27 - The Last Night
Sonata had finally cried herself out by the time Fireflower guided her into their room. They hadn’t had any money to pay for it, but when Fireflower had managed to walk her to a nearby hotel, the kindly pegasus at the counter had taken one look at Sonata and had checked them in anyway, quietly lamenting “the terrible times.”
Red-eyed, Sonata had immediately headed into the bathroom, and Fireflower had heard the water running a moment later. Sighing, he moved further into the room…and stopped dead as he realized that it only had one bed, large enough for two. His earlier confidence buckling under a rush of embarrassment, Fireflower was wondering if he should go back and ask them to change their room when Sonata exited the bathroom.
“Hey,” she said softly, giving her companion a wan smile. “Sorry about going all to pieces on you like that.”
“You don’t have to apologize!” he assured her, a little more forcefully than he meant to due to his renewed nervousness. Forcing himself to calm down, he continued. “Really, I should have been more sensitive to how you felt.”
Her smile widened a bit, until it almost resembled her usual grin. “You’re already a really sensitive guy, taking care of me like that.”
Fireflower was going to protest, to remind her that she’d done the same for him in the aftermath of Lex’s attempt on his life, but the words were lost as Sonata suddenly stepped forward and kissed his cheek. The only reason she didn’t see the stupefied look that crossed his face – eyes wide and jaw hanging – that were the results of her actions was because she immediately moved past him, heading into the room.
“Oh hey! Look at this!” Hearing her voice, now having recovered much of its usual vigor, was enough to snap him out of it, mostly, and he blinked as he turned around to see what had caught her interest.
She was flipping through a newspaper that had been on the room’s smaller table. Fireflower could see that its headline indicated that it was the “special evacuation edition” of the paper. Doubtlessly this was what the mayor had mentioned during her speech. “What does it say?” asked Fireflower as he moved alongside Sonata.
“All sorts of stuff. There’s a lotta stuff about who’s going when, and why they have to use ships, and- ah ha!” She grinned in triumph. “And the instructions for what to do when it’s your turn to leave!”
Fireflower tilted his head in confusion. “Why is that helpful?” He was sure the answer was right there in the paper, but he was focused on her rather than the newsprint in front of him.
“Because if Lex is going to be anywhere, it’ll be here,” she answered. Her voice was filled with confidence. “I’m, like, totes certain of it! He’ll want to be there to issue instructions or be on lookout or something. He’s like, super dedicated to helping ponies who need it.” She glanced at Fireflower as she said that, as though wanting to make sure he didn’t disagree.
His pained attempt at a smile seemed to satisfy her, and she went over to the bed, taking the paper with her as she laid down, still reading it. “It says here that it’s gonna start tomorrow at half-past four. Can you set the alarm for then?”
“Sure thing.” Despite his acknowledgment he didn’t move, caught in a bout of indecision. Was she expecting him to climb onto the bed with her? Or was she expecting him to sleep on the room’s small sofa instead?
Shifting on his hooves uncertainly, Fireflower decided that he needed more time to think. “I’m, uh, gonna go get cleaned up.”
“‘Kay.”
Retreating to the bathroom, Fireflower sighed in equal parts relief and disappointment. Glancing at himself in the mirror, he tried to rally. They were going to face a dragon, the same dragon that had killed his little sister. It was no time to be squeamish! Not when they quite literally might not live to regret it!
Jumping into the shower, he kept building up his thoughts as he fiddled with the unfamiliar controls, until his head – and the bathroom – were full of steam. Toweling himself off, he took a deep breath and nodded to himself. No more being too nervous to speak, no more evading the issue. He was going to walk right out there and tell her how he felt, and damn the consequences. Fortune favored the bold, right? Right.
He repeated that to himself for almost three full minutes, glancing at the doorknob that was the last barrier between himself and what he was about to do, before he finally worked himself up enough. Flinging open the door, he practically charged out. “Sonata, I want t-”
Soft snoring greeted him.
Fireflower let out a huge breath as the tension suddenly left him. He knew that if his siblings were there, they’d have been howling with mirth. For that matter, even he couldn’t help but let out an amused snicker at the irony of the situation. It was perfect, absolutely perfect.
Still chuckling softly, he went over and gently pulled the blankets up over her, being careful not to wake her up. Pulling the newspaper out from under her hooves, he laid it on the table before hopping onto the sofa and curling up. He was still smiling as he spent a few minutes watching her sleep, before the exhaustion of the day caught up with him and he drifted off as well.
It was almost full dark by the time Nosey returned to her room. “I’m ba-ack!” She called out in a sing-song voice as she walked in. A gray glow surrounded her horn, matching the aura around the box she was telekinetically carrying with her. “Did you miss me?”
Giving her the barest of glances, Lex snorted derisively before returning his gaze to the newspaper, looking it over on the slight chance that it would have any other information that might be useful to him. “What did you find out about the evacuation plans?” He didn’t bother to look at her as he spoke.
Putting her box down, Nosey didn’t protest his attitude. It was unpleasant, but his whole “dark and brooding” shtick would only enhance the exposé she planned on writing about him later! “Yeah, talk about a dead end! I spent an hour trying to get in to see her, and when that didn’t work I tried to interview some of the office-ponies going into and out of city hall, but apparently all of them were named ‘No Comment.’” She rolled her eyes in exasperation before continuing.
“But I did have one stroke of luck. Check this out!” She lifted her box again, nodding towards Lex, clearly wanting him to open it.
He gave her a level look for a long moment, silently making his irritation with her known. He couldn’t imagine that whatever she’d found was at all useful, and even if it was there was no reason for her not to just tell him instead of playing this ridiculous game. But Nosey was apparently undeterred by his glowering at her, simply floating her box towards him and smiling in anticipation.
For a moment he considered rebuking her more harshly for wasting his time, but decided against it. In just a few hours, he be involved in what would likely be the fight of his life, and conserving his energy, even it was just the mental fatigue of dealing with this twit of a mare, was important. Grasping the box in his own telekinesis, he opened it slowly, peering at the contents within.
After a pregnant pause, he looked back up at her, unimpressed. “It’s a camera,” he declared flatly.
“It’s a camera!” came Nosey’s enthusiastic response. “Normally I have to contract a local photojournalist in order to get a picture to go with my stories, but that’s a no-go with the whole town getting ready to be evacuated, so I’m gonna do it myself!” Pushing her glasses up on her muzzle, she grinned. “I always knew I was an ace reporter, but now I get to show everypony that I’m an ace photographer too!” Her voice made it clear that she was quite impressed with herself.
Lex turned back to the newspaper, letting his lack of a response speak for itself.
Unpurturbed, Nosey took the camera out of the box, keeping up a one-sided dialogue as she did so. “I had to get this one at a secondhoof shop, being a girl on a budget and all, but the clerk assured me that it should work just as good as a new one. Now let’s see…” her voice trailed off into soft mumbling as she removed the last of the components, arranging them on the floor.
For a brief time, silence reigned in their room, broken only by the soft swishing of turning newspaper pages and Nosey’s broken mutterings as she haphazardly assembled her camera. Almost an hour passed, and Lex was just finishing his reading when a bright flash filled the room, startling him. “What?!”
“One operating camera: check,” smiled Nosey. “With a picture to go with this story, it’ll make headlines in every paper in Equestria!”
“I didn’t tell you that you could photograph me,” growled Lex.
Nosey scoffed. “You knew that I’m a reporter, that I bought a camera, and that I’m writing a story on you. As far as I’m concerned, not saying that I couldn’t photograph you meant that you were fine with it. Now,” she continued in her best Photo Finish faux-accent, stepping behind her camera again, “ve’ll get a few more for good measure. You are an evil overlord, yah! You’re going to destroy all zat displeases you!”
“I’m about to,” hissed Lex darkly.
The snarl that crossed her guest’s face, as well as how he extended a hoof – not towards her, but towards her camera – in response to her words was enough to make Nosey realize that she had pushed her luck far enough. A good reporter didn’t badger her sources, and so she quickly stepped back from her camera and began to break it down. “But that’s enough for tonight,” she hurriedly stated, returning her voice to its normal pitch. “Big day tomorrow, after all.”
Lex didn’t soften his glare, but lowered his hoof, apparently mollified by her acquiescence. Once he was sure that she had gotten the message, he got up from the desk and headed over to the corner of the room. Settling down, he pulled a blanket from his haversack and – ignoring Nosey’s grunt of interest at seeing something be removed from a container that looked too small to hold it –draped it over himself, settling the haversack beneath his head as a makeshift pillow.
Rolling her eyes at his curtness, Nosey moved over to the desk that Lex had vacated. Picking up the newspaper, she quickly flipped through it. It didn’t take her long to find the same information that he had earlier, and she glanced at him thoughtfully for a moment.
Her first inclination was to ask him to confirm what she suspected: that he planned on crashing the initial group of evacuees, or at least tailing it to the dockyards, and then fight the dragon that he’d claimed would be waiting there. But for once, Nosey held her tongue. She was sure that if she did, he’d realize that she intended on tailing him and tell her to stay put. There was no way that she’d actually listen to that, of course, but she couldn’t take the chance that he’d back his orders up with magic to somehow force her to stay behind. Which meant that she had to be smart about this…
“Well, I’m going to bed,” she announced.
As she’d expected, there was no reaction from Lex, although Nosey was certain that he was still awake. Going into the small adjoining bathroom, she brushed her teeth and washed up before coming out and climbing into the room’s only bed. She briefly wondered if she should thank him – it had been nice of him to leave the bed to her, after all – but decided against it; he’d been enough of a jerk that one gracious act wasn’t enough to make up for it all.
Pulling the covers over her, she used her telekinesis to turn the lamp off, letting the room fall into darkness. And then…she waited.
Although Nosey knew that few ponies would have ascribed it to her, patience was a virtue that she possessed in abundance. Oh, she didn’t like having to use it, of course, but you didn’t get to be a star reporter without knowing how to wait, whether it was for a subject to emerge from seclusion or for prying eyes to turn away. Or in this case, fall asleep.
Lying in the inky blackness, Nosey paid close attention to the sound of Lex’s breathing. It took a long time – it had to have been well over an hour – but eventually she heard it become slow and regular. She waited a few more minutes, just to be safe, and then climbed out of bed.
Stepping as lightly as she could, Nosey padded over to the clock on the wall. Normally she just would have telekinetically brought it over to her, but she couldn’t risk the glowing aura that would have created waking Lex up. Instead, she reached up with her forehooves and gently pulled it off the wall.
There was almost no ambient light in the room, but her eyes had adjusted to the gloom enough that she could just barely make out the knobs that set the alarm. Clenching her mouth around it, she slowly turned it so that it was set to go off…at 4:35 AM.
Replacing the clock, she carefully crept back into bed. Once she was tucked under the covers again, and after confirming that Lex’s breathing hadn’t changed, she smirked to herself. It was obvious to her that he was planning on somehow waking up by himself at the right time and leaving her there, probably hoping that she’d sleep through everything. But by setting the alarm for just after he left, she’d have no trouble waking up in time to follow him!
Chuckling softly to herself, Nosey closed her eyes. She could almost see the journalism awards she’d get for this story now…
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Lexs trip is about to get a whole lot worse?
7693229 Life is never so bad that it can't get worse.
There are typos! What's worse than that?
Since when does Fireflower know what a shower is? Or even how to operate it?
And, how does Nosey know that Lex will wake up before then? This is going to end badly.
7695778
This is a fair point. I've edited it appropriately; he now says that he's going to go get "cleaned up" and it mentions that how the shower works is unfamiliar to him.
I didn't do a good job making this clear, but Nosey is essentially operating on intuition, and reasonably so. It doesn't take much interaction with Lex to know that he's severe and exacting, with others and with himself. As such, she's taking it as a given that he won't oversleep.
7695836
Then he messes around with it to try get warm water. 
But she has no idea what "oversleeping" is for Lex, hence she might run into him, or maybe her alarm will wake him up.
Maybe you should add him turning on the water... To be freezing cold.
7695839 Not so; she read the same newspaper that he did, which had information about when the first wave of evacuees will be leaving. Given what she knows about Lex, she can reasonably assume that he'll want to be there exactly when it happens, and extrapolate from there.
7695842
Then she's going to have to run. Run chickie RUN!
[youtube=https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jz-N1vPwph8]
Nosey is such a fun character.
Also:
carefully kept - carefully crept
7696878 Nosey is a lot of fun to write. She just has such a strong personal voice that I can just sit back and let her scenes practically write themselves.
Also, typo fixed!
My story is up Alzrius, go check it out.