• Published 23rd Jun 2016
  • 8,265 Views, 538 Comments

Things Are Rarely as They Seem - Orkus



Habeas Brittle, a carefree changeling who left his hive, is attacked by a grim figure as he wanders through the Canterlot countryside. Wounded greatly in the scuffle, he is found and cared for by a filly belonging to a widowed mare with a dark past.

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Recovery

Habeas shifted into his unicorn form right before they got to Canterlot, having been reminded to do so just in time by Peach Blossom. When he had done that and they rushed forth to the hospital, she was taken in immediately and put into emergency care. Habeas and Peach Blossom spent the next three hours in the waiting room, knowing in their hearts that Persica was fine, though with no short amount of worry plaguing their minds.

All that worry came to naught when a youthful earth pony nurse eventually came by and politely informed them of Persica's condition and whereabouts. She offered to lead them to her room, and before she could even finish her sentence on the subject, the pair had agreed and quickly were on their way to her through the wide corridors of the hospital. They arrived at it soon enough.

The room was spacious, bearing five beds in total, with the only one in use being Persica's. Currently she was laying in it, dressed in a blue patient gown that was hidden under the white covers. Having been allowed entry by the nurse, Habeas and Peach Blossom stood by her side and spent the next hour talking with her.

"So... it's not that bad, right?" Peach Blossom asked her mother for the third time.

"Don't worry," she smiled to her in a sore voice. "They said I'll only be here for a short time, depending on well I heal up. The doctor told me she'll be by to double-check on my injuries a little bit from now. To see what else needs tending to, and all that..."

"You're beginning to sound drowsy," Habeas noted as she let out an immense yawn.

"Yeah... the doctor also cast some sort of... anti-bacterial spell, or something like that on me," she mumbled again. "She said it keeps out whatever germs have the chance to get in my wound while my bandages settle into it, but it would also eventually makes me feel a little tired as a result. Nothing to worry about."

"Well, I'm going to be worrying. Just until you get out of here, anyway," Peach Blossom said again. She walked up to her mother's side and gave her a hug around the neck, to avoid accidentally disrupting the hurt part of her body. "I hope you feel better really, really soon, Mom."

"I'm sure I will, dear," Persica whispered tenderly. "I was told I shouldn't be in here for more than a few days. I'll be on my hooves before you know it."

The hug soon ended, and Peach Blossom gave one last hopeful look into Persica's eyes before departing from her side. As the filly trotted a few feet away, Habeas took this second to go up to her himself. "I'll make sure to take good care of Blossom while you stay here."

Persica smiled reassuringly. "I know you will." Her expression turned serious a moment later, as another, important detail came to her mind. "Just... when you get home, how will you... take care of the-"

"-The changeling? I already told the city guard of the encounter," he finished for her. "They sent a patrol to the house an hour ago, but when they returned they told me that all they found was blood from the fight and a trail that made it look like something was dragged out from under the plow. They stopped at the barn's entrance and that was it. The changeling seems to have... vanished."

Persica thought on this for a few moments. "Do you think an animal came by and carried her off?"

"I asked that too, but they said that after making a thorough inspection around the farm, no animal tracks were found," Habeas responded. "They told me that they're going to station a temporary patrol to keep watch around the property, so I don't think we'll have anything to fear from it for a time."

"Well... that's good news, at least." Persica quietly said. She looked about ready to settle down and get comfortable, when yet another thought struck her and she looked the changeling's way once more. "Oh, one more thing, Habeas. Before you go."

"Yes?" he asked her, leaning his disguised head in. Persica smiled and extended her thankful face to his, giving him a kiss on the tip of his muzzle.

"That's for everything," she spoke when it finished. It was nothing more than a quick peck, but when Persica got back into a comfy position and took a look at Habeas, the results were something to behold. Were anyone else to judge the look on his face, they'd probably have guessed that he had just won the lottery. "I... I, um... got it," he smiled in a goofy fashion, struggling to keep his love-struck mind set on maintaining his current disguised form with all the intense emotions of infatuation making him lose nearly all focus on keeping it. The changeling drifted slowly from Persica to the door, and when he moved out of the mare's way Persica saw Peach Blossom beaming at her from the corner of the room.

"What're you looking at?" she asked her daughter with a curled brow.

Keeping that shining smirk on her face, Peach Blossom chirped "I'll see you in a few hours, Mom. Love you!" and simply turned to the door and skipped off after Habeas, closing it behind her afterword. Persica could only shrug and pulled the last of the white, clean covers over herself. When that was done she laid her head flat upon the pillow below it, and tried to relax her stiffened muscles. Ever so slowly, she could feel her mind slipping away; succumbing to the welcoming influence of the medicine, healing magics, and her fatigue in general from this day's extreme events.

Her rest lasted not five minutes before it was interrupted, however. After the squeaking sound of the door being opened made her eyelids lift, Persica bore witness to two nurses carrying in a pony of a yellow color on a stretcher. They trotted over with the pony to the bed straight to the left of Persica's own, and with extremely careful hooves, began to take the new character off of the stretcher and place them on the bed. Persica wasn't able to see much of the nurse's faces, as their backs were turned to her while they operated in eerie silence. Only when they were starting to finish was when she got a good look at them.

There was a dull look in their individual eyes, as if they weren't fully focused on what it was they were doing. After finishing up situating their patient, the two left the room in silence. Persica looked at the bed her new roommate was in and studied it as closely as she could.

There was a small metal frame set rigged to the end panel of the bed that was carefully holding the braced and concealed lower legs of the pony up a small ways. It was quite the spectacle to observe, and from what little she could see, they poor pony had some form of severe lower-body injury. Just how severe it was she couldn't tell, but it was indeed interesting to witness, to say the least.

"Hmph," Persica grunted, merely testing the water for a reply.

"Humph," the pony in the adjacent bed huffed back in a feminine voice, gaining no small amount of surprise and intrigue from Persica.

"Hmm... Do you got a name?" she decided to ask, in an effort to make real conversation. There was a long silence without a response, but eventually, just as the mare had given up hope, she did.

"Apini."

"Apini..." Persica recognized the name right off. "Apini Bee? Is that you?"

"Who wants to know?" Apini mumbled back, a sour note evident in her tone.

"Prunus Persica does. Peach Blossom's mother, remember?"

"P-Persica?" Apini's voice seemed to be overcome by a high twinge of what sounded like panic, before a long, steady and cool breath came over it and it sunk back down to a normal, if not partially shaken one. "Why are... you in here?"

"Spear wound to the chest," she spoke in a rasping grunt as she shifted into a different position in her bed. "I was... attacked at my house by a changeling, believe it or not. The creature got ahold of my own weapon when it did it. It was defeated in the end, but the damage was done. It's going to keep me down for a while."

"That sounds... absolutely dreadful," Apini gasped, horrified from what Persica could discern in her voice.

"In what manner of injury are you in here for? And how did it happen to get you such an odd form of casts?" Persica took the liberty to ask.

Apini's mind was rough like a rock's surface and feeble like a flimsy twig, but she was able to piece together a clever and detailed lie soon enough. "A... I was walking down a lonesome and mostly-empty road, minding my own business when some workers who were... hoisting up a big wagon-thing onto a something-or-other above me let the ropes slip their grasp and it... dropped on me."

"It dropped on you?" Persica turned her equally fuzzy-feeling head in the direction of Apini. "How bad is it?"

"Doctor says it did a lot of irreparable damage on my spine, among other places. I'd be considered lucky if I were to ever walk on my hind legs again. I'm... paralyzed. A paraplegic, in the term I was told of. Quite the... q-quite the bit of downer news, eh?"

"Celestia," Persica gasped, her tone full of true shock at this bit of news. "That's... that's terrible. How are you feeling about all this?"

"Well, it's not as bad as being actively attacked by someone else, if I were to compare," the disguised changeling managed to breath, thinking back to the encounter. "But at least you'll heal up, right? Those clumsy workers... seemed to have vanished after the deed was done to me, and I'm only here now because my kids found me crawling up to them on the front door."

The hollow sound of a hoof knocking on the door went out as Apini finished. Both of them looked to the door just as it opened a crack, and the red-furred head of a nurse poked his head through to look at them.

"I am terribly sorry to intrude Miss Bee, but your children wish to see you," he said. "Shall I let them in?"

"Of course you may," Apini replied without hesitation. Nodding, the nurse pulled his head out from the door and closed it for a brief instant. When it reopened seconds later, one small shape of a unicorn entered, holding a large bundle in one of his hooves. Within the bundle was what Persica could see was a young foal, also a unicorn. She knew right off the colt was her daughter's friend Bumble. And to match up with the descriptions she received, she knew that the smaller child was none other than his little sister, Honey, whom Blossom talked of constantly.

Ignoring Persica for the most part, they paced up to Apini's bedside. They looked at her, and she stared back in a disheartened, but loving and motherly way. "H-hey, Mom," Bumble was the first to speak, his voice full of sadness, all while Honey giggled and spoke childish gibberish at the sight of their mother. "How are you... feeling right now?"

"Oh, you know, heh..." Apini chuckled weakly, while in truth she was struggling to hold herself back from tearing up in front of her offspring for having to keep seeing her in such a pitiful state. "I'm... hanging in there."

"Mumma!" the infant squealed, continuing to wave her minuscule hooves about in front of her parent, seeing nothing wrong in the situation with her innocent and naive mind. "Mumma, Mumma, Mumma!"

"That's enough, Honey," Bumble spoke to his sister, patting her lightly with his spare hoof in an attempt to calm her down. "Please be quiet now. For Mom."

"Mumma?" she questioned.

"Yes, Mom," her sibling confirmed. "She's really, really... tired right now. She needs her rest, okay? That means no loud noises."

"Oh. Uh-huh..." Honey slowly agreed. Her attention was then stolen away from Apini to Bumble's ear, and she began playfully batting at it when he spoke up again. "What did the doctors say?" he asked her.

"It's a little bit... complicated," Apini spoke. "You wouldn't really understand the full set of details. I will tell you that they said I... may not walk again. On my back legs, of course..."

"I... understand." Bumble's head lowered in lament and his ears also began to sink, causing Honey some confusion, as she was just playing with them.

For a time after that, Persica heard Apini converse with her children. It was mostly trivial matters, about side information the doctors had given her, the rough draft of the plan she had been forming and putting together for how things would go while she was staying here, and so on.

"...And until I'm able to leave here, she'll take good care of you," Apini finished her current sentence, which dealt on the matter of how Bumble and Honey would be cared for by a fellow castle servant and next-door neighbor, 'Mrs. Bramble', or somepony of some other name like that from what the weary Persica had gathered. "Bumble, you know how to take care of Honey, right?"

"You always ask me that, Mom." He rolled his eyes and gave off a small smile. "Of course I do."

"It never hurts to make sure," she chuckled. "Keep a close eye on her. And most importantly, behave - as I taught you - for Mrs. Bramble. Got it?"

"I got it," he said, shifting Honey into a better part of his arm when she started to squirm in his grasp. "I'll be good for her, and I'll make sure Honey is too."

"Good..." Apini's tired voice sounded like it was starting to trail off as the conversation with her children reached its end. "Now then... I think it is best if you go on now. I know you both'll be perfectly fine without me for the time being. If you have any doubts whatsoever, just visit me."

"Bye-bye, Mumma," Honey spoke as her tiny hooves stretched out and softly touched Apini's face, her voice more noticeably quiet and melancholy than the jovial, twittering tune it was before. Persica knew that, in spite of the infant's young age, she was intelligent enough to see the cons in not being able to be in contact with her beloved parent.

"Goodbye, sweetie. Mommy loves you. Mommy loves you both." Apini's words were just as sad and filled with an unmistakable grief. With a final, reluctant nod, Bumble spoke his farewells and turned away with his sister to the door, carrying her with him safely. Persica could hear the younger foal beginning to let out a mumbling whine just before the door closed, and everything in the room went silent when it clicked shut.

That silence stayed about until Persica decided to break it. "You know, Apini, you're fortunate to have such a loving family," she complimented. "Your two kids are something else."

"They're the ones who I've devoted my entire life to raising," she replied, sighing as heavily as her aching lungs could allow. "They both take a lot after their father, you know."

"Peach Blossom's never mentioned him," Persica said, before she came to what she thought was a fatal conclusion. "Is he...?"

"It's a... long-distance relationship..." Apini murmured, her eyes focused on the ceiling above. "I never see him often. Once every few months, or so. He always claims to be so... busy with everything he does, all the time. He says he cares about the kids, and I have a strong feeling he does, but I don't know if I really know..."

"Relationships like those are always of the complex variety," Persica spoke. "I know how it must feel. I've been a single mother for the longest of times."

"I've seen you with that other... pony," Apini brought up, finding some solace in the fact that she was able to speak with the pony who failed to recognize her for her true appearance. "I'm willing to bet that things are... more than what they appear to be between you two, yes?"

"They might be," the mare hummed, keeping the truth vague from the pony whom she saw as a common friend and nothing more. "They might be..."

The sound of the door opening with a squeak of its hinges alerted Persica and Apini that somepony new was once more coming in. Persica was the first to see this individual enter, whom she quickly recognized was the doctor she had met some time before. The doctor was a unicorn mare with red fur and a pink mane that also had a swirling white color within it. A set of circular glasses rested over her snout, a colorless lab coat was worn over her body, and a clipboard was sitting in her hoof. She was pulling in an empty stretcher on wheels, not unlike the contraption Apini was brought in with.

"I'm here for a Miss... Prunus Persica," she said, staring at her clipboard a second time and then lifting her head back up to the sight of the two patients. The doctor quickly saw who she was looking for here from the bed with the matching name bolted to the front of it. "Ah, you must be her," she said next.

"That I am," Persica agreed. Going up to her, the doctor used her magic to gently pull back her bed covers and levitated Persica into the air as though she were a feather; carefully bringing her down onto the stretcher's soft surface.

"Are you all set? Comfortable?" she asked next upon settling her patient down and buckling her in. Persica nodded in confirmation, and with that the doctor steadily pushed her out of the room with a squeaking of the stretcher's wheels. Persica managed to make one last glance in Apini's direction just before she fully left the room and the door closed. Apini saw it, and she unleashed a loud sigh of pure relief that only she heard.

As she lay there by herself, Apini lifted her head just enough to see her shattered legs concealed in their casts and braces, and then let it fall back down to the pillow with a whumf. Something ghastly she had never once felt before was gnawing at her insides since she was brought to the hospital, and the conversation she had with her would-have-been prey was the cause of her realization of it. Whether it was something as wretched as guilt or not was something she tried not to care for deciding over, but the question burned inside her like a hot brand.

She was still able to shift her upper body into other forms, and a combination of her children sneaking her in here and her magic were the only reasons she was able to enter the hospital without anyone realizing what she was, hypnotize the medical aids and staff and get the doctors to work on her without compromising her true identity. As she feared, the thought of her being horrendously crippled from the ordeal at the Peach farm came true. She had to cope with this new condition of hers in one way or another, but she as of yet knew not how she possibly could.

With the mixture of terrible thoughts swirling inside of her sore head like a violent maelstrom of misery, Apini tried, as best as she could, to forget them for now and fall asleep.