Best Friends Forever: Between Life and Machine

by DemonBrightSpirit

Searching for Hope

A pungent, caustic smell burned Rarity’s nose. She pulled back, trying in vain to escape the terrible odor. As she did so, her eyes blinked open to a piercing white light. Squinting, shapes appeared from within the light. It was a mare with a nurse’s hat.

“Miss, are you all right?” she asked, pulling a hoof with a glass vial away from Rarity’s face.

Realizing that she was on the floor, Rarity rolled over and up onto her hooves. “Wh-what…?” Her words failed her as she caught sight of Rainbow Dash using a towel to wipe herself off. It all came rushing back to Rarity as she saw the red stains.

Rarity’s heart pounded painfully in her chest, and she whipped back around to face the nurse. Taking the nurse’s shoulders in her hooves, Rarity pulled her face close to her own. “Sweetie Belle! Please tell me she’s okay!”

The nurse gave her a squeamish smile, wriggling out of Rarity’s grasp. “I, um, the filly that was just brought in was taken into emergency surgery. I wish I could tell you more, but that’s really all we know at the moment.”

“What do you mean, ‘that’s all you know!’” Rarity shouted at her. “How is she? Is she going to be okay?”

She shook her head again. “All I know is that she was in very serious condition when they brought her in, but we can’t know any more until something happens. You have to understand that we can’t just go into the operating theater and bother the doctors. We have to just trust that they’ll do everything they can.”

Rarity stomped a hoof on the smooth tile. “That’s not good enough!” she screamed, her voice straining and her eyes brimming with tears.

Ears folding down, the nurse took a step back. “I understand that you’re upset, but there really isn’t anything I can do. It would only make things worse if we interrupted the surgery.”

A cyan hoof landed on Rarity’s shoulder, pulling her away from the nurse. “Rarity, there’s nothing she can do. J-just take a deep breath.”

Rarity turned her desperate glare on Rainbow Dash. “How could this have happened!” Her rage melting under a flood of hot tears, Rarity latched onto Dash. “How could I let this happen?”

Dash wrapped her forelegs around Rarity, running a hoof down her back. “I don’t… I didn’t get a lot from Scootaloo, but I know this isn’t your fault.”

“I-I’m sorry!” a small voice squeaked. Rarity and Dash looked over to find Apple Bloom, rivulets of tears wetting her cheeks. “We n-never thought…” Her words fell into incomprehensible sobs.

Dash and Rarity shared a look, and Rarity gave a nod as she tried her best to quell her own sobs. They stepped away from each other, giving Rainbow the opportunity to sweep Apple Bloom up in a hug. The distraught filly buried her head in Dash’s chest, despite the remaining stains of blood too stubborn to be wiped away by a towel.

From the safety of Rainbow’s embrace, Apple Bloom managed to choke out a single phrase. “Is Sweetie gonna be okay?”

The words, echoing her own fears, brought forth a new sob from Rarity. She quickly joined the embrace, not only to comfort Apple Bloom but to receive her own comfort as well.

That only left Rainbow Dash as the only one that wasn’t a blubbering mess. And so it was up to her to answer the difficult question. Sure, she could just lie and say Sweetie would be fine, but that just wouldn’t be right. No, Apple Bloom deserved the truth, no matter how painful it may have been.

Licking her lips, Rainbow found the truth left a bitter taste. “You… you heard the nurse,” she said, fighting the tightness in her throat, “they’re gonna do everything they can to save Sweetie Belle. But… it’s bad, and I-I don’t know that—if—she’s gonna be okay.”

Her words only served to elicit more sobs from the duo in her hooves. Just as the waves of emotion threatened to take her under, a familiar burst of light and sound tore her attention away. “Twilight?”

“Scootaloo said Sweetie was in the hospital. Is everything okay?” Twilight asked, trotting over.

Rainbow looked at the fillies in her forelegs before looking back at Twilight and shaking her head.

Twilight held a hoof over her mouth. “O-oh, my goodness. She’s not… is she?”

“We don’t know,” Rainbow said, her voice filled with disdain. “They won’t tell us anything.”

“What?” Twilight’s head turned to the side, toward the nurse.

Breathing a measured sigh, the nurse repeated herself, “She is in surgery. We cannot interrupt the doctors to get any kind of update on the situation.”

Twilight turned her attention back to Rainbow and the rest. “Well, how was she when you brought her in? And how did this happen?”

Rainbow shook her head. “I’m a little fuzzy on the details. All I know is she fell off a cliff over at that mountain where we drove off that dragon. I got her here as fast I could but…” Folding her ears down, Dash let her gaze fall away from Twilight. “I mean, I checked her when I got there and… and by then she already wasn’t breathing.”

“Oh, Rarity, are you—”

“No!” Rarity cut Twilight off, her voice drowning in emotion.

Before Twilight could respond, the doors burst open. In marched a trio of ponies: Sweetie Belle’s parents, Hondo and Cookie, with Scootaloo in tow.

“What’s going on?” Hondo demanded.

“Is Sweetie okay?” Cookie asked.

Twilight stepped away from the trio. “I-I got this,” she insisted, walking over and corralling the duo to a nearby corner.

---

After a couple of hours of explanations, excuses, and emotions, everypony found themselves completely drained, especially Rarity. She and her parents had been moved to what they called Sweetie’s room. The very notion smacked of mockery, given that the only member of Rarity’s immediate family that wasn’t there was Sweetie.

Rainbow Dash had left for a much-needed shower over an hour ago and never returned. After coaxing the events leading up to Sweetie’s accident from them, they sent the fillies home. Even Twilight left, gone in search of the terrible bird that attacked the Crusaders, lest it hurt somepony else.

That just left Rarity and her parents in the room reserved for Sweetie. The tears and emotions had ebbed away, leaving a relatively benign numbness and a terrified silence. Nopony dared to utter a syllable, lest they shatter the numbness that gave precious little comfort.

No, the clock provided the only sound in the form of a maddening metronome. Rarity glared at it for what must have been the hundredth time. The embodiment of time mocked her. How long would the surgery take? Three hours had passed since Rainbow Dash brought Sweetie in.

A darker, more sinister thought haunted the back of her mind. How long would it take them to let her know if the unthinkable happened to Sweetie Belle? In the dramas, the doctors could keep trying to revive a patient for the better part of an hour. If those were true, and that's a big if, then it could very well be more than an hour before anypony came bearing the worst news.

If Rarity had to sit here even one more minute listening to time tick away, she would surely break down. Stumbling to her hooves, she blurted out the first excuse she could think of to run away. “I just… I need to grab a bite to eat.”

Her mother didn’t move. Her head stayed buried in her father’s shoulder. The only response she got from her father was a small nod of recognition. He didn’t even look at her.

And why should he?

“Oh, Rarity, one more thing!” Sweetie Belle practically shouted as she stood in front of the door, adjusting her saddlebags. “After school, we’re gonna go help a classmate a cutie mark in rock climbing, okay?”

Rarity didn’t budge from her workstation. Her eyes stayed locked on the fabrics in front of her. This work had to be done by the end of the week, and she already found herself behind. Having agreed to have Sweetie spend the night certainly didn’t help, either.

“Mmm-hmm, that’s nice,” Rarity replied, barely even acknowledging Sweetie’s question.

Rarity hadn’t uttered a single word about it, but she knew where the blame fell. It wasn’t on an innocent little filly that got hurt. It wasn’t on her friends. Even the monster that attacked them wasn’t responsible. Not entirely. It wasn’t that monster’s job to keep her safe.

Everything around her blurred. Blinking liberated tears, but did little to clear her vision or her conscience. She tried to focus on the barely-touched tray of food before her. Her trip to the cafeteria and even her getting the food hardly even registered. Reigning in her emotions, she gave a ragged sigh.

Clank.

The sound of a tray dropping onto the table stirred Rarity to look at something other than her food. Across from her, a black stallion with a graying yellow mane sat down. This Unicorn bore no dress or white coat like most of the rest of the cafeteria’s patrons. Instead, he wore a green gown. “My goodness, you look like ten—no—fifteen miles of bad road.”

Who walks up to a lady and says something like that? “Please, I’m not in the mood,” Rarity said, barely keeping her voice steady.

“There’s only one reason for a pretty young lady to be here by herself, crying in a hospital cafeteria,” he said. Using his horn, he took a fork and scooped up some unidentifiable muck from his tray, then pointed it at Rarity. “Somepony you care about is suffering, and there’s nothing you can do to ease it. You may not be in the mood, but you need to talk to somepony.”

The tears returned, choking her voice. “And what, you’re that somepony?” Rarity asked.

A sad, knowing smile spread across his muzzle. Stuffing the fork into his maw, he gave a nod. “Hey,” he said after swallowing, “I may not look like it, but I know a thing or two about what you’re going through. Let me guess: your thoughts keep going back and forth to worrying about your loved one, and the regrets you have about what you did, or didn’t do, in the past. How you so desperately wish that you had done so much differently.”

Rarity shut her eyes, driving fresh tears down her cheeks. Maybe this stallion did know what he was talking about. There was no way she could speak with all the emotion drowning her voice. Instead, she settled on an emphatic nod.

The stallion reached across the table, placing his hoof atop Rarity’s. “Why don’t you tell me about it? It might make you feel better if you get some of it off your chest.”

Withdrawing her hoof, Rarity shook her head. “I—I don’t think I can.”

“Well, maybe you could start by telling me your name? I’m Short Circuit. Just don’t call me ‘Shorty,’” Short Circuit said.

Rarity only managed to summon a single word. “Rarity.”

After a moment of silence, Circuit rubbed the back of his neck. “Would it help if I told you about my loss?” he asked. Rarity did nothing to reply, so he continued, “I lost my daughter. She never even got her cutie mark.”

That got Rarity’s attention. She looked up with shimmering eyes, begging him. But did she want him to stop, or to keep going?

Circuit licked his lips. “This was all over a decade ago, now. She drowned, my daughter did. I brought her here and they managed to save her life, but… she never woke up.” Sighing, he shook his head. “She spent over a year in a coma, then she, well she just got sick. An opportunistic infection, they called it. And then, just like that, she was gone forever.”

“A-a year? You went all that time never knowing…?” Rarity asked, her voice trembling.

“Don’t be silly,” he said, breathing out a bitter chuckle. “Sure, they told me she’d never wake up, but all that meant was that they couldn’t help her. I never gave up. I threw myself into finding a way. Had it not been for that infection…” Stopping in the middle of his tirade, he took a deep breath in before letting it out through his nose. “Sorry about that, Rarity. It still gets me worked up, sometimes.”

“It-it’s my little sister,” Rarity said, finally opening up. “She just got her cutie mark not long ago.”

Again, Circuit reached across the table and placed his hoof on Rarity’s. Though, this time, she didn’t pull away. “What happened?”

“Do you remember that mountain where that dragon roosted? She went climbing on it with her friends. They were attacked by a big bird-thing and… and she fell.” Rarity sat up, pulling at her eyelids in a futile attempt to dry her tears before they could spill over. “She’s in surgery now, but they won’t tell us anything. It’s driving me mad. I don’t even know if I want to know. I’m so scared that… what if it’s the worst news?”

Tears poured down her cheeks, and Rarity choked back a sob. She finally uttered the words plaguing the dark corners of her mind. “It’s all my fault. I never should have let her go.”

Just as Rarity submitted to her sorrow, her body convulsing with sobs, Hondo burst into the cafeteria. “Rarity! She’s out of surgery!”