The Last Flower

by TheMareWhoSaysNi

Prologue: Where Are All The Flowers Gone?

Air. A cloud of oxygen back inside the heart. Blood supplied in the brain and the lungs hurting from aspiring too much emptiness.

Soarin’s eyes opened wide, his upper body sitting up in one single move, like pushed by a spring. Surrounding him, a crystal darkness, gloominess of the saddest days, those saddest days of routine. Silent was purring around him, an engine whispering in his ears, along with beats, like knocks at his body’s door.

His latest memories came back to his mind. As if he were still lying against the dusty red ground of the battlefield, as if he heard the astounding strike, that ground shaking under his feet, and the whistling air, bursting out his eardrums. And then, came nothingness.

Where were his fighting buddies? Where was she? How long had he been gone? Only for an hour, or maybe a whole lifetime…?

He had only one certainty now – he was alive. The rest was as hazy as the atmosphere of this cold and dark room.

Once the shock over, Soarin ran a hand over his face. His skin wasn’t cracked but dry and his lips were chapped. In theory, less than a decade separated him from this vision, only print left of a past that was impossible to situate.

Then, he touched his legs. Only by palpating the flesh and slipping his palm along the bones could he make sure they were still attached to his body.

That was when a new sound materialized. Regular yet piercing. The booster shot against oblivion. A small mechanical cry testifying life. One of the rare things he was able to affirm he knew.

The door of the room in which he was opened up. A narrowed ray of light came across the bed with immaculate sheets. A nurse appeared, wearing plain lab coat and pants, her pink hair into a bun. She stayed standing there for a few seconds, staring at him as if she were staring at some wandering ectoplasm. Then her face shut down, the spell already erased.

She came forward.

“Where am I?” asked Soarin in a reedy voice, feeling like his throat was on fire.

“Safe”, was all the nurse answered.

She took a small flashlight from inside her lab coat, and without any kind of explanations, opened wide the young man’s green pupils, and observed them one by one, her beam straight into his retina.

No other words went through the nurse’s white lips. Her back already was all Soarin’s stunned eyes could have a glimpse of. He needed clarifications. Something had happened and he had the right to know.

For a few minutes, paralyzed by the simple fact of breathing, in, out, in, out, he remained this way, his eyes lost in the bleached space. Too many and too little at the same time was all he was holding, invisible, between his fingers.

When the white outfit came back, he felt as if another whole lifetime had gone by.

She was pushing an old rusty wheelchair, which seat’s leather appeared to be worn at some spots, clear despite the strange darkness. Once at his level, she pulled off the patch stuck against Soarin’s chest, under the stiff-clothed shirt he was wearing. Her hand with long pale fingers patted the seat.

“I’d like to walk…”

“No. Four years of coma in a lying position made you weak.”

Was she always talking this way? As if she were talking to a child, or to an incompetent person.

The way she heled him to go from his bed to the wheelchair had nothing of the Healers’ usual benevolence. Just like in every caste, those who took this path didn’t always do it for desire or passion. It was an inheritance, as sure as the blood in their veins, like the eyes of a grandmother or the smile of a father.

Things might have changed a lot, if the basics of this inheritance were neglected, since it was the only law still presiding over the West Continent, and this country they called Equestria.

Not a word was uttered during all the time of his journey in the wheelchair. The sound of the rusty iron was the only thing resounding in the quiet of the night. If they were at night. There was no clock in the shady corridor. There was no window neither. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, it was nothing but plaster and dust. Military hospitals had never been renowned for being welcoming places, however, it seemed to Soarin he never had never seen such a place before.

At the end of the corridor, the nurse pushed his chair in a tiny room with a pale light she closed thanks to a metal gate. Once the box closed, it went down with a soft purr and finally stopped in front of another corridor, a little less dark than the previous one.

“Where are we going?” ventured Soarin.

“You’ll know it very soon.”

What seemed sure now was that they couldn’t be inside a military hospital, as he previously thought so. Between these walls there didn’t seem to exist anything restless. There were no staff, no other sick persons. He hadn’t even seen other rooms. Neither there was any kind of indications about where they were in the building or even whether this was indeed a building.

When the nurse pushed him through this new corridor, Soarin watched with eyes wide opened the first other inhabitants of this weird place. Behind doors made with wire fences, piled up on the ground or lying together on the same bunk, there were men, men by dozen and dozen. Those who weren’t asleep were looking at him passing by with a sad face like he already had seen many in the battlefield. Wearing grey and dirty pajamas, with beards shading their chins, their complexion waxy, some were coughing such as patients in a terminal phase.

In another corridor, more men, this time in great shape, were sleeping on bunk beds, in rooms which doors were wide opened. Yet, when passing them by, Soarin thought he had a glimpse at thin strips of red lights, crisscrossing, looking like loosen stitches of the same sweater.

His journey stopped at the end of this corridor, where a door similar to the other was waiting for someone brave to dare going through the infrared toing-and-froing. The nurse quickly drummed a code on the tactile keyboard blinking beside each knob, and a small click sound shut down the lights, lighting up the walls of the room at the same time.

While she was pushing him inside, he noticed another young man, sleeping and snoring on one of the bunks hanging at the wall thanks to metal chains.

In a few seconds, Soarin was transported from his wheelchair to a bed and the young woman dressed in red forced his legs to go into a strange iron machine, which immediately imprisoned his calves and thighs.

On the bunk under his, his new roommate didn’t seem to be equipped as well. He still could try and ask a question, but something told him he would find as many answers to that as he already had.

After this action, the nurse stuck against his neck some sort of small white cotton patch, that she had inside her lab coat.

“Sleep now.”

Soarin wanted to reply he had slept enough for years, however, he couldn’t even open his mouth that, already, his eyelids seemed to be as heavy as lead, and his mind was sliding to another country.

-----------------------------------------------

She used to smell like cinnamon. A spicy fragrance, which tickled your nostrils each time she was passing you by. One night, he had tasted one of her sweat drop, with the tip of his tongue. It tasted like cinnamon as well.

Or at least, it was the feeling he had then.

It felt as if she were still here in front of him. Her elbow leaning against the ergonomic pillow he always let her use, she watched him and when he opened his eyes, she smiled a little, softly, her lips stretching more at one side of her cheeks, forming a delicate small dimple. Her hair messy and her skin, soft as silk, against his own skin.

“Are you watching me in my sleep or am I dreaming?”

He took a strand of purple hair, make it slip between his fingers, banging into knots.

“You’re in my bed. It’s not as if I was some kind of lunatic lurking in the dark.”

He loved her. He loved her, oh how much he loved her. So not perfect. But perfect for him. Yes, he loved her more than he had ever loved anybody. The way people loved only in novels.

Where was she now?

------------------------------------------------------

But it wasn’t a fragrance of sweet cinnamon which woke Soarin up. If there was a hand trying to get under his shirt, it wasn’t the one, small and rough, of the girl he loved so much.

Bigger, more callused, these hands weren’t trying to caress him, they seemed to be more like grabbing his flesh as if it were examining a ripped fruit.

When Soarin opened up his eyes, his heart skipped a beat. His roommate, his face stroke out by a large scar coming from the top of his forehead until under his right ear, and which the stitch, reddish, were easy to distinguish even in the half-dark, was kneeling beside him on his bunk. Even seeing him woken up didn’t stop his exploration.

Once the shock registered, Soarin took the man’s wrist and removed the hand searching under his clothes.

The other man laughed in a whisper, his grey eyes almost completely shut down, as if nothing here was traumatizing or at least disturbing.

“Got to get used to untimely fingering here, dude”, hurled the man with his hoarse voice. “And seeing the merchandise, it’s going to happen, like, a lot. All day and all night long, I’d say.”

“What—What do you mean?”

Once again, the man laughed, though this time, his own voice finally strangled, and he turned his head in order to spit a few phlegm on the concrete floor.

“You must be the Military they kept up there for three years… The one in the coma, right? I knew they couldn’t have found a new one, so fresh, after so long not going back to the surface.”

Three years. Three years in coma. No. It was four. The nurse had said four years a bit earlier, he was sure. It meant he had spent three years in this place, whatever this place could be. But what about the other year?

It seemed to Soarin that the more he was told, the less he could understand what was going on. This period during which he had stayed unconscious was all he was sure of. The rest… It was fleeing shadows on the immaculate of anguish.

But maybe… Yes, maybe this accidental traveling companion had some of the keys which would open the doors of his understanding. So he could at least know what this was all about. If the Uncivilized War had ended, then who won it, if not what had become the survivors and of the Resistance Army?

“What is this place, anyway?” he asked with a hint of distrust.

“Here? That’s the Underworld, dude! No one up the surface knows it exists, not even the Chrysalis woman.”

“The Chrysalis woman?”

“The leader of the Hive, the floating Ghetto!”

Taken over by a sudden dizziness, Soarin lowered his head and buried his hands into his midnight blue hair. A lot of things had changed in four years. As if he had entered an alternate universe where he couldn’t comprehend neither the language nor the customs.

The name of Chrysalis, on the other hand, didn’t sound like out of nothingness. Among the swarming thickness of his blocked memories, these sounds reacted in a more striking manner. Hair like a curtain of spider’s threads with a strange hue of blue was moving in front of his eyes.

In the war which had led him in the place he was now, she wasn’t operating with the Resistance Army. No, she was affiliated to the enemy camp, Sombra’s troops, the Angel Stealers.

So, this woman led a Ghetto. So, this woman was still alive.

He had to learn more. He had to before the nurse would be back, because he was sure she would be back.

Taking a deep breath, Soarin rose his head again, and looking straight into his roommate’s eyes, which scary aspect now seemed to be a little less unpleasant, he asked:

“Is the Uncivilized war over?”

“It’s been four years now. The Resistants has released this virus, in order to speed things up. It killed the Angel Stealer. And a great deal of the male population with it. Now it’s worse than it ever been. Well, here it’s not so bad. If you’re not bothered to be turn into the ladies’ private genitor…”

This last detail remained one of the shadiest aspect of Soarin’s horizon, which was slowly starting to get clearer. He had seen all those men when he arrived. The ones piled up, sick, maybe even dying, and the others. The ones in great shape. The ones sleeping in bedrooms such as his, on bunk beds such as his.

The shrilling sound of an alarm cut their conversation short. Right after the chirring started, a blinding red light starting to blink in the corridor. It filled each corner, pervading everywhere, and Soarin saw his roommate turning pale.

Without an explanation, he left his bunk, tumbling down. As soon as he recovered from the fall, he went back to his bed, and took a refuge under his blanket flecked with brown stains. He was hiding, curled up, now a child terrorized by his surroundings.

Whatever this alarm meant, it couldn’t be a good sign. In all likelihood, someone who had his face cut in two, might have been through horrible things before, yet his dread, emphasized by jolts in his curled up long body, showed that whatever was going on felt even worse for him.

The wide opened door of their room got shut down in a slam. Though the light from the corridor no longer pervaded the room, the alarm’s, redder than ever, stronger than ever, never stopped gnawing at the air. Clearly, Soarin heard each of the other doors slamming the same way, above the alarm’s cries.

It lasted for minutes and minutes, minutes during which, pinned against his mattress, the young man was unable of the least move, his breath weak in his chest, now aching.

His roommate kept on shaking, the jolts of his body making the nearest wall vibrate.

Then, a distant sound, like an explosion, resounded in the middle of all the rest, followed by screams. Like a stampede. The metal gates separating the sick men from the other corridor probably were shaken, and the doors of the other bedrooms in his corridor probably were knocked into. Gunshots were exchanged. Other screams followed. Female and male voices were mixing up with the other sounds, forming an unbearable cacophony.

Just like the other man on the bunk under his, Soarin put his hands at each side of his head, shut his eyes. The racket was barely muffled. He even felt as if the more he tried to block the sounds, the more they were piercing his eardrums.

He jolted when he heard an explosion closer than the others. Sounds of boots against the concrete floor resounded, then something like sounds of a lock. So close. So close. As if they were right in front of his door.

When he took off his hands, in order to check, his heart compressed his chest, so much it turned out hurtful. It wasn’t as if it was happening right in front of his door. It was happening in front of his door.

Once again, an explosion. Small, concentrated, but an explosion all the same. The bedroom’s door opened wide again, and Soarin saw a young woman appeared on the threshold. The bottom of her face was devoured by a black scarf which prevented from seeing anything else than a pair of blue eyes. Her hair was covered by a scarf as well, but a few red strands escaped. In her hands there was a heavy gun, black and gleaming, almost too big for her frail arm.

Without the least hesitation, she walked to him, with fire in her eyes. His legs bundled up in the odd machine where the nurse had locked his bottom body, Soarin was unable to move and to defend himself when she grabbed his neck with her palm and stuck there, very indelicately, a cotton patch similar to the one the nurse had put on him a bit earlier.

Just like previously, he was unable to fight against sleep, immediately taking over him. Right before he fell back into unconsciousness, however, he was able to have a glimpse at the young woman’s face, when she removed her scarf for a short moment in order to adjust it.

She couldn’t be more than twenty-three. A little less than his own age. And almost the same age as she might have now, if she had survived to the Uncivilized War.

Comments

[Magnus Orion]

Uhh... post-apocalyptic AU?

This’ll either be horrible or great. Until I get more plot, I’m not sure what this is.

[Midday Giggle]

This already got ALL my attention *sits in her chair with popcorn* Don't mind me, I'll be watching closely.

Ni, you did it again. Catched my attention in no time, and you can be sure I'll follow this story, like, a lot.

(Sunset... What are you doing here?)

[rainbow awesome dash]

OMG i love it 😍😍 i hope you will upload the next chapter soon because it’s so interesting

[Dusk_Writer]

I love these kinds of stories so I'm looking forward to this!

The bottom of her face was devoured by a black scarf which prevented from seeing anything else than a pair of blue eyes. Her hair was covered by a scarf as well, but a few red strands escaped.

I thought it was Dash but she has magenta eyes…I thought it was Sunset but she has turquoise eyes…but Sunset's eyes can also technically be classified as blue so…I have no idea

[rainbow awesome dash]

8640365
Rarity or Pinkie 🤔 than I don’t know 😂

[Cutest Boxer Puppy Ever]

“Safe”, was all the nurse answered.

“Safe,” was all the nurse answered.

“Got to get used to untimely fingering here, dude”, hurled the man with his hoarse voice. “And seeing the merchandise, it’s going to happen, like, a lot. All day and all night long, I’d say.”

“Got to get used to untimely fingering here, dude,” hurled the man with his hoarse voice.