The Nightingale Effect

by N00813

8

Chapter 8

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A whimper and a sigh brought me back into the land of the conscious. I blinked my eyes open, seeing nothing but black. I gasped, and my heart went into overdrive. Had I been captured? Celestia! Of course! That bitch –

My eyes adjusted enough to the dark for me to pick up the dark, sleeping form on a stone platform in front of me. Too small to be Celestia, but too big to be a normal pony. Ah, right. I had been sleeping in Luna’s room, hadn’t I?

And we’d been interrupted in the middle of an intimate heart-to-heart. Well, heart-to-ear. Close enough. Still, I knew enough now to make a judgment.

All I had to do would be to wait for her to wake up.

-&-

The wait wasn’t that long, in all actuality. Letting my thoughts run free in my head, I ran through all the possible ‘cures’ for PTSD. As far as I knew, a friend with listening ear and a sympathetic heart did wonders for sufferers. Sufferers of all sorts of mental conditions, actually. Sometimes, all we needed was to be understood.

Good luck to anyone attempting to understand a guilt-ridden, mass-murdering, centuries-old pony.

Shaking the sarcasm out of my head, I walked over to check on her.

The tears on her face had dried, leaving little trails of dust on the blue fur. Her breaths came in slow, quiet huffs. She still had her forelegs over her head, but I could see that the muscles were relaxed; the tension all but vanished into the bone. Peace, for a limited time, had come to her.

She blinked her eyes open after an indefinite amount of time. We met each other’s gaze, and I could feel a small smile stretch across my own face as one spread out across her own. Alas, the moment did not last.

“I did not mean for anything like that to happen,” she muttered, sighing.

“I know,” I replied evenly. “I know.”

She exhaled again, pushing the air out of her lungs. “What do I do?”

I shrugged. “We carve our way.”

She shot me a stare. I met her eyes with my own, resigned and passive.

“What doth you mean?”

I sighed, before shaking the base of my shoulders and cricking my neck. The tension flowed out like water down a mountain river, leaving a slightly odd feeling of naked comfort behind. “In the end, it’s what you want to do. I can help you get better, but I can’t decide what… I can’t decide what you want to spend your life doing.”

I fixed her with an even gaze. “That’s your job.”

She fell silent, slumping back down onto her belly and chest, staring vacantly at the doorway. Her forelegs were tucked cutely underneath that soft fur, her large teal eyes blinking slowly, once, twice, thrice, and the ends of her mane fluttered through the air weakly.

She whirled her head around to face me, propping herself up so that we were eye-to-eye. Her hair whipped around, the strands tracing fine blue circles in the air before wrapping themselves around her smooth contour of her neck.

I blinked.

“Come with me,” she said, suddenly.

I nodded, speechless for a moment. She took up the lead and we walked side-by-side in relative silence. The castle’s twisting and turning corridors gave the distinct impression that, despite the uniform white towers as seen from outside, the building was in fact conglomeration of separate structures, stretching back centuries into the past. Even the flooring changed from tile to marble to common mudstone as we continued our little trek. Judging by the low number of guards here, it was a private area, closed to the public.

I supposed Luna had never seen any of this, never even known of this. She’d been exiled before the ponies had even set foot here.

She stopped at the base of a stained glass window, peering through the light film of dust on its surface to discern the pale colors beneath. The sun’s rays shot out from behind the glass, spraying the opposite wall with a kaleidoscope of colors. Luna’s dark coat absorbed most of the light, however, leaving her as an empty black space in the midst of the rainbow.

The glass window depicted what I guessed to be the start of Equestrian history. Three ponies – one of each race – stood in rearing positions, each one facing away from the others, back to back. Above them, the crossed forms of the two princesses stood in a perpetually frozen dance, with the sun on one side and the moon on the other. Curiously, the figure that depicted Luna had the sun on her back, and it was the opposite with Celestia’s depiction. Above them, at the top of the glass window, another alicorn stared down impassively at all bystanders. She was white, with a red mane, and her wings were spread out to encompass the width of the window.

I’d never heard of her. Some long-forgotten princess? The pony god? Eh, it didn’t matter.

Hoofsteps bounced around the corner, and the source popped out into view a couple of seconds later. It was Heartfelt.

Her eyes brightened up as she saw me, but beside that, she gave no notice as she trotted to a respectable distance before bowing.

I raised an eyebrow, before a shadow fell across the floor, and I looked up to see the impassively blank face of the Moon Princess.

“I have something for you, Princess,” she said, her slightly shaky voice echoing through the empty corridor.

“Give it, then,” Luna declared, raising her hoof to a point directly in front of Heartfelt’s face.

Poor lass. Her head jolted backwards, as if she’d been shot, and even my mediocre ears could pick up the faint panting coming from her mouth. Clearly, she wasn’t used to Luna’s odd quirks.

Come to think of it, only the guards and I were around Luna for more than a few passing seconds. She’d spent the first few months simply acclimatizing to the environment, and with her sensitive ears, we had all agreed to keep the number of visitors to a minimum. Not that there were any.

I stepped forwards, flashing a beaky smile. “You’ll be fine. It’s just her way.”

She nodded, gulped audibly, and then turned to a small saddlebag strapped to her side. As the servant fumbled with the straps, I pushed down softly on Luna’s outstretched hoof. The limb seemed to fold like gelatin under my touch.

Hearfelt’s head came up and around again, this time with a scroll of paper held delicately between her light pink lips. The royal seal was present.

Heartfelt’s rapid gazes upwards, directed at the Princess in front of her, almost passed by my eyes. Almost. She was scared. The way her breathing became shallower and shallower, faster and faster, and her eyes flicking here, there all testified to that. I sighed.

“Pass the scroll to me,” I said, raising a claw. She dropped the parchment onto my outstretched talons, before bowing hastily, and turned to leave.

Time to start acclimatization phase two.

“Wait!” I called, handing the scroll over the Luna, who stood still as a statue in my peripheral vision. The Moon Princess plucked the scroll from my grasp with a whisper of magic.

Heartfelt turned around, spotting me walking towards her. “I just want to speak to you,” I continued, before turning my head back around to face Luna. “I’ll just be a moment!”

Luna glanced over the top of the parchment for a moment, staring at the both of us. She blinked, once, twice, and then nodded slowly, before burying her nose in the parchment.

“You don’t have to be scared of her,” I murmured, walking a short ways away. “Well, actually… Never mind. She’s not as bad as she was before. That is for sure.”

Her smile flickered into existence. “For sure,” she returned, in that same low tone. “We’ve all heard of the myths.”

She turned back to glance at Luna, and so did I. “Do you think they’re true, though?”

The alicorn in question, meanwhile, simply shot us a long, tired glance.

I put a clenched claw to my chest. “Sorry, patient confidentiality.” This was the cardinal sin of medicine, both physical and mental – never stab your patient in the back. They entrusted their lives to you, and if you had any shred of moral decency, you’d honor their trust.

“Ah,” she said, glancing downwards, a wistful smile playing upon her muzzle. “I’m so sorry, Doctor.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Luna raising a hoof slowly and jerkily, as if someone else was in control of her muscles. She hesitated for a long moment, as if planning her moves on a chessboard. It was for naught, though. She let her hoof fall limply back to rest upon the ground.

“Don’t mention it,” I said, waving a claw. “And don’t be a stranger. You’re not my patient – call me Sigurd.”

She smiled, and her eyes seemed to light up with some spark of life. “I will. Oh, and thanks. For, you know, taking the time. I hope I’m not too much of a bother.”

“The pleasure is mine. After all, I asked for you to wait.”

She chuckled bashfully, scraping one of her forelegs with the other. “Ah, yes. Force of habit.”

Hmm. So it seemed. Perhaps the feudal system was still in full swing under the pristine white tablecloths of Canterlot Castle’s dining hall.

“Sigurd!” Luna called, again with her announcer’s voice. I gave Heartfelt a hoofshake, before turning and ambling back towards my friend – sorry, my client.

Damn.

I shook my head rapidly, trying to clear my thoughts and sort them into degrees of helpfulness. Between snarky jabs at my own capability, the ever-present, low-key dread in the background grew steadily – an encompassing blackness that I couldn’t detect, but simply knew was there.

The unspoken cardinal rule of medicine: never get attached to your patients.

I was already close to committing that cardinal sin. Every psychologist, therapist and psychiatrist knows that friendships are formed as a side effect of their jobs. Even ones that specialize in research, like me, have to talk to the subjects – ahem, interviewees – unlike physicists or engineers. And the more friendships you form, the more bonds tie you down, until it becomes torture to try and leave – for both the patient and the doctor.

Luna bent down and put the end of her snout into the crook of my neck. Her coat, soft as down, brushed against the stems of my feathers, tickling the skin beneath. Small, whispery exhales brushed against my neck, leaving it warm and slightly damp, although the feeling was far from unpleasant.

I raised a claw, and slipped the talons around her other cheek, intending to push her away. Still, I froze as the scales met with her skin, right as another warm gust of breath crossed my neck. My claw fell away, limply, the sharp keratin tips hitting the floor with a soft but profound clink.

She pulled back, casting a glance once more down the endless corridor. I turned around in time to see Heartfelt’s retreating form round the corner and disappear.

Luna looked down at me once more, smiling softly. I couldn’t help but smile back. She looked truly majestic, with her darkening hair wafting through the air slowly behind her like a blue ocean wave, and her long, slim legs tapering into a lean frame which shifted smoothly from side to side. Her teal, almost translucent eyes shone with warmth and the happiness of a trust freely shared.

I couldn’t help but smile back.

Comments

[High_Wind]

assets.diylol.com/hfs/e96/83f/c08/resized/piseed-off-harry-meme-generator-you-ve-made-a-big-mistake-62625c.jpg

Now Heartfelt is either going to
A) Get jealous about what happened right there
B) Tell Celestia a.k.a get you killed

[Igabugalo]

You should know that this story is really awesome.

[N00813]

1767217

No, neither of those is going to happen. Though you have given me an idea.

[N00813]

1778026
Thanks!

[Corejo]

Oh, man. This is going to go from bad to worse real quick.