Broken

by Bicyclette

Chapter 1

because I love you…

Pulsing, throbbing pain greeted Shining Armor’s return to the waking world. Waves of it, radiating from his temples, causing him to screw his eyes shut as if the pressure from them would staunch the flow. It seemed to work, as the waves gently eased into an ebbing tide, unmasking the other sensations that they had covered. The softness of the blanket draped over his barrel. The sensation of sweat-soaked mane and pillow beneath his neck. The springs of the mattress underneath him. He was in bed, yes. He must be waking up, but he just felt so tired. His throat was parched.

He opened his bleary eyes, blinking them as they filled with the sight of the familiar. He was in his room. Of course, where else would he be? The hardly-discernible pattern of his well-worn childhood blanket. On the opposite wall, the dresser, and his ant farm perched atop it. Above it, his prized shelf of Power Ponies figurines, arranged in the order of strongest to weakest that he and Cherry Fizzy had argued for hours about when they were little colts. He smiled at the memory. But wait, no, something was wrong. Saddle Rager was to the left of Radiance, and Issue #67 clearly showed that Radiance’s constructs could match Saddle Rager’s strength, even at her angriest. Ah, it must have been Twilight. A little petty of her to go sneaking around in his room to make her point, but she was incredibly stubborn about how to order things. He laughed at the thought, and made a note to have a talk with her about boundaries. At least this was something that undoing wouldn’t take more than just reaching out with his aura to—

A sharp pain blossomed from the base of his horn, driving jagged knives of torment into his temples and behind his eyes. He screamed, clutching his head with both hooves. He heard the slam of his door against the wall, and a voice shout.

“Shiny!”

He still couldn’t open his eyes, as the pain was too great, but he didn’t need to. He knew whose voice it was. He felt the familiar caress of a hoof against his muzzle.

“Oh, you tried to use your horn, didn’t you? I’m so sorry, son! I should have been here.”

“Dad?” Shining managed, opening his eyes a crack to see the worried face of Night Light. “What’s going on? My horn?”

“I’m so sorry, Shiny,” he repeated. “There was an accident. You can’t use your horn.”

“Accident?” Shining puzzled. “What?”

“Shiny.” Night Light looked at him with a serious expression. “What was the last thing you remember?”

“Remember?” Shining tried to think back. What was he doing last night? This week? This month? He could only come up with blanks. He looked up at Night Light with a confused frown.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I… I don’t remember.”

Night Light gave him a pitying smile, tears welling in his eyes. “The doctors said that you might have trouble remembering things. You were in an accident, at the training camp for the Royal Guard. Your horn broke, and...” Night Light trailed off, his face falling as his eyes drifted upward.

“M-my horn?” Shining followed his father’s gaze with his own, looking up at his own horn. Or at least, what should have been his horn. In the place of the gleaming white cone he kept expertly polished there was this unsightly thing, half the length it should have been, wrapped in a brown bandage. A pit formed in his stomach as the implications sank in. All he had done was try to move some Power Ponies figurines on a shelf. If he couldn’t do even that...

Shining closed his eyes. He could not bring himself to open them. “Is it going to get better, Dad?”

Night Light did not say anything for a few seconds, then sighed. “We don’t know, son. But the important thing is that you rest, okay? And that no matter what happens, we will be here for you.”

Shining felt a hoof on his own, the one that was clutching his blanket tight to him. He felt his tear ducts burn as water forced itself through them..

“We love you, son. We know you’ll get through this. ”

“I love you too, Dad.” Shining sniffled.

“Shiny!” a voice rang out from the hallway, and Shining opened his eyes just in time to see Velvet Sparkle entering the room, holding a platter in front of her in her aura.

“Mom!”

His mother approached him, laying the platter onto the end table besides him effortlessly as she placed her cheek against his.

“Oh, Shiny!” she cried, as she began stroking his other cheek with a hoof. “Everything will be alright, sweetie.”

As his mother kept holding her face to his, Shining could feel a soothing calm wash over him. Enough to almost make him believe it himself. She let him go in order to look at him, and smile.

Shining smiled back, putting on a brave face. “Okay, mom, I believe you. Everything will be alright.”

Twilight Velvet nodded sweetly. “It will, Shiny. You just need to rest, and heal. And eat up.” She pointed a hoof at the platter beside her on the end table. “I made you your favorite!”

“Corn dogs!” Shining exclaimed as he saw the sticks of golden-brown deep-fried batter on the plate. His first instinct was to reach out and— he stopped himself, his own body remembering what had happened last time. How was he supposed to— How would an earthpony—

“Oh, don’t you worry about that, Shiny! Mommy’s here.”

A purple glow lifted one of the corn dogs off the plate and carried it just up to his mouth. Trying not to feel too embarrassed, Shining opened his mouth and took a bite. The soft batter yielded easily to his teeth; the carrot at its core with a crunch. As he savored and swallowed the morsel, he was grateful that at least his jaw still worked. Especially since he was ravenous. In just a few more bites, he was done, though his mouth parched from the saltiness of the dog. To make him all the more grateful when a cool glass pressed against his lips, followed by a course of refreshing water. Shining Armor greedily drank it down, a little too quickly, dribbling a bit out the sides of his mouth at the end. He felt the glass move away from his face.

Then, he felt a napkin work its way against his lips.

“Moooooom!” he whined around the napkin, as Twilight Velvet finished wiping his lips. “I can do that myself, even without a horn!”

“Oh, it’s no bother for me, Shiny!” Twilight Velvet said chipperly. “We’ve had to clean up much worse messes on you when you were a baby!”

Shining rolled his eyes and smiled, as he felt the warmth of his parents smiling back at him with love. But he couldn’t help but think that something looked off about them. On some level, they looked the way they always had, but there was something in their eyes. A deep weariness. Shining realized that worrying about him must have taken their toll on them.

“I’m so sorry for making you both worry.”

“Oh, no no no, Shiny!” his mother quickly replied. “There’s no need to blame yourself! It wasn’t your fault!”

“Nothing that happened was,” his father sternly insisted.

Shining frowned. “But maybe if I was more careful, or if I—”

“It wasn’t anything you could have done anything about, Shiny. It was something that happened to you.”

Shining blinked, confused.

“So what did happen?”

“An accident.” Night Light sighed. “A boulder fell on you during a training hike. If it was just a little to the left it would’ve missed you completely. A little to the right…”

Shining didn’t need to hear the end of that sentence. He looked up at his own mess of a horn, and considered that maybe it wasn’t the worst it could have been after all. At least he was still here. For Mom and Dad and—

He frowned. “Where’s Twily?”

“Twilight’s at summer camp wIth the other fillies at Celestia’s School!” his mother said quickly. “We haven’t told her yet because we didn’t want to worry her.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Shining realized. She went to that every year, of course! He sighed in relief that she wouldn’t have her good time with her friends interrupted, though Shining knew that she tended to spend most of her days up there reading in her cabin. Still! The last thing he wanted was to worry her like that.

And in a few days or weeks or however long it would be (how far into summer were they, anyway?), Twily would come back, and maybe by then the doctors would find a way to heal his horn and.there will be nothing to worry about after all! But even if not, well. He was still here. He was still here with his parents and his sister and that was what was important. And it’s not like he needed his horn to be in the Royal Guard like he’d always dreamed of. There were plenty of earthponies in the Guard, after all. And maybe he’d have to learn new skills and strengths to navigate the world again, and maybe they would have to earthponify the house a bit, but that was okay. It was okay. Everything would be okay. Even if his horn stayed broken. Even if he never got his magic back.

Even if.

He looked up at his horn again, as if doing so would tell him the answers that he wanted so badly right now. As if that mass of mysterious bandages would reveal anything to him. His vantage point was so limited.

“Can I see what it looks like? Under the bandages? Maybe with a mirror?”

“Of course, son!” his dad answered sweetly. “There’s the mirror in your bathroom, if you can get there.”

Shining blinked,and realized that while he still had the dull throb of a headache somewhere, besides that, his body didn’t really feel all that bad. He gingerly raised himself up, and didn’t find anything bruising or aching, really. Maybe a little stiff, but that’s all. He rolled himself out of bed, as his parents carefully backed away to give him room, looking at him proudly. He briefly wondered if that is how they had looked at him when he was a foal learning to walk as he got onto his hooves. He took a step, then another. Yes. There was not really anything wrong with his body. All the more reason to be thankful that the accident could have been worse.

He walked through the open doorway into his bathroom, and was assaulted by just how clean every surface in it was. Far too clean for him to have done it, even if he had uncharacteristically done a deep clean of the place within the gap in his memory. Mom or Dad must have taken the time to really go over it, and he cringed with guilt for how far off the habitual state he kept it in was from where it was now. He looked in the mirror, polished to a shine, and stared at his own reflection.

His brilliant blue mane was an absolute mess of split ends and wayward curls, hardly unexpected. His face was unshaven and scraggly. His eyes were tired. And his horn was still wrapped in its spire of bandages, all the more clearly shorter than it should have been in the reflection in front of him..He reached upward with a hoof, and realized.

“Um… Mom? Dad? Could I get a little help?”

“Oh, of course, son!”

Twilight Velvet’s aura grabbed hold of one end of the bandage and gently unwound it with care. When it fell away, Shining could see exactly what he had been dreading. A smooth column of keratin emanating from his forehead, cut short prematurely by a jagged edge, ringing a gruesome slant of bleach-white bone.

He sighed.

Author's Note:

by Bicyclette

Comments

[Sparkly sparks]

Shining opened his eyes just in time to see Velvet Sparkle entering the room, holding a platter in front of her in her aura.

wasn't her name twilight velvet?