Even Stranger

by SaltyJustice

Chapter 22

Looking out over Ponyville, Octavia's mind could not put itself at ease. In the distance she could see the hospital, where no doubt 'Hist' was interred. Each time she drew her eyes towards it, she cast her gaze away in disgust. The rest of the horizon offered no respite from her conscience, and the slowly setting sun gnawed at her mind. Each minute only compounded her failure.

A clacking from behind her announced an interloper, but Octavia merely continued to stare away. Somepony sat beside her, and for a brief moment, she wished it was Hist, whole, unbroken, as though the night before had never happened.

"I figured I'd find you up here," Vinyl said.

Octavia did not answer.

"You gonna just sit around and mope all day?"

Silence.

"He's gonna live, you know. Redheart said he'll make a recovery, eventually."

"And he'll still be a changeling after that."

Octavia finally turned to see Vinyl. Her glasses lay on the floor of the windmill's loft, and her crisp magenta eyes hinted of a different kind of understanding.

"So? He's been a changeling this whole time, it's not a disease you catch."

"Is there a cure, though?"

Vinyl stamped her hoof, causing Octavia to snap to attention. She could not relax as Vinyl's glare intensified.

"None of that! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! There's nothing wrong with changelings!"

"Did you already forget what happened in Canterlot? Is there nothing wrong with being assaulted in a place you thought was safe?"

Vinyl did not relent in her stare, nothing softened in her exterior.

"They're not all bad guys, you know. You've seen how he looks at you!"

"Yes, and it was all a ploy. He just wants to steal love to do something with it, something awful. Damn him, why'd he have to be such a good liar!"

"You don't get it, not even after all this. It wasn't a ploy, he loves you too!"

Octavia's disbelief was writ large across her face. "How can you even pretend to know?"

Scratch sighed, and closed her eyes briefly. A memory, brought forth from deep beneath, replayed in her head.

"I - I've been there. I knew a colt..."

Octavia held up a hoof toward Scratch's face. Scratch swatted it away, fetching her glasses and plopping them on her face. Octavia chanced to speak. "I'm sorry, Vinyl."

"No, hey! You've got it all wrong! I knew he was a changeling the whole time."

Octavia raised an eyebrow. Vinyl snickered. "How did you know?" Octavia asked.

"I could tell, when I got up close. You know what I mean."

"Then why the te- "

"He had to leave, said that he couldn't risk getting me involved in his life. The guardsponies are always looking for changelings, so he just left one day. All I got was a note on the nightstand."

"Did you love him?"

Vinyl made a 'pfft' sound, which wasn't a 'no'. "Don't make me out to be a sap like you."

"But - " Octavia stammered. She struggled to find the words. "Aren't they - what about Canterlot?"

"I told you, some of them are bad guys, some aren't. Some changelings are just making their way in the world, same as you and me."

"Do you think Hist - "

"Thorax," Vincyl interjected, "that's his real name. Or code-name, I dunno."

"Thorax, huh. Did he tell you, or - "

"I interrogated him." Vinyl let her grin glint for just long enough to make Octavia take note.

"You didn't."

"No, I'm not a monster. He's really honest, if you just ask him he'll tell you anything. Kind of a weird trait for a spy..."

Octavia shook her head, and cast one last look at Vinyl's face. Those glasses couldn't hide all the little facial tics that wrote volumes, if one knew how to read them. Concern, earnestness, enthusiasm, carefully hidden so nopony could see it.

Octavia sighed. "Do you think Thorax is a good changeling?"

Vinyl laughed. "I think you're the one who has to answer that question."

"You think Octavia is the changeling?" Twilight asked.

"It all makes sense. I don't know where the real one is, but this one has got to be a changeling spy," Cadence answered.

Spike lit a candle in the Library's main reading room, as the sun outside began to set. Darkness seeped around the edges of the room, doing little to assuage Twilight's fears.

"But I don't understand! The Princess said the changeling was supposed to be arriving within the last week, not months ago."

"Our intel could have been wrong, and it's not like Tia ever tells either of us the whole story. You think that Amine guy getting his back broken and conveniently forgetting who did it was a coincidence? This whole thing stinks."

"Wait a minute," Shining Armor interrupted, "we don't have anything solid. We can't just go around accusing ponies willy-nilly, we'd cause a panic."

"You're right," Cadence said, "which is what brings me to my next point - "

"Spying on her," Spike spouted. All eyes turned angrily to him. He looked guiltless. "What? Isn't it obvious?"

"It's not spying," Cadence said, "it's called surveillance."

Twilight shook her head. "I've known Tavi since she moved here, she doesn't seem different."

"Yes she does," Spike said.

"No she doesn't!"

"Yes, she does. She smiled. Has she ever smiled?"

Twilight thought for a moment. "No. Huh. Maybe she is acting differently."

Cadence put a hoof up. "If I'm wrong, no harm done, right?"

Twilight and Spike nodded simultaneously."

"Good," Cadence said, "just act normal, and leave everything to me."

"I hate it when she says that," Shining Armor murmured.

"And what if you're right?" Twilight asked, "Princess Celestia told me very specifically not to take the spy in, she really emphasized that point."

"And just let some nut go around snapping spines like fortune cookies? I don't care what Tia says, this has got to stop."

Spike was writing something on a scroll. He mumbled to himself, "... spines like fortune cookies. That's a good one."

"Spike this is serious!" Twilight shouted.

Shining Armor cleared his throat. Everyone else turned to look at him.

"And just how are you going to 'surveil' her? Survey? Sir-veil?"

"Survey," Twilight offered. Shining Armor nodded.

"Fear not," Cadence said, "for I am a master of disguise. Observe."

Everyone else stifled their giggles as Cadence showed off her new-and-improved disguise. The addition of false eyebrows had not helped in the slightest. Cadence ripped them off and threw them on the floor.

"Gah! I'll think of something, just you wait. You'll all see, Princess Cadence always catches the changeling in the end."

"Except for all those times you didn't," Shining Armor said. Twilight held back a laugh.

Cadence left the library grumbling and vanished into the night, as Spike and Twilight exchanged concerned looks.

"You don't think we upset her, do you?" Twilight asked her brother.

"Oh she's just flustered. She's a damn good hunter when she puts her mind to it."

Half an hour later, a pink nurse-pony stood guard outside Hist Amine's hospital room, her face buried in some periodical or other she had found downstairs. She was not actually reading it, merely making sure everypony who passed thought she was.

Vinyl and Octavia ascended the stairs and trotted past. Octavia saw nothing unusual, but Vinyl sure did. Octavia let herself in the room, not stopping to wait for Scratch.

"Seriously?" Scratch whispered to Cadence.

"Shut up, Scratch!" Cadence hissed.

"Whatever. Octavia's here, if you didn't see."

"Yeah, I saw. Everything is going according to plan."

Vinyl rolled her eyes behind her glasses. "Freakin' weirdos in this town, maybe it's something in the water," she muttered.

Thorax's face lit up the moment he heard Octavia enter. He struggled to sit up as much as possible, and for a moment, it seemed as though the pain that now coursed through his back had gone entirely. If only he could feel his hoof to reach out and touch her...

Octavia set herself next to the hospital bed and clasped one of his forelegs in hers. Thorax felt the sensation ripple through his body, the return of feeling to his limbs like an ecstasy only matched by the knowledge that Octavia was here, for him. He couldn't even find a word to speak.

"Thorax," she said, letting the word glide from her lips.

"Octavia," Thorax replied.

"I'm so sorry."

"I'm the one who ought to be sorry."

"You didn't break me in half," Octavia said, casting her eyes to the floor.

"But didn't I break your heart? Isn't that the worse crime?"

"I didn't know you could be so articulate... Thorax."

"I have learned so much in my time here, it astounds even me."

Vinyl Scratch walked into the room, then immediately turned as if to leave.

"Wait, Vinyl! Come here," Octavia pleaded.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" she asked, setting herself on the other side of Thorax's bed.

Octavia leaned in and nuzzled Thorax's cheek. He relaxed his head and let the warmth flow through him. Vinyl watched the display wordlessly.

"I am sorry to trouble you," Thorax said. He tried to move his hoof, but could only nudge it an inch before it refused to respond.

"Don't try to move, Redheart will yell at you," Scratch said.

"It does not matter. I find out what love is only to have it ripped from me. The world is so cruel."

"Ripped from you? What?" Octavia asked.

"I am glad I got to see you, Octavia, but I must ask that you not return. I have some bad news."

Both Scratch and Octavia huddled closer. Thorax let slip a single tear down his face, before continuing.

"Now that I am here, I will slowly starve to death. I do not know how long I will survive, but I cannot contact my home to even tell them where I am, nor can I fabricate what I need. I fear I will not recover in time to find more food."

"Thorax, what are you saying?" Octavia asked. She pressed herself closer to him, and had he the ability to, he would have pushed her away.

"My people, we need a thing called Nectar that only we can produce. I myself know the ingredients, and I know how to make it. Only now that I am infirm do I find out the last, most vital, ingredient... was... you, Octavia. Your love for me."

Octavia sniffed.

"Is there nothing we can do?" Octavia asked with a whimper.

"I fear there is not. I cannot direct you to any of our other agents, and the production process is complicated."

Scratch scoffed. Octavia and Thorax turned to look at her.

"I take it back, this is even dumber than a romance novel. Why don't we just go get you some Nectar, huh?"

"Only the changelings can make it, I - "

"That's all I needed to hear," Scratch said.

"Vinyl?" Octavia asked, as Scratch turned to leave.

"I know some ponies, who know some ponies, who know some changelings. You wanna come save loverboy's life, or are you gonna sit around and cry all night?"

Octavia threw a kiss on Thorax's cheek, and Thorax smiled broader than ever before. Octavia leaned over to Thorax's ear, and whispered softly in it, "I love you."

"I love you, Miss Melody."

Octavia grinned from ear to ear, and hurried after Vinyl. Thorax merely reclined in his bed, the pain having gone entirely. A calm feeling washed over him, and he could not help but drift off to sleep. To dream, perhaps, of Octavia's triumphant return.

Outside, in the hallway, Vinyl noted an absence of the poorly-disguised pink pony. Whatever Cadence had been doing, she was now doing it somewhere else. Scratch put it out of her mind, they were going to have to run to catch the midnight train to Hoofington.

Comments

[TheGreatSako]

Wait, what? I coulda sworn that the Nectar was only a medium for storing Love, not a necessity in order to consume it.

Gah! Freakin' idiots, all of 'em! He's been drinking straight from the tap for days now!

[Loveless]

Hahhahaa Candence! You got wrong target! Hahaha

[Rokas]

The clusterflop of this story is going to be epic. Especially once the Old God or whatever gets involved.

[Rokas]

3337129
All I recall seeing is that he slipped into "normal". sometimes implied works, but in this case when you state a change it implies that change is permanent until you state another change. I.e. you said he dropped his disguise, which implies that, unless you take pains to tell people that changes, they assume he remains in his natural state. Thus it is very confusing.

[Razzy]

3335450 Keep in mind that it's the first time Thorax ever let the hive. Maybe he simply has no idea that love can be absorbed directly, the descriptions in the fix am to suggest he was indeed investing Octavia's love.

Cya
Raziel-chan

[Rhawkas]

6590405
Also, this is Thorax we're talking about here. Not the sharpest tool in the shed by any stretch of the imagination. XD