Two changelings held each others gaze, one managing to do so with what little life remained in his body. His eyes traced through the foggy air to the queen, whom stood over him with an apathetic sheen to her eyes. He didn’t care, really, about what she had just done. He didn’t care about the green ichor that bled through his split exoskeleton and pooled around him. He didn’t care about the judgement that even now was being wound about the queen’s horn. He didn’t even care about how she had decided to dispose of his corpse after she was done.

No, none of that mattered in light of the look in her eyes, that all of this and more she had done without a care either way as to his own experience. Perhaps it would have been easier to bear if she had gloated or ranted about how weak he was, about how easily she had overpowered him. Instead, she looked at him as less than a weakling. She looked at him like he were so far below her he didn’t even matter at all.

Her spell was near finished now and she began to walk away. He watched her go with a cold gaze, wanting to say something that would haunt her after he had died, something that someone would remember when he no longer existed in this world. But, he didn’t know what to say, and that tore him apart inside. There were no vengeful words that would fill that queen’s empty heart, and there was no one else to whom he could direct his words, so he let her go in peace and wondered if she was, at least, appreciative of that.

Always the soldier, he took his punishment with honor, with servitude, with silence. The spell lured his memories away from his head, like fish chasing bait. He felt each individual thought disappear, giving him one last second to remember them before they faded into the abyss that began to take his mind by storm.

His acceptance into the queen’s court, his family’s congratulations... torn from him. His most precious mementos were taken away by force, removed from his life, leaving a large hole that felt all the more empty when he knew something should be there but couldn’t place what. This was her ultimate torture: to tear away a changeling’s identity. This was removal from the hivemind at its peak. After putting all your soul into something, you found that thing taken away from you.

But she had left him one thing, to strengthen the horror of what would occur next. She had left him with things that had been ingrained into his body. Maybe she hadn’t had a choice. He had no idea. Perhaps those were things that simply couldn’t be taken away, but it meant that what happened next was only going to be all the worse.

His breath was stolen from his lungs, his eyes were covered in white, and his entire being was transferred a great distance in nearly no time at all. He was going where he wasn’t supposed to go with teleportation; there were consequences to it. The world shook as his trip met its end, his head throbbing against his skull in vicious pulses as the magic sought to turn his bones to dust and torture his soul with unexplainable pain. Agonizing second after second, the torment decayed into a dull throb, marked by the slow appearance of pony silhouettes against the sharp white of his manic vision.

Grand, gripping fear tortured him as he lay there, unable to move from weakness. The ponies would be his executioners, and he had no doubt they would find some way to make up for all the trouble he had caused them. He saw them, looking at him, stunned by his arrival. A shout echoed through his head, one of war and attack, but the bells were louder and it sounded muted in comparison.

He saw a pony running towards him and his mind told him this might be his attacker, but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter anyway, in the long run. His instincts tried to move to a counterattack, but he was simply too worn down to move at all. Truth of the matter was, he was entirely at their mercy. They would need to act quick, though, if they meant to kill him; he could feel his body slowly disintegrating his bonds to reality, trying desperately to put him to sleep so his energy could be put into healing. Too little, too late.

The charging pony suddenly leaped over him, sailing past and behind. The changeling tried to turn his head to follow the silhouette, but failed. The only input he was given was the eerie silence that caught the air a moment later, an ominous foreboding dredging up through the ground in the absence of noise. However, at that particular moment, the changeling cared little for suspense, and instead took this moment to fade into his deep, deep slumber.

He awoke in a hospital, his mind as empty as the royal coffers after a cake sale. A new born baby in a trained and rigid body, he couldn’t quite make up who he was, where he was, only that things were most definitely in a bad place right now. His eyes flickered open as if they were unsure of whether they wanted to look or not, and the changeling slowly rose up to look at his surroundings.

Across from him, he spotted a pony with white fur and an electric blue mane that bobbed back and forth to a simple and yet complex hum that she provided for herself. By her feet he saw a smaller pony that traced a paper with worn-to-naught crayons. He was silent as he moved, not wanting to alert them. Then, he stopped completely, his mind leaving his body behind as he looked back on what he doing. He couldn’t quite process what his intentions had been moments ago, unsure of why he didn’t want them to know he was awake.

It was a horrible feeling and it almost made the changeling vomit then and there. His mind said one thing and his body said another. He wanted nothing more than to hide right now, but it didn’t make any sense. In the end, he decided to follow his gut right now and began to slide his hoof out from under the blanket, letting it slowly fall toward the floor.

Just before it touched the chilled boards, the voice of the pony came to him in a sudden burst. “Luna asked that you stay in your bed, if you don’t mind.” Her words haunted him for a moment, even more so when he realized the pony was facing away from him. Carefully, he pulled his leg back up and swung it beneath his sheets. The smaller pony looked over at him, smiled, and waved.

When he waved back, her smile widened a bit more, before she turned back to the paper and continued her work. The changeling was content as he lay there, blissfully not knowing what he didn’t know, that he’d lost his name, his being, his entire self. It was an entirely different person in that body now, his soul altered and shifted like a jenga tower and his memories pulled out one by one, each time his psyche becoming more and more unstable. Now, here, in this place, he was at peace. He was at peace for the first time in years, but he wasn’t quite there to enjoy it.

The door to the room opened and Luna walked in, her illustrious coat of blue shimmering like stars and awe radiating from her beauty. The changeling was, more or less, a child again: everything forgotten, everything new. But some things are so ingrained they can’t be lost, and even now, emotions of peace conflicted with emotions of panic, his insides squirming like civilians caught in no pony’s land.

She walked towards him with unflinching eyes, and he met her gaze with his own deep blue pools. He watched her, watched how her body exclaimed her confidence to the rafters for all to hear. She approached him slowly and thoughtfully as he lay in the bed. Then, suddenly, her eyes danced away from him and towards the nearby window. She changed her course, and moved past him without a word, taking herself to the paned glass that offered a sprawling view of Canterlot.

“How’s Hendrick doing?” The white mare spoke up, not making eye contact. And all the while, the changeling was merely a third wheel.

“He’s improving. He should be out of rehab by tomorrow, they said.”

“Heals fast, doesn’t he?”

“They said he wasn’t hurt enough to merit rehab in the first place, but he insisted and paid them, so they agreed to work with him. I imagine he’s happy to have a reason to—” She stopped herself, realizing she wasn’t alone in the room, as if she had been talking to herself the whole time. “—learn,” she finished vaguely.

The white pony laughed in response. “I know how much he loves to learn, but you’d think he’d have learned all about walking in the past dozen or so years.”

“Yes, I suppose you would.” The statement seemed subconscious, no meaning put into the words by their speaker. Luna paced idly, showing how unsettled she was by the situation.

Trying to take her mind off of it, or at least to get her to do something, the mare tried to keep the conversation going. “Any word from Celestia?”

“No, not yet.”

They both fell into uneasy silence for a few minutes, until Luna turned to the changeling. “Can you walk?”

The changeling didn’t know, but he thought it might be worth a try at least. He slowly inched out from under the covers, his movements jittery with a strange fear. He touched down, his legs supporting his body with ease, and looked to the shining mare for further instructions. She merely nodded towards the window.

He hesitated, but slowly made his way over. He stood at the window and followed the princess’s gaze to the ground below, where he saw a large mess of color, like a surging spill of paint. It took him a while to realize that each color was a pony, jostling in a massive crowd with signs over their heads.

“They want you dead,” Luna said in a cold tone, and the changeling’s eyes widened in response. Why did they want him dead? He couldn’t know why. It seemed a very knee jerk reaction to having someone in a hospital bed. “My sister has locked herself up in her room, and I can’t blame her.” Luna sighed heavily. “As soon as she comes out, she’ll be besieged with questions. She’ll be expected to know the best course of action as soon as she shows her face. Everypony will expect her to know what the best course of action is.”

“Everypony?” the D.J. asked, her voice itself implying something that the changeling couldn’t put his hoof on.

“I’m not proud of it,” Luna responded, her words subdued.

The reality of the situation killed the room, everyone dead aside from the little filly who had just finished her work. She stood hurriedly and ran over to the changeling, her art held in the tips of her lips to avoid getting it wet. He turned to look at it and felt an odd smile touch his face. Luna joined the viewing and smiled as well.

A black changeling with its big blue eyes was standing next to, as the filly had named them, 'Mommy Tavi', 'Mommy Scratch', 'Me', and 'Hendrick'. Aside from the ponies, the only other decoration on the picture were the red roses in the background. Or it might have been polka dot christmas wall paper; crayons aren’t the best for precision.