Gyro was not a mare prone to tears. Growing up in Baltimare, she had learned early on that the world wouldn’t be nicer to her just because she let them fall. If she was going to survive in a cramped and not very mare-friendly occupation like airship engineering, then she needed to prove herself as tough, stubborn, and able to take anything and everything life threw at her.

She hadn’t cried when the Concordia went down and took so many of her friends with it. She hadn’t cried when the minotaurs had locked her in a tiny room for weeks with barely any food or water to survive on. She’d sniffled a few times when she’d learned that they’d eaten Stormy Skies, the happy seventeen year old mechanic who’d ended up stranded on the minotaurs’ island with her. But she did not let herself cry. At the time, she didn’t have the strength for tears, and in subsequent reflections, she refused to let them come.

She cried for Hot Coals, however. She cried for the stallion she hadn’t seen in so long, who she thought had simply abandoned her after life took them in two different directions. She cried not because he was dead and gone, but because he was alive and recovering. And now, after so many years apart, she could simply talk to the pony she had once loved with every fiber of her being. No longer did she have to stay awake at night wondering what he was doing, if he was okay, if he ever thought of her. None of that mattered anymore. He was here, and Gyro could be with him. It made all the pain of the past few years melt away into nothing.

“You’re alive,” Gyro cooed again, pulling herself closer to the stallion with her forehooves until she could finally lay neck to neck with him and put her forelegs around his shoulders. “I didn’t think… I worried that…” She swallowed hard and drew in a shuddering breath. “Do you remember me?”

She felt Hot Coals weakly exhale, and then he buried his nose in her coat, just below her ear. “How could I forget you, Gyro?” he asked her, his own voice momentarily hitching as it seized up on tears. “I thought about you every night for five years. I thought I would never see your beautiful face again.”

“I thought you were dead,” Gyro said. “Or even worse, that you… that you just didn’t care about me anymore. You just… you disappeared off the face of the earth. You vanished from my life.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Coals said, breathing into her ear. “I didn’t have much choice in the matter. If I could have talked to you, believe me, I would have.”

Gyro hiccupped and smiled. “I… I h-heard you were moonlighting as a pirate,” she teased. “I bet you were a blast on Nightmare Night.”

Coals shuddered against her side, but he did manage to chuckle regardless. “After five years, I think I got good at playing the part.”

“I just can’t believe our luck,” Gyro said. “How impossible is it that we were both on the ships that went down in the storm?”

“It just means we were meant to see each other again,” Coals said. He stroked her cheek with his hoof, and Gyro happily sighed and tried to put more of her weight against him. “We were always meant to be together, Gyro. It’s just… well, that first stint apart that was supposed to only last six months ended up taking ten times as long.”

“We’re going to have to make up for it somehow,” Gyro said. “I’d take you right here, right now, but the doc says that’d be a bad idea. Don’t want to tire you out, right?”

“Just having you here with me is enough to keep me awake and alive,” Coals said. “I feel like I’ve been sleeping for an eternity.”

“You were out cold for four days,” Gyro said, shifting some to get more comfortable inside of the dimly illuminated hut. “I didn’t think you’d make it. A lot of us didn’t.”

“Four days?” Coals looked around the hut as fast as he could manage without succumbing to dizziness. “What happened? Where am I? How did you get here?”

Gyro exhaled and chuckled. “That’s… a kind of a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Coals assured her. “Give me the condensed version?”

“Alright, but I know I’m going to have to answer twenty thousand questions when I’m done.”

The stallion’s lips perked up into a bemused smile. “That just gives you more time to spend with me.”

Gyro snickered and shook her head. “When you put it like that, it doesn’t seem so bad at all.” Taking a breath, she quickly organized the important pieces of the past four days into something resembling a recap. “Uh, let’s see. So after Squall shot you, Rarity and I did some things to get the rest of your crew out of your camp, and then she and Rainbow Dash killed Squall. A bunch of the survivors killed some more of the pirates, and then we all went back to their camp on the other side of the islands. Thankfully, the survivors had a doctor who patched you up so you wouldn’t die on me, and then they went to the tomb at the center of the island, because Rainbow and Rarity were convinced that there was something inside it that they needed to get so we could all go home. But instead of finding it, they unleashed some sort of horrible mummy uprising, and Rarity went missing, and then we all evacuated the archipelago and went east to a different island where we could have some respite and be safe for a while. Now, Rainbow Dash flew south to look for Rarity, and we haven’t heard back from her yet, and you just woke up, and now I’m here.” Gyro looked back toward her flank and rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, I was also half-paralyzed for a day or something, but it’s getting better. Can’t use my hind legs yet, though I can at least move them and stuff.” She turned her attention back to Coals and grinned. “So, uh, where do you want to start?”

Coals blinked at her for a few moments, simply trying to process everything she’d said. Eventually, though, he managed to circle back around to the beginning. “Squall is… dead?”

Gyro scoffed. “After I just said there’s a fucking mummy uprising, I’m surprised that’s the first question out of your mouth.”

“It’s the sanest point I can think to start with,” Coals said. “Squall was a horrible monster and I lived in fear of that bitch for five years. I can’t possibly believe she’s dead.”

“If she was still alive, do you think you’d be out of her camp and even alive to hear me say it?”

“Mmmrfff… good point.” Coals shook his head. “Still, though, Rainbow Dash and Rarity? How in the world did they manage to take down that hardened psycho by themselves?”

“You’d have to ask them for the details, but they’re both gone right now. Maybe later.” Gyro shook her head. “But she’s dead, and most of the pirates are, too. There’s only Black Flag and Jolly Roger left, and for the time being, they’re with us.”

“They deserted?” Coals asked. “Flag was second in command. I don’t know why he’d work with you all.”

“He didn’t have much choice. When the mummies started coming out of the tomb, he and Jolly kind of got drafted to help keep them contained. Now they’re just… hanging around our island, and I’m pretty sure Jolly Roger’s still thinking about ways to kill us all.”

“He’s not exactly right in the head,” Coals said. “He was one of Squall’s favorites because he was bloodthirsty just like her. He was convinced half the crew was going to kill him somehow, someday, and so he was always prepared to murder them in their sleep. He’s probably doing the same thing with you guys right now.”

“I’d bet money on it if I had any.” Gyro shook her head. “But yeah, there’s some horrible shit going on at the tomb on the archipelago, and we had to abandon it. For the time being, it's all contained within the tomb, because it only opens during the full moon or something, so we don’t have anything to worry about for a few weeks. But come next full moon, we’re probably going to be fucked. Which is why Rainbow Dash is trying to find Rarity and we can figure a way back home.”

Coals blinked several times, shook his head, sighed, and laid back down on his side. “Okay. That’s a little too much for me. I think I need some time to process that all.”

“I’ll get you caught up,” Gyro said, dragging herself closer to Coals. She happily sighed and rested her chin on his body, cuddling up to his warmth. “I don’t care how long it takes, just ask and I’ll answer. I don’t want to do anything else except spend time with you.”

Coals smiled back at her and managed to contort his neck enough to kiss her ear. “I’m fine with that, filly. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Heeeeee…”