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Bedbound (And Beyond)

by Cackling Moron

Chapter 8: So stand up and be counted

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Author's Notes:

I'm really churning this stuff out, huh?

Why can't I attack my own nonsense with such fervour?! Why?!

Ah well, at least I'm producing something.

Did hope that I hadn’t got Celestia into trouble.

The rest of lunchtime was still fun, obviously, but subdued. Both of us were aware that outside forces were now watching and waiting, which kind of made it difficult to enjoy things the way we had been before. I missed the empty corridor. Getting sent flying and eating shit on the floor hadn’t been great, sure, but being entirely on our own had been wonderful.

As a princess I’d imagine it wasn’t the sort of thing Celestia got to enjoy all that often. Poor Celestia.

Once the stew was all gone I was wheeled out and passed into the care of the doctor who had - somewhat disconcertingly - been waiting outside the door the whole time.

Given her previous behaviour I did kind of expect another nuzzle from Celestia. I didn’t want one or anything, obviously, I just kind of expected one. I did not get one though, as instead she resumed her very regal poise and posture, standing tall above both me in the chair and the doctor behind me.

“I leave him in your capable hooves,” she said.

“Princess,” the doctor said, and I figured he followed it up with a bow.

“I’d bow but, you know, chair,” I said.

Celestia turned away quick but I saw her smiling, I saw!

I got a last look at her cool swishy tail and big picture of a sun on her...whatever the rear part of a horse is called...before the wheelchair was abruptly swivelled in place and we started rolling back, presumably towards the bed.

“What happened?” The doctor asked after a few good corners put plenty of distance between us and Celestia.

“Pardon?”

“I know you didn’t have a black eye when I saw you last. What did you do?”

Damn, and I thought we’d got away with it.

“...s’just a wheelchair accident.”

He sighed.

“Well try to keep the accidents to a minimum around the princess. She has enough to deal with as it is.”

Ouch. Alright mate, Jesus.

“Bet she does,” I said, just to fill the air. He did not reply.

The scale of the palace really was something else, and the more of it I saw the more I became convinced that it was physically impossible. I mean seriously, at no point did we seem to see stairs, but I swear blind that we went up at some point. And how could it be so big?

Probably magic. I imagine it was magic.

The doctor got me back to the room before too long, the nurses appearing as though from thin air, he and the unicorn one wrangling me back into bed with the kind of tired, practised ease one might expect from medical professionals. Magical medical professionals.

“I can tuck myself, I can tuck myself, hold on,” I said before they could do anything with the duvet. I struggled up and reached for it, straining, grabbing and managing to flop back before my back gave out. A little more wriggling had me properly covered, and I’d done it all on my own!

Whatever I’d been given before for the pain was starting to wear off now, too, because I felt that one. The pain which had up until then been keeping a respectful distance was now outside the door, so to speak. Probably just as well I was in bed, really.

If either the doctor or the nurses were impressed by my independence they didn’t say anything about it. If anything they looked a bit disapproving. Probably because I was hindering my recovery. Whoops. Well, too late now.

The doctor cleared his throat, getting my attention.

“Now I know you might find this difficult but you are going to have to stay still for a while. Bedrest is likely only going to be good for you right now. And from the looks of things you’ve had an active enough day as it is,” he said.

Felt like making a joke about me wanting to go running or dancing but I felt this wasn’t the right crowd. Humour is all about timing, you see, and sometimes that timing is not ‘not now, not here, not these guys’.

“Bedrest, got it. Uh, this might come across as a dumb question - and it probably is, so brace yourself - but can’t I just get magicked better?” I asked. This thought had been nagging at me and it seemed like a good enough time to ask.

He gave me a look like he was trying to work out if I was serious or not. I was, and he worked that out.

“Um, okay. Well, first, no, magic doesn’t really work like that and second we’re not wholly sure how magic works on you anyway, so we’d rather not take any risks we didn’t have to,” the doctor said.

Not for the first time I got the feeling he didn’t like me much. Not what you want in your doctor, really. Still, at least I’d got an answer. Guess I wouldn’t want to shove handfuls of magic up the arse of something that had just fallen in from parts unknown. Who knew what might happen?

“Fair do’s,” I said.

I’m not a wizard or a doctor or a wizard horse doctor. I felt comfortable deferring to his expertise.

What followed was a few more fairly minor tests. Lift my arm again, turn my head, look at light etcetera. The results were noted down, and that was that. The doctor and nurses departed, though not before telling me that I should need them they would be on call and around somewhere.

I didn’t think I would, but thanked them anyway, and off they went.

Dinner arrived eventually and I was left to my own devices to eat it. This went about as well as could be expected, but I kept mess to a minimum.

I wondered how Celestia was doing.

And after dinner there wasn’t anything. I was left in the room on my own.

Boredom came on swift wings. I hummed a tune and then gave myself a mild headache trying to remember what the tune was or if I’d just made it up. I stopped humming.

And in this quiet time, all of those unfriendly thoughts that had been so distant earlier came tip-toeing back into my head.

I thought about who I was. Sure, I had various bizzare opinions and notions now, but when - if - my actual, proper memories came back, would any of that stay the same? I didn’t know. Was I like this normally, or was this just a passing phase? I didn’t know. And that made me nervous.

And while I was clearly getting better, was that going to keep going? Would I recover fully? Or would it hit some kind of obstacle no-one had forseen and stop there? Would I relapse somehow? What had even happened? I didn’t know. Did anyone?

Normally, when things were lighter and louder, things like this didn’t bother me. I could roll with uncertainty, I could shrug off not knowing. But on my own in the quiet everything felt so much worse. Unavoidable. Every possible point of failure was glaringly obvious, and each one looked like it was going to go wrong on me.

Like being stuck in bloody quicksand, it was. Sucking me down the more I tried to get out.

And how the fuck did I know about quicksand and not my fucking name?!

I wanted to ignore it, I really did. But I couldn’t. It was all I had right then. The only thing that my brain seemed to want to focus on. I couldn’t shake it.

None of this stuff worried me when Celestia was around. Hell, none of it even occurred to me when she was around. Though really I was so heavily biased in Celestia’s favour at this point that I’d probably say the sun shone brighter when I was with her, so clearly I wasn’t being objective.

Thinking about Celestia though immediately boosted my spirits.

She’s really lovely. In a way that I can’t quite put my finger on. Just everything about her, really. Her smile, her laugh, that I can seemingly get her to do both of those things quite a lot. The sound of her voice. That she, you know, saved my life and her continued joy in keeping me in fine health after that point. Her overwhelming, sincerity in all things.

She was just so bloody lovely!

That she’s not human is kind of incidental at this point. Whatever weirdo reaction I was having before had dwindled away to basically nothing, which is great. Now I could enjoy being around Celestia without that irritating, nagging feeling in the back of my skull.

It’s actually kind of cool, now I think about it. We’re like, interspecies buddies. Ignoring differences, sharing dumb jokes, engaging in shinanigens, hugging.

That’s neat. I like that. We’re so cool.

And once I was up and walking it’d be even better! We could go for a proper walk around the gardens! Or hell, maybe even around Camelot, if she’d let me. That’d be cool. She could show me the sights!

Wait, not Camelot, Canterlot. Horses. Ugh.

But still, yes. Walking would be a big improvement. It’d open doors. The sooner that happened, the better.

Looking around the room again I didn’t see anything else demanding my attention and no-one was there to tell me otherwise, so why not give it a shot? If nothing else it’d pass the time and that had to be good, right? Keep my mind occupied, too.

Shuffling up in bed so I was closer to sitting I paused, took a breath, and then twisted in place to swing my legs out from under the covers.

This was not a comfortable or especially easy thing to do, but it was possible and I did do it. Balancing there, legs dangling and feet resting on the floor I took a minute to catch my breath.

The bed looked to have been made more with someone of Celestia’s size in mind than one of the littler ponies, as it was a reasonable enough height off the ground. Certainly, my legs were actually dangling, or at least I didn’t have my knees up around my ears. This would, in theory, make this a little easier for me. I’d have gravity on my side.

Then the next step.

“I can fucking do this, fucking watch me. Not going to stack it like last time, watch this,” I growled, shifting weight onto one leg, then the other, and then slipping off the bed and standing up.

Barely.

But I did it.

“I’m the best at recovering!”

Enthusiastic though I was, I knew pacing myself was important. No sense doing laps of the room of cartwheels or whatever. Start small. Set a simple goal and hit that.

The window. I could get to the window. That’d be easy. I could do that.

Until I got to the end of the bed I was leaning on it, and that wasn’t so bad. After that though I was on my own, and progress slowed considerably.

My legs were working, which was nice, but under sufferance, which was less nice. Both of them felt as though they had only just stopped being completely asleep, both heavy and barely a hair above completely inert. They were an effort to move, basically, and even more of an effort to keep solid enough to take my weight.

But I did it, damnit. One step at a time I did it.

Once the window was in spitting distance I lunged, my trembling legs choosing that moment to give out. I crashed ribs-first into the windowsill and scrabbled to hold on, managing to not immediately fall over backwards. Instead I slipped, winded, to my knees with my arms resting on the windowsill.

This was probably the best result I could have hoped for, really.

“Nailed it,” I wheezed, eyes watering.

I could walk! Agreeably not very quickly and not even across a room, but still! I could walk!

Resting by the window and figuring it’d probably be a good idea to wait a minute or two before making the arduous trip back to the bed, I looked out to see what I could see.

It was much the same view that Celestia had shown me, the one that had made faint. It didn’t make me faint now, which I appreciated. Gave me a chance to really take it in.

The sun looked to be on its way to setting by now so all was clear. The city itself - Canterlot, ugh - looked a little odd to me, I’ll admit. What bits and pieces of Earth I could dredge up served as a reasonable enough comparison, and while back home things were pleasant enough they often tended towards the grey, the dirty and the dilapidated. At least as far as I could remember.

Here there was none of that. Everything was so bloody whimsical looking and so clean you could probably eat off every surface. Though, to be fair, I was looking out of quite a high window. And this was a royal city. So who knows? Maybe this place was unique.

Certainly, the place looked nice. I did hope Celestia showed me around some time.

Noises outside the door pulled me out of that and dropped me right back in the present where, with certain icy dread, I remembered that the doctor had been quite clear on the ‘bedrest’ thing. And there I was, not in bed, not resting.

Oops. Silly me.

Girding my loins I lurched to my feet and tottered back to the bed as I fast as I could, falling forward onto it and missing faceplanting on the floor by inches. Doing what was possibly the best worm I’d even done in my life I writhed back into position under the covers with my head on the pillow. All of this hurt, of course, but at this point pain was getting a little dull.

Change the record, body. I get it already. Everything hurts, yeah, cool, great.

Face turned away, eyes closed, I heard the door open. Was I being checked up on? Seemed likely. I kept still and pretended to be sleeping, which seemed the right thing to be doing, and a few moments later the door closed again.

“Fooled them,” I said to myself, before promptly falling asleep through sheer physical exhaustion.

Next Chapter: We are indestructible Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 9 Minutes
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