A little find

The pony came to, the eyelid of her left eye slowly fluttering open. She felt something coarse, wound tightly around her head and covering her other eye. She heard the soft, rhythmic beeping noise pulsing somewhere nearby. She saw a tall, odd-looking creature in white looming over her body.

“Huh,” she muttered quietly, her voice dazed and weak. “And here I thought angels were supposed to be stunningly beautiful.”

The creature paused, before bringing out a piece of white cloth and dabbing gently at the pony’s forehead. It felt damp and soothingly cool.

“What do you mean?” it spoke softly, sliding the cloth lower to clean around her eye.

“You’re ugly, that’s what,” grumbled the pony, wincing from the touch.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” calmly replied the creature, pulling away.

“Well and I’m not a very nice pony, so what of it?”

The question remained unanswered. The pony blinked her eye open once more, and, with the world slowly coming into focus, took a first look around.

She found herself tucked in a bed, a large and soft one, with a puffy pillow under her head and a light blanket covering her up to the neck. The bedding, pristine white in color and without any pattern, felt starched and stiff against her body, clashing with the otherwise comfortable bed. Her left forehoof was resting atop the blanket, half-encased in a plaster cast, with several tubes connecting the thin needles stuck under her skin with the bags of clear liquid hanging from the stand above. Another tube was fixed against her nostrils, and a bundle of wires coming from under the blanket connected her body to some humming and beeping machine nearby.

The pony paused, swallowing against the sour dryness in her mouth and tasting the air that carried a vague chemical scent.

“Well,” she said then, raising her hoof slightly and tracing the tubes back to the dripping bags. “I guess that means I’m not dead yet.”

“You’re not,” confirmed the creature in the same soft tone of voice, eyeing the humming apparatus. It seemed as if it was taking notes. “And you won’t be, not anywhere soon. The worst is over, and now you will only be getting better.” It looked back at her with a smile, and carefully brought an oversized cup to her lips.

“Yaaay…” quietly drawled the pony, before taking a tiny sip from the cup. The fresh and cold water felt nice, and she took another sip, longer this time. Then her eyelid drooped.

“I feel kinda sleepy though...” she muttered drowsily. “You mind if I nod off for a bit?”

“Of course not. Rest.”

She didn't quite hear that, however. Closing her eye, the pony slipped back into the lulling darkness.

***

It was that very same featureless ceiling and a dimmed white light that greeted her next time she woke up.

She felt different though. There was no more tube at her nostrils, no more bandages around her head or cast around her hoof, and she could breathe easy and think clearly for the first time in longer than she could remember.

Not that she could remember much, anyway. For example, she certainly didn’t remember the room around her being so large and spacious, with everything from the bed to the chairs to the cup on the bedside table looking at least several sizes bigger than it should've.

Naturally, the creature from the last time - now quietly sitting in the chair by the bed - was also much bigger than she was, now that she paid attention to it. He didn't seem to notice her coming awake, yet, seemingly busy filling out something on the clipboard he was holding. There were quite a few papers in it.

The pony took her time inspecting the creature, peering through the slits of her eyelids. Tall, relatively slender body, mostly hidden under the long white labcoat. Limbs ending with slender claw-like extremities, firmly holding the clipboard. Flat, unimaginative face with tiny eyes and tiny mouth. Bare, hairless pinkish skin with only a short mane atop of the head. Thin-rimmed glasses perched upon his nose, which he seemed to adjust every now and then.

“Would you look at that,” she spoke up quietly, a crooked smirk across her lips. “You are ugly.”

“And good morning to you as well,” he replied with a small polite smile, looking up from the clipboard and setting it aside face down. “How are you feeling?”

“Eh,” she groaned weakly. “I’ve been better. But then again, I’ve been worse, too, so let's chalk it up as okayish.”

“Good.” His reserved smile grew just a little wider. “You are recovering very well so far. Sort of amazing, to be honest, given how you were.”

“Yeah, right, about that..." she said, a flicker of interest showing in her eyes. "How was I, actually? My head’s kinda fuzzy, and I don’t really remember anything after--” She faltered. “...Anything after.”

He hesitated, before tilting his head forward.

“Then, maybe, it’s better off if you don’t know?” he asked in a softer tone, looking at her over the top of his glasses. “It’s not pretty, you see.”

“I think I can handle a bit of not pretty, okay?” She replied harshly, although still in a weak voice. “Just lay it out.”

He paused for another moment, looking down on his forelimbs. Then, in a quiet, flat tone, he started to recount:

“…Aside from a number of wounds and bruises across the whole body, and a massive blood loss, your body sustained a depressed skull fracture, a mild concussion, multiple fractured ribs, punctured lung, broken jaw and leg, dislocated hip...” He adjusted his glasses, pushing them further up his nose. “...As well as severe damage to genital and rectal tissues.”

She listened to that, lying very still, her expressionless gaze fixed on the needles in her hoof. Steadily, the liquids dripped into her veins, meting out the silence that fell after his words.

“...It makes sense you don’t remember,“ he continued softly after a pause. “You've been mostly unconscious, and it’s been more than a month now. To be honest, if you hadn't woken up by the end of this week, I’d--”

He was cut short - by the sound of her quiet, bitter laughter.

“Wow,” she voiced, shaking her head. “Like, wow!” She threw her head up, staring at the faraway ceiling with a sort of distant amazement on her face.

“...How the heck I am still alive?” she muttered with a genuine wonder in her voice.

“Well...” he started, but she didn't seem to listen.

“I was sure I was going to die back there,” she muttered on, staring into the distance. “I… I was ready to die back there." Her eyes slowly moved downward, wandering over the form of her own body under the blankets. "I mean, that would finally be the end to it.” Her voice faded away. "Would be the end to it...."

She fell silent, lost deep in her own thoughts.

“Well,” he coughed, breaking the silence. “You may say what you want, but you should know that your body had its own say in this matter. Because you see, none of my efforts would succeed, were it not for your remarkable will to live.”

“My will to life…” she echoed quietly, with the same bitter and mirthless chuckle under her nose. “Right…”

There was another pause, as he just looked at the pony with a hint of sadness in his eyes.

“Well!” This time she broke the silence herself, wriggling around a bit and propping her head up against the pillow. Her face livened up just a little, with another crooked smirk taking place of the empty expression she had just a moment ago.

“What's done is done, I guess. Now, I take it you’re the one to thank for the miraculous saving of my life, aren't you?” she asked, looking him straight in the eye.

He nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah. Thanks." She took a deep breath and looked away before turning back to him. "So, care to explain me anything? Like, what you are, where am I, what do you want, all this stuff?”

“No,” he replied at once, in a voice calm and firm. Then, seeing as her face fell, he continued with a softer expression. “Sorry, but the explanations will have to wait. Now that you have come to your senses, I need you to make a decision.”

“A decision?” She raised her eyebrow.

He nodded.

“You need to choose what will happen of you next, and you need to do it now.”

“Great.” Her smirk went wider. “Great! Sounds fun. My favorite thing to do after being dead for a month. No, really. Though - just so you know - I kinda suck at decisions when it comes to my life, even when I do know what's going on. So don't expect much, okay?”

He stared back at her, his stern expression unchanging.

“This is not a laughing matter. Please do listen carefully to what I have to say.”

She shrugged.

“Oh sure, since you ask so nicely." She lay back down. "I'm all ears.”

He nodded, straightening up in his chair and adopting an even more serious expression.

“I'll be to the point. First of all, you are not at home anymore. Right now, you’re in completely different world altogether.”

The pony didn't react, keeping still and quiet with her gaze down and that little smirk glued to her face. Maybe, somehow she already knew that much. Maybe she didn't care.

“As an active member of a certain organization,” he went on, “I was entrusted with one of the interdimensional gateways connecting your world to ours. The rules are so that under no circumstances we are allowed to take anything from either side to another, or get seen by the locals, or otherwise intervene with their lives in any way.”

“However,” he continued after a small pause. “We are allowed to look through and observe. And few weeks ago, when I found your bleeding body during one of my inspections, I broke all of the aforementioned rules at once.”

He lowered his head, pulling his glasses off and starting to wipe at them absently with the hem of his labcoat. His voice went lower, now barely above a whisper.

“Now, I have taken considerable risks to bring you here. I continue taking those risks every day that you stay here. So I do hope you understand my urgency, and make your choice out of the two options I can offer you."

"The first is for you to return back to your world. I would allow you to recover for a little while longer, but as soon as you're able to move, you will be returned to the exact same place you were taken from, and as long as you take nothing from our side, it will be impossible for my colleagues to detect the whole ordeal afterwards. Naturally, you will never meet me again. You will be on your own.”

The pony let out an unintelligible sound, midway between a chuckle and whimper. He paid her no mind, staring down and fiddling with his glasses.

“I can imagine, however, how that would be not the best choice for someone in your situation. So for my second option, I want to offer you to stay here, with me. You will have a place to sleep and food to eat. You will never have to worry again about making a living for yourself. You will be safe.”

“However,” he continued after a small pause, suddenly sounding strained and stiff. “There are further conditions to that offer. One is that you would never be allowed to leave this house. We’re keeping our work a secret from the rest of our race, and a sentient alien lifeform simply strolling around is not something that would help that.”

“And another condition… Well, there is a certain something I would expect in return.” He worked his jaw silently for a moment, as if having trouble getting the words out, before seemingly going off a tangent. “The organization that I belong to, one supervising the portal between our worlds, has always been going to great lengths in its continued effort to uphold absolute secrecy. People like me, we get vanished off the face of the earth, and are never allowed to have ties with outside world again. That means no guests, no friends... No family. It is a justified decision, all things considered, but...”

He finally raised his head, locking eyes with the pony. Without the glasses, his face looked younger, softer, and much more sincere - but still just as stern and serious.

“I’m lonely, you see,” he concluded simply. “In more ways than one.”

For the longest time, there was silence. He kept his gaze firmly on her face, she, in turn, stared down, her expression lost and eyes dim.

“...Now, I can understand it may seem unreasonable,” he continued after a while, his voice quiet but certain. “But that is my wish, and that is the only offer I’m making. And well, after all, I'm not asking for anything that is out of your… line of expertise.”

That's when she started to laugh. The same quiet, bitter, mirthless laughter filled the silent room, steadily gaining in volume.

“I can’t… I can’t freaking believe it...” she forced through her laugh, shaking her head. “I mean, come on!” She threw her head up, staring at him with a wide twisted grin. “I get raped, killed, revived in another world… and all that just to end up as a fucking fuckslave for an ugly ass alien?”

She went into another convulsing fit, laughing hard enough for tears to appear. He didn't budge, silently, patiently watching.

“Fucking… Ridiculous…” she breathed out as the last of her laughter died out, still smiling that crooked grin. Then she looked up.

“Well, you know what?” she said with some sort of wicked glee in her voice. “I don’t even fucking mind!”

With the quick sweep of her hoof, she threw the blanket away, revealing her body to the view. His eyes traveled downward as if with a will of their own.

There she was, half-sitting against the oversized pillow, posing tensely with her left foreleg high aside, her breath ragged and her shimmering eyes wide open. In a place where her right foreleg should have been, there was only a small, accurate stump on her shoulder, pointing aside as if she was trying to throw her hooves wide. Behind her, her wings were spread out rigid - but only the left one was fully feathered, with the right one being an unsightly fan of thin, barely skin-covered protruding bones. Below, both of her hindhooves were missing just like her right forehoof, and the short stumps that were there she was spreading wide open, boldly presenting herself. Below still, her long and tangled tail was flicking around nervously, betraying her unease.

“I don’t mind at all, really,” she repeated bitterly, her body as stiff as her smile. “After all, that’s all I’m good for. I know that. I’m used to that.” She grimaced, struggling to keep that twisted smirk on. “I mean, It’s not even that bad. Your offer is, like, way better than anything I've ever got before for that stub of a body. It honestly is.” She gave yet another shaky chuckle, glaring straight into his eyes. “So come on. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. You've totally earned that.”

He didn't move and he didn't make a noise, his expressionless gaze fixed at her body. For a brief time, there was silence, filled only by her shallow, uneven breathing.

Slowly, he moved his eyes back up to her face. Slowly, he rose up, leaning closer to the sprawled out pony. Slowly, he reached out with his limb.

Her breath caught and she froze, ears flattened back and eyes fixed straight forward.

He reached past and went to pick up the blanket.

“First off,” he said calmly and evenly, covering her up to the neck with it once again. “With me being the one who performed the surgery on you not that long ago, together with the aftercare, there isn't much left of you that I haven’t already seen.”

“Second,” he continued, taking her only hoof in his hand and gently laying it down, making sure all the needles were still properly in place. “There is no need to be that harsh or that bold, nor there is a need to hurry. Above all, you hadn't even fully recovered, yet.” He withdrew, seating himself back into the chair. “You need to rest, and not to worry about anything. So for now, try to concentrate on just that. Okay?”

For some time, she just stared back, her expression unreadable. Then her lips formed into another little smirk.

“Yeah,” she said, a little hoarsely. “Sure. You’re the boss. Rest now, worry later. Can do that. Anything else?”

He didn't answer, staring back with a strange, thoughtful expression on his face. Then, even slower - as if to not scare her away - he reached out again, gently touching her ear. It flinched, shying away as he gave it a light rub, but the pony herself didn't move, staring sideways and tensing up.

“I’ll be sincere, though,” he uttered quietly, his eyes wandering across her face. “I do want you to understand the situation as it is.” His limb moved downwards, sliding down her short silky mane and coming to a rest against her flushed cheek. ”You see, even if you were somewhat harsh with your choosing of words…” He put a bit more force behind his touch, grazing across her lips and parting them just a little. “...You did caught the essence of my conditions quite well.”

With that, he withdrew and stood up, taking the last glance at the medical apparatus before leaving the room. Left to herself, the pony silently stared at the door he disappeared behind, before lying back on the pillows and starting to sob.