Getting bucked in the chest wearing full pads and armor felt exactly like it sounded. A loud clang, and you were either knocked on your ass or at least wobbling on your hooves. Your breath would be caught in your throat too, like somepony just went up and sucked the air right out of your lungs. Maybe your heart is beating a tiny bit faster, it did just take a blow to the ribcage and was trying to calm down. Underneath all those pads, a bruise starts to form.
Shining Armor saw the hooves colliding with his chest armor, and every motion his body went through after that. His ribcage bouncing off his heart, his bones getting whip lashed backwards through his skin. Shining Armor was flying backwards, knocked off his hooves from the blow, trying to breathe in that breath that didn't want to unstick itself from his lungs. That moment when gravity sinks in and all that air rushes from your lungs, that's what was running through Shining Armor's head.
And then Shining was awake, his entire body shivered. He couldn't see, body and mind still trying to overcome that single breath.
His mind fell into his body and gravity sunk in.
Their bedroom was dark, within leg's reach was Cadence, laying next to him wrapped up in sheets. Silently breathing, quietly exhaling, Shining intensely watched the rising and falling of her chest, listening to the little cooing noise she made when she slept, and comparing it with every other moment within his life he'd spent with Cadence to this exact moment in time at 3:23 in the morning. Shining Armor's conscious asked him nightly, how did he not know? Is this still her? He felt he was burning up on the inside, but his limbs felt like heavy blocks of ice.
He needed to place a hoof on her back, to feel Cadence's fur, and her warmth. Ahhhhh...there it was. His fears were broken instantly as he felt her warm touch spread upwards through his hoof. This was her, this was real. She twitched once, but didn't break her peaceful slumber as Shining laid his head back down on the soft pillow. His body slowly unwound itself from the scare, not that they happened that often. Closing his eyes, the scent of Cadence's mane reached his nose, and he couldn't bear it anymore.
Swinging his legs out, he grabbed a blanket and draped it over his shoulders, tugging it free with his mouth as he walked from their bed to the wall. Turning around, with his back to the wall, he let his legs go under him and slid down to the floor.
Shining's head danced and bobbed under the haze of tired muscles telling him to give in and fall back to sleep. His head would start to droop, and then two minutes would pass and his thoughts would switch back over that same question, like it was on a scratched record.
"Is this still Cadence?"
Damn that mare, she ruined their wedding, she ruined her species chances at diplomacy, she ruined so much, Shining couldn't help but sit there on the cold floor with a blanket wrapped around him in the middle of a crystal castle, in the middle of an empire surrounded by thousands of ponies, in the middle of the night, with his loving wife at a safe distance, and cry. Damn that mare, sometimes she was still sleeping next to him when he woke up. She somehow managed to ruin that too, and that was the final straw.
"Oh Skies, she's coming back." Shining declared, he felt like he was sitting on the Friendship Express railroad tracks with the steam engine speeding towards him with it's whistle blowing. Cadence didn't move, but the doors parted slightly. He looked up from his hooves past the tears raining down his chin, to the small crack appearing between the doors. The guards responded to the faintest noise, as Shining instructed them. He raised a hoof and nodded. The doors already so close together, slid back in place with a soft whoosh of air.
Shining head swam, trying not to believe what his thoughts were telling him, but her history, her brash decision making, the way she spoke those words to him. Owning him, possessing him, she wanted him, and everything about him. She wanted his love, for others, his friends and everyone Shining Armor knew. She wanted all of it.
You don't take away everything from a mare who ruined so many other ponies lives to get it...and not expect her to come back like a crazy ex-marefriend who didn't know how to take no for an answer. That darn mare, she couldn't even be summed up reasonably without a follow up explanation as to why.
Skies, damnit. It was easy to blame her that she ruined his good night sleep too...but then Shining Armor forced his eyes shut and cringed at what he thought.
He was in her body. Shining Armor felt so cold, even with the blanket wrapped around him. He willed his magic into pulling it around him even tighter. He didn't care that he was practically suffocating, he felt warmer, and that was all that mattered.
He looked through her eyes, and could only see a circular chamber, carved from rock and some other type of dark material. She, he, they were in her bed, the long green hair coming down in the corner of her vision, she wiped it away and rose to her black hole filled hooves. Her hive's halls lacked any detail that Shining could hope to provide. One time it was a red-brick corridor, another, a rocky cave, a dark hallway, a barrack hall with bunkbeds that stretched on forever, or the twelve feet from his room to Twilight' bedroom door back in Canterlot.
He opened his eyes, blinking away his tears. He was back in the Crystal Empire, back with the blankets and the cold floor and Cadence. Swallowing, he closed his eyes, trying to control his breath as he was back in her body.
As far and as long as the corridors were stretched out, she never needed to walk to far before she was where she needed to be,
A growing buzz caught her attention, a door materialized and she passed through it. In this giant room, so big you couldn't see the other end of it, were all her subjects. Their eyes all looking to her for guidance and support. They were looking to her for structure in their lives and to be their role model. She was a mother to all of them, and then they were all crying out at once. Like ten thousand voices stacking on top of each other, the changeling's voices called out to her, "Feed us!" They were a swarm of locusts, it was a pack of bears chasing him through the woods, it was Twilight asking for him to make breakfast for the two of them.
"I'll feed you, my little ponies." She said, turning away from them all to go back to her chambers.
She strode in a perfectly calm manner down the corridor, back into her room. There he was, Captain Shining Armor, smiling away like a colt about to have sex for the first time. His armor was strewn all around the room, a trail of his gear leading up to the bed. She stopped, only she didn't...
Shining pried open his eyes...that was were the role playing stopped, that was where the self-help lessons ended. He couldn't get over what she had done to him, if he didn't even know what she did.
She would find Shining Armor in various states of undress. Bound and gagged, encased in a cocoon, she even found Shining Armor laying on his side one time, patting the bed and welcoming her back with open hooves. Barking like a dog.
Shining Armor would be bringing a birthday cake with candles brightly burning, and there she would be in all her childish glee to chow down on the pieces after blowing out the candles.
It made her sick, she couldn't even look at Shining Armor any more. He was so pathetic, she could take whatever she wanted from him, and he couldn't do a thing about it. As much as he didn't want those memories, a part of him had a primal base instinct of needing to know what had happened between him and the black mare. She said she drew love from him some time leading up to the wedding, Cadence could've been down in the mines longer than she had realized. Cadence might even still be down there.
"Fight Back." She told him, that was the first time she told Shining Armor to do that. Her eyes lost intense glare and became flat, she was losing vision of him. Love was coming off him in waves as she turned into Cadence, and asked him all about the best times of his life.
Shining Armor opened his eyes again and saw the blue morning skies from his spot on the floor. A growing hum caught Shining Armor's attention. Like a sign from the Skies themselves, a ray of sunlight was cutting into their room. Shining stirred from against the wall. Rising up, he deposited the blanket on their bed as he walked the short length of bedroom to the balcony door. He went through it and was assaulted with a crisp wind of air. Looking to the horizon, there were homes of ponies for as far as he could see. His, their subjects, Shining Armor corrected himself. They were all moving, spreading out and preparing themselves for the day. Some would look at the Crystal Castle, but the words they were saying was like hearing a voice that echoed, growing louder and louder. A thousand voices, ten thousand voices all saying "Feed us!"
"I'm trying to!" She said, weeping from the balcony that overlooked the Crystal Empire. "I can't feed everypony."
That was a lie and they both damn well knew it, everyone knew it. He could run projections and come up with holding capacities for every type of situation. The resources were there, but as his eyes went to the edge of the domain, two long reflecting pieces of metal glinted in the early morning sunlight made him think of distribution. Equestria had an abundance of resources, that was long before they took the reigns away from Sombra to the Crystal Empire, but now...now... Shining Armor licked his lips, and snorted. He spat over the edge, and turned around.
Shining Armor coughed from the cold air, closing the balcony door behind him. There on the bed was Cadence, she was beautiful. She was here. This was real.
Slipping under the covers, he resigned his fate to the expectation that somepony would come along soon enough to wake them. As Shining wrapped his foreleg around Cadence's withers, and inhaling through his nose, he whispered, "I love you, I love you." Cadence's touch was as warm as he remembered.
She was still making soft little hitches with her breath that caught in her throat an came out as tiny coos, like a baby dove. Skies above he was lucky to have her. One in thousand lucky, and this bed, one in ten thousand. This home? To have all these factors and responsibility come together? One in a million.
Shining Armor sighed into his wife, her chest was still rising and falling the same number of milimeters as it was a few hours ago, he was sure to check.
He closed his eyes, and laid back onto the cool pillow's embrace.
She was combing Shining Armor's mane with Cadence's hair brush, quietly crying and petting his shoulders.
"Shining Armor, I miss you...I miss you..."
