Debris

by eemoo1o

Rating: teen
Tags: Pharynx, Thorax, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad, Changelings, Tragedy
Length: 5387

Pharynx is reformed now. So why does he feel so empty?

Pharynx was considered a nuisance to the Hive for quite some time. He was destructive, he wasn’t nice enough, and so he was resented.

Eventually, he reformed, and everyone couldn’t be happier for it.

Excluding Pharynx.

Maybe Changelings just aren’t meant to change, after all.

Published 2022-09-25 19:10:00 UTC
Last updated 2022-09-25 19:10:00 UTC

Debris

Author's Note

Fic-inspiring songs? Check. Angst? Double-check. Thorax and Phar— hey, wait, haven’t we been through this before?

Debris

The cacophonic buzz of Changeling wings created a counterpoint with the full hooffalls in the Badlands’ valley on the route to the New Hive, an immersive play directed and starred in by Pharynx’s younger broodmate, Thorax.

Those two pony friends of his brother’s had bid their dues shortly after Pharynx had wrapped up his very considerate - seeing as he was all ‘good’, now - social-save of the story where he used to make Thorax hit himself back in the gorge.

The swarm immediately resumed their menial tasks upon its return to the Hive, like demolition and flower arranging. It was sunset, by then, and Pharynx decided with himself that - in his new, moderately larger form - he wouldn’t be able to sleep in his makeshift shelter just on the outskirts of the drizzly forest. So, he strutted his way down the path to his unused quarters - which was essentially a turret dislocated from the rest of the New Hive - with Thorax at his haunches.

“Too cold out for ya, huh?” He asked with a voice attempting to be casual. Uninterested, almost. The apparent fakeness of it made Pharynx want to gag.

“I dunno what I was thinking,” Pharynx retorted gruffly, or at least as gruffly as what he could make himself sound in his new form, “taking a stupid little teepee over a whole bed chamber. Only royals get stuff like this, huh.”

It wasn’t a question. Not really. Pharynx, back in the old days, had shared a pod with four others of his rank. After Thorax had left, that was. Or was it before, as well? Anyway, they’d all kicked and snored and snarled and bit. One of them even had night terrors now and again. Pharynx didn’t think he’d had a proper night’s sleep until he’d started sleeping in that dinky little teepee, and even then it wasn’t really ‘proper’.

“You had your...” Thorax briefly hesitated as he took his time to think of a word, “principles.”

Pharynx’s demeanour transitioned into an agape mess, as though someone had taken a bucket of iced water, filled to the brim, and dumped it over him and now he was stuck, unsure of what to do next. He continued walking, however, after taking some time to let Thorax’s statement cut into his very exoskeleton and diffuse through his bloodstream.

Pharynx turned to the automatically morphing door to his chambers. Inside was a space just a bit larger than his old four-changeling pod; on the left with its headboard against the wall was a - what he estimated to be in pony standards - queen-sized bed with a green gossamer canopy. On the right was a bare dresser with a cracked mirror.

His heart skipped a beat: was that Chrysalis’ dresser? In his chambers?

“I told the changelings working on the demolition to salvage it,” said Thorax, coming up behind his brother in all his large, oafishly antlered glory. Of course, the New Hive was still being reconstructed into what Thorax claimed to be an ‘open, free, happy space’. “I hope you don’t mind.”

If Pharynx was Thorax, he would have hugged him. Instead, he waltzed into the room in an attempt to act unfazed, and placed a hoof on the left side of the bed. The mattress was made out of grass and leaves, and it was comfortable. And Changelings never used to sleep all ‘comfortable’.

Pharynx used his teeth to yank the tucked-in blanket - one all cosy and silky and thin - off of its resting place and grabbed a pillow under his right foreleg. Then, he turned around with the intent of nesting in the far corner, between the old dresser and the wall. Feeling his content stomach, he thought about just hanging from the ceiling in a cocoon.

“What are you doing?” Thorax asked, as Pharynx wrapped himself up in his blanket and positioned his pillow between the back of his head and the wall.

“Getting ready to go to sleep.” In all honesty, it was quite early. Not even Thorax would be going to bed at this time. Give it an hour and he would’ve, but Pharynx felt exceptionally heavy. He couldn’t bear to stand on his own four hooves any longer. It had been an eventful day for him, and unfortunately that wasn’t just because of the fight with the dread maulwurf, or his reformation. “Why?” He asked, feigning innocence.

“Oh,” Thorax blinked, wavering in the entrance-way, “well, goodnight, then, Pharynx!”

“Night, Thorax.”

“Goodnight, Pharynx. I... I love you.”

Pharynx baulked at those words. They were words that bore into his very recently-thawed heart. Thorax would have gotten slapped for that, if anybody else was around to hear. At least, he would have. Pharynx would have done it, but he was comfortable wrapped up in his little corner. “Night, Thorax.” He repeated.

“Oh, right,” Thorax stepped back, “well, I- uh- goodnight, then, Pharynx. Sweet dreams.”

“Is Princess Uma gonna visit them?” Pharynx inquired. He didn’t really favour the idea of his mind being intercepted by a pretty pink pony vomiting sprinkles and syrup to taint his dreams of battles played out in his indulgent victory.

“Actually, Pharynx, it’s Luna,” Thorax corrected, very politely, “and no. Not unless you need her to, that is.”

“I don’t,” Pharynx said, moseying into his pillow and turning on his side, carapace now to his brother. “But knowing I don’t have to deal with her just ’cause I’m all reformed now means my dreams are gonna end up totally radical.” He could feel Thorax’s purple eyes bear into his withers.

“Okay, Pharynx,” he said, eventually, “goodnight.”

The entrance closed up, leaving Pharynx alone in both the dark, and with his thoughts. He turned back on his carapace. If he was so reformed now, why did he still feel so empty? And heavy? It was like he had a hungry stomach in his chest, and he didn’t like it. He thought that a fate spent with a panging stomach was better than whatever this was.

Did Thorax feel like this, too? He hoped not.

“You had your... principles.”

Surely that word shouldn’t have seemed so dirty. Trodden on. So worthless. ‘Principles’. As he mulled over this, Pharynx looked over one of his new form’s hooves. It was cyan, and unlaboured. Unscarred. It looked new, almost, like a foal’s.

Some viewed scars as a stunt in vanity, a hindrance, and some viewed them as a wicked tale. Pharynx was the latter, having viewed the late scars and cracks that littered his charcoal-ish chitin as reminders of his life. Thorax, on the other holed hoof, had been the former.

Pharynx glanced over one of his shiny dark cyan hooves and grimaced. Now, it seemed as though he - just like the Changeling culture as a whole - was forgotten.

Of course, he had always known that one day he would disappear, through combat or otherwise, but had at least idealised the idea of his Queen, Chrysalis, remembering him as a particularly loyal and fierce drone that died somewhat nobly for as long as she lived through the next few centuries that were to come.

Pharynx wondered if now, without his keepsake scars, he’d forget what he had done as a dutiful drone to the Queen. His clean, dark cyan chitin certainly didn’t tell the tale, and with everything just a faint memory, what would?

Mortality had never been a subject that Pharynx was particularly fond of. It just added to the pile, but he was so very sure that if he took the time to organise it, it would definitely be one of the ones to come out on top, with mortality and creatures - only really including the ones that he was particularly fond of - getting hurt being rather differential. Amidst those creatures was his brother Thorax. Though in actuality, it was really just Thorax.

Back in the old days, everyone in the whole Hive would recite “long live the Queen” on a regular basis whenever something along the lines of the subject of mortality would come up concerning her ex-majesty. Even back in the old days, Pharynx had never chorused, because doing so would be admitting there was a possibility of the contrary happening.

It was a prayer. A moment of hope and doubt residing in one silly little sentence.

Pharynx didn’t play along. He wasn’t fond of doubt. Or jinxes.

He tried sleeping after that. He shut his eyes and rolled around in his sheets; opening his eyes to try finding his scarred black chitin, seeing the perfect dark cyan.

It was surprisingly dark in Pharynx’s chambers. Dark and undisturbed. Darker than night and quieter than deafness. Though, he supposed that last part didn’t make too much sense, as the silence made him feel deaf. As he stared up at the ceiling, Pharynx wondered why his chambers didn’t have a window, or something else to let the moonlight in. After all, wasn’t Thorax all for ‘light, happy spaces’, now?

Pharynx thought about adding some windows himself. Anything to make it less dark in his chambers. Consider it on his mental to-do list.

But all that planning aside, it was dark. And spacious. And alien.

Pharynx groaned and covered his eyes, twisting his whole body to the left until he fell into a small stoop that his carapace had made in his pillow.

A long horned cyan Changeling gasped. Her hoof was put to her lips in shock: “Oh, my goodness, it’s Pharynx!”

“Should we hide?” asked another beside her, lowering his yellow head in fear, ears pinned back.

“I don’t know! Is he still in one of his moods?”

“He looks so different now,” observed a third onlooker, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, no! I think he’s looking! Quick, be quiet!”

Pharynx’s fairly neutral mood wavered when he felt the surprise at his appearance. He could also sense an undertone of fear, and hunger spat and sizzled in the pits of his chest. From the corner of his eye he could spot the decorative vines he had ripped to shreds yesterday, still on the floor in a messy little heap, and so he approached them with a coarse frown.

“He’s going to do it again!” A surrey green Changeling wailed, placing his forehooves over his head as he ducked down in absolute horror.

“He’s gonna start breaking stuff, again! Hide!”

Pharynx shovelled a single hoof under the vines and managed to grab at least six in between his hoof and fetlock. Then, he reared up and balanced himself against the stone wall, and forcefully thrusted his hoof-full of vines into the socket that he had once ripped them out of. Stepping back with all four hooves on the ground, Pharynx observed the ugly clump of wrecked foliage, right before it fell out like hair that had just been snipped.

“Uh, what’s Pharynx doing?” Pharynx’s ear turned to the source of the voice, but he made no other sign of acknowledgement. He recognised the voice as the infiltrator that had impersonated Princess Cadance in the previous invasion. He and Pharynx had to walk around the Crystal Empire with their forehooves all over one another, just so the loving subjects on which they had been feasting hadn’t gotten suspicious.

Pharynx scooped another tuft of vines and crammed them into the slot in the wall again. And again they fell back out onto the floor. Pharynx snarled in impatience and for a third time he snatched them up and stuffed them into the crevasse, only for them to fall back out. Then, he snatched them again, and again, and slammed them much more carelessly into the wall. The stone cracked and the vines slid back onto the floor in defiance.

Pharynx growled loudly in anger, and grabbed the vines with his teeth, shaking them around like a freshly killed rabbit. Just as he was about to throw them down vehemently, so he could stomp the remaining life out of them and kick dirt over the flattened pile, he finally tuned into the shocked and horrified gasps and exclamations behind him. He’d garnered himself a crowd of pesky onlookers.

“What is he trying to do?”

“I don’t know. He’s weird.”

Pharynx awkwardly spat the vines out into his upturned hoof and pressed them towards the groove in the wall. They fell back onto the floor. Pharynx sighed to himself in defeat.

The whole swarm had collected in the packed throne room by pheremonal request of the Queen. In front of the throne, Chrysalis had arisen, and before her at the bottom of the steps was a Changeling just like the rest of them, but his wings were glimmering like the night sky over a particularly pony-populated place in Equestria.

“What’s he even trying to do?” Pharynx heard a Changeling just a year or so younger than him ask under his breath. “Win her over?”

“Sharing? Love?” Queen Chrysalis repeated a keyword from the unassuming drone’s little speech, with a nefarious little chuckle of disbelief. He’d gone with a small cluster of peers to infiltrate a patch of the Fillydephian suburbs, and had come back claiming to be a new creature, with a glittery new set of wings to prove it.

“I don’t know. He’s weird.”

The Queen inhaled through her nose, and let her posture inflate. “Please, Cranium, do elaborate.”

“Well,” Cranium exclaimed with an elated buzz of his wings, “when I was in Fillydelphia, I made some new friends who accepted me for being a Changeling, and their love willingly shared with me was enough to-”

In a streak of sickening green, Cranium was laying on the floor with a smouldering hole in his abdomen, mouth ajar and eyes wide. Dead.

Some gasped, some were perfectly still. Pharynx was the latter, giving nothing more than a silent wince.

“And that’s what happens when you betray the Hive,” Chrysalis said, as if it was some grand moral at the end of a story instead of common knowledge, “make no mistake. As for him...” she glared at the corpse of the misfortunate drone several feet away from her. “Put him in with the nymphs.”

Putting lifeless bodies in with the nymphs was a common practice as to teach the new generations of the Hive to fend for themselves. Pharynx remembered several times where Thorax would be pushed to the side when a new body was thrown into the nursery, as well as a resistance to follow every other nymph’s example.

Something about Cranium’s story had struck Pharynx. Perhaps he was just glad that Thorax wasn’t here now to see it.

“Okay, that’s enough everypony,” Thorax stepped beside his brother, and Pharynx flinched. He hadn’t even heard him approach. He placed a hoof on Pharynx’s shoulder. Pharynx flinched again. “Are you okay, Pharynx?”

Pharynx didn’t think to respond. He just stared at the thin crack he’d made in the wall with something of dismay.

“But, Thorax! What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s just standing there!”

“Is it a stroke? I think it’s a stroke!”

“I said: that’s enough!” There was muttering as the crowd of onlookers dispatched, but Pharynx stayed still, because when he looked out of the corner of his eye, there was a beady-eyed black bear with sharp yellow teeth. He should have hit it or transformed into something bigger, but found that he couldn’t move. He was glued to the ground with his four hooves spread out into a prey-like position.

As a flash of blue sequenced, it took Pharynx an embarrassingly long amount of time to realise that the bear had actually been Thorax. He still couldn’t move.

“Pharynx..?” A hoof was slowly encroaching Pharynx’s chitin - he could feel it lingering there - and then magnetised to his right shoulder with enough static to make Pharynx gasp. His posture went from frozen stiff to shocked rigid, and after a confused moment the two pulled away in surprise and revulsion respectively.

“What is it, Thorax?” Pharynx asked, a bit slower than what he expected from himself. It was like the vowels wanted to stick to his tongue like honey, and he had to drool them out to release them.

“Are you okay?” Thorax asked, with concern twice the size of his new body mass. “You seem... out of it.”

Pharynx coughed, “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Thorax pressed, with a voice that most pony’s used when quizzing an infiltrator. He licked his lips and swallowed a mouthful of what must have been either saliva or slime. “You can be honest with me, now, Pharynx! These aren’t the old days anymore, we’re both reformed.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Pharynx said, making his voice deeper than what it naturally was.

“Well, I think it does,” Thorax stated, acting with a newfound opposition.

“Doesn’t.” A grunt. That’s all it really was: a gruff, almost unintelligible noise that usually warned the pest in question off. But, just like that Twilight Glimmer, Thorax - unlike in the old days - was undeterred.

“How about you join me in one of the feelings forums?” he offered, smiling with self-righteous judiciousness, “I think there’s one starting now.”

“I’d rather rule under Chrysalis, again,” Pharynx let out a scoff. “’Sides, last I checked, those feelings forums” - he planted himself on his haunches and made quotation marks with his front hooves - “were just for talkin’ about me behind my back!” The stinger from this bee was still fresh and unremoved. “What’re you all gonna do once I’m actually there?”

“That was just one time,” Thorax excused, “because everyone was upset that you were...”

“What?” Pharynx interrupted in accusation after glancing back at the limp heap of decorative vines on the ground behind him. “Was what? ‘Out of control’? ‘Breaking things’? ‘Throwing a temper tantrum’?”

Thorax reeled in surprise, eyes widening like saucers. “Okay... come on!” he turned flank and gestured over his shoulder for his brother to follow. “Let’s go to the feelings forum. Ooh, or we could go check out the demolition?”

“I’m not moving,” Pharynx said sternly.

“Look, you don’t even have to say anything in the feelings forum if you don’t want to. But, I think it’ll do you some good. I don’t want what happened yesterday to happen again.”

The two locked one another in a staring contest. It was the longest bout of eye contact the two had ever made with the other. Pharynx knew exactly what Thorax was referring to, and Thorax knew that Pharynx knew. Pharynx knew that he knew.

“Fine. We’ll go to the feelings forum,” Pharynx said, at last, with a tone of defiance as opposed to relenting. He’d rather see what the Hive had become, and not what it would never be again. “But only because I haven’t got anything better to do.”

Most nights in the sleeping pod were loud. While one would scream or sob in their sleep, the others would either snore straight through it or throw a rock or stick or talon at them in an effort to force them awake. Pharynx, as far as he could remember, had never been woken up in this manner. He was so sure of it.

Until Thorax left.

Thorax had that morning, and it had been the prime subject of several sectors all day. Pharynx had heard the very worst of it, and at the gossip’s particular zeniths he had interrupted and threatened violence to the specific whisperers.

That night, Pharynx had returned to his pod late after what he had reported as a pretty tepid patrol, and had caught the abrupt end to cheeky whispers of his podmates all gossiping about Thorax’s absence. They’d all hushed one another as soon as they caught wind of Pharynx presence, and Pharynx had made his demeanour grumpy and threatening as not to be spoken to. Then, he’d heaved himself into his little alcove in the wall and turned his carapace to them.

As soon as Pharynx closed his eyes, and his mind began to slip away, something hit him in the side of the head, and he awoke with a terrified, confused, and defensive start. “What the Tartarus was that for?” he barked.

“You were keeping us awake.”

“Crying.”

“Idiot.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Pharynx retorted, “what’s it to you, anyway?”

“Whatever, Pharynx,” came the reply from Epiglottis, the merciless second in command, in the greenish dark, and Pharynx could just about make out a smirk, and then a stifled snicker of judgement. “Just go on patrol or something. Who knows? You might find Thorax in the bottom of a gorge or something.”

A bitter laugh followed. “Yeah. Maybe the ponies killed him.”

“Maybe he just starved. That weakling couldn’t even drain the love from an ant.”

Cruel cackling emitted from all three, and Pharynx felt as though he had just undergone a sneezing fit: all breathless, stingy and watery. “Whatever,” he huffed, taking to the pod’s exit, “not like I have anything better to do.”

“I think your advice from yesterday is really working,” a Changeling standing in the centre of the feeling circle said. “I’m changing my colour depending on how I feel in the moment! And everyone still recognises me for me! I don’t think I’ve ever felt more myself!”

“You are so brave to share this with us,” Epiglottis, the dowdy ringleader, expressed with an accepting smile. The speaker smiled, nodding thankfully, and sat back down. “Would anyone else like to go?”

“Not again,” Pharynx groaned. Thorax turned to the right and watched as his brother leaned back in devastation.

“Pharynx,” Epiglottis said, “would you like to go next?”

“No.” Pharynx furrowed his brow and scowled. When Thorax nudged him in the ribs, he sighed. “No, thank you.”

“Very well, then.” Epiglottis gave a smile that neither encouraged or discouraged him. “Would anybody else like to-”

Pharynx groaned. He couldn’t do this again. Not another pompously worded speech about how the stitches on one of their home-knit tea cosies had been one off, or how sad the most recent book discussed in their book club made them. He could have gone on and on.

“Pharynx,” Epiglottis said again, “are you sure there isn’t anything you wish to share with us?”

“No.”

“Then stop interrupting.”

“Well, I can’t help it if I’m already sick of all of you whining about stupid little things like the thorns on a rosebush or not havining chitin like a moodring.” Some of the members in the feeling circle gasped or winced. “I wanna leave.” He turned to Thorax, who was the very reason he was there to begin with: “Let me leave.”

“If I may, Pharynx,” just as Thorax was about to nod in approval, Epiglottis sat back on her haunches and made an expressive gesture with her front hooves. “You have never taken the time to ask for permission to do anything you wish to do, especially now that You-Know-Who has been overthrown and we have all reformed, and so I believe that you are making excuses for yourself. Not just for this, but for everything else as well. You say you wish to leave, and yet you wish to stay. And I also believe it is not a question of which one it is that you really wish to do, but rather which one you are choosing to do.” She stated, smiling in a way that a mother would to her young. “After all, everything is your choice, Pharynx. No one else’s.”

Pharynx’s blood was boiling. If he was in a form that had claws, they would have gripped deep into the earth beneath him. Instead, he pressed his hoof down and gritted his teeth. “‘Excuses’, huh?” As if he was detached from his body, Pharynx felt himself rise to his hooves with a violently beating heart.

“Yes,” Epiglottis confirmed, nodding gently. “What’s really troubling you, Pharynx?”

“You,” he pointed at her, “you’re bothering me! Trying to tell me what to feel. But, you know what? Yeah! I do have something to say! About this stupid feelings forum! You just referred to Chrysalis as ‘You-Know-Who’ when just yesterday you were calling me that. What, do you think we’re the same, or something? Do you have any idea how that feels? Do you? Because I feel as though this feelings circle accepts any emotion that comes from stupid stuff, and not about stuff that really matters. Just like how you’re all trying to ignore the old days just because you don’t like them! You really think the ponies did that when the Sun Pony banished the other one to the moon? Just because they didn’t like her? You!”

The Changeling that had complained about their chitin being the wrong colour just the day before gulped as Pharynx pointed an accusatory hoof at them.

“We’re Changelings! We can change to whatever colour we want, so what was your problem even about? You’re so quick to tell me how I’m feeling, yet you won’t even cover how that’s probably to do with this!” In an uproar of purple flame, Pharynx transformed into an unreformed blue-eyed Changeling and hissed threateningly. Then, as the crowd took their time to gasp, he turned back into his reformed state. “So, how is it I’m the only one who’s told how they feel? Huh? Because I think every feeling is accepted here except for anger! The only time you guys’ve ever been angry here is when you’ve been talking about me! Well, guess what? You got me, I’m angry!”

Epiglottis interjected with an unfazed smile. “Pharynx, these emotions are perfectly normal for the problems you’re going through. Anger, sadness, they’re all a part of the grieving process.” The circle - excluding Epiglottis, Pharynx, and Thorax - all chittered in agreement and started to applaud.

Pharynx gritted his teeth at the condescending response. “You’re doing it again! Stop it! Quit clapping! You didn’t even answer my question.”

With a final growl of disbelief and frustration, Pharynx turned away from Epiglottis and kicked a rock behind him. It hadn’t necessarily been at her, but rather in the direction of, but she caught it between her front hooves nonetheless, without a single flinch.

“I’m done - done with all of you!” Then, Pharynx stormed out.

“How’d I know I’d find you here?” Pharynx asked Thorax. The two were standing in the middle of Thorax’s room in the Crystal Palace. Of course Thorax had been residing here: the Crystal Heart was the same pale ocean colour as his eyes, and the whole capital was teeming with warmth and love and light.

“I don’t know,” Thorax’s smile dropped from his face in the daintiest of manners, “but you’ve known for weeks, now, haven’t you?”

Pharynx didn’t reply, but yes, he had. Ever since Thorax had left and he wasn’t able to catch him in time to talk him out of it, he’d spent most of his external patrols trying to track Thorax’s whereabouts. “You need to get out of here,” he replied at last, upon inspecting Thorax’s glittery wings, and for the first time since it had happened, he thought about Cranium’s death. “It isn’t safe.”

“I’m not going back, Pharynx,” Thorax said, “You can’t make me.”

“That’s right,” Pharynx stated, putting on a commanding voice, “you’re not going back. It’s not safe there, either.”

“What are you talking about, Pharynx?”

Pharynx huffed in frustration. “She knows you’re here, Thorax. She’s planning an infiltration Equestria-wide, too, hoping to knock two birds with one stone or something.”

“Is that why you’ve got that new scar on your side?” his brother asked, frowning with his ears pinned back.

“Guess so,” Pharynx said, looking down briefly at the deep, two month-old gash on the side of his barrel. Chrysalis had inflicted it in her chambers after she’d caught wind of Thorax’s escape.

“You’re not going to take me to her, are you?”

“I’m giving you the chance to run before the infiltration happens here, too. The others aren’t so eager on giving you any other chances, seeing as Chrysalis’s been chewing us all out about your treachery for months.”

“I’m sorry, Pharynx.”

“Ain’t your mouth that she’s shooting off,” Pharynx said, with pain. That stingy, post-sneezing sensation returned, and while he wanted Thorax back at the Hive with him, he knew that living with the ponies was what was truly making him happy. And if it meant making Thorax happy, then he’d be all runny-nosed and watery-eyed. “Just gather some of your closest friends, or whatever they are, and hide with them. Maybe go for the ones that have a fighting chance against the swarm.”

“Is that why you’re here? To warn me?” Thorax asked, sadly. “Why don’t you come with me? We can stop the infiltration with the princesses, and Twilight and her friends, and-”

Pharynx didn’t want to hear the end of what his brother had to propose. In a spiral of red flames, he reappeared as a large, white unicorn with a split-ended blue mane and tail.

“Oh,” Thorax seemed to deflate, and it made Pharynx’s intestines corrode. “I see.”

“They’re coming in an hour or two at the most,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t his own. “So, I’ll only say it one more time, Thorax:” he transformed back into himself, using the voice that he often used in an attempt to fend off or intimidate enemies, “get out of here.”

Pharynx stared at the mountain of debris before him. It had once been Chrysalis’ bed chambers, now completely demolished. He’d just fished through the pile of jagged rocks to find one small enough to keep on impulse. He had also told some of the demolition workers that he’d look through her belongings, see which ones were worth keeping.

All of it felt worth keeping. As keepsakes. Even the snapped spine of an old quill that looked like it hadn’t been used in years.

“How’d I know I’d find you here?” Thorax fluttered next to him and sat down. Pharynx bowed his head and, when his eyes started to hurt and his vision started to fail him, he scrunched his eyes closed. “You okay?”

Pharynx didn’t turn, and he didn’t look up. “I don’t know.”

“Is it about what happened in the feelings forum? Or is there more?”

“There’s more.”

Thorax placed his left foreleg around Pharynx. Pharynx didn’t care to push it off. “Do you want to talk about it?”

The voice that Thorax used was soft and delicate. At least more-so than usual. It was like the one that Epiglottis used: neither encouraging or discouraging. But unlike Epiglottis’, Pharynx believed it.

“No,” he said eventually, his voice pinched and his volume inconsistent.

“Okay,” Thorax said, quietly, and rotated his body so that his underside was facing Pharynx. He wrapped his other long foreleg around his back, and then rested his head lightly in the space between Pharynx’s antlers and horn. “I’ll wait until you’re ready.”

Pharynx felt heavy and awkward in a hold such as this, but he hadn’t the strength or aspiration to protest. So, the two sat in silence together, alone. No interruptions, no disturbances, no obligations.

“Do you think I’m like Chrysalis?” Pharynx inevitably asked, after a while of pondering over what had happened in the feelings forum. Most of it was just a blur.

“What? No! Of course not. You’re nothing like her.”

Pharynx attention returned to the mound of rubble in front of them. “Neither are you.”

Thorax smiled earnestly. “Thanks, Pharynx.”

“’Cause just between you and me,” he continued, curling his left foreleg around Thorax’s right one, “I actually like you.” A half-bitter, half-genuine laugh followed. “Long live the king, huh?”

“You’re silly, Pharynx.” Thorax giggled, and pulled himself out of the lock to playfully nudge at Pharynx’s shoulder. Chrysalis had once dislocated it after the Canterlot Invasion, but since reforming it was as if it had never been touched.

“One of the many reasons why you love me, though, right?”

“Yeah, right.” The shadow of Thorax’s previous giggle was still there.

Pharynx hesisted. “Thorax?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,” he admitted, “...or, you know, whatever.”

Silence.

Thorax smiled brightly. “I love you too, Pharynx.”