Albert Wesker and the Hospital
Author's note: Ponies. Ponies everywhere. We are indeed back in Equestria, should be interesting. I think I'm doing a pretty good job but let me know if I'm not... or if I am. I live for your feedback people! Beta'd by REV6Pilot, give him all your love.
The light felt like tiny blades cutting into his retinas and the ambient sounds of birdsong and distant ponies milling to and fro sounded astronomically loud to Wesker's sensitive ears; he groaned as his senses were overwhelmed. The sensation was unerringly similar to when he first recovered consciousness after his death, and with that precedent firmly in mind, he decided to ignore the world around him as best as he could, settling for introspection instead.
How uncharacteristic of you, Albert.
He frowned, what was that supposed to mean?
Ignore him, Al, he's just being an ass.
The man turned pony decided to confront his situation. Living inside his head was becoming increasingly irritating, and even his internal voices were beginning to make errors of judgement.
His surroundings were pure white, sterile and dull, which led him to conclude that he was in a hospital of some sort. He loathed hospitals. Probably because they reminded him of imperfection and weakness. After his ascension to the pinnacle of existence, they hadn't been worthy of his attention anymore; a god did not get sick or injured after all. But now, here he was, infirm and useless. It was enough to make him want to trade in his humanity again. Certainly he would take another violent death if it meant he could avoid the indignity of being reminded of his own mortality.
That's not normal, Al.
Wesker smirked. He aimed to please.
Eventually, he managed to sit up in an upright position, ignoring the pounding in his eardrums as well as the disgustingly persistent taste of vomit at the back of his throat. It certainly wasn't the most desirable of states to be in.
Understatement.
Natural light was streaming in through the window and illuminating the room he was in. It was a fairly basic affair, crisp white sheets on a simple steel-framed bed, a pair of glasses and a pot of flowers on a pine side-table. The only unusual aspect was a pissed megalomaniac with no way to occupy his time other than to wait for someone to visit him. Wesker sighed. How had he gone from being on the brink of establishing a new world order to throwing up outside a bakery and going to the hospital?
Bad luck?
He decided to go with that, over-thinking would just anger him, and he could definitely do without an outburst here. Things tended to get broken or die, or a mix of both, when that happened. He diverted his thoughts elsewhere. It was still light outside, so he assumed his little foray into unconsciousness had lasted a couple of hours.
All of a sudden, Wesker heard voices approaching from the corridor. "You say he was in here, nurse Redheart?" That sounded unmistakably like Twilight. Though he was fairly certain that he could have coped without it, the thought of having some company in this horrid building brought forth a small degree of satisfaction. What gave him greater hope was the possibility that the lavender unicorn had brought a book to read, which certainly would pierce his inertia more effectively than any idle chit-chat. Feeling useless irritated Albert Wesker, more so than pretty much any other embarrassment he had suffered so far.
Unfortunately, this brought back unpleasant memories of the corneal abrasion that had resulted in his hypersensitivity to light. Wesker was only fifteen years old at the time, though his intelligence was still incredibly advanced; he had been considered a gifted child.
Not gifted enough to keep your experiments away from your eyeballs, unfortunately.
When Twilight finally entered his hospital room with Nurse Redheart alongside her, Wesker was in a strange mood, something which both occupants of the room noticed straight away, though not in the manner Wesker was accustomed to.
"Oh, you're awake Albert, how are you feeling?" Her tone was light and faintly teasing, causing Wesker to lessen his scowl, if only slightly.
"Just fine, dear heart." He folded his hooves across his chest. "I do enjoy feeling obsolete and sitting pointlessly in a pen for the diseased."
Nurse Redheart clicked her tongue whilst Twilight hid a smile behind a hoof. "Now now, mr. Wesker, no need to get testy. You gave us all quite the scare outside Sugarcube Corner, but you're just here to make sure that everything is just fine. I'm Nurse Redheart."
Wesker raised an eyebrow, grabbing his shades from the rickety bedside table. "I assume saying that I am just fine will not be sufficient?"
Nurse Redheart smiled. "We need to be certain you're well. You were out for quite a long time after all."
The male stroked his chin. "I was? Well, what time is it?
"It's 7 o'clock, mr. Wesker."
He snorted. "A couple of hours, miss Redheart, are certainly nothing worth confining me in a whitewashed prison for."
Twilight jumped in to prevent the nurse from adding to her patient's list of woes. "It's 7 o' clock in the morning, Albert, you've been unconscious for over 12 hours. We were at your bedside up until about 10, but nurse Redheart said you were stable and we should all get some shuteye. I decided I would visit you in the morning and... Here I am."
Wesker grimaced. "It appears I am allergic to parties, dear heart." He cracked the joints in his neck. "I had my suspicions." He examined the purple mare over the top of his shades. "I appreciate your concern, but if losing my memory left me physically unaffected, then unceremoniously depositing cake and punch into a bush was always unlikely to leave a mark."
Twilight giggled. "You're in an unusual mood today."
Wesker spread his front hooves disarmingly, "Honestly Miss Twilight? I dislike hospitals." He cast a sidelong glance at Nurse Redheart, smirking faintly. "No offense, Miss Redheart." The pure white earth pony sighed dramatically and ran a hoof through her bubblegum pink mane, smiled and waved the aforementioned appendage dismissively, allowing him to continue. "You mentioned before that amnesiacs may recover memories from random stimuli?" At her questioning look, he pushed his shades up to the bridge of his nose and sighed irritably.
"Not as eloquently, perhaps, but you made the general point. Not all memories they recover are pleasant." He looked around the blandly featured hospital room and thought of all the days spent testing his near-shattered vision, the excruciating pain he had experienced when disregarding his doctor's advice for the first time and accidentally looking directly into one of the cheap bulbs without his glasses on.
Twilight noticed the increasingly dark scowl spreading across the gold maned earth pony and quickly sought to redirect his thoughts. "So, do you know why you were so ill at Pinkie's party?"
It was hardly a cheerier subject for Wesker to consider, but it served its intended purpose.
Sorry to say it, Al but you definitely can't tell the truth here, unless you want to stay in here forever with a nice straitjacket thrown in for free.
"I'm not entirely certain." He arched an eyebrow in the direction of the nurse, "I assume that's why I'm being kept here, to ensure no relapse or possibility of contagion?"
Nurse Redheart nodded. "I'm sorry to inconvenience you, mr. Wesker, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one."
Wesker smirked, how idealistic, "Normally I would agree with you, miss Redheart, but when the one is myself then I tend to think quite differently."
Redheart rolled her eyes. "I'm sure, mr. Wesker." She started strolling towards the door, stopping briefly to address the pair of them. "Twilight, you have about half an hour before I need to run some routine examinations on mr. Wesker." The pink-maned mare then turned to the stallion. "Normally, I wouldn't say this to a first-time patient, but don't try to leave!"
Wesker sighed and pretended to mull it over, giving a mock salute and settling down in the bed to prove his willingness to stay. Redheart smiled and shook her head on her way out.
He was restless. He wasn't usually lazy, and something about hospitals aggravated him, put him even more on edge. Luckily, it was Twilight who had come to visit him and, as the most intelligent of the ponies he had met since his impromptu arrival in Ponyville, she was capable of realizing this. "Albert... you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, but what was the memory that resurfaced when you woke up in the hospital?"
The former S.T.A.R.S. captain put a hoof to his forehead in contemplation. How much should he divulge? He supposed that he could give the memory without context, but that would seem as though he were confiding in her, an act which suggested intolerable weakness to himself. However, despite her gentle approach, he assumed that Twilight would not take 'no' for an answer – she probably believed it would be healthier for him to express his feelings.
Don't pretend you have any, Albert.
Ultimately, he crumbled. "Fine. When I was younger, I was a burgeoning chemist and I was taking part in a university level practical experiment... To summarize, it went wrong. I suffered a great deal of damage to my eyes, and afterwards, I became hyper-sensitive to light and started having to wear darkened glasses," he tapped the side of his shades, "much like these."
She looked at him sympathetically, which certainly didn't help his rapidly disintegrating mood. "I'm so sorry to hear that, Albert. I'm guessing the rest of your eyes healed on their own?"
Wesker nodded. That was close enough to the truth; he was hardly about to tell her the actual way in which his sight was fully restored.
A small smile spread across Twilight's face when she perceived she had found a diversionary tactic. "So, you used to be a scientist, then?"
Wesker nodded. "So it would appear."
"Then I'll be sure to bring some scientific books the next time I visit. I've got a couple of the books from your saddlebag for you to read whilst you're here."
At least he could be pathetic, mortal and occupied, rather than just pathetic and mortal. "My thanks, miss Twilight. They will hopefully make the time spent here pass more rapidly."
The purple unicorn's grin grew wider. "It's no problem, with all these excellent books I'm sure the time will fly by!"
Wesker arched a cynical eyebrow.
"What? It doesn't hurt to be optimistic, you know."
Wesker barked out a bitter laugh. "The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised."