//------------------------------//
// Two 
// Story: A Change in Perception 
// by Jade Ring 
//------------------------------//

Shining Armor never felt more relaxed than when held tight in the embrace of the mare he loved. She held him now in their marriage bed, his muzzle buried in the fur of her chest. He could feel her heart beating, smell the strawberry shampoo she used, and knew that he was home. "So." He sighed against her. "What do you think?"

He'd just finished telling her what he'd learned in Canterlot. On the train ride back, he'd considered keeping the whole thing from her. Wasn't there safety in ignorance? But no; this was going to reach her eventually. Somehow, someway, someone was going to tell her. Better it come from him now than later on, probably from some gossipy nurse at the clinic where the path to the truth had begun.

"This is one of those things where it doesn't really matter what I think." She tilted his head up and smiled gently. "This is all you, honey."

"So... what am I supposed to do? Any suggestions?"

Cadance took a deep breath and settled back against the pillows. "The way I see it, you have to look at this two ways; personally and politically."

"Politics. Of course." He rolled away from her and stared at the wall. "My all-time favorite thing."

"It's unavoidable in this case, I'm afraid. Thorax is a king with a kingdom, a throne, and everything else that entails." She sat up and looked at him hard. "But now he's also the rightful heir to the throne of the Crystal Empire. By all rights, he's the next in line."

He looked back at her and raised an eyebrow. "But it's like you just said; he already has a kingdom. Flurry Heart is still next in line."

"But what if he..." She sighed. "What if he decides one day that it isn't enough? Wars for succession have started over much less than this."

Shining Armor rolled back over and sat up beside his wife. "We've known Thorax for almost a decade, Cadance. What has he ever done that makes you think he'd do something like that?"

"That's where the personal meets the political." She looked at him hard. "Before you decide what you're going to say to him, you have to consider how he might take it."

Shining Armor laughed uneasily. "What? You think that if I say the wrong thing, Thorax is going to gather his forces and... what? Invade?"

"He might not need to." Cadance didn't laugh. "There are always going to be those dissatisfied with how the current monarchy operates. All it would take is a few powerful individuals to start stirring up unrest, pointing out the various disasters only narrowly avoided by the two of us, and contrast those events with the relative prosperity of the changeling way of life."

"But that's them. Not Thorax. He would never..."

"The heart is a complicated thing, Shining Armor. You should never underestimate what someone is capable of when their heart's been broken."

"I'm not going to break his heart!"

"Then what are you going to say to him? Exactly?"

"I don't know!" He fell back, grabbed a pillow, and covered his face. "I don't even know what Thorax expects to come from this. What? Does he want to play catch at the next royal summit? Do I owe him for all these year's worth of birthday and Hearth's Warming gifts?" He tossed the pillow across the room and glared at it. "This would've been easier if he'd just kept it to himself."

"Easier for you, you mean."

He turned his gaze to her. "Easier for everyone."

"But you, especially."

"What do you want me to say, Cadance?! Yes, easier for me. I could've gone my entire life not knowing and been perfectly happy. But now? I feel... I feel..." The anger began to bluster and his focus began fading off. A faraway look stole into his eyes.

It was a look that Cadance knew all too well. "It's bringing it back, isn't it? The invasion?"

Shining Armor took several deep, calming breaths. It was an exercise he hadn't needed to use in years. Not since he'd finally managed to put the... incident behind him. "The last thing she said to me was that from now on, I wouldn't see him as my friend, or even my son. All I would see is a living, breathing reminder of what she'd done to me." He looked at his wife with tears filling his eyes. "What if she's right?"

Cadance pulled him to her and hugged him tight. She felt him sob into her chest and felt the old, familiar hate for the monster that had done this to him. She shushed him softly and rubbed his back. "It's alright, baby. You're past all that now."

Cadance remembered the months of therapy it had taken for Shining Armor to fully get over his ordeal. Unbidden images came to mind of the nights, few but still too many, when she'd awoken to find his horn at her throat, his sleep-addled mind convinced that she was the false image that he'd almost married. Even after coming to terms with what had happened, finally accepting that he'd been the victim and that there was nothing he could have done differently, he'd still nursed a fierce hatred for, and deep mistrust, of changelings.

Until Thorax.

The months that Thorax had spent in the Crystal Empire had been the last piece of healing Shining Armor had needed. It was through him that Shining Armor was able to learn to open his heart once more, to recognize that an entire species could not be blamed for the actions of one. Shining Armor called Thorax friend. But now? What would become of that friendship now?

"What did Thorax ask you for in the letter?"

Shining Armor pulled away and wiped his eyes. "He didn't say. He said he just wanted me to know. Told me that if I wanted to talk about it, to just write back."

"Then you need to ask him what he wants." Cadance brushed a stray gray strand back into the sea of blue. "Before anything else, before you decide anything at all, you two need to sit down and talk."

"But what if..." He cleared his throat again. "What if he wants more than I can give?"

"You have to cross that bridge when you come to it. Right now he just wants your time. And for you to know that he's a part of you. Beyond that...?" She shrugged. "We just have to trust that things will be alright in the end. This doesn't have to be anything painful, right? You two are still two of the best stallions I've ever met. I'm sure that you two can figure this out." She reached for the light. "But that's for later. Right now you need to sleep. You've had a long day."

"You're not wrong." He told her as darkness filled the room. She filled his arms as they lay back on the pillows. Before too long, her soft, rhythmic breaths filled the air... but not his. Shining Armor lay in the dark for a long, long time that night. And when he did finally manage to sleep, his dreams were filled with that terrible laughter, those horrid green eyes, and the leering face of the former queen of the changelings...

...but in his dream the face split and shifted, morphed into the face of Thorax wearing a cruel and mocking expression he'd never seen before. 

The laughter of the changeling king was just as cutting as his mother's.