//------------------------------//
// Stop 
// Story: Flash Memory 
// by SilverNotes 
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Flash Sentry couldn't sleep.

Memories had been clinging to him all day, and when he'd tried to sleep, they'd closed in, becoming a series of near-dreams that he never seemed to fully drop into before he felt jarred awake. He'd finally pushed himself out of the guest bed and headed for the kitchen; Thunderhead and Deluge never minded if he helped himself to some late-night cereal.

But it wasn't them who found him.

"Hey guardstallion." Genna was leaning in the doorway, and he nearly jumped at the sound of her voice; a creature of her size shouldn't be able to move so silently, but he guessed it was the owl in her. "What's got you up so late?"

He looked back at her. In the shadows cast with the single lightning-orb light in the room--he'd never fully gotten used to glow-crystals in the Empire or everlasting candles in Canterlot for illumination--he couldn't make out her expression, but the words were quiet and oddly calm, especially for her.

Flash eventually gave up trying to read her face and shrugged. "Just being in an unfamiliar bed, is all."

"Unfamiliar? You used to crash here all the time." She snorted, something she'd picked up from being around ponies. "We all heard you playing earlier. Don't pretend guard training knocked all the memories out of your head."

"Hey, beds in the Crystal Empire are different. It's been a long time since I've been in a cloud bed."

"Yeah, it has, hasn't it?" Her striped tail lashed in the shadows. "Been a long time."

They stared at each other. The lightning-ball continued to flicker with tiny, barely-audible zaps.

He was the first to push. "What's with the look, Genna?"

The face doesn't mean anything. She's learned how to open her beak, tilt her head a certain way, to make it look like a smile or smirk, but it's just that, learned. Eyes can change a little, but there's still much fewer muscles there than a pony, few ways to change the shape. The real expression's in her wings. Her tail. Tension in her talons. Her voice.

She's upset.

"You haven't come back before now," she said, and the calm of the words sounded like the deadly serenity of creeping frost. "And when you did, you didn't tell us you were in town." Tail lashed again. "Someone could really get the idea you wanted to leave it all behind. Leave us behind."

"I can't just casually fly from the Crystal Empire every other weekend." He was tired, and the retort was out before he could think to stop it.

Genna took a step forward. Talons raked through cloud with discomfortingly slowness. "You weren't in the Empire for all of it." Wings weren't just open, but arched, a posture that meant challenge. "The Empire wasn't even here for all of it." Another step, more furrows in the cloud. "You were a Solar before you were a Crystal. Canterlot's right there. Cloudsdale flies right past it every few moons."

I'd be backing up by now if she'd advanced on me like this when we were kids.

As it is now, I know five ways to incapacitate her.

I don't want to. She's my friend.

Genna wasn't done. "You left. We had all these plans, for the band, for our lives, and you left to join the guard and left those two knuckleheads falling back on the weather factory and me stuck as a courier. And then you just blow into town like this..."

"You could have gotten another guitarist." As offerings went, he already knew it was a weak one.

She snorted. "You were there, just now. There's a magic in the music when it's all four of us. When you left, you took it with you."

Flash shook his head. "It wasn't going to work out. None of us got marks to be musicians. You don't understand--"

"Don't you bucking dare, Flash Bradley Sentry!" 

The words sounded like they should have woken the whole house, but Flash knew better. Griffons could decide how loud, or quiet, they were to a listener, overwhelm a single target with a roar that others barely heard. 

Genna reared up, and her talons sank deep when they landed in the kitchen floor again. "I get to be hurt. I get to be upset. Even if I'm a big stupid griffon who can't understand your fancy cutie mark destiny, I get to feel betrayed when something takes my plans and my friend away. I get to be mad that you didn't write, didn't visit, and then show up like nothing happened!"

Didn't write?

They sent a letter while I was in training. I still have it. 

I was going to write back...

The training was brutal. I ached so much, could barely drag myself back to the barracks and into a bed to sleep. It was weeks of that, with my mark urging me forward. Everything narrowed to the next training, the next lesson, pushing myself to the breaking point.

I wrote back... didn't I?

Flash drooped. Head fell, ears went limp, wingtips met the floor, weighed down by realization.

...I didn't.

Genna looked at his silent sorrow for a long moment, before turning around. "I'm going back to bed."

His eyes raised, watching her, and the words were barely more than a whisper. "...They aren't all jokes, are they?" She stopped, and he kept going. "When you say those things. About griffons. About yourself. It isn't all banter, is it? It's..."

"Things ponies have really said about me?" Her head turned to look at him over her shoulder. "And on the bad days, things I say to myself?" She let out a low, mirthless chuckle. "You've just put that together now, guardstallion? You're pretty slow on the uptake sometimes, you know that?" A deep sigh, and she slowly turned back toward him. "Thunder and Del keep trying to get me into therapy. I just haven't found a therapist yet I don't wanna throw for distance."

Flash nodded at that. She never did like anypony trying to pry into her thoughts, and that's therapists in a nutshell. Then he sighed as well. "You're right. I... Marks aren't the be-all and end-all. I should've talked to you all more, rather than just taking it as a given that we'd go our separate ways and we'd made peace with it. And I should've kept in touch, instead of burying myself in my training. I..." He let out his own weak laugh. "I had to be ordered to take a vacation."

Genna opened her beak briefly, and he recognized the smile before she gave a shrug. "You're right too. Maybe the music thing was never gonna take off, no matter what we did. Maybe even with you guys getting music marks, we'd bomb. I guess I just figured, if we did, we'd be bombing on our own terms, and we'd go from there. Together." She looked to one side, and he knew she was eyeing the bolt and shield. "Then you were the first to get that bright light and it's like all the eggs got dumped out of the nest without a chance to hatch."

"I'm sorry." It didn't feel like enough.

Genna shook her head. "Don't be sorry. Just be..." She gestured vaguely in the air with her talons. "Around. I can take losing our guitarist, but I also feel like I lost a brother. We were tight back then, all of us."

We were.

"I'll write letters," Flash promised, "I'll make time for it, as long as something's not threatening to destroy the Empire." He stepped closer to her, smiling up at her. "And we should... do this again. Get together and jam, like old times."

Genna smiled back. "I'd like that."

He raised a hoof and offered it to her. "So... we're cool?"

"Yeah..." She raised her foot, curled her talons, and bumped the hoof. "We're cool." She yawned, and gave a few slow, sleepy blinks. "Now I'm gonna go back to bed for real this time." She turned away, the loss of anger leaving her movements sluggish. "Night, Flash."

"Night, Genna."

Flash glanced around the now-empty kitchen, and ran his hoof along the talon marks in the floor, smoothing them out. Then he yawned, stretched out his wings, and headed toward his own bed.

The moment he hit the pillow, he fell into a restful sleep. 

And for the first time since starting his vacation, Flash Sentry knew why he was here.