Thunder Strike's initial assessment of the situation he found himself in remained unchanged.
The diarchy had come to his dreams to talk to him. They'd disappeared for about one second, before returning to talk some more, and then disappearing again.
They'd reappeared once again, just like they had the first time, and then things went from simply weird to much weirder.
Before he'd even had the chance to speak up and ask if there was a problem, or otherwise see if his services were needed in the waking world, Princess Luna had wasted no time trotting over to him and throwing her forelegs around him as she sat down on her haunches to pull him into a tight hug, and quickly brought her wings into the equation as well.
It wasn't exactly objectionable to be getting hugged, but it was certainly confusing as to what exactly had brought it on. All he could do in response was look over to Princess Celestia in hope of an explanation, as he waited to be released again.
Finally she did get involved, by tapping her sister on the withers.
"Luna, that's enough. You're going to scare him if you don't stop," she urged.
Luna sighed in response and eventually complied, slowly pulling herself back to let him go.
"I apologize," she stated, but to whom it was directed remained uncertain. "Thunder Strike, I am so sorry for what you had to experience while growing up. Nopony deserves that sort of existence. I was... not prepared to actually encounter that tonight when we came to help you."
"I apologize, Your-"
His statement never got out, as he once again found his mouth being pinned shut by Luna's hoof as she quickly shook her head.
"Thunder Strike you are not the one who needs to be apologizing for what you went through growing up! You have been apologizing for far too much that is simply not in any way your fault. And while it is certainly polite, it is entirely unnecessary. A rock does not apologize for being hard, a reaper pepper does not apologize for being hot, and an orphan does not apologize for not being adopted. Is that understood?"
Just as previously, he nodded in response, unable to speak around her hoof until she finally removed it from the equation.
"Good then," she stated and sighed. "I believe we, once again, got off on the wrong hoof. It is obvious that more work must be done than we thought. Will you accompany us to a more comfortable surrounding so we can just... relax? Together? The palace courtyard is nice, but hardly the most comfortable location to be having this sort of conversation."
The subject of the question was quite similar to the one that'd been asked previously. The question that'd started this whole recent mess. The question that he couldn't answer honestly because it would upset them all over again if he told them the truth about what he thought.
A Guard must always be loyal, to command and comrade alike. Without loyalty there can be no trust, and without loyalty there is nothing. It was a basic tenet of what it meant to be a Royal Guard. And part of being loyal meant being honest when questioned, regardless of the consequences that might arise.
But he had been honest when he'd answered the question the first time, and it'd only served to upset them. Upset them and... bring them distress. Bring Princess Luna pain. He'd ended up hurting her in his efforts to exercise loyalty to them.
A Guard... must not hurt others...
"I can do that, Your Highness," he agreed and nodded.
The smile he received in response... he couldn't remember seeing a smile like that before. It almost looked like she was smiling out of relief, from hearing him say what they wanted him to say.
A moment had passed and the surroundings had changed. Gone was the courtyard he'd been standing watch in, as it was replaced by a... he paused, not entirely sure what he would describe this room as looking like. It didn't look like any room he'd ever been in before, and his duties had taken him into just about every room in the entire palace.
This was grand, and comfortable looking, with an aesthetic appeal unlike anything he'd witnessed before. The carpeting, the wooden floors, the walls, the windows, even the furniture all looked like it was intended to blend together into one another in an overall fashion. This was all well beyond his pay grade and he knew it. Maybe it was a country club?
"Please have a seat, Thunder Strike, there's no need to remain standing at attention the entire time," Luna spoke up as she made her way over to one of the overstuffed chairs and sat herself down.
He glanced about the room, taking in the decor but more specifically the available furniture that was already being made use of. All of it looked swollen, overstuffed, like it could swallow a grown pony right up if they made use of either the recliners or the sofa.
Eventually he did as was requested and finally sat down, easing himself down on his haunches as he made use of the carpeted floor.
His flanks had just barely touched down on the carpeting, before he caught sight of Luna shaking her head and sighing, just before she levitated him up off the floor and gently sat him down on the sofa.
"On the furniture, Thunder Strike; you are a pony, not a pet," she added.
His first instinct had been to apologize for his actions. But he managed to bite it back, reasoning that would only serve to further aggravate the sisters. A different response was necessary.
"This furniture looks very expensive. If I actually sat on it, my armor might damage it, Your Highness," he explained.
"Perhaps so," Celestia acknowledged softly, bringing his attention back over to her as she took a chair for herself. "But you're not actually on duty, so you don't need to be Lieutenant Strike right now. Why don't you take that armor off, be yourself, and simply rest while we talk some more," she suggested.
Thunder, in turn, looked down at himself as if he were trying to decipher what she was saying.
"I... don't actually know how to do that here, Your Highness, it's never come up before," he admitted.
Hearing this, Luna let out a sigh of frustration and tapped her hoof against the floor again. In a flash Thunder's armor was now completely absent, leaving him looking much like he had upon his return to the palace.
And now outside of his armor, he looked a lot more uncomfortable as he seemed to fidget on his seat in its absence.
"I-I don't know if I can relax like this, Your Highness," he admitted as he looked himself over. "Could I please have my armor back? I feel a lot more naked than I thought I would without it."
"That is a rather fascinating observation," Luna noted, "I cannot do that for you at this time, Thunder Strike. But I can do the next best thing."
Just as had happened with him, Luna and Celestia's regalia vanished from view.
"We do not need the trappings of our respective offices separating us at this time, we are simply ponies meeting as friends for the purpose of helping one another. We shall all be naked together!" she declared.
"Really, Luna, did you have to phrase it that way?" Celestia asked.
"Yes I did, I am trying to go for a laugh to help ease the tension," Luna shot right back.
"Whatever," Celestia sighed and shook her head, before turning her attention back to him. "Thunder Strike, I'd like to ask you a question if you don't mind. What sort of hobbies do you have?"
"I... don't understand the question, Your Highness," he replied slowly.
"Hobbies. Interests. Activities to pass the time when you're not working," Celestia clarified. "Don't take this the wrong way, but even you couldn't log sixteen-hour days for over seven years without a break. It's just not physically possible, no matter how much dedication is had, the physical strain would've killed you years ago. And your covering for other guards notwithstanding, there still must be some stretch of time when you're not working that you have to yourself."
Thunder slowly nodded in response, all the while with a look on his face that suggested he'd been caught in the act of doing something scandalous.
"This is the part of the conversation where you're supposed to speak up and say something in turn," Celestia eventually stated when he showed no inclination to speaking up on his own.
"I apologize, Your Highness," he replied. "Most of my time not spent working goes to either reading or exercising."
"That is good to hear," Luna stated and smiled. "With how dedicated your mind is to your duties, I was worried. But hearing that you have at least something to do when not working is a relief! What do you like reading the most? The old classics? Detective novels? Crime dramas? Do-it-yourself tutorials? Comic books by chance?"
"Training manuals," he replied as simply as he did flatly. "Whenever possible I reread training manuals from the Academy to ensure my knowledge about rules and regulations is both correct and accurate, as well as up to date in the event of a revision being released."
Luna suddenly found herself slack-jawed as she listened, sitting there in stunned silence at what she'd just heard. Surely he couldn't be serious, could he? That was... that was homework. Nopony did homework to relax! Homework was the antithesis of relaxation!
"I'm almost afraid to ask what your exercising consists of, if you count training manuals as reading material for relaxation," Celestia admitted.
"Should I not say, Your Highness?" he asked.
Celestia shook her head in response. "I think we might be a bit past that point by now. Please proceed."
"I've been trying my best to keep my skills adequately sharp as of late, Your Highness. Standing at attention without slouching, marching in accordance with how we were taught, refraining from distracting physical stimulation like random itches that pop up at inopportune times and compromise our focus. Basic calisthenics to remain physically in shape, fine-tuning my magic for greater precision in use, even strength training in the hopes of being able to do what Lieutenant Brick Wall can do. I've even been attempting to read books from across the room in an effort to train my eyes and mind to better pick up on minute details with a mere glance."
Now it was Celestia's turn to be shocked to hear. This was not the type of answer she'd expected to hear, and it was quite concerning.
"Thunder Strike... why... why would... why would you devote what little time you have away from work, to doing more work? I'm afraid I don't understand."
"I quite concur. That is excessive and unhealthy. This is what you do all the time? It is no wonder you almost died!" Luna stated. "Why?"
"... Because neither the Royal Guard, nor you, deserve anything less than the absolute best that I can offer, Your Highness," he replied slowly, all the while looking uncertain if he should be looking at them or away from them. "Recent developments have shown that I'm failing to deliver on what should be the absolute minimum standard of performance. Meaning that I have to do better."
Celestia drew in a breath, held it, counted to ten, and slowly released it in an effort to calm herself down.
"There's nothing wrong with wanting to do better, Thunder Strike. Recognizing one's own weaknesses, and working to improve themselves, is an admirable and respectable trait to possess. But at the same time, there's such a thing as trying too hard. I don't say this out of disrespect or dismissal, but from hard-earned experience that I learned for myself along the way. There are simply times and situations when no amount of effort will ever be enough to accomplish a given goal. There are things that I can't accomplish. There are things that even Discord can't accomplish, hard as that may be to believe. Do you think that I'm not trying hard enough if there are things even I can't accomplish?"
"No, Your Highness," he replied slowly as he shook his head.
"Then why aren't you extending yourself that same courtesy?" she asked pointedly.
"... Because my inadequacies are partly responsible for the second changeling invasion being allowed to proceed as far as it actually got, Your Highness," he stated, slowly and solemnly as he tried to continue addressing them. "A Guard must always be aware of their surroundings and what's beyond them. But I wasn't that day. I knew that something wasn't right when Sergeant Zacharia was patrolling the wrong hallway. I managed to incapacitate and apprehend the changeling posing as him, but I never stopped to think that Lieutenant Lance might've been compromised as well. And by the time I knew otherwise, it was too late and I was already being cocooned.
"I spent hours hanging upside down helplessly like everypony else who'd been caught, trying anything and everything to get loose. Horn-based spells, spoken incantations, pure brute physical strength, even working my entire body back and forth to try and snap the cocoon loose from the ceiling we were hung from, but nothing worked. And by the time we were finally rescued, by the time the plot was finally uncovered, I was too weak from struggling to be of any use..."
By now he was no longer looking at them as he spoke, but rather towards the floor.
"Rescued. The noble Royal Guard, needing to be rescued from a changeling incursion, like a bunch of untrained civilians. All because I wasn't doing my job adequately," he grumbled darkly. "I can't even swear an oath on my honor as a Royal Guard to not let it happen again. Because trust in our fellow Guards is integral to our service. Without that trust, there can be nothing. That trust was exploited, but to respond accordingly would serve to effectively destroy it. All that I can do, is try to better myself, until the point I'm not able to be a liability to anypony."
The two sisters shared a silent, uneasy glance in light of Thunder's words, neither one of them entirely certain about how to respond just yet. On the one hoof, it sounded like they at least had something more to go on than they had previously. In this case that something was guilt. Lots and lots of guilt from the sound of it. More guilt than was healthy for a pony so young to be carrying around like that. But on the other hoof, it just raised more questions than answers about what the best course of action was.
Fortunately for them, it was a subject they were both well-versed in, and Luna nodded to Celestia, deferring to her.
"There's nothing wrong with experiencing a sense of guilt, Thunder Strike," Celestia spoke up in an assuring tone. "Guilt is what stops us from becoming monsters. Uncaring, unfeeling monsters who don't think twice about inflicting pain and suffering on others, simply because we can.
"But guilt isn't something we can just force to go away. And when efforts at trying to assuage that guilt become an all-consuming, self-destructive obsession, then it becomes a problem. Did you know that a pony will literally die before they'll let themselves believe that it's alright to forgive themselves for what they've done? Or worse, what they believe they've done?"
Thunder Strike remained silent as he listened and slowly looked up to her as she spoke, paying attention to her words.
"I wish that I had more comforting words to offer, but I only have the truth. And I'm afraid that simple truth is that sense of guilt we carry never truly goes away. It can be lessened, it can be ignored over time, but it'll always be there, no matter what we might do. Always present, always ready to make itself known at the most inconvenient time when we least expect it and are least prepared to weather it.
"It's been over one thousand years since I was forced to banish my sister to the moon, and I still feel guilty about it to this day, even though I had absolutely no say over what the Elements of Harmony would do to her. I certainly wasn't expecting banishment to be at the top of the list," she explained.
"And that does not even approach my own experiences at the time," Luna chimed in. "Do you have any idea what it is like to find your body taken over by a malicious entity, intent on using your frame for its own purposes? To see and hear everything that your body is doing, while being helpless to do anything to stop it even when you are trying to resist with every fiber of your being? Now that is real guilt. I pray that you never come to know such horrors for yourself."
Not even Thunder could prove stoic enough to not react to the disturbing imagery brought on by Luna's statement. Even he could feel the horrified reaction across his face. And he knew that his own struggles in the showers, against a body that refused to heed his demands to stand back up, couldn't hold a candle to what she'd experienced. It would be insulting to her, to even try and compare their experiences.
"Now then, I need you do to me a small favor," Luna stated as she climbed down from her perch to stand back up. "There is a pony in need of help, and you are the only one who is able to help him out of his plight."
Before he could get a word out edgewise to ask who was in need of assistance, he was met with a full-length mirror being conjured in front of him, leaving him staring at his own reflection as it stared back at him.
"This is the pony. His name is Thunder Strike. He is a young pony with a big heart, who wants nothing more than to do his very best. But he is unforgivably hard on himself and refuses to believe that the best he has to offer truly is his best, or that his best is good enough to meet his unwavering standards of review. He is carrying an ever-increasing amount of guilt on his withers, and it is driving him towards an early grave because no amount of outside assurance is enough to help him understand and accept the simple fact that there really is nothing more that can be done. He needs to understand that he is not to blame, and that he can forgive himself for being a simple mortal pony, with limits just like anypony else.
"He needs to hear you tell him that he is forgiven for not being perfection incarnate. And he needs to hear you tell him, because only you can make him understand that he does not have to die in pursuit of that goal, just to be considered good enough," Luna explained.
Thunder sat silently on the sofa, his view of the sisters blocked by the mirror while he stared at his reflection, as it stared back at him.
Finally, after a long stretch of still silence, he slowly shifted his position to look past the mirror.
"I can't do that, Your Highness," he stated slowly. "I apologize, but I can't. I... I just can't do that."
Luna and Celestia slowly looked at each other, not really certain what to think by this turn of events. Out of all the developments they could've prepared themselves for encountering, this wasn't one of them.
"And why not?"
"... Because it'd be a lie if I said that, and a Royal Guard doesn't lie," he replied slowly. "Perhaps he does need to hear it. But it's just not something that can be done."
Celestia fought not to groan in response. "Thunder Strike, the changeling invasion caught all of us off guard. We-
"Not the changeling invasion, Your Highness."
Celestia's spiel about how the changelings had taken every last one of them by surprise was halted before it could even properly get started. And the memory of what she'd been getting ready to say was fading as curiosity took over, demanding that she be silent and listen up.
"I... I shouldn't have said that," he mumbled and shook his head, looking like he was current in the middle of contemplating just how to go about kicking himself for opening his mouth.
"Perhaps not," Luna acknowledged and shrugged. "But I have been noticing a pattern emerging, where what you "should not have said" is in some way connected to facts that deserve to be shared. Facts that supposedly contradict with the tenets of being a royal guard, but are related to the truth. I suspect that you want to be open and honest, but are afraid to actually do such."
Thunder remained silent as the mirror was moved out of his line of vision, leaving nothing that would obstruct his view or otherwise provide him with something to hide behind.
"If you do not wish to share, then that is fine. You are under no obligation to tell us anything you do not want to tell us," she stated softly. "But not speaking up when something is in need of being said, has a way of causing its own brand of pain and suffering, both for ourselves and others. Sometimes that silence ends up hurting those that we tried to spare, because we did not think that we could speak up."
Luna paused, needing to take a steadying breath before she could continue.
"I used to hate my sister. I used to despise her very being, for how popular she was. She was loved, while I was shunned by our subjects who feared the dark and its shadows in the wake of Discord's reign. But I could not bring myself to tell her this because I loved her as much as I hated her. For a long time she was all that I had, and I could not risk making her hate me in turn. And that inability to tell her what I thought, what I felt, ate me up inside and left me vulnerable to evil."
Another pause, another shuddering breath.
"If I had simply had the courage to speak up, I could have spared so many, so much pain. But at the time I simply could not do it, because I was too weak. I was too weak to open up to her and say what I needed to say, and too scared to do anything but hide my pain away and pretend it was not there. And in the end all I did was hurt everypony, because the truth does not like being hidden away. One way or another, it will make itself known."
There was a lot more that she wanted to say to him, but she just couldn't get them out. If she stayed on the topic much longer she was going to need to step out in order to compose herself yet again.
And for better or worse, she just couldn't talk him into telling them what they needed to know. He was going to have to make that decision for himself. All they could do was offer words of encouragement and support, and wait for him to follow through with whatever decision he was going to make.
"A Guard... must always be loyal, to command and comrade alike..."
It wasn't a bold declaration, but a quiet mumble as he focused more on the floor than anything else.
"A Guard doesn't lie..."
Celestia glanced over at Luna as they stood silently, observing him and his actions, waiting to see where this would go if they didn't interrupt the natural progression.
"A Guard... must always do the right thing..."
Slowly, he sat up straight and stopped hunching over, before returning his attention to them.
"I... a long time ago, before going to the Academy, I did something that I shouldn't have. Something horrible. Something that can't be forgiven," he stated slowly, all the while looking like he wanted to look anywhere else except to them right now. "I... I hurt another pony, Your Highness. I hurt them on purpose, because I wanted to. I hurt them... him, I hurt him because I hated him. I hated him and what he said. I wanted him to stop, but he wouldn't. So one day I made him stop. I forced him to stop..."