The room was largely silent, other than the occasional sound of paper shuffling, and steady but quiet breathing. That suited Doily just fine.
True to his word -or rather his nod- Thunder hadn't been asleep on the floor when she had returned from the last of her late-night duties/errands.
Much to her pleasant surprise -and even a bit of relief- he'd been up on the bed, and once again fast asleep by the time she'd walked back into the room.
Her statement to him previously had been -mostly- in jest, as they both knew that she had no authority with which to actually order him around. If he'd chosen to ignore what'd been said and sleep on the floor like a dog again, there really wasn't much she could've done other than wake him up, or just let him continue laying there.
But since that wasn't the case, that left her free to get set up on the couch where the lighting was currently better for reading, stretch out comfortably as far as she might like to, and get onto the next chapter of her book.
It wasn't until twenty minutes and several pages in, that something sounded inside the room and served to catch her attention.
She glanced up, scanning her surroundings for sight of what she might've heard, but saw nothing out of place. Maybe Discord was about and being a dick? It certainly wouldn't be the first time he'd done something like that to palace staff out of boredom.
Eventually she simply wrote it off and returned to her book. Only to hear the same noise not even a full paragraph later.
Getting immersed in the story wasn't going to be a possibility if she kept getting distracted by random noises popping up. So with a bookmark secured in place, she kept her head up and ears on a swivel, waiting to see if it happened again, and if she could track it down.
It was heard again, not even a full minute later. But this time she had a better idea of where it was coming from and turned her attention to the bed where Thunder laid, before climbing down and making her way over to it.
He was still asleep, still in the same position he'd been in when she'd arrived. But he was periodically twitching in his sleep, with odd noises occasionally accompanying. Maybe he was simply dreaming?
"Verzeihen..." was mumbled out, but what it meant was a mystery to her.
He might've been asleep right now, but he certainly didn't look like he was resting comfortably. And going by the clock on the wall, it was still too early for Princess Luna to be making her rounds. So whatever he was facing in there, he was facing it alone.
"Well now. That won't do."
Going back over to tuck her book under her wing, she climbed onto the bed and carefully laid herself down next to him. She then, very carefully, nestled herself in against his frame, pressing up against him.
Two seconds into the contact, he reacted to her presence by draping a foreleg over her barrel and holding onto her tightly. Not exactly what she was expecting, but not exactly unpleasant either. But as he let out a sigh through his nostrils and grew still, it seemed to be just what he'd needed. In a way it was sort of adorable, seeing him able to relax like he was.
The positioning she was in wasn't exactly ideal for what she'd wanted to get done this evening, but her reading could still continue; she just had to scoot and reposition a little bit to make herself more comfortable, before retrieving her book.
And then, as she got back to where she was previously, an idea presented itself to her.
"What do you say, Thunder? Would you like to hear a story?"
She started back on the previous paragraph, reading aloud but still keeping her voice soft and low so as to not outright disturb his rest. Maybe it might give him something he could work with for having a better dream.
"She looked into his eyes, two icy-blue windows that led down into the depths of his soul, and instantly knew that he was a stallion of exceptional character..."
Twenty minutes into the narration, and Doily had to stop to lick her lips, idly wishing that she had a glass of water to wet her throat with. Reading aloud for so long, even in a whispery tone, really did have an evaporative effect on the inside of the mouth.
It was an easy enough problem to address, if not for the fact that Thunder was still sound asleep, and showing no signs of wanting to disengage his hold on her. She might've been able to slip out without disturbing him, but there was no way of telling for sure. And honestly, he looked so peaceful right now that waking him up seemed like a lousy course of action to take.
Sighing to herself, she marked her book and closed it again, before setting it aside for the time being. She'd just lay down for a bit and try to relax.
But just as she fully laid down on the bed, she felt Thunder's leg move as he began to stir, leading to him slowly opening his eyes.
"Hey," she greeted him softly.
"Doily?" he asked wearily as he looked like he was trying to gather his bearings. "What... what happened?"
"You took a little nap while I was out," she replied, "and got a bit clingy in your sleep."
She could practically see the realization forming in his head at her words, before he slowly withdrew his foreleg from across her barrel.
"I apologize..." he stated as he tucked the limb in against his side, like he was afraid to let it anywhere near her.
The stallion's propensity for apologizing for his actions, his perceived and believed infractions and deficiencies, was hardly a secret amongst the palace staff. But to actually watch him apologizing for being in need of comfort in a moment when he was at his weakest and most vulnerable in the middle of a nightmare, essentially apologizing for being a pony... well that just wouldn't do.
No, that wouldn't do at all.
She resisted the urge to frown as she shook her head, and did the one thing that she could think of in this situation; that was grabbing him and pulling him into another hug.
"There's nothing wrong with ponies hugging a willing participant. Especially not when you're in the middle of a nightmare and Princess Luna can't help. Understand?" she asked, briefly pulling back to look him in the eyes, before hugging him once again. "Ugh! Just how badly did your parents screw you up when they yelled at you?"
It was only after the words had actually left her mouth, did she realize that she'd spoken the question aloud, rather than thinking it to herself. Much to her embarrassment. Now she was the one who needed to apologize.
And then she felt his hooves on her, as he slowly pushed them apart so he could look at her, all the while looking utterly confused.
"... My parents?" he asked her slowly. "I... don't have any parents."
Doily paused, it now being her turn to be confused by his statement. That had come entirely out of left-field.
"You... you don't?" she asked him. "But you said... w-well then who yelled at you for letting another pony sleep in your bed with you?"
"The staff at the orphanage," he stated simply.
She looked at him yet again. That'd been a curve ball she really hadn't seen coming. It was also another reminder of why she'd dropped her psychology course back in school. There was way too much guesswork and uncertainty involved, and made a definitive answer just about impossible to achieve.
"Oh..." she replied slowly, "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I thought that... well, what I thought was wrong. It never occurred to me that you might be an orphan too."
"... Too?" Thunder asked as he looked back at her again. "As in you were also an orphan?"
Doily nodded in response. "Yeah. Dumped and raised over in the Las Pegasus area. Gentle Soul's Sanctuary for Wayward Youths. How about you?"
"Um, Clydesdale Valley. Madam Heart's Home for Abandoned Foals," he replied.
"Huh. Nice name. Very lisp-friendly," she remarked, before propping her head up on a foreleg. "So how old were you when it happened? Er, the yelling I mean."
"I was... about nine, I think? Maybe ten. I don't really remember for sure exactly," he explained.
"Seriously?" she asked incredulously. They had actually told him he was too old to share a bunk when he was only nine years old? "Dude, your orphanage was staffed by jerks!"
It was a topic that she really didn't want to linger on for too long. Orphanage staff could be such a hit or miss when it came to whether or not they actually cared about the well being of their charges. Faust knew her own experiences weren't the best when it came to the ponies who looked after them. But getting down into the nitty-gritty of that and comparing notes really wasn't what she wanted to do tonight.
"I know it's not any of my business, so feel free to tell me to shut up if you want. But a minute ago you said you didn't have any parents. Were you talking about birth parents? Or did you mean you didn't get adopted?"
"Either one, I suppose," he replied in a tone of voice she couldn't quite place as he slowly sat up on the bed. "I lived at the orphanage until I aged out of the system. What about you?"
She shook her head in response. "Adopted when I was eight, before I got my cutie mark. For what it's worth, I'm sorry you weren't. Growing up in an orphanage sucks."
The fact that he didn't really respond to her assessment, somehow made her assessment hurt all the worse.
"What's it like?" he eventually asked. "Being adopted. What's it like?"
Now there was a heavy question. One she hadn't been expecting, but probably should have.
"Way different in my case. You get your own room. Your own bed. Your own bathroom; technically it's just the upstairs bathroom, but if you don't have to share it with anypony it might as well be yours. Much better quality of toilet paper. The food... eh, you at least get more variety to pick from; it's not all the cheapest stuff on the market. Nopony comes in and pilfers your little treasure trove of stuff you've hoarded away for yourself. There's no waking up at two in the morning to the sound of somepony in the next cot over puking on the floor because they're sick and now everypony else is gonna get sick!"
She stopped herself short of going into details about what birthdays and Hearthswarming were like. There was eventually a point when it stopped being informative to compare notes, and just became a matter of flexing on somepony by going on about what you had that they didn't. And from the sounds of it, he didn't have anything while growing up.
"Did you at least get a courtesy cone while you were there?"
"A... what now?" he asked, looking at her like she'd just broken into speaking a language he wasn't familiar with.
"A courtesy cone," she repeated. "Kind of a slang term, it's what we called when prospective parents looking to adopt would take a foal out to a local ice cream place and treat you to something cheap and simple, before taking you back to the orphanage because you just weren't quite what they were looking for. It was a way for the nicer ones to say sorry for getting your hopes up before disappointing you by dumping you off again. Happened a lot in Las Pegasus."
"Oh," Thunder replied in understanding, before shaking his head. "No."
"What!?" Doily asked incredulously as she sat up on the bed. "They didn't? You mean not even once? That's just low. The least anypony could've done for you was treat you to one lousy courtesy cone to apologize for disappointing you after getting your hopes up like that! Those cheap bastards!"
His orphanage was staffed by jerks. Clydesdale Valley was filled with jerks. That was the only way to explain what she was hearing. What sort of degenerates would actually do something like that? Surely that had to be against at least one law that was on the books, right?
The more she thought about it, the madder she ended up feeling as a result. There was just so much wrong with the whole arrangement.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, and seeing it was just before ten PM, she knew what she had to do. She knew, and she was going to do just that. Like a mare with purpose, she climbed down off the bed.
"You know what, Thunder? Come with me."
Thunder, like the obedient guard he was, followed her off the bed.
"You and I are going to have a little fun tonight. Just you and me..."
There were nights when a lack of petitioners in the available night court slot was an annoyance to Luna, and could be interpreted as a sign of their little ponies not valuing her counsel.
And then there were nights like tonight, where the growling in her stomach made her very thankful for having no petitioners seeking her counsel. Breakfast just hadn't been as filling as she'd hoped it would be, and hadn't stuck with her nearly as long as it should have.
And if she was going to weather a night of overseeing the dreams of needy ponies, she was going to need a little something extra from the kitchen to see her through the upcoming long stretch of work so she could properly concentrate.
Right now a sandwich was sounding mighty appealing. A couple of slices of bread, each of them covered in a generous helping of creamy peanut butter, with a drizzling of honey and a sliced banana situated firmly between them would definitely hit the spot.
It would also spare her from all the effort needed in trying to actually cook something up at the moment. She didn't need the frustration, and nopony needed to be saddled with that level of mess at this hour.
"Urgh!"
But before she could set hoof through the swinging double doors of the palace kitchen, she was alerted by a sound. A sound like a pony who was in pain and trying not to yell out in response to being in pain.
She knew it was on the other side of the doors, but that was all she knew. Curious, she pressed her ear to one of the doors to try and hear what was going on.
"I told you to slow down," she heard one voice clearly say.
"You were right, I should have," another voice replied. "But it's just so good!"
Now her curiosity was growing. She recognized those voices, but she didn't understand the context behind them. And she really wasn't getting any answers out here, only wasting time that could be better spent eating.
Slowly pushing the doors open, she poked her head into the room and glanced around to try and find the source of the voices, and figure out just what she might be interrupting if she entered the room.
The sight of two ponies lounging in the kitchen and treating it like the palace break room wasn't all that unusual of a sight; she'd both seen it, and even done it herself, quite a few times over the years. But the fact that Thunder Strike was one of them, leaning back against the industrial fridge while shoveling ice cream into his face? Now that was unusual!
There he was, sitting in the company of another pony as they worked in tandem to demolish what looked like a quart of ice cream, and some other assorted foodstuffs positioned between them. And perhaps even stranger than the sight of him acting like a pony seeking a late-night snack, was the fact that he actually looked... happy while doing it, as he sat there with a spoon cocked at an odd angle in his mouth and was actually murring around it. He honestly looked like he was smiling.
"Told you so," the pony sitting next to him stated while she scooped out another spoonful out of the container for herself, before popping it into her mouth. "Bar none, Canterlot has the best ice cream in Equestria."
Thunder simply nodded in silent agreement as he hurriedly swallowed, before going in for another spoonful to pop into his mouth.
Luna blinked, and then smiled at the adorable sight before her. And now that she was certain she wasn't intruding on anything indecent, she fully entered the room.
But the moment the doors sounded as they swung shut, Thunder's head all but snapped around to catch sight of her. His eyes went wide with surprise, and he inhaled so sharply, it was only thanks to his companion's quick wits and reflexes that he didn't end up accidentally swallowing his spoon in the process.
It was like a switch had been flipped. His whole happy demeanor from seconds ago had practically evaporated before her eyes, as the Lieutenant portion of his identity had taken the forefront and reasserted itself. And all from her simply walking into the room in order to get something to eat...
"At ease, Thunder Strike, at ease," she insisted. "I am only here to get something to eat; not to conduct a surprise inspection to look for acts of wrongdoing. What you and the rest of the staff may do in your off-time is none of my business."
Despite her efforts he didn't look convinced. It took longer than it should have for him to realize that he could put his hoof back down again, and even then he still remained at full attention. How he didn't break himself in half doing stuff like that was beyond her. Although his companion had no such reservations and easily went back to slouching.
"By all means, please go back to what you were doing. I will not be here for long," she insisted. "But if I may ask, what were the two of you doing when I walked in?"
"We... we were..." he tried to answer, but seemed unable to get the words out.
"Eating rocky road ice cream, and raw cookie dough straight from the tube," his companion answered with much less effort and hesitancy in her words. "Thunder never got anything like that while growing up, not even plain vanilla if you can believe that, so I decided to treat him to some delicacies he missed out on. Turns out he kinda missed out on a lot."
Luna wasn't exactly certain how those particular foods counted as delicacies, or even when such a reclassification would've occurred. But those details weren't particularly necessary right now. What intrigued her far more was what she'd seen, and what it meant overall.
"You do not say. That is very kind of you," she replied before turning back to Thunder. "And have you been enjoying the experience, Thunder Strike?"
"Oh he definitely has been," his companion stated, not even giving him the chance to speak for himself. "You should've seen the look on his face when the first spoonful of ice cream hit his tongue, Princess. It was one of pure and utter bliss. He's gotten brain freeze three times since we started, and he just keeps going back for more!"
Taking a page from her sister's book, Luna resisted the urge to frown. She would've preferred to hear the answer from Thunder directly. But the way he physically flinched at the question, acting as if he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing, she wasn't certain that would even be possible.
She would simply take what she could get, and settle for it. Even if the information was second-hoof, it was still good to hear overall.
"Has he now? I remember doing the same thing my first time around encountering such delectable confectioneries. My first night back I wholeheartedly devoured an entire gallon of cookie dough ice cream in one sitting by myself, all the while gladly taking a figurative ice pick through the skull because the taste was unlike anything I had ever experienced."
Thunder seemed entirely uncertain of how to respond to her little tale of past experiences, or even if he should take part in the ongoing exchange. Until finally he turned to look back at his companion.
"Cookie dough ice cream is a thing?"
"Oh, you'd better believe it's a thing. Ponies take their desserts very seriously," she nodded and chuckled.
"Your friend is quite correct on that point, Thunder Strike," Luna agreed. "Now, as much as I would like to continue this conversation, and hear about you opening up to experiencing new things with the help of a good friend, I simply cannot do that right now. I must soon start patrolling the dreams of ponies, and I must get something to eat before I do that. Otherwise I will be too hungry and distracted to be of use to anypony."
Thunder and Doily stood by, watching silently as Luna went about securing various ingredients and assembling herself a sandwich in accordance with a rhyme and reason that only she seemed to truly understand, in a manner that promised to be quite messy if one weren't exercising caution as they went along.
"Have a pleasant evening, you two," she called as she departed, sandwich in tow as she left the kitchen just as easily as she'd entered.
"Huh," Doily eventually mumbled, "well that was... kinda weird."
"Doily?"
Her thoughts on just how weird it was to have a snacking session crashed by one of the princesses themselves, were interrupted by Thunder eventually speaking up, bringing her attention back to him.
"Yeah?"
"Are we friends?"
She looked back at him, not entirely certain what he was asking. But when she saw the genuinely uncertain and confused look on his face, she understood. He honestly didn't know what the answer was for himself, and was looking to her for help.
Rhetorically asking him why he might think otherwise, and have reason to believe that they might not be friends, just felt like it'd be adding insult to injury at this point. And he was already injured enough as it was; she didn't need her failed psych classes to tell her that much.
"Yeah. We are," she replied and nodded, doing her best to present him with a warm smile. "You opted to sleep on the floor when Holly and I came over to spend the night, because you were worried about us being comfortable during our stay. And even after working yourself almost to death, you still put on a dress and makeup, and helped us maids do our everyday duties. If that's not a friend, then I honestly don't know what is."
She was thankful he nodded in response, seemingly understanding what she was saying and being good with it, rather than trying to continue the discussion.
"Now, what say we get back to what we were doing before everything happened? We've still got a lot of ice cream and cookie dough to get through before all is said and done."
Again, Thunder nodded in response as he sat back down. "I can do that."
Doily smiled as the focus returned to the treats. It was a relieved sort of smile, thankful that he'd seen fit to leave well enough alone for the time being. As much as she'd like to help him, to be able to help him, there was only so much she actually could do for the stallion.
So for the time being, as he now turned his attention to the tube of cookie dough that was being shared, she'd do what she actually could do and simply keep him company. If nothing else, at least he'd have that.