Half Hour Horses: Legacy Prompts

by HoofAndQuill

LP41: The Walls Fall [Drama?]

The Prompt: Secret agent mare

Warning, episode 100 spoilers.

"... and you're not the only one with a secret, y'know."

In less than a second, Lyra knew that Bon Bon knew. Or Sweetie Drops. Whatever name she wanted to be now. Her face was a mixture of worry, hurt, and a certain kind of knowing tension underneath it. But Lyra had spent the past little while preparing, and went ahead with her (true!) story about Bon Bon's (delicious!) imported oats. They really had been quite good, as oats went, and certainly a better story than the real truth.

As soon as it was obvious that Lyra wasn't going to open that particular can of worms, Bon Bon smiled, and their friendship was right back to normal.

Yes, back to normal, with that slight divide between them that never quite seemed to disappear no matter how close they became.

Lyra and Bon Bon shared a warm hug, and sat together for the wedding, ate together at the reception, and so on. Everything was comfortably back to normal.

That night as Lyra lay in bed and stared blankly at the darkened ceiling, she couldn't help but wonder exactly how much Bon Bon knew. It was a surprise to Lyra, that Bon had been part of the shuttered anti-monster organization. Lyra had known of it, in a sort of off-hand kind of way. But it had been shuttered a bit after her dispatch to Ponyville, so the specifics weren't in the intelligence she had been given.

Lyra lifted her hoof into the darkness of the room, and let the disguise fade. Yep, still a changeling. Surprise.

It had been well over a decade now since Queen Mother Chrysalis had deployed her here. One of the small number of long-term spies, none knowing any of the others, who were placed in various towns in various nations over the world. She had been trained to work with little to no supervision, which was good when the Queen was defeated in battle and promptly disappeared, along with most of the command structure. Since the fiasco in Canterlot, she hadn't heard from any of her compatriots at all, and she was starting to wonder just how many changelings were still alive.

Didn't really matter, now that she thought about it. Changelings in her position had always had a high tendency to go native, so to speak, and... well, she hadn't been writing reports for some time now anyway.

But Bon Bon was not who she seemed, and if she was part of some secret organization, she must have some knowledge of the 'monsters' of the world. Her reaction earlier proved, or at least hinted, that she knew about this one. So... why were they friends? Had Bon Bon figured it out immediately? The early days of their friendship had been a bit strange, Bon Bon seemed to flip from personality to personality sometimes, and her voice seemed to change with it. Over time she'd worked herself out, of course, and now she was simply Bon Bon. Or... she had been. For a time Lyra had thought that Bon might have been one of the other spies, but she had never responded correctly to any of the code phrases.

Lyra swapped her hoof back and forth between black carapace and mint-green fur.

So here they were again. Bon Bon had let down the walls, under duress, but still. She had let Lyra in, just a little more, but Lyra hadn't done the same. Maybe she couldn't do the same. Oh, she knew what Bon Bon thought of her. That friendly love was there, only slightly tainted by the bit of distance they always kept; the lies between them. But it was still there, a nice icing on the pony food that Lyra lived on.

"It's sort of thrilling to reveal your deepest, darkest secrets!" That's what she had told Bon before the wedding. She imagined it was true. It probably was. But was this secret too deep or too dark? She hadn't done anything terribly treasonous. No eating ponies, not that changelings did that anyway, despite paranoid pony theories to the contrary. She hadn't hurt anypony, nor had she sold out any meaningful secrets to the Queen. Only because she hadn't found anything notable in Ponyville until after the mess in Canterlot had come and gone.

But now that secret sat heavier inside her than it had before. She knew about Bon Bon's past, she knew more than she had, and yet she still had to hide this from her best friend. She had kept this from her for years, actually for the entire time they had known each other. Earlier today, Bon Bon had lost what might have been her last real secret, the last barrier between them.

Lyra rolled to the side, and hopped down to the floor. She started in a trot toward Bon Bon's room, just down the hall. Her trot became a canter, and then a gallop. She had to do this before she lost her nerve. Galloping around in a wooden house certainly made noise, and before she even knocked, Lyra could hear Bon Bon grumbling about being awakened in the middle of the night. Standing in front of the door, Lyra felt her will wavering. As the door handle clicked, she felt it shatter. She couldn't... she couldn't risk it.

"Lyra? What are you doing, it's the middle of the..." Bon Bon trailed off mid-sentence.

She couldn't tell her. "Oh, it's... nothing, sorry, I--"

Lyra looked at the hoof she was using to wave off her friend's concerns. Furry, mint-green leg faded to black, carapaced hoof. She froze for a second, and her eyes looked into Bon Bon's. Neither mare said anything for a few long, tense seconds. Finally, Lyra's voice came back to her.

"Bon Bon, I... I have a secret to tell you, too. Can we talk?"

Bon Bon smiled, and opened her door for her best friend.