No Sun-Queen Shall Rend Asunder

by Plough and Stars Pony

A Sharp, Steel, and Flash Fragment

A Sharp, Steel, Flash Fragment

"We're so glad you're back, Flash." Sharp said thumping a leg over the light-orange stallion's withers.

"And...um, you...look like you had a good time in the Empire," Steel put in, who had seen with pleasure how happy and relaxed his friend was. Flash looked and sounded much upbeat than the morose Pegasus Guardspony with exhausted eyes every few days they had known before he went to the Crystal Empire. Part of him wanted to hold, control, and stash away the desire to know exactly what or the why had changed Flash Sentry, their cheerful partner and friend in basic to advanced training to graduation in to an unhappy inward-drawn loner. The other, larger, stronger part of him ached to know.

One of Flash's ears cocks backward to catch and note the hesitation in his friend's speech. "Why do you say that, Steel?"

Steel almost trips to a stop. Mouth shut and throat tight, heart yammering. Caught red-hoofed, tongue-tied. Now he has to answer. Steel traces the toe of a shod hoof on the stone floor, thinking quickly. Sharp Spear turns to regard him.

Steel Wind purses lips to select words carefully.

"Just...you seem more bucked up now...There were times - before you left, when you were so down. The bags under your eyes, listlessness, not wanting to come out." And like that, the mood of camaraderie slips away and thickens.

Flash's pace slows as Steel's speech spiels on. The smile and the looseness of his gait stiffens. "Yes...back then I was very down," Flash replies. Steel mutters in consternation at the predicament. He hadn't really wanted to bring up this tangential questioning of his friend. Flash continued, bracingly: "But I'm much better now. Fresh cool air, mountain scenery, new friends to make, heh." The mood between the three would not recover, though.

"You...never would tell us what was wrong," Sharp puts in too slowly to realise the contribution was not particularly needed, but stepping quickly to dodge a an admonitory hoof-kick from Steel.

Sharp Spear and Steel Wind see Flash crawl to a stop. Their light-orange bosom-buddy, pauses, not speaking or affirming Sharp was right. His head looks on ahead, not seeing them or the stone corridor ranged with torches and occasional window.

"If you do want to know..." he says at last. "If you do really want to know." Flash nods his head down the corridor. "I'll tell you in my room."

The metal-grey stallions breathe a little easier, but not too easily. Steel knows it is something wrested kinda-sorta contrary to whether Flash wanted to tell them, or not.

In the small recognisable room, Flash dumps saddle-bags on the floor, no formalities in here. Flash leans on the side of the bed to prise off golden horse-shoes. Flash lifts body up on to the hard mattress and beige blanket. Sitting on haunches, hoofs in a line on the sheet. Steel Wind and Sharp Spear file in to the small room behind him.

"I suppose I should tell you now," Flash says laconically. Steel Wind and Sharp Spear sit down in front of him.

"It is just very simple." Two metal-grey stallions lean in.

Flash blushes a little from the attention of his audience, and not just that...He opens a wing, inspects the feathers, lifting a hoof to nudge the smallest feathers. "Just a pretty mare I saw one day, and my heart...just flew out to her. Before I knew it...I was head over hooves for her."

Steel Wind and Sharp Spear choke and breathe in deep. Both goggle at Flash.

“You were in love?” Steel cried incredulously, eyes wide.

Flash bowed his head, not out of shame, but out of dread for the next question, and the three terrible words it would haul up in to the glare of Celestia’s sun.

“We were worried about you, Flash,” Sharp Spear put in. “All those months looking miserable and aloof, refusing our help every time we tried to help you.”

He touches Flash on the shoulder. “We thought you were ill, or worse. And now you tell us you were in love?”
Flash, gaze still smelted to the flags, replied: “It’s somepony I shouldn’t, but I cannot help but love her.”

Here it comes, he thought, Solaris and Galaxia help me.

“Who is it, Flash?” the duo asked tentatively, breaking a bond as hard and thick as stone.

Flash lifts his eyes to them, four eyes waiting wide and two maws tensely half-open. Once he spoke the three words, Ironhoof’s realm of iron and stone would rust, crumble and sink beneath spreading flowers of future joys.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle.” The second he said it, he was sure somewhere hour-glasses tilt over and time for the Order patters out, sprinkle by sprinkle.

The weight of the words almost topple Sharp and Steel on to the floor, armour clattering an awful cacophony. No crash and cracked armour, but the delicate silence of Sharp and Steel’s drawn out gawping. Flash waits, wondering which one would crack first; with sympathy or gobsmacked trepidation.

There were no stereotypical gasps, only squeaks.

“Pr-pr-Princess Twilight Sparkle,” Steel says.

He turns his head to stare at Sharp Spear, hoofs pushing him on to haunches so he could raise both to his mouth.

“Oooooh,” Steel breathes. A pause, and he sets his hoofs to the floor. “I - I … I see. Oh, Flash,” he sighed.

"B-buh-but, there's love, and then there's love." Steel said. "C-couldn't you, you know, tell yourself that she just way out of your league...and move on?"

Flash shakes his head, his stiff blue flag of mane flopping leisurely side to side. "Not with her." He turned his face away, drawing thoughts together. The stallion turns to face his two friends again, trying to get them to make them understand.

"I mean, it was like, just one moment, just one moment,
that day. It was her Coronation. Do you guys remember the Coronation?"

Steel Wind and Sharp Spear both nod.

"Well, I was in the guard detail outside, on the public Mall. She flew out of her little carriage, trotted with her friends the Elements in that line-up...then flew off. All that time, she was happy; grinning and happy, so carefree...like nothing in the world could trouble her. And she was so beautiful!"

"Waaaaiit," Steel breaks in, stopping. "Flash," looking up to see if they were alone, looking back at him, pursing dry lips, eyes entreating, wings wide and feathers flexed. "Flash...does she" he gulped, a dry sound, "...does she know?"

Flash doesn't say anything. Sapphire eyes meet the wide eyes of his friend. He had been true with them, revealed what had plagued him those terrible months of tears and shame. It had been plain he had worried them sick. Didn't they deserve the whole truth? But if he did tell them, wouldn't that worry them more?

"Promise you won't worry?" said Flash, knowing saying that would make them worry. "She knows." Flash started to add more, but both Steel Wind and Sharp Spear groan in despair, clapping legs over their eyes and muzzles. Flash closes his mouth, and sighs. His two friends had assumed the very worst. That the Princess of Magic had learned of her Guard's crush on her, that she had repulsed him, and told him he would be her Guard for the remainder of the study-holiday, and when they got back to Canterlot that he, Flash, would forget, not should forget, his feelings were fantasy, and she could never return his crush.

Steel Wind vents a huge sigh. "...Everything we did, it was great... just brilliant." He sighs again. "Alright, Flash, tell us...just tell us - when are you leaving the Guard? We sure will miss you." Flash knows both Steel and Sharp are now thinking of the forebidding future of disgrace and loneliness now "open" for their friend.

Flash's mouth twitches upward at his friends working themselves up. He pushes himself off the bed and claps hoofs on Sharp's and Steel's shoulders.

"Hey, hey, hey...Steel, Sharp, cheer up. Listen, I'm not leaving the Guard."

Sharp sniggers hollowly, "Oh, good one, Flash."

---- ---- ---- ----

It was deep in to the night. The endlessly beautiful and absorbing night sky sprayed with stars and where gossamer and evanescent clouds roll as whales and leviathans roll and breach in the deep blue. It was only marred by the white pocked moon showing half of her powdered face. Half white and grey mares and sinii and oceanus, half coy shadow gaze down impassively as it has age-in, age-old.

On the boulevards and the snickets of the great Avalon-lofted capital, the bars - both club and dive- - were ushering their patrons and party-goers out in to the cool night and shutting out the lights almost in respect for the serenity of the night. Ponies trot or fly home.

The Palace lowers over the metropolis, as understanding and amused at the ponies' antics as an old aunt. It was ever-present, unmoving, and as unchanging as the mountain it was built from. Like the night, it too is silent. The Night Guard even treads lighter on the stone flags, the beat of thestral wings soft as the pulse of a heart and the sputter of the torch-flames. The Solar Guard in their cells sleep peacefully; of hopes, friends, family, loves, fantasies... Some sleep less soundly. Some are even awake... the black walls of the cell, the warm weight of bodies stowed and tucked deep in bed, maybe watching a crooked shape of silvery light glide across the wall and ceiling.

Sharp Spear was such pony unable to sleep. His other half, slumbers above him, bunk bed bowed, snuffling, "Mmm, you'rr a really cute mare, Miss Rose Linden...mmm, oh, Rosalind!, heh, suhs'rree. Well, y'still very cute, even with your mane up like that....nn...whh...th'ssay...strait-laced mares cuttin' loose. Oh, whoo's'is. Why'ssee frown...buck! issee your coltfriend? Oh, yuhr brudder, Robert..."

"Steel,...you awake?"

The muffling breaks up with a snort. Several seconds pass. "Sharp? Did you call me?"

"Yeah".

"Sharp Spear, it is - too - late for pranks now. Go back to sleep."

"But I can't."

"That thing's bugging you,"

"We'll never see her in the same light again, will we?"

"There are times, Sharp, when you are too right."

"The Princesses...they are on a pedestal for us to admire. Like, they're untouchable, above us, they love us, we love them, but it's not romantic love. Know what I'm saying.?"

"Now, Flash tells us he's in love with Princess Twilight Sparkle of all mares. I never expected that. Sure, she's a...," Sharp trails off, silence in the cell. A sigh. "Steel...surely, you must have seen she's, like, a really eye-catching mare."

"Sharrp," Steel hisses in warning, sitting up now, mane brushing the vault ceiling. "We're not supposed to think of the Princesses that way."

Sharp snorted. "That didn't stop Flash. And you have thought she's totally gorgeous."

"Now..how do we go on from this?"

"Accept it. We must. We can't stop being friends with Flash. He won't stop feeling that for her for our sakes'."

"What if he is found out? What happens then, what happens to us? Will we be fired from the Guard too?"

"We knew about them. That could lead to some sort of action."

The stallions shift in to an easy sleep, but once they wake up, they remember the anxious conversation of the night before.

Author's Note:

You're read that right, that's a reference to "Bioshock Infinite" to the irrepressible Rosalind/Robert Lutece.

Comments

[Bad_Seed_72]

Always nice to hear from Steel and Spear too!

[Ultimate Warrior of Zera]

Nice.