Sleepless in Canterlot

Call me a cynical pony but I have never seen the royal guard as being much of an armed force. Sure we have the numbers and equipment to be Equestira’s one and only standing army, but without anything to attack beside training dummies the job becomes acting like a second police force. Now this is a problem for most of the guard because most of our commanders take pride in maintaining the ‘order through the border’ by standing around. And if funding is low falling back on our secondary line of work as temporary statues for hire to keep the peace.

I usually don’t have a problem with being on the better side of a free market world when the big monopoly business is on my side, we are a big imposing force and to be honest those stone masons never stood a chance. But most ponies think of us as the third line of defence behind the elements of Harmony and niceness in that order. Call me ambitious but I like to be known for more than just the only line of defence that imposes taxation in order to work.

Don’t get me wrong though I know I do something to keep order every time I clock in, I just happen to be more devoted to my job than the regular grunt. Sure the bed is nice and hard, and there is a decent wage to be made if you can stand biting your tongue hard enough to not tell every passer-by at a royal event that you not only know all of the fifteen hundred bits it takes to make a suit of armour. But you personally enjoyed melting every ‘hard earned’ bit from their pouches into something you wear on patrol duty around the west sewerage grate.

What makes me irritable is the danger. Of all the cities in Equestria, Canterlot is the unofficial home of the guard. On a good day we can pack the streets with soldiers and check every house if we thought the princesses were in danger. However that is not how the guard works, the policy we know and love is that nopony crosses anypony while there is a guard around.

When there isn’t though things can get messy, injustices to equine kind are found in alleys or their own houses usually in a bad way. We know it happens and if the brass gets worried enough we get them a pair of eyes to watch over whoever we think is at risk, always sticking to the guard philosophy of protecting ponies by being capable defenders.

I don’t pretend to be much of a paragon protector, knowing what they say about throwing stones when you live in cloud houses. And I obeyed that phrase like any good colt, the second I lived in a solid house, on a good solid - quite possibly made of stone bunk - I was going to go after the first bunch of misfits who dared threaten anypony in my good city again.

About two seconds into my vow of justice the clerk from the front desk runs into the wrong room and tells us to suit up and go across the street to the apartment block. I didn’t have much time to rethink my recent promise when I was buckling into gear so I stuck by it. No less than a minute later I was standing in the hallway of some decent looking place staring at a senile stallion crying on the floor.

He’d been banging on the door begging to be let in for a good hour or so before his age finally caught up with him. The owner had called in the precinct claiming to have been harassed by the guy for a while and was happy enough to wait for the old guy to leave. An hour later of tears somepony finally noticed and called us.

I didn’t know Heavy Step back then so I did what any guard would do in my position. Helped him into his cell for the night, gave him a place to sleep tomorrow and listened to his side of the story. I have to thank him for introducing me to his son later if he is still alive, hopefully rotting in his house alone and bitter.

So being the good vengeful sort I went to the ancestry files and saw exactly what I thought. Blank files left right and centre of the pony in question. I knew old man did in fact have a son who was removed from his family, without factual backing though I immediately assumed it was just another would be upper crust degenerate pushing around a lesser stallion and getting a kick out of it.

I couldn’t prove his guilt, couldn’t believe how much the poor stallion was drinking up my pay check trying to remember his son’s face and didn’t have the authority to conduct a search. I did however have the thirty bits left over from the receptionist who wandered into the wrong division of guards. A quick hushed conversation later I was on the recommendation list for the Celestial Service Protection list.

Long story short the CSP foundation were a special division designated to act like bodyguards to whoever the crown deemed important enough. When I first got a look at Bright’s I thought he was a completely different guy. He was a twitchy guy who would wore magically shielded clothing and always had a private carriage ferry him to and from his place to wherever he went.

On top of that if you looked carefully enough he would only talk when spoken to first and never for long unless somepony asked him a personal question, which he usually deflected. I hated who he was, but decided if I wanted to get close to him I better talk to him, act more like a friend than a guard.

A week later he was walking to work with me alongside him, a week after that we started talking about, inevitably if you happen to be male, mares and such over dinner. I’m not sure if that counted as a date in his book, especially after he told me of his preferences in a stallion, a little while after that I got invited inside his house. To be honest since I met him I knew he was slightly eccentric and I watched enough movies to paint a good picture of what a paranoid pony’s house would have looked like if I ever saw one and he didn’t fit the description.

When we walked past the station and he greeted all the guards by name, I was a little suspicious seeing as not even I could tell us apart in the armour. When he undid all eight deadbolts to his arrow proof door I thought he was a little over cautious. When I entered his apartment I immediately thought of my old barracks.

His home if you could call it that was two rooms, a work and living room with a desk where a couple of hundred papers and a disassembled cross sat. A kitchen with enough non-perishable foods to challenge the princess’ bunker and enough long knives to rival the royal kitchen and armoury combined.

Never in my life have I been more thankful for the stoic faced training they teach in basic. Because it was not until he opened his pantry after three minutes of polite small talk until I finally got the ‘inspiration’ to have a long talk about his fears. It was none of my business as a bodyguard, not even as a friend. But I could not justify my actions as acting out of guilt or pity.

I asked him innocently if he had trouble sleeping at night. He said he had the best money could buy around him. And I, with my boundless charm said there was no better way to ensure his safety unless I stayed the night. He was slightly sceptical at first, but being an expert in security and blunter than a hammer I informed him that spooning was second to nothing in terms of feeling safe at night. I barely noticed the wires digging into my back with his head on my chest, or the hoof cannon under the pillow.

Over the next month there were walks together for no other reason for being in each other’s company, a nice promotion if you ask me since in the halls in the palace are much better than the building he worked in before and my job was to protect him everywhere he went.

His home became. Well homey, deadly weapons disappeared, walls where pained and the gryphon who refunded the handgun of questionable legal status helped move the new furniture in. A nice fellow once you get used to the smell of sulphur.
My client was changing as well, I introduced him to an old flame of mine and she gave him a hobby at the local clinic, somewhere that would get him recognised and feel slightly better about him. Neither of us has the time to do anything substantial outside our jobs, but it’s a nice gesture and helps feed the soul, and his ego at some points during water cooler conversations with co-workers or dinners with me.

It was on the eve of our fifth official date when I asked him about his life before coming here. The happy mood he was in completely shattered. The moment his adorable smile disappeared I knew I overstepped a boundary and apologised, he trusted me though and invited me inside for what had to have been the thousandth time.

Since I had first arrived the place had changed a lot, we followed the usual routine of me removing his coat and sitting down on the couch. Neither of us drinks much, at home at least, so I knew I was in for a talk when he grabbed a whole bottle and no glasses.

He sat down next me started talking when he had drowned two huge gulps of liquor, and told me of a stallion called Heavy Step. I think he got through a third maybe a quarter of his life story before the bottle ran out.

I gave him one of the biggest hugs I could muster and said sorry more times than I can remember. And despite what I presumptions ponies may make about his physique he’s a strong stallion, he returned the hugs and his usually stiff upper lip trembled a bit, but he didn’t cry. He moved into a building with more security than some prisons I have seen, and hired a coltfriend to keep him safe.

A couple of tears from me later and he was still incoherently spilling his heart out about how happy he was since we met and begging me to stay with him and things like that. The second I said yes though, and I don’t exactly remember what he asked me he tensed up. I was still deep in thought about what he told me so I made the second promise in my life where I didn’t know everything about what I signed up for, the first being ‘to protect ponies from danger’.

Whatever it was within seconds he relaxed and whispered something ending with “you” before falling asleep. He’s tougher than he looks but nopony is invincible, with liquid courage running him I think he said something that might have caused me to pause before it he passed out.

I was with sitting next to my sleeping special somepony with a wing draped over him and being used as a pillow, the whole cliché shebang. And all I could think about was how I nearly let his farther inside the one place he thought he was safe from him. I was willing to let a stallion live in my home, eat my food and drink away my pay check and listen for hours on end to him complain about his rich and greedy son while I did paperwork.

A stallion who was still in my home.

I knew Bright was a light sleeper, so carefully I slid my wing off him and held my breath as shifted in his sleep and held me slightly tighter. Slowly and cautiously I angled out of his grip, my gut wrenched as I saw him shift uncomfortably, searching for his source of comfort.

I stood there for a minute, I wanted to join him and do what a good spouse should do. The word was hardly befitting of though, if I really wanted to be with him I would have asked him without wanting to shove an elderly stallion in his care. Grabbing my spare keys I slipped out of the room and breathed a sigh of relief when Bright was still on the couch. Before the weather came in through the hallway chilling me to the bone, I wished I had brought my armour which would still be at the foot of the bed we shared.

It was not mine, I simply slept in it, Bright bought it a while ago when he wanted to ‘surprise’ me one day. The same went for a lot of stuff in the apartment, not that I really looked at it that much. I never really thought about his new décor as anything more than a sign that he was getting more comfortable around me. Not that he had gone to such lengths to make me feel more welcome.

As I landed at my door all I wanted to do was leave the key and break the lock, just leave this part of his life as a memory of a monster being charted away forever. I could have just left him alone with enough hard cider to kill him, it would have been the merciful thing to do if Bright finished that story of his.

When I opened up to find the stallion reading through the list of finances I left on my desk my heart stopped. A small red note I sent to the shipping mare was still there with the address of Bright’s apartment on it. He takes a long look at me, and after a second or two of silent staring I tell him I found his son. And then unless I get him a couple of thousand bits a week the whole of Canterlot will know Bright’s less than humble origins. And I have been on duty at those long enough to know how seriously the upper crust take their ancestry.

I would have bargained with him, not for bits or love for his son because I was entitled to neither. Part of me wanted to know why he started hurting Bright, and hope to find some reason behind him. while the other part wanted him to do the right thing and roll over and die. He would have laughed if I had bothered to tell him before leading him on the ground to his son’s place, en route to ruin his life. I could tell from his gait he had been planning this ambush though or finally ran every pub nearby dry the day before.

And thank Celestia because he could finally move fast enough to give me time to think, reputations count for a lot in this city. You gain and lose friend and enemies based on who you are and what you have done and I had a lot of time to do some soul searching when I was slowly brining my lover’s worst nightmare to his home.

For instance I imagine the only thing scarier than having somepony find out you are a child abuser in the company of a royal guard is having somepony stomp on the ground and yell to a crowd of bruisers ‘hey guys, child abuser’ then leave you alone.

Never heard of Heavy Step again. No suspicious bodies turned up the next day, or up to this day. As far as I know there were no shouts in protest or even bright lights from spells. All I remember of the evening was going home.

I crept into the apartment and immediately noticed the stallion on the couch. And how he was not my coltfriend. He was in the other being comforted a mare in night guard armour. When we locked eyes there were no sudden jumps of joy at or waves of relief, there was only tears and my distraught apologies. When we had both finished I gave a full account of my whereabouts and activities to the guard.

I saw him flinch at the mention of his dad but neither of the guards saw it. When they left I joined them and as punishment they kicked me out of the CSP division. And in hindsight I am kind of glad they did.

I’m a strong believer in second chances, and a bigger believer in letting the universe judge you. I didn’t have a lot of faith in myself for losing a lot of my pay check, but I got the damn thing after blackmailing a desk jockey and spent nearly half of it every month keeping a revenge scheme busy in my house.

I knew this was not the end of me and certainly not the end of us. And I’m glad I only had to tell that to Bright. Breaking and entering a primes to make an apology is not something I plan to do unless I forget his birthday or something. When I finished cleaning the blood off my brow though and he asked me why I had bothered coming back here, my second chance was more like his in lieu of mine.

But I suppose stallions really love it when you pay attention to the little things, and risking jail just to keep a promise he couldn’t remember holding me to is a good first step to forgiveness. The next five involve sleeping alone and walking on eggshells for a while but the only part I don’t really understand was the first bit. He still says that risking everything for something nopony else would care about was a ballsy move. But even months later of reminiscing on the couch together he can’t remember what he said.

He has yet to ask me what I was thinking when I said yes, and it may have been the blunt force trauma’s fault rather than mine, but for the life of me I cannot remember either.

But there are more important things to worry about in the future. Bills, promotions that will get me closer to him again, deployment calls and whether or not he will ask me to garrotte him in shower for our anniversary sex. Quite sure the last one will keep me up at night, but what is missing from my list of worries is two things.

One being the Heavy Step and two being the fear of a permanent break up sort of death. And the death of every powerful necromancer in the land. Our story is far from a happy ending, but Its one in the making and judging by the messages we send each other not likely to be short of a happy one.

Right now though I don’t have time to contemplate our relationship’s end, because my world does not include a future or past in it. It consists entirely of the moment and the magic running along my back. I am twitch and shiver as it runs inexpertly down my waist somehow hitting every sweet spot on my lower back. I hear my lover softly say “turn over” and with much care to avoid brushing my stiff wings against anything I lay down before him with a sultry smile.

His eyes dart down to my waist then quickly return to meet mine. I close my eyes just as he lowers his head and moan as he starts, sure there’s a way to go for us. But I can predict a pretty happy ending coming up.