“Commander.” Skasis addressed and saluted his leader upon finally returning just after sunset. In response, she turned to face him, and he went to speak further, “I’d like to request permission to speak regarding . . .”

She stopped him, unintentionally, without even doing anything. He hadn’t completely perceived everything when he first came into the parlor, but now his eyes did, and the subtle shock was just enough to make him pause. She had been standing just inside the open way out to the balcony as he often returned to find her doing, and had now already turned to face him instead. But . . . she wasn’t wearing her armor. No helmet, no cuirass, nothing. She had removed her helmet frequently enough as a sign of respect to him, but he had never once seen her without armor, no matter how at-ease she’d become at any point.

“Something concerns you Corporal?” She asked.

Skasis stuttered in response. Not that he didn’t normally, but now he was stranded amidst trying to explain himself. “It-I . . . uh, it’sss-I’ve only ever seen you without your helmet on two or-no three times . . . You’ve never actually taken your Armor off . . . uh-or at least by this point I kind of subconsciously thought you probably never did.”

“Amongst only our own company . . .” she had a brief pause, finding just the slightest difficulty in admittance, “I’ve come to allow myself to see you beyond just being another of my soldiers. I don’t feel it a dishonor to stand before you without a uniform.”

Skasis couldn’t produce any verbal response, but he did feel his face beginning to lighten.

The Commander waited for a few more seconds before her irritability claimed its natural place. “You were going to address me regarding an undoubtedly more important matter?” She led him with the question.

“I-it was regarding the position of another soldier.” Skasis answered at her demand.

One of her eyebrows went up before she spoke. “Go on then, Corporal.” She encouraged, her curiosity plainly evident in her voice.

“It may not be my place to say or recommend such thing,” Skasis started, “but, are you familiar with Private Briskly Healed?”

“The Private assigned to daylight hours at the southcloud medics’ unit?” She asked in order to confirm, which Skasis did with a quick, short nod. “You’ve monitored her performance to some degree?” She then asked.

“I believe at this point in time she has proven enough to warrant a promotion in rank,” Skasis told her, and then held out for a second only to go on when she didn’t display any signs of a negative reaction, “if my opinion is of any consideration in such matters.”

“Of course I trust your word, Corporal,” she responded immediately, and then spoke on whilst walking up to him, “With what you’ve proven of yourself, the value of your opinion isn’t something that I would question. I hold it too high for that . . .”

Skasis was being internally struck by the same waves fulfillment that always came when he actually received praise from her.

“You are my friend, Skasis,” she suddenly said, going on, and catching him so blindsided that anything he’d been about to say was gone for that moment, “. . . and I pledge to you that I will never deny such a thing again . . . you are the only one I have after all.”

“You had Private Pansy before me.” Skasis felt to remind her, after a few seconds of silence passed between them.

The Commander’s eyes fell, and she looked downward as she responded to him. “I never even cared to understand the sentiment while it was there during the time she served under me . . . my own sister. And I owe her so much more than I have ever given her for it. She was the only pony that was ever a friend to me . . . until now.”

“You’re the only other friend I’ve ever had.” She told him, looking eye-to-eye.

Skasis looked away, just off by a small distance, looking into his own memories. “Yeah, you’re basically mine. I’m not really the most likeable pony-“

“-But your concern for your comrades is more admirable than most ponies.” She found herself protesting.

“. . . No, my concern and care is biased . . .” he said, shaking his head slowly, and then undergoing a short, nervous laugh, “extremely biased.”

Her eyes narrowed by a degree as she reminded him, “You know that I can tell when somepony is concealing something, Skasis.”

All Skasis could even do then was shut his eyes hard for a fraction of a second and regret being such a give-away.

“If we are friends,” the Commander went on saying, although now . . . with a tint of uneasiness buried somewhere in her voice, “shouldn’t you be able to trust me with whatever it is?”

Skasis bit down on his teeth hard, pressing the two halves of his jaw together as his face began to redden. He felt his heart beginning to accelerate. Only when he was able to look over at the growing insecurity in Hurricane's face did he finally cross over the line he’d both forced himself to ignore and hidden from her, and so greatly feared. He made that one choice, emptying all of his resolve into a single set of actions, using it to replace the courage he didn't have.

When Skasis finally looked straight back into her eyes, with his newly-reddened face, he forced his heart out of himself, before he could stutter.

“I’m in love with you.”

The Commander inhaled sharply, almost as if it were a reflexive response. And for the proceeding moment tried to consciously process what Skasis had just said. At the end of it, she realized that she was becoming short for breath, with the memory lost of the last time her lungs were ever so strained. Her face was utterly torn between expressions, though all mostly resembling one of being confounded and lost. Her eyes shifted a great deal, mimicking her mind’s turbulent search for an answer to what she had just heard . . . and what she felt.

“With . . . what!?” She shouted. It was all she had.

She even began acting on a compulsion to shift her hooves excessively, pressing each one hard into the cloud every time she placed it back down to lift the other.

“Explain yourself!” She managed to demand.

Skasis’s face was so beat red, he was quite visibly sweating as he let himself walk and unbalanced path of trying to answer her. “You’re beautiful, to me,” he went off, “Your mane, it’s s-so cutely short and I-I-h’I I’m really weird for it but I love the way it looks so greasy. Your missing ear tuft ... And y-your nose . . . your nose is so hoofing a-adorable. I’ve never even used the word adorable before.”

The Commander’s face was beat red as well at that point, if anypony could have seen through her crimson fur. And her eyes were open and huge.

And Skasis went on, “Your voice . . . your voice is-is like . . . tasting HydrOxyzine. S-so harsh, and bitter . . . but so soothing at the s-same time. And just . . . your attitude, the things we do together. Rrgh-it’s more, so much more than I know I’m probably making this sound like. Agh, I never even cared about . . . thinking about mares . . . until I met you . . . Commander-“

“Skasis . . .” she finally cut him off. Her voice, when she did so, was edgeless. It wasn’t even the same calmed version of her normal commanding voice that she lowered to when talking in private.

She stilled her eyes and straightened her gaze back out to look him in the face again, finding his eyes giving away all that he was, and all the truth of what he had said. She could feel from him how much it had just taken for him to tell her just now. But, what this was . . . what . . . she felt overwhelmed. Commander Hurricane felt overwhelmed for the very first time in her life.

“Skasis . . .” She even sounded lost when she spoke his name again.

Her eyes narrowed at him for a flashing instant, fiercely, but then they relented. She took a broken, fettering breath, the kind one does at the last instant before crying, and took a step closer to him, closing the last of their distance. And then she darted forward with almost all of her combatant swiftness, but reached out only to throw her right foreleg around the back of his neck, forming one half of a pony hug. It was a half that Skasis matched, with only the faintest delay, wrapping his hoof around her more tightly than any object or pony he ever had. Their cheeks brushed past each other as they both pulled each other close, until her chest actually stopped against his and both their muzzles reached behid the other’s neck, his jaw resting on hers and her muzzle burying itself in the fur of his.

“Skasis Paradigm,” she tried to say with her natural harshness, but there was still a quiver in her voice, “Private Pansy, my own sister, was the only pony even close to friend to me before you arrived here. But,” she grit her teeth so much that had he been able to see it he would have perceived her as furious, “nopony’s ever cared for me alone as much as you have . . . you do. I . . . I’ve preferred having you with me, these months you’ve been here, much more than not. But I don’t—ugh, I’ve never . . . felt like this, or anything like this, about anypony . . . or ever thought . . . I-I don’t—know what to do.”

Skasis slips off his foreleg, gently letting her go, not knowing what really to do himself. But, at least feeling some instinct to look her in the eye again.

She did the same, though more hesitant, never having been so unsure of her actions before.

Skasis brought his face back in front of hers, leaving their muzzles barely more than a nose away from each other. She looked into his shining green eyes again, seeing from them the resolve of the decision he had made, and the fear that he had overcome to make it.
“. . . do you love me too?” The words came from Skasis, without his eyes ever leaving her.

The Commander’s head recoiled back for a second, and her face . . . what happened to it would probably never happen again: it showed fear. She had trouble exhaling, taking oxygen in easy, but releasing carbon dioxide in short, forced huffs.

Her expression shifted into something else, between the appearance of fear and disgust. “. . . Yes . . . Prissy Hooves.”

Skasis’s eyes widened for a second, letting down again with his development of a smile. Her calling him by that pet-name gave him the reminder and the push to release his own naming desire that he'd held of her for the longest time. So he leaned forward, until he touched his nose to hers, scrumpled as hers was.

“Scrumple-nose.” He said, nervous, but sweet.

The name left her eyes narrow and almost burning, until she made them relent, not by time but her own choosing.

And then, with his mind breaking down it’s normal pathways as it struggled to reclassify what had been a fantasy into a reality, Skasis did something he would have never, EVER imagined himself to even remotely close to doing. While they still had their noses touched to one another, he tilted his head upward, lifting her nose with his, and bringing their muzzles together until their lips become joined.

Skasis’s eyes shut. Hurricane’s shot far more than open.

She blinked hers hard once before they just closed. Her wings beat twice in an alarmed fidget, but she stilled them and brought them nearly back against her sides, though they refused her command to fold back into place completely. And her so normally collected, calculating, authoritative mind was thrown so far out of her reach by rushing feelings that she could neither devise nor enact any reaction to.
Skasis had absolutely no idea what he is even doing either, and had certainly never kissed anypony before. He held with her for a few seconds before opening his eyes, finding hers shut tight and her face cringing hard. He ceased and broke away immediately in panicked thought she is repulsed by his action, and her lack of reaction for the first few seconds afterward only drove his fear further, until she did speak.

Hurricane did speak, with a very, very grudging voice “. . . you . . . that—was . . . nice.”

“I thought a Pegasus and a Unicorn being together was outlandish to you?” Skasis oddly felt like he couldn’t help but ask.

“Shut Up!” She blasted her voice at him upon the realization that she was now a hypocrite. Skasis took due notice that her face had vaulted again into true fury, and his own fell into his innate timidness because of it. The Commander was unable to hold it for long, however, and her expression broke after a period of ten tense seconds . . . she broke.

“If this is some sickening attempt on the part of your kind to subvert our command structure,” she suddenly flung herself into half-heartedly trying to accuse him, “. . . it’s worked.”

“It isn’t . . . you of all ponies Have to know that I’m not lying.” He said back, calling on her discerning ability.

“I shouldn’t be like this,” she started making declarations, “I shouldn’t be Weak Enough to succumb to some Feeling of this sort! I,” she paused for an instant as she found her breath trembling, “I . . . H-I can’t!”

For the first time Skasis has ever seen, the Commander hung her head. She hung it entirely, a full dead weight to her shoulders and inactive neck muscles. Only then did a portion of Skasis’s well-educated mind reactivate itself, and the severity of the psychological trauma she was clearly going through finally came down on him.

“Commander . . .” He tried to say something, but felt, not decided, to do something else.

Skasis struck down his fear again with a brief intake of air, and reached out to bring the very pony he had feared more than any other in his life into another hug, which the Commander then seized control of the instant it began. She reached both of her front legs around him and pulled him in so close against her that he felt tangible pressure restricting his lungs. He responded as close to being in kind as he was physically capable of, holding her close with all that he could but lacking her strength. His lungs felt as if they were being crushed further and further each passing instant, but he so fittingly found that he enjoyed the struggle to garner them an oxygen flow.

The Commander began to cry. Skasis could feel both the sudden points of dampness in his fur developing right where she has her face buried against him, and the hyccuping spasms she started experiencing that he knew to be sobbing.

After a moment the sobbing convulsions come to a stop, but the crying continued at a more steady, even and unfettered rate.

“It was never in my mind at all that anything like this was ever even going to happen to me,” he felt compelled to admit to her, “and then out of all the possible ways . . . I get dropped two thousand years through time . . . to you. I love you. I love you more than any pony . . . only my brother could still be equal to you. And I wish he was here, so much more than I did even when we first got separated. Cause then if he was, I would never leave, even if there was a way back.”

She was silent for the moment that followed, and then she lifted her head off the back of his neck just enough to talk without being muffled. “You . . . stupid . . . Unicorn. You’ve taken the only thing from me I can’t duel you in combat to win back.”

She held herself from speaking for a moment, and as she did begin to again, she reached out forward with both her wings wreathing them as far as they could go around Skasis’s neck and dragging his head down with them until it lied against her neck just as hers did his.

“I wouldn’t even be able to,” she said, “I discipline ponies to make them strong. I do so with all of my soldiers, and I’ve done the same with you from the first day.”

“I know.” He just answered back plainly.

“I might even discipline you physically,” she went on to admit what had just become a new reality for her, “. . . but I could never harm you . . . and not ever now after what’s become of my integrity this night.”

A breeze of cold air drifted in from the open way to valley-viewing balcony, leading Hurricane’s gaze to it, and then to the not-yet-burning fireplace.

***

Two minutes later a pair of sizeable logs were burning, and the wooden balcony door was closed. And the two of them rested next to each other on the floor, her with her eyes shut and brows narrowed, and Skasis with his aimed into the hearth fire. Hurricane pressed her head upward, the back of it resting against Skasis’s throat, and the top of her head against the underneath of his jaw. And she wrapped one wing over him at some point, and Skasis’s eyes grew dreamy . . . sitting next to her like this . . . and staring into the gentle fire.

(cue music)
And this becomes their song

Author's Note

Alright! It's finally here, BRAKDOWN TIME!

Oh no, White House Down! Olympus has Fallen! WHITE OLYMPUS HOUSE HAS FALLEN DOWN! . . . yes, I HAD TO, even the cinemasins combination title too . . . LOLz and laughs everypony :D

But seriously, you understand once you read :)

Anyways, I'm back, been back for a good 10 days now, written more in these past ten days than any other same-time length period in my life, and I don't even think I've ever written this much in an entire month before! I'm uploading this, the next chapter of Drug is practically ready, just need to edit it. Plus there's all the writing in my actual original stories that I've been doing which obviously are not seen here.
One of which could be seen on my Patreon page though . . . along with the pledge/support button if anypony ever finds they really like any/all of my work enough.

I really hope you enjoy this one, it's built up, and it's been such a long wait. I'm honestly sorry for falling into one of those absentee periods.

And don't forget about these two's Ask Blog :)