The train car was once again silent as conversation ceased. But this time around the atmosphere didn't feel quite as tense as it had previously. And though it was entirely premature, she wanted to believe that their previous talk had helped make things better, now that they knew a bit more about each other.

But still, it was going to be a good couple of hours before they'd be back in Ponyville again. And the idea of just sitting in silence that whole time, even if it wasn't a tense sort of silence, just didn't sound all that appealing to her at the moment. So maybe it'd be for the best if she tried to broach the topic of discussion once again.

"Twilight?"

Or maybe a bit of waiting would be rewarded, and she wouldn't have to do anything.

"Yes, Thunder?"

"Can you... give any type of estimate on how long this mission will last? So I can know if I planned accordingly?"

She didn't want to frown at his referring to his vacation as an assignment. But right now that was neither here nor there. Everypony had their own little quirks, after all. Who was she to be casting dispersion on others when it came to theirs?

"I'm sorry, but I can't really say," she admitted as she shook her head. "Why? Is there something specific you'd like to do? Something that you think might take longer than a month? I can assure you, I'm very good at scheduling matters to maximize the efficiency of time management."

Silence followed. Whether it was a good silence, or a bad silence, she didn't really know yet. Looking over at him where he sat hadn't given her any clues one way or another, as his face was pretty neutral and unreadable.

"Is there any way this could be concluded by the day after tomorrow at the very latest?"

She slowly looked back up again. She knew that she'd heard him ask the question. But whether or not she'd actually heard it right was another matter.

"You're actually asking for your vacation to end early?" she asked him.

"Yes, Ma'am," he confirmed.

Back to that again. But she opted to ignore the informal manner of address, and focus on the more important matter.

"Thunder, I don't think I understand. From what I've been told you were cleared for at least a solid month of paid leave, to use however you see fit, so you can rest up and recuperate from your guard duties. The same duties that were slowly killing you, I might point out," she stated. "And you actually want to go right back to working before you can even have the chance to possibly enjoy having a brief period of time where you don't need to do anything? You'd just barely get to Ponyville before you'd have to turn right around and leave again. Just... why? Why would you want something like that?"

Once again, Thunder looked around the train car, taking in the positions of the other passengers they were sharing space with, acting as if any single one of them could potentially be a security breach that had to be accounted for if he were to raise his voice too high.

Taking this into consideration, she hopped up from her own seat and crossed the aisle, sitting down right next to him until they were almost physically touching. This was followed by a dome of purple-tinged magic expanding out from her horn until it encompassed the area around them.

"One sound-proofing spell. Princess Luna could be screaming bloody murder in here, and nopony in the car with us would ever be able to hear it," she explained confidently. "I even added a visual distortion ripple effect across the outer surface, just in the event we make somepony suspicious enough to try and read our lips."

"Very impressive," Thunder noted as he examined the structure around them for himself.

"Thank you," she replied with a smile. "Now. Level with me, Thunder, please? At it's very core, what's really the problem?"

Once again, she saw him looking around as his eyes moved about rapidly. As if even this level of security she was affording them, might not actually be enough to assuage his concerns.

"Is this wholly off the record?"

"Wholly off the record," she confirmed and nodded, all the while curious about what it was he had to say, that might warrant this level of secrecy. "Whatever you say in here won't get back to anypony."

She knew that making such a guarantee could pose its own problems later on. But at the same time, she needed to do what she needed to do.

He looked back at her, as if he were trying to evaluate whether or not he could take her word for it, before finally nodding in agreement.

"I'm scared," he eventually admitted as he looked away once again. "To be perfectly honestly, I'm absolutely terrified of what could potentially happen and serve to go wrong on this outing."

The admission had been so far out of left field, Twilight found herself being left speechless, entirely uncertain of how to respond. To reference something that Pinkie had been saying recently in the last few months, this definitely wasn't on her bingo card.

"Oh," she replied, not really certain of what else she could say right now.

She waited, hoping that he might say something else that she possibly did have an answer for. But he didn't really seem to be particularly in the mood to offer up much else. And the longer that she sat there waiting, the more she was fairly certain that he wasn't going to be volunteering anything on his own.

"Is there anypony that you'd want to talk to about this, who might be able to help? Family? Maybe friends? Anypony we can send word to for you?"

He shook his head. "I don't have any family. And my friends are back at the palace. I asked them about the prospect of coming along, I even offered to cover a month's salary if they did, but neither one of them could get away."

Twilight did her best not to frown at this. It certainly added some clarity to why he wanted to return to the palace so badly. She knew that if she were ever sent away from Ponyville for whatever reason, unable to see any of her friends, she'd absolutely hate it.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she admitted. "But on the bright side, you're not being sent out into the middle of nowhere without anypony to talk to. Ponyville is a very nice place to visit. And besides that, my friends and I will be there if you need any help."

"Understood, Ma'am. Thank you."

This time she did frown. That was going to get very old, very fast, and she really wanted to put an end to it. Hopefully all without coming off as being hostile, if at all possible.

"Thunder," she sighed as she looked at him, "I get this might not be easy, but please stop calling me "ma'am" all the time. Just call me by my name, alright? I'm not anypony special, you don't have to address me in such a professional manner. Just... just refer to me like you would anypony else, alright? Please?"

"Understood," he replied simply, his voice full of flatness and evenness as he spoke.

Silence once again returned to the equation. Which wouldn't be so bad on its own, if not for it being the uneasy sort of silence that always seemed to follow when there was tension in the air. But whether the tension was on her part, or on his, she really didn't know.

She considered dropping the soundproofing shield that was currently up, unable to see any real or worthwhile reason to keep it in effect if he had no desire to speak up any further. He was sticking to the whole silent guard routine as easily as any other pony breathed.

Maybe it was for the best. If he didn't feel the need to try and make small talk to fill the vacuum, why should she try and force the issue? Who was she to be making that sort of decision?

...

"Thunder?"

A pony who was grateful that other ponies had taken such an initiative with her when they'd had no reason to all those years ago. That was who.

"You said you were afraid of what could go wrong on this outing. What'd you mean by that? It's just a vacation so you can rest up and recover from your work; what is it you think could happen and go wrong with that?"

"When I was at the Academy, the instructors drilled all of the recruits on a number of topics. One of the topics they taught us about was an incident that occurred over three hundred years ago. A crew of naval ponies, during a period when they were between missions and had been provided with leave, downtime, whatever you may want to call it. This led to over half of the crew rebelling and mutinying against their captain, and stealing the ship they were on to set sail for the Ponynesian Islands territory. Court martials eventually followed for everypony that was involved in the mutiny. All those that survived long enough to stand trial, at least. None of which would've occurred, had they not been given leave in the first place."

Twilight would admit, she hadn't expected a straightforward answer to so easily follow. She'd anticipated having to work at it, trying to get him to gradually open up about what was on his mind and bugging him. But what'd followed had been... well... something.

"Okay..." she replied simply as she tried to process what exactly to make of what she'd just heard. "So you're worried that if you're on vacation, you might do something crazy, like try to steal a ship and set sail like they did?"

He shook his head. "I know the two aren't connected in a direct Point A to Point B type of fashion, like walking off a cliff and falling down due to gravity being a factor. It's what lays between the two points, between the getting time away from work, and the decision to commit a full-on rebellion and subsequent mutiny, that has me concerned. The catalyst event that could serve to sway a pony's dedication to their duties, leading to them losing sight of what's actually important, and eventually making that sort of decision because of the circumstances they're in, that make it seem like a good idea at the time."

"So you did the one thing that you could do, to ensure that possibility never came to pass," Twilight surmised.

A single nod followed, as simple as it was solemn. And watching it was enough to make Twilight wish that her assumption about his motivation had been wrong.

"Some ponies think I'm afraid of the outside world," he eventually offered up. This was eventually followed by him shaking his head. "It's not agoraphobia. I don't fear setting hoof into the world that lies beyond the palace walls. I don't dread being called upon for duties that may be somewhere out in the wilderness. I simply have no desire to venture out and face whatever manner of temptation that may come with it, that serves to challenge a pony's resolve and dedication to their duties."

A lot of things went through Twilight's mind as she silently listened to him talking. A lot of things that could be said in response, but nothing that she was really certain about being the right thing to say. He sounded a lot like a pony who needed professional, psychological help to try and work his way through his issues. But at the same time he sounded like he'd already given a great deal of thought to the matter, and had arrived at the most logical conclusion he could draw under his circumstances.

One couldn't exactly fault a pony with a drinking problem who understood they couldn't control themselves when surrounded by alcoholic beverages and took steps to avoid exposure to that sort of temptation. But it wasn't exactly right for a pony to believe that they couldn't trust themselves, based on the actions of outside parties in an extreme example.

Then again... she didn't have to go and participate in a skydiving class herself, to have the first-hoof knowledge in order to properly conclude that is just wasn't for her.

This whole matter was proving to be a lot heavier and more complicated than she'd initially believed it might be. This might require professional help on top of whatever she and her friends could provide.

"Thunder," she eventually spoke up, "let's leave all of that aside for the moment. I want to try something different, alright? Hypothetically speaking, let's say that you are in Ponyville for the entire month, no going back early for any reason."

He looked back at her, indicating she currently had his attention.

"Let's go further, and say you find out that your resolve and dedication are robust enough to weather whatever sort of temptation you might face while you're there; that you're made of sterner stuff than that ship's crew could ever hope to be.

"In fact, let's go even further than that for the sake of this hypothetical. Let's say you end up having the best time of your life while you're there, better than anything you could've imagined, and after all of that you're still willing to go back to work at the end of your vacation, secure in the fact that you stood strong and didn't fall like others," she continued, laying things out for him as best she could. "What do you see coming out of this, if all of these factors turn out to be in play?"

If ever there was a poker face to be found, it was definitely Thunder's after hearing her question. He didn't blink, didn't shift, didn't twitch, didn't respond or react in any sort of fashion to what was being presented to him. He just sat there, unmoving and doing nothing to betray whatever sort of thought process might be unfolding behind that stoic veneer.

"I don't know," he eventually replied. "I'm not really accustomed to thinking along those sort of lines."

"Oh no?"

He shook his head. "Thinking about what would happen after I became a Royal Guard is a... foreign concept. For a long time it was a matter of if I became a Royal Guard, not when."

"You mean, like you might've gone into the wrong career?" Twilight asked.

He shook his head quickly this time, as if the speed of his physical reaction was of the essence in dispelling the question.

"No, no, nothing like that. Being a Royal Guard was what I wanted from the moment I first learned about them when I was five years old. That was never a question," he clarified, pausing as he shook his head again. "It was always more a question of if I'd actually live long enough to ever become one."

That one had come entirely out of nowhere and left Twilight feeling very much off guard by what she'd just heard. Before she could even ask for clarification, he was already speaking again.

"I... I shouldn't have said that..." he muttered, shaking his head as he looked down towards the train's floor. "Can we just... carry on like I actually didn't say anything just now?"

"I mean, if that's how you'd like to proceed, we can certainly do that," she replied, unsure of what else she could actually say in response. "But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about what you meant by that," she admitted.

He nodded. "Understood. And I apologize for that. But... there are a lot of things that I'm really not proud of. Things that I... don't like to discuss. Things that I don't like to think about."

She nodded in turn, understanding what he was getting at.

"Alright. I won't pry if you don't feel up to sharing. But I will be available if you ever do feel like talking," she assured him.

It'd been a hard-learned lesson on her part, but she knew for herself just how much good could come from sitting down and talking with somepony about her problems. And while not exactly a substitute for actual counseling, it at least opened the doors.

Another stretch of silence soon followed. But this one managed to feel less tense and forced than previously. She decided to take that as being a good thing, and saw it as no longer needing to keep the silencing spell in effect.

"Twilight?"

But she stopped short of actually letting it drop when he spoke up again.

"Yes, Thunder?"

"What if I do fail this, and I'm no better a pony than the crew members of the HMS Bounty that mutinied? What if, after all is said and done, I don't want to return to my service again, and just walk away from it all?"

She paused as she thought over the question, and how would be best to respond. As she knew, there were two particular courses that she could take.

The first one that came to mind was the most straightforward, and involved simply denying the validity of the concern; much as they had done with Rainbow Dash and her worries about her performance in the Best Young Flyers Competition, and her concerns that she might not come in first place, in front of her friends and everypony else watching at the time.

They had learned the hard way that this was a bad idea. Even if they didn't share Rainbow's concerns about her own performance, that didn't mean the concerns were invalid to her. And simply writing them off so dismissively, didn't do anything to help her be any less worried.

The second course of action that could be taken, required a different approach and involved leaning into those concerns and treating them as if they were as valid as the need for oxygen itself, even if they didn't see them that way.

"Well..." she started as she tried to figure out what to say, "I can't say that it won't happen, because I don't know divination abilities. And based on what you've said, about how important being a guard is to you, I really don't see how it feasibly could happen. Listening to you talk, I don't even think it's something that you could be forced to do.

"But in the unlikely event that this worst case scenario actually does come to pass and you decide to just up and resign? Well... you might be disappointed in yourself, but it won't be the end of the world. And to the best of my knowledge, I don't think there's nothing saying you couldn't go back if you wanted to."

Exactly how much of that was true was anypony's guess. If it were one of her friends asking her something like that, she'd at least have a much better grasp of understanding their characters and psyches and quirks for giving them an answer about what she thought. But he was an outlier in comparison. A pony who she'd just barely started talking to, making it impossible for her to know one way or another what would be best to say beyond a generalized statement that could apply to anypony in such a situation.

"You're the first pony who's ever explained it that way before."

She looked at him, not quite certain what to make of what he'd just said in such a soft tone. Although she really didn't care for what the implications of it were. The way he'd phrased it, the best case scenario that came to mind was his simply being such a workaholic that he'd never actually stopped to ask the question until now. And on the other end of the spectrum... she'd rather not think about the sort of implications it had for the quality of his coworkers.

"About what we were discussing earlier?" he slowly spoke up. "Hypothetically speaking, I'd be open to suggestions, if you had any to make."

She looked back at him again, her mind going over everything that'd been discussed since the start of this train ride, and slowly smiled as she did.

"I'm sure we can think of something," she replied, before letting the sound-shielding spell drop again.

Author's Note

I hate this chapter. I absolutely hate it.

This was supposed to be a simple little piece. And instead of being that, I get something that took over a month to write, and went through nearly 10K words worth of numerous revisions to try and get right. I'm still disgusted with it, but it's probably better than turning out nothing at all.