The messenger passed the scroll to him without a word. Sealed with the distinctive Night Guard stamp, Moune was in little doubt as to who it had come from. Frankly, he’d been expecting it. He nodded as he shut the door and turned back to his bed where his few possessions lay strewn around his saddlebags.

Breaking the wax seal he unrolled the parchment. The message was short and to the point.

“My office. Now.”
~Emberfire.

He tossed the note on the bed, took a deep breath, and did as he was told.

His knock on the Captain’s door was met with a curt “Enter!” from within, the two guards posted outside glancing askance at him as he pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside.

Emberfire sat behind his desk, watching in silence as Mourne entered, motioning curtly for him to shut the door. Emberfire didn’t even wait for him to turn back around before he got to work.

“If I had my say,” he began, every word crisp and precisely enunciated, “I’d have you drummed out of the Night Guard so fast your head would spin. If I had my say, you’d be packing your bags to go back to the caverns instead of Ponyville. If I had MY say, I’d take you out to the practice field and thrash you to within an inch of your life, THEN I’d throw your ass out of this palace like last night’s garbage and wash my hooves of you!” His voice rose with every word till he was standing behind his desk, fore hooves slamming down hard enough to make the heavy desk shudder with the impact. He stared across that polished expanse at Mourne, his eyes cold, before taking a deep breath and regaining his composure. “You can count yourself very, very lucky that I don’t have my say in this matter.”

“I--”

“Did I give you permission to speak, Night Guard?” Emberfire snapped. “You’re here to listen, not talk. You’ve done enough talking these last few days, enough and more besides. So now you’re going to do what you should have done in the first place. You’re going to shut your hole and pin your ears open because I’m not going to repeat myself.” He stepped around the desk and began to pace back and forth in front of it, tail lashing behind him. “You may think that Ponyville is some cushy posting. Others may think that this is some kind of promotion, that being posted to guard Luna’s coltfriend is a desirable assignment. Well you’re wrong, and they’re wrong, and to prove my point there’s going to be some changes. Effective immediately you’re busted down to private, with a corresponding reduction in pay. Said pay will be docked by half for six months.”

Mourne’s eyes widened, his jaw slack. “But...why?”

“The reduction in rank is for that fiasco in Ponyville. You disgraced your uniform, yourself, and your fellow Night Guard. You can count yourself damn lucky that the Apple family believe in penance through honest labour instead of punishment or we’d be having this conversation in the stockades.” He paused a moment for this to sink in, tapping one hoof on the desk. “The Mistress herself argued FOR you! For YOU! After everything you’ve done, she argued to keep you in the Night Guard when I was all for throwing you out and being done with it! So I can’t discharge you, I can’t throw you behind bars, but I can make damn sure that you never get assigned to her personal guard again. So yes, you’re busted down to private and if you are very, very lucky one day you might actually start to climb back up the ranks again.”

Mourne swallowed convulsively, his throat dry and tight, the room suddenly too warm, his head swimming. In less than a minute, the last five years had been undone. Five years of sweat and toil, of inspections and evaluations, of hoping and striving, waiting for his chance to serve the Mistress and stand before her as her sword and shield. Five years gone between one breath and the next, and he had no-one to blame but himself. He forced words out through lips suddenly gone numb. “And the reduction in pay?”

"You assaulted a member of the Solar Guard." Emberfire curtly replied. “I will not tolerate brawling between Guards so you’re being fined. Count yourself lucky that it’s only a fine and the guardpony was convinced not to pursue a charge of assault or you’d be standing in front of a court martial right now. You have friends in high places, Mourne, though for the life of me I don’t understand why. They want you in the Guard and they want you in Ponyville so that’s where you’re going to stay,” Emberfire leaned in close, “and if I were you, I’d stay there as long as I could.”

Mourne stood in silence for a moment or two, just blinking as he stared at the wall, his knees trembling as Emberfire sat back down with a long, weary sigh, rubbing at his forehead.

“I get it, you know. This thing with your sister, I get it. We all know the nobles are little better than a pack of hyenas just looking for any sign of weakness they can exploit, but going off half-cocked on some sort of wild crusade to protect somepony who doesn’t need protecting is just…I’d expect that from a colt, not from a seasoned member of my Guard.”

He glanced at Mourne a moment but there was no response. “I remember what it was like without the Mistress. We were little better than Diamond Dogs in the eyes of most ponies. Feared, ostracised, forever marked by our association with Nightmare Moon, even though as many of us fought against her as with her. We were all tarred with the same brush in the end. A batpony gets beaten up? So what. Some batpony turns up dead? Must be suicide or natural causes or an accident. Any excuse that pointed a hoof back at that poor dead soul.”

Emberfire leaned forward again. “Things are changing, Mourne. Little by little, we’re becoming accepted. We can walk the streets of Canterlot without ponies flinching away from us. We can play, love, marry and have foals like any other pony without a second glance from the majority of folks, but make no mistake, there’s plenty of others who think we deserve to be kept in the shadows, that we’re still somehow...tainted. Your bullheaded arrogance has just heaped fuel onto a fire that had died down to embers. Your actions have ensured that the scrutiny on us all will be more intense than ever.” He sighed, shoulders sagging a little. “All I can say is that I hope you keep that in mind while you’re in Ponyville. This is your last chance, Mourne.” Emberfire levelled a hoof at him, his expression sombre. “The last chance to show me and everypony else what the Night Guard stands for. That’s all I have to say. Get out of my office, pack your shit and get on the train.”

Mourne finally looked at him, his expression twisted into something akin to physical pain. He opened his mouth, then closed it again and instead half-heartedly thumped his hoof to his chest. “All Hail the Mistress of the Night,” he croaked.

“Those aren’t just empty words, Private,” Emberfire growled. “Maybe you’ll remember that from now on.” He picked up a scroll from the desk and began reading, not even looking up as Mourne turned and walked stiffly from the office.

Mourne closed the door behind him and headed down the corridor, not meeting the gaze of the guards that flanked the door, ignoring the soft murmur of their conversation as he passed them by. He picked up the pace, trotting first, now galloping, charging down the hallways, ignoring the startled cries of the palace staff or the shouts and curses from other guardsponies. He didn’t stop galloping till he was back at the barracks, slamming the door behind him and leaning back against it, panting hard, blinking back the tears that made his vision blur.

“Bit of a melodramatic entrance, don’t you think?”

He blinked and really looked properly around the room, snorting at the sight of Shadowstep standing by his cot, looking over his few belongings. She glanced over at him, her expression indifferent, then turned back to his bag, giving him time to wipe the tears away before she commented on them. “Didn’t figure you for a reader of penny dreadfuls. Guess somepony has to buy them.”

“You shouldn’t knock them if you haven’t tried them,” he growled, stalking across the room to sweep the last of his books and equipment into the heavy canvas bags before he pulled them shut. “Something I can do for you?”

“I heard you were called in to see Emberfire.” She stepped back to give him room, watching as he fussed over his gear.

“Who told you that?”

“Same pony who gave you the message. He figured I deserved to know, being your partner and all. Suppose he’ll be calling for me soon enough.” She paused, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the back of his head. He was still refusing to even turn around to talk to her, fiddling with the straps on his bags instead. “You really bucked this up for me, you know that? Doesn’t matter if I didn’t lay a hoof on the farmer, I was your partner and we weren’t supposed to leave each other alone. But you? You hung me out to dry without a second thought.”

She could see Mourne’s shoulders hunching as her words struck home but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, not yet. “Did you, Mourne? Did you even think about me once? Did all our time together mean nothing to you at all in the end?” Damn it, she tried to keep the emotion out of her voice but she couldn’t keep it from quivering just at the end.

He finally turned to face her. “No.”

She blinked slowly. “No? No what? No it meant nothing? No, you didn’t think of me?” Her voice rising as she advanced on him. “Which is it?”

“No, I...I didn’t mean it like that.” He sighed, dropping his head to stare at the floor again. “I wasn’t thinking about you, or me, or anypony specific. I was thinking of us, all of us, of what would happen to us if the Mistress had her heart broken again, what it would do to us if she left.”

“Oh don’t you DARE try and play the martyr card here, you sanctimonious ass.” She punched his shoulder hard enough to rock him back but he still wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. She punched him again, frustration boiling over. “LOOK at me, you prick! You bucked up both our lives, Mourne! The least you can do is look me in the Celestia-damned face when you admit you didn’t care!”

“I had to do it!” He snapped back, shoving her away before she could hit him for a third time, finally meeting her accusing gaze. “I had to...I had to try, don’t you get that? I was so sure I was right, so sure he was wrong and I bucked up. I get it now, I messed it all up. I just...all I could think of was what happened to my sister. If they did that to the fa--to McIntosh, what would that do to the Mistress? We all know how lonely she’s been. We’ve heard her crying some nights, heard the arguments with her Sister.”

“And that’s what I just don’t get,” Shadowstep admitted. “You say you did this because of your sister, that you did it to protect Princess Luna, but you know what you actually did? Exactly the same as the nobles, Mourne! You’ve been no better than they were and yet you just don’t see it. You haven’t protected anypony. You’ve disgraced her memory.”

“I...what?” He stared at her, his eyes wide, puzzled, the look of shock on his face too genuine to be feigned. Shadowstep snorted and shook her head.

“What did the nobles do to your Sister, Mourne? They thought she wasn’t good enough for that little lordling, Velvet Rhyme, so they threatened her. They bullied her. They did everything they could to try and drive a wedge between the two of them, to belittle her and force her away. Sounding familiar, yet? You bullied him, you attacked him, without even knowing him or giving him a chance you decided he wasn’t good enough for the Princess and you tried to break them apart. You did EVERYTHING you accused the nobles of doing but, thank everything that’s holy in this world, all you’ve actually managed to do is bring them closer together. I’m surprised your own bucking hypocrisy isn’t choking you blue right now.”

Mourne couldn’t answer, could barely breathe. There was a heavy lump of ice in the pit of his stomach that was freezing the words in his throat. Wrong. He’d been so wrong from the start. Luna had tried to tell him, tried to warn him and he’d thrown it back in her face. It wasn’t McIntosh that was nearly responsible for her leaving, it was him.

Emberfire was right. He should have been tossed out of the Guard. He should have--

“OW!” He was snapped out of his ever-decreasing spiral of self-recrimination as Shadowstep slapped him full across the face, and she wasn’t holding back, his head ringing from the blow. He snarled at her, baring his fangs and barely holding back an angry hiss.

“I can almost see you getting ready to flagellate yourself, but you don’t get to do that,” she said without a trace of apology or contrition. “You bucked up, but unlike some of us you get a chance to make it right. You get a chance to earn a little redemption and Luna help me, part of me actually hopes you succeed.”

He rubbed gingerly at his aching jaw. She knew him far too well. “And the other part? Wait, nevermind. I can guess.”

“Then I won’t bother saying it.” She turned to leave, then paused with one hoof on the door handle. “Assuming I’m still in the Night Guard by the time Emberfire’s done with me, I’ll be asking for assignment somewhere else. If we’re lucky, we won’t see each other again for a long time. Maybe by then you’ll have earned some forgiveness.”

He lifted a hoof to protest, then just let it fall. “So that’s it?”

“That’s it.” She looked back at him and for the first time the cold mask she’d schooled her expression into slipped. “You’ve thrown away everything good in your life in your crusade to protect the Princess. Colleagues, friends, l-lovers,” she couldn’t quite keep the hitch from her voice, taking a moment to grit her teeth and steady her emotions before she went on. “But she doesn’t need a crusader or a zealot, Mourne. She needs friends. She needs family. She…”

Her voice broke again and she yanked the door open, slamming it shut behind her without a second glance and leaving him alone in the room with nothing but his thoughts and regrets.

He finished his packing in silence, setting the saddlebags by the door while he made the bed and checked one last time around the room to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Finding nothing but a scrap or two of parchment he swung his bags up and onto his back and began the long walk through the corridors to the Palace gates.

He saluted the Solar Guards standing by the gates by reflex as he walked into the crowded streets of Canterlot. Pausing a moment he looked back at the towering spires of the castle, noting a few pegasi and batponies swooping around the rooftops on their daily patrol routes. He couldn’t help but wonder when he would see inside it again.

Trudging through the busy streets, he scarcely noticed the bustle around him, the cries of salesponies attempting to entice passersby into their shops, the ebb and flow of the chattering crowd; the only thing he could hear was a single voice repeating over and over again ‘You’ve disgraced her memory’.

Shadowstep was right. Repine would have been furious with him. He’d taken her memory and twisted it, taken her sacrifice and cheapened it, used it as justification to be little more than a bully. He had to make this right. Somehow, he would make this right. He had to.

A promissory note from the palace was exchanged for a ticket to Ponyville. The ticket was exchanged for a seat on the train. The hills and tall white buildings of Canterlot were soon exchanged for lush grass and trees. He scarcely noticed any of it, barely acknowledged the other ponies around him, lost in his own misery, the gentle clack of the rails beneath the train carrying him further and further away from the place he once called home.

He was under no illusions about the situation he was in. This wasn’t just a posting, this was an exile. He’d burned almost every bridge behind him and now teetered on the smouldering remains over a crevasse. This could easily be the last time he ever set hoof in Canterlot. If he bucked up again, they’d ship him out back to the caverns before he could blink, or send him so far North you wouldn’t be able to find him with a compass, tracker dogs and a seeker spell.

“Ticket please, sir.”

The voice jolted him from his reverie and he turned to find the ticket inspector waiting patiently with a hoof outstretched. He passed the ticket over, watching silently as it was punched.

The inspector paused a moment before he gave it back, checking the details on it for a second time before asking, “No return trip?”

Mourne slowly shook his head. “No. I may be staying in Ponyville for some time.”

“Worse places to be,” the ticket inspector replied as he returned the ticket, then turned to attend to the pair of mares sitting on the other side of the carriage. “Fine little town, good folks. They accept anyone and everyone in Ponyville.” The inspector smiled and tipped his hat politely. “Hope you have a good stay, sir.”

“Mmm.” Mourne turned back to stare out the window once more. “You and me both.”