“Hello, Rat Racer.”

The little red unicorn’s eyes flickered open, and he let out the tiniest little groan as he caught sight of a set of heavy white hooves.

“Stronghooves,” he grunted, hauling himself upright and looking up at the larger stallion, “I guess you’re not done with me yet, huh?”

“Unlike my sister, an encounter with me seldom only lasts one night,” Stronghooves said with a smile, patting Rat on his shoulder.

“So I guess there’s more ground to cover?”

“Yes,” Stronghooves said, nodding, “Sky’s damage runs far deeper than you or I know. It makes the healing process...difficult.”

“Well, Sky and I had one hell of a day today,” Rat chuckled, “but I think we made a lot of progress today. I think she’s really starting to trust me.”

“Interesting,” Stronghooves frowned, conjuring a dossier out of the ether and reading it over, “the file we have on her notes that she had a lot of trouble forming meaningful emotional attachments to other ponies. In fact, to my knowledge, she’s only done it with two ponies before she met you.”

“Shadow?”

“And myself,” Stronghooves said, nodding again, “Sky’s been starved for love all of her life, and it’s the fault of our blasted parents.”

“What was wrong with her, anyway? Was it because of her wing?”

“Um...no.” Stronghooves looked away, “I don’t suppose you have all-unicorn families in Manehattan, Rat Racer?”

“Course we do,” Rat said with a shrug, “but they’re pretty much the same as everypony else. Are you trying to tell me that your parents hated her because of her wings?”

“Precisely.”

“That’s fucked,” Rat sighed. “She could’ve been anything she wanted, even without a horn. She could’ve been a Wonderbolt, or…”

“She tried,” Stronghooves said, shaking his head, “but her wings were underpowered even when she had both of them. Barely able to lift herself off of the ground under her own power. I had to...launch her.”

“That sucks,” Rat muttered. “With all due respect, your parents are a pair of assholes. When I get back to Canterlot, I’m gonna kick their asses myself.”

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Stronghooves smiled, “you don’t need me to tell you that they fell out of favour with me when I realised that everything they’d said about her had been a lie.”

“What exactly did they say?”

“Anything that they thought I’d buy,” Stronghooves sighed. “Rumours of her stealing from the other foals, about her being a manipulative little bully. I believe they even told me that she was a changeling, and that my mother’s distress was because she kept sapping her love.”

“And you bought it,” Rat frowned, folding his forelegs and raising his eyebrow.

“I was thirteen, and scared. A lot of very confusing things had just happened, not least my little sister being thrown out of our family home. I accepted what they said...at first.”

“Yeah, I remember it said in her diary that you kept bringing her food and stuff for a while. She also wrote something about how you...protected her.”

“That’s correct,” Stronghooves affirmed, “there was a little father-son burglar team in our part of the city by the names of Shady and Nightshade. They were...and are...brutal stallions, brawlers first and burglars second.” He scoffed. “Sky got called all sorts of horrible names by those two for being a...sub-par pegasus. I protected her from them every single day…”

“...and then you left her alone…” Rat growled.

“Yes. My parents’ lies finally got to me. I believed them, and I left her alone…” Stronghooves whimpered, “and...well, I suppose you explained to me last night what ended up happening to her.”

“Does it hurt, knowing that you’re responsible for that?” Rat asked, narrowing his eyes.

The enormous stallion turned his head away, closing his eyes.

“It...hurts a lot,” he murmured, his voice cracking a little, “my own little sister...made to suffer because...I couldn’t...protect her…”

“You can’t blame yourself for this,” Rat said, shaking his head. “Your parents are manipulative douchebags, and you were just a kid. It’s...well...it’s not okay, not by a longshot...but it’s not something you can take responsibility for.”

Stronghooves scoffed as tears ran down his cheeks. “Are you sure about that?”

Rat stared as the captain hauled himself to his hooves, wiping his eyes.

“You no doubt remember...this is a place where we can share our memories and watch them together?” Stronghooves asked.

“Ye...yeah…” Rat nodded, looking around worriedly. He wasn’t entirely certain that he wanted to see this particular memory.

Stronghooves took a while to compose himself, breathing heavily as the sobbing gradually subsided. Finally, he stepped out onto the little stone bridge, beckoning for Rat to follow him. The burglar sighed, trotting along by his side.

“They held my future over my head,” Stronghooves growled. “They knew exactly what buttons to press to make me compliant. I wanted to go to the Royal Guard Academy when I got older, and they threatened to...well, you’ll see…”

The two of them came to a halt atop the bridge, looking down into the opaque water of the creek below. Stronghooves placed a heavy hoof on Rat’s back, sighing weakly.

“I’m sorry for what you’re about to see,” he whispered, before hurling the burglar into the water.

* * *

Rat surfaced once more, blinking in the relative brightness of Canterlot at dusk. As he looked around, he caught sight of some worryingly familiar buildings.

This is the canal that we jumped into when we were escaping that Operative mare yesterday… he thought to himself.

With a grunt, Rat hauled himself out of the channel before it took him anywhere too vertical, rubbing his head and getting his bearings. Nearby, a white stallion with a bright blond mane waited for him, his expression grave.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to that.” Rat chuckled, wringing out his mane as he approached Stronghooves.

“Well, hopefully you won’t have to get too used to it,” Stronghooves said, patting his friend on the back, “but right now, I want you to brace yourself. We’ve gone back even further into the past than we did last night.”

“How far back, exactly?” Rat asked, walking with Stronghooves as the stallion made his way towards the Rich District.

“Well, I believe this was three days after Sky’s seventh birthday. That makes me fifteen today,” Stronghooves replied, “Rat...if I show you this, you must promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Try to see what happens here from the perspective of a scared teenager, and realise that...I do realise my mistake in retrospect and I’ve regretted it for most of my life. This is the night I lost my own little sister.”

“I think she lost a lot more than you did,” Rat said frowning.

“You’d be right. Moreover, we both lost each other, and that was something...almost symbolic, I suppose. It was as if we each realised that there was no going back anymore, no returning to the childhood we’d known. We...grew up in our own ways.”

“And you think that Sky somehow grew up...wrong?” Rat asked.

“We’ll take a look at this memory, and then perhaps you can make the assessment yourself,” Stronghooves said quietly, stopping at a fence.

Rat looked past him, cocking his head as he stared over the fence at a great big house, so huge that at least three of his hideouts could fit inside it. Considering the kind of fare in this part of the city, that house was unremarkable, but to Rat, it was enormous and elaborate beyond belief.

“You lived here?” He asked.

“I did,” Stronghooves smiled, “Sky and I both lived here, actually. My family were ladder climbers. Very wealthy unicorns indeed, though they were mostly piggybacking on the city’s old money. It took me far too long to see that.”

“That’s why Sky was somehow an abomination, right?”

“Correct,” Stronghooves sighed, ears splaying back, “an all-unicorn family having a pegasus foal? That doesn’t exactly look good when you’re trying to play up your pedigree. In fact...it makes it look like somepony cheated.”

“That makes sense...I mean, it’s a fucked-up, horrible kind of sense, but still…” Rat sighed.

“Come on. If you want to see just what was going on in my head, we’ll need to go in round the back and look in the kitchen.” Stronghooves said, ushering Rat onto the little pathway that led around the back of the miniature palace.

“Why the kitchen?”

“Because that’s where I was stealing food every day so that I could bring Sky something to eat.” Stronghooves explained., “This was the night my parents finally caught me, after two years of successful food-snatching.”

The two stallions strode down the path around the side of the house, finally peeking around the back doorway into the kitchen. A tall, lanky teenager stood there, backed into a corner by what could only be Sky and Stronghooves’s parents.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, STRONGHOOVES?” Mrs Runner screeched at him, her horn flashing as she pulled a stash of food out of her son’s saddlebag.

“I wasn’t going to let her starve, mum,” Young Stronghooves croaked, backing up as his parents advanced on him. “She’s dying out there. I know you guys don’t like her, but please...please let me help her…”

“Neither of us ever said that we didn’t like her, Hoovesie,” Mr Runner began patiently.

“But you and I both know that it’s true,” Young Stronghooves finished for them, shaking his head and flaring his own horn.

“We never had a problem with Sky,” Mrs Runner stated, “rather, it was /her/ who had a problem with /us/. Remember, she was always screaming, filling your head with lies about how supposedly horrible we were, trying to turn you against us…”

“That’s not the kind of pony she is. You two are just far too blind to see the truth,” Young Stronghooves whimpered. “Please...give me the food back...she needs me…”

“Hoovesie…” Mr Runner crooned patiently, “you need to understand something about why we couldn’t take care of Sky anymore. You’re acting without insight, and that’s not what guards are supposed to do.”

“Are guards supposed to let their little sisters starve on a street corner?” Young Stronghooves replied evenly.

His parents fell silent for a time, glaring at him, and then…

“Hoovesie, sweetie…” Mrs Runner smiled, her expression softening, “nopony’s doubting that you’re compassionate. You’re a sweet, strong stallion, and if you were doing it for anypony else, I’d congratulate you. However, you’ve failed to ask the important questions, to use that big brain of yours and establish just why we threw Sky out.”

“Because she was a pegasus, right?”

“Partially,” Mrs Runner admitted, “but there’s more to it than that. You see, we were fully willing to accept Sky for everything she was...and wasn’t. However, with repeated failures on her part came...behavioural difficulties.”

“The truancy, I know,” Young Stronghooves growled.

“Exactly,” Mrs Runner sighed, sitting down and staring at her hooves, “but there’s more. You see, she had major anger issues. She kept them hidden from you, of course. She didn’t want to lose her only friend.”

“Those anger issues developed in spite of everything we tried,” Mr Runner put in, “but eventually they became too much to handle. The day Sky ran away, she...tried to stab your mother with a knife.”

The three ponies fell silent, Young Stronghooves’s eyes widening in shock. Mrs Runner broke down into silent tears, her husband patting her on the back and nuzzling her for comfort.

“BULLSHIT!” Rat bellowed out, breaking the silence as if it would somehow change the past.

“She...she did that?” Young Stronghooves asked.

“Ye...yes…” Mrs Runner sniffled. “She...she told me not to tell you...she was so scared of losing you...she threatened to come back and murder us if we ever told you…”

“She’s not coming back, dear. It’s okay,” Mr Runner said, shaking his head and holding his wife tightly. “We’ve called the guard and they’ll be sure to apprehend her if she comes within five hundred feet of the house.”

“I...see…” Young Stronghooves frowned, pushing past them. “Um...I have to...go...see...Sky...now…”

The little stallion trotted out of the back door, passing straight through Rat’s body as if he simply wasn’t there. As the memory began to fade, Rat’s ears perked as Mr and Mrs Runner chuckled softly.

“I can’t believe that actually worked.”

Rat turned to his friend, biting his lip. “You didn’t actually believe that, did you?”

“They were distraught...and I’d never known them to lie so...convincingly.” Stronghooves sighed.

“And then what happened?”

“Er...we had a falling-out…” Stronghooves trailed off hurriedly. “You don’t need to see that. I think you can piece together what happened from there and what you read in her diary.”

As the memory faded around them, Rat narrowed his eyes at Stronghooves. The stallion refused to meet his gaze, even long after the two of them had reappeared back on the dark bridge.

“You’re hiding something,” Rat said accusingly.

“I’m hiding nothing,” Stronghooves said, convincing no one, “I merely wanted to show you just how good my parents were at playing to my emotions, twisting me so that I...made mistakes…”

“I don’t buy it,” Rat shook his head, advancing on him. “You’re not being open with me, Stronghooves. Why don’t you want to show me what happened?”

“It’s...complicated,” Stronghooves croaked, glancing up at Rat before pawing the ground nervously. “Um...perhaps you’d better go. It’s clear that you’re troubled, and I’m sure that Sky needs you a great deal right now...and...you’d best get back to her.”

“Stronghooves, be honest with me!” Rat growled, as the dream faded around him. The Captain of the Royal Guard paid him no mind, looking away and vanishing as everything faded into a great white void.

Rat’s eyes shot open.

As the little burglar glanced around in search of Stronghooves, the first thing that caught his attention was a subtle movement right underneath his chin. Glancing downwards, his expression softened as he watched his favourite little mare snuggling up to him, fast asleep. She brushed her fluffy ears against the underside of his chin, coaxing a tiny giggle out of the stallion as he held her.

“What the hell is he trying to hide from me?” Rat frowned, leaning down and nuzzling his marefriend between her ears.

Sky offered no comment, wrapping her hooves and wings around him a little more tightly and yawning squeakily. Any worries Rat had had about her wellbeing since that tentacle monster attack evaporated. She was going to be all right, after all.

“We’ll get you that Poison Joke, Sky,” Rat murmured, kissing her on the forehead and closing his eyes again, “but tomorrow night, I’m getting to the bottom of this, once and for all.”