Punky Print's Log: Day 230 pt 2

"I pictured you shorter."

The pegasus turned away from the picture, and saw me for the first time.

"What?"

"Um, well," I turned to the portrait, "he used to tell us stories about his life back in Equestria. When he mentioned you, well it just sounded like you were much smaller." I shrugged, a nervous smile forming as the stallion turned back to the picture.

"Yeah, I had a growth spurt a little while after he..."

"Died?" The pegasus sighed.

"Yeah." He turned away from the picture and looked skeptically at me. "Who are you?" I blushed, remembering that even though I already knew Brassheart's son, he didn't know me. I held out my hoof.

"I'm Punky Print. Your dad looked out for me and my friends." He shook my hoof, but still looked at me with suspicion.

"Ironhide. He never told me about you, or your friends." My shoulders slumped. "Well I mean, he never mentioned anypony by name. Not even the other guards."

"Because Celesita forbade it?"

"No. He just didn't want to, I guess." I nodded.

"That makes sense. No matter which side you're on, we aren't exactly the most," I searched for the best word to describe us, both the brutal guardsponies and the exiles, who had only recently deemed us worthy of their kindness, "altruistic of ponies."

"Wait, wait," he said, holding up his hoof to stop me, "what do you mean 'sides'? The guards are here to protect you lot." I shifted away from Ironhide warily, half expecting him to attack me in a fit of Happy Dagger-like hatred. The guards are there to crush us under their hooves, and only the very delusional believe any differently.

"Who told you that?"

"My father. He said that was why he was here, to protect you." I took a shaky breath as tears sprung to my eyes.

"Oh. Well Brassheart he... he was kind of an isolated incident."

"Wait, then, what are the guards really here for?"

"To keep us in submission, too afraid to leave or rebel." I glanced at Ironhide, who sat in stunned silence beside me. "Brassheart was the only one who saw it as their duty to protect us. You're here to suffocate us." Ironhide hung his head.

"Is that why this is here," he asked, pointing to the enshrined painting. "Because my dad protected you from the dragon?"

"That's part of it." He laughed weakly.

"You know, when I first heard he'd burned up for you exiles, I hated you so much." He swiped under his eye, rubbing away tears. I felt my blood rush from my face and my stomach tie in knots.

"He didn't burn." Ironhide looked up from the painting.

"What?"

"He didn't get burned up by the dragon. It didn't kill him, didn't even touch him."

"What else could it have been? He left the wall to drive it back and it killed him." I shrank as he looked at me expectantly, guilt making me too afraid to tell him. "Right?"

"The guards shot him." His silence stretched for one minute, then another. I looked up from the ground to see him staring, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Eventually his mouth snapped shut and his eyed narrowed.

"You're lying."

"What? No, I-"

"You're a liar, there's no way the guards would shoot my father! You're just trying to make trouble because you don't want to pay for whatever crime you did to have you sent here! I should have known, you are a traitor after all." With that he took off into the air without looking back.

As I walked back to Mystic's home, I thought about what Ironhide had said. I'm not ashamed of what I did to be exiled here. I don't want to be here, but I don't think I'm desperate enough to make something up just to cause disorder among the guards. I didn't need to either way, but still, I'd like to think I would be better than that. What Inky and I did wasn't wrong. We had questions, and there shouldn't be anything wrong with that. I would accept my sentence if I had earned it, I think. As is, I'm living with it until... until what?

When I entered Mystic's house I left most of my stressful thoughts behind, however I could not shake my disappointment that somepony so close to Brassheart, somepony I still think so highly of, thought so badly of me. Mystic looked up from a pot of steaming mixture, and his forehead creased up in concern.

"You took quite a while to come back." I nodded.

"I met Brassheart's son," I said as an explanation. Mystic stayed silent, waiting for me to go on. "He didn't know about the arrow." Mystic came over to me and put his foreleg over my shoulder.

"I'm sorry, little one," he said, knowing that Ironhide must have reacted badly.

"He called me a traitor," I said, "it shouldn't surprise me, I guess I am, but..."

"You've done nothing wrong. Most of us haven't, but the guards all see us as if we have." He sighed. "The best advice I can give you, little one, is to accept it. They'll never see us as anything other than guilty." He walked away to continue his work, but I remained seated on the floor, contemplating Mystic's words. As I mulled over his words, a thought struck me like a bowl to the back of the head.

"Were you born here?"

"Yes. As was my mother." I gaped at my mentor.

"But then, you never did anything. You never committed a crime worthy of exile," I elaborated. "If you have never done anything to deserve this, how can you be so accepting of it?" Mystic smiled sadly at me then.

"Little one, I'm not like you. I've known nothing else."

AN: I feel so ashamed right now, this took months to put up. MONTHS. I really have no excuse for how long this took, and all I can say is that I'll try my best not to do this again. I hope you guys can forgive me.