//------------------------------//
// Bloody Idiots 
// Story: Black and Blue and Bloodied 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

It had taken the best part of two hours to find the outfit, and another half-hour to convince the Doctor to wear it. Things had not gotten any smoother from there. It had taken another half-hour to sneak past the set-up for the party, and one hour more for the Doctor to relearn the basic concepts of gardening. After that, it had been… well, not exactly smooth, but there were no more obstacles between them and the garden party. None, that is, save for the Doctor’s lousy attitude.
“I hate this,” the Time Lord said for what seemed to be the twelfth time.
“I am fully cognizant,” Blueblood replied.
“I look ridiculous.”
Blueblood stared at the green stallion through glazed eyes. He was wearing ripped blue overalls, a floppy straw hat, and Wellies, as well as the most miserable look that the prince had ever seen on a grown pony. “I quite concur.”
“I am going to get you back for this,” the Doctor warned.
That, at least, was a new sentence, and the novelty left Blueblood without a ready comeback. After a second, he managed, “What will you do, leave me stranded here?”
“Nah. Not here. Th’ moon, maybe.”
“That’s a tad extreme.”
The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. “Point. Maybe Appaloosa, then.”
“That hick western town? I’ll take the moon, thanks.”
“Some urbanized alien planet. You get all the amenities, but you know nothing about the culture. Yeah,” the Doctor nodded thoughtfully. “An’ I only come back when you’ve learned how to not get into trouble with the law or society or whatever.”
Blueblood shuddered. The Doctor smirked for a moment, but then his hat fell over his face. When he’d pulled it upright again, he was scowling once more. “‘Ow long ‘til this party starts?”
Blueblood pulled out a pocket watch. “Half an hour.”
The Doctor groaned. “Right. I’ll just, I dunno, weed or something.”
He turned when Blueblood finally said what he had been thinking since last night. “You traveled with my aunts.”
The Doctor stopped. “Yeah,” he said, not turning around.
Blueblood bit his lower lip. “Travel with… anypony else?”
“A few, yeah.”
Blueblood took in a deep breath and let it out. “What happened to them?”
The Doctor’s ears flattened against his head. “Well,” he said. “Let me think. There’ve been… a lot of folks in the TARDIS. You lose count, eventually. Let’s say somewhere around fifty or so. All different, all special, all left eventually. Let’s see. There was my granddaughter, married a freedom fighter. Victoria, adopted by a nice couple of scientists. Liz went to Cambridge, Romana stayed to save the Tharils—”
“How many died?”
The Doctor stopped cold. “Eventually? All of them. Fact of life. How many died ‘cause of me?” He paused, tallying up in his head. “Little hard to say. Lot of them died in flux. Peri wound up living four lives ‘cause some warring factions couldn't leave well enough alone.”
“An answer, please.”
There was a long pause. “Between six and twelve.”
“How?”
“Variously? Trapped in a crashing spacecraft, overloaded circuitry, possessed by the Master… Was going to have died, but I saved her, only to wind up back at that fixed point…”
He sighed. “I’m not going to lie, this is a dangerous life to lead. I’ve died myself, nine times now. Never hurts as bad as when you’ve lost someone you care about.”
He turned around. “You know the feeling.”
Blueblood’s lips tightened. “We are discussing you, not me.”
“Right. So what you want to know is, are you going to die.”
“It’s not an unreasonable question.”
“Not unreasonable to ask. Unreasonable to expect a proper answer. I’m a Time Lord, but even I can’t tell the future.”
Blueblood stared silently at the back of the Doctor’s head. Eventually, the green stallion sighed. “I promise,” he said, “that I will do anything in my power to keep you alive and safe from harm when possible.”
“That’s quite vague.”
“Well, it’s the best I can do,” the Doctor snapped, turning around. “This isn’t nursery school, you know. Auntie’s not always going to be there, and like it or not, I can’t either. You’ve got to learn to do for yourself.”
He stormed off, head down, leaving a mildly stunned Blueblood behind him. Nursery school? Nursery school? The prince’s jaw clenched. He’d show him nursery school…


***

The straw hat fell off. The Doctor sat in the shadow of the TARDIS, glaring at nothing in particular. His trowel had been shoved deep into the ground. He had to ask, didn’t he? He had to bring back all those memories. It was more than six, the Doctor knew. More than twelve. Katrina, sucked out of the airlock. Sara Kingdom, died in the line of duty. UNIT soldiers who gave their lives in the course of duty. A few ponies, too. He hated remembering that. Any of that. There was too much death, too much destruction.
But…
He did have a right to know, didn’t he. Blueblood was scared. Who the hell wouldn’t be, under the circumstances? The rug had been pulled out right from under his hooves, and no mistake. The Doctor sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his muzzle. He’d have to apologize, wouldn’t he. Brilliant.
He rose to his hooves. “At least you still love me, eh, old girl?” he asked, lovingly patting the side of the TARDIS.
“...You talk to a box?”
The Doctor spun around. Staring at him was the butler who had originally foisted them from the gardens. “...Yeah,” the Doctor replied. “What, you never get lonely?”
The butler cocked his head. Slowly a smile spread over his face. “And here, I thought this was going to be difficult.”
The Doctor suddenly realized something very important. The butler was grey. The same grey that the receptionist had been. The same grey that Tuxedo Mask, who had tried to lead them down the garden path, had been. “Ah,” he said, slowly backing away. “Well, you know, difficulty can be a little relative.” With his back hoof, he flipped the trowel into the air and prepared to catch it. It never came.
The butler, who was looking quite craggy and considerably larger than he had a few moments ago, nodded to a spot right behind the Doctor. The Time Lord turned to find a very large stony pony standing directly over him, doing his best to keep to the shadows. “Ah. You know, you’re much quieter than one might expect.”
“You will come quietly.”
“Alright, alright…” the Doctor raised his hooves in the air. “It’s a fair cop, guv.” He grinned cheekily. “Always wanted to say tha’ at least once.”
“Put your hooves down.”
The Doctor’s smile faded as he did as he was told. In the process, one hoof bumped against his ear. Just before his hoof hit the dirt, he tossed the sonic slightly to the side. The gargoyle to his rear poked his flank with the trowel. “All right, all right, I’m goin’...”
The trio trouped away. The only trace that they had been there was the faint glimmer of silver in the grass. Oh, and the footprints. Quite a few of those.


***

Blueblood brooded. It was some ten minutes past the hour, and the Doctor was late. How on Gaea could a stallion billing himself as a “Lord of Time” be this bad at keeping it? The guests were, for the most part, already assembled, apart from a few stragglers who felt that being late could be counted as being fashionable. Punctuality, it is writ, is the politeness of princes, and Blueblood was not an exception. He was ripped from his reverie by an annoyingly shrill giggle, and he glanced about to see where it had come from. Oh. Surprise, surprise. She was here. The white-coated bane of his existence. At least he couldn’t fault her for that irritating laugh he kept hearing. That venomous sound could come from only one mare; Upper Crust. Blueblood’s lip curled. Perhaps he had been a little too hard on Verity. If she’d spent the last week in the company of that gaudy social climber, she had his sympathy. Somewhat. Sort of. Not really. Where was the Doctor?
He pulled back from the hedges and glanced around furtively. Nopony in sight. Good, “Ah, Blueblood, old chap! I didn’t expect you to be back here!”
The prince nearly jumped out of his newly-cleaned Armponi suit. “Oh,” he said, once his heart had resumed something close to its usual pace. “Hello, Fancy.”
The mustachioed stallion beamed at the prince. The noblestallion was irrepressible, Blueblood thought. It was virtually impossible not to like the bounder. He was about the closest thing the prince had ever had to a friend. His wife, on the other hand, was something of a more worrying proposition. Fleur always seemed like something of a self-absorbed ditz, but Blueblood had seen her looking at some ponies with a hard glimmer in her eye that spoke less of brainless attraction and more of calculating fury. He had never seen her cast that look at him; he was certain that he never would. The first he would know of it would be waking up one morning with untraceable poison in his bloodstream.
Fancy was talking again. “Been awhile since we’ve last spoke, what? What’ve you been up to. Hm?”
Blueblood smiled weakly. “Oh, this and that,” he said, waving a hoof vaguely. “There was a bit of a stir at the Gala, you know. Auntie, ah, sent me away for a time.”
Fancy frowned. “Well, steady on. It’s not been so long as all that, has it? Only a month or so, was it not? During that little, ah, affair at the palace?”
“Oh.” Blueblood’s mind raced. “Yes, ah, I suppose it was.  Erm, I’m afraid you must pardon me, old sport. I was waiting for a friend, but he’s quite late.”
“Oh, our mutual friend in medicine! Yes, of course, of course. If things happen to get, ah, "rocky", mind, you need only whistle, and Fleur and I will be there to, ahem, “guide” you through.”
Blueblood stared. Did Fancy know about the gargoyles? Before he could ask, the white stallion had galloped off to rejoin his wife at the punch bowl, where they engaged in a series of heated whispers. Perhaps it would do to look for the Doctor after all. At least it would make him somewhat harder to find…
Blueblood hurried into the hedge maze as quickly as he could, unaware of the creatures observing him from all sides.