//------------------------------// // Chapter IX - Heartsick // Story: The Early Life of Blueblood // by Macgyver644200 //------------------------------// Spike checked his watch again, groaned, and began looking around the fairgrounds again. He'd already spent all of his money, and it had started raining, so now all he could do was wait for Blueblood and his date to finish. As he had been doing for the past hour. Which was boring him out of his mind. "YOU JERK!" Spike perked up and stopped the watch. A few seconds later, an angry, yellow, cake-splattered mare stormed by. "How's your-" "Don't ask!" The mare stopped and sighed. "I'm so sorry, Spike. It's just," she pointed to the white stallion vigorously wiping punch off of himself with napkins, "how in the world do you cope with that, that..." "Utter troll?" Spike shrugged. "I wish I had a foolproof method," he told her, "but sometimes the only way to win is just not to play." "You got that right." The mare took a deep breath. "Well, you have a nice day." She glared at Blueblood. "Somepony should." She bowed to Spike and stormed off. Spike grimaced as Blueblood walked over. "How'd she do?" "Three hours, fourteen minutes. Did you really have to do all that? She seemed really nice." Blueblood frowned at Spike. "You didn't have to sit through her or three years of her predecessors." Spike's eyebrow rose. "My previous dates," Blueblood explained. "Oh." Spike frowned. "I sat through Spark Plug." Blueblood hmmed. "Ah, yes you did. Again, I'm so sorry you saw that." Spike shivered. "But still, this one seemed pretty nice." Blueblood turned a vendor and purchased a bottle of purified water. "Spike, when you're older, you're going to have to learn how to tell when someone actually loves you and when they just think they love you. She may have been a nice woman, but all she saw in me was a squib, very-soon-to-be-duke, whose jerkish personality hides a broken heart of gold that she can bring out. Intentions only go so far." Blueblood dipped a few napkins into the water and started rubbing through his mane. "And anypony who only explodes after I douse them with cake is nopony I want to spend the rest of my life with." Spike grabbed a napkin and joined Blueblood. "Then why do you go out with them?" "In the futile hope that such girls will understand if I make myself seem un-date-able enough. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be working." Spike threw a napkin in the trash. "Why don't you just ask Cadance to find somepony who'd like you for you?" "Because that seems a little extreme." Blueblood threw the rest of the napkins away. "A pity Lyra moved away." Spike's eyebrow rose. "I thought she wasn't interested in you." Blueblood glared at him. "She wasn't. But she probably knows a few mares who won't fawn over me." He sighed. "In any case, it'd be nice to know one mare my age who doesn't just pity me right off the bat. Fat chance of that happening, given what everypony knows." Spike stopped. "Something I've been wondering, how did everypony find out you had hypomagia?" Blueblood gave Spike a look. "Something else you'll have to know," he said, "royalty has the best secrecy that money can buy as well as federal resources. So you might as well announce anything you want to keep secret in the town square and get it over with." "But how does everyone find out?" Spike asked. Blueblood shrugged. "Various means. Bribed servants, hidden paparazzi, things like that that are hard to completely block out. It's certain, however, that any of our secrets will get out given time, and thus it's better to try not to have any secrets." Spike didn't seem satisfied by this answer, but let it slide. "Well," Blueblood said, "now that that's done, I can finally get back to work." Blueblood turned to Spike. "Unless you wanted to do something?" "Uh," Spike said, "actually, Twilight and I were going to go get a bite to eat for her birthday. I'd ask you along, but..." "I understand." Blueblood smiled. "That's alright, I've got a lot to do anyways. I'll see you later." Spike smiled. "OK. Have fun!" "I will." With that, Spike turned and set off. Blueblood frowned as Spike walked away, but quickly put a smile back on. "Oh, well," he said as he set off another way. "There'll be other days, and cabbage tariffs wait for no-one." <*> A week later, Celestia was in the middle of court when she got a note from a courier. It's about Blueblood. Come to the kitchens quickly. -Cadance Celestia quickly excused herself from the throne room and ran down the stairs into the now moderately occupied kitchens. There Cadance and Spike were sitting at a servant's table and Celestia noticed a hole in a cabinet and that the floor had recently been mopped. "What's the problem?" Celestia asked. Spike was scowling, his mouth shut tight. Celestia turned to Cadance. "Blueblood's sick," Cadance said. Celestia stared at her. "Blueblood, that's disgusting! Go blow your-no, NO, NOT ON THE TABLECLOTH!" "Blueblood, will you please hold still so I can put the lotion on?" "Oh, I'm sorry, Cadance. I'm just too distracted by this EXCRUCIATING ITCH! "Blueblood, stop groaning about your headache and get ready for school!" "SPIKE, IF YOU DON'T RETURN MY EAR DROPS RIGHT NOW... well why in Tartarus were they on the sink?! Was a foot just too far to move them?" "You're sure?" "I saw it with my own two eyes. Whatever he has this time, it must be a doozy." She reached across the table. "It's OK, Spike," she said. "Blueblood'll come to his senses once he's better." Spike huffed, but said nothing. "What are his symptoms?" Celestia asked. "Well, he didn't whine about anything, so I'm guessing one of the symptoms was a sore throat. His nose was red, so it's possible that he has sinus problems. Also, the lymph nodes in his neck were swollen." Cadance's mouth pinched shut. "Spike pointing them out was what started the tantrum." Celestia nodded. "Well, it's a start. Now comes the hard part." "Blueblood had his flu and strangles shots a few weeks ago," Cadance said, "so it's probably not those." "That's not the problem," Celestia said. "Now we have to get him to see a doctor." <*> “Hello, my dear nephew.” Blueblood quickly shushed Celestia as she entered his room, two glasses of colorful drink in tow. “I'm right in the middle of this,” he whispered, motioning to the books in front of him. Celestia nodded. “Oh, I see,” she whispered as she sat down next to him. Blueblood looked over at her, as she just smiled back. He kept reading and taking notes, but the pressure on the side of his head built and he eventually put his quill down. “Is there something you wanted?” Celestia shrugged. “Well, I was in the kitchen today and I thought that I’d try my hoof at culinary matters again. I tried mixing punch, and I think that this has actually turned out pretty well. Please, try some.” Blueblood nervously put his hoof around the glass and lifted it. He looked up at his aunt and there she stood, same sweet smile on her face. "I was supervised," she said. "Give it a try." Slowly, Blueblood put the glass to his mouth and sipped some of the glass’s contents. It actually tasted really good. Suddenly, Celestia’s hoof was over his mouth, her smile gone. “Swallow it,” she commanded. Blueblood focused on his horn, trying desperately to get his horn to do something, but nothing. He tried to spit, but Celestia’s hoof wouldn’t let him. Finally, hesitantly, he swallowed. Instantly, he put a hoof to his throat with a moan. "As I thought." Celestia removed her hoof, sanitizing it with magic. “You’re going to see a doctor, Blueblood. No excuses.” <*> Doctor House Call diagnosed it as strangles (which Celestia was quick to explain as strep throat to a freaked-out Spike). Blueblood would be fine, but he was highly contagious, and was thus confined to his room. A few days later, several staff members were taking sick days and isolating themselves. But the worst came after the news had broken. As soon as they had heard, the clinic Blueblood got his shots from made a statement that Blueblood had not been seen in their office for a year, and had preemptively pulled their doctors' patient records to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt (no action was taken). Simply put, Celestia was livid, a condition that only grew three days after the diagnosis. The respectable newspapers had buried it under actual news, but the story still had a blurb on every newspaper she'd come across. The tabloids just put it on the front page: "Blueblood Not Allowed to Get Shot for Strangles!" Thankfully, the source for that quote had come forward and Celestia did not doubt that his words had been twisted. She was still very irritated at him, though the true target of her rage was not allowed out of his room. Her breakfast untouched, Celestia took care to tear each of the tabloids into confetti-sized pieces in full view of the windows before she got up from the table. Celestia dawdled on the way up, taking deep breaths to try and calm herself. She wasn't a violent mare, and she was perfectly capable of getting angry without causing a scene. Plenty of ponies annoyed or frustrated her every day. Dealing with that was easy. However, there were possibly four or five people who could infuriate her, and all but one had been safely dealt with. 'And given everything that has transpired,' Celestia thought to herself, 'he'll be lucky to-' CRASH! Celestia stopped just outside Blueblood's room and struggled to compose herself. That sounded like a window, and given the time, Celestia would've bet the souls of every single one of her citizens that it had been smashed by a bowl of oatmeal. "Alright, Blueblood," Cadance said, "I've tried being nice, and that's clearly not working. What do I have to do to get you to cool it? If you keep going, the staff are probably going to kill you." "What do you care?" Blueblood rasped. "Everyone's going to die on you anyways. Rafter already did. Twilight and Shining Armor will. Might as well get it-" Celestia slammed the door open. "BLUEBLOOD, THAT'S ENOUGH!" Celestia stomped into the room. She could vaguely hear the floor cracking under her hooves, but couldn't bring herself to lighten her step. Cadance and Spike jumped back at the sight of her. Blueblood, however, only glared at her. It was only with the greatest of effort that Celestia did not immediately smite him from existence. "Blueblood," she hissed, "throughout your entire life, I have never been as mad at you as I am right now. You lied to me about your shots. You lied to me about your illness. You infected several other members of my staff. And now you've quite possibly said the cruelest thing you've ever said in your life. If you want me to utterly destroy you, please, keep going. If, however, you have a shred of self-preservation left in that empty skull of yours, then you will behave yourself. Right. Now." "Aunt Celestia." Celestia slowly turned to Spike, who was scowling at a flattened metal gyro-flyer he'd pulled out of Blueblood’s wastebasket. She looked into the basket herself and noticed that crumpled-up pages from several of his journals were in there as well. Suddenly, her scowl vanished. "Oh, no." She turned to Blueblood. “It happened, didn't it?” Blueblood indignantly snatched up the teacup on the tray and started drinking. Unfortunately, he tried to swallow too much, so he started coughing out the bits that had gone down the wrong pipe. When he finished, a full thirty seconds later, he sucked down a breath and tears were coming out of his eyes. He scowled at Celestia, smashed the teacup against a wall, and buried himself under the covers. “Spike, Cadance," Celestia said, "would you mind waiting outside for a moment?” Spike looked at Celestia, but Cadance escorted him out of the room. With them gone, Celestia walked over to Blueblood's bedside. "How long?" she asked. Blueblood just rolled over to face away from her. Celestia sighed. "Alright. Just call if you want something." Blueblood growled, and she departed, leaving the door open a crack. Cadance and Spike were standing in the hallway looking back at Celestia. Cadance was concerned, Spike still irritated. Celestia closed her eyes. "I should have seen it," she said. Spike looked at Cadance, who didn't say anything. He turned back to Celestia. "So what's wrong with Duke Jackwagon in there?" he asked. Celestia looked at Spike. "Spike, did Cadance ever tell you what happened to Blueblood after you were born, when he found out about his condition?" Spike shrugged. "Not really. I'm guessing he was kinda' moody for a while?" "Spike, Blueblood's entire family's struggled with depression. Basically, it makes them unable to feel like there is anything good in their lives, and they often have periods of anger where they can say hurtful things they don't really mean. Many of them have died young because of it. After Blueblood was diagnosed, we kept a very close eye on him, but aside from a slightly darker mood, he seemed to be taking things much better than past generations. He reacted in much the same way a normal child would. After a few weeks, he was back to the way he usually was, and we thought that was the last of it. Almost all of his ancestors developed it in childhood, often due to their own diagnoses of hypomagia. Since he didn't, I thought he would be alright" She sighed. "Unfortunately, it seems the disease was just biding its time." Spike raised a claw. "Wait, why would it come back now?" "His coronation's coming up," Cadance said. "You think that finally pushed him over the edge?" Celestia nodded. "Maybe. In any case, we're going to need to watch him again. Cadance, you know what to do. Spike, I'm going to have to teach you how to talk to him. First of all, you're going to have to be very patient with him." She looked up at the door. "This is going to take a while."