“Finally!” The Doctor rounded on his companions as they finally caught up to him in the middle of the forest. He chose to ignore the upset looks on their faces and the way neither would even look in the other’s general direction. “We’d best get going, before the trail goes cold!” Turning again, he quickly headed off, the other two following silently in his hoofsteps.
Derpy shot a nervous glance at Tick Tock, wondering silently if she’d been too harsh with him. He was certainly silent now, though she couldn’t tell if the silence was contemplative or… something else. She couldn’t see his face at all.
Until he suddenly glanced at her, green gaze concerned. Flushing, she quickly looked away.
“Oh, no…”
“What is it, Doctor?” Derpy asked quickly, glad for the distraction, even if it sounded like bad news.
“The trail splits here,” the Doctor answered, pointing a hoof to the trees. “See? One path seems to go left, while the other’s headed straight on.”
With a thoughtful “Huh,” Derpy rose into the air, examining the trees on both ways. Finally, she descended, announcing, “It looks like the more recent one was the one straight ahead, but there’s no way to be sure that that’s the one the thing that took our tour guide took - another one might have passed by more recently.”
The Doctor blew a whistling breath between his teeth. “Okay, then, looks like we’ll have to split up. Derpy, since you’ve got the wings and can see the branches up close easier, I suggest you take the path on the left. Tick Tock and I will go on ahead. Regroup here in, oh, say, fifteen minutes.”
Derpy nodded cautiously. “Okay, Doctor.”
“Be careful.” The admonition came from Tick Tock, not the Doctor, like she’d expected. Derpy hesitated before giving him a quick nod, too, and took off.
The Doctor gave Tick Tock a cardboard smile. “Well, come on, then!” He trotted on ahead, and with one last look after the gray mare, Tick Tock followed.
After a few minutes of silence, broken only by ill-fitting percussive hoofbeats, Tick Tock finally spoke up. “Erm, Doctor?”
“Yes, Tock?” the Doctor responded in the stretched-out way he always talked when pretending not to be nervous.
“Derpy mentioned an earlier adventure you’d been on,” the unicorn explained, casting a suspicious glance into the underbrush at a small scampering noise that turned out to be a harmless rodent. “Something about a ‘huge dragon thing that was trying to destroy the multiverse’?”
“Ah, yes, the Jabberwock,” the Doctor answered sagely. “That was quite a story, I assure you!”
Tick Tock spoke over the end of the Doctor’s words. “She said you let it live.”
The Doctor stopped in his tracks. After a moment, he sighed, and his voice no longer retained the silly higher pitch he maintained mostly for Derpy’s sake. “We stopped him,” he said quietly. “He’s not coming back.”
“But isn’t that always going to be a threat?” Tick Tock asked, coming up to stand alongside the Doctor. “Why take the chance?”
When the Doctor hesitated, Tick Tock pressed further. “I know you’re a soldier, too, Doctor. I know what a soldier’s eyes look like. You must have known you were taking an astronomical risk in letting that thing live.”
Sighing again, the Doctor started to walk, with an air that said he didn’t want Tick Tock to see his face as he spoke. “You’re right, Tick Tock. I am a soldier. Back in my universe, an enormous war broke out. We called it the Last Great Time War.”
“What happened?” Tick Tock asked apprehensively, following a few paces behind the Doctor.
For a long moment, it almost seemed as though the Doctor had no intention of answering. Just when Tick Tock had given up on getting an answer, he heard, “I killed them.”
“What?”
“I killed them.” Tick Tock’s eyes widened at the Doctor’s shift in tone. While he’d been somber before, he now sounded utterly despondent. “The Daleks, the Time Lords… I killed them all. I’m the last one of my people left.” Even without seeing his face, the ginger pony could hear the grim smile in the other stallion’s voice. “Lucky me.”
Tick Tock froze for several seconds, unable to formulate a response. The Doctor stopped, too, waiting, but never turned. Finally, Tick Tock blurted out, “H-How can you carry on like this? Smiling, laughing, while -?!” He stopped, not wanting to go further. Not wanting to say the Doctor had the blood of two races on his hooves.
The implication was pretty clear, but the Doctor didn’t respond to it. “I learned an important lesson that day. All life, no matter how seemingly stupid or insignificant, is so incredibly important. And I refuse to squander that.”
He finally turned, letting his companion see his face, as he smiled the saddest smile Tick Tock had ever seen, looking for all the world like a depressed clown. “Besides, that’s why I travel with companions. You keep me honest - remind me of what I need to be reminded of.”
“I can see why Derpy would help you with that,” Tick Tock admitted. “But… why me?”
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer. Before he could get a word out, though, a frighteningly familiar scream ripped through the air. Panic flashed through both stallions’ eyes, and without a word to each other, they both took off at a dead sprint. But by the time they got to where the noise came from, it was too late.
A few gray feathers lay scattered on the forest floor. Derpy was gone.
*o*o*o*o*
“Not good, not good, not good!” The Doctor was frantic, pacing back and forth across the clearing. “She could be anywhere - how are we going to find her in a dense rainforest on an alien planet?!”
“Doctor,” interrupted Tick Tock, ever the level-headed voice of reason. “You’re-”
“Oh, thank Adis!” another voice broke in. “We found somepony!”
Both stallions turned their heads and regarded the new arrivals. It appeared to be a small family - led by one rather creepy-looking stallion with a brilliant violet coat, set at odds with the bones that lay on the outside of his skin. The other, oddly enough, appeared to be an average Crystal Pony. Their two fillies were… an strange sight to behold.
“Are you searching for the creatures that have been abducting tour guides?” the skeletal pony asked, stopping as his husband herded their children behind him as though afraid the two stallions would hurt them.
It seemed to Tick Tock that there seemed to be a lot of that going around lately.
“Ah, yes!” The Doctor beamed. “I suppose you are, as well?”
Tick Tock had to bite back a snort of laughter as he watched the skeleton-pony angle his ears forward in the unicorn’s trademark “I-can’t-smile-so-please-interpret-this-as-one” gesture. Seemed as if smiling was difficult when one’s jaw was in front of their face.
...Speaking of which, just how did he eat?
He’d missed out on part of the conversation as he mused over the strange pony’s anatomy. He tuned back in as the Doctor trotted towards the broken branches above. “...but when we got here, she was already gone.”
“How do we track her?” the Crystal Pony spoke up suddenly, helping his smaller filly climb up onto his back.
“I believe I may have a solution.” As he spoke, Tick Tock’s horn ignited, and the shed feathers on the ground rose into the air. They spun for a moment, before all suddenly turning, as one, and gliding away.
“Are they tracking her?” the Doctor asked, sounding equal parts hopeful, intrigued, and excited.
Tick Tock couldn’t give a wry grin, so instead he simply attempted to communicate the expression with his eyes. “You wouldn’t believe how many times Lightwing ran off to do something stupid during battle, and we had to track him like this.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” With a crazed grin, the Doctor took off into the bushes at a run, the others close on his heels. Tick Tock’s gaze was fixed intently on the feathers leading their way. Would she be all right?
Would he ever get to tell her he was sorry?
*o*o*o*o*
Her eyes opened to find green light filtering through the branches overhead. Was it just her, or were they woven?
Where was she?
She sat up, golden eyes scanning her perimeter. She seemed to be in some kind of a hut. There was a tree trunk passing through the center, but it didn’t seem to be on ground level.
She stood, just as an enormous, looming shadow appeared on the leaves covering the door. Derpy’s eyes widened, skewing even more, as the covering was pushed aside and a huge creature filled the doorframe. “W-What are you going to do to me?!”
*o*o*o*o*
They’d been running for nearly two solid minutes. The fillies were both being carried by their rapidly-tiring fathers, and even the Doctor was starting to feel the air burn his lungs as he sucked it in. He thought the first one to slow (after the fillies, of course) would have been Tick Tock, but the other stallion gave no outwards signs of fatigue - only determination. He might have been fighting with her before, but nothing was going to stop Tick Tock from getting Derpy back now.
He abruptly stopped as the feathers fell to the floor once more. “We’re here.”
The other two ponies were more than happy to stop and catch their breath. The Doctor, meanwhile, pushed forward even as his legs quaked to get a better look.
Ahead of them lay a treetop village of some kind. The creatures inhabiting it were very strange. About twice as tall as a normal pony, they were clawed, similarly to a sloth, and seemed to have an easily adjustable center of balance for climbing, as well as a flexible spine.
There was no sign of any of the tour guides, or of Derpy, but this was unmistakably where the feathers had led.
“Is Orange Cream gonna be okay?” A small voice piped up, catching both stallion’s attention. One of the fillies had wandered over to ask them a question, and was now regarding them with big, shining lavender eyes.
The Doctor felt kind of bad that he hadn’t asked their tour guide’s name.
“Hard to say,” Tick Tock answered bluntly as he returned to peering through the foliage. “There’s no sign of anypony out there, though they may just be inside one of the huts.”
Shooting the tactless unicorn a dirty look, the Doctor looked at the filly with his best attempt at a reassuring expression, adopting the voice he used when talking to foals. “Don’t worry - we’ll find Orange Cream, I promise.”
The filly looked rather uncertain, but she nodded and turned, trotting back to one of her fathers. With an annoyed sigh, the Doctor turned to look back at Tick Tock, who was already speaking to him again. “It looks as if the only way up to those huts is to climb the tree, so ascending would definitely pose some difficulty.”
“Well, we could always-” the Doctor began. He was cut off, however, as something caught his eye. “Hang on, isn’t that our tour guide?”
Sure enough, the familiar pony who’d led them into the forest in the first place was striding out from behind a tree now, with one of those odd… things loping alongside her.
With a grin, the Doctor broke through the tree line, calling out, “Hello there!”
Glancing up, startled, the pony blinked a few times before smiling back. “Hey! You’re from my tour, aren’t you?”
“Yes, we are,” Tick Tock responded, following the Doctor. “I don’t suppose there are any other tour guides here?”
“Oh, almost all of them are!” the pony responded, enthusiasm glowing from her face. “This is so exciting - the race that left all of our extensive ruins are still alive!” Turning to the creature with her, she explained (presumably in a different language) what was happening.
“So Orange Cream’s all right?” asked the older filly as her family finally emerged into the clearing.
With a nod, the pony turned, calling, “Hey, Orange Cream!”
Several paces away, another pony with a brilliant orange coat and white eyes turned, fixing his green gaze quizzically on her. “Yes, Rose Hip?” When he spotted the small family, he broke into a grin. “Hey, it’s you guys!”
With high-pitched shrieks of laughter, the fillies darted over to Orange Cream, their grinning parents following behind.
“So, this race has been on this planet for, oh, I don’t know, probably thousands of years, and you never noticed until now?” the Doctor burst out with a question.
Rose Hip flicked her ears back uneasily. “Well, until now, they’d been hidden under the surface of their ruins. They only came out now because somepony wanted a souvenir, and they were alerted when their stuff was disturbed.”
Tick Tock interrupted with a far more relevant question. “Have you seen-?”
“Doctor!”
A gray streak shot through the air, nearly bowling the brown stallion over. Derpy wrapped her forelegs tightly around the stallion’s withers as he chuckled. “Hey, Derpy, nice to see you too.”
She let go and turned with a grin to Tick Tock, but froze just before offering him the same greeting. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, anything, to make this right.
No words came.
Rose Hip was having another discussion with the creature beside her. Then, with a smile, she turned back to the three time-travellers. “You three have certainly had an exciting day! How about I lead you guys out of here so you can relax?”
Derpy nodded, giving Rose Hip a shy smile. “That sounds like a good idea to me.”
*o*o*o*o*
Derpy watched as Rose Hip chatted animatedly with a group of ponies from the nearby resort, the Doctor at her side as they attempted to explain what they’d discovered. Any other day, it would have brought a smile to her lips.
She sighed instead. This was getting ridiculous. Maybe she was acting like a filly. Maybe she should-
“Derpy?”
She jumped as a familiar voice startled her out of her thoughts. “O-Oh, Tick Tock!”
He was standing rather awkwardly, expression nervous. He was also trying - and failing - to conceal a package behind his back. She raised an eyebrow, but ultimately chose to pretend not to see his glowing green horn.
“I, er…” He blew out a breath before meeting her gaze. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. And I know that that doesn’t even begin to make up for what happened, but… I swear, it was a mistake I will do my best to never repeat again. After all,” and he flicked his ears in an anxious version of his usual smile substitute, “if the Doctor can do it, so can I.”
Derpy looked at his tense, but hopeful gaze and couldn’t help but smile. “It’s all right,” she reassured him. “I understand - the way you grew up couldn’t have been easy. I forgive you.”
Relief settled over his features, what little tension his muscles would allow fading. “Thank you.” Pulling the package from behind him, he added, “I, um, got you something. T-To smooth things over.”
Derpy giggled a little. “You didn’t have to do that,” she informed him, even as he settled the white box in front of her. She lifted the lid off and blinked at its contents.
“You… you said you liked the color green, so…”
Derpy smiled at him, wider than before, her beautiful honey-gold eyes meeting his startlingly green ones. “It’s perfect.”
He lifted the green scarf from the box. He hesitated, but at her nod, settled the fabric about her neck, wrapping it in a quick knot at the bottom.
“Well, now that’s settled!” the Doctor declared, rejoining the group. He blinked at Derpy’s new neckwear, surprised. “My word, Derpy, that’s a lovely scarf!”
Derpy gave him a grin, peeking at Tick Tock from the corner of her eye. “It is, isn’t it?”
*o*o*o*o*
It wasn’t until they were back on the TARDIS that Tick Tock realized. Watching Derpy head towards her room, he asked, “Hey, Doctor? You never answered my question before. I see how Derpy can help you, but what about me?”
The Doctor simply gave him an erratic smile. “Why, Tick Tock, who’s to say I’m so selfish as to need two ponies for that?”
It was then that Tick Tock finally understood. The Doctor had chosen Tick Tock to travel with him because he reminded the much older pony of himself.
If Derpy had helped one, she could certainly help the other. As the thought crossed his mind, he felt his atrophied muscles tug in an automatic attempt to form, for the first time in a very long time, a genuine smile.