Idiot!!
There was no doubt about it, ponies were idiots and couldn't be counted on. There was only one member (and that word was used only for lack of a better one) in Chrysalis's swarm that showed a capacity for such stupidity as to try to turn away curious explorers about to stumble into the changeling hive by approaching them at the entrance and politely asking them to leave.
They inquired what it was he had been doing there, but he only explained that there was nothing to see or do here, and that they should move along. The proof that ponies were stupid? It worked!
It might seem silly to get so worked up over what ended up being a false alarm, but if they had to take those two ponies captive to keep them quiet and someone else came looking for them, they'd have had to relocate again! That was just one offence on a list of many, but his latest, she decided as she stormed through the dimly-lit tunnels of the hive, would be the last. This time she would get rid of that ridiculous fop once and for all!
She remembered the day he arrived, just bumbling into the hive not unlike those he had just repelled did, getting halfway to the throne room before her drones (on her order) thought to seize him. When he was brought before her to explain in exactly what way he'd lost his mind to have not turned back and fled at the first sight of green membranes, he smiled at her.
"Hello! My name is Prince Blueblood, how may I be of service?"
He offered his help. No begging, no pleading, no sign of fear or awareness of his situation whatsoever, just got straight to business and told her he wanted to help her and the swarm with anything he could.
It was an occurrence akin to if she had flown in through the window of the Canterlot Palace throne room, not even in disguise, used Celestia's flank as a pillow, and said "Oh, don't worry about me, just gonna rest here a while. You guys don't mind, do you?"
Chrysalis had lived a long time, even if her swarm couldn't always say the same, and in all her years among so many types of love-sac, she had never seen something like that. Some beings had strange ideas of what changelings got up to, and published creepy, (even by her standards) fetishized stories of how the process of 'extracting love' might be enacted.
While that was certainly an option, it was faster to just bite and drain, storing the cattle to bite them again later.
Anyway, with that in mind, there was the rare deviant who sought out changeling hives in the hopes of being 'captured' to live out some twisted little fantasy, only to be met with a rude awakening. Usually by being bitten. Blueblood proved to not be one of those ponies. There was no lust in his aura, no desire, nothing but this tiny spark in his being, like a dying wick in a jack-o-lantern.
Ponies were stupid, but they had some interesting holidays...
He wasn't even worth the small effort of draining at the time, practically a walking husk, but you wouldn't know it with the way he behaved. Suspicious that his presence was a ruse by Celestia and certain that any reply he could give would be a lie, she didn't ask his reasons, instead using him in no uncertain terms as a pawn to further her schemes. Chrysalis had played along, given him small, simple tasks the least sophisticated drone could carry out, always accompanied by actual drones so she could keep an eye on him. He never complained, setting to every task with such whimsical enthusiasm that she almost thought nearby drones were just a hair stronger than usual.
Then she asked him to do something useful and the blunders began.
She had been offered Prince Blueblood, a high-ranking pony, on a silver platter. To not make use of that to conquer Equestrian society would make her a bigger idiot than the ponies. At least, that's what she'd thought back then. So she tried to use him as an inside pony that would be immune to detection spells, on account of actually being what he appeared to be. She'd set him to tasks that would further her hold on Equestria, but he bumbled it up at every turn!
Seduction! He was supposed to worm his way into the hearts of as many of those wielding Elements of Harmony as possible so that Chrysalis could tear them apart and render their power useless. They were all mares for pity's sake!! The less time she spent thinking about how that went down, the better...
Kidnapping! She watched through her drone's eyes, Blueblood's back-up at the time, as the idiot's captive woke up while he was dragging her.
"Oh, you're awake? I'm Prince Blueblood, pleased to meet you. Actually, could you please return to being unconscious? Your wakefulness is a little inconvenient for me."
And the mare he abducted, like a stupid pony, tried to comply. It might have been more accurate to say that she closed her eyes and didn't resist, occasionally peeking through narrow eye-slits to see where he was taking her, or oogle his bulging equine muscle structure from behind.
The horror of not having an exoskeleton...
Anyway, Chrysalis didn't need to be there herself to read the mare's aura, to see what she really thought of the situation. In some twisted kind of luck, the few who saw Blueblood dragging her around must have thought the same thing, smirking behind their hooves or turning red and looking away. He made it all the way to the designated storage unit unopposed, and that mare's fantasizing alone fed the swarm for days.
It wasn't a changeling's best source of sustenance, but the disappointment bleeding from her when they took the blindfold off on the day they let her go (ponies might be stupid, but killing wastes food) was some the sweetest Chrysalis had ever tasted. Which is doubly odd for disappointment, typically quite bitter.
But that didn't excuse Blueblood's recklessness!
Stealing! Again, the drone keeping tabs on the prince was the means by which she witnessed his idiocy. He walked right up to the shop keeper in possession of the Alicorn Amulet.
"I would like that emblem, please."
"Why, certainly, Your Highness!"
"Much appreciated!"
She watched in silent disbelief as he paid full price for the trinket.
"I'll be sure to come here again for my next robbery!"
"Sure thing, see y-... Did he say 'robbery'?"
It turned out they couldn't even use the damn thing. Pony magic didn't work for her, no matter her form, and Blueblood just didn't have the juice to make a difference. Though, while wearing it, he was just a little more... What was the word? Not intolerable? Bearable, perhaps. Once while she was scolding him for being an idiot again, he almost snapped back at her.
They eventually ended up refunding the amulet, thinking it must not have been as powerful as legends said. Not two months later, they heard about a lone unicorn taking over a town with it.
Blueblood was an idiot, but she'd refused to squander the opportunity having him in her employ surely offered, she just had to figure out what it was! There were times she suspected he was just a ploy by Celestia, planting her own inside pony to undermine the swarm from within, but that the invasion wasn't stopped before Chrysalis could wipe the floor with the fat-flanked sun queen said this probably wasn't the case.
That, and Blueblood's aura was always clean of any sign of deception on his part. No fear, no guilt, no doubt, not even a thrill of the danger doing this would put him in, nothing. He was either innocent, or an unfeeling sociopath, and he was always far too cheerful for her to believe the latter.
More and more through her failed plans, Chrysalis noticed that nopony visibly cared what her pony agent did on his missions, nopony even figuring out that he worked for her. It was strange, because any half-competent investigator probably would have noticed his many, many trips to the badlands, or any of the dark areas changeling membranes had been sighted in. And yet, his arrival never brought with it legions of armed guards, nor princesses wielding magical wrath, nor Twilight Sparkle come to sing a disgusting little tune of friendship. Just Blueblood, smiling and ready for his next task.
But this, this was the last straw.
Stomping into the chamber where he sat waiting for her, it was all Chrysalis could do not to blast him through the nearest wall. "One thing," she hissed, "one little thing I ask from you this time, and you return with nothing!"
He frowned, ears lowered in that stupid, pony, sorry-I'm-a-stupid-pony look. "Forgive me, My Queen, I-"
"The plan was very simple," she went on, "and since you probably don't remember it, I'll go over it again: The Equestria Games start, you sit still and do nothing until given the signal, a small team of drones infiltrate and replace one of the competitors, that drone launches an ice arrow into a cloud to create a distraction, you steal the Crystal Heart during the distraction, which was the signal, and bring it back to me. Which part of that confused you?!"
He lowered his head. "The distraction."
"What?"
"I got distracted."
She grit her fangs to glare at him, but it wasn't enough. She stood up on her hind legs to scream at the ceiling. "AAAGH!! You, Prince Blueblood, are the most incompetent, most brainless, most impossibly stupid pony I have EVER encountered!! Why?! Why can you not do a single thing right?!"
He raised a hoof to point out something she already knew, but she stopped him.
"In the way I intended you to! Why do you continue to exemplify everything a competent agent should not be?! Why do you make-" She stopped, slammed a hoof into the dirt, and let out a long breath. "Why, did you ever even come here?"
He looked her dead in the eye, his expression unreadable, neither of them speaking a word for a long minute. "Do you truly wish to know, My Queen?"
Something in his tone got to her, like he'd been keeping some secret from her over the last year or so. She was sure she heard a faint note of challenge as well. "Yes," she replied with a hint of condescension, "tell me what brought you to me the day we met."
Blueblood nodded. "You may wish to be seated, My Queen, the explanation is lengthy."
Rolling her eyes, she complied only enough to lean on a nearby reclining sac.
He cleared his throat, speaking in a calm, almost detached tone.
"The parents of other foals pushed them to be great, pushed them to make names for themselves, be it in magic, or in the arts, or in show-business, or what-have-you. Mine didn't. I was already the Prince, the ultimate status symbol from the day I was born. They didn't care.
Princess Celestia prides herself as a teacher, even if the only 'successful' student of hers I can name lives miles away and learns more from her friends' insane antics these days. I tried my best in school. Maybe she didn't see in me what she saw in Twilight, and Sunset Shimmer before her, but either way? She didn't care.
Years later, I thought I had found a kindred spirit in Luna, she must have known what it was like to be brushed aside. She did, demonstrated by her tendency to do it to everypony that wasn't her sister for the first few months after her return. Whatever it was that brought her out of her sulk, I had nothing to do with it. Every time I tried to reach out to her, she didn't care.
So I threw myself at my 'peers', those who, surely, I was always meant to grab the attention of. Ultimate status symbol and all, you know? But then, no matter what I said, no matter what I did, they never offered their thoughts, never spoke with me as they would each other. Have you ever seen somepony dragged away by a current? That was what it was like, whatever I did, they'd copy, whatever I said, they'd agree with. They weren't fish in a river, they were the water itself. They didn't care.
One day, I'd had enough, just dropped what I was doing, walked out of the office in which I normally sort out the Day Court's meeting schedule, walked out of the castle, walked out of the city. Nopony asked where I was going, nopony tried to stop me. Nopony cared.
So I walked, hiked down to Ponyville where I'd heard Luna had been saved and rested the night at a local inn. I tried to figure out what was so special about the place Twilight had gone to live, but I suppose it was too late for me by then. Walking around that insipid little town, I realized I didn't care anymore.
So I kept walking, abandoned my plan to drop in on Auntie's favorite and just walked in as straight a line as I could manage as the horizon shifted. I'd walk straight off the edge of the earth, if there was such a thing. I wandered.
There were a few encounters in my travels, but none of them stopped me. It's odd, I thought hydras were supposed to eat ponies on sight, but the one I walked past just stared at me, confused. At least I think it did, I didn't stop to give it a second glance. In hindsight, maybe my behavior (admittedly quite odd, just stoically walking into places) baffled it? That would explain the Diamond Dogs that just watched me walk through their territory and the Ursa Major (or Minor? I didn't care enough to stop and differentiate) that let me walk straight through it's cave. There was a dragon resting on a hill, somewhere. I don't know if it didn't see me or decided that reclining where it had been was more important, but like the creatures that came before, it didn't care, and neither did I.
I found myself in the Badlands. Green slime on stone, black shapes in the sky. I saw some of them disappearing into a crevice not far from me."
Chrysalis spoke softly, connecting the dots herself. "That was the day you wandered in? Just because you could?"
He nodded. "I walked right through the doorway, the green eyes in the dark on me at all times, but not a one moving to stop me. It felt no different to the rest until, to my surprise, I was seized and dragged off."
"When they brought you to me," she mused, "you were smiling."
He smiled once more. "Of course I was. You saw that I was there and ordered your followers to do something about it. You cared."
She stared back at him, momentarily at a loss for words. "I, it's not that I, I mean..." She shook her head, her tone authoritative and her gaze as cold as most any other time she spoke to him. "You were a possible asset, something I could use to further my plans, of course I wasn't just going to let you go!"
As was his annoying habit, he kept smiling at her. "Then you forgive me for not stealing the Crystal Heart?"
"What?!" She scowled at him. "Don't be ridicu-"
He nodded. "Yes, I thought as much. I've had some time to think, since joining you, and a while ago I realized something. All the ponies I met that didn't care I existed? Realistically, why should they?"
She stared back at him, lost.
He shrugged, frowning a little. "Reason. It's not much to ask, is it? Just something to connect one action to another, something to make an effort worth pursuing. Nopony responded to me before because I didn't give them enough of a reason to, nopony cared what I did because they had reasons to care more about other things. It wasn't that everypony was just so hollow that they couldn't be bothered to engage me at all, it was that, well, who could honestly stop and be friendly with every single being they meet? We either give others a reason to care we exist, or they plain don't, that's all there is to it. Nopony is truly at fault for that, are they? We live our lives, they live theirs, and if they should just never happen to overlap, for even the briefest moments, that's simply how the cards are dealt."
Blueblood smiled again, but without a hint of the mirth she'd come to know from him. "You've allowed my presence among the swarm this long because you thought I could be of use to you, because having me at your disposal would potentially make your goals easier to achieve. Mercenary as it sounds, I know even the closest friends and tightest-knit families can work the same way, helping each other not because they strictly want to, but because there's something to be gained for all involved. Looking back, while I think things have generally turned out alright in the jobs you've sent me on, you quite disagree, and have no further reason to keep me around." He chuckled humorlessly. "I learned a lot here, Chrysalis, so for whatever it's worth, thank you."
He stepped back, bowed to her, and turned to leave, likely for the last time.
Chrysalis stood in something like shock, just watching him go. Then, she found her voice, pointing to him with a hoof. "Stop right there!"
Quite familiar with the note of irritation in her voice, he stopped, turning to look over his shoulder at her with a hint of alarm. "Yes?"
Flicking her head to the side to blow a stray strand of hair aside, she paced toward him. "First of all, I never said you were dismissed. Second, you know far too much about the hive to be allowed to leave indefinitely. Third," she walked in front of him, turning around to look him in the eye, "I alone decide when I'm done with you, for whatever reasons I so wish. Understand?"
Her tone was, for a scolding, surprisingly gentle. He looked up at her for a long moment, and bowed his head. "Yes, My Queen."
"Chrysalis," she snapped, walking past him again to return to the throne room, "I'm tired of you talking like one of the drones. Now come with me, my spies are reporting ponies getting drained of their magic and I want to know what's going on."
Moving to follow her, Blueblood smiled. She cares.
Author's Note
At the stage Blueblood was in when he was wandering, he was pretty much thinking "I will find one being in the world that cares I exist, and dedicate my life to them." If Pinkie had found him in Ponyville and rolled out the Welcome Wagon the day he happened through, giving him an answer to "who could honestly stop and be friendly with every single being they meet?", this would have been a very different story. I can think of three AU's not counting the Pinkie possibility off the top of my head:
Him wandering through Sweet Apple Acres. "Uh, howdy. What're ya doin' here, Mister?"
Passing Fluttershy's cottage. "Oh, e-excuse me, uhm... H-hello there, are you lost? Do you need something?"
And my personal favorite; wandering through a rock farm! "Sedimentary."
He turned, speaking for the first time in days. "Pardon me?"
"That rock you're standing on. It's sedimentary."
"...Do tell?"
Also, you're probably wondering a little about the interaction with Luna alluded to in the story. Truth be told, I'm thinking that while he might have made an effort, BB wouldn't have tried that hard to befriend her, maybe only trying to start conversation three or four times before giving up. I imagine it this way because in the more realistic "I am a person with thoughts and feelings" portrayals I'm going for here, I don't think Luna would just shrug off the whole Nightmare Moon incident in a blink. In addition to Luna being hard to approach (if only at first) in the show, this makes BB's efforts more about bad timing than either of them truly just not caring about one another.
Although, him getting through to her is one more AU possibility, I guess!
