"When I was just a little colt, Mother would tell me all kinds of fairy stories. She told me about the breezies, and how they're so weak that they need the help of all Equestria just to survive. She told me these great, sweeping epics about the elk, how they appeared at all the most important parts of our history to make sure things went our way. But my favorite stories were always about the frost-kin.
"With every other fairy, there seemed to be some kind of weakness, some flaw that made them... I don't know, less than perfect. Elk were always so proud, breezies were tiny and frail, wisps had no love for ponies like me, and so on and so forth. But the frost-kin had no such flaws. To them, it never mattered if a pony was rich or poor, ugly or beautiful, if they had a horn or wings. They were just... good."
The prince poured himself another glass of cider. It was a soft cider, barely strong enough to give one a buzz, but a seventh glass of cider was still a seventh glass of cider no matter how little the hangover. It looked as though Blueblood wanted very much to be drunk, even if he didn't have all of the right tools. What was worse, one couldn't clearly tell why; perhaps he wanted to forget this conversation, once it was over. Perhaps he wanted to let himself be angrier than decorum and high society's rigorous training would allow. Perhaps, his guest dared to hope, he simply wanted to be more comfortable.
The why of the drinking was not important to Double Diamond. It was the what, the very action, that was so distressing to him. Of all the reactions he could have expected from Blueblood, this was the most depressing.
"Did it ever bother you?" he asked, cautiously nursing his own first glass of cider. "That the frost-kin cared for the poor just as much as they did for the rich?"
"Why should it?" Blueblood took a big sip of his cider before continuing. "The rich have bodyguards, counter-assassins and insurance. The poor subsist on a barter system and live on the most undeveloped fringes of Auntie's empire. They need all the help they can get."
Double Diamond cocked an eyebrow. "Uh, dude, nearly all of Canterlot's food is imported from the 'undeveloped fringes'. And if you only count good food, then all of it comes from outside."
The prince laughed, a surprisingly lively and booming sound for such a tired stallion. "You misunderstand, good sir. I do not use undeveloped as a slur, rather as something to be celebrated. In any case, good food is hardly a counter-argument to that label. A juicy apple plucked fresh from a towering tree is much better than that pulped and pressed mess we call a hayburger." He grinned, and held up his glass in a glittering golden aura. "This very cider you and I are drinking was imported from Appleloosa, and one hardly gets less developed than that!"
Diamond chuckled despite himself, and took another sip. It certainly tasted drier than what he'd had during his Ponyville visit, though he'd be the first to admit he knew nothing about cider. "You've got a good point, Your Highness."
Blueblood sputtered just a little around his glass, setting it down so fast that Diamond almost thought his magic had stopped. "None of that highness business, please! I get enough of that brown-nosing from these gussied-up nouveau riche types." He gestured at the rest of the club, and Diamond smiled like a doofus at the counts and lords that kept shooting them envious glares. They rolled their eyes at him, but he didn't care; to them, he was just some country bumpkin.
"Well, what else would I call you, if not highness?"
"You know my name, don't you?" The glass was nearly empty now. Diamond listened with half an ear to the background hubbub, trying to tell if the waitress was already approaching.
"Dude, even babies know your name. It's just, I don't know... you always struck me as a bit of a stickler for protocol."
"Not between friends, good sir." Blueblood smiled, and it seemed a more knowing smile than his usual glassy-eyed smolder.
"Friends, huh?" Diamond broke eye contact, looking down at his glass and the shimmering, broken reflection in the cider. "Are we friends, though? I mean, we don't really know each other that well."
Blueblood's glass clinked down on the table, empty except for the half-melted ice cubes. "You saved my life. In my book, that means you can call me whatever you damn well please."
The room didn't actually grow any more quiet when the prince said those words. Conversations didn't stop, records didn't scratch to a halt, and glass didn't quietly shatter from the sheer vacuum caused by a truly overwhelming silence.
But to Double Diamond, it felt like all of that did happen.
"You... really do remember me."
Blueblood raised an eyebrow, and put his hoof over the glass to stop the waitress from refilling it. "How could I not? An event like that, it does rather stick in the memory."
Diamond waited for the waitress to leave before speaking up. "Yeah, but... you were just a kid, dude. When a..." he looked around and lowered his voice, "a fairy helps out a foal, usually ponies grow up and forget about us, or decide that we must have been some kind of imaginary friend."
"I would never diminish you like that." Diamond couldn't fight back a blush as Blueblood reached a hoof across the table to lay it over his own. "If you hadn't been there, I would have died." The look in the prince's eyes grew distant, as though he were looking into the past.
"It was a family ski trip. My parents were much more chipper in those days, always throwing themselves into the kinds of thrills that only the rich can really enjoy. I was too young to join them on the slopes, so I spent most of the trip making snow ponies and playing with the other foals. Well, trying to play with them." He gave an embarrassed laugh. "I was a rather proud little fool. Prouder, in some ways, than I am today. In hindsight, I must have been quite insufferable."
"I remember a very funny colt," Double Diamond cut in, putting his other hoof over Blueblood's. "It felt like everything you said was a joke, and you just kept smiling when I laughed."
"Yes, well." Blueblood grinned, a slight blush coloring his snowy white cheeks. "I was mostly just happy that somepony was sticking around for more than five minutes. For the first time in my life, I cared too much about a pony to hold them to my standards."
Diamond giggled, and took a moment to just look into the other stallion's eyes. "That was a good day."
Blueblood nodded slowly, and for a moment it seemed as though he was leaning closer. "Yeah." He pulled away only by about a hair's breadth, but it felt much further. "Not such a good night, though."
"It was so cold, even I felt it." Diamond decided not to mention the fact that he had been gleefully dancing on the snowflakes as they fell before he realized there was a pony freezing to death underneath him.
"Imagine how I felt." Blueblood gripped the glass in his magic again, but didn't lift it. "Mother and Father were... being a mother and father on a vacation. As a child, I decided that meant no bedtime, and that I could play outside for as long as I wanted. And when we visited beaches or rinky-dink towns, that was all fine and good. Not so much when you're in the Smoky Mountains during a blizzard."
"So much snow, you couldn't see more than two inches in front of your face." Diamond shivered despite himself. "So much, it sounded like you were a world away when I could have reached out and touched you."
"Until you showed up. It was like a curtain parting around me. I went from being alone, cold and terrified, to being right next to my only friend." The smile was so warm, Diamond worried that he might melt. "And do you know, there was something quite unusual that I noticed in that moment."
Diamond dared to lean forward, more than enough that Blueblood would be able to notice. "What did you notice, Blue?"
The prince leaned forward, inching closer and closer until Diamond could feel Blueblood's hot breath on his ear. "You were standing on thin air."
"Oh." It wasn't much, considering Diamond had come right out and told kid Blueblood that he was a fairy on the way back to the lodge, but it was still embarrassing to realize that he'd missed such an obvious detail. "Well, now I'm kind of sad it wasn't daylight when I ran into you there."
"And why is that?" Blueblood had pulled just far away enough that they were eye to eye.
"Because then, I could have said I was walking on sunshine just to see you again." Diamond cracked a smile at his own joke.
There was a moment, where it seemed like neither of them had any idea what to say. Then Blueblood chuckled, and pressed his nose against Diamond's. "For a guardian angel, good sir, you are quite the dolt."
Diamond blushed as red as the rising sun. "Heh. Yeah, I've never really had much of a way with words. Was always better at... actions." He remembered a staff, hurled through the air to strike a glass vault.
"Now, now, you mustn't sell yourself short. I didn't say I disapproved, by any means." Diamond felt his heart skip a beat as Blueblood licked his lips. "But, if you're so much more confident in your actions, I can oblige you. Clearly, there's something you want to do."
"Is it that obvious?"
"It's been almost twenty years, frost-kin. Long enough that you were worried I would forget you. Anyone could see there's something weighing on you. And do you know what I think?" He pulled away by just a fraction, and any hint of a smile disappeared. "I think there's something you regret."
"A lot of things, really." He remembered the village, its every aspect cast in a much more different light than when he lived there. "I've... been in a bad place, for a long time. There's a lot about myself that I forgot, stuff I've been trying to learn again. The other day, I remembered you." Diamond felt a few tears running down his cheeks. "And it broke me, because I realized I had forgotten you."
He turned and stared at his own flank. His cutie mark sparkled back at him, and he shivered at the thought that he had once been ashamed of it. Ashamed of his talents, his passions, his very identity. Without the mark, he couldn't ski, couldn't snowboard, couldn't even walk on the snow without sinking into it. Glimmer's spell may as well have turned him into an earth pony.
Once it was back, and she was gone, it had finally sank in. He had spent days dancing in the wild snowstorms of the untamed north, darting between the blizzards and skating in the sky. And then, unbidden, a memory of a child crying in the cold dark had come screaming back into his mind.
"It's okay," Blueblood spoke up, and Diamond returned to the present. "Ponies move on, we grow up. You don't need to feel guilty about forgetting me. We only had the one day."
"But it was one of the best days of my life," Diamond snapped. "And I never stopped thinking about how much I..." his voice trailed off, lost in the memories, "how much I wished it wasn't just that one day."
"Really?" the prince asked. "You... you wanted to be my friend for more than just that day?" Diamond hadn't seen a face so confused since the village. "Then, why didn't you stay?"
There it was. The question that every fairy got asked, eventually. "Because I thought it was wrong. Because saving colts and fillies from the cold is my nature, and I thought it wasn't right to choose only one colt to watch over. Because I didn't know I would never be so happy to see a pony smile again. I didn't know I was in love."
A second too late, he realized that he was saying those words. He watched the shock manifest on Blueblood's face, and the blush tint those snowy cheeks. He stared into those deep blue eyes, searching for any clue about what the next words out of the prince's mouth would be.
"Love, eh?" It seemed for a second as though the prince were about to laugh, but that energy was drained from his voice by the next breath. He looked down at his glass. "You really feel that for me?"
Diamond nodded desperately, not trusting himself to speak.
"So, you came here. As I said, there's something you want to do." Blueblood smiled, and his eyes flicked up to look into Diamond's. "Show me."
A kiss is a very simple action. All one has to do is press one set of lips against another. To someone who has danced in storms without the wings of a pegasus, overthrown a cult leader and saved countless children from all the ravages of winter, it should have been a very easy thing indeed.
Kissing Prince Blueblood was the hardest thing that Double Diamond had ever done.
"I love you," he dared to whisper.
"Thank you," Blueblood whispered back. "I love you too."
It was easier the second time.
