“You really don't drop by often enough, Doctor,” Celestia said, noting with wry amusement the way that the waitress was eyeing the dishevelled humanoid figure as she placed a silver tray loaded with sandwiches, cakes and other sweet treats on the table. “It's been more years than even I can remember since your last visit.”

The Doctor tilted his head slightly and made a face; an expression which, on his previous face, might've looked sheepish came across as something of a ghastly smirk. “Yes,” he said in a gravelly voice, almost distorted by an accent that the Princess couldn't recognise. “Your world orbits a dimensional riptide. It gets close enough to my universe every few hundred years for the TARDIS to make the voyage safely, otherwise she'd get lost in the void.”

The aforementioned TARDIS, still stuck in its usual form of a battered blue police box, was sitting in the courtyard below them; only Celestia and Luna remembered the Doctor's previous visit to Equestria, so the bizarre object was something of a curiosity for many ponies. Including a purple-coated mare with magenta star-shaped symbols on her flanks. A brief flicker of something crossed Celestia's face when she saw who was accompanying her former student.

“How long have you been in love with her?”

It was a typically-bold opening conversational gambit, the Princess found herself thinking, and her lips paused around the tiny cupcake she had been in the process of inserting in her mouth. The face might change, the personality might be drastically different to what I remember, but still that same keen observational ability. The Doctor could be infuriatingly flippant, but he saw everything; Celestia had no hope of bluffing him, and one glance in the direction of those mad, staring eyes dissuaded her from even making a token effort.

Such things were to be expected whenever he visited Equestria, but Celestia herself didn't like to be so easily scrutinised. It was wise for royalty to be aloof; and while she didn't necessarily play by the rules, she did at least recognise the necessity of maintaining a certain distance from those under her protection. “For far longer than I probably should have been,” Celestia finally admitted, feeling a weight lifting from her shoulders simply from being able to tell someone of her feelings without being judged for it. The cupcake was quickly forgotten. “It happened so quickly. I don't know when exactly fondness turned into affection, and when affection turned into … into this.”

The white-coated Princess sighed, letting her flowing mane settle in front of her face to hide her embarrassment; politicians, heads of state from the most aggressive of Equestria's nation states, demonic entities from the beginning of time … these things she could cope with, but the contents of her own heart were an enemy that could not be sweet-talked, browbeaten or vanquished with magic. Only ignored. Ignored until another loss left its mark on her thousands-of-years-old soul.

The Doctor took a sip of tea from his mug; almost immediately, he spat it back out, a wince creasing his already wrinkled visage. “Sorry,” he mumbled, making a feeble attempt to clear up the spilled liquid before it had a chance to stain the polished marble floor.

“That used to be your favourite blend,” Celestia muttered with mock anger, trying (and failing) to hide her smirk with a golden-shod hoof. She was grateful to have something temporarily distract her from the bleak mood that was threatening to descend over her.

“New taste buds,” the Time Lord explained contritely, throwing his sodden napkin on to the table. “It takes a while for everything to settle down after the change.” The visage of a total stranger looked back at him as he caught sight of his reflection in the teapot; he wondered how long it would be before he could accept this new guise as himself, and not some stranger whose form he had appropriated. The sardonic expression, distorted by the warps in the pot's surface, seemed to be openly contemptuous of him.

Regeneration. It was a traumatic process at the best of times, and this one had been hellish in the extreme; that was why he had come here, hoping to find some respite in Celestia's domain. Its ordered environs were every bit as calming as the TARDIS' zero room, and the perfect place to settle his newly-overhauled central nervous system.

His first look at the Princess upon setting out from the TARDIS had told him that something was up, and he'd been on his guard for a threat, but it soon transpired that she was simply … moping. In an extremely dignified way, of course. The Doctor was no stranger himself to such feelings; two hearts weren't even enough to cope with the amount of loss he'd suffered, and many was the night he'd wondered if he should've told his closest friends his true feelings. It didn't seem fair, though. Mere mortals were such ephemeral things, and having to watch them grow old and die while you went on forever was too painful to bear.

The sound of raucous laughter jolted them out of their reverie, and their respective gazes drifted downwards to the expanse of the gardens; many ponies could be seen going about their business – or pleasure, as the case might've been, as the grounds were open to anyone who cared to visit them – and it was a colourful mixture of tourists, guards, students, and townsfolk simply out for a stroll. As she had always done, the purple mare stood out; her chiming, musical giggle flitted above the bustle, and one wondered what her companion had said in order to provoke such a sound from her.

“They seem close,” the Doctor teased, his eyes darting between Celestia and her one-time pupil. He quickly retried his tea to avoid having to meet the Princess' cross gaze, and he found it much more palatable this time around. She was normally such a guarded individual – an inevitability, given her station in life – but this one pony was able to render her completely vulnerable.

“Yes,” the white-coated alicorn finally said, pushing her anger at her friend's kidding aside. She hated being exposed like this, but it was still rude of the Doctor to prod her in such a manner. Envy clawed at her stomach like the sharpened talons of an eagle; love and friendship, she knew, were feelings to be bestowed upon others freely, not jealously hoarded, but right now, those well-intentioned words were just … well, words. The fevered mewlings of someone who had no idea what they were talking about. Anyone who'd really been in love would know that it was something to protect, to keep to one's self, and not share. Ever.

Celestia hated feeling this way. Cadance, had she been here, would've tried to comfort her in that sweet way she practised so well, but it would've been futile. Even the Sun Goddess had a dark side, though she tried her best to keep it buried deep.

“Ever since she returned from the other world, they've been spending a lot of time together,” the Princess mused disconsolately. “She hasn't really spoken of what happened there, but it's safe to assume that she encountered his doppelgänger there and those residual feelings transferred over.”

“Things change,” the Doctor said sagely. “You get so caught up in the momentum of events that you don't even notice that you're suddenly considering options that had never even been a possibility before.” The Time Lord considered a moment. “Are you upset?”

Should I answer that truthfully? “I'm happy that she's found someone,” Celestia said after a moment's hesitation. “When I first sent her to Ponyville, it was only through an act of calculated misdirection that I was able to coerce her into finally allowing other ponies into her life. This, I have to say, I wasn't expecting. At least, not so soon.” An exhalation of irritation escaped her. “The burden of immortality, I suppose. You don't expect things to change quite as quickly as they do.”

“They do grow up so fast,” acknowledged the Doctor with a grim smile. “One minute, you're having to rescue them from the slimy-tentacled creatures. The next, they're abandoning you because they've found some cool guy with a spiky haircut.” Off Celestia's look of scepticism, he made a gesture with his hands and added, “Our individual experiences may vary somewhat, but I believe the general point stands.”

“I should forget about her.”

“For the rest of your lives, you're just going to ignore her?” the Doctor questioned with an almost pony-like snort of derision. More softly, the Time Lord continued, “I know she isn't immortal like yourself or Luna, but her lifespan has been greatly extended, yes? So. What happens in forty years? Fifty years? You'll both still be here, and will have anything have changed in that time?” A look passed between them. “You can't deny yourself because you fear the transience of it all.”

“As you do, Doctor?” Celestia said, more bitterly than she had intended. The Doctor was the one person in the universe who, perhaps, truly understood her feelings; in his thousand years of travel, he had loved and lost many friends. He never allowed himself to cross that same line in the sand Celestia herself had drawn. “I'm sorry,” the Princess murmured gloomily, “that was uncalled for.”

If he was angry, the Time Lord wasn't showing it; memories of his companions, their reactions to his transformations, quickly swept through his mind. “I think our circumstances are a little bit different in that regard. You are eternal and unchanging, whereas I'm not. Regeneration is difficult for some people to cope with. If I were to ever be … close to someone, how would they react to suddenly have an entirely new man in their life? Not many would be able to cope with it.”

“If someone truly cares about you,” Celestia was saying, knowing it was an unfortunate truth that, despite their protestations to the contrary, some beings just couldn't see past the exterior, “then it should be what's on the inside that counts.”

“It should,” agreed the Doctor with a mirthless smile, “but how often have you known that to be the case?”

A silence descended over the table as the friends settled into a companionable quiescence; they contented themselves with watching the ponies cavorting below, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. It would soon be time for the nightly ritual: Celestia lowering the sun so that her sister could raise the moon. The Doctor found the whole process interesting; so many cultures believed that gods and goddesses controlled the stars, and how happy would they have been to discover a world where it was the literal truth?

The flowing-maned Princess' attention was, naturally, preoccupied by one couple in particular; they were still standing near the TARDIS, and the purple-coated mare was squinting at the Ship with her tongue hanging out. She was trying to figure out its mysteries, as she did with everything she couldn't immediately understand. Her tenacity was such an endearing trait. Celestia could see that the stallion was bored and wished to move on, but he was putting up with it for the sake of his friend.

Or maybe they were more than friends? Celestia didn't know, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to either. Maybe it wouldn't go anywhere? Maybe they would last until the stallion took his final breath? The star-adorned mare would, on that day, discover the harshest lesson her new station had to teach: you could love someone with all of your heart, but it didn't change anything. People died, and remembering them was scant consolation.

Wounds might heal, but you never forgot how you received each and every scar. Twilight Sparkle would be the cut that killed her; they could share a brief unity, but eventually, she would pass into the abyss, and Celestia would be alone again. It was better for all involved if she were to enjoy her fleeting existence, extended as it was by alicorn magic, in the company of others. To be a temporary companion to an ageless deity was … unfair. To both of them.

“How do you cope with it?” the morose idol asked, her eyes following the couple as they finally moved away from the blue box. “You've known hundreds, thousands, of people in your time. And you're nowhere near as old as I am.” It was difficult to think of the thousand-year-old Time Lord, with his sombre demeanour and deeply lined face as being young, but compared to Celestia, he was practically a kid.

“I just have to remind myself that each life is special, unique,” the Doctor explained so solemnly that even inanimate objects would be moved, “and that sharing in that life, even for so short a time, is better than nothing.” He shot Celestia a pained smile. “It's difficult. There have been times when I've found it difficult to go on, and simply hid away in the TARDIS for years on end. But you shouldn't close yourself off to others because you fear the future. Love is the most precious gift you can give to another being, no matter how much it hurts.”

The Princess' eyes narrowed for a moment before her lips curled into a grin. “You rehearsed that little speech, didn't you?” she asked dryly.

“A bit,” conceded the Doctor, holding this thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart. “Still, it's from the hearts, for whatever that's worth. If you want my honest advice: go to her. Tell her how you feel, and let her make up her own mind once she's got all the facts. If she's not interested, you can at least move on knowing that you did something proactive rather than sitting here and fretting your mane out over it.”

They watched Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry part with an embrace that lingered just a smidgen too long to be a simple, friendly hug, and once again, Celestia felt the pangs of covetousness rage within her. That same dark feelings that had turned her sister into Nightmare Moon. “No,” the Princess decided, and her insides felt like they had been run-through with a sword. “Those two might have something together, and it would be selfish of me to derail that. The last thing Twilight needs is more doubt and uncertainty when her life is already complicated enough.”

It was slightly later-than-normal when Celestia finally got around to lowering the sun; the TARDIS and the Doctor had long since departed, and the courtyard was bereft of life. The aching chasm in my soul will simply have to endure as best it can, the Princess thought wearily, wishing simply to sleep now and forget this day. Forget her feelings, too, if possible.