“Are you sure?”

Fluttershy blinked in a combination of shock and modesty, and had to ask her once again.

“I’m positive,” Rainbow Dash nodded quietly across from her, trailing her hoof across the grain in the table. The half empty wine glass before her shone in the afternoon light streaming through the open window, making the indigo liquid seem surrealistically glossy. “I wouldn’t ask anypony else.”

“I-I mean, it’s just completely out of left field…” Fluttershy tapped her hooves together nervously, shifting in her seat.

“If you don’t want-”

“I do!” Fluttershy nodded her head abashedly. “I-I’m honored, Rainbow Dash, I really am. I just really wasn’t expecting it is all.”

“Thank you,” Dash breathed a sigh of relief with a small smile, which Fluttershy mirrored. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Fluttershy. I trust you more than most anypony.”

“I’m humbled to be a godmother,” she bowed her head a little, her own glass almost completely untouched.

“It’s just… if the worst comes to pass…” Rainbow Dash began quietly.

“And I’m sure it won’t,” Fluttershy reassured her with a smile, patting her hoof gently. “It’ll all be okay, you’ll see, Rainbow Dash.”

“… Thanks, Flutters.”

Dash took a long, weary draught from her glass and swallowed audibly. She let out another sigh as she reached the end of the whorl, searching instead for the next.

“I still don’t think she has the right to pass judgment without meeting somepony first,” she blurted all of a sudden, angrily refilling her glass.

“Oh, um, I think Doctor White really only gave suggestions…” Fluttershy ruffled her wings, taking another careful sip as Rainbow Dash began working on her fourth glass. “I mean, separation anxiety is perfectly natural in a lot of colts and fillies.”

“She doesn’t know my colt like I do,” Dash frowned, glaring into the murky depths of her drink.

“I think this is really all just because she mentioned foster care.”

Rainbow Dash didn’t want to admit it, and certainly loathed the very idea of agreeing. She emptied her glass with a steady movement, refusing to allow the idea that maybe she was right to cross her mind.

But Fluttershy wasn’t trying to lord it over her, she wasn’t rudely interjecting her own opinions or even trying to make her feel bad. Fluttershy wasn’t trying to make her feel like a failure, even though her heart stung like she was. She was just being honest, and Dash felt a small surge of guilt again. She peeled her eyes away from the table and blinked wearily at her friend.

“Yeah… maybe.”

“Dash…” Fluttershy began uneasily. She struggled to find proper words as the pegasus stared at her. Without warning, Fluttershy slammed down the entire glass of wine in one go, careful not to drop it. She breathed heavily, her cheeks pink and ruddy.

“… Heh, careful of th’ aftertaste,” Dash warned her with a chuckle.

“That’s n-ooh, wow,” Fluttershy blinked after a moment, shaking her head rapidly. “Haa, wow. You weren’t kidding.”

“Told you,” she sniggered, not mentioning that she had done exactly the same on a previous occasion.

“Rainbow Dash, this is probably a really bad time for either of us to be, you know… drinking.”

“I was saving it for Pinkie Pie’s birthday,” Dash admitted miserably, a hoof finding its way to her temple as she stared back down at the table.

“That isn’t for another four months,” Fluttershy blinked.

Rainbow Dash grinned.

“Yeah, but it took me forever to actually find any bottles of Crystal Malt, and it seemed like a shame to hold on to ‘em for that long.”

“I guess…” she shook her head slowly, brushing a lock of pink mane from her face. Rainbow Dash watched her tuck it neatly behind her ear, smiling.

“And ‘sides,” Dash dizzily topped off Fluttershy’s glass as well as her own. “Celebrations are a great time for a drink ‘tween friends.”

Fluttershy snorted, embarrassed immediately afterwards by her own noise.

“I didn’t really think there was any cause for celebration,” she shook her head again, surprised by her friend’s unexpected good mood.

“Aw, ‘course there is,” she waved her off flippantly with another grin. “Lemme see… we’ve got an empty house, two best pals with some tension, some-some really potent schmoozy-boozy…”

Rainbow Dash glared at the bottle for a moment, thinking.

“… How aged is this, anyway…” she muttered to herself. “Eh, never mind. Point is, ‘s always good to celebrate somethin’. Life’s too short not to enjoy it, y’know?”

Fluttershy nodded, sipping patiently at her glass. The taste was still pungent and oddly sharp, but not overpowering. She simply assumed that it was an acquired taste.

“I can agree with that, I suppose,” Fluttershy nodded quietly.

Rainbow Dash leaned across the table, her hoof tentatively touching Fluttershy’s as their eyes met.

“You know… we could always… blame it on the alcohol.”

Fluttershy’s already pink cheeks skyrocketed to an alarmingly red blush, and Dash started to pull away in discomfort when Fluttershy’s other hoof settled atop hers.

“… We probably could,” Fluttershy whispered at last, an unexpectedly sly smile peeking through.

“Are you serious?” Rainbow Dash asked with an even tone, but her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she swore that the pegasus could hear it.

“M-maybe…” she answered bashfully. “I-I mean, this… this sort of, um, thing. It’s kind of… big.”

Rainbow Dash’s heart slammed in her ears, and she fought to keep herself under control. She knew when a hook was being dangled in front of her, what she was concerned about was how to bite down. She could see the glow in Fluttershy’s eyes, the nervous way that she chewed her lower lip in anticipation. It was like she was begging her, silently pleading, and Dash was only too willing to comply.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Dash turned her hoof over in Fluttershy’s, gripping one loosely. “Anything serious, I mean.”

“I’ve-I’ve always sort of, um… waited for that special somepony…” Fluttershy said softly, letting Rainbow Dash cup her hooves in her own from across the table.

“I don’t have to be that somepony,” Rainbow Dash replied eagerly, unwilling to let her slip away after being teased. “Like I said, nothin’ special.”

“I-I suppose…” Fluttershy started, but her words were cut off as Rainbow Dash leaned across the table bodily and kissed her. Fluttershy froze as Dash’s lips met her own, heat nearly radiating off of her. Much to Dash’s pleasure, Fluttershy ever so tentatively leaned into it and returned the favor. Her face was bright and flushed, and her wings were clamped tightly at her sides. Dash finally released her from the oral embrace, and Fluttershy took a sharp breath.

“… Flutters, I’m sorry to say, but I think I just knocked over the bottle.”

Fluttershy stifled a giggle, embarrassedly looking into her amber eyes as her head was turned upward.

“We’ll have to make sure to clean up the mess…” Fluttershy breathed shakily, her wingtips trembling as hard as her hooves.

“You wanna make a mess…?” Rainbow Dash kissed her again, more heatedly. She drew deeply from her lips, crawling a little across the creaking table to meet her. Fluttershy’s inexperienced hoof wound up to the back of her neck, quivering against her mane. As much as it burned, as much as she itched, as much as Rainbow Dash wanted and needed to feel her, to explore her and feel her warmth against herself, she still froze as Pinkie’s words haunted her. As if she were betraying her by her actions. Like even though she was only trying to help herself, it was still wrong.

But she wasn’t with Pinkie Pie anymore, so she shouldn’t feel guilty… right?
This is wrong. This is wrong, this is wrong. She trusts you, this is wrong, this is so wrong please don't do this, please I'm begging this doesn't have to happen, it doesn't matter how bad you want it just hold it off a little longer. Just a little longer, please, this is so wrong-

“… We-we could, um… stop. I mean, if you want to,” Fluttershy said when she noticed her stillness.

“No. Let’s make this feel so good that we don’t regret it. Whaddya say?” she kissed her again, wings stiffly rubbing against her and reminding her of just how sensitive they grew when untended.

“… O-okay. Okay. Let’s-let’s do it.”

“There’s a good girl.”

The train station in the center of Canterlot was a fair sight to behold.

Billowing gusts of steam rose through the station with a hint of urgency about them, carried on a calm wind. Glistering bronze plaques of assorted ponies dedicated to the station were littered across the halls, and the hustle and bustle of busy folk as the whistle of trains tore through the air brought a powerful sense of nostalgia to William. It was gone within another moment though, and he sat in silence across from Eris as those outside their small personal compartment busied themselves with normal life.

Looking at them all out the window made William feel strangely sick all of a sudden, and he returned his gaze to the quaintly decorated cabin as the remaining passengers began boarding. Thick velvet covered the plushy seats, the small satin curtains thrown wide and adorning both windows ruffled a little in the breeze. The draconequus wrinkled her nose absentmindedly at the scent of oily smoke drifting on one of the gusts, legs tucked beneath her as her tail swished lazily across the wooden floor. Her ears were flat against her head, and she was curiously intent on staring a hole in William’s rucksack.

Having long since abandoned his uniform, William was redressed in his usual attire of a simple black shirt and pants, hands clasped neatly in his lap as he stared at the floor.

The seat that Eris sat in seemed oddly forlorn and empty the longer that she sat in it, no matter how she tried to make herself comfortable. She wound up attempting to sprawl over backwards, then leaning over the edge, then lying on her stomach before returning to an upright sitting position.

There were no words shared between them, but it was anything but quiet. The monotonous clanking and whistling of the train as departure finally transpired was all that could be heard. Grinding metal screeched as the steel behemoth finally began inching forward at a snail’s pace, and Eris eventually grew tired of the noise and attempted to block it out by closing the windows. It did very little to help, of course, as she swiftly discovered with a frown.

“Not gonna… not gonna talk at all, huh?” Eris asked quietly as she resumed her awkward position, legs tucked beneath herself across from him. “I mean, you’re not – well, uh… I guess what I mean is that I don’t like it when it’s so quiet.”

William said nothing, not even meeting her gaze.

“Normally I wouldn’t have to worry about this kind of thing,” she added, despite the fact that William was seemingly ignoring her. “Just a snap of my talons and poof, no more problems. I miss doing that, it’s driving me nuts not having that after I just started getting used to it.”

The flicker of understanding on his features implied a question.

“Oh. Eh, yeah, I didn’t always have ‘em,” Eris shrugged. “Chaos-y powers like that, I mean. I used to be pretty normal.”

William blinked.

“Shut up, I’m still totally normal.”

Silence overtook the cabin once more as they slowly progressed in speed. Shadows rippling across the ground at equal speeds to the train flittered noiselessly over the ground, and William felt sympathetic toward them for a moment. It was never really a shadow’s choice to go anywhere – they could do nothing but follow, carried along like a water lily caught in a current.

“My mom used to take me fishing.”

Eris’s admission was an unexpected one, and she had finally assumed a position somewhat similar to William’s. However, instead of sitting stiffly like a board were placed against her back, Eris was slumped over and clasping her hands together loosely. She focused on something far away beneath the slightly jittery floorboards, losing herself in memory.

“Mom liked to get out and do stuff. Always wanted to keep her hands busy. Guess that’s why she got that piano. We had this boat,” Eris continued after another stretch of silence. “Mom used to call it her personal yacht, but it was really just this god awful little rinky dink rowboat with the word ‘yacht’ on the side in big yellow letters. Do you know that she misspelled ‘yacht’? Mom was never good at stuff like that, it always bugged me though. I used to love going out to sea with her, just off the coast.

“Sometimes, we wouldn’t even fish at all, we would just sit out in the middle of nowhere and yammer our mouths off. Probably scared away all the fish, now that I think about it,” she chuckled weakly. “I never… never really could get the hang of it, Mom said it’s because I was too impatient. That’s not really it, though. I just didn’t want to kill any fish. They were too pretty.”

Eris spread her hands apart to display the size, grinning.

“I swear,” she shook her hands a little. “These-these motherfuckers, some of these things were huge, biggest fish I’ve ever seen. Every color of the rainbow, too – when the sun shined just right on the water, it was like the whole ocean was putting on an underwater light show. It was amazing.”

Her smile slowly faded away as she clinched her hands together again, her mismatched fingers drumming over her own knuckles.

“I… lost… my mother,” Eris said after a while, a shadow looming over the cabin as the train blared beneath an overpass. “I don’t remember how. I just know that I asked Dad to make sure that I never remembered it, because whatever I did to my Mom I did to everybody else, too.”

William stole a glance at her at last, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. Eris’s head was bowed, her hands over her ears like she could shut out the sound of her own words.

“He’s not even my real dad, he’s- Discord, to me, is just some guy. At first, I mean. It’s so weird that nobody ever even questions it. Nobody bothers, nobody asks. Nobody notices that I’m adopted too.”

If William was surprised, he didn’t show it. Instead, Eris barreled into a fueled rant that left her hands shaking as they resumed their clamped position in her lap.

“He just showed up one day. After – after I did something. He said that I wasn’t like anybody else, he told me that I was special. And then…”

She expanded her fingers and made a small booming noise.

“Then he showed me what it’s all like. I mean, like, everything. There is so much out there, Will. When you really take a step back, it’s just amazing how everything seems really-really… small, I guess. I never really thought of it that way before. I don’t even know when I started calling him Dad, I guess it just sort of happened after a few years. I never knew my real dad, he – well, you know the type. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, I guess he’s dead now, too.

“I still remember walking through this one city afterwards, I don’t even know where. I just remember wanting to keep that memory. Dragging myself along, listening to the wind between the buildings. The feeling of ash running through my fingers, looking out over the ocean. I don’t know why it was so important to me, but I didn’t want to forget it. Kind of ironic, in a way.”

Eris twiddled her thumbs awkwardly as the sun vanished from view once again, the beginning of the tunnel’s mouth engulfing them. They were soon completely cast in shadows, her eyes glinting strangely in the darkness. Her voice became quieter, but William could still hear despite the echoing rumble.

“He didn’t really talk about you much. Not for a long while, a little bit before he left me here. ‘Best of all possible worlds’, apparently. I-I promised that I’d look out for you when he asked me, though. I was a single kid, and… I’ve never really had any other family, you know? So I really thought I could live up to my promise, ‘cept I never actually bothered to put in the effort. I-”

Eris paused as they reemerged into warm sunlight, the flare of light shining off the windows. William noted that she had been furiously rubbing her eyes in the dark, but now she had once again taken to holding her hands in her lap as he was.

“… Please say something. You haven’t talked in forever, bro. I hate just talking to myself,” Eris pleaded quietly, struggling to speak. Still he would not look at her, still he refused to see anything but the floor. “If you talk to yourself for too long you start to go crazy, take it from me. I hate talking to myself. Please, Will. Say something. Anything.”

“… William.”

Eris blinked.

“My name is William. William Zachariah Klaskovsky. Not Billy. Not Will. Not Bill. Not bro. Not Willie. My name is William.”

There was a strange tone in his voice that Eris had never heard before, at least not from him. He finally met her gaze, and when she did a small sliver of discomfort shuddered up her spine. She couldn’t quite say why, but there was just something… wrong with his eyes.

“… Okay,” she said at last, shrugging as she looked away. “William.”

“Thank you, Eris.”

“Tumulto.”

He stared at her in mild confusion.

“My name is Eris. Eris Concord Tumulto,” Eris replied in a low tone. “After my grandmother.”

“It’s a very nice name.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Eris slowly twirled a solitary talon through her white hair, gaze returning to the floor.

“… I’m sorry.”

When he did not respond, Eris pressed on.

“For everything,” she wrung her tail bitterly. “God – if it hadn’t been for me, none of this would have ever even happened. We could have been at home right now, being bored and eating cotton candy and watching reruns of Spaceballs. I’m sorry for everything, William. I’m sorry for screwing up everyone’s lives.”

“I don’t think you ruined anyone’s lives,” William said quietly.

“I did. I didn’t keep my promise to Dad, I didn’t protect you like I said I would.”

William frowned, meeting her dejected stare.

“It’s fine,” his brows furrowed.

“No it isn’t,” Eris ran a forefinger over her paw distractedly.

“It is,” he insisted, frown deepening. “It’s fine, I shouldn’t have overreacted. I had a moment of weakness is all.”

She balked at him, dumbfounded for the second time that day.

“Ov- what? No, it’s not overreacting! How is it weakness to ask for help?”

“I didn’t need to,” William said instantly. “I had the situation under control.”

“Oh, my ass!” Eris scowled.

“I said it’s fine,” he returned his stare to the floor. “I’m used to it.”

The realization was quick to set in. He knew right away that he had said the wrong thing from the mortified expression on her face.

“No!” she yelped, eyes nearly bulging out of her head. “I – god no, jeez! That just makes it even worse, oh my god!”

“Please stop shouting, Miss Tumulto. I said it’s fine. We just have to go home, like you said, remember? So long as I can go home. I just have to get home, and then everything will be fine.”

Her hands clenched and unclenched for several long moments before she reached out for him across the aisle. William flinched instinctively, and Eris pulled away as she tried to hide a remorsefully hurt expression.

“… It’s not fine. It’s not fine, it’s not okay,” Eris seethed softly. Her voice was scratchy and her eyes stung and watered.

“Everything’s going to be okay.” She cringed inwardly at the obviously plastic smile that he wore, his eyes still oddly emotionless. Eris almost snorted at the irony that for some strange reason, he was the one trying to comfort her. “Everything will be fine. We just have to go home.”

“Home,” Eris cleared her throat miserably, drying her eyes quickly on her elbow. “Yeah. Home. I want to go home, too.”

“… You can call me Will if you really want to. I suppose,” his voice was dull and monotonous, and he was barely heard over the clanking of the train. “It doesn’t really matter anymore. Maybe it never did.”

They sat in silence for a while longer. Eris grew to dread that awful silence weighing heavily on her ears. Although it did not occur immediately, a sort of wordless understanding was forged between them then. Another tunnel carried their silence into open air, and by the time they emerged from the next tunnel William discovered that at some point in the dark Eris had sidled noiselessly into the seat next to him.

“… Eris.”

“Yeah, Will.”

“Do you know when father is returning?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Eris.”

“Yeah, Will.”

“Do… you believe in God?”

“… I think I used to.”

“Me too.”

Fingers interlocking, he silently held her hand the entire way home.

“I feel kinda crummy,” Eris admitted as they walked down the empty streets of Ponyville, a lamplight flickering as they passed beneath it. “I mean, I didn’t say bye to anybody or… jack.”

William’s small suitcase seemed to grow heavier with each passing step, but he said nothing of it. The deafening cries of cicadas were a familiar sound. He dug at his ear in irritation.

Familiarity did not necessarily equal coziness, however.

With the train station slowly drifting away behind them as the odd pair trundled along the dimly lit sidewalks, the cool night breeze lingered over them and gently urged them onward with a brush of its ephemeral fingers. Many more stars seemed to have cropped up the further away from Canterlot they grew, until the sky was spoiled with shining lights that still held no candle to the shining crescent moon. Eris gave a quiet sigh through her nostrils, absentmindedly kicking a small stone into the street as they trudged deeper into the village.

“… We are going in the right direction, right?”

“Yes, Eris,” William sighed, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I know exactly where my home is. I live there.”

“When did you turn into such a smartass?” Eris snorted, grinning down at him.

“When are you going to stop asking stupid questions?” he retorted in irritation, leading her down a left turn and crossing the road.

“Stupid is as stupid does, as my mama used to say,” she drawled in an obnoxious accent, leaning heavily on his shoulder.

“You still fail to recognize that I take no delight in your personal brand of humor, Eris,” William frowned, but made no effort to move from beneath her weight as they walked.

“You still need to lighten up!” Eris said with far too much enthusiasm for that early in the morning. “Smile, brighten the day a bit!”

“You still need to realize that people need sleep,” he scowled even harder as a light flickered on in the house that they passed.

“You still need to figure out how ‘humor’ works.”

“You still need to lose some weight.”

“I am not fat!” she jabbed him in the ribs, making him jump. However, she did finally pry herself from his shoulder, cracking her back as she stood. “God, that hurts. I hurt in places I didn’t even know I had. Weird stuff just keeps happening to my body. Seriously, I think I might be getting a tumor or something.”

“Why?”

“There’s this weird lump on my chest…”

“That would be puberty,” William deadpanned.

Eris stopped midstride, too stunned to do anything more than stare at the back of his head as he walked away.

“… Oh my god,” she giggled as she caught up to him. “You just made a joke!”

“What?” he frowned again.

“There is hope!” Eris cheered, giving an enthusiastic little kick and punch to the air. “Huzzah!”

“Will you whack jobs keep it down?” came a voice from nearly half a block away, and William decided that it was a good time to take a detour before Eris brought the entirety of Ponyville down on them.

“Almost home,” William said as a familiar cliché picket fence came into view at last. “Almost home, almost home. Almost home, almost home.”

He repeated his mantra with uncharacteristic zeal, his strides quick and feverish as they approached the darkened abode. William wasted no time in pushing open the slightly creaky white painted gate, cherishing the sight of Pinkie Pie’s frankly hideous pea green polka dotted curtains hanging in the window of the small house. No lamplight was outside, and Eris was almost out of breath as he smiled up at the place.

“… I remember it being bigger,” Eris said after a moment. “Also, orange with giant five-legged goldfish.”

“Home,” William breathed a relieved sigh of contentment, the smile on his lips unwavering.

“Uh… gonna bang on the door or something?” Eris blinked as William continued to simply stand there. After a few more seconds he shook his head, peeling back the welcome mat that he stood on.

“No need,” he explained. “Mother always keeps a key, there’s- huh.”

The sound of his confusion as he furrowed his brows was followed by a tiny but slowly growing sense of dread.

“What?” Eris pried, but her question was soon answered as the door swung silently inward.

“… The door was unlocked,” he said quietly.

“Clearly,” Eris threw out her hands toward the door. William’s frown deepened as he replaced the key, dusting his hands and taking his suitcase inside before creeping over the floor. The sound of light snoring reached his ears, and he followed it without pause to the living room.

Rainbow Dash was sprawled over the couch with one leg dangling off the edge, several multicolored bottles of cider strewn across the floor. One was perched precariously between her shoulder blades, wobbling dangerously whenever she breathed. However, it never fell, despite the fact that it looked one deep breath away from clattering to the floor.

William held a single finger up to his lips, halting Eris in her tracks.

“What?”

“Quiet. I don’t want to wake Mother.”

“Seriously?” Eris balked. “Wake the bitch up, I’d say he-”

Her words mysteriously died in her throat from the downright wicked look that William shot her, like hell itself had silently begun to burn behind his eyes. She made a slow zipping motion over her mouth, struggling not to trip over the number of empty bottles. She saw William looking down at the dozing pegasus with a mixture of anguish and worry, but it was gone the next moment. William only snagged the bottle between two fingers and left without another word.

He returned a short while later with a small blue blanket, which he carefully laid over her up to her neck before placing a cautious tiny peck on her cheek.

“… Guess I’m just gonna stand here with my thumb up my ass,” Eris shrugged as he walked away again, his mind clearly elsewhere.

William trailed like a ghost down the hall to his mother’s bedroom, peeling open the door quietly. Moonlight was streaming in through the window, and he could just make out the shape of a pink mane that he was well acquainted with. William smiled wearily as he approached, placing a single hand on her shoulder-

Fluttershy shifted uneasily in her sleep, reaching out for something in the bed that wasn’t there. William started, resisting the urge to rub his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t seeing things. But the sleeping mare remained, despite the furiously denying scream in his head that claimed he was dreaming. A strange sensation of wooziness overcame William then, and the downright terrifying and bizarre urge to hit Fluttershy shrieked through his veins.

She moaned softly in her sleep, and William realized that he still wasn’t moving. Partially because of the ice flooding his veins, and partially because a small part of him was still stupidly insisting that at any moment Pinkie Pie would burst up with her usual heartwarming eagerness. Her gleaming smile, her wide, innocent eyes, the sound of a laugh just at the tip of her tongue.

And instead what he got was Fluttershy.

His fists clenched and unclenched again and again.

In the end, he simply walked away.

The words Eris was whispering to him all bounced off of his ears. He didn’t hear her as he prepared a mat for her, and seemingly did not hear when Eris pointed out that he had no blanket. It was as if he were experiencing his own mind shutting down as he stared up at his bedroom ceiling, which seemed horribly unfamiliar for reasons that he could not ascertain.

He stared until Eris’s stream of words eventually transformed into snores.

With a small black book tucked beneath his arm, William continued staring a hole in the ceiling until the sun rose.

Author's Notes:

Getting up every day and going through this again and again is hard.
~ Charles Manson