The clink of silverware was all that penetrated the air.

One set loose and untimed that ground against the other, the other robotically and curtly meeting the plate in perfect timing.

It was that offbeat imperfection that was steadily infuriating Trimming, but the captain of the guard didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all. If anything, he seemed surprised that she was continuously glaring a hole in him. The flickering candlelight danced across the little room, illuminating all but the furthest of corners.

“… You gonna finish that?” Silver Spear eyed a healthy sprig of garnished broccoli on her plate.

“I don’t know why I even bother,” she scowled, neatly laying her knife and fork beside her plate and rubbing her temples. “One would think that I would learn eventually.”

“Nah, it’s cool!” Spear grinned, magically catapulting the vegetable from her nearly full plate to his empty one. “It’s because I’m irresistible. And mares dig a guy in uniform, you know.”

“Smartass.”

“Tight ass.”

He smirked at her, tilting his smug grin a little as he popped the remaining dinner into his mouth in one swift motion. Trimming shook her head and sighed, but he noticed the almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of her lip. She returned to the vacant gaze that she had been giving the table nearly the entire night, one hoof drawing something invisible on a napkin.

“… Silver.”

“Why, yes,” he stroked his chin with a sly wink. “I do agree that we need dessert.”

“Shut your mouth and listen for once in your life,” Trimming deadpanned, but the captain was seemingly unaffected. “I need to ask you something.”

“Oh. Serious then,” he furrowed his brows and dropped the playful demeanor instantly, leaning forward and perking up his ears.

“Do you think that I’m evil?”

Silver Spear blinked, confused.

“Where did that come from?” he tilted his head again, this time with a frown. When she didn’t respond, Silver shrugged. “Just caught me off guard is all. You’ve never sounded self-conscious like that or anything.”

“Answer the question.”

He smiled quietly and shook his head.

“Evil? Pfft,” Silver rolled his eyes. “Despite what some of your little maids might say – and I’m not saying which ones, don’t give me that look again – nopony thinks you’re evil, Trim. Maybe just a little high strung, too much stress in your job. Probably,” he added.

Trimming stared a hole through him, glowering at something in the distance.

“… Yes. Stress.”

She looked away from him then, wordlessly folding her napkin and dropping it onto her plate.

“Off so soon?” Silver rose with her, but she gave him a hard look.

“I have something that needs to be attended to. Something that I’ve been meaning to do for a long, long time,” Trimming explained quietly without looking at him. She continued along and didn’t look back as she raised a single hoof. “And make sure we get new maids.”

“Me?” he blinked again and pointed to himself, which he realized too late did no good considering that she wasn’t even looking at him. “Why’s that…?”

“Just do it, you simpering- just do it for me. I want to take care of the rest of my business first.”

And with that, she was gone.

The door closed roughly behind her and blew out the candles, leaving the thoroughly baffled unicorn sitting alone in the dark.

Surely firing another of her maids hadn’t upset her that much…

But then again, Trimming was a mare that took much care in what she did.

And sometimes stress made ponies do some very strange things indeed.

William took great pride in his garden.

When he first took to caring for the small plot of fenced in land behind their home, it was thoroughly unimpressive. Only a few bare scrubs of grass remained, everything but a single stump cleared out to make room for the house’s foundations. In the beginning, it was an empty, forlorn little place.

But as time passed and William began collecting different plants and seeds out of his curiosity of Equestrian vegetation, the bare plot of land gradually began morphing into a home on its own. It took more than time, though; it required patience, care and a tender touch. He found himself strangely attached to his little flowery children, and was proud to watch them grow. A bed of curiously star shaped tulips would wind up along the fence eventually, circling around into a cradle of barely blooming roses. Those in turn would gracefully caress the stump in the center of the patch of dirt, with dandelions and sunflowers and even a tiny peach tree growing up betwixt the roots. All in all, it was a place of calm, of solitude and isolation that, from the overlapping wall of thistles along the fence, almost seemed completely cut off from the outside world.

Or at least, it used to be.

William stared in abject horror at the remnants of his beloved garden, his bandaged hands shaking.

The daisies were wilted and pale. Sunflowers drooped their sleepy heads all the way to the ground, begging to return to the silence of the earth as the last of their warmth seeped out of their green bones. The roses had grown flaccid and lifeless, a sickly brown and grey bulging beneath their necks like an infection. Even the already dead stump seemed a little more deceased.

“This place looks like shit,” Eris stated bluntly.

“Oh god,” William’s knees felt like they were going to buckle. He clawed and kicked viciously at his own mind, screaming to wake up from a nightmare that wasn’t happening. “Oh god, oh my god my poor babies!

He sank to his knees and tenderly cupped a dangling tulip in his quivering hands, the color completely drained from the dead plant. William’s breathing seemed to fight for control with his heart, neither of which were working properly.

“Dude, you’re gonna hyperventilate,” the draconequus crouched beside him, peering uninterestedly at the dead flora. “Calm down, they’re just plants.”

“Just plants?” William screeched in anguish, trembling hands stinging as he pulled them away from the bulbs he had planted seemingly an eternity ago. “Just plants?! Eris, I loved this garden!”

“I-”

“Dead!” he seethed, kicking furiously at a patch of dirt and watching it fly. “Dead, dead, dead! All that work, all of that effort – for nothing! My garden is – it’s, it’s ruined! It’s all ruined!”

Eris started to reach out for him but pulled back at the last moment, clenching her paw up awkwardly.

“Willie,” she frowned, rubbing her sore lower back as she stood. “Chill, little man. We can replant ‘em, you know.”

“That’s isn’t –!” William jabbed a wrapped finger at her angrily, the paused and furrowed his brows deeply. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

“As in me and you,” Eris deadpanned, crossing her arms as the sound of something heavy hitting the floor met her ears. “I know how to plant crap, I’m not incompetent.”

“And who says that I want your help?” he tried to ball up his fists and failed, turning instead to stand on his tiptoes to glower at her. The height difference was almost nonexistent, but it didn’t wipe the vicious glare from his face. “If it weren’t for you, my garden wouldn’t even look like this!”

“What?” she balked. “How is it my fault?!”

“I don’t remember, it just is!”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

Another loud clatter interrupted them, and William realized just how close to each other they had become as the shouting intensified. His cheeks were burning brightly and he settled away in quiet fury, turning his slightly watery gaze to his deceased shrubbery.

“… Sorry,” he muttered eventually as the silence became too much to bear. “I… know it’s not your fault. Forgive my outburst.”

“Whatever,” Eris shrugged nonchalantly, looking off elsewhere as well. “People get angry. It happens.”

“It doesn’t excuse my childish behavior,” he retorted with a sniff, carefully adjusting his clothing so as not to hurt his hands and standing a little straighter.

“You are a c-”

“Don’t you dare.”

His demeanor was one of burning rage, but he didn’t move a single inch.

“I am not a child,” William stated matter of factly through clenched teeth. “Don’t presume to treat me like one.”

Eris stared at him for a few seconds, arms still crossed tightly over her chest.

“… You know, you’re kind of weird for someone your age.”

“You don’t even know how old I am, do you?” he asked in a bitter half jeer as he started back toward the noisy house.

“I don’t even know how old I am,” Eris retorted sullenly, trudging beside him. “Thanks for rubbing it in.”

William said no more as they reentered into the cool shade, but his anger seemed to have long since dissipated from her words.

The smell of sawdust permeating the air mingled with that of baking pastries, and William crinkled his nose. Apple Bloom poked her head out of the hallway to glance at the pair before returning to the jabbering mares.

“-nd I done told you, it ain’t going to work like that,” Applejack frowned, pointing out a spot on the blueprints to the agitated pegasus.

“It’ll be fine, we’d just have to add another hall… here? Here.”

“Yeah, by breaking down the wall!” she rolled her eyes. “Unless y’all feel like sharing one room for a while, and I kind of doubt that, we’ll have to pull out the studs on this end here, then just add this here extension so’s we ain’t gotta loop ‘round. See?”

Rainbow Dash finally gave in with a sigh, wings clamped tightly to her sides.

“That’s going to take even longer, though…” she rubbed her chin, watching Apple Bloom out of the corner of her eye as the filly dragged another bucket of nails to the sawhorse.

“I’m sorry ‘bout Big Mac, I mean it,” Applejack said a little sheepishly. “He pulled his back real bad with the plow again, he’s not gonna be doing much o’ anything this week.”

“He’s doing a lot of eating,” Apple Bloom said with a snarky grin, but went unheard.

“So… two days?” Rainbow Dash said hopefully, the rattle of familiar tin leaking from the kitchen where William and Eris had returned to.

“I’m thinking at least four,” Applejack said distractedly, much to her friend’s dismay. “I tried getting Rarity to help, but wouldn’t you know it she got some kind of ‘special hooficure’ where she can’t go touching nothin’. And if we’re gonna get the insulation in right it’ll take time, and I’ve still gotta cut more lumber since Sawdust is crankin’ up price again. I’m telling you, I think he’s going crazy.”

Another loud clash came from the kitchen, and Dash sighed.

“William, don’t burn yourself again,” she shouted absentmindedly, rolling up the blueprints.

“Hey,” Eris breathily poked her head into William’s open bedroom, clamping one frosting coated talon over the doorframe for support. “Me and Willie are gonna split to the park for a while, ‘kay?”

“No, not okay,” the farm pony frowned up at her. “Ain’t you supposed to be helping?”

“I second that!” Apple Bloom added tiredly and leaned on the sawhorse, but again she was ignored.

“Well, Willie can’t really do much…” Eris started slowly, turning hopefully to Rainbow Dash. “And he’s really upset about his garden, and he could definitely use a responsible adoptive older sibling to look out for him at the park…”

Rainbow Dash sighed heavily through her nostrils.

“… I guess.”

“Oh, come on!” Apple Bloom threw up her hooves.

“Sweet,” Eris grinned. “’kay thanks bye!”

Dash watched her whirl on the spot and leave nothing but a flicker of tail behind her as she darted away.

“Didn’t take much,” Applejack noted quietly, but Rainbow Dash shook her head.

“I prefer not having her underhoof is all,” she clarified, but she wouldn’t look at her when she said it.

“Might I add,” Applejack said after a moment with the sound of rumbling thunder picking at her ears. “That I really wouldn’t care to go getting wet when we take out the wall?”

Rainbow Dash frowned, snapping back to reality as she perked up her own ears.

“… ‘the crap?” she tilted her head in mild confusion. “We’re not sched- Everfree again, sonuvab-”

“Biscuits!” Apple Bloom swore as the nail bucket spilled over.

They walked in moderate silence for a while, boy and draconequus.

The overhanging trees lay shadow after shadow for them to pass beneath. The trail was all but deserted except for a solitary squirrel which was quick to dart away the moment it spotted them. William’s light footfall and Eris’s lazy shuffling were both stifled by the surrounding trees the further they wound into the park, a familiar bench beside a glistening lake calling warmly to them.

“… You gonna tell me?” Eris slumped forward on the bench with her mismatched hands clasped together. She watched him closely as he sat beside her, but his gaze was fixated solely on the water.

“I’m afraid that I don’t know what you’re talking about,” William sat stiffly, one hand carefully resting atop the other. Although it was fairly sunny despite the growing grey clouds and the shade was quite comfortable, the shadows hanging over them seemed oddly… darker to Eris than previously. Like the shade was unnaturally deepened, and she couldn’t place her finger on why. William fingered something in his hand, and she peeked to glance at it.

“… Are you playing with matches?” she asked curiously.

“No,” William dropped the match quickly and hid it beneath his foot.

Eris snorted and leaned back, tail swishing back and forth in frustration.

“You didn’t say anything to your little friend the whole time,” she pointed out. “Before you guys never shut up, and today you don’t even look at… was it Apple Blossom?”

“Apple Bloom,” William corrected her without turning away from the water. “And I’d rather not.”

“You’ll feel better if you te~ll me…” Eris said in a singsong tune, leaning forward again and grasping the bench seat with her talons and tail.

“It’s none of your business.” He scowled sharply and stiffened up even further, which Eris hadn’t even considered possible. “I’ll talk to my ‘friends’ when I want to, just quit picking about it.”

“… It’s because she didn’t write to you, isn’t it?” she guessed, hiding her smirk when his face twitched. “Haa, I knew it.”

“None. Of. Your. Business.”

“Sure it’s not,” Eris grinned, licking a bit of missed frosting from her talon. William cringed in disgust.

“Didn’t you wash your hands?” he edged away from her an inch.

“… Why wouff I wo what?” she balked with her mouth full of fingers, drooling a little.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Takes after her old man, don’t she?” Discord grinned beside him.

William nearly fell off the bench.

“You’re back!” William’s face exploded into a myriad of expressions, joy overriding his fear and surprise.

Then, Discord’s face exploded, primarily with Eris’s damp fist.

“Anytime I call my fucking ass!” she screamed as she pounded thin air where the smirking draconequus had just been, standing shakily atop the bench over a shocked William. “Come back you bastard so I can hit you again!”

William whirled around in panic, desperately searching for Discord – and for a brief moment, the insane notion that he was completely delusion seemed very real, leaving him frozen. But Discord was quick to reappear, reclining lazily in the crooked arm of a tree above and grinning down at them like a Cheshire cat.

“You know,” Discord pulled a large shining red apple from his armpit and took a noisy bite out of it. “You need to work on your ‘hello’ a little bit.”

“You lied to me!” Eris bellowed, fists clamped in raw anger as she stomped over to the tree to shoot daggers up at him. “You told me – you lied, you prick!”

“If you don’t watch your language, you’re grounded, young lady,” Discord grinned even wider, finishing off the apple and spitting out seeds like a machine gun into the air. The next moment he winked and vanished, crawling with an ‘oomph!’ out of the wooden seat next to William and reclining on air beside him.

“How’ve you been, Willie?” Discord gave him a toothy smile. “I see your hands have been busy, is that why you didn’t say ‘hello’ too?”

His words were cut off by a surprisingly powerful hug, and William was grinning from ear to ear.

“You came back!” he said breathlessly, unperturbed by the painful burning sensation in his palms. “You’re back, you’re finally home!”

Discord shifted uncomfortably as Eris leaned over the back of the bench to glower at him, unwilling to punch any more so long as William was clamped on to him.

“Uh, yeah…” the draconequus peeled the boy off carefully, looking awkward. “Just dropping in, staying busy.”

“What?” William’s look became downcast. “But-but, you just came back…! Why do you have to leave?”

Eris looked at William, then she looked at Discord. Then she repeated the process several times.

“… You motherfucker.”

“Grounded,” Discord stated expressionlessly. “I’m telling sun-butt to keep your powers even longer. Have fun with that.”

“You didn’t tell him?” she pulled away with a hint of disgust mingled with her anger. “You seriously – I don’t even – no words. I have no words.”

“Tell me what?” William looked cautiously back and forth between the draconequui, nervously clamping his stinging hands together.

“Not now, Eris…” Discord tried to shake his head subtly, but she only crossed her arms.

“You’re messed up in the head,” Eris spat. “I can’t believe this.”

“It’s not time yet!” he insisted, only serving to confuse William further.

“What isn’t time? What’s going on?” William stared nervously.

Discord heaved a sigh and ran a paw through his messy white goatee.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” he said flatly.

“You’d better,” Eris cracked her knuckles threateningly. “Or I’ll-”

“Do nothing of the sort, because you know what will happen!” Discord interrupted. Eris started to argue, but bit her tongue. After a moment she crossed her arms in indignation and threw herself angrily onto the bench, refusing to look at him any longer.

“You don’t have to tell me,” William bargained desperately. “Honestly, I couldn’t care less, it doesn’t matter. Please just tell me that you’re staying home.”

“Aww, don’t do that…” Discord rubbed the back of his neck and tried to keep his gaze. “I mean, you look like a lost puppy, it’s killing me. I stopped by for a reason.”

Eris’s ears perked up, but she still didn’t look at him.

“There’s no need to panic,” Discord held up his hands, at which point Eris suddenly became very, very anxious. “But in an indeterminate amount of time, we might need to… go away for a while.”

“… I don’t understand,” William blinked, mind working furiously.

“Everything’s going to be fine!” he insisted with a forced smile. “I’ve even got us a nice little villa picked out, it’ll just be me and you and Eris and your mom and everything will be fine.”

“What about Pinkie Pie?” William narrowed his eyes. “Or Miss Sparkle, or anyone else? Why won’t you clarify?”

“Just think of it as a long vacation,” Discord grinned again. “Don’t worry about anyone else, I’ve got everything almost taken care of, just don’t panic.”

The fact that Discord was repeatedly telling William not to worry was steadily making him more and more worried, which was not lost on Discord.

“So, uh…” he clapped his hands together. “I’ve got a few minutes, what have you kids been up to?”

“I hate you,” Eris glared at him over William’s head with enough intensity to melt steel. “Dude, I hate you so much right now.”

Discord subtly snapped his talons, and Eris found herself suddenly buried beneath a wave of slinky toys. William paid it no attention.

“I have some questions that need to be answered,” William said sternly, the sound of Eris’s struggling meeting deaf ears.

“I have some answers that might fit with questions,” he inspected his talons carefully. “Depending on the question, of course.”

“You’re not coming back to stay ever again, are you?”

Discord looked away, his face blank.

“Probably not.”

“And there’s nothing that can ever change your mind?” William’s pleading tone started to return, but he fought it off.

“Same answer.”

William paused, thinking.

“Can you bring back the dead?”

Eris froze up in her pile of animated slinky toys, watching and listening warily.

“Uh… yes and no…” the god of chaos shifted uneasily beneath the boy’s intense stare.

“Explain,” William said curtly.

“Ehh, it’s a really sticky and confusing situation,” Discord shrugged restlessly. “I mean, it can be done, you just shouldn’t.”

“Can anyone bring back the dead?” William pried.

“I really don’t like where this is going,” Discord said firmly. “Eris hasn’t tried it, has she?”

“Screw you!” she let out a muffled shout beneath the pile of multicolored plastic.

“No, no – I’m just very interested…” William tried to seem casual.

“Don’t try it,” he demanded, pointing a talon in his direction and squinting hard. “I mean it, necromancy is not something to play around with. Not while Sunny D. is running the show, anyway, it’ll royally mess up the balance.”

“Of what?” William inquired. “You seem to know a lot about it, have you done it before?”

“Whoa, look at the time!” Discord gawked at a large cuckoo clock that had somehow appeared on his wrist a moment before he tossed it away. “I’ve gotta get back, there’s –”

“One more question?” William grabbed his arm in desperation.

Discord started to deny him, and frowned.

“… Go ahead.”

“Why did you adopt me?”

Discord blinked. William watched carefully as something inside of the draconequus seemed almost to… deflate.

“Uh, huh. Uh. Oh. Okay. Uh, wow,” he ran a paw over his jagged horn, which fell flat with his touch and sprang back up like rubber. “Yikes, that is a really intense line of questioning and I was, uh… not prepared for that.”

“Because Mother said that you did it for revenge,” William pressed on with a strange look in his eyes.

“Wha-? When?”

“After her fourth glass of wine…” he answered quietly. “I remember. She refused to talk about it any after that, but I still remember.”

Eris had seemingly stopped moving altogether, and it was silent in the park except for a single bird’s chirrup.

The cuckoo clock sounded off.

A leaf fell between them, and still he said nothing.

“… You didn’t really adopt me just because of something like-like… that. Right?”

Discord didn’t speak, and William did not let go of his arm.

“… Right? Father? You would never do something like that. Right? Father…? Right?”

One moment, William was standing precariously on the park bench and clutching at the silent draconequus’s arm. The next, he was standing in utter silence and grasping with pained hands at nothing but air. He struggled to make words form, but there seemed to be a mysterious golf ball lodged in his throat. All that he managed to choke out only came in a frail whisper.

“… Dad?”

Neither of them moved for what seemed like an eternity. A sliver of cool wind picked up and ruffled the leaves, the growing storm clouds hanging fatly above and beginning to blot out the light.

“You wanna just… go home?” Eris asked softly after a while, kicking off a stray slinky.

“… No. I don’t want to go home.”

“You sure?”

“Just leave me alone.”

Eris did no such thing. Instead, she sat silently beside him for a while, and they watched a few droplets of rainfall spatter across the lake. Eris sat slumped forward with her tail drooping through an opening in the bench, and William sat stiffly with his hands folded loosely over one another.

A droplet of blood seeped from a sliver in the bandaging, mingling in a pinkish color with the collecting water at his feet.

Eris held her tail up with an arm uselessly over his head like an umbrella as they finally began the long walk home.

William had never liked swimming.

He hated the cold rush of water, even on a hot day. He despised the feeling of needing to dry as quickly as possible, he disliked deep water even more for the irrational fear that something would slither up from the depths and bite him. But mostly, he hated floating about and doing nothing, carried along by the water.

William felt rather as if he were floating for the rest of the day.

It was as if his ears were full of water that blocked all the words out, and waterlogged his brain. He hardly even noticed when Rainbow Dash came back late, sopping wet and in a foul mood. William was in the same watery fog when he discovered the gaping hole in the wall covered only by a large tan tarp. Nothing changed during dinner or when he stared with a pencil in his smarting hands down at the black book, which waited patiently for him nonetheless.

Nothing changed when Eris began snoring quietly on her mat, giving a single kick in her sleep.

The floating, empty feeling at last was shrugged off as William watched the clock on the wall. He waited until the very last second. The flickering solitary candle on the little pink cupcake was blown out with one silent puff.

Then William carefully placed it on his nightstand, pulled his sheets up to his chin, and quietly cried himself to sleep.

Author's Notes:

One flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoos nest.