I’ve always wondered what she looks like.

What do you think that one looks like?

I just want you to be happy again, Mother.

He could no longer tell if the high pitched whistle was emanating from before him, or if it was the sound of his own screaming. William gazed on in horror at the impending menace, the shadow of the colossal mechanical army looming over him as he gazed back at himself-

I don’t know, Princess. Sometimes I wish that I would dream of flying.

Do you enjoy the thought of flight?

No. I hate it. But it would still be better than this.

The rain was never-ending.

William sleepily contemplated recording his dream to Princess Luna, but almost immediately brushed off the thought. It would only be the same as always, a waste of time. Redundant.

The heavy patter of rain smacking the tan tarp seemed so much louder, and the sudden chill seeping into the room bit at him with sharp teeth. He started to pull the blankets up a little closer to stave off the cold and return to restless sleep once more until proper morning arrived, but stopped.

Eris lay with her back to him, her tail wrapped loosely around one of his bare ankles. He didn’t even have the energy to sigh again, the first one having already drained him. Her back firmly against his, William almost wondered how he had failed to notice in the first place until he finally realized that perhaps it was because he was oddly comfortable.

The thought made him highly uncomfortable.

“What’s your excuse this time, Eris?” William asked quietly, his voice almost silenced by the sound of heavy rain. “Too cold? Too damp? Sleepwalking? Don’t you try to ignore me, I know you aren’t really asleep. You haven’t snored once in the last twenty-three minutes.”

For a while, William thought that she would simply continue feigning sleep. He only listened to her slow breathing. Eventually, Eris whispered back.

“… You looked lonely.”

“Well, I’m not. I don’t want or need anyone.”

“Is that why you haven’t pushed me out yet?”

“Why?” William asked in a bitter, soft voice as the tarp he stared at billowed heavily against the clamps that held it in place. “Why do you feel the need to torment me like this, spawn of chaos?”

Eris didn’t seem to have an answer to that.

William, however, did.

“… Right, sort of answered my own question.”

“I get the feeling we’ve been down this road before,” Eris said suddenly. “Talk about déjà vu.”

“This feels weird.”

“Tell me about it, I know I’ve heard somewhere –”

“You know what I meant,” he corrected her.

“Oh. You mean sharing a bed with your sister.”

“We’re not really related. So it’s fine.”

Eris started to shift away, but found herself unexpectedly stilled by his touch.

“… I thought-”

“You thought wrong. Stay.”

She shuffled awkwardly, but remained behind him nonetheless.

“In hindsight, it is kind of weird…” Eris began quietly until she realized that William had at last turned toward her. He had an odd sort of look to his eyes, like he wasn’t quite focusing. An almost delirious, searching sort of gaze.

“It all depends on your definition of ‘strange’ and how weird anything really is in comparison.”

“Comparison to wh-?” she started, words catching in her throat. Eris’s lower back automatically arched from the sensation of her ear tip between his burned fingers. The coarseness of the bandages rolling her slowly between his fingers made a sharp shiver ripple up her spine, and her tail instinctively tightened around his ankle.

“C-careful…!” Eris breathed fearfully. “Don’t pinch…”

“Like this?” William straddled her chest, free hand grappling her other ear as well and making her cringe. “Oh, I might, Eris. I could pinch as hard as I wanted to right now.”

Although his words were cold, his motions remained the same – slow, gentle rubbing between the fingers of each hand, prudently and leisurely kneading them up and down in synchronization with each other.

“... Stop,” Eris’s command was almost unheard. Her face was deeply flushed, and her breathing was heavy.

“Of course. But only if you say it again. And this time say it like you mean it.”

Eris said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” he leaned forward a little with a quiet smirk.

Her body trembled weakly beneath him. Sporadic jitters would wrack her body every time his fingers danced near the base of her ears, cautiously sidling all the way back up. Eris bit back a moan and tried to look away. William found his face strangely hot, almost as much as the heat flooding her ears – so much that he could feel it through the bandages, soothing the stinging.

“… This is so wrong,” she breathed at last.

“And why is that?” William whispered into her ear, making her quiver again. “How is it wrong for someone to get what they want? It doesn’t have anything to do with what you say, I can see it in your eyes. It’s only because you’ve lost control of the situation.”

His words sank in after a moment, and he bit her lower lip. For as still as his voice was, he was quivering and trembling just as much as Eris. His injured hands caressed her, and her own wound tightly over his forearms. Another soft moan was stifled as he pulled particularly hard, forcing her attention back to him.

“How does it feel, Eris?” he asked quietly, gradually but roughly forcing down her ears and making her whimper aloud. “How does it feel, being completely powerless? Helpless beneath your assailant, so easily injured?”

“… You won’t hurt me,” Eris answered with frail determination after a moment, large red eyes turning to him.

“What makes you so sure?” William asked, a hint of haughtiness in his tone.

“Because,” she smiled weakly. “You don’t have it in you to hurt someone that trusts you.”

Eris hissed in sudden pain as he clamped down on her ears. Her cry was stifled as one of his hands fastened securely over her mouth, and he glowered down at her with a heated glare. She bucked beneath him, but he stiffened his clasp with his knees to make her still.

“You make me so angry, Eris,” William seethed into her open sore ear. “I can’t stand you, you make me madder than anyone else ever has. Every single day with you makes me want to rip my own eyes out, you make my blood boil!”

Her heavy breathing through her nostrils was just as fast as his own, her eyes widely staring into his sharp almond ones. His angry clench finally slowly, slowly released. Her pained ear sprang up throbbing between his fingers, and William sluggishly pulled his hand away from her mouth and gently cradled her cheek.

“But I’ll give you that much, Eris. Damn you, do you make me feel alive.”

They only stared at each other for a long while, neither of them moving or speaking.

“… That hurt.”

“Then hurt me back. Then we’ll be even,” he insisted.

“Maybe I will.”

“No you won’t,” William felt her tail coil tightly around his ankle again as one of her arms rested on his lower back.

“What makes you say that?” Eris drew him a little closer, a low, dangerous tone in her voice.

“Because you don’t have it in you to hurt someone that trusts you.”

“… You’re a devious little bastard,” she met his coy grin with one of her own.

Again silence fell, the only noise resounding through the room the mysteriously heavy drumbeat of rainfall.

“Eris.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to tell you to do something. And then I want you to obey it.”

“You know, I’m older than –”

William’s hand stiffened around her ear, and she did simultaneously. Eris blinked, a tinge creeping into her cheeks once more.

“Age before beauty, oh sister of mine. Now shut your trap and listen, or I’ll punish you.”

She started to retort simply to antagonize him, but paused.

“… Uh huh. And… what’s that?” she asked quietly.

“Don’t you ever, ever leave me.”

“… I won’t.”

“Do you Pinkie Promise?”

“Pinkie Promise,” Eris’s talon wrapped around his little pinkie finger, matching his tiny, nearly content smile.

“There’s a good girl.”

Then, the wall exploded.

“Save the books, save the books!” William shrieked as he stumbled past Rainbow Dash, arms loaded down with as many of his precious books as he could carry. Several fell out of his arm, which Dash ignored as she attempted to pin down the tarp again.

“I said hold it!” she demanded, her voice muffled amongst the storm.

“And I’m freakin’ trying!” Eris bellowed back, snapping her talons and struggling to force the tan tarp back over the partially finished flooring connected to William’s room. The enormous gusts of rain and wind blasting them back only served to infuriate Rainbow Dash further, and she heaved with all her might to mash the clamps back in place.

“Will!” Rainbow Dash screamed over the raging gust that nearly ripped the tarp away from them again, her mane matted with rain. “Get something heavy!”

“Like what?” he blinked, looking around the room. There wasn’t much in the house that could hold down the entire tarp – after a split second he darted to his wooden dresser, desperately flailing to shove the heavy furniture over to the gaping opening. Eris was swift to release her end of the tarp that she was supposed to be holding, and Dash’s angry shouts went unheard as the pair strained to heave the clunky thing into place. With effort, they finally managed to hook part of the tarp beneath the dresser and shove it firmly into place and stop the rain from pouring in.

By that point, however, they were all three thoroughly sopping wet.

“… Well,” Eris said after an uncomfortable stretch in which they only stood around admiring the damage. “That happened.”

“We’re going to have to repaint in here,” Rainbow Dash stated wearily, wiping rainwater from William’s brow with one hoof.

“At least we managed to save the books,” he breathed a sigh of relief, to which Eris rolled her eyes.

“And I’m pretty sure everything in your dresser is soaked,” Dash carried on nonetheless, carefully fixing his hair and failingly trying to dry him with one of her wet wings. “It’s all my fault. This is what I get for procrastinating and crap. Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap.”

“Why is it still raining, anyway?” Eris peered through the crack to the broiling storm outside. “I thought that was taken care of?”

“Towels, please,” Rainbow Dash nudged William off. “And we did, for some reason these weird storms keep sneaking out from somewhere in the Everfree.”

“A peculiar weather anomaly,” William hummed to himself as he returned with the towels. Eris promptly took hers and wrapped it skillfully around her head like a turban, opting instead to sit Indian style on William’s bed and grinning like the whole ordeal was hilarious. “How often do freak storms like these occur?”

“Freak storms – thanks,” Dash wiped her face off with a bright blue towel. “Bleh. Storms like these are nothing new, it’s just weird how determined they are. You remember what I told you about Everfree clouds?”

William paused for a moment, wistfully regarding his supply of sopping wet clothes as he attempted to dry himself.

“They move independently, if I recall correctly,” he frowned.

“Right!” Dash beamed proudly, pulling the towel between her wings. “So when a whole lot of them gather together, it tends to create bigass drenchers like this one.”

“So why are they suddenly so consistent?” William furrowed his brows in concentration. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not a clue,” Rainbow Dash shrugged after she finished drying up as much as she could from the floor and started toward the door. “Last I heard the weather team had Dew Drop on it, and she’s drawing blanks too. All we can do is buck out what we can and ride out the rest.”

They were interrupted by a loudly growling stomach, to which Eris shamelessly raised a single talon.

“Not to interrupt your thrilling chit chat,” the draconequus deadpanned. “I don’t know ‘bout you guys, but I’m starving.”

“Likewise!” Dash said with enthusiasm, ruffling her wings before clapping her hooves together. “And afterwards, I think it’s a great time to go introduce you two to a new… friend of mine, but since it's still pretty early that can wait. So…. who wants some breakfast?”

The two of them turned instantly with eager grins to William, who sighed quietly.

“… I’ll get the eggs.”

Author's Notes:

"Io fei gibetto de le mei case. I made my own home be my gallows."
~ Hannibal Lecter