Nymeria & Lilómiel

baby, I'm a sociopath / sweet serial killer / on the warpath / 'cause I love you / just a little too much.

Nymeria eyes him, imperious, rolling dangerous words around her mouth—words that could hurt, that could splinter into shards to pierce through Volterra's heart. Their intimacy, their bond as kin, gave her knowledge of him: knowledge which could be used to malicious ends. And she wonders—hesitates, in this revelation which crawled from the back of her mind forwards, to seep into her ponderings and croons to her like a living entity, a lethal poison which could corrode and eat away at their precious love for one another.

Skin jumps over muscle, an almighty twitch fluttering through her frame, and she turns her head towards the monster: the hatchling. Eyes widen, framing her disgust, lips curling back into an unseemly grimace; she tears her ruby retinas away from the awful beast, abhorring his jealousy.
Is that how Volterra feels?

No wonder he's angry; no wonder he's upset. If the emotions of her companion, the envy, the greed for Nymeria's heart, were mirrored in her twin's feelings... she couldn't blame him the slightest bit for his resentment. At the roil of his muscles, the stiff displeasure inscribed to his black frame, guilt flashes through her gaze. Her head drops ever so slightly as her scarlet eyes come to settle on the soil, hiding away the loathing—for herself, for Lilómiel—which washed through her veins. It shouldn't be like this, she berated herself; it's not about one or the other. Her love, her adoration, was not limited to Volterra and Confutatis. It was something that could grow, hold whoever she wanted.

Everything would be the same, she tells herself insistently.
But she knew it wouldn't be.

At his disagreement, at her brother's displeasure, she scuffs a hoof along the ground, nostrils flaring in distaste. There's no point in engaging with him—to some degree, he is right, however reluctantly she admits it. Letting Lil run wild with his own ideas wasn't a partnership in any sense of the word. It was allowing him to control her; and she refused that. Nobody would hold sway over her—nobody would force her into anything, not today, not tomorrow (nor for as long as she lived.)

Their embrace stings for more than one reason. The first, the wound on her muzzle, and second, the claws which dig in deeper to her skin, a physical demand on behalf of her tiny counterpart. For a long moment the daughter is distracted as she gropes for the bond [to reprimand Lilómiel]—before she is disturbed from her duty by a promise of love.

"I love you too," Nymeria murmurs, and as he reaches in to let his teeth roam across her neck, she mirrors him in kind. There is a sweet and decrepit second of togetherness, and then he pulls away from her, leaves her alone.

Ears twitch forwards, flexing to catch his final goodbye, and then she watches him retreat.
She doesn't say anything—but it's not necessary to. Even when they quarreled (albeit mildly) they were still siblings, still family. It wasn't required for her to verbalize her devotion, her fondness, not even when they were dead and buried, gone to rot in the ground.

They were twins; they were bonded.
It was as simple as that.