Title: Best Friends Forever
Description: "Sylvanas doesn't do friends. Brightwing disagrees."
Notes: Requested by Lucario, although technically I had an idea for a "Sylvanas 'befriends' Brightwing whether she likes it or not" chapter since the story's conception.
Notes 2: The nickname Sylvanas gives for Tyrande is the nickname I give to Giada de Laurentiis from the Food Network channel for wearing shirts that show lots of..."plot". I had also considered calling Thrall by the community's derogatory nickname, but that has no place here. Not now, not ever.
Notes 3: I'm now taking requests for future chapters! However, I will not do pairings unless they're going to be satirized. Shipping, for me, is like going through a minefield with a metal detector.

The rock bounced up and down in her hand.

Up and down.

Up…and down.

Sylvanas sized up the cute little bird tweeting on the branch, never taking her eyes off it even as the rock obscured her vision leap after leap.

It sounded so happy, with its high, squeaky voice. So happy, flapping its colorful wings. So happy it was alive and free.

Happy to be in this world.

Sylvanas tossed the rock up in the air. It hung there for a split second, and then it conceded to gravity and fell once more. Just as it was about to fall past her, her hand snapped out, snatched it, and flung it across the pond. It cut through the silence with a sharp whistle.

The bird's body jumped with a shocked "WARK!", bounced off the branch, and plopped into the water. Sylvanas watched the surface ripple and shatter, and then settle. She drew her gaze back to the tree it was in and waited.

A minute passed.

Suddenly the space where the bird had occupied folded in on itself, an act of self-cannibalization. The bird popped out of the hole, bright and unbroken and not a speck of blood on it. It continued where it left off on its song, as if it had never died at all.

Sylvanas punched a fist against the boulder she was seated on. "What is wrong with this world?! Why does everyone and everything have to be immortal?! I would've appreciated it all the more if the likes of ARTHAS and UTHER weren't around! Why them? Why were they handpicked by the Powers That Be? They're not Heroes! They should've stayed dead! Dead! And now I have to put up with that Proudmoore nerd, that idiot Thrall or Go'el or whatever the hell he calls himself now, and the whole cavalcade of time-lost troglodytes I've had the misfortune to ever meet! And stop singing, you twat! You're making my cold, black heart beat!" She shouted this last bit at the bird, which didn't so much as spare a single glance at her. Her glare intensified. That bold, ballsy bastard! How dare it ignore her!

Her anger boiling, Sylvanas searched the base of the boulder for another rock, deciding on one that was flatter and pointier than the previous. She scooped it up, gave it a couple practice tosses, and reared her arm back.

"HI THERE!" screeched a voice that was even higher than the bird's. Something loomed up right in front of her face, green and blue and…reptilian? It flapped on wings patterned in moons and stars and glittery showers of pixie dust.

Sylvanas yelped and threw her arm back, flinging the rock behind her high over her shoulder. She caught herself before she could fall off the boulder and breathed for the first time in a month, taking in a lot more AIR and NATURE and ALL THE LOVELY SCENTS PERTAINING TO LIFE and they tasted so disgusting! Then she got a good look at the creature and stopped breathing altogether, thank Darkness, because she recognized what it was. However, that didn't really concern; rather it was the fact that, "You can talk." She wasn't awed. No, no—she was disturbed. When the hell could these things talk?

"Of course I can!" said the faerie dragon, doing a little loop-de-loop in front of her. "I am Brightwing! Do you know about faerie dragons?"

"How can I not? Your kind is friends with those tree-hugging night elves, especially to Birdman and Miss My-Boobs-Hang-Low!" Ugh, the way Malfurion and Tyrande were so lovey-dovey made her skin crawl…as if it already didn't! "Also, your name is Brightwing."

"Yes! It makes Brightwing happy that you know!"

"Well it doesn't make me happy! It rhymes with 'light'—any kind of light, really. Especially the Light, the Light that makes people smile and laugh and spread happiness to all the good little boys and girls the world over like that…weird goblin from the Crown Chemical Company cosplaying as a winged angel during Love is in the Air!"

"Do you want to know what makes me happy?" Brightwing asked.

"No," Sylvanas said bluntly.

But Brightwing carried on. "Smiling makes me happy!" Sylvanas groaned. "Do you like to smile?"

"I don't do smiles."

"Smiling is happy making! I really like to smile when I kill baddies!"

"The only baddies you kill are herbivores, like rabbits and birds. There is no way you can take on a fully grown human, or anyone for that matter."

"But that is the best part of snack time! Nothing tastes better than a scared baddie running for their life! Doesn't that just sound fun?"

"It would be more fun if this blasted place didn't bring the dead back to life!" Like Arthas; at first she had been so thrilled when Uther put her through a crash course at the Cursed Hollow and she had put an arrow right between that man-child's eyes, into the slit of that abominable helmet. He was down, down for the count and not getting back up, and she had actually laughed and danced and cheered that he was gone, gone, gone! He was finally GONE!

…Until he respawned a moment later in the Hall of Storms, looking smug and no worse for wear. Then he proceeded to faceroll her, Uther, and their blue-clad soldiers—but that was a different story for a different time.

"That is a good thing!" said Brightwing. "Dead baddies that make comebacks always means time for snack time!"

"Nothing would make me happier than seeing my enemies get slaughtered," Sylvanas growled. "But I can't! This world, this…Nexus…won't allow it, and it is a hell worse than the hell I was shown when I attempted suicide back on Azeroth! Ohhhh, if only I could wrap my hands around his neck and—!" Her words dissolved into angry, hateful gibberish, clutching the air in front of her and strangling it as though Arthas (or Uther or Thrall, anyone would do) was right there with her. Just the thought of having him right next to her, still alive and undead and oh so proud, drove her to an even greater fury, her eyes blazing a scorching crimson.

"Brightwing is sorry you feel that way! Here, have a hug! Hugs make Brightwing feel much better!" Then Brightwing squeezed and molded herself into Sylvanas's shaking hands.

Sylvanas stopped. She stared at the faerie dragon that she was now holding instead of Arthas's imaginary, unprotected slab of a neck.

Brightwing fluttered her eyelashes and gave the Banshee Queen the faerie dragon equivalent of a grin. "See? Isn't this happy making?"

Sylvanas whined low in her throat, sounding like a kettle ready to blow its lid. Her eyes were wide and feverish, her mouth pulled down in a severe frown.

"Let's be friends!" said Brightwing.

"I'm not your friend," said Sylvanas.

"What about buddies?"

"No."

"What about guys?"

"No! I don't want to be your anything!" Sylvanas roughly shook the faerie dragon back and forth.

"Why not? We can kill bad guys together! It makes us both happy, yes?"

She…had a point. Darkness, she had a very good point, and Sylvanas didn't want this…thing…to be right. But Uther said the Nexus was the hunting grounds for team fights and free-for-alls, upheld by the Powers That Be because the nobility and peasants couldn't get enough of their Heroes (she ground her teeth at that word) kicking each other's asses over whatever objective they were focusing on.

Sylvanas didn't want friends.

She didn't do friends.

This was the Nexus, a living hell she had once thought of as paradise, and anyone on her team was an arrow in her quiver. Including Brightwing.

So Sylvanas nodded. "Yes," she said slowly. "Yes it does…but let's get one thing straight!" She brought the faerie dragon close so that their noses were touching. "I'm not your friend. I'm not your buddy. I'm not even your guy. I am Sylvanas Windrunner, the Banshee Queen! The only thing we have in common is seeing our foes vanquished until we're called upon to do battle as enemies on opposing teams. Do I make myself clear?"

"Brightwing understands perfectly!" said the faerie dragon, nodding with a healthy cocktail of vigor and enthusiasm. She giggled and snuggled closer to Sylvanas, her claws digging into her breastplate. "Hurray! Brightwing has new friend! Best friends forever!"

"What did I just say?!"