She wasn’t proud of herself. This story was nothing glorious, conversely. After she had cheated death even closer than on the morning, and dragged with her one of her most precious friend, she happened to be on her own in an unknown area, crying rivers. Anything could have happened to her…
In fact, once again her eyes were staring anywhere but at Dr. Horse, who probably was trying to interpret each of the micro-emotions from her face.
Rainbow Dash heard him clearing his throat, and the sound of his pencil moving along the paper of his notepad. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see him picking up his phone and calling Miss Red Heart in order to command her to come and give her a room.
But he didn’t. All he did was staring at her and asking her what she did after this unfortunate episode.
To be honest, when she had stepped into his office, she had no intention of telling him what happened next. A part of the end of this day was very intimate and he didn’t need to know…
Shrugging, she decided not to tell him about what was the most private.
A heavy and icy rain had started to fall while she was crying. It was late, she was distraught, and she felt as if no one could save her. While she went looking for a cab, unsure of where she’d ask it to go, a face appeared in her mind.
He could understand and find the words… She wouldn’t try to put him in jeopardy, the way she did with Fluttershy and most importantly with Pinkie Pie. Now it was too late and the harm was done, she knew her lesson.
What Rainbow Dash had forgotten was that taxis didn’t come around this area easily, and she had to walk under the rain for at least one hour, barefoot since she’d broken one heel of her expensive pair of pumps.
When she finally found a car which agreed to bring her to the university district, it was so late she feared she’d done all this for nothing.
Rain hadn’t stopped when she climbed at his floor – she knew the entrance code by heart – and she knocked on the door. The whole building was plunged into silence, if not for light sounds she didn’t identify immediately.
Then it came back to her mind. Right above his desk, he had hung a black board on which he wrote complicated scientific calculations Rainbow Dash knew quite well. Her mother used to do the same.
It meant he wasn’t asleep.
A few seconds later, a disheveled Soarin dressed in a pajama opened the door. His eyes opened wide when he saw her, not only because it was late at night, but also because her general state was rather piteous.
Her beautiful professional makeup was butchered. Her mascara formed some kind of cracks in the middle of her foundation. Her eyeliner had dripped and made her look like she had received two punches under her eyes. As far as her lipstick was concerned, it no longer covered her mouth, but was going awry, towards the black on her left cheek.
To make matter worse, her soaked hair hung like an old worn out towel along her shoulders, and the wet material of her dress stuck against her skin, freezing her whole body.
“Dashie…? What happened to you?”
She didn’t know whether it was the worried sound of his voice, or the sole fact of being in front of him, but the gates opened again, and she burst into tears, her face into her hands.
Immediately, Soarin made her step inside, and closed the door behind him. Then he softly took her in his arms, and patiently waited for the shakes of her body against his shoulder to decrease. If he said anything before she was quieted down, he feared she would break down again.
Meanwhile, he was patting her back and whispering words of comfort. The dampness of both her tears and dress came and wetted the clothes of his pajamas, but it didn’t matter. What kind of boyfriend would he be if he let her in such a state of distress without trying to comfort her?
When he felt her tears had run dry, he brought her to the edge of his bed so she could sit. Her fishnet stockings were torn off at the heel and ball of the foot… Little pieces of gravels had even come to lodge themselves around here.
Whatever had happened to her was serious.
“You’re going to tell me everything, alright? But first…”
Quickly, he went to his small bathroom and came back with two towels and a wet flannel. Soarin gave her the flannel so she could clean up her face, put the first towel on her hair and the second one around her shoulders, rubbing them with a little something anxious.
“Now I’m all yours. Tell me…”
Her eyes in the vague, like absent, she opened her mouth and explained, in a summarized, dreary and monotonic way, that today was her mother’s death anniversary, and then everything she had made Fluttershy, Sunset Shimmer and most importantly Pinkie Pie go through.
“If you only knew how bad I’m feeling about this”, she said looking straight into his eyes. “I’ve been horrible! They’re going to hate me and they won’t ever speak to me again.”
“Don’t say that, I’m sure they won’t…”
This time, Soarin slightly rubbed the towel on her head, since she hadn’t touched it yet, her arms looking like bubblegum hanging along her body. Then, with his thumb, he wiped away remains of tears on her cheeks, and cupped her face with his two hands.
“They know what this day means to you. They’re good friends, you know… They love you. And so do I.”
Alright, maybe it wasn’t the perfect moment for such a confession, but he just couldn’t help it and let it escape his mouth. A very brief display of joy went through her magenta eyes, then she lowered her eyes on her two hands on Soarin’s laps, still shaking from cold.
It was late. She was frozen. She was scared of anything that could happen if she left the soothing warmth of this small apartment to be on her own in her big empty house. To be alone… No, not tonight. Not after all this. It was the best way for her to go insane again.
“Can I… sleep here tonight?”
It was in no way an answer or even a comment about what he had just said. Rainbow Dash wished the words could go out of her mouth, yet neither did she want Soarin to believe she had said them in the confusion of the moment, or only to please him.
The young man didn’t point out her omission. It would have been no use. And it wasn’t what she was expecting from him.
“Of course you can. I’m going to get you pajamas, alright? Plus, it won’t hurt you to change your clothes, conversely. You could fall sick.”
“Thanks”, she whispered.
She was staring at the vague again. Her mind seemed to be unable to think, like a completely blank page refusing to be filled with words. She had to clasp her hands not to let herself go. Her fear was to go back to her state of psychological shock, which she was in for a few days after her mother’s death, and of which she went out with a violent and destructive suddenness.
Meanwhile, Soarin was rummaging through his closet, from which he got a tee-shirt and shorts that might be thrice larger than the young woman’s waist. Even with a bit of imagination, it was the only articles of clothing he could find that would at least fit her.
“Here… Put this on”, he said, putting the clothes by her side. “Do you want hot milk with a touch of honey? It will help you to relax.”
“It’s nice of you. Thank you, Soarin.”
She answered still with her absent stare, and kept it while taking her clothes off, while Soarin got busy in his tiny kitchen, his back on her not to risk to see her naked by accident.
Hot milk with a touch of honey was something from their shared childhood. On the winter nights, it always was what her mother used to prepare for them after they’d played in the snow and came back frozen from their snow ball fights. Better than anyone else, he knew how this little sweet something was able to warm her heart.
But while milk warmed up on his old hot plate, he was obliged to leave her alone with her thoughts.
Soarin almost jumped when he heard the sound of her voice. Her words barely were audible, so he had to prick up his ears in order to listen to what she was saying. Maybe it wasn’t even addressed to him…
“Do you know what’s the worse? It’s not to have witnessed her accident… No. What kills me is each time I think about what might have been her very last seconds… I just can’t, it’s so horrible!”
Soarin stopped what he was doing as she burst into tears again. In a bit less violent way, but…
It was the first time she confessed it out loud, repeating it to somebody else than herself. It didn’t make things easier to put up with, but at least, truth was out.
Yes, what she had been through was traumatizing. It had launched an avalanche of misfortunes, a scar deeper than all the rest, and which would never be healed completely. However, it wasn’t the images of the blazing plane making a nosedive towards the ground which shocked her the most, in her memories and her nightmares. It was the thought that her mother probably understood, behind her shaft, that she wouldn’t escape and it was her end which was coming closer. This, she couldn’t come to term with. It wasn’t how this extraordinary person should have left the world, but old, warm in her bed, and surrounded by whom she loved the most and who loved her too.
Soarin turned off the hot plate, hurried to prepare the cup of milk and came back to Rainbow Dash. He put the cup on the low table behind him, and held his girlfriend in his arms, the way he did a bit earlier. She hung at his shoulders, and the muffled hiccups she choked in his ears broke his heart in two.
He couldn’t imagine the pain she was going through at this very moment.
This time, waiting for her to calm down on her own seemed a little complicated, so Soarin made sure she would look at him, while drying the tears she kept on crying with the back of his sleeve.
“I’m not going to tell you commonplaces, things people often don’t even mean… I’m not going to lie to you either, telling you it will get better with time, because I know it won’t erase anything… What I can tell you is what I’m convinced of. Whatever happened, these last seconds… They have been for you. She loved you so much.”
Maybe it wasn’t much. But these few words, said in all sincerity, were able to make her sobs stop, without her being sure of why it did. It didn’t change anything to the awful truth, yet it was a small detail which added a bit of softness to the whole.
Rainbow Dash remembered… A few days before the beginning of the show, when she went to encourage Firefly on the runway strip, the way she always did, her mother had given her this necklace with a tricolor thunder out of a white puffy cloud, telling her she had it drawn especially for her, and that she would wear it on the day she would become a pilot herself.
Right before climbing into her plane, she smiled at her tenderly and declared:
“I’ll fly for you today, my Dashie. As always.”
If Soarin hadn’t been here, she didn’t know what she would have done. Because he had known Firefly longer than any of her friend actually did, he knew perfectly who she was, and how much she adored her daughter – to the extent of creating tensions between her and her husband many times. She could never thank him enough for what he was doing for her.
Seeing she seemed to feel better, he slipped the cup of hot milk into her hands. She was less cold now, and the steaming cup against her palm did her some good she really needed.
She was very lucky to have Soarin by her side, a boyfriend who she could share everything with. So understanding, so patient, so soothing.
And she still hid him things. Dark things she still was ashamed of today. Too often, she had been scared that telling him about this period of her life would change the image he had of her, but now she realized it was a bad understanding of the benevolent nature of the young man.
She had to tell him. What happened after her mother’s accident.
After she swallowed her hot milk in silence, Rainbow Dash put the cup on the closest prop, and took the hand which was not stroking her back tenderly and which he had put on her laps.
Words were difficult to get out yet she had to tell them. He couldn’t be the only one not to know about something that important and serious. It wasn’t easy, yes, but she didn’t have the choice now. He wasn’t hiding her anything, not even the most hideous of his weaknesses. It was her turn to open the rest of her heart to him.
“Do you remember on my birthday party; the bubble pack I tried to conceal?”
He nodded, and waited for her to go on.
“These sleeping pills… I take them since my mother’s death. Because… I have to tell you about what happened next. And it’s rather ugly.”
“You can tell me about anything you want. I’ll be here to listen and I’ll never judge you. You know it, don’t you?”
This time, she was the one nodding. He had given up on the little strokes along her spine and was now holding her two hands in his. Large and always warm. She liked his hands so much…
“Right after the accident, I fell into some kind of daze, like a zombie. When I realized Mommy was gone forever, I went out of this state and made a severe depression. I experienced the accident again through nightmares, I didn’t want to see anyone, I was paranoiac, I didn’t want to do anything neither, except running, running until my whole body ached. Sometimes I was having this thing… they call it psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. It looks like epilepsy attack but it’s longer and the causes aren’t the same.”
Rainbow Dash felt Soarin’s hand clasping hers. If he could touch her palms, he would feel the droplets piled up here within a minute of explanation.
She swallowed, and went on. Now it was too late to turn back.
“It’s because of all this that…”
Break. Deep sigh.
“It’s because of this that I made a nervous breakdown one night. I could no longer face my loneliness, my nightmares, Mommy being gone, my crisis… So I took a bottle of whisky in my father’s office, and painkillers, and I tried to kill myself.”
She saw a shadow passing through Soarin’s face, and immediately, the look in his eyes changed. Not from deception, which she had feared, but from something else. Some kind of despair, and fear, mixed with the realization that he could have lost her forever.
Her boyfriend opened his mouth to make a comment but she stopped him, putting on his lips a hand she had taken off his sweet embrace.
“Let me finish… You have to let me go all the way or else I’m scared I’ll never find the strength to tell you this again.”
Once sure he wouldn’t try to add anything, she resumed her story.
“I lied on the bathroom floor, hoping I would die quickly… I don’t know for how long did I remain this way, before deciding to get up and to go in my bed instead. But I immediately lost my balance and my shoulder bumped into the mirror before I fell back on the floor. Well, that’s what my father told me… He’s the one who found me. I’ve been in the coma for a few days. And after this, on the advice of the doctor who had taken care of me, Dad decided to send me to a hospital.”
“To rest?”
“No. Not this kind of hospital. A psychiatric institute for minors.”
It probably was the most difficult part of all this confession. Of course, her depression hadn’t been a stroll in the park, but everything surrounding her suicide attempt was hazy, a bit like a remote dream. When memories she had from her stay in Green Haven were dreadfully crystal clear.
She had a quick glimpse at Soarin. Despite the fact he promised not to judge her, she couldn’t help but being scared of his reaction. What would he think about her now? For sure, he wouldn’t see her anymore as the awesome character full of self-confidence she was doing her best to stay. But the look on his face remained unchanged.
So, she went on.
“I guess these were the worst days of my life… I bet you never had to wear a straitjacket… There’s nothing in the world that’s more humiliating.”
Rainbow Dash suppressed a chill. It was as if she could still feel the hessian was clasped against her chest, and the straps against her back. Somewhere on the Web, she had read the use of straitjackets were exaggerated on works of fiction, and they were in reality used for the most violent of patients… In Green Haven, at the least display of aggressiveness a little too noisy, they had it out, often accompanying it with a strong dose of Tercian and most terribly, of a short stay in The Room. The Room was the worse of worst things.
“The girl I had to share a bedroom with had issues with blades of any kind. One day, she’d been able to steal a switchblade in a store and to come back from a group outing with it. She stabbed me… Here… And here…”
First, Rainbow Dash showed Soarin her left forearm, then her upper right thigh.
Indeed, he already had noticed ugly scars around the two spots, that she wasn’t really trying to hide. He always thought it probably was due to her daring nature, as she had fallen so many times from the huge tree in her garden on which she tried to climb all the time while playing. Soarin would never have guessed it came from stabs.
For the second time since her story began, he dared saying something.
“Why did she do that?”
“She said it was to set me free. Since I wanted to die, she was going to help me. But I no longer wanted to die at this moment. I was better, thanks to Dr. Horse and Miss Red Heart. It was a bit before I was able to leave the institute, but I had to celebrate my fourteenth birthday there because of that. They were scared it would create another trauma.”
Here. In the end, it hadn’t been so terrible. She had thought she would never be able to enunciate, but everything had gone out naturally, just like when she confessed it to Sunset Shimmer, Fluttershy, and even Pinkie Pie.
That was how she realized. Speaking about it again was a good thing. If she was able to speak about it again, she would get rid of everything that still blocked her each time she was thinking about it, each time this cursed day came back on her calendar. It was the moment when she decided to see Dr. Horse again, and to resume the conversations she had let hanging when she left Green Haven and refused to continue her therapy.
Her story to the doctor stopped here as well. It was all the psychiatrist needed to know. What happened next was her own business. But something happened next.
“Why haven’t you told me before?” Soarin asked her.
“I was scared. Scared it would be too hard, scared that… you’d think I was dysfunctional and broken. Do you think I’m broken?”
There were uncontrollable hints of despair in her voice.
“You’re not broken. Just a little cracked apart.”
In silence, he went to put the cup into the sink.
One in the morning. It was more than the moment to go to bed, what Soarin pushed her to do while he was preparing the tableware for breakfast.
He had his back on her and didn’t see anything… The shorts he had given her were so large for her it fell at her feet when she tried to get up. Discreetly, Rainbow Dash picked it up and put it on a cushion, before slipping between the sheets.
When Soarin turned off the lights and lied down beside her, he wasn’t much surprised that she curled up against him, the tip of her nose rubbing against the cotton of his pajama top. She was snuggled so close he couldn’t ignore the warmth of her own body, her fragrance with hints of spice – and a bit of tequila – and her bare legs wrapping around his thighs.
Although he had a lot of self-control and wasn’t the type to be obsessed by sex with women, it was hard for him to master his reactions. It wasn’t any girl who was glued at him like this… It was the one he was deeply in love with, the one he couldn’t stop thinking about night and day. With another girl, it would have been easy for him to turn around and fall asleep without further ado.
Rainbow Dash looked up to him with questioning eyes. His tension was more than palpable. She almost felt as if she was lying next to a marble statue. Even if she was rather naïve in certain conditions, she was far from being stupid. It wasn’t that hard to understand what put him in such a state.
In the past, she had always been with boys in constant need. Each time, she started by refusing, and finally given in when she had enough. But at no moment did Soarin tried to slip one of his hands lower when they were cuddling or even tried to lay her down on his bed when they were kissing.
It fit her just right. Affection was enough for her, and in her mind, daring thoughts never grew. If sometimes, something sexual went across her mind, it was as fast and meaningless as any thoughts of her daily life. Questions about sexuality she had asked herself until then were limited to “since I’m not this and I’m not that, then what am I?”
For the second time in her life, another body made her want to have a closer contact, even if it was rather chaste for now.
Soarin being so tense wasn’t strange nor was it insulting in her opinion. He probably was scared to do something he shouldn’t be doing. It was up to her to show him that she wasn’t afraid and that she was feeling ready to explore something new and a bit different with him.
He opened his eyes wide as he saw Rainbow Dash sitting up straight, shifting the weight of her body in order to sit on top of him, a thigh at each side of his hips, and leaning over to kiss him.
Before her lips touched his, Soarin gently pushed her back by the shoulders. In the half dark, he couldn’t completely distinguish the features of her face. She seemed to be composed, if not sure of herself, but he had to be certain.
“Nothing obliges you to do this, you know. We can perfectly sleep together without anything like this to happen, the way we did back in Fillydelphia.”
“It’s okay if it’s with you.”
“But… What if… I mean… I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Let’s say we establish a code. If I don’t say anything, everything’s fine. If I say “orange”, it means “slow down” and if I say “red”, it means “stop”.”
In front of his bewildered face, Rainbow Dash took one of his hands and put it under her tee-shirt, right beside her belly button.
“I know everything’s going to be fine.”
“Alright, then…”
From the moment their lips met, the whole thing flowed naturally, as if they already knew each other by heart. Yet everything was unseen and fresh. It was different to be together this way. To notice how broad his shoulders were, how soft and gentle his hands were, never intrusive. To smell the real perfume of her skin, its delicacy, how firm her stomach was, shaped by boxing and climbing.
At only one moment did she use their code… To show him how to stroke the right way, so he could get more intense sighs out of her mouth. For all the rest, they were on the same wavelength. It even was intoxicating, to see how their harmony, made of nuances and complementarity, was working even in the intimacy.
“Be nice, alright? Doesn’t seem like yet this part’s fragile”, she told him, eyes to eyes.
Both at the same time, they burst into laugh. It was the first time of the whole day that Rainbow Dash was laughing heartily, or even that she was laughing, period. She’d missed this sensation so much… Then, it was replaced by something else. Pleasant too, but in another way.
Yet it took her a couple of minutes to be perfectly at ease, and to push aside what Fireball told her on the day they broke. Soarin didn’t seem to think he was making love to a plank of wood… He rather seemed to be enjoying the experience, and even complimented her on how beautiful she was, which she wasn’t quite used to.
Once she finally felt a hundred percent comfortable, it was as if she rediscovered what intimacy of this kind really felt like. Came back to her sensations she had almost forgotten, and that none of her former boyfriends had been able to make her feel, since desire wasn’t shared. There only had been one boy whom it had been possible with, but even this time hadn’t been as pleasant as tonight was. She loved Soarin, not like a friend or a brother. From the deepest of her heart, even if it still was quite hard to for to say it out loud. It was the detail changing everything. Something she would never had thought possible.
Sitting on his bed, Rainbow Dash looked at Soarin coming back with two glasses of fresh water, the blanket only covered the bottom part of her body. It had always fascinated her, how easy it was to be walking around naked in front of the other, once more than just kisses had been shared.
Without trying to put things back in place, as soon as she had drunk her glass, Soarin put them back on the closest support, and they both slipped back between the blankets, in the messy bed.
“This is my favorite part”, Rainbow Dash said as she snuggled between Soarin’s arms. “Just for this very moment… It is worth it.”
“I can only agree.”
“Who would have thought we would be here, one day?”
“I did. I always knew. We’re meant to be.”
“Sheesh, you’re so sappy!”, she said, laughing.
“But you love me…”
“It’s true.”
He knew it would be much complicated for her to say these three words. The only person she used to tell them most gladly was her mother… It didn’t matter. This answer fit him. Deep inside, he knew. And the most dazzling proof of it wasn’t the fact they had made love together tonight. It was that when with him, she didn’t need sleeping pills or any kind of medicine, in order to fall asleep with no fear.
The safety she was feeling by his side… It was worthier than any words of the world.