//------------------------------// // Disappeared (part 2) // Story: The Truth About Girls (Vol. 2) // by TheMareWhoSaysNi //------------------------------// The next day. Sugarcube Corner again. The scene looked like the scenes of the previous days. Nonetheless, something had changed. Pinkie Pie wasn’t with them. Well, she was, but not around their table. Today, the temperatures were lower again. It explained why the tearoom was overcrowded, and as soon as the band had arrived, the Cakes had asked for her presence behind the counter. Because it was the deal and she owed them to have a roof to live under, she’d obeyed without further thinking. The girls all understood, and had promised to give her a full account on Octavia’s online activities as soon as possible. Twilight had brought her computer to high school, purposefully for the inquiry. Because in Equestria people don’t really have a surname, researches on SNS were a little more complicated than elsewhere. The Marebook network, official copy of its American counterpart, was adapted to this peculiarity, although it rendered manipulations longer. She’d finally found traces of her, after a few computing mishaps – wifi throughput not being on top of its shape because of the weather conditions. The last of her messages dated back to a little earlier before she completely deserted CHS’ corridors. And the least one could say was that they were rather… bewildering. In theory, it was nothing but a succession of unrelated sentences. The only thing certain was that these messages weren’t the happy type. The teenage girl had taken off every of her photo album and deleted anything related to school and cello. She had also demanded her list of friends to erase all the pictures in which she had been identified. “Obviously, something terrible has happened to her”, Twilight drew the conclusion from it. “But what do you think this might be?” Sunset Shimmer asked her, eager to know more. “I’m sorry. Psychology isn’t my field of expertise.” Indeed, it was much easier for her to speak about stars and black holes than to see through the mysteries of the human soul. But all the same, it seemed Sunset Shimmer that her insight and rationality made her someone appropriate to draw other personal conclusions from the elements she possessed. “Your Octavia can’t stand the sight of herself, this is what it means!” Applejack stated. “It’s clear. She doesn’t want anyone to look at her face anymore. Only when you can no longer bear yourself something like that happens. Or when you think you’re ugly but I never felt she was the kind of person to be riddled by her complexes”, Rainbow Dash went on. Of course, the latter wasn’t as thoughtful as Twilight, but when it came to darkness of souls, she and Pinkie Pie undoubtedly were in the best positions to speak about the matter. “Do you think she could be going through depression?” “I’d stake the motorbike I still don’t have yet on it!” “And what do you think could be the cause of it?” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Well, there, I can’t tell! There’s too many possible risk factors. All I can say for sure is that it’s not a heartbreak.” Indeed, it hadn’t seemed to her that Octavia and Vinyl’s relationship was going downhill. Conversely, they looked really happy when they were together. With these words, unable to hold herself back, and scarcely interested with the matter despite its intriguing plot, Fluttershy took a glimpse at the counter. The others hadn’t noticed, but Big Macintosh was here, and he hadn’t stopped by to see her at any moment. She had told no one about their break, imagining Applejack knew. Nothing was sure now. Indeed, if her friends were into the secret, she would have asked her how she was, would have tried to comfort her, but they hadn’t spoken to her about it at all. Surely it was because he hadn’t stopped by to see her neither that his sister hadn’t noticed he was around. He was at the counter, and was talking with Pinkie Pie. Well… Pinkie Pie was the one doing all the talk, actually, and from where she was, Fluttershy couldn’t hear a word she was saying. There were fewer chances for them to be chatting about her, at sight of their relaxed and smiling faces. Like a cloud passing her by, she heard Rainbow Dash’s voice, still speaking about Octavia’s sudden disappearance. “Sunset Shimmer and I will visit her at her place tomorrow. We’ll use the excuse of homework. Maybe it will work.” As far as Fluttershy was concerned, it seemed obvious her friends didn’t need her to see through the mystery. Not that poor Octavia’s lot didn’t matter to her. Conversely, she thought it to be sad and frightening at the same time. The main problem was that she was so caught up in her own heartache that she couldn’t give this all the attention it deserved. Each time she glanced at Pinkie Pie with Big Macintosh, her stomach ached, and a fear like nothing before took over her body. Until now, she had always put this down to the description of his type of girl the young man gave her on the first night where she had confessed. It probably still was the case… No, it wasn’t. Suddenly, obviousness struck her, and she felt knocked down. All this time she had put lacy blinders on her face not to see what was yet transparent. And sure it was even more painful than the rest. From that very moment, everything no longer existed for her. Octavia and her depression, her friends debating about what might have happened to her, laughs and other conversations of the tearoom. It only remained Big Macintosh happily chatting with Pinkie Pie, surrounded by the murkiest halo of stormy nights. She needed to know. It would hurt her but at least she would have certainties. So, when she saw Big Macintosh walking to the exit door, she apologized towards her friend and got up from her seat. It was only then Applejack noticed her brother had been in the same room. Weird… Usually, he always stopped by to say hello to the other girls, and even in a hurry, he always stayed at least one minute in order to be with Fluttershy. In fact, his behavior had been the same since Pinkie Pie’s move. He made his very best to avoid Applejack as much as he could, and when she would ask him how things were with Fluttershy, he avoided her question with another question. She took a discreet glimpse at the window behind her. Despite the mist from cold, she thought she saw her friend running after Big Macintosh. The cold outside was biting, and Fluttershy regretted she hadn’t thought about taking at least her scarf. The first time she had screamed his name, he hadn’t heard, or he had pretended he hadn’t heard. On the second time, she screamed louder, and he finally turned around with a certain amount of stolidity. Smoke like a ghost was escaping her lips as she was trying to catch her breath. For a few long seconds, they only stayed face to face, not really looking at each other, nor doing anything at all. When Fluttershy eventually looked up, he couldn’t help but see fear in her eyes. Not the kind of fear she usually displayed when in front of a new or stressful situation, no, a fear of another kind. A fear of knowledge. “You say you’ve always been honest with me, don’t you?” He nodded. “So, I want you to answer my question honestly… Are you in love with Pinkie Pie?” She just couldn’t believe she had been able to say this horrible sentence out loud. Yet she had. It was even more tormenting than she thought. But she knew, to ignore would be even worse. An absolute ordeal. She needed to know, to tear off the dressing once and for good. She was already hurt, anyway, it could never be worse. “I am”, he simply confessed. She had been wrong. There was always a possibility for things to get worse. Under the shock of hearing out loud what she already knew, her cottony knees were unable to stand, and she let herself all on the snowy ground, out of breath and her vision erased by a thick curtain of tears. The fact he didn’t come closer to enquire about the way she was feeling, and that he let her on her own with her pain was almost as unbearable as the rest. She was feeling torn apart, shattered into a million pieces scattered all over town. If it had been someone else, anyone else, yes she would have been sick as hell but she would have accepted it. That it was one of her closest friends, whom she had fought for, who she had brought comfort to so many times, and whom had done the same for her, it was the detail that made all the matter even harder. Brusquely agonizing. ----------------------------- The building in which Octavia was living was one of those dark and old buildings that were to be found all over Canterlot’s working class areas, with a janitor living at the first floor, watching who was getting out and who was getting in. In order to be able to climb where they wanted to go, after they had checked the names of the mailboxes, Rainbow Dash and Sunset Shimmer had to lie and say the father of one of them envisioned to buy and renovate buildings of the surroundings. At first reluctant, the janitor finally welcomed them warmly as soon as she learned what was the name of the father in question. It didn’t particularly make her feel comfortable to use the name of Rainbow Blaze in order to achieve their ends. The lesser possible did she have to evoke their filial connection, the better she was. She hated for people to think that if she succeeded in something, it was thanks to his money. Octavia was living in an apartment at the last floor, right under the roofs. Both teenage girls ignored what her parents were doing for a living, but they for sure weren’t of those who were rolling in money. It wasn’t much a surprise, since the young woman only had been able to pursue her studies thanks to her gift for cello. Because she was really promising, many Colleges already had offered her a complete scholarship if she agreed to swell their ranks next year. This gift would probably save her from a life far more difficult than what the two girls who came to visit her were used to. Though she didn’t have the manners related to her social rank, and wanted to get off this financial influence in the future, Rainbow Dash didn’t know what starvation was like, nor how it felt like to have difficult end of the month. Sunset Shimmer, as far as she was concerned, came from a family of the upper middle-class, like every of her friends, except Applejack, whose family wealth even exceeded her best friend’s. The walls of the corridors had probably been white one day, but now displayed colors of mildew. The light supposed to illuminate the whole was so pale they almost felt like caught in the middle of a scary movie, and expected at any moment to see a girl whose face was hidden by long black hair coming from one of the doors. To get things worse, a suffocating scent of frying and rancid cooking floated in the air. “It’s no surprise the girl is depressed while living in such a hellhole…” “Yes”, Sunset Shimmer went on. “She’s always so presentable, with that very elegant accent, so I’d never have thought.” “You know, it’s best to beware of appearances like the plague!” A smirk appeared on the teenager’s face. She knew a lot about appearances… Like Fluttershy, for example, so shy and fearful, who had almost tried prostitution. And what could she say about her former group of friends, who you’d gladly think butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth, as long as you didn’t look the details too hard? They stopped in front of what seemed to be the apartment the young woman lived in. The painting on the door was flaking, and the bull’s eye seemed to be blocked. Graffiti was decorating it, calling the residents ritzy on the become and sellouts. It wasn’t very inviting… But the gruesome detail was that the door was ajar. Who could let the doors half-open in such a place? Weren’t they scared of a potential robbery, although they would bet there weren’t a lot of expensive items inside this apartment? A scream from inside resounded, and the two friends didn’t think much through before dashing in. Just one glance had been enough… Especially as a second scream resounded as well, this time a female mature voice calling the name of the person they were coming to visit. It was not easy to spot where in the apartment the cries came from, especially as they didn’t know the place at all. They found the source of this racket in the bathroom. The least one could say was that what they discovered was nothing comforting. Octavia was struggling with an older woman who she looked like, her mother for sure, and she had a utility knife in her hands, and her wrists were flooding with blood. The teenage girl’s mother, who had probably tried to wipe her daughter’s arms with a towel, looked up and saw the two young girls, listless at the doorstep, and begged them to help her with a quivering voice. For a few seconds, Rainbow Dash was on the verge of fainting. One of the rare residents from Green Haven whom she befriended with had tried to kill herself by cutting her wrists, and her image had haunted her for a long while. A sudden nausea wrung her stomach, and she had to lean against the door frame, since everything around her had started to spin around. What snapped her out of her torpor was Sunset Shimmer’s voice, catching her phone in order to call emergency services. From the corner of her eye, she had the time to catch a glimpse at Octavia getting up and trying to pounce on her friend, her utility knife darted at her. Gathering all of her top athlete strength, Rainbow Dash was able to grab Octavia, holding her arms in her back. The young woman was still firmly holding her utility knife in her hands, and was moving about as much as she could, her eyes drown in tears. “Let me go!! Let me go!! I want to die and you won’t stop me!! Let me go!!” “Octavia, please stop, I beg of you”, her mother was crying. “You shut the f*ck up! You can’t understand me! None of you can understand! Let me go!” Once her shock passed, Sunset Shimmer came to assist Rainbow Dash, trying to control Octavia, who kept on struggling like a devil, crying and swearing how no one could understand her will to get over with life. The problem was that she precisely was in front of two persons who could understand this better than anyone else. Although Sunset Shimmer had never acted on, conversely to her friend, she had envisioned it more than once, and more than once, she had almost given in. “How can you be sure we can’t understand?” she tried to tell her. “Shut up! I don’t want to talk with you, I don’t want to talk with anybody. I just want it to stop. Please, let me make it stop.” “You’re so in pain you feel like there’s no way out. Everything disgusts you, you’re scared to fall asleep, scared to wake up in the morning… The more time is passing by, the less you want to speak, to see people, or your own reflection… The plain fact of opening your eyes is a nameless torture. Sometimes, you feel as if you were unable to breath, choking. The world no longer has anything to offer for you, even what you used to love the most makes you sick, and you want to cry all the time, but even when you cry, it doesn’t make you feel better. Nothing can make you feel better. Trust me, I’ve been there too, I know what I’m talking about… But if you do that, it would be worse. You’ll hate yourself if you fail, and you know the others will look at you like some monster’s fair, like half of a human being. They will stare at you, have the front to tell you that you lacked courage… And you’ll hate yourself even more. Trust me, it’s not worth the pain… It’s not worth the pain…” As Rainbow Dash’s speech went along, delivered with tears strangling her throat, Octavia had finally ceased to struggle, and the two young women were now sitting on the tiling floor. Octavia was crying like a baby, trembling from cold… And let go her utility knife to curl up into a ball as soon as Rainbow Dash loosen her embrace. Her mother ran to her in order to hold her and wipe away the blood on her arms. Then, Sunset Shimmer get her phone back and called the emergency services. If the drama hadn’t enlightened them much more on what kind of trauma could have degraded Octavia, they both had understood that a horrible and terrible thing had happened to her, and that the angst eating her from inside was so unbearable she no longer had taste for life. Yet, both knew that although life still offered its loads of unpleasant things, there also were things worth living for. They thought maybe, they really were the appropriate persons to show her there was another way and that all wounds eventually heal one day, even if some of them were longer to close up.