//------------------------------// // vi. Reveal // Story: Don't Let Go // by cierragp //------------------------------// This time, it was my turn to seek him. It was not hard to find him. He was always too prominent in a group, a leader that everyone was willing to follow. "Soarin." The one time I found him alone, I took the chance. He didn't reply while getting up. "Soarin!" I yelled, pulling him, not letting him leave. "Let go." "No." "Do you feel like visiting the police station?" "Well how's this for a change?" I held out a small blade. At the sight of it, he flinched. In one swift move, he grabbed it from me and tore it away. "What, do you think you've outsmarted me?" I smiled. "And?" "Do you have any idea, any, how much I liked you?" I began. "And the price I've paid for my mother's lies. The binding is too tight and in the summer I use every ointment that turns my winters into nightmares. My hands and feet are always cold and I cannot sleep at all." "I don't feel like being tricked all over again." He replied gruffly. "I'd rather start with the truth." "I've had enough of your lies." "Soarin." I pleaded. But did he listen? No. The coldness that was a Canterlot winter was nothing compared to the coldness he showed me. In despair, I fell, and I did not see a reason to get up. At least I still had a home. I was not dead, and then I heard words that would've haunted me if I had been younger. "Dear! Strike! Look at this!" I heard muffled sobs. Auntie's? That was what I called father's wife. "What was that woman thinking!" I heard him roar over her sobs. "Calm down." She said softly. "It's not something she should be considered with. This is not her fault!" She. I felt a new type of horror as I realized the kind of constriction the binding provided was gone. "Rainbow Blaze?" She stepped in. "Do you prefer a more feminine name?" "Dash." I said. "Rainbow Dash." She smiled. "Auntie, I can explain." I said quickly. "It's perfectly fine." She smiled. "In fact, now I won't have to worry about teaching you how to date. That's good. And a girl should probably have a little more pocket money for clothes and the like. Let me know if you need anything." Here was a woman who treated the daughter of someone who betrayed her better than said person who was the mother. I could feel tears running down my face. Firefly, my father's wife, was not the type of striking beauty that Chrysalis had formed herself to be. She had a sweet and mellow complexion that was calming and much easier to look at than the dramatic impressions Chrysalis made. "What about father?" I croaked. "He's at the registry. Trying to explain the confusion." She smiled. "Don't worry. He loves you more than his own life. He's just mad that your mother tricked him so and now he has to accompany both of us during clothes shopping." I was still shivering. "Don't worry. Everything that Rainbow Blaze would've got Rainbow Dash will get."She hugged me tight. "You're still the same person." The next day, my father announced that he had made a mistake and had me masquerade as a son. He mentioned Chrysalis exactly zero times. Even the name caused him to recoil in disgust. I read the confession on the newspaper exactly fourteen times that morning and twenty times in the afternoon. "I don't usually regret decisions, but this is one that I will always regret. I presented my daughter Rainbow Dash as a son Rainbow Blaze. My pride had costed my daughter her happiness and I have only just realized the error of my ways. In the last few nights I have been near sleepless as I reflected on my own mortality and I realized that I cannot do this to Dash in her finite years. I am old and greying and no matter what happens, I stand by so that my daughter will have a better life." I cried. Was this love? Mother called me many times, but after the rage induced shouting that ensued from answering once, I never bothered answering a call from her number.