//------------------------------// // XIII. Abnegation // Story: Abandoned Memories // by Mika //------------------------------// Cold sweat. Shortness of breath. Unquantifiable amount of guilt, despair and sorrow. All the usual ailments of your night terrors were evident. Rising from your slumber, you swiftly dart your head in all directions to analyze your surroundings, leading yourself to conclude that the cloud had drifted away from the small town. Hanging over the edge, you see that your impromptu home had drifted to what seemed to be an isolated area, surrounded by plains and a handful of trees. Which was good, because you were just about ready to unleash your mixture of emotions. "No no no no NO!" you shouted, hearing your voice echo across the landscape. "That wasn't supposed to happen! I was not supposed to have the dream again! I communicated! I interacted with the... the yellow pegasus! Yes, I actually remember! So why the fuck did I have the dream again!? Damn it!" Uncertain of what emotion to express next, you collapsed onto the cloud in despondence. I communicated. I willingly spoke with another pony. And yet, I relived my nightmare once more... Darkness. Two cold, static figures. Holes in their chests. A trail of crimson liquid. And a helpless little colt, pleading for my... his parents. Letting out a raspy, shaky breath of air, you cross your forelegs and lay your head onto them, trying to suppress tears and gasps for air. Refusing to ease into the mourning, you shut your eyes and clenched your teeth as hard as you physically could. You could feel your muzzle begin to warm, then quickly become damp, as your tears began to roll down your cheeks. Still trying to fight it, you quickly raised your right hoof to dispose of the tears. However, what began as a small trickle of tears had become a stream. It became unbearable. Unable to resist anymore, you gave in; allowing your sobs to take over your rhythm of your breathing. The sounds of your lament, too, echoed across the land. But you did not care. Sigmund was wrong. He said that communication would help. He assured me that it would. And it didn't! What am I goingto do now? I don't want to keep living this horrible, miserable excuse for a life. I wish I could just end it. All this constant torture... Reliving that memory, over and over again. Is there even a point anymore? There's no hope for me. There isn't any help for something as mentally deranged as I am. Letting your pessimistic thoughts flow through your conscious, you couldn't stop yourself from replaying the memory in your mind; only elongating the time you spent in your torment. All you wanted was for the pain to subside. You wanted to thrash and scream like a young foal would do when denied something they wanted. All you wanted... was to die. I just want, to end it all. But... I'm too much of a coward. Why? Why am I cursed with this? Why don't I have the fortitude to do so? It's not fair! Wiping your tear-stained muzzle, you peered over the edge of the cloud. Through your blurry vision, you could see that you were rather high up. Your pessimistic thoughts began to become overrun by self-destructive ones. I'm high enough. The fall would kill me if I land on my neck. I could go fast enough, and my brain would be crushed under my own weight... Instant death and instant relief. Can I actually do it this time? I almost drowned myself last time, but I couldn't do it. I just can't stand it anymore. Slowly, you lifted yourself onto all four legs, observing the edge once more. Jump. Jump! Jump and everything will be fine. You can finally be at peace. All of your painful memories, all of your sorrow will be vanquished. There isn't any other way to avoid this torment. All of this will be gone. You won't have to worry about the future, you won't have to worry about your past, you won't have to worry about anypony any longer. No pony wants you, and you don't need any pony. You're just a waste of breath. Every time you pushed yourself closer to the edge, you retracted. But, suddenly, when attempting to push yourself closer, you slipped and began to fall. You kept your wings shut; you weren't in the air to fly. You began to descend, but as your speed quickly increased, you shut your eyes, not wanting to see just how close the ground was. You were overwhelmed with a sense of tranquility... or something. Although you've recently experienced it, was foreign to you. Finally. You're finally doing something right. In a few seconds, you'll be able to sleep forever. No more pain or suffering. Just rest... Without warning, a rush of anxiety attacked you, forcing you to open one of your eyes. The ground, now dangerously close, had terrified you into opening your wings, and gliding mere inches above the ground, causing you to fail your second suicide attempt. After coming to this realization, you contracted your wings in, causing you to tuck and roll onto the ground. When you finally stopped on your stomach, your thoughts began to swarm once more, much more violent this time. Again. You couldn't do it. Again. Do you enjoy living this life of yours? You can't even accomplish a simple task. It would be contemptuous to tell you to kill yourself, seeing as you couldn't even do that. You pathetic, miserable excuse for a pony. What are you still doing alive? Do you enjoy your amnesia? Do you enjoy enduring all of your agonizing pain? You were in shock, unable to comprehend much of your surroundings. The same mixture of emotions was rising once more. However, your anger, or rather, your self-loathing, was much more prevalent. Slowly, you began to pound the ground before you, increasing your pace after every hit. After every successful pound, the pain within your left wrist began to increase, as well as within yourself. Tears began to form once more, except you didn't fight them back this time. You let them roll downwards, all while you were still heavily pounding the ground, beginning to create small craters. As seconds passed, you let out what began as a small growl, only leading up into a thundering scream of agony. Again, the pounding had only deepened the pit, and worsened your still-damaged hoof. With tears still running down their path, your scream had finally subsided along your thrashing. You brought your head down, making contact with the ground next to the holes. You were gasping for air; you’d never letting a scream of rage escape you before. All you could do now was lie helplessly in defeat. Hopeless. It's all hopeless. Why can't I do anything right? I just wanted all of the pain to stop. Is that too much to ask for? I just can't do it! Why can't I forget? Why can't I just kill myself? I don't have anything to offer to anypony, so what's my purpose? To die, that's what it is. Just to be another job for somepony else to clean up. And, even after all this, I'm just going to end up forgetting all of this tomorrow, and repeating the whole process over again. Your tears had stopped, but still, you raised your hooves to wipe what residue was left. Your breath had returned to, what you considered, normal, yet your eyes were still bloodshot. The rampant thoughts of suicide and depression had subsided, as they had transformed into questions of a self-assessment. What now? Do I just spend the rest of my time wasting it? For how much longer? All of these questions. Useless. I can't even remember the simplest of memories. The anti-depressants do not help in the slightest, so why do I even bother taking them? How am I supposed to live- "Hey! Finally found you!" The urge to kill yourself was quickly reinvigorated. No, please. Not now. Not after what just happened. Please, Celestia, don't let this happen. Please. Just make her go away. I can't be held responsible if I end up doing something we’ll both regret. You weren't facing the pony, but from her voice, you immediately identified her with as the cyan pegasus. Her very presence was enough to surge your, until recently, well-suppressed hostile nature. "Ever since the party I've been looking all over for you." The sound of her hooves making contacting with the ground sent chills down your back. You knew that she was approaching you. The thousands of possible responses began to play in your mind, as they usually did. What if she knows? What if she's planning on taking me back to the town? Over my dead body. "Now you're going to come with me," she said, placing her hoof on your shoulder. Instinctively, you grabbed her forehoof and thrust her onto the ground, pouncing onto her. You placed your hooves directly on her neck, and began to press, feeling her throat depress underneath the pressure of your hooves. She began to kick and flail her legs around, but to no avail. Gritting your teeth and staring into her eyes, you could see her eyes dart around, looking for some form of salvation, only to see them slow down, and her eyelids conceal them. It wasn't until she spoke again that you were retrieved from your fantasy. "Hey, you awake?" What was that? It was the same vision I had when I went to see Sigmund. Am I going to end up a killer? No, that's ridiculous. These visions are only fueled by my hatred, not by impulse. You rose to your feet, cringing a bit, having applied more weight to your, freshly re-injured hoof. You donned your trademark blank stare, and turned to her. The rainbow maned, cyan-colored, pink-tinted eyes pegasus was before you, without her usual scowl that you had seen her with every time you were in her presence. None of this mattered to you, at the moment. All you could concentrate on was whether or not she truly knows your past. "Man, I can't believe it's been so long!" I wish it would have been longer. "I mean, really, how long has it been?" Not long enough. "We should totally catch up!" The statement you've been dreading ever since she saw your Cutie Mark and remembered you. Her request to remember your past, something you couldn't do, and something you didn't want others to know. This is it. The end of the line. My dark past is about to be revealed to everyone. My horrid childhood memories, the death of my parents, my incarceration at the hospital, all of it. And all because of this cyan pegasus. I should have killed myself when I had the opportunity. Her smile that had replaced her scowl slowly formed into a blank stare similar to yours. You figured that she wanted a response, but you couldn't bring yourself to do so. How could you? After being mislead into believing your nightmares could be suppressed by Sigmund, the only pony you ever learned to trust, how could you confide in others? "You do remember who I am, right," finishing her sentence with your name. Your real name. She knows my name. My actual name. She knows. She knows my past, my childhood, everything I had kept a secret. How much does she know? Say something! Anything! "No..." Anything but that, you idiot. "What do you mean, "no?" It's me! The one and only," she began, following her sentence with a short acrobatic performance, "Rainbow Dash!" As much as you hated to admit it, the name, Rainbow Dash, kept recurring in your mind, as if it was attempting to make some sort of connection in the remnants of your repressed memories. Something you were praying would not happen. No, no, this is all just a misunderstanding. It can't be her. She can't be the one who knows my past. It's not true! She must be lying! She has to be! Finishing her small display of pride, she landed boastfully, again directing her attention towards you. She was thrown off by your blank stare, indicating that you still had not remembered her, although, it was more denial than forgetfulness. "Don't you remember?" she began, as she dashed to your side without indication of doing so, slightly startling you. Before you could create distance between the two of you, she wrapped her foreleg around your neck, making contact with you. You tried to pull away, but, as what had happened a few nights ago, her warmth radiated onto you. She kept speaking, using her other foreleg for emphasis, but you were lost in the state of blissfulness. You couldn't help but feel soothed by her. She was rambling on about her accomplishments or something of that nature, for you paid no heed to her words. You let your eyelids fall, and, unwillingly, slowly leaned your head against her neck. She wasn't phased by your sudden motion, as she was still boasting. The warmth dissipated onto you, sending a rush of euphoria within yourself. The feeling was hard for you to interpret, albeit a simple pleasure. The feeling of the moment you were in was comparable to when you first left the hospital, or from when you had first flown. Still having her foreleg wrapped around your neck, you uttered a subtle moan of pleasure, still deterring your thoughts, allowing yourself to enjoy the moment. Normally, you would have been fighting her to be released, but you oppressed those thoughts. At this point, you were finally able to shut her out, enabling you to reach an elevated level of enjoyment. As she still continued on her autobiography, she tightened her grip on you, bringing the two of you closer, the sides of your waist now touching. Your bodies would have been fully connected if it had not been for your saddlebag. This feeling of ecstasy caused your wings to unfurl, and your muzzle to warm. If you had been fully conscious of your actions, your thoughts would have been rampant with disgust and repugnance. But your subconscious said otherwise. Time seemed to slow down, and your heart began to beat faster. Her foreleg then became undone, and you were brought back into your conscious state, with time returning back to normal, abruptly ending your brief moment of delight. "Remember?" she questioned in a cavalier manner. You were at a lost for words, having been brutally separated from your moment of serenity. You tried to open your mouth, but a thousand and one thoughts were racing in your mind. The only words you could manage was a stutter. "No? Darn it. Well, I gotta go back to Ponyville and do some weather patrol, but we have to meet up again! Maybe I can jog your memory in Cloudsdale. See ya later," ending her statement once more with your name, before flying off into the clouds, leaving you dumbfounded. That... That was nothing. Just urges. If you truly had intimate feelings for her, you would have acted upon them. And you did... No! That was not me! Why did she act differently? Is it because she believes that we were, "friends" before? Surely I would have remembered her before the incident! Then why can't I? She knows my name, where I came from... This can't be true! I abhor Rainbow Dash, dammit! She can't be the pegasus that will reveal my dark past to me! Somepony else has to know! Somepony other than her! Just admit it, you were enjoying her touch. No, I was not! It was just another urge! I had nothing to do with it, my subconscious took over! "Denial," you muttered out-loud.