We Will All Be Changed

by Cynewulf

But When Completeness Comes, What is in Part Disappears

I know that I’m awake first because my throat is sandpaper and refuses to be ignored, and secondly because Rarity’s hair tickles my cheek until I settle my chin firmly on her head as she cuddles closer.

I stifle a yawn and stretch carefully, making sure not to disturb her or the cat which I’m sure is somewhere in the folds of this bed, ready to remind me exactly who owns this apartment de facto if not de jure. Opalescence may not actively despise me after a few years, but I doubt she’ll ever be really fond of anyone who isn’t Rarity. If tolerating being handled counted as fondness.

Slipping out of bed was both a herculean task and a sad one. I was always a bit sad when our mornings together in bed ended. Even if the rest of the day was lovely, the intimacy of the morning before you crawled out into the sunlight was the best and most important thing. But nature did not care about my preferences.

Washing my hands and face in Rarity’s sink, I caught my reflection again and just… sighed. She’d apologized, and said something or other about making it up to me, but my enthusiasm for whatever she had planned was anemic at best. I didn’t know how to explain myself, and I could tell that she was trying to figure it out.

Of course she would. I would, if I were her. I had investigated myself trying to understand my own feelings. In the mildly hungover clarity of morning I knew exactly what was wrong with me and the wrongness grimaced at me right there.

I glanced back through the doorway at her. Her arm laid across where my body had been. Her hair felt unevenly around her beautiful face, and the blanket had fallen down to her stomach. It took me a moment to realize her eyes were open, watching me.

Oh. Hey, I said limply. Good morning.

Good morning, she replied, her voice so warm.

Was going to make you some breakfast, I lied. Though I suppose it wasn’t a lie as soon as I’d said it. I probably would, now. I asked her if she wanted eggs, and she did, which was good because making scrambled eggs was essentially a kind of mantra for me at this point.

I retreated to her kitchen. As I cracked eggs and stirred and poured and all the little mundane procedure, I could almost hear Shining explaining it step by step like he had when I was a child. Every time I did this I felt like he was there and like I was six again and it was Saturday morning and my brother had decided it would be fun to see if a little kid like me could use the stove properly.

I didn’t know what Rarity had planned. My earlier feelings softened as I listened to the quiet sizzling pan. Rarity could be dramatic, and I wasn’t sure how I would handle dramatic, but she was also thoughtful and thoughtful I could handle. The day stretched out before us and I began to calculate what exactly I could expect.

I might have kept on planning, except that her arms snuck around my middle as I plated her eggs and she kissed the side of my neck. Thanks, she said, and I smiled and closed my eyes for a beat.

You’re welcome, I told her, and we stayed like that.

After breakfast, she took her sweet time getting to whatever it was that she had planned. I stewed in hopeful dread. It could be something nice. It could be something very nice. Historically speaking, most things Rarity planned were nice, even if I wasn’t sure at first.

She went about her normal routine, getting ready for… I didn’t know what. Still. I ended up curled on her couch for what felt like an eternity, reading on my phone until the sound of her clearing her throat forced my attention upwards.

She was stunning. She always was, but doubly so now. Hair perfect, makeup like she was expecting to impress, clothes immaculate--and new, I didn’t think I’d seen that skirt--and her smile wide and smug.

We’re headed out! She announced it more than said it. I blinked at her.

And where are we going? I asked, and she rolled her eyes at me.

Twilight, came the admonishment, it isn’t a surprise if one isn’t surprised.

I did point out that I was, presently, surprised by her announcement, but she countered that she’d warned me, and in a few minutes I was both defeated and in her car.

The drive was lively. Rarity had her music on this time, and we talked back and forth. She wanted to know about my friends in grad school, and I wanted to know about how her work had gone. I traded stories about sitting in cold computer labs ranting at a rubber duck about why such and such coding solution should work, damn you, for gossip from the art shows and the hubbub of artists moaning into coffee.

We were downtown before I asked again where we were headed. Again she refused to answer, her smile still smug, but I wondered. I always wonder with Rarity. She’s said before that I am an open book and I believe her, but as much as I wish she were the same, she is not. I cannot help but betray my feelings, but hers are so hard to read. Is that smile genuine, or is it hiding worry?

Looking around, I imagine the map of town I’d memorized so long before, when Shining first insisted that I navigate on my own. There was the old Frugal’s grocery building, the one with the mural… and that was the little pizza place he always insisted was the best—

Oh. Oh, I had an idea where we were going.

But I didn’t say anything. Not yet. Not until she pulled us into the mall parking lot and my heart sank into my stomach. She parked the car, and then… sighed. It was like she gathered all of her strength into a single breath.

She spoke before I could.

The last time I tried to help, I messed up royally, she began. She didn’t look towards me. Her hands gripped the steering wheel white-knuckled, then unfurling like a cat’s careful reaching, then clenching again. Managing stress. I hated to see it so naked. But she continued: if you truly do not want my help, there is a fallback. I wanted to make things up to you, and I know I do not have to do something bold, but I wished to.

What did you have in mind? I asked her, swallowing, mind skipping ahead moments hours the two of us frustrated and awkward and—

You want to, ah. The word is presentation, so I’m told. You want to present a different way.

Truth be told, I wish I could just blurt out yes, but I can’t. I just blink.

Rarity continues, her voice too fast, too fragile: And I’ve worked with men before, and I do know somethings about how one presents masculinely. Not that you have to be the same, but if you wanted to. If it were something you wanted to do. Which I think you do. And I really want to support that. And I thought if I hurt you because you thought I didn’t, and I showed that I did—

I reach out, not entirely sure why, and touch her arm. Her whole body sags. The words fall away.

I tell her its alright. It is alright. It really is.

Because… because I am still worried. I am nervous, and in a new way. Not in a I don’t want to talk about this way but in a I do, in fact, want to talk about this an awful lot but am not sure what talking will end up doing. The nervousness of possibility.

I want to, I tell her. I’m just nervous.

She says she is nervous. I ask why.

She counters, why am I?

I’m not entirely sure, I lie.

Same, she lies.

This is kinda silly, isn’t it? I say, trying to smile. But I think I want to go ahead and try. I was nervous before and that just made me feel bad, right?

She nods.

So, I continue carefully, so carefully, laying out a foundation of half-truths—So, logically, if letting myself be nervous and pushing you out doesn’t help, and I’m not happy with what I’ve done on my own… logically speaking—

Doing it together, Rarity says.

I nod. It’s worth a shot, I tell her, and my heart hammers in my ears.

Why? I can’t stop to think. We’re out of the car and headed in.

It was a bit of a blur, at first, Rarity is talking so fast and I don’t catch all of it and she knows that and I know she knows, but she talks regardless because talking is better than silence. It fills the nervous aching hole. I catch tidbits. Designs, cuts. Something about getting the right sort of jeans, and how its more important to getting a good silhouette than you’d think. Something about sizing. My head is swimming. I wish I could take notes because of course I wish I could, because the only reason I was always taking notes is because excitement does frustrating things to my brain.

She pulled things off racks and I made noises of approval or shook my head. It was all a bit formal, I said, but she laughed and told me that not everything had to be casual, and that she knew I had the casual down. I had enough graphic tees to fill a few closets. Don’t think of it as formal, she said to me as she showed me a blazer. Think of it as professional. Because you will have to be professional eventually, and when you do…

I nodded.

When she ushered me into the changing room and closed the door, I froze. Changing rooms do that to me. I can’t stand them. A whole room devoted to a mirror.

I hung the haul of new things up and just… sat down. Sitting helped. It made the world feel more stable. I needed that.

I knew she was waiting outside, eager to see me. And I wanted her to see me! But the feeling in my stomach was too much.

Truth be told, sitting there, pointedly not looking at myself in the mirror and staring down at my old boots, I realized that I couldn’t keep avoiding this forever. This being, of course, the real reason for the hair cut and the clothes and the mirror-hate. I didn’t cut my hair because it was too hot, the heat just helped me make a decision. I didn’t change my clothes because I wanted to be comfortable or just because I was trying something new. I didn’t hate mirrors because of societal pressures to be beautiful.

I slipped out of the boots.

Shining bought them for me, half a decade ago. Treat them well, he’d said. And they’ll treat you well—and hell, they’ll last forever.

I wanted to be like him. Not just in the normal way, admiring an older sibling, but in a very specific way. I wanted to be like him, and very specifically not like me. The feeling grew more intense as I grew older and my body changed and his voice dropped and mine didn’t, and I retreated into books. I didn’t want to be the part of him out in the sun, running and sweating, and yet I still wanted to look like him, to be spoken to like him, to hear my voice sound less…

I wanted to be a man, and I’d known it for years.

But what did you do with that? What could you do with that? Some things were just impossible, weren’t they? The world wasn’t made out of iron but it didn’t bend just because I wanted it so fervently to bend this one time.

I placed the boots together in front of the mirror and then stood up and faced myself.

I shrugged out of my shirt and, perhaps hoping it would lighten my spirits, stuck my tongue out at the reflection there. Dumb body. Off came the pants. Dumb, dumb body. I didn’t want it. If I could just be incorporeal thought, just idea and inclination and words, I would be that in a heartbeat. If I could be just code in a server, be in the same automatons I spent my nights perfecting, I would do it. I would trade cold steel and silicon and copper wiring and ten million lines of assembly for this awful flesh and its hateful curves and its stupid face.

I dress quickly. I try not to think about it, and I try not to watch myself do so. Hope is poisonous. Hope is what happens when its 1 AM and you think you’ve solved all the problems and the bugs are dealt with, and then nothing works and so hope is dashed and you talk it out with the rubber duck someone got you as a joke and realize that you’d rushed because you wanted to go home. Hope is what got you stuck in a cold computer lab by yourself for hours.

The worst part of all is that I know that Rarity is more than competent about this sort of thing, and that expecting to look anything other than great is probably too much to ask. It’ll look good, and I’ll have to admit that because I’ve frankly used up all the lying left in my exhausted spirit, and then…. I don’t know what happens then.

I button the shirt carefully. I hadn’t quite got used to the buttons being on the other side.

I think the thing that scares me most is that it might not be impossible. Hypothetically, if a thing were impossible, one could adjust oneself to live with this fact. The immutability of it would be a firm foundation upon which to build. But to have a thing be maybe possible, half-possible, whatever. That’s just not a foundation upon which you can build something. At least, it doesn’t feel like it.

I slip the boots back on. That’s familiar, at least. I tug at the sleeves of the blazer. It fits. Snug where it should be snug and loose where it should be loose. The shirt fits. I reflexively straighten the collar.

What would it mean for me and Rarity?

Now that makes me pause. I haven’t looked up yet. Somehow, in all of this, that is the one angle I had not anticipated. What did it mean for me and—

Rarity’s voice filters in under the door. Darling, she says, are you alright? If something doesn’t fit, it’s quite alright to skip it. Don’t force yourself on my account!

I stumble over words, saying I’ll be out in a moment. I had been almost calm before but god now I’m not sure if I want her to see me.

I open the door anyway and step out, and she’s there. She’s there, and her smile starts small and grows and grows and she lets out a little squeal of happiness and hugs me.

You look wonderful! She says. Handsome, like a scholar should!

I’m an engineer, I complain.

It’s the same thing, she counters.

It is not the same thing, and I tell her this, but she hushes me and steps back to admire her handiwork. She makes me turn around in a circle and she hums and hums.

Dear, you look excellent. I really think this is a good look in general, the coat and—

I cut her off. Rarity, I say. She blinks at me.

Yes, dear? She answers.

I think I’m ready to say something but I’m not sure what it means. I swallow again. I’m worried if I say—

You should, she says. Because it doesn’t matter what it is. We’ll be okay. We shall be fine. I promise you. Whatever it is, we will talk. And this time I will listen, and we will figure it out.

My eyes feel… itchy. Red. I don’t know that eyes can feel red, but mine somehow do. I wipe them and my hand comes away wet. Rares, I say, and my voice sounds a little pinched. I don’t think I’m a girl, Rares.

She takes a deep breath.

Is it good or bad that you don’t look like one right now? She offers quietly.

I think its a good thing, I say. I think so.

She nods.

I like it, she says.

I like it too.

Twi...I, do I still…

Twilight is fine, I say quickly. We can talk about that. Maybe. Maybe later. We, uh.

Twilight. You look dashing. I probably should have found you a tie but I thought you would revolt, she says weakly.

I bite my lip. Yeah, I admit. I might have. They’re too… Sunday Morning Best. I know how to tie one.

She snorts. Of course you do.

Yeah, of course I do. Why wouldn’t I learn how, watching videos on the internet quietly by myself, practicing over and over with one I borrowed from my dad’s drawers one saturday afternoon when everyone was napping or reading? It makes sense now. Lots of things do.

What does that mean… no, you said it was okay, I say. Is this okay? I don’t want to ask but I do. Is this okay?

Right now? She asks it softly. We are standing awkwardly in the row of changing rooms and I swear to god that its a miracle that no one is staring at us.

Yes, I reply. Right now. Is this okay. Are we okay. That we, you know. It would mean we weren’t… Or that we were… I mean if you’re a woman and I’m...

I think so, she says. I already said that. I mean. I’m sorry, she says and rubs her temples. I mean, I realized I was stuck in a loop, I repeated myself. Yes, I am okay. And you are okay. And you look splendid. I’m not sure what to say. The more I try to figure it out the more flustered I become, Twilight. But I can’t help but be happy, and whatever that means, you can have that. And you look splendid. I said it again. Damn it. It’s still true.

I try to smile, and to my own surprise, its not hard.

Thanks, I say. There’s a few more in there. Do you want me to, ah—

Please, she says. Her face is flushed. Before we stand here being idiots for another moment.

I retreat, laughing as much from the weird stress as from what she said. But I keep smiling. And the mirror doesn’t bother me. It can’t touch me for just a moment.

Comments

[Ice Star]

This chapter was so delicate and lovely despite all the weight it had to bear. Though, at this point, I'm wondering if the lack of quotation marks is entirely intentional.