No one would have thought that this eternally cheerful, self-confident girl could actually cry, and Rainbow Dash herself did not believe that she was capable of it. However, now girl commanded, barely discerning a path through a shroud of tears. She always considered crying the lot of the weak, preferring to pour out emotions in the form of aggression. When times were tough, rainbow didn't get out of the gym, scraping her fists in blood against a pear tree, but she didn't let the telltale moisture get the better of her.
She had kept everything to herself for too long, had dammed the river for too long. Now the barriers had been torn down, and the water, no longer held back by any force, was rushing down the slopes, washing away everything in its path. Dash couldn't move anymore, and by and large, there was nowhere to go. Swaying as if drunk, she collapsed into the snow, feeling her cheeks burn with tears, and burst into tears. The heart was pressed by copper wire.
"Can you please cry somewhere else?" a low, emotionless voice spoke in her ear. The girl slowly turned her head and was surprised to find the source of the sound – a guy, as far as she could see through her tears – her age. He didn't even turn his head in her direction, just called out.
His black-and-blue hair, which had not been combed for a long time, stuck out in all directions, and his face was expressionless. On the young man's lap lay a thick leather-bound book, open in the middle, to which he fixed his eyes. The cold indifference that emanated from each of the stranger's words seemed to freeze the flow of tears inside Dash, making her stop crying. The girl, unable to find words from a new wave of surprise, slowly got up from the snow and carefully sat down on a bench next to the young man, who seemed to have already forgotten about her existence, turning over another page.
They sat side by side in complete silence, busy with their own affairs – the stranger devouring the lines, and Rainbow building a new dam in her soul. She didn't know how long it took, but it seemed like an eternity before she decided to speak.
"What are you reading?"
"Are you really interested?"
Dash hesitated.
"I'm sorry," she finally managed. In shop was silent again.
Rainbow had never been assiduous, and now, just a few minutes later, she didn't know what to do with herself. When she turned to the young man, she saw no change in his posture or expression – he sat like a marble statue.
"What did he find there?" she asked herself, and found no answer. In the end, her natural curiosity got the better of her, and dash peered cautiously over the stranger's shoulder, trying to read a line.
Her eyes were filled with long, cumbersome sentences that sent her thoughts racing. The lines seemed to cling to the heart, evoking a strange and indescribable feeling.
"Whose is it?" Rainbow asked, dumbfounded, desperately trying to calm her raging mind.
"I repeat: are you really interested?" the stranger asked dryly.
Dash nodded, confused.
"You may know the author as the originator of a great evil," the young man replied, always colorless.
"I don't understand," Rainbow said, feeling completely stupid.
"I'm not surprised," the stranger shrugged, beginning a new pause.
"Oh, no, now it is all right to speak!" Dash thought, feeling the destruction of each new second of silence, and asked a new question:
"What's your name anyway?"
He looked up from the pages and slowly turned his head in her direction. Dash stared blankly into his faded gray eyes.
"I don't want to make friends," he said coldly," and I don't advise you to.
Rainbow felt something inside her collapse with a crash, and quickly turned away.
'After all, why do I react like this to his words?' she tried to calm herself. 'He's just a nerd with a crazy roof and nothing more, so why do I take his stupid phrases so personally?'
After taking three deep breaths, she quickly got up and hurried home. Flight, shameful and hasty flight. Rainbow was defeated again.
***
She was in a strange mood, lost in her own thoughts as she walked slowly through the familiar park – she couldn't explain why her feet had brought her here, but something told her that this was the right choice. Wearily, she sat down on a wooden bench, trying to drown out the annoying screeching of birds, and asked, addressing the void:
"Why do so many people turn out to be hypocritical liars?"
"Because they are smart and understand that two-faceedness, and sometimes many faces in our world – the only way to stand firmly on their feet."
Rainbow flinched at the familiar cold voice and quickly turned her head in his direction.
Disheveled bluish hair, an indifferent expression on his face, and a book on his lap. There could be no doubt that it was him.
"Oh," Dash said with mock admiration, "our sir Icy Splendor has deigned to raise his voice."
He didn't look up from the open book. Rainbow's face twisted at this statement.
"I wasn't talking to you at all." she said, and turned away.
"Let's just say," the guy shrugged and fell silent.
Dash had never liked silence – it seemed to her that words drove death away, made it run away until the man was silent. She wasn't afraid of the dark, or the cramped rooms, as long as she could pick up any sound, even a faint one. When the silence wrapped its nets around everything, Rainbow was afraid.
"Do you really think so? Well... about the hypocrisy?" a stupid question, the answer to which can save from madness just by its sound.
"I'm used to saying what I think, you know. Even though it's a bad habit."
"What's that for?" I was amazed Dash.
"You see," the dryness in the other's voice changed from distant to condescending, "what I think is often the opposite of what people want to hear."
"A revolutionary?"
"Realist," he said, shaking his head.
Dash laughed heartily. The clouds that had so recently tried to gather over her head dissolved, leaving behind a feeling of strange lightness, like all earthly life. The guy shrugged and went back to the pages.
"What can I call you, monster?" Rainbow said, still giggling.
"I already once told you, that friends win not plan," with new, already hostile cold in voice, has he spoken interlocutor.
"Well, I have to address you somehow!" Dash replied.
"You'd better not address me at all and leave me alone."
Rainbow was startled by the lack of expression on the other man's face. Even the last sentence was uttered without showing any signs of the inherent irritation of the occasion. The guy, as if made of pure ice and animated by an unknown force, it seemed that even the end of the world would have met without any emotions, without flinching a single muscle. In her heart, Dash envied him – she would have given a great deal now just to avoid the constant bitterness that made her toss and turn like a caged bird every day, even if the cost of that would have been the loss of all other feelings.
"How do you manage to keep such an indifferent face all the time?" she asked at last.
"I get the feeling you're just trying to keep the conversation going," the icy youth said coldly.
"I'm really interested," in conceals souls Rainbow was ashamed for what she all not left guy in alone, but Dash implicitly preferred remorse conscience silence, squeezing heart of and breaking ribs.
"I just gave up on the value judgment."
Again, he makes the girl feel like a complete dumbass.
"How's that?" she asks softly, shrinking again from the condescending cold that the guy smelled like.
"We feel good when we feel that our General condition is improving," the young man explained dryly, "and Vice versa. The rejection of value judgment entails the rejection of the concepts of 'better' and 'worse', and, accordingly, the complete absence of manifestations of baseness, which people called 'emotions'."
Dash swallowed.
"But then you stop being human!" she tried to protest timidly, feeling the slight chill of condescension that came from the other man turn into a chill of contempt.
"That's right," the young man finally nodded, "then you stop being a human being and become a step higher, but people who are drowning in their own ignorance do not know. These stupid, embittered creatures hate improvement and are willing to do anything to keep others from coming up. They say: 'thou shalt not kill', because without this commandment, they, unworthy of existence, would have long ago been wiped out by the powerful of this world, opening the way up to others."
Rainbow felt that she was afraid of this man, afraid of what he was saying, because deep down she knew it was true, but admitting it would cost her her sanity.
"B-but murder is really bad!" she said, her voice trembling.
For a moment there was a deathly silence on the bench. Time passed slowly and disgustingly for Dash, as if she were being pulled through a rubber hose, squeezing her chest and not letting her breathe.
"It is in the nature of man to dislike one's neighbor and take pleasure in causing suffering," the other finally replied in a low voice, and after a moment's silence added: "Bernard Verber."
The girl rose slowly to her stiff legs and staggered home. She was leaving the battlefield in disgrace. In her heart, Rainbow knew that the boy was right, but admitting it would cause a collapse. The collapse of what has accumulated inside Dash for a lifetime. Collapse of worldview and self-awareness. She couldn't run from the truth forever, but she didn't want to think about it. The girl just ran, defenseless and lost.
***
No, she's definitely a masochist. Every time she'd met that guy, she'd had to run away to keep from losing her mind, so why was she so drawn to him?
Dash paced the room, nervously chewing on a fingernail.
He was right, of course, but she didn't want to believe it. Or wanted to? Rainbow hissed, trying to drown out the scream of her own thoughts, but their call was stronger. He was dragging the girl into the abyss of fatigue, fatigue from herself. It was as if a part of her had separated from Dash, once strangled and thrown into the far corner of her heart, but now risen from the dead, and ready, like a Messiah, to lead a lost soul across the desert to the oasis of truth.
"I will help you to be reborn," she would say as she is to become different, "new Rainbow."
"I don't want to!" the girl moaned, sinking to the floor. "Leave me alone!"
Dash could feel the halves of her soul fighting for the right to help her. She could no longer think clearly, her mind whizzing madly with fragments of thoughts: '... run!..', '...help!..'.
Obeying their entreaties, the girl ran out into the cold January wind. She didn't know why her feet were carrying her to a place where she was unlikely to be helped, but the whistling in her head made her obey her will. Rainbow ran, barely seeing where she was going, feeling how much she hated these streets, these pedestrians, this empty, paltry sky. A soundless cry of despair tore at her insides and burned away the remnants of her mind; her heart crushed her ribcage, trying to break free of her confinement. Dash didn't hope for anything. She just ran.
"Please..." croaked the girl, falling on the icy snow boards are painfully familiar benches.
"About what?" the young man beside her asked coldly.
"Tell me!" Dash pleaded desperately. "Just say it!"
A silence hung in the air, absorbing and decomposing. Then he spoke. His icy voice was the only thing that still connected Rainbow to reality, and she clung to it like a drowning man to a thin straw.
'Run, my friend, to your solitude! I see you are deafened by the noise of great men, and pricked by the stings of little ones. With dignity, the forest and the rocks are able to keep silent with you. Again, be like your favorite tree with outstretched branches: quietly, listening, it bent over the sea…'
Dash listened in silence, listening to every word and feeling her mind slowly return to her. The sudden calm that covered her head froze her, covered her inner struggle with an icy crust, and slowly pieced her torn soul together, stitching the fragments together with threads of words. Fear and pain were replaced from the heart by a new feeling – a sense of gratitude.
"Thank you!" Rainbow whispered softly as the boy's voice trailed off.
"I didn't do it because I wanted to help," he said coldly.
"Why, then?" Dash be curious.
"Would you have gotten rid of me if I hadn't done what you asked?" he answered the question with a question.
In other circumstances, rainbow would have been offended by such a statement, but she simply couldn't pout at someone who had literally just saved her mind from a seemingly inevitable cloud, no matter what his aspirations were. She simply dismissed the unpleasant phrase as an annoying fly and, trying to keep the conversation going, asked:
"What you said ... where did it come from?"
Instead of answering, the young man, without taking his eyes off the pages, tapped the cover of the book twice.
"So you've been reading aloud to me all this time?" Dash snorted. "What a romantic situation, however, came out."
He didn't say anything. It seemed that he was trying to exclude Rainbow from his circle, to pretend that she, this annoying person, was not and never was.
"If you don't want to, you don't have to say your name," Dash continued. "but you're not interested in mine?"
"If you don't want me to curse you and your entire family down to the fifth generation for being Intrusive, you'd better refrain from divulging such information. Better yet, try not to molest people."
Rainbow smiled:
"I offer you a deal: I don't bother you with my conversations, and you keep reading to me."
"...I so understand, other options I have no," through minute, dryly stated the young man and, after a pause, again began talking, to evoke ice calm. Dash closed her eyes and rested her head gently on his shoulder.
***
"No matter how I come, your Icy Highness is already here. Do you ever leave here?"
Dash smiled affably as she sat down next to the already familiar young man whose name she couldn't find out. Again, he didn't deign to answer, but Rainbow was used to it, and she even liked his terse manner. The young man balanced it like a weight on a scale, keeping the dash bowl from collapsing under the weight of the words. His icy calm was transmitted to her, too, not allowing her to lose the pathetic remnants of herself that still clung to her body. The obsessive thoughts that had long kept the girl from living receded at the first sounds of the young man's speech. He was her doctor, without knowing it, and without even knowing what a significant role he played in the life of a rainbow-haired girl. Although even if he understood this, it is unlikely that Rainbow could find out – this guy was always cold, successfully replacing the shades of cold emanating from him, contemptuous or condescending, phlegmatic or annoying, any existing emotions in the world.
She thought that the young man was simply interesting to her, until the slowly growing, bubbling, tickling feeling in her chest became her faithful and only companion, superseding everything else. Rainbow now understood what was happening to her and tried desperately to fight the meanness generated by her mind, but it was all in vain. She spent hours telling herself that love is compassion, and compassion weakens you, but the feeling inside her only grew stronger; she tried to distract herself in every way, and could not. With every hour, the tension inside grew and grew, trying to break free from the cage of ribs.
He was reading to her again, placing another book on his lap, but she didn't hear him. Love, that low, mean feeling, had taken hold of her mind. Rainbow was no longer in control. With an abruptness that was unexpected even for her, the girl clung to the young man and as quickly clung to his lips. The fractions of a second spent in this state dragged on in a different way. And then the young man, with a violent, uncharacteristic force, broke free of her grasp, and rainbow, without support, fell to the ground.
He was standing in front of her, the fingers of his right hand half-clenched in an incomprehensible gesture. His eyes flashed lightning, and his voice, always cold and emotionless, was now permeated with a monstrous hatred:
And I learned that this is a circle of torment
For those whom the earth's flesh called,
Who betrayed the mind to the power of lust.
And how starlings are carried away by their wings,
In days of cold, thick and long formation,
So this storm circles the spirits of evil.
There, there, down, up, in a huge swarm;
There is no hope of easing the torment
Or for a moment of the peace.
Dash didn't see where the boy had gone. Her eyes had long been filled with tears.
***
The bright spring sun had been shining outside the window for the past week, but Rainbow hadn't seen it. The wet tracks of tears no longer disappeared from her cheeks, and the dark, half-empty room with its curtained windows had long been her home. The girl hated, cursed herself for showing a low weakness. She tried and could not shake off the heavy weight that pulled her soul to the ground. She was almost cured, but by her own stupidity she had lost her world again, which had once prevented her from falling into the iridescent abyss of madness.
For weeks, Dash wept in the dark of her room, cursing herself and her worthlessness. She was afraid to return to the place where she had once been cured, but when she dared, all she saw was an empty, rickety shop. Rainbow believed until the last, every day coming to the coveted place, but no one ever sat down next to her. Neither your own nor someone else's. She tried in vain to catch the familiar bluish hair as she scanned the people passing by. It seemed that this shop existed only for her and someone whose name she did not know. Behind closed doors, the girl spent hours reproaching herself, knowing with horror that she could not change anything.
Madness crawled like a silver snake through her body, getting closer to her throat every day. Rainbow wasn't fighting anymore – she didn't know why.
And once, from the street, there was a soft, faint, sad music that enveloped everything with a cold, barely perceptible glow, causing Dash to get out of bed and walk unsteadily to the window. As she pulled back the dark, heavy curtains, she knew for some reason that she would see him.
Framed in bluish strands, a familiar pale face that had lost some of its vital color stared back at her, putting the heavy seal of the coffin around it on the world. People walked around him, mired in a heavy, dreary silence that rang like a final verdict in the air. Rainbow froze, staring in disbelief at the one who had once pulled her out of the pool of her own obsessions, giving her a second life; at the one whose presence soothed her soul, healing wounds and abrasions; at the one she had foolishly lost, now forever.
Dash didn't remember how she dressed, how she went outside, or how she joined the escort of the man who had once healed her on his last journey. For several long, unpleasant minutes she walked in grim silence, until an equally grim man asked her:
"Did you know him?"
A funeral is an event where strangers no longer seem so unknown. Every person who voluntarily shares your pain turns out to be so close to you. Rainbow dash nodded.
"W-why did he die?" she asked softly.
"Pancreatic cancer," the man sighed. "He was too young and the disease was stronger than him."
Pancreatic cancer – two words and one death. Dash no longer hoped that what was happening was just a stupid dream. She no longer dreamed of waking up. The sounds of someone else's speech announcing the diagnosis seemed to cut off something very important to the girl. Rainbow didn't feel any more pain, just an icy grip on her heart. She didn't remember what happened next. I think someone took her aside and put her on a brown wooden bench. The same as the one she had sat on with her healer only a short time ago.
***
"'The patient wants affection, he needs something to lean on,'" Camus wrote. Dash had often returned to these words of his lately. Words that she had heard from a man who was now dead, just as ill, but who did not require the same affection and support. He served as a support for others.
Rainbow walked slowly over to the old wooden table and opened one of its many drawers, carefully picking up a yellowed, crumpled piece of paper that bore the dreaded medical verdict: hebephrenic schizophrenia.
Dash reread the words she had memorized. She was no longer afraid of them. A strange smile spread across the girl's face. She opened her fingers, and the yellowish paper, caught up in another gust of draft, slowly flew out of the window. Rainbow no longer resisted her soul. It was really time for her to be reborn into a new version of herself, a new Dash.
"'Kinship and unity of souls are not known by their Union, but by their separation,'" - she whispered softly, and after a pause added: "Friedrich Nietzsche."
