I get by with a little help from my friends
The phone rang. Rainbow wished it wouldn't. She should really rip the damned thing out of the wall, but that would require getting up.
It wasn't that she was particularly comfortable in bed --she was wearing her regular clothes, which weren't made for sleeping in, the sheets were dirty, she could feel grit against the skin of her arms and legs, and her skin itself felt downright disgusting, like it was covered in a layer of grime-- but getting out of the bed required energy, and right now she didn't have that. She'd just have to endure the ringing until it went away. She resigned herself to that . . . until she realized that it had already gone on for longer than it should have.
The answering machine must have filled up. Why the fuck did people have to call her so often? Didn't they understand how much it bothered her? Did they want to make her suffer?
Honestly, they probably did.
The intentions of people aside, when her answering machine was full there was no limit to how many times the phone could ring. It could theoretically go on forever. The thought made Rainbow want to gouge her eyes out, which didn't make a great deal of sense to her given that it was her ears that led to all of her phone-related woes.
Rainbow also wanted to go back to sleep, but she knew it would never happen. The phone, or the light of day, or something gave her a splitting headache, and she ended up pressing her hands into her forehead very, very hard in response. Did that actually help? It certainly felt like it was doing something.
It was impossible to tell how much time passed, but eventually the phone stopped ringing, and Rainbow was left in blessed silence. If she could get the rest of the world to go away too, everything would be fine. Being aware was suffering, when she was unconscious, though . . . sleep was the only time being alive didn't suck. She didn't see or hear; she didn't think or feel. There was nothing. Complete oblivion. It was like being dead, but without guilt at making people sad or the hoopla --there was an Applejack word if ever there were one-- of a funeral. It was perfect.
Unfortunately, Rainbow was very much not asleep, and no matter how much she tried, the darkness refused to take her.
Even more unfortunately, the silence ended, and it ended loudly.
At first, it wasn't all that loud, mind you, just knocking at the door. Rainbow elected to deal with that the way she'd dealt with the phone ringing: she ignored it and hoped it would go away. That utterly failed. The knocking only got louder.
This, Rainbow decided, was evidence that one should make very, very sure to get an apartment that people couldn't actually reach the door of. If all they could do was ring the bell, and you disconnected the bell, well . . . then you had a really nice system, didn't you? Rainbow, unfortunately, didn't even have a bell to disconnect.
Unfortunately could be Rainbow's middle name, given how it applied to every aspect of her life. Rainbow Unfortunately Danger Dash.
The knocking got even louder, and --faced with the possibility she might actually have to face whoever was pounding on her door, Rainbow ran her fingers across her cheek. The results weren't good. She'd passed the point of scratchy stubble and moved onto the part where it was more like fur --short fur, to be sure, but fur none the less-- on her face.
Rainbow was torn between thinking about how much of a failure she must be if she couldn't even shave consistently, and just hating herself and her body for even needing to shave in the first place. She had a reminder of everything she was, and everything that she wasn't, growing out of her damned face.
And the knocking got louder.
Then it stopped, and for the briefest of moments, Rainbow felt something that was almost like joy.
It wasn't, of course. Not really. It was more like momentary relief from a pain that you felt so consistently you'd forgotten what it was like to not feel it.
It ended almost as quickly as it had started, because a few moments later her bedroom was invaded by an uninvited Sunset Shimmer. Sunset said something about Fluttershy, which Rainbow didn't quite catch, then rushed over to Rainbow and swore.
"Shit, Rainbow," Sunset said, "I thought you were getting better."
That sounded incredibly stupid, but one didn't just say, "Damn, friend of mine, who has traveled over a hundred miles to see me, you sound stupid." So Rainbow instead said, "When have I ever gotten better?"
"Several times," Sunset said.
Rainbow had no idea what Sunset was talking about, but she was in no state to argue, so she just said, "If you say so."
"Do you really not remember?" Sunset asked.
"Everything blurs together," Rainbow said, which was the gods' honest truth. Rainbow had a question of her own, so she asked it, "How did you get here?"
Sunset answered the wrong question, "I drove."
"How did you get in here," Rainbow asked.
"You gave me a key six months ago."
"Huh," Rainbow said. When everything blurred together, details like that could be lost.
Sunset seemed to take a moment to think something over, then asked, "Have you been taking your meds?"
"Only reason I get out of bed every day."
"Every day?"
"Every day," Rainbow said. She was somewhat annoyed at having to repeat herself. For that matter, she was somewhat annoyed at having to speak. She liked Sunset, but she didn't like Sunset bothering her
"Have you taken them today?" Sunset asked.
Another stupid question. Rainbow asked, "Am I out of bed?" in response.
"When's the last time you ate?" Sunset asked.
Rainbow's first inclination was to yell at Sunset and tell her to fuck off, preferably using those very words. That would require more energy than she was willing to expend, however, so she just asked, "What day is it?" because she'd need that information to figure out the answer to Sunset's question.
Sunset gave a sigh that, Rainbow felt, was very judgmental. Rainbow didn't blame Sunset, though. She'd always known how much of a burden she was, after all. Sunset asked, "And the last time you drank?"
"When I took my meds yesterday."
"Ok, I'll be right back," Sunset said. Then she was gone.
Rainbow tried to get up. She really, genuinely, tried. She didn't move. She tried again. No luck. She made whatever one called the sound of something groan-like becoming so nasalized that the sound probably came out of one's nose. This accomplished nothing.
There were sounds from the kitchen. Clanging and chinking of metal, glass, and ceramics. Every single sound was like white-hot pain in Rainbow's skull, and there were so many of them. It sounded like Sunset had thrown all of her silverware, several of her pots and pans, a few of her plates, and some glasses in a clothes dryer and then let the thing spin.
Rainbow's hands found their way back to her forehead, and she pressed inward again. She imagined what would happen if she could actually apply enough force to crush her skull. The thought was not entirely unwelcome.
The noise eventually stopped, as all noises did. Moments later Sunset asked, "Are you ok?" with what sounded like genuine concern.
Rainbow said, "Loud," because she really wasn't up for proper sentence structure.
"Sorry," Sunset said. It sounded sincere. Rainbow thought she heard guilt there.
Rainbow thought, Serves her right, and then felt like she was an asshole for wanting Sunset to emotionally suffer.
"Couldn't find a clean cup," Sunset said, "and the sink wasn't set up for cleaning." She pulled Rainbow into a sitting position, then said, "Here you go," and put pills into Rainbow's hand.
Rainbow looked at the pills. Three pills estrogen, two pills androgen blocker, two pills primary antidepressant, one pill secondary antidepressant, one and a half pills ADHD med, and one pill for anxiety. That was, almost, exactly how it should be.
"How did you . ? ." Rainbow asked as she set the anxiety pill aside.
"The doses are on the bottles," Sunset said while offering Rainbow a glass.
"In that case," Rainbow said as she accepted the glass, "why did you give me the anxiety one?"
"It said, 'Take as needed,' and I didn't know if you needed it," Sunset said.
"Do I look anxious?"
"No idea," Sunset said. "I think you'd know better than me, regardless."
Rainbow didn't argue, she just took her meds. With that out of the way, Sunset could leave, Rainbow could try to sleep, and with any luck, Rainbow would be back in oblivion's embrace pretty quickly. Just one problem: Rainbow didn't have any luck.
"Ok," Sunset said, "time to get up."
Sunset didn't quite pull Rainbow to her feet, but she did provide most of the energy behind the process of getting Rainbow standing. Rainbow had wanted to protest, but she didn't manage to find the right words. Sunset led her to the bathroom and left her to sit on the (closed) toilet while she did something somewhere else.
Rainbow could have turned her head and looked to see what Sunset was doing, but she was too occupied with staring straight forward to do something like that. Based on what Rainbow heard, it somehow involved the shower.
After a few moments, Sunset was back. First, she got Rainbow on her feet, then she led Rainbow to the shower. Rainbow just went along with it; it was the path of least resistance. Somehow, Rainbow didn't realize she was headed into the shower until she got there. The shower was already on, and the temperature was one Rainbow liked.
"I highly recommend you take off your clothes at some point," Sunset said; "showers tend to work better that way."
With that glib remark, Sunset left the bathroom . . . and closed the door behind her.
The water did help Rainbow wake up a bit, and she eventually took Sunset's advice. By the time Sunset opened the bathroom door and shoved some clean clothes in, what Rainbow had been wearing was a soggy heap on the shower floor. While Rainbow was well aware that the reason Sunset had taken pains not to look was because Sunset was trying to be respectful, some part of her mind insisted, in defiance of all reason, that it was instead because no one in their right mind would want to see her naked.
That only made sense if one assumed Sunset would try to peek at someone she were interested in, which Sunset wouldn't, but logic wasn't helpful when dealing with thoughts like that.
When Rainbow got out of the shower, she was faced with a very familiar problem: she desperately wanted to shave; she very much did not want to look at her own reflection.
When she looked in the mirror, what looked back at her was the thing that always looked back at her. A thing that was pretending to be a girl, and doing it badly. She couldn't even joke and call herself the bearded lady; the bearded lady didn't have a dick.
As always, she endured that while she got to work on doing away with the rainbow mess that was her facial hair. If nothing else, it did feel good when she could touch her face and not feel a beard, or stubble, or any other indication of the traitorous follicles she'd come to loathe.
~ * ⁂ * ~
When Rainbow walked into the kitchen she was greeted by the smell of pancakes, a mock gasp, and the words, "You do exist," said in fake surprise.
"Yeah, well . . ." Rainbow said. At that point she took the time to actually think about what to say. She didn't come up with any good ideas, so she went with a bad one. "It's a good thing you laid out yoga pants," she said. "If I'd had to shave my legs, you might have died of old age before I got out here."
She had no idea what she'd been thinking when she'd decided to wear a skirt before. On the other hand, she had no idea when she'd put the skirt on to begin with, so maybe the situation hadn't been quite so bad when she'd made that particular decision.
Sunset shrugged, then said, "I'm glad that you're more awake. The next step is to get hydrated and get some calories in you."
"Calories good," Rainbow said. "Got it." It wasn't, quite, sarcastic, but neither was it meant to be taken literally.
"Calories are energy, and you know that better than me," Sunset said.
"Pretty sure I don't know anything better than you," Rainbow said as she sat down.
"Self effacing doesn't suit you," Sunset said. "It never has."
Rainbow sighed then looked down at her food. The temptation to never lift her head back up was strong. "Look," she said. She looked up. "I'm sorry you had to come all the way from Canterlot just because I wasn't getting out of bed."
"I'm glad Fluttershy asked me to check in on you," Sunset said. "I completely missed what was happening. If she hadn't said anything . . ."
"You'd still be studying magic, guarding two worlds, and giving Twilight the advice she needs to not run Equestria into the ground."
"Twilight has three princesses on call, and plenty of experience of her own," Sunset said, "I'm sure she'd be perfectly fine without me."
"You brought the journal," Rainbow asked, trying not to smirk, "didn't you?"
"Of course I brought the journal," Sunset said.
"Methinks you doth . . ." Rainbow ran out of words. "Something, something, something," she said.
Sunset said, "She's a maladjusted neurotic--"
"Yeah, you totally think she'll be fine on her own," Rainbow said.
"But that doesn't make her a bad ruler," Sunset said.
"Uh huh."
"Her problems, which are admittedly legion, are primarily interpersonal, not political."
"After a thousand years of being ruled by a single individual," Rainbow said, "the country is now ruled by a committee of six friends, none with experience in government, that farms out its most difficult decisions to to the theoretical ruler's sister in law, her mother figure, the boogeyman--"
"Boogeymare," Sunset corrected.
"--and the one that got away from her, romantically speaking," Rainbow finished.
"It took me far too long to realize that you're only talking about this to avoid talking about what's going on with you," Sunset said, and Rainbow wasn't sure whether she was right or wrong, "but before we address the matter that's actually at hand," something about that made Rainbow feel like she's scored some sort of points, "what in Taratrus makes you think Twilight was ever interested in me?"
"Besides the fact that she is, you mean?"
"You've yet to offer a cogent argument in support of that assertion."
"What does 'cogent' mean again?"
"Clear, logical, and convincing."
Rainbow was pretty sure she could, in fact, make such an argument . . . right up until her mind went blank.
"Uh . . . my brain sort of shut down," Rainbow said, "So give me a moment and . . ."
Sunset sighed, massaged her temples, and said, "Let's just talk about you."
It was more or less at that moment that all hope and joy died. "Can we not?" Rainbow asked.
"If you want to focus on eating and drinking, or watch a movie or something," Sunset said, "we could put it off for a bit--"
"Let's do that," Rainbow said.
"--but I'm not leaving until we've talked about it," Sunset said.
"I could bribe you," Rainbow said.
"With what?" Sunset asked.
Rainbow didn't actually have anything in mind, so she said, "I'll think of something," even though she had serious doubts about whether it was true.
Author's Note
I need to sleep, so for right now I'm just gonna say that:
a) Yes, this will have a happy ending. It's for the positivity event.
b) The story title and the chapter title are both from Beatles songs. I was considering both for the story title, and --since I didn't actually have a chapter title in mind-- used the one I didn't pick for the story as the chapter title. Story title is from Help, the chapter title is the name of the song it comes from. Both songs have more lyrics that fit the theme of this story than just the bits I used for titles.
c) I am actually capable of coming up with ideas for lighter stories;* it's writing them that's a problem.
d) C2, there's a non-negligible chance that this will turn into a SunDash fic, and I know that you're allergic to any characters who aren't asexual aromantic, so consider this your warning. It's only a possibility, hence the lack of tagging at this time, but given how you are with such things, maybe the possibility is enough, in itself, to send you running for the hills.
* There's actually, for example, an idea I have for a light and fluffy, more obviously positive from near the beginning, trans story, but I'll probably never get around to writing it. I might make a blog post about it, because the author's note to another story isn't the best place to talk about it.
