Time to Tip the Scales!

[Fenris]

Zen was supposed to be good at this game. At least they were better at it than most people, they thought, and they were proud of that, cause it was a Hard Game, and being good at Hard Things was a thing to be proud of. It’s why they felt real good about how good they’d gotten at, like, Guilty Gear, which was also hard, to other people, they’d heard. But this game… this game. They were good at it, they swore. They’d played the whole thing on Hard when they first got it, no problem. They’d managed to get through it on Lunatic, even. But Lunatic+ was apparently made for real actual lunatics because it was just. Not doable. It wasn’t. Zen swore.

Chrom died for like the 17th time in the row and if Zen was the kind of person who’d throw a 3DS they would’ve, but they weren’t, so they bit it instead, which was exactly as helpful as throwing it would’ve been.

They threw themself back on their bed, groaning dramatically, because theatrics didn’t really help or anything but they felt pretty good! And then, for what felt like the millionth time today, they glanced at their computer, and more importantly at Discord, and how Discord was stubbornly not blinking. No new messages. The shiny green light next to Lyra’s silly OWO Robot avatar was still very shiny and very green. They frowned at it. Maybe if they frowned hard enough their Upsetness would get through to Lyra somehow and they’d go “oh maybe I should message Zen!” and then they’d message Zen. Or maybe that wouldn’t work, because maybe Lyra was mad at them?

They wracked their brain. Why was Lyra mad at them? They couldn’t think of anything they’d done. They’d been showing them how to play Fire Emblem the other day, had they been too pushy? They didn’t mean to be pushy, they just liked sharing good things, cause that’s what you did with friends. Has they said something bad? They couldn’t think of anything but maybe that was it, Zen was real bad at remembering things they’d said anyway, maybe they’d said something horrible and then blocked it out and now Lyra was waiting for an apology but they’d never apologize because they didn’t remember what they did so now they were gonna both sit here in silence forever and that probably wasn’t it but Zen was still tearing up a little thinking about it??

There was some small part of Zen’s brain that made sense sometimes that told them that maybe, just maybe, they should message Lyra first. Then if they were mad at them they could tell them! But that was a dumb idea, for reasons. They couldn’t do that. They stared harder at the screen instead. Maybe they just had to Telepath Harder.

Then their face started to hurt from the effort and they turned back to their game.

They hoped that Lyra wasn’t actually mad at them, and they were just being Paranoid, which was probably the thing they were, but it still made their heart beat fast to think about and not in any of the fun ways. Lyra made their heart beat fast a lot of times in a lot of more interesting situations than this one! Which was a thought they probably shouldn’t be having, especially when they’d just been trying to beam their brain energy through the computer and the residual thoughts might totally still get through to them. But thinking about Lyra was always super distracting and being distracted was a bad way to be when you were trying to play a Ridiculously Difficult Video Game and yep Robin was dead. They made a noise and threw their 3DS, very gently, so it moved about a foot and landed on the bed.

Still no flashing Discord light.

Maybe it was hopeless. Maybe it was dumb to expect Lyra to want to talk to them at all. They were always so smart, they were so talented and they knew about so many things Zen didn’t understand at all, and Zen liked to listen because Lyra had the prettiest voice and they smiled so big when they talked about the things they loved but Zen was too stupid to understand a lot of it. Maybe that was why. It was at least probably why Zen kept on not saying the thing that they’d wanted to say for years now. They weren’t good enough. They never were.

For some reason Lyra still talked to them though! And that was enough. That had to be enough. The nights when they didn’t hurt, but it didn’t mean things were hopeless. Things would be better tomorrow! They had to believe that. But they kept hurting, now.

Zen picked up their 3DS and glanced at their face in the reflection of the top screen. Their eyes were puffy. They must have been crying. They hadn’t noticed! That happened sometimes, too. Zen rubbed them, which made it worse.

They should probably just go to bed, but they wouldn’t do that, because maybe Lyra would message. It was still possible. Maybe they could just skip sleeping? They’d done that before. It would be okay. Everything would be fine! It always was, eventually, even if it wasn’t right now. They’d just have to be patient! It would be okay.

Their eyes hurt, from crying, mostly, but they’d feel better soon. Everything would get better. They picked up their 3DS. All they had to do was kill a little more time.

Just a little more.