Time to Even the Odds!

[Pippi]

Y’know, normally they were pretty good at this game.

Well, kinda good. And only on Normal difficulty, anything harder made Lyra wanna cry. But Zen said they were doing really well for their first Fire Emblem game! They’d nearly made it to the endgame, and their only permanent casualty had been Kellam, who Lyra had kinda. Not realised you could recruit. Whoops.

But tonight, apparently, was not their night. They’d sent their cute little sprite army into death’s reach again and again and again, and they’d watched Chrom and Frederick and Robin get pelted with fireballs and arrows and flying axes too many times to keep track of now. They’d shut their 3DS and chucked it to the end of their bed and screamed into a pillow for a little bit, and that had felt good in the moment.

Now, though, they were just lying there, with a pillow on their face, feeling stupid and frustrated, frustrated at the game for being such a fuck, and at themselves for having such a dumb, childish reaction to something so small. They sighed into it, before slipping it off of their face, and scrambling to the foot of the bed to grab their handheld again.

Maybe they just needed a little break from strategy. They’d been so close to beating the level last time, if they just cleared their head a little bit, then maybe they could actually pull their plan off. So! They closed the game, scrolling to the right on the 3DS home screen until they reached the StreetPass Plaza. They would just check in there, grab a couple of picture panels until they felt calm again, then try and get the Fire Emblem level over and done with.

The first thing they saw when they opened the game was Zen’s little Mii representation of themselves, and for a long, long, long time, Lyra just stared at it, before they closed the 3DS again and stared off into space.

God damnit.

After a minute, or maybe an hour, or maybe even more, they glanced over at their laptop, switched on and shining merrily away on their desk, coated in stickers of aliens and UFOs and ‘I Want To Believes’. Discord was open, and even from here, Lyra could recognise every pixel in Zen’s little anime icon. Ura… something. Gravity girl. Lyra could never remember her name off the top of their head. Zen had told them plenty of times. They always felt shitty having to ask yet again.

They rolled off of their bed, picking themselves up off the floor, wandering over to stare at their laptop, holding onto the backrest of their chair but not sitting in it. The last message from Zen had been from yesterday, a good night message, filled with exclamation marks and heart emojis. Then, below that, nothing. Just the message box. Lyra desperately wished that they’d see the little notification signifying that Zen was typing to pop up, but even then, they weren’t sure what good that would do. They didn’t really trust themselves not to write anything stupid right now.

Maybe they needed to just… write something dumb, something stupid, something totally fucking incoherent but heartfelt. Bite the bullet, rip the bandage off, whatever you wanted to call it. Just do that.

Lyra clicked the Notepad icon on their taskbar, opening the most recent file they’d created and briefly skimmed the paragraph they’d written late last night, one that now looked simultaneously far too long and far too short. They highlighted and copied it. They took several deep, deep breaths. They hovered over the Discord message box. Then they tabbed back into Notepad, deleted the entire paragraph, bit their lip, pasted it back into Notepad, ran their fingers through their hair, grabbing hold of it tightly, before saving the document, closing it, and letting their laptop sit on the cool grey screen of Discord once more. They let out a deep sigh.

Another time.

Another time, they told themselves, for yet another time. When would that time actually come? Their last day at school? When they were both at college, potentially miles away from each other? What, exactly, was gonna spur them on to taking any action? Nothing, if the thought that it didn’t even matter never left their brain.

Zen was popular, and cheerful, and attractive. It felt like every other week, they would come running excitedly to Lyra, eager to tell them about someone brand new who’d actually worked up the courage to say anything to them and about all the flings and one-night stands they’d had. Meanwhile, Lyra was… well.

They shuffled over to the mirror attached to the door of their wardrobe, gently rolling up their sweater and the t-shirt underneath it. They ran their hand over their stomach, pinching and squeezing it, squishing it and seeing how much they could hold in their hand, noticing stretch marks every time they turned to look at it from a new angle. Their jeans were starting to feel too tight, and their t-shirt a size too small. It was gross. They were gross. They were gross and disgusting and no matter what they did it never got any better.

Lyra rolled their clothes back down, covering their stomach again, before pushing their glasses up and wiping their eyes with the back of their sleeve. Zen deserved better than this. Better than this crying, cowardly, ugly wreck, cooped up in their room, too frightened to talk to their best friend in case their heart came tumbling out.

It never went away, though, this feeling. It ebbed and it flowed, but it was always there, and Lyra could always feel it, and on days like today, it was so very strong that they felt like their heart would burst.

And yet, here they were again. Doing nothing but letting that pain engulf them.

Lyra flicked off their bedroom light, the room now illuminated in the cool light of their laptop screen. They stripped off their clothes, scurrying into their pyjamas as quick as they could so they didn’t have to see themselves for very long, before, slipping into bed, flipping their 3DS open once more. It wasn’t even late, and they hadn’t even said anything to Zen today, but they didn’t feel like doing anything but slamming their head into the brick wall that was Fire Emblem right now.

Another time. Maybe they could lie to themselves until they believed that.