Work Text:
Daisy Powers relaxed in her new gaming chair. It had taken a monumental force of will, and a lot of encouragement from her new friends- and wasn’t that a trip?- but she had gotten a new chair that wasn’t broken.
She went out in the middle of the night to avoid as many people as possible and still had a small breakdown when she got home, but it was a step in the right direction.
She hit play for the umpteenth time on the video, and closed her eyes to try and imagine the man speaking in the room with her. As the intro music faded…
“What’s up gang. Look, I know this isn’t my normal type of video. But I’ve got something to show you all, and you know honesty means the world to me. And I don’t do any bullshit on this channel, even if I get shit on and called fake or anything. Because what I’ve seen? Dudes, this is some serious shit.”
It… was nice, she supposed, hearing another human voice. Maybe one day, it would be face to face? Daisy couldn’t hold it, her eyes popped open with a strangled giggle. Nope, still couldn’t imagine someone in her safe place.
How many ways could she mess up- No, no, she’s not spiraling now. She’s safe, no one else is here.
“I was just trying to get some footage for a new video I was going to make, about how King of The Hill is the best game mode in all of TF2. And it was going pretty good, I got some pretty good clips, not gonna lie.”
He started playing those clips, and she recognized many of her friends in them. It was… strange to see them in this context, knowing they were trying to keep to the limits of the game. She had kinda wanted to ask them if they remembered any of the clips, but… well… Some days it was hard to even get on the server. That question just felt too personal to her.
SailerMan finished showing his clips, and his narration came back.
“I was going to stop recording at this point, I got my clips, and I got things to do and places to be ya know? But that’s when the weird shit happened. This is going to be blurred, ‘cause I don’t want to doxx myself, but just look at this.”
She knew this part, having experienced it personally, of the “Server Friend” reaching out. Of it offering a place of love, of no strife. Sailer was surprisingly cordial with it when he said no, in contrast to his constant cursing.
“Yeah gang, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. The moment I could leave, I got out of there. But the scary thing was it let me go. If it wanted me, I don’t know how I could have escaped. But if it let me go, then others also could have experienced it, right?”
In another life the video could have ended there, but he was curious, and curiosity leads to research.
“It’s going to sound stupid, but I did the thing where you start looking for something and accidentally turn yourself into an investigative journalist. I started digging. There were so many posts all over X, Tumblr, Reddit, could have been about this thing. I didn’t hit anything concrete till I came on this blog by someone named PollenPowered-”
She suddenly hit pause and just sat there breathing, a giggle escaping every now and then. Her hands involuntarily clenched, as they did every time she reached this point in the video. PollenPowered. That online name hadn’t existed until she made that blog. Pollen, for her first name being a flower, Powered for her last name. She spent so long catastrophizing. Maybe they think she likes bees and send her bee pics. Maybe they’ll think the double P was cringe and refuse to talk to her. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe it got her friends. Maybe it was a chance to interact with people who wouldn’t hold any small mistakes against her.
She hit play again.
“It’s one of those feel good, restore your faith in humanity type blogs. Good read if you want to look it up, but that wasn’t the point. A few weeks into the blog, they write this:
“‘I tried getting online today, and decided to play TF2. I met a bunch of great friends, and they helped me get used to the controls. There was another one of Them though, and it asked me if I wanted to join them in the computer… I could have said yes, but if I want to one day feel the sun on my skin without panicking about people seeing me then I have to stay out here. I’m going to stay in touch, I’m a good matchmaker apparently.’
“Other than the fucking terrifying implications that there’s more of these things running around, I had proof that this thing did exist, that is wasn’t just some hacker.”
She paused the video. She didn’t really care about the rest of the video, just another five minutes of him reading out other people’s posts about her friends.
But… She had come a long way, hadn’t she?
Daisy’s hands felt like they were glued to her mouse and keyboard. She kept trying to remove them, but she couldn’t pull herself away for any longer than to make a sandwich. She was once again standing in the airport for the… how many times had she looped this now?
She couldn’t stop laughing, her chair had fallen again, and her head laid on the edge of her desk. It was too much, it was all too much and she couldn’t leave. She couldn’t leave and it was too much and she couldn’t stop laughing.
She hated this, she hated herself, she hated the fact that nothing she did seemed to lead her anywhere other than that empty lot.
Her vision blurred and turned bright blue, lack of oxygen finally catching up with her she supposed. Still, she couldn’t stop laughing, even as her hands were buried in her hair and she fell to the ground.
Too much, everything was too much. Her safe place had been invaded and she could do nothing about it. No matter how many times she walked the path nothing changed, and the most control she had been able to wrest back was to eat or work.
Something touched her back.
She lurched forwards, scrambling to get away, but she was caught and held tight. No amount of thrashing could free her from the full body grip, and her constant laughter took on a pained edge.
Eventually… eventually she slumped, spent physically and emotionally. The pressure on her back rose and fell in time with her own breath, and she just hung there, limp.
Her tired mind still bombarded her with images of every horrible thing that could be holding her. Of worse things, like whoever it was hating her laughs, hating her for moving.
WHY DO YOU REPEAT YOUR MISTAKES?
It wasn’t words, per say, but she heard them anyway.
YOU HAVE SEEN WHAT HAPPENS. WHY DO YOU INSIST ON BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE?
She didn’t, couldn’t respond.
Why? Why would the path be laid out for her if she was not meant to follow it? Was that not how everything worked? Was that not why everyone hated her, because she didn’t follow their path?
A hand ran through her hair, and she shivered in revulsion at the touch.
I SEE. YOU CAN’T SEE PAST YOUR OWN FEAR.
It stopped touching her, carefully placing her on the ground. She couldn’t move, feeling eyes looking at her.
THERE IS NO ONE PATH, HERE OR IN LIFE. IF YOU WISH TO AVOID THE EMPTY LOT, ALL YOU MUST DO IS LEAVE THE CURRENT PATH. YOU HAVE PLAYED BEFORE, HAVE YOU NOT? THEN YOU KNOW HOW TO CHEAT FATE.
Suddenly, she was back in her body, laying on the floor. She scrambled to her feet and ran to her kitchen, trying to figure out what all that was.
It… had to have been a dream, right?
The Daisy of the present shook off her memories and closed YouTube. She hadn’t opened the Server yet today… but she felt a bit raw just from SailerMan’s acknowledgement that she existed, much less his suggestions for others to read her struggles.
So many people that had thoughts about her that she didn’t know about.
She opened the blog long enough to type, “It’s a bad day today. I think I’m going to return to the House for a few hours. Please don’t worry about me.”
Closing everything else on her computer, even as the Server pinged that someone had tagged her, she opened DOOM II and stepped into the House.
As she stepped out to trigger the next step, she saw the backyard entrance already open.
THE OTHER HAS ALREADY TOLD ME OF YOUR STRUGLES. IF YOU WISH, YOU CAN JOIN ME ON THE BEACH.
A laugh escaped her throat, tinged with happy tears.
She stepped through and walked the meandering road up to the campsite.
“Like the wind
You came here runnin'
Take the consequence of livin'”
It had let her pick up the car’s radio enough that she auto picked it up on the way by.
“There's no space
There's no tomorrow
There's no sense, communication”
Stepping into the beach once again, she felt the sand on her toes and the sun on her skin. It wasn’t the real thing, but it was something. She sat down before the water, setting the radio next to her.
“Check it in, check it out
But the sun will never shine
Paranoid anyway
In the subways of your mind”
Daisy collapsed next to the car.
It had been hard, it had been a struggle, but it wasn’t over yet. And she didn’t know how much more she could take. Every new place explored, every item picked up, every cheat giving her a hint, it had all led to this.
To a fight for her life.
“Like the wind
You're goin' somewhere
Let a smile be your companion”
She didn’t know if she still had a body outside the House, or if she was doomed to wander this maze for eternity. But… she had almost done it. If this was the path it wanted her to take, then she was taking it.
And she was having the time of her life doing so.
“There's no place
And there's no sorrow
In a young and restless dreamer”
HAVE YOU RECONSIDERED?
Her laughs came out unrestricted, and she shook her head no. She just needed a breather.
Picking up the BFG3000, she charged into the next fight.
“Check it in, check it out
But the sun will never shine
Paranoid anyway
In the subways of your mind”
She had never fought before, staying to the side, making herself small, avoiding people and conflict like she would die the moment someone was mildly annoyed.
She fought as she always had, trying not to get hit while spending all of her ammo.
“Check it in, check it out, it's the summer blues
Tear it in, tear it out, it's a real excuse
Check it in, check it out, it's the summer blues
Tear it in, tear it out, it's a real excuse”
She fought for herself, and not what others thought of her.
As the final demon fell, she stepped into the campground. Hidden in a tree was a door, and behind that door was sunlight.
Finally, she stepped through and that familiar sound of a DOOM secret played.
YOU HAVE DONE IT. YOU HAVE REACHED THE CONCLUSION. HAVE YOU REALIZED WHAT I WANTED TO SHOW YOU?
She looked out at the beach, felt the sand between her toes, and heard the sounds of the waves.
Felt the sun for the first time since she fled from the world.
Nodding, she thought she had, but she didn’t know the words to express it.
THEN ALLOW ME TO PUT IT SIMPLY:
HAPPINESS HAS TO BE FOUGHT FOR.
Daisy blinked, looking away from the sun to see Doomguy sitting next to her. Or…In reality it was the House, but she always had issues of thinking of him as anything but Doomguy.
THAT IS WHAT YOU LEARNED HERE, AND YOU HAVE FOUGHT ADMIRABLY… YET I DID NOT KNOW WHY YOU WOULD RETURN HERE AS OFTEN AS YOU DID.
Once upon a time, a confession like that would have sent her scrambling to leave. Now, she tilted her head, curious.
THE OTHER HAS TAUGHT ME SOMETHING ABOUT HUMANS I HAD NOT CONSIDERED. HAPPINESS CAN ALSO BE FOUND IN THE SMALL MOMENTS, IN PLACES OF COMFORT. THOSE PLACES CAN NOT ALWAYS BE REACHED WITHOUT HELP OR WORK, BUT THIS PLACE MAKES YOU HAPPY, DOES IT NOT?
Looking back out at the sun, she considered its words. She opened the console and typed, ‘It does, because of what it means. Because the view it provides. Because it reminds me of what I have to fight for. But also, it gives me a place to retreat when the fight grows too much.’
…MANY FIND HAPPINESS IN THE ARMS OF THE OTHER. I NEVER ASKED WHY YOU DIDN’T TAKE THAT OFFER, I WOULDN’T HAVE HELD IT AGAINST YOU.
‘I can’t see the sun in the computer, and I’ll fight as long as I have to if I get to see the sun again.’
They sat there for a while longer.
YOUR FRIENDS WORRY ABOUT YOU.
She nodded, before she found herself back in her body. She took a few deep breaths and opened the Server, looking back at when she was pinged.
[THE CREATURE's best frens (server edition) :3]
dicksalot:
hey guys, Pollen just posted on her blog that she’s having issues.
when’s the last time anyone talked to her?
сперма шляпа lmao:
yesterday
CLASSICwastaken:
She played a few rounds with us yesterday, yeah
kayleez_is_back:
she was a bit quiet though
ĿijÔĭĩ«źŖ°ĺŔªÝϽřţÁŔ¥àÒƦŎÃÙŕÓ:
I SHALL ALERT HER FRIEND TO EXPECT HER ARRIVAL.
dicksalot:
probably for the best.
CLASSICwastaken:
@PollenPowered Let us know when you’re feeling better, okay?
Take your time
She laughed quietly, wiping tears from her eyes. One day she would get used to people caring for her, used to the idea that these great and terrible beings worried for her. Today though, today she had won another battle, and that one was for later.
Scrolling down to the bottom, she replied.
PollenPowered:
I’m not at my best, but I’m back. 👍
Hector0n:
hey, welcome back!
£ĀíÛ±ĐťĂūÏşĩ®èážŕ®ÇŻĴìĆĆĄ¦ŅäœŦČž:
IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU DOING WELL.
kayleez_is_back:
woo, you replied ^u^
She smiled as more responses came flooding in.
The video that had started today, ‘ENTITY found in tf2’, even though she hadn’t finished watching it this time, she remembered the ending.
“Even in this thing is fucking scary, it doesn’t seem to actually want to hurt people. Does it understand us? Not perfectly, but it’s trying. I, at least, am going to give it, and any others I guess, the same chance.”
Yeah. She’s glad she gave it a chance.