Work Text:
C’est La Vie
Warnings: bad news in a variety of forms including but not limited to medical ailments, bereavement, financial difficulty, retrenchment, broken relationships. If I’ve missed something, let me know and I’ll update the list.
Sad, hurt, hurt no comfort, depressing, not for blue days, SAO, SAO survivors, reality sometimes,
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Surviving SAO was a joyous, relieving thing. Waking up in the hospital, not great, finding all muscle mass gone, worse. Breathing hospital air (stupendously wonderful while still smelling awful so averaged out about a “good”) being able to take that death machine off your head was phenomenal.
Learning that physical therapy was going to take months if not years and that counselling was required for all SAO survivors was a mixed bag.
But then came the personally devastating news.
For some it was: Your fiancé, (boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, spouse, significant other,) the person you were hoping would spend the rest of your life with. Chose not to stay. They’re married now, with a child on the way.
Others woke up alone, with a police officer, or a lawyer who delivered the bad news: your spouse, children, parents, family passed away. You’re alone in the world once more.
A rare few had this variation: the Nerve Gear had an unexpected reaction: to your nervous system; to your temporal lobe, to your pariental lobe, to your prefrontal cortex, to your occipital lobe, you’re paralysed from the waist down some hear. Half your face is frozen, others receive. You’ll have to relearn all motor control and language, several are informed.
Some receive: you have cancer, it’s terminal, there’s nothing we can do. It was detected when you were first brought in, but all treatment options would have interfered with the Nerve Gear.
No employment options immediately available, your credentials are two years out of date and your boss doesn’t want you back. The government will help, of course, and Akihiko Kayaba’s assets were frozen and their monetary worth is distributed amongst all the survivors, so you’re not destitute.
For a lot it’s: Your lease is gone, and you’re now homeless. The mortgage wasn’t paid so the banks repossessed and sold your house and all of your effects to pay off your debt.
You were frozen. Fighting for your life inside a video game. But the world outside moved on.
Life went on…without you.
And sometimes… it’s not good news.