A Simple Virus - BEN Drowned X Reader

Level 15

It had been years since the final incident happened. Some may have called it psychosis, perhaps a series of sleep paralysis episodes mixed in? You graduated college at this point, pushing the lost time to the depths of your conscience, avoiding any resurface with any techniques you could muster.

"...and then she really turned around and said, "Is this fancy enough for work?" Can you believe it? I mean..."

Your friend continued on with her comments on her troublesome new coworker, keeping the cold out of your thoughts while walking to your bus stop home. She was a friend of yours, a lovely young woman with a perfect sense of the supernatural. While the final incident had not been paused by her alone, you had not seen BEN since telling her of your ailments. Getting in touch with anyone who would listen had given you not just ease of mind, but peace as well.

Today was a later day, one in which you and your friend had taken a stop for some coffee before heading to your shared apartment right outside the main part of town. Unfortunately for you, this included the longer walks and lowering temperatures in such walks. In order to combat this unfavorable scenario, you snagged another warm drink for the road, and sipped on it each time you could between the comments on your friend's incompetent new worker.

"Hey, (Y/N)?"

What would happen, should you be brought back to the time of uncertainty? You always wondered how your life would turn out to be, considering the torturous moments in early undergrad. While people pass it off as the episode of psychosis or extreme sleep paralysis, you could not quite convince your own mind, as it seems to have done to you.

Perhaps you would be dead, or maybe admitted, you did not know. What you did know, was that the one on the screen entrancing you now was triggering the deepest of mental stress and trauma you long held hostage in your own mind. It looked just like him. His hair, the cap, the outfit, it was all the same. He was here, in your town, in your local vintage videos and games shop.

Numbness overtook your body, nerves detaching from your hands, sight removed from your conscious. You felt like crumbling then and there, but you would only dare to hold the breath screaming to be let out, and to ignore the burn of your eyes thirsting for a blink.

How was he here, with you, and this world? How could he have been your mind's game, when he was in the shop right here?

It is only when you feel the warm,dry hand on your shoulder that you feel the air fill your lungs, and only until you hear her voice that you find your pupils align to the world around you, "It is just the game, it's not him."

And now, you find the poltergeist to be a simple replica of the infamous game of his origin, that God-forsaken curse, with no attachment.

Although, you could have sworn that you saw red and black pixels manifest within the face of Link, and find that even as you walk away, you hear the reversed tune that entertained your pre-teen years.