After the rest of the Misfits left, Sean sat alone in one of the break rooms and tried to make his mind go blank. This was exactly like being in high school all over again. Back then he’d been friends with a group of gamers and while they were the odd ones out who weren’t invited to football games and special parties, they had made their own geek culture. After being dumped in a trash can freshman year, his buddy Brian had pulled him out and the two of them had started the Geeks and Freaks club. They weren’t an officially recognized school organization or anything like that but unofficially they accepted the weirdos: the drama kids, the awkward book readers, the board game late night nerds, and anyone else who didn’t fit in.

That first year had been a blast as the two of them grew their little group and everyone just hung out. Although they were still hazed by their peers and the Seniors at least they weren’t alone. Sean and Brian were the unofficial leaders of the group. Sean hated the oppression he noticed in the more organized social clubs where one leader dictated to their followers how things had to be. That didn’t seem to be in the spirit of the type of organization he and his friend were trying to make.

Brian confessed his feelings to Sean at the end of that freshman year. Sean had always known that his friend’s sexuality was a little ambiguous but being that they were all freaks and geeks he wasn’t one to judge. The problem was that Sean was pretty sure he wasn’t into guys. Hell, it was high school so he probably would have screwed anything but still he was pretty sure that he preferred girls. But Sean was pretty immature when it came to relationship and he probably would have freaked out if a girl had confessed to him let alone his then best friend. Sean didn’t handle the situation well because of his own jumble of feelings and he let Brian down hard. Brian tried to be understanding but was hurt by the way Sean had handled it. It fractured the group and by sophomore year the Geeks and Freaks were no more.

That incident was the first scar for Sean in a series of real life problems leading up to his adulthood. Years later he’d thought he’d shed those scars and was finally able to achieve some semblance of ‘normal’ when he’d gotten his job in IT at Terrazon. Those had been a brief few years where Sean didn’t feel like a failure. Meeting his now ex-wife Julie had seemed like a godsend at the time. He felt vindicated that he’d turned Brian down and embraced being heterosexual. The problem was that their relationship had been a farce. Julie was entitled and manipulative, which were two traits that Sean absolutely loathed in any friend let alone his significant other.

Their marriage was, in some ways, just one of convenience. Julie had liked the idea of having a man on her arm who daddy didn’t approve of while Sean had fallen for Julie’s superficial beauty and the idea of being married to a woman and having a ‘normal life’. Even after all those lies, there had been times when he really enjoyed being married to her. When she wasn’t being a brat or trying to get back at her father, he’d seen some real beauty in his ex-wife. At one point he had hoped to be the one to bring out more of those traits and dampen the pettier ones.

That dream died when he’d been laid off. Sean knew now that it was quite likely that Julie’s dad had been the one to pull the plug. Yes, there had been general layoffs in their IT staff; however, the department was still mostly intact and Sean had been a star member. For a time, Sean held out the hope that Julie would be able to get him reinstated although he wasn’t sure what was worse – being fired to get back at his wife or being rehired in a case of pure nepotism.

It was a fact that he’d been the root cause of all these problems. He’d managed to bungle every single relationship he’d had and the people who relied on him, whether the Geeks and Freaks, the other IT staff in his department or the Misfits had suffered the consequences of his failures.

After Sean had been laid off at Terrazon, he’d escaped deep into the game of Champions thinking that he could hide from himself in the game. For a while this had worked – he was able to experience the thrill of leveling up and making his character more powerful and the relationships he’d had in game were straight forward and didn’t get too personal because everyone was really a stranger. Gaming had been his salvation and as he’d led the Misfits to victory after victory in Champions it seemed like their success would start to turn his real life around too. After they had downed Cermillion, he had run around the house like a kid after Christmas. Getting that call from Mr. Tiel a few days later was just the icing on the cake.

When he’d been told that they were all going to be hired for this job to test out AO he’d been on cloud nine. Not even his fight with Julie had been able to weigh him down completely. But now he was at another dead-end. The real world had returned to kick his butt and his complete and abject failure to be what the Misfits needed on that asteroid yesterday replayed over and over again in his head. Sending Cheezus and Krok in alone to scout out the space station had been his first critical mistake. Sean hadn’t properly taken into account the fact that this wasn’t just a game anymore and that there was only one set of Gears. This meant that the usual strategies he’d employed in Champions weren’t necessarily optimal. Sending two of his best DPS players into a completely unknown situation with potential hostiles had set them back significantly. When it had become clear that they’d lost those two on the station, Sean hadn’t leapt into action like he normally would. Instead of being on the offensive all of a sudden, the Misfits were trying to step back and in doing so he committed them into another unforced error – trying to retrench and hold their ground. If the group had immediately fled to another area – perhaps even going back to the station and creating a narrow Spartan fighting column, they might have survived the incident. There were a number of different ways that Sean could have handled things that now scrolled through his brain like a movie on replay. The problem was that in the heat of the moment he’d frozen up for those critical few seconds. Instead of continuing to treat things like a game where he could win, he had treated it just like every other misstep he’d made in his life.

Sean’s thoughts were interrupted as someone walked into the room and turned on a light. Turning around he saw that it was Dr. Thompson. “Sorry to bother you but I thought you might be hungry,” she said setting a small bowl of tomato soup in front of him. Come to think of it he was ravenous. She left the room while he ate in silence and thought some more about what he could have done differently yesterday. However, the darkness of his previous thoughts had been somewhat reduced now that he’d had some of his blood sugar restored.

A few minutes later, he’d finished his meal and Dr. Thompson came back into the room. “You look like you’ve had a hard day,” she said. “Do you want to talk about it?” She had a gentle look about her face that reminded him a bit of his mother. Part of him wanted to keep clammed up – he didn’t really trust doctors and certainly not shrinks. However, he’d let down anyone he could possibly talk to and his own friends weren’t around at the moment.

“Sure, I guess,” he mumbled. “It’s pretty obvious I messed up yesterday and cost us the Gears. That and the opportunity to find out what was going on with that space station on the asteroid.”

The doctor, Laura, he corrected himself – she had a name, just sat and listened. I guess that’s what makes a good psychologist he thought. Not interrupting. Why the hell was it so hard just spitting it out. He pushed himself just to say it.

“I’ve let everyone down. Again. It’s just like my marriage, the time I lost my job, and betraying my good friend in high school. Gaming was the only escape for me and now that it’s affecting the real world I just can’t keep it together,” he said quickly, the pain of recognizing his feelings raw on his tongue.

Laura looked at him sympathetically. I bet she doesn’t have any of these types of problems, he thought. It wasn’t like she could understand.

“And how does that make you feel?” she said.

Sean looked at her incredulously but said, “Like shit. I’ve failed. Again. The end.”

“Uh-huh. And what does that say about you?” she asked.

“That I’m doomed to ruin the lives of other people? That I can’t get my act together? Maybe I shouldn’t even try?” he said, exasperated.

Laura nodded and said, “Like maybe you aren’t good enough?”

That got Sean’s attention. Shit, maybe she did understand. “Yeah, exactly like that. Like it’s never enough – like I’m not enough.”

“So, everything yesterday was your fault? No one else was there that could have done anything differently? Your guild members weren’t there with you fighting and no one else could have possibly been in the same situation as you – stuck and afraid?” she asked with a quiet insistence. “I know that your friend Tim often provides the guild with great strategies. Did he give you any advice? What about Miles or Kevin? They’ve both been gaming for years and could have recognized that trap. Or what about Craig and I – certainly we should have been able to do something to help you or foresee that you might need another set of Gears up on that station. But none of us did. Do you still think it’s fair to claim responsibility for all of yesterday’s failure?”

Sean didn’t have any quick comeback response to that. He hadn’t completely considered how everyone else was feeling. Tim must have felt terrible being outplayed the way that they were. And Miles was so proud of being a sneaky bastard that having someone else get the drop on him must have stung badly. However, instead of consoling his friends after their loss he had blown up at Kevin’s angry remarks and walked off in a huff.

“Are they still online?” Sean asked.

Laura nodded and handed him a headset. “You should be able to reach them with this. Why don’t you see if you can join them leveling and talk with them about how they might feel about yesterday’s setback. Just remember it isn’t the end of the world,” Laura said with a laugh. “Ok, well maybe it is; but we’re still here and you still have a chance to fix it but only if you can let some of the rest of us claim responsibilities for our own failures.”

It turned out that Laura was pretty relatable for a doctor and she had her own fair share of guilt from yesterday’s debacle. Sean took the headset and called the Misfits. Knowing how his moods came and went, he knew he hadn’t completely solved his problems by talking with Laura; however, he’d gotten enough of a handle on things to get back in the game. Hopefully, that would be good enough.