An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Gwen (Camp Camp), David (Camp Camp), Max (Camp Camp), Preston Goodplay, Dolph (Camp Camp), Nerris (Camp Camp), Harrison (Camp Camp), Ered (Camp Camp), Space Kid (Camp Camp), Nurf (Camp Camp), Max's Parents (Camp Camp), Jasper (Camp Camp), Mr. Honey Nuts (Camp Camp), possibly various ocs
Additional Tags: idk - Freeform, third eye au, dadvid, Gwom - Freeform, gwenmom, david adopts the campers, but max first, Government Conspiracy, might be violence idk yet, thanks dadvidismycanonheadcanon, maybe gwenvid eventually? who knows for now it's platonic, maxvid shippers EAT SHIT AND DO NOT INTERACT, Ghosts, Sixth Sense AU
Summary:
No kid should ever be alone, he thought. Until David found out where Max came from, he was just gonna be stuck with him, he supposed. Good thing David had experience as a camp counselor! He figured that he was pretty good with kids!
How can I swim if there's nothing worth swimming for?
She sobbed in her bed, clutching her pillow as if it were her only friend. It was, for the time. She couldn't contact her real ones, not today. Any day but today. She couldn't force her problems onto her friends on their special day. It wasn't their fault they were the only ones who could help her.
I have already left the shore years ago, there is no hope for my return
She tried to pacify herself by imagining her best friend's arms around her, soothing her. Understanding. Loving. Helping. It only made it worse. Her eyes widened in terror as she began to hyperventilate. She tried to muffle her sounds with her blanket so no one would hear.
There is nothing to hold on to
She had never felt so alone. All her life she had denied that ignorance was bliss but as she lay dying in her own bedroom she wishes she had never learned that everything she believed was a lie. She glared at the unlit walls around her. How dare they shield her from the world? How dare they protect her from the grotesqueries of reality?
The waters wash away my self, my soul, my love, my life
Tears streamed and she felt like screaming. A knock at the door. She held her breath. Someone had heard, someone knew, the walls hadn't hidden her-! A quiet question. 'Are you okay?' 'Yeah, I'm fine.' 'If you need anything, let me know.' She needs him to leave. She says nothing, and then he's gone.
In the clouds I see your faces
She knew she needed help. This one was too big for her to take on by herself, but who could help her? Certainly not her friend. She would not ruin this day for her. It could not be her family, because they were unwittingly causing it. She wished she wasn't the only one privy to such knowledge. She hated the burden and knew it could kill her.
You can't see I'm drowning
She picked up her phone. If he came back to check on her there would be hell to pay for it, but she turned on the screen anyway. She scrolled through her contacts. She needed someone who would answer immediately. Someone she trusted and knew.. And it could not be her best friend, as much as she knew they could help.
And water fills my lungs each time I try to scream
She remembered a friend she'd seen earlier that night. Before the Realization and before she ever got home. That friend would surely be awake. That friend could be trusted to keep secrets. She clicked the button and began to type her message, blinking through the tears and shaking.
No boats have passed me by and I know they never will
'Are you there?' 'What's up' 'I need to tell you something, but you have to promise not to tell my best friend' 'ok' 'I just had a panic attack' 'oh god, are you okay? do you need me to call someone?' 'I'm ok, it's over now, but it's because of what happened tonight' 'what happened?' 'do you know what emotional abuse is?'
So why don't I sink?
She tells her friend everything. They try their best to help and she appreciates it. She calms down, but she still feels sick to her stomach. She doesn't know how she's going to pretend everything's okay after this. She's glad her friend answered her phone. She knows she needs to sleep before she makes any decisions.
Why do I swim?
She grabs her only unnamed toy. She remembers all of her others', but this one is a mystery. For some reason that is a comfort, and she cuddles it close and pretends it is someone who loves her. When she wakes up in the morning she will lie to her therapist. The therapist will believe her.
There is nothing for me to swim for here but there is pirates' treasure beneath me
It has been months. She pretends she is fine. She realizes now why things her parents do bothers her so much. She realizes that other things she hadn't considered aren't normal. She realizes she isn't alone. She tells her best friend. She tells her church leader, just so she knows that if she can't take it anymore then an adult will know why she ended it.
So why do I go on?
She doesn't know why she keeps doing it. She doesn't know why she keeps lying. She doesn't know why she keeps acting. She doesn't know why she's still breathing, she doesn't know why she has kept quiet. She doesn't know why she suffers in silence and watches other victims suffer in silence and she doesn't know why she's afraid of the only people who've always loved her since the moment she was born. She doesn't know why she wants to cry as she's writing this because it's not like she deserves emotions when she watches in silence as her family tears itself to pieces like she does to herself.
Warning: death mention, deity themes, existentialism, reader interactive
It's a tough question. Would you kill baby Hitler, if given the chance? Would you take over the world? Would you banish everyone who ever committed you the slightest wrong? If you could bring back the dead, would you? More importantly, if you could do anything, what WOULD you do?
Shae could do anything. She may have been able to before, but she didn't know. She could find out, but she wasn't sure she wanted to.
Shae was a god. She could do anything, but what would she do? Nothing presented a challenge to her, and in retrospect, nothing ever had. Would she stop WW2? Perhaps she could simply erase humanity from this plane of reality completely, or move this miniscule speck in the universe to another dimension, just for the heck of it. Maybe she'd make herself famous and rich, or make it so no one needed food to survive. She could make dreams or rip out the fragile souls she knew lived inside so many things.
She could erase hate, foster love and bliss. She could pit things against each other in epic battles or inspire a revolution, good or bad. Shae did not know what she would do. She knew the meaning of everything now. Because of this, nothing meant anything to her anymore. She could simply float in the void, she supposed, but it may get awfully boring. She decided to send a message across the cosmos, across all planes of reality. She asked for all beings to tell her what they would do if they became a god as she had. She waited for their response with a forever of patience. She would not do anything until she had an answer from everyone and everything. Shae wants to know.
Warning: death, fire, and yelling! “War” was not a typo! If that bothers you then DON’T READ P L E A S E
"Look at me." He looked down at her obediently, his eyes spilling liquid emotion. She reached up and wiped his cheek with her thumb as her watery eyes tried to blink away the pain.
"Don't look away," she murmured. "I've got you."
"And I've got you." His voice broke, but he managed to smile. She wrapped her arms around him and gazed into his eyes.
"Always," she whispered. They embraced, and the room erupted in flames.
—
"Cover me! Agent Heather going in." She double checked her air-tight suit, reassuring herself that she still had twelve minutes of air left before the poisonous exterior began seeping in.
"Agent Heather, this is Praetor Nightshade. As your superior I command you to stay where you are. We've lost too many agents tonight. I'm calling this the one in. Let's make sure the rest of us live to fight another day."
"All due respect Praetor Nightshade but," Heather pried open the door into the center as she spoke, flames leaping out to meet her but brushing harmlessly past the proofed cloth. "I'm not going to fight another day, one way or the other. I'm giving this one my all." She turned off her communications as the praetor and her fellow agents began to shout at her. She smiled grimly at the darkness within and trudged on.
—
"KEEP THEM OUT!" He screamed in the youth's face, who recoiled immediately. The other knights kept their gaze away, glad it was not them who had the guts to ask the question they all wanted the answer for.
Lord Cytisus looked around at them in disbelief. "What did you THINK you were supposed to be doing, running around like headless-"
"SIR!" An apprentice burst in and then shrunk back from the intensity of the glares shot at her.
"WELL?" Cytisus demanded. "What is it, Miss Abrus?"
"An agent has penetrated the inner circle, sir." The poor girl was only a child, but here she was in the middle of a Knott-forsaken battle. Many of the knights pitied her, but their attitude changed drastically with her next words.
"They've let the firewall in." Gasps went up around the room as realization set in. The firewall was a last-ditch defense mechanism that had been created so that it did not reach the interior, but the old building had been hastily adapted for it when enemy forces chased them out of their old base. It was only a matter of time before they would be incinerated. There would be no escape from the shrinking circle of death as it enclosed on them.
"...Lord Cytisus?" The young knight from before spoke up again. "What now?"
The man was quiet for a minute. "There's only one thing we can do."
He turned to the man—more of a boy really, he realized—that only moments before he had wanted to slap. "Your name is Fallopia, yes?"
"Well, yes—yes sir." Fallopia shuffled his feet, feeling the gazes of everyone on his back once again.
"Well Mister Fallopia, I want you to go into the back with Miss Abrus now; she'll lead you to the cases we've been protecting. I want you to destroy them."
Fallopia's eyes felt like they were going to pop out of his head.
"But sir!" Abrus protested. Cytisus silenced her with a single raise of his hand.
"If we are to lose, then our efforts shall not be in vain. It is better for that information to be lost completely than in enemy hands. Do you understand?" The two looked at each other for moment and then left uneventfully.
"Sir?" Another knight clutched her sides fearfully. Cytisus wished he'd bothered to learn all of their names. All he could do was memorize their faces, raw and afraid, in this moment. He had to make sure their sacrifice—and his—was worth something. He needed to prove that their lives had been worth it.
"Sir," she repeated, "are we... giving up?"
The man smiled at the innocence in her question. "My dear," he said, with a gentleness none of the knights knew he possessed, "who ever said we were doing that?"
