Work Text:
Ashlyn knew she'd been off for a good few days, but the why and the worst of it was finally starting to set in, and wow, this was fucking inconvenient.
She lied in bed one evening, staring at the Savannah Kids group chat when suddenly everything being said began to feel foreign and confusing to her. She could read the words just fine and knew what they meant individually, but when it came to gluing them together to form coherent ideas...
Well, that normally trivial activity felt extremely difficult all of a sudden.
Worst of all, they were asking her questions about their plans for the dream world. Questions that would require coherent answers made by a clear mind.
She stared at the screen. She understood the base concepts of many of the questions and somewhere in her brain, different responses were being formed but she couldn't find the words to articulate them. She couldn't just process the conversation like a normal person. What the fuck was happeni-
Oh.
The realization hit her suddenly- A byproduct of her Autism mixed with general burnout from all the Phantom shit. She was shutting down.
This was bad, very bad. They all knew she was Autistic but they'd never seen her shut down before. The social aspect of it hardly mattered at the end of the day, though. It's not like she needed them to like her anyway.
No, the part that had her truly worried was the fact that, in only a few short hours, she and the others would go to bed and fall into a synced nightmare realm in which they looked to her for guidance.
They needed her guidance and she couldn't even form a sentence.
Feeling a bit dazed, she slowly swiped out of the group chat and took a moment to find her private chat history with Aiden. She wasn't even entirely sure why she went to him specifically. Sure, he was the only other one in the group with a proper diagnosis (though he had ADHD, not Autism), but he certainly wasn't the only other neurodivergent person in the group.
Nonetheless, here she was, using all of her brain power to type out a simple message.
ash_not_ketchum : !!
rubixcubeextrordinair : oh hey ash wats up
ash_not_ketchum : Brain. Shutdown. Bad.
rubixcubeextrordinair : oh geez
rubixcubeextrordinair : gotcha uhh
rubixcubeextrordinair : do u want me 2 explain 2 the others or ..???
ash_not_ketchum : 👍
rubixcubeextrordinair : will do soldier
Ashlyn closed her phone and smiled to herself. She wouldn't have to worry as much now because Aiden was doing all the explaining for her. The pressure would be off of her shoulders at least a bit while she worked through this.
Shutdowns sucked, but maybe they didn't have to be complete misery.