Illusions and Lies (A Super Smash Brothers fan fiction)

CHAPTER FIFTY: A LETTER YOU'LL NEVER READ.

Their lips moved but he heard no sound. Were they trying to talk to him? Please no. He didn't want to talk. The numbness was giving way to a feeling that everything was wrong, that something had gone terribly wrong and-

Wrong. Yes. Something was terribly wrong but he couldn't remember what it was, and he wasn't certain that he wanted to know what it was. Someone had died if Zelda was to be believed, but Sheik hadn't been very certain that she was trustworthy recently and if he didn't trust her then Corrin saw no reason why he should either.

Where was Sheik?

Why wasn't he here?

Corrin's breath hitched in his throat.

"...you hear me?"

Oh. He could hear the person in front of him now. It sounded like Lucina. Maybe he said something in response. He couldn't hear his own voice if he did.

"I need to get you to the med wing so they can look at your hand, okay? Staying here any longer isn't going to help you at all." Lucina said softly, careful not to touch him like she had before. Had he hurt her? He hadn't meant to. He was just so... wrong. Everything was wrong. Was he still here? Or was this some kind of twisted dream?

He wanted it to be a dream. That way he would wake up and Sheik would be there and everything would be okay.

Lucina helped him stand up, even though he didn't want anybody touching him because it only made the disconnect worse, but he literally couldn't stand on his own and could hardly walk because his legs didn't feel like his anymore.

As they left, Zelda started shouting again, her words barely decipherable save for the honestly impressive strings of curse words.

How long did it take them to walk to the medical wing? Corrin didn't know. He hardly registered anything, including the impact of his feet that didn't feel like his feet against the ground. Lucina tried to talk to him, but it was useless. He just... couldn't.

One of the doctors glanced at his hand and immediately said something that sounded like "broken knuckles," but Corrin couldn't be sure of what he had said because he forgot it a moment later.

They tried to get him to sit down so they could wrap it up and give him pain medication, but the feeling of hands on him was too much and he wanted it to stop and he needed someone he trusted and everything was suddenly too loud and too quiet all at once-

Distantly, he was aware of someone yelling something. Was it him? It might have been him.

Then there was a sudden sharp pain in his neck that cut through all of the fog in his head and numbness in his body. Blackness followed soon after, though it was surprisingly soothing to all of the terrible emotions running through him.

././.

Vague impressions of memory slip by him. 

His smile, his laugh, the little glint he gets in his eyes when he's telling a joke.

Is he really gone?

He feels so real... Corrin can almost reach out and touch him. 

But when he does, his fingers meet nothing but air and everything comes rushing back to him at once, only to be immediately stifled by the numbness again. The abrupt switching of emotions from intense to numb only further serves to further figuratively take him out of his body. Even the distant stinging from his knuckles that's still present and feels like it should hurt more just doesn't.

What's wrong with him?

Why does he feel like his head is stuffed full of cotton?

Corrin opened his eyes, distantly surprised to find himself still in the medical wing. Lucina is there, talking quietly with someone he can't see. She looked over at him- he must have said something, but he didn't hear whatever it was. And then she said something and he didn't hear that either. Or maybe he did, but it just didn't register at all. Maybe that's what had been happening ever since Chrom had looked him in the eyes and he'd glanced around at the others, barely even noticing how few of them there were now before being told that Sheik wasn't coming back, that he wasn't even breathing anymore because his entire team had been caught and brutally murdered.