That voice.
I’m having trouble breathing. My tongue feels swollen and heavy in my mouth. I can’t say a word.
I turn around. There he is. It’s not my enemy anymore. He’s turned into someone I can’t hurt. Someone I could never bear to kill. My chest tightens. I feel like my heart has stopped.
He touches my face. “Godrick, are you alright?” I close my eyes, trying to hold back emotion. It’s just as it was in my memory. I’m in pain. This shouldn’t hurt. The one person who could always take my pain away is here. Why isn’t it leaving?
“Do it!” Lorraine shrieks at me. “He’s not real. You know that! This is the perfect time! Kill him!”
That’s why. I know he isn’t real. He’s just an illusion, a bit of my past. And yet I turn to Lorraine with an expression that I’m sure exposes my feelings.
“I can’t,” I manage to choke out, giving her a helpless smile. “I can’t take that chance. I could never even try. And… he knows that. I can’t do it.”
“Thank you.” His voice is warm, inviting. Just as it had always been. I want to collapse into his arms. But he isn’t real. I can’t. I have to restrain myself.
The conflict brings me to my knees. My head lowers, and I clutch at my hair. I don’t know what to do.
His hand is on my shoulder. I can’t breathe. There is nothing I want more in this moment than to fall into him and bawl as I did before several times. But… I can’t, because he is the one causing the pain. My mind is going numb. I can’t think. Pheromones. Too much detail. I’m overloading. It vaguely occurs to me how easy it must be to manipulate me, considering how I once paraded about flaunting that I would never fall in love.
“I love you.” His voice falters on the ‘love.’ It cracks, changes. I am positive he never told me that, would never tell me that outright as he had just done. He was more subtle. It is then that I’m sure this isn’t him.
The illusion falls away like cherry blossoms in the wind. Left exposed is only my enemy, bewildered.
I trip him and grab him by the throat. My anger is mounting.
“You can punch me, you can kick me. You can shoot me and call me a faggot. But none of those have such dire consequences as pretending to be Fritz.”
His neck beneath my grip snaps as easily as a frozen twig under my boot.
