A couple of author's notes;

One, this is fairly spoilery for pretty much the entire game. Don't read it until you've completed it, just to be safe.

Two, I did this as part of a fanworks raffle contest on Livejournal; feel free to check it out and maybe join in if the prizes tempt you. It's a lot of fun and it's not too late to join.

(Also, I would like to submit this to Court Records.)


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He hadn’t meant to get lost.

Well, really, no one ever intended to do that, he amended to himself. You leave your house with a specific destination in mind, and have every intention of getting there safely and returning safely as well. No one ever leaves their home wanting to lose their way, or never return from a simple errand.

That’s what this had been. He’d walked out the door, aiming himself towards the store. He’d gotten there with no problems, had bought what he’d gone there to pick up, and left, in short order.

But it was on his way home that he’d run into problems. He didn’t know how it had happened – maybe he’d been daydreaming? – but he’d taken one wrong turn, and that had snowballed, badly, into disaster. One unfamiliar street had melted into the next, and the one after that, and so on and so forth until he had absolutely no idea where he was. And what was worse, no one seemed to be interested in helping him; all his efforts to get someone’s attention for directions were in vain. People either didn’t hear him, or brushed him off entirely without a second thought.

It was early evening; the sun was going down and the sky was a rich, silky amethyst dotted with fluffy grey clouds. Brightly colored leaves, stained with the red and orange hues of autumn, fluttered briefly in the wind, before the force ripped them from the branches and tossed them down onto the muddy streets. The air was cold, and the wind colder, and he shivered, wishing he’d worn something heavier to keep the chill out.

- there! He knew that street, right? Right. It looked very familiar, at the very least, and he was already lost, so what harm could it do? He clutched his parcel in his hand – though not tightly enough to damage it – and turned down the street. Hoping it was the right decision.

To his immense relief, it turned out to have been correct, after all. There was a small park up ahead; he’d been there before, and now that he saw it, his heart rose with hope. He remembered this place, and from there it would be such a simple thing to find his way back home, as long as he kept his wits about him. Some people would’ve said that that was easier said than done, for him, but he knew better. He didn’t think it’d be a problem.

“Feenie?”

He looked over; she was sitting by a patch of thorn-apple, on the grass in the park, beneath the shadows of a large tree. His vision blurred for a second as he looked at her face – he rubbed his eyes and tried to get whatever was in them, out. And by the time he was done, she had her arms around him in an embrace.

“Feenie, I’m so happy to see you!” He could smell something in her hair, sweet yet indistinct and unidentifiable. It occurred to him that this was strange, but he wasn’t sure why. “What brings you over here?”

“I – um – I kind of… got lost,” he admitted, feeling himself blush with embarrassment.

“Really?” She giggled. “You have no sense of direction sometimes, Feenie… but it’s cute, I guess.” As she pulled back, he could see that she was blushing too; yet, her features were still somewhat… it was like looking at a picture that had had water splashed onto it, now that he thought about it. “Oh! But – are these for me?”

“These?” He looked down at what he was holding in his hand. A switch seemed to be turning off and on in his brain at the sight of them. “… Yeah, I was out buying them for you when I got lost. I was on my way home…”

“Oh, Feenie!” Her eyes seemed to fill up with happy tears as she took the bunch of blue roses and hugged them to herself. “That’s so sweet of you… you’re always so…” She closed her eyes and smiled, though there seemed – somehow – to be an undercurrent of sadness within it. “Thank you…”

“Anything for my Dollie.” He kissed her on the forehead. “So, um… what were you doing here?”

“That’s a secret.” She giggled as she opened her eyes to look at him, and it was then that he realized that something else was off about her. “It’s a good thing I was here, though, wasn’t it? That we got to – ”

“Dollie,” he interrupted, staring at her with a look of bewilderment on his face, “what did you do to your hair?”

“My… hair?” She frowned and reached up a free hand to touch it. “I… haven’t done a thing to it, Feenie. What are you talking about?”

“It looks different.” He was staring intently at her now. “It’s the wrong color.”

“I haven’t done a thing to it,” she repeated. “You must be imagining things… it’s only the light, cause it’s getting dark.” She giggled. “Your eyes are playing tricks on you.”

“Maybe.” He scratched the back of his head. “It sure looks weird, though.”

“… I’m sure it does.” She stared down at her flowers now, looking thoughtful. “Hmmm… I… oh, Feenie! Look – you’ve pricked yourself!”

“What?” Sure enough – there was a trail of blood seeping down his finger from where one of the thorns on the roses had broken the skin. “Oh – I see it. I’ll just – ”

“Here, let me.” Cradling the flowers carefully in her arm, she took his hand in hers and gently wiped the blood off. “There, that should do it.”

“Dollie – but, Dollie, you’re – ”

“Oh… this?” She glanced at where the thorns had pricked her arm, causing her own blood to trickle down and drip onto her dress. “Don’t… don’t worry about it. Okay? I’m fine… this is as it should be, so don’t worry about me.”

“Dollie, what – what are you talking about?” She looked… sad? Regretful? “I don’t understand you.”

“That’s okay.” She sighed, and her voice sounded strange… her eyes shone a little too. “I’m…” She paused. “Oh. It’ll have to wait – you need to get that, first.”

“Get it? Get what?” He shook his head, frowning. “I don’t know what you’re talking ab - ”

And then he heard it – the phone, ringing loudly and insistently from his bedside table. He barely had time for one last, fleeting glimpse of her sadly smiling face before he was pulled into the waking world.

“… Hello?” His voice sounded groggy and croaky to his ears; and in the back of his barely-awake brain, he dimly realized that he had answered the phone more out of habit than out of a desire to actually talk to anyone right now. Or maybe just to shut it up. He didn’t know.

Silence.

“Hey? Hello?” Nothing. “… Hello? Is anyone there? Come on…” Breathing? Maybe, faintly… but no words. He could feel irritation beginning to bubble up inside him. “Larry, if this is some stupid prank, I’m going to – this isn’t – ” Click. “… funny.” He slammed the receiver down as the dialtone began to buzz in his ear, and the loud noise was almost worse. He groaned, even as he felt something begin to tickle at his sinuses. Again. “Ugh!” In his frustration, he ripped the fresh tissue in half as he withdrew it from the box with more force than was necessary. It didn’t really matter, though, and soon joined its brothers on the floor, next to an overflowing trash can.

What a trippy dream that had been. He rolled over onto his back, staring at the dark ceiling as bits and pieces of it moved in and out of his mind. It was beginning to fade away, but he could still see images from it in his mind’s eye. Sort of. It was like looking into a mirror that had become covered over with steam – just like what happened in his bathroom whenever he took a really hot shower.

Right now that was beginning to sound really good. He flung an arm over his face and groaned. The cold was still going on, with a vengeance – and part of it was his own fault. Call it irrational paranoia, but he hadn’t yet opened that new bottle of Coldkiller X. Something was holding him back every time he reached for the bottle. It was stupid; understandable, given everything that had happened, but still stupid. And he knew it. He was only hurting himself with this silly fear of something that nobody had touched.

She’d really done a number on him, hadn’t she?

”Why do you think it wasn’t really her?”

“Because she…” He hesitated. “She – she never acted like that before. Not once.”

“Acted like… what?” Mia tilted her head slightly. “You mean to tell me you never saw her get angry at you? You didn’t fight once?”

“Well, sure we had some disagreements from time to time,” he admitted. “But she… she never got like THAT. The look in her eyes…” He shivered. “It was like Dollie had gotten… possessed by a demon or something.”

“… Phoenix.” It was the first time she had called him by his first name, and he stopped looking through the medicines on the shelf, a startled look on his face as he turned to her. “First of all… you’d be better off casting aside that nickname. It’d be better if you called her simply Dahlia.” She took a deep breath. “Second of all… I know it’ll be hard, but you have to think about the fact that it’s quite possible that she herself was the demon.” She paused, and when she she spoke, it was half to herself. “No… more than possible… it’s a fact.”

“How do you know?” He followed her as she walked away down the aisle of the hospital pharmacy. “You seemed to know her from before… something to do with that case last year that you kept mentioning when you cross-examined her? Some lawyer being poisoned or something?”

A few boxes of medicine fell from the shelf where she had paused to peruse them; Mia bent to pick them up. He couldn’t see her face. “It’s not important. That case is – it’s over.” There was something funny about her voice; he was sure he knew what it was, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to call attention to it. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But… I need to know.” His voice came out as little more than a whisper. “Why you think Dol – Dahlia – is a – ”

“Because she is. And if what you saw today wasn’t proof enough, well…” There was something in her eyes he hadn’t seen there before – shadows? Ghosts? He didn’t know. “You shouldn’t need me to tell you why I think so. What she did to Doug – what she tried to do to you, and would have done had he not chosen to step in – should be proof enough. But if you need to hear more… fine.” She reached up to brush something from near her eye – a stray eyelash. “She took something very important from me – something very precious. I don’t really want to talk about it more with you, though – not really with anyone, so don’t take it personally. I just want you to realize that she’s hurt so many more people than you alone, probably more than even I know, so you should hurry up and accept it rather than trying to delude yourself with fairy tales about there being two different Dahlias. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you’re really not doing yourself any favors by trying to hide from the truth like this.”

He didn’t really know what to say to that.

“Ugh, oh man…” He groaned and wiped at his nose with his pajama sleeve – and instantly regretted it. “Ow…” His nose was sore, painfully so – he knew that if he bothered to get up and go into the bathroom, and turned on the light, looked at himself in the mirror… it’d be as bright red as her hair.

Ugh.

Why did reminders of her have to be everywhere?

And why did it have to hurt so damn much?

“This isn’t working,” he mumbled as he pulled himself up and out of bed. He caught a glimpse of the numbers on his bedside clock – glowing red in the darkness – as he passed by, and winced. It had somehow been better when he hadn’t known what time it was.

He dragged himself down the short hallway to the kitchen, listening to his own sniffling all the way. It was loud, almost enough to drown out the noise coming from outside. It was raining, as it had been all day; soft, and gentle, without a hint of thunder or lightning. A steady drizzle that showed no signs of either abating or becoming something more. The grey skies outside had long since turned to black with the setting of the sun hours ago, but it persisted on.

“Eugh…” He grimaced and squinted against the kitchen light even at its dimmest setting, raising a hand to block it out until his eyes had adjusted. Feeling almost half-blind, he nevertheless managed to locate the objects of his search and handled them adequately; he filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove to boil, and put a tea bag into a nearby clean mug.

It was supposed to be some kind of herbal tea that would help with his cold; Mia had recommended and purchased it, along with the unopened bottle of Coldkiller X that seemed to mock him even now, sitting alone on his countertop. He didn’t remember what was in it, but he remembered her saying that it would make him feel better a little faster. He had always been kind of skeptical about such things; but after what she had done for him, he was more than willing to trust her.

After all, wasn’t it the least he could do, after betraying her trust multiple times? He felt his cheeks burn slightly, and it wasn’t because of any fever. Mia was… well, he’d let her down again and again during that trial, but she’d hung on – kept on believing and trusting in him, even after he’d done the stupidest thing possible. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that he’d stopped to really think about it… well, he was just lucky that he was even here thinking about the whole dumb fiasco, instead of being in jail… or worse. He shuddered.

What if Mia hadn’t found a way to still prove Dahlia was the culprit? What if there had still been enough poison in there to really hurt him? He wouldn’t soon forget the look of stark terror and panic on her face after she’d learned what he’d done – it was like nothing he’d ever seen before in his life. And even afterwards, she’d still been anxious and fearful, insisting over his protests that she take him to the hospital to get checked out just to make sure that there hadn’t been some kind of trace amount.

The water was boiling now. He turned off the heat and poured it over the teabag; the steam somehow felt good as it washed over his face. The tea itself didn’t look that great – it was a funny color, and might have smelled awful if he had any sort of a sense of smell left at this stage of his illness, but, well – Mia had been kind enough to buy it for him after his exam, so he wasn’t going to waste it.

Besides, any kind of relief from this misery would be worth whatever he had to go through to get it. He sniffed again – winced at the flare of soreness where he’d rubbed his nose raw. All of his trash cans were overflowing with used tissues, and there were even some littering the floor in places, from when he’d been sitting somewhere and had been too lazy to get up and put his trash where it belonged.

She would have wrinkled her little nose, and sighed, and then smiled and helped him pick up the trash and taken it out.

But without her around, he didn’t feel much motivation to do… well, much of anything.

Tea was ready. He sipped it, made a face, then shrugged and took a bigger gulp. No pain, no gain, right?

Right.

He’d considered, a few times over the course of these past few days, looking into that case somehow. To see what it was that had gotten Mia so upset, what was so important about the connection between it and this one. But every time it had crossed his mind, he’d ended his contemplation with a shake of the head. He’d feel too much like he was prying into Mia’s personal life, and besides… he didn’t really want to know. He didn’t really need to know.

He needed to forget.

But easier said than done, right?

He settled himself down in a chair with the now half-empty mug of tea; he put it down on the little table in front of him and buried his face in his hands. They felt so dirty, as they always did when he had a cold, but he ignored it.

“Why?”

It was a single word, but it hurt so much to ask. And hurt so much more when it went unanswered, time and time again. It hurt in so many ways, because despite being a single word, it was a million different questions with painfully nonexistent – or just plain painful – answers.

Why had she tried to kill him?

Why had she done all that she had apparently done?

Why did it have to still hurt so much?

Why couldn’t he seem to forget her and all the memories they had together? They had all been lies, so…

Why had she seemed so different on that witness stand from the person he had known all those months? From the person he’d so stupidly fallen in love with?

He remembered what Mia had said about it; that it was likely that he’d never really known her at all. That made sense. As hard as it was to accept, it made an awful lot of sense. The “Dollie” he’d known and loved hadn’t been real at all; she’d been a trick, an illusion. The dream that was beginning to dissipate like morning mist in his mind had been more real than she had been… he’d never once been able to see the true her. She had been a shadow, a mirage, and he was beginning to realize with painful clarity that, in a way, he had no idea who he’d been dating these past several months. He still didn't really want to believe it, but...

“Who were you?” he whispered as he stared down at the last dregs of his tea. His eyes were watering, and his nose was starting to run again; but he wasn’t convinced that it was because of his cold. “Who are you? And… why did you have to do this to me?”

There was no answer.

Oh wow. This is really quite good. You captured the emotional and mental conflict that Phoenix endured during that period before 3-5 so well. I truly felt for poor Phoenix while reading this. Nice work. :)

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Thanks! =D I'm glad you enjoyed it~

Poor Phoenix indeed. T_T I felt so awful for him because of what Dahlia put him through...

.................I have no words. T________________T

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