Illusions and Lies (A Super Smash Brothers fan fiction)

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE: MAKE THIS RIGHT.

Warnings: This chapter contains mild blood and gore, as well mentions of suicide. Read at your own discretion. 

The door of the Headmaster's stronghold loomed in front of him. Corrin wasn't quite certain of how he'd gotten here- his last concrete memory was Roy showing up, then pure agony erupting across his face and Lucina leading him away from the man who claimed to have murdered Sheik. Blood still trickled down his face in a thin stream, but it was easy to ignore that.

All he could think about was the fact that the Headmaster was inside those damn walls. They were the one who had killed Sheik, not Roy. Corrin knew the truth. It made the most sense.

Finally, he would be able to make this right. He would be able to avenge Sheik and then everything would fall into place. It had to.

"Corrin, stop!" Lucina exclaimed, running up behind him and skidding to a halt. "You need to wait for the main force!"

Corrin felt his lips twist into a smile. "You don't get it, Lucina. I have to do this alone."

"No, you don't!" Lucina protested. "Revenge isn't going to solve anything."

"Yeah, it will." Corrin said dismissively. "It has to."

He didn't wait for her response. There was no changing his mind now. Corrin no longer had anything to live for outside of revenge. Almost all of his friends, his twin sister, Sheik... they were all dead. It was so hard to care about anything but how it would feel to kill the person responsible for all of the hurt he and his friends had gone through.

Corrin stepped inside the building and closed the door behind him.

The emptiness of the place was surprising and a little bit unsettling. Was everybody out on that field right now, or had they retreated to some other location? Was he going to turn a corner and immediately be killed in an ambush? Where the fuck was the Headmaster anyway?

His footsteps echoed throughout the barren white hallways as he followed the main hallway through the fortress. Logically, there would be some kind of central command room like the Rebellion had. Chrom liked to spend his time in there, so maybe the Headmaster was the same way.

Thankfully, Corrin's intuition paid off, as he came across an ornate set of doors marked with a symbol he didn't recognize. He hesitated in front of them for a moment, weirdly anxious all of a sudden.

This was (probably) it. The Headmaster was almost certainly waiting behind those doors. It felt an awful lot like the final boss in a video game, which in turn brought up memories of going to an arcade in the city with Sheik, Robin, and Lucina.

Oh. Corrin had almost forgotten about that day. It was relatively soon after the group had arrived in the city, and Robin had been really excited about going to see an arcade like one of the books he'd checked out from the library had described. Naturally, he dragged Lucina along, though the offer to come along had been open to any of the others. Sheik had been pretty excited about it as well, so of course Corrin agreed to go.

"Oh man, there's so much stuff here. I feel like I could spend hours in here and still not see all of it!" Sheik laughed. They turned to Corrin, a genuinely happy smile on their face. "Where do you want to start?"

"Up to you, love. Lead the way." Corrin responded, feeling a matching smile creep onto his face. Seeing them like this... he really didn't have a way to describe how happy he was.

"Hmm... I think Robin and Lucina went that way, so let's try over here first."

Corrin's hand closed on the door handle and gripped it like a lifeline. He inhaled sharply and gave himself until a count of three to get a grip, goddamn it, then forced himself through the door.