Professor Layton isn't mine, blah, blah, blah.
Deterioration is what he called it.
Because his heart, his mind, everything about him was turning to dust, dying inside and pulling him apart. And all because of one simple thing:
a girl.
But she wasn't who he thought she was, she was different, and he knew that, but something about her was exactly the same. It was her face, her hair, her features, her mind, the way she talked and looked at him, and everything about her he had seen before. But she was different.
She was.
That's what he told himself as he fell in love with the girl he had already been in love with for years, the girl he had never gotten over.
But Celeste was different. She had this air to her that didn't match Claire's, despite how familiar she seemed. Perhaps it was the uneasy aura she carried around everyone, the body language she used, the way she would wrap her hands around her hair to retie it - it all seemed so different.
That's what he would keep thinking, the love never going away, and -
Shit.
He was in love with Celeste.
Oh, she had him wrapped around her finger the way she seemed so much the same as his previous love, but she had him begging to figure out her secrets.
And now here he was, deteriorating and dead - dusty, falling into a grave that he had long been digging himself since he saw her. She smiled at him, at his skeleton, his flesh had been long gone and all he was now was a skeleton, a shell of his former self.
Luke would call out to him, and it would take the Professor seconds to actually realize what he was doing, who he actually was, and who the little boy that stood in front of him was.
He was dying fast, losing important memories among the Deja vu he was having, the dust he was becoming, the girl he was in love with.
Celeste.
Celeste.
Celeste.
She was just everywhere he looked, he couldn't get away, and everyone forgot what to do without the Professor.
He put on an act - one that was him, as if his flesh never melted off - and they believed it was him. But really, he was dying. Still dead.
And then it struck him so fast, so awful, because the girl he was in love with wasn't real. Wasn't really alive.
She was the someone else he loved.
The original girl he was still in love with.
And he was alive and wonderful again - because he was back with her. Just that seemed to restore him from the grave he had dug. Because she was there and now and with him. Like Celeste had been.
Celeste never left him.