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Simon was lost Bobby was not Bobby after all.
Just a ghost,
Just a phantom,
He tried tracing back as far as he could to when the switch happened, when in those dim walls of his drab prison cell the one light he had grew just as quiet. There was no clear time though. However long he strained and furrowed his brow, dampened from stress, he couldn't pinpoint when his Bobby had left.
Maybe it was when he laughed with his smile just slightly drooped to the left side where usually it would be a full beam. Maybe it was when he stopped talking about how much he admired him and believed in his redemption. Words he would then only then say when in the faces of others and in the spotlight of crowds. Maybe it was when he would stop visiting, as though he wasn't really worried what was happening to him in those suffocating walls that dripped cold. Maybe, even, when he started to use the electric cuffs which he had so staunchly sworn off.
He had never cried when with Bobby before, but as time dragged painfully on, he recognised he was crying because of him. The person, the only person who believed in him from the start and supported him, twisted into some pale imitation that reflected just enough to be passable. Deep in his heart, if he believed he was any better than that, or worth more, he knew he would have noticed sooner. Maybe then he would have been able to say something and stop more people being hurt. Maybe he could have stopped wishing for the past if he knew his past was already dead, but unlikely buried.
They had talked about so much for when he was free, an already unlikely prospect. That faith was just the man his Bobby was. He wanted to show Simon the world that had grown past him in those years. He wanted to own a cat, or maybe just make do with caring for Taka. Somewhere else was enough for Simon. Somewhere quiet far far away from this prison of his own design. They both knew that connection ran deeper than just friendly affection; it was a love the both of them had only found in each other, but under such conditions they could not share that. Only when they were in that silly dream, with their pet and long gone could they be free to love too. How much of that dream did he then wrongly share with the Phantom…
At some point he would have told the Phantom how much he loved him. How much he wished he could do more than share stolen kisses between bars and under the moonlit cover of his car. How excited he was for their future . But Bobby was dead. Bobby had been dead for a long time.
The very idea made his skin feel wrong. Like it needed to be ripped clean off of the bone and incinerated. He was used to the eyes of the stand in court, but now it felt like eyes were floating around him all the time. Judging. Watching. Questioning. Simon clutches onto the future he had waiting for him with Bobby, and shudders at the future that almost was with the Phantom. If Athena didn’t help uncover the truth and it was all left a secret, yes he would have just died but that's not what scared him. It was as if he had somehow lived too in that scenario, and did live and marry the Phantom. The Phantom was by no means anything like Bobby. When he had him cornered and in one place would that mask slowly drop. What was to become of Simon, if he was alone and bound to a heartless assassin. The thought alone truly was horror enough and plagued his sleep in ways unseen since his early days of prison.
He kept wishing it could have gone another way, but there was not another way.
Wishing wouldn’t bring Bobby back, wishing and hoping wouldn’t change his severe misfortune.
He never got to say goodbye, he never got any closure,
The last he knew of Bobby Fulbright was his face ripping open as he laughed in his face.
The last he knew was a ghost,
A Phantom…