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bevioletskies · 3 years

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the first time (ever i saw your face)

summary: On their six-month anniversary, Apollo and Klavier decide to pose a seemingly harmless question: what did they think of each other when they first met? As it turns out, the topic is a little more complicated than they originally thought.

word count: 4.9k | read on ao3

a/n: For @klapollo-week, day one of seven (prompt: "firsts"). All seven of my fics take place in the same continuity! However, each can be read as a stand-alone, with the exception of day seven being a sequel to day five.

This fic takes place at some distant point in time after Spirit of Justice where Apollo and Trucy have learned that they’re siblings. Mild spoiler warning for the end of Apollo Justice; warning for brief mentions of alcohol. Fic title is from the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack.

“...why does this look like something out of a direct-to-streaming movie adaptation of a YA novel that has a three-star average rating on Goodreads?”

“If you’re trying to say you don’t like it, baby, you could just say so.”

“No, no, I - I’m actually kinda into it. It’s like we’ve walked onto the set of a staged proposal, though if you ask me to marry you right now, I will start laughing.”

Klavier sighed. “I’m starting to think the phrase ‘romance is dead’ was invented specifically for you.” Nevertheless, he tugged gently on Apollo’s hand. “Come on, liebe, I got our favorite snacks, I queued our favorite movies...and before you ask, nein, there is no engagement ring, so stop looking at me like that.”

“I’m not...totally opposed to getting married, you know,” Apollo added as he followed Klavier. “It’s just...it’s a little early for me. This is only our six-month anniversary, after all.”

“Fair enough,” Klavier hummed, the two of them settling down in their spots. He’d learned long ago that Apollo wasn’t one for flashy, photo op-worthy dates, that he preferred more intimate, low-key settings. And so, for their six-month anniversary, Klavier had taken them to his family estate. He had cleared out the conservatory overlooking the garden of all its furniture, filling it with blankets and pillows, drapes and string lights, and a projector whose screen covered the entire back wall. It reminded Apollo of what he himself had done for their three-month anniversary - because apparently, he was that kind of person now - when he’d planned a weekend’s stay in a cozy lakeside cabin. “A conversation for another time, ja?”

“Yeah, definitely.” Apollo draped one of the blankets over his and Klavier’s laps, then lowered his head to rest on Klavier’s shoulder. Smiling, Klavier turned to briefly kiss Apollo’s temples, then reached for his laptop so he could start the movie. They spent the first fifteen or so minutes in companionable silence, sharing a bag of popcorn and a bottle of wine while they watched, until Apollo eventually spoke again. “...weird, isn’t it?”

“The movie? Not particularly,” Klavier shrugged. “If anything, I’d say the plot twist is a bit predictable.”

“No, not the movie. I mean...this.” Apollo gestured aimlessly. “You and me. Us.”

Klavier’s expression darkened somewhat. “Are you...having doubts about our relationship, Apollo?”

“Wh - no, no, not at all!” Apollo protested, sitting up. “It’s just...I guess it’s mostly weird for me. Like, if someone told me, say, a couple years ago, that I was gonna be in a relationship with you, of all people...hell, can you imagine if someone told me that on the day we met? I-I wouldn’t believe it!”

“You weren’t shy about your distaste for me, true,” Klavier agreed, his slight frown relaxing into an amused smile.

“I don’t think that’s an...entirely accurate assessment of, uh, of how I felt,” Apollo said carefully.

Now it was Klavier’s turn to straighten up, looking at him curiously. “Really?” he asked. “Then what did you think of me when we first met?”

“You first,” Apollo retorted, seemingly on instinct. He then softened. “I mean, only if you want to. I’m kinda curious.”

“I don’t mind,” Klavier reassured him, setting down his wine glass so he could squeeze Apollo’s hand. He hesitated, thinking it over. “...I expected to hate you from the very beginning, to be perfectly honest. And, for a moment there...I did.”

Apollo’s eyes widened. “Wh...what?”

“‘Disgraced Defense Attorney Dismantled By His Disciple’, I believe the headline was,” Klavier continued. He then smiled wryly. “A bit dramatic, if you ask me. But then again, I’m not a big fan of alliteration, so I might just be biased.”

“Did you really hate me?” Apollo’s shout had dropped to a mere whisper. “Because...because you didn’t wanna believe it, did you? About…what had happened. What he’d done.”

“It wasn’t all bad memories, all the time, you know.” Klavier gently released Apollo’s hand so he could brush his hair out of his eyes, though he kept his head ducked low. “We had our moments, him and I. We weren’t close, but...we weren’t estranged, either. In fact, I...I first heard your name from him, not from the papers.”

“He told you about me.” It wasn’t a question. “I guess I should’ve suspected, but I never really knew what your relationship was like...before. I mean, he never once mentioned having a brother, so I kinda assumed…”

“As everyone does,” Klavier shrugged, far too casually for Apollo’s liking. “Anyway, your question was about you and me, not me and him, ja? He told me all the usual things people have to say about you - loud, eager to please, a little bit sensitive. I didn’t think much of it at the time, other than the fact you had a strange name.”

Apollo rolled his eyes, sinking back into the cushions. “Wonderful. Fantastic. Glad to know I made a great first impression.”

“And then when the headlines came along...and Mama and Papa called…” Klavier’s face darkened once more; he cleared his throat. “I looked you up. I hadn’t bothered when I first heard your name, but I had to know. Still, I...I found almost nothing. No photos, no social accounts...nichts. Just a single line on a college graduate roster and the same articles I’d been reading before.”

“...I see.” Apollo fiddled with the ends of his blanket, just so he would have something to do with his hands. “So, when we finally met in person…”

_____

The first thing Klavier noticed was Apollo’s eyes - large, round, expressive to a fault. The color of melted chocolate, though in the sunlight, more akin to the color of honey. Those eyes of Apollo’s, curious and maybe a little bit accusatory, narrowed right at him as he arrived at the entrance of People Park. He internally winced at the sight of Apollo’s companion, who was arguing with the police officer standing guard at the scene. Despite the time that had passed since he last saw her, he could never forget Trucy Enigmar-now-Wright.

Are you working for Phoenix Wright now? Klavier wanted to ask as he approached them. Why? Don’t you know what he’s done? Don’t you see what he’s become?

“I must say I'm used to being inspected by the ladies...but this is the first time I've felt this way with a man,” he said instead, leaning forward to smile somewhat condescendingly at them. Klavier was momentarily struck by how similar they were - how their hair was the exact same shade of brown, how the dusting of freckles across their identically shaped noses matched too perfectly, how their furrowed brows and perplexed frowns were one and the same. The only difference was their eyes, hers more the color of a stormy sea. Perhaps there’s a song lyric there? Klavier mused to himself. Ach, now is not the time.

“Mr...Gavin?” Apollo said disbelievingly, his eyes now widening. His arms, previously crossed tightly against his chest, fell to his sides. The motion caught Klavier’s eye, drawing his attention to the glint of the golden bracelet sitting on Apollo’s left wrist. He wondered if there was some sort of significance to it, what with the way Apollo clutched it tightly with his right hand.

“Ah, fräulein,” Klavier continued, his eyes flickering back upwards. He wondered if she knew him, if she recognized him at all. Clearly, Apollo had no idea who he was; he wasn’t sure how to feel about that just yet. “What is a sweet morsel like you doing in such a dismal place? Can I help?”

“Yes! The police man officer fellow here won't let us in!” Trucy complained, huffing. She brandished an envelope in Klavier’s face, nearly swatting him on the nose as she did. He flinched slightly, surprised by how brazen she was. “We even have a letter of request!”

Klavier’s smile softened into one that was a little more genuine. He couldn’t help but be instantly charmed by her. “You must be exhausted, standing out here. I will take you to the scene of the crime.”

“Ooh! Really?” Trucy exclaimed, brightening. Apollo looked skeptical in comparison, his intense gaze traversing the length of Klavier’s body. Usually, he would have preened at the attention, been flattered by the obvious interest and maybe made a show of looking back, but he knew that wasn’t what Apollo was looking for. I am not him, Klavier thought fiercely. I am not the one you trusted, the one who taught you everything you know. I could never -

“By your leave, officer,” Klavier said with a nod and a wink. He barely heard the officer’s affirmation over his own thoughts. Then, he turned back to Trucy and tilted his head towards the park. “Very well. This way, fräulein.”

Trucy’s giggle was sweet, melodic, as she happily followed him through the entrance. He made a show of lifting the police tape for her to duck under, which she seemed easily amused by. Apollo, meanwhile, was left standing on the street, staring at them incredulously, before he finally seemed to register what was happening. “Hey! What about me?!” he cried. His voice gets raspier the louder he gets, Klavier couldn’t help but observe. Interesting.

Once Apollo had caught up, Klavier turned to grin at them both, teeth clenched beneath his lips. Trucy was rocking back and forth on her heels, beaming back, while Apollo had braced his hands on his hips indignantly, like he had something he wanted to say and was just waiting for the opportune moment to say it. Ach, those eyes, those hands, those freckles, Klavier thought rather stupidly. Wait - you’re not supposed to think he’s cute, Klavier, hör auf!

“On that note, enjoy your investigation,” he remarked. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the flash of a white lab coat further into the park that told him he needed to leave if he didn’t want to be reprimanded - or worse, Snackoo-ed.

“Thank you! Will we see you again?” Trucy asked, hopeful.

Klavier hesitated. Apollo still hadn’t said a thing about the obvious elephant in the room, still staring at Klavier like he was a ghost. He wanted Apollo to say something, anything, to ask questions, to start the conversation that he himself admittedly didn’t want to take responsibility for. But Apollo was clearly stunned into silence, and any courage Klavier had had when he first walked up to them moments ago was long gone.

“Ask the wind, fräulein. I'll be riding on it,” he said, shooting them one last saccharine smile. He could hear the click-click of Ema’s shoes against the cobblestone as she approached. With that, he turned and left, his chest aching in confusion.

_____

The silence was heavy, heavier than Apollo expected. Klavier had turned the movie volume down long ago, leaving them with nothing but the sound of their own quiet breaths. “Makes sense,” Apollo finally said, shooting Klavier a sympathetic smile. “To you, I...I jumped ship from one corrupt defense attorney to another. At least, that’s what it seemed like at the time, right?”

“Part of me wanted to confront you right then and there, but I didn’t want to do it. Not in front of everyone, especially not in front of her. But the other part of me...I just wanted to learn more about you. To get to know you before I decided whether it was a battle worth fighting. Whether he was worth defending.” Klavier then smiled back; now it was his turn to drop his head onto Apollo’s shoulder. “Besides, you were cute, and I’m weak.”

“‘Were’, huh?” Apollo teased, nudging him. “Well, I’m glad Trucy’s presence, your curiosity, and my cuteness apparently deterred you enough to walk away. To think, what would you have done if you didn’t think I was cute - ”

“Achtung, you’re such an arschgeige sometimes,” Klavier groaned, laughing. “Anyway...I got my answer in court soon enough. I could trust you, and he...he wasn’t worth defending. Not one bit.”

“No, not at all,” Apollo agreed. “Still, I’m...I’m sorry, Klav. Not for what I did, I mean, I-I had to, but just...how it all played out. How messy things got. Whenever we, y’know, come here to see your parents, I still see that look in their eyes. It’s that face that you make when you think no one’s looking.” He swallowed. “Mr. Wright says Trucy does that, too. Less now that she’s got me and Mom, but…well.”

“It wasn’t you, Apollo, it was me. It all started with me believing he wouldn’t lie to me.” Klavier’s laughter was bitter now. “Anyway, I’m starting to think we’re all a little too observant for our own good. None of us can ever let things go, nein?”

“We’d be horrible lawyers if we could,” Apollo chuckled, rubbing Klavier’s arm reassuringly. “But fine, fine, I’ll stop psychoanalyzing you now. It’s my turn, anyway.”

“I want to hear this,” Klavier said, snuggling closer. “Lay it on me, baby. Tell me how you fell for me in two seconds flat.”

“I’m gonna lay into you in two seconds flat if you don’t let me talk,” Apollo said dryly, elbowing him again. “I, uh, I don’t think I remember it as clearly as you do, but…”

_____

“Excuse me, coming through.”

It was a voice, a smooth, musical voice, polite but firm, that caught Apollo’s attention first. He turned in its direction, confused by how familiar it felt, how similar it sounded to another voice he knew, but with a light, lilting cadence and a strangely affected accent whose origins he couldn’t quite place.

“Ah! It’s you! Mr. Gavin!”

Apollo’s eyes widened, his heart pounding wildly in his chest, then narrowed at the sight before him. Striding towards them with a swagger in his step was a man who, as far as Apollo could tell, was supposed to be behind bars. Only, his skin was a few shades darker, his hair a shade or two lighter, and he was wearing, for reasons Apollo couldn’t fathom, eyeliner and leather and chains instead of a neatly-pressed suit and wire-rimmed glasses. Who’s THIS guy? Apollo thought, his stomach turning.

“I must say I'm used to being inspected by the ladies...but this is the first time I've felt this way with a man,” the man said, leaning in close; his smile was a little wider than Apollo would have liked. Apollo also didn’t want to think about how pretty he was, how long his eyelashes were or how smooth his skin seemed to be. This can’t be him, Apollo decided, though he was still frozen in place. He could only vaguely feel Trucy’s fingers tugging gently on his shirt sleeve. No, it can’t be - it’s not - but who -

“Mr...Gavin?” Apollo said stupidly. He felt a phantom pinch on his left wrist; he released his arms from where they were crossed so he could rub the spot where it hurt, though the moment he touched it, he realized he hadn’t been in pain at all. The man’s eyes flickered down, following his fingers in curiosity, before moving back up to continue smiling beatifically at Trucy.

“Ah, fräulein,” he said; he was practically simpering now. “What is a sweet morsel like you doing in such a dismal place? Can I help?” Apollo barely managed to refrain from rolling his eyes. Of course, he internally sighed, he’s one of those guys.

“Yes! The police man officer fellow here won't let us in!” Trucy whined, shoving the envelope in the man’s face. Apollo had to bite back a laugh at his startled expression, a contrast to his otherwise indifferent smile. “We even have a letter of request!”

“You must be exhausted, standing out here,” the man murmured sympathetically, eyes sparkling. He seemed intrigued, though Apollo couldn't blame him. He supposed he and Trucy looked like a completely mismatched pair. “I will take you to the scene of the crime.”

“Ooh! Really?” Trucy exclaimed, her entire face lighting up. Apollo tried not to smile himself; her energy was infectious. Then, the man’s words finally clicked in his mind. Wait - really?! But why would he - how can he - who is he?

“By your leave, officer,” the man ordered, winking. A pleasant shiver went down Apollo’s spine, one that he was trying his best to ignore. No good was going to come out of that train of thought, not when this man was clearly someone he needed to worry about - though in what way, he wasn’t sure yet. He seemed too generous, too open. Whether he was a police officer, a detective, or, god forbid, a prosecutor, Apollo didn’t trust him not to lead them astray, not one bit. “Very well. This way, fräulein.”

Before Apollo knew it, the man was walking away with Trucy in tow, leaving him behind. “Hey! What about me?!” he shouted, jogging after them. By the time he caught up, both of them were grinning at him amusedly, as if watching him trip over his own feet was some hysterical inside joke. Huffing, he braced his hands on his hips, ready to open his mouth and protest. The man’s gaze briefly travelled down to his hands once more. What’s that all about? Apollo wondered, confused. What’s he looking at? Is it my bracelet? It’s not that weird, is it? Wait, or can he tell that it’s -

“On that note, enjoy your investigation,” the man said, speaking a little quicker than he did before. He suddenly seemed distracted, like he couldn’t wait to get away from them.

“Thank you!” Trucy chirped, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Will we see you again?”

“Ask the wind, fräulein,” the man said, recovering. He seemed almost too focused on Trucy, like something about Apollo bothered him. Maybe he already knew who Apollo was, what Apollo had done. Was he angry? Resentful? Waiting for the right moment to strike? A shiver of a different kind tingled throughout Apollo’s body at the very thought; the phrase “kill them with kindness” was coming to mind. “I'll be riding on it.” He then left without another word, leaving Apollo to stare stupidly after him, his heartbeat in his throat.

“...who was that?” Apollo exclaimed, stunned, as if he wasn’t confused enough by everything else that was going on. His mind was racing with possibility, with anxiety that he really, really didn’t need. Before he could get into it, however, his jumbled thoughts were quickly cut off by Trucy’s surprised cry.

“Eek! Apollo, look - a c-corpse!”

_____

“...interesting,” Klavier said after a moment’s silence. “Did she really think the mannequin was a dead body?”

“Seriously, Klav?” Apollo groaned. “Surprised you didn’t fixate on the part where I thought you were pretty.”

“‘Were’?” Klavier echoed mockingly, grinning. His expression then sobered. “So...mixed feelings all around, it seems. I suppose it shouldn’t be all that shocking, though. We weren’t...total strangers, after all.”

“You practically were to me,” Apollo murmured, tangling his fingers in Klavier’s hair. Klavier leaned into his touch, his eyes fluttering closed in contentment. “At least you knew I existed, while I...he never…” He then shook his head. “Y’know, I-I’m not sure if I really wanna think about this anymore. Not if it makes us think about him.”

“It’s not one of our happiest memories, nein,” Klavier agreed, humming. “I like where we are now...where we can trust each other. There’s little I hate more than ambiguity. And not knowing how I was supposed to feel about you…”

“Sucks, right?” Apollo let out a hollow laugh. “But at least we were on the same page, in a, uh, weird way. I guess that’s always been our thing. Even when you’re driving me up the wall in court - which is all the time, so don’t even question me, I see that look on your face - we’re, y’know, generally working towards the same goal.”

Klavier’s fingers danced along the length of Apollo’s forearm, tapping out a rhythm that Apollo couldn’t quite pick out. “I’d like to think so. I was never really sure until...ach, well. You remember.”

_____

Apollo was still trembling as he exited the courtroom with Trucy by his side. She was putting on a brave face for them both, but he had a feeling that she was more torn up about what had happened than he was. He wanted to comfort her, to reassure her somehow after they’d learned the truth behind her biological father’s death, but for once, he was completely speechless.

“Polly?” Trucy’s voice was tentative. “I’m...kinda hungry.”

“I...oh.” Apollo looked at her curiously. Out of all the things he’d expected her to say, that hadn’t been one of them. “Do you wanna get something to eat? We could go to Eldoon’s if you want.”

“No, that’s okay,” Trucy reassured him. Her face then lit up. “I was actually thinking about the courthouse café! We can get cake and drinks and stuff. A little sugar goes a long way!”

Apollo smiled softly. “Sure, Trucy. Whatever you’d like.”

And so, they found themselves a small table at the courthouse café - and maybe calling it that was rather generous on Trucy’s part - with two thick slices of Swiss rolls and tall glasses of milk tea. Admittedly, Apollo still felt numb, but Trucy’s running commentary of her thoughts on the trial kept him going. “Now all we need is for Vera to wake up,” Trucy said, gripping her fork with determination. “I’m still so worried about her! What if she doesn’t - ”

“We can’t think like that, okay?” Apollo said, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. “We gotta have hope. That’s all we can do, you know?”

“I guess,” Trucy murmured, chewing her bottom lip fretfully. She went quiet for a minute or so, poking at the last bits of her drink’s half-melted ice with her straw. “Hey, um...Daddy says he’s meeting up with a friend later today, and he wants to have dinner. And when he says ‘friend’, he usually means Mr. Edgeworth. You know, the prosecutor?”

“Yeah, I’ve definitely heard of him.” Apollo sat up a little straighter at the word ‘prosecutor’. In his stupor over the whole ordeal, he’d barely spared a thought for Klavier; he could only vaguely guess how he was doing. “What about him?”

“I was just wondering if, maybe, you’d wanna...join us?” Trucy suggested. He’d never seen her so hesitant before. “For dinner, I mean.”

“...oh.” Apollo paused. “No, uh - not today, sorry. I should really go home and sleep all of this - ” he gestured aimlessly “ - off. I feel like I need to sleep for, like, three days straight.”

“Sure, of course,” Trucy nodded, smiling faintly. “But….you’re still coming back to the agency, right? Maybe not tomorrow, but like...in a few days?”

“Yeah. Yeah, definitely,” Apollo promised, surprised by how quickly he’d responded. In all his hesitation, his doubts about law and what it was meant to be, what it could be, he was finally starting to feel like the Wright Anything Agency was where he belonged.

After they finished eating, he and Trucy parted ways after a long, much-needed hug on the courthouse steps. Apollo then went to fetch his bike from the rack adjacent to the courthouse parking lot, only to spot a familiar face lingering nearby, seemingly in no rush to leave.

“...Gavin?” Apollo said carefully.

Klavier turned sharply at the sound of Apollo’s voice. His smile was a touch too wide, his eyes suspiciously glossy. “Ah, Herr Forehead,” he greeted, ducking his head; his voice sounded trapped in his own throat. “Good show in there, as always. You never fail to impress.”

“Thanks. Hey, um - I’m surprised to see you’re still here,” Apollo commented, taking a few tentative steps closer. “Don’t you have somewhere...better to be?”

“Not really, nein.” Klavier let out a short, forced laugh. “I have paperwork to do, I’m sure. But it can wait.”

“...right.” Apollo cleared his throat awkwardly. “Thanks, by the way.”

Klavier blinked. “Entschuldigung? What for?”

“For agreeing to summon your brother, and...y’know, everything after that.” Apollo found himself oddly fascinated with a few stray pebbles on the ground, nudging them around with the toes of his loafers so he wouldn’t have to look at Klavier’s face. “Look, I-I’m not gonna pretend like I know what you, or Trucy, or Mr. Wright are going through. I’m mostly on the outside looking in, so. All I really know, if I know anything at all, is that, uh...we did the right thing. Yeah?”

“Ja.” When Apollo looked up, Klavier was also deliberately looking elsewhere, staring off into the distance at nothing in particular. He’d displayed a whirlwind of emotions back in the courtroom, but none of them were quite the same as the bitter expression he was wearing right now. “...Apollo?”

Now it was Apollo’s turn to do double-take. “Huh? Wh-what is it?”

“Danke schön. For...everything. I honestly don’t think I could’ve done...any of that on my own,” Klavier confessed, his voice thick with emotion. “And I think I...I think I’m going to take a little time away from the prosecutor’s office. Not for long, mind you. Just...I need some time off. A week, maybe two. Some distance, some perspective...it would make a world of difference, achtung.” He then turned to face Apollo directly for the first time since they started talking. He looked tired, defeated, even. His posture, his expression - Apollo felt as if he was seeing an entirely different person standing before him.

Without thinking, Apollo took the last few steps forward and closed the gap between them, wrapping his arms around Klavier and pulling him close. Klavier let out a startled noise; then, he hugged Apollo back, sinking his weight against Apollo’s, his forehead dropping to Apollo’s shoulder. His exhale was long, unsteady. “Take care of yourself, okay?” Apollo said, fingers digging into Klavier’s back, his face buried against Klavier’s bicep. “And if you ever wanna talk about it...I-I mean, I’m sure I’m not your first choice, but still. I’m, uh, I’m around.”

“Danke,” Klavier murmured, barely above a whisper. They stayed like that for a moment, maybe a moment too long, just holding each other in the middle of the courthouse parking lot for anyone and everyone to see. Klavier’s breath trembled against Apollo’s ear; Apollo half-expected his knees to give out from underneath him. Then, he slowly detached himself from Apollo’s grasp, carefully schooling his expression into something more Klavier-like, something brighter and blander, his teeth blindingly white in the mid-afternoon sun. “Anyway, I should really get going. That paperwork isn’t going to take care of itself, ja?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah, don’t I know it,” Apollo said, letting out another strained chuckle.

“Until next time, then,” Klavier said smoothly, winking. “Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Forehead.” He didn’t wait for Apollo’s send-off, instead turning and heading over to his motorcycle, humming and twirling his keychain expertly between his practiced fingers. Apollo watched him peel out of the parking lot, silently wondering if he’d said all he wanted - no, needed - to say.

_____

“Of course I remember.” Apollo held Klavier just a little bit tighter. “But, y’know, again - not our best moment. Not by a long shot.”

Klavier lifted his head from Apollo’s shoulder so he could kiss him briefly, gently. Apollo smiled against Klavier’s lips, cupping his jaw so he could bring him closer. “But I’d still say our first kiss is more of a memory worth reminiscing over. Wouldn’t you agree, liebe?”

“It was a little dramatic for my taste,” Apollo teased, pulling back so he could affectionately nudge his nose against Klavier’s cheek, his fingers lightly pressed into Klavier’s sides. “But you’re into that sort of thing, so I’ll give it a pass. Still, let’s just agree not to cry all over each other ever again, okay? It was honestly kinda gross. And wet. And not in a fun way.”

“You’re saying you won’t cry when I propose?” Klavier asked, pouting exaggeratedly. “Because ach, I know I will.”

“Who says you’re proposing?” Apollo retorted, grinning as he prodded Klavier in the chest. “What if I get there first? What if, while you’re getting down on one knee, I just whip a ring box out of my pocket - ”

“Then I really will lose my scheisse,” Klavier murmured, his lips ghosting across Apollo’s skin. “I’m going to hold you to it, baby.”

“Can’t guarantee it’ll happen, but I’m definitely gonna try,” Apollo said, turning his head to capture Klavier’s lips once more. The two of them exchanged slow, lazy kisses for a few minutes, fingers loosely tangled in each other’s hair. In the background, the movie continued on, long forgotten; not that it mattered, seeing as they’d watched it together many times before.

Eventually, Klavier carefully detangled himself from Apollo. He passed him his wine glass, still half-full, then reached for his own and lifted it above his head. “To making new memories, ja?”

“Are we really cheers-ing ourselves? That’s pretty self-serving, literally,” Apollo said dubiously, though he still raised his glass all the same, amused by Klavier’s dramatics. “But hell, why not? To new memories that don’t involve us crying, sneezing, yelling - ”

“You make us sound like absolute disasters, achtung,” Klavier protested, chuckling. “We’re not that bad, are we?”

Apollo took a sip of his drink, then leaned in close, so close that his nose brushed against Klavier’s, his wine-stained, kiss-bitten lips stretched into a fond grin. “Nah. I think we’re doing just fine.”

_____

a/n: Welcome to my first entry for Klapollo Week 2021! I've never participated in any fandom challenges/events before, so I'm super excited to see how this goes. My plan is a little overambitious, with all seven fics set in the same continuity, but in a different order. For example, this fic is actually the last, chronologically speaking, while day seven's fic is set in the middle. If you're wondering why they were crying during their first kiss, you'll have to wait until then 😉

Don't worry about any of that, though, you don't need to read the others to follow along! Day seven is technically a sequel to day five, but it can be read as a stand-alone, though I think it packs more punch if you read it after day five. They're also the longest; every other fic averages out to about four to five thousand words, whereas five and seven are over ten thousand words each. Brevity is the soul of wit? Not in my Google Docs, I am wordy as hell.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! Likes and reblogs would be much appreciated. Hoping you're all safe and healthy and doing well ❤️

#KlapolloWeek2021 #klapollo #kyodoroki #klapollo fic #ace attorney #ace attorney fic #myfic #long post #i've made that dumb goodreads joke before lmao #anyway happy klapollo week y'all!!

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fey-family-reunion · 4 years

Text

Turnabout Toilet Brush

Fandom: Ace Attorney Pairings: Wrightworth, background Klapollo Wordcount: 12196

AO3 FFN

Summary: Phoenix, with no ulterior motives whatsoever, calls a meeting to resolve an office dispute. Apollo and Athena, meanwhile, try to solve a few office mysteries, like why Phoenix is suddenly so insistent on not using their powers in the workplace.

More importantly: who broke the damn toilet brush?

***

"I think we can all agree," Phoenix began, fingers steepled in front of his face, "that things have gotten out of hand."

The three of them had gathered around his desk, which he'd finally cleaned off for the occasion. Apollo and Athena slouched in front of the desk, both looking like sulky students who'd been called to the principal's office, while Phoenix had managed to maneuver the agency's best chair behind the desk for the first time in years. In the center of the desk's polished wooden surface sat one toilet brush, snapped in half at the handle.

Apollo glowered off to the side, arms folded across his chest, probably thinking nostalgically of the time he'd punched Phoenix in the face. Athena, meanwhile, looked perfectly calm, but Widget's worried expression and the way her fingers toyed with her ponytail told a different story. Neither said a word as Phoenix stared them down.

Fine, guess I'll have to move things along myself. Phoenix never liked having to bring out serious boss mode, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

He drew the Magatama out of his pocket, placing it on the desk between them. "We need to talk about the use of powers in the office."

***

(One day earlier...)

"Mr. Wright, whose turn is it to clean the toilets?" Athena asked.

It was a slow morning for the agency. Apollo sat at his desk, concentrating hard on something on his computer that was almost certainly not work-related, while Athena lounged on one of the couches, flipping through a handful of court documents. Phoenix, meanwhile, relaxed on the other couch, enjoying coffee and quiet as he read through the morning's news.

"Apollo," Phoenix said, without looking up from his newspaper. He wasn't sure, but the answer was usually Apollo.

"What?" Apollo said, spinning around in his chair to face them. "No way! It was my turn last week!"

Phoenix sipped his coffee. "Oh, sorry. Must be Athena's."

Athena's cry of outrage was almost as loud as Apollo's chords of steel. "Wait, no! I definitely remember cleaning them last week! I was only asking so Apollo would remember to do his job!"

Phoenix shrugged. "I don't know, then. Does anyone know where the schedule is?"

"Trucy used it in another one of her magic tricks." Apollo groaned.

"Hey!" Trucy sat perched on top of Phoenix's desk, shuffling and reshuffling a pack of cards. She'd told Phoenix she wanted to learn more card tricks, and had been obsessively honing her technique ever since. "It's not my fault you wrote the schedule on the back of one of my props."

"You didn't have to burn it!" Apollo countered.

"I didn't know what it was! Your handwriting is terrible!" Trucy shuffled a little too vigorously, sending all her cards onto the floor. "Anyway, I don't know what you're talking about. I would never do fire tricks when Daddy told me specifically not to." She smiled winningly at Phoenix.

Nice save, Trucy.

Phoenix sent her a stern look intended to mean 'We'll talk about this later', but her smile just widened, and he shook his head. "We need more paper for this office, so we're not writing chore schedules on the back of Trucy's props. Could whoever's not cleaning the toilets go out and get some? I've got to get Trucy to school."

Athena leaped up, grabbing her bag. "Sure thing, boss! I'll head out right now!"

"Hey, wait," Apollo said, shoving himself out of the desk chair. "Since when did we decide it was my turn to clean the toilets?"

"Well, I guess we didn't, but it seems pretty likely," Athena said, flicking her earring.

"What? Why?!"

Phoenix winced. "Apollo, no chords of steel before noon, remember?"

"Well, Mr. Wright said he thought it was your turn first, didn't he?" Athena said. "And he'd probably know best. Anyway, I know I cleaned last week, so it's definitely not my turn."

Apollo pointed at Athena. "There!"

"Apollo," Phoenix repeated. "Please-"

Apollo grabbed the bracelet on his wrist, jerking his arm up toward Athena. "You're lying! You keep fidgeting with your hair when you say you cleaned last week!"

Athena folded her arms, regarding Apollo with a piercing look usually reserved for difficult witnesses. "Are you sure there isn't something causing you lots of anxiety about what you're saying?"

Apollo waved both hands at her. "Of course there is! I have a lot of anxiety about cleaning the toilets when it's not my turn!"

"I don't know," Athena said, rubbing her chin. "Are you sure you're not just feeling a lot of emotional discord because you're the one lying?"

"I'm not- Mr. Wright!"

Phoenix looked up. Both had turned to face him, and he knew what was coming. He sighed, setting down his paper, and wondered what Pearl and Maya would say if they knew the mundane things the Magatama was being used for these days.

Scratch that, they'd probably support it, if it meant this office got cleaned.

"I can't keep using the Magatama to settle office disputes," Phoenix said anyway, leaning forward.

Apollo folded his arms across his chest. "Fine, just this one time. Then we can remake the chore schedule, and stop fighting about this."

Athena mirrored Apollo's pose, jutting out her chin. It was eerie, sometimes, how many little habits they'd picked up from each other. "Yeah, Boss! Just tell us, who's really lying?"

"Alright," Phoenix said, drawing his Magatama out of his pocket. "Repeat after me: I cleaned the toilets last week."

"I cleaned the toilets last week," Athena said confidently.

"I cleaned the toilets last week," Apollo repeated, directing a glare at Athena.

Phoenix watched in amusement as chains appeared in the air along with two locks, one over Athena, and one over Apollo. He shook his head, not bothering to hide his grin. "You're both lying."

Athena's mouth dropped open. "What! But-"

"Fine, I'll go out and get some paper for you, Mr. Wright," Apollo said, darting toward the door.

"Wait!" Athena sprinted after him, blocking his exit with an arm across the doorway. "I already said I was going! It's your turn to clean the toilets!"

"No way, it's been my turn for the past three weeks!" Apollo said. "See you later!" He ducked under her arm, disappearing into the hall.

"Not if I see you first!" Athena called, sprinting after him.

Their shouts echoed down the hall before finally fading into blessed silence. Phoenix let out a contented sigh, taking a deep swig of his coffee and picking the paper back up. Apollo and Athena were both talented lawyers, valued employees, and very good friends, but both were far too loud in the morning.

"Hey, Daddy." Trucy popped up from behind his desk, clutching half of a deck of cards between her fingers. "You think they'll ever figure out that the schedule always vanishes before one of us has to take a turn?"

Phoenix chuckled. "Let them solve that mystery on their own. It's part of their training."

"You're the best, Daddy." Trucy placed the cards on the desk, and disappeared behind it again.

"Now about this fire trick..."

"Sorry, I can't hear you, I've got to pick up all these cards I dropped!" Trucy called, voice muffled by the desk. A hand came up and swiped at the cards on the desk, sending more on the floor. "Whoops, guess we'll have to talk about this later!"

Phoenix glanced up at the clock, and finished his coffee. "Leave those, Trucy, we've got to get you to school." We can talk more about your trick on the way.

***

"Okay, maybe we have gotten a little out of hand..." Athena began, fidgeting with her earring.

"A little out of hand?" Apollo raised his arm, indicated a bandaid on his forearm. "You almost shoved me down the stairs yesterday. I'm lucky to only have a scratch!"

"I'm sorry!" Athena said. "I didn't mean to, really! I didn't think you'd be so easy to push over!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Phoenix cleared his throat. "Regardless of how easy Apollo is to push over-"

"Come on, Mr. Wright!"

"-I think we need to stop using powers in the office," Phoenix said. "It's causing too many problems. I don't want to scare clients away because we're shouting at each other."

Athena leaned forward, gripping the armrests of her chair. "Well, hang on, Mr. Wright, it's not like my power is something I can just turn off! Plus, none of this would have happened if Apollo just admitted he didn't clean the toilets last week!"

Apollo sank back in his seat, pressing a hand to his forehead. "Can we forget about the toilets, please? I'm so sick of arguing about the damn toilets."

"Fine," Athena said. "Then admit you lied, and go clean them."

"He can't clean them," Phoenix said. When both of them looked at him, he gestured to the snapped toilet brush resting on the desk. "No one can."

Athena and Apollo looked down at the toilet brush, and up at him. Apollo sighed. "You're saying you think one of us broke the toilet brush so we wouldn't have to clean the toilets today?"

Phoenix shrugged, letting their minds do the work for them.

"Why isn't Trucy here?" Apollo said, voice rising. "She probably broke it for one of her magic tricks!"

"She's at school." Phoenix reminded him. "Trucy and I left the office together last night before you two left, and I dropped her off at school this morning and came here after you two arrived. Neither of us had an opportunity."

Apollo shook his head. "Mr. Wright, this is ridiculous. Just buy a new one. Can we get back to-"

"It was probably Apollo," Athena interjected. "He always gets so angry when we talk about cleaning the toilets. I bet he took the brush in a fit of murderous rage, and!" She mimed snapping the brush over her knee.

"You're the one with the freakish strength!" Apollo snapped.

Athena balled her fists. "Hey! That's not something you should say to a lady!"

"When I came in this morning, you were already here!" Apollo said, waving toward the rest of the office. "You could've broken it before I came in!"

"Yeah, well, when I left last night, you said you were working late! It's not like you have a client right now, what were you working late on, huh?"

And for some reason, that question made Apollo color. He sunk down in his seat, muttering something about 'reading up on the latest cases', and Phoenix turned his attention to him. This wasn't the point of the meeting, and he wasn't sure he had time for the detour, but it was intriguing.

"See!" Athena said triumphantly. "He's acting totally suspicious! I can hear it in his voice!"

Apollo sent a look of desperation at Phoenix. "Mr. Wright, weren't you just saying that we shouldn't use our powers on each other?"

"Uh..."

Athena crossed her arms. "Boss, isn't it suspicious that now Apollo's on board with this no powers thing? He's definitely got something to hide!"

Athena wasn't wrong. Phoenix was a little surprised that Apollo had suddenly jumped on board, given his insistence on using the Magatama yesterday to figure out who was on toilet duty. It didn't take a lot of thought, though, to understand what was going on. Apollo had very few secrets that made him turn that color.

Reading up on the latest cases indeed.

***

(Several weeks earlier...)

The first time Phoenix had seen Athena and Prosecutor Gavin interact was also the first time he'd worried about the practicality of cramming four lie detectors into one tiny office. Gavin had come by to discuss a detail on some old case with Apollo, and Phoenix had watched Athena carefully. He'd seen a few defense attorneys be too starstruck to stand against Gavin in court- it was one of the reasons Apollo was so well-matched with him- so it concerned him when the normally talkative Athena didn't say much while Gavin was in the room. Instead, she kept sneaking glances at him and Apollo.

It apparently concerned Gavin, too, because, after the usual three minutes of bickering with Apollo, he smiled at her. "Ah, I believe we've met before," he said, extending a hand to Athena. "Athena Cykes, was it not? Herr Forehead, where have you been hiding this lovely lady?"

Phoenix expected a blush, a slip of the tongue from Widget, a giggle, something, but instead, Athena just smiled brightly, shaking his hand. "It's good to see you again, Prosecutor Gavin!"

"You two already met?" Phoenix asked from across the room, and Apollo muttered something under his breath, glaring at nothing in particular.

Athena nodded. "Yep! During the Themis Academy trial!" With that, she and Gavin fell into such easy conversation together that Phoenix wondered if he'd imagined her previous shyness. By the end of the conversation, they'd discovered they'd both spent time in Germany, and were talking rapidly in German. Phoenix sent a bewildered glance at Apollo, but Apollo had returned to his desk, back to the room.

Finally, Gavin laughed. "You are too funny, Fräulein, but I'm afraid I've got a meeting to get to, and I can't keep Herr Edgeworth waiting. We must speak more of this later." He nodded at Phoenix. "Herr Wright. Herr Forehead."

"Yeah, bye," Apollo said shortly, digging a pen out of a desk drawer.

For a moment, Phoenix thought he saw a crease between Gavin's well-groomed eyebrows, but, with another easy grin, the man waved and left. Phoenix eyed Athena. She was smiling as she returned to her seat, but there was no longing sigh, no lovesick swoon, no pink cheeks. She did, however, catch Phoenix staring at her.

"What is it, boss?"

"Uh." Phoenix ran a hand through his hair. "I wanted to see how you reacted to him. You might have to face him in court someday. I wanted to make sure you wouldn't have any trouble because he's, you know..."

Athena shrugged, still smiling. "People are just people, Mr. Wright, even celebrities. I'm sure whenever I have to face him in court, I can take him on!" She punched one hand into her palm, striking a confident pose.

"Great," Phoenix said. "Apollo's faced him lots of times, he can give you some advice. Right, Apollo?" He was a bit concerned by how tightly Apollo was gripping his pen.

"Yeah," Apollo grumbled without turning around. "He's not actually German. He just pretends he is to impress girls."

Athena's smile didn't fade, but Widget turned an anxious blue. "Oh, he told me he wasn't German! He studied there for a while, right?"

If possible, Apollo's shoulders tensed even more, and Phoenix thought, if he squinted, he could make out a cloud of gloom over Apollo's head. Am I about to have to mediate my first-ever office dispute over Klavier Gavin, of all people?

He cleared his throat, trying to think of something halfway professional to say. Phoenix desperately wished Trucy or Edgeworth were here. Trucy was better at alleviating tension than he was, and much better at calming down Apollo when he got in one of his moods. Edgeworth, on the other hand, had no issues keeping a firm hand on the prosecutor's office, and his employees were more difficult than Apollo or Athena. Then again, Phoenix thought he'd rather die than ask Edgeworth's advice on something like this.

"Maybe we should talk about something else?" Phoenix suggested.

"You're right, boss. Besides, I got the feeling that I'm definitely not Prosecutor Gavin's type." Athena said, as if he hadn't spoken. "And he's definitely not my type. All that blonde hair, uck! I can't stand guys who are musicians!"

Phoenix blinked at her incredulously. Granted, Wright Anything Agency was never a professional environment at the best of times, but he got the feeling this was unprofessional, even for them. "Athena," he said slowly. "Let's not discuss the dateability of prosecutors at work."

Apollo spun around in his chair, arms folded. "Yeah, why'd you have to bring that up, huh? I don't care what you think about Prosecutor Gavin! What are you so defensive about?"

It didn't take special hearing to tell that Athena wasn't the defensive one here. Oh, no, Apollo.

"I'm sorry, I just thought that you two were-" Athena's eyes darted around the office, and she sank back into her seat. "I guess I was wrong. I'm sorry."

Oh, no, Athena. "It's alright," Phoenix said, not wanting her to think she was in any real trouble. "Let's get back to work. Apollo, can you show Athena how to shelve evidence?"

"Hang on, what'd you think?"

Phoenix closed his eyes. Forget Trucy or Edgeworth, he needed to call Maya and have her channel Mia for this. She'd handled him when he was head-over-heels for Dahlia, she could handle whatever was going on here. "Apollo, please."

Apollo held up a hand. "No, this isn't about how dateable Prosecutor Gavin is, I promise. I don't care. I'm just curious. It's just casual conversation, Mr. Wright."

Doesn't sound like it. But he also didn't want Apollo to corner Athena about it later, when he couldn't intervene.

"Nothing," Athena said, clutching Widget. "I thought- nothing." Apollo narrowed his eyes, and she offered him a nervous smile. "I thought since you're his friend, you might try and set me up with him, and I wanted to let you know that I don't want that to happen."

"Really," Apollo said flatly, eyes flicking down to her hand on Widget.

"Nope!" Widget chirped. Athena winced, sinking further into her seat.

"Apollo, drop it," Phoenix said, passing a hand over his face.

Apollo turned his glare onto Phoenix. "Why do you want to end this conversation so badly, huh? Do you know what she's going to say?"

"No." Apollo gestured toward his bracelet, and Phoenix sighed. "Fine. I have a feeling it's going to be about Prosecutor Gavin's love life, and it's going to turn into an even longer conversation about Prosecutor Gavin's love life."

"It's okay, Boss, I'm trained for this," Athena said. "Maybe if I just get it all out in the open, we can move on."

Phoenix very much doubted that, but he also very much doubted that Apollo was ever going to let this go otherwise. He waved for Athena to speak.

"Well." Athena smiled at Apollo, her hand still clutching Widget. "You acted so grumpy around Prosecutor Gavin just now, but I could tell, under that emotion, you were really happy to see him. So I guess I just thought maybe you...like him more than you let on?"

Phoenix buried his face in his hands, waiting for the explosion. It apparently took a second for Athena's words to sink in.

"You think I like Prosecutor Gavin?!"

"Apollo!" Phoenix said. "Chords of steel!"

"I didn't say that!" Athena insisted. She waved her hands from side to side frantically, as if trying to clean an invisible slate. "All I said was that maybe you guys are better friends than how you act! I didn't mean it like, um, something romantic!"

"It's totally romantic!" Widget chirped.

Phoenix did his best to turn his laughter into a cough, but, judging by the furious look on Apollo's face, he didn't succeed. "Sorry, Apollo. I tried to warn you."

Apollo scoffed. "Oh, like you're one to talk, Mr. Wright!"

Phoenix drew himself back up to his full height. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"About being closer to prosecutors than you act?" Apollo said. Phoenix stared at him blankly. "About pretending you're just coworkers when there's something else going on?"

Phoenix shook his head, reaching for his coffee mug. He had an inkling of what Apollo was trying to say, but he and Edgeworth had always been open about their friendship with each other. They toned it down if they were interacting in a professional capacity, sure, but there was no acting or pretending going on. "I don't know what you're talking about, Apollo."

"Come on, Mr. Wright, everyone knows you and Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth are dating." Apollo said, and Phoenix gagged on his coffee."You two aren't even subtle about it. I don't know why you feel like you have to keep it a secret, nobody cares."

"What- but we're not- everyone?" Phoenix said, dabbing at his chin with a napkin. They really weren't. Phoenix wouldn't deny that there'd been times over the years when he'd thought- but they really, really weren't. "Apollo, the chief prosecutor and I are very good friends who've known each other for a long time. We're not, and never have been, dating."

Apollo's face reddened, his eyes widening in horror. He glanced down at his bracelet, and back up at Phoenix. "You're really not?"

"No," Phoenix said shortly. This could be a funny story to tell Edgeworth later- or, more likely, another memory to throw deep into the box of 'things to forget about forever and never, ever bring up again'. "Who's, uh, everyone?"

"The entire prosecutor's office. Most of the police department." Apollo said, still looking like he'd seen a ghost. "And a few others- we thought you two just wanted to keep it private, so no one said anything. But-"

Phoenix set down his coffee cup, hard enough for hot liquid to splash onto his desk. "Apollo, could you show Athena how to shelve evidence? Please?"

"S-sure, Mr. Wright." Apollo nearly knocked over his chair as he stood. "Come on, Athena."

Athena got up much more slowly, lingering by Phoenix's desk as Apollo made his way to the door. "Um, Mr. Wright..." she began.

Phoenix looked up at her. "Yes?"

She directed an uncertain glance at Apollo, and Apollo shook his head. "Never mind. I'll shelve evidence really well, and no more talk about prosecutors, I promise." She saluted with a smile and followed Apollo out.

It's a good thing neither of them have a Magatama. Talk about locks on the heart.

"Shut up, Phoenix," Phoenix muttered to himself, wiping up the spilled coffee.

***

Phoenix considered his options, looking between Athena's furious glare and Apollo's desperate pleading. After a moment, he clasped his hands together in front of him. "I think Apollo is telling the truth about working late. I'm sure he has some side projects to work on."

It was an easy decision. Besides the fact that he had no desire to needle Apollo about something the kid was clearly sensitive about, calling him on that lie would set a dangerous precedent for the types of questions they could ask each other. The entire point of this whole conversation was respecting each other's privacy, after all.

Apollo grinned, sending a victorious finger toward Athena. "See? Mr. Wright believes me! Which means it was you who broke the toilet brush!"

Athena's mouth dropped open. "But-"

"But," Phoenix said, "no matter what Apollo was doing here, he still had an opportunity to commit the crime." Apollo's shoulders slumped, and Athena stuck out her tongue at him. "Both of you did. Unless either of you have any evidence to prove you didn't?"

Neither of his employees said a word. Apollo stared at the floor, and Athena crossed her arms, frowning.

Phoenix nodded, relieved to finally return to the point he was trying to make. "It doesn't matter who broke the toilet brush," he said. "We can buy a new one. What matters is that an argument got out of hand thanks to everyone using their powers, and-"

Apollo looked up. "What if I had a witness?"

Phoenix checked his watch. "Apollo, I don't care who broke the toilet brush. What matters is-"

"No, we're defense attorneys, right?" Apollo said, straightening. "Give me a chance to prove myself innocent."

Athena nodded. "Yeah, I wanna hear this. Because I sure didn't break the brush, so it must have been Apollo."

"We'll see about that." Apollo pulled out his phone. "I'll call him right now."

"Him?" Phoenix asked as Apollo dialed, and then he noticed the flush had returned to Apollo's cheeks. Oh, no, kid, I was trying to save you from having to do this.

"Here, I'll put it on speaker." Apollo pressed a button, and the sound of the call connecting blared into the office. He set the phone down next to the Magatama, and waited, arms folded, staring at it. Athena sent an uncertain glance at Phoenix before watching the phone, too. Phoenix, meanwhile, checked his watch again, wondering how things had gotten so off track.

As soon as the other line clicked, a smooth German voice filled the room. "Liebling, this is a nice surprise!" Klavier Gavin said. "I was just about to call you, I wanted to ask-"

Apollo leaned forward, arms still folded. "Prosecutor Gavin, you're on speakerphone."

"Ah." When Gavin spoke again, he sounded still sounded friendly, but it was an entirely different kind of warmth. "Who am I speaking to?"

"Hi, Prosecutor Gavin!" Athena called.

"Hi, Prosecutor Gavin," Phoenix echoed obediently. He had a very bad feeling about where this was headed.

"The entire agency!" Gavin said. "Only missing Fräulein Wright, of course. To what do I owe the honor?"

"I want you to clear something up for me," Apollo said. He squeezed his eyes shut, taking in a deep breath. "When you dropped me off at home last night, we stopped by the office on the way back, yes?"

Athena immediately gasped, and slapped her hands over her mouth to silence herself. Phoenix sat back in his seat with a creak, watching Apollo. Even Gavin took a bewildered pause before replying.

"Uh, ja."

Apollo nodded, opening his eyes. "And when we stopped by the office, I gave you the key so you could let yourself in and use the restroom. Yes?"

"Ja," Gavin said. "I don't see where this is-"

"And when you were in the office, there was a toilet brush in there." Apollo continued, as insistent as if he were pressing a murder suspect. "Yes?"

Phoenix's bad feeling rapidly evolved into outright dread. There was no way Klavier Gavin of all people- and what had Apollo been doing with him in the first place-

"Ah, I don't know," Gavin said. "I wasn't looking for one. I'm not sure what we're talking about right now, Herr Forehead. Did something happen?"

"Did you or didn't you?" Athena snapped, leaning towards the phone.

"Excuse me?"

Athena fired off a rapid sentence in German, and Gavin responded in kind, sounding even more bewildered than before.

Phoenix shook his head. "It doesn't count as witness testimony if we have to take Athena's word for what you're saying."

"Sorry, Herr Wright," Gavin said. "I was just telling Fräulein Cykes that I believe I remember seeing a toilet brush when I stopped by the office. Is that...all you called about?"

"One more thing."

Gavin's voice brightened. "Yes, Herr Forehead?"

"When you saw the toilet brush," Apollo said, leaning forward, "was the handle broken?"

Apollo and Athena stared at the phone, both looking like they'd forgotten how to breathe. Phoenix, meanwhile, began mentally calculating the timing of last night's events. There was no way- was there?

"Nein," Gavin said. "It was a toilet brush."

The effect on the room was instantaneous. Apollo grinned, relaxing back into his chair, and Athena tensed, balling her hands into fists. "I didn't do it!" she snapped. "Apollo still could have done it! What about when he let Prosecutor Gavin in, huh?"

"Would one of you please tell me what is going on?"

"Someone broke our toilet brush to get out of cleaning duty," Apollo said. "We're trying to figure out who it was. Whoever did it has to clean this week."

Phoenix, in the middle of trying to figure out when, exactly, Apollo and Gavin had dropped by the office, flinched. "Hey, punishment was never on the table!"

"Sure it is!" Athena said, slamming her fist into her palm. "Apollo broke the brush and I'm gonna make him pay for it!"

"A noble cause," Gavin said. "I'm happy to help, then. I asked Herr Forehead to assist me with an investigation last night, as he is not related to the case, and much better at reading people than I. We left your office around six-thirty pm, and returned around ten, on the way to his apartment. I, ah, needed to use your facilities, so Herr Forehead lent me the key and I let myself in. He stayed with the bike the whole time."

"Ooh, where'd you guys go?" Athena asked, apparently unable to resist herself.

"A restaurant, and then a bar," Gavin said. "...It was a long investigation."

"That's irrelevant!" Apollo said forcefully, jabbing a finger at the phone. "What matters here is that I have a witness who can vouch that the toilet brush wasn't broken after I left the office at six-thirty. And as Prosecutor Gavin said, I was with his motorcycle the entire time he was in the office at ten. He was carrying my key at the time, so there was no way I could have gotten in without him knowing. Therefore I'm not the culprit, so it has to be Athena!"

Athena was gaping at him. "You two rode on his motorcycle?"

"Don't worry, Fräulein, Klavier Gavin does not drive drunk."

Apollo nodded vigorously. "Especially because it was an investigation. We would never drink on an investigation. Right, Prosecutor Gavin?"

"Boss, come on, they're totally lying!" Athena said, turning to him. "Prosecutor Gavin's got to be a biased witness, listen to them! This has to be a conflict of interest- boss?"

Phoenix blinked, shaking himself out of his stupor, to find both Apollo and Athena staring at him. He offered a smile. "Um, yeah, that's probably right."

"Boss, are you even listening?"

It wasn't possible. There was no way. Years ago, Klavier Gavin had, admittedly without knowing the full story, ruined Phoenix's life, and now here he was, about to do it all over again.

Not all over again. Isn't that a little melodramatic, Wright?

Apollo's eyes narrowed, and he leaned back toward the phone. "Kla- uh- Gavin, did you notice anything else strange when you were in the office? Anything that wasn't there when you picked me up?"

"Now that you mention it, I did," Gavin said. "The lights were on, and I'm sure we turned them off when we left. I remember seeing a wine bottle and two wine glasses on the coffee table, too. I'm sure they weren't there before, or I would have suggested we take the wine on our investigation." He hummed thoughtfully. "The bottle was empty, though. Schade."

Nope, not melodramatic, he's ruined my life. Again.

"Thank you, Prosecutor Gavin, that's all I need," Apollo said, picking the phone off of the table. "I'll call you later about the, uh, investigation."

"Happy to help, liebling."

Athena was apparently too engrossed in this revelation to react to what Phoenix was sure was a pet name. "But there wasn't a wine bottle here when I came in this morning!"

"I figured," Apollo said, tucking his phone in his pocket. He aimed his stare towards Phoenix. "Which means someone else must have been in here last night."

It took all of Phoenix's training from years of poker to hold Apollo's gaze. "Isn't this irrelevant?" he asked. "Prosecutor Gavin said the toilet brush wasn't broken when he left. Maybe someone else came in beforehand for unrelated reasons."

"But if the wine bottle and glasses were gone when I came in, someone must have cleaned them up after Prosecutor Gavin left!" Athena said. "They could've broken the brush then!"

"And that someone had to have a key." Apollo stared Phoenix down. "I don't remember any signs of a break-in."

Athena nodded, tapping her chin. "Plus, that'd be a really weird break-in. I feel like some of Trucy's props would be worth more than a wine bottle and some glasses. And why would they snap a toilet brush?"

"Why indeed," Apollo said, elbowing Athena. Athena followed his gaze to Phoenix, and narrowed her eyes.

Struck by the glares of both of his subordinates, Phoenix felt sweat dripping down the back of his neck. He quickly considered his lines of defense.

Accuse Gavin of breaking the brush? Nope, he has no motive, and no real reason to lie about it.

Blame the wine and broken brush on Athena? Too obvious a lie, it wouldn't take much to discredit it. Athena's not old enough to buy alcohol.

Give up and admit the truth? Can't do that.

Redirect their attention?

Phoenix cleared his throat. "The broken brush wasn't actually what I wanted to talk to you about-"

"Boo!" Athena said, grabbing a handful of Trucy's scattered cards and throwing them at him. They sailed a few inches through the air before fluttering onto the desk.

"Yeah, that's not fair!" Apollo said. "You let us think one of us did it!"

Phoenix chose his words carefully, trying to keep his expression and movements still, his errant emotions under control."I never said I was the one who broke it."

"I can tell you're trying to talk like a robot, Mr. Wright!" Athena said.

Redirect, redirect. Keep them from asking the important questions.

"Fine," Phoenix said, with a tiny sigh. "I'm responsible for the broken toilet brush. I was hoping to avoid the punishment of, what was it, one week of toilet duty?"

"One month." Athena corrected.

Apollo shook his head. "Two months."

Phoenix, despite knowing there were more important things to discuss, rubbing the back of his head, smiling. "Hey, we never agreed there had to be a punishment at all, did we? I never agreed to that."

Apollo returned his smile. "Let's take an office vote, then. Majority rules?"

"We're getting off track," Phoenix said. When Apollo and Athena protested, he raised a hand. "Fine, I'll buy a new brush and clean the toilets for the next two months. Like I said, that wasn't the important part of this meeting." He took a moment to gage their reactions- both still looked furious, but they were listening to what he had to say. "We need to stop using powers in the office. I'm sure neither of you-" he sent a significant glance at Apollo- "want us prying into your personal lives, and we can't keep using them for office disputes. It escalates things until we end up pushing each other down the stairs."

Apollo's gaze had drifted to the floor as soon as Phoenix said 'personal lives'. Athena, however, was frowning, looking as though she were already preparing an objection.

"I know you two and Trucy can't turn them off like I can," Phoenix said, gesturing toward the Magatama. "But maybe we can try not to focus or, uh, listen too hard when we're having everyday conversations with each other, and not bring up anything weird you see or hear unless it has to do with a case. Does that sound reasonable?"

"Yes, boss," Athena said.

"Yes, Mr. Wright." Apollo echoed, not looking up.

"Great!" Phoenix checked his watch again. Somehow, he'd managed to get his point across in just enough time. He stood, hastily maneuvering his way around the desk and toward his bag on the coffee table. "Good work today, everyone! I'll see you both tomorrow!"

"Hold it!"

Phoenix turned back around. Apollo stood, holding the Magatama out toward him, determination in his eyes.

Phoenix forced a smile, reaching for it. "Thanks, Polly. Maya would've killed me if I lost it."

"Just one more thing, Mr. Wright," Apollo said, jerking it out of Phoenix's grasp. "If we're going to sentence you to two months of toilet duty, we need to make sure you're actually guilty."

Phoenix reached for the Magatama again, and Apollo dodged backward. Fine, kid. You want to play hardball? I learned hardball years ago, from the Nickel Samurai, no less. "I wasn't lying earlier," he said. "I'm responsible for the brush being broken. Apollo, don't you have your bracelet for this? Give me the Magatama, please."

Athena's eyes narrowed, and she swiped the Magatama out of Apollo's hand before Phoenix could take it. "Wait, boss. Did you really break the brush?"

Phoenix sighed. "Didn't I already answer that? Listen, you two, I have someplace I need to be, so-"

Athena traded an uncertain glance with Apollo, but she didn't let go of the Magatama. "Did you actually break it, though?"

"I don't know why you keep asking me that," Phoenix said, shaking his head. "Only the three of us have keys to the office. Was it you, Athena?"

"No!"

"Apollo?"

"No, but..."

Phoenix shrugged, not saying aloud the obvious conclusion.

"But he's acting so weird!" Athena whispered to Apollo. "His emotions are all over the place!"

Apollo took the Magatama from Athena, eyeing Phoenix thoughtfully. "Mr. Wright, how did you break it?"

"I had too much to drink." Definitely true. "It was an accident." Also true, at least as far as I know. He checked his watch again, making a show of it this time. "Apollo, can I have the Magatama back, please? I really need to go."

He could tell Athena's resolve was wavering, her don't-upset-the-boss instincts kicking in. Apollo had known Phoenix since long before he deserved to be called anyone's boss, but there was clear hesitation in his eyes. Phoenix held out his hand, waiting.

I could just run, he thought, but then they'd just ambush me tomorrow morning, and I'd look even more suspicious. Better deal with this now.

"Apollo," Phoenix repeated, using his best serious boss voice. "Arguments like these are why I wanted to ban the use of powers in the office. We-"

He could tell the exact moment the locks appeared. Apollo's mouth dropped open, his eyes tracing invisible chains through the air around Phoenix. Phoenix's stomach sank as Apollo clenched the Magatama more tightly in his hand, and Apollo met Phoenix's eyes, resolve strengthening.

Apparently that one was a stretch even for the Magatama. Goddammit, I was so close-

"Mr. Wright," Apollo began, "why do you really want to ban the use of powers in the office?"

Phoenix groaned. "Apollo, please."

Apollo shook his head, although his serious expression had melted into something amused. "This is a major change in office policy, Mr. Wright. I think all of your employees deserve transparency for why it's being established."

"Yeah!" Athena said, balling her fists. "Plus, you just spent the last thirty minutes trying to frame us for breaking that brush, and I wanna know why!"

Phoenix opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again, mind blank of anything to say besides the truth. Clearly, the Magatama wasn't going to let him get away with much here, and even half-truth-half-lies about the subject would be damning.

I could really use a miracle about now, he thought. Anything to distract them so I can run, and call in sick until they forget we had this conversation. A flock of birds could fly in the window! A hurricane could level the building! Trucy could leap out of the desk as part of an elaborate magic trick! She'd...never let this go, but still, anything!

Someone knocked on the door, and all three of them jumped. "I'll get it!" Athena called brightly, moving past Phoenix toward the door, and Phoenix's shoulders sagged in relief. Then, he checked his watch again. His worst suspicions were confirmed when he heard the familiar voice greeting Athena.

...Anything but that.

"Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth!" Athena said, backing up to let Miles into the room. Her pleasant smile was undercut by Widget's anxious frown- Phoenix had always suspected she and Apollo were intimidated by Edgeworth. "What brings you here?"

Miles's gaze swept the room before landing on Phoenix. "I trust you are ready to go, Wright? I was expecting you outside." He turned to Athena. "Your boss and I have a business meeting to attend tonight, but it seems he's forgotten-"

Apollo let out a high-pitched yelp, and the Magatama clattered to the floor. He clapped his hands over his mouth as Athena and Miles stared at him.

Phoenix smiled tiredly, bending down to pick up the Magatama. "Punctual as always, Edgeworth."

***

(Last night...)

"You cannot be serious, Wright," Miles said from the couch.

Phoenix grinned down at him. He struck a pose, one foot up on the coffee table, with the toilet brush jutted out in front of him like a sword. "I thought I did a good job reenacting it."

Miles pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, his other hand struggling to keep his glass of wine upright. "You cannot expect me to believe that your subordinates began fencing over whose turn it was to perform a chore. Clearly, your daughter's penchant for showmanship has rubbed off on you." He was chuckling, though, a rare sound even these days, and it, more than the wine, warmed Phoenix from head to toe.

Phoenix hopped down, setting the brush down on the table. "Just because your subordinates never do it...besides Blackquill, I guess." He grabbed his glass of wine and fell back onto the other couch.

Miles replaced his glasses, fixing Phoenix with an unimpressed stare. "If this is how the Wright Anything Agency functions, it is no wonder your trials are always so haphazard and-"

"What are we celebrating tonight, again?" Phoenix asked, raising his wine glass toward Miles.

Miles sighed. "You're absurd."

"That's what I thought."

It'd been too long since Phoenix had a night like this. He and Miles had gone out for their usual weekly dinner, and had their usual pleasant time discussing the antics of their respective subordinates. The evening had taken a different turn, however, when Miles presented him with a bottle of wine in celebration of closing a particularly ugly case, and Phoenix had suggested they open it for their usual one-drink nightcap at the Wright Anything Agency office. At some point, one drink had turned into 'just one more', and from there into 'we might as well finish off the bottle', and now, after a steady two hours of drinking, the only wine not yet consumed was in Phoenix and Miles's half-full wine glasses.

Phoenix hadn't felt this relaxed in a long time, and, judging by the way Miles slouched back into the couch cushions, he wasn't the only one.

"Whose turn was it last week, then?" Miles asked, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"What?"

"To clean the..." He gestured vaguely towards the office restrooms.

Phoenix blinked. "Does it matter?"

Miles rolled his eyes. "It's an interesting puzzle, Wright, that's all. They were both lying, and you and your daughter apparently are never on the schedule."

"I'm surprised you can't figure it out."

"Of course I can. You know, then?"

Phoenix nodded, smiling patiently. "You want the solution?"

"Truthfully, I don't care enough to work it out," Miles said with a beleaguered sigh.

Phoenix took that to mean, Give me a hint. "One of them wasn't lying. At least, not completely. It was their turn, but they didn't do their job."

"Forgetfulness?" Miles said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. They seemed determined to slide off his face. "Or spite? Ms. Cykes seems more likely to have forgotten, but Mr. Justice has been quite bitter in the past about the chores you assign him, if I recall."

Phoenix shrugged. "What do you think?"

"From as much as I can trust your melodramatic recollection, Ms. Cykes seemed shocked to discover both of them were lying, while Mr. Justice did not. My assumption then is either Ms. Cykes didn't realize she forgot until that very moment, or that she was aware it was Mr. Justice's turn and was surprised to hear he didn't perform his duties. Mr. Justice must have known either way-"

"You can call them Apollo and Athena, you know," Phoenix said. "You're tipsy, and you've definitely spoken with them enough."

"As I was saying, Wright," Miles continued. "If Mr. Justice truly was not surprised, then I can only assume he knew neither he nor Ms. Cykes performed their duties. Therefore it was his turn, not Ms. Cykes', last week, and he didn't do as he was told." He sipped his glass slowly, eyes unfocused. "I can't comprehend why either would get your Magatama involved, however."

Phoenix shrugged. "Because asking me not to use it would be the same thing as admitting they were lying, wouldn't it? Apollo was the one who insisted on it. Maybe he was hoping Athena would crack under the pressure and admit she was lying first, or maybe he just wanted to drag her down with him."

"Your office sounds like a nightmare, Wright."

"We don't have any hawks," Phoenix said. He shuddered. "Or Paynes."

"I would take Taka any day over the amount of interpersonal meddling and gossip that appears to go on at the Wright Anything Agency."

Phoenix snorted. "Like the prosecutor's office never has any gossip."

"Of course not. We're professionals." Miles drained his wine glass and set it on the table beside the bottle. "We know how to stay out of each other's personal lives."

"Oh, really," Phoenix said, smirking. "Come on, Edgeworth, I know for a fact that-"

Wait, I don't want to talk about this, what am I doing?

It was too late. Miles was already watching him curiously over the rims of his glasses. "You've heard gossip from the prosecutor's office?"

"Uh..."

It'd been weeks, and he still hadn't forgotten the rumor Apollo had told him about him and Edgeworth. Maya had always teased him for being too easy to read, but, up until that conversation, Phoenix had thought he'd managed to keep that particular secret more or less under wraps. If everyone in the legal system believed this rumor, then Miles had to know, right? And if Miles knew, then he clearly didn't want to talk about it, or he would have brought it up already. And if he didn't know-

"Is something the matter, Wright?"

Phoenix tilted his head back, finishing off the rest of the wine, and set his wine glass on the table. "Nope."

"If you've heard rumors about me, I can assure you that does not affect me in the slightest," Miles said, gaze drifting to Phoenix's empty wine glass. "As I'm sure you're aware, I've dealt with rumors for most of my career."

Phoenix closed his eyes, remembering a time where rumors had greatly affected Edgeworth. "They weren't about you." he began, before realizing that the obvious lie would confirm Miles's worst suspicions. "Well, they were, but it wasn't anything...bad."

"And?"

Phoenix opened his eyes. Miles was watching him, face impassive. Phoenix fidgeted in his seat, scratching the back of his head. "It's not anything mean, either. It's, uh..." He couldn't bring himself to say it. "Hey, Edgeworth, you won't fire anybody over this, will you?"

"Of course not," Miles said dismissively. "I told you, I don't care about rumors. What is it that has you so rattled?"

"Rattled? Me?"

"Wright." Miles shook his head, smiling. "You look like you just realized your accused has run off with all of your evidence."

Phoenix, about to run a hand through his hair, clenched his hand into a fist in his lap. "It's a silly rumor. The entire prosecutor's office apparently thinks we're, uh, secretly lovers."

Lovers? Where'd that word come from?

Miles's face didn't change, but he picked up his empty wine glass. "The entire prosecutor's office."

Phoenix nodded. "And most of the police department. And a few others. Apollo said we're, uh, not subtle about it." He forced a laugh. "Isn't that funny?"

Miles's expression still hadn't changed. "You have an odd sense of humor, Wright." He brought his wine glass to his lips, and blinked down at it, confused.

"It's empty," Phoenix offered.

"I am aware." Miles cleared his throat, pushing himself to his feet. "Would you like to go for a walk? I think we could both use a clear head."

"Yeah, sure." Anything to end this conversation.

They locked up and wobbled their way down the stairs, only a little unsteady on their feet after the past couple hours of slow drinking. The cool air of the street outside was a relief, although Phoenix no longer had the excuse of the too-warm office for the flush on his face. As soon as they left, Miles strode ahead of him, headed in no particular direction, and Phoenix had to jog to catch up.

"Whoa, hang on!" he called, and Miles slowed slightly. "What, did you miss your cardio this morning?"

Miles gave him a withering look that Phoenix wasn't entirely sure he deserved. "Wright, you are out of shape."

"I've also been drinking." Phoenix pointed out. "Not all of us have your inhuman tolerance." Miles didn't respond, and Phoenix shoved his hands in his pockets. "So, where are we going?"

"I thought it might be nice to walk around your neighborhood." Miles adjusted his glasses, not looking at Phoenix. "I admit I haven't seen much of it in all the times I've visited. Is there anything of interest around here?"

"Uh..." Phoenix checked his watch. "Not at...ten at night, there isn't."

An uncomfortable silence followed as they passed underneath a streetlight. Phoenix glanced at Miles and, for a second, thought he made out panic in his expression. He cleared his throat. "Trucy's old elementary school is near here. It's not really a landmark, but-"

The creases in Miles's forehead smoothed out immediately, his shoulders relaxing. "Lead the way."

As they followed a route Phoenix and Trucy had walked hundreds of times, Phoenix didn't ask why they were visiting his daughter's elementary school in the middle of the night. He didn't ask why they were going for a walk in the first place. He was so busy not asking that he didn't hear the roar of the incoming vehicle right as they were about to cross the street.

He did, however, feel Miles' arm, thrust across his chest before he could step forward. "Careful, Phoenix!" Miles snapped, and the use of his first name snapped Phoenix out of his thoughts just in time to see a motorcycle speed by, a few yards ahead of him.

Phoenix looked down at the arm across his chest, and up at Miles, who was glaring down the street after the bike. Miles muttered something irritated under his breath.

"Hey, it's okay, Miles, people are always flying down this street," Phoenix said. "Thanks, though."

Miles studied him for a second, a mix of several emotions present on his face, and Phoenix raised his eyebrows. After a second, Miles's eyes widened in realization. "It was the best way to get your attention, Wright," he said. "You were lost in thought. You should have been watching the road."

"Sure, Miles," Phoenix said, with a rush of courage he attributed to the wine. He made an exaggerated show of looking both ways before crossing the street. "Trucy's school is just up here, come on."

Trucy's school was much more rundown than he remembered. The playground appeared to have been redone, though, with a few new death traps dotted around a mulched field that he was sure wasn't there before. Then again, he was getting old, as Trucy often reminded him. He walked up to the chainlink fence, intertwining his fingers around the metal, and heard Miles's footsteps as the other man came to a stop beside him.

Miles cleared his throat. "This is it?"

Phoenix nodded. "They've added a few things, but this is it." He pointed. "There's the swingset where she broke her wrist trying to prove she could fly. Those are the monkey bars she spent two weeks trying to master. She nearly broke her wrist again." He shook his head, not even bothering to keep the fondness out of his voice. "She's a stubborn kid."

"I can't imagine where she gets it from," Miles said, apparently not trying too hard to keep the fondness out of his voice, either. "As I recall, the monkey bars took you four weeks." He smiled at Phoenix, his first smile since Phoenix mentioned the rumors, and something fluttered in Phoenix's chest.

Phoenix laughed, looking away. The question of why they were visiting Trucy's old school at ten at night was growing into a larger question, one he'd kept at the back of his mind for years, only braving when he was tired or tipsy. Like now. "Uh, Edgeworth." Phoenix tightened his grip on the chainlink fence. "Sorry if I made you uncomfortable, with the..."

"I told you, Wright, I do not concern myself with the rumors of my subordinates." Miles's smile vanished, though, and the crease had reappeared in his forehead.

"Right." Phoenix, later, didn't know what made him decide to keep going, although it was probably that smile. "It's weird, isn't it, though?"

"What is?"

"What Apollo said." Phoenix kept his eyes trained forward, on some kind of spiral-shaped contraption that looked like an injury waiting to happen. "That we aren't subtle about it."

The ensuing silence was so long that Phoenix began idly daydreaming about going back to school, getting a physics degree, burying himself in research, and inventing time travel to prevent this conversation from ever happening. He didn't look over at Miles. He didn't want to see the expression on the other man's face. If he'd just upset a decades-long friendship, he wanted a few more moments of blissful ignorance before having to face that fact.

"Wright," Miles said, slowly. "Are you suggesting something?"

Phoenix wished Miles had gotten easier to read over the years. "I don't know," he said. "What would you say if I were?"

Miles eyed him, not responding.

Dr. Wright has a nice ring to it. They make people with PhDs in physics doctors, right? And Trucy would probably love time travel, I bet she could use it for magic tricks-

"Wright, look at me."

Reluctantly, Phoenix met his eyes. "Listen, Edgeworth, you don't have to let me down easy. We can pretend this conversation didn't happen. I don't-"

"Wright-"

"-want to make you uncomfortable. I can stay away from the prosecutor's office until the rumors-"

"Phoenix, for once in your life, would you listen to me?" Miles snapped.

Phoenix shut his mouth, but Miles didn't speak, scowling down the street at nothing in particular. "Okay," Phoenix said, carefully. "What do you want to say?"

"I..."

It happened in an instant. One moment, Miles was staring down the street, hand gripping his elbow in a familiar gesture, and in the next, Miles had stepped closer, his hands on Phoenix's shoulders, his face close to Phoenix's own, and-

What the-

Phoenix, shocked, took a step back, and Miles pulled away. For a beat, Phoenix tried to figure out what exactly had just happened, while Miles curled up into himself.

"Wright," Miles said. "Please tell me I didn't misinterpret-"

Phoenix quickly closed the distance between them and kissed him, letting go of the chain link fence to card his fingers through Miles's hair. It took Miles a moment to respond, but he did, with enthusiasm. The kiss was clumsy, fumbling, and tasted strongly of wine, but when Phoenix pulled away, he couldn't keep a smile off his face.

"You didn't misinterpret anything, Miles," Phoenix said, a bit breathlessly.

Miles looked vaguely gobsmacked, as though he'd just been told Franziska had quit criminal law to become a daycare teacher. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "I see."

They kissed seven more times on the walk back to the building, three more times on the stairs up to the office, and once more by the door, not that Phoenix was counting. As soon as they were inside with the door closed behind them, the kissing became something much more distracting, and either both were drunker than they thought, or the phrase 'drunk on love' really held water, because neither noticed the coffee table behind them until Miles stumbled and fell back onto it with a loud crack.

"Ow," he said, sprawled on top of the table.

Phoenix stifled a laugh as he offered a hand to help Miles up. "Are you okay?"

Miles took Phoenix's hand, standing, and rubbed his back. "I"m fine." He looked down at the table. "I don't know about your table, though."

His fall had knocked the- thankfully empty- wine bottle and glasses onto the floor, and Phoenix gathered them up. The drinkware was unbroken, and the table appeared fine, too. "It's alright. No harm done," Phoenix said, carrying the wine bottle over to the office's recycling bin.

Miles bent over, picking up half of the toilet brush off of the ground. "What about this?"

Phoenix groaned as he discarded the bottle and took the wine glasses to the sink. "Apollo and Athena are going to have your head for that. There's been enough fighting about that toilet brush as is."

Miles's eyes widened. "You're planning on informing them?"

"You want to keep this a secret?" Phoenix asked. He turned on the faucet and ran water over the wine glasses, watching as the last traces of wine swirled down the drain in thin red trails.

"Whenever we do tell people," Miles began, picking up the other half of the toilet brush, "I have a feeling we're going to have to fill out a lot of paperwork. Of course, we will do nothing unethical beforehand, but I feel it would be best to get our footing before telling others. Don't you?"

Phoenix placed the wine glasses back in the cabinet and wiped his hands on the dishrag. He could already imagine the reactions from his own employees if word got out that he and Miles were, actually, dating. "Yeah, I get it. I'll make up some story for the toilet brush, I won't tell them you came by tonight."

Miles raised an eyebrow. "I know your employees have certain gifts..."

"I'll come up with something," Phoenix said, taking the broken toilet brush from Miles. "I've been meaning to get them to tone down using powers in the office, anyway." He examined the two halves. "Actually, this might be the perfect excuse."

"I don't follow."

"Don't worry about it, just help me clean up." Phoenix grinned, placing the broken brush on the table. "I'll take care of everything. They'll never even know we were here."

***

Looking back, Phoenix should've known the motorcycle that almost ran him down belonged to Klavier Gavin, on his way to the Wright Anything Agency. It was exactly the sort of coincidence that always happened to him. Franziska Von Karma had once said that she didn't know if Phoenix was lucky or unlucky. Phoenix didn't know either, but, going by the events of the past twenty-four hours, his suspicions leaned heavily toward the 'unlucky' category.

(Although he supposed he'd gotten lucky where it counted- having such ridiculous people in his life in the first place.)

***

Apollo's wide eyes darted between Phoenix and Miles, hands still clapped over his mouth. Miles sent him a quizzical look and nodded at Phoenix. "Shall we go?"

"Uh, yeah," Phoenix said. As he stepped forward to join Miles at the door, he tilted his hand so Miles could clearly see him putting the Magatama in his pocket. Come on, Miles, catch on, we can't lie to them, they suspect too much already.

"Wait!" Athena said. "What's going on? Apollo, why are you making that face?"

Apollo lowered his hands. "I'm not making any faces! This is just my face!" His voice was audibly shaking, though, and Athena's eyes narrowed.

"What's happening right now? What did you see with the Magatama?"

At the mention of the Magatama, Phoenix felt Miles tense beside him. "Wright, what exactly have you and your subordinates been discussing?" he muttered.

Phoenix closed his eyes. "It's a long story. Everything got kind of out of hand-"

"And you two!" Athena whirled, pointing at them. "I can hear you whispering! Mr. Wright, I know you're hiding something! You still haven't told us why you want to ban powers in the office!"

Apollo rubbed his forehead. "Trust me, Athena, you don't want to know."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Phoenix cleared his throat. "Look, the chief prosecutor and I really need to be going." He grabbed Miles' arm, spinning him around toward the door. "Come on."

Miles allowed himself to be led out into the hallway. "What happened in there?" he said under his breath. "It didn't go well?"

"What do you think?"

"Hold it!"

Phoenix turned around, just before they reached the stairs. Athena stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip, the other pointed toward them. Behind her, Apollo had buried his face in his hands again.

Phoenix smiled. "I'm sorry, Athena, we've don't have time for this."

"But..." Athena glanced back helplessly at Apollo behind her. He still looked as though he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. "But you're lying! I know you are!"

"Daddy's lying?"

Phoenix stifled a groan as Trucy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, backpack slung over her shoulders. She took the stairs two at a time. "What are you lying about, Daddy?"

"Hey, Trucy," Phoenix said, letting go of Miles to hug her. "How was school?"

Trucy pulled back with a smile on her face. "It was great! What are you lying about, Daddy?"

"The toilet brush!" Athena strode forward into the hallway, a look of determination on her face. "Somebody broke it last night, and your dad knows something about it, and he won't tell us!"

"I told you, Athena, I broke the-"

"Last night?" Trucy repeated, and then comprehension dawned on her face. "Oh. Oh." Her eyes became impossibly wide as she looked at Miles and Phoenix standing next to each other, Miles staring pointedly toward the wall. "Oh!"

"What?" Athena asked.

"Nothing!" Trucy said, although the giant grin on her face said otherwise. She hugged Phoenix again, and then turned and threw her arms around Miles for good measure. He stiffened, but returned the hug. "I just- had a really good day at school, that's all!" She gave Phoenix another hug. "A really, really good day!"

Wait, how did Trucy figure us out? Has she been expecting this?

Athena was watching the whole exchange open-mouthed, one hand over Widget. She glanced down at her necklace, as if trying to confirm what she was hearing, and back up at the trio on the top of the stairs. "What's...what's going on?"

"Mr. Wright, please, can we just tell her?" Apollo said, emerging from his hands. "She's going to interrogate me and Trucy the moment you leave."

Phoenix glanced over at Miles. Miles nodded, and Phoenix took his hand. "Athena," he said. "We were hoping to keep it quiet, but Edgeworth and I are headed out on a, uh, date."

He expected Athena's gasp, Trucy's noise of delight, and Apollo's groan. He did not, however, expect a smooth German voice to say "Really?" behind him.

"Oh, for God's sake," Miles muttered, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as they turned to greet the new intruder. Klavier Gavin stood at the bottom of the stairs, open-mouthed, carrying what looked suspiciously like a new toilet brush under one arm- a toilet brush with a rather ostentatious bow on its handle.

"Prosecutor Gavin," Miles said coolly.

"Herr Edgeworth," Gavin said, look of shock melting into a smile. "I didn't mean to intrude, I was simply making a social call."

Miles's gaze flicked down to the brush, and back up to Gavin's face. "Indeed."

"Did you buy us a new toilet brush?" Trucy said, bouncing down the stairs.

Gavin's eyes were still on Miles. "Uh...ja."

Apollo appeared at Phoenix's elbow, making him flinch. "You did what?"

"Herr Forehead!" Gavin raised the toilet brush in some kind of toast. "To assist you with all of your future toilet-cleaning duties!" His eyes darted around the group, who were all staring at him. "It was, ah, intended to be a joke. I was not expecting..." He gestured vaguely towards Phoenix and Miles. "...everyone to be here."

"Apollo won't be doing toilet duty for a while, though!" Athena said, stepping up beside Apollo. "Mr. Wright confessed to breaking the brush, so he's got two months of toilet duty, although he's still acting weird about it."

She shot him a glare, and he groaned. "Athena..."

"Two months?" Miles mouthed.

"What?" Athena said. "It's great that you and, um, the chief prosecutor are, um, dating, but I still don't get where all the emotional discord in your voice came from! Did you actually break the brush?"

Gavin raised his eyebrows. "That mystery still isn't solved?"

"The mystery isn't solved because it doesn't need to be solved," Apollo said, folding his arms. "Mr. Wright had too much wine, and he broke the brush. That's all there is to it."

Athena gasped. "Wait, but the wine! The two glasses! There was someone else there! Maybe-" Her gaze turned to Miles, and Widget's expression rapidly cycled through shock and fear. "Oh, um, never mind. You're right, Apollo. Mr. Wright broke it. He has to clean the toilets for two months."

"Oh, crap!" Widget added.

Miles began to laugh.

It was such an unexpected sound that even Phoenix stared at him. For a long moment, no one spoke, and Miles kept laughing, hand over his mouth. Eventually, he removed his glasses to wipe his eyes, and cleared his throat. When he spoke, his tone was businesslike again, although he hadn't stopped smirking. "Phoenix, while I was not aware there was a punishment at the time of the crime-"

"Neither was I," Phoenix muttered, shooting a glare at Athena and Apollo.

"-nevertheless, it would be a shame for you to serve the sentence for a crime you didn't commit. Justice must be done. If you like, I can take the punishment instead."

The hallway went dead silent again as, Phoenix assumed, they all tried to picture the dignified chief prosecutor on his knees scrubbing a toilet. Phoenix grinned. "We can negotiate, Miles. It was partially my fault, anyway."

"Gross!" Apollo burst out.

"I didn't mean..." Phoenix shook his head, resigning himself to whatever assumptions the other members of the Wright Anything Agency were going to make about him for the rest of his life. He took Miles's hand. "Come on. If that's everything, the chief prosecutor and I have a date to get to."

"Have a good time!" Trucy said, darting back up the stairs to give him a kiss on the cheek. "Don't stay out too late!"

"Thanks, Trucy." Shouldn't I be the one saying that?

Miles swept his gaze over the group, instantly assuming the power of his job title again. "And we would appreciate if you would be discreet with this...new knowledge you have gained today. We are planning on informing everyone, of course, just not in the first twenty-four hours."

"Of course," Apollo said, still beet red. Athena saluted, and Widget cringed. Trucy and Gavin nodded, too, and Phoenix grabbed Miles's hand, tugging him down the stairs.

As they passed by Gavin, he shifted the toilet brush to his other arm, laying a hand on Miles's shoulder. "Chief Prosecutor," he said. "Gratulation."

Miles nodded. "Danke."

"What was that about?" Phoenix whispered as they continued down the hall.

Miles glanced back. "Mr. Justice is not the only one who thought we weren't being subtle, it seems."

Phoenix followed his gaze. Gavin had climbed the stairs, and he and Apollo were talking intently, Apollo gesturing to the toilet brush. Athena, meanwhile, was giggling at something Trucy said, her hand still covering Widget. "I think my subordinates are terrified of you," Phoenix said.

Miles smirked. "They are." It wasn't a question.

"I wish I could say the same about me."

"It's not a bad thing to be friendly with them," Miles said. "You three- four make a fearsome team, both in and out of court. Your bond is one of your strengths."

"Tell me that again when I manage to keep a secret from them for more than a day," Phoenix said, smiling. He squeezed Miles' hand. "Who would've thought your idea of romance would be offering to clean toilets for me for two months?"

Miles scowled. "I recall mention of negotiations-"

"It's just like Gavin buying Apollo a new brush," Phoenix said cheerfully. He glanced back. Trucy and Athena had disappeared into the office, but Gavin and Apollo were still in the hall, standing almost too close to each other. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but Apollo's smile spoke volumes. "For...whatever's going on between them."

He fingered the Magatama in his pocket. It seemed monumentally unfair for him to be interrogated until his secret relationship was revealed, and yet no one questioned Gavin bringing Apollo a new toilet brush, wrapped up in a bow, less than an hour after finding out the old brush was broken, as part of a 'joke'.

"Don't," Miles said, eyes following the movement of his hand.

Phoenix sighed. "I won't. I'm the boss, right? I have to follow my own rules. No more powers in the office."

Miles nodded. "That, and I'd rather not spend our first date trying to figure out if our subordinates are dating."

"Don't worry," Phoenix said, grinning. "I've got much more pleasant things to think about."

If Phoenix had looked back, in the last second before they turned a corner and were out of sight of the stairs, he might have witnessed decisive evidence of what, exactly, was going on between Klavier and Apollo. But Phoenix didn't turn, and Miles smiled to himself, and the mystery remained a mystery.

***

(Coda)

"You know what's weird?" Athena said, fiddling with her earring.

"That Prosecutor Gavin bought us a new toilet brush?" Trucy said. She crossed to Phoenix's desk, gathering up the cards scattered all over its surface.

"No," Athena said. "I mean, everyone knows why he did that. No, the thing with the toilet brush had me thinking- when was the last time you were on toilet duty?"

Trucy straightened, happy her back was to Athena so she couldn't see the look of horror on Trucy's face. She pasted on her best magician's smile and turned around. "What do you mean?"

"Well, we worked out a schedule, and it's supposed to be all four of us, but you and Mr. Wright never do it," Athena said. "I mean, it should have been your turn at some point in the past month, but we kept restarting the order because the schedule was-" She paused, eyes narrowing in accusation. "...destroyed in a magic trick. Twice."

What's a magician's best trick? Redirect their attention! Luckily for her, a distraction appeared in the form of Apollo in the doorway. He had a tiny smile on his face, both more pleased and more private than his usual grin, and the bow-clad toilet brush was tucked underneath his arm.

"Polly, did your boyfriend already leave?" Trucy asked. "I wanted to thank him for the new brush!"

"Yeah, he had to-" Apollo began, and then his smile vanished. "Wait, boyfriend?"

Trucy assumed an expression of innocence. "Isn't he?"

"What?" Apollo looked between her and Athena, backing up. "Trucy, we just had an office meeting about this! We're not going to pry into each other's personal lives anymore!"

"Technically, it was just about using powers to pry into each other's personal lives," Athena pointed out.

Trucy nodded. "Plus, I wasn't here for it, so I can still pry!"

"No, we're not dating!" Apollo said, flushing. "You guys are so weird! This is why we had to pretend last night was an investigation! Can't two men go out for dinner and drinks together without it being a date?"

"But sharing a motorcycle-" Athena began.

Apollo gesticulated wildly, waving the toilet brush. "It was the fastest way there!"

"And he keeps calling you all of those German pet names when he thinks we're not listening," Trucy added.

"How did you- no, that's- that's just how he is!" Apollo said. "He treats everyone like that!"

It took one look at Athena's expression for Trucy to confirm that, no, she was not crazy, and yes, Prosecutor Gavin did not treat everyone like that. "Okay, Polly," Trucy said cheerfully. "If you say so."

Apollo threw up his hands in defeat. "Ugh, all of you are impossible. I'm going to put the new brush away in the bathroom." He stormed off, slamming the door behind him.

Athena was first to break the ensuing silence. "Do you think he knows he walked into the evidence room?"

"He'll figure it out," Trucy said, and Apollo stormed out of the evidence room, sent them another glare, and stormed into the bathroom. Somehow, him slamming the door a second time didn't have quite the same weight behind it.

When Trucy looked back at Athena, Athena was already eyeing her. "I haven't forgotten about you destroying the chore schedules, you know," she said pleasantly.

Darn.

#ace attorney #narumitsu #wrightworth #phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #apollo justice #athena cykes #meant to post this two weeks ago but ah well #takes place vaguely in the dual destinies era if you dont think too hard #also shoutout to tumblr mobile for messing up my formatting lmao

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turnaboutnerd · 5 years

Text

Full Disclosure

Pairings: Cykesquill, Wrightworth, Klapollo (mentioned/implied)

Summary: Phoenix and Miles receive some surprising (and perhaps concerning) news from Athena and Simon. Set sometime after Spirit of Justice, but there are minimal spoilers.

Word Count: 2,960

A/N: If I have the opportunity to write married!Wrightworth being dads to their subordinates, then by God, I’m going to do it.

Athena’s been nervous around him for days now. Phoenix might not have the ability to read others’ emotions like she does, but he can tell that much. In fact, when he asked two days earlier if she was okay, she, apparently taking a page out of Apollo’s book, loudly replied “I’m fine!”—and a single red Psyche-Lock appeared.

He was surprised, but he didn’t push it then. Back when Apollo still regularly worked for the Agency, and they were quite literally an office full of human lie detectors, it had been an unofficial, unspoken rule that they weren’t allowed press each other over every single little white lie and secret they kept. Even in a company as tight-knit as theirs, they’re entitled to their privacy.

But Athena’s jumpiness, Phoenix thinks, is reaching a worrisome pitch. Even Trucy has noticed her odd behavior, though she hasn’t said anything. So Phoenix resolved last night to bring it up again before the end of today, and when Trucy announces she’s going to the corner store a block away to pick up a snack, he knows he has the perfect opportunity.

But Athena beats him to the punch.

“Boss!” Athena says a little too loudly, appearing in his office doorway the moment Trucy leaves. “Uh… there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

(What a coincidence. There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, too.)

“Sure, Athena,” he says. “Do you want to sit down?”

She sort of nods and sits in the chair opposite his desk quickly—too quickly. She’s incredibly nervous, more nervous than she’s been these past several days. It touches a nerve in Phoenix, making him feel a little anxious too. His magatama is in his desk, but he can see the faint outline of her red Psyche-Lock hovering near her face.

“I, um.” She stops and takes a breath. The Psyche-Lock quivers; whatever she’s been hiding, Phoenix knows he’s about to learn it. “I—I don’t really know how to start this, so I guess I’ll just come out and say it: I’m pregnant.”

The lock shatters. Phoenix doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he wasn’t expecting that. The confession briefly knocks him breathless, and it takes him a moment to process that, yes, she really did just say that.

(Calm down! Don’t freak out on her. She obviously had a really hard time telling you this, so just—God, say something! You’re just staring now!)

“A-And I’m going to keep it,” she belatedly adds, and it’s enough to shock Phoenix back into speaking.

“Okay,” he says, and he’s surprised by how even his voice is. “May I ask who the father is?”

Phoenix realizes she’s shivering, and his heart aches. She’s terrified—of him, or of her situation, he isn’t sure.

“It’s—Simon,” she manages.

(Prosecutor Blackquill?! They’re—?)

“Does he know?” It takes every ounce of self-control within him, but his voice is still calm.

“Yes. Um.” She shifts slightly in her seat and takes in a cleansing breath. “He’s supportive and everything. He wants to be involved.”

“Okay,” Phoenix repeats. “Well—okay. I’m glad to hear that.” He pauses, collecting his thoughts. “The Agency’ll support you through any decisions you want to make here. You can continue to defend clients for as long as it’s safe for you and the baby, and of course I’ll give you time off work when you need it and—” He realizes he might be getting ahead of himself here. “I mean, if you still want to work here.”

She sniffles, and Phoenix’s heart jumps into his throat.

(Did I say something wrong?!)

“Y-Yeah, I still want to work here.” She covers her face with her hands to hide her tears. “Sorry, I’m not crying because I’m upset. I’m actually really relieved! I was so scared to tell you…”

(Oh! … Oh…)

“Aw, kiddo…” Phoenix starts. He leaves his desk, circles around it, and pulls up an extra chair close to Athena, wrapping a comforting arm around her. “You know you can always talk to me.”

“Yeah,” she sniffles again. She uncovers her face, revealing a small, tear-stained smile. “I guess I was worried over nothing. I think the pregnancy hormones are already getting to me.”

Phoenix tightens his hold.

“We’re gonna get through this, okay?” he says. She nods and wipes her face with her hands. He briefly lets go just to reach for the tissue box on his desk; he keeps it there for his more distressed clients, and occasionally his distressed daughter and distressed junior partners—although, it’s usually Apollo who does the tear-shedding in his office, even if he’s in another country at the moment.

Athena gratefully accepts the tissues.

“Okay,” she says, and she sounds like she really believes him. Phoenix is relieved; somehow, he thinks, he managed to say the right things.

“Does anyone else know?” he asks.

“No. Well—” She hesitates. “Simon said he was going to tell the Chief Prosecutor today. And I was thinking of calling Polly later, too.”

“You don’t have to tell everyone all at once.”

“I know, but I think he’d want to know, and I also just kind of want to talk to him about it.”

He grins at her.

“He’ll probably rush back to the States tonight just to check on you,” he halfway jokes, because he knows there actually is a real possibility that Apollo will hop on the next flight to LA after hearing this kind of news.

Athena laughs.

“Probably.” She grins back.

“Hey everyone!” Athena and Phoenix jolt a little, hearing the unmistakable cheerful pitch of Trucy’s voice, and the sound of a door opening and closing. “I’m back, and I brought Skittles!” She walks into Phoenix’s office, and then her breath catches. “Thena, are you okay?!”

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine now,” Athena says a little shakily, though she’s smiling as she rises to her feet.

Trucy looks doubtful. “Do you… want some Skittles?” she asks, holding out her bag.

Athena laughs again. “No, that’s okay.” She pauses, thinks. “I am hungry though.”

“Well, let’s go get some lunch!” Phoenix says, standing too. But his mind stutters, and he looks thoughtfully at Athena. “Er… maybe not at Eldoon’s though. Maybe something less salty? A little healthier? There’s a sandwich shop not too far from here.”

Trucy gapes at him. “No Eldoon’s? Something healthy? What happened while I was gone?!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll explain on the way,” Athena says, smiling weakly at her.

Trucy hums and pops a Skittle into her mouth. “Well, okay,” she says. “Not that I’m opposed to eating better. It’s just a little unexpected.”

They grab their coats—it’s late November, and it’s getting chilly—and Phoenix shuts off all the lights as they head out the door, carefully and comfortingly placing his hand on the small of Athena’s back as he guides her through.

...

Miles is in the middle of paperwork when there’s a knock on his door. He’s so engrossed in his work that he ignores it at first, but it comes again, and he sighs. The least favorable downside of being Chief Prosecutor is that when he has a visitor, he cannot simply turn them away because he’s working—people need to see him all the time now, and usually with good reason. But if it’s Winston here to complain again about some inane social crime Gavin has committed (Klavier may be charming and generally well-liked around the office, but the Paynes have begrudged his presence for years), then Miles swears he’ll—

“Edgeworth-dono?”

(Oh. It’s Blackquill. That’s much more preferable company.)

“Prosecutor Blackquill. Come in.”

He does, and immediately, Miles can sense tension in Simon’s demeanor. His expression is tight, and his shoulders are drawn taut. Simon’s always been a serious man, but now, there’s something almost—anxious, perhaps?—in the way he’s carrying himself. Miles knows he’s not the best at reading others’ body language, but still, he can tell something’s off.

“I need to disclose a conflict of interest that has recently arisen,” Simon says without preamble.

(Straight to the point, as usual.)

“All right,” Miles nods. He pulls out a blank notepad and clicks his pen once. He’s gotten into the habit of taking notes whenever he meets with others. He’s not a forgetful man, but he carries so many diverse conversations throughout the day that things tend to fall through the cracks if he doesn’t keep a log of it. “Why don’t you sit?”

He does.

“I believe it would no longer be appropriate for me to prosecute cases in which Athena Cykes is the lead defense attorney,” Simon continues bluntly.

Miles hums, holding his pen to the page but not yet writing.

(That’s odd. Blackquill and Ms. Cykes have always had a long and personal history, and neither he nor I have raised concerns about his impartiality in a trial for it. What’s changed?)

“Might I ask why?”

Simon inhales slowly, and there is a barely perceptible tremor in his breath. Miles is honestly surprised he catches it at all, and he draws his eyebrows together, starting to feel a little worried.

“She is with child,” he says. He falters as he clarifies, “My—child.”

The pen doesn’t move. In fact, Miles lets it drop from his hand. He isn’t going to forget this.

“I—I see,” he says. He pauses, takes in a slow, careful breath, and continues, “I’ll ensure you’re not assigned to any cases wherein Ms. Cykes is involved.”

“Thank you.” Simon quickly rises and turns to go. An unfamiliar emotion bubbles up in Miles’s throat, and he feels compelled to speak.

“Simon.”

He stops. Miles never calls him by his first name. He never calls anyone by their first name. He hardly even calls his own husband by his first name, but saying “Blackquill” now seems too impersonal, too cold, and—

(I’m not good at this.)

Miles removes his glasses and retrieves a microfiber cloth neatly tucked within his front breast pocket. He cleans the lenses, then sets them aside. It’s a nervous habit he has, something he does when he needs to buy himself time to speak. Simon is watching him warily from over his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Miles eventually manages.

Some of the tension in Simon’s shoulders visibly relaxes.

“Yes. I—” Simon faces him again. “This may be premature, but I would like to request some time off in April next year. She’ll be due around that time.”

“Of course,” Miles readily agrees. “But it is early now, so we’ll puzzle out the details closer to her delivery.”

Simon breathes something like a sigh. “Thank you again, Edgeworth-dono.”

Miles nods to him, and Simon is able to peacefully depart this time. Once he is gone, Miles picks up his pen a second time, writes the words “Cykes-Blackquill baby due: April” at the top of the blank page, circles it twice, and drops the pen again.

...

Phoenix impressed himself keeping it together as well as he did when Athena told him she was pregnant that afternoon. But after Trucy’s gone to bed, and he and Miles are winding down together in the privacy of their own room that evening, he starts to fall apart.

“She’s so young, Miles,” he says as he paces back and forth between the door and the entrance to the master bathroom. Miles is sitting on the bed, a book in front of him, though he’s most certainly not reading—no, his eyes are looking over the pages, watching his husband drive a ridge into the carpet, but he hasn’t stopped him yet. Phoenix needs to move when he’s thinking.

“20 years old, is it?” Miles asks.

“Barely 20 years old,” Phoenix emphasizes. “She’s a baby herself.”

“Blackquill is older. I believe he’ll be 30 in a month,” he tries reassuringly.

“Yeah, that doesn’t change that she’s 20 though.” Phoenix stops pacing and gathers a fistful of his own hair. “She can’t even legally drink yet!”

“Well. That doesn’t make much of a difference. She shouldn’t be drinking until after April anyway.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“I understand the point.”

Phoenix pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing. He starts to pace again. “I need to make sure the Agency starts picking up a steady stream of paying clients. We can’t keep doing stuff pro bono. She needs a consistent paycheck if she’s going to be raising a child.”

“I don’t think finances are going to be a concern,” Miles says. “Blackquill is involved, and he’s well-off. I know. I sign his paychecks. This is not a case of a single mother who’s going to struggle finding the means for her family’s next meal. And even if it was, you would never let her go without. You would have her over every night for dinner with Trucy and myself. You practically already do.” He pauses. “Although, you really should stop taking so many cases pro bono regardless.”

“Yeah, yeah…” He’s still pacing. Miles has finally had enough.

“Wright.” Phoenix stops, looks at him. Miles sets aside his book on the nightstand. “Come here.”

Phoenix briefly hesitates, but then he climbs into bed and lets Miles gather him into his arms.

“She’s going to be fine. It’s going to be hard, but she will be fine. They both will be,” Miles assures him. “Despite his appearances, Blackquill is an honorable man. He’ll be loyal to her and to their child.”

“I know,” Phoenix quietly agrees. He sighs and rests his face against the crook of Miles’s neck. “I didn’t even know they were together.”

“Neither did I.” He hesitates before adding, “They’ve always been close, but I have the sense their romance might be quite new.”

“Me too. I didn’t ask Athena about it today ‘cause I didn’t want to push, but…” Phoenix closes his eyes. “That’s why I was really conscious about not freaking out in front of her today. If I’m a wreck, then I can’t imagine how she—both of them—must feel, just starting to date and then suddenly winding up pregnant. It’s scary, you know?”

“Terrifying,” Miles agrees. “But, well… I knew someone who was too young, too much of a mess, to be a parent, and they turned out fine. They were single, unemployed, struggling to get by, and now—they’re happily married, nursing a successful career, their daughter having already been accepted to several universities across the U.S. in the first semester of her senior year.”

“Really?” Phoenix lifts his head. “Who—?” Miles stares, and the meaning clicks in Phoenix’s brain. “Aw, geez, Edgeworth.”

Miles smirks and presses his lips against his husband’s temple.

“It’s going to be okay, Phoenix.”

...

Mr. Wright was, well, right. The moment she called Polly and told him, he lost his mind and immediately started looking up flights to Los Angeles.

“Come on, come on! Ugh, stupid, slow Khura’inese Internet!” he curses over the phone.

“I-It’s okay, Polly,” she assures him with a touch of amusement. “You don’t need to come out right now. I’m going to see you next month at Christmas anyway.”

“No, I have to be there,” Apollo insists. “I just need to—agh, get this stupid dinosaur dial-up computer to bring up flight information!” She hears a mumbled string of expletives, and though Athena was serious when she said he didn’t need to see her right then, that they’d be together again at Christmas… she’s touched he’s so concerned and wants to be there for her. Even if she knows this is really more for him and his reassurance than her own.

Eventually, Apollo’s voice becomes clear again. “Look, I’ll call you later, okay? Just as soon as I get my flight information figured out.”

“Okay,” Athena agrees. “I’m only gonna be up for maybe another hour though, all right?”

“All right. Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will. Thank you, Polly. I mean it.”

After hanging up, she leaves the privacy of her bedroom and heads back toward the kitchen, where Simon sits at the counter, a cup of tea in front of him. He looks up upon her arrival.

“Feeling better?” he asks.

“Yeah.” She pulls up a chair next to him. “I think we’re gonna see Apollo here real soon.”

“I’m sure Gavin-dono will be very happy to hear that Justice-dono is making an early trip back to the States.”

Athena smirks knowingly.

“I’m sure he will be,” she says. But then she sighs and drops her head sideways against Simon’s chest. Her hands rise below the counter to feel her stomach. It’s flat now, but it’s weird to think that soon it won’t be, and already that there’s a baby growing inside her—her and Simon’s baby.

Simon threads his hand through her hair, pulls her closer, kisses her forehead. “I love you,” he says gravely. “You do know that, right?”

It’s not the first time he’s said he’s loved her—she heard it from him as a child, platonically, and later, in private, after he was a freed man, again platonically. But this is the first time she’s heard it from him as her lover, as the father of her child.

“I do,” she says. “I love you too.”

His hand drops to her waist, then moves to cover hers—the ones that are placed carefully over her own stomach.

“We’re going to be fine,” he says, and she knows that we includes more than just herself and him.

“I know,” she says. And how could they not be? They have each other, and Mr. Wright and Edgeworth have turned out more supportive than either could have hoped for, and Trucy’s already asked to be the baby’s aunt, and Klavier’s already promised free guitar lessons for “the little fräulein, ja?”, and Apollo’s probably already on a red-eye flight back to Los Angeles.

Yes. They’re going to be fine.

#cykesquill #wrightworth #miles edgeworth #phoenix wright #athena cykes #simon blackquill #apollo justice #klavier gavin #trucy wright #klapollo #fanfiction

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neko-shinigxmi · 5 years

Text

.: We Make the End Our Beginning :.

Ship: Phoenix/Me ;; Trucy & Me (familial) Prompt: It’s Friday, April 19th. Another day working, another day for Phoenix at court. Though the night before was lovely [fic here], the new day promises more struggles than either of them expected...

Notes: I may be a day late, but nothing will stop me from getting. This. Done.

The day started beyond perfect. Phoenix woke up a little earlier than usual to prepare for his case, Rachel slept in another hour, and when it came time to get up, the sun was warm, a gentle breeze was around, and clouds floated through the sky. It was perfection, enough so that they even sat outside while drinking their coffee, people-watching all the while and wondering how the case was going. Phoenix’s cases tended to start around early afternoon... This one no different.

There was still time when Rachel checked their phone, so no rush. Soak up a little more sun, indulge in the sweet coffee they ordered, watch the clouds roll by and pick up light chatter... Wonder what Diego was up to in jail. Hopefully they had the kind of coffee he liked or they’d never hear the end of it.

With that amusing thought, they drank up the last of their cup, tossed it, and headed out for the courthouse.

The walk over was rather quiet, the only sounds aside from the ones the city gave being the tune Rachel couldn’t stop humming. Another song stuck in their head that wouldn’t quite leave... Doomed to repeat the part they remembered best until they listened to the song itself later. Eh, it was fine, though... Things would get worked out eventually.

The courthouse wasn’t far, now. They hurried their steps a little more, not staring at the man who passed them in an equal rush, his head tilted down. Rachel might’ve ignored the man, too- wearing a trench coat is reason enough, but with the collar pulled that high, there was no way they could get a good enough glimpse of his face- but what did make them stop was the spiky, black hair poking out in the back. Tilted down, it make the stubborn hair stick straight up...

“Phoenix?”

Heartache started the second he turned around. He looked lost, on the verge of a breakdown. Eyes were shiny with tears he hadn’t shed yet and with his hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his trench coat, he made for a striking difference for the man they’d come to love so, so dearly. What happened to their cheerful boyfriend?

“Is... Is the case over?” They asked hesitantly, stepping closer. “What happened, babe?” Phoenix didn’t respond, eyes moving all over his partner’s face before a hand left his pocket, grabbing theirs and dragging them with him. Not out here... Okay, but their anxiety was skyrocketing. What couldn’t be said out in the open?

What happened in this case?!

“Fake evidence? How does that even happen?” Rachel was in horrified awe, hands cupped around their mouth. Disbarred. He was getting disbarred for having fake evidence. How?! The prosecutor knew, too...but Phoenix would never!

“I don’t know,” he responded, giving a dry, humorless laugh. He’d sat down at his desk- the last time he may ever do so- and put his head into his hands. This might as well be their last time at the office...and their heart hurt at the thought. “His daughter even gave it to me, I don’t... I don’t understand, either.”

The lights should be on. They should be celebrating with Maya and Pearl... Maybe a few of their other friends, like Gumshoe and Maggey. But the lights were off, the AC quietly rumbling, and it was only them.

It was hard not to cry.

“So, what...what happens now?” Rachel hates how timid their voice sounds. They need to be strong for him, too, right? But now everything’s become uncertain. The future’s a mess and they’ve got to pull together...

Nothing’s pull them away from him since they first gave this relationship a shot. Not bringing a parrot to the witness stand, not any of the odd hijinks that happened along the way... Hell, even Iris was accepted with just as gentle of a hug as Godot/Diego had been. Through it all, things have stayed strong...and that wasn’t going to stop with Phoenix being disbarred.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, fingers sinking through and messing up his hair a little, before sitting up again. “I... I’m lost, honestly. I never thought of what I’d do if I wasn’t a lawyer. That’s...never been something I’ve had to think of. Plus... From now on, there’s somebody else to think of, too.”

“Someone else...?” Rachel’s eyes widened, staring at him. He still only looked at his desk, so they stood up, trying to draw his gaze in their rising panic. “Who- What do you me-?!”

A knock at the door. They paused, looking at Phoenix, then hurried to the door. Opening it, nobody was there...? A sniffle drew their gaze downwards, however, to what appeared to be a young girl in a pink magician’s outfit. So small, so cute...and tears coming from her big, blue eyes.

“I-Is Mr. Phoenix here...?” Wordlessly, Rachel moved out of the way, opening the door wider so this little girl could see him. She gasped, hurrying over and arms opening to hug him. Without hesitation, Phoenix held her, hugging her close before scooping the little girl in his arms, standing from his chair at last. He still looked so lost... Only now, he looked like a lost, single parent.

“My client today...was her father,” he confessed, eyes downcast. “He disappeared... Trucy doesn’t have anyone else, Rachel. I can’t... I want to adopt her. Look after her...from here on out.” He paused, swallowing nervously as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. “...You... You don’t have to join me on this. Not after all that’s happened toda-”

“Phoenix. Phoenix, look at me.” Hesitantly, he did. “I’m not leaving you now or ever. Even after something like this. Okay? If raising Trucy is what you want to do... I’ll help. You don’t have to be alone on this. This...” Rachel stepped closer, a hand on Trucy’s still-shaking back and another on Phoenix’s bicep. “This, right now? It can be the beginning of our family. An odd one, to be sure...but a family. Okay?”

All at once, the stress he was carrying was sighed out in relief, shoulders sagging as he nodded. He obviously thought this could’ve been the end... What a weirdo; they sure weren’t leaving him any time soon. Not even with his badge revoked and a child being adopted!

“Daddy...and Mommy?” Trucy’s voice hesitantly spoke up, peering at her new parents with a hint of uncertainty.

“Mm, Trucy? Do you think you could...call me Renny, instead? I would like that a lot better.” The girl blinked and then nodded...then slowly began to smile wide.

“So... You’re my Renny now?”

“I would like it, if you’d like us.” Trucy looked to Phoenix, then back to Rachel and nodded eagerly, humming her confirmation. Joyful laughter at her temporary boost in mood didn’t brighten up the dark office any, but somehow...made it bearable. Like it wasn’t oppressive anymore, but kind and secretive.

For that was the day Trucy Gramarye become Trucy Wright. She got a new family and Phoenix became a father, just as Rachel became a parent to the wonderful little girl. Wright and Co. Law Offices would suffer for many years yet...but something wonderful still came of it.

And the next morning, when Rachel woke up to see not only her boyfriend, but their adopted daughter between them... It was hard to say if life was worse off giving them such a picturesque scene.

Things would be okay, someday. They all would be okay...but for now?

It was nice to wake up to a new day as a family.

#self ship #self insert #self ship community #self insert community #self shipping #ace attorney self ship #Aki Stories #otp; our love is law #HA HA WE'VE GOT AN OTP TAG NOW #now to just....throw it on all the OTHER relevant things #whoops #anyways pLEASE READ AND REBLOG #THE SUPPORT IS NICE MAN #I'M DOING MY BEST HERE

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magewardensurana · 7 years

Note

For your writing prompts! Ema/Maya, chocolate?

Sorry this took awhile!

Ema knocked on the door to the Wright Anything Agency, but didn’t wait for an answer before she pushed it open. It was business hours, after all.

“Mr Wright?” she said, not looking up from the folder she was absorbed in reading. "I was wondering if you could take a look at - Oh.“ She stopped when she did look up, and saw that the person in the office was not Phoenix Wright, or his daughter, or Athena Cykes.

“Heya, Ema!” The woman greeted her with a bright smile and a wave.

Maya Fey. It was always a slightly awkward moment running into a highly attractive old friend. Even more awkward when the last few interactions had involved murders, arrests, testimonies and cross examinations.

“Maya, hello. I wasn’t expecting -” The folder got transferred to under her right arm and her left hand automatically went for the bag of snackadoos. "Have you been in LA long?“ That seemed like a safe topic choose.

“Just a few days. Probably be here a few more. With Trucy in her senior year and Apollo in Khura'in, Nick’s a little short staffed. So I said I’d help out for a bit.”

“What about Miss Cykes?” Ema’s mind had gone blank of anything except the most inane of small talk. She suddenly wished she had a crime scene to examine (not that she wanted the Agency to be the scene of yet another crime. It was more a desire for a general crime scene) or a testimony to give. Forensics would give her something to talk about, and distract her from the fact that she hadn’t washed her hair in several days and her lab coat still had that stain on it from last week.

“Thena’s running way more trials now, and Nick’s taking the whole mentor thing really seriously.” Maya grinned, “Doesn’t really like me reminding him of the days when he couldn’t get through one trial without yelling for Sis to help. So, it’s time for the real head of Wright and Co. to take her rightful place in the office again.”

Ema untucked the folder from under her arm. "I’ll just leave this here, then,“ she said, slipping the folder on the desk. "If you could ask Mr Wright to look at it. It’s not important, just something I thought he’d find interesting.”

She turned to go.

“Ema, wait.” Maya was leaning over her desk, her hand on Ema’s arm. "It’s been ages since we spoke properly. And arrests and cross examinations don’t count as a proper reunion.“

Ema blushed, and Maya sighed. "Is that why you’re acting so weird? Look, if I held a grudge against everyone who accused me of murder or testified against me I’d have no friends except Nick.”

Ema managed to smile in return.

“I am sorry about that. I could’ve got you and Mr Wright killed.”

“It’s no problem. Happens all the time. Come on, I was about to make hot chocolate.”

The kitchen at the Wright Anything Agency was still well stocked despite the fact that the Wrights no longer lived there. Maya found milk and a saucepan, measured out the milk and put it on the stove to boil.

“Milk?” Ema asked, surprised.

“Yeah. What else would I use? Water?” Maya slipped a glass disk into the pan. She caught sight of Ema’s guilty expression.

“Oh, Ema…”

“What? It’s quick and less work. That efficiency is necessary for the busy working woman.”

“If you want to kill all the taste. Also, that’s coco.”

“What’s the difference? In scientific terms, please.”

“S-scientific, huh?” Maya frowned, thinking.

Ema rolled her eyes. "Look at the basic nature of things, Maya”

They stared at each other for a moment, then Maya shook her head. "This is all sounding way too familiar. Besides, if I used water then I think Sis would channel herself into me and throw it all out.“

It was still strange to hear Maya so casually talk about spirit channelling, despite everything Ema knew of the Feys and had seen in Khura'in.

“Do you speak to your sister often?”

“Not as much as I used to,” Maya replied, rummaging through the cupboard to find the chocolate flakes. "We spoke loads before I went to Khura'in, though.“

"How… exactly do you talk?”

“Is this your scientific curiosity?” Maya asked, a tub of chocolate flakes in her hand. She added a generous amount to each mug and stirred in some cold milk. "And it’s not that difficult. Either we write notes to each other, or Pearly channels Sis and we talk face to face.“

Ema considered this. Scientifically she knew spirit channelling was impossible, but empirical evidence said otherwise.

"It must be nice,” was what she managed. She thought about her own parents, a man and a woman she barely remembered, and wondered what it would be like to see them again.

“I guess. We haven’t talked since I turned twenty seven. It just -” Maya shrugged, and stirred the milk and chocolate flake mixture again. Ema tried to think of a way to change the subject.

“Did you know I didn’t actually realise our sisters were dating?"

Maya laughed. "Yeah, I know. Sis and I had a bet going on how long it would take for you to realise.”

“I was pretty focused on my school work.”

“Emaaaaa. They were living together. In your house.”

There was a rattling of the glass dish as the milk came to the boil. Maya poured the milk into the mugs and added a whipped cream and a sprinkling of marshmallows to each. "Ta-da! Maya’s Super Special Hot Chocolate!“

"It shall be drunk,” Ema replied, reaching up to adjust her glasses, “In the name of science. You proposed the hypothesis that this is superior to water-made hot chocolate. I intend to test this. Scientifically.”

“I intend to drink it ‘cause it’s delicious. Later I’ll probably test the hypnosis that whipped cream straight from the can to my mouth is just as good as adding it to food.”

The mental image of Maya Fey and whipped cream caused a small and sudden coughing fit from Ema.

“You okay, Ema?”

“I’m… fine.” Ema replied, running through the periodic table in her head to refocus her thoughts. "Let’s go drink, shall we?“

They took their drinks over to the office’s couch, Maya curling up on her seat with the comfortable familiarity of someone who had thought of the place as a home for a long time. Ema studied her over the top of her mug. They’d known each other a long time, but then lost touch after Lana ended things with Mia. Despite their mutual defence lawyer friend they hadn’t properly reconnected until just a few months ago. And now they were drinking hot chocolate and talking like the years of separation had never happened.

Romance was not Ema’s strong suit. In wasn’t that she lacked experience in the field. More that her usual approach was impossible. Dating wasn’t something that could be treated scientifically. What worked with one person wasn’t guaranteed to work with another. Each partner required a whole new set of formulae. Klavier hadn’t been Kay, and Maya wasn’t Klavier (which she was very grateful for since being interested in one Klavier Gavin had been bad enough), so there was no reference to draw on. No way of telling if her interest was requited.

"Did you know,” Maya said, breaking the silence. "Meeting your sister really helped me.“

"Oh?”

“I’d only ever really had Sis to compare myself to. So I figured there was something wrong with me ‘cause I didn’t like guys. Kurain is really, really straight and Sis liked girls, buuuuuuuut she also liked guys. So it wasn’t until I met Lana that I realised it could be a thing.” Ema didn’t realise she’d been staring at Maya until the other woman blushed, then pouted.

“Shit. You did know I’m gay, right?”

“A little hard to miss,” Ema replied, wryly. "We were mutuals on tumblr, remember? You url was mayagay and your description was ‘I’m a lesbian and I like Steel Samurai’.“

"Still is. And it’s still true. So, what was with all the staring, then?”

“It’s just - I went through the exact same thing. Growing up my only frame of reference was a lot of heterosexual people and Lana. So I thought attraction was an either/or deal, and that I was an outlier. Then I met Mia, and adjusted my theory to fit the new information.”

“Y'know, a quick Google search would’ve given us the same answers.”

“True.”

Maya raised her mug in a toast. "Here’s to being a couple of really weird kids.“

Very carefully, so she didn’t dislodge any of the marshmallows or whipped cream, Ema accepted the toast.

#ace attorney #maya fey #ema skye #emamaya #bluuuuuuurgh #it's bad sorry #surana writes

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kiora006 · 7 years

Text

A Delayed Tag Meme

Tagged by @their-destinys-writer [Better late than never]

Rules: Answer 20 questions and tag 20 followers you would like to get to know better [I dunno 20 peeps so I’ll wing it I guess]

Name: Kimberly

Nickname: Kim, Nicky, Kimby, Kimmy, make your choice or come up with ANOTHER one.

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio [For the sake of this questionnaire]

Height: 5′ ???“ Probably around 2 or 3

Ethnicity: Puerto Rican

Orientation: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [Can Cartoons be an orientation?]

Favorite Fruit(s): Banana’s Apples & Citrus Orange goodness.

Favorite Season: Winter

Favorite Book(s): Started off the Hunger Games until I saw that Prim dies later on and I stopped caring.

Favorite Flower(s): I love seeing them all but never had a favorite.

Favorite Animal(s): Manta rays and Hyenas. [Turtles are there too... maybe some birds... dogs are cool too... I love too many animals...]

Favorite Beverage: FRUIT JUICE!!!

Average Hours of Sleep: Mmmm I go to sleep around 10 to 11... usually up by 9AM...oh my more than 8, and I still wake up sleepy?

Favorite Fictional Characters:

Aqua [Kingdom Hearts],

Lucina [Fire Emblem Awakening]

Musashi [Pokemon]. Top 3 up there^^^ Here’s a few more I recall that I love:

Mikasa [Attack on Titan]

Noire [Fire Emblem Awakening]

Apollo, Athena and Trucy [Ace Attorney]

Tron Bonne & Servbots [MegaMan Legends]

Hsien-Ko [Darkstalkers]

Widowmaker and Mercy [Overwatch]

“Shenzi Marie Predatora Veldetta Jacquelina Hyena”, Banzai & Ed [Lion King]

Nick Wilde [Zootopia]

Among many others. [Included those last 2 to cancel all the animu LeL.]

Number of Blankets You Sleep with: 1 and it must be nicely folded once, I don’t like loose skinny blankets >:c

Dream Trip: France. [I’d usually say Japan but Hayashibara lives there and that’s just a death wish]

Blog Created: Regular Blog: 2011 [Ayyyy como pasa el tiempo...] Drawing Blog: 2015 [Wait....IT’S ABOUT TO BE 2 YEARS OLD THIS YEAR?!]

Number of Followers: Regular blog: 431 [Love you bby’s]

What do I post about: Regular Blog: Life Updates, The freshest and delicious MEEEEEEEEEMES [And cartoon obsessions]

Drawing Blog: The obsessions I reblog on my regular blog LeL

Do I get asks on a regular basis: Not really, I take my time to respond...... a little.... too much.......time....... gotta think well what to respond here on this website..........................

Aesthetic: Underwater

Favourite band/artist: HAYASHIBARA FRIGGIN’ MEGUMI

Fictional characters I’d date: HahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA- Don’t make me choose! WE’LL SEE once I start playing Fire Emblem Fates.

Hogwarts house: Hogwarts sounds like a rather unfortunate combination of words between a hog and a wart.

I’m sure y’all done this before but anyway- I TAG: @estrelarabyss @song-falls7373 @fuckin-rockets @rocketshippingassbutt ANNNDDDDDD well any other that wanna join, you’re more than welcomed, I wanna know ya’ll.

#Tag Meme #Kimtext

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leonawriter · 7 years

Text

Cinderella Stories

Read it on AO3

Fandom: Ace Attorney

Characters: Larry Butz, Original Female Character (Alice), Phoenix Wright, Justine Courtney.

Pairings: Larry/OFC

Summary: He meets her at a book signing, only learning her first name, the fact that she likes Alice in Wonderland, and that she thinks his art is beautiful, and for all he knows (as Nick points out) he’ll never see her after that.

Notes: Set post-AAI2. Canon divergence AU in that Phoenix never loses his badge, but does still end up with Trucy.

...

The first time they met, it was while he was signing his latest masterpiece. Drawing children's books had its good points, given he had - somehow! - been able to find an area that was his, the way lawyering was for Nick and Edgy, but it also meant that most of the people he was selling them to were, well, kids, and although he met so many beautiful, lovely ladies on days like these, it was an inevitable fact of life that they were, nine times out of ten, mothers, or even grandmothers.

So he'd charm them, and he'd be friendly with the kids, the ones who'd pointed at his books and pestered their parents to get them, his books, and life was... well, it was okay.

And then there she was, looking kind of mousy and holding a copy of The Magic Thinking Clock in both hands, clutched tightly against her chest.

He would always remember the way he'd smiled up at her from the table he was sat at. The way his wrist had kind of ached from how many signatures and messages he'd already had to do. The way his mouth was kind of dry from all the talking, even with a half finished plastic cup of water on the table behind him, safely away from the precious books.

"And who am I addressing this one to?"

"Um," she'd said, her cheeks gaining a dusting of a pink blush, "me. It's mine - I, I really like your books. I think they're beautiful. Oh! Allie. I mean, Alice. Like in Alice in Wonderland."

She held the book out to him, and he opened at the title page.

To Alice - A little madness can be found in the best of people, and there's more than a bit in here. Enjoy! Laurice Deauxnim.

She took it back with a duck of her head and moved away, and he couldn't help but stare after her. He had to be reminded by his PR aide that there was someone else in the line, and although he was disappointed that he couldn't just start ambling after her - asking which bits she liked best, how she found her first one, if she liked him -it was hard to feel annoyed for too long when the kids' faces looked up at him in awe, one after the other.

See, he felt like it was all saying, I can do this. I can hold down a job. And I can be important.

...

It'd become a habit of his that after a signing, once he'd got back home and had a chance to unwind, he'd take out his sketchbook and open at an unused page, and he'd start to draw from memory some of his favourite faces from the day.

Sometimes, they ended up making their way into his books as completely new characters. The princesses and ladies of The Dress Made For Fighting In that Maya had inspired by reminding him how popular the Pink Princess was, had almost entirely come from the sketches of beauties and the many, many excited little girls he'd come across. Sometimes, he remembered the way Maya's face had lit up when he'd given her a free copy (Nick and Edgy would have to pay for theirs - the discount was limited, of course) and he fancied that she liked the way he'd used her as inspiration even better than that other one.

Tonight, as he was half a page in, he already started to notice that one particular person was showing up a lot. Circles became faces, lines where eyes and noses and mouths would be, and again, it was her.

Allie.

...

"I'm in love," he sighs, and it's only completely rational, because she's all that he's been able to think of in the past week. "She's the one, Nick. She's my Cinderella. But I didn't even get her shoe."

"Stop being melodramatic, Larry. You met her once. At a signing. You're probably never going to see her again."

He stares at Nick for a good long minute or so, eyes widening and starting to water at the realisation that what one of his best friends has just told him is undeniably true.

He's never going to see her again. He only knows her first name.

She might not even live in this state.

Larry groans, and collapses onto the table in front of him, and no, he is not being melodramatic, because his life is over.

"Larry. That's - oh, com on. Up. I swear, dealing with you is harder than dealing with Trucy - at least she tries acting mature."

"My life is over," he says, voice muffled by the table. He's lucky he's waited until they'd finished their food, or he'd have faceplanted into burgers, chips and sauce. "My true love is lost, and I'm being compared to a nine year old."

He can hear Nick groaning above him, and it doesn't help. Doesn't he understand how serious this is? Because it is. Very serious.

"I'm going, Larry."

He instantly sits up, tears still streaming from his eyes.

"You're leaving me! When I need you the most!"

"Well, yes - I need to pick Trucy up from school, remember? And I have a meeting with a client right after that. So I really do have to get going."

He watches as Nick gets up and goes. And then, he stares at the now mostly empty table again. And lets his head fall back onto it in a controlled descent.

...

He sees her again when he goes to get coffee down at Gourd Lake two weeks later, and he thinks - after he's done with being giddy with the fact that he's met her again, his life has meaning again - that he's going to be able to tell Nick he was wrong for once.

They start to talk, and of course the first thing he asks is about her, about if she came here often, and what she does for a living - she works in a coffee shop! He could have bumped into her in any of them, and not known it - and then they're talking about him, and how she's sure she'd heard his name before she knew about his books, and he tells her, some parts embarrassment and some parts pride, that he'd been around a bit before finding his calling.

He ends up telling her about having been involved in criminal cases in the past, always by accident, although he leaves out anything to do with Cindy, dancing around the subject of her like an expert, hardly even knowing he was doing it, but unable to avoid certain other facts.

"Wait," she says at one point, "you mean to say you made that?"

He's ready to have to defend himself, because he's had to every other time, even though he can still remember Cindy telling him how amazing it was, that she'd take it with her anywhere-

(and how she had, even when she wouldn't have if she hadn't loved him at least a it)

-but he's hardly opened his mouth before she's talking again.

"I didn't know you were were so creative," she's saying. "A clock like that sounds really ingenious."

And he's encouraged, and the next thing he knows, he's sharing stories about how for a while he made ends meet by playing parts in stage productions, which inevitably included how he'd once helped save Edgy's butt in one of his cases, and they're both laughing, but god help him - when she laughs, it's like the whole world lights up.

...

He starts sketching out ideas at her coffee shop. Or rather, the coffee shop she works at, because it's not like she owns it, but to him, she might as well.

He'll there for hours, in one of their plush chairs, pad and pencils out and watching her as she works, and sketching ideas for his next book, and sketching her.

It's not even as though they can complain, since he buys coffee and a muffin every so often, and she doesn't mind - she comes over and talks to him when she goes on break, and sometimes they go out, usually just on a walk around the block to get away from her workplace and complain about her colleagues out of earshot, sometimes to the park, where it's away from the bustle of the city a bit, and away from angry and outright weird customers.

...

He introduces her to Nick one day when she's finished her shift, and they're walking down a familiar road as they're talking about ideas for his next book, and he realises that they aren't that far away from where his office is.

Allie is excited to meet another third of his trio of friends, though part of him is nervous about the idea - the last few times Nick has been involved with any of his girlfriends, or potential girlfriends, things have gone badly. Bad with a capital B.

When he knocks and then lets himself in, he's kind of surprised to find someone else in there that he recognises.

"Wow, Nick! I didn't know you and Justine knew each other already!"

The judge rises from the couch, with Nick not far behind her, and Larry can already see him wondering who Allie is.

"Miles introduced us," Justine says with a serene smile. "When he understood that I might be able to give Phoenix here some unique insight into the world of being a single parent. Although, there are still many things that both of us are still learning."

When she's gone, Nick turns back to the both of them, though Larry has to admit, it's weird without Maya making as much noise as she always did around the place. It's quiet. And doesn't smell nearly as much of burgers or salty noodles.

"I'm guessing this isn't a client," Nick says dryly.

"Nope! Allie, meet Nick! Nick, this is Allie, my girlfriend!"

Allie holds her hand out shyly, and Nick - glancing at him before he turns his attention back onto her, like he's confused why she's with him or something - takes it and shakes.

A few minutes later, and they're sat on the couches, talking. Nick's surprised when Allie mentions where she works, probably used to Larry singing the praises of model after model, but then he also mentions offhand how he'd not really gone to coffee shops much since he was usually being dragged around by Maya. Then they're all talking about what they'd end up doing if they weren't in what they were doing - Allie started that one, by saying how she'd never really seen herself as ending up waiting tables all the time - and they ended up telling Nick's story of how he'd started out in the arts department but switched to law, and halfway through that she reveals that she'd wanted to design stage costumes at one point, which reminds him and Nick of their time in the drama club, putting on performances.

"She seems like a nice girl," Nick says, a few days later. "I don't know how you convinced her you're all she thinks you are, but-"

"Convinced?! She came up with all that on her own! Before we even met, remember?"

"I'm just saying. I hope things actually work out for once, Larry."

He's taken aback for a moment, because in all seriousness, he hadn't really expected that. So he gives Nick a grin, and scratches at the back of his head, looking away.

"Haha... yeah. Me too, y'know?"

...

She catches him sketching during work again, and asks him what he's working on.

"It's my version of Cinderella," he says, tongue stuck out as his pencils work on making the lines and colours on the page match what he can see in his mind, like Elise Deauxnim - Maya's mom, he remembers soberly, Misty Fey, but he remembers her as Elise - taught him. There's love in those lines. "I'm thinking that might be my next book."

Allie peers down over his shoulder to take a closer look, and she gasps, lightly, making him pause, because he loves it when he can surprise her with things, and what makes it even better is that he doesn't even have to pay for that little sound she made.

"It's beautiful," she says. "But - isn't that-? Is that me?"

The princess in his picture is in her ballgown, running down the stairs, a copy of Alice in Wonderland in her arms and one glass slipper left behind. He'd worked hard to get her skin to match properly with Allie's warm brown tones, and the hair to have the right amount of frizz.

"I based it off one of the designs you showed me the other day," he says happily, basking in the way she was still staring at his mostly finished picture, letting his over-long sleeve flop from side to side. "You know, the one you came up with!"

...

A few months later, he takes a new book from a little girl, staring up at him with wide eyes, and opens it up to the title page to sign - and as he does so, he flicks past the dedication, and smiles even wider.

For Allie, it read, who everyone agrees is my very own Cinderella.

#ace attorney #larry butz #Leona fic #Larry Butz appreciation

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

Text

Witches, Chapter 7: the actual end of the case.

And goin’ off the rails into a crisis of morality and questions of justice, as you do. Wait, that’s not supposed to happen this early in this game, is it?

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

“That was a hell and a half of a case,” Phoenix says. He shows up in the lobby as Apollo and Athena attempt to reassure Mayor Tenma that most likely, his unpopularity as mayor won’t affect his popularity as the Amazing Nine-Tails, and rather his popularity as the latter will bolster him as the former, especially now that he is no longer attempting the merger. “And that’s a hell of a mask there, Mr Tenma.” He raises his eyebrows. Apollo gets the feeling he’s trying to communicate something more, something he can’t possibly guess at.

“It is,” the mayor agrees curtly. “One of the rare few to indeed be magic.” His voice drops and his eyes dart around, glancing behind Phoenix, making even his unchanged ramrod posture so much shiftier. “Though I should hope word does not get out. Our daughters would be distraught to learn how few spirits are involved.”

“My lips are sealed,” Phoenix says, slowly turning his head to Apollo and Athena in turn.

“Don’t break kayfabe,” Athena says seriously. “Lie our butts off, got it!”

“You don’t have to lie,” Phoenix says. “It’s not like you can lie, not to Trucy. You just have to not tell the truth.”

Athena considers this, her expression equally solemn and confused. Apollo hears the question: there’s a difference? And there is, to lawyers and fae and fae lawyers, a whole realm of difference, and it’s there that they work, in the gray, in the twilight. Apollo would like to stop slipping through the cracks and ending up there.

“Mayor Tenma?” he asks. Since trial’s end, another question, besides the matter of why the hell L’Belle thought that a more complex coverup was better, has bubbled up to the forefront. “Can I ask you how you got that mask? You’re not from Nine-Tails Vale, and it seems like something incredibly powerful and dangerous to just be lying around.”

Phoenix attempts to communicate something with his eyebrows, to Apollo this time, but he isn’t alarmed, isn’t making a frantic stop this line of inquiry motion, so whatever it is can wait. “Indeed,” Mayor Tenma says. “I admit, the circumstances of my coming across it were very strange. I had come to Nine-Tails Vale the first after receiving the threat against Jinxie, to propose the merger to Alderman Kyubi, and on my way from the manor so pondered what I could do to fight against the situation. The thought had occurred to me, of course, of our masked wrestlers, and that I could hide myself in that scene - and no more had I thought so than before me appeared, amidst the flowers, the mask of the Nine-Tails.”

“You don’t mean it was within a ring of flowers, do you?” Phoenix asks warily. Apollo realizes, in that moment, that he never mentioned to him that he fell into a faery ring when he found the mitamah in the woods last year.

The mayor’s face is like stone. He’s tall enough to stare Phoenix down, literally, though Phoenix doesn’t blink either. “My daughter’s life was threatened, Mr Wright,” he says. “Would you not take such a risk for her safety?”

“Papa!” Jinxie cries, bursting into the lobby, and the mayor moves to meet her. He leaves Apollo watching Phoenix, to see his lips move, soundlessly. An objection? An agreement? The correction that Phoenix wouldn’t have to take up strange masks distributed by unknown fae because he’s on a name-basis with some already? Jinxie takes the mask from her father and in awe, hugs it to her chest.

“Yes, there was much risk to accept what I was offered,” Tenma continues. “But I felt there was little other option, and the Nine-Tailed Fox has been called the protector of the Vale for generations. I hoped, as it was, that it was well-meant, to help me help the village. And is has been.”

“Mon Dieu,” Athena breathes. “That’s really cool!” Phoenix’s head snaps around to stare at her. They’re going to go from her not believing in yokai to trying to make a deal with one in three days. “But that’s also dangerous when someone else gets their hands on it,” she adds. “Like if L’Belle had done more than just disguise himself.”

“I doubt he could,” Tenma says. “I believe I understand something of the Fox’s mind, sharing its power - and while the body may take the same shape no matter who is beneath the mask, the real power is held in the tails, which are granted should the Fox think your cause is righteous.”

“I thought that was strange,” Jinxie says, from under her father’s arm. “That when I thought I was talking to you, I noticed you didn’t have your tails. But that was because it was Mr L’Belle instead and he wanted what was worst for the town.”

Tenma nods. “Yes; even in my dazed state I too thought it strange to look upon my guise lacking its tails.”

Something about this doesn’t seem quite right, but Phoenix is nodding, saying, “That’s somewhat reassuring,” and then the mayor is saying that he and Jinxie should be going, it has been a very long few days for them both, and, Mr Wright, say hi to Trucy for me! Jinxie adds, and he laughs and assures her that he will, and that he’s sure she’ll be coming up to check in on them - and he freezes, his smile twitching and then faltering, and Apollo is frozen.

“Wait,” Apollo says. “Mr Tenma - about the tails. If the Fox’s mask only gives the tails to people it decides are, are good or righteous or whatever, then—”

“Prosecutor Blackquill,” Phoenix says, his hand combed halfway through his hair in frustration and then stopped.

“When he took the mask and proved our point for us, he had tails,” Apollo adds. He didn’t count them to know if there were nine, or if he’d just been granted something halfway. It didn’t matter then. “But he’s…” A convicted murderer, an underhanded manipulator, with an attack hawk and a cruel chuckle and the ability to literally twist what people see. Nothing to draw a guardian yokai, especially not when he was trying to get the Fox’s chosen vessel convicted of murder.

“Indeed,” Tenma says. “A samurai, certainly, but a murderer as well. I agree that I cannot imagine what our protector spirit should find in him - but I must trust that there is something.”

“Even the nicest fae can have morals that are a little—” Phoenix folds his arms and struggles for a word. “Squidgy,” he decides at last, and Apollo snorts. All that thought for that end. “Or perhaps it just wanted to prove that yes, this is how the mask works, in the flashiest way possible, for your sake. I wouldn’t dwell on it much.”

The corners of his eyes light up red. Apollo starts - going so long in trial without seeing any flashes almost made him forget - and Athena shoots him a puzzled glance. Phoenix is going to be dwelling on it, and from the looks of it, Athena too. She taps her toe on the floor as they watch the Tenmas leave. “Figuring magic out is just a lot of guesswork, huh?” she asks softly.

“You got that right,” Phoenix says. “And it’s funny, because from all I’m told, it takes a lot of confidence in it to properly cast anything.” The tension in his face slackens; the lines on his forehead disappear and he relaxes his jaw. “Good work, both of you, by the way. Between the actual case and the prosecution, that’s a rough one. Ready to head out of here?”

They have barely left the defendant’s lobby for the hall when a voice hisses from behind Apollo, “Psst! Ey! Mr Demon Lawyer!”

He stops and spots Filch pressed up by a potted plant, just outside the lobby doors. “Er,” Apollo says. Athena turns around, nothing too quiet to escape her notice, and Phoenix sees her hesitate. His eyes follow to Filch and blink blue for the briefest fraction of a second. “What do you—”

“Gotta get something off my chest,” Filch says. “To - uh - to all ya three demon lawyer folk, I suppose.”

“What is your definition of ‘demon’ that all three of us fit it?” Athena asks. “People with cool hair? Lawyers, generally?”

“You’re already dealing with a couple counts of perjury, Mr Filch,” Phoenix says. Apollo thinks of this as his poker voice - faked kindness, faked ease, and a glacial weight behind it. It’s the voice he uses when he’s trying to shrug his way out of a serious conversation, when he was trying to pretend that he was nothing more than the unshaven mess in a hoodie he presented himself as. As he is now, in a suit, in a courthouse, that voice is a threat, unequivocally, the words set aside. “I hope for your sake this won’t be a continuation of that theme.”

“Ah heh.” Filch forces a laugh, unconvincingly. He runs into the wall when he tries to take another step back away from Phoenix. “It ain’t - ‘course it ain’t. See, I didn’t say nothing that was uh, perjury-ous. You said it, and I just didn’t exactly correct the bit you had wrong.”

There have been other cases that, even when it was over, in his client’s favor, Apollo has still wanted to throw up. That says more about those other cases, how bad they were (a droplet of blood, or was it just paint, on the card; the echo of Kristoph’s laugh), and much less to say anything happening now is good or normal or the end Apollo wants or expects to a case. The verdict came down. The client walks free. It’s supposed to be over. Apollo’s voice croaks. “What—” He coughs to clear it. “What did I have wrong?”

Oh, god; what did he have wrong? How many dominoes fell after it?

“Oh, fuck!” Widget exclaims, and Athena doesn’t even try to belatedly muffle or apologize for it.

Filch’s grin, wide and awkward, stays plastered to his face, like he either can’t read the room or thinks that it’s going to get even worse if he ends his pained attempt at friendliness. “Well, see, the verdict ain’t wrong - shoulda figured out myself that L’Belle wasn’t offering to cover my alibi for my sake, he wanted me to lie for him - he absolutely did it, no question there - I wouldn’t even have a motive, y’see, I worked in that manor all the time and wouldn’t need to kill anyone to get in to the treasure, if Grandpappy hadn’t already—”

“Can you get to the point?” Apollo snaps. “No one’s accusing you of murder, even if you’re making yourself way more suspicious!”

“Sorry, sorry sorry!” Filch claps his hands together and bows awkwardly. Phoenix’s eyes have narrowed further and he comes to stand next to Apollo, saying nothing, just glaring. Is Apollo not intimidating enough on his own? He was the first one Filch called a demon. “Thing is, yeah, woulda made a lotta sense to chuck the costume out the window before the security cam; woulda done that myself if I’d still had the costume when I got back there.”

“If?” Apollo repeats. The word gives him some sense of where this leads, and nothing on that path makes him less want to vomit.

“Vent got pretty tight and hot in such a big ol’ costume,” Filch continues. “And it felt like it was getting smaller as it went. I couldn’t fit my whole costumed self, so I kinda just kicked my way outta it and left it there in the vent and kept going ‘till I got in the chamber.”

“You said you didn’t know what happened to the costume!” Apollo tries not to yell. He really, really tries. Phoenix winces and leans away, and behind him Athena’s footsteps scrabble across the floor as she too puts some distance in between her ears and Apollo��s vocal chords.

“I sure did, didn’t I? Heh.” Filch’s cloying grin is wearing on the patience that Apollo no longer has. “Was gettin’ kinda afraid up there, didn’t know what you were gonna say next--”

“So you decided to become a more suspicious and uncooperative witness!”

Even Filch winces at Apollo’s volume, that time.

“Mr Filch,” Phoenix says dryly, having dropped the false levity of his poker voice, “I hope you’ve never once in your life wondered why tanuki have the folkloric reputation that they do, when you can find the answer in a damn mirror.”

“That’s the other thing!” Filch says. “For ditching the costume! Easier to get through the vents on four paws, y’know?”

Phoenix snorts. Apollo stares. “Wait,” he says. “Mr Filch isn’t actually—”

“Apollo, you had the magatama,” Phoenix says. “That’s what it was for.” In spite of the words, he doesn’t sound frustrated. Maybe just a little confused. Apollo still feels the need to defend himself.

“There wasn’t exactly much opportunity to subtly take a look,” he protests. Was there? There probably had been, and he was just occupied with too much else. “And then L’Belle did notice and chewed us out for being superstitious yokels or whatever!” He stares back at Filch. A shapeshifter. An actual goddamn shapeshifter. Apollo could scream.

“Grandpappy was, too,” Filch says cheerily. “He had it better figured out than me, though; he could turn anytime, but me, only if I’m real stressed out, like the thought of gettin’ stuck in air ducts, y’know? Or uh - yer all kinda lookin’ a bit scary, yourselves, now.”

“If you try and run I am going to step on your tail,” Phoenix says.

“Wouldn’t dream of it!” Filch says, and his hands toying with his scarf blink red. Clearly he at least considered it. “Just wanna prove myself, y’know? On Grandpappy’s honor!”

His honor as a thief, but Apollo blinks and in front of them, peering up with small round eyes out of a distinctively-patterned face, disheveled brown fur all over, stands an actual raccoon dog. It looks nothing like those yokai statues by the Fox Chamber doors. Apollo is numb enough to have only that thought. Athena shrieks, and by the time there’s an officer and bailiff running out of the next lobby to investigate, Filch is human, and Athena puts on a grin and assures them that she is fine with a ferocity that makes Apollo proud.

“I was trying to skitter back up the wall to the vent to get out when the chamber door opened,” Filch says. “Turns out, ain’t so good at climbing. Think American raccoons might be better at that, their creepy little hands and all.” He takes in their expressions, Athena’s dropped back to intense concentration, Phoenix’s never so much as twitching. “So I went skittering out into the Fox Chamber and hid there for a bit ‘till I knew I could get out without anyone seeing, ‘cept maybe that lil maid girl got a glimpse. ‘Cause villagers might keep quiet about Tenma Taro, but tanuki don’t get such respect.”

“But—” This is all just a distraction from the main issue, the one that reared its head minutes before and that Apollo hasn’t asked because there’s so much else to be angry with Filch for, too much dragging his attention back and forth and back. “But if your Tenma Taro costume was left in the vents, then who was the Tenma Taro that Jinxie saw? Who left the feathers and the tracks!”

Filch’s eyes dart in both directions. He hunches his shoulders and leans his head forward, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. “You have to ask?” he says. Athena growls in her throat. Filch’s eyes grow wider. “It was Tenma Taro, o‘ course!”

Apollo no longer wants to throw up, but the nausea has turned into a headache pounding at the front of his skull and he hasn’t yet decided which is better. “You said you don’t believe in the village superstitions!” he says. “You said—”

“Shh!” Filch hisses. “I said I didn’t believe all that glop about getting yer soul stolen just for looking. Grandpappy knew his stuff, and he said to me, souls don’t come lose that easy, not unless you’ve already cracked it up and given parts away.” Phoenix shrugs one shoulder, apparent affirmation of that statement. “But Tenma Taro - might not go taking souls if ya talk too loud about him, but you draw his attention instead. And now that he’s out he’ll be listening. Couldn’t say that back in there.” He jerks his head back, toward the courtroom, but smacks it on the wall in the process. “Too many people, y’know? I can talk to you ‘cause you’re demons yourselves, he might not so readily go messing with you.”

Athena clutches the back of her neck, her eyebrows high and eyes wide, turned pleadingly toward Apollo and then Phoenix. Apollo squeezes his eyes closed. “So you went to try and steal the treasure in the Forbidden Chamber,” he says, “even believing there was an actual real life demon trapped in there?”

“Grandpappy always said that he was sealed up tight even if the chamber doors opened, and that was extra extra protection!” Filch says indignantly. He could say anything and none of it would make Apollo believe in the rationale of what he did, though Apollo also willingly went on a trip to set a faery ring on fire. He still works at the Wright Anything Agency, despite everything. Maybe he shouldn’t judge.

(No, he’s still judging.)

“But,” Athena says weakly. “But, if that’s all true, then - then Tenma Taro escaped! If what Jinxie saw - if the feathers and the footprints - then there’s an evil yokai loose in the village now! Doing - evil things! We have to do something! Mr Filch, you have to tell Mayor Tenma! He’s the Amazing Nine-Tails! He can wrestle Tenma Taro back into its prison!”

Filch didn’t explicitly confirm that was what he did. He didn’t deny it, either, just let Apollo keep going and them all assume - because in the end, he was still too afraid of Tenma Taro to testify truthfully. He would rather lie and blame Jinxie, and then place himself on the scene of the murder, causing murder-unrelated trouble, than speak to its presence in front of everyone. And on that supposition, that Filch was agreeing and not dodging, Apollo kept going. Built the rest of his case on a fact fundamentally untrue.

(The last person who did that to him, he punched in the face. The last person who did that to him is standing right next to him.)

“Not sure Mr Mayor is gonna wanna hear from me after all the trouble I caused him and his daughter,” Filch says. Is shaming him in silence better, or should Apollo start screaming? He deliberates this, and while he is, the silence works well enough. “‘Course, yokai running loose in town is even more trouble. Least it’s just him and you and I don’t have to tell that scary witch on prosecution.”

Apollo believes coincidences happen. He runs into them often enough, always to make his cases so much more nightmarishly complicated. Or maybe he’s cursed, or the Agency is, with bad luck, but that’s still luck, still just random. The point is, he believes in inherent randomness of the universe, and this is not. It can’t be.

Because immediately after Filch merely alludes to Blackquill, Taka swoops, talons outstretched, straight for him. The hallway ceiling doesn’t rise nearly so high as the courtroom, or even the lobbies, and Apollo can’t tell where the hawk came from or how it built up its momentum. Shouldn’t they have heard it flapping around above them, waiting for its chance to strike? Birds can be smart, sure, and maybe Apollo could believe that Blackquill had trained his to attack on cue and deliver him evidence. But to recognize when he’s being spoken about, not even by name?

(Vongole, doing as Klavier wants without a word. The crows that spent a week flocking around Apollo. Fae or otherwise magic. Add another animal to the list.)

“Yipes!” Filch swats back at Taka with his hat, and when it circles back up to prepare a second attack, Filch bolts, not for the stairs, but for the window at the end of the hall cracked open maybe an inch. As he runs he suddenly isn’t Filch anymore, but again a tanuki, streaking along on four paws and bounding up onto the bench beneath the window. In another smooth movement he leaps up against the window, opening it far enough to slip through, fluffy tail the last thing out of sight. Two paws briefly reappear to kick against the window and slam it shut again.

Taka reaches the sill moments too late, alternating between jabbing at the glass with its beak and turning its vivid yellow eyes on the three of them still clustered where they found Filch. After several rounds of this, it takes to the air, flying just high enough to do a pass straight over Athena’s head. She yelps and throws her arms up over her head, but Taka simply lands on her arm to pluck at her hair. It does this several times while she remains paralyzed with fear, before it rustles its feathers in a motion that looks annoyed and lifts off to grab the end of her ponytail and tug it back in the direction of the window.

“No!” she shrieks, snatching at her hair and succeeding at pulling it away. “I’m not letting you go out there and eat Mr Filch!”

It stares her down from its perch on the bench for several more seconds, but she wins the staring contest and it swoops down the stairs and out of sight below.

Voices drift out of other lobbies and up the stairs, but none of them matter. They can’t break into the silence that has draped itself over them. Athena is the first to speak again, but her words just pull the shroud tighter. “If - if Mr Filch lied - and our whole case was based on that - then the verdict - then everything - then everything is wrong!” She turns around with heavy stomps; Widget glows furious red at her neck. “It was supposed to be a simple end! Our client’s innocent, the truth comes out, and the bad guy goes away! It’s not supposed to be based on a lie!”

“We didn’t press Filch hard enough,” Apollo says. “We should have made sure that we were - that I was - on the right track. At the right end.”

“L’Belle confessed! But false and coerced confessions are a thing! The mayor nearly falsely confessed!” Athena digs her hands into the hair at the sides of her head, pulling strands loose from her ponytail. “This isn’t right! This is—!”

“Hey,” Phoenix says sharply. “Woah, okay, take a breath, kiddo. Both of you. I’m lodging an objection, right now. I wouldn’t call your entire case based on a lie.”

Of course you wouldn’t, you lying, hypocritical—

“But it was wrong!” Athena cries. “It’s all wrong!”

“Not all,” Phoenix says. “Here, c’mon, let’s get out of here and we’ll talk.”

Athena’s anger slumps out of her in an instant. “Alright, Boss,” she says. They trail out of the courthouse after him, back out to the bustling city street and the noise that muffles all of their conversation. Maybe Phoenix did that on purpose. Maybe he didn’t want any court staff hearing them discuss bungling their own case. Athena flings herself onto the nearest bench. Widget has turned a sad blue color. Apollo sinks down next to her and Phoenix, shaking his head, assesses them both sadly.

“Your whole case, really?” he asks. He still doesn’t sit. He would have been sitting the entire time in the gallery while they stood behind the bench. He probably relishes the chance to stretch his legs now. “If I recall, the matter of what left the feathers was the problem of whether Jinxie was an accomplice or not. And that was a side matter, wasn’t it?”

“But we couldn’t address the entire case without dealing with that!” Athena protests.

Phoenix holds up a finger. “Because Prosecutor Blackquill wouldn’t let you,” he says. “Because as long as he had that, he had the mayor close to just confessing. You didn’t have room to work because he wouldn’t give it to you. But look at everything else. Imagine, for a second, that Tenma Taro, the - shit, the real one, got some friends I gotta give a call to see what we can do about that - never left any of that evidence behind. It’s tangential to the case. It’s important to solve to make sure it isn’t connected to the case, but it was not the crux of your case. It was a stumbling block you had to get through so that Blackquill would allow you to address anything else. He put that there.”

Apollo nods numbly. Athena puts her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. Her nodding isn’t very noticeable. “Yes, it’s absolutely critical to get the truth, fully, confirmed as such, out of the witnesses,” Phoenix continued. “So yes, maybe next time, you hit a little harder to make them say ‘yes, that’s what happened’ and if they’re still lying, then that’s more perjury on their plates. Make it have a consequence. Learn from this here. Do better next time. But—”

“If Filch had said yeah, there really was a monster set loose,” Apollo says, “could - could we even have solved the case at all? I mean, how do we prove that? Would the newspaper even be enough to point to and say that’s it, flying away?”

“It wasn’t yesterday,” Athena says glumly. “We’d have to spend today hunting down the real Tenma Taro and figuring out how to bring it to court.”

Phoenix sighs and combs his hair back. A few strands of it spring forward again, down his forehead. “Usually when I dealt with monsters and magic, they were tied right into the case as witnesses or culprits,” he says. “It’s easier to get your proof. Tenma Taro’s just damn bad luck for you. But if Filch hadn’t lied, then that would be both him and Jinxie corroborating that yes, there was a yokai. And two witnesses and that newspaper, you might have a fighting chance again. And the thing is, the rest of it fits together, doesn’t it? L’Belle’s batshit ploys, the blackmail, the self-incrimination—”

“It’s still wrong!” The wheel turns and Athena, and by extension Widget, cycle into red anger. “The whole truth should be known!”

“And I’m not denying that,” Phoenix replies evenly. “Of course it needs to be. What I’m telling you is that you don’t need to have a crisis about the entire case being false because of that one piece of testimony. You certainly didn’t present false evidence. Everything takes it to this same logical end, the one you reached in court.”

He addresses Athena, not Apollo. He doesn’t look at Apollo. Would it be better or worse if he did? Better or worse to acknowledge that history and hypocrisy? He’s always going to be tainted - he and Apollo both will always know that, and this reassurance he offers Athena casts a long shadow she’s fortunate not to see. She just has to grapple with magic and monsters making cases more complicated than they should have been, muddling the verdicts. It’s wrong to let this go uncorrected, but Apollo’s head hurts at the thought of what Blackquill would do with another chance, and his heart hurts at the thought of putting the mayor and Jinxie back through this because of Filch’s lie and his mistake.

(And he let the ace of spades go by. He took his own personal justice against that wrong and let it stand because everything else made too much sense. Everything else fit together too well. All they lacked was—)

“Except verdicts aren’t made on logical ends and common sense,” Apollo says. “It’s all about the evidence.”

“And you did have the evidence you needed to acquit the mayor and take down L’Belle,” Phoenix says. “It was all there, this time.”

This time. That’s the closest they’ll come to addressing it, that their hands are stained, their morality just slightly too flexible. Do better next time, and this is next time, and here is Apollo again, and what has he done?

(Do better next next time. Even the damned fae make less of a mess of cases. They slide right into the legal system, take their places, and settle there. Yokai trample right over it.)

“And evidence is everything,” Apollo adds dryly. Phoenix winces. He sets his jaw and all the muscles in his neck tense.

“It still matters how we get to the end, even if it’s common sense,” Athena says. “It’s all - it’s all just a mess! This just isn’t how it’s supposed to be! This isn’t how this case ends!”

Except it is, and Apollo sighs, and so does Phoenix. He doesn’t look any more at ease. “Welcome back to LA, kiddo,” he says. “But I am sorry it turned out like this.” He shakes his head. “It’s not your faults.” Except it is, that they’re all doing nothing. The guilt isn’t strong enough to outweigh his impulse that justice has been served. Maybe he’s a hypocrite, too. Maybe he always has been, since he let Phoenix get away with it. Maybe that’s something Phoenix saw in him somehow, too, to pick him. “That you’re scrabbling for evidence and technicalities even if the truth is plain because evidence is everything.”

The bite he puts to the phrase is sharper than Kristoph’s.

“Though it took a while for this truth to become plain,” Athena adds. “To anyone without our eyes and ears.”

They can cut to the truth quicker than anyone. Maybe that’s why Phoenix doesn’t show any remorse about taking justice and a playing card into his own hands. Because he knows. Because he doesn’t trust anyone else not to cheat worse than he does. In his third case as a lawyer, he proved one of the world’s most famous and accomplished prosecutors to be corrupt and a murderer. Two months later he unseated the Chief of Police for the same thing. Apollo’s read his cases. He can guess at what’s made Phoenix into what he is. What broke his faith in the system and sunk him into the wreckage of the men he tore down.

“I wish there was a clean answer to everything, too,” Phoenix says softly. “That it was just as easy as saving people.”

Saving people. Is that it? Apollo wants the truth. He wants an end to this gut-churning discomfort of how easy it is for him to slide down that slippery slope in Phoenix’s wake. He thinks there should be a simple answer to this, to say that Phoenix’s bloody ace was unequivocally wrong, that to sit here and let Filch take his lie and run is unequivocally wrong. And maybe it is. Maybe that’s what he’s supposed to say. And he can’t, and he doesn’t know how bad of a person that makes him. He doesn’t know how bad that makes Phoenix, either.

(He thought he did, because he didn’t ponder the fact that he let Phoenix get away with it. And now that he does, maybe the gulf between them isn’t so wide. How wide is the gulf between them and Kristoph if he had just committed forgery and not murder?)

“I haven’t heard much about the Jurist System lately,” Apollo ventures, with his heart in his throat, not knowing how much more he wants to dwell on this but unable to look away from it now. Through the early winter, Phoenix had kept him and Trucy updated on what was, or more often wasn’t, happening with the committee, but it’s been months now. “What’s happening with that?”

He rubs his eyes. “Just about nothing,” he says. It’s the answer Apollo knew was coming, but knowing doesn’t make it hurt less. He knows the problems with their legal system run deep, deeper than anyone really knows, for longer than he’s been alive, and that the addition of juries can’t be a cure-all. But it would help. Anything would help. Anything that takes it out of the sole hands of Apollo and Phoenix and people far worse than them and this.

“I mean, me getting myself into that took enough strings pulled, friends and friends of friends in high positions, and then when I switched the first test case to - to that, even people who trusted the people who trusted me were giving me the side-eye. Like I was using the whole project for personal revenge and didn’t actually care at all about the ‘legal reform’ part. And now that Edgeworth’s Chief Prosecutor, he’s got the whole of California’s worth of legal issues to preside over, too, and even before that we were disagreeing on - well, what to do for things like this, fae and monsters and the like.”

“Maybe a jury would’ve helped for this case,” Athena says. “To see that more than us could agree that it all makes sense, even if the feathers came from anywhere.”

Phoenix smiles sadly. “Even if we had some of the protocols up and running, we wouldn’t have a jury here, not with this prosecutor.”

“He’d manipulate them just like he did the judge,” Apollo says.

“You think?” Phoenix raises an eyebrow, looking down on the two of them. “I think they’d be loathe to believe any word from his mouth, or any evidence he and the police presented, because he’s a convicted criminal and the common sense question there is, ‘who the hell let him prosecute? How are the police all okay with this, too?’”

“How are they?” Apollo asks. He knows who the hell let him prosecute. The Chief Prosecutor, Phoenix’s friend, Edgeworth. And taking justice and morality and legality into his own hands, too. Making it flexible. All of them, in different ways, trapped in this broken system, are to some points breaking within it. Doing better, but not great.

Phoenix shrugs. “I haven’t asked details of what kind of deal he struck for this.”

A deal. That wording feels fae. Like a question of what he had to sell - clean hands, like Phoenix has?

Apollo watches the cars go by. A squirrel skitters up one of the trees along the sidewalk; hopefully Taka is long gone to wherever it should be. “For a positive change in conversation,” Phoenix says, his head tilted back to look at the blue cloudless sky overhead. “You two are probably starving. How’s lunch on me sound? I’ve gotta see Edgeworth later, and then call up some other friends of mine to figure out what we can do about the Tenma Taro situation, but we’ve still got enough time now.”

“Eldoon’s!” Athena cries, springing to her feet. She turns it into a chant, bouncing up and down with the words. “Eldoon’s, Eldoon’s, Eldoon’s! Trucy’s told me all about it and that it’s like, the after-trial thing, and I want to try it!”

Phoenix coughs disbelievingly. “Right, just so - I’m offering to pay, and you’re still going for cheap ramen?”

Be still, Apollo’s heart - Phoenix arguing against the cheapest course of action? He really does like Athena. “Heck yeah!” Athena cheers, and Widget adds, “Abso-lutely!”

Both his eyebrows raised, Phoenix glances at Apollo. His input, actually asked for, and he doesn’t even know anywhere to eat that isn’t some or another sort of cheap ramen. “I wouldn’t mind getting some extra salt, after all this magic stuff,” Apollo says. The more his thoughts return in that direction, Tenma Taro and Blackquill, the more he wants to ingest enough salt that he implodes. It might not be able to protect him from moral quandaries and questions of what is and isn’t just that would make Fulbright proud, but it can do one thing.

Athena punches the air with both hands. “Eldoon’s!”

“I expected to see you immediately after the verdict came down,” Edgeworth says, barely glancing up over his glasses at Phoenix as he shuts the office door behind him. “To gloat about being right about Prosecutor Blackquill, surely.”

“I had to get the kids lunch,” Phoenix says. “They’ve had a hell of a case to deal with, after all.” And a different kind of hell after. “Besides, you already knew I’d be gloating, so I could put it off for a bit.” He grabs a chair and drags it around the side of Edgeworth’s desk.

Edgeworth snorts. “Did Ms Cykes or Mr Justice have anything to say about Prosecutor Blackquill?” he asks, finally setting down his pen and giving his full attention to Phoenix.

“Besides ‘what the hell kind of magic is he?’ and ‘why the hell is he prosecuting?’, put politer than that because they’re both generally politer than me: no, not really.”

“Mm.” And like that, he has turned his gaze back to the papers on his desk. “And do you know what he is?”

“No,” Phoenix admits. Edgeworth’s glasses slide down his face when he jerks his head up. “I can’t figure him out. It’s like he blocks me from figuring him out.”

He pushes his glasses back up on his nose. “Fascinating,” he says. “He’ll be giving you several kinds of challenge. I seem to have thrown you right back into the deep end.”

Phoenix props his elbow on the edge of the desk. He was never out of the deep end; sometimes it was tolerable, with Edgeworth, in Europe, and sometimes he was bleeding in the water sought by a shark. That office smelled like nail polish and chilled him to the bone every day, no matter the season, and Edgeworth might have pretentious decor as well but it’s offset by the Steel Samurai figurine on the shelf and the comfort of someone he can trust. “I hate to ask this, knowing you will continue to gloat,” Edgeworth says finally, slowly, and Phoenix wants to reassure him that if it’s important he would never, but he continues before Phoenix has the chance. “But what can you tell me about” - he sighs and closes his eyes - “the actual Tenma Taro?”

“What?” He would love to gloat that once again, Edgeworth is coming to him for information about magic - but the mere existence of this question from him means that either he suspects that there’s a truth that wasn’t addressed in the trial, or he knows there is. (Taka swoops down as soon as Filch mentions its master. Edgeworth surely had a debrief with the prosecution after his first trial in six and a half years.) “Is this something Blackquill brought up?”

“It is,” Edgeworth says curtly. “A confession, made by one witness who has already perjured himself several times, to your agency.” Phoenix’s mouth is dry. Edgeworth tilts his head to the side and asks quietly, “Were you planning on bringing that up to me?”

And he wants to ask Edgeworth if Blackquill told him how he found out, and he doesn’t because he knows that’s immaterial to the fact that Edgeworth does know now and what’s now important is Edgeworth waiting for an answer with narrowed, tired eyes. “C’mon, you know me, Edgeworth,” Phoenix says, forcing a laugh to make it seem like he’s just saying that and not dodging answering. And his answer could mean anything, because Edgeworth knows him, the good and the bad, and the way his face darkens further, he’s thinking of the bad. And so is Phoenix, for that matter, because this time last year he was waiting out the weekend in a holding cell with a playing card that he dipped in Zak Gramarye’s blood.

“Prosecutor Blackquill asked if this matter could be investigated further, to which I agreed,” Edgeworth says curtly. Phoenix’s hope that he might be allowed to stick around today after they’re done talking business withers and dies. “He did not ask for a full retrial, which I am sure your subordinates will be relieved to hear. He - somewhat reluctantly, because the man truly does seem to enjoy being difficult - concurred that it’s unlikely that Damian Tenma would receive a different verdict even with this information - though whether Florent L’Belle will make it factor into his trial, we will see.”

“I think Athena and Apollo will be more relieved to hear that you agree that information wouldn’t change the trial’s outcome,” Phoenix says. “They were both pretty fucked up at the thought that a miscarriage of justice could occur under their watch.”

Edgeworth frowns. “Had he told the truth, Phineas Filch’s testimony would align with Jinxie Tenma’s, that there was indeed a real, live yokai on scene.” As Phoenix had said to them, but he knows there’s a damn good reason Apollo has to not take any reassurance from him to heart.

“And after that performance with the mask, I suppose even I myself might believe them and accept that as truth and that Ms Tenma was in no way an accomplice.” He folds his hands together in front of his face, his glare still directed straight at Phoenix and only slightly lessened. “But I dislike the possibility as well, and loose ends in general. Mr Filch will face some punishment for perjury; Blackquill will be working on that. What we agreed we would ask from the defense - or I suppose you, in lieu of your junior partners - was to assist in some way accruing proof of Tenma Taro’s existence. If there is anyone who could know what to do to find a” - he pinches the bridge of his nose - “a yokai, it would be you.”

“I was gonna give Maya a call after this meeting and see what she knew,” Phoenix says. “For the sake of the village and the people living there, if nothing else, better to find out if that thing is truly dangerous and put it back in its prison if it is.”

“I have no doubt that it is,” Edgeworth says.

“Is this an official legal matter?” Phoenix plucks a pen from the holder and spins it in his fingers. “Or something you want for the sake of being thorough?”

“I’m Chief Prosecutor,” Edgeworth says. “What I want, I can make an official legal matter.”

That statement has its dark side, as taking justice into their own hands, however well-meant, tends to. Phoenix doesn’t point this out. Edgeworth always knows that well-enough. No good to pick at that wound. Everyone else already is tearing into the Demon Prosecutor for what’s going on with Blackquill. And Phoenix might not have much clue as to what the hell’s going on, there, but he knows where he stands and that’s with Edgeworth.

“And,” Edgeworth adds abruptly, surely thinking the same thing, “if you were going to be hunting down Tenma Taro anyway…”

“Might as well prove it’s real, legally, so that no one can entertain the thought that this verdict was wrong. Makes sense. Apollo and Athena will be glad for that, up until the part where I might have to ask for their help recapturing it.”

Edgeworth snorts. “I don’t envy any part of that task.”

“I don’t envy your amount of paperwork.”

That at least gets the shadow of a smile. “I’m not planning to send you out entirely on your own. I doubt you’ll be able to drag a yokai the entire way back to the courthouse as proof, so I’ll send some people along with you to corroborate whatever you find.”

“Not Fulbright?” Phoenix asks. “I don’t think he has any idea about—”

“Not Fulbright. Not when I have the two usual suspects who will doubtlessly leap at such a task.”

“Oh, no.”

“You haven’t missed careening around Europe with them?” That’s more than the hint of a smile, this time.

“Didn’t say that, but careening is the word there. God knows I can’t keep up.” Edgeworth is glancing back to the papers again. Phoenix takes that as a sign and pushes his chair back. “Right, I can see what Maya has to say on this and let you know and we go from there?” Edgeworth nods. “And I’ll let my kids know that they can take a breath and save the moral crisis for another day that might really deserve it.”

“Hopefully not,” Edgeworth says. “Don’t steal my pen.”

Phoenix drops it back on his desk. He has the door open when Edgeworth stops him. “Wright.”

“Yeah?” He shuts it again.

“We both agree that justice is best served by the prosecution and defense working in tandem to find the entire truth, no matter how complex or unpleasant it turns out to be. Or no matter how much it hurts.” Phoenix doesn’t like the look in his eyes, the one that looks like he’s trying to see down into Phoenix’s heart and soul, when Phoenix knows there’s only black and shriveled emptiness where both should be. “Which means that you tell me things, like when a witness confesses to another count of perjury.”

(Or worse. When you do worse.)

“Yeah,” Phoenix croaks. His mouth is too dry for more than that one hoarse word. It doesn’t matter if Edgeworth isn’t the prosecutor on the case; he’s the chief prosecutor. Everything is under his purview now.

His hand is still on the doorknob and he studies that thoroughly instead of meeting Edgeworth’s eyes again. Fingerprints get left very easily on the shiny metal. It would be easy to tell if someone had been here and wiped the whole thing down to cover their tracks. He takes the loud sigh from the far side of the room as a cue that there’s nothing left to say on this topic, not today.

But he hates to leave like that, either. Swallowing doesn’t make his voice come out less like a dying frog, which doesn’t make his words sound as offhand as they’re supposed to, like they are just offhand and not something he’s saying so they don’t part on that note. “Athena might be emailing you later - over lunch she was talking about wanting to buy a car, but Apollo and I both don’t know anything about that and I told her she could ask you.”

“When I gave her my contact information all those years ago, I presumed it would be for legal matters only.” Some amusement has edged back into his voice.

And Phoenix assumed that he would just be guiding her to the Bar and then she would find somewhere reliable to work, someone reliable to work for. Not him. “Times change, huh?”

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

Text

Chapter 8: flashback!

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

“Wait, how did you even go to Europe on your, erm, ‘piano player’ salary?”

“Edgeworth needed help with cases from time to time - he worked out all the details. I might’ve been technically billed as an Interpol consultant? It drove his sister up the wall. Anyway, so that’s when I met Athena. Pretty simple.”

“It was like it was destiny! And it’s thanks to Mr Wright that I became a lawyer at all!”

“Give yourself plenty of credit. Defense attorney at age eighteen, honestly.”

Phoenix does not know jack or shit about the German language, which makes him more than useless (or is it “less than useless”, or do those two turns of phrase come out to mean the same thing like “flammable” or “inflammable”; Iris was the one whose major involved language, not him, and he’s not about to summon her for a grammar lesson) whenever Edgeworth is dealing with officers and witnesses.

Admittedly, most of them probably have decent English, but they’re trying to maintain the fiction of Phoenix belonging here. (Edgeworth says he belongs here, but while Phoenix trusts Edgeworth more than anyone, he can’t on this matter.) And Phoenix doesn’t like having extra attention drawn to himself, not anymore, not even here across the ocean where only a few people know him from anyone else, and those few trust him that he didn’t present forged evidence. (Or they trust Edgeworth, who trusts him.)

So while Edgeworth is actually getting useful information about the case, Phoenix is left uselessly pacing over the crime scene, and it’s then that he notices, standing on the far side of the Polizei tape, the girl. She might be Trucy’s age, not much more, with red hair half falling out of a ponytail and a broad face with blue eyes that are transfixed, staring unblinking, at the drying blood spilling off of the sidewalk onto the road.

He imagines Trucy, at her age, wandering onto a crime scene and seeing real blood, and that he doesn’t like at all. (Wait until she’s older. Like, fourteen. That’s a good age for starting to investigate murders, right? It’s a year older than Franziska was, but being a better father than Manfred von Karma is a bar so low that it’s in hell, coincidentally with Manfred von Karma.)

“Uh, Guten tag,” he says, sure he’s fucked up that pronunciation as much as something so simple could possibly be mangled. And he doesn’t know why he even tries that much, because it means she responds in German, and he doesn’t know anything else.

Which he admits, but she brightens and says, in unaccented English, “That’s okay! I’m American, actually, but I’m living here now. I think it’s good to learn the language of wherever you are, but it’s harder for adults to learn new languages than kids – there’s a kind of cutoff point where your brain stops absorbing it so easily – so I can’t blame you, really.”

It takes several moments for his brain to even absorb that. Then, finally, faintly, he says, “You shouldn’t be here. It’s a crime scene, you know. Authorized personnel only.”

“And I’m on this side,” she says, indignantly pointing to her feet and then to the tape. Her eyes drift back down toward the blood.

“Yeah,” he says, “but you’re a kid and really don’t need to be looking at this much blood.”

“I’m almost fourteen.” She raises her chin and stares at him like she knows that’s the arbitrary age he picked and is daring him even in his own head to recant on it, though “almost” isn’t actually fourteen. “And besides, I need to get tougher! Like how I’m running and going to the gym and spending time in crowds and talking to strangers.”

Phoenix frowns. She glares at him. “There’s nothing wrong with being squeamish,” Phoenix says. There isn’t a good way to position himself between the girl and the bloodstain but if he keeps talking maybe he’ll distract her. “And if you don’t like crowds and strangers and you’re out here in the city talking to me, maybe you’re already tough enough. You’re going to be running into those more than murder scenes, anyway.”

“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t think that someone could lose that much blood and live. I guess they didn’t.” Her eyes start to drift away from Phoenix’s face but then she snaps them back, leveling a suspicious squint at him. “You meant that. About being tough. People say things like that but don’t always mean it, but I can hear you mean that. Even though you don’t know me.”

It isn’t a question, but Phoenix hears one anyway that he feels compelled to answer. “I have a daughter,” he says. “She’s eleven.”

The red-haired girl nods, satisfied with that. For a moment, anyway. Then she’s back, looping around earlier in the conversation, like she knows how to hit Phoenix’s vulnerabilities after she confessed her own. “What are you doing there?” she asks. “You don’t look like authorized personnel either.”

And he’d even put on a tie and shaved today. Is it his hair? Is it too ridiculous for him to be believable as a professional? “I’m a lawyer,” he says, expecting the next question to be the why don’t you speak German?

She purses her lips and idly taps at the side of her necklace. It’s about the size of a golf ball, with a simple smiling face imposed on a glowing green. “Are you a prosecutor?” she asks.

Blinking at her, he is too surprised to immediately answer. He wouldn’t have known the types of lawyer at her age if not for Edgeworth. Maybe she’s interested in a career in law, already, and that’s why she thinks she can’t be squeamish. “No,” he says. “I’m a defense attorney.”

Was. He was, past tense. He answers in the present like a reflex, because that’s how he can justify himself being here as a consultant, but he’s not been a defense attorney for almost as long as he was a defense attorney, now. He hung a corner of his identity on it, Phoenix Wright, attorney-at-law, and got hung out to dry.

“Oh,” she says. “That explains it, why you sounded so sad when you said you’re a lawyer.”

Had he sounded sad? He didn’t think so. He’d answered without thinking, without time to get sad about the fact that he’s lying when he says “I am”.

“Because it must be really sad to be a defense attorney,” she continues, probably taking his silence for confusion. “Some people think you’re evil and helping criminals, and then you don’t ever win even when the defendant is innocent, because the police trust the prosecutors more and want to get the cases wrapped up as quick as possible because that looks best, so a prosecutor has to be honest and especially honorable to make sure justice is properly served, but a lot of prosecutors are more concerned with win records than being honorable.”

She waits, expectantly, her hands on her hips, for him to say something. It takes much, much longer than it should. “Where did you hear all that?” he finally asks. Somehow, refuting her insistence that the defense always loses doesn’t seem to be the one most pressing matter.

The confidence written on her face and in her pose - not a happy confidence, because she doesn’t seem to like what she’s saying but believes it to be true anyway - vanishes. Her shoulders fall. “My mom’s student was a prosecutor,” she says. “We’d study together, even though it was different things, and he was a lot older than me, but even before he took the Bar he’d tell me all about the legal system - the one back home, back when I still lived in LA.”

“You’re from Los Angeles?” Phoenix asks abruptly. She nods. “I am, as well.”

“Nice!” She raises a hand for a high five and then without missing a beat continues, “He never talked down to me and even if the truth was really heavy he’d always answer any question I had honestly.” Her hand, falling back to her side, freezes in the air. Everything about her freezes for a second. “Almost any.”

If she’s from Los Angeles, with someone in the legal system there, then she might very well know the name Phoenix Wright, and how he was ruined. His stomach turns. He could easily name a few of his high-profile defendants - the ones who weren’t Matt Engarde - as proof that it’s possible to win a Not Guilty, for the price of drawing attention to himself. And he’s really only nitpicking - the concept that she’s saying, that their legal system is rotten to its core, is really true despite Phoenix’s victories. He’s only one man. He was only one. Now he’s nothing at all.

“Oh!” she says suddenly. “I didn’t give you my name! I’m Athena!”

He could’ve stood to introduce himself sooner, if he wasn’t afraid of her or anyone knowing the name Phoenix Wright, and if he hadn’t taken up the fae rule of never offering his name first, which he realized the other day when Edgeworth was introducing him to the rest of their team. Paranoia, always, toward everyone equally. “I’m Nick.”

Athena raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t that super informal?” she asks. “It feels especially so I guess because I’ve been learning German and it’s all figuring out Sie and du and then you’re an American lawyer just like, yeah I’m Nick.”

“It could be ‘Mr Nick’ if you’re feeling formal,” Phoenix says.

She laughs and stops, abruptly, tilting her head to the side. Then she takes a few steps forward until the police tape is being pulled forward with her, trying to lean in across the scene. When she ducks under it entirely, she watches where her feet go, at least but she’s still where she shouldn’t be, stretching forward like a cautious dog sniffing an unfamiliar object, turning her head side to side, positioning one ear and then the other toward where Edgeworth is talking to a witness. “Hey!” Phoenix says. “You’re supposed to be on that side--”

“Shh!” she hisses.

She doesn’t move any more, is just listening intently even though Phoenix can barely pick up Edgeworth’s voice, never mind the words themselves, over the other conversations and the background noise of Frankfurt at large. After another minute during which Phoenix braces himself to be yelled at for not removing this child from the crime scene, she straightens back up and turns, very seriously, to Phoenix. “Who’s that?” she asks. “The man talking to the man in the purple suit?”

Phoenix would be more inclined to describe Edgeworth as red, or maybe burgundy, but there’s no one else who could be even close to purple in the area. “He’s a witness,” Phoenix says. “And the prosecutor.”

She nods. “He looks like a prosecutor,” she says. “Fancy.” She shakes herself, like trying to focus herself again, and says, “The witness is hiding something.”

“What?” Phoenix asks.

“He’s hiding something,” she repeats. “He didn’t do it, but he’s glad it happened, and he’s starting to get a little worried about the prosecutor’s questioning.”

Phoenix can’t see “a little worried” in the man’s body language. Certainly there is nothing to suggest any of the rest? Glad? “Where are you getting that from?” Phoenix asks. “I can’t even hear what they’re saying.”

“I have really sensitive hearing,” she says. “Like my ears can pick up a lot of things. And sometimes people’s emotions come through in the subtlest tones of their voice.”

“Like when you said I was sad,” Phoenix says. She nods. “I’ll make sure we look into the witness’ and victim’s backgrounds to see if there’s any connecting threads.”

She blinks. “You - you will? You believe me?”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “I believe you.” He would know if she was lying. He would be able to see the locks. “I can’t take the chance of ignoring anything if it could help us get to the truth.” Even if anything is a tip from a strange girl from Los Angeles. (Strange girls from Los Angeles tend to be blessed or fae. Maya and Pearl who are fae. Ema whose sister knew Mia. Trucy whose grandfather was fae and left a blessing on her eyes. Athena who - what?)

“Oh,” she says. “You really do believe me. Even my aunts, sometimes, the ones I’m living with here, sometimes they don’t believe me totally, all the things I can hear, when I tell them. And I--” Abruptly she cuts herself off, scrambling back under the police tape but not fast enough for her to be out before Edgeworth is there, close enough that Phoenix can hear him now too.

“Why is there a child on the crime scene?” he asks.

“I was trying to get her out,” Phoenix says.

“Unsuccessfully, I see.”

“But I was watching her the whole time and she didn’t touch anything.”

Edgeworth snorts. “Small miracles,” he says. “There was probably some other way for you to occupy yourself, usefully.”

“Hey,” Phoenix says. “I was waiting for you to finish talking and catch me up on what everyone else has to say. Besides, I think I’ve got plenty useful for you.” He turns back to Athena. “You should probably go home now. Stop skulking around at crime scenes and giving your name to strange lawyers you just met.”

“Okay,” she says. “Is this going to trial tomorrow? Is it going to be at the courthouse just up a couple blocks, if I want to see? Since I wonder how actual court cases are different than the stuff I learned back when.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “But, really. This is my fatherly advice to you.”

Edgeworth rolls his eyes. “Wright. I know you’re missing Trucy, but we do have to go, and you can’t just invite every child you run into along.”

“I was not,” Phoenix says. Though it’s true that he misses Trucy; she had wanted to come, very badly, but this is a trial balloon more than anything, a few days, see if they can get away with it. (Which sounds underhanded even though Edgeworth of course went through all of the proper channels to get Phoenix attached as an Interpol/prosecutorial consultant.) Next time, if there is a next time, which doubtlessly there will be considering the number of times Edgeworth has invited him and Trucy along since Phoenix lost his badge, continuing even through Phoenix’s refusals until the home situation was stable - next time, Trucy will get a European vacation.

(For now, she gets an LA vacation, because she’s staying with Larry and that is a situation far removed from any everyday life. Phoenix anticipates washing paint out of all her clothes for days. And he’s been worried, constantly, even though Larry almost has his shit together more than Phoenix does, and even though he’s assured that Larry’s attention is responsibility focused on his books and on Trucy because he swore off women after his crush on Iris and mostly seems to have stuck to that. Which Phoenix empathizes with innately, because Phoenix also swore off women after Iris and has entirely stuck to that.)

“I invited myself!” Athena says brightly. “It’s not his fault! But okay. No more crime scenes! Got it!”

“See?” Phoenix asks Edgeworth. “I can be a good influence.”

He pairs the eye roll with a sigh this time.

Phoenix makes it an hour into the trial, from the gallery, before the emotional tumult is too much, sets him fraying from the edges in and burning up from the inside out, and he sneaks out during the cross-examination of the first witness (not the witness Athena pointed out, the one he and Edgeworth had investigated further). He intends to go straight out into the city, where the air still won’t be cold or fresh enough to settle his stomach, but the front steps might be far enough from the courtroom to make his hands stop shaking.

He doesn’t get there, because on the wide stairwell down to the entrance lobby, he finds Athena sitting there, her hands pressed over her mouth, her eyes closed, and her shoulders heaving with long, deliberately steady breaths. Standing on the stairs above her, he sees and Sees a girl not much older than Trucy and with all her stubbornness, a girl who gave him and Edgeworth a very useful hint, a with her red hair matted to her neck by sweat, who looks halfway into an anxiety attack. Who looks the way Phoenix’s poker face won’t allow him to anymore, who has a heart on her sleeve instead of locked behind stone. Strange girls from Los Angeles, nothing - they’re an ocean away and she’s a damn kid and he’s paranoid and half heartless and doesn’t know how to change any of those things and get back his humanity because he doesn’t even know how to be kind to humans anymore either. “Hey,” he says quietly. “Athena?”

She twists her head around sharply, frantically wiping tears out of her eyes. “Oh, hi, Mr Nick,” she says. She sniffs loudly but forces a bright grin onto her face. That reminds him of Trucy, too, the lie inherent in the expression.

“Do you mind if I sit down?” he asks. She shakes her head. He folds himself down onto the stairs next to her. “Yeah. Overwhelming in there, isn’t it?”

She nods. “It’s loud,” she says. “I wanted to watch everything but everyone in there is so loud with everything they’re feeling. And I’d been saying that I’d gotten better at shutting out hearing anything extra but what I wanted to but I guess I was wrong because now I’m…” She rests her chin on her arms.

“Yeah, I told myself I’d be fine and I was lying to myself too,” Phoenix says. “I’m - I was a lawyer. I’m not anymore. I was careless - someone gave me some suspicious evidence and I just presented it without further investigation, and it was forged and the prosecutor knew in advance, and I got my badge taken.” She stares at him with wide blue eyes. “This is the first time I’ve been back in a courtroom since.”

“And that’s why you were sad,” she says. “When you said to me that you’re a lawyer.” She keeps staring at him, as though she might figure anything out from seeing and not hearing. “Did you ever actually win a case?” she asks.

“I did, actually,” he says.

She sits back up straighter. “Really?” she asks. “Even with everyone against you, and - and even if you know that they didn’t do it what if no one listens to you? That you go up there and scream and no one listens?”

“You never really know if your client is guilty or not,” Phoenix says. “You just have to believe, and fight for the truth.” Those are Mia’s words, not his own; he has trouble believing, sometimes. He has trouble putting his heart into anything. “But the thing about being a defense attorney, with your badge” - he starts to point to his badge and stops, because it isn’t there anymore - “is that when you’re up at the bench, they have to listen to you. That’s your job and their job. So you get that badge and get back there and you just scream, as loud as you can, in your client’s defense.”

Athena has steely eyes when she’s focused and intent, staring at him like she can find the whole truth of the world and the profession in the words of a man who’s been disbarred almost as long as he ever had the authority of a badge. “I think I believe you,” she says. “You sound sincere. Like you believe you.”

Does he? He doesn’t know. But Larry wasn’t convicted of murder, and Edgeworth wasn’t. Von Karma tries to steamroll the judge and the entire court and still Phoenix, with Maya’s help, screamed louder. Is she right? Is he right?

“Let’s go back in,” she says, standing up and firmly planting her hands on her hips. “We can handle it this time.”

The verdict doesn’t come that day, but the witness Athena had earmarked admits, under pressure of being on the stand, to have been involved in the planning of the crime but refuses to say who he was planning with. Athena’s eyes are alight; she leans forward so far that Phoenix is afraid she’s going to tumble out of the gallery and talks his ear off on their way out, tagging along with him like a shadow. He doubts she’s really aware of where he’s going, just that she has things to say to him and wants to say them. If he’s lying, he’s only a little worried about her and this way that she’s just attached herself to a stranger. Does she do this often, or is it just him? He can be grateful that her ears might help her sus out whether someone has good intentions.

But still, she’s not that much older than Trucy. (And Trucy attached herself to him in the same way. And Ema. Is there some part of a blessing that makes him a magnet for preteen girls? Or is it a very weird curse that no one’s informed him of?)

“And the prosecutor,” Athena adds, not taking in that they are approaching the prosecutor lobby, and that very soon she will be talking about said prosecutor not behind his back but to his face. “Prosecutor Edgeworth - is he the Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, from Los Angeles?”

“Yes,” Phoenix says, cautiously, and Edgeworth, standing at one of the lobby benches putting the last of the papers into his briefcase, looks up in alarm. It would be nice if the only thing he had to be afraid of right now was Phoenix trying to adopt this child, too. “Why?”

“Because he’s famous!” Athena says, throwing her arms in the air. “He’s Miles Edgeworth! He’s one of the best prosecutors in the state and abroad! Even crazy international cases don’t scare him!” Phoenix has a memory of Ema gushing in a similar manner. “And he cares about the truth and is honorable and that’s tragically rare, but - ah.” Finally stepping out from behind Phoenix, she spots Edgeworth right there, and she shrinks down and retreats back into Phoenix’s shadow. “Oh. Hi.”

“Wright,” Edgeworth says, pressing a hand to his face, which Phoenix swears is turning a little pink. And it’s funnier the more Phoenix thinks about it, because Athena said what she knew of the legal system was what a family friend told her, and that means that Athena isn’t the only Edgeworth fan. The person who told her about him likely was, too. Phoenix needs to mention that to him later. “Wright, Wright, I leave you for two hours and again you find—”

“Wait!” Athena gasps. She springs back from Phoenix, blue eyes huge in her face, turning between him and Edgeworth so fast that she hits herself with her hair. “Wait, wait, Wright? You aren’t - he’s Edgeworth, so you, Mr Nick, you aren’t Phoenix Wright, are you?” She struggles for words, her palms drumming on the air as she searches for what she means to say. “The badge, what you said about your badge, losing it - you’re Phoenix Wright!”

“Yes,” Phoenix says, and even Edgeworth can hear how pained he sounds on admitting it. (Names matter, in magic and in general, and Phoenix cannot, will not, give up on his own. But sometimes he’s tempted; sometimes he just wants to be Nick, or no one at all.)

Athena’s eager smile slides off her face. “Oh,” she says. “Oh. I’m sorry. It’s just - you’re a legend too!” Implying Edgeworth is, and yes, his face is rather pink, adorably flustered by that bout of compliments earlier. “Will Powers and Max Galactica and Mask DeMasque! And you won all those cases! You won, you actually won!” Her smile returns, infectious enough that it loosens something that has been tight in Phoenix’s chest since he entered the courthouse in the morning. “I didn’t think defense attorneys could, but even though there was evidence and - and it seemed certain - they were innocent and you proved it!” Her mouth hardens in a line of intense concentration. “I want to be a defense attorney,” she says. “Like you. I want to be able to save people, like you, because it’s possible if you did it!”

The constriction around his heart returns with a vengeance. “It’s not as easy as that,” Phoenix says. “Saving people, I mean.”

He avoids Edgeworth’s eyes. They had that conversation during the Engarde trial, back when Phoenix was still trying to hang onto his last bit of optimism and faith in Mia’s words to believe in his client. Back when Phoenix thought he might ever have some sort of moral high ground. There was a crossroads he and Edgeworth met at, then, and Phoenix took the path that Edgeworth had just left behind. And Edgeworth became better than Phoenix ever was.

Athena frowns. “But they weren’t guilty, and you saved them from the guilty verdict. Trials and investigations are complicated but that’s simple enough isn’t it?”

“Conceptually, anyway,” Phoenix says.

“A career in law isn’t just something you pursue on a whim like this,” Edgeworth says, and again Phoenix avoids his eyes. This one is aimed straight at him. “It’s a lot of work that you have to dedicate yourself entirely to, and—”

“I know!” Athena says. “I know how much work it is! And how hard the Bar is! And what a mess the system at home in LA is! But I’ve wanted to for years. I just - I didn’t know how. And I didn’t think it could be anything but fighting losing battles.” Again she looks between them, her head tilted, assessing them with eyes and ears both. “But I could! I could, right?”

“You could,” Phoenix says. It isn’t his place to try and crush her. Studying for the Bar would do that if she wasn’t truly determined. “I’ve known some young prosecutors who got their badges abroad, so I don’t see why a budding defense lawyer couldn’t.” Sometimes he’s pretty sure that prosecutors get more leeway to even get the badge - he knows damn well they get more leeway when it comes to conduct while having the badge - but he glances at Edgeworth, who doesn’t make motion to say no, she couldn’t.

“I’m not too young, am I?” she asks, slumping from what was a moment ago bright confidence. She wheels quickly through emotions, and Phoenix doesn’t remember much about being thirteen, but he does remember feeling everything too much, and like was the end of the world. Hell, he felt like that at twenty, too.

“My sister got her badge at thirteen,” Edgeworth says. Phoenix can hear the twinge of bitterness. They’ve talked about that, the age of some prosecutors, how they’re so young, too young, set loose to be too easily manipulated by the older people around them. How Franziska should have been allowed to be a child instead just a name.

But Athena beams, that Edgeworth had addressed her with something that is in one facet encouragement. “I’m thirteen now, so I don’t think I can manage that,” she says. “But I’m already a grade ahead in school so what’s a few more?”

“That’s the spirit,” Phoenix says.

Again her smile disappears and she fidgets, bringing her arms tight across her chest. “You probably have investigating to do,” she says. “And I’m talking about how important that is and then I’m taking up all your time.”

“It’s all right,” Phoenix assures her. “Edgeworth’s used to finding more kids to advise, huh?” He nudges Edgeworth with his elbow. “And I don’t mind, either. I know how important it was for me to find someone to look up to when I was starting as a law student.”

Athena nods solemnly. “Can I give you my email address?” she asks. “For if I want honest answers about being a lawyer?”

“You don’t think there’s anyone else who can be honest?” Phoenix asks.

Athena shrugs. “You haven’t really talked down to me, either,” she says.

His heart, what’s left of it, what isn’t yet frozen, screams in protest. He isn’t a good person to be around - he can’t be a mentor - he’s afraid to love his best friends and his own daughter - he can’t just strike up another correspondence. He might’ve let his emails with Ema trickle out for a reason, and that reason is that he knows the road that Death takes him down, and god only knows what Misfortune will add.

But in the same way he’s afraid because she looks like Trucy, because she’s thirteen years old and bright of mind and bright of smile, he wants to help her. Help her because Mia helped him, like he just mentioned Mia, and he compared to Athena must have looked like far less promising a candidate to take under wing.

(Strange girls from Los Angeles, blessed or fae, another following in his wake. Trucy’s sharp eyes. Athena’s sharp ears. Good for poker, good for witness interrogations. He keeps seeing Trucy or even Ema, not Maya or Pearl.)

(Christ, he’s not adopting her, though.)

“Edgeworth,” Phoenix says. “Do you have a pen and a business card or something? So I can give her my contact info?”

Edgeworth sighs. “Honestly,” he says. “You should at least have a pen and some paper on you. You’re an investigator, you can’t just slack off - and you’re giving her my information too?”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “It’s important to know your enemy. See the other side.”

Edgeworth’s glare could split rock, but fortunately, Phoenix’s head is harder than that. “Of course!” Athena says. “That’s very important! And, oh, I never introduced myself to you, Prosecutor Edgeworth!” She extends a hand and he starts, taken aback by her boldness. “My name’s Athena, Athena Cykes!”

Ah, a last name too, this time. Edgeworth blinks slowly and accepts her hand even more hesitantly. “Cykes?” he repeats slowly, quietly, like he’s not aware of her being there right in front of him to hear him.

She nods eagerly. “Yep! Athena Cykes.”

“Cykes,” he says again, dragging it out like a hiss. “Athena Cykes.” Edgeworth isn’t good with names, Phoenix notices and usually hasn’t pointed out to him when he gets them mixed up, but maybe he’s finally noticed it himself. He’s taking care not to end up calling her Artemis Psyche later, maybe. “Nice to meet you, Miss Cykes.” He releases her hand and then goes into his jacket pocket to pull out a business card. Athena’s grin widens, and Phoenix indulges in a small smile. So she’s won him over now, too. “Now, I suppose…” He hands the card, and a pen, to Phoenix, even though he just as quickly could write down Phoenix’s email and number and office address. It’s the principle of the thing, surely.

“Thank you!” Athena practically squeals when she takes the card from Phoenix. “Thank you both so much, Mr Wright, Prosecutor Edgeworth! Good luck on your case! I’ll let you go to it now! Au revoir!”

“Even I know that’s not German!” Phoenix calls at her back, and her laugh lingers after she bolts around the corner.

-----

[chapter notes]

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

Text

NOTES: Fae AU Chapter 13

So while a lot of my decisions about characters in the Fae AU are drawn from canonical things, in this case, here in Chapter 13, there’s obviously a lot going on that might be coming out of nowhere, because it’s built on my headcanons. It makes sense to me, obviously, how I’m drawing the parallel from game canon to my AU, but, well… for the rest of you…

For the rest of you, here’s some behind-the-scenes notes about how I constructed the history of this particular character, and without further ado, obvious spoilers for the chapter:

ON THALASSA

Thalassa’s a weirdly bare-bones character for how much of her life is catalysts for something. Her family, her marriages, her “death”, her amnesia, her career -- there’s a lot. But she herself… we don’t even know how the fuck she ended up in Borginia, for the love of god Capcom.

Because I hate Magnifi, because he is a bastard and I hate him, I’m assuming that he decided that because she had amnesia, and thus would have to relearn all her tricks for the Troupe and start from the ground up, he decided she would be more useful as blackmail material to get Zak and Valant squarely under his thumb, so he sent her away.

Because he is a bastard.

But we’ll back up a little, to I’m sure everyone’s reactions of “what happened with Jove in the Fae AU? He did what?”

Yeah.

Let me give you first the brief summary of how I see Thalassa’s life, canonically.

Apparently the average age of motherhood in Ace Attorney is about 18 or 19, if you do the math on Misty, Thalassa, Amara… everyone is young mothers, women aren’t allowed to be old. We can unpack that another time. For now, let’s think about Thalassa, and the fact that she was married and had a kid at 18.

For me, what I felt for her, was her story then, was that was her escape. Maybe it was a shotgun wedding, maybe she was pregnant -- but whatever, what I felt for her was that she got married young to leave the Troupe. The dark underbelly that became apparent with her “death” can’t have come from nowhere. I can’t imagine it was a very great place to live. I saw her as getting married to get away.

And then her husband dies, and her kid -- my pre-SoJ interpretation of events was that her husband died, and she’s 18 years old with a kid and completely overwhelmed by the thought of having to raise her son on her own. She can go back to the Troupe and not be alone, but then she’s 18 and has to raise her son within that shitshow, trying to shelter him from what she knows is gonna be Some Fuckening. And grief-stricken and so, so young, she doesn’t think she’s up to that. She gives Apollo her bracelet so that he will always have a token of her, and she puts him up for adoption, because she hopes that will be a better life for him than she can give right now, and she goes home. And then some years later, she has Trucy, and she is older, more experienced, and she thinks yes, she can raise Trucy within the Troupe but protected and safe form some of That Shit. Then she dies and so much for that.

SoJ added a hell of a lot to my understanding/interpretation of Thalassa, which I really love.

Now, again, I still imagine that she is running. She marries Jove and leaves the Troupe, because running away with her boyfriend, that’s one thing, but to say “he is my husband, and I am leaving with him”, well, her father can’t stop her. So she leaves with Jove, and they travel the world with their son. And then they take that fateful trip to Khura’in, where Jove takes Apollo off Thalassa’s hands for a night. (I still love forever whoever suggested that Apollo used Thal’s bracelets as teething rings and that’s why Jove/Apollo had it during the fire. “Here are my valuable, unique, almost magical bracelets that allow me to have superhuman powers. I will let my baby chew on them.”)

Khura’in collapses into shock and grief, the trial of the century between the new queen, the prior Minister of Justice and a top prosecutor, and the king-consort accused of murdering his wife, the Queen. The country is in turmoil, the city especially is in turmoil, and there is no room for a 19-year-old American to make her shouts heard. And as things get heated between Ga’ran and Dhurke, as the country hangs on a thread, someone pulls Thalassa aside and tells her she needs to go home. She needs to leave, while she still can, before this entire thing shatters.

And she does go home, grief-stricken and broken, 19 years old and lost her husband and her son and she has nothing in the world left. The Troupe doesn’t look so bad anymore, to what she’s been through, what she’s lost. She doesn’t know what else to do. She can’t bring herself to do anything else, to try and strike on alone. She’s 19 years old. What else can she do?

She goes home, and never speaks of her grief again. She’s weary and cynical and broken and never quite puts herself back together again. She tried to run and look what it did to her, and that’s something that she thinks of as almost a cruel twist of fate. Shouldn’t have left, Thalassa; if you hadn’t left you wouldn’t have lost a husband and a son. It’s with that sort of resignation that she decides to go back and make a life within the Troupe. You belong there, you see that now.

I think you can see, from that, how I spun that to the Fae AU.

The if I hadn’t left this wouldn’t have happened is plain and literal and obvious. She tries to leave; Jove dies. The fae are jealous and possessive and petty, and Magnifi had just been cast out of the Twilight Realm and lost everything he had, including his own name. He did not want to lose his favorite thing on top of it all. And so he curses Jove with death and he waits, waits for Thalassa to come back broken and grieving.

And she does, because she has less than nothing, she is new to the mundane world and she doesn’t know how to live, how to do anything, and she returns to Magnifi knowing what he has done. It’s monstrous, it’s a hideously abusive dynamic, and for the price of her soul Thalassa extracts a promise: he will never take from her someone she loves, ever again. And with that promise secure, she marries again, has a child again. And Magnifi takes nothing from her: Zak and Valant take her from Trucy. And by that point, Magnifi has her soul, and that’s the most use she can be. He has Zak and Valant to lie for him, if he really needs it, but here no longer in the Realm, there’s so much less use. He can let Thalassa go. Her last use to him is as leverage over Zak and Valant.

And that’s… about it, really. I hate Magnifi and I made him even more of a bastard than we knew he was from Chapter 12. He is the fucking worst and here’s the shorthand for why I made him that way. It’s… heavy. I got to a point in the chapter and I was like “holy god, I did not mean it to end up this way, for him to be this much of a monster”, which -- that sometimes sort of happens with the Fae AU, that when you start mixing in curses and soul dealings, the bad charas get so much worse, and this particular way that Magnifi got worse… yeah. Bastard.

Honestly, most of the other fae backstories will not be like this. This one just… turned out like it.

And I think that’s… about everything I wanted to include here, about my “canon” interpretation of Thalassa and how that plays here. Did I forget anything? I don’t think I forgot anything I wanted to mention here.

(Other than about the Summer Court. I ain’t telling you shit about the Summer Court.)

#fae au extras

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

Text

Chapter 20: I can’t come up with a clever summary for this one that doesn’t ruin the surprise of the nonsense I’ve set loose, I’m sorry, I’m tired

[Beginning] [Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

Trucy has Christmas off from school – or maybe just takes it off, Apollo doesn’t ask these questions – but it is a weekday and the office is open, so Apollo spends it with her and Vera and Phoenix nowhere to be seen. “We would make a great investigation trio,” Trucy says, adjusting the Santa hat that she has moved from her head to Charley now to her wisp so that it, invisible beneath the hat, bobs about the office as some kind of strange holiday decor. “But I also hope no one comes in today, because – spending Christmas in jail because you’re accused of murder. Can you imagine?”

“Or being murdered on Christmas,” Apollo agrees.

Having said that, he still does like to get paid.

It’s cold, fae cold, like every Christmas Apollo has experienced in Los Angeles. (Like every Christmas Apollo has experienced; they didn’t celebrate it in Khura’in. They had their own holidays, things all dimmed down in his memories.) The dusting of snow across the sidewalk melts by afternoon between the bright sun and the foot traffic through the city, but the chill remains, making Apollo infinitely grateful for his Christmas presents from Trucy, a knitted beanie and scarf, even if the colors she chose for him are pink and limey green.

“I know you won’t really get cold,” Trucy had said to Vera, “but everyone should have cute scarves and hats, so you get one, too!” The knitwear she presented to Vera was pink and bright blue, colors that much better match her typical fashion – and her fae form, when she lets her glamour drop to hold the yarn against her skin. Trucy insists on a selfie with the three of them; right before she clicks the button, Vera washes away her watercolor skin, and grinning back from the photo are three apparent humans.

“Maybe shouldn’t have photo evidence that I’m not human,” Vera says quietly, but she is already reaching for her sketchpad and scribbling a tiny self-portrait, fae ears and all, in the corner of a page. She still takes a sketchbook everywhere with her but doesn’t keep it in hand at every moment, seeming a little more able and willing to express herself with words and either of her own faces.

Trucy tells them that she has also made Ema a scarf so that she can contribute to the scientific assessment that Trucy expects of Iris’ yarn. “Daddy says that humans who spend a long time in the fae world end up with kinds of glamours, too,” she explains to Vera, after catching her up on Iris. Apollo wonders who Phoenix learned this from; if he knew that, shouldn’t he have figured out what Klavier was sooner? Or is this another fact he’s only put together after that one realization? “So we’re all wondering what properties these might have. I expect you to take notes on anything strange while you’re wearing these. Like if people start telling you you’re more attractive.”

Apollo snorts. Trucy smacks him on the arm. “This is for science, Apollo!”

“How much do you talk to Ema, again?” He can’t say that he isn’t curious – could something like this be the origin of the infamous Magic Panties? – and he can’t say that he isn’t more curious than afraid nowadays, but he also can’t say that he’s not afraid of where this curiosity will take them. Everything Clay impressed upon him for thirteen years has collapsed in eight months.

(And Dhurke – well, maybe there was a nugget or two of advice Dhurke left him, half-forgotten, but he let Apollo and Nahyuta make their mistakes, and as far as that goes, Apollo is definitely making mistakes.)

Trucy is powerful, he’ll give her that. And if anyone can turn stage magic into entertainment in a city so full and wary of real magic, it would be her. (That seems to be her latest career aspiration, the latest turn of her Youtube channel after her stint as a cover artist, but she laments that it’s hard to really perform when she knows her audience could easily believe she’s just cleverly editing her videos.)

(If he really thinks about it, he wonders if she, like Klavier, has some innate glamour, if at least some part of her force of personality and charisma and likeability is magic.)

“I have two more very important things to tell you,” she says over a late lunch of Chinese, because Eldoon’s isn’t an option with Vera and he apparently takes some holidays off anyway.

“Uh-oh,” Apollo says.

The lights blink between two stages of brightness; Apollo still can’t really say he’s used to Mia’s rare laughter. “Excuse you!” Trucy says. “I object! I am having a New Years Eve party here and was going to tell you to come and invite your friends but now you are uninvited! Polly is, anyway. Vera you’re still good.”

“You can’t blame me!” Apollo says. “The amount of strange things that happen with Mr Wright, I never know if you’re just gonna tell me that he’s – I don’t know, got summoned back to the Twilight Realm for a stint and you need to crash on my couch – or whatever.”

“Oh, Daddy’s just over at Uncle Miles’ office today,” Trucy says. “Probably not actually doing work.”

“Uncle Miles?” Vera asks the question that Apollo was about to.

“Oh – Mr Prosecutor Edgeworth. Polly, you met him, right?”

“Prosecutor Edgeworth? I – yeah.” So he and Phoenix are close, close enough that Trucy calls him family. That’s probably important to know, another piece to Phoenix’s wide and varied social circle. “Well uh, I guess it’s good that he hasn’t been disappeared by the fae or something.”

“Oh, we’d be warned if something happened,” Trucy says. The cryptic vagueness of that statement seems fitting somehow. “There’s no need to worry!”

Apollo wouldn’t say he was worried; rather more of a neutral expectation he has that Phoenix is someday going to flake in some grander way than he did setting up the Jurist System.

“Anyway, New Years,” she continues. “I’m inviting a friend from school, and Ema, and a couple other people she and I know, and you can invite Clay if you want, and I need your phone for Prosecutor Gavin’s number to invite him.” She extends her hand, palm facing upward, to him.

“Erm,” Apollo says.

“Or you can invite him yourself,” Trucy says. She draws her hand back. “Do you think he’ll be more likely to say yeah to you or me? I mean, I’m cute but you already talk to him on the regular, so it could go either way.” She claps her hands together. “Okay, we’re decided: you invite him on my behalf!”

Apollo wouldn’t say that they actually decided it so much as Trucy decreed it, but sure, he’ll go with it. “I thought you and Ema didn’t know each other at all when we first met her,” he says. The tragicomedy of the white powder ordeal is still, and always will be, fresh in his mind when he thinks about Ema. “How do you have mutual friends?”

“Oh, y’know.” Trucy shrugs. Apollo does not know. “She knew Daddy and Uncle Miles back when, Uncle Miles knows other people who I know, then she meets them, then we meet – the usual. Everyone ends up working in the legal system.” She pauses. “Except me.”

“I think you count,” Vera says.

“You’re co-counsel,” Apollo says. “You definitely count.”

“I guess you’re right,” Trucy says. “Magic just keeps ending up hand-in-hand with the law.” She sits forward conspiratorial, steepling her fingers in front of her face. “Now,” she adds, unable to stop herself from grinning, “the second thing. This is top secret, invite-from-me-only stuff. It’s a secret family tradition that I’m only inviting the two of you and Ema and Kay’s tagging along because she’s like a superspy and found out about my conversation with Ema – anyway.” Leaving Apollo with little time to parse that sentence – does he know who Kay is? Has he heard that name before? He doesn’t think so – Trucy holds up a pointer finger. “You are both cordially invited to The Gourdyversary.”

“The what?” Apollo asks.

“The Gourdyversary,” Trucy repeats, sounding very serious but still grinning all the while. “The Gourdy Anniversary. It’s a very very secret Wright-Butz friendship tradition that is also very very important for the upkeep of Gourd Lake Park.”

“You’re losing me,” Apollo says. “Also, if it’s this secret, and you’re busting it open to everyone--”

“Not everyone! I thought Ema would be super interested, and Kay was being stalky, like I said, and then the two of you are super important parts other parts of the Wright-Butz social circle, so I was allowed to invite you!” Her eyes narrow in concentration. “Also,” she says, with an air of recollecting something, “Daddy mentioned you specifically, Polly, said that he’d like to see the look on your face because you always react a lot to finding out new magic stuff.”

“Great,” Apollo mutters. “I cordially decline your invitation.” He looks at Vera, who is just as confused as him, blinking her huge eyes owlishly at Trucy. “Wait,” he says. “‘Butz’? Who’s that?”

“You know – oh!” Trucy laughs and falls further back into the couch. “You don’t! That’s Uncle Larry’s other last name, the one he had first.”

On one hand, Apollo can’t really blame someone for wanting to be rid of that surname, especially in a profession where names are as important as they are to authors. On the other hand, there’s a certain expectation that Apollo has come to have. “Is this a fae thing in some way?”

Vera is the first to nod. “Deauxnim was one of the names his mentor used.” It appears thoughtless now, both the way she starts to raise her hand to her lips and the way she puts it back down. Is another incentive for her to break her habit of chewing her nails how strange the thought must be that she also has claws in a different form? Could it be possible for her to chew her claws off? “The last name she used before… before she died. She gave it to him.” She picks at the eraser on her pencil, clearly for something to do with her hands. “He – Mr Laurice offered it to me, too. If I want – if I want to sell my art someday and use it for my career, I could be…” She frowns at her sketchbook. “Vera Deauxnim.”

“I’d do it!” Trucy says. “It’s a good name, Uncle Larry says, and Uncle Valant always told me that it’s good to have spare names in case you really need to give one away.” She frowns, too. “But he only had one name. He was only ever ‘Gramarye’.”

“I know it’s a good name,” Vera says. “Mr Laurice says it’s lucky. But I have my name already, and it’s my dad’s. I shouldn’t – I shouldn’t give that up. Should I?”

“You’re not giving up anything!” Trucy says. “You’re Vera Misham and you can be Vera Deauxnim, like I’m Trucy Wright and then Trucy Gramarye on Youtube because that’s both my family and I can be both. Like Prosecutor Gavin said about different faces.” She spreads her hands wide in the air in front of her like she’s spreading something out for them to look at. “We contain multitudes!”

That pulls a grin onto Vera’s face.

“I must’ve missed when you started going by Gramarye again,” Apollo says. She’s called herself Trucy the Enigma, which he knows is a reference to her father’s name, and that was as far as he knew.

“Yeah,” she says, stretching herself out further on the half of the couch she has claimed. “It was sometime after we talked about just – me, and magic, in general, all that. And I thought, it’s my mom’s name too, I want to keep it for her. So I’ll make it mean something good, like I think it should be. Like I used to think it was.”

He wonders if when she holds the mitamah she hears something like he heard music; he wonders if he’d hear it again if he picked it back up. Sometimes he feels drawn to that drawer of Phoenix’s desk, a compulsion to understand who she was – is? A dead body with a bullet in it but a soul that is still here glowing? – that he stifles again and again. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, knowing how hard it all hit Trucy, knowing that she still can’t always find the light behind her eyes, but she forestalls him with a red-tinted grin. (A lie. Her smile is a lie, and it’s magic, a fae blessing, that tells him this.)

“Man, names are so complicated,” she says. And Apollo sees red and oh, this is the limit of it, isn’t it? Her smile is a lie but while he’s seeing that, any words she says might be true, might be a lie, and he’s already going to be stuck on her expression.

(Who was it that gave him Truth? Which one of them thought that was the most important gift? Dhurke? Datz? Nahyuta?)

“And they’d be this complicated even without all the magic,” Trucy continues. She cranes her neck to look at Vera’s sketchbook. “Ooh, nice!”

(Complicated, nonmagic, Apollo knows that too. On his birth certificate, a forgery, his father’s name is Jay Justice because his stage name was Jangly and they didn’t know his real name and even Datz who had the papers drawn up seemed to realize that they couldn’t put that down and just the initial J was a little sparse. His mother’s name they made up entirely. Dhurke named her Hera, because he always thought he was funny. Apollo had looked it up sometime in middle school. Hera wasn’t even the mythological Apollo’s mother.)

Vera has Trucy’s phone balanced up on the piano, showing off the selfie, and she is sketching from it but for herself, pointed ears and big eyes. “So what is the, um, Gourd… Gourdversary?”

“Gourdyversary,” Trucy repeats, as though she is teaching them an actual word that they might need to know. “You know Gourd Lake Park, maybe?” Vera shakes her head. Apollo nods. It was in the vague area of Apollo and Clay’s high school and a corner of the park was the popular hangout for stoners, which meant Apollo wasn’t surprised when a lake monster was sighted there. (He was surprised that tourists and not stoned kids who first made the claim.) In their senior year, he and Clay camped out in the abandoned, allegedly-haunted, boat shack, or tried to, made it to about midnight when Clay swore he heard a voice, and then later lied about it to their friends and Clay’s siblings to claim that they totally spent the whole night there and nothing happened. Every few years there were attempts to revitalize the park and make it a real community location. Those never worked.

“Well,” Trucy continues, “always sometime after Christmas, this year, it’ll be the 27th that, we go, before dawn, to the lake, to make the annual sacrifice.”

“I don’t like the sound of this in the slightest,” Apollo says.

“We don’t sacrifice people,” Trucy says. “C’mon, Polly. Really.”

“I hate that you know exactly what I was about to ask because it is actually a reasonable question in these circumstances.” Apollo smacks his head into the couch and stares at the ceiling. “Sacrifice what, then? To what? The lake?”

“You have to come along to know,” Trucy says smugly. “Exact time and meeting location will be disseminated only to true believers.”

“Believers of what?” Apollo demands.

Vera has folded her knees up onto the couch and has her sketchbook propped against them, her dark human eyes peering out from behind the top of it, darting between Trucy and Apollo.

“You’ll see,” Trucy says.

The next morning, Phoenix enters the office and asks for Apollo’s help getting the doors so that he can carry inside a heavy grocery bag filled with twelve-packs of hot dogs. “What is this for?” Apollo asks, when he’s followed Phoenix into the kitchen (not even asking why Mia wouldn’t get the doors because he knows the answer is going to be that she rightfully thinks whatever is going on is stupid) to watch him maneuver the contents into the refrigerator.

“The Gourdyversary,” Phoenix replies. He pushes the fridge door closed only for it to pop back open and six packs spill back to the floor.

“Is this a hazing ritual?” Apollo asks. “Like, am I getting hazed?”

“Apollo, I’m pretty sure the entire Kitaki case was the universe conducting a hazing ritual on you,” Phoenix says. “Why would I bother with anything else?” He winks. “See you bright and early tomorrow, huh?”

“I haven’t agreed to this ridiculous venture,” Apollo says.

Phoenix slams the refrigerator shut with more force this time. “But are you really going to disappoint Trucy?” He manages to take one step before, in defiance, the fridge spits some of its contents back out. “Come on, seriously?” he asks, turning about in a circle and gesturing helplessly to the room at large. “Just let us do our dumb shit, Mia, c’mon.”

Apollo leaves him to fight with the ghost of his mentor, only to find that Vera has definitively declined to join in on the Gourdyversary, and consequently, Trucy is pouting at him with the most pathetic puppy eyes he has ever seen from a person.

It isn’t that – he tells her, several times, it isn’t that – which gets him, and she, seeing Truth, should know that is the truth, but she keeps proclaiming victory for her powers of persuasion – “Powers of getting people to pity you, if anything” – when he acquiesces. It’s curiosity, purely and painfully, and if it’s only painful in the moment for everything required to make it to the main gates of Gourd Lake Park at 6 am, the chances are high that it’s going to be worse next time. And there’s going to be a next time, he’s sure of it: he’s come to feel at home in an office filled with the lingering wraith of a fae queen, followed Trucy and Klavier in pursuit of grimoires and faery rings, and he’s becoming desensitized, he’s sure of it. He’s on the road to becoming a missing persons report or a cautionary folktale for future generations.

But damn if he isn’t curious as to why Phoenix “cheapskate” Wright bought more than a dozen dozens of hot dogs.

Trucy’s gifts, the scarf and hat, seem to block out the wind better than any other he can recall owning, which Apollo tells her to note down for her experimental records when he reaches the park entrance. Twilight Realm yarn, helping him resist the fae’s cold snaps. The dead brown grass is dusted with snow and a few more errant flakes drift down from the dark sky. Whenever the sun finally rises, they probably won’t see it. Trucy is waiting when he arrives, bundled up in a heavy coat and matching blue knitted hat, scarf, and gloves, and talking with two women. One is Ema, recognizable by the crinkling snack bag in her hands – “Are you aware of the time?” “Yeah, it’s snack time.” – and the dead-eyed glare from over the pink scarf Trucy apparently saddled her with.

The other, Apollo has never seen, but when she spots him, she abandons her conversation and bounds over to him, grabbing his hand and shaking it enthusiastically. “Hi!” she chirps. “I’m Kay! Kay Faraday! Super glad to finally meet you, Apollo!”

Finally?

“Uh,” he says, allowing her to wrench his arm about, “I’m sorry, but I have no idea who you are.”

“That’s okay!” She lets go of his hand and strikes a pose, one hand in the air and the other on her hip. None of her clothing seems quite to match, a puffy pink coat with a huge dark scarf, gold hair accessories, and leather gloves that look more expensive than his life. “Kay Faraday, homicide detective, Great Thief and Mr Edgeworth’s first and best assistant, at your service.”

“You lost me at ‘thief’ right after ‘detective’,” Apollo says. He can already see why Trucy likes her, though.

“Get used to confusion,” Ema says dryly. “That’s all she does for you.”

“Rude,” Kay says. She skips back past Trucy and Ema and down the park path. “Let’s go get gourded out of our gourds already!”

“I don’t know what that means but I refuse to do that,” Ema says. She doesn’t move, watches Trucy race after Kay, and then holds out the Snackoos bag to Apollo. “Kay wasn’t even invited. She was just creeping around and was unrelenting in demanding to accompany me in finding out whatever Trucy’s on about.” Apollo declines the Snackoos and she shrugs and shoves a few more into her mouth. “That’s also how she makes friends so watch it or you’re next.”

“I see,” Apollo says, even though he isn’t sure that he does. “It sounds, uh, interesting down at the precinct.”

Ema snorts. “We’re like two steps away from being a coven at this point.”

“Prosecutor Edgeworth said something like that.”

She nods sagely. “He thinks he can stop it but I know it’s futile.” She stuffs the Snackoos into her jacket pocket and pulls her scarf up against the sudden onslaught of wind. “How’s Trucy doing?” she asks quietly, eyeing the distant backs of her and Kay. “Haven’t heard from her much since October and” – a pause, a search for a tactful phrasing that she doesn’t find – “all that shit.”

And it was, nothing but a bunch of shit, no more honest way Apollo can think to say it, Ema cutting back to the heart of the matter. “Better, I think,” he says. “We had a couple conversations about her family and er grandfather that seemed like – like she’s figuring it out.” Or just coping, but even that is harder than it sounds. “And Mr Wright is spending a lot of time looking into the mitamah thing trying to deal with that.”

“That’s good.” She sounds like she means it. “If anyone can find a way to fix it, it’ll be Mr Wright. I’m sure of it.” And on that she sounds so confident that Apollo almost believes her. Isn’t that how Trucy said magic works? And what must Phoenix have done for Ema that she still has such faith in him?

Trucy stands planted in the path ahead, fists on her hips, facing them. “Hurry up!” she calls.

“Bunch of snails!” Kay yells. Ema flips her off but above her scarf, her eyes squint up like she’s grinning.

“So clarify for me how you all know each other,” Apollo says when the four of them have reconvened. Along the edges of the path the trees thin out and he can see the dark glassy surface of the water. “Through Prosecutor Edgeworth?”

“Basically!” Kay says. “I first helped him investigate cases years ago – I saved him when he got kidnapped – then there were some international incidents – I got accused of arson once and murder twice – it was a ridiculous month. And we ran into Emmy” – Emmy? Apollo raises an eyebrow and Ema stares back with unchanging expression – “and she already knew Mr Edgeworth from stuff and she helped us out. And then later working with Mr Edgeworth, I met Mr Wright, and my little apprentice thief.” She throws her arm around Trucy’s shoulders and grins.

“I thought you were my assistant,” Trucy says.

“Anyway!” Kay barrels past that statement. Trucy sticks her tongue out at her. “Then Emmy came back to work at the precinct and hang with me again, and then she met you, and here we are!”

Apollo almost keeps pace with that. He has about half a dozen follow-up questions about the arson and murder, but they’ve come up to the biggest gathering area of the part, a few vendor’s stands unattended for the weather and time of day, and Phoenix and Larry waiting by the one bare tree in the area, the bag of hot dogs at their feet. “Hi, Mr Wright!” Kay shouts. “Hi, Mr Steel Samurai!”

“You’re never gonna let me live it down, are you?” Larry asks.

Kay swings a friendly punch at his shoulder. “Nah, but I don’t let Mr Edgeworth forget about it, either, if that helps.”

“It absolutely does,” Larry says.

“So are you gonna tell us what’s going on or drag out the mystery for a little longer?” Ema asks.

Phoenix and Larry look at each other. “I’m thinking we drag it out,” Larry says.

“I already have my reputation for being cryptic,” Phoenix says, turning his head to stare directly at Apollo, “so yeah, let’s torment the kids a little longer. And besides,” he adds, stooping and wincing as he hauls the bag back up into his arms, “we’ve still got a little further to walk. We’re heading back through the woods there – there’s a little outlet to the shore that’s a little more hidden.”

“The hot dogs are the sacrifice, right?” Apollo asks. Larry gives a thumbs-up. “So then you could just answer what we’re sacrificing to—”

“Wait.” Ema stops walking. “Trucy, you didn’t tell me there was ritual sacrifice involved. You just said ‘hey, there’s something you will want to see, scientifically speaking’ and I asked to make sure it wasn’t a hoax like the last time people said there was something cool at Gourd Lake—”

Phoenix and Larry glance at each other. Trucy looks up at them both. “No,” Ema says. “No, do not tell me that the lake monster is real.”

“You proved in court that it was a hoax,” Apollo says. “You proved that it wasn’t a real—”

“I thought I proved that,” Phoenix says, thankfully not taking any time to dwell on the fact that Apollo knows his cases well enough to know exactly when this happened. “I did prove that loud banging noises aren’t the hallmark of the monster, and that Larry was out on the lake looking for a bigass balloon he’d launched into orbit—”

“The balloon was also very real,” Larry supplies helpfully. “It was the Steel Samurai. It was pretty cool until I slipped up inflating it with the air canister. Launched that, too.”

“—but we were accidentally enlightened as to a little more, when was it – a couple days after the trial?”

“The day after,” Larry says. “And already you were moping about being lonely with Maya going back to Fairyland—”

“—so I went all the way to the bottom of my contacts list and came to hang out with you at your hot dog stand—”

“You had like, three people in your phone then. Don’t pretend like I was your last-ditch social reject friend! You’re my last-ditch reject friend!”

Ema coughs. Phoenix and Larry both clearly take the cue to continue the narrative. “We were about the only people in the park, hanging out back there.” Phoenix points back over his shoulder with his thumb. They are passing by the old boat shack now, its shattered windows and unstable rotting dock, and Apollo shudders. One step on that and it’s straight into the water. “And then, just, out of lake—” He waves vaguely and purses his lips together. “There she was.”

“And that’s why hot dogs?” Apollo asks. “Because he had a hot dog stand then?”

“Yeah.” Larry shoves his hands in his pockets. “Like hey, we didn’t know if it was gonna eat us, figured we’d throw some food that wasn’t us and hope that was enough.”

“And now we come back yearly with offerings to hopefully appease her and never find out why she was sealed away in the first place. Because as it turns out,” Phoenix continues, grinning broadly, far too amused for the fact that they are discussing the potential of some lake monster to eat people, “someone’s flyaway balloon got caught on a warding sigil and tore it off. Make a hoax monster while releasing the real monster.” His grin shrinks just a little. “We found the place where the seal originally was and went looking all over the park hoping to find it and put it back, but no such luck. Not like you can dig magic rocks out with a metal detector.”

“I cannot believe that Mr Edgeworth and I solved an entire murder conspiracy here at this lake and he never told me there’s a real monster in it!” Kay pouts. She does a good impression of a moody teenager, kicking a stray rock out of the way on the path, but she can only hold it for a few seconds.

Phoenix and Larry again exchange a look.

“He uh,” Kay says, her eyes narrowing, “does know about the lake monster, right?”

Phoenix sucks in a breath through gritted teeth. Larry elbows him in the ribs. “This one's all on you, buddy,” he says with a wicked grin. “You justify yourself.”

“Edgeworth does not know,” Phoenix says, sounding pained. Kay gasps exaggeratedly loudly. “Listen, we weren’t on as good of terms back then! He knew the part that came out in court about the hoax, and then I was not exactly sure that he would appreciate me reaching out to tell him no, there’s an entire fae monster actually there now.”

“And the ten years since then where you’ve been on very good terms?” Larry asks, still grinning.

“Fuck you,” Phoenix says to him. “I’d call it eight, also.”

“I think you should tell him,” Kay says. “He could stand to have his preconceptions shaken up every so often, that there’s more magic just chilling around than he thinks there is.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says dryly, “until he asks me how long I’ve known and I have to figure out whether he’d believe it if I lied to him. Like logically I know the best thing to do, but at this point half of the fear of telling is the ‘why did you not mention that you knew this sooner?’ so I just drag it out even longer in the hopes that we’ll all live and die before Gourdy ever makes a situation where I’d have to mention it to him.”

“That is a very bad way of handling secrets, Daddy,” Trucy says.

“Oh, believe me, sweetheart, I know.” Phoenix frowns and sighs and shakes his head. “Though this isn’t just me covering my ass right now, but I think our new Chief Prosecutor has a lot more important things to deal with.”

The path they follow through the woods is almost overgrown with the tangled underbrush and buried beneath icy dead leaves. Phoenix and Larry, when they aren’t bickering, seem to confidently know the way, leading their small troupe out onto the saddest beach Apollo has ever seen. Sand and mud mix with snow for a slick surface that slopes straight down into the water, and an old weathered sign prohibiting camping is the only apparent clue that people come out here – though why anyone would want to camp here, Apollo has no idea.

Phoenix drops the bag into the wet ground. “Oi, Gourdy!” Larry calls. His voice doesn’t echo on the open lake but seems to be swallowed up by the white fog that has begun to swirl across the surface of the water. “We’ve got your yearly sacrifices!”

“Please don’t say it like that,” Apollo says. “That makes me think you’re going to throw us into the lake.”

“If I’m throwing anyone, it’d be Larry,” Phoenix says.

Larry, standing right at the edge of the water, flips him off over his shoulder. Through the fog, Apollo can see the water rippling, before it moves, pointedly, a long white wake pushing toward the shore. Larry scrambles backwards up the slope to Phoenix and the bag of hot dogs, grabbing an entire pack but not attempting to tear it open.

At first Apollo thinks that it’s a catfish, coming up strangely above the water. Then it keeps rising out of the water, far higher than a fish could, and he sees – he doesn’t know what he sees. It has a face like a catfish with the wide, gaping mouth, the barbels, and the beady eyes at the sides of its head; but past its eyes, it has small pointed ears and an otherwise horse-like body, its skin a slimy-looking brownish-green and its mane a long tangled curtain of seaweed. “Oh,” Kay says, very softly. “Oh, geez.”

Larry tosses the pack of hot dogs, plastic wrapping and all, in an underhand arc toward the creature. It stretches its neck out and catches the hot dogs in its wide mouth, throwing its head back and appearing to swallow the package whole. “You feed it plastic?” Ema asks. “It – her?”

“I call her ‘her’,” Phoenix says, “but that’s mostly because all the most powerful and terrifying fae I’ve known have been women, and not for any actual reason. But yeah, most of the fae and fae creatures I’ve known also have not been concerned with what humans do or don’t consider edible.”

“That sounds like some people I know,” Ema says. Kay pouts, but Ema isn’t looking in her direction. Her eyes are fixed, understandably, on the horse-catfish creature.

“S’good as far as keeping litter out of the lake,” Larry says. He grabs another package to throw. Phoenix hasn’t reached for the bag but is instead grinning at the stunned expressions on their three faces. “But yeah, we just show up, feed it a couple dozen hot dogs, and then do it again next year. Simple stuff.”

“So you really did just invite us to see the looks on our faces,” Apollo says. Phoenix’s grin does not waver. Trucy grabs two packs out of the bag and tosses them each at different sides of the creature – Gourdy, they call it Gourdy, a cute name for something that is frankly terrifying – and it swings its head about, inhaling one after the other.

“Worth,” Kay says, still wide-eyed.

“You weren’t even invited,” Ema says. She frowns, staring up at Gourdy from narrowed eyes. Is this how tall horses usually are? Did it get the size right when it took this nebulously horse-like shape? “I wonder,” she mutters, more to herself than anyone. “Do you think it always looked like this, or it tried to look like things that do exist in our world as a – disguise, I guess. An attempt at one?” She glances over to Phoenix. “Because you’ve said the fae in their true forms look sort-of but not quite like humans, but that they can’t really – alter their glamoured appearances very much?”

Phoenix nods. “It’s more innate,” he says. “What, say, Mia looked like is what Mia looked like. She didn’t just decide, oh, when I pretend to be human I want brown hair. But that’s just the fae, and fae animals are an entirely other barrel of catfish.” He reaches up to adjust his beanie. “Horses. Catfish-horses.”

“Someone who can’t really draw’s idea of a horse,” Apollo offers.

“Don’t be rude!” Trucy scolds. “She’s beautiful!”

Gourdy turns one tiny beady eye on Apollo. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but he decides that he’s not going to say anything that can be perceived as insult again – he doesn’t know how smart this thing is and if it’s fae it probably has very dangerous responses to insults.

“But it’s like…” Ema pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts frantically typing something. “Was it trying to look like natural wildlife? Is it coincidence? Convergent development? How long has it been sealed here and was that before horses were introduced to North America? I have questions!”

Phoenix chuckles and Ema lowers her phone, turning her furious glare on him. “Don’t laugh!” she snaps. “This is interesting! These are real questions!”

“I knew you’d think so,” Trucy says brightly, instantly diffusing the first bits of tension. “And since I dragged you and Polly out on... “ She sighs. “You know. So I thought I’d at least drag you out to some fun magic stuff!”

She thinks she owes them, to make up for the debacle of finding her mother’s soul. Or she was hoping for something like an adventure and wanted to bring them on that. Apollo isn’t sure whether he’d count this as fun, either, learning that there’s a catfish-horse that could probably kill all of them somehow in the lake, but Trucy seems happy.

“I promise I’m not laughing at you, Ema,” Phoenix says, holding his hands up in an attempt to placate her. Apollo doesn’t see that he’s lying. “It’s just nice to see you get a bit of your spark back.”

The angry huff of her cheeks deflates instantly. “I was probably real annoying as a kid, babbling like that the whole time while you were just trying to investigate, huh?”

“Not at all,” Phoenix says, and again, he isn’t lying. “I mean, I’ll admit to having been a little terrified that if I let you out of my sight you were gonna summon something or make a bad deal trying to get more tools for investigating, but I wasn’t annoyed.”

Ema pulls her scarf back up over her nose, but Apollo catches a glimpse of the sad smile on her face as she does. Then she steps forward and grabs a pack of hot dogs, extending it in her hand to Gourdy on approach. With about a foot between its mouth and her hand, she apparently decides not to risk having her arm be swallowed, and she gives the pack a little toss to get it to its destination. “Oh,” she says, “sort of related, Lana asked about you the other day, Mr Wright. Wanted to know how you’re doing.”

“Ah.” Phoenix rubs the back of his neck. “At least with the Jurist System you’ve got something to tell her more than ‘still sucks at playing the piano’.” His sheepish expression looks a little less when he reaches the part about the piano, and Trucy laughs. Apollo again wonders why he ever bothered to get a piano for the office. “Where is she now, anyway? She got out a year or two ago, right?”

“About two years now, yeah,” Ema says. There is a rhythm to them feeding Gourdy, now, Larry, Trucy, and Ema. Phoenix seems content to hang back, and while Kay bounds forward, Apollo has no inclination to join in on this part of it. “She’s out near Reno, just wanted to get away, and she’s talking moving out to London where we’ve got some family. She’s hesitating now that I’m back, or something, but I told her just get outta here, flee the continent, go somewhere that no one knows your name, y’know?”

“Oh yeah,” Phoenix says. “I’d – had that option, honestly, but—”

“But you didn’t do anything,” Ema interrupts. “And she kinda did… most of it.”

“Do you think Gourdy would let me pet her?” Kay asks.

“I would not try it,” Phoenix says. Kay’s shoulders slump.

“She was gushing about the Jurist System when we talked about it, though,” Ema continues, with only a brief roll of her eyes at Kay’s question.

“I can’t imagine her gushing,” Phoenix says.

Ema shrugs. “It’s – a big thing, y’know, to her. To all of us, but, she’d said – she’d said that maybe it could’ve helped stop Darke, put him away before even more people died and…” She looks from her phone down to the hot dog bag. Its contents are mostly depleted but she grabs one and hurls it with a surprising amount of force. “Good for cases like that. Common sense, no evidence, maybe now justice gets served.”

Apollo can’t say why the name Lana, Lana Skye, seems familiar, but he knows with the expression on Ema and Phoenix’s faces, he’s not about to ask.

Kay whispers something to Trucy and, both giggling, Kay hefts the bag and whatever remains in it onto her shoulder and flings the entire thing at Gourdy. Its mouth doesn’t look wide enough to take in the entire bag, but it does – the bag is there and then gone with a wet sucking sound in the time it takes Apollo to blink. He suddenly wonders if when Klavier complains about Vongole eating everything he has, he means everything, takeout containers and all.

“That’s, um…” Ema taps a finger against her chin. “That’s something. Kind of impressive. Kind of horrible!”

“And scientifically fascinating?” Kay prompts.

“Absolutely!”

“That’s all we’ve got,” Larry says to the beast, showing it his empty hands, like he’s sending off a dog that has gotten its share of treats but continues begging. “Good talk as always, Gourdy. See ya next year.”

Gourdy tilts its head, seeming to carefully survey Larry. It trots forward and for a horrible moment Apollo thinks someone is going to be eaten but Gourdy bumps its square fishy head into Larry’s face and makes an arc back into the water. Its tail is the same as its mane, stringy green and brown weeds with sand and grit tangled up in them. The water around it barely ripples as it enters, doesn’t splash when the creature goes from being half-visible to gone, and the wake moving away from them is weaker than the one that arrived. The arc of its hoofprints left in the snowy sand are backwards, like it left the water where it really just entered.

“Very slimy,” Larry says, wiping his face with his jacket sleeve. “Sticky, slimy, would not headbutt again.”

“But you’re friends now!” Trucy says. “Officially!”

“You never knew what its skin was like before?” Ema asks. She has her phone out again for notes. Kay peers over her shoulder. “Or beyond what you could see that yeah it’s probably fishy. How long have you been doing this again?”

“It’s… Shit.” Phoenix shakes his head, laughing again. “Ten years, now.”

“Plenty of time to have observed and thought about some of the questions on my list.” Ema lowers her phone and stares at Phoenix. “I have questions.”

“My answer is gonna be ‘I don’t know’ to most, but go for it,” Phoenix says.

“There’s gotta be somewhere open for breakfast, right?” Larry says. “Right? Who’s up for that?”

“Eldoon’s!” Trucy says brightly.

“Oh no, no no.” Larry holds up his hands and takes a step back from her. “Eldoon’s for breakfast reminds me of being broke as hell and I’m not about that.”

“That mean you’re paying wherever we go?” Phoenix asks dryly. “Since I got the hot dogs and you’re worth your weight in faery gold now.”

Apollo looks at Ema. Ema glances out of the corner of her eyes first at Larry, then Apollo, then Kay. Kay looks back and forth between Phoenix and Larry.

“Metaphorical gold,” Larry says, jabbing a finger at Phoenix. “You can not phrase it like that, so they” – he points a thumb toward Ema and Kay – “can not be terrified.”

“I’m super down for breakfast, if nobody else is gonna say anything,” Kay chirps.

“You not gonna eat garbage for once?” Trucy asks. She says it with a grin so big that Apollo would find it impossible to take offense if she directed those words or similar at him.

“Hey!” Kay protests. “It’s cheap! It’s cost-efficient!”

“Like you have to worry about that,” Ema says, elbowing her. “Like hell won’t be frozen before Mr Edgeworth lets anyone threaten your salary.” Kay elbows her back, apparently harder, because she staggers. “Anyway,” she adds, looking more at Larry and Phoenix again, “Interrogating you both over breakfast sounds great.”

“Do you ever worry that bringing more and more people in on these secrets makes them untenable?” Apollo asks Trucy. It’s probably a better question for Phoenix, but Ema has already begun the process of cornering him. “Just – showing off magic to us all?”

Trucy shrugs. “Maybe?” she offers. She hooks one arm through Apollo’s elbow and the other through Kay’s. “You and Ema already know so much other stuff.” For a moment her eyes are sad, downcast, and then she turns a sharp look on Kay. “You, though—”

“Guilty of whatever you say,” she laughs.

Trucy shrugs again, jostling Apollo’s shoulder too. “But also we’re like family, and family should get to know some of the weird fun secrets that we have.”

Again Apollo wonders at her definition of fun. But family. Or like family. Like-family is nice to have.

Phoenix, over Ema’s head, raises an eyebrow at her. “Hey Truce,” he says. “Does that mean you’re gonna run off and tell Edgeworth without warning me?”

“I might,” Kay says, snickering and nudging Trucy, who bumps Apollo with the force of it.

Phoenix snorts. “Yeah,” he says. “I know you would, but I’m not sure he’d believe you.”

#fic: the seelie of kurain #roddy fanfics

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

Text

Witches of LA, Chapter 2: I hope you like exposition and pro wrestling jokes because that’s all we’ve got here

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

“And where exactly did you say we’re going?”

“It’s called Nine-Tails Vale! Jinxie – you remember her from New Years? – works there and invited us up for a yokai festival today!”

“A yokai ff – is it too late to get off the train and go home?”

Nine-Tails Vale sits in the hills at the base of the mountains of Kurain, far enough away that there’s a chance that they can have as normal a day as anyone at a yokai festival could, but close enough that the hills around the valley still might be faery mounds. Like most days at the WAA, anything goes, and Apollo has to live with it. And maybe he’ll die with it one of these days, sooner rather than later.

Trucy keeps trying again to explain to Apollo the storyline of the local wrestling scene, which she and Jinxie are avid fans of, on their walk over from the train station.

“It’s like a soap opera combined with a fantasy story, but also with grown men hitting each other with chairs,” she says, which is definitely a pitch that would appeal to certain people who aren’t Apollo. “They’ve got their thing that’s kinda like Court, or if there were two Courts who hated each other, and they battle it out in the ring like Daddy says some of the fae do within our legal system. Because the wrestlers are all masked and they’re the proxies for these powerful spirits who possess them whenever they’re wearing the mask. Like selkie skins but if the seal was separate and you were being controlled by it.”

“Uh huh,” Apollo says, surveying the main lane they’ve come up along. The dirt path, lined with a few scattered cobblestones, is overladen with little wheeled carts and pop-up stands selling little charms and trinkets and decorated with leering faces of yokai. Overwhelmed and shoved aside by the merchandise are older buildings bearing signs with both English and Japanese writing and weathered stone statues that have little offerings and candles scattered about their bases. “I wouldn’t feel like being possessed by a seal is very useful. What am I going to do, flop around a lot?”

“There’s always slapping,” Trucy says. “But I’m saying it’s like that. You put on the skin and you turn into it, wear the mask and bam.”

“Uh huh.”

“So when the wrestlers lose, they can have their masks stripped off, which is the ultimate disgrace because they lose both their power and the world and their enemies know their face and name and can claim them.” Trucy stops and leans over a table of paper tags marked all with a paw print and otherwise with a variety of characters and symbols. “And anyway it never got real big until the Amazing Nine-Tails – he’s one of the wrestlers obviously – started being active outside of the ring. And that’s a real no-go to use your powers like that, but he started getting attention, and the Vale started getting attention, and then this yokai craze kinda started up and now there’s lots of tourists from way out of the area watching the matches and visiting!”

“They’d have to be from way out of town,” Apollo says, “because there’s no one I know from the LA area who would hear about a town in the mountains full of monsters and say ‘yeah, I’m going to spend money to go spend time there’.”

“Yet here we are,” Trucy says. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a bracelet of wooden beads. “Oh, here.” She grabs his arm and slips it onto his wrist next to his bracelet, then shaking her own wrist to draw his attention to a matching one she wears. “I forgot to give you this sooner; it’s rowan wood, which is—”

“An anti-fae charm like iron,” Apollo finishes.

Trucy nods. “Yep! And anti-yokai, it overlaps. Anyway, Daddy says it’s very important to not get rowan mixed up with hawthorn wood, which the fae like. He says that’s a very dangerous mistake to make.”

(“Are you speaking from experience?” Apollo asked, and Phoenix cracked a broken smile and told him that’s all he has to speak from.)

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Apollo says.

“I know you’ve got your ring, but it can’t hurt us to be extra cautious out here today.” Trucy pats the necklace she is wearing; a small horseshoe-shaped charm that must be made of iron dangles from it. Horseshoes are a lucky thing, or thought to be, Apollo knows. Clay has one he keeps with him. “I think that’s why Daddy wanted you to come with me. I think he’s worried I would get into trouble alone, since Jinxie’s working and I won’t be with her all day.”

“I thought he sent me with you because he hates me,” Apollo says. Trucy smacks him on the arm.

Uphill to the alderman’s manor, the dirt roads merge with a well-kept cobblestone path to lead them into a beautiful garden, full of paper lanterns and long banquet tables. Trucy sticks her nose into a bush of beautiful golden flowers and is still admiring them when Jinxie, wearing an apron over her dress and carrying a round serving tray, finds them and slaps a warding charm – one of the thin formal slips that Apollo saw for sale down in the yokai extravaganza, like she wears on her own forehead, not a sticky note – on his forehead. Even after she remembers that she’s met him before, they have to make their way through another circular argument about whether or not Apollo is a fae demon. Trucy has apparently given up on convincing Jinxie of the truth, because she says, “He’s a demon but a good one!”

Does he look extra monstrous today, for some reason? Is his hair spikier, his voice louder? What has he done to deserve this?

Jinxie works as a maid at the manor, though she doesn’t live in the Vale but instead in the neighboring Tenma Town, and with her job she can’t spend all afternoon with them. She imparts on them some local lore from the village about the powerful and terrible yokai, Tenma Taro – is it coincidence or significant that its name bears such similarity to Tenma Town? Like Kurain and Khura’in, what does that mean? – imprisoned in the mountain that the manor is built against. Today’s festival, she explains, is a much more robust version, bolstered by tourist dollars, of a ceremony they hold every year, ritually releasing a shade of Tenma Taro and then banishing it.

Though instead of the Nine-Tailed Fox, the village’s guardian yokai – is that an oxymoron? Apollo once would have thought so, but he works in an office that has a guardian ghost fae – doing the banishing, the wrestler the Amazing Nine-Tails, will be.

Which reminds Apollo of Trucy’s one-sided conversation on the way over, and he interrupts Jinxie and Trucy starting to gush over some recent matches to ask, “So all of this you’re talking about, the wrestlers, uh, kind of channeling yokai spirits – that’s all just in the fiction of wrestling not really being real, right?” They both glare at him. “They aren’t actually using magic and summoning demons, right?”

“Apollo,” Trucy scolds, her hands curled into fists on her hips. “You can’t break kayfabe! You should know that!”

He wishes he had the strength to believe that it isn’t real, and that no one could be so stupid to be fucking around that deep into fae magic for the sake of televised entertainment, but he’s also here at a goddamn yokai festival on one of his days off and that’s pretty stupid too.

“I should get back to work,” Jinxie says. “I’ll see you later – ah!”

Making its way through the garden, causing people to spring out of its path, is a tall bird-creature, with gray feathers and three yellow eyes and sharp talons on its hands and feet, which with their yellow skin resemble the legs of some kind of raptor. It resembles the yokai on the scroll Jinxie showed them, the Tenma Taro, but it’s just – someone in a costume? Right? A costume for a festival, and not actually—

It rounds on Jinxie with a hiss. “Better watch out, little girl, or I’ll sssnatch you away!” She raises her platter up over her face and cowers back into one of the banquet tables. Apollo thinks that it probably is just someone in a costume, now that he’s seen it speak; its beak doesn’t move and its tongue lolls forth even in the middle of its speech. It’s too static, or is that wishful thinking?

But no one else is looking at the monster and how it’s cornered Jinxie, no one moving to help her – and Apollo realizes he is moving forward, not sure what he could do if it’s a yokai and knowing he shouldn’t do anything if it’s a performer (like how he and Clay got banned from a local haunted house when they were 13 because Clay reflexively punched one of the actors in the sternum), but still unable to stand by.

“Hey! Don’t stare like that!” someone nearby warns, at a volume that tries to be a whisper but doesn’t really succeed. They must be talking to Apollo and Trucy, because no one else, not even Jinxie, is staring. “If Tenma Taro locks eyes with you, he’ll steal your soul!”

Apollo turns his eyes to the ground instantly, reflexively, because that’s the one thing he knows not to take chances on even though, as he thinks about it, he’s more sure that this monster is a costume and even if it weren’t, he doesn’t think there’s anything powerful enough to just simply take a soul so easily. And if there were, they wouldn’t just casually set it loose. (He hopes.)

“Look!” Trucy whispers, nudging him and pointing toward the manor, where a small figure stands on the roof dark against the blue spring sky. Whatever – whoever – it is leaps down to the lower roof, disappearing from sight, but only a few seconds later springs again, with a long leap far too long to be human. (He thinks first of Lamiroir’s disappearing act and wonders what the trick behind this is.) The man who lands in the midst of them, between Tenma Taro and Jinxie, wears a wrestler’s belt and a golden fox-head mask, with a collar of the same color fur that turns into a cape of many long foxes’ tails. If he was going to guess, Apollo would say that there are nine.

Clearly the Amazing Nine-Tails, and with some silted words about vanquishing evil, he chases Tenma Taro back toward the manor. And Apollo might now be really convinced of the scriptedness of it – and admittedly relieved by that – but the crowds are cheering and Jinxie no longer looks like she’s about to faint from fright. With her platter still clutched across her chest like a shield, she waves goodbye and returns to work, and Trucy drags Apollo off to explore the town.

Trucy wants to buy everything. Apollo should have expected that – the amount of Gavineers merchandise that she acquired in the two weeks between their meeting Klavier and the concert was astonishing – and to that end he should have expected that she would run out of money and turn to him. She at least considers herself an organized businesswoman, enough to write up the invoice of what she owes him, and he strikes from it the paper warding charms they buy. He isn’t sure yet if he believes in them, but he’d probably be getting a few for his and Clay’s apartment anyway, and Trucy is talking about how it would be nice to have some kind of protective charm to give to Vera that wouldn’t hurt her like iron, and getting something for their friends seems a worthwhile investment. Trucy’s attempt to wheedle a few dollars out of him for another plush Nine-Tailed Fox keychain is not.

It’s warmer now than it was last April, enough that Apollo tentatively hopes that the fae are done throwing their winter tantrums. If Trucy had to drag him anywhere – and she would consider that a necessity – it’s a good day for it, pleasant to spend time out under the sun and the clear sky. He’s not even convinced that the town is as cursed as he first assumed.

Naturally, that’s where it always goes wrong, letting his guard down, no longer anticipating that the worst is going to claw its way up out of the dirt.

He and Trucy circle back to the manor as a crowd is starting to gather at the front doors; at the center of it, once they manage to push through the people, Trucy helping clear a path by sending Mr Hat off to the side to draw people’s eyes and attention the way a will o’ the wisp does, is Jinxie, simultaneously wild-eyed and looking close to passing out. She stretches out one visibly-trembling hand and grabs Trucy by the wrist, her other arm still hugging the platter close to her chest. It must be iron, it must. “Alderman Kyubi is dead!” she cries. “T-ten – Tenma Taro murdered the alderman!”

She sways on her feet and Trucy takes her by the elbow and helps lower her to sit on the ground, and Apollo does what is starting to become a habit in these sort of situations – which are becoming habitual in themselves – and rushes in, pocketing a charm that Jinxie throws at him as he goes.

The scene is a small room Jinxie called the Fox Chamber, up the entry stairs and down the hall to the right, and there, one thing is certain: the alderman is dead.

A classic locked room murder mystery: two men, one dead, the other unconscious, no one else seen when Jinxie discovered the crime. The killer? Obvious, seemingly: the unfortunate unconscious man, whose murder plan clearly ran into a hitch when it came time to get away, and for motive who happens to be the mayor of the neighboring town currently disputing over municipal issues with the dead alderman.

Except the mayor is Jinxie’s father, and if he goes to jail she has no other family, and she’s adamant that Tenma Taro did the killing, and the last locked-room murder case that Apollo defended ended up not being one at all. So, classic setup, maybe, never the obvious solution, and Apollo’s record of stumbling into complex cases while he’s trying to do something law-unrelated with Trucy continues. Is it her? Is it him? Is it them both, together? He can only write so much off as coincidence.

And he wishes he could write off Jinxie’s ramblings as those of a superstitious girl scared witless by the feathers and bloody footprints at the crime scene, and maybe once he could have, maybe this time last year, but he’s seen too much since then. If a monster, a yokai – are they connected to the fae? They must be. Isn’t everything? – murdered the alderman, then the question becomes: how does he prove it? How does he convince the judge and prosecution of it?

He should start with asking Mayor Tenma what happened, first.

Trucy tells him that the mayor can seem scary, but he’s nice, really, promise not to run away, Polly. His nerves would be frayed enough without it, but her warning snaps several more of the barely-connected threads, and like a self-fulfilling prophecy, he’s jumpy and nearly flees the room, sheet of glass between them or no. Mayor Tenma is very good at setting some very bad impressions, loudly, with great force, giving Apollo’s heart time enough to stop several times before the mayor corrects the misconception. It’s a very anxiety-inducing interview, and the facts he gleans from it are worse: Mayor Tenma’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon, and he, asleep from being drugged, remembers nothing, including who was it that hit him on the head. Apollo can’t see the wound or a bandage; the mayor’s entire scalp is covered in Jinxie’s warding charms, as though to make a full hat. Does he believe, or is he humoring his daughter? Apollo doesn’t ask.

He has barely left the building when he receives a phone call from the last person he expects. “Mr Wright? What’s going on?”

“Trucy tells me you’ve found yourself a case over in Nine-Tails Vale.” No preamble, no small talk: Phoenix, friendly as ever.

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“Are you still at the Vale right now?”

“No, I was just talking to the client at the detention center. Why?”

Phoenix sighs heavily. “Because I’m at the airport, picking up the new addition to the Agency – Athena Cykes, Trucy’s mentioned her to you before? And I mentioned your case, and that was it, no stopping her, Athena ditched me with her luggage and took the rental car and is heading out to help you right now.”

“She – you what? She what?” Apollo won’t say that he doesn’t feel some small sense of satisfaction at Phoenix having to suffer someone else flaking on him, but what an impression to make on your new boss.

(Almost as good as punching him in the face.)

“So I need a favor, basically: can you go back to Nine-Tails Vale and intercept her?”

“I—” Once again, the way this day is going takes a sharp turn off the road. “Yeah, I can. But I’ve never met her – what’s she look like?”

“Yellow,” Phoenix says.

“What?”

“She’s got long red hair, and the way you’re red, she’s yellow. Hard to miss with how much energy she’s got.” The description is somehow both vague and incredibly specific – he can’t exactly picture Miss Cykes in his head, but he knows he won’t mistake anyone else for her when he finds her.

“Okay. I can do that. I have to go back anyway to check out the crime scene.” Did he say that Athena had a rental car? He can only dream of how convenient that will be once he gets to her.

“Cool, thanks. Good luck with the case – and with the Vale.”

So much for putting himself at ease convincing himself that it was just a man in a costume, and that there’s some sort of easy explanation for the feathers. (Or not an easy explanation, because saying that Tenma Taro passed through is very easy, but a mundane one.) “What does that mean? Mr Wright?” He doesn’t answer right away, giving Apollo’s stomach enough time to flip over itself and then squish his heart up into his throat. “The stuff Trucy was saying about wrestling, with the yokai and the masks and uh, channeling them? Or whatever it is – that’s not – that’s just the story on the show, right? That’s not…?”

“Not actually real? For most of them, it’s not, no; no magic in the mask but television magic and a tall tale to keep the audience.”

“But – most of them. You said for most of them? So for some of them it is real?”

“Yeah.”

Apollo wants to sink down to the sidewalk and cry. Or scream. Definitely scream, right here next to a police building where they can arrest him for disturbing the peace very easily.

“I can say with certainty that if any spirits involved were actually powerful and smart enough to be malicious, they wouldn’t be stooping to playing a part in half-scripted on-camera fights between half-naked men. Maybe it’ll be a nuisance to your case, at worst, but no threat to anyone’s lives or souls.”

Apollo wishes he could believe that wholeheartedly, and that he could say for sure that Phoenix’s definition of nuisance is something close to his own. “If you don’t get the Not Guilty tomorrow, when you head back up to investigate again, I’ll let you borrow the magatama,” Phoenix adds. “Just so you can really keep an eye on everything, if it’s needed.”

He thinks there will be a second day – that if Apollo doesn’t win in one, then he will have kept his head above water well enough to drag it out. He doesn’t expect Apollo to lose in a day. He thinks Apollo could win in a day.

“Thanks, Mr Wright.”

“No problem. Now you’ve gotta find Athena, and I’ve gotta figure out how to lug her suitcase home.”

Athena, Athena – what else has Trucy told him about her? She was studying in Europe – did she grow up there, too? Does she know what Los Angeles is like? Will she think him superstitious or ridiculous for everything he knows to be real? Does she know what she is walking into in Nine-Tails Vale? Did Phoenix warn her?

Apollo starts walking quicker than before. Of course Phoenix wouldn’t warn her – but hell, to be charitable to Phoenix (for once), he might not have had time to say anything to her before she took off.

If, against his own nature and his lived experience, he tries to be optimistic, he hopes for three things. First, that everyone involved in the murder his plainly human and that no monster committed murder. (That seems the most likely: would a monster know to plant the mayor’s fingerprints?) Second, that Athena has enough sense to be cautious about whatever village folklore they’re stumbling into instead of immediately dismissing it. And third, if he’s really dreaming, that Klavier will be the prosecutor on this case, easily able to identify who is and isn’t human and probably willing to share it.

But Apollo knows that’s all a little much to hope.

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles #next chapter: MY DAUGHTER APPEARS AND THROWS AN ENTIRE DUDE BECAUSE SHE'S SWOLE #and we also meet -- oh FUCK we meet fulbright oh FUCK #i'm not sure if we'll meet simon in 3 or 4 tho. depends on how quick i can gloss the investigation portion

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