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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

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Chapter 14: most of this is tangential but I think most of you know that’s my writing style by now

Yeah so....apparently spring break is great for my writing brain, because I wrote this in two days. Do I have an essay due in two weeks to think about and a play to read? Yes. Am I? Hell no. Instead, I offer up this chapter, which contains some small worldbuilding and an even smaller amount of stuff that pushes the broad plot, and you can figure out what to call the rest of it

[Beginning] [Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

“Hey, Clay, I need your expertise.”

“Math, or human interaction?”

“Legally, you shouldn’t be able to be good at both of those at the same time. But, yeah, how do I say ‘sorry that your brother has committed multiple murders and is one of the Fair Folk, checking in to see how you’re doing after all that’ but without sounding either too dismissively casual or overbearingly worried and overstepping the boundaries of this relationship that I don’t know what it actually is?”

“Apollo.”

“Yeah?”

“Dude.”

��Yeah?”

“Your life is fucked way beyond my wheelhouse, dude.”

“Just help me write the damn text.”

The first cold winds of winter blow down from the mountains early Monday morning. Apollo wakes around 3 am with a numb nose and, cursing the fae, stumbles out of bed for a hoodie, an extra pair of socks, and the extra blankets he and Clay keep in the hall closet. It happens every year, takes him by surprise every time, but he can’t remember it ever being October when the faery chill hits.

Clay says the same later, when they both are awake for real, and Apollo finds him in the kitchen making coffee that, judging from his wide eyes and frenetic babbling, he doesn’t need. “D’you think it’s something we did?” he asks, slopping coffee onto the counter next to his mug. “We pissed ‘em off digging around and that’s why there’s bad weather so early?” He spins about, sloshing more coffee onto the floor. Apollo with a wordless glare points him to the paper towels. “What if I called in sick and hid at home until the weather is better?”

“Unless there’s snow, I don’t think that’s an excuse,” Apollo says. He pushes the blinds aside. There is not snow on the street below.

“I bet Mr Starbuck won’t go in. I bet Director Cosmos won’t show up. They’re gonna hide safely from the Folk and I’m gonna leave this apartment and die.”

“The more you tell me about how the Center runs, I’m surprised it does run,” Apollo says.

“Bit like your law office,” Clay says.

“True and uncalled for.”

There’s probably some sort of scientific reason behind it; Apollo has tried to look but meteorology makes his head spin. But when winter comes, snow hits the LA area and the mountains of Kurain at lower altitudes than it should be, and nowhere else. And they blame it on the fae and go on with their lives. It’s a stupid city with stupid superstitions that are real. It’s why no one lives here. It’s why Apollo can afford to live here.

He stares into the fridge, decides he’s skipping breakfast and they need to go grocery shopping, and goes to put on a sweater.

Biking to work is hell on these kind of days. He remembers last winter, when Mr Gavin never kept his office warm enough for anyone — especially not for Apollo, who did the worst with the cold snaps of any of his coworkers. Was it because Kristoph was one of the fae that fae weather didn’t bother him? Does it bother Phoenix? Klavier?

He realizes on opening the door to the agency — he has a key but doesn’t use it, finding that even when he locks the door at night it is open ready for him in the morning — that he dressed anticipating the temperature in Kristoph’s office, not Phoenix’s, which has always been temperate. Maybe the sweater was overkill.

The door swings open to deliver an icy rush of air to his face.

Or maybe not.

“Shit,” he says, tossing his jacket to the couch and breathing into his hands.

He makes for his desk, flipping the light on in the other room and stopping short at the mess piled up around Phoenix’s. He glances back through to the front door. Cleaner than usual, like someone picked up everything littering the floor, and dumped it right in that spot. It’s something to do today, at least. Probably won’t be getting any clients. As usual.

“Shit, it’s cold.” He shivers and rubs his arms and then screams as something soft hits him over the head and shoulders. The world goes dark for several seconds as he wrestles with it, finally flinging to the floor a dark blue blanket. “Oh.”

Glad that no one else is in the office right now, he picks it back up and turns it over in his hands to find it is branded with the Steel Samurai logo. Trucy’s, maybe? She’s never shown a great deal of interest in that sort of television, as far as Apollo knows. He glances up at the bookshelf that sits next to the doorway. It must have fallen from up there — conveniently for the weather and that the office is now a walk-in freezer. He wraps it around his shoulders like a cloak and sets to work on the mess at Phoenix’s desk, because if he has to look at it any longer, he’s going to start breaking out in hives. As long as he can toss it aside and pretend to have dignity should any client wander in, he’ll be fine.

After a few hours of cleaning, he goes to check his hair in the bathroom mirror, remembers that it fell on Saturday — and finds that it has been put together back on the wall. He doesn’t remember exactly what it looked like, having no reason to commit that to memory, but he would swear it is the same one, and he can see and feel a few faint cracks if he squints and runs his hand over it. “This place really is haunted, huh?” he asks, spiking his hair back to its proper shape.

The lights blink, maybe in response, and maybe just a coincidence. “Benevolently haunted,” he adds stupidly, not wanting to offend whatever entity may lurk here. “Because it means that Mr Wright doesn’t have to buy a new mirror.”

The mirror shakes as though rattled by an earthquake, but nothing else does.

Or like laughter. Like it’s shaking with laughter.

Apollo goes back to his desk, the sense of satisfaction he had at cleaning gone — both because of this weird interaction with the office, and because of the onset of existential dread that this is what the rest of his career is going to look like, sprints and bursts of Mr Wright’s fuckery and months of drudgery in between. He’s probably peaked with this Jurist System test case. That’s going to be his biggest professional accomplishment.

He sloughs the blanket off onto his desk, walks back into the main room, and nearly straight into a woman.

“Ack!” Springing backwards, he slams his shoulder into the doorframe. So much for a dignified entrance even without the blanket-cloak. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know anyone was here! You should’ve said something!”

She doesn’t look shocked by him or his outburst and she turns her dark eyes away from the bookshelf to look over Apollo. She wears some sort of robe or traditional garment, and her glossy black hair swings like a cape behind her even with the smallest, slowest movement of her head. “Is your boss here?” she asks.

“Er, Mr Wright — no, he’s not. I can call him and let him know someone’s here -- but he’s not a defense attorney anymore, so if you need some sort of defense, he can’t…” He trails off at her calm, unwavering stare. If she knows that he isn’t the Wright on the door, that he isn’t the one in charge, she probably knows Phoenix, and she probably knows what happened to him. “I’ll, uh, call him.”

She bows her head and drifts toward the piano. Apollo ducks back around the doorway to give himself a moment for silent screaming before he dials Phoenix’s number, and, to his lack of surprise, reaches voicemail. He starts to text Trucy, realizes that she is probably in school at this time, texts her anyway, and then Phoenix.

Someone at office to see you

The woman has lifted the cover of the piano keys and runs her finger down the edges without compressing any to make a sound. Apollo can’t begin to guess how old she is — his age? Mr Wright’s age? Something ancient and out of time? She turns back to him, the curtain of her hair swinging. “Can I get you anything?” Apollo asks. He wishes he had Trucy; she is too good at setting people at ease, at setting the office at ease, at offsetting this tension that is tightening in his lungs and in the frozen air. “While you wait?”

“Be careful in your questions, little dragon,” she says softly. “Do not let them dangle so open-ended.”

“I…” He closes his mouth. She tilts her head. Her hair looks strange, the way the light hits it; when she moves, it highlights auburn red, like the color is layered beneath it, except that makes no sense because he can see the hair that frames her face and how it is black down behind her neck. “What did you say your name was, again?”

He knows she didn’t say her name.

She smiles. “Clever little dragon,” she says. “You may, as many do, call me Iris.”

With his heart in his mouth, Apollo nods.

She walks her slender fingers down the piano keys. The notes creak out hoarsely, as if it hasn’t been touched, let alone tuned, in many years. Knowing Mr Wright, he probably got it off the sidewalk somewhere. Iris makes no attempt at a melody, does nothing but plunk out staccato little croaks. All the while, the office grows colder. Apollo throws open the blinds, hoping the sunlight will help alleviate the chill and counter the way the ceiling lights are flickering and dimming.

Haunted. Yeah, that’s it.

The door swings open and Phoenix enters in a different drab ugly hoodie than his usual, his blue beanie pulled down low over his forehead and a bright pink scarf hiding the rest of his face but his eyes. That answers Apollo’s question about how much he feels the cold, and it is not enough to muffle his, “Aw, shit,” or distract from the way his black eyes immediately turn blue.

Whatever air of mystery Apollo thought that Iris had evaporates. She bows, her hair falling as a veil around her face, and with her face still toward the floor she says in a rush, “The Mystics are both immensely preoccupied and wished for me to appear in their steads, else I would not come here or elsewhere to bother you—”

“Hey, no worries.” Phoenix holds up his hands in a placating gesture of surrender; they blink red like lies. “It’s not you, specifically.” That appears as truth. “Any time any of your family shows up impromptu, I know I’m in for some shit. What’s up?”

Iris lifts her head, shakes her hair back from her big sad eyes. “You’re making waves again,” she says.

“In the Court? Because I knew I was doing that here.” Phoenix reaches up to take his beanie off and then seems to think better of it, instead only partially unwinding his scarf. “Of course it’s in the Court. You’re all freezing me to death. Carry that message to the Mystics.”

Iris’ lips twitch. “Ah, but that pink is such a good color on you.”

Time seems to stop, for a moment, a pendulum halfway through its swing, something heavy sinking down onto all of them. Iris’ eyes widen; one foot shifts back. Phoenix’s eyebrows lower, just for a second, just so that Apollo can see something is passing between them, and then he laughs and breaks the spell and says, “Isn’t it? Trucy made it for me; the beanie, too. She’s been knitting since she was little and she’s gotten really good at it, except for color matching — you should see what she gives to Edgeworth. She probably does it on purpose. Apollo.” He jumps. He hadn’t expected the sudden shift in Phoenix’s mood, had expected to be forgotten as soon as the woman began speaking. “Don’t let Trucy know when your birthday is unless you want…” Phoenix rubs a hand over his chin. “Purple or magenta, probably, for you. Maybe chartreuse. You’re already doomed for Christmas.”

Apollo nods numbly.

(He can’t tell Trucy his birthday because doesn’t actually know his real birthday. Dhurke had a range of two months and Datz tossed a knife at the calendar to pick.)

“She sounds like a good child,” Iris says.

“She’s the best.” Phoenix grins, and then he sighs, and his shoulders slump forward. “So. Situation at the Court. Is this about the Jurist System? I was imagining that just like certain people here aren’t happy about letting average citizens make judgments, some of you might not be, either.”

Iris nods. “Sharp as ever, Feenie.”

Apollo chokes on air.

Feenie?

The glare that Phoenix turns on him could split rock.

Phoenix’s statement catches up to him a moment later. “Wait — why would the — the Fair Folk care about what we’re doing with our courts here?” Apollo asks.

Then he waits to be shut out again, like always.

“We find it a fair, neutral ground to resolve our disagreements,” Iris says. “It is an agreement we hold dear to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.”

“Was it ever a formally written agreement?” Phoenix asks. “Mia never said when she told me all that, but I can’t imagine you would all adhere to something without explicit terms.”

“You lawyers are much the same in that regard,” Iris says.

“Ain’t that the old joke,” Phoenix mutters. Leaning against the bookshelf, he doesn’t look at ease, eyes pale darting between Iris at the piano and Apollo standing lost alone in the center of the room by the couch, but he speaks with a sort of casualness that Apollo hasn’t heard from him. “So since the way we’re conducting our trials is changing, hopefully, the Court will have to change — and that’s, well…” He shrugs. “They don’t like change, much.”

“That was my mother’s folly,” Iris says softly. “And the former Queen Mystic, perhaps that she loved it too much. But yes.” She raises her head and reaches into one of her billowing sleeves, producing from it a scroll. “We wrote an agreement, and that is what the Mystics wished you to review.” She drops one end and the page unfurls to the floor and rolls across it.

“I don’t know how to read,” Phoenix deadpans.

Apollo cannot pretend his laugh is anything but a laugh.

Iris frowns and snaps her wrist and the scroll bounces up like a yo-yo into her hand. “I do not at this time know there is any clause in this stating that we need a verdict in your courts to be rendered by a lone judge and not a jury — and if there is, the Mystics will change it — but you as our go-between should stand as part of our process.”

Phoenix breathes in deeply, pulling up his shoulders and closing his eyes. “There’s not even a clause that says the judge presiding has to be human — just that verdict is rendered in a human court. You probably won’t have to change any wording; just minds.” He opens his eyes. “I need to clear off my desk, first. It was a damn shitshow.”

Apollo opens his mouth to mention that, but Phoenix has already ducked into the next room. He waits, unsure of where he belongs, as Iris drifts into the doorway; and then Phoenix reappears, his features contracted in confusion. “My desk — yesterday — did someone…?” He gestures between Apollo and Iris in a vain search for words.

“Oh,” Apollo says. “Yeah. I didn’t have anything else to do this morning.”

Phoenix blinks, again. If he had nothing else to do, he probably still would have done anything else. “Oh. Well, thank you.”

He disappears again, Iris trailing after him, just barely brushing the door with her hand and leaving it in its half-closed state. Apollo stands rooted in the center of the room, swallowed halfway up by the cold.

He… thanked me?

Apollo’s phone chimes with a text from Trucy. He sends back a scolding, knowing it will only encourage her slacking further, and then sinks into the couch. He has no place in the politics of the Court, wants no place in it, not like Phoenix — what did he always say? Young and too stupid to know better. Apollo wants to know better. Apollo doesn’t want to step any further into this.

Feenie.

He and Iris weren’t in a relationship, were they? Is that what Phoenix meant? Is that how this began, this part of his life?

Personal involvement with the fae seems like a good way to fall down that rabbit hole. Avoid that, Apollo thinks, and he finds that he has written those two words, avoid that, on the yellow legal pad left sitting on the coffee table. Avoid that. Right. Like he can do that, with his phone buzzing with another message from Trucy and weighted with another message he hasn’t sent.

Maybe better not to overthink it.

Hey How are you doing How’s it going How’re things How’re you doing Sorry about your brother Heard about the band. sorry

“Polly! I need to get you stuff for the weather!” Trucy, with some difficulty, pulls off her scarf — royal blue, and a little lumpy and holey, like it was an earlier prototype — and throws it at him. “It gets cold in here!”

“Yeah, I noticed.” He has spent the afternoon huddled into the couch, hoping for reprieve that eventually came; maybe it got a little warmer in this part of the office, or maybe he went numb. Remembering what Phoenix said about getting knitwear for presents, he buries his face in Trucy’s scarf anyway. He can’t feel his nose. “Warm.”

She throws herself onto the couch across from him. “Daddy is still meeting with whoever?” He nods. She frowns. “Is it jury stuff or… stuff?”

The weekend’s adventure lingers in their mind. “Jury stuff, but still with… stuff.”

A few more stuffs deep and they’re not going to know what they’re both talking about, but Trucy seems to realize that as well and drags her algebra textbook out of her bag. She scratches numbers onto a legal pad, mumbling the whole time, while Apollo tries to jog his memory and solve the problems upside-down. It is easy in the quiet to hear when the conversation in the next room draws toward the door and when it creaks open.

“—was warned not to expect anything.” That’s Phoenix, his back toward them, pushing the door open further. He looks over his shoulder and waves at Trucy. “Thought I should ask anyway.”

“But I will ask the Mystics what they know nonetheless.” Iris carries herself with some sort of innate unease, like she thinks — or knows — herself unwelcome here. Apollo hadn’t noticed it at first, but now, hours later, she still stands as if wanting to shrink, arms tight to herself. “If somewhere in their secrets they know something, they have spoken nothing of it to me; but you are right that this is not our family’s parlance. Even my sister, given choice, preferred to deal in names, not souls.”

“Her sole virtue,” Phoenix says bitterly, and Trucy’s eyes widen at the sharpness of it. Apollo has grown used to deadpan and cynical and sarcastic, but all without much bite. Not like this.

Iris bows her head low as in apology. “And this must be your daughter,” she says, raising it and turning her sad eyes toward her and Apollo. Like before, when Phoenix talked about the scarf, something of the mention of Trucy seems to fan apart the thick tense smog.

Trucy sits up straight and squares her shoulders, her biggest grin finding its way into place. “Yes, I’m Trucy!” she chirps. “It’s very nice to meet you!”

“This is Iris,” Phoenix says. “She’s an old friend.”

That sentence is not visibly a lie, but Phoenix’s eyes flicker toward Apollo, doubtlessly recalling earlier, and Apollo would bet there’s a little more to it than that.

“I’ve heard a great deal about you, little firebird,” Iris says. “Your father is very proud, and rightfully so.”

“Oh!” Trucy rubs the back of her head. “Um, thanks! But it’s nothing, nothing really—”

Iris’ eyes snap toward Apollo; she stares him down for two long, silent seconds before her gaze drifts across Trucy and back to Phoenix. He cocks his head slightly and raises a shoulder. It might be a simple stretch, but it might be a nod back into the room behind them, and it might be something else passed between them. Iris raises a hand to her cheek, eyes wide, surprised.

“What are you talking about?” Trucy asks, hands on her hips. She stands up.

“We said exactly zero words, Truce,” Phoenix says lightly. He raises an eyebrow at Iris. Her hand at her mouth, she nods.

“Your father mentioned your brave face in the worst of times,” Iris says. “And your modesty, and your lovely smile. And here you greet me with all of that, and I find he is right in all he said.”

And nowhere is she saying that’s what she was silently communicating, but the barrage of compliments seems to have upset Trucy’s footing enough for her to let it go. “He mentioned you knit,” Iris adds. “I used to, as well, a few lifetimes ago, and I believe I still have some yarn I did not leave behind. I might gift it to you, if you wish.”

Those are fae words, carefully constructed, carefully closed: a gift. “I think I need more.” Trucy taps her chin. “I definitely do. That would be great!”

Iris smiles.

“A few lifetimes ago,” Phoenix echoes, and he snorts. “You’re making me feel old, if college was a few lifetimes ago.”

College. Apollo files that away in the same place he has reluctantly stored the nickname Feenie.

“And your teenage daughter makes you feel — what, exactly? Young?” Iris doesn’t smile with her teeth; everything is closed lips, very slight, delicate, and shy expressions. Everything about her is compact and controlled, as though she wants to be overlooked — everything but her hair, gleaming with fire or autumnal leaves.

“Absolutely.” Phoenix’s face does not twitch. “That is exactly it — wait. Wait wait.” He holds up a hand and Iris jumps. “You’ve had the yarn, not stashed away somewhere here, but you took it back with you?” She nods. They’ve obviously communicated about what the hell he means by these vague location words before. “So… we are going to end up with glamour-enchanted scarves and hats, yes or no?”

“Oh!” Iris scrunches her brows together, deep in thought. “I…” She slowly lifts her hand away from her chin. “I have no idea. Does this mean you don’t want it?”

“I kind of want Trucy to have it even more now,” Phoenix says, also with his hand on his chin, “just to see.”

“It’ll be an experiment!” Trucy says. “Magic fashion!”

“You sound like Ema,” Apollo says.

“Ema would love this, I bet,” Phoenix says. “It’s probably the most harmless version of all the bullshit experiments she talked about wanting to try, years back.”

Iris smiles again and ducks her head. “I am glad I have something to give.” Something solemn is packed in between the words. The corners of Phoenix’s grin fall. “For you, then, little firebird, a gift.” Apollo almost expects her to produce some balls of yarn from within her sleeves, but she instead simply drifts toward the door.

“You’re heading out that way?” Phoenix asks.

“Daddy, you know there’s only one door in this office,” Trucy says. “Unless she wants to go out the window.”

She’s brilliantly, uniquely perceptive, Phoenix has always said, Apollo has come to see as well, but sometimes the obvious flashes right by her like a wisp come and gone.

“I found, preparing for my visit, some cash I never spent all those years ago,” Iris says. “I thought I might get myself some coffee. I rather miss it.”

“Maya still has no idea what to do with a coffee machine, huh.” Phoenix chuckles, shaking his head. In context, knowing what Iris is, Maya can only be another of the fae — and Phoenix laughs at her, with something like fondness. Something that maybe is fondness.

“I would never dare to speak ill of the Mystic,” Iris says.

“That’s exactly all the answer I needed,” Phoenix says, holding up his hands in mock-surrender. He leans back against the wall, and, a moment later, as Iris has almost reached the door, says, “Oh, hey, I don’t even know if you were thinking about there — the place just off the quad, with the name that—”

“The Vine Yard?”

“Yes!” Phoenix snaps his fingers together. “The one we said sounded like a place you should be able to get wine. That closed up years back, I forget what kinda restaurant replaced it. All I remember is Maya and I got kicked out so it could be anything.” He shrugs and his shoulders fold in on themselves. Reminiscing lets a wall down and he seems now to regret it, to take back the words he’s let himself release into the air in front of Trucy and Apollo. “Maybe you weren’t even thinking about that and were just gonna wander into wherever, which I recommend, but—” He shrugs again. “Didn’t want you to go looking for something that’s not there anymore.”

Her hair swings past her eyes when she bows her head in acknowledgement. It looks redder again. “No,” she says. “I would not want to do that, either.” She lays a hand on the door, her long white nails catching the light, and she turns back one last time to glance over Trucy and Apollo. “Take care, all of you — and do take care of your father.” Her eyes twinkle. “He needs it.”

“Hey!”

The door closes behind her and the entire office seems to shudder, settle on its foundations, the blinds rattling in their places and the lights warming in their tone to something less harsh than they were. Apollo exhales and no longer sees his breath. “So,” Trucy says, swiveling in place, bouncing in a way that Apollo always takes to mean trouble. “Who is she, Daddy? Are you—”

“Trucy, darling, sweetheart, light of my life—” Phoenix crosses the office in a few large steps to stand in front of Trucy and lightly clap his palms against her cheeks. “I know how you’re going to finish this sentence, and I know you want to have more than one parent in your life, and I know I want that for you too, but please, in this instance, on this day, take your question and swallow it and lock it away deep in your soul and never think of uttering it in this direction ever again.”

Trucy’s cheeks are ballooned like she has the words stored up and ready to go, but she nods. Phoenix taps her on the face again. “Good.”

She manages silence for less than a second before she blurts, with all the force of something that physically pained her to contain, “So she’s your ex-girlfriend, then?”

Phoenix presses his hands over his face and slumps forward. “Trucy!”

“I want to clarify!” Trucy throws her hands in the air. “So I don’t say more stupid things!”

Phoenix laughs for what feels to be a long time, almost stopping and then looking at Trucy and Apollo and doubling over again wheezing. “No,” he gasps, finally. “I never dated Iris.”

It must be a lie — Apollo can’t believe it’s anything but a lie — but he can’t see that it is.

On Tuesday morning, the cold has slightly abated, Klavier has not responded to his text, and in the middle of the office Apollo finds a box of brightly-colored yarn sitting in the center of a hula hoop. Pink is predominant.

#roddy fanfics #fic: the seelie of kurain #i didn't expect this chapter and this side-stop in the fic to be this long and i know i say that every time #but i NEVER expect anything to have the substance that it does. this being no exception. i thought i could move the plot some more.#and then i hit a decent natural break and thought 'well okay. maybe i call it there'#lying in bed last night i wrote most of chapter 15 in my head but that's......useless.........

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