#pen had a fit while i was inking gavin's mouth

[catella-ars]

#oH #art #fanart #traditional art #redacted asmr #redacted gavin #redacted lasko #pen had a fit while i was inking gavin's mouth #LIKE I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TROUBLE DRAWING MOUTHS

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Chapter 16: the nigh-inevitable prosecutorial existential crisis, now with more bullshit fae magic

I wrote this and 17 all as one chapter, which means that 17 will go up tomorrow, or maybe even tonight if I get impatient. It’ll be a surprise, like every update.

[Beginning] [Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

It occurs to Apollo, over halfway to the Prosecutors Office, that even going in armed with some probable truth, Klavier probably will not want to talk to him about it.

Which -- fair enough. There’s a huge chunk of Apollo’s own life that he does not want to talk about with anyone, ever, and he can remember talking to Klavier in that cafe and no matter how suspicious it obviously was, rather than explain how he could See, clear that suspicion, all he could do was just ask Apollo to trust him. That seems certain. A dead end. Conversation cut off before it begins.

But Apollo is already over halfway to the Prosecutors Office when he considers this, and he has the feeling that if he just turns around and goes back, Phoenix will laugh at him. Or worse, Phoenix will be disappointed, and Apollo doesn’t think he could physically handle a man so disappointing as Phoenix Wright thinking that Apollo is the disappointing one.

As much as he tried to brush it off with that last blithe, uncaring comment – as much as Apollo let him bait him to it – Phoenix did really seem to mean it when he mentioned being concerned about Klavier, more than he seems to mean most things. And the magatama – what else does it do? More than looking through the center, he had said something about glamours. Glamour and glimmer. Apollo could laugh.

He can pretend he’s supposed to be here when he walks into the lobby, even though today he doesn’t even have a handful of documents to flash and a name to drop, but he makes it into the elevator without any question of what exactly he is here for. The doors close on his shoulder when he is too slow to get out, questioning again this course of action, sure that he should have at least waited another hour or so until Trucy came back from school to bring her with him. They could pretend she was the concerned one.

(Like Apollo hasn’t sent five texts in three days that are each more clearly, desperately, grasping at an excuse to talk.)

But he manages to force himself to knock on the door. “Prosecutor Gavin?”

He waits, watching beneath the door for any sign of movement and straining to hear anything. He could press his ear up against the door and look like an idiot and a weirdo when someone else comes down the hall or when the door opens; or he could be an idiot and try to explain himself through the door to either an empty room or a prosecutor who obviously does not want to talk to him.

(Fine, fine, so their courtroom rivalry was a summer fling that burnt itself out. Whatever. See what Apollo cares.)

He probably shouldn’t try to talk, not without Clay over his shoulder dictating and debating every turn of phrase.

(Okay, Apollo might care a little. If nothing else, he owes him for that initial, albeit misplaced, concern.)

The little demon on his shoulder with Clay’s voice tells him to go for it, say anything, it can’t be stupider than anything he’s said in court. Which, you have not watched any of my trials, Clay, you cannot know if I sounded stupid in court. He would just feel stupidest if Klavier wandered down the hallway while Apollo was having a one-sided conversation with his door.

But he has to do something. He knocks again. “Um, if you’re in there and don’t want to see me, I get it, I guess. I just, um, I think I’ve figured out what you are – that sounds weirdly dehumanizing when I phrase it like that – and I… kind of hoped I would figure out the end of this sentence on the fly.” He smacks his head into the wall next to the door. God, he’s no good at this. They didn’t teach him this in his rhetoric classes. “Yeah. I’m going now.”

He walks down a few more doors, stops, turns around, and waits. He’ll go in another minute or too, just long enough to see if Klavier comes down the hall, or out of his office. It wasn’t a lie – he’ll go. Just, not quite. Just to see.

He presses the button to call the elevator, decides he really will bring Trucy next time and have her batter down the door, and hears the creak of a door. Behind him, back down the hall, he sees Klavier’s door crack open enough to show a flash of blue eyes that meet his.

And then the slam shut seems to ring out forever after.

“Hey!”

The elevator beeps in vain behind him. Apollo scrambles back to Klavier’s office. “Prosecutor Gavin, wait—”

“A magatama – figures.” Even with his voice muffled by the door between them, the sneer is obvious. Like Kristoph’s.

“Because you’ve completely disappeared!”

He sounds like Kristoph, and his bare attempts at his accent don’t change that. “Did Herr Wright put you up to this?”

“No,” Apollo says, truthfully, because he’s pretty sure he didn’t. Phoenix just – wanted him to, and gave him advice for it. But Apollo made the decision without him. Right? He never knows. “You think Mr Wright has ever told me to just plainly do something in his life?”

Silence. “Look,” Apollo says. “You can tell me to fuck off forever and I will, but I figured at least I’d – attempt. Because I owe you for all your concern about me getting tangled with the fae, back when we first met.”

Something mumbled, something Apollo can’t catch. “What?”

“I said” – the door opens about three inches – “you don’t owe me anything.” Apollo could probably throw his shoulder into the door and barge in, now, but that’s not the point of what he’s trying to do. “And even if you did, I’m quite human. No reason to worry about how I would collect on any debts.”

The magatama spins easily between Apollo’s fingers. “Human. What was it you said, ‘human and not like you’? I think I know what you mean.”

“Do you.” Again, he sounds like Kristoph, the dry not-a-question that he’s not commenting on until Apollo lays out for him what he knows of the case.

“You were stolen by the fae,” Apollo says. “As a kid. They left a changeling behind and took you away and now you’re – like this, Sight and glamours and…” His last words are a presumption, a bold one, but it fits with all the facts, of Klavier’s behavior. “And terrified of them.”

The door moves, starts to push close, and then it stops, swings wide, an invitation. “I wouldn’t personally say ‘terrified’,” Klavier says.

Apollo thought his office was a mess before, with its haphazard pilings of books and scattered papers, but clearly the day that Lamiroir accused Klavier’s best friend of murder was a good day. The blinds are drawn over the huge window, only a few strips of sun making their way inside, and the overhead light and computer screens give the entire room a sickly glow. On the floor, balanced on a stack of books, sits a laptop, surrounded by a half-circle of more books, papers, and pens. It looks like he has been doing his work sitting on the floor.

Vongole lays sprawled in the fancy chair, her head draped over the arm, only her ears twitching on seeing Apollo -- the only chair in the room, Apollo now realizes. Apparently Klavier doesn’t get many visitors for very long.

And Klavier – Klavier behind Apollo now, pushing the door shut, looks terrible. He isn’t unattractive, by any means, but clearly unkempt, probably unhealthy. His eyes are bloodshot, puffy, and so hollow beneath that Apollo could assume he hasn’t slept in days. All the apparent life and warmth has faded from his brown skin, like he is in desperate need of fresh air and sunshine (he probably is); his hair too (especially) has lost its glow, like the golden light shining out from it has been shut off, leaving behind something faded, blond just shy of gray.

“How’s the view with the magatama?” Klavier asks dryly. The words seem typical to him, one hand propped on his hip, but the other is toying with his hair in a way that Apollo has come to recognize as nervousness or uncertainty, and the cocky smile he attempts falls off halfway through the question.

“You look awful,” Apollo blurts. He winces. Great. Nailed it, again.

“That huge forehead, and yet no room for a filter between your brain and your mouth.” Klavier at least doesn’t look offended. He seems to have realized that this, or something like it, would happen with the magatama – enough to be resistant to it at the start. Enough to know that whatever glamour he has is the thing most holding him together. “But I did assume as much.”

“About me, or about the fact that you look like a hot mess?”

“I appreciate the ‘hot’ part, at any rate.” He tosses his head back, but the loose strands of his bangs fall right back into place, and he huffs and combs his fingers back through them. “Glamours, ja, you see? Good for a celebrity.” He offers a smile that doesn’t collapse quite so quickly. “No messing around with makeup unless I really want to, but never a bad paparazzi shot. Perfect all the time.”

“Do you have to think about it?” Apollo asks. He casts around for a place to sit, remembers again that there’s nothing. “Or does it just unconsciously happen?”

The tabletop next to him is almost clear, but there’s still a few scraps of paper and a small journal open to some scrawl in purple ink. Klavier snatches it out of the way and then gives a feigned-casual wave. “Sit down, if you like – I would offer a chair, but I’ve been working from the floor.” He pulls open a desk drawer with his foot and drops the journal inside. “As for your answer, it is both – always on, but I can turn up the charm if I so choose, if I want more of the spotlight and adoration.” He leans back against his desk, not even offering a smile at that. “Or down, if I want to disappear.”

“Huh?” Apollo hoists himself up on the table.

“Put the magatama down for a moment.” Klavier gestures toward the stone in Apollo’s hand. Apollo sets it on the table and blinks – like a cloud moving out from in front of the sun, an immediate brightness returns to Klavier’s face, the lines around his eyes vanishing. He places his hand on the magatama and raises it again, watching the sharp shift, the fog clear and then settle. This time, Klavier’s smile holds steady, smaller than usual, but apparently entertained by Apollo making this discovery. “Or do that some more.”

“You have no idea how bizarre this is,” Apollo says.

“I can imagine,” Klavier says. His smile turns down at the corners, sad, wistful, and independent of the magatama, his eyes flicker to their different blue shade. Did he do something like this with Kristoph, watch his brother turn from someone so similar to something so different?

“Anyway.” Apollo sets his palm back flat on the desk. Klavier seems even worse now, even more exhausted, now that Apollo has the sharper, fresher image of what he looks like otherwise in his mind. “You said…?”

He tries to just keep looking at Klavier, but there is something in the other corner of the room, past Vongole, near the covered window, drawing his eyes. It feels like Trucy’s wisp, the few times she has absently set it loose around the office, distracting Apollo from being able to do anything but watch it until he can shake himself long enough to tell her to stop. And then he tries to look back to Klavier, to the desk, but his eyes keep shifting either way past it, past where Klavier apparently should be. After a few dizzying moments, the sensation clears, but when he fixes his gaze, Klavier is no longer standing there.

Maybe this was a ploy to get away from Apollo – maybe he left the office. Apollo still feels like he’s seeing spots, trying to look over his shoulder, around the rest of the office, find the spot that he can’t look at—

“Herr Forehead.”

—is right next to him.

Apollo nearly falls off the desk. A few papers and the magatama slide to the floor when he tries to scrabble away. “What the hell—”

Klavier grins, stage-bright, dragging his hand through his hair and down from the bun. “Sorry,” he says, still grinning unapologetically, so surely that Apollo doubts there is any glamour involved in that. “The prospect was far too tempting.”

“Explain that one to me.”

Apollo has never seen him with his hair down, and apparently won’t get the opportunity, because Klavier is already tying it back up, a little more neatly. “It’s all manipulating appearances. If I can make myself – hm, how would I describe it? – dazzling” – he gestures vaguely with his hand, and the hairband around his fingers springs loose and shoots across the room – “dammit – to others, make myself loved, then there is the other direction, ja? To make myself unnoticed, inconsequential. Overlooked.”

Vongole unfolds herself from the chair. She looks like nothing more than pure white fog with long, gangly limbs, a snout, and red ears protruding from the cloud. The approximation of where her shoulders probably would be doesn’t rise much higher than Klavier’s desk. She’s shrunk, she has to have, because Apollo remembers something wolflike, towering, in court, not their weird unimposing dog that has wafted over to Klavier with his hair band in its mouth.

“So that’s why no one’s seen you around,” Apollo says. “Because you’ve made everyone overlook you.”

Klavier nods. When he takes the band from Vongole, she flashes her teeth, and those still look too big to fit into her mouth, too blinding white to be real. “Even Herr Prosecutor Witch and his Sight can’t find me. The subtler glamours can’t really be Seen through – hence, why your boss needs that magatama.” Klavier points to it with his foot.

“Mr Edgeworth did mention there’s a prosecutor here who’s a witch, when we talked,” Apollo says.

Klavier nods. “We went to school together. He wasn’t a witch then. We also hated each other, so, times change, ja?” He shakes his head, already shaking a few hairs newly loose. “So he’s made a nuisance of himself trying to act supportive, and since he can’t find me, he has set Fraülein Crow after me. Hence—” He points to the window.

Apollo tries and fails to take all of that in. “Like, there’s just a flock of crows harassing you if you open the blinds?”

“Probably still out there now.”

Apollo hops down from the desk and crosses the room to pull the blinds away at the side and peer through. There are indeed at least five crows perched along the side of the building, all now staring directly at Apollo. All begin squawking loudly through the window and two immediately take to wing, swooping off between the buildings. “Yeah. They are.” He lets the blinds fall back into place. He’s heard a little of witches’ familiars – this is probably something like that. “Two of them just left.”

“Off to report signs of life, surely.”

“For all you talked about how weird my office was, I expected the Prosecutors Office to, y’know, not be.” Apollo scoops the magatama off the floor as he returns to the table. He doesn’t look at Klavier right away. “But you can See through fae glamours? Like Vera, and—”

“Yes,” Klavier says quickly, forestalling the name if Apollo hadn’t already been cutting himself off. “They can’t really do the most subtle shifts – too much energy diverted plainly into looking human.” He drums his fingers on the edge of the table. “It’s more like an enchantment, what I’m doing, except enchantments are harder to break than just with a magatama.” He pulls his legs up to sit cross-legged on the table, not looking back at Apollo, almost an attempt at hiding from him. “I don’t exactly have the words to describe any of this. I’ve only met one other person like me.”

“I’m surprised there’s anyone,” Apollo says. “People don’t usually come back from the Twilight Realm, do they?”

(Tell him about Dhurke, whispers a little voice in Apollo’s head. Tell him you don’t know what you are, either. Ask him if you’re like him. But he hasn’t told Clay about Dhurke, hasn’t told Trucy, and the words refuse to entertain themselves on his tongue.)

Klavier tilts his head, looks back at Apollo. It is difficult to meet his eyes and gaze on the evidence that he has probably spent at least one long night, recently, crying. “No,” he says. “They don’t.”

And he’s going to leave it like that, like he and Phoenix always leave things like that hanging, no explanation, no elaboration, because why should they let Apollo in on this secret knowledge? Why should he be allowed to know anything that could help him make sense of the world and people around him?

(Never mind that he’s learned more in this past week, about Mia, about Phoenix’s history with the fae, about Klavier and glamours, than he has before.)

“I have some work I need to finish,” Klavier says, uncurling himself and sliding down to the floor and settling again in the midst of some papers. “You are welcome to stay. I…” His voice breaks.

(Like bringing all of Kristoph’s machinations to light unlocked something within both of them, too.)

“What?” Apollo asks.

Klavier’s shoulders hunch but he doesn’t respond.

Well, Apollo’s not going to leave it like that, no matter how awkward it is going to be to hang around in this office for any unknown amount of time. He slides the magatama back into his pocket, hoping that will be contact enough for its effect to keep working, and hauls himself around over the table to look at the guitars on the wall.

Investigating each of them in depth – not touching, because they might be worth more than his life – reminds Apollo that he knows absolutely jackshit about music in general and guitars specifically. His phone buzzes with a text from Clay saying that he’s going home now, early, because half of the Space Center was evacuated when one of the engineers blew up a robot and the zero-G training room is at this point still filled with smoke. An hour ticks by in slow chunks. Trucy texts that she earned the role of lead in her school play, which is the most normal thing he’s ever heard her be involved in, and he doesn’t have to feign enthusiasm for a response with several exclamation marks. He starts reading an article about the anatomy of a guitar.  

“Herr Forehead?”

“Yeah?” Oh, god, he responds to it automatically now. Does Klavier look as smug as Apollo imagines him to be?

“Can I ask a favor of you?”

“You can ask,” Apollo says, “but it depends on what.”

“Of course; I would not ask more of you than that.” Klavier stands, laptop in hand, and pushes it haphazardly in between the other junk on his desk. He hooks his thumbs into his pockets and stares Apollo down straight, the most unwavering eye contact they have had all day, like he knew that Apollo was going to be watching him for any tells and decided to make it easy for him. “Since I came back, there is something I’ve been wanting to do – needing to do, I suppose – but I have obviously been dreading going alone for half a year, and have no one to ask.”

“You aren’t friends with your bandmates?” Apollo asks. Of them, he only met Daryan, and certainly wasn’t impressed with him as a person even before it became clear he was a murderer, and maybe if the rest of them are like him, he understands.

Klavier twitches his head, trying to flick aside some bangs that aren’t hanging loose. “I am, but I just broke up the band, ja? And then to ask…” He shrugs. The motion doesn’t come off as light or dismissive. “I was steeling myself to tell Daryan,” he adds, his voice softer now. “About me, and my brother, and everything. I put it off after every practice leading up to the concert, and then – ach, better that I didn’t tell him then. My cowardice worked out well for me.” Cutting through the glamours to see the man breaking apart below doesn’t work on his voice; he still tosses out his last statements with airy carelessness, the dismissiveness that his body language doesn’t manage.

“Daryan is the only one who knew my brother personally, anyway. No one else would quite understand the same.” He’s starting to get restless, finally breaks and starts playing with his hair. “How long did you work for him?”

“Over a year,” Apollo says. “I started there before I took the Bar.”

Klavier raises his eyebrows. He lets his hand fall back to his side. “Really? That long?” Apollo nods. “I had assumed it must have been shorter, that you would turn on him so at behest of a disbarred man again accused of murder.”

“I didn’t turn on anyone!” Apollo snaps. Vongole lifts her head at the noise. “I was interested in the truth!”

“I apologize.” Klavier looks away. “I did not mean to imply that you didn’t, nor that you were wrong. It was not what I thought, but I suppose most things involving my brother are not.” He sighs. “And those which involved your new boss.”

He has stopped using Phoenix’s name.

Apollo has thought about that often enough, that going on a year and a half working at the Gavin Law Offices, when the accusation came, he didn’t falter and just kept pushing forward for the truth. Of course it mystifies Klavier – it mystified Apollo. “Mr Wright was my idol, though,” Apollo admits. “He was a legend. And I was a kid when he got big, and seeing what he did kinda solidified that I wanted to do the same.” Not because of Dhurke, but not really despite him either. In absence of. “So even meeting him being accused of murder, being – how he is – I still did trust and respect him. And then I found out he’s a disappointment in most regards.”

Klavier laughs bitterly and it sends a sharp chill down Apollo’s spine. “Ach, doesn’t that so often seem to happen? Find someone to look up to and respect, and if you don’t disappoint them, they will fail you.”

(“Phoenix Wright and Zak Gramarye both deserve their fates!”)

The silence, too, feels cold.

(“Didn't you notice in today's trial? There was a single piece of forged evidence.”)

“Yeah,” Apollo says. “I’ve come to notice that.”

(“I’ll come pick you up as soon as things settle down here. Promise.”)

“So...” Apollo flails quickly for where this conversation started, desperate to stop that last train of thought because Klavier doesn’t need him having a breakdown here, too. “What is it that you want to do that you don’t have anyone to ask?”

Klavier looks back at him with icy eyes. “I need to go burn a faery ring.”

“Is that a joke, or do you want me dead?” Apollo asks. “Like, do you actually wish that I had left or you had thrown me out and slammed the door in my face again, and you’ve secretly wanted me dead this entire conversation?”

“No! Herr Forehead, I would never.” He actually looks genuinely offended, his hands up and splayed wide, half surrender and half pleading. “No, it is inactive and has been for years. A residual marker that once there opened a one-way, one-use door from them to us.”

“Then why bother with it?” Apollo folds his arms across his chest. He should have expected them to hit the cliff sooner rather than later: Klavier, once he opened the door, has been entirely too reasonable. “I think we’re both probably cursed enough to not want to risk it, don’t you?”

Klavier freezes with his hand in his hair. “All considered,” he says after a few seconds, “this might be the least dangerous thing either of us have done for a while, ja?”

His weak grin isn’t very good at persuasion. “Seriously,” Apollo asks. “If it’s not dangerous, why burn it at all? Why not just leave it?”

“Ah, the dramatic symbolism, of course,” Klavier says – lies, obviously, his eyes darting away from Apollo’s, marked red just as his hand and his hair are. “You know very little about being a performer, do you, Herr Forehead?”

Apollo gives him his best look of unamusement, the one that he uses with Clay or Trucy to shut down puns, and he slowly raises one eyebrow – or tries too, but they both go up anyway. Is it too much to ask that he gets to look cool for once. “Prosecutor Gavin,” he says. He waits for Klavier to meet his eyes again. “I’m not going anywhere with you unless you can be honest with me about it.”

“After all our time in court together, I should know better than to try and hide information from you, ja?” He leans back against his desk, drumming his fingers on the edge, the soft sound interspersed with the clack of his rings against the wood. “That ring – that spot, marks where I came back through, years ago. I want it gone in a sad childish dream of closure; like I keep thinking if I get rid of it I can stop feeling like I am living in two worlds and belong in neither of them.” He presses his hands against the side of his head, trying to block out some sound that only he hears. “And I am still too afraid of looking myself in the eye to do it!”

Vongole, smog, unfurls around his legs. “Congratulations, Herr Forehead.” He folds his arms tightly across his chest, his last attempt at hiding himself. “Your magatama is a backstage pass to the fuckin’ shitshow” – his accent vanishes but he doesn’t sound like Kristoph because these are words that Kristoph would not say – “and grants you the privilege” – an accentless sneer, much more like Kristoph – “of learning more about me than anyone.” He looks over Apollo’s head, still unable to hold eye contact for more than a few seconds. “And there is the answer to your question and more you didn’t ask.”

“It’s not like you’re unloading on me entirely without prompting,” Apollo says. “I did push.”

“And rightfully so, for the depth of what I ask of you.” Tap tap tap go his rings on the desk. “You found the igniter to set it off, after all I’ve tried to spare witches and crows and foreheads that much.”

“You think you’re doing us a favor by turning yourself into a grungy shut-in?”

Klavier doesn’t respond, not even to object to the “grungy” part. Spiral off a cliff, Phoenix had said he was worried about. Klavier seems to have some amount of self-awareness, in this moment; maybe he opened the door because he knew if he didn’t then, he was going over and down, in flames, alone. “Closure, huh,” Apollo says.

He went looking for it with Trucy – maybe just found her more pain, but he hopes the daughter of a lawyer, even one as dubious as Phoenix, can appreciate that knowing the truth is better than to live ignorant forever. That maybe someday, it will be better closure. And Apollo’s never going to find his own – he gave up waiting five years ago, and only held on that long with denial, not hope – but if Phoenix pulled him into all of this, Apollo can at least try and help his friends find their answers.

(Feeling like I am living in two world and belong in neither seems familiar, even if one of the worlds is to Apollo no more substantial than a long-ago dream.)

“You didn’t ride your motorbike in today, right?” Apollo asks.

Klavier laughs, a sudden bright burst, doubling over and then flipping his head up like he expects to toss his hair out of his eyes. “Herr Forehead is not the adventurous type?” he asks, his grin balanced between amusement and pleasant disbelief. “But fortunately for you, no, I did not.”

“You’re going to have to tell me where exactly we’re going.” How in six months has he come to willingly throw himself into these sorts of situations, when he began so wary of everyone he is now spending time with? “I need to let my roommate know who to blame and where he should send the police to look for my body if this ends bad.” Clay calls that the First-Date Protocol, but Klavier doesn’t need to know that, and no valid first or any date involves faery rings anyway.

“Of course. I have a few papers to drop with the Chief Prosecutor” – Klavier scoops them off the floor and waves them –“and then I think I should be able to get away. Haven’t used any sick days since I got back – unless you’re needed at your office until the evening?”

“Yeah, I ran out after having a revelation and Mr Wright didn’t try and stop me, so I think I’m good.” Actually, that makes him feel bad, in a mostly-inadequate partially-guilty way, like he needs to be doing more when Klavier so obviously is. “Not that I make a habit of it!”

Klavier chuckles. “Never said you did, Herr Forehead.” He hooks the toe of his boot under handle of the bottom desk drawer. “Meet you down in the parking lot?”

#fic: the seelie of kurain #this whole chapter feels like it took me years but 15 only went up a week ago so that's cool how time is fake