#and it's not like apollo MEANT to hurt klavier

[cenviswasteland]

Do you guys ever think about how much Klavier Gavin loses over the course of AA4?

-- Hella spoilers for Apollo Justice (AA4). Go play it, it's a masterpiece. --

Where is Klavier during 4-1? Probably preparing for a show, knowing him. How does he learn about what happens to his brother? Who tells him? Not Kristoph, he's already been taken away. Is it his family? Is it Daryan? Or does he find out from the paparazzi after his set is done, all shouting at him "Klavier! Klavier, do you have a statement on your brother's arrest?"

I wonder what happens in the in-between. Does he go to Kristoph, demanding the "what happened" and the "why did you do it"? Does he get anything? Or does Kristoph just stare back and give him vague explanations that mean nothing in the grand scheme of it all? Does Klavier beg for the answers he doesn't get? Does he cry? Does Kristoph just stare back, knowing that eventually Klavier will give up like he always does?

Klavier is so flashy in 4-2. I wonder if it's a front. I wonder if it's the hasty bandage wrapped over the aching, still-bleeding wound. After all, he's up against the same defense attorney that got Kristoph arrested. And that attorney is good at what he does. In a way, that's its own loss. It means that Kristoph's arrest wasn't a mistake. There's no way that Justice screwed up. Kristoph killed a man in cold blood, with almost no motive. And Klavier is just expected to move on. His brother is a monster. Move on.

I'm almost certain he starts confiding in Daryan in the in-between. "I dont know what to do." "He wouldn't talk to me." "I need to cut my hair now." "I can't look at myself." "He was arrested, Daryan. He killed someone, Daryan." "I look like him!" "I don't know him at all anymore!" "What do I do? What do I do?!" "I hate seeing him when I look at myself." "I miss him." "I look just like him!!" over and over and over. It's him putting his head in his hands, desperate to block out the vision. It's the "C'mon, Klav, we've got a show soon," as Daryan carefully turns him away from the dressing room mirror.

So what happens in 4-3, when Klavier starts to piece together the case? What happens to Klavier when he realizes, in time with Justice, that the shoulder he'd replaced his brother with did the same thing? What happens as Klavier watches Daryan break down on the witness stand? What happens as Klavier watches him get led away in handcuffs? What happens now that Klavier is completely, utterly alone? He can't confide in his murderer brother. He can't confide in his murderer bandmate. Who else does he even have?

…Justice? Apollo Justice, the man who got them both arrested? The man who pulled every little secret from the cases, who pointed the blame to them? Apollo Justice, the one that remains at the end of the trial, when the dust settles? The one who looks so proud of himself as he tears apart every person Klavier loves?

He can't take it. He can't take any of it. He hates the way he looks at himself in the mirror every morning, shaking off the sudden twinge of fear that he looks too much like his brother. He takes up smoking again, something he hadn't touched since turning the Gavineers into a serious endeavor. But the Gavineers don't matter much now, do they? He stops trying to get answers out of Kristoph. He does his best to not think about Daryan. He just wants to be left alone. He just wants to put his pieces back together. He can't get himself to pick up his guitars-- he nearly considers getting the ones in his office shipped off to a storage facility. Instead, he covers the case with bedsheets like he's a child again, and he starts safety-pinning newspaper clippings and red string to it. Maybe if he does enough digging, he'll be able to find out why Kristoph did what he did. Maybe, if he tries hard enough, he can shove the right evidence in Kristoph's face. Maybe, if he just does more, he'll be able to talk to his brother again.

It consumes him. He talks to no one. He barely goes home-- instead, he stays up for days at a time and collapses in his chair when his body succumbs to the exhaustion. He lives almost entirely off of coffee and cigarettes and whatever snacks are in the prosecutors' office break room. He looks awful. He feels awful. He stops making progress after a certain point, just falling into this awful, awful spiral of hatred and guilt and shame.

And it's nearly a miracle when Phoenix Wright comes to his office, asking him to help test a new trial system. He accepts without a second thought, not even bothering to check what case it was.

Oh, 4-4. Oh, when Klavier realizes with mounting horror what he's gotten himself into. When Klavier figures out that not only is his brother a murderer, he's a serial murderer. Kristoph has a seemingly never-ending web of lies, plots, schemes, and the like. And there's Apollo Justice, and himself, working in awful tandem to tear it all apart. Justice doesn't even realize that he's pulling Klavier apart at the same time, does he?

Klavier keeps looking at Kristoph, begging for any kind of retort. Any truth that can cut down Justice's line of logic. That retort doesn't come. The family closet's been full and shut for a long time, and now suddenly it's all being pulled out to the tune of "Objection!"

It's sick. It's an awful nightmare. He's not waking up from it.

Klavier is stronger than a lot of people give him credit for. But he's not strong enough for all this.

#and it's not like apollo MEANT to hurt klavier #but TWICE hes put away the people klavier loved. #apollo was just doing his job as an attorney. he was just playing his part #klavier just happened to get caught in the crossfire #and as they say... justice is blind #in other news ive been listening to mitski's “i dont smoke” recently chat #this is my first little adventure into posting quickfic character analysis in a loooong time please tell me if you enjoyed #love you all!! mwah mwah thanks for reading xoxo oh and big thanks to my besties who told me to post this here #kristoph gavin #klavier gavin #aa4 #apollo justice ace attorney #ace attorney apollo justice #gavin brothers #ace attorney #apollo justice #daryan crescend #turnabout trump #turnabout corner #turnabout serenade #turnabout succession #aaaj #cenviswasteland #cenviswriter

[4ragon]

Klapollo for 30? 👀

Okay! Last one in my inbox! Thank you guys all so much I super didn't think anyone would send me anything :D

30. “Marry me.”

It was just two little words. Two little words that could change their lives. Two little words that could change everything.

They’d talked about it before, of course, Apollo wasn’t one to make assumptions. Not in a “Let’s go to the courthouse ASAP” kind of way, more in the “Do you think you’d ever want to get married” kind of way. That sort of way. There was no plan, no rush. No more earth shattering life changes on the horizon, as far as Apollo knew. Nothing that meant it had to happen right now.

Apollo swallowed. He’d been pacing around the apartment for a while now. Vongole had been trotting after him curiously, nosing at his hand as if she thought the box he was holding was some sort of treat. Mikeko meanwhile watched in a distantly bored sort of way. He was lounging on the back of the couch, stretched out, sunning himself. He had nothing to worry about, of course. He didn't care. He was a cat. He didn’t hold the entire future of his relationship in his hands.

Apollo huffed, looking back down at said entire future of his relationship in his hands.

It was a small ring. Nothing too fancy, nothing too gaudy. He wasn’t sure if Klavier would like it at all, really. But it was a nice band, about as high as Apollo’s price tag could go. A diamond, some small amethysts and garnets. Was that too cheesy, the purple and red? Well, too late to go back on it now, he’d already paid for the damn thing.

...maybe he still had the receipt.

“Stop that,” he snapped, slapping his cheek resolutely. This was not the time to panic. After all, he knew what Klavier’s answer would be. He knew Klavier would be over the moon about this. Really there was no way this could end badly.

Apollo stopped his pacing. He felt Vongole run into his leg before she plopped at his feet. Slowly, he popped the box open, glancing down at the ring within.

There was a way it could end badly. There were a thousand ways it could end badly. Anything could happen after he opened this stupid little box. The ceiling could collapse, or he could trip out a window, or Klavier could look down at this little band and realize that he was really going to tie himself to Apollo Justice of all people and why would anyone want to--

Stop. He shut his eyes, shutting the box with a click. Klavier loved him. He knew Klavier loved him. He was panicking over nothing.

But love couldn’t fix everything. People hurt those they loved all the time. People abandoned those they loved all the time. Love didn’t save Clay. Love didn’t bring him Dhurke. What was love, anyway? What did it matter who loved who if people would always keep taking that love and walking out the door.

Apollo stood there, feeling the velvet in his hands. He could hear Vongole plop down on the hardwood floor beside him. He could feel the breath filling his lungs, in and out. In and out.

In and out.

What did Apollo want? He’d dragged his feet on this for so long, for years. He knew Klavier was waiting on him to figure things out, that Klavier would say yes in a heartbeat. And Apollo hesitated, still hesitated, always hesitated. Even now, even now that he’d bought the damn thing, he could hardly breathe. Why did it terrify him, the idea of opening that box and saying those two little words?

His eyes opened. He was back in Apollo and Klavier’s shared apartment. Vongole was at his feet, Mikeko was lounging on the couch. There was an engagement ring in his hands.

Nearby, he could see a photograph of the two of them. Apollo was grinning, Klavier was pressing his own smile against Apollo’s cheek. The two of them were happy, and safe, and together.

He wanted that forever. He wanted Klavier forever. He did, he really did. And Klavier wanted it too, he knew that with every fiber of his being. And this ring was just that. A promise, a promise that this was real. That Klavier was real, that this apartment was real.

This was real.

There was the sound of a key in a lock. Apollo turned, hands tightening around the little box. This was it. No going back. And he didn’t want to go back. So he took a deep breath.

Just two little words...

#klapollo #klavier gavin #apollo justice #ace attorney #spoilers #ace attorney spoilers #just a bit tho #fanfic

[malewifeklaviergavin]

The last 'i love you starter' prompt for Klapollo (the prompt is long and I'm on mobile)

(regardless of what happens tonight, I want you to know that I love you, okay?)

"You know, it's okay if you want to go. It's okay if you don't want to go, too." Apollo said quietly, watching Klavier fluttering nervously around the room. He had already wiped the counter twice, dusted the cabinet four times, and now was rearranging the three pairs of shoes by the front door. Killing time, Apollo supposed, until it was... Well... Killing time.

Tonight, Kristoph Gavin was being executed.

Personally, Apollo thought that it was mean to have it so late at night. Who wanted to die at 8:30 pm on a Tuesday? It meant that the whole day, people would be on edge. It meant that people had woken up that morning and had to go about their day knowing that before they went to sleep, someone they knew would be dead via lethal injection.

Apollo and Klavier were people, in such case.

"Ach. He asked me to come specifically. I cannot just not show up." Klavier replied smoothly, his tone far too casual considering he'd been sick three times in the last twelve hours, unable to keep even coffee down. "It's his last request, for me to be there."

'You know he only asked you to come just to hurt you.' Apollo almost said, biting back the sharp words. He knew that Klavier knew that this was all some sick last minute dig. One final twist of the knife from Kristoph. Two years of radio silence and refused visits only to turn around and demand his little brother watch him die.

And like a kicked puppy, Klavier came running at the first sign of a response.

"I know what you're thinking." Klavier sighed, standing up from where he finished inching the shoes back and forth against some imaginary line. "I'm foolish to go. And maybe I am. But... If I don't go, I'll never know. I'll always wonder how exactly it went. I would rather the devil I know against the pain of ambiguity."

"Like seeing a body in a casket." Apollo murmured to himself, tracing a finger over the ridge of his bracelet. Somewhere, Clay's jacket gathered dust. Somewhere, his own parents gravestones had probably grown over. The devil he knew against the pain of ambiguity.

"Exactly, Apollo." Klavier sighed and grabbed his jacket. "Don't wait up. I don't know how long it will take, and you have work tomorrow."

"Klavier." Apollo said suddenly, climbing off the couch and approaching his boyfriend. Carefully, he took Klavier's jacket and helped him slide it on. He took a minute to brush his fingers against the smooth leather and shut his eyes, resting his head between Klavier's shoulder blades. "Regardless of what happens tonight, I want you to know that I love you, okay?"

Klavier let out a soft noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob and turned around, taking Apollo in his arms and holding him tight. "I know, Schatz. I think that's exactly what I needed to hear to get through tonight." He spoke softly into Apollo's hair. "Thank you."

And with a kiss to Apollo's forehead, Klavier slipped out the door.

Sighing, Apollo turned and walked into the kitchen. Fishing around in one of the cabinets, he finally pulled out what Klavier and him had decreed to be the In Case Of Emergency Whiskey and poured himself a drink. 'Go easy, Kristoph.' Apollo thought, lifting his drink in a vicious mockery of a toast before knocking it back. 'At least give him that.'

#anonymous #klavier gavin #apollo justice #klapollo #my writing #ace attorney #little sadder but it was that or me writing smut tbh #my brain was like sad or trashy thats it babey #i once again have thoughts about the Gavin brothers #if anyone needs this tagged just lemme know

[blackopals-world]

Klapollo Case Fic Idea

This idea had been bouncing around my head and it needs to be free.

A famous singer's manager comes to the agency. The singer's name is name is Alto Idels. He wants Apollo's help getting Alto off the hook for a murder he didn't do.

Apollo immediately refuses. He tried to push the guy out when Athena and Trucy stop him. Apollo responds with "Then you defend him" before storming out.

In containment Klavier arrives to get a testimony from Alto.

Alto immediately thought Apollo was coming but was disappointed. Klav asked him if he knew the attorney only to get silence.

Klavier is familiar with Alto's music which was just okay by his standards. It always sounded off to him.

Alto goes to court on accusation of murdering his girlfriend. One of the roadies claimed to have seen him do it.

Apollo comes to court as Athena's co-counsel and refuses to look at Alto as it becomes glaringly obvious they know one another.

Athena had gone to meet Alto by herself earlier that day as Trucy calmed Apollo down. Alto practically begged her to let him see Apollo and her mood matrix flashed blue and pink. Sadness and love? There was a story there.

Apollo's mood on the other hand was red as can be.

"Hey AJ, it's been a while. Ive missed you. Did you get my texts?" Alto tried to awkwardly initiate conversation.

"Not the time or the place. And I deleted them." Apollo said gruffly.

Klavier felt a bit out of the loop but he didn't like the way he addressed Apollo so casually.

"Defendant, if you please. Focus on the trial at hand and not finding another victim." Klavier smiled but it wasn't warm or friendly in the slightest.

The trial goes on that day as the roadie who saw the crime had not seen the crime but heard it. She thought it was Alto because the couple were arguing earlier that day.

After the murder Ema had found a burnt notebook on that floor of the crimescene. It contained scraps of music lyrics and sheet music and it was guessed that the girlfriend destroyed his work and he killed her in anger. It being noted that the singer was going through a dry spell and had difficulty making new music.

Alto refused to disclose the nature of the argument regardless.

The case had to go on the next day with their witness knowing nothing in the end.

Athena pulled Apollo aside and asked what was going on and he wouldn't engage in anything she asked. It was clearly causing pain to defend someone he didn't like.

Klavier over heard them and asked Apollo to not work on defense but instead help out Ema and him on the investigation instead. He could still help Athena but also not interact with Alto.

Apollo reluctantly agreed since Mr.Wright already assigned him to help but didn't mention how he had to.

Klavier offered Apollo his support through the case as it was discovered that Alto's girlfriend had many issues with their arrangement especially since Alto was gay. Apollo support that line thought saying he was definitely not straight. When Klavier pressed for more information Apollo revealed that they knew each other in high school.

Klavier by this point realized that they definitely more than knew each other from what they both said and how familiar they were. Something he was certainly jealous of, wondering what gave this guy the nerve to continue pestering Apollo after whatever happened between them.

He also wondered if Apollo might take him back if he was innocent. He kind of hoped he wasn't, I'd be easier to hate him.

The came comes to ahead when putting the notebook back together song lyrics mentioned a green-eyed lover when the girlfriend had brown eyes. It was also revealed that Alto was cheating on her and evidence pointed to killing her to keep her silent.

Alto stated that the lyrics are just words and didn't mean anything.

But then an explosive shout rang from the gallery.

"You bastard! How dare you say that! Just words?! Did I mean nothing to you?!" It was none other than Apollo throwing everyone for a loop.

It was decently hysteria in the crowd as Apollo was asked to the stand to testify what that meant. Apollo denied and told them that Alto can speak for the both of them.

"Aj, I know you still mad at me but don't do this. My career-"

"Is a fucking sham! I don't want to cover for you. You decided a long time ago what was more important to you, now suffer for it."

"You can't just forgive me?"

"No...I can't"

The court was told a tale of heartbreak, betrayal, and lies. One where a teenage Apollo met a wannabe singer in band class and shared a small musical hobby. Apollo wrote music to deal with his issues and lyrics to help him understand English better since it was still his second language but now it just felt nice to make something. He wrote songs for Alto since he was trash at it and exchange Alto showered him with affection. They were a cute couple for a while until Alto sold the rights to one of Apollo's songs and began gaslighting him about how this was for their future and he is finally famous and that all this work doesn't pay for itself. Apollo didn't want to be famous or anything nor make a career out of this but he loved Alto so he went with it. When Alto finally got his first big gig he gave Apollo a present. A breakup text and a stolen notebook that had all of Apollo's music in it. He told Apollo that his producers didn't want him dating a guy because it looks bad and fans would hurt him. Apollo told him to go fuck himself and he could keep plagiarizing him as long as he never came back.

By the end everyone in court was either angry or crying over the betrayal.

In fact Apollo looked over at Phoenix and Trucy in the stands and if looks could kill. Athena was crying enraged tears as she tried to jump over the sand and give that guy a piece of her mind before a bailiff stopped her.

Klavier kept his opinion to himself but didn't pass up an opportunity to degrad the man every chance he got for the record the trial. I mean he had Apollo's devotion and love but decided to give that up for a lifeless music career. If he had the choice of Apollo or music he'd give you music everytime. Though he knew Apollo would never ask him to do that. I mean but really Apollo is just- I mean look at him! He's perfect!

Athena was caught off guard with the flurry of emotions coming from Klavier as every color flashed on her mood matrix.

The case end with a "not guilty" as it was discovered that it was the manager who killed by the girlfriend because Alto was sleeping with him and the girlfriend being just another songwriter used to cover up his lack of talent was going to become another Apollo situation where Alto never really let's them go. Alto still tried to get Apollo back regardless how how long it had been and was glued to that stupid notebook. The manager was helplessly in love with Alto and wouldn't let anyone else have him.

Outside of court Alto tried to catch up to Apollo as he left with his co-workers (family) only for Klavier to cut in front

"Herr forehead, I hope you haven't forgotten about tonight." Klavier smiled broadly was Alto chocked on his words.

"Tonight?" Apollo asked puzzled

"Yes, remember?" Klavier winked and pointed to Alto. "We have reservations."

Apollo's face lit up with recognition as he nodded "oh, right tonight. We should get going now. Or...we'll be late." Apollo practicly dragged Klavier off by the arm as he felt the glares of his friends prick his skin as they were aimed at Alto.

They needed to move fast but Alto better be faster.

#klapollo #ace attorney #klavier gavin #klavier x apollo #aa klavier #aa apollo #apollo justice

[synnefo-nefeli]

What are klapollo like with each other’s exes? Jealous? Any concern about how they stack up?

Hmmm I think Apollo would be jealous / threatened by Klavier’s exes because Klavier probably dated a celebrity or two before he started dating Apollo.

It mostly triggers Apollo’s imposter syndrome and other feelings that he can never measure up to be one of the “beautiful people” Klavier is obviously meant to date.

It especially doesn’t help that Klavier has had to collaborate with his exes due to contractual reasons or something and Apollo is just a mess because he doesn’t understand how Klavier can just go work and be cordial with someone he intimately knew and broke up with, and shoot a sexy perfume ad.

Klavier has to constantly tell Apollo “it’s business, and while we’re acting like we’re enjoying it- neither of us really want to be there”.

It takes some reassuring and eventually Apollo gets better at accepting Klavier in the celebrity circles he still runs in. However it still doesn’t get rid of the slight anxiety Apollo may initially have a the start of the evening when Klavier takes him to some celebrity gala or something.

Klavier on the other hand doesn’t get jealous... but he is cold towards Apollo’s exes because “how dare they break Herr Foreheads heart” and that’s quite frankly in Klavier’s book, unforgivable.

Apollo doesn’t mind it because he got to turn up to his high school reunion with a sexy celebrity, and it did puff him up to see some of his exes and bullies practically agog seeing him with Klavier on his arm.

However after Apollo’s had some revenge /feelings of validation he does tell Klavier to knock it off because, “if they didn’t break my heart, then I’d still would be with them and that means we wouldn’t be together”. That mostly works for a time, because again- to Klavier, hurting Apollo = unforgivable sin.

#ace attorney #klapollo #apollo justice #klavier gavin #head canon

[astrologista]

Kristoph Gavin Character Analysis I

Part 1 of... fucking infinity, I hate this bitch so much lmao.

Well, it's Halloween time and I just thought, why not. So let's answer this question.

What makes Kristoph Gavin a scary character/villain? A soft spoken gentleman with a deadly secret... the Devil, who lives in his hand, that crazy evil scar thing, his creepy music theme... damn, he’s a scary dude. But scariest of all? His psychology, as we all know. (This is mostly gonna be headcanons. but ya know what, I have a license (hands you a piece of paper that says ‘i can do what i want’))

Kristoph seems like a person who is very aloof, particularly when it comes to personal relationships. At first he kind of just seems like the typical anime glasses guy whose main emotion is like whooa he does the glare thing with his glasses sometimes. But... what is he really about?

You know, let me digress for a moment, what's really interesting to me about the AA characters is how much depth they have in their writing. Case in point, Adrian Andrews. There's a character who you assume is just going to be the typical "anime glasses girl" who is a career woman who don't need no man, and is very aloof, cool, and as she says, not concerned with irrelevant topics or things. Later you learn about the true depths to her personality. The fact that she is codependent, that she needs other people telling her what to do in order to survive. Just because she masks these emotions doesn't mean they don't exist. I felt that really gave a lot of depth to her character and added another dimension that stories in this genre don't often address as boldly or fully (especially when it comes to a female character). So the quality of the writing is always really top notch with only a few exceptions. Take this as context...

Now getting back to Kristoph Gavin. Typical anime glasses dude, right? But no, though. One of the reasons why he's so interesting to me is how his emotional understanding of personal relationships really works. Or seems to, anyway. Based on the endgame testimony and his crimes, Kristoph Gavin is extremely dangerous because, should you get involved with him in any way, he will never, ever let go of you, ever. Once you are entangled with him he wants you to stay entangled, not unlike an overbearing parent who refuses to let you go. It's partly that he thinks he knows what's best for you (that is, to stay completely loyal to him). And also partly... because he is pretty dependent on what other people think of him. So he needs to keep them around him closely.

Kristoph's biggest fear was his lying being exposed for what it was. That Phoenix was really the honest, straightforward attorney, and not him. Kristoph would do anything to perpetuate his own false reality. He kept it going for seven years. His absolute worst fear of all was losing his reputation. Being seen for what he truly was in front of others. He could never accept that. That fear drove all of his murders. Fundamentally, he sees himself as benevolent... when nothing could be further from the truth of how he was hurting everyone who had the misfortune of crossing his path.

Kristoph has a need to perpetuate this false identity of himself above all else. A very adjacent second goal to that is to keep all of his personal associates very close and under his control in order to keep the first goal intact.

Reject him and he will stalk you until you are dead. By his hand, or otherwise. Slight him, and he will get you at the first opportunity, case in point, Zak Gramarye. (He only had to get a quick glance at the guy and his fate was sealed. Turnabout Trump is a chilling case.) Replace him, and he will tear your life and livelihood up into little itty bitty pieces. He will then continue to stalk you aggressively for seven years while pretending he is your best friend. Case in point, Phoenix Wright.

Create false evidence for him and you become a loose end. So does your daughter. Like I said, just don't get involved with him. If he feels threatened, Kristoph Gavin will not hesitate to end you. It's definitely an obsession. I mean the first word that comes to people's minds when it comes to Kristoph usually isn't "obsessed", because he gives off the aura of being calm and uninterested. But he is, he's obsessed. You have to be obsessed to do what he did. This shit consumed his every waking hour, and that's what he won't admit. That he was so sick, he completely lost the plot. Phoenix was already living in his head rent free the day he ordered the forgery. And even though Phoenix wasn't physically present at the Misham trial and was only watching everything by video camera, you can bet Kristoph was seeing Phoenix. Hallucinating him, images of him. Probably multiple images of him. That's how obsessive. Imagine letting something or someone control you to that extent. Imagine thinking that you're so important, that Phoenix taking Zak Gramarye's case at all was meant to be a slight against you personally. (It's funny because Phoenix mentions not even knowing Kristoph at all until after the disbarment. So Kristoph's own logic in thinking that Phoenix was just out to shame him absolutely doesn't track. Ob-sessed, dude.)  

It's actually pretty astonishing that someone like Apollo made it out alive. On a side note, I really think Kristoph enjoyed having someone to mentor. He sought someone like Apollo out. Someone naive and new to the field for him to indoctrinate. And maybe I have a post about that later, cuz that's a whole 'nother barrel of monkeys right there. (It kind of involves Apollo’s naivete (also, daddy issues, hello.) being a huge reason why he would gravitate towards having a mentor known for having a “caring” personality. And I think Apollo genuinely liked that about him, which makes the end result so much more awful for Apollo to deal with because to him, that was real.)

But now think of Klavier, right. Being forced to grow up with that. To live with that your entire life. To have a familial relationship that is that smothering, that suffocating, that strangling. That controlling, to criticize every single thing that you do or say right down to the way you say it. And remember... He's never letting you go. I would go on a world tour as a rock star, too. Anything to be anywhere he isn't. This is horror movie tier stuff. (now im imagining a horror movie trailer for aa4 focusing on gavins stuff... eep!)

And Kristoph Gavin markets himself as someone who simply doesn't care. He's the coolest defense in the west and he doesn't care for what you may think about it. Except... he does care. It totally consumes him. Your perception, your opinion, is everything to him. He has shitty self esteem, deep down, because he knows Phoenix is better than him. And tries to mask it with narcissism as the two duke it out. Appearances are everything, evidence is everything. What people think is true is the only thing that matters, truth doesn't. And it makes sense that his closest contacts and associates are the targets for his constant narcissistic abuse and gaslighting. Their opinions matter even more than the common crowd - of course, Kristoph hates them. Which makes it even worse for him when the jury decides unanimously that Vera is innocent (and by implication, he is therefore guilty). The jury verdict was kind of like the ultimate confirmation that guess what, the evidence doesn't matter. The common and boorish masses have passed judgement, no matter how "mindless, emotional and irrational" they are, even they can see behind his crappy little facade. Even a blind woman like Lamiroir can see that insecurity; even a common person can understand it just by looking at the facts. That's what absolutely wrecks him... that his “poker face” couldn’t hold a candle to Phoenix’s. And he loses the “hand” again (because of his “hand”... get it??).

The identity that he needs to maintain is part of how he sees himself in his mind. As Phoenix's protector, not as his stalker. As Klavier's benevolent big brother, not as his abuser. As Apollo's teacher and mentor, not as someone guiding him into ruin. He lives in a false reality.

Try to bring this up in any way, shape, or form and he will write it off. You're just imagining things...

Because at some level, Mr. Black Psyche Locks himself doesn't even realize. (I feel like that might just be basically canonical fact, based on Pearl’s explanation of how black psyche locks are supposed to work.) That’s pretty freaking terrifying.

At the end of the day this is a big part of the reason I think his character is just so interesting. In a very messed up way, Kristoph is one degree away from being such a good person. He could've been obsessively protective of Klavier - the way a big brother is supposed to be - instead of abusive, could've actually been very caring of Phoenix instead of manipulative. Terrible people can have good traits, just as good people can have awful traits. His attention to detail and understanding of psychology (like getting Vera those gifts she would like so much) could've been used for genuine good. He could've been someone who cares deeply about other people because he does care deeply about other people. But only in terms of their relation to himself, what do they think of him, how are they useful to him.

Maybe this is why I kind of like his character. Intelligent, semi-neurotic protective characters are just my ish. But, no, he has to have a narcissistic bent that skews everything into complete abuse. That’s what makes him awful... that he’s devoid of a moral compass or true compassion for other human beings.

So in closing, fuck off, Kristoph Gavin.

Postscript, he's also such a good foil for Phoenix for this reason. Kristoph does everything for himself. Phoenix does everything for Trucy, because he's a dad and he understands the weight of what it means to really care for someone. Kristoph couldn’t understand motives like that. And Phoenix can't help it if he's an order of magnitude smarter and more mature than Kristoph is. He was just born like that. Classy as fuck. You know what, Kristoph Gavin is like the dollar store version of Phoenix Wright as an attorney. Has many of the same functions but actually doesn't have a leg to stand on and will fail you when you need it. And is revealed to just be a cheap knockoff of the real thing.

#kristoph gavin #aa4 #apollo justice ace attorney #im just thinkin thoughts here #dont know why im in such a creepy mood right now #maybe halloween has something to do with it #srsly i need to do some analysis on some other characters lol #and ignore this rat man #btw im totally up to analyze specific characters and interactions #lmk #maybe nahyuta? #or phoenix and trucy #or phoenix and apollo...aaa

[xmfxne]

Gone...

It had been a little too long for Apollo to notice, but she was gone. She never came home last night, but he didn’t realize that because he came home late, passed out on the couch, and woke up early to get a head start on the cases. All he had to do was make it to the end of the month. Then, he could buy the engagement pendants, then he could propose, and he could finally spend some time with her. He’d known since she came to him that she was the one. That nobody else would love him more than she did. 

Just before the first trial, he shot her a quick text, reminding her that he loved her, and would see her in a few hours. However, the trial came and went and nothing was said back. He texted her again, hoping she was just busy... but the text didn’t seem to get through. That was when he started to panic. He called, but it went to voicemail immediately. Was her phone off? She usually only did that when she was going in to a trail, but she hadn’t worked since coming to Khura’in.

Apollo tried not to worry about it. He kept having to tell himself that she was fine, but it still frightened him. It wouldn’t be the first time a loved one disappeared on him... So when he got back to the office, he asked if anyone had seen or heard from Genie all day.

He went pale when they said no.

He called again. No response. Apollo felt sick. He couldn’t breathe. Then it felt like he was being forced to breathe by his own panic. He hung up and called again. Nothing. Tears fell from his face, and the only thing he could hear was his heartbeat. He called again. Nothing. 

He hadn’t realized he was coughing until Datz reached into the attorney’s pocket and shoved his inhaler into his mouth. It hurt his teeth, but it gave his lungs relief. Apollo did something he swore he’d never do.

Cancel everything, put everything on hold. 

These strangers at the mercy of a strict and violent law weren’t important to him, he had to find the love of his life. He had to find Genie. 

Everyone split up to every corner of the kingdom, finding any place where she may have gone, but turning up empty handed. Apollo scrambled to all her regular locations, calling every single person in his contact list, from Ahmdeh Faurhst to Zelhas Twh’ahne, asking, begging them if they’d seen or heard Genie. If they didn’t pick up, then he’d leave a message. He felt sick.

After literal hours of searching filled with crying, asthma attacks, and feeling completely sick to his stomach, Nahyuta pulled him aside and Rayfa attempted to search for Genie in the Twilight Realm using a technique she’d only just learned a few weeks back. Apollo couldn’t say he had much faith in it yet, but he couldn’t bare to say it to her benevolence’s face. He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t okay. He wasn’t fine. Where the hell was Genie?!  “I have good news.” Rayfa said after some time, “I couldn’t find her.” “That means she must be alive, Apollo.” Nahyuta reminded, placing his hand over his brother’s as a fruitless attempt to console.  “...Y-you sure I wasn’t distracting you?”

The siblings fell silent. It seemed as though Apollo had asked the question they hoped he wouldn’t ask. They really couldn’t be sure. “Do... you want me to attempt a Divination Séance?” “Please.” “Apollo, calm down.” “I have to know if she’s alive or dead!!” His voice echoed in the sacred chamber, hurting both the monk and priestesses’ ears, but they didn’t have the heart to do anything about it. The three had looked at pendant shops together, searching for what Apollo would propose with. They knew how serious he was about Genie. They knew how much she meant to her. 

“...I think I’ll start calling people from the states.... They might have heard something.”  “Keep your inhaler on you “...That’s what she always told me...” God, please be okay, Genie. Wherever you are, for the love of all things holy, just be safe. 

Apollo left the chamber and began to call the people he knew in the states. Mr. Alguy, Mr. Wright, Athena, Klavier, Mr. Frontal, Ms. Fey, Pearl--!

He froze on Mr. Edgeworth’s name. How could he call him and ask if he’d heard from Genie? How could he possibly explain that he lost her? That he didn’t even know if she was alive or dead? But, if anyone had spoken to her, it had to have been him, right?! Apollo steeled himself and moved his thumb over the call button, but before he could press it, someone called him back. “Hello?!”  “Ah, yes, hello, this is Mr. Justice, yes?” “Speaking.” “Ah! Good! I have information about the missing person! I saw her going into the airport this morning.” “This morning?!”  “Y-you’re hurting my ears...!” “S-sorry! Where did she go?! Was she alone?!”  “I-I don’t know...”  “Okay. Thank you anyway!!” Apollo hung up and turned towards the chamber where Rayfa and Nahyuta were, but the door opened before he could go in himself.

“She’s definitely alive!” Her Benevolence announced. “Provided her true identity is Imogen Kastel.” “Someone saw her in the airport this morning.” “What?!” “That doesn’t make sense!” Rayfa gasped. “I know. But it’s all I’ve got. I’ve got to run back home and get the money before I go!” “What?! You don’t mean--!” “I do. I have to. I need to find her.” “But your proposal...” “What does it mean if she ends up dead?!” “Apollo. Slow down. Where are you going to even go?!” Nahyuta reasoned. “I’ll figure it out. But as soon as I do, I’m going after her.” “Apollo!!” Nahyuta tried. “Stop! Genie is my whole world! She’s my everything!! And if she’s out there hurting somewhere, I will crawl through the fiery pits of hell on my hands and knees if it means she’s safe!!” Tears spilt from his eyes once more. He was serious. He really was just like Dhurke. Apollo stepped forward and handed Nahyuta their father’s badge. He wasn’t going to work until he found the woman he loved safe in his arms. 

Apollo turned on his heel, “Take care of the cats while I’m gone. I’ll keep you updated.” “And we will not stop searching here.” Rayfa reassured. “We won’t rest until we find her.” Nahyuta added. Apollo nodded and ran to his apartment. 

Her stuff was gone, but he didn’t notice. He didn’t even bother packing, all he had was a large stack of cash that he’d hidden away from her, his inhaler, his wallet, and his phone. That was all he needed. He ran straight to the airport, shutting the door as an afterthought. He immediately began asking the staff if they’d seen her, and it luckily didn’t take too long to get the answers he needed. A flight to L.A, it seemed, so at least it was an area he was familiar with. 

The cash was immediately handed over as Apollo purchased the first, fastest flight to L.A. It wasn’t cheap, it cost him most of his funds, but he couldn’t care. He was only lucky he got the last seat, but he immediately boarded and was off to find Genie. 

The flight was long, a bit longer than he recalled it being, but the first time he’d flown to Khura’in, it was a private jet, and he might have slept on the way. This time, Apollo couldn’t. All he could do was bounce his leg anxiously and cry. Genie was the only thing that occupied his mind, hoping she was okay, hoping that she was safe. He didn’t know what he’d do if she’d been ripped away from him too. Like Clay. Like Dhurke. Please, let him save her this time. Don’t take away the love of his life. 

The whole flight was spend wheezing and crying, so much so that the staff always kept a close eye on him, but when he landed, he immediately ran around the airport and began asking the staff if they’d seen her. His search began. 

#Gone... #Apollo Justice #genieuslaw #Moral Genius {Imogen Kastel} #A Future {Genipollo} #Post! SoJ #Drabble

[sevi007]

Second part of “Turnabout Succession” ramblings! It’s all over the place, I’m very sorry – I jumped in between the past-present-cases so much, I got confused while writing these notes down. XD

 * So this whole uh – MASON System? Yes? This thing was WILD. What an interesting idea, both as a mechanic, as well as story-wise. I thought I would have to finish the past investigations first, and then the presents ones, but in truth, I had to jump in-between to finish one after the other. Heck, I could take evidence from the present to the past and back again! I was really mind-blown about this bit. It was a bit lengthy, okay, but super fun to puzzle it altogether, and really FEEL how Phoenix was trying over the last seven year to find the truth, and all of it. Wow. Really genius bit here!

  * Listen. Zak Gramarye? I’m honestly not sure if I like him, as a person. Not as a character – he’s a great character! But, like the rest of the Gramarye troupe, he’s actually a bit of an asshole. Magnifi is easy to say why – he used the “death” of his own daughter to get leverage over his disciples, that’s pretty ugly. Valant tried to frame his friend and partner for a murder neither of them was responsible for, just to get the stage rights. But Zak? Zak just kind of jumped everything on Phoenix AND left him there to suffer consequences alone while he went into hiding, is shown to hit a so called “friend” – Brushel – in the face multiple times, just kind of “dumps” his eight-year-old daughter without making sure that Phoenix would take her in (he just ASSUMED), he never even kept informed about how Valant is doing and thus never heard that his former partner was unofficially being accused of murder because HE had vanished in the middle of court… I could go on.

Listen, as a character and magician? Super cool. As a person? Not so much. I honestly couldn’t warm up to him if he was a real person and I was meant to interact with him. The whole Gramarye troupe is pretty dark, actually, deep down.

  * Glad that Apollo finally got to know everything he needed to know. I LOVE Phoenix, you all know I do, but I was actually a little pissed with him that he let Apollo go into cases related to his past again and again without telling him very important parts. Again and again, Apollo was caught off guard and had to force his way through cases. I understand that part of it was because the Jurist System was not yet active – but in “Turnabout Succession”, the Jurist System was being used, Phoenix was on the way of getting Kristoph down, and he STILL waited until AFTER Vera was poisoned to tell Apollo everything. I don’t understand this decision, and I was glad when Apollo finally got everything he needed to win this.

  * Kristoph actually makes me sick. HE’s an amazing character, good villain, but he literally makes me sick. His reason, especially. Everything – everyone – had to suffer so much because a) wanted to win cases and b) was so hurt in his pride when Phoenix got picked over him that he destroyed his career, his life, made his own brother an unwilling accomplice in this, had an innocent nearly considered guilty, killed a man and (nearly) the man’s daughter… I cannot even summarize it all, it’s too much. And over what? Hurt pride.

He probably got the most laughable motif out of the entire series, and he did SO MUCH damage. It’s ridiculous. (On that note, it’s very similar to von Karma’s motif, but Kristoph nearly overtook him in evil here.)

  * I absolutely loved two of the “good” characters in this last showdown. First of: Trucy. She knew – somehow – or figured out that Shadi was her Daddy, and instead of hesitating or asking anything, she was like “What is it, Apollo? Keep going! We can talk later!”. Goddammit, that girl is fifteen, and I know that deep down she is hurting (even Phoenix said it) but she was so awesome, from start to finish. As supportive and mature yet childlike as any other of the supporting characters. I was really proud of her right then and there. You’re doing amazing, sweetheart!

And second of – Klavier. The moment he realized what had happened, without a single moment of hesitation, insecurity or denial, he was like “GET HIM APOLLO!” and went out of his way to give Apollo hints to bring Kristoph down. His own brother. It would have only been normal for him to try and deny the truth, at first, but he hounded after it instead, ignored all threats Kristoph threw at him, and did his outmost to clear up his own “mistake” from seven years ago.  I was a little awestruck, I’m gonna be honest. Klavier quickly got very likeable  for me from the first second on, but this was just to top it all of “yeah he’s great”.

 * I mean the entire last trial was such a volley of evidence, testimonies and shouts of encouragement from the side, I was on the edge of my seat, and my hands shivering. When the breakdown of Kristoph came, I was cheering in victory. It was great. XD

  * On the note of Klavier -  I would really love for Phoenix and Klavier to have a post-trial talk. The moment Klavier realized the evidence was not forged by Phoenix, but Kristoph, he must have realized that he had basically part in Phoenix’ disbarment when the man was in fact, innocent. He must have felt horrible. I really would have loved to see a talk between the two men – because I don’t think Phoenix holds a grudge against the younger man, but Klavier might feel bad about it, and needs to hear that.

 * God the sound I made when I realized the hand I was using to select “guilty” or “Not guilty” was Lamiroir’s… that was so well-made. It was still the player’s decision, but we saw through her eyes – gave me chills. Really great!

 * APOLLO AND TRUCY ARE SIBLINGS! Listen I thought they are related, alright, but I was gonna be happy with like – dunno, cousins. Like Maya and Pearl! But now I’m just delighted they are actually siblings. And LAMIROIR IS THEIR MUM! Gosh. Gosh when I said “her face-model looks like Trucy’s” I was kind of joking here? XD I was… not fully expecting this. Jokingly dreaming it up, yeh, but not really expecting it. How cool! I’m super happy with this.

   Honestly guys? This was easily one of my favorite cases so far. Right up there with “Bridge to the Turnabout” – though that one had a lot of found family and teamwork, and y’all know I’m WEAK to that, so that one is my favorite so far. But Apollo Justice was AT LEAST as fun as the original trilogy – some of the extra gameplay mechanics even better, like the fingerprints or the finding of tells – and I loved the new characters as much as the old ones. (Though I miss some of the old ones, as well.) I had fun playing from beginning to end, and was so excited about the story… wow. They just keep bringing out one great game after the other, eh?

 Dual Destinies is next (I think? Yes). I’m VERY excited to start that one – I had seen it once, on stream, as a kid, but I couldn’t buy it back then… kept dreaming about it though, for almost 12 years or so. This is like a childhood dream coming true, so I’m double excited for it!

#sevi plays apollo justice

[askclaypollier]

OH NO SHE DIDN'T. APOLLO, NOWS YOUR CHANCE! TAKE. HER. OUT!

[@bitter-as-wormwood-13 ]

TW: BLOOD

---

*Apollo screams and police rush into the room and immediately subdue Eve. Klavier slumps to the ground, hissing as blood pours from his side. Apollo rushes over*

Fuck! Klav... Don't worry. We'll get you an ambulance.

*Klavier tries to give a strong smile*

Heh, it'll be okay, Forehead. She didn't hurt you, did she?

*Apollo shakes his head*

N-no...

*Klavier's looks relieved*

Good... Good.

*he remembers Clay as he hears an officer calling for another ambulance*

Liebling... Clay was shot. It was his leg, he should be okay, but... Scheisse that sucks that we both got hurt.

*Apollo swallows a lump in his throat, now feeling even more fearful*

C-Clay and you both will be f-fine.

*Klavier nods and winces a little, resting his head over onto Apollo*

*Eve is screaming as the police take her away, but Apollo and Klavier are in their own little world, not paying any attention to her.*

*soon the ambulance arrives and Klavier is taken to the hospital. Apollo rides in the ambulance with him*

---

[I love how Clay got shot and a couple of people or so were like "oh nooo" and Klavier gets stabbed and all y'all in my inbox screaming bloody murder 🤣 thanks everyone! We're nearing the end of this plot line. I never meant for it to last this long, but depression has really caused me not to be on top of things, and it's really taken a hit on my writing. I gotta get back into it, but thank y'all who keep reading and reacting to these posts! It means a lot!]

#claypollier #klavier gavin #apollo justice #clay terran #ace attorney #Eve Le'Won #the crazy ex #plot

[luukeskywalker]

I'm a bit late, but can I talk you into Claypollo 49 for the kiss prompt?

AAHHH YES CLAYPOLLO!!!! i have a little AU of sorts where clay just barely survived the stabbing, because canon hurts too much x) so take this fun angst about clay in the hospital!! at least he’s alive!!! 

Apollo had never before understood how difficult it was to have your heart in two places at once. He had to solve the case, more than anything he understood that. His top priority was seeing justice through to the end, to ensure that he held up a system in which the innocent people were protected. He had to go to court tomorrow, to defend Solomon Starbuck from accounts of a bombing and attempted murder. 

But he wanted - no, needed - to be by Clay’s side. 

Of course Starbuck hadn’t done it. He and Clay were thick as thieves, and even though he’d been terrified to get back out there, he was willing to face his fear alongside one of his closest friends.

And now that friend was in the hospital, fighting for his life. 

Apollo sat there in the brightly-lit room, attempting to ignore the way the fluorescence hurt his eyes. He could not bring himself to look away from the bed, where the love of his life was swathed in too-clean white sheets that made him look even more pale. The heart monitor beeped slowly, but regularly - he was unconscious. 

Clay survived, just barely. He hadn’t woken up - they didn’t know if he would ever wake up - but he still breathed, and his heart still beat. 

For now, that was enough.

“I should have been there,” Apollo said quietly. “I don’t know what I could have done, but - I should have been there.” 

Of course, he wouldn’t get a response. But that had never stopped him before. 

“Don’t worry about Starbuck. I’ll make sure he’s free to go. He’ll come visit before you know it.” He couldn’t help himself - it was like he’d been possessed, the way he got up from the uncomfortable chair and stood by Clay’s side. He felt like he was seeing everything in third-person, like he was playing some sort of horrible video game about losing the most important person in the world. He reached out to gently wrap his fingers around Clay’s hand. 

He was so cold.

“You’ll be fine, Clay Terran.” The words choked him. Tears brimmed at the edges of his vision, but he didn’t let them fall. He couldn’t. 

He had to go. 

“Apollo?” A voice from the doorway - the next person to watch over Clay. Considering the attempted murder, the Wright Anything agency had set up a round-the-clock watch at the hospital… just to make sure. 

“Hi, Klavier.” Apollo didn’t turn away from Clay’s bedside. “Just give us a moment.” 

He didn’t wait for a response. He placed his other hand on Clay’s cheek - cold, just like his hand - and Apollo felt his heart crack. 

To say he was terrified would be the world’s biggest understatement. The thought of leaving him here hurt worse than any physical pain, even with the knowledge that he wasn’t leaving Clay alone. There was something so horribly wrong about him tucked into that hospital bed, all still and silent. 

He leaned in and pressed his lips carefully to Clay’s forehead. The nurses had removed his hat, and his fluffy hair tickled Apollo’s nose. 

Apollo closed his eyes. This was like any number of kisses he’d given Clay - if only for the fact that there was no laughter, no smile, no shocked, exhilarated joy when Clay would then sweep him off his feet and kiss him back. 

He pulled away. “I’ll be fine, too.” He whispered this - for once, those words of comfort were only meant for Clay, and Clay alone. Even if he couldn’t hear them.

He stood back up and headed for the door. Klavier waved at him. “Good luck.” He peeked into Clay’s room. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.” 

Apollo gave his friend a half-hearted smile. “Thanks. I’m sure if you practiced your music in there, you could wake him right up.” 

“Don’t give me any ideas!” Klavier chuckled. 

The interaction felt half-real, like Apollo had forgotten how to speak to other human beings entirely. But Klavier was kind, and must have understood, because he took it with grace. 

Apollo left the hospital with only half of his heart. The other half was nestled away with Clay, trapped in that cold, too-bright hospital room. He’d stop at nothing to protect Clay - and that meant, first and foremost, catching his would-be killer.

He was Apollo Justice, damn it, and he was going to be fine.

#ace attorney #claypollo #apollo justice #clay terran #odoroki housuke #aoi daichi #writing meme #my writing #my fic #klavier is here too but not much so no tag for u my angel #THANK YOU!!!!! I LOVE CLAYPOLLO!!!!!!!!!! #sorry if this reads a little rusty LOLOL i need to replay dd #cteranodon #ask

[ronsenburg]

part 3.

It is not good to have habits as a celebrity. 

Habits are for people who enjoy the predictable, who don’t mind when the staff begin to recognize your face and greet you by name as you walk in each day. For people who have the luxury of entering establishments without a carefully constructed disguise that’s meant to be anonymous enough to prevent curious eyes, but not anonymous enough to draw suspicion. 

For people like Klavier, habits make it far too easy to end up at the end of a paparazzi’s telescopic camera lens. But there is a coffee shop tucked away three blocks from the courthouse that Klavier falls into the habit of visiting regularly all the same. How he stumbles upon it is a story in itself; its location halfway down an alley is so inconspicuous that Klavier wonders how they manage to stay in business at all. There is only ever a few people inside, and none of them ever look twice at the man wearing dark aviator sunglasses under a raised hood, even indoors. 

Which makes it all the more surprising when, one September afternoon, he nearly collides with a man in scarlet red jacket rushing out the front door.

“Ach, pardon me,” Klavier says, reaching out instinctively to steady the coffee cups now leaning precariously in their drink holder that the man is carrying. The sound of too many tiny bells hung on the doorknob jangling together draw his attention, and Klavier steps to the side without really looking. 

“Oh,” a familiar voice says, “you’re early.”

Klavier stops, suddenly frozen in place. 

Apollo looks almost exactly the same as he had four months ago when Klavier had watched him disappear into the crowded airport terminal. His hair is longer now, free from the usual confines of gel, and he holds himself with more confidence than he ever had before, but there is still the same softness to the edges of his face, the intense set of his gaze. 

It hurts to see him, more than Klavier would have anticipated.

“Hello, Forehead,” Klavier says out of habit, smiling as much as he is able to with his heart pounding and his chest aching as though the breath has been suddenly, forcefully removed from his lungs. 

Apollo winces at the nickname.

“It’s impossible to get a good cup of coffee in Khura’in,” he begins explaining, reaching his free hand sheepishly to the back of his neck, “Sorry. You usually come at 8? I didn’t think you’d be here now.”

“I’m surprised you remember,” Klavier replies, first, with too much emotion in his voice and then, “Don’t apologize, ja? This is a public place.”

“It’s your place.”

“Then you have my permission to visit as often as you would like.”

Apollo laughs, the slightest huff of breath through his nose while the right corner of his lips turns up slightly, and Klavier realizes, instantly, that he is just as in love with Apollo Justice now as he ever was before. 

For a moment, silence sits awkwardly between the two of them. There are so many things to ask- why are you back in LA? How long will you be staying? How is Khura’in? Who is the coffee for?- but each of those questions seems too personal, now that they are not what they used to be. How do you hold a conversation with someone you used to share everything with, when you know nothing about them now? 

Klavier reaches up to remove his disguise, more for something to do with his hands than for the actual need or politeness. He doesn’t expect the look that Apollo gives him as the hood lowers, though, the way his mouth opens slightly and a sound that isn’t quite a gasp fills the space between them. 

“Your hair,” Apollo breathes, so soft and full of surprise that Klavier’s own eyes go momentarily wide behind his sunglasses as he reaches up a hand to touch the shorter strands at the back of his neck. “I mean, it’s different? You cut it.”

“Ja, I needed a change,” Klavier replies quietly. 

Another rush of breath, exhaled so quickly that it seems involuntary. “I always liked it long.”

“I know.” Klavier tries to smile, but it feels like a grimace. His thoughts play an endless loop at the back of his mind: Apollo’s hands caught up in his hair, raking roughly across his scalp, tangled in loops around his warm fingers, toying absently with loose strands as he drifted to sleep. It feels like only moments ago and, in the same turn, another lifetime completely.

Time, and it’s accompanying silence, stretches between them.

In front of him, Apollo hesitates, fingers dancing against the cupholder in his hands in an awkward shuffling of grip. He glances down to the cups and to the coffee shop door behind him that they are still standing in front of. 

“I should…. I should probably go,” Apollo murmurs, “Before it gets cold.”

It takes a long moment for Klavier to realize he is talking about the coffee in his hands and not something more telling, more metaphorical. 

“I understand,” he says. “Bis bald, Herr Forehead.”

“Yeah. See you,” Apollo agrees. For a moment, it looks like he might say more, his lips parted and eyes unbelievably soft. But Klavier blinks and the moment passes; Apollo flashes him a tiny smile, almost apologetic, and turns to exit the alley. 

It is not the same as the airport, the night Apollo left. Then, he’d watched Apollo’s retreating back long after he’d disappeared through the sliding glass terminal doors until a security officer had tapped on the tinted car window and forced him to move along. Then, he’d collapsed against the steering wheel in the parking garage of his apartment complex, with his arms folded and his eyes squeezed firmly shut to block out the harsh, artificial lights. Then, he wished that he had said more.

“Apollo,” Klavier calls out now, in a voice too full. “It was good to see you.”

Apollo pauses, glances back over his shoulder with a look so bittersweet that Klavier’s heart begins the slow process of breaking all over again at nothing but the sight of it.

“Take care of yourself, Klavier,” is all he says.

This time, Klavier does not watch him go. 

The coffee shop door clatters closed behind him to the soft accompaniment of jingling bells. No one looks up as he moves inside, orders his coffee, and leaves. By then, Apollo is nowhere to be seen. 

Klavier pauses on the sidewalk, listens to the sounds of the city rolling on all around him. He takes a breath, turns, and continues his walk to work. 

[part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4]

#god i know this has been done to death but i started it and i'm going to finish it #ronsenburg tries to write #i don't care i'm leaning into that soft angst!!!!!!!!!!! #fight me!!!!!!!!!

[maki0725]

Klavquill 1-8

The more I write, the more difficult it’s become to make dialogues. In Japanese edition Klavier was in the U.S. to study and he got the prosecutor’s badge in there, but he uses few English words in dialogues (the only phrase I remember is “Let’s rock!”, maybe it is replaced with “Achtung, baby!”). I might have to put in more German words but I don’t know German language at all and it’s quite difficult to write their dialogues in English (also in Japanese...)

By the way seeing first sunrise is popular in Japan, it feels special but it’s cold outside in winter, there are fewer people who go to see it actually than first visit. Though it feels more special if you go to see it actually with someone special.

*************************************

Athena gets off the car in front of a rather old apartment. It is located so much far from the train station but she doesn’t mind the distance, she rather enjoy it for the physical training.

“Have a good night! Apollo, take care of yourself, please come back again soon!”

She goes actively, it’s bliss for Simon that Athena is fine and happy.

The large-sized car starts going again with the engine sound. It takes some time to drive to the suburb airport even through the highways.

The seat is warm and shaking comfortably, a mysterious female voice song is playing. Simon’s conscience is just like floating and he realizes he has never felt relaxed in these days when he rides in a car. A little alcohol from the bottled Sake helps him to fall half-asleep though he can hear Apollo’s controlled voice.

“Don’t you play your music?”

“You don’t like it, I think”

Gavin replies calmly.

“This is Lamiroir’s new album, have you listened?”

“Oh, I didn’t know it was released”

“I’m not sure if it’s available in Khura’in, you can take this. I’ve already done the digitalization”

“......Thank you”

Simon doesn’t know “Lamiroir” but Apollo seems to know the musician(Simon assumes).

“......And, thank you for giving me a ride”

“Don’t worry, It was me who just wanted to stay with you”

It’s been ages, Gavin says. He and Apollo Justice have an old score to settle in a way though they seem to have built a kind of friendship.

“Well......as long as you can say”

Apollo’s voice is lowered.

“I’d like to know how the phantom case is going”

Simon is given a start like being grabbed his heart.

“I’ve heard that the trial won’t be held in Japan though I don’t know where. In the Hague?”

“......I don’t think ICC deals with it”

Gavin replies that he doesn’t know well quietly.

“You know prosecutor Von Karma takes that case”

“......Yeah”

“Then, I can say nothing more. It is a top secret and actually I don’t know about it”

“So does prosecutor Blackquill?”

“I don’t know but......should we ask?”

Simon’s heart gets pounding.

“Well......no, he doesn’t know or he can’t say about it, I suppose. I’m not even a member of the bereaved family”

Apollo is right, Simon wants to know for anything. Apollo exudes his chagrin. How the unreasonable loss of his bestfriend suffer him? Gavin’s voice sounds gentle but a teasing tone appears.

“By the way, do you think he’s sleeping?”

“Oh is he awake!?”

Apollo looks back in a hurry and Simon pretends to be asleep. He doesn’t care Apollo’s bracelet notices.

Though it might be cheat, he can’t talk about the phantom case to Apollo right now. If he could have believed Athena and the whole judicial system enough in the UR-1 case, the phantom might have been arrested at that time and Clay Terran ——and Bobby Fulbright—— might be alive now. One year ago, the world he had believed collapsed and his self-consciousness could just let the revealed truths and the radical change of the environment go past, but he has started suffering from the regret and the guilty consciousness after some time. He shouldn’t get stuck in there but he doesn’t know what to do exactly. He decided not to hide the truth never again but it should have been a matter of course for prosecutors. He feels himself not to be qualified to be a prosecutor in a way.

Luckily, Apollo and Gavin continue talking without noticing what Simon feels.

“If I had known you went abroad, I should have seen you more, even if a little bit forcefully”

“I think you tried hard enough, Trucy said that she felt lonely as you didn’t come often like before since last summer”

“...... I was just a little bit busy”

It was true, the prosecutor’s office has been a shortage of prosecutors so he and Simon are always very busy. Though it hadn’t changed around Apollo’s leave.

“......I certainly feel it is not as easy as before to go to the office without you”

“There are only girls and Mr. Wright. But I think you are good at treating girls”

“I don’t know, Fraulein detective still hates me”

It reminds Simon of the event a few days ago. She meant not to insult Gavin seriously but he couldn’t keep silence.

“Ema often complains about Nahyuta in Khura’in”

“He likes her so much, doesn’t he? I’ve heard that she is there today, it’s ideal for her to be able to improve her scientific skill as much as she wants”

“I saw her for a short time today in Khura’in, I didn’t tell her that Nahyuta said he planned to have her come to the new year ceremony at the top of Mt. Poni-poni”

Apollo sounds sympathetically.

“Oh, I assume she’s on the top of the mountain right now”

Gavin chuckles, he might be imagining Ema astonished.

“By the way, con priests get married?”

“Yeah, they can......what, Ema and Nahyuta? Hmmm......”

Apollo seems to be sunk in thought but he shakes his head like he shakes it off. He might not want to imagine his brother’s love life.

“By the way, why is Blackquill coming with us? He doesn’t look like a type who wants to say goodbye at the airport”

“He is going to come to my place and stay”

“Really!? You......you are actually close”

“I’m not sure we are close, but, have you heard of the event a while ago?”

“Y-Yeah”

The members seemed to tell him as Simon thought. There is nothing to worry when Apollo knows it but it’s a little embarrassing.

“Well...... I’m sorry”

“What?”

Gavin’s voice is always calm.

“I said...... I hate your music”

“Oh that’s it? No worries, some people don’t like my music, it’s quite natural. I don’t like being lied about it”

“Though...... I might be able to choose a manner of speaking that hurt you less”

You have been always kind to us like this.

Apollo’s voice lowers. He is always kind, to everyone, anytime——

“Why do you say such a thing suddenly, are you scared of Prosecutor Blackquill?”

Gavin laughs teasingly.

“No, it’s not that”

I......just a thought, Apollo says, his voice is quite but clear.

“Hmm, it’s a little boring, you’ve grown up Herr Forehead?”

He says that like nothing and laughs.

Though, he cried certainly when Simon protected him.

“I’m glad that you have a friend now”

“You’ve thought I’m so lonely?”

Of course Gavin has so many friends. He and Simon rarely join the same gatherings because of the pressure of business and Gavin’s estrangement from the WAA as Apollo said, but he talks to Simon casually when they happen to meet in the prosecutor’s office in spite of Simon’s intimidating appearance and they have exchanged phone numbers before Simon knew by Gavin’s high social skill. They must be all usual things to Gavin, even inviting Simon to his house. He can’t take it as a big deal.

Although, why is it painful to him that Gavin is kind to everyone?

The airport is crowded but it gets rather empty way past the midnight. Maybe because there are few flights that depart around the same time as the one to Khura’in.

They have some time before Apollo heads to the departure gate but they can’t find affordable coffee shop or something, they sit on a bench with cans of coffee in their hands.

“How’s your hometown?”

“Well......I think nothing has been changed as for the nature and food......or something. I’m too busy to go around”

“I’m happy to hear your business is going well.

Though I think you’re working so hard”

“Ah......I’m sorry not to keep in touch”

“It’s okay with me but contact the girls more often, they looked so happy today”

“......I see. Then, I got to go”

“Take care”

After seeing Apollo off, Simon and Gavin are just two of them. Simon tries to ask him a kind of question.

“That’s unbelievable to have refrained from drinking, what did you do if Justice-dono had rejected your suggestion?”

Gavin smiles brightly after a few blinking.

“Then, I was planning to go to see the first sunrise with you”

Simon doesn’t feel bad about his selfish decision. Has he foreseen that Simon would think so?

“To be honest, I haven’t seen it properly. I searched some places though”

Gavin leads Simon to the large glass window side.

“We can see it from here”

The clouds is taking on the glow of the sunrise.

“Beautiful”

Gavin admires the sunrise. Several golden hair are sticking out of his beanie.

(To see the first sunrise together!)

(Like having him all to yourself)

Simon sounds Trucy again. He should look at the sunrise, not Gavin, Simon tells himself.

******************************************

いささか古びたマンションの前で心音を降ろす。鉄道の駅からはかなり遠いが、彼女の健脚にかかれば何も問題はないらしいーーむしろ、「足腰の鍛錬になる」とのことだった。

「それでは、今日はありがとう���ざいました！　先輩、どうかお元気で！また帰ってきてくださいね！」

元気よく心音が去る。彼女が健康で幸せであれば、夕神としては無上の喜びだった。

大型のSUVはエンジン音を立て、再び走り出す。最寄りのインターチェンジから高速道路に入り、郊外の国際空港まではそれなりの距離がある。

座面の温もりと程よい振動に意識が浮遊する。カーステレオからは神秘的な雰囲気の女性ボーカルが流れていた。車に乗って寛いだ気分になった覚えが近年まるでないことに改めて気づく。ちびちびと舐めていたコップ酒のアルコールも手伝い、いつにないことに、眠りに落ちかかっていた夕神の耳に、王泥喜の抑えた声が届いた。

「……アンタの曲、かけないんですか」

「だって、好みじゃないだろ？キミの」

牙琉が穏やかに答える。

「ラミロアさんの新しいアルバムだよ、キミもう聞いた？」

「えっそんなの出てるんですか」

「クラインでも買えるのかな？ 良かったらこのCD持っていっていいよ、ぼくデジタルに落としたし」

「……ありがとうございます」

夕神にはラミロアなる人物ーーどうやら歌手らしいーーが誰なのか分からなかったが、王泥喜には馴染みがあるようだ。

「あと……ありがとうございます、乗せてくれて」

「気にしないで。ぼくが、もう少しキミといたかっただけだよ」

本当に久しぶりだね、と感慨深そうに牙琉が言った。王泥喜と彼とはある意味因縁の相手であるはずだが、一種の友情すら築いていたらしい。

「あの……言える範囲で、いいんですけど」

王泥喜の声のトーンが下がる。

「亡霊の事件って、どうなったんですか」

心臓を掴まれたように、夕神はギクリとする。

「日本じゃ裁判しないって聞いたんですけど、どこでやるのかも分からなくて。ハーグですか？」

「……ICCの取り扱いじゃないんじゃないかな」

ぼくもよく知らないんだよ、と抑えた調子で牙琉が言う。

「狩魔冥検事が担当してるのは知ってるよね」

「……はい」

「そうすると、ぼくが言えるのはここまでかな。極秘で、ぼくも本当に知らないんだよ」

「ユガミ検事もですか」

「……分からないけど……聞いてみるかい？」

心臓が跳ねる。

「いえ……知らないか、言えないかのどっちかでしょ。オレは遺族でもないですし」

実際その通りだった。夕神とて知れるものなら何を差し出してでも知りたかった。王泥喜の口調には悔しさが滲んでいる。親友を理不尽に失った悲しみは如何ばかりのものだろう。牙琉の声にも労りが感じ取れたが、ふと悪戯な揶揄いが混じった。

「ところでキミ、彼が寝てると思ってる？」

「えっ、起きてます⁉︎」

王泥喜が慌てて後ろを振り向く。夕神は眠っているふりをする。こういうことに例の腕輪が反応するのかは知らない。

卑怯だとは思いつつ、王泥喜と亡霊の話をする自信がなかった。あの時、夕神が心音を、司法を信用していれば亡霊は直ちに捕らえられ、葵大地も——番刑事も、運命は変わっていたかもしれない。一年前、自分の信じていたものが崩壊し、引き続いて明らかになった真実や環境の激変に耐えることが精一杯だった夕神の自意識は、ある程度の時間を経て、悔恨や自責の念に蝕まれつつあった。それだけに浸っているわけにはいかないが、そこから脱する術が分からない。二度と真実を隠さないと誓ったものの、本来、そんなことは検事なら当然なのだ。夕神はある意味検事としては落伍者のように感じていた。

幸いと言うべきか、王泥喜と牙琉は夕神に構わず会話を続けていた。

「キミが海外に行っちゃうって分かってたら、もっと無理してでも会っておくんだったよ」

「……十分、無理してたんじゃないんですか？　みぬきちゃんが、夏からあんたがめっきり顔見せなくなったって、寂しがってましたよ」

「……ちょっと忙しかったからね」

それは確かだ。検事局の人員不足で、彼も夕神も多忙を極めていた。だが、それは王泥喜の出発前から変わりはない。

「……確かに、成歩堂弁護士さんのところ、少し行きにくくはなったかな。キミがいないとね」

「成歩堂さんと、あと女の子しかいませんからね。でもアンタ、女の子のあしらい得意でしょ？」

「さあね。刑事クンにはすっかり嫌われてるけどね」

数日前の出来事が夕神の脳裏をよぎる。彼女とて、本気で牙琉を侮辱する気ではなかっただろう。それでも、黙っていられなかった。

「アカネさん、クラインではよくナユタの愚痴言ってますよ」

「気に入られてるんだろう？　彼女も、そっちで科学捜査の腕を磨けて最高じゃないか。今日もあっちだろ？」

「オレと入れ違いでちらっと会いましたけど、ナユタがポニポニ山の上で年越しする行事に参加してもらうって言ってたことは伝えてません」

王泥喜の声には同情が滲んでいた。

「そうか、じゃあちょうど今山の上かな？」

愕然とする茜を想像してか、牙琉が少し笑う。

「ちなみに僧侶って妻帯できるの？」

「できますよ……って、ナユタとアカネさんがですか⁉︎ うーん……」

王泥喜は考え込んでいるらしい。しばらく無言だったが、彼としては義兄の恋愛沙汰をあまり想像したくなかったのか、考えを振り切るように首を振る。

「ところで、なんでユガミ検事もいるんですか？ わざわざオレを送りたがる気もしませんけど」

「これから、うちに泊まりに来るんだよ」

「エッ⁉︎ ほ、本当に仲いいんですね」

「仲いいかは分からないけど……もしかして仕事納めのこと聞いたの？」

「え、ええ」

やはりあの事務所の連中が王泥喜にも伝えていたらしい。別に知られて困るわけではないが、少しばかりの気恥ずかしさはあった。

「あの……すみませんでした」

「何がだい？」

牙琉の声は、いつも穏やかだ。

「アンタの曲……嫌いなんて言って」

「何だい、そんなの……仕方ないじゃないか、そりゃ嫌いな人だっているよ。嘘つかれたらその方がイヤだよ」

「でも、アンタを傷つけない言い方だってあったかもしれないのに」

——アンタはいつだって、こんな風に親切だったのに。

王泥喜の声がくぐもる。そう、彼は親切だ。いつだって、誰にだって————

「どうしたの、夕神検事が怖くなったの？」

からかうように牙琉が笑う。

「いえ……別にそういうわけじゃありません」

ただ……ふと思ったんで。王泥喜の声は小さくも明瞭だ。

「へえ。オトナになったおデコくんなんてつまらないな」

何でもないことのように言って、笑う。

それでも、夕神に庇われて、彼は泣いていた————

「……良かったですね、友達ができて」

「キミ、そんなにぼくが孤独だと思ってたの？」

それはもちろん、牙琉にはたくさんの友人がいるのだろう。多忙と、王泥喜の言うとおり、彼の出発以降牙琉が成歩堂の事務所に出入りしなくなったことを合わせてか、集まりに同席することはほとんどなかったが、検事局内で顔を合わせた際には夕神の出で立ちに臆することなく気軽に話しかけて来たし、牙琉の社交ス���ルにつられていつの間にか連絡先も交換していた。それもこれも、夕神を家に誘ったことだって、おそらく彼からしたら何でもないことなのだろう。大袈裟に取る方がおかしい。

それなのに、彼が誰にでも優しいことが苦しく思えるのは何故なのだろう。

年越しとあって空港は賑わっていたが、真夜中となれば多少落ち着きが出ているようだった。クライン行きと同じ時間帯の出発便が少ないせいもあるだろう。王泥喜が出発ゲートをくぐるまでには少し時間があったが、入れそうな店もなく、飲み物だけを買ってベンチに腰掛ける。

「故郷はどう？」

「そうですね……変わってない、ような気がします。忙しすぎて、あちこち行く暇もないんですけど」

「千客万来なら結構なことじゃないか。といっても、色々立て直しで大変なんだろうけど」

王泥喜はコーヒーを啜る。

「そうですね……連絡、全然できてなくてすみません」

「ぼくはいいけど、お嬢さんたちには連絡してあげなよ、今日は本当に楽しそうだったね」

「……そうですね。それじゃ、そろそろ行きます」

「達者でな」

出発ゲートに向かう王泥喜を見送ると、牙琉と二人になる。夕神はささやかな疑問をぶつけてみることにした。

「おめェさんよォ、禁酒までしてご苦労なこったが、泥の字が断ったらどうする気だったんだ」

数度瞬きをして、牙琉がにっこりと笑う。

「その時は、キミと初日の出でも見に行こうかなって」

勝手に予定を決められていても、何故か悪い気はしなかった。彼は、夕神がそう感じることまで見越していたのだろうか？

「実は、あんまり見たことないんだよね。一応、場所もいくつか調べてはみたんだけどさ」

牙琉はそう言って、空港の大きな窓際に夕神を導く。

「ここから、見えるね」

滑走路の向こうで、山の木々と、空の境目が橙色に染まっていく。ちょうど日が昇るころだった。

「綺麗だね」

牙琉がうっとりと呟く。黒いニット帽の際から、金色の後れ毛がいくらか覗いている。

（初日の出を一緒に見ることです！）

（独り占めって感じですよね）

みぬきの声が蘇る。彼ではなく、日の出を見るべき時だと、夕神は自分に言い聞かせた。

#klavquill #klavquill 1 #klavier gavin #simon blackquill

[4ragon]

For topics to ramble on; how about Ema and Klavier’s dynamic? I’m playing SoJ and neither of them are here yet and I miss them ;-;

Hehehehe hope you’re enjoying SoJ!

Oh Ema and Klavier. I truly and deeply care about Ema and Klavier friendship so gosh darn much. And some of that is I enjoy that dynamic, I enjoy the idea of an Ema who pretends to dislike him but begrudgingly still cares for his wellbeing. However, I think what I like more is how they got there.

Let’s face it: I think they genuinely don’t like each other in aa4. Like, there’s certainly plenty about their dynamic that I think could make for a good foundation for a friendship, with Ema’s grouchiness playing off Klavier’s teasing, but they also do enjoy screwing each other over at multiple points. Klavier embarrasses her in trial, Ema freaks Klavier out by imitating Kristoph. These are both very mean spirited actions, and I think speak to a level of how much these two don’t understand each other. Klavier hadn’t really thought much about how his 'grand reveal’ would hurt Ema, and Ema didn’t understand how upsetting Klavier would find her sudden imitation, or even fully why. It’s not like either of them would be trying to hurt each other, they’re not those kinds of people, I think they just don’t understand each other and have written off any possibility of doing so.

And I think that’s what I find interesting about a potential Ema Klavier friendship. They both I think start off with really strong misconceptions about the other, the both write each other off, and them being able to grow past that, to come to understand and care for each other is just a really nice narrative.

Ema, of course, knew Klavier immediately as “That prosecutor who disbarred Phoenix,” and I think, unlike Phoenix and Apollo, she never really tried to look past that. I think she was perfectly caught up in Klavier’s rockstar persona. Klavier Gavin talks about wanting a simple life, having simple motivations. His entire affect is meant to prevent people from knowing the real him, and Ema absolutely does not see through that. She thinks he’s vain, and arrogant, and self-serving, and these biases against him make it so hard for her to see the genuine heart of gold underneath.

On the flip side, I do really like the headcanon that Klavier, pansexual disaster, had a very short-lived crush on Ema Skye before she mercilessly beat it out of him. I think he tried to make those good first impressions, but in that flirty, flighty rockstar way that came off to Ema as deeply insincere and arrogant. And once those first impressions had been set, any sort of connection became really hard to make, so Klavier just accepted, “Oh, this is my detective, she hates me for some reason, and that’s just how it is.” His rockstar persona was a front to prevent people from getting to close to him and allowing him to be hurt, after all, and so it was working perfectly as intended.

And all that prevents them for so long from realizing that they really do have a lot in common. They’re both hard working, they both are so passionate about their dream jobs, they’re both good, honest people, and they both have an older sibling who’s in prison. In fact, I feel like that last point is hugely important. Ema, more than so many other people in his life, shares that single point of connection, of an older sibling who not only is in prison, but did in fact commit the crime they were accused of. That is something that almost no one else in the series understands, something not many people have experienced, and it’s something I think both of them would benefit from connecting over. They both have written off the other as someone not worth attempting to get to know, but once they do get past that, they can come to realize that there is so much more to this person that they wrote off at the start.

And once they’re past that initial hurtle, I think they would be such a fun pair. Ema would still be a grouchy contrarian, and Klavier would still enjoy teasing her mercilessly, as is his want. I don’t know, I find dynamics like that so much fun. Characters who appear to not get along, but deep down do care about each other so much. Just. I love these two. I enjoy these two.

#ace attorney #ema skye #klavier gavin #spoilers #maybe

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 10: living with the ghosts of who you could have been, a how-to guide.

This is a 13,000 word chapter because that’s just how it is now.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

People Park sits right near the office, but even in the time it takes to bike there Apollo always expects to get hit by a car. Something about Phoenix’s experience, and the fear that Apollo is nowhere near as lucky as him, still hasn’t left his head. But as he always has, he makes it safely through the gates and rolls down the paved path. People are always scarce here - though Phoenix said once it’s funny that the park has become less shady now that the mob has a financial interest in it - but the late afternoon sunshine means that along with the people simply passing through it on the way to another destination, there are a few joggers and a few more dog owners. 

Apollo steers himself into the grass and hops from his bike, scanning the area for a particular dog. Unless she’s just wandered off - which is always very possible - she should be easier to spot than Klavier. (In what world is a cursed fae dog more visible than a rock star? In this world that Apollo has to live in.)

Vongole is a bright white, vaguely dog-like shape lying beneath one of the trees, but only after several blinks can Apollo figure that maybe, without her, he might recognize the blond sitting on the grass next to her as Klaver. Her red ears snap to attention when she spots Apollo and she rises to her feet, but not with a movement that any animal should or could make. She doesn’t propel herself up from the ground with her legs, which would give her some forward motion, but drifts up like she is attached to strings that were yanked straight upward, with legs solidifying beneath her.

Her tail takes a distinct shape to wag, smacking Klavier in the face on each swing. He doesn’t look up right away, and Apollo falters, not certain that Klavier didn’t catch a glimpse of him and deliberately ignore him. Vongole’s tail continues swishing and Klavier finally puts up his hand to block it and lifts his head, visibly annoyed, about to scold her - and he looks where she’s looking, at Apollo, and brightens, instantly, a surprised-but-delighted grin stretching out across his face. “Herr Forehead! What a surprise to see you here!”

“I work literally a block away,” Apollo says. Klavier can’t actually be surprised, and while he doesn’t see any red, his eye only sometimes pings sarcasm and hyperbole.

“And you could easily have just gone on home,” Klavier replies. That’s true, somewhat; Apollo could look at him and forget he’s a celebrity, right now. Not just because he’s sitting in the dirt in a mafia-funded park with his hair barely brushed and held together with an actual rubber band, but as a glamour. He hasn’t disappeared, entirely, faded like a ghost into the scenery, but he’s projecting the image of someone normal, someone who doesn’t merit a second glance.

Apollo doesn’t like not being able to trust his own eyes, when it comes to Klavier, but the magatama feels like an intrusion, so he’s damned either way. He leans his bike against the side of the tree and sits down near Klavier.

“Yeah, but between the typo-laden texts and you being here right by the office, I wasn’t sure if that was all a cry for help or what.”

Nothing said straight-out, because Klavier is only straightforward professionally, not personally. But the calendar, the bakery, the park, and that Apollo knows from prior conversations that Klavier usually doesn’t leave the office until at least six - the evidence leads to a logical conclusion, one that any jury would agree with.

Klavier raises one eyebrow - Apollo’s never figured out how to move them that independently, but that could be glamour, too - and taps a pink pen against the notebook that sits in his lap. “You mean you thought it was me playing coy about wanting to see you, ja?” he asks. The grin on his face now is different, hollower, not pushing his cheeks the whole way up to his eyes.

“No,” Apollo says. “That is absolutely not what I meant.”

“It’s what I would be asking, were I in your place,” Klavier says, but his grin snaps away. Apollo prefers that, feels less like he’s talking to a mask. He gets that feeling with Trucy too, sometimes. 

“That’s because your ego is the size of the sun and just as gaseous.”

“You wouldn’t go wrong having an ego like that.” Klavier leans his head back against the tree and glances at Apollo from the corners of his eyes. “It would fit your name.”

“I didn’t know you knew my name,” Apollo says.

“Of course I do,” Klavier says, though in Apollo’s opinion he’s overestimating himself with the of course. 

“How was I supposed to know when you never once used it?” Apollo asks.

“Your name is on the docket for the court cases,” Klavier says. “And in the letter of representation that Fräulein handed me just beyond the gate, there.” He points to the other entrance of the park, the one near which the noodle stand spent three days sinking into the grass, covered in police tape. Frowning still, his eyes return to meet Apollo’s. “I didn’t know what to make of you that day. I thought perhaps you were corrupt, and that by letting you onto the crime scene you would try something, and Fräulein Detective would chew your head off as she had been mine, and I would have my answer as to what happened on that day with my brother.”

The admission doesn’t hurt but does come as a surprise, given the hand of kindness that Klavier offered him so soon at the end of that trial. “And then you proved yourself to be rather honest, and far too normal, and I still did not know what to make of you but I thought I knew what to make of your place of employment, some sort of fae snare - and I was wrong, again.” He closes his eyes and turns his head away. “I suppose I still don’t.”

And Apollo doesn’t know what to say to that, certainly didn’t expect the conversation to take such a turn when Klavier started out by dodging Apollo’s attempt to scratch beneath the surface. “You thought I was normal even though I can see when people are lying?”

“Mm.” Klavier draws out the hum for a while. “I suppose my perception of such things is rather unbalanced. But compared to the Fräulein next to you, and your boss, yes, you seemed mostly normal.”

“I didn’t know what to make of you either,” Apollo admits. “I mean, I definitely didn’t think you were normal” - Klavier laughs - “but that you were the prosecutor and willing to - to help my case, for the sake of finding the truth - that, I didn’t get.”

And he’d been unhappy with it, at the time - unhappy with the flashy fae-seeming prosecutor pitying his case and lending his assistance. Unhappy that he couldn’t win on his own. It’s petty now, remembering, even if he understands where those emotions came from, and so he leaves that out.

Klavier hums again, still looking off at anything that isn’t Apollo. Vongole chews on a rock. Somewhere in the distance, past the traffic, Apollo would swear he hears Eldoon’s harmonica. “It was a fortunate coincidence that you and your office happen to be out this way,” Klavier says quietly. “What I was - it was simply for the bakery. Or not simply, but—” 

He’s about to say more but doesn’t, instead pressing his fingers to his eyes and pulling up his knees so he can rest his head on them. “Are you okay?” Apollo asks. He knows the answer when he asks this time, too.

Klavier makes a noise of disgust, muffled as it is by his face in his arms. “Give me a moment,” he says, and Apollo does even while plotting their trajectory to the nearest hospital or just back to the office for easy couch access. When he lifts his head again, there’s something artificial and unnatural about the brightness of his eyes, half glamour and half sick. “I wanted to remind myself that something I did since coming back actually mattered. The defendant was an idiot, ja? But he would not have deserved to be falsely convicted, nor die from negligence, as his darling fiance so hoped. That his whole family learned a lesson about this path they had chosen - that I can stress-eat my reminder that something I did was useful—”

“You don’t think anything else you did was?” Apollo interrupts. “Not for Lamiroir and Machi, or—”

“This was the only one that did not cause me more pain,” Klavier replies. “And sometimes it is hard to see the whole forest when the trees around you are falling toward your head. Like I want to tell Kris about the bakery, that there he would have choices there to eat and minimize his salt and still enjoy it as much as I. Or call Daryan and bitch about how I haven’t prosecuted a case in a week and a half and think this the prelude to Herr Chief finally firing me.”

“I really doubt that,” Apollo says. “He has a convicted murderer prosecuting. I think you’re fine.” He’s glad Klavier kept talking, gave him something easy to respond to. What reassurance can he give to the fact that yes, two people Klavier loved - two people he loved most, even - are murderers, and Apollo did the digging to expose that fact. Take comfort that justice is served. How much does it hurt? 

Klavier smiles sadly at him. “That’s kind of you to say, at least.” Clear that he doesn’t believe it, or doesn’t believe that Apollo actually believes it. He pushes some hair away from his eyes. “So you had to face Herr Samurai, ja? How was that?”

“He’s a witch or something worse and I think he tried to kill me,” Apollo says. “He scared the judge into being okay with him having an attack hawk in the courtroom, and even Mr Wright can’t figure out what he is.”

Klavier sighs, his shoulders slumping. “I was afraid I was losing my mind,” he says. “But if it is Herr Samurai, and not me—” They both watch Vongole return with a small twig in her mouth that she drops on Klavier’s shoe. “He reminds me in some way of Kris. The way that when I looked at him I could tell something was odd but - Kris would sometimes be…” His jaw set, he searches for the right word. He tosses aside the twig Vongole left him and she bounds away after it and continues on past it. “Blurry, flickering, with my Sight. Some days I would only get a glimpse of—” He raises a hand and gestures first to the side of his head, around his ear, then to his eyes, and finally pantomiming the curve of Kristoph’s horns that Apollo saw only briefly. Flittering in and out. 

“Do you know why that happened?”

Klavier shakes his head. “And he wasn’t always like that, not at first. And I stopped checking, because I know what my brother looks like, shouldn’t I? And then he just—” He waves a hand in front of his face again. “Kris and his obsession with appearances. Perhaps it ate him from the inside out.”

“So Blackquill…?”

“Ach, I suppose the comparison is small to draw, beyond them both being lawyers and murderers.” He laughs once, sharp and bitter. It’s somehow both something and nothing like the laugh that filled the courtroom half a year ago. “Herr Samurai, I can’t even get a hint of what he might be, and he blurs everything around him too. The Twisted Samurai, ja, is fitting, twisting everything he gets near. It seems to make sense until I ask myself how and why.” 

“I feel like that’s what happens every time someone tells me anything new about magic.” Klavier laughs. “But that’s not part of the standard fae powers, messing with the Sight and people’s eyes?” Apollo asks. Even Kristoph’s tics were visible and highlighted.

“There would be little point to the Sight for us mere humans if they could so easily circumvent it.” Klavier lays his head back on his arms, but turned so that he still can look at Apollo. “Though that would be better. They would have less use for stolen children that way. Our Sight is different than theirs, did you know?” Before Apollo shakes his head, Klavier speaks again. “That for humans it is at will, a choice, to turn on and off, of course, while they are always to see the true forms of other glamoured fae, to see the chains on a witch and the wings of a shapeshifter. What they don’t see so readily are the blessings and curses they pile upon each other’s heads; for that, they look through a magatama like any unSighted human must.”

Vongole flops down on Klavier’s feet and lays her head on Apollo’s shin. He tentatively reaches out and scratches her head. She is more solid than she looks. “Ach, I think the royalty might be able to see everything,” Klavier continues, not looking at Apollo anymore, head raised and eyes fixed somewhere distant. “But they are - the fae are monsters who steal children, the nightmare under the bed, and their royalty are what scare them.” 

(“She could have been queen,” Phoenix said of Mia. Royalty.)

In six months, Apollo has gained no more insight into what is a fitting response to any of this. Or even an awkward, clumsy response. Apollo helps by solving problems, getting acquittals, fixing things. His strategy for sympathy hasn’t changed since he was nine years old, and that strategy is screaming, and Klavier already makes enough jokes about his voice already, thanks. He wants to say something just for the sake of letting Klavier know that he is still mentally present in this park and listening. (He is also mentally back in the office, remembering times that Mia had thrown a blanket at him. The terrifying queen of the faeries, everyone.)

“So those human children who are not artists - the entertainers - they are spies, weapons of politics, to check the curses and blessings on your enemy, tell you everything you can exploit, and maybe in return you try to keep that valuable tool of yours from being destroyed in the crossfire.” Klavier’s voice is soft and even-toned, as though everything he says isn’t so viscerally horrifying that Apollo feels nauseous. 

“And the rest, like me, nameless, underfoot, attached to no alliance, no - keeper, I suppose you could say - I learn only by guessing what blessings and curses look like. Sometimes I see someone and still don’t know. And I learn to keep my mouth shut, because I am no one’s favorite toy, I am no useful piece in anyone’s ambitions in that Court, and they all hold their cards close, divulge no hidden vulnerabilities or secret assets, and should anyone else do so—” 

He snaps his fingers. 

“Oh,” Apollo says.

Even before this he never wanted to wonder what might have happened to a little human girl who could grow up to look just like Vera. He hopes they just left her alone to paint. 

Klavier doesn’t look back at Apollo for any more of a reaction. “I remember so very little of the Court,” he adds, like an afterthought, too breezily for his prior words. “I suppose they took it from me when I left, to keep their secrets - but this I remember. And I - do you know how jealous I was of Kris?” 

Something congeals in his voice, something that sounds to Apollo like the intersection of grief and anger. “That he got to grow up human? That more than that, that our parents were loving ones who cared for him, that he had a name and a voice from the start? That I named a band after myself trying to make myself someone! And still that is not just my name, it is ours, because everything I could have been, he had! From the start!” He presses his hands to the sides of his head. Both are shaking as he raises them. “And he threw it all away!”

Apollo wishes he had words to say, anything to help, that they were in court in a trial and he had evidence and a jury that would put an end to this, usher Klavier back out of the darkness and the skeletons from the closet. There’s no one to save them this time, nothing but the two of them, Klavier trembling, Apollo silent, a silence he could break if he wants to put his foot in his mouth soon after. Because of course that’s what will happen, and maybe if he’s lucky his fumbling would at least make Klavier laugh for a moment. 

“He murdered two men, tried so many more, ruined lives, and I am angry at him that his own life was one of those ruined,” Klavier says. “He deserves it, surely, and it is his victims I should concern myself entirely with, but I…”

“I’m not judging you for that,” Apollo says. 

“And what are you judging me for?”

“Your fashion sense, mostly.”

Klavier laughs, sudden but not sharp, more surprised than anything, his head snapping toward Apollo. “For the first thing, Herr Forehead, there is nothing wrong with my fashion sense.”

“Do you even know how to tie a tie?” 

Klavier doesn’t answer, which Apollo finds suspicious, but he laughs again and elbows Apollo in the arm. “Rude,” he says. 

“Hit a sore spot, clearly,” Apollo says. 

“Hardly. I am unshameable. I’ve never been embarrassed in my life.”

“That does sound like you.”

Klavier tilts his head. “Now why do you make that sound like a bad thing?” His smirk stops it from being a genuine question. 

“Look at your car,” Apollo says. “Look at those deliberate design choices you made.”

“I see we have a rather different perception of what we could consider my flaws.” The smile falls off his lips, makes Apollo realize again how sad his eyes are.

Which reminds Apollo how they started down this road and that something much heavier precipitated it. “Well,” he says. “It’s not exactly like, um, there’s a guide you’re given to follow when someone close to you turns out to be a murderer. I don’t think anyone can tell you how you’re supposed to respond. Especially since this is your brother. And everything else with - with everything.”

Klavier hums, examining his hands. Vongole noses her way into his vision and he starts to push her away before changing course and patting her nose. “My brother,” he repeats. “After all that I admired and trusted him, after all that he had - I would not want someone to be able to tell me how I am supposed to feel. There is no one I would wish this on.” Vongole licks his hand. “Do you mind me asking,” he adds, softly, and Apollo braces himself for anything. “Did you ever have any foster siblings or others your age in the homes you grew up in?”

To gauge whether Apollo can even begin to imagine. To guess on whether he has the chance, however slight, to feel that pain more personally than a mentor he respected. And the answer - how is Apollo supposed to answer that? “None I ever kept in touch with once I left,” he says. 

It’s true in the way the fae speak to truth, if it isn’t true to what Apollo knows in his heart. What he knows he should say, what he wants and doesn’t want to say, is “Yes, I have a brother. His name is Nahyuta. He’s a year older than me and I grew up with him for the first eight years of my life, the longest I ever stayed with one family. We lived in the country of Khura’in, a kingdom so small that if I ever look for news about it, I have to remember how to read Khura’inese, because I never find its modern going-ons reported on in English. And I would have stayed in contact with him if I could.” 

(Because that’s why Apollo first started keeping a journal, isn’t it, when he came to America: to have all of his new adventures easy at hand to recall and share with Nahyuta again when he went home. It helped him practice his written English, too, which started out a hundred times choppier than the spoken. And he kept recording everything, long after hope died, thinking as a lawyer to have records of everything and have his own memory of a case and not just a transcript. It was for him, then, not for his brother, even though if he ever said the full truth, those words would be, “I have a brother; have, present tense, if he hasn’t been killed. I have a brother, present tense, even if I’ve now lived nearly two-thirds of my life away from him and I’m not quite sure if he’s human.”)

And for once Klavier is the one with no way to respond. They both know why he asked; no need to clarify. How many ways to bleed do they share? Not that one, or maybe still, and that’s Apollo’s secret - if Nahyuta were to—

If Nahyuta—

No. 

(Dhurke wanted to overthrow a corrupt queen without shedding blood, but it’s been fifteen years, and when Apollo checked last year, the first time looking up anything about Khura’in in seven years, the queen was still the queen. Maybe they’ll get tired. Does the proper end ever justify the route to get there? Phoenix wants to reform the courts, expose murderers and forged evidence, and he himself faked decisive evidence. What is just in pursuit of justice? Blood on a playing card - blood on rebel hands.)

If Nahyuta. 

End thought.

Apollo leans his head back against the tree. 

“Daryan has a little sister,” Klavier says, his head ducked again and his hands over his eyes.  “Nineteen, maybe, now? She plays the cello, has since she herself was smaller than the instrument. Rock and classical, we all thought it was funny. She was going to university for teaching music. Dropped out, I think, after Daryan’s conviction. I think, only, because I did not hear it from her.” He sighs, his hand now propping his head upright, his eyes closed. “We spoke only after his arrest, when she told me that this was my fault, because had I not gone to Borginia, met Lamiroir and Herr Tobaye, put them in contact with my band - had I not done so, Daryan would not have been tied up in smuggling, would not have committed murder, and she would not have lost her brother.”

“Way to shift the onus of the blame,” Apollo says. He understands the impulse, he’s sure Athena would probably have something to say about it, but of all the people to blame - Klavier, who was losing a friend, too?

“I did tell her such, that Daryan is a grown man who could have chosen not to be involved, and that I empathized with such a loss, with my own brother.” Klavier sighs again, louder this time. “And then she threw a violin at me and told me to fuck off and that was the last I saw of her.”

“An entire violin?” Apollo asks, which is so far from the main point but remains remarkable in the wrong way. 

“She had been refurbishing it,” Klavier says. “I did not stick around to see how much extra refurbishing it would need after that.” He looks pained, what little of his face he’s allowing Apollo to see. “Though strictly speaking she isn’t wrong. Had I not been to Borginia—”

And he pulls up his other arm half around his head, his fingers curling into his hair at the back of his head. Vongole lays her head down on her paws. “Seriously, are you okay?” Apollo asks, pushing himself up onto his knees, his hands hovering over Klavier’s shoulder and back, because despite everything, there still feels like a gulf between them that hasn’t been crossed, all of the times Klavier has poked his forehead aside. “And this time don’t just avoid the—”

Klavier groans. “Herr Forehead, you are yelling in my ear.” Apollo sits back on his heels. That can’t actually help, can it? “You shouldn’t be worrying about me.”

“That’s not ‘yeah, I’m okay’,” Apollo says. “That’s avoiding the question.”

Klavier shakes his head, the movement limited by the position of his arms, and he makes a disgusted noise from the back of his throat. “It’s nothing you can help with.”

“That just sounds like you’re dying!” 

“We could hardly be so lucky,” Klavier says dryly. He shifts, his hand still clutching his hair, his cheek resting on his other arm, to look at Apollo from one eye. “Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if some certain or another thing had not happened?”

“Huh?” And what the hell does that have to do with this, them, now?

Which is a question Klavier expects. “It will make sense in a moment, ja? I promise.”

Somewhere there’s got to be a connecting thread, but it’s like they’re in court, Klavier two steps ahead and setting out the pieces for Apollo to catch up. “I didn’t used to,” Apollo says slowly, because even though he doesn’t understand the groundwork being laid, it matters to Klavier, and he might as well answer honestly. “But now I find myself thinking about it a lot more.”

Sadness, not anger, knits Klavier’s eyebrows close together. He must suspect Apollo to be saying, in a veiled sort of way, “I keep wondering what would have happened if my boss your brother didn’t turn out to be a corrupt murdering fae.”

And that’s not it. That’s not the quandary on Apollo’s mind. But he’s got no way to say, “This isn’t about your brother; it’s about mine.”

(If Dhurke hadn’t sent him away. If Apollo grew up knowing what he and Nahyuta were. If Apollo’s father didn’t die, or Apollo wasn’t stolen away - if he remembered who told him the story of how he came to be raised by Dhurke, because the fae can’t lie but was it Dhurke or Datz who talked about a fire killing Apollo’s father?)

“So what does that have to do with anything?” Apollo prompts. Klavier isn’t going to keep going on his own; he looks like he’s half somewhere else, dazed and glassy-eyed. 

“I don’t have to wonder,” Klavier says. “I know where I would be had Kris and I never been switched. I, ah, see it sometimes. Like I imagine seeing the future would be, except.” He frowns. His frowns are always very pronounced, more like a pout, that on other days Apollo has been tempted to laugh at. (Or that’s the thought that Apollo most allows himself to entertain regarding Klavier’s lips, anyway.) “Except nothing like the future; I don’t know why I’m saying that. It’s quite more like looking sideways, I suppose.”

This time he waits, watching Apollo keenly for a reaction. He’s not going to get one, given that Apollo is still figuring whether this means sort of what he thinks it might, and he’s only part of the way through it. “Like visions?” he asks.

Klavier nods. He starts to unfold himself, stretching his legs out and uncurling his arms from around his head to cross them across his chest, still defensive. “Visions, ja. Of where I would be, what I am doing, having gotten to grow up human. And an only child, as well.” He picks up from the ground the journal he was writing in when Apollo first approached. “I take notes, when it happens - a diary of the life I’ve never had.” He flips through it quickly, too quickly for Apollo to read any of the words, and rather he watches pages and pages of different colorful inks flap past. 

“How long has this been happening?” Apollo asks. 

“On and off through Themis and my first year as a prosecutor.” Klavier snaps the journal shut again. “Almost never for all those years traveling and touring with the band. And then I came back and it’s worse than ever. If there’s a pattern I’d love to know it.” He glances around, finds the pink pen he had earlier, and begins tapping it against his leg. “I let my mind relax for a moment and there’s always a new piece working its way in. I can usually push it back out with something else to focus on, except now today it feels like someone taking a jackhammer to my skull from the inside out. An injury to insult for this particular occasion. I can’t even enjoy the quiet day at the office my other self would have had today.” 

The pen flings loose when he abruptly stops moving his hand and Vongole, with a heavy exhale, rises up off the ground to retrieve it. Klavier’s mouth twists. 

“Are you still a prosecutor?” Apollo asks. “Or, how do you phrase that? Is it hypothetical? Would you have been?” If he’d stayed with Dhurke, he still would have wanted to be a defense attorney. But if not for Dhurke, if Apollo had grown up with his birth family, whoever they were, would he still? What could he have been instead? Was Kristoph the catalyst for Klavier? Who would he have been without his brother? (Who would Apollo have been without his?)

“It’s the least hypothetical hypothetical scenario,” Klavier says. “Which is to say it absolutely does not matter in the slightest.” He grins and it takes several seconds to fade. “But yes, I am. Still. Would be?” Apollo snorts. Klavier glares at him. “Verdammt, now you have me confused. - I wasn’t a prosecutor at seventeen, though. Didn’t go to Themis, wasn’t trying to catch up to Kris as soon as I could. I was Kris, after all. Or not him, but that should have been my name, except I went by would-have-gone-by Kris, and he never tolerated anyone but me calling him that.” Klavier squeezes his eyes shut and brings a hand up to rub his temple. “Does any of this make sense?”

“Relatively,” Apollo says. “The whole concept doesn’t make sense in the first place, but within the overall ‘what the fuck’” - Klavier laughs - “I’m mostly following it.”

“There is a reason I did not tell you about this with everything else, back when.” Klavier waves his hand, unsuccessfully feigning casual dismissiveness. “It’s a bit of a stretch even from ‘my older brother is my changeling doppelganger’, ja?” Another attempt at being casual, glancing at Apollo from just the corners of his eyes, but the worried downturn of his brow and mouth continue to betray him. “And the disconcerting philosophical questions, if this implies that some things are destined to happen - that it all always would have turned out as I see if I had not been taken, that there are choices we are bound to make.” He shrugs. “Or perhaps this is not magic at all and is just my mind trying to make sense of all that happened in the worst way possible. I should ask Herr Samurai for his opinion. You know he studied psychology, ja?” 

“Please do not try and use your coworker the convicted murderer as a therapist,” Apollo says. “Based on all the stunts he pulled in court, all his manipulating and twisting people - he would take all that information you gave to him and use it to destroy you.”

“I would be asking his opinion on one matter, not offering him my entire life story.”

“You entire life story is kinda tied into this one matter!”

“Besides,” Klavier says, at the same time Apollo is objecting, “he and I are both prosecutors. What reason would he have to want to destroy me? It is not as though he could use it to his advantage as my opponent in court.”

Who knows why a murderer like him might do anything, Apollo thinks, about to say it, and then Klavier’s actual words, “my opponent in court”, fully register. He squints at him. “Are you saying I would use it against you?” After everything they have been through - after everything Apollo has helped him with?

“I’m saying that I would have less concern consulting with him than some others,” Klavier says darkly. Apollo isn’t sure what he’s implying with this but doesn’t really like the options. “And while I do not doubt your experience in court, when I spoke with Herr Samurai he was not unpleasant. He quite liked to talk about his bird, and his bird quite enjoyed terrorizing Vongole.”

“That bird would fight god if given the chance,” Apollo says. “And I’m not sure I would want to spend time with a murderer anyway.”

“I seem to end up at that point anyway,” Klavier says bitterly, “and at least on this occasion I am forewarned.”

Apollo swallows the lump in his throat. There’s no good response to that. Klavier’s eyes meet his again, and he lets the silence drag on several more seconds before very softly he says, “But I do like to think I know magic, and I do think that this is more than solely my mind. A last mocking joke from the Winter Court, ja? I won my way home and they taunt me with the knowledge that I am not truly free by dangling ahead of me the life they stole from me.”

“Wouldn’t it really be Kristoph who stole it from you?” Apollo asks. Klavier’s eyes narrow. “That the Court took you, and your brother took your life?”

His expression relaxes. “I was jealous, like I said, but never angry, not at him. He did not ask for it any more than I. We were - I presumed we were in agreement that it was they who were to blame, not each other.” But not sure. Not now, not after everything. Who could blame him? “And I am angry that he squandered the life he had, but not that he had it.”

Apollo watches for lies and waits. And waits, and waits. And accepts that even if Klavier did mean that he’s not sure if Apollo won’t use any of this against him, he’s still continuing to be honest with him. “It would have been a much easier life,” Klavier says. “From everything I…” He motions to his journal. “Many less lows, this past year. Though also some other less.” He tilts his head toward Apollo and shrugs one shoulder. A question, shall I go on? Apollo nods.

Klavier begins ticking off points on his fingers. “I am a prosecutor still, but never the rock star. I did not meet Daryan - I am eight years older than him, so how were we to? No Gavinneers, no tours, no songs on the radio. Music just does stay a hobby.” With a wry grin that falls immediately into an unhappy one, he adds, “Though I never gave up the piano. It’s - how am I to weigh it? I never have a second career I so loved - I am not at Themis to meet my favorite professor - I never know Daryan, but that means, I imagine, that he does not get caught up in smuggling. Maybe he finds trouble on his own, or maybe his sister gets to keep her brother.”

“You don’t know for sure?” 

“It’s like looking through a one-way mirror. I know what is changed with this me-I-could-have-been, but he - I - cannot know what’s happened here.” He spreads his hands wide, palms up, gesturing to the world. “I can’t change what I know there. I can’t get a message to myself to say, go look up Daryan Crescend, see how he is doing. I never met him. There’s no reason for me to pay attention to that name.” He shakes his head. “I know Phoenix Wright only because we have faced each other in court every so often over the past eight years.”

The number stings. It would have a bite on its own, but Klavier gives its teeth extra force, extra sharpness. Without Kristoph, no diary page, no disbarment. Phoenix Wright remains a defense attorney. “Does he still adopt Trucy?” Apollo asks. With no diary page, is Zak Gramarye acquitted, or does he vanish anyway? What happens to Trucy if she stays a Gramarye? The concept isn’t one Apollo likes. 

Klavier shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “He and I only cross paths in court, and he still does not exactly like me, at all.”

“I’ve told you I’m pretty sure he has nothing against you,” Apollo says. He frowns. “And what happened that he doesn’t like you in—” What to call it? A parallel universe, another lifetime?                                             

“It is - hm.” Klavier eyes him suspiciously. “Something that happened, yes.”

“That bad?” Apollo asks. Klavier fiddles with his hair. Apollo takes a shot from a different angle. “Or that embarrassing?”

Klavier elbows him in the side. “That’s quite enough from you, Herr Forehead.”

“Didn’t you say you don’t get embarrassed?”

“I am not embarrassed. I am ashamed on behalf of - of—”

“Of yourself,” Apollo finishes. 

“Yes.”

Apollo raises his eyebrows. Klavier stares back, an attempt at a glare that slowly cracks apart into laughter. “That sounds ridiculous,” Apollo says. “You sound ridiculous.”

“I’m aware,” Klavier says. “That happens. I actually only have a suspicion about what happened between myself and your boss in—” He waves his hand vaguely. “Which reminds me that I have meant to ask you, for several reasons, do you have any idea what on earth it is between your boss and mine?”

“What?” Apollo asks. Even if Klavier is leaping from topic to topic this quickly to keep his mind and visions at bay, he’s abandoned the linear path between anything.

“This is not to say that there is an office pool on if-when they are dating, but I am not to say that there is not such a thing, either,” Klavier says.

“You’re betting on your boss’s love life?” Apollo asks, aghast. Did he ever harbor a delusion that the Prosecutors Office is more functional than the Wright Anything Agency? He definitely hasn’t since spending New Years with Faraday and Debeste. Which, now that he thinks about it: “Wait, that wasn’t a thing that Detective Faraday started or something?”

“I am not part of it,” Klavier says. “I don’t gamble anymore unless I know I will win. But yes, it was her, up to nothing good, as ever.”

“I don’t know anything,” Apollo says. “I mean, I know Mr Wright is friends with him, but not like - well, today Mr Wright left and said he was going to study for the Bar somewhere else, and Trucy just guessed that he was going to see Edgeworth and he didn’t say he wasn’t.”

“If you can get any information out of the Fräulein I will split the winnings with you,” Klavier says. “And I will tell you the ill-advised decisions my other self has made if you promise to keep your mouth shut.”

Apollo blinks. “Yeah?” he says, not meaning to sound hesitant, but doesn’t Klavier know that he hasn’t talked about anything he told him last October? Why would that change now? (Though maybe if it is actually embarrassing, Apollo won’t pass up the opportunity to mock him about it directly to his face.) “Of course.”

“I am reasonably sure that - you know, hypothetically, looking sideways, all of that - that in that hypothetical lifetime, I seem to have unwisely walked myself right into some romantic entanglement of theirs and earned Herr Turnabout’s ire, I believe perhaps out of jealousy, that I asked out Herr Chief.”

Klavier twists some strands of his bangs around his fingers, lips pursed tightly together, waiting for Apollo’s reaction. It arrives delayed and more confused than Apollo has been in a while, though he keeps thinking he’s hit peak confusion and keeps being surprised. “So you’re a homewrecker?” Apollo asks dumbly.

“Nein, I am not!” Klavier smacks Apollo on the shoulder with his journal. “They were not dating! I would not have - I assume it was anger that before he would get himself together, someone else would—”

“You asked your boss on a date?” Apollo asks, louder than the last question, loud enough that even in the half-barren park it might carry. Klavier slaps his hand over Apollo’s mouth with too flat a palm and enough force that it’s a bit like a slap in the teeth.

“He was not Chief Prosecutor, and so not my boss at that moment,” Klavier says, half defensive and half apologetic, pulling his hand back away. Apollo runs his tongue over his teeth; they’ve stopped stinging now. “And furthermore, I am about their age, ja? Or I would have been - my brother is a year younger than them.” Klavier tilts his head to the side, and a slow, lopsided grin spreads across it, wicked and mocking both. “And Herr Chief is a very handsome man, you must admit.”

Apollo covers his face with his hands. “I don’t have to say anything,” he says.

“You were curious, as I recall. You asked.”

“Right,” Apollo says. “I’m good now thanks. Don’t need any more.”

“There’s not much more to tell,” Klavier says, propping up his chin on his hand. “It went nowhere and was not an avenue I chose to dwell on.” With his other hand he picks at the corner of his journal. “I shouldn’t dwell on any of it I’m sure, but there’s some part of it that’s fascinating. Such a quieter life with so many less griefs and my coworkers don’t resent me. I have a dog, a golden retriever. And other parks to take her to, nowhere near kitsune mafia fronts and defense attorneys who know too much about me.”

That’s certainly a statement to unpack. Klavier, as ever, doesn’t linger on it. “Muffin?” he asks, picking up a paper bag from his other side and offering it to Apollo. “I overestimated how much I wanted to stress eat while I was at the bakery.”

“I didn’t know rock stars are allowed to stress eat,” Apollo says, taking the bag and glancing inside. “Are these the regular ones or the, uh, fae ones. Trucy and I get them for Vera whenever she comes to hang out, but I don’t like them as much.”

“I refuse to forsake salt, ever,” Klavier says. “Those are regular. How is Fräulein Changeling doing, anyway?”

As always tends to happen, he asks the question of Apollo once Apollo has a mouthful of muffin. “She’s pretty good,” he says finally, after a perilous second where he thought he might choke to death. “She’s got an apprenticeship, kind of, I guess, with a friend of Mr Wright’s who’s a children’s book author-illustrator. Since November or December, I forget. She’s been talking lately about wanting to sell her house to leave all the bad associations in the past.” Phoenix promised her he would help her with that, even though he isn’t that kind of lawyer. Or any lawyer, right now. 

“Ach, I understand that feeling quite well,” Klavier says. Apollo takes another bite of muffin. Klavier watches Vongole chew on a rock again. “This ‘friend’,” he adds. “Do they know what she is?”

“Oh, yeah. He knows a lot about all of that. Mr Wright said he accidentally became a witch once.”

“He accidentally…?” Klavier is rarely struck speechless. His mouth opens and closest several times. “Of course that is possible, but…” He clicks his tongue several times. “That is not a thing that someone just easily comes away from. Your boss knows the strangest people.”

“No kidding.” And it wouldn’t be any less weird if Kristoph had never been, would he? Trucy might not be around, but Larry - Mia - Iris - they come from before. The biggest difference in the office besides Trucy would be - would be. “Do you know if I still work for Mr Wright?”

He wouldn’t need a badge. He wouldn’t need a bloody ace. Apollo never would have never worked for Gavin Law Office. He surely would have admired Phoenix just as much, maybe even more if he had seven extra years of stellar and befuddling cases, and working at Wright and Co. would be an option - provided Phoenix would let him. And would Phoenix, not needing someone with a badge to make his plans work, even bother? 

Klavier shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He opens his journal and pages through until he reaches a dog-eared corner. “I marked some of the cases against him and once I wrote it down blocked it all out. He had a young woman with him in court that time, rather pretty, black hair, dressed something like—” He shrugs. “A monk, I wrote. Whatever that is supposed to mean now.”

That sounds familiar. 

“But it is like what I said about Daryan, ja? That I am looking sideways through a mirror, and he, this other me, he does not know anything I care about. He doesn’t know what he’s passed by, what he’s lost, what he’s missed. I’m afraid all I know is that we never met.”

And if they did, would they care? They would have no Kristoph in common, no shared trauma of betrayal, with ten extra years between them. 

Maybe it’s a different life for Apollo, too. Maybe in the lifetime where Klavier is never taken away and grows up entirely without his brother, Apollo is never sent away and grows up with his. 

“Oh,” is all he can think to say, and then to save himself from looking like he should have something to say, he finishes eating the muffin. They watch two joggers and their dog loop past on the path. The wind rustles some leaves loose from the tree and Apollo tries and fails to catch one as it flutters past his face. The time to breathe is welcome; there has been so little of it in the course of the conversation. Time to grapple with all of it or maybe none, focus on this that they have now. They can’t escape one way through the mirror.

When he glances back at Klavier he feels immediately guilty for the chance to relax. Klavier has folded back into himself, knees to his chest, head resting on his arms, his journal carelessly abandoned, still open, on the ground. “Are you sure there’s nothing that helps?” Apollo asks. Give him a way to fix it. It’s the only comfort he knows how to provide. 

“When I was still considering going into work this morning, I ate a whole bag of pretzels and got nearly an hour’s reprieve.” Through his arms, his voice is a mumble. Apollo tries to picture it: Klavier, some sort of mess in the morning, with a party-size bag of pretzels, shoving them into his mouth by the handful. A dignified image for either a celebrity or prosecutor, it is not. “Unreasonable amounts of salt is my attempt, and that has its own very large issues.” He lifts his head, hair falling into his eyes, to offer Apollo a very weak grin. “Rock stars die young all the time, but how many have high sodium as the cause?”

Apollo doesn’t laugh, can’t even bring himself to try. Klavier surely notices but doesn’t seem to care, doesn’t cease the light, ugly chuckle that followed his words. “Speaking of unreasonable amounts of salt,” Apollo says, because now that Klavier has given him one piece of the case, one fractal of evidence, he’s got a shot at solving it, “have you ever tried anything from Eldoon’s noodle stand?”

“His is the stand from that case?” Klavier buries his head back in his arms, and Apollo nods before realizing that doesn’t work and audibly confirming it. “I have not. Why?”

“It’s the saltiest ramen I’ve ever had in my life,” Apollo says. That still can’t actually fully impress upon him the true understanding of Eldoon’s Noodles. “It’s the saltiest anything I’ve ever had in my life. Mr Wright says nobody’s ever managed to eat more than two bowls of it in a day, so when we went yesterday after court, the new kid, Athena, took it as a challenge.” Of course she did. She takes everything as a challenge. She makes competition where it doesn’t need to be. “She made it a bowl and a half and then spent the rest of the day lying on the couch saying she’s probably dying but if she survives this is her first step to building up immunity and beating the record.” Trucy promised to assist Athena in such an endeavor, and Phoenix had looked over her head at Apollo and rolled his eyes. Death by noodle stand, the next step forward from being shot dead while pulling said noodle stand. 

“That sounds quite promising,” Klavier says. “And like a challenge I should like to attempt. Tell me we don’t have to walk far, though.”

“He’s only a block past the office,” Apollo says. “Sometimes you can hear his harmonica from here.”

Vongole lifts her head, pointing her nose to the sky and swiveling her ears about. After a moment she springs to her feet, a single motion that nonetheless looks jerky and wrong, like a frame has skipped in the middle that should have showed her picking herself up from the ground. Klavier hasn’t moved. “Or I can just bike down there myself. Meet in the middle at the office if we want to sit somewhere that isn’t the dirt.”

Klavier mumbles something that he must also realize is incomprehensible, and he raises his head and repeats, “How much am I gonna owe you?”

Apollo stands, dusting grass and dirt off of his knees. “I can’t in good conscience accept payment for something that you don’t fully understand how actually awful it is,” he says, lifting his bike back away from the tree. “Besides, Mr Eldoon gives a little discount to everyone who works with Mr Wright, anyway.”

Which definitely implies something about their collective tastes.

He doesn’t think he’s ever gotten Eldoon’s two days in a row and even telling himself that these are extenuating circumstances, he doesn’t like the precedent it sets. His standards have never been good but they’re not so much slipping now as they are plummeting down an elevator shaft. Mr Eldoon does not remark on it, to which Apollo is grateful. He knows no one in the office would let him live - the real and alarming but also conceptually hilarious question would be whether Trucy would approve or not of a “date” with Klavier to Eldoon’s of all places. 

She really would not let him live if she ever finds out about it.

Apollo orders his usual and tells Eldoon to give him two more of whichever, because Klavier said he didn’t care as long as it was salty, and Apollo is not about to ask Eldoon to give him his saltiest. At that point that would be manslaughter, at best. He’s paying for it when he gets a text from Klavier, slightly less typo-laden than before, saying that he has decided after all to relocate to the office. And a minute later:

-do you not lock your office ever??

Mia, welcoming him in. Should he tell him about Mia? Is that even something he would want to know, the lurking ghost, privy to their every word? But for the moment he shoves his phone into his pocket and walks his bike and the noodles back up to the office.

“Mess as it is, there’s probably something worth stealing in here,” Klavier says when Apollo enters. He looks uneasy, wary, like he’s been pacing the room before Apollo arrived, and he doesn’t sit down until Apollo sets the noodles down on the coffee table and sinks into one couch. Even then, he lowers himself awkwardly, his eyes swirling between shades of blue as he glances about. “I certainly wouldn’t just leave anything unlocked in this part of town.”

Apollo wants to argue that it’s not bad, all considered; Phoenix says the Kitakis keep it orderly, and the only cursed locale for a square mile around is the run-down hotel across the street from the window behind Apollo’s desk. (And Apollo had asked how worried he should be about that, and Phoenix said not at all, because he and Mia both hated that people staying in some of the hotel rooms could just see straight into the office. Which then gave Apollo reason to wonder exactly who cursed it, along with reason to never walk past the building on the same side of the street as it. Typical Los Angeles sort of thing. Who in the city doesn’t have a place like that?)

What he ends up saying is, “I don’t think we ever have to worry about getting robbed,” and that is a statement weird enough that he knows he is going to have to explain and he regrets this. Klavier raises an eyebrow and accepts the two takeout bowls that Apollo has indicated are his. “Since the office is, uh, haunted.” Apollo waits, grimacing. Klavier looks at him, expression still unchanged. “By Mr Wright’s mentor. I have an office key but I’ve never actually needed to lock or unlock, because she does it. And I don’t think she would just allow anyone to come in.”

“I knew it,” Klavier says. 

“What?”

“I suspected as much,” he amends. “That there is something wrong in here, about here. It’s felt a different kind of wrong every time I’ve been.”

Apollo glances up at the lights. They don’t flicker. He might have expected her to take offense at Klavier’s description, wrong, wrong. Klavier talking about the royalty. Apollo won’t mention all he knows about Mia. “She spent the winter throwing a blanket at me whenever I got cold,” he says. “It’s not really that haunted-haunted.”

“And I haven’t been smited yet,” Klavier mutters. “Still, I would not - I would be careful, is all, ja? You never know what may happen, if you were to fall asleep on the couch here and wake up to have your body puppeteered by a fae spirit.”

“Can they do that?” Apollo asks. Klavier shrugs. “Mr Wright says he got amnesia from sleeping on one of the defendant lobby couches but I think he left out a few pieces of that story.”

“Knowing him, that was actually all there was to it.”

Apollo cannot find room to object. Instead, he waits for that smug look to disappear from Klavier’s face with his first bite of noodles. No one adequately braces themselves for it - Trucy laughed at Apollo, Apollo at Clay and Ema, and Apollo and Phoenix at Athena, though they didn’t have long to laugh before they were horrified by the way she, still spluttering from the first mouthful, immediately went in for more without finishing chewing. Prodigy in some regard, worryingly dense in others. 

But Apollo watches and Klavier’s expression doesn’t change; he doesn’t flinch. His eye twitches. Is this a glamour that he’s almost holding together? Apollo turns his attention to his own meal, some ever-growing part of him already filled with regret, and Klavier laughs suddenly, brightly, a welcome change from the bitter amusement that threaded through their conversation. “This is how I used to make ramen at Themis,” he says, his grin wistful but sharpening. “Back when I was first discovering salt.”

“You didn’t have salt before them at home?” There were several years between the faery ring and Themis, several that should be accounted for in here.

“Our parents wanted to avoid it as much as possible for Kris and stopped me from dumping the excess I truly wanted on my plate, and then—” Klaver stops to take another bite and to try and rein in his grin. He doesn’t succeed, and still with his face torn between reminisce and wickedness, he continues, “And then we drove our parents to the point that they didn’t keep any in the house for safety’s sake.”

And still grinning he waits for Apollo to ask him what the hell that means. Which Apollo does, but only after half a minute’s pause where the only sound is the slurping of noodles and broth. “What did you do?” 

“It was Kris’ idea, to start. All very thorough of him, of course, as he is.” There, again, sadness that glamour can’t hide or maybe doesn’t try to. “He needed to know what it was to be a changeling, to be fae - what it meant for him in regards to iron and salt and all the superstitions he heard and scoffed at.”

“He hadn’t ever noticed something that he thought was, like, metal allergies, or food, or something?” Apollo twists the ring on his hand and thinks of Clay’s horseshoe amulet. 

(It’s easy to know, with a friend like Clay: the first time Apollo went over to play at his house, Clay had lightly knocked him in the forehead with first it and then a crucifix, just to be sure, because he’d been up late sneaking movies on TV and had seen some version of Dracula and ended up extra paranoid for a few months. They’re still not actually sure where the crucifix came from, because no one in any part of Clay’s family is Catholic.)

“Or is that something that runs on belief, too?” Apollo asks. “That since he didn’t know he wasn’t human, he had no reason to think that it would harm him, so it didn’t?”

“A self-fulfilling weakness,” Klavier says. “I suppose that is possible, though pure enough iron is not precisely common unless you are seeking it out, and salt’s effects not enough to assume…” He rubs one thumb over the ring on the other. “Kris never mentioned anything he did or didn’t notice before he knew, but after, we had it in mind to conduct experiments. After all, he was fae but raised human, and I was human raised with the fae, and we wondered how each of us might be affected. 

“I gathered up everything that I thought could be iron, not that I in my life had ever known iron. They do not exactly have it and salt on hand in the Twilight Realm. Some pots and frying pans, some scrap metal and nails from the shed, there was at least one ordinary rock in there and Kris took it like ‘you know nothing about this is any kind of metal?’” 

Apollo is still surprised when he changes his voice, drops the accent, to imitate Kristoph, and if Klavier’s surprise in return is an indication, he hadn’t even realized this time that he was doing it. They both look away from each other, concentrate too long on their ramen. “And somehow it all went so much worse than you would expect,” Klavier says quietly. “We didn’t get to the salt step before Kris had a broken toe because I dropped the frying pan, and I had to go to the hospital for a tetanus shot because I had a rusty nail through my foot.”

Taking in Apollo’s horror, Klavier adds quickly, “Oh, that was not something Kris did, no, no. I had been poking him with the non-pointy ends of each of the collection of nails I had scrounged up, I dropped a few, I did not find them all, and I did not believe in shoes at the time because I saw no reason for them, and you know how that ends, ja. So our poor suffering parents confiscated all the salt before we found a way to hurt each other with that, too.”

Apollo lets out his breath. He hadn’t wanted to even consider that prospect, but since his method of reassuring himself was thinking that Kristoph, the man whose plans to kill were to lay poison and curses, wouldn’t ever stoop to physical violence unless he was completely out of options - well, at that point, there wasn’t any keeping that thought off his face. “Your poor parents,” he agrees.

(For just a moment he thinks that he and Nahyuta weren’t able to drive Dhurke to something like that, because of how hands-off and otherwise busy he was, but he still had to dive in a river to save them from drowning. And then there was Datz, who provided the opposite of help whenever he was around, forcing Dhurke to, on one occasion Apollo can dredge back up from the pits of attempted forceful repression, retrieve a knife from Nahyuta. Nahyuta had cried when Dhruke took it away, because of course he had, and then Apollo cried because on the worst days they were a stupid feedback loop of emotionality and not knowing what was and wasn’t worth getting hung up on.)

“They did their best and we did not make it easy.” That they are eating while talking means the silences in between feel more natural, but that in itself gives Apollo less warning that Klavier is about to drop something heavy on his head again. “I’m grateful, in some way, that they never had to see how it turned out. All their work to stop us beating the hell out of each other.” He grimaces. “Did I tell you that the scar on Kris’ hand was one I gave to him?”

“You did.” The last time they were here together in this office. 

“It was after our parents died,” Klavier says, watching the noodles slide from his chopsticks with no apparent concern and stabs them back into the bowl. “Kris was twenty-four, I believe - he’d moved into an apartment here by then, and I was dorming at Themis. I had just bought one of these” - he spreads his fingers out, examining the rings he wears - “or maybe that one” - he points at Apollo’s hand - “who knows, and we were arguing about something stupid. It could have been about the ring, why I so felt the need to keep iron literally on hand when he was… I suppose he felt slighted, or like I did not trust him. He put a finger in my face and I smacked his hand away and the iron left a burn that turned into a scar.” Klavier picks up his chopsticks. “And we never talked about it again, because why would we?”

“I can understand that impulse,” Apollo says. “Why bother having the awkward conversations if you can just repress everything?”

From personal experience. Why try explaining his childhood when he can just never bring it up? What’s it matter anymore?  

Klavier snorts. “You know, Herr Forehead, I’m not sure I like how easily you’ve summarized my methods.”

And Apollo likes that they’re focused enough on Klavier for him not to guess that Apollo is speaking for himself, too. “Except I’ve figured you out because of all these awkward conversations we keep having.”

“My tried-and-true coping mechanism failed me at the worst time,” Klavier says through a mouthful of ramen. Hilarious, really, to look at this man and remember what a dazzling celebrity he can pretend to be. “But salt has not yet let me down.”

“Did you really make ramen like this?” Apollo sets his down. Halfway through and he doesn’t think he’s going to get any further. The memory of yesterday’s salt still lingers. This is not a sustainable diet. 

“I made everything like this,” Klavier says, grinning. “If I can think of a food I did not put salt on, I will tell you.”

“No, I don’t think I want to know, because that exception is going to prove the rule, and the rule is that you are terrible.”

“Nein, you are not running from this. This is the least distressing can of worms we have opened all evening and we are going to lie in it.”

“That’s not the saying,” Apollo says. “Do you mean, like, you put salt on - on—” What’s the worst thing he can think of? “Like, cookies?”

“That’s amateur hour, really now. I poured salt in my coffee.” 

“No!” He isn’t lying, and Apollo is gagging already on the mere thought of salted coffee. “What is wrong with you?”

“You know how those little sugar packets” - he holds up his forefingers about an inch and a half apart - “that are sitting around for coffee? And there are little salt packets, similar size, abouts, often near them? Why shouldn’t they be used for the same thing?”

“No,” Apollo repeats. “No, you can’t do this to me.”

With the biggest shit-eating Apollo has seen, Klavier continues, “Our parents had never allowed me to drink coffee! How was I to know what to do with it? I did what seemed reasonable!”

“And you didn’t think, I don’t know, ‘this tastes horrible’!”

“It was dining hall coffee at a pretentious boarding high school! It was always going to taste horrible!” Klavier seems more alive than he has all day, and Apollo finally feels like he’s more than simply a pair of ears, even if another pair of ears is what Klavier needs. They are lawyers through and through, and a good argument does wonders. Or a bad argument, an inconsequential argument, something with as much messy laughter as yelling, for the sake of nothing but not wanting to relent. “I poured extra salt on bags of pretzels! It was about the salt, and I was perfectly pleased with any kind of salt-delivery vessel. Applesauce, yogurt - extra flavoring to cereal and milk.”

Apollo pantomimes vomiting on the floor. Klavier presses his lips together and thoughtfully ponders the coffee table. “I wonder if I still have any of the salt shakers I stole out of the dining hall,” he says.

This time, Apollo’s choking is not feigned, and he spends several very long seconds coughing and praying that he doesn’t die this way, which would be even stupider than dying from eating too much of Eldoon’s ramen. “So you could - could—” He wheezes in between his words. This is definitely the stupid way he dies. “—Could have a steady supply of sodium straight into your veins at all times?”

“See, you understand,” Klavier says. Apollo coughs again, both a decent way of expressing his disbelief and necessary because he’s still choking on a bit of air. “For everything I kept stashed in my room. Candy bars, pudding cups—”

“I am begging you to stop,” Apollo says. “I am actually begging you. I will grovel if it means I never have to hear you utter something like ‘salt in milk’ ever again.”

He lost this round of pointless arguments, and he knows it, and Klavier, smirking, knows it, and that smirk still leaves Apollo with the impulse to smack it off his face. Insufferable, insufferably pretty, and they both know it. “How else were you to properly empathize with my suffering?” Klavier asks, his tone light enough to make it a joke.

“I think I am suffering in a very different way than you, now.” 

“Perhaps.” Klavier props his chin on his hand, his first bowl of noodles finished, and he either pausing before or reconsidering the wisdom of the second bowl. “There was an actual reason I ate like that, and not just not knowing what to do with salt and relishing the chance,” he adds. “One of the professors at Themis - she was not the head of my course, she had been a judge not a prosecutor, but I took several classes from her anyway because I liked her - told me that it is a very common thing, for humans returned from the fae realm, to have horrific salt cravings. The kind that compels you to try putting it in orange juice.”

“Please.” Apollo puts his face in his hands. “Please.” The actual meaning of Klavier’s words, the implication, sinks in a moment later. “Have enough people even come back from the Twilight Realm for anyone to be able to say something’s common? And how would she even know that?”

Klavier shrugs. “I never asked her. I was too afraid to.” He shakes his head. “These were the secrets that my family barely spoke of even behind closed doors, that my brother and I buried, and here she was speaking so openly of such things because she noticed that I kept pouring salt on every meal. And I think she was human, and that she was talking about it should be an invitation that I am - ‘allowed’, I suppose” - he makes quote marks in the air with his fingers - “to ask her, ja?” He lowers his hands very slowly. “But information like that is a weapon in the Court whether you mean it to be or not, and I was afraid to know anything that would make me armed. So even though she became something like a mentor to me we only ever spoke of academics and the legal system and my music and her art projects. Things of consequence here, not there.”

“She’s an artist?” Apollo asks. What was it, exactly, that Phoenix said about artist types and changelings, the moment before he and Apollo both realized?

“She is. Almost any kind of visual arts she could - sculpting, pottery, painting, papercraft, certainly more I am forgetting.” His mouth twists in a scowl. “I suspected that could mean she is like me, but she did not look like what I now am sure that being stolen away looks like.”

“You did say once that you’d met someone who was like you.” And only one; how rare to escape. No surprise that he was afraid of what his professor could be if she knew. “Who was that?”

Klavier freezes, about to take up the second bowl of ramen. He looks like a witness under pressure on the witness stand, Vera struggling to put a name to the man who forged the diary page, Jinxie terrified of the swath of yokai before her. “Oh,” Apollo says. Asking that question immediately after Klavier had just explained to him why he won’t talk about it. “Right. You don’t talk about those things.”

Klavier loudly slurps his noodles and shakes his head. “Some part of me got left behind when I bargained for my freedom and is still sure someone will kill me for speaking to anything.”

Not a lie; visibly not a lie to anyone who could see the fear lingering in Klavier’s wild-eyed expression. Apollo files that away, not to ask, not unless it’s of dire importance, not to put Klavier on the spot like that when it still eats away at him. (Apollo has a magatama he can borrow; Apollo has Phoenix around sometimes. Phoenix is secretive because he’s an asshole, not because he’s neurotic from trauma. He’s the person to wrangle the truth from.)

But a lump sits heavy in Apollo’s throat, and he can’t swallow it, finds it grows bigger as he tries. Klavier went so long without mentioning the blessing on Apollo; Phoenix goes without mentioning anything. “That other person - that isn’t me, is it?”

He’s shocked he manages to get the words out at all. 

Klavier jerks back and then he sits forward, squinting suspiciously at Apollo. “What? No. You’re not.” Apollo scans him, waiting to see red, waiting for the worst to be confirmed after all, but there’s nothing, nothing that he sees, and he knows Klavier and he knows Klavier isn’t like Blackquill and he hopes there’s no one ese in the damn world who’s like Blackquill. He likes to be able to trust his own eyes. “Why would you even suspect…?”

His bright blue eyes linger on Apollo’s face, where last year he first pointed out the dragon scales marked on Apollo that he’ll never be able to see himself. And he’s answering his own question, silently, and showing Apollo that answer. If the blessing came from someone who stole him; but a child in the Court would never need Truth as a blessing, because they are among fae who can’t lie. And Apollo didn’t even grow up around here, anyway. 

“I dunno,” Apollo lies, forcing his voice to sound casual, to not crack on two words. He can lie to Klavier. He can ask Klavier these things that he can’t ask Phoenix because he can lie to Klavier. “With everything that goes on, you never know. And sometimes I’m not sure anyone would tell me unless I ask specifically, so, just making sure.” He shrugs. He thinks even the that shrug would be illuminated red, if Apollo were watching someone else make these same motions. 

Klavier clearly doesn’t buy that, but after several more long moments, he turns his glare to the portrait of Zak over the piano, and Apollo is able to breathe again. What would it be to live like that, as paranoid and suspicious as the likes of Clay, but with full, nearly firsthand knowledge of the exact consequences of crossing the Fair Folk. To have that compulsion to keep silent, especially in a profession so concerned with the truth. As a person so concerned with the truth as Klavier is. And then, with all that in mind—

“Er,” Apollo says. Klavier’s eyes turn back to him, still close to a glare. “I mean, I get it, what you’ve said, but then you - you told me about what you thought Mr Wright was. Him and Trucy, you told me. That.”

Klavier growls from the back of his throat but he speaks and interrupts Apollo as he’s about to consider apologizing for bringing it up. “I thought I had won, against him. That it’s all battles and backstabbing like in the Court, against him, ja? And I had…” The growl turns to more of a scoff, more disgusted, and he strips his accent away from the next words, layering them instead in bitterness. “I had beaten him in court and exposed him for what he was, a cheat and a liar, and of course that means I have won against him, ja?” 

His voice swings between two people, his and what would have been his in another life, his and the voice of the person who had really hoped to beat Phoenix. “And that I don’t have to be afraid of him” - he snorts, blowing up a few strands of hair on his forehead - “and that because I have won means that what I know is a weapon I may do what I like with. Is a warning I may issue if I so choose. Which I thought, then, the best choice would be to let you in on just enough to send you running, and you shouldn’t have to fear the repercussions of knowing because I’m the one running the show, ja? If this makes any sense.”

“A little.” He thought he was the one in charge, that he could - protect Apollo? Save him? And the way everything fell to shit after, it was Apollo who kept having to help save him. And Trucy’s not the fae-stolen child that Apollo knows - it’s Klavier. 

“At any rate, you’re better off asking your boss,” Klavier says. “Knowing how often I have been wrong.”

“Right now I just want to understand anything about Prosecutor Blackquill,” Apollo says. “And you’re both equally unhelpful.”

“As Herr Samurai may very well intend.” Klavier leans back into the couch. “So what all did happen in your trial against him? Was it a case, ach, typical of your office?” He waves his hand with a flourish in a circle, gesturing to the room around him.

“It was atypically awful,” Apollo says, deciding in that moment to leave out the part about Filch’s lie that went uncontested, and the fact that they’re going to have to go wrestle a yokai or something, because even if none of that had happened, the case still would have been a nightmare. It was a nightmare before Apollo knew that happened. “Have you ever heard of Nine-Tails Vale?”

Klavier winces, hissing his breath in through his teeth. “Nothing good ever starts with that question,” he says.

“Yeah, you know what to expect already. So Trucy has a friend who works up there—”

-

“Apollo,” Clay says, from the couch, where in front of him on the coffee table an empty carton of Chinese food lays. Apollo has not even finished closing the door behind him. “It is nearly eight. Why are you just getting home, without groceries, and if you have a good answer I might not stab you with these chopsticks.” He raises the arm that was hanging off the couch and brandishes the aforementioned improvisational weapons.

“I met up with Prosecutor Gavin after work and we went to Eldoon’s,” Apollo explains.

Clay narrows his eyes. “You can’t go to Eldoon’s on a date with someone. Haven’t I taught you better than this?”

“It wasn’t a date,” Apollo says. “What, you think I asked him out on the anniversary of me getting his brother arrested for murder? Who do you think I am?” 

Someone actually brave enough to ask out Klavier Gavin at all, for starters.

“Well, if it was a date I was going to let you off without being stabbed,” Clay says. “But you’ve unfortunately done this to yourself.”

“Uh huh,” Apollo says, grabbing the chopsticks out of his hand as he passes by the couch. “I’m terrified.”

“You should be! Hey!” Clay drapes himself halfway over the back of the couch. “Don’t walk away! I’m telling you that you need to stop your stupid pining and—”

“I am not - I have never been—”

“I can tell when you’re texting him because you get this look on your face—”

“You guess when I’m texting him because I text three people, besides you.”

“Wait, you have three entire other people besides me?” Clay asks. “I’m impressed. But also I’m right about your stupid face and—”

“Just because he’s pretty and I willingly talk to him doesn’t mean that he’s not insufferable or that I’m in love with him. What are you saying?” Apollo throws the chopsticks back at him. 

He is not and has never been pining, especially not for Klavier, who’s even more of a goddamn mess of issues than Apollo knew yesterday. Pining implies, to him, that if there was the opportunity to be in a relationship with Klavier, he would take it - and the problem with that concept, one of the problems, is reciprocity. Is the fact that Klavier can say that he wants to repress it all, but he’s talking. He’s talking and exposing the roaches to the light and Apollo, won’t, can’t, has repression figured out so much better because Kristoph might be here in a prison nearby and Apollo knew him but Nahyuta is a world away. Apollo could bury him. 

And if - if, if - they were - he and Klavier - if Klavier keeps trying to grapple with the past, keeps asking Apollo’s help, one day he’s going to say something that hits too close, hurts too much. Another something about brothers, about lives that could have been. And he’s going to see it written on Apollo’s face and he might ask Apollo to open up to burn out the dark, to have the awkward conversation.

And that’s the one thing Apollo knows he can’t do, not for anyone, not Clay or Trucy or Klavier, not for the world. 

#this chapter is So Much y'all have fun now #fic: the witches of los angeles #roddy fanfics

[ask-ace-attorney-mpreg]

||Name: Klavier Gavin

Is this your first time using our service? Yes

Do you have a photo or DNA of the preferred “father” of your child? Yes

Write it here: Newspaper clipping

Father ID: Apollo Justice

Will the father be present? No

No. Of Children desired? 1

On a scale of one to ten how long would you prefer your contractions? 4

On a scale of one to ten how long would you prefer your labor? Write several scales if more than one child. 3

Would you like assistance during delivery? no

Would you like to customise your delivery? If so circle what you want to experience.

Pain / pleasure / joy / peace / add your own

Would you like to keep the child after the birth?

Yes||

Please submit your form in our submissions box and we will get to you as soon as well can.||

(Oh boy first submission! Author wanted to be made anonymous but sent me the plot idea via DM)

Klavier missed Apollo terribly after he moved to Khura’in. He knew it would be a long time before the attorney would come home.

He was feeling empty and unsatisfied with life. And alone

He wanted to fill that hole with a child. A child he would raise and love as such. Not someone to make perfect or live his dreams through.

He had heard about the facility and knew that the option was there. But only now has he decided that this is the time.

He did his research on the most ideal natural birth, picked out a day when he’d be free and scheduled everything else around it.

Then he entered the facility.

He submitted the form and the photo graph to be processed and was escorted to the nurses to a small white room with nothing but a plate with a tablet on it and a T-shirt that said “loading”

“When you’re ready just put on the shirt and take the pill, we’ll be with you when you’re at 100%”

Klavier nodded as the nurse left and did as he was told. a few moments after taking the pill he felt a bunch of sensations most of them an odd mix of pain and pleasure.

He eased himself into sitting as the sensations wracked through his body, managing to look down to see his belly expanding along with the loading bar on his shirt.

15%, 27%, 36%

Klavier cradled his dome and admired it as it grew, loving every sensation that shot through his body.

77%, 86%, 92%

“Come on libeling... just a little more...” klavier urged, panting heavily

98%... 99%... ding!

A light went off and Klavier let out a sigh as the sensations ebbed away.

A pair of nurses came in and helped him up. Removing the loading shirt so it could be left for the next customer and giving him an oversized shirt slightly better looking than a hospital gown. it looked like a dress on the now heavily pregnant prosecutor.

They then removed his pants and undies and stashed them with his old shirt and jacket “you won’t need these, you can collect them when you leave.”

Klavier felt a bit naked with out them but the shirt covered everything so he just nodded.

The nurses escort him to a zone known as the delivery wing, klavier can’t help but look in the windows of the occupied wards, seeing many people, 1 or 2 he thought he recognized, in various stages of labor and birth.

He was entered into an empty ward that contained everything he needed. The nurses read his files and nodded “we’ll be with you when the baby is born but if any thing goes wrong, just press the emergency button located on your wristband” the nurse explained and clipped it onto his wrist

Klavier nodded and waddled around the room a bit. Still not used to walking with such a big belly.

In mere moments he felt the contractions and a number flash on his wrist. That’s right he asked for four hours of contractions.

He grunts at first but the pain ebs away. He noticed the tub at the back of the room. warm water eased the pain of contractions so it would be best to go there.

He removed the shirt and eased into the bath, admiring his contractions and watching as his belly moved.

“We’re going to have a beautiful baby, herr forehead....” he sighed “I wish you could meet him”

The warm water eased the pain, but not by a lot by the time contractions ended, klavier was covered in tears and sweat, his drill now a mess of mangled wavy hair every where.

After his water broke the tub drained its self to be rid of the fluids. Klavier was about to ease himself out when the tub refilled itself with warm clean water.

Klavier never planned on a water birth but the warm water soothed him and he could feel his child press at his birth canal. Slowly being pushed through

“Shisa!” He cursed at the pain.

He knew it. It was time to push.

Klavier gritted his teeth and pressed his legs against the wall of the tub and started to bare down

“Nnnngh ooooooh!” He felt time slow to a crawl as he tried to push the baby through the birth canal.

By the gods it hurt!

Klavier was ready to give up before he suddenly heard his voice

“You can do it...”

Klavier looked up to see Apollo smiling assuringly at him, he couldn’t believe it.

“Herr Forehead!?”

“You can do it Klavier! Keep going!”

Klavier nodded and went back to pushing, moaning and shouting as he felt himself open up wider and feeling the child force it’s way out.

“Ah... oh... a-apollo... the head...” Klavier gasped

Apollo smiled “You’re doing great Klavier! Just a little more!”

“Ooooh! Ooooof!!!” Klavier wailed before planting heavily, building up strength until with one last pained cry the child was out.

He splashed around as he reached for the child and pulled them to his chest. “Apollo look! We have a son! And he looks so much li... Apollo?”

The prosecutor looked around and noticed he was the only one in the room. Apollo was merely his mind and heart encouraging him.

Klavier looked to the newborn and smiled. A new life meant a new beginning, and new possibilities for the prosecutor.

#mpreg #ace attorney #ace attorney mpreg #klavier gavin #apollo justice #tw: graphic birth #tw birth #water birth

[synnefo-nefeli]

Hello!! Just wanted to say I just re read Heard Your Heart Beating for like... The fifth time, probably?? And now that I know ur tumblr, I just wanted to say. Its probably one of my fav Klapollo fics. I LOVE your characterization in it. Especially Apollo's, in which he gets flustered and provoked quite easily but he can also get super sassy and bitchy lmao. And I love his and Klavier's friendship? It makes me so happy to see fics where their pre-relationship is explored. I love seeing romantic interactions but it's also SUPER nice to see them just being... Platonic and hanging out together and supporting each other and being friends!! I mean relationships are founded upon friendships so it's really cute to read about them before they get all romantic too. I loved reading about their Valentine's Day hangout at Apollo's house. It's just... So chill. Even though you touched on the big Kristoph issue, it is also lighthearted at times. It was really nice to see Kristoph being addressed but it not being the whole point of their 'date'. And their banter...... Omg.... Especially Klavier's highkey flirting LMAOOO ITS SO FUNNY TO READDD!!! And Trucy omg.... I love the inclusion of her because of course she needs to be included. Love her. Anyways thank you so much for writing it!!! I don't want to, like, unknowingly pressure you into continuing or anything though!!! I just wanted to share my thoughts! I know how hard it can get continuing a fic when you have real life obligations lol. Anyways I will be suppperr happy if you do but even if you don't! I am still so glad you wrote the chapters so far. PHEW THATS IT. HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY

Anon, I am just dead from this comment.  When I read this, I wanted to cry because I am just so touched and humbled.

“Heard Your Heart Beating” has such a special place in my heart and I am sorry that it takes me 5ever to write in general that the updates to it are slow. Never did I think that a story I came up with nearly seven years ago (lsdkfmslkfdm) would take me this long to write but also I like taking my time with it, as I’ve never ever written a slow-burn fic.

I love Klapollo so much, and I just want to do them justice (haha), because there is so much there between them as characters.  They’re two characters bound by tragic events but, they’re both forthright individuals who have a lot of external factors (good and bad) impacting their relationship.

AA5 was such a great game and full of emotion, but there was a lot to read in between the lines-  Apollo had suffered a personal tragedy in losing Clay, and his introduction as an attorney had been fraught with betrayal and a lot of fighting against the odds, then he nearly has to accuse Athena for Clay’s murder...and it was just a lot for him.  

As for Klavier, the year prior had left him with the truth that he’d been used and betrayed by his brother and his best friend...and then as he’s picking the pieces of his life together, transitioning from the rocker life that was his way of life/protection from Kristoph for 7 years, his mentor is murdered.  Klavier is a genius prosecutor, he most likely advanced early through Themis, changed his career path, graduated, got his badge, and then his debut is just a mess.  Apollo brought him back to the courts but Klavier, it seemed at least to me in DD, was still trying to figure out where he fit in.  

Constance Court’s impact on Klavier is a big part of Heard Your Heart Beating and will be explored in later chapters.

But yeah I liked the idea of these two coming together organically- they’re both highly empathetic people, so there is common ground there.  Klavier knows that Apollo has seen the Kristoph that Klavier once knew and admired. It’s easy to paint Kristoph as a monster, but when you look at how Apollo and Klavier speak of him (before the murders obvs) you can tell that all they both wanted was to make Kristoph proud.  And I also wanted to explore those human moments with Kristoph too.  Yes, he’s an asshole- but he was someone that Apollo and Klavier looked up to.  So that betrayal and grief is something they can both share, and while Daryan is still alive, Klavier’s friendship with him died metaphorically. But the hurt and pain of not having that friendship, not having that person you love platonically in your life for the rest of your life- is a death unto itself not unlike Apollo’s pain and grief over losing Clay. 

They strike me as two people who are just looking for safety, and they both recognize (Klavier more quickly than Apollo, although I feel it’s subconscious on Apollo’s part) that they can have that safety with each other.   This theme is reflected in the title.  It’s from the song “Cosmic Love” by Florence + The Machine.

“Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too So I stayed in the darkness with you “

When I heard this song while writing the opening drafts of this story, I felt that this song summed up Apollo and Klavier in this story-  they’re both in personal darkness that no one else seems to understand, but when they recognize that the other is in that same darkness- they reach out, even if it means remaining in that grief and sadness, there is comfort in knowing that you’re understood and not alone.

Oof that was a tangent hahaha.

The Valentine’s Day scene was one of my favorite scenes to write. It comes from such a personal moment between the comfort I’ve found with my own friends during a time where I was trying to get my footing in life.  Also, not to side note again, but this fic is actually pretty personal- I’ve never really put my own personal experiences or feelings into a story to the extent that I have in this fic. The opening chapter was written during a time when I thought I was losing my best friend- I had commiserated a lot with Apollo while playing DD- I cried while writing it and I still cry when I read it because it is so intrinsically tied to that time of grief and a feeling that the universe was taking my friend away from me.

So the Valentine’s Day scene was meant to be a scene of comfort and banter- two friends, just hanging out together rather than being alone on “Singles Awareness Day”.  I love that everyone had an expectation of where I was going with that scene.  Especially when alcohol was introduced and then it ended up with them being in Apollo’s bed XD.  It amuses me that their first time ever sharing a bed together would be under the most platonic of circumstances XD.

Anyway, thank you so much anon for the lovely comment- it definitely made my day and made me look over my drafts for this story :)  Maybe an update will come soon!

Have a good day!

#Klapollo #apollo justice #klavier gavin #Heard Your Heart Beating #fic asks #writing