#can you imagine how easy that would be for kristoph to turn against him? as a means of control? i just...... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ronsenburg · 3 years

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i saw this post and IMMEDIATELY started writing an essay, so I moved it here so as not to clutter up someone else’s post...........

it absolutely blows my mind that, today in 2021, i honestly can’t remember what’s canon from the turnabout serenade case, what i read in a fanficition, and what is my own personal HC. like, it’s been more than a decade since i played the case for the first time and it’s probably been 5ish years since the last time i played AJ (definitely forgot to play it again before writing youngblood which is.... contributing to this) so i really don’t know if what goes on in my head is accurate, but, over the years, i’ve come up with a Lot of Thoughts, which i’ll discuss below.

tldr; it’s all about power (the desire for, the subversion of, the need to maintain), but if you’d like the specifics, here you go:

daryan: i think the explanation that he did it for “the money” is a line. please don’t mistake me, daryan is an asshole and a murderer, im not discounting that, but in court ive always thought that he was playing the part that everyone- especially klavier- is expecting of him. he’s the bad guy. might as well make it a finale for the books.

i’ve always seen daryan and klavier as opposite sides of the same coin when it comes to family and career aspirations. where i imagine klavier came from a well off and well loved family before his parents died, i see daryan from a working class, difficult upbringing. i read a few papers on the psychology of children/parenting style of police officers and decided early on that daryan’s dad was also a cop. his mother is either dead or (more likely) left them early on. dad coped by working a little too hard, gambling/drinking a little too much, and was overall not around a lot and kind of an authoritarian/controller when he was. it left daryan with a lot of anger he had to cope with, about what it means to be a cop, the idea of a “just cause” and the ends justifying the means, and an issue with authority (which is laughable, considering what a bully he turned out to be. sometimes we emulate our parents unintentionally; it’s the only thing we have to model our behavior on). so daryan started off at a disadvantage. klavier started off loved and supported and surrounded by expensive belongings, but the death of his parents and the subsequent emotional and financial abuse by his newly appointed guardian/brother left him in a similar place by the time he and daryan met. i think it was probably the foundation for their bond, and i think it’s why klavier decided to become a prosecutor instead of following in his brother’s footsteps and why daryan ultimately decided to enter law enforcement as well. i think they had a lot of optimistic, idealistic thoughts on being better than the people that hurt them, on utilizing the law to make the world a better place. i don’t think klavier ever conceived that kristoph could have wanted him in the prosecutors office as another pawn to play, and i don’t think he realized how fluid daryan’s morality could be.

shipping alert—you guys know me, im crazy for the idea of a “best friends to on again off again lovers to tenuous coworkers to bitterly disappointed in but still harboring feelings for the other person despite being on opposite sides” dynamic between daryan and klavier. i honestly can’t separate the ship from the case and im sorry about it. if you read youngblood you know that i think daryan started to resent klavier pretty early on, when they were still together, when the band was still successful, because klavier was able to move forward and work through the issues of his past while daryan was seemingly stuck. yes, daryan had made detective and the gavinners were a hit, he’d risen above his initial social standing and thrown off the control his father, he had money and fame and a future. but everything he had was because of klavier. daryan needed klavier, emotionally, morally, financially. but even when klavier was professing his love for daryan, both privately and in the form of chart topping songs, he didn’t need daryan. it was obvious (and of course, healthy, but how do children of abuse learn what a healthy relationship looks like without help? especially when the only relationships you’ve ever had are codependent and, in some ways, just as toxic?) and so things spiraled. daryan got possessive and angry again and klavier got distant and they broke up and got back together and broke up and didn’t get back together but kept ending up back in each other’s arms for comfort and for support and because how the hell do you move on when the person you’ve been in love with since you were 15 is sitting next to you on a tour bus and is also your partner in a homicide case and singing songs he wrote about you on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans?

okay, shipping glasses off, sorry. but no matter how you look at their relationship, daryan’s promotion out of homicide was probably the most distance they’d had from each other in years, as it removed a large chunk of the daily “working relationship” aspect. and without klavier there to act as a moral compass, it was likely easier to slip back into his earlier thoughts about what constitutes justice and his intense hatred of being pushed around by someone who has more power than you. so enter the chief justice with a son who is sick, dying even, but can’t get the medicine he needs because there’s a government out there telling them no. The reasons are arbitrary: the medicine could be used as a poison and can’t be found anywhere else so it might come back to bite the country in the ass if it’s misused by criminals. newsflash: pretty much all medicine is poisonous if it isn’t used correctly, should we stop using penicillin entirely because some people might be allergic to it? they’ve essentially condemned a whole bunch of people to death because they’re worried about their reputation. and that doesn’t sit well with daryan, who is caught up remembering the bullshit justifications his dad would spout when he knocked him around, that kristoph would give when withholding every single penny of money klavier was entitled to until he agreed to do what kristoph wanted. it isn’t right, it isn’t fair and unfair laws shouldn’t have to be upheld, especially when they’re the unfair laws of a country you most definitely did not swear to uphold and protect. it was never about money, though daryan agrees to take it when the chief offers it to him, more for his comfort level than for daryan’s need or desire. it’s about justice and putting a bully in it’s place with a (seemingly) victimless crime that should be so easy given his role in the international division of criminal affairs and klavier’s sudden hard on for the country of borginia. seriously, how could this have been any more straightforward? daryan is capable of murder, though. all cops are. and if it came down to a “them or me” shootout, of course he’d pull the trigger.

machi: when you come from nothing, the desire to have something of your own is overwhelming. the idea that machi is famous and financially set is disingenuous; he is not individually famous, he is Lamiroir’s “blind” pianist. yes, she views him as a son and seems to care deeply for him, but his main purpose in her life is to perpetuate a lie. machi has been abandoned before; what will happen to him if lamiroir suddenly remembers who she was in the past? what if she has a family and a true son of her own and has no use for him? what if their secret is found out and the public rejects him for his role in it? he is 14. what does he know about being provided for? about contracts and trust funds and royalties? he ended up in an orphanage originally because he was unwanted, and that led to a life of poverty and hardship. abandonment issues are rooted in fear and are rarely logical. i find it far easier to believe that machi did it for the money, but more for the power money might have given him towards independence in an unfeeling and capitalist world.

kristoph: i won’t get into this, because this is supposed to be about daryan and machi and the guitar’s serenade, and kristoph is not really involved in that at all. but i think everything that kristoph has ever done in the game, good or bad, is rooted in a pathological need to constantly be in control. i think that kristoph and klavier both have very intense personalities that they have sought to control over the course of their lives for the sake of their careers. kristoph believes that to be a good lawyer, you need to play your cards close to your chest, that to show your hand is to expose a weakness that the enemy can exploit, that to show no weaknesses at all places you in a position of power. klavier believes that to show his true self, to display his weaknesses and fears to the public, would result only in their rejection. as such, they both wear masks of their own creation even under the most intense of pressures: kristoph as pleasant and calm, klavier as magnetic and dynamic. note the primary difference in their rational? klavier wants to be wanted, while kristoph wants power. and power corrupts, after all. once you have it, what could be more overwhelming than the idea that you might lose it all? it can drive even the most rational people to commit acts of passionate irrationality in the name of holding on to that power. and kristoph has so many pieces involved in his strategy to maintain.

#i love daryan crescend i'm so sorry #i cut this to spare you all the pain of my rambling and also my inability to use caps and proper punctuation #gonna tag this as klavdar so you can avoid it just in case it bothers you #i think it's hilarious that this is JUST AS MUCH ABOUT KLAVIER as it is about any of these other people #shut up krissy #i have a lot of feelings about this case okay #man i'm still obsessed with lamiroir and machi's portrayal in 'dirty sympathy'#excellent stuff i'm going to go read that again #klavdar #i don't think i ever managed to squeeze in my hc about the specifics of kristophs abuse towards klavier into any fics #specifically the financial aspects of it #but its absolutely an effective weapon #klavier's money from his parents would absolutely be in a trust and controlled by kristoph until he was legally able to access it #he would have to ask kristoph for EVERYTHING #can you imagine how easy that would be for kristoph to turn against him? as a means of control? i just......#broke: kristoph physically abused klavier when he was a kid #woke: kristoph didn't have to abuse klavier when he could manipulate him so completely with money and mind games #all the while making klavier believe that he was truly looking out for him and any hurt klavier experienced was selfish and misguided #and klavier's fault #:|

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

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Witches, Chapter 5: investigations will be the death of Apollo one day and he’s not even gonna be surprised.

Either that or they’re gonna kill me, the author, first.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

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“What the hell was that?” Apollo asks.

Or that’s what he means to ask, but judging from the quick glance he takes at Phoenix’s face, it came out even more strangled than Apollo thought, the frantic question wedged between his attempts to breathe, to push the pain out from behind his eyes and from the front of his skull. The air outside the courthouse has a chill to it, for once more refreshing than uncomfortable, and Apollo sinks against the railing. It’s the first time in hours he has been free of Blackquill’s haze, but the clarity of his vision is only starting to make him more anxious about how Blackquill did that, what it means, what else can he do, what is he.

He slowly lifts his head and hears his neck crack - god, he’s exhausted. Athena looks worried. Phoenix - also looks worried, a fashion as unfamiliar on him as that suit. “Apollo, what happened?” he asks.

Like you could’ve done better with what I had to work with! he thinks, mustering a more tactful way to explain why the case went so wrong, though Phoenix in the gallery should know - and he takes in Phoenix’s expression again, reads the nervous hunch of his shoulders, replays the tone of his voice when he asked the question. That wasn’t an accusation. And for all Phoenix tossed him out to sink or swim, he’s never berated him for the way a case went. Apollo is responding to someone else, and he isn’t quite sure who.

(Kristoph, perhaps? He had an edge, sometimes, passive-aggressive, that Apollo just thought was part of his perfectionism, that Apollo just thought was “normal, until it wasn’t,” which is the way that Klavier phrased it once, in the only text that ever came anywhere close to addressing Kristoph, which Apollo never had the chance to respond to because Klavier followed it immediately by musing on a new limited-edition Snackoo flavor and whether if he gifted a bag to Ema, would she throw the contents of it at his head still?)

“I couldn’t see right.” Apollo presses his fingers against his eye and blinks it several times, still expecting the world to spin out again, still afraid that something broke permanently. “Blackquill did something and I couldn’t - I couldn’t tell if anyone was lying because it looked like everything was - the entire courtroom—”

Phoenix scowls, but his eyes roam about like he’s either thinking deeply or searching for something to scowl at, something to be angry at. “It was something similar for me,” he says. “I can’t tell what he is because—” He waves a hand across his own eyes. “Everything just went warped.”

“It felt like looking through a kaleidoscope,” Apollo says. “Psychedelic.”

“I was gonna compare it to the time I had pneumonia and a concussion and was seeing double,” Phoenix says. “But my Sight is something different than yours and Trucy’s, anyway.”

“You had pneumonia and a concussion at the same time?” Athena asks.

“Fell off a bridge,” Phoenix says. “But Mia wouldn’t let me die that easily. I’d been using the Sight for twelve hours straight before so everything was starting to look like photo-negatives anyway, so the vision issues might not even have been the concussion after.” Leaving them to chew through that, he takes a few steps down toward the sidewalk and stops, tipping his head back to the sky and running a hand through his hair. It spikes up the wrong way like it does after wearing his beanie for too long. “The point is, Blackquill, and he’s been dealt the better hand than us this round.”

“He broke his shackles,” Apollo says. He has a hawk that holds onto evidence and he cast invisible razors on gusts of wind across the courtroom at Apollo. Blackquill’s been dealt the advantage for this entire game, not the round. How are they supposed to counter him if the iron on Apollo’s hand isn’t helping? “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” he asks. “This - this sight thing.”

“No,” Phoenix replies, without facing them again, his head turned to the side lot watching some commotion there - probably trying to get Mayor Tenma and Prosecutor Blackquill both back to their prison cells. “But there’s a lot I don’t know, and a lot of people I haven’t met before. Magic’s pretty unique, person to person.”

Athena folds her arms tightly across her chest; Widget’s face turns a despairing purple. “The fae can’t lie, right?” she asks.

Now there’s a nonsequitur for this part of the conversation. “No, they can’t,” Phoenix says. “But they’re very tricky and twisty with words. Like lawyers, actually.” He chuckles. Apollo wonders if he got that from Kristoph or came to it himself. It isn’t an untrue statement, coming from anyone. “Why?”

Athena shrugs. “Well, we’re trying to figure out if Prosecutor Blackquill is human or fae, right? And if you can’t See we’ve got to logic it out some other way.”

“And you think he lied about something?” Apollo asks.

She goes quiet, her eyes falling toward her boots. Phoenix faces them again, still unusually serious. “I mean,” Athena says at last, “look at the way he dealt with the whole Tenma Taro thing. First he’s claiming monsters aren’t real, then he’s saying it doesn’t matter, then he’s willing to agree that yeah, the mayor is possessed, just to get the conviction!” Her anger brings the life back to her voice and color to her face. She clenches her fists and Apollo imagines her trying to pick a physical fight to sort out the case, throw Blackquill the same way she did the officer yesterday. “He can’t believe every stance he took!”

“Of course he can’t,” Phoenix says. “But it all depends on phrasing, whether it’s lies - and I didn’t pay close enough attention to that because—” He rubs his temples. “The most important mystery for us to be solving is our client’s locked-room murder case, after all. We’ll have time to sort out the Blackquill problem later.”

Athena sighs.

“I wanted to ask you about Mr Filch, too,” Apollo says. “If you could tell what he was, but if—”

“Yeah.” Phoenix cuts him off - not rudely, but with the same kind of exhausted resignation that Apollo feels. “I couldn’t figure out anyone in that courtroom. Filch could be anything or nothing.”

“And Mayor Tenma?” Apollo asks. “We don’t know if he’s really possessed, either?”

Phoenix motions to them to start walking. Athena takes a few seconds to force her feet to move from the stairs and bound down after them. She left her rental car at the office and walked to the courthouse from there because apparently she likes running, she said, which is the weirdest thing she’s said, including anything about her sense of hearing. “I seriously, seriously doubt he’s possessed,” Phoenix says, shrugging out of his suit jacket and starting to roll up the sleeves of his shirt, like he can no longer maintain the level of formality that he was attempting. (Not that Apollo can judge, because he hasn’t worn a suit jacket in two years.)

“How come?” Apollo asks.

“Because nothing about it makes any goddamn logical sense,” Phoenix says. “Break it down, from the start. Set aside the fact that getting possessed isn’t actually easy” - Apollo decides to take that as a reassurance and not inquire further into how Phoenix knows about that - “let’s think, what was Mayor Tenma Taro’s story again?”

“That the mayor opened the Forbidden Chamber, Tenma Taro possessed his body, and then after Jinxie left, he—” Athena skips along the sidewalk to go from Apollo’s side to Phoenix’s. “He - turned fully into bird-yokai form, flew out the window, and then went back before Apollo saw the scene?” Her next footsteps hit the ground hard. “That’s ridiculous! And Prosecutor Blackquill went with it!”

Apollo turns the scenario over in his head, pulls back the mayor’s exact words that Athena has summarized, and imagines every step of the story, start to finish. “Why would he go back?” he asks. “If I were a demon who just got free of my prison, I would just go.”

Phoenix snaps his fingers together over his shoulder. “Point one!” he says. “Just return to rest near your prison cell, makes perfect sense.” The venomous sarcasm dripping from his voice is enough that Apollo’s eyes don’t even register it as a lie - or maybe he’s still scrambled from Blackquill. “Not to mention, it would make more sense to get far away from the murder. If your host body gets arrested for murder, that’s havoc you can’t go around wreaking. That’s point one-point-five.”

Apollo nods, even though Phoenix isn’t looking at him. His phrasing is still implying that there’s more he objects to, and Apollo considers what else he could reasonably object to. Which, he could object to everything, which seems to be what Athena is doing, but that’s not going to get them any closer to the truth or a Not Guilty.

(And-or. And. The truth and a Not Guilty. The Not-Guilty because of the truth.)

“I’m not sure I’d want to announce myself like that,” Apollo says. “Without some means of flying out of the courtroom or whatever. This ‘confession’ just makes Mayor Tenma look more suspicious, when you’d think a yokai would care more about self-preservation.”

“Point two!”

“Look at the timing of it,” Athena says. “It’s obvious that he was doing all that to protect Jinxie from suspicion - it should have been obvious to Blackquill, too!”

“It was,” Apollo says. “That’s exactly what he was trying to get from the mayor, and he got it.”

“Ugh!” Athena cries, throwing her hands in the air and nearly knocking into Phoenix’s face. “That’s such a - a - a douche move! Taking advantage of a man’s love for his daughter to get him to confess to a crime he didn’t commit! Just to get an immediate conviction!”

“I’m sure Mayor Tenma thinks what he’s doing is for the best for Jinxie,” Phoenix says, much quieter than he has been, quiet enough that Apollo has to squeeze in between him and Athena to hear what he next has to say over the sound of the traffic. “Unfortunately, what would really be best for her would be for him to trust his lawyers and not try to handle the situation himself, because his handling is going to get him put away forever, and Jinxie left alone, and among other things I do not have the time right now to adopt another kid.”

Athena laughs, a little awkwardly, and when Phoenix doesn’t she shoots Apollo a wide-eyed look that asks if Phoenix is joking. He shrugs. Sometimes it’s better not asking.

“So,” Apollo says, “all in all, you’re pretty sure that Mayor Tenma isn’t possessed?” Phoenix nods. “But if there’s a little chance that he is actually possessed…”

“I suppose I’ll go research exorcisms, then,” Phoenix says lightly. His nonchalance is worrying. His concern would also be worrying. Apollo doesn’t know when not to worry. “Or swing by the detention center with you to see him and get confirmation one way or another.”

“They’re probably interrogating him again, the way they whisked him out of the courtroom,” Apollo says. “I was thinking we might go back to the manor and check on my air duct theory.”

“Makes sense,” Phoenix says. “I might head over to the detention center anyway – call you if I’m able to get in to talk to the mayor.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Phoenix, helping personally with a case? Apollo doesn’t know if he should be grateful or not – if this is Phoenix trying to make a good impression on Athena or not. He wishes he could stop second-guessing everything his boss does, accept an assist as an assist and move on, because it’s been a year, almost, a year short two days, since he met Phoenix. And still, here they are, traversing this uneven ground.

“You could text”, is what Trucy usually says when Phoenix calls her for forty-five seconds to get a quick answer or tell her something briefly she’ll need to do. This is also something that Edgeworth tells him, as well, that he could stand to update his phone with the times instead of having to hit the same key twice to respond with the affirmative K.

Which would be fair enough, even for someone as technologically challenged as Phoenix considers himself - he isn’t actually sure if that is something to do with the fae or not - if he hadn’t once tried to actually buy a new phone once (still a flip phone, but one step up from his “brick”) only for it to metamorphosize back into the brick over the next two days.

And admittedly that might have happened because around the same time as buying the new phone Phoenix had flung the original phone-brick off a bridge (March 2017 was a bad month), and maybe if he kept that phone when he also got a new one they wouldn’t merge into one entity and he would be able to take part in group chats. But he hasn’t wanted to waste the money on a new phone when the old one, fae-enchanted as it is to make calls straight to the Twilight Realm, is serviceable and also might just engulf a new one like Maya eating five dozen raw eggs on an ill-conceived challenge from Pearl who had just watched Beauty and the Beast.

Apollo, at least, puts up an amenable exterior, and doesn’t say anything directly to Phoenix about a twenty second phone call, that could easily for anyone else have been text, to establish that he’ll be allowed to talk to Mayor Tenma. “Maybe I’ll get the yokai exorcised before you get here,” he says, and Apollo snorts.

The guard in the back of the visitation cell stands cowed, folded up and head ducked to avoid the mayor’s hollow-eyed glare. “Who intrudes now? Have you come to free Tenma Taro posthaste?”

Phoenix meets his eyes, makes sure he is watching when he flashes his own blue to examine the situation in front of him. The iron bars on the window go darker, as do the walls, but Tenma appears almost identical. A faint gold trace clings to his shoulders and flows down, moving with his movements. It isn’t exactly a blessing - it definitely isn’t possession - but Phoenix doesn’t need an answer to that, not now. “Mayor Tenma, this farce is really undignified for us both,” he says. “Can we have a real conversation about this case, or…?”

The mayor blinks once. His face hardens, frown deepening, brow dropping in the same direction. “If my Jinxie had more friends,” he says darkly - not that much different from his usual tone, truthfully - “I would not hesitate to keep you, and by extension, your daughter, as far away from her as possible.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “I hear that a lot. What’s it - the stench of death? Shadow of misfortune? ‘Witch’ is simple but a classic.”

Tenma continues to glare. “I’ll be serious if you will,” Phoenix says. “You aren’t possessed, and you aren’t a killer, but you, what - don’t trust your lawyer to get you to that point?”

“Tell me, Mr Wright - if the threat was to your daughter, and you in the defendant’s chair, would you not do all within your limited power to see her safe, whatever the cost? Could you trust?”

Blood on the playing card. Apollo punches like someone taught him how in theory but he’s never practiced it. Kristoph’s sneer with sharp fae teeth, as if to say I know what you did; see how far I made you fall and now you rot in the grave next to me. Phoenix Wright, forger, hypocrite. Trucy was never in danger of being called an accomplice because if it went wrong Phoenix could sacrifice her brother’s badge and not her.

(Ethical standards for lawyers. Blackquill is prosecuting. Nothing goddamn matters anywhere but Phoenix’s conscience, which has been getting louder lately but still doesn’t speak in his own voice.)

Tenma laughs, which sounds a bit like a crow, at his silence. He’s not a bad actor at the demon-thing. “Can I ask you something about Jinxie?” Phoenix asks, accepting that he doesn’t and will never have the upper hand in any argument that falls along these lines. “About her seeing yokai.”

Tenma stiffens. “I suppose,” he says curtly.

Phoenix holds up his hands. “I promise, this is nothing bad - she’s Trucy’s best friend, she’s a good kid, I know she is.” A miniscule muscle at the corner of Tenma’s mouth relaxes slightly. “And she’s human, and it doesn’t look to me like she has the Sight, either. But do you know if it’s possible that there’s - something else, about her? Anything weird from her childhood, for instance - yokai or fae-type things?”

“That’s a very, very broad category,” Tenma says. “But, I suppose that—”

The door behind Phoenix crashes open. He expects it to be Athena, without looking, and when he does turn his head, it is Athena, with Apollo trailing her, faintly perturbed by the noise. He probably shouldn’t have had that much of a gulf to cross, adjusting from Trucy to Athena as co-counsel. Memories of trying to herd the two girls around Europe rise up unbidden and he sets them aside to deal with Mayor Tenma doing the Tenma Taro voice again.

“So, are you actually a demon?” Athena ventures, creeping up toward the glass divider with certain lack of caution.

Phoenix sighs. “Mr Tenma, it’s really best to be completely honest with your lawyers,” he says. “And frankly, Prosecutor Blackquill probably knows the truth about this ‘possession’ matter as well, and he’s got enough other advantages.”

“This prosecutor is very strange,” Tenma says. “Carefully though I watched him, never once did I see his eyes change as yours do. And yet he made it apparent that he knew things far beyond any ordinary seeing.”

The fae’s eyes don’t change, not in their glamoured forms, because they see in perpetuity everything and more that humans with the Sight can. But just as well, he could be any other magic user, and the hawk a fae-creature that picks up on those things, instead. God only knows the extent of what Vongole can do, and only god would know now that Klavier has her abilities leashed by just being a fundamentally decent person.

“As for your question about Jinxie, Mr Wright.” The mayor sighs and closes his eyes. “There was indeed a time, when she was six years old, that she wandered off while we were visiting her mother’s family in the Vale.” His eyes snap back open to scan each of their faces in turn. “Many of the hills that surround that valley belong to the Gentry, you know,” he says. “Jinxie wandered into the depths of one.”

Next to him, Apollo inhales sharply, and Athena gasps. “Her mother stormed in after her, stared them down, and retrieved her,” the mayor continues. “It was not long that she was there - we had her back within the same day.”

“But time works differently for the fae,” Apollo says, before Phoenix gets the chance, and he attempts to remember if he ever told Apollo that or he picked that fact up from someone else.

“She still can’t have been there terribly long by their standards, either,” Phoenix says. “Humans change if they’re there too long and I would be able to See that.” Like Thalassa, and presumably Klavier - Apollo never confirmed or denied if Phoenix’s suspicion was right, and Phoenix is content not to know specifics just as long as he does know that the kid isn’t choosing death.

“It was after that, that she began in earnest to be concerned and fascinated by yokai,” Tenma adds. “She had learned some of them in our family and cultural folklore, but she began to seek out information on her own, and speak of seeing them.”

So many possibilities that could mean, and nothing concrete enough to bear out of them. “Although, now,” Phoenix says, “I wonder if it’s possible for people to be mildly affected by fae magic, in a way that they start to notice things differently, but no one else can See. That Jinxie might actually be Seeing something, but I can’t tell that.” There are a few stories he’s heard of people who gained the Sight not in a bargain or a blessing or time spend in the Twilight Realm, but from some artefact of the fae. Like an ointment for the eyes, and would that show up the same as the traditional Sight? Possibilities, possibilities.

“But you still said you’ve never seen a yokai,” Athena says. “But what if she’s - what if it’s both magic and psychology? That she’s seeing fae stuff like you do, but in her mind it’s turning into yokai because she’s so afraid and knows so much about those?”

“That yokai tales might be her only framework for understanding weirdness,” Phoenix says. “That could make a lot of sense, actually.”

Athena beams, but a few seconds later her face falls, and Widget swears. “But she still didn’t see Tenma Taro at the crime scene,” she says. “So this is all a little moot.”

Apollo sighs. “Of course it is,” he mutters, and then looks sheepish, like he didn’t intend at all for that to be heard.

“I know,” Phoenix says. “But I’d been hoping to figure out some part of it, for Jinxie’s sake in the future.”

“Oh!” Apollo says loudly, over a reply that Athena starts and stops making. “Mayor Tenma, Detective Fulbright said that you’d remembered something you wanted to tell us!”

“Indeed.” Tenma places a fist on the sill and opens it, revealing an old-looking black key. “This is the key to the Forbidden Chamber, which I swallowed to prevent the killer from accessing the chamber.”

It takes Phoenix more effort than he would like to not laugh at the expressions on Apollo and Athena’s faces. This isn’t his case, and right now, the only thing important that means is that he doesn’t have to touch any regurgitated keys. “Well, good luck with this,” Phoenix says, reaching into his pocket and slapping the magatama into Apollo’s hand.

The magatama’s first target is L’Belle. He claims there is a rumor about town that Jinxie is possessed by Tenma Taro, destroys the blackmail letter that they attempt to confront him about, and spritzes cologne straight into Apollo’s eyes. It hurts about the same as whatever Blackquill did to him. Athena, on the other hand, lands an accidental piece of flattery that causes L’Belle to gift her with a tube of his personal brand of hair dye. Apollo lets Athena fumble her way through a less-than-halfhearted thanks, with his hand in his pocket on the magatama, waiting for the man to turn his back. Somewhere, sometime, he’s certain that someone warned him not to be seen when looking at someone through a magatama, that such creatures don’t like to be doubted; but the only person he’s looked at before was Phoenix, who told Apollo to, and gave him little more instruction after that.

(He supposes it must have been wrapped up in how he knew what a magatama is, long before Phoenix, but he doesn’t remember much specific of what Dhurke ever said about anything. He remembers a warning about souls and then the very last thing when he went away, that promise that was broken.)

Even having the magatama in his pocket means that if there are any glamours about, he should already be seeing through them, but he thinks, surely, that through the magatama, he should see some sign of those glamours existing. And holding it up to his eye, L’Belle looks exactly the same. It doesn’t surprise Apollo, really - maybe a glamour would’ve help polished his repellant personality - but it does tell him if L’Belle was somehow the killer, he couldn’t have hidden at the crime scene. It had crossed his mind, briefly, that Jinxie could have overlooked someone if that someone was like Klavier, able to turn into a ghost, be overlooked, but L’Belle is their prime - only? - suspect, and nothing.

And L’Belle turns back to make one last jab at them, or maybe brag to Athena some more about his hair dye, and Apollo can’t get the magatama hidden fast enough. A part of him has already, instantaneously, laid down and accepted death at fae claws. But L’Belle just laughs and laughs; while he seems to generally hold himself with an attempt at poise, what he must figure for composure, he’s given that up to laugh. “Really, now,” he says between undignified wheezes, unconcerned by the fact that Athena has her fists raised ready to defend Apollo’s honor or something. “You people aren’t even from this backwards burg, and still they have you caught up in all their silly superstitions! You think I’m some sort of magic creature, is that it?”

“Um,” Apollo says, and then he decides it’s better to say nothing at all and let this storm pass. Athena bounces from foot to foot like a boxer, clearly anticipating or maybe hoping that this will turn into a brawl.

“That my beauty must be too otherworldly? I assure you, I am only what you see, and entirely naturally.” Except for his hair colors, and his shoulderpads. This lecture is worse than just being cursed by fae magic. At least death or a coma would be quick.

“Of course we were wondering!” Athena says, and Apollo appreciates how she can force a smile and lie through her teeth. “Thank you for clarifying! We’ll be going now!”

“Frankly, I cannot believe the mayor would hire lawyers as small-minded as the rest of this village of peasants, but alas he did not ask me to vet his representation.” And that’s a small mercy, because L’Belle would choose someone who would get him locked up forever. (Like Alita Tiala tried, and god does that still sting if Apollo thinks about it for very long.) “And he of course is quite the strange man himself. You must have realized that by now, or since you are strange yourselves maybe not. So small-minded, so simple, to believe in magic! To think that it is the only source of true beauty!”

“Ja, oui, of course,” Athena says, grabbing Apollo’s arm as though he needs encouragement to flee. “Thank you for the information! Adiós, ciao!”

The Forbidden Chamber is cold, from the moment Apollo steps over the threshold, from that moment and not a second before. Athena shudders, as well, but her objection seems to be to the slow crawling creak of the heavy wooden door’s ancient hinges. The light from the Fox Chamber spills onto the stone path, illuminating black feathers scattered on the ground and to the sides of the rather-spacious cavern, a rack of staves, a stone shaped like a tomb, and stone lanterns. The chamber’s ceiling lies high above them, arched and appearing like it was carved out of the mountain itself. He jumps - Athena shrieks - as their eyes adjust and they spot, looming over them, the massive figure of Tenma Taro. One hand clutches a stave; the other is open, its massive claws outstretched. The way the light gleams off its golden eyes suggests that maybe it’s made of metal, but the rest could be stone. Either way, the ropes bound around its body don’t look like they’d do very much if the beast sprang to life.

“Don’t like this,” Athena says in a sing-song tone that doesn’t mask her fear. “Don’t like this at all!”

“Me, neither.” Apollo experimentally blows out his breath. He can’t see it, and Athena gives him a strange look. “This Tenma Taro statue has a staff, but the Tenma Taro on the scroll doesn’t.”

“Huh.” Athena warily glances around them. “What do you think that means? I’m gonna go find the switches for those lamps.”

“They’re probably lit with actual fire, not electricity,” Apollo says. “Why would they furnish a demon prison with—”

With an electric hum and the crackle of a system that has not been used in a while, a light springs on in each lantern. The bulbs have an old orange glow, but it’s still easier to see than it was. “Huh,” Apollo says.

“Switch was just hidden out of sight,” Athena says, straightening back up. She cranes her neck back further, straight up at Tenma Taro above her. “There’s an air vent up there behind his hand, see?” She points to the rectangular hole. Apollo would estimate that one is big enough for a person, too, though too high up and with no way of reaching it for it to be useable. “I guess even forbidden chambers need good ventilation? Make sure the bird-demon gets enough oxygen? Not that it’s helping this place not be a dusty suffocating mess—” She squints at Apollo. “Do faery creatures actually breathe air?”

He shrugs, with no idea whether she is mocking him or not. She shudders again. “Let’s just get this search over quickly,” she says.

She keeps babbling as they search, chattering about apparently anything that crosses her mind, and Apollo finds himself doing the same. Their voices echo through the chamber, bounce across the stone walls, but he still likes the sound better than the silence, something to remind him that he isn’t alone in here, that they’re alive in here, with a way out at their backs. And he often found with Trucy that the way to piece cases together, realize what observations matter, is spitballing any thought they have, throwing everything at the wall and hoping somewhere in there, something will stick.

They talk about the feathers, the statue, the staves. Athena finds, amidst the feathers, a tube of hand cream on the floor, obviously L’Belle’s. In the legs of the Tenma Taro statue, Apollo finds a secret compartment; the light doesn’t reach down into it and against both his better judgment and Athena’s urgings, Apollo plunges his hand into the crevasse and fumbles about until he emerges with some dust-blackened wooden figurine. It is no more distinguishable held close to the light. If forced to label it, Apollo might call it a goblin or an uncomfortably humanoid-bodied pig.

“Don’t like that either!” Athena says. “Non merci.”

“Weren’t you the one saying that the odds of us running into yokai are really low?” Apollo asks. “And now you’re the one shaking!”

“Freakin’ out, right here!” Widget cries and Athena claps her hand over the necklace with a furious look. “Well, you’re shaking too!” she retorts.

“That’s because it’s cold,” Apollo says. Which of course, Athena could be, too, if Apollo in his statement hadn’t been using “shaking” as more of an all-encompassing metaphor to describe all of the shifts in Athena’s demeanor that indicate fear.

Athena raises her eyebrows. “No, it’s not,” she says. “You can admit you’re scared, it’s okay! That’s what Widget and I are here for—”

“I am not scared!” He’s too frustrated with the case to be scared. He’s almost too resigned to this kind of situation to be scared.

“This just seems like the kinda place a ghost is gonna pop out, you know?” Athena says, after Apollo has plopped the figurine onto a little wooden table that looks suspiciously like an altar, to examine the curled scroll lying there.

“You believe in ghosts?” Apollo gingerly picks up the scroll, hoping it won’t crumble to dust at his touch.

“What, you don’t?” Athena huffs, still standing in the doorway on the threshold, the light spilling in around her, but after a moment her shoulders slump and she returns to Apollo to lean over his shoulder and examine the scroll.

“I didn’t say that, but I’m having trouble getting a grip on where you draw the line.”

In fading ink, the paper shows a monk - a sharp, stabbing memory of Khura’in, the temples Nahyuta wanted to visit, the religious training he wanted to undergo and couldn’t, pierces through Apollo’s heart and he immediately shoves it back into the abyss from which it rose - carrying a lump of something gold - he wonders idly how they created that shine whenever the scroll was first drawn, gold leaf? - and setting it on a little altar. There it either begins to transform into Tenma Taro or Tenma Taro rises out of nothing to stand before and guard it.

“Is this how Tenma Taro was born?” Athena asks. “Are yokai born? Are the fae born? Or do they just mold new ones out of, like, flowers and tree bark?”

“I, uh, presume they’re born?” He thinks he remembers Iris speaking of family, in the hazy way he remembers anything she said that wasn’t directed at him. (Those words are all burned into his memory by the adrenaline of sheer panic.) “But they’re also not exactly Tenma Taro, either.” He thinks. He doesn’t know. He’s only ever seen Kristoph and Vera’s fae forms. Maybe ones that aren’t changelings are less human, more monster. “It’s kind of creepy, whatever this scroll is trying to show, anyway.”

“This is all creepy,” Athena says. “Can we go, now?”

“I’d like to talk to some of the witnesses again.” Not L’Belle, though maybe they’ll need to talk to him again, a decidedly frustrating prospect. “Jinxie, Mr Filch, anything more we can get out of them. And I want to check this room over.”

Clearly having had enough, Athena retreats to examine the crime scene again, like they haven’t already combed it top to bottom. Apollo stops on the threshold, just past where the air turned cold, and holds the magatama up to his eye. The Forbidden Chamber looks darker through the magatama, like the Tenma Taro statue sucks up all the light, but nothing else appears out-of-sorts, so he figures they’re probably good to go here. Not that he knows exactly what to look for, but he’s positive it would involve suspicious glowing. Most fae things have.

“Anything?” Athena asks. Apollo shoves the magatama back into his pocket and shakes his head.

Filch, in the foyer, tries to pickpocket him again, failing spectacularly when he gets the magatama out of Apollo’s pocket and then shrieks like a rodent caught beneath car tires and flings it to the floor. “Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr Demon Lawyer Sir!” It’s the same way that Apollo reacted to the magatama when Phoenix first handed it to him, dropping it from his hands because he knew it was fae. Does Filch now think that Apollo is actually a demon or fae? “Won’t ever do something like that again—”

Which is when Athena notices that he has Widget.

“Why are you like this?” she demands, while Widget, refastened around her neck, squawks, “Jerk!”

“I can’t help it!” Filch says, nearly wailing, but his voice drops back to a regular pitch when Apollo and Athena don’t stop glaring. “Runs in the blood, y’know. Ever since I was born, what with my grandpappy, the Azuki Kozo, being the Azuki Kozo.”

“You lost me,” Apollo says, checking his wallet and the magatama and his bracelet again even though Filch hasn’t approached again.

“The infamous bandit, Azuki Kozo! Ain’t you ever heard?”

“Nope,” Athena says.

Filch slumps but springs back a moment later, hurrying toward his tiny corner office and motioning for them to follow. Which Apollo does, warily, at a distance, and Athena still has one hand cupped around Widget, ready to strike back at any thieving fingers. “See this?” Filch asks, reaching in past the door and removing a figurine from the sill beneath the big glass panes that look out into the foyer. “See this?” he repeats, proudly brandishing a carved wooden figure of what seems to vaguely be a buck-toothed balding little man, hunched over a bucket. “My ol’ grandpappy made these, he did! Azuki Kozo, stole from the rich to give to the poor, and leave one of these behind at the scene! Thieves’ honor, he’s my grandpappy, so I’m his grandson!”

“I got that the first two times,” Apollo says.

Filch doesn’t seem to hear him, instead lost in his doubtlessly-idealized recitation of family history. “Sound late at night of azuki beans getting washed, and dirty money too, to get handed out to the poor!”

“Wait, didn’t Jinxie say that it’s a yokai that washes azuki beans?” Athena interrupts. Filch still isn’t listening. “Your grandfather is a yokai? Apollo, gimme the - the - thing!” She reaches out and still staring at Filch smacks at Apollo’s arm. He presumes, maybe, that she means the magatama, and offers it to her. She takes it and freezes with her arm halfway raised. “Wait, no, the yokai name was Azukiari.” Her hand drops back to her side. “Never mind.”

“Okay, but wait,” Apollo says. “That figure Mr Filch has - that looks like a cleaner version of the thing from the Forbidden Chamber.”

“You’re right!” Athena shoves the magatama back into his hands and digs into her messenger bag, where over the past two days they have stuffed an inordinate amount of papers including two old scrolls, a one-of-a-kind key, the broken piece of the fox-and-yokai statue they found under the coffee table a half an hour ago, two samples of L’Belle’s beauty products, and now a grimy lump of wood. She holds it up triumphantly. “Mr Filch, we found this in the Forbidden Chamber.”

“Maybe he broke in way back when,” Filch said. “Reminds me, Grandpappy said there was treasure in that there chamber! Greatest quick-rich chance in the universe, he said!”

“I didn’t see anything like treasure,” Apollo says. Athena shrugs at him. “Could your grandfather have already stolen it?”

Filch snickers. “Maybe,” he says. “Figure was there, so maybe that’s how he knew. Heh, good ol’ Grandpappy. Never bragged about his good deeds!”

“Uh,” Apollo says.

“Huh,” Athena says.

“There was something else I wanted to ask you about,” Apollo says, hoping he can stop another round of family stories before it starts. “You mentioned having seen Tenma Taro at the scene of the crime—”

“Yeah,” Filch tries and fails to look sheepish. “Sorry ‘bout not coming clean sooner, but you’d know if ya lived here, gotta take that stuff seriously!”

“The village superstitions - er, stories, about Tenma Taro?” Apollo asks. “To not speak of him? You believe in those?”

That was where Filch had started lying on the witness stand - something about believing, or not - and without Blackquill around, maybe he can get to the bottom of it.

“Course I do!” Filch says. Liar. “Grown up my whole life here and ain’t gonna go anywhere else, and I might’ve had to talk about Tenma Taro today, but I ain’t never going that again! Keep to the old ways, that’s right.”

“So you’re staying here in Nine Tales Vale,” Apollo says. “And you believe all the old tales?”

“Ya got rocks in yer ears or something?” Filch asks. “Course I do! I just said all that!”

“Right,” Apollo says. “It’s just that, we’ve been around asking people about all the village superstitions, and if you actually believed in them, you’d be really afraid for your soul, now, wouldn’t you?” The confusion on Athena’s face has cleared into awed understanding of where Apollo has taken this conversation. It feels a little warmer inside his chest. “Because if you see Tenma Taro and tell someone, he’ll take your soul - unless, I’ve heard, you leave the village and never come back.”

Filch opens his mouth, flaps it like a fish out of water, finally caught off guard enough to be still and silent. “Let’s start this over,” Apollo says. “Mr Filch, you’ve been lying to us.”

“Had to,” he says, resuming fidgeting. “Didn’t have a choice!”

“What do you mean?” Apollo asks. “What was the real reason you woldn’t talk about Tenma Taro?”

“It ain’t my fault!” Filch protests. Apollo cannot agree with that statement. “It’s that pretty boy, L’Belle!” If he had to pick two words to describe L’Belle, Apollo would use neither of those. (Petty, though—) “Told me he’d make something bad happen, if I said a word. Trying to protect that lil maid gal, he was.” Filch’s voice drops, conspiratorially, and he leans toward Apollo and Athena. They both take a step back, out of pickpocket range. “On account of that rumor, y’know, ‘bout her being possessed by Tenma Taro.”

Athena sighs. “That rumor again. Guess that’s the thing about Jinxie we should’ve talked to the mayor about. Should we head back?”

“I guess,” Apollo says. He doubts Phoenix is still there, but he already did his job as an exorcist in some sense. More than Apollo expected from him.

“When I give this rental car back,” Athena says, already digging in her pockets for the key as they leave the manor, “they’re gonna ask how I put so many miles on it, like did I do something fun, and I’ll be like ‘nah, just commuting back and forth between LA and this little hamlet out north’.” Apollo snorts. He’d probably have bashed his face into a train window in frustration if he and Trucy had to do this the public transit way. “If Jinxie was possessed, Mr Wright definitely would’ve said something though, right. Like we can definitely count that one out.”

Apollo snorts, louder than before. “He might not,” he says, trying to keep his voice as even as he can, but this is Athena who can surely hear the bitterness that’s down in the bottom of his soul, and she stops dead in her tracks, wide eyed, one hand drifting absently toward Widget as though she means to psychoanalyze him now. And he really, really doesn’t want to talk about this - not with her, doesn’t want to sour her on Phoenix, the way it’s obvious she idolizes him. The way Apollo did. “I had a client who was one of the fae, and he didn’t tell me that,” Apollo adds hastily. Athena’s hand doesn’t move, but she hasn’t activated Widget, either. “It was important to the case - it, and that the killer was one, too - and he just - didn’t tell me any of that.”

Athena’s frown deepens, her brows creasing further, but it isn’t an angry expression, or even that much like she’s concentrating on what Apollo said or his voice. More than anything she looks confused, and a little sad. Widget has turned dark blue. “He must’ve had some reason for that,” she says. “Surely, there was some reason.”

“He did,” Apollo says. Widget turns green, and Athena’s face relaxes, glad to have been reassured of the fact that Phoenix had a plan. (He did have a reason. It was just a bad one, one that clearly only made sense in his own head, paranoid as he is. But Athena doesn’t need to know that part, and Apollo doesn’t want to dwell on any of it any more, either.)

“Wait,” she says suddenly. Apollo braces for the psychoanalysis again. “So you’ve really actually met a faery? What are they like?”

What a question. How to answer? To say that he’s still in occasional contact with one, and the other was his first boss and the doppelganger of a friend (maybe?) - courtroom rival (no) - conversational partner (sure). “They’re people,” Apollo says. “They’re just people.”

And more than that. He wants to explain to her what it was to see Kristoph sprout horns and claws; to hold the magatama to his eye that first time and see a curse branded around Phoenix’s neck and over his heart. How is he supposed to describe to her what it was like to see Klavier change faces when he picked the magatama up; to find Vera wearing a face she didn’t recognize as part of herself? And should he let someone else tell her there is the ghost of a fae queen haunting the office, and a soul locked up in a desk drawer?

“All the good and bad like anyone else,” he adds.

She nods, but it’s obvious that she can hear more of the tales he doesn’t have words for in his voice. Widget’s color keeps changing, and with it so does her expression, her eyes sad and grown sadder on his last statement.

“We should probably just deal with the case at hand,” Apollo says hurriedly, before he can dwell any longer on what she might be hearing, and the fact that he isn’t even sure what he is feeling. “And Jinxie’s human anyway - I think. Mr Wright implied that.”

And Apollo knows how to work within Phoenix’s implications. That’s usually all he gets.

Athena is confident that Jinxie isn’t possessed, and rather simply sleepwalks; but Jinxie tells them that her father confessed his guilt to her at the scene of the crime, and Apollo again forgot to check if Filch is totally human.

As investigations always go: one step forward, and three back into the grave for the birds, Tenma Taro and Taka, to scavenge.

#fic: the witches of los angeles #roddy fanfics #i had fun coming up with all the nonsense for Monstrous but at this point i'm tired and relieved to have one chapter of it left #NEXT UP: what in this case is and isn't magical bullshit? finally we get to find out!

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janglyjusticeforall · 6 years

Text

Begin Again

Summary: Several snapshots following two men cracked by the harsh reality of life and trying to piece each other back together again.

Read it on AO3

Characters: Klavier Gavin, Diego Armando/Godot, Ema Skye, Phoenix Wright I Mentioned: Kristoph Gavin, Mia Fey, Misty Fey/Elise Deauxnim, Winston Payne, Daryan Crescend, Simon Blackquill

Ships: N/A

Word Count: 2,725

Author’s Note: I actually wrote this for a good friend of mine who hasn’t quite finished Apollo Justice yet, so I can’t really give it to him. Instead, I’ll share it with you guys! I really hope that one day Godot will return to the series; he deserves it. Enjoy!

The first time they meet is two weeks after Klavier’s first trial. He’s proud of his win and even more so proud of exposing a long-standing attorney who’s built his entire career on lies.

“You look lost, kid,” a voice says. Klavier hates to admit that he is. Chief Prosecutor Payne had issued him to go to the district’s only high security prison and speak with an inmate who may have intel the prosecutor needs for an upcoming trial. The task itself isn’t exactly in Klavier’s job description, but something tells him that this is more than just your standard interview. This is a test Payne’s providing to see if Klavier is all the record’s chalked him up to be. Klavier has every intention on passing it.

Of course, nothing had prepared him for how utterly useless the guards are. Sure, the outside of the prison is high security and solitary confinement is on an absolute lockdown, but every other section of the prison is mazes of cells and little population watching the outsides of them.

Klavier thinks he might have had to turn left 13 paces back instead of right. No matter- he could always turn around.

Instead, he looks to the barred inmate speaking to him. “I don’t suppose you have a map,” he counters.

The man… isn’t what he was expecting. Regardless of personal prejudices, he thought criminals had to meet a certain caliber. He thought once their true selves were exposed, once they were locked up and justice was served, they’d revert into orange-clad monkeys who spit at you and call you names.

The man in front of Klavier did not look like someone who would spit at him and call him names. The man in front of Klavier was wearing a designer suit and drinking out of a mug that said ‘#1 Inmate’ with a handcuff decal. Instead of baggy eyes or thick-rimmed glasses, this man dons a metal visor that glows a deep red in contrast to the green tinge of the prison lights.

Alright then.

The man sets down his mug and leans back against the metal frame of his cell’s bunk-bed. “‘S the problem with lawyers like you nowadays,” he broods. “You take the first mug you see as coffee and never once question whether it may be just an extremely dark cup of tea.”

Klavier narrows his eyes. He decides this man is trying to fight him. That’s the problem with Klavier at age 17. He never could back down from any challenge or fight. He never could let anyone try to change his mind. He never could admit that his perspective is not absolute.

He’d yet to be proven wrong. Give it time.

“Who even are you?” Klavier snaps. The man seems to have to consider this for a moment before finally coming to a decision.

“Godot.”

Klavier presses, “Is that a last name or a first name?” The man doesn’t respond- just takes another sip of coffee. “Whatever,” the teenager grumbles. He doesn’t have time for this. As he stalks away, he can feel eyes from behind the visor trained on him until he turns the corner again.

It wasn’t a test. Chief Prosecutor Payne just didn’t feel like taking the time to interrogate his own witness.

He gives Klavier the rest of the day off, though, as compensation for his efforts. Klavier takes the time to just-so-happen-to stumble into the court’s archives. And if he winds up in the ‘G’ section, well, that was a stumble as well.

There are four cases in Godot’s folder- three of which he was a prosecutor for, and the final he was the defendant in. Despite the information for that one being completely blocked out and marked as ‘confidential’, Klavier can imagine what the verdict was. Another one of his files- the last dated prosecuting one- is completely classified as well; however, the first two of his trials are free for Klavier to read.

They’re both against the same defence attorney. Phoenix Wright- the name makes Klavier scowl. He decides then and there to put the files back and push this to the back of his mind. He had no intention in getting involved with another one of the cheat’s schemes.

The second time they meet is after Kristoph’s first conviction. Truthfully, Klavier knows where solitary confinement is, yet he finds himself making a left where he should have turned right and is face to face with the ex-prosecutor Godot yet again.

There’s no particular reason, Klavier thinks. He mostly just wants to see if the man is still alive.

Godot now has a bunkmate. The man has thick black hair, broad shoulders, and an intimidating presence. He sits in the back of the cell, legs crossed, eyes closed, completely devoid of any movement aside from his own steady breathing.

“Meditation,” Godot informs Klavier. “He can sit like that for hours and nothing disturbs him. It’s almost fascinating.”

Klavier doesn’t say anything.

Godot continues, “You aren’t dressed like a guard. You’re dressed like you might actually make some money.”

“You don’t remember me?” Klavier asks, sounding surprised. Godot laughs in response, but it sounds bitter.

“There are other things I prefer spending my time mulling than a bratty kid.”

Klavier opts against responding again. Instead, he takes the time to look into Godot’s cell and deeper at his life. It’s small. If Klavier took a step to the right, he could probably see the toilet against the wall, but he doesn’t. He looks back at Godot again. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Godot scrunches up his nose. “Maybe, but not for me. If you were sorry for me, you would have come back earlier.”

Klavier nods because that’s fair. There’s a lapse in conversation before he decides to admit some truth.

“I looked up your records. I couldn’t find anything from before you started prosecuting. Not even your résumé or where you studied law.”

Godot shrugs, taking a sip out of his #1 Inmate mug. “The person whose body this once was died a long time ago. I am just a prisoner to the mistakes he made.”

It doesn’t really make any sense, but in that moment, Klavier felt like he understood.

Klavier starts visiting him every Saturday. It’d be unprofessional for him to abuse the benefits of being a prosecutor to visit Godot’s cell, so he sits along a row of cubicles, each with their own special phone, surrounded by other people who share business with convicts trapped within these walls.

Godot actually made Klavier laugh the first time he’d come there. “I almost rejected your invitation to meet,” the white-haired man admits, sliding his mug between his palms, “because I had no idea what the fuck your name is.”

On Klavier’s way out of his and Godot’s first visit, the guard by the door remarked, “That’s the first time I’ve seen him accept an invitation since he was admitted seven years ago.” In that moment, this one time fluke became a regular, weekly thing.

Randomly, some weeks later, Klavier tells him, “You could get out of here,” leaning closer to the glass and gripping the table. “Become a prosecutor again. I’m sure you could do it. Get off on good behaviour or something. Even if it’s not in your sentence, strings can be pulled.”

Godot’s nose scrunches up, dark hand reaching up to scratch his chin. “You know, kid,” he says, leaning back in the rickety metal chair the government oh-so-generously provided. “I just don’t think prosecuting is in my blood.”

“Then why’d you do it,” Klavier arches an eyebrow, knuckles turning white. “It’s not exactly an easy job to obtain.” Godot ignores the younger’s obvious frustration in favour of looking out the barred window of the visitation area.

After a long pause, he replies, “There was someone I needed to find. Someone I needed to stand on equal ground with. Actually, no, that’s a lie,” he looks back at Klavier, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. “I needed to find him and always be five steps ahead of him.”

“Did you?” the blond asks. Godot laughs.

“No,” he sighs. “I never did.”

The first time Klavier ran into Phoenix in the seven years since he’d exposed him was in the supermarket at 3:42 in the morning. Earlier that day (or, he supposes, it was technically yesterday), Klavier lost a case to the same defence attorney that sent his brother to solitary confinement. Apollo Justice was now working under the Wright Anything Agency. Go figure.

“Nice work in court today,” Phoenix remarks. From anyone else, Klavier thinks it may have come across as a taunt of sorts, but Phoenix seems to genuinely mean it.

Klavier could say thank you. He could ask Phoenix about what happened seven years ago. Hell, he could ask Phoenix what happened just a few months ago.

Instead, he asks Phoenix about Godot.

Klavier doesn’t miss the recognition that immediately flares up in Phoenix’s eyes. But then Phoenix still responds with, “Sorry, I don’t think I’ve had the opportunity to meet him.”

The experience makes Godot genuinely holler with laughter. “Trite really said that?” he exclaimed, clapping his hands. The whole predicament has Klavier on edge. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I wouldn’t have expected him to say. He really has changed a lot since he was disbarred.” Godot takes a sip of coffee.

“Since before he was disbarred,” Klavier finds himself arguing. Even to himself it sounds rehearsed, though it’s never an argument he’s ever had aloud before. “He presented false evidence in court.”

“Yea, well that’s-” Godot stops abruptly, shakes his head, takes another sip of coffee. “I try not to call things impossible. But the Phoenix Wright I knew- the one from seven years ago- he respected his mentor. And for anyone who respected Mia Fey to do something like that, well,” a third sip, “that’s impossible.”

Klavier’s about to argue that Godot’s point was cute and all, but he wasn’t there like Klavier had been there, when he notices the absence in Godot’s voice. Klavier suddenly thinks they’re talking about more than just Phoenix Wright.

“When you get out of here,” Klavier asks, “what will you do?”

He receives a firm shake of the head in response. “I don’t plan on getting out of here,” Godot admits. Before Klavier can ask why, he continues, “There is nothing waiting for me outside of here. My story has already ended.”

Mia Fey’s body was buried in a graveyard outside a small village in the mountains. Klavier goes there late at night when he knows no one will spot him. To the right of her grave is a stone that reads ‘Misty Fey’ and to the left is the only one in the graveyard with a male’s name on it. It says ‘Diego Armando’. Somehow, it looks older than its companions.

According to the archives, Diego Armando drank up to 17 cups of coffee in nearly every trial.

Klavier’s trying not to let it show, but he’s getting sick of bullshit. Is everyone around him keeping secrets? First Kristoph, now Daryan. He swears next week Ema Skye is going to kill somebody, and he’s just going to have to quit his job.

“Please tell me you haven’t killed someone,” is the first thing that comes out of Klavier’s mouth. Godot’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“Prepare to be disappointed,” he mumbles into the rim of his coffee mug. Klavier groans, head falling into his arms. It’s silent as Godot watches the prosecutor before him try to pull himself back together with ropes that his loved ones keep on wanting to cut. “Hey, kid,” Klavier lifts his head up. “The only time a lawyer can cry is when it’s all over. Your job is to keep smiling until the end.”

The blond nods, finally sitting up. Godot grins, not quite like he means it, but not at all in the grim way he usually does. It gives Klavier hope.

Months later, Krisoph is convicted.

Again.

Klavier smiles when he says it to Godot. The older man tiredly runs a hand through his hair, whistling lowly. “I think it’s fair to cry now, honestly,” he admits. Klavier shakes his head.

“I think I may be cursed. Or have really, really bad luck,” when Godot’s expression turns questioning, Klavier continues, “Herr Wright seems to think this is just the beginning. They’re calling it ‘The Dark Age of the Law’. I can’t help but think that I contributed to the start of it.”

Godot makes a face. “I can’t say I believe much in curses or luck,” he begins.

“But you do believe in spirit mediums?” Klavier finds himself asking before Godot can finish. Immediately the white-haired man goes rigged. Klavier regrets opening his stupid mouth.

“I believe that the world keeps turning,” Godot says carefully, “and that we turn with it.”

Klavier starts speaking again to apologise, but Godot cuts him off, saying he has to go. Klavier knows he has nowhere to go but still lets him use the excuse. For the first time, they stop talking before visiting hours end.

Klavier thinks that, to him, Godot is what Phoenix Wright was to Fräulein Skye however many years ago that was. And he understands now why Ema hated him so much for so long. He supposes that if he’d been in her situation, he’d have a lot of reasons to hate a lot of things as well.

Now he sits cheerfully on her desk awaiting her to return from her lunch break. And when she does, she looks significantly less ecstatic about coming to work today. Klavier could concede, however, that she doesn’t immediately attack him with her ever present arsenal of Snackoos now that Phoenix’s name has been cleared. Progress?

“Can I help you?” Ema even bothers to sound somewhat professional. Progress!

“I need a non work related favour,” he sheepishly admits. She tilts her head to the side, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Klavier can’t help but think about how different her response would have been three months ago. “And regardless of whether you pull it off for me, I do have something else to give you.”

Ema gives Klavier a skeptical look, setting her bag down next to him on her desk. “Alright,” she decides. “I’ll hear you out.”

There is a rehabilitation program for prisoners. After all, once you’re convicted for eight or so years, it can be a bit difficult to get back up on your feet.

When Godot is released, the state has him join one of these programs. He’s to meet with his parole officer every week indefinitely. He also has a psychiatrist now, which is an interesting touch, but he supposes it couldn’t hurt. If he didn’t like it then he’d find a way out of it. He thinks it might do him so good, though, because even though the gaping hole in his heart no longer yearns for things he could never again have, it has filled with a certain emptiness that he doesn’t think will ever go away. But, yknow. Maybe it’s manageable.

He’s given a temporary living space until he sorts out where he wants to go from here. On his bedside table is a poorly disguised mug underneath gaudy purple wrapping paper and a note.

Herr Caffeine Addiction,

If you are ever truly found guilty again, do not expect anything like this to happen. There is no smorgasbord of second chances. Let’s not kill anyone else, ja? This is a thank you for everything you’ve done this past year.

Diego Armando may be dead, but Godot still has life left in him. Do not be prisoner to yourself. That is, for lack of a better word, stupid.

I’ve left you a gift to get you settled. Once you obtain a phone, give me a call.

Klavier Gavin

P.S. Recently, my detective has found the resources to return to school so that she can take her forensics test again. I’m sure you, too, could find the resources to replace said detective. If that’s something you’d be interested in, ja?

When he unwraps the present, he finds ‘#1 Partner’ staring up at him. Godot wonders, for the first time in this new life, if a story can really begin again.

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