#apollo will admit to klaviers (who his IS friends with!) face that the idea of smashing a statue of him sounds satisfying | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years ago

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Witches, Chapter 24: welcome to Themis.

Watch me go this whole arc without mentioning the “dark age of the law” but still trying to impress upon us the corruption inherent in the school and the legal system anyway.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

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“Phoenix Wright speaking.”

“Hello, Mr Wright? This is Constance Courte, one of the professors—”

“—at Themis? I remember hearing your name. What’s up? Is something going on with the school festival?”

“No, everything remains as scheduled - including your lecture that you’ll be giving tomorrow. I was calling to ask if, perhaps, you would be able to arrive a bit earlier tomorrow - say, around one o’clock? I’d like to discuss in advance what you’re planning for your lecture and seminar. I imagine that Professor Means likely told you that the stage is yours and you are free to say what you like, but he and I disagree on - well. We have rather different teaching styles, shall we say.”

“Yeah, he pretty much said it was up to me, but I’d be happy to have a chat with you about what you’d like the fledgling defense attorneys to learn to make it easier on your future judges. The mock trial starts at two, right? I can definitely be there early - oh, I invited my two junior partners along, too. Hope that won’t be a problem.”

“Not at all. I look forward to meeting them too. And there is something else I would like to ask of you, though. It’s in regards to Prosecutor Gavin.”

“I’d heard he’s the prosecutor who was invited to speak, same as me.”

“Yes. At my suggestion - he was one of my students. I teach several classes open to students of any course. I believe it’s better to have a fully rounded view of the courtroom and understand all those positions, and I hope you might agree. Klavier was one of my favorite students, though I’m not sure I should admit that I do have favorites.”

“I’m not sure I’m following what you mean to ask. If you’re worried I take some sort of issue with him, on basis of what happened eight years ago, I’ll be the first to assure you that I don’t blame him for what happened.”

“I’m certainly glad to hear it. Now, I said that I suggested that Klavier be invited, and he agreed to come to Themis again, yes, when the academy’s administration sent him a formal email asking him if he would come speak. As for myself, I have reached out to him a number of times over the past year, most recently floating this idea, and every time, I am met with silence. Considering everything that has happened, I’ll admit that I am concerned about him.”

“...Honestly, so am I, but I am, without a doubt, the worst person to ask. I know for a fact that he will be doing his damndest to avoid me.”

“We may be in that boat together, and I fear that tomorrow he will continue to do so. This brings me to you, Mr Wright, and what I would ask of you. I have heard quite a bit about you, I’ll admit, some rumors much less court-related and much odder than others. One of the things they say is that you are quite good at seeing things that other people can’t.”

“...!”

“However that may be, I would be deeply grateful if you would, if necessary, help me corner Klavier tomorrow, because I suspect you may have also noticed that he is very, very good at avoiding people if he does not want to be found.”

“Well, this just feels like my first day of university all over again.” Phoenix shields his eyes against the sun and stares up at the building that looms in front of them. It’s a huge campus for a high school, but it’s also a fancy lawyer high school with alumni that probably donate boatloads of money from their lucrative careers, so it’s not all that surprising. “Lost as hell.”

“There’s probably at least three lecture halls in every one of these buildings,” Apollo gripes, staring out across the quad at the other nearby academic buildings. “Which one is the lecture hall where we’re supposed to meet the professor?”

“She said the main lecture hall,” Phoenix says. “I am making the assumption that this building in the center of campus is the main building, and thus, houses the main lecture hall.” But who the hell can actually know, really? Athena’s probably lost as hell too, since they’d waited as long as they could by the main gates to campus waiting for her, and still she didn’t turn up.

With still an hour until the mock trial, students aren’t swarming all over the campus yet, though maybe it would be better if they were. The mock trial is also taking place in the main lecture hall, but because it’s only students and faculty attending the mock trial, there are no signs pointing the way, because everyone who is regularly at the school would know where the damn main lecture hall is. And there’s no crowd to follow, yet, and so, their current predicament.

Behind them, someone clears their throat. “By chance, you would not happen to be Mr Wright?”

It’s the hair, isn’t it? Or the blue suit. Hilariously, “hair and bright primary color suit” is also how Phoenix would describe both Apollo and Athena to anyone looking for them. The office accidentally has a theme. “That would be me, yes,” Phoenix says, turning around to come not quite face-to-face with a very tall man, with a carefully arranged gray beard and hair, and, over his vest and dress shirt, a white robe that in any other situation would scream frat party bedsheet toga. Trucy went to the Themis website last night to show him pictures of the professors so that he knew who he was looking for. “And you are Aristotle Means?”

“I am indeed.” He offers a hand and Phoenix shakes it. “It’s wonderful to finally get the chance to meet and speak with you in person.” He was the one who sent the invitation email to Phoenix. And a formal invitation letter and a pamphlet about the school and one about the mock trial and Phoenix meant to read those and has no idea what they disappeared to.

“Thanks for the invite,” Phoenix says. “And - oh, this is Apollo Justice.” The introductions are swiftly made - “The other lawyer at our agency should be coming, too, though I’m not sure where she’s gotten off to” - their situation and desperate need of directions explained, and Professor Means offers to escort them up to the main lecture hall, which is on the third floor of this building, meaning that Phoenix and Apollo almost had it. “Thank you. I appreciate it - and for the invitation to come here to speak. I wasn’t expecting that - I’m sure there are other defense attorneys around, and alumni at that, who are…” Phoenix searches for any words at all that won’t drag himself too fiercely through the mud. Apollo is suddenly seemingly very interested on all the posters on the walls advertising school announcements and campus clubs.

“Nonsense!” Means says brightly. “Truly, I could think of no defense attorney I would rather have to our illustrious school, and I am glad that situation has been sorted out that you may return to the courtroom. I have had my students study your cases for years, you know.”

“R-really?” Kind of flattering, kind of alarming that he had his students study up on the tactics of a disbarred lawyer. Unless they were “what not to do” kinds of lessons, in which case that’s not flattering, and also why would he invite Phoenix here, then.

“Indeed. Your defense of Will Powers is one that I find particularly exemplary. That even while you were backed into a corner, you still managed to shift the blame well enough to buy yourself and your client further time, and another day to investigate. I have my students practice how to make effective accusations of a case’s initial witnesses, and to sound convincing even if they themselves do not believe their gambit.” Phoenix’s stomach flips over itself. Apollo really isn’t looking at him now. Means, oblivious to the tension between the two, that Phoenix hoped was going away but now is back in pained full, continues, “It is unfortunate, in truth, but is our client’s acquittal not our utmost priority? Is it not ultimately justified, what we do in pursuit of that?”

“That’s a bit of a slippery slope, don’t you think, Professor?” Apollo asks. He finally looks Phoenix in the eye, but he’s glaring at him instead, and that just makes Phoenix feel even worse. He’s supposed to give a lecture to these students; what’s he supposed to say when all they know him for is his most desperate and shadiest moments? Hell, what’s he supposed to say to Apollo once Means leaves?

“Unfortunately, if it is, then it is the prosecution who have given us our push down it.” Apollo’s frown deepens. “Consider how many of them value only victory and have their own underhanded tricks that, if we did not act, would convict our clients not on strength of evidence but simply on the prosecution’s say-so, that they demand this of the judge. We are letting our clients down if we do anything but fight their fire with our own.”

Phoenix expected him to protest further, but Apollo is strangely quiet. Maybe he’s thinking about Blackquill threatening Mayor Tenma to try and get a guilty plea, or maybe even that time that Klavier didn’t tell even his detective that the defendant could see and the witness was blind. He doesn’t mount a defense of the supposed minority of prosecutors who aren’t underhanded on behalf of his friend, at any rate. Means changes the subject and Phoenix carries on a conversation with him without his brain in it, and when they come up on the lecture hall, Phoenix has no idea what the hell they were talking about. He just wonders what Courte thought about inviting him here, considering it was her favorite student who got him disbarred. She hadn’t given any hint of animosity during their weird conversation last night.

“If I see Professor Courte around, I will let her know that you’re here,” Means says as he leaves. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t show up for a while. She labors under the unfortunate curse of being habitually late.”

The size of the lecture hall reminds him of his own university days, but not the quality of the room itself, which is unfathomably better. Hell, it’s at least as nice as the courthouse, stark white marble-looking walls and shiny white desk surfaces, with a screen at every station. Students wouldn’t even have to remember to bring their laptops for lectures. The cynic in him wonders just how much this all cost, and whether they could have gotten even more nice screens and supplies if they hadn’t tried to make this hall look like a temple or museum. Wealthy alumni, he thinks again.

“So when he said ‘curse’ there,” Apollo ventures slowly, the first thing he’s said since he asked Means that question, and Phoenix is just glad that this all hasn’t put them off speaking terms yet. “Do you think that was just a turn of phrase or - I mean, that just sounds really petty, for a curse.” He sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself of such, rather than actually believing it.

“Petty’s what they are,” Phoenix says. “Besides, I know a guy who has a fae blessing that he can memorize any words that are written down on a page, so long as he eats the paper it was written down on. A curse that’s just chronic lateness? Might not be that far off.”

“Eats the paper?” Apollo repeats.

Phoenix sinks into one of the seats in the back row. Apollo has no idea how lucky he is that the fae in his past saw it fitting just to give him plain, unvarnished Truth. (Magnifi gave the same to Thalassa and Trucy, presumably because in the human world he thought he would need them, but what was the motivation for Apollo’s fae? Just a gift?) “Eats the paper.”

Time crawls by, with Phoenix checking the clock every few minutes, neither Courte nor Athena showing up. “I did tell Athena we’re meeting at one, right?” he asks, and Apollo, staring bored down at his phone (“Your daughter is texting in class” he said a few minutes ago) nods. “Right, because I told both of you at the same time, and you’re here.” The back of the chair is low enough that he tilts his head the whole way back to stare up at the ceiling when he tries to lean back.

1:30 comes and goes. Apollo encourages Trucy’s bad habits of texting in class. Phoenix sinks down into the chair and props his knees up against the edge of the tables. The hall slowly starts to fill up with students and their colorful uniforms, based on what profession they aspire toward; and then with an overhead announcement telling all students and faculty to please make their way to the lecture hall, the room begins to flood. Apollo springs up out of his chair and waves to someone. “Hey, Athena!” he shouts, ignoring all of the eyes that turn toward him for his loud yell and the fact that he’s someone not dressed like a student. Athena’s probably run into a dozen people who mistake her for a classmate and asked why she isn’t wearing her uniform.

“Apollo! Mr Wright! I am—” She doubles over, hands on her knees, to catch her breath. “So so sorry that I’m late!”

“You’re lucky that the person we’re supposed to be meeting is running even later,” Apollo says. “So you’re not the last one here.”

When Means returns, he informs them that he still has not yet seen Professor Courte this morning, and then Athena immediately launches in to badgering him for information about the school. He seems to appreciate her enthusiasm, and she for her part seems enthralled by the whole concept of Themis. And why wouldn’t she be? She doesn’t know enough to know the rot that crept under the foundation and, for all Phoenix knows, still lingers there.

“Excuse me, Professor Means?” A small but firm voice interrupts the conversation, and Phoenix’s wandering mind. What subject had the conversation gotten to, anyway? “Forgive my interruption, but with the mock trial starting soon, and you giving the opening speech, it would be best if you went up to the balcony now to wait for when we start.”

“Ah, of course, Ms Woods,” Means says. “As organized as ever, aren’t we? I shall leave you to keep this trial running smoothly, but do introduce yourself to our guests, wouldn’t you?”

The young woman wears the black dress that marks the students of the judges’ course, and she has pinned a sunflower up in her ashy brown hair. “Of course,” she says to means, and then she turns to Phoenix. “My name is Juniper Woods. I’m a third year in the judge course and the Student Council President. Professor Means must have given you the introduction to our prestigious academy, but if there’s anything you wish to know—”

“J-Junie?” Athena gasps. “Junie, is that you?”

“Huh?” The young woman blinks in confusion, and then her dark eyes go wide and she too gasps, a hand flying up to slap over her open mouth. “Th - Athena? I barely recognized you! I didn’t know you were back from Europe.”

“I know, I know, that’s my fault, I’ve been so bad about staying in touch with people since I got back and started working and everything - I kept meaning to write!” Athena’s grin gets progressively more nervous and her babbling picks up speed. Widget can’t decide whether to settle on green, yellow, or blue. She clasps her hands together tightly. “I didn’t realize you’d for-sure decided to study law! And such a prestigious school, too!” She casts an admiring glance around the hall.

“So,” Phoenix asks when Juniper doesn’t respond and instead continues to stare ahead, not at Athena but somewhere between Apollo and Phoenix, in blank shock, “old friends?”

Athena nods, her hair swinging about wildly with her enthusiasm. “We knew each other when we were kids! We were best friends, right, Junie?”

Juniper has nowhere near Athena’s energy, or apparent glee. Maybe it’s still her surprise, or maybe it’s some sort of embarrassment, or maybe it’s - whatever, but all the same, a pang of sympathy shoots through Phoenix’s heart. A long-lost childhood best friend who’s much more reluctant to pick up the relationship again. Poor Athena. Juniper isn’t even looking at her, and has turned her eyes toward the floor now. “Yes. We lived close by each other, and used to play in the forest together.”

Maybe she just likes plants, and nature, with the sunflower in her hair, running around in the forest as a child. Not everyone grew up right in the city. It’s possible for that to be an innocuous statement. Some people actually just have yards and trees in them, Phoenix, he tells himself, failing to convince himself. Because on the other hand, she’s an old friend of Athena’s, and she’s studying law and there’s that old joke about that, and Phoenix can say it all he wants, my kingdom for one normal kid, for one other person besides Ema in our ever-expanding social circles to be relatively normal, relatively unaffected by fae bullshit—

And Juniper’s not looking at anyone, and Athena and Apollo are looking at Juniper, so Phoenix can cast a quick glance over her.

He closes his eyes to reset himself to regular vision, and to ask himself if there’s such a thing as fate or destiny that drives them all together like this, or whether Edgeworth is wrong every time that he says most people in the greater Los Angeles area are maybe a little more superstitious than most but otherwise unremarkable and unmagicial. Because he claims that, and then Phoenix meets someone else, just by chance, and no, no, they’re at least somewhat fae-adjacant too. To hell with it all.

Also, her name is Juniper Woods, which, come on. That’s a very fae-trying-to-figure-out-how-to-name-someone-like-humans-name-humans name.

“I’m afraid that we only have the one seat reserved for Mr Wright in the mock trial, and otherwise, you should wait in the lobby down on the first floor,” Juniper is saying. She seems much more comfortable and self-assured when they’ve switched back to talking about the organizational details of the day. “It is a part of our curriculum, after all, and we need the space for all of our students.”

“Oh,” Apollo says. “Darn. I wanted to see what the mock trial was all about.”

“I’ll trade you,” Phoenix says. “You can take my seat, and I’ll go wait for Professor Courte still, with Athena.”

“But I want to watch the mock trial too!” Athena protests.

“Sorry kiddo, but Apollo got first dibs, and he’s got seniority on you, too.”

Athena groans. She doesn’t try to engage Juniper in conversation again, either, when she escorts the two of them downstairs. Juniper leaves them in the lobby there, as stark white and like a Greek temple as the rest of this building has been, but there are a few nice couches and some wide windows that let in enough natural light. Phoenix sinks down into a couch, even though it reminds him a bit of the courthouse lobby couches and he has an official long-standing rule against those. Athena would hopefully stop someone who tried to beat his head in with a fire extinguisher.

But he needs to take the time to figure out what he could possibly say in a lecture, that won’t make him sound morally bankrupt or like an idiot who only wins by lucky bluffs. And maybe he is, but he doesn’t need to encourage the legal system to fill up with more people like that, especially not if Means is already doing so. He closes his eyes. What are the most important things that Mia taught him? What has he noticed Apollo and Athena have trouble with - what parts of defending has he watched them learn on the fly, because it can only be learned in a courtroom? He could talk about body language; he’s not Apollo or Trucy or Thalassa, but he’s pretty good at that.

Or, hell, what are the biggest mistakes he’s made over his career? What could someone have said to prevent those? Don’t trust evidence given to you by strange girls in top hats, except if Apollo had heeded that then Phoenix wouldn’t be here. Always check what’s written on the back of your evidence. Someone who seems too weird to be human might still be human but you should always watch the way you phrase your statements anyway. He’s going to sound like a paranoid morally bankrupt bluffing idiot. And again, maybe he is, but that’s not something he wants to encourage. Is it paranoia if it’s justified fear? Is the terror that he’s instilled Apollo with something that will help or hurt him in the long run? Or the short run.

Something loudly shatters. Athena yelps. “What did you break?” Phoenix asks, opening his eyes, expecting to find Athena frantically attempting to hide the pieces of some broken Themis decor that costs more than anything in the Agency because appearances might be important but Phoenix hasn’t ever been secure enough in the amount of clients he has to spend a thousand dollars on an easily-breakable light stand, Mia.

“It wasn’t me!” Athena protests. She stands in the middle of the lobby, staring all around, and there’s nothing broken in Phoenix’s line of sight, so with a yawn he swings his feet down from the couch. “I think it came from outside.”

“Guess we should go take a look,” Phoenix says. “Everyone else on campus is supposed to be in that lecture hall right now.” Maybe it’s Professor Courte, wherever she got off to.

Outside, Athena swivels her head around like an owl, trying to judge where that sound earlier came from. “Maybe over there?” she suggests, pointing across a stretch of green to, further along the side of the main building, a stage set up with a line of spotlights and giant speakers along the scaffolding. As they approach, Phoenix sees that the stage is set up like a courtroom, with two benches on either side, a judge’s podium looming high in the back, and a witness stand in the center. Just like apparently everything else at Themis, they are all designed to look like they’re made from white marble, and trimmed with gold. The whole school balances precariously on the line between classy and pretentious. “Do you think they’re having some sort of concert here?” Athena asks.

With Prosecutor Gavin around, it wouldn’t surprise him. There’s something lying on the stage behind the witness stand, something green. “Athena, what’s that there?”

They hurry closer to the stage and up the stairs on the side, close enough that Phoenix can see the woman lying on the stage, in a green track suit, her hair fanned out across the ground, a dark bloodstain spreading out across her white shirt from the arrow jammed in her side. Athena screams. Phoenix has been here too many times before. “Athena,” he says, turning to her, watching her face pale and go slack, “call the police.”

She nods silently, fumbling the phone from her pocket and dropping it to the stage; her hands are shaking when she picks it back up, and she casts one last glance at Courte before she turns her back on the scene. Phoenix kneels, finding no pulse in Courte’s neck. Her skin is cold. Already dead - already gone. Athena’s voice shakes, but all considered, she does a good job at relaying the necessary information and sticking only to that. “I’ll run and go tell everyone in the lecture hall, too,” she says, tucking her phone back into her pocket.

“Wait.” Athena stops with one foot raised. “Don’t. They’ll find out as soon as the police get here. We might as well do some investigating now, before anyone else gets here.” Who knows what sway someone at this school might have with the police, whether that someone is the murderer or just wants the incident buried for the sake of the academy’s good name. If they know what the crime scene looks like now, they’ll know if it was tampered with later.

“Are we allowed to do that?” Athena asks. Her eyes turn back down to the body and then she looks away, pressing her lips tight together and swallowing hard.

“We’ll make sure to leave everything just like we found it,” Phoenix says, picking up the little notebook lying next to Courte’s body and paging through it. A planner, with a sword emblem on the front cover and every page. Under today’s date, she lists mock trial preparation in the morning, the meeting with Phoenix at 1:00, and the start of the mock trial an hour later. No hint as to who she may have interacted with in any of that span of time. Her limbs have begun to stiffen, so it definitely wasn’t recent. “But considering—”

Considering the rot inside this institution. Does Athena need to know that? Is it going to help her solve the case if she does?

“Considering?”

There’s no reason to dump all the rumors and past troubles of Themis on her now. It might not even be relevant, and Phoenix can keep his eyes out, with that in mind. Athena is still standing at a distance, her hands to her mouth, her eyes big and fearful. “C’mon,” he says. “Deep breaths, and take a look at this and tell me what you see.” She, unfortunately, has to get used to this if this is the career she wants to stick with; there’s nothing like dropping right into the deep end for acclimating to it, and Apollo saw a man die within his first month of working at the Agency, so Athena’s got a lot of catching up to do.

The murder is just like the mock trial. The body’s location, the lack of blood suggesting that it was moved, the murder weapon - just like the mock trial. Apollo’s head is buzzing, or maybe that’s Athena in his ear, seemingly more indignant about the school newspaper she found than the actual murder. “—and Junie would never lead guys on like that! ‘Battle for the she-devil’s black heart’! This is slander!”

“It sounds like tabloid trash,” Apollo says. Campus newspaper standards sound like they’ve really fallen since he was in school.

“Ugh, I know,” Athena says. “That’s what Mr Wright said.” Compared to the explosive reaction when the police arrived and put a halt to the mock trial, campus is eerily quiet now, as the police have begun to send away most of the student they believe could not have been involved. Apollo wonders how they could have alibis for the time the body was moved - there was some sort of check-in or attendance taken of students at the mock trial, given that it is part of their curriculum, after all.

Apollo stuck around while Phoenix and Athena were questioned, and now Phoenix has gone off elsewhere and set them loose. Athena wanted to go find Juniper. Apollo really hopes she’s not going to bother her more about this damn school newspaper. “But it was talking about the two competitors in the mock trial being rivals for her affection. You saw the mock trial, Apollo. What were they like? Were they any good at being lawyers? Were they better than me?”

“Now you’re starting to sound like you think they’re rivals,” Apollo says, pushing open the door of the stairwell to let them out on the third floor, back to the lecture hall; if Juniper is anywhere, it’s probably here. “Your rivals,” he amends, because Athena doesn’t look like she gets it. “For Juniper’s attention.”

“Well, isn’t everyone at least a little in love with their best friend?” Athena asks.

Apollo snorts. “My best friend is insufferable,” he says. Which doesn’t necessarily refute Athena’s point, given that someone else in Apollo’s life who is also insufferable is Prosecutor Gavin, and that - that’s a road Apollo’s not going to go down. Not that they’re actually friends. But the half of that. The insufferable part—

“So?” Athena prompts. “So what’s your point? So whenever I meet him don’t say things like that, because then he’d be more insufferable?”

“Sure,” Apollo says. Might as well go with that answer. He pushes open the lecture hall doors and looks out over the large hall. Almost empty now, he spots Juniper sitting in the bottom row, and two other students, one in the red uniform and one in blue - they might even be the same two guys from the mock trial - standing by one of the benches, talking among themselves.

“Because being insufferable doesn’t rule out—” Juniper glances up at the door opening, and then she stands, smoothing down her skirt, and Athena hurries down the stairs to meet her, abandoning the current thought. “Junie! Are you all right? I was worried that—”

“I’m all right,” Juniper says, a little stiffly, and Apollo can’t decide which of the two girls he feels worse for. Athena, whose eagerness to reunite with an old friend keeps being rebuffed, or Juniper, whose body language screams uncomfortable with her every action. “I have to be. I’m Student Council President, and representative of the school, after all. I need to keep myself together, and act properly, for the sake of the school and my classmates.”

Athena nods, more in a way like she’s acknowledging what Juniper is saying rather than agreeing with it. Her fingers flutter toward Widget. “Um, I hate to ask this of you, especially right now, but could you tell us anything about Professor Courte?”

Juniper sounds like she greatly admired the professor - her professor, considering that she’s one of the judge course students. She coughs a few times as she’s talking; Apollo figures she’s just got a cold from working too hard - this might be a high school, but Apollo remembers college, and this seems more like college - but Athena appears incredibly alarmed, and she keeps restlessly shifting her posture, unsure of what to do. Maybe Juniper wasn’t in great health when they were younger? Whether it’s either of them steering the conversation, or just the way it happens to go, Juniper moves on to telling them about the mock trial. She wrote the script that outlines the initial scenario and the evidence involved, and she and Courte were the only two involved in putting it together.

As she explains, her two fellow students finally finish whatever conversation they were having and approach to join her. Hugh is a smarmy and rude budding defense attorney who has high opinions of only himself and Juniper; Robin is a very excitable prosecutorial student whose voice cracks when he yells too loudly and he carries a lump of clay around in his pocket to fiddle with and smush back up whenever its shape becomes unsatisfactory. Athena cheerily introduces herself, and then as soon as the two boys are looking at Juniper, she turns, aghast, to Apollo, undiluted panic written across her features. Horrified by her best friend’s apparent taste in guys? (Apollo can sympathize. The best taste Clay has ever had is his low-key celebrity crush on Klavier, and Apollo’s not gonna get into that.)

They do seem to genuinely like Juniper, though, or at least they can’t stop talking her up - once they’re done arguing about which of the two of them was closer to winning the mock trial, vowing to beat the holy hell out of each other, and then assuring Athena that they won’t actually be beating the holy hell out of each other, because they’re all best friends and have certifiable proof of that. (Athena gets a strange expression on her face when they say that. Maybe she hears something in their voices, or maybe it’s just hitting her that her long-lost old friend has new friends in her life, people who have their own in-jokes and secrets shared with her. It would be like Nahyuta meeting Clay, and that thought makes Apollo feel very strange, too.)

But besides their appreciation for her mock trial script, and her acting as the defendant in said mock trial, she is - or was supposed to, before this happened - singing in a concert for the school festival. “It was supposed to be later today,” Juniper says, ducking her head. “I’m only singing because most everyone else was too embarrassed to try out…”

“But still!” Athena has joined what’s now a triangle of people gushing over Juniper. “The stage outside, right? My Junie singing in front of a crowd - that’s incredible! You’ll be amazing!”

“Ah - th-thanks.” The poor girl is definitely uncomfortable with all of the attention now. “I made my own costume for the performance,” she adds. “I was still working on it this morning.” She takes her phone from her pocket and Athena eagerly leans in to see. Apollo rests an elbow on her head to push her out of the way enough that he can see without crowding Juniper’s personal space. “I based it on the outfit of a singer I really love—”

“Lamiroir?” Apollo didn’t mean to interrupt so loudly, but he recognizes that ruffled white dress and the beautiful blue cloak; he would remember it even if the brooch on her costume hadn’t come into contention as a piece of evidence.

Juniper almost whacks her head on Athena’s when she raises it. “You know Lamiroir?” she asks, and Apollo almost laughs, because he knows she wouldn’t think to mean it like that, but he does know Lamiroir, as in, met her, multiple conversations with her, cross-examined her.

“She’s an amazing singer, isn’t she?” Apollo says, and Juniper nods in eager agreement. He can’t actually listen to much of her music all at once, though. Something about it makes him homesick for somewhere, and he’s not really sure where - it isn’t Khura’in, exactly - but it always leaves him melancholy at best. And while Lamiroir’s songs are beautiful, none of them are what he would call upbeat, and that doesn’t help either.

“She’s incredible,” Juniper says, her words turning into a sigh of admiration. “I was so excited to hear that she was coming here for a tour last year, even if she wasn’t the main act, and then I couldn’t make it—”

“You didn’t really miss much,” Apollo says. “Since she only sang one song, and then there was the murder.”

“Huh?” Athena asks. Hugh and Robin don’t exactly appear to be in-the-know either.

“Were you at the concert?” Juniper asks. “Wait,” she adds, before he can answer, and she finally seems to have a little more energy than she did before, and to be relaxing her formality, even just a little. “Your name - you’re Apollo Justice. Didn’t you defend Machi Tobaye?”

“Er - yeah.” What’s this weird feeling - being acknowledged? Being recognized? Weird. “That was me.”

“Now you’re really gonna have to catch me up on what that case was about.” Athena interrupts with some force, sounding more than anything like a petulant child. Though she also has to be feeling bitterly left out, finding Apollo suddenly pulled into this group of people who have some connection to her old friend that she doesn’t. “Whenever we have time to talk about old cases. Whenever this case is dealt with.”

Maybe that was a bad thing to say. Maybe that cursed them, cursed the investigation to be suddenly kickstarted in the worst way. Maybe that’s a ridiculous thought, and it’s just unfortunate, unlucky timing, that at that moment, Detective Fulbright enters, trailed by a few officers. “Hello, my lawyer friends! Long time, no see, though I’m afraid we’ve no time now to catch up - Juniper Woods, you’re under arrest for the murder of Constance Courte!”

Athena shrieks louder than Robin, and both of them are louder than Juniper, who blanches and then goes a little sickly green, her hands over her mouth as another bout of frantic coughing escapes her lips. It’s not Juniper who Fulbright has to argue the reason for arrest with - it’s Athena, Athena demanding the evidence, the motive, why why why, and when Fulbright tells her everything he can he adds that Prosecutor Blackquill won’t let him say any more, Apollo’s stomach drops through the floor. “Blackquill?” Athena repeats indignantly. “Prosecutor Blackquill is the one—”

“Indeed!” Does Fulbright have any idea how terrifying the man actually is? Or is his casual attitude only feigned. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do, and we must be going. Come along now, miss.” Two officers flank Juniper, escorting her up the stairs to the doors, one of them holding the mock trial evidence that she still had in her pocket.

“Hold it!” Athena cries. “Hold it, hold it!” Fulbright stops, and so do the other officers, but Juniper doesn’t look back at Athena. “It’s not her! I won’t believe that! Junie! I’m going to defend you! I promise I’ll get you freed!”

At that, Juniper turns her head. She still looks green and pale, and tears flow freely down her cheeks, but a smile crosses her face, the first one that Apollo has seen her give. “Th-thank you, Thena.”

“Have you ever actually defended a case before?” Fulbright pushes his sunglasses back up his nose, from where they had slid down as he gave Athena a disbelieving look. “As more than the assistant, I mean. You’re pretty new to this, aren’t you?”

“I’ll help,” Apollo interrupts. Can’t let Athena start to second-guess herself now, especially not with her friend the defendant, and likely in desperate need of reassurance, at that. “I’ll be right here with you, Athena, for the whole case.”

“You don’t need to worry about a thing, Junie!” Athena calls after her, and between coughs, in her tiny voice, she thanks them again, and then she, and the other officers and Fulbright, are gone, and the door closes on the silent hall.

The first person to make a sound is Hugh, with a derisive snort. “Please. Like rank amateurs are going to be able to handle this case. I’ll get this solved and have it under control for Juniper’s sake.” He turns, hands still in his pockets, and stalks toward the doors behind one of the mock trial benches.

“You don’t even have a badge!” Athena shouts after him. “And I do, you smug little—”

Whatever her particular choice of insult would be, she is drowned out by Robin, also yelling after Hugh, and then running after him. “Totally rude, man! And I’m in this too, don’t you forget it! I’m gonna save Juniper!”

Athena places her hands over her ears and leaves them there a moment, until both of them are also gone, and silence returned to the hall. Just the two of them now, in over their heads with another case and client. “The mock trial,” Athena says finally. “You said that it was all kind of like the real murder?”

“It was almost exactly like what we know of the real murder,” Apollo says. “The body probably having been moved to the crime scene, the arrow as the weapon, the - the stage wasn’t set up yet in their mock crime scene photo, but—” Is he missing a detail? He’s still pretty sure he’s missing something. Rope, was there a rope? No, he’s just assuming because of the bruising on the victim’s wrists in the real crime scene. “I’m going to start scrambling the two in a minute. I wish you’d seen the mock trial, too, or we had a script, so then we’d be sure we’ve got all the details right.” Fulbright mentioned the script, so it’s probably part of police evidence now, and way out of their hands. And by the time they’ll be able to talk to Juniper again, she’ll have gone through questioning by Prosecutor Blackquill and who knows what state that traumatic event will leave her memories in. “It’s not like I took notes on the mock trial or anything.”

Who could have thought it would be this direly important?

Now that everyone else is gone, Athena’s bold, decisive confidence is falling apart, and her shoulders slump, almost like she’s deflating. “We’ll write down what we know for sure and then come back to this later,” Apollo says. This is Athena’s case, and she’s going to need to take charge, but he’ll give her a few moments longer to come to grips with their situation. “Then we’ll need to—”

“Or, Herr Forehead, we could just take a look at the script now, ja?”

Apollo nearly smacks him in the face. It’s not Apollo’s fault, really, because Klavier could have given him warning, and how was Apollo - how were Apollo’s reflexes - supposed to guess that he was right behind him? It’s Klavier’s fault for putting himself right in arm’s range of a startled defense attorney and deliberately startling him. He’s got no reason to look so offended that Apollo nearly hit him.

“Prosecutor Gavin! What are you doing here? And how did you—”

He remembers that Klavier attended Themis when he was younger, yes, and he’d wondered if along with Phoenix, there had been a prosecutor invited to lecture, just for equity - but that doesn’t explain why he’s here in the lecture hall, and in his hand, a professionally-bound booklet that, on the front, reads submission by Juniper Woods. “Is that the script? How did you get that?”

Klavier winks. “I just so happened to borrow it for you, Herr Forehead. And not even a word of thanks?”

“So you aren’t supposed to have it. Just to clarify.” Apollo glances around the hall, knowing he won’t be surprised if he spots a certain faery dog in the vicinity. If Vongole picked up something and ran off with it, would the ordinary person just see a floating object, or does what the invisible-to-most hound picks up turn invisible with her, too?

“Ah, I’m sure we’ll get it back before it’s noticed to be missing,” he says. Definitely stolen, but maybe he took it himself, ghosting in and out of wherever the police have their evidence piled up.

“So is anyone going to introduce me, or are you just gonna leave me hanging?” Poor Athena, left out of the loop again. “I guess you know this guy, Apollo?”

“Why hello there, Fräulein. I don’t believe we’ve met before.” And there goes Klavier turning on all the rock-star charm, a brilliant smile and his accent falling on thick. “I believe I would remember your face.” Apollo rolls his eyes. Typical Gavin. Athena doesn’t seem entirely taken with him, yet, but she’s definitely relaxing from her earlier frantic nervousness. “My name is Klavier Gavin. I’m a prosecutor, though I was rather more famous for my band, the Gavinners. Regrettably the band went, ah, kaput, last year, but I was the lead localist. Perhaps you heard of us.”

“Gavineers,” Athena repeats. “No, sorry, don’t know it.” She pauses for a moment, considering something that Apollo expects to be smarter than what she actually says. “Can I have your autograph anyway?”

Klavier laughs.

“No, Athena, don’t encourage him. His ego’s already the size of Jupiter.”

“Ach, jealously hardly becomes you, Herr Forehead. And you’ve no reason to be - you’re the one always being trailed by the lovely Fräuleins, ja?”

“She’s the new lawyer at the Agency,” Apollo says irritably. It really is so much easier to like Klavier with no one else around, no one he’s putting on a show for, putting up this facade. It feels - almost dishonest, and like Apollo’s talking to someone entirely different than the man he knows, or thinks he knows. And it doesn’t surprise him that he’s currently dealing with this version of Klavier, especially because they’ve already failed this month to deal with the elephant on the calendar. It’s been a year since they watched Kristoph break down into the changeling shadow of himself, and a year since Klaver told Apollo everything there was to know about him and his brother - and Apollo texted him about it, earlier in October, and Klavier refused to engage. Threw up a stone wall and Apollo has no idea why he’s so much less willing to talk than he was in April. Now they’re face to face and Klavier’s just playing the vapid Eurorock flirt, and Apollo can’t even wring his goddamn neck because he has a case to deal with instead.

“I’m Athena Cykes! Nice to meet you!” She extends a hand and Klavier slaps the mock trial script into her palm instead. He does give her a little bow of his head, saving her from looking too off-put, and she turns her attention to the script. “So this is Junie’s script?” she says. “The one the actual crime is like.”

“I figure we could give it a little mockup of our own,” Klavier says, sweeping a few loose strands of hair behind his ear. “With myself as the prosecution, of course, Herr Forehead as the defense, and you, Fräulein, to fill in as both judge and defendant.”

“So like a mock mock trial,” Athena says. “All right! I’m ready to go!” She flips open the script and starts paging through it. “Let’s see, what do we have for evidence…?”

“And you, Herr Forehead? Ready to rock?”

“No,” Apollo says. “Why can’t we just, you know, look at the mock trial script and just read it?”

“Ach, but where is the flair? The drama? To the bench with you!” He plants his hand in Apollo’s back and shoves him off toward one of the mock trial benches. Athena has already taken her place at the witness stand, her nose in the script book.

“You are insufferable,” Apollo mutters, and he regrets saying it - or that specific choice of word, or using that word earlier because that’s more how he tends to describe Klavier, not Clay - because Klavier doesn’t seem to hear him, and Athena’s head snaps up and she shoots him a look, and then tosses another pointed one in Klavier’s direction. Apollo shrugs. Athena’s not the one that reads body language. If he doesn’t say anything she can’t hear anything. She flips to the next page of the script and pulls a few photographs out from where they were wedged.

“Achtung, baby! Let’s rock!”

The murder is really, really just like the mock trial. The body was moved from the location of the murder (the art room in the mock trial, currently unknown in the real case) down to the quad (just the stretch of ground in the mock trial, on the stage set up in the real case), where it was found with an arrow in its side. The athletics storehouse lies around the side of the main building, near the art room window, and contains heavily padded high jump mats and ball carts, which would allow the body to be tossed out the window without showing signs of trauma and easily moved. The real murder weapon wasn’t decided in the mock trial - it wasn’t the arrow, Robin argued, and the mock autopsy report agreed - but Klavier suggests it’s an awl from the art room. The mock trial script has several photos packaged with it, including the awl, the one Juniper had in her pocket.

“I hope that was just paint on it,” Athena says, pressing her lips together. “It’s scary how similar this is.”

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Apollo says. He believes in coincidence, but not to this extent. “I guess we should investigate the art room.”

“I’ve got to sneak that script back, so I might as well check up on whether the police have gotten to that.” Klavier leans onto the bench, propping up his head on one hand. “What’s your next move, Fräulein and Forehead?”

“Wait, wait, hold up!” Athena yelps. “I need to finish scanning the script! I want to have a copy of the whole thing!” She has laid it out flat on the stand, and Widget is lit up, recording everything in front of it and projecting a screen to the side, where she is checking her photos of each page to be sure they are readable. “And then we’ll - we’ll - Apollo, what should we do next?”

“Start by interviewing everyone who might be related to the case,” he says. “Hugh, Robin, definitely - Mr Wright might be able to tell us if Professor Means has anything to say - and we’ll ask around to see if there are any other witnesses.”

Athena nods vigorously, and as she continues her work with the script she bounces on her feet with nervous energy that once again collects within her, the tension in her shoulders and the deeper furrow of her brow, anxious to get moving again. It might be a miracle if she finishes her task with the script without bolting off and chasing the need to feel like they’re making tangible progress. Klavier at the other bench has gone silent, and now that Apollo thinks to look, takes a wide glance around the hall, he spots Vongole stalking about the edges of the room, the way she did in the courtroom a year ago, circling silently and ceaselessly. Could Athena see her? Apollo doesn’t know what the pattern is for who can and can’t, and he isn’t sure he wants to.

Instead of a lot of things he could say, he goes over to the other bench and says, “You’re in an awfully helpful mood today.”

“Am I not supposed to be? Shall I keep all of my information to myself, though I am not the prosecutor, and this not my case?” He straightens up. “We have the same goal, ja? To find the truth of who killed the professor.”

Is that the goal of a defense attorney? The truth, or to save their client? Is that the goal of a prosecutor? The truth, or to get justice for those wronged? Should all of those be the same thing? “Did you know Professor Courte?” Apollo asks. Athena closes the script book but doesn’t move. Her intent stare, and her head tilting this way and that like an owl, tells him she’s not just waiting for the answer, but waiting to analyze it.

There is a moment after the question when Klavier slips, when even his powers of glamour don’t hold up, and actual, real, emotion finds its way across his face. He looks exhausted, he looks distraught, and Apollo has barely a moment to take it in, to process that pain, before it is gone, smoothed over and replaced by Klavier’s neutral expression. And more than neutral - more like he’s ratcheted the glamour up a few more notches, bright and gold and hard to tear his eyes off of Klavier’s face, but impossible to get even a glimpse of the actual person and feelings behind it. “Ja, I knew her. She taught the judges’ course, but she made some of her classes available to all students, and I was fortunate enough to be able to take some with her before I went to study abroad.”

Athena’s eyes narrow into a suspicious squint. So what she’s hearing is definitely more than yeah, took a couple classes from her a decade ago. Apollo guessed as much. He remembers Klavier talking about Themis, about a professor he had there, one who if not knew what he was and what the fae had done to him, had guessed by knowing enough about the fae to notice his horrible high-sodium dietary habits. Apollo opens his mouth to mention that.

Whether Klavier notices that, or notices Athena’s expression, or was just steeling himself for a second and always intended to keep talking, he adds, “She was a brilliant woman. Always concerned with truth and fairness and the proper means to an end, and determined to dig out corruption wherever it could be found. I’ve rarely known a more honest person, or a better one. I had not seen her for quite a while and had expected to speak with her again as I came back here. And now…”

Athena’s face falls. She raises a hand to brush aside her bangs and surreptitiously wipe her eyes. “So,” Klavier continues tersely. “I have as much reason as you to want to be sure that we find her real killer, ja?”

What to say to that? I’m sorry is hollow as it ever is, and the best Apollo can do - the only thing he can ever do - is to investigate, find the truth, expose the murderer. He and Athena should get moving again, but he doesn’t quite want to just leave Klavier alone now either. Not with the grief that keeps flickering across his face, a different kind of grief than before: Kristoph and Dayran were murderers. Professor Courte was murdered.

“Were you going to be giving a lecture like Mr Wright was, too?” Athena asks, offering the script book back to him.

Klavier takes it and idly thumbs through the pages, stopping on a photograph stuck between two middle pages, of Professor Courte lying in the dirt holding an arrow to her side, posing as the mock trial corpse. “Ja, and a concert as well. You saw the stage outside? That was to be for a bit of a reunion performance of the Gavinners, just this once, one last time.”

“Really?” Apollo asks. “I didn’t expect you’d just—”

He and Klavier never spoke about the band, the break-up, and Apollo had just assumed what it was about. No replacing Daryan, and then, after Kristoph, Klavier reevaluating everything, re-prioritizing, figuring out who was Klavier Gavin, and what was he, prosecutor or rock star? Or something like a crisis of faith. Of identity, though honestly, given what he knows, he thinks Klavier can’t really afford to get hung up on identity crises because that’s his whole life.

“Ja, well, the school asked, and suggested having a student representative up to sing one song, and at that point I could hardly refuse someone the grand opportunity to get up on stage there with me, could I?”

He winks, leaving Apollo more the fool to have expected something meaningful from him. “Oh! That was going to be Junie, right?” Athena asks. “Had you met her before? She’s a real sweetheart! She would never kill anyone!”

“We exchanged a few emails discussing song selection and other such things, but I am hardly the man to determine whether she did what she is accused of.” Klavier waves a hand, feigning a casual dismissal of Athena’s statement, when his own response is, knowing his history, anything but casual. Athena’s face darkens, but she perks up a moment later as he continues, “As I am neither prosecution today, nor ever the defense, I will refrain from judgment, and simply do my best to help you find the truth. That is an acceptable agreement to us, ja?”

“Ja! Danke! Whatever help you can give us would be fantastic!” Athena says brightly. “Thank you so much!”

Klavier grins back at her. First meeting of the Themis German Language Social Club, call to order. One day they’re going to need someone who knows Khura’inese and then they’ll all be sorry. (Ha. As if.) “Best we all get back to investigating, but I won’t say goodbye, as I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again. Bis Später! Herr Forehead, Fraulein.”

Vongole follows him up the stairs out of the lecture hall, close at his heels, confirming for certain that Athena can’t see the fae dog. “Au revoir!” Athena calls after him, and even still down on the floor, Apollo hears Klavier’s laugh.

“Huh, German sounds different than I remember,” Apollo says.

“Always the critic,” Athena says. “Prosecutor Gavin seems like a pretty good guy. Really friendly. It’s kind of nice, to be reminded that’s possible - I mean, I know, like Mr Wright and Prosecutor Edgeworth, and Prosecutor Debeste was very friendly too, but—”

“And then we’re against Prosecutor Blackquill for this case.”

Athena sighs. “And then,” she echoes, wearily, crossing her arms, “there’s Prosecutor Blackquill.”

“I’m afraid, by orders of Prosecutor Blackquill, that no one not affiliated with the police’s official investigation is allowed in here right now!”

Fulbright’s broad shoulders block off almost all of the doorway of the main building’s third-floor art room. Behind him, Phoenix gets a glimpse of some colorful mobiles hanging from the ceiling, several officers bustling about between easels, and, very likely not affiliated with the police’s official investigation, Prosecutor Gavin. Frozen with wide eyes, he stares at Phoenix, and then as an officer passes by barely an inch from him, he hops to the side, landing on one foot and bouncing to the other, deftly maneuvering himself between people who have no idea he is in their midst. “So Blackquill is the prosecutor on this case?” Phoenix asks, and it takes all of his years of practice to keep a straight face with Klavier, over Fulbright’s shoulder, making a slashing motion across his throat. Definitely not supposed to be there.

“I am here, am I not?” Fulbright asks. “Prosecutor Blackquill and I are a team! Which is to say yes, he will be prosecuting!”

Does Blackquill consider them equally a team? Somehow Phoenix doubts it. Though, all considered, the detective seems to like Blackquill well enough, which makes him someone Phoenix should try and talk to. He’s only going to learn so much about Blackquill from facing him in court, or talking to Edgeworth. What of the detective who has to be his eyes, ears, and hands on the crime scene?

(Although, as far as eyes are concerned, Phoenix tries to peer at the window to see if, by chance, there might be a hawk sitting on the outside sill.)

“I thought the crime scene was down at the stage,” Phoenix lies. The lack of blood beneath Courte’s body refutes that suggestion. “What are so many officers doing up here?”

“I’m afraid I’m not allowed to say,” Fulbright says. That’s a pretty good hint that they think this is a place of interest, and that they’re looking at it as, possibly, the real scene of the murder. “If you would, Mr Lawyer, please leave us to our work.”

“All right,” Phoenix says, catching Klavier’s eye. Kid still looks like he thinks the eye contact is a preamble to being hit by a train. “I’ll just be heading out that way.” He tosses his head back down the hall and with that, does as he is asked and leaves, and immediately after turning the corner he parks himself there and leans up against the wall. Just out of sight, but the stairs and elevators both lie beyond him, so anyone leaving or going to the art room passes right by him. And he waits there with his magatama burning a hole in his pocket, metaphorically; if it ever does anything, it gets cold, like ice against his skin that will never melt with his body heat.

The minutes tick past, and then, finally, the hellhound rounds the corner first, tall, tall as Phoenix has ever seen her, but still wispy, barely corporeal, head held low yet almost eye-to-eye with Phoenix, her empty red ones and his blue. Klavier follows a moment later, all gleaming shining gold like the sun shines only on him, like different light illuminates him than the overhead fluorescence of the academy hallway. Funny, how Thalassa looks like dusk, a rich blue and starlit night, while it’s the daylight that glows out from under Klavier’s skin. The same, and not at all; two sides of the sky, and the magic in the very air of the Twilight Realm soaked through them to make them so.

But Klavier’s eyes still gleam that haunted blue that says every way he turns his head, he expects to see fae, or just fears that he will. Balanced on a knife’s edge between paranoid and justifiably so. “What’s the word in there?” Phoenix asks.

When he stops looking with the Sight, everything about Klavier goes dark, dull, desaturated, gray and tired. Lines under his eyes like he hasn’t slept well in weeks, and the color sapped from his face by that same exhaustion, he’s two different people when the magatama cuts through the bright glamour that a changed child effortlessly breathes. A star, and the black hole it left when it burnt out.

“They think it’s the location that the murder actually took place,” Klavier answers. “Luminol reactions detected traces of blood on the floor that was wiped away. The suspect’s script also had the art room as the most likely scene of the crime, so they are only further convinced of her guilt.”

“Planning out a murder in advance so well that it gets chosen as a mock trial case.” Phoenix shakes his head. “Hell of an argument the prosecution is making. But that’s good to have confirmed for sure. Any talk about a motive?”

“None that I heard.”

“Not that they’ll necessarily need a motive, with this other evidence looking like it does,” Phoenix muses, “but Prosecutor Blackquill will probably figure out something anyway. I wonder what Ms Woods’ grades look like. She’s probably a smart kid” - her script was the one chosen, and she’s Student Council president too - “but that’s the first place I’d look if I was trying to figure—”

“How can you do this?” Klavier asks.

“What?”

“Just stand here and - and talk to me like nothing happened! I ruined your life!”

“Is that what you think happened?” A year ago, the only time they’ve seen each other since that unfortunate, life-changing trial, even with Vera, Trucy, and Apollo around as a buffer, Klavier still ran from him. Phoenix knows that this is exactly what Klavier thinks. Guilt wouldn’t have him running and hiding otherwise. “I don’t think the truth of that matter is as clear-cut as that.”

“Don’t—”

“If I held a grudge against everyone who inadvertently, or with good intent, helped a bad actor’s ploy to ruin my life, I wouldn’t have any damn friends left,” Phoenix interrupts. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. He would still have Larry and Maya - but Edgeworth? Pearls? Iris? Vera? Trucy? For Redd White, Morgan, Dahlia, Kristoph, their hands on the strings, knowing how to play a perfect prosecutor or a family member against their latest target.

(And Kristoph and Dahlia may be too alike, poison and betrayal and petty pride and a devil’s horns, but Iris knew exactly what her sister was. Iris consciously chose to help her manipulate and lie because she wanted to stop her from killing anyone else but didn’t want to see her caught for her crimes. She was a well-intentioned accomplice who knew exactly what she was doing to help her sister. Klavier had no idea. Phoenix would be a damn hypocrite to forgive one and not the other.)

“Don’t - don’t patronize me, just because I’m not one of your little band who can see lies.”

Phoenix swallows, forcing down a strange and foreign anger that bubbles up from his stomach. Is it because he’s hearing someone else’s voice when Klavier speaks, someone they’re both conspicuously avoiding mention of. “Dammit, Gavin, I’m not. Look at me” - he motions to his chest, to the cursed necklace mark imprinted around the base of his neck, that he knows Klavier can See with his marked eyes - “and tell me that your brother was the first person to hate me enough to not care who becomes collateral and who gets used!” He drops his hands to his sides and they smack against his legs. “I’ve been here before, and I’m not lying to you, and I don’t hate you or blame you.”

“You don’t hate me,” Klavier repeats, his voice dead and dry and wholly accentless. Does he do that on purpose? Or is it an accident that it slips, that he sounds just like - like him. “You don’t hate me, of course you don’t, I’m to believe that, yes? Then do you always carry that magatama with you?” He tilts his head; his eyes don’t waver from that grayer shade of blue. “Or that’s just something you happened to grab knowing that I would be around.” He leans forward a few inches so that he’s closer to looking Phoenix in the eye. “Couldn’t let me get past you. Couldn’t bear the thought of something slipping out of your control.”

“Are you sure you’re still talking to me with that last bit?” Phoenix asks. Or does he just want to bait Phoenix into reacting to the comparison - does he want to make Phoenix hate him for these things he’s saying? Does he want Phoenix to hate him, to hate him for his part in what happened as much as he hates himself for it. “Yes, I did bring my magatama along because of you, but I was going to lend it to someone.”

He’s got no way of knowing how Klavier is going to react - especially since they don’t know who killed Courte, who to blame, who to hate and hold responsible, but Phoenix, Phoenix is right here, and Klavier already lashing out at him as the specter of his guilt and everything that went wrong - but he knows he needs to say it. “Professor Courte gave me a call last night. We were supposed to meet earlier about the lecture, but she also admitted to me that there’s a particular someone who she was worried was avoiding her, for whatever reasons he might think he has, and she asked if I had any way to help her be sure that he wouldn’t be able to slip away without her getting a chance to chat with him.”

The last of the light bleeds from Klavier’s face; something dies behind his eyes. “She’s worried about you,” Phoenix says, realizing as the words emerge into the air that there is a problem with the statement, and Klavier blanches, hearing it too. “She - she was. I’m sorry.”

Klavier’s nod of acknowledgement is a shallow motion, and his face pinches together like he fears moving too fast will make him sick. And then he bolts for the stairwell, flinging the door open and disappearing inside.

“Klavier—!”

The door slams with a force that shakes the hall. But the hound remains there in front of Phoenix, looking at him, as though she’s waiting for something. Seeking some kind of help or reassurance Phoenix doesn’t know how to offer.

Over behind the main building, beneath one of the art room windows, they find Robin Newman high-strung and lamenting - loudly, furiously - the fact that as a prosecutor there’s nothing he can do to save Juniper. The police investigation at the stage is ongoing - they tell Apollo and Athena to go away because students aren’t allowed to be snooping around, and Athena gets fired up and Apollo has to urge her away before they have a Nine-Tails Vale redux but with more witnesses. Stomping away and telling Apollo that they’ve just got to come at this from another angle, literally, to hide and eavesdrop, Athena stumbles into a conspicuous cardboard box that pops up to reveal itself to contain a student - Myriam Scuttlebutt, one of Juniper’s classmates in the judge course, by what of the uniform they can see not hidden beneath the box. It has arm holes in the front so that Myriam can have a fuller range of motion. It’d be impressive dedication to snooping if she wasn’t the one who wrote the trashy campus tabloid and its slander about Juniper, and if she hadn’t just tried lying to Apollo about being Juniper’s friend to get information on the case. As it is, she’s annoying.

She’s the prosecution’s witness for tomorrow. Blackquill has bagged a girl in a box who hisses like a snake, and when the sunlight hits one of the punched-out handholds in the box, the place that presumably Myriam sees through, her eyes catch the light and glow like a deer in a car’s headlights.

Human eyes don’t reflect light like that.

Surprise isn’t even an emotion that Apollo feels in these situations anymore, just resignation. Maybe Blackquill will say something tomorrow that drops a hint. Maybe Phoenix will sit in the gallery and be able to tell them. Maybe Apollo is too tired to care anymore.

Phoenix they find again in the main campus building, with Professor Means, who, on finding out that Athena took up Juniper’s defense, tells her that he will do everything in his power to help the case and that if they aren’t finding the evidence they need for the correct verdict, to come see him at once. Phoenix’s face darkens as the professor speaks, and Apollo is glad to know that he isn’t alone in thinking that all sounds mildly shady.

By the time they’ve made this full loop of the campus, they find that Hugh has also circled back to the lecture hall, where he tells them that he actually saw Courte’s body when he was wandering around before the mock trial started, but he didn’t want to say anything because the mock trial would be called off and he knew he had to win because he was going to confess to Juniper when he won. Athena looks aghast, and she doesn’t say why but Apollo thinks he has an idea: that, of all people who could be in love with her friend, it has to be this black hole of egocentrism that took it to the point of ignoring a corpse.

If these are the kind of people that go to a law high school, Apollo will gladly take the college debt instead. (Not that Themis isn’t probably expensive as hell, but. The point remains.)

The autumn sun sinks down through the orange sky as they navigate rush-hour traffic to the detention center. Athena’s leg starts bouncing in the waiting room, enough to disturb Apollo’s chair next to her, and she continues to vibrate as they head in to see Juniper. “I think you can afford to take it down a notch,” Apollo tells her, and she nods even while she continues to drum her heel against the ground. So much for being a bastion of calm to support their client. He just hopes that Juniper won’t really notice Athena’s frantic nervous energy.

Juniper is already on the other side of the glass when they enter, but she sits with her body positioned away from them, her arms folded and her hands tucked away, and her long hair hanging down past her face. “Heya, Juniper?” Apollo ventures, Athena gone silent but still twitching her leg, and all of that movement in the corner of his eye doesn’t help him as he tries to understand Juniper’s body language. She’s afraid, upset, understandable, but is some of that - is she nervous because they’re here now? Is some of her fear directed at them? “How are you doing? We’ve talked to everyone that we could but there are a couple things we wanted to ask you.”

Juniper turns her head. Apollo’s stomach drops; Athena gasps, and Widget lets out a staticky, surprised warble. No word to this emotion - “surprise” doesn’t quite cut it, even with Widget’s yellow background. “I wanted to tell you, Thena. I just...” Juniper coughs into her hand. Her skin has taken up the yellow-green color of a plant that hasn’t seen enough sunlight, and when she pushes back some of the hair that frames her face, she tucks it behind a pointed ear.

When Athena said that Vera reminded her of an old friend of hers, she didn’t mean Juniper, did she?

“I didn’t know how,” Juniper concludes at last, when the silence stretches on without interruption from either Athena or Apollo. “Or if you could still think of me as—” Another coughing fit interrupts her.

“Of course you’re still my friend!” Athena says furiously. Widget lights up red, bright enough that it illuminates the bottom half of her face. “And of course we will still defend you!” She clenches her fists and turns her impassioned glare on Apollo. Does she expect that he’s going to be the weak link? That after Tenma Taro, no, this is what’s too weird? They’ve been working together for a whole six months. She should know him better than that.

“Of course we’ll still defend you,” Apollo repeats, before Athena can kick him or something, like she looks like she might. “You don’t need to worry about that. You’re not the first changeling I’ve defended, anyway.”

“Huh?” Athena cocks her head to the side. They didn’t tell her about Vera - Vera didn’t mention it, and so Apollo and Trucy never did. “Wait, really?”

“I’m not” - Juniper coughs - “a changeling.” She raises her head and finally looks them in the eyes. Her own aren’t the plain red of all the fae’s true forms that Apollo has ever seen, though if he actually thinks about it, that number is only three, Kristoph, Vera, and Iris. The whites of her eyes are still white, and still have dark visible pupils in their centers - it is just the irises that have changed to that bright, distinctive faery red. And thinking back, he definitely remembers noticing that Vera’s ears were large, distinct and almost batlike, while Juniper’s aren’t much larger than a human’s ears, and if they had the points but without her sickly green skin, Apollo isn’t sure that too many people would notice. Her hands, nervously clasped together, lack claws. “I’m half human.”

“Really?” Athena has finally stopped bouncing. Was she worried about some discord she heard in Juniper’s voice, that has now cleared now that she’d admitted this. “How is that - how does that happen?”

“Athena,” Apollo says, “nobody here wants to explain to you how babies are made.”

Juniper covers her face with her hands.

“I know how that works, Apollo!” she yells, her face reddening like Widget’s face reddens into anger. “I’m not asking that! I mean, I didn’t know that was - I guess there’s no reason why it wouldn’t be possible - so you’ve always been like this? Looked like this? I definitely don’t remember that when we were kids.”

Juniper doesn’t lower her hands but pulls them apart so that she’s peering through at Apollo and Athena with one eye. Pink has begun to show through the yellow-green of her cheeks. “I didn’t know when I was younger,” she says. “My grandmother - you remember I live with her, right, Thena? - never said anything until she thought I was old enough to understand, and to be strong enough to consciously hide it.” She bites her lip. “It’s easier if you don’t know, and just believe the whole way that you’re human.”

“Grandmother on which side of the family?” Apollo asks. He’d be lying to say he wasn’t personally curious, but who can honestly say before it happens what kind of information becomes relevant in a trial. They might need to know.

“She - she isn’t human.” Apollo wonders if that’s odd that even someone who shares blood with the fae seems reluctant to name them as they are. “And she warned me that this might happen if I get too stressed or emotional and now—” Another longer coughing fit overwhelms her.

“Do your friends know?” Athena asks. “Robin and Hugh?” Something like distaste hangs evident in her voice on their names. Earlier she told Apollo that all three of them sounded anxious when they spoke about the strength of their bonds, like maybe they really are on the verge of a triangular friendship breakdown, be it over the supposed love triangle or something else. Some other secrets, and she’s worried about Juniper in the middle of it.

“N-no.” Juniper seems especially nervous again, tense across her shoulders and she’s moved one hand to clutch her other wrist tightly enough that her knuckles don’t quite turn white, but a very pale shade of yellow. Close enough to white on green skin. Is she worried what they think of her for not telling them? For not telling even her closest two friends? “I wanted to, really. But I just - I never - I—”

“You couldn’t figure out how,” Apollo says, remembering Klavier talking about that same problem, Klavier telling him that he never even told Daryan, never knew the way to. “I understand completely.”

Athena raises her eyebrows at that - now she’s probably wondering what secret Apollo is hiding, and good luck to her if she ever tries to guess, but Apollo isn’t even thinking of his own situation right now - but Juniper visibly relaxes, slumping in her seat. “And I wanted to tell you too, Thena, as soon as I got to see you again, but you’d been away for so long that I couldn’t even start to guess how you would react. Or if you’ve been away for so long that you wouldn’t even believe me and would just think that I was crazy.” She looks down at her hands. “I think I started, um, showing” - she touches a hand to her face - “during the interrogation, and that prosecutor, Prosecutor Blackquill—” Her head snaps up and her red eyes widen. “Prosecutor Blackquill, Thena, he—”

“He’s a real jerk, I know,” Athena interrupts, “but we’ve beaten him three times before and I’m not gonna let him convict you! I promise, Junie, you don’t have to worry about that.”

She nods. By the expression on her face, that wasn’t all she was going to say, but after a few more seconds of silently looking at Athena, she continues, “He must have seen me this way that you’re seeing me but he didn’t even say anything. And I’m afraid that he’s waiting for some perfect time to reveal it, because—” She stops talking and they wait while she coughs. “Because—” Again, she coughs so badly that she can’t continue through it.

“Are you all right?” Apollo asks.

“Sasha has a heart condition,” Athena says abruptly, and the confusion might have successfully paused Juniper’s fit. “And so did Azura, and they were both selkies. And they said that it’s like, a thing, for people who are magic like that, trying to grow up in the human world.”

Juniper nods. “There’s so much metal and iron everywhere. And here especially. I feel like I can’t breathe in here.” Her shoulders shake as she inhales.

“Being partially human doesn’t help you with that?” Apollo glances down at the ring on his hand and is glad that she didn’t offer to shake hands with anyone when they first met.

“My grandmother said that it’s a genetic grab bag,” Juniper replies. “I guess I’m just not very lucky. But I’m worried that the prosecution will” - she coughs - “that I don’t know how he could know but—” She coughs again, but keeps talking through it, her voice growing more and more high-pitched and strained like she’s running out of air and choking. “But Professor Courte was the only person at Themis who knew this about me.”

She doubles over, wheezing.

She’s afraid that Blackquill is going to turn that into a motive. Apollo gives it some thought and decides there’s no point to reassuring Juniper that even if her glamour hadn’t cracked up, Blackquill would still probably know. That’s not reassurance.

“I…” Athena’s voice emerges faintly and her eyes dart toward Apollo, as though he isn’t equally clueless to how to respond to this revelation. Finally, she repeats, firmly, “We’ll get you found innocent, Junie, I promise.”

Get as much other information from Juniper as she knows about the mock trial and the real case, and then go into the trial tomorrow with their heads held high. That’s all they can do. They have to hope that it’s enough. They’ll have to make it be enough.

#fic: the witches of los angeles #roddy fanfics

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synnefo-nefeli · 7 years ago

Note

For the dribbles, klapollo, "I'm too sober for this"

So sorry I am late for this!!! I didn’t forget! RL has been busy!

***

Apollo knew that eventually, he would have to deal with “that side of” Klavier. It came with the territory of living in LA and dating a celebrity. Apollo would have been okay with it, if Klavier’s celebrity remained solely on the side of the Law- kinda like Mr. Edgeworth. At least Apollo had some common ground there and Apollo was making a name for himself too.

But no, Klavier was very much a celebrity in the “Razzle Dazzle LaLaLand” vein and Klavier remained in contact with his A-Lister friends and the Movers and Shakers of the Music and Entertainment Industry. And while going to mansions out in the Hills, and rubbing elbows with the most beautiful people in the world, would be a dream for many, Apollo dreaded the idea despite him knowing that him being there for Klavier at these events was important/ things that came with the territory of being a good boyfriend.

“It’s going to be fine, Spatzi,” Klavier offered as he drove them past the security checkpoint at the mansion’s gatehouse, “It’s just a party.”

Apollo nervously chewed at his lip watching the scenery drive-by, “At one of the biggest director’s homes in the city.”

“He’s a normal person, Spatz-”

Apollo turned to shoot Klavier a look, “We’ve been on this driveway for like minutes, and the house is nowhere in sight, normal person, my ass Klav.”

To his credit Klavier only offered a gentle laugh and an “ah, ja, this is a little much” and kept driving.

Apollo sighed wishing he didn’t feel an impending sense of dread and social anxiety. It wasn’t fair- Klavier went to all the things Apollo asked him to attend happily, but then again Klavier was a natural crowd-pleaser and an extrovert extraordinaire. He made friends wherever he went.

“You never told me what the party was about,” Apollo offered as the house finally came into view, “or how you know this guy? I know the scenes intersect a lot, but you really don’t have a lot of dealings with Movie Bigwigs…”

“Ah, we know each other from a club.”

That was new. Apollo cycled through his information about Klavier before they started dating. Was he talking about a Country Club? Klavier never mentioned that he belonged or if the Label Record ever gave them access to one- was Klavier holding out on him? A country club would be nice…Apollo’s apartment complex’s gym was rather mediocre…

But Klavier had that intense look on his face; the only he usually got whenever the man was ready to give as good as got in court; as much as Klavier didn’t participate in sports, the prosecutor was incredibly competitive.

He was about to ask about what club Klavier was referring to, but they were pulling up to the valet and Apollo’s door swung open to reveal the attendant waiting for Apollo to exit the Mercedes.

There were a lot of people milling about, and Apollo picked up on the tense feeling that seemed to resonate within the crowd. He wanted to mention it to his date, but Klavier was wearing his steel and cooled expression, not the usual easy-going one as Klavier took Apollo by the hand and lead them to the entrance.

“We’ll stay as long as I need to defend meine crown…we can leave as soon after if you’re not enjoying yourself-”

“Crown?” he asked bewildered, “what is this? What sort of thing are we-” but then they were being swept into the gargantuan house, and Apollo was being introduced to many people he was certain that he wasn’t going to remember their names in the morning.

For the most part it was a typical LA house party. Many beautiful people, alcohol flowing freely and music playing a little too loudly. Totally Klavier’s scene…so why was he acting so intensely…and passing up the alcohol?

“Uhh, Babe?” Apollo offered trying to offer Klavier some of his cocktail, “are you okay?” Was Klavier acting this way for Apollo’s sake? If so Apollo felt badly that Klavier would sacrifice his good time just because Apollo was being socially awkward.

But Klavier waved him off, his typical smile returning, “Later baby, I need meine wits and coordination about me…Ah there is our host. It’s about to begin!”

“What’s about to begin?!”

A large middle-aged man, one of Hollywood’s elite producers and directors wandered onto the stage that was set up between the large speakers,

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to the 25th annual South California Alpha Delta Chapter, AIR GUITAR COMPETITION! We have a roster tonight that is sure to thrill-”

The words drowned out as he looked over at Klavier, who was looking at their host with a look of excited anticipation.

“An Air Guitar Competition? You’re a part of an Air Guitar Club?”

“Ja,” Klavier smiled, “And I’m the reigning champion four years running…und I want to make it five,” he was practically purring.

Apollo frowned, “Wait…this is a thing….how have we been dating and I don’t know this about you?!”

Klavier feigned wounded, “Ach, baby…how do you think I got so gut at it?”

Apollo groaned, “I don’t know…I figure you were good at it because you know, you play the ACTUAL guitar and you’re an ACTUAL rockstar?”

“Ah baby, you’re such a gut and supportive boyfriend. This is why I love you…you always think the best of me-”

“That’s not it, fop, and you know it-”

“Competitors please come to the back to receive your performance number and submit your set lists.”

“That’s mine cue, baby,” Klavier leaned over to kiss Apollo, “be meine lucky charm?”,

A thrill went up withing him, how could he say no to someone like Klavier, despite this most ridiculous scenario. Apollo blushed, “Uh, yeah, sure. I mean of course?”

Klavier gave him another kiss,”You’re the best, mein liebling,” then he disappeared into the crowd of the queuing competitors.

And then he was alone.

“There are seats over there, sir,” an attendant who was in charge of crowd control said and pointed Apollo to sit at a table with people who were more than likely the unfortunate spouses and significant others who had been dragged to support the competitors.

Apollo stood before the table looking bewildered looking between the stage and the new group of “friends for the evening”.

“First time?” a woman with several empty glasses in front of her.

Apollo nodded.

“Let me guess,” another man, Apollo vaguely recognized from a celebrity rag sheet slurred, “he didn’t tell you until you were inside what this is?”

“Pretty much.”

The woman patted the spot beside her, “Come here and drink with us dear, you’re in for a long night. Your boyfriend is favored to win.”

So Apollo sat and found two more drinks set in front of him, “So how much do I have to drink to not have second-hand embarrassment.”

“A lot…just smile and maybe you’ll be cheerfully supportive by the time the costume round starts.”

“C-costume Round?!?”

“Yup, that’s house they get performance points on top of their technical points… so we don’t end up with ties…and stay here longer than needed.”

“There are points?!”

The lights dimmed and a hush went over the crowd as the first competitors took the stage. Strains of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” struck up as the competitors began to guitar “duel”.

It was interesting he had to admit and the competitors seemed to be into their imaginary guitar battle…some of them definitely had the flare to make Apollo forget that they didn’t have actual instruments in their hands.

But then his mind kept circling back to the point that at some point, Klavier was going to be on stage and he was going to have to be his Klavier’s supportive and loving boyfriend throughout this silly thing.

“Another sir?” A waiter asked offering a tray filled with several sugary cocktails,

Apollo took one, “Yes, please. I am still too sober for this-”

The waiter smiled and Apollo almost missed the, “you’re not the first to say that, sir” as the man walked away.

And so Apollo settled back to witness his very glimmerous boyfriend wow a crowd of Hollywood elites, with nothing but attitude, stage presence, and a guitar made of air.

When Klavier eventually took the stage in a dazzling purple sequined number, he was greeted with the cheers and applause as per usual whenever he was on a stage. However, the drunkenly enthusiastic shout of

“KNOCK THEM DEAD! GO ROCKSTAR BOYFRIEND!”

was enough to spur Klavier to a certain and decisive victory.

#klapollo #ace attorney #apollo justice #klavier gavin #writing

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ace-attorney-headcanons · 8 years ago

Text

WAA Shenanigans 2

Okay so I LOVE the idea that the Agency will host “movie/game nights” whenever someone happens to win a case. So I like to think that Phoenix will usually invite friends every once and a while too.

So of course they drink (sometimes) and play party games like Never Have I Ever, Quiplash, and Fibbage (Phoenix is REALLY good at this one).

But anyway, one night they invite Miles and Klavier to the party. So they’re playing NHIE, and Apollo says “never have I ever made out in a broom closet.” When Klavier raises his hand, Apollo raises his arms in the air and is like, “Of course you did! Why did I expect any different!?” And Klavier leans forward laughing and responds with, “You mean to say you haven’t, Herr Forehead? I can change that if you want!” and winks at him.

Apollo, mildly flustered, puts a hand over Klavier’s mouth, turns away, and is like, “ANYWAY! Moving on to the next question!” (and of course Klavier gets a kick out of his reaction) but is immediately taken aback when he sees that Phoenix is ALSO raising his hand. Apollo is dumbfounded and Athena falls out of her seat from laughter. Apollo’s like, “Oh no! Not you too, Mr. Wright!”

Phoenix just laughs and puts an arm on his neck and makes a cheesy grin. He’s like, “When have I NOT done something, Apollo?” And Apollo squints in response and points back at him and just says, “Touché.” (At this point, Athena has tears in her eyes from laughter, and Klavier is cracking up at Athena’s reaction.)

However, the room falls momentarily quiet when they notice the embarrassed look on the Chief Prosecutor’s face and see that he TOO is raising his hand, albeit slightly. And Phoenix wheezes from laughter at their reaction (cause of course he knew about that. He was there!) and at the fact that Miles decided to admit to it. And Klavier is like, “I did NOT see that coming!”

Athena gets back up in her seat, still giggling, and asks, “So who’s the lucky person, Mr. Edgeworth?” And Miles suppresses a laugh, takes off his glasses, and immediately retorts, “A mystery we will take to our graves, Miss Cykes.” And this time its Phoenix that’s crying from laughter cause at this point it’s obvious what happened.

I also love the idea that Miles Edgeworth is REALLY good at Quiplash. Not many people associate him as the witty type, since he tends not to joke around much, but when he plays Quiplash, he is really REALLY funny. He plays to win, and he always does win. It gets to this point where everyone says “if we’re playing Quiplash, you gotta invite Miles Edgeworth. He’s practically undefeated!” (The runner up is Apollo, who is also surprisingly funny. Although everyone has a good sense of humor. I like to think Simon is very good at Quiplash too, but his sense of humor is far more twisted and dark.)

Also, I absolutely feel like Phoenix is incredibly good at Fibbage. Miles simply says, “They finally pandered to Wright’s wishes and made a game for bluffing! It’s perfect!” which gets a laugh out of everyone, including Phoenix.

#ace attorney #phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #wrightworth #apollo justice #klavier gavin #klapollo #athena cykes #wright anything agency #laughter and shenanigans #headcanon #yes i am in fact implying that phoenix and miles made out in a broom closet at some point

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ashrizen · 8 years ago

Text

yeah so uhhh i accidentally wrote like a 1.2k+ word meta about phoenix & the differences between him when we’re playing as him vs as someone else & the reasons behind those differences. woO O P S.

the reason phoenix comes off as so capable whenever we play as someone else & when we face off against him in aa6 — capable to the point where it seems to not just contrast everything we’ve seen of him from his pov but do a near perfect 180 of it ( what with him having figured out the case & having a set plan of action & having prepared witnesses & evidence beforehand ) — is exactly because we’re viewing him from someone else’s pov.

to the world at large, phoenix’s uncertainty & anxiety & admissions to bluffing & surprise at some of his own tactics working are all kept to himself, to the blue text of inner monologue. he could be questioning his own decisions tenfold, yet to anyone else looking at him it would seem that he’s utterly confident in his statement.

the thing is, he has, pardon the expression, a good poker face. when we play as him, we get to see his anxiety & freak - outs, but everyone else just assumes he’s deep in thought rather than internally screaming & thinking “ I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING WHAT IS GOING ON WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE LOVE TO TORTURE ME I AM FIVE SECONDS AWAY FROM CRYING ” ( which sounds like an exaggeration but honestly that is a pretty much perfect summary of the sort of thoughts he has when he’s up a creek without a paddle ) . his theater kid years have served him well, along with the inadvertent practice of general avoidance of open conversations & of poker ( a game notorious for being a game of bluffs, something phoenix even mentions being akin to lawyering ) over the past near decade — he’s a good actor & knows how to look collected.

plus, he actually is a pretty capable lawyer ; he’s certainly grown to be one over the course of the first trilogy. i mean, you don’t amass a reputation of being the “ turnabout terror ” & “ comeback king ” & keep recognition as a brilliant lawyer for like nearly a decade, even through disbarment, on bluffs & luck alone. that doesn’t fucking happen, especially in a country where the legal system seems to have absolutely everything stacked up against lawyers, with them being allowed limited police department assistance & having prosecutors be allowed to speak with ( & thus potentially manipulate by making them omit parts of testimony ) the witnesses, & where the court favors quick trials to convict criminals as quick as possible, going so far as to have a trial length limit of three days & having the judge be the lone decider of the verdict.

& also like, i mean, if people like miles & franziska can admit to phoenix being a worthy rival, someone on their own level, there’s no way the majority of phoenix’s success stems from Luck & Bluffing. don’t get me wrong, he’s incredibly lucky ( interruptions that give extra time, new testimony that was Just what was needed, new evidence that you can spot from a mile away contradicts established testimony, etc. ) & has bluffed his way through parts of trials ( bluffing someone’s guilt to buy time, bluffing about contents of evidence to trick a witness, etc ) , but that’s still a very low occurrence percentage. saying phoenix’s career has had so many successes due to luck & bluffs is like saying that miles edgeworth & franziska von karma, when they lost cases against phoenix, while both being brilliant prosecutors who’ve had perfect win records up until facing him, lost because of Bad Luck. that doesn’t happen. you don’t go years winning on brilliance only to lose due to Bad Luck.

& you know what’s worse ?? despite boosts in confidence when he’s on a roll, a rather big chunk of phoenix’s internal monologue is spent stressing over shit. the guy that’s lost three cases in his entire career ( though the first two verdicts were fair & he had no qualms about them, so technically they’re only losses by name, & the third was lost in a foreign country with an unfamiliar court & legal system & the verdict was soon overturned due to proving his client’s complete innocence ) still second guesses himself & has internal freak outs when his grasp on near victory begins to slip, as though he hasn’t recovered soon after in every single case beforehand.

also, on the matter of his level of capability post!trilogy, when you look at all the facts of the cases that phoenix “ seemed to magically solve while apollo was still figuring it out ” , you have to remember a few things about the conditions surrounding the cases.

in the case of zak’s murder, unlike apollo, phoenix was there at the crime scene & was familiar with all the tricks & quirks of the hydeout, not to mention the conditions of the previously ongoing poker game. he had time for a quick investigation before the police arrived plus prior knowledge to ways one could disappear from the hydeout. that, plus the good amount of time at the detention center he had to mull things over, easily explains how he figured the case out before apollo, who had never been to the crime scene, was informed of the case through kristoph, & only had a few hours to figure out the entire case from scratch.

as for the case of the mishams, his investigation of things in relation to them spanned over 7 years & he’s stated that he’d taken trips to europe due to a friend needing help once in a while, which we can obviously assume to be edgeworth, so it’s highly likely he had help with small details. not to mention, while phoenix may have figured out who done did it, he didn’t yet know how to prove it without a shadow of a doubt & how to use what he’d acquired to show the guilt. he may have figured out who did the deed & collected evidence & information, but he did so over the span of 7 years, &, ultimately, it was apollo & klavier who put together all the puzzle pieces & were able to prove kristoph’s guilt. the mystery of the black psychelocks still remains, & as we learned in aa5, they lock secrets that not even the keeper is aware of, but they’re not impossible to unlock, so there is potential for that mystery to be solved before kristoph’s death sentence is carried out.

but i digress.

aa4 is where the “ magical knowledge of cases ” starts & ends. the cases besides zak & misham’s were solved entirely by apollo & trucy, & phoenix only helped out a little in the meraktis case, & that was just helping the kids get into the crime scene. he did nothing else.

meanwhile, in aa6 when we’re up against him & he has everything ready for the trial, while true that often phoenix doesn’t have all the details & evidence ready, not to mention the witnesses are often not as helpful as he’d like, you have to remember that edgeworth was helping phoenix with the case, being the only other person to know of the blackmailing situation. so phoenix being more prepared than one would expect is nothing unusual when he has someone to help out, not to mention the sense of urgency to perfect the case due to the circumstances that no doubt played a large part in the preparations.

phoenix doesn’t magically become more capable when we’re not playing as him — he’s always been as capable as he is, if more oblivious & clumsy with his work in his first couple of cases. seeing him from an outsider’s pov just lets us see what he’s like without all the internal screaming & uncertainty, not to mention the fact that he’s grown quite a lot as a lawyer since his early years at the practice due to over a decade of experience.

#this was supposed to be SHORT #fu c k #* !! study.#* !! i'm about to end this man's whole career.

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turnabout4what · 8 years ago

Note

36 for Klapollo?

“I wish I could hate you.”

For anyone ready to call out my blatant hypocrisy in using a trope from the Klapollo bingo board I made, my only defense is that this is a very good trope

----

“Klavier, go home.”

“You sound very serious for someone currently laying on top of me.” Klavier was laying on the couch with his arms around his boyfriend, who was using Klavier’s arms to hold up a stack of papers he was reading.

“I am serious. I have no idea how I’m going to win this case tomorrow, and you’re being distracting as hell.”

Klavier kissed the back of Apollo’s head. “If you want me to leave, you’ll have to get off of me.”

“If you want me to get off of you, you’ll have to let go of me.” Apollo shoved Klavier’s arm, which didn’t budge.

“Too bad I don’t want you to get off of me.” Klavier grinned. Apollo answered him with his middle finger. “Ach, I know. I’m terrible and you hate me.”

“I wish I could hate you. It would make my job so much easier.” Apollo tilted his head back to glare at Klavier, who took the opportunity to kiss him on the forehead. Apollo’s hair spikes tickled his neck.

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me today.”

Apollo snickered. “What, that I don’t completely despise you? You make me sound so mean.”

“You are mean.”

“I feel like most people wouldn’t be nice if their boyfriend showed up to their apartment uninvited. Especially if they were distracting them from saving an innocent person from going to prison for the rest of their life.”

Klavier scoffed. “You make me sound so mean. As if you aren’t going to completely wing it tomorrow anyway.”

“I try to avoid winging it if at all possible. It’s not good for my mental health.”

“Yet you still let me in.”

“Well... You’re usually good for my mental health.”

Klavier smiled. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all week.”

“Who knows? Maybe I’ll have some other things to say after I figure out how I’m going to convince this witness to testify about the money she stole five years ago,” Apollo mumbled, looking back down at his papers. “She won’t admit to it if it means she’ll go to prison.”

“Statute of limitations on grand larceny is three years,” Klavier said. “She can’t be arrested.”

Apollo considered this for a moment before shifting to get a better view of Klavier’s face. “Why did that thought not occur to me? I’ve been sitting here for three hours.”

Klavier laughed. “It was the simplest explanation. You never think of those.”

Apollo stared at him with raised eyebrows. “If she won’t get arrested, I’m sure she’ll testify. The defendant’s one of her friends, after all, and it’ll provide the real culprit with a motive...”

He held all of the papers in his arm out over the edge of the couch and dropped them, making a satisfying slapping noise. “That’s it. That’s the case.”

“So, you had some other things to say?” Klavier asked, smirking.

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brokensmileswritings · 8 years ago

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Nerd Poker

Inspired by @georgialeflayart artwork of Strip Poker with Drunk Edgeworth and Plumed Punisher.

I am a terrible person as I was going to write another fic about secret agent lawyers but i have writer’s block.

Title. Nerd Poker.

Rated T maybe.

Phoenix wasn’t exactly sure how this had happened. All he knew was that it was something he has never seen before or willl see again.

What had started as a * friendly* game of strip poker with Maya, Apollo Blackquil and Klavier with drinks had ended up in a full scale argument between an underwear clad Maya and a nearly naked Edgeworth. The argument was about the merits of the Plumed Punisher of Khur’ain verses the untouchable Steel Samurai.

It had started innocently enough. Apollo was on a break from Khur’ain for a week and Phoenix had invited him around for drinks and a catch up session. Somehow a few beers had turned into a game of strip poker ( suggested by a rather merry Klavier) Phoenix was glad Trucy was with Athena and Pearl since he dreaded the thought of Trucy seeing her family in various states of undress. What puzzled Phoenix the most was how they had got Edgeworth. Prime and proper Edgeworth whose idea of spicing up your love life in the bedroom consisted of chocolate sauce and marshmallows. Edgeworth,who always blushed deep red whenever Phoenix saw his husband even without a cravat.

How did they get Edgeworth to agree to play strip poker again? Phoenix deduced copious amounts of alcohol were involved.

As expected, Phoenix was trumping everyone, having only lost his jacket, waistcoat and tie. ( Given to Edgeworth when he complained his neck was cold) Apollo had managed to remain somewhat decent in his shirt sleeves and trousers. Klavier was shirtless, as was Blackquil surprisingly enough. ( Who Phoenix admitted looked very attractive. How had he agreed to this as well? Phoenix just shrugged and figured alcohol) Maya was in her underwear but didn’t care that she was the only woman in the room. Then again, Maya was always up for a laugh or let her hair down after training for so long.

Of course there had to be a loser, who of course was the nearly naked form of Phoenix’s husband. The game had now been abandoned for the current heated discussion between Maya, Edgeworth and Blackquil. Apollo was too busy fighting off a tipsy and overly flirtatious Klavier to even care. Feeling left out, Phoenix did all he could to support his husband’s argument- hold him from behind and mimic his hand gestures.

“ I think you will find, the Steel Samurai is vastly superior to that Khur’ainese knock off. “ Chief Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth slurred, his face flushed from the effects of one to many fireballs.

“ Na ah!” Maya retorted “ I think it is a great homage! Wouldn’t it be awesome to have some crossover between the two heroes?”

“ And ruin the entire premise of the show? PAH! I bet that drivel would sever.. sev... really undermine the.. show. I haven’t been this outraged since I saw the abysmal reboot.” came Edgeworth’s slurred response.

“ You mean Steel Samurai X?” Simon Blackquil chimed in. “ Yes it was a complete travesty and insulted the original. However, I believe Fey-domo has a point. The two should meet up and unleash their power upon a new villain that neither can defeat alone. “

“ YES! That disgusting excuse for a show!” Edgeworth spat. Phoenix had to admit his beloved was extremely adorable when he was drunk. His pale face flushed, his perfect silver tresses slightly dishevelled, and as Phoenix noted, his nipples standing proudly on his milky skin. The attorney had to remind himself that he wasn’t alone since he really wanted to play with them. Twice he had let his hands wander down to Miles’s chest to tweak those perfect nubs but... upon meeting Apollo’s disproving eye, he abruptly stopped.

So Phoenix continued mimicking Edgeworth’s moves to amused smiles until Edgeworth turned around and gave him a drunken death glare.

“ Wright! Grow up”

“ Says the nearly naked prosecutor arguing with my best friend over children’s TV shows.”

“ That’s nearly naked CHIEF prosecutor to you.”

“ Ok I think we had better head to bed.” Phoenix gestured to the small group.

“ Ja..”

“ Good Idea Wright-domo”

A soft snore came from Apollo who was already passed out on Klavier’s shoulder.

“ Yeah.. Nick” Maya yawned in response.

“ I agree.. You may have won that match Wright, but I won that argument” Edgeworth muttered into Phoenix’s neck as he shivered.

“ Yeah yeah.. whatever you say dear.” Phoenix grinned as he helped his beloved husband stand up and escorted him to their bedroom.

#Nerd poker #NaruMitsu #georgialefey #hope you like it.#phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #apollo justice #klavier gavin #simon blackquill #maya fey

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foreheadface · 9 years ago

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AJ: Ace Wizards Chapter 3 under the cut~

I’m pretty happy with chapter 3....

if you guys find anyone’s name that I spelled horribly wrong like Dhurke because I literally always do plz tell me!!!!!!!!

and yes, I still cannot think of a better title than Ace Wizards... gahhhh

this chapter was so much fun to write and read over again because during the sorting is where you kind of get a foreshadow of people the mains will meet/make friends with in the future~ at least, that’s how i’ve always thought of it...

Also, I was thinking of creating a masterlist of these.... even though you can find everything under the tags.... just hit me up if you find these interesting~ this fic is just for fun anyways~

Hours later, the Hogwarts Express reached its destination. Apollo’s brown eyes were glued to the window. They scaled the large castle as the train moved toward it. It was absolutely breathtaking. The castle was huge- probably endless because of magic, he speculated.

When the train stopped in what seemed to be Hogwarts’s personal station, everyone was directed to leave their things so they could be transported to the Great Hall- though Apollo had no idea what the Great Hall was. His eyes wandered toward Klavier and Clay who both lopsidedly smiled at him, giving Apollo an unsettling feeling. Daryan hung behind.

They were directed to some docks over a huge, black colored lake, just off of the station, where they would all get on boats to sail to the school. The scene was exciting, Apollo had to admit.

He watched, with his new friends quite literally in the same boat, as the castle began to grow larger and more mystical and magnificent. He had trouble seeing anything through the fog and the darkness of incoming night but Hogwarts castle certainly lived up and beyond his low expectations, so far.

Being raised by “Muggles” made you easily impressed, Apollo guessed.

As soon as they were off the boats, time passes a blur of movement.

The children had been rushed into the castle. Klavier was loudly talking to Clay and Daryan next to him, but Apollo didn’t notice. There were paintings all along the high walls of the corridors and they were moving. Not only that, but he couldn’t help but notice the structure of the large building. Apollo had never been somewhere like this before. The palace in Khura’in wasn’t even this big , he assumed.

All of a sudden, the large group was stopped. Apollo looked through the audience and saw a taller man at the front with glasses and dark hair. He had a sort of brooding look about him as he cleared his throat.

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” He yelled, toning down the excited eleven-year-olds. He looked tired... Already? It hasn’t even been a whole night yet…

Klavier rustled next to Apollo, so much so that when Apollo looked up at him and saw Klavier’s wide grin. He must know who this is…

“Now, I know all of you are excited and that is all perfectly fine but when you are in here, you must be on your very best behavior! That means no shouting.” He looked into the crowd of eleven-year-olds and pushed up his glasses. “Now when I read your name when I stand at the podium, last name then first, you will step up to the stool where the sorting hat will sit upon each of your heads. Immediately after, you will go to the table you belong to, in an orderly fashion! Do I make myself very clear?”

Apollo glanced around at all of the other children who were nodding and muttering excitedly and suddenly had a sense of foreboding. Wait… What if I don’t belong anywhere?

“Now, If you will all follow me,” The professor said, turning around and leading the class through large double doors. The Great hall was great as in humongous. Apollo found himself wondering how big the castle really was. As he had now been expecting, there were five large tables filled with people. The one that was in the very front facing the entrance, Apollo guessed, were full of teachers and staff members. Each of the other four tables had a lot of empty space where he guessed was room enough for newer students.

As they walked to the side of the room in the organized line, Apollo spotted the man from the train. He gasped.

“What?” said Clay. Apollo only shrugged it off uncomfortably. “N-Nothing.” The man had said he was a teacher, after all.

The crowd stopped, so Apollo stopped. Looking through the crowd, he saw Professor Edgeworth step up to the podium as he had said he would. Then, Apollo felt his anxiety rise again in his throat.

It went just as the professor had explained. He called a name, the child stepped up, and the hat was placed on the head. Then the hat became animated and it spoke! Apollo had jumped with a start, his eyes wide. Then again, this was a magic school. He should have been expecting it…

Then time seemed to move quickly.

One after another, children would be called, then get ‘sorted’ by the hat, then move to the table they were directed to. It was easy to tell which table was which because of the four very large and different colored banners hanging from the ceilings over each table.

“Blackquill, Simon!”

Odd name… Apollo glanced up to watch the dark haired boy walk to the stool. When he sat, the boy looked up and glared directly at Apollo, apparently feeling his stare. Apollo felt a shiver run down his spine.

The hat didn’t even touch his hair when it called out, “SLYTHERIN!” The table with the green banner erupted in cheers.

Apollo bit the inside of his cheek. Great. This was just great. Way to make enemies, Justice. It’s not like I was trying to look at him wrong…

And so, the cycle repeated.

“Crescend, Daryan!”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Cheers.

“Cykes, Athena!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

Cheers.

Apollo stared each time with awe. It was… Cool. And the kids looked happy as they walked to their places at the tables that the other students were joyfully calling them to. I hope they’re okay with me… Apollo lingered at the thought.

“Fulbright, Robert!”

“Gryffindor!”

The blond boy getting off the stool hissed a “yes!” and nearly ran to the table. Apollo heard snickers behind him.

“Gavin, Klavier!”

Apollo turned to Klavier who grinned back at him. “See you on the other side, Forehead,” he said, giving Apollo a winning smile. Apollo felt the corners of his own lips crease up. “G-Good luck.” Klavier nodded and stepped up to the stool.

Oddly enough though, when the hat was on Klavier’s blond head, it said nothing. Apollo looked up from the floor and watched closely. That’s weird… Then the hat began to speak.

“Hm…. Yes… A brilliant mind you have but I do not see you with any of the Ravenclaws… Not fun enough, yes? For you wish for something a little more upbeat…” Klavier looked confused. His head slightly tilted and his mouth opened but he didn’t speak. The hat continued.

“You may be brave, yes, but you lack a certain ‘umph’ for Gryffindor, shall we say? And Slytherin... Well- No, you don’t want that. Though you could be great, you know- wonderful, even. You could rise high above your peers in Slytherin as your brother and father and Grandfather have before you…”

Apollo watched, awestricken. Is this supposed to happen? He noticed Klavier whispering or mouthing something and the hat spoke aloud for him. “Not like him, you say? Hmmmm… Maybe kindness will get you somewhere bigger than Slytherin, then… Yes… I see… I suppose you better go with HUFFLEPUFF!”

The yellow and black table stood up immediately, cheering as the others and it had done before, but Klavier wasn’t smiling. Instead, the hint an unhappy albeit confused scowl lingered on his lips, but he leapt up as quickly as possible and headed for the table anyway. This struck Apollo as... Strange… He tried to get Klavier’s attention again but failed miserably as the blond had already turned away from his direction. Apollo wasn’t even paying attention to any of the other sortings anymore.

Where had he gone? Klavier had disappeared into the crowd of yellow and black robed students. Huh. How easily he had disappeared-

“Apollo! Get up, Edgeworth’s called your name twice now!” Clay’s voice tore Apollo’s concentration away and he turned back with a start. “Wait what?”

“Apollo Justice!” Professor Edgeworth bellowed, looking about ready to throw the scroll of names into the audience of students and grab him by the ear. The other teachers looked amused- especially Phoenix Wright. Apollo felt his breath quicken and sweat roll down his forehead. “I-I’m sorry sir!” he said as he ran up to the podium untraditionally. He heard some laughter from other students but Edgeworth was not amused.

The Professor sighed and went to place the hat on Apollo’s head but it spoke before it even hit Apollo’s hair. “Hufflepuff!”

People began cheering as they did when they got a new student at the table, and Apollo felt a tie being shoved over his head. He could have choked but it happened too fast. Before he knew it, he was sat in an empty place near another first year, a girl with really long red hair with a wide smile on her face and some older kids. Apollo almost looked around the table for Klavier when a hand was shoved in his face.

“Hi! I’m Athena!

Apollo’s head whipped back around to the girl. “H-Hi… A-Apollo…” She took his hand with vigor and shook it. “Are you excited? This is exciting right? I can’t wait to see the dorms! My mom will be so happy went I write to her tonight!” His first thought was that the girl was strange… but he may as well make another friend. It was better to be friends than enemies, Dhurke always said.

“Oh, was she in Hufflepuff too?”

“No, Ravenclaw,” she said with a grin. “But Hufflepuff has great qualities too! Actually, they all have great qualities! C’est genial!”

Apollo blinked. “Wh-what?”

“It’s awesome! So do you know any people here? Did your parents go here?” Apollo took the minute to size the girl up. She had really, really long red hair in a side ponytail in blue ribbons. Apollo wondered if she ever lost her balance just walking. She looked nice.

“N-not that I know of…” he said with a slight laugh. “But I’ve met people on the train… Err… One of them was sorted into Hufflepuff before I was… I wonder where he’s sitting...”

The girl- Athena- scrunched up her face before jumping up in her seat ecstatically. “I’m sure you’ll see him again in the dorms! We go as soon as we’re all done eating! Isn’t that exciting? I can’t wait to get to the common room!! And the Dorm rooms! And…”

Then, the room grew quiet. Apollo looked up to the front table where he assumed the professors and other staffs were sitting when a woman with long dark hair and a large pointed hat and seemingly massive authority clear her throat. Her gray eyes were bright and her face was rather pretty. Her voice was authoritative and welcoming.

“Settle down everyone! Before we begin the feast, let me introduce myself to the new students. My name is Headmaster Mia Fey and I hope for the best for new and old students, alike. I’m sure you will rise above the odds and do magnificent things for the year to come.”

She pushed some hair behind her ear as she spoke. “Secondly but important nonetheless, weekend trips to Hogsmeade will be heavily chaperoned until further notice until the Azkaban escapee Yanni Yogi has been caught and dealt with by the Ministry of Magic. Though there is no need for alarm, we must take several precautions here at the school in order procure our students’ safety, by Ministry’s standards…”

Apollo turned his head toward Athena. “Who?”

She glanced at him and shook her head. “No idea. I saw it in the newspaper earlier this week but my mom wouldn’t explain it to me… Said it was nothing to worry about. Weird, right?”

“…Yeah…”

“Anyhow! The house elves have prepared a wondrous feast for us tonight! I do believe I’ve said everything I’ve really needed to say except that I have high hopes for all of you, this school year!” There was applause all around, students and teachers alike. Apollo found himself clapping as well.

“She seems nice…” Apollo thought out loud.

Athena nodded next to him. “She’s the youngest headmaster in a century! My mom knows all about her!!”

“Seriously? That is really cool…”

At the end of dinner, Professor Fey had directed the Prefects (Apollo had absolutely no idea what ‘prefects’ actually were, what their job was, or why they had it…) to take the first years to the common rooms. Athena talked excitedly the whole way, though Apollo found himself sneaking glances around the other his students to look for Klavier. He was in the crowd of Hufflepuffs somewhere, but he was apparently trying to keep himself hidden. Apollo tried not to let the disappointment show on his face.

The group was now on the same floor as the kitchen as Apollo’s nose caught the scent of the gravy and potatoes and tender beef that had been served and devoured in the feast just now. Even though he was full, Apollo could feel his stomach rumbling for more. Yeah… he could get used to this...

They passed a very large still life painting of some fruit, which seemed a little out of place. A painting, near a kitchen? Won’t all the the heat melt the paint? Also, all of the paintings in the wizarding world moved so still lifes didn’t seem very magical...

The teenager leading the group of first years stopped when they passed by some stacked barrels. He placed his wand on the second from the bottom and began to tap out a tune with his wand that he told the group to pay attention to until it opened up.

“Playing music to get into the common room? Very cool. I can seriously get into that! What about you, Forehead?” Apollo nearly jumped over Athena. “K-Klavier, do not do that!”

Klavier glanced at the prefects and slid his hands into his pockets. “Do what? Call you ‘Forehead’ or sneak up on you?” Athena giggled beside Apollo who was not amused. He deadpanned. “B-both. My name is Apollo.”

The blond smirked back before turning to Athena “Annnd it is very nice to meet you, Fraulein.”

Athena snickered. “Athena.” Klavier sighed dramatically. “Ja, ja… No one likes nicknames, apparently. Got it, got it,” he said with a laugh.

“You disappeared earlier, before the feast. Are you okay?” Apollo asked, crossing his arms. He made sure to observe Klavier’s face very closely.

The blonde only feigned surprise. “What? Why would I not be? You wound me, forehead!” Apollo blinked and cocked his head to the side. I dunno… maybe it’s your sudden mood changes? It’s as sincere as you probably think it is…. He thought. Apollo met Athena’s eyes in a glance and she seemed to be thinking the exact same thing as she fiddled with her earring that looked sort of like a gold crescent moon.

The barrel opened up in the corner of their vision so the group followed everyone else in through the barrel. The path was surprisingly winding, so much so that it kind of reminded Apollo of an ant farm. It led to a large honey colored room that was cozy and warm. Apollo noticed the comfy-looking furniture and various plant-life right away. It immediately reminded him of home.

Amara always kept rare potted plants and flowers that were Khura’inese in origin around the house. He’d always guessed it made her feel like she was still in Khura’in and as he stood in the Hufflepuff common room, he felt like Dhurke and Nahyuta would feel comfortable here, too. He smiled slightly thinking of them.

Athena soon nodded and waved at Apollo and Klavier before she followed the rest of the girls into the girls dormitory, promising that they would all meet up tomorrow at meal times and after classes, if she could find them. That girl was persistent! Then, they both ran to the other side of the room to a dirt hallway marked ‘boys’ and caught up to everyone else.

He followed Klavier in to one of the bedrooms and immediately found his trunk there. He started unloading things from his trunk and putting them away. The carts with all of their things on them had been taken out; things organized how Apollo assumed they were supposed to be. His trunk sat on the floor near Klavier’s.

From the moment Apollo stepped into the room, he had his arms crossed. He observed Klavier from behind until the blonde turned around. “Oh hey, Forehead!” he greeted loudly when Apollo came into the room.

Apollo, not buying Klavier’s ‘enthusiasm,’ blinked. “Are you okay?”

Klavier twisted a silver ring on his right hand. Upon regarding it with a quick but closer glance, Apollo noticed it had a large ‘G’ on it. “Why… wouldn’t I be?” He then took the ring off, setting it onto the dresser and reached into his own trunk. Klavier began pulling out clothes, folding them, and placing them into the dresser near his bed.

“You just seem… I don’t know… down? Since you were sorted. But no- wait… Even before that…” Apollo trailed off, tapping his head. “It’s almost like…“

Klavier spun around. “Like what? I’m fine. It’s really nice down here- much nicer than the cold dungeons in Slytherin anyhow. I’m all right. Can we just leave it there?” Apollo blinked before shaking his head and pressing on.

“But… when you being sorted you also said ‘not like him…’ W-What did you mean?”

Klavier sighed, an uncharacteristic frown donning his face seeing as Apollo would not let this go. “If you must know, Forehead, my whole family was in Slytherin. My mom, my dad, my grandparents, my brother, aunts and uncles, great-grandparents…. It’s sort of a Gavin legacy thing…” he trailed off, going back to unpacking. He took his book bag out. It seemed full already.

“Legacy? Being in Slytherin is that important?”

The blond shrugged and began to move some of his clothes into the wardrobe. “To my father and brother, it is. It’s a status thing for all of the pureblooded families. I can’t really remember my dad but from what Kris has said... He’d probably be very disappointed in me, right now.”

Apollo moved some regular muggle clothing into his own wardrobe. “What do you mean from what Kristoph has said abou… Oh.” Apollo immediately looked away, his eyes falling to the floor, as people often do when hearing that sort of thing. No wonder the two of them stuck together immediately. Klavier was an orphan, too.

“No, but it was a long time ago. I wasn’t even 4 yet! I-I’m not sad or anything! Barely even knew them! It’s fine!” Klavier began to laugh aloud a little awkwardly, but Apollo saw right through that, mostly because he knew that longing feeling tugging at someone like the two of them. Wishing you knew them, even just a little.

“It’s okay to miss them.” Apollo argued, grabbing a pair of pants from his trunk to hang up in his wardrobe. “It’s okay to miss what everyone else has and you don’t. It’s not a bad thing. Sometimes, I’m jealous of my foster siblings for having such great parents. When… I probably shouldn’t be because, I guess they’re mine now too....”

Klavier turned suddenly. “Foster? I thought-”

“That Dhurke was my real dad? Not a chance,” Apollo said, giggling at the thought. He would have run away a long time ago. It was surprising the Nahyuta hadn’t run away yet because he seemed so levelheaded on the outside, so unlike his dad- probably because his mother balanced them out. Even still, Nahyuta was just like his father in a lot of ways, even if he didn’t realize it.

Sure, Dhurke was loud and chaotic; definitely not like Nahyuta at all, but he was also kind, loving, and rebellious. He questioned everything, from why there was a police car outside of the house to what the reason actually was that he had to be punished by going to his room-a quality that was treasured by his father. Though, that was the extent of things.

Yes, Dhurke was a great father but he had his moments of severe craziness more often than not.

Dhurke’s friends and “club”- the Defiant Dragons as they are called, were completely insane and were always getting themselves in trouble and tight situations. Like Datz Are’bal, who was Dhurke’s best friend and didn’t really have the best personality or composure for a lawyer, but tried his hardest anyway (usually) to get his clients off the hook... Though he was still the occasional mooch off on the Samadhis… Amara was getting pretty sick of him eating their food and living in the guest room, that’s for sure.

“He’s a great dad, don’t get me wrong but he’s probably criminally insane,” Apollo said, lost in thought. “Like… Once, he shoved me into a fountain because it connected to an underground cavern. He wanted me to swim to the other side...”

Klavier blinked. “That’s cool though- real cool. What’s so bad about that?”

“I can’t swim,” Apollo deadpanned. “And he knows that. The fountain led into the ocean so I’d have to have been under for at least 10 minutes and swim to a boat waiting for us on the other side. At some point I passed out and he had to come back to get me… Then he proceeded to poke fun at me for it when I woke up.”

In spite of that, Apollo smiled at the memory. He had woken up to Nahyuta screaming bloody murder because he thought his brother was dead. Datz was trying to get the boy to freak out a little quieter so they could get away but Dhurke was laughing his head off the entire time. Apollo would have found it funny too if he had been completely awake and/or wasn’t hurling water into a bucket when he did wake up…“But we were trying to get away from…. Well…” Apollo scrunched up his eyes. “It’s a really, really long story. Dhurke just has his quirks, that’s all.”

Klavier walked over to Apollo’s bed and sat down beside him. “So you aren’t a muggleborn, then…?”

“What?” Apollo cocked his before he understood not even a second later. “Oh, uh… No idea. To know that, I’d have to know who my real parents are, right? And… I can’t remember them…” He looked back at Klavier who was nodding his head solemnly; in the way people normally did when you told them you were an orphan. Only, this scenario was obviously very different.

“Guess we are more alike than we originally thought about each other, eh Forehead…?” said Klavier, looking down at Apollo’s yellow and black bedspread.

“I guess so…” Apollo trailed off. “...But you… You knew your parents a little, though, right? H-How old were you when th-they,” and Apollo pauses and begins allowing himself to hesitantly look up at the other boy, his heart pounding in his chest. Klavier looked at his shoes as he took them off.

Way to go, Justice. What actually gives you the right to ask about his parents? A voice in Apollo’s head taunts. The way Klavier normalized how Kristoph acts towards him should be evidence enough that his parents were probably just the same… Apollo bit the inside of his cheek and pushed these horrible thoughts down.

At first, Klavier’s crystal blue eyes were narrowed and Apollo thought Klavier hadn’t any idea as to what Apollo had even asked. Apollo thought that maybe he could change the subject! Wouldn’t that be something???

Then, the blond pushed his bangs back and smiled. “Seven. Again, I can hardly remember them. The majority of what I know about them comes from my brother or my grandmother, but she’s pretty much in Germany for most of the year.” Klavier’s hand ran all the way through his hair as he said this, curling the short tips in a nervous way. Then, his eyes began to scale the tightly packed dirt wall behind Apollo.

“As far as knowing them… I’ve heard that father was very strict on Kristoph. Like…. He had to participate in Quidditch or that he was punished if he didn’t make straight O’s on his O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts.” Klavier chuckled, sarcastically then looking down at his hands. “-But Kris is perfect so I’m sure that wasn’t hard for him.”

Apollo sighed and lay back onto his bedspread. Family was difficult, he guessed, for everyone. Though that strange girl… Athena seemed okay with her’s and she wasn’t even sorted into her family’s house.

A thought tugged at his mind. What if my parents did go to Hogwarts…? Where were they placed if they did…? Were their parents happy with it…? Would they be angry at my placement?

Surprising to Apollo, Klavier laid down beside him, his elbows behind his head. “Wonder if family is this strange for everyone or just us, ja?”

Apollo looked over at him. “Maybe it is… Or maybe it’s not…”

It was silent for a moment, just two boys staring at a tightly packed dirt ceiling. A small smile appeared on Apollo’s face after a while. “What do you think tomorrow will be like?”

“Don’t know,” said Klavier with a heavy sigh. “All I’ve got to go on is what I’ve from my brother and Daryan’s family… And those reactions are pretty vague…”

Apollo turned his head. “Do they not talk about Hogwarts much? Didn’t one of Daryan’s parents take you guys to the train?”

Klavier closed his eyes. “No. I guess that’s just how it is in historically Slytherin families. But it is school so I don’t think it matters much if it’s enjoyable.”

Did his brother tell him that? Apollo always found school fun, himself… Or maybe, wizards didn’t put their kids into school until they’re eleven? Not that that made much sense…

#AJ:AW #Apollo Justice: Ace Wizards #<3 #Apollo Justice #aa #aa trash

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minyocs · 8 years ago

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Pretty Little Words

100% inspired by Loud Blessings on AO3. I even used the words they had for the Klapollo part. I’m a sucker for soulmate AUs, and wanted to try my hand at this idea. Using my polyamorous relationship that I created for this series.

Claire had always been different from others in one specific regard: she had two sets of words on her body. Everyone she’d ever met only had the words of one person, their soulmate, if they had words to begin with. Not everyone had them, but they were as common as those with words. But nobody she ever knew had more than one set. Her parents had each other’s words, cheesy as they were. Her friends in school only ever had one person’s words. Claire had two, neither of which she could read. One was in German, her mother had told her when she was young. That was how Claire, at the age of seven, had found herself in a library with a book cracked open so she could learn the meaning of Du bist ein Lebensretter, Spatzi. Being called a life guard didn’t seem to make much sense to her, and certainly didn’t sound very romantic, but Claire figured it would make sense when her soulmate said it. These were traced across the middle of her back, right where the band of her bra would sit as she grew older.

The other set of words was really more of a bunch of characters in a language neither she nor her parents had ever heard of. Even her daily excursions to the library had not turned up anything in the way of answers. The neatly, very precisely traced characters made a pretty little arch over her hipbone, barely peeking over her pants. This was the one she showed people if they ever asked about her soul mark, and ever more than a character or two. Her two sets of words were special to her, and they weren’t for anyone else to see or judge. Every night before bed, Claire would stand in front of a mirror and stare at the words on her hip and back until her mother — and later, just her father — called up for her to go to sleep.

***

She met Klavier at Themis Academy when they were just teenagers. They had hit it off right away, and Claire was ecstatic to learn that he was German. He interspersed it in their everyday conversations, but he never said the words that were on her back. Claire grew to care deeply for Klavier over the years they knew each other, and then he moved away to study in Germany. They promised to keep in touch — and they did, really — but Claire found herself thinking it was for the best that he’d never said the words she’d been hoping for. They were better off being best friends, she told herself. It would be silly to get other feelings in the mix, especially when she had other words tattooed on her body as well. She’d shared them with only Klavier, making him promise to ask around while he was traveling. He had then shared his own words, stretching across his stomach in the same foreign characters. They exchanged phrases and promised to ask around for each other.

“I feel like I’m never going to see you again,” she admitted through teary eyes as she was seeing him off at the airport. Klaiver hugged her and promised that wouldn’t be the case.

Then Klavier came back from his studying in Germany and won his first case in a brilliant flourish that left the great Phoenix Wright disbarred, just as Claire was graduating from Themis herself. Klavier started up his band, and insisted on Claire joining. She declined, but still made music and debuted with him. She swore to never play a show without Klavier after that first night. She started dating Daryan in 2020, about a year after the band started. A year later, she broke it off and Klavier had almost gotten into a fist fight with his Second Guitar. Klavier had always been so protective of her.

***

In 2026, Claire met Apollo Justice shortly after Klavier had. She thought he was cute, and she loved his passion for finding the truth. She would be lying if she said he hadn’t inspired a few lines of songs she wanted to write. They didn’t get very far for years, but she would find inspiration for a few lines at a time whenever she duked it out with him in court. Apollo was a challenge, and she loved it. But Apollo had sent Kristoph to prison in his very first case against Winston Payne. Kristoph absolutely deserved it, but it had been a blow to Klavier, and that was what had upset Claire to begin with. Then Daryan was sent to prison. And then Kristoph was, once again, convicted of first degree murder in the Misham case. Claire had been in the gallery for that last one, and had seen firsthand how Klavier had fallen apart behind his bench. But she couldn’t find it in herself to hate Apollo for his hand in these chain of events. He’d pushed forward to find the truth, and Claire couldn’t fault him for that. All she could do was comfort Klavier in the weeks that followed.

She didn’t mean to offend Apollo when she’d invited him for coffee almost a month. As it turned out, Apollo had already heard the words of his soulmate, or one of them, he’d admitted.

“Wait. You have more than one?” Claire asked in shock.

“Yeah. I know it’s kind of weird, seeing as nobody else ever has,” Apollo admitted with a shrug, like this was a conversation he was used to having. Claire had never admitted to anyone her own pair, not even to Klavier. He only knew about the one on her hip.

“I’ve never met anybody else with them. I’ve never told anyone about mine.” Now Apollo’s eyes were wide with intrigue. They seemed to get that way quite often whenever he interacted with Claire. It made her feel like she had butterflies in her stomach, not dissimilar to the way she felt whenever Klavier tried to protect her.

They didn’t share what their marks were. Both admitted that they were in places that were a bit too conspicuous for somewhere as public as a coffee shop, and that they were too personal to be sharing until after they had found their soul mates. They both agree to save the conversation for when they’ve found both of their soul mates.

It turned out that a month later Claire, Klavier and Apollo would all try their hand at a polyamorous relationship together, and it started off swimmingly.

***

“Du bist ein Lebensretter, Spatzi,” Klavier whispered as he hugged Claire as tightly as he could. It had been six months after Kristoph’s conviction, and Claire had just finished writing and demoing her latest song. It would be a while before it would hit the airwaves, but she had wanted Klavier to hear it first. After all, it had been primarily written for him. The skin on her back, hidden beneath the band of her bra, grew warm and tingled slightly, and Claire found herself biting her lips to keep from tearing up. Her arms tightened around Klavier and she buried her face in his shoulder.

“I knew it would be you,” she whispered. Now Klavier chuckled softly as he pulled out of their embrace.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to figure it out, Spatzi. I’ve known about you for a long time now.” He rolled up the right sleeve of his jacket to reveal a sentence in beautiful, dark red, cursive writing. I feel like I’m never going to see you again.

“But… I said that to you…”

“When I left for Germany, ja.”

“So you’ve known all these years. Klavier, that was ten years ago!” For the first time in years, Claire saw him looking sheepish.

“Ja, and you said it right before I left the country. Your words helped me through all that studying.”

“But you showed me-” Claire gasped as realization dawned on her. “You have two. Oh my God, you have two! Just like me! And we both have one in Kura’inese!” Klavier had discovered that much during his travels, and had shared the information with Claire upon his return to Los Angeles. A sudden realization dawned on the both of them at the same time. Claire had to ask the question. “But what about Apollo? He has to fit with us, right? He feels too right for him to not.”

Klavier didn’t have an answer, though he hoped more than he would tell.

***

A year after they had all started their relationship together, Apollo started pulling away. His best friend had been murdered. Claire and Klavier could both understand, to some degree. They tried to be supportive of him, tried to get him to talk to them. He refused every time. It was a difficult time for all of them. Apollo stopped answering his phone calls after a while, so Claire finally took it upon herself to go to his apartment. At the very least, she needed to make sure he was still alive. She hadn’t heard from him in weeks. She was surprised when he actually answered the door for her.

“Apollo, we’re worried about you. Will you please talk to me, at least?” she pleaded. His uncovered eye turned downcast, and she heard him mumble something in a language she didn’t know. She’d never known he was bilingual. The mark on her hip tingled. “W-What did you just say?”

“Nothing. You should go, Claire.” Without another word, he softly closed the door, leaving her out in the hallway alone. With tears forming in her eyes, Claire rested her palm on the door.

“I don’t believe you.” And then she turned on her heel and left.

She didn’t hear Apollo’s gasp, and couldn’t see the way he absently rubbed a hand over his heart.

***

They got lucky. Apollo learned who the true murderer of his best friend was, and he returned to Klavier and Claire with profuse apologies. But not before Claire had written a song in honor of their last conversation. As soon as he’d been able to, Apollo met Claire at her apartment to speak to her without Klavier. What needed to be said was between the two of them.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to you,” he blurted out as soon as he was seated on the couch. “I was too focused on finding Clay’s killer.”

“I know that. You said this before, when Klavier was with us,” Claire answered. She didn’t ask the question that was really on her mind. Why did he need this conversation to be more private?

“We said we’d tell each other… when we found our soul mates. I know who mine are. Or, well, I’ve heard the words of both of them. One was in a crowd, so I don’t know for sure. I’m hoping, but I can’t know for sure yet.”

“But you know one?” Apollo nodded. “I know both of mine.”

“I… kind of figured. Which is why I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that that’s when you had to find out.”

“Are you going to tell me what it means?”

“Huh?” Claire tugged at the waistband of her skirt just enough to show the beautifully painted characters on her hip that now shined in a vibrant bright red.

“Whatever you mumbled. Those were your words for me. What do they mean?” Apollo cleared his throat.

“I, uh, I don’t remember. I haven’t been able to read Kura’inese in years.” His behavior seemed off, but Claire wasn’t going to push it. If he didn’t want to share yet, she would wait. “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting there to be a song titled after the words you gave me.” He was trying to deflect. She’d go along for now.

“I knew I loved you, and you needed to know that. If you wouldn’t talk to us, then I’d make sure it was on every radio station for you to hear.” She gave him a cheeky smile, and all was forgiven. They didn’t show each other the purple ink that they both unknowingly shared.

***

When Prosecutor Sahdmadhi, Claire and Klavier were both surprised to learn he was from Kura’in. Klavier was the one who insisted upon asking about their soul marks. The characters on his stomach were still gray, and Claire still didn’t know what hers had meant. They both hoped that Klavier’s words also belonged to Apollo, but neither could be sure and they didn’t want to jump to conclusions. After all, they already had an unusual situation with them having two marks each. There was no guarantee that they all belonged with each other. Klavier asked about his first, for Prosecutor Sahdmadhi to translate. The words weren’t cryptic, per se, but differing tones could change the meaning entirely. Claire giggled when she imagined the exact exasperated tone Apollo might use to say them. Then Klavier asked about the translation of the characters on Claire’s hip.

“You have my sympathies,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi said when he finished reading the words that Claire had already heard come from Apollo’s lips. “It says May the Holy Mother forgive me for leaving you. I fear these may also be the last words you hear from your heart.” Claire shook her head and smiled softly.

“No. He’s already said these words to me. We are very happy together now.”

“Then you have my congratulations.”

***

Apollo was in Kura’in. He was staying there. Klavier and Claire had to find out from Phoenix Wright upon his return from the country with the rest of his entourage, as Claire liked to jokingly refer to them. But Apollo had been missing from the group, and that had hurt. Why hadn’t he told them himself? Klavier hadn’t wasted any time in calling Apollo once they’d gone home, and he had the call on speaker when Apollo answered groggily. In their rush to get information, they had forgotten about the differing timezones. Apollo apologized for not telling them sooner. There had been a lot of excitement, and he honestly just hadn’t had the time yet.

“We understand, Apollo,” Claire insisted. “And I think I speak for both of us when I say we’re proud of you.” Klavier hummed in agreement.

“It seems like an amazing opportunity for you,” he said. “Just promise you won’t forget about us, ja?” Apollo mumbled something on the other line in another language, and even though neither Klavier nor Claire could understand it, they both knew what he meant.

“Finally,” Claire breathed as Klavier beamed and lifted his shirt to watch the characters across his stomach change from their usual dull gray to the bright, fiery red that matched Claire’s hip.

“As if I could forget someone like you.” Apollo made a surprised sound on the other end of the line. “You know, we had your brother translate our words for us. Is it true you don’t read Kura’inese anymore?”

“Of course it’s you,” Apollo chuckled. “And no. Sorry for lying, Claire.”

“I figured you’d tell me eventually, when you were ready.” The three of them talked for another two hours, before Apollo finally needed to get back to sleep, else he pass out on the phone. Promises were made for a visit to Kura’in very soon, with Claire already on an airline website on her phone by the time Klavier hung up.

#Ace Attorney #Claire Chalmers #my writing

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years ago

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Chapter 27: a short one today, a post-trial wrap-up which includes conversations about nightmares, teeth, poodles, and bad deals. As you do.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

“Do not let Professor Courte’s death be in vain. Proudly carry on your mentor’s legacy and spirit; I have no doubt she would hope for nothing less from each of you.”

“I have nightmares about my teeth falling out,” Robin says. “This is totally not gonna help me get over that.”

“You have nightmares about your teeth falling out?” Hugh asks.

“Oh c’mon, maybe it’s not your nightmare about failing all your tests, but you try and tell me it wouldn’t be horrible if suddenly all your teeth started getting loose in your mouth and you couldn’t get a dentist appointment for months, and then—”

“What?” Hugh interrupts before Robin can get her impassioned dream diary really going. “No, I was asking because I have that nightmare.”

“It’s not an uncommon stress dream,” Athena says. “I can’t tell you why it’s that, but you’re far from the only one - or far from the only two. Not a nightmare I’ve had, though.” She idly flicks her earring, sending the crescent moon swinging back and forth. “Mine are…” She stops moving her finger but the momentum keeps her earring moving. “Actually, I never remember what any of them are. How about you, Junie? Teeth?” Juniper shakes his head. Apollo ponders how that one-word question seems utterly inane if one hadn’t heard the beginning to this conversation. “How about you, Apollo? What’s your go-to stress nightmare?”

Fae-red eyes in the faces of everyone he loved long ago in another life; he grabs Nahyuta’s hand and falls with him down into the rapids and no one saves them this time, Dhurke abandoning them then like he did abandon Apollo a few years later. “Drowning.”

Athena winces. “That’s a rough one,” she says, and Widget adds a consolatory, “Oof.”

“Thena,” Juniper says sternly. “We’ve all had enough stress, don’t you think? Why don’t we take a rest from thinking unnecessarily about unrelated stressful things.” Appearing properly chastened - Apollo needs to learn the trick to getting Athena to feel shame, because he’s never managed - Athena nods and goes quiet. Juniper’s expression softens. “Thank you so much, Thena. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there - how I ever could have made it through such a twisted case without you.”

“Oh, it was y’know,” Athena says, shrugging. “I’m kinda like a pro at this now.”

Three cases now, she’s had to reach such convoluted depths. Apollo has unfortunately been through more and he wouldn’t call himself an expert. But today, he’ll let her have this one - mostly. “I dunno, Athena,” he says, fighting a grin. “You have to admit we were pretty tied up toward the end there.”

“Boo!” Athena yells, which gets Robin going too, but Juniper covers her mouth and turns away, giggling. Hugh rolls his eyes, like he thinks he’s somehow above this. “Get outta here, Apollo!”

“Okay, sure thing.” He needs her for a ride back to the office, but he can make a dramatic show of walking away now and turn up at the car.

“Ah, Apollo, wait,” Juniper says. “I, um, wanted to thank you too. For all the help you gave Thena, always being there for her - and for me. It really helped me keep hope, knowing there was someone else so amazing on my side.”

“Oh, ah, don’t mention it.” He had expected Athena to take all the praise on his one, and he wouldn’t begrudge her it: it’s her first case as lead, and her best friend. “But thanks. I know I’ve still got a lot to keep working on.” Like how to contort his brain in the way Athena did to come up with Statue Charades. “I hope this whole ordeal doesn’t scare you out of law.”

Juniper shakes her head. “Absolutely not.” She sounds firm on this point, her resolve strengthening in the opposite direction of Apollo’s concern. “I want to be able to work with amazing lawyers like you to help people who end up in these situations. I want to be as good as Professor Courte was. I want to do what Prosecutor Blackquill said, and make her proud.”

Oh, to have a mentor whose legacy would be that - all the honest good they did, and nothing else. Not that Apollo envies Juniper (or Klavier) in her (their) grief, never, but he just - wonders. Despite himself. Stupid thoughts like that.

Speaking of Phoenix, he wonders where he has gotten off to and tells Athena he’s going to head out and look. Down the hallway, Myriam Scuttlebutt lurks in perpetual cardboard incognito, peering around a doorway. Apollo doesn’t think she notices him approaching, but she holds up a hand and swings it backward into his chest to make him stop, hissing “Shh!” rather loudly for someone apparently trying to maintain stealth. Apollo should be the mature adult here and shoo her along instead of stopping, but he’s vaguely curious as to what she’s trying to spy on, and he glances out.

Outside of the courtroom, Fulbright never strays far from Blackquill, waits at hand ready for trouble, but he has stepped to the side in a cursory gesture of not involving himself in the conversation. Blackquill, for his part, never looks at him; the gesture on his part is of pretending that Fulbright does not exist at all. Taka sits perched on his arm and he strokes the bird’s feathers as he converses with, of all people, Klavier. Apollo hadn’t quite realized how tall Blackquill is - much as he hates to admit it, most men are taller than him, and he doesn’t pay attention to the specifics of how they would all stack up against each other - but he has a couple inches on Klavier, especially with the way that Blackquill stands uncomfortably straight and upright, and Klavier casually slouches.

“—and far and away a more underhanded technique then I anticipated of you.” If he had to guess, Apollo figures this is a conversation about the forged tape and the analysis of it that Klavier had done. Or maybe he had an idea of how Klavier got in and out of everywhere he shouldn’t have been during the investigation. Or those two things are reasonably intertwined. “I will not make that mistake of underestimating you again.”

“Underestimating me?” Klavier repeats. Weirdly casual is how Apollo would choose to describe Klavier’s tone. Not particularly bothered by - well, everything that there is about Blackquill. What was it that he said, a long time back? “Not unpleasant”? Apollo can’t agree with that on principle. “Ja, you thought this pretty head had nothing in it?”

Very weirdly casual, Apollo amends. To the point that Klavier hasn’t corrected his course away from his usual, what the hell should Apollo even call that? - his usual flirty charm? (For a certain value of “charm”.)

“You aren’t that pretty,” Blackquill says dryly, and with that Apollo thinks he has entered yet another fever dream. His life seems like a series of successive but always slightly different fever dreams, but at least his teeth haven’t fallen out yet. “And I am well aware that you only look and act dumb.” A smirk crosses his lips. Klavier recoils in offense and Apollo can’t tell if it is or isn’t feigned. “No, I based my assumption of your capacity for sneaky tricks off of the fact that you, even as the remarkably intelligent prosecutor that you somehow are, have yet managed to turn one of the Wild Hunt’s own fiercest hounds into a dumpster-diving show poodle.”

Apollo’s heart drops straight through his feet. Blackquill has to be referring to Vongole - Blackquill knows about Vongole?

Beside Apollo, Myriam grumbles something and her arms fall to her sides, her pen no longer at the ready on her notepad. “I give up,” she mumbles, but then she turns toward Apollo, hitting him in the shoulder with the top corner of the cardboard. “Is this some sort of code they’re speaking in? Is this some - this can’t be…”

He’s not going to ask her what her assumption is or isn’t.

Klavier raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think she looks much like a poodle,” he says. Out of nowhere, Vongole is suddenly at his side, her ears relaxed and her tail idly swishing back and forth. She twists tight in a half-circle around Klavier, her nose raised, pointing at Taka, and Blackquill’s eyes follow her slow movements.

Blackquill can see her. Apollo, Phoenix, Trucy, and Vera - he thought that was all of them. And Klavier, and Kristoph. He thought that was why - it was only them, tangled in it as they were. But Blackquill—

“Besides,” Klavier adds, not sounding nearly as cold as Apollo would have expected him to be at this subject being brought up, “I fail to see how I am responsible for her decision to eat literal garbage.”

“Wait, are they talking about an actual dog?” Myriam mutters. “A - no, that can’t be right.”

“And with that attitude, I certainly see how you will never fix that problem,” Blackquill says, smoothing out a few feathers on one of Taka’s wings. Now Klavier frowns, his eyes narrowing. Blackquill doesn’t elaborate on what he means about either Klavier or Vongole, what exactly they have done wrong, and he instead adds, “But I do believe I must be on my way. There may be more to glean from the gummed mouth of that double-dealing fool of a professor.”

Klavier, already scowling, doesn’t change his expression, but he his voice is suddenly icy, sounding all the world like his brother at his worst, as he says, “Give him hell.”

“Oh,” Blackquill replies, “I intend to.” He turns on his heel, Taka alighting from his arm. “Fool Bright. Let us be off.”

Maybe the reason they assigned Fulbright to Blackquill was because they knew they’d need a detective with the patience of a saint to be stuck around him all this time. “As you insist, Prosecutor Blackquill! Until next time, Prosecutor Gavin.”

Klavier doesn’t say anything. He appears to have spaced out entirely, watching Blackquill’s back as he leaves. Vongole looks up at Klavier expectantly, waiting for something, and when he still doesn’t move, she darts off, slipping through the door as it’s closing behind Blackquill - as though she couldn’t just pass through it after it closed. Myriam raises her notepad again and scribbles something; Apollo glances over and just sees the word dog written and underlined twice. Impressive journalistic talents, he thinks, as behind him loud footsteps and louder voices herald the arrival of the others. Apollo steps back and straightens up, determined to look like he wasn’t eavesdropping. Myriam has no such reservations.

“Hey! Prosecutor Gavin!” Athena calls, waving to him across the lobby. He jumps, startled for a moment, and then relaxes into an easy smile. “Thanks so much for your help! We owe you one!”

His smile falters and doesn’t recover as immediately. “Ach, it was nothing, Fräulein. I’m simply glad that you were able to find Frau Professor’s killer.”

“Still,” Juniper says. “Thank you for all of your help. I - um, I’m Juniper Woods. I—”

“You are the Fräulein chosen to sing with me, of course.” Klavier gives her a small little bow of acknowledgement. Apollo suddenly wonders what would happen if he had shaken her hand, if iron would burn her the way they’ve had to be so careful with Vera. The way Klavier said these same iron rings left a scar on his brother’s hand. “Lovely to finally meet you, though I do dearly wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

“Me too,” Juniper says. “I’m sorry that you didn’t get the chance to see Professor Courte again. She mentioned to me how much there was that she wanted to talk to you about.”

Each time they’ve met these past few days, Apollo has kept a careful eye on Klavier, watching for whatever he’s trying to hide. But nothing’s hidden right now, Apollo thinks. Klavier’s smile crumples and what’s left isn’t simply grief, but more like distraught horror. More like the expression of someone being told of Courte’s death for the first time, not “yeah, she was looking forward to seeing you.” There’s no reason that should be a surprise to Klavier, but that’s what he seems to be: surprised that his mentor wanted to see him. Why would he think she wouldn’t?

“I - I’m sorry,” Juniper adds hastily, seeing Klavier’s brow furrow and him blink a few too many times in quick succession. “I shouldn’t have - have mentioned right now—” She rubs her own eyes with the back of her hand.

“Ah, not your fault,” Klavier says. He does a worryingly good job of keeping his tone breezy even with his head tilted back, hiding from them his eyes and any tears that may be gathering in them. “It is - it is as it is, now, and we to in some way or another live with it.” He falters, voice going softer as he speaks, until he seems to give up entirely on the pretense of having something to say. Lowering his head and shooting a bright, blinding, lying smile at Apollo, he adds, “I should be off now. I have spent enough time out of the office this week that I am sure Herr Chief is not pleased.”

“Just tell him that you were helping us!” Athena chirps. “He and Mr Wright are friends, and Prosecutor Edgeworth knows me and likes me! I can put in a good word for you.”

Klavier laughs. “Thank you for the offer, Fräulein, and I’ll let you know if that becomes necessary. Also” - he has barely turned away from them before he spins around and snaps his fingers, and Apollo can’t be sure that he didn’t do that all on purpose to be dramatic - “there was talk last night among the academy administration of, if the trial should end today, which as we know it did, they might extend the school festival to tomorrow, to have a proper honoring and celebration of Professor Courte’s life. Keep an ear out for that, and perhaps I will get to see you all tomorrow, ja?” He winks at Juniper.

“Oh, no,” Juniper whispers. “You mean I’ll still have to sing after all?”

“Good work, you two. Sorry I couldn’t get around to saying that sooner.”

Apollo had been pondering how to tell Athena that she might have to give up hope of a debrief with Phoenix until tomorrow; they had waited in the courthouse main lobby for twenty minutes after the Themis students left, until Phoenix finally called to say he would catch up to them later.

Later, though, is hours later, the afternoon wearing on and on, long after Trucy has arrived back from school. They have time to explain the trial to her in all of its horrible detail, leaving her with their same questions, and the only person available to answer them missing, and apparently not particularly inclined to tell them why he’s disappeared or when he’ll be back. It’s like Apollo’s first year at the agency again, except he and Trucy have someone else with them now.

“Thanks, Boss,” Athena says. “Where’d you go?”

“There were some things I wanted to know about Means,” Phoenix says, “so I had to go talk to Edgeworth to get me in to talk to Means myself for a bit.”

“What did you find out?” Athena asks. “What was the motive? Was it for-sure—”

Phoenix tosses his suit jacket over the back of the couch. “Yeah, Means was the one taking bribes,” he says. “Courte suspected that and went to confront him, on the stage, where he killed her. He had seen the note she made of props she would need for the mock trial and pieced together some aspects of the script from that, in order to make the murder seem like it was modeled after the script.”

“So Courte was - she was just a good person, after all,” Athena says softly. “And she was just trying to do the right thing.”

Phoenix shakes his head sadly. “And I suppose she thought that Means, her long-time coworker, would be reasonable enough that she could confront him alone without concern - or she was too fired-up to consider the possibility - and then he killed her.”

“You never really know someone,” Apollo says. Juniper’s friends, an odd bunch with odd secrets, certainly, turned out okay, yet still - still it was someone they trusted, someone the victim trusted. “So do you know what was going on with Means’ speech? And why his - why did—?”

“His teeth?” Phoenix asks, uncomfortably casual for the actual event that they’re talking about. He heads back for his desk, waving for them to follow, and he flings himself down in his chair and kicks his feet up on the desk. Some habits don’t change. “You recall that very interesting barb he made today, when he was trying to claim Juniper was the killer? The ‘in half’ remark? Did you wonder why he knew that?”

“She—” Apollo glances at Athena. Means wasn’t there that first day, when she told them. But the second day— “Juniper definitely had moments at the detention center where she looked - not exactly totally human. I guess I thought…”

He hadn’t thought about it at all, actually. He was more interested in Blackquill’s response.

Phoenix steeples his fingers together and rests them under his chin. “He said he suspected from that, and he—” He closes his eyes and presses his lips together. “I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise you to imagine that a man like him, who forged evidence as an attorney and took bribes as a professor, also made some other kinds of deals.” His eyes snap open, blue now. “Means didn’t have the Sight. He shouldn’t have known. But he had what we’ll call an ongoing contract to get information like that about people that he thought could help him - against Juniper, or against…” He waves his hand. Apollo remembers arguing with him last night. “Whoever. Opposition research, of the fae sort. We’re probably fortunate he didn’t try to learn anything about us.”

Apollo reaches up to his face, his eye, without meaning to. He thinks about his dreams about drowning, the people he once knew who appear in them.

“What does this have to do with his teeth?” Athena sinks into her desk chair and slumps over to rest her head on her arms.

“One has to think was the fae on the other end of the contract very suddenly calling in payment for those services rendered.” Phoenix’s phrasing does a remarkable job of obscuring the actual horror of the situation.

“He offered up his teeth?” Apollo repeats.

“He didn’t say,” Phoenix says darkly, all the levity he feigned moments ago gone, “so I’m not sure he did. That may just have been what got extorted from him. All considered, probably lucky they took his teeth and not his tongue.” He shrugs, still far too casual. “Words are the weapon he needs this information for, after all. But I think he might be a lawyer who thought that his legal work was enough experience to be able to safely deal with them, and he was very much wrong.” His feet smack heavily against the floor as he sits up. He sighs. “It’s bad when the cost of a deal is worse than something that might be a curse.”

“What might be?” Athena asks, mumbling from how her cheek is smushed into her arm. Trucy sits on the floor, leaning up against her desk, quietly listening.

“The issue with Means’ speech. Why I had to give you the magatama, Apollo. Could be a curse. A self-aggrandizing man like him, I’d bet he’d be furious that his grand speeches make the audience physically incapable of paying attention to it and him. But on the other hand, he did use that to his advantage by moving the body during his speech. He knew that everyone would be put half to sleep by it and disinclined to even try to look around for where he was sitting.”

“So there was some sort of glamour in his words?” Apollo asks. “But we never had a problem following what he was saying any other time.”

“I’d guess it probably gets going once he hits over a minute or two of uninterrupted speechifying,” Phoenix says. “Presuming it’s a curse, and not something he chose. Which I couldn’t tell you. He was reluctant to answer anything, then the police wanted to talk to him again so I ran out of time. I was more concerned with finding out how he knew - about Juniper and whatever, anyway.”

That “and whatever” hangs in front of Apollo’s face as a very loose thread, one he desperately needs to pull.

“Oh,” Phoenix adds suddenly, and Apollo watches the metaphorical thread be snatched away from him. “While I was waiting to talk to Means, I got a call. Themis’ school festival is being extended - the mock trial and the concert will be held tomorrow. I’m going, since I might still be teaching a lecture. You two can have the day off or come along, whatever you like.”

“Can I skip school and come too?” Trucy asks.

“No,” Phoenix says. “You can come after your school lets out.”

“How was High School Drama, Day Two: Electric Boogaloo?” Clay asks.

“Not Guilty,” Apollo says. “Now I’d like to go sleep for the next sixteen hours and hope I don’t have nightmares about my teeth falling out.”

“Oh weird,” Clay says. “I have that dream sometimes.”

#fic: the witches of los angeles #roddy fanfics

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