#anyway hi i am rereading trials of apollo for my paper

[joanthangroff]

I still think that Lavinia's "promotion" feels more like a punishment than anything else

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

I think this is nominally incomplete, but it’s from October and I’m never going to finish it, but I reread it and still enjoy some of the jokes in it so.... I figured other people might get some enjoyment out of it.

Summary: Some defense attorneys, prosecutors, and detectives get together and while drinking make poor conversational choices that vacillate wildly between commiserating over personal trauma and making bad jokes. So, the usual.

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“You know,” Kay says, frowning in concentration as she attempts to affix a fourth paper umbrella in her hair, “what always bums me out about these big get-togethers is I always start thinking we should play some super-fun drinking games and then I realize that would be terrible, because, like, ‘Never Have I Ever’ always turns into weird sexscepade confessions and that’d be horrible enough if Mr. Edgeworth was just our boss, but he’s like, our dad, so we can’t do that.”

Everyone takes twenty seconds to absorb what she has said. “There are things I don’t want to know about any of you,” Apollo says. “Especially not Mr. Wright.”

“Because he’s our dad,” Athena adds. She is lying on the floor with her chin propped up on her arms. “Also it’d be mean to play drinking games with me here not being able to.” Her glare turns from Phoenix to Simon. “American drinking laws are stupid.”

“You say to a room full of prosecutors and detectives,” Apollo says.

“No no, she’s right,” Klavier says. “I got my badge in Europe and then came back and they would let me stand in court and prosecute a trial but not buy a beer.”

“Franziska complained all the time about that,” Edgeworth says, with a small smile that is almost fond as he contemplates the dregs at the bottom of his wine glass. “In the interest of full disclosure, she complained about everything in America. She still does, actually.”

“I can see why she would,” Athena says. “I liked Germany. I didn’t actually drink a lot there, though.”

“You are smarter than I,” Klavier says. “I lost about a month somewhere in Germany.”

Phoenix coughs and sets down his glass, which is pint-sized but filled with wine. The only condolence for Apollo, and from the expression on his face, Edgeworth as well, is that he isn’t drinking straight from a bottle. “A month?” he repeats incredulously.

Klavier nods. “I had just taken the bar; I had nothing to do but wait for my results. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Not that?” Phoenix asks. He looks somewhere between impressed and horrified, which is strange for Apollo to realize; he can’t usually read his boss’ emotions from his face. “Anything but that?”

Klavier shrugs. “Ja ja, but I never got arrested or woke up anywhere unfamiliar, so I think I did fine.”

“Did you wake up with that horrible accent, though?” Blackquill asks, smirking slightly, and without looking bats Athena’s hand away from his drink.

“Ooh!” Athena says, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “You know, that’s actually happened! There’s been cases where after a traumatic brain injury, a person has recovered to speak with an entirely different accent that they never had before. So you could have--”

“I’m sorry to dampen your excitement, Fraulien, but I have never had any traumatic brain injuries.” Ema mutters something and Klavier, staring at the glass in his hands, says, “Ach, we’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, and I will amend my statement to ‘not that I know’ because Kris could have dropped me down the stairs when we were young and I can never know for sure now, because what I am sure of is that even if the answer is no, if I asked him now, he would say he did.”

“You know, Kay, that this is realistically where ‘Never Have I Ever’ would end up,” Ema says. “The personal trauma shit, like ‘never have I ever had someone close to me turn out to be a murdering bastard.’” She doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes and instead stares at the floor. “Ah shit I can’t even say that. That one’s happened to me too. Fuck it.” She throws her head back and drains a third of her glass.

“Would that be a shot for each murdering bastard, or just one for all of them?” Klavier asks.

“At that point you just start drinking and don’t stop,” Phoenix says without lowering his glass from his lips, apparently taking his own advice.

“Define ‘close’,” Apollo says.

“We’re lawyers,” Sebastian says. “Why don’t we just all argue about the definition and never get anywhere with it?”

“He was your boss,” Klavier says brusquely. “That’s fuckin’ close enough.” The harshness of the words doesn’t match the way Klavier’s weight leans against Apollo’s shoulder or how his hand shakes just slightly, knuckles too white curled around his shot glass.

“Is ‘close’ in this case simply to be understood as figuratively referring to emotional connection,” Blackquill says, “or would a literal meaning as in physical proximity at length apply as well?”

“When you’re splitting hairs like that just join the rest of us in being drunk and depressed,” Ema says.

“Are we actually playing now?” Kay asks. “Because this is like a super fucked up way to play if we are.”

“Let’s not even bother with the ‘never have I ever had someone I loved be murdered’,” Apollo says. He hadn’t wanted to get drunk tonight, and instead just sit back and watch whatever unfolded, but he’s thinking he might want to change those plans.

“Everyone loses on that one,” Kay says, reaching over and gently patting Apollo’s head, which he thinks is a gesture of sympathy as best as she, pink-cheeked with unfocused eyes, can manage. And he thinks he is just tipsy enough that it actually feels like a comfort. “And the grand prize, ‘never have I ever had someone I loved be murdered by someone I was close to’, because that’s like… aw shit that’s me isn’t it.”

“Depending on how you define your proximity to Ms. Yew, or Shih-na, or whatever you should like to call her,” Edgeworth says, and it’s probably not coincidence that he is now finishing off his wine, after Kay has said those words. Everyone knows the story of von Karma.

“Again,” Blackquill says, his chin resting on his hands, his elbows on his knees, “how are we agreeing to define ‘close’ and does it apply retroactively, in that they only came in close literal proximity to you long after they committed the murder of that particular--” This time he is not quick enough to stop Athena from snatching away his glass and draining the contents.

“Gross!” Widget cries, and Athena sets the glass back in front of Blackquill with an expression of profound disgust twisting her features. “What the hell is that, anyway?” she asks.

“You were duly warned,” Blackquill replies.

“No,” Athena says. “You told me it was illegal, not that it was disgusting.”

Phoenix is laughing at her, his glass untouched on the floor for the past minute. Kay raises an eyebrow. “What, the unluckiest man in the world can’t drink to that?”

“I can’t, actually,” he says, “though not for lack of trying on my ex-girlfriend’s part.”

“Is trauma crossing over with sexscepades now?” Ema asks. “I’m gonna need to be super more drunk if it is.”

“Me too,” Apollo says, staring at the empty glass in front of him. He hadn’t wanted to refill. Now he thinks he needs it. Klavier offers him the remains of his drink. Apollo accepts it.

“It was not a… a…” Phoenix props his chin up on his hands. “Well, depends on how you’re defining it, and whether ‘my college girlfriend was actually twins, one of whom was evil and wanted me dead and tried to frame me for murder when her good twin, who’s a sweetheart other than having a dire blind spot where her sister is concerned, spent eight months trying to convince her not to kill me’ counts as such.”

“Wait,” Ema says, reaching for Kay’s drink, as Edgeworth stands and leaves the room, “you were dating both twins, and you thought they were the same person?”

“They fully intended to convince me they were the same person,” Phoenix says. “And it took me six years and an attempt on my best friend’s life to find out otherwise.”

“Why’d she -- they -- whoever -- try to kill Edgeworth?” Sebastian asks.

Phoenix coughs. “Erm -- my other best friend, Maya. It’s a long fucked-up story that’s incoherent enough when I try to tell it sober but it ended with me cross-examining a dead woman and the prosecution indicted on the murder charges that had been leveled against my client.”

“What,” Athena says.

“I was there and can corroborate,” Edgeworth says, reentering with a new glass of wine.

“Wait,” Klavier says. “When was this?”

“It’s…” Phoenix frowns, staring at Edgeworth. “It was February, so… nine years now.”

“Was that prosecutor Coffee Dude?” Klavier asks.

“Coffee dude?” Apollo repeats. Klavier’s accent has been slipping in and out all night but hearing him utter the word dude is still absolutely jarring.

“Eloquent as ever, Gavin-dono,” Blackquill says dryly.

“I don’t remember his name because I was a self-absorbed piece of shit who’d just joined the office but: Eine, I remember the news article, and Zwei, I remember him taking the pot out of the coffee machine in the break room and drinking directly from the pot.”

“Oh yeah that’d be him,” Phoenix says.

Blackquill frowns. “This prosecutor you speak of -- about my height, white hair, blind, and able to be convinced to punch another inmate for the price of half a cup of sludgewater prison coffee?”

“Oh my god,” Phoenix says.

“Simon,” Athena sighs.

“I did not say that it was I who convinced him to do such. For all you know I may have been the victim of the punching. You assume the worst of me, Athena.”

Apollo snorts at that. Phoenix is rolling his eyes and Edgeworth coughs.

“You met him in prison?” Edgeworth asks, sitting back down next to Phoenix. “I suppose you must have, if you know him, because he was arrested in February and you joined the office in -- May?”

“April,” Athena corrects.

“Right when everything went to shit,” Klavier says.

“In February a prosecutor was arraigned on charges of murder; in March, another prosecutor committed murder in the office, and the chairman of the Investigatorial Committee was convicted on counts of murder and forging evidence since he was Chief Prosecutor -- you forget, again, that in no point in our lifetimes has ours been a functioning legal system.”

Something about the way Blackquill says it, and the way that Klavier responds with “Bleh,” makes Apollo think it’s a conversation they’ve had before.

Sebastian is staring at his hands.

“And that’s when Mr. Edgeworth gave up his badge for two days and I fell off a building and got amnesia,” Kay adds. “And then we caused another international incident. Not totally in that order.”

“What,” Apollo says.

“Oh god I remember half of that,” Ema says.

“You left out the part with the assassins,” Sebastian says.

“I’ve always believed if you’re not in court it’s sometimes better to leave out details in the retellings, and nothing here is dissuading me of this notion,” Phoenix says.

“So what did you leave out of your little sexscepade story?” Kay asks

“Kay,” Sebastian says, “I am begging you to stop saying that word. I will pay you.”

“Hey Chief, I think that’s Prosecutor Debeste saying I should get a salary raise.”

Edgeworth places his face in his hands.

“I left out the part where I fell off a bridge, my murderous ex-girlfriend was my best friend’s cousin, and Edgeworth --”

“Continue leaving out any further part of this involving me,” Edgeworth interrupts.

“Fine.”

“Boss, how are you still alive?” Athena asks.

“That’s a case that’s going to go forever unsolved,” Phoenix replies.

“Can we do ‘never have I ever had a near-death experience’?” Athena says. “Or any significant physical injury on the job. How many shots would you have to take for that one, Boss?” Phoenix is muttering under his breath as he starts counting on his fingers. Apollo can’t make out the words but Athena almost immediately objects -- “Wait, did you say tazed?”

“Tazed, blunt force head trauma from a fire extinguisher, fell off a bridge, that one thing from before I was a lawyer doesn’t count because you said ‘on the job’, hit by a car doesn’t really count under that definition either -- I think that’s it.” He stares absently into space. “Actually, no, it was sort of related to the job so in hindsight, add ‘getting smashed with the man who got me disbarred’.”

“Take another shot for tonight, then,” Klavier says.

Phoenix rolls his eyes. “Klavier, shut up,” he says, and Klavier recoils in surprise, blinking a few times. “I mean the one with ill intentions and a penchant for poisoning people. God there’s so many ways that could’ve ended with me dead over a bowl of borscht in that hell restaurant.” His eyes go unfocused staring at some point over Apollo’s head. “You know what’s another one of the super fucked up parts about that?” He doesn’t wait for anyone to ask before he continues, “I don’t even like borscht.”

Klavier coughs, or at least Apollo thinks it’s a cough, but it also sounds like a laugh and a sob intermingled.

“You exasperate me,” Edgeworth says to Phoenix. Phoenix flops over into his lap like a particularly boneless cat.

“Here’s ‘take a shot if your older sibling is or has ever been in jail,” Ema says dryly, emptying her glass and then laying backwards on the floor. “Welcome to the shit club, boys.”

“I think Herr Samurai and I need more alcohol for this one,” Klavier says.

“Then go get us some,” Blackquill says.

“Sometimes I feel like I am the only one doing the work in this relationship,” Klavier says.

Athena chokes on air.

Edgeworth sighs. “You both know what I am going to say.”

The response comes in near-unison from the three other prosecutors and two detectives. “Dollar in the jar!”