Chapter Text
Phoenix couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Kris had stayed the night and was gone in the morning. That much was normal. Phoenix’s “morning” these days was closer to noon. Kris left for work, or otherwise went home, with little patience for saying goodbye. Trucy woke him up. That much was normal, too.
Something felt...off. He felt compelled to check if everything in his room was where it was the night before, with cursory glances and little taps here and there. Trucy knocked on his door a second time and he stepped out. Ruffled her hair with a smile. All the way into the kitchen to make her lunch, he looked around for the source of this odd feeling.
After Trucy had been fed and, opting not to eat anything himself, he shuffled around to each of the upstairs windows. All the locks were where they should be. He trudged downstairs, to the office part of the building, and checked the windows there. Also untouched...so it seemed.
He had no idea how or why he’d latched onto the idea of being broken into. There was no evidence that they had been. He hadn’t heard anything go bump last night. All he did was wake up feeling...wrong...and drew unconsciously to the windows. He stared at the one Mia had died next to for a long time. His thoughts were shapeless and clouded.
He went about the rest of the day as normal, but he couldn’t shake that feeling.
Phoenix had been with Kristoph for seven years. He liked to tell himself that he’d learnt everything there was to know about the man, but he still had no way of predicting when Kris was going to come over. Sometimes he’d get a warning call or text without much preptime. Sometimes the man would just show up. But if he wasn’t there by Trucy’s bedtime, that meant he wasn’t coming over at all that night.
Phoenix put Trucy to bed. No Kris. Not tonight.
As he did from time to time, on nights when he knew it was safe, he went over everything he had on him. It wasn’t much: a tiny stack of newspaper clippings and personal notes that he kept under the fridge, plus some unrelated ideas for a jury system. Seven years, and that was all he had on Kris. Nothing definitive. Nothing even substantial. Yet, he slumped by the fridge and glazed his eyes over all of it for the thousandth time.
There was a time so painfully long ago where just reviewing the evidence for a case sparked some great revelation every time. When all he had to do was turn his thinking around, and the gates would open and the truth would come out. The killer would shriek and crumble triumphantly. The defendant would be innocent. The hostage would be rescued.
He had a newspaper clipping that mentioned Zak firing Kristoph. He had a short list of suspicious atroquinine poisonings, and a lingering taste of glass in his mouth. He had no room to move. He had no allies he could contact anymore.
Phoenix put away his evidence and went to sleep in the same clothes he’d woken up in.
In his depressed, regretful state, he had fallen asleep clinging to one single silver lining: that sleep would strip away the horrible off feeling he’d had all day. But just his misery...when he woke up with a stale tongue and bleary eyes, he’d also woken up with even more wrongness weighing him down. He’d felt anxiety and it was nothing like this. This, it felt like he’d look up and everything in his room would be an inch to the left.
Phoenix’s face collapsed back into his pillow. He hadn’t checked the time, and he didn’t care to. He didn’t hear Trucy’s voice or her little footsteps so there was no reason for him to be awake. Maybe more sleep, he prayed, would finally take away this feeling, or at least unconsciousness would deprive him of feeling it for another hour.
He couldn’t fall back asleep. The air conditioner made noise. He could hear his hair and the fabric of his clothes moving against the pillow and blanket. He could feel his own breathing. His stale tongue wouldn’t sit right in his mouth.
Finally, he found excuse to sit up in Trucy’s scurrying footsteps. Phoenix threw himself upright and then stared at the door, unmoving, for some uncountable time. At least someone in this house was excited to be alive.
He stood, stretched. Sniffed himself. How long had it been since he’d bothered to shower? He glanced at his closet and considered changing clothes, but decided against it. He didn’t have the energy. He chose to focus on listening to Trucy play outside his door and let it ebb away the terrible wrong feeling that had overtaken him.
He’d just about begun to shake it, and reached for his door handle when something hit him.
Somewhere in the walk from his bed to the door, something in his peripheral had stuck out. It’d just taken a moment to register.
Without changing a thing about his stance, Phoenix walked straight back, keeping his eyes where they’d been on the door until the out-of-place spot came back into the corner of his eye. Something new, and very blue, was sitting on his bedside table. He turned towards it.
Some kind of little hand...thing. Phoenix delicately touched it. Kris had something like this. Right, it was one of his weird nail polish containers. He must’ve left it here. Was this what had been giving him such a horrible feeling? He could’ve laughed at that, if it didn’t mean Kris had taken over another part of his mind and emotions.
But - his gaze dropped - the container was on top of a photo. Phoenix set it aside and picked up the photo. It was of the container...in a room that Phoenix had never been in. He’d seen Kris’s house, once, and he’d been to his office many times. This shelf was not those places.
His butt hit the bed. His eyes didn’t leave the photo. His lips had fallen carelessly open, his eyes dull and tired, and focused. His hold of the photo, light and delicate.
Other things in the photo included a few books on the same shelves. Phoenix squinted to read the titles. He could only make out a few. Art history books. Stuff he’d read back in college, actually. There was a cup full of paint brushes, too.
This, Kris wouldn’t leave behind.
He turned the photo around. Nothing was written on the back.
Phoenix still had a small thing of fingerprint powder stuffed away somewhere, and he considered using it for all of a moment, until he realized he had no one to compare prints on. He leaned and snatched the nail polish container and looked it over. It matched the one in the photo. Whoever left this was telling him where they’d found it.
Phoenix was struck with the need to look behind him.
He checked the lock on his bedroom window. Still in place.
He stood and set the nail polish and the photo down, and saw a third thing that had been underneath the photo. His eyebrows raised and scrunched up. He ran his fingers underneath and delicately picked up the card. It was white. White, with fancy black trim in the corners, and the silhouette of a three-legged bird in the center.
Phoenix stared at that card.
Trucy banged on his door. “Daddyyyy! It’s eleven!”
“Huh-?” Phoenix looked up. He slid his free hand into his pocket. His thumb ran over the high-quality paper of the card. The black trim was slightly raised. “Thanks, Truce. I’ll--” He yawned. “--I’ll wake up.”
“Okay, daddy!” Her little footsteps trotted elsewhere. Phoenix’s gaze dropped back to the card. Bounced, dazed, between it, the photo, and the nail polish.
He stuck all three in his pocket.
“Trucy?” He came out of his room and looked around for her. She ran to hug him in an instant and that brought a warm smile to his face - and a sinking realization that whoever had broken into his house had also broken into his little girl’s. The thought twisted his stomach. He didn’t show it at all.
He said, “Can you fetch something downstairs for me? Since you’ve got so much stair-climbing energy.”
“Sure, Daddy!”
“I’ve got a book I’ve been meaning to re-read. ‘S called, uh… The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. Should be in my office. No worries if you can’t find it…”
“I’ll find it!” She pulled from his one-armed embrace and skipped down the stairs. That bought Phoenix time to slide the card, the photo, and the nail polish under the fridge. He had to turn the nail polish on its side to get it to fit, and when he did, he saw a sticker on the bottom of it.
Typed, and cut to fit almost exactly underneath: “DO NOT USE.”
There was no indication in the photo if that was already there or not. He gently tugged the sticker off. It wasn’t a sticker, turns out - it was a piece of paper held on by double-sided tape. And on the other side, someone had drawn that same three-legged bird in fountain pen ink.
He stuck it back on and got it hidden before Trucy came back.
“Here you go, Daddy!” She held the book up to his face. He was still in the kitchen. He had that cool smile. The confusion he felt was outweighed by the feeling of violation from being broken into. And that feeling of violation was outweighed by fear when he saw his vulnerable teenage daughter’s face.
He took the book. “Thanks, Truce. What do you want for lunch?”
Kris came over that night and stayed over, something that always filled Phoenix with dread and usually drove him to drink himself unconscious. Tonight, he made the tough call between being too drunk to experience whatever Kris was going to do to him, and being conscious enough to act if someone broke in. He dreaded, even more than Kris alone, what would happen if someone broke in while he was here. What would happen to either Kris or the intruder when they saw each other? Or worse - if they didn’t notice the intruder, but Kris found whatever the intruder left?
Phoenix had no idea if what was being left had anything to do with Kris. It was a guess. Well, more of a hunch… Few people were so gaudy to buy that shape of nail polish container.
Who would know about him? Who knew about his investigation?? Who was stupid enough to risk pissing off Kris? To risk outing Phoenix to Kris by leaving evidence where he could find it?
The only relief of the night was that Kris left him alone. They fell asleep spooned and that was it.
Kris was gone in the morning. Phoenix woke up with a start and threw himself out of bed, frantically checked every surface in his room, the closet, the drawers, the shelves. The window. Locked. He checked every window upstairs, all locked. Nothing out of place. He held his hand over his heart.
He checked on Trucy.
“You’re awake?” She said. She was making herself breakfast. Phoenix breathed out a long sigh in the doorway and took over the job for her.
He said, with that cool smile, “I just had a bad dream.”
“Oooh. Do you wanna talk about it?”
“Yeah.” But he didn’t. Briefly, he had plans to lie up something silly...but that smile fell, and his voice grew serious. He asked Trucy, “Have you noticed anything unusual around here?”
“Huh? No.”
“Have you heard anything at night?”
“No… I heard Mr. Gavin leave this morning.”
“Around what time?”
“Uhhh, eight?”
That sounded normal. And nothing else was out of place… Trucy said, “Did something happen in your dream?”
“Yeah. I’ve...uh, I keep having his dream that someone breaks into the place. I’m starting to wonder if I’m really dreaming or if...something real’s getting into my head. You know, like, how your alarm clock sometimes gets into your dreams?”
“Well, I haven’t noticed anything.” She bounced on her heels, hands behind her back. Gaze in the corner as she thought long and hard. “Nope… Nothing’s been stolen. And my stuff’s probably the most valuable in the house. Sooo…”
“And nothing left behind either?”
“Nope. Why would a thief leave something behind?”
“I never said they were a thief.”
“What are they, then?”
“...I don’t know.” He paused. “Dreams are weird like that.”
“Yeah. I had a dream that everything was normal but you were an animal, but when I woke up, I couldn’t pin down what kind. I guess dreams just do that.”
Phoenix snorted some laughter. As soon as Trucy had food, he went downstairs and checked all the windows, and the front door.