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Dr. Cykes looked up at the creak of the door opening. “Did you get her back to sleep?” To anyone else—even her daughter, who could hear so much but understood so little of it—it might have sounded nonchalant, even cold, but he could tell from the tension she held as she met his eyes that she’d been worried. She cared. He knew how much she cared.
“Out like a light,” Simon promised. “She was telling me about this experiment she’s been reading about in one of her books, fell asleep in the middle of a sentence.”
The tension bled out of Dr. Cykes’s shoulders, and she nodded briskly. “You’re a natural with her,” she said, her voice strained with something Simon couldn’t put his finger on. “You make it seem so easy.”
Simon shrugged and gave her a little smile. “I don’t know what to say. She’s a good kid.”
“Yes,” Dr. Cykes agreed with another sharp nod. “That she is.”
“Did I tell you, she called me Uncle Si the other day?”
“Really.” Dr. Cykes looked at him, impenetrable. “And how did you feel about that?”
Simon chuckled. “It’s cute, but I can’t say I’ve ever really thought of her as my niece. I guess I see her more as… I don’t know, my little sister or something. Sorry, is that weird to say?”
A rare, fleeting smile crossed Dr. Cykes’s face. “No. Weird isn’t the word I’d use.” Her eyes narrowed slightly in consideration. “You’re not opposed to the thought of being her uncle, though?”
“Well, if that’s how she sees me, I don’t have a problem with it.” Simon smirked. “Why do you ask, Dr. Cykes? Any particular reason? Something you want to talk about?”
Dr. Cykes coughed, pink dusting her cheeks. “I don’t know what you mean, Simon. We should get back to work.”
Metis was never coming back. Simon knew that. Compared to everything else, her death had been oddly easy to accept—it had hurt the way death tended to, a piece of his heart carved away, and he had grieved her and mourned for her and never really stopped missing her, but it hadn’t taken him long to come to terms with it. She was gone. That was simple.
His older sister was less simple. Willing to hold a crowd hostage to secure her brother’s freedom, but not willing to show up during his visiting hours once a month. Aura hadn’t said a word to him during his trial—he knew she would never buy the story he was selling, and she would hate him for trying to cover for the killer of the woman she loved. It didn’t matter that that killer was Metis’s own daughter, that the victim herself would never have forgiven Simon if he’d done anything other than lay his life on the line for Athena. What mattered to Aura was justice. Simon hadn’t known how to explain that this, Athena’s safety, was the closest they were going to get.
After the conviction, he’d been alone. There were three people in the world who mattered to Simon, and one of them had died at another’s hands, and he was going to die for it. Simon had needed Aura, and she had chosen not to be there. Now they had traded places, Aura’s freedom lost right when Simon’s own was won. It was her own damn fault. She had always been too headstrong for her own good. He went to visit her anyway.
She was his sister. He loved her. He was never going to trust her the way he had before. That was simple enough.
Nothing with Athena was simple.
She had been eleven when he left.
She wasn’t eleven anymore.
Simon woke before the sun the morning after he was freed for good. He couldn’t remember anything from his dreams. He couldn’t remember where he was for a moment, either, and the softness of the sheets felt wrong against his skin, painful in its unfamiliarity. He threw them off and laid there until he knew where he was again, watching the thin light drifting in from the window as it made its way across the walls.
It took a while to peel himself out of bed; by the time he got to the kitchen, Athena was there, standing in front of the fridge with a blank look. She startled at his footsteps, which no one else would have heard, but her surprise melted instantly into a warm smile. Simon jerked his chin in her direction in reply.
Rucking up her shirt to scratch at her stomach, Athena said through a yawn, “You hungry?”
Simon buffered for a moment, unused to being asked that—to being asked anything, really, that didn’t fall under the categories of what are you in for (answer: murder), will you get the hell out of my way already (answer: fuck off and die), or what’s your problem (answer: how much time do you have?). Was he hungry? Was that something he got to decide now?
Concern crossed over Athena’s face when Simon didn’t answer, her brows furrowing. “Si? Did you hear me? I think I’m gonna make eggs, if you want any.”
Did he want eggs? Did he like them? He thought he remembered Athena liking to cook—he knew he did. Seven-year-old Athena who rarely spoke but always listened running in while he was making lunch, dragging a stool over to the stove and attaching herself to his side to supervise; Simon filling the space between them by narrating every step until he’d taught her how to cook rice at least a dozen times over. When she started to creep out of her shell, he would put his hands over hers and guide her through the motions, chopping vegetables and stirring the pot and sprinkling in salt by the pinchful from the palm of her hand. By the time she turned eleven, she was probably a better cook than he was—not that that was a high bar to clear. Words came easier to her then, and she relegated him to the role of her sous chef, ordering him around the kitchen as dinner came together. He didn’t mind.
“Alright,” Simon said, pairing it with a shrug as if it didn’t matter, as if he couldn’t feel the echoed imprints of Athena’s little hands on his arm, tugging him down so she could whisper in his ear.
“Scrambled?” Athena asked over her shoulder, grabbing a pan from the rack above the counter. Simon nodded.
That was new, wasn’t it? Athena hadn’t liked scrambled eggs as a kid, wouldn’t touch an egg that hadn’t been hardboiled—she hadn’t liked most foods back then, really. Oh. Simon was the one who had always preferred his eggs scrambled, wasn't he? Oh. Something swelled in his chest, and he stood up abruptly, needing to shake the feeling off and make himself useful. “You got anything to drink?”
“We,” Athena said pointedly, “have, uh…” She twisted to glance at the fridge, tugging at her bottom lip in thought. “Water, milk, OJ… coffee somewhere, but you’ll have to figure that our yourself. I think there’s a coffeemaker in one of these cupboards. Can’t promise it works, though. We can get you a new one if it doesn’t.”
“I’m good,” Simon said with a grunt, resting a brief instinctive hand on Athena’s shoulder as he stepped past her to grab two cups. She shot him a curious look.
“I thought you liked coffee?”
Simon snorted. “Where did you get that idea?”
“You used to drink it! All the time!”
“And?” Simon arched an eyebrow at her. “I was a college student, ‘Thena, you know how it is—wait, I forgot, you don’t.” He grinned.
“You were a postgrad,” Athena said, rolling her eyes. “And you’re just mad I graduated younger than you. But—you really don’t like coffee?”
“Fuck no. Tastes like dirt. Actually, scratch that, that’s insulting to dirt. I’ve had some decent dirt.”
“Yeah, I bet you have,” Athena muttered, smiling as she rummaged around in a drawer for a moment before producing a spatula. “Hey, pass me the eggs while you’re over there? And the butter, please.”
Simon handed them over and poured two glasses of orange juice, then grabbed an ice cube tray from the freezer and popped a handful out into one of them. It was only after the last one landed with its little plonk that he realized he’d forgotten to ask, moving on muscle memory because Athena liked to chew on ice and hated when her drinks weren’t cold enough—if he forgot, she’d take one sip and spit it out, then push her cup across the table with a shake of her head and a baleful look. Shit, sorry, ‘Thene, I don’t know where my head’s at today, he would say, or something like that, and she’d giggle at his language and graciously accept the cup back once he’d added ice. Was she still the same way? What had she kept with her, and what had been left behind with that little girl Simon had loved more than anything?
He knew her better than anyone else in the world. He barely knew her at all.
Behind him, Athena hummed to herself as she stirred the eggs around the pan, and Simon turned and leaned back against the fridge to watch. The tune acquired words, turned into a song Simon didn’t recognize. (He hadn’t listened to a lot of music in the past seven years; he had a fair bit of catching up to do.) She had a nice voice, still, though it was different from what Simon remembered. Deeper, less childish—not that that was a huge shock—more mellifluous and a little bubbly; the old speech impediment was all but gone. He wondered if she liked her voice now—she’d started on the blockers as a kid in large part because she was terrified to have it betray her with its change, but he wasn’t sure what the shattering of her life had done to her plans in that arena. He’d liked her voice then, and he liked it now. He hoped she did too.
“Order up!” Athena announced, startling Simon out of his head. She pointed over his shoulder, and he opened the cupboard there to find plates, two of which he obligingly handed over. A moment later, Athena gave one back, laden with eggs and a fork, and said brightly, “I hope it’s to your liking, monsieur!”
Simon shot her a grin and held out the orange juice with the ice for her. “Thanks, kid.”
Athena took the cup, swishing it around a little and smiling as the ice clinked against the glass. “Not a kid anymore, but you’re welcome… old man.”
“Oi,” Simon warned. “Who are you calling old, you little shit?”
Athena cheerfully stuck out her tongue.
Simon didn’t know how to be the person Athena remembered.
Did that person even exist anymore? Was he there somewhere, buried within Simon like an old layer of bark deep inside a tree trunk, entombed in the shroud of the new self he’d built—or was he gone? When caterpillars became chrysalises, they dissolved their old selves before they built new ones out of the goo; maybe he’d done the same thing to himself. Maybe Athena had dedicated her life to saving a man who didn’t exist anymore. Maybe Simon Blackquill had died that day at the Phantom’s hand and there was nothing left now but a hollow shell, a ghost piloting its own walking cadaver. Maybe—definitely—Simon was just a depressed, and depressing, bastard.
He was afraid that if he looked inside himself, deep down, there wouldn’t be anything there: underneath the grief and rage, was he empty? A phantom in his own right, the name and face in his possession be damned.
Athena had saved his life. The eleventh hour, his back to the wall ready for the firing squad, and she’d swooped in to rescue him. Ariadne unspooling her thread at the mouth of the Labyrinth, tying a knot for mooring, and marching off into the maze to seek the monstrous brother who lived in its heart and lead him out by the hand. Simon had been ready to die. Eager for it most days. Now that he was free, he found himself missing it: the phantom-limb noose around his neck, the certainty of life with an expiration date. Now the world was open before him, and he didn’t know what to do with it.
He didn’t begrudge Athena saving him. How could he ever? She was his knight in shining armor, his little sister and his niece and his responsibility, the only truly good thing he had ever had and the only thing he had ever truly gotten right. He knew her. She could never have left him alone in the dark, and he could never have asked her to—but he didn’t know what to do in the light. It hurt his eyes, burned his skin, cast the shadows in him into brilliant relief. Wasn’t it easier when none of it mattered, when he knew he was going to die, when it was dark and he didn’t have to care?
Sometimes he wished he was back in the dreams. It had been easier to face her then: no real consequences, no new heartbreak.
Did Athena ever feel the same? Did she look at what she had brought back from the brink of death, the husk of a man that had once been her brother but could never live up to her memories of him, and find him wanting? Was she disappointed? Did she regret it? If she could do it over again, would she choose to abandon him to his fate this time?
He knew the answer would be no, every time. Athena had always been orders of magnitude better than him.
Do you miss me? Simon wanted to ask, the words on the tip of his tongue as he looked across the room at Athena.
He didn’t ask. He knew she would look at him all confused and scrunch up her nose and say, You’re right there, Si, but then her chin would dip and her eyes would slide away because she knew what he meant and she wasn’t about to give up an answer.
He missed her. He had spent seven years missing her and then he got her back and it turned out he wasn’t done.
She wasn’t eleven anymore. She would never be eleven again.
Sometimes Simon liked to torture himself with thought exercises. The best and worst of them was when he let himself imagine what if: wipe the slate clean and dream up a new world where none of it had happened. Who would they be without it? The Greek tragedy rewritten, the foundation of their lives torn down and built anew. No matricide to tear the house asunder, no blood for the brother to wash his hands in, no phantoms to keep them apart.
Simon would have argued his first case before the court seven years earlier, unmanacled, fresh-faced and twenty-one and arrogant. Dr. Cykes would have been in the gallery for it. Perhaps she might have come into the prosecution’s lobby beforehand and straightened Simon’s collar with a firm nod, a hand cupping his cheek for a moment before she turned again and left—never one for effusive praise, his mentor, but he would know how proud she was of him without it. He would have won that first case, and the second, and more after that. The papers might have called him a spectacle, a brute, a second demon prosecutor to rival the first.
(He would never have faced Phoenix Wright in court, but he would have fought Kristoph Gavin before too long.)
Dr. Cykes wouldn’t have stayed his mentor for much longer—he’d only been weeks away from his degree—but they would have ended up proper friends afterwards. She would have told him he’d earned the right to call her Metis, and he would have used it. They would have researched together as equals, working late into the night, drinking tea the robots brought them.
On some of those nights Aura would have come and leaned in the doorway, clearing her throat for their attention and shooting a smirk at her brother before she coaxed her wife to bed—they would have gotten the chance to be wives, to get married, suits and rings and all, and Aura would have gotten desperately wine-drunk at the reception and cried on Simon’s shoulder about the luck she couldn’t believe. His sister would have been happy, happier than Simon had ever gotten to see her in the lifetimes they’d been given. No bitterness creeping in, no regrets about what could have been, only a life full of love.
On other nights Metis’s daughter would have shown up and curled up against one or the other of their sides, or in their laps, and they would have taken a break to read her to sleep, and Simon would have carried her to bed and tucked her in afterwards, brushing a hand over her forehead when she stirred for a moment and mumbled his name.
Metis would have gotten to live the life she deserved. A wife, a daughter who knew the enormity of her love, a thriving career, a faithful disciple.
No death meant no trial, and no trial meant no prison time. No nightmares, and no tear tracks Simon was too tired to wipe off his cheeks, and no scars across his arms and thighs and belly from his own and other’s hands.
(No little scars from Taka’s beak and talons, either, and no Taka, and he wouldn’t have known that there was anything missing from him.)
It hurt the most to consider Athena. She would have stayed whole, her heart unfractured and childhood unstolen, no splintered pieces of her life she’d be forced to pick up and piece back together. A mother kept, another gained, and a brother by her side through everything. He would give anything if he could make that true.
She would have been a child and stayed a child. Simon would have been able to hug her when she was caught up in panicked deliberations at thirteen about whether she should start HRT and tell her the story of how he started his own, maybe half a decade prior at that point, teasing that you’re lucky, ‘Thena, you won’t even have to stab yourself. He could have taken her to her first appointment, and to every one after that if she wanted, and sat with her while she took her first Estradiol, high-fiving her afterwards.
There would have been no overnight flight to Switzerland where distant relatives would take her in, no online university program enrolled in because it was the fastest way to get a degree in law, no staying up studying until she couldn’t keep her eyes open because if she didn’t do everything she could to save her brother then that made what happened to him her fault.
(No chance encounter with Phoenix Wright in Europe, and no invitation extended to come work with him once she was certified; she never would have found a second family and a new place to call home.)
He would have been there to see Athena graduate middle school and whoop when her name was called at the ceremony. She would have gone to high school after, maybe together with Juniper, and he would have been there to drive them every morning before work, dropping them off and waiting at the curb for a moment until Athena turned back to wave goodbye and shoo him away, Juniper shooting her own shy smile over her shoulder.
Maybe Athena wouldn’t have gone to Themis—would she ever have become a defense attorney if it wasn’t for his sake? He didn’t have the courage to ask. She could have done anything—whip-smart and determined, never one to let go once she had her teeth sunk into something, that was his Athena. It wasn’t something he’d say to her face, in this world or any other, but he’d never found anything else to believe in the way he believed in her. No matter what she ended up doing, his pride in her would be bottomless; he’d brag about his little sister until everyone he met was sick of hearing her name.
Things wouldn’t have been perfect for her—for any of them—but Simon would’ve been there with her when they weren’t, to make it better when he could and hold her when he couldn’t. That was what family did, wasn’t it?
They would have been happy. They would have been better.
There was no point in thinking about it—it wasn’t as if sheer force of will could make it real. They’d been dealt the cards they were dealt, and there was no way to reshuffle them now.
There was nothing Simon wanted more than to reshape the world to make it kinder to her. Even now, seven years and some change in, it hurt like an open wound that he couldn’t.
“Should I take this case?” Athena asked around the pen she was chewing on. Simon bent down to look over her shoulder, and she tilted Widget so he could see the display. When he got to the bottom of the screen, he stared at it for a moment before Athena stifled a laugh and took pity on him, scrolling down to show him the rest. It wasn’t anything groundbreaking—a cut-and-dry murder case, as far as he could tell, although with Athena there was every chance it would turn out to be anything but.
“Did they ask you to?” Simon lifted an eyebrow.
Athena took the pen out of her mouth and gestured with it. “No, I just thought I’d show up in court and try my chances,” she deadpanned. “Yes, duh, they came to see us today, and the boss said he thought I could handle it on my own, but… I don’t know.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Maybe I should let Apollo have this one.”
“Fuck that,” Simon said immediately and with authority. “You can handle this on your own, and you don’t need me or Wright to tell you that.”
Athena shot him a grin. “I knew you’d say that.”
Simon knocked her on the shoulder. “Why the fuck did you ask me, then?”
“Maybe I just like hearing you sing my praises.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“If I take the case,” Athena said, “will you come to the trial?” She flapped her hands to wring out pent-up energy and said, “It’s the day after tomorrow.”
Simon frowned. “Why would I come?”
Athena’s bright, cheerful countenance turned into a scowl, and she rolled her eyes at him. “Alright, fuck you too, then.”
Simon winced—he hadn’t phrased that well, had he? He tried again: “You… want me to come? Are you sure?” He grimaced. “I’m told my presence can be somewhat… off-putting.”
Athena snorted a laugh. “Yeah, alright, maybe to people who don’t know you at all, since you’re a big dweeb who likes to dress”—she swept a hand to indicate Simon’s outfit, which was, unsurprisingly, head-to-toe black—“like that and carry around a hawk to look scary, but I think we’re past that point, Si. I’m built different.”
“I am not a big dweeb.”
“Whatever you say,” Athena said pleasantly, patting Simon’s hand. “You admit that you like looking scary, though?”
Simon glowered. “Weren’t you asking me for a favor? I could’ve sworn there was something you wanted me to do for you. Out of the kindness of my heart.”
Athena flapped her hands again and smirked. “Like you’re gonna turn down a chance to see me kick ass in court. You’ll be there.” Her expression softened into a warm smile, and she added, “I like knowing that you’re there. It makes me feel safer.”
How was Simon supposed to say no to that?
Athena seemed to need Simon as much as Simon needed her. It didn’t make sense to him, but it worked out well enough that he didn’t question it.
She had been eleven when they were taken away from each other.
She wasn’t eleven anymore.
That was alright. The seven lost years would always sting, but Athena was eighteen now, and she would be nineteen soon, and Simon was coming to find that he loved this version of his sister every bit as much as the one he’d left behind.