Chapter Text
Apollo knew that he wasn't supposed to feel this way.
Whenever he looked at the photo of the crime scene, he kept thinking that Sol wasn't the one who was supposed to die. The one who had guarded the Hope capsule was Clay, and Sol had somehow managed to take Clay's place - had protected him from a grim fate, only to lose his own life in the process.
With that terrible thought in mind, Apollo felt... relieved. Relieved that his best friend had survived such a harrowing experience, that the touch of death had not yet claimed the budding astronaut. A man had still died - the victim happened to be Clay's mentor instead, another friend of Apollo's.
It was all so very selfish, and the doubts that plagued the young attorney did not help. He had been given reason to believe that Athena - his trusted co-worker and friend - was responsible for this crime. Apollo wanted desperately to believe otherwise, but the evidence did not lie.
He cast away all thoughts of relief and fear and doubt, and closed himself off from the people who cared most about him. That was the only way he could continue fighting - for Clay's sake, and to catch the one who was responsible for Sol's death.
Aura Blackquill seemed sympathetic enough, but even with his perception blocked, Apollo had the sinking feeling that he had walked straight into a trap. A dark part of him hoped that it was true - he would rather be caught in a madwoman's deceit than believe that someone he cared for had become a murderer.
Athena knew that she wasn't supposed to feel this way.
While she had been exonerated in the UR-1 case, another possibility had been brought to the table - that she had killed Solomon Starbuck. She knew the man herself; in her most distant of memories, she'd met him a few times at the Cosmos Space Center, along with his young student Clay Terran.
She'd never made the connection between those two and Apollo before, but looking back, it all made too much sense. Clay was loud and boisterous, and he would always claim that he was fine, no matter how dire the situation - just like Apollo.
And speaking of her senior co-worker, Athena watched him with horror as he stepped up to explain his reasoning behind indicting her. When the launch pad switched with the Space Museum, there had been no one else in the connecting lounge, according to the security footage... but most damning was the fact that her fingerprints had been found on the lighter supposedly carried by the culprit, according to Ms. Blackquill.
In that moment, Athena should have been scared - terrified, even. She should have been angry with Apollo for even thinking that she could kill someone with no motive. Yet, she had not been consciously aware of her own actions at the time of the murder, and so she couldn't deny it... plus, there was one other reason.
Regardless of his feelings, Apollo had made this accusation in search of the truth. She could hear the pain in his heart whenever he spoke of her - pain that he had tried to conceal, even from himself, and it made her understand that he never wanted to do this. Locked deep beneath his anger and suspicion was... fear.
A fear so deep and primal that he may not have even realized he had it - much like the dark truth that had been concealed in Athena's own heart. Beneath all his other suffering, Apollo was terrified that his suspicions were true, and that was because he wanted to believe in her with all his heart.
The conflicting emotion, then, was Athena's own happiness. She was grateful for Apollo's actions, no matter how cruel they seemed - she knew that those actions came from a good place. She, too, wanted to believe in him, that he would find the path to her complete innocence.
When Mr. Wright shared with the destroyed courtroom the most ridiculous and nonsensical escape route possible, Athena could hear in Apollo's voice the purest relief she had ever heard from another person.
Clay needed counseling after that incident.
He'd tried to be strong for Apollo's sake, but the fact of the matter was that he had barely escaped with his life - the phantom had targeted him, and his mentor had happened to save him by chance. With Sol dead, Clay had lost one of his most trusted people in the world, and the odds of him ever making it to space seemed slim; there weren't many other senior astronauts who could advise him at the Cosmos Space Center, and he had wanted more than anything to go to space with his teacher.
Of course, Apollo wasn't going to let his best friend suffer in silence. He told Clay about his partner in lawyering, the brilliant girl who had stood by both their sides when Sol was murdered, and explained to him just how capable she was. Beneath her youthful exuberance and overemotional tendencies, Athena was a professional - psychology was her forte, and it showed whenever she drew out the testimony of a damaged witness in the courtroom.
Sure, the first meeting between Athena and Clay hadn't gone the way Apollo wanted it to, but then again... it was entirely possible that the two knew each other already, since she had lived at the space center in her childhood, and her mother had been part of the HAT-1 team. In that sense, perhaps this therapy session would be more of a re-introduction.
Clay only made one request, and that was for Apollo to sit in on the session. Neither he nor Athena objected, and so Apollo watched as his co-worker picked apart his best friend's mind, helping the scarred man through his trauma in a surprisingly impartial manner. When the session was over, Clay seemed much more like himself again, and he practiced the old routine that he and Apollo had developed when they were back in high school.
It came as a slight surprise to Clay when Athena joined in, and so he left a parting remark-
"And here I thought you'd never get yourself a girlfriend, Apollo. Congrats!"
Apollo and Athena left the counseling session blushing their faces off... but at the same time, neither of them could deny what Clay had said.