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The concert, as usual, is a huge success.
As per tradition the band drink long into the night, alcohol picking up where the post-show adrenaline leaves off. Even then by 4am it is only Klavier and Daryan left standing.
The atmosphere is quiet, now, and they loll against each other in the deserted dressing room like milk-bloated puppies. When Klavier opens his eyes he spies the first splashes of light creeping their way across the waning night sky, aggressive against cool darkness. The sharply contrasting hues remind him of a painting his brother has hanging in his study, right above his desk: bone white canvas, spattered with an abstract mesh of colour. Kristoph had always been fond of art. Whenever he got a chance he would wax poetic to Klavier about how it would one day be the sole trace of humans’ passage on earth, or something. Klavier, ever polite, had always nodded along but privately thought that Kristoph’s prized painting appeared more a creation of a toddler run loose with watercolours than any work of genius.
Somehow, in his quietest moments his thoughts always drift back to his brother. He is ruminating on this when Daryan grunts softly beside him and pulls himself upright, rubbing his eyes.
“Did I fall asleep?” he grumbles. “What time is it?”
Klavier chuckles, glad of the distraction. “Around 4,” he answers, stifling a yawn at the realisation of how late it has become. “And yeah - think you must have dropped off for a while, there.” His muscles creak as he stretches, cramped from hours of inactivity. He is aware of Daryan watching him, lips curled in subtle amusement.
“What?” he asks, grinning; Daryan’s expression is is inordinately hilarious.
“Were you just sitting there all that time?” Daryan runs his fingers through his elaborate hairstyle, movements instinctive as he tweaks stray locks into place. “Never clocked you as one for meditation, especially after a show.”
Inspired, Klavier sets to the task of fixing his own hair so as to avoid Daryan’s gaze. “Time is subjective,” he replies breezily, although even he can hear the forced nonchalance behind the words. “A few hours is no time at all to exalt in the success of our show.”
Daryan laughs, sharp and loud . Klavier cringes as the sound shatters the hush like ice underfoot; he is suddenly conscious of how cold the dressing room is, as though they really have been plunged into freezing depths.
“I’m a cop, Gavin,” Daryan wryly points out. “I can tell when you’re lying. Or trying to.” He quirks an eyebrow. “What I can’t tell is why .”
Klavier sighs, defeated. He might as well tell him. “Ah, it’s nothing,” he murmurs. “I...I was thinking about my brother, that’s all.”
“Oh.” Daryan dithers, his discomfort settling over them akin to a fine drizzle. Klavier has kept what he can of his tumultuous relationship with his brother from his band, but unfortunately for Daryan he knows him better than anyone. In this intimate venue snuggled away in the bohemian quarter of Boston the presence of his brother’s spectre is faint, and in that moment he is desperate to no longer be alone with his thoughts.
“You remember our first tour?”
Warmth softens Daryan’s features as memories float to the surface. “Of course. Abrupt, but the best parties are always unplanned, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” Klavier grins, though the gesture is scant of mirth. The sole recollections he has from those times are flashes of nights spent crammed too close to his bandmates on the tour bus or in dingy hotels, staring at darkened ceilings and wondering why he still didn’t feel safe .
“I…” he pauses, struggling. “I never told you why I was so… adamant about it at such short notice, did I?”
Daryan’s smile fades, aware of the shift in Klavier’s demeanour. “No,” he breathes, “I… didn’t know there was a reason.”
“I thought - think my brother is watching me. Following me.” The words escape in such a garbled rush that Klavier isn’t sure if Daryan will even be able to make sense of them. His bandmate’s expression, however, puts any such fears to rest – Daryan stares at him in unabashed incredulity. Klavier cannot elaborate further for a moment, as he is fighting the urge to laugh; now the words have been spoken aloud it all seems so ridiculous. And yet…
It’s been a long day. Klavier sneezes himself awake, bleary-eyed and blinking. He’s fallen asleep at his desk again. Maybe he should take Kristoph up on his offer to join him on his monthly spa trips. Still, for now, there is paperwork to finish.
However, when he reaches into his drawer the notes from his and Gumshoe’s meeting are nowhere to be found. Odd, he thinks - he is sure he remembers storing them exactly there
The exhaustion must be getting to him.
Klavier shudders.
“How do you know?” Daryan interrupts his burgeoning spiral of panic. “Why would he…”
Klavier dismisses the words with a wave of his hand, as though batting them from mid-air. “I don’t... I don’t know.” His voice drops, suddenly conspiratorial. “I just feel it. All the time.”
“But what are you afraid of?” Daryan presses. “I mean, even if it were true, what d’you think he’d do?”
Slats of milky morning light suddenly stream through the window, stopping him in his tracks. The rays raise strange shadows, distorting the shapes of the instruments and objects scattered about the room. When Klavier catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror he notices a darkness daubed across his neck, reminiscent of a gaping wound.
His response dies in his throat.
//
Like any smart predator that knows when it has been bested in battle, Daryan comes quietly.
In the wake of the trial Apollo finds Klavier sitting alone on the courthouse steps, his mournful figure stark against pale marble. Upon sighting him, Apollo hesitates; he had stepped out with the resolution he had to say something. He now realises he has not yet decided what that something should be, however.
Paralysed as he is in the throes of his dilemma, he does not notice Klavier spot him until he calls out. “Herr Forehead!” Apollo snaps to attention as Klavier raises a hand to wave. “Heading out? Where is Fräulein Wright?”
“Ah, no. She’s inside, with Lamiroir,” Apollo falls into stride, glad to be relieved of the responsibility of starting the conversation. “I… came out to see you, actually.” His voice drops as he squats to settle at Klavier’s level, balanced precariously on the balls of his feet. If the attempted heart-to-heart goes too disastrously he can always hurl himself lemming-style down the steps, he decides. That might take Klavier’s mind off things.
“Oh?” Klavier arches an eyebrow, coquettish and gently teasing. “Have you come to whisk me off into the sunset on the back of your bicycle, Herr Forehead?”
Unwelcome heat floods to Apollo’s cheeks. He’s not used to being joke-flirted with; or any sort of flirted with, for that matter. Still, he’s wise to Klavier’s tricks by now.
“Not exactly,” Apollo replies, meeting Klavier’s coy look with a contrastingly somber one of his own. “I... I just wanted to check if you were alright.”
Klavier’s smile drops, its disappearance felt as keenly as the sun receding below the skyline.
“Ach, well… you know. About as well as I could be.” He sighs. “I’m not… surprised in a way. Daryan… had a penchant for danger, is the kindest way I can think to put it.” He leans back on his hands, and Apollo pretends not to notice the way his hair pours down his back like molten gold. “He was… is a dear friend, and I… I wish he’d seen the error of his ways before it was too late. But, the truth will always come out, one way or another; there was no way I could have saved him.”
Apollo nods thoughtfully and he, too, swivels his eyes skyward. “I felt the same way about Mr. Gavin.”
He speaks the words without thinking, but their effect on the prosecutor is instantaneous. Klavier freezes and the world about them, too, feels suddenly suspended in space. Apollo’s teeth clamp down on his lower lip in an instinctive response developed after long years of running his mouth.
“Damnit, Klavier, I’m sorry,” he manages after a moment. “That wasn’t-”
“Don’t apologise,” Klavier cuts him off with a firm certainty. “I don’t… want to never mention him.” His eyes tighten.“He’s in prison. Whatever he was planning, it’s over.”
“Yeah… of course.” Apollo fidgets uncomfortably. Kristoph might be behind bars, but that doesn’t feel like enough. It’s a conviction that sits under his skin like an unreachable itch, a grain of sand rattling around the deepest confines of his consciousness. He wishes he could properly recall seeing Kristoph as merely his mentor, as a person who cared deeply about law and how he could harness his evident brilliance to ensure it was suitably enforced.
Now, Apollo can only wonder if all of it had been part of some grand play.
“It’s stupid,” Klavier’s voice shocks him out of his fretting. “My brother… he’s just a person. Not only that, he’s my brother . But.. the thought of what he’s capable of, even now… it terrifies me.” He sucks in a quick breath through his teeth. “I keep thinking... it’s not over. I don’t even know what isn’t over.”
Klavier fixes Apollo with a stare that one could only describe as desperate, a conveyance so wildly out of character for him it strikes Apollo dumb. He wants to say something blandly comforting that will smooth out the rigid lines of Klavier’s distress - the craned neck, the wide eyes, the tensed hand, half reaching toward him - but he cannot find the words. It’s startling, to have worries he had attempted to dismiss as self-indulgent paranoia be articulated by Klavier of all people. But then, who else had known Kristoph as intimately? “It’s not stupid,” he murmurs at last. “Not at all.”
Klavier inches closer, vindicated. “He- Apollo… can I tell you something?”
Apollo nods again, mutely.
“My best friend is going to prison for murder.” His voice has dropped to a whisper. “And… all I can think is how, at that moment, when my guitar went up in flames… I thought it was him, somehow.” He lets out an abrupt bark of laughter. “It’s ridiculous, right? And yet…” he swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing in a frenetic rhythm.. “You feel it, too, Apollo, don’t you? Like we’re in danger.”
In the distance Apollo can see grey clouds beginning to roll in, rapid as a set change onstage.
“I know exactly what you mean.”
//
“Are you planning on saying anything?” Kristoph asks archly. “Or have you merely come to sit here and smirk at me?”
It was kind of the prison guards to allow him to say goodbye in the cell. The privilege was afforded in no small part due to his connection to the Department as a prosecutor, of course, but he appreciates the gesture nonetheless.
It is not their fault he is rapidly coming to regret the decision. Still, he will not be distracted by his brother’s attempts to antagonise him; those days are finally, finally over.
“No, of course not.” Klavier levels him a cool stare. “Do you not want me here?”
Kristoph’s nostrils flare at his impudence. “I had expected you to make an appearance at some point, I suppose, but your request to meet in the cell upended me somewhat,” he admits, stowing his book in the desk drawer. “I wouldn’t have thought you desired time alone with me, after everything.”
“Don’t mistake it for sentimentality,” Klavier shoots back. “I just… I needed to ask you something.”
“Oh?” Kristoph rests his elbows on the table (something for which he has spent much time chastising Klavier for) and folds his hands beneath his chin, eyes bright with interest. “You have my attention.”
Klavier suddenly remembers some wisdom imparted from his beloved Professor Courte, long ago.
“As a judge, I always made a conscious effort to never appear to be thinking too hard.” She taps her nose with a wink. “To appear contemplative is to appear uncertain. And appearing uncertain in court goes down about as well as a bloody nose in a pit of sharks.”
He squares his shoulders, folding his expression into what he hopes is a mask of neutrality.
“You were watching me, weren’t you?” he asks, his hand gripping the edge of the desk with such force his nails make small cracks in the laminate. “From the moment you thrust that diary page into my hands. And if I had discovered your plot too soon you’d have killed me. Wouldn’t you?”
Kristoph sits up, visibly taken aback. The sudden, incessant pounding of Klavier’s heartbeat in his ears prevents him from feeling any pride at inciting such a visceral reaction from the person formerly known as the ‘Coolest Defence in the West.’
“I don’t believe my answering that question will satisfy you in the way you think it will,” Kristoph replies at last.
Klavier’s heart stutters, and the gripping hand curls into a fist. “So it’s true, then.”
“Yes. That, I suppose, would be the short answer.” Kristoph exhales the words in a long, beleaguered sigh, as though this confession is something Klavier should have figured out long ago. He stands, pacing the confines of the cell the way he would whenever he called Klavier into his study for ‘a little chat’. They were never about positive things, their little chats; it’s comforting, in an odd way, to respect the tradition. “But, as I just said” - he shoots Klavier a glare - “there is no response I could give that would satisfy you.”
He stares back at him, unwavering. “I just want the truth, Kristoph.”
Kristoph holds his gaze, eyes narrowed, before coming to sit back down with a flourish. “Alright. Fine. Then allow me to ask you a question.”
Klavier grits his teeth.
“Vera Misham,” Kristoph tilts his head. “Do you believe you deserved to live more than she did?”
Klavier blinks, wrong-footed. “What has she got to do with this?”
“As yourself and the esteemed Mr. Justice revealed, I intentionally gifted the atroquinine-laced varnish so as to ensure her demise once I was finished with her and her miserable wretch of a father.” Kristoph spits the words like bad cherries. “So, as astute as you clearly are, dear brother, why would you not realise that of course I would not hesitate to inflict a similar fate unto you, unless you believed that your life was somehow more valuable than hers?”
Klavier just about resists the urge to seize Kristoph by the collar and shake him. Instead, he bares his teeth, lips pulled taut so as to stop them trembling. “You’re being willfully obtuse,” he snaps. “I just thought that maybe as your brother you’d have thought twice about bringing about my death.”
At this, Kristoph retreats. He folds his arms atop the table, one over the other, in precise, deliberate motions. For a heartbeat his gaze lingers on his hands, contemplative, and when he lifts his head he meets Klavier’s eyes with a look of grief that is so intensely vulnerable Klavier’s breath catches.
“Did you, then, think twice about bringing about mine?”