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It all starts because the thrift store near Ema and Kay’s apartment is having a $5 Grab Bag Sale. 5 dollars for a combination of absolutely anything in the store that you squeeze into one standard-size plastic bag, the poster in the store window advertises proudly.
“Aww man…they’ve added a new rule since last year’s sale,” Kay notes with disappointment when they pass by the store on the way home from their weekly farmer’s market run.
“Well, I don’t think you can blame them, babe. You did clean them out pretty well last time with that extra-large evidence sleeve,” Ema reasons.
“Hey, if they say any bag, they should mean any bag,” Kay grumbles. “And we got a really great $5 coffee table out of that, so I don’t want to hear you complaining.”
“I would never dream of complaining about your talents, oh great thief Yatagarasu,” Ema teases, leaning in to give her pouting girlfriend a soft kiss on the cheek. This immediately brightens Kay up. “Anyway, the date on the poster is next week. January…” Ema turns around to double check the day, walking backwards for a few seconds, “...the sixteenth. Do you have anything you’re doing that day?” she asks, flipping back around just in time for Kay to tug her out of the path of a telephone pole.
“Oh, shit, yeah,” Kay groans, “Prosecutor Von Karma’s in town next week and that’s the day Sebby and I are supposed to help her look through the records room to see if we can find anything related to this case she’s working on. I’ll probably be in the office late.”
“Ooh, what’s the case?” asks Ema.
“I’m afraid that’s Interpol confidential,” Kay says, with a put-on air of great self-importance.
Ema half-heartedly shoves Kay with her shoulder. “Since when do you care about laws?”
“I don’t appreciate what you’re insinuating there, Ms. Skye,” Kay giggles, “I’ve never met a law that I didn’t like.”
“Liked to break, maybe,” Ema mumbles, but she decides to let it go. “I guess that means I’ll just have to go to the sale by myself, then.”
And so she does. She picks up a couple pairs of jeans (different from her current ones by virtue of an absence of chemical stains) as well as a cool pair of distressed combat boots for Kay, a few interesting looking old murder mystery novels, and a small collection of cat toys that she thinks will make good offerings for Apollo’s cat Mikeko on their next game night. Eventually, she aimlessly wanders her way into the home goods section. She looks through a few sets of ceramic figures that must have belonged to someone’s grandmother and snaps a picture of a metal wolf statue to send to Agent Lang with the caption ‘why didn’t you tell me you were in town?’.
It’s as she’s looking through a stack of wall-art (she’s hoping to one day find a full periodic table of elements print) that she stumbles upon the poster.
A Gavineers’ commemorative poster for their ‘Love With No Chance of Parole’ album, featuring Gavin himself front and center, smirking at the viewer in what he must think is a seductive way. Ema finds it revolting. The poster is glossy and in near mint condition, unlike the rest of the stuff in the pile. The only signs of previous ownership are the four neat pinpricks in each corner, where it no doubt hung in a place of honor in some tween girl’s bedroom. Ema sort of wants to destroy it just because of how nice it’s been kept up until now. Actually, scratch that, she definitely wants to destroy it. She has a momentary vision of herself taping the image of Gavin to a dartboard and going to town on it until his ‘rockstar physique’ is in shreds. It’s an incredibly tempting image.
After a surreptitious glance around to make sure no one is watching her, Ema succumbs to the temptation, rolling up the poster and sticking it in her bag.
“Big Gavineers fan?” asks the clerk at check out when Ema hands over a ten-dollar bill for her two bags.
“No,” she answers honestly.
The clerk gives her a confused look, but doesn’t say anything else.
Ema can almost feel the poster burning a hole in her bag the whole walk home, and it’s a relief when she finally reaches her apartment. She locks the door clumsily, breathing heavily from both her walk up the stairs and the fear that someone she knows could have just seen her walking the streets of LA with a Gavineers’ poster in her possession. She’d never be able to live that down.
She tries her best to ignore its stifling presence while she unpacks the rest of her thrift store haul, throwing the clothes into the washing machine and having to try very hard to squeeze the new mystery novels into a place on their already-overstuffed bookshelf. When she’s done with all that, she’s finally alone with Gavin.
She unfurls the poster, looks into his ice-blue eyes for a split second, and frantically furls it back up, probably wrinkling it with her trembling fingers. God, she hates those eyes. Just friendly enough to hide their patronizing, self-aggrandizing depths at first glance, but not sincere enough to let her ever be truly comfortable in their presence. So similar to Kristoph Gavin’s, but so different too, in a way that makes them feel infinitely more dangerous. If Kristoph Gavin’s eyes are a freezing Arctic ocean too perilous to go near, then Klavier Gavin’s eyes are a beautiful tropical sea hiding a rip current just beneath, waiting to draw you in and pull you under forever.
Ema pushes away any thoughts about the Gavin brothers and hides the poster under her bed.
It stays there, gathering nothing but dust and occasional guilty glances, for almost a month, until Ema has one of her worst weeks in recent memory.
It involves a three-day trial, at least five uncooperative witnesses, two reprimands from the chief reminding her that she’s “a boots on the ground detective, not some sort of fancy-shmancy scientist”, and a partner prosecutor who won't stop smiling and air-guitaring and acting like nothing’s wrong. She’s absolutely exhausted, both emotionally and physically, but even still, when she gets home from the trial and collapses on her couch she finds herself too annoyed to sleep.
If Kay were here, she would force Ema to lie down while she cooked dinner (before giving up and ordering take-out) and then they’d watch a movie and cuddle until Ema fell asleep, but Kay’s working late doing work on her own case, so there’s no one around to stop Ema from pulling the Gavineers poster out from under the bed and taping it to the living room wall.
She spends a long while just glaring at it, which is relieving in its own right, because at work she can only glare for short periods of time while Gavin’s back is turned and even then she gets weird looks from anyone else who’s around.
At one point, she flicks his forehead and just enjoys the way the force reverberates along the paper.
But then the longer she looks at him, his smug grin and his teasing eyes somehow just the same in a years-old promo shot for his rock band as they were in court today, the angrier she gets.
“You’re the worst,” she says aloud, and the brief weirdness of talking to an inanimate picture is overshadowed by the release she gets from finally being able to say how she really feels to some version of Gavin’s face. “Like, actually the worst. I still can’t believe that after facing some of the world’s greatest and scariest prosecutors, the chief of police, like two different mafias, and an actual tiger, the one who took down the great Phoenix Wright was you: a 17-year old pop star with a fake accent and hair so blonde that I’d probably think it was fake if I hadn’t met your brother.” Ema sighs and flicks the poster again, enjoying it substantially less the second time. “I especially can’t believe that after you did that you ran away to go play celebrity simulator for seven years before coming back and then acting like you had any right to carry that prosecutor’s badge. Well, I know how real prosecutor's behave, and you can’t fool me. Riding around on your purple motorcycle, filling your office with guitars, singing and posing and signing autographs at crime scenes?! I know it’s all an act,” she hisses, feeling a sudden fresh rush of anger that she's been holding back for what feels like years, “Everyone knows you’re faking. Acting like you didn’t singlehandedly ruin the life of the Turnabout Terror, the one light of hope some people found in this country’s dark, dark, legal landscape. God, could you have picked anyone less likely of being a forger to accuse?” Ema laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “If Mr.Wright could forge evidence, well, let’s just say that certain trials would have ended more beneficially for his clients, okay?” She bites her lip and forces herself to move on. This is about Gavin, not her.
“And everyone’s always like ‘Oh, but Ema, Prosecutor Gavin feels so bad about ruining Mr. Wright’s life, you should go easy on him.’ Well, I think that’s bullshit. Maybe you do feel shitty about what you did to Mr.Wright, Gavin, but I don’t think you’ve stepped out of your bottomless pit of self-pity long enough to think about anything besides that.
Did you ever think about all the other things you could have ruined by accusing him of forgery? All the other people’s lives you could have fucked up?” she shouts, her voice getting louder and higher-pitched by the second. The poster is infuriatingly silent. “I’ll answer that for you. No, you didn’t. You were a stupid, self-absorbed 17-year-old who cared more about making sure your hair looked perfect for your courtroom debut than persuing the actual truth!” Ema picks up the closest object to her, a decorative pillow from the couch, and throws it directly at Gavin’s face. It bounces off harmlessly, but the action fuels something inside her, a deep desire for cheap, violent vengeance, and she doesn’t feel complete again until she’s repeated the action with the remaining pillows and a cheap paperback book that she’d left lying around, the first thing that made its way into her grasping hands once she’d run out of pillows. She feels a slight twinge of guilt, as though she knows she’ll regret damaging the book later, but right now the only thing that matters is wiping Klavier Gavin’s infuriating smirk off his face.
“Mr. Wright’s disbarment could have been so much worse than it was, and I don’t think you’ve ever even considered that. The DA could’ve gone back and reconsidered any of his previous cases, and it’s probably only thanks to your psychopath older brother wanting to keep Mr. Wright in a constant state of dependency and limbo that they didn’t.” Ema feels a wave of fury towards Kristoph Gavin rise up inside her, an incredibly familiar companion of these past seven years, and when she looks up at the poster of the younger Gavin brother all she can see is that same blonde braid and those same piercing blue eyes, all nuance gone from their depths. She throws another book and revels in the sound it makes when it bangs against the wall, an echo to the gavel slamming that she hears over and over again in her nightmares.
“They could have decided that the verdicts of all Mr. Wright’s old cases were void because he was a forger. They could have retried Larry Butz, or Maya Fey, or, hell, even Miles Edgeworth! They could have accused our fucking boss of murder again and there would have been no one there to stop them because YOU got Phoenix Wright disbarred!” Ema clenches her fists, nails digging into the skin until it nearly breaks, then speaks again, voice shaking. “They could have-they could have reviewed State v Skye. They might have decided to release Damon Gant from prison and send my sister to the electric chair! They could have killed Lana, and left me more alone than I already fucking am!” Burning hatred coursing through her veins, Ema snatches a teacup up off the side table and hurls it at the poster. The patterned china shatters against the wall, splattering the remaining dregs of Rooibos tea over Gavin’s glossy face.
Ema blinks a few times, staring down at her broken cup. The pattern of light red splotches along the wall and ground forcibly remind her of blood spatter, specifically the blood spatter pattern cards Lana had bought her from a forensics catalog years ago, before things went bad. It’s this deeply buried memory, more than anything, that pulls her out of her rage and back into the moment. Slowly, Ema sinks down to the ground, breath shaking.
“Because that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?” she mutters, speaking to herself now, instead of Gavin. “It’s about Lana, just like everything always is.” She lets her head lean back and hit the couch for support while she digs out her phone, getting ready to do the same thing she always does whenever she’s having conflicting feelings about Lana. She navigates into her photos app, scrolling past dozens of shots of her and Kay posing at various crime scenes, a generous collection of forensics memes, and a whole series of Sebastian’s accidental selfies before finding what she’s looking for: the digitized version of a photo from over a decade ago, featuring her and Lana posing in front of the police station, with Lana in her new uniform and Ema having stolen her hat at some point. They’re both saluting the camera, smiling and happy and blissfully unaware of everything that will soon go wrong. Ema sighs. It’s such a bittersweet picture, really. It feels as though she looks at everything from before Joe Darke with naive rose-tinted glasses and everything after with the bitter cynicism she’s wrapped herself in, to the point where Ema Skye as a person oscillates between two extremes: Ema with Lana and Ema without Lana.
“You know, when I was a kid, Lana was my whole world,” Ema says aloud, turning her head and beginning to whisper to the poster of Gavin, as though he’s some sort of confidant, or a sounding board for her feelings. “Everything I did was for her, in some way. To make her smile, or to make her proud, or, if I was in a bad mood, to make her cry and scream at me. It was never really about what I was doing, it was all about Lana’s reaction. She was the only thing in the whole world that mattered. But then when I got older, I stopped being able to make her do any of that. It was just suddenly, one day, I could barely even get her to look at me,” Ema’s voice cracks just remembering her sister’s coldness over those two years, “She still fed me and took me to school and everything, of course, but it didn’t feel like she was doing it for me, anymore. It was like she was doing it for her, because I was part of her established routine, because I was something she had to take responsibility for. It had never felt like that before. Before, even if I knew it was Lana’s job to take care of me, it always felt like something she wanted to do anyway, like it was a labor of love. And then that all changed, just, on a dime. And now I get why it had to be that way, or at least, why she thought it had to be that way. But in the moment…it felt like I’d lost the only person who’d ever cared about me.” Ema looks back down at the picture, feeling yet another pang of regret for what might have been had there never been a Joe Darke, or maybe, more truthfully, had there never been a Damon Gant. “You wanna know something terrible?” she asks Gavin, not waiting for a response this time, “A part of me was actually…relieved when Lana was arrested and sent to jail. Because once we had that trial, once Mr. Wright exposed the truth, at least I knew that everything she’d done…she’d done for me. Because she loved me. That I hadn’t done something wrong to lose her love. I think–I think I might prefer an absent sister who cares to a present one who doesn’t,” Ema lets out a shaky breath, “And isn’t that terrible? That in some fucked up way I’m actually glad my sister’s in jail, because it makes me feel marginally better about myself? God, I’m so selfish.” She stews in silence for a few moments longer, until the years old smile on an unfamiliar reflection of her own face is too much to bear and she has to put the phone down.
“Older siblings, huh? They fuck with you,” she mutters, giving the poster another sideways glance, and feeling some strange sense of camaraderie from Gavin’s flat, unmoving face. “I guess you’d know that better than anyone else, huh?”
And God, everything seems so unfair right then, because it suddenly hits Ema that Kristoph Gavin had years upon years he could have spent with his younger brother before he went to prison and he didn’t appreciate them at all. But Lana, who did everything for Ema, who’s still in prison right now for wanting to protect her, barely got fifteen years with her, and for those last two they hardly ever talked. Lana didn’t get to see Ema graduate high school, help her get ready for her first date, give her advice before her first day on the job, or comfort her on the couch as she cried, holding her forensics rejection letter. Ema had had to do all of those things herself and Lana had had to sit alone in a cell miles away, knowing they were happening and that she had no way to be involved, all because she’d cared too much about her little sister in the first place.
And Ema doesn’t know who to feel worse for anymore; herself or Klavier Gavin. Because she, at the very least, knows her sister loves her. (Well, on good days she knows. On bad days it becomes a question, but it’s a question that’s always solved with a gentle and affirming ‘yes’ once she’s calmed down. It’s a question that can be answered through memories of bandages over scraped knees and splurges on cupcakes after bad school days, photos like the one of them in front of Police Headquarters, and a decade-long correspondence from the Los Angeles County Penitentiary.)
She doesn’t know if Klavier has anything like that to go on. Because for Ema, a trial revealed the ultimate truth of her sister’s love. But for Klavier, a trial revealed the ultimate truth of his brother’s inconsiderate madness. It’s a strikingly tragic parallel when she thinks about it that way, so Ema resolves to try and stop thinking about it at all.
Ema, slowly but surely coming back to her senses, looks around at the mess she’s made of the apartment. She reaches up to wipe her face and her fingers come away wet with tears that she hadn’t even noticed she’d shed. “I should call Kay,” she mumbles, “If only to warn her that there’ll be a mess when she gets back from work.” A gust of wind comes through the open window and shakes the poster, so it almost looks like Klavier is giving her an encouraging nod. When she opens her phone contacts menu and scrolls down to K, though, a different name sticks out to her. She sighs. She’s thinking about it again, despite telling herself less than a minute ago that she wouldn’t. She’s thinking about Klavier Gavin and how alone in the world he must feel, and how she’s done nothing but make that worse the whole time they’ve known each other.
Her finger hovers hesitantly over the screen. Before she can talk herself out of it, she hits the call button.
Klavier picks up almost immediately.
“Fraulein Detective,” he greets her, and Ema can practically hear the fake smile he’s pasted on just for this conversation, “To what do I owe the pleasure? Wait, let me guess-” he continues before she can even get a word in edgewise, “There’s been another murder. Just tell me where, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She can hear him shuffling around, picking up what sounds like his keys before she manages to interrupt.
“No, there’s, uh, there’s no murder, actually,” she says slowly. Oh, god, why did she do this? She desperately wonders if it would be too much to hope that if she just hung up now Klavier wouldn’t call her back or bring it up ever again.
“Oh,” says Klavier, sounding slightly let down, “A robbery then?”
“No.”
“Arson?”
“Definitely not.”
“Tax evasion?”
“It’s not a crime, okay!” Ema huffs, already exasperated.
“Oh,” says Klavier again, “Then, is…is something wrong? Do you need my help with anything?” He sounds genuinely concerned, and for the first time in their months of acquaintanceship, Ema considers that maybe he’s not faking it after all.
“No, no, I’m fine,” replies Ema, despite the fact that she’s very recently been crying. She stands up, deciding to try and distract herself a little from the conversation by putting the room back in order. She begins picking books up off the ground and trying to decide where on the shelf they belong. “I was actually calling to, um, see how you’re doing?”
“How I’m doing?” he repeats, slightly incredulous.
“Well, yeah. I know it’s sort of out of the blue and everything, but I’ve–I’ve been doing some thinking…about you,” she says, as delicately as she can manage.
“What exactly is it ‘about me’ that you’ve been thinking about?”
“I mean, you’ve been dealing with…a lot these past couple months, and I know I’ve never been like ‘nice’ to you or anything but I guess I just thought that if you ever wanted someone to talk to…you know, about the whole ‘older sibling in prison’ thing, then I’d be a pretty good choice.”
She lets that settle for a moment. Klavier says nothing for a long time, and Ema worries she’s stepped past the boundaries of their slightly-antagonist coworker bond by bringing up the very thing everyone’s been trying so hard not to mention around Klavier for the last few months, before he says: “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Fraulein ,” in a tone that is equally confused and apologetic.
Ema huffs, continuing to place books back on the shelf, holding the phone tenuously between her cheek and her shoulder. “Aren’t you supposed to be some kinda legal prodigy? Top of your class at Themis, and all that?
“Well, yes,” Klavier replies, a faint hint of pride sneaking its way into his still confused voice, “But I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“I’m calling you out, that’s how it’s relevant. You can’t have been that great a legal student if you never read State v Skye.”
There is a short moment of silence followed by a sharp inhale of breath on the other line as Klavier makes the connection. “Ah. That case,” he begins awkwardly, “Yes, I’m familiar with it. Though defense students would have done a more thorough reading of the case, from an evidence law standpoint. I only ever saw overviews.”
“And none of those overviews had a witness list? Or, I don’t know, the last name of the defendant?”
“No, no, of course they did. I just never, uh, put two and two together, as it were. Quite the oversight on my part, ja ? I…apologize.”
It is at this moment that Ema realizes several things:
- She may be joking around, but Klavier is entirely serious.
- She has never made any sort of joke with Klavier before, so he has no precedent for what it sounds like when she does.
- Klavier has, no doubt, received many pop-quizzings on court proceedings and reprimands for any wrong answers he gives.
She decides that it would be a good idea to talk about something else for a while.
“I’m going to change the subject now, okay? And we’re going to pretend like we’re just two friendly coworkers having a chat.” Ema says, wandering away from the bookshelf and over to the couch, where she picks up and refolds the quilt that lays on top of it.
“Okay.” Klavier sounds slightly confused but he goes along with it nonetheless.
“We were talking about Themis a second ago. Since you went there, you must have known Sebastian Debeste, right?”
“I know of him, certainly. We, uh, ran in different circles,” Klavier replies, tripping awkwardly over his words.
“Different circles how? You were both prosecution students with a family connection to the courts and a side-passion for music. Seems like a match made in heaven to me.” She bites her lip when she mentions the family thing again. Maybe this is why so many of their coworkers avoid drawn-out conversations with Klavier; it’s so hard to talk around the existence of his brother.
“Ah, how should I put this,” Klavier sighs, “There’s only room in a friend group for one ego the size of the Rhineland. He had his, and I had mine, to the point where we hardly would have fit in a room together.”
Ema pauses in her adjustment of the couch cushions. Any other day, she would take this opportunity to bully Klavier about his overinflated ego and run with it. But right now, she just says: “Given what I’ve heard about young Seb, that fits pretty well.”
“Might I ask how you know Herr Debeste, Fraulein Detective?”
“He’s my girlfriend’s best friend.”
“Oh ho,” Klavier’s voice lightens up, as though he’s eager to discuss Ema’s love life. “Now, would your girlfriend happen to be a mysterious detective who always wears a long navy blue cape and a golden key in her hair?”
“That’s my girl,” says Ema proudly, “Have you met her?”
“Not personally, though I’ve seen her around with Herr Debeste and Herr Edgeworth. And I once found her–actually, that’s not important,” Klavier trails off, leaving Ema desperately curious as to what he was about to say.
“You can’t just bring up something like that and then say it’s not important! Come on, spill! What embarrassing thing did you find her doing?” Ema asks eagerly, settling herself down on the now-organized couch.
“I–well, I found her going through the desk drawers in my office a few days after the Magnifi Gramarye case,” Klavier admits, and Ema mentally slaps herself in the forehead for accidentally making him bring up the topic they’ve deliberately moved on from, “No doubt the Chief Prosecutor put her up to it. Not that I blame him, given that I had just gotten his husband disbarred.”
“They weren’t…married then,” Ema half-heartedly tries to intervene, but Klavier ignores her.
“And no doubt they would have been married much earlier, had I not been involved,” he says, so self-pityingly that Ema kind of wants to punch him through the phone. “And for that, I am deeply sorry.”
“God, do you have to be so sorry about everything all the time?” Ema snaps, before immediately regretting it.
“Yes!” Klavier snaps back incredibly suddenly, “Because I have an overabundance of things to be sorry about! Ruining Herr Wright’s life, ruining Fraulein Trucy’s life, never noticing that my older brother and best friend were both criminals, being so unaware of my surroundings that I didn’t even know you have a sister who’s in jail, need I go on?” he says desperately, and Ema can almost see him pulling his own hair out in frustration. “Why did you really call me, Ema? Just to dredge up bad memories and then make me feel worse about them?” he asks, sounding overwhelmingly exhausted. It’s the use of her given name, more than anything, that makes Ema worry.
“No! I called you because I realized we have something in common and I thought I could use that to…I don’t know, rebuild the bridge I’ve been purposefully burning down every day since we met?”
Klavier says nothing, evidently waiting for her to explain herself, or potentially, to stick her foot even farther into her mouth than it already is.
“Look,” she sighs, “Your older brother’s in jail. And that sucks. I know it sucks because, well, my older sister’s been in jail for a decade. And I know it’s not the same thing, not even close. But I know what it's like to find out that the person you spent your whole life looking up to and trying to please isn’t who you thought they were. I know what it’s like to feel alone. I know what it’s like to have to try and talk around it when people ask you about your family and what it feels like when strangers, people you barely know, judge you because of what they think you’re gonna grow up to be. I know. I get it.”
“Why exactly are you telling me all this, Fraulein?” asks Klavier, still sounding tired, “We’re not exactly, how do I put this, friends, are we?” he asks, letting a twinge of bitter sarcasm slip into his words.
“We’re-” Ema stops herself before she lies outright, “No you’re right. We’re not friends. And I’m not going to pretend that I’m not the main reason for that. But I don’t–I don’t hate you. At least, not anymore. And now that I’m thinking about it more I’m not so sure I ever really did, because I might have just been projecting a lot of misunderstood feelings onto you in order to not have to accept that the man who saved my sister’s life was miserable and there was nothing I could do about it. And I know, or I’ve known since the Misham trial anyway, that you were manipulated into everything in the first place and it wasn’t your fault, it was Kristoph’s, but it was still so much easier to blame you because you’re right there and you’re accessible, and at least if it was your fault then you were just one independent idiot, but when it’s his fault it’s this whole massive corruption deal that’s actually legitimately threatening and…” Ema trails off when she realizes that she’s rambling. She sighs. “Look, you might be obnoxious, headache-inducing after long term exposure, and generally insufferable, but-” then she mutters something hopefully incomprehensible under her breath.
“Sorry, what was that last bit? Didn’t quite catch it,” he says, getting far too much enjoyment out of the moment for Ema’s liking. It will never not be impressive how quickly he can switch his positive, sunshine-y rock-star mode back on. Impressive, and a little concerning too.
“I like being your detective, okay?” she admits, “Well, like might be a strong word. I prefer working with you to working with any of the other bozos who work around here, Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth obviously excluded.”
“Why, Fraulein Detective, I am touched.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t let it go to your already oversized head. You’re only not the worst because you don’t send paperwork via hawk rather than email, or spend hours styling your toupee in your office, or conduct trials with a whip. It’s a low bar, Klavier.” His first name slips out of her mouth before she has a chance to stop it. When did she start thinking about him so personally?
“Since when do you call me Klavier?” he asks teasingly, picking up on Ema’s faux-pas immediately.
“Since…I dunno, twenty minutes ago when I called you on the phone and forced you to listen to me talk about our sibling trauma and also Sebastian Debeste?”
Klavier hmms under his breath.
“That’s not the point,” Ema stubbornly pushes on, “The point is that you’re a good lawyer, and a-” she bites her lip, “A good guy overall. Sure, your jeans are too tight and your hair is egregiously shiny and you spend way too much time at crime scenes rhapsodizing about your boyfriend, but you also care about the truth. You work hard to find the truth and bring it to light in every case you work on. And that’s what really matters at the end of the day, I think. You’re in law for the right reasons, and every case you work on it’s clear that you really care about the people you’re working with. I was just…willingly blind to all of that before. So I guess I just want you to know that you can talk to me about your brother, even if you feel like you can’t talk to anyone else. I just wanted you to know that I’m here, I guess.”
There’s a long pause, where Ema wonders if she’s completely overstepped her bounds, before Klavier replies, “Thank you, Ema. It–it means more than you know to hear you say that.” His voice is wavering and wet, and in that moment, knowing she’s just made Klavier Gavin cry by saying one singular nice thing to him, she knows that she’s forgiven him for everything she might have once held against him. And maybe she’s been on the path to forgiving him for months, ever since the Misham trial, or maybe it’s been inevitable since the Gramarye case happened seven, nearly eight years ago, that one day Ema Skye would meet Klavier Gavin and hate him, until she realized she could see herself in the ocean-y depths of his blue eyes. And it feels very significant, to her at least, that this reconciliation takes place over the phone, where she can remember that Klavier Gavin is his own person, no matter who else he might look like on the surface.
“Do you mind if I ask a follow up question?” Klavier mutters after a moment.
“Sure,” Ema shrugs.
“I’m relatively sure I understand it, but I want to hear it in your own words,” he pauses for a moment, seemingly thinking of how to phrase his question, “Why exactly do you–did you–hate me so much?”
Ema thinks it over for a moment, deciding how much of the truth she should tell. “I guess I’ve just always felt so miserably guilty about not being able to help Mr.Wright get his badge back even after he saved Lana’s life, and mine too, that I needed a scapegoat to project all those feelings onto, and you were easy to hate,” she says rather quickly, deciding that now is the best time for overwhelming casual honesty, both with herself and with him.
“Gee, thanks,” snarks Klavier, purposefully ignoring the heavier beginning of that sentence. Ema appreciates that, and thinks it’s only fair, given that she’s ignoring his little sniffles.
“You know what I mean. You were there, and it was easy to blame you for the whole thing without looking any more analytically at the situation. So, I’m sorry. At least, I’m sorry for blaming you for everything that happened to Mr.Wright. I’m not sorry for all the jokes about your accent, because I maintain that those are fully warranted.”
“ Achtung , baby. I accept the partial apology,” Klavier laughs, laying on the German Euro-Pop tang even thicker than usual.
“Do people actually think that’s hot?” she asks curiously.
“Well,” he begins, dragging out the ‘L’ sound in a way that implies that whatever he’s about to say is going to make Ema roll her eyes, “Our mutual friend Mr. Justice certainly does.”
Ema does, in fact, roll her eyes.
“He’s so lucky that I’m still friends with him despite his terrible taste in partners,” she groans, and Klavier’s chuckle proves he knows that this time, at least, she's joking, “God, does he have, like, some sort of German fetish or something?”
“No comment,” jokes Klavier, and Ema laughs in spite of herself.
“Wait, okay, are we friends now?” she asks, feeling a happier, more youthful version of herself coming to light.
“I’d certainly hope we’re on the way there,” says Klavier, with no trace of sarcasm.
“Okay, good. Because that means we can totally team up to make fun of Apollo now!”
She can almost hear Klavier’s grin. “Fraulein, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
When Kay gets home, she stares for a long time at the tea-stained poster of Klavier Gavin that’s now hanging in their living room.
“New decorations?” she asks, raising her eyebrows curiously at Ema and clearly waiting for a good story.
“I had…a moment,” Ema explains. “A very intense, Klavier Gavin related moment.”
Kay tears her eyes away from the poster and steps forward to wrap Ema in a hug, which she gratefully melts into.
“Was it a moment that started with the angry tea throwing or one that ended with it?”
“It was kind of a moment that started with Mr.Wright getting disbarred seven years ago, had the angry tea throwing thing in the middle, and ended with me calling Klavier on the phone and talking to him about Lana for twenty minutes to help unpack our shared sibling trauma,” Ema explains, fully aware of how ridiculous it sounds.
“Ah, one of those moments,” says Kay, squeezing Ema a little bit harder and then leaning back to press a soft kiss to her forehead.
“I think he and I are good now,” confides Ema, “Or at least on the path to being good. We’ve got a lot more to talk about, and I’m probably never going to be his best friend or anything-”
“Well that’s a given, cause that spot’s all mine.”
“-but I don’t hate him anymore. And that’s a pretty important first step, I think. Like, we’re kind of friends now. He even said so.”
Kay nods. “I’m proud of you. I know you don’t like talking about your feelings, and you especially don’t like talking about Lana, but you did both of those things today because you thought it would help someone else. You’re a good person, Em,” she says, and Ema frowns and blushes in equal measure. “Do you need anything? Or want anything?”
“Can we order Thai food for dinner?” Ema asks shyly.
“I think I might be amenable to that.”
“And, um, do you think we could invite Klavier to our next game night?” Ema mutters into Kay’s shoulder. “I think he needs some more friends.” There’s a pause. “And honestly, so do I.”
“I’m sure he’d love to come,” says Kay encouragingly. “We might want to take the poster down before he visits though.”