Chapter Text
Kristoph does, in truth, miss having a degree of power, of control over what happens to him. To be fair, he's grown used to the lack thereof over the years, but it's still irritating to know that others make the decisions for him nowadays. Others being Phoenix Wright, who apparently has connections that override Kristoph's intentions. Who knew that a so-called friendship with the Chief Prosecutor would mean more than the silence of a madman?
(Funny.)
This is ridiculous. This is how Kristoph finds himself staring at Wright through the smudgy pane of glass that is really his only window to the outside world anymore. Had it been a couple of years prior, there would have been malice in it, but apathy is a strange little thing. It worms its way into your very being until things that used to mean so much are practically worthless.
Kristoph doesn't have the energy to be petty. Not actively petty, anyway: he doesn't volunteer so much as a greeting, just sits straight-backed and unblinking. Wright looks annoyingly well, having finally ditched his ugly, off-the-rack suit for something that likely costs twice as much and having a new sort of determination hiding in the corners of his face. In contrast, Kristoph is practically drowning in the fabric of his prison uniform, and his hair is longer than ever, spilling down his shoulders to almost his wrists.
"Do you know why I'm here?" asks Wright, and Kristoph despises the quiet confidence now in his voice.
"You know that I don't," he says flatly.
"Well," Wright leans forward, so slightly that it's probably unconscious, "I'd like some honesty."
Kristoph almost rolls his eyes. "Oh, please."
"I'm serious."
"You know what, Wright?" Kristoph pulls a couple of strands of hair sticking to his cheek away from his face. "I don't actually care. I could tell you lies all day long and you would be able to do exactly nothing about it."
Wright looks irritated, to say the least, but the corner of his mouth lifts in a smirk, one that says I know something that you don't. "You sure you want to say that?"
"The only thing that I'm sure of," says Kristoph, "is that I would like you to leave. But, by all means, play whatever game you've come here to play. I couldn't care less."
Wright shrugs, and moves one hand into Kristoph's line of vision, above the little counter under the glass between them. He's holding some kind of stone – maybe a bead, actually – which looks like a somewhat failed attempt at a circle. It's glowing a little, Kristoph realises, in a luminous green, and he cannot put a name to it.
"It's a magatama," Wright says, noticing Kristoph's frown. Kristoph looks away from the magatama to meet Wright's eyes, which he swears can see right through him, they're so piercing.
"I didn't think you were one for trinkets," he observes cautiously.
"Oh–" Wright laughs, just a little. "I thought you'd noticed. Wow, okay."
"What?" snaps Kristoph, who has always abhorred being treated like he's stupid – he is not stupid. He finds himself almost unwilling to hear the answer, but he has to know (not that he'll get a choice, exactly, but he can pretend).
"It shows me when someone is hiding a secret," says Wright, "and, by extension, when they're lying."
Kristoph fumbles for words, finding only: "You're delusional."
Wright raises an eyebrow. "Am I?"
"Yes," Kristoph says. "Yes, you are. That's fundamentally impossible."
"If it's impossible," and Wright has his hand on the counter so that the only thing Kristoph can see is a dull, green glow seeping between his fingers, "then explain the trial."
Kristoph stiffens, stares at him. "What?"
"I'm willing to bet," (Kristoph is tempted to make a comment here, but he refrains in favour of suspicious silence), "that you felt like something was breaking. Like– I don't know, like someone sledgehammered you in the chest or something."
Kristoph presses his lips together and says nothing, merely glares. He'd never admit it, but Wright is, in fact, correct, although Kristoph had chalked it up to mental stress back then. Apparently, his silence is taken as confirmation, because Wright smiles. "Yeah, well. That's what happens when you get a bunch of locks broken– oh, right. Yeah. The secrets – or lies – they manifest as, like, locks. With chains and everything. And, like, some cause physical pain when you break them, which is what happened."
"You can make up all the stories you want, Wright," Kristoph tells him, mouth drifting into a condescending smirk, the kind that he hasn't worn in a while. "It won't make you more credible."
"There was one left, though," Wright continues, as if he hadn't been interrupted. "You're still hiding something."
Kristoph folds his arms. "In the event that I am, it's none of your business."
He isn't, actually. If he knew what Wright really wanted, he'd have given it just so that this conversation could be over. Kristoph would even prefer staring absently at the wall over this; it's less taxing. Wright studies him, brows furrowing, and appears to reach a conclusion. "You don't know," he says, almost softly, "do you?"
Kristoph lets a tiny, stifled laugh hiss through his teeth (he's not sure he could have stopped it if he'd tried) and meets Wright's gaze through the slices of hair falling over his eyes, not bothering to brush them away. "What I know is that you're trying to make me believe in your little–"
"Why did you forge the evidence in the first place, anyway?"
If Wright thinks that Kristoph doesn't know why he forged evidence, then he's even more of an imbecile than Kristoph already thought. It's obvious, of course, and Kristoph isn't broken to the point of not understanding his own motivations.
"I'm not under oath, Wright," he sneers. "I have no obligation to tell you anything."
Wright shrugs. "True. But that just makes this take longer."
Kristoph glares at him; this is one piece of information that he wouldn't give away if his life depended on it. He suspects, however, that this would change if Wright manages to goad him enough, and he suspects that Wright is also fully aware of that. So he's already resigned when he bites out: "So be it. I have all the time in the world."
(If Kristoph is lying to himself, which he isn't, it's none of Wright's business. He isn't about to go along with this just to find out something about himself that he already knows, after all. By now, he's run out of secrets, and he isn't about to let Wright know about the mess that was his childhood just to satisfy the man.)
Wright rolls his mismatched eyes. "Wow. I kinda forgot how much of an asshole you are."
"You should have thought about that before you forced me to have this conversation, then." Kristoph studies his hands, lying clasped in his lap and marred with scars from various breakdowns he's had, splitting knuckles over walls and practically tearing his own hair out. He looks up. "I'm happy to leave, though–"
"Yeah, no. I'm literally asking you one question–"
"You aren't," Kristoph counters. "I know you. You aren't stopping until you get everything you want from me. At least have the decency to be honest about it."
(He won't get what he wants from Kristoph; he will get what Kristoph tells him.)
"Fine. But you don't have a great history of lying to me–"
"It's a game, Wright," he snaps. "It's a fucking game, and, if you can't figure that out, then you shouldn't be trying to untangle me in the first place."
Wright's eyes lock onto not-quite-Kristoph, a space in front or around him, and his hand tightens around his little magical stone. He swallows, looks back up at Kristoph. "You're lying."
Maybe there is some truth in Wright's delusions, then, or maybe it's just dumb luck. Kristoph, after all, is not a particularly good liar; he simply tends to end up in a position where people don't question him.
"No, I am not."
Wright runs his free hand through his hair, exasperated. "Don't treat me like an idiot, Gavin; you're lying through your teeth."
Kristoph smiles, saccharine. "My point exactly. You can do absolutely nothing to change that."
"You think?"
He laughs. "I promise you, you don't want to know things like that, anyway. Unless you bribe someone to let you in here and force me to tell you, it isn't happening. Why don't you run off back to your pathetic little office and tell them how your endeavours were fruitless, him?"
"Why don't you stop being a petty little coward?" Wright retorts. Kristoph relishes in the anger seeping into his face, superficial though it may be.
He leans forward, grinning like a cat. "Make me."
Rowan would probably be disappointed: they'd sigh and tell him that putting up a front isn't going to help him. They'd find a deep-rooted reason for his so-called trust issues and tell him that giving into those impulses is unproductive, and he would likely agree. But Rowan isn't here; there is only Phoenix Wright and Kristoph Gavin, and the hatred that simmers between them.
Wright's knuckles whiten; he looks resigned, disappointed, and Kristoph can only guess as to what he's going to say. Except he can't, of course: he's never been good at reading Wright, who manages to be so open and still so hidden. Wright, who is staring daggers at him when he asks: "Did you know that you talk in your sleep?"
The cliché of blood running cold is one that Kristoph has always hated. It's melodramatic, the kind of thing that Klavier would say, the kind of thing to be read in low-class novels. Yet he wouldn't be exaggerating to say that it is happening to him now, and it is not in the slightest bit pleasant. He tries to force the disinterested neutrality back onto his face, although his cover has slipped and he knows that Wright will have seen it. "What?" he rasps, throat suddenly closing and choking.
Wright doesn't appear to be enjoying this much more than Kristoph is, in fairness, but Kristoph knows that look. He's determined to get his truth, even if it hurts – no matter who it hurts. "You're always begging someone, you know that?"
"Stop it," says Kristoph. "Stop it, stop–"
"You're always asking someone not to hurt you. Telling them to stop. Telling them that you didn't mean to do or say something."
Kristoph's eyes are frozen wide, bile rising in his throat and hair falling over his face. He's shaking, he realises, arms wrapped around himself, like that will protect him, like that could ever save him. Wright is blurring a little across from him, and his breath is shuddering on the rare occasion that he manages to get air into himself, choking on secrets and lies and things he thought he could forget. "Stop it," he whispers. "I-I don't owe you that– you don't– you don't get to do that to me, stop it–"
He can't see Wright's face anymore, hidden under layers of panic and hair, but he can still hear him, to his detriment. "Which begs the question, Gavin: who was hurting you?"
Kristoph is too breathless to scream, even to speak, heart hammering in his chest and nausea all in his teeth, little, scared-dew-drop tears balancing on his eyelashes and threatening to fall, threatening, threatening, don't make me lose my patience, boy, and he hasn't been this terrified in a little while, actually, and isn't he supposed to be better, and
"You're a selfish man, Wright," he chokes out, "you know that?"
Wright makes an ungraceful sound somewhere between a cough and a snort. "What?"
"You like–" Kristoph manages to wrench himself back into reality, enough, at least, to drag this from his brain before he collapses. "You have a… a type, yes? Us–" and he spits the words, "us broken people–"
"Don't put yourself in a box with Miles," Wright says sharply (so Edgeworth has become Miles, then). "Don't you dare."
"You like to fix people," hisses Kristoph, "in an attempt to feel better about yourself."
"Yeah, and I tried to fix you, Gavin," and Wright seems to have forgotten his own purpose amidst his anger, "and I couldn't. You're fucking twisted beyond belief."
Kristoph can barely speak, and he gets one sentence out before his brain falls back into panic: "Where do you suppose I've heard that before?"
Wright's eyes widen, then abruptly narrow upon realising what Kristoph is insinuating; he almost looks like he's about to argue before he thinks better of it and somehow continues this line of questioning, like it's just another cross-examination. "That's what I'm asking you."
Kristoph shudders into a laugh that more closely resembles a cough, and an ugly one at that. "Really? You– you really want to know about that? That's the question you're asking? That's the lie I'm telling you?" He props his elbows on the counter until the whole tangled mess of his stupid, stupid fear of these stupid, stupid memories is on display, until he's close enough that Wright can see his white-knuckled hands clutching his sleeves and the manic anxiety buzzing up into his face. "And you're sure," he says, harsh and breathy and downright impulsive, "that you wouldn't rather know me as a heartless murderer?"
Wright nods shortly, and Kristoph leans forward a little further. "You wouldn't rather know that man than the sixteen-year-old whose father slapped him around and left him bleeding on the floor?"
"What?" Wright blurts out in shock, unthinking as ever. The magatama slips from his hand and clatters onto the counter; Kristoph is glad, because Wright can't read him quite as well without it.
"I told you," says Kristoph. "I told you that you had a… type, let's say, a-and it just so happens that the type is people who would have been better off without the adults they grew up with, who were always made to believe that they were inferior, and useless, and altogether broken. I told you that you didn't want to know, and now– now I'm telling you to get out."
Wright swallows. "Gavin–"
"Get out," Kristoph almost snarls. "You've got what you wanted. I hope you're happy. I hope you sleep well at night knowing that I haven't done so since I was eight, if not before then. I hope your life turns out to be fucking spectacular, and I hope you enjoy none of it, because you can't forget about me and my fucking baggage."
"I–"
"If I have to tell you one more time to leave this room," says Kristoph, in a voice far quieter than he feels, "I will genuinely make an attempt on your life, and it will not be pretty. I never want to see your face again, you hear me?"
Wright, to his credit, looks absolutely terrified, and Kristoph is glad. His eyes are wide, hands trembling when he picks up the magatama, like he thinks that he realises the extent of Kristoph's motivations. "Got it," he says, hoarse, and then his eyes widen as he stares back at where his so-called lock is, and it's then that Kristoph knows that he knows that he's been fed a sob story and nothing useful, and there's nothing he can do about it without Kristoph breaking, and isn't that funny, and Kristoph's vision is spotty with panic at the edges, blurring with anger, and maybe now is a good time to give in, and maybe he should let go and stop trying and just fall, and