Chapter Text
Apollo Justice had been sitting at his desk; that was how it always happened.
He was sitting. Working at his desk. Minding his own business. Half-heartedly filling out paperwork that needed to be done before it piled up, becoming insurmountable like the snow that had piled up on the sidewalks—and continued to pile up outside the frosted window, forcing him to trudge through the winter instead of bike.
Then, like the devil ascending upon him—with her red hair, and malice crinkling her eyes, broadening her grin—her palms smacked the desk. “Five days until Christmas, Apollo!” she announced as if he hadn’t been dreading it with each passing minute. “Didja get your shopping done?”
“Good morning to you too, Athena.”
“I just finished wrapping everything last night,” she continued, oblivious to—or simply ignoring—his deadpan sarcasm as she shot up a peace sign. “I think I finally mastered the art of gift wrapping! Everything’s usually a mess of tape and paper whenever I try to wrap stuff, but I found this tutorial online, and it looks soooo good! I’d show you, but… I don’t want to give you any hints about what I got you.”
He blinked. “You got me something?” His heart skipped a beat—a stupid juvenile beat that led to that damned muscle falling flat on a bed, and kicking its feet as it scribbled in a journal, Athena got me a Christmas present!
Her smile fell into confusion. “W-Well, yeah… It’s Christmas. I-I mean, you’re not Jewish, are you? I didn’t think you were, Asians usually—well, my mom was Japanese—but they can—” She cut herself off, trying to salvage her thought. “I-I think Hanukkah already happened, but—”
His heart ignored Athena’s disaster of an explanation, instead proceeding to scribble deformed hearts all around the page, framing the only thought in his head— Athena got me a Christmas present! —and scrawling their initials smooshed together inside, and scratching arrows through them. Arrows that Apollo wished would pierce through his head, killing him instantly.
“I-I’m not really anything, I just—” He cleared his throat. Bit back how he’d gotten used to not expecting anything after years of rotating through empty houses, and empty apartments. “I didn’t expect you to get me anything,” he said instead.
“Of course, I got you something!” Athena said, “Why wouldn’t I?”
He hadn’t anticipated any presents to begin with, not for years. He hadn’t considered getting any presents. He hadn’t even considered holidays, not since last Christmas when a wrapped telescope and bright festivities were devoured by a sea of black, crowded around a casket as snow bleached the outside cold white.
A sickly pallor, like the one that had consumed Clay.
“...Weren’t you worried about paying the rent a few weeks ago?” Apollo said instead.
Athena made an awkward choking sound. “I-I was not! I just—I paid my rent just fine!”
He smiled surprisingly easily at that.
“D-Don’t look at me like that!”
“So cruel!” Widget blurted from around her neck.
A lot of things had been cruel, recently.
December had never been a month of joy. No sleigh bells, or baking cookies, or hanging lights and ornaments on a tree in preparation for the presents beneath—it had always been a month of cold, of hollow reminders that his parents, his family, were gone. Had never been there to begin with.
Last year it had not just been a hollow reminder. It had been a month of grief.
This year, it was a month of numb memories, falling with the snow, falling like his blood and his body had fallen in the space center.
Unlike the snow, Athena’s smile climbed back into her features. “Anyway, I got something for everyone at the office. And I got Simon and Junie something, too—oh, but don’t tell them! It’s supposed to be a surprise!”
“Oh.”
It was silly to think he’d be the special one, that out of everyone she knew—Simon who’d sacrificed a near decade of his life to keep Athena from prison, Juniper who’d known her for far longer than he had, and probably dozens of other people who mattered more to her—she would decide to get him something. Nobody else. Just him. Some guy she worked with.
“Shopping for Prosecutor Blackquill seems… challenging,” he forced himself to say.
In hindsight, he wasn’t surprised she’d gotten him something. Athena was that kind of person, the one to make sure everyone had a good holiday, that everyone had a present and a smile.
Apollo was not that type of person.
“You’d be surprised!” she chirped. “You don’t know him, so that’d make it harder, but Simon’s pretty easy to shop for once you know what makes him tick.”
“...Yeah. Tick like a bomb, ready to explode.”
Athena’s elbows replaced her palms on his desk as she rested her head in her hands, staring up at him. “Did you finish your Christmas shopping yet?” she asked slowly, wading through the mud of indirect questioning. But it was not truly wading through mud; no, it was slowly sharpening a blade, honing it to load into the guillotine, readying it to slice his head off.
He had two choices: he could tell the truth and admit he hadn’t gotten her anything, or he could lie and scramble to get her a gift before everything worth buying was gone.
She stood there, leaned over his desk, her blue eyes staring so expectantly into his own, so bright and beautiful and hopeful—there was no way he could say he hadn’t gotten anything, even if his reaction clearly gave it away. How could he have been surprised she’d gotten him anything if he, himself, had gotten something?
How did she not know?
Was it a trap, or was she more airheaded than he’d thought? Was she going to snap back, point an accusatory finger as if he were nothing more than a witness on the stand and expose his lie in all its pathetic obligation?
Did she just not pay attention? Was she more worried about his reaction, about what she'd undoubtedly heard—of course, she heard!—in his stupid heart, the surprise and skepticism and hope?
Did it not matter? Was he overthinking it, put on the spot and simply falling back into the critical analysis that’d saved him so many times before in the courtroom?
His mouth—his stupid mouth!—shot open before he could spare another second. “Of course I did.”
No, he hadn’t.
“I’m not going to wait until the last minute to get this out of the way…”
Yes, he would.
“It’s already enough of a hassle.”
Yes, it certainly was.
Athena huffed, standing up straight and crossing her arms. “Of course you did,” she mocked with a pout.
“Of course I did,” he repeated, mirroring her with an attempt at a smile to conceal how hard he was lying, lying through his damned teeth, lying so hard he could feel his own bracelet clench his wrist as if saying, great job, jackass, you’re in it now!
“Well, Mr. Perfectly Fine,” she said, “I’m excited to see what you got.” She smiled then, not a broad, melodramatic grin, but a small, casual quirk of the lips that crinkled the vibrant oceans of her eyes, warmed the soft features of her face.
Cute.
“Y-You should be,” he said, a stammer slipping through the crack of his voice.
Her eyes stayed on him a moment—in judgment? Analysis? Skepticism?—before she chuckled, then sauntered off to her desk, leaving him with a flush burning his face, an intensifying hatred for the holidays, and an impending sense of dread.
Weird.
While the flush eventually faded, replaced by confusion as to what her stare meant and what she undoubtedly knew, his holiday hatred and looming dread remained even after sunlight, stripped white by snow clouds, faded into the dim desolation of early December evening. When he turned to the window and gazed into the darkness of the snow-covered city, his reflection stared back.
They shared a half-lidded glare, both burning deep into the dark eyes of the other, passing condemnatory stares through the frosted glass.
Though the work day ended—with all of Trucy’s interruptive banter of magic tricks and whatever else popped into her head, and Mr. Wright’s parental weariness in return, and Athena , munching on peppermint bark—the hatred and dread did not.
As Apollo gave a wave, then stepped through the office doors, and exited the hallway into the frigidity of the city, he let out what had to be the longest sigh his lungs were capable of. Never before had he so desperately wanted someone to get murdered, if only to have a case, to escape into the legalities of criminal justice and have an excuse as to why he didn’t go Christmas shopping; an excuse as to why he’d avoided the holiday altogether. He’d been distracted by duty, preoccupied by responsibility, engaged in the law that had held his attention for years.
Not distracted by what had happened last Christmas. At all.
He could tell it was going to be a long night.
Apollo Justice had never liked Christmas shopping. He’d never liked the obligation to spend money on gifts that would likely spend the rest of their inanimate lives in a closet, untouched. Never liked the movies showing what other kids had while he was sitting alone on an airplane, tears sliding down his silent face, into his lap, as he prepared for a childhood of bouncing around foster care.
He especially didn’t like this Christmas.
Trudging through the dirt and slush that littered the sidewalk, and the dark, dismal sky, he regretted not lying to Athena. He should have told her that he was Jewish to have a valid reason to avoid the holiday altogether. Maybe he could’ve been a Jehovah’s Witness. Being in a cult was a definite reason not to celebrate Christmas or any holidays in general.
Apollo scoffed at the thought, kicking a muddy chunk of snow. It crumbled upon meeting his dress shoe.
His relationship with the holiday had been lukewarm at best, after he and Clay had established a gift exchange—a competition to see who could get the worst gift—and college friends proved to be worth more than nonexistent family. Now his relationship with the holiday—the wretched, horribly horrendous holiday—was now at its worst, colder than the icy December air that tore into his skin.
There was no Clay. No foster families, at the least.
There was, however, the new burden of trying to find Athena a present.
He knew very well that if he came in just days before Christmas and had only a present for Athena, who Trucy was convinced he liked—because she could tell, she knew that his heart beat for her, through his awkward smiles and forced chuckles and prolonged stares—then he would be unable to live it down. Trucy would turn it into a scene; a mortifying masterpiece of Troupe Gramyare’s heir. Mr. Wright would be, rightfully, skeptical. And probably amused.
But it would not be amusing; no, it would be terrifying.
There was no way Athena wouldn’t know. She’d hear the humiliation in his voice, the nerves draining his Chords of Steel—which would be turned to pathetic puddles of melted ore because he would be mortified!
Trucy would know. She acted like she already knew.
Mr. Wright would catch on. He was smart, clever. Even if he’d fallen from grace nine years ago, he had risen from the ashes like his namesake. Perhaps his legal skills were dull and rusted, like a blade out of use, but each case he worked honed them into a finer, sharper point.
It was that fine point that would stab Apollo to death, leaving him full of bloodied holes on the floor because they would all know.
As he sighed, stepped out of the desolate cold, and into the three-story agglomerate of concrete and windows—lit from within, like the blindingly bright pits of suburban hell that was the shopping mall—he knew there was no escape. This was his purgatory. He couldn’t leave until purchasing and wrapping a present for everyone in the office. Even if the three-story building was swarming with people, frantic to get their last-minute shopping done, and the shelves would be barren, save for overpriced trinkets nobody would want, he had to get a present for everyone in the office.
This was his fate.
He stared at a woman, her bun messy and falling apart—like both their lives, he figured—as she ran across the glossy floor, bags smacking against each other on her arm.
That was his fate. He would become her, bags clustered on his arms and dragging beneath his eyes.
A groan slipped from his throat as he trudged into the endless corporate abyss of shopping hell.
Ornaments and gleaming lights hung from a fir tree that towered up from the tiled floor. Shining tinsel garland connected the balconies above in elegant swooping curves. But the clamoring hordes of people, fighting for presents, and the snow stifling the skyroof’s view into grey desolation made the mall anything but bright and joyous—that, and the fact that Apollo did not want to be there.
Another groan slipped from his throat as he forced his feet to walk past display windows of faceless white mannequins posing in overpriced clothes. Each window advertised hats and scarves and flannels in the same reds, whites, and browns onto identical figures of plastic. Or cloth. Or whatever mannequins were made of.
Apollo really did not care what they were made of because he had more important things to worry about, such as getting his boss, and his boss’s daughter, and his co-worker—who he wished he did not feel so strongly about—presents five days before Christmas.
Getting something for Mr. Wright would be the least challenging. As Apollo passed more mannequins, stuck Vogue-ing in their cramped boxes for eternity, he figured he could just get him a mug. He was in his thirties. Any thirty-odd-year-old would appreciate a solid mug.
Plus, Mr. Wright was his boss. What was he supposed to get him? A shirt? A jacket? A smartphone that cost over a thousand dollars, just like the ones at the corporate kiosk that would last a few months until new updates deliberately slowed the phone down, and drained its battery life—drained like the wallets of the users who would be forced to upgrade to the newest model?
Apollo bit back a third groan, now power-walking to the nearest department store.
A mug. He would get Mr. Wright a mug and hopefully find something that Trucy would like in the process, leaving the most important person for last.
He hurried past a swarm of people, racing into the only video game store in the entire building, and ducked into what had to be the most generic font on the most generic wall housing the most generic department store he’d ever set foot into. The walls were beige, almost like that of the office, but without the clutter of magic equipment and grass-green carpet to give it personality. Cornering him on either side of the glossy tiled floors were endless lines of clothes—metal racks, hangars, and those damned faceless mannequins that seemed to be mocking him as they posed atop their boxes, free from the social responsibility of Christmas shopping.
Is my suffering funny to you? he asked them with a wordless glare, descending into the heart of the department store.
It was all the same. Clothes, blankets, the occasional scented candle. Carpet for a bathroom (which was a questionable choice in itself), carpet for a toaster, carpet for a room.
Apollo was unsure what to get Trucy—for what was a grown man supposed to get a teenage girl?—but he knew it wouldn’t be in the department store. No, the department store was unfit for an eccentric magician, bubbling with inhuman levels of (debatably) charismatic cheer.
But the department store was perfect for socially sanctioned shopping for his boss.
And the shelves full of mugs—Apollo’s sole reason for entering the department store, his sole savior in this godforsaken endeavor—were perfect for finding a socially sanctioned present for his boss.
There were so many mugs. So. Many. Mugs.
Some were plain, with a minimalist design or nothing at all—just a cup. Some were cute, even cat themed, and beckoning for Apollo to purchase himself a Christmas present and go home without buying what he actually needed to buy. . One particular mug had a cat face scrawled on it, two eyes, a nose, and whiskers, with two ears molded from the ceramic.
But Apollo Justice was not shopping for his own feline affinity. Besides, he told himself, Mikeko might get jealous.
He knew very well that Mikeko wouldn’t care as long as she got chicken and salmon and everything else that good kitties deserved, but it was a necessary threat. He forced his gaze away from the kitty mug, and looked back to the rest of the shelf.
Then he saw it.
The mug was blue. Mr. Wright’s signature color was blue.
The mug was painted with traditionally styled Japanese clouds. Mr. Wright’s ancestor was Ryunosuke Naruhodo, legendary attorney of the Meiji Era, who Apollo had studied back in law school during a Wikipedia deep dive.
The mug looked hand-painted. Mr. Wright’s paternal instincts would kick in, even if it was obvious that Apollo had not sat down and made pottery for his boss and had instead chose a hand-painted mug because it looked more personal and special and damn, he was bluffing with his reasoning.
But it didn’t matter! Apollo picked up the mug with care, carried it throughout the infested purgatory that was the department store five days before Christmas, purchased it for twenty dollars more than he was sure it was worth, and left, breathing a sigh of relief as he crossed one present off his mental list.
Mr. Wright would like it. Though it wasn’t anything extravagant, a good mug was a scarcity. Perhaps it was a bit bland for a Christmas present, a bit generic; however, its casual, ordinary nature seemed fit for the boss. The thrilling danger of his navy golden era had ended, and he’d settled down during that seven-year disbarment, taking care of Trucy and working to make ends meet with poker and piano.
Then Mr. Gavin had gone and meddled in everything yet again—because forcing his badge out of his hand wasn’t enough—only to ensnare himself in the very trap he’d set for Mr. Wright.
After everything—everything Mr. Gavin had done, everything he had taken from him, everything he had put him through—Mr. Wright deserved a solid mug, the very mug Apollo had swinging in a plastic bag on his arm, waiting for the rest of his Christmas shopping to join it.
Waiting for the two presents he still had yet to buy. Two more. Trucy and Athena.
Apollo descended back into the horrifically beating heart of the shopping mall, beating with the frenzied footfalls of all the people that had somehow proliferated like the plague during his mug acquisition. Bags rustled together like fake plastic trees in the gravity-dragging rush of it all, beating together like the wings of massive bugs.
Looking at the people with the bags, Apollo could see it etched into their faces, the tired eyes and force in their step: it wore them out.
Looking at the generic outdoors store with a telescope in the display window, standing tall on a mound of fake plastic earth, it wore him out. The navy blue night sky, speckled with shiny painted stars, and the silver glow of the full moon high above it all; that was where he should have gone.
Clay should have gone up there in that rocket. Clay should have seen that night sky in all its vast, starry glory, as he sent up the Hope probe to collect asteroid samples from the belt.
Clay should have been there, pointing at that telescope with a grin plastered across his face as he joked about wanting that one, there in the window for Christmas. Clay should have been there, mocking him for how badly he’d fumbled in the office, and how much he was struggling to get Athena a present.
Clay should have been there.
He should have been there, right next to Apollo to smack him on the shoulder and say, Get it together, man, you need to get this done.
Apollo would have scoffed and said, Sorry that I’m sad you died.
And Clay would have said, You were sad long enough… now hurry up and get that cute redhead her present, or you’ll be seeing me before you even try asking her out!
And Apollo would have rolled his eyes in that affectionate way friends do.
But Clay was not there to roll his eyes at. So he instead got it together and hurried along the edge of the mall, scouring for an idea of what to get Trucy through the display windows.
He saw all the same faceless mannequins and their silent mockery, frozen in the fake snow they all stood in, and he saw all the furniture, and all the display stands of both bath and body works—and he smelled them longingly, wishing he could simply burn down the labyrinthian building in a scented blaze of candles—
And then he saw it. The music store.
He saw the record player, calling its sweet siren song to the hipsters. He saw the guitars strung along the walls, lurking in the back.
He saw what Trucy had swooned over time and time again: one of Prosecutor Gavin’s albums, reincarnated this time on the sleek vinyl of a record.
He saw the next five minutes of his life stretch out before him and bit back a groan, forcing his legs to carry him inside the music store. For Trucy’s sake; for all her welcoming kindness when he’d reluctantly joined the agency, her guidance in unlocking the skill of perception, and the bubbly cheer that—while it was a nuisance at times—managed to bring light to the world. For all the times she’d acted as the little sister he’d never had.
That was how he rationalized it, anyway.
Apollo Justice had not—had never—wanted to purchase a Gavinners album. He had never wanted to purchase an album of Prosecutor Gavin’s unreleased singles, or anything so glimmerous and Prosecutor Gavin-related ever in his entire life.
Yet, there he was at the counter, holding an accursed CD of the very thing he’d sought to avoid. He set it on the counter with a silent sense of shame, eyes escaping to the pretentious wall of albums behind the cashier and his clear-framed glasses.
This is for Trucy, Apollo reminded himself as he stared with empty eyes at the albums. I’m getting this for Trucy.
Then the cashier spoke. Of course, they opened their wretched mouth and pushed words out to fill the meaningless silence. “Chains of Fate, huh?” they commented, clicking his tongue as he slid the CD across the counter to ring it up.
I’m doing this for Trucy, Apollo reminded himself again.
“Say,” the cashier said for him, “aren’t you that attorney Klavier Gavin’s gone up against in court?”
“...Glad to see people remember my name.”
The cashier nodded as if there was a thought behind the lenses.
“So, are you two..?”
Apollo stared. “I—e-excuse me? I-Is that really what people think?”
“There’s just this…chemistry in the courtroom, this… love-hate rivalry, this natural back-and-forth that you can see even through a television screen.”
Apollo desperately wished that courtroom proceedings would stop being televised, even if it was that television that led him to discover Phoenix Wright—before he was disbarred for evidence he had never forged and spiraled into a grape juice depression for seven years.
“Unless you two are trying to keep it quiet—which I get. I’m just nosy,” the cashier chuckled. He placed the CD in a bag, too slowly for Apollo’s preference. “Plus, I have a bet going with my girlfriend…”
“It’s nothing like that,” Apollo stated. Silently, he wondered how the cashier had even managed to find a woman stupid enough to want him, because why the hell would she want to date someone obsessed with some fabled homoeroticism of lawyers?
Apollo had respect for Prosecutor Gavin and how, unlike most of Mr. Wright’s golden era opponents (though now-Chief Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth had changed, and the mysterious Godot had been working toward resolution in the end), he had the desire to find the truth; not just maintain a perfect win streak. He had respect for Prosecutor Gavin prioritizing law over the band that had been destroyed despite all the blood, sweat, and tears he’d put into it; respect for the strength the glimmerous fop had to go through with disbanding it.
He did not have a secret love affair with the glimmerous fop, nor did he harbor an intense yearning for him.
The cashier didn’t seem to believe him. “Not yet, huh?”
“...Not ever,” he said, staring very intensely as the cashier lifted the bag with Trucy’s wretched CD in it, lifted it very incredibly slowly, further forcing Apollo to remain in this conversation.
“I can’t blame you,” he continued, oblivious, to Apollo’s immense dismay. “He was my bi awakening.”
“...Out of all men?” Apollo sighed, because Mia Fey and Diego Armando existed—or had existed—and it was their legal prowess and relationship that had been his awakening, and what was the awakening, not some glimmerous fop who turned the judicial system into a rock show and made Apollo grind his teeth into bone powder in his mouth and irritated him so intensely because he knew just what buttons to press—
“Come on, have you seen him?”
Apollo certainly had seen him, too many times for his own preference. “He’s so… glimmerous. He looks like Donald Trump if he was in an ‘80s boyband.”
“What?!”
“His skin is the same orange. His hair is the same highlighter yellow.”
“You take that back, man!”
“I argue for a living,” Apollo said, crossing his arms.
“You are so wrong,” the cashier sighed, finally sliding the bag across the counter—a white flag, a surrender, a surefire victory for the lawyer wasting his life away yet again because you are so wrong was in no way a rebuttal.
“Evidence is everything.”
“Why’d you even buy his solo album?”
Apollo paused a moment. It was for Trucy. But what was Trucy?
His boss’s daughter? That sounded too distant.
A co-worker? She was seventeen, and even if it was accurate, he chose to believe—for pride’s sake—the Wright Anything Agency was a law office, rather than a talent agency with three lawyers and a magician.
A friend? That, too, managed to sound too distant, too impersonal.
“It’s for my little sister,” he settled on, taking the bag and sliding it onto his arm, alongside Mr. Wright’s mug.
It was what he always settled on, what always felt natural. It was the closest thing to the truth.
Apollo Justice had never been happier to leave a store in his entire twenty-four years of life. It had been enough having to talk to that cashier, but having to carry around a CD with Prosecutor Gavin’s face plastered upon it was something else entirely. It was so smug, so clearly bronzed by fake tan. So glimmerous.
So familiar.
All the face lacked were a pair of oval glasses over his eyes, glinting in the courthouse lights as they imparted legal wisdom, as they were being marched away in chains; an icy stare, that of the “coolest defense in the West,” meticulous enough to do anything for a victory. Ruthless enough to snag that victory, that perfection.
Ruthless enough to ruin a man’s career out of bitter envy.
But that had been two years ago. Two years before Apollo had gained the experience to stand on his own. Two years before Mr. Wright had earned his badge back.
Two years before Clay had died.
Two years before he’d met Athena. Which was ultimately more important than thinking about his former boss and his best friend who had died last December, because between all the office bickering and bantering and all her bright, beaming smiles and the warmth of her laughter and the vibrant sapphire oceans of her eyes and the way her painfully cheerful optimism somehow uplifted him, pulling him out of the “grumpy,” “cranky” bouts he found himself falling into—
Just tell her already, Clay would have said; but he was not there to force the words from Apollo’s mouth, leaving them locked behind layers of chains and emotional constipation, according to him.
Whether he was “constipated” or not, he still needed to get Athena a present. She was the only reason he’d gone to the damned mall, even though he really, really hadn’t wanted to go Christmas shopping and would have rather been sitting in his apartment with Mikeko hours ago.
She was now the reason he was aimlessly wandering through the mobs of people, hurrying with more fervor than he’d ever seen shoppers exhibit. Hurrying with purpose, which he lacked.
Mr. Wright was a man with layers of experience and things unsaid, all hidden behind irony and a smile. Trucy was a bubbling bundle of charismatic showbusiness, all to hide the sadness underneath her cape and hat.
Both Wrights were complex individuals—but they were easy to shop for! Mr. Wright was a thirty-year-old single dad! A mug was fine! Trucy was a teenage girl obsessed with some glimmerous rock star! She had evident interests, and even if she didn’t, she was a magician! Maybe there weren’t any magic shops, but what the hell were you supposed to get a psychologist, a boxed set of Frasier? A book criticizing Sigmund Freud?
There were those damned mannequins mocking him, and furniture, and department stores, and jewelry stores—
Athena wore jewelry. Jewelry was nice.
Athena deserved nice. Something more than a mug or an album that she probably already had. For all she had endured—the unspeakable tragedy of seeing her mother, bloodied and lifeless, and how hard she had worked to be where she was today, years ahead of her peers with a badge for her efforts—she deserved nice.
More than nice, probably, but Trucy and Mr. Wright would hone into him like twin sniper shots, ready to take him out with the most incessant comments and knowing stares, and if they didn’t kill him, then the fact that Athena would hear it cracking through his Chords of Steel would be the exigence behind him taking a shotgun and blasting his brains out, or defenestrating himself to escape the perpetual misery surrounding him and become nothing more than a splat on concrete, or simply bashing his head into the wall until—
Apollo needed to go to the jewelry store.
Never before had he felt the need to speed-walk with such vigor.
Beneath a wide archway, bright lights illuminated the store, beaming down on glittering glass tables filled with jewelry that caught that light, bounced it around in their gemstones and metal. Rigid diamonds sat encrusted in silver bands, positioned on pillars of cloth. Bracelets in gold, silver, and whatever else bracelets were made of, lay stretched out across hills in the fabric.
My bracelet is better, he thought, hand going to fiddle with it as it sat on his wrist. He traced the grooves in the golden metal as if the answer was engraved within the cool alloy he’d had since birth, as if drawing the pattern would draw a conclusion on what to get Athena.
He rarely bought things for people, let alone co-workers who happened to be sweet, and pretty, and capable of luring a smile from his lips even when he was running on irritation and thirty minutes of sleep because she was just that kind of person . He never bought jewelry for girls he liked, let alone girls who’d worked so arduously through academia to pass the bar, to rightfully earn a gleaming attorney’s badge; girls—no— women who yielded technology to hear what others could not—hear what people had been deaf to years ago, had been unable to understand, had mocked her for.
His eyes fell on the faux collarbones where necklaces were laid across. Gold, and silver, and whatever else necklaces were made of.
After everything Athena had been through, she endeavored for others to never feel the same. She listened for all the times she was not heard, smiled for all the times she’d felt a burden, cared for all the times she been alone.
His eyes fell on one single necklace. A thin silver chain, with a charm at the end of it: a crescent moon, just like the earring she always batted when she was deep in thought; the earring evident of her mother’s silent affections. The necklace was simple, a chain and a charm, but there was meaning, something personal in its minimalistic beauty. Something that connected her past—the Cosmos Space Center, with memories good and bad—to the present she had fought for.
Something nice. Something she deserved.