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July 6th, 7:41 P.M.
Phoenix Wright’s apartment
“"I... I went to Volcanoland a few days ago. I might have lost it then."
Phoenix’s breath catches in his throat. He feels Miles tense up next to him. Neither says anything, but they’ve both caught the contradiction. It… it can’t be her.
But the contradiction is staring him in the face, yelling that there’s only one possibility. If Trucy had lost it, she wouldn’t have insisted that she had her knife only a few moments before. When one of the other participants points out the contradiction, there’s no surprise, only a cold feeling of dread settling in Phoenix’s stomach.
Self-defense. She’d just been trying to protect herself…
“...I can’t watch this,” Miles whispers and Phoenix doesn’t protest when he leaves. He wants to look away, too, but he doesn’t.
He’d promised to protect her, but he can’t be there to even hug her or tell her that he loves her, he can’t fix this and keep her safe. He can only watch as some of the participants of the game do what he wishes he could.
The locket he always keeps with him feels like it’s burning a hole through his heart.
July 6th, 8:37 P.M.
Wright Anything Agency
“Polly! Apollo, help!”
Athena claps her hands over her ears at the sudden burst of emotions, mixing with and amplifying her own emotions, overwhelming her. She can’t hear the TV over the screaming of Apollo’s heart ( grief, pain, this can’t be happening, Trucy, I’m so sorry, that’s not me, Imsorrysorrysorry ). Athena’s heart screams out in tandem.
She doubles over, curled up on the couch. Everything else bleeds away, until all that’s left is their hearts, screaming out for Trucy.
Widget’s usual light blue screen becomes dotted with black.
July 6th, 8:47 P.M.
Gatewater Hotel
Room 107
Thalassa watches the TV, choked with horror. She’d thought nothing could hurt more than the day she lost Jove and thought she’d lost Apollo, but her daughter’s cries tear her apart.
Back then the horror had been in not knowing what had happened, having to leave Khura’in with no answers. There’s no ambiguity here, not with Trucy bleeding out on a live broadcast.
She watches as her daughter stops breathing.
Would it have been better if Thalassa had never remembered who she was before she was Lamiroir? If she’d gone back to Borginia only knowing Apollo and Trucy as the lawyer and magician who had helped Machi? This would still be horrifying, but at least then she’d be detached from it, a passerby at best.
Then she wouldn’t be here, mourning her family for the second time.
July 6th, 10:42 P.M.
Apollo Justice’s apartment
Apollo hears the bedroom door open, but he keeps his back turned to it. There’s footsteps, a pause and soft sigh, and then the quiet sounds of Klavier getting ready for bed. He closes his eyes as Klavier approaches the bed, pretending to be asleep.
They had moved in together for added safety against one of the prior motives, and then the reappearance of Kristoph, and Apollo has liked having him here. But tonight… Tonight he’d rather be alone. But that would require actually talking to Klavier and he can’t do that, not without dissolving into tears.
The bed dips and he can feel the hesitation before arms wrap around him from behind. “I’m sorry.” Klavier’s voice is soft, quiet, and something in Apollo breaks at it. It’s confirmation of what he’d already known but had desperately wanted to pretend was some horrible nightmare.
There’s no hiding the way he starts shaking or the gasping sound of sobs, not when they’re so close. Fingers curl around Klavier’s wrist, pulling him closer even as Apollo presses his face into a pillow, stifling his cries.
Dhurke, Clay, Trucy.
How many more people will he lose?
July 7th, 1:03 P.M.
Los Angeles Prosecutor’s Building
Breakroom No.2
The Prosecutor’s Office is familiar with death. Among their ranks there have been deaths, a few murders, even a couple executions such as Manfred von Karma’s. But this feels different. Because it was a kid? Because they all knew of Trucy Wright and most had met her before, not as a coworker but as Wright's over-excited child and Justice's weirdly perceptive assistant?
She’d always liked showing them her magic tricks, regardless of whether she’d been in the office to visit her dad or to pick up autopsy reports and files for the Wright Anything Agency.
Today the office is quiet, more so than usual. No one is surprised when Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth and Prosecutor von Karma don’t come in for work. They are surprised by the appearance of a rockstar, forensic scientist, and detective. None are doing any work and, technically, two shouldn’t even be hanging out at the office. No one says anything, leaving them alone where they are, slumped over in a breakroom.
It’s after midday when Winston Payne approaches the trio, awkwardly standing near them with a drink carrier of coffee cups and a bag of snackoos. Ema doesn’t even look up at him, arms on the table and head resting on top of them. Gumshoe does, looking like a sad puppy that, for once, isn’t loudly shouting.
It’s Klavier who actually accepts the items. There’s no rockstar persona today, no disarming smile, but he does nod at Payne, grateful. “Thank you, Herr Payne.” Payne looks like he wants to say something, but in the end he just nods back and leaves. Klavier slides the snackoos to Ema and passes out the coffees.
The silence starts to fall back over them like a blanket, but Klavier doesn’t think he can stand another three hours of silence. “My first trial after I returned to America was against Apollo and the Fräulein,” he starts, catching Gumshoe’s attention. He’s sure Ema’s listening, even if she’s still got her head on the table. “He couldn’t think of a contradiction and Herr Judge was going to make his decision. So the Fräulein used that puppet of hers to fake a kidnapping, in the middle of court, to delay the trial. And it worked.”
“She what ?” Ema looks up, seeming shocked for a moment before it melts into resigned understanding. “Actually, yeah, that makes sense. She does… did a lotta weird things.” Ema’s face falls and she reaches out to the bag of snackoos. “She said she once licked fingerprint powder.”
“Oh, uh, yep. She did that. I was babysitting her that day,” Gumshoe mutters, rubbing the back of his neck.
“And you didn’t stop her, Herr Detective?”
“Hey, pal! I didn’t know what she’d found! Mr. Wright looked like he wanted to cut my paycheck when he came home…”
That’s how they spend the rest of the day, telling stories about Trucy. It doesn’t stop the grief and pain, and nothing will, but Klavier can’t help but think Trucy would prefer this to the silence of earlier.
July 9th, 9:07 A.M.
Wright Anything Agency
He sees the punch coming, but does nothing to defend himself from it. All Phoenix does do is wince and stagger back a step as Apollo’s fist connects with his face, aggravating still-healing bruises. He lifts a hand to his face - he’s sure there’ll be a new bruise there tomorrow - and looks at Apollo, who seems torn between horror that he just punched his boss and anger.
“A-Apollo!” Athena cries out, hands raised to her face and Widget having turned from light blue to yellow with her shock.
Phoenix hadn’t expected to be punched walking into the agency, but he finds himself not surprised, and oddly uncaring of how his face throbs in pain. “You’ve still got a great right hook,” he compliments, but there’s something off, empty in his voice. He smiles at Apollo, that same poker face smile he’d worn for seven years, and he knows Apollo recognizes it with how his shoulders tense, the anger in his eyes becoming more apparent.
“Two years. You kept it secret for two years. And now…” Apollo’s voice trails off, eyes dropping to the floor before he shakes his head and storms past Phoenix and out of the office.
Phoenix stares at where Apollo had been and then looks to Athena, whose eyes are darting between him and the door, torn between her concern for the both of them. Widget flickers rapidly between yellow and a deep blue. He takes a step away from the door and nods towards it. “I’m fine, Athena.” He’s not, and while he’s become a master at hiding his tells over the year he’s sure Athena can hear the lie in his emotions. But Apollo’s the one who stormed out, the one who needs a friend.
“I’m sorry, Boss,” Athena whispers, before she’s gone too, following after Apollo. The silence that falls over the office is suffocating. It’s rarely been quiet, let alone completely silent, not even back when it had been Mia’s office and certainly not when Trucy was around. But neither are here now.
He glances around the office. There’s a plant near the door, one that Mia had loved enough to call it Charley. Phoenix had never understood wanting to name a plant, but he’d taken care of it over the years. A bookshelf full of law books, most of them Mia’s. He’d spent hours pouring over them, both back when he was studying to take the bar the first time and when he’d retaken it to get his badge back. The couches have been here for years, since the time of Fey & Co. Law Offices.
There’s stacks of magic props - zigzag boxes, a magic wand, cards, a hula hoop (to levitate people with, Trucy had said) - kept here because there wasn’t enough space in their apartment for every prop. Opposite Phoenix is an old poster that Larry had helped a nine-year-old Trucy make, ‘The Wright Talent Agency, where you’re always in the wright place’ written on it in large letters. On a stack of books is that weird plastic novelty toy, a plate of fake spaghetti with a floating fork, that Trucy had insisted was the absolute pinnacle of magic.
And on a trophy rests a blue beanie, ‘papa’ knitted onto the side. A present from the first father’s day they’d celebrated.
He’ll never celebrate another Father’s Day with his daughter. Or birthday or Christmas or gotcha day or anything.
Ever since Mia died, the office has been under his name. Wright & Co. Law Offices, then the Wright Talent Agency, and finally the Wright Anything Agency. But standing here now, surrounded by all these random bits and pieces, remnants of people he’ll never see again, he can’t help but think that it had never been his. It had been Mia’s, even when the office had changed names. And then it had been Trucy’s.
Mia had started it, and Trucy had turned it into something different yet the same, and now… now it’s a memorial.
Phoenix sinks down onto the couch, tears pricking at his eyes, haunted by the ghosts of those he failed.