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Pearl Fey grows up not knowing that she has a soulmark. Her mother thinks they are dangerous things that can draw good mediums down off the mountain and entrap them into a life of sodomy and debauchery. She’s seen it happen before, with her eldest niece. So, after Pearl is born, and Morgan sees that little picture painted on her daughter’s back for the first time, she declares that soulmarks are not to be discussed by anyone who wants to remain in good standing with the main family. What Mystic Morgan says goes in Kurain Village, so no one ever tells the young girl about the design hiding in the small of her back, where she cannot see it.
Pearl grows up in a village that has raised dozens of children, but is either too hesitant or too afraid to help raise her. The adults all keep her at a respectful arm’s length, and the other children skirt around her in the street as if they feel threatened by her very presence, or, at least, the shadow of her mother that hangs over her presence.
Maya tries her best, telling her younger cousin the same happy bedtime stories she remembers hearing from Mia all those years ago, and reminding Pearl that she loves her whenever she feels as though her love might be in question. It’s good, very good of her. Maya tries so very hard and that probably saves Pearl’s life in the long run, but a scared teenager, even one who’s trying very hard, is no replacement in the moment for a real loving mother. And even though Pearl doesn’t know it, bedtime stories about other people’s happy endings are no replacement for having the key to dream about your own.
She can feel it, sometimes. That itching sensation somewhere inside her that she thinks might be her soul, that tells her something’s wrong. That something’s missing.
Trucy Gramarye grows up not knowing that she has a soulmark. Her father thinks they are distracting things that can cause promising magicians who should be carrying their family legacies on their shoulders to run off to parts unknown. He’s seen it happen before, with his wife. So, after Trucy is born, Zak appeals to Magnifi to ban any discussion of soulmarks from Troupe Gramarye. Magnifi is only too happy to pull the rope binding his newest star to the family even tighter, and Thalassa’s protests against his tyranny have grown more and more feeble since she lost her first husband, so no one ever tells the young girl about the design hiding in the small of her back, where she cannot see it.
Trucy grows up in a troupe that has never raised another child, and doesn’t try particularly hard to raise her, either. She is treated like a tiny adult from almost the moment she can walk and talk, expected to pull her own weight and learn the tricks of the trade. No one sits her down for conversations about life and love and how to face the world properly, rather, they let her stumble around and figure things out for herself.
Thalassa tries her best, but she has been beaten down by life again and again over the years and can’t quite bring herself to spring back into position, even for her daughter. The stories that she spins for Trucy are just as beautiful as the songs she sings, but there is something detached about them. She never shares any snippets of her real life, the life she had before Trucy. She never tells her daughter the tragic love story that ended with them both here, once again trapped in a convoluted three-ring-circus of deceit and distrust, and she certainly never guides Trucy’s little fingers to trace the music notes painted across her forearm, to teach her what soulmarks can mean.
All of this means that young Trucy Gramarye grows up missing a brother, half of a mother (and then quite suddenly, all of her), all the good parts of her father, a fundamentally important part of herself, and most importantly, the knowledge as to why any of those things are missing.
Most people scare Pearl when she first meets them, at least a little bit. But Franziska Von Karma scares her more than anyone ever has before, with her sharp eyes and sharper words. And, of course, that whip.
It does not help that she only seems to show up at times when Pearl is already more scared than normal; the first time her world is shattered by violence and Maya’s been taken away and labeled a criminal, during the Juan Corrida murder when Maya’s been kidnapped, after she’s just been stranded on Eagle Mountain overnight without a single adult around, and Maya is missing yet again.
It also does not help that after a while, the safest person in Pearl’s world – Maya, who, despite her frequent arrests, kidnappings, and disappearances, has been solid, like rock, since Pearl was born, the one who held her hand when she took her first steps and cuddled her after she was woken by nightmares until she fell back asleep – seems to be completely unphased by Ms. Von Karma’s intense, frightening attitude, in fact, she seems almost…attracted to it.
The two of them attach themselves to each other in a way that Pearl finds extremely confusing. After the Engarde case, they start having weekly dinners, talking on the phone every few nights, and sending letters when Ms. Von Karma is away on Interpol business. Pearl has never seen Maya write anyone a letter before. Maya shows Ms. Von Karma The Steel Samurai , which Pearl had thought was sacred, and even goes so far as to invite the woman up to Kurain Village for her birthday dinner.
The woman, with some sort of sadistic sense of timing, knocks on the manor door right when Maya is out at the village market with their other guests (no doubt attempting to persuade Mr. Nick to buy her every snack her eyes land on) and Pearl is trying to take advantage of the time alone to bake a birthday cake. It’s not going very well so far. She’s never baked anything before - her Mother had always made sure all her energy was spent on training and meditating - and she can only read about half the words in the old, wrinkled cookbook that she’d found holding up desk leg in the library. By the time Ms. Von Karma arrives, Pearl has spilled vanilla extract on the already mostly indecipherable pages of instructions, dropped two eggs, and spattered the cabinets with sugar and butter in a misguided attempt to use the unfamiliar hand mixer.
“Maya isn’t back yet,” says Pearl quickly, when she opens the door to see Ms. Von Karma, immediately trying to pull it shut again before Ms. Von Karma can step inside and see the mess she’s made. Pearl gets the sense that Mr. Von Karma will be insulted by any sort of untidiness, even in someone else’s home.
“I am well aware of that,” says Ms. Von Karma, prickly as ever. “I have come looking for you, Pearl Fey.”
Pearl gulps, abandoning her effort with the door.
“I have,” Ms. Von Karma clears her throat awkwardly, “Failed, as difficult as that may be to believe, to find a proper gift for Ms. Maya Fey.”
Pearl nods, because she feels like that’s what she’s supposed to do, even if she has no idea how she’s supposed to help solve this problem.
“And I thought, perhaps, she would enjoy it if the two of us were to…bond.” She spits that last word out like it leaves a foul taste in her mouth. Pearl sincerely doubts if Ms. Von Karma has ever bonded with anyone before, and doesn’t understand why she would want to do so now, and with Pearl of all people. “Would that service as a gift? Or is it too theoretical? I have not had…many opportunities to practice gift giving before,” She pauses, looking down at the floor in a way that makes Pearl’s heart ache for her a little bit. It’s sad that Ms. Von Karma has never had a real friend before Maya, though Pearl has never considered it that way before. It reminds her a little bit of…herself. “But I am sure that I will quickly become the best in the world at it!” Ms. Von Karma asserts confidently, forcing the frown from her face, and leaving Pearl stewing in her new, unfamiliar, sense of pity for a grown adult.
“I’ve been working on my own gift for Maya,” Pearl admits, “But it hasn’t been going very well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe…maybe it would make more sense if I showed you,” says Pearl, deciding that she trusts Ms. Von Karma enough to share this with her, at least for the moment. She’d trusted Pearl enough to share her problem, after all. And Pearl still hasn’t forgotten the way that the woman put herself in harm's way to help save Maya during the Engarde Case, so she opens the door wider and ushers her inside. She looks strangely out of place in Fey Manor, like a lost time traveler sent back a few centuries. Pearl leads Ms. Von Karma to the kitchen, and hopes that her lawyer’s skill at interpreting evidence helps her understand the problem without Pearl having to explain it out loud.
Ms. Von Karma looks around for a few moments, wrinkling her nose at the mess, before nodding in a determined way and clapping her hands together,
“It seems,” she says slowly, as though she can’t even believe the words that are about to come out of her mouth, “That you and I are going to bake a cake. It will…how do you say…hit two flies with one swatter. You will get your cake, and I will get my bonding.”
What follows is perhaps the most surreal experience of Pearl’s young life. Ms. Von Karma approaches baking the same way she approaches a case in court; methodically, punishingly, and with no possible outcome but perfection even in consideration. She lines all of the ingredients up on the freshly-scrubbed counter like little soldiers, and Pearl half-expects her to start shouting at them. Her measuring is so meticulous it wouldn’t be out of place in a science lab, and her stirring is so powerful that Pearl’s surprised the bowls don't shatter.
Pearl, for her part, is not nearly so skilled. At one point, while attempting to pull a second bag of flour out of an overhead cabinet that is far too tall for her, she drops it several feet, causing it to break open on the counter, filling both the kitchen and the two people inside it in fine, white powder.
And then, to Pearl’s great surprise, Ms. Von Karma laughs. It is a strange, unrehearsed sound, coming from a strictly rehearsed woman, and, similar to the flour, it fills up the whole room. “Maya Fey would find this hilarious. To see us getting dirty like this just for her,” she says to Pearl, shrugging off her now-soiled blazer in a clumsy way that makes her almost look her age. When she straightens back up, rubbing her hands together as though preparing to renew her effort in the war against batter, Pearl sees something that makes her gasp out loud.
“Are you alright?” Ms. Von Karma asks, brow furrowing with what might just be concern.
“Gah…I, uh, got flour in my mouth,” Pearl manages to stammer out, and Ms. Von Karma gives her a sharp pat on the shoulder, then turns back to her bowl. Luckily, it doesn’t seem as though the magatama tattoo on her shoulder (the very thing that startled Pearl so much) works like a real one, because Ms.Von Karma doesn’t even notice her lie.
Pearl stares at the emerald green mark, all thoughts of the cake driven from her mind. She almost wants to reach out and touch it, to prove she’s not seeing things. But she doesn’t know if there’s a texture difference between soulmarks and skin, and more importantly, she thinks that stroking Ms. Von Karma’s shoulder without warning would be a very good way to get herself better acquainted with Whippy.
She thinks quickly back through a lot of things, many of them casting themselves in an entirely different light with this new revelation. If Maya and Ms. Von Karma were soulmates, then it explains a lot of things. Like why Ms. Von Karma would want to try and “bond” with Pearl, for one. Why she was so worried about getting Maya a proper gift for her birthday. Why she’s here to celebrate with them at all, given that, in Pearl’s experience, she avoids any event that involves loud music, colorful decorations, and general happiness. Why she seems to act so differently around Maya than she does around anyone else – softer, somehow – and why Maya always believes that she can be a better person despite very little evidence to prove the claim. It’s because they’re soulmates , whether they know it or not. It’s because they’re meant to be there for each other – Ms. Von Karma is meant to be soft for Maya and Maya is meant to believe in her. That’s how soulmates are supposed to work, but getting to see it up close for the first time makes Pearl like she’s never even truly understood the concept before.
“Are you going to keep standing there like a dead fish, or are you going to help me pick a color for the frosting?” Ms. Von Karma snaps a few moments later.
So Pearl helps her cousin’s soulmate finish baking a birthday cake.
It’s not a very good cake. If Pearl’s honest with herself, it’s awful. Despite Ms. Von Karma’s organization and commitment, she still has no experience with baking, and isn’t particularly inclined to follow the instructions of some old book above her own intuition. So the icing turns out gloopy, the cake itself is grainy, and the decorations are sloppy. But Maya eats a whole, thick slice without the grin on her face even slipping, and Pearl isn’t sure whether it’s because Maya’s happy with all foods, regardless of quality, or because people she love made it for her. She hopes it’s the second one. And then she frowns a bit to herself, realizing that she’s just accidentally admitted in her thoughts the very fact she’s been struggling to ignore for months; that Maya is in love with Ms. Von Karma. And now, Pearl is almost certain, after watching the care she’d put into making the cake for her this afternoon, that Ms. Von Karma is in love with Maya too.
That night, tucked under a lavender duvet so old and worn that it’s almost falling apart, Pearl thinks about Maya and Ms.Von Karma. She thinks about how they bring out different sides to each other, each smoothing the other down and then building them back up, like waves from the ocean beating against the shore. She thinks about her Mother, and wonders how different their lives might have been if her Father had managed to be a good person like that, tempering his wife’s dark ambition with a gentle, loving hand. But mostly, in a rather different way to the romantic idealized yearning she’s used to, she thinks about soulmarks.
When Trucy first meets the two men that she will one day gladly call Daddy and Papa, they both scare her a little, in very different ways.
Papa Miles whisks into her life like a hurricane, if a hurricane were kindly, anxious, and elegant. He barges through the apartment door a few days after Trucy first comes home with Mr. Nick, hair disheveled despite his immaculately tailored suit, dragging a matching suitcase behind him.
“Miss Trucy Gramarye, I presume?” He asks in the form of introduction, when he spots her peering over the back of the couch at him. She nods, feeling strangely shy, like she doesn’t know how exactly this man wants her to speak to him, but she still feels the need to do it correctly and earn his approval.
“Is your–” he sighs, clearly stressed about something, and runs his fingers through his hair, explaining its disheveled state, “Is Phoenix Wright here?”
Trucy nods again, and points backwards into the hallway, towards the door of Mr. Nick’s bedroom.
“Phoenix!” the man shouts, and begins striding towards the room himself, evidently deciding that Trucy has reached the limit of her helpfulness.
Mr. Nick pops out of his room, looking half-eager and half-anxious.
“Miles! You didn’t…you didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“I’ve called half a dozen times, and texted twice that,” the man - Miles? - says, wheeling his suitcase to a stop and staring down Mr. Nick with a look that Trucy can’t quite place.
“Oh,” says Mr. Nick, scratching the back of his neck with embarrassment, “Phone’s dead. Haven’t really felt like charging it, you know. Nothing but interview requests and anonymous hate messages.”
Mr. Miles’s eyes soften, and he crosses the gap between them in a few long strides, before wrapping Mr. Nick up in a hug, a big tight one. Trucy wonders what it feels like to be held like that. Safe, probably, she thinks, and warm.
After a few long moments, the two men break apart, and Mr. Miles’ eyes swivel, terrifyingly, to ponder Trucy. It’s not the look itself so much that’s scary (it’s actually rather soft and compassionate), but the man giving it, and what his presence here could mean for Trucy.
“Trucy, can you…give us a minute?” Mr. Nick asks, noticing where Mr. Miles’ eyes are pointed. Trucy, with the sharply developed survival instinct of a child who knows how to tell when she’s not wanted, has already ducked down the hallway towards the bedrooms. Once out of eyesight, though, she stops, too curious to know what the adults are going to talk about to actually go back to her new room, with its oppressively blank walls and unfamiliar scratchy sheets.
“Why on earth would you have thought bringing home the magician’s daughter was a good idea?” Ms. Miles asks sharply, and there’s a personal subtext in his voice that Trucy can’t understand, as if he’s putting himself in her shoes.
“She had nowhere else to go!” Mr. Nick snaps back, “What, would you have wanted me to have her shipped off to the orphanage, when it was my fault she’s without a father in the first place?”
Her first thought is that they are going to start screaming and throwing things, the way her Old Daddy used to do when he was angry, and so she darts a few steps farther back down the hallway, where she’s safer, but can still listen. But then, instead of blowing up, Mr. Miles sinks into himself, looking smaller than ever before, and falls softly onto the couch.
“A daughter,” he mumbles into his hands, “We have a daughter now.”
“Yep,” agrees Mr. Nick, taking a deep breath and keeping his voice forcibly casual as he sits down beside his partner and begins rubbing his shoulder comfortingly, “We sure do.”
“We’re parents.”
“We sure are.”
This statement, which feels like acceptance, warms Trucy’s heart, and she takes a few steps forward again.
“We’re 26, and now we’re in charge of raising an 8 year old.”
“Is telling me things that I already know your way of processing an overwhelming situation?” Mr. Wright asks, grinning in spite of himself.
“Yes!” Mr. Miles groans, frustrated.
“Okay, love. Just keep talking, then.” Mr. Nick’s hand continues its path, back and forth along his partner’s back. Trucy briefly wonders what it feels like, to have someone touch you that kindly and gently, like they want to help take care of you.
“I’m a father now.” Mr. Miles’s voice cracks over the word, and Trucy can feel an intense swirling of emotions there that she doesn’t really understand. She also notices that neither of the men have said anything about only keeping Trucy until her real Daddy comes back, and so she files that information away to think about later.
Mr. Miles looks up, and lightly pushes Mr. Nick’s arm away from him, in order to grasp both of his hands between them. “If this is going to continue, then you have to make me a promise.” Mr. Nick nods solemnly, and it all feels very dramatic to Trucy, like a scene from a movie.
“I need you to promise me, that if you ever see me start to act anything like Von Karma, that you will pack up, take Trucy, and leave.”
“Miles, I can’t just-”
“Promise me, Phoenix. Or else I can’t, in good conscience, let her live here.”
Mr. Nick sighs, long and deep, and then says; “Alright. I promise. But I’m never gonna have to go through with it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Because I know you , Miles.”
Slowly and gently, Mr. Nick reaches out and pulls Mr. Miles’ hand down towards him. Trucy narrows her eyes, trying to understand what he’s doing, as he pushes back the sleeve of the other man’s coat, exposing what should be his bare wrist. But, instead of normal skin there, Trucy spies a beautiful pattern – a bright yellow sunflower inked into the man’s skin like a tattoo. It takes her a minute, but she eventually realizes what she’s looking at; a soulmark. She read about them in books and seen them on TV sometimes, but no one in real life has ever had a conversation with her about them. She always got the sense that her family had something against them, and so considered the topic off-limits.
While she thinks, Mr. Nick pushes up his hoodie sleeve too, exposing a matching flower, this one with pale pointy white petals, on his wrist.
“I know you,” Mr. Nick repeats, “Always have, always will. There’s proof right here on your arm, if you’re ever looking for it.”
Trucy nearly averts her gaze, overwhelmed with the sense that she’s spying on an intimate moment not meant for prying eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Miles mutters suddenly, like it’s a thought that just overcame him and forced itself to be said.
“What are you sorry for? I’m the one who should be sorry. Or haven’t you read the news lately?”
“I’m sorry you had no choice in the matter,” says Mr. Miles finally, “Sorry that you ended up stuck with me and not someone else who could better help you handle all this.”
“Stuck with you?” Mr. Nick repeats, incredulous, “Without a choice? God, Miles, maybe that was a terrible point for me to make. It’s not about the marks, not really. It’s about us . So many things that I’ve done for you, so many things that we’ve done for each other, we did before we even knew we were soulmates,” he continues, holding up their wrists side by side, “This mark isn’t the reason why I defended you in court that first time, it’s not the reason you backed me up in the Powers and Skye cases, it’s not the reason you’ve come back from Europe twice…three times now to save me, and it’s not the reason I love you. If I woke up tomorrow and the mark was gone, well, that wouldn’t change anything at all,” Mr. Nick promises.
“It always manages to surprise me. That you love me.” Mr. Miles says, seemingly only latching on to the final piece of Mr. Nick’s impressively impassioned speech.
Mr. Nick runs a hand through his hair, letting out a singular soft chuckle. “God, of course I do, Miles,” he says. “I don’t think I know how to do anything else.”
Trucy almost retreats back into her room, so overwhelmed by a scene that she is now certain she is not meant to be witnessing. She can’t seem to make her legs move, though, so she keeps her eyes forcibly fixed on the ground as a series of gross noises that sound suspiciously like what the kids on TV call “making out” come from the living room. While memorizing the grain of the wood floor, she thinks about soulmarks and what they mean. If she had one, which she doesn’t (Old Daddy always told her so, and anyway, she’s never seen a trace of one) she wonders what it would look like. If it would point her to someone to love her the way Mr. Nick and Mr. Miles so clearly love each other, someone to hug her like that when she’s feeling sad and laugh at all the jokes in her routine even if they’ve heard them a thousand times. She wishes, for the first time, that there was someone like that waiting for her in the world. But there’s not.
“You can come out now, Trucy,” Mr. Nick calls a few moments later, and Trucy pokes her head about from behind the wall, blushing hard but not feeling the need to pretend she wasn’t eavesdropping. Mr. Nick, his hair all messed up but looking brighter than she’s seen him in days, smiles at her, in that happy-sad-sincere way that makes her feel all jumbled up inside, but also strangely safe. “Why don’t we see if we can convince Mr. Edgeworth here to take the two of us out to brunch? Something fancy?”
Mr. Miles starts to put on a scowl, but it vanishes quicker than a rabbit in one of Trucy’s magic acts when faced with the combined power of her and Mr. Nick’s puppy-dog eyes.
A half-hour later, stomach comfortably full of eggs benedict, watching her two new guardians squabble lovingly over the pronunciation of ‘hollandaise’, Trucy sits with a prim linen napkin on her lap, wondering how many slow-blinks it will take to get Mr. Miles to take her shopping for bedroom decorations.
That night in bed, tucked under a pink comforter and sheet set so new that it’s still slightly stiff, Trucy thinks about her new Daddy and Papa. She thinks about how soon she can ask them to take her back to that brunch place so she can try the stuffed French toast. She thinks about her new posters and stuffed animals and decks of cards. But mostly, for reasons she can’t quite understand, she thinks about soulmarks.
Trucy and Pearl become fast friends from the very moment they meet, despite all of Phoenix and Maya’s initial hesitations. What they, in all of their adult wisdom and consultation of parenting books, had not factored in, was simply how lonely and starved for companionship, any companionship at all from someone their own age, both of the girls had been their entire lives.
Pearl had grown up alongside several girls from the village, but their acquaintanceship began and ended in their shared channeling classes. Morgan had attempted to drill into her head that she was destined for greater things than all of those other girls, that she was above them and ought not to interact with them any more than she had to. She had hoped that by doing so she would grow Pearl into a properly refined and detached master when she came of age. All she succeeded in doing, however, was creating an earth-shatteringly lonely little girl who reached the age of eight without ever having a successful one-on-one conversation with another child.
Trucy had been the only person under the age of eighteen who toured the country with Troupe Gramarye’s traveling magic show. Her time was not spent in school, meeting other children, but learning tricks from her father, grandfather, and uncles, and practicing quietly for hours until she’d gotten them perfect. She was always careful not to disturb the rest of the troupe’s own practice sessions, because she knew what sort of harsh punishment would ensue if she did, and so spent much of the first eight years of her life alone, with only Mr. Hat for company. Sometimes, if she was lucky, she would find time to sneak out of her trailer and play a few games with kids who were waiting to see the show, or whose parents were working a one-city gig for the troupe, but those kids always left after a few hours. The brief fleeting connections made over a couple rounds of tag or hide-and-go-seek were fun, but they were certainly no replacement for real, genuine friends.
The first time that Pearl and Trucy are introduced goes better than any adult in their lives dared to hope. When Pearl peeks around the edge of Maya’s robes, in a gesture that makes her seem much younger than she actually is, and sees Trucy, smiling widely with her hand extended for a shake, she simply steps forward and takes it, with very little hesitation. She is unable to articulate exactly why she does such a thing so contrary to her nearly overwhelming shyness, but her best guess is that she’d had a feeling, so deep in her gut that she thought it might have even been her soul, telling her that this was a person she could trust.
And with that, the girls are best friends, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They become Trucy-and-Pearl, Pearl-and-Trucy, an inseparable (if not by space or time, than by concept and thought) unit, that only grows stronger as the years go by.
Every day from when they first meet, Trucy counts down the minutes on the clock at school, waiting impatiently for the bell to ring and send her home; home to Daddy and Papa, and the plastic phone on the kitchen wall that she can use to call Pearl and update her on everything that’s happened since they last spoke less than 24 hours ago.
And each of those same days, Pearl counts down the days on the wall calendar at home, waiting only slightly more patiently for the week and to end and the train to come; the train that carries her and Maya down the mountain and into the city to see Mr. Nick, Mr. Edgeworth, and most importantly, Trucy.
Together, they learn to be kids, in a way neither of them have ever been allowed to be before. They practice roller skating together in the street, and patch each other’s knees up with decorative bandaids afterwards. They scrounge up coins from between couch cushions to save up and buy packs of used Pokémon cards at the thrift store, and have passionate imaginary trainers battles that span the whole of Kurain Village, Trucy’s Mewoscarada putting up a valiant fight against Pearl’s Espeon. They weave pink and purple friendship bracelets and wear them everywhere they go, like badges of honor. They spend summers swimming in the public pool down the street from the Wright’s apartment, practicing underwater handstands and cannon balls, dunking and diving under eachother’s legs, and getting spectacularly sunburned in the process. They start co-writing about a dozen different fantasy stories, abandoning each in turn when a sudden new idea becomes more interesting. They fall asleep still on the phone some nights, miles apart but each comforted just by the sound of the other’s breathing.
Neither one of them ever notices the strange way their muscles seem to relax when they’re together, like they’ve just had an hour-long massage, and neither of them ever comments on the strange itching pain that spreads across their backs in the hours they’re apart.
For Trucy’s 13th birthday, Mr. Nick, Mr. Edgeworth, and Maya all agree to let Pearl stay over for a three-night sleepover extravaganza. They bake cookies, make more beaded friendship bracelets than it would be possible for either of them to wear, watch all three seasons of The Steel Samurai (this takes significantly longer than it should, because when he’s there, Mr. Edgeworth pauses the show about once a minute to tell them interesting behind-the-scenes facts and make sure they’re picking up on the queer subtext), build a truly impressive pillow fort across the Wright’s entire living room, and eat more junk food than Pearl’s ever seen before in her life.
On the third night, both exhausted and thoroughly covered in glitter and cheese puff dust, they’re sitting in Trucy’s bedroom flipping through a series of teen magazines that they’d picked up at the corner store while on a snack run.
(“I’m thirteen now!” Trucy had exclaimed, pointing at the rack beside the check-out counter, “Finally old enough to read these!”
“They’re not really all that exciting. Mostly articles on picking the right nail polish for your skin tone and asking your crush to the school dance.”
“Don’t ruin this for me, Pearly,” Trucy had pouted.
Pearl had bought her the magazines.)
The magazines turn out to be much more interesting than Pearl had been anticipating, but not for any real value of their own.
“‘Find out what your soulmark really says about you’,” Trucy reads aloud dramatically, “What could it possibly tell you except for who your soulmate is?” she asks, and Pearl giggles.
“Well, let’s find out,” she says, starting to read.
“You have one, don’t you?” Trucy asks eventually, without looking up from the article, “Even though you always say you don’t?”
“Yes,” Pearl admits, more out of panicked shock than real honesty. Trucy’s intuition never ceases to surprise her. Pearl has never told anyone, not even Maya, that she’s known about her soulmark for months now, ever since the persistent dull, hot pain in her back sent her into a panicked spiral thinking she had slipped a disk or contracted some rare disease. Luckily, before calling 911 or starting to draft her will, she’d looked up her symptoms in a variety of medical texts at the manor’s library, and found descriptions exactly matching her experiences appearing over and over again in descriptions of soulmates. “How could you tell?” she asks.
“Sometimes, when you think no one is looking, you reach around and touch your fingers to the middle of your back, like you’re checking to make sure something is still there. You didn’t used to do that, so I guessed something had changed in your life that made you pick up the habit. Soulmark is an easy conclusion to come to.” Here, Trucy pauses, like she’s debating in her head about what to say next. “Especially since I went through the exact same thing a little before you did,” she admits very quickly, before burying her head behind the magazine again.
Pearl blinks, taken aback.
“You never told me,” is the first thing that she manages to say.
“It never felt like the right time to bring it up,” Trucy admits. “And I was dealing with it myself, like, emotionally, you know?”
“Of course,” Pearl says immediately, “I’m not mad or anything.” The follow-up statement; I could never be mad at you , not for anything, hangs in the air between them, unsaid but heard nonetheless.
“I know it’s back there,” Trucy says, setting the magazine down and reaching her arm around to her back to poke at the spot where her mark lies, “I listen much better than my old Daddy thought. And I understand more too.”
Pearl nods. This is a feeling, a frustration, that she knows well. “Why has Mr. Nick not told you about it?” she asks, because the idea of Mr. Nick hiding something so important from his daughter is beyond impossible to fit into her worldview.
For a moment, this odd expression flickers across Trucy’s face, too brief and confusing for Pearl to identify before it’s gone. It almost reminds her of the way the guards used to look at her when she went to visit her mother in prison, like they understood something she didn’t and felt bad for her because of it. Pearl wonders what Trucy thinks she understands better than her, and her insides wrinkle a bit, at the idea of this small girl, smaller even than her, and younger too, looking down at her the same way grown-ups do.
“Daddy makes a lot of choices,” Trucy says vaguely, and Pearl nods again, despite her confusion and annoyance, “Maybe he thinks I already know about it. That would make sense. Or maybe he doesn’t think he’s the right person to talk to me about it. That makes less real-life sense, but makes lots of sense for Daddy.”
Pearl thinks about the way Mr. Nick goes pale when anyone mentions Pearl’s mother and his stammering responses to Pearl’s own questions about her, and thinks she knows what Trucy means. A bit of her resentment washes away in understanding. “Like, in his head, because he’s not your real Daddy, he’s not the one who’s supposed to tell you important things. Or hard things,” she says.
“Exactly. He’s probably doing it ‘for my own good’ or something like that. But I’m real tired of things being done for my good. Shouldn’t I get to decide what’s good for myself?” Trucy pouts a bit and fidgets with her cape as she speaks, running the folds back and forth between her fingers. Pearl kind of wants to reach out and take her hand, to hold it still, but she pushes the idea away and lets the silence envelop them.
“We could look at each other’s,” Pearl suggests, almost on a whim, nearly half an hour after the conversation has naturally ebbed away.
“Each other’s what?” asks Trucy, not looking up from her cape, which she’s fixedly studying, as if searching for wrinkles or some other small imperfection.
“Soulmarks. You can’t look at your own back, but I can. And I can tell you what’s on it. Then you can do the same for me.” Pearl explains, and Trucy finally lets go of the cloth, frowning slightly. “It was just an idea,” Pearl corrects immediately, “It’s fine really, I shouldn’t have even said anything. Soulmarks are personal stuff and-”
“No, it’s a good idea,” Trucy says, “I was just thinking.”
Trucy gets up and walks over to her desk as Pearl lets out a small internal sigh of relief. Trucy pulls open the top drawer and begins rummaging through it.
“What are you looking for?”
“This.” Trucy pulls out a small square camera made out of pink plastic, which Pearl recognizes as the kind that prints out the pictures right after you take them.
“Cool,” she breathes, never having seen one outside of the pictures the older girls in the village post online and let her look at sometimes.
Trucy nods in agreement. “Papa Miles got it for me. After I accidentally told him I don’t have any family pictures of my old Mommy and Daddy.” Before Pearl can even frown sympathetically, Trucy moves on; “Anyway, I thought it would be easier for us to take pictures of the marks. Rather than trying to describe them to each other. Like, what if yours is some fancy Kurainese symbol I don’t recognize?”
Pearl supposes that this makes sense. Still, it feels much more permanent this way. When there will be physical proof of their marks, making them impossible to ignore any longer. When someone else, Trucy at that, will see the most vulnerable part of her, not just with her eyes, but with an alienating, inhuman device between them.
“Alright,” she says eventually, not voicing any of her concerns.
“Great!” Trucy chirps, shoving the camera into Pearl’s hands. “Well, here goes nothing.”
Trucy whips off her cape and shirt before Pearl can say anything. The large bare expanse of pale skin is so disorienting that at first Pearl doesn’t even register the soulmark sitting in the dimple of Trucy’s back.
When she does, though, she gasps and nearly drops the camera. Luckily, she comes back to her senses just quick enough to snatch it by the string out of the air before it hits the ground and shatters into pieces.
“What? What is it?” asks Trucy, a bit of unusual anxiety creeping into her voice, “Is it really awful or something?”
“No…not awful,” says Pearl delicately.
“What then?”
“I’ll just…I’ll just take a picture and show you,” Pearl decides, because she has no idea how she would explain this to anyone at all, least of all Trucy. So, trying to keep her hands from shaking, she raises the little plastic camera back up in front of her face, and clicks the button. She’s certainly not going to win any awards for composition, but at least she took the photo.
Agonizingly slowly, the little black square that will soon be a photograph slides out of the slot. Having just finished tugging her shirt back on, Trucy grabs the picture with her lithe magician’s fingers, and sets it face-up on her desk.
“We’ll have to wait for it to develop,” she says, and Pearl nods.
Neither of them says anything else as they stand, side-by-side, watching color slowly seep into the photo. Every couple of seconds, Trucy stops rocking back and forth on her heels and tries to catch Pearl’s eye, looking for some hint as to what she’s about to see, but Pearl keeps her expression stubbornly blank, so as not to reveal anything.
After what feels like an eternity but is probably less than a minute, the picture has come into focus enough for both of the girls to tell what it is. The silence continues, possibly getting even deeper, as they both lean forward to get a closer look. Pearl isn’t quite sure why she’s acting so interested in the picture, as if she didn’t just see the real thing, but maybe she’s hoping for evidence that she was hallucinating somehow, and what she thought she saw wasn’t Trucy’s real soulmark at all. But as more color floods into the photo, it’s clear that she will have no such luck. There, nestled into the smooth skin in the small of Trucy’s back, are two halves of a pale cream-colored seashell, slightly separated from each other, with a shining silvery sphere in the middle. A pearl.
“Oh,” says Trucy, looking from the photo up at Pearl and then back at the photo again, as if expecting it to have changed. It hasn’t. “Oh,” she says again, softer.
Pearl says nothing. She resists the urge to squinch up her eyes and squeeze her fists, and instead makes herself stand completely still and calm, waiting for the yelling to start. Waiting for Trucy to throw her out of the bedroom, send her home, and never speak to her again. She waits for a long time, until Trucy speaks again, in a surprisingly light and casual tone.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
Pearl nods slowly, unsure of how to react.
“I like it,” Trucy says simply, as though that settles the matter, and Pearl blinks, confused. “Well, I guess it’s time to look at yours now.”
“You still…want to?”
“Yeah? Why would I not want to? That was our whole plan, wasn’t it?”
Honestly, Pearl still doesn’t understand why Trucy hasn’t kicked her out yet, whether in disappointment, anger, or embarrassment, but she’s willing to go along with it if it means finally getting to see her mark after all these years. She’s never had any guesses as to what it could be before, despite puzzling over it every night for months, but now, with the revelation of the painted skin hidden on Trucy’s back, well, Pearl has a sneaking suspicion of where her soulmark may be trying to lead her.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
“How do you even take this thing off?” Trucy asks, fiddling with the ribbons that cascade down Pearl’s back, seemingly unaware of the jolt that the sensation sends through Pearl’s already overworked nerves.
“Oh, um, it’s sort of complicated. Lots of layers. But I can untie the sashes and take off the kimono itself, and then I’ll just be in my…well, my underclothes. They’re mostly see-through, so we should be able to take the picture even if I keep them on.”
Pearl doesn’t want to seem prudish and stiff in front of Trucy, who’d been so willing to strip without a shred of embarrassment just moments ago, but she’d still been raised to think of modesty as one of the highest virtues a women could possess, and she’s not sure she’s ready to lose all that virtue in one foul swoop, soulmates or not.
Trucy, though, just nods in understanding. “Growing up in show business, you’re not really allowed much privacy, so you don’t develop a sense of modesty the way normal people do, I guess. Sorry if I freaked you out earlier, just throwing my shirt off like that.”
“It’s fine,” Pearl mutters, turning her face downwards to watch her fingers untie her outer sash, as well as to hide her growing blush.
“Is it okay if I watch you, though? Taking it off? I’ve always wanted to figure out how all the pieces fit together.”
Pearl’s fingers stammer clumsily over the knot of fabric. “Have you really never worn a kimono before?” she asks, trying very hard to keep her voice steady.
“Nope.” Trucy frowns, “Old Daddy thought they were too ‘traditional’ to fit with our image. And new Daddy…I don’t think he’d even know where to start with girl clothes if it wasn’t for Aunts Maya and Franziska.”
“What about Mr. Edgeworth?” Pearl asks, sounding the name out carefully so as not to make a fool of herself, “He’s always buying you nice things.”
“Yeah, he is,” Trucy shrugs, “But he’s also so afraid of forcing me to do anything I don’t want to do that he’d never buy me something like that if I didn’t ask for it first.”
The girls both pause for a minute, thinking about Mr. Edgeworth, and the ephemeral, kindly father figure that both of their lives had been missing for so many years.
“So, anyway, show me how this thing all fits together!”
Unable to deny anything to those big blue eyes, Pearl does, slowly taking off each part of the garment and holding it up so Trucy can see. “Obi, date-jime, koshi-himo, nagajuban,” she sounds out gently and deliberately, the same way Maya used to teach her new words that showed up in the chapter books they read together. “And these are the susoyoke and hadajuban,” she says finally, after Trucy is done meticulously inspecting each thread of the other components.
“Wow,” Trucy breathes, still cradling the magatama necklace in her hands like a precious treasure. “It’s like its own little magic trick. There’s so much going on under the outer layer holding it all together, making it look neat, but no one looking at you from the outside is ever going to notice.”
Pearl nods, trying not to think about the fact that she’s currently standing in front of Trucy Wright in her underthings.
“Don’t you ever get tired of doing all that every morning when you get dressed? Isn’t it annoying?”
“When it rains, earth hardens,” says Pearl as if on cue, quoting one of her Mother’s old proverbs, and then wincing despite herself.
Trucy tilts her head to the side, confused.
“It’s something my mother used to say when I complained about having to tie all my sashes myself,” Pearl explains quickly, “It basically means that when you do hard and annoying things over and over, you become a stronger person.”
“Like learning a new trick. It’s hard at first but then once you master it, it feels great, and you can do it whenever you want!”
“Kind of like that, yeah.”
“That makes sense. Still, if you ever just want to, I don’t know, wear shorts and a t-shirt for a day instead, you can always borrow some of mine.”
“My mother wouldn’t let-” Pearl stops, and remembers, the same way she has to dozens of times a day. The grief doesn’t threaten to overtake her like a tidal wave, the way it used to, but it still makes the corners of her eyes itch, just a little, as if she’d like nothing better than to burst into tears. “I’d like that,” she decides eventually, pushing back all of the sadness and just focusing on Trucy, “I’d really like that.”
Trucy beams at her. “Alright! Now let’s see this soulmark!”
With very little preamble, she twirls Pearl around, pushes aside her hair from where it’s fallen down out of its braid buns, and snaps a picture with the plastic camera. The distinctive click and the flash of light echo through Pearl’s head. Trucy doesn’t say anything that might give Pearl a clue, or even do something simple like gasp, and when Pearl turns back around she sees why. Trucy has her eyes screwed up tight, not looking at anything.
“Are you facing towards me again?” she asks, and Pearl nods, before remembering that Trucy can’t see her.
“Yes.” Trucy blinks her eyes open, and Pearl is struck, again, by just how big and blue they are. Like the sky just before twilight, or a rushing waterfall. “Why did you close your eyes?”
“So that we could see it for the first time together.”
Pearl’s heart stutters in her chest, surprised to experience such consideration. As Trucy plucks the photograph out of the camera’s slot to watch it develop, Pearl turns around again, both because she doesn’t want to experience the anxiety of watching the black slowly fade into color, but also because she wants to put her clothes back on.
When she’s done redressing, Trucy still has her eyes shut, and is twiddling her thumbs together. If Pearl didn’t know Trucy Wright well enough to know that she never worried about anything, she might think that was a sign of nerves. Though perhaps, she realizes, with everything that’s happened tonight, she doesn’t know Trucy quite as well as she’d thought. So, slowly and gently, with great courage, she reaches out and takes Trucy’s hand in hers.
Trucy lets out a little surprised breath, but doesn’t let go or pull away. After a few moments, with that encouragement, Pearl entwines their fingers. Trucy smiles, a small genuine smile just for Pearl to see, and as some strange show of thanks, Pearl runs her thumb back and forth along the back of Trucy’s hand. They just stand there for a long while, reveling in this new sensation. It’s nice. So nice, in fact, that Pearl nearly forgets what they’re waiting for until Trucy says; “The photo should be ready now, I think.”
Pearl nods, even though Trucy can’t see her. “On three, okay? I’ll flip it over and you can open your eyes.” She reaches out her free hand, so as not to have to let go of Trucy, and grasps the corner of the photograph in her fingers.
“One…two…three.”
Pearl turns the photo over and stares down at it intently. There, on her pale skin, just above the little dimples in her back, are two pure white doves in flight, looking just like the ones that Trucy uses in her magic act.
“Oh thank goodness,” Trucy breathes out in a rush, “I was really worried for a second there that they weren’t gonna match.”
Pearl, still feeling the weight of the moment sink in, foolishly lets the first thought that crosses her mind slip out; “I didn’t think you worried about anything.”
“Of course I do,” says Trucy, clearly taken aback, “You, most of all.”
“You worry about me?” Pearl asks, finally wrenching her eyes away from the polaroid to look at Trucy, and search for sincerity in her face.
Trucy nods, keeping her big blue eyes staring into Pearl’s smaller hazel ones, so clearly honest that it almost hurts. “I worry about you a lot. I worry about you staying safe and warm whenever there’s a snowstorm up in the mountains. I worry when you get sad and quiet every year on your mother’s birthday, and worry that this will be the time you don’t start to feel better again afterwards. I worry about the way you apologize for yourself so much, like you think you’re not allowed to take up space. But mostly, I worry that you don’t like me nearly as much as I like you.”
Another wave of emotion washes over Pearl, leaving her even more overwhelmed than before. She’s never heard Trucy share so many of her emotions so openly; usually she holds them close to her chest, only letting the smallest bits out for the people she loves to see. To see so much of Trucy in one night, both physically and emotionally, feels like a beautiful and unexpected gift.
“I do,” she whispers, squeezing Trucy’s hand as hard as she can without making it hurt, “I promise I do. Like you as much as you like me, that is. Because I like you so so much.” The words are leaving Pearl’s mouth at the same moment that she’s realizing how true they are.
Trucy swallows. “That’s good, then,” she says eventually.
They stare into each other’s eyes for a long time, and some silent understanding passes between them.
“Do you…do you maybe want to cuddle and watch the pilot of The Pink Princess ?” offers Pearl, because it’s the only thing she can think of to say, “Maya says she gets a girlfriend in season two.” The offer hovers between them, representing a million different things; queerness, magic, girlhood, and the joy found in jointly reclaiming their ability to be childish.
“I’ve never wanted anything more,” Trucy grins, accepting all of the offerings with shining eyes. “But I’ll tell you one thing first-”
“What?” Pearl asks, too eager not to interrupt.
“I bet you her girlfriend is nowhere near as cool or pretty as mine.”
Pearl giggles, covering her face with her hands to hide her quickly spreading blush. There’s no need for them to discuss the term, or what they mean to each other. It’s simply understood. They’re Trucy-and-Pearl, Pearl-and-Trucy, same as they’ve always been, just with a beautiful little change somewhere in the middle.
They fall asleep on Trucy’s bed together, never even having changed into their pajamas, with The Pink Princess still playing softly in the background. Pearl’s head lays comfortably on Trucy’s shoulder, like it was meant to be cradled there, and Trucy’s arm curls around her, like it was made to protect her. If either of them stirs in the night, they’re lulled back to sleep quickly, both by the reassuring feeling of the other beside them, and the soothing warmth coursing through their bodies, starting from the centers of their backs.
That next morning, Pearl comes down to breakfast in one of Trucy’s girlier tank tops and a pair of embroidered jean shorts. She tries to help make pancakes, but is slightly distracted, smiling and posing whenever she catches sight of her reflection in the shiny, reflective surface of the oven. Trucy finds this all overwhelmingly adorable, and so she doesn’t mind having to chew around some charred bits of batter at the edges of the cakes at all.
To be fair, she’d found the sight pretty distracting too. Pearl Fey, standing in her kitchen, wearing her clothes. Pearl Fey with her hair down, and wearing pants. Pearl Fey, her best friend who was now also her girlfriend, grinning over the kitchen island at Trucy with pancake batter smudged on the tip of her nose. It was almost too much for a newly-thirteen year-old girl to handle without screaming, or at least without staring for a very long time. So it’s likely some of the burning is Trucy’s fault too.
Daddy and Papa are both kind enough to eat the low-quality breakfast without complaining, and to pretend they don’t notice the girls holding hands under the table. Trucy thinks it’s because they understood, probably better than anyone, how she felt at that moment. She’d realized that her soulmate had been right beside her all along, a better and realer person than she ever could have imagined, and it felt like she and Pearl had forever stretching out in front of them, with a world ready for them to take by storm. She finally understood what it must have felt like when Daddy and Papa started to fall in love, and it felt, quite simply, like magic.