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Phoenix’s eyes aren’t used to morning light. He moves around the kitchen on autopilot, working by the slivers of day willing themselves through the slits in the blinds around the apartment.
Once he has his mug of coffee, he leans back against the counter and lets out a drawn-out sigh, as if expelling the tiredness from his body. After a time, he rolls onto the balls of his feet and makes his way towards the living room window facing out onto the street. He pulls the cord with a flourish.
For a painful few seconds, he has to squint, the day assaulting him in autumn-turning-winter blue. Then, as soon as he’s able to take in the scene, the streets full of people beginning their day, he hears the telltale patter of footsteps down the hall.
*
After dropping Trucy off at school, during the short walk to the courthouse, the air is brisk. Where he would have once been absent, he focuses. Some shops and restaurants have closed, others have remained – only the seasons stay the same.
Once an imposing building, the courthouse seems smaller now. He affirms it to himself as he crosses the entrance hall, greeting the security guards and continuing on to his destination. No matter how much has changed, he knows this place. It knows him.
There’s something almost comforting in the sound of his footsteps against the tiled floors, the pillars and walls and high-set windows, the light and shadow that fall in the same way they always have, ignorant of everything else.
This is what Phoenix is thinking when he rounds a corner and collides with another body.
The first thing he recognises once his vision returns to him is the way the sunlight glints off of startling blonde. Second, irises like pools of ice, impossible to read. Third, the smile, all-white, defences raised.
“Herr Wright!”
The voice fills the space as though it’s a concert hall. It’s different to Apollo’s thunderous, full tones. Klavier Gavin’s voice echoes as though hollow at its core.
They stand awkwardly, Phoenix in his tracksuit and beanie, Klavier in his prosecutor-cum-rockstar attire. Phoenix is about to nod and continue on his way when the morning crescendos outside, the last clouds dispersing to allow bright light to spill into the space.
Phoenix has never been – never wanted to be – this close to Klavier Gavin. He’d repeated it like a mantra, back then – he’s seventeen, he’s seventeen, he’s seventeen. A teenager pulled against his will into something bigger than he could ever have understood. Nonetheless, the stranger who had ushered in the moment his life changed forever. A strange, unseverable tie, paths that had diverged yet remained inextricably joined at one key junction. Seven years of being not-strangers.
Klavier Gavin is twenty-four. He has bags under his eyes, his tan skin is dull and pockmarked, his satin shirt is creased. These aren’t imperfections you can see from across a courtroom, the signs of a boy who isn’t ready to be a man. A memory he’d forgotten is suddenly in front of him, clear as day – Mia strictly un- and re-doing his tie for him on the morning of his very first day behind the bench.
Phoenix stalls. Klavier Gavin does the same. They hover, the moment charged with a million things neither of them had been prepared to look at at nine in the morning on a Tuesday. Something that hasn’t changed – Phoenix opens his mouth, unsure what’s going to come out.
“Prosecutor Gavin, how about a coffee?”
*
Once seated in a cafe across from the courthouse, positioned across a table by a large window facing out onto the street, Phoenix becomes aware that his decisions have consequences. As the moments pile up, he wonders what he can talk to Klavier Gavin about. Spontaneity doesn’t come as naturally to him anymore.
“You’re re-taking the bar?”
Klavier’s voice rings through the air. Phoenix glances around, as though someone might notice them. Fortunately, the cafe belongs to a bland chain. In a setting like this, on a regular day, the rockstar prosecutor can just about pass as any other twenty-something.
As he waits for the answer to his question, Klavier takes a sip of his drink. Up close, the movements are almost unnaturally smooth, as if engineered to be viewed only by a distant audience. The too-small table is dominated by the reason for the question, and for Phoenix’s trip to the courthouse – a veritable tome of a book on everything he’d need to know for the exam.
“Yes. I am.”
“I see.”
Klavier turns his attention to the window. The sky threatens rain, washing the day in a colour that could be blue or could be grey, depending on how you looked at it. For a while, neither of them speak.
“What made you decide?”
Phoenix had found studying at his current age to be an interesting experience. An exercise in memorising things that felt a million miles away from anything anybody would reasonably think while standing in a courtroom. He thought about the students who pored over these books in universities while never having felt the smooth oak of the bench under their palms, heard the clacking of still-stiff shoes as they crossed the courtroom floor, or taken a breath knowing that from there on, every word carried a new weight, that of acting as another’s voice. Hundreds of hours spent studying the minutiae of pleas and sentences and loopholes, without ever knowing how they looked, sounded, felt when applied to a human life. The pulsing, bottled terror of realising you held another’s fate in your palm had only ever been matched by that of realising you never really had.
The book sits between them. Klavier faces him over it. He cups his mug in both hands. He’d ordered tea.
Phoenix exhales. It’s the in-between hour before the lunch rush. Only a few of the tables around them are occupied. A hazy mist has descended outside, an uncertain kind of rain. The windows reflect the warm, artificial lights of the shop interior.
“That case seven years ago was the first time I failed to secure a “Not guilty” verdict for a client,” he begins. “Obviously, I’ve thought a lot about what happened.”
Klavier suddenly looks very serious. Surprising himself, Phoenix maintains eye contact.
“Without ever realising it, I’d become tunnel-visioned. I expected the evidence to tell me a complete story. That’s dangerous. You know why?”
“Of course. People lie.”
The answer is instantaneous. Klavier’s gaze is unwavering.
Phoenix leans back in his chair, stretching his limbs. It sends a quiet fissure through the atmosphere, and Klavier’s features relax as much as he seems to know how to let them.
“...That’s one way to look at it. Either way, I wondered. What if I’d won, off the back of that forged diary entry?”
Klavier’s expression twitches. Phoenix continues.
“What foundations would that supposed justice have been built on? I thought I was chasing truth, but humans are more partial to certain truths than others. Regardless of who the guilty or innocent parties were in any one case, that realisation troubled me.”
Klavier is gripping his mug now, knuckles white. This time, Phoenix averts his gaze before continuing.
“The evidence might tell a story, but evidence is considered by people with thoughts, feelings and biases. If the evidence tells you the story you want to hear, you can become blind to everything else.”
“Yes.” Klavier’s voice is so quiet, it seems to float on the surface of the building’s ambience, detached, almost ghostly. Phoenix isn’t sure if he’s meant to hear the next words at all. “I trusted him.”
A gentle patter begins against the window – rain. All the light seems to have drained from the day. It’s hard to tell how heavy it’ll get, or how long it’ll last.
“And I trusted her.”
Klavier tilts his head slightly, questioning. In response, Phoenix smiles.
“I don’t think trusting people is a bad thing.”
The forecast hadn’t said anything about a storm, and yet the drizzle outside is strengthening. Through the window, it’s becoming harder and harder to see anything other than shadows, suggestions at people and vehicles. From time to time, there’ll be a chime as the door opens, and they’ll hear the telltale sounds of wheels on wet tarmac and footsteps in puddles. Just as quickly, the door will swing shut, the sharp November air chased back out.
“I didn’t bring an umbrella.” Klavier says miserably. It’s so unexpected, Phoenix can’t help but laugh.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting that. Don’t you have, like… a sports car?”
Klavier frowns lightly. “I prefer to walk.”
“Huh. Me too, actually.”
“I knew Kris was obsessive, but… I idolised it. Everything I learned came from him. Now I feel like I never knew him at all. Do you know what it’s like to feel like your only family was actually a stranger all along?”
Each word is heavier, jagged, ripped from soil by bleeding hands caught on rough, serrated edges. An unexpected excavation. Klavier looks surprised, like he’s presented the realisation to himself as much as Phoenix. Still, he continues.
“Why did he do it?”
A customer and the barista exchange a joke, laughing loudly, swallowing the end of Klavier’s question. His eyes are those of somebody who still believes the world is generous enough to give answers to those who search. If Phoenix were to rewrite all the volumes on practising law, he’d begin with this: lawyers are, in many ways, executioners.
“I’d like to know as well.”
Klavier blinks. Not a child, nor an adult. Mia, adjusting his tie for him. For the first time, he sees the scene through her eyes.
Phoenix glances at his watch, then places their cups on the tray they’d brought them over on. He can’t tell whether the rain is getting better or worse, but he has to go.
“Sometimes, I…”
As Phoenix rises, Klavier speaks up. The words catch, and he coughs. He keeps his eyes on the table. His hands are balled into gentle fists. Trucy does the same when she’s anxious, or scared.
“The Jurist System.”
Klavier looks up, confused.
“You asked. That’s why.” Phoenix retrieves the book from the table. “The truth is never decided by one person.”
A sudden roll of thunder ruptures the air, and lightning fills the room.
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
Klavier’s eyes are still the same icy blue, but Phoenix was wrong – they’re not unreadable, and this person isn’t Kristoph, and never was.
Phoenix breathes in, closing his eyes. The air is fresh in the way it only is on days that it rains. When he exhales, a tension he hadn’t realised was there drains from his body, like a wave pulling away from the shore. Finally, he extends a hand.
“So did I. That’s all most of us are trying to do. That’s all we can do. That’s all it is.”
For a moment, Phoenix’s hand hovers in front of Klavier. Then, Klavier reaches out, at first tentatively, before he finally clasps Phoenix’s palm, rising from his seat. They stand facing one another.
“I’m looking forward to working with you, Prosecutor Gavin.”
*
The dash to the bus stop is awkward with a thousand-page volume stuffed under his top, but Phoenix still pauses for a moment, compelled to look back. True to his word, Klavier is strolling away through the pouring rain as though it isn’t even touching him, looking a whole lot cooler than he ever had at that age, or now likely ever would. I need to go suit shopping.
Just before re-entering the courthouse, Klavier glances over his shoulder, raising a hand before vanishing into the light.
On the ride home, Phoenix can’t help but wonder about the etiquette of gifting barely-colleagues ties, if not because it would go some way to making Klavier look less stadium-tour and more trial-ready, then at least to prevent him from developing hypothermia.