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"The shapes that you drew may change beneath a different light / And everything you thought you knew / Will fall apart, but you'll be alright."
- The Oh Hellos, "Constellations"
The temple’s floor is cold under Trucy’s feet, leaching through the thin fabric of her tights. For a moment she wishes she packed socks, but then has to mentally chide herself for such a stupid thought—after all, she didn’t pack anything . She wasn’t even supposed to be here; Daddy specifically asked her to stay home. She’s glad she didn’t listen to him, though, because…
Her stomach flutters with uncertainty. Toes curling against the stone, Trucy peers through the temple’s open doors out to the courtyard beyond. There, at the top of the steps under flickering lantern light, sits Apollo, slumped over. Trucy takes a step forward, then another, and calls softly, “Polly?”
Apollo’s head whips around, drooping horns bouncing. His eyes are red-rimmed even in this light, and there are bags under his eyes the likes of which she hasn’t seen in a long, long time.
“Trucy? Why are you up, do you need something?” he asks, voice hoarse from all the shouting (and screaming, and crying) he’s done the past few days.
“I was looking for you. I can’t really sleep.”
“Jet lag?”
“Maybe,” Trucy lies. When Apollo doesn’t immediately ask to be left alone, she scurries over and sits down beside him, close enough that their knees almost touch—but not close enough that they do. “Are you okay?”
Apollo huffs. “I guess so.”
Trucy tucks her feet under the length of her cape. It’s the closest thing she has to a jacket out here in the cool, damp night.
“That’s not really an answer,” she says, and then winces. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
A breeze rustles the prayer flags lining the courtyard. Bells and windchimes jingle in the distance, like falling water. Apollo closes his eyes and breathes deep, as if remembering.
“Were you here a lot,” she ventures, “when you were a kid?”
“Honestly, not really.” Apollo chuckles. “For most of that time we were in hiding, usually up in the mountains, so I didn’t really spend a lot of time in town like this. I’d never been inside the temple before today.
“It’s weird,” Apollo confesses. “I lived here for nine years, but the fact that I existed at all was a secret, so I don’t really…” He trails off. “Sorry. Don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“How come you never told me before?” Trucy asks. “You know, that you were from here.”
“Because I didn’t want to be from here,” Apollo says sharply. “Only Clay ever knew, because I couldn’t hide it. I spent years trying to forget that I was raised by a fugitive. Why would I tell you?”
“Because we’re supposed to trust each other,” Trucy shoots back. “I don’t—I feel like I don’t know anything about you, Polly. But I want to. I want to so badly.”
Apollo just looks at her, eyes wide. His shirt is rumpled, tie half undone. There are still mud stains on his pants that they couldn’t quite scrub out after he almost drowned the other day. Trucy can’t think about that too hard or she’ll have an anxiety attack, so she looks away.
“I’m sorry, Truce,” Apollo murmurs. “I’m being a little mean.”
Trucy just shrugs. “It’s just that it feels like you have a whole second life I never knew about. One that… I’m not a part of.”
Once the words are out of her mouth, Trucy feels tremendously guilty instead of relieved. Apollo Justice has no obligation to her, his (former?) boss’s daughter, just because she got attached. He just found out the man who raised him is dead. The system that took that man’s life has just been uprooted at its very source. Apollo looks for all the world like a haggard and beleaguered man ten years his senior, and here she is, complaining that she isn’t the center of his world.
“What are you talking about?” Apollo asks quietly. “You’ll always be a part of my life. That won’t change just because I’m trying to reconnect with Khura’in, too.”
Trucy searches his eyes and feels her own prick with tears.
“You’re really considering it, then,” she whispers. “Staying here.”
Apollo looks away, out over the steps. “Yeah,” he says. “I am.”
Trucy squeezes her eyes shut and prays he doesn’t see it. All at once, a thousand terrible, cruel thoughts pop into her mind. She hates this place, hates it for making her Daddy run off and get himself into trouble when she needed him at home, hates it for putting Apollo through so much strife, hates it for taking him away from her. She hates that everyone expected her to stay home and keep quiet. She hopes tomorrow Prosecutor Sahdmadhi laughs and says it was a joke, or that he changes his mind and Apollo shouldn’t stay at all under any circumstances. She hopes Apollo tells him no. She wishes he told him to get fucked. She wants to cry, she wants to hit him, she wants to beg him not to leave her.
But that’s eight-year-old Trucy talking, and seventeen-year-old Trucy is supposed to be braver than that, so she tucks those mean thoughts somewhere far, far away, and tries to smile. That last part doesn’t really work.
“Trucy?” Apollo says. He’s looking at her now, with those big brown eyes of his that are far too kind for what she deserves. “You know it doesn’t have to change things, right?”
Trucy sees red.
“What do you mean it doesn’t change things?!” she snaps. “We’re across the entire ocean right now, Apollo! I’m used to seeing you almost every day, I… I just sort of thought you’d always be there.”
“Truce, I was always going to leave the Agency eventually. The goal was always going to be to have my own firm.”
“Well, yeah, but I figured that would mean, like, you’d be just a bike ride away, and I could still see you all the time and you could come to my shows and I could come watch your trials, not… Not that you’d be a whole ocean away, I…” Thick, fat tears begin to spill from Trucy’s eyes and drip like heavy raindrops down onto her knees. “Oh, Polly , I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t cry, I just—”
“Woah, woah, hey,” Apollo says gently, taking her hands in his. “I’m sorry, I know, I didn’t—I didn’t mean it like that. Of course things would be different. But we could call each other any time, and I’d visit whenever I could. And you know it wouldn’t be forever, right? Trucy, hey.” He squeezes her hands tight and bends down to look her in the eyes. “You know I love you, and nothing is going to change that, don’t you?”
“I-I know,” Trucy sniffles. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, I-I’m not trying to manipulate you, Polly, I swear, I—”
“Hey, I know. I know.” Apollo sighs. “And I’m sorry.”
Apollo lets go of her hands and looks away again, and Trucy immediately mourns the contact. It strikes a match against that age-old fear in her heart, a voice that screams she’s never going to see him again, after this. He’s never going to hold her hand again. This was it.
Everything feels too much, too fast, too soon. She’s only had Apollo in her life for about two years, but sometimes it feels like he was always supposed to be there. And despite the turmoil and the lies that permeated that first year they were together, somehow Apollo has never held any of her involvement against her.
That first April, after the incident with the false ace, Trucy remembers asking her Daddy if they did the right thing. Her Daddy said that sometimes doing the right thing still has consequences, and that even if they kept Apollo out of their plan entirely, he was always going to find out the truth about Gavin someday, and it was always going to hurt.
It always seemed so sudden, to her, the way they pulled the rug out from under Apollo and left him unemployed and unmoored. For the greater good, perhaps, but it was still cruel.
“If I hadn’t snuck on board,” Trucy says, “would you have made your decision even knowing I wasn’t here to say goodbye?”
“...Yeah,” Apollo admits. “I’m sorry.”
So that was always going to be it, then. After all that they went through together, after all the times Apollo nearly died and the times he left and came back and they ended up stronger for it, he was always going to get on a plane and not come back.
It cuts deep into the family-shaped hole in her heart, the one carved by a father who abandoned her, haunted by the spectre of a mother who loved her and whose face she can barely remember. Apollo was always going to leave someday, Trucy realizes. And it was always going to hurt.
“I don’t understand,” she says, low. “You said you barely lived here outside of the mountains, and you tried to forget all of it, and now you’re staying?”
“Because it’s different now, Trucy.”
“But—”
“Look, do you really think this isn’t hard for me?” Apollo bites back, running a hand through his hair. “Dhurke is dead and everything I knew is somehow different and wrong, and I feel like I have the chance to make things right , here, both for myself and for the country, and I just—I have to make that choice. I have to choose between two places to call home that are both full of people I care about. I was always going to have to, it’s—It’s not something that feels good. You think that’s easy for me, Trucy? You think it doesn’t hurt like hell? Why do you think I’m out here in the first place instead of sleeping?”
Apollo runs out of steam, and Trucy realizes his eyes are wet too.
“I’m sorry,” Trucy whispers.
Apollo’s posture deflates. He lets his hand fall into his lap.
“No, hey, I… I’m sorry, too.”
“I’m just…” Trucy tips her head back. There are so many stars in Khura’in, so many more than she’s ever seen from LA. Each is like a tiny little pinprick hole in the sky, a place to let the light in. It’s a small comfort, in a world that seems to darken at the edges every time Trucy stops to rest. “I’m really scared, Polly.”
“I am too,” Apollo confesses. He tips his head back too, but his eyes land on her instead of the sky. Bright, kind Apollo, the brother she never had, shining with the light he’s always carried himself—like the sun, like a star, a supernova, here and then gone again, just like that. “But I’m also… I don’t know, hopeful? Hopeful that things are going to work out this time. Even if it’s hard.”
“No, I know, I—I’m really proud of you, Polly, I just—I already miss you. I feel like I still just got you back and now you’re leaving again, and this time you’ll be too far away to invite over for movie night, o-or to help in my magic shows, or for me to follow you around on your investigations or hug you when you’re sad, and what if something else bad happens to you and I never see you again, or you’re just too busy to call, or you decide you want to stay here forever and you never come home and—”
Apollo closes the distance between them and throws his arms around Trucy, pulling her to his chest. Trucy wraps her arms around his middle and breaks down crying again, sobbing into his shoulder. She breathes in the lingering scent of his deodorant, mixed with the smell of sweat and incense and, yes, still cave water, and she prays to god that her paranoia is just paranoia and this isn’t going to be a permanent goodbye.
“Just—Stop talking,” Apollo says, crackling voice rumbling out of his chest. “I love you, Trucy. I promise I’m not leaving you behind.”
“I love you too,” Trucy blubbers. “I’m going to send you so many letters. You can tell everyone I’m your cool penpal from America and they’ll all be jealous.”
“Or I’ll just tell them you’re my sister, and they’ll be even more jealous.”
“ Polly! ” Trucy cries, squeezing him. Her eyes are buried in his collar, but she can feel him chuckling. “Don’t say stuff like that or I’ll never stop crying!”
Apollo laughs. “I love you so much, Truce. I’m sorry this is all happening so fast.”
“You swear you won’t disappear?”
“I swear on my life. Don’t worry about that.”
“I worry about you all the time, you know.”
“Not your job.”
“You make it so hard not to, dummy.” Trucy pulls back from the hug but stays at Apollo’s side; he keeps an arm around her, solid and warm. She breathes deep, lets the night air fill her lungs. The air is crisp here, cool and light and fresh despite the humidity. It’s good for Apollo, she thinks. He’ll be healthier here, probably, with the clean air and the mountains and local foods. Apollo will get stronger, maybe, and maybe being far away from Los Angeles will help him heal.
Hating Khura’in would be so much easier if it didn’t seem like such a nice place.
Trucy wipes roughly at her eyes. Apollo’s arm is a comforting weight over her shoulders, shielding her from the night’s chill.
“When will I get to see you again?” she asks wetly.
Apollo sighs. “I don’t know, exactly. There’s a lot of logistics to work out.”
“So it’ll be a long time, then.”
“W-Well, I don’t know. But it won’t be forever.”
Trucy sniffles. “It better not be.”
“Would I lie to you about something like that, Truce?” Apollo asks. “Of all people, do you think I would tell you I’d come back for you and not mean it?”
“Well… No,” Trucy mumbles.
“Then just… trust me.” Apollo leans his head on top of hers—she’s getting close to his height, so it’s more like knocking their heads together. “I’ll miss you.”
“You will?”
Apollo sputters. “Wh— Yes?! ” He pulls his arm back and shoves her lightly in the knees. “Now you’re just being ridiculous. I called you my sister and I told you that I love you, how many more times do I need to say it before you believe me?”
Trucy darts forward and captures him in a hug again, arms wrapped tight around his torso. He makes a strangled yelp of surprise like a dying animal but snakes an arm around her back anyway.
“I do believe you, Polly,” Trucy says into his shoulder. His arm tightens around her for just a moment. “Thank you.”
“You’re impossible,” Apollo huffs fondly.
Trucy giggles and pulls back again so they’re back to sitting side-by-side, Apollo’s arm around her. She pulls her knees up to her chest so she can wrap her cape around them like a little cocoon and drops her head onto Apollo’s shoulder.
“I don’t wanna go back to bed,” she confesses. To tell the truth, she is rather tired, but going to sleep now means separating from Apollo, and sleeping only puts her closer to when they have to say goodbye in the morning.
“That’s okay, I don’t either,” Apollo says, and she knows he feels the same.
“Do you wanna tell me about Khura’in, then?”
Apollo chuckles. “Sure thing.” He tilts his head upward. “Do you know anything about constellations?”
“Polly, I’m from Los Angeles,” Trucy deadpans. “No, I do not.”
He snorts. “Okay, okay, fair. Well, huh. Let’s see. I learned about a lot of constellations from Clay when we’d go camping, but that was more the science side of it… But I know a decent amount of Khura’inese folklore, at least, if I can still remember it.” He pats her shoulder. “What do you wanna hear?”
Trucy thinks for a moment. It’s not exactly what she asked for, but she can see, now, the way Apollo has been forced to straddle two worlds, the way he’d do anything to make them one.
“You pick,” she decides. “Tell me something you think would make me feel better.”
“Alright, let me think. Have to make sure I’m remembering all this right…” Apollo trails off, deep in thought. Trucy follows his gaze all the while, drawing pictures amongst the stars how she imagines the ones in Apollo’s stories would be like, as he pieces together two disparate retellings of the same sky. She finds a set of stars that almost look like they could form the two horns of hair atop his head, and giggles under her breath.
When Apollo launches into his tale, it’s more a series of rambling non sequiturs than a cohesive story, but it paints a more accurate picture of Apollo’s upbringings and the way he’s come to see the world than any perfect retelling ever could. Trucy follows along for a while, nodding along and interjecting where appropriate as Apollo points things out to her in the blanket of lights above, but eventually she feels her eyes grow heavy. Apollo’s voice becomes a distant lullaby, until it fades out completely into the night, and she falls asleep.
In the morning, when Trucy wakes, she is tucked back into her makeshift futon in the temple, Athena still fast asleep a few feet away. She could almost be convinced that the night had only been a dream, but there is an extra blanket draped over her that smells like cheap deodorant and cave water, and when she peeks her head into the other room where Polly and Uncle Miles and Daddy are sleeping, she sees Apollo curled up on the floor asleep, with only a thin sheet to keep him warm.