Chapter Text
Trucy’s daddy hasn’t been around much lately. She knows he’s off on his “secret mission,” whatever that may be—and isn’t that the thing that bugs her the most. He’s kept secrets from her before, sure—where her birthday presents are hidden, the fact that he’s in love with Uncle Edgeworth, the truth behind his “grape juice”—but he’s never been this unreadable to her. He’s never felt so far away.
It's like the way she gets when she’s working out a new trick, mind off in a world of angles and misdirections and perfectly-timed maneuvers until it clicks. Except that when she gets lost, her daddy is always there to tell her to turn her thinking around, to eliminate possibilities until she finds the truth, hits on the secret behind the trick that makes the whole thing fall into place.
Trucy always, always figures out the secret behind the trick.
So she’s not used to people having secrets from her. Especially not her daddy. Usually Trucy is her daddy’s secret—the ace up his sleeve, so to speak. But this time she doesn’t even know what game they’re playing, what’s in his hand—let alone what he has up his sleeve.
She wonders, briefly, uncomfortably, who there is to help him when he gets lost in the trick—to tell him to turn his thinking around, guide him toward the truth. It all makes her uneasy, nauseous, but she covers it up with her best performer’s smile. One she’s never had to use on him before.
She tries her best not to think about a different daddy, a different ace, a different trick where she didn’t know the secret until it was too late.
* * *
When Mr. Gavin invited them to his concert, Trucy was ecstatic. She resolved that it was going to be her night off, a break from worrying about what her daddy was hiding from her, wondering if he had finally decided to go somewhere she could not follow.
She applied herself to the task fully, dipping into the secret stash of money she tucked away in little increments after every Wonder Bar show, and bought every Gavinners album she could find. She did a deep-dive into fan forums on the agency’s old desktop, studying lyrics and interviews until her eyes blurred. She didn’t wonder if her daddy’s experiences were anything like what Mr. Gavin sang about, back when he was still a lawyer, back before she happened to him. She convinced Polly to go with her (though she knew he secretly wanted to see Mr. Gavin perform anyways) so her daddy wouldn’t worry, didn’t listen to the small part of her that wasn’t entirely sure he’d even notice if she was gone. She practiced singing along to their songs in the shower. She ignored the sick feeling in her stomach when she remembered that Mr. Gavin was the prosecutor at that trial seven years ago. She committed herself perfectly to being a normal teenage girl, someone excited for her first-ever concert where she’d get to see the utterly swoonworthy Gavinners play their Top 40 radio hits—the role of a lifetime.
* * *
The backstage area was incredible, and Trucy actually found herself caught up in the magic (ha!) of it all. She imagined herself performing at a venue like this one day, bustling army of stagehands clad in black at her command. Having a real dressing room like Mr. Gavin’s, with bright LED mirrors and racks of glittering costumes, instead of a dark, sticky room in the back of the Wonder Bar.
She was having fun, and the smile on her face grew wider, more real. She idly wondered about the new song set to premiere, the mysterious guest star she briefly read about. Lamiroir, she thought the name was, though she wasn’t certain—most of the Gavinners fans she now followed didn’t seem too interested in her role in the collaboration, opting instead to speculate if the song would be about Mr. Gavin’s rumored romantic relationship with his bandmate, Daryan Crescend. Trucy wasn’t too sure about that, based on the way he was flirting with Apollo, but the thought brought the tune of “Guilty Love”—another song fans believed to be about them—to her lips, and she began to hum a few bars.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the door, and Mr. Gavin went over to answer it.
“Ah, Lamiroir—” (she was right!) “—come in! You must meet my friends, Herr Forehead and Fraulein Wright.” He looked over his shoulder and winked at Trucy as he ushered the singer into the room.
When Trucy heard the voice speaking Borginian, the tune died on her lips. When she turned to see the woman who walked through the door, she froze completely. Lamiroir felt…familiar, in the same way that Polly felt familiar. In the way she wondered how exactly it was that Polly took to perceiving tells so quickly; the way she questioned why exactly it was that Daddy asked him to be his lawyer and then hired him.
The way she noticed that the bracelet on Lamiroir’s wrist was identical not only to the one on Apollo’s, but also to the ones that still sometimes clinked softly in her dreams.
The stakes had just been upped, and Trucy still, still didn’t know what game was being played. But she was raised on bluffs and taught to always keep her cards close to her chest, so she put on her biggest, brightest, most dazzling smile and said—
“Ooooh! It's Lamiroir! I'm actually meeting Lamiroir!”
She made her way through the conversation without missing a beat, projecting the appropriate amount of starstruck awe, but inside her mind was racing. She surreptitiously examined her conversation partners, questioning exactly how much each of them knew. There was no way Polly was in on it, that was for sure. Mr. Gavin…probably not. He wasn’t like the other Mr. Gavin that way. But Lamiroir and her team…they were—
“—mysterious!” She finished exclaiming, and didn’t let on how just much she meant it. She listened to Mr. Gavin describe how “her songs remind us of something close, and warm,” and practiced not letting a single true feeling show on her face. She said, “I can’t wait!” and tried not to think about exactly how much of her life she had spent doing just that.
“Nights like this make it all worthwhile, you know!”
* * *
Lamiroir vanished from the stage, and Trucy went cold. If she hadn’t been certain before, she was now. That kind of disappearing act was all Gramarye, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth. Everything felt wrong, wrong, wrong. She couldn’t help holding her breath until Lamiroir reappeared.
Still, a small part of her burst with pride when the audience began to roar. But another part felt angry. Upset.
Mostly, she just wanted to cry.
And then Mr. Gavin’s guitar caught on fire, and if things hadn’t felt wrong before, they certainly did now. The rest of the audience didn’t seem to know anything was off, but Mr. Gavin looked really distressed. Trucy got a headache as her eyes jumped from tell to tell, all telegraphing disaster—and Lamiroir standing tall at the center of all the chaos. She hardly even noticed when the song came to an end.
She didn’t want to go backstage again. She didn’t want to know what had made Thalassa Gramarye reappear again, the conclusion of the trick years too late, destruction trailing behind her. She wanted to preserve how it felt at the beginning of the night, when everything felt possible, and she forgot that she had to be afraid. She wanted to linger in the audience forever, just one more clueless fan. She wanted to go back to before Lamiroir walked in the room, she wanted Polly to say, “let’s just go home,” and she wanted her daddy to be there, to give her a big hug, to tell her all his secrets and say that everything was going to be alright.
Trucy had plenty of experience not getting the things she wanted.
* * *
“Wow, wasn't Lamiroir amazing? I—” she sniffled, “I even cried a little!” She desperately hoped that Polly couldn’t tell just how true that was.
“I was surprised Prosecutor Gavin actually burned his guitar,” Polly said, and Trucy examined him closely. He was just as perceptive as her. Did he really think it was part of the show? She chose her words carefully.
“Yeah! That even surprised me, and I'm a magician! What a production!” She watched for his response.
“What a destruction.” His hand absently twisted his bracelet. Gotcha.
So Polly thought something was wrong too, but he didn’t want to worry her. It was almost sweet, like an older brother. She wanted to play along, to spend just a few more minutes as a Gavinners fangirl impressed by the show.
“Is that what they call ‘risking life and limb for art’? I think he's my new hero!”
“I'm not sure I'd call that ‘art’.”
The sarcastic dig was so fully Apollo that it almost made her smile—at least one thing had stayed the same.
She knew her next line. She didn’t want to say it. She wanted to stay in this moment, where the bad thing hadn’t reached her yet, where disappearing acts were just stage tricks and flaming guitars were just props. Where disappeared mothers stayed gone and fathers never lied. But she’s nothing if not a professional. The show must go on.
She took a deep breath, smiled.
“Well, what are we doing here? Let's get going to Mr. Gavin's dressing room! There's twenty minutes till the last part of the show!”