A Boy at the Airport

[ July ]

The intercom is too loud at the airport. Too much and too in his ears until he can not only hear it but feel it closing like a vice around his throat. It hurts to swallow.

“Gloria Devine, please report to the nearest service desk. Passenger Gloria Devine, please come to the nearest service desk.”

“Baggage from Flight 958 coming in from Dallas will now be on Carousel 5. Repeat, baggage from Flight 958 from Dallas will now be on Carousel 5.” 

Too many conversations pass overhead. There are people looking for their luggage, mothers and fathers warning their children not to climb onto the carousel, reunited friends catching up as they wait, talking about what they should grab for dinner on the way home. 

He assumes, anyway. The language surrounding him isn’t familiar. It’s a strange string of syllables and letters that go in one ear and out the other, completely incomprehensible to sneaker-shoe’d boys who flew in from across the world and are all by themselves in a big place and a bigger country. 

Apollo grasps the straps of his backpack. He tries to breathe.

In and out. 

In, and then out.

“Remember, Apollo,” he says. His breath hitches on its next way out of him. “A dragon! N-Never yields…”

His throat closes up tight. The busy, too much world in front of him with its too many people and not enough answers is suddenly very hard to see. It distorts in a blur of colors; Apollo throws an arm over his eyes. He hiccups. “D-Dragons don’t yield…” Right? That’s what Dhurke always said? “I—I have to stop crying…” 

Any second, now. Any second now, he’ll finally stop crying, and then he’ll be strong and brave. He’ll be ready like a true dragon for Dhurke when he comes back. Dhurke will be proud of him, and then he can go home again. Then he can see Nahyuta and Datz. Maybe he can even— 

—maybe he can even know they missed him and didn’t want him to go and maybe he’d discover that they would be happy he was brought back— 

—yeah. 

Any second, now. He just has to stop crying.

“Are you lost?”

Apollo jerks his head up mid-sob.

Oddly enough, it’s not the stranger’s proffered handkerchief that Apollo notices first, but the man’s hair: all black and spikey. It reminds him of a hedgehog. He thinks he might laugh at it in any other circumstance in which he wasn’t already crying his eyes out first.

The stranger continues talking. “I can call your parents for you if you’d like?”

Which is when Apollo notices the second thing about the man: his eyes.

They’re awfully kind. 

One is brown and warm, the same color as the mountain soil after rain; the other is a deep blue-grey, like a shimmering ocean and steel. Concerned. He’s still holding out the handkerchief: a small, carefully folded square of white engraved with a fancy “E,” not weirded out by the fact that Apollo must be staring.

Apollo’s voice gets lost in his throat. “Can you help me?”

The stranger blinks. His face falls. “Ah—oh. Shit. That’s not—uh. Okay.”

And Apollo may not know English, but he knows what discomfort and confusion looks like.

“Sorry, kid.” The man winces. He raises his free hand to scratch at the back of his head. “Uh, no hablo español?” After a moment of staring back at Apollo, he blinks. “No? Uh, how about, non parl… uh… non parlez-vous fran—fuck, I don’t think that’s right, either…”      

Apollo adjusts his hold on his backpack straps and steels himself. Dhurke made him practice, after all. He said if there was any phrase in the English language Apollo would need to know, other than what Datz taught him, it’d be this one. This one he couldn’t mess up. This one he drilled until he got perfect. Or close to perfect. As close as he could get.

“Can you take me to a care center?”

The man freezes. Apollo didn’t realize he was looking away until those dual-colored eyes snap back to his. They are sharp and unreadable. “What did you say?”

Apollo stares, waiting.

The stranger stares back.

Does he want me to repeat it? Apollo shifts his weight from foot to foot. He rubs at his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie and tries again. (Maybe he said it wrong the first time? Or maybe it was hard to hear him, with all the other voices and noises around them.) “Can you take me to a care center?” he asks.

The man doesn’t frown, exactly; he doesn’t scowl. No shadows cross his visage to suddenly darken his expression. But something is different in him; Apollo can’t tell what. 

(His bracelet is getting awfully tight, though. Kind of like his throat.)

He sniffs and shakes out his arm at the same time as the man sighs and straightens up. He has one big, deep blue suitcase behind his legs and takes hold of its handle the moment he’s fully upright. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can do that, kid,” he says slowly. “A care center, huh…?” 

Apollo thinks he can understand an agreement or acquiescence when he sees it. Didn’t Dhurke say “yes” was a good thing in English? 

The man seems a little bit at a loss as he stares at him again. He glances away and then waves for Apollo to follow him as he walks. They take a few steps towards the sliding doors on the far side of the giant baggage claim before the stranger digs into his pocket and pulls out a phone. His thumb jams against the screen once, twice, and swipes. After a moment, he puts his phone to his ear.

“Hey Miles, it’s me,” the stranger says. “Listen, do we have the backseat clean and space in the trunk? N-no, I didn’t suddenly smuggle in an exotic pet. There’s just, uh…” He glances down at Apollo, still following at his side. “Well. Let’s just say I might need your help with something…”

They get as far as the sidewalk in front of the arrivals pick-up lane and as soon as the boy with the funny hair sees Miles’s bright red car, he stops. With both sneakers planted flat on the cement, he starts rattling off in that language Phoenix doesn’t recognize and Phoenix doesn’t know what to do about because it doesn’t sound like anything he’s ever heard before.

Damn, does this kid have volume, though.

A car door slams behind him. When he jerks to look over his shoulder, Miles is rounding the hood of his car. He looks stricken, confused.

“Wright, what’s—?” Miles looks around, at all the faces now turning their way while there’s a screaming child yelling in a foreign language at them. Bad time to realize this probably doesn’t look good, does it? How loud can this kid yell? “What, exactly, is going on here?”

“I don’t know!” Phoenix throws out his arms. “It’s like I told you: he asked if we could take him to a care center, then as soon as we got out here, he started flipping out!”

Miles opens his mouth, but Phoenix tears his eyes away the instant a small hand fists in his sleeve. The kid is staring up at him with both big, fierce brown eyes burning bright and thrusts a pointing finger towards the sliding doors they just exited. He shouts more of his unfamiliar language.

Phoenix lifts his free hand to rub at his ear. “Uh…are you trying to say you’re not alone?”

The boy frowns, huffs, and tries again.

Miles sighs. “This is ridiculous, Wright. Perhaps you misunderstood him.”

“But I swear that’s what he said! He said—”

“—can you take me to a care center?”

Both Miles and Phoenix snap their gazes around again. The boy looks near tears again: misty-eyed and wobbly-lipped. Phoenix sends a quick I told you so glance at Miles and then squats. “A care center, yeah?”

The boy takes a deep breath. His thin chest shakes with every quivery inhale and exhale. He wipes at his face with the heel of his hand and tries talking again in his own language. He points to himself and then turns to point back to the airport. He makes his hand flat and slides it down towards the ground—a plane?—before more aggressively, pointing at himself several, several times. 

“Is…someone coming on the next plane to you? Are you waiting for someone?” 

The boy’s eyebrows furrow. It looks like he’s in pain. Or maybe he’s afraid. Or maybe it’s both.

Phoenix sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Okay.” Okay. He looks at Miles, who seems to be at just as much of a loss before he turns back to the boy. “So you’re waiting for someone.” Probably. “But you said you need a care center, right?” 

At ‘care center,’ the tension in the boy lessens.

“Well, to get to a care center, we have to get in the car, kid.” Phoenix turns and points to Miles’s atrocious excuse for a sports car idling alongside the curb. “Care center… uh… that way.”

The boy looks over Phoenix’s shoulder.   

When his eyes drag back to Phoenix’s face, he looks less hesitant but still hesitant.

Phoenix sighs. He lifts a hand and taps the back of his hand against Miles’s thigh. “How about you, huh? You’re not being a whole lot of help, here.”

“I’m trying to figure out what language he’s speaking,” Miles huffs. He swipes up the screen of his phone, frowns, and then sighs. “I figure the sooner we can translate what each of us is saying, the far less frustration we’ll have on both sides. Not that I’m having a terrible amount of luck, either way; none of my translation apps has whatever language it is in their registry.”

“What does that mean?” 

Miles sighs and pockets his phone. “It means exactly what it sounds like, Wright—”

“—no, I mean if it’s not on any app, then it’s probably not well-known, right? If we’re unlucky, it might even be a regional dialect wherever he’s from.” Phoenix curls a hand in front of his mouth. “Which means…”

“Which means what?”

Phoenix sighs. “I don’t know. I’m beginning to think maybe we should just find someone at the service desk inside the airport, and—”

He stops the instant that same, small fist grasps hold of his sleeve for a second time.

The boy is looking at him with a determined and pinched frown. He glances over Phoenix’s shoulder, then back to Phoenix again. After a moment, he points to Miles’s car. “Care center?” 

“W-well.” Phoenix blinks. “I mean, that’s not the care center, but we can take you to the care center if that’s what you—”

Miles sets a hand upon his shoulder. 

For the first time since they wandered outside, he meets eyes with the strange young boy from so far away. To Phoenix’s surprise, a small smile spreads across Miles’s face. “What he means to say is yes. We’ll find you a care center.” Miles pauses. “Once you get into the car, of course.”

“Miles! That sounds terrible!”

“There’s no other way to put it! And it’s not like he understands us, anyway!”

“Yeah, but—” Phoenix huffs and shakes his head as he stands. He glances at the kid, still watching them both with those big, big eyes and he sighs. “Whatever. It’s a long drive home, so the sooner we set off and try to look for this ‘care center,’ the better.”

Miles casts a cautious glance at the lingering onlookers still watching them curiously. “I couldn’t agree more.”

LAX is a spaghetti bowl of roads and different-tiered levels of concourses and no matter how many times they drive through it, Phoenix always somehow manages to find himself hungry afterward. And hot. Miles tosses him an unimpressed glance when the man cranks the air conditioning up on blast and settles more comfortably against the car door with a yawn. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Like always.” Miles bites back a reluctant smile. “Did you have a good flight?”

“Yeah. The guy next to me kept talking, though. Didn’t get a chance to sleep like I thought I would.”

“Unfortunate. And the legal exchange in London?”

“It went great! Much better than the one Maya and I went to a few months ago. Got to visit a few friends while in town, too, which was nice.”

“Did you manage to cross paths with Franziska?”

“No.” Phoenix’s head snaps left. His jagged eyebrows lift high on his brow. “Why? Should I have? Was she there for the exchange, too?”

“No, but I believe Interpol currently has her stationed in London for a case. She kept asking about you and where you were staying and what you were doing. I said you probably wouldn’t have time to meet, busy as you were. You weren’t there on vacation, after all.”

Phoenix blinks. “Wow. I’m impressed. I thought if she found out we were in the same town, she’d want to fly out immediately afterward.”

Miles chuckles deep in his throat. “Oh, did I not clarify? When I said she wanted to meet up with you, I do not believe it was to get a ‘spot of tea.’ I think she had a very different and very familiar venue in mind for you two instead.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

They’ve taken the merger from I-10 to 105 when Phoenix finally takes a peek at the rearview mirror. He freezes, then lifts his hand from his fist, elbow propped up on the window ledge. “Wow. Kid’s out like a light already.”

Miles hums. His grey eyes dart to the mirror. “Jetlag, perhaps? Who knows what time it is wherever he’s from, or how long of a flight he’s had.”

Phoenix frowns. He twists in his sweat, seatbelt bowing outward over his shoulder as he contorts to better see the boy, slumbering with his giant forehead pressed against the window. A bit of drool glistens at the corner of his mouth.

He fights a small smile. “Did you know when I found him, he was crying?”

Miles makes a wounded sound. “Really?”

“Yep. A boy at the airport with a face trying too hard to be too brave, save for the tears squeezing out the corners of his eyes… I couldn’t just walk away, you know?” 

“That explains it, then.”

Phoenix splutters, snapping his head around. “Explains what?”

“I knew there had to be something about him that tugged on that big heart of yours. You tend to have a very uncanny habit of picking up strays whenever they are at their lowest points, Wright.”

Phoenix thinks he should take offense to being essentially called predictable, but there’s something too fond and too affectionate and a little bit nostalgic in Miles’s tone to activate the desire to defend himself. Phoenix lets the matter go and turns back to the kid. His eyes fall upon the dusty, bright red backpack leaning against his leg.

After a moment, he unbuckles his seatbelt.

“Wha—” Miles nearly swerves the car as Phoenix lifts himself up and reaches through the gap between their seats. When he turns, his entire view fills with the side of Phoenix’s ass. Not exactly something he needs to be distracted by while driving on a major interstate. “Phoenix!”

“Just a second!” Phoenix calls, strained, from the backseat. After a moment, he finally falls back into the passenger seat again, exhaling loudly. “There. Got it.”

Miles waits until Phoenix is buckled again and then promptly chews him out. “And what on earth was that about? Do you know how reckless that was—and while I’m driving? You are not a child, Wright.” It takes two glances to recognize just what it was Phoenix had retrieved, too. “Oh, and now you’re resorting to rifling through this child’s things as if he doesn’t have a right to his own privacy. Great. I’ve married a criminal.”

“Relax.” Phoenix doesn’t sound the least bit remorseful. He unzips the backpack and peers inside. “I’m not going to take anything; I just want to see if there are any clues about who he is or where he came from. Maybe it might help us figure out how to help him better.”

Miles grumbles under his breath. 

Phoenix counts it as a victory when he doesn’t say anything more. The biggest pouch is full of spare clothes and socks and he doesn’t think he needs to rifle through those. He foregoes it for the smaller pouch in the front, cracking a small smile at the granola bar wrapper labeled in an unfamiliar non-romantic language—go figure— and the boarding pass just underneath. Phoenix yanks it out, dusts off the crumbs, and squints. “Is that… uh. Damn, I have no idea where that is.”

“Where what is?”

“Ēyara?” Phoenix’s mouth twists around the word. “Is that how you say that? Ēyara, Khura’in?”

“Khura’in.” Miles hums. His eyebrows lift and he glances to the rearview mirror again. “Ah. No wonder he’s exhausted. He must have had quite the long flight coming in that far from Asia.”  

“Yeah, that doesn’t tell me anything about where Khura’in specifically is, but alright.” 

“At least it gives us an idea of what his native language might be. I’ll have to see if I can find some sort of online translator to assist; perhaps social services might have some sort of help from a government-funded translation service when we get there. Who knows.”

Phoenix gives a noncommittal sound and returns the boarding pass back to the pouch. His fingers brush against more paper, folded, above a navy-coated passport, and he pulls it free.

Then, ever articulate, Phoenix says: “Huh.”

“Huh, what?”

“Tell me I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy, right? That’s English?”

“I mean you are ‘crazy Wright,’ but…” Miles risks a glance to see the penciled letters on the back of the envelope Phoenix holds out into the space between them. 

To: Whoever finds my son.

“It is,” he says, mystified. He turns back to the road and offers a quick glance to Phoenix out of the corner of his eye. The rip that fills the car is by no means quiet. Miles looks to the sleeping boy again and frowns. When next he looks at Phoenix, the man’s mismatched eyes are skimming across the letter he found inside.

Slowly, bit by bit, Phoenix’s face falls. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

Phoenix looks at Miles. “Oh,” he clarifies. “I think this kid’s a refugee.”

Oh. “Oh.”

Phoenix nods and leans back in his seat. “Oh.” He looks out the window for a moment. Then, he looks to the letter in his hands and reads again.

To whoever finds my son,

My name is Dhurke Sahdmadhi. The boy whom you have hopefully found with this letter is Apollo Justice. Though he is not mine by blood, I have raised that boy as well as I could in my country for the past nine years. By this point, he is practically my son in all but name.

I hope you can imagine how hard this decision is for me, then. Please believe me, stranger: this is the most difficult thing I have ever had to do.

Khura’in—my country—my home—has been ruled by a tyrant for several years now. Some might call it a warzone, one in which civil liberties are compromised every day. They would not be far from the truth. I myself am part of an underground rebellion seeking to one day free Khura’in from this tyranny. Our work is dangerous, as you can imagine.

Apollo’s father lost his life in the same coup which allowed this tyrant to usurp power nine years ago. Somehow, as a baby, Apollo survived. I do not know anything about his mother or where she may be; part of me hopes that in sending Apollo back home, he may reconnect with her somehow. (I have been told that bracelet of his is special. It may have once belonged to her. It might be the key to finding her again.)

That brings up the other piece that is important to know: “home” isn’t Khura’in for Apollo, though he may feel like it. He was not born here. He was born there, in the United States.

As such, I believe it is time he goes home. It’s no longer safe for him here in Khura’in. 

Apollo does not know English. In preparation for his leaving, we were only able to teach him a few phrases; if you wish to communicate with him, it may be best to purchase some sort of service for Khura’inese translating. That is his native language.

It breaks my heart, but in order to convince Apollo to agree to board a plane to the United States, I had to promise him that I would one day come back for him. As I write this letter, I must confess I’m not entirely sure if that promise will end up being a lie or not. Can I keep it? Or will it be broken because the next mission, or the one after that, will fall through and something will happen to me? I do not know. I have no way of telling the future.

But in the meanwhile, please, use your best judgment. I am trusting you, stranger—trusting you with one of the two lights of my life. If you can find Apollo a home where he will be raised safely, that’s all I can ask. I really do love that kid.

If I never am able to come back for him and he grows to hate me, I can’t say I blame him. But if you think of it, please tell him how much I love him. Please take care of him for me.

- Dhurke

When next Apollo wakes, he is not in the car.

He is in an unfamiliar room, lying in an unfamiliar bed, with no memory of how he came to be there or why, and when the sky got so dark outside the window. Last he remembered, he had met two strangers who told him they’d take him to a care center. He had climbed into their shiny red vehicle, held his backpack close, and then—

Did I fall asleep?

At least his bracelet is still on his wrist. 

Apollo shoves off the blankets. His shoes are off; he wriggles his socked toes. He kicks his legs over the side of the bed and gazes around the room. Is he terrified? He feels like he should be terrified. But the room is such a calming grey and the photos framed over the walls have such happy faces of the two smiling men from the airport—as well as a few other, odd-looking strangers—that he can’t find himself to be very much afraid at all.

Should that be alarming?

Apollo slips off the bed. Now that he’s listening for it, he can hear voices beyond the door. His backpack is right next to the bed. Good. They didn’t take that from him, either.

Is this their home?

Apollo moves for the door.

As soon as it whines open, the voices on the other side fall quiet. He ducks out into the hall, peers up and down and can see no one, not until he navigates towards the end of it. The room opens into a wide kitchen, where sitting down at the wooden table under one harsh, bright ray of light are the two men who were kind enough to offer him help.

They turn around as soon as he approaches.

“Hey there,” says the one with the strange, dark hair; he has one of his arms folded across the back of his chair. His smile is just as friendly as it had been earlier that day: toothy and wide. “Looks like someone’s finally up and at ‘em. About time.”

He rubs the heel of his hand against his eye. “Care center?” Is this it, he wants to ask, but doesn’t know how. 

The other one gentles. “Ah. That’s right.” He turns and Apollo hadn’t noticed he had a computer in front of him until, after his fingers fly across the keyboard, he turns the screen to face him. Up against the white background is a familiar language—the first familiar thing in a whole world of things not-familiar—that reads: We can take you to a care center, but we may have to take you tomorrow. I'm sorry for waiting.

Sharply, Apollo gasps. He shuffles forward. 

The dark-haired one with the nice smile chuckles. “Wow. You like that? Took us a bit, and might not be uh, fully legal or accurate, but we finally managed to get an English-to-Khura’inese translator, and vice-versa. You’re welcome.”

“You mean Kay managed to fetch us an online translator.”

“Like he knows who Kay is.”

Apollo is already looking at the keys and frowning. His fingers hover idly.

One of them swears. “Miles. The keyboard—”

“—right, right—”

A few clicks and taps later (in which Apollo discovers that you can tap on laptop monitors apparently and make things happen), and another keyboard, colored soft magenta, opens up across the lower half of the screen. On it are the familiar symbols of home, of Khura’inese. Apollo can feel his eyes burn, but he swallows it down and gives a tentative tap against the screen on one of the keys. Sure enough, that character appears in the left-most box.

He can talk.

He has a voice.

Apollo tap-tap-taps across the screen painstakingly slowly with two fingers, but it’s more than he’s been able to do in twenty-four hours. He pushes the screen back around when he’s finished and the translated message of: It’s okay! Thank you! appears on the opposite box.

The one with silver hair smiles. It rounds his face and softens his features; he types again. It has been brought to our attention that you are waiting for someone. Is that correct?

Apollo nods. 

Are you waiting for your father?

Apollo nods again.

This time, when the man turns the laptop back to himself, he pauses. His fingers hover, curled over the keys, until the other man calls across the table, “Miles—”

“—I know, but…” There is still hesitation in him; he bows his head. “Wright, I can’t help but think: what if we have this wrong? What if we sign him into child care services, and he ends up somewhere completely different? I…” His face tightens. “There are a great many things I resent von Karma for, but that he never let me get swept up in the system has never been one of them.”

“Sometimes I wonder if that would have been better for you.”

The strict line of those shoulders slump. “Perhaps.” His eyes, so silver and grey, dart to Apollo. Apollo jerks to attention as the man presses into the keys: A care center can take you far away from here. Is it necessary that you wait for your father in Los Angeles?

Apollo’s heart squeezes. He nods and nods.

“Do you really think they’d take him out of Los Angeles?”

“I think regardless, once we hand him over to the system, we lose what control of the situation we can offer him.” 

The two mismatched eyes blink. The deep blue and muted brown-grey look kind of cool up close. “Whoa, whoa, wait, what are you saying?” They glance to Apollo before flicking back to the man on the other side of the table. “I didn’t think you were genuinely listening to me earlier when I suggested that he stay with us until his dad comes back.”

“Of course I was listening to you. I was just… hesitant. This is a difficult situation.”

“You can say that again.”

“We have no way of knowing when this ‘Dhurke’ will return—if he even will—and how he will let Apollo know once he has, and what then?”

“Maybe we should ask the kid?”

His hands hover only a minute above the keyboard. Then, rapidly—much faster than Apollo could ever hope to type—he writes away. Several times, he deletes his words and starts over, but when at last he is finished, and when he turns the screen around once more, it’s Apollo’s turn to hesitate.

I don't know what happens when I sign in to the care center. It can be difficult to wait for your father there.

Apollo’s heart falls down into his toes. 

The laptop is turned away. Then: But if that's what you want, I'll gladly let you sign in to the care center. It depends on whether you sign in to the care center or wait for your father, which is more important to you.

Oh.

Apollo reaches with grasping fingers for the keyboard. When at last he has the screen with the Khura’inese alphabet before him, he painstakingly taps out: I want to wait for my dad. 

The two men share a look.

Then, before the one with the silver hair and the heavier eyes can type a word, Apollo waves for his attention and for the computer. He continues: What will the care center do? Will it help me? 

That is the difficult part to answer. It helps you, yes, but care centers help you find new homes and new families here in America.

Apollo’s heart jumps into his throat. He taps as fast as he can with his two fingers. But I don’t want a new home! I don’t want a new family! I want my old home! I want my family! Why would Dhurke teach him how to ask for a care center, then? He doesn’t want new things. He wants Nahyuta and Datz and Dhurke, and the mountains and the river that cuts through them and—I want to go back to Khura— 

Suddenly, it is very difficult to see the screen. 

Apollo blinks furiously and rubs his sleeves against his eyes. He shakes his head before either of the two men can move and furiously, frowning deeply, he finds the delete button. He erases and erases and starts over. I don’t want a new family. I want my dad. That’s all. 

Once again, the two men share a look that Apollo doesn’t know how to interpret; he ignores it. 

It’s the dark-haired one who reaches for the computer next, but Apollo quickly waves him off until he sits back with both hands raised. He still has more to say. Can I stay here with you two until he comes back?

It may not be that simple. Do you know when he will come back and when he will come back? We cannot contain you forever.

“Miles—”

“—it’s the truth, Wright, and you know it. I cannot sugar-coat it to somehow be more palatable to us all. It will hurt much worse later if we do not ask this question at all.”

Apollo shakes his head. It does not have to be forever. Just until he comes back for me.

And what if he doesn't?

Those words stare at him like a slap in the face. Apollo freezes, reading them over and over and over again: And what if he doesn’t? And what if he doesn’t? It seems impossible. Dhurke had promised him, and Dhurke never breaks his promises. Dhurke saved him and Nahyuta from the river when he could have let them drown. Dhurke always comes back for him.

After a moment, slowly, he types back: That won’t happen. 

Apollo continues after a moment when the silence in the apartment grows too thick and so much until he can hear the lights above quietly hum: But if he doesn’t come back, then you can sign me into the care center. I will go. I won’t complain. 

It won’t happen, Apollo tells himself. But under that great, weighty “if,” he supposes it’s better to at least have a back-up plan.

That seems to satisfy both men at the table.

Very well. That's what we do. You can stay with us until your dad comes back for you, or until it becomes clear that he will not come back. Are there any other concerns?

Apollo shakes his head. Relief is a strange thing, tied so closely to the hope in his chest.

But then, suddenly, sharply, he gasps and reaches for the computer again. Wait! I have two questions. He waits until they nod at him and then adds: First, who are you, and second, where is the toilet?

Their names are Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Miles. They have been married for four months; the bathroom is down the hall and on the left, and they are both—as Apollo discovers within those first few days of knowing them—very, very kind. 

They make sure he has everything he needs to be comfortable in their guest room. When they take him to the store, they let him stick his feet on the front bar underneath the bright red basket and hang off the front so he can ride the cart up and down the aisles. As they pull down boxes and cans from the overburdened metal shelves, they ask him what “snacks” he would like.

Apollo hasn’t seen a majority of these “snacks,” but he can recognize his favorite sweet and crunchy granola bars when he sees them: the kind with chocolate chips that Datz always smuggled up the mountain. It’s the only “snack” he asks for.

They buy him other things, too, like a toothbrush and toothpaste and his own hairbrush. He thinks it’s a bit much, but he doesn’t know how to tell them no.

It’s during this first shopping trip they decide he should learn English. Apollo thinks it might be good to know, too, even if he is going to go back to Khura’in soon. Dhurke and Datz know English; it’d be cool to impress them by being fluent when he returns. Maybe he can even rub it in Nahyuta’s face.

Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Miles are also lawyers—which sounds frightening, considering that last Apollo was told, it wasn’t safe to be a defense attorney, but Mr. Phoenix, for some reason, doesn’t seem afraid for his life and Mr. Miles doesn’t hate him (quite the opposite, in fact). As his first two days in America blend into the third and then the fourth, he discovers they’re both busy with their work. Too busy to keep an eye on him, even though he types to them to tell them that he’s fine and doesn’t need to be watched all the time. 

They introduce him to a friend of Mr. Miles who can watch over him and occasionally play with him and even, they hope, help him learn English. 

Her name is Kay.

“So! You’re the refugee kid—Apollo Justice—huh?”

Apollo blinks up at her from his spot on the floor. The paper of his workbooks rustle under his elbows as he pushes himself up to his knees. 

“Oh! No need to get up! I like the floor better, too!” she says at the same time as Mr. Miles gently scolds from the kitchen, “Kay.” She drops flat on the ground in front of him with her chin in her hands. She kicks her feet up back and forth and back and forth, which is when Apollo realizes she has mismatching socks that reach high up on her calves. Bright pink polka-dot paired with blue stripes looks kind of funny side-by-side, but her bright green eyes are funnier, as is her wide smile. “You’re trying to learn English?”

Apollo nods. He looks down at the workbook at his knees.

“Hm.” Without asking, Kay swipes the closest one and flips through it. Apollo bites back a small, indignant cry, which makes Mr. Miles spin around and glare.

Kay doesn’t pay him any mind. The twist of her mouth scrunches up her entire face and, after a moment, she drops the workbook in front of Apollo again. “Seems kind of a boring way to do it, if you ask me.”

Mr. Miles’s sigh can be heard over the running water in the kitchen. “Kay, as you no doubt saw, even the Khura’inese alphabet uses different characters. If he’s going to learn English, then he needs to start with the basics, which includes the English alphabet. That part, at least, isn’t all that exciting.” A few sharp clings and clangs echo from dishware knocking against each other. “Fortunately, he is already literate in Khura’inese. That should make the process a little easier and faster.”

Kay drops her arms to cross them underneath her chin. She huffs so widely, her cheeks balloon out. “Still. You’re not gonna expect him to stay cooped up inside studying all day, are you?”

“That’s what you’re here for, I thought.”

“So I can take him outside?”

“What? No. I didn’t say—”

“—c’mon, Apollo! Let’s go!” 

“Kay!”

Apollo has a hard time getting his feet underneath himself, but Kay’s hand wrapped around his wrist, carefully avoiding his bracelet, is hard to fight against. She yanks him up from the floor and drags him towards the front door, kicking his loose leaves of papers up. They flutter noisily across the living room space.

“We’re gonna be fine, Mr. Edgeworth! Consider it a field trip!” Kay calls over her shoulder. The security system she installed that Mr. Miles and Mr. Phoenix do not pay for gives three shrill beeps as she opens the door. 

Mr. Miles sputters and ducks to look over the counter at her. “A field trip?! A field trip where—”

But the thick door shuts behind them before Mr. Miles can finish talking.

They don’t go far that first day. Kay takes him to the playground at the front of the property and even though she’s taller and older than any of the other kids there—“I’m a cool fifteen-year-old, you see!” she announces—she is unafraid to play on the see-saw with him and push him on the swings.

She shows him cool things, too, like the caterpillar she finds crawling up the bark of the tree on the block corner and the bumblebees buzzing near the arid flower bushes surrounding the leasing office. They hunt down the bee’s honeycomb and sneak away before they can get stung. Apollo finds a salamander on the cracked sidewalk and Kay squeals too loudly about how “cute” it is before it scrambles off into the grass.

She teaches him how to say the names of these things in English and listens very carefully and very seriously when he teaches her how to say them in Khura’inese.

Above all, Kay seems like a pretty great friend to have. If not only because it’s nice to be able to talk to someone about Khura’inese, but also because she’s lots of fun to help pass the time with as the days Apollo spends waiting for Dhurke slowly stretch into weeks.

[ August ]

“…Franziska, what do you mean you’re back in the States?”

“I mean just what I said, you foolish fool of a little brother.” Franziska’s voice is as snippy and condescending as always on the other end of the line. Miles has to restrain the urge to wince. “I mean that I am not letting you and your foolish husband walk away from me without giving me the decency of a hello while you are in town. What kind of nonsense—how could you?”

“For the last time, it wasn’t me who flew into England. It was Wright.”   

“I do not care which of you it was! The fact that you allowed that foolish husband of yours to step foot in the same city as me and then leave, while not demanding that he face off against me in court is inexcusable.” 

“Franziska—”

“—so I have come to make amends for you.” Franziska sniffs. In the static space beyond her voice, Miles thinks he can hear the blustery wind suddenly snap off with the slam of a car door. “You’re welcome.” 

“W—” Miles pins the phone between his shoulder and ear, pushing back the sleeve of his jacket. “Franziska, you do realize what time it is, right? It’s only 3:30. There is still work to be done.”

“And? I will just let myself into your apartment and wait. I already have a key.”

That’s not the problem. “Franziska, where are you going to stay? You can’t possibly think you’ll be staying with us while you’re in town.”

“And whyever not? Your guest room is still available, isn’t it?” 

Miles hesitates. “It…”  

“You foolish fool of all fools! Do you really mean to tell me you are going to make me, your big sister, pay to stay in a hotel? After I’ve come all this way to right a cruel injustice that would not have happened if you or your husband had a single fiber of etiquette inside of you?”

Miles is torn between pinching the bridge of his nose and throwing himself through the tall windows behind his desk. He grits his teeth. “You are not listening to me.”

“Am I not? What a pity. Now you know how I felt all those weeks ago in London.”

“Franziska, this isn’t what you think. You don’t understand—”

“—I’ll see you when you get off work, little brother, and not a second earlier. Do not foolishly slack off. I will know.”

The instant the call ends, Miles stares at his phone. Horror claws at his gut, until at last, he pushes himself to move, frantically swiping for Kay’s profile. To this day he does not know why she changed her photo to the selfie she took with his phone while he wasn’t looking where she stuffed several french fries up her nose. He taps the picture and brings it up to his ear, bracing his forehead between his forefinger and thumb.

“Yellow.”

“Red,” Miles hisses back. “This qualifies as a ‘code red,’ Kay. In fact, consider it a major code red.”

Kay sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth. “Oooooo… yikes. That bad, huh?”

“Franziska is on her way to my apartment as we speak. As of this moment, I believe she is expecting a completely empty welcome.”

“You mean you haven’t told your sister that you’re housing a kid refugee?”

“No.” Miles is at a loss for words. “In all likelihood, he’s not supposed to be with us all that long. Of all things, why on earth should I tell her about someone who’s only staying with us temporarily?”

“Uh, because she’s family? And if people are family, you typically tell them things? To, y’know, keep them in the loop?” There’s a crunch on the other end like Kay has bitten into something (probably one of those disappearing granola bars of his that Apollo has been lamenting) and Miles frowns. “Like, I don’t know, how a very responsible—I promise—very responsible—babysitter had to leave the apartment to go help a friend in need a few minutes ago and hasn’t gotten back yet to watch over her charge. Those kinds of things!”

Miles sits up very slowly. “Kay.”

“Yes?”

“Did you leave a nine-year-old alone in my apartment?”

Kay’s pause lasts a split-second too long. Miles presses the heel of his hand into his brow and groans. “Kay Faraday—”

“—hey, I said it was an emergency, didn’t I? It was Sebby! I’m not just gonna leave Sebby out to dry when he needs me. Besides, it’s not gonna be for very long. The kid’s fine for like, an hour or two. Right? I was when I was his age! Heck, when I was ten, I was left alone at the courthouse all the time while my dad was working—”

“—Kay, one: that wasn’t very many years ago, and two: you didn’t exactly have what one might call a normal childhood.”

“Well, from what you’ve told me, neither has this kid, right?”

Touché. Completely missing the point so badly that currently, Kay might be floating somewhere out in the stratosphere, but touché. 

He feels like he should add something about the gnawing fear at the back of his head that points out this is the very same kid who was left alone at an airport not all that long ago and still hasn’t had his father return for him, so maybe we should think about the potential emotional fallout over budding abandonment issues, yes? Instead, Miles hisses, “Regardless, how do you fail to see what’s wrong here? Franziska is on her way to my apartment, and she has no idea that we have a young guest. Neither, in fact, does Apollo know that there is a stubborn-headed stranger on her way to him.”

“I think I see the problem.” 

“Oh, do you?” Miles’s eyes dart to the clock. “Regardless, I am unable to leave the prosecutor’s office until I am finished with this work. I doubt I will make it home in time to somehow intercept her.”

Kay sighs. “Yeah, yeah. Alright. I can take a hint. But I still have to help Sebby first, you know.”

“Then take him with you. I don’t care. Just catch Franziska before either of them run into one another and, I don’t know, cause the entire apartment building to catch fire. I do not know what will happen if they surprise each other unsupervised and frankly, I do not want to find out. You know my sister.”

“That I do, sir… that I do.” Kay sighs. “Alright, say no more. We’re on our way.” 

When Franziska von Karma finally opens the door to the Edgeworth-Wright living room, she does not expect to see a little boy curled up on the couch with an entire plastic case of Oreo’s on his lap, crumbs falling off his cheeks.

Clearly, he does not expect to see her, either.

He stares back with wide, enormous brown eyes. His bracelet catches the light coming in from the open door and reflects it back at her, glimmering. None of the lights in the apartment are on. Is he an intruder? It’s the first thing Franziska considers, but she hopes that his terribly young age rules that out.

There had been something Miles was trying to tell her over the phone, wasn’t there?

A half-second later, the boy is gone.

He scrambles up from the couch, knocking his Oreo’s to the cushions, and darts down the hall, vanishing out of sight. Franziska hears a distant door slam and assumes that means he’s gone into hiding—which is fine. If that’s the case, that gives her time to consider what her best plan of attack is, here.

She closes the front door behind her suitcase and turns around in time to be met with the bristle end of a broom as it’s held out against the level of her bow. 

Slowly, Franziska drags her eyes down along the broom’s rod until she meets the determined browns of the boy holding it. His mouth is set in a large, pouting frown above his small, heaving chest. His hands do not shake. That much stands out to Franziska: that he holds his weapon completely steady, very bravely, despite the shortness of his breath.

Despite herself, Franziska starts to smile. “Well. At least you at least have a shred of self-preservation in you, unlike your fathers.”

The boy glares back at her with no response.

“Well?” Franziska raises an eyebrow. “What is your name, boy?”

The boy’s eyes narrow. His frown deepens. He turns his head away slightly, giving her a look that all of a sudden, makes Franziska rather feel like she’s looking in the mirror. She’s worn that look herself. Several times.

“No answer?”

The boy does not speak.

Franziska frowns back. She props a gloved hand on her hip. “Do you understand a word I am saying right now, you fool? Do you speak any English at all?”

His frown deepens even more. 

“Wie sieht’s mit Deutsch aus?” 

Nothing.

The boy readjusts his grip on the broom. His eyes glance behind her to the front door; then he glares at her again with as much intimidation as he can muster. For such a small frame, it isn’t very much. Franziska narrows her eyes and places the flat of the back of her hand against the side of the broom bristles. Gently, she pushes it to the side.

“Very well, then,” she says. “I believe I may have a solution for us both.”

Twenty minutes later, Kay whistles an exhale that balloons out both of her cheeks. She sets her hands on either side of her waist and announces to the empty Edgeworth-Wright living room, “Well, that settles it. Mr. Edgeworth’s gonna kill me.” She spins on her heel, eyes darting around the Edgeworth-Wright living room, very much devoid of any Franziska von Karma's or any tiny Apollo Justice’s. “Yep. I’m dead.” 

At her side, Sebastian audibly gulps. 

Kay reaches down to the couch cushion and picks up a fallen Oreo. Sebastian shakes his head puppy-like when she holds it out to him, so she pops it inside her mouth instead.

“Hm.” Franziska frowns. “No. That’s still not right.” 

Apollo blinks at her. His arms drop down to his sides and as if proving her point, the sleeves of his blazer immediately fall too far over his hands, nearly covering his fingers. Franziska squats and pinches the fabric, pulling it back so the edge of it neatly ends at the base of his palm.

“Well. I suppose there’s no other option,” she huffs. “We’ll just have to have it tailored.”

Big brown eyes watch her as she dusts off his shoulders and tugs on the bottom hem, straightening out the suit jacket’s body. She nods to herself after another moment of careful scrutinization. “I’m glad I picked this color. It’s very sharp on you, Apollo Justice.”

It must either be the fact she said his name or the fact that without realizing it, Franziska herself might be smiling, but for some reason, Apollo starts smiling at her, too.

Franziska rises to her feet. With long, loud clicks of steps against the changing room floor, she walks back to the chairs set against the far wall where all of the other jackets and shirts and outfits Franziska had already either approved of or rejected neatly lay. “Now. To complete this ensemble, we must pick a tie. If my foolish fool of a brother were here, he’d probably have something to say in objection to the bow-style, but. Seeing as how he is not here, he forfeited his right to his opinion.”

When she returns, there are several different types and patterns and colors and shapes of bow ties lined in rows on her palms. “Well? Which one would you like?”

Franziska is completely unsurprised when those small fingers pluck the loudest, most glaring red in the bunch.

By the time they have made their purchases and Apollo’s arms are loaded with bags of new clothes, Franziska’s stomach is starting to gurgle, just as she can hear Apollo’s is. And though Franziska has no intention of dining at the mall’s food court, of all places, she is not a fool. She sees the way Apollo’s eyes linger on the steaming fried rice just beyond the glass wall they walk beside and she rolls her eyes. She ushers him along towards the end of the line.

Her phone buzzes by the time they reach the cash register. She takes one look at Miles Edgeworth strung across the screen in glaring, white letters and frowns. 

“Two plates of teriyaki chicken. Thank you,” she says and stuffs her phone back in her pocket. 

The bags rustle as Apollo lifts his arm and tugs on her sleeve. When Franziska looks, his other hand is extended towards the display of a new drink that doesn’t look the least bit appetizing with the floating fruit pieces she can see in the photo. She scrunches her nose. “And one strawberry lemonade I suppose,” she mutters. She tries not to smile at how eagerly Apollo takes the filled cup the lady slides to him.

“Thank you,” she reminds, covering the end of the straw with her hand before he can take a sip. 

Apollo’s eyes light up. Immediately, he turns back to the woman behind the counter. “Thank you.” 

It is heavily accented, rough on his tongue and unfamiliar, but Franziska places a hand on his back and guides them down the counter to wait for their boxes. Somehow, impossibly—perhaps foolishly—she feels warm and content without having taken a single bite.

The next time Miles Edgeworth tries to call, just like before, she ends it without answering.

Phoenix sighs. “Miles, you’re going to wear a tread on our carpet. C’mon. Maybe you should sit down.”

Miles frowns, pulling his phone away from his ear for what feels like the twentieth time and glaring at the screen as if that could somehow fix the issue of not being answered by the person on the other end. “Perhaps we should go looking for them—”

“—no, no. We already decided that was a bad idea. They’ll come back. We know they will. Franziska left her suitcase here, remember?”

“Yes, but what if something has happened between them? Or worse, what if she thought Apollo was…”

“Well, I doubt that would happen. She’s smart. Smarter than us, anyway.” Phoenix rolls his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true. I bet they’re fine, wherever they are.”

“Yes, but if both of them are so ‘fine,’ then why won’t she answer her phone?” Miles, with his cell once more pressed against his ear, jerks back around the instant he can hear the front door’s lock turn. He has barely pulled his phone away and ended the call by the time Franziska leads the way in with a very overburdened Apollo on her heels. 

“There you both are!” he hisses. “Franziska, why on earth didn’t you answer my calls?”

“Hm? What was that?” Franziska doesn’t appear the least bit fazed. Apollo toddles past her with his bags for the hallway beyond the kitchen. Phoenix leans forward from his chair to watch him go and mouths to himself in surprise with lifted brows, Saks-Fifth Avenue? “I’m sorry, did you want me to communicate with you, Miles Edgeworth?”

Miles’ face tightens. He shuts his eyes, breathes in deep through his nose, and then out. “Franziska—”

“—oh. No. Foolish me. But that can’t be it.” Franziska tsks, stepping further into the living room and crossing her arms over her chest. “After all, that would be completely two-faced of you. Expecting me to remain in contact with you while you and your husband have blatantly ignored me.”

Phoenix winces from the couch. He ducks his head and mutters something about seeing if Apollo needs any help putting his new things away and shoots down the hall.

“I met that ‘Apollo Justice’ of yours, by the way—in case you couldn’t tell. We had a lovely time together; he’s a very polite young man. You’re welcome for finally purchasing him clothes worthy of the von Karma name. His new suit should be perfectly adequate for court, as well.”

Court? What the— Miles crosses his arms over his chest as if in a direct mirror of her. “No. I refuse to play this game. I know what you are doing.”

“Do you?” 

“Yes.”

“Wonderful.” Franziska shifts her weight. “So then we are on the same page. We can skip this petty argument where you attempt to deny your actions and go straight to the part where you apologize for your behavior.”

“What? Apologize? There is nothing to apologize for.”

Franziska lets out a string of angry, angry German, waving a hand. “It’s just like when we were children. There you go, acting like whenever you do a thing that deliberately hurts me, it’s all right. But when I take the same exact measures to illustrate my point, somehow it’s wrong.”

“Franziska, do not misunderstand me—” 

“—misunderstand what? That you suddenly do not want me in your life anymore?” There’s a strain of hurt in Franziska’s voice that is hard to ignore. Miles’s heart constricts tight, tight, tight, pounding to the rhythm of, “What else am I supposed to understand? When was it that you were finally going to tell me—your sister—that you had become a father, hm?”

And just like that, the words that were going to shoot off Miles’s tongue to escalate the situation freeze. He blinks. “A father?” 

Wait, does she think—? Oh no.

Miles’s stomach drops out.  

Oh no.

“Yes, a father!” Franziska flings a hand towards the hall. Her pale face has always filled with color so easily when angry; Miles can see the red as it spottles across her cheeks, not unlike a rash from the sun. “You fool! I thought of all people, when such an occasion should happen in your life, even if I am not your closest friend, at least you would give your sister the courtesy of knowing when you decide to expand your family! Of when I would once again become an aunt!”

“Franziska, wait, I think there’s been a misunderstanding—”

“—I think I would agree, little brother.” Franziska’s blue eyes are very round and filled with a terrible shine. “A horrible misunderstanding about just where I stand in your eyes!”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say!”

“Then how else am I to interpret everything when you’ve told me literally nothing for weeks?” Franziska bursts. “That’s my point, you foolish fool! What would you have me believe when I walked into your home and saw your son eating on your couch, hm?”

“What? You’re still not listening to me—” 

“—am I not? Go on, then! Spit it out! What conclusion is it, exactly, that you insist I’ve jumped to—”

“—he’s not! Our son!”

Miles’s voice booms through the apartment.

Franziska freezes, but her face does not change. She pauses, caught mid-thought. She crosses her arms over her chest. Very suddenly, very quickly, her eyes become unreadable. They are very difficult to look at.

Miles turns away.

“…so who is he, then?”

At first, Miles doesn’t think he heard her correctly. Franziska’s voice has dipped and fallen too quiet, too uncharacteristically soft in the silence that makes his ears ring in the wake of his own outburst. “I’m sorry?”

Franziska gestures with her chin down the hall. “That boy. That ‘Apollo Justice.’ If he is not your son, then who is it I’ve fed and bought an entirely new wardrobe for?” 

The sigh that escapes Miles is ragged and heavy. “He’s a refugee. From Khura’in.”

Franziska raises an eyebrow. “I was not under the impression you and your foolish husband had decided to become an asylum.”

“We aren’t.” Miles pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “We aren’t. Apollo’s situation is… special. Phoenix ran into him at the airport once he had flown back in from London, saw him alone and crying in the baggage terminal, and well…” He drops his hand. “…you’re familiar with my husband.”

Franziska hums in agreement. 

Silence drifts between them. The wall clock is a constant and quiet tik-tok-tik-tok; the only sound Miles can hear until Franziska takes a breath. “Why is he here, then? Why is he not in a home?”

“He arrived with a letter written in English. Apollo is convinced that his father is going to return for him at some unknown point. The letter that we found, meanwhile, is vague.” Miles’s face pinches tight. His mouth thins into a frown. “I wish I could believe in his father as much as Apollo seems to, but we have reached an agreement. Until such a time comes to pass that either his father does return for him, or it becomes certain that he won’t, Apollo will stay with us. If he doesn’t, then Apollo agrees to be taken to child services, where we hope he will find more appropriate, hopefully one day permanent, housing.”

“I see.” Franziska’s voice is even. Measured. After a pause, she mutters, “So he is not yours.”

“No.” Miles shakes his head. “No, he is not.”

“Mm.” Franziska’s eyes drift to the hall. The shadows are longer now than they were when she first strode into the Edgeworth-Wright apartment. They are darker and heavier. “A shame. I had begun to think highly of him, you know; he is intelligent—a smart young man. I enjoyed his company. You saw.” She waves a hand in the direction Apollo and Phoenix disappeared in.

Miles slowly follows her line of sight. “Yes, I did. And I would agree. Apollo is a good kid.”

“Very much.”  

The silence stretches on and on until at last, Miles turns to Franziska again. “I am sorry, though, for how distant I’ve been. You're not missing anything important, I promise, Franziska. But I admit, I haven’t been the most… forthcoming with you either. And for that, I apologize. I promise to do better.”

Franziska scoffs. “Do not be foolish. I have no need to be privy to every detail of your miserable life, Miles Edgeworth.” Then, she softens. “But it would be nice to hear from you a bit more often than before, so thank you.”

Miles gives her a small smile. 

Tentatively, Franziska smiles back.

Ms. Franziska, while she is in town, teaches Apollo a great many things. 

She takes him to the nearest Russian market to buy bubliki— which is not German, she points out, but von Karma’s have Russian roots, too, apparently—and lets Apollo hold the round bread rolls up to his eyes like funny-looking spectacles before eating them.

She helps him write letters to Dhurke and instructs him how to mail them, in the hopes that eventually his father will write back. Maybe he’ll even say when he’s returning.

She teaches him a few phrases in Deutsch, a language different, and yet sometimes eerily similar, to English, as well as a few “polite” English phrases that she “cannot believe” her “foolish excuse for a little brother” did not already teach him. Deutsch is a harsh language, not one that Apollo would call “pretty,” but one he enjoys listening to as Ms. Franziska and Mr. Miles talk to each other in the kitchen and over cards at the table. They speak so fast and so quickly, ping-ponging words to one another seamlessly—switching to English right in the middle sometimes—before going back. 

Sometimes, she will talk to Mr. Phoenix in Deutsch, too. Mr. Phoenix, however, is not as fluent as Mr. Miles and always stumbles over his words, wincing at her disapproval. 

Apollo has never empathized with Mr. Phoenix more than in those moments.

The nicest thing, Apollo thinks, is that for those two weeks during Ms. Franziska’s visit, the apartment isn’t half as lonely and quiet as it can be sometimes. Apollo finds he rather enjoys the liveliness.

It reminds him, just a little bit, of home.

[ October ]

September comes and goes.

In the sweltering Los Angeles heat, there are days when the Edgeworth-Wrights turn the air off and open the apartment windows in an attempt to cool down, and Apollo has never felt more like he’s back in Khura’in during the peak of its summer season than he does kneeling at the windowsill, letting the breeze ruffle his bangs.

Work at both the Prosecutor’s Office and at Mr. Phoenix’s Wright & Co Law Offices picks up. Sometimes, Mr. Miles says, the heat is what provokes people to be angrier, to make snappier decisions than they would under normal circumstances. 

Then finally comes the inevitable day in early October when Kay can’t watch Apollo, and Maya—another one of Mr. Phoenix’s friends Apollo has met who really likes to eat—can’t drive down from the mountains either, so Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Miles are forced to resort to their dubiously titled “Plan C.”

This is how Apollo finds himself donning his brand new suit jacket and bowtie that Ms. Franziska purchased for him and following Mr. Phoenix onto the bus, watching with wide eyes out the window as the Los Angeles county courthouse looms closer upon their approach.

The courthouse is massive. 

Apollo tilts his head up as they walk inside and nearly trips over the steps leading up to the front doors. He yelps, stumbles, and squeezes Mr. Phoenix’s hand. Mr. Phoenix puts his other hand on his elbow and has to lift him up to the same step he’s standing on to keep them moving. Apollo’s legs get all tangled underneath himself.

“C’mon,” Mr. Phoenix gently urges.

Apollo gives him a short huff and glare; Mr. Phoenix chuckles back.

Once they pass through the front doors and beeping metal detectors, the clip of their shoes echoes across the giant lobby. The marble floor that stretches out in front of them is decorated with a golden, expansive emblem that Apollo has never seen before. His eyes go wide; his breath shortens. Once again, Mr. Phoenix has to grab him and lift him up to keep them walking. “Sorry, kiddo. We’re gonna be late if we dawdle too long.”

When Mr. Phoenix takes the stairs, his long legs skip every other step. Apollo tries to keep close to his heels but trips over his own feet when he can’t stop glancing up and around, continually bewildered at the ornate and expensive architecture around him. There’s so much to look at; he almost feels dizzy.

Mr. Phoenix lifts Apollo back to his feet for the third time in as many minutes, setting him on the upper landing of the stairs. “Almost there, kiddo. We gotta get to the defense lobby, and then we’re there and you can sit. I promise.”

He takes Apollo’s hand this time as they walk. Apollo holds tight and once again, loses track of his feet in the process of staring at the walls and the windows and the paintings on said walls.

They come upon an intersection at the end of the hall and when Apollo glances right, he sees the boy from a distance: all golden hair and brown skin. Blue eyes. About Apollo’s age, if not a few years older. Mr. Phoenix puts a hand on his back, encouraging him to “hurry along, Apollo,” and guides him in the opposite direction.

After a few more steps, they finally reach Defense Lobby #2, and unfortunately, when Apollo sneaks one more glance down the hall, the strange boy he saw from before is gone.

Mr. Phoenix paces a lot before his trial. Apollo watches him go back and forth and back and forth across the carpet, looking at the open folder in his hands. Apollo drops his eyes to his feet, idly bouncing them one after the other.

“Ugh, it doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Phoenix mumbles to himself the same time that the door opens. 

Two strangers enter:  a bailiff in a sharply dressed uniform and a small, portly woman with dark eyes and equally as dark hair. Immediately, upon seeing Mr. Phoenix, the woman bursts into tears and covers her face with her hands.

“Oh. Miss Terry!” Mr. Phoenix takes a step towards her, then stops. He looks at Apollo and fishes around in his pocket. He pulls out his wallet and two seconds later, Apollo’s hand is stuffed with a wad of cash. “Wait. Here. I think there are some vending machines on the other side of this floor. Why don’t you go get something to eat?”

Apollo looks up.

Mr. Phoenix takes a breath, then closes his fingers together and gestures towards his mouth. “Food.” He tilts his head in a quick jerk. “Go get some, okay?”

That, at least, is more clear than before. 

Apollo nods and hops off the couch. He skirts around Miss Terry, who doesn’t seem to notice him at all, and then scurries through the doorway.

There are fifteen dollars in his hand. Enough for… something, but Apollo isn’t quite sure what. He knows Mr. Phoenix wanted to talk to Miss Terry in private, and come to think of it, he is rather hungry, so he’s not complaining. He just has no idea where and what kind of food there is to find in this massive courthouse. He wonders if it’ll be warm; the autumnal weather outside is nice but chilly. 

He comes to the intersection of halls he and Mr. Phoenix had entered from. He glances behind himself.

Out of curiosity, Apollo decides to navigate the hall where he had seen the other boy. 

He doesn’t see him at first. It takes a few twisting turns and confusing backtracks to try to figure out if he isn’t just walking around in a circle, but eventually, Apollo finds him again in an unfamiliar end of another hallway, standing in front of a few vending machines, eyes locked on one of the middle rows inside.

As if knowing Apollo is staring at him, the boy turns and looks back at him.

For a moment, neither moves. 

Then, immediately, the stranger brightens. “Guten Morgen!”

Apollo blinks. He lifts the hand that isn’t holding fifteen dollars and waves. 

“Are you hungry? Am I in your way?” The boy has a pleasant manner, all smiles and eager-to-please blue eyes. He folds his hands behind his back and neatly steps back. Then, he gestures to the glass window of the first machine. “Ah, but please, don’t mind me! I’m just admiring the selection. Go right ahead!”

Slowly, carefully—now beginning to think that this boy is just a little bit strange—Apollo steps in front of the machine. His eyes rove over the series of images.

He scowls.

“Are you having trouble making a decision?” the boy says from over his shoulder, much too close and without any warning of approach. Immediately, Apollo spins away. He glares from the safe distance of a couple quick steps.

The boy holds up both of his hands. “Ach! I didn't mean to frighten you. Sorry!”

Apollo’s glare hardens.

“I’m Klavier. What’s your name?”

Oh. He knows that question. They’ve been practicing it. “My name is Apollo,” he says, harsh and guttural, but well-rehearsed. He turns back towards the machine. 

“Apollo! Like the Greek god! What a strong name—and for so short a person, too! And you have a very funny forehead, too.” Klavier laughs to himself. When Apollo, decidedly, ignores him, the boy stammers out, “Um, sorry. That might have been a little rude of me. Especially when you don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

If Apollo glares hard enough at the food options, he wonders if that’ll make Klavier leave him alone.

“But neither am I, you know? I suppose that makes us pretty similar!”

Too much to hope for, then. 

What do any of these mean? Apollo frowns. Are my options to drink really only orange juice and milk? What about that hot dog? Is it even warm? Do I even want to know? I didn’t like it when Mr. Phoenix made it. Does that mean this one will be better or worse?

Klavier hesitates. “Uh, do you want some help? Can I help you at all?”

Apollo rolls his eyes. “No English,” he grumbles and decides that, you know what, whatever a Swiss roll is at least looks like it has chocolate, and if there is one thing Datz taught him, it was to never turn down chocolate. He points at the picture and presses on it.

It doesn’t budge. 

Even when he presses his hand flat against it and shoves, nothing happens.

“Oh!” Klavier comes around his side. “You don’t speak English? That’s okay! Sprichst du Deutsch?” 

Apollo puts everything he has into his next frustrated glare. He fists his hands at his sides. “No! No English! No Deutsch!” Why does it seem like everyone in America speaks both English and Deutsch? Apollo huffs so hard his nostrils burn and he pats his hand against the picture. What word in English or the limited Deutsch Ms. Franziska taught him would help? Why can’t he remember? “I want—!” 

“Oh!” Klavier makes such a disarmingly pleasant sound. He holds out his hand. “Here. Allow me.”

There’s a split-moment of hesitation before finally, Apollo relents. He shoves the fifteen dollars roughly into Klavier’s palm, and Klavier counts it, blinking in surprise, before only pulling a few dollars out from the bunch. He tugs them flat and runs them against the corner of the vending machine before inserting them into a small slot on the front. A couple more button presses and a humming later, and with a whirring clunk, a Swiss roll is spit out into the lower compartment. Two of them, actually, Apollo finds when he fetches them from the bottom. 

He snaps his gaze up to Klavier. “Thank you.”

Klavier laughs. “Not a problem! I must say, Herr Forehead, you do have a funny way of showing your gratitude.”

It takes Apollo a second to realize why he’s laughing at him: he’s still frowning and scowling like the look has gotten stuck on his face. He huffs and glares for real before holding out his hand; without needing to be asked, Klavier drops the rest of the money in his waiting palm. Apollo counts it before stuffing it back in his pocket. 

Nine left. Okay.

That makes sense. 

Klavier tilts his head. “Are you here with your parents?”

Parents. Apollo recognizes that word, he thinks, for as much as it makes the center of his chest pang. He shakes his head and rips open the Swiss rolls. There are two inside. It takes him a moment to decide whether or not to share the second as a thank you. He holds it out.

Immediately, Klavier’s eyes light up. “Danke!” he cheers and folds his fingers around the moist cake. Crumbs drop to the floor. Once he’s taken a bite and swallows, he adds, “It’s okay. I’m not here with my parents, either. Actually, my brother’s a defense attorney, did you know? He’s got a very big case today and he let me come see it. He doesn’t always do that, but I’m glad he’s in a good mood today.”

Apollo takes another bite of his Swiss roll. Not bad. A little bland in that way that he’s found lots of things are here, but not bad. 

Klavier leads him to a small, upholstered bench beneath a window against the far wall. They sit side-by-side. Apollo idly kicks his feet out. He finishes his Swiss roll first and quickly; Klavier, meanwhile, takes his time, with meek and careful bites that limit the cake bits crumbling to the ground.

Klavier looks over. “If you’re not with your parents, do you mind if I ask who you are with?”

Apollo gestures down the hall he came from with his chin. “Mr. Wright.”

“Mr. Wright?” Klavier echoes. Both of his eyebrows lift. “Like, as in, Phoenix Wright?”

Apollo blinks and slowly nods. The plastic crinkles into a ball in his hand. 

“Oh.” All of a sudden, whatever joy and whatever light had filled Klavier’s eyes dim and ebb. He looks down his cleanly-pressed khakis to his just-as-lovely shoes. “Huh. That’s…” 

Apollo frowns. 

He leans in and Klavier looks away with a nervous laugh. His hand runs through his short, blond hair and when his fingers curl against the back of his own neck, Apollo doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows that there’s something Klavier isn’t going to tell him. “That’s, um. Well. I’m sure he’s very nice. My brother always says he’s very good at what he does, if that encourages you at all. I’m sure he’ll have whatever issue you need sorted out and sorted quickly.” 

Apollo understands very little of what Klavier said, but he nods slowly back.

Klavier smiles. Suddenly, he looks up at the nearest clock. “Oh. I should—I should probably get going now. I bet my brother is waiting on me, and he always is quick to remind me how much he doesn’t like to wait.” Another nervous laugh. Apollo’s bracelet is very tight on his wrist. “But thank you for the Swiss roll, mein Freund! I appreciate it, and I hope we see each other again soon, ja?”

Apollo follows suit as soon as Klavier slips off the bench. He mimics Klavier’s wave good-bye and watches as he ducks around the corner, scurrying so fast his shoes squeak across the polished floor.

He thinks for a moment, to himself. He said friend, right? That was… friend?

Huh.

Mr. Phoenix’s trial is the coolest thing Apollo has ever seen.

In fact, Mr. Phoenix, standing at the defense bench, objecting and occasionally slamming his hands against its surface, pointing across to the weaselly prosecution on the other side, is perhaps the coolest person he’s ever seen. Blue is normally such a calming, soothing color, but when Mr. Phoenix wears it and shouts in it, suddenly it seems explosive. Brave. Heroic.

Apollo fists his hands above his knees and listens, watching with wide eyes as, at the end of it all, the Judge finally raises his gavel and bangs it twice.

“I declare Miss Terry… not guilty.”

And Apollo decides that he’s never heard two more incredible and perfect words side-by-side.

“Amazing!”

Phoenix laughs and pats the stool next to his. Immediately, Apollo hops on; his momentum swings him right. With another short chuckle, Phoenix plants his hand on top of his head and turns him forward. “You’ve been saying that a lot, kiddo. Was I really all that cool?”

Apollo shrugs. His hands grasp at the edge of the cart counter, turning himself right and left and right and left. Then, after a moment, he points to Mr. Eldoon and shouts, “Objection!” to which Mr. Eldoon huffs, lifts his harmonica, and plays a single loud note back.

Phoenix laughs again and rubs at his ear. “Guess I can take that to mean you really liked the trial.”

Apollo nods.

The instant both of their ramen bowls are placed in front of them, Apollo snaps his chopsticks apart and digs in. He slurps up noodles giant mouthfuls at a time, kicking out his feet to an idle rhythm and probably a different tune that Phoenix doesn’t know. But at least Apollo seems happy. Happier than Phoenix thought a nine-year-old would be after being forced to wait through a multi-hour trial. 

“I’ve got to admit: I’m a little impressed by you.” He smiles and works his chopsticks around a few noodles to pinch them tightly. “I didn’t think you’d understand most of what was going on.”

Apollo wipes at his chin with a napkin from the dispenser. With two round cheeks, he shakes his head. 

Phoenix laughs. “Alright, alright. I should have figured. You just liked the shouting, huh?”

“And Miss Terry,” Apollo mutters. “She…” He pauses, frowns, and then points at his mouth as he imitates the expression on her face back in the defense lobby after the verdict had been made. 

“Her smile?” Phoenix raises an eyebrow. “You mean you liked her smile?”

Apollo nods. After a moment to swallow a bite of pork, he adds, “You help her.”

Both of Phoenix’s eyebrows lift, now. He makes a small, curious sound low in his throat before he turns back to his noodles. “Yeah… yeah, I did.”  

Leave it to Miles to be less impressed with Phoenix’s win than Apollo had been. 

There’s an unspoken post-dinner routine the Edgeworth-Wrights have fallen into with their extra guest the past few months, and fortunately, it has yet to throw the chores list in disarray. Miles is elbow-deep in soap water at the sink, patiently washing, while Apollo has a towel over his shoulder, drying plates and cups and silverware before handing them to Phoenix to be put away.

Miles sighs as he shoves his hands under the water again. “Don’t misunderstand me, Wright. It’s not that I’m not happy you won your case. I am, however, a little less-than-enthused that a literal nine-year-old was permitted to sit in on a murder trial.”

“He didn’t understand everything we said, Miles. It’s fine.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“Besides, Apollo had a great time! He liked it! Didn’t you, kiddo?”

Miles extends the next sud-drenched cup to Apollo in time to see his eager nod. Once Apollo takes the cup, he extends his other hand to point at the lower cupboards and shout, “Objection!” 

Is he imagining the way the cabinet doors rattle against their baseboards?

Miles rolls his eyes. “Yes, well. I’m very glad. That’s all well and good that he enjoyed himself, but that still doesn’t mean we can just take him to the courthouse from now on. There are bound to be more gruesome cases in the future, and I will not be responsible for scarring someone else’s child while he’s under our care.”

Phoenix sighs. “Yeah, I guess when you put it like that—”

“—why ysobuǝq?” 

Miles and Phoenix look at him, eyebrows lifted.

Miles unplugs the drain in the sink. Over the sound of the retreating water, he murmurs, “I’m sorry, what was that?” 

“Why…” Apollo frowns. He hands Phoenix the last cup and points at him before a sudden light enters his eyes. 

Phoenix gives a quiet “oof” as Apollo’s towel is shoved into his chest, then watches as Apollo sprints out of the kitchen area and down the back hall. “What the—?” He shares a puzzled, clueless glance with Miles, but before the question is finished coming out of his mouth, Apollo is already back with both hands wrapped around something small. Phoenix is half-afraid it’s a bug until Apollo holds his palms up and shows him his own defense attorney badge.

“Oh.” Phoenix pinches its gold stem between two fingers. He throws the towel over his shoulder. 

“Why?” Apollo asks again.

“Why what? Why did I become a lawyer?”

Apollo nods and he gestures to both of them. 

Immediately, Phoenix flushes. He looks to Miles again, then scratches at his cheek with his free hand. “Oh. Uh, well…? Mine’s kind of sappy, really. It’s a long story.”

Apollo frowns.

Miles runs a hand through his hair. “On the other hand, I believe mine is short and sufficient. Easy. My father was a lawyer first, and I… wanted to follow in his footsteps. Even if I did end up taking a different route than I had originally intended.” He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the sink. “But life is hardly so linear, I’ve found.”

“Yeah, sorry, there’s nothing ‘easy’ about that.”

“It’s much more abbreviated than your reason, at least.”

Apollo snaps his gaze from one to the other. 

Phoenix grins, spinning his defense attorney badge right and left between his fingers. It catches the warm light from above and reflects it, sparkling like gold in his hand. “Do you really want to hear the story, kiddo?”

Apollo nods.

“Well…” Phoenix scratches his chin. “Let’s see…”

There are things that Dhurke told Apollo about his life before the mountains and their little cabin that sat nestled in them, and there are lots of things that he never told him, either, because he always said he “couldn’t.” They were things Apollo knew were too hard to talk about; things that made his eyes darken and his face grow weary and sad.

But he did say he once used to be a lawyer, a defense attorney. He’d say he used to help people.

And he’d say it like it was the grandest thing in the world.

Apollo listens to the tale of a much younger Miles Edgeworth defending a much younger Phoenix Wright over the problem of a missing $38 at their elementary school, and he thinks, Dhurke would have liked Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Miles. There’s something about helping people that makes a good story, he’d say. There’s something about doing the right thing. There’s something about caring.

There’s something about…

[ December ]

Winter in Los Angeles is much different than winter in Khura’in. For one: it is less in every sense of the word. It is still cold, in all of the ways that force Apollo to bundle up before he hurries outside after Kay or Maya and occasionally Pearl, but not as snowy as he is used to up in the mountains of Khura’in. Apollo thinks this is a good thing; he’s not fond of the snow. He cannot say he misses it.

Over the past few weeks, Apollo has begun to compose a list of things he looks forward to telling Dhurke and Datz and Nahyuta both in his letters and in case he finds they haven’t received said letters whenever he eventually returns: everything he can think of that is different from Los Angeles as opposed to Khura’in.

Christmas, for example, is one of those things that is very, very different.

In direct opposition to the difference of snow and cold, Christmas is so much more in Los Angeles. It’s louder. Brighter. Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Miles aren’t very big on celebrating Christmas, but it still seems like it is everywhere around Apollo, on all the street billboards and across all the red-and-green television ads. 

“What are you guys gonna do for Christmas this year?” Kay asks one day as she’s coloring in the corner of Apollo’s English workbook. “First Christmas together while married and all?”

Apollo huffs and tries to push her crayon off the page as Mr. Phoenix tilts his head and frowns. He hums. “I’m not sure. We’ll have the big Christmas party at the Wright & Co Law Offices like normal, but… I don’t know. I think Miles mentioned he’d like a nice dinner the day-of. Nothing fancy.”

“What?” Kay rises to her feet and gives him a great big puppy-eyed pout. “You’re not even gonna get presents? What about a tree? Y’know, for…?” 

Her voice trails off at odd parts of her questions. But when Apollo glances up at her, she quickly straightens up as if she had been doing nothing strange at all. 

Mr. Phoenix chuckles and stands up from the kitchen table, empty coffee mug in hand. He shakes his head as he pulls the coffee pot out from the machine and mutters, “Kay, you know I can’t answer that question. For being a legendary thief, I thought you’d be better at the whole ‘being discreet’ thing.”

To which, Kay falls silent and her mouth drops open in a very round ‘o.’

Apollo looks between the two, wondering if there’s something he missed.

The Christmas party at the Wright & Co Law Offices is nothing like Apollo has ever experienced. 

He had thought he met everyone that Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Edgeworth knew, but clearly, Kay and Maya and Pearl and Ms. Franziska were and are only the tip of the iceberg. There is Mr. Gumshoe, and Ms. Byrde, and Mr. Butz, and Ms. Hart. Then there is Mr. Powers, and Ms. Skye, and Ms. Iris—who might be his favorite out of the bunch because she is the quietest. The Wright & Co Law Offices is full of people, crowded shoulder-to-shoulder, and full of so much conversation, Apollo sometimes finds it a little overwhelming.

The food is good, though. The laughter is nice. 

But Apollo finds he much prefers the quiet awe that greets him on the morning of December 25th, when he wakes up and walks out of the guest room to find the decorated tree in the corner of the room with a few, modest presents stuffed underneath.

It happens later that evening—suddenly and with no warning at all.

One minute, Apollo has brought the last of dinner’s dirty dishes to Mr. Miles, who already has suds up the length of his forearms. The next, without a sound, there is darkness. The lights snap off; the heater falls silent. The water runs in the sink, but the sound is swallowed up by the magnificent, horrible crash and shatter of a dinner plate dropped to the floor.

Apollo jumps and yelps. There’s a pound of feet against the floor, then a hiss. 

“Wait—wait! Nobody move!” Mr. Phoenix says. “Apollo, you hear that? Don’t move.”

“O-Okay!”

There are several small bangs and bumps against the walls and floors. A cabinet door opens and shuts and then, after a muffled curse, a flashlight flips on. It takes Apollo’s eyes a second to adjust to the sudden and sharp light, but he thinks he can recognize the faint outline of the broom in Mr. Phoenix’s other hand for what it is before he feels its bristles tickle across his toes. 

“Here,” Mr. Phoenix says after a moment, holding out the flashlight. “Take this for a sec.”

Apollo extends the flashlight above his head, aiming to illuminate as much floor space as possible. He watches as Mr. Phoenix sweeps up the broken porcelain, making sure to get every small piece. Apollo follows him until at last, he dumps the pan against the edge of the trashcan.

“There,” Mr. Phoenix finally sighs after a moment. “I think I got all of it. Miles?”

Mr. Miles doesn’t answer.

Tentatively, Apollo turns the flashlight towards the sink again. He doesn’t know how he missed it the first time when he wasn’t standing all that far away from Mr. Miles as the lights went out, but Mr. Miles has since formed a very little ball, small and shuddering against the lower cabinets beneath the sink. His hands press white into his hair, tightly. 

“Oh god.” Mr. Phoenix’s voice is just as tiny, and Apollo looks up as he jerks forward. He gets his arms as quick as he can around Mr. Miles’s shoulders. “Hey. C’mon, Miles. Let’s get you off the floor, okay?” 

“N-no.” 

Apollo has never heard Mr. Miles’s voice sound like that. Ever. 

His heart jumps high in his throat. He readjusts his grip on the flashlight, daring his hands not to shake—and somehow, when someone is so evidently and clearly hurting right in front of him—that’s not very hard at all. 

“No?” Mr. Phoenix echoes. “So do you… do you want to stay here, then?”  

Apollo isn’t able to see Mr. Miles’s answer, but whatever it is, it makes Mr. Phoenix’s head jerk up. He looks around and then at Apollo, still holding the flashlight aimed at them. His mismatched eyes brighten. He gestures with his chin. “Hey. Apollo. Could you grab us some blankets from the living room? Grab a bunch, okay? You can probably pull from the linen closet, too. Oh, and get a few candles. Do you know where those are?”

Apollo nods. He nods quickly, over and over again.

Mr. Phoenix smiles. “Good kid,” he manages to say, and then Apollo is off, scurrying through the apartment with the laundry list of things running through his head.

It takes a few minutes and more than one trip, but by the time Apollo has grabbed a sizable amount of blankets, Mr. Phoenix is ready with a lighter from one of the kitchen drawers. Apollo isn’t sure which candle they want; he grabs several. Mr. Phoenix, with a smile and a chuckle, sets all of the wicks aflame and lines them up on the kitchen counter above them. 

A pleasant mix of pine and evergreen fills the air, combated with confetti cake and pumpkin and something that reminds Apollo of the ocean. Come to think of it, the varied fragrances actually don’t smell all that great when put together. 

“Okay,” Mr. Phoenix finally says anyway. “Okay. This should help.”

Apollo settles down with his own blanket wrapped around his shoulders, over the blanket they laid as a buffer between their legs and the cooling linoleum floor. The winter chill wastes no time seeping in with the lack of a heater.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Mr. Phoenix’s voice is soft and quiet and gentle. He shushes and soothes, a tender lull. “It’s okay.” The candlelight from above burns soft orange across the side of his face, highlighting his hair like jagged lightning. Apollo can see him pat Mr. Miles’ back; it seems sacred, somehow, the way Mr. Miles immediately takes to hiding in his neck. “It’s alright. I’m here. It’s gonna be alright.”

Apollo watches.

Idly, he wonders why his hands itch and burn.

Mr. Miles’ next exhale is harsh and thick with tears. He swallows. “It’s been years. This is stupid. I should be better than this—”

“—no. No. Don’t do that to yourself, Miles.” Mr. Phoenix runs his fingers through grey hair, colored nearly silver in the dim light. “Every time, each year, you tell yourself that, but it’s just a way of cutting yourself off from dealing with this however you might need to. It’s okay to still be affected. Heck, it’s okay to still mourn and grieve and miss him; he was your father.”

That makes Apollo blink. He tugs his blanket closer around his shoulders. “Father?” he echoes.

That draws both of their attention to him. Mr. Miles blinks wetly like he had forgotten Apollo was there. Mr. Phoenix smiles a little and sadly. 

“Yeah,” Mr. Phoenix rasps. “We’re talking about Miles’s father.” 

“Dead?”

Mr. Miles’s breath hitches. Mr. Phoenix’s grip tightens around him.

Apollo blinks. Wrong question to ask.

“Yes,” murmurs Miles. He moves his head so that Apollo can see his face, though he does not rise from Phoenix’s shoulder. The thick blanket around the both of them is now stretched as wide as a mountain. “Yes, he’s been dead for several years, now.” He skin around his eyes pinches and folds; his mouth thins into a grim, sad line. “Actually, I was about your age when he died, too. Nine years old.” He meets eyes with Apollo. All of a sudden, his face tightens. “I… suppose I never really realized how young I was…”  

Carefully, Apollo scrambles up to his knees and ignores the way the chill from the floor seeps through his pajama pants. He crawls close enough to place a hand on Miles’s leg, leaning into his side and then, after a moment more, he turns his head and wraps his arms around his middle as best he can.

“I’m sorry,” Apollo mumbles into his shirt.

Miles makes a soft sound. Shakily, he puts a hand on Apollo’s back. “It’s… it’s alright.” Even as he says it, Miles sounds surprised. He clears his throat and sniffs. “I… well, there’s nothing that can be done for him, now. But thank you.” 

“How?”

Miles moves his hand from Apollo’s back to grasp his shoulder. “How what?”

“How dead?” 

Also another question that was perhaps wrong to ask because it makes Miles’s face go all ashy and pale in the darkness. But he does not push Apollo away. Neither does Phoenix intervene. Apollo can feel Miles take one deep, full-lunged inhale. The hand on his shoulder squeezes.

“A night much like this one,” he confesses. “It was shortly before Christmas. There had been an earthquake… then a blackout. Unfortunately, we were not at home to experience it like we are today. But that’s when he lost his life.” Miles clears his throat. “He was killed in an elevator while unconscious.”

“Killed?”

“Someone had taken a gun, and—” Again, his voice breaks. “Well. The one mercy I suppose that I can find relief in is that he did not feel any pain, at least.”

Apollo lifts his face. His chin digs into Miles’s side when he settles again.

“Do you understand everything I’ve said?”

“Parts.”

“Mm.” Miles lifts his hand from Apollo’s back. He runs his fingers over the back of his head, through his hair. “You’re learning fast.”

Apollo blinks up at him, sleepily. “You look sad.”

“I am… sad,” Miles says, halfway like he’s impressed about that, too. “Still sad, even after all this time. I miss my father terribly on days like today. Even if the blackout had not occurred to take me back to that horrible moment, I think I still would have been sad. It’s just that time of year for me, I suppose.”

“He love you?”

Miles’s eyes mist over. They shine in the candlelight; two melted pools of grey. “Yes. He loved me very, very much. And I loved him.” He takes a breath and glances at Phoenix. Phoenix’s arms squeeze tighter around him; in echo, so do Apollo’s. “And I suppose that is the most important part, in the end. Perhaps it’s what even makes the grief hurt so much: that I was loved, and then that love was taken away. For several long years… ”

Apollo frowns. “What?”

Miles chuckles wetly. “You can’t want to hear that part of my sad story.”

“Yes,” Apollo says without blinking, without thinking.

Miles runs his fingers through Apollo’s hair. Apollo’s next blink feels heavier than the last. It is more difficult to keep his eyes open each time he closes them, and he hates that. He wants to stay awake for this. But the pumpkin is so rosy and warm and sweet on his tongue and the lavender makes him woozy.

“Well, then who knows,” Miles murmurs. “If you stay with us long enough, perhaps I really will tell you one day. But I appreciate all that you’ve done this evening, Apollo. That’s sweet of you to comfort me.”

Slowly, Apollo nods. Soon, he forgets to think about anything at all.

[ January ]

At the start of the new year, Apollo asks to be taken to the airport. 

This, of course, alarms Phoenix and Miles terribly until he explains that it’s not to board a plane or go anywhere, but just to see if Dhurke has come back yet. The pressure and weight of these long months of waiting are making him antsy—and worried. (Always worried.)

So on a rare Sunday morning that both Phoenix and Miles have off, they make the long drive back to LAX. Though it feels foolish, Phoenix asks at the service desk if anyone named Dhurke Sahdmahdi has left a note, or dropped by, or left anything at all for someone very young, very small, but very loud. When the young lady shakes her head, giving him an odd look, he supposes that’s fair. It’s a strange situation, one that is slowly tying Phoenix’s stomach up in knots as he begins to anticipate how it was always supposed to end.

He returns to Miles and Apollo, waiting patiently with cheap ice cream from the McDonald’s in the food court. When he squats in front of Apollo and tells him the news, he can’t help but tack on a “yet” at the end of it.

No, Dhurke hasn’t left any message or any word or had any contact… yet.

Apollo nods very seriously with a look on his face that’s hard to read.

[ February ]

It’s Kay who decides that swinging on the playground has started to become boring (or maybe she says “too depressing,” but Apollo isn’t sure what she means by that), so with a grin, she drags Apollo along on another of her “field trips” deeper into the city. 

Somehow, February in Los Angeles is colder than December was, and it doesn’t help that it rained the other day, so the sidewalk is glistening and wet while the air around them is sticky and moist and Apollo huffs, a grumpy and unenthused bundle of red, as Kay takes him to get what she promises are the “best crepes in the world.”

Admittedly, the crepes are pretty good. (The thing called Nutella might be his favorite part.)

They come across a giant area of concrete, vastly—strangely?—empty for 10:32 in the morning, right in front of a large, wide upside-down funnel-cone-shaped building covered in windows. There are tall light posts that look like something out of the latest season of that Steel Samurai show that Miles and Maya marathoned with him the other day. He doesn’t complain when Kay tells him to wait right where he is as soon as she remembers she had promised Sebastian she’d bring him some crepes, too. He’s just glad to have a reason to finally stop walking.

Kay disappears back the way they came and Apollo sits on the nearest bench, before immediately deciding that’s not a good idea. The metal is far, far too cold.

He stands up and that’s when he hears it:

“You’re just being a big baby, Klavier! Grow up!”

He recognizes that name. 

He does not recognize that voice, but Apollo knows the name Klavier and he remembers the phrase mein Freund, and when he turns, he can see them a short distance away on the other side of the plaza.

Klavier is just like Apollo remembers from his first trip to the courthouse: tall and blonde and brown and with those bright blue eyes. Over his back he has a purple guitar case, one that is a different shade than the purple of his jacket, and Apollo thinks the two hues of the same color aren’t normally supposed to go together, but somehow, on Klavier they look fine. 

The boy across from him has strange hair: dark and white in the front where his bangs sweep up. He is all black and white as opposed to Klavier’s burst of color, with both straps of his own black guitar bag lazily strung over one shoulder. When he leans in with a cruel, lazy shark’s grin, his guitar bag bounces over his back. The neck of it swings like it’s going to slip down his arm any second.

Klavier murmurs something quiet, something Apollo can’t make out. He turns his face away.

The other kid stomps his foot. “The other guys already left! Ain’t nobody gonna see us!”

When Klavier looks back, he’s frowning. It seems ill-fitting on his face when all Apollo can remember of him is his persistent, friendly smile. “That’s not the point, Daryan. It’s still wrong.”

Daryan scoffs. “There you go, trying to be all straight-laced. What, it’s not like it’s illegal. It’s not even a big deal.”

“But neither is it kind—”

“—ha! That’s rich, coming from you!” And the look on Daryan’s already shark-like face turns dagger-ish and cruel. “Why do you always gotta be like this, man, huh? Sometimes I think you like looking down your nose at us all, thinking you’re better than everyone else just because you’re everyone’s golden-boy.”

Klavier’s face floods with a deeper, darker red. “I—w-was? I don’t…”

Somehow, before he’s even aware of it, Apollo’s feet begin to move.

“Yeah, you do. You’re always so stuck-up. Self-righteous or whatever. Sometimes it makes me sick. You know you’re Mr. Soundheim’s favorite, too? Ask anyone in the band club; everyone else knows it. That’s why you always get picked to do the leads.”

“I am not… trying to make you feel inferior or anything, Daryan—”

“—really? ‘Cuz you sure do a great job of it.”

“I just practice, that’s all.”

“Are you trying to say I don’t—”

“—nein! No! That’s not what I’m—ugh!” Klavier hides his face in his hands. The sound of his frustration echoes off the concrete and the large, empty plaza. “F-forget what I said. I didn’t mean to make it sound like that; I’m sorry.”

Daryan steps closer. “Yeah, yeah. Keep that up, huh? And maybe I’ll actually believe you when you apologize one of these days, golden-boy.”

Which is precisely when Apollo arrives, shouts, “Objection!” at the top of his lungs, and punches a kid he’s never met right in the face with all the force he can muster behind a mean, angry right hook. 

Kay isn’t allowed to babysit for two weeks.

“You’ve got to admit, though, it’s a little impressive—and kind of poetic, in a way,” she says when she’s trying to defend herself a half-hour after the incident, once Daryan’s parents and Klavier’s stern-faced older brother have been called and a meeting point has been arranged so they can all sit down and discuss reparations for beating-up a stranger’s kid. “What deeper, older language is there to defend someone with than that of your fists?”

“Kay,” Miles growls. “You’re not. Helping.”

Both Miles and Phoenix—who both had to be called away from their respective jobs—lecture Apollo until his ears turn blue. Then, they spend an even longer time apologizing and talking with the Crescends while Klavier’s brother nods and occasionally looks back at them. 

It’s when their backs are turned that Klavier finally gets a moment to sit beside Apollo on the cold, cold ground of the plaza to apologize.

Apollo turns to him and blinks with one hand mashing Phoenix’s “E”-engraved handkerchief to his nose. He frowns. When he pulls the white cloth away to talk, he winces at the blood already pooling thickly into the middle of it, folds it over, and crams it back under his nose again. “Why sorry?”

Klavier, pale, still somehow manages to chuckle. “Because it’s my fault you got into that fight. It’s my fault we got to finally meet again under unfortunate circumstances. And now it’s going to be awkward for a while with Daryan, too.”

He says it like it’s a bad thing.

Apollo’s frown deepens. “I’m sorry.”

Klavier shakes his head. His smile widens but doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s not like it was before, not like it had been when it was just the two of them in front of a couple of vending machines at the courthouse. “You don’t need to apologize. You don’t know Daryan. You probably heard us shouting, thought he was being mean, and wanted to intervene. All things considered, punching a stranger was brave of you, really.”

There’s something about the phrase, You don’t know Daryan, that makes Apollo’s chest squeeze.

He turns to look at Daryan, sitting between his parents and occasionally glancing over his shoulder at the two of them. Even with the new black eye he’s sporting and the tears budding at their corners, he manages to look fairly intimidating. Apollo glares back.

“He isn’t nice,” Apollo mumbles.

Klavier blinks. “W-Well, he can be. He just… doesn’t feel like being nice today, I guess.”

“Doesn’t feel like… ?” Apollo repeats. For some reason, that tightness in his chest turns hot and angry again. “Can you feel to be nice?” Er— “When can you feel to be nice?” When Klavier freezes, caught with that strange look on his face as he reaches up for his hair, Apollo adds, “I think you must to be nice all of the time. Dhurke tells me.”

“I… I don’t know who that is,” Klavier murmurs quietly. “But…”

Apollo watches him unblinking, hanging off of whatever it is Klavier wants to say but apparently doesn’t know how.

Finally, after a long moment, his hand stops toying with his hair. His hand falls to his lap, and he bows his head to look at the curl of his fingers over his legs. He smiles more freely. Softly. In a way that seems more genuine than Apollo has ever seen. “But thank you, Herr Forehead. I do appreciate you saying that.” He laughs. “Who knows? Maybe you and I should be friends from now on if we keep running into each other, ja?”

Apollo hums and looks away. The words from now on echo in his head. 

When they finally return home that afternoon, Miles and Phoenix have very different reactions to Apollo getting into a fight.

Where Miles is: “I can’t believe you punched a kid,” Phoenix is: “I can’t believe you punched a kid!”

It’s a bit of a back-and-forth in the kitchen until Miles eventually wins out, his voice stern, horrified, and harsh. For the first time since Apollo began to stay with them last year, he grounds him to the guest room, saying, “You can’t do things like that, Apollo! I can’t believe I have to say this, but you can’t just go and punch people!” 

Later that night, however, Phoenix sneaks him an extra granola bar when he tucks him into bed.

“You know how you probably felt watching me in the courtroom back in October?” Phoenix asks and when Apollo nods, he grins wide, toothy, and youthful. “That’s kinda what it felt like to hear that you’d defended somebody.”

“Amazing?” Apollo whispers, with wide eyes.

“Yeah, kiddo,” Phoenix nods and ruffles his hair. “You were amazing.”

[ April ]

Fortunately, the fight complicates nothing in regards to Apollo’s coming birthday—which is already a strange phenomenon, since according to him, even his own father wasn’t sure when it was. Apollo is a bit like a corporeal ghost in that he has no paperwork to identify him other than the passport (possibly forged, Miles worries) in his backpack. The birthdate on it, Miles and Phoenix are told, had been picked when someone named “Datz” blindly chucked a dagger at a calendar they had ripped all the pages out of and strewn across the floor. 

Miles is horrified. Phoenix finds it a little funny.

Nonetheless, April it is.

It is a huge success.

“Should we be letting nine-year-olds stay up past midnight? Are they allowed to do that?”

“He’s ten now, Wright. And besides…” Miles’s eyes slide to the boy still kneeling by the window with the wall clock in his lap. Night falls around Apollo like a heavy blanket, shrouding him in deep, dark navy. For all of his excitement and buzz and fervor earlier, he is quiet and subdued, now. Miles doesn’t think he’s heard the boy speak in over an hour. “It’s his birthday,” he finally says. “If not for his birthday, then when else can ten-year-olds stay up past midnight?”

“Uh, New Year’s?”

Miles smacks the back of his hand against Phoenix’s arm. Phoenix chuckles. 

Finally, Apollo unfolds himself from his spot beneath the windowsill. With the clock still in his hands, he pads to the kitchen table. 

As soon as Phoenix sees his face, he brightens. He reaches for the remains of his chocolate cake. “Hey. Do you want another slice there, kiddo?” 

“Wright, no. No dessert after nine—”

“—what happened to it being his birthday, huh?”

Apollo sets the wall clock on the table with a heavy thunk. He shakes his head. “No. No cake.” 

Phoenix and Miles share a glance. Slowly, Phoenix sets down the knife and plate he grabbed and Miles unfolds his arms. He leans forward in his chair and asks, “Did you eat too much of it earlier? Are you feeling alright?” 

The boy is pale and quiet. There’s a strange, glazed shine to his brown eyes. 

“Apollo?”

After a moment, Apollo takes a sharp breath. He presses his lips together tightly and looks away. “Dhurke isn’t coming for me.” 

Phoenix and Miles steal another look.

In the stunned silence that follows, Apollo finally begins to nod. His shoulders slump. “It’s okay…” He mutters a string of Khura’inese, then adds: “Thank you for being nice, but it’s okay. I know now.” 

It’s Phoenix who moves first, slipping from the wooden chair to crouch on the tile floor next to Apollo. “Wait, what? Hang on. Hang on, kiddo. Back up. What makes you so certain he isn’t coming back for you?” It’s your birthday kid, the other part of him wants to say. He called you his son. Don’t look like he doesn’t love you. Why are we talking about this on your birthday, anyway? Can’t this wait a day or two? 

Apollo shakes his head and turns away. His face is tight, mouth set into a grim, downturned line. His hands fist at his sides. “I… I thought he might come. If coming for me, then he is here before today. Before my birthday. He must.”

“He must?”

“Before my birthday.” Apollo’s chest begins to heave. His breaths wind shorter and shorter. “I tell myself: if he is coming, if happening, he is here before my birthday. If happening. But if not…”

“I…” Phoenix, at a loss, glances to Miles. “Uh—”

“—but he isn’t. He isn’t here.” Apollo takes a thin, shaky breath. “He isn’t here and now today, I’m ten. Next year, I’m eleven. Then twelve. And what if always, all of the years, he isn’t—”    

Whatever else Apollo was going to say gets muffled, stifled up, behind his hands. A sob cuts off his voice, warbles it, makes it small and twisted and confused. Hurt. His shoulders bunch up to the level of his ears; his hands fist into his eyes. “What do I do? It should have been now. He should be here now. S-so maybe… I say: maybe he isn’t coming…” 

“Apollo.” Phoenix’s hand hovers above his shoulder. When at last he lets it fall to touch him, Apollo crumbles like whatever strings of courage had been holding him up suddenly are snipped.

The first sob bursts from deep in his chest like shattering glass. Loud and abrasive. Sharp.

It hurts to hear. 

Miles winces. Apollo’s fingers fist into Phoenix’s shirt and twist and pull Phoenix feels it is not unlike Apollo has reached inside his chest and taken hold of his heart with those same angry hands and tugged it free. He wraps his arms around Apollo as Apollo cries and lifts his eyes above his head to meet Miles’s on the other side of the table.

Miles sighs and closes his eyes. He bows his head.

With little else left to do—with little else that he feels like he can do—for as frustrating and as human as such uselessness feels—Phoenix holds Apollo. He sets his cheek on the top of Apollo’s head as he cries and cries—and he holds him. He murmurs platitudes, soft encouragements he’s not even sure Apollo will hear—things he’s not sure of: “He’ll be here one day,” and things he is: “It’s going to be okay”—and he holds him.

Quietly, the clock on the kitchen table ticks the seconds by.

Apollo’s voice grows hoarse until it slips away entirely. He has cried himself to sleep by the time Phoenix has his arms underneath him and can lift him from the floor. Miles gets up at the same time and begins to clear the table. 

“I’m going to get him into bed,” Phoenix murmurs.

“Yes, of course.”

Phoenix stops himself from turning fully around. His face pulls tight at the corners. “Miles—”

“—it’s alright, Wright.” Miles looks up from the paper plates and plastic cutlery he’s already stacked together. The shine in his grey eyes paints them near mercury under the light of 2:01 AM. “It’s alright. I understand. We’ll both talk about it and handle the transition appropriately in the morning.”

“Right.” After a moment, Phoenix nods. “In the morning…”

He waits and when it seems Miles really is content to leave it at that, he turns for the side hall. He listens to the minute creaks and groans of the floor underneath his socked feet as he carries Apollo. He wonders.

The next morning is slow. Dreary. 

When Apollo lifts his head, he can see the grey of the thick clouds and rainy sky beyond the window. It’s appropriate, somehow, he thinks; fitting, when his folded clothes that he slips into his backpack and all of his socks and the few toys he can manage to squeeze in feel so heavy. Sliding the straps over his shoulders afterward feels sluggish. He toes on his shoes and hikes his heel onto the edge of the bed to tie his shoelaces.

When he stands at the threshold of his guest room and looks back, he sets his hand on the door frame. 

He says thank you.

And, for good measure, he says goodbye. 

They seem surprised to see him with his backpack on at the kitchen table first thing in the morning. 

Mr. Phoenix asks if he would like to wait a minute; there’s no rush, after all. He knows what they agreed last year, but maybe there’s time they can eat and relax. Play some games. They can take him to child services after lunch?

Apollo shakes his head. His stomach is already twisting itself into knots, and he doesn’t know how to say that other than to fist his hands around the strings of his hoodie. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to focus or enjoy anything until this part is over. Until his future has a pathway, even if for the second time in his life, it will have no one he knows on it.

“Alright,” Mr. Miles says. “A breakfast of dry toast it is, then.”

Apollo helps clear the table afterward. It is his last time to do so, but at least he is getting better at these last times. He offers to clean everything he can; maybe that way he can say goodbye to it all, too.

He doesn’t know how to answer the looks that Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Miles occasionally send him; he ignores the ones they pass each other over his head.

It… feels a little better, actually, knowing that they’re sad about him leaving, too.

(Maybe Dhurke was, too, though he supposes there’s no way to tell now.)

They allow Apollo to close the front door behind himself. Then, Mr. Miles locks it. Mr. Phoenix gives Apollo one last, long look and an encouraging smile before leading the way down the outdoor stairs. Apollo follows on his heels and follows him across the sidewalk and follows him towards the bright red car parked against the curb. 

Everything is as it usually is: Mr. Miles settles into the driver’s seat. Mr. Phoenix looks out the passenger side window, resting his elbow against the door, with his chin in the crook of his palm.

Apollo watches the little apartment neighborhood as they slowly and finally begin to move. His heart rises into his throat once he can no longer see their building—not his, but rather Mr. Miles and Mr. Phoenix’s, he reminds himself—until he forces it down, down, down until his fingertips burn numb. 

He sees the playground at the front of the property that Kay took him to the first day he met her. He presses his forehead to the glass and counts the trees as they pass. They turn on to the state road, and he can see the mall where Ms. Franziska had bought him the suit jacket he couldn’t fit in his bag. He thinks he can see the glass funnel-shaped building where he helped Klavier in the distance, too. They move on to the interstate into the city and he recognizes the exit Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Miles take to get to the courthouse. They descend on the next exit just after it and merge onto an intercity road, framed by tall, pale office buildings on either side, where nothing is familiar anymore.

Apollo swallows and bows his head. He looks at his fingers in his lap.

It’ll be better once it’s over and I’m there, he tells himself. I’m fine. I’ll be fine when it’s over, too. It just needs to be over first.

It is the silence, he thinks, that is the most awful part. That quiet that fills the car when no one knows what to say or how to say what they are feeling, so they decide to say nothing at all. They’re just going through the motions.

Maybe that makes it easier, in a way: turning off how you feel to make it through the present moment.

He sees the sign first, big and boxy, out of the corner of his eye: the County of Los Angeles, Department of Children and Family Services. Okay, he tells himself once again. Over and over, until it gets easier to hear: Your name is Apollo Justice and you’re fine. You’re gonna be fine. 

Then, at last, the car starts to slow. 

The tires crunch against the gravel that sits close to the curb, dusted off the sidewalk— 

—and it’s not so much that they keep going, but rather, that they never stop.

Apollo’s head snaps up. He stares outside as the building passes by. When he looks forward, Phoenix has lifted his head from his hand, too. Apollo leans forward in his seat and calls, “Mr. Miles?”

Miles doesn’t answer.

He drives them further down the road, another block or two until they come to a stop in front of a different and taller apartment complex than their own. Miles parks the car but leaves the engine on idle and mutters so quietly, Apollo almost misses the words: “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

Apollo pulls his bag close to his chest.

Both of Miles’ hands slip further up the steering wheel, gripping so tight that his knuckles burn white. “I know,” he adds at first, when no one speaks and the car sounds so, so quiet. “I know we talked about this, Wright. I know we agreed this was the wisest option.” And then something in his voice changes as he adds: “But I can’t—I can’t in good conscience—”

He spins around.

When he locks eyes with Apollo, Apollo stares back, stunned.

“Our home... it’s right here,” Miles says, choked. “And this past year, I—well, I’ve grown fond of you, Apollo, and I like the way our family of two has become a family of three.” 

Apollo doesn’t quite know why it’s so difficult to see him until he gives a wet sniffle.

Miles softens. He turns again in his seat. “I’m sorry, Wright, but I—”

“—Miles?!”

And Phoenix is already crying.

It’s like a dam has burst, somehow. It’s like a secret has been brought out into the open. It’s like something all three of them had been too afraid to say, too afraid to acknowledge, has finally been placed on the table, and now that it’s there, now that it exists, it’s too much to turn away from. 

Phoenix sniffles and wipes at his face with the heels of both hands. He shakes his head. “Oh my god! Oh my god! I can’t believe you, you overdramatic, unbelievable ass!”

“—I—I already said I’m sorry—”

“—you can’t just drop that shit on me! Give your husband at least some kind of warning before you make him cry, damn it—”

“—I really did say I’m—”   

“—but god. God! I’m really glad you said something because I… I was already thinking the exact same thing.”

“W… were you?” Miles’s voice lifts; it sounds a lot like relief.

“Yeah.” Phoenix chuckles wetly. He smiles and turns back around to look at Apollo. His hand curls over the shoulder of his seat. “I was.”

Miles turns around, too, and then it’s both of them looking at Apollo and Apollo doesn’t know what to do. He stares back and he stares and he stares, with his backpack against his chest, and tears warm down his flushed cheeks, hardly daring to believe. “You… you want me? To stay?”

“Of course,” Miles says at the same time Phoenix bursts, “Duh!”

Immediately, they share a look. Miles rolls his eyes as Phoenix chuckles again and wipes at his face once more. But there is a definite shine in Miles’s eyes as well, something Apollo hadn’t noticed when he first started speaking; something that seems delicate and rare and so much.

Apollo’s hands shake. 

“Would that be amenable to you?”

“Miles, oh my god, shut the fuck up. He doesn’t know what that word means—”

“—it’s okay,” Apollo says and they both snap their mouths shut. He squeezes his backpack tighter and sniffs again. He smiles, but it feels wobbly and too wide, just like his heart right now: much, much too big to fit inside his chest. “It’s okay. I want—I want—you, new parents, too.” 

Phoenix sniffs. His smile is crooked and the widest Apollo has ever seen it. A tear slips down Miles’s cheek.

“Okay, then,” Miles says at the same time that Phoenix spins around, unbuckles his seatbelt, and jams his car door open. He’s a blur of movement, stepping out onto the grassy edge of the sidewalk, and then in the next moment, the car door Apollo sits against is open and Phoenix’s arms are around him, holding him so tightly, he thinks he might forget how to breathe.

“God, I’m so glad to hear you say that, kiddo,” Phoenix breathes.

Apollo stifles a gasp. His eyes burn. His throat swells up as it had at the airport so many months ago. Except it’s different, now; everything is different. He thinks this kind of cry has a good feeling behind it. There’s something about caring. There’s something about— “Love?”

“Yeah.” Phoenix laughs a little as he says it and Apollo can feel the bounce of it in his chest. “We love you, Apollo. We love you very, very much.”

He thinks he can be forgiven for bowing his head into Phoenix’s shoulder, grabbing two fistfuls of his jacket. He sobs into him, clinging tightly, tightly, tightly. He didn’t know it could feel so nice to not have to let go.

It’s when he’s holding the papers in his hands that it hits him. It’s when he sees the words written in the boxes—only a handful of them familiar—but the most important ones, like “name of child,” and “name of parent,” and “father,” which is scribbled in not just once, but several times, over and over again. 

Apollo looks up and it’s hard to see Phoenix’s face, but he thinks he’s smiling just as widely as Apollo is. 

It’s nice.

“You look happy!” Phoenix says. His voice is warm, warm, warm.

Apollo grins with everything he has. Tight and cheeky and with all his teeth and he thinks more tears might squeeze out of the corner of his eyes, but it’s fine because he’ll be fine. He’ll always be fine, now.

I don’t know, he thinks, but you look happy too, Dad.

Dad.

And it’s like Phoenix knows what he’s thinking. It’s like Phoenix knows the instant that word manifests in his head, taking shape and form and weight. The instant it settles in, registering as his—and theirs, together—new going-forward.

Phoenix’s arms, when they wrap around him, are warm, warm, warm, too.

[ Two Years Later ]

The courthouse is massive, but every day he visits, Apollo Justice Edgeworth-Wright thinks it may not be as big and gigantic and scary as it was to him that first day. 

It is April 19th, and he can’t run down the stairs fast enough. He rubs his sweater sleeve across his mouth and narrowly avoids running into a much taller man, with broad shoulders and a pointed beard, shouting a quick, too-loud, “Sorry!” as he goes. His shoes squeak against the polished floor as he rounds the corner of the stairwell. He practically jumps down the last few steps to reach the ground floor.

“Whoa!” the Judge says with his hands raised to the level of his shoulders.

Apollo bites back a swear and swerves around him at the last minute. “Gosh! Sorry, your Honor!” 

The Judge chuckles as he darts by. “In a hurry to check on your dads, are you, Mr. Justice?”

“Wh—” The Judge’s lackadaisical attitude startles Apollo into momentarily stopping. “Are you not worried? But what about the trial?” 

“When you reach my age, Mr. Justice, there’s nothing you haven’t seen.”

Apollo gives him a weird look, but smiles a little. There’s not a lot he can argue with there. The worry and concern knot itself tighter in his chest as he waves to the Judge and the Judge waves back before he turns around. 

He has grown very, very familiar with where Defense Lobby #2 is. 

Heedlessly, he throws the door open. “Dad! The defendant—”

“—Apollo Justice Edgeworth-Wright, what did we say about running in the courthouse?”

Apollo comes to an abrupt halt and hisses in through his teeth. 

Immediately, Miles takes hold of his chin and turns him around. With his thumb, he presses into the chocolate Apollo had hastily tried to wipe off. “And how did you get this?” he rumbles. Apollo squeezes his eyes shut.

“Mr. Gumshoe gave me half of a Swiss roll.”

“Just half?”

“He said he could only afford one.”

“Ah.”

The instant Apollo is free from the cheek-scrubbing, he spins around. His eyes land on Phoenix, kneeling a short distance away, further into the lobby. “Oh! Right! Dad! The defendant that ran away—”

“—The police are still searching, kiddo.” 

Apollo’s eyes drift down to the suspiciously familiar red top hat he can spy behind Phoenix. It’s the same color as the defendant’s that disappeared; Apollo’s stomach swims uncomfortably as he lifts a finger. “Uh… Dad…? There’s someone behind you…”

“Polly!” Phoenix announces and clasps a hand on his shoulder. His bright smile could light up the entire city. “Meet your new sister!”

“S-sister…?”

And then and for the very first time, Apollo locks eyes with those of a bright, curious girl at the courthouse.  

Her name is Trucy.