Simon Blackquill walks free on December 21, 2027, and feels his mind bleeding at the edges in the face of a future he had never thought he would see.
Athena holds him close, in the lobby, his jacket clenched in her fists. She buries her head in the crook of his neck.
"Just barely," she says for everyone to hear. The way her fingers are shaking is only meant for him. "But I still made it."
Simon looks to the side, to the closed doors of the ruined courtroom, away from everyone, knowing she can hear the words of his heart but remembering (as if awakening to old memories of a life he hardly knew) that with Athena, actions are everything. Tentatively, unused to touch and so uncomfortable with the eyes of others on him that the tiniest part of him wants to drop everything and escape immediately, he wraps an arm around her in return. Her tears come a little faster, but Widget beeps out something happy-sounding that he barely hears above the beating of his heart.
It's enough.
"Yes," he tells her, something shellshocked in his voice that he knows everyone can hear, even as they hover between politely moving away and watching on in support of the girl he very nearly gave his life to save. The wildness of it all is still so new, and there are witnesses, and he has so many things to say to her that he doesn't know where to begin.
Athena. His lifeline.
After everything, he's done it. He's protected her, lived to see the evening of a day that had loomed so long in his memory, brought the man who had killed Metis to justice.
But he could not have swung his sword even half as effectively if it had not been for her unrelenting faith in him, however misguided, after all these long years.
He tries for humor: "I survived by the skin of my teeth, thanks to you."
It comes out too somber. He has forgotten how to blunt the edge of his blade, so long he has had need of it in its sharpest form, and he starts to kick himself when she sobs more. "Shame on you," she's blubbering, "Simon, for trying to throw your life away—"
That notion will simply not stand. Simon snakes his other arm around her and holds her tighter when she knocks one of her fists against his back and hopes she has it in her to listen to his heart right now, because he will never be able to fully explain what he means in words, masterful manipulator or no.
"It was never my intention," he says slowly, haltingly, a man who has not been honest in far too long finding his feet again, "to throw my life away. But some things in this world are more important than your own life."
"Oh," Athena whispers after a moment, registering, finally, the careful tension in his arms, the slight shake to them, the way he's half in pieces just like she is. But she is both the girl-that-was and the girl-that-is: her dewy eyes, red with tears, flash up to meet his in challenge. She doesn't relinquish her grip on him, only moving enough to look him in the eye, and the part of him capable of rational thought seems to have taken an absence of leave, because an incurable rush of fondness for the woman she has become sweeps through him at the determination on her face. A therapy session, Prosecutor Blackquill, mayhaps, or a little show for the people around them, or maybe she just wants to hear him say it. "Like what?"
At any other time, he might've teased her for it; badgered her into thinking out her own logic trails, forced her to connect the dots. As it is now, his sense of mischief has deserted him. The only real things in the world are the way her hands clench and unclench as they linger on his person; her eyes, clear and strong; the urgent truth written clear on both his heart and his mind. He sets his hands on her shoulders and meets her gaze. "My honor-bound duty to protect my mentor's most beloved treasure."
Her fingers twitch before she lets them fall to her sides. She smiles, something fractured lingering at the edges, lurking under the surface, but overall... whole. And, for the moment, intensely warm. "Thank you. Simon."
They have more to say to each other, but it will wait.
For now—
"Hey, I know how we should celebrate!" Athena yells at her coworkers, who have gracefully moved to the other side of the lobby. She slips her hand into his and refuses to let go, even when he gives a light, experimental tug. Simon subsides with a snort and the world feels a little less like it's tilting on its axis as Taka fluffs his feathers a bit.
Another day, he'll give her a hard time about it. When time itself isn't busily opening up a yawning portal in front of him, exposing him to a wide horizon he'd never dared to hope he would one day see.
Another day.
He says it to himself both when the Wright Anything Agency runs about the precinct retrieving all the friends and allies they seem to have made within a ten-year period and when night has fallen, Athena glued to his side somewhere in the middle of the long table they've pulled together using far too many picnic tables for the food park their large group migrates to, chattering up a storm and somehow acting as if taking him back with her to her apartment was something he ought to have just assumed was going to happen.
Whether or not he's actually going to get around to giving her a hard time over that one particular moment gets lost in the details. Simon breathes for the first time in seven years.
And, naturally, in the courtroom lobby, with Athena pulling him toward her coworkers, he's got to do something to regain equilibrium.
Phoenix Wright's expression when Simon counts himself in on Apollo's offer of noodles on Mr. Wright's tab—and the doubly-pained look he gets when Trucy Wright suggests extending an invitation to everyone—is all but priceless.
It's just a coincidence. Really.
My apologies, Wright-dono, he thinks, not all that convincingly, not even to himself.
The holidays still exist. Simon finds himself absurdly baffled, more than anything else, at the way the world outside has lit itself up in cheer; less so at the way Athena's fingers often find a way to lace themselves through with his, the little rituals they develop to convince themselves and each other that they are still real. After the first night, where the celebration drags on into the early hours of the morning and everyone only very begrudgingly drifts off to return to their daily lives (and the sleep that requires), Athena mellows out when they are lingering in her apartment.
Simon has always preferred his personal space, but when it comes to Athena, and the newness of being near her in those private hours before going out to face the waking world, he finds himself... accepting. Especially as Taka has deemed Athena's apartment fit for habitation, and occasionally lets slip the fact that he is terribly fond of Athena—who, two days into their stay, absentmindedly hands the bird a small strip of raw meat as cooks them both dinner. She is telling Simon all about Trucy Wright's latest antics, and she seems to have completely missed the adoration in Taka's gaze at the casual gesture.
Time goes on, Simon tells himself. Life goes on.
Athena is not as subtle about watching him as she thinks she is.
He wonders, for a bit, if he should get her anything for the holidays. The Wright Anything Agency has a tradition of celebrating Christmas Day and exchanging small gifts, but the Prosecutor's Office does too, and he finds himself unsure of how to go about purchasing a gift and getting it to her two days before Christmas short of going outdoors, to a physical store, in which case he might as well just go to the party at the Prosecutor's office and wait until online shipping schedules resemble something reasonable again. Simon only learns that these parties are one and the same when he voices the dilemma to Athena, who, hands on her hips, informs him that Edgeworth-dono always ends up at the Agency by the end of the night, anyways, and so does Prosecutor Gavin and Investigator Skye, and—
"Are you saying," Simon interrupts, dryly, sat quite comfortably on her couch in her living room with the background noise of some baking show she enjoys providing a backdrop for their conversation, "that I ought to go because the entire Prosecutor's Office has a collective attachment to Wright-dono and cannot keep their noses out of his business?"
Athena huffs, Widget flickering between red and yellow—a bit of offense, a bit of amusement—until it settles on an orange that matches her hair. She crosses her arms. "I mean, you didn't have to put it like that."
"I dislike crowds."
"You don't have to go."
But if you did, it'd be a relief! Widget chirps in, and, face flaming, Athena claps her hands over it. Through the laced gap in her fingers, it's turned a steady pink.
Simon meets her eyes, slowly, gives her time to change the subject. She doesn't, only watches him just as intently as he's watching her. "And why might that be, I wonder?"
"I like having you around," Athena answers honestly. The intensity of her gaze never wavers. That their victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat has, it seems, inspired her to dispense with pleasantries and half-truths. "And I hope that reintroducing you to people in a controlled situation with known variables, where you can leave if you need to, will help you do what you need to do. You haven't gone outside at all."
"I interact with plenty of unknown variables in the courtroom." If he's honest, he doesn't really need to be fighting her on this. She's right. But something in him does need to voice his hesitations. At the same time as he craves his schedule being set for him, as it had been in prison, as it had been with Metis, having his freedom after so long has made him into something that desires an unfettered existence just enough to chafe at any suggestion of being controlled. Fool Bright—or, rather, the Phantom—had done enough of that for him, and the memory of electricity coursing through his veins, he can admit to himself, makes his fists clench a little tighter when he thinks of it.
Athena sighs, shrugs, flops on the couch and edges closer to him. Her hair spills over his dark turtleneck sweater when he pulls her closer and rests his arm on her shoulders, bright fire on a canvas of black, and Taka hops away from her with a disgruntled squawk. She glances up. "Oh—sorry, Taka! You can mess with my hair if you want—"
Taka makes a noise almost like a preet and instead opts to settle on Simon's other shoulder, giving them both a gimlet eye. He lets out a low bark of laughter and reaches up to give his bird a scritch.
"Anyways. I won't force you, Simon. If you need to take things slowly, you need to take things slowly." Her smile is serious, but achingly genuine. "I'm here for you, whatever you need that to look like."
Yes, but what about what you need it to look like? Simon thinks, thinks of saying, but the careful set of her jaw at the shift in his expression tells him that if they're going to have that conversation in any sort of productive manner, it will have to happen later. This new life is still too raw for the both of them—his are just the most evident issues to be addressed. Relationships have a push and a pull, he well knows, and for all the vibrancy she has kindled in herself, much of what goes on underneath her surface is carefully-guarded and apportioned to very few.
Before the Wright Anything Agency, "very few" had been two people: Juniper Woods and himself.
He's willing to wager that number has only barely crept up to include Wright-dono and Justice, and only after the tumultuous events of their trial.
"I'll think about it," he says instead, pretending not to notice the way the line of her shoulders relaxes under his arm.
This does not mean Simon forgets about it.
One time, between Christmas and the new year, in the dead of night, both of them having given up on sleep:
The kitchen table is cool under his bare elbows. His guilt bears in on him, hot and crushing. "I am... I apologize, Athena."
"What for?" She's staring listlessly at the light from the brewing coffee pot, the only bright thing in the darkness, but at his words she glances at him a shade too quickly to be casual. He's apologized multiple times already for multiple things—too many times, she's said—but even so.
Guilt is a difficult beast. Part of him wonders if he will ever fully slay it.
"I tried to drive you away." I thought you would bring yourself to your own doom, after everything I sacrificed to keep you safe, and I do not regret the sacrifice, but the fear lingers in me. I certainly did not think you were cut out for the lawyer business when we first reunited.
"You were a huge jerk, yeah. Sometimes you made me miserable. In court especially."
He flinches despite himself. He had seen the need for it, to be ruthless and relentless even if she could not see for herself why he was doing what he was doing, and he had no possible way to know how things would eventually turn out. Even so, the verbal confirmation of something they both already know stings.
Athena reaches out. Her hand rests on his, light but warm. "But I hope," she says, somber, "I was able to show you what I'm capable of now, despite that. I'm not alone any more, Simon."
The only thing to light his face is the coffee pot, and it's not very good at that. Simon looks away anyways. Athena has grown beyond comprehension, and not just since she was a child seven years ago, walking around in his shadow.
"You've more than proven your capabilities," he mumbles. You lack only sustained self-belief, which, for you, may only be brought about by time. And a chance to finally heal.
"What?" she asks, a cat's grin on her face, leaning in a little closer. His heart, completely without permission, skips a beat. "What did you say?"
Simon clears his throat. "I said, I believe the coffee is ready."
"Oh, you're right!" Athena feigns surprise, standing up to attend to their drinks, but the smile on her face tells him she's heard the words of his heart loud and clear. The air between them feels less heavy, less laden, and Simon quietly wonders at the difference time has made—how all the old things have become new, taken on different shapes in lighter colors. She hands him a mug printed with a photo of her and her aunt and uncle on it; he turns it, carefully examining what little he can in the early morning darkness. He has missed seven years of her life, after all.
They end up sitting together on her couch, watching old Steel Samurai runs he'd never gotten to see, and the way the dawn filters in from the glass door to her balcony feels like a gift.
Court returns to session on the first of January—crime does not stop for the celebration of the new year, after all—and so, too, do Athena and Simon return to work. He feels rather numb about the prospect of returning to normal life, but the lunch he and Athena had prepped together dangles loosely from his fingers, and the stiff winter breeze feels nearly bracing enough for him to take on the mantle of the Twisted Samurai once again.
Her fingers brush against his. "Hey."
Simon inclines his head in her direction, distracted from his own musings. She still looks sleepy, but the thermos of coffee clutched in her hand will chase that away soon enough.
"I'll see you later. Have a good day, okay?"
"Doubtful," he mutters, thinking of the case files Edgeworth-dono had sent him the previous evening, but Athena's fierce grin makes him want to bend. "Athena."
She tilts her head. "Yeah?"
"If we meet in court, I will not go easy on you." This goes beyond their past: just because the stakes are lower now doesn't mean he's going to let up. To practice his profession honorably is to give it his all.
"I wouldn't expect anything less," she says, the grin morphing into a confident smirk, and she gives him a thumbs up. "Don't worry about me, Simon! You and I both know that in court, getting to the truth takes total dedication. I care about that as much as you do!"
On a whim, he gives her that same sly smile she's had to face multiple times and watches the slight widening of her eyes with care. "Oh, did you mistake my meaning? Be careful not to let that resolve of yours waver, Cykes-dono, lest your blade bend like a reed in the winds."
"Just watch me, Prosecutor Blackquill. I'll show you how brightly my resolve burns!" She nearly shouts the last part, clearly excited by the prospect, drawing glances from a few passerby. They duck their heads at the happiness writ across her face, and no wonder.
Even under duress, Athena's brilliance reverberated like the moon on a clear night, steady and unyielding. Now, the greatest weight lifted off them both, her full radiance shines in her very being, a sun unto itself.
There is very little he would not trade for that smile to remain upon her face.
I have been thinking about these two for LITERAL YEARS and I wrote this in three hours that seem like a haze the more I think about them. In this fic: introspection, the aftermath of trauma, and the world outside the tunnel. Enjoy, there's certainly more to come.
