Notes: Crossposted on AO3 under the user name thelightninginme. As always, THANK YOU for reading!
"Does your father need to be concerned about all of these flowers?"
Trucy pauses in her task of packing her bag and whirls to face him, grinning, still flush with the triumph of another perfect show. "No, Daddy! See, the roses are from Uncle Miles, and the big one is from Prosecutor Gavin, oh, and you'll never guess who those are from."
"Oh?" Phoenix reaches for the tag.
"That's boring, Daddy, you were supposed to guess."
He starts to answer, but reading the name on the tag is like being suddenly doused in a bucket of ice water. Phoenix says nothing; he doesn't even look up at her until he's sure that he has mastered his expression. "From Lamiroir? Wow."
"Yep! Wasn't that nice of her? You remember that case that Apollo and I worked on, right?"
"Yeah."
Trucy ceases the endless flurry of activity, looking from the flowers to Phoenix and back again. "What's wrong with them?" Her expression is suspicious; wriggling out of this one will not be easy.
He sighs. "Nothing, nothing! I just…can't believe I'm being out-famed by my own daughter."
She doesn't look entirely satisfied by this answer, but just as Phoenix has learned that lying to Trucy is nigh-on impossible, she has learned not to doggedly pursue every one of his secrets. She resumes packing up for the night, sighing. "I don't really think you have to worry about that yet. It's just one little show."
"Little?" Phoenix repeats incredulously. There's nothing little about it.
"I think that's everything," Trucy announces, ignoring him and shouldering her bag. "I guess if I forgot anything I can get it tomorrow." She looks around the dressing room one more time, and her gaze falls upon the poster of Troupe Gramarye she has prominently pinned to the wall. "Do you think they're proud of me?" she asks quietly.
Phoenix is at a loss as to how to reply at first. Trucy hardly ever talks like that. Always moving forward, never looking back - what he would have done without her after losing his badge, Phoenix doesn't know. It's a testament to just how badly Mr. Mistree's murder has shaken her, even a month later, and not for the first time, Phoenix kicks himself for not being there. He crosses the room and all but crushes her against his chest. "Of course they're proud. If they're even half as proud as I am, they're so proud they can't even stand it."
Trucy sighs and returns the hug. "Thanks, Daddy." And, a moment later: "You can, uh, let go now."
"Nope," Phoenix answers, only holding her tighter, until she giggles and tries to squirm away.
At the time - was it really only two years ago? - at the time, Phoenix was already keeping mounds upon mounds of secrets from everyone. So when Thalassa said she wasn't ready, Phoenix had merely shrugged and added another secret to his pile. But now, with Apollo on his own, and Trucy not far behind, Phoenix was itching to have this last secret out in the open. Phoenix has been meaning to talk to Thalassa anyway. What with, well, everything that has happened. He's kept her up to relatively up-to-date on what happened in Khura'in, but Phoenix knows that Thalassa is overdue the whole story. It was downright terrifying to finally check his phone after Ahlbi's trial and see, amongst his eight thousand missed calls and texts from Apollo, a few from her.
Those kids are giving him gray hairs.
Trucy's trial must have been scary for Thalassa, too, able to do even less than Phoenix, which was absolutely nothing. He tries to keep that in mind, rather than think about the flowers, as he invites her into the office one morning while Trucy is at school and Athena is out researching a case.
"Apollo really wanted to stay? Will he be all right there by himself?"
Phoenix looks up from his cup of coffee, having finally come to the end of the whole tale, and peers at Thalassa askance. "What? Of course he will. Apollo's a grown person."
She stares down at her own mug, held delicately in her lap. "But he has a life here. A good one." Phoenix doesn't like the way she says that last bit, almost as if it's a question, as if Apollo decided to re-open a law office halfway around the world rather than spend another day in Phoenix's employ.
"Yeah, and he has family in Khura'in. His only family, as far as he knows." Phoenix is thinking of Trucy and Apollo at the bus stop, Trucy hugging him so tight as to knock her hat askance and Apollo resting his forehead against her shoulder, right about the time when Phoenix decided he was the Worst Person Ever.
And Phoenix is thinking about Nahyuta, scrunching every true part of himself into a box and locking it away for the sake of a spoiled kid that would have never guessed at their true connection.
And he's thinking about Maya, who would never let him hear the end of it if he let on how truly proud he was of her and what she has done for the Feys. Maya, who lost family too soon. Maya would be so angry if she knew; at Thalassa and at Phoenix, her willing accomplice.
But a little less willing than he once was. A lot less, actually.
"You think this is my fault," Thalassa says slowly. "You think he would have come back with you if he'd known."
"I mean, it would have factored into his decision, at least somewhat."
Thalassa sets her untouched coffee on the table, having apparently been too polite to refuse it when she walked through the door. "I'm waiting for the right - "
"Yeah, yeah, the right moment, I know. If you ask me, you've missed the right moment. The right moment was before Clay died, when you could have met your son's best friend. The right moment was when Trucy was putting hours upon hours of rehearsal in on top of school, so you could have been there opening night. The right moment was before all of this... This..." He stops and scrubs a hand over his face.
Man, it's been a shitty month.
"Look, if you still aren't ready to be part of their lives, okay, but in that case, I've got to tell them. And you can't...You can't have your cake and eat it, too, Thalassa. You can't just...send my daughter flowers." If he's being honest, that was the final straw.
"Your daughter?" she repeats, a little incredulously. "Mr. Wright, I - " But then she looks around the room, at the magic props that have proliferated on every available surface, at Trucy's math textbook on the coffee table, at the jacket that Apollo always forgets at the office. "Your daughter," she says again, a little softer.
He didn't mean for it to come out as harshly as it did. Phoenix is pretty sure it's bad form to get snippy with the mother of your adopted child. "I'm sorry," he says. "It's been rough lately. In case you somehow failed to notice."
Thalassa doesn't answer for a long moment. "My reasoning must not make sense to you, Mr. Wright. I simply - I never wanted to burden them. I suppose that must be hard to understand."
Phoenix thinks of Apollo in the Hall of Justice, insisting that he is fine, even as he clenches his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. He thinks about Trucy when she was young, crying in her bedroom at night when she thought he wouldn't notice, then cheerfully pouring herself a bowl of cereal in the morning. Once, a long time ago, Maya called to say hello, and to vent to Phoenix about the latest indignities she has suffered at the hands of the snooty elders council. When she asked how he was doing, he demurred, and then went to have dinner with a ticking time bomb.
"No. It's not really that hard to understand." Phoenix swallows the last of his frustration and reaches for the olive branch he has tucked into a book on the coffee table. "I made a copy of this for you."
Thalassa accepts it, a little hesitantly, but her face alights with recognition almost immediately. "Jove," she says, barely above a whisper. "It's so nice…it's so nice to see him again." She studies the photograph for another long moment before tucking it carefully away in her bag. "I think…maybe you're right. I think it's time."
He can practically hear the hallelujah chorus. "Couldn't agree more."
"We'll give Apollo some time. A little time," she corrects herself, "to get settled. And…I'll start to figure out what to say." Phoenix agrees. There are some things you just deserve to hear in person. Not to mention, he's glad to give his poor bank account the chance to recover before he has to buy more plane tickets to Khura'in.
After she has gone, Phoenix dumps Thalassa's untouched coffee down the sink in the kitchenette, marveling at how dead silent the office is. He doesn't think it's ever been this quiet. Maybe back when it was just him and Mia, but even then... He supposes the quiet will become a more frequent occurrence now, what with only one employee and Trucy splitting most of her time between school and rehearsals.
He had not realized how much he had grown to appreciate all the noise until it was gone.
Phoenix retreats to his desk, still a mess after being away, and his gaze falls on a sticky note Athena has left for him. Crap. That client meeting at three o'clock. He'll just make it, and Athena will give him a dirty look when he shows up, but it's a good reminder that there is still plenty of work to be done here at home, too. Phoenix throws on his jacket and lunges for the door. The locket with Trucy's picture nearly comes loose, and he pauses half a beat to tuck it back into place.
Maybe that's the last, little, baby secret he'll keep holding onto. Maybe for the day she heads off to college. He's falling behind on his "acting like a total embarrassment in front of his teenage daughter" quota, after all.