Simon visits Aura on the fourth of January, days before her official court date, and for a very long moment, they simply sit and stare at each other through the plexiglass window. Ask me why, Simon, Aura's expression is daring him, and he knows well enough to know that if he does, she'll leap on him and lambaste him for his foolishness. The two of them have suffered these seven years, and Aura with a deepness and intensity that had always privately pained him.
What is there to say, really? He is free in part because she had taken a drastic course of action. It could have led to disaster, but in the end, it put their ghosts to rest. Doubting her intention to do exactly as she'd said she would with the hostages would be to doubt her dedication. She may have never taken to their parents' ideals in full, but she has her own form of it, and talking about it would likely result in the conversation ending prematurely.
That's not what he's here for. He's seated in the draftiest visitation room in the prison complex, suffering through their awkward silence-the truth hanging between them that they have forgotten how to talk to each other-for a reason.
"Aura," Simon starts, and her mouth quirks. She always did know how to summon a sneer when it was most unnecessary. He sighs, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. "Fine. Be that way."
"You're a fool, Simon Blackquill." His sister is altogether too serious when she says it.
Simon inclines his head. That, at least, is something he can agree with. "Yes."
"What, not going to argue?" She raises an eyebrow.
"It'd be even more foolish to argue with an eminently correct statement."
Aura looks at him, really looks at him, tracing the lines of his face and the look in his eyes. She's always known, perhaps better than anyone else currently living, where to look to find the truth of him. "Something's eating you."
"Has the Wright Anything Agency come by to visit yet?" Simon asks instead of elaborating. She would not be pleased to hear what he has to say on the subject of what's eating him, as she put it, and they both know it. Coming back into the prison complex, even simply to visit Aura, has him on edge—not because of the prisoners or Dope Gumshoe waiting in the room beyond, trying very hard to pretend that the walls are not especially thin, but because of the guards. They remember him.
It's... tiresome.
Aura leans back in her seat, mirroring him as she crosses her arms, and absurdly, Simon thinks that if Athena were to be bearing witness to this, she would find humor in that. "Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. What's eating you?"
"Just the one burning question." Two can play at this game.
She tilts her head to the side. "I don't buy it, samurai boy."
"Do you really want to know?" Simon asks, leaning forward and meeting her gaze. Intimidation tactics never have and never will work on Aura Blackquill, but he'll be damned if he tells her that every day with Athena feels more natural than the last, and it's starting to scare him.
Even the thought of moving out, which the two of them had tentatively bandied about in December, seems to be a distant impossibility: apartments near work are at a premium, costing something hefty and unreasonable even with his built-up stipend, he does not fancy the process of finding a roommate to splint the rent with, Athena's apartment suits him and Taka perfectly well, not to mention that Athena seems, between her loud outbursts at his needling and their considerably more subdued evenings, to remain fond of him... and he of her.
Which was something he'd never dreamed would remain true, or have any inkling of a deeper truth. Not in a million years. Not while Metis lived, and not while his thoughts lingered on Athena as he sat in his cell, hoping, praying she was rebuilding her life—that she was happy—that she'd forget all about the terrible events of the past, and grow into someone strong enough to withstand life's storms.
Granted, he did think he was going to be dead before he ever had the chance to see her again.
But then. But then she'd shown up in court, opposite him, her eyes brilliant and blazing, and somehow, even though the vast majority of the time he was winning, he knew deep inside he was fighting a losing battle. Athena has her issues, obviously, a fair chunk of them caused not just by the terrible events of UR-1 but the first trial, when she'd tried so desperately on the witness stand to tell everyone that his heart was speaking the truth, when he'd had to turn away from her to continue selling his charade. She does poorly when under fire—something more than a few people, including, unfortunately, himself, catch onto and pick on—but much like her mentor, she rises from the ashes.
Every time. Simon would have to be blind not to see it, and blinder still not to admire it, even if he does think that all the chaff and hand-wringing that comes with it is rather ridiculous and occasionally nerve-wracking. He will, of course, never admit it. Especially not to Athena.
"No," Aura says. "Tell me anyways."
Simon raises an eyebrow. "You're being awfully persistent."
"And when have I ever not been?" she asks.
He tilts his head. "Oh, I can think of a few instances..."
"Enough, Simon. I'm not going to ask again."
His eyes drift to the floor. It is a choice between telling her and the door, and things may be what they may, but she is still Aura and he is still Simon, and they, together, are making the choice to reforge the blade that was broken. The silence feels manifold, feels weighty, and he takes in a small breath. His heart pounds for no good reason. "Athena is very important to me."
Aura stills.
"I knew that," she says, casually, after a moment that is entirely too long to pass as casual in any shape or form. "You didn't need to tell me something the world already knows—"
"Aura." Simon barely recognizes his own voice. He barely recognizes himself, a free man, still operating under archaic strictures begun first as an homage to filial piety and then as a reason unto itself.
Her shoulders sag, and he hates to see it, hates to see the way she looks away from him. When she speaks, her voice is bitter. "What do you want me to say?"
I know she didn't mean to, he hears in the words she isn't saying, but the girl took Metis from me, and even if she's innocent, I'm not kind enough to forgive her for it. Do you want me to look on her with kindness, Simon? Is that what you want? Is that why you're here?
"Say whatever," Simon says, and it might sound cold to an outsider. "You asked. I told you."
"Dammit, Simon."
He looks to the side. "I'm not going to apologize. Nor am I going to ask you to do anything, or behave differently. Your choices are your own."
"But you want me to choose." The look on her face could melt steel beams. It probably already has, somewhere.
"Would you believe me," Simon asks, more rhetorically than not, tipping his chair on its hind legs and looking up at the ceiling, "if I told you I didn't?"
"I wouldn't," she says, flatly.
They will do it the hard way, then.
"I understand that you have mourned Cykes-dono these past seven years. I know you took the hostages to have me exonerated. And I know that my conviction caused you to lose faith in not only the legal system, but Athena's importance—"
"—Because she is not as important as you are! You were innocent and she didn't know the difference between a woman and a robot!" Aura bursts out, slamming her fists on the desk and leaning as far as the plexiglass will allow. "Damn it all, Simon, you were going to throw your life away over a reclusive eleven-year-old—"
"—And what else, exactly, would you have had me do?!" he shouts back, chair thumping back onto the ground, temper spiking despite himself. The guards look on warily. "She's Metis's girl, Aura, and she had no way of understanding what was happening precisely because her condition—which you were helping Metis research!—kept her from the outside world! Have you forgotten—?!"
Aura looks like she's about to slap him. He's sure if she could reach through the glass, she would. "I haven't forgotten a single thing about Metis since the day she died, Simon. I remember everything. The way she laughed—the way she breathed—"
She breaks off when her voice hitches, and she turns her face from him, hiding her eyes with her hand.
He breathes, in and out, very carefully, closing his eyes. When he thinks he trusts himself enough again, he speaks. "Whatever you have to say to Athena is yours. Obviously I would protect her from any harm I can imagine—but she... she is... an adult. She can take care of herself. And her will is strong."
"Are you telling me," Aura says quietly, pointedly, "or are you convincing yourself?"
"You witnessed that will of hers for yourself." Of course he's at least partially trying to convince himself. But Aura doesn't need to hear him say that, so he won't, because very few things truly belong to him after all this time and he finally has the luxury of keeping them to himself.
His sister watches him with eyes that are far too tired. He does not know her with her hair down. "She isn't just important to you. You'd do it all over again in a heartbeat if it meant her freedom."
"Yes." He hesitates. "But, Aura—" I won't let it happen again.
"Bah, enough." Aura waves her hand and flops down into her seat, resting her arms on it as if she belongs there.
They fall silent. It lingers.
Simon's eyes eventually drift to the cracks in the concrete floor, which are different on this side of the glass, and he busies himself tracking the crevices—there is a dent in the wall that looks like someone once broke it in anger, dirt in the corners, scrubbed edges where someone has gone to great effort to make things look cleaner than they are.
"Well," Aura says eventually, "if the little princess is so important to you, what are you still doing here?"
"Pardon?" Simon peers up through his fringe and catches a glimpse of something nearly fond on her face, a split second before she pins him with that familiar caustic smirk. He did take many of his cues from her, he remembers now. They laugh the same way, fight the same way, take their coffee the same way. When he was a boy and Aura was finishing high school, he'd follow her everywhere he could; she had complained to no end, but he was never sent away. In a similar vein, he'd eventually followed her to the Space Center and its accompanying personnel.
It says something, he supposes, that throughout his time in prison, she never did stop visiting.
Aura rolls her eyes at him. "Brat. It's not like you to keep someone waiting."
Go away already, she might've said if she was well and truly sick of his company, like the few times he'd poked and prodded at her robotics setup in her room enough to incite her true ire. But she hasn't, and Simon suspects this is the kindest dismissal he'll receive, so he stands and gives her a low bow.
"Idiot. You know our parents didn't mean for you to take the samurai schtick as far as you did."
Simon rolls his shoulders and shrugs in response. "They will be in attendance at your trial, so I suspect you will have time to inform them of your opinions on that yourself."
"They'll what?!" she squawks, rocketing out of her chair, eyes wide for the first time since he walked through the door. "Simon! They're coming into town?"
He bows his head. "Indeed. I figured we both ought to prepare ourselves for the oncoming storm—I would have told you sooner, but I only heard of their travel itinerary from the Wright Anything Agency. Apparently, they contacted Wright-dono the same day I did—on your behalf."
"So that's why you made such a fuss about seeing me."
"No, that's not why." Simon pauses at her suspicious-yet-expectant expression and smirks right when she looks ready to hurry him up. "Taka insisted on a change of scenery. He has been an honorable friend and a worthy warrior at my side—"
"Enough," she groans, standing and walking away from the window without another word.
There are still more cracks and hollow ravines between them than not, but they have taken the first step, and ended the visit on a good note. As Simon steps out the gate of the prison complex, he breathes in. Then out.
There is time, he reminds himself. This will take time.
"Hey, Simon," Athena says out of the blue the night of January 7th, pensively staring into her case files, which are spread out across the kitchen table with far too much mess and far too little organization. Simon is heating some water in a kettle, leaning on the counter with some impatience. He glances over at her. She's running her fingers through her hair, a motion he's learned is only half-conscious and usually indicates she's either embarrassed or she's letting her guard down, and he thinks it may have grown longer since the first time he saw her again.
Simon tilts his head. "Do you require something?"
"Kind of." Her eyes flick to his and her brows furrow. "You don't have to answer."
"But whatever it is, you think it'd be helpful."
Athena frowns. "At the very least, I might be able to figure a few things out. Is that okay?"
"I am a prosecutor, and personally connected to the case," he reminds her, turning around and crossing his arms. For a moment he's bewildered by the way she tenses up, then—ah, yes. We usually assume these positions in court.
Well.
She'll have to get used to it being the norm again soon enough.
He keeps on, resting his elbows against the counter. It only feels slightly ridiculous, which he'll count as a win. "So. How may I illuminate your enfeebled mind, Cykes-dono?"
"Simon," she complains, face scrunching, and he doesn't bother to hide the smirk on his face. "Okay. Sure. Here goes. Before... everything, was there any record in your family of a mental health diagnosis? Like—depression, or anxiety, or—"
"I know what a mental health diagnosis is, Athena." Simon wishes he had one of Taka's feathers on hand to chew on as he considers how best to approach the answer; while she looks a tad nervous, there's more relief in her than fear. Relief that he didn't take the question the wrong way? He isn't sure there is a right way to take that question. "As it happens... no. My parents are—" he definitely notices the widening of her eyes at that, "—not the most friendly toward such practices, unless something has changed since I last saw them."
They are older now, Simon realizes. When he sees them again, because there is no earthly way in which he can avoid them and not be in more trouble than he already is, their faces will be lined with age, even if his father still dyes his hair to match Aura's and their mother's. The Blackquill family, before UR-1, had not kept apart out of a lack of love. It was just... like him, he supposes, uncomfortably aware of himself for a moment. He speaks less in words and more through actions. Thus also with his honored mother and father.
Athena deflates. "See, that's something that frustrates me. Not your parents specifically, Simon, but if everyone were accepting, there'd be a greater likelihood that the people who need help the most could get to it..."
"Maybe so, maybe not. Not everyone who needs help seeks it even when the path is available to them." He rubs his chin, thinking for the first time in a week and a half about the personalities he encountered during his time behind bars. There had been several inmates who, had they had a chance to be diagnosed, would have then been able to receive the proper care and consideration needed to prop them up to one day walk on their own two feet again. One older man had looked at him with haunted eyes in the exercise yard—he'd been one of the few to talk to Simon after the show he'd put on the first few months, and to this day, Simon doesn't know exactly what his story had been.
Only that his name was Rasa, he had a well-trimmed beard, and he'd given Simon simple conversation in small moments, showing consideration for a man trying to paint himself as a monster as quickly and effectively as he possibly could.
There is no tabula rasa, Blackquill, Rasa had said in the exercise yard. The prison P.E. jumpsuit had been baggy on his frame, making him look thinner than he truly was. I read a bit about psychology, back in the day. The person before this—he'd gestured to the yard, the prison, the high-security cameras—was not a blank slate, and the person during this is not, and the person after this won't be, either. All of this exists to press us down. But no matter how we pass through life, every stage of it changes us. We cannot return to who we were.
It'll be true for you, too.
He had been unnerved, then, and too young to hide it quite so well as he can now. If he remembers correctly—which he thinks he does, given that the memories are not altogether unrecent—he had snapped something along the lines of perhaps you assume too much, old man, a weak comeback. Those days had depended on selling the lie: fail at any juncture, and Metis's treasure might have been lost to him, despite everything.
"Simon?"
In the present, alive and perhaps not well, but something approaching it, Athena is peering at him with concern in her gaze—not worry, not exactly, but visibly enough to make him uncomfortable.
"Are you thinking of pursuing the path of mental incompetency as a defensive strategy?" he asks instead, to distract himself, and tilts his head. "You should know that those are shaky enough grounds—"
"I'm co-counsel, and psychology is my specialty," she interrupts before he gets going. It's ruthless, but more than that, it's unthinkingly ruthless, a rarity for Athena. He pauses, unperturbed, and lets her get her thoughts together. "At any rate—no, not now that you said that, and not in the way you said it either. I was just... thinking. About the time before. Even when Aura was happy, she was scared."
Simon stares despite himself, despite knowing Athena's sensitive hearing in and out. "Elaborate."
"Aura didn't like me very much, even then," Athena says, running her hand through her ponytail with a little more force, her eyes distant. Part of him wants to protest—that wasn't exactly true, she was Metis's child, and Aura loved Metis—but the rest of him remembers his visit to the prison complex a few days previous, and he keeps his mouth shut. "I mostly kept out of her way, especially when she and Mom were working, but... I could hear her heart the few times I hung around. There was always a thread of discord underneath everything. Like she thought the bottom was going to fall out from under her at any moment, and nothing terrified her more."
He is silent as he processes the information. If they were in court, with its heightened stakes and its emotional highs and lows, the thought might've been something he would take to poorly; as it stands, in Athena's apartment with the kettle beginning to whistle and the only stakes are over who gets to watch which show at which time, all he can think is: I didn't know.
Athena flinches. "You didn't—?"
She heard.
"Aura keeps her cards close to her chest," Simon tells her, and when that doesn't wipe the miserably guilty look off of Athena's face, he switches the kettle off and goes to her, sinking to his knees to meet her at eye-level where she sits. "Athena. You must never apologize for your abilities. You are..." marvelous, he thinks, inimitable, you were making Metis proud from the moment you were born, she told me so, "...the inheritor of a gift. One that let you see to the heart of our own tragedy, and untangle it when all seemed lost."
"That was mostly Mr. Wright," she points out. Her voice is soft. Neither of them are especially soft people, on the surface.
Simon reaches out and clasps her hand in his, stilling the steady rhythm of her fingers through the strands of silken red hair, and he knows he doesn't imagine the way she swallows. "You're a psychologist," he admonishes, voice coming out gentle despite himself. "Neither he nor Justice would have figured it out without your analytical aid, Athena. Your abilities and the tools that help you make use of them were instrumental in convicting the Phantom."
"I-I guess that's true," Athena says, visible discomfort and embarrassment turning her face a deep shade of pink. She's left Widget in her bedroom, maybe to keep it from shouting out her thoughts at inopportune times, maybe to avoid her train of thought being derailed. Maybe the two are one and the same.
He takes in a breath, for a moment floundering, caught between moving closer and moving away, and then he remembers the tea he was going to make. Withdrawing slowly, setting her hand on her lap, he says as he stands, "All of that said, the chances of Aura consenting to a therapy session—"
"—are nil, especially if I'm the one giving it," Athena says with a dryness she doesn't often display. "Zip. Zilch. Nada. She'd rather accept harsh penalties."
Simon snorts. "Yes."
"Hey, since you're making tea, could you make me some too?" she asks, hopefully, but if she's trying to give him a wide-eyed, innocent stare, it isn't working, because he's already busily taking the kettle off the burner and pouring it into a cup. A single cup. With his preferred blend and nothing else.
One, two, three...
"Simon! C'mon!"
His shoulders are shaking in silent laughter when, suddenly, her arms snake around his sides to trap him in a vise grip. Her heartbeat is somewhere between his shoulderblades and mid-back; her hands meet in the middle of his chest, scrunching firmly into the rough fabric of his turtleneck sweater. He balks. "Athena—?! Unhand me!"
"You know, Simon, if I really wanted to, I could suplex you," she says, sweetly, and unaccountably, he can feel his own heart speed up.
To cover it, he sets the cup down on the counter and turns his face to look at her the best he can. Both his hair and her ponytail make it terribly difficult to see anything but one bright, mischievous blue eye, meeting his without fear. "Impossible."
"I did it to Apollo when we first met," she sing-songs, glee in her voice, and exactly no part of him doubts that. "So, you know, it's in your best interests to make me some tea, too. I don't think you want to spend the rest of the night with a bruise on your back from being hurled to the floor."
"Is that a threat, Cykes-dono?" he asks, voice low.
Athena chuckles nervously, noticing the tension in his shoulders, the stillness of his frame. "A-huh-huh-huh... m-maybe...?"
"Then perhaps," he says, a wild grin growing on his face, finish what you start, Athena, "you ought to have considered the fact that I still have use of my arms—an elementary mistake, spring chickling—"
"Did you just call me a spring chickling?" she yelps, and her distraction affords him all the time he needs: he turns in her grip and hefts her over his shoulder, moving forward in the same motion so she doesn't hit her head. She squawks angrily, sounding like Taka, and Simon, striding into the other room with his burden pounding her rather strong fists on his back, throws his head back and laughs.
...At least, until she swings herself around his neck and brings them both crashing to the ground halfway to the couch, ending up on top of him somewhere in their tangle of limbs, pinning his wrists to the floor. "Surrender," she says, a grin not unlike his own on her face, and it only widens when he tests his constraints and finds that her strength does, indeed, hold, despite his best efforts. Somehow, like this, the faint scars from his manacles don't bother him as much.
He meets her eyes, a slow, lazy smile on his face. His heart flutters in his chest, lighter than it has been in eons, at the heat in her gaze. "Alright," he says, softly, laid out on the floor like she said she would be, only she's stretched across him to keep him there and the bruise is probably blossoming somewhere near his shoulderblades. "I yield, princess."
"Athena," she demands. I have a name, I own it now, you'd better use it—
Simon inclines his head as best he can. "Athena."
"So, tea?" she asks, hopeful.
His head thuds onto the floor, only barely cushioned by his thick hair and the ponytail keeping it bound in some semblance of order. "Only you," he grumbles, somewhere between breathlessness and the sensation of being laid flat on a spiritual level. Her grip slackens; he takes the opportunity to free himself and wrap his arms around her, bringing her head down to the crook of his neck, his nose nudging the juncture between her jaw and her ear. She shivers at the puff of breath he lets out, at the way his lips graze the skin of her neck when he speaks. "Don't you have a case to be preparing for?"
"Don't you?" she shoots back. He'd been assigned one just the other day after wrapping up the one from the first week, coincidentally in a manner that would prevent him from observing Aura's trial, and Edgeworth-dono had given him a rather bulky paper dossier to take home—though I would recommend acquiring a smartphone soon, Blackquill. I suspect you'll find the features they have to offer quite useful—that he had thumbed through the moment he'd arrived back at Athena's apartment... yesterday.
"Unlike some fools I could name, I'm in the habit of being prepared well before trial time."
"As it so happens, mister, I was just wrapping up. This trial matters to me, too," she says. "She was trying to save you. Even though she went too far, she was still trying to save you."
I was trying to save you, too, she very carefully does not say. I would do for you what you did for me.
Simon holds her closer, listens to the sound of their hearts beating. He closes his eyes. We are, the three of us, far more unreasonable than we like to pretend we are. "Just these last few days, and we will be on our way to spring blossoming once more."
"Simon?"
He says nothing. He doesn't know how to put it in words in a way that won't leave him stripped bare and vulnerable, and the world may be slowly stumbling back into something resembling a pace and a movement, but even with the fire simmering between them, he knows neither of them are ready yet. Athena, though, seems to understand what his heart is murmuring, because she sighs after a second and wriggles an arm out of his embrace to reach up and run her fingers through his hair.
"We made it," she reminds him. "We'll make it again. You'll see."
They stay there on the floor, half of them on the living room carpet and the other half on the linoleum tiles in the kitchen, for a very long time.
This is quickly becoming a big project and the next few scenes have no good cutoff point, so here's a shorter bridge chapter with two long scenes. More to come; feedback appreciated!
On characterization-I think when their lives even out and they gain a sense of stability, Simon and Athena would probably grow more comfortable with taking the piss as part of the ebb and flow of their relationship. Given that these are early days after Turnabout for Tomorrow, though, and particulars like the exact length of Aura's sentence are still somewhat up in the air, I think they're both being very careful with each other. Neither wants to upset the balance or for the other to think that all that's happened between them somehow doesn't matter. (Naturally, this doesn't mean they're exactly on eggshells, either-it just takes time to create a new dynamic from something that burnt to the ground, and as psychology specialists, they're both keenly aware of that.)