When Trucy comes home to their flat, Phoenix immediately knows there's something weighing on her mind. Despite how good her façade usually is, there are tell-tale signs that, as her father, he can't fail to recognize.

Her feet are dragging a little, the squeezing of her boots sounding off-beat. Her demeanour is less bouncy, less dynamic, more sullen and slower. She doesn't immediately ask how his day has gone and for information on the case. She barely manages to finish eating her afternoon cereals. The last nail in the coffin is the absence of her signature "welcome home, Daddy!" smile.

He's learnt over the years not to let things drag on for too long, so he immediately goes to sit on the opposite side of the kitchen table, almost failing to get her attention to rise up from her bowl.

"Truce, is there something wrong?"

His voice is soft and slow like tea being cold-brewed (imagery he learnt from watching Miles prepare some for Kay and Sebastian). He reaches for her hand, which she doesn't pull away from his grip. Her eyes are filled with confusion rather than the sadness he expected to see in them, taking him a little aback, yet reassuring him at the same time. He's relieved to know she's most likely a teenager navigating a confusing world rather than a sad teenager discovering a depressing world.

"A-ah, it's nothing big, I was just… wondering about something, Daddy."

"And what'd that be?"

Phoenix isn't the most present father Los Angeles has seen, far from it, and he knows Trucy has had problems dealing with an absent father before he accidentally entered the scene. It doesn't prevent him from trying his best, even if he has the suspicion it isn't enough, and guiding his daughter through the most difficult time of someone's life is part of his duty as her sole remaining parent.

It'd seem Trucy is comfortable enough with the idea to let him know about her doubts, since she puts down her spoon, takes off her hat and twists her tongue inside her mouth, clearly thinking of ways to put it into words. After a couple seconds stuck in a silence that is just about to get awkward, she speaks up again, breaking through her hesitation.

"Daddy, what's testosterone again?"

There's doubt in her voice. Uncertainty. She knows what it is, but she's not sure about it anymore. It's odd, considering this is part of her biology lessons.

"It's the masculine hormone." It's also why the Judge is already bald, but he won't comment on that: Trucy really likes Mr Judge. "That's what makes guys guys, remember?"

"Apollo's a boy, right?"

He doesn't like the direction where this is heading.

"Y-yeah. Why're you asking that?"

"I went with Clay to Polly's place earlier to get something back for him. Polly told me it was testosterone."

What? That's… odd.

"He didn't tell you anything else?"

Trucy shakes her head.

"No. All I know is that Clay wouldn't tell me because then Polly would go after him while Polly himself would go hide in a hole if he was 'found out'… That's really all I know."

Oh, so that's why.

He doesn't even have the words to tell her about it. Truth be told, it's because it's not his place to speak on the matter: it'll always be Apollo's. Thing is, he isn't here at the moment, and Trucy's mind won't wait for the day after to ask the questions a teenager will always ask towards the unknown parts of their world; so, needless to say, he's now faced with quite the dilemma.

Does he tell her? That'd clear up her suspicions and make her sleep better at night. At worst, if his explanation isn't good enough, he can always tell her the word and she can look it up on the Internet or speak to her friends about it. On the other hand, shouldn't he let Apollo explain that himself? He'd probably pretty pissed if he learnt his boss spilled the beans to his half-sister. Still, Trucy deserves to know the truth, and she'll be frustrated over it all-night-long if she doesn't have a semblance of an answer… though she could probably find that by her own devices if left unattended. He should be thining of Apollo's mindset, though… It's his secret, after all. What is he meant to do, huh?!

His silence apparently lasts for too long by her standards, because she's soon waving at him.

"Daddy? Is there something wrong with Polly? Please tell me if there is!"

"It's not something wrong per say, albeit I don't know how Apollo feels about it. He'd be able to give you a better answer than I ever could."

"Why does he have to take testosterone, then? Is there something wrong with his hormones? I've heard hormone issues can be bad."

Well, phrased like that, it's not wrong, but…

"If that's what I'm thinking it's about, then he needs it to…" How does he even phrase that? Has Trucy learnt about that in school?

"To?"

"…Trucy, I'm going to tell you something that you may find weird, but it's the truth according to what evidence we've gathered so far."

She goes quiet.

"Apollo is born female," Phoenix says in a trembling voice with a lot of shame on his mind for not finding a better phrasing for a reality whose true nature he ignores, (the phrasing burns his tongue, but he's got no other way to explain it at the moment), "and that's why he needs to take hormones."

The sigh that leaves his chest as soon as he's done replying isn't that of relief: it's that of bitter realizations and shame, of having failed someone he should have been protecting. Trucy, however, doesn't see it in the same way, and decides to kill the awkward silence between them that ensues with small talk and a hyperbolic depiction of her adventure to Polly's flat with Clay.

Did Phoenix know about this before Trucy asked him about hormones? No, he didn't. Apollo is someone who keeps private and professional lives so far away from each other that they're practically the lives of different people. From what he can gather about what she's telling him, there's on one side the Apollo who lives in a shabby rundown apartment that smells like instant noodles and cigarettes, and the Apollo they know, the one who can't stand seeing the office messy and who keeps tidying his Court Record until it's pristine.

It's not that Phoenix didn't have his doubts, but to imagine that it was actually the case is something else altogether. It explains a couple things he's seen here and there like Apollo absolutely refusing to be seen without a shirt at the beach or having emergency hygiene products on him whenever Trucy needed them and both Wrights hadn't seen it coming. The possibility of another explanation was the one thing that had kept him on the sceptic side, but now? No need to speculate anymore.

It brings something of a foreign feeling of serenity and yet a burden of responsibilities onto him.

"Ah, I've heard about that," Trucy tells him with a little smile. "One of my classmates is like that, but the opposite way around! She's really cute."

That's oddly convenient. He doesn't remember Trucy ever bringing this classmate up. Said classmate isn't the matter at hand, so he won't delve into the matter too much, but he should ask her more about this later. After all, he's always been intrigued by whom Trucy spends her school days with (she never talks about them much, but the way her eyes bright up when she speaks about this classmate makes him think the situation can't be that bad). It'd be a nice opportunity.

"Oh, so you know about it?"

"Yeah! She explained the situation to us. It was a little confusing at first, but honestly, it makes sense! I'd have never guessed Polly was this way too though… even if I suppose that it's not something you see after a while."

"What do you mean?"

"Now that I think about it, Mira used to look different, but she explained that as her transition advancing." (Trucy really does know more than she lets on, as always). "I guess Polly's just that far enough for me not to notice anything."

"Well, yeah. That's kind of the goal there, I guess."

This conversation is really awkward, so silence is bound to shortly ensue thereafter. Before they can switch subjects to topics they're much more comfortable with and knowledgeable about, he needs to assert one last thing.

"Trucy, promise me you won't bring it up unless Apollo does, okay?"

She looks aside for a second, prompting him to think she's about to ask why. However – and most likely because this is Trucy –, she takes the unpredicted way and nods in agreement, her expression stern.

"I promise."

He gives her a heartfelt smile. God, he's so proud of her, she's such a good kid.

"Thank you for being so understanding, Trucy."

No matter what she does, Trucy's mind is too full of thoughts to let her find sleep.

Of course, she wants to know more about Polly and why he needs that treatment, and why he wouldn't tell her about it until she insisted, and if he feels offended because she got so insistent; but she can't. Daddy made her promise she wouldn't dig into it unless Polly let her do so, but will he ever do so? He's always been such a secretive guy, even now that he knows they're siblings… Will she ever get to answer all these questions or are they too invasive? They're probably going too far, aren't they?

See? She keeps finding new questions and, the more she wonders, the less any of them get to be answered. This is a losing battle.

There is just so much Polly has refused to tell her about over the months. It gave her an incentive to talk with him and see what she could pry away from their conversations, but in the end, she truly didn't learn much about him. Sure, she knows about his tastes in music, his age and the manga he reads; but that's pretty much it. For each and every thing she knows about him, there are, what, a dozen things she has no idea about? A dozen things which he feels compelled to hide from both Daddy and her for some reason he just won't explain himself?

It's not that she doesn't understand not trusting people when most of your early years have been nothing but a succession of betrayals and a saga of abandonment. She gets the feeling of having a missing mom, of having no father to really trust. She even supposes she's got it much better than him because, unlike Polly, she has Daddy, can rely on him whenever she's sick and if she ever needs to confide her secrets in someone – but then, he has Clay, doesn't he? He knows what being able to trust people feels like.

So, why doesn't he trust her? Why did it take a pneumonia to tell her about things she could've helped him with before? Why did she have to insist to know about his complicated situations? Why does she have to play amateur sleuths to get slivers of information? Did she do something wrong? Is he envious of her better raising? Is he… is he jealous of her? Does… Does he secretly hate her?

No, no, that's not it, Trucy knows it. If Polly hated her, he wouldn't have told her about what his treatment was. He'd have profited from Clay's insistence to protect the secret otherwise. He even said he trusted her in a situation where lying made very little sense. She felt it: he was honest, in that moment, too open not to be truthful.

Maybe it was the fever, maybe it was the exhaustion, but he was honest, and that's what matters here: this is not on her fault. It's not even on Daddy. It's something that goes deeper than any sort of personal fault or grudge, something that runs down veins and nerves, something that poisons the well without the exact source being identifiable from a glance.

Trucy knows that feeling – it's part of the Grammarye curse. It's that impression that you need to protect yourself behind a mask, whatever it may be made out of. Hers is made out of sunshine and sugar, always smiling, always sparkling: she pretends to be the happy girl she wants to be when she's plagued with loneliness and a fear of being abandoned all over again, even if she knows how irrational she's being.

Apollo's is simply made differently, adjusted to his own experiences and what he feels the need to be protected from. His is curated to shield him from treason, abandonment and dishonesty. He pushes away people with a mask composed of steel, ice and repulsive amounts of spice: if he hurts people before they hurt him, then he'll never hurt again, won't he? That must be his reasoning behind his icy, professional persona despite his actual personality – or, at least, what she's seen of it so far – being in no way as frigid. She can only understand, as much as the spikes on his arms hurt when she tries to embrace him.

She doesn't need to prove to Apollo that they're here for him now: they need to convince him they'll always be by his side, like Daddy convinced her when it seemed like her entire family had left her behind. This is the only way she'll get to finally let him to open up and really trust them, even if they won't always understand his side of things, like she sometimes has to explain to her dad why she thinks this way or reacted that way when it seemed to make little sense to him. She'll help with his wounds like Daddy helped with hers, through patience and nurture.

And yes, even now, there is a ton of things she doesn't quite understand about him. She'll never understand the feelings about that vial of testosterone, about the chest she now realizes he was hiding with his arm when she was visiting him, the way he gets insecure when he rises his voice too high – she can only guess, yet already knows it's going to be inaccurate in some way. It can't ever be the full experience, after all.

Maybe that, one day, she'll understand. He'll explain to her what it feels like, and why he feels so compelled to hide what he must think are the worst parts of himself. It's only then that she'll be able to do anything about it. The only thing she can really do about this situation is wait for him to be ready and to kick the ball because, as it stands, it's nobody else's role to do so. It may take a week; it may take a year. Who knows? Not her, that's for sure.

In the meantime, she can browse her phone in search for simpler answers, find resources, and hope that, tomorrow and the day after, she can be a better sister.