Written after I replayed all the Ace Attorney games for the 13284687th time last year. Valant is one of my favorite characters in the series lol, I do love a pathetic wet dog of a man
Inspired by a headscratcher entry on tvtropes, which wondered why Valant didn't recognize Thalassa during the 4-3 performance even though he literally dressed up exactly like her lol
It takes Valant a mere one minute and twenty-two seconds to deduce that Lamiroir is blind. She hides it well, to be sure, but he has decades of reading people under his belt, and his trained eye picks up everything. It's in the way she doesn't fully focus on him when he talks to her - she doesn't fully focus on anything, in fact; it's in the way she moves somewhat cautiously whenever she's alone; it's in the way she turns her head to listen and concentrate, trusting her ears over her eyes.
This last one, among others, also allows him to deduce that she not only understands him, but speaks English as well, and she swears him to secrecy when she realizes he knows (which he agrees to readily, of course). That she speaks English is an unexpected plus, however, because his Borginian is primitive on the best of days, and LeTouse is often not around to interpret when Valant and Lamiroir are discussing their big illusion. So he speaks slowly, watching her eyes for comprehension as he does so - unseeing as they are, he has no qualms about staring right into them. They're startlingly familiar, those eyes, eliciting a strange pang in his heart that he has trouble finding the source of at first.
It's the night of the dress rehearsal, the first time the entire illusion will be practiced during the set. He shares a dressing room with Lamiroir that night in order to disguise himself as her. Even though they are very different sizes, Lamiroir's outfit is concealing enough, and they will be far enough away from the crowd, that the switch will be more than sufficiently convincing. Thus, it's easy enough to put on a prepared duplicate of Lamiroir's deep blue cloak and layered dress, and 90% of the illusion is done for him.
Still, Valant Gramarye has never half-assed anything in his life, especially not when it comes to show business, and thus his disguise is not complete until it is truly complete . And so he joins her in her and Machi's dressing room to put on the finishing touches.
"Are you permitted to remove the veil?" he asks her as he adjusts his wig in the mirror. She takes a moment to formulate her answer.
"Yes," she says. "It is not culturally significant. Just part of my image." She slips her own cloak's hood off of her head and unties the veil that covers her lower face, pulling it off. "My manager's idea," she says with a small smile, but Valant doesn't really hear her over the sudden ringing in his ears.
Thalassa.
Thalassa.
There is no doubt in his mind - even though he cannot begin to fathom the hows or the whys - that this woman standing in front of him is Thalassa Gramarye. The sheer shock of it feels like a palpable punch in the chest, knocking the wind out of his lungs and altering his blood pressure so suddenly he has to lean back against the vanity for balance. That pang in his heart rips apart and aches like an open wound.
Lamiroir - or Thalassa, he has no idea how to refer to her now - immediately picks up on his distress even though he hasn't said a word, but she must hear his altered breathing. She steps towards him.
"What is wrong?" she says.
"Thalassa-" The name is out of his mouth before he can stop himself. She blinks, and for just a fraction of a second Valant feels… hope? He's not sure what he's even hopeful for, but nevertheless it's the emotion that springs to the forefront of his mind.
But she tilts her head, looking puzzled.
"What?"
His heart still has not settled back down to a normal pace - Thalassa and Zak have haunted his dreams for so many years now that it feels like he's staring at a ghost. Every cell in his body burns to reach out and touch her, confirm her corporeal state; he squeezes the countertop of the vanity behind him instead.
"Does the name Thalassa mean anything to you?" he says, trying to get his breathing under control.
He knows what her answer will be before he asks, but he has to confirm, has to watch her expression to know for sure that she isn't lying to him. And she's not - that she has no idea what he's talking about is written clearly on her face. His chest tightens.
"No," she says.
"Trucy, then? Zak? Jove?"
She shakes her head.
They stand there for a moment in silence as Valant finally catches his breath, though his heart is still racing and his mind is still reeling. "Forgive me," he says. "You look uncannily like someone I knew once."
He flops down onto the chair next to him, and Lamiroir - Thalassa - makes her way over to the chair opposite him, sitting down sideways on it to face him. This close he can smell her, and she smells like Borginian spices and incense, nothing like Thalassa ever did. He fumbles with the makeup in front of him, trying to focus and be a professional despite the fact that his long-lost friend and family and unrequited flame has turned up in front of him after so many years of assumed death, at his own hands. He's shaking as he pops open the bottle of foundation.
"This person..." she says, and her voice is soft, the gentlest hint of an accent clipping her pronunciation - but she is Thalassa, and so English is her native tongue, or perhaps it isn't, anymore? "She was special to you?"
He nearly laughs at that but swallows it down, rubbing Thalassa-colored foundation onto his face and almost thankful she can't see him making a fool of himself. You are still special to me. "She was special to many," he says, strained.
"Mm." She fidgets with the veil in her hands, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. He looks at her - he has to, to replicate her face on his own - and the surreality still hasn't worn off, no matter how long he stares at her face. She is Thalassa. She is Thalassa, and she is alive, and she is here, sitting in front of him, somehow, blind and foreign and unremembering, but here. Some part of him wants to weep. "What happened to her?"
Valant swallows down the lump in his throat, his eyes burning, trying to focus on her face in a technical sense, the edges of her high cheekbones, the furrow between her brows, the lips he'd always dreamt of kissing when he was a young man. "An accident," he says, returning to the makeup because if he stares at her any longer he's fairly sure he'll do something he'll regret. "A rehearsal that went awry." It feels terrible and strange, to tell her this, to tell her what happened to herself, and so he can't help but censor it, to shield her from the truth lest she remember and hate him for it.
"I'm sorry," she says as he contours his face to look like her. "I can sense deep pain when you talk about her." She furrows her brows. "I feel it, too."
He doesn't look at her. Can't look at her.
"I think I must have lost someone, as well," she says, pressing her hand over her heart. "I wish I could remember them."
"Perhaps it's better that you don't," he says, blending his contour and keeping his voice carefully even.
"Would you forget your Thalassa, if given the chance?" she asks.
He shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath. That ache in his heart flares. "No," he says.
"Then you understand, don't you?" she says. "I am not sure if remembering the lost, or forgetting them but feeling their absence, is worse."
"I'm afraid I have no answer for you, there," he says.
"... Would you like to talk about something else?" she says.
He has no idea how to answer. There are many things he would like to talk about, but they don't have the time, and she will not remember, anyway. What is he supposed to say to her? Their working relationship had been more than adequate - he had no problem ignoring her pretty eyes and alluring mystery in the interest of being professional - but now the situation is deeply complicated, as are his feelings about a woman he considered nothing but a beautiful stranger and fellow performer up until just several minutes ago.
He wants to touch her, and how simple it would be to reach across the twenty-four inches of space that separate them, to press the knuckles of his fingers against her cheek. But what does he expect to happen? She doesn't know him, and besides, she never returned his affection anyway.
He swallows hard, opening a pallet of eyeshadow. Why now? Why here? Why Thalassa?
"Mr Gramarye," she says, snapping him out of his rumination. "Are you okay? Perhaps you should get some fresh air?"
He laughs before he can stop himself, though he manages to clear his throat and cut it off before it becomes hysterical, which is how he feels. "Please, call me Valant," he says, and it's not for the first time, but now even more so than before does he want her to. "And I will be fine, I assure you."
It's a barefaced lie, of course; even as he says it he blinks back the tears attempting to well in his eyes, which make applying eyeshadow doubly hard. Still, he attempts to keep his breathing even in the interest of not making this worse than it already is.
"Let's change the subject, then," she says. "How are you feeling about the rehearsal? The illusion, specifically."
He takes another breath. The change of subject - shifting his focus back to business instead of world-shaking revelations from personal ghosts, if even in the smallest degrees - does help calm his mind a bit. "I feel prepared," he says, and it's true, even now. Complicated feelings aside, she has her job and he has his, and that's a rhythm he can fall back into with ease. "And you, my dear?"
She gives a contemplative hum, strangely musical, but then she is not the Siren for nothing. "I also feel… good," she says. "Though I must admit, even still, I always get… ah, how do you say it?" She flutters those slender fingers of hers and he has to resist grabbing them. "Butterflies, I think?"
"You get stage fright?" he asks, amused, studying her. Thalassa never got stage fright, always said she felt the most at home and alive when performing.
"Just a bit," she says, grinning gently, and Valant's heart melts painfully. "But then it passes. I feel drawn to the stage, like I belong there." She thinks for a moment. "Even doing this illusion feels… familiar, somehow."
Once again Valant doesn't trust himself to reply, so he just gives an affirmative grunt. He's almost finished with his makeup, and has done a shoddier-than-usual job of it, not that anyone should notice with the multiple other factors thrown in. It feels incredibly strange to wear Thalassa's face on his own - almost perverse.
The speaker over the dressing room door crackles to life, playing a soft jingle before Klavier Gavin speaks: "Alright, people, rehearsal is starting in five minutes. Five minutes til showtime!"
The speaker goes silent, and a moment later Valant puts the finishing touches on his makeup. "I believe that does it."
Lamiroir grins again, more amused this time. "What are your thoughts?" she asks. "Shall we pass for one another?"
"Oh, yes," he says, standing up to stretch his legs. "We are spitting images of each other. The effect is quite striking."
She faces the mirror, and he does too, and it is indeed striking to see two Thalassas staring back him. Somehow it makes him feel a little sick.
"I wish I could see it," she says. His breath catches in his throat, and he's not sure how to respond without playing his hand and letting his heart-wound leak through again. He's relieved when she continues: "It's alright. I will take your word for it."
She presses her hand against her heart once more, probably as her stage-fright mounts. But she is a performer, born and bred, and has done this many, many times. These are just the motions for her.
"Are you ready?" he asks, pulling on his veil.
She turns to face him, looking strangely mischievous. "Do you partake in the tradition of kissing for good luck?" she asks.
Valant splutters, attempts to disguise it as clearing his throat, with dubious success.
"Klavier introduced me to it. I think it is very peculiar and charming," she says. That Klavier kisses strangers doesn't surprise Valant as much as it maybe should.
"I regret to say that I've been almost exclusively a solo performer before this," he says, trying to keep the deep pain out of his voice and his thoughts.
"Me, as well," she says, again with that uncharacteristically coy-edged sweetness. "But perhaps we should usher in some extra luck, for our illusion."
If he didn't know any better - and perhaps he doesn't, because what he thought he knew has been turned upside-down multiple times tonight - Valant would suspect her of flirting with him. It might be his own hopefulness, or his loneliness, or some other overwrought and mixed-up emotion, and yet he knows he'll hold onto that intonation of her voice in his head for as many years as he possibly can. Thalassa never spoke to him so coyly; it thrills him, even despite his still-muddled feelings about her existence in this room.
"If the lady insists," he says, pulling his veil down. Lamiroir, of course, has no idea where his face actually is, and so she just gently puckers her lips in a general upwards-facing direction. He presses his mouth against hers. It's chaste, just a peck, though perhaps he lingers for half a second too long, just to feel the softness of her, to inhale her scent, to sear this moment into his brain. He dreamed about kissing Thalassa so many times when they were younger, he'll be damned if he doesn't take what he can get now.
He pulls away, and it's one of the hardest things he's ever done, so many emotions twisting and knotting up in his chest. Lamiroir looks satisfied, amused, though her deeper thoughts are impossible to decipher. She replaces her veil, tying it behind her head, then pulls her hood up. Having half of her face hidden makes it a little easier for Valant to look at her without feeling like his chest is going to burst open.
There's a knock on the door and Machi comes in, feigning blindness as he always does, though in reality he is here to escort Lamiroir to the stage. He says something to her in hushed Borginian, and she replies in turn.
"We are going to the stage," she says to Valant as Machi loops his arm around her elbow.
"Before you go," Valant says, grabbing her hand, "I've been meaning to give you my business card. In case we don't get another chance to converse." He presses it into her palm, reveling in the rare feeling of his usually-gloved bare fingers against hers.
"Oh, thank you," she says. He gives her hand a squeeze before letting go, and she slips the card into a pocket inside her cloak. "Well, good luck, Valant." She grins, though with the veil in place he mostly just sees the crinkles by her eyes. It still makes his heart leap.
He follows her and Machi out of the dressing room, has to resist the urge to follow them to the stage - he is going to the secret passage underneath it instead, but he knows he will only be able to think of her now. He watches her go and feels heavy; already he's sure that the wound in his heart will not heal again, not while he knows Thalassa is alive and in the state that she is. Not while he desperately wishes things were different, and that he was a braver man, and that she remembered. If only she remembered.
He closes the dressing room door behind them and heads for the under-stage passage.