Apollo
(For holderoftheheart)

I have a confession to make...

When Mr Wright told me who she was, I let her hold me. My mother. I had a mother, have a mother now. Trucy was ecstatic, of course - to find the mother she thought she'd lost! The mother I had lost. My mother, Thalassa Gramarye. Our mother, mine and Trucy's. My sister.

It was too much to wrap my head around, really. Trucy slipped into it all as if Thalassa had never been away, and I...well, I moved in with the Wrights, on Trucy's insistence. Not that I was complaining, it was hard to keep up with the rent in my tiny apartment alone. And, well, it didn't feel strange. Mr Wright isn't quite a father figure in my life, but I suppose - and don't anyone let him hear this - he's become a sort of older brother, or uncle, maybe. Not my father, no, but the closest thing I have. And Trucy...I love her. I do. She gets on my nerves, and has since we met, but what else is a sister for? I suppose I always saw her this way, really, as a little sister; only now, of course, I find out that it's true.

But Thalassa...what is she to me, but some singer that Prosecutor Gavin hired for a concert and lost her manager in the process? A jurist on Vera Misham's trial? But my mother?

When I was three, I went to my first foster mother. I stayed with Julianne for about five years, before I moved on to Marietta, then Mrs Alice-Anne Small, who, ironically, is quite a large lady. Julianne helped me perfect walking and talking, taught me to read and to write, watched me with pride as I entered school for the first time. She was there for my first ever school quizzes, and my first skinned knees, and my first sleepover with friends. Marietta had me from the age of eight to fourteen, and in that time she saw my first detention for talking too loudly in class, my first crush on a friend and my first tentative kiss and the consequent heartbreak, and the formation of my dreams of the future. And Alice-Anne, who I loved best, who would have adopted me if they would have let her, was with me through high school and college, through my first relationships and my apprenticeship at the Gavin and Co law offices, through every important milestone of the latter years of my teenage life. She was the one who encouraged my dreams, who held me when I was stressed. I don't know why she prized me even above all her other foster children, why she loved and nurtured me like she did, but I never forgot and was forever grateful. I lived with her until I was nineteen, when I finally had to leave, making room for all the other children who would be lucky enough to live with her, if even for a short time.

I still keep in contact with them all on occasion; Julianne sent me a letter when she heard about my first case in congratulations, Marietta has called a few times, but it is Alice-Anne who I visit and who visited me, who I call at least once a fortnight and share my news. She insisted on meeting Mr Wright, though as far as I know I've managed to keep her away - just. And then this woman comes out of nowhere and tells me she's my mother, and, well, I don't really know how I'm supposed to act.

Thalassa sat me down and told me her story, about my father and his accident, about her illness, about her father and Zak and Valant. She wept as she told me, and I comforted her even as she was begging my forgiveness. There's no need to apologise, I told her; no need at all. When she finally calmed down, she looked at me, dry-eyed now, her intense gaze seeming to reach my core. And of course it did. Didn't I do the same thing to witnesses on the stand every trial? Didn't Trucy do the same to me, to those who played her daddy at poker? Thalassa was the first to break the gaze with a rueful smile. "It's too late."

I didn't answer.

"I'm sorry," she told me again. "And I'm so proud of you, Apollo."

"Thank you," I told her, and I realised she was right. This woman, my mother...to hear those words from her was nothing compared to hearing them from Alice-Anne...nothing even to hearing them from Mr Wright. "You don't need to apologise."

"Yes I do," she told me sadly. "Any mother who loses her son must apologise."

I pitied her then, but, again she was right. This woman was my mother by blood, but I couldn't feel that bond, that warmth I'd wanted from childhood, that connection that I never truly found, not even from Alice-Anne Small with her brood of foster-kids, until I met Phoenix Wright and his daughter. My sister.

"I've had a lot of mothers," I explained slowly. I didn't want to hurt her; I bore her no ill-will. I just...well, I didn't know her.

She stood to go. "Of course. Perhaps I shall see you again, Apollo," she told me with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, and walked past me in a hurry.

I found my arm shooting out, grabbing her wrist as she passed. "I've had a lot of mothers," I repeated as she looked down at me, surprised. "But I've never had a real sister, and I do now. You gave her to me."

Thalassa stared. "You would have been close to Trucy anyway, would you not? Even if you didn't know? You were acting like siblings already, that day at the concert when I was Lamiroir." She chuckled, and I smiled.

"Trucy and Mr Wright...they are my family now, yes," I admitted, realising I could trust her not to laugh, not to share. "But...you made that possible. If it wasn't for you..."

"All I did-"

"No," I interrupted firmly. "Trucy wants you in her life. She's willing to have you try again with her, to make up for what's lost. Now she knew you for longer than I did, and less time ago than me. And I'm not promising anything. It'll take a long time, and I don't know you yet. You'll never be able to be my 'mommy' from when I was a kid, it's too late for that. But you gave me my family, in one way or the other and...I guess I'm willing to try too. For something."

...maybe one day we'll be family, too.

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