aliasthomas, breezescodes
pronounshe/him
899written posts
offlinecurrently
bc
Summer '19 Bingo Completionist
this is my murder mittens ^-^
this prompt singlehandedly dragged me back into ace attorney and i am replaying dual destinies as we speak jfc some spoilers for the end of dual destinies i guess 03. YEARS FROM NOW
Simon Blackquill was not to be blamed for the result of his best friend shoving several bowls of apocalypse-ending salty noodles into her mouth at an increasingly desperate pace to compete with the champion of spirits and noodle-slurping contests, Maya Fey. Beads of soup dripped from Athena’s mouth as she guzzled down another chunk of noodles, nearly choking in the process and causing Wright to make a wheezing noise of concern.
He would have put his foot down already, but Athena had given him a withering look alongside her trusty Widget’s red, angry face that made him back off with some reluctance. Old habits died hard, but Athena was allowed to make her poor choices as an adult who didn’t need Simon to point them out. (Although as her best friend, he reserved the right to laugh at her when she had to down several glasses of water after consuming half her weight in salt and spend the rest of the day flatulent.)
“Hey, maybe slow down there, Athena,” the blue-suited lawyer said. He scratched his head, a nervous action that Simon often witnessed the defense do in court from both mentor and student.
Enthusiastic as ever Athena Cykes slammed her fist down on the table rattling the bowls as she tried to whip around, surely to chew her boss out—but she slammed her knee into the metal bearings of Eldoon’s noodle cart instead and yelped in pain. Her noodle bowl tipping dangerously close to spilling where she precariously held it in the air. She flailed in the air, one arm paddling in a desperate bid to keep her balance.
“Athena!” Phoenix exclaimed as she tipped to the side, just enough to lose her handle on her bowl. As it hurdled on a one-way path, she dove to catch it. Maya followed after her and just barely caught Athena by her arm before she face-planted into the ground, but her noodles were all but lost and splattered in the grass, certainly too gross to salvage.
Athena cried in distress and kneeled at the chipped bowl with a disappointed expression, her lips pursed and hands folded tightly.
“Man, those noodles were so good, too,” she lamented.
She grumbled a bit more over her unfortunate loss before picking herself off the ground and bounced towards Simon with a seemingly unaffected smile, having apparently swiftly recovered after what must have been a tragic loss for her.
“What are you doing here anyway, Simon? This is our lawyer hangout!”
Simon tilted his head at Athena’s implicit accusation that he was somehow not allowed to convene with the defense outside of court. He would have Athena know that he has met several of his opponents outside of work, and he quite enjoyed every interaction where he absolutely terrified them.
“Am I not technically a lawyer? But I suppose I’ll take that as you’re not happy to see an old friend. Really, Athena? I would have thought you’d been taught better manners.”
“Wh—” Athena covered her mouth with her hands, surprised by his words even though she had to be able to tell they were mostly in jest.
She folded her arms and said, “Well, sure, but I see you every day. We live together!”
She punctuated her words with a wide grin, the sort that she triumphantly used in court though it normally followed with dropping hair and sweating bullets. (A common trait of Wright’s juniors—their expressive hair that seemed almost psychically connected to their moods.)
“Hm, but I especially stopped by to congratulate the defense on their excellent show in court today. Am I to take it as untoward by the defense?”
Sure, they lived together; Athena had been especially insistent that she didn’t leave him on his own, despite his protests. Although you wouldn’t hear it from him, he appreciated that Athena cleared out her office-turned-storage room and made it into a slightly cramped space that was still better than his old cell in her apartment only afforded thanks to the combined efforts of the entire Wright law office. Though, with Simon pitching in his prosecutor’s pay, it was enough to cover Wright and Justice’s portion of the rent. Maybe there was an ulterior motive there, but Athena was sweet for worrying about her best friend, even if he would have somehow figured it out on his own all the same.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t as though they were distant roommates that rarely crossed paths outside of the shared apartment. Aside from the fact that they often crossed blades in court because of their shared lawyering profession, Simon’s paltry circle of friends mostly overlapped with Athena’s only slightly bigger circle made of former clients, Los Angeles’ eclectic law enforcement, and the occasional food vendor such as Guy Eldoon and Bucky Whet.
All that to say, he was mildly offended that Athena didn’t seem particularly excited to see him, but he understood that there was literally not a time she didn’t see him around, despite her best efforts to find him a friend group preferably a few kilometers away a year ago. And begrudgingly, he had to admit that Athena was absolutely warranted in desiring some time and space apart from him, especially after a year of dealing with him with more patience than ought to have been expected from a fresh-out-of law school nineteen-year-old girl. Adult. Technically.
Put in those terms, he was a little sheepish guilting Athena into putting up with his presence once more. Not that a little something called guilt usually stopped him, and in a rare expression of positive, good-will towards another human being, he did actually want to congratulate Athena for her victorious, solo performance in court today, but still—he could wince his words from some sense propriety as that funny, swept to the side bangs of hers scrunched up similarly to her utterly aghast, wide-mouthed expression.
“But I suppose I am to leave it to the defense’s friends to praise her well enough?” He rose an expectant brow at Wright, who stared back with an assuring nod. “For once I was not your opponent”—apparently there were more prosecutors than him, though it felt like he was taking most of the precinct’s cases as of late—“but were your still rather dull blade to have met mine today, such an elegant victory would not have been so simply won. Nonetheless, you did well, Cykes-dono. I look forward to your future successes.”
He grinned and swiftly bowed before turning away to hide the full, sentimental smile that chose to make itself known at the most inconvenient moment.
Naught a year ago, he wouldn’t have imagined bearing witness to the growth of green-horned Athena into a competent lawyer. His execution date had loomed all-omnipotent over the farce that some might call hope. He had expected to die, along with the last traces of his mentor’s murderer. But that man was behind bars and Simon could see the grass and trees of People’s Park extend beyond his eye, with no prickly fences crisscrossed in belligerent wire blocking his view.
He used to picture his future, all concrete blocks and artificially lit cells dimming and unreliable with age day after day, and tucked in his coat pocket, the slip of paper that was his only clue to Metis’s killer. Until a certain point—
Time, stopped.
He had seven years to accept this bleak fact as irrefutable and inevitable like the natural laws that bound the world in order, however unnatural his surroundings were. He still woke up some days convinced that he was breathing his last and felt like a dead man dragged into the courtroom all over again, forced to relive the worst moments of his life before it was abruptly cut. But—and though it couldn’t entirely measure, a year of Athena there for him when he felt pallid and ghostly, clasping his clammy, cold hands on the worst of days when the mind’s terror wouldn’t dissipate with simple mantras and practiced mindfulness, eventually made his heart a bit clearer and the future a little brighter, as terribly cliché as it was. He returned the gesture in equal measures, containing every mistake and fault that Athena revealed in the painful moments between the present and the reeking spirit of the past within a familiar, guilt-filled box that he shelved to never touch ever again for both of their sakes.
All the guilt shared between them, they promised each other that they would release for the bluer sky and a resonant mind. And credit where credit was due, Athena was right when she said a lighter world was colored different (though she didn’t need to know how exactly he chose to deal with his load; surely, she would reprimand his horrible coping mechanisms). He remembered passing by a few kids chasing past their parents and heading towards the lake at the entrance of the park, but Eldoon’s noodle stand was blessedly empty aside from them. It gave him a moment to appreciate the park’s fresh breeze that lapped against the lapels of his coat before brushing past him, ever uncaring and whimsy. Behind him, Athena had given up on him and had turned to her boss to complain about him, only for Wright to deflect by saying, “Uh, you are going to clean that up, Athena?”
“Oh! Of course I was. I didn’t forget! What do you take me to be, huh?” she said as she slapped her hands against her cheeks, having forgotten about the mess she had made.
The heavy sigh of wright chimed on by Mystic Maya’s assurance that wright would buy Athena another bowl was Simon’s cue to get out of there before Athena roped him into another ramen-eating contest that he would surely never put down his dignity for, but just in case, he left the defense team to their victory outing without him standing out like a sore, unwanted thumb. Besides, he and Athena could have their own celebration at home, where Taka was impatiently waiting for pets and the smuggled scraps that Simon absolutely noticed Athena conspicuously feeding his bird.
Honestly, there was something about two spoiled brats feeding off each other in the way that Athena and Taka seemed to get along just to spite his initial assumptions that Taka, not liking anyone much less energetic teenage girls would spend as little time around Athena as he could, and therefore would not possibly find someone else to cuddle with. The betrayal he felt when he found Taka curled up next to Athena one day after work. It was the last thing he expected to ever feel when he received his execution date written and signed all those years ago, but life was a funny one.
And years from now? It wasn’t always easy to visualize, but it was a physical future nonetheless.
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last edit on May 10, 2021 20:12:49 GMT by bc |
