Chapter Text
Klavier Gavin stared into the mirror in front of him, eyes bloodshot and dark circles etched into the sallow skin around his nose and under his eyebrows. His hair, which he’d loosed from the ponytail only moments prior, had fallen over his shoulders in a loose curl. He hadn’t showered in days. Considering he’d spent the past months going between daily showers that scorched his skin (and left his bathroom humid for hours) and weeks without bathing, he figured he was doing pretty well. Three days wasn’t so terrible. It wasn’t like he’d been using product to keep it styled, anyway. No, his hair would go straight from the towel to a ponytail, and most often he pulled a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He’d seen his reflection staring back at himself before, but never with so much…
Well, angst, he figured. That was the only way he could describe it. He’d dealt with angst before. That’s what led him to the Gavinners in the first place, after all; it was a refreshing way to deal with all the teenage hormones and upset from his home life. But this angst felt…different at its core. Where the Gavinners experience had served as an outlet for an unnamed anger that he couldn’t place, this had too much direction. There was so much angst this time, too much he could point to, too much about which to cry that just the thought of it overwhelmed him.
Most obviously, there was Kristoph. Ever since he’d been convicted, Klavier had tried to visit. The unfortunate side of Kristoph’s conviction, however, meant that he could agree to, or deny, any party that tried to visit. Once Klavier was announced, Kristoph would deny him access, and he’d be turned away.
He’d tried every day for three months.
Days had turned to weeks, and then weeks into months.
Leading up to his execution, Klavier had almost stopped trying. Every day, the date of his brother’s death would stare him in the face, as if he’d circled it in red ink and placed neon flashing lights on the little calendar’s square. Some days, it felt like it would never come; that Kristoph would only be locked away for the rest of his life, or his sentence would be overturned. On days like those, Klavier stared at the hardest pill he’d yet to swallow.
On the one hand, he would give anything to have his brother back. Something—anything—from his childhood. Their parents had long since passed, and when Kris had the opportunity, he’d pulled Klavier from Germany to America in a heartbeat, leaving behind any extended family. He’d heard from other rockstars that fame seemed to bring many ‘relatives’ out of the woodwork, but Klavier figured that whatever family they had, Kris had circumvented their communication before it reached him. That thought, and the bitterness that swept over him, always led to the other hand.
He’d spent years under Kristoph’s care. It hadn’t been long after Kristoph turned sixteen that their parents had died, and he’d done everything possible to keep them out of foster homes for the remaining two years before he turned into a legal adult. For fourteen years, it had been Klavier and Kristoph against the world, but, what Klavier struggled to come to terms with, was that it had been more ‘Kristoph and his Puppet, Klavier, Against the World’.
On those days, he figured, as much as he wanted his brother back, he was better off without a manipulative murderer in his life. He’d attended the execution, of course, but if closure was measured in money, he wouldn’t even have a penny to his name.
Without two manipulative murderers in his life, he was always reminded.
Even when Kristoph was alive, he’d always had Daryan. He’d spent countless nights on his best friend’s couch growing up, not to mention that their time at Themis had been, quite possibly, the most consistently happy time in his life. As if growing apart from childhood friends wasn’t hard enough, as they had leading up to the Tobaye trial, finding out that his best friend was a murderer on top of it all shook him to the core. The days after the Misham trial had been a harsh wake-up call.
He’d stared at his ceiling, mostly. Some days, he’d been afraid to leave the safety of his bed, tied down by the inescapable fear that someone else would turn into a monster in front of his eyes. Others, the thought of rising, striving—caring—felt too heavy to lift, and he’d simply slept the day away.
Nights following those days only strengthened his anger toward himself. He’d spent countless nights awake, aimlessly plucking at strings of his guitar, trying to find something to catch his muse. The old Gavinners songs danced in his head like cruel goblins, taunting him of a time when music acted like an escape, not just a torturous game of cat-and-mouse. Even listening to music felt like a chore; the same intro-verse-chorus-verse formula only brought back Daryan’s fear to branch out into anything unfamiliar.
Like smuggling, Klavier would think to himself, and he’d return to square one, back in his bed. When he needed to go out, he’d find some scotch or rum to help him out of the house, and go from there. He’d dragged himself to parties where—even though it only lasted for a few hours—he’d felt welcomed. Needed, even. There, he could run on autopilot and pass it off as a mellow trip; he had no need to focus on anything specific. Working had turned itself into a nightmare. Every case he took, no matter the circumstances, he’d been too timid to conduct the case the way it needed to be conducted. The fear of someone pulling powerful strings behind his back kept him frozen in a state of ‘what ifs’ and doubt. The Chief Prosecutor had quickly taken the terrified Gavin and placed him on data entry.
As much of a pain that Miles Edgeworth was, and no matter how many times Klavier tried telling him so, he was eternally grateful for the switch. Data entry had meant quiet days locked away in his office, staying out of the public light, and hours that allowed him to show up late to the office and leave long after everyone else. No one had to see him in such disarray, and no one asked questions. Even when he would show up late from a tattoo session, hardly anyone batted an eye.
He’d always wanted a sleeve, but the fear of ruining his image had kept him paralyzed in a fascination from afar. Once a year passed from Daryan and Kristoph’s case, and he still wasn’t dead, he’d taken full advantage of a good day, and rushed to a tattoo parlor. The artist, one he’d visited prior for a cover up on his hip, had given him the large pirate ship that now covered his left forearm.
Herr Edgeworth had been concerned, yes, but Klavier had avoided questions his entire life. One stuffy, gray prosecutor would never break the will of someone who had grown up with the Coolest Defense in the West. For almost a year, he worked old cases, entering them into the new system Herr Edgeworth implemented to finally bring the prosecutor’s office up to date, and visited his tattoo artist to finish the grayscale piece. The routine sunk him into a numbness where, eventually, the only time he’d felt anything were his tattoo sessions, and, once the ship was complete, he’d expanded to an abstract pattern around his elbow and tricep. He’d considered seeing a shrink, but after a while, he got used to the numbness. So used to it, in fact, that he began looking at cases as a prosecutor again, not just an intern.
The change from monotony was enough to make him feel like he was finally—finally—on the up and up.
Constance Courte’s murder, however, had brought him crashing back to earth.
He’d only had a few classes with Ms. Courte in his time at Themis, but she’d left more of an impact on him than she would have ever known. As advisor to the Fine Arts Club, Klavier had spent countless afternoons perched atop one of her classroom’s desks, notebook or guitar in hand and debating the finer sides of the courtroom. She’d always pushed him to be his best, to keep striving for the next level. Her advice had been the drive to keep Klavier playing when his fingers bled, and to branch out past the guitar to any instrument he could get his hands on.
In Klavier’s adolescent world, where true reality and Kristoph’s reality were so blurred, so caught up in one another, it was Constance Courte who was always there to give the boy direction. Klavier had always wanted to do something for her, anything, to let her know her impact on him.
Reading the headline that she’d been killed, however, took the fragile stability Klavier had constructed, and shattered it against the looming wall of silence Kristoph had left in his wake.
Her murder had done some good, at least; it got Klavier out of bed without any alcoholic assistance, and back into his legal clothes (which hung on him more loosely than he remembered). Word that the Wright Anything Agency, and thus, Apollo, on the case had brought him out of his room. With everything he’d lost, the thought of adding ‘Herr Forehead’ had pulled him out of his haze and into the real world once more. In fact, it gave him a foolish hope that they might reconnect, or that he’d see the defense attorney outside the courtroom more. He’d thrown on some bronzer to try and hide his sickly complexion, and styled his hair for the first time in almost a year.
Pulling it back into the familiar twist had sickened him, but he wasn’t about to show up in front of him looking as he felt; like a forgotten, withered shadow of himself.
He’d walked into Themis with head held high, slipping back into the comfortable rockstar mask he’d constructed for moments exactly like this. He’d heard the whispers around him, but flashed the same smile. If he kept smiling brightly enough, he’d hoped that he could hide the darkness boiling within him. There was no reason that he should have to bother his last ray of sunlight with his abyss.
When he’d first laid eyes on him in a year, however, it was as if Klavier’s world of black and white had robbed him of any memory of the color red.
It did, however, look good on Apollo Justice.
Those big, brown eyes had stared at him incredulously, as if they’d seen a ghost. The moment between Klavier’s offer for help and Apollo’s flustered sputtering had felt like an eternity. The new girl, Athena, she’d introduced herself, had almost caught on to him, but he’d locked away whatever made her eyes water in his direction and decided to lay on Klavier Gavin, rockstar, even thicker.
Apollo hadn’t changed, much. He had more confidence, that was for sure, but he still carried himself nervously, and seemed to jump at any lead Klavier would give him.
Despite everything, helping out with the trial felt…comfortable. Being helpful hadn’t been something Klavier was used to in the year prior, but any assertion that he’d only been there for Professor Courte would be incomplete.
So, when Apollo’s friend was almost murdered, he found himself staring at the ugliest emotion he’d ever registered.
An anger, deep and upsetting, had taken over. He imagined this was how Kristoph felt all the time, and it scared Klavier to the bone. And along with that anger came shame, once he realized it.
He was envious that Apollo wouldn’t share in his suffering.
He remembered feeling nauseated at the realization.
It was a selfish thought; possibly the most selfish thought that had ever crossed his mind (a tall order, when dealing with a former teenage rock star). The idea that he was upset because someone wouldn’t understand his despair completely overtook him. No matter how he tried, how hard he tried to forgive the universe, or Clay, or Apollo, or whoever he was angry at, the envy returned, and with that envy, anger at himself.
And it exhausted him.
After Clay’s attempted murder, he slept. For almost two years, he went to work and slept. The parties stopped. The attempts to find a shrink stopped. The small rays of color he’d received from meeting with Apollo again vanished as quickly as they’d shown up, and he stared into a black and white pit.
What remained in Klavier Gavin’s life had been work, sleep, anger, and booze for whenever he had to drag himself out of bed.
Sure, some days were better than others. Those days he spent staring at his phone, the typed out (but never sent) invitation to Apollo staring back at him. He’d lost count of how many times he’d almost sent it. Every time, the envious, overwhelming anger would flare again, and, ashamed of himself, Klavier would delete the invitation, and throw his phone across the room. Then the spiral would happen again.
The alcohol happened slowly. At first, he would only use it to get him out of the house. Eventually, the bottles moved from the kitchen to his bedroom, and it helped him get out of bed. He’d tried justifying himself by saying that he only needed one in the morning, and then everything would be fine after that.
It usually was only one in the morning, sure, but the guilt of his dependency, added to the envy, shame, and anger, turned him into a hermit, afraid of the anger turning him into the monster that had taken over Kristoph.
When he heard of Apollo moving to Khur’ain altogether, his list was complete. He’d stared at the invitation for two years too long. Something in Klavier Gavin snapped.
He broke his work schedule for the first time in three years. The schedule by which he’d planned his life no longer mattered, because, to Klavier, nothing did. He took a look around his room, finished his first drink of the day, grabbed his baseball cap, and stormed out. He’d been so distraught that he’d forgotten any makeup, and had walked into the middle of a Los Angeles summer in baggy jeans, black hoodie, and tank top.
He’d been unsure what he was going to do. Stop Apollo’s plane? Confess that he’d been avoiding him because he was too ashamed to face him, but wanted to see him anyway? Yell from the rooftops that he wasn’t okay, and that he needed help?
No, he was Klavier Gavin. Klavier Gavin stared at the words ‘I’m Fine’ with the same longing a lit candle stares at a strong breeze.
The familiar disheveled mess stared back at him in the mirror, and he pursed his lips together. Klavier Gavin didn’t feel despair; he’d just have to press on.
“…Mr. Gavin?” The woman behind him asked for the third time, and suddenly, Klavier was hyper aware of the cape snapped too tightly around his neck and the uncomfortable vinyl pressing into his back where the tank top and hoodie were riding up. He was sweating; whatever sorry excuse for an air conditioner the salon was using was out of date. HIs sandaled feet readjusted on the foot rest, and finally, ice blue eyes turned from themselves to the woman. She was average in height, blond hair styled into a messy beehive. “Are you sure about this?”
Klavier looked from the razor in her hand and back to his hair.
He was sick of seeing Kristoph staring back at him whenever his hair was down.
“Ja, Fraülein. All of it.”