Chapter Text
July 11, 2026
Klavier had never been to the detention center for personal reasons, only professional ones. Call him an optimist, but three months ago he’d expected it to stay that way.
He’d never visited Kristoph here. Maybe he should have. Kristoph was Kristoph and if there had never been any point arguing with him before, there certainly wouldn’t be now, but it might have been easier if Klavier had done this before.
Or maybe not. Maybe no matter what, it would have always felt the same, too bright, too quiet, off-balance like the world had tipped off its axis, cold walls closing in like Klavier was the one being dragged in to account for his crime.
Daryan glared at him through a veil of wild, tangled hair. Klavier caught himself instinctively lifting a hand to brush it out of Daryan’s eyes, the way he always had – would have, if not for the bulletproof plastic between them.
It wasn’t his case. He didn’t have to follow the checklist, though it might have made a decent starting point. Names, dates, who what where when –
But the only question Klavier could find through the haze of punch-drunk horror was Daryan, why?
“You look like shit, Gavin.”
It could have been casual. Needling, like Daryan always did when Klavier got a little too into his own head.
Except for the bared teeth, and the eyes that wouldn’t meet Klavier’s.
Klavier pushed his hair out of his face. His fingers shook. “And whose fault is that?”
Daryan snorted. “I told you to leave it. You gave me your word you wouldn’t put me on the stand.”
“Ja, I did.”
The words hung in the air like smoke. A door slammed somewhere in the distance.
“Tell me the truth.” Klavier couldn’t remember the last time he’d said it to Daryan. Kristoph, witnesses, suspects, opposing counsel, but not Daryan. Daryan didn’t lie to him. “Smuggling, murder – why?”
Daryan jerked upright. “I –”
He broke off, and Klavier watched the anger die out of Daryan’s face, replaced by something colder and harder and devastated.
“You know what? If you have to ask me that question, you don’t need the answer.”
“Daryan –”
“Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare,” Daryan snarled. “Why don’t you go ask your little defense buddy? He’s got all kinds of things you wanna hear, right?”
“Leave him out of this,” Klavier bit out. Daryan’s glare sharpened.
“Oh, now you give a shit about dragging other –”
“For god’s sake, Daryan, this isn’t about Apollo!” Klavier heard his own voice crack. “I am trying to give you a chance –”
“A chance? Like you gave me in court, huh?” Daryan’s face twisted in fury. “You stabbed me in the fucking back and now you want to sit down and have a nice chat about it? Fuck off.”
“You killed a man!” The guard at the door jumped. Klavier forced his voice down to something resembling a reasonable volume. “You smuggled a Borginian cocoon into the country and killed a man when you got caught! And – what, you expected me to cover for you?” Daryan might have flinched at that; it was hard to tell. “The least you can do is tell me why. You owe me that much.”
“I don’t owe you shit.” If Daryan had flinched, it was gone now, buried under teeth-gritted rage again. “You’re the one who said we’re done, so, we’re fucking done.”
“Don’t do this.” Klavier’s voice almost cracked again. “If there was a reason, something –”
“Let me guess, something you could have done?” Amazing, how much venom Daryan could put into eight words. “Right. Because that’s how you think this works, isn’t it? News flash, Gavin, the world doesn’t fucking revolve around you.”
“What am I supposed to think? My best friend –” my partner, my – “You committed a crime and used our band – the one we built – you used me to do it! You k–” He couldn’t say it again. “What were you thinking? I – I trusted you!”
Daryan looked away, and said nothing.
“Goddamn it, Daryan, look at me!”
Daryan turned slowly and resentfully, like he was being dragged by an invisible leash. “You think you’re so fucking smart, you figure it out. Until then, get the hell out.”
Klavier’s throat tightened. “Daryan –”
Cocoon smuggling carries the death sentence in Borginia. Daryan knew that better than Klavier did. Hell, Daryan had told him about it, hey, isn’t this fucked up –
Interpol’s pushing for extradition. Daryan didn’t need Klavier to tell him that. He knew; he had to.
Tell me you had a good reason, or they’ll kill you. If Klavier stepped in, it would only look like a prosecutor covering for his detective (his best friend, his partner –). It wouldn’t help, and it might hurt.
Daryan’s mouth twisted in a mockery of a grin. “You said it. We’ve played our last show, partner.”
“Daryan.”
Daryan turned away again. “Get out.”
Klavier could have argued. He could have refused to leave. Could have made Daryan stay, no matter how much he cursed and yelled. It hadn’t worked when they were teenagers fighting over nothing and it wouldn’t work now – but he could have tried.
Instead, he pushed himself to his feet, numb and shaking, vision blurring.
His hand was on the door when Daryan spat, “See you at the execution, Gavin.”
Klavier staggered like he’d been punched in the gut. “I won’t be there.”
It slipped out before he could stop it. He didn’t look to see Daryan’s reaction.
I didn’t mean it, I didn’t –
But he didn’t let himself turn around, or take it back, or beg for answers he wouldn’t get.
He’d get his answers at trial, he told himself. He had to.
It wasn’t Klavier’s case; most of what he heard after that came through the office grapevine. There were probably worse ways to learn about it.
First, rumors that Chief Justice Lawe had stepped in with Interpol to stop the extradition (Klavier thanked the gossipy paralegal who confirmed it, and then locked himself in his office until his hands stopped shaking). That probably had something to do with the chief justice’s son getting his cure after all. Political pressure and international attention worked wonders, and sending the man responsible overseas to die would have been – in poor taste.
(Klavier couldn’t make himself believe Daryan deserved to die for that. Not for smuggling a cure for a child, for god’s sake. But LeTouse –)
Then, jurisdictional squabbling. Local courts, Interpol, Borginia – either everyone wanted a piece of the celebrity cop murder scandal or no one did. Klavier decided he didn’t want to know, and gritted his teeth through days of staying the hell out of it until one of the headlines he was pretending to ignore confirmed Daryan Crescend would be charged locally.
There was nothing he could – would – have done anyway. Celebrity didn’t translate to much real legal influence, and after Kristoph and Daryan – But if Daryan was tried locally, the sentence might be lower. Fifteen years, twenty, twenty-five if they could prove premeditation. Not execution.
Klavier hadn’t seen any evidence of premeditation. There’d been a struggle, it was LeTouse’s gun –
– Daryan barely had a motive for the smuggling, he’d denied the murder, were they sure he’d even –
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t Klavier’s case, and he wasn’t anyone’s defense attorney.
He went back to the detention center twice. Daryan refused to see him.
Maybe that was for the best; Klavier wasn’t sure what was left to say.
Tell me, please, tell me why –
Ema cornered him in his office after the second visit. “You’ve been suspiciously tolerable, Gavin. Are you…” She trailed off. “Anything I can do?”
It was kind of her to worry. It grated like nails on a chalkboard, but she meant well. “Ja, Fraulein – you can find me something useful on the Traction case. I’d like to go to trial with some actual evidence, if you don’t mind.”
That produced an eye roll and irritated huff, obviously put on for his benefit. He appreciated the effort.
State v. Crescend went to a prosecutor Klavier barely knew, an older man who’d been with the prosecutor’s office for a decade and a half without ever making waves. No one with personal history. No one who could be accused of being soft on the defendant.
He saw Apollo across the courthouse lobby, the day before Daryan’s trial was scheduled to start. It was a busy day – a robbery trial that had landed on Klavier’s desk an hour before he was due in court, thanks to the original prosecutor being out sick – and Klavier told himself that was why he didn’t say hello.
Maybe they’d see each other at the trial – if Apollo attended. He didn’t know Daryan, not like Klavier did (thought he’d known him –). Klavier didn’t remember seeing him at Alita Tiala’s, and as for Kristoph –
Well, Klavier hadn’t attended that, either.
It wasn’t exactly the kind of question he could drop into casual conversation. Good afternoon, Herr Forehead. Going to my murderer best friend’s trial? It’s tomorrow in courtroom 6, the one with the nice lobby, I’ll save you a seat –
Then State v. Crescend vanished off the courthouse schedule.
It was a few more days before Klavier found out anything at all, and he had to go looking for it. Going by the paperwork, the prosecution had barely investigated.
On the charge of second-degree murder: not guilty. On the charge of battery: not guilty. On the charge of smuggling a controlled substance across international lines: guilty.
That last one should have made Klavier’s stomach drop, but apparently he’d done all the stress-vomiting he was going to, because all he thought was they lowered the smuggling charge. Not by much – but enough.
Daryan would do jail time, if maybe not as much as anyone had expected (maybe – definitely – not as much as he deserved). But he wouldn’t be extradited, or executed. LeTouse’s murder would stay legally unsolved.
(Klavier spared a sympathetic thought for the detective who had to break that news to Interpol. Not Ema, luckily.)
He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t relieved. But looking at the file…
It didn’t add up.
Daryan’s defense attorney was good – of course he was, enough money could buy a lot of skill. But he wasn’t that good. Daryan screaming his lungs out on the witness stand wasn’t a signed confession, but it wasn’t exactly denial. It should have been an easy guilty-on-all-counts.
And Daryan’s co-conspirator was already in jail. He didn’t have anything to bargain with.
Unless he did.
Klavier followed that thought, staring at his living room ceiling in the middle of another sleepless night, and didn’t like where it led.
Chief Justice Zenith Lawe had been investigated, of course, after Machi’s trial – the cocoon had been for his son. But as far as Klavier knew, Lawe claimed he’d known nothing, he’d cooperated more than he was legally obligated to, and nothing suspicious had turned up. Half the judiciary vouched for him, most of them unprompted. Some of that was the usual ass-kissing, but all of it?
Klavier spent the next day and night looking into the man anyway, combing through every piece of information he could get his hands on until the eastern horizon turned pink and a pop-up calendar reminder told him he had a meeting with Winston Payne in an hour. If he believed the publicly available records (and he wasn’t sure he did), Chief Justice Lawe wasn’t just innocent of the smuggling; he was possibly the least corrupt employee in the entire system, Klavier included.
In his position, it wouldn’t have been hard to hide. But it’s possible was hardly damning evidence, and it made less sense than Daryan’s nonexistent motive. Lawe’s son had been diagnosed a year before the concert; why wait so long to act? Klavier couldn’t find any proof Lawe and Daryan had ever even met. Yes, the Chief Justice could have rigged the trial; so could a dozen other prosecutors and judges. He couldn’t make a case on unanswered questions and a hunch.
Why does it matter? None of this will change the fact that your best friend –
It mattered because the truth mattered. Whatever Daryan was or wasn’t, there was no truth in that verdict.
Klavier ran through timelines in his head while pretending to pay attention to the day’s meetings. A co-counsel would have been nice, he thought, or a detective, someone to bounce ideas off (he couldn’t take this to Ema – not until he knew what he was even doing). Evidence review, witness interviews, and his actual casework blurred into a featureless background drumbeat under half-formed theories and a haze of exhaustion the terrible office coffee couldn’t touch.
Daryan. Borginia. LeTouse. Lawe. A cocoon. A gun.
He wasn’t sure what time it was, but the sun was down when his office door slammed open without a warning knock.
He could already hear Daryan’s voice. The hell you still doing here, Gavin, it’s late, come home with me –
“How long have you been here?”
Klavier’s chest tightened agonizingly as his breath caught in his throat. His vision blurred, computer screens swimming into an unreadable haze of color. “What the fuck do you want, Allie?”
“Guess I don’t have to ask how you’re doing.” The Gavinners’ drummer (former? They needed to have that conversation, not that any of them wanted to) shut the door. Klavier didn’t look up. “Would you go home, already?”
You go home, Klavier almost snapped, like a surly teenager. “I have work to do.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t really a suggestion.” Allie sighed, heavy and tired. “Go home, Klavier.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’d been promoted to Chief Prosecutor when I wasn’t looking.” That wasn’t fair. None of this was fair – “Do you need something, or are you just here to waste my time?”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Allie said dryly. “Simmer down, okay? I’m not here to pick a fight.”
It wasn’t Allie’s fault. Klavier stared at the monitors until they resolved into something almost like clarity. The inside of his lip stung when he bit down, where the skin was already broken.
Allie’s footsteps thudded across the floor. “I’m worried about you, man.”
How nice of you, Klavier thought and did not say.
“Lyric says you’ve been ignoring his calls, too.” Allie sighed. “Look, Klav, I get it, okay? We’re all pissed off and hurt. But burning yourself into a coma isn’t going to help. Go home. Eat something that didn’t come from a vending machine. Talk to somebody. I know I’m not Daryan, but –”
“You’re right.” The venom in Klavier’s voice surprised even him, but he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re not him.”
The silence stretched out into something awful and echoing. Klavier swallowed. I’m sorry wouldn’t quite come out, stuck in the back of his throat like a fishhook.
“Okay,” Allie finally said, still calm, still practical. “All right. You don’t have to talk to me, fine, whatever. Just…go home, okay? You have to sleep sometime.”
Klavier swallowed again, and again, until he could force a response out. “Ja. I hear you.”
There was another, longer pause, until Allie sighed and finally retreated toward the door. “You know, Klav, I lost one friend already. I don’t wanna lose another.”
Klavier’s vision blurred again. By the time it cleared, Allie was long gone.
He should have told Allie, he thought. It wasn’t Allie’s fault. He was a detective, at least, and hadn’t Klavier just been thinking he needed a sounding board? Someone else to talk to…
Someone else to talk to.
Someone else to talk to.
Klavier didn’t have enough evidence to approach Lawe. Daryan wouldn’t talk.
But Machi Tobaye might.
Klavier hadn’t dealt much with underage inmates. Juvenile detention was unsettling, a sort of halfway point trying to pretend it wasn’t the same concrete walls as any other jail. The waiting room was a little more comfortable than the bare-bones one he was used to, but that just made the whole thing feel wrong. It was still prison.
Corrupt cops didn’t do well in prison.
Daryan wasn’t even here. He was halfway across town at Central. So Klavier wasn’t sure why staring at the faded yellow walls made thoughts of his former best friend so fucking inescapable.
“It’ll just be a few minutes, Prosecutor Gavin,” the officer at the desk chirped helpfully. “I’m sorry, we don’t usually have overlapping visitors.”
“It’s no trouble, Fraulein. I don’t mind.” He did, but that was hardly her fault. “If I need to come back another day –”
The lobby door clicked open. Klavier turned, and found himself face to face with Apollo Justice.
“Oh! Uh – Prosecutor Gavin.” Apollo straightened his vest. Klavier flashed a camera-perfect smile and reflexively flicked his bangs out of his face.
“Herr Forehead, I might have known.” No sign of his teenage assistant. Was school back in session already? “Should I assume you’re also visiting our young pianist?”
“Well, I am his lawyer.” Apollo eyed him curiously. “What are you doing here?”
“Just looking into a few loose ends, ja? Another trial Machi might be able to shed some light on.” It was more honest than Klavier had intended; he hadn’t planned to lie, but he hadn’t meant for the loose end in question to be so obvious.
Sure enough, Apollo’s gaze sharpened. “Crescend, right?”
No point trying to evade the truth. “Ja. The outcome was…” Not what I wanted was a half-lie he didn’t want to tell. “Unexpected.”
The half-truth still felt painfully obvious. Klavier braced for Apollo to point it out, but instead, Apollo said, “It wasn’t you?”
“What?” Klavier stumbled over his words for a moment, smile dropping. “You thought – I –”
Apollo had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. “I didn’t mean – I wondered, that’s all.”
That had no right to hurt the way it did. “No.” Klavier forced his voice into some semblance of calm, something that sounded like the professional he claimed to be. “The law is the law, even if –” my best friend killed a man – “I know the criminal. Besides, even if I was protecting him, it wasn’t my case. I don’t have that kind of authority to misuse in the first place.”
It sounded defensive even to him, and now Apollo was looking at him with something dangerously close to concern. Klavier bit his tongue and forced a smile back onto his face. “Ach. No. Daryan made his choices. I have no intention of protecting him from the consequences. But under the circumstances…ja, of course, I see why you’d wonder.”
He wouldn’t, if their positions were reversed. But there was a slight difference in credibility, Klavier supposed, between bringing down a murderer, and being that murderer’s best friend.
“It’s not that I thought –” Apollo made a face, fiddling with the bracelet around his left wrist the way Klavier had seen him do during cross-examinations. It wasn’t the most reassuring thing to notice right then. “You – if you wanted to cover for Crescend, you would have done it at Machi’s trial.”
“It would have been easier than rigging an entire case I wasn’t even prosecuting,” Klavier said. Apollo snorted.
“Well, yeah, exactly. It didn’t make sense.”
So why did you ask, Klavier almost said, but – What did you expect, Klavier? You’ve made a career out of acting like a dramatic child. Anyone would assume –
Klavier pushed the thought in Kristoph’s voice aside, flicked his bangs out of his face again, and turned toward the door. “As much as I hate to cut this short, visiting hours –”
“Right. Sorry.” Apollo cleared his throat and stepped out of the way.
It was a serviceable end to an uncomfortable conversation. So it shouldn’t have been a relief when Apollo said, “Do you really think Machi knows anything? I mean, two trials’ worth of testimony – he’s already told you everything. What else do you want?”
“The truth, if he knows it.” Once again, Klavier found himself unintentionally honest. “I don’t think there was much in Daryan’s verdict, in the end.”
He wasn’t quite sure what possessed him to add that last sentence, but Apollo was giving him that look again. “It didn’t look like it to me.”
“Nein. Something wasn’t right.” There was an odd relief in just saying it. “I won’t pretend I wanted him extradited –” executed – “but it all seems to have worked out very conveniently for him.” For a given value of convenient, of course. Corrupt cops in prison – “If there’s something else to this case...”
“Something like what?”
Apollo’s hand was on his bracelet again, and Klavier’s spine prickled. Maybe it was nothing more than paranoia, after Kristoph, after Daryan, but –
But.
“I won’t know until I ask Machi.” Klavier flashed his brightest smile and turned a little more purposefully toward the door. “Preferably today, since I came all the way out here. If you’ll excuse me, Herr Forehead – I’m sure I’ll see you in court soon, ja?”
He pushed through the door without waiting for an answer. Let Apollo assume what he wanted. It didn’t matter.
Machi stared at Klavier suspiciously from across the visitor’s room. His hair had grown out past his chin, and he had the wary look of a feral kitten cornered under a car, ready to run or bite at the slightest provocation. Klavier wondered if that was new since he’d been in prison, or something he’d been hiding all along.
He’s a child, Daryan, he thought, surprised by his own fury. You pulled a child into this.
“How are you, Machi?” His Borginian was too awful for more than pleasantries, but it might smooth things over. “Doing well?”
Machi glared silently at him, hunching into a nervous curl in his chair with his arms wrapped around his chest.
“All right.” So much for easing the tension. “I have a few questions for you about the smuggling operation.”
“No.” The denial came instantly, almost before Klavier finished speaking. “I not know. Nothing else.”
“It’s all right. We’re done with trials.” Machi couldn’t exactly be tried again, even if he did disclose something new. “I want to know what happened before it went wrong, that’s all. Can you tell me how you first heard about the cocoon?”
Machi said nothing, staring at the table like it might bite him.
“You didn’t meet Dar- Detective Crescend, until you came here for the concert, ja?” Klavier went on, when it became clear Machi wasn’t going to answer. “So how did he contact you? Or did you contact him?”
“He send message,” Machi said quickly. “Not me. His plan. His –”
“Ja, I understand.” Klavier held up a hand. “It was his plan, I know. I just want to know how he told you the plan.”
Machi went silent again, eyes fixed on the table. “You have nothing to be afraid of,” Klavier continued, forcing his voice into something gentler. “I only want to know what happened, ja? Detective Crescend is in jail. You don’t need to worry about him.”
Of course he did, of course Machi was afraid of Klavier’s best friend – but Klavier didn’t have time to flinch as his own words sank in, because Machi’s head jerked up. “Ask detective. He know.”
“I’m asking you,” Klavier said. Machi’s expression sharpened into a glare again.
“Ask. Him.”
“All right.” Easy, Gavin. Daryan was obviously a sore topic. “Let’s back up. You and I met in December of last year. Did you already have the cocoon then?”
Machi didn’t relax, but he shook his head. That made sense; Klavier had wrapped that guitar himself and he knew damn well there hadn’t been anything else in it at the time. “When did you get it?”
Machi just eyed him skeptically. Klavier paused to go over his own timeline. He’d visited Borginia in December; the guitar hadn’t shipped until early in May. At the time, he’d chalked the delay up to coincidence – the evidence shipping service could only handle so many deliveries at once and even a prosecutor could only push his access so far. Now, though… “Sometime in the spring, ja?”
“Why?” Machi tugged at his sleeve again, eyes darting around the room. “It was Crescend’s plan. His plan. Not me!”
“Machi, calm down –”
“No. Not matter.” Machi shoved his chair back, like he was trying to get as far from Klavier as he could. “Detective killed LeTouse. Not me. His plan, his shooting!”
“Machi –”
“No.” Machi glared at the wall behind Klavier’s head. “No more talking. Ask him, not me.”
He meant it. Every other question Klavier asked was met with stony silence and a glare too old for Machi’s years.
Apollo was gone by the time Klavier left. Staring at the empty bike rack, Klavier wondered if he should have asked for Apollo’s help. It was a long shot, but if anyone else might want the truth behind Daryan’s inexplicable acquittal…
…but that was too much to ask of a man that Klavier barely knew. A man who, for all his apparent honesty, took his cues from Phoenix Wright.
You know a dead end when you see one, Klavier.
He wasn’t sure if it was his own voice, or Kristoph’s. He didn’t want to hear it either way.
Daryan wouldn’t talk; there wasn’t enough evidence to justify interviewing Lawe; and now Machi claimed to know nothing.
It wasn’t a dead end. Just a setback. He could find other investigative routes. Interpol, Borginia; it would take time, but he had options. Let the case go cold, if it had to; it wouldn’t be the first time.
It’s practically tradition, isn’t it? Zak Gramarye –
Klavier shook off the thought. If there was some truth to find, it would come out. For now – as much as it burned to admit it – there was nothing he could do.
You’re so fucking smart, you figure it out.
Shut up, Daryan.