Chapter Text
Phoenix gets to the hospital to check in on Apollo (and Trucy, who he assumes will be with him and forgetting to take care of herself) just in time to witness Apollo signing himself out against medical advice.
"Is this the last thing I have to sign?" Apollo's asking, as Phoenix pauses uncertainly at the far end of the nurse's station where the other attorney is working his way through a stack of documents.
Trucy, hovering behind his shoulder and squinting at the document as her brother signs it, says, "I think your arm's going to fall off if you have to sign anything else, Polly."
The obviously agitated nurse overseeing Apollo's frankly baffling decision to leave the hospital with a fresh bullet wound says, "Sir, if your arm is bothering you then you should really reconsider--"
"It's not bothering me," Apollo says. He puts his pen down and flexes the shoulder of the arm he'd been signing forms with. "This isn't even the shoulder that got shot. Trucy's just trying to be funny."
"I'm the funniest sister you have," Trucy says.
"You're the only sister I have."
"Well," she says. "Technically--" But then she cuts herself off, looking over her shoulder and down a hall Phoenix can't see from where he's standing. "Hey!" she calls down the hall. "We're about to leave, are you coming?"
"Sir," the nurse says to Apollo, with the air of someone gearing up for a desperate last stand in a battle she's already lost. "I really have to insist that you at least stay long enough to let yourself be examined by a doctor before leaving. It's only been a few days since you were injured, and there will be long term health risks if you don't receive the full course of treatment."
"Thank you," Apollo says. "But I understand the risks, and I'll be fine."
A teenage boy comes rushing up the hall Trucy has been shouting down, awkwardly half-running and half-shuffling, looking like he's maybe just been yelled at for running in a hospital, and had tried to slow down without actually slowing down. Phoenix does a double take, seeing him--at first, he'd assumed that he would probably be one of the crowd that's always hanging out around the office, maybe Klavier or the new one, Clay. But this is a teenager Phoenix hasn't seen before, and he looks so much like Apollo that he almost could have been a clone. Apart from some unfortunate acne spots and a face he hasn't quite grown into (he looks like he's about Trucy's age, probably fifteen or sixteen), he's almost scarily identical to Apollo.
And he's noticed Phoenix. He looks surprised for a second, obviously recognizing Phoenix even though Phoenix hasn't recognized him, then elbows Trucy.
"Huh?" she says.
The new teen nods in Phoenix's direction.
"Oh!" Trucy says. "Phoenix, hi!"
"Hi," Phoenix says, walking over to the trio and trying to pretend he's only just gotten here. "Uh... what's going on here?"
"Nothing," Apollo says. He sounds calm, which is unusual for him. "I'm just leaving."
"Uh," Phoenix says. "I know I'm not a doctor, but you just got shot."
"Please listen to your friend, Mr. Justice," the nurse says anxiously. "You have a bullet in your shoulder."
"I know you have to be worried about that," Apollo says. Behind him, the teens exchange a look. Trucy is fighting a laugh that Phoenix doesn't understand at all, until the boy steps on her foot and she stops. "But I'm okay with the number of bullets I have in my shoulder right now, and I just signed all these forms specifically so that I could leave even though you're still worried. So now I'm leaving."
The nurse bites back an obviously frustrated noise, before collecting the signed forms and side stepping away from the whole encounter. This leaves Phoenix alone with Apollo, Trucy, and the teenage Apollo-clone. "So," he says, a little awkwardly. "Do I get to know what's going on here? Or maybe who your friend is?"
The three of them exchange a complicated look Apollo actually looks less comfortable than when he'd taken his life into his own hands by checking out of a hospital with a bullet in him, when he says, "This is harder to explain than I thought it would b- -"
"We're cousins," the teenager interrupts, so suddenly that Trucy jumps and Apollo ends his sentence with a confused 'Wha--?' and Phoenix starts from the sudden appearance of multiple psych locks rattling and slamming into place. Why are there so many psych locks wherever this family goes?
Phoenix isn't sure, but he's starting to think it might be worth finding out.
"You didn't have to shout," Trucy says, and her cousin, if they even really are related, turns bright red.
"Sorry," he says. "I just--sorry."
We should probably get going," Apollo says.
"You really shouldn't," the nurse interjects, trying one more time to keep Apollo from walking out of the hospital with a major wound. "If you'll just wait a little bit longer for the doctor to get in and run a few tests--"
"I'm so sorry," Apollo says. "But we really need to go." He catches Phoenix's look of utter confusion, and adds, "We'll see you later at the office?"
"Uh," Phoenix says. "Sure..?"
And then they're gone. Phoenix is left alone with the very anxious nurse, who is already on the phone and trying to explain to what sounds like a doctor that no really, she'd done everything she could to get Apollo to stay, and he'd just absolutely refused to sit through any kind of examination.
Weird, Phoenix thinks. That had been--what had that been?
It had been wildly out of character for Apollo, to start with. For all the time he spends yelling at the top of his voice that he's FINE, Phoenix has noticed that he's actually a fairly quiet person. Outside the courtroom, where he always gives everything he has for his clients, he tends to keep his head down, live quietly, and avoid trouble. This sudden and absolute refusal to do what the doctors say is best for him feels off in a way Phoenix is struggling to wrap his head around--it feels much more like Trucy than Apollo.
And what's going on with the new cousin? Why had that surprised the siblings?
Phoenix decides, all at once, that he's going to figure this out. He has to, because this isn't the first time something about the siblings has felt wrong. There had been the thing at the magic show, when he stumbled on Apollo arguing with that old man, Magnifi, protesting that he doesn't even know who his mother is (and so how can he know Trucy is his sister, when they have different last names, which means different fathers?).
There are contradictions here. The contradiction of Apollo's sudden, sure confidence in defying the nurse. Where had that confidence come from overnight? Where had the motivation to leave the hospital come from. And the contradiction of Apollo and Trucy's parents, of how they can be siblings without either parent matching.
It feels bad to be questioning these things. Phoenix likes both of them. Apollo has been a lawyer for a little longer than Phoenix (he thinks--Apollo is always confusingly vague about his past). They've been figuring things out together, and it's been a wild ride but not a bad one. And Phoenix thinks that they're really starting to find their feet. The Wright and Co Law Offices are starting to feel like a real law office, even without Mia around to hold them up. They've been winning cases, keeping the doors open, figuring out what it means to believe in their clients and keep moving forward.
And that's all good. Phoenix has never felt more sure that he's in the right place in his life than he has been since he started defending clients.
It's just that he's starting to doubt whether he trusts his co-counsel. He's doubting Apollo, and not in a way he can close his eyes and ignore anymore. He's worried about where all this is going. Leaving a hospital with a bullet in your shoulder is dangerous. Confrontations with unhinged looking magicians is probably also dangerous, even if the one Phoenix had spotted Apollo with had been a little... elderly? A little older, sure, but there had been something in his expression that had made Phoenix genuinely worried for Apollo's safety.
This is him being worried about his friends' safety, he decides.
He's not being nosy.
He's being concerned.
-//-
Apollo leaves Trucy and his older self just outside the hospital, skirting the entirely reasonable questions he can feel both of them about to ask. Why had he blurted out that he's a cousin when they'd been perfectly happy for him to just come right out and say that he's a younger Apollo from the past? Or that the other Apollo is an older him from the future, technically, now that they're back in his time.
But--
Well, it had been easier in the future. There had been no other explanation for how he'd gotten there. Here? This is his own time, he belongs here. Future Apollo and Trucy don't have to actually claim him as family, and if push came to shove, they probably... well, people don't usually...
It's just better to not give people the chance to be your family, and then to leave you behind. He's had it happen to him often enough before, and in the actual moment when the two from the future might have been about to acknowledge him--
Apollo had been too scared to give them the chance not to.
He doesn't answer questions before he leaves, just says he wants to get back to his own life--from their expressions, Trucy suspects this is a lie, and older Apollo knows it is, knows there's nothing worth running back to in the foster home--and leaves. He's not proud of it, and when he's calmed down he'll probably have to come back to apologize, but for right now he just can't get over the feeling that now he's back in his own time, he needs to protect the life he's managed to scrape together for himself.
Stupid.
Hadn't he been upset with Trucy not that long ago for feeling like she was leaving him out?
He's doing so much worse. They'd been fully willing to start actually talking about the time travel, and now he'd not only slammed the brakes on that, but made it so much harder by letting one of their friends see his face. He owes bot of them so much of an apology...
His phone pings and when he looks down there's a text from Clay, moaning about their English assignment, asking if he's started yet or if he's still at the hospital. And if he has started, does he have any idea whether the wallpaper is supposed to be symbolism.
It's such an overwhelmingly normal text from his best friend that some of the anxious pressure in Apollo's chest starts to ease away. He knows before the next message comes through that Clay's about to move on to complaining about how colors can't possibly be symbolic, they're just colors, before grumbling that he's just going to write his essay about colors anyway, because English teachers love that.
Clay
Clay: Who cares if the wallpaper is yellow??
Clay: But that's 100% what we're supposed to be writing about, it's always the stupid color symbolism
Clay: I still don't get the point of the green light from Gatsby
Clay: Whatever. I'll write something about the wallpaper, I'll probably get a decent grade out of it
Clay: What's yellow mean, happiness? The sun? Egg yoks?
Clay: This is why I like physics better than English
Apollo lets out a long sigh, and it feels like he's really letting go of all the baggage he's brought back with him from the future. Or some of it. He's not oblivious enough to think that he's actually getting past all the problems he's just made for himself, but Clay is a good friend.
Clay
Apollo: So I went to the future
His phone rings so quickly that for a second Apollo actually doubts it could possibly be Clay. He couldn't have seen the text, processed it, and called this quickly. But the caller ID says his name, and when Apollo answers, it's Clay's voice blurting, "You time travelled? Are you serious?"
Apollo smiles a little. "Yeah," he says. "I went to the future. It's been like--a couple months?"
"Holy Shit, Apollo! We have to talk. Where are you?"
"Just left the hospital," Apollo says. "So I'm not really anywhere yet. I was just going to check the bus schedule."
"See if you can get to the space center," Clay urges him. "I want to talk about this without anyone walking in on us."
And they're there so much anyway that no one really cares what they're talking about anyway. They're just two teenagers bumming around in a space center, one of them being a giant nerd and the other one more than willing to spend time at his friend's favorite place instead of at the foster home. Everyone else at the space center has important work to do. It's a great place to have unheard conversations.
Apollo feels a little weird about it now, knowing that the Clay of the future actually works there. He'd only heard about it secondhand, since he'd been away on training, but it feels like something he should tell his best friend. It also feels like it should be something Clay gets to experience for himself?
No. No, Clay loves all this. Both space and time travel. He'll lose his absolute mind, and Apollo should tell him. He will, he decides, when they're face to face.
"I'll get there," he promises Clay.
"Awesome," Clay says. "I'm so--I'll bring you lunch. Or breakfast? I don't know, we'll figure out whatever it's called at whatever time we eat."
"What?" Apollo frowns. "Why are you feeding me?"
"For bribery," Clay says, matter of factly. "Because I'm going to be grilling you for ages. Like you're on a witness stand, you'll have a great time, you love lawyer stuff. You're going to be a lawyer."
Apollo starts to protest that if he's--when he's an attorney, he isn't going to be on the witness stand, he'll be the one asking the questions. Then he remembers the big future conversation with everyone after Vera's trial. Judging by Mr. Wright's history of being accused of murder, maybe that really is a crucial part of being an attorney. "Thanks," he says quietly.
"What," Clay says. "For the food? It won't even be a fair trade, I'm going to ask you so many questions."
"Not that," Apollo says, although he's not going to turn down the food. "I mean thanks for..." He trails off, not quite sure how to phrase something he's only just starting to understand. He's wanted to be a lawyer for a long time now. As long as he can remember, really. It's a connection to a part of his past that feels meaningful, and more importantly is something he can work hard for and grasp himself. It's a personal choice, because of his past and his fam--his childhood.
Until it isn't. Because he's gotten to see the way other people use the legal system to find the truth, and that feels so much bigger and more important than his own personal need for connection to people that don't want to be connected to him in return. He can just--he can do that. Someday, if he really works at it, he'll be able to walk into a courtroom and use that to find the truth too.
In the meantime, right now, he realizes that he likes the idea of Clay grilling him about time travel. If it helps him get to the truth of his own... whatever he's feeling, it'll be worth it. "Just thanks," he tells Clay. "It's nice to be home."
-//-
The next several weeks are more stressful than time travel usually is, which is kind of a weird thing to think, but Trucy is getting used to time travel. This is just her life now. And so it's not the time travel itself that's stressing her out, it's the fact that now they know things that are going to happen.
(And also baby Apollo, who Trucy is still pretty sure is mad at them)
(She's gotten used to seeing him around all the time in the future, and it's kind of weird to suddenly barely see him)
(Older Apollo says to give him space, but Trucy thinks she can come up with something better than that)
The next murder that they have any real chance of stopping is a man named Kane Bollard. The name makes Trucy think of a bulldog, but it's just an idea. She doesn't know what he actually looks like, she hadn't even seen a picture in the future. There had been enough other things to pay attention to, and remember, so pictures of someone that hopefully won't even be a victim hadn't been a top priority.
But they know where he'll be when he's supposed to be murdered. They know when and how it'll happen. And at whose hands, if they allow it to happen at all. If they can stop it.
Trucy has never had to stop a murder before. Neither has Apollo, and so they've been arguing about what to do for weeks. He thinks they should talk to Edgeworth, because he already knows about time travel, and he might be able to do something to help prevent the murder, officially. Tracy thinks they should stake out the scene of the crime themselves, because what is the prosecutor's office supposed to do with a crime that hasn't happened yet? You can't arrest people for stuff they haven't done.
"It has to be us," Trucy insists, again, on the last day before the murder. "If it doesn't work, and we aren't there? I don't want to have to live with that, and we don't have to! why wouldn't we at least try and stop it ourselves?"
"There's going to be a guard," Apollo points out.
Trucy makes a face. "Yeah," she says. "But it'll be Larry Butz."
"That's true," Apollo admits. "Only, I'm not sure we want to rely on any plan that involves being in close proximity to Larry Butz."
Trucy winces. She doesn't want to admit he has a point, but the thing is he does. "Okay," she says reluctantly. "Maybe we could try both?"
But Apollo shakes his head. "I don't think Edgeworth would be okay with a couple random time travelers trying to get involved in a murder?"
Trucy groans, and flops (dramatically) onto the office couch. For once they're alone, which makes it safe to have this conversation for what feels like the hundredth time. For a few moments she's silent, then she asks, "Do you know what we should have done?"
"What?" Apollo asks.
"We should have stopped Atmey from stealing the urn and making his fake alibi in the first place."
Apollo stares at her. "That--" he says. "Yeah, that is exactly what we should have done."
They're interrupted before they can finish the conversation, the door opening to let in Phoenix and Maya. Maya keeps right on saying whatever she'd been talking about on the way in, finishing what sounds like a lengthy point about ladders. This is such a common argument between her and Phoenix that the rest of them have literally gotten together and agreed to never bring it up around them, so Trucy and Apollo both stay stubbornly silent as Maya finishes.
Phoenix nods along like he's paying attention, but his eyes sweep across Trucy and Apollo with a hard edge of suspicion in his eyes that never used to be there before. It's not exactly an accusation, it's not angry, but it sure is... well, it's something.
(They really need to tell Phoenix everything, but past Apollo has made things complicated by freaking out)
(If he doesn't want to be known, how can they explain the rest without lying by leaving him out?)
(...or is it just hard to think about broaching the subject to Phoenix when he's looking at them like that?)
"You two look serious," Phoenix says.
"We are always serious," Trucy says. "Very serious."
Maya laughs, which is kind of fair. Trucy had hoped it would smooth over the awkwardness, and it seems like it's done that. Mostly, at least. Phoenix isn't looking at them anymore, but Trucy is still acutely aware of time ticking on toward evening, toward when she and Apollo will have to make a decision about what to do next, no matter what. She keeps looking over at him, and finding him giving pointed looks back at her, but there's not much they can say with other people around, and so the tension very much does not go away completely.
The afternoon stretches out. Klavier wanders in at some point. Maya rushes out to meet up with Pearl. Close to the end of the work day, but before when Apollo usually drags himself away from his work, he looks up at the clock and says, "We should get going, Trucy."
"Yeah?" she asks.
"If we want to have time to make our plans tonight."
He'd said plans tonight. If they go talk to Edgeworth, they'll have to do it now, before the end of the day, because there's no guarantee they'll find him after. If they do, he'll be cranky at being bothered so late. If Apollo's saying they have plans tonight, that's him telling her that they're going with her plan. Not his. He's trusting her.
"Trucy beams, and says, "Oh yeah! We better get going."
"What kind of plans do you two have?" Phoenix asks.
"Stuff," she says.
"Just plans," Apollo adds.
Phoenix frowns at both of them, and if Trucy didn't know for a fact that he can't detect lies the way she and Apollo can, she might have thought that he knows, somehow.
But he can't, possibly, know they're hiding something.
Not know for sure.
-//-
(Psych locks, Phoenix thinks)
(This isn't even their past or their family or any of the normal things that trigger psych locks, so what's going on?)
-//-
"I'll try and be in early tomorrow to make up for it," Apollo says apologetically to Phoenix, starting to pack up his things. "I pretty much have everything urgent taken care of anyway."
"No problem," Phoenix says. "I was going to head out too. I guess Maya and Pearl have something they want to show off at some department store?" For the first time today, he doesn't sound suspicious at all--mostly he just sounds confused, and Trucy hopes she's doing a good job of keeping the oh, well, of course off her face. Considering she knows that the Feys are probably talking about the urn that's already been stolen so it can be used as an alibi in the murder she and Apollo are going to try and commit, she's really hoping none of that is showing in her expression right now.
Her hopes are dashed when Phoenix looks at her and asks, the suspicion coming right back into his voice again, "Everything okay?"
"We're just going to be late," Apollo says, coming in for the save. "Trucy, come on."
"I'm coming!" She scrambles for her stuff, throws a couple things in her bag, and rushes out of the office ahead of Apollo. "That was close," she hisses, when they're out in the hall.
"I don't know what that was," Apollo says, looking back over his shoulder at the door, expression puzzled like he doesn't know what to make of it. Or of the other attorney still on the other side. "I think he's starting to get suspicious that there's something going on with us, but there's no way he's guessed."
"Do you think it has something to do with the magatama Dad told us not to worry about?" Trucy asks.
"I think it has more to do with my shoulder being magically healed," Apollo says. Which is true, actually, Phoenix has been asking about that for ages now. "And probably how suspicious we've been acting. And he did see the other Apollo."
"We need to go talk to him again," Trucy says. "Do you think if we called today, we could convince him to help us stop the murder?"
"One thing at a time, I think," Apollo says with a sigh. "We can work on convincing him after we save Bollard's life."
"Good point," Trucy agrees.
"Come on," he says, gesturing. "Let's get going."
-//-
Apollo is halfway through being talked through his physics homework by Clay--he isn't a bad student, his grades are fine, but Clay will always be ahead of him on any subject that could even possibly relate to his future career--when he realizes the date.
"Oh crap," he blurts, voice cracking and going loud, the embarrassing sound of it almost but not quite managing to drown out the loud scrape of his chair sliding back against the library floor. Several other people in the silent study room look up at him, either annoyed or curious, but Clay is barely paying attention. Today is that day, and he can't sit here in the library trying to remember which equation the speed of light is used in.
Not when someone's about to die.
"Apollo?" Clay asks.
Apollo gestures urgently for Clay to follow him out of the library, and Clay--after a second of just not getting it--helps Apollo stuff all their books and notes into their bags, and follows him out of the building.
"It's October 11th," Apollo says.
"I know?" Clay says, and Apollo has a feeling that the question in his voice isn't exactly because Clay isn't sure what day it is, and is instead probably because he thinks Apollo is being crazy.
"Tomorrow is October 12th!" Apollo says. "Tonight is going to be October 12th at 1:00 in the morning!"
"Yeah," Clay says. "I get it, Apollo, I know how time works. What's so special about it being the 11th or 12th or whatever?"
"Because--" Apollo is still talking too loudly. He forces himself to lower his voice and turn to face Clay, close enough that his friend and nobody else will be able to hear, and says, "Kane Bullard is going to be killed at 1:00 this morning."
Clay blinks. Takes a step back. "Oh..." he says. "Today is that day..."
"Yeah," Apollo says. "And I don't want to just sit around here and do nothing. I want to help stop that."
"Cool," Clay says. "I'm in. Does this mean you're talking to Oldpollo and Trucy again?"
"We are not using that name," Apollo says, without missing a beat. If he lets this slide now, he's going to regret it when ten years, because Clay will have precedent, and he's going to be the one being called Oldpollo. "And--I don't know."
"We've been talking about it for weeks," Clay says. "Maybe we've been talking about it enough that you've decided how you feel?"
Apollo swings his backpack over his shoulder and starts walking. Fast and purposeful. Clay hurries to follow him. "I don't know if I've decided," he tells Clay as they walk. "But I do know that I have to decide."
Clay's been listening to him bounce back and forth about this for weeks. He's never, not even once, complained about Apollo's need to have the questions asked again and again, to have the chance to argue his own position and figure out what that actually is. In fact, as soon as Apollo tells him that he needs to figure this out, he starts throwing questions at him.
"So are you a part of all this time traveling stuff now?" he asks. "Like, if you're trying to stop murders, are you officially a time traveler?"
"Yeah," Apollo says. This one's easy--he's been to the future, and now he's taking knowledge he'd gotten there, and applying it to try and make things better in the present. "I'm a time traveler."
"Sick," Clay mutters. "My best friend's a time traveler." He raises his voice back up to a normal volume, and asks, "So if you're a time traveler, and Oldpollo--"
"Clay!"
"Future you is a time traveler, and Trucy's a time traveler, that means it's probably a family thing, right?"
"Probably?" Apollo says. "I don't--I don't know how this works. That's kind of your thing."
"And I'm still going to figure it out," Clay says. "But I didn't mean like does it only work for your family. I meant, isn't this a thing that your family is doing together?"
"I don't know," Apollo says. "I don't know if we're family."
"Okay," Clay says. "So you're just doing this because of the murder thing?"
"Isn't stopping a murder enough?"
"Well, yeah," Clay says. "I mean, obviously stopping murders with time travel is cool. But is that why you're doing it?"
"Yeah."
"The only reason?"
"I..."
"Because I think it'd be pretty cool if you finally got a family," Clay says. "Like, I'm not saying you need one, but you've always kind of seemed like you wanted one."
Clay has known Apollo for longer than anyone else in the US. Well--anyone other than his future self, now that time travel is involved, but that doesn't count. And even though they've been back and forth on this since Apollo got back from the future, this specific argument is new. Hearing someone that knows him really, really well tell him that he wants a family makes something that Apollo's been trying not to think about for a very long time feel real.
"I've had a family before," he says, pace slowing for just a few steps, before he remembers the urgency and speeds up again. "It didn't work out great."
"It didn't work out at all," Clay says. "I mean--I know this is a touchy subject, but you never even talk about your foster family. You told me once that they left you in the US, right?"
"Yeah," Apollo says, not looking at Clay. He's not--he is not--thinking about Dhurke.
"And they didn't come back."
"Nope."
"And now you know they never will," Clay says. "Because of the time travel."
"I..." He has to take a breath. Out, in. Breathe. He is fine. "Yeah."
"But if you can use time travel to try and change our present so that guy doesn't get murdered," Clay says. "Why can't you use time travel to change our present to that you get your family?"
Apollo turns and stares back at Clay. Stares for so long that he trips over an uneven spot in the sidewalk, and pinwheels wildly for a second before managing to regain his balance."
"You okay?" Clay asks.
"I'm fine!"
Clay, who has his hands out like he'd been about to try and catch him, lowers them. "It's okay if you're not," he says. "I still don't know all the details, but I know that your family leaving you and not coming back is an okay reason to not be fine."
Apollo, just for a second, forgets all about the urgency. He stops.
So does Clay. "And now you have people that want to be your weird time travel family," he says. "And we don't actually know what your foster family wants."
"Evidence," Apollo says.
"What?"
"I..." He hesitates, then admits. "You're right. I don't have any evidence to show me what they were thinking. Or why they didn't come back. And... maybe I don't have to live without knowing just because a future version of me did."
"Right," Clay says. "You don't."
"I don't."
Clay gives him a hard clap on the back, enough to make Apollo stumble forward and get him moving again. "Okay!" he says. "So I don't know anything about court cases, and I don't know if that means I won or lost or whatever, but we have a murder to stop and some weird time travel siblings for you to make up with, and then an international foster family to track down, somehow. Let's get going!"
"Wait up!" Apollo calls, as Clay charges off in the wrong direction. "You don't even know where we're going!"
"Oh yeah," Clay says, jogging back. "Where's the murder?"
"We're not going there," Apollo says. "And it's not until 1:00 in the morning, anyway." Still hours away.
"Then where are we going?" Clay asks.
"Well," Apollo says. "I have a plan." And luckily, the city library isn't that far from his destination. In a surprisingly satisfying bit of dramatic timing, he turns a corner, and points straight ahead to the building that hosts the prosecutor's office. "Apparently Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth already knows about the time travel."
"In this time?" Clay asks.
Apollo nods.
"And he'll help?"
"Well," Apollo says. "I haven't met him in this time, but he was really helpful in the future. That counts for something, right?"
(He had been kind of... stiff? But this is about a murder, he'll want to help with that, right?)
"Guess we'll find out," Clay says.
The two of them stick out like sore thumbs as they make their (slightly nervous) way through the intimidating lobby. It's getting close to the end of the workday, and the lobby is fairly busy with people heading out at the end of the day. There are a lot of men and women in official, business formal outfits, and a few people that look more like police. A lot of them give Apollo and Clay judgmental looks as they try to get their bearings, and Apollo realizes that okay, sure, two teenagers in hoodies and jeans definitely look out of place here. Especially two teenagers that obviously don't know where they're going in a building full of people that do.
Clay spots the screen on the wall with the building directory before Apollo does, and nudges him in the side to point it out. Trying to figure out how to read the map there leads to a frantic whispered argument about where they are, where the office is, and what they're going to do if Edgeworth isn't even in his office--
At which point a voice that apparently won't change at all in the next ten years asks, "Can I help you?"
Apollo whirls around. Clay is a step behind him. And there's Edgeworth, looking like he's stepping in something that smells (Apollo vaguely remembers him looking like this in the future, so maybe that's just always how he looks). Then he sees Apollo, looks surprised for about half a second, and then looks resigned.
"Uh," Apollo says, and tries hard to meet the gaze of a suddenly exhausted looking Miles Edgeworth. "Sorry if this is kind of weird, but I heard that you know about time travel?"
"And we need to stop a murder," Clay adds.
Edgeworth sighs again, then gestures for the two of them to follow him out of the building. "I don't even know why I'm still surprised," he says, apparently to the universe at large. "I really don't." To Apollo and Clay, he adds, "I'll call a detective with a squad car. By the time he gets here, I need to know details. Who, when, where."
Apollo immediately starts explaining, trying hard to remember every single detail he'd heard in the future before coming back here. He's so focused on that, in fact, that he barely notices that on their way out, they ass a man carrying an enormous thermos of coffee, and wearing a weird, Star Trek-y visor.
Almost.
But Godot, or Diego Armando, or whoever, is not today's issue. As curious as Apollo might be after things he's heard in the future, now is not the moment.
They have a murder to stop.
-//-
Apollo is, as of the last time he checked, an adult. He is an adult, and his sister is a teenager with a flair for the dramatics and the occasional impulse control issue, and therefore Apollo should have known better than to go with her plan for trying to stop an actual murder.
No, that's not fair. Trucy's plan had just as much chance of working as his. This isn't her fault, and blaming her isn't going to help.
The person he should be blaming is Larry Butz, because apparently tonight is the one and only time that he's actually managing to do his job.
Larry is a security guard today--a step up from selling samurai themed hot dogs, probably--and that should have meant it'd be easy to get past him and into the building. And to be fair, he and Trucy haven't actually been caught yet. But they also haven't gotten to the office where the murder is about to take place, either, and Apollo is getting anxious.
This only gets worse when the cops show up.
"Great," he says, reaching out with one hand to stop Trucy from leaning out too far from the hiding place they've found in the building's lobby. "Now we're going to be arrested for trespassing."
"Yeah," Trucy says, slipping out of his grasp with the practiced ease of someone that escapes handcuffs three times a week at her show. "Maybe. Did you call Edgeworth after all?"
"What?"
Apollo follows her lead, edging out of their hiding spot so he can get a better look at what's going on, and is immediately spotted by Miles Edgeworth, standing all the way on the far side of the room.
"He just saw you, didn't he?" Trucy asks.
"...no."
"I don't even have a bracelet on and I know you're lying."
Apollo makes a face and stands up.
"Smooth," his sister whispers, and he resists the urge to turn around and start an argument with her over whose fault exactly this is.
There are half a dozen police officers here, along with Edgeworth and--Apollo doesn't realize this until he's halfway across the room, a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of activity going on--teenage him with Clay.
"Wow, Polly," Trucy says. "You're really predictable."
It is, he'll admit, a little funny that two versions of him from two different points on his personal timeline had both come up with the same plan. It's just that one had gone through with it, and the other hadn't.
The same, but different.
"This," Edgeworth says, looking at all three of them. "Is not okay. There was almost a murder here today, and it could have been something you started trying to stop well before it got this close to actually happening."
"I know," Apollo says. "It's just..." He shrugs helplessly. "What do you do with something like that? With knowledge from the future?"
"I want to hear about it before it happens next time," Edgeworth says, flat and unimpressed. "We barely got here in time today."
"But you did?" Trucy asks, excited.
"Barely," Edgeworth stresses. "We found Bullard with a head wound, but he's receiving medical treatment. He'll be alright."
"Did you get Atmey?" Apollo asks.
"We might have," Edgeworth says. "If the security guard hadn't been busy chasing a couple of intruders around."
"He wouldn't have caught him anyway," Apollo says, apologetically. "It's Larry Butz."
"Ah." Edgeworth closes his eyes, and taps his fingers against his crossed arms. Then he opens his eyes again, and admits, "In that case, yes, I suppose that's irrelevant. But if you had come looking for backup before today--well, yesterday at this point, considering the time--I could have arranged to have police here. We could have caught the man that attempted this murder."
"Maybe Bullard will remember Atmey hitting him?" Trucy says hopefully.
"Not with a head wound," Apollo says.
"Oh yeah," she says. "Probably not."
"It's okay," younger Apollo says. "Because Bullard didn't die, and that was the most important thing. When we were in the future, we heard all about who really did it, and how, and everything. And they figured it out. We can do that this time, too."
He looks like he really believes it. Really believes it, in the way that only teenagers can. Sure, Apollo himself believes that they can make sure Atmey's scapegoat isn't found guilty, and it'll definitely help that they have a prosecutor on their side to hold up the other side of things, looking for evidence to get Atmey behind bars.
Edgeworth sighs. Again. "Well," he says grudgingly. "You're probably right. But the three of you should get out of here before anyone starts to ask questions about why you're here. Have you told anyone else that you're from the future?"
"Not exactly," Apollo admits.
"Then go," Edgeworth says. "Get this case taken care of, and then please, for my sanity if not yours, start talking to people. Talk to Wright."
After seeing Edgeworth with Phoenix both here and in the future, Apollo isn't surprised at all to hear this suggestion. Of course he'd say that. Even if the Edgeworth of the past isn't as open about their friendship as they will be in another ten years, it's pretty obvious with that extra context.
"Yeah," Apollo says. "That's... we're working on it. It's complicated."
"Complicated or not," Edgeworth says. "You have knowledge of the future now. Stop hiding that, and tell me about the next murder. Preferably with more than a few hours of warning."
And with that, he turns and walks off.
"He's not as nice as he was in the future," teen Apollo says uncertainly, watching him walk off.
"He was kind of a jerk," Clay says.
"People change," Apollo says. "And he's right, we probably should have handled this better." Now that it's over, it's starting to really sink in how close they were to failing here. They'd almost let someone die. They need to be better next time.
They start walking, Apollo trying to look like he's responsible enough of an adult to explain why he's out past 1:00 in the morning with three teenagers. He's not sure how well he's doing, but luckily there's no one else around to notice and have an opinion.
"So are you done ignoring us now?" Trucy asks younger Apollo.
"Trucy," Apollo sighs. He knows for a fact that he can't stop her, but this probably isn't the best time for an argument.
To his surprise, though, younger Apollo nods. "Yeah," he says. "I'm sorry it took me a long time to kind of work through things, but I'm good now."
"I helped," Clay says.
"You talked me into it," teenage Apollo says, laughing self consciously. "But um... yeah. I kind of forgot the murder was going to be tonight, otherwise I probably--I hope I would have done something earlier, but we kind of talked everything out today--"
"For the hundredth time," Clay adds.
"Very thorough," Apollo says, before the teenagers can start bickering.
"Yeah," teen Apollo says. "And he kind of convinced me that I should..." He hesitates, gestures at Apollo and Trucy, and finishes lamely, "Yeah."
"Welcome back!" Trucy says. "I mean, I guess I'm outnumbered now, but I'm glad you're okay coming back."
"I'm outnumbered too," Clay says.
"We can be outnumbered together!"
Teen Apollo clears his throat, and with just a little bit of nervousness, he says, "So um. You know how we just finished changing the past, and that's a really good thing?"
"Yeah?" Apollo asks warily.
"Are you going to help with stopping the next murder?" Trucy asks.
"Well," teen Apollo says. "Yeah. But I also--there's something else Clay and I were talking about that would be good to change."
"Like what?" Trucy asks.
"Like..." he hesitates. "I want to find out why Dhurke never came back."
Apollo stops walking. Trucy walks into him, and starts to open her mouth to say something. She stops, though, when she sees the look on his face.
"He never came back," he reminds his younger self. "Never."
"I know," younger Apollo says. "But what if we can go back for him?"
Apollo shakes his head. He's had to do a lot of work to put Dhurke behind him, and it's probably going to take even more work to open those doors back up again.
"I want to find out the truth," younger Apollo sighs, and...
Well, Apollo's a lawyer.
"Let's get this trial over with first," he says. "And then maybe finally explain to Phoenix what's been going on."
Trucy nods enthusiastically.
"And then," Apollo says, barely believing he's about to say these words. "We'll see what we can find out about Dhurke."
-//-
Phoenix is missing something.
He's absolutely sure that he's missing something, and so the trial that takes place over the next few days makes no sense whatsoever to him. Apollo scrambles to take lead on Ron DeLite's defense, which isn't the kind of case Phoenix would have expected to see him jump at. And when Apollo firmly mantains that the best trial strategy is to drag his feet for three days, the maximum trial length, even after Phoenix points out that they can literally prove that DeLite had been miles away at the time.
"Trust me," is all Apollo says. "The last thing we want to do is prove he was there."
"But he's going to be found guilty," Phoenix argues.
"Only of theft, though," Trucy says.
The three of them are alone in the defense lobby. It's the end of day two, and Apollo has just wrangled an absolutely unnecessary extension out of the judge to continue the trial until tomorrow. DeLite has been whisked back to the detention center, and Phoenix is absolutely lost.
"Theft is what he's accused of," he reminds Trucy. "We're supposed to believe in him, and help him be found not guilty."
"It'll be okay," Apollo says. "It will be, I promise."
But...
Well, Apollo can't know for sure that it will be.
Even later, after Phoenix finds out that Edgeworth has spent the past two days systematically proving that Luke Atmey was not only the real thief of the vase Ron DeLite is accused of taking, but he'd also been using it to frame DeLite for an attempted murder at the KB Security building where DeLite had been lured. And where Apollo had insisted they do not want to place his client.
Phoenix doesn't understand it.
He really doesn't.
And he understands it even less when he starts going through the public records of Atmey's trial, the evidence that Edgeworth and Atmey's attorney have been sparring over. Because there, at the edge of a security picture that had been submitted but apparently not closely examined, a shot of the building in the aftermath of the attempted murder, when the police and even Edgeworth himself had showed up to take charge of the scene...
He sees, in the corner of the picture, four people he recognizes, and who should not be there. Gathered in a tight circle with Edgeworth, none of them looking at the camera but still recognizable enough, are Apollo, Trucy, Clay, and the cousin Phoenix had briefly met when Apollo checked himself out of the hospital.
Right, Phoenix decides, taking a copy of that picture and leaving the courthouse. Right.
He's had about enough of this. Enough of whatever had happened in this case, enough of Apollo and Trucy apparently magically knowing that a theft conviction is better than murder, and that a dismissal of the case is even better than that. Enough of strange confrontations after magic shows, enough of cousins that had come out of nowhere and never been introduced or explained.
Phoenix hadn't even been surprised to see psych locks around Apollo and Trucy over the course of this case. It's just par for the course with the two of them now. But now that he's holding evidence that they themselves had been at the scene of the attempted murder, he has something that he's never had with any of the other psych locks he's spotted around the two of them.
Evidence.
Maybe, if he's lucky, the right evidence to start breaking those psych locks.