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Reus puts on the show of his fucking life in the docket. The fire and the coins, the cards and capes are all just flash and bang. The real trick is getting them to look where he wants them to.
That’s why granddaddy kicked you off the troupe!
Snot nosed little Trucy Gramarye, she had been back then. Four years old and clinging to her mother’s skirts and god how he’d hated her. He’d felt sick with it then, hating some stupid little kid to death just for daring to be born. He had watched Thalassa sit down in the meal tent and feed her daughter ham and cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off and hated hated hated.
What the hell did she know about it, anyway. The Gramaryes were monsters; they chewed up lives and spat them out still ripped raw and bleeding. And yet here was Trucy Wright, prancing around like magic was all love and bunnies. If he tarnished that, even just a little, it would be worth it.
He minds less than he thought he would, getting put into the squad car. He could get out of the cuffs if he wanted to, but why bother. He’d been a dead man walking for the last thirteen years; it just took the rest of him a little while to catch on. The empty penthouse apartment, the studio full of sycophants. Fuck, prison couldn’t be much worse. All that time, all that success, and he’d never felt so alive as when he was killing somebody. Hurting somebody. It had been a long time since he felt that good.
Right after intake, they whisk him off to a little side room with the studio lawyer and a guy in a loud pink suit.
“It will save us all the difficulty if you will agree to terms and avoid trial,” the man says, sliding a piece of paper across the table. It’s a rough cut: life in prison, thirty years before the possibility of parole.
“One year for every one of Mistree’s, huh.” Reus shakes his head, smiling.
“I suppose you’d have preferred a three million dollar clause.”
The studio lawyer sits up straight. “Mr. Edgeworth-”
“Chief Prosecutor,” the man corrects. Reus lets out a low whistle.
“These terms are unreasonable, and given your past connection to the previous defendant-”
“Marv,” Reus says casually. “You’re fired.”
The studio lawyer stares at him.
“You heard me.” Reus jerks his chin toward the door as he casually skims the paperwork. There’s a couple token protests for the record before he finally scrams, but eventually it’s just the two of them in this dingy back room.
“So,” Reus says, finally setting the paper aside. “She got you too, huh.”
Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth spares a slight, unkind smile. “I think you’ll find the professionalism on this case to be impeccable.”
Reus nods. No chance in hell of citing collusion on this. “And I’m guessing you had a whole bunch of plan Bs if it went sideways.”
“The court of appeals is always an option,” Edgeworth says mildly. “It could even be one for you, if you enjoy wasting my time.”
“A personal vested interest in the case. Gramarye charmed, aren’t you?” Reus shakes his head in disgust. “Gimme a fucking pen, then.”
Edgeworth rises after it is complete. He isn’t smug or triumphant; it’s like he swung by the dry cleaners to pick up a shirt. Reus was already a done deal.
“You are mistaken about one thing,” he says, stopping right in front of the open door, light shining in from the front windows bright and free in a way that Reus knows is staged but can’t help appreciating anyway. This guy would have been a hell of a magician in another life maybe.
“What’s that?” Reus drawls.
“It’s not because she’s a Gramarye. It’s because she’s a Wright.” Then he closes the door, cutting off the light.
~~
Unlucky or lucky?
That Thalassa Gramarye ran off with Jove Justice right when the troupe was passing through Rome.
That Magnifi had been out for a night stroll to think over what to do with a bevy of tricks that needed three extra sets of hands when he was down to two just when Reus was pulling the tourist crowd by Trevi Fountain, hustling up a little cash between the tricks and picking pockets.
That he’d been picked up off the streets and given his wildest dreams just in time for a new one to walk in through the tent door, wild eyed and grief stricken after losing it all.
That Trucy Gramarye had gone and got herself adopted by the one defense attorney the chief fucking prosecutor had a hard on for.
~~
In hindsight, it’s obvious that Reus wanted Magnifi’s approval for the same reason he was never going to get it: they were too goddamn much alike. Valant had no talent and Zak had no interest; they were hanging around until the old man died, hoping to scrape the crumbs of a life out of his corpse someday. Vultures, and clumsy about it.
Reus did what he was supposed to do. He set props, hit marks, triggered trap doors, and stood in a smiling, happy line with all the rest, a little back and to the left as the newest, lowest member. He just did other stuff too. When he took over for Troupe Gramarye, he wasn’t coming empty handed.
Then, Thalassa.
Thalassa.
Miserable, life ruining beauty. Thalassa Gramarye had the slow melancholy smile that made men want to rob banks, knock off jewelry stores. Reus took one look at her and knew that this, this, was what the others had been sticking around for. She kept her admirers like greeting cards, tacked to the walls and fading over time… but not him. He wouldn’t let her ignore him.
“We can’t,” Thalassa had murmured in the dark.
“Then why did you come to my trailer?” Reus asked, already touching her hair, her face.
“To tell you we can’t,” she insisted, even as she clung to him, kissed him with her sweet mouth. Thalassa Gramarye was the greatest magician of her time; he had been taken in completely with the illusion of her love.
“You want her,” Zak had said one day after a show.
“Telling me to get in line?” Reus smiled sharply. “Sorry for cutting in.”
Zak shrugged placidly. “Not up to me. Still, Magnifi’s hard to win over.”
“I’ll do it,” Reus promised. “I’ve been working on something big, really big.”
“Is it ready?”
“Just about.”
“Then I’ll help you.”
Reus stared at him disbelieving. “Why the hell would you go and do a thing like that?”
Zak’s eyes cut across the tent where Thalassa stood with her father. Her head was down, her mouth trained into that polite sad-doll smile. Magnifi, as ever, did all the talking.
So Reus had been ready, when Zak brought the others down after dinner hour. They were relaxed, content, ready for a big show.
Fire flashed and coins sang and then, when they were dazzled, when he saw Thalassa’s face flushed, her hair blown back from the sudden flare of heat like it had been the other night, in his trailer, soft and quiet beneath him, he’d pulled his final trick, a real show stopper: A single illusion, Magnifi’s illusion.
He’d watched enough times to work out a quarter of it, reasoned out half, and improvised the rest and it had worked. The lion roared and flickered out and he stood panting in the center of the stage, his hands outstretched and waiting for the applause.
Silence.
He knew then that he had made a terrible mistake.
~~
Reus is stuck in temp holding for a bit till they arrange something a little more long term and he sees a surprising amount of the Wright Agency assholes - or hears them, anyway. Seems like every five minutes they’re bursting in with some client, some witness, some informant. It’s exhausting to listen to; he finds himself looking forward to his transfer. Sure, the uniform is anything but flattering, but solitary confinement is sounding pretty good right about now.
“You’ve got weird toes,” a slightly glazed-eye guy tells him in the shower room.
“They’re webbed,” Reus says, annoyed. “It runs in the family.”
“I don’t like them.”
“Ominous. I’ll put twenty bucks in your canteen if you fuck off.” He stops to think a second, sizes the other guy up a little. “Fifty, if you keep anyone else from looking.”
“I’ll protect your fucked up feet with my life,” the guy says and is good on his word.
“What’s your damage, anyway?” a bailiff asks him conversationally coming down the hall. He’s got a little Trucy in Garmaryeland pin on the front of his uniform. It gleams in the shitty fluorescent lights. “What’d you have out for a sweet kid like that, always helping people?”
“Flowers still keep their roots in the dirt,” Reus tell him. “Otherwise they die.”
~~
The night after his one man show, Thalassa did not come to meet him. She did not meet his eyes the next day, not even when Magnifi took the stage to announce her new engagement. The time for mourning, it seemed, was over.
“Why?” Reus had cornered her in her own little rooms for once - who cared who heard them now. “Why, for god’s sake, why? You care for me, I know you do-”
“Let go, you don’t understand-”
“I understand that you lied to me-”
“I never lied!” Thalassa cried. “I never wanted this. I was sad and lonely and you wouldn’t leave me be.”
“So I made you? Come on-”
“That’s not what I said,” Thalassa sprawled in her emerald upholstered chair, limp and pale and for the first time all Reus wanted to do was shake her.
“I love you,” Reus said, and his voice broke midway.
Thalassa closed her eyes tightly to keep from looking at him. “I can’t,” she said.
“You did for Jove,” Reus reminds her darkly.
“Yes, and now he’s dead. I can’t risk that again, you don’t understand. Roger-”
“Don’t.” He shook his head twice. “Don’t call me that anymore.”
He stumbled out and away, so heartsick that he was sick, coughing and sputtering in the grass in the dark. A heavy, comforting hand rested against his back to steady him as the sobs subsided.
“Poor kid. Let it out, there you go. You’re okay.” The big hand patted him twice before helping him stand up straight. The two of them stood, looking out into the dark woods surrounding the campsite.
“I like you, Reus - I really do. So I’m gonna give you a little piece of advice. You gotta learn to read people. It’s the number one thing, really, wherever you go. You get it now, don’t you? Magnifi is the star of the show. He always is, and he always will be. Anything else is a threat.”
“You set me up.”
Zak nodded thoughtfully. “I guess I did,” he agreed. “You lost that girl the minute you showed your hand. The house always wins, even if they have to rig the game a little. You were just too damn good. Try to take it as a compliment.”
It was hell. Every day was hell, and the non-compete clause in his work contract kept him standing in the fire. She was in such a hurry to restart her happy little family that she was pregnant five minutes in and the baby still came early. Never in the world was there a more doting set of parents than Zak and Thalassa. His one solace was the fact that Magnifi never took to little Trucy either; eyeing her with thinly veiled unease. He wouldn’t even let them put her in the posters, even though child of magic would have sold a lot of seats.
Every trick Reus made while he was under contract belonged to Magnifi. It ought to have drained the life out of him, but that was what they wanted, wasn’t it? The new King and Queen of Magic and their little Princess and their great Emperor over it all. Fuck that, Valant could be the court jester if he wanted to.
Reus worked the shows, came to rehearsals and then disappeared. All the glory of Gramarye and not a bit of it pleased him. Trick after trick, he took Magnifi’s illusions and turned them inside out. In miniature, the techniques were so simple. He flipped them around, dissected them piece by piece. Once he had entertained thoughts of revenge - of taking the tricks to someone else, of publishing them for the world to see, but Reus was a magician before he was a Gramarye. He loved magic. The tiny thrill of triumph of a new trick, a new illusion sparkled better than any drug.
Magic was all he had left. He wrote them all down in his little green book and waited, like the rest of them, for Magnifi to die.
~~
“She wants to see you,” the lawyer kid says. First visitor that wasn’t press; Reus had said yes just to have something to do.
“Why?”
“God knows.” Apollo Justice shakes his head, those stupid slicked up bangs bobbing. “You should let her, though. When she puts in the request, approve it. You owe her.”
“I don’t know about that,” Reus muses. “I’m doing my time, you see.” He holds up his cuffed hands. “One could argue that additional penance constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
Justice lets out an aggravated sigh. It brings a genuine smile to Reus’ face. It’s hard to get a little honest to goodness riling up in here. Usually it ends in some kind of brawl.
“I might be willing to take it under consideration,” Reus says, throwing him a bone.
“That sounds like you want something,” Justice notes darkly.
“Just a little friendly conversation, maybe. Answer a couple of questions for me and we’ll play it by ear.”
“What? Why?”
Reus shrugs. “I have time to kill.”
Justice thinks this over. “Alright, but the information is a two way street. There’s some stuff I was curious about that didn’t come out in trial.”
“A question for a question? How first date of you.”
“S-Shut up. What do you want to know?” Justice crosses his arms over his chest.
“What is it about that kid that gets you all worked up over her? You in love with her or something?” Reus tries to sound bored, but the Justice kid lays a hand over his weird bracelet and stares. Something’s bugging him about the bracelet, but that weird tense eye contact is worse.
“What? No. Not like… romantically anyway. Trucy’s a lovable person, though. And I believe in all my clients, it’s the mark of a good defense attorney.”
“But you believe in Trucy a little more,” Reus points out and Justice relaxes a little.
“I do. Really, I have you to thank. That weird contract was so over the top - I knew Trucy would never have signed it. And you were so hell bent on ruining her reputation, even aside from the murder. It was too much revenge, really.”
Reus nods. It’s a fair criticism.
“My turn. Okay.” Justice leans forward a little in his chair. “Were you really dating Betty?”
Reus blinks, incredulous. Justice’s face goes pink. “Dating might be a strong word,” Reus temporizes, and the color deepens. He smirks.
“But you hate magicians.”
“I hate Gramaryes,” Reus corrects. “I trained Mistree before the Gramarye revival of my own volition, remember? And it would take a stronger soul than I to resist the siren call of twin bunny girls.”
Justice looks at the ground. “Jeez, you have to be so crude?”
“You asked.”
The bailiff knocks on the door, holding up two fingers.
“Well, we’re on a time crunch, so let’s fast forward to the good stuff. Can you really look me in the eye and tell me the Gramaryes were good people?”
It’s a softball question for most anyone, but Justice is the type to take things too seriously. It’s what makes his reactions so good, so painfully earnest. Disbarment, child abandonment, crime scene tampering, running from the law. You could hardly blame that Khura’inese monk for writing off the whole lot of them as a goddamn loss.
“Trucy is more than who she came from.” Justice answers steadily without missing a beat.
Reus gets up to leave.
“Hey, wait! I didn’t get to ask my last question!” Justice protests, jumping up too.
“Life’s full of disappointment,” Reus says lazily.
“Are you going to talk to Trucy at least?” Justice asks, frustrated. He reaches up to push his bangs up out of his face and that bright bangle catches Reus’ eye again.
That bangle.
“You can sure try,” Reus says vaguely as they lead him back to holding.
~~
The story about the trick and the accident was good, it was really good. Explained the scars and everything. Between the clause in his broken contract and the tatters of his reputation, Reus would never publicly do magic again. Zak and Valant burned the little green book in mock ceremony.
“You are lucky that I am taking mercy on you,” Magnifi had said, lordly as a god. Even then he had started losing weight, though they wouldn’t find out why for another half a year. “You have my gracious daughter to thank for that.” She had stood beside her father and her husband and her precious little daughter.
To thank, yes, Thalassa, thank you, thank you, you bitch, you whore, you man eating tiger.
The night before Zak had struck her in the face, just the once, because she wouldn’t quit nagging, asking him this and that, and she had fled mewling and crying to Reus in the night. He had held her and iced her soft face, forgetting in the strange hours between midnight and dawn just what they were to each other. He had promised her anything to run away, to be together, to burn this goddamn circus to the ground- and she had said no.
“I can’t - Trucy - I have to go back, he’s my husband -”
“Then why the hell did you come here?” Reus raged.
“I’m sorry, please believe me. I had a reason, a good reason, truly. I hope that someday you can understand. And I came because… I thought you would be kind to me,” Thalassa said, her beautiful eyes full of those starry tears and he would give her something to cry over, then.
“Stop, please!” She cried out and struggled but not hard enough, not strong enough. He had torn through her thin night dress and taken and taken and taken his fill, enough for four lost years deprived of her smell and her skin and her soft wet heat until she had gotten her little desperate hands on a throwing knife.
~~
“Left your watchdog at home, I see.”
“Polly’s not my watchdog, he’s my lawyer!” Trucy grins, tilting her head to the side. Dumb-cute’s only going to work for her a couple of years more. Reus wonders what she’ll turn into next.
“You Gramarye girls,” is all Reus says, and it’s plenty. Her smile softens into background noise.
“You didn’t tell him either,” Trucy points out. He shrugs. What the hell does he care.
“I think I want to apologize,” Trucy says after a pause. “So that’s why I’m here.” He gestures grandly for her to continue. “I do remember you a little. Do you remember me?”
“All brats are the same, you know.”
“Liar.” The way Trucy says it is almost affectionate.
“Yeah, I remember you.”
“You really were a Gramarye. I shouldn’t have said you weren’t.” Trucy looks at him dead on.
“That’s not really a compliment.”
“It shouldn’t be one,” Trucy says. “They were pretty awful, weren’t they? It’s why I don’t tell him. Who would want any part of that? Only other creeps like us, that’s who. Polly’s not like that.”
“Did Zak know?” He asks abruptly. “Is that why your mom married him?”
“Maybe she married him because he was the least awful option in a whole world of bad ones,” Trucy answers serenely. “Maybe not being a Gramarye anymore is the best thing that ever happened to her.”
“You’re not making any sense.” Reus crosses her arms over his chest. “We’re bad and terrible people and you’re the best Gramarye to ever live. Was that all?”
“It’s important,” Trucy insists. “I need you to know - Gramarye or Enigmar or… or whatever, that I’m Trucy and I’m always all Wright.”
Reus rolls his eyes. “Message received. Can we cut to commercial on this after school special already?”
“You never asked me anything. Didn’t you want to know why I looked for Mr. Reus even after granddaddy blacklisted you?”
“Because you’re a power hungry little attention whore,” he sneers. “Just like your mother.”
Trucy’s smile stays fixed to her face. “Okay.” She sets a small envelope on the table and slides it across to him. “I thought you might like something to remember us by. They’re just a couple of photos I found from back then, Uncle Valant sent them over. It’s okay if you want to just tear them up.”
“Why bother, then.”
“They’re yours to destroy.” Trucy gets up. “Goodbye, Mr. Roger Reus. I won’t be seeing you again.”
“Thank god,” he snaps, and she goes.
In his bunk, he spreads the pictures out across the mattress and takes out his lighter. He’ll get a citation maybe when they follow the smoke smell to the contraband but fuck it. It’s worth it. The only fire he’s got left, and he’ll use to burn whatever little piece of them he can.
A print of the poster, thirteen years past. A picture of the wedding, and it still makes his gut clench up something fierce. They are both smiling but Thalassa’s eyes are turned down. For the first time he notices the hand that holds the bouquet rests lovingly against her middle. A picture of himself - Thalassa took this, sometime before his hatred had become a thing with teeth. There’s a cigarette in his mouth and he looks young and fierce and ready to burn the world down at her feet. There’s one last picture, a happy little family - Zak, on a good day, giving Trucy a bath. Her feet are flailing, water splashing, all motion and such sickening affection that he takes the lighter to it before he can notice little baby Trucy’s webbed toes.