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Trucy doesn’t waste a moment once they arrive at the dressing room after bows.
“Alright,” she begins, removing her hat, cape, and gloves, and setting them on a mannequin. “Good job on the smoke transition, I was worried about that one, but you were right! Your presence is also a lot better with an audience―I could feel it!” She makes her way to her makeup table, still talking to Klavier. “I do think that you need to focus more on the blocking and cues, since there were a few near misses, and magic can get tricky when things aren't squeaky clean and tighty-righty. Overall, though, a great first show!”
Working with Trucy Wright for his debut as a solo artist has been a surprise, for Klavier, but not entirely a bad one. One wouldn’t expect it from her usual demeanor, but Trucy runs a tight ship when it comes to magical performances. It’s not to say she’s too serious for laughter―quite the opposite, in fact―but that it’s behind the curtains where one truly comes to understand how she’s become the international sensation she is at only eighteen years old.
Klavier finishes undoing the complex matrix of straps attaching his shoes to his feet and makes his way to his own makeup table, where he unceremoniously tosses his jacket on the back of the chair. There is a clear line of delineation between his and Trucy’s side of the room, not out of intention, but simply because they have, to say it nicely, different attitudes about the optimal cleanliness levels of dressing rooms.
“You certainly don’t hold back, do you, Frauline?” he says.
“I never do!” she says, smiling in his direction. “Show business is serious!”
That, they can definitely agree on. And none of her criticisms are untrue: learning to meld musical performance with magical performance has been a journey for both of them, but mostly Klavier.
“Any notes for me?”
Klavier pulls out two eye-makeup remover swaps and presses them against both his eyes. “I’m not sure,” he says. “As you said, I don’t quite have the hang of magic yet.”
“Well, duh, ” is the reply―she is not one to mince words, Trucy Wright. “But I don’t sing either.”
To illustrate her point, she launches into an enthusiastic rendition of “Inculpatory Evidence Inside My Heart”, a song on Klavier’s recent album, Opening Statements. (He thinks the title is a bit cliché, but according to his manager, going for simplicity is better than “Dismissal With Prejudice For Love”, which had been his personal favorite). Trucy doesn’t lie about her singing abilities: what she has in confidence, she ruins entirely for lack of anything resembling a pitch. It hurts Klavier’s ears, but he does not say so, because over the past few months she and him have become very good friends.
“Alright,” he says, stopping her before she can blaspheme upon the chorus, “I concede!”
“Anyways,” Trucy finishes, attacking the left side of her face with a single all-purpose makeup wipe (Klavier tries not to think of the state of her pores), “performance is performance. Hit me!”
Klavier inspects his eyes in the mirror. The eyeshadow is near entirely gone, but smudges of liner and mascara still remain, along with a few wayward sparkles. “Alright,” he says, thinking. “Your... character, if that is the word, was very good. I nearly believed you were going to curse me, at one point. The, ah, trickster idea, I believe you were going for. It worked well, we could do to bring it out more. You were also a few beats early for your cue on the chorus.”
Trucy drops her makeup wipe upon the table. “Aw, man! I knew it! Thanks, though.”
“Anytime, Frauline,” Klavier says, and they lapse into a comfortable silence. Trucy continues to attack her face with a number of wipes, as Klavier takes two more eye-makeup wipes to remove the paint on his brows. After the brows is a cleansing gel for all of his face, which smells of forests and roses. It is perhaps the scent, and the ritual of rubbing it all over his face, that brings him back to years past.
“You know,” he remarks, “back with the Gavinners, we had a whole host of artists to remove makeup after each show.”
Trucy, finished with her slapdash makeup removal, makes her way to the couch, whereupon she’s left a soft blue sweater. “Yeah,” she says, pulling it over her head. “I’ve had makeup artists for a few bigger shows, when we needed to be extra fancy. But back with the Troupe, we always used to do each other's.” Then, slightly quieter, “Or, at least, they did.”
Klavier suppresses a wince. It’s water under the bridge, of course―Trucy Wright would never let something like a silly grudge exist when there’s a magic show to put on―but like mentioned in the Gavinners’ old hit single, Guilty Love , the guilt doesn’t fade so easily.
“Don’t worry, Frauline,” he says, putting just the right amount of sympathy and nonchalance into wiping his face of gel with a cloth. “I don’t miss the noise. Five bandmates, and all those people running around, the stress was near unbearable.” There is a rogue bit of glitter on his cheek, which he attempts to scrub away. “But I won’t lie, I cannot help but miss my friend Frau May Capartiste. You know, no one in the world could draw a wing as sharp as she!”
Trucy hums in agreement. “We could bring her on!” she says. And then, giggling: “I’ll see if she can draw a wing sharp enough to cut you in half! ”
Klavier chuckles. He doesn’t think May would enjoy being on stage, nor throwing so many knives as Trucy is prone to do. Hiring her to do her actual job, however―not only was she skilled, but perhaps it would be nostalgic. Klavier struggles, often, these days, to be nostalgic for things without being reminded of murder, or grand conspiracy, or even worse, his own failures to foresee such.
“How does it feel?” Trucy says suddenly, knocking him out of his thoughts.
“How does what feel?”
“Being back, and all that. I know you’ve been planning this for a while, but...”
But one can never truly prepare for what they will feel when the spotlights hit their face. “Ach,” Klavier sighs, putting down his cloth and pausing to look at his makeup-less face. “I will have to see. It feels different. Of course,” he gestures at himself, a few years older, the G pendant around his neck a much smaller, classier style, “I’m different. I’m not sure if I will ever be as good as when we toured for Burden of Proof Upon My Heart ... back then, I was on top of the world every time we stepped onstage. I cannot imagine feeling as invincible now as I did then.”
He pauses to sigh, before steeling himself and saying, “But I want to continue.”
“Yeah,” Trucy says, and her voice is edging close enough to melancholy that Klavier turns to look, but what he finds on her face is only the usual, patented Trucy Wright smile.
Klavier hedges his bets, for a moment. He asks, “What’s on your mind, Frauline?”
Trucy kicks her legs and leans over the arm of the sofa playfully. “Nothing much!” she says. “C’mon, we were talking about you! I wanna hear all the juicy details behind the Gavinners’ rise to fame!”
Klavier levels a look at her, knowing, but not unsympathetic. In for a penny, in for a pound, they say. “You’re smart,” he says, “but I know a distraction technique when I see it. You cannot fool another performer, Frauline. We all know the same tricks.”
Trucy raises an eyebrow. “Really?” she asks, and for a moment Klavier is reminded that despite her fame, ability, and ruthless direction of production, she’s only eighteen. When Klavier was eighteen, he had been in the middle of writing a second album, and despite what he would’ve told you at the time, he barely understood how to deal with half the things in front of him.
“You’ve been without your ensemble for a long time,” Klavier tells her, smiling, “but once you’ve performed with someone, you know all their tells.”
Trucy is silent for a minute, contemplative. It’s a stillness Klavier has rarely seen on her before, at odds with the jolly magician she shows to crowds and the whip-smart director she is on set. He would contemplate whether this Trucy is the most truthful version, but Klavier knows firsthand the folly of imagining a single truth at the core of anyone’s being.
Finally, Trucy speaks. “The Grammaryes were kind of awful, you know?”
“Ja,” he replies, giving her the truth of his opinions, but hopefully also a generous helping of empathy.
“Magic is my... well, everything,” she says, and Klavier nods in understanding. “It’s the piece of my family that I held onto when I was alone. It was what kept me... me, through everything. The part of me I could always be proud of.”
Klavier knows the feeling. When Kristoph was arrested, he fell into his music. When Daryan was arrested, that was when it felt like things were truly falling apart.
“I wonder, sometimes, you know,” Trucy says, “if I should give it up and go to, I dunno, law school.” She snorts. “ Pfft. Imagine me as a lawyer. All those laws, and fancy terms―I could never. But...” Trucy sighs, waving a hand dismissively. “Eh. I don't know.”
Klavier gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile, though he’s not entirely sure. Being an adult, he’s found, is often just as confusing as being a teenager, but perhaps moreso. How he has survived this long, he’s only half certain, but that may be all it truly is: simply trying your best.
“Many do not,” he says finally. “Great works of literature have been written, concerning the sins of our fathers, though I don’t know what advice they give. I haven’t read them.”
Trucy snorts at that, and she looks a little lighter, but perhaps less forced than before. “Man, I didn’t read anything in school either.”
“Someone may have it all figured out, but alas! We would never know.”
“ Mmmm , could be. I don’t think so, though. Daddy says books are for boring people with sticks up their behinds.”
Oftentimes, Klavier wonders how Phoenix Wright is still alive, let alone his daughter. “Your father may not be right about everything,” he says, and nothing more on that judgement. “With regard to your other family, though. You hold sole rights to Magnifi Grammarye’s magical secrets, do you not?”
“Yup,” Trucy says, matter-of-factly. “I’m the last of them, now.”
“Then it’s you who will decide who they will be, from now on. For better or worse, it’s in your hands.”
Trucy turns to the side, gaze resting on the mannequin holding her hat and cape. It’s styled the same way as her father’s, but his was red, while hers is blue. Legacies, Klavier thinks, are certainly a funny thing.
“Yeah,” Trucy says. “It is.”
She sighs. Then, dramatically, she throws herself upon the arm of the couch like a maiden overcome with a fainting spell, if that maiden still had flecks of leftover glitter on their cheeks. “If you’re done over there,” she says, “we should get out. Polly and Daddy and the others will be waiting.”
Klavier drops his face into his hands, suddenly tired. “Mein Gott, they will be. Out of the dressing room and straight to another party!”
“Hey,” Trucy says, “I thought you liked parties!”
Klavier takes his hands off his face, steeling himself for the inevitable festivities. “I do! But after a performance.... Once the adrenaline fades, all I want is to curl up with a hot chocolate and watch Eurovision Song Contest. ”
“ Hmm. That’s pretty smart, actually. I think we can convince them, especially if I look real sad about it.”
She’s not wrong. Trucy’s pouting face should be considered a legal weapon. “Now you’re talking, Frauline!”
“But you cannot pick the movie.”
“What? Why?”
“ Eurovision Song Contest? Really?”