It had been four days since Apollo had recorded the song and given it to that reporter. In the midst of his work Apollo had been playing his radio in the background, hoping to hear some kind of proof that would tell him Klavier was being noticed. He felt downtrodden every time the radio host spoke of something that wasn't Klavier—and really, he would have even settled for talk of Kristoph at this point, he was so impatient—and he wondered if he needed to concoct a more compelling argument before strolling into the press office again, shoulders held high and fists clenched with anticipation.

There was no need for that, he soon realized. There was talk of a curious new song that wasn't the station's usual taste in music, but they felt obligated to play it anyway due to its "artful sincerity." Apollo recognized Klavier's song instantly, and he shut the radio off before the song finished, before the host could say anything more. The only thing left to do was to wait for Klavier to storm into the Justice and Co. Law Offices, frothing with conflicted emotions.

Two days later and nothing had happened. Apollo began to fear that his assumptions of never seeing Klavier again were starting to take form. Apollo wondered if he was always this nervous and socially awkward. A new desire emerged: he wanted his bracelet to react to his own hypocrisy. It was hard to figure himself out when he was always so busy trying to figure out everyone else. To an observant man like Klavier, all his idiosyncrasies were decidedly obvious, but ever since he had given up his past in favor of the law, he had tried to forget his vices. It worked to a certain degree, but sometimes his weaknesses leaked through and he felt obligated to act on them before doing anything else.

Apollo knew a prosecutor's hours were very similar to a defense attorney's, and he chose to believe that a Chief Prosecutor's hours were the same, if not extended. And so he knew very well to show up at Miles Edgeworth's office during the early hours of the morning, just when the sun was starting to peak over the horizon. As expected, Mr. Edgeworth was there, sifting through some paperwork spread across his desk. What was unexpected, however, was Mr. Edgeworth's reaction.

"You look like a fan girl who's never seen me in person before when you barge into my office like that," he said, not even bothering to acknowledge Apollo's presence with a glance. Apollo viewed himself with the mirror hung on the back of the door he had just shut behind him in a hurry. His red suit was blindingly bright compared to the dark purple décor of the room, and so he supposed he stood out above everything else. His height was of no help and made his identity rather distinct, seeing as how he was the shortest of all the legal workers he had come across in years. Mr. Edgeworth easily looked down at him whenever they talked. Apollo was still confident when he thought they were decent courtroom coequals, though nothing could match Mr. Edgeworth and Mr. Wright's rivalry.

Apollo glanced at the room, since he couldn't bear to look Mr. Edgeworth in the face after that comment. A lofty bookshelf stood at his right, and the ladder (or the step-ladder, as Trucy would insist) pressed against it told Apollo that important contents were spread from bottom to top. A chessboard was close by, but there were no chairs to sit down at, indicating that it wasn't used very often. On the other side of the room was a dark purple couch and Mr. Edgeworth's prized possession—his prosecutor's outfit from his younger days—hung up in a delicate glass frame. In the back was his cluttered desk, dark purple drapes trimmed with a golden brown, just like the walls and hardwood floor, and an assortment of Steel Samurai action figurines, tea sets, and plants.

Apollo regained his composure. "An impressive place you've got here, Chief Prosecutor," he said, smirking to make his blunder less noticeable, though he knew Mr. Edgeworth wasn't prone to fall for such playtime manners.

"So you've never been here before. That explains everything." Mr. Edgeworth put down his papers, and the sigh that followed told Apollo he wasn't anywhere near done with them. Apollo would have been impressed had Mr. Edgeworth completed his paperwork this early in the day.

"Does it…?" Apollo fumbled.

"Yes. Your foolery never ceases to astound me. Objections loud enough for the deafest of judges to hear, the slamming of fists as if your hands were gavels themselves, and absurd last minute testimony and evidence that somehow always sheds light on the situation at hand. That is what I know of you from my prosecutors and my own time with you, Apollo Justice, and you have just added to that image of yourself by stumbling into my office."

Apollo rolled his eyes. "Ahah… Sounds like you really miss being in the courtroom with me."

"Last time I was in a courtroom was against Wright, where the only role you had was spewing out old sayings from your old mentor. It certainly didn't leave an impression."

Apollo wanted to object, but he knew that what Mr. Edgeworth had said was true. He remembered the Athena Cykes and Simon Blackquill trial quite well, as if it had only occurred recently. The doubt over whether or not Athena was the killer was gone—Mr. Wright had made sure of that, for Apollo's sanity and for the truth itself—but the act of missing Clay would never end. He still touched his eye and his arm sometimes, expecting bandages to be there, and he still reached behind him sometimes, expecting Clay's jacket to be just behind him. Out of everything that had transpired, however, Apollo regretted using Mr. Gavin's words as weaponry inside the courtroom. To mouth the very words of a psychopath made him feel like a criminal once more, like he had gone back to his younger days, pining to find a just conclusion to his story, but not having the means to do so.

Apollo couldn't help but wonder what Klavier would have thought of him if he had been at that trial.

"Hmm," Apollo mused.

"What is it, Justice?"

"Oh, nothing. I was thinking that, well, usually I'm cautious when I come into the prosecutor's office because I feel I'm too loud and I don't want to disturb anyone, least of all you. Maybe I should have let you down, though."

"I don't mean to look down on you, Justice. If you ask Wright, I give him just as hard a time about his bluffing and his useless inquiries during cross-examinations."

Apollo grinned at this. "I'll have to talk to him about it sometime, then. His stories about you are the best."

Mr. Edgeworth grinned back. "I'm sure you didn't come today to hear about Wright. What can I do for you?"

"Well, I have a question, actually…"

"Go ahead. And sit down, would you?"

Apollo did so. The couch was comfier than it appeared; he originally thought Mr. Edgeworth only chose it for its color. He watched as Mr. Edgeworth went to make tea and then he said, "Did you know Mr. Gavin had a younger brother?"

Mr. Edgeworth was just about to pour into a cup when he stopped for a brief moment, then resumed. "No, I did not."

"Am I the only one who knows him…?" Apollo whispered to himself. "Well, check out the recent papers. They've got his name written all over it."

And it was true. After Apollo heard Klavier's song on the radio and waited for Klavier to show up for a day, he checked the papers. The headlines included both Gavin names, and the story that came with it told about Apollo and Kristoph's relationship, then Apollo and Klavier's. Apollo had read it with a twinge of sorrow; he hadn't wanted Klavier to be fully known for his relationship to Kristoph, but he supposed that the family relation being mentioned was inevitable.

"Something tells me that was of your doing," Mr. Edgeworth said. He always was an intelligent, intuitive man, which made him a worthy opponent in Apollo's eyes.

"That's not the point. He's… How do I put this? He's"—Apollo could say many things (alluring, pretty, pleasant to be around, despite everything, everything he had been through) but he could only tell Mr. Edgeworth one thing—"a prosecutor."

"He's a prosecutor, and yet I've never heard of him before?" Mr. Edgeworth folded his arms concernedly.

"Yes… Well, that can be explained. Just—give me a minute." Admittedly, seeing Mr. Edgeworth outside of the courtroom was proving to be a difficult task, because normally, Apollo had a piece of evidence in the court record to fall back on, but not this time. The only proof that Klavier even existed at all was the vague emptiness that pulled at the various, separate corners of Apollo's mind whenever he wasn't actively thinking of where Klavier was. He conducted the outlines of a speech, but he settled on saying, "He's had bad run-ins in the past. He has a small amount of trials to his name. I think."

"You think, Justice?"

"That's what was implied, anyway. Is there a record for that sort of thing…?"

"That's not something that could be so easily dug up without some filing skills and some background to go off of. Your friend sounds like he has neither." Mr. Edgeworth took the tea—which he had left to cool near the beginning of their conversation—and handed it to Apollo. Apollo took it, trying to be gleeful, but he honestly wasn't sure how far he was going to get with a Chief Prosecutor. His authority, his personal weight, could only bring him so far.

Mr. Edgeworth was right, at any rate. All he had left was words. He could still foresee a glimmer of a proud moment, for both him and Klavier. Apollo sipped his tea, for appearances, before going on: "Imagine this. Well, uh, the most important thing you should know right off the bat is that the money I mention is both literal and a metaphor for dreams. You've been to Germany, correct?"

"That is correct."

"But a few years later you wanted to come back to the states—back to Los Angeles, of course. So you saved and budgeted for years and years so you'd have enough to come back. And eventually, it was time to come back. You took a plane, or a cruise ship, it doesn't matter. The point is that this mode of transportation probably needed to make numerous stops in different locations on the way to Los Angeles. The stops were meant to drop off passengers, to pick up some more, you know. Are you with me so far?"

It could have been Apollo's imagination, but he swore he saw Mr. Edgeworth lick his lips, sort of like a nervous tick that told Apollo he was somehow hitting a sore spot. "Yes," Mr. Edgeworth said after a while.

"Oh," Apollo said, withdrawn. "I don't know if I'm right or not, but humor me here. Imagine that you grew so frustrated because you wanted to reach Los Angeles as soon as possible. You paid more and more to get there much, much faster. All of your savings, all of that hard earned money you intended on using toward a home and food and such, was spent in a matter of days, due to your impatience. And—here's the kicker—when you reached Los Angeles, it wasn't even what you'd been hoping for. Okay. Now. I just put you in Klavier's shoes. He came from Germany at the age of eighteen, and his dreams were crushed in more ways than one."

"Justice," Mr. Edgeworth said swiftly, cuttingly, and he perhaps was prodding Apollo further when he went on and said, "people cannot be negotiated into believing the truth. They know the truth from the very beginning or not at all. Klavier Gavin knew his luck had run out from the get go, and he unconsciously knew about his brother's crime the moment he heard of the conviction. That being said, I cannot help him with his brother's troubles, or with anything else that's happening. He has to accept that, or he will be known as a hallucinatory lunatic."

"I think he's come to terms with everything, but that doesn't change the fact that others still think he's a… hallucinatory lunatic. Klavier may as well have been the murderer himself."

"And what, pray tell, do you expect me to do about it?"

"Hire him as a prosecutor, of course. Give him a chance. If he blows it, then you can have me punished for it instead. You can never have too many prosecutors, anyway…" Apollo trailed off, trying to make fun of the situation. He had failed at coming through with his own joke, if he could even call it that.

"You do realize the implications of your proposal?" Mr. Edgeworth said. He had still been standing up until this point, but he seemed more relaxed now that Apollo's true reason for showing up had been released. He sat behind his desk and turned on the lamp light to make up for the shadows peaking into the room.

"Yes. I'm willing to bet it all."

"Is that so?" Mr. Edgeworth said slyly, making Apollo think that they were going around in circles. Would Mr. Edgeworth ever run out of questions, or was that all he was made of as a Chief Prosecutor?

"I take that as an indirect way of asking me: why? I can tell you why. It's hard for you to judge me accurately when you don't know my past. I won't tell the specifics, but I can say that I was a pretty typical teenager. I thought I knew everything I needed to know about life. By my early twenties I realized I'd been a total idiot. I tried to put a bit more focus into my life. Back then, my brain wasn't necessarily my best friend so I tried very hard to kill it and replace it with something better. I'm going to hit thirty rather soon, and Klavier Gavin has just been the one to show me that everything I know is wrong. My perspective is perfectly indefensible, and I should have known better than to think my realizations would come to me through a decade benchmark like age. Age is an artificial measurement created by humans to make life seem more celebratory. So I can safely say I don't give a fuck anymore—pardon my language, or not—and that I hope to spend what little time remains by starting anew, one last time, and making things right."

A heavy, tension-filled silence spilled into the room. The sun had risen higher now, as if its goal all along had been to disclose Apollo's past. Apollo thought he'd gone too far; he had, at the very least, come dangerously close to tell this man, this relative stranger, all of the secrets he had been trying to keep from even the closest of allies.

Mr. Edgeworth's brow furrowed. He gulped the rest of his tea in one sip, and then he offered, in the most elegant voice Apollo had ever heard, "Bring him to me first thing Wednesday morning. I'll make my decision then."

Apollo cried, "Thank you, Mr. Edgeworth! I… I'm sorry"—he toned down his voice—"about that. It happens. As you know. Ahem…"

"I just hope you know what you're getting yourself into, Justice."

"Believe me, I know what you mean." Apollo simply breathed. It was Monday. It would be two days before he could see Klavier again. "My hands are so damn full."