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Apollo’s back in LA after three years gone - more weathered and worn, flaking gold off of a silver badge. Shiny new passport from the newly established legal wing of the embassy too - when he wants revolution, he never wants to settle. They meet him at the airport - it’s some sort of legal comedy, because he twirls her when she runs to hug him in the terminal and it’s like no time has passed at all, tells her he’s already been in talks to set up shop in the office across the street. Playing at a happy home until he makes it real, with the standard casual ribbing against Daddy’s now inferior credentials. Laugh track plays.
A rival legal practice needs to be kept tabs on, of course - Trucy comes over to provide ambience, to chat about all of the things they’ve missed from each other, days and minutes and years and that unbearable feeling that somewhere she’s going to find something that will separate them for good. It was probably inevitable, their collision. Something about the potent combination of defense and assistant, of dedication and performance. Like recognizing like, in more ways than one. They’re destined for something like this - variations on a theme of love and loss. She’s just now finally forgiven Daddy for leaving her behind to die off in a courtroom across the ocean - Apollo finally met the requirement of coming back, so he’s on the waitlist.
Chemistry. Sparks. The way Trucy can say a joke and Apollo understands the punchline before it comes. His dry humor and specific grudges - her technical expertise and choreographer’s grace as she un-puzzles a problem, gambles their entire case and wins. He finishes a story about the fabric markets at the end of the month and legal regulations on the exchange of raw goods and they’re looking right into each others’ eyes under dim fluorescents. Tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy. They kiss and stars burst behind her eyes, Apollo gentle but unrepentant, more than she'd dreamt about in her wildest fantasies. Later thinking, if it was wrong, shouldn't it have felt that way? Instead of feeling like being thrust into a new reality where everything was right for a change?
For a couple of months, it’s some new undiscovered paradise on earth. Nothing like that lasts. Her daddy breaks the fantasy the day he comes to visit them at their office (it’s a mistake to ever think the office is theirs, that she can have anything that’s hers) and they break apart, too close and too casual to be subtle.
He clears his throat. “Hey Apollo, could we talk? I’ve got some legal matters I could really use the help with.” He adds, with a snap to his voice that can’t be anything but revealing, “Without Truce. If that’s okay with you.”
Apollo stiffens beside her and Trucy resists the urge to gently nudge him underneath the table, let him know she's here for him. That might be more cold than comfort. “Hello Daddy, I’m right here. Polly, want me to come with you two?”
“Nah, it’s okay - I’ve got it.” He runs his thumb over her knuckles and she almost wants to fall apart with the tenderness of it. Her daddy’s face is in shadow. “I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”
Apollo’s back, but later than he promised - he won’t say a word, brushes past her stiffly when she asks him what’s wrong. He says he needs to research something.
“What did you say to him." Trucy doesn't pull her favorite fold-out from the corner like usual, sits on the same sofa Daddy gives to prospective clients that meet him in the office, instead of the detention center. "What did you tell him."
Daddy has his poker face on. "Happy early birthday, Truce." He slides a golden bracelet over to her, slight whorls and intricate designs, solid as a weight slung round her neck. There's a note by it, in cursive tidier than her Daddy's, deep blue ink with a lifetime of apologies. It’s a mirror duplicate to the one burning itself onto the wood of her bedside table - she woke up with Polly's snores in her ear, his arm slung warm and snug around her body.
She connects the dots, quicker than she can reach out and grab the metal like it's going to burn her. "Daddy. Daddy, you didn't."
He did.