December 21, 11:15 am
Simon was well familiar with the procedure for receiving visitors in prison, but he was much less familiar with the procedure for making the visit himself. There was a bit of a stir among the guards when he showed up– the very day after he had become a free man– and he couldn’t help but smile at the way that he turned heads.
Later in the day he would go and visit his sister, Aura, who was not at the prison yet but rather still in county lockup. This was a special trip, and he had two purposes in it. The first was in answer to a message he had received from Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth that morning. Edgeworth had arranged for Taka’s official transfer of ownership, and Simon could go and pick him up.
The second purpose was to visit an old friend and see if he had heard the news.
After a short, and rather awkward conversation with the prison director– Blackquill enjoyed making him squirm, and watching the man apologize over and over again– he left the office with Taka once again on his shoulder. The familiar weight and dig of the talons into his heavy clothing was a reassuring comfort as he made his way to the visiting area and waited for them to bring in his friend.
The visitor’s room was more spacious than most, given the prison’s unique style of rehabilitation, but it was no less devoid of personality than any other prison visitation room. Harsh white walls, posted reminders, and armed guards were all there was to look at aside from the evenly spaced tables and chairs.
All empty for the Twisted Samurai.
The door opened with the familiar groan of hinges and clank of the heavy lock, and brought with it the clipped steps of the prison guards and the rattling of handcuffs’ chains.
“Well, well, well. Look what the hawk dragged in.” The voice was rich and heavy as dark coffee, and quite familiar to Blackquill.
Diego Armando– Godot as many called him– smiled broadly under the strange mechanical mask he wore over the upper half of his face, framed by the pale tangles of his snow-white hair.
Simon chuckled, and looked over his long time friend from on the ‘inside’. Diego had been serving time for murder in the second degree since the year before Simon had been sentenced. He’d become quite good friends with the older man in their mutual imprisonment.
“Yes, I never thought I’d see the day.” He smirked. The joke was implicit. He hadn’t been expecting to live today. “You’re looking as well as ever, my friend.”
Diego sat opposite him with the scrape of metal on metal as he rested his cuffed hands on the steel tabletop.
“Me neither. Mostly ‘cause I was planning to flick the visor off all day so I didn’t have to see your tragic mug in the obituaries when the paper made its rounds.” He whistled, catching the attention of his prison-assigned therapy animal, an albino rattlesnake with scales as pale as his hair. She slithered over his shoulders to curl against the warmth of his arm as he continued. “Thanks, samurai. You look great too. Like a free man.”
Simon chuckled and as his shoulders shook, Taka’s feathers rustled and he eyed the snake on Diego’s arm as he often did.
“As free as a bird I suppose,” he agreed. “I’m not sure yet if it suits me– maybe you can give me a deeper assessment when you’re out. Has that paper made its rounds yet?”
Diego gently stroked his fingers over the top of the snake’s head.
“There, there, Fey.” he murmured, “don’t go scarin’ poor Taka again. Heh. It’s been passed around…enough for me to see your face on the front page. Figured you’d come around sooner or later to fill me in with the inside scoop.”
Simon tapped his chin.
“It certainly was an unexpected turn of events. I should have known my sister would pull some kind of stunt, but I never thought–” he shook his head. He’d been getting through the day so far by pushing down the memories of the previous one. All of his beliefs had come crashing down around him and his life had changed in an instant. “I’m at loose ends, Armando-dono. All the things I thought that I knew have changed in an instant.”
“That she’d…what was it that guard said…’Threatened to instruct her robot army to kill a room full of hostages, starting with a 17 year old girl’ ?” He shook his head.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, my friend. Most desperate measures you can’t take back.” He tilted his head, and Simon could hear the hum of electricity and the whirring of internal machinery as his eyes flickered. “Sounds like it was a hell of a trial, even past that. Why don’t you tell ol’ Diego about it, samurai, and I’ll see if we can tie those ends back together.”
Simon laced his fingers together over the table, feeling scrutinized by his friend’s crimson gaze, as though he could see straight to his soul. But he was used to that. He wasn’t surprised by the old man’s perspective– he himself was in prison for reasons one could see as similar to his sister’s or his own.
“I figured of course, that you’d sympathize with my sister,” Simon said with a smirk. “you may even have a chance to meet her before you leave this place, depending on how swiftly she’s sentenced. As for my loose ends, Armando-dono– you remember the officer who had had me under supervision lately? My own personal ball and chain?”
Simon felt a pang even to speak of the man. The ray of light in the last year of his life. The spirit who had never existed at all. Who had left him, on the day of his intended death, with a whole life ahead of him and a monstrous wound in his soul.
“Should I be so lucky, Simon.” Diego chuckled roughly, as Fey brushed her nose against his fingers. He spread them, and the snake began winding through them and over his hand. “Course I do. The detective. ‘Probably had too much coffee, and that’s coming from me. Fulbright, yeah?”
“The same.” Simon grimaced, and Taka’s feathers rustled in reaction to his body’s tension. Taka had been fond of Fulbright, who was always bringing snacks for the gluttonous bird. Taka, of course, could not understand what had happened. “Or should I say, not the same at all. The Fool Bright it seems left me the real fool in the end. Apparently the real Bobby Fulbright has been dead this past year.”
Simon grimaced bitterly. He kept imagining it– kept seeing it in his mind’s eye. The hapless, smiling detective face down in a puddle of mud and blood, the faceless killer who had stolen his life and Metis’ life looming over him with a leer.
“You’re yanking my chain. Then what…we’ve got ourselves some kind of imposter?” Diego said with a wry smile. It jerked Simon out of his horrible reverie and he watched as Diego brushed his thumb over the scales of the snake in his hand as her tongue flicked through the air, almost teasingly at Taka. “I’d say it’s unbelievable, but I’ve had some experience with someone wearing a dead woman’s face.”
Diego’s case was a strange one. A bizarre circumstance which had forced the justice system to legally recognize the existence of ghosts. Simon never knew how far he believed in it himself– or if it was a shared delusion between all parties, including the deceased.
What did it mean for Metis Cyckes if ghosts were real? What did it mean for Bobby Fulbright?
“In imposter, yes,” Simon agreed, feeling the sting of it and shifting in his chair. Though he had never spoken about it, he was sure that Diego knew the fondness for the idiot detective that Simon had kept behind his barbs and jabs. He doubted– or at least he hoped– that Diego didn’t know the true extent of that fondness. “It seems neither of us ever met the real detective Fulbright. Only our very own man of a thousand faces.
Diego sighed deeply, rubbing his fingers over his stubble in thought.
“A man of a thousand faces, eh?” He frowned, the only part of the emotion that could show with the heavy mask on his face “Can’t imagine it felt nice, being there at the bench when the truth came out.”
“It was a shock,” Simon said dryly, glad that Athena was not there to read all the myriad of emotional turmoil that surged through him. Simon had been very young when he went to prison. And he had become very lonely. A loneliness that the detective had helped him relieve– and he only now understood that the Phantom had taken advantage of. “In truth, I’m not sure that I can believe it even now– but he has already gone beyond my questioning or judgment.”
It was of course, no sure thing that the Phantom had been killed by the assassin. But what kind of underworld assassin misses his target? Besides, Simon had to believe that the man was dead. He had to believe that he was beyond reach.
Or he didn’t know what he’d do.
Maybe murder.
Maybe something worse.
He remembered the feeling of the man’s hands on his bare shoulders, and he shuddered with a mixture of longing and disgust.
Diego listened quietly, idly brushing his finger against Fey’s scales.
“Gone? You mean dead or …” he gestured over his shoulder at the guard “locked away like us…me…if he’s dead, that’s more answers you’ll never get.”
“Felled by an assassin in full view of the court,” Simon hissed. He swallowed, and his throat was very dry as he explained. “A daring display of villainy if ever there was one. Should he have by some miracle survived the assassin’s bullet the level and specifics of his crimes will demand a closed trial and a swift execution. No. I will never see the man who played me for a fool again. But I suppose he left me with one parting gift, though that was not his intention.”
Diego whistled, but Simon could see the slight grimace of discomfort on his face.
“Never gets easy seeing something like that. The type who’d assassinate someone in full view of Lady Justice is a harder man than you or me, samurai.” He shook his head “The faceless man’s damned either way, then? It ain’t easy…holding onto unanswered questions. But keep your chin up. Don’t fall apart like I did, you got it?”
Diego turned his unblinking gaze down to Fey as she made a tentative slither across the middle of the table. “What’d he leave you? Your freedom? Or something else.”
To call it a gift was dubious, but he hung onto it in any case. The one bright spot in the bleak revelation which he would cling to like a liferaft.
“My freedom is a nice afterthought,” Simon mused with a little smile at the edge of his mouth, “but what he really gave was greater still. He freed me of the burden of guilt that I had carried for seven long years, a burden which I had carried in the name of another. The sin I took up in place of another had never been committed.”
This was the first time Simon had ever spoken of it. He was certain that Diego had suspected, but he had maintained his own guilt with every breath of his voice and every fiber of his being.
“Sounds like you’re free of more than just these damned chains, samurai. Relish that….I knew you didn’t do it. You never seemed the type, no offense. Not in cold blood. Not like they said.” He looked back up at Simon. “What are you planning on doin’ now that you’re a free man? You don’t got the weight of sin on your shoulders, or the shoulders of whoever you were saving from it. You’re unchained. So what are you gonna do with that freedom, samurai?”
Simon hadn’t even considered it. Yesterday when he woke up there was only blackness, and the relief of an end long imagined. Today there was sunlight, the cool breeze on his face. Dirt under his feet.
And betrayal and confusion in his heart.
“I admit that I have very little idea. Continue to act as a prosecutor, perhaps? There’s not much call these days for a samurai outside the courtroom. I have a meeting with Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth later today– perhaps that will help clarify my path.” He extended a hand toward Diego, eager to get the topic off of himself. “And what of you, Armando-dono? Any ideas for your path once you’re out of the clink?”
“Well…you were a damn good enough prosecutor that they let you in the courtroom even though you were in goddamn lock up. I’d say you deserve your spot back at the bench. Maybe the Chief Prosecutor’s got good news for you, kid. You never know.” He chuckled roughly “as for me, I dunno…Still feels like it’s worlds away, samurai.”
There was little happiness in his smile. Something weighing heavily on his own soul, no doubt.
“I understand.” Simon nodded. The two of them didn’t pressure one another to speak– that was part of their friendship.”Maybe we can talk about it as free men together, when that world comes to pass.”
“Maybe we can.” Diego flashed him a thin smile, “when we’re free men, I think we’ll find ourselves a little less tied to the bitterness of the past, eh? …I’ll say one thing…when I’m out…I’m going to go make sure Pearl and Maya are alright. First thing. Iris said she’d do what she could and I trust her– but a man’s gotta make sure. Especially when Trite’s involved.”
Simon smiled. Pearl Fey. He’d met her briefly during that silly trial with the whale, and been happy to tell Diego all about it. What a time that whole affair had been.
And to think, the phantom who wore Bobby Fulbright’s cheerful face must have felt nothing about it. What a tragic waste. They called Simon twisted, but he couldn’t twist himself into a complicated enough knot to understand.
He pushed the thoughts away again, and returned to the present moment.
“I’m sure you can feel better when you can check on them yourself. I may very well visit with Iris with you. It will be like old times.”
“Like the old times. Bunch of old jailbirds getting together for a real cup of coffee…only this time we’ll be in the open air.” He raised his hand with Fey upon it in a mock salute. “Things’ll be better…they’ve gotta be. Just remember that, samurai.”
Simon returned the salute as Taka flapped his wings.
“I’ll remember it, old man. And we can see if it’s true.”