( No Title )
Lucifer Was an Angel As Well (44125 words) by thesavagesabretooth
Summary: A sheltered young artist with a tragic past finds herself caught in the web of dark affection by a beautiful and sinister murderer, and his carefree rockstar brother.
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September 3, 2028 – 8:30 am
When Vera woke up in her bed the next morning she was surprised to find that she didn’t have a hangover at all. She’d read about hangovers. On the taxi ride home, Klavier had coached her on how to nurse a hangover.
But as she stared up at the light of dawn seeping in through the blinds of her window she felt clear headed as any other morning. There was no pulsing pain, no dry mouth and achy body…just–
A normal, gentle rousing from bed by the fingers of the dawn. She yawned and stretched with a little murmur as her bones popped, wondering just why it might have happened.
She survived a poisoning attempt in the past– one with an almost certain chance of fatality with the amount she’d consumed. One with almost no known survivors.
As she shuffled into her bathroom to brush her teeth and comb her hair, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she just had a good liver? Maybe she was just more resilient than most to the effects of toxins and poisons by that same demonic luck that drew her and the Gavins together.
That, at least, was the thing that gave her a reaction. A deep flush she could see in the mirror as the details of the night before filtered back into her mind.
“You’re going to spoil me, big brother.”
“I have been taught that that is part of a big brother’s job, liebling.”
The very memory sent her heart beating quicker in her chest as she combed out the unruly waves of her hair in her reflection.
Klavier Gavin treated her the whole night like his ‘little sister’…trailing her around the club and introducing her to his friends. Teaching her to dance, buying her the first drink she’d ever had at a bar…
She’d gotten into it, the little thrill and warmth of acceptance every time she called him ‘big brother’ practically burned into her heart even now. Even when he introduced the Gavin family secret into it…
Helping her practice her kissing, holding her close…
Maybe it wasn’t a joke after all, just as he’d said.
The familiar and insistent chirp of her cell phone’s message function pulled her out of her daydream.
She dropped her brush with a startled yelp, before she hurried over to her end table to grab the phone and check her messages.
The message was from Miles Edgeworth. All it said was–
Are you available to talk this morning?Vera tilted her head to the side as she typed her answer “huh…”
Of course. I’m ready any time, Mr. Edgeworth 🙂
Thank you.
Knowing Mr. Edgeworth, that meant he’d be there pretty soon. Probably not immediately though, or he’d have given her some warning.
She took a deep breath, and wandered back to the bathroom to freshen herself up and drive away the lingering thoughts of ‘big brothers’ before dressing.
The body glitter and mingled perfume covered dress lay draped across her drafting table while she figured out how to get it laundered…so she opted for something familiar and simple. A white and blue striped dress and jean jacket.
The dress was very much a reminder of the night before, and it brought everything to mind again. She hadn’t expected that her journey into the web of her guardian angel would lead her to a situation like this.
How could she have? The devil’s web was more complicated than she could have imagined– bound in ways she never knew to people both familiar and strange. The thrill of excitement came back to her with the memory of the muffled music through VIP room speakers and the feeling of Klavier’s body against hers as she accepted a very physical invitation into their twisted family.
The Devil had his claws in all of them…and she found she could hardly resist walking deeper into hell after him…right alongside, it seemed, his brother. ‘Her big brother Klavier’. She felt her breath grow heavier again, not realizing for a solid moment that she’d practically fallen into a dissociation staring at the dress on the table.
The way Klavier had talked last night– the way he’d acted. It had been different than when he’d been trying to warn her about Kristoph, trying to dissuade her and make her stay away.
She remembered him staring off into space during the discussion. The revenant, but almost frightened tone he spoke about his brother in. As if he was something mysterious, to be feared if he couldn’t be hated.
It was clear that Kristoph had hurt Klavier deeply somehow. In some way perhaps no one else knew, and that was the experience Klavier had been remembering days earlier.
But last night had been different. The mentions of his brother had still been reverent, but almost worshipful, rather than fearful. The hurt wasn’t gone, but it was clear that Klavier was compelled by him somehow, in a way he couldn’t entirely reject.
Much like Vera herself.
It was like for Klavier, Kristoph was a poison he was eager to drink, and perhaps– eager to share.
She brushed her fingers against the dress with a fragile smile. Klavier…herself…they had more in common than anyone knew. They’d both been hurt, by the same man…but they both were drawn to him in a way they simply couldn’t escape.
Nor did they want to.
Klavier shared the poison Vera was already desperate to drink…sealing both their fates in the process.
Perhaps it was the devil’s own luck that Vera Misham had an amazing tolerance for poison.
September 3, 2028 – 9:15 am
The familiar knock of Miles Edgeworth rang on Vera’s door just as she was washing up the breakfast dishes.
She put them on her dish rack to dry, leaving only the coffee cups and some silverware in the sink as she drifted over to open the door with a quiet smile.
“Good morning, Mr. Edgeworth!”
Edgeworth smiled politely as he stepped inside. “Good morning Vera. I hope you’re well.”
Vera nodded cheerfully. “I’m doing pretty good h-honestly. I had a nice night last night and slept pretty well…and the Academy’s looming right on the horizon!”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” he nodded, striding into the kitchen where they usually talked. “Only two days until you move in. Are you… nervous?”
Vera walked back towards her kitchen table with a nod of her head.
“Honestly very nervous, but…at the same time excited. They’re not too different , as far as emotions go.” She started pouring water into her kettle with a thoughtful smile. “it’s going to be my first real step towards a new life…I know you’ll be watching over me while I’m there, Mr. Edgeworth.”
She looked over her shoulder at him and he smiled back.
“I will, Vera, without a doubt. But ah, there’s something a bit awkward I wanted to talk you about. If you’ll forgive me for intruding in your privacy.”
Vera froze, and her smile went a little tighter on her face..
“….oh dear…did something happen?”
A thousand nerve wracking possibilities rattled through her mind…including the absolute worst case scenario…
Did he know?
Edgeworth sat down at her table and folded his hands on it. “Vera, I’ve been making a lot of preparations with regard to Kristoph Gavin’s community service. That includes checking on his visitations– and his correspondence.”
Vera gasped, the mug she’d grabbed to set aside for Miles dropping from her hand to the counter below with a sharp ring of chipping ceramic.
“His…correspondence…” she trailed off before startling back to attention “oh no!”
She grabbed the mug and held it in her shaking hands to check for damage, using it as a distraction from Miles’ gaze.
“I’m sorry to invade your privacy like this. It wasn’t my intention. I… had no idea up to now.”
Edgeworth’s tone was as it often was, somber, and hesitant.
Vera turned with the mug clutched to her chest. She could feel how wide her eyes were, and was keenly aware of the way her breath shuddered in fits and bursts. Hyperventilation, that was the word for it.
She squeezed the broken mug tightly in her fingertips. “You rea…read them, Mr. Edgeworth?”
“Some of them, yes, Vera,” he said. “Would you sit down at the table with me? I hope you understood that correspondence with a prisoner isn’t truely private.”
She was in a daze as she fell into the chair opposite him , pushing the mug away into the center of the table before pressing her hands to her face. “Of…of course i knew. I’m not…I’m not stupid. I just…”
He spread his hands on the table. “Talk to me, Vera. I’m not mad at you. I want to understand what’s going on.”
Vera peeked out from between her fingers.
“You’re not m-mad?” she whispered. “I’..I’ll talk to you Mr. Edgeworth…I just don’t know where to start.”
“I’m not mad,” he promised again. He took his glasses off and cleaned them with his handkerchief. “Why don’t you start at the beginning. I noticed that he wrote the first letter.”
Vera slowly shifted until she rested her head in her folded arms.
“I was settling in after you helped me get set up again– after father’s death and my coma. The letter arrived. I didn’t…didn’t expect it. It surprised me enough that I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.” She murmured softly and bit her lip. It smelt like him, she’d known instantly who it was from. “…so I read it.”
“It’s only natural to read mail you’ve been sent,” he agreed. “Can I ask what made you respond?”
Vera shrugged her shoulders.
“He was polite in it. Conversational– even if he didn’t say he was sorry for everything. He wanted to know if everything was settling alright. I don’t know exactly why I responded at first…curiosity maybe? Maybe it was just that I had so few connections at the time, too.”
She’d just started to write before she knew what she was doing.
“That’s understandable,” he murmured. “And then you just got into the habit of writing, I suppose? How did you feel about it– back then?”
“Would it surprise you if I said I wasn’t upset?” Vera gave him a weak smile as she looked up from her arms. “It surprised me at first. I felt…curious. Maybe even a little happy. I didn’t know why he was taking the time to write to me. I mean…he’d poisoned me, usually you’d think that’d be the last someone wanted anything to do with you, right?”
“You would think, yes.” MIles nodded with a frown. “Most people don’t try to kill someone that they’re happy having a pleasant correspondence with.”
“So I kept writing,” She murmured. “I’m sure you saw what I started calling him…”
“Your ‘guardian angel’, yes?” He folded his fingers together again.
Vera nodded
“…my guardian angel, twice a week with advice and a smile I could read between the lines. He’d killed my father, Mr. Edgeworth, while trying to kill me…but he accidentally did the only thing that could have ever set me free.”
Miles sighed and shook his head. “Vera. I’ve wanted to respect your privacy, but I fear maybe I’ve gone too far, and made you feel isolated, or like you couldn’t to me. Can I ask you a very personal question?”
Vera looked up at him with wide eyes. She bit her lip.
“…I…I always felt like I could talk to you, Mr. Edgeworth! I just didn’t want to disappoint you…” She brushed her hand through her hair. “..but what, what is it?”
He took another deep breath. “How did you feel about your father? And your father’s death. Genuinely.”
Vera tensed, and her fingers tightened around her elbows.
“Do I have to be honest, Mr. Edgeworth?” She looked at him with a shaky smile “would you still care about me if I was?”
“I promise to you that I will still care about you no matter what you say, Vera. I won’t be mad. I would… very much like to hear the truth of your feelings. Difficult as that sort of thing may be for me sometimes.”
He spoke slowly, as if the whole conversation was as difficult for him as it was for her.
Vera took a soft, hiccuping breath before she admitted something she’d only admitted to a few people before. Trucy, Kristoph, Klavier she expected knew…
“I was happy when he died. Scared, yes…it was frightful to see someone die in front of me…but when I woke up from the coma I felt…”
She trailed off “free. The fear was gone, and I felt happy…confused, but happy. Papa was a demon, Mr. Edgeworth.”
Looking up to meet his eyes, she continued with a voice trembling with emotion.
“When I nearly got kidnapped by that man, I became too scared to leave the house. But papa never ever tried to help me. He…he kept me inside that tiny cage of a house. He never urged me to leave, even – even as he lied to Mr. Wright and that reporter about how he’d been ‘so worried’. He fostered my fears so he could use my talent.”
She hiccuped “…he took my eye for details– my love of art, and he turned me into a criminal chained by fear in his house. He told me all kinds of stories about what people were like and how horrible they could be…he only seemed to care about me, notice me, when I’d created some new work for him to sell. I was a tool. A forgery pretending to be a human being, to be used by him for money I’d never even see outside of more…more forgery equipment and the occasional drop of a childhood. Like the Gramarye show..”
Miles Edgeworth had gone white, and his hands were tense on the table. If the surface of it had been wood, his nails might have been dug straight into it.
“Lady justice– I never– I… I should have known.” He looked away from her, and she could hear a terrible hurt in his voice.
Vera reached out her shaking hand towards him.
“I didn’t want to talk about it more than I had to…but it’s why art’s been so hard for me lately. I knew– I knew if I talked about it people would worry. Maybe it was better if– if people saw him the way Mr. Wright saw him. ‘A dutiful father who fell into criminality to protect his traumatized daughter’. Right?”
She looked down. “but I’m only able to be where I am now because he died. If he were still alive, I’d still be working alone in that workshop with only the poison Mr. Gavin sent me as an unknown promise of release. I wouldn’t have you. I wouldn’t have Pearl, I wouldn’t have Trucy, or even my guardian angel and his brother. I’d have nothing.”
Miles put his hands around hers, and she could feel that his were shaking just as bad. He looked at her, and he looked like someone had slapped him across the face. he squeezed her fingers with his.
“Vera– Vera I’m so sorry that you felt that you had to hide your feelings. I… I understand. The man who raised me. If… if someone had killed him when I was your age, I might have thanked them for it.”
He looked away again, clearly ashamed of his own words.
Vera looked up at him with wide eyes, blinking away her tears.
“…you would have? so you understand…you were raised by a demon too?” Her hands held his tightly. “Mr. Gavin saved me from Drew Misham. I’ve never stopped being grateful for it. He told me in his letters of his own father too…a cruel and awful man…something we all, all share. I can’t even fault him for…for trying to kill me too. I can see the broken logic in it.”
Now Edgeworth’s lips had gone white as well, and he held her hands too tight. “Y-yes, I suppose you can. Not that it’s any kind of excuse but– I’m sorry are you telling me that Kingsley Gavin– But I remember him! My father was friends with him!”
Vera leaned forward to rest her forehead against their hands, staring up at him under the fringe of her hair. “and my father had friends…and Zak Gramarye was well beloved by many…but what I’ve been told in my letters and what I’ve seen from Klavier and his home…”
Miles hissed through his teeth.
“Another Manfred Von Karma? Another Blaise Debeste? Where the hell does it end?” He took a shuddering breath, and seemed to compose himself, squeezing her hands again. “I’m sorry, Vera. I’ve drifted off topic here. We’re talking about you. And I have to apologize again, for failing you, and not seeing that you had been in pain.”
Vera’s fingers tightened around his, and her cheek rested against the back of his palm as she nodded.
“You’re forgiven, Mr. Edgeworth– but I promise that you haven’t failed me. I never wanted to trouble any of you with it. I tried not to let it weigh me down, but I…I wish I’d talked to you about it. You’ve always been a source of good advice and care for me, sir…I was just… I dunno.”
She was quiet a moment before she spoke again. “I wanted to grow beyond it, which is one of the reasons why I was desperate to be a detective. Someone strong…capable. Useful. I could repay Mr. Gavin for killing papa by finding evidence to help his case…maybe…if I were lucky…”
“I understand,” he took another breath and lessened his tight hold on her fingers without releasing them fully. “I won’t lie to you, Vera, I have serious reservations about your relationship with Gavin, and what his intentions might be. But… hearing this, I understand better why you’ve allowed yourself to fall into this relationship at all.”
He paused for a moment before continuing. “I’m not a very good man for talking about emotions, Vera, even emotions that I understand and empathize with. Would it be alright with you if I had you talk to someone about all this? Someone whose job it is to listen to people’s emotions?”
Vera still clung tightly to his loosened hand, nodding nervously against it again.
“Y-yes…I’ll talk to someone if you think it’s necessary. But I..” She hesitated “I won’t be dissuaded from my course.”
“I understand. You’re an adult, Vera, and you’re free to make your own choices. I hope that they won’t bring you to harm, but it’s not my place to keep you from making bad decisions,” he sighed. “Perhaps you’ll be a good influence on Mr. Gavin.”
Vera smiled for the first real time since the mug broke against her countertop.
“…that’s my hope, Mr. Edgeworth.” She took a deep breath “…but I’ll talk to whoever you want me to talk to…if you think it’ll help.”
“Thank you, Vera,” he nodded. “I’m happy to listen to anything you have to say, but I’m afraid I don’t have anything wise to respond with. And you’ve already given me quite the food for thought.”
She brushed her hair over her ear.
“I really didn’t want to trouble you. And I’d always been taught that …y-you know..“ She put her finger over her lips “…lingering criminal behavior. Sorry.”
"You’re used to keeping quiet about things?” he offered.
Vera nodded.
“I was hardly allowed to talk to outsiders, but in the rare moments where I was…father told me that the more you say, the more people can use to hurt you. So I got used to saying almost nothing at all…it helped that…that words are hard.”
“The more you say, the more people can use it against you.” Edgeworth sighed. “Yes, I understand very well. But I hope you will open up a little. I’m told it’s… healthy.”
“I’ve been trying! ..it’s very healthy, r-right?” She tried to smile a little more, leaning against the table. She bit her lip. ‘…I’ve been talking more with Pearl and Trucy…and just last night Klavier took me out to a club for a drink to celebrate the Academy!”
“I’m pleased to hear about you and Pearl and Trucy,” he nodded. “Klavier took you out drinking? Goodness, that must have been… an experience.”
Miles looked a little terrified by the idea.
She pointed to the dress covered in glitter with a flush.
“Yeah, to his favorite club in town. It was a lot…a little scary, but also pretty exciting.” She bit her knuckle thoughtfully “I got to dance and try a new drink…and I think we really bonded…”
The memories of the night before flashed in her mind , and she hoped the flush didn’t show on her face.
‘You’re going to spoil me, big brother’.
“Well, if you had fun, then I think that’s wonderful,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Very appropriate for a young lady of your age to be out dancing. I assume Klavier was a good host?”
Vera smiled and tucked her hair over her ear with a sheepish smile.
“Yeah he was ah..he was a pretty great host. I can see why everyone’s so enamored with him..”
“Yes, he certainly has that rockstar charm down, doesn’t he?” Edgeworth chuckled politely before he asked, “does he ah, know about your correspondence with his brother?”
She rubbed the back of her neck.
“….ah…well..” Did she lie? Or tell a half truth…
“You haven’t told him yet?” Miles asked. “I can’t blame you. He seems to have a very… rough relationship with Kristoph. But make sure you don’t hide a secret that can hurt you later, Vera.”
Vera opened her mouth, her brow furrowed, before she nodded and accepted the hand life had apparently dealt her.
No forgery required.
“Of course. I’ll make sure to talk to him about it as soon as I can, Mr. Edgeworth!”
“Good,” Edgeworth nodded. “Perhaps I ought to offer to have someone talk to him as well… but I suppose that’s none of my business. But thank you for being open with me, Vera.”
Vera glanced down before giving him a smile.
“Mr. Edgeworth…I hope we can spend more time with you soon. I’m..I’m going to try and be more open, alright?”
“I’d like that very much, Vera.”
September 3, 2028 – 10:05 am
Edgeworth and Vera had talked for a little while longer, but he had turned the conversation shortly to all the preparations for Vera’s move in two days, and her orientation at police academy.
After he was gone, Vera collapsed onto her table with a quiet sigh and a hesitant smile. She rolled the broken mug gently back and forth as she considered its repair.– he handle had snapped off and a nasty crack running down its side– and the conversation.
She’d nearly had a heart attack when she realized the inevitable consequences of her correspondence. Miles Edgeworth had read her letters now and knew of her unusual relationship with the devil himself.
She’d opened up– all of it was the truth— a truth she kept to herself and few others purely for the desire not to relive it in her mind, and gotten a kind of sideways blessing from one of the most important figures in her life.
A protector, a friend, someone dear to her. He wouldn’t interfere, even if she dreaded the conversation with the ‘expert’ who’d arrive to talk to her about it.
Edgeworth had said that he’d see what he could do about having someone come and talk to her before she moved into the academy. Which meant tomorrow, or the day after.
Her heart beat loudly in her chest as she traced the pad of her thumb over the edge of the break in her mug. “Will it be Miss Cykes…or someone else, I wonder..”
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