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Trucy is sitting in the back of a cop car with her hands cuffed behind her back and she's strong and she's not going to cry she's not going to cry she's not.
She's stronger than this, and she's miserable but she's tough and sharp and smart and she's going going to hold on but she can't stop thinking about the blood and the sword and the body laid flat and speared, life and love and lung extinguished, and it's her fault and it can't be her fault-
And the door is yanked open, another set of limbs being shoved in with much more force and flailing and her Daddy is here, why is he here-
He looks so awful, face beaten like it hasn't looked in years, blood bleeding and trickling from his nose out a nostril, drippling down into his swollen lip, busted up and pooling off the side of his mouth and dripping towards his nice new suit, shirt and lapels rumpled,
and suddenly she's eight, watching him wince as he rubs healing creams into his scarred and burnt legs;
she's ten, helping him press an icepack into a bruise at his temple as he slumps into the couch;
she's twelve, and he's given up at halfheartedly trying to keep her away from this and she's wetting a cloth and dabbing at the blood smeared and scabbed over his knuckles and split lip after Mr. Gavin paid his bail that she suspects but will never say that they probably can't pay back and dropped him back home.
"Trucy," Daddy croaks and scrambles towards her. His arms strain as his tightly cuffed hands struggle to wiggle free and reach towards her and he clumsily, frantically, scoots closer. The door slams and locks shut behind him and the cop is muttering muffled curses that she's not listening to because it doesn't matter and he doesn't matter and she doesn't care about anything beyond the welcoming plane of her Daddy's open broad chest and the way she strains to bury her face in his neck.
"Daddy," she chokes, still not crying, but she's shooshing and soothing her.
"It's alright, you're okay, we're going to make it through this," he whispers into her hair,
and then she's nine, and her Daddy scheduled her court day for her name change for exactly one year to the dot to the day she was left behind and he's casual and calm like it doesn't even matter and he didn't notice and he didn't realize but his eyes keep flicking over her and she realizes for the first time that he can see through her, can read her, and it sends a shiver of a shock through her;
she's eleven, and she's miserably sick and everything exists in a fog, and life lives in flashes — Daddy helping her sit up and feeding her something hot and liquid and she can't taste it but he's petting her head and tucking in her stuffed animals closer — he's talking softly and frantically on the phone, back turned away and hair tightly fisted in his hand, and she can't make out much beyond the swimming in her ears, but she realizes days later that he should have been at work hours ago then;
she's thirteen, and she's suddenly signed up for the choir classes that she didn't ask for because they couldn't afford and were too proud to ask, and her friend Jas is so excited and when she comes home and hesitantly tells him, Daddy knows and he's smiling and it even reaches is eyes;
she's fifteen, and she's curled up in his lap and sobbing and she's holding her tight and tucked under his chin, and he's exhausted and laid flat with an empty tongue but she's never been safer than here, and she knew she knew she knew from the moment she got his call that he — Shady, Zak, Smith, Enigmar, Gramaraye, Dad — was dead, and she thinks she's supposed to feel sad but all she can feel is the soul shattering sadness and grief and relief that her Daddy is here he's home and she grabbed his freedom and dragged him here herself with her teeth, and he's not leaving her and her love.
She presses her forehead against him until the threatening swell of tears dies down again, choked and stamped down behind her eyes. She's pretty sure he's gotten his blood caked into her hair, but it's not anything new for them. He sniffles and she turns her head to press her ear against his chest.
"Did a cop bust your nose again?" Trucy whispers into him. Daddy grunts under her. That's a yes then. He sighs, chest rising and lifting her and she raises her head with the motion.
Daddy grimaces at her and his eyes flick up to the front of the car, rumbling beneath them, trying to cut off more questions. She's not stupid, don't trust and don't say shit and I plead the fifth were the first and best lessons she ever learned from every parent she's ever had down the line.
"Sorry, Mr. Wright," Detective Skye mournfully mumbles from the front seat. Daddy's started going a little soft and gooey on the inside again this last year, but Trucy stays strong and keeps the Wrights afloat and they still don't cave in blind hope and trust and familiarity.
"Did Bayge hit you very hard?" Skye asks. Daddy grunts. Ema's a nice girl, but right now she's a cop no matter how much regret she might feel for it in that moment.
"You shouldn't have been messing around with the crime scene though," she scolds weakly. Daddy stays silent. Oh boy. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but he's not going to make it easy or fun to figure out either way, and nearly half her lifetime of assumptions and biases will make it hard to pull the courts in the other direction.
"You have Polly's number memorized?" Daddy asks her, ignoring their chauffeur.
"He'll come by," she chirps as cheerful and hopeful as she can, answering the real question. "Are you going to call Mr. Edgeworth?"
He groans and throws his head back against the hard seat cushions.
"I will if you don't," she threatens.
"I can text him when I uh, um, drop you off," Ema offers, still trying to fit her way into the conversation.
"I think him playing defense attorney for me is a once in a life time kind of cash in," he jokes lightly. Anything else about conflict of interest and tampering with evidence and guilty before proven innocent is left unsaid.
"Athena then," Trucy declares.
"Athena then," Daddy agrees.
Trucy leans into him again, bracing herself for their fates.