so, i just found out kay, sebastian, and klavier is the same age, and both sebby and klav attended themis. i wanna know your take on their time there. are they besties or passive aggressively competing in everything
oh!! i have so many thoughts, anon, give me a sec:
ok, so i think that they wouldn't like each other in school for a vital reason: they're far too alike in their motivation to pursue law, but way too different in how they express that.
teenage klavier is talented and he knows it, and that's part of the problem. he aims for suave and he's rewarded for his intelligence and charisma in praise and admiration that feels surface level. he knows he's smart but plays it cool. he's popular but lonely. he doesn't let imperfection show, and hides the weight of all this pressure-- from new friends, competitive classmates, from himself, and always (always) Kristoph-- beneath a showy persona that's even more unbearable as a teenager than when he's older.
meanwhile, sebastian is not perfect. he is not charismatic. he is not suave or popular or the shining star of the prosecutor's program. but he feels he has to be. he sees klavier as everything he's supposed to be and chooses bluster. desperate bluster, the facade worthy of Debeste, and pretends, poorly, that he is just as good. just as talented. even though every peer he knows succeeds where he struggles, and flourishes where he stumbles (and klavier is the worst, the Best, of all of them. he is the prodigy sebaatian's father demands.)
their meetings in classrooms and hallways are as brief as they are tense. klavier looks at sebastian's posturing and tells himself he feels pity (but truly, there is nothing he fears more than being so transparent.) and sebastian sees klavier as a pedestal he will never reach, no matter how much he tries to convince himself.
(later, when time goes on, after the Turnabout Terror falls and Apollo Justice finds the truth, and Miles Edgeworth takes on the PIC and purges the last of its corruption-- later, when Kristoph Gavin and Blaise Debeste are both behind bars-- they find themselves in the same room, working on a joint case. they're older now. changed. the pressure they once felt is gone, even if it lingers in unexpected ways. neither of them have to pretend, anymore. sebastian fumbles a word, a phrase, and on reflex, klavier gently corrects him. sebastian doesn't sweat, or recoil, or pretend he never slipped up. he says thank you, instead, and moves on. klavier doesn't fail to notice. later, he makes his own mistake, the wrong English noun in a silly idiom. sebastian hums, thoughtful, but lets it go.
against the new lawyer, athena cykes, they lose their case the next day. but they know, the both of them, that they did what they could. and that's finally enough.)
