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1.
The first time Edgeworth noticed something might be wrong was the last day of his trial.
Wright showed up at the defendant's lobby looking more disheveled than usual--his suit didn't seem to fit quite right, his hair was, if possible, even more of a travesty than it normally it was, and his face, well...
It didn't exactly inspire confidence.
"Wright," Edgeworth said. "What on earth are you doing? The trial is in twenty minutes."
Wright blinked, then slowly dragged his gaze back to Edgeworth. His expression was dazed, his eyes vaguely unfocused, and Edgeworth was rapidly losing any confidence in his future verdict.
Not that it mattered anyways. He had decided to confess to his father's murder, and he would be put to death regardless.
"Sorry," Wright said with the slightest sigh. "Yesterday was kind of rough for me. We'll make sure you get that not guilty, all right?"
Even that rang a little hollow, devoid of Wright's usual boundless (and generally inadvisable) confidence.
"Speaking of 'we', where is that assistant girl of yours?" Edgeworth asked. "I thought she followed you everywhere, or did she lose faith in your abilities?"
That seemed to snap Wright out of his stupor, as he bristled and said, "Maya's helping with this case, Edgeworth. Just because you can't see her doesn't mean she isn't doing everything she can." He exhaled heavily. "If everything goes well, you won't see her until the trial is over."
That didn't sound particularly useful to Edgeworth, but he had the tact not to say so. Wright was clearly not in the best mental state, and, as hopeless as this case already was, it was best not to exacerbate it.
The bailiff called them in to the court, and the final day of the trial began.
"This court finds the defendant, Miles Edgeworth, not guilty."
The gavel fell, and Edgeworth let out a breath he didn't even realize he was holding.
It was over.
Somehow, against all odds, against Von Karma, Wright had proved him innocent of both the murder of Robert Hammond and his own father.
Edgeworth found himself at a loss for words. By this time, he'd fully expected to be back in a jail cell, weighing the benefits of execution by lethal injection versus hanging. And yet, here he was, a free man.
He made his way out of the court in a haze, not entirely aware of the people and sounds around him until he was in the defendant lobby, facing Wright yet again.
Wright smiled. "We did it," he said.
"Yes," Edgeworth said. "You did."
He still couldn't wrap his mind around it. Only someone as unpredictable and stubborn as Phoenix Wright could accomplish such a miracle.
Edgeworth did the only thing that seemed appropriate and expressed his gratitude the best he could--that is, not very well at all.
And then Wright suddenly had to leave, claiming he felt extremely ill. To his credit, he certainly looked ill--his face was off-color and covered in a sheen of sweat that was more feverish than nervous, and had been that way for at least an hour and a half.
Come to think of it, Wright had seemed unusually distracted for much of the latter half of the trial. He'd kept twitching to the right, as if looking towards a co-council that wasn't there. Perhaps his illness was related to the Fey girl's absence.
So Wright took his leave, and not ten minutes later, the Fey girl returned, carrying Wright's briefcase. Her hair had been cut short since the previous day, as if someone had simply grabbed a handful and chopped it off.
Edgeworth hadn't thought much of it then, but perhaps in hindsight, he should have known.
2.
The second time Edgeworth noticed something was off, Wright wasn't doing anything at all.
Really, it was just that--Wright wasn't doing anything.
True, Wright had the inexplicable habit of going for weeks or months without cases, but this was different. Nobody seemed to have so much as seen him or have any idea where he was, and he certainly wasn't in his office the few times Edgeworth had deigned to check.
He had to resort to sending emails to try and get the case files he needed, which was arduous at the best of times due to Wright's technological incompetence.
He must have gotten lucky, because Wright responded astoundingly promptly (only three hours later, compared to the usual never) and an hour after that, the case files were delivered to his office by Wright's assistant.
"I thought that Wright would leap at any occasion to bother me in my office," Edgeworth said as he took the files and thumbed through them.
"Oh, yeah!" the Fey girl said. "I guess Nick would, but he's been kind of, uh, busy lately! But if you wanna talk to him, you can call him, you know? Or take him out to dinner! Just let us know ahead of time!"
(Dinner? Where in the world did she come up with such an absurd idea?)
But before Edgeworth could ask the Fey girl what she was trying to insinuate or what Wright could possibly be so busy with, the Fey girl had already vacated the premises.
Edgeworth sighed.
Ridiculous. The both of them.
3.
Edgeworth called Wright's personal line once.
He was making plans to leave the country after that debacle with Ms. Lana Skye, and it occurred to him that it may be somewhat cruel to Wright to leave before saying some things that needed to be said.
Not that he knew what things needed to be said, but considering the note he intended to leave, saying anything would be better than the alternative.
So he called Wright. He got a response on the second ring.
"Hello?"
Edgeworth glanced at the phone to see if he'd misdialed. Unless Wright recently had his voice raised half an octave and his larynx replaced with that of a teenage girl's, that was most definitely not him.
"Is Wright available?" Edgeworth asked.
"Oh, Mr. Edgeworth!" the other person, who must have been Wright's assistant, said. "Yeah, I can get Nick, just give me a minute, okay?"
There was a sound that was distinctly the phone being put down, then some scratching sound that sounded a little bit like writing, and--
"H-hello? Edgeworth?"
"Wright," Edgeworth said. "Why does your assistant carry your personal mobile phone? And it's nine at night. Why are you even together right now?"
He wasn't even sure why he asked that last question. Wright's assistant was from some mountain village, so obviously she didn't have a permanent residence and they were temporarily living together or...or something. It wasn't important, not for this.
"That's...don't worry about it, Edgeworth. What did you need?" Wright asked.
And there it was, Wright's apparently insatiable urge to help. At least he didn't waste time with small talk.
"I wanted to ask your opinion on some...recent matters. Not strictly work-related, but..."
"Does this have to do with your resignation letter?" Wright asked.
Edgeworth blinked. Wright still remembered that? That was weeks ago.
On second thought, Wright used that resignation letter to convince Detective Gumshoe to break in to Police Chief Gant's office, didn't he? It must have left an impression, in that case.
Either that, or Wright simply had nothing better to do than obsess over unimportant details for inordinate lengths of time, which, considering him, was not inconceivable.
"I suppose," Edgeworth said, "that you can construe it as being related. As you are aware, I have not worked any cases recently--"
"I--you haven't?"
Edgeworth resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. It seemed that he had, once again, overestimated Wright's awareness of current events, and life in general.
How did that man survive, floating off in his own world all the time?
"Yes," Edgeworth replied curtly. "And if you had read anything related to the legal circles since your case with Ms. Lana Skye, you would know this. The media seems to have run wild with their imaginations about my absence from the courts, but evidently, their shoutings have not reached whatever rock you seem to live under."
"Oh," Wright said, and Edgeworth could just about picture him grinning idiotically with his hand behind his head. "Sorry about that. Maya, er, we don't really keep up with that stuff. So you haven't been taking cases?"
"I am not a private defense attorney, Wright. I do not have the luxury of taking cases. But no, I have not had any cases assigned to me since our last trial. My superiors did not accept my resignation and have put me on forced vacation leave."
"Wow, uh, forced vacation. That sounds, um. Terrible." There was an awkward pause, then, "So what, you need some ideas on what to do with your forced vacation? Because I'm not sure I can help you with that."
Edgeworth sighed. "That is emphatically not what I wished to talk about," he said. "I have been thinking about the SL-9 case, as well as my role as a prosecutor."
"Your...role?"
"Yes, Wright, my role. My role as a servant of the law, my role as someone who brings criminals to justice." He took a deep breath. "As you are no doubt aware, I have spent much of my career so far in pursuit of the guilty verdict, but facing you in court..."
Edgeworth paused. This was not something he wished to admit, especially not to Wright.
"Edgeworth? You there?"
"What I mean to say," Edgeworth continued hesitantly, "is that I must admit my previous thinking was flawed. As you have proven, not everyone who takes the stand is guilty. However, innocent or not, it is still my duty as the prosecution to find them so."
There was another long pause.
"Oh," Wright said. "I guess you're right. But, um, what did you want to ask me?"
And that was the question, wasn't it? What did he need to know?
"How do you do it?" Edgeworth asked. "How do you defend your clients, knowing that they may very well be guilty?"
"Wh-what? Uh, I mean. I just believe in them, you know? I believe they're innocent, and they're telling the truth, and if they are, then there has to be a way to prove it."
(Blind faith? What a...ridiculous answer. I should have expected it, coming from Wright.)
Edgeworth sighed. It was an answer, perhaps, but not one that would work for him. As he'd anticipated, he would have to find his answer himself.
"...I see. Well, that is all I wished to ask. Thank you for your time, and--"
"Wait!" Wright interjected. "Edgeworth, I, uh, just wanted to say something before I go."
Edgeworth paused. "Yes?"
"I'm gonna be, um, Maya and I are gonna be out of town for a while. We're going to her hometown, in Kurain? She needs to do training, and I've got some, uh, business to take care of."
"I see. So you wish for me to know that you will be out of touch?" Edgeworth asked.
"Um, sort of. I wanted to ask, um. I know we're only sort of friends these days, but if I were, y'know, hypothetically, uh..."
"Stop stammering and get to the point, Wright."
"W-would you want to attend my funeral?"
Edgeworth looked at his phone incredulously, because there was no way Wright just--
"I beg your pardon?"
Wright made a few vaguely distressed sounds, then said, "My funeral. Do you want to be there?"
"I don't have time for jokes, Wright. Why are you asking me this? This is incredibly poor taste, even for you."
Wright paused, no doubt trying to think of a way to get out of this situation with some dignity intact. "...Yeah, sorry," he said, sounding dejected. "That kind of was a bad thing to ask, wasn't it? I'll, uh, let you get back to your forced vacation, then."
He hung up then, and Edgeworth looked at his phone again.
What in the world had gotten into Wright, asking something about his funeral? Last he checked, Wright was very much alive and intending to stay that way, as long as he didn't go and, in Detective Gumshoe's words, shove vital evidence in a criminal's face again.
Edgeworth turned back to the files on his desk and continued filling out forms. He wanted to be out of the country by the end of the week.
4.
(Wh-what is that ridiculous thing on Wright's head?)
Edgeworth stared intently at the TV screen, as if that would make reality reassert itself and remove the abomination that Wright was wearing over his hair.
Even abroad, Edgeworth was aware of Wright's trials, few and far between as they were, and yes, Wright had never been a bastion of decorum, but this was the first time he had done something as ridiculous as come into court wearing...that.
It was a bright purple striped knit cap, covering all of Wright's unbelievable hair and accomplishing the previously thought impossible task of making him look even more of a disaster.
It was so distracting that Edgeworth could barely focus on the actual trial--the second trial of Maya Fey, that was. She had somehow managed to get accused of murder a second time, and the details were embroiled with that spirit channeling nonsense.
Oh, and Franziska was the prosecution.
There was very little question in Edgeworth's mind as to why Franziska wanted to go to America, even when all she ever seemed to do was complain about how barbaric Americans were. Her pride in 'the Von Karma name' had not waned as she'd grown older, and her personal stake in defeating the man who took down her father far outweighed her distaste of the country.
Edgeworth could tell from the beginning that Franziska was due to be disappointed.
The trial was fairly standard, for a trial in which Wright took the defense. Franziska's whip-cracks were expected, and Wright unsurprisingly found himself on the receiving end of most of them, what with his usual antics and his unfortunate choice of hats.
And of course, Wright proved Ms. Fey completely innocent by the end of the second day, and Franziska was so incensed with her broken win streak that she whipped him into unconsciousness.
What was unexpected was when Franziska went to the defense's bench afterwards, presumably to deliver a verbal lashing in addition to her physical one, only to have a look of utter horror cross her face before the camera feed cut out.
Sitting thousands of miles away, Edgeworth couldn't help but wonder what Franziska had seen.
5.
Edgeworth was back in the States, and it was a disaster.
Franziska had been shot, Maya Fey had been kidnapped by Shelley de Killer, and Wright was almost certainly defending a guilty man--not that he would believe it.
They had no leads, except...
Wright returned to the hallway of the Hotti clinic with that ridiculous hat on his head. He was a bit pale and out of breath.
"She's in a wine cellar," he said. "A really big one, there's casks on both sides, and stairs going up. The door leads to a lounge, with a radio dish receiver thing and a door with a cat flap, and a picture..." He blinked. "Do you know who Celeste is?"
Edgeworth stared at Wright. "What? How do you know this? Do you have some line of communication with Maya?"
Wright shook his head and said, "Look, that's not important, okay? Just--"
"What do you mean, 'that's not important'? This could be critical, Wright!" Edgeworth shot back. "How in the world did you learn all of these details?"
"Edgeworth, I will be happy to explain things another time, but right now, who is Celeste? There's a picture there with 'With love, Celeste' written on it. Who would own something like that?"
('With love, Celeste'? Engarde almost certainly hired de Killer, but he wouldn't be so bold as to... Would he?)
Edgeworth bit his tongue. Wright was clearly not going to explain how he knew what he knew, and he was right, there were more important matters to address at the moment. "If your information is accurate, I may have an idea of where Maya is being held, but I warn you, you will not like it."
Wright reached under his cap, nervously entangling his fingers in his hair, revealing a flash of...brown? "I...I don't care, Edgeworth. I just want Maya to be safe."
Edgeworth blinked, then nodded. He could ask Wright about his questionable hair dye choices later. For now, they had to rescue Maya.
They did.
It was a long and hard pursuit, but between Wright's inexplicable knowledge and the special forces team's determination to rescue Maya, they managed to find her before it was too late, even if de Killer himself escaped.
Wright managed another miracle in court, making de Killer break his contract with Engarde and bringing the court to the correct verdict. All in all, it was an exhausting day.
So perhaps it was expected when Wright, who was looking extremely ill after the trial, excused himself immediately afterwards.
Less expected was when a small girl wearing purple robes returned with Wright's bag and horrible hat. Her brown hair was poorly clipped into a disaster of a bun and she looked about ready to collapse.
"Pearly!" Maya shouted.
"Mystic Maya!" the girl--Pearly, apparently, responded.
Edgeworth watched as the two embraced, utterly confused as to who this girl was and why she was in such a state.
"You did it!" Maya told Pearly. "You and Nick, you saved me and got the bad guy! I'm so proud of you!"
How this little girl managed to help rescue Maya when he hadn't so much as seen her, Edgeworth didn't have a clue. He opened his mouth to ask, when Maya's stomach growled loudly and everyone decided a huge celebratory dinner was in order.
Edgeworth did wonder why Maya didn't insist on bringing Wright along, but perhaps she was just being mindful of his illness.
Franziska confronted him at the end of the day.
"I will be leaving," she said. "I have already booked a flight to Berlin."
"Is that so?" Edgeworth asked. "I thought you wished to defeat Wright?"
"Defeat that fool? Ha!" Franziska turned her nose up at him. "You are nearsighted and foolish, Miles Edgeworth, if you think my goals are so foolish as to foolishly compete with a ghost of a defense attorney."
Edgeworth sighed. Franziska had never been a particularly good loser. "Ghost? Even now, you are belittling Wright's achievements, absurd and unconventional as they are?"
That made Franziska's gaze sharpen as it settled on him. "His achievements--? Did that foolish Phoenix Wright not tell you?"
Edgeworth resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "It's difficult to say, when I don't know what you are referring to. I can't say Wright and I are as close as you seem to believe we are."
"Well, if that foolish fool of a man did not bring you into his confidence, then it is not my duty to do it for him," Franziska announced with a huff. "I will restore the Von Karma name elsewhere, Miles Edgeworth, and I will have my revenge. Do not think that I will forever remain in your shadow."
With that, she turned on her heel and left, taking her--and apparently Wright's--secrets with her.
+1.
Edgeworth only semi-regularly corresponded with Wright over email and visited him in person even less. But now that he was back in the States for a few quick matters and since Wright had harangued him for months to meet, he figured he was due for a social call.
He politely emailed Wright about it two days in advance, and so was irked to arrive at the Wright and Co. Law Offices only to find a note on the door that said Wright was busy meeting a client and would return within the hour.
(I suppose I can't fault him for prioritizing his work, as little as he gets.)
Well, Wright had, for whatever reason, given him a spare key last year, so Edgeworth decided there was no need to loiter around outside and let himself in.
The office looked much like it always did, with large dusty bookshelves and the overwatered plant in the corner and that absolutely prehistoric computer. There were papers spread across the desk in a characteristically messy fashion, and Edgeworth, in his idle curiosity, decided to take a look.
It was standard legal fare, for the most part. Forms, contracts, a couple of invoices, and--
(A-a death certificate?)
Gingerly, Edgeworth pulled the sheet off of the pile. It was a death certificate, filled out and signed, with...
Phoenix Wright was the decedent.
The date of death was listed as several months ago, which wasn't, wasn't...
Edgeworth tried to remember the date of the last time he'd talked to Wright, and couldn't.
(But he responded to his emails just three weeks ago! And the note on the door is Wright's handwriting! Could it possibly be that he--)
His thoughts were interrupted by a rattling sound from the lock and some muffled words.
"--worry, we'll be there in a few days, okay? ...No, I looked into the case, I think Maya was mistak--"
Edgeworth whipped around to face the door and--
Phoenix Wright froze in the doorway. "Um," he said into his phone, "I've got to go, Pearls, there's a visitor. I'll talk to you soon, okay?"
Slowly, he hung up and put the phone away, never taking his eyes off Edgeworth.
"Edgeworth," he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "Wh-what are you doing here?"
"What am I--" Edgeworth swallowed, trying to suppress the hammering in his chest. "What is the meaning of this, Wright?" he demanded, shoving the death certificate at him.
Wright stared at the death certificate, then up at Edgeworth. "You...weren't supposed to see that," he said.
"Is this your idea of a sick joke?" Edgeworth asked. "Or is this some kind of twisted revenge for my departure last year?"
"Reve-- No! I'm not, it's not what you think, Edgeworth!" Wright stammered. "Look, you just--"
Edgeworth stepped closer to Wright. "Just what, Wright? I come back from France and visit you after your constant badgering, only to find this on your desk! What did you think I would assume? What possible reason did you have to forge your own death certificate?"
"It's--" Wright swallowed heavily. "It's not."
Edgeworth glared at him. "It's not what I think? You have said so already, Wright."
"No," Wright said. "It's not forged. That's my actual death certificate. The--the dates and cause of death aren't quite right, but it's...it's real."
Edgeworth forced himself to take a deep breath, then stepped back, out of Wright's space. "This may have slipped your notice, Wright, but this is a death certificate, while you seem to be very much alive."
Wright sighed. "I'm being channeled right now. By Maya."
Edgeworth clenched his jaw. This was impossible, this couldn't be true, this had to be some absolutely horrible joke...
"Explain."
Wright did.
There was a long silence as they sat across from each other, heavy confessions hanging in the air.
Two years. Wright had been dead for two years, had been murdered, and Edgeworth hadn't known.
"So you're saying that Von Karma k--" Edgeworth swallowed, then forced himself to go on. "He killed you? During my trial?"
Wright nodded solemnly. "After the second day, we caught him trying to destroy the DL-6 evidence, and you remember that letter we found, right? He wanted to destroy that, too, and he tazed us--Maya and me--to get it." He let out a humorless laugh. "Maya was fine, but my family has a history of heart problems, you know? I... Maybe if Maya'd woken up earlier, or Von Karma had half a conscience, or someone had checked the evidence room, or, or something, they could have used an AED and I would've been okay, but...that's not what happened."
Edgeworth found himself feeling slightly faint. "And you decided that the best course of action was to have your assistant channel you so you could continue defending me?"
Wright shrugged. "It was Maya's idea, not mine. If we didn't defend you, nobody else would, and you'd get convicted. We didn't want that, so we did what we had to do."
"By which you mean your assistant hid your body, cut her hair, stole your clothes, and left a vague note before proceeding to channel you, a dead man, to complete my trial."
"It sounds kind of bad when you say it like that, but pretty much," Wright said.
Edgeworth took a deep breath. "And you...you continued to do this? Have your assistant channel you to do cases?"
"Like I said, it was Maya's choice. When you're dead and not being channeled, you...you don't really know what's going on and you don't feel time passing," Wright said. "Maya doesn't want innocent people to get convicted, and I'm the one with the badge, you know? It's not like I mind. If I don't want to be channeled, I can just leave."
"I see," Edgeworth said, very much not feeling like he understood anything at all. "So all of your absences between cases...?"
"Yeah, I guess you can say I didn't exist. I think it's really hard on Maya to channel me, since I'm not related and, uh, a guy and all. She's gotten better at it with her training, but it's still best if she doesn't channel me unless I actually need to be around." Wright grimaced. "And since she's usually the one channeling me, we never actually see each other. I guess there's Pearls, but it's even worse for her--channeling me makes her sick for days afterwards. The only thing we can really do is write letters."
Edgeworth nodded slowly, piecing the facts together. The difficulty of channeling would account for Wright's illness after long trials and extreme aversion to social gatherings. The fact that Wright was a...a spirit accounted for his incredible ignorance of current events and Maya answering his phone and maybe even responding to his emails...
(The signs were there all along, weren't they? But I never could have imagined...)
He looked up at Wright and his ridiculous hair and his ridiculous poor posture and his ridiculous cheap suit, and tried to convince himself that the man sitting in front of him truly wasn't alive anymore.
He couldn't.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Edgeworth asked. "My trial was two years ago, and you couldn't tell me in all that time?"
Wright at least had the grace to look contrite. "Well, I didn't want you to feel guilty about it on top of everything else you were going through with that case. You'd probably come up with some dumb way to make it so you killed me."
Edgeworth sputtered indignantly. "No, I-- That's--"
Wright huffed with amusement. "Edgeworth, you blamed yourself for your dad's murder for fifteen years. You're probably blaming yourself right now about me not telling you about my death."
(W-well, he's not wrong.)
"But Von Karma murdered you. He should have to answer for his crimes!" Edgeworth insisted.
"Von Karma was already on death row for shooting your dad, Edgeworth. I don't think another murder charge would make much difference after the fact, especially since he's dead now," Wright said, with not nearly the gravity the subject called for.
Edgeworth balled his fists in his lap. He could argue, but the likelihood of getting anywhere against Wright's bullheadedness was slim to none.
"You still should have told me, Wright. I shouldn't have had to come in and find your death certificate."
Wright winced. "Okay, that's fair. That could have gone better, but it's not like I didn't try. I invited you to my funeral, didn't I?"
Edgeworth blinked. "What? No, you..."
And then he remembered: When he'd called Wright before leaving for Europe the first time, Wright had made that tasteless joke about attending his funeral that--
"Oh, god, you weren't joking when you asked me about that--"
"No, it's my bad," Wright said with a smile that was not at all appropriate for the situation. "I wasn't super clear when I asked, and if it's any consolation, you didn't miss much. We had it up in Kurain Village to keep it all secret. It was a pretty small service."
"Does that mean your...your grave is...?"
Wright nodded. "The Kurain elders said that since I protected Maya, I could have an honorary spot in one of their branch cemeteries. It's beautiful up there, you know, with the trees and the rivers and everything. I haven't been there since the funeral, because it's kind of weird to visit your own ashes, but if you ask Maya, she can take you." He frowned and ran a hand through his hair. "She hasn't told me, but I know she goes a lot. I think she blames herself, even though I keep telling her it's not her fault."
(That's just like Wright, to worry about others when he's the one who was murdered.)
"I...see." Edgeworth leaned back on the cheap sofa, arms crossed. He could accept that everything was true and that Wright wasn't lying, but he couldn't make himself accept the fact that Wright was somehow dead.
"You seem to have taken your...death fairly well," Edgeworth said slowly.
"Well, it's been two years," Wright said. "It's not so bad once it's happened, and I'm pretty lucky. With Maya, I can still help out my friends even though I'm, y'know."
"And...what is it like?" Edgeworth asked, unable to restrain his morbid curiosity. "The afterlife, or whatever it is you spirits do?"
Wright smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I can't say. I mean, there's something there, I'm sure of it, but I can't remember it when I'm being channeled. It's kind of like when you wake up and your dreams sort of slip away until you can't remember any of the details, but you know it happened? It's peaceful, though. I'm sure of that." He shrugged and thought for a second. "Your dad's doing all right. I don't really remember, so I can't tell you any details, but I get a strong feeling he's proud of you."
For not the first time that day, Edgeworth found himself bereft of words.
(Father? How would--?)
But of course, if Wright was dead, logically they could communicate, somehow, wherever all spirits went.
"I...thank you, Wright," Edgeworth said.
Wright nodded, then looked down at the floor. "I should go," he said. "I don't want to exhaust Maya more than I have to, and she's been channeling me for almost two and a half hours now."
Edgeworth sat up. "You--You can't!"
"Sorry, Edgeworth," Wright said. "But it's not like I'll be gone forever. There'll be more trials, and you'll see me then. And..."--he nervously ran a hand through his hair--"you'll look out for Maya for me, won't you? I worry about her a lot, with everything she's gone through. She puts on a strong face for her little cousin and her friends, but I think she's really hurting inside. I want to do it myself, but..."
(Yes, he did say he couldn't directly interact with Maya, didn't he?)
"Of course," Edgeworth replied. "And...if you must leave, can you...take a message? To my father?" He felt ridiculous even as the words left his mouth. This sort of supernatural silliness was unbecoming, but he could suffer some indignity for this. "I wanted to...apologize. And say that I still miss him, and respect him, even though I--I took a different path."
Wright smiled. "Edgeworth, if that's what you want to say, believe me, your dad already knows."
And then he left, leaving Maya in his stead, and Edgeworth in the remnants of his shattered disbelief.