Chapter Text
Miles wasn’t exactly sure what the relationship was between Wright and Iris, but he was pretty sure he could figure it out if he allowed himself to think about it.
Just as he was pretty sure he could figure out why this hypothetical relationship was bothering him so much if he put his mind to it, but he refused to. Not delving into every possible thought was a technique he’d used often in his early days of prosecuting: Don’t think about that hole in the witness’s alibi that could make them a suspect. Don’t think about how the defendant might be innocent. Don’t think about how you might have killed your father. Don’t think about how you’re standing against Wright. And, most recently: Don’t think about Wright.
It was really quite embarrassing.
He couldn’t exactly pinpoint when his thoughts about Wright shifted from irritating rival to something like a friend again to whatever the hell this is. Maybe during that trial, when he’d been standing in the defendant’s lobby struggling to keep his composure after declaring his darkest fears to the world. Gumshoe had been looking at him with the expression one would normally find on a sad puppy, dejected, making feeble protests with no weight behind them. Maya Fey had looked downhearted but resigned to it. Miles deliberately refused to look over at Wright; didn’t say anything other than an apology for wasting his efforts.
But Wright had been looking through the court record, expression never wavering, declaring that he would prove Miles’ innocence. He refused to believe in the nightmare, not in the way Gumshoe or Miss Fey or even he did, not in the way of I refuse to believe it because I refuse to think about it too much. He refused in the way of I refuse to believe it because I don’t believe it, and will stop at nothing to prove that I’m right.
“I’ll prove your innocence,” he’d said. “Trust me.” And he’d given Miles a smile, then— not the sheepish, bluffing smile he’d seen so often, but one of total confidence, the one that crossed his face just before he backed the true killers into a corner— and Miles found himself lost for words.
If that was when things changed, there was far too much on his mind at that point for him to think about it.
Maybe it was at some point during the next case they had, then, with a body in his car and the ghosts of SL-9 rising up to drag him down. Wright worrying about him near-constantly to the point of irritation. Wright standing across from him as they broke Gant down and uncovered the secrets behind the case. Wright being there as Miles truly tasted, for the first time in years, the truth: it stung, and it stung badly, but there was something fundamentally cathartic to it, something freeing, assuming you survived the sting.
He didn’t think he would.
The circumstances that lead to him not fulfilling his note on a literal scale were complicated. He wasn’t really sure if he was aware of them himself. Make sure your will is updated; don’t leave anything to von Karma. Leave the country; don’t make Detective Gumshoe find the body. No, that way would be too painful. No, that way might not work. “I’ll be waiting for you in court.” What even is the best way to do this? Why are you even doing this? Is there another way? What would he do? What would he do if he lost everything? Would he end it, or would he keep going regardless? Why did he save you for this to happen? What would he think? What would they all think— him, Gumshoe, Franziska, his father — maybe he should see a therapist. Maybe just once.
It didn’t solve everything immediately, of course, but it was a start.
At the turn of the new year he returned to America. He didn’t let anyone know he was back at first. It took some time for him to track down his possessions, reclaim his old penthouse, let some important officials know he wasn’t truly dead. It was taxing work. He didn’t let Wright know he was alive, not yet, because he wasn’t sure how to explain all that happened, and he wanted to return by helping Wright in some way with a case, to try to reestablish their relationship on somewhat professional terms.
That attempt had, evidently, failed.
Any hope of a somewhat professional relationship with Wright, any hope of simple friendship, was dashed to the rocks when he woke up from a dream where Wright had been kissing him under the moonlight, on a bridge somewhere in Europe overlooking the sea.
It was after the Engarde case. After he and Wright somewhat cleared the air about his disappearance. After he spoke to Wright and to his sister about everything he learned regarding belief and truth and trust.
He left the country.
He was staying away until these feelings subsided. He was staying away until he got this under control. He wasn’t going to let this ruin one of the few positive relationships he had in his life. His relationship with Wright was founded on trust, on the mutual search for the truth, but he could hardly fill his role while hiding this deep, dark secret of his.
And then: a phone call in the middle of the night.
And then: eleven hours on a private jet, fearing the worst, praying that he wouldn’t be too late.
And then: somehow he became a defense attorney.
“Her name’s Iris,” Wright said, after he’d finished explaining the basics of the case: his voice hoarse, his face reddened by fever, an acolyte’s hood pulled over his sweaty head. “She’s the younger nun at the temple, and she’s the suspect in the murder. But she didn’t do it, Edgeworth. That’s why I need your help.”
Miles frowned down at the newspaper clipping Wright had passed to him. There was something about Iris that was tugging at some train of thought abandoned for years, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. “How do you know she didn’t do it? Do you have another suspect in mind? Before the trial begins, we could arrest someone else if we have evidence against them.”
Wright’s face twisted. “Well, no, I don’t, but—”
“Then I fail to see what I can do for you in this situation. If the evidence is pointing towards this Iris, then what makes you believe she’s innocent?”
“It couldn’t have been her,” Wright repeated, and he sounded feverish, desperate, and somehow years younger as he said it. “It wasn’t her. I don’t know who it was, but it couldn’t have been—”
“Settle down.” Miles had never seen him in such a state. It was rather unnerving. “You’re running a high fever. You’re not in your right mind. Someone will defend Iris, and if she is innocent, all we can do is hope the courts will prove that—”
“We both know the courts don’t always do that, Edgeworth. She needs someone on her side, someone who believes in her.”
“But you’re not going to be able to fill that role. You almost died, Wright, nobody is letting you out of this room until you are cleared to do so.”
“I know.”
“Then I don’t see what you’re asking me to do.”
Wright looked at him for a long time. Miles could see that familiar determination, even behind the layers of illness and that ridiculous hood over his head. He reached over to his suit jacket where it was resting beside his bed and pulled out some sort of green stone, which he passed over to Miles.
“This is a magatama,” he explained. “It’s charged with spiritual power. It will let you peer into their hearts… if you can break the psyche-locks, you’ll reveal their secrets.”
Great. Now Wright was speaking utter nonsense.
(On the other hand, if Wright did have something allowing him to see into people’s hearts, then it was a very good thing that Miles left the country.)
Miles turned the stone over in his hands. Aside from its peculiar shape— something similar to what he’d seen the Fey sisters wear around their necks— and its faint luminescent glow, he couldn’t see anything particularly special about it.
“And what exactly am I supposed to do with this?” he asked, looking up from it at last. Wright had been reaching over for something else from his jacket, and after a moment’s hesitation, grabbed Miles’ hand in both of his.
Wright was very warm. It was probably from the fever. Miles had the urge to snatch his hand away but for some reason found himself unable to move.
“I need you to take care of her.”
“Take care of whom?”
“Iris.”
“I don’t even know this girl,” Miles excused, unable to think clearly with Wright’s hands on his and his eyes boring into him. “From my understanding, you barely know her either. Why all this faith in her?”
Wright tensed.
“Remind me again exactly how you know her?” Miles asked.
“I don’t know,” Wright blurted out. “I don’t know if I know her or if I don’t. It’s— it’s really weird. I might know her, I might not at all, she might be— but she might not be—”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Please, Edgeworth,” Wright begged, “I have to see her again, I need to talk to her. I— please. You’re all I have.”
He opened his mouth to say no.
It didn’t happen. He didn’t move his hand away, either.
A nurse came in to tell him his visiting time was up, and he’d have to leave to let Wright get some rest. He barely heard it, with the way Wright was looking at him, not letting him back away until he got the answer he wanted.
He really just had to say no. Get up, leave, go back to Europe knowing Wright was alive and would be fine, and not think about Wright or Iris or why he was so desperate to see her or why he wore her hood on his head.
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” There was something wrong with him.
“Thank you.” Wright’s entire body relaxed. Miles could almost swear he saw some of the fever leave his face. “Thank you, Edgeworth. Really. I owe you one.”
Wright’s hands finally let go of him, and Miles shoved the magatama into his pocket. (Was there something else there? He couldn’t tell.) “Get some rest,” he said shortly, and left the room before he could do something else he would regret.
He probably should have gone back in and refused the moment he realized Wright had slipped him his attorney’s badge. Instead, he met with the defendant.
Iris was a pretty girl. Miles was vaguely aware of that, even though the attractiveness of women didn’t matter to him in any way beyond practical use. It was one of the old tricks from his early prosecuting days: if stuck between two witnesses to call to the stand, it was usually better to choose the attractive women, because if both the judge and the opposing defense attorney were men (which they often were), they were more likely to listen and give in. It wasn’t an infallible method — for example, Miles would be unaffected by such things — but he hoped that the method would still work if he were standing behind the defense’s bench.
And though Miles wasn’t affected by Iris in the traditional romantic-sexual sense, there was still something about her that was bothering him. He felt like he’d seen her before. But asking her about it gave him no clues: she was a nun, and she had been at the temple all her life. She couldn’t be a witness from a past case, because Miles knew he hadn’t worked with nuns before. Trying to ask how she knew Wright was a little more fruitful. He at least got the impression that the two had met somewhere before Wright came to the temple, although he still didn’t know how, or when, or what exactly happened.
“Mr. Edgeworth,” said Iris, in response to his prying. “What is Mr. Wright to you?”
That was the question, wasn’t it. “He is a very dear and indispensable friend,” he said, which wasn’t a lie, but also not the full truth.
Iris looked away. “It was five years ago,” she said. “That’s when I… deceived him.”
“You ‘deceived’ him?”
“I heard he was in a lot of pain after what happened. That’s why… that’s why I thought it would be best if he never saw me again. I wanted him to just forget about me, without learning the truth.”
The truth.
From this, as vague as it was, it was obvious that the two of them knew each other. There was more to their relationship than either of them were willing to admit. Miles knew he could figure out what it was if he let himself think about it. There was really only one logical conclusion to both of their strange behaviours.
He thought about Wright, feverish, in the hospital, begging for Miles to take on the case.
“Well, if you ask me, Wright is still suffering,” said Miles. “And until he learns the truth, I don’t think he will ever be able to truly recover.”
Miles knew the value of the truth. He knew how freeing it could be. Wright had shown him that much. And if the truth of the relationship between Wright and Iris was what he was denying it was…
“Iris, it’s not too late. You should go to him. … Tell him the truth.” Tell him, so that I can’t. Tell him, and maybe this can end.
Iris was still looking away. There were tears in her eyes.
“I’ll defend you, but only if you agree to that one condition.”
Iris turned to him at last, determined. “Alright, Mr. Edgeworth. I promise.”
“Then I will do everything in my power to get you an acquittal.” For Wright’s sake.
The case was a disaster. Gumshoe was baffled that Miles was taking on Iris’s case as the defense attorney, and Miles couldn’t even manage a reasonable explanation as to why. Larry teased Miles of having his heart turned to sherbet (or sorbet) but for all the wrong reasons, was clearly infatuated with Iris, and was perplexed when Miles didn’t agree. He also had some of those psycholocks, or whatever Wright had called them, appear when Miles asked him what he was doing on the night of the crime. Already he was getting a headache.
The head nun had a ridiculous name that caused him a lot of embarrassment and she forced an acolyte hood over his head. She also claimed to have seen Iris stabbing the victim, and Miles thought for a minute about what a great decisive witness she would be before remembering that he was standing on the other side of the courtroom tomorrow.
Maya was still trapped on the other side of the bridge, and Miles hoped that there was at least some insulation so she wouldn’t freeze to death before they could get over there, and also that the real killer (if it wasn’t Iris after all, who he only believed wasn’t because Wright did,) wasn’t over there alone with her. Pearl Fey was missing as well, having last been seen with the victim, and if Miles thought about that for too long he began to feel ill. There was also a letter blackmailing Iris threatening to express a secret of hers. All of this brought him back to the Detention Center to meet with Iris again to clear everything up.
The only way to get her to talk was to break those strange psycholocks that Wright was talking about. He wasn’t exactly sure how it worked and not entirely sure that he wasn’t in some incredibly bizarre dream, but as he held that strange stone in his hand he could see the locks floating around Iris, clear and solid, and he could almost swear he could reach out and touch them.
One of them snapped when he brought up the blackmail letter, a loud metallic clang that nearly had him reeling backwards. It took him a moment to register that Iris was saying something else, and that there was still a lock firmly in place.
“I thought that letter was just someone playing a prank on me,” she insisted.
“A ‘prank’?” he echoed, knowing full well that, if it were true, she wouldn’t have been so frightened, and he wouldn’t be sitting here trying to break these hallucinogenic locks.
“Well, yes. After all, even if I did have a secret… there’s no one to tell it to that would cause me any grief.”
“Hmm… I wonder about that.”
Iris misunderstood, or perhaps she was wilfully misinterpreting; not that Miles could exactly blame her. “Sister Bikini is like a mother to me. I would never hide anything from her!”
“No, you may not have anything to hide under normal circumstances. However! Last night was different.”
Her stunned reaction was enough to confirm his suspicions.
“Unfortunately, I don’t know the exact nature of your secret yet. However, whatever it is, there is one person you don’t want your secret told to.”
Iris turned her head away. Miles didn’t say anything, still gripping the magatama, not wanting to speak the name, not wanting to confirm what he’d been thinking all this time. It could be someone else, after all. He could try getting her to admit it first. “Well, Iris?” he tried.
Iris turned back to him and stared at him for a long time. It was very unsettling. “Mr. Edgeworth,” she said, suddenly very serious. “Is it just possible that maybe… you yourself have a deep, dark secret in your heart?”
The response was enough to make him forget himself, forget that he is on the offensive, forget that red lock still floating in between the two of them. “Why do you say that?”
“As they say,” she said, her stare piercing into his very soul, “it takes one to know one.”
What does that even mean? She couldn’t possibly know. He hadn’t even said Wright’s name yet. Any hint she could have picked up about whatever lingering feelings he held couldn’t have been revealed yet.
Or maybe dancing around the topic was what had clued her in. His willful ignorance of this relationship between Iris and Wright, pretending that there could be some other explanation, pretending he doesn’t know what’s right in front of him: just as he struggled and failed to repress his feelings for the better part of the year, tried to forget his smile, the sound of his laughter; wondered what it would feel like to have Wright hold him close, or how soft his hair would be, or if he kissed like he did in Miles’ dreams.
Ridiculous. He knew it was pointless. He knew it all along. It was just another one of these things he knew but refused to recognize. Wright would never return his feelings, never hold that range of emotions in his eyes as he did when he spoke of Iris, never care about Miles the way he cared about this girl on the other side of the locks.
“It’s true that there is a deep-seated darkness in my heart,” he said, stepping around the crux of the matter yet again. “However, the only way I can get rid of it is to fully uncover the truth.”
Back on the offensive. Iris frowned. “You mean… the truth about my secret?”
“Phoenix Wright.”
He heard Iris give a sharp intake of breath.
“You mean something to Wright, it seems… and I can tell he holds a special place in your heart as well.” As much as he hated to admit it. “That’s why you don’t want him, of all people, to know your deep, dark secret. Well? What do you have to say?”
Iris held that soul-piercing gaze for a moment longer. “I should have expected as much,” she said softly. “Especially from a friend of his.”
The last lock broke. Miles almost thought he could feel one break over his heart as well.
He never got the chance to find out the nature of Iris’s secret. She’d been strangely cryptic about it, even after her locks were broken, and any further questioning churned up no answers. The one who wrote that letter threatening to expose the secret was just Larry, who hadn’t known Iris’s true secret and instead thought that the blackmail was a love letter. In addition to this, his testimony was riddled with lies and those infuriating locks popped up nearly every time he spoke.
(It would have been nice if Larry had fallen into the river instead of Wright.)
But it didn’t matter if Miles didn’t know what Iris’s secret was, so long as she told Wright after the trial. He was going to win: he repeated it in his head like a mantra. Not winning for the sake of winning, like in his earlier prosecutor days, but winning for the sake of the truth. Winning so that Wright and Iris could see each other again. Winning so that Wright would be happy.
As he lifted that golden badge and pinned it to his lapel with trembling fingers, he felt a strange sense of surreality, as if he’d stepped into the life of a different Miles Edgeworth, one with a living father and his dreams intact. A Miles Edgeworth that could believe in others, that could smile with ease, that was perhaps closer with a different Phoenix Wright and would have no hesitation in expressing his feelings aloud. And for a moment he felt a surge of envy for this other Miles Edgeworth, before he shook his head and sighed to himself, because it was ridiculous to become jealous of a self that didn’t exist. The situation was what it was, and he would deal with it appropriately.
Besides, even in this supposed alternate universe, there would still be an Iris.
Before the trial began, as they stood in the defendant’s lobby, he gave Iris a brief description of what he’d discovered during the investigation since the last time he saw her. She became flustered over Larry’s true intentions, which irritated Miles on Wright’s behalf. He confirmed one last time that Iris wasn’t the one who killed Ms. Deauxnim, because if Wright had this stone for at least a year, it had failed him at least once before, and Miles wasn’t going to allow himself to make the same mistake.
“Mr. Edgeworth,” said Iris, after confirming her innocence. “You are a prosecutor… aren’t you? If your true identity is revealed…”
“Don’t worry. I’ve taken the necessary steps.” So long as this judge had the same long-term memory as the regular one and Franziska was too tempted by the prospect of revenge to turn him in, he might be able to get through this trial without losing his badge.
“You have…?” She looked reluctant, but there was also that look in her eyes, the same one she wore when she’d confronted him while he tried to break her locks.
“Iris. It is a prosecutor’s job to doubt people.” He couldn’t lie to himself and say he still didn’t doubt her, at least a little. There was a tremendous amount of evidence pointing against her, and there was still the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that he knew her from somewhere, and that she was dangerous.
But Wright had taken on trials with more evidence against his client than this before. Miles’ trial was one of them. Wright had believed in him when not even he believed in himself, and now Wright was trusting in him to do this. “But right now, I am a defense attorney. A defense attorney’s job is to believe in people, and to believe until the bitter end.” He couldn’t help the hint of a smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. “That’s what a friend of mine told me once.”
“Mr. Edgeworth…”
“You may pass judgment on me from the defendant’s chair. You are the one to decide… whether or not I am able to do the task I have been entrusted.”
She looked at him for a long time, and then nodded. “Very well, sir. I leave my defense in your capable hands.”
Franziska arrived a few minutes late. There had been barely enough time to travel between when he gave her the phone call and now, and Miles could tell she’d been pressed for time. But he also knew that, jet-lagged or not, she was not going to go down without a fight.
She wasn’t a prosecutor who was going to give him an easy win, but anyone else would almost immediately report his transgressions to the P.I.C. Franziska might not.
She blinked at him a couple of times once she entered the room, taking in the bench he was standing at and the badge pinned to his lapel, before her mouth curled into a smug smile. She continued her introduction as smooth as ever, and covered up for him once the judge began to question if he’d seen Miles before.
“There is no such weakling as this man among those of the Prosecutor’s Office,” she said, running her hands along the length of her whip and smirking the whole way.
She was never going to let him live this down.
The least he could do to repay her was insist that she be permitted to keep her whip during the trial, even if it would make things a little more painful for him in the short term.
“I had expected to face Phoenix Wright here today,” she said, once her whip was safely in hand. “But looking at you now… maybe this is what I have been waiting for all this time.” She pointed at him from across the room. “Miles Edgeworth! I will not allow this chance to crush you slip through my fingers!”
Miles shook his head. “I see you brought your flair for the histrionic.”
One benefit of the whip: it was very good at silencing judges who were asking questions that Miles would rather weren’t answered.
Being a defense attorney was far more difficult than Miles would have thought, and for a moment he was almost grateful that his path had been turned from it. Every time he tried to press for details or expose a contradiction, some combination of the witness, Franziska, and the judge mocked him. He had to press on nearly every miniscule thing to find the thread that would unravel the case. But even Franziska’s “perfect cases” have their holes, and the misery of cross-examination made exposing contradictions that much sweeter.
By the end of the day’s trial, every theory he had about the case was turned on its head. The murder weapon was something else entirely, Iris had been using the snowmobile for reasons that she refused to reveal to him, and if he ever saw Larry Butz again, it would be too soon. If this was what it was like to be Wright during every case, then Miles never wanted to live a day in his shoes again.
He didn’t prove Iris’s innocence by any means, but he did manage to drag out the trial long enough for it to go another day, and he’d leave that problem to Wright. He unpinned the attorney’s badge from his lapel and stuffed it in his pocket as he heard the telltale steps of Franziska approaching him in the defendant’s lobby after Iris had been taken away to the detention center for the night. At least she appeared to have recovered from her miniature meltdown in court earlier, though he still braced himself for the sting of a whip.
“Miles Edgeworth,” she said. “You are perhaps the greatest fool I have ever met.”
“Thank you.”
“I confess myself surprised,” she continued, ignoring him. “Have you really jeopardized your position and your dignity on Phoenix Wright’s will? Have you entirely submitted yourself to the beck and call of that man?”
“That’s not it,” Miles protested, although Franziska was drawing precariously close to the truth of the matter. “The circumstances are… complicated.”
“Explain, then.”
Miles looked over at her. Despite her aggressive stance and the disappointed expression on her face, he could tell she wasn’t all that angry with him, or at least not more than she usually was. She seemed more confused than anything else. He couldn’t blame her for that. He still wasn’t sure why he went through with this case in the first place.
(No, he knew. He just refused to acknowledge it.)
“I thought he was dying, when I came here,” he explained. “I wasn’t in my right mind.”
“So you decided to play defense attorney?”
“This case is important to Wright. The defendant, Iris…” he trailed off. “They have some sort of history.”
Franziska frowned. “What sort of history, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Neither of them will say, but it is clear that they have something going on between them. She claims to have deceived him many years ago, and… he wants to see her again. He can’t do that as easily if she’s convicted.”
He tried to imagine what would have happened if Iris got a guilty verdict today. If Wright would have ever cleared up whatever history was between them. Whether or not Wright would have forgiven him.
“It would have been far simpler for you to have refused,” Franziska said. “Stepped aside. Let it go to an actual defense attorney, who may have proven her innocence, may have not. Phoenix Wright would not blame you for protecting yourself. There is no need to risk it all for his… ex-lover.”
“I don’t know if that was their relationship,” he protested, even though he knew it was likely. “Regardless of what it was, Wright trusted me to see this through. He believes in Iris’s innocence, and I believe in him. ...It’s the least that I owe him, after everything. If seeing Iris again would bring him happiness, then I will do anything that I can to help.”
Franziska gave a sharp intake of breath, and her eyebrows raised. Miles had just enough time to wonder exactly what part of what he’d just said would cause that reaction when she whipped him.
“Are you out of your mind?” she hissed. “He is a defense attorney, Miles Edgeworth.” She raised her free hand to her forehead. “Papa would be rolling in his grave at the very thought of this.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
Franziska looked at him incredulously. Miles tensed, expecting another attack, but she lowered her arm. “I stand by what I said. You are utterly foolish.”
“I know.”
He refused to say anything more than that. Franziska stared at him in disbelief before composing herself, back to the perfect prodigy prosecutor. “I am returning to the crime scene,” she declared. “You may accompany me, but don’t expect any special treatment just because you are usually a prosecutor. So long as you stand on that side, you will reap the consequences.”
“I wouldn’t expect any less. But… thank you, Franziska, for what you’ve done today.”
Franziska scoffed. “As if I would miss a chance to crush both you and Phoenix Wright with one strike! I will win tomorrow’s trial, Miles Edgeworth, regardless of which one of you is standing across from me.”
“You can try,” said Miles. He smiled a little. “On the verge of death or not, you know Wright won’t make it easy for you.”
Wright showed up during the investigation and Miles passed the case off to him, despite his green complexion and the way he coughed between every other sentence. He made one last attempt at getting Wright to reveal Iris’s background, but achieved no results, so he made his way back to the precinct to look into some old cases.
He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew Iris from somewhere, and maybe he would have overlooked it, if Wright hadn’t been involved. Though Iris seemed the very picture of meek, unassuming innocence, he could still sense something dangerous about her: a particular familiar intensity that unsettled him. And if she weren’t innocent, he had to get her away from Wright as fast as possible.
He couldn’t quite connect how he knew Iris. She and Wright knew each other, undoubtedly, but he couldn’t see where this nagging feeling of his fit into the picture. He hadn’t spoken to Wright at all between that incident and their reunion in court, and if Iris had deceived Wright five years ago, then there would be no reason for him to know about it. Wright hadn’t mentioned it before.
It was bugging him all the way to the precinct and down into the evidence room. He decided he may as well look through his cases, since for some reason, he could connect Iris to a previous experience in court. He couldn’t figure out when, but it made sense to start with the beginning.
It didn’t take him as long as he thought it would. It was right there in the files for his first case in court. Dahlia Hawthorne.
He’d tried to forget about the case. He really had. The image of Fawles collapsing on the stand haunted him for months after the incident. Mr. von Karma had said it was lucky: Mia Fey was approaching a not-guilty verdict, and had Fawles lived, or testified against Dahlia, she would have gotten it. Miles had agreed, almost mechanically, trying his best to fight down the urge to be sick.
Most bothersome to him was the feeling that Ms. Fey was right about her theory, that Dahlia Hawthorne wasn’t as innocent as she led everyone to believe. But pursuing the lead further would mean admitting that he was wrong about Fawles’ guilt, and Miles couldn’t afford that, not with his prosecuting career so young, not with Mr. von Karma breathing down his neck, so he didn’t.
That case was six years ago. Iris’s alleged deception of Wright occurred five years ago.
He began to feel rather nauseous.
He put the file away and went to look up what happened to Dahlia Hawthorne. She may have just dropped off the radar, as many suspicious witnesses had, but there might be a lead somewhere. Something that would explain why a woman who looked exactly like her was under suspicion of murder, somehow connected with Wright.
Dahlia Hawthorne had hidden her identity once before. Who was to say she couldn’t do it again?
When he pulled up the data for Dahlia Hawthorne, however, he saw it was impossible. She was dead. She had died just a month ago, executed. Whoever Iris was, she wasn’t Dahlia Hawthorne; there was no way to bring back the dead.
(He thought back to a few moments where Maya Fey had looked years older. A few moments where he could swear Mia Fey was standing beside Wright at the defense's bench.)
(No. No, it was impossible.)
He was about to close the file, forced to conclude that his hunch meant nothing after all, when he paused. Why was Dahlia Hawthorne executed anyways? She hadn’t been arrested after that trial. What else had she done?
According to the file, she had been executed for the murder of a man named Doug Swallow. The name didn’t ring any bells. Looking into that trial linked him to another case: one labelled State v. Wright.
He froze with the mouse hovering over the link. Wright was a common enough last name. It didn’t have to be him.
It was him.
He read over the case, horrified. Wright had been framed for the murder of Doug Swallow by his girlfriend, Dahlia Hawthorne. The murder had been spur-of-the-moment: the decisive evidence was Wright’s cough medicine, poisoned.
Between that, the necklace he’d consumed during the trial, and the way he fell off of a burning bridge into a freezing river, there was no way that man should still be alive.
But most importantly, he was no longer any closer to understanding how Iris tied into all of this, or why Wright was so attached to her in the first place. Iris wasn’t Dahlia, and even if she was, why would Wright want to defend her?
It didn’t make any sense.
Before he could read the case file in full, he received a call asking him to bring Iris up to the mountain: something about locks only she could break, and something else about Maya Fey being a suspect of murder, again. He wondered how many times they’d try her before they just gave up.
He picked up Iris from the detention center— apparently this Prosecutor Godot had claimed a state of emergency to mobilize the police, what nonsense, although he was grateful that it would at least help Maya get rescued sooner — and debriefed her on the situation as they began the long drive to Hazakura Temple.
They sat in a solemn silence for most of the drive after that. Miles pondered over whether or not he should ask Iris about her past. She had been evasive before, true, and declined to answer, but perhaps with evidence it would be easier to unlock the secrets. He’d given the magatama back to Wright, so he wouldn’t be able to tell if she were lying or not, but perhaps he could at least get something out of her.
“Iris,” he began, as they started up the mountain path near the end of the drive. “I have a few questions for you, and I would appreciate your cooperation in answering them.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Miles steeled himself, not quite sure how to begin. “I visited the precinct and uncovered some information on a case five years ago. It involved the murder of a man named Doug Swallow, in which Phoenix Wright was under suspicion, and a woman named Dahlia Hawthorne was the culprit.”
He thought he saw Iris tense out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t be certain, and couldn’t afford to take his eyes off the road to confirm it.
“I have to know. What is your relation to this case?”
She was silent for a very long time. Eventually she said, “I knew nothing about that murder.”
“Are you telling the truth?”
“I am,” she insisted. “I know you don’t believe me, if you know about her… but… I would never willingly hurt Mr. Wright. I would never deliberately put his life in harm’s way.”
It was suspicious. But there was something about the intensity of her voice as she insisted she would never jeopardize Wright’s safety that made him inclined to believe her. “I see.”
Neither of them spoke for a minute. “I know you care for him,” said Iris, softly. “I promise you I mean him no harm, and I never have.”
“Then what, exactly, was the situation where you deceived him?” he challenged, perhaps a bit harsher than he intended to be, after that first comment of hers. “Five years ago, correct? Awfully coincidental.”
“I can’t tell you that,” said Iris. “I have to be the one to tell him. He has to be the one who knows, first… and I have to see with my own eyes whether he forgives me or not.” She let out half of a laugh, or perhaps it was a sob. “Silly, isn’t it? I know he won’t, and yet I still hope he might.”
“I’m sure he will.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Wright has a remarkable capacity for forgiveness,” said Miles, half-lost in memories of last year, and the year before that. “Whatever it is you’ve done, he cares a great deal for you right now. Enough to make me take on the case. … He will forgive you.”
Iris said nothing.
They were approaching the temple now, and couldn’t go much further without hitting deep snow, which Miles’ sports car couldn’t afford to go through. He searched for a suitable place to park. “If you were not involved in the attempt on his life, or the framing of him for murder, and you didn’t kill Ms. Elise Deauxnim… then you will make him very happy.”
“No,” said Iris. “No, I won’t.”
“Why are you so insistent on that?” Miles asked, pulling up next to a snowbank.
“You don’t know what I’ve done. I…” she drew in a shuddering gasp. “I hurt him so badly. He’s never going to forgive me.”
“He sat in that hospital bed, having nearly died, and one of the first things on his mind was to ask me to defend you. He wouldn’t let me go until I agreed.” Both literally and figuratively. “Whatever you did, I think he’s forgiven you already. Even if he hasn’t, knowing the truth about what happened is the only way to help him heal.”
“It might just hurt him even more.”
“Maybe. But the only way he can recover is to face the truth. To see it, to be hurt by it, and eventually, to accept it.” He turned off the ignition and turned in his seat to face Iris. “It is a lesson that he taught me, and it has saved my life. If knowing the truth will help him, then I will do everything in my power to have him learn it. And that involves you… telling him your secret.”
Iris looked at him for a long time. “Then why are you still hiding yours?”
“Hm?”
“Your secret.” That intense stare was back on her face again. Miles was beginning to dislike it. “I know what it is. You know that I do. We’re the same, after all, in how we feel about him. If you think that me telling him my secret will help him, why hide yours?”
“It’s different,” Miles excused, reaching for the door handle.
“Is it?”
“It is. I have wronged him, and horribly so. More than once.”
“He has a remarkable capacity for forgiveness,” Iris echoed.
“I know that. I know that well.” His voice wavered for a moment, but he cleared his throat and continued on. “I have done many things wrong, but somehow, Wright has overlooked them, and he has saved me. And I repay him by developing these… these…” he waved a hand around vaguely in the air, “feelings. Wright has been nothing but kind to me, knowing full well I didn’t and never would deserve it, and I don’t know if I can ever repay him. All I want is for him to find his own happiness; to find his own truth. And you, Iris, are the key to that.”
Miles opened the car door, letting in the cold air, hoping it would end the conversation. Iris said nothing, and they walked in silence for a while through the snow.
“But how you feel is the truth, isn’t it?” Iris argued, after some time. “Why refuse to let him know?”
“This isn’t the same,” Miles insisted, because it wasn’t, because Wright never had and never would look at him the way he looked at Iris. “This is a fleeting thing, born of gratitude and misplaced attraction. It will pass.” He had to hope it would. “Knowing this truth wouldn’t help him in any way. Maybe it would be a weight from my chest, but it might just make things worse. After all he did to repair our relationship, I will not have it shattered with this.”
Iris opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by the sound of voices being carried on the wind. Miles was surprised to see Franziska and Wright standing by the gate, talking to each other in low voices, both with concerned expressions on their faces. Both he and Iris came to the conclusion that they should stop their conversation at the exact same time.
Wright’s whole face seemed to brighten when he saw Iris, although he was insistent on accompanying them across the bridge, which he could not do. Even outside of the situation with Maya now being under suspicion for murder, they didn’t know what kind of condition Maya was in. It had been two days since she was last seen, trapped on an island in winter, and… well. Miles was certain that Wright shouldn’t be there if their investigation went badly.
Luckily it seemed Franziska had the situation well in hand. Miles was sure she’d prevent Wright from doing anything foolish.
He and Iris continued their walk in silence until they were out of earshot. “I think you’re making a mistake,” Iris said, looking down at the ground as she watched her footing in the snow.
“Regardless,” said Miles, “we can discuss it further after this case is over. After you tell him your secret.” It was likely that after that he wouldn’t stand any sort of chance at all, and Iris would be quite opposed to him saying anything.
“Very well.”
The makeshift bridge was sturdier than Miles was expecting for something Gumshoe had a hand in building, though the swaying under his feet was reminding him unpleasantly of other things and it took all his will to keep himself grounded in the moment to cross the bridge. Perhaps Iris sensed this, because she didn’t say anything either, although she crossed the bridge with ease.
Miles took a second to regain his composure after they finished crossing the bridge. Iris kept her eyes averted politely. “I’m terrified to tell him,” she confessed. “I really am. But you’re right… he should know.”
“I’m glad you think that.”
“But, Mr. Edgeworth, I feel like I should warn you, before we enter the temple…” she turned to him with that familiar intensity in her eyes again. “I have hope that things haven’t gone wrong. But if they have, then whether or not he knows my secret won’t make a difference.”
“What does that mean?”
“He will hate me, and it has to be that way.” She clenched her fist in the sleeves of her robes. “Because—”
The rest of what she said was drowned out by a faint rumbling, growing in intensity. Iris’s head turned towards the cavern and she shouted something, but Miles couldn’t hear it anymore, his mind filled with sounds of arguing and a gunshot and that scream—
He woke up in a snowbank.
It took him a second to register why he was in a snowbank, but once he did, he sprang to his feet and looked around for Iris. She wasn’t anywhere.
How idiotic of him. How naive, how foolish, to have trusted her just because Wright did, just because she knew his secret. She was still a defendant, she was still under suspicion, and of course she saw her chance and ran. How ridiculous of him to assume that he was strong enough to handle this case alone.
He brushed the snow off his jacket and headed towards the bridge, intending to alert the first person he knew to get a manhunt underway— already he was calculating the most logical routes she could have taken— but he ran into Wright and Franziska first, who had sprinted across the bridge, defying orders because they must have known Miles couldn’t handle this case.
He’s barely coherent, still reeling from the flashback the earthquake had caused, but Wright was convinced that Iris was in the inner temple and he relented. Wright was correct, as usual: Iris was standing in front of the gate, facing five red trick-locks that looked oddly like the psycholocks, and she claimed that she couldn’t remove them.
Miles wanted Franziska and Wright to leave so he could talk to Iris again, get her to explain why she couldn’t remove these locks and why she ran and what she was about to say before the earthquake hit, but instead he was the one who was forced to leave the cavern.
He supposed it made sense. There was no way someone as incompetent as him could be left alone with the defendant again.
He lurked in a back corner of the garden above the temple, glaring at the police officers, glaring at the bloody writing on the lantern, praying that no aftershocks would hit and trap both his sister and Wright in the cavern below, all the while berating himself for his weakness.
“How could I have done that?” he muttered to himself for what must have been the fiftieth time.
“Edgeworth?”
Miles spun around. Wright was standing there, near the entrance to the garden, where he’d probably been for some time. Half of his face was covered by the scarf he was wearing, but from what Miles could see, he had that look on his face again. The expression he wore after seeing Miles on the other side of the glass in the detention center. The expression he wore after Miles spoke about DL-6 for the first time. Pity.
Miles hated that look.
“Hey!” Wright called out to him, as Miles made for the gate. “Don’t you dare run away!”
Miles sighed. “What do you want, Wright?”
“What do I want?”
“If you came here to laugh at me, then get on with it.” His voice was rough and raw, and he hated that too. “Go on! Laugh away!”
Wright didn’t laugh. Miles knew he wouldn’t. Wright didn’t laugh at things like this. He never laughed, only pitied, was only ever nice.
Wright made an odd twitching motion with his arms — is he going to hit me? Miles wondered— before settling them back down at his sides. “You went back to the Criminal Affairs Department, right? You said you wanted to look into something concerning Iris.”
He accepted the topic change, although he was certain they would be treading back into dark territory before long. “Yes… there was something about her from the moment we met. I felt like I’d seen her somewhere before. It turns out that I’d seen her face six years ago, during my first appearance in court.” The distinction from his “first case” was crucial: it was not the first time that a defendant he was to prosecute died before a verdict could be reached, but it was the first under his watch. “As far as cases go, it was my worst nightmare.”
“So? Who is she?”
It might have been his fever, might have been Miles’ unbalanced mental state, but Wright looked so desperate that Miles nearly gave in. “... I’m sorry, Wright, I can’t give that information away.”
“What? Why not? It might be the crucial piece of the puzzle that solves this case!”
If it were any other defense attorney, a little piece of information like that would have no effect, but Wright did have a habit of turning cases around on less. Regardless… “The woman I knew has nothing to do with Iris or Hazakura Temple. She is completely unrelated to this case. I can say that with complete confidence.”
Wright hesitated, shoving his gloved hands even deeper into his pockets. “Hey, Edgeworth, did you know that Iris had a twin sister?”
“You can’t be serious.” This was going nowhere good fast.
“Sister Bikini told me. The problem is, she didn’t know the name of this twin sister.”
If he wanted Miles to say it first, he wasn’t going to relent so easily. “There was nothing about Iris having a sister in the files I checked.”
“Well, Iris was taken in by the temple when she was very young,” he explained. “Apparently her sister was raised by their father. … A jeweler, I think.”
“A jeweler?” he repeated, beginning to feel even more nauseous than before. “Wright, I think I might know who this twin sister of hers is.”
“Dahlia Hawthorne, right?” He said the name with a level of delicacy that it didn’t deserve.
“... Yes.”
“Please, tell me what you know about her, Edgeworth. Please.”
Miles wasn’t sure how he was supposed to refuse a request like that from him.
He gave a brief summary of the case: as it turned out, Wright already knew most of it, having read up on the case file while he was incapacitated, so he wasn’t sure why Wright had asked him. As he spoke, however, Wright’s face grew more and more grim. It wasn’t a good look for him.
“So after Terry Fawles died, what happened to Dahlia?” He asked it in the same tone one would ask about the weather. “Did you check that out?”
With the situation with Iris, Miles didn’t have a lot of time to think about that case, or think about how close the man standing in front of him was to dying because Miles let Dahlia Hawthorne go free. He didn’t get the chance to think about how he’d managed to cause Wright pain even when he wasn’t involved in his life.
At least that particular mistake of his was unrelated to the current situation. “There’s no need. Like I said, Dahlia Hawthorne isn’t connected with this case.”
“Why are you so sure about that?”
“It’s simple.” He paused, just for a moment, to wonder how Wright was going to react. “Dahlia Hawthorne is dead.”
Silence, for a beat. “What?”
“Well, her metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians, so to speak.”
“What do you mean she’s dead, Edgeworth?”
Miles might have expected relief from Wright, perhaps, that his would-be murderer received her due punishment, but he knew better. He knew that Wright didn’t let go of people once he’d made up his mind to save them. He knew that all too well.
He also knew how complicated it could be to have someone you cared about, or someone who you thought cared about you, turn out to be a ruthless murderer dedicated from day one to destroying you in every way possible.
He couldn’t blame Wright for the mixture of grief and anger and confusion that passed over his face.
“I only just discovered this, Wright,” he began, knowing that sooner or later they’d have to breach the topic, “but I never knew about the murder case you were involved in during your college years.”
That seemed to snap Wright out of his reverie.
“She was found guilty, thanks to the persistence of Mia Fey.” Yet another reason why he should have respected her more when she was alive. “Her sentence was finally carried out. She was executed last month.”
“Executed,” Wright repeated, his voice hollow.
“I’m sure that’s a bit of a shock for you, Wright, and in more ways than one. But do you understand now? She can’t possibly be connected with this case. She’s dead, and once someone is dead, there is no way to revive them.”
Wright’s face twisted into a more familiar expression: the kind that appeared when he was debating whether or not to point out a contradiction. “It seems you’re not aware of one more connection yet, Edgeworth. It’s about Iris and Dahlia’s mother… Morgan Fey. A spirit medium from a branch family of the Kurain Channeling Technique.”
“The Kurain Channeling Technique?” he repeated, wondering if every old wound from DL-6 was going to be reopened today. “Like that fraudulent spirit medium?”
Wright’s eyebrows rose. “Fraudulent?”
“Seventeen years ago… I’m sure you remember the case, don’t you?” There was no way Wright could have forgotten, but his voice still rose. “The police were stumped for leads, they turned to that so-called spirit medium, and thanks to her efforts, an innocent man was accused of murder! She and her powers! They were all fraudulent!”
“Edgeworth.”
“If you need a refresher, stop by the Police Records Room, it’s all there under DL-6!”
“Edgeworth!” Wright cut him off. “You’ll understand someday. And then, you’ll see that the Kurain Channeling Technique is real.”
Miles scoffed and turned away. Although he did respect Mia Fey, for proving herself to be a capable defense attorney, and Maya Fey, for all she did for him during that one trial, the respect did not extend to their so-called profession.
He’d hoped that the slight against his friends would anger Wright enough to leave him alone, but he didn’t. “About earlier,” Wright began, hesitantly. “That earthquake. I’d thought that, after what happened two years ago…”
He’d forgotten Wright’s persistence. Of course he wasn’t going to let the topic go. Miles relented. “My nightmares have stopped, thankfully. But still, if the ground gives even the slightest tremor, I find myself short of breath.” He kept his eyes fixated on the snow, pretending Wright wasn’t there. It was difficult to stop talking once he started, just like two years ago, as he spilled everything about DL-6 to Wright. At least this information wasn’t anything new for him. “Two years ago, I thought it would all be over, but… I never imagined I could be so wrong about myself and my life. I’m sorry, Wright. There’s nothing else I can say. Not after you chose to become a lawyer for my sake… and not after you saved me.”
Wright moved closer, stepping into his peripheral vision. “Edgeworth—”
“Anyways,” he practically shouted, deciding that that was more than enough feelings from either of them for the day, or perhaps the rest of his life, “you should get back to your investigation. I don’t know anything else about Dahlia Hawthorne or this case. I won’t be able to help you.”
Wright looked like he was about to protest. Miles was certain he would have to walk away if Wright tried to bring anymore feelings into this conversation. Wright was in the middle of an investigation: Miles had interrupted it enough. “Okay,” he relented. “But really, Edgeworth… thank you for everything you’ve done so far.”
He wasn’t sure what there was to be thanked for: he hadn’t done much of anything except derail Wright’s entire case and also nearly lose the defendant. It took him a few seconds to come up with a response. “Take care, Wright.”
“Yeah. You take care of yourself too, okay?” The corner of Wright’s mouth twitched upwards in a smile. “I’ll see you later.”
Miles’ eyes lingered a little longer on him than they should have as he walked away.
Miles wasn’t in much of a state to do more investigating, and worried that he’d be recognized as the day’s attorney and a prosecutor if he kept hanging around the crime scene, so he went home soon after that. He didn’t intend to involve himself with the case any further — in case the judge began to wonder why the attorney had changed and why yesterday’s defense attorney was sitting in the gallery — until he got the call from Franziska.
It took him a while to decipher what she was saying, from all the whip cracks and shouting through the receiver. Eventually he managed to piece together that she’d been removed from the case: apparently this Prosecutor Godot had filed for it personally, and since Franziska was a foreign prosecutor and shouldn’t have been there, the case was reassigned to him. It took a very long time for Miles to calm her down, and then she said something about the victory being stolen from her, as the defendant was confessing to the crime and tomorrow’s trial would end without much of a fuss.
“I beg your pardon?” Miles spluttered, not sure at what point he’d missed that Iris was intending to confess to the murder. She’d been vague on a lot of things, but she had been insistent that she was not the killer.
“You heard me. The defendant is planning to confess to her crimes. It seems all your struggling yesterday was in vain, little brother.” She cracked her whip again. “Though I am angry that the victory will not be mine… it seems that I shall have to wait for the next case to thoroughly crush Phoenix Wright. It wouldn’t be as satisfying if I didn’t have to work for it.”
“Of course.”
“Though I doubt Prosecutor Godot’s ability, if he intends in any way to live up to his title as a prosecutor, the case should be an easy win for him. Phoenix Wright won’t be able to see it coming.”
“I see. Then why are you telling me, Franziska? You must know that I’m going to pass on this information to Wright. We are, after all, partners on this case.”
The other end of the receiver was silent for a long time. “I do not like this Prosecutor Godot.” There was a bridling rage underneath her voice that Miles wouldn’t have picked up on if he didn’t know Franziska so well. “To take away my case, and attempt at being patronizing while he does so, while it was his fault he didn’t show up on the first day? He is the very worst type of prosecutor! Men like him need to learn their lesson, and I am not in a position to teach it to him, unfortunately, without being charged for assault.”
So she was on Wright’s side now, too. Miles smirked. “I see.”
“Quit smirking, Miles Edgeworth!” Another crack of the whip. Miles winced instinctively and wondered how she could tell that through the phone. “Should the defendant be guilty, it doesn’t matter who puts her away, so long as they accomplish it in a manner befitting of a prosecutor. But... so long as it is not my perfect case he is ruining, Phoenix Wright may do whatever he likes. So pass on this information to your ‘partner’, if you must. I will be removing the trick-locks to rescue Maya Fey and will not be accessible for more information.”
The “partner” comment made his face heat up, though he figured that he deserved it, since he was the one who brought it up in the first place. “Very well. Thank you, Franziska.”
“I didn’t do it for you or for him, you fool,” she clarified, as if he thought otherwise. “I did it so that when my time comes, it will be I who delivers that final crushing blow to Phoenix Wright!”
“I know.”
“I won’t let a prosecutor like that be one to defeat him!”
“I know, Franziska.”
“Good! Then I must return to my work. Take care, Miles Edgeworth. I trust we will speak again soon.”
He could have just left Wright a phone call, but he suspected that Wright wouldn’t want to be interrupted, so he ended up attending the trial anyways.
Only Wright and the little girl who must be Pearl Fey were in the defendant’s lobby, muttering about Iris, so Miles gave them a quick rundown of Franziska’s message. As he delivered it, he watched Wright, noticing how different he was from yesterday. His eyes still had bags under them and his face was still a little red, but the very way he carried himself had changed, and his eyes had regained that determined courtroom gleam: the look he always had near the end of the case, when they’d stepped past the point of no return, and there was nothing left to do but see the truth through to the very end.
“It’s strange,” said Wright, when Miles brings this up. “On the way here, I decided that today would be the end of all this. Almost immediately after I made that decision, I felt myself getting stronger.”
If anyone could shrug off a near-deadly cold through sheer power of will, it was Wright. “Interesting. Maybe you’ve passed on your cold to someone else, literally. And with that…” His earlier conversation with Franziska replayed itself in his mind. “I leave the rest in your capable hands… partner.”
It was a good thing that court was starting soon, so he didn’t have time to regret what he’d just said.
Iris’s confession was not to being the murderer, but an accomplice to Maya Fey.
It was an interesting start to the trial, to put it mildly.
As Wright worked to break down Iris’s testimony, Miles watched from the gallery and wondered how to comfort the distraught child who had decided to sit with him. His eyes kept being drawn back to Iris. There was something off about her this time: the intensity she sometimes demonstrated was… different. This being a murder trial, he would expect Iris to be serious, but even her mannerisms had changed from the last time he saw her. She would have brief moments where even he, sitting in the gallery, could feel the contempt radiating off of her.
What could have happened to her, between the time Miles last was speaking to her before the earthquake to now?
He trusted Wright to figure it out.
Until he started claiming that Iris was the channelled Dahlia Hawthorne.
Miles couldn’t help it: he scoffed. This caused Pearl to glare at him with a ferocity that nearly had him running from his seat, so he tried to disguise it with a few short coughs.
What was ridiculous was that the prosecution’s argument was not that channelling spirits was impossible, but that there was no opportunity for the switch between Iris and Dahlia to occur.
Wright brought up the one opportunity: the one, sole opportunity that Miles identified the moment the topic came up, and named Miles as the one that allowed the defendant to go unsupervised for a few minutes.
A few people in the gallery that recognized him turned to look at him, while Miles started considering just getting up and walking out, since this trial was turning into a disaster.
What kept him in his seat was that Iris started claiming that she was Dahlia Hawthorne after all. Miles didn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it, but as Iris continued talking, even he had to admit that he could see it.
Despite his disagreements with Iris, he didn’t think she was the type to suddenly pin the blame on Maya or behave in this manner. It was that stubborn core of defense-attorney-like belief that not even Mr. von Karma could manage to weed out of him.
Still, he couldn’t fully believe in the validity of the Kurain Channelling Technique until the phone call came in claiming that Iris, the real one, had been rescued from the Sacred Cavern.
Miles had stopped paying attention for a few moments while he tried to process that spirit channelling was real after all and he’d spent most of his life loathing and discrediting a legitimate practice. When he finally returned his attention to the trial, Pearl had disappeared and was now channelling Mia Fey — how had he not noticed that before? — and the ghost of Mia Fey declared that Dahlia Hawthorne would never win against her just as Dahlia vacated Maya’s body and she passed out.
It still didn’t make any sense to him at all.
Franziska ended up occupying the seat vacated by Pearl as the trial continued to determine who really killed Misty Fey. Wright ended up pinning Prosecutor Godot for the crime, and when Miles looked over at Franziska, he noticed that she was concealing a grin behind a gloved hand. He sighed and shook his head fondly.
After what seemed like an eternity of cross-examination and debate, the case came to a close, with Godot’s mask dripping blood and Iris coming up to the witness stand to receive her verdict.
“There is one thing,” Iris said, once the judge asked her if she had anything left to say. “I’d like to say something to Mr. Wright.”
Miles leaned forward in his seat. Was she really going to do it now? In the middle of the court, in front of everyone?
Iris’s eyes flickered to the gallery and met his for one moment before they settled down on Wright and didn’t move. “I want to apologize to you.”
Wright seemed at least as surprised as Miles was. “Apologize? To me? For what?”
“For the case five years ago, of course.”
“I just remembered,” the judge realized. “Weren’t you poisoned by your own lover?”
Wright grimaced. “Not exactly, but yeah, something like that. Even now, five years later, I can hardly believe it. She was going to do it… she was going to kill me.”
Iris looked away. “It’s not all that surprising. The two of you hardly knew each other.”
“Huh?”
“You and my sister… you only met twice.”
Miles could guess where this was going, even as Wright stammered his disbelief, and something in the region of his stomach flipped.
“For those eight months,” Iris continued, “the woman you thought was Dahlia Hawthorne… wasn’t actually my sister.” She met eyes with Wright again and blushed deeply. “I hope one day you can forgive me… Feenie.”
Miles couldn’t see Wright’s face from the angle they were sitting, but he could tell that Wright was frozen in shock. The whole courtroom was dead silent — unusually so, as normally everyone would be getting up to leave just before the verdict was read — as Iris explained the circumstances in which she took on the role of her sister to stop her from killing anyone else, and when everything changed for her. “I think she must have noticed my feelings for you. If I had found out she was planning to kill you, I would have done whatever was necessary to stop her.” Her face hardened into that familiar intensity. In some ways it made her look similar to her sister, but there was some indescribable quality about it that made it different. “Even if it meant her life… or mine.”
“I-Iris,” Wright stammered.
“After spending half a year by your side… my feelings towards you…” Iris tensed as if preparing for a blow. “They changed.”
All eyes in the courtroom were on Wright now, waiting for his response. He turned his head to the side slightly, and Miles could catch part of his expression. He was smiling. “I have something to say to you too.”
“Yes?”
“You really are the person I always thought you were.” His head turned back to Iris again. Miles couldn’t see his face, but could imagine the soft expression that would grace his features. “Even after Dahlia Hawthorne was found guilty, I still believed in you.”
Iris began to tear up. “Thank you.”
The trial ended after that, Iris receiving a not-guilty verdict on the murder of Elise Deauxnim, although she would still be tried as an accomplice. Miles wasn’t sure that even Wright could manage to get her out of that charge. For Wright’s sake he hoped that her incarceration would be short, but there was an ugly, selfish part of him that longed otherwise.
“Miles Edgeworth,” said Franziska, placing one hand on his shoulder as she stood up. “Shall we go?”
“In a moment. I wish to congratulate Wright and Iris on the trial.”
Franziska raised one eyebrow at him, but it seemed she still didn’t want to breach that particular topic they’d been avoiding since Miles explained why he took on Iris’s case, so she instead accompanied him to the defendant’s lobby.
Iris wasn’t there; she’d probably already been lead off to await her next trial. There was only Wright and Maya, the latter of which was smiling and trying to cheer Wright up.
Before Miles could announce their arrival, Franziska did it for him by whipping Wright.
It seemed some things never changed.
“Franziska!” Wright shouted, rubbing at his shoulder.
“Still a softy as always, Phoenix Wright.”
“Excellent work, Wright,” Miles congratulated him, though it took more effort than usual to get the words out.
“When did you get back, Mr. Edgeworth?” Maya asked, looking alarmed.
“Edgeworth and Franziska have actually been helping me,” Wright explained. Miles noticed that at some point he’d switched over to calling Franziska by her first name, which was surprising. It was even more surprising that Franziska hadn’t attacked him for it. “If these two hadn’t been here on the first day of the trial, the defense wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.”
Maya blinked as she looked back and forth between the two of them. “Wow… but where were you, Nick?”
“I heard he fell into a river and caught a nasty cold which forced him to sleep all day,” said Franziska, smirking.
“Yes, he laid in bed shivering from his fever with Iris’s hood pulled over his head.” Miles somehow managed to keep his voice neutral through the last part of that statement, despite the inexplicable burning sensation in his throat.
Maya giggled. “Oh, ouch. Talk about embarrassing, Nick.”
Eventually everyone gathered in the defendant’s lobby, except for Pearl, who had disappeared. Wright and Maya went to look for her while the rest of them went to the worst French restaurant Miles had ever been to in his life. After a while, Wright called to let them know the three of them wouldn’t be coming, as they had a very long day and both Pearl and Maya were exhausted, which was just as well. They’d been in the restaurant for all of twenty minutes before Franziska started whipping the chef for that horrible mangling of the French language and they’d all been kicked out.
“If she’s confessing to the role in her sister’s crimes as well,” Franziska said, as Miles drove the two of them back to the hotel they were staying at, “I don’t expect Iris will be able to avoid jail time. I’d give her fifteen years, at least.”
“Wright might be able to decrease it to ten,” Miles suggested. “And I don’t see why you’re telling me this.”
Franziska took out her whip and twisted it in her hands. Miles hoped she had the sense to not whip him while he was driving. “I’m trying to be supportive,” she said through gritted teeth. “Though undoubtedly he is the most foolish defense attorney in existence… I want you to be happy, little brother. If Iris is out of the picture for even ten years—”
“Ten, fifteen,” Miles interrupted, his voice harsher than usual, “however long… Wright will wait. Besides, it’s not as if anything ever would have happened anyways. Please, Franziska, I do not wish to discuss this.”
“Very well. Then we won’t.” She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. It was probably the first time she’d been able to since arriving in America. “Fool.”
Miles had planned to return to his studies right away, but when he called in, his superiors advised he come back at the start of the next week and take the rest of the week off, since he’d told them he was leaving because of an emergency. With nothing to do for the rest of the week, he decided to attend Iris’s trial, since he had been her attorney and thought it would only be courteous.
“Wright,” he greeted, as he stepped into the defendant’s lobby. “Iris.”
The two of them had been sitting on one of the couches, speaking to each other with their heads bent close together. Wright stood up as he approached. “Hey, Edgeworth! I didn’t think you’d be coming. Even Maya and Pearls are sitting this one out.”
“I thought I should stop by,” he explained. “As a courtesy.”
“It’s not going to be as exciting as the other day, I’m afraid,” said Wright.
“I’ll be pleading guilty,” Iris spoke up, standing as well. “To my role in the murder of Misty Fey… and in the murders of Doug Swallow and Valerie Hawthorne. In some way, I was connected to everything that my sister did.”
Wright looked upset. Miles wasn’t sure how to deal with it. He decided it would probably be best to leave and give them their moment. “Good luck, then, to both of you.”
He turned to leave when Iris spoke. “Ah, Mr. Edgeworth? May I speak with you for a moment?”
Miles turned back around, looking first at Iris, and then at Wright, who seemed confused, and hoped that she wasn’t going to bring up anything he’d rather keep private. “... Very well.”
Both of them looked over at Wright.
“Oh,” he said, looking like he was just snapped out of deep thought. “Uh. I’ll just… go wait… over there.” He waved vaguely at the other side of the room and wandered away.
Iris sat back down on the couch. Miles, feeling rather awkward towering over her, sat next to her.
“I wanted to thank you,” said Iris, folding her hands in her lap. “For defending me, and… for encouraging me to tell my secret.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t sure what about this Wright couldn’t listen in on. “Well, it was the right thing to do.”
“But you had every reason not to do it,” she insisted, barely above a whisper. “I’m grateful, truly. Even though I know I’m going to prison… I’ve never felt happier.”
Miles wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “I’m glad to hear that. Though I am sorry that you’ll face punishment.”
“It’s what I deserve,” said Iris. “We all know that. Even Phoenix. It wouldn’t be fair for me to escape punishment just because of some external factors. I was aware of the risks and the illegality, and I faced it all willingly.”
“I see.”
Iris looked at him for a moment, and then over to Wright, who was hovering awkwardly on the other side of the room and inspecting the wallpaper. “Take care of him for me, would you?”
“I hope you’re not…” Miles began, looking over at Wright as well. He wasn’t sure if their voices were carrying, and he didn’t want Iris to bring up certain topics if they did.
“No, no.” She shook her head. “I want him to be happy, and… a lot can change in the time I’ll be incarcerated. You know?” She placed her hand on Miles’ arm. “I know you don’t want to say anything. I understand. But… should things change… I want him to be happy. Please, remember that.”
He wasn’t sure how to interpret what she was saying, and he couldn’t afford to ask for clarification. Logically, it made sense that she was telling him to keep his feelings secret, so as not to disturb Wright, but something about her expression made him feel like that wasn’t the case.
The court bailiff stepped in to announce that court would be commencing shortly, and Wright returned to them. “Iris? Shall we go?”
“Yes.” She stood and brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Mr. Edgeworth… thank you, again.”
“Of course,” said Miles. “Good luck.”
Iris looked over at him and smiled. It was a very nice smile that illuminated her whole face. “You too,” she said softly, before Wright placed a hand on her shoulder and guided her into court.
Wright did his best to lessen her sentence, but in the end, Iris was sentenced to ten years in prison for aiding and abetting in the numerous criminal acts of Dahlia Hawthorne.
Miles visited Wright in the defendant’s lobby afterwards, to offer his condolences, and then somehow got roped into going out for drinks with him. It wasn’t something he was intending on doing at all, but Wright had looked rather lost and lonely standing in the middle of the lobby alone after the case, so Miles ended up agreeing. Wright had a habit of making him do that.
“This is nice,” said Wright, as the two of them sat at a small table in the back corner of the bar. Miles didn’t have anything alcoholic to drink, as he would be driving, but Wright was already a few drinks in. “I don’t normally do this kind of thing after a case, especially since Maya’s still underage and all, but after the week I’ve had…” he shrugged. “You know?”
“Mhm,” Miles agreed noncommittally. He had to keep his eyes trained on a blurry picture at the back of the room, otherwise he’d just end up staring at Wright. The two of them had never spent time together alone like this, and Miles was beginning to think that he shouldn’t have come here, although he was grateful that he had an excuse to not ingest anything that may risk lowering his inhibitions. This was unbearable enough as it was.
“Hey,” said Wright, and Miles didn’t have a choice but to look over at him. “Thanks for everything you did. It meant a lot to me.” He smiled a little bit, and Miles felt the room get a few degrees warmer. “I don’t know how I can repay you.”
“Don’t bother,” Miles muttered, looking down at his half-empty water glass. “You’ve done more for me.”
“I’m not going to get into this argument right now, because I’m tired, but you’re wrong.” Wright rested his chin on one hand and looked out the window. “... It’s weird. For five years I’ve been so broken up over Dahlia, and all this time… I mean, I guess it’s good that I’m not as awful a judge of character as I thought I was, but it’s still so… weird. Like, you think you understand how things are, when really…” He tapped his fingers on the table a few times. “I always thought if I figured out it wasn’t Dahlia— or, uh, Iris I guess— who tried to kill me, I’d get some closure and I’d feel better. But I did get closure, and I do feel better, but also…”
He trailed off, and Miles realized he was supposed to respond to his half-drunken rambling, but he didn’t know how. “You could visit her,” he suggested. “Whenever you wanted.”
“Yeah, I plan to. But that’s not it. It’s kind of… difficult to describe.” His eyes moved back to Miles. The dim lighting was making them gleam. “College me was head-over-heels for Iris. When I thought she’d been planning to kill me… I couldn’t find anyone to talk to. Mia hated Dahlia, so she wouldn’t have been too sympathetic. Even now, I can’t talk to Maya or Pearls about this, because they’ve suffered enough from this case without my stupid problems getting involved. I guess I could talk to Larry, but he’s still… Larry. He’d probably start yelling at me for ‘stealing Iris away’ or something like that.” He laughed a little to himself. Miles had to admit that his prediction was probably accurate.
They sat in silence for a minute. Miles lifted his glass to take a drink from it.
For some reason, Wright chose that exact moment to ask, “Have you ever been in love, Edgeworth?”
Miles choked on his water and nearly spilled his glass all over the table in the ensuing coughing fit. His entire face was on fire. “Wh-Why would you even ask something like that?” he managed to say while gasping for air.
Wright had leaned back in his seat and held his hands out in front of him as a shield. “Whoa. Sorry. I know, weird question, but I realized… we haven’t gotten a lot of time to talk about our lives outside of work. I mean, we both know lots of depressing stuff about each other, but…”
“That’s true,” Miles said, as he regained his composure. “We haven’t talked about anything that isn’t relevant to a case.”
“Yeah,” said Wright, looking at him strangely. Miles hoped he would take that as an indication to change the topic. He didn’t. “Well? Have you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. No. Kind of?” He shrugged. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but… I’ve been rambling about all of this, and… I don’t know. I kind of wondered if you had any idea of what I’ve been talking about. Might make me feel better, I guess.”
Miles stared at a burnt spot on the table. He couldn’t lie to Wright. He couldn’t bear to think about what would happen if those horrible red locks started popping up around him while he avoided the topic. “I… have been,” he admitted, through gritted teeth.
“Really?” Wright leaned across the table. The table was too short. It needed to be longer: perhaps one of those long tables meant to seat hundreds of guests. That should be an appropriate distance from Wright. “Tell me more.”
He couldn’t afford to do that. “It was ill-advised and unrequited. I don’t even know why it happened in the first place. I never said anything, as nothing would have come of it.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Because you’re clearly in love with Iris, and you’re probably straight, and I’ve hurt you far too much for you to ever care about me. “... I’d rather not talk about it. I’m sorry.”
He chanced a look up at Wright. He looked a little disappointed, but he leaned back into his seat. “That’s fine,” Wright said, finally looking away from him.
Miles had wondered, in moments when his thoughts got too out of control, about what Wright’s reaction would be if he found out. Whether Wright would openly show disgust or anger, or if he would be kind. Miles wasn’t sure which was worse. But either way, he did not want to know, and with luck never would.
“So, how did you like being a defense attorney?” Wright asked.
Miles quickly pulled himself from his thoughts. “It was horrific. I could hardly blame you for throwing yourself into a freezing river.”
“Ha, ha. Real funny, Edgeworth.” He grew quiet for a moment. “Thank you, though. Really. I didn’t think you’d actually take on her defense.”
“I owed you a favour, I suppose.”
“Still,” Wright insisted. “I didn’t think you’d do it. I never thought I’d see you wearing this.” He lifted one hand to run a finger across his attorney’s badge.
“And I never imagined I’d ever seeing you wear one of those, either,” Miles admitted.
“It’s because of you that I became one, Edgeworth,” said Wright, unexpectedly. The expression on his face softened. “Not that I have any regrets. I really don’t.”
Miles couldn’t formulate any sort of a response to that. Instead he stared at a particularly interesting patch of the floor.
Wright sighed, sounding exasperated, before clearing his throat. “Iris told me that you convinced her to tell me about her secret, so… thank you. I can’t tell you what a load off my mind that was.” He frowned. “You and Iris got along pretty well, didn’t you?”
He hadn’t thought of it that way before. He didn’t usually “get along” with anyone during any cases, and it would be easy for him to hate Iris, but for some reason he didn’t. “I guess so.”
“What did she want to tell you? When she wanted to talk to you alone earlier today, I mean.”
“She was just thanking me for my defense,” said Miles, which technically wasn’t a lie.
It didn’t seem to be good enough. Wright raised an eyebrow, and Miles could practically see the locks clicking into place. “Really?”
“Why would I tell you?” he asked, perhaps a tad more brusquely than was necessary. “It’s not my place to share things if she’d rather you didn’t know.”
Wright winced. “Yeah, you have a point.” He stretched and yawned. “I am so exhausted. I don’t think I’ve been this tired after a trial since… I dunno, Engarde’s?”
“You should get some rest, then,” Miles suggested, recalling how exhausted they’d all been after that. He was amazed they’d made it as far into the feast as they did. “You did just fall into a freezing river a couple of days ago.”
Wright buried his head in his hands. “I did, didn’t I? It feels so long ago.”
Miles sighed and stood up, pulling on his coat. “Come on. I’ll drive you back to your place.”
“What? Really?”
“Yes. Let’s go.”
Wright looked up at him and smiled. “Thanks, Edgeworth.”
That smile did odd things to Miles’ stomach. He turned around and left so that he’d have a moment to himself before Wright caught up with him.
The sun was setting as he pulled up to the sidewalk outside of Wright’s apartment. The light filtered in through his car windows, reflecting off of the metallic surfaces of the dashboard and the attorney’s badge to focus wholly on Wright. It highlighted his hair and his skin and those determined eyes, making him appear dazzling and radiant, and Miles couldn’t stop himself from staring.
All Miles knew was this: he had to stop looking at him from any distance further than across the courtroom. It wasn’t good for his health.
“What is it, Wright?” he managed to say, after he and Wright had been staring at each other for what felt like an eternity and Wright made no move to get out of the car.
Wright blinked a few times, rapidly. “What? It’s nothing.” He hesitated for a moment, and then extended his hand to cover Miles’ where it was resting on the gear shift. “I’m really glad you’re here,” he said. “... Miles.”
Miles opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out. He wasn’t sure what he would have said if something did.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” said Wright, and without waiting for a response, got out of the car and went into the apartment without so much as a backwards glance.
Miles watched him go into the building. Then he stared at the door for a while after that. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t safe for him to drive in his current condition. He was also pretty sure that if he stayed here much longer, he was going to get a ticket for idling.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he muttered to himself, putting the car back into drive and pulling away from the building. He’d catch the next flight back to Germany and stay there for a while. By the time he came back in a month, he decided, he would be over this ridiculous infatuation. Yes: he’d go to Europe, sort himself out, and come back without any darkness hanging over him so he could return to dedicating himself solely to the truth. No more feelings appearing where they shouldn’t be. No more longing for the impossible.
The back of his right hand burned the whole drive back to the hotel.