Work Text:
6 pm
The staff of Wright and Co. had done some wild, dangerous things for their clients. There was that time Nick fought a kleptomaniac monkey, and that time he confronted a mafia queen with incriminating evidence. Maya herself had gotten hit with a stun gun for a vital piece of evidence. The point was that lawyers amd their assistants went above and beyond to help clients out of desperate situations.
She'd probably do all of the above twice over, she decided, to avoid doing the paperwork.
Maya let out a low, buzzing sigh as she tossed the stack of paper on the desk. The motion sent the pencil cup spilling out, and pencils clattered to the floor.
Lucien chirped indignantly, hopping from his perch on the desk. He sent her a sharp look with one dark eye. "Now we have to clean that up," he chided.
She stuck out her tongue at her daemon. "I'll get it later, I don't need to write anything anyway."
"Throwing in the towel?"
Maya and Lucien turned their heads to Nick. The lawyer had his head bowed over his own desk, apparently not even glancing up at the disturbance. One hand was writing rapid-fire notes on his legal pad, the other skimming down a printed out page. His tongue poked out from his lips as he crossed something out in a single, clean swipe of his pen.
"How do you lawyers do this?" Maya whined. "I've got numbers and dates behind my eyelids."
Nick shrugged as he hooked a finger under a page to turn it. "We're all crazy, I guess." His hand moved too fast, and the paper ripped. Nick grumbled out a curse as he flipped the page over. "Take a break," Nick suggested. "Stretch your legs. Uh, or wings," he amended, glancing between her and Lucien.
Both daemon and medium exchanged amused looks as Nick ducked his head back down to work. Lucien hopped in place, a mischievous glint in his beady eye.
Maya paused, pursing her lips. As much as she enjoyed the idea of messing with Nick while he was distracted, she knew their work was important. The client was relying on the information in these shipping logs, no matter how bored Maya was.
Lucien tilted his head. He fluttered onto her shoulder and settled next to her ear. "Watch him," he muttered. "He's on the same page he's been for the past ten minutes."
Maya glanced in Nick's direction. She sat up a bit straighter in her chair to get a better view of the page he was reading. With fluid strokes, he traced a highlighter across the paper, and then another, and another. Even from across the room, Maya could see that there were more highlighted sections of the page than not. The neon yellow ink was even leaking through the page.
"Hey, Nick?" Maya cleared her throat. "Maybe you should take a break, too."
He didn't respond for a moment as he wrote something else down on the increasingly messy notepad. He grunted. "What was that?"
Maya rolled her eyes. "Maybe you should - "
"Oh, nah, I'm good." Nick cut her off, idly flapping a free hand in her direction. "I'm making good progress. Go raid the...the snack thing."
"The snack thing," Maya repeated flatly.
Lucien shot her a look, accompanied by a triumphant fluff of his chest feathers. Both of them knew that the vending machine in the hall of their building was a decrepit, half-dead relic. Even if it were operating, the snacks would inevitably be stale and lifeless things. Nick himself had complained about it endlessly, so if he was suggesting it as an option, he really was out of it.
Lucien was right. This required intervention.
Maya snickered, gave Lucien a point taken nod. He bobbed his head as he hopped to the edge of the desk.
Say what you will about Maya's clumsiness or her hyperactivity, but she and Lucien were smooth operators when they put their minds to it. Case in point: she perfectly timed the scraping of her chair and her loud, feigned yawn to coincide with the swoop of Lucien's flight. The azure blur of feathers alighted on the windowsill, without drawing so much as a flicker of attention.
Maya idly strolled in the opposite direction, away from the window and towards one of the bookshelves to the side. She drummed her fingers along the book spines, pretending to read such inspiring titles as Japanifornia Evidence Law, Volume VI and Civil Litigation And Reform.
Right on cue, the long squeak of window hinges cut through the room, mimicked to a perfect tee. The noise was followed by a long groan from Nick. "Maya. Leave the windows closed, we're not paying to heat up the whole street."
Maya smirked, before pivoting on a heel to give Nick an innocent (well, as innocent as she ever got, anyway) smile. Nick gave her an irritated grunt as he stood up. Maya waited until Lucien started flying again to say "Jeez, Nick, do you get all of your lines from dads in sitcoms?"
"Hardee har har." Thankfully, Nick was too busy rolling his eyes to notice the swoop of air behind him as Lucien perched on the back of his chair. "Says the parasite who doesn't pay rent for this office," he grumbled as he strode over to the window.
From the top of the chair, Lucien hopped down to the desk and over to the ancient brick that Phoenix Wright used as a phone. He shot Maya a wink, which she returned with a thumbs up.
Nick carried on with his lecture, unaware of the schemes of his assistants. "You shouldn't be leaving the window open anyway, we don't want the Gatewater to get any ideas about - huh." Nick fiddled with the window, finding it shut tight. "Am I gonna have to get this thing replaced? Already? We just - "
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
Maya blinked in surprise. She'd never heard Lucien mimic the vibration of a cell phone before, but his imitation was eerily accurate. She found herself mirroring Nick, hand fumbling to the pocket to check.
"Ugh. Maya, keep your phone on silent."
Maya snorted. "It is on silent. It came from your desk anyway." She raised an eyebrow at Lucien, who nodded and darted behind the old, pallid computer.
Nick grumbled some more as he turned and stalked back to his desk. Something about junk texts and at this hour.
As the lawyer snatched up his phone, she pounced. "Nick, maybe you should take a break," she suggested. "You seem antsy." She fought as hard as she could to keep the grin from her voice as he punched buttons on the phone.
"I was fine until you left the window open, and then..." Nick trailed off with a frown, apparently confused at his lack of notifications on his phone.
Lucien took the opportunity to whistle the opening notes of the Steel Samurai theme. Nick jumped, first checking his still silent phone again. He spun around, wildly searching for the source of the noise.
Maya couldn't fight down the snort from her breath. "And then?" she asked.
Simultaneously, Lucien and Nick moved. The daemon flew up and around, apparently aiming for the bookshelf Maya stood at. The lawyer stepped around the desk to follow the noise behind the computer. Blue met blue, and with a squawk that could have come from either, Nick flailed his arms in a panicked windmill.
A jolt of adrenaline shot through Maya, and she stepped forward, attempting to stop the collision. "Wait - "
A whirl of confusion filled her mind, and she saw Lucien swerve in the air. He neatly dodged Nick with the maneuver, but he careened wildly towards the filing cabinets.
Clang.
Both Lucien and Maya yelped and stumbled at the impact. Pain and shock flared through their bond, white-hot and startling. Maya felt herself careen to the ground, off balance and reeling.
She didn't remember hitting the ground, but she did hear Nick's horrified gasp. "Oh my God - Maya - Luce - "
Maya groaned. "Owwwwww."
Nick snapped his head between Maya and Lucien, clearly unable to determine which one to swoop in and check on. She'd forgotten, really, that he was so inexperienced with daemons.
Before she could urge Nick to check on her daemon, she saw over his shoulder a flutter of blue coming from a filing cabinet drawer. Lucien poked up from within, dazed but otherwise uninjured.
Maya felt one last flicker of mischief for the night. She groaned again - half dramatic, half genuine as the pain of the impact ebbed away.
Nick spun and darted towards Maya, falling to his knees next to her with a thud. "Oh my God, Maya, are you okay?!?!"
Maya gasped, clutching a hand to her completely uninjured chest. "Nick...oof, ouch...my bones..."
Hands flew to her arms, her legs, her ribs, as Nick frantically checked her over for broken bones. "Maya, it's okay, we'll get you and Lucien to a - a doctor or, uh, a vet, or - "
From across the room, reverberating slightly in the metal of the filing cabinet, came a long, brassy note. Lucien's voice blared through the office as he played an impressive rendition of Taps, mourning Maya's imminent demise.
Maya reached out and grabbed Nick's hand. "If...if only I had..." She coughed into her free hand. "...enough...enough money for the ferryman across the Styx."
The fear immediately dropped from Nick's face, and he glared at Maya. "Seriously?" he demanded.
Maya continued, lifting her voice over Lucien's somber background music. "Nick...Nicholas. Remember to...account for inflation." She let out a dramatic gurgle and flopped back onto the floor.
Across the room, Lucien paused his rendition of Taps. He croaked, "But inflation, like, the fetish...not the economic thing. Bleh."
The corner of Nick's mouth twitched, but he scowled against the movement. "I'm assuming you two aren't about to die?"
"About to die?" Maya snorted. "Maybe we are. Maybe we'll haunt you because you didn't buy me enough burgers." She tugged on Nick's hand, and he rolled her eyes as he helped her pull herself up to a sitting position.
"Whatever." Nick groaned as he creaked up to a standing position. He strode back over to his desk. "If the pests are done trying to gouge me for money while faking their deaths, I'll be going back to...my..."
He paused, staring down at the papers he'd abandoned as if seeing them for the first time. He picked up the top page and held it up to the light, revealing that over three quarters of the page was saturated with highlighter ink. "Did I really do that?"
Lucien fluttered out of the filing cabinet - a bit dizzy, but still managing to land on Nick's desk. "We thought you could use a distraction," he explained.
Maya hopped up from the floor. "Yeah, you're just gonna end up turning your brain to mush." She held out a hand, and Lucien returned to her palm with a grateful chirp. "We can go hit up that convenience store for some snacks, and then get back to work."
Nick studied the two of them for a moment, a single eyebrow lifted. He glanced between them and the page he'd highlighted to incoherence. "I can only assume I'm paying for your little snack raid," he complained. He grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair and slung it on, comfortably rolling his shoulders around it.
"Wellllll, since you're offering..."
Nick gave a teasing swat to the back of Maya's head, but the fond smile on his face belied the exasperation. "C'mon," he said. "You're right, I could use a break."
10 pm
Phoenix blinked down at the legal pad, finding it filled with dense shorthand notes. His eyes swam with numbers and facts. Despite the haze, he focused on a handful of circled entries on the shipping log, contradictions in a sea of conformity.
He yawned, stretching his shoulders and feeling a satisfying pop in the depths of his spine. "I'm thinking we should call it a day, huh, Maya?"
The only response he received was a low sigh.
Phoenix looked over to the smaller desk where Maya sat, and found her slumped over in a bundle of dark hair and silk robes. Her head rested on her arms amidst a nest of colorful snack wrappers. The only visible part of her face was her eyebrows, smooth and relaxed on her brow.
Her low breaths were joined with a small trill. Phoenix paused, confused, until he remembered that there were two where he usually saw one. Sure enough, a fan of blue tail feathers shivered from somewhere within Maya's hair. Their breaths were synced, two halves of one peaceful whole.
For a moment, Phoenix stopped, watching the pair sleep. It was unusual seeing them so still. Maya always fidgeted and poked around at whatever she could see, and Lucien fluttered around her, never quite landing, an inverse shadow in constant motion. But now Phoenix could see them truly merged into one being in rest. He smiled down at them. They've earned a hundred naps.
Quietly, he began packing up the files on their desks, careful not to disturb the sleeping medium. He kept sneaking glances at them, to make sure they still rested. Occasionally, Maya shifted, mumbling words that Phoenix couldn't hear, Lucien cooing as if in response.
Eventually, all that remained was a stack of paper under Maya's elbow, the pages she'd been scanning through. Phoenix debated trying to scoot them out from under her without rousing them, but he'd have to wake them up to leave anyway.
Phoenix paused. He realized, belatedly, that he'd never woken someone up like this before. How does one do it without scaring them, making the process as gentle as possible?
Tentatively, he settled a hand on her upper arm. "Hey, Maya?" he asked, keeping his voice soft.
"Hmph." Maya grumbled low in her throat, lifting her head slightly. "Five more minutes."
He rolled his eyes. "C'mon," he ordered, giving her a small push. "You're gonna get a crick in your neck sleeping like that."
The bundle of feathers shifted first, and a beady dark eye poked out of her hair, regarding Phoenix with a baleful stare. "You too, Luce, early bird catches the burger."
"Like we haven't heard that one before," Lucien sniffed. He retreated into Maya's hair, and in a few moments, she was slowly pushing herself up. Her hand moved to her shoulder, as if checking instinctively on her daemon.
"Hey." Phoenix rapped a knuckle on the desk in front of her, and two pairs of eyes followed the movement. "You done with those papers?"
"Papers? Wha - oh." Maya blinked, and handed Phoenix the stack. "Don't remember how far I got," she mumbled. "Sorry, didn't mean to sleep." She gave an admonishing glare to her shoulder. "Someone was supposed to keep me awake."
Lucien let out an indignant chirp, but said nothing else. Like an echo, Maya trilled back, and Lucien huffed as he burrowed himself into her hair.
"You can sleep separately?" Phoenix asked. He flipped through the section of the shipping log he'd given Maya to parse through. He was surprised to find it almost completed: almost every page had Maya's scribbled notes in the margins, notating her painstaking comparisons. Only the earliest sections were free of her work.
Maya groaned as she stood up from the desk. "Spirit mediums can. Dunno about others, we don't get a lot of...well, anyway." She stretched her arms.
Phoenix swallowed down a rush of pity. The reminder of Maya's lonely childhood sat like a brick in his chest. Even with a daemon, even with a sister, it must have been an isolated world for her, as one of a handful of children in a secluded mountain village.
Both daemon and medium seemed to notice Phoenix's expression. They winced in unison, Maya ducking her head, Lucien ruffling his feathers. "We shouldn't have fallen asleep," Lucien mumbled, apologetic.
"Nah, you two did a good job." Phoenix gave Maya a grin, bumping his elbow into hers. "You got all the important stuff, the early entries are probably a wash anyway." He ushered the tired pair out of the office, flicking off the lights and closing the door behind him.
A smile flickered at the edges of Maya's face, but it quickly faded into a frown. "Still...I really should have better stamina by now." She crossed her arms. "I can't just run out of steam halfway through like that."
As Phoenix locked the door, he studied Maya and Lucien. They were both strangely withdrawn. Neither would meet his gaze. He wanted to reach in and pull Maya out of her own head, get her smiling again.
So he cleared his throat and said in a singsong voice, "Hey, Mayaaaaaa?"
Two pairs of dark eyes shifted, peering up at him.
"That's what she said."
Maya snorted, and she and Lucien both let out startled laughs that bounced and echoed through the empty hall. "Gross!" Maya swatted at his arm as she swooped past him. "Ew, ew, ew, ew, you're too old to make sex jokes!"
"Says the pair who know what inflation is," Phoenix shot back.
Lucien ducked his head under his wing. "My poor innocent ears," he complained, his muffled voice light with amusement. "Why would you corrupt us like this?"
As lawyer, medium, and daemon bantered their way out of the office building, Phoenix couldn't keep the smile off of his face. As strange as this world was, where one soul was split between two beings, where he had chased an old friend across dimensions, where he was an underdog, an odd man out in so many ways, Phoenix found that the important things stayed the same.
His presence here was an accident, to be sure, but he was here to stay.