Chapter Text
Phoenix sat cross-legged on the floor of Mia Fey's office, still unable to think of it as his own. He was surrounded by a pile of past-due bills and overdraft notices addressed to Wright and Co. Law Offices on envelopes of varying shades of scarlet. Many hours into the process of attempting to organize them by urgency, he had maddeningly little to show for it. There was only one item scribbled on his priority list in a well-used composition notebook. It read, in block letters at the top,
RENT - OFFICE.
His laptop sat on the floor with him, its fans screaming for mercy under the weight of many tabs and programs left open. The trackpad lagged as he attempted to mouse through everything: case files old and new, a variety of low-budget airline tickets, street maps of Vanesland, New Hampshire, the Wikipedia page for Extradition, and motel reviews he was sorting by the fewest mentions of bedbugs. He knew there was something in there that he was forgetting. The clock in the bottom right of his computer’s display read 10:15pm. He had been trying all week to break the habit of looking at his wrist for the time, having pawned his watch to pay for Maya and Pearl's train tickets from Kurain.
Fuck.
Maya and Pearls.
Phoenix squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath before navigating back to the discount airline tab, holding his breath when the screen froze momentarily. He clicked on the plus signs to add tickets for one adult and one child. When he saw the total, his vision blurred. He minimized the window and pushed the laptop a bit further away.
Blinking hard, he pulled the same TI-84 that had seen him through high school off of his desk. The display read 1,148.64. It represented every last penny he had to his name. All of it (and much more) was owed to someone else. Plane tickets would cost over $700 and they would need somewhere to sleep, too. How were they going to eat?
At least I don't have to worry about a car rental, he thought.
"Shit."
He pulled the laptop back over and began mapping out public transportation to the courthouse in Vanesland. There was a bus route at 8:45 which could take him to within a five minute walk. That was promising. He hit print, but a pop-up window informed him that the printer was, once again, out of toner. He put his head in his hands.
* * *
The Steel Samurai theme song jolted him awake. He looked at his wrist (still no watch), then answered the phone.
His voice hadn’t woken up with him. "Hello?"
"Sorry to wake you." Phoenix sat up straighter when he heard Edgeworth speak. "It's not exactly urgent-- I can call again tomorrow."
He cleared his throat, "What is it?"
"Well..." Edgeworth hesitated, "Some of your mail seems to have been delivered to my office by mistake. I opened it before I realized."
Phoenix looked at the pile of bills already surrounding him. What now? He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed loud enough to be heard over the phone.
Edgeworth continued, "I was hoping you might be able to explain. The envelope bears my name and my office's address, but its contents are quite clearly intended for you."
"I don't understand. Why would it be sent to you then?"
"That is precisely what I was wondering. Wright..."
"...Yes?"
"You aren't caught up in anything... illegal are you?"
"What?"
"It's just that this is a lot of money for you all at once." He was talking very fast now, "And the fact that it's come through my office is a bit--"
"What kind of bill is it?" He sifted through the stack in front of him wondering which one was absent from the pile. If Edgeworth was calling it “a lot of money” he must have missed something huge.
"Sorry?"
"Rent? Oh. No, that's right here... Uh, student loans… those are in here somewhere, I know I saw them earlier today. Oh shit, is it my Apartment?!"
Edgeworth made him wait a while before he answered, no doubt drumming his fingers over his desk in thought.
"I think you may have misunderstood me," He finally replied. "It's not a bill."
"It's not?" That was, quite literally, the only mail Phoenix ever got.
"No. It's a check. For ten thousand."
"Wh-- H-- Who..." Phoenix couldn't decide which question to ask. After stuttering through the first syllable of each of them in turn, he blurted out, "Dollars?!?"
"Indeed."
"That… can't be right," He actually laughed in disbelief. It was the first time he’d laughed in over a week.
* * * * *
Miles Edgeworth paced the length of his office twice before remembering he was trying to break that habit. Tracks were starting to show on the carpet. He settled back into his plush office chair with a long sigh and attempted to center himself. Rain tapped incessantly against the window behind him. Many people find the sound of rainfall soothing, but it made Miles apprehensive somehow.
His Rolex said 11:45pm.
It's been thirty minutes, he thought. It shouldn't take this long.
He was about to call Wright's cell number when he heard footsteps thumping down the hall. The doorknob to his office turned, then abruptly returned to its starting position. Three knocks in rapid succession beat against the door.
"Come in," He said just loud enough to be heard through it.
The first thing he noticed when Wright entered the room was his attire. He was sopping wet-- as if he'd ran the entire distance between their offices in the rain, without even his usual blue jacket to protect him. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows and it hung open at the collar, framed by his loosened tie. The second thing he noticed was how tired Wright looked.
"What took you so long?" Edgeworth demanded as he walked in.
"Hey, I made great time-- considering."
He doesn't have a car, Miles remembered. He really did run all the way over here.
"Yes, well…” He slid the check across his desk with the back of a fountain pen. “Here it is."
Wright picked it up with both hands and held it inches from his face. The top left corner said Pursuit Bank.
"Victor Speck," He read aloud.
"Is it a name you recognize?"
Wright set the check reluctantly back onto Edgeworth's desk. His fingernails made a rasping sound against the 5 o’ clock shadow darkening his jaw.
"No," He admitted, "I don't know him."
"Wright, until you know who wrote this check and-- more importantly-- why, it would be reckless to cash it."
"But," He flopped down on the couch, "…Not illegal?"
He's going to ruin the upholstery, Miles stared at the place where Wright's wet shirt pressed against the back of his couch. He had to work hard to bring his mind back to the topic at hand, and didn’t quite make it in time.
Phoenix continued, "It's my name on the check, plain as day. How many Phoenix Wrights do you think are out there? Even if this... this..."
Miles raised an eyebrow, "Victor Speck.”
"Yeah, okay, but look-- Even if it’s all a big misunderstanding, I can’t possibly get into trouble for cashing a check that’s got my name on it! …Right?"
He shut his eyes and folded his arms across his chest in an effort to maintain composure.
"Supposing it's forged," Miles tapped his finger impatiently, "Which seems likely, you could be charged with check fraud."
"But I didn't forge it! I didn't even know about it until you called!"
Part of Miles agreed with him, purely on the basis that he was sick and tired of hearing accusations of forgery. The more rational part of him prevailed.
"Which brings us to my next point: Why was it sent to my office? I checked my Rolodex," he gave it a spin for emphasis, "I'm positive I've never met a Victor Speck. Yet, he was able to address a letter to me personally. If you decide to gamble on cashing that check, Wright, you’ll implicate both of us-- whatever the consequences."
Wright buried his head in his hands.
A few moments later, he emerged, “Could he have mailed it to you just to save time? Maybe he already had your address somehow, but not mine.”
“Let me get this straight," The theory was so stupid, it made him angry, "You believe that, although Mr. Speck had some urgent, and completely inscrutable reason to cut you a check for ten grand, he simply took it on faith that a third party, myself, would see to its safe delivery?”
“Probably not,” he sighed. “But… you did.”
"Regardless, we're left with three questions,” He counted them off on his fingers, “Who is Victor Speck; What is the ten thousand dollars payment for; and Why has he mailed it to my office?"
Wright shook his head, "I really don’t know."
"...You're sure he isn't a former client of yours?" Edgeworth knew it was a reach. "What do you charge?"
"Per defense?"
"You... You charge per defense?"
"Doesn't everyone?"
"Of course not! Most attorneys bill by the hour."
Wright jumped to his feet. "WHAT? You mean I could be earning..." He counted on his fingers. "WHAT??!"
Miles couldn’t let it go now. "So how much do you charge, anyway?"
He shoved his hands into his pockets and muttered something under his breath.
"What? Speak up."
"...Two hundred dollars."
"TWO HUNDRED-- What are you, an escort?!?"
"That's assuming they even pay."
"But you-- wait... Hold on a second," Miles held up his hands. "How many cases do you get in a month, on average?"
"Shut up," He dropped back onto the couch in despair.
"No, because..." He did some mental math. "You can't be making a dime, Wright."
"I know! You don't have to remind me! …But just when my luck turns around,” Wright stared hungrily at the check sitting on Edgeworth’s desk. "And you say I can't even use it!"
He dropped his head in his hands again.
"Listen to me," Miles said softly. The tone didn’t suit him. "If times really are that hard, I'll give you some money."
"I couldn't accept that and you know it." He was addressing his shoes.
"Think of it as a loan at no interest. You can pay me back later, if you insist." He couldn't see Wright's face to gauge his reaction. "Let me just get my checkbook--"
"I said no," Finally he lifted his head. His voice was steady, but his eyes looked wet.
"Would you really rather take Victor Speck's money?! A large sum, offered to you by a man you don't know, under circumstances neither of us understands, is more appealing to you than a loan from a--" Miles realized he wasn't sure how to characterize their relationship. "--from me?"
"Edgeworth," Phoenix took a shuddering breath and confessed, for the first time to anyone but himself, "I'm going to lose the office."
He tried to stay positive, but it took him a while. "...Perhaps that's not such a bad thing. You could downsize to something more affordable. Maybe even move closer to the courthouse."
"But, Mia worked so hard on it." Wright was stricken, "I can't just throw away everything she built because of a few little setbacks."
His reasons are utterly sentimental, Miles thought to himself. Mia Fey was a pragmatic person who would've simply packed up and moved on, if she’d been dealt the same hand as her protégé. And yet...
He couldn't explain it to himself--- why he found Wright's situation so sympathetic. He sat in the prosecutor’s office, dripping wet, like a stray dog brought in from the rain and cold. Miles couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He looked at Phoenix Wright and felt the same mixture of guilt and pity that had once brought him to make a large donation to the ASPCA. Wright may be incapable of turning a profit, but he wasn’t a charity case. Miles could understand why he found a loan difficult to stomach-- it was for the same reason he’d hesitated to accept Wright’s help when accused of murder. He wanted to say something, but articulation of these feelings (of which he was incapable in the first place) would surely offend him further.
Instead of money, he offered the opinion, "She would be so proud of you."
This, Phoenix tearfully accepted.
Chapter Text
Phoenix woke up on the couch in his apartment at 7:30am the next day. Red lines marked the place where his cheek had been pressed against a seam in the cushions. The pillow had worked itself away from him over the course of his restless night, and a thin, red blanket barely held around his calves. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the couch and losing the blanket at last. He was clammy, as if he’d just broken a fever. Even this early in the morning, it was too hot.
He looked at a beat-up swamp cooler trapped underneath the half-shut kitchen window. It was held together-- just-- by peeling electrical tape. Over a bare spot on the control panel, where there had once been a button to increase the fan's velocity, a purple smiley-face sticker was affixed. He thought of the utility bill in a pile in his office and decided not to turn it on, but undid another button on the crumpled white shirt he'd slept in. Again.
Into the kitchen.
It was separated from the living room more by definition than by any solid partition between the spaces. He opened the cupboard quickly so its hinges had less time to squeal. He didn't want to wake Maya and Pearls, who were still asleep in his room. On their first prolonged visit, Pearl had tried to insist that he and Maya take the bedroom, while she slept on the couch, but Phoenix had put his foot down then and the current arrangement was established.
The cupboard was even emptier than usual. Hazy images of the night before flashed from the periphery of his recollection: Maya placing a blanket over him, then a pillow under his head when he raised it to see who was there. She had gone over to the kitchen, hoisted herself onto the counter and ate the last poppy seed muffin for her midnight snack. He remembered drifting back to sleep watching her there, watching him.
"Dammit," He muttered. "I wanted that for breakfast."
He settled for corn flakes instead, emptying the rest of the milk carton into his bowl. It wasn’t enough for the amount of cereal he’d already committed to. Having no other choice, he ate them dry, save for the flakes at the bottom which were soggy by the time he got to them.
The batteries on the wall clock were dead. He looked at his empty wrist, again, before patting his pockets to find his cellphone. It wasn't there. He crossed the room and went through the pockets of his suit jacket which lay in a forlorn heap by the door. When those turned out empty, he dropped it back to the ground. Lifting the couch cushions, he at last saw his phone amid some crumbs, two dimes, a nickel, and a small charm bracelet that Pearls had lost last time she and Maya stayed over. He put the change and Pearls' bracelet in his pocket and flipped the cushions back down. His phone’s batteries were dead too.
Phoenix flopped onto the couch and dropped his head over the backrest, not even flinching when his skull collided with a thunk against its sturdy wooden frame. A few minutes later Maya padded through the room in her pajamas.
"Good morning," she yawned and rubbed the sleepiness out of her eyes.
"Morning," Phoenix said, buttoning his shirt back up.
She walked past him into the kitchen and opened the fridge door.
"There's no more milk.”
"I'll get some later," He left his wording deliberately vague. Later could mean any time this week.
“It’s fine.” Maya, too, settled on dry cornflakes. Through a mouthful of these, she observed, "You were out late."
Phoenix needed hardly to be reminded. He couldn’t stop thinking about the events of last night. Even sleep had been no reprieve for him, riddled with stress dreams. In one of these, he stood in line at the bank for hours, but when he got to the clerk, instead of the words "I'd like to make a withdrawal," all that fell from his mouth were teeth.
At 12:30am last night, when his talk with Edgeworth at the prosecutor's office was finished, it was still pouring rain. He'd made some very compelling arguments. It was hard to discredit the fact that nobody in their right mind would pay that much money for services that had not been rendered. Edgeworth pointed out that it would certainly be difficult to explain if scrutinized. At best, it was a mistake. At worst, it was blackmail. Still, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to cash it, so they agreed to leave the check in Edgeworth's custody for the time being. He was better equipped to look into the matter anyway. He had made a solemn promise to keep Phoenix apprised of any developments in his investigation.
Then, Phoenix gratefully accepted the offer of a ride back to his office. They both went in, only because Phoenix had forgotten what a state he'd left it in. He felt certain his face was as red as the envelopes he hurried to collect off the floor, before resorting to kicking them under his desk. At that point the rain still hadn't let up, so Edgeworth insisted on driving him back to his apartment, too. They'd had to make a block though because Phoenix missed the entrance to the parking lot while giving directions.
"Nick?"
"Huh?" He snapped out of it, "Oh. Yeah... I fell asleep at the office for a while."
Maya answered with a drawn out, "Hmmmm."
She was waiting for him to elaborate, but he couldn't do that without raising more questions. Questions he preferred not to answer. He had already decided not to tell her about the money until he knew whether or not they could use it. Another reason he preferred it to stay with Edgeworth.
"Well," Phoenix cut through the silence, "I'd better get going. Still have a few things to do before visiting hours start."
"Wait, aren't you gonna change? I can go get your clothes from your room," She correctly assumed he didn't want to go in there while Pearl was still asleep.
"That's okay, I have a spare at the office." He picked his wrinkled, blue jacket up off the floor and draped it over his shoulder, too hot to put on another layer. "See you later today?"
"We'll bring lunch," she offered.
"Sounds good," He shoved his hands into his pockets and got as far as one step out the door. "Oh! Here, I found Pearls' bracelet this morning."
Maya watched from behind threadbare and dusty curtains as Nick made his way across the lot. Steam rose up from the street while the sun worked hard to evaporate any trace of last night’s downpour. As he turned the corner, Maya strained her ears for the same low rumble she’d heard last night, between the lightning and thunder.
She remembered climbing out of the bed, carefully, without waking Pearly, and walking to the front door where she peered through the same curtains. A bright red sports car, illuminated by an even brighter flash of lighting, idled in front of the apartment building. Its windshield wipers raced back and forth while the noise of its engine cut easily through the complex’s thin walls. The passenger door opened and Nick emerged, holding his suit jacket over his head as a makeshift umbrella. One hand flashed out from underneath to wave as the car receded into the night. Maya returned to Nick’s room and shut the door softly behind her. That night, until sleep overtook her, where there should have been thunder she could only hear the noise of that engine. Mr. Edgeworth’s car.
Today, as Nick made his way to the law offices that he’d inherited from her sister, Maya could hear nothing at all.
* * *
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Falcon has already used his visitor hours for the day.”
“He what?!” Phoenix’s blood pressure rose to dangerous levels. “With who?”
“That’s privileged information.”
“I’m his attorney !” He pointed to the badge on his lapel. “It doesn’t get more privileged than that.”
The guard folded his arms and glowered at him.
A prison reform bill had recently passed which, among other things, limited the number of hours per day that a detainee could spend on visitation. Right now, the verbiage was interpreted to include legal counsel as ‘visitors.’ It was ridiculous, of course, and Phoenix felt certain it would soon be amended. However, for the time being, he was shit out of luck. He really didn’t want to waste a trip to the detention center though, being a staunch proponent of the sunk cost fallacy, and having already paid the bus fare. Who did he know, other than his client, that was currently jailed?
“Is G-- I mean-- is Diego Armando available?”
Five minutes later, Phoenix was shuffled into a meeting room. It was clearly just an extra holding cell that they’d stuck a card table and some chairs into. Diego jumped to his feet when he saw who was being led in.
“Mr. Wright,” His face lit up-- even his mask seemed to glow a bit brighter.
“Oh-- Just Phoenix is fine.”
He was never going to get used to this man being happy to see him.
“What brings you by? How’s Maya doing? And Pearl?” He fired off questions. “Are they keeping you on your toes?”
“Ah, yeah they’re good. Pearl’s gonna start school soon actually. Just part-time. We thought it would be good for her to make some friends her own age, you know?”
“That’s great,” he smiled warmly. “Hey, you want a coffee? They’re letting me run a prison roastery. It’s pretty good stuff, too.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“Marco!” He called through the door.
A uniformed guard appeared and shouted, “Polo!”
“Ha..!” He nodded over his shoulder toward Phoenix, “I was wondering if you’d grab us two coffees? Doghouse blend.”
“Yeah, you got it, man.”
“Thanks, Marco.” Diego sat back down.
“They, uh, treat you pretty good here, huh?”
“Oh yeah, the guys are very accommodating.” He tented his hands together, “So, what brings you by?”
“Well, actually I came to see a client,” Phoenix confessed. “But I guess he wasted his visitation hours with someone else already.”
“It’s a crying shame,” Diego’s expression turned dark, “What they’re doing with prison reform.”
“I can’t believe it got through,” he shook his head. “Sometimes I think the legal system is worse now than it was when I started.”
“Tell me about it.”
Marco returned with their coffees. He set down two steaming mugs and, with a quick glance over his shoulder, pulled a plastic-wrapped chocolate muffin out of his pocket. He gave them a wink and placed a finger to his lips before backing out of the room.
“What did I tell you about Marco?” He laughed. “The best.”
Diego split it down the center and offered half to Phoenix, who declined.
“Your loss. So who’s your client, anyway?”
Phoenix debated whether or not he could disclose that. By way of stalling, he took a sip of the coffee. ‘Doghouse blend.’ Not bad, but he would have added cream and sugar. There was no need to debate whether he should disclose that .
“You were right,” He pointed to the coffee. “This is good. What was the blend called again?”
“It’s okay.” Diego read right through him. “You don’t have to tell me. I shouldn’t have asked-- I’m not a lawyer anymore.”
“No, no, no,” he assured, “It’s not that! It’s just that my guy’s kinda cagey. We’ve drafted up and signed all these contracts about what I’m allowed to say and under what circumstances. I just had to think about it for a second, that’s all. You know, he actually worked at the prosecutors office for a while-- as a cleaner. I guess it’s a good way for a layman to pick up some legal acumen.”
“Really? Maybe I know him.”
“I kinda doubt it, he was a recent hire. His name’s Axel Falcon.”
Diego set down his mug. “Falcon?”
“Yeah.” Phoenix fished the notebook out of his briefcase, “Do you know him?”
“Yeah, I know that guy,” He sighed heavily. “Or-- know of him. Little thief! You can’t just go through a man's office and take whatever catches your eye.”
There were at least three layers of red tape at all times preventing him from commenting on Axel Falcon’s case. Diego’s contempt for thievery would have been rich, coming from someone guilty of conspiracy to commit murder , but more than anything it was convenient. Phoenix was just glad that he already knew about the thefts because he was pretty sure they couldn’t talk about them. The contracts that he had signed for Falcon started out simple enough, but they became really convoluted over time. His client wanted to keep the charges leveled against him on a need-to-know basis, so he had asked Phoenix to sign an NDA. At first, that didn’t seem too unreasonable, but charges kept stacking up. Axel had stolen so much. Wright managed to argue down to a significantly reduced sentence, but things only got worse from there. Falcon had not been in prison one full week before the state of New Hampshire sent in paperwork to extradite him on murder charges.
“Tri-- I mean, Wri-- Uh,” Diego cleared his throat, “Phoenix. I know somebody who had some problems with Falcon. That guy is bad news. He’d signed an NDA so couldn’t really tell me anything…”
“That tracks.”
“You need to watch your step around him. You’ve signed contracts?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “They’re starting to muddle together honestly.”
“Reread them,” he urged. “And don’t sign anything else.”
“Diego,” Phoenix discreetly put a hand on the magatama in his pocket, “Do you know something you’re not telling me about Axel?”
“No,” he sighed, “I wish I did.”
No psyche-locks.
“Look, it’s just a gut feeling, but I think you should reach out to the guy I mentioned earlier. His name’s Theodore Bunting; He’s a court stenographer. Maybe he can help you out.”
“Thanks, I will.”
* * *
Phoenix was trying to keep his balance standing on the bus that took him from the detention center to his office. This would have been easier without all of the items he juggled in his arms. His briefcase was pinned under his elbow, and he tried to hold both an open notebook and a thermos of coffee in the same hand. Diego had insisted he take some for the road. Given the choice, Phoenix would have picked a cold beverage. His other arm was hooked around a pole for balance. He flipped past the page that contained “Rent - Office” and two sketches of Edgeworth to find an empty one. In this, he scribbled, “Theodore Bunting - steno.”
The driver took a turn too sharply and his balance was momentarily lost. He spilled coffee onto the notebook and scalded his hand. His briefcase escaped in the confusion, but he managed to step on it before it slid too far away. He peeled the notebook off of his chest where he had reflexively clutched it and found, to his great dismay, the coffee and ink had transferred onto his last clean shirt.
“God dammit.”
His phone rang. Getting it from pocket to ear was a struggle, but he succeeded in pinning it there against his shoulder.
“Phoenix Wright.”
“Wright, it’s me.”
“Hey, Edgeworth!”
“Now, I’ve done some-- Hey,” he remembered it was impolite not to return a greeting. “I’ve done some looking around. There are three people in state by the name Victor Speck. Gumshoe is going to interview two of them but it’s a bit of a drive, so he'll get back to me with the details late tonight.”
“Why only two?”
“Because I talked to the first one already-- his daughter, rather. He died three years ago, so it can’t have been him who wrote the check.”
“Oh.”
The driver hit the brakes and laid on the horn as he was cut off in traffic. Phoenix had to drop his notebook to grab a handhold, and even then, he was almost thrown across the bus. The passengers' loud expressions of disapproval overlapped with the driver’s. Wright prayed that his shitty cell phone wasn’t relaying any of this to Edgeworth.
“Is… Everything all right?”
No dice.
“Uh, yeah, all good…”
Phoenix was distracted chasing down his notebook. A teenager, who had also boarded at the detention center, plucked it gingerly off the floor and handed it over.
“Sorry,” she said. “Looks like it got kinda ruined.”
“Nah, it was already like that. Thanks.”
Edgeworth’s voice chimed in his ear, “It sounds as if I’ve caught you at a bad time.”
“What? No. No, not at all, now is--” Phoenix realized he’d missed his stop, “Oh shit.”
“I’ll call you when I hear from Detective Gumshoe. Goodb--” He hung up before finishing the word.
He flipped the phone shut and stuffed it into his back pocket. At least one page of his notebook ripped as he shoved it into the briefcase under his arm. Hopefully nothing too important. When he pulled the cord to request a stop, the indicator wouldn’t light up. He checked his watch-- or tried to. It was probably around noon.
What a day .
Notes:
This one's probably gonna get re-worked. It's a little clunky while I get through the setup.
Chapter Text
When he finally got back to the office, Maya and Pearls were already inside. He could tell that much from the street. When he got to the door, he determined that they were playing tag: the sound of running was broken up periodically by overlapping squeals. Apparently, they didn’t hear him come in. He walked into the reception area where Maya ran headlong into him, knocking everything out of his hands and sending both of them sprawling. Flat on his back, Phoenix tried to catch his breath, somewhat difficult with Maya’s weight centered over his chest.
“Mr. Nick!” Pearls slapped an open palm on his shoulder, “You’re it!"
“Good job,” he wheezed. “Maya, please get off me.”
Phoenix decided to lay on the floor a little longer. Maya gathered the papers that had flown out of his briefcase and dropped the stack onto the reception desk with a thunk. Pearl sat on the floor next to Phoenix and attempted to braid a strand of his hair.
“You’re late for lunch Mr. Nick.”
“I am? What time is it.”
“Ummm,” she bit her thumbnail, “I dunno.”
“Really?” He shifted around and pointed to the analog clock on the wall. “There’s a clock, Pearls. Can you tell me what it says?”
“The big hand is on the twelve.”
“Good,” he smiled. “Where’s the little hand?”
“Seven!”
“Oops, that’s actually the seconds hand, Pearly. See how fast it’s moving?”
“Oh. Then the minute hand is on the five!”
“Yeah Pearly!" Maya cheered, "You’re a genius!”
“It’s twelve o’ five!” Pearl cried triumphantly.
Lunch, as usual, was small. Each of them had a PB&J, on one piece of folded bread, and they all shared from the same tube of Pringles-- on clearance for being squashed out of shape. At the farmers market that morning, Maya haggled for some bruised apples and cut off the particularly squishy spots. When they finished eating, Pearls sat down with a remedial workbook the school had provided, and Maya and Phoenix retreated to the office.
“So, how was Mr. NDA?” Maya asked.
She really hated being out of the loop, and Falcon had specifically excluded her in the terms of their contract. Meaning, by extension, Maya hated Axel Falcon.
“Miserable, probably.”
“Yaay!” She clapped her hands together. “Wait, why only probably?”
“I didn’t actually get to see him today.”
“Huh? But you were at detention for hours !”
“One hour. Singular,” he corrected. “He spent his visitation time on someone else-- they wouldn’t tell me who. I didn’t want to waste the trip so I thought I’d drop in on Mr. Armando. He says hi, by the way.”
“Is that why you suddenly have a thermos full of coffee?”
He laughed, “It is actually.”
“I knew it!”
“He’s like, popular with the guards there,” Phoenix gossiped. “They let him run a roastery. One of them, Marco, even snuck in food for him while we were talking.”
“Weird.”
Mia’s ancient desktop computer finally booted up. He opened a browser and pulled up the district court’s website. His notebook had disappeared in the sea of documents on the desk-- not having a cover, it blended in amid the other papers. The still-damp coffee stain eventually gave it away. He flipped through to find the name of Diego’s stenographer.
“Was that a drawing of Mr. Edgeworth?”
“Huh? No, it's Godot. I mean Mr. Arman--”
“No, not that one! On the other page. Go back.”
He flipped back. Maya seized the notebook.
“It’s not a good likeness, Nick,” she teased. “His jaw isn’t so… chiseled in real life.”
“Give me that!” He tried to snatch it out of her hands, but she evaded. “They’re just scribbles. I didn’t know they’d have to hold up to critique.”
“Good, because they don’t.”
“Maya, there’s a reason I dropped out of art school.”
“Yeah, I know!” She pointed to the larger of the two drawings. “Him!”
It depicted Miles Edgeworth from the shoulders up, with a soft, contemplative expression. If Phoenix had to point out one thing wrong with the drawing it would be that his values were off. The shading he’d started on Edgeworth’s hair looked more like natural roots showing through bleach. He had felt pretty good about the face until Maya spoke up. The exaggerated slope of his shoulder intersected with a note written in the margins: “Victor Speck.”
Phoenix felt his breath hitch. He didn’t want Maya to know about that yet. He ripped the notebook out of her hands.
“Would you stop it?!” His tone came out harsher than he’d intended. “Sorry. Just--”
“Yeah.” She sat down.
“I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“It’s fine.”
It was not fine, clearly. He sighed, and vowed to make it up to her later. He got Theodore Bunting’s name and dropped the notebook into the top drawer of his desk. The stenographer’s details were, fortunately, very easy to find. It looked like he’d lived and worked in California for about three years. His biography said he’d received his bachelors in journalism in Maine then worked as a court stenographer in Vermont before moving here. It didn’t say for how long. There was an email address listed. Phoenix drafted a message explaining their mutual connection through Diego and, apparently, Axel Falcon.
I’m sure you can appreciate that Mr. Falcon is not a cooperative subject of conversation. I’d like to clarify a few details with regards to your professional relationship to my client. To that end, I hope we can schedule a meeting. I would understand completely if there are topics which you cannot discuss with me; Mr. Armando suggested that you may have signed a Non-disclosure Agreement. If so, I assure you, this will not pose a problem.
He also included his office and cell numbers, in case Mr. Bunting preferred not to commit an answer to writing. When the email was sent, he exhaled and dropped against the backrest of Mia’s old office chair which groaned in protest. One of these days, it was going to fall completely apart on him. He wrapped a hand around his empty wrist.
* * *
Maya was stationed at the reception desk, looking over Pearl’s work from earlier in the day. Phoenix eventually got bored and migrated to the couch in there, aiming to review what little material he had on the New Hampshire murder. In relatively short order, he found himself lying down with photographs and official memos spilling out of the folder he clutched over his chest. His eyes drifted shut.
“Nick.”
“Wha-?” He sat up. Half of the case material fell onto the floor.
“Can you do the math part?”
“Huh?” He rubbed his eyes. “Pearly’s homework?”
“I corrected everything else.”
He caught himself before cracking a joke about a grown woman unable to do fourth grade math. Maya had never gone to a real school either. She was sensitive about it, not incapable.
“Sure,” He walked over to the desk and took the chair she had just vacated. He blinked a few times at the worksheets, fighting his eyes' tendency to glaze over. “Maya, would you get me a glass of water, please?”
“Yeah, of course.” She filled a glass from the tap. “Another headache?”
“Yep.”
The page was colorful and its margins overflowed with cheerful clip-art, but he could tell from the angry way that she had scribbled out her mistakes, that the mood was not contagious. Pearls had missed all but one of the questions so far. On the current page was a list of fractions written out in sets of two. She was supposed to circle the larger of each pair, but always chose the one with the biggest denominator. Phoenix put the pen down. He’d better set aside some time to go through it with her; Crossing out an entire page with a red marker wouldn’t help. Maya returned with a glass of water and a bottle of Tylenol.
“Maya Fey, you are a saint.”
She gave a weak smile. She looked as tired as he felt. “So, how’d she do?”
“Not great,” Phoenix admitted. “Fractions are giving her a lot of trouble. But, I struggled with them too, at that age. I’m gonna sit down with her and go through all of these tomorrow.”
“Better review clocks while you’re at it.”
Phoenix chuckled, remembering Pearls’ mistake at lunch, “Do we have to? It’s kinda cute.”
“She has to catch up to the other ten year olds, Nick. They’re gonna eat her alive.”
His smile faded. She was in a really weird mood tonight. They had been pretty careful, he thought, to consider all the costs and benefits of putting Pearl in a fourth grade classroom. They even compromised by only doing it part-time, to sort of ease her in. It was a measured choice. Now that the start of school was closing in, Maya seemed to be having second thoughts. If she felt like Pearls should be held back a year, that was worth talking about, but he doubted any productive conversation could be had tonight. He rubbed his wrist apprehensively.
“Hey,” Maya noticed, “You’re not wearing your watch.”
He froze.
“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen it in a while.” She put her hands on her hips, “Nick, you didn’t break it did you?”
“No, but… You’re not gonna like this.”
“I’m not gonna like what? ”
“I had to…” he couldn’t look her in the eyes. “I had to sell it.”
She stared at him. Phoenix broke out into a cold sweat.
“I was completely out of money and I hadn’t been eating, and-- and--” He stammered, “Then you and Pearls needed train tickets from Kurain and I just…”
“You sold it?! ” Her voice shook, “You just… sold a gift from my dead sister?”
“I didn’t want to! Maya,” he pleaded, “Look, something had to give.”
“Then it should have been something else!” Her eyes filled with tears, “Nick, something always works out.”
“You don’t get it,” His jaw hurt from being clenched too tight.
“How could I?!” The tears spilled over. “You don’t tell me anything! We’re supposed to be in this together, but you never talk to me !”
The NDA made it a bit difficult to argue with that one. “Maya, I wish I could tell you everything, but I signed a contract and I have to honor--”
“I’m not talking about the fucking NDA!”
He was taken aback. Language like that was unusual for Maya. She was more upset than he’d initially realized.
She wiped her eyes dry and huffed. “ You don’t get it, Nick.”
The front door slammed behind her. Phoenix walked wordlessly back into the office. He stood up in the center of the room long enough that his feet began to hurt, then sat on the floor in the same spot. Their lives had always been stressful, but it didn’t feel the same anymore. That sort of never-a-dull-moment lifestyle used to suit him. The non-stop action was exciting, once. He wondered if this is what it meant to get old.
The stakes for failure had increased so gradually and over such a long period of time, he hadn’t noticed anything change until one day he woke up feeling like he was standing at the edge of a cliff. Except falling wouldn’t only mean damning himself-- Maya and Pearls were irrevocably tied to him. Being poor didn’t just mean sleepless nights and insubstantial meals anymore, it meant there would be no school supplies for little Pearly. His inability to pay the rent didn’t only lead to feelings of worthlessness for him. Now, it meant forcing Maya to watch as he killed off the last part of her sister that still moved in the world: her law practice.
Some movement in his peripheral vision brought Phoenix back to the present moment. It was a single, wilted leaf falling off of Charley. He crawled over and sat, with his back against the wall, next to Mia’s favorite plant. He picked up the fallen leaf by its stem and rolled it between his fingers. He had been meaning to prune it for a few days, but hadn’t quite got around to it. Charley looked a bit better today actually, now that the leaf had fallen off.
Notes:
Two chapters this week because this one is short and sad! Starting next week there'll be an update every Friday.
Chapter Text
Phoenix awoke with a jolt on the floor of his office. He was annoyed to have managed that for the second time in two days. Something fell off of his chest as he sat up. It was a leaf. He placed it in Charley’s potting soil. His phone told him that the time was 6:15 and that he had no missed calls. That was odd; He was pretty sure Edgeworth had promised to call last night with an update. There was a bad crick in his neck. He stood and hobbled to his desk where the Tylenol was kept. Mia’s chair offered only a slight improvement to the floor, in terms of lumbar support. The phone rang.
“Wright and Co. Law Offices,” he answered.
Silence.
“Hello? …Hello?”
The line went dead. Phoenix shrugged and hung up. It was a bit early to be taking calls anyway. He found the composition notebook with no cover buried under a stack of manila envelopes. He flipped to a new page and started writing:
-> See Falcon
-> Update from M.E.?
-> Call VPD - lead detective
-> Math HW w/ Pearls
-> Apologize to Maya
-> Groceries
Phoenix set the pen down. Items for his to-do list were swimming through his head faster than he could wrangle them onto the page. Certainly faster than he could rank them in order of priority. He laid his head on the desk and stared at a stain on the wall. His eyes unfocused and the discolored splotch seemed to grow. Raindrops tapped against the window on the opposite wall. Phoenix flipped around to stare out of it instead. Weird, late summer weather they’d been having. It seemed to oscillate between scorching hot, without a cloud in sight, to severe thunderstorms that lasted the entire day. The rain hadn’t properly kicked off yet-- just a light drizzle-- but experience told him that it soon would.
He allowed himself some time to space out. To stare through the window and appreciate the colors and sounds of an impending rainstorm, but he found that he couldn’t enjoy it. He cracked his neck and stood up. In the reception area was a half-full thermos of room temperature coffee. It tasted like sand, but he finished it anyway. Next began his scavenger hunt for the extension number, written down somewhere , that connected to the Vanesland Homicide department. He eventually found it, written in purple gel pen on the back of a scrap paper he’d used to teach Pearls how to convert decimals to fractions. It was far too early in the day for anything else on his to-do list, but luckily New Hampshire was three hours ahead.
Still, he was stuck on hold for nearly twenty minutes before being put through to Detective Fischer.
“Phoenix Wright…” He mused, “Why does that sound familiar?”
“I’m Axel Falcon’s attorney.”
“Oh! Of course.” Fischer didn’t seem to mind that he was talking to the defense, “What can I do for you, Mr. Wright?”
“Actually, I was hoping you could help me make sense of a letter I received from your department,” Phoenix suppressed his annoyance, “I’m confused because it seems to be a letter telling me that you can’t mail me anything… So…”
“Huh,” Fischer took a second. “Oh, did you request some documents or something?”
“I… Yeah? I need some files on the Cicero murder. I am defending the suspect.”
“Yeah! Okay, rookie mistake,” the detective patronized. “We’re not used to explaining this to lawyers, but I guess you’re out of state so that makes sense. We can’t actually post sensitive documents. So, if somebody needs access to police records they have to come pick them up.”
“Oo-kay…” Phoenix felt his patience waning, “Could you not just fax them to me instead?”
“No. Again, New Hampshire state law prohibits that sort of thing. It’s much more secure to hand the documents off in person where we can verify someone’s identity.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “How long has that been a law?”
“Oh, ‘bout a decade-- maybe a little less.”
“So, just to clarify, there is absolutely no way for me to get a copy of, like, the autopsy report or photographs of the crime scene without physically picking them up… in New Hampshire?”
“Nope. Wish I could help you out here, but there’s really no getting around it.” Fischer clicked his tongue, “But, hey! When you do pick ‘em up, I’ll be there with bells on, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” Phoenix didn’t quite hang up on him, but it was close.
This did not bode well. Falcon’s extradition was being put off until his sentence was up in the state of California. In theory, that bought them a few months, but in practice-- with prison overcrowding and budget cuts-- he guessed Falcon would be on the prison transfer bus sooner rather than later.
* * *
When the guard brought Falcon into the room and unlocked his cuffs, Phoenix felt a lot more nervous than he had yesterday, when he was left alone with Diego. Strange that he was more comfortable around a man guilty of conspiracy to commit, than someone innocent of another murder charge. It was still a relatively new experience for him-- being left alone in a room with prisoners. Bizarre reform bills and an overall lack of funding forced the detention center to do away with the old system of dividing prisoners from civilians. He used to speak with his clients across a pane of bulletproof glass. Now, when Phoenix needed to interview someone, they sat together at the same steel table, bolted into the floor. He was still working out exactly how that made him feel. The answer seemed to change on a daily basis. Today, it made him uneasy.
“You look like a man with great news!” Falcon’s voice bounced off the walls.
“I’m… working on it,” Phoenix gave him a smile-- nothing was over yet.
“Good, that’s what I like to hear.” He dropped himself into his chair, attached via metal arm to the table. “Tell me how you’re gonna prove my innocence.”
Falcon was very fond of impossible questions.
“First, I need to know how the prosecution is going to try to prove your guilt. They say they have your fingerprints on the murder weapon.”
“What is the murder weapon?”
“Hunting knife. It belonged to the victim.” Phoenix flipped to a new page in his notebook.
“Well they’re not my prints.” He folded his arms. “Can’t be, because I didn’t even know the guy.”
Psychelocks.
That wasn’t exactly a new thing -- Falcon seemed to be a pathological liar. As part of their defense, Wright had had him officially diagnosed with kleptomania, but he’d deliberately avoided any kind of tests that might undermine Falcon’s testimony. It was admittedly an underhanded tactic, but the prosecution had their chance to call it out and failed to do so. That was on them, he convinced himself. Edgeworth would’ve caught it. Now, Phoenix had a dilemma on his hands. Until then, Axel had never lied about the murder.
“You were in New Hampshire at the time though, correct?”
“Yeah, I was driving through. Don’t know if LYNCHPIN kept ‘em, but I had to make a record of all the truck stops and weigh stations and whatnot.”
“And you’re absolutely certain you never met Henry Cicero?”
“Who’s absolutely certain of anything?” He imitated Phoenix’s voice.
“…To the best of your knowledge.”
“Sure, to the best of my knowledge, I never met the guy.”
He was lying. Phoenix couldn’t believe it. He knew that Axel wasn’t guilty of the murder. The magatama had confirmed that as surely as it confirmed he was lying now. He’d perfected the art of direct questions after the Matt Engarde incident. In one of their earlier meetings, Phoenix had asked him point blank, "Did you, Axel Falcon, commit murder?"
"No," had been his answer.
"Did you commission someone else to commit murder for you?"
"No."
"Do you have any reason to believe you'll be found guilty in a fair trial?"
"That's really more your area, isn't it?" He'd folded his arms and concluded the interview.
Nothing about this guy was totally black and white. More than that, Phoenix had simply never liked Axel. He believed in him, as far as that went-- he believed in all of his clients, but Falcon just wasn’t a good person. He had a mean streak. Phoenix had been on the receiving end of his short temper, and it wasn’t pretty. Though he was innocent of murder, it was easy to believe that he was capable of violence.
Phoenix backed off on that particular issue. “Alright. Well, as far as the prosecution's strategy, I really don’t have anything else to work with. I need to get to New Hampshire to see any of their evidence.”
Falcon frowned, “Pain in the ass law, that.”
“Yeah. At the rate things are going, you might beat me there.”
An edge of concern crept into his voice, “I’ve still got three months on my sentence.”
“It’s pretty likely that you won’t serve all of it. Prisons-- well I don’t have to tell you -- they’re overcrowded and underfunded. They’ve been letting a lot of people out early for good behavior, just to lower costs really.” Phoenix sighed, “That would be good news for you if you didn’t have another state lined up waiting to put you on trial.”
“Good behavior,” Falcon spat. “That’s a nice reward, isn’t it?”
“Sorry.”
There was an awkward silence.
“Sheesh!” he yelled loud enough to make Phoenix jump. “Don’t you have any good news?”
“They say no news is good news.”
“You didn’t bring me no news, Wright. You brought me bad news.” He shrugged. “Come on, lift my spirits, already!”
“Uh…”
“What about a personal anecdote? Tell me something good that’s happened to you, man. If nothing good’s coming to me.”
“Well, I uh…” Phoenix shifted in his seat. He didn’t like sharing personal information with Falcon.
“Come on, are you really gonna deprive me of news from the outside world? I’m dyin’ here. Let me live vicariously.”
“Good news, huh?”
“Yeah!”
"Well," Phoenix began, "I might have come into some money."
“There we go!” His face split into a grin. “Tell me about it.”
“Uh… A relative passed away,”
"Oh, sorry to hear that."
"It's alright, I barely knew him. Actually, I never even met him in person. But, for some reason, he's left me a lot of money in the will."
"Score," said Falcon.
"Yeah… But it comes with some conditions, you know? And I'm still trying to figure out the legal implications of everything. So, I don't know yet if I'll take the money-- even though I could really use it."
Falcon's face scrunched in confusion. "Like what conditions, for example?"
"Oh, just..." his mind had gone blank, "You know. Conditions."
"Well that’s a bunch of cryptic bullshit.” Falcon's moods changed on a dime. “Get the fuck outta here with your half-assed stories.”
* * *
When he got out of the detention center Phoenix saw that the rain had graduated from a light drizzle to a downpour. He wasn’t prepared to bike through this weather all the way back to the office, but no immediate alternative presented itself. The bus line to and from the detention center only ran on Tuesdays and Thursdays-- not that he could afford the fare anyway. His bike was already slick with rain before he could unlock it. He affixed his briefcase to the handlebars with a fraying bungee cord, threaded around twice to keep the busted latch closed.
It had taken him half an hour to get to the detention center this morning, and that was with a tail wind. Now Phoenix was squinting into gusts that drove raindrops into his eyes. His jacket flapped behind him like a blue flag in the middle of an ocean, just barely more saturated than his surroundings. Fortunately, there were very few cars on the road with him. He would have been in the bike lane, but everything within two feet of the sidewalk was underwater.
The wind abruptly changed direction and very nearly knocked him over. A stream of curses evaporated as soon as they left his mouth. Phoenix could barely hear himself. What he did hear, as he shot across a four way stop, was the prolonged squeal of car tires losing traction on the road. Its headlights were close enough to blind him when he turned to look. He panicked.
A flash of red and the awareness that his bicycle was no longer beneath him.
He hit the ground and momentum dragged him another four feet across the pavement before he came to a stop.
The car slid to a halt as well. Its windshield wipers moved frantically back and forth, the car’s way of waving its arms in hysterics. When they reached the apex of their arc across the glass, Phoenix saw a familiar face behind the wheel. The hazard lights came on. He dropped onto his back and clasped a hand over his racing heart. His mouth, hanging open in shock, filled with rainwater. When he spit this out he saw that it had mixed with blood. The car door opened and shut and Miles Edgeworth dashed out into the street.
“What was that?!” His arms matched those on the windshield behind him, “You could’ve been killed!”
Phoenix gasped for air, sprawled out on the road. He wanted to shout back, to cite the traffic violations Edgeworth had just performed , but he couldn’t get his voice to cooperate. He couldn’t just lay there forever, either. He managed to stand up and they stared at each other for a moment, wide-eyed and pale-faced. Phoenix had almost died. Edgeworth had almost killed him. He tried to limp over to his bike, but found out the hard way that his left foot could not support his full weight. The pain seared a temporary hole in his memory; How had he fallen down again? He felt a hand on his back.
“Okay, here we go,” Edgeworth coaxed an arm over his shoulders and lifted him back to his feet. “Up we get.”
He had expected his voice to be steady, but he sobbed more than asked, “Is it broken?”
“No,” he answered, without looking, “It’s just a sprain. You’ll be alright.”
Phoenix was steered toward his car and deposited into the passenger seat. Edgeworth rolled up the hem of his trousers to assess the damage. No bones stuck through the skin. He prodded at his ankle and Phoenix sniffled miserably. That was about as much first aid as he knew how to perform.
“Wait here while I get your bike,” he ordered.
Phoenix watched him through the fogged-up window. His briefcase had escaped in the crash and its contents now littered the street. Edgeworth collected all of the papers that he could-- though a few fell apart in his hands as he attempted to rescue them from the gutter. He returned to the car and placed the ruined briefcase and papers on the floor behind Phoenix’s seat before going back for the bike. Its handlebars looked misaligned and it did not move smoothly when he wheeled it over. Edgeworth’s car was certainly not meant to carry a bike, but with perseverance and a few choice expletives, he managed to wedge it in the backseat.
It was a quiet drive. For a long time the only sound inside the car was the rhythmic clicking of the hazard lights which he forgot to turn off. Edgeworth’s facade of calm and confidence throughout the encounter had been thin at its best, and now fully crumbled away. His breathing was accelerated and his knuckles white around the steering wheel. They remained well below the speed limit. Phoenix watched him cycle through three states: staring straight ahead, sparing concerned glances at Phoenix, and checking with dismay in the rearview mirror where his bike had tracked mud on the seats and the headliner.
“I hope,” Edgeworth finally broke the silence, “that notebook wasn’t too important.”
Phoenix twisted in his seat to look at the battered composition notebook on the floor behind him. It was sopping wet. The ink on the first page ran until it was illegible and the binding hung on by a thread.
“It was already like that.” Phoenix faced forward. “Mostly.”
They stopped at a red light and the windshield wipers were slowed by an automatic sensor. Phoenix experimentally checked the range of motion in his left foot. It didn’t move far in any direction, but it hurt . He tipped his head back and took a deep breath in. The light turned green.
“That was really close back there,” he exhaled.
“Yes.”
As shaken as Edgeworth sounded, it could have been his own near-death experience. Phoenix watched him put on the turn signal to switch lanes and noticed his hands were still shaking from the adrenaline.
“It wasn’t your fault, though.” He tried, “I didn’t look both ways.”
“I was looking and I didn’t even see you. That’s much worse.”
They continued in silence.
“You missed the turn,” Phoenix observed. “My office is that way.”
“We’re not going to your office, Wright. You need x-rays.”
“What?! No no no no,” Phoenix pressed his foot against imaginary breaks. “No hospitals! You said it was a sprain! Just take me to my office, I’ll put some ice on it.”
“I only said that to calm you down!” Neither of them were especially calm. “I’m not a doctor-- What the hell do I know?”
“Pull over, I’ll walk back.”
“You literally can’t walk!”
“Then I’ll hop!”
“We are going to the ER and that is final!" Miles shouted. “Give me your phone.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it.” He held out his hand.
Phoenix eventually caved and handed it over. Edgeworth hit 1 on speed dial.
“No!” He tried to take the phone back but it was already too late. Maya sure answered quickly for being so mad at him.
“What do you want?” He heard her ask.
“Goddammit, Edgeworth,” His hands were swatted away. “Give it back!”
“Er.. Hello Miss Fey, this is Miles Edgeworth.” He sounded remarkably calm and collected for a man actively engaged in a slap fight. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but I’m afraid there’s been an accident. Mr. Wright has crashed his bike-- well, it wasn’t his fault-- I accidentally hit him with my car.”
“Oh my god is he okay?”
“Well--”
“I’m fine!"
“He may have a broken leg.”
“Give me the phone!”
“I’m driving him-- Stop that! I’m driving him to the ER now for some x-rays. I feel just terrible about the whole thing. If you-- Phoenix Wright, so help me God, I will pull this car over and finish the job!" He took a deep breath and resumed, “Obviously, I’ll pay the medical bills, as his injuries are my fault. But I was wondering, could I impose upon you to collect his bicycle? Neither he nor it are in any shape to ride home and I imagine he’ll have his hands full with crutches or the like.”
Phoenix flopped back against the headrest in defeat.
“Um… Which hospital are you going to? It would have to be within walking distance of the apartment-- I don’t have a license,” Maya said. “Or a car.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Edgeworth pretended to have forgotten. “Well, don’t worry, I’ll deliver him and his things to the apartment once we’re through. Shall I give you a call when we’re headed in your direction?”
“Yeah that would be-- yeah. Thank you.”
“It’s no trouble. Goodbye.”
He tried to hand the phone back to Phoenix, but he was no longer interested in accepting it. He stared out the window, knees pointed firmly to the door. Edgeworth rolled his eyes and dropped it into his lap.
* * *
Miles parked as close to the hospital entrance as he could, but it was still a bit of a hike to get Wright through the door. His leg had worsened on the drive over-- or more likely, the shock that allowed him to ignore the pain earlier had worn off. Miles was quite out of breath when they got to the front desk, so he let Wright do the talking until the matter of payment came up.
“And who is your health insurance provider?”
“Just bill me directly, please,” Edgeworth cut in.
“How many times do I have to tell you-- I can’t take your money,” Phoenix protested.
“Wright. Maya already knows that you’re injured and that I’ve offered to cover the expenses. How will it look if you go home without treatment?”
Phoenix finally understood the point of that phone call. If he hadn't kept interrupting himself during the call to make open threats of violence, it would’ve been almost classy of him.
“You son of a bitch.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” Edgeworth shrugged. “I’m irredeemable.”
They weren’t in the waiting room for long, but Phoenix tried to check his watch three separate times. The staff soon put him in a wheelchair and took him back for x-rays. Miles watched calmly until he was out of sight then dropped into a chair. His worst moments often came when he was alone with too much time to think. The severity of their situation crashed down on him, and was promptly eclipsed by the severity he imagined.
I almost killed Phoenix Wright . He couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He would’ve been charged with vehicular manslaughter at least. He would’ve gone to jail and Phoenix would’ve gone into the ground. He pictured the funeral. Pearl Fey was about the same age Miles had been when his father died. He put a shaking hand over his eyes and attempted to collect himself. It felt like he was suffocating. He rose from his chair and made it halfway to the door before he realized that he would be leaving Wright with no way home. His car keys felt heavy in his hand. He couldn’t drive in this condition-- it had been reckless of him to drive to the hospital in the first place. He pulled out his phone and called Dick Gumshoe.
* * *
Phoenix was surprised to see the Detective in the waiting area. Edgeworth was nowhere to be found. His absence, although unexpected, couldn’t really be described as surprising. He was a busy guy. No doubt with much better uses of his time than sitting around in a waiting room all afternoon.
“Hey, pal!”
“Hello, detective.”
“You ready to go? I’m supposed to drive you home. Mr. Edgeworth helped me move all your stuff to my truck.”
“Yeah I guess so.”
“Great!” Gumshoe turned to the receptionist, “Hey, do you validate parking?”
She did not. As they scrounged in their pockets, under the floor mats, and inside the glovebox for enough loose change to pay the parking meter, Phoenix could have sworn he saw Edgeworth's bright red car still parked near the front.
Detective Gumshoe drove a dark green 1977 Chevy Silverado-- not that Phoenix could have identified the make and model by himself. Those details and many more were included in a monologue that had gone on for five minutes and counting. Gumshoe was exceptionally proud of the truck-- a little odd for a vehicle that was almost thirty years old.
“Yep,” he stroked the dash lovingly, “She used to belong to my dad.”
“It’s not the kind of thing I’d expect a detective to drive,” Phoenix observed.
“Woah!” Gumshoe whipped his head around, “How’d you know my old man was a detective, pal?”
“I didn’t..? I meant you.”
“Oh.” He thought about it for a minute, then chuckled, “I guess that makes more sense.”
Chapter 5
Summary:
In which Miles Edgeworth has three mental breakdowns in one day (but that's probably normal right?)
Chapter Text
Miles drove in a state of highway hypnosis. “Picture Book” by the Kinks blared through his radio. Gumshoe must have changed it off of the classical music station when he’d driven the car back to Miles’s apartment. It took real courage for him to hand over the keys yesterday. After crashing into Wright, Miles considered himself a danger on the road and asked the detective to take him home. Gumshoe’s erratic driving convinced him that he was the very least of the dangers on the road. So, today he was behind the wheel again.
He fought morning traffic for nearly forty minutes before pulling into his reserved space in the underground lot at the prosecutors’ office. It occurred to him as he parked, that he had meant to drive somewhere else. “Magic Carpet Ride” came on the radio. Miles’s life was a cruel joke. He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel and wept.
Ten minutes later he breezed past the 12th floor reception desk, head high and eyes clear. Gustav Holst’s The Planets played softly from a radio on the secretary’s desk. He recognized the movement, Saturn, but couldn't recall what it was supposed to be “the bringer of.” Inside his office it was still bothering him, though he could no longer hear the music. Mars was the bringer of war, Venus was peace, Jupiter jollity, and Saturn… He sat down and rubbed his eyes.
“What the hell is Saturn supposed to be?”
“Excuse me?”
He jumped. One of the administrative assistants was poking her head through the open door. She looked just as startled as he was.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Miles stood up. “What did you need?”
“Cynthia would like to know what time to schedule your interview with Ms Katz today.”
“Ms Katz…” He repeated, hoping utterance of the name would jog his memory.
“Yes,” she took cautious step into the office and prompted, “Your witness for the Devereaux trial next--”
“Right. Yes. Thank you.” Now what was the question again? “Oh-- no. No, today’s not going to work. I shouldn’t even be here, I just needed to get a few things from the office.”
“Oh,” She looked disappointed. Probably dreading the tedium of rearranging his calendar for the seventh time this week.
“I do apologize, Miss…”
He didn’t know her name. Should he know her name? His fears were assuaged when she brightened and extended her hand.
“Knapp. Gretta Knapp. I’m very much looking forward to working with you, Mr. Edgeworth.”
So she was new then. He wondered if she was a student. The office sometimes gave internships. She did seem awfully keen to make a good impression. Knapp was very smartly dressed-- a frilly red blouse tucked into a charcoal gray pencil skirt. Miles could tell that her shoes were knock-offs, but the starting wages for an administrative assistant couldn’t be expected to cover Louboutins anyway.
“Yes, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Please convey my apologies to… uh...” Miles pinched the bridge of his nose. His headache had returned with a vengeance and momentarily blocked out the name.
“To Ms. Katz?”
“No. Well her too, I guess. I meant uhm…"
The hell’s the matter with me?
Knapp looked worried. “Cynthia?”
“Yes! Her. Please tell Cynthia I’m sorry for switching the schedule again.”
Miles shook his head at this botched interaction and watched the young lady make a tactical retreat. He’d worked with Cynthia for three years now-- not closely , but still. He sat in his chair and scanned the room until he remembered what he had decided to walk up the stairs to fetch: a blue binder labeled AP-13. Miles returned to the hallway just as “Saturn” ended. He could hear the classical music radio host while he walked past reception to the stairwell.
“That was movement number five of Gustav Holst’s The Planets: Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age. Up next, we’ll hear the Boston Symphony…”
* * *
Back in the underground parking garage, Miles’s footsteps echoed loudly on the walk to his car. He caught himself staring at the exhaust pipe as he approached. Walking past it-- eyes up-- he got into the car. Seatbelt on. Mirror adjusted. Key in ignition. Turn.
The key was gripped tightly in his hand, but he couldn’t make himself move it.
Turn…
He squeezed his eyes shut. Turn, goddamn you .
The radio sprang to life. Gumshoe had definitely changed its presets. “For What It’s Worth" was just starting. The opening harmonic riff resonated through the car, before it was abruptly cut off. He got out and walked around back. On his hands and knees, Miles carefully examined the exhaust pipe. Empty. Obviously. He popped the trunk. Inside was a road flare, a tire iron, his knife (cleaned so thoroughly it shone), and an empty garment bag from the dry cleaners. Enough already. You’re supposed to be over this.
He got back into the car. Seatbelt. Mirror. Key. Ignition. He’d wasted over a full minute, judging by Buffalo Springfield’s progress into the song. He wasted another trying to collect himself.
Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when--
He let out a low, guttural noise that crescendoed into a scream. Miles’s first blow to the radio glanced off the volume knob and actually turned it up.
Stop! Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.
He drew his fist back and hit it again and again and again.
“Stop!” The song wailed. He kept punching until it did.
His breathing was ragged and shallow without the music to cover it up. Blood stood out on his knuckles, white around the gear shift. The outburst suddenly struck him as horribly embarrassing. He braced his hand on the back of the passenger seat and looked over his shoulder. Nobody there. He reversed and drove slowly through the exit, listening to his tires screech conspicuously at every turn in the parking garage until he was back out on the street.
* * *
Dick Gumshoe drummed his hands against the big steering wheel of his ‘77 Silverado. His favorite radio station was blaring loud enough to be heard over the wind rushing through the cabin, and then some. “Movin' Out” was playing. He loved that song.
“Is that all you get for your money?” He and Billy Joel wondered together.
When he used to drive a patrol car, he would turn the sirens on to skip red lights. His truck didn’t afford him that same privilege, but he’d retained the habit anyway. He blew through an intersection without noticing the cars that had swerved to avoid collision.
He loved the chorus, but his favorite part was Sergeant O’Leary’s verse. He felt represented when he heard it and he didn’t realize that was a bad thing.
“At night he becomes a bartender.”
A pedestrian had to leap out of his way.
“He works at… bu-dah-buh-buh… Sullivan Street! Across from the medical center.” He could never remember all the words. He made up for it with enthusiasm, “Yeaaah! He’s tradin’ in his Chevy for a-- Huh?”
Dick turned his head to watch Mr. Edgeworth’s car pass him, moving fast in the opposite direction. When he faced forward again, he was drifting into oncoming traffic.
“Whoops!” He jerked the steering wheel to the right, and put a hand through the window to wave off the people honking at him.
Gumshoe’s phone rang from underneath the passenger seat. Retrieving it was a bit hairy-- he couldn’t see the road while he ducked to get it-- but eventually he emerged successful (and only hit one little mile marker sign in the process).
“Yyyyellow!”
A few seconds of silence.
“Don’t ever answer your phone like that again, Detective.”
It was Mr. Edgeworth, the Crusher of Whimsy.
“Sorry, sir.”
“No,” Edgeworth heaved a sigh, “ I’m sorry. I realize I’m running late. I’m sure you’ve been waiting at the archives for close to an hour by now.”
“Oh…” Gumshoe had forgotten all about that. He was on his way to the precinct. “It’s no biggie.”
“Yes, but I need a favor. I’m sorry to make you fight morning traffic again, but I left something at my apartment. Could you swing by and get it? Show the doorman your credentials, and he’ll let you in.”
“Sure thing, sir!” Gumshoe perked up. He was much closer to Mr. Edgeworth’s apartment than he was to the archive library. “I’ll be so quick, you won’t even notice I’m gone!”
“Great, thank--”
Gumshoe hung up, tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, and did an illegal U-turn without checking his mirrors. He hummed the mission impossible theme and tapped the wheel. His phone rang again.
“Yye-- Detective Gumshoe, here.”
Several seconds of silence.
“Are you forgetting something, Detective?”
“Yes, sir. Always, sir,” he placated. “Which thing are you talking about?”
“You didn’t let me finish telling you what you’re supposed to pick up.”
“Oh! Yeah that would definitely help, huh?” He laughed it off. “What am I getting?”
“In my bedroom, on my nightstand, there's a folder with-- or actually-- all the documents may be spread around, I don’t really remember. Just bring me any paper that you find in my room.”
That didn’t sound right. “You want me to… go into your room?”
“No, I don’t! ” he snapped, “I really don’t. But I left my brain on my pillow this morning so I guess this is just the way it’s gonna be. Can you do this one thing? Please? For God’s sake? Great.”
Edgeworth hung up.
His room was a mess, but it was clear to Dick that this was not its natural state. Books stood in orderly rows, free of dust, and only one day's worth of laundry had accumulated on the floor. The disarray was new. On his nightstand, a manila folder overflowed with maps, autopsy results, evidence logs, transcripts of police interviews-- the works. About a dozen documents were spread out on his bed as well. Dick pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and got to work. He gathered everything into a neat pile on the desk, trying where possible to place things back in the order that they seemed to have been removed from the folder. When he had done that, he looked around the room and wondered briefly if it would be overstepping to tidy up a bit. He could make the bed, fold the clothes.
“Yeah right,” he said out loud. “Mr. Edgeworth would kill me.”
He did one last pass of the room and was glad that he did-- The second page of an evidence list stuck out of the nightstand’s top drawer. He pulled it open and noticed a few pill bottles underneath the paper inside. Dick Gumshoe was, first and foremost, a detective. It didn’t occur to him that what he was doing was invasive. He was primed by the last ten minutes spent combing through the room, literally collecting evidence. He didn’t think twice about reading the labels on the bottles.
One of them was empty. It said Ambien and in angry block letters underneath was printed, “NO REFILLS.” He recognized them as sleeping pills. The other said Proloft. Antidepressants. They had been prescribed recently and the name of the same doctor was written on both. So was, “MILES EDGEWORTH.” Gumshoe finally realized what he was doing and hurried to put them back into the drawer. He slammed it shut, collected his pile of documents and headed for the archives building, intent on forgetting what he’d seen.
He pulled into the archive library parking lot, just as Edgeworth disappeared through the door. Dick caught up to him at the front desk where he was signing some kind of registry.
“That was fast,” he remarked. “Well done, Detective.”
“Thank you, sir!” Gumshoe beamed.
Mr. Edgeworth was always most free with his compliments around an hour after he’d lashed out in anger. That didn’t make it any less pleasant to be recognized and appreciated. Edgeworth pulled out a pack of sugar-free gum and popped one into his mouth. He even offered a piece to Gumshoe before putting them away again. The archive librarian returned to the desk.
“Alright Mr. Edgeworth, the microfilm and the readers for it are all up on the third floor. The elevator is just down that hall; Take the first left and you can’t miss it.”
“And, ah,” He cleared his throat. “Are the stairs nearby?”
“No, the stairwell is kinda hard to find, actually. If you go all the way to the end of that first hallway, you take a right, then you go through a big gray door. That’ll actually take you down a few steps. Follow the corridor and it’ll take you around to a white door that leads into the stairwell. It says ‘fire exit,’ but it won’t actually set off any alarms.” She offered the unsolicited opinion, “You’re much better off taking the elevator.”
“Thank you,” he turned stiffly to leave.
“Oh, Mr. Edgeworth-- I’m sorry, but you’ll have to spit out your gum.”
* * *
Miles’s legs shook as they approached the top floor. It was fortunate that he had Detective Gumshoe to be his pack mule; He doubted that he could’ve made it up the steps carrying a stack of files. Not quite ten in the morning and Miles had already climbed and descended 27 flights of stairs. He thought about asking for a temporary office on the first floor.
Of course, his real trouble-- the one from which all others stemmed-- was that he had not slept in days. Mild insomnia was a common side effect apparently, but according to his doctor, it was supposed to go away after a few weeks. Well, two and a half weeks later, it actually seemed to be getting worse. Over the last three nights, he might have netted a total of six hours of sleep. Non-consecutively.
In response, he'd developed a new habit this week. In the wee hours of the morning, when he finally gave up on ever getting a good night’s rest again, he’d taken to researching the effects of sleep deprivation on human health. He did not like what he learned. It had just become one more thing to lie awake at night worrying about, and the circular nature of that problem vexed him enormously. Exhaustion plagued every muscle in his body, but that was not the worst part; His mental faculties had noticeably dulled.
When they finally reached the third floor, he looked at his watch simply for an excuse to stop to catch his breath.
“So,” Gumshoe dropped the files onto a desk with a resounding thunk , “What are we doing?”
“Four things at once,” Miles tried to ignore the assortment of postgrad students glaring daggers at them across the otherwise silent room. “I need you to help me stay organized.”
“Hmmm. Maybe you want someone else for that?”
“Can’t.” He took a seat at a microfilm reader. “This has to do with that special project I’ve had you working on. Remember what I told you?”
“You said it’s top secret!”
“Shh! I appreciate the enthusiasm, but this is a library and I have a headache. Try to lower your voice.”
“You said it’s top secret,” he whispered.
“For now, yes. The fewer the people who know about it, the better. You’re already in the loop so I need your help.”
Gumshoe’s eyes brightened, but he managed to keep his voice at a hoarse whisper, “You can count on me, sir!”
“Wonderful.”
He sifted through the material Gumshoe brought from the apartment until he found a list of names and dates for every Victor-Something, or Something-Speck, to ever live in the state of California over the last 60 years-- including people who had their names changed. It was a long list with a vanishingly low probability of helping them in any way.
“This is what you’ll be working on, Detective. I need you to find obituaries, birth certificates-- some kind of documentation for every one of these people. And keep an organized list of the catalogue number for each film you find them on. What I do not want,” he pointed in Gumshoe’s face, “is to later find out one of these names is important and discover you’ve written a long list of catalogue numbers without telling me which is which. We’re not doing this again, okay? I want a name, date, and right next to that I want to know where to find him.”
“Yes, sir.” Gumshoe’s enthusiasm waned slightly.
* * *
The last stop of the day was a new one for Miles. He didn’t like new things. The sign said open, but the door wouldn’t budge. He squinted through his own reflection in the glass to see inside the cramped pawn shop. The man behind the register held up one finger, and pressed a button on the underside of the counter. There was a loud buzz and it opened at last. An entirely redundant bell rang on the inside of the door as he stepped through.
“Buying or selling?” The man asked. As an afterthought he added, “Or pawning.”
“Buying.” It wasn’t an afterthought, but he spaced it out like one to add, “If you have anything decent.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A watch.”
“We don’t have anything as fancy as yours,” He stared with open greed at Miles’s Rolex.
“That’s fine. It’s not for me.”
“Over there,” the man pointed. “Unless you’re looking for ladies’ watches. They’re under the counter up front.”
He moved to stand behind the locked glass cabinet that held a range of men's accessories: watches, cufflinks, and tie pins among other things. Most of them were worthless, but there were a few items inside, Miles was alarmed to realize, that he would happily wear-- So long as he didn’t know where they came from. He didn’t have to agonize over the watches for very long. There was a single, obvious winner.
“How much?”
“For which one?”
Miles shot him a look. He’d just spent six hours at the archives with Gumshoe. His tolerance for dumb questions was fully exhausted.
“If you mean that one,” the salesman gave a coy smile, “It’s five hundred dollars.”
“Wrap it up for me.”
He whistled while he worked. Probably happy just to have made a sale, but definitely pleased to avoid arguing over the price. The man would have haggled, Miles felt fairly sure of that, but he just didn’t have the patience today. The tissue paper he wrapped the box in crinkled at the slightest touch, fighting bravely against the man’s whistled tune for the title of loudest, most irritating noise in the room.
Miles was pushed, unwilling, into a memory. It was not one of the first trials he’d ever prosecuted, but one of the first that Manfred von Karma had actually watched him win. It had been difficult. Success hinged on his ability to conceal a lot of information from a veteran defense attorney who, von Karma implied, would be tough to deceive. Everything went perfectly. The verdict was handed down in less than an hour. Von Karma did not congratulate him, but that was to be expected. Perfection was the bare minimum. It didn’t spoil his mood, he would just have to be better than perfect next time. Miles whistled “In the Hall of the Mountain King” while they walked together. Von Karma indicated for him to lead the way down a deserted corridor to an exit at the rear of the courthouse. Miles had just passed the halfway point when a blow to the back of his head sent him sprawling and caused his whistled note to sail sharp and die. Von Karma glared down at him. It was the second and final time in their lives that he’d ever physically struck Miles.
As the pawn shop salesman completed his tone-deaf rendition of “Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” Miles had to stuff his own fists into his pockets.
Chapter 6
Summary:
In which Phoenix can't catch a break. Until, weirdly, he does.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
On the morning after the accident, Phoenix woke up with his injured foot elevated on the couch armrest. As he sat up to stretch and yawn, he noticed Pearls huddled under a thin blanket on the floor between himself and the coffee table. It occurred to him how easily he might have stepped on her in the night if he’d needed to get up for any reason. It also occurred to him that that may have been her intention in placing herself there. He gave the ceiling a melancholy smile. It was so sweet, but he knew that the behavior stemmed from having lost so many loved ones. She kept a very close eye on Maya and him.
He crept forward and climbed over the side of the couch, but, in the process of standing up, he forgot to keep the weight off his left foot. He winced and drew a sharp breath through his teeth, but the pain soon ebbed back to a dull ache. Pearl stirred as he lifted her up off the floor, blanket and all.
“Hey kiddo,” he said as her eyes fluttered open.
“Hi Nick,” she murmured.
He put her down in the spot on the couch he’d just vacated and she snuggled into the warmth of it to fall back asleep. She’d dropped the honorifics when addressing him. He wondered what that meant while he made a fresh pot of coffee. Phoenix was sad to see that the bag of coffee grounds was almost empty-- he doubted whatever pocket change he could scrape together for groceries would cover a new one. Maybe Diego could help him out. He took his warm mug of black coffee through the living room and out the front door, shutting it softly behind him. He sat on the chipped concrete landing in front of his apartment, legs dangling over the edge through gaps in the crooked handrail. He didn’t trust the thing enough to put any weight on it. It was already bent in the middle in a way that suggested someone with substantial mass or momentum had once fallen onto it. He doubted it could take much more abuse before it gave way. He complained to the building manager once or twice in the past. Management never fixed anything.
The building was quiet this early in the morning. Half of the occupants went to work long before dawn, and the other half wouldn’t wake until the sun was well overhead. They were a ragtag bunch-- the occupants, and not always courteous of their neighbors, but Phoenix thought every last one of them deserved better. So did Maya and Pearl. He was ashamed that this was all he had to share with them. Most people who drove past the building thought it was a motel. It certainly looked like one, with its two-stories of exterior access doors, but it wasn’t . The distinction was very important to him. When he had to talk about where he lived, he pronounced ‘Apartment' like it was capitalized every time. Without consciously realizing, he’d even written it out that way a few times.
The sun was once again burning away any signs of yesterday’s storm. All that remained were the stains on the sidewalk where leaves had been plastered to the ground, and the steady drip from the building’s clogged gutters. He guessed it was about seven in the morning. 7:00 am and already too hot to be drinking coffee in the sunlight. His mug made a thin clinking noise as it wobbled over the uneven concrete next to him. He picked up a small chip of cement and extended his hand out through the bars as far as he could without shifting his weight. He inverted his fist and dropped it straight down to the asphalt below. On impact, it split in half and the pieces skittered away from the impact site.
The door opened behind him. Maya sat down next to him, but they didn’t talk until his mug went cold, and he’d choked down the rest of its contents (which had expanded to include a small leaf, blown in by the breeze).
“So, listen…” She started. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you the other night.”
“Maya--”
“Let me get this off my chest, Nick, please.” She took a breath. “I’ve had time to think about it, and I guess… Mia wouldn’t be mad at you for selling the watch, so I shouldn’t be either.”
Phoenix’s lungs felt like a popped balloon.
“I know that it’s bad,” She continued. “Like, worse-than-usual bad, but we’re gonna be okay. I meant it when I said that something always works out. And-- I mean it now too, but… in a different way I guess.”
His feet swung back and forth over the edge of the second-story landing. Together, they listened to the hollow clang of his injured foot hitting a metal support beam somewhere below. It hurt, but he didn’t let on.
“Nick?”
“Thank you.” He gave her a smile, “I’m glad we got to talk about it.”
Maya smiled back at him, but she didn’t feel it. This hadn’t been a conversation. They had not gotten to ‘talk about it.’ She had talked. And maybe Nick had heard her, but that wasn’t what she needed out of the interaction. She needed him to give her some sign of life. He was deeply, profoundly troubled by something and he was shutting her out. She was certain it wasn’t the money. They had always been poor; This had to be something different. Whatever it was, it was coming from inside his head.
“Nick, maybe we could--”
She was cut off by the Steel Samurai theme. He gave her an apologetic shrug before answering his phone.
“Phoenix Wright.”
It would probably be easy for Maya to eavesdrop on the conversation, but she didn’t care. She was too sad and angry to care. She stared straight ahead.
“Yes, I’m his attorney.”
On the ground by the vending machines, a seagull had discovered an empty bag of chips. She watched him peck at it.
“Why, What’s he done? A-- Allegedly, I mean.”
Three other gulls descended from the roof to steal it. They fought bitterly. She lost track of the original, like it was some kind of feathery shell game.
“ What?! ”
Maya looked at Phoenix through the corner of her eye.
“Is he okay? Are his injuries serious?”
One of the seagulls flew away with the empty bag, while the others squawked and fought amongst themselves. Their fighting only grew more vicious with the disappearance of their prize.
“Okay, I’ll be down there as soon as I can. Would you please let them know to expect me? Tell Falcon not to use his visitation with anyone else. I don’t care if he--” Nick furrowed his brow and listened for a moment. “What-- No, you can’t just-- He has the right to an attorney!”
Maya turned to share a concerned look with him.
“I don’t care what he did!”
Maya mouthed the word ‘allegedly.’
“Allegedly!”
It wasn’t as easy to listen in as she thought. She crawled closer and tried to press her ear against the other side of the phone, but Nick waved her off.
“Alright… Yes, I understand.” His shoulders sagged at whatever he’d just been told. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Who’s the prosecutor?”
Some hope sprang back into his expression, “Oh, there’s not?”
Hope died, “Oh. I see.”
Maya hissed, “Nick, what? ” The suspense was killing her.
“Not now,” He covered the receiver with his hand to hiss back. “Which hospital did you say it was?”
He got up quickly, and almost fell down. Maya didn’t remember why until she watched him hobble into the apartment with a distinct drop in his gait on the left side. He came back with his notebook open in one hand, a pen in the other, and the phone pinned by his shoulder to his ear.
“Okay,” he furiously scribbled something down. “Got it. Thank you . Listen, I know you didn’t have to call. I appreciate it.”
He dropped the pen into the notebook and snapped the whole thing shut. He snapped his phone shut too and put it back into his pocket. His eyes glazed over in the direction of the seagulls by the vending machine.
“Well?!” Maya demanded.
Phoenix dropped the notebook on the ground next to his coffee mug and walked to the edge.
With a curious formality, he announced, “Falcon attacked his cellmate-- put him in the hospital-- And we don’t know why. The guy’s still in surgery so they can’t ask him what happened. That means there’s no charges yet, but there will be. And Falcon won’t cooperate so they threw him in solitary for God knows how long.” Some emotion ebbed back into his voice, “I’m not allowed to see him.”
“Holy smokes,” she breathed.
His knuckles turned white as he leaned over the crooked handrail. It only came up to his hips. Maya felt lightheaded watching him. She wanted him to come away from the edge. She opened her mouth to say so, but it wasn’t necessary. He loosened his grip and stepped back, trailing his fingers on the bar until he could no longer reach it. His hands dropped, one after the other, to his side.
* * * * *
“I have to talk to him! The trial is tomorrow,” Phoenix protested, “How am I going to defend him if I don’t even get to hear his side of the story?!”
“That’s not my problem,” the guard answered coldly.
Two days had passed since he got the call. Axel Falcon remained in solitary confinement. Phoenix had done as much investigating during that time as he possibly could. With his bike out of commission for the time being, he was reduced to begging Detective Gumshoe for a ride to the detention center and then the hospital where Falcon’s cellmate convalesced.
“Sure, pal,” good old easygoing Gumshoe had replied. “I’m headed there anyway.”
The victim, Peter Roscoe, was taken into surgery almost immediately after the incident occurred. He remained unconscious for nearly a full 24 hours and, upon regaining consciousness, was questioned by police the entirety of the next day. Phoenix managed to get in the room with him for about 10 minutes, but he didn’t learn much. Roscoe was finally allowed his pain meds after the cops left, so he was pretty loopy by the time Phoenix saw him. Anything he was even able to convey through his broken jaw may or may not have been accurate.
The doctors, to their credit, held their ground in insisting that it was impossible for the victim to testify in court. He was well protected in their midst, but the police still had some power left to abuse. They had, no doubt, forced him to forgo the medication that long so that he could sign a sworn affidavit in an unaltered state of mind (That is, unaltered by anything other than excruciating pain.) The prosecution did not respond to Phoenix’s request to see this affidavit. He knew they wouldn’t. Probably, it hadn’t even reached anyone yet. He left his business card on the table by Roscoe’s bed and suggested faintly that he might like to sue the police department for the inhumane way he had been treated. Their conversation was cut short when he rolled his eyes back and mashed the morphine button at a sudden stab of pain.
From everything he could gather, the attack came out of nowhere. Interviews with prisoners belonging to the same cell block as Falcon and Roscoe reported that the two were largely indifferent to each other. Nobody was aware of any disagreement between them that could have escalated to violence. Falcon had been in the phone room to make a call, got cut off when his hour was up and escorted back to his cell. The guards dropped him off and got all the way back down the hall before the screaming started up. He had to know he'd be caught. None of it made sense. The warden wouldn’t give Phoenix the time of day-- nothing unusual there. He would have tried going through the police for access to evidence, but Gumshoe was his only real contact there, and this was not a homicide case. Prison guards, it turned out, are even less receptive to the idea of cooperating with the defense.
All said, he was vastly under prepared. His worst fears had been realized when he learned that Edgeworth was set to prosecute. In light of these circumstances, Phoenix did not expect to win. This was distressing because he had a lot riding on success. If Falcon were convicted of a violent crime here, then his murder trial in New Hampshire would be a foregone conclusion. Further, and he hated to think like this, but he really needed the money. Every day he got further and further behind on his bills. The lights in his apartment flickered threateningly and now even the landline in his office was acting up. He’d get several calls a week that made a crackling sound and went dead.
Escorted out of the detention center, Phoenix had very few options left to him. He checked his wrist, which still did not have a watch around it.
“Hey, pal!” Gumshoe popped up from nowhere. “Perfect timing. I gotta get to the Prosecutors’ Office, so if you’re done here--”
“Sure, of course.” They headed for his truck, a little faster than a comfortable walking pace. “Hey, Gumshoe?”
“Yeah?”
Phoenix tried to keep his voice casual, “Has Edgeworth said anything to you about Falcon’s case?”
“Falcons?” He tilted his head.
“Axel Falcon. The-- the guy he’s prosecuting tomorrow morning?”
“Uh…” Gumshoe’s attention was momentarily occupied by pulling into traffic. He got it back and had Wright repeat the question. “Oh, yeah! Mr. Edgeworth said… Well, I probably shouldn’t repeat what he said.”
“Fair enough.” Phoenix melted into the passenger seat and longed for the days before Detective Gumshoe got so careful about what information he divulged.
“He’s really mad about it.”
Phoenix sat back up. “He is?”
“Yeah. I’ve never heard him talk like that before.”
“Really?”
He realized Gumshoe’s reluctance to talk may have had less to do with concerns of leaking intel, and more to do with simply not wanting to repeat the more colorful phrases that Edgeworth might have used. Gumshoe hardly ever swore if he could avoid it-- slightly unusual for a detective.
“He doesn’t think it should have been assigned to him.” Gumshoe’s expression filled with admiration. “I bet it's because he’s way too important to deal with something so small-time. A prison fight? Not even a murder?! No offense, pal.”
“None taken.”
He doubted that was it-- Edgeworth was willing to prosecute anything, as far as he could tell. So why would he be mad about this assignment? Was he too busy? He had seemed pretty run-down the last time they spoke. Or maybe Falcon’s case was more complicated than it looked on the surface. Perhaps it wasn't quite as open-and-shut as he thought. Phoenix held onto that hope all the way to his office-- which Gumshoe was kind enough to drop him off at, even though it was a little out of his way. His optimism faded quickly from there.
* * *
A short, sharp knock on the exterior door of Wright and Co. pulled Phoenix back into the present. He sat on the floor again, surrounded by a carpet of documents that had accumulated with the same silence and weight of a snowstorm. The floor vanished entirely beneath everything he had on Axel Falcon-- between this case, the previous, and the next. He could scarcely remember a time when he was not Falcon’s attorney. It was too much to sift through. And too difficult to focus on with an empty stomach. At some point, his eyes must have glazed over. He’d managed to stare straight through the drift banks of incriminating evidence, divorced from reality.
He trudged out of Mia’s office, through the reception area (which had never, in the history of the building, held a receptionist) and unlocked the front door. A short, stout man faced him on the other side, his fist frozen in midair, caught just before he could level it against the door frame again. He wore a powder blue shirt tucked into khaki slacks. His shirt’s placket struggled and gaped open between buttons over the considerable bulk of his stomach.
“Phoenix Wright?” The man lowered his fist as he raised his eyebrows.
“Yes.”
He read off of a document in his hand, “...Of Wright and Co. Law Offices?”
Oh, God. Is this a summons? Please no.
Phoenix braced for impact. “Yes…”
Instead, the man extended a hand in greeting, and shook Phoenix’s warmly.
“Mr. Wright, my name is Ian Chambers,” A smile crept into his gruff voice, but failed to entirely displace his professionalism. “I’m here on behalf of the T.E.A. Are you at all familiar with our work?”
“Kind of,” he answered.
Phoenix recalled seeing an article in which Edgeworth received an award from them last year. He had resisted the urge to clip the article and now regretted that decision.
As they spoke, he was distracted by a gray panel van parked on the curb behind Mr. Chambers. Its back door was open. One young man sat on the edge of the trunk holding a large camera, completely engrossed in its settings. Another stood a polite distance away to light a cigarette. They looked roughly college age. Chambers followed his eyes over to the shoddy film crew.
“The interns,” He explained with a sweeping gesture. The smoker waved. “They’re here to take your picture, if you’ll allow it.”
“What? Why?”
“Mr. Wright,” Chambers laughed and held open his palms, “You’ve won.”
“I’ve… won?” He shook his head, “I’m sorry, Mr. Chambers, I don’t understand.”
“Maybe not so familiar with our work after all? It boils down to this: The T.E.A. was started when a generous portion of Phil Anne Thorpé’s estate was willed to our organization. Every year we narrow down a pool of candidates to select one person in each district who exemplifies prosecutorial excellence, and we reward him-- or her -- with a monetary prize.”
“And…” Phoenix looked again at the camera crew, “I’ve won?”
“You’ve won! Congratulations.”
“I’m not a prosecutor.”
Chambers’ shoulders drooped. "Mr. Wright, may I speak frankly?"
Phoenix folded his arms."I'd appreciate that."
"Look,” He leaned in and spoke through the corner of his mouth, “The prosecutor's office is not what it once was. Competition for this award used to be stiff. ‘Course, the prize money was better back then too. We had whole committees to put people in or take them out of the running, and ten evaluators in each district! Lately though… It's tough to name a winner for entirely different reasons, if ya catch my drift. We gotta give this money to someone or the DOJ will stop granting us the money to award in the first place-- you know how the government gets about surpluses."
Phoenix remembered his late-night discussion with Miles Edgeworth. The words, I’ll give you some money, still ringing in his ears. The award began to make more sense.
"Why not Edgeworth?"
Chambers scoffed, "That man is fully booked. You want to give him an award, or a commendation, or the keys to the goddamn city, you've gotta get in line."
Phoenix rolled his eyes, but suspected it wasn't actually much of an exaggeration. He'd been on quite the winning streak lately. Another reason to worry about the trial tomorrow.
"Look, Mr. Wright," Chambers furrowed his brow, "We did our research. To be honest, I thought your name was put forth as a joke-- that's how I treated it at first. Hell, maybe it was a joke. Thing is though, you've identified and put away more criminals than any of the prosecutors nominated this year. Well-- except Edgeworth, but again, it's not going to him for the third year in a row.”
Phoenix wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“Make no mistake, whoever entered your name, and for whatever reason, it's at the top of the list now. You can decline, of course, but Mr. Wright...?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't."
On page 18 of the August, 2005 edition of The Prosecutor’s Friend , anyone who cared to read that far into the dense, bi-weekly journal was rewarded for their endurance by an amusing two-page spread on this year’s recipient of the Thorpé Excellency Award. Miles Edgeworth left it open on his desk, glancing back every so often while he worked. The article explained that this was the first, and perhaps only time the award had been presented to a defense attorney.
The first page was almost entirely devoted to a photograph of Phoenix Wright shaking hands with a portly man handing over a large, cardboard check for $12,000. In the corner of the check was a drawing of a cup and saucer emblazoned with T.E.A. He could hear Phoenix’s voice so clearly in the unflattering quote selected: “I still don’t really get it… You promise this isn’t some kind of joke?”
The second page had a smaller picture. In it, the check along with Mr. Chambers were knocked aside as Maya Fey tackled him in a hug. He deduced, correctly, that Maya had stumbled in on the fanfare unannounced and threw herself at Wright, without regard for the photo op. He thought they were probably both overjoyed to be delivered from their apparent destitution.
Good for them.
It did not occur to him to wonder who had nominated Phoenix. Miles had received so many awards during his young career that they were, in his head, a given. The mechanics of how one was selected simply never crossed his mind.
Notes:
Guys. This fic is going to be so stupidly long. I'm so sorry/you're welcome???/Thanks for bearing with me
Chapter Text
That evening, for the first time in over a year, Phoenix was able to do his shopping without sparing a single glance at the ‘Just As Goode’ rack, which stood sentinel by the exit of Goode’s Grocery Outlet. It held expired non-perishables and half-rotten produce upon recycled pallet wood shelves, supported on upturned milk crates. Everything found there sold for just fifteen cents, if it sold at all. The steeply discounted products exacted their toll-- not on one’s wallet, but on one's stomach and one’s dignity. It’s a privilege to ignore that rickety affront to decent grocers everywhere. A privilege that, until very recently, Phoenix quite literally could not afford.
As soon as the large novelty check was in his hands, Wright had walked it to his bank. Chambers assured him a smaller version would be posted to him shortly, but research (inspired by other recent events) had made Phoenix quite the expert on the legitimacy of different kinds of checks. He told Chambers not to bother-- this one would do. The people at his bank didn’t want to take it at first. They came around when he began to recite the legal precedent on failure by other banks to accept legitimate checks, and the subsequent lawsuits which bankrupted them.
Twelve thousand dollars richer, his first order of business was to go shopping. The whole way to the grocery store, Maya rambled about all the good things they could do with the money. It being Nick’s money, and Nick’s money alone, didn’t occur to her-- to either of them, really. They were a package deal, already too firmly established as a team-- too trauma bonded. Beside the building’s once automatic doors (their functionality as manual doors implied in the way that decommissioned escalators become a flight of stairs), Phoenix and Maya stopped for a briefing.
“Okay,” He was short of breath, “Just because we have money now--”
“A lot of money!”
He nodded, “That doesn’t mean we can afford to go crazy.”
“Nick--”
“We have to be careful. We have to save as much of it as we possibly can. It’s not gonna go as far as you think.”
Maya frowned, “I’m not a little kid, Nick. I know that.”
“Sorry, that was mostly for my own benefit.” He felt a pang of guilt for talking down to her. “I was just building up to say… Can we find one little treat?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you think we’ve earned it? Come on, Maya,” Phoenix’s smile came across a little manic-- not at all out of place on him. “Let’s get our groceries-- not like name brand, but not expired either-- and we’ll find one thing to splurge on.”
Maya nodded, deep in thought. “We have earned a little treat.”
“Exactly! Something… luxurious.”
“Okay, well, you know what I’ve been craving lately?”
“What’s that?”
“Ice cream sandwiches.”
“Yes!” They started in, all smiles. “Oh, and one little gift for Edgeworth, too.”
“Wait, what? Why?”
He remembered that she was not caught up on all the details: the check he couldn’t use, the subsequent offer of a loan he couldn’t accept, receiving an award typically reserved for prosecutors only days later.
“Oh, uh,” Phoenix scratched his head. “Just… because?”
She shook her head and suppressed a grin, “Whatever. Ten dollar maximum.”
Phoenix flashed a smile and a big thumbs up. Ten yards behind her, at the ‘Just As Goode’ rack, Detective Gumshoe waved enthusiastically and returned the gesture. Neither Maya nor Phoenix noticed him as they split up to do their shopping, having agreed to meet back up in fifteen.
Twelve minutes later Phoenix found himself pacing the aisles, his basket weighed down with produce, but still lacking one crucial item.
“What do rich people even like?” He muttered to himself.
Nothing I can find at Goode’s, came the answer.
“Thought that counts.”
He headed for the wine section. More of a cheap beer guy, himself, he had no idea what to look for. A viciously ugly shirt caught his attention. It was a neon yellow uniform which read “The Goodest Staff Around.” The man wearing it was crouched in the middle of the aisle, stocking shelves.
“Excuse me,” Phoenix tapped him lightly on the shoulder when his voice alone didn’t do the trick.
He jumped at the contact. When he saw it was just a customer, he was less frightened but no more relieved. He huffed and pulled the headphones off, music from his Walkman filtering through as they hung around his neck.
“What,” He demanded.
“I’m a bit lost. I need a decent wine, but I only have ten bucks.”
The employee shrugged, “Yeah, I just stock shelves, man. It’s cheaper down there.”
Phoenix thanked him and headed off in the direction he’d pointed. The prices seemed to increase with elevation, so he set his basket down and kneeled for a better look at the bottom two shelves. He asked himself what Miles might appreciate in a wine and found he didn’t know what anyone appreciated in wine. For reasons he didn’t articulate to himself, Phoenix gravitated toward the reds.
What the hell, he thought. As long as it’s got alcohol in it.
* * *
“Cocobon,” Edgeworth read the label with one eyebrow raised. “You… shouldn’t have.”
“It’s nothing-- really.”
“I can’t accept it.” He pushed the bottle back across his desk and reclined in his office chair.
“Come on,” Phoenix coaxed, “Don’t be like that.”
“No, really--”
“What, is it the wrong kind or something?”
“It’s not that. Well--” he looked at the label again with a brief, but visible flash of distaste, “Not exactly. Truth be told, I can’t have any alcohol anymore.”
“...Oh.”
Shit is he in recovery or something? Have I ever actually seen him drink before?
“No,” Edgeworth looked annoyed. “It’s not that either.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.” He took off his glasses and placed them upside down on the desk-- Phoenix noticed them for the first time as he did so. He didn’t look himself when he was not wearing them either.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“That’s okay.” He drew a hand across his face and stifled a yawn. “The gesture is appreciated.”
“I just… I just wanted to stop by and say thank you. So, uh…” Phoenix shrugged, “Thank you.”
“Thank you?” He tilted his head. “For what?”
So that’s how he wants to play it.
“Nothing,” he winked, “Nothing at all.”
Edgeworth went quiet for a long time, tapping away at his folded arms. Phoenix had learned a long time ago not to interrupt him when he got lost in thought like that. Most of the time it was a futile effort anyway.
“Oh,” he said at last, “Are you referring to my help tracking down Victor Speck?”
That would work.
“Sure.”
“Well, I guess I have time to talk now,” He shrugged. “Let me just find where I’ve written… my… uhm…”
Edgeworth trailed off while he opened and shut every drawer in his desk. When those turned out empty, he rose from his chair and leafed through a small stack of documents on the windowsill behind him. He placed his Steel Samurai figure back on top as a paperweight. Quickly running out of places to look, he furrowed his brow and scanned the shelves. Finally, he discovered the folder he had been searching for underneath a leather-bound notebook in a fairly obvious place on his desk. Phoenix had come to expect that kind of behavior of himself, but it was a bit concerning to see Edgeworth spend three minutes looking for what had been right in front of him all along.
“Okay, let’s see.” He put the glasses back on to re-read his notes, “An acquaintance of mine in forensics has agreed to look over the check in the lab to find out what kind of ink was used and whatnot. We’ll be able to confirm that it’s fraudulent fairly quickly that way. It’s not official evidence though, so she’ll have to do it outside of business hours. That might take a while. From my own research, I’m fairly confident that whoever Speck is, he’s not from around here. So I’ve--” Edgeworth winced and seemed to wish he hadn’t read on, “I’ve also called in a favor with my, uh… with a colleague of mine at the FBI. He’s agreed to look through some of the national databases for us. Supposedly, he’s going to fly in with those results sometime in the near future.”
It was hard not to get sidetracked on the FBI thing, but he managed it. “What about the three Victor Specks you said were in California?”
Edgeworth tilted his head, “Did I not already tell you about that?”
“No?”
“Sorry.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I must have dreamed that conversation. Right, uh… It wasn’t any of them. One turned out to be dead, another is four years old, and the last one doesn’t bank with Pursuit. He also definitely doesn’t have ten thousand dollars to give away. So, we’re looking nationally now.”
“Well, your FBI agent must owe you a pretty big favor to fly out for this.” That seemed rude so he added, “Or he’s just a good friend.”
“It was a big favor. We’re even now.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“Ah, where was I…” Edgeworth pressed the plastic-coated arm of his glasses into his temples.
“Are you okay?”
He dropped them onto his desk with a clatter. Phoenix got the impression it was a question he was sick of hearing.
“I’m fine.” His sharp expression softened into a thousand-yard stare. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”
“I hear you.”
Edgeworth said nothing.
“Well… I’ll see you tomorrow.” Phoenix gave a small, sad smile, “Should be a good day for you.”
“Yeah right.”
He did not seem to realize he said that out loud.
* * *
The new chief prosecutor, Emmerson, was not popular with Miles or his peers. He got the impression that, in his case, the feeling was mutual. She could not have had any reason except spite to dump this most recent case on his head. The week prior, when he began to accept his own absentmindedness as a result of the insomnia, he decided that it would be irresponsible to make any court appearances until he was well again.
He told Emmerson, very frankly, that he needed some time away from the prosecutor’s bench, though he could still come into the office. She, not knowing him well enough to see that this request was out of his character and should simply be quietly agreed to and never discussed again, pressed for details. That was one of the most uncomfortable conversations in his professional career. She told him (in so many words) that minor side effects from the introduction of a new medication were not an adequate excuse to take medical leave; And he told her, in a fit of temper, that if she had listened to a single word he said, she’d know he never requested any such leave. That went over like a lead balloon.
So now, here he was in his office at-- What time? Late anyway-- attempting to make sense of the incomprehensible pile of evidence against Axel Falcon. Phoenix Wright’s client. Emmerson clearly just wanted him to lose his winning streak-- as if things like that really mattered to him anymore. It wasn’t even a murder case. Some poor, incarcerated fellow had the tar kicked out of him over nothing (it happens) and now it was Miles’s job to march into court first thing in the morning to wag his finger and say a stern, “Now, stop fighting, boys.” When did this become his life?
He poured over the victim’s medical chart. All of the entries were timestamped. What the hell time is it, anyway? Somehow, he’d lost his watch. When last he could remember, he took it off to go through a metal detector at the detention center. Probably he’d forgotten it there and inadvertently given some underpaid guard a nice bonus.
There was an easy solution: the second-hand watch in the bottom drawer of his desk. That afternoon, Wright had stood three feet away from it. Miles had literally opened the drawer and looked right at it. He had not handed it over. Why? There was probably a reason. Perhaps it was one of those complicated reasons that one can’t explain even to oneself. Miles could not possibly have just forgotten. Well then, there had to be an explanation. He tried to puzzle it out: The moment hadn’t felt right.
What moment? He needs a watch, you bought him one. This is so simple.
So, what was it then? Was he just going to keep it wrapped up in the bottom drawer of his desk forever? You are such an idiot. Miles never missed an opportunity to kick himself while he was down. Thankfully, this deeply unproductive train of thought was interrupted when Gretta Knapp poked her head into the office.
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t expect you to still be here.”
“Nor I you, Miss Knapp. Do you have the time?”
She stepped into the door frame. Tonight, she was wearing a very well tailored skirt suit in royal blue. He admired her choice of accessories while she checked her watch: a tasteful selection of gold jewelry and white accents, like a tear-shaped pearl necklace and a daisy brooch on her lapel.
“It’s five past ten.”
Miles huffed at the pile of documentation that obscured his desk. He was not quite halfway through it.
“Never be a prosecutor, Miss Knapp.”
“Is it really as bad as all that?”
“No,” he admitted, “Not really. Not usually, anyway.”
He tapped his pen a few times in thought. Knapp was still standing in the doorway when he looked up. She stared hungrily at the paperwork on his desk, and suddenly he could see ambition spelled out on her face. It was so obvious, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed before. And it was a nice reminder of what he had. There are people out there who would kill for this. He felt a nebulous pang of guilt which he tried not to dwell on.
“When you have one of these desks,” Miles told her, “Try not to let it look so much like a copier explosion. My office is usually much neater than this, I assure you.”
She beamed at him. “If you’d like some help reorganizing…”
“Another time perhaps. You should go home. They can’t really keep you here this late until you’ve got one of these,” He pulled his badge out of his breast pocket.
“Well,” she said, “Until then, Mr. Edgeworth.”
“Until then, Miss Knapp.”
* * *
At 7am on a school day, Gregory Edgeworth brushed the hair away from Miles’s sleeping face. It was cold in the room, but warm under the steel gray covers of his twin bed.
“Time to get up, son,” his father murmured, close to his ear.
“Mm five more minutes,” Miles woke himself up by saying.
Sunrise filtered in through the window behind his desk. He must have fallen asleep working late. Instead of a soft pillow wrapped in smooth gray fabric, beneath his head laid a drooled-on copy of the prison’s incident report.
“That’s dignified.” He wiped the corner of his mouth.
The dream was completely forgotten by the time he got to the break room to put on a pot of coffee. A rhythmic clicking sound reverberated in his head. He couldn’t tell if it originated from the unnaturally loud wall clock, or if it was just a symptom of his headache. The coffee helped a little, which must mean he’d developed a caffeine addiction. Great. He gathered everything he had on Falcon and put it into his briefcase. Half the pot of coffee was gone before he was ready to head out.
* * *
“The defense is ready, your honor.”
“The prosecution is ready.”
“Very well. Mr Edgeworth, your opening statement please.”
“Certainly, your honor.” Edgeworth realized he hadn’t prepared anything in advance. “In large part, I think you’ll find that the evidence against Mr. Falcon speaks for itself. I submit to the court record this affidavit, signed and sworn by the victim, Mr. Peter Roscoe, who attests that he was attacked viciously and without provocation by the defendant in their shared cell on Monday, 22nd.”
“The court accepts this evidence. I assume you’d like to call this Mr. Roscoe to the stand?” The judge asked.
“No, your honor. His injuries are so severe that it is impossible for him to appear in court.” He spared a glance at the defendant, who was looking back with a cool, disaffected gaze. “I am confident, however, that you will be able to declare the defendant guilty of attempted murder, even without the benefit of the victim's testimony.”
“OBJECTION!” Wright looked up from the affidavit that he had been speed reading. “ Attempted murder?! My client has already plead guilty to aggravated battery!”
“He is no longer being charged with aggravated battery, Mr. Wright; He is being charged with attempted murder. Have a look at the victim’s medical chart. It’s perfectly clear that the defendant’s goal was to kill Mr. Roscoe. And, I’ll add, he very nearly succeeded.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Wright threw his arms up in exasperation. The defendant himself maintained his composure a little better than that, but he was certainly paying more attention now. “Nothing Roscoe says in this affidavit suggests he thought my client was trying to kill him.”
“What the victim thought is immaterial. It matters only what we can prove.”
“But you can’t prove--”
“Order!” The judge banged his gavel. “Mr Wright, you will have your turn. Until then, stop interrupting.”
“But your honor--”
“And Mr. Edgeworth,” he continued.
“Yes, your honor?”
“Are you quite certain that you want to abandon the battery charge? As the defense stated, Mr. Falcon already pleaded guilty. You would be throwing out a certain conviction.”
“Ah, but such a conviction would fail to accurately represent the severity of his crimes. Yes, your honor, I’m certain.”
“Very well.”
Wright glared daggers at him across the courtroom. Miles did feel a little guilty for springing this on him. It wasn’t quite a fair fight. After all, he’d had access to so many more resources than Wright during the investigation. He picked up the thermos of coffee on his bench and stifled a yawn. Four hours of fitful sleep on his desk was a better night’s rest than he’d managed all week. He hoped this would wrap up quickly. His headache had returned.
And then, twenty minutes later, something terrible happened.
NOT GUILTY
“No fucking way!” Falcon positively blew up, “They weren’t kidding about you and your dumb luck. Jesus Christ! Can’t believe people told me that idiot is the best prosecutor in the business,” he gestured toward Edgeworth and scoffed. “Open-and-shut case. What a moron!”
“Axel, could you keep your voice down,” Phoenix hissed.
“No!” He whipped around and directed all of his ire onto Phoenix. “What the fuck was that?! You wanna argue with everything I say on the stand? That’s not what I pay you for!”
“This time, it literally is.”
“Cute!” He shouted. “That is real fuckin’ cute!”
Phoenix could remember a time when a ‘not guilty’ verdict gave him a sense of relief. Not with Falcon. That would be too simple.
“Look, can we talk about this outside?”
There was a deserted hallway to their left as they exited Courtroom no. 3, leading to an exit at the rear of the courthouse. He took Falcon about halfway down and attempted to de-escalate.
“Try to relax a little, okay? We won.”
“I didn’t want you to win, genius!” Falcon shouted, “I wanted the conviction so I could put off being extradited!”
“Don’t you see how incredibly short-sighted that is? A felony will genuinely ruin your life. Is that what you want?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a felony! How could you get blindsided like that?!”
Phoenix spoke through his teeth, “Axel, if you get convicted of a violent crime-- any violent crime, the judge in New Hampshire is not going to listen to a single word I say. That’s why I advised you not to plead guilty this morning! We got lucky here today. You could try being a little grateful.”
A vicious right hook sent Phoenix to the floor. Gingerly, he felt at his split lip and watched the blood drip off his hand.
“How’s that for grateful?!” Falcon spat. “Get your stupid ass to New Hampshire, now. Pray that your luck holds out.”
NOT GUILTY
After he handed down his verdict, the judge withdrew to chambers. Miles stared down at his desk while the defendant and his council shuffled out of the room. They seemed to be in a heated argument, but he stopped listening after “dumb luck.” Other than those in the gallery, Miles was the last to leave. The bailiff tried to say something to him as he walked out, but he couldn’t hear it over the shrill ringing in his ears.
He stalked around the prosecutors’ lobby for a while, muttering under his breath and generally unnerving everyone else in there, busy rehearsing their opening statements or coaching their witnesses or whatever they were doing. He barely noticed them. In his mind’s eye he could see Wright’s face, expression fixed with concern as he mouthed the name “Falcon” across the courtroom. Miles stopped and tipped his head back. He collected himself and exited the lobby.
Bad call. The defendant was walking down the same hallway.
“Well, if it isn’t Miles Edgeworth,” he sneered. “See? I remember your name.”
Falcon was practically carried out of the building by his armed escort, but still seemed to leave with more dignity than Miles could hope to. He went through the main exit and walked to his car parked out back. About halfway around the perimeter of the building, his phone rang. Word can’t have gotten out that quickly, can it? Wright’s contact information flashed across the screen. He breathed a sigh of relief and declined the call.
It was another silent drive. He would have to find time to get the damn radio fixed. Life was an unyielding parade of inconveniences and indignities. His phone rang again.
“What.”
A familiar, scratchy voice crowed at him, “Is that any way to talk to an old friend?”
Miles dropped his head against the seat.
Unyielding.
“Hello, Agent Cavanaugh.”
Chapter 8
Notes:
Well, folks... I have had An Idea that sorta changes the ending I had planned for this fic. In my defense, it is a good idea, but it also means I need to re-write a bunch of stuff. So, unfortunately, updates are probably not going to be as regular from here on out. Sorry guys :(
Please bear with me though, I think the payoff will be worth it!
Chapter Text
“What do you mean you won?!”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.” Phoenix was pacing like a caged animal.
“But it was Edgeworth, right?” Maya asked. “Was he... going easy on you or something?”
He stopped dead in his tracks. “No, he-- Why would he-- No! He came in, guns blazing, switched it to a felony charge--”
“He can do that?”
“Apparently! He was trying to prove that it was an attempted murder instead of just battery,” he began pacing again, “And he totally could’ve done it too! That’s what’s so… But then-- I don’t know! It’s like he got distracted or something. I mean, he completely shot his credibility. And he got the names confused and-- Oh God, Maya, what am I gonna do?! I need to be in New Hampshire yesterday.”
She caught him by the shoulders and shook him violently. “Calm down!”
“That’s not really calming.”
“Let’s just be reasonable here.” Maya floundered for something reasonable to say, “Let’s talk it out.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “...Okay.”
“When do you think they’ll hold his trial in New Hampshire?”
“As soon as they can get him there. I don’t know. I don’t think he’ll serve more than another month, tops.”
“Even though he put that guy in the hospital?”
“Well yeah. He wasn’t actually charged with anything.” Phoenix put his head in his hands. “The one time I was banking on losing a trial…”
She winced. “Have you looked at plane tickets?”
“Yeah. They’re pretty expensive. If not for… for the T.E.A., we wouldn’t be able to afford it at all.”
“How expensive are we talking?”
“About seven.”
“Thousand?!"
“No, thank god. Hundred.”
“Oh.” Maya was pleasantly surprised. "Honestly, Nick, seven hundred is a pretty good deal for six tickets."
"Six?"
"Yeah, three people, two ways? You can do basic math, can't you?"
He stared at her, wide eyed.
"Oh my god." Maya pinched the bridge of her nose. "Nick. Tell me you looked at return flights, too."
"No, I forgot!" He wailed, "Argh! This is impossible!"
Phoenix flopped down on the couch. While he was wallowing in misery, Maya took the opportunity to grab something to drink from the kitchen. She pilfered one of the juice boxes that were meant to be reserved for Pearly’s lunchbox. Summer had gone by in a flash.
“Scooch over.” She returned to the couch with a beer in hand.
Phoenix made room for her and gratefully accepted the drink. It was nice and cold. He held the can against his split lip for a moment before opening it. After a couple long swigs, he realized Maya had been sitting quietly for longer than usual.
“What’s on your mind?”
“I was thinking about timing. The sooner you’re in New Hampshire, the better right? Like, by Monday, ideally.”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“And Falcon’s probably only a few weeks behind you, so you’re staying there until the trial.”
“Yeah…?”
“But Pearly starts school next week.”
Phoenix squeezed his eyes shut. “What are we gonna do?”
“I think you’re gonna have to go by yourself. I don’t like it-- Pearly will hate it-- but I can’t really see an alternative.” She looked up at him hopefully, “Can you?”
Forgetting he’d already emptied it, Phoenix tried for another swig of his beer.
"I'll figure something out," he promised.
"Hey. We'll figure it out together."
* * *
Late that night, there was a knock on the door. Maya answered it. She wasn’t sure who she was expecting-- a neighbor perhaps-- but certainly not Mr. Edgeworth.
“Oh,” he said, looking equally surprised to see her.
“What?”
“I… Forgot that you live here, too.”
Jerk, Maya thought.
“I’ll go get him,” she said and slammed the door.
Nick was sitting on the floor, taking turns playing on his old SNES with Pearl. He inclined his head toward her, without ever taking his eyes off the TV, “Who was it?”
“It's Mr. Edgeworth. He’s still there.”
“What?!”
With excellent comedic timing, the jaunty ‘Super Mario World’ death music played as soon as he looked away from the screen. Nick passed the controller to Pearl and dashed across the room. Maya expected him to walk out and shut the door behind him, so they could talk privately on the landing, but instead he opened it wider and welcomed their guest inside. For his part, Edgeworth seemed to share Maya’s assumption, but he quickly recovered and stepped in.
“Thank you,” he said.
Maya waved awkwardly. She wouldn’t have slammed the door in his face if she’d known he was going to walk through it only a minute later.
“Can I get you anything?” Nick was asking, “Water? Coffee? There might be tea. A beer? Wait, no. Uh, there's--”
“I’m alright, thank you.”
Maya perceived some shock in his expression as he looked around the apartment. It wasn’t spotless by any means-- they had not been expecting company-- but it wasn’t that bad.
“What brings you by?”
He glanced furtively at Maya before making something up about being in the neighborhood. It was interesting to watch them interact. They stood much further apart than usual, as if they were each making a point of it. Neither man seemed to know what to do with his hands. Nick had tried all of his pockets already, to no avail. He would not look over at Maya at all, but Edgeworth kept stealing glances, only to hurriedly look somewhere else when he met her eyes.
“Come on, Pearly,” She said, “That’s enough Nintendo for tonight. Let’s go for a walk.”
“Awww,” Pearl complained, but did as she was told.
Now Nick was looking at her. Behind Mr. Edgeworth’s back, he bared his teeth and shook his head ever so slightly. She pretended not to notice.
Well, Maya thought as she slammed the door behind her , that settles that .
* * *
“Sorry,” Wright was saying, “I don’t know why she ran off like that.”
“That’s fine. I wanted to get you alone anyway.”
“What?”
“I need to talk to you about Speck. Or have you already caught her up on that?”
“Oh! No, yeah I still haven’t told her. It kinda slipped my mind, to be honest.”
“It slipped your mind?” A sudden flash of anger seared through Miles’s skull and resolved itself into a tension headache. “I'll have you know that I am going to a lot of trouble for this, so if it simply doesn’t matter to you--”
“That’s not what I meant! Of course it matters, I’ve just had a lot going on lately. Pearls is starting school for the first time in like a week and me and Maya keep fi-- having disagreements about that. Plus, I have to go to New Hampshire now, and that’s gonna suck.” Wright shook his head, “I’m sorry. I really do appreciate your help. I'm sure by now I would have found out the hard way what that check is for if not for you.”
Miles thought those were all pretty lame excuses. Pearl Fey going to school should actually free up some of Wright’s time, and a trip out of state didn’t sound half bad right now to him. Wright was rambling again. He tended to do that when he got nervous.
“Um can I get you anything? Something to drink?”
“You already offered.”
“Oh yeah.”
Miles took a moment to collect his thoughts. The Speck investigation was, in fact, important to Wright. It was worth dealing with Cavanaugh for one evening; That was a reasonable sacrifice to make for more information.
“I mentioned my contact in the FBI?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s flying in tomorrow with everything he’s managed to find.”
“That’s great!” He was certainly more enthused than Miles. “When do I meet him?”
“You don’t,” he snapped.
“So he’ll only go through you?”
It was really more of an executive decision on Miles’s part. The thought of Wright being in the same room as Daniel Cavanaugh made him nauseous.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll pass along anything useful.”
“Oh, okay then.”
What else? He tapped absently against his crossed arms. “Did you say New Hampshire?”
“Yeah, how come?”
“When are you leaving?”
“I’m not really sure yet. Maybe Monday.”
Miles nodded. It was time to wrap this up. He stuck a hand into his pocket and withdrew a small box, shrouded in yellow tissue paper.
“For me?” Wright looked astonished.
“It’s a gift,” he clarified uselessly. “Or an apology, rather. For running you over…”
“Edgeworth! You didn’t have to-- You already--” He wrestled with what to say before landing on a simple, yet enthusiastic, “Thank you!”
“It's really not that exciting,” he warned.
He accepted the box with a blinding smile and took off the wrapping with great care. As soon as he saw what was inside, however, his expression went flat. Wright picked up the watch with a shaking hand and turned it around to look at the back. Miles hadn’t checked the back-- there was no need, since the battery worked. It occurred to him now, watching his eyes move left to right, top to bottom across it, that replacing a battery wasn’t the only reason to check the reverse side. There was a personalized engraving on it and he had no idea what it said. He’d bought the damn thing secondhand. It could be anything! It could be a marriage proposal for all he knew.
He panicked, “I didn’t write that! I don’t-- I didn’t realize it had… writing.”
Wright looked up at him through misty eyes. He turned the watch around for Miles to read, but never once let it out of his grasp. In small, precise lettering was engraved:
Phoenix,
The time we give others is never wasted.
-M. Fey
“M. Fey?!” He looked up with a start. “Mia?”
He dove in for a hug, the watch still clasped tight in one hand. He was crying. He was actually crying . Was that a good or a bad thing? Either way, it was profoundly uncomfortable for Miles. He had not anticipated this at all.
Wright soon got the better of himself and pulled back, sniffling and hastily drying his eyes. If he was embarrassed by this outburst of emotion, he hid it very well. Then again, how could he not be? Miles believed that there wasn’t a single item on earth capable of making him act this way in front of another person. Even watching someone else be so vulnerable was difficult for him.
“I tried to buy it back when I got the money, but it wasn’t there anymore.” He read the inscription again and again. “I thought I’d lost it forever.”
Phoenix beamed at him. The expression on his face was so earnest and open and affectionate, that Miles went quite blank.
“Thank you,” he was saying, over and over again, in as many different ways as he could think to say it.
“That’s alright,” Miles continued to answer.
He had almost successfully removed himself from this mortifying scenario when Maya and Pearl Fey returned from their walk. Phoenix practically shook with excitement while he showed off the watch. They talked over each other, explaining that Miles had returned it to him without any idea of its real significance. Though, Maya outright dismissed the possibility that it could be a mere coincidence. With an exaggerated wink aimed in his direction, she proclaimed it to be nothing short of fate. In any case, her opinion of Miles seemed much improved, and it took a very long time to convince the three of them that he could not possibly stay for dinner.
Chapter 9
Summary:
In which we meet the famed FBI agent, Daniel Cavanaugh
Notes:
I'm back!!! Although, this is a weird one to drop in on after a long break. This week’s chapter is a bit different from the others. Hopefully you fw it, but if not, don’t worry; We’ll be back to usual in the next one. See notes at the end of the chapter for a long justification of what’s happening here.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The Chaise Lounge was a stylish restaurant attached to a luxury hotel. It was possible to enter either from the street or through the hotel lobby. Miles chose the former. His watch told him that he was one minute early, at 7:29 pm. He glanced up just in time to see Agent Daniel Cavanaugh saunter through the opposite door.
So, he’s finally done something about his punctuality.
They converged on a table for two in the middle of the restaurant.
“You look good, Miles,” Cavanaugh smoothed his tie as he took a seat. “The years have treated you well.”
“Mm. Not particularly.”
He waited, but not long. “...Would this be a good time for you to return the compliment?”
“You look exactly the same, Danny.”
“I’ll take it!” He flashed a toothy smile that did not reach his eyes.
He really did look unchanged. Danny had a handsome, square face and short, dark hair. There was an air of neatness about him which was almost sterile. He always wore a black or dark gray suit paired with one of many thin red ties that he owned. The only time Miles had ever seen him break from this standard was early in both of their careers, at a black-tie event. The clothes he had on tonight were new, at least to Miles, but familiar all the same. Everything about him was sickeningly familiar, from his smooth voice, to his dead eyes. Miles wished bitterly that they had never met. A waiter came to offer them drinks.
“We’ll share a bottle of the house white,” Danny said.
“No we won’t,” he addressed the waiter. “I’ll have--”
“Yes we will. You’ll love it.”
“I’ll have an unsweetened iced tea.”
“No he won’t ,” Danny told the poor waiter, who was looking fearfully back and forth between them. He turned back to Miles “Trust me, it’ll be great. It’s on me.”
“ Daniel. ”
“Ugh. Fine. An unsweetened ice tea for the gentleman and-- let me see…” Danny made them both wait while he read every single option on the non-alcoholic menu. Eventually, he ordered the very first thing on the list: a grapefruit mocktail.
Their drinks arrived and their food was ordered shortly thereafter. Throughout the whole affair, Miles was disgusted to see how much Danny tried to play it as a date. He declined three separate offers to sample the mocktail he’d ordered, and had to keep his feet tucked beneath his chair since Danny kept “accidentally” brushing against his legs.
“It’s really great to see you again, Miles,” he announced, for the third time. “I gotta say, I was surprised to hear from you.”
“I wouldn’t have called if I didn’t have to.”
“Still.” Danny shrugged. “So, how’s work?”
“Fine.”
“I heard you lost your win record.”
“I did.”
“Must have stung.”
“For a while,” was his glib reply. “How’s Kinsley?”
“Don’t know. He transferred. Now he rides a desk. Teaches sometimes,” Danny added around a mouthful of his dinner.
“Good for him.” It was the first thing Miles had said with any sincerity all night. And with that subject behind them, his only vested interest in small-talk expired. “May I please see the documents now? That is the only reason for this little rendezvous.”
“I’ll go get them.”
Miles dropped his fork with a clatter. “You didn’t bring them with you?”
“They’re just upstairs, it’s not far.”
“Upstairs…?” He finally saw exactly what kind of a fool he’d been played for. “You’ve brought me to dine at your own hotel.”
“Is that a problem?” Danny was either pretending not to see the issue, or he’d gotten much stupider since they parted ways.
“Unbelievable,” he scoffed. “I’m amazed you had the restraint not to suggest we order room service.”
“Look if you’re uncomfortable, I could just go--”
“No, no,” Miles held out his arms in a sweeping gesture, “Far be it from me to spoil the fun! Let’s just go upstairs and see what the hell happens. That’s what you were banking on, after all. I would so hate to disappoint you.”
“Okay,” Danny pretended he could not read the sarcasm. “Sounds good to me.”
They rose together, leaving their unfinished meals and a crisp hundred dollar bill on the table. In the lobby, Danny veered left before he was corrected.
“We’re taking the stairs, or we’re not going.”
“Stairs it is.”
If Miles had harbored any doubts as to why Danny had chosen his own hotel for the venue, these were dispelled as soon as he saw the room. There was a bottle of wine sitting in ice on the table with two upturned glasses beside it. A sweet smell permeated the air, owed to an arrangement of daylilies on the nightstand-- Miles’s favorite. Danny could remember these things when it was convenient. The large, picture-frame windows were open wide, and a breeze wafted through the room. Sheer curtains billowed towards them, approaching like two angry ghosts-- one for each year he'd wasted with this man.
The view through the window was, unfortunately, gorgeous; City lights glittered like fireflies beyond a well-kept courtyard. Miles had to admit, it was far from the least comfortable room they’d ever shared. Danny’s briefcase was on the floor, propped up against the legs of the only seat in the room. Danny flopped into the chair and picked it up.
“Have a seat,” he offered, rummaging through.
The only other place to sit was on the bed. Miles folded his arms and remained standing.
“Here it is.” He handed over a manila folder.
Inside were the results of various ViCAP, AFIS, and other federal database searches. There were about 20 pages to sift through in all. Miles recognized only one face in the collection of mugshots and ID photos: an employee of the mail room at the prosecutor's office. His were the unidentified fingerprints lifted off the envelope in which Wright’s check had been delivered. Great. There goes that lead . The sound of a cork being popped interrupted his train of thought. Danny filled one glass and hovered the neck of the bottle over the other.
“No,” Miles said firmly. “Thank you.”
“You sure?” Danny held it up so he could see the label. It was a Riesling. “It’s really good.”
“Quite sure.”
He flipped to the next page, which was the criminal record of a man named Frank Jeffries with ‘Victor Speck’ highlighted in the list of his known aliases. Odd choice. Could it be a coincidence?
“What, you don’t like white wine anymore?”
“I don’t want anything to drink.”
A handwritten memo, clipped to the page, explained that Jeffries was serving ten years in a Texas penitentiary. He frowned. How likely was it that the man who wrote the check did so from prison?
“So you don’t drink at all now, or just not with me?”
Miles’s concentration was fragmented as he scanned the list of Victor Specks for any connection to Wright or himself. He forgot to be guarded.
“I don’t drink at all,” he answered honestly, “Going on a month now.”
Danny gestured at the glass he’d already poured. “You mind if I do?”
“Fine,” he murmured from behind the folder.
Engrossed in his reading, Miles sat down. He made it through one full paragraph before he remembered that the decision to stand had been very much intentional. He sprang to his feet and paced the room until he found himself at the window. The breeze coming through threatened the delicate balance of all the paperclipped printouts in the file. Miles shut the window. In its reflection, he saw that Danny had followed him over. He reached past Miles to push the curtains back a bit further. More or less cornered, Miles gave up trying to read.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Danny said.
“Are you here on any other business?” He tried for a neutral subject. “Did the bureau put you up?”
“Mhmm,” Danny hummed absently. “There’s a conference tomorrow morning.”
He set his wine glass down on the window sill, but he didn’t remove his hand. He now had one arm on either side of Miles, who was definitely beginning to feel more cornered than less. They looked at each other in the reflection.
“Hey, remember that one conference in--”
“In Florida?”
It was an easy guess; The man simply could not get past Florida.
Danny laughed, mistaking it for a shared obsession with their past. Mistaking it for encouragement. He closed in, slinging one arm around Miles’s waist and the other across his chest. The bottom of the wine glass, still clutched in his hand, pressed a smooth, cold circle onto his shoulder. Miles tried to look at the scenery, but couldn’t see past his own reflection. What he saw disgusted him. He turned away from it, passively accepting that, in doing so, he was turning toward Danny.
The eyes are sometimes called windows to the soul. Miles couldn’t bear to face what might be reflected in those windows either.
Kissing him was about like he remembered. Danny had always kissed like he was starving. Miles used to like that, back when his self esteem hinged on feeling like there was even one person in the world who wanted him. Now he knew better. He’d thought he knew better, anyway. Danny steered him toward the bed. He tried to set the folder on the table as they passed, but its contents spilled over the edge and flopped to the ground.
“Leave it,” he ordered, in the same tone he'd use on a dog, and all at once the bed was beneath them.
On his back, Miles rolled his eyes. Danny didn’t see that, but if he did, he would have misjudged and been flattered. He was too busy removing Miles’s cravat and unbuttoning his shirt to bother gauging his expression. Danny pulled his own shirt over his head, too, when it became clear that was the only way it was going to come off. He returned full force, not knowing any other kind, to kiss him again. He reached down between them for Miles’s belt, unclasped it, pushed his hand down the front of his trousers and… stopped.
Danny sighed into his neck, and rolled over flat on the bed next to him.
“So,” he said in a light, conversational tone, “What kind of antidepressants do they have you on?”
Miles was simultaneously insulted and impressed.
“I must be on SSRIs,” he scoffed, “Because it’s inconceivable that you might fail to excite me. Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s not just the broken dick--”
“It is not broken .”
“Anyway, it’s not just that.” He turned his head. “It’s the little comments about how life’s been kicking your ass--”
“I don’t recall saying that.”
“The no alcohol thing,” he continued, “And you even refused a sip of my grapefruit mocktail, when I happen to know for a fact that you enjoy grapefruit.”
“When have I ever said that?” Miles shrugged at the ceiling. “You’re just making things up now.”
“No I’m not!” He propped his head up on his elbow. “There was that drink you kept buying from the vending machine at my hotel in Miami, remember?”
“Oh.” He did remember. “God-- What were those called again?”
“Something-tails, I think.”
“Hightail.”
“That’s it,” Danny snapped his fingers. “You must have had like six of those every night.”
“I was dehydrated. It was ludicrously hot there.”
“ Riiight . I’m sure the random soda you found was so hydrating.” He sat up. “Why can’t you ever just drink plain water?”
Miles sat up too. “Not every fucking thing has to be an argument, Daniel.”
“Okay, okay. Sorry ,” Danny surrendered, but his tone was far from apologetic.
Miles fixed his eyes on the wine on the table. He was angry at himself for wanting any. He used to drink whenever he and Danny fought-- which was often. At the time, he told himself it was a good stress reliever, but in hindsight, it never actually made him feel better. This had not been a fight. Tonight, he wanted to drink for a different reason. Danny reached over and squeezed his hand, which made his skin crawl.
“I’ve missed having you around on investigations,” he said.
“That was three times in two years. You’ll live.”
“I’m serious,” He looked at the pile of documents spilling out of the folder on the floor. “I liked getting to help you out with this one... Even though it’s not the same. For one thing, this is not technically legal.”
Miles didn’t want to hear “for another thing,” so he pulled him in for another kiss. It was by far the most effective way to get him to shut the hell up-- as he knew from extensive experience. He also knew that Danny’s help was conditional. It always had to be an even exchange with him. He’d only gotten part of what he wanted tonight and he would make sure that the same applied to Miles. Next he’d be saying that he could only look at the files and not take them or show them to anyone else, exaggerating the potential risks to his career.
He thinks he’s so fucking subtle. Tells me it's illegal. Miles got a handful of Danny’s hair and thought about how satisfying it would be to rip out. He was still kissing him, angrily now. If Danny could even tell the difference, he liked it better that way. Know what else is illegal? Extortion. He swung a leg over his waist in one fluid motion. As soon as he had done so, he was pinned there by arms much stronger than his own.
I should have anticipated this, Miles berated himself. He tried to focus that anger onto Danny, pulling roughly at his hair and narrowly suppressing the urge to bite his tongue clean off. Yet, for all of his practice at being angry with Cavanaugh, Miles was much better at being angry with himself. And what if you had anticipated it? You’d still be here, wouldn’t you? You’re pathetic.
* * *
At 10:36pm Miles, now slightly disheveled, walked back through the hotel lobby, clutching the hard-earned folder of Victor Specks tight to his chest. His eyes fell on the bar inside the Chaise Lounge, illuminated by pink strips of LED light. He had received very specific instructions not to mix alcohol with his medication, but only vague warnings about the consequences thereof. It can’t possibly make me feel worse, he thought. He needed something to wash the taste out of his mouth-- and preferably the memory out of his brain.
The staff took turns waiting tables and tending bar. One of the young men who had seen Miles in the restaurant a few hours ago, and remembered the large tip left on his table, rushed to the bar when he saw him pull out a stool. Miles sat the folder down and clasped a hand protectively over it.
“Hi there,” the bartender’s voice was quiet, but friendly. “What can I do for you?”
“I don’t know.” He drew a hand across his face and attempted to collect himself. “How about an old fashioned?”
“Sure thing.”
The drink sat in front of him, untouched, for two full minutes. And then it was drained within one.
“Want another?” The kid asked. Miles was his only customer.
“Yes I do.”
He chugged half of the drink, best savored, as soon as it was sat before him. He regarded the young man on the other side of the bar. His uniform was wrinkled and shabby and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. The expression on his face was warm, however, and Miles wondered what sense of joy, of purpose in life, he could possibly find in a place like this. He has to have something else.
“You a student?” He asked.
“I am,” The bartender was happy to report. “Ivy University.”
“Good for you,” Miles raised his glass and drained the rest of it. “What d’ya study?”
“I’ll have my bachelors of fine arts at the end of next year-- That’s if I don’t drop out first,” he said. “Another?”
“Yeah.” His third drink, he finally slowed down enough to appreciate. “Ivy University huh?”
“Did you go?”
“No, all my degrees are from Germany. I‘ve friends who went to Ivy, though. How d’ you like it?”
“It’s a really nice program. I just wish I’d thought ahead when I picked my major. There’s pretty much nothing to do with a BFA other than go back to school so you can teach. It’s like a pyramid scheme,” He quipped. “What do you do?”
“I’m a prosecutor.”
“How do you like that?” he asked, with all earnesty.
At first, Miles couldn’t answer; He was working too hard on not bursting into tears.
Finally, he choked out, “It’s not what I thought it would be.”
The kid had the great sense not to push him any further on that particular subject. Unprompted, he poured two shots of some top-shelf tequila and, aside from the clinking of glasses, they took them silently. Before leaving, Miles emptied his wallet of cash and handed something like $300 to the kid.
“Stay in school,” he said.
The bartender was wide-eyed. “I can’t accept this.”
“They don’t let you keep tips?” He was suddenly furious. “That’s illegal. I’ll write down the number of a good attorney. You need to get some of your coworkers together and--”
“No they let me keep tips, but,” He was incredulous, “Man, this is all of your money.”
“Oh. Don’t worry about that.”
“But--”
“Today’s Thursday, isn’t it? I get paid again tomorrow morning.”
“Keep enough for the cab fare, at least,” he tried to hand over a twenty.
“It’s alright, I’m not driving,” he lied, pointing to the lobby.
“Well… Thanks. Really, sir. This is… I can’t tell you how much this is gonna help me out.”
A thin smile appeared and broke over Miles’s face. He gathered up the folder with great care and waved over his shoulder as he staggered out. He dropped his car keys onto the pavement when he took them out of his pocket, but was not dissuaded. Behind the wheel, he put a hand on the seatbelt out of habit, but ultimately left it unbuckled. His little red car moved homeward down the freeway and Miles was vaguely disappointed to arrive safely. The folder stayed on the passenger seat. After a very long, very hot shower, he climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling until his alarm went off the next morning.
Notes:
Danny is not gonna be a recurring character or anything. In the early stages of writing this fic I kept thinking about how we have insight into at least one past relationship for Phoenix, but we don’t get any canon information about Miles’s love life at all. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like my version of the character would’ve had a lot of short-lived, ambiguously shitty relationships throughout his life.
Danny serves two main purposes in this fic: First, to establish a baseline for the longest relationship Miles has ever maintained (two years, on-and-off). Which will show some interesting contrast in how he behaves with Phoenix when they (EVENTUALLY) get together. And the second reason is to show that Miles has hit his absolute mental rock-bottom.
Chapter 10
Notes:
We now return to your regularly scheduled program.
Chapter Text
With crucial preparations to be made for his upcoming trip to New Hampshire and not nearly enough time left to make them, Phoenix instead found himself at the ironing board. He was obsessively pressing wrinkles out of the suit he planned to wear for the meeting with Pearl's prospective teacher in less than an hour.
Maya’s nervousness had begun to rub off on him the closer they got to the start of the semester. There was no real reason to be apprehensive on Pearl’s behalf. She would do great; He was sure of it. The thing that threatened to have him come unglued was the terminology of a Parent/Teacher Conference. Until very recently, the term ‘legal guardian’ felt completely distinct from ‘parent.’ Now, the school was using the two pretty much interchangeably. Phoenix was comfortable as a legal guardian. That title made sense for him. Being called Pearl’s parent, on the other hand, made him break out into a cold sweat every time. He didn’t have the qualifications for that. Lost in thought, he passed the iron over his finger.
“Ow! Shhhh--Shoot.” He fixed the ending when he noticed Pearl watching him from the couch.
Before he knew it, he and Maya were crammed into tiny, plastic chairs across from Pearl’s teacher, Miss Leland. She tolerated their hundreds of neurotic questions about the school while Phoenix signed various permission slips. It was slow going. She and Maya finished a whole conversation about the PTA before he was done flipping through the latest document that required his signature.
“Do you read everything you sign?” Miss Leland quipped. “It must take a while.”
“I try to.” Phoenix’s mind flashed to the reams of paper in contracts with Falcon sitting on his desk. “It comes with the territory.”
“He’s a defense attorney,” Maya explained.
“How exciting!”
The document was alright. It basically said he couldn’t sue the school district if anything happened to Pearl during school hours. Just from a cursory look he could see a few loopholes-- not that he expected to need them. He signed.
“Great!” She placed it into a labelled folder and handed him another. Indicating with the back of her pen, she said, “Okay, last one. So Pearl’s information goes in this box up top, and then this one for Mom and this one for Dad.”
Phoenix winced, but he didn’t correct her. Maya wrote on behalf of Pearl and herself, then handed it back over the desk. Miss Leland looked it over. Her smile faded when she read their birth years. The math did not look good on paper.
“How long have you two been together?” Her voice went a bit shrill.
Maya flushed, “Oh, we’re not-- Nick and I aren’t--”
“We just share custody,” Phoenix jumped in. “Maya is Pearl’s cousin and-- and next of kin.”
“Oh!” She was immensely relieved.
“We’re not a couple,” He felt the need to clarify again.
“Of course,” she shook her head. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“Oh, but,” Maya gave him a significant look, “Um. Pearly might tell it differently.”
* * *
Phoenix’s watch said 7:15 pm as he stood alone inside Mia’s office. All it took to get rid of Maya and Pearl was enough money to buy some frozen yogurt and a promise that he’d catch up to them in a minute. He was only there to pack up what little he had on the Cicero murder in New Hampshire, but with that thin folder in hand, he lingered. He wanted to do something small and practical and final. Something to put a neat bow on the office so that leaving it for a few weeks didn’t feel so much like abandoning it. Charley had already been watered.
He stared at the carpet under the window. A spot he'd once paid a lot of money to have steam cleaned rather than replaced.
What he really wanted was to talk to Mia.
“Okay,” he brushed a thumb over his watchband and took a deep breath. “I know that I could talk to you-- like actually talk to you-- face-to-face, but I don’t like asking the girls to do that anymore. I think it takes a pretty big toll on Maya, like, emotionally. And Pearls is great at it, but I want her to just... I want her to have the chance to just be an ordinary little girl after everything Morgan put her through. And I guess if... uh... talking out loud to an empty room is good enough for people who do not have immediate access to a spirit medium, then it'll have to be good enough for me too.
"I miss you. A lot. Every day, actually. I’m trying to keep the office up the way you liked it, and do everything how you taught me and, I don’t know, honor your legacy and everything... But it’s hard. And I’m making a mess of things. I almost lost this place. If not for Edgeworth, I-- I would have lost it."
Phoenix spun the watch in a loose circle around his wrist.
“He’s so different now. I almost don’t think you’d recognize him. He’s been really helping me out, though. The money and the Speck investigation… But, uh-- and not that I’m complaining-- but he’s hard to talk to. And that’s okay, obviously. Hell, he probably thinks I’m hard to talk to. Emotions are tough for him, no wonder, and I’ve been so damn emotional lately. I’m going away to New Hampshire soon. Pearl and Maya can’t come with me. I already miss them, and I haven’t even left yet.
“I just… I hope you know that I’m trying. They deserve the world. I can’t give it to them, but I am really, really trying.” He cleared his throat. “And I’m also rambling. I haven’t been able to vent about this to anyone. You’re kind of a captive audience, I guess. Ha. Sorry, Chief.
“Oh, and I saw Diego last week. He’s doing good. He’s being treated well and he seems happy. As happy as you can be in that situation. I hope he gets out soon. I think he misses you, too. Um… Also last week. Edgeworth said, uh, that you’d be proud of me. I hope that’s true. I… I love you, Mia. We all do.”
***
Much too soon, it was time to say goodbye. The three of them shuffled down the stairs hauling Phoenix’s overfilled duffel bag (which just barely qualified as a carry-on). At the bottom of the steps they turned to look at each other, three miserable expressions obscured with varying levels of success. Maya was doing the best; Pearl was doing the worst.
“Aw. Chin up, buttercup,” Phoenix lifted her head.
Through trembling lips, she asked, “Do you really have to go?”
He knelt down to her level. “I do, kiddo. I don’t want it anymore than you do, but it’s gotta be done.”
“I’ll miss you.”
He gave her a big hug. Half because she needed one and half because, if he saw her face right now, he’d cry. Maya too. He squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to cry right now. What kind of impression would that leave? He could cry on the way to the airport. Right then, he had to be strong. After a moment, he was pretty sure he could speak without his voice breaking or anything.
“I’ll miss you, Pearls.” He took her by the shoulders and gave the goofiest grin he could muster, “But you are gonna forget all about me! You’ll go to school and have such a fantastic time and make so many new friends that, when I get back you’ll be like, ‘Hey, who’s this guy?’”
“No I won’t!” She balled her fists at her sides and stamped her foot. “I’m not going to forget you!”
“Okay, maybe not-- I won’t be gone that long. But all the other stuff is true.”
She still looked upset.
“Hey, pester your cousin all the time for me while I’m gone, okay? She loves it.”
“Oh, Nick!” Maya complained. “Really?”
Pearls finally cracked a smile. She nodded.
Phoenix started walking backwards down the sidewalk toward the taxi. “Call me! I’ll get bored.”
“We will,” Maya and Pearl promised.
“Oh-- and Maya, remember to keep an eye on the sink because it’s been leaking,” he called louder the further he got, “Make sure it’s totally shut off before you leave the house!”
“I know!”
“I mean under it! In the pipes, not the faucet!” He was still walking backwards.
“Yeah, I know! It’s gonna be fine, Nick!” They started to climb the stairs.
“Don’t throw any parties!”
She laughed, “No promises!”
“Okay! I’m going now!” He leaned against the open door of the taxi, still drinking in the sight of his little family.
“So go then!”
“Watch me!!” His eyes welled up a little. That was okay-- Pearls was too far away to really see. “Here I go!”
From the second floor landing, outside their door, Maya put her hands on her hips in mock disapproval, but she could do nothing about the big, involuntary smile on her face.
“It’s happening!” He put one foot very slowly into the car. “On the count of three! One! ...Two!! ....Two and a half!”
They laughed, “I love you!! We love you! We’ll miss you!”
“I love you both!” He threw his duffel bag into the seat behind him and blew a kiss. “Okay, three!”
He got into the car. They waved at each other through the window and then the rear windshield until they were out of each other’s line of sight. That didn’t take long-- he’d made the driver very impatient.