Chapter Text
Every night, there is a gun in your hand.
And oh, Miles Edgeworth, you know what happens to bad men with big guns. You take them to court and to prison and to their deaths, to the gurney, to the restraints and to the needle and to the veins and to the sodium thiopental, the pancuronium bromide, the potassium chloride, that myoclonic malformation behind the ribs, the left ventricle, the right ventricle, to the final and foul and forever fogged-over stare.
You know what happens to bad men with big guns. You take them and you tear them apart. You take them and you dislocate their souls with the recoil of your rifle, your Ruger, your Remington, double-barreled and double-action and dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
You are a bad man with a big gun, Miles Edgeworth. And you know what you must do.
You are twenty-six and the fault beneath your feet has just fractured you in two. It is happening again. It always is.
You are trembling in the Hazakura gardens and Iris is gone and it is all your fault, and you are staring at the magatama in the palm of Phoenix Wright’s hand because it is green, because green means good, because green means safe, and you are not blinking and you are saying those four safe words in your head in four safe sets, silently pleading and kicking and begging him not to take it away until you’re done.
But his heart is too big. He wants to comfort you. And so he moves to tuck the magatama into his breast pocket and reach out to you, and you are about to lose your everloving mind, and so you snatch the stupid stone out of his stupid hand and stare at it, unblinking, silently saying those four safe words in four safe sets and—
“What are you doing, Mi—”
“Don’t talk.”
“But—”
“You’re messing me up,” you say, urgent, voice cracking, covering his mouth with your free hand. He can feel how it shakes, you’re sure. “Just—please—”
You don’t take your hand away from his mouth until you’re finished—until you’ve silently said those four safe words in four safe sets, unblinking, unmarred from any other thought as you stand-off with the color green.
He doesn’t understand what’s happening, and you don’t know how to explain it to him.
You don’t remember the first time this ever happened. Ah, but you remember the first time you ever realized something wasn’t normal about it.
My name is Miles Edgeworth. I’m twelve.
I was born in the United States but I live in Germany. My favorite color is red but I’m told it’s the law, and my favorite animal is a dog but I’m told it’s the law, and my best friend’s name is Phoenix Wright but I’m told it’s the law, and my name is Miles Edgeworth, but I’m told it’s the law.
I don’t know what’s happening to me. They say strange things start to happen to kids my age, but I think this is different.
There is an outlet on the wall across from my bed. Every night, before I go to sleep, I stare at the little green light circled upon it and I don’t blink and I think “safe, safe, safe, safe” in four safe sets. A total of sixteen times.
Sometimes I blink. Sometimes I think the wrong word. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel right. I have to start over a lot. Sometimes it takes me hours. Sometimes I don’t sleep at all.
I asked Franziska what words she thinks of when she stares at the little green light before bed. She said she doesn’t think of anything. She said she just goes to sleep.
I asked Mrs. von Karma what words she thinks of when she stares at the little green light before bed. She said she doesn’t think of anything. She said she just goes to sleep.
I asked Mr. von Karma what words he thinks of when he stares at the little green light before bed. He said he doesn’t think of anything. But he told me I should think of the word “guilty”.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.
I stare into the light and I don’t blink and I think the word but I still have the nightmare.
I think I’m doing something wrong.
I know I’m doing something wrong.
Why am I always doing something wrong?
You figured out that it was OCD when you were sixteen. By that time, it had gotten much, much worse. By that time, your mind had wasted into a theater of war.
It is a disorder that infuriates you to no end, because there is no logic or reason or rationale behind any of it. The obsession, the nightmare, your father and his blood and your finger and the trigger and the shot and the sound—the sound. The agonal breathing, that evil, gasping, rasping, haunting, hacking, sawed-off sound, the compound fracture of the world, the total annihilation of your soul, the almighty all-consuming all-possessing fear that it will happen again and again and again and again and again—how could this ever be mended by a light and four words?
Still, you walk on. You live with it. You move through life in 4/4 time and nothing changes. It doesn’t help a thing. Warring and wasting and obsessing and completing compulsions does not help a thing.
You are doing something wrong.
You always are.