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2029
“Daddy, hurry up, it’s 11:55!” Trucy’s voice rings out from the hallway.
“I’m coming, just give me a sec!” Phoenix calls back as he quickly combs back his constant flyaway before rushing out to the hallway to join Trucy in front of the entryway mirror. It’s one of the only pieces of furniture in the house they just moved into as of two days ago, purpose-bought for this ritual.
“Where’s Miles?” Phoenix asks.
“He’s coming,” Trucy says. “He went to help Pess downstairs.”
Phoenix nods. Despite the fact that they’ve set up Pess with everything she needs on the ground level, including his and Miles’s bedroom for nighttime snuggles, she still insists on following Miles whenever he goes upstairs. Unfortunately, considering the fact that she’s getting old and can’t figure out how to run downstairs anymore, this means that she gets stuck up there. Phoenix wraps an arm around Trucy and pulls her close.
“You ready for 2030, Truce?”
Trucy grins. “It’s going to be a good year, Daddy. I can feel it. It’s my magician’s instinct, you know.”
Phoenix focuses his attention on his reflection in the mirror. This will mark the 30th year of this tradition for him, give or take a couple of years he must have missed in his childhood.
Trucy is quiet. He’s happy to have her here, always happy to have her here, especially nowadays when her winter breaks from college are never enough to sate Phoenix from missing her, but she knows that this is a sacred moment that can be shared only in coexistence. It is not made for people to speak with one another. It is only made for a person to speak with themselves.
And every year, when the clock strikes midnight, Phoenix imagines speaking to himself, every version of himself.
1999
Mama says the computers are all going to shut down tonight. There are boxes of emergency rations in the pantry and the bathtub is full of water, just in case.
Mother says that nothing’s going to happen, but she isn’t putting up a fight about letting Phoenix stay up until midnight this year either way.
Maybe it’s because she wants to humor Mama. Maybe it’s because she knows Phoenix is scared. Most likely it’s because she knows everyone is tired and stressed out from the week they’ve had.
Despite being allowed to stay up, Phoenix is half asleep anyways. Even though he’s already seven, he’s never allowed to stay up past eight, and now at 11:55, he’s having to fight his body not to fall asleep where he lays on top of Mama’s chest, Mother running her fingers through his hair.
He feels Mother pause for a moment, assessing whether Phoenix is asleep. When he stays still, she whispers to Mama.
“I’m sorry about this week. That whole case, it never should have happened. He had no legal grounds to stand on.” She sighs, a twinge of worry lacing her voice.
Mama snorts lightly. “He’s his father. In the eyes of the court, I’m not his parent at all. He had a custody case. A bad one. A convoluted one. But not impossible. You should just be glad we won and nobody’s going to try and take him.”
“It’d have to be over my dead body,” Mother huffs. “He’s your son. You raised him. We’ve raised him all his life. His father’s done nothing, he has no- he had no right.”
Mama presses a kiss to the top of Phoenix’s head. He’s more awake now, but keeps his eyes shut and remains utterly still.
“I don’t blame him. I would have fought tooth and nail to have custody over my boy too.”
You sound like Mama now, Phoenix tells his past self. You sound just like her. If anyone tried to take Trucy away, you wouldn’t have been able to hold back.
“It wasn’t about Phoenix. You know that. It was about that convoluted child support loophole, he was just trying to threaten us. If he wanted Phoenix, why the fuck- sorry- why the hell would he have left him as a baby? No, that asshole didn’t want us. He doesn’t want anything but money.”
A conclusion draws in Phoenix’s mind: he is unwanted. He is unwanted. Something is wrong with him. His dad didn’t want him. His dad didn’t love him, and now Mother is stuck with him and he isn’t really even Mama’s kid. He’s nothing. He’s worse than nothing, because you don’t run from nothing.
You’re loved, Phoenix wishes he could tell himself. You’re so loved. You have to reframe it: you may be adopted but that doesn’t mean you were unwanted. It means you were wanted enough to be chosen as Mama’s child.
But of course, Phoenix can’t hear any of that.
Mama’s grip around Phoenix tightens. She lowers her chin so it’s hovering right above Phoenix’s head, and despite himself, Phoenix burrows closer to her.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Mama says quietly. “It’s over. Phoenix is home with us. He’s going to stay home with us.”
“Even if the world ends tonight?” Mother teases.
“It’s not ending, the computers are just going to-“ Mama laughs. “Would you stop teasing me for that? I’m serious!”
Mother laughs.
You sound like Mother when you laugh.
“Come on, I’ll show you a little tradition of mine. Maybe it’ll get your mind off this whole Y2K thing.”
There’s shifting and Phoenix is being hoisted onto Mama’s hip and carried somewhere. He blinks a sleepy eye open just long enough to realize that they’re in the foyer, facing the grand mirror: Grandpa’s wedding gift to Mama.
“You look at yourself in the mirror as midnight comes,” Mother continues. “So that as you transition to the new year, you’re taking yourself, just as you are, with you. Every version of yourself.” Her voice dips down softer. Phoenix is a little smushed as Mother leans in to kiss Mama. “Every lovely version of yourself.”
Mama breathes out and Phoenix can feel her shift her weight in the way she holds him, her muscles relaxing.
“Alright,” she says. “Here’s to the year 2000, may our bank accounts not freeze and may we make it to 2001.”
“Amen.” Mother gently shakes Phoenix’s shoulder. “Feenie? It’s almost midnight, my love, did you want to be awake for it?”
Phoenix grumbles. He yawns widely and opens his eyes. He glances at the reflection of the mirror, at his Mother and his Mama and him, standing in the foyer of Grandpa’s house that they’ve just moved into, a clock ticking away behind them.
His dad should be there. His dad chose not to be there. His dad knows he’s more trouble than he’s worth. His dad knows that he can’t seem to figure out why he just can’t sit still in class. His dad hates him.
You’re a good kid. You don’t need him. You’re loved, Phoenix. I don’t know how to tell you enough. Look at your mothers. You’re loved.
He wants his dad. He watches himself in the reflection of the mirror. The clock ticks past midnight. They stay there, Phoenix snuggled close in between his mothers.
“Don’t you want to go check if the phones still work?” Mother teases when Mama doesn’t move.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mama whispers. She rests her head on Mother’s shoulder. “This is more important.”
2001
Phoenix is allowed to stay awake for this New Years too, and he knows it’s because his moms have seen the news on TV about the Edgeworth case.
Phoenix hasn’t really been able to eat since he heard about it. He keeps thinking of Miles, sitting alone in an empty house. Miles doesn’t even have a mother. Phoenix feels selfish for having two.
Who’s going to cook for him? Who’s going to take care of him, where is he going to go?
“He’s not going to be at home alone,” Mama reassures him when Phoenix cries to her about Miles not being at school. “They’ll see if he has family he can stay with.”
He doesn’t have any other family. Phoenix knows. He’s been to Miles’s house. He’s seen Miles’s bedroom, filled with law textbooks with words so big that Phoenix loses focus halfway through them. He’s heard Miles explain ten dozen times to him and Larry that he’s going to be a lawyer like his dad because there’s nobody else in their family and Miles has to show his dad that he admires him.
“He’ll probably be taken into foster care then, sweetheart,” Mama promises. “I know you’re worried about your friend. But he’s not going to be at home alone. They’ll make sure he’s safe.”
When Phoenix asks, “what then?” Mama doesn’t know how to answer.
Phoenix has heard Miles explain the legal processes behind adoption and foster care long enough to know that once you’re in foster care, you don’t often leave.
Phoenix doesn’t talk to Mama about it again. He tries to be good and eat dinner so she doesn’t worry about him, but he still thinks of Miles and how he can’t eat crusts and can’t eat peanut butter and can’t eat broccoli unless it’s made just right and he knows he has to be starving at the foster home and then Phoenix can’t find it within himself to eat either.
It’s hard to see someone you love in pain. It’s hard to watch their life changed forever. It’s hard to know that they are suffering. You didn’t even know about von Karma yet. But you knew he was hurting. You can’t stop every cruelty in the world, Phoenix. Talk to people. Help where you can. Allow yourself to worry about the people you love.
He “goes to bed” at eight on New Years Eve and nobody tells him to leave his door unlocked or to turn his lights off. His parents seem to understand this is a sacred moment of grieving for him.
He cries for a long time. Where is Miles? Where is Miles? Is he ok? How can he possibly be okay when his dad is dead?
The worst of it is that Phoenix can do nothing. He’s ridden his bike by the house. The doors are locked. He’s called every number he knows that Miles might be able to answer. None of them were answered. He’s written a letter: but Phoenix suspects that’ll just go to the mailbox of the Edgeworth house in a few days, and will stay there.
He hates knowing Miles is in pain. He hates knowing he can’t do anything about it. He hates knowing he’s like his dad, in a way, abandoning someone, even though he doesn’t mean to. He feels guilty: he has a dad out there, somewhere, even if he doesn’t know him. At least he’s alive.
He calls Larry, who doesn’t really have a bedtime and always picks up no matter how late Phoenix calls. Larry has a way of calming Phoenix down that Phoenix doesn’t quite understand.
“He has to come back to school sometime, right?” Larry reminds Phoenix. “You remember what he said about foster care always being within county limits. He’ll come back and he’ll still have us. It’s just a few days, probably. And then we can be there to make him feel better.”
He won’t. He’ll be taken away to Germany. It’ll be the first of many times in your life where you sit and wonder where he went, if he’s ok, when he’ll be back. He’s not ok right now. But he will be.
Phoenix feels a little better. At five to midnight he unlocks his door and tiptoes to the bathroom. His parents’ bedroom door is cracked open and a nightlight is turned on: an invitation if he needs it.
Phoenix goes to the bathroom. He stands in front of the mirror. He takes a deep breath. Wherever Miles is right now, it’s going to be a new year for him too. And Phoenix can only hope that in 2002 he and Larry can remind Miles that he’s not alone, even now that his dad isn’t here anymore.
Phoenix watches himself as midnight passes. Then he closes the light and climbs into bed with Mama and Mother.
2009
There’s a blurb published in an expensive law magazine Phoenix is subscribed to even though he’s living off of instant ramen and dining hall points and still has to pirate textbooks if he wants to be able to study.
It’s published on December 12th, 2009.
An honorable mention must be made to Mr. Miles Edgeworth, who earned his license to practice in California earlier this month. This young lawyer is only eighteen years old, and despite residing primarily in Germany, is originally from L.A. and intends to return here to practice. We wish all the best to this young man, who is sure to have a respected career in front of him, following in the footsteps of his father, acclaimed attorney Gregory Edgeworth, and his adoptive father, acclaimed prosecutor Manfred von Karma, who personally mentored him. With both nature and nurture on his side, he’s already achieved this great accomplishment earlier than most, and we look forward to seeing his career develop.
This blurb makes whatever obscene amount of money Phoenix has spent on this magazine worth it. Phoenix has reread this blurb almost every day since it’s been published, and that’s not even the part Phoenix cares most about.
Above the blurb is an image, in crisp black and white, the first clear image Phoenix has seen of him in years. Miles is looking directly at the camera, von Karma’s hand on his shoulder. They’re smiling, but there’s a… lifelessness behind it that Phoenix worries about.
He knows how Miles’s real smile is. He never quite knows what to do with his face: it’s lopsided and awkward and his upper lip folds back so his front teeth are peeking out. The smile in this picture is perfectly polished.
He’s so skinny. He’s so, so skinny. Admittedly, Phoenix has put on more than his fair share of the freshman fifteen, but Miles looks like he’s half his size, his face gaunt and his collarbone protruding out of his skin. His nails are flaking apart where he holds up his new badge to the camera and his lower lip is peeling. Phoenix knows about the symptoms of iron deficiency. Phoenix knows how Miles chews his lower lip when he’s hungry but is too stressed to eat. He’s not eating. Phoenix knows he was right to worry. He’s just not eating.
He rereads that blurb every day. He looks at the picture every day, until he’s certain he can’t parse any more details out of it. On the 31st of December, he cuts them both out and adds them to the pinboard he’s got hung up in his dingy little excuse for a walk-in closet that he can barely stand in. It’s officially the third piece of information he has about Miles since his father’s death.
He can hear his roommate strumming his ukulele outside the closet door, this melancholy tune from a pop song.
He knows it’s a little crazy and obsessive to have this… this stalker mural in his closet, but it’s not like that. He’s not expecting anything from Miles. He just… worries about him. He worries. He’s been doing a lot of worrying recently. He would want someone to love him enough to want to know he was okay, even years after they stopped talking. He would want to be loved so violently that any possibility of abandonment could be disregarded. He hopes that if Miles wants the same thing, this fills that need.
It’s funny, in some ways I think your obsession with observing Miles set the path for you picking up on details as a lawyer. Some people would certainly call it crazy. It’s not normal, and you know that, even if you don’t know why yet.
He’s careful to respect his boundaries: he’s only ever sent a letter to the von Karma office once. The rest of this is kept solely to himself, to try and calm that itch in his mind that tells him Miles is at risk.
Looking at this pinboard, the itch only flares up more. He’s not okay.
I keep telling you, Phoenix, if you’d listen. He’s not okay, but he will be. I promise you. He will be. You don’t believe me.
No, he just doesn’t hear you. He’s too busy staring at the second hand on his childhood Swatch that’s far too tight for his wrist now, waiting for it to spin around to midnight.
The sharp overhead light is grating against his eyes, but it’s only for a few more seconds. He glances at the pinboard, then back to the tiny pop-up mirror he’s got on the built in shelf. He watches himself as they tick into the new year.
There’s good news in all of this. Miles Edgeworth is licensed to work in California. He’s returning. Phoenix will be seeing public recordings of him sooner rather than later.
2013
Admittedly, he’s never not felt like a little bit of a cheater.
He’s not a cheater, to clarify. He doesn’t like Miles that way, even though he does like boys, and he hasn’t talked to Miles since elementary school anyways… at least not in a two-sided way.
And he’s in love with Dahlia, he really is, he’s so in love with her that it hurts, that he’s gone from saying that all he cares about is his friends and his career to fantasizing about moving into a house in the countryside and raising noisy kids who ask him for help with their English homework and Dahlia for help with their science homework and whine when they’re stuck with their math homework because neither of them would be much help.
He spends pretty much every waking hour with her, whenever they’re out of class. It’s the happiest he’s ever felt. He loves her. God, he loves her. It’s physically painful seeing her, sometimes, like the love doesn’t know where to fit, threatening to come dribbling down his nose.
You quit theater to spend more time with her. Text your friends back. Stop skipping class. You can love her but don’t make her your life.
He’s never cared about anything so much.
But he doesn’t tell her about Miles because he’s worried it’d… hurt her, maybe. Or make her worry he wasn’t in love with her. He doesn’t tell her, and that feels like a form of cheating too.
It’s strange. He’d worried for a while that his quest to save Miles would suffer at the hands of his studies, his friends, his hobbies, at the new discovery of his sexuality that left him going to gay bars and forgetting how to talk when a boy flirted with him, but he feels just as solid in his obsession now as he did before.
When he began dating Dahlia, something had to budge. There wasn’t enough room for everything. Between Miles, Dahlia, and his life, he picked the people he loved.
It certainly makes him feel like a cheater now as they sit atop the plush pink rug on Dahlia’s apartment floor. She’s braiding her hair absentmindedly, leaning into Phoenix’s side. Phoenix wonders whether Miles is doing anything to recover from the brutal case he just wrapped up a few hours ago.
“Thank you for letting me be a part of this,” she says softly, looking at Phoenix through the reflection of the full-length mirror they’ve taken off the hook and propped up against the wall so they can see themselves as they lean against the couch.
“Thank you for doing it with me. I thought you’d think it was silly.”
Dahlia shakes her head. “Nothing silly about it at all.” She smiles at Phoenix earnestly, her hand laying flat on Phoenix’s chest.
Her fingers linger over the charm of the necklace she’d given him all those months ago when they first met.
“I love this necklace,” Phoenix says.
She looks away for a moment, embarrassed.
Guilty. Nervous. Regretful.
Embarrassed.
“It’s funny, I thought you’d find it silly. Every time I look at it, I think that you might want something a little less girly.”
Phoenix sets his hand atop hers. He’s too flustered to meet her eyes with their hands together like this.
“There’s nothing wrong with something being girly. I wear that sweater you made me all the time too, and I don’t care if it makes me look girly.”
Dahlia hesitates. “Are you sure you don’t want something different as a New Years gift? I can get you a different one.”
Phoenix shakes his head. “This one is perfect. It reminds me of our first time meeting. It reminds me of our love.”
Dahlia fits her arm in between Phoenix’s arm and his side and squeezes lightly, an acknowledgment of the sentiment.
“It’s almost midnight,” she whispers. “To 2014.”
Phoenix sneaks a glance at her. She’s so beautiful. He can’t believe she’s real.
“To us,” he manages. He looks at them both in the reflection as midnight hits, and the sound of the campus fireworks show resonates throughout the building.
She pulls him into a kiss, her face bright red when they pull apart.
Phoenix stumbles over his words when he speaks. “Fireworks,” he finally manages, a dorky grin plastered across his face. “We should go see the fireworks.”
She interlaces her fingers in his and they go out to her balcony and watch whatever bits of the fireworks they can see from the awkward angle between buildings. It’s the most beautiful fireworks show he’s ever seen.
She’s human. Love her. Enjoy it. But remember that she’s only human. You’ll need to remember that for later.
He wonders whether Edgeworth is still awake. He had been ruthless today: an almost certainly guilty defendant but Miles had fought for the maximum sentence, despite it being a first time offense. The Miles he knows wouldn’t be able to sleep after a day like that. Phoenix hadn’t even wanted to add notes of today’s session to his log.
“My Dahlia,” Phoenix says, squeezing her hand.
“My Feenie,” she replies, her voice breathy.
It’s 12:02 AM in 2014, and things are as they should be.
2014
Everything is wrong. Everything is wrong and Phoenix doesn’t have to really think about it because he can’t feel anything anymore, not with the amount of cheap liquor sloshing around his empty stomach.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to find someone to kiss, it’s nearly midnight!” The bar host’s voice rings through the packed campus bar.
Phoenix is lucky to have gotten in tonight. His fake’s been turned away at nearly every bar on campus at this point, but the crowd here means that they must have been letting just about anyone in.
The guy Phoenix has been making out with all night wraps an arm around him and grins.
“God, I can’t believe we’re closer to 2030 than 1999.”
Phoenix laughs even though there wasn’t any joke. Maybe if he laughs enough he can convince himself to feel anything other than blatant emptiness. Maybe he can pretend there’s a reason to live now that he doesn’t have Dahlia. Maybe he can pretend that there’s a universe somewhere where he wasn’t so easy to abandon. Maybe he can pretend he’s not the type of guy to be moping over a breakup that happened eight months ago.
There’s nothing wrong with loving people. It’s not so easy to get over love, not for people like us.
Breakup. Court trial. Attempted murder. It’s all the same shit. If they hadn’t pumped his stomach, he’d be better off for it.
If they hadn’t pumped your stomach, I wouldn’t be able to speak to you. I’m glad they did.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” Phoenix excuses himself, pushing the guy away.
“Go after midnight,” he insists, pulling Phoenix close again. Phoenix glances at the bar bathroom. There’s a line out the door. He’d better improvise.
He pulls out his phone and opens up the camera app. Even though it’s an outdated flip phone, it’ll work. Dahlia never teased him about the phone. She said she admired that he didn’t get swept up in the craze of smartphones. Which was part of it, sure, but Phoenix was also just poor. She didn’t seem to mind that either. He’d stayed up late for three nights in a row before their anniversary, finishing a very underwhelming scrapbook full of poetry for her, when he knew he couldn’t afford a real anniversary present.
She had looked at him with glassy eyes, and told him it was the most wonderful present she’d ever received. In that moment, Phoenix had felt like he was worth something, if he could make her smile like that.
Here’s one good thing about the fact that everything reminds him of Dahlia, needles prickling the inside of his stomach. Sometimes he’ll go a couple days without worrying about Miles. It’s probably easier now that he’s on a mission to get his badge. He gets a break from obsessing. Meeting Miles again is attainable.
Well, it will be, tomorrow, when Phoenix cuts out these habits of drinking too much and spending too much and hooking up with too many people after asking too few questions. Today, Phoenix fights the reality of being worse than nothing, of being a tainted creature that everyone is forced to leave. Tomorrow, Phoenix will be nothing at all, air to be molded into anything worthwhile by Mia Fey.
“We takin’ a selfie?” The guy slurs, pressing his face up in the crook of Phoenix’s neck. “That phone is crazy. It’s like you’re living in the 90s.”
A wave of annoyance floods through him. He wants Dahlia. He wants Dahlia. He wants Dahlia in whatever way she’d have him. He’d swallow the necklace a dozen times over as long as she was there to hold him.
It’s unrealistic. Love isn’t made for people like Phoenix, disposable, expendable, too much work. Ask Dahlia. Ask Miles. Ask his father.
“Fuck off,” Phoenix huffs. He doesn’t want him invading this sacred moment. He pushes him away and storms outside.
It’s drizzling, but Phoenix can’t seem to care. He sits on the front step and looks at himself in the camera.
The annoyance doesn’t leave as he stares at himself in the camera. How is it that he looks the same now as he did last year, when his entire world has crumbled around him? He hates Dahlia. He hates theatre. He hates his friends and this bar and himself.
He hates the fact that Dahlia looked the same in court recordings, consumed by rage that Phoenix’s love had ruined her plans, as she did that night as they kissed under the fireworks and she’d held his hands and promised him that she couldn’t see a future with anyone but him. How could those two creatures exist in the same body?
Sometimes people are multifaceted. They can change rapidly, see-saw back and forth. You know that better than anybody: do you love Miles or do you hate what he’s become? With Dahlia… sometimes, they’re two creatures entirely.
There’s a countdown inside. Phoenix focuses on his image in the camera. There’s cheering. It’s 2015. Phoenix feels like nothing at all.
2015
This is the year. This is the year. Phoenix is going to meet Miles this year, he can feel it in his soul as he watches himself in the bathroom mirror of the Fey & Co Law Offices as they transition from 2015 to 2016.
Everything has been building up to this, and now that the possibility stands at his doorstep, he feels a little sick.
Mia knocks on the bathroom door. “Are you alright? You’ve been in there forever.”
Phoenix opens the door with a wide grin.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just this tradition I have for New Year’s. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always started the new year off looking at myself in the mirror.”
Mia raises an eyebrow at him and smiles, her bangs falling into her eyes. “I like it. Maybe I’ll take a page out of your book and do that myself next year.” She glances back out towards the window, a car’s headlights glinting outside. “I just wanted to say that I think I’m going to head home now. You should head out too. I know you’re impatient about getting your minimum hours in but you don’t need to be working past midnight.”
You’re lucky to have ended up with her. Of the dozens of attorneys who would’ve preyed on your manic need to do this, you got Mia Fey. We are never allowed to complain about luck again.
Phoenix hums in understanding. There’s not much waiting for him at home. He prefers being in the office: at least he feels like he’s being useful.
“Sure thing, boss,” he says. “Thanks. I’ll head out in a few but don’t wait for me. I’ll lock up after myself.”
Mia nods. She says goodbye to Phoenix and he watches as she gets into Lana’s car and kisses her across the console before they drive away.
For the first time in a long time, the grief of Dahlia and Miles doesn’t threaten to suffocate. He knows he’s right where he needs to be. He knows that he’s going to be able to help Miles.
He’s going to be able to help a lot of people. Good things are coming.
2016
Nights like this, the silence is deadly.
Sitting in Mia Fey’s old desk chair and staring through the window at the Gatewater Hotel, he too feels close to the afterlife.
He thinks about it, whenever he’s here alone. The way her body had collapsed, slumped against the wall. The way he had spoken to her hours before. The way her hands were cold.
That might be what gets to him most, especially during the winter when the old heating system in the building can’t keep up with the weather, and the tips of his fingers tingle as he types at his computer.
He remembers grabbing her hand, and for a split second, he could have believed it was just the cold.
He shouldn’t be thinking of her right now. There’s work to do. And it’s not as though he can’t speak with her ever again. He’ll keep in touch with Maya. She can channel her.
Grieve for her. Why do you run from it? Grieve. Allow yourself this.
It’s been a strange year. For every loss, he’s gained something different. Mia Fey, her little sister. Unfortunately, it also works in reverse. For everything he’s gained, there’s loss tinging it. Miles Edgeworth, the idea of him.
2016 has been the year where Phoenix has finally seen Miles Edgeworth, not as a child, not as a hero, and not as God himself. Phoenix has seen Miles Edgeworth as a man, a flawed, complete man with a complex inner world complete with fears and biases and insecurities.
Phoenix prefers the version in his head.
He wouldn’t trade the dregs of friendship he’s regained with Miles and Larry, but it does leave him… a little lost. Then again, it’s only been three days since the trial.
You’re being impatient. Things take time. You can’t love a man you haven’t seen in almost a decade. You can’t love a ghost. Give it time.
His phone dings.
Maya Fey: made it back home in time to see fireworks!!! happy new year nick!!!
Phoenix smiles.
See? For every loss, there’s a gain.
Phoenix: Enjoy! Don’t stay up too late or your sister’s going to yell at me when you channel her next time
Maya: doesn’t matter to me, I won’t get to see it :p don’t be a hermit!!!! you should go out and celebrate!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Phoenix glances at the time. 11:59. Welp. It’s definitely too late to make plans.
Phoenix: Shouldn’t you be running to go see the fireworks?
Maya: !!!!!!!!!!
The green dot disappears from her icon. Phoenix looks over to the window. In the semi-darkness of the L.A. night, with only the lights from the Gatewater sign shining in, Phoenix can see himself reflected back in the glass.
If he lets himself believe, he can swear that he hears Lana’s car pulling up outside. He can swear he sees Mia in the reflection behind him. They indulge in this ritual together, just like she’d promised last year.
“Happy new year, Mia,” Phoenix says, and he swears he can hear her respond.
2017
Maybe it was a drowning.
Phoenix sits at the edge of the Ivy University campus lake and tries to picture Miles Edgeworth, walking into it and never walking back out. It’s elegant, tidy, like something out of a period piece movie. It makes more sense to him than the alternatives. Miles wouldn’t want something messy.
Poisoning might make more sense. It’s one of the most common methods of suicide anyways. Very difficult to fake, though Phoenix has seen his fair share of murderers who have tried their damn best.
He’s lucky most of the students are away for winter break. He’s got to look strange sitting here in the middle of the night, alone, having graduated ages ago. But this space is special to him. He remembers sitting here with Dahlia when the weather was nice, sprawled out on a picnic blanket on the grass, eating lunches that they took turns bringing for both of them.
Now that memory, like Miles Edgeworth, has walked into the lake and has not come back out. It’s a nice idea: somewhere to find all the people he’s been unable to find. Miles, Dahlia, his father, himself. Maybe Phoenix should walk into the lake too. It’s too warm for it to freeze over top of him, unfortunately.
He doesn’t mean that. He’s just jaded. He’s just sick of hurting. He’s sick of the fact that his life has felt numb since he lost Miles. He has no purpose anymore. Why is he even a lawyer, if he couldn’t save Miles after all that? There’s no obsession to drive him. Without obsession, there is no joy. There is nothing. There’s worse than nothing.
He hates Miles Edgeworth. How could he do this to him? How could he do this to himself? Phoenix is angry.
You’re not angry. You’re hurt.
Phoenix is unbearably angry. He’s tired of being angry. He should do something about it.
-
Larry had shown up at his apartment once, after neither he nor Maya could get in touch with Phoenix. It was the week of the letter. Larry looked worn and ragged himself, dark circles under his eyes. Phoenix half-expected a lecture about bedrotting, about how he needed to be taking better care of himself.
Instead, Larry had laid on the floor next to Phoenix.
“What a jerk, am I right?” Larry muttered without any real heat behind it. “He still had us. We could have been there to make him feel better. What kind of asshole just kills themselves without even telling his friends?”
You’d laughed then. You’d both laughed, in this awful wet way where it was really a mutual cry. You needed it. Larry has a way of calming us down that we’ve never quite understood.
Larry says things just as they are. It forces Phoenix out of his own head when he gets stuck in there. They’d laid there together for a while, in mourning.
Eventually, Phoenix had sat up. “I really want to get wasted. We could go out, if you’re up for it.”
Larry raised an eyebrow at Phoenix. “Nah, I’m good. That’s a loser way to deal with this.”
“Stops me from being miserable.”
Larry was quiet for a moment. He sat up too, his head tilting as he studied Phoenix’s expression. “Our friend just killed himself, man. Being miserable is normal.”
Phoenix swallowed thickly. “Doesn’t feel normal.”
Larry had shrugged. “I think that’s also normal.”
They’d laid back down and Phoenix had cried so violently into Larry’s chest that he was sure his lungs were going to escape his body.
You needed that too.
-
Phoenix thinks of Larry now as he sits at the edge of this lake. He thinks of Maya, who had texted Larry to ask him to check on Phoenix. He thinks of his mothers, having to stomach the same loss Phoenix is experiencing now. He shuffles back to sit solidly on the grass.
He watches his reflection in the lake. He doesn’t even realize midnight’s come and gone until he hears the cheering and sees the fireworks framing his face in the reflection. He manages a small smile.
Maybe he is the type of person that still misses Dahlia. Maybe he is the type of person who’ll never get over losing Miles. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe there are better ways to cope, and maybe they’re worth it, for the people who love him.
It’s midnight, but if there’s one thing he knows about Larry Butz, it’s that he never has a bedtime. Phoenix reaches for his phone.
2018
He almost doesn’t keep up with the tradition in 2018. He finds himself at the courthouse library, poring over piles of books for a niche loophole he’s trying to find for the case he’s fighting tomorrow, and before he knows it, it’s almost midnight, his phone is dead, and the bulletproof windows of the library mean that there’s no reflection to be seen.
He doesn’t really want to get up. He wants to sit here in his little pile of books that he’s skimmed over half a dozen times and skim over them one more time, just in case.
Here’s what his therapist has been telling him, now that he can finally afford it: it’s a skill to practice, knowing when to call it quits or pivot. Phoenix can effectively determine that reading through these for a seventh time isn’t going to do anything good for him. He’ll have all day tomorrow to investigate and find another route.
He shuts the books and puts them back in the library return cart before he heads out to his favorite late-night shawarma restaurant. He makes it to the worn-down bathroom just before midnight.
He looks a hell of a lot better than he’s looked in the last few years, despite his late nights and general state of overwork. He supposes, knowing how to deal with inevitable grief saves you from looking like shit all the time.
There are some blessings in disguise. Seeing Miles Edgeworth as a complete person, making decisions Phoenix might not choose to make, returning from the dead (from Europe) has made Phoenix come to terms with a loss of his own: Miles has never belonged to him. Phoenix has gotten rid of the dozens of letters he’s written and never sent over the years. Phoenix has finally cancelled the law journal subscriptions he can’t afford. Phoenix is finally friends with Miles Edgeworth: the man, not the idea.
Now, Phoenix knows Miles has his own reasons to stay running, to live out of suitcases and to run on airplane meals. Now, Miles can leave, Dahlia’s execution is in a month, and Phoenix still knows how to breathe.
Maya had played a song for him the other day, some indie new release, and Phoenix had liked one of the lines in it: these catastrophic problems follow us around.
It’s true. Here is the misconception Phoenix has spent the year internalizing: moving on does not mean that the grief dissolves away into nothingness. Moving on means that the grief dissolves away into acetone. The fumes fill the air: suffocating at first, less potent as the days go by, and eventually all you have left to show for it is a cough that’s never going to leave. Some days will be good. Some days will be bad.
Moving on is an acceptance of an unending grief. Moving on is allowing yourself the scars.
This also always felt like cheating. Letting go feels like an acknowledgement that nothing happened. It feels like a negation of the loss. You get better at it. You were already getting better at it. I’m proud of you.
“I’m proud of you,” Phoenix says to himself under flickering lights in the bathroom mirror at midnight. “I’m damn proud of you.”
2019
“Daddy?”
Phoenix looks up from the electric bill he’s been staring at. Trucy is standing at the edge of the living room in her pajamas, clutching a Blue Badger plushie close to her chest. She’s sniffling. Phoenix puts the bills down. There’ll always be more time to grieve over the insane rising costs of electricity in California, especially if he keeps losing the battle to get more hours at the Borscht Bowl Club.
“Trucy, hey, what’s wrong?”
Trucy doesn’t say anything, just climbs into Phoenix’s lap and buries her face in his chest. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together, especially since Trucy’s never been a particularly good sleeper, admitting to him that she still has nightmares about her dad being in danger.
“I’ve got you, kid,” Phoenix soothes, running his fingers through her hair. “I’ve got you, you’re safe.”
Trucy whimpers and Phoenix’s heart softens. He hadn’t ever expected to be a parent. After Dahlia- Iris- Phoenix had given up any hopes he’d ever had of loving anyone enough to start a family with them.
Now, holding his baby and trying to soothe her from a nightmare, Phoenix can’t imagine it any other way.
Trucy has nightmares about Zak Gramarye disappearing. Phoenix does too, but nowadays, Phoenix’s nightmares usually involve Zak Gramaye showing up at his doorstep and asking for his daughter back. It’s selfish. Zak is still her dad, and Trucy still asks for him all these months later. Phoenix wouldn’t blame her if she kept asking forever.
But even if he did come back, he’d be sent straight to prison.
But Trucy eats like every meal is her last. Phoenix has asked her about it.
“My other Daddy forgot about my dinner sometimes,” she had admitted nonchalantly, like that wasn’t supposed to make Phoenix’s heart shatter.
So it wasn’t much better before either.
He wouldn’t ever tell anyone this, except maybe his therapist if his Medicaid ever gets approved, but he is relieved with every day that goes by and Zak Gramarye stays missing.
-
The night she’d first come over and decided she lived here now, Phoenix had thought that she was destined to go into the system.
It was a miracle he kept Charley alive. He was not equipped to raise a child, and certainly not an eight year old little magician who would be disappearing in puffs of smoke and setting fire to the office.
But then she’d looked up at him with those big, glossy eyes, and Phoenix remembered 1999, being cradled in Mama’s arms and thinking I want my dad.
He remembers the hurt of not being valuable enough to stay. He remembers how lucky he is to have been raised by mothers who - however imperfect - always reminded him he was loved. He remembers 2001, his jaw aching and stomach growling because what if Miles couldn’t eat at a foster home?
He remembers Iris, on one night in winter when they’d come across an old cat shivering by a dumpster, an inch away from death. She’d pleaded with him to take it. He had just gotten his new apartment. She was in the middle of a move. He had asked her: what sort of a sorry life could I give a cat in a studio apartment when I’m in class all day? I’ve never had a pet. Iris had looked up at him, pleading. A better life than this, she had said. He had taken the cat, who went on to live another two years.
He remembers the statistics. Most kids who go into the system don’t make their way out of it. And he just can’t do that to her.
When he makes the call to report an abandoned child, he signs up for the mandatory classes and registers as a foster parent.
-
“Sorry for crying,” Trucy mumbles, gripping Phoenix’s shirt in her fists. She’s calmed down now.
Relish it while it lasts. It’ll feel like tomorrow you can’t even pick her up anymore.
“Nothing to be sorry about at all, Truce,” Phoenix reassures her.
She sits up and wipes her nose with her sleeve. “I don’t wanna go to bed.”
Phoenix nods. He smooths out her hair with his fingers and glances over at the time. Minutes to midnight.
“Okay,” he says. “Then you’ll just have to join me for my New Years Eve tradition.”
He explains it to her as he carries her back to the bedroom that Phoenix has done his best to convert from an empty bachelor pad to a child’s room. His canvases still stand in a corner and there are two wardrobes to account for both of their clothes, but there’s floral bedding and a fluffy rug and a secondhand bookshelf full of secondhand books, and Phoenix thinks that counts for something.
They sit on the floor and Phoenix hands Trucy the little Pink Princess mirror that came as part of a play makeup kit Maya had sent over when she’d first found out about Trucy.
“Grandma taught me about this when I was just about your age,” Phoenix tells her as she angles it upward so she can see both of them in the reflection. “You can join me in it if you’d like.”
Trucy nods. She leans back into Phoenix and relaxes. “Can we make a wish for the new year?”
Phoenix smiles. “Of course. I think that’s a great idea.”
They watch themselves in the mirror. For however many wishes Phoenix has, none of them come to mind as they flip into the new year.
You wished for Trucy to stay with you. You didn’t let yourself believe that you wished for it, because you thought it was selfish. It’s not selfish to want things, Phoenix.
“So,” Trucy asks, her expression suddenly back to silly and playful. “What did you wish for, Daddy?”
Phoenix blinks.
“Hey wait a minute, I thought wishes were meant to be private?”
“That’s birthday wishes,” Trucy explains, tilting her head very seriously.
Phoenix narrows his eyes at her. She would make a damn good lawyer, finding loopholes like that.
“I wished for the special at work tomorrow to be French onion soup,” Phoenix lies.
The glint of amusement in her eyes tells Phoenix she knows he’s lying, but this is their truce: she doesn’t call him on it.
“I wished for us to get a dog,” Trucy declares.
Phoenix can’t tell if she’s lying so he can’t call her on it either way.
“We have bad wishes,” Phoenix laughs.
It’s about another hour before he gets her back to sleep. His own sleep fights him a little more. He thinks about 2019. He thinks about his losses: his badge, Iris Fey in prison, the wrong person at the wrong time.
He thinks about mistakes he can’t seem to stop himself from making: warm breath against his neck amongst silk bedsheets in a manor across town, an embroidered handkerchief: K.G.
I never know if you believed him or not. You loved him. Did you believe him when he told you he cared for you?
He thinks about his blessings, his biggest blessing of all, Trucy Wright asleep in the other room, unaware that had she not been Phoenix’s responsibility, he wouldn’t have been able to fight the fleeting thoughts that told him to run into traffic, give up on trying to be useful.
He thinks about that old cat, purring on his chest with her wheeze and her missing tufts of fur, meowing in annoyance if Phoenix tried to leave in the middle of the night.
That stupid cat that Phoenix had never even had the heart to name, who died only two years later, had saved Phoenix’s life half a dozen times over, when nothing felt like it mattered and everything felt like it mattered too much.
He can’t kill himself, not when he has to feed the cat tomorrow.
Trucy Wright is unaware that she does the same now.
He thinks about Miles Edgeworth, in Europe, somewhere or the other, running, running, always running, searching for a destination he’s never likely to find, a freedom that’ll never be enough.
Some freedoms are suffocating. Some burdens liberate. Phoenix understands that now. Phoenix has decided to stop running.
2023
Phoenix is a garbage dad. He knows this as he sits in the white leather passenger seat of Kristoph’s brand new DB12 Aston Martin, freshly imported. He leans the seat back as far as he can and tries to keep his guts inside.
They take a rounded exit and Phoenix groans.
“Poor thing,” Kristoph tuts. “You must be more careful when you drink.”
Phoenix wants to stab him. Not that it’s his fault, not entirely at least. Just because he shows up and waves his platinum card around and offers Phoenix unlimited drinks with the implication that he’ll drive him home afterwards does not mean that Phoenix has to take him up on the offer.
He likes seeing Phoenix needy though, and Phoenix likes to be seen.
So here they are driving through L.A. traffic in the middle of a Sunday night. At least tomorrow is a federal holiday. Phoenix has work, but it doesn’t really matter if he’s driving himself directly into the ground. Trucy doesn’t have school, and that’s what matters. Staying up late on a school night isn’t good for her.
He doesn’t have any right to be playing up this saintly father role. This… thing, this situation he has with Kristoph isn’t good for her either.
A twitch of guilt flicks in whatever part of his brain is still sober. He should be with her on New Years’. They have their annual tradition. He would’ve stayed home, if she’d asked him.
So many excuses to avoid letting yourself believe you’re in love with him. You do shitty things when you’re in love with people. You can’t change that until you accept it.
“I’ll be home in time for our midnight tradition,” Phoenix had promised Trucy after he told her that he’d be coming home a little late from work.
“Did you get more hours at the bowl club?” Trucy asked, hopeful. There’s guilt in that too, in that failure. She shouldn’t be worrying about his hours.
“No, uh-” Phoenix had been apologetic even then, rubbing the back of his neck, “Kristoph asked to meet. We might go out for a bit.”
Trucy’s nose had scrunched in annoyance. She liked Kristoph, even though she would always tell Phoenix that his tells were so much more suffocated than most people’s. Still, she liked him. They had dinner all together often enough. She invited Kristoph to her school plays. She asked to tour his office. She made him a card for his birthday.
It’s not Kristoph that’s the problem. It’s the going out.
For however much Trucy can spot a liar, she’s terrible at masking her own feelings. He sees her force a neutral, nonchalant expression before she glances at her phone.
“My friend Jinxie asked at school today if I could spend the night,” she says. “I told her I was busy, but if you’re going out, could I go spend the night with her? Her dad is hosting a celebration for the village.”
Oh. Trucy doesn’t want to spend New Years’ with him. And he understands. But hell if that doesn’t sting. He’s a failure of a dad. He spent his whole life staring in the mirror and promising he would be better than his father, but here he is, no better at all.
Imperfection is not failure. You were there. You could have been better, but you were there.
“Yeah,” Phoenix manages to say. “If you want to go, of course. What time do you want to go over? I’ll schedule an Uber and I can come drop you off.”
“I can take the train,” Trucy says matter of factly. She doesn’t announce what they’re both thinking: two Ubers on New Years’ Eve would be another expense they can’t afford.
She's not even mad. Phoenix could deal with mad. It’s the fact that she looks at him like she expected this that wounds Phoenix because then the truth is unavoidable: that it’s clear to her that he’s a man that’s started picking the path of least resistance no matter the consequences.
He almost wants to argue with her: what is he supposed to do? He’s lost his badge. Miles is in Europe. His friends all hate him. He has nothing. He has nothing. He is nothing. When you reach the bottom of the barrel, you’ve gotta stop scooping.
You chose to stop speaking to your friends because they encouraged you to fight for your badge back. You’re only dating Kristoph to spite Miles. You’re running from uncertainty again. Things can live in the unknown sometimes. Don’t kill them off prematurely.
Kristoph Gavin is what Phoenix finds, tucked away neatly in a secret compartment underneath the bottom of the barrel, untainted. He doesn’t think that Kristoph loves him, but that’s what he loves about Kristoph. It’s easier when you definitively know what to expect. It’s always been the hoping that killed Phoenix. With Kristoph, there’s nothing to hope for. There’s only that good old reliable guilt, and that belittling smile.
Kristoph finally pulls into his driveway and they sit there in silence as Phoenix attempts to regain his constitution. Kristoph doesn’t rush him. Patience is a virtue Kristoph is full of: he wins games of chess because Phoenix quits by the time their kings dance around the board alone.
“What time is it?” Phoenix asks.
Kristoph glances at his watch. He waits until the second hand reaches 0 to respond. “11:59. Nearly midnight.”
Phoenix flips down the passenger side visor and flips open the little mirror so that he can see himself, just barely, roadkill splattered across white leather. He looks like shit. He looks wasted. He looks used. He looks lovely, just as he’s always meant to be.
“If you’re trying to see if you’re still flushed, I have to tell you, you are,” Kristoph teases. He clicks open his seatbelt but doesn’t move.
“Shh.”
He’s not in denial: he shouldn’t be dating him. But sitting here in a fancy car at 11:59PM, choosing not to tell Kristoph about this ritual, noticing the way Kristoph prickles at the realization that there’s something going on that he isn’t being let in on, Phoenix feels powerful. And that’s something.
He sits there for a while, in silence, minutes passing as he watches himself. He doesn’t even look human in the mirror. It’s someone else, some terrible creature that’s possessed him. He watches it in case it attacks. It’s long-dead, incapable of any such thing.
Eventually, he tucks away the mirror and closes his eyes.
There’s a soft peck on his cheek, Kristoph’s hand on his shoulder.
“Come to bed,” he says gently, offering Phoenix his free hand. “You’ll feel better when you’re lying down.”
Phoenix takes it. Phoenix always takes it.
When defensiveness inevitably comes to him in the future, he’ll say that he was with Kristoph to study him, playing psychiatrist to a sadist found to be harming animals, to a pathological liar, to his rival, but the truth is far more sinister than that.
The truth is that Phoenix Wright is just a man, with needs, with desires, with a heart. The truth is that Phoenix loves him. Not in the way he loves Miles or Dahlia, but he loves him nonetheless. The truth is when Kristoph Gavin offers Phoenix his hand, he’ll take it a hundred times over. The last thing you want to find at the bottom of the barrel, after your hands are sore from scraping, is nothing at all.
2026
His body shakes as he climbs down the stairs carefully. After the hellish year he’s had, this feels like a fitting way to end it, feverish and in pain. But it’s over. It’s over. This is the purge Phoenix has been waiting for, the last squeeze of paint left in the crusty tube before you’re allowed to open a new one.
He manages to make it back to the couch, to the safety of the heated blanket that he and Trucy are sharing, draped over their laps.
“Sorry for getting you sick, kid,” Phoenix apologizes, sniffling.
Trucy coughs. “I blame Miles.” She smiles at Phoenix, leaning into his side.
Phoenix blames Miles too. It’s all the damn trips to Europe. Phoenix hopes now that he’s settled down in his new role as Chief Prosecutor, he’ll stop traveling so much.
“Boy am I ready for 2027,” Phoenix says, leaning his head back against the sofa.
There are the parts Trucy knows about 2026: Kristoph’s arrest, the car swerving into him, the Mason System and all that went into the grand expose.
And then there are the parts Phoenix is sure she’ll be able to figure out sooner or later: the guilt that eats at him when he thinks of his ex-boyfriend behind bars because of him, the way he’s turned Miles down for dinner because he doesn’t want to feel like he’s in college again, his emotions about Kristoph far from neutral, the way that he thinks about getting hit by that car and sometimes he hopes he can open his eyes and realize everything that followed was a dream, that he is indeed that creature he saw in the mirror years ago, long-dead.
Phoenix wants Kristoph. Phoenix longs to play out the scene of a jailbreak movie, find himself somewhere alone, abroad, with Kristoph, reading together in the grass, Phoenix reciting poetry to him.
“Keats,” Kristoph says firmly, even though it’s not, it’s Shelley, Phoenix would know. It’s his favorite poem.
“Keats,” Phoenix agrees.
He misses him. God, he misses him.
He hears his voice in his head all the time, his fingers around his throat. You betrayed me, he says. The nausea rises as he thinks about it now: he took Miles back after he had abandoned him. He would have swallowed a dozen poisoned necklaces. Why is it that he drew the line at this? Since when has he become the type of terrible creature that betrays?
He imagines Kristoph in the way he looked in the morning, before he’d had the opportunity to pull his skin on and become who he wanted to be. That was his favorite Kristoph, sleepily smiling at the way Phoenix kissed the top of his head, mumbling something about the cold.
God, what he wouldn’t do to duck his head down, give Kristoph the opportunity to warm his icy fingers on his neck.
How often did he fantasize about squeezing? How often was he just plain cold?
Your daughter is here, he wants to tell himself. Your daughter is here, and you’re both alive, and this tradition is continuing. Who cares about Kristoph Gavin? Who cares? But Phoenix in 2026 can’t hear him. Phoenix in 2026 is thinking about Kristoph Gavin and the absence threatens to kill him.
“I’ll miss 2026,” Trucy says quietly. “A lot of stuff is going to change this year. I’ll miss things being normal.”
Phoenix opens his eyes and looks at his daughter, the way her face has begun to flatten out, the babyish puff vanishing from her cheeks, her eyes more proportional to the size of her head. Phoenix barely recognizes her. His little girl used to be 90% eyes once upon a time.
He’s missed out on a lot of her childhood, he realizes. Poverty will do that to you. Desperation as a whole will do that to you. Giving up will do that to you.
But this year, Phoenix has a thousand reasons not to give up. Trucy’s still got plenty of her childhood ahead of her. It doesn’t matter if the memory of Kristoph’s lips against his, his wild eyes behind the defendant’s stand, are going to ache in Phoenix’s heart. It doesn’t matter. Phoenix is going to be better this year. At midnight, he will be one month sober.
You’ll have three more ‘one month sober’versaries. I’m glad you celebrated this one. I’m glad you celebrate each one that follows.
“I guess we’ll see what 2027 brings,” Phoenix hums. “For now, we’ve got wishes to make. It’s almost midnight.”
Trucy nods. She cuddles up close to Phoenix and holds up the same Pink Princess mirror she’s had since she was a little girl, the decals faded and the plastic sun-bleached.
“We look like crap,” Trucy giggles at their reflections, their noses red and raw, their skin greasy, their hair unwashed. An apt summary of the year.
“The whole point is to love every version of ourselves, Truce,” Phoenix says. “Even the ones that look like crap.”
They watch their reflections as midnight comes and goes. Phoenix glances over at Trucy’s reflection to see if he can figure out what she’s wishing for. She mouths her wish subconsciously: he catches the word Daddy.
He doesn’t know if they’ve made the same wish, but he figures that they’re probably somewhere in the same ballpark.
For the first time, he doesn’t wish for something better for Trucy. For the first time, he closes his eyes and he wishes: I hope when I make my next wish, I’m thirteen months sober.
2027
It’s a miracle they all fit into this bathroom. In this bathroom barely bigger than a photobooth, upon Trucy’s insistence, somehow five of them are squeezed in here.
When Phoenix had gotten his badge back earlier this year, he had felt a renewed sense of vigor for what drew him towards law in the first place - other than Miles Edgeworth. It was the same reason he loved theater and art: he wanted to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. He wanted to help people. What he had not expected was the result of this helping: being shoved in this bathroom with an ex-convict and his little sister who Apollo probably has a case against given all of the tossing around she does to him.
Phoenix’s head is smushed awkwardly up against Simon Blackquill’s shoulder, trying to shrink himself down however possible.
“Apologies, Wright-dono,” Simon grimaces.
It’s better than where poor Apollo is, stuck in the middle of the whole platoon, awkwardly as stiff as a board in between Trucy and Athena. He’s smiling though, as he argues with Trucy, who is attempting to maneuver him into a different position so that their reflection looks more balanced. Phoenix is so relieved to see that boy smile after all that he’s been through this year.
“Daddy, you’ve gotta go to Athena’s right,” Trucy huffs, ushering Phoenix away from the corner and smushing him up further into Simon’s side. “Since she and Simon are the tallest, they should be on each end.”
“Not that I’d doubt your arrangement, Truce,” Athena says, “but I kinda wanna be next to my big brother. First New Year’s together and all, you know?”
Trucy looks up at Athena and considers this. She hums in thought and then shoves Phoenix back in the other direction.
“Okay, then you and Simon on the right, and then Apollo in the middle, and then me and Daddy on the left!”
They all get into position. Phoenix wraps his arm around Trucy’s shoulder: every year that goes by he’s a mixture of proud and horrified at how he has to squat less and less to do that. This is finally that fabled year where he doesn’t have to bend at all.
“Alright everyone, ten seconds, get your wishes ready!” Phoenix announces, glancing at the bathroom clock in the reflection.
Apollo is already looking at his reflection. Where there should be just his playful annoyance that he’s being bullied by a teenager to stay at work past midnight for a little tradition, there is only a sincere, deep, tiredness. There’s the tiredness of grief spread across his face, so familiar to Phoenix that he couldn’t possibly mistake it for anything else. He’s staring at his face in the mirror. Phoenix knows exactly what he’s thinking.
Apollo is thinking: Clay is gone. Clay is gone. I’ve lost the only person I have left who I’d consider family. I am alone. I am entirely and utterly alone.
It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue. It doesn’t matter that his little sister, unbeknownst to him, is standing one step to his left. It doesn’t matter that he has his friends and his coworkers and his cat. It doesn’t matter because he can’t see that yet, because the grief has only just dissolved into acetone. He’s still trying not to breathe it in. It’s ok: these things take time, Phoenix knows that now.
But there is an undeniable fact: Apollo is on bereavement leave. He chose to come in today, despite that.
For now, it is enough that he is not alone. It is enough that he is surrounded by people during important moments like this.
2027 will be a year to remember in different ways for everyone. For Simon Blackquill, it’s the year of his freedom. For Athena Cykes, her first year as a lawyer. For Phoenix Wright, his first year back as a lawyer. For Apollo Justice, it’s the year he faced unbearable grief. And for Klavier Gavin, it’s the year he couldn’t run from it.
For the many moments of grief that have been peppered throughout Phoenix’s life, he is grateful none of them have been quite as acute as this year has been for Apollo, or as acute as last year has been for Klavier. He certainly doesn’t know how to address the lingering grief that Klavier has been facing recently.
He’s heard what the gossip channels on the radio have been saying: that Klavier Gavin is quitting music, that he’s been spotted at a rehab facility.
He gets better. His grief runs deep, but he has that in common with Apollo. They grieve together.
It’s only through seeing Klavier’s grief that he realizes that he is lucky to have not grown up with his father: he doesn’t experience the inevitable losses that would come with being family to a person like that.
He thinks of last year, lying in the hospital and thinking: I wish I were dead. He knows how he’d do it, he’d drink until he was numb and he’d walk into the lake on Ivy University’s campus, but one shining light holds him back: Trucy. His Trucy.
He thinks of that stupid old cat Iris had convinced him to rescue, and he thinks of Kristoph’s retriever, and he thinks of how life sometimes gives you what you need, to keep you holding on even when you feel entirely underqualified.
He’s seen Klavier Gavin with his own eyes, out with Vongole on a walk late at night, shaking on the sidewalk in front of the Gavin manor Kristoph had inherited. He doesn’t grieve alone: Vongole paws at the gate, trying to get in.
Phoenix thinks of wild birds, unaware of people like Simon Blackquill whose faces light up when they see them, tracking sightings in journals and excitedly reporting it online or sharing it with the group during their monthly bird enthusiast meetup in Independence Park.
People like Simon Blackquill rely on this bird to force them into shared spaces of joy. People like Simon Blackquill rely on this bird to remind them that they are welcome in society, that there are people who will look at them and see more than meets the eye. Without this bird, Simon Blackquill would not have a reason to show up at Independence Park at 10AM on a Saturday and crouch in the grass as he shows small children and their parents the best way to pet Taka without hurting her.
He imagines the extinction of this bird, and the echoes of loss that would ripple through the birdwatching community, through the friends of enthusiasts, through the ecosystem as a whole. Does the wild bird know, as it sits on this fragile branch and sings songs of mourning, how deeply it is loved?
Does Klavier Gavin, weeping in the night in front of his brother’s house, know that Phoenix is thinking about him tonight at midnight?
Phoenix makes his wish as midnight comes: I wish this year brings comfort for Apollo and Klavier.
He notices Apollo’s wish, mouthed to himself the same way Trucy does: I wish Clay is okay up there.
Phoenix ruffles Apollo’s hair. He can’t face Apollo’s grief for him. But he’s there, and that matters.
2028
It’s quiet tonight.
Trucy’s at a New Years Eve party. Phoenix glances at his phone as he and Miles stand on the tiny smoker’s balcony in Miles’s apartment, waiting for the fireworks.
“Maya and Pearl are there too,” Miles reminds Phoenix gently.
“You say that like it makes me worry any less,” Phoenix huffs.
Miles smiles. “I think Trucy is old enough to be going to a party. And she’ll call if anything goes wrong.”
“I know,” Phoenix sighs. He tucks his phone back into his pocket. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” Miles says.
Phoenix wraps his arm around Miles’s waist.
The unintentionally of this moment is what gets him. Trucy getting invited to the party. Miles calling to say he couldn’t come because Pess isn’t feeling well. Maya offering to take her so that Phoenix could stay home with him. The fact that Phoenix has been over at Miles’s often enough that they’re no longer getting dressed up for each other: they get to stand out here in the dark in their sweatpants, Pess cradled in Miles’s arms.
After seven years of a cautious chess game with Kristoph, this comfortable unintentionality is nice.
It still feels like cheating, thinking of Kristoph, thinking of Dahlia, thinking of Iris, thinking of the artificial version of Miles that has lived in his head, but this is what his therapist tells him often enough that he’s starting to believe it: it’s ok to miss people. It’s ok to miss versions of yourself, even when they were hurting. It’s ok to change and to grow and to mourn the loss of who you once were. It’s ok to be someone different.
“Shouldn’t you be going inside for your tradition?” Miles asks.
He’s right. It’s almost midnight. But Phoenix can’t bear the idea of giving up this picture-perfect late night out here on the balcony with Miles and his rescue dog.
He hesitates. He thinks of sitting on the floor with Iris. He thinks of sitting in the passenger seat of an imported car. He thinks of that jackass at a campus bar.
“Would you join me?” Phoenix asks.
Miles blinks. A flush spreads out across his face. “Of course. As long as you don’t mind Pess joining us too.”
Phoenix grins. He flips around so that their backs face the balcony handrail. He pulls out his outdated Android phone and switches to the camera app. He holds it up in front of the three of them and immediately Pess perks up, sniffing the phone. Franziska’s trained her well, she’s posing for the picture.
Phoenix rests his head on Miles’s shoulder. It ticks from 23:59 to 00:00. They can see fireworks behind them. He can see the way Miles’s eyes crinkle as he watches Phoenix’s reflection.
He thinks: I wish that I will always be lucky enough to have people that love me. I wish to have people worth fighting for, and people it would hurt me to lose.
“So,” Phoenix teases, kissing Miles’s cheek, “what did you wish for?”
The flush only deepens on Miles’s cheeks. He hesitates.
This is how you know that he’s better now. He looks like he did as a child, awkward and unsure and no longer forcing himself to meet your eyes.
“Do you remember that case we had back in September? With Ellen Wyatt?”
Phoenix blinks. He feels his own face heating up. He’s got his own suspicions of where this conversation is heading. It makes him a little uncomfortable, the idea of forever, but he’s been done running for a while. It’d be nice if Miles was too.
“‘Course. Tough case. Beautiful wedding.”
“It was,” Miles says to both things. He looks away awkwardly and Phoenix realizes he should probably put his phone away. He does as much. “I feel silly saying it.”
“Tell me,” Phoenix encourages. “I won’t think it’s silly at all.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Miles says, holding Pess closer. She starts licking his chin helpfully. “You know, growing up, I never thought any of that stuff was for me. Marriage, I mean. I was going to be too busy being the best attorney, or later, the best prosecutor.” He chokes out a laugh, an acknowledgment of the naivety of youth. “I suppose… after that case, for the first time in my life, I thought… I don’t know. It would be nice, perhaps, to have a wedding like that someday. It doesn’t feel like a crazy thing to think anymore.”
Phoenix smiles, wide and lopsided and toothy. “I don’t think that’s silly. I think that’s beautiful. Is that your wish- having a big, gorgeous wedding?”
“No,” Miles says. He manages to meet Phoenix’s eyes for a brief moment but he quickly looks down at Pess instead. “My wish is to be married someday. To you, preferably.”
How many years did you spend denying that was something you wanted? How quickly did those years of self-preservation crumble when you heard him say that?
Phoenix tilts Miles’s head up with two fingers.
“I’d like that a lot,” he says against Miles’s lips before he presses them together.
2029
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Miles apologizes as he finally joins Phoenix and Trucy in front of the mirror, setting Pess down on top of the console so she can join them in this tradition.
“You almost missed it!” Trucy huffs, though she’s anything but upset as she pets Pess. “Well, you’re here now. I hope you have your wish ready.”
Miles glances at Phoenix. He smiles.
“I do.”
Phoenix gives him a quick peck on the cheek.
“Be sappy later,” he grins. “Wish time.”
They stand in front of the mirror, Trucy in between them, and they watch themselves, their new family, their new life.
Phoenix would never have believed himself if he had told himself as a child that this would be his future, living in Miles Edgeworth’s childhood home, freshly purchased, with his fiance and his daughter and their dog. He would never have imagined living this idyllic white picket fence life.
I love you, Phoenix says to himself in 2028, hopeful that Miles would stay.
I love you, Phoenix says to himself in 2027, surrounded by grief he didn’t know what to do with.
I love you, Phoenix says to himself in 2026 and 2025 and 2024 and every year leading back to 2000, through his layers of grief and love and identity and lack of it and the inherent nonlinearity of healing that means that there is no such thing as a satisfying conclusion.
Stay, he says to himself in 2017 and 2026. I’m glad you stayed. I’m glad you let me be here for this.
I love you, Phoenix says to himself in 1999, watching Mother and Mama and himself in the mirror, wishing that his father wanted him. He gives himself grace now, for the wanting. He lets go of it too. Right now, he wants for nothing.
I love you, he says to that little boy in 1999, waiting for the world to end, prickling with the feeling of being unwanted. You are so wanted. You are so loved.
I love you, he says to himself in the mirror in 2029, and a moment later, again in 2030.
My wish is to be able to say it again for every year I’ve got left.
His cheeks are wet as they begin 2030. He can’t help but laugh when he sees Miles’s expression, a mix of bewilderment and concern as he places a hand on Phoenix’s shoulder.
“You’re crying,” he comments.
Trucy looks at Phoenix in the mirror with a familiar smile. She’s seen him cry often enough to know this is to be expected. “Should I get a tissue?”
“I’m okay,” Phoenix promises. He pulls his daughter close in one arm and his fiance close with the other. “This is more important.”
-
They go outside to light some fireworks of their own afterwards. They’re pretty tiny, given the constraints of residential housing laws in L.A. but it’s still lovely to sit on the grass and watch them pop and spark rainbow colors in the air.
“I think I’ll check the mail before we go inside,” Miles says when they stand to head to bed. “We’re officially in a new insurance year, so hopefully we’ve got our homeowners insurance.”
Phoenix and Trucy head inside. Phoenix says goodnight to his daughter and heads to bed. He’s just got his pajamas on and is brushing his teeth when Miles walks up to him.
“Guess what I found in the mailbox?” Miles whispers.
He brandishes a crumpled, yellowing letter, in the unmistakable shaky handwriting of a grieving little boy.
Printed in a red colored pencil on the front are the words: Miles Edgeworth (my best friend)
Phoenix nearly chokes on the toothpaste.
It’s proof, he supposes, that it’s never too late to give up hope. Even a letter presumed undelivered can show up more than twenty five years later.
Thank you, he says to himself in 2001. For having hope. For being a good friend. For daring to love.
There are a lot of things Phoenix’s still got to learn. There are countless mistakes he’s bound to make living this untameable creature they call life. But he knows this to be true: he can always look to himself, to every version of himself, to guide him home at the end of the day.
I love you, he says to all of them. For bringing me where I needed to be.