Chapter Text
For 15 years he had been haunted by a nightmare.
Dizzy from lack of oxygen, watching his father fight off the security man in the elevator.
The gun is close and is the only thing he can use.
It’s thrown at the two adults and just as he loses consciousness he hears someone screams in pain.
For so many years he thought he actually killed his father.
That the dream was a sick reminder that his hands were stained with blood.
In a way they still were, just not his father’s.
It made him wonder, in his penance, how many innocents had he tossed behind bars or to the death sentence, guided by the very mentor who murdered his father.
He betrayed everything his father stood for, all for the sake of a guide who made sure that Edgeworth himself would finish his revenge.
He doesn't understand why Von Karma even took him on.
No worse, he understands with an almost certain belief why.
To make sure no loose ends were ever left seen, to end the legacy of his father, to eventually even kill Miles Edgeworth off himself.
Part of him whispers it would have been so much easier if the man had just shot him too in that elevator.
Saved them all the time and energy.
He had respected and even cared for his mentor, as strict and no nonsense as the man had been. The man had even begun to be a - a father figure of sorts. At one point.
It felt like an illusion. Like the rug had been pulled too fast from under his feet.
The cold feeling of numbness wasn’t even there anymore.
Instead all there was, was this torrent of emotions.
Making his throat thick and his head heavy.
Every attempt to breathe or calm down didn’t work.
Instead his brain was miles a minutes focusing morbidly on the details of the case.
His fathers death.
His nightmares
His mentor
How easily he could have died
How he could die
The gun would have been enough for his oxygen depletion finishing the job.
To the skull it would have been over.
The gun was still in evidence.
Somewhere too easy for him to get to.
*What about phoenix*
His brain almost whispers.
Wright would be fine.
He had been fine all these years without him.
He had defended his case in court but that was the man he was.
It meant nothing.
It meant nothing even if he believed in Mile’s innocence.
The gun.
It was just a few corridors down. Barely 10 minutes.
No one would be around long anyway.
Just a trigger and a bang.
It would be over.
Just like he fantasized so many times over the case.
Just like he almost did before gumshoe walked in on him in that evidence room.
It could be over so soon.
And well, if it wasn’t meant to be someone would stop him just by existing in that room.
He gets a piece of paper and writes the note.
*prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death*
He wonders why Von Karma never made him change his name.
He feels he knows the answer too well.
It’s a walk. Quiet, suffering, crowding.
Gumshoe waves at him and Miles nods at him.
He feels like sludge.
The room is dark and quiet and empty.
Lined with shelves of evidence.
The box is nondescript and a gun sits in the box.
It doesn’t fit his hand.
It feels clunky, cold and *heavy*
It killed his father.
Incriminated his mentor.
He holds the bag as a small shiver is sent down his spine.
He can’t tell if it’s fear, excitement or cold brushing past him.
He’s detached himself from reality enough that when he holds the gun, unsealed, unbagged.
Open in the palm of his hands.
He feels nothing over than a hanging expectation.
Morbid fascination has him look at the tip of the gun.
He brushes on the box as he inspects the gun with gentle touches.
The box contains just one bullet.
The second one, in his mentor's shoulder.
Why does he still call the man his mentor.
It’s barely damaged from the first time it was used.
He doesn't know if you can even reuse bullets.
But it’s the one that killed his father.
The one that haunted him.
The one his mentor fired.
He barely remembers loading it into the gun, just hearing the click of placing everything together.
The added weight is heavy on his mind.
The gun is at his temple now, an empty box infront of him and documents that his brain barely scans before his finger squeezes the trigger.
Sound explodes and the room blurs into something hazy.
He jerks at the impact he thinks, pain barely registering as the impact shakes his world.
It’s hard to think now.
he’s on the floor -and thoughts flow out of him like a leaking dam into a void, like the blood that streaks on the floor.
The gun doesn't feel so heavy anymore.
He feels his eyes close before he’s ready.
There’s thudding on the floor and sound tries to encapture the silence, but there’s nothing he takes in.
Instead he feels so very cold, like the gun in his hand and the tile floor beneath him.
———
