Chapter Text
It was December 28th, 2016. The final day of Miles’ trial and the fifteenth anniversary of his father’s murder. Whatever happened today, his fate would be decided.
For a man who had spent the previous day on the run from the police, the caretaker looked especially sleepy as he approached the witness stand. Miles envied his ability to relax under those circumstances. His sleep was already terrible, but it had only been worse these last four nights in detention, and although his body sorely needed it, the stress of being on trial seemed to prevent him from keeping his eyes shut longer than a few minutes at a time.
Miles knew how this part of the trial would go. The caretaker would claim he had no connection to the case, Phoenix would present the letter, Mr. von Karma would dismiss his claim. Against his better judgment, he found himself slumping a little bit in the chair before forcibly snapping back to attention. Now was not the time to fall asleep in his seat, as much as he may have wanted to.
To his surprise, Phoenix didn’t present the letter. Instead, the way he intended to prove that the witness was Yanni Yogi was by… cross-examining his pet parrot?
Yet, somehow, this insane strategy worked, and the judge was convinced to question the witness’s identity. The witness, seeming to give up a charade, stood to his full height as he answered.
“My name… is Yanni Yogi,” he said in a voice far different from the one he had been using before. “Fifteen years ago, I served as a bailiff in this very court.”
So he really was… that had been Miles’ theory when Phoenix had first shown him that letter, but to hear it directly from the witness cleared up any remaining doubt.
Yogi went on to confess his motive and his part in the murder. Just as Miles had thought, he’d held a grudge against Hammond for making him plead insanity. He had been innocent in DL-6, but Hammond had not believed him, arguing a flimsy technicality and destroying his life. Now, fifteen years later, a package had arrived in the mail with a plan to take revenge.
“I didn’t care who had sent it,” the former bailiff said with resignation. “I thought this was my chance, after fifteen years, this was it! Finally, a chance to have my revenge on Robert Hammond and Miles Edgeworth… I have no regrets.”
The judge looked confused. “Wait a moment,” he said. “Revenge… against Miles Edgeworth? What do you mean?”
There was only one reason why Yanni Yogi would hold a grudge against him, only one mutually understood truth that made all of this make sense. Miles braced himself. Any moment now, someone would raise an accusation confirming all of his nightmares to be true as day.
“I’m not at liberty to speak on that matter,” Yogi said. “Why don’t you ask Mr. Edgeworth yourself? Anyway, I admit it, I was the one who killed Robert Hammond.”
Surprisingly, Mr. von Karma had no rebuttal, and Yogi was placed under arrest. Miles could hardly believe it. Was it really going to end like this?
The judge seemed to echo his disbelief. “Mr. von Karma,” he asked, “where is Mr. Yogi?”
“Under arrest, Your Honor,” Mr. von Karma said, the tone of his voice inscrutable. “I saw no room for error in his confession.”
“Then…” the judge said in confusion, “the defendant, Miles Edgeworth, is…?”
“Innocent,” Mr. von Karma conceded. “In this case, at least.”
Miles had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead, those words rattled around his head as he was called to the stand. He couldn’t be referring to that, could he? To his memory, Miles had never mentioned it until that visit with Phoenix yesterday…
Feeling unsteady, he took the stand, forcing himself to meet the judge’s eyes.
“There are a few mysteries left unsolved,” the judge said. “Still, you are cleared of suspicion for this particular case. So I would like to pass judgment on the murder of Mr. Robert Hammond. Any objections?”
Silence. Still waiting for an accusation to be raised, Miles exhaustedly weighed his options. He could say nothing and let the trial end here… but what kind of person would he be, walking free on the day the statute of limitations ran out? Mr. von Karma, at least, would never let him hear the end of it.
He glanced at Phoenix and Maya at the defense’s bench and behind them at Trucy and Kay in the gallery. All four of them were watching anxiously, Kay biting her gloved fingertips even as she squeezed Trucy’s hand. It dawned on him that he would essentially be taking away another father figure if he said something. But what kind of father would he be if he said nothing, if he walked away knowing as he did now of his own guilt?
No, he was being presumptuous to even put that label on their relationship. Kay didn’t deserve to lose another father, but someone like him was unfit for that role. She hadn’t deserved to be adopted by him in the first place.
“Very well,” the judge declared. “This court finds the defendant, Mr. Miles Edgeworth…”
Miles wondered for half a second if the judge was having second thoughts.
“Not guilty!”
Confetti rained over the courtroom, never having felt quite as wrong as in that moment.
“That is all. The court is adjourned!”
And with one final tap of the gavel, Miles knew that this was his last chance.
“Objection!” he shouted before anyone could leave their seats. “Your Honor. I object to your judgment.”
The judge, who had been in the middle of standing up, sat back down. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not innocent at all!” Miles really had to spell it out, even now as he confessed his own guilt. “As we have heard, Yanni Yogi killed Robert Hammond in revenge. But, revenge for what?”
As he expected, Phoenix objected to his outburst, but Mr. von Karma countered his objection, saying that the court needed to hear his new statement. The judge agreed that they had a duty to hear him out.
“For fifteen years, I have had a recurring dream,” Miles finally said. “A nightmare… it’s only a nightmare. That’s what I told myself. But now I know, it wasn’t a dream. Yanni Yogi wasn’t the killer.”
“You mean, in the incident where your father died?” the judge asked.
Miles nodded. “From the distance of the shot, it wasn’t suicide, either. Everything was as clear as day.” And now, it was time to reveal to everyone in this courtroom the mutually understood truth, the only one that made everything make sense. “The murderer… the criminal in the DL-6 incident… it was me!”
The gallery went into an uproar. Miles tried not to think of how the girls must be reacting. It would be in their best interest to have no more contact with him, after all.
Somewhere in the judge’s attempt to call the court into order, it was decided that they would hold a retrial for DL-6, right then and there. Court was adjourned for a five-minute recess.
“I’m sorry, Phoenix,” Miles said once they arrived in the lobby. “I’ve just wasted all your effort.”
He supposed this was his chance to say goodbye, but the words caught in his throat. Phoenix would probably try to visit him anyway. If he wanted to, that is. No sane person should ever want to associate with a murderer like him— because that was what he was, no matter the circumstance, and he deserved to be punished for it.
At least Kay would have someone to look after her who wasn’t burdened as he was with repressed guilt. As soon as he was convicted, Miles decided, he would sign over legal guardianship and give Phoenix access to the college fund he had set aside as well as paying him a form of child support. It would be the least he could do for both of them.
“Nick?” he heard Maya ask. “What are you doing?”
“Huh?” Phoenix looked up from the file he was reading. “Oh… I was just reading through the DL-6 file again. Getting my case ready.”
“Your case?” Maya asked. “For what?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Phoenix closed the folder, a determined look in his eyes. “I’m going to prove that Miles is innocent.”
“What do you mean?” Miles asked him. “I confessed in court that I killed my father. How can you hope to prove me innocent?”
“I’m sorry, Miles,” Phoenix said. “But I don’t believe your nightmare. It’s just a dream. It’s not real. The truth is right here in this court record.” He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “In any case, tighten your belts. The real fight is just beginning. I’ll prove you’re innocent, trust me.”
Even now, Phoenix refused to give up on him. How did Miles have someone like Phoenix in his life?
Once the trial reconvened, Miles was called to testify. Doing his best to ignore the fear that welled up at recounting the memory, he told the court everything he remembered: being trapped in the elevator, the argument between his father and Yogi, throwing the heavy object he now knew to be a pistol, the gunshot, and the terrible scream that haunted his nightmares.
“Are you sure you only heard one gunshot?” Phoenix asked as soon as he had the chance.
“Yes,” Miles said. “I’m sure of that. I heard the shot, and the scream… then everything faded. I was unconscious until the rescuers came.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Phoenix said confidently, opening the folder for the DL-6 case file. “Look at this file one more time. This plainly contradicts the witness’s testimony.”
Miles had never really looked at the case file, never able to treat the incident that had ended his childhood with the same impartiality with which he treated his work, so if there was information in the file that contradicted his memory, it was news to him. And apparently there was. Rather than the one gunshot he remembered, it was written in the case file that there had been two bullets missing from the murder weapon.
Of course, that didn’t necessarily prove that there had been a second gunshot during the incident. As Mr. von Karma pointed out, it was entirely possible that the second bullet had been fired the day before and was irrelevant.
But contrary to that claim, Phoenix did, in fact, have evidence proving the second bullet to be relevant. “It’s in this photograph, Your Honor,” he said, shooting a warning look at Miles. “The crime photo from fifteen years ago.”
Miles closed his eyes as the photo was projected on the TV monitors.
“As should be obvious, the contradiction is here,” Phoenix said, presumably indicating part of the photo. Miles almost wanted to look, but he knew it would mean seeing his father’s dead body, and that was something he couldn’t force himself to look at.
“I see,” the judge said. “A bullet hole in the door…”
There was a hole in the door? Miles couldn’t remember seeing or hearing anything about that, but Phoenix seemed to be arguing that between the bullet hole and the additional missing bullet, the murder weapon had been fired a second time in that elevator, possibly during the time that Miles had been unconscious.
It was at this point that Mr. von Karma stepped in. No other bullet had been discovered on the scene, he pointed out. Therefore, the second bullet didn’t exist and the hole was made by something else. While those two assertions seemed oddly coincidental, two coincidences made more sense than the idea that a bullet would simply disappear. A disappearing bullet had to go somewhere, and if it hadn’t been discovered on the scene, it couldn’t possibly be relevant to the case.
Even Phoenix seemed to realize how hopeless his case was. He made one final attempt at an objection, but couldn’t find anything new to say.
But right as the judge concluded that waiting wouldn’t produce any answers, Phoenix came up with something.
“I, uh…” Phoenix stammered. “The second bullet! It, uh, it exists!”
Grasping desperately, Phoenix raised a new idea, completely on the fly: the murderer, whose identity he had no idea of, had removed the second bullet from the crime scene for seemingly no reason.
“Bah!” Mr. von Karma scoffed. “The murderer had no reason to take that bullet! You don’t want to admit it, but it’s true!”
Phoenix didn’t respond for a moment.
“Mr. Wright?” said the judge, checking if he was paying attention.
“Y-yes, Your Honor!” Phoenix appeared to bounce back, though he was still grasping. “Uh, well, the murderer had no intention of taking the bullet from the scene. But, uh, the murderer had to take that bullet.”
“‘Had to,’ Mr. Wright?” the judge questioned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, for instance…” He was surely stalling. What explanation could he possibly— “Uh, maybe the bullet, uh… hit the murderer?”
The judge seemed equally as stunned as Miles. “The bullet… hit the murderer?”
“Just saying, for instance.” Phoenix began talking quickly, sounding no more certain than before. “I mean, if it hit you, you would have to take it with you, wouldn’t you? It’s not like you could perform surgery right there. Y-y’know?”
The courtroom fell into a stunned silence. A small, hopeful part of Miles’ brain wondered if Phoenix’s desperate theory held water. He had heard a scream, after all, a scream he had always assumed came from his father in his final moments. Was it possible that the scream had come from someone else…?
But there was a problem with that. As the judge pointed out, both he and Yogi had been unharmed when they were rescued from the elevator. Though from the scenario Phoenix now described, the murderer had come from outside the elevator, with the hole in the door marking the trajectory of the bullet that Miles had accidentally fired.
The judge hummed as he considered the possibility. “Mr. Wright,” he said, “you are truly the most unpredictable defense attorney I’ve ever known. I can tell you’re grasping, yet I cannot deny the possibility of what you say.”
“What are you saying?” Mr. von Karma shouted. “Deny it! Deny it! No one involved with the incident was wounded! There was no ‘murderer’!”
Miles glanced at the defense’s bench where Phoenix and Maya appeared to be having an intense whispered conversation. After a brief moment of conversation, Phoenix’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates, his jaw dropping as he gasped with a revelation of some sort.
“Something wrong, Mr. Wright?” the judge asked. “You seem dazed.”
Phoenix straightened up, swallowing nervously. “Uh, no, Your Honor.”
“Well?” The judge leaned forward eagerly. “You have indicated the possibility that the murderer came from outside. Can you give us the name of your suspect?”
Phoenix took a deep breath. “Your Honor! There is a suspect… one lone suspect!”
He sounded certain this time, but rather shaken. Miles hadn’t the faintest idea who he was about to accuse.
“Well, this is certainly interesting news,” said the judge. “Very well, Mr. Wright. Who is your suspect?”
“V-V-V…” Phoenix braced himself against the desk, visibly shaking. “Von Karma!”
Von Karma? Was he hearing correctly? A confused silence fell over the courtroom, only broken by the occasional echo of that question. This had to be the most desperate grasping attempt he’d ever heard… and yet, the look on Phoenix’s face was not the look of one who was grasping. Rather, it could only be described as a look of stunned revelation. What could it mean…?
Mr. von Karma did not honor the accusation with an objection. Miles waited to see if Phoenix would explain the revelation that had shocked him so thoroughly.
“Because you took a vacation for several months starting the day after the incident,” Phoenix explained, confidence returning to his voice. “Yet you pride yourself on a ‘perfect record.’ Why would you take such a long vacation without any reason?”
Had he been injured at that time? Miles couldn’t remember. Then again, much of his memory from that time was hazy, the shock of losing his father compounded with the loss of his home and friends as he moved away to live with Mr. von Karma. He’d known that his new guardian was taking time off from work, but he’d always thought it was to formalize the adoption.
Then again, Miles hadn’t needed much time off for Kay’s adoption, though he supposed that was due to proximity as well as his choice to keep her in the same school.
In any case, Mr. von Karma had an answer to Phoenix’s claim. “So you’re claiming that I took a vacation to heal my ‘injury’ from the incident?” he said. “Fascinating! Prove it. I would have needed surgery, no? Where did I go under the knife at, Mr. Wright? Bring the doctor that operated on me! Have him testify!”
This was one of his mentor’s favorite strategies, challenging the defense’s claim by demanding proof that was impossible to obtain. Miles knew all too well how deep his mentor’s obsession with being perfect ran. If Mr. von Karma were to commit a crime, Miles knew that he would never be so careless as to leave traceable evidence or witnesses, even if it meant (hypothetically speaking, of course) leaving a wound he could conceal untreated indefinitely.
To his surprise, however, Phoenix had an answer to that: he would sweep Mr. von Karma with a metal detector to see if he had a bullet lodged inside. Mr. von Karma resisted, clutching his shoulder and sweating profusely as he tried to call for adjournment, but these demands were overruled and the sweep was performed on the judge’s orders.
The courtroom held its breath as Phoenix approached the prosecutor’s bench with the metal detector extended in front of him, the machine beeping quietly as it scanned Mr. von Karma’s body.
As Phoenix zeroed in on the right shoulder, the metal detector emitted a loud wail as it found something. Miles couldn’t believe it. Could it be…? But there was only one reason why there would be a bullet in his mentor’s shoulder, one that he would keep secret at all costs.
“You!” Miles shouted as Phoenix returned to the defense’s bench. “It was you!”
The veteran prosecutor closed his eyes for a moment. “I was afraid this would happen,” he finally said. “And so, I remained silent. Indeed, there is a bullet in my shoulder. However, it has nothing to do with this incident!”
“What?” Phoenix gasped.
“I was shot in the shoulder long before the DL-6 incident!” he asserted. “I claim that the bullet in my shoulder has no relation to DL-6!”
Shot before DL-6? Impossible. Perfect physical health came before even a perfect attendance record, and that came before most other things. If that bullet were not incriminating evidence, he would have had it removed long ago.
Regardless, von Karma didn’t bother to prove he had been shot at a different time, instead shifting the burden of proof to the defense, as he seemed to expect that Phoenix wouldn’t have any of the DL-6 evidence. Clearly, he did not know who he was dealing with— Phoenix was perhaps the most tenacious defense attorney he had ever met, one who never did anything halfway, and having known from the beginning that this case had to do with DL-6, he’d found out everything he possibly could about it.
“Who would have thought you’d dig your own grave trying to convict Edgeworth?” Phoenix taunted, pulling an evidence bag out of his pocket. “I can link that bullet in your shoulder to the DL-6 incident… and here’s my final proof.”
It was the bullet that had killed his father. It had been fired from the same gun as the bullet in von Karma’s shoulder, Phoenix argued, so the ballistic markings should match. And then von Karma screamed, and Miles was knocked back by horrible recognition, it was the same scream , it was all true, oh god it was all true. He continued to scream, slamming his head against the wall as he cursed Miles and his father, and the threat to bury you with my bare hands was empty in these circumstances but certainly didn’t feel that way, and then there was a full confession— all of this over a penalty?!—
But before Miles could wrap his mind around that, it was time for the verdict. He was innocent then and innocent again now. As he’d said, it had all been a nightmare. The courtroom broke out in cheering and confetti as the verdict was pronounced.
It had all been a nightmare, but why did its resolution not feel like waking up?
As he left the courtroom, he faintly registered von Karma shouting something at him, but before he could process any words, several pairs of familiar arms were dragging him away to the defendant lobby.
“Mr. Edgeworth!”
“Uncle Miles!”
As soon as he entered the lobby, Kay and Trucy jumped on him, pulling him into a many-armed hug that was at once relieving and overwhelming. After a moment, he gently extricated himself, watching as Maya babbled excitedly over Phoenix’s victory.
Phoenix knelt down to greet Trucy, sagging with a mixture of relief and exhaustion as she threw her arms around his shoulders, and Miles was struck with an odd feeling of longing. Maybe it was an illogical feeling— he and Phoenix were romantically involved, and if anything, Phoenix had always been more open to physical affection than Miles was. But it was more than simple longing he felt, and it was twisted with a strange jealousy he’d been convinced he didn’t deserve…
“It’s finally over,” Phoenix said as he let go of Trucy and got back to his feet. “How are you feeling, Miles?”
He finally met Phoenix’s adoration-filled gaze. Warm feelings welled up inside of him, feelings he’d had for a long time but hadn’t found a reason to put a name to. At least, not until now. Was it finally time for him to say it out loud…?
“Phoenix,” he said hesitantly, “I’m not sure how to say this.”
“I know! I know!” Maya piped up. “Try ‘thank you.’”
Yes, he supposed that would be more appropriate for these circumstances. “I see… thank you, Phoenix.”
Everyone who had been involved in the case gathered for a group photo, Phoenix slinging an arm around him as Kay and Trucy posed in front of them, Trucy helping Maya hold a hastily made Victory! sign. After the photo, Miles quickly finished some paperwork and joined the others as Gumshoe took them all out to celebrate.
They ate at Gumshoe’s favorite steakhouse. Those who were above the legal drinking age raised a toast to Miles’ freedom, the girls at his and Phoenix’s table echoing the toast as they clinked glasses of juice. Partway through dinner, Larry gave him an envelope with $38, at which Phoenix realized that he had been the one to steal Miles’ lunch money.
“If only I’d known, I’d have become a prosecutor!” he declared indignantly, to laughs from everyone else at both tables.
The same went for Miles, he realized, but the other way around. It was true that he’d developed a deep hatred for criminals after his father’s murder, but although he’d tried not to acknowledge it, a lot of that hatred had been directed at himself. If he’d known the truth… how much differently would his life have gone?
He wouldn’t have been von Karma’s student, at the very least. Even if his disillusionment with the idea of defending suspects still led him down the prosecutor’s path, it would have been a drastically different one… and, he realized, he likely wouldn’t have met Kay, since it had only been with von Karma’s influence that he’d been assigned to take over her father’s last case, and there was something disturbing about this thought, but between everyone laughing and carrying on around him and his pained effort to join in, it was difficult to ascertain what.
Eventually, Miles noticed Trucy beginning to fall asleep at the table and offered to take her home, if only for an excuse to leave early. He spent much of the walk to Phoenix’s apartment giving the five-year-old a piggyback ride. First thing tomorrow, he resolved, he was going to get his car back.
—
The following week, Miles was called to testify at von Karma’s trial.
Phoenix insisted on coming along, as much for personal closure as for emotional support. Despite Miles’ initial protests, he had to admit he would rather have his boyfriend by his side than face von Karma alone, and since school was already back in session, he insisted on helping drop Trucy off before driving himself and Phoenix to the courthouse.
“Will you be alright?” Phoenix asked in an undertone as they approached the door to the prosecution lobby.
Miles glanced apprehensively at the door. This would be the first time he entered this lobby as a witness rather than in his usual role as a prosecutor. In the courtroom beyond, he would act not as a student of von Karma, but as a witness testifying against him. His former mentor’s steely gaze would be turned on him as always, from the opposing side this time, but no less cold in its judgment. Could he really do it?
He took a deep breath. “Compared to last week, this will be nothing.” He wasn’t sure if he meant that assurance more for Phoenix or for himself.
“You don’t have to pretend with me.” Phoenix’s gaze softened as their eyes met. “Testifying is hard, especially testifying against someone you thought you knew. I mean, I don’t know how it was for you, but…” He glanced down, looking pained. “I was… betrayed before, and had to testify about it. Believe me when I say it wasn’t easy.”
Whatever Phoenix had been through, Miles doubted it was in any way comparable to his situation— clearly, since he still trusted people at twenty-four the way he had when he was nine, it was nowhere near on the same level. Still, he couldn’t remember Phoenix ever mentioning this before. Perhaps even the most open and trusting person could have difficulty talking about his past.
“There was one thing Mia did that really helped me,” Phoenix said. “When I had to testify, she told me to find her in the gallery and pretend I was just talking to her. That way, I didn’t have to look at anyone else and I could tell the full truth without feeling like I was being judged. Maybe doing something like that could help.”
Before Miles could do much more than nod, it was time for them to part ways, Phoenix offering one last reassuring smile as he left for the public gallery. Missing his boyfriend’s presence already, Miles squared his shoulders and opened the door to the lobby. The prosecutor for von Karma’s trial was someone Miles didn’t recognize, though he assured Miles that he could always turn to him for guidance. Miles wasn’t sure that this thoroughly unremarkable man offered any form of guidance he needed, but he nodded along anyway, bracing himself as he was led into the courtroom.
As he’d expected, no private defense attorney had come to represent von Karma. Only the most desperate, greedy, or foolish would even try, but if there had been any attorney with little enough self-respect, his former mentor had surely turned them away, his lack of respect for the profession overcoming any desire to get away with his crime. Instead, behind the defense’s bench was a public defender with the look of someone who would rather be anywhere other than where they were.
This was a complete reversal from his own trial— before Phoenix had offered his help, Miles had briefly wondered if this was his fate as the Demon Prosecutor, left so defenseless by a public that reviled him that it would only take a single word from a prosecutor for him to be sentenced. How drastically the tables had turned.
Miles did everything he could to ignore the cold gaze from the defendant’s chair as he was called to the stand.
“Witness, please state your name and occupation.”
“Miles Edgeworth,” he said, much as he had the last time he was called to give testimony. “I am a prosecuting attorney.”
The same introduction, perhaps, but a completely different circumstance. Now, he was asked not to testify about a memory of killing his father, but about how he now understood that memory in light of the truth. The cold gaze that would have him swallow his words did not come from the prosecutor’s bench to his immediate left, but from the defendant’s chair— if he held himself in a certain manner, he would not see. Instead, he located Phoenix in the gallery, the same gallery he had done his best to ignore a week prior, and addressed his testimony to him.
There was a cross-examination, but it was perfunctory at best, the public defender asking only the most basic questions to keep up an appearance of performing the role. With no major contradictions or new findings, Miles was relieved from the stand. He found his way to Phoenix’s gallery seat and sat down beside him.
“Doing okay?” Phoenix whispered, extending his hand.
Miles shrugged, glancing around to make sure no one was watching as he took Phoenix’s hand. Fortunately, everyone’s eyes were on the balding prosecutor, who was presenting evidence for a second charge against von Karma: the instigation of Robert Hammond’s murder.
Miles recognized that evidence. It was the letter Phoenix had discovered in Yogi’s shack, the letter that began with ‘get your revenge on Miles Edgeworth.’ Rather than speculate on who might have written it, he’d suggested that Phoenix take it to the police for a handwriting analysis, and apparently, that analysis revealed von Karma to be the author.
He… didn’t know what he’d expected. He’d thought the writing looked familiar, but at the time, he had been too preoccupied to place it— and even if he had recognized the writing, he doubted it would have immediately clicked that this meant von Karma was behind that incident. After all, Miles had known his mentor well enough to know that he wouldn’t have had an incriminating bullet removed and risk leaving a doctor as a witness, but he’d needed to see evidence of an untreated bullet wound to suspect that von Karma had actually killed his father. Although, come to think of it, writing that letter by hand had been rather careless of him. Perhaps Miles didn’t know his former mentor as well as he’d once thought.
He glanced at Phoenix, finding no hint of surprise in his boyfriend’s expression. Rather, he had a look of long-awaited vindication, as if he were presenting the evidence himself after waiting the entire trial for it to become relevant. Had he known all along?
But before Miles could say anything, it was time for a closing statement, which the prosecutor delivered between “hee hee hee”s while smugly tapping his forehead. The defense had no last-minute objection, and within moments, von Karma was called to the stand, looking eerily calm for being convicted of two murders.
“It appears that once again, my only role is to tap my flimsy gavel and get on with it,” the judge said with a hint of amused irony. “For the murder of Gregory Edgeworth and the instigated murder of Robert Hammond, this court finds the defendant, Manfred von Karma… guilty.”
Rather than lose his composure on the stand, von Karma stood to his full height, his eyes scanning the gallery for a moment and flickering momentarily with disgust toward Phoenix before landing on Miles. Refusing to blink first, Miles met his former mentor’s cold gaze that bore directly into his soul.
“Farewell, Miles Edgeworth,” von Karma enunciated, his stare unblinking. “We will meet again in hell.”
Von Karma continued to stare him down until a bailiff stepped in front of him, fastening handcuffs around the convicted murderer’s wrists before leading him away.
—
“Objection.” Kay lowered her voice as far as it would go, folding her arms more tightly than usual to complete the impression. “The PIN number on my ATM card is 0001 because I’m number one!”
Across the booth from her, Trucy giggled with unrestrained glee as she finished folding her napkin over Mr. Hat’s bowtie and ruffling it outward. “One word from you and I’ll have you thrown out in contempt of court!” the puppet crowed, pointing emphatically. “Nobody is allowed to talk in this courtroom except me, the amazing Prosecutor von Hat!”
Several hours after the trial had ended, Miles had helped Phoenix pick up the girls from school, caving to the popular demand for a celebration and taking them all out for pizza. In contrast to how wound up he had been last week, Phoenix seemed to genuinely relax as he watched Kay and Trucy’s impromptu performance from the corner of the booth.
Miles, however, found that he still couldn’t relax completely. His former mentor’s parting words continued to swirl around in his mind.
“We will meet again in hell.”
He stared at Prosecutor von Hat, noticing the odd way his napkin was folded around the bowtie underneath. He knew intellectually that von Hat was meant to mimic von Karma, but in many ways, he reminded Miles a lot more of himself, of the Demon Prosecutor who convicted innocents without a second thought in a vain attempt to compensate for a past sin, ironically damning himself far worse in his attempt at penance for a sin he had not committed in the first place.
Really, Miles thought, all it would take would be a slight change in priorities. If you asked him just half a year ago whether it was more important to pursue justice or to win trials, he would have answered that winning trials was itself the way to enact justice and that such a distinction was meaningless. He could say with certainty now that pursuing justice was more important, but what if that became unattainable?
All that I can hope to do is get every defendant declared guilty.
If winning trials continued to be his highest priority… how long would it be before he abandoned the pursuit of justice entirely?
He kept these thoughts to himself for the rest of the evening as they finished dinner and made their way home. Even when he and Phoenix had the opportunity to speak in private, he did not voice his thoughts. What could Phoenix possibly say to him? Meaningless platitudes about what a good person Miles supposedly was? That belief could save him from a criminal conviction, but it couldn’t change anything about the kind of person he was. The kind of person he would become.
No, Miles thought as he prepared for bed, checking one last time that the night light in his bedroom worked as usual. There was only one way out of becoming another von Karma.
Only one permanent way, at least.