Chapter Text
Phoenix knew he was warm, and not a little delusional from the fever. His forehead burned, his skin was red-hot. Red as her hair, as her twitching lips when she reminded him to take his cold medicine. A distant part of Phoenix's mind, the rational one, knew it was a nurse asking him to take the pills. But the flavour of poison was soft on his tongue, with the sweetness of letter glue. Like an envelope and a message addressed to her. It had snippets of haiku and chōka he researched. The best way to respond to a poem was another poem after all. With all his careful typesetting and genuine calligraphy, he had written her a love letter, one which belonged in an envelope.
En-ve-lope. On V elope. Elope: to run away in secret, in love.
Phoenix repeated the word, stretching its syllables out like bread dough. Holes formed, tears, and to go with the tears in his voice were the tears at his eyes. The suggestion twisted in his mouth like a consideration. Phoenix had no clue what that meant, but it made sense in the heat of his fever.
Please, let's run away together.
He repeated himself until someone pressed a glass to his lips and made him drink water. It was so cold that he was falling into the Eagle River again. But so were the slate eyes with dark circles, which stared at him from across the room.
Clarity returned when the fever broke. He became just a reckless man, who survived another brush with death. Phoenix sorted what was real and what was dreamed up before he went to court.
The many-pronged case, which curved and bent with the flow of a shichishitō's blade.
Hazakura's burning bridge.
Iris.
For the second time in his life, Phoenix swore off dating. And being reckless, though he wasn't sure how long that would last. As many pointed out, he had the tendency to think about his actions only after they landed him in the ER. Though both these promises would weaken with time— no sense in denying it— Phoenix still felt some of that caution during their poker game.
So far, Phoenix was winning. In a casino, he would be making more than he earned in a week as a lawyer. Zak Gramarye wasn't doing so well by comparison. Phoenix didn't gamble outside of courtroom bluffing, so it was strange to think that he had some kind of hidden talent at poker.
"I'll put in say, five hundred," Phoenix announced, dividing his chips. "Let's see what doesn't happen with this bluff."
Gramarye didn't say anything, but placed his own bet. Again, Phoenix took the pot.
"This can't just be my luck, can it?" Phoenix wondered, accepting his loot. "What's the catch? Is he using his magician skills to fiddle with the deck somehow? Is he going to accuse me of cheating?"
The guard acted as their dealer. With soft fluttering, they were given new cards. On a whim, Phoenix didn't examine his. Instead, he kept a measuring stare on Gramarye, seeking the facial tics which would give away his hand. His expression remained neutral, but as Gramarye fanned out the cards, his eyes kept their focus on one near the end. An important card, or a damning one?
"Here's my bet." With a sweeping arm, Phoenix put up a quarter of his chips. Even if he lost it, Gramarye would remain behind.
"You didn't check your cards."
"I'm not trying to show off. Just humour me."
Gramarye's hand was outmatched by one, when the cards were turned over.
"Alright, either something fishy is going on here, or fate really wants me to win this game."
Cheating was a dangerous allegation to make; Even if Gramarye was innocent, he still looked like it wouldn't be much trouble to kill someone. Phoenix would prefer to avoid the man's bad side, but he wasn't sure about how to get out of the situation. In his job, when things appeared simple, there was a convoluted mess beneath the surface. The pressure would build to intolerable levels, and then explode when left unchecked.
The ring of his cell phone broke the tension. The Steel Samurai's theme bounced off the detention center walls. Phoenix jumped, scrambling to turn it off. And he would have, if not for the name on the screen's display.
"Edgeworth? He'd only call me if it was an emergency!"
"Do you mind?" asked Gramarye, raising an unimpressed eyebrow.
"Sorry," Phoenix stood up, chair scraping against the concrete. "Whatever this is, it's important."
The guard unlocked the door long enough for Phoenix to step into the corridor. Heart thumping in time with the ringtone, Phoenix picked up. He placed the shaking phone by his ear and asked, "Edgeworth? What is it? Are you alright?"
"Is that how you greet everyone when they call you?"
"Who's hurt? I'm at the detention center right now if there's someone you need me to defend."
"Everything is fine, Wright," he snapped in a tone which suggested it wasn't.
"Huh? Then why are you calling me?"
Edgeworth gave an ever-suffering sigh. Phoenix pictured that it would come with an elegant, if not tired shake of his head. One would think Edgeworth could appreciate people being concerned for him.
"In a roundabout way, you've already brought it up. We only see each other in times of legal crisis."
"You're exaggerating," Phoenix replied. He came to lean against the cinderblock wall, fiddling with the knot of his tie. "I mean, there was that one time, at the place, and uh, yeah, you're right."
"No, I'm Miles Edgeworth."
Phoenix was struck dumb. What had changed Edgeworth so much that he was willing to make puns with his name? Phoenix wondered why Edgeworth was lying about his state of mind. Everything was not fine in a world where he wanted to talk outside of work, and make awful jokes.
"We're having a casual discussion right now?"
"That is part of why I called you."
Upon listening to his words, there was a bit of a strained note to it, keeping the conversation from sounding too natural. What if Edgeworth was held at gunpoint over the phone, being forced to say something for the kidnapper?
"Wright, I want to take up the offer you made when sick."
"Uh, what did I do while sick?" Phoenix asked, with dread in the pit of his stomach. "You know I was hazy and not thinking straight about anything, right?"
"Regardless," he brushed off, as if it weren't important.
"What did I say?" Phoenix asked, pulling at his collar. Not even high-stakes poker made him sweat like he was now. Itching pinpricks of formed at the base of his neck, and he rose a hand to wipe his forehead.
"To run away and leave court behind for a time. Together."
To elope.
He'd asked Edgeworth for a shotgun wedding while delusional with a fever, and months later, it turned out he had been considering it.
"I was sick when I asked that," Phoenix reminded. "I had no idea what I was saying."
"You gave me a glowing rock and said it could let one see into the hearts of others right afterwards. Suffice to say, that was evident."
"Um, I'm sorry, but I'm not uh, interested in marriage right now," Phoenix said, trying to let him down easy. "Or dating for that matter."
It would be a time before he was ready to give anyone with his much-abused heart. The older he got, the more difficult it was to believe in people. Trusting others used to come to him naturally, at one point. Few people violated it, but those who did were just so monstrous about it.
"I swear only half of what anyone says makes it to your brain," snarled Edgeworth. "Where in this conversation did I ask such a thing?"
The saying went that one learned something new every day. Phoenix learned that Edgeworth could send the feeling of his glare straight through a phone. The image of his scowling face beamed direct into Phoenix's skull, for his viewing displeasure.
"I-isn't that the connotation behind running away together?"
"It was metaphorical running away, not literal."
"Good. You've done enough of that already."
"Why?"
"Is the fact that we only meet when someone is being held hostage, or put on trial for murder not enough?"
"No," Phoenix said. "Because I'm eighty percent sure someone is keeping you at gunpoint right now."
"To put it lightly, I've been through legal hell these past few weeks," Edgeworth said. "I just want to spend time away from court and convoluted investigations. Now stop dancing around the subject Wright. Yes or no?"
There was a genuine exhaustion to his words. That didn't make Phoenix any less confused, or suspicious. He needed to keep wary, to avoid another life-threatening experience and all that. Hanging out with the entity who could be an Edgeworth impersonator was dangerous. It was safest to meet in a public place— it lowered the chances of being murdered in some horrific manner.
"Yes," Phoenix said. For even if it was a doppelganger, Phoenix knew he owed it to the real Edgeworth to investigate. "I'm kind of in the middle of work right now but we could meet tomorrow and work something out."
"Then it's settled. I will see you then."
Edgeworth hung up.
"Aliens, maybe?" Phoenix wondered aloud.
Phoenix replayed the talk in his head, always lingering upon the new weird aspect it found. While discovering those, he ran through all the weird, ludicrous possibilities his offer had been inspired by. It was the concept of a body double that troubled him the most. Ever since his encounter with Furio Tigre, he began to worry about impersonators. Could the caller be some kind of Se Lim to his Xin Eohp?
Oh God, Edgeworth would turn up the next day with a bad tan, and a garish hawaiian shirt of lemonade pink. No one would believe him when he said the man wasn't Edgeworth because he would still have a cravat on.
But they never arranged a time or a place. Edgeworth just ended the conversation!
So lost in his musings, Phoenix didn't realize he made twenty consecutive bad decisions in the poker game until it was too late. Such was true of much of what happened to him at work. Gramarye made a complete comeback, as a result of Phoenix's absent-minded playing. Phoenix watched as the last of his chips were pushed in Gramarye's direction.
"Whelp, there goes my client," he thought."Weird, I kinda' pictured myself being more devastated than this. I guess fate didn't want me to win that much."
Figuring the pain would come later— like when he needed to pay rent— Phoenix shrugged things off with a roll of his shoulders.
"I'm glad that wasn't real money," Phoenix commented to Gramarye. "Thanks for considering me at any rate."
"That call was distracting, put you at a disadvantage," the other man remarked. His wrist flicked, and the cards began to organize themselves, sliding back into their box. "It must have been quite important."
Not trusting himself to lie about that, Phoenix said, "A disadvantage is only something the other side has."
Gramarye barked a laugh at that, chips jumping from the table with it. They rolled between his gloved palms with ease, filing in piles based upon colour.
"You're the better attorney," Gramarye said. "I'm still willing to hire you."
"I lost fair and square. Keep the other guy. If things don't work out in trial, you can still give me a call."
From his breast pocket, Phoenix took out one of the business cards Maya and Pearl had designed for him. It had his name, a crayon drawing of a magatama, and a fiery bird on the front. Important information such as the office location and phone number were squeezed in tiny letters near the bottom.
"You have kids?" Gramarye asked.
"Nope, I just take care of 'em from time to time."
As Gramarye shuffled his card with the rest, Phoenix thought about his many encounters with both trick and genuine magic: Berry Big Circus, his magatama, spirit channeling. The miracle outcome of a certain case had to fit into that category as well.
"I think I've had enough of magic for ten lifetimes," he decided.
The watery sun warmed his skin while he left the detention center. Phoenix double-checked the transit schedule, and then the four desperate texts Edgeworth sent since their initial call. Now he had some context for their meeting the next day. As Phoenix walked to the bus stop, creepy goosebumps rose across his arms despite the evening's warmth. Phoenix's gut gave off the feeling that he had just dodged a bullet.
What it didn't tell him was that he stepped on a landmine to avoid it.