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When Phoenix was nine, he didn’t really think much of girls. He knew he was supposed to like them, but he wasn’t supposed to like them too much either; eventually he decided that grown-ups were confusing and just ignored girls altogether.
He didn’t like boys much either, but in his defense, they didn’t like him first. He was too clumsy for their ball games and too slow for their races and too quiet for their lunchtime joshing, so they pushed past him and laughed when he was just out of sight. Larry was left alone too, but that was more out of self-preservation than any respect.
Miles Edgeworth was different, though. He was completely above the like and dislike and hurt, at least in Phoenix’s eyes. He walked in the room and did his reading and raised his hand and wrote his notes- and at the end of class he simply walked out, as if it were that easy to escape the hisses and whispers of nine-year-old children. Phoenix never saw Miles Edgeworth show a single spark of anything other than obligatory attention to anyone until the day after his lunch money went missing.
That was when everything changed. Miles had passion in his eyes and resolve in his stance and Phoenix had never felt anything like what he felt in that moment. It was more than thankfulness. It was more than awe. Phoenix didn’t have the words to describe it then. All he knew was that he felt happy when Miles agreed to eat lunch with him, and let him help with origami projects, and even came over to his house.
He wouldn’t have called it love, but Miles Edgeworth was special.
--
When Phoenix was twelve, he still didn’t think much of girls. Or boys for that matter. No one bothered him now, too preoccupied with the strangeness of their own gawky bodies to mind his. This was normal and expected, the adults told them. The braver ones looked, touched, always rearing back as if afraid of the awkwardness in their limbs.
Phoenix refused to look, but not out of fear.
Everything had changed again, and he didn’t want to talk about it. He had already learned how to push the feelings of anger and sorrow onto paper and how to let his sour what-ifs and bitter why-nots flow through his pen. He sealed the letters and sealed a smile on his face and didn’t look into anyone’s eyes too closely.
He wouldn't have called it heartbreak, but he had other words to describe it then.
--
When Phoenix was sixteen, he started looking. And what he saw, he liked. Boys were nice, and girls were nice, and the people who didn't use those boxes were very nice. The adults told him it was okay to experiment a little as long as he was being reasonable, but he had stopped listening to them a while ago.
He made his mind up to stop being so afraid.
He never found someone whose stance was just as resolute, whose eyes sparked with the same passionate flare, but that was okay. He felt better than he had in a long time, and he didn't need to talk about it. There was nothing more to feel hurt about, nothing that hadn't already been worn down and smoothed over by the tides of time and preteen angst. He linked hands and smiled, and if the memory of a boy with strong words and clumsy fingers came to mind he gently pushed it away.
He wouldn’t have called it happiness, but he felt lighter nonetheless.
--
When Phoenix was twenty, he met a girl who believed in fate. She came to him in the dim light of the basement library, butterfly eyelashes fluttering and cheeks pink as she stammered endearingly about destiny and links as strong as the gold chained bottle necklace she presented to him.
He accepted it.
The next eight months were a haze of enchantment. Dahlia Hawthorne was an abundance of sweetness and lightness personified. They spent hours talking about poetry and art and beauty and life, fingers laced together and laughing airily at whatever came to mind. When Phoenix looked into her dark, deep eyes, he forgot everything else.
He called it love, but he didn't know any better.
--
When Phoenix was twenty-one, he was saved from himself by a knight in a black suit and a golden scarf. She took him by the collar and had him watch as she slashed and stripped away the facade- it was a facade, how could it have been a facade- of lightness to reveal the darkness underneath that swallowed him up as easily as the bottle had gone down his throat. He refused to see, refused to listen as the girl he loved spat words of hatred at him, refused to acknowledge the burns that were slowly charring his heart to ashes.
He couldn't accept this.
But Mia Fey didn't look at him with disgust, or even pity. She offered him advice and a slightly-too-hard pat on the back, and it was then that he remembered why he had been in that basement library eight months ago.
"I'm studying to become a lawyer myself... I hope we see each other again someday, maybe even in court."
He wouldn't have called it a promise, but it was a balm nonetheless.
--
When Phoenix was twenty-three, he met a girl as she desperately shook the slowly cooling body of his knight. The black suit and golden scarf were marred with blood, and the girl was taken away in the tear-stained silk of her purple sleeves.
She refused his help at first, and he understood. Mia wanted- would have wanted- the best aid in this situation, and who better than her own mentor? But he refused as well, and Maya Fey officially became his second-ever client.
Miles Edgeworth was different, though. He was completely above the doubt and desperation and fear, at least in Phoenix's eyes. At first glance, it seemed like he hadn't changed a bit from fifteen years ago- he was still methodical, still disinterested, still above the hisses and whispers that followed him in and out of the courtroom. Phoenix would have thought him untouchable if not for the fact that he had made the same mistake before.
He got the not guilty verdict, and nothing changed. Edgeworth kept his distance, and although he still had the resolve in his stance the passion was gone; only a weak flicker of recognition remained when everything was over with, quickly doused with cold disdain. By now, Phoenix had enough experience with failure and disappointment to temper the feelings that bubbled up when the other man walked out without a word.
He wouldn't have called it grief, but only because he had felt worse losses. Miles Edgeworth wasn't special.