Chapter Text
He learned about it from a folder left on his desk before he arrived at the Prosecutor’s Office for the morning. Whoever had come to drop it off must have been busy, or perhaps they had known he would have needed to see this alone.
Whatever the case, Miles Edgeworth thought nothing special of the file resting on his desk, innocently awaiting his attention. He took his time to arrange his briefcase, smooth the wrinkles in his suit jacket before sitting down, and retrieve a pen from the desk drawer, idly tapping it against his index finger as he flipped the page open.
He saw the name. And the image. And he briefly wondered if it was too late to call in sick for the day, as he was feeling quite nauseous all of the sudden.
Mia Fey. Mia Fey had been murdered. In her own office.
Miles stood from his desk abruptly, scattering a few unrelated pages and nearly overturning his chair in the process. Why was he only just being told about this now? And why like this? And whatever had made Chief Prosecutor Skye see fit to assign him the prosecution in this case of all people?
His cell phone burned a hole in his pocket. Phoenix hadn’t called him. Should he call Phoenix? Would his call even be welcomed at a time like this? They had remained in occasional contact after the events of the Hawthorne trial, but Phoenix had recently been quite busy preparing for his courtroom debut. It had only been yesterday, and though Miles hadn’t been available to attend himself, he’d heard outraged ranting about ‘rookies’ down the hall and had resolved to meet with Phoenix for a celebratory lunch sometime this week.
Not that either of them must have felt much like celebrating now.
He clutched at his sleeve instead and gave himself a moment to think, and very resolutely did not look at the potted plant resting in his windowsill, still in damnably good health despite what he was sure had been marked incompetence in plant care on his part. Alive unlike her, some traitorous part of his brain reminded him, though he firmly ignored it.
After a few minutes trying to process the new information, he returned to the closest approximation of composure he could manage. He reminded himself that he had not ever truly been friends with Ms. Fey. They had been passing acquaintances at best, occasional collaborators from opposite ends of the justice system and rarely interacting outside of it. Only briefly. And on that case. And after that phone call. But those were hardly matters to worry about now.
He also reminded himself that this was his job, and that if he was not fit to examine evidence and treat this case as he would any other, then he may as well hand in his badge right now. Such emotional reactions were unbecoming and only got in his way.
And more than that… though Miles would have preferred to deny it, there was a small, bitter part of him that wanted to be in charge of this case. He wanted to know who had killed Mia Fey, and he wanted to be responsible for putting them in prison. Someone like that should not be allowed to walk free.
His mind settled, he again turned to the open folder, and began to read.
~~
Maya Fey had not stopped crying since she’d entered questioning. The whole affair was getting to be rather tiring.
“I told you, I didn’t kill her!” Maya, admittedly, didn’t seem like much of a killer. Unless she was an exceptionally good actress, she seemed to care a great deal for her sister. Miles supposed it was always a possibility – he had seen young women like Dahlia Hawthorne play those around them for fools before, and too close for comfort. But even if she did not intend her sister ill will, it did not mean she hadn’t killed her sister. Miles knew that possibility to be all too true.
He had to trust the evidence, and trust that von Karma’s lessons had been true. He alone could not determine guilt. But it was his job to follow the evidence to its logical conclusion. Even if that conclusion meant that Maya Fey must be guilty of her own sister’s murder.
Even if every time he looked at Maya it felt like he was looking at Mia once again, and he was back in the middle of that damned Hawthorne case.
He discarded the thought as useless. “Ms. Fey. I am merely asking you to recount what happened when you entered the law office last night. Truthfully.”
Maya’s cheeks had grown red and splotchy from frustrated tears. It meant nothing. He had been inconsolable after his father’s death, and yet… Stop getting distracted. “I told you the truth!” she insisted once more. “I came into the office, and sis was… she was…”
Miles tried not to sigh impatiently. “Very well Ms. Fey. I believe we are finished here then.” He was unlikely to get much from the girl as she currently was. It was no matter. Detective Gumshoe and the rest of the police force had provided him with more than enough evidence for the conviction.
He stood to leave, but he had hardly taken two steps before Maya’s “Wait!” made him pause. “You… you said your name was Edgeworth, right?” He nodded. “Sis mentioned you once, over the phone. She said you helped her out of a tough spot once.”
Miles failed to see where she was going with this. Maya continued. “I didn’t get to visit her a lot, from up in Kurain Village. And her leaving the village… it was tough on our aunt. She hated to even hear about what she was doing out here as a lawyer. But you knew her, right? It sounded like you were friends.” She paused. “What sort of a lawyer was my sister?”
Miles closed his eyes. That tone in Maya’s voice… he was very glad he had remained facing the door, as there was no telling what expression he was currently wearing.
He could have talked about that case. He could have told her about what Mia had said to him afterwards, or the odd occasion they had encountered each other in passing in the courthouse. He could have spoken about the twist in his gut whenever he tried to reconcile his relationship with Mia Fey with the word ‘friend.’ But he didn’t say any of those things. “I’m afraid I am not the best person to answer that question,” he said instead. “My apologies.” And before he could change his mind, he left.
~~
He was on his way out of the detention center when a familiar spiky head of hair nearly shot past him. When Phoenix looked up to see who he’d almost carelessly knocked over in whatever haste he’d been in, he took a surprised step back.
Truth be told, he was a touch surprised to see Phoenix here. He hadn’t thought he’d be working again so soon after Mia’s death, though he supposed it would have been quite hypocritical of him to suggest as much. But he had heard from a coworker that Mr. Armando had taken time off in the wake of the event, so he had presumed Phoenix would have done the same.
“Phoenix,” Miles greeted, eyes darting uncomfortably to focus on the floor. “I was sorry to hear of Mia Fey’s passing. My condolences.”
Phoenix stared at him blankly for a beat, as if he couldn’t manage to reconcile Miles with their location. “Uh… Miles? What are you doing here?”
“I was meeting with a suspect for questioning.” He hesitated, trying to determine the right way to phrase his next statement. Phoenix certainly did look out of sorts over Mia’s death; he didn’t want to add to his discomfort. But there weren’t many good ways to reveal you were prosecuting your friend’s mentor’s death. “For the State vs. Fey case.”
“Oh?” Phoenix didn’t look quite as surprised as Miles had expected. Perhaps Gumshoe had already leaked the information. Less tactfully than he should have, he was sure. “I was just about to talk to Maya myself…” He winced. “Though, not for exactly the same reason…”
Was he seriously considering providing legal representation for his mentor’s killer? “If you are thinking about defending Ms. Fey, I would suggest against it.”
“W-what?” Phoenix recoiled as if stung. “What do you mean? Maya’s innocent!”
Miles huffed impatiently. “You cannot seriously believe that, can you? I understand she is the sister of your mentor, however-”
“Mia was your friend too!”
Miles clenched his jaw. Stop reminding me. He was so incensed he allowed the statement to pass without calling out the usage of ‘friend’ out for the contradiction it was. “That is exactly why I am doing this!”
“So you think Mia’s sister killed her? Because I gotta say, it seems to me like she loves her sister a whole lot. And she’s just a child! How could you accuse her of Mia’s murder?”
“Whether she is a child or not has no relevance to the facts of this case. And as I am sure you are aware, accidental murder is still murder.” It was a phrase that had come up in his own ruminations often enough, and he knew it to be true on a more intimate level than most. More intimately than Phoenix, if the man’s determined, frustrated expression was anything to go by. But Phoenix had always had a penchant for the dramatic emotional outburst, and college had done little to calm those tendencies.
“How could you say that?!” Phoenix asked, apparently choosing to be willfully ignorant of Miles himself not being responsible for the letter of the law. “Maya didn’t do it. I believe in her innocence!”
“Well you’re not as good a judge of character as you may think.” Phoenix had tried to befriend him, hadn’t he? The Demon Prosecutor himself, and guilty of the worst sin of all. Clearly if Phoenix did not know what laid so heavy on his heart and what kind of a son Miles truly was, then he was no judge of character at all.
Phoenix looked oddly wounded at that comment, but Miles couldn’t quite figure out why. Until Phoenix spoke again, and Miles noticed his own poor word choice. “Using Dahlia is low, Miles. Even for you.”
An apology died on his lips. ”Even for you?” What in the world was that supposed to mean? “I wasn’t talking about Dahlia,” he managed, though his tone was quite a few shades short of ‘apology.’
“Oh? Then what were you talking about? Why are you so fixated on getting Maya declared guilty?”
“Because I-!” He snapped his jaw shut with an audible click. Because I killed my father even though I loved him. He’d nearly said it. He hadn’t ever spoken those words aloud, and here he was, allowing Phoenix to rile him up and nearly shouting them for the world at large to hear. What a fool he would have made of himself then. He could hardly bear to picture how Phoenix’s anger would have shifted to disgust with the knowledge.
He had been allowing himself to grow very distracted today. This case was uncomfortably similar, and it was simply bringing up old memories best left forgotten. He’d allowed himself to get carried away; Franziska would have had some especially choice words for his behavior. Even Phoenix looked surprised at the strength of his response, though it did little to abate his anger.
Miles was wasting time. He should return to the prosecutor’s office so he could get work done on his arguments before court. “Do as you like, Phoenix. It will not change the verdict tomorrow.”
He hoped that when the truth was revealed, Phoenix would be able to accept it.
~~
The nightmares were worse that night. He stood over his father with a gun in his hand, not the man he was now but the child he had been, and his father’s image seemed to flicker and fade. In its place, he saw Mia Fey as she’d looked in that gruesome crime scene photo, and he carried the small golden statue in his own hands.
He woke with gritted teeth, as he always did, and firmly ignored the nightmare, as he always did. It was nothing new, except for all the ways in which it was. But it didn’t matter. He had a case to prosecute.