Chapter Text
Miles Edgeworth no longer controlled the streets of LA by anyone's definition.
Currently he didn’t control anything beyond a rundown storage unit in the bad part of LA and a hotel room when they could afford it. He tried not to think of the beloved Alpha Romeo he’d left back in Germany. At the time his biggest vehicular worry had been finding a stateside replacement in his favorite shade of red.
Now he was sneaking naps in coffee shops and eating dollar store chips with grocery store sandwiches. Even then he was lucky, if the right people actually cared enough to track down a no-name like that, the only place he’d be able to relax would be at the local morgue.
Fortunately, he still knew how to keep his mouth shut, and he still looked the part, even if his name and his legacy combined weren’t worth a thin dime. The Karmas sold perfection, and he had trained for over a decade to give that precise illusion. As long as he could be useful, he remained alive. As long as he was willing to run jobs that the rest of the family considered beneath them, he was useful.
It wasn’t like he had the right to complain about keeping his hands clean anymore.
Gumshoe knocked on the back window as he approached. “Is that a swoon or a nap, sir?” he chuckled when he saw the young man sprawled across the back seat, his hat resting across his eyes.
“Is that my driver or a fucking narc?” Miles growled without moving.
“Don’t be like that, Pal, I brought you tea.” Gumshoe laughed disarmingly, setting it in the center cup-holder. “Three sugars, no cream. In styrofoam, your favorite.”
Edgeworth made a face, but grabbed the drink. He shook a few pills out of a bottle and purposely ignored Gumshoe’s too-obvious attempt to surreptitiously count what he was taking. The tea was exactly as bad as expected, especially with the bitter aftertaste of the pills, and he sighed.
“Breakfast of champions!” Gumshoe whooped with enough enthusiasm it might have not been sarcasm. “So, what’s on the agenda today?”
“A delivery, at least that’s easy.” Miles flipped through a few messages. “Oh…and we’ve got a lesson to teach.”
“Full course or introduction?” Again Gumshoe managed to sound excessively optimistic.
“An introduction,” he mumbled. “Some producer’s insisting on moving forward with that script about the trial of one of Von Karma’s men. He was warned, but it looks like he likes the edgy reputation it gave him. Might take a few bones this time. As much as you could expect an idiot to break on a set. An accident.”
“Is Karma afraid of a movie?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Edgeworth replied. I’m not prepared to discuss the moral obligation of entertainment to a man who got his start directing sexploitation films. Do you have money?”
He could feel the atmosphere in the car change. “Like, fourteen… twelve?” Gumshoe finally offered nervously, “You need something?”
“Noting that fourteen dollars can buy.”
Gumshoe adjusted the mirror and caught his eye. “You okay, boss?”
“Same as ever.”
Gumshoe took a deep breath. “Y’know, I know you’re a picky eater, but I got a muffin for ya.”
“Should have saved your money.” Miles pulled his coat further around his ears and settled back into the seat. “Wake me when we get closer.” He wasn’t asleep, but Gumshoe knew from experience that there would be no more responses.
“Getting enough air back there?” he asked redundantly as he pulled out of the parking spot. There was a small snort.
Sometimes Gumshoe wondered how he had got into this situation again. He knew he wasn’t all that bright, so if even he realized he was getting a raw deal, it must be pathetic. His brain wanted to start that conversation again, where he asked himself how he got into this mess and then explained to himself in simple terms exactly how he had happened to end up in this situation.
There was that club he’d joined when he was fourteen. The one with the nice older kids who let him hang out and didn’t ignore him like his father.
The one that had turned out to be a gang.
Yeah, he probably should have seen that coming. Especially when the robberies had started. And he kind of had, it was just his friends… he had really convinced himself that it was okay if he didn’t steal anything. He wasn’t breaking the law, just helping his friends.
And then Mike got shot.
And he’d always known that his dream of joining the police force was a pipe dream with his grades and his family, but it sounded even more ridiculous when he realized that some day he’d have to explain about how he’d convinced his friends to shove Mike out the door a block from the hospital because he wasn’t a doctor, and he’d seen tourniquets in the old cop dramas but his best friend was turning grey, and there wasn’t a show that had taught him how to fix that.
He’d heard that Mike had survived, but they’d never seen him again.
He’d sworn he’d get out, but by then he was no longer the youngest member in the group. When he watched the new kids welcomed to the fold, he began to notice how friendly everyone was, how desperate the younger members were for that acceptance. He noticed how they started on easy stuff, and the screw-ups weren’t a big problem, because this was just a fun game and everyone was having fun.
He began to realize how he had been so easily accepted.
But there was always someone younger in more danger.
This time, he had found the Citizen Kane of potential versus bad decisions: Miles Edgeworth
Stopped at a red light, Gumshoe took another look in the back seat. Mr. Edgeworth was curled a little more now, with his collar pulled tight around his face. He looked so young and vulnerable, even if that was the last thing he wanted to hear.
Miles Edgeworth had told Gumshoe that he was twenty-four, but he had multiple IDs identifying him as anything from seventeen to thirty-two. Gumshoe’s meager attempt at a background check had only shown that he’d been active in America for around six years.
Before that was blank that Mr. Edgeworth seemed quite literally determined to take to his death.
But Gumshoe knew that he was young. And he was in serious trouble.
He also was serious trouble, there was no denying that. Gumshoe had worked with the young man for a few years now and fought him a few times before that, and he’d learned a great deal more than Mr Edgeworth thought he did. The boy knew how to fight, and he could probably talk the ocean out of drowning him on a good day. He could kiss ass like nobody’s business and had an uncanny ability to pinpoint exactly who was calling the shots. No matter how much he’d been through, he always managed to look like a fresh-faced young man who was slightly out of his league but eager to learn. And Gumshoe was willing to face death to protect his boss’s image, but the truth was, the only way he managed to keep the reputation for being impossible to kill was luck, fastidious care of bruising, and solid hand at makeup.
And an increasingly large number of pills. Some had been intended to fix what could be fixed, but most of them just seemed to mask the pain. He wasn’t interested in getting better, he only cared that he looked like he was holding strong. Mr Edgeworth had never spoken about it, but Gumshoe had the impression that the young man knew he was going to break. It was only a matter of time.
He didn’t think the kid was doing it on purpose, or at least he wasn’t doing it to hurt anyone besides himself. The man just had a need for vengeance that overshadowed his drive to be alive.
He knew he was a sucker for a lost cause, but just this once, he was hoping he’d be surprised.
He thought that every time.
His boss moaned, a long, uncertain noise that seemed to grow more urgent as it went along. It went straight to the hairs on Gumshoe’s neck.
Because that sounded like a nightmare, and those got worse when he was sleep deprived, and he hadn’t been keeping track, but he was guessing that the boss had gotten around eight hours of sleep in the last two and a half days. And he was taking pills without food again, which meant two things: his stomach was acting up enough that he was avoiding food, and he was sick enough that the last thing he should be doing was taking pills without food.
There was a soft, trembling gasp, and Gumshoe cringed. He knew he wasn’t supposed to wake him up, the shock could make him sicker and he’d been known to hurt himself or others. He could only keep his fingers crossed and pray this was a small one, because when the dreams got bad they were bad.
This one looked like the worst type
---
Just the echo of shoes clicking made him sick. It was like a song he’d heard too often, he knew every beat before it hit, knew every word down to when the singer paused to take breaths. (It’s more like a commercial, you hear it a million times and you hated it the first time but by now it was so engraved into your brain that you hear the wrong word and suddenly all your mind can think about is that horrible jingle you can’t fight)
He knew it was a dream. The realization didn’t help.
He was holding his father’s hand, and he was smiling, and the joy was real and intense. His father had won, because his father was strong and smart, but also because his father was good, and good always triumphed over evil. (It was the cornerstone of his understanding of the universe, but it was very, very wrong.) His father was also smiling, and Miles knew that was also genuine, because his father loved his son dearly. (Too dearly.) Miles was walking fast to keep up with the grownup’s steps, but he liked that because he had pent up energy after the trial. He was praising his father and reciting all the German words he’d managed to learn from deciphering their context. Of course he was thrilled, because he was precocious to a fault and one of those insufferable children who not only enjoyed learning but would recite anything he had recently discovered to any adult that didn’t run.
He was dangerously naive. The older Miles observing the sequence of events knew to the second how much longer that would last.
They reached the elevator and Miles ran forward to hit the call button while his poor future self screamed helplessly at the inevitability of it. His screams made no sound, and some part of his mind registered that his real body was still in the back of a car and no part of him was actually moving. The whole effect was jarring, like sleep paralysis, but it was a dream and nothing had to make sense. Time needn’t even be linear, even as he waited for the elevator car to arrive he could feel cruel hands on him, feel the harsh carpet against his cheek for hours, (It could feel like hours and still be simultaneous, since this wasn’t real) and hear his father’s distraught screams as the elevator descended out of ear shot.
In the main timeline, the door opened. A man (he looked like a bailiff, but Miles knew he wasn’t, he was bad and he wasn’t supposed to be there, his father couldn’t tell because he was too focused on helping his son get the pronunciation right). Miles had noticed but opted to test his German by saying hello. When the man didn’t reply, he turned back to his father (because he was a stupid little kid and he had no sense of self-preservation, but at least he should have worried about his father, his father was the center of the universe, he should have-) was standing in the back of the call and didn’t acknowledge them, and Miles pressed the button to the lobby. (Because they were getting off on the ground floor, so they could catch the bus back to their hotel, and he had told his father all of this like knowing the ground floor leads to the street made him a god damned prodigy. Adult Miles could have rung his neck.)
The ride was uneventful, save for the disembodied entity shrieking helplessly, and when the car arrived at the ground floor, his father stepped out.
But he was a young, innocent, and pretentious, and he still thought he could impress the man in the corner. He turned and gave a small bow, “Es war schön dich kennen zu lernen.” (his pronunciation was terrible, he wasn’t even good at any of the things he was proud of.) He turned to join his father.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder.
All the other sensations dulled as Miles of the future and Miles of the past collapsed into one terrified child. His father had turned, and was walking back to confront the man assaulting his son, but the door was already closing, and when they sealed in front of him and he heard his father pounding uselessly to be let in, it finally hit him that this was something serious. The sort of thing that ruins lives.
(He had no idea how right he was)
He was pleading with the man, asking to go back to his father, they were here for a trial, they’d be leaving in a few days. (To this day he couldn’t remember why he thought it would make any difference to a criminal, but to be fair it was his first time negotiating with one). He felt the barrel of a gun cut into his neck, and of course he had a gun, that was why Miles initially assumed he was a bailiff, and the man he had come to realize was kidnapping him spoke to him in English, and he was too terrified to process most of the words but he understood that the man was threatening his life. He could see the man’s face, and he was young and naive but he realized if his attacker wasn’t worried about being identified then it meant they weren’t expecting you to be able to tell police, and he couldn’t die, his father would be crushed. The door opened to the parking structure and suddenly everything was too loud. The man dragged him fast enough he couldn’t keep up, and he realized they were headed for a specific van and tried to memorize the license plate.
Another man jumped out of the back and the two made short work of binding the boy and pulling a bag over his head. (It hurt, they were rough and he was small and fragile, but he would come to know far greater pain soon.) He was being forced into a small space, something carpeted that smelled like a mildewed basement, and his throat was closing up and his body was telling him he’d die in there but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He bit desperately at a hand that was forcing him down and received a dizzying blow from somewhere outside his ever-shrinking world, and when the lid slammed down over him it was like he was locked in his own coffin. The air was thick and suffocating, and for the first time in his young life he realized he would probably die without ever seeing his father. There were so many things he still needed to say. He had to thank his father for taking him to court today. He needed to make sure someone fed his dog. He was almost certain that he had never told his father how much he loved the soggy french toast they shared on his birthday.
He had to tell his father he was sorry he hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings. He had been raised better than that.
He had to tell his father that it was going to be okay. He’d been so happy, he’d been blessed with a wonderful family, and everyone told him his Mom was watching him from up in heaven and now he’d finally get to hug his mother again. He and his father (shut up shut up shut up) had so much fun, his mother was probably lonely. Perhaps she’d asked God if she could get a visit from his son.
The elder Miles hadn’t hugged his mother in almost twenty years and could no longer picture her smiling serenely and carrying a harp because he could no longer believe there was enough good in the universe to sustain a place of happiness. Hell was real, he’d been there. He’d seen pure evil and bowed his head and offered himself as a servant to it, because only hate could sustain you in this godforsaken world.
His parents were gone. As comforting as it would have been to believe they were sitting together in some holy resting home touching hands like shy lovebirds on a first date like he’d seen them do in photos, every time he tried to think about it all he could see was his father face-down in his own blood. All he could feel was a little boy screaming as a man with bolt cutters had taken his toe. “Your father called the police,” the man had justified, but that made no sense, of course his father had called the police, his son had been kidnapped. He wanted his son to be safe, how could that be wrong? Maybe he’d tried to explain and maybe he hadn’t, all he remembered was the pain and the smell of blood and his own screams managing to make their way past the dirty rag that covered his mouth. He’d seen a lot more blood since then, his own and the blood of others, but the smell still made bile rise in the back of his mouth, and sometimes just the smell of a playground in the sun gave off that hot metallic smell of blood on hot asphalt and then he was there again-
The real Miles fought hard against the memories, and somewhere in the real world he felt a real kick hit the car door, and for a second he could feel the soft rumbling of the car like an earthquake and he clung to it, because they say dreams can’t hurt you, but they controlled the flow of time and waking up in five minutes could mean another four hours in that goddamn box trying to scratch “I love you, Father” into his forearm in hopes it would still be there when his body was recovered. And he felt sorry for the child, he really did, he remembered every second of pain like it was yesterday, but if he could reach back in time and reach his past self he would strangle the terrified boy with his own two hands until he was absolutely certain he was dead. Those memories were killing them both, and if it took death to separate him from that helpless child then it would have to be death because it was just a dream but he couldn’t spend another second in that box, it would kill him. It would kill him and he would live through it because it was a dream, it couldn’t hurt you, but it could pull your soul apart like petals on a daisy and it would do it almost every night, sometimes if he was tired enough he would blink and feel the nightmares reaching out to him from his exhausted subconscious and knew that his next death was waiting for him in the darkness behind his eyelids and the shock would keep him up for another few hours but he could feel it waiting-
With a tortured scream he finally broke the surface of consciousness and clawed his way out of the dream with clumsy grasping fingers. He could hear and feel the box with the child that used to be him slowly sink away. It was a dream, but it was part of him, and he always felt it take a little piece with it when it left. He clung to the pocket of the door forced himself to think of nothing but breathing but his heart was beating out of his chest and his stomach lurched and he knew it wasn’t possible but it tasted the way the box smelled and he he felt himself clamoring for the button for the window before he remembered thinking of doing it. Gumshoe swerved off the road into a parking lot and turned around to ask what happened just as his boss leaned out of the window and vomited. It was thick and it burned and some of it went up his nose but he hardly processed it, he just knew he had to get it out of him, the smell and the taste and the childish weakness he’d spent the rest of his life trying to kill.
Then Gumshoe was there, he must have climbed in the back seat, it was cramped, he didn’t want to be cramped, it was like the box, but he hardly had time to think it, and certainly not say it, before the next wave came. Gumshoe rubbed his back and said all the things people said when there was nothing to be said. It helped to not be alone, he supposed, even if he was taking up two and a half of three seats. He tried to say something, just to make it real, to prove he was awake and capable of interacting with the waking world, but he just managed a weak, wet moan and convulsed as his stomach tried to purge itself again. It hurt, but he would live. Just a few moments and it would be over. He gratefully accepted a stack of napkins and wiped his mouth as he sunk into the footwell where there was more space. His head throbbed and it felt like his body was dying, but at least it felt like it was his own again. He swallowed hard and reached for his tea.
“That’s a lotta blood,” Gumshoe wailed, looking out the window at the mess on the ground.
Miles pulled the napkins back for a look. There was more blood than vomit.
He’d think about that tomorrow.
Gumshoe turned when he heard the pills rattle. “You just took-”
“I just threw them up, didn’t I?” Miles growled. It wasn’t like his usual anger, that Gumshoe could have handled. It was the venomous growl of a stray dog, growling at the people trying to help them. The humans knew the dog couldn’t recover on its own, and even the dog must have known there was something wrong with it, but it was starved and half mad, and if you made a wrong move, used the wrong tone, even looked at it wrong, it was likely to flee to where you’d never see it again.
“Boss, let’s get you a hotel room. I’ll make the delivery and give the lessons, you need rest. It’s okay, I won’t mess it up.”
Mr Edgeworth lulled his head to one side, looking at him in a stupor “Get a hotel room, with fourteen dollars? You think you can do that?” The dazed exhaustion made it sound like the young man really thought it was possible.
“We’ll steal something. I, I’ll steal something. It’s what I do, right? I’m a criminal. Give me two hours, I’ll get us into a nice place like the old days. Nice spa tub an’ everything.” He really wanted to sell the idea like it was nothing, but they both knew he couldn’t steal a free sample. Mr Edgeworth just sighed and curled into the smallest ball he could. Sleep was out of the option, but again the older man knew instinctively that he wouldn’t speak until they reached their destination. Gumshoe started the car and heard a deep, shuddering sigh he knew wasn’t meant for his ears.
He turned the radio on. If he couldn’t do anything, he was at least obligated to give his boss the privacy to recover his dignity on his own.
“Anything I can get you? Food, drink? Medicine?” he asked quietly, and was surprised when he heard stirring in response.
There was a long, pained groan that was too sick to even be sarcastic, and then a quiet voice, “do we have any water?” The words were garbled and strained, but he could still hear the shame the young man felt for his weakness.
“I got some in the back.” Gumshoe soothed. “I’ll turn into the next parking lot.”
“It’s not important.”
“Neither is keeping a schedule,” the older man replied, gently but with firmness. Edgeworth didn’t protest, just settled in more. “I, uh… I’m sorry to do this, pal, but that one seemed really bad. The worst, maybe.”
“Not the worst, but it was bad.” Edgeworth agreed.
“Maybe we can go to that clinic? The Hotti guy’s pretty greasy, but he’ll probably give you a sedative. Just take a few days off, you’ve been working too hard.”
There was an extremely long pause, and Gumshoe was certain that they’d reached the end of communication, but as they pulled into the parking spot and the car shuddered to a stop, Edgeworth turned around. His eyes were wet and tinged with red. “I don’t want to sleep, Gumshoe,” he responded quietly. “I can’t.”
Gumshoe rarely dared to offer his boss sympathies for fear of insulting him, and touching had been established early on as a nuclear option, but there was a vulnerability in the boss’s voice that terrified him. Closing his eyes and praying he wasn’t making a mistake that would end their arrangement, he turned the slipped out and once again entered the back seat. “You’re not alone, Sir.” he said softly, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. The young man jerked violently, and for a horrible second Gumshoe was certain the unbalanced young man was going for his gun, but then Miles was burying his face in Gumshoe’s shoulder and clinging to him like he was drowning, sobbing and babbling nonsense words inter-spaced with desperate apologies. Gumshoe uselessly stroked the silky grey hair and even that wasn’t denied.
“I’m sorry, Sir, I’m so sorry.”
The problem with being a sucker for a lost cause…
… Sometimes it was a lost cause.
He held his boss closer than he dared and hoped against hope that this time would be the surprise.