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Miles Edgeworth is not someone who is well-known for his ability to rest. On the contrary, people have badgered him all his life (save for Von Karma, of course) for working himself too hard.
However, when he does take an evening to himself, he’s thorough about it.
Tonight is one of those nights. He’s settled himself onto the couch with a hot cup of tea and a thick book, ready to spend several hours doing absolutely nothing.
He’s just pulling his favorite blanket over his shoulders and flipping to the first page when the all-too-recognizable buzz of his cell phone comes from the coffee table.
He almost just lets it go. If it’s really a matter of life-and-death, whoever it is will call again.
But then his real ringtone begins, the choppy, nostalgic theme from the very first incarnation of Steel Samurai, and he can’t blow it off. Shoving warm fabric to the side, he grabs the offending device and swipes right.
“Wright?” he states simply.
“M-Miles”, Phoenix’s voice comes through the other end, shaky and uncertain and horribly, heart-breakingly tearful.
Oh God, he’s crying.
Miles swallows hard. Phoenix was always a bit of a crybaby when he was younger, bursting into tears at seemingly everything: a bad grade, an argument, a skinned knee. Allegedly, it got worse when he was in college, though Miles wouldn’t know. But now, that side of him only seems to come out when something very bad has happened.
And for a trouble magnet like Phoenix, nothing at all seems to be out of the question when it comes to very bad.
“What’s wrong?” Miles breathes, trying to keep his own voice from quaking.
Phoenix takes in a gasp and yelps something, but it sounds like nothing but wordless noise. After that comes only more trembling sobs.
“Pho-- Wright”, he corrects almost too late. “You need to calm down enough for me to understand you.”
Immediately, the man on the other end chokes out another sound, which breaks halfway through in a cough. He tries again with similar results.
Miles’ mind begins to whirl; he’s never heard his old friend so distraught. Is he injured? Is he in the hospital? Should he be in the hospital, but instead he’s slowly bleeding out in a ditch somewhere? Has he finally stepped on the wrong person’s toes one too many times? Did someone hurt him? Could they have hurt Trucy? That would certainly reduce him to tears; he loves her to death! What if--
“Daddy! Is that Mr. Edgeworth?” someone shouts in the background, effectively answering at least the last question for him.
There’s some muffled words. More wails. A bit of static, presumably from something brushing against the phone.
“Go ahead”, Phoenix whimpers, the first clear words Miles has heard from him since his given name. Another burst of white noise.
Miles is about to lose his patience and demand that someone explain something with words that he can decipher without a translator when Trucy’s voice travels down the line.
“Hi, Mr. Edgeworth!”
He shivers. She’s crying as well, but even through her obvious despair, her tone is unfailingly bright. If he didn’t know better, he’d think things were just fine.
“Was Daddy--” Some more muffled words are exchanged. “Was Daddy able to tell you anything?”
Miles shakes his head, then realizes she cannot see him and says, “No. All I heard was indiscernible noise.”
She lets out a watery giggle. “Yeah, he’s not good at talking when he’s all emotional.”
He sighs, patience at its end. “So, what is he trying to tell me? Are you two in danger?”
There’s a sudden burst of noise. Miles flinches away from the phone as Phoenix lets out a terrible roar. There’s a high-pitched squeal that must be Trucy, followed by a shrill, “Daddy!”
Miles bolts up from his chair. Something is horribly wrong. They must be in someone’s possession right now, attempted to call for help, and, seeing as neither Wright knows the first thing about stealth, gotten caught.
He tries to keep his pounding pulse at bay but his mind won’t stop screaming, ‘How can you stay calm?! You heard that noise! Someone’s hurting them!!’
The noise steadies, and Miles can make out the sound of hysterical tears from them both, the kind that sound, almost cruelly, like laughter.
“You get into so much trouble that everyone always assumes you’re in a mess again!” Trucy shouts, tone tinged with what he realizes actually is happiness, but it can’t be…
“You know Daddy took his bar exam?” the girl pipes, this time to him directly.
Miles shakes his head to clear it. “Uh, yes.”
He failed. He failed. Oh God, he flunked completely and now he’s destroyed. He’ll never recover and he’ll go back to playing poker and he’ll lose his daughter and--
“We got the results back-- hey! --”
Yet another round of brushing, and Miles almost screams with a combination of frustration and pure nervousness.
Then Phoenix seemingly gets ahold of his phone and yells something perfectly clear.
“I aced it, Miles!”
Tears, ecstatic tears coat the words, so pure that Miles himself is struck silent for a moment by it all.
“Y-You passed…?” he croaks.
This time, he can clearly hear Phoenix laugh; he sounds almost delirious with joy.
“ Better than passed! I got my badge back!!”
“Daddy’s gonna be a lawyer again!!”
Miles is suddenly struck with many things at once. He’s angry because how dare they scare him like that. He’s just a bit melancholy, thinking that Phoenix was-- is a good man. He shouldn’t have had to go through so much just to get back what he loves so much.
But above it all, he’s so incredibly, immensely proud that he can hardly breathe.
“Wright”, he murmurs before retracting his surname and deciding to go for it.
“Phoenix. I’m so proud of you.”
Phoenix laughs warmly. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Miles snorts. The sound is almost certainly covered up by Trucy squealing again, only compounded when her thirty-four year old father decides to join in.
Miles, barely able to think straight anymore, collapses into relieved, overjoyed laughter.
Finally, his old friend will be able to live out his dream once more.
Finally, the Dark Age of Law is turning itself around.
And finally, finally, Phoenix sounds genuinely happy.
(Miles hadn’t realized quite how much he’d missed that until just now.)