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The doormat that says "Home" is kind of cruel.
For one thing, doormats are weirdly expensive, and this one is beyond salvage, fraying at the corners and caked in dust. For another thing Phoenix is surrounded by moving boxes, boxes he’s been filling with all sorts of sentimentalia; and this stupid doormat, of all things, is the thing that finally makes him stop. Not any of the dress shirts, or the legal books, or the fucking law school diploma — the doormat that says "Home".
Not even "Home", because the "O" is replaced by a red heart. H-heart-me. H-love-me? Phoenix is, he thinks, probably losing it. But he's been packing for hours now, picking up all the little pieces of his life from where they're messily shoved into closets or under his bed or on the chair in the corner of his room, the one he'd picked up from the curb on trash day a few months ago and planned on replacing with a chair from a store someday and never had. Never will, now. Honestly, he's just surprised this hadn’t happened sooner.
The doormat is still there, on the floor. Phoenix had brought it in here — right, because it had a fucked-up corner and he was tired of tripping on it, and he figured he might as well throw it in the trash bag, along with the empty containers and the wrappers and all the other shit he's been too busy staring at a wall to take out recently.
So that's exactly what Phoenix does. And then he sits back down, and stares at the floor.
He’s fine, really. It's not like he's going to miss this apartment, with its stupid creaky floors and its windows which look out onto a busy street and block out approximately 0% of the noise associated with said street. He's not going to miss it, and he's not going to miss the stupid fucking doormat either. He's not.
There's the sound of sock-clad feet on the floor, and Phoenix lifts his head to see Trucy, watching him from the doorway. "Daddy?"
He shouldn't, Phoenix thinks, be used to being called that. But somehow, right now, it sounds just as warm and familiar as his name. More than, because his name has been dirt in so many different mouths — his last name in particular, pronounced with such disgust and disdain (and don't think about him right now, the absolute last thing Phoenix needs is to be thinking about him right now, so he won't, and he isn't) that it'd actually been kind of rare to hear it in the voice of a friend; or in a non-aggressive way, at least. He's never been called "Daddy" by someone who's about to punch his lights out, but he's been called "Wright" or "Phoenix" or — nope, not going there right now either — by hostile voices more often than he can count.
And alright, Phoenix will admit — it's nice to have someone to keep a stiff spine for. God, isn't that really why he became a lawyer (no, not now) in the first place? Because there were clients sitting, behind glass, in the detention center, in the worst situation of their lives; and they had all needed someone. Someone like Phoenix Wright, whether they admitted it or not. And he had been there and they had needed him; he had become that someone, the someone Mia had been for him, but that's another avenue he's not going to explore right now because the point is: it is nice. To be needed.
Except, to be honest, he's not really sure if Trucy needs him like his clients had, like Phoenix is starting to think he needs her. Sure, she's small, and sure, she would need his permission for a child performer permit (or whatever they're called) to make any sort of real money, and she can't get one of those on her own (Phoenix thinks — he wouldn't be surprised if fraud was included among the magic skills she'd learned from her previous guardians, but not now, not useful), so, practically speaking, she does need him.
But when Phoenix looks up from the floor and sees her standing in her top-hat and cape (and he really needs to get her some new clothes, normal clothes, not the weird, mismatched wardrobe of pajamas from Italy and shoes from Kmart and all sorts of things a little too showy to be normal kids clothes she'd brought with her, so she won't get made fun of at her new school when the kids notice she's been repeating the only five semi-normal outfits she'd been able to put together), the only father she'd ever known gone, vanished into the fucking ether along with Phoenix's last hope at making it in the career he'd spent years studying for, preparing for, (not useful, don't think) Trucy is smiling at him. Just like she has been for the past month.
It's insane. She's either the best child actor Phoenix has ever known or she's a million times stronger than him, and somehow the second option is just as intimidating as the first.
Well, there is also a third option, the "We Need To Talk About Kevin" option. But she's so — for all her intelligence and her showmanship, and her ventriloquy dolls, she's a startlingly normal kid. She had even pouted when Phoenix had told her, somewhat dazed that the words were even coming out of his mouth, that she couldn't have dessert until she'd eaten her veggies — because for one thing, there was no way Phoenix was going to throw out food, not when he'd had to go stand in line at the food bank at ass-crack-of-dawn-o'-clock in the morning for it. For the other, it just seemed like the sort of thing Phoenix was supposed to say, had seen repeated ad nauseum on a million episodes of a million different sitcoms by a million different old, balding white guys, who were supposed to represent what a “Dad” was supposed to be.
She'd even made a face when Phoenix had tried to get her to eat spinach. Which, okay, it's not like he had liked spinach when he was that age, but it had been wilting, and he had bought that box before — everything happened, and someone had to eat it.
That had been in the first few days. And that someone had ended up being him.
Trucy had eaten the vegetables from the food bank, though; had eaten the peas. And then for dessert they had eaten fucking — pudding. Phoenix doesn't think he's eaten pudding (especially not honest-to-god My-T-Fine brand, from-a-box pudding, which has packaging he doesn't think has changed from like, the 1950s, and at the food bank he'd had to double-check the "Best By" date before putting it in his bag, because he couldn't be sure it wasn't some ancient estate sale relic someone with a terrible sense of humor or no common sense had dropped off) since he was a kid.
It actually hadn't been bad. Phoenix had mixed it with what milk he had left from that week's grocery run, and a little bit of water to make up the last one-third of the one and one-thirds cups of milk the side of the archaically-designed box had called for, and then he had mixed it with a fork (who owns a whisk?) and put it in the freezer instead of the fridge to set, because he had made it right before starting dinner; and he may not be the fastest cook in the world, but it wasn't going to take him four hours to make boxed mac-n-cheese with chopped lunch meat and frozen peas, and he didn't want to wait too long after dinner for dessert; knew he'd probably still be hungry afterwards, and he had been.
Of course he had. When Phoenix was in college he could have eaten a whole box of mac-n-cheese by himself, especially if he was hungover. God, he had practically lived on microwave cups of the stuff freshman year, with a limited dining plan and terrible planning skills and his scummy roommate persuading him to sell his Adderall for way-too-low prices to seniors who had, in retrospect, totally overcharged him for the beer they bought him as a thank-you. At the time Phoenix had, naively, assumed it was just the brain-drain of his Intro to Sociology class or whatever causing the fatigue and hunger, and not, you know, fucking stimulant withdrawal. Thank God said roommate had dropped out after half a semester and Phoenix had actually started taking his meds again, because if not he'd be in even more debt from the sheer volume of crap he would've kept eating, as well as the student loans. Not to mention probably twenty pounds heavier.
Although — he could kind of use a theoretical twenty extra pounds right now, because he can't even afford those microwave Kraft cups he lived off of in college, anymore. Hell, he can hardly afford the shitty store-brand mac-n-cheese, and now he's sharing one box of that with an eight-year-old whose legs are stick-skinny. Are kids supposed to be that skinny? Phoenix has no fucking clue, and yeah, he had been eight once too, but that was a whole lifetime ago, and stop thinking about it, don't think about him, it's not helpful — he's twenty-five now, an actual adult, and eight years old is a lifetime ago, "eight years old" shouldn't still have the power to tighten his chest, stick a wrench on the screws of his ribcage where it's bolted to his sternum and turn painfully tight the way it apparently still can.
Anyway, he'd forgotten how much kids could eat. And a single box of store-brand mac-n-cheese, combined with two chopped-up slices of ham (because he needed to save the last slice for tomorrow, for the world's saddest Wonderbread and mustard and single ham slice sandwich, and thank God for free and reduced student lunch or Phoenix would be truly fucked) and half a bag of frozen peas doesn't actually amount to much when it's being split with, well — she’s a kid, sure, but her appetite doesn't really match her appearance. Neither does her personality.
It's not like Phoenix hadn't known that kids were people, before. Obviously they were. They were annoying little shits, sure, just like adults could be annoying little shits. They were also sweet, and caring, and loyal, just like adults could be; just like Pearls. But Trucy is — Trucy is kind of like the kids he'd seen in movies, back when Phoenix actually had the time and the energy to watch anything that isn't whatever doesn't make his headache worse. The ones that stumble over lines screenwriters who haven't interacted with anyone under the age of forty write, the ones who use big words and then unconvincingly ask adults what the words mean, as if the big words they'd said weren't exactly the ones which moved the adults towards whatever dramatic conclusion they'd needed to come to.
Phoenix had always rolled his eyes at those kind of scenes before, even if he'd never really thought about them too closely. And then he'd met Trucy. And Trucy doesn't stumble over her lines. It's not like what she says is particularly insightful, or revelatory. A lot of it is pretty mundane. But it's all, somehow, earth-shattering.
Just being called "Daddy" is earth-shattering, every time. Phoenix has gotten a little more used to it, sure, but when she'd looked at him the first time and stated that he was her new Daddy now, like there was no argument, no ifs ands or buts — Phoenix hadn't known it then, but his world had been broken into a million tiny pieces.
On TV, he’d seen a show about diamond mining. God knows when or why, but Phoenix can still remember the big rock the miners had shown the camera, and he may not know much about gems but he could tell it was a huge find by the way the miners were smiling as they held it up, still covered in dirt, dull and ugly, a sallow, overcast white. They'd shown it in its final form, too: a million tiny crystals getting picked up with tweezers and blasted with so many lights that the screen looked like one of those old Star Trek shots, the ones where the pretty alien lady of the week is alone on frame and wearing some sparkly dress that twinkles like how the stars would probably twinkle, if Phoenix could magically see past the smog and the light pollution; if he were the sort of person who believed all the carefully-edited, long-shutter-speed pictures online looked anything like the reality.
Phoenix had never really gotten the appeal of diamonds — couldn't pick a real one out from a lineup of fakes if his life was at stake — but he'd kind of related to them in that moment. A hulk of rock that could never gain back what it lost by polishing. Although polishing probably isn't exactly the right word for what had happened, recently.
In the days after the trial, it had been all investigations and things to do, things to focus on, and then he had hit what could charitably be called a dead end. If there's an end more definite than a dead one, that's probably a more accurate descriptor; but "dead" seems pretty accurate for his hopes of finding out who had actually commissioned the forgery right now, not to mention his legal career. Worse than dead. Not even dead, because you could taxidermy something dead, even roadkill could be taxidermied — decimated. Eviscerated. Cremated, the ashes dumped onto the 5 for assholes in their BMWs to run over when they were changing lanes without using a turn signal.
He’s probably mixing metaphors now, but the point is it's gone, without hope of resurrection. Without the possibility of ever becoming whole again — shattered white, bone-white, and sometimes Phoenix thinks it could've become diamonds and sometimes he thinks it would've just ended up like the styrofoam, crumbling into the dawn-blue shade of the gutter at seven am on a weekday in the line outside the food bank: inconsequential.
Whichever it could have been, it can't be put back together again. So now it's Phoenix, packing his pitiable belongings into cardboard boxes, and looking up to see an eight-year-old girl looking down at him, and calling him "Daddy", like she's always called him that. Like this whole situation is normal, and not unbelievably insane. Like Phoenix isn't moving out of an apartment he had just moved into, just this past December, like he hadn't looked at the dingy walls and the cramped kitchen and the bare, empty space, and thought with the sort of forced optimism of a classic Stockholm Syndrome-sufferer that he could actually make this place a home, and like now it isn't the end of May, and his landlord (who is, annoyingly, way too nice to be mad at) had apologetically said that he couldn't renew the lease, not when he'd been letting Phoenix pay half-price for the past month due to quote unquote unforeseen circumstances, and the fact that the people willing to live with a kid and an infamous public figure for potential roommates had all been either too creepy or too unstable for Phoenix to let into his apartment for a tour, much less live in the same space as Trucy. Like now Phoenix isn't putting the little pieces of his life in boxes, again, figuring out what he can take with him and what he can't. Like he hasn't done this too many times before. Like he doesn't feel like every single item he throws in the "donate" bag is just another nail in the coffin of what he thought was going to be his future.
The thing is, it's hard to dwell on it for too long. Because there's Trucy, standing there in the doorway, looking at Phoenix like he's a constant and not like an hour ago he hadn't been close to a breakdown over the fact that he might not be able to take the dresser he had bought (from IKEA, but still, he had bought and assembled it himself, swearing at the stupid wordless instructions over two beers from the corner store down the street that rainy Friday evening, and now it's too heavy for one person to move and Phoenix doesn't have anyone to help him move it, because he'd turned his phone over and let the texts and the calls and whatever else take their toll on the battery until it had drained entirely and left it like that for the past three weeks or so) with him to their new apartment.
Like all that matters to her is the fact that he's here, and the fact that he had signed the adoption papers, and for all the agonizing Phoenix has been doing in the past — God, whenever he had started packing, it feels like literal days ago now — all that really matters to her, is that he plans on staying.
"Trucy," Phoenix says, and it comes out steady, thank God. "What is it? You okay?"
"Yeah," she answers, and blinks at him. It's late. She should be in pajamas, and Jesus Christ Phoenix really is terrible at this, at this whole "being a responsible guardian" thing. "I was just wondering…"
"What?"
"It's dumb," she tells him, all cheery confidence. Phoenix can see through it, though he has no idea when he had learned to. Maybe just now. "So — never mind. Night, daddy!"
"Trucy." She stops, turning, one hand on the doorway. Phoenix grimaces, as he gets up on legs unsteady from kneeling so long. "Hang on a minute."
"Okay." Her eyes watch him, large in her small, pale face. So small — he could cradle her head in his hands; could hold her whole world in his cupped palms.
That'd probably be a little weird to do in real life, though, so Phoenix doesn't. He kneels down with an exaggerated groan instead, which Trucy giggles at. "Sorry. I'm ancient."
Trucy blinks at him again, owl-like. "Are you really?"
"Nope. But it sure feels like it sometimes."
"Oh." She looks down, twisting the hem of her cape in her hands. "But, like, you won't die soon or anything?"
"Sure hope not," Phoenix replies, gently taking the twisting hand from her side. "I'm old, but I'm not that old."
"Okay." She bites her lip. "So —"
"So, I may not be old enough to die of old age. But I am old enough to tell that something is bothering you."
"Oh." Trucy stops biting her lip, but she doesn't stop looking worried. She shouldn't look like that, Phoenix thinks. No kid should, but especially not her. "Okay. Um — I was wondering if I could ask you something?"
"Shoot."
She takes a deep breath. "Are you moving cause of me?"
"No," is Phoenix's instinctual answer, and it's true, mostly. But she had been one factor (a big one, if he’s being completely honest) in his decision and he can see her pick up on this, knows she knows he's being deceptive as clearly as if she had been holding up the magatama.
Phoenix sighs, and ruffles her hair. It still feels kind of performative, another sitcom trope, but Trucy doesn't seem to mind. "Alright. You got me. Yeah, you were one reason, but there's a bunch of other ones too."
"Oh. Like what?"
"Boring adult stuff. You know." Trucy tilts her head, and Phoenix tries to smooth down the cowlick he'd just greatly exacerbated. It doesn't work. He's always been better at messing things up than fixing them, anyway. "Financial stuff. And leases."
Trucy's nose wrinkles. "Oh."
Phoenix laughs despite himself. "Yeah, I don't like it either. But you know. It's just part of being an adult. Knowing that stuff. Making decisions."
"But I was one of the reasons, though." She's back to biting her lip again. It reminds him of Pearls. "Wasn't I?"
"Sure. It'll be good to live somewhere you don't have to transfer buses on your way to school though, right?"
"Yeah." Trucy smiles at him, and they're back to their usual, but now Phoenix is actually paying attention, and he wonders suddenly if it's always been this off, before. If, in the future, she's going to get even better at hiding what she's feeling, and if she does he's got a feeling he'll be in real trouble.
Maybe it's the idea of that which makes him pause, and really think, about why she's asking him about this, about the actual circumstances they're in. Trucy's had to move a ton too. Probably more than he has. Way more, and Phoenix suddenly feels like the world's biggest idiot, the most immature, ignorant, self-absorbed idiot ever to exist. Because sure, he may have just gotten here in December, but Trucy had only moved in at the end of April, and the memory of her standing in the doorway with her suitcase, filled with all the things she owns, almost too heavy for her to even drag behind her, cuts far deeper than any of the things Phoenix has read about himself in the headlines in the past couple weeks.
Phoenix stares at her. The world tilts slightly, realigning on the same axis it had been aligned on ever since that day she'd told him in no uncertain terms that Phoenix was her new daddy now, just even stronger. Even clearer; even to an idiot of the likes Phoenix Wright apparently is.
“Trucy," he says. "It's okay to be sad about moving. You know that, right?"
She smiles a little brighter, but he can see the uncertainty in her eyes. "Yeah. I'm not sad."
"I am." Which she probably knows, Phoenix has pretty much been telegraphing his emotional state like it's a fucking SOS signal and he's on the bow of the Titanic for the past month or so. But he hasn't said it like this, yet. "I'm sad. But I'm also happy."
Phoenix doesn't have to worry about her spotting any deception this time, because even though he hadn't realized it before he'd said it — it's the truth. He repeats it, just to check. "I'm happy, because we're going to make this new place our home. But I'm still sad to be leaving. So it's okay if you're sad, too."
"Okay," Trucy almost whispers. She grabs her cape again, twisting it. "Sorry."
"You don't have to apologize."
"Yeah." Trucy hesitates. "I am sad to be leaving, I guess."
Phoenix nods like he'd expected this, like it doesn't crack open his chest a little with fear, and he'll deal with the fear later, he's sure, but right now he's got something else to focus on. Trucy continues. "Cause I just got here. And I like my window."
"Into the alley?"
"Yeah. Because the sun comes up and it makes a pretty shadow, on the brick. And the guy at the 7-11 on the corner is nice. He gave me a Tootsie pop the other day.”
Phoenix suppresses a wince, because oh God his head has been so far up his ass he hasn't even taught her not to take candy from strangers. Another thing on the ever-growing "later" pile. "That was nice of him."
"Yeah. And I guess I was kind of happy to be, um. Staying somewhere."
"I know," Phoenix says, and it doesn't come out at all steady this time, but how could it? "I know. It's — change is hard. It might be hard for a while. But it'll be okay. We'll be okay."
Trucy nods, and thank God she's not looking at him because Phoenix doesn't think his attempt at a reassuring expression would convince a kid half her age, much less a human lie-detector. "Thanks, Daddy."
"You got it," Phoenix says, and then before he can stand Trucy's throwing her arms around his neck; burying her face in his shoulder.
Phoenix almost expects her to cry, but she doesn't. She just breathes, clinging to him, and he just holds her, still unsure how to but needing to nonetheless. He can feel her heartbeat; can feel, even in the new-emptiness of the room, packed away into boxes, packed away into bags he'll probably just throw in the landfill later (because he's never really had his shit together enough to figure out where or how to donate stuff anyways), the drumbeat thump-thump of life, against his chest.
And it doesn't matter, that the apartment they're moving into is even smaller and definitely has a bug problem and that Phoenix is going to have to leave the dresser behind and that he had to get up at six in the morning the other day just to get in line to make sure he could feed her and himself guilt-seasoned boxed mac-n-cheese with frozen peas and lunch meat and pudding that looked like it could've been bought with WWII ration cards.
Because at this moment, Trucy needs him. Because at this moment, for every refracted shadow, every trinket or shirt or book, every mockingly-printed doormat covered in dirt, reminding Phoenix of what his life could have been, what his life had been, before it had been smashed to pieces — Trucy is here. Casting a new reflection. Of a future, never imagined; one whose absence is now unthinkable. And yeah, he's obviously not great at this whole "parenting thing", probably won't ever be, but Phoenix also knows beyond certainty that he would fight to the last breath anyone who ever tried to take her away from him. This brilliant, empathetic, incomprehensible soul, this heart, somehow contained in skinny sapling limbs and a head small enough to hold in his palms — his daughter. His daughter; Trucy now-legally Wright.
Phoenix needs her more than he had known even an hour ago, needs her more than she can ever find out. And so after a moment he gently disentangles her, and then tells her to go brush her teeth, and put on her pajamas, and then he'll tuck her in, but only if she also flosses, and she runs off to go do those things, and in the room, filled with boxes, filled with what he'd thought was his life, Phoenix puts his head in his hands.
Only for a moment. Because the room is empty, but not in the way he had thought it to be, not in the way his life had been, before, the way he doesn't think it can ever be again. Not when Phoenix can lift his head, and turn to the doorway, and see his life looking back at him, the tiny pieces of home he’d thought to be scattered all contained in one heartbeat, beating brighter than even an optimist's ideal of the stars.
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