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anyway! for the first nine years of his life miles is the kind of kid who insists he's Independent™️ and then gregory wakes up almost every single day with his kid snuggled into his side, even though he's sure he tucked him into his own bed last night, what the fuck
raymond: wouldn't you wake up though?
gregory, an hour late because he was mysteriously comfortable: evidently not!
edgeworth is the kind of kid who lines all of his stuffed animals up neatly by the wall and wishes them each a very pleasant good night. he doesn't have many stuffed animals, because he's very picky about Who Makes The Cut™️, but he gives the ones he's disinterested in to the donation box by the main office in his elementary school, or occasionally to phoenix
anyway, stuffed animals and sneaking into his dad's room lasts- seven or eight years, give or take, because i don't count the first years where he was basically in a crib- and then. well.
at the semimansion of the von Karmas, he doesn't have his favorite stuffed animal (which was a teddy bear whose polyfill he and his father replaced with plastic beads, because it makes the bear softer and floppier and heavier.) it was one of the first things to go, maybe two weeks in, along with his flute
he doesn't try and sneak into mr. von karma's room. it's too unfamiliar, and besides, he isn't sure he would make it there without getting lost in the huge winding hallways.
instead he coils himself around his pillow, and pretends it's his father, even though it's not sturdy or warm or alive- though... he supposes that last modifier doesn't apply to his father anymore, either. he drifts off into fitful, hazy bad dreams that vanish like cotton candy the next day
(the real nightmares don't start until six months in.)
as any trauma psychologist would tell you.
once that starts happening, he wakes up one day to find he's accidentally ripped one of the seams on his pillow from clutching it too hard. he does his best to keep mr. von karma from finding out, but find out he does, and miles never curls around the pillow again. he settles instead for laying it upright against the headboard, as if it's a human person sitting down, and rests his head in its "lap." (he still wakes up clutching it tight to his chest but it's the thought that counts.)
anyway, his classes ramp up and up. the von karma method is made for that; made to manipulate a child, whose ideals in the world have been broken or perhaps were never there in the first place, to pretend at giving you the justice you so desperately crave and to draw you in until you're leaps and bounds above your peers, taking highschool classes at age 11
he stops having time to fix his pillow before bed. most nights he collapses into the bed, haphazardly pulls the bedsheets over his legs and passes out. it doesn't help that he skips entire nights of sleep at a time, in a desperate attempt to avoid the dreams- and the messages- inside them
he wakes up thrashing every time, not screaming but sobbing, trying desperately to get a breath because it feels like he can't even though he knows he can
one morning (well, early morning, really) he wakes up before the dream was supposed to end, his hand throbbing, his knuckles sore. he realizes that in his fitful sleep he'd struck the wall. he starts paying more attention when he falls asleep- the only position that keeps him from rolling or thrashing is tightly closed in on himself, curled into a ball with his knees tucked under his chin.
so that's how he sleeps. for years, that's how he sleeps. curled in on himself like he's trying to protect himself from some nonexistent threat; he knows, logically, the only real threat is himself, but sometimes he can't convince himself of that. (some nights- the worst nights- he sets his alarm for too-early, huddles into a tight-packed corner of his closet, unable to bear open air at his back.)
at eighteen or nineteen, he... he starts coming to terms with it. it's hard to deny the truth for too long- this horrible, undeniable truth that he killed his father. he's known it on some level for years but it only sinks in then what a horrible person he is. patricide- a crime punishable by death- he should have- god-
he doesn't sleep. for days on end. the only way he can justify giving himself the mercy of sleep is by making it as uncomfortable for himself as he can, and even then, it's not... it's no mercy. it's him, stiff-backed and straight as a board, atop his blankets, shivering cold. (there's a pre-teen, somewhere in his mind, wondering if self-denial will help atone, because there has to be something he can sacrifice to stop the nightmares, the bloody recurring dreams-)
he hates earthquakes, of course, but some deep-hidden part of him craves them, because blacking out is a sort of sleep, even if it's filled with the cloying scent of blood and the horrible, horrible feeling of claustrophobia
five or so years later he finds out he didn't kill his father.
his ears ring when he tries to sleep. facts, thoughts, emotions racing inside his head, behind his eyelids. he reels with it. he talks to himself, a desperate attempt to make sense of it all, and can't make heads nor tails of it. phoenix notices, of course; he's more sleepless than ever, and while the dream stops happening, it's not exactly a cure-all. that kind of deep-set trauma, the court-ordered therapist says, doesn't go away. not that easily. it's replaced by things set along a similar theme- rooms with walls closing in around him that would have made even poe panic, the haunting face and scream of von karma. other things that make him feel the same. worse, even, because the elevator he expects but he does not expect the dreams where he's dragged underwater.
(he stops talking to his court-ordered therapist.)
and then- and then- there's Skye v. State. gant had always reminded him of von karma to an uncomfortable degree. he doesn't sleep the entire trial, and then, after the trial--
well. we'll gloss over what happens after the trial.
indirectly after the trial, months later, he's in germany and studying legal philosophy in a university library in Berlin, halfway nodding off, when it occurs to him that he has been tired every single day since he was nine years old, and that perhaps this is not particularly normal.
reluctantly he schedules himself an appointment with a therapist, who tells him the same thing the court-ordered one had: that he can't expect things to disappear. that it takes work. and help. and "do you have a support network," and "...i think you have more friends than you let on, miles, come on. name two people for me who care about you." and "well, that sounds like a support network" and "well, get in contact with them!"
slowly. slowly, with medication and with work, he starts to get better. he finds himself absentmindedly sleeping in positions that aren't "passed out at desk" or "ramrod-straight in bed like a vampire." he stops having to spend nights locked in the bathroom or in the closet, coiled against one wall.
(it's 2019 when he wakes up, coiled around one phoenix wright with the early morning sunshine streaming through the curtains, and he realizes that he's made progress)