Chapter Text
It hurt his heart to see her behind bars.
Despite everything she and her demon of a sister had put him through, Phoenix Wright could do little to escape the feeling in his chest when he visited her at the detention center. Sentencing had occurred a week prior, handing Iris a ten-year prison stint for her involvement in the death of Misty Fey. The result was far preferable to a life sentence, or the death penalty, to be sure, but a decade was a long, long time. Phoenix couldn’t even imagine where he might be in ten years. After all, it had only been five years since his acquittal, in the case that brought his relationship with Iris - and with Dahlia Hawthorne - to an initial end. Doubling that felt like an eternity.
Iris looked alright, for her part. Tired, with her hair undone, draped around her shoulders, but seemingly at peace with how the trial had gone, freed from the burdens of the lies and secrets she’d carried with her for so long. Phoenix couldn’t imagine the strength it took to seem so calm in a situation like this. He admired her audacity.
“Feenie, you look pale. Are you alright?”
The fact that Iris was asking him if he was alright embarrassed Phoenix. He wasn’t the one whose freedom had been taken away. And yet, Iris was always so quick to put others ahead of herself, even to her own detriment, as the trial had revealed in excruciating detail. He tapped his fingers on the counter in front of him, attached to the large window separating him from Iris, the phone receiver pressed to his ear so he could talk to her.
“Y - Yeah, I’m fine, Iris,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’m just…still recovering from the bridge, you know. My ribs will take a while to heal. What about you? How are you holding up?”
Iris twisted her receiver cord around her finger, mulling over the question. Her eyes drifted upwards, and Phoenix couldn’t help but fixate on her lips, pale pink and hanging open ever so slightly. He could still recall every detail, every feeling from their eight month odyssey in his college years. The revelation that it had been Iris he was with the entire time, rather than her cruel, twisted twin, re-contextualized those memories in a way that he couldn’t quite parse.
“It’s okay, in here,” she said, re-focusing on Phoenix. “I spend most of my recreational time in the library. There’s this attorney that’s also serving time here, I think her name is…Lana, maybe? She teaches law courses for the inmates twice a week. I’ve found the ins and outs of the legal system to be quite engaging. Maybe I can even be an attorney some day.”
She smiled, a giggle escaping her lips. “Maybe we’ll face off in the courtroom when I get out.”
When I get out. She said it so casually, as if that day wasn’t a full decade away from now. Ten years without Iris, after he’d finally uncovered the truth about her, finally resolved everything he’d kept tangled up in his chest in the wake of the Swallow murder case.
Ten years was a long, long time. But Phoenix…well, he supposed he was willing to wait it out.
“I’ll visit you every month,” he affirmed. “And I’ll keep working your case. We’ve already gotten your sentence shortened to ten years, maybe we can shave even more off. You don’t - you don’t deserve to do this much time, after everything you’ve gone through, Iris.”
A blush crossed Iris’s face, causing Phoenix’s heart to skip a beat as he took in her radiance. But her smile faded, and she looked away.
“I don’t think that’s true,” she said, tugging at a stray lock of hair over her shoulder. “I…I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, Feenie. I’ve helped Dahlia do terrible, terrible things. Even if - even if we say that I was a victim of circumstance with regards to Master Fey, I still have blood on my hands for what happened with you and Doug Swallow. I need to pay my dues, Feenie.”
She pressed her hand against the glass, and Phoenix reciprocated, gripping the receiver tightly so as not to betray the wave of emotion welling up in his chest. Iris could be so cruel to herself, so convinced of her own weakness, and yet, here she sat, putting on a brave face while staring down ten years of confinement for a crime she had no intention of being involved in, that she’d been dragged into because of her sister, because of Godot. Out of obligation.
“Besides,” Iris continued, “if I get to see you every month, it won’t be all that bad. That’s all I’ll need to get through this, Feenie.”
Phoenix turned his head down, squeezing his eyes shut. It was going to be a long, hard ten years. But he was going to get through it. He was going to be here. For her.
Whatever it took.