Work Text:
i still hc that edgeworth has a very small tattoo over his heart of a pair of crossed swords, for his father
he got it while he was in europe, coming to terms with... everything, and one day he was just. exhausted, and mentally so fucking out of it, and he was only half-aware of where he was going until he was standing outside the tattoo parlor and it was raining hard and he kind of went. "god. fucking. dammit. okay" and got the tattoo and mentioned it to abso-fucking-lutely nobody
OH HOLY SHIT.
Hang on I just realized I accidentally turned it into angst
here's the thing
Probably my most major headcanon for Edgeworth is that he's Jewish, because, like. He has a big nose and is very pale and seems to have zero concern (even as a kid) for Christmas, also I'm projecting, leave me alone
Now here's the thing.
If I also am simultaneously headcanoning that he has a tattoo.
There's a thing, in conservative/orthodox Jewish culture, that basically says if you have tattoos you. You can't get buried with the rest of your family.
So.
I'm just- I'm just thinking, like, okay, he gets the tattoo in a spur-of-the-moment decision, one night, in Europe, he's exhausted physically and mentally- he is, for all intents and purposes, alone, with zero anchor, nothing mooring him anywhere, in the post-AA1 spiral most people acknowledge probably happened.
So he spends Christmas in Europe, again, for the first time since he was 20 and moved out of the von Karmas' mansion, and he's not really consciously thinking about it, but there's.
There's something about the Christmas decorations, and something about the season and the date and the anniversary, and he-
it just hits him like a sledgehammer to the chest, what he's done, what he's unintentionally done to himself, and sure, he and Gregory were never anything but Reform Jews. Nothing's keeping him from - from -
He realizes, probably a little too late, that he is fully in the middle of a sidewalk, stopped dead in his tracks, as people push past him on either side, and he's. He realizes for the first time, I think, the breadth of what he has done, because for the first time in as long as he can remember, he realizes he didn't- consider, in any way, shape, or form, the consequences of his own actions, the long-term effects, and he realizes he hasn't considered them for a while- and god, what has he done? What has he- all of the things he's done, he didn't, he just did without thinking, because he was better than anyone, he was perfect, he was- he was infallible, and everything he had done had to have been perfect because he was making those decisions-
I think this is where he realizes he has a problem. That- that what he's done, what he's doing, what he plans to do- that it's not normal
And that it's doing nothing but damaging him
He keeps the tattoo, of course, because somehow- he's already conscious he got it for his father, he, he can't abide thinking of erasing any part of what is already crumbling memories of his father, but I think once he gets back to Los Angeles- after Edgeworth had rebuilt himself out of the ashes of his own self-hatred, and after the trial, and after his sister was shot, and after Wright screamed at him, hurt and furious, he visits the cemetery and sets a stone atop his father's tombstone and. Just.
He doesn't cry. He hasn't cried in some time. But he... stands there, and the words of the Mourner's Kaddish rest heavy on his tongue, and he finds he doesn't remember half of the syllables. He swallows, instead, and whispers his own prayer. English, not Hebrew, but it will do. It will have to do.