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How, Phoenix can’t help but wonder, did he get into this mess?
To be fair, he wonders this every time. He ponders on the cause, every time, because like most people he doesn’t actually like getting into messes, it just happens. Fairly often, at that—although there hasn’t been too much excitement since he lost his badge. Which is good, objectively speaking—because as much as he misses being Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, defender of truth and seeker of justice, he has more important priorities at the moment. Specifically, two of them: the two most important people in his life, and Phoenix’s own wellbeing comes in at a distant third.
Number one is his daughter, Trucy Wright, currently at the hotel being watched by her self-proclaimed Auntie Franziska, and therefore completely safe. The worst that could happen is that she learns how to use a whip a little too well—and as long as said whip isn’t being used against him too much, Phoenix isn’t exactly going to complain about his daughter learning to defend herself.
Number two is a bit more complicated: Miles Edgeworth. Gifted prosecutor, trusted friend, and in a slightly roundabout way, responsible for their current situation. Although, really, if anyone is to blame here, it certainly isn’t Miles.
“Don’t even start, Wright,” his best friend mutters from his seat across the room—if it can even be called a room when it’s a walk-in freezer they’re locked in. “Self-loathing is not going to get either of us out of here before we freeze to death.”
“Of course not.” Phoenix pulls his beanie down further over his ears, and slams into the door again. It doesn’t budge again, because of course it doesn’t. “It is kinda my fault though.”
“I believe both of us are to blame for honestly believing that Ms. Denn had valuable evidence to show in the freezer.”
“I’ve picked up evidence in stranger places,” Phoenix supplies, then winces.
He doesn’t look at Miles. That wound is still too fresh, too raw and painful to probe at. Instead, he backs up further, then charges at the door again with a yell. The door budges somewhat—only to smack against something before it’s gone even an inch.
(Wait, no, they’re in Europe. Shouldn’t he be saying centimeter? Or… how many centimeters go into an inch?)
(Fuck that, he’s not paid enough to think about converting to the metric system.)
“I think it’s barred,” he offers, resting his head on it for a moment. It’s cold. Of course it’s cold, they are locked in a freezer. “We won’t be getting out that way. Any luck with Franziska?”
Miles sighs. When Phoenix looks back at him, he has pocketed his phone and is standing as well. “No signal. Do you remember, when we came in…”
“Metal roof, yeah.” Phoenix kicks the door, then leaps back with a yelp. “Ow! Shit. Remind me not to do that again.”
“If you decided you had to kick the apparently blocked door again for some preposterous reason, I sincerely doubt a reminder from me would stop you.”
“You’re right, but you didn’t have to say it.”
“Of course I did.”
And of course, when Phoenix glares at him, he’s greeted with a knowing smile. His glare only intensifies, and Miles’s smile only widens, until Phoenix eventually looks away with a mutter of, “We don’t have time for this.”
“I suppose not.” Miles visibly shivers. “If I had to guess… we have anywhere from five to ten more minutes.”
“Before we die.”
“Before we lose consciousness. We’d likely have another fifteen, optimistically speaking, if someone got to us after that—but that would require someone to know we were here—”
“Franziska,” Phoenix points out.
“—and for that same someone to get here and get that door open within the next half hour.”
There lies an even bigger problem: the hotel is forty-five minutes away. They are definitely on their own, and would be even if either of their phones had a signal.
“So what you’re saying is, either we somehow get that door open ourselves, or we figure out some way to last until it occurs to Franziska that we’ve been gone too long and she comes in guns blazing.”
“Not an option, and she’d come in with her whip swinging if anything. But we have no way to last. There’s nothing in here except crates of frozen food. Such as...” Miles peers down at the one he’d been sitting on and reads out loud, dubiously, “...Duck blood soup?”
Phoenix gags aloud. “Well, we already knew the management of this place was… interesting, but damn, okay then, and I thought McDonald's was bad.”
“McDonald’s is bad, Wright. Though I suppose that means you were right about Ms. Denn.”
“No… I don’t think I was, actually. Not entirely. But we can worry about that after we get out of here, since you’ve already pointed out we have a time limit.”
“We do.” Miles checks his watch. “Three minutes, taking the most pessimistic view. It likely helps that neither of us are dressed for warm weather.”
“Probably.”
There has to be some way out of this, so Phoenix surveys the room, eyes darting rapidly from one thing to another. Crates upon crates of frozen food items ranging from strange to obscure to downright disturbing, the door almost certainly blocked, the air vents sending chilly air back chillier, the thermostat on the wall…
Wait.
Wait. The air vents. It won’t be easy, but perhaps… if they stacked some of the crates up on the wall under them… and assuming frozen duck blood soup could hold his weight and Miles’s… and assuming they could both fit into said vents…
Well, an air vent has to lead somewhere, doesn’t it? That somewhere might just be elsewhere in the building, but that alone would be enough.
“I’m afraid it is my turn to apologize,” Miles says. “If it hadn’t been for me…”
“If it hadn’t been for you dragging me out here, I’d be with Truce in LA with no idea that your life was in danger, and no way in hell to help,” Phoenix replies. “Don’t go blaming yourself, Miles Edgeworth.”
“As long as you don’t either, Phoenix Wright.” The prosecutor tugs at his arm, a nervous habit he’s never quite gotten away from. “Wright… Phoenix… ”
Hearing his first name uttered by Miles snaps him immediately out of his thoughts. “Wh—yeah?”
“I’m sorry for everything, first of all.” He holds up a hand as Phoenix goes to protest. “Not this. Everything else. If we are to die here… the least I can do is make sure I die without regret.”
“We’re not going to die here,” Phoenix blurts, before it occurs to him that Miles might have been about to say something important.
“...What?”
Too late now to backpedal. “You’re acting like those are our only two options, but they aren’t. The door isn’t the only way out of here. Miles, look up.”
He does, and Phoenix finds some pleasure in the startled ‘o’ his mouth forms. “Ventilation… of course. You think, with the boxes…”
“Yeah, and the air has to come from somewhere…”
“And as there are no other ventilation ducts in this room, it must open somewhere else…”
“Somewhere outside!” Phoenix beams. “Miles, you’re a genius.”
Miles raises an eyebrow. “Only in the sense that I made the right decision in inviting you along. You came up with that all on your own, didn’t you?”
Phoenix laughs nervously. “Let’s get these boxes moved—I don’t know about you, but I think that vent might be a little too high to reach from the floor.”
The vent is a little too high to reach from the floor, and upon trying to move the food crates, another, far more damning problem is revealed: they’re stuck to the floor. Something must have spilled, because they’re for the most part frozen to the floor, or the other crates.
“You cannot be serious,” Miles mutters.
“Course not, I’m Phoenix,” he says on instinct, then moves on before Miles can yell at him. “Something spilled, nobody mopped it up, and I guess they haven’t used the frozen stuff in a while… or it happened really recently, one of the two. It isn’t as if it would take long for something to freeze in here. It was probably the soup.”
Miles raises an eyebrow. “Since when did you know everything there was to know about walk-in freezers?”
“Ha! Not everything. Worked at McDonald's for pretty much my entire senior year of high school. Not a fun time but I needed the money.” He pauses. “Larry did too actually. He lasted about a week.”
“Somehow, that… does not surprise me. What happened?”
“I’m not actually even sure. I think he burned himself making fries or something and just… walked out.” Phoenix shrugs. “Actually I should have done the same thing, in retrospect, that place was absolutely not up to code and I have no idea how they avoided being sued. Any luck getting those to budge?”
“No. We’ll need some other way to get up there.” Miles looks up at the vent thoughtfully, then at Phoenix. He walks over to the floor beneath the vent, muttering something under his breath, then nods. “I’ll boost you up.”
Phoenix blinks. “What?”
“Did I stutter? You are smaller than I—”
“By one inch!”
“—much more physically fit—”
“Thanks, it’s the sudden abundance of free time I didn’t want or need.”
“— and significantly less conspicuous. Take off your hat and your hoodie and you’re practically an entirely different person, which will be invaluable given that we were locked in here presumably to die.”
“Okay, so you’re making some good points. But you know what, Miles? OBJECTION!” That last word is punctuated by pointing directly into the other man’s face. “I’m not leaving you here, Miles. You mean too much to me for that.”
“I’m flattered, truly.” Miles smiles. It is a genuine smile, not the teasing smirk he usually sees, and that alone gives Phoenix pause. “But the fact remains that, unless you have a better way out…”
He doesn’t. Phoenix kicks the box of duck blood soup anyway, and hisses in pain. “Don’t you dare say I told you so, the door and this completely frozen cardboard box are two entirely different things—”
“And both are equally unwise to assault. Phoenix—we don’t have time for this.”
“No, we don’t,” Phoenix agrees, and he hates it. “Alright. I’ll climb out, then come back for you.”
“You will climb out through that vent, contact the local authorities, and then come back for me,” Miles corrects. “I will… endeavor to stay conscious as long as possible, but the longer you argue with me over this…”
“The less chance there is of you being here once I get back. Fine. Boost me up.”
Miles wastes no time in doing so. They’re lucky, as it turns out, in one small aspect: the grate is held on by only one rusty screw, and is easily pulled off. From there, crawling in isn’t—well, it isn’t easy, but it’s doable, even if there will be no space to turn around.
No backing down. Well, it isn’t as if Phoenix is any stranger to that, for better or for worse—and these days, probably for worse.
“Miles,” he says before he goes in. “I just want you to know…”
“Save it for later,” Miles says, still smiling, which is really weird actually, Phoenix didn’t know excessive smiling was a symptom of freezing to death. “Because there will be time later, Phoenix. I leave the future in your capable hands.”
“Oh shut up,” Phoenix mutters, crawling in at last. It is extremely dark in the ventilation shafts, and extremely cramped—Miles may not have been wrong about them being too small for him, even if he isn’t that much taller or broader than Phoenix.
He crawls, thinking of Trucy and of Miles, until the freezing air gives way to something much warmer, and until there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Light, shining in from outside. Light, which appears to be sunlight.
With all of his strength, Phoenix rams up against it, and it gives way easily. So easily, in fact, that Phoenix tumbles headlong into the bushes several feet below.
“Fuck,” he hisses, because while he doesn’t think he broke anything, his everything still hurts right now. He stumbles out of the bushes and feels around for his phone desperately.
There! Jacket pocket, just where it was two minutes ago, and not broken because one of the few perks of being behind on just about everything tech-wise is that you still have an unbreakable brick of a cell phone.
He dials 9, 1, and then stops because shit, they are not in America right now. What the hell even is the emergency number in Germany? He doesn’t have time to figure that out. He should have asked. He should have known better than to assume Miles knowing it would be enough.
Better idea, if by better he means something he will be hearing about for the rest of his life but that’s okay if everyone makes it out of this alright. He scrolls down his contact list and hits one of the more recent entries.
It rings once, twice. “Prosecutor von Karma. State your name and business.”
“Uh, hi Franziska,” Phoenix tries.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to use my first name, Phoenix Wright. Your daughter is fine. Give me one reason why I should not hang up on you right now.”
“Because Miles is in trouble and I couldn’t remember the emergency number, I know it’s 911 in the States obviously and I’m pretty sure it’s 999 in the UK but there was a clue and a witness who said she had evidence to show us and we got locked in a freezer and Miles is still in there—”
“What the fu… oolish foolishness is this now,” Franziska mutters, and that confirms Trucy is within earshot. “Assuming I did, in fact, hear you correctly, you left my little brother in—”
“There was a vent, he couldn’t get through it, he told me to call the cops before trying to get him out and he’s—” Phoenix takes a deep breath. “Please tell me you can call the cops so I can keep him from freezing to death.”
“Miles Edgeworth left me the address you were going to. It seems not all of your collective actions today were entirely foolish.” Franziska pauses, then says, “I will not be allowing either of you to hear the end of this.”
“Of course not.”
The line goes dead. Phoenix stuffs his phone in his hoodie. Then he runs for the back door.
Miles is counting on him.
In retrospect, he had completely forgotten to change his appearance before running back inside, which is probably why he was jumped just around the corner from the blocked freezer door and why he was still dodging punches from their oh so cooperative and only slightly murderous witness when the police force showed up.
“Oh, thank god,” Phoenix says, right before they restrain him too. “Hey—wait! Arrest me if you have to, sure, but—do you speak English? Please tell me you speak English, I’m not good with German and, um… okay, high school language classes don’t fail me now, yo hablo un poco de español?”
The officer stares at him before at last, in a heavily accented voice, saying, “I speak English.”
“Okay, cool. Not sure why you’re arresting me but—listen. My partner, he’s stuck in the freezer—that way—and he’s going to freeze to death, you have to get him out before—”
“Your… partner.”
“Investigative partner,” Phoenix clarifies, though a part of him wouldn’t mind the other definition at all.
“I’m sorry. We can look for your partner once we’ve found Mr. Edgeworth—”
Okay, Phoenix really wants to smack himself upside the head now. “My partner is Miles Edgeworth!”
“...You’re Phoenix Wright?”
“Yes! And he’s—he’s going to die in there—”
The officer lets him go, with a mutter of “My apologies. I was expecting a little more from the Phoenix Wright.”
And that hurts, it always will, but Phoenix ignores it. He all but flies around the corner, feet barely touching the ground. He was right. The door is blocked—there’s a massive box with German writing and a picture of a styrofoam cup emblazoned upon it, and more importantly wedged in the hallway.
The box is—heavy. Really heavy. But by the time that officer has caught up to him, he’s gotten it back out of the hallway enough that the freezer door can be opened.
He swings it open with a yell. The door bounces off the wall.
And an unconscious Miles Edgeworth falls into his arms.
“Foolish,” Franziska says, and while it is unclear who or what her statement is actually directed to, it isn’t directed to the ten-year-old magician sitting on her lap.
“That’s fair,” Phoenix says, at the same time as Miles in his hospital bed says, “Of course.”
“Is Uncle Miles gonna be okay?” Trucy asks, reaching out for Phoenix’s hand. He takes it, and holds it.
“Of course I am,” Miles says firmly. “It takes more than that to kill me.”
“But not much more,” Phoenix mutters.
He’s rewarded with a whip strike hitting the wall directly next to his head, and a giggle from his daughter. What’s more impressive is that Franziska managed that level of precision with one hand and while carefully balancing Trucy.
“Fools, both of you,” Franziska proclaims. “Little brother. Should you not be capable of prosecuting tomorrow, I expect you to inform me so I can ensure the criminal who tried to kill you receives the guilty verdict she deserves. Now, Miss Trucy?”
Trucy lights up. “Yes, Auntie Franziska?”
Franziska’s mouth quirks in a way that could be a smile, but was probably a trick of the light, because there’s no way in hell Franziska von Karma would smile in the same room as Phoenix Wright. “Let’s give your foolish father and my foolish brother some space, shall we? I believe they have business to attend to.”
Trucy nods, and slides off of Franziska’s lap. She holds up her hands, and Franziska von Karma, respected and feared prosecutor across the globe, sighs and picks her up. With a muttered “hurry up” from Miles’s sister, the ladies are gone.
“I was… very worried about you, you know,” Phoenix says quietly. “Which is kind of funny in a fucked up way, because usually, well…”
“Usually you’re the one to pull off death-defying feats in the pursuit of justice?”
“Well—when you put it like that, come on, it’s not as if…”
“Dusky Bridge,” Miles says flatly.
“I still do not regret that.”
“Merely not succeeding in… what was it… running across a burning bridge?”
“Actually, yes! And it was fine in the end.” Phoenix stares at the pristine hospital wall. “But my days of that are over. You know that better than anyone.”
Miles sighs. “I do.”
Phoenix quite resolutely does not think about footsteps on an old roof, or what it felt like to truly hit rock bottom, or the terrifying, weightless sensation of falling to his death. He wouldn’t be here, without Miles.
(And, as impossible as it is to believe, Miles wouldn’t be here without him. He’d have long since frozen to death in the walk-in freezer of an eccentric restaurant. He doesn’t think about that, either, or at least that’s what he tells himself.)
“Uh, anyway,” Phoenix says instead, “are you going to be up to prosecuting? Because I’m not sure Franziska would listen to me at this point. Not that she ever would.”
“I’ll be up to it if I have to crawl there,” Miles grumbles. “You were going to… say something, there. In the freezer.”
His breath catches in his throat, despite himself. He thinks back to every one of Truce’s lessons on how to maintain a poker face. “Yes. I was.”
“About Leah Denn,” Miles clarifies. “I’m assuming she’s been arrested by now—and it’s quite likely this incident will be used to indict her in the murder of Ernest Mann.”
Miles sounds almost disappointed. That’s quite understandable—he’d trusted Denn just as much as Phoenix had before she’d locked them in to die.
“Oh, definitely,” Phoenix agrees. “No matter what, she’s going to face some serious charges for attempted murder.”
His old friend squints at him. “You don’t think she killed Mann.”
“Absolutely not. Think about it. We—uh, you—were well on your way to a guilty verdict for the defendant. Leah wasn’t even under suspicion. Why would she throw suspicion onto herself for no reason?”
“Obviously it wasn’t for no reason. What are you getting at, Wright?”
“Remember State v. Skye?” As if there was any doubt what he was referring to, he clarifies, “The murder charge, specifically.”
“How could I forget?” Miles averts his gaze and clears his throat. “You think she’s being blackmailed.”
“By the real murderer,” Phoenix agrees. “Who may very well be Ebony Way after all. It’s a long shot, but… it makes sense.”
“Too much sense, as it often does with your crazy ideas.”
“That, or I’m so far off the mark that it’s physically painful,” he quips back. “I… I do miss it.”
There’s a hand on his arm. Miles. “I know you do. Mark my words, Wright—you will be standing on that side of the courtroom again someday.”
“Yeah… maybe.”
“No, I don’t mean maybe,” Miles insists. “You will be. You’ll live up to your name and prove what really happened—”
“I’m not sure what really happened!”
“Has that ever stopped you before?”
Okay, low blow, but also he’s not wrong. Phoenix sighs, and takes off his beanie to run a hand over his hair. Only once it’s back in place does he say, “Hey, do I need to bug Franziska to get in to see the defendant, or…”
“I’ll tell them to let you in,” Miles says. “What are you going to ask her?”
“Well, nothing that big, and I don’t really have access to the evidence, but…” Phoenix reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out the artifact that always resides there now—and has since long before nightmares became reality. “Remember this?”
“The magic lie-detecting rock,” Miles says dryly. “How, exactly, do you intend on—”
“I’m just going to figure out if she’s hiding something. Ask her if she killed the Mann, and what the exact nature of her relationship with Leah is.”
“Right.” Miles leans back in the hospital bed and closes his eyes. “Isn’t this what got you into so much trouble with Engarde?”
“No, what got me into so much trouble with Engarde was the bastard kidnapping Maya.”
“...I believe it was Shelly de Killer who kidnapped Miss Fey?”
“Oh, of course. My mistake. One of those men was a remorseless murderer, and the other was Shelly de Killer.”
For the first time since he and Trucy arrived in Germany, Miles actually throws back his head and laughs. “You aren’t entirely wrong.”
“Course not. Didn’t you hear Truce?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Us Wrights—”
“Don’t you dare.”
“—are always Wright!”
Miles sighs and shakes his head. “I hate you, Phoenix Wright,” he says with a fond smile.
“You too,” Phoenix says, and he leaves before Miles can open his eyes and find it odd just how red he is. He stops outside his room, leans against the wall and takes deep gulps of air until his face no longer feels like it’s on fire.
Is he seriously doing this right now? Is he seriously doing this right now?
He is not seriously doing this right now. He has a job to do and for his best friend’s sake, he’s going to do it, and he’s going to do it well and he is not going to let the stubbornly lingering feelings of a childhood crush ruin one of his most treasured friendships.
“You miss him already, don’t you,” Trucy pipes up on the first of three flights home, when the plane has barely even gotten off the ground from Germany to England.
Phoenix wonders if he can fool her into thinking he’s already asleep. He doesn’t move.
“Uncle Miles,” Trucy clarifies, as if there was any doubt whatsoever as to who she meant. She pokes his arm. “Daddy, I know you’re awake!”
“Yeah, I do,” Phoenix admits. “He means a lot to me. We’ve… been through a lot together.”
“Mhm?” Now she looks a little too interested… wait.
Wait. Oh no. He’s seen that look before, on the face of a girl around Truce’s age at the time who had been so convinced he and Mystic Maya were the very pinnacle of romance. It was bad enough when it was someone he didn’t have that kind of feelings for.
“He’s one of my best friends, probably my closest friend actually,” Phoenix says, putting heavy emphasis on the word. “Not sure where either of us would be without each other.”
Probably dead, he thinks, but he isn’t about to say that to his daughter. He raises the water bottle he’d smuggled on to his lips.
“So… no chance of another daddy?” Trucy asks innocently, and Phoenix proceeds to spit water all over the back of the seat in front of him.
At least the plane’s fairly empty, so no one actually notices or cares—except Trucy, who giggles.
“Objection! Trucy Wright,” Phoenix says, “I… don’t even know how to respond to that?”
“It’s a yes or no question, Daddy!”
“...No, I can’t imagine Miles answering to that,” he decides, and realizes a second too late that was probably not the objection most people would raise. “Also, no! No, there’s nothing like that between us.”
Trucy stares him down intently. When she speaks next, it’s much more carefully, “Would you want there to be?”
Shit. He can’t lie to her—and he’s not just saying that on principle, he literally can’t lie to her. Phoenix replies, equally carefully and somewhat desperately, “I can’t say I’d mind. I’m sure he’d be quite a lovely date to whoever he wanted to date.”
Okay, score one for Phoenix Wright, Ace Father. Neither of those statements were lies, so Trucy shouldn’t pick up on anything. He risks another quick gulp of water.
“Okay,” Trucy says. “How about a mommy, then?”
Phoenix almost dies of embarrassment on the spot.
(And of course, Miles calls them as soon as their plane lands in Manchester. Phoenix's hunch about what Ms. Leah Denn had been hiding was, apparently, spot on.)