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Phoenix leans back in the seat, smiling a bit to himself, hands resting on his knees as he sits in the passenger's side of the car. He takes in the distant glow of Los Angeles through his window, almost marveling at the fact that he'd been able to convince Miles that this was any sort of good idea at all.
He shifts a bit restlessly in the passenger's seat, sitting up and stretching out his legs for a moment before smiling over at Miles. There aren't any words, he's saving them for something.
Phoenix points at the shoulder up ahead that leads into a bit of a clearing off of the main road.*
“Hey, there we go. ...right over there.”
He taps his hand against the dashboard after he speaks. The car comes to a smooth halt, throwing up bits of dust. The city is plainly visible from their vantage point up here in the hills, and he quickly unclips his seat belt, opening his door and sliding halfway out of the car. He smiles again, and gestures with his head.
“Come on, everybody out.”
The heat of a spring day after no rain, and Phoenix is opening the door and the dust blows in on the mountain breeze, getting into his eyes and making him blink.
Miles swears in German, scowling at Phoenix.
“Hurry up and close the damned door... and where the hell are we?”
“Yeah, I'm working on it. Sheesh, you worried about the upholstery or something?”
Phoenix rolls his eyes and shakes his head as he says it, closing the door behind him. Phoenix’s tennis shoes leave prints in the dust underfoot, and his hands are in the pockets of his jeans. He's worrying at something with his left hand, but he quickly pulls them out and tries to look nonchalant.
In all honesty, there was still the thought that, you know, Miles might just start the car back up and leave him here.
Miles opens his mouth to respond and immediately regrets it, a light dusting of grit swirling in as Phoenix slams the car door, making him cough and blink a little more.
He sits there for a while; hands on the wheel and the unpleasant feeling of grit between his teeth; watching Phoenix through the haze of the windshield and watering eyes. And for more than a moment, it does occur to him to just drive away and leave the man in this Godforsaken spot, wherever the hell it was.
But he doesn't, checking the rear view mirror before finally opening his own door with a sigh and stepping out onto the edge of the highway.
“You really don't have to be so damn forceful with the doors, Wright - it's not a junker. And I don't wish to return home with half a mountain in the footwells.” Miles closes his own door quickly and quietly, as if to underline his words. There's another heavy sigh, the "plip" of his remote lock and he walks round the car towards Phoenix with very little enthusiasm.
“...you've never been out here?” Phoenix glances out into the night, and then turns back to Miles, his bright blue eyes fixing on Miles, and the prosecutor glances away.
“No, I can't say that hard shoulders on roads that lead to and from nowhere are a particularly common evening destination. And don't try to tell me they are for you either, Wright. You don't drive, and somehow I doubt the city bus routes extend to the back of beyond.”
Miles brushes some dust from his vest and jeans, casting a pointed gaze at Phoenix.
“Remind me again why I agreed to drive you out here?”
“I don't know. You tell me...you were the one driving the damn car.”
“And as I recall, this trip was your idea, and you were the one giving the directions.”
Phoenix smiles, shrugging and kicking at the ground under his feet. He picks up a small rock unearthed by his sneaker and rolls it between his fingers as he thinks. The near-glare that Edgeworth was giving him was shrugged off, something he'd learned to do after knowing him for a while.
Miles shoves his hands into his jeans pockets, his expression still irritated as he looks around the clearing, at the remains of a fire and a few empty beer cans under one of the trees. His eyes slide back to Phoenix when he mentions the change of major, but Phoenix is still looking at the ground.
Phoenix’s voice is distant when he speaks, hand and rock tucked back into his pockets and he leans against the back of the car.
“I came out here a few times, in college...right after I switched majors. Some of the other theater majors were having a cast party. ...anyway, after the party a few of us drove out here.”
He stops the explanation there, turning back to Miles. His expression is more serious than usual, and he stares at Miles a bit more intensely than he means to, at first.
“You're going back the Europe, huh? When's that happening?”
Phoenix didn't mean for anything to seep into his tone, perhaps a bit more direct and with a hint of almost bitterness. They hadn't discussed it, but he'd expected it by now.
Miles was about to make a disparaging remark about Phoenix's choice of social venue when that deep blue gaze fixes on him again. The sudden scrutiny makes him uncomfortable and he looks away, his gaze sweeping over the view of the city unseeingly. He folds his arms and nods, just once.
“To Switzerland. Next month. I have a flight booked for the 16th.”
And there's something in Phoenix's tone that he can't place, but it makes him bristle slightly all the same.
“It's my work, Phoenix. It's what the state pays me to do.”
"And after what happened at the Temple...", but he doesn't say it. He shouldn't have to, he tells himself - Wright should know.
They're both adults, after all.
Phoenix shrugs, smiling a bit and scratching at his scalp. Miles looks away, and he follows the gray gaze out to the city. He knows the look, and he leans back. He cranes his head to look at the orange sky, air pollution and dust making the sunset colors glow brighter in hues of orange and pink. The trees reflect a vivid green, and he finally rolls his head back to glance sidelong at him.
There is a sigh, and he steps away from the car, walking to stand in front of Miles. He's not too close, but just inside the twenty feet of personal space that the other man seemed to keep around him at any given time.
“So, we have a month, then. ...I guess we've gotta make the most of it, right? Hey, I have something for you.”
The sign snaps Miles’s attention back to Wright, and their eyes meet for a moment before he glances away again, his finger tapping on his forearm as he looks down the road as far as the next curve, asphalt still shimmering slightly in the distance after a full day of being baked by the heat.
“Really, Wright, there's no need to be so melodramatic. It's hardly as though I'm emigrating.”
Phoenix fishes the little bit of cardboard out of his pocket, curling it into his palm. He watched Miles closely, stepping in and softly pulling at Miles’s vest. The cardboard badge is pinned in place over his left collar, and he lets his fingers linger in place, lightly running them across the front of his chest. He smiles to himself, meeting those gray eyes.
Miles tenses instinctively when Wright steps closer and tugs on his vest; at the familiar scent of peppermint and cheap drugstore cologne when he inhales; and the soft pressure of those lingering fingers as Phoenix pins the badge to his lapel. And when their eyes meet he can only hold the gaze for a few moments before he looks back down at the badge, pulling a wry face as he touches it.
“...there. I know it's not real, but...I need mine. Besides, it's already fooled The Judge once, so who knows.”
“A bottle cap on a paperclip would fool most of the judges on the Los Angeles circuit, Phoenix.”
Miles looks up again, meeting the other man's eyes for longer this time, an eyebrow slightly raised at the question that hangs between them. Then he shakes his head slightly.
“It was... I enjoyed that day in court more than I had any right to, considering the circumstances. But I'm a prosecutor. And I'll always be a prosecutor - it's what I was trained for.”
And he turns away then, a few strides beyond the cover of the trees and he's looking down at the city below them - a city that he once called home but that he knows never truly was. And even now...
“I don't intend to give it up. I don't want to give it up, Phoenix.”
The silence stretches away for a while, until he glances sideways at Wright, gesturing to the badge.
“Is this what you wanted to come here for?”
“Kind of, yeah. ...but not the way you're thinking, Miles.”
There was that smirk on Miles’s face, the one that had said so many times before that Phoenix was wrong, that he'd found that flaw in his logic. When Phoenix finally speaks, he pauses for a few moments, lapsing into the way he thought aloud at times.
“I guess it's that...you deserve mine. I mean...I only did that because I wanted to see you again. And...I'm glad that I did.”
He smiled again, before he dropped his eyes, returning his right hand to his pocket to worry at the rock there. He pulled it out after a moment, turning and pitching it across the road and into the underbrush on the other side with as much force as he could manage.
“I just wanted you to know that. So even though I can't really give you my badge...it's the thought that counts?”
He shrugs, his hands back in his pockets.
“...besides. I think we make an alright team. I mean...really...it's just not the same if it's not a stuffy, frilly prosecutor on the other side of the courtroom.”
And he laughs at that.
Miles returns the laugh with a frown, but more out of habit than emotion - a joke between the two of them that had somehow become established over the past year, despite time and distance. And he listens, pinned by those blue eyes and the honesty in them that made him say and do things that often strayed beyond the boundaries of what he felt to be safe. The fear that has been lurking constantly for the last few weeks redoubles, and he takes a long breath to steady his voice.
“No, Phoenix, I don't deserve your badge. I didn't earn it. I'm not even sure I deserve to still have my own.”
His eyes skirt Phoenix's at the last, suddenly uncomfortable, his rational mind unsure what Phoenix is trying to say; angry at that other part of him that flares with hope at the choice of words - that same part that had clung on to the belief that one day, Manfred would offer his approval unconditionally, if he only worked hard enough to earn it.
He remembers that day in court, only a few weeks ago. "Partner", he'd called him, without a moment's hesitation; summing up everything he wanted to say in one word. Two years and a debt he could never repay; fifteen years of unanswered mail and sacrificed ambitions before that; an apology; an admission; and at the time, as he'd watched Phoenix with Iris, forcing himself to accept what he had believed then to be the inevitable - a farewell, of sorts.
But in the space of a few scant weeks, everything had changed. Now, the future was a confusion of possibilities; doubts and hopes and fears where once there had only been self-denial and certainties. He looks down at the hazy lights of the city below his feet and suddenly there's a wash of vertigo; an intense rush of fear that makes him take a step back.
Carefully, he unpins the cardboard badge, holding it in his fingers for a moment before holding it out to Phoenix, his face impassive.
“You're a good lawyer, Wright. You don't need me for that, any more.”
“Don't be an idiot, Edgeworth...of course you do. If it weren't for you...just think about it. I might have died of pneumonia and Maya would have been trapped in some cave in the middle of nowhere. ...and that's not even starting on the Engarde case last year. You really came through for me and...I learned a lot.
Besides, just think about it...Maya, Pearls, Larry...hell, even you. I wouldn't have been here to help them all out if it hadn't been for you.
You should stop being so hard on yourself.”
Phoenix shakes his head. It's that closed-off look on Miles' face that makes him stop, but he takes the badge back all the same, tucking it back into his left pocket and deciding that later it would be conveniently "left" in the car or some other place.*
“I'm still thankful for it all. ...but no, I don't need you for that.”
Miles turns away briskly, back towards the car, a nod and a smirk in Phoenix's direction.
“I could always have a word with Winston about his court attire - I'm sure he would be more than happy to accommodate you.”
Phoenix pauses, feeling that feeling of holding himself back that he wars with, that he would regret a few months later. There's always that bit of hesitation between the two of them, waiting for the other to meet halfway first.
He shadows Miles to the door of his car. For a moment, he doesn't think, and he grabs Miles by the hand, just enough to get his attention to make him turn around.
“Hey.”
Phoenix doesn't really know why he did it, or what to say, but he moves quickly, brushing their lips together briefly. His grip relaxes on Miles' hand, leaving their fingers loosely brushing together and entwined until he steps back, smiling and shrugging, tucking his hands back into his pockets.
“...come on, let's get back.”
Miles makes no attempt to pull his hand away, his fingers slipping between Phoenix's almost of their own accord as he leans back a little, his weight against the car and his gaze wavering between Phoenix and the ground.
“I didn't cure your pneumonia, Wright, I'm not a doctor. And I didn't save Maya - unless you seriously think that in my spare time I moonlight as a structural engineer. I couldn't even be entrusted with custody of the suspect for two hours. I endangered everyone, and compromised the scene.”
There's a short laugh and a bitter smile at the last.
“All that I did was to buy you a day of the court's time - because you asked me to. I didn't... I wasn't even sure that she was innocent.”
“Yeah, well...I'm glad that everything turned out the way it did. You just need to stop being such a fucking pessimist.”
He smiles a little, shrugging one shoulder.
“You did the best you could, Edgeworth. See? This is the shit that I'm talking about...you're always dragging yourself down for no reason.”
Miles sighs then, looking past Phoenix to the trees at the other side of the road, their outline beginning to blend with the mountainside behind as the growing dusk leeches away the colours.
“And if it were not for you, I would most likely not be alive. You don't owe me anything, Phoenix. You never have.”
Miles opens the car door, slipping in without saying anything more and without meeting the other man's eyes.
Phoenix stands there for a few moments, worrying over the cardboard badge in his pocket and accidentally sticking himself with the pin. He winces a bit and brings his left index finger to his lip. He thinks over the last words as he does, sighing a bit. He knows the look on Miles' face when the car door closes, and he thinks for a minute.
His lips move as he turns, a soft muttering of something lost between the glass as he walks around the car, sliding into the passenger's side on the left and closing the door.
Miles doesn't look up when Phoenix gets into the car, even when the door is closed with exaggerated care and there's a pointed side-glance that he affects not to notice. Miles can still remember the silent drive home, the evening that had followed, or the next four weeks that had slipped through his fingers like sand.
He'd found the badge slipped into the pocket on the passenger-side door of his car almost a year later, the day before he sold it back to the dealer and left Los Angeles for the last time. He'd held it in his hand as he waited in the same departure lounge that he had last seen Phoenix in a year earlier. And he had thrown it into the trashcan two minutes before he boarded the flight for Paris.