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What do you do when your pride, your sense of purpose, everything short of your very life is torn away from you in a single day? Phoenix doesn’t think anyone would take it very well. He knows he hasn’t.
Hence the rooftop of a condemned house as far away from anything he knows as possible. As far away from anyone he knows, too. His phone rings again. Steel Samurai theme. Maya.
He pulls it out of his pocket to look at the display, then sets it down on the roof beside him and lets it keep ringing. Of course Maya’s heard the news already. Someone must have called and told her. Maybe Gumshoe.
There’s been a few missed calls from Gumshoe already too.
What everyone should do is just leave him alone. The absolute last thing he wants right now is for anyone to see what he’s become. To laugh at the fallen attorney, as Edgeworth put it so aptly a few years ago.
But all Edgeworth had against him was a murder charge. Well, two. But those had been something he was able to actually escape. This…
To be completely honest, Phoenix doesn’t see any way out of this one. His fate was sealed from the moment he presented that diary page. Somehow, that prosecutor—seventeen! The kid was seventeen! —had known it was forged before Phoenix did.
Someone gave an anonymous tip to the Prosecutor’s Office, if he remembers correctly. Well. That’s none of his business now.
The Steel Samurai theme cuts out. He has a few moments of blessed silence, and then it starts up again. Phoenix ignores it in favor of grabbing a bottle from the six-pack of cheap beer he’d brought with him and opening it.
Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?
You’re scaring us and all of us, some of us love you
Achilles, it’s not much but there’s proof
You crazy-assed cosmonaut, remember your virtue
Redemption lies plainly in truth
Just humour us, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?
He’s on his third bottle when his phone stops playing the Steel Samurai theme on near constant repeat. Honestly, he doesn’t even have the energy to sigh in relief, merely enough to slump over a little and stare out at the nighttime skyline.
He finishes it, and reaches for the fourth.
“Maybe you should slow down, kid,” someone says close by.
If he weren’t so tired, he’d leap to his feet at the sound of someone that close. As it is, he wearily looks over in the direction of the voice. There’s nothing.
For the briefest of moments, someone sitting beside him flickers into view. It’s only for a second, but a second is really all he needs to recognize the woman who taught him nearly everything he knows about being a lawyer.
“Hi, Mia,” he says, or really kind of just slurs, and reaches for the fourth bottle anyway. He pops the cap, but doesn’t start drinking. Not yet.
“You can… hear me?”
“See you too, sorta. Sometimes.” He takes a gulp of his beer. Honestly he doesn’t even really like beer but the important thing here is to get sloshed enough to forget for a little while.
“That… well. You’ve only heard me without Maya’s help before when you’re…” Mia sighs. He catches another glimpse of her, and she only looks more concerned now. “Shall we say… very stressed. Perhaps it’s a side effect of spending so much time around us Feys, or of using the Magatama so much?”
“Stressed, huh…” He laughs, or tries to. It turns into more of a coughing fit midway through, but he recovers quickly. “Yeah I’d say this qualifies. Mia… I thought I had things under control, you know?”
“Yeah. I sure do. I thought I did too, until…”
Phoenix gulps down more alcohol and says, bluntly, “White.”
“White,” Mia agrees. Her hands are balled up into fists. “I was so close. And then… well, you know how that ended. At least we got him in the end.”
He blinks hard, and nods. “I don’t even know where I’d begin, Mia.”
“How about by getting off this roof, going home, and getting some sleep? You look… a lot of things, but most of all just… tired.”
“I am tired.”
“But you’re still alive, Phoenix, and that means you can still turn this situation around.”
Phoenix stares at where she’d be sitting, if she hadn’t been murdered, and—laughs. He actually laughs. “I’ve lost my badge, Mia. The one thing that’s given me any kind of purpose in life and it’s just— gone. Because of a stupid mistake by a stupid excuse for an attorney.”
“Phoenix…”
“That was all I had, you know? And it’s gone. I’m never getting that back. So what am I supposed to do now?”
Mia sits up, an old familiar gleam in her eyes. “You could—”
“Rhetorical question. Don’t really want an answer. Sorry.” Phoenix sets the bottle down, pulls his legs up to his chest, and buries his head in his arms. “Mia… please just… I want to be alone right now.”
“...okay. Be careful, and remember that a lot of people care about you . Don’t do anything you’ll… regret.”
There’s something like a faint touch on his shoulder, and then it—and Mia—are gone. Phoenix blinks hard, though no tears come. He reaches for the bottle and, in a sudden burst of energy, he chugs the rest of what’s in it.
Still not enough for him to forget. And then, to add insult to injury, his phone starts ringing again. Steel Samurai theme, of course. Probably Maya again. Might as well face the music now, if only so she stops calling him.
He clicks the accept call button without a second glance, and puts the phone to his ear. “Maya, I want to be alone right now. Stop calling me. Please. Don’t you have… medium training to do or something?”
“I do not,” says a voice that is quite obviously not Maya—and Phoenix nearly drops his phone. “Wright… what happened to you?”
Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?
The self is not so weightless, nor whole and unbroken
Remember the pact of our youth
Where you go, I’m going, so jump and I’m jumping
Since there is no me without you
Soldier on, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?
He should have checked who was calling him—just because it’s usually only Maya who bothers doesn’t mean it’s always Maya. Sometimes it’s Gumshoe. And, very rarely, it’s Edgeworth.
What he should do is hang up, right now. He can’t talk to him right now. But, conversely, he can’t not talk to him right now.
“...Edgeworth,” Phoenix greets wearily. If it was light out, he might be able to see the Prosecutor’s Office from here. Probably even Edgeworth’s office—it’s on the twelfth floor, after all.
“...Wright,” Edgeworth greets as well. Gingerly. Cautiously. Like he’s some delicate witness that will crack under the pressure put on by the defense, if he’s not careful.
It’s a shame that Phoenix has already cracked.
“Let me be perfectly clear,” Edgeworth continues after a moment. “Over the past several hours, I have received no less than thirty-five panicked calls from Detective Gumshoe and Miss Fey regarding your current whereabouts and staunch refusal to pick up the phone. So tell me, Wright, what happened to you?”
“What happened to…?” Phoenix laughs harshly and pops another bottle. He takes a swig before elaborating, “I’m sure you’ve heard all about it from plenty of other people. It’s not what happened to me at all. It’s what I did.”
“Is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“More than you know, Wright.”
It’s still dark outside. He’s been out here for a long time, maybe. Although he doesn’t think he’s been out here quite long enough for the sky to start lightening. Unless… maybe it has, and he’s just completely lost track of time.
That’s a thought he should be more disturbed by.
“What do you know already?” He asks, instead of even trying to unpack that.
“To be completely honest… very little. I know there was a new prosecutor involved, and that what should have been one of your brilliant turnabouts fell to pieces when the prosecutor exposed you for presenting allegedly forged evidence.”
“Very little, my ass.” Phoenix ignores the sharp intake of breath from Edgeworth and continues, “There’s no allegedly about it. The evidence was forged, as far as the Bar Association’s concerned. As the one who knowingly presented that evidence in court, I’m responsible.”
“...you’ve been disbarred. Haven’t you.” Edgeworth’s words aren’t a question, nor does he wait for an answer before continuing, “You presented that evidence this morning, and they’ve already…?”
“Taken away my badge? Yep. So hey, Edgeworth… what do you think of the Forgin’ Attorney now?”
“They are not calling you that.”
“Nah. I’m calling myself that. Because it’s true. So… what do you think of me now?”
For a long moment, there is nothing but silence and static from Edgeworth’s end of the call. Phoenix lets the phone fall away from his ear, and stares out at the nighttime skyline of the city he calls home. However briefly, he entertains the possibility that somehow, Edgeworth will be able to fix everything.
Ha. Like that would ever happen. He’ll be lucky if Edgeworth doesn’t want nothing more to do with him after this. For the first time since he got up here, his gaze drifts down from the skyline.
Would Edgeworth even miss him? Would anyone even miss him?
“I think,” Edgeworth says at last, “that this is not a conversation we should be having over any medium but face-to-face. Where are you, Wright?”
His heart sinks. He lies, pathetically, “I’m at the office.”
“No, you aren’t, unless you’ve managed to turn invisible. I’m at your office.”
“Oh. Surprised you know where that is.” Phoenix tries to think. “I’m at my apartment. Don’t bother coming over—”
“Gumshoe is at your apartment.”
“He knows where I… oh, wait, yeah, nevermind, he would. Uh… would you believe me if I said I was at a bar somewhere?”
“If you hadn’t said that, and if I couldn’t quite clearly hear that you are alone, I might have.”
“Ah.” Phoenix blinks hard, and stares down at the liquid inside the bottle. “Why do you care?”
“That’s… that’s not… I… you don’t know?”
“Humor me.”
“I hope I don’t have to remind you that I have been in your position before.”
“Oh, yeah. How could I forget how you dealt with that? ‘Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death,’ was it? Not a bad idea.”
“Wright, you—that was a terrible idea and we both know that. You can’t seriously be thinking…”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it? Everyone was so relieved that you hadn’t gone and killed yourself that nobody cared about you presenting forged evidence under the impression that it was real. Although maybe that’s just because prosecutors can get away with anything short of, y’know, actual murder.”
“Wright—”
But Phoenix isn’t done. “Maybe I’d be better off just disappearing for real.”
Loathe the way they light candles in Rome
But love the sweet air of the votives
Hurt and grieve but don’t suffer alone
Engage with the pain as a motive
Today of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
How you will heal and you’ll rise above
“PHOENIX!”
It’s been… a long time since he’s heard his first name come out of Edgeworth’s mouth. It’s been longer, if it ever happened at all, since the last time he heard someone scream his name with so much sheer panic in their voice.
“Phoenix, don’t…” Edgeworth clears his throat then continues, desperately, “Tell me where you are. Please. I’ll come pick you up.”
A part of him wants to tell Edgeworth exactly where to shove it and hang up on him. But then… what then? His gaze finds the pavement below again, and he shudders. If he weren’t so tired he’d scoot further away from the edge.
“I’m…” Through his not-exactly-sober brain, he tries to think of how he got here. “Would you hate me if I told you I wasn’t sure?”
“Wright…” There’s a slightly relieved and somewhat fond sigh, barely picked up by the receiver. “I could never hate you. Not after what you did for me.”
Phoenix snorts. “You? Not hating someone? That’s a first.”
“I don’t find this quite as funny as you seem to. Do you have any idea where you are?”
“Well, I’m on a roof. Pretty sure this building is condemned, though it held together well enough for me getting up here. Uhhhh… honestly I just wanted to get as far away from everything as possible.”
“Do you… at least have some idea of which way you went?”
“Um…” Well, it hadn’t been dark when he got here, though it had been going that way quickly. “South. I think. Took a detour to, um… stop in a store. To get something. It was… it might have been a Target?”
“It might have been a Target?”
“Were you paying much attention to your surroundings when you left that note?”
It’s unfair of Phoenix to bring that up now, and he knows it. But… maybe if he hits hard enough, Edgeworth will give up on him. He (doesn’t) want that.
“I see your point,” Edgeworth says at last. “Stay put. You said you were on a rooftop? Please, just…”
“Don’t take the fast way down?” Phoenix jokes. “Damn, Edgeworth, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use the word please so much at once. Or use my actual first name. Maybe I should get disbarred more often.”
“Just… don’t jump, Phoenix.”
Phoenix waves a hand dismissively. “I won’t, don’t worry about—” He realizes, just a little too late to stop it, that he waved the wrong hand and his phone just went flying out of it. Down to the ground below.
It looks further, now.
“Shit,” Phoenix remarks to no one in particular.
Don’t jump, Phoenix.
A dark part of him wants to. What good is he for anything, for anyone, without his badge? He should have known better. But he hadn’t. It’s only fitting that Defense Attorney Phoenix Wright chooses death as well…
But.
Edgeworth.
He’d promised, sort of, to stay put until Edgeworth could find him. He looks down, and imagines Edgeworth arriving too late. The thought fills his mouth with bile.
He chugs the rest of his bottle and starts in earnest on the sixth. At some point, sitting on the edge of that roof with his feet dangling over the edge, his eyes flutter shut and stay that way.
Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, jump now
You are absent of cause or excuse
So self-indulgent and self-referential
No audience could ever want you
You crave the applause yet hate the attention
Then miss it, your act is a ruse
It is empty, Achilles, so end it all now
It's a pointless resistance for you
He’s in court, because where else would he be. Except—he’s in the defendant’s chair again. No one’s at the defense bench, or in the judge’s seat. And the prosecutor is… well, if the pretentious outfit and disdainful attitude didn’t give it away, the finger-snap certainly did.
“Pathetic,” Manfred von Karma spits. “Your precious little win was a fluke.”
“Yeah, well, you murdered your opponent after you defeated him in court,” Phoenix fires back, “and I’m pretty sure you got executed like… a month after your verdict was declared. So! Fuck you.”
von Karma laughs. He actually laughs. “Oh, and how do you know the evidence implicating me wasn’t secretly forged, too? How do you know you didn’t put away an innocent man?”
“Even if you hadn’t murdered Edgeworth’s father, you were far from innocent! And you literally confessed to doing it!”
“Tsk, tsk. Have you learned nothing? So did our lovely Chief Prosecutor Skye, if memory serves.”
“If memory—you were dead by then! ...I think.”
“You thought I was referring to my memory?” von Karma shakes his head. “Oh, no, I was referring to yours. Pathetic excuse for a defense attorney. The Edgeworth boy did a better job than you.”
“Well, yeah, I… I trusted him for a reason. I trust him.”
But von Karma is gone from the prosecutor’s side of the courtroom. Instead, at the witness stand, is… oh no.
“You,” Phoenix all but hisses. “You bastard.”
Matt Engarde chuckles darkly. He takes a sip from a massive glass of wine produced from nowhere, exhales with a satisfied smirk, and turns on him. “Oh, Mr. Lawyer. You call me such hurtful things. Yet you forget just how alike we really are.”
Phoenix stands then, slamming his hands down on the railing so hard it should hurt. “We are nothing alike!”
“We aren’t, are we? We’re both dedicated. We’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll hire someone to deal with Juan before he can spew all his lies to the press, and you’ll present forged evidence.”
“I…” Phoenix shakes his head. “I didn’t know it was forged.”
“Intent matters?” Engarde raises an eyebrow. “Don’t be ridiculous. You knew it was suspect even without explicit knowledge of the forgery. You knew exactly what you were doing, and then had the gall to act surprised when you were called out on it.”
“I… didn’t…”
“Youse stupider than me,” cries a familiar spiky-headed not-attorney from the defense bench. “An’ my badge was made o’ paper!”
“Objection,” Phoenix says weakly. “Cardboard. It was made of cardboard.”
“Ha! Youse dink that’s gonna cut it? Ha, ha, ha! No wonder youse got sacked!”
“I wasn’t sacked! Okay, well… maybe I kind of was but—”
“Disappointing, Trite.” And suddenly, Godot’s at the prosecution’s bench and there’s warm coffee dripping down his face. “Truly. You really were never worthy of her legacy.”
“That’s not… Mia doesn’t even have anything to do with this—!”
“Oh, but I do.” Mia shakes her head, clearly disappointed, standing besides a particularly smug Godot. “You were better than this, Phoenix. You should have been better than this.”
“Mia… I…”
“Did you think before you presented that page?” Maya, standing besides Tigre, has her hands on her hips and her tongue sticking out. “They’ll probably question all your prior cases now. And I bet they’ll have some questions to ask about the girl who’s been a major suspect in… what, three so far?”
“Two,” Phoenix says weakly. “No one honestly suspected you had murdered your own mother.”
“Liar,” says a red-headed woman with braids in her hair, and Phoenix can’t even tell if this is supposed to be Dahlia or Iris or some twisted mix of them both. “I had the court wrapped around my little fingers.”
“No, you… none of this is real. This is all a bad dream. None of this is real, none of this is real, none of this is—!”
“OBJECTION!”
Phoenix’s heart sinks as he looks up to the judge’s bench, and his eyes meet Edgeworth’s cold gaze. “Edgeworth… please…”
“Please?” Edgeworth scoffs, and his signature glare only intensifies as he retracts his pointed finger and crosses his arms. “You fall apart at the first hint of adversity. You’re weak. Weak, and stupid, if you think I’d ever love you, Wright.”
“I’m not that stupid,” Phoenix mutters.
“Oh, but on some level, some unconscious level, you are. That’s the saddest part of all. You’d be pitiful, if you were deserving of my pity. But you aren’t. You deserve death, for what you did to me. For all the lives you ruined.”
“I-I didn’t… they made their choices. And I couldn’t just let someone get away with murder.”
“But you could. And you would have, if it was me. How hypocritical. How utterly…” Edgeworth tsks, much like von Karma, and waggles his finger. “Shall we say… pointless?”
“I know.” Phoenix’s shoulders sag. “I’m sorry. There, are you happy now?”
“Happy? While you yet draw breath? I will be happy when you are— Phoenix!”
Dead would have been the logical thing to say there, and yet this Edgeworth that can’t possibly be real but can’t possibly not be real is looks as baffled as Phoenix himself feels.
Slowly, Phoenix says, “What did you…?”
Achilles, Achilles, just put down the bottle
Don’t listen to what you’ve consumed
It’s chaos, confusion and wholly unworthy
Of feeding and it’s wholly untrue
You may feel no purpose nor a point for existing
It’s all just conjecture and gloom
And there may not be meaning, so find one and seize it
Do not waste yourself on this roof
His eyes snap open. He’s not in a courthouse at all. He’s seated at the edge of a roof, a little high up for his liking, and his head is pounding. The sky is lightening—it’s just before dawn, now. He’s… well, he’s not dead yet.
“You’re… awake,” someone says close by. Too close by, and Phoenix is suddenly and quite intimately aware of the arms around him. The arms that are withdrawn almost before he stiffens, and he knows who they belong to without looking. “I… my apologies, Wright. I thought you had…”
“Killed myself?” Phoenix says bluntly. “Jury’s still out on that one.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Wright, we haven’t had a jury trial since well before you or I ever passed the bar.”
“The bar… ha, right. Guess you won after all, Edgeworth.”
“Won? Don’t be ridiculous, Wright, you think I’d consider this a victory? When it leaves you like this?” Edgeworth sets a hand on his shoulder, gestures vaguely at the section of roof beside him. “Do you mind if I…”
“Sit down? Nah. Knock yourself out.”
Edgeworth does so—he sits down, that is, and discreetly moves the remnants of Phoenix’s sixpack out of the way to do that. “Wright… you know that I care a great deal about you.”
“The me before or after I got myself disbarred?”
Phoenix looks over to see his friend’s brow furrowing. Edgeworth doesn’t answer for a moment. At last, when he does, it’s a single word: “Yes.”
“...yes?”
“Yes. As in, I care a great deal about you regardless of what the press claims you may or may not have done. I would like an explanation at some point as to what is real and what has been blown wildly out of proportion, but that can wait until you aren’t drinking cheap liquor atop a condemned building.”
Hear those bells ring deep in the soul
Chiming away for a moment
Feel your breath course frankly below
And see life as a worthy opponent
Today of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
How you will heal and you’ll rise above
Crowned by an overture bold and beyond
Ah, it’s more courageous to overcome
“No, it can’t,” Phoenix says firmly, though he can’t be certain he didn’t slur the words a little. “It can’t wait. Edgeworth—the rumors are true. All the rumors.”
“All the rumors,” Edgeworth repeats skeptically. “Do you even know what all of the rumors are?”
Phoenix shrugs. “Do you?”
Edgeworth grumbles under his breath and eventually says, “That doesn’t matter. Did you or didn’t you knowingly present forged evidence in court?”
“Um… I did. It wasn’t knowingly, I—I don’t know what happened. But it was forged.”
“Did you… know it was forged before you presented it?”
He shakes his head, and stares out into the no longer entirely dark sky. The sun hasn’t peeked up over the horizon yet, but it will be soon, that Phoenix is sure of. “I knew it was weird, but you’re talking to the attorney… former attorney… who cross-examined a parrot. The thought that someone had just… made it all up didn’t even cross my mind.”
“Not until it was far too late. That… must have been a nightmare.”
Phoenix gestures vaguely at their surroundings and then at the empty beer bottles. To punctuate his nonverbal statement he says, verbally, “Believe me, it was. Somehow, that kid knew before I did that it was forged. Long before I did.”
“That kid… ah, Prosecutor Gavin. We’ve met a few times, though he hadn’t had his first…” Edgeworth freezes. “This wasn’t his first case, was it?”
“I think it was.” Phoenix’s shrug conveys the but I don’t really care he doesn’t actually say aloud. “I know he was like… fifteen, but he was a dick from the beginning.”
“Seventeen,” Edgeworth corrects gently. “That… doesn’t make sense. Granted, I haven’t talked to him very much recently given… well, recent events… but he seemed quite the promising prosecutor.”
“He was good, I’ll give him that,” Phoenix mutters. “Like I said, though. A dick. Reminded me of Godot, but swap the physical assault via caffeinated beverages with an actual air guitar solo in the middle of court.”
“Yes, that is what doesn’t make sense. He’d always expressed a desire to find the truth above all else, one I wish I’d had at that age…” Edgeworth sighs, and shakes his head. “I’m disappointed.”
Phoenix laughs. “Yeah, you’d have thought I would have gotten fucked over by you or your sister, not some upstart teenager—”
“In him, Wright. I should have known an idealistic young prosecutor was too good to be true.” Edgeworth sighs again, louder this time, before looking to Phoenix meaningfully. “Well? What comes next?”
“Next…?”
Edgeworth nods earnestly. “Well, of course. How are we getting your badge back? I’ll help in any way I can.”
You want the acclaim, the mother of mothers
(It’s not worth it, Achilles)
More poignant than fame or the taste of another
(Don’t listen, Achilles)
But be real and just jump, you dense motherfucker
(You’re worth more, Achilles)
You will not be more than a rat in the gutter
(So much more than a rat)
You want my opinion, my opinion you’ve got
(No one asked your opinion)
You asked for my counsel, I gave you my thoughts
(No one asked for your thoughts)
Be done with this now and jump off the roof
(Be done with this now and get off the roof)
Can you hear me, Achilles? I’m talking to you
For a few long moments, Phoenix just stares at his oldest, dearest friend. Then he laughs. He laughs, and laughs, and laughs until his chest hurts and Edgeworth looks thoroughly baffled.
“We aren’t getting my badge back,” Phoenix clarifies. “I’m not getting my badge back. It’s over. Maybe I didn’t forge that evidence personally, but any other attorney would have known better than to present something so suspicious without first getting it checked out.”
“You’re… not even going to try? What happened to you, Wright? What happened to the stubborn idiot who wouldn’t give up even when I was sure I was guilty, and proved my innocence twice over—to the court and to me. You don’t give up. You never give up.”
“First time for everything.”
“Yes, I suppose, but not for this.”
“Like I said: first time for everything. There isn’t going to be any kind of comeback or turnabout this time. It’s… it’s over, Edgeworth.”
“No, it most certainly is…” Edgeworth pinches the bridge of his nose. “Wright. If you can look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t want to get your badge back, then I will happily support you in whatever other path you choose.”
“I…” Phoenix forces himself to meet Edgeworth’s eyes. He succeeds for all of two seconds before he jerks his gaze away and says, “I don’t know what to do.”
“And I would be remiss in claiming that I do. Regardless of where you go from here, the first step is to deal with the aftermath. If you find yourself in need of… anything at all… I’m here for you, Wright. Don’t forget that.”
“You wouldn’t let me,” Phoenix says wryly. “Say, that reminds me… when did you get back in town? I thought you were in Europe.”
“I was,” Edgeworth says in the way that makes it abundantly clear there’s a story there he doesn’t particularly want to tell right now. “Suffice it to say that I found myself in a similar position not long before you did. I… was the lucky one, it seems, this time.”
“And I’m the one taking the fall.”
Abruptly, Edgeworth stands. The sunrise before them illuminates most of his face, though it leaves a certain contour of shadow. And if Phoenix didn’t know perfectly well that this would never go anywhere and that was okay, he might have gotten up and kissed him. But he didn’t, and doesn’t, because Edgeworth deserves better than a pining fool who got himself disbarred.
And then Edgeworth goes and extends his hand to Phoenix, and his heart actually skips several beats as he stares at it.
“Not forever,” Edgeworth promises. “However long it takes. You helped me through the darkest times in my life, and far be it from me to not return the favor.”
Phoenix laughs, a little. It’s less forced this time. “Edgeworth, we’re friends, aren’t we? Helping friends out is what friends do.”
“It is,” Edgeworth says meaningfully.
Smiling a little, despite himself, despite everything— Phoenix reaches out and takes his hand. The gravel on the rooftop shifts beneath him as he lets Edgeworth pull him up—except suddenly, too suddenly, he’s—
—falling—
—down, down, down.
Throw yourself into the unknown
With pace and a fury defiant
Clothe yourself in beauty untold
And see life as a means to a triumph
“ PHOENIX!”
Oh god, he’s going to die. Oh god, he doesn’t actually want to die. But it’s—but it’s too late now. It’s too late. Dusky Bridge is on fire above him, what’s left of Dusky Bridge is on fire above him. He’s falling. He’s falling and this time there’s no Eagle River to break his fall and he’s—
He’s.
Not falling.
He’s not falling?
There’s still nothing beneath his feet but someone is pulling him up, so harshly that his arm nearly feels ready to be pulled clean off his body. He opens his scrunched up eyes just in time to stumble into Edgeworth’s arms.
Edgeworth is—there, he’s there and while he doesn’t say anything the brief glimpse Phoenix catches of his eyes are wide. Very. And he’s dragging Phoenix away from the edge. Away from the partially collapsed edge of the roof.
“My apologies,” Edgeworth says tightly, “but I don’t believe this building is entirely stable. We should…”
“Get down,” Phoenix agrees. “Uh… good plan. No objections here.”
Even as Edgeworth’s grip on him tightens, he glares at him. But he doesn’t let go until they’re down the three flights of stairs and standing in the parking lot, staring up at the deceptively normal-looking building. Although it was condemned probably for a reason.
Phoenix almost found that reason out the hard way.
Today of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
How you will heal and you’ll rise above
Crowned by an overture bold and beyond
Ah, it’s more courageous to overcome
He finds his voice, eventually, after he finds his phone right where it had fallen. Hilariously, his phone was fine, but that’s because his phone is a fucking brick and considerably more indestructible than one particular… former attorney.
God, thinking about it like that hurts. It’s never going to stop hurting, probably. But Edgeworth is right. He can’t just give up now.
Maybe he’ll never get his badge back. But he can live with that. He can figure out where to go from here. One step at a time, one day at a time.
Already, he’s trying to think of what to do next. They did arrest Zak’s partner as well, though they’ll only be able to hold Valant Gramarye for so long—Phoenix has some questions to ask even if he knows better than to expect genuine answers. And Zak’s little girl… where is she staying? He’ll have to find somewhere she can stay, because Trucy Enigmar is—what, eight?
What if… what if he can’t find anyone? What if Trucy is completely alone in the world, with her father leaving her? How could her father just… leave her?
He’ll… he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
There’s the forger. Drew Misham. He must have known more than he said in court, whether he’d known it or not. And, given what he’d done to Phoenix, to his client, the guilt alone might be able to make him talk. If not, well, he’ll figure something out. He’ll figure something out the same way he always does.
He doesn’t need a badge for that.
(But it still hurts.)
“Edgeworth,” Phoenix says evenly, eventually turning to the other lawyer—or well, the only lawyer here, actually, now. “Thank you.”
It’s amazing, really, just how much meaning can be contained in two simple little words. There’s the obvious, thanking him for being there, for quite literally reaching out and keeping Phoenix from doing something… really stupid, even by his own standards. There’s the less obvious but still firmly implied, the thanks for being Phoenix’s friend in general, for being in his life at all, for caring so much in spite of everything, really.
And then there’s the words he’ll never say, or even dare to think, and it’s okay. Phoenix Wright is not in love with Miles Edgeworth. And if he did happen to be, for some unfathomable reason, he’d know better than to say anything about it.
Edgeworth smiles back at him. It’s weird, seeing an actual smile on his face and not a triumphant smirk. But there’s been a lot of weird tonight, some good, some bad, some better than Phoenix would have ever dared to hope for.
“Of course,” Edgeworth says gently. “Thank you.”