Chapter Text
“It’s that demon that did this to me! And--And he calls himself a doctor!?” The man squirmed and flinched at every touch beneath Phoenix’s rough, calloused fingers. Sure, he wasn’t a delicate touch, but he knew what he was doing, and something was definitely wrong.
“Okay, just calm down, you don’t need to speak--”
“I may…” His breathing was ragged, and every inhale looked excruciatingly painful. Phoenix winced at the sight, imagining what he must’ve been feeling. The patient continued, “I may not have… followed exactly what he… he told me to do… but…but I...”
His expression fell into something like pained statue, and his frail, tensed grip on Phoenix’s sleeve came loose and fell to the side of the bed.
For a moment, Phoenix was thrown into a panic. Wide eyes and quick hands were scattered everywhere. The permanently mangled shelves, the stand of supplies next to him, the piles of scattered notes that were split up between carefully written out, described in great detail and random inquiries and random little mentions between lines. In an instant he remembered his sedative remedy that had been placed beside him thanks to a certain wandering help that seemed to be a bit intrigued by what was happening with this patient.
‘Thank God for Apollo,’ he thought in that moment with an audible sigh and a quiet chuckle came from someone lurking nearby, observing the procedure.
The patient had already passed out many moments before Phoenix opted to make him take the sedative, but that was alright in this case.
“Apollo, thank you for that. He probably would’ve woken up again and started throwing a fit…” His apprentice grinned with a nod, but didn’t seem fully satisfied. He stepped towards Phoenix for a closer look at the slack figure who lay flat on the bed before the pair.
“What do you think that is, Mr. Wright?”
“I’m not completely sure. My best guess is... a curse? A really well crafted one at that… it keeps wearing down his stamina, his heart rate keeps picking up, but every time I swear that he’s going to take his last breath, that his heart is going to cave in at all the pressure, the cycle starts again. It’s horrible to think about, but if it originates from what I think it does, he should be able to shake it in minutes once I figure out how to create a complete blessing to counter this specific curse. We’ve never seen it before, so it’s going to be a ton of extra work going into this one.”
He allowed himself a long, exhausted sigh. Apollo seemed to understand the roots of his exhaustion and swallowed any unnecessary comments that had come to mind. One corner of Phoenix’s mouth curved up into a reassuring smile. “Make sure you document it though, please, that’s all I’ll need for now. I’ll probably be spending the night here so… go get some rest. Tell everyone that they’ll have to manage with what’s available up there, and that I’ll cook up something good in return next time I get a chance.”
He was hesitant, but Apollo stepped back towards the stairs with a light chuckle and a quiet sigh. “Goodnight then, Mr. Wright. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
His half smile turned into the full thing, and he held up a hand to wave. "Yep, bright and early. Goodnight Apollo.”
-----
He felt like an idiot--smiling to himself while organizing the specific leaves and pre-made potions he was going to experiment with for the night--but the smile teetered, falling soon after he began to dissect what the patient had fought to express earlier.
‘A demon..? Who calls himself a doctor’
If demons were possibly more than just myth, would they become witch doctors?
He shook the thought but his mind kept going.
That was certainly a concerning concept, but even worse than that, why would a doctor place a curse on one of their patients if it had the possibility of turning out to be that bad?
Perhaps they really were a demon… maybe a novice, but again, could a person really mess up that badly and claim they’re just a novice? Phoenix highly doubted that, and it left a sour taste in his mouth. It wasn’t a simple curse, and it wasn’t the first he’d seen of something of this caliber.
‘Wait…’
Phoenix’s hands were occupied and well versed with all of his supplies. While he contemplated the source of the curse, a string of hushed spells fell from Phoenix’s lips, instinctively trying to preserve the quiet of the patient’s room to allow them a brief silence from the writhing pain caused by the curse. His mind resumed its line of questioning.
Just two weeks ago, a woman stumbled in, seemingly on her last limb, and begged for immediate treatment. She wore glasses, but the frames were both shattered, and it seemed like she had arrived with no sign of shoes anywhere on her person. Similar to the patient now, the effects of the curse paused while she was unconscious, though it was obvious that she couldn’t fall asleep on her own.
It seemed that she was infinitely clumsy--and not in a cutesy airheaded way--just minutes after her arrival, she shattered three full glasses of Wisteria mixtures and somehow managed to trip and fall again, only this time needling her sides and her back with countless shards of glass. Phoenix sighed at the memory, wincing as he remembered having to watch Maya and Apollo pluck the pieces from her senseless body.
The morning the woman woke up (her name was Adrian Andrews, if Phoenix remembered correctly), she silently eyed the leafy patches pressed on thousands of little scratches and gashes along both of her arms, as well as some even placed up against bruises on her legs and face that she earned even before she arrived. When Phoenix had finally stopped by to check on her one last time, she thanked him and gave a brief summary of what originally had happened.
‘I… had been stabbed in the chest when I originally went to the doctor for help. The whole reason I even bothered to find a witch doctor was because I was sure I was going to die. I swore I’d do anything to stay alive… I… I wanted to keep living with my sister, that’s all. But I think I may have stumbled into an even bigger problem when I stepped into that office. I knew yours was here but… he was just closer so…’
At that time, Phoenix never really considered that another witch doctor was operating close by. Some wires in his head finally connected when he realized that maybe he should’ve done a little bit more research on their location before finally settling in here and sealing his fate in the never-ending battle against taxes. Maya, who was listening quietly in the doorway, voiced her same connection with a subtle, “Hoooh….” fading off in the background. He bit back a smirk and a sigh.
‘He gave me instructions to follow as soon as he saw me. That should’ve been my first red flag, but I definitely didn’t catch it there, not while I was bleeding out on his cold, hard office floor. I did everything he asked, but I can’t really remember anything, even if I really try to think back on it. He must’ve been a pro at this… I guess it didn’t really matter to him as long as I came out alive.’
After that, she just wept, silently. Her shoulders quivered with every stunted breath and she stared down at her feet making her eyes impossible to see. Phoenix shot Maya a clearly pained and panicked glance before she returned the same expression, reluctantly making her way over to sit by and comfort the poor, tortured woman anyway. As Phoenix stood, he finally let go of the anxiety that had steeled itself in his own chest while he had been observing the woman’s suffering. In that moment, while he approached the door to head back to his office, he smiled softly, claiming the profit in his pride.
‘This is what it feels like to be a witch doctor,’ he remembered thinking. The memory tugged a smile to his lips once more.
The woman quietly muttered her ‘Thank yous’ between sobs.
-----
That morning, Phoenix crumpled behind his desk in the office as soon as he sat down in his seat. He’s just barely conscious when Maya, whose hands are interlocked with both Pearl Fey and Trucy Wright’s, approaches his desk.
“I know you need some sleep but Trucy and Pearls wanted to congratulate you before you did, so I brought them down.” Maya let her satisfied grin speak for itself as Pearls and Trucy erupted into vibrant shouts of congratulations.
“Mr. White’s all better now Daddy!”
“Mr. Nick saved everybody again!”
Maya snickered at Phoenix’s embarrassed blush and let the pair go, eyeing them thoughtfully as they began playing in the office up until they scurried back up the stairs to the roomed floor. Maya watched silently as they exited, a sign that held Phoenix’s attention for a long moment, seeing as she looked like she hung back for a reason.
He was right. She turned back and her expression had shifted, like there was a shadow in her gaze. Phoenix dropped his own smile and furrowed his eyebrows, curious to try and understand without having to hear any words. Ultimately this failed, and Maya still looked torn while she tried to put her sentence together.
“He said… Mr. White… he said that he was recommended to the witch doctor he went to that gave him that awful curse...so he knows his name and even the location of the office...” Phoenix couldn’t decipher her fidgeting or the lack of eye contact between them that came with giving him this fortunate news.
“Yeah? That’s good, right? We can report them immediately, then they won’t be able to keep causing things like this to happen...am I wrong?” Regretfully, he struggled to hide the doubt in his own words, but he couldn’t help it. Clearly, something was wrong, but even after a moment of trying to come up with reasons why this might be a bad thing, he couldn’t picture one that was truly impenetrable. If they were a criminal, if someone was in danger, they could call law enforcement. It was that simple, right? So what could possibly have Maya so on edge..?
“I might be wrong…” she started, now glancing up at Phoenix occasionally while she continued to tap her fingers on her sides nervously. “But isn’t Miles Edgeworth someone important to you?”
Her lips drew to a thin line that had been anticipating his response the moment she heard the name.
His throat was somehow dryer than before, and even though he knew he had to reassure her, words didn’t--couldn’t, more like--leave his clenched jaw. His next few breaths were heavy. Loud. Overbearing. The weight of Maya’s implication sat like lead on his desk, on his chest, and her worry became confirmed.
Yes, Miles Edgeworth was someone important to me.