Chapter Text
The night of December 28—well, technically the morning of December 29, as he didn’t get back home until past midnight—was an object lesson in the folly of hope. Miles couldn’t be blamed, however, for his optimism, considering he’d just been acquitted of an impossible charge to combat.
He’d rather hoped the nightmares would stop when DL-6 was finally wrapped up. He’d been looking forward to the statute of limitations running out for years for that reason.
Instead, he sat shivering and hunched over the toilet bowl. He’d been too nervous to eat more than a few crackers in the past 48 hours, but that didn’t stop him from vomiting those crackers up.
The nightmare remained. It was just complete now, and he no longer had the flimsy cover of plausible deniability. Now, it continued after the scream: the door opened, and Miles’s body didn’t move, couldn’t move, as von Karma picked up the pistol and killed his father. The dream only allowed him to turn his head to see his father’s body jerk in a parody of consciousness as blood began seeping from his chest.
A reconstruction based on forensic evidence. A culprit pinned to a crime from a police sketch. A narrative woven from the court record. It was no different from his work, really.
Von Karma’s face flickered between shadowed youth and his feral courtroom snarl in a memory Miles knew didn’t actually exist. He retched, and bile dribbled from between his lips. His stomach spasmed with nothing left to give.
Once he was sure he was done throwing up, Miles flushed the toilet and started brushing his teeth so he could go back to sleep and forget the nightmare ever happened.
He looked terrible. The dark circles that he’d been plastering over with concealer for court shone like bruises, and his hair fell in grey strings over his face. Even his cheeks were hollowed out, sticking out sharply against his pale face.
His father’s cheekbones were the same, but Miles only remembered that thanks to pictures.
Fortunately, he didn’t have anything to do the next day—well, later that day. He’d taken a week of his stocked-up vacation time to regroup, though it was looking like he’d probably just be napping the whole time.
When he lay back down, Miles’s eyes refused to close. This, at least, was a familiar feeling: he was always sleepless when he missed something, when there was a problem his brain hadn’t finished working through.
By the time he finally fell asleep, 5 milligrams of melatonin later, the sun was starting to rise.
The nightmare was different the next night. That, at least, was reassuring. It meant that this wasn’t a new normal.
It was also reassuring that the nightmare had morphed into something that had certainly never happened.
The door opened, and Miles watched from his frozen position on the floor as von Karma entered. The man barely hesitated before leaning down and picking up the pistol. He shot, and the gunshot was totally silent, nor did the muzzle flash; Miles only knew the gun had fired because the bullet tore through the air like ripping paper.
He turned his head, and Phoenix Wright lay slumped in the corner by the door. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
Miles woke up with a choked gasp, and he couldn’t move, could barely breathe—
He reminded himself to take inventory, focus on the facts. He was in his bed. His limbs were frozen. The room was dark, and he couldn’t see anything. It was the night between December 29 and 30. He was acquitted of murder, he had taken some vacation days, and Phoenix Wright…
Phoenix was fine. He was fine. He had pulled off the most spirited display of courtroom boldness that Miles had ever seen on December 28, and he was not lying dead in an elevator.
The dream was not real. It was not even a reconstruction of a real event. Phoenix was fine, and he was not dead. Even though Miles had gotten him involved in DL-6, he was fine, and alive, and very much totally not dead. He was fine.
Miles covered his mouth with a shaking hand. His bedroom was cold, but he was sweating. The darkness was black, and couldn’t hurt him. When he closed his eyes, he saw Phoenix dead in the elevator.
It was illogical. There was no reason for his brain to superimpose his friend/defense lawyer on a 15-year-old trau—case, a 15-year-old case.
Phoenix Wright truly had a knack for turning Miles’s carefully sorted feelings into a maelstrom.
His phone was in his hand. He didn’t remember picking it up. He dialed Phoenix’s number, but caught himself with his thumb hovering over the call button.
What was he doing? Phoenix was asleep. And if he did pick up, what would Miles even say? “Hey, sorry to wake you up at 1:26 a.m., but I had a dream that you died and I wanted to make sure you were alive?” Ridiculous. It was an obvious fact that Phoenix was alive. Calling to confirm it was the kind of double-checking that Phoenix Wright himself would do when he’d run out of contradictions in a testimony.
Maya Fey was dead, and Miles held a bloody statue in his hands.
Gregory Edgeworth was dead, and Miles held a gun his his hands.
Phoenix Wright was dead, and Miles held a bloody clock in his hands.
The room was dark, and his hands were dry, and there wasn’t nearly enough oxygen. He was back in the elevator, and he couldn’t breathe. There was only silence, of course, because everyone else there was dead—
No, not silent. The heating system hummed. That wasn’t in the elevator. He bit his cheek and it hurt. He was awake in the dark, and he couldn’t breathe.
His cheek hurt, which meant Phoenix Wright was dead, and Miles fumbled for his phone. He dialed the wrong number three times with his trembling hands, and when he finally pressed the call button, he knew no one would pick up.
“Mmmphwazzizit?” a groggy voice said, tinny, into his ear.
“Wright, is that you?”
“Edgeworth?” Phoenix said, suddenly sounding entirely awake. “Is there a problem? What’s wrong? I can be over in twenty—wait, shit the bus doesn’t run this late—“
Phoenix’s voice woke Miles up and made him feel like an idiot. He was a child again, confusing reality and dreams. That tendency had nearly landed him in jail. When would he learn?
“A-apologies,” Miles said. “It’s nothing. I’m terribly sorry for waking you up.”
“Dude, it’s not nothing,” Phoenix replies. “No offense, but you sound like you’re about to cry.”
Now that Phoenix said it, Miles realized he was right.
“I’m not. Well, I was, but I’m not now, I just…never mind. Good night, Wright.”
“Waitwaitwait, don’t hang up!”
If it were anyone else, Miles would have shut his phone with a satisfying noise and gone to sleep. Yet the words of Phoenix Wright had the power to stay his hand, to make him falter, to trip his words in their tracks.
“Do you…wanna talk about it?” Phoenix asked. “I mean, I know that’s a stupid question, because you never wanna talk about anything, but I figured I’d ask.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Stupider than cross-examining a parrot?”
Miles laughed a little, entirely against his will.
“I had…a nightmare,” he confessed. The next words hung heavy in his mouth, unable to leave.
“The same one?”
“No. Different. I…it was the statue this time.”
“You killed your father with The Thinker?”
“I killed you with The Thinker. And when I woke up, I…I panicked.”
“I’m fine, Edgeworth,” Phoenix said with not a hint of mockery in his voice.
“I just don’t understand,” Miles muttered. As he spoke, he tried to stop himself, but the lateness of the hour and the shortness of his breath forced his words from his tongue. “I know I didn’t kill my father. I know you’re alive. So why…”
“It’s been a long few days for you,” Phoenix said. “Like, your whole life and past has been dragged up and turned upside down. I’d say it’s normal for you to be a little disoriented.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Again, I apologize for waking you.”
“Wanna come over tomorrow?” Phoenix asked abruptly.
“Pardon?”
“W-well, it’s just, I heard you were taking some vacation days, and I didn’t expect the office to be so quiet without Maya. I don’t have any cases right now, but I could make some hot chocolate, we could watch some TV…”
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“C’mon, Miles. I’m going stir-crazy alone in the office!”
His breath was returning. There was nothing like Phoenix’s pinballing thoughts to stop a panic spiral through sheer confusion.
“All right, I suppose I could keep you company tomorrow. Now, I believe I’ll try to go back to sleep.”
“Sounds good! Let me know if you need anything, all right?”
“All right. And, Wright?”
“Hm?”
“…Sleep well.”
Miles hung up and stared into the darkness of his bedroom.
Phoenix was alive. Maya had returned to her spirit medium training. His father was dead, but that had been true for 15 years, and his true murderer was in jail.
Everything was okay.
One year ago, he had to take the whole day off of work on December 28. He didn’t have anyone to talk him down. Now, all it took was a short conversation, and the waves of a far worse nightmare crashed uselessly against the shore.
Phoenix Wright was an incredible, stupid, foolish, baffling man.