Chapter Text
When Miles Edgeworth moved from Germany to the United States, he had brought fairly little with him that was not related to casework. But while Von Karma had had very little empathy for his adopted son, Franzika had been far more perceptive, and had ensured the transport of one certain, and very important, someone. Pess had been a middle-aged dog by then, but her company had been invaluable to Miles' mental welfare. Perhaps it was a good thing that she survived for a good many years more—and her soft fur and white-muzzled kisses helped him through that night where he could for once go to bed and not feel the weighty guilt of his father's death on his shoulders.
Then he awoke one morning scant months later, the first where he did not wake in a sweat-soaked panic with the memories of dark elevators and the smell of gunpowder, to find Pess quiet and cold in her basket. Perhaps the tiny pomeranian had sensed that he no longer needed her as much as he had before, and found that it was time for her to move on. Miles found himself calling in sick that day, blaming his running nose and red eyes on a cold.
It took him two years, a few trips around Europe, several bright-eyed students hanging onto his every word as if they were God's own truth, and a surprising amount of patience from Franziska before he accepted how much Pess had kept him from going off the deep end. It was a slow and gruelling process to rebuild his own self on the ruins of what he had been taught by both his father and Manfred von Karma, and without the trusty ball of fluff that had been there for emotional support whenever he had needed it. But, at the same time, he knew that he could not lean on others for support - that he could not get another dog to fill the void without risking another mental breakdown when, eventually, that one, too, would peacefully (or violently, as he realised he was amassing a surprising amount of enemies) pass away.
Five years after he had regained faith in his own abilities, four years after he had seen his best friend disbarred from court and a rookie prosecutor under his watch receive the death sentence, when his mood was low enough that he stumbled through the streets of Amsterdam with a bottle in hand, he stumbled into one empty alley for a piss, and stumbled across—
Well, it did take his drunken brain more than a minute to recognise the huddling, shivering bundle of fur as anything, but it was most certainly a puppy. And not just that, but a puppy that wagged its tail at him, nosed the bottle out of his unresisting hand, and, when he kneeled down, gave him the softest of licks that reminded him so dearly of a fluffy furball that had comforted him through the darkest years of his life...
Pess took to her name like she did to her duty as a companion. Once the initial shots had been done, and once she had gained the prestigious award of being the youngest dog that was allowed on any aircraft without quarantine, she accompanied Miles everywhere. She would sit at his feet during meetings, sleep curled up next to the bed so that she could lick at his fingers in case of a nightmare, and she would be lying under the desks during court, only reacting whenever the judge declared a recess or his verdict - except in one case where the defendant became aggressive and made a lunge for Miles, at which point Pess rose from beneath the desk like some kind of vengeful dog-god, and patiently growled in a way that settled everyone down immediately.
That her height, from her front paws up to her shoulders, at the time came up to the middle of Miles' chest might have been a deciding factor in the sudden onset of calm, however.
But while she provided safety, and was fiercely protective of her owner when he felt unsafe, Pess maintained a somewhat... silly nature. Franziska had at one point come to visit him in France, only to end up leaning against the nearest doorframe and laughing until she was very nearly sick. Miles refused to find the hilarity in that his dog had been dragging him across the floor towards the kitchen by the back of his shirt while he was stubbornly trying to keep reading his case file. Several times he had found himself showing up to court in different shoes than he had planned, as Pess had stolen all but one pair and hidden them somewhere he had been unable to find. She actually taught herself to operate door handles, and would consistently grab any bouquet of flowers that Miles came home with in order to bury them somewhere outside.
And, of course, her insistence on playing fetch. Sometimes Miles would throw a small stick, and find Pess returning with a small, uprooted tree, but, well, he always believed that it was the thought that mattered. She was intelligent enough to pick up several dozen different nouns, resulting in the odd 'Pess, fetch the tea', 'Pess, fetch my glasses' - or Franziska's favourite command, 'Pess, fetch Miles'.
There was also the one-time, mostly-joking 'Pess, fetch the murder weapon' that had left Pess covered in dirt, tongue lolling out of her mouth, tail hammering happily against the floor boards, and a detective that had to choke out some kind of apology to his superior officer as to how they could have missed the buried gun in the backyard—but Miles generally considered that one a fluke.
She also accompanied him back to America, and spent a whole hour thoroughly investigating the small house he had bought (technically, that Gumshoe had found and Franziska had paid for, though she had grudgingly accepted that Miles repaid her) for them. He had not been entirely surprised when Pess had shown up with most of the cobwebs that had been in the house and three lost socks in front of her.
Inviting Wright and Trucy to dinner to celebrate his own rise to Chief Prosecutor and Wright's reinstatement had only been natural. Informing them that he had a dog, was, of course, only logical when they entered his house. That Wright seemed to forget that pomeranian-Pess had passed away nearly a decade later had, in fact, made up for all of the hidden shoes and the Miles-fetching when Wright had happily kneeled down in the living room, clicked his tongue and gone 'Here, Pess! Come to Phoenix!', only to have 300-odd pounds of giant, happy mutt come tearing around the corner and realise that a friendly person was at the perfect height for a tackle-and-kiss greeting.