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Phoenix Wright takes a deep breath, only to immediately cough at the smokiness that seems to be settling in the air. The sky above him is a convoluted purple, complete with eerie dark clouds and murkiness. A sea of orange-red flames sprawls across his vision. Cautiously taking a step forward, he finds himself standing before the Dusky Bridge. He hears a scream that sounds hauntingly familiar and his heart sinks to his stomach. Looking across the chasm, Phoenix immediately knows what to do. He takes a step onto the wooden bridge and runs towards the direction of the noise. The bridge below him groans and creaks but, somehow, it manages to hold. Even so, the bridge is very long. Phoenix picks up speed and sprints across the chasm. He’s running for no more than ten seconds when he comes to a gut-wrenching realization—he’s no closer to the other side than when he started. His eyes watering both from the heat of the flames around him and his own frustration, Phoenix furiously rushes across the bridge.
To his dismay, with each step he takes, the bridge stretches longer and longer. He’s stuck in an infinite loop of unmoving. Another scream sounds from the other side of the chasm and Phoenix feels nausea stirring in his gut. He reaches to take another step, but the planks beneath him crumble to bits, leaving him to fall down to the watery depths below. As he plummets closer and closer to his impending death, all he can hear is that familiar scream, over and over. Just as he’s but a few feet from hitting the water, someone yells his name.
“Wright!”
Phoenix gasps and opens his eyes, immediately regretting the action as he’s assaulted with bright fluorescent lights. His breaths are panicked and raspy. For a dreadful moment, he feels as if he’s entirely unable to breathe. Phoenix desperately closes his eyes and grips at the sheets with fervor, trying to ground himself and remain calm. He hears a voice sound in front of him and he looks up, only to find Godot staring down at him.
The prosecutor seems to be saying something, but the shock of being in a completely unfamiliar setting coupled with his general exhaustion makes it impossible for him to understand what the man’s saying. Phoenix settles for blinking at him dazedly. The man evidently realizes his confusion, because his lips stop moving and manage to settle into a grimace of sorts.
“What?” Phoenix eventually manages to rasp, wincing at how dry and scratchy his throat feels. He pushes himself up to a sitting position and suddenly there’s a hand on his shoulder and a cup of water shoved into his hand. He drinks it and places it on the table next to his bedside.
“It was just a dream,” Godot says, in a reassuring tone that sounds very uncharacteristic of the prosecutor. Phoenix looks at him in confusion for a moment, before he realizes that he must have been tossing and turning. Color floods his cheeks and, in an effort to avoid further humiliation, he averts his gaze and looks off to the side. Upon closer inspection, he finds that the table at his bedside is filled with cards and flower arrangements.
“That was stupid, Trite.” Godot’s voice jars him out of his thoughts. Phoenix places the card he had been inspecting back down on the table before turning to the masked prosecutor. The man looks entirely out of place amidst the domestic but simple atmosphere of the hospital room. His coat is draped over the back of his chair, as if he’d been in the room for a decent amount of time already. “Why on earth did you think that running onto a burning bridge was a good idea?” Phoenix stiffens for a moment at the accusation when, almost immediately, everything comes rushing back to him at once. Kurain Village. Elise’s dead body at the foot of the Ami Fey statue. His scramble to find a phone to call the police. The burning bridge. His nightmare. Maya.
“Maya!” Phoenix exclaims, pushing himself up and off the bed. His heart is suddenly racing in his chest. He can’t believe he forgot about her. Is she okay? What of the fire? He’s quickly spiraling into panic, so much so that he fails to notice his uncharacteristic shakiness. Phoenix resolutely takes a step away from the bed and towards the door, only for his knees to buckle from underneath him. Just as he’s about to have a nasty collision with the tile floor below, there’s a tight grip on his waist and he’s deftly pulled back up into a standing position. Phoenix sways on his feet, grabbing at the prosecutor in front of him to steady himself. If Godot is bothered by the new grip on his forearms, he doesn’t comment on it. Instead, the man simply leads him back towards the bed.
Even when Phoenix is safely returned to the mattress, he finds his head pounding. His vision is swirling around him, turning the walls of the hospital inside out and back again. Dark spots and shadows creep up from the sides, threatening to swallow his sight. For a long moment, he remains sitting there, a hand on his head as he tries to regain control. When his vision finally clears, he’s surprised to find Godot wearing a pinched expression, his lips pulled taut in a grimace.
“Idiot,” Godot reprimands, but Phoenix hardly hears the insult over the roaring in his ears. He almost doesn’t want to ask the question that’s weighing on his mind.
“Where’s Maya?” Phoenix eventually manages to ask. Godot nods as if anticipating the question. He sits back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other, spreading his arms wide over the cushion at his back. Phoenix bites his lip.
“She’s… fine,” Godot answers, pausing for a moment before continuing to speak. His mouth gives absolutely nothing away and, not for the first time, Phoenix wishes he could see the man’s eyes. It would be so much easier to read his emotions. Even so, Wright feels as if Godot is hiding something from him.
“What is it?” Phoenix asks, squinting at the prosecutor seated across from him. The man bristles for a moment before sighing, muttering something under his breath about stubborn defense attorneys and their propensity for danger. Wright pretends not to hear his murmuring.
“The Fey girl is trapped on the other side of the river,” Godot replies. Phoenix immediately feels any good feeling shrivel up and die in his chest. He quickly pushes himself up further, ready to get up once more, only to be stopped by hands on his shoulders. Phoenix looks up to find Godot staring down at him, an unreadable expression across his lips. “No, you’re not leaving,” Godot says, standing over him and bracketing him against the hospital mattress.
“What?” Phoenix exclaims, thrashing against the prosecutor’s hold. Unfortunately for him, Godot’s grip doesn’t so much as budge. Phoenix tries to place a hand on the man’s arm and push him away, but his efforts are to no avail. “But Maya—”
“Will be fine,” Godot interjects before he can finish speaking. His hands remain on his shoulders and his posture is guarded, as if expecting for Phoenix to break away and run out of the room at any moment. “The police are working on repairing the bridge as we speak. There’s nothing we can do now, except wait.”
“But—” Phoenix tries to say, only to be interrupted once more.
“There is no way to get across the chasm,” Godot interjects, finally removing his hands from his shoulders. Despite the removal of his grip, there’s a challenging look on his face, a quirk to his lips that says: try to get past me, and see what happens. “There is no burning bridge for you to run across this time.” Phoenix grits his teeth and remains silent, despite his frustration. It’s not Godot’s fault, ultimately. If anything, it’s his own fault. His thought process must show on his face, because Godot lets out a long suffering sigh.
“If the Fey girl is anything like Mia, then she will be fine,” the prosecutor asserts, crossing his arms over his chest. Phoenix wants to argue, but the utter conviction in the man’s frame convinces him that his words ring true. “Besides, you’re in no condition to be running around.”
Protests seeping out of him, Phoenix sinks back into the pillow behind him. A question remains on the tip of his tongue. It’s been weighing on him from the moment he woke up. Somehow it manages to slip out before he can prevent it. “Why are you here?” For a long moment, Godot remains entirely silent. Nothing in his body language betrays what he’s thinking, and so Phoenix is forced to wait for the prosecutor to speak.
“I already lost Mia,” Godot murmurs, so quietly that Phoenix almost wonders if he imagined the statement. Evidently he didn’t, because the prosecutor’s fingers clench and unclench around his bicep in a show of confliction. For the first time, the man appears to be truly lost for words. Just as Phoenix contemplates saying something, Godot brings a hand to his chin. A determined expression comes over the prosecutor’s face and his head tilts up ever so slightly, evidently looking at Phoenix himself. “I won’t lose you too.”
Phoenix doesn’t know what to make of that. He doesn’t know what to make of the masked man sitting in front of him, calling him by the wrong name one minute and promising his safety the next. It makes his head spin even more than it already is. Is this all some sort of ploy? He doesn’t realize he’s entirely zoned out until there’s a hand on his forearm. Phoenix blinks a few times and glances to the side, only to find Godot staring at him.
“Go to sleep, Trite,” Godot suggests. Phoenix squints at him for a moment, before realizing that his exhaustion is beginning to catch up to him. The adrenaline that came with his remembrance of Maya’s situation seems to have faded away. “I’ll be here.” Phoenix isn’t sure how he finds that comforting, but he’s too tired to question it. He lies back against the pillow behind him and his eyes begin to slip shut of his own accord. The last thing he registers before falling into a deep sleep is the brush of a tanned hand against his forehead, pushing his hair out of his eyes.