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Constants were scarce in the life of Miles Edgeworth.
He thought one of them might have been his father, until that was taken away from him. Another had been his childhood home, a nondescript condo on 145 Elmwood Lane, until Miles left behind the Atlantic and fled to where clocks ran nine hours too fast.
Life in Germany was a necessity for survival, and so it became a new constant. He cannot bring himself to regret the endless afternoons with Franziska or the depth of his prosecutorial training, just as he cannot bring himself to be thankful for von Karma’s outmoded and consistently irascible ideal of perfection. This, however, changed the second Miles passed the prosecutor’s examination at twenty, as he was sent to achieve absolute perfection in his home country.
Home. That never registered to his younger self, not when memories of Ceylon tea and tenacious best friends had long since faded into that strange limbo between recollection and fabrication. Los Adachi was another hotbed of crime to check off the list, a den of voracious imperfection begging to be fixed. His father had lived and died in this city, and thus von Karma conditioned Miles to abhor it. It wasn’t a difficult task, after all. The nightmares began here.
The closest thing to a true constant in his life was the presence of nightmares. Nightmares, for lack of a better term. Reliving the same nightmare for fifteen years felt more like karmic condemnation after the first two, and then a fact of life after five. It was the constant which had lasted the longest, in between six thousand miles and the ebb and flow of success. It became a given that after some indiscernible amount of time from when Miles drifts into sleep, he would find himself two feet shorter, cravat exchanged for a bowtie, and dangerously low on air. And not long after would come the shouting, and wake up! , and the feel of a metal object, and Miles? , and his own lips moving of their own accord, and Miles? Wake up! Please, please, just wake up—
Perhaps it was entirely fitting that a completely in constant man would be the first to disrupt that pattern.
Edgeworth!
Miles shot up from Wright’s dingy couch, barely noticing a layer of cool sweat. A mismatched wide-eyed gaze was the first thing he saw. “You’re awake…!” He rubbed out the sleep, or what little of it there had been, from his eyes. Tremors threatened to overtake his composure.
“Astute observation, Wright.” The words were sardonic, but they had no bite. They were not in court and he saw no need to masquerade as his usual self more than necessary. “Why are you awake?”
The man had just fallen off a burning bridge, walked away with a cold, and successfully defended his client with a fever. Frankly, Miles was shocked to see the man standing. Wright waved away his valid concern. “Not important. Edgeworth, you said the nightmares were gone.”
“That’s—“ Miles attempted to control his rapidly tunneling vision and think. “I don’t do the deed, per se, in the nightmare. I pick up the gun, and I—“
“Stop.” Wright grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing Miles to meet his gaze. The sensation adds to his unease. “Edgeworth, you’re shaking.” He felt a gentle pressure on his wrist. “And your pulse is going a mile a minute.”
“I’m fine, Wright.” Perhaps Miles should have considered this possibility before crashing in the Wright and Co. Offices. “This is nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” It truly wasn’t, for the experience had remained more or less the same all these years. Wright’s defense had erased the worst of it, but the fear he felt never seemed to change.
Something about that constricted the space in his chest. In a second he was nine years old, waking from a long sleep surrounded by machines, faceless nurses, and glossy white walls.
His companion shifted his hold from Miles’ wrist up until their hands grazed and intertwined, rough with the calluses of the past few days and delicate in their touch. He’s still looking into his eyes, as if they were still school children who cared nothing for matters of perfection.
“Edgeworth, you’re…” A thumb swiped across something on his face, something wet. “I…I can stop. Do you want to stop?”
Miles had lived fifteen years without Wright. Even after that first year, only legal crises were enough to push them together again. Eighteen years of fits and starts of sleep, the same voices, the same endings. To tolerate this was a necessity. To accept this seemed only fitting. What, then, was this petulant spark of content, of rightness, of things he had never known, doing here? Why was it telling him that change could be for the better, just this one time? And why was it inextricably linked to the man holding his hand right now?
He squeezed Wright’s hand back gently. “No, I don’t.” It was the most sincere thing he’d said all night.
Tension seemed to leave his companion’s body. “Good. I didn’t want to either.”
Miles made room on the couch for Wright, letting that one point of contact ground him to the present. He can’t say whether the clamminess between them came from him, Wright, or both men. For a long while, they stayed that way, not looking at each other, but acutely aware of the other’s presence. Miles dared not move an inch closer, or perhaps do something foolish like grasp a little bit tighter.
In the end, it was Wright who broke the silence. “I’m going to ask you something. And I want you to be honest this time.” They turned at nearly the same time, prepared to address each other. “Are you okay?”
He sighed and turned away again, not quite sure what he was expecting. “No. But I will be, eventually.”
“Alright.” Wright’s eyes fluttered softly shut with the weight of fatigue. A near inaudible whisper came from his lips. “Thank you.”
A smirk makes its way on Miles’ own. I should be thanking you, Phoenix.
Nightmares came and went as the years passed, sometimes rehashing the ones from his adolescence, sometimes altering the cast or the script. The change he sought was slow, imperceptibly shifting with the times and the company he kept. That was fine with Miles. It was a nice change from life moving impossibly fast. Until the day came when December could begin with a soundless night, some things would just have to remain the same.
The nightmares were a constant, but so was Wright, it seemed. Someday, Miles would find the sentences to describe this feeling, and Wright would finally know.
With that knowledge, they both drifted into blissful, continuous sleep.