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The courthouse is on fire.
It’s the only light left in the blackness of this accursed day—no sun gets through the windows, no stars break through the clouds. The flames crackle and spit, though—hissing their melancholy song as they singe ornate carpet and polished hardwood, lighting the halls in ominous red. In their center Manfred winces with an arm thrown over his face, trying to make sense of what is and isn’t real in the smoke that’s curling all around him, burning ugly holes deep into his lungs. The fire grazes his feet, but does not burn.
The elevator.
His cane hits the floor with an almost forceful tap, leading him as though it has a mind of its own. There’s a voice in the back of his head that tells him to stay away, that he knows what’s waiting for him there, that this time it can be different, this time he can walk away. He beats it back with every step, tells it to silence itself with a growl in his voice and a murderous look in his burning grey eyes. A thousand lifetimes, a thousand chances, a thousand opportunities—perfect is perfect is perfect, and there is nothing here to amend or fix.
The courthouse is burning. The elevator door is searing hot. Miles blurs in the heatwaves when the doors finally open, his little fingers trembling around the pistol’s handle, tears streaming down his chubby cheeks. Shaking, he takes aim. All Manfred sees is the golden glint of Gregory’s badge, brilliantly brandished in the firelight all around.
His shoulder burns.
Jolting awake with a strangled gasp, Manfred curls in on himself, gripping at the bandages living on his shoulder as though he’s intent to tear them to shreds. The wound pulses and burns and screams and he’s half-tempted to scream right back, an animalistic impulse he holds behind his teeth, a hiss in the darkness of this empty room.
Outside, beneath the cabin’s deck, past the soft sands that lie decorated with powder-white urchins and pleated, speckled shells, he hears the waves roar. Distant and rhythmic, a façade of the sea—uncaring and chaotic as she is, moreso in the night as it turns her face pitch black. There aren't any people in this house—no scattered footsteps of the servants in the hallways, no stuttering stomp of his toddler’s feet on the hardwood. Only the wind, and the waves, and the sound of Manfred’s own wheezing breath, low and shallow as he wakes from the nightmare.
Shivering, he rolls around to scrutinize the patterns warbling on the walls—distant and blurring in the heatwaves that linger, refusing to take proper shape. This property was so rarely visited—a scrap of leftovers from the fools before him and their improper work ethic—right now he almost regrets not decorating it more to his own taste. Gods above willing, though, he’ll never have to set foot within these walls again.
The dream is over, but the fire remains—heatwaves turning the blackness liquid, shifting and wavering. He trembles despite it, cringing through the revolting feeling of sweat-drenched hair sticking to the back of his neck. Closing his eyes, he presses firm on his shoulder once more, biting his tongue as another fresh wave of agony rips through him.
Painful, but normal, nothing to be worried about. This sickness is a thing of its own, then—no infection of the wound or burgeoning complication—no, it’s simply his luck that way out here, far from society, he’d somehow pick up yet another curse to lay him low like a beaten dog. It boggles the mind, how karma keeps moving Her goalposts, weaving around him like tricky winds, like light itself, like something impossible to take shape of or hold onto.
In the dead of winter, it’s freezing cold on these shores, and the starfish and bottom-feeders sink into the sand, desperate for warmth.
Why do I suffer still? Manfred wants to look karma in Her shining oil-spill eyes and ask, but in his mind’s eye he’s not sure if he’s prostrate on hands and knees at Her foot, or nose-to-nose with a pinch across his brow. Because the score was evened, no loose ends left—Edgeworth had ruined him, taken the reputation he’d spent 25 long years polishing to pristine perfection, and in turn he’d done the same. A life for a life, an eye for an eye. Perfectly balanced, like a golden scale.
He should have done more. What’s done unto others will come back around threefold, that was the rule, wasn’t it? But the bullet in Gregory’s heart wasn’t yet close to threefold, impulsive and unplanned and set there only by chance, by destiny, by karma. A little leaded thing, blood on a fading gilded lapel badge, compared to a legacy spanning centuries, untouched until now. Gregory Edgeworth shot first.
Why do I suffer still? What score is unsettled? What loose ends are left?
The sheets are drenched, and his shoulder’s in need of new dressing, and here Manfred lies in misery while Gregory’s allowed the solace of death. Between the fever and the rage this fire is different from whatever caught his dreams ablaze—simmering, seething, embers waiting for the wind. What score is unsettled?
The waves churn. He burns. And there, fading quickly, barely detectable on the recesses of his mind, is the boy.
Miles, with the soft dark brown eyes and the polite monotone in his voice—baby faced and gentlemanly, cushioned in a dark red suit jacket. Miles, who sometimes wore that same golden badge, stealing glances down at it every so often and trying to keep the pink off his cheeks, the smile off his normally stoic face. Miles Edgeworth, who followed at Gregory’s side like a permanent fixture, mirroring his every thought and expression and mannerism, twin curses in their own right. Miles Edgeworth, who pulls trembling hands around a pistol and shoots Manfred every night, in a million different ways, with tears spilling from those saccharine eyes. Miles Edgeworth, face down on the elevator floor, air thinning in his lungs and a gun just barely out of his reach.
Miles Edgeworth, who is all alone.
An unfortunate casualty, perhaps. Or, better yet, the final piece of this cosmic game.
For Gregory deserved what happened to him, and karma, She agreed. She wouldn’t have put that gun at Manfred’s feet if She didn’t, wouldn’t have allowed him to flee the scene without a trace. He watches as the headlines fall like dominoes, one after the other—desperate, clueless, clinging to any scrap of truth they can manage. He lies in plain sight, gone in the dark.
Gregory deserved what happened to him. But Miles, foolishly wide-eyed fool that he was, did not.
As though he’s poised atop a candle, Manfred feels the heatwaves around him flicker, blur, jolt on the unseen wind. He pulls himself upward, finally, holding the covers over his shuddering shoulders like a child shivering in the cold. Teeth grit hard, he waits for the chill to subside with bones aching and nerves iced over. When he opens his eyes again, there’s something that lurks like a specter in the corner of his vision—barely a shadow, hat tipped, wearing a long beige trench coat, a single golden spot of light over a heart drenched with blood that looks black in the night.
And Manfred von Karma, despite many things that would point to the contrary, believes in ghosts quite easily. So without much care he turns his head—as much as he’s able against the creak of his muscles—and stares sidelong into Gregory’s honey-brown eyes, looking as golden as the revolting scrap of metal on his chest.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Manfred all but snarls, then offers a winning smirk. “...old friend?”
Before the silhouette of him can crystallize it vanishes, though—as though he were never there to begin with. In the final few seconds before his remnants leave, Manfred swears he sees Gregory’s teeth—white as they were the day he died, a bittersweet smile.
Outside, the waves roll.