Chapter Text
"Now," said Edgeworth to the shaken looking young woman. "You must make sure to testify every little detail you remember. Even if you may not think it relevant, the smallest detail could turn the tide of this case."
"O-Ok," she said, glancing at the doors. They stood in the lobby of the courtroom and bailiffs shuffled back and forth gathering loads of witnesses for the current case. Wright was doomed for sure, with all these testimonies to get through in three days.
"Don't worry. The defense attorney, Phoenix Wright, is a good man. In fact, he's my partner."
"Oh?" gasped the witness, her eyes wide. "Really? How did you meet?"
"That's not really our biggest concern today, Miss Smiley," he replied unfazed. "The trial begins in ten minutes and your inclusion is rather late. You don't need to worry what the papers say about Wright. He won't accuse you of a crime if you didn't do anything wrong. Usually." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Personally, I'd trust him with my life."
"Of course," said Miss Smiley, nodding violently and grinning. "I understand." He raised a brow at her, sighed, and quickly walked away while rolling his eyes. He had no idea what she was so happy about. After all, someone died for this case to occur. Not that that didn't happen with most cases. Still, she gave him the creeps.
"Next witness! Peterson, Peter."
He tallied the attendance of the witnesses, which ran quite a few minutes into the court time. He'd have to make the message to each witness humorously minimal. They had to know not to make a scene or lie blatantly, which he had originally thought was just common sense.
The nameless bailiff burst through the doors of the courtroom. "Mr. Edgeworth, if you don't hurry it up, the Judge will declare you in contempt of court."
"Well then sir, you tell the Judge that he's going to have to hold his horses!"
"H-Horses?! Where?" cried a witness among the crowd.
"No... no, no! There's no horses here!" He kept forgetting that the defendant was none other than a horse, accused of killing spectators during a horse race. The horse, of course, wasn't here in the courthouse. There was no need for it to be. But he'd have to watch his phrasing from now on.
The bailiff came back again. "The Judge is willing to allow 30 minutes to let you finish with this, provided you let Mr. Wright help."
"Fine, fine, bring him in then," he said, exasperated. If only the entire stadium hadn't decided they wanted to testify the day of the trial...
Wright entered through the doors of the court, scanning the crowd for Edgeworth before nodding and looking for the first witness to talk to. He saw Maya Fey hovering behind Wright curiously, unsure what she was supposed to be doing.
"Ah, so you're Mr. Wright!" said the witness he saw earlier, Miss Smiley.
"Yes, I am! Has he, I mean, has Prosecutor Edgeworth accounted for you yet?" he asked, clearly not accustomed to this courtly duty.
"Why yes! He's told me so much about you. So when did you get together?" she asked, pulling out a pad and pen. Edgeworth suddenly remembered she was a tabloid writer and blanched.
His eyebrow quirked noticably but he answered quick as lightning, "Oh! I'd say our first case together was about a few years ago. Recently, we've been working cooperatively to find the true criminal in each case."
"Interesting, interesting. What kind of things do you do outside of court?"
"Not much usually, but sometimes he comes to the office and-"
"Wright," said Edgeworth warningly, and then he quickly glared at the witness who still flashed her disgustingly sweet, toothy grin. He was afraid of what Miss Fey would read in the papers the following day if they let her twist his words enough. "You're supposed to be helping me prepare the witnesses, you know."
"Sorry Edgeworth. Um... Miss... er... I can't help you out with whatever you're doing right now, but my assistant Maya can provide emotional support. Right, Maya?" Maya Fey seemed not to have any idea what he was talking about, but it didn't matter to him after we walked to the other end of the room to avoid the woman who began to chatter endlessly to Maya.
"I can tell you're a good friend of his. Say... who made the first move?"
"Wh-what?! What are you talking about? Am I missing something?" blurted Maya rather loudly. "No, we're not... like that. Gross! He's so old! Not as old as you but... wait, no, I mean-!"
"No, not you, darling! Him and Prosecutor Edgeworth!" she replied, not bothered in the slightest.
"Oh!" she said and then laughed. "Oh, you thought- okay. Well nothing like that is going on between them... at least I don't think? I could be wrong. There's a lot that could've gone on while I was at home-"
"Miss Smiley, when I said he and I were partners," Edgeworth said, stepping threateningly into their little chat and blushing furiously, "I meant we worked together on cases and that's all. I apologize if I misled you."
Both she and Maya seemed almost... crestfallen. He wondered how much damage Miss Fey could have caused if she had spoke any further on the subject. "I'm sorry, sir! I just assumed-"
"You assumed wrong," he said, his voice cracking a little. The witness quickly put away her supplies in her hand bag while Maya coughed awkwardly, gave Edgeworth a reproachful look, and hurried away.
Edgeworth spun around and the Miss Smiley audibly sighed and muttered, "I guess my imagination got ahead of me. When he was talking to me he seemed so... admiring of him. But on second thought, who'd be dumb enough to think there was a chance of something like that happening between them?"
He let out a shuttering breath. Before briskly walking away, he mumbled to himself: "Me."