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“Father,” Miles asked one day, “what do these words mean?” He pointed to the two names marked on the inside of his left wrist.
Gregory leaned in for a closer look, even though he’d had the two names on his son’s wrist memorized since he’d grown big enough for them to be legible. “Those are names,” he said. “Both of these people will be very important to you in some way or another.”
Miles tilted his head inquisitively. “What does that mean?”
“Well, there is no one conclusive answer,” Gregory said with a pained smile, “but according to legends, those people will be important to you in opposite ways. One is your soulmate, and the other…” He gripped his own wrist, twisting it uncertainly. “The other will be an adversary of some sort.”
“An adversary?” Miles echoed, barely struggling to pronounce the word. He was developing a rather broad vocabulary for his age.
The more common word was nemesis, but Gregory hesitated to use that word with Miles. The last thing he wanted was for Miles to obsess over his nemesis like a villain from a superhero comic. “I wouldn’t go as far as to call them an enemy,” he answered, “but that is one common interpretation.”
Miles hummed thoughtfully. “Is there any way to tell which is which?”
“From just looking?” Gregory asked him. “No, there is no way to tell. You’ll have to exercise judgment whenever it is that you meet these people, just like I always do with my new clients.”
The mention of his work seemed to placate Miles, and Gregory was secretly glad to end the conversation here for now. He knew that one day they would have to talk more about this. Still, he hoped that whenever that time came, Miles wouldn’t ask to see his mark.
He never liked to look at his own wrist. Since his wife’s untimely passing, her name had partially faded, reminding him of what he had lost every time he looked. In contrast, the other name on his wrist remained clear as day.
It wasn’t until third grade that Miles met someone with one of those names.
It piqued his curiosity during roll call. He sat near the front of the room (it made the board easier to see, and how better to prepare for his future as a lawyer than to get ahead on his studies now?), but against his better judgment, he always found himself twisting around in his seat when the teacher called that name.
Once he had located the boy named Phoenix, he found every excuse he could to be around him. Granted, these excuses were few and far between, since Miles didn’t enjoy the loud and boisterous company Phoenix usually kept, but he began spending recess outside, casually following the spiky-haired boy into whatever game he was playing (or watching from the sidelines while pretending to read, which he usually ended up doing). He didn’t know what it meant that this boy’s name appeared on his wrist, but nonetheless, he was curious. Mostly, he was curious what would make Phoenix smile at him like he had the first time they’d spoken.
One day in spring, his lunch money mysteriously disappeared. Everyone in the class blamed Phoenix. This was his chance, Miles realized, recalling how his father defended those with nobody on their side. After today, Phoenix would surely take notice of him.
A soulmark didn’t always mean what you first thought. This was something Phoenix’s mom had told him when he was first trying out his new name. She had shown him her own mark then, letting him read the names marked on her wrist.
“That’s Mama’s name,” he remembered observing.
“That’s right,” she’d said. “But it’s a common name. Some girls with that name were my best friends, but there were others who were mean.”
Phoenix had thought about that for a moment, then read the other name. “What about this one?” he’d asked. “I think I’ve seen it somewhere before.”
His mom had smiled. “It’s Mama’s old name,” she’d said. “It used to be a lot more popular for boys and everyone used to say it was my soulmate’s name. But it made your mama unhappy, kind of like how your old name made you. One day, she found a name that made her a lot happier, and it was this one.” She pointed to the other name on her wrist.
“You said one of them was your personal bad guy, right?” Phoenix had asked. “Maybe the bad guy wasn’t a person. Maybe the bad guy this time was just the name that made Mama unhappy.”
“That’s a nice thought,” she’d said, and ruffled his recently cut hair.
So when Phoenix noticed that there was a boy in his class named Miles, he tried not to jump to conclusions about what it meant. There were other people named Miles. People named Dahlia as well, Phoenix reminded himself, though he hadn’t met anyone with that name.
However, when Miles defended him in the class trial, his sleeve pulled back, revealing the names on his soulmark, and while Wendy was a common enough name, Phoenix was not. Unlike his mama, he hadn’t wanted a common name that would be easily confused for a number of others, and the legend of the phoenix reborn out of its own ashes had called out to him specifically. There was only one person the name Phoenix could refer to.
So at the end of the trial, Phoenix personally reached out to Miles, as well as Larry who had also spoken up for him, and the three of them became friends. Best friends. But even more than that, Phoenix was certain that he had found his soulmate.
Gregory had always worried that Miles didn’t make friends or share interests with other kids his age. Naturally, when Miles came home from school announcing that he’d made new friends, he was over the moon, so much that he impulsively agreed to his son’s request to adopt the dog he and his new friends had rescued.
“So, who are these new friends of yours?” he asked over dinner after Miles had finished watching that new TV program, the pomeranian Missile happily sleeping on a pillow.
“There are two of them,” Miles said. “Larry is a bit of a troublemaker, but he’s pleasant enough to be around. Phoenix is kind and sensitive and has the most brilliant smile.” A faint blush colored his cheeks as he spoke. “He said he was Signal Blue, and now I can see why. Signal Blue is always watching out for the other two…”
Miles continued to explain the dynamic between the three samurai characters, but one of the names he’d mentioned caught Gregory’s attention. Phoenix was one of the names on his son’s soulmark. As he observed the way Miles talked about the boy, the logic connected– Phoenix was a rather unique name, so it stood to reason that it was no coincidence his son’s new friend had a name that matched his soulmark. And seeing the way Miles talked about him with bright eyes and beautiful words… well, some would call Gregory a romantic at heart for thinking this, but he was certain this Phoenix was his son’s soulmate.
That sentiment was only further evidenced when Miles brought his friends over. By all means, they acted like typical elementary school friends, but occasionally, Gregory would notice the way Miles and Phoenix’s gazes lingered on each other. It reminded him a little bit of how he sometimes caught Detective Badd looking at him when they investigated together. It was sweet enough to give him cavities, and he was sure that even the lollipop-loving detective would agree.
Speaking of which… he had been single for quite a while, and although he wasn’t lonely exactly, seeing Miles find his soulmate reminded him how much he missed that part of his own life. Perhaps he was ready to try dating again. As glorified as they often were, soulmates weren’t the end-all be-all of romance any more than nemeses were guaranteed to be mortal enemies, and as long as his partner was good for him and Miles, it shouldn’t matter if they were soulmates or not.
Soulmates, along with Signal Samurai keychains, had no place in the von Karma household.
Discussing marks wasn’t outright forbidden, but it was hardly a favored topic, as speculating about who one’s soulmate might be was seen as a distraction from more important things, like achieving perfect grades in school or getting into the advanced law program. Even speculating about one’s nemesis was discouraged. As Mr. von Karma maintained, it was unrealistic to think that everyone had a worst enemy who they were also the worst enemy of.
There were several hypotheticals he liked to use as examples of people with many enemies. A serial killer, for example, who not only killed many people, but left behind grieving families and frustrated a number of investigators. Or a defense attorney who framed someone for murder, and in the process of defending them, shifted the blame onto another person. Who were those despicable criminals’ nemeses? Miles and Franziska could debate over the answer, but in the end, there was no right answer. The marks were arbitrary and the whole matter was foolish.
Miles knew that he should listen to his new guardian on these matters, but the same part of him that still lived with Phoenix and Larry in suburban LA couldn’t stop wondering if there really was a guiding hand that led everyone to their fate. Could some supernatural entity really determine from birth who would be the most important people in someone’s life? Could the same entity determine when and how someone would die? If so, what did that mean about the very real crimes that people committed every day and the punishment they rightly deserved?
Foolish boy, he could already hear Mr. von Karma saying. It is a cowardly fool who blames the supernatural for his crime.
In any case, the people at school didn’t seem to share Mr. von Karma’s view. Every day, he was surrounded by teenagers whispering to one another, giggling as they pointed at one another’s wrists. Thankfully, this was one area where being younger than most of his classmates meant that nobody bothered him, though there were several occasions when he noticed one of his classmates being bullied over his mark.
He investigated those incidents, finding decisive evidence against the perpetrators and presenting it to the school authorities. Nothing happened at first, but as more incidents took place, the authorities eventually took notice and began punishing the instigators. During his investigation, Miles noticed a pattern: the victims of these bullying incidents, all boys, had two male names on their soulmark. Similarly, among those with both a male name and a female name on their mark, the assumption was usually that the name of the same gender belonged to the nemesis.
With all of this evidence, there was one conclusion to be drawn: having a soulmate of the same gender was decidedly outside the norm.
As he mulled over this conclusion, Miles gazed at his wrist, tracing over the two names. He didn’t want Phoenix Wright to be his nemesis. That message on the radio meant he still remembered him, even if the rest of the world had forgotten.
Soulmark name mix-ups happened all the time, Miles reminded himself. He’d been foolish to think that the first Phoenix he’d met was his soulmate. Phoenix had another name on his wrist, anyway, and Miles couldn’t remember what it was but he did remember that it was a girl’s name. For all he knew, Phoenix had a nemesis named Miles other than himself and that girl was his soulmate.
Could there be another Phoenix in the world? Miles hoped so, and he hoped that this Phoenix was a despicable criminal of the sort Mr. von Karma described in his hypotheticals. That would be a nemesis he would relish defeating.
Still, as much as he hoped Phoenix Wright wasn’t his nemesis, he didn’t especially want to seek out his soulmate. None of the girls at school ever caught his interest. Maybe Wendy would be different, he thought optimistically as he pulled his sleeve back down.
In the years since Miles had disappeared from his life, Phoenix never stopped missing him.
“Get over it, dude,” Larry advised him. “I bet he’s already forgotten about us. Don’t waste your time on someone who’s never coming back. Besides, it’s not like Edgey’s the only Miles in the world. Maybe it’s actually Dahlia who’s your soulmate, have you thought about that?”
This coming from the guy who couldn’t figure out if his mark said Cindy or Mandy or Katty or whatever he thought it was this week… as much as he liked Larry, Phoenix certainly wouldn’t be turning to him for romance advice anytime in the near future.
Still, he would be lying if he said his friend’s words didn’t come to mind in the courthouse reading room when he bumped into an angelically gorgeous girl who shyly introduced herself as Dahlia.
She had to be his soulmate. People said there was a feeling you got when you met your soulmate, and that was the feeling he got every time Dahlia entered the room. The world felt brighter in her presence, and even when he was sick and had to stay six feet away wearing a mask, it didn’t matter, as long as he could be around his darling Dollie. She was the most gorgeous and perfect human being to grace this Earth, and if he died in her arms, he would die a happy man.
He’d gotten a glimpse of Dahlia’s mark a couple of times, never really paying attention to the other name on it, but when he got a letter asking him to meet behind the pharmacology building, he thought the sender’s name looked familiar. Only when Doug started to say mean things about Dahlia did he make the connection.
“Shut up!” he told him. “I don’t care if you’re her nemesis, don’t talk about my soulmate like that!”
Doug opened his mouth to respond, but he never got the chance. Phoenix shoved him into a pole and stormed off.
He had originally started taking law classes to cope with the feeling of missing Miles, along with a vague memory of how it felt to have the whole world against him. Now, suspected of killing a fellow student, his eyes were opened to the reality of criminal law and the truth of Dahlia’s intentions with him. He couldn’t believe at first that his lawyer was trying to pin this murder on sweet darling Dollie, but when she called him a joke and asked how any woman could rely on him, he started to wonder if she had truly been his soulmate as he’d thought.
His law studies hadn’t been high priority when he was dating Dahlia, but as the trial went on, Phoenix started to see what his future could be like. Helping people who were in trouble, saving people from illusions they were trapped in… it had been eight months since he’d thought about Miles, but for a moment, he pictured himself at the defense’s bench where Ms. Fey was and Miles at the prosecutor’s bench, or maybe in the defendant’s chair where he currently was. It could happen. And if it did, Phoenix could finally pay him back.
By the end of the trial, he’d decided. “I’m studying to become a lawyer myself,” he told Ms. Fey. “There’s a friend I desperately want to help, and if I hurry, I should still be able to save him in time.”
Two years and several months later, he passed the bar, pinning his shiny new attorney’s badge to the lapel of a blue suit he’d scored at a thrift store and joining Mia Fey in her new law firm. She had become a great mentor and friend to him and he looked forward to working with her.
It was barely a month after Phoenix’s first trial that he came into the office to find Mia slumped against the wall beneath the window. A girl he had never met before was kneeling over the unmoving form of his boss, crying as she pressed her fingers against a wrist that was now blank and searched for a pulse that wasn’t there.
Miles should have known it was too optimistic to hope there was another Phoenix.
Of course, things never went the way he hoped for them to go. A trial was called off, a murderer escaped justice, a defendant committed suicide. A sister killed a sister and the autopsy contradicted the evidence. And protecting the murderer was none other than the last person he had ever hoped to meet in this manner: the boy he had once played house with, foolishly thinking they might be soulmates, now a man who used bluffs and trickery to defend criminals.
And the worst part? He looked hot when he did it.
Miles managed to talk himself down somewhat as the investigation continued. Since the first witness had proven to have been lying, he had no choice but to trust the new witness who emerged, and the new witness’s account had some rather unsavory implications about his childhood friend. If, as the witness said, it had truly been Phoenix Wright who killed Mia Fey, then he must have also written the message that incriminated her sister, the very sister he had been defending. There was no criminal lower or more cowardly than one who used a child as a scapegoat, and to then turn around and shift the blame onto another while gaining that child’s trust? Utterly despicable.
He knew now what the answer to Mr. von Karma’s hypothetical was. The defense attorney murderer’s nemesis was not the victim or any of the people they tried to shift the blame to. It was the prosecutor who had been tricked into pursuing a false suspect, fated to bring the true culprit to justice. It didn’t matter that they had once played at being soulmates. Wright was the nemesis he was fated to defeat, so he couldn’t expect special treatment.
Still, in the end, even Miles had to admit that he had been mistaken. Redd White’s word was supposedly the absolute truth, and while the individual inconsistencies in his testimony could be explained away, there remained one that would require further investigation, and before the trial could be adjourned, White gave an irrefutable confession that made every inconsistency make sense.
It was the first time Miles had ever lost a case, and far from the first time he had faced his mentor’s disappointment, but it was the first time he truly felt as though what happened was his fault.
A nemesis didn’t have to be a mortal enemy. His father had told him that a long time ago, citing examples he had seen of nemeses who were rivals in their youth and eventually grew apart, or who managed to have an amicable rivalry in the workplace. Even if he wasn’t the despicable criminal Miles had imagined, the fact that Wright had dealt him his first defeat had to mean something. They could be work nemeses, couldn’t they? The attraction Miles felt for him was just another challenge to overcome, perhaps even the reason Wright had managed to defeat him in the first place.
In any case… Miles pushed back his sleeve, once again tracing over the names. There was one person here he had yet to encounter. He still had never been interested in women, but perhaps when he met the mysterious Wendy, any attraction he felt for his nemesis would fade into nothing.
He should have been more careful what he wished for. Just over a month after his first loss, he was placed in charge of a case against Will Powers, the lead actor on a kids’ show he would never admit to watching. Detective Gumshoe was in charge of verifying witnesses, so all he was told was that the key witness would be the woman in charge of security at Global Studios.
“Will the witness declare her name?” he asked for what felt like the thousandth time in his four-year career.
“Hmm?” The old woman batted her eyelashes at him. “My, aren’t you a handsome fellow! I’m afraid I’m a bit flustered!” After some back and forth during which his irritation mounted, she finally answered. “Wendy Oldbag, dearie. So just call me ‘grandma,’ it’s practically my name! So even when I was young I was an Oldbag…” She rambled on and on, something about being made fun of, and Miles was starting to regret leaving the witness preparation to the detective.
Then again, if he never saw this particular witness again, it would be too soon. Even though it hurt his case, he would be lying if he said he didn’t feel some vindictive satisfaction when Wright accused her of murder and found logic to back it up.
Only when Gumshoe passed along the report about Oldbag’s detainment did it hit Miles that her name was Wendy, and that in complete contrast to what he’d imagined, meeting her hadn’t made his attraction to Wright fade in the slightest. Rather, he felt nothing but irritation for the garrulous security lady and had the feeling she would be nothing but a continued nuisance.
Was it therefore possible that Wright was his soulmate after all? As little as Miles respected his profession, he could tell that Wright was operating on a steadfast belief in his clients’ innocence, reminiscent of how he’d always seen the best in people when they were younger. Was it even possible for a prosecutor and a defense attorney to be soulmates?
Over the next two days, he was so preoccupied with this question that he could barely hold a paper cup without crushing it. These feelings were becoming a problem, and if they didn’t go away, he could never face Wright in court again.
When Phoenix was in elementary school, he was certain that Miles Edgeworth was his soulmate. He’d re-evaluated that assumption in college when he met Dahlia, but after everything that had happened with her, there was no way she could be his soulmate. If anything, what happened made her his nemesis. Naturally, he had to re-evaluate his assumptions again.
As he became a full-time law student, an optimistic part of him began to revive the idea of Edgeworth as his soulmate, even as he continued to read rumors of him forging evidence and manipulating witnesses. Still, when he faced him in court, he had to ask himself: was it possible for a prosecutor and a defense attorney to be soulmates?
Seeing the way Edgeworth turned against his own witness to help him once he realized the truth, Phoenix had his answer. Yes, even if they were rivals for the time being, it was possible that they were soulmates.
So on December 25th when the news report mentioned Edgeworth being arrested for murder, Phoenix did whatever he could to investigate, eventually convincing Edgeworth to accept his defense in the trial. He heard that the case against him was solid, but he wasn’t afraid of losing– his soulmate was suffering and in danger, so all that mattered to him was doing everything in his power to save him.
If he’d won the trial for Mia’s murder by the skin of his teeth, now it felt like he was surviving to the next day by the skin of his teeth. Prosecutor von Karma was relentless, thorough in his witness preparation and holding no qualms about intimidating the judge into doing whatever suited him. Edgeworth had warned him that von Karma was like himself multiplied by ten or twenty, and Phoenix was inclined to agree, maybe even up the number.
By the end of the second trial day, though, Phoenix felt like he had a good chance of winning. He’d basically solved the case already. All that remained was to question the caretaker of the boat rental and figure out who he really was, and Phoenix already had a hunch about his identity.
Still, there was one thing that troubled him. Right after the trial, Edgeworth had told him he was having nightmares about a murder he had supposedly committed in the past. And while the letter he found in the caretaker’s safe was perfect evidence of what happened in the current case, the wording of the letter had troubling implications about the past, implications that Phoenix didn’t believe for even a second.
In case those implications were brought up in court, Phoenix checked the police records room again, which led him to meet von Karma face to face.
“Mr. von Karma,” he asked after hearing him insult Edgeworth, “you had an axe to grind with Mr. Gregory Edgeworth, didn’t you?”
Interestingly, von Karma hid his left hand behind his briefcase. “Me? A grudge against a mere defense attorney? Why?”
“Because he dealt a blow to your otherwise perfect trial record?” From what he’d heard about von Karma from both Edgeworth and Mr. Grossberg, it would track completely that he would obsess over a single penalty.
Von Karma had nothing to say, only giving a “hmph” as he brushed his thumb against the cuff of his sleeve.
Their conversation did confirm two things: one, von Karma was planning to bring up DL-6 in tomorrow’s trial; and two, he was the one who wrote the letter to Yanni Yogi instructing him to commit murder. However, as soon as this was confirmed, von Karma pulled out a taser and stunned him and Maya before taking the letter and leaving. He left one item behind in its place, a bullet from DL-6 that Maya had grabbed from him before being stunned. Phoenix only hoped it would somehow compensate for the loss of that perfect proof.
Miraculously, it turned out that all he needed to prove Yogi’s identity was the DL-6 case file and his pet parrot. Between the parrot’s name and the combination to the safe, he established a pattern, and once the pattern was established, Yogi confessed, both to his identity and his part in the murder. Although it looked like von Karma was going to get away with what he did, Phoenix was relieved to hear a not guilty verdict for Edgeworth.
Or he was, until Edgeworth decided to bring up DL-6 after all and confess his nightmare about killing his father. Von Karma smirked– clearly, this was what he had been anticipating. Since the statute of limitations on DL-6 was about to expire, it seemed they would have to hold an abrupt retrial. Von Karma had to have known this was going to happen, didn’t he? Well, Phoenix hadn’t been afraid of losing before and he wasn’t going to back down now.
In the version of Edgeworth’s nightmare that he’d told Phoenix the previous day, Phoenix noticed one detail that didn’t quite fit. He didn’t know where this was going to lead, but he trusted his instinct not to believe the nightmare at face value.
He was right to trust his instinct. He was grasping in the dark, but with help from what he could only assume was Mia’s ghost, he came up with a theory: Edgeworth threw the pistol, which fired accidentally, making a hole in the elevator door and hitting the murderer outside. After Edgeworth lost consciousness, the door opened and the murderer fired the deadly shot with the same gun.
Phoenix couldn’t think of anyone who had been injured at that time, but when Maya suggested that von Karma’s uncharacteristic vacation wasn’t just out of shock over his penalty, it made too much sense. He had clearly held more of a grudge than he was letting on, and according to Edgeworth, if he perceived a weakness in himself, he would do anything in his power to make it go away.
Finding the doctor who operated on von Karma would be impossible, but from what Edgeworth was saying, it sounded like this was a surgery he never would have had in the first place. In that case, there was only one thing Phoenix could do: use Gumshoe’s secret weapon that had helped him disprove the existence of Gourdy, the metal detector. “Well, von Karma?” he said. “I’m going to run this over you and see what we find.”
“Objection!” Von Karma grabbed his right shoulder, sweating profusely. “I… refuse!”
Despite von Karma’s refusal, the judge permitted use of the metal detector and demanded that von Karma submit himself for testing. As Phoenix approached with the metal detector, von Karma made a bid for freedom, reaching for the pocket where his taser was, but was stopped by a group of bailiffs, two of which held him in place as Phoenix ran the metal detector over his body.
The bailiff on von Karma’s left had a firm grip on his arm and the sleeve was pulled back slightly. Out of curiosity, Phoenix glanced at the names on his soulmark. The first, Damon, meant nothing to him. The second was partially faded and a little bit harder to read, but it certainly looked like it said Gregory. Could that mean…?
The metal detector beeped loudly against von Karma’s right shoulder.
Miles could hardly believe what he was seeing. That whole time, it was him…
Mr. von Karma tried to claim that the bullet in his shoulder was irrelevant, but Wright was having none of it. “You were so close… one day away from freedom. You see, I have proof!”
“Wh– what?” Mr. von Karma grabbed his shoulder again, the same motion as always, and Miles was struck with the implications: in hiding his involvement, he’d gone fifteen years with the wound untreated. No doubt he considered it the one personal weakness he couldn’t get rid of.
Wright struck a confident pose, hands on his hips and a smug smile on his face. “Who would have thought you’d dig your own grave trying to convict your nemesis’s son?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small evidence bag. “I can link that bullet in your shoulder to the DL-6 incident, and here’s my final proof.”
It was the bullet that had killed his father. The bullet that Miles had been convinced he himself had fired, that had actually been fired by none other than Mr. von Karma, his father’s nemesis (and this also explained why he had avoided the topic of soulmarks, preferring to act as if he had respected Miles’ father or otherwise not particularly cared for him). It had been fired from the same gun as the one that had shot von Karma, Wright argued, so the ballistic markings should be a perfect match.
There was no way out for von Karma. With a white-knuckled grip on his shoulder, he tilted his head back and let out a terrible scream, the same terrible scream that had woken Miles from nightmares for the last fifteen years.
“It’s that scream I heard in the elevator!” he declared. “Fifteen years ago… von Karma, it was you who screamed!”
Von Karma continued to scream while slamming his head against the wall. Once he ran out of steam, he confessed. Apparently, Miles’ father had gotten him penalized, and this was enough of a shock that he took the first opportunity he saw to murder him. This was the first time Miles had heard about a penalty. Was this another personal weakness von Karma had tried to make go away?
With that confession, the trial came to an end. He had been innocent then and he was innocent now. It seemed that what he remembered really had been a nightmare after all. With those parting words, the judge pronounced his verdict: not guilty.
“So it’s finally over, Edgeworth,” Wright told him in the lobby afterward, eyes shining with relief.
He hadn’t wanted Wright to get involved with a case involving his past, but now that it was over, he could see that it had been a good idea to accept his help. Wright truly believed in his clients, so of course he would believe in Miles as well. And… he had to admit, the lengths Wright had been willing to go to in this case had only deepened Miles’ attraction to him.
“... Wright,” he started to say. “I… I’m not sure how to say this.”
“I know, I know!” Miss Fey piped up. “Try ‘thank you.’”
Yes, he supposed that would be a better place to start. “I see… thank you, Wright.”
Everyone who had been involved in the case gathered in the lobby, with the witness from the first day taking a group photo and Gumshoe inviting everyone to “party” on his dime. Larry returned the money that he’d apparently stolen, as Miles had suspected, and Wright declared that if he’d known, he would have become a prosecutor. Miles had some paperwork to finish, but once he was done, he rejoined the others and Gumshoe took them all out to celebrate.
They ate at Gumshoe’s favorite steakhouse and raised a toast to Miles’ freedom, Larry and Wright engaging in some sort of enthusiastic toasting competition that ended with Larry calling a cab to go home early. The celebration began to dwindle afterward, and eventually, it was just him and Wright making their way back to Wright’s office since it was nearby and Miles still hadn’t gotten his car back.
“I missed you, you know,” Wright admitted as they sat together on one of the couches, his face flushed from the alcohol. “I wrote so many letters and you never answered. I know it was probably stupid to be so hung up over you, but I really thought…”
“I know,” Miles said. He’d felt the same way too, clinging to anything he could, any possible sign that Phoenix hadn’t forgotten him. “Hold on– you wrote letters?”
“You never got my letters?” Wright asked in disbelief. “I’m sure I sent them all to the address you told me. I don’t remember how many, but I always sent one for your birthday…”
When Miles had come back for his Signal Red keychain, he’d told Phoenix his new address at the von Karma mansion in California. He hadn’t lived there the whole time, but the von Karmas received mail at both addresses, so he should have received Phoenix’s letters. He knew he would have remembered Phoenix sending him birthday letters.
Still, he didn’t seem to be lying when he mentioned them, which led Miles to one unfortunate conclusion. “...He was keeping them from me.”
Wright slumped into the couch cushions. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Out of all the things he’d come to learn about his former mentor over the last several days, this was hardly a world-shattering revelation, but it still came as something of an eye-opener. “I never thought von Karma believed in the marks,” Miles said, “but if my father truly was his nemesis, he might have believed after all. Perhaps at some point he saw my mark and, thinking we were nemeses, sought to limit contact between us.”
“I don’t know,” Wright said. “To me it sounds more like he didn’t want you staying in touch with your old friends. Especially if one of your old friends was your soulmate.”
That… would make more sense. Miles supposed he was being too charitable in his interpretation. “Even so, I can’t say I regret reuniting in the way we did.”
Wright sat up. “How so?” he asked.
Miles took a deep breath. “Truth be told, the first time we faced off in court, I thought you were my nemesis. There was a debate we sometimes had in the von Karma household about who would be the nemesis of someone with many enemies, and one of the hypotheticals von Karma liked to raise was…” He considered explaining the intricacies of the defense attorney murderer hypothetical, but Wright didn’t need to hear it. “Well, it was something like what I thought you had become. And it was frustrating.”
“Frustrating how?”
“Because I was inordinately attracted to you,” Miles admitted, gripping his pant legs. “More than I had ever thought possible.”
“Really?” Wright’s eyes widened for a moment. “I mean… you can be attracted to your nemesis. I was.” He looked down, holding his wrist uncomfortably.
Clearly, there was a longer story behind that statement, but Miles wouldn’t pry into that just yet. “That was what I thought too. I thought it was a challenge I would need to overcome.”
“What convinced you otherwise?” Wright asked.
Miles pulled back his sleeve, letting Wright read his mark. “Meeting my real nemesis.”
Wright burst out laughing, clutching his side as he doubled over. “Her?” he choked out between wheezes. “The old security lady? She’s your nemesis?” Tears formed at the corners of his eyes, and Miles might have been offended if he wasn’t so adorable when he laughed. “I thought you’d have, I don’t know, a serial killer or a real-life supervillain as your nemesis. Not her.”
Despite himself, Miles found himself laughing along. Wright’s laughter was infectious, and looking at it from that perspective, it was kind of funny how out of everyone in the world, Wendy Oldbag had managed to be his nemesis.
“I can’t say I regret reuniting either,” Wright said once he regained his breath. “As much as it hurt to hear some of the things you said back then, I’m glad to be with you now, because even if I did think someone else was my soulmate at one time, I never once thought of you as my nemesis.”
Phoenix really was too good to be true. Perhaps one day, when he was less doubtful about his place in the world, Miles would tell him the full truth of his feelings. But today was not that day.
As they transformed the pullout couches into beds, Miles drifted off to sleep, grateful that at least he wouldn’t wake his soulmate if he had another nightmare.