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“Hurry up, Mister Edgeworth! We wouldn’t want to miss the start of the marathon!” Maya Fey was extremely eager and happy on this day in particular, but the sight of her being in the Prosecutor’s Office was rather an oddity. It wasn’t like she was around here very often after all. But, after discovering Miles Edgeworth’s secret love of the Steel Samurai, she had managed to convince him to watch the marathon being run on TV today with her, an activity would take up all of their afternoon into the evening.
Even more of an oddity, however, was the sight of Miles Edgeworth smiling. Not an ironic smile or a smirk, but a genuine one, even if it wasn’t a broad one.
“Come on now, Maya, it won’t start for another 15 minutes, we’re not in that big of a rush.” Miles replied, shaking his head.
Maya just gave him a smile. “Maybe, but we still need extra time to prepare snacks! If you think I’m watching this marathon without food to keep me going, well, you should know better than that by now.” The raven-haired spirit medium giggled gleefully.
“I still don’t understand. How did you even find out that I liked The Steel Samurai so much before you confronted me about the fact?” The prosecutor raised an eyebrow at Maya.
“Well, I have my sources, but I figure it’s best to keep confidentiality, Mister Edgeworth…”
“…Detective Gumshoe?”
“…unless you should happen to guess them correctly.” She grinned. “Is he really that predictable?
“I would say you have no idea,” Edgeworth started, smirking, “but you know him well enough by now to know that’s a fact.”
“Fair enough!” This got a giggle out of Maya as she pushed the button for the elevator.
“You realize you pushed the button for the elevator, right?”
“Yes, and…?”
Miles looked off to the side. “You know I don’t do well with elevators.”
“Well I really don’t wanna climb all those stairs!” Maya let out an exaggerated huff. “It’s not my fault your office is way too high up, mister Chief Prosecutor. You’re the one who didn’t want to watch it in Nick’s office anyway! Come on, Trucy’s not so bad!”
“Oh trust me, it’s not Trucy that I am worried about, I can assure you of that.” He shuddered a little. “I like Apollo and Athena well enough but they’re both so…loud sometimes.”
“Well I’m kind of loud too, but you never seem to complain about me.” Maya retorted.
“For one, you’re nowhere near as loud. Also, you don’t shout or yell very often, and you generally talk about more pleasant things rather than argue with another person over whose turn it is to clean the toilet today. But all of that is beside the point. I…really do not want to take the elevator up, Miss Fey…”
“Come on, Mr. Edgeworth!” Maya encouraged him with that smile of hers. “Think of it as a way of facing your fear! And hey, I’ll be here so you won’t be alone, okay?”
He gulped and considered this. But when she smiled at him like that and really wanted to give him reassurance…well, he just couldn’t say no. “Very well Miss Fey. Maybe it won’t be as difficult with you there.” Deep breaths Miles. You can do this. He looked over at Maya who gave him another smile of encouragement, and that gave him the strength he needed to step onto the elevator. So, as the doors closed, it was just the two of them there.
“Alright, now uh it’s up around the 12th floor, right?” Maya asked for confirmation.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
She reached out to push the button for the 12th floor of the prosecutor’s building…
…and that’s when it happened. The lights flickered out for a brief moment and the ground started rattling beneath the two of them, as if irony had manifested itself and decided to play a sick, twisted joke on Miles Edgeworth.
When the lights flickered back on, the ground was still shaking, and Miles was practically clinging to Maya.
“M-Mister Edgeworth…?” Her face flushed red. Was Miles Edgeworth, of all people, really holding on to her for dear life and…She shook herself out of her daze. “A-Are you okay?”
Miles could hardly breathe. If he struggled anymore, he would probably hyperventilate. “N-Nnngh….! N-No…t-the….e-elevator…s-stopped…ground…s-still shaking….M-Maya, I-I can’t handle this…”
She had never seen him this panicked, even the first time she saw him curl up into a ball after an earthquake had hit. “Mister Edgeworth-”
“N-No, j-j-just…call me Miles, y-you can drop the…f-formality…I-I don’t think I’m going to make it…”
“…Miles…” Calling him by his first name was a bit strange but…she liked saying it. “Look, don’t be so dramatic, that’s just the aftershocks, it’ll be gone soon-.”
“N-No…I-I need to say this now, Maya, i-in case w-we don’t make it or I-I can’t…nn-nnngh…” He whimpered, scared for his life, and his breaths sounded more strained and terrified. “I-I…nnn….nngh M-Maya, I…love you!” He didn’t know how he managed that. Probably through the sheer adrenaline that the fear of actually losing his life in this nightmarish prison of his own fears was sending through his veins.
“W-What?!” Maya Fey’s went absolutely crimson at this point. “Y-You…”
“Y-Yes.” He managed between deep, panicked breaths, blushing probably as much as Maya was at this point. “I-I love you…Maya…” with that, he shakily pressed a soft, sweet kiss to her liips (even more shakily due to the tremors beeath them, of course). He never thought he actually would kiss her, much less kiss her before he was about to die. It was a wonderful last moment to have. Maya had gentle, beautiful lips. How she ever ate so many burgers and kept them looking and feeling so perfect was a mystery he’d have to try and solve in the afterlife.
But Miles Edgeworth was making one terrible assumption in all of this. Because as soon as he broke away from the kiss, the tremors slowed more than before and ceased altogether.
“…o-oh great…this is even worse….now I get to die of oxygen deprivation…” He looked away from Maya. “E-Er…I-I’m sorry Maya, I thought-”
“Uhm, Miles, I hate to interrupt you talking about what you blurted in the middle of fearing this was the end, but we never left the ground floor…
The prosecutor’s red face turned a notable.shade of pale as the elevator doors suddenly opened to reveal a good few people staring wide-eyed at them.
“…and we didn’t lose power in the elevator for very long either.” Maya added.
“N-…NGHOOOOOOHHH!” There went Miles’ trademark sound of utter astonishment and defeat. “D-Did these people hear that entire…?”
“Well, judging from my amazing powers of observation and seeing the look on their faces,” Maya giggled a little before concluding that sentence, “my guess would be that yes, they did.”
“Gah!” His expression was quite the mix between anger at the listeners and total nervousness and fear between both them andd Maya. “I’m fairly certain that in emergency instructions on what to do in an eartquake, there’s no instruction for eavesdropping on other people’s conversations, and elevators are not where you are supposed to head for!”
“How right you are, Miles Edgeworth.” Maya replied wth a big grin on her face. “Now if you all could give us some privacy…” The spirit medium paused to close the doors to the elevator and as they started to slide closed, she quite audibly said, “…I have a prosecutor to kiss.”
Miles hardly had time to give a response. Maya quickly tapped the ‘12′ button, uninterrupted this time, and pulled him by his cravat into a deep, tender kiss, even better than the one he’d managed in the heat of the moment. It was almost like their surroundings dissolved around them, leaving only them in the middle of that blank space…although, he didn’t really want to think about the elevator dissolving out of existence so he didn’t linger on that thought very long. All there was right now was Maya Fey…that was where he kept his focus.
The kiss lasted a little less than half of a minute, even though it felt like a whole lot longer to both of them, and when she moved away, Maya was smiling shyly. “M-Maybe we should put you in more supposedly ‘near-death’ situations if it will get you admit those sorts of things to me.”
“I-I believe I will take the alternative of being more open and willing to say things to you from now on, if that’s fine with you.” Miles hastily replied, though he was smiling too, a little awkwardly. “Maya…you really…?”
Maya rolled her eyes at him. “Of course I love you too, dummy! I wouldn’t have kissed you if I didn’t!”
The prosecutor smirked a bit. “I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“Ohhh, I see. You’re a sly one.” Maya teased, adding a giggle. As the elevator doors opened once more she glanced at his watch. “Told you we would need the extra 15 minutes…I-I just…didn’t think it would be for the reasons we did need it.”
“If you think I’m done giving you affection for the time being, you’re gravely mistaken, Maya Fey.”
“Even as we walk through the hallway your incomparable office is on, Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth?”
Even so. He smirked as he led her by the hand. “Though I must admit one thing…”
“What’s that?”
“This is the first time in my life that I have ever been thankful for an earthquake.”