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Pess, unfortunately, is herding him.
It takes all Miles’ strength to not scream at the top of his lungs when it starts. She, of course, is polite as ever. Her nose is wet and cold as it brushes his knuckles, before she takes her leash—his leash, now—between her teeth and gives a deceptively soft tug.
To the doorway, it says, but Miles would really rather just curl up in a corner somewhere and die. He counts his blessings that no one’s here this late, at least.
The thing no one ever told him about having a service dog was that it was not some miraculous balm to all that ailed him. In fact, in many ways, it was merely replacing one form of mental anguish for another. Pess’ presence in his life is a very good thing, as it’s mitigated the threat of bodily harm. He doesn’t have to worry about nasty falls, concussions, or—god forbid—crashing his car. There is definitely something to be said for the room to be proactive.
But good lord, the anxiety.
As soon as he felt the hot puff of her snuffling at his wrist, Miles’ stomach began to churn. We are now on a timer, said the seismic sniffer at his flank, and she is merely doing her job, so it would be cruel of him to respond with anything other than gratitude. Still, the petulant child that lives in his heart—the same one that needs a service dog in the first place—wants to fall to the floor and start throwing a tantrum, what do you mean we’re on a timer?! I don’t wanna! I wanna go home!
It had already been such a dreadfully long day. On the weekend, there were a scant few people wandering around the precinct to begin with, and this late in the day they had all gone home or locked themselves in their offices to prep paperwork and write reports. Miles, of course, is grateful for this much at least—there are no desks in the records room to crawl under, and he’d really rather not have anyone see him going fully catatonic within the threshold.
With a heavy, trembling sigh, he allows Pess to lead. She takes him to that very same threshold, then falls into a sit—upright, alert, staring him down with big, watchful eyes. Miles goes through the motions—crisscross on the cold linoleum, shuffling out of his suit jacket, folding it like a neck pillow around his head in case he blacks out. Truthfully, he wishes he could just lay down, but with the lack of cover it’s far too risky of a move. Just his luck, of course.
Satisfied, Pess inches herself into his lap. Her snout finds his hand again—this time palmside—and a few more warm snuffles make an attempt to ground him. She whines low, as if to say, don’t be afraid.
But he is.
Balling up, Miles touches his forehead to hers, trying his damnedest to breathe deep and slow. That unseen timer ticks down, and he’s unsure if the clock hanging on the precinct wall has gotten louder or if he’s already started hallucinating phantoms of phantoms. Somewhere in his ears, there sings the distant ding-ding of two steel doors drawing themselves open, and that confirms it’s likely the latter. The closest elevator is way back down the hall, far away from here.
Mouth dry, throat tight, he squeezes his eyes shut. His stomach feels like a proper rock in his gut, obtrusive and sour and wrong. He buries his fingers in Pess’ fur, begging the nerves in his body to stop fraying and screaming and firing off. They fire off twice as hard, of course, and Miles feels the sweat dripping cold down his back, frigid in the tinny indoor air conditioning.
Underfoot, the earth begins to shudder.
Pess, in contrast, is still as a statue while the very world around her shakes and bends and crumbles. His eyes are closed, but Miles can hear the binders and books clattering to the floor, the shattering of glass as vases fall from the tables. One door squeaks on its hinges, another slams shut—he jolts, holding tighter, jaw constricting as he makes his best attempt to swallow back tears. The building groans as it moves, and he tries not to think about the fact that he’s stuck here on the bottom floor, in a room full of unstable shelving that’s already gutting itself amongst the tremors.
There’s a brief moment of lucidity before he goes elsewhere, where Miles wonders how Pess remains so brave. Was she not an animal? Instinctual and motivated, above all else, with survival? How did she not tremble when the earth did, how did she not howl and cry and cower in fear? Was it that she felt the overwhelming need to be strong for him? Or was she truly not scared at all?
It doesn’t matter. He cannot ask, and Pess cannot answer, and then Pess is gone, anyways. Pess does not come with him to the elevator, cannot travel back to that moment in time long before she was even born.
(Even if she could, she’d never be able to do much to change the ending. She’d always loved Mr. von Karma, and he’d always been just as good with her.)
Above him, the lights buzz, and buzz, and buzz. They’re so loud, so grating, and Miles is far too ungrateful to appreciate when they seem to say fine then and shut off. The elevator hangs suspended in its shaft, rocking back and forth by what feels like a hair-thin thread, threatening to snap at any moment and send them all falling to their catastrophic end. Everything happens in some impossible state, both horrific slow-motion and inescapable speed. Lungs constricting—he’s been here three minutes, he’s been here three hours—Miles stares down at the polished steel of that pistol, trapped inside his own mind and screaming at his hands to stop.
Every breath in feels like fire.
His father’s eyes are white.
The ending’s already written, and yet he tries to fight it.
Shaking hands—sweat-soaked, small, inelegant. He’s so new. He’s so small. The world is too big, too loud, too scary, and he is so small.
He is so small.
His fingers are too short to even curl properly around the pistol, and they won’t stop screaming, can’t they see the world is too loud? What good is adding any more noise to it?
He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t—
A pixelated tune shakes him out of his body. The elevator blurs and swims around him, and suddenly its cadence is all he can hear. Instinctually Miles looks down, and there’s a cell phone in his hand where the gun was prior. He can’t read the words on its shining face—the letters are ordered wrong, upside-down, incoherent, impossible—but he is a stranger that watches himself from the outside as he answers. As he somehow knows he has to answer.
Trembling, Miles watches himself from the fringes as he raises the phone to his ear.
“Miles Edgeworth,” he rasps into the phone, and it doesn't feel like his name.
“Hey,” says the voice on the other end, shaking ever-so-slightly. “Are you okay? It’s Phoenix.”
“Phoenix…” Miles echoes, the shape of it warm in his mouth. “Hello.”
“Hi.” Nervous laughter. “Where are you?”
Where… is he?
That’s a good question.
“That’s a good question.”
There’s an exhale on the other end. Not quite a sigh. Exasperated, tense… worried. Miles sucks in a broken breath of his own. His face is hot, cheeks uncomfortably wet.
“We can figure it out together,” says Phoenix. “Describe your surroundings.”
Blinking long and slow, the first thing Miles registers is the fur beneath his palm. Pess is looking up at him with big, shifting eyes. He fights the horrible ache in his arms, moving his hand slowly in dragged out motions across her long, fluffy coat. She licks her lips, ears back.
“I… dog.”
Phoenix laughs, this time more genuinely. “Pess is with you! That’s good. I was hoping she was. What’s around you?”
Swallowing an uncomfortable feeling, Miles takes in his surroundings. There is a stillness in the air that does little to relax him, a quiet that is nearly suffocating in its contrast to mere moments before. His insides feel buzzy, the fluttering in his stomach so distracting it’s hard to think, his tongue feels like dead weight in his mouth. Still, he tries, knowing he’s being waited on.
“A mess,” he scowls at the toppled shelves and cabinets. “Really, did no one have the forethought to nail everything down? Last I checked, we lived on a fault line.”
More laughter. Almost… celebratory. For some reason, Miles feels like he’s back in elementary school, being praised for his grades.
“Keep going.”
“It’s quiet,” he says. “I don’t like how silent it is. I think the clock’s fallen off the wall. There’s no one at the front desk.”
“Eerie. What colour are the walls?”
“The same horrible off-white as the rest of the criminal affairs department—”
His breath skips, an almost choking thing. Miles clamps a hand over his mouth, fighting against the sick feeling that pools deep in his gut. More tears slip out, hot and unpleasant as they trickle down his knuckles. On his lap, Pess whines some more.
The numbness that’d been tingling across his fingertips and face shocks itself away when the wetness makes contact. Gagging uselessly into his palm, he squeezes every muscle he has and begs the wave of empty nausea to subside. There on the other end, Phoenix somehow understands.
“Hey, Miles?” He sounds even softer, now. “It’s alright. Just try and breathe, okay?”
Idiot. Like I haven’t been trying.
Stomach lurching again, he balls up more, trying his damnedest still.
“Can you talk? Or do you just want me to talk at you?”
“Talk at me,” Miles squeezes out the words through his throat as it seizes. “Please.”
“Alright,” Phoenix says, “It’s August sixth, 2021. Can’t be sure but I think you’re in the records room. Uh, you treated me to tea last weekend and it was really nice. Told me about the case you were working on the drive home, and I helped you with it. I had a really good time.”
Suddenly, his voice is coming back in spurts. “Yes… me too.”
“Yeah? That was a neat little place. Never would’ve discovered it without you, so thanks.”
It was more of a closet than a café, really. Nestled in a larger, brickwalled office and barely marked besides a sign that simply read ‘coffee.’ Inconspicuous enough that it was never overcrowded, and one of Miles’ favourite places to sit and do work when his office began to drive him crazy.
Breathing deep, he remembers Wright’s jagged smile, inhales the lingering scent of earl grey. For whatever reason, it’s this that snaps the last few inches of him back into himself—like a magnet latching itself back into place.
He drags his hand up Pess’ back, scratching her behind her ears, closing his eyes, breathing. His stomach is still throwing a bit of a fit, but it’s manageable.
“I think I’m alright.”
“Yeah?” says Phoenix. “That one sounded pretty bad.”
“I’m conscious, aren’t I?”
“Fair enough.” He huffs out another laugh. “Can you make it home alright?”
Attempting to stand, Miles takes stock of his vitals. He’s a bit sore, but that’s to be expected—flashbacks usually saw him clenching his muscles, grinding his teeth, overall just holding as much tension in his body as was humanly possible. Hands splayed in front of his face, he studies their lingering tremor—light, insignificant, but there nonetheless.
“I think I can manage, Wright.”
“Good, ‘cause my five minutes are up.”
Indeed they are. Sure enough, his phone beeps its little call waiting song, and then Franziska’s number is flashing on his screen. Quite aggravatingly, Miles had suddenly found himself with not one, but two people who felt the slightest shiver underfoot and felt the need to call him to make sure he was alive. Maybe a less abrasive person would find this thought comforting, but Miles was Miles and his loved ones had enough to argue about already. Honestly, it was a miracle they’d come to an agreement at all.
Franziska had written a contract. A bloody proper plea deal. Presented it to Wright with demands he look over it, negotiate. They had done this in private, without even thinking to ask Miles if it was something he’d wanted to begin with. He’s not sure he’d have an answer to something so absurd, anyways.
“So they are,” Miles says, leaning back ever so slightly. Then, “Thank you, Wright. Do take care.”
“You too.”
Wright never hangs up first, so Miles mutes himself for one brief moment, sucking in another laboured breath. Deep, shuddering, wheezy from sobbing. Lets it fill his settling stomach, cool his fraying nerves. With fingertips still trembling, he answers the call.
“Franziska.”
“Miles.”
“To what do I owe th—”
“Shut your mouth,” she interrupts. “Are you safe?”
“I am.”
A pause. “Are you alright?”
“More or less.” He surveys the damage out of the corner of one eye, swallowing something thick. “Pess is with me.”
“Good girl,” Franziska purrs through the phone, as if the pooch will hear her. Maybe that assessment isn’t too far off base, because her tail starts wagging almost immediately.
“I’m in what’s left of the records room,” Miles tells her, “I should be home in twenty. Is everything—”
“Don’t you dare ask me that question, Miles.” He hears her whip distantly crack against the hardwood. “Your belongings are fine, and even if they were all in tatters you would be given the same instruction. Come home now, take the longest bath of your life, and stuff your face full of hot chocolate and the takeout I’m about to order you. Am I understood?”
The way that humans manage to so consistently find different definitions for the same word boggles the mind. Flashback, clinical: a disturbing sudden vivid memory of an event in the past, typically as the result of severe psychological trauma. Flashback, standard: you’re thirteen years old on a cold January night in Munich, and your (adopted) (brand new) (younger) (older) (how did this happen?) sister is on tip-toes in her wool pyjamas, messily spooning instant cocoa into warm milk.
There in his memories, Miles can still feel the tear in his throat (from screaming, from sobbing, from waking her) and the teartracks that itched on his cheeks. Franziska is illuminated only by the light beneath the microwave, warm-toned and gilded as she struggles to work the stove. Miles, of course, does not tell her what he dreams about—but every child has nightmares, regardless of their content, and Franziska does not get discouraged—she gets results.
Papa says a glass of warm milk is standard, she had said, but he also said nothing about additions being against the rules.
And so, somehow, this too became tradition—to choke back and chase away the taste of gunpowder with a hearty swig of chocolate powder. Sometimes, all it took was a whiff of something sweet to pull the friendly ghost of his sister’s arms around him.
That is an insufficient amount of marshmallows, Miles Edgeworth! she screams somewhere far off in his head, nearly spilling the bag as she wrests it from his still-shaking hands.
“Do we have marshmallows in the cupboards?” he asks in the present, absentmindedly.
“Please, Miles.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “What kind of fool do you take me for?”