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“I am rather surprised you were so persistent, regarding this visit. Don’t you have more important things to focus on?” Edgeworth eyed Phoenix as he poured two cups of tea. The two of them sat at the small table where normally Edgeworth’s chess board lay. Said chess board was temporarily moved to the desk now.
It has been around a week since the Engarde trial. Since the case involving Maya’s kidnapping. It was without a doubt, the most difficult case Phoenix ever found himself facing. Not only did he need to earn a complete acquittal for a person he knew very well to be guilty, Maya’s life was threatened if he failed to go along with the demand too.
However, Matt Engarde was found guilty and Maya’s kidnapper, having seen that he could not trust Engarde as his client and was being deceived all along, broke his contract with him. In the end, Matt Engarde was nothing but a selfish, unreliable person who only looks out for himself and no one else.
“Yes, well… It has only been a week. I still do not get cases very often.” Phoenix fiddled with the brim of his tea cup.
“Glad to know some people out there have so much free time.” Edgeworth sipped his tea. If there is one thing that did not change in him during his year long absence, it was his dry sarcasm. “But I have to say, you put up an impressive performance on the Matt Engarde trial.”
“... I couldn’t have done it without your help.”
“Yes… I am… relieved Maya was unharmed.” Edgeworth’s usual cold tone softened ever so slightly as he stared into his tea cup. “However, given that you have been restlessly begging to visit me for the past week, I doubt that is all you wanted to discuss.” Edgeworth looked back at Phoenix.
This time, Phoenix genuinely could not look him in the eyes. Yes, Edgeworth did help him in the Engarde trial. Without his help, Maya would have surely been killed by Shelly De Killer and Engarde would have been acquitted. But still, despite all that, he still found it difficult to even be sitting here, next to Edgeworth on this bright, sunny day. There was something that made his stomach curl into a pit and his nerves light up with sudden fury whenever he was near Edgeworth, and he knew very well what it was.
“Yes… it is something very important.” Phoenix nodded, unsure of how to even break the topic. He knew he should try to put it as gently as possible. Edgeworth was never one for discussing such delicate matters. There was silence between the two of them as Phoenix tried mincing his words. In the end, it was Edgeworth who had to break this silence. “Yes, what is it?”
Phoenix sipped his tea, just so he could delay the inevitable moment of having to look into Edgeworth’s eyes. “Edgeworth… Can you tell me what you were up to, after your trial last year?”
There was a very long pause. Edgeworth put down his tea cup, his gaze turning away from Phoenix. “After that trial… where you uncovered the truth...” He began slowly. “I felt like my world had turned on its head. Everything I knew about what it meant to be a prosecutor, everything I knew about myself and my life… it all changed after that day.” Edgeworth stared down under the table. “I realized I needed time to reflect. Reflect on what kind of path I have been walking as a prosecutor. I had to realize, the path I have walked… has not been right. At that time, I believed that a perfect record was all that mattered. So my policy was to convict every defendant guilty. I believed that we could never truly prove who was guilty or who was innocent.”
“Do you still believe that?” Phoenix asked quietly.
“The only thing I believe in now, is the truth. A prosecutor’s goal should be finding the truth, not a guilty verdict.”
Thinking about it, Phoenix could obviously understand why Edgeworth felt the need to leave and reflect on his situation. The truth that was uncovered during Edgeworth’s trial last year would not be easy for anyone to accept and live with. Phoenix could understand and respect that. But that still did not clear up his biggest, glaring problem regarding this matter. “So… what about that note? ‘Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death’... were you serious?”
There was another long pause. Phoenix could see the hesitation in Edgeworth’s eyes. But his demeanor would not change. Regardless, Edgeworth would always do everything in his power to not show a drop of vulnerability, no matter what. “Once I left abroad, the part of me that was known as the ruthless prosecutor has died. I knew I was set on a new path and once I returned to the country, I would return as a changed man.”
“That’s it? That’s the only reason for your cryptic note?”
“I have nothing else to say about it, Wright.” Edgeworth did not look Phoenix in the eyes for several minutes at this point. It did not miss Phoenix’s attention. “Edgeworth… I thought you were dead.” The tea cup in Phoenix’s hand began to tremble. “I was not thinking in any of your metaphors. I thought you died.”
“But as you can see, I am clearly not dead.” Edgeworth finally looked back at Phoenix. His narrowed eyes were still just as cold and guarded as ever, but there was something else twinkling in them for a brief moment. However Phoenix could no longer notice that, through his slowly rising anger. Either Edgeworth was really that oblivious or he was doing a terrible job of hiding his true thoughts. “I haven’t heard from you for months after your trial. Then the next thing I knew, you’ve gone and died.” Edgeworth wouldn’t say anything more. Phoenix went on. “Then you just come back, acting like you never even left. Acting like nothing even happened.”
Edgeworth sighed. “I have nothing left to say.” Now his gaze would not shift from Phoenix’s eyes, not even for a brief moment. Phoenix also kept his gaze on him. “Quite frankly, I did not even consider that anyone would take that note so seriously. It hardly matters anymore and I suggest you just forget about it.”
So in the end, that was all Edgeworth had left to say. How can he make it sound so simple? Was he really that insensitive, that oblivious, or was he just not being upfront with Phoenix about this? Whichever it was, Phoenix’s patience was running low. The fact that Edgeworth was still sitting there, acting like himself. Appearing so unmoved, so unbothered, completely failing to grasp what that note meant for Phoenix.
That was it. At that moment… something snapped.
The tea cup fell out of Phoenix’s hand and shattered with an ear piercing noise, tea stains forming a large puddle on the floor. Phoenix stood up from his chair, looking down at Edgeworth with such anger he possibly never felt for him before. “How can you just sit there? How can you even look me in the eye and say such things? I thought you were dead for a whole year, Edgeworth and you want me to just forget about it ?”
“Wright-”
“I thought you died. How does that make you feel? How can you just act so normal about it, how can you say it does not matter?” Phoenix slammed his shaking hands on the table, glaring down at Edgeworth. “Do you really have nothing to say?!”
For the first time, Edgeworth looked genuinely baffled. He did not say anything in response for at least a solid minute. But then he stood up, too. “I… I am sorry.” Phoenix blinked. Somehow, this was not what he expected Edgeworth to say in response to his outburst. “I never meant to make you believe I had died.”
“Then… why? Why that note? You say it was meant as the ‘death’ of your old prosecutor self, but I don’t believe you.” Edgeworth closed his eyes, looking away. Phoenix’s expression began to soften, his sudden fiery rage dying down as quickly as it came. “Why did you never… talk to me? I could have-”
“Wright…”
“Yes?”
“Do you recall what I just said?”
Phoenix considered it for a moment. “You said… You had to reflect. Reflect on what kind of path you have walked as a prosecutor. Right?”
“Yes, that is right.” Edgeworth nodded. “It was all because of you.” He turned his gaze back to look at Phoenix.
“Me?” Phoenix raised a brow.
“You stood up to me in court, and against your defense, I tasted my first defeat. Then later on… you defended me in court when no one else would. You changed the way I looked at everything. After the truth you uncovered, after I reflected on just what kind of prosecutor I had been all these years… I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed of myself. I felt ashamed of who I had become… and I felt ashamed to face you in court again.”
Phoenix could barely believe what he was hearing. To think that Edgeworth would feel ashamed to see him in court again. Edgeworth, the infamous ruthless prosecutor with the unbreakable win record. “... Did you really?”
“The truth you uncovered in that trial made me change the way I looked at my own role as a prosecutor. I never would have imagined that the man I called my enemy would end up saving me. After all that… You really think I would have had the strength to talk to you, during my darkest hour?”
“I…” But Phoenix found himself at a loss for words. That anger long since driven out of him. Edgeworth walked to the window behind his desk, staring outside. Phoenix followed, though kept a few feet distance. “The truth is, when I wrote that note I was at my lowest point. It was the most vulnerable I have ever been in my life. I was truly ready to end it all.” Phoenix suddenly felt like he was stabbed in the heart. While he was spending day and night in the office, trying to keep himself occupied with something while Maya was away for her spirit medium training, Edgeworth was on the brink of ending his life. Never once did he consider checking on him, to see how he was doing. To see if he was alright. Not until it was too late. “But then… something unexpected happened.”
“What?”
“Detective Gumshoe found me. I suspected he must have started to look for me once he found my note. It is rather incredible he found me in the nick of time.” A sad smile spread across Phoenix’s face for the briefest moment. Detective Gumshoe had the tendency to show up at the last moment, whenever an urgent situation was happening. He is a master at that, truly. Edgeworth’s posture still shifted slightly, his head bowed. He only saw his back, yet Phoenix could read his expression from his posture alone. “As soon as it dawned on him, what I was up to, he insisted on keeping an eye on me for the rest of the day. I could not shake him off, no matter how hard I tried. I ended up staying with him for two more days. I did not return to my office.”
That must have occurred while Phoenix visited Edgeworth’s office and found the note himself. He remembered the office looked the same as always and the note looked like it had only been written a few hours ago. The aching feeling in his heart grew stronger. While he was on his way back to his own office, wondering what Edgeworth’s note really meant, Edgeworth himself was this close to ending his life. If it wasn’t for detective Gumshoe… He will have to thank him when he sees him next. “I knew I couldn’t step foot in the courtroom again, until I learned what it truly meant to be a prosecutor.” Edgeworth went on. “So I left the country shortly after, to reflect and gather more experience. During that time, detective Gumshoe was the only one who knew what happened to me and the only one who really knew where I was.”
There were several minutes of lingering silence after Edgeworth finished talking. Phoenix was left speechless. Back then, one year ago, in the months following Edgeworth’s trial, he never thought much about how Edgeworth was doing. He knew he probably needed space. After all, in that trial, Phoenix not only shed an entirely different light on the subject of Edgeworth’s life’s most traumatic event, the murder of his father during the DL-6 incident, his father’s killer turned out to be Manfred Von Karma too, Edgeworth’s mentor prosecutor.
He knew Edgeworth would be going through a hard time after all that. But he never would have imagined that it was this bad. That it escalated to the point where Edgeworth considered just ending everything and vanishing for good. And he did not even try to do anything about it, until it was too late and Edgeworth was already gone, having made up his mind.
The pit in his stomach and the ache in his heart was getting worse by the second. The anger he felt towards Edgeworth for disappearing like that, was long gone by now. If anything, he just felt horribly guilty for never trying to look out for him more after the trial. Phoenix walked closer to Edgeworth by the window, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. “... Edgeworth…”
Edgeworth turned around to face him. Somehow, even after all this, his expression remained just as unreadable as it was, minutes before he started talking about this incident that happened. The only thing Phoenix could see was a slightly distant look in his eyes. “I… I spent months in the office, not taking any cases after your trial. I had all the time in the world, to come and see if you were alright but I… I never even considered it until it was already too late, I…” Without even thinking, he tightly wrapped his arms around Edgeworth, his eyes starting to fill with tears. “I’m so sorry…”
“W-Wright- I-” Edgeworth hardly knew how to respond to the unexpected gesture. He hesitantly wrapped his arms around Phoenix. “... It was never your responsibility to look out for me…”
“It’s not about responsibility, Edgeworth.” Phoenix backed away from the hug, so he could look him in the eyes. “People who care about you are going to look after you. I do. So does detective Gumshoe.”
Edgeworth looked away uncomfortably. “Yes… well… I…” He sighed which sounded more like an exasperated groan. “Take no offense, but at that time you were really the last person I wanted to see. That was not out of any anger or spite, just… out of shame. Even if you did come to see me, I doubt it would have helped.”
Phoenix’s shoulders slumped. “Still, after I found your note… for a long time, I felt responsible. I felt like I failed you.” Phoenix stared down at his hands. “I defended you and yet… it was not enough. I felt like it was my fault. I felt like I did not do enough, like-”
“ Wright. ” Edgeworth remarked rather firmly. Phoenix looked back at him. “The only one who was ever responsible for my failures was myself. If anything…” He paused, something softening in his stone cold expression. “I owe you some level of gratitude. If it wasn’t for you… I would not have been able to face my mistakes and grow as a person.”
“Well, you are welcome. I was glad to help. I was… angry, when I first saw you again after you came back. But at the same time…” A smile spread across Phoenix’s face. “I am grateful to see you again.”
Before leaving, Phoenix decided he might as well help Edgeworth with cleaning up the remains of the broken tea cup and the spilled tea. He was the one who dropped the cup after all. After they were done with that, Phoenix looked at Edgeworth one more time before heading for the door. “Hey Edgeworth… are you going to go back abroad now?”
“I am planning to soon, yes.”
“Take care out there, and…” Phoenix hesitated for a moment. “Maybe call me once in a while if you find the time?”
Edgeworth grimaced. “I’ll… try. If you insist.”
Phoenix thanked Edgeworth for the tea and for accepting his request to visit and was soon back on his way to Wright and Co. law offices.