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The boat was rocking.
That will be his explanation, he thinks, when the time comes to defend himself. And the time will come, he knows it, because what he has done here in the middle of Gourd Lake, on a windless night while fog swirled its way across the lake like converging, silent ghosts, was not something they agreed upon. And as Miles Edgeworth's body sinks, to be swallowed by sea monsters and dark waters below, Yanni Yogi lowers his shaking hand, his finger still tight on the trigger of the gun.
The boat was rocking.
It had been fifteen years since he'd last seen him, that crying little boy in the elevator car who had ruined his life. Time had not been kind to him, shaving off the soft baby fat on his face until he was all sharp angles and harsh lines, wrapped up in a trench coat with tired eyes. When Yogi had revealed himself to him, not as Hammond any longer but instead the court bailiff accused of killing his father, Miles Edgeworth hadn't flinched. And when he'd detailed his plans of revenge, his plans to frame him for murder because it was only fair, wasn't it, because the same had been done to him, because he hadn't killed his father, because he was an innocent man, Edgeworth had looked at Yogi with his weary gray eyes and said, "I see."
And that, itself, was infuriating.
Yogi had pulled his gun. He had only three bullets at the beginning of the night, and now one less: one for Hammond, two for the lake. His instructions were crystal clear.
Do not kill Miles Edgeworth.
Despite the fact that the waters were calm, despite the fact that the wind was down, there were two grown men standing in a small boat and one had just pulled a gun. Edgeworth had taken a step back, though there was nowhere to go. The wood beneath their feet, shifting, unsteady.
The boat was rocking.
The first shot hit the water, and Yogi didn't miss the way that Edgeworth flinched at the sound. He felt a wicked kind of satisfaction at that and cocked his gun for the second shot, but the boat, the boat, the boat was rocking, back and forth on the still lake's surface like glass reflecting all the stars and sorrowful angels from heaven that he long gave up praying to because he was not a man to be saved, he was no longer innocent.
And he fired.
Do not kill Miles Edgeworth.
The second shot did not hit the water.
Do not kill Miles Edgeworth.
Edgeworth touched his chest and his face raked in moonlight turned pale, his mouth half-open and blood blossoming between his fingers, red like the color of his fiancée's favorite dress, the one she wore the night Yogi proposed. He took a step backwards before he stumbled, before he tipped, and the splash was louder than the gunshot, water surging around his body and the spray dappled Yogi's face and beard and trembling hand.
Somewhere far across the lake there was the sound of a camera shutter. Somewhere far across the lake a man's body lies waiting to be tossed in, the one body that was supposed to be found when the police drag the lake in the morning, now joined by the one person Yanni Yogi was not supposed to kill.
And somewhere a man with snake's eyes waits to hear Yogi's explanation:
It was the boat.
The boat was rocking.
The boat was rocking.
It's quite the feeble excuse, though he supposes he shouldn't have expected anything more from such a feeble-minded man as Yanni Yogi.
Manfred's final revenge would have been, could have been, should have been perfect. Yanni Yogi summoned Miles Edgeworth to meet with him for the first time in fifteen long years. Yogi killed Robert Hammond, a single shot in the dark that he would never see coming. Yogi went out on the boat with Edgeworth.
"You utter fool," Manfred says coldly. "If you had followed my instructions to the letter, you would have been able to have your revenge and walk away from it unscathed."
"The boat was rocking," Yogi protests, as if that somehow changes what he has done. "It doesn't matter, really, does it? The Edgeworth boy's dead now, and good riddance to him."
As far as he knew, as far as society itself knew, Yanni Yogi was already a murderer in all but name. Manfred cannot fathom why he would come here, now, after such a critical mistake—does he think, perhaps, that Manfred will protect him now that he, too, has killed an Edgeworth?
Foolish as Yogi is, he is correct in a few of the details. Miles Edgeworth has joined his father in death, and while Manfred would have preferred that he do so after having his life fall apart around him, he can still work with this. With a few bribes in the right pockets, enough heads turned the other way, Manfred could very easily make all this go away. It wouldn't even be hard to spin it as if a vengeful Edgeworth had killed the man who defended his father's murderer, then taken his own life from the guilt.
It wouldn't be hard, and yet Manfred has no real desire to do anything to help Yogi out of the grave he has dug for himself. He could try to point fingers at Manfred, but who would ever believe Yanni Yogi?
"Good riddance," Manfred repeats, folding his hands behind his back as he considers his words carefully. "I was under the impression that you were not a murderer, Mr. Yogi, and that was why you desired such vengeance against the child who pinned you as one. I see that I was wrong about you."
He sighs, exuding disappointment from his very being as he turns to leave. He takes one step, another... then stops.
He adds, almost as an afterthought, "You'll receive no further aid from me, but I won't testify against you. Be grateful for that."
Yogi's feet shift against the ground behind him. There's a click, nearly silent, a sound that Manfred has heard before.
"No," Yogi agrees, "you won't."
The pistol fires.