Work Text:
Phoenix flipped through the pages, bleary-eyed. It was a few hours before daybreak. He took a sip of coffee and set his mug down on a form that was probably too important to leave coffee rings on.
He was cross-legged on the floor, the piles of papers having outgrown his cluttered desk space and now sprawling out onto the floor. Pictures, news clippings, reports all lay around him in piles, organized into invisible categories. Phoenix chewed on the end of his pen as he pored over one of the suicide reports. A senator. Phoenix exhaled through his teeth—Redd White really had fingers in everyone’s pies.
He set the stack of reports down and looked around, looking for something useful, anything. He needed something concrete. He pushed up onto his knees and reached for a heavy binder that sat open-faced on the ground, dragging it to his lap and skimming through the most finely-printed legalese he’d ever seen.
Something concrete. Just one damning piece of evidence. Something that wouldn’t slide off of Mr. White like all other accusations seemed to.
He had to. White would do something terrible if he didn’t stop him.
A nameless terror crawled up his throat at the thought. What terrible thing? What terrible thing would he do?
Phoenix shook his head and flipped through the binder, stopping suddenly and bending his head closer to the print to read it properly. His vision was so blurry with sleep, and the font was so tiny and cramped it was almost illegible. He rubbed at his eyes and leaned closer, but the words were inscrutable. Frustrated, he cast the binder aside and reached for something else, the first thing his gaze latched on to—newspaper clipping. The big, bold heading was just heavy black blocks to him, meaningless geometric shapes. The words below were tiny. It may as well have been a cryptogram. The thin paper stuck to his sweaty fingers when he tossed it aside and reached for something else.
Something concrete. Anything. He had to stop it from happening.
Phoenix got on his hands and knees, looking wildly over the papers that lay around him. Everything he looked at, everything he picked up became a jumble of lines. The words were suddenly foreign and unintelligible to him. Phoenix had to stifle a cry of despair, crumpling the papers and shoving them aside. There had to be something, something he’d missed, something. He threw papers aside haphazardly, searching, searching . Oh God. Oh God. He couldn’t fail. He couldn’t fail, because then—
Light from the hallway spilled into the office. “Phoenix, are you still—” said a voice over the creak of the door, and he looked up. Mia peered inside, her shadow blocking out some of the yellow light that poured in from outside. “Oh, Phoenix.”
Phoenix stared up at her. Mia closed the door and stepped inside, her hands on her hips as she surveyed the scene. She sighed a sympathetic laugh and crouched next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s late, Phoenix, you should really go to bed.”
“I can’t,” he said. He felt the pressure of building tears inside of his skull.
“It’s okay. I know. I’ve been there. But you’re not making any progress like this,” she said gently, rubbing his back. “You’ve got to go sleep if you want to be able to walk into court tomorrow.”
Phoenix shook his head, but he didn’t stop looking at her face. “You don’t understand. I can’t.”
“I know it feels like that. That’s because you care about your client.” Mia squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “I promise it’ll be okay.”
“Mia,” he said, “I can find something. I can find something, I promise.” He looked down at the wrinkled sheets of paper he’d been clutching in his hands. “I just—I just—” He looked up at her, and his lip began to waver. Mia looked at him evenly. His trembling fingers closed back over the pages, and he broke, face crumpling.
“I—I’m trying to save you,” he said in a thin, broken whisper.
Mia looked at him sternly. “Phoenix Wright. You’re a promising young attorney, and I won’t see you killing yourself by sleep deprivation before you’ve even seen two trials all the way through.”
Phoenix felt the tears dripping down his face, onto the pile of meaningless papers below him. “Come on, get up,” she urged, standing and extending her hand. “Don’t make me use my attorney voice.”
“Yes, Chief,” Phoenix whispered. He released the papers and took her hand, letting her help him to his feet.
“I can meet you before the trial for breakfast to look over some of your notes, okay? Just put it out of your mind and try to get some rest before then.”
Phoenix looked down at his hand, still in hers. He could taste the salt of his tears on his lips.
“Phoenix. Don’t look so worried. I saw you in your first trial. You’re a natural.” She pulled her hand out of his to pat his shoulder, giving him a firm, reassuring smile. “Oh, and, tomorrow—wear the pink tie. Goes best with your suit.”
Phoenix sniffed, straightened. “Yes, Chief.”
“Alright. And really, don’t work yourself out to the point of breakdown, okay?” She looked at the dark windows. “Do you want a ride home? It’s late. You can pick up your bike tomorrow.”
Phoenix shook his head, wiping at his face. “That’s alright. Thanks, Mia.” He paused near the doorway, tears still trickling down his face. “Thanks for everything.”
She winked. “That’s what I’m here for. Eight o’clock breakfast, alright?”
Phoenix pushed the door open, and the yellow light spilled out. “Alright.”
He awoke violently, hitting the back of his chair when he shot upright. He blinked and wiped at his mouth, realizing he’d drooled onto his paperwork. Damn. He’d fallen asleep at his desk again. He looked around the office, one hand coming up to scratch his head. His hair must have been a mess.
“Rise and shine,” a voice called from the sofa. Phoenix looked over at Maya, sprawled out as what Phoenix recognized as the Pink Princess opening played on the TV.
“What time is it?” he asked foggily.
“Ten-fourteen. PM. You just had a little cat-nap.” Maya sat up and giggled at the sight of him. “Nice hair.”
Phoenix patted his hair self-consciously. “I thought you were meditating?”
“I finished.”
“Right,” Phoenix grumbled. “And a new episode of The Pink Princess just happened to be on.”
“Crazy, right? The universe must be rewarding me for my good work.”
“Right.” Phoenix stretched his arms over his head, stifling a yawn. He leaned from side to side. His gaze rested the poster that hung next to the bookshelf, the one of Mia’s favorite movie.
“Did you ever see this?” he asked, gesturing to it.
Maya looked over it. “No. Mia told me I should, though.”
A beat as Phoenix considered it, still a little sleepy. “We should watch it.”
Maya looked down at the sofa. “Yeah,” she said. “I’d like to.”
Phoenix looked back at her, feeling guilty for bringing Mia up. He joined her on the couch and propped his crossed legs up on the coffee table with an exaggerated sigh, squinting at the TV as a commercial played. “What’s new this week with Neo Olde Tokyo?”
Maya rolled her eyes. “The Steel Samurai was set in Neo Olde Tokyo. The Pink Princess is set in Little Olde Tokyo, Nick. You’ve got to keep with the times.”
“The times are moving too quickly for me,” he grumbled.
“That’s because you’re getting old.” She waved her arm. “Look at you, nodding off at work. Next thing you’ll start forgetting your glasses.”
“I don’t wear glasses.”
“It’s already happening!”
Phoenix mussed her hair. “You’re so annoying.”
Maya shushed him. “Look, look, it’s back on!” She turned the volume up and begin to speak excitedly: “okay, so last episode, the Pink Princess was on the verge of being defeated by the Red Ronin, because she knows about her biggest weakness—do you remember from the one episode with the mountain, and that big fight where she lost her powers?—but at the last minute…”
Phoenix fell asleep ten minutes into the episode, mouth open and head leaned over the back of the couch. Maya rolled her eyes. When the episode was over, she turned the TV off and walked over to Phoenix’s desk to turn his off lamp, which was still illuminating his cluttered desk.
She glanced at the folder open on his desk, and saw it was a report about a senator’s suicide. Her mouth tightened at the grim subject matter, but when she read the note scrawled at the top of the clipping, her shoulders lowered slightly. White, written in handwriting Maya would never forget.
Oh. Maya closed the folder to read the front, and saw the label: Mia Fey Murder. Closed.
Oh. Nick. Maya looked at him, asleep on the sofa, then at the movie poster on the wall. This was why he’d brought it up. He’d been looking through the old case file.
She closed the file and turned the lamp off, sinking the office into darkness. She finished closing up shop for Wright & Co. Law Offices, watered Charley, and left quietly, so as to let Phoenix sleep. He needed it. She decided to just leave a note on the coffee table, for him to see when he woke up:
finished closing the office for you, gramps.
love, me
P.S. can we go out for breakfast tmrw? I’m thinking waffles.