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Maya blinks and sways, the shock of her consciousness abruptly returning to her body making her stomach twist and her knees buckle.
Someone gently grabs her shoulders to steady her, and she looks up into Nick’s tired, but smiling, face. “Hey, Maya. Welcome back.”
“Nick…” Maya droops against his arm as she glances around the courtroom. “Did we win?”
“Yeah, thanks to you and Mia,” Nick says, practically beaming. “She always knows what to say to help me get my head on straight. I’m really lucky to have her counsel.”
His words are like a sucker punch. Maya’s glad she was able to help Nick in some way—it’s why she’s been working so hard on her training—but every time he talks about his conversations with Mia, like she’s not really dead, her chest tightens painfully.
She’s only spoken to her sister once since the morning before she was killed, and that had just been a brief exchange while Pearl was channeling her. Nick, on the other hand, has talked to her so many times. Sometimes, the unfairness of it makes her want to scream: she can enable others to talk to her sister, but she can’t talk to her herself. She could if Pearl channeled her, but how can she ask her to do that? What right does she have to put that burden on her? Maya knows firsthand how draining spirit channeling can be. And Pearl is her own person, with her own life to live. She can’t be channeling a spirit all the time.
Maya has to face the fact that her sister is gone. To her, at least.
The grief of it hits her randomly, and sometimes she even finds herself forgetting, pulling out her phone when something exciting happens to make a call to someone who can no longer answer. Other times it’s omnipresent, a hole in her life shaped just like Mia Fey. She still hasn’t deleted that last conversation they’d had from her phone, instead listening to it over and over again whenever that gaping hole feels like it’s going to swallow her completely. It was one of the last times she’d talked to her sister – one of the last times she’ll ever talk to her. She can’t bear to delete it.
She’s scared that, if she does, she’ll forget the sound of Mia’s voice.
Nick’s smile falls as a frown pinches between his eyebrows. “Hey, are you alright? You look pale…”
Maya snaps out of it, habitually burying her negative thoughts. Now isn’t the time to feel sorry for herself. “I’m fine, Nick! Just hungry – how about treating me to burgers to celebrate our victory?”
Nick’s expression flattens as sweat drips down his forehead. “Can’t you pay for yourself for once? Or treat me?”
Maya laughs brightly. “What are you saying, Nick? Where would a lowly spirit medium in training like me get money like that?”
“And where would a lowly defense attorney get it…?” Nick mutters, but Maya knows he’ll cover for her. He always does.
But tonight, their usual burger joint doesn’t lift her spirits like it normally does. The food’s good and cheap so they go there often, but it’s also where they went after Mia’s case, the first place Maya and Nick had ever eaten together, before it really sank in for Maya what had happened.
Grief slams into her just walking through the door, and she staggers.
Nick catches her again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Maya can’t put on a brave face this time. Her lip trembles and she sniffs audibly.
“…Let’s just head back, okay?” Nick murmurs, shrugging off his suit jacket and draping it over her shoulders.
She nods and leans into him as they walk back to the office. He doesn’t ask her what’s wrong—he either already knows or just isn’t sure what to say—but she appreciates it in that moment. She doesn’t think she could talk about it even if he did.
Nick unlocks the door for them and then gives her space, ducking into the office—her sister’s old office—while she sits on the couch in the front room. Taking out her phone, she navigates to the saved conversation between her and Mia. With shaky hands, she presses play, holding it up to her ear as she listens to her sister’s voice. She mouths the words she herself had said, and for just a moment, it feels like she’s talking to Mia again.
Tears slip down her face, and she wipes at her eyes as the conversation continues.
Unbeknownst to her, Phoenix watches this scene from the doorway, a frown pulling at his lips.
--
A few days later, Maya walks into the Wright & Co. Law Offices and does a double take. Nick or Pearly must’ve done a lot of interior decorating recently – there’s a huge, almost wall-length mobile whiteboard propped up on one side of the room that wasn’t there before, and bells and wind chimes of all shapes and styles dangle from stands set up at various places around the room.
They’re an odd choice for decor, and clash horribly, but Nick’s never been known for his style.
The bell near the whiteboard suddenly dings, making Maya jump. She whirls around to stare at it, but can’t see what would’ve caused it to ring. There’s nothing around it that could bump into it, the office windows aren’t open, and the air conditioning has been broken for a long time, so it can’t be due to airflow. She cautiously approaches the whiteboard, reaching for a pillow from the couch to use as defense, but freezes as a marker suddenly flies off the tray, hovering in mid-air. She gapes at it in astonishment as it starts writing something on the board.
Hey, Maya. How have you been?
The pillow falls to the ground with a dull thud. Clearly a ghost is haunting the office, but who could it be? A Fey ancestor? Someone she and Nick put away? Mr. Edgeworth’s father?!
The marker squeaks loudly as it continues writing: It’s me! Mia.
“…Mia…?” Maya murmurs, hardly daring to believe it. “Is that really you…?”
It is! Don’t worry – I have evidence to support my claim. The marker starts drawing a picture of a cracked urn with ‘AMI’ written in bold letters along the side. I still haven’t given away our secret. Seems like I’ve carried it beyond the grave, as well!
Maya’s eyes widen. When she was really young, she accidentally knocked over the Sacred Urn, shattering it into a million pieces. She’d cried and cried until Mia found her and started helping her put it back together. By the time their mother arrived on the scene, Mia was the one gluing the pieces together, so she took the blame for it. To this day, Maya and Mia are the only ones who know that it was really Maya who’d broken it. So this ghost has to be Mia! And now that Maya’s looking more closely, the handwriting on the board is definitely her sister’s.
She hadn’t thought that spirits could interact with anything in the world of the living if they weren’t being channeled by a spirit medium. But Nick must’ve realized and put this whole set-up together, just so Maya and Mia could talk.
Tears brimming in her eyes, Maya grins and says excitedly, “Mia! I’m doing great!! I’m managing the whole office for you, so you don’t need to worry!”
Mia draws a grinning emoji and then writes, I knew I could count on you.
Maya puffs up proudly. “I’m also slowly getting better at channeling – I’m going through my training arc, just like the Steel Samurai! Oh, are you able to keep up with it still? There was a new movie recently!”
Oh, I saw it. Mia draws a crude likeness of the Pink Princess. I especially loved the Pink Princess, modeled after my own little sister!
Maya laughs. “She captures my likeness perfectly, doesn’t she? Oh, and I love the scene where—!”
Phoenix walks into the office sometime later to find the sisters still chatting, the entire whiteboard filled with words and drawings, the wind chimes ringing like crazy, and smiles. Looks like they found his homemade Ouija board.
Neither of them notice him, so he ducks out again, leaving them to their long overdue reunion.