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With Franziska refusing to give them any details about the case, there was nothing left for Phoenix and Pearl to do but leave the detention center. Phoenix was trying not to panic—or really, he was trying not to show his panic, because he’d heard that kids could really pick up on those sorts of emotion, and he wasn’t sure if he could take it if Pearl melted down again.
Not that he blamed her. In fact, he felt guilty trying to repress her natural emotional responses at all, not to mention dragging her around with him on a murder investigation. It was a little ironic, considering how her mother had made him swear not to spoil her innocence. She’d been a bit to blame for that too, though.
As they stepped out into the afternoon sunlight and headed for the crosswalk, Pearl reached for his hand. She was a little old to be holding hands just to cross a road, but the contact was actually pretty nice. Phoenix was extra careful to check for cars before they started into the road.
His eyes caught on a man: maroon coat, hair glinting silver in the sunlight. Phoenix ripped his gaze away. Even the sight of someone who just reminded him of Miles was enough to send pain like shards of glass into his gut (and he of all people would know what that felt like).
But that man… he’d looked a lot like Miles.
Like… a lot a lot.
They were already almost across the street. Phoenix twisted, making Pearl peep in surprise, and scanned the thinning crowd crossing the road with them. The man was gone.
He was hallucinating then, great. It wouldn’t be the first time. After Gumshoe had called him about the letter on Miles’ desk he’d seemed to see the prosecutor everywhere. A flash of maroon here, a glint of cravat there. Nothing as concrete as the man he’d just thought he’d seen.
Still, he’d slept terribly last night. Maybe the stress and the exhaustion were getting to him.
“Mr. Nick?” Pearl asked hesitantly. “Are- are you all right?”
“Yeah, sorry, Pearl,” Phoenix mumbled, leading the rest of the way across the street. “Just… thought I saw something. Someone.”
“Wright.”
Phoenix stopped short so quickly he dragged Pearl back and she stumbled. He swallowed, his throat bone dry. That voice… that voice.
Pearl stomped her foot. “Mr. Nick!” she yelped. “What-”
“Did you hear that?” Phoenix couldn’t turn around. He actually, physically, could not bring himself to turn around. “Did you hear someone say my name?”
Pearl peeped around, froze, and turned slowly back. “There’s a man,” she whispered. “He’s just staring at us.”
“Wright, what are you doing?” that same voice demanded.
Phoenix whipped around.
And there he was.
“No,” Phoenix said flatly. Pearl’s hand fell from his. “No. You’re dead. You’re gone.”
Miles Edgeworth winced. “Uhh… on the contrary, I’m… I’m alive.”
“No you’re not,” Phoenix mumbled, pushing his hands back through his hair. “I’m dreaming. I’m hallucinating.”
Suddenly, Miles let out an exclamation of pain. Phoenix’s head jerked up to see Pearl rearing back for another kick. “I think he’s real, Mr. Nick!” she huffed. “But let me just- check- one more time-!”
She kicked Miles in the shin again.
“Pearls!” Phoenix yelped, dragging her back. “Don’t- don’t-”
“Who is this child?” Miles demanded, staggering backwards. “Wright- is she- she’s not-”
“You were gone for a year, Edgeworth, how could she possibly be my kid?” Phoenix snapped. “She’s Maya’s cousin. Which you would know, if you’d been around at all lately.”
Miles’ jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “This is not a terribly warm welcome for a man who’s been away from home for a year.”
Phoenix blinked, incredulous. “A warm welcome?” he said flatly.
“That… maybe have been-”
“A warm welcome?”
“I shouldn’t have said-”
“You wanted a warm welcome after you made me think you’d killed yourself?!” Phoenix yelled. “I grieved you, Edgeworth! I thought you were dead! I spent my whole life trying to find you again and I thought you were dead!”
He heard a sniffle from beside him and his gaze shot down to see Pearl, teary-eyed and white faced as she watched him yell. Phoenix shut his eyes briefly and then crouched down to her level. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“D-don’t yell at him,” Pearl whimpered. “C-c-can’t you s-see how s-sad he is?”
Phoenix looked back to Miles. Before he wouldn’t have been able to pick out sad from his expression, but now that Pearl mentioned it… there was a slight droop to his shoulders, and even though his mouth was a rigid line, his eyebrows were drawing together in a micro expression of hurt.
“Edgeworth…” Phoenix murmured, slowly rising again.
Miles broke eye contact almost immediately, gripping his arm with his opposite hand. “I- I understand that my actions were… that they were hard to understand.”
“They were selfish,” Phoenix said, his voice still a little cold. “They were selfish, Miles.”
Miles’ gaze flicked to him at the use of the first name and he took a ragged breath. “That… that is a word for it, yes.”
A word. Not the word. “How else would you explain it?” Phoenix snapped.
“It- I-” Miles swallowed roughly. “Leaving was my only option, Wright. It was all I was able to do. But I couldn’t explain it—I couldn’t explain why, not then. I couldn’t tell anyone. I knew everyone—you—would try to talk me out of it. And if you tried, you- you might have succeeded. And you couldn’t succeed. I had to leave.”
“Why?” Phoenix cried, dragging his hands back through his hair. This was too much to deal with on top of everything with Maya. He couldn’t think straight. “Why couldn’t you just deal with everything here?! Or- or- why couldn’t you just leave and not fake your suicide, Edgeworth?!”
Pearl had started crying in full and was clinging to his leg. Miles looked a little like he wanted to do the same—though perhaps less so the leg-clinging part.
“I just couldn’t,” Miles whispered. “I don’t know how to explain it, Wright. I just couldn’t.”
Phoenix nodded curtly. There were so many emotions bubbling up inside of him they were pressing down on his lungs. He rested a hand on Pearl’s head and gasped in a breath.
Miles straightened. “I understand if you never want to see me again,” he said quietly. “That being said, I have certain information-”
“I don’t,” Phoenix snapped. “I don’t want you information. I want you to leave.”
“But- it’s regarding your trial.”
“I don’t care.” Phoenix looked up at the sky, fighting the onset of tears. He could get through this interaction. Miles would leave, he would calm down Pearl, and then they could turn their complete attentions to saving Maya. That was all that mattered. This storm of emotions raging in his chest? They didn’t matter. The look on Miles’ face? Didn’t matter. Nothing but saving Maya mattered.
He repeated it over and over in his head as he half-watched Miles’ shoulders droop. “I- I understand,” he murmured. “I have wronged you beyond forgiveness. I won’t bother you again, Wright, and shall take my leave.”
He turned and began to walk away. His foot had just landed in the crosswalk when fear rushed over Phoenix like an icy waterfall. “Wait!” he blurted, staggering forward, Pearl letting go of his leg. He was wrong: Maya wasn’t all that mattered. He couldn’t let Miles cross that road. “Please, please- don’t leave again. Please.”
His voice cracked and Miles turned around, staring at him wide-eyed.
“Please,” Phoenix whispered, inhaling raggedly. “I can’t lose you again.”
Miles hesitantly removed his foot from the crosswalk. A few impatient pedestrians brushed around him, but they both ignored them as Miles slowly walked back to stand in front of Phoenix. “Would you- that is to say- I have information regarding your case that-”
Phoenix really, truly, could not have cared less at that moment. He reached forward. Miles had just enough time to flinch, as if he thought he was going to be slapped, before Phoenix dragged him into a hug.
The other man was momentarily unresponsive, board-stiff in his grasp. Phoenix normally would have respected the clear boundaries he was putting up and let go, but he allowed himself this one moment of indulgence. He needed this. Miles could be slightly uncomfortable for a few seconds so he could wrap his arms around the man that had consumed his every waking moment for the past decade and a half and prove to himself that he wasn’t dead.
Miles. Wasn’t. Dead.
Phoenix buried his face in Miles’ neck, fingers digging into maroon fabric, inhaling a scent that sent him, vaguely, all the way back to childhood. A beat later, Miles’ hands brushed along his side and then came to Phoenix’s back to grip him with almost as much fervor.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, so quietly that Phoenix wouldn’t have been able to hear it had his mouth not been right beside Phoenix’s ear.
“I’m so glad you’re alive,” Phoenix managed, then firmly shut his mouth, knowing that if he said a word more he would entirely crumble, and he couldn’t, because they still needed to save Maya, they still needed to acquit Engarde. He knew that he should pull away, check on Pearl, hear Miles’ information on the case.
But for now, he allowed himself just one more moment to ground himself on the fact that Miles was alive.