Archive of Our Own ^beta

New York City, USA. December 30th, 2016.

When Miles Edgeworth left his final goodbye note on his pristine office desk, the initial plan was to walk into the Pacific Ocean. But the beaches of Los Angeles are a horrible location for one to commit suicide, too busy and populated even in the dead of winter, nothing about it felt suitably poetically dramatic, somehow. The thought of holding a gun, especially to his own head, nauseated Miles; the memory of watching a man's organs slowly fail before him took any form of poisoning or overdose off the proverbial table, and even he wasn’t wealthy enough to afford something like a garage to lock himself in with a running car; jumping off of something might be doable, but a juvenile fear of heights still made his stomach turn at even the thought of falling. Every reason or justification, he would soon realize, was shoddy and intentionally poorly thought out, but still Miles decided if he was really going to kill himself, he couldn’t do it in California.

That was how he ended up on a red-eye with nothing more than the messenger bag already in his car and his courtroom suit. The soonest flight out and, perhaps more importantly, east was to New York, where he had been once before as a child. Of course, a five hour flight actually gave him the time to think, and by the time he had landed he had decided that, instead of finding the fastest way to end his own life here, he would book a hotel room in Manhattan for the week. Just in case. In case of what, Miles hadn’t decided yet, but on the yellow-cab ride from Laguardia to Times Square his stomach swirled with a heavy, nauseous dread. Uncertainty, he realized with a semi-ironic twinge, followed him to the sunrise over the Atlantic coast.

By now, that final evening spent in California is a blur. After his release, he destroyed his office then meticulously put it back together like nothing had happened, he ripped out chunks of his own hair then carefully shaved and washed his face, made a plan to kill himself, but booked a plane ticket anyway. Miles couldn’t really say what brought it on, but he couldn’t imagine his freedom being liberating with the chains of who he knew himself to be before. At midnight came the tipping point with a perfectly calligraphied message, and a promise to himself immediately broken. The sky over the central USA felt full of dread, full of judgement, and even as his eyes grew more and more heavy Miles could not stop shaking with some horrible and unplaceable energy.

New York is, or has been, different. It’s colder and snowy, for one, and more condensed, more bustling in the early morning than L.A. Part of him wants to relive that childhood trip with his father: walk the whole of Manhattan again and again from neighborhood to neighborhood, visit the Met, see a show on Broadway, maybe. But he doesn’t. That first day in the city, the eve of the eve, Miles immediately puts the do-not-disturb card on the door handle before curling himself up in a ball on the floor and covering his bare body under the thick duvet cover from head to toe. His whole form is full of an incessant anxiety which manifests in ice-cold sweats and a bout of hyperventilation which lasts so long he nearly passes out from the overwhelming exhaustion of it all.

The 30th is a Friday, and, worse, the Friday before the new year. That night, Miles sits pressed up against the balcony door and listens to the sounds of partygoers below, all laughing and talking and enjoying themselves in the promise of what the following days would mean to them, not to him. Miles told himself on the flight that he would try and see the new year out, then he would do it. Maybe. He cannot commit to any real plan anymore—all of the organized planners and meticulously crafted schedules mean nothing here, three hours ahead of whatever was happening back at what Miles supposes is his home, that alone throws off one’s perfectly synched internal calendar. 

How long would it take them all to realize he’s gone, Miles wants to ask himself, but then he realizes he doesn't know who them is supposed to mean. Maybe the family he doesn't have anymore, or the friends he maybe never had? Realistically, no one would realize until Monday at the earliest, when one of the department paralegals knocks on the door to his office to discuss the week's hearings and finds it door unlocked and room empty, save for that single sheet of paper. (The first week of January was always one of the busiest for first appearances, he remembers. How could he leave them all to do it without him? He adds it to the list of cruelties he has committed.) 

As Miles stares down into the blinding lights of a city he does not know, dusted with snow he has not seen in years and filled with six million lives he could never understand, it is 10 p.m. on the 30th, only 15 sleepless hours since his arrival in Manhattan. But it is only 7 p.m. in L.A., and Miles cannot help but imagine all the people he never really knew in their homes he never saw eating their dinners or washing their dishes, or working late in their offices. Down below on the street college students and families and coworkers laugh together. Are they laughing in L.A. too? Would they laugh at him?

He realizes, with a twinge of something, that the only people he can recall are the people he knows from work. His paralegal, Detective Gumshoe, the judge. Phoenix Wright. In his imagination they are all smiling, living full lives full of love and not thinking about him, not knowing about the note or his upcoming death or his pathetic present state and not caring. Worse, he thinks about the people, now nameless and faceless to him, behind bars shivering and alone and caring too much about his eventual catastrophic fate. He too is shivering and alone, but he has the freedom, unlike them, to walk outside and feel the snow drift onto his shoulders and breathe the thick city air.  He cannot use it—freedom in itself has become another chain constricting his throat and making it impossible to breathe, just another nightmare.

He stares out the window until his eyes are too heavy to be held open, and when he wakes up the sun is rising on the final day of the year. Miles stands, slowly and without that grace and poise he had spent years practicing, and stares down at his own shaking hands. Hands which have held lives within them, and with that power had crushed them as if ants. Miles stands still yet shaking for what must be entirely too long, mind racing and yet unable to think. Without realizing, he stumbles over to where his bag was thrown onto the bed. Within is his passport with a photo of a stone-faced and unfamiliar 17 year old Miles Edgeworth glaring up at him, his wallet, his keys, stacks of case-files he would likely not read along with a random scattering of too-expensive pens, and his prosecutor’s badge. His cell phone is there, too, which holds all the ability to reverse this mess in its small black frame. He could, if he wanted, just go back and pretend like nothing ever happened, pretend like he hadn’t dramatically uprooted his life in attempt to quietly end it, but he ignores it and decides that, even if he’s going to kill himself, he should probably buy some clothes other than his court suit, which lays crumpled on the floor.

But the idea of leaving, of walking down those six flights of stairs to the lobby and facing the world for a period even if for the briefest moment is a guarantee against his half-hearted promise. If he were to leave these four walls, Miles fears he would throw himself into the East River, or in front of the subway tracks, or something equally dramatic and life-ending. He tells himself he will leave the hotel after the new year, so at least if he does do it, it will be in accordance with his pre-existing aspirations. Which means no new clothes.

Miles lays in the same position as the night before until mid-afternoon when hunger finally presents itself after nearly two days of running on adrenaline, and he orders room service which he can only pick through about half of before an overwhelming nausea takes hold. He thinks of everything and nothing all at once, just staring into the space outside his window. Miles tries to put on the TV to something, anything, but he realizes soon enough that he cannot get this television in New York to play his favorite Los Angeles news station, and so he gives up and lets the speaker babble on incoherently behind in. His window faces north, he realizes, which is towards the museum his father took him to as a child, not more than eight years old. He saw Starry Night there, stared into each blue swirl until it all burst together behind his eyes with the realization that this was something, that the sudden feeling rising in his chest was art, and it became his favorite thing he had ever seen. Miles now sees the irony, sitting alone and shaking on a hotel floor staring towards the Starry Night yet unable to see it, and he thinks about van Gogh lying alone and bleeding in a field in rural France from a self-inflicted wound. He no longer has a favorite anything, he decides.

It isn’t until past 8 p.m. that he tries to clean up that heap that consumes him, puts his only clothes in the washer and stands under the pulsing hot water of the shower completely still, as if lifeless, and staring at his own feet. He does not leave until the chime of the laundry machine goes off and his skin is blotched bright pink. It is nearly 10 p.m. when it does, and the news channel Miles turned on earlier has already begun to show where the ball will drop in Times Square mere blocks from Miles’ room.

He had forgotten about that ritual, too caught up in his own semi-mania of just running to register the ridiculously high spike in the price of the room. With the realization, a restless anticipation seizes Miles from his previous stupor, and he paces the hotel room in his suit button-down and slacks until his feet ache and he hears a large cheer from below his window and the countdown begins at 60 seconds. Looking down, there is a sea of people smiling, counting down with each number, and if Miles squints hard enough he can see the bright lights at 7th and Broadway where the ball is going to drop in 58 seconds, 57, 56.

Do all these people have their own hopes? Surely, they must want to live in this new year. While Miles is figuring out how to end his own life, blow out his own brains, slit his own wrists, what do they dream of?

45, 44.

In Los Angeles, it is not yet so close. But still, Miles imagines Wright and his assistant in gimmicky glasses, drinking sparkling cider and writing down their resolutions. They still don’t know he is gone. Why does he care about them? Why would they care about him?

30, 29.

He tries to imagine what all of their resolutions might be, and what his own would be if he was still the man he was a week ago. Miles draws a blank on every front, it seems frivolous to think about wanting anything in his present state.

19, 18.

Still, the view is beautiful. The bright lights and advertisements are an assault on the eyes, but here, like this, with the snow and the people and the joy in the air, the urban expanse of neon is beautiful in its own way.

5.

He looks down at the crowds again. Perhaps they all want to be kinder people.

4. 

Have more hope in the world.

3.

Not give up and run away so easily.

2.

Not make a life based on cruelty.

1.

Not be like Miles Edgeworth.

0.

The ball drops, and the crowd below erupts. Poppers go off, couples kiss, drunk college students woo and dance. ‘It is the new year,’ Miles thinks with a heavy dread settling into his throat. It isn’t until a few seconds after midnight that Miles makes his resolution: he will stay true to his note, kill prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, but he doesn’t know if the rest of him will follow. 

In the morning, Miles blows a few grand on a new wardrobe—he buys silk button-ups and wool pants and turtlenecks and a nice new trench coat all in his customary muted reds and browns and greys. He buys a suitcase, too, and a ticket for a flight landing in Heathrow Airport tomorrow.

London, the United Kingdom. January 4th, 2017.

Miles flies out of JFK International on the 2nd, and lands in England in the early morning of the 3rd. As the plane descends, he gazes intently at the inky pool of darkness encompassing the Thames and the bright city lights surrounding, and it is something out of a familiar postcard he has no one to send to. It almost feels like a homecoming as the stomach-turning descent begins. Most of Miles’ supposed university experience was spent in England, though the differences in legal education meant by the time he was 19 he was enrolled in a prestigious California law school with a degree from one of the world's most prestigious universities and a 179 on the LSAT. Though, everyone knew he was not actually being taught in those classrooms. Trial by fire, as the old saying, or rather, Manfred von Karma, goes. Miles maintains a certain fondness, though, for where he spent the closest thing to his years of youthful independence. With another jerk, the plane lands and Miles lets out a deep sigh of the breath he had not realized he was holding. When he lands, he has five missed calls, and he ignores them with a great shame looming over his shoulders.

Miles had arranged ahead of time to rent a small upstairs room in South Kensington for the month, offered very kindly by the widow of an old professor. Part of him, the most cynical and jaded and self-loathing part, is glad that the only connection to his past there died before he could see how far Miles has fallen. Once, he had potential, that nebulous quality which is said to make the greats so. Much good all that potential did for him—where did it go? Presumably, it, too, was locked in the Los Angeles County Jail years ago.

He walks to his room as the city awakens, people rush to and fro on their ways to work and school and home, and even though he, too, is walking, Miles feels somehow motionless in comparison. He finds the key hidden exactly where his landlady, professor Arrington’s widow, told him it would be: hidden in a hanging pot of almost wilted peonies. The room is a second floor flat, the staircase tucked away behind the proper house where Mrs. Arrington lives alone. It is clear the room was never meant to be a complete domicile, far too small and dusty and stuffy, but it will do, and as Miles arrives he sets his stuff down and starts the kettle on the old gas stovetop for his customary cup of black tea as the cold London air nips at him through the cracks in the brickwork. The small window facing the street, as clouded over with residual rain as it is, provides enough of an escape for Miles to spend a long time staring over the mundane life of all the people below, as has somehow become custom.

That afternoon, still thrumming with the energy of 20 sleepless hours, Miles takes a walk around the neighborhood in the pouring dreary rain. He passes by the museums without even fully realizing they are there as a profound loneliness begins to rip through his stomach gazing at the passers-by in groups with their families and friends and lovers. It is the same loneliness that has proliferated since his childhood, rendering his hands ice cold and jaw clenched tight. To acknowledge it, however, was to acknowledge his own fundamental weakness, his whole folly in the eyes of his mentor. Miles is, and always was, too soft, too sensitive. Perfection cannot be achieved in tears over another silly nightmare, perfection is not found in caring about one’s friends or families, and perfection is certainly wholly unrelated to the music and the writing and the enthusiasm of Miles’ childhood. Perfection is found in hammering out the frivolous feelings which turned what could have been a 180 into a 179. No matter how hard he tried, that foolish heart would always prevent Miles from being the desired perfect in every way.

In another life, that folly could’ve been a sort of heroism—he could have been intelligent and sincere, calm and devoted, precise and loving. He could’ve been something greater, something whole rather than fractured into pieces and parts that could never be fully put back together, as if his whole personhood was that of a cracked looking glass. He could’ve held life in his hands without strangling it out. The thought is quickly dismissed as a child on a bicycle rides recklessly past and splashes a puddle in a suitably dramatic fashion onto Miles’ already soaked boots. It should be a reminder of something, representative of something he misses, but he tells himself he will not dwell, not interpret as such, so he does not. He instead interprets it as some kind of divine punishment. For what, he cannot decide.

There is a small theater tucked in a side-street close to his apartment. It is so small, in fact, that Miles didn’t even realize it was there when he first moved in. Any time he had been in London before, he would walk to the cornices of The Globe theater alone and in secret with a leather-bound notebook in hand. Miles, when he was still a teenager and still thought there could maybe be another path for him, would see each show he could there and study each moment of the performance with a level of devotion which rivaled his legal studies. He could recite nearly all of Hamlet’s monologues from the distant memory of each performance (though he was, in truth, a terrible actor) and relay the exact events and endings of any given history or tragedy. 

But something about that young man he once was steered away from the comedies, likely he thought them meaningless drivel of mistaken identities and overly crass sex jokes, not serious enough to justify. Perhaps the judgement still holds on in some recess of Miles’ mind, but he sits down to watch Twelfth Night anyway. He tells himself it is because this is the only show at the only playhouse near enough to his room, which isn’t even really true, but he uses the excuse as justification anyway. Really, some part of his heart which had read the script once knew it would only be fitting. And besides, he was trying to kill the Miles Edgeworth he once was.

Miles knows the show well enough besides. A sister, independent and newly orphaned, cloaked in her brother's clothes—the show is not an apt metaphor for him and his sister, but the lights come up on a young actress playing Viola with silver-blond hair hanging just to her shoulders and dull eyes sharpened in their own determinate way, so he makes the comparison anyway. 

The theater is a small blackbox, no more than 50 or so seats modeled in a thrust layout, and the Thursday showing he now watches is barely at half capacity, civilians and theater-goers he could never know dotting the seats occasionally in their own little bubbles. And he is oh-so close to the performers. He watches as the show goes on with rapt attention how the actress's eyes narrow and sharpen with precision, how the actor playing Sebastion tenses up his shoulders as if in defence, how terribly un-alike the two siblings look. It is a good show, great, even, but Miles cannot suspend his disbelief when all he can see is his own sister stepping into his shoes with a condescending grin. He knows that they would not be this play, out of all of them. Twelfth Night is a comedy, after all. They'd be better fit for a tragedy—Titus Andronicas, perhaps, because, at the moment, nothing feels more apt than the father killing the son and the daughter in a spectacular and gruesome fashion. It is just more blood on his hands—that had never stopped the man before. 

Miles is too close, he realizes, when in Act II the actress playing Viola stares into him as she speaks. Her eyes are a steely, almost grey blue, and although her voice is so painfully and obviously British, Miles hears her tones in something closer to German in that moment. She stands on stage alone in a pair of men’s pants not made for her, pinned up at the ankles, and Miles sucks in a breath in the pause she takes before her eyes narrow in on his own. He mouths along with the words as she speaks to him—this is the only line he knows from this show.

“Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness / wherein the pregnant enemy does much.” she says, and although the context of the line is not anything familiar to Miles, her eyes linger a moment before darting elsewhere in the crowd for the rest of the monologue. It is good, she is a good actress. But Miles cannot breathe through the rest of the second act, nor after the intermission, and soon enough every line, every joke, every expression on each actor's face becomes an all-too-real blur he is drowning in. Each little word twists itself into a knife, into another reminder of every point at which he has failed, and eventually Miles feels like he himself is the fool worthy of everyone’s judgement. The crowd around him laughs, and for a moment it seems they are laughing at him.

He leaves before the fifth and final act, and he pretends the siblings are cast back out to sea to be crushed, too, under merciless storm. A certain guilt racks Miles’ ribs, he knows it is bad form to leave a show in the middle of a scene, but to see a happy ending for that not-Franziska and that not-Miles wouldn't feel real to him, it couldn't. He stares out at the city roads as he stands in front of his door, and his eyes dart back to the playhouse doors. ‘I could’ve loved this still,’ he thinks ‘the theater and the beauty and the performance. Why did I stop?’ He knows the answer now, perhaps he always did. The walk back to his apartment is cold, air still wet with rain, and he welcomes every minute discomfort in it all. ‘O time, thou must untangle this, not I’ he thinks with some ironic twinge. 

The morning after the performance, at the corner café on his block he has become a frequent visitor of, he sees that young actress with bright blond hair and almost blue eyes by some auspicious divine punishment. She sees him too, clearly, and as they look at each other for the briefest of moments and with shame bubbling in Miles’ stomach, the illusion shatters. She could never be like his sister. Without the heavy stage lights, her skin is too pink and full of life, her lips curl into a smile too naturally, and her eyes open too wide to be like her. She laughs with a friend, or maybe a former co-star, and wears clothes too bright and colorful for the dreary London winter with shoulders slumped down rather than drawn tight, and a deep embarrassment for ever trying to liken this woman he never really knew to one he knew once forms a lump in his throat. ‘Your disguise,’ Miles thinks, ‘is not wickedness at all.’ 

Miles tells himself that he leaves London a week before his tenancy is up only because he wishes to see the countryside, which is partially true, but more so it is because every time he tries to leave his flat to walk across the streets once more, his eyes are pulled back to the playhouse door. He spends the week dotting around the south of England, and, ill-advisedly, returning to Oxford for a two day tour before he plans to travel back eastward to Folkestone and then southward to France. 

The perpetual raincloud which surely hangs over all of England follows him northwest to Oxfordshire and the colleges within. At Brasenose, where he spent his late teen years, young men and women like a younger version of Miles rush around, arms full of books and dressed in upscale coats and scarves as they speak to each other all highbrow and pretentious and verbose, and Miles is somehow still young enough that he doesn’t look too out of place among them. 10 years prior, when he was really too young to be there, he walked amongst them perhaps the most highbrow and pretentious and verbose of them all, freshly pulled out of his international all-boys preparatory school. He stares out at it all, everything slightly left of how he remembers it, from the side of the chapel entrance where everything is weathered and grey and rain-soaked. 

With the distant echo of a clock-tower, the crowds of students seem to disperse. Sitting together, a few yards from where Miles stands and huddled on a bench under an awning to protect themselves from the near-freezing rain, a group of three students, a young woman and two young men, crane their necks over a novel in the lap of the center boy, their voices getting louder and louder in some passionate discussion self-contained. Miles cannot help how he, in his nostalgic brooding, picks up on their conversation from his post.

“—is the point. Clarissa is just like Septimus, she just has the wealth and status to not lose her mind,” says the center boy, his newsboy cap slowly sliding down his blond hair and onto his face.

Recognition shoots through his spine, and he straightens his back in the recollection of it all. They must be taking English with Bradshaw, just as Miles did, and reading Mrs. Dalloway for the winter. He smiles to himself, just a little bit. He always liked that class, and liked Woolf’s meandering style even more.

“I do not think it is her money,” says the young woman, her accent almost French in the way it curls around each vowel, “people expect of Clarissa. She has a role, a station in society, but Septimus had long lost his.”

‘Which is why he could kill himself,’ Miles thinks but does not say, ‘he had nothing to lose.’

“Marie,” the third boy, Scottish, from the sounds of it, narrows his eyes at her, “she may have a role, but she is just as lonely and powerless as he is.”

“Then why is the novel named after her? It is as Professor Bradshaw says, there must be something about Clarissa which sets her apart, yes? She is happy he does it—why?” the girl, Marie, asks, and the three of them sit in contemplative silence a moment in their picture-perfect tableau of academia.

With the re-emergence of their fervent discussion, Miles walks the other direction. ‘The girl was right,’ he thinks, ‘people expected much from Clarissa, she could not die.’

He walks through the Fellow’s Garden, where he used to ache to have conversations like that of those three students with his own peers. He could not blame them for disdaining him—he was young, far younger than anyone else there, filled with faux-egotism and constantly speaking of his mentor. Back then, he thought of it all, the pressure and expectation and cruelty, as being the fuel of the fire of his own greatness. The softness and encouragement of his childhood was a trap, a well-meaning but foolish practice in dulling his intellect into something pathetic and weak, and any softness he tried to project was labeled an expression of his own folly. Part of him also knows, as much as he loathes to admit it, whatever pressure and expectation and cruelty he faced would seem kindness compared to how he and his mentor treated his own sister. The shame of it makes him want to vomit.

Passing by the trees which cannot flower this time of year, memory after memory form an onslaught in Miles’ mind of each and every moment of almost-freedom he achieved amongst these very same shrubs and grasses and flora. It was here, under a clear night in late spring, that Miles kissed a girl for the first and only time, though it ended with him hyperventilating in his dormitory later that evening. Only weeks later in the very same garden, he kissed a boy for the first time, which ended poorly for completely different reasons, most of which could be attributed to the fact it was 2009 and he was surrounded with insecure and over-compensating British boys. Best not to think of it. It isn’t as though Miles can bring himself to pull any meaning from it all—he hadn’t allowed himself to pull any meaning from it then, either. He was 17 then, about to leave England for Los Angeles again, and the memory makes it something of a blessing that he did not spend much longer at Oxford after. 

He never told anyone about either experience, the shame of each feeling rendering him into silence, which was then replaced with the perfectly manufactured perfect young lawyer he was to become. As hard as he tried, it never stopped the nightmares, or the doubt, as to the imposter he was. Miles spent so long trying to be the logical and confident and sharp person he was meant to be that he could not rectify that status, that expectation, with the weakness which he knew kicked around his fool’s heart. Above him, the rain clears a moment, though the clouds remain dark grey and looming, and Miles begins the slow walk back to his rented room for the few days. When he passes back through the chapel, the three students are gone, and Miles cannot help but smile ever-so-slightly to himself when he sees the center boy’s hat forgotten on the bench. After the nearly 45 minute walk back, he packs his bags back up as quickly as he can.

In Folkestone, on the 7th of February and hours before his train ride through the Channel Tunnel, Miles stumbles into a tiny used bookstore facing the water with his few pieces of luggage in tow. The selection is limited, but he spends nearly half an hour coming through each volume placed on the shelves. By some cosmic, auspicious fortune (mis or otherwise), the proprietor is a retired attorney. Miles spends the rest of his cash, just under £40, on a variety of legal philosophy and theory and history books, as well as a copy of Crime and Punishment with a worn cover picturing Petersburg in deep red. Miles had always wanted to read novels like this, but by the time he really could it was far too late to partake in anything so frivolous, and his mentor made his distaste for anything translated abundantly clear. 

He was lucky he could take any literature classes at all in between law course after law course during his time at Brasenose, and being a full-time workaholic attorney didn’t exactly grant one much time for leisure reading. Last time he had truly read a novel, it must have been some dreary Victorian drawl back in university—Villette, maybe, or something similarly hopeless. All Miles remembers is writing an essay about pre-determinism and the shackles of one's past, which he had to have gotten an A on because he would remember if he didn’t. He must have been 17 or so then, deeply ashamed and just preparing to move back to L.A. to take the LSAT and break some record an even younger version of him wouldn’t have thought to break. 

Miles sits on a bench facing the muted blue of the channel as the sun sets early in the late winter sky, and he tries to read. He really does try, but even though he has hours to kill Miles can only get through a single chapter of Crime and Punishment before he cannot stand to look at the words on the page. He knows he is not Raskolnikov, but his wandering loneliness makes something stir Miles’ stomach which resembles nausea. He stares at the lines and phrases again and again in some twisted recognition. Is he, like Raskolnikov, lying in a corner day in and day out, or suddenly struck by the same boundless loathing? Is he the same, desperate and frantic and running both to and from something he cannot place? With the final words of the chapter, he slams the book shut and stares blankly into the water until his train to Coquelles arrives

Paris, France. February 10th, 2017.

Miles doesn’t get much out of the French countryside, finds something about it too quiet and unnerving when what he needs is the noisy bustle of the city to drown out his own thoughts. He once again makes arrangements to rent a small room for an exorbitant price and walks around the city aimlessly, all part of his new routine. The streets of Paris, where he spent the summer of his 16th year learning how to be a crueler person, are, as always, cloaked in a soft cloud of cigarette smoke. Miles never smoked, he had watched his father do so in half-shame too many times with the accompanying lectures to do as said not as done, but sometimes, in that stage of want-to-be-intellectual youth he tried to live, he would sit outside at cafés and lean into the puffs of whoever sat next to him. It was a child’s attempt to affect maturity, to feel adult and in-control no matter how much he insisted otherwise.

Now, as he sits outside in the foggy winter drinking his chocolat chaud, listening to last week’s NPR online and watching the passer-bys, Miles detests the smell of smoking emanating from the young couples and businessmen and old ladies sitting all around him. It is a simulacrum of a childhood memory—those February evenings spent with his father, the persistent smell of cigarettes stuck to his tan trench coat and the taste of sweet chocolate on his own lips. Then, when Miles would still smile with his teeth, he drank hot-coco mix out of the box flavored with artificial peppermint and watched cartoon mecha movies with his father after listening to the radio report while sitting in the living room of their home. ‘Uh oh, kiddo,’ his father would say as the TV played over-the-top robot fights, ‘it seems your father has been possessed by…Evil-Man-3000!’ and then would lift Miles up upon his arm and spin him around until they were both slightly sick with dizziness and laughter.

The memory makes something curl in Miles’ chest, and perhaps it is in the contrast between the simplicity, the frivolity of the memory and the almost Gothic reality of what came the winter after that his stomach sickens. Warm drinks in a worn-down family home with laughter and a father who loved him traded for nothing but coldness in a manor-house grim and in the hand of a mentor he is sure must have hated him. He takes another sip, and the rich liquid only tastes bitter under his tongue. Miles takes it as his cue to leave, places a few Euros on the table before walking further into the city center and farther away from the neighborhood his room is sequestered to. The cold sting of the air is another painful reminder of the dichotomies of his youth, this one being the year-round sun of Los Angeles and his home within, and the cold winter air of western Europe.

It is easy to create the divisions in his mind, pile on the contrasts between Miles’ father and the man who assumed his place. It is harder to find a place where his sister lies on the sliding scale because there is nothing he could compare her to, really. There are no words, his vocabulary somehow now expansive enough in English or any other language, to really describe Franziska von Karma, the wild mare, as he had once called her and never stopped. She is his sister, and had been for all of her life, but her father was not his, not then and certainly not now. All Miles really knows is that to see her, now, after everything, would perhaps be the final nail in his coffin, would be the thing that would finally convince him to put rocks in his pockets and walk into the river. Miles does not know if he could live with Franziska seeing all this pitiful cowardice which she would no doubt judge him for, especially with this final and greatest rift his mentor has put in between them, forever placing them on the opposite sides of one coin. He does his best to dismiss the thought of her entirely, but sends some small mental apology her way which he knows means and does nothing.

He walks until it is past dark, aimless, and his feet ache within his already-worn leather shoes. The city lights obscure any light of the stars, and the new moon renders the whole entire sky a blank black abyss. It isn’t until nearly 10 p.m. that Miles relents and takes the Metro back southeast. When he sleeps, he does so in brief bursts before a nervous fervor takes hold of him, and he pushes it back down. 

Miles does not leave the room again until four days later. In that time, a restlessness in the back of his mind prevents him from reading the boring and dense true legal texts Miles had made a routine of reading, and after many dull of exhausting attempts at reading them anyway, he glances back nervously to that novel which had made him so ill he had yet to pick it up since its purchase. The lettering of Pevear & Volokhonsky’s first edition is a familiar shade of maroon which reads Crime & Punishment in faded typeface, and Miles stares at the worn corners of the copy until the feeling of the novel staring back scares him into finally opening it.

It is easy enough to get through most of Part I. Of course, there are still palpitations in his heart at any small characteristic he and Raskolnikov share—indeed, when Miles reaches Chapter III’s descriptions of Dunya, her intelligence and resilience and trust in Raskolnikov, he feels so strongly reminded of his own intelligent and resilient and once-trusting sister it causes his stomach to curl somehow, but he is able to get through. Really, the writing is quite beautiful in its evocation compared to all the dense and precise case-briefs he had spent the last half-decade parsing through, any nauseating recognition to the novel’s destitute and morally corrupt protagonist can be ignored well-enough with semi-regular breaks to stare into an aimless abyss through the wall.

Well-enough is not enough when Miles reaches the titular crime. He knows, now, that he is innocent to his father’s murder. He knows, yes, but there is still a part of him which had never learnt to not feel guilty, and thus reading the terrific violence Raskolnikov unleashes feels more like a remembered than imagined evil-doing. The hairs on the back of Miles’ neck stand, and a nausea begins to worm up his throat with building suspense. Raskolnikov holds the axe over the old woman, and Miles himself flinches as he feels the air shift on the wicked downswing. More accurately, he feels the knots of the wooden handle in his own hands with the same weight, somehow, as a pistol. With the conclusion of Part I, Miles slams the book shut, hyperventilating, and decides it would perhaps be better to return to his aimless meandering.

In the late morning of February 14th, the rose-red and pink decorations he had noticed in the windows and doorways of storefronts become an inescapable inundation of various romance-themed goodies, especially in those neighborhoods closer to tourist city center where Miles is certain an average of 20 proposals are taking place per hour. Normally, he would spend such a foolish holiday far away from any faux-romantic consumer nonsense as he had been conditioned to on this St. Valentine’s Day, but the restlessness which has so far propelled him has overtaken the lethargic pain in his legs which had kept him bedbound and hopeless. Anything, he decides, is better than his previous languor.

Outside, young women squeal in delight and embrace the young men beside them, groups of teenaged friends giggle together over various chocolate and strawberry flavored treats, daughters dressed in pink hug their father’s legs tight. Each display would make a previous version of Miles roll his eyes and curse their silly foolishness, but this new Miles he is trying to be wants desperately to be able to smile at each. He does not, yet the fondness still builds in its own alien, sickening way. The whole holiday feels frivolous, really, an expression of immaturity using the name of a saint as an excuse for fools to spend their money on ridiculous nonsense, but Miles knows at least some of that sentiment comes from his mentor. With his lunch, Miles orders a glass of red wine—that will be his celebration of the holiday.

Miles cannot help but imagine what is happening in L.A. as the glass slowly drains. Of course, 1 p.m. in Paris means it is well before waking hours back in California, but he imagines the bouquets and chocolate boxes to be exchanged when the day comes, the hand-written elementary valentines to be passed out at his old school. Something unplaceable tugs at his chest with the attempt to think of Wright’s Valentine’s Day, and his head begins to swim just slightly. It hurts to imagine him spending the evening in an upscale restaurant in his same navy polyester suit with a generic yet charming woman, but it also hurts to imagine him sitting alone in that undoubtedly cramped one-bedroom apartment above his office. Miles cannot kid himself to imagine that Wright could be wishing to spend this holiday with him, but his swimming and ever-traitorous mind tries to lead him down that path anyway to thinking maybe, just maybe, some part of Wright misses him in a fond and simple way. Miles has gotten a few calls since he left L.A., mostly numbers he knew were from his colleagues at the Prosecutor’s Office or old classmates or, worst of all, Franziska, but a number he does not recognize has left two short voicemails Miles cannot bring himself to listen to. Still, an ever-romantic part of him hopes, just a little bit, that the number is Wright’s. 

It feels somehow inappropriate to dwell on whatever unresolved ‘unnecessary feelings,’ as he once called them, still hang in the balance. Really, his feelings for Wright, whatever they may be considered, were nothing more than one reason to loathe himself in shame among the many others. Another failure to live up to that perfect standard he had been raised by. Miles let himself be too known, too vulnerable, and yet somehow too cruel and impersonal. The Nick of his childhood could not interfere with the Mr. Wright of the courtroom, he was a fool to think they could still be one. Miles cringes to imagine the impression Wright now holds of him—surely he thinks of Miles as a coward, or worse, an egotist who hates him enough to die for it. In his mind’s eye, Miles sees that smile Wright flashed after his acquittal, sweet and real. Perhaps even worse than Wright imagining that Miles hates him is Wright knowing that he could have loved him if he gave himself the chance. 

As he is strolling through the park absent-mindedly, somewhere to Miles’ left a small commotion breaks out over a man dropped to one knee before a beautiful red-headed woman. He cannot really see it, but he stops in line with the group of spectators, even if he cannot focus on the scene. The woman must say yes because a triumphant cheer breaks out in the small crowd which had formed. An old woman, rosary round her neck, gives her blessings to the young couple, but Miles is perhaps the only person who sees something twinkle in the bride-to-be’s eyes. It makes a horrible pit of fear for her form at the bottom of his stomach. She quickly dismisses whatever it is and smiles, gives her thanks, and turns back to her now-fiancee with a flash of a similarly ominous expression as he grabs and kisses her cheek.

Miles decides it is best to dismiss any thoughts of romance, and he spends the rest of his afternoon walk through Paris in a sort of heartsick, not to mention wine-tipsy, daze.

He spends the rest of February, and all of March, in similar sorts of dazes. The effort of introspection exhausts him, as does any concerted effort to make sense of words on a page. Anything and everything seems to blur between his synapses into one dreary and miserable inky grey sea. It seems pointless to develop any semblance of routine in this state, half-alive and half-dead and without any of the meaningful reinvention he had promised him at the beginning of the year, but he still follows each day in the same arbitrary patterns which had once sustained him: sleeping in four hour blocks, sipping tea, reading, walking around the city streets aimlessly, sipping tea, all as random threads of his mind are pulled and unwound. Miles can barely notice the time passing.

On his eventual last day in Paris, nearly halfway through April, the Orchestre de Paris hosts a special solo flute exhibition, and something within Miles had compelled him, even through his stupor, to buy a ticket when he first heard weeks ago. It had been a miracle the show had not sold out by that time, and as Miles sits behind two elderly couples he must assume are season ticket holders, the lights go down into a pitch-dark suspense, completely quiet save for the amplified tapping of heels on the stage floor. They come back up, dazzling and golden, on a woman in an elegant black dress with a flute in her hands which shimmers in the spotlight. As soon as she brings it to her lips and the first high and glorious note trills out, every hair on Miles’ body seems to stand straight up.

Her fingers move with a practiced grace, her body ebbs and flows with the rises and falls of the music, her brows and eyes knit together not in stressful tension but with blissful concentration. Her life, the artist’s life, is one of beauty divine, of careful creation and intuition is one which runs so counter to the ruthless and unforgiving sharp precision of Miles’ own. It is not that she is imprecise—certainly not—but rather than her precision is one of gentle care, of sense and love for the carefully crafted piece of metal which rests so naturally within her hands and lips; whereas, the pens and papers Miles so often wielded were treated as if they were nothing to him then, as were the lives he was in charge of scrutinizing and often ending. Bitter sadness takes hold of his stomach as the last note of the first number rings out in perfect clarity, and all around the concert-goers clap with poised and measured hands used to the impersonal affection they carry.

It is so unlike the enthusiastic applause of his childhood recitals. It feels silly to compare the two, the measured and perfected work of a professional musician to the messings-around of a child placed in lessons as what was essentially a form of baby-sitting, but the gently humming echoes bouncing through the concert hall brings him back to those memories anyway. Miles remembers standing in his elementary school auditorium in his bow-tie and poorly gelled hair, his music teacher sitting to the side on the piano and his friends and father sitting together in the second row, where he took deep yet nervous breaths until it was his time to ring out the first swelling notes of his first and only solo piece (a Gossec, if he remembers correctly). He remembers very little of that last and biggest recital, only that once he finished and returned his instrument to his side with a nervous smile, his friends both jumped from their seats in rapturous cheering. Realistically, Miles notes, his performance likely wasn’t that great, but it was enough that afterwards his father’s eyes seemed shiny with pride, and perhaps that was the real test of greatness.

After the earthquake, after his father’s murder, after his abductive adoption, he had no other chances to play, really. It is not that he missed playing flute, necessarily, it is more that Miles now wishes he could say he has created more, done more good, than he has destroyed. There were times when his mentor was not around that he could tap out a few simple songs on the grand piano in the von Karma library where his sister would sing along with whatever songs she could best remember, but those few memories are not enough to outweigh the lives of those sacrificed for his misled ego. There is nothing that could, save for that which he has been trying not to think about since December.

Miles barely notices when the performance ends. After the intermission, a full string orchestra is to assume the flautist’s place on the stage, but a guilt so treacherous racks Miles’ ribcage that he stumbles out onto the cold evening streets before the 15-minute break is up. When he reaches his room in Paris for the final time, all he can think of is the taste of the sickly-sweet ice cream his father would get him after his recitals more than a decade ago.

Madrid, Spain. April 14th, 2017.

The initial plan was to head east after Paris, maybe spend a few days in Strasbourg, then cross the Rhine and do all that wretched work he had convinced himself he had to at the beginning of the year. Miles did no such thing—at the train station he sickened and instead headed west and south. Perhaps he thought the sunny Iberian peninsula would help clear his head, but he knows more likely it is another tactic of diversion and fleeing from the pains he cannot properly escape. Heading south to the transfer in Barcelona, the train traced the path of the Mediterranean, a sea he had not seen since a week in Nice when he was 13, and its perfect cerulean blue felt like some Fauvist masterpiece made real.

As the sky reddened in those few hours spent along the coastline, Miles twisted himself to face the window, holding a small leather-bound notebook he had picked up second-hand in Place d’Italie as he tried to make the clumsy lines and scratches in the paper into some form of aesthetic beauty. Each attempt failed horribly, each piece of paper torn out and shoved into his bag until the notebook is a husk of what it used to be. Miles cannot be surprised, not really, because he always seemed to lack that artist’s touch his childhood friends seemed to have. He remembered one art class during what had to have been fifth grade how, in fittingly childlike form, he crossed his arms and whined as Nick and Larry seemed to so easily follow the contours and lines and colors of the skyline outside where Miles simply could not. He supposed, when he reached the back of the notebook where he had been keeping personal reminders and grocery lists, that the artists’ life simply couldn’t be his. Miles spent the few remaining hours with his eyes gently shut in some mindful half-sleep, and he remembered hearing about Wright’s undergraduate degree in arts, wondering how it was that Wright could balance the scales of justice and of beauty where Miles had always failed to really reach either.

Upon his unplanned arrival in Madrid late into the evening, Miles was forced to book a less romanticized accommodation compared to his previous two, and he stays in some small and clearly touristy hotel in Cortes. It’s still plenty lovely—view of the park, running water, all of that—but it’s clear almost immediately that the room beside his hosts an obviously honey-mooning couple and the other adjacent room hosts a loud, likely American (Miles places his bets on Midwestern) family. It isn't as though he was planning to spend much time in his room, but the decision is certainly made for him rather quickly.

Spain poses more of a logistical challenge than France—Miles had spent considerable time studying the French language in school, and while his skills were certainly quite rusty with five years of minimal use, there was still a sizable enough pool of knowledge to slowly find himself drawing on again in something resembling fluency. It is not the case with Spanish, not really, and while Madrid is certainly touristy enough that an English speaking American could get through just fine without knowing a lick of the language, Miles did not want to be that person. 

He had learnt some Spanish in his early childhood, his father made sure of that. Miles remembers his father sitting him down one day as a young boy, no older than seven years old, and telling him about a client he had who had been arrested because the officer on patrol couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then, with all the cases he took without payment out of his own sense of justice, his father might as well have been a Los Angeles County public defender. ‘Miles,’ he said, ‘there are so many good people with good things to say, especially here, and if you want to help them you have to know how to listen to them, how to talk to them.’ Miles picked up bits of Spanish from when his father would drag him to the laundromat across the street his neighbors, the Perezes, owned. They were simple phrases, not really helpful in his current situation, things like: ‘Heyy, Gregory! How are you?’ and ‘is your boy doing well in school?’ and ‘can you tell that cop that’s always hanging out around here to leave my brother alone?’ His father would respond quickly and warmly, and Miles would look up at him proud to say he was his son.

He couldn’t remember any of that Spanish now, at least none of the personal and real and natural Spanish his father tried to teach him before his death. He can speak simple textbook phrases well enough to get by in most social interactions, but there is no chance for those simple and personal observations he could make while in France. Maybe that’s why he decides to spend most of his days roaming through the art galleries of the “golden triangle” near which his hotel is located in his own silent bubble, it is easier to look than to listen.

He visits the Museo Nacional del Prado three times, and each time he finds himself following the progression of the Goyas. Yes, he enjoys Las Meninas and Agnus Dei and all the other masterpieces hosted within, but something about Goya’s portraits and pretty landscapes and conventional forms of the late 1790s slowly turning grey and grotesque through the 1820s’ Black Paintings captures him. Miles also finds himself staring intently into one, the bloody and deranged and repulsive sight of Saturn Devouring His Son surrounded by similarly disturbed works of the la Quinta del Sordo where they were painted. The bulging eyes and vivid blood, each time Miles stares into it, strike a familiar chord in Miles’ chest, the blood feels as though it is his own.

His own circumstance feels a little on the nose, Miles thinks, standing in an art gallery staring at an art piece which feels dramatically apt for his own life and situation as part of some belated coming-of-age. It must be a scene out of a bad indie student film as the other gallery-goers around him begin to blur its a sea of unknowable connections and experiences, streaks of light passing by without a trace. The third and final time he visits, Miles stares into Saturn’s eyes until they become that familiar and unnerving shade of deep grey, and he leaves the room with his chest tightening around his rapidly beating heart. When he gets outside, the sun is shining and gorgeous over a vibrant blue sky.

In myth, Saturn consumed each of his children one-by-one out of the fear of his prophetic downfall, godly infant flesh ground between even more powerfully divine teeth. First his daughters, then his sons, before being spit back up with his final cosmic punishment. As Miles walks back towards his hotel, he realizes that while he may consider the myth of his mentor to be that of Saturn, that of cruelty and violence and nauseating destruction, if his sister were asked her father would be likened to the skull of Zeus from which Athena sprang, his prized daughter of wisdom and battle. He isn’t able to place where that thought came from, but maybe it was the reminder that there wasn’t only one child in Saturn’s stomach. There is something funny to Miles about the different forms one man can take for the same sets of actions through different eyes—a far from groundbreaking revelation, he knows, but one Miles takes some semblance of comfort in anyway. 

The Museo del Prado also hosts Reni’s portrait of Saint Catherine, the young girl staring up into the heavens, but it isn’t until Miles instead wanders the Thyssen-Bornemisza that the recognition hits him. Carravagio’s Saint Catherine is sharper, more of the wit she is said to be the patron of glittering in her eye, and suddenly, as if in flashback, Miles remembers his own sister kneeling before the bishop anointed with Chrism Oil in Catherine, Katharina’s, name. He was 17 then, back from London specifically for Franziska’s confirmation and full of a brooding disdain for the whole affair. It seemed anachronistic to him then, and even still, for a man like his mentor so defined by his own reason with no regard to morality or proper procedure to be so faithful, so steadfast. The more Miles thinks about it, however, the more it all makes sense: the game of control taking over that of truth. If Miles is to think about it esoterically, von Karma adhered to Church, not to God, perhaps that’s why he was so willing to bend the rules if they were to be forgiven quickly.

Miles was exempt from the show-rituals; he, unlike his sister, was not subject to mass or to baptism or to confirmation. Faith was the realm of von Karma’s daughter, not of his student. It wasn’t until Franzsika became the second that it all became one, Franziska’s patron made to be a woman of veracity and law as if a different form of prophecy, the prophecy of pre-destination. It is perhaps, then, the perfect humor that once Katharina became another name of hers to God, it became another name of hers to the state. Saint Catherine stares at Miles through all his inward heresy as if he is her next pagan convert, draped in her blue and gold silks and approaching her own gruesome fate. Beside him, a woman crosses herself as she passes the saint.

When he first arrived in Germany, Miles couldn’t understand it, the cathedrals and the rituals and the prayers in Latin. He had seen different versions of the same faith in California, yes, but Miles himself had never really been exposed to any of it, and despite whatever he and his father were nominally he hardly ever went to temple. Any faith was an abstract concept, one he heard about but never really engaged in. It was strange, then, that first and really only time he had been made to partake in their communion in awkward and stilted apprehension, his child eyes still heavy and reddened from his mentor’s greatest crime. While he in his intellectual and pretentious self may wish to dismiss it all as distracting nonsense, he remembers the look in his sister's eyes as she was sealed with the apparent Holy Spirit, and Miles leaves Saint Catherine be, hanging on her wall. If not for Catherine herself, then for his sister.

After that, Spain follows the same basic pattern each city has thus far brought. He sleeps, barely, wanders down streets aimlessly, ignores his phone, reads as much as he can stomach at a time. With Holmes' The Common Law, which he read in university but never fully processed, Miles begins keeping a journal of each thought and idea that comes into his head with each page of each volume he parses through. He scribbles nonsensically, but with each word written something within him grows, some new spirit begins to possess not his mind but his heart. He thinks it is what his father called justice. In the sunshine, the revelations, the actual progress Miles finds himself finally making, he cannot bring himself back to the dredges of Dostoevsky, at least for the time being. He supposes he has to let himself be at least a little bit happy, even if the existential dread and desire to launch himself out a window still looms in the back of his head.

Before Miles leaves in May, he takes his walk through the city center with something resembling a smile, and, in his optimistic mood, it is as if the sun smiles back. ‘Yes, Strasbourg will be good,’ Miles thinks. When he visits Retiro Park at sunset, a group of small children chase each other through the shrubs beside the lake illuminated in a soft orange glow. One of the four, a boy with dark curly hair, trips on an outward-sticking rock and tumbles to the ground. The smallest, a girl maybe a year or two younger than the other three boys, is the only one who sees, and she stops, calling the other two back as the boy who had fallen stays staring up on the ground. A tense moment passes, each of the children perfectly still, but a resounding laugh rings out, and all of the boy's friends tumble to the ground alongside him in giddy excitement. 

As the sun sets further, the sky becoming a dusty purple, Miles smiles to himself and walks away. Before he leaves Spain, Miles does something long overdue: he messages Detective Gumshoe back.

My apologies for the delayed response and any confusion thereby, Detective.

I am afraid I am not quite at liberty to explain the whole matter over text, but if you would be so kind as to keep our exchange confidential, I would be amenable to assisting in any current investigations. If you would like to discuss in greater detail, as is your prerogative in such a situation, please call this number, and I shall do my best to answer promptly.

Best, M.D.E.

Strasbourg, France. May 20th, 2017.

When he first arrives back northeast, Strasbourg is idyllic and straight out of his childhood memories—all meandering canals, folksy architecture and timber-framed buildings, a warm breeze in the air in Petite France where he stays. The first few days are much the continuation of his positive momentum in Madrid, the reflection and careful studying and selfless introspection becoming a force ever-consuming in what Miles thinks to be a great light. Even his conversation with Detective Gumshoe, as awkward as it turns out to be to allude to the bizarre workings of his own psyche, is doable in his current disposition. Miles finds himself smiling, just a little bit, for no reason.

The upward trajectory only carries him so far, and when three days in a store clerk responds to his French in German, something in the idealism of it all snaps. At first, the response confuses Miles—his French was certainly fine enough to get through the notoriously judgemental Parisian speakers. It is then he realizes, with something resembling horror, that it’s because he learned French in a German accent without even realizing. In Paris they may have assumed him to be German too, but here, so close to the border, the assumption carries the weight of action and response. Miles’ mentor might have been an expert of cloaking his own accent, but his daughter, Miles’ conversation partner, always retained some element, some sharpness of her native tongue in her speech, and he had picked up on it without ever noticing. Franziska’s voice was in his own in each corner of his inflection, if only a little bit. When she spoke, she would always sound like herself; ergo, Miles would sound like her, too. 

It seems an odd leap to make, but when Miles wakes up on the 24th with a horrible burning in his head he’s reminded of that odd revelation from the previous day. He tries to continue on as normal anyway, stumbles down to the café on the corner of his block for his now-customary tea for his now-customary morning reading hour, but stepping away from the counter a sudden faintness possesses him. The room swirls around him, his head light and full of an almost unbearable pressure, and he puts the back of his hand to his own forehead to find his usually icy skin is burning hot. ‘I have a fever,’ Miles thinks, odd as it is to think of himself somehow ill after years of perfect health, but with the realization an aching heaviness hits each of his muscles at once.

He does not remember returning to his room, but next his mind is aware Miles is laying on the floor of his rented room on his back with beads of cold sweat forming on his reddened brow. He feels paralyzed. The day passes in a fog, half awake and half asleep with every light seeming too bright and any darkness seeming all-consuming. Miles doesn’t notice the day passing, but when the next morning comes after a few bouts of ultimately restless sleep, he resigns himself to whatever fate this sudden illness holds for him.

That second day, he fails to get out of bed for anything, not even the quick showers he forced himself to take during that lull in Paris. Miles cannot bring himself to pick up any of the books sitting right beside his bed, nor his cell-phone sitting atop them, but he does hit the few buttons needed for the radio to start blasting French pop music throughout the room. If Miles had the mental wherewithal, he would find the soundtrack funny in some sardonic sense, but it instead blurs into a horrible cacophony as he lays still and aimless. It is likely the worst he has ever felt, physically, at least, the few days he spent in New York may still be more existentially miserable, but every corner of Miles’ body aches with simultaneous unbearable heat and freezing cold, and his mind seems incapable of forming any solid thought. For a moment, it’s remembering a case from his early career, then the synopsis of his favorite TV shows as a kid, then wondering how far away the nearest doctor’s office is, so on and so forth in an alien and immaterial confusion, every thread slipping loose between his fingers and out of his hands.

Late into the night, he has the misfortune of sleeping for longer than he has in weeks. In his dream, a different nightmare than the one he had once been so used to, he holds an axe over an ever-changing figure on the ground below. With each drop, each splatter of bright red blood, its face shifts again and again. First it is von Karma, with his eyes held wide around slit-thin irises and baring his teeth before the blade comes down upon him with a sickening thunk. Then, on the upswing, the face morphs into that of his sister, like her father but possessed with something softer deep within, eyes full of some incessant and almost manic fear above a cocky grin she cannot hold together as she is cut in two like her father. The blue of each of them melts into the blue of Wright’s suit, his face one of disappointment and fear rather than any attempt at a smile, and as the axe crashes down again unstoppably from within Miles’ hands he is Nick again, the childhood friend Miles tries to pretend he doesn’t remember. The blood begins to pool, Miles notices, and when his attention forcibly returns to the figure below him it is a jumbled-together approximation of all those defendants he had convicted over five years of perfection, each of their features collaged together in desperation before being sundered apart again by the blade. Finally and worst of all, below Miles’ dulled blade is his own father in his cigarette-scented coat, whose face he cannot process fully before his glasses shatter with the force of a final blow, as does the rest of him.

 From each of them, Miles hears that scream which had haunted him for years and the banging of a skull on wood over and over again. He looms down at the now faceless form beneath him—not his father, either one, nor his sister or his once best friend, nor all those he made his enemy. He sees clearly that the skull is shattered and even displaced a little to one side. He catches a glimpse of his face in a mirror just past the bloody pile, and it is that of his boyhood, covered in blood with an empty stare. Miles’ reflection speaks without him, breaking the symmetry meant to keep him in place as Miles looks back down to see himself in his courtroom suit.

“It’s red,” child Miles, in his cutoff shorts and bow-tie, says from the mirror, “blood won’t be so noticeable on red,” and then, in his dream state, Miles tries to reach for something, it’s shape ever changing, even as it slips again and again from his blood-soaked hands. Whatever it is, it falls to the floor glittering, and Miles falls with it in a desperation his waking self could not understand. 

His vision blurs in the dream, until his hand suddenly comes down upon that object he had been searching for with a blinding sharp pain, and now kneeling in the center of the courtroom he looks to see the pin-side of his prosectors badge jammed into the center of his palm. Looking down from the gallery are the disfigured and bloody faces of everyone he had just unwittingly killed: von Karma shakes what remains of his head with crossed arms, his daughter replicates the action even as dark blood tangles the ends of her silver hair, Wright holds either side of that terrible seam across his skull with elbows rested upon his own knees in his final expression of despair without even looking to Miles, countless defendants stand around him, shaking and bleeding, as they plead why, why to Miles’ own shaking form, and finally he looks up. His hand bleeds where his badge has broken skin, and he meets the gaze of his father sat in the judge’s seat, no longer in the coat of the previous scene with terrible gashes everywhere and an unrecognizable face, but with broken glasses and a blood-stained suit as if from a picture burned into Miles’ retinas. 

He does not hear what his father says, and the sound of a gavel wrings out. A guilty verdict, Miles is sure.

He wakes in a cold sweat, and stumbles over to the bathroom to vomit. Outside his window, the sun is shining upon the waterways and the tourists, the blooming flowers and the birds of the early afternoon, but Miles cannot see it. He has never felt more dead as he kneels clutching his own stomach, the taste of acid burning his teeth. Looking in the mirror after lifting himself back up shakily, he has never looked more dead. Miles’ skin is pallid and grey, darkened under his eyes in such an extreme sense he looks like some undead horror creature, his cheeks gaunt and lifeless, lips chapped and red where bitten on the inside. Worst are his eyes, so dull and blown out that the irises seem smaller, darker enough to be the eyes of his mentor. At that though, Miles wants to vomit again, but he doesn’t, or rather cannot. ‘I want to live,’ he thinks, ‘I cannot die. Not like this.’

So Miles walks into his kitchenette for the first time in days, pulls out two eggs from the fridge and an apple from the counter, and turns on the old gas stove on still-shaky legs. It is a slow process preparing this supposed meal, and an even slower process eating it, but by the end Miles has enough energy to change his sheets and his undershirt, so it must be worth something. He spends what remains of the afternoon reading in bed, eyes passing over the words and having to go back to piece them together again and again. He opens the window with the need for fresh air and avoids sleep as much as he can, and he almost feels better for it.

The next few days pass in that similar way. Miles will wake from his nightmare in a heightened fever, run to throw up, stumble through preparing and eating something, and lay around until sleep grabs him again doing whatever he can in his wretched brain fog (he is ever thankful for the crossword packet he bought while still in crisis at La Guardia). Each day his temperature lowers, and nine days after his fever first started Miles feels somewhat alive again. He had, in the course of his illness, read the next two volumes of Crime & Punishment, but in all honesty the words were morphed in his mind into something even less real than the fiction itself, far more like a game of insanity playing out in his mind theatre, much too absurd to truly disturb him. Miles is satisfied, though, with that.

He cannot decide what caused the fever—he knows it was likely the result of too much traveling, that he had contracted some illness without realizing it on a train, or something similar, and it had lurked around his immune system, but Miles wants to interpret it as something more. Walking outside in the wind for the first time in days, it is as if Miles has beat some sort of challenge, some Herculean trial meant to deter him on his noble quest to kill only part of himself. On the third of June, staring out at the sunset, Miles decides what this triumph must mean. It is a thick pill to swallow, one which he feels slide heavy and revolting down his throat, but regardless Miles makes the decision, and spends just two more days in Strasbourg. 

Berlin, Germany. June 11th, 2017.

When Miles eventually and inevitably reaches Berlin after dotting around the German countryside, he leases a fancy apartment in Charlottenburg and walks around the luxury shops and almost Parisian cafés. He spends the second day in town at the old palace, staring up at the baroque gilding of the walls and porcelain cabinets. In another life, he would’ve liked to catalog the history of a place like this, carefully note each person who had dedicated some piece of their life to that towering green dome and the façade and cornices. He had come here once before in his youth, but he chooses very purposefully to not dwell on that memory, and specifically the man in the memory. His intention to avoid it doesn’t seem to matter, though, and eventually Miles steps into a room too contained, too claustrophobic, where he hears the echo of that same horrifying scream which he has dreamed of every night for years and suddenly the air feels thin. He leaves the Schloss Charlottenburg hyperventilating, the weight of truth heavy on his shoulders. 

He wanders the streets, the ritzy corners of the neighborhood until he is an hour away from the hotel and at Tiergarten, the familiar paths through the park and surrounding cafés and bakeries and the assorted antique shops are a familiar comfort. In the early summer, there is a pleasant warmth emanating from the blue sky, and to Miles is the most beautiful a city has ever looked. His mentor never brought him here, oddly enough, so there is no room for the memories to be stained by the tapping of his shoes. Miles had only spent a few hours of the late morning at the palace, so the warm air of the afternoon settles onto his skin, and he suddenly feels overdressed in the vest and cotton slacks he had once thought were far too casual. He rolls up his sleeves, bag slung over his shoulder, and it is nothing like Los Angeles County Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, it’s just Miles.

It is safe, here in this neighborhood, Miles decides, and it always had been. He remembers after his first and only display of true early teenage angst, back from London for the winter, how he had ran to the park, sat on the bench alone shaking and fuming with childlike rage into a night freezing cold and merciless, yet somehow warmer and kinder than his mentor ever could be. How funny it seems now that every significant thing to ever happen in his life took place in winter, all the better fortune for the current season, which Miles hopes will pass in quiet peace. When von Karma finally decided to send for him back, Miles had caught a bad case of pneumonia and was locked in his room to study for the LSAT. It taught him a very clear lesson: no subversion goes unpunished, by his mentor or by God or by wherever the two separated.

Now, in the warmth of early summer, the park blossoms full of life. Children run to and from their mother’s side, birds chatter from their places in the trees, and elderly couples sit at pond-facing benches. A quiet peace hangs in the air, one Miles cannot ignore in all his misanthropic reminiscence, and for a moment he catalogues each and every movement and figure in his vision as if frozen in a photograph. What happy lives he decides for each of them, all that which he could never and may never achieve: a warmth that doesn’t go out, a home that does not crumble, a love true. It is in the tranquility that the sting of loneliness shoots through his heart once more, and Miles takes it as a sign to continue his walk to the coffee shop he used to frequent in summers long past, albeit with a certain dread for whatever will find him on these too-familiar streets. 

It is inside, after ordering his tea to accompany him on his reading for the day and in the process of hanging his bag on the back of a chair, that a woman behind him says, as if having heard his prior internal monologue:

“Your German has gotten messy,” and he doesn’t have to look at her to know it is his sister. “You used the wrong gender-particle there. Really, you should know better.”

Suddenly, his fingers feel numb with cold, as does his chest. He swallows any apprehension, because of course it would happen like this.

“Franziska,” is his greeting in response.

“Little brother,” she mirrors, “I have heard much about your failures. Shall we sit?”

He nods, and they do. Franziska von Karma, his sister, the wild mare, sits perfectly straight up, legs crossed and fingers braided together atop the table in her crisp button-up and vest and pencil skirt, her whip wrapped around her belt where he knows it to stay when dormant outside of her work. Miles also notices what he remembers to be her usual coffee order beside her—a triple shot americano with a splash of cream—because of course he does, he remembers when she first started drinking it and her lips would curl up in disgust of the bitterness. Her silver-blond hair must have been cropped shorter, but otherwise she looks the same as when he last saw her two years prior—too young to do what she does and be who she is. She is barely even 18. Who was Miles when he was her age? He can barely even remember even though only a few years have passed, it is as if that young man is a ghost.

“How did you find me?” He asks, because Franziska’s blank stare feels like judgement in the silence.

“Some fool who I studied with in Brussels now works in Los Angeles. He called in January, told me about your little note. I knew my little brother would be too cowardly to truly kill himself, and I also know he is a sentimental fool who is fond of this neighborhood and park and such. I looked, and here you are.”

“I left months ago.”

“I am aware, I have been visiting fairly regularly while I have been in Berlin. Really, little brother, you are too predictable, anyhow. It clearly was a working strategy. You could not even properly fake your own death.”

“I was not trying to—”

She snaps her fingers up to silence him with a glare he had once watched her practice. Miles stops talking.

“I suppose you are trying to run away, yes? Run back here and pretend like you have not failed? Foolish. You are a coward, Miles Edgeworth, you will never escape.” She swallows thickly. “You could never be a true von Karma, you are too weak.” 

Something in her voice shakes at that, and she pulls back and looks down with a face almost softer. The sister he knew, the child she once was, could be soft, once, but no longer.

“Franziska…Did you really come find me just to berate me?”

Her hand pulls into a fist where it is rested on her arm. It is a familiar gesture, all too familiar. Even in that familiarity, however, she still looks nothing like him, her father. Realistically she does—she has his pale face and sharp features and stormy grey eyes, but her cheeks, gaunt as they are, are somehow too round. She clears her throat and looks back up with her knife-sharp glare.

“No, little brother. I have business to attend to,” she says as she moves to rifle through the bag she carried in with her—it is pragmatic, androgynous, and oh-so unlike the little girl Miles used to run through the Gothic manor halls with. She pulls out a sheet of paper, crisp from some manila folder, and hands it to Miles without looking at him. By the time he processes that is his mentor’s last will & testament, he is already reading. He, somehow, cannot focus on the dense legalese footnoting the document, only on the words he is intended to see. Section III, Disposition of Property—he remembers that much from law school.

I devise and bequeath my property, both real and personal and wherever situated, as follows:

 

1st Beneficiary

Franziska Anna Katherina von Karma, currently of XXX, as my daughter with the following property: all financial investments and accounts under my name which are estimated to have a combined value over twelve-million Euros, sole ownership of all real estate properties in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States including the von Karma family estate, and all personal belongings otherwise not mentioned.

 

2nd Beneficiary

Adele Johanna Schulz, currently of XXX, as my granddaughter with the following property: her horse, Nina, and the sum of 100-thousand Euros which are to be placed into a trust account only accessible when she becomes of age.

 

Except to the extent that I have included them in this Will, I have intentionally, and not as a result of any mistake or inadvertence, omitted in this Will to provide for any family members and/or issue of mine. This includes my daughter, Elise Charlot Gesine Schulz née von Karma, and my ward, Miles David Edgeworth.

 

Signed, Manfred Hans-Peter von Karma.

He reads the words once, then again, and looks back up into Franziska’s piercing grey eyes. Neither of them can really be surprised by this new gulf between them, von Karma always set his expectations clearly.

“You show me this why?”

“He had it updated not long ago. In the previous version, you were set to inherit nearly all of what is now mine,” she says, and something in that makes her pause. Whatever it is, she does not dwell on it, and so neither does Miles. “The estate manager he appointed had called me in April and said Papa is to be put to death, and that I am to be his primary beneficiary.”

“Your father, he—”

“My father was a murderer, yes. Apparently, he didn’t even try to appeal for life in prison, the fool,” something in her voice nearly breaks, and is then pushed down into ice-like composure. “He will be executed in Los Angeles tomorrow. The funeral is this Friday, the 17th. Will you come?”

“To…his funeral?”

“Yes.”

He allows himself to imagine it, for a moment. First he sees Franziska alone in a waiting room, or perhaps an observation room, as a panel of one-way glass faces towards what is ostensibly a hospital bed. It is physically impossible for her to be there, to see her father's death, but he imagines it anyway. There is a syringe placed ominously on a little tray table beside. He chooses not to dwell on that image. The cathedral of this later imagined funeral is Gothic, something like that at Köln, towering towards the sky and mostly empty. He sees an overcast day, notably dreary for the usually lovely season. A simulacrum of his sister sits near the front, stone-faced and wearing some pristine black dress she would never wear again, as a priest prattles on about the kind of man von Karma was not in reality. Would they do a final prayer as they bury him in the earth? Which saint would dare forgive him? Would anyone else be there? It is the opposite of the funeral he imagines his own father had, something too-big in a too-small space. (He had not had the chance to attend, and didn't realize until far too late after that he had missed his last chance at really mourning.) His brooding thoughts are interrupted by reality in the form of Franziska.

“I am planning the whole affair. After the execution they will be shipping the body back to Germany per my request so Papa may be buried here.”

It is a revolting image—a body preserved in its flight over the Atlantic, and they both recognize it. There is a certain irony Miles cannot place, or the beginning of a bad joke.

“And why would I go? Would you really expect me to attend the funeral of…” he clears his throat, “of the man who killed my father?” The words do not feel natural, do not feel correct to describe a crime he had always blamed himself for. Maybe he still could blame himself, if he found the right way to frame it.

“We both know Papa was not always a good man,” there is a bitter envy hanging heavy in her voice, “but, he was my only father, unlike you. You forget that. I am also not expecting anything, Miles Edgeworth, as you would have known if you could listen. I merely asked if you would be attending. I must plan the catering and venue and whatnot, you understand.”

“Is there no one else who can do this for you?” He knows the answer is likely no, but he wants to hear what Franziska would say anyway. After a moment:

“...It would not be perfect. No one else knows—” she stops herself, “knew Papa like I did. Besides you, perhaps, but the brother I once knew is dead. I could not let anyone else try.”

“What about your sister? Is anyone even going to attend?”

“I do not have a sister. That woman wants nothing to do with me,” Franziska bites, and she shifts uncomfortably in her seat before turning her head to where Miles can only see her profile. “As for your second question, that is why I ask you. Many of the fools whom I have invited already have refused to give me clear answers, but it seems most of them are too cowardly to show their faces. I suppose it was a mistake to ask you, then, as you are the greatest coward I know.”

The remark doesn't really sting, and Miles doesn’t know if it's supposed to. If anything, it makes him feel less alone. Sitting across from him is his sister, just as she was when he last saw her two years ago. The bitterness is familiar, and the familiarity is comforting, in this moment. She, in her practiced aloof dignity, clears her throat and takes a sip from her coffee, still avoiding eye contact.

“I am sorry you have to do this alone, Franziska,” is what he says, voice softening around the syllables of her name in a way that makes him feel as though he is pronouncing it wrong. In his memory, her name is so often said coldly, without gentleness or kindness or remorse. To say her name was like the swift and precise cut of a well-sharpened blade, it was not the too-vulnerable bleeding that comes after. He could not count the times he and his mentor would discuss her in cruel and exacting tones. ‘Franziska will not be coming with us,’ that man would say, ‘she is still too frail and weak. How disappointing.’ Now, he hates how we would agree. She was just a child, then, and part of her may still be.

As soon as the word sorry leaves his lips, however, he cannot dwell on the bitter nostalgia of a resentful childhood. He sits across from his sister, the strongest and most guarded person he had ever known, and he watches as, for the briefest moment, the words he said burrow into that frost-guarded heart and her eyes soften and begin to shine in the very corners before it is all quickly dismissed. Franziska von Karma, the intelligent and enduring prodigy, returns, and she laughs (or, more accurately, scoffs) at him.

“Your apologies mean nothing to me, fool. I assume you will not be attending, then? Very well, it is your own choice after all. You have already betrayed the family, Miles Edgeworth, what is one more disappointment? You may say you pity me for being alone, but rest assured that while you may be disgraced and lonely, I am not. After all, I am still a von Karma, still perfect.” She takes another sip. “I am going back to America a week from today to redeem our name. I will find that fool who drove you out, and I will win.”

“So you will be going against Phoenix Wright.” It is not a question, and Miles doesn’t know what he’s going to say next before he continues speaking. “He is…a very good lawyer,” is what he lands on.

“Perhaps better than you, but not better than me. You were too pompous, too sensitive—it was only a matter of time before you failed. I have heard of the circus that this Phoenix Wright operates, I am not scared of him. He may have killed my brother, the prosecutor, but he is just a fool. You are a fool to have let him beat you. How disappointing.”

‘Before him, I always knew you to be the greatest lawyer I ever met,’ a fonder part of Miles thinks. His younger big sister, her crisp pencil skirts and menacing eyes and wit sharp enough to slice, greater than anyone else he knew. Perhaps it is a form of overcompensation for his own failures, or the knowledge of her lack of the childhood he could have, but he can admit to himself now what he never could before: that Franziska von Karma, his sister, is the perfect prosecutor, and she was always meant to be.

He then realizes, with a slight twinge of horror, that through the last few months or so he's been able to envision countless other lives for himself: Miles Edgeworth the academic, the flautist, the lawyer of his own accord. But he couldn't bring himself to imagine his sister living any other life. She is the greatest lawyer he had ever met, and that is the only way she can be. He had watched every bit of Franziska be smoothed out, carefully molded into a flawless little prosecutorial doll, and he couldn’t undo it in his mind. He remembers Franziska von Karma the little girl who could not bend her mouth to say his name right, the child who would gallop in circles around his room giggling with every spin, the big sister who would sleep in his bed when she heard him have a nightmare as if to protect him—where did she go? He knew the answer, tragic as it was, that the little girl he once knew his sister to be had been eaten, and that he chose to say nothing to protect her in return as her flesh was ground between teeth. Did she grieve that version of herself the way Miles did? Did she know she could, now?

“Is it fine if you doubt me,” Franziska says when he fails to answer her, shoulders poised. “I know I will not repeat your mistakes, brother.”

‘For your sake, Franziska,’ he thinks but does not say, ‘I hope so too.’

“We shall see,” he says instead, and her eyes narrow somehow further. There is a coyness in her countenance.

“I know I will not,” she repeats, “I am a prosecutor, a good one, unlike you. If I ever see you in a courtroom again, know this, little brother, that last semblance of respect I have for you dies. That is the only promise I will ever make, know that I will keep it.”

A few moments pass in silence, Miles stares into his cup of Earl grey and clears his throat, Franziska sips her coffee absentmindedly, they both avoid eye contact before she speaks again.

“So, how have you been enjoying your return to Germany?”

“Franziska…”

“What?” she flashes one of her practiced and coy slight-smiles, too quickly, and Miles is perhaps the only person who would know it to be disingenuous, “am I not allowed to make small talk with my brother?”

“Franziska, what is really going on?”

“I am planning a funeral, as I said, and then I am visiting America to redeem the von Karma name. That is what is ‘going on,’ happy?”

“I…You are planning your father's funeral—”

“Our father, little brother,” Franziska says, her eyes narrowed and brows drawn tight. Imperceptibly, her hand beneath the table trembles its way into a fist. “Whether you like it or not, he is—was our father. You owe Papa that much, as do I.”

‘And what a father he was,’ Miles thinks with some hint of irony. Any sarcastic humor, though, cannot be sustained as every crack in Franziska’s perfected countenance reveals itself to Miles all at once. Every shake and tremor and bit of redness around the eyes become terribly clear, and Miles knows with instant recognition that Franziska has not been sleeping. Her face is likened in his mind to when she was 12, studying for her legal license and popping caffeine pills in the wake of insomnia. Maybe that is why her growth spurt stopped early, a distant part of him realizes.

“To what do I owe him—respect? Certainly you cannot expect that of me, Franziska, after everything we know now.”

“Gratitude, for one,” another crack reveals itself—the inside of her lips are bitten bright red under a duller brown lipstick, “Papa made you great. He raised you, trained you, perfected you. There is that much to be grateful for.”

Heavy is the air as they stare at each other for a moment. Miles wishes that some way to cross the gap would reveal itself to him in this moment, some way to make Franziska really his sister again, like in the summer of 2012 when she taught him how to ride a horse and laughed with him when he fell. He wishes she wants it too, although neither one would be able to admit to any such foolish fantasy. For the first time during their meeting, Miles stares down into his own drink where dull Earl grey tea melds with warm cream. The cup warms his hands as he takes a sip, because he realizes that that was what Franziska was teaching him to do when he couldn’t think of something to say. After a moment, the slight citrusy notes of the tea blooming in his mouth, Miles finally speaks, hushed as it is.

“I would hardly call that greatness.”

“What.”

It is not a question. Instead, it is a statement full of bitter loathing and venom and something still yet unplaceable. Miles opens his mouth to speak, but the words are stomped out, or perhaps were never there. ‘Perfection is nothing without truth,’ he wants to say, but that mental voice is more of his father’s than of his own.

“You may sit there and wallow, Miles Edgeworth, but Papa gave you everything. Everything, little brother, and yet you managed to squander it all on foolish romanticist fantasies and foolish misanthropic brooding. To say you were not great, especially now that—” she makes some sound, some stuttering inhale messy and raw. “—Be grateful, brother, for all he did for you. You were always the lucky one.”

Dread builds. It resembles nausea.

“I cannot agree with your assessment of luck, Franziska.”

“You do not know what you speak of, fool.” It is quick, sharp. Deadly. “Our father, who raised and clothed and taught you, is dead. Any judgement of him now lies with God, and now that you have failed to live up to him it is my time, I will show you.”

They stare at each other, and it is as if steel meets steel in their eyes. There is so much clearly unsaid in her gaze, so much she has had months yet no time to formulate into the crisp and perfect words she needs. Miles knows she thinks him too weak to hear most of it, anyway. After what feels like hours, Miles stares back down to what has now become a unified dull grey liquid. His voice, once so used to being crisp and powerful, is little more than a whisper.

“I suppose I should allow you to mourn him, then.”

Franziska’s voice is little less than a command.

“I do not mourn. I am not the weakling you think I am, I am not like you.”

“But you have come here every day—”

“Week.”

“Right. Every week. Regardless, you have come here searching for me for months. Why?’

Her shoulders stiffen. Defense. She stills with her words, and Miles thinks of her favorite mare balking for fear.

“I told you, little brother, I had business to attend to. The will and funerary arrangements and such—”

“But you yourself said you only learnt of those facts a few weeks ago. Ergo…”

She falls silent, and so does Miles. It is as if he is in a courtroom again, but the rush of adrenaline rather sickens his stomach. The face Franziska makes is one he has seen countless times before—it is one of shock, anticipatory grief and fear, one of someone realizing everything they have been telling the world and themself is no longer a bridge they can stand upon. She looks down again, and Miles can too-well register the shaking that begins to possess her. First her fingers and hands, still sheltered by dark leather gloves, then her shoulders, perfectly poised and straightened as always, and then her jaw, quivering. What seems to be minutes of glass-fragile silence later, her voice follows.

“So you came back to Germany to mock me, then, brother. Is that it? What, you think that I have mourned you like some—like some fool? I am not the child you think me to be, I am not.”

‘Aren’t you?’ Miles thinks. She takes a deep breath. It is shaky, but still steadies her enough.

“You have made a mockery of the family name too much already,” Franziska snaps, “I will not let you make a fool of me again.” She stands, takes a deep authoritative breath, and moves as if to march to the door. Then she stops, still staring straight ahead, neither one looking at the other, and speaks with the shake of a teenage girl about to cry in her voice.

“The least you could have done, brother,” she swallows and it is a thick and raw thing, “is called to tell me yourself, you foolish, foolish coward,” another deep breath, another thick swallow which eats whatever words she was going to say next. “The next time I see you, I will show you myself. Good day.”

Franziska’s heels clack in steady rhythm out the door, and the bell chimes as she exits. It is not until she is gone that Miles realizes he has once again forced his sister away without saying goodbye. It stings a moment, and he washes away the knot which forms in his throat with the now-dull taste of his tea.

It was hardly a real meeting, far more like two trains passing in the night, and they both know it. Miles knows that if anyone later down the line were to ask, they would both deny having ever seen each other at a tiny Berlin café. The Franziska he knows would never admit to having let the façade crack even a little bit and even to her own brother, and Miles knows himself well enough to say he would never admit to such a saccharine attempt to find himself somehow through her. He also knows if he is ever to see his sister again, she will not repeat her supposed errors—Franziska is one to keep her promises, after-all. The whole ordeal was too fond, too sentimental, that their father would never approve, so as Miles feels the last of his tea sink down his throat, he chooses to forget he had even seen her. It is easier that way, and he knows she will do the same besides. 

Miles heads home early, after that, and the sky turns grey with him. It seems to stay grey. On June 30th, he receives another call. It is not Gumshoe, so Miles lets his ringer go off until the person on the other end of the line gives up. It is odd, he thinks, for there to be anyone still trying to reach him—any spam calls had been put to a stop years ago, so the only person who could be calling is someone who once knew him. He realizes, after the ringer ceases and a voicemail appears in the inbox, that it is the same 323-area-code number which had called twice in January, and a petrifying fear fills his chest which compels him to shut his phone down for days in an anxious avoidance. Whoever it is, he cannot yet face what they have to say. Not after being kicked to the ground by that wild mare, his sister.

He spends a few more months in Germany after that, hears of Franziska’s first defeat through his favorite news radio and thinks about calling her before a shameful fear stops his hands from dialing the number. His condolences wouldn’t mean anything, just another form of condescension. With the coming of mid-summer, Miles finds himself bedbound with a dull lethargy unlike his fever of the spring. He knows it to be the culmination of months worth of walking and wallowing and isolation, but he feels it to be something suitably karmic and just, certainly more just that anything his career had ever brought about. The ebb and flow of the year, the constant switching from optimistic energy and desperate misery make any thought or attempt at self-change seem pointless. August passes in a daze, the weight of everything exchanged with his sister still too much to properly digest as he is with a newfound incessant anxiety. It is not so bad as when he was in Paris, and certainly not as bad as Strasbourg (perhaps France is simply cursed), but nevertheless he finds time to blur away in a miasma of loose mental threads and dead ends. At once every single spot in the city becomes a hotbed of memory, every person becomes a fearful reminder of everyone whose life he had ever tarnished, every word he speaks seems to be painfully inadequate for the racing of his mind. 

That voice that started this whole ordeal re-presents himself. What way is there to repent, to make up for those lives, likely innocent, that Miles had made a career off ending? The answer stares down at him from the top of the condominium in which he stays. His room is on the second floor, how easy would it be to walk up just a few more flights of stairs and then crash down to earth again, rapid and spectacular? He cannot think about it, because as some part of him realizes, more death does not replenish life. He has made more than a career out of all he was essentially forced into doing—if he wants to redeem the misguided cruelties of that young man, of the Miles Edgeworth who was so good at doing what he was told, it will require a lot more than boundless self-loathing. Of course, that doesn’t mean the self-loathing simply disappears. Some things are easier said than done, afterall, and all things told he’ll never be able to really get rid of the feeling. It is difficult to acknowledge through the gauze of years of repression, but Miles has hated himself at least a little bit for years, ever-cloaked under a veil of self-grandiosity and untouchable ego. 

It is not until late September that Miles pulls himself back together. He glances from the standing mirror in his bedroom, to where his favorite court suit hangs, back to himself. The two can be separated, for now, but Miles knows they will have to come back together sooner or later. Redemption, he thinks, and with the thought he reaches for his half-finished and half-abandoned copy of Crime & Punishment. Every other book he had bought in Faulkstone has been finished in the interim and annotated to death; this remains his final obstacle.

Really, if Miles so desired he could walk to any number of the used bookshops in the neighborhood and fill a whole shelf with volumes that wouldn’t make him as viciously nauseous as this one, but he had made a decision. He is in the middle of running away, he could not possibly try to further such shame. He commits himself to it, and part of it feels completely pathetic, to have to commit to something as simple and elementary as reading a book, but still it seems some monumental goal. He justifies the difficulty internally by saying that Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth never would, and maybe that’s enough to make it worth trying. Keeping with his resolution, and all, finding where the two sides of him, the almost-sentimental intellectual and the perfectionist egotist, could become one.

The September air brings a chill, and with that chill a stretch of rain which lasts the week of Miles’ 25th birthday. He spends it as he has the last 15 birthdays: exactly the same as any other day. Meaning here, in his present metamorphosis, he walks the city and settles in the park nearest his room with a book in one hand and a hot tea in the other sheltered under worsted wool. Here, the autumn means the settling of chill in the air, but Miles imagines the difficulty his sister must be having now with the ever-sunny warmth of the L.A. autumn. It had been jarring for Miles when he returned home, he can only guess how well Franziska, perhaps winter personified, could handle the warm single season of southern California. There is a comedic irony, he thinks, to this swapped locality they have found their way into.

He finishes the novel with a strange feeling in his chest. Miles knows he wouldn’t be able to piece the whole thing back together if asked, his reading being far too disjointed over time and fever, but something pulls at his heart nevertheless. He feels a strange sickness when Katerina dies, which he attributes to her name and her name alone, and an even greater sickness when Dunya pulls out her pistol. By the end, he really does know himself not to be this protagonist, this Byronic hero he once feared himself to be. Miles cannot stop believing everything wrong with him, and in some strange moment of absurdist divination, he decides that maybe the novel can serve as inspiration to the fate of that which he has spent months killing. Let the myth of the prosecutor within him be sentenced to the cold and bitter, let the rest of him somehow find the way through it all to live. 

To Miles, that October and November seem the warmest months of all.

Europe. Early December, 2017 through March, 2018.

December brings its usual anxieties, its painful reminders now made painful for a different reason. Miles cannot spend the season in Germany, he knows that much, if only for the almost forgotten memories of running through the halls with a version of his sister who still stumbled when she walked. He flies to Brussels, watches as the skyline comes into view and dots around the cityscape for a few weeks enjoying the architecture. Snow falls over the shopping districts, illuminated in iridescent light the stretch of urban expanse feels like some sort of dream, the ending of some romantic comedy where the hero and heroine wear knitted hats and laugh under a set of fairy lights as snow falls. It’s a saccharine image, entirely too corny and cliche, but he smiles rather than scoff, and that counts for something. Chanukah and Christmas both pass without Miles noticing, but he doesn’t really mind.

December 28th comes and goes on another long train ride from Brussels to Prague, perfectly planned as to not give any opportunity for a private slip into despair. The mourning of this 16th year is a different beast than in years past. There is no self to blame, at least not so wholly, there is only the play-drama nature of the whole affair. It is not too late to follow his father’s model of justice, it never was. Perhaps it would have been better had he done what he said he was going to as a child, but it is too late to dwell on those what-ifs by this point. Maybe in another world he could’ve been that perfect successor to his father’s legacy the whole time, maybe that world would be nicer, both for him and the world as a whole, but that Miles Edgeworth had died in the elevator. All there is left to do is move forward without him, mourn what he could’ve been but not be consumed by the hypothetical of it all. Miles had made his decision, coerced though it was, the best he can hope for now is to make a new decision he can be proud of. Never mind his mentor, never mind his father, even, the way to make up for the crimes of his prosecutorial past is to do what he had always aspired to do, and he will do his best to stand with the decision.

In Prague, he buys mulled wine from the night-markets and visits the castle. Hell, Miles evens goes to a soccer game, as awkward as it is, and even though he leaves before the first half is even over the cheering of the crowd, the excited fathers lifting their sons on their shoulders, the groups of young and dumb groups of friends are enough to make the foray worth it. Detective Gumshoe calls a few times asking for advice on a case, which makes Miles feel the most alive he has in perhaps years. It is a convoluted mess, one that is far from pleasant even if one ignores the murder, but both his sister and Wright are on the case, so Miles offers what guidance he can anyway. Just because he isn’t there does not mean he cannot still atone for all that past injustice.

Stumbling back to his inn-room from the market slightly drunk for New Year’s Eve, there is an odd whirl of dread and excitement in Miles’ chest at the end of yet another year, which seems to pass in a dream-state clearer than any reality. There’s a small balcony attached to his room, but a ringing in his ear and head prevents him from facing the bitter cold again. Miles sits pressed up against the balcony door and listens to the sounds of partygoers below, all laughing and talking and enjoying themselves in a language Miles cannot himself speak. This December 31st is better than the last, he decides, no matter how similar they may seem on the surface.

There isn’t a countdown here like in New York, but to be fair there is not a countdown on Earth which rivals that of Time’s Square. Instead, Miles knows it is the new year because sudden cheers erupt in the streets below, and a layer of fireworks shoot up to dot the snowy sky in bright reds and pinks and greens. He had no reason to stay up in the first place, the more he thinks about it, but there is a certain poetry which he cannot deny, and wouldn’t want to. Miles smiles to himself, just a little bit, and goes to bed without a resolution. He figures the last year’s was grandiose enough to make up for it.

He wakes up at 9 a.m. on New Year’s Day with the ringing of his phone. Despite the fact it is already far later than his normal rising time, seeing the number begins with that familiar 323 makes the same avoidant spell which drove him away awaken in his chest, and Miles hides himself under the covers in childlike avoidance. He lets it ring out again, his heartbeat pounding in his throat, but after it is done he washes his face and dresses and begins brewing his morning cup of tea with a heavy weight in his throat. Miles plays the first of the now-four voice mails left over the past year, he feels as though he simply has to.

The voice is Wright’s, something the Miles of February would scoff and blush at, but this Miles only sinks a little bit with the realization. He listens to them play oldest to newest, the first of which is only a few seconds long and dated January 3rd, 2017.

Hey, Edgeworth. It's, uh, me. Wright, I mean. Look, I heard about the note you left and got your number from Gumshoe—just—if you're alive please call me back, okay? 

A few seconds of silence hang at the end of the message, something inaudible mumbled under Wright's breath, and suddenly Miles notices the dense and bitter fog of his hangover. Everything internally is screaming at him to stop, to turn his phone off again or throw it out the window or plus his ears and scream, but he just can’t bring his body to do any of it. The next message is dated January 9th.

It's Wright again, not that that's important. I…part of me hopes this is still some big misunderstanding, so I'm gonna do my best to maintain professionalism. Yeah…This is kinda crass but here goes nothing, I guess. Why'd you do it, Edgeworth? I know if you're actually dead there's not point in asking, but isn't the point of suicide notes that you give some semblance of closure to the people around you? I know we're not…friends anymore, Edgeworth, but we were, we could've been. I wanted to. Were you so ashamed of losing?...Did I do something when I was defending you? I’m just so scared that seeing my process from the defendant’s chair made you feel embarrassed, or something, that you lost to me. I guess that's kind of presumptuous, though.

...This is really messed up, but I'm kinda pissed off that you killed yourself right after I tried so hard to defend you. I thought things were gonna change, get better, you were—I mean, Edgeworth, you actually smiled. I guess that could've been a sign. I've been looking up signs of suicidal ideation the past few days, which I know is maybe a bit much because we just can't find you and it’s too late for all that anyhow. You could still be alive, and you could be listening to this from, I don't know, somewhere, and you could be laughing at me for being so stupid as to believe you when you said you killed yourself. I want to believe you when you say things, Miles. But I am so, so mad.

…If you really are alive, just please call me back?

Miles’ chest feels tight, and all of a sudden he feels like the same terrible person as last January. He keeps listening. June 25th—Wright had just beaten Franziska.

 

It's Wright again. Look, I'm pretty sure you're dead, which makes this really really stupid to even be doing, but it's late and that last trial was…I met Miss von Karma, your…whatever she was to you. Peer, I guess? She's a real piece of work, but I feel kinda bad for her. That's, uh, not important though. I called because, well, Maya asked about you. She didn't know what happened because she went back to Kurain so soon and I guess it just reminded me of the fact that it's been six months and there's still no sign of a body. Thought I might as well say hi again?

…This is really dumb, isn’t it?

‘It isn’t dumb at all,’ Miles wants to say but doesn’t. The voicemail ends suddenly with Wright cursing under his breath. Final message, dated January 1st Central European Time. For Miles now, it’s about 9:30 in the morning and snowy. For Wright, it’s just after midnight with a dark, clear sky. Miles takes a sharp breath and hits play again, because why not? There is a noise of loud chattering behind Wright’s voice.

Happy new year, Miles. I don’t really know when you died, if you even actually died, but I’m saying it’s January 1st. So happy being dead a year. I’m still really mad at you, I can’t even let anyone else talk about you without going insane. It’s kinda weird, though, because even when they’re not I’m still always thinking about you

 

…Is it wrong I hope you’re dead? It’s the uncertainty that gets me the most, I think. One moment I’m talking to von Karma—your sister, apparently, which is weird—and she’s saying that she knows you’re alive out there somewhere and, God, I want to believe her. I can’t tell if that's the nicest or meanest thing she’s ever said. But anyway then the next moment I can’t stop thinking of all the ways you could have done it. I told Gumshoe about the last three calls and he made this face, and honestly I don’t know what it means at all, but it made me feel really weird.

…Miles, I really—yeah, one second—Sorry, uh, I’m with some old college friends, which is weird, but they wanted to all do shots, and after that last case I kinda agree with them. But I need to turn my phone off before that so I don’t say anything even more stupid to a guy who might not even be dead. If you’re not dead, I’m gonna be even more mad at you.

His phone goes silent—there are no more messages, and the dramatic irony of it all seizes Miles in a sudden and disturbed fit of laughter, which soon becomes choking on some weight collected in his throat. He looks out his window again. Overhead, the sky is clear enough that Miles spots a plane taking off into a sky blue beyond the winter clouds. Which is more like running away: staying here or going home? 

He decides Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth is dead, yes, but there is no answer for what to do with that space in his psyche. Empty, it seems to reach for the corpse of who he used to be in some self-consuming way, baring bloody teeth over the petrified heart of a young man who had not let himself feel. Saturn devouring his son, and all. That’s what this whole odyssey was, he decides: the buildup of a decade of shame and loathing he could not place. Miles knows himself to be a coward whether he returns now or not, he must give this new, half-dead but fully alive Miles the chance to fill those empty spaces. He doesn’t deny it’s also a little bit of running away, how could it not be?

Miles spends another month in Prague. He attends the ballet, walks the university campuses, even visits the Spanish Synagogue on a particularly sunny day in late January. He also picks up whatever he can find in a nearby shop. The only English novel is Shelley’s Frankenstein, which Miles picks up without missing the humor.

He rereads it as he dots around the Balkans for a few weeks, and finishes it for likely the third time of his life on the Croatian coast of the Adriatic on a cold but clear day gazing into the lapsing blue of the water. It is a scene so picturesque it makes something swell in Miles’ heart which he cannot help but smile at. The ever-poetic boy inside him finds himself to be both monster and maker, but it is not a cruel self-judgement and it once might have been. He looks down at his own hands with fondness—they are hands which have held the weight of lives, but they are also the hands which have turned the pages of poetry collections and brushed the hair of his younger sister before any of the evil worked its way into the bones. It is not too late to find a middle-ground between the two. Evil does not necessitate evil; there is such a thing as redemption.

March 14th, Miles lands in Petersburg for the week. This, he decides, will be the final leg of his journey. It is terribly self-indulgent, he knows, but he enjoys it anyway. Walking along the streets whose names were struck out in those familiar pages, crossing the Moyka River, standing before the monument to Dostoevsky adjacent to the cathedral, all of it is a practice in idolatry he never would permit normally. There is a peace to the whole affair, though, none of the erraticism behind his daily walks as there was last year at this time, and he indulges in all his prior state wouldn’t let him. He goes to the opera, the plays, the symphony concerts, all which had once disturbed him so greatly.

He lets each mote of sadness wash over and through. It is not perfect, but Miles never expected himself to be, and that in itself is worth something. Gumshoe calls again on Miles’ last day as he sits in Pulkovo Airport, a newspaper on his lap from months ago with his sister’s forced-smile on the front page. His heart is an erratic thing, but now it seems to calm with the assurance that he is still alive, and that is enough.

Over the Atlantic Ocean. March 21st, 2018.

As the plane takes off, Miles watches the illuminated ebbs and flows of the river pass into a cool fog. He is afraid of heights, yes, but he always loved the window seat. As it all passes beneath him, the continent and the memories and all that sickened him, Miles cannot help but miss home. He misses his childhood neighborhood, misses the horrible expanse of L.A. highway, misses the thrill of the courtroom if not who he was within. He misses his sister, Wright, Gumshoe, even, he misses the receptionist at the front of the Prosecutor's Office, his favorite radio station playing from his car stereo, the taste of his favorite brand of tea with honey. 

Most of all, he misses himself. The idea of self seems such a peculiar one to him now, but it is a thought he still delights in. There are infinite versions of himself, too many to count, really. There are some which he hates, viciously, even though Miles knows he needn't, but there is a certain joy in pronouncing them dead. 

He smiles to himself as he stares out the window into an expanse of familiar ocean, and thinks about what might happen after the wheels of the plane jerk down onto the Los Angeles International Airport runway, and for the first time maybe in his life, he lets his eyes close over six miles above the ground. Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth has died, but this new Miles Edgeworth may be able to live, if he gives him a chance. It might make the subject of a new story—he is reminded—but our present story is ended.