Archive of Our Own ^beta

Two weeks after the Vera Misham trial, Phoenix receives a call from the Prosecution’s Office. He still can’t fully believe that it’s over, and is half-convinced they’re calling to send him to jail for all the underhanded shit he did collecting the evidence for the trial, or because they decided he did murder Zak after all, or because Kristoph’s connections run deep and they want to fuck with him, or…

In any case, he takes the call. 

He almost hangs up, red-faced and furious, ten seconds later. The call was to inform him that the Prosecutor’s Office is arranging for a social worker to work with everyone who saw Vera Misham collapse on the stand, in order to help them ‘process their trauma.’ It’s a service being provided to the community for free.

This has Miles Edgeworth written all over it, and Phoenix is done with Miles’s increasingly transparent attempts to talk him into therapy. It’s not like Phoenix hasn’t tried, okay? He’s not actually as much of a moron as everyone seems to think he is; he wasn’t going to adopt a daughter after violently losing his job without at least getting his head checked out, especially if Miles was willing to foot the bill.

It was a disaster. The first one asked him invasive questions about Trucy. It took him more than half the session to clock that he thought he had a Freudian obsession with his new daughter, but as soon as he did, he was out of there like a shot.

The second wasn’t much better. She was just barely out of school and clung to wooden expressions and mechanical platitudes to mask the fact that she was terrified of messing up. She asked some good questions, but delivered them like she was reading out of a textbook, and didn’t know how to probe deeper, when even Phoenix was able to realize that his initial answers were… not all there was. 

The third was…fine. He stuck with her for the better part of a year, until Truce was done with fourth grade. She was very into ‘giving Phoenix a safe space to explore his childhood’ and seemed overly fixated on the mother he barely remembers, but compared to the others, she wasn’t a bad fit. It’s with her that he realizes that whatever’s broken in his brain, talking won’t be enough to fix it.

Phoenix takes a breath to tell the poor receptionist on the phone where she can stick it, when his brain finally engages, for once. This is exactly the kind of thing that Miles would do - offer a blanket service to 1,500 people just to get Phoenix to take his advice - but in this case, he probably…didn’t. Miles is still in Europe. He hasn’t even accepted the job of Chief Prosecutor yet, although Phoenix knows he’s in very serious negotiations over it right now. If anything, this is the Prosecutor’s Office trying to clean up their act before Miles gets there and comes down on them like a tenement’s worth of bricks. 

It only takes a few seconds for him to put all this together, but it’s still a few seconds too long in phone-time. 

“...Mr. Wright?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.” He considers the offer seriously for the first time. And Hell, you can’t beat free. “I might just take you up on that,” he says. “What are the details?”

There are limits, it seems, on the Prosecutor’s Office’s magnanimity. The social worker is only available two mornings, both next week, and any medical stuff is only covered if you arrange it through one of the social workers’ visits. Phoenix is suddenly grateful, as he sometimes is, that he’s a deadbeat who owns a talent agency and works nights. Most people would have to skip work to make this happen, and Phoenix knows from painful experience that when you’re hanging on by a thread, not working can mean not eating.

But maybe there were a lot of deadbeats watching the trial that day, Phoenix thinks to himself, when he shows up to the appointed block of offices and sees a sizable number of laypeople sitting in the makeshift waiting room. It doesn’t seem very confidential, considering there are some prosecutors trailing through on their way in and out of the surrounding conference rooms, but he supposes that would be too much to ask - at least he doesn’t run into Klavier Gavin. 

He presents himself at the intake station and is handed a clipboard and a cheap pen, which he takes to one of the chairs and settles in. There’s about 6 pages of forms, which seems like it’s at least 5 pages too many for a free service, particularly when - yep. He flips through them; the back four are dedicated to insurance information. Maybe the Prosecutor’s Office is able to get reimbursed. At least he doesn’t have to fill those pages out, having no health insurance to speak of, but he still hates going through his medical history.

He wrinkles his nose when he has to disclose that he’s had sex with men, and grits his teeth as he keeps adding checkboxes down the list of past conditions. Too bad falling off a burning bridge and drowning aren’t listed here; he’s almost like to complete the set.

He sidles back up to the intake desk when he’s through and hands the clipboard back to the administrator, or whoever she is. She stares at his paperwork for what feels like too long, then squints up at him, sizing him up, before putting the paperwork in one of her piles. It makes his hair prickle.

It takes about 45 minutes for the administrator to call his name, which is plenty long enough for him to start getting antsy. People who came in after him have already been called. Finally he hears:

“Mr. Wright?” and he shuffles back to his feet.

The admin points him towards the back of the office block, where some of the conference rooms have been transformed into exam rooms with the neat application of cheap paper blinds over the glass paneling. He finds the room number he’d been told - 3C - knocks briefly, and goes in.

He’s not totally sure what he was expecting, but this isn’t it. Sitting at the oval conference table is a little old Japanese lady. She looks nothing whatsoever like Phoenix’s grandmother, but he still feels his face go defensively blank.

“Ah, Mr. Wright,” the woman says, going in for a handshake and a bow. Phoenix returns both greetings. “I’m Dr. Koba. Have a seat.”

Her consonants are softly accented, and it surprises him - which he supposes makes him a jerk. He tries not to think about his grandmother too much, only lived with her for a couple of years after his mom passed, but he remembers she was not very big on things like mental health. He’d kind of gotten the feeling it was a cultural thing.

“Mr. Wright,” she begins. “What brings you in today?”

“The free mental healthcare,” he says truthfully, then wonders if he’s going to get dinged for the quip. Dr. Koba takes it in stride. 

“And what kind of mental health support are you looking for?”

He bites back a Isn’t it your job to tell me? But the good doctor must be able to hear it in the shape of his silence. 

“Put another way, what are you hoping to get out of this? Many of the patients I’ve seen today have been seeking relief from trauma-related symptoms caused by Ms. Misham’s distressing collapse.”

Phoenix snorts, then realizes that…wasn’t appropriate. 

“Sorry,” he says. He’s wearing the beanie, so he’s not tempted to rub the back of his neck, but the muscle memory is there. “Vera is a great kid and I’m glad she’s okay, but - on a scale of zero to I’ll have nightmares about this until I die, that was like a…two.”

Dr. Koba blinks.

“Tell me more about that.”

“The man who was found guilty for Vera’s attempted murder stalked me and my daughter for seven years, culminating in the brutal murder of my daughter’s biological father, which he framed me for,” Phoenix snaps. “That’s a little higher on the old trauma meter.”

Dr. Koba stares at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s more reflexive than heartfelt, and it makes him feel like he’s lost something - there was a time when he would have felt guilty for that. “I just meant - I mean, I’m sure I am traumatized, not so much by Vera but by…other stuff…but that’s not really what I’m here for. Sure, I’d love to sit down and - and process everything that’s happened to me and find important life lessons in it or whatever well-adjusted people do, but mostly I just want to stop feeling like dogshit all the time.” 

“Mr. Wright,” Dr. Koba says, and Phoenix tilts his head to give the illusion of looking up without ever looking up. “I’m writing you a prescription for Sertraline. It’s an antidepressant.”

Phoenix does look up now, alarmed, but she beats him to the punch: “The cost will be covered by the Prosecutor’s Office. I’m going to ask you to ease yourself onto this. Start with 25 milligrams a day for the first week. The smallest pills they have as a generic are 50 milligrams, so you’ll have to break them in half. Then move up to 50 milligrams the next week. You can expect some stomach upset, but it should only be temporary.

“As a precaution, tell someone close to you that you’ve started the medication, in case your behavior changes unexpectedly. Then I want you to follow up with me in my regular office in two weeks’ time.”

She pulls out her phone. “Does Tuesday the 12th at this same time suit?” she asks.

Phoenix agrees, feeling a little dazed by her direct, no-nonsense manner. He’s ushered out not long after - apparently, these are just 15-minute consultations - and goes to the pharmacy across the street from the Borscht Bowl.

He waits for the script to be filled with some wonder; there really wasn’t any copay. Then he goes to the Agency, takes his first half-pill, and sits on the couch for a while, thinking about nothing. 

Apollo comes in at around lunchtime, and Phoenix flinches - at the sound of the door or the sudden company or both.

“Apollo,” he says, feeling like an idiot. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

It is a wildly stupid thing to say to his one sort-of-employee in his place of employment, and Apollo knows it.

“...same to you,” he says. It takes a split-second too long for Phoenix to tip his head down into his customary smirk, and by then it’s too late.

“I’ve been coming in most days,” Apollo says. “Just to check the office voicemails and water Charley.”

Which you would know, if you were ever here goes unsaid.

“That’s - um. Good of you,” Phoenix says. “I’ve mostly been upstairs.”

That surprises the kid for some reason, and yeesh, for someone so gifted at spotting tells, he’s truly terrible at hiding his own. 

Apollo nods slowly, easing himself into his desk chair. He seems to be thinking hard about something - his brow is furrowed the way Phoenix has seen in court.  

“Mr. Wright, are you okay?” His face twists up as soon as he says it, like he already knows what Phoenix is going to say, and that more than anything makes the glib answer die on Phoenix’s tongue. He wants to be honest, for some reason, and the compulsion scares him. He hasn’t been honest in…years.

“I mean, in one sense, I’m fine,” Phoenix says finally. “I’m not dying or anything. You could almost say I’m doing better, since -” he waves his hand so he doesn’t have to say since I puppeteered you into getting your prior employer a life sentence. “But, uh - to answer your question the way I think you meant it - no. I don’t think I am.”

Apollo watches him carefully, like Phoenix is a wild dog that might still bite. 

“...Not to overstep,” he says finally. “But I think today the Prosecutor’s Office is having -”

“I know,” he interrupts him. “I came from there.” He glances over to the counter, where his new meds sit in their little orange, plastic pill bottle. “Or I guess I came from the pharmacy, but…” he shrugs. Apollo follow his line of sight and his eyebrows climb up into his forehead.

Something occurs to Phoenix.

“Are you - I mean I know we can’t exactly afford to pay health insurance here -” another stab to the heart, another thing to feel guilty about -

“I have health insurance through the state,” Apollo says, voice surprisingly…understanding. “I will until I’m twenty-six. Mr Gavin didn’t pay for my health insurance either.”

Phoenix holds his breath for a moment, then lets it all come whooshing out at once.

“I wish that didn’t make me feel better,” he mutters, mostly to himself, but it still makes Apollo huff out an almost-laugh. It is without a doubt the warmest conversation he has ever had with his employee, and he is about to ruin it. 

“Hey, Apollo. Can I ask you for a favor?”

The warmth dries up - Apollo’s body language is back to being suspicious and standoffish. 

“You’re asking?” he says, which shocks a grim laugh out of him.

“Yeah, I’m asking. I’ll ask Truce if you decide you don’t want to do it, but…” there are too many ways to finish that sentence; he lets it trail off instead. “The shrink I saw today said I should let someone know that I just started taking new meds. Just in case.”

“What do you mean, just in case?” Apollo asks, alarmed.

“You don’t have to like, keep watch on me or anything!” Phoenix says, arms out in a shrug. “I think it’s more like - if you see me getting led away in a straight jacket because I started talking to people who aren’t there, maybe tell the EMTs about it.”

“And you don’t want to ask Trucy because…?”

“I’ve put her through enough.” It comes out heavier than he meant it to; Apollo’s face is back to being sympathetic, and it makes Phoenix want to claw out his own eyes.

“Sure,” Apollo says finally. As long as you show your face in the office so I can actually do it is probably implied in there, too.

“Cool. Good. Uh, thanks.” God, could Phoenix be any more awkward? “I’m gonna go-”

“Yeah, I’ll let you get back to it,” Apollo says just as abruptly, as if they’re two macho men who just realized they’re dangerously close to experiencing an emotion. Phoenix settles into the kitchen; there’s always something to clean in there. He thinks he hears Apollo start abusing the filing cabinets. There’s a finesse to getting the left one to stay shut that the kid still hasn’t mastered.

*****

He’s pretty sure the shrink told him not to expect any immediate results, beyond stomach upset, so he chalks it up to placebo when his appetite comes back six days in.

It’s odd, he thinks as he munches some toast along with his ritual morning coffee, listening to the quiet after seeing Trucy off to school - he hadn’t really noticed that his appetite was missing. If he’d been pressed, he probably would have said that he’d never been one for breakfast, there’s only so many bowls of borscht you can eat before atroquinine starts looking attractive by comparison, and salty noodles for dinner saves some money he can use to buy actual produce for Truce.

He feels a pang of worry at that, wondering if their expenses are about to increase, before he remembers - he doesn’t work at the Borscht Bowl anymore The Jurist Trial Committee gave him a five-figure stipend, which is more money than he’s had in his account at any one time since he defended Will Powers. He can relax, if only for a minute. 

But the thought of what comes next is making the back of his neck prickle and his palms sweat, sharper than he’s felt it since Trucy was a little girl. Abruptly, he doesn’t want to be up here anymore, by himself, so he grabs the office key from its hook by the door and takes the stairs one floor down.

The door’s unlocked when he gets there. Apollo is sitting at his ramshackle little desk, doing his best to look uninterested as he blows by. Phoenix feels jittery, desperate for something to do with his hands, when he spies a new set of playing cards on the piano. He falls on it gratefully, ripping off the cellophane wrapper and tapping the too-slick, too-stiff cardstock into his hands. He begins shuffling the stack, doing some showy tricks like a bridge and a perfect riffle, just to keep his hands occupied.

Apollo begins making some noise, clattering around near the filing cabinets again, but Phoenix isn’t really paying much attention. The feeling of cards beneath his fingers has grown repetitive and soothing. 

From his peripheral awareness, he hears a huff, then:

“Why do you keep the files from the top of the alphabet in the bottom drawer over here?”

For a moment, Phoenix’s mind is in overdrive. He wasn’t expecting the question, doesn’t have an answer prepared to twist it to his best advantage. Then he takes a breath, and lets his brain shift back down to a lower gear. Sometimes a question is just a question, and an answer can just be an answer.

“That’s just the way Mia always did it,” he explains. 

“Mia?” Apollo says. “Who’s Mia?”

Phoenix pauses his shuffling to squint at Apollo, incredulous. 

“You’re standing in her law office right now.”

Apollo’s face kind of squinches up. 

“I’m standing in your law office right now,” he says.

“Sure,” says Phoenix, overlooking for the moment that both of them are, in point of fact, actually in his daughter’s talent agency. “But it was Mia’s first. And the apartment upstairs.”

“...Huh,” Apollo says, but like he’s drawing a conclusion, not like he’s acknowledging an answer.

“What?” Phoenix asks, needled.

“I guess that sort of explains it,” Apollo says. “Why you held onto this place for so many years. I guess even you get sentimental.”

The even you snags on his brain, but he’s talking before he can process it:

“Sentimental is one thing, but I own this place outright - this and the apartment upstairs. What I pay in property tax is a hell of a lot cheaper than rent.”

“Hold it!” Apollo shouts, startling him. “I knew you and Trucy were conning me when you were going on about losing the lease on this place before the Kitaki case!”

Phoenix feels his mouth pulling into his signature, guilty grin, but it feels awkward on his face. How strange. 

“You got me,” he admits. “That’s just a bit that me and Trucy do.”

Apollo glowers at him.

“Tell me the truth,” he says. “Why did you call me that morning, really?” 

He wants to object to the tell me the truth treatment - it’s not like he makes a habit of lying to the kid, he just plays his cards close to the chest!

A lie of omission is still a lie, a voice that sounds annoyingly like Miles’s says from the back of his head.

“Well, first of all, Truce is only 15. She needed someone to keep an eye on her while I was in the hospital.”

“And your first choice for the job of watching your underage daughter is a strange man?” Apollo deadpans. 

Phoenix freezes up. It was a better question three weeks ago, before he knew all of Thalassa Gramarye’s secrets. Even before that, though, he could see that Apollo and Trucy have the same eyes. 

“...I trust you with her,” he finally decides on. He’s not enough of an asshole to needle Apollo about his sexuality to duck the conversation. He wishes he hadn’t even thought of it - and besides, not all predation is sexual. “I did then, too.”

“And did you know there was a case, or were you just yanking me around to get free babysitting?”

Kristoph is on death row, yet it still feels like saying it out loud will cause the whole house of cards to come tumbling down. He pushes through it.

“I thought there was a case. I was totally wrong about what it was.”

Apollo squints.

“I thought you would find that Gavin had put a hit out on me,” he finally admits. Apollo looks stricken. “I’m glad you didn’t, all things considered.”

“Holy Mother, Mr. Wright.” Phoenix blinks. The only other person he’s ever heard use that oath is Mia. Anyway, Apollo’s unwavering attention is starting to feel suffocating, after he’s spent so long skulking in the shadows. He tries to deflect:

“I probably seem pretty paranoid, huh?”

“Mr. Gavin murdered two people, and one of them was while he was in solitary confinement. So, no. It doesn’t seem paranoid.”

“...Yeah,” Phoenix says, and goes back to his deck of cards. Apollo sighs, long-suffering, probably because of the abrupt end to the conversation, and Phoenix loses himself in the movements. 

He’s still at it nearly an hour later, when Trucy bursts into the office after school. She gasps, delighted, when she sees what he’s doing.

“Are you wearing in my new deck for me, Daddy?”

“Mm-hm,” he says. “I’m almost done.” He gives it one last showy bridge, then hands the cards over. Trucy pets them happily, enjoying the rounded edges and softened corners she needs for her tricks. “They always feel better when you do it,” she says, and he feels like he swallowed a sunbeam to at least have been able to do this one, small thing for his daughter.

*****

Upstairs, in the quiet, after Trucy has left for school, seems to be prime time for the thoughts to hit. I wish I could talk to Miles, he thinks to himself, then realizes with sudden, stunning clarity that - he can. There’s nothing stopping him. Maybe there never was.

He dials Miles’s number from memory and waits for it to ring. He’s not sure if he’s more scared of Miles answering or not. The call connects.

“What the hell -” he hears.

“Oh, shit, timezones, I’m sorry -”

“Wright!” Miles barks. “Don’t you dare hang up!” The order freezes him in his tracks. He waits as Miles clatters around, muttering to himself and - by the sound of it - knocking over everything that there is to knock in a three foot radius. 

“There,” Miles says after a time, sounding more like himself. “Apologies, Wright, I didn’t know it was you.”

“What time is it over there?” Phoenix asks, now that he’s been given permission to speak. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Nonsense,” Miles says. “It’s a nine hour time difference, Wright, it’s a perfectly acceptable 7 pm.” 

“O - oh,” Phoenix says, for some reason the thought not cheering him like it should have. “Then I’m not interrupting - something else, am I?”

Miles snorts. “If that’s your clumsy way of asking if I’m entertaining, the answer is no.” Phoenix can’t tell if Miles meant entertaining or - entertaining. “The only thing you’re interrupting is my dinner, and if you can stand to have me talk and eat you needn’t even interrupt that.”

“Of course,” Phoenix hurries to say. “That’s fine.”

“Hmph.” There’s a pause while Miles, presumably, puts him on speaker phone.

“What got you so worked up when you first answered, if it wasn’t from me interrupting?” he asks.

Miles grunts, and it’s so delightfully him that it makes Phoenix grin. 

“That imbecile of a detective they’ve assigned to me for this case,” Miles snaps. “He’s apparently heard rumors of how demanding I am and thinks the correct way to proceed is to solicit my input on everything. It almost makes me wish for Gumshoe. At least with him I could assign him to a task and get minutes of quiet, sometimes consecutively.”

Phoenix is snickering by the end of the tirade. “I’ll tell Gumshoe you miss him the next time I see him,” he says.

“Yes, well.” And here Phoenix can imagine him looking to the side, shifting uncomfortably with a clarity that aches. “What are you calling about, Wright?” Miles says, in a transparent attempt to change the subject. “You didn’t call just to hear my voice.”

“Actually, I did.” Phoenix pauses for a second - the words hadn’t quite come out right.

“I can’t tell if you’re being facetious,” Miles says, a statement of fact, and Phoenix winces. He’s spent so long twisting everything into cryptic words or sarcasm that he’s forgotten how to do earnest.

“I’m not,” he says, voice quiet, hoping the volume substitutes for sincerity. “It’s the truth.”

“Mmph.” Miles must be swallowing something. “Well, do you want to talk, or shall I?”  

“Why don’t you start?” Phoenix says. Has he ever heard Miles quite like this? Brusque, yes; awkward, certainly; but willingly accommodating in his own clunky way. God, Europe must be good for him, and the thought makes him feel hollow. “Tell me about what tea you’re drinking now.”

“Well, the local specialty seems to be some sort of black blend, but I recently…”

Phoenix closes his eyes, only half-attending, letting the sound of Miles’s voice drive away the dark shadows in his brain. By the time Miles is pausing for breath, Phoenix has learned more about one specific family of Vietnamese immigrants living in Cologne and their tea-making habits than he could have ever predicted.

“And the case?” Phoenix prompts, just to keep him talking longer. It sounds like Miles does have more work to do this evening, so he’ll avoid asking about something like case precedent that can keep him talking for hours, but he is curious.

“Impossible,” he huffs. “There are contradictions in everyone’s testimonies, but they can’t all have done it. I wish you were here - you’ve always been better at reading people than me.”

“Miles,” Phoenix says, not minding that his voice comes out affected this time, since it covers up how stupidly touched he is by that. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Shut up,” Miles grumbles, and he has to press an honest-to-god hand over his heart to keep it from beating out of his chest from sheer, unfettered affection. 

“Well,” Miles clears his throat. “I’ve finished my dinner.” Phoenix expects to be dismissed in the next breath, but then: “Do you feel up to talking now?”

“I-” he begins, but then stops when no easy, fluttering falsehood comes to his lips. It shouldn’t be a shock to realize that he doesn’t want to lie, not to Miles, but somehow it is. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “I think it would make me feel better to talk, but - I don’t know how to put it into words.” 

“You could warm up by telling me about Trucy’s latest show.”

“You already know all about it,” he points out. “You can’t pretend like it wasn’t you who got Wonderbar to set up that livestream equipment.”

“I’d pretend no such thing,” Miles says. “And besides, it’s not a public livestream. Only Franziska, Kay, and myself have the access codes.”

It’s an out if he wants it - he could easily spend the next 20 minutes on this. “I guess I’ve just been a little bit in my head about things,” Phoenix spits before he can chicken out, half-amused, half-furious that Miles’s ploy to “warm him up” with talk of his daughter had actually worked. “About what comes next. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the past seven years would have been miserable if it weren’t for Trucy, and I’m glad they’re over, but I always had a goal. A focus. Now Gavin’s in jail and the Jurist Test Trial is over and it’ll be months before the Deliberations Committee makes a decision, and - shit. I don’t even have my job at the Bowl anymore to keep from losing my mind.” 

Miles grunts - his thinking grunt. 

“I assume, based on the stipend you received from chairing the Jurist Selection Committee, that compensation is not the specific issue here. Yes?”

“Huh?” Phoenix asks. “I mean, I’m not hurting for money right this second, but Truce and I can’t survive on unemployment indefinitely.”

“Noted,” Miles says. “But the kinds of projects that give you the greatest sense of purpose have never been based on compensation. They’re based on…on…” It’s rare for Miles to struggle with his words like this. “Conviction,” he finally settles on. “They’re built atop the strength of your conviction, and that is a formidable foundation.”

“Are they?” Phoenix asks, because - really? Does that sound anything like him?

“Wright,” Miles growls, exasperated. “You pursued law because of your conviction that I had been good as a child, and could be good again. You pursued each of your cases because of your conviction in your clients’ innocence. You pursued Kristoph Gavin because of your conviction in his guilt, and you pursued the jurist trial project because of your conviction that the Japanifornia legal system, for all of its flaws, could be reformed.”

He pauses for breath here. Phoenix feels bowled over.

“Jesus, Miles,” he finally manages, more overwhelmed than when he started. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Miles retorts, as literal-minded as ever. “But it seems to me that you may feel adrift until you determine what your conviction is now.”

“I’m not sure I have one,” Phoenix admits. His voice feels hoarse for…reasons he won’t interrogate right now. “I’m not sure I believe in anything like that anymore. I’m not sure I can. I think that part of me might have…broken.” 

“Does that scare you?” Miles asks, a propos of nothing. 

“I - what?” Because it’s Miles, he actually considers the question. “I…yeah.”

“Then it’s not broken.” His certainty could be arrogance, innocence, or lethal bull-headedness - or, knowing Edgeworth, a combination of all three. He feels himself tearing up. Edgeworth’s convictions are strong, too, he thinks to himself. Strong enough for him to borrow, for a time, if he needs some help finding a new foundation. 

“Ah - I must go.” 

Phoenix pulls himself enough together to answer: “Yeah. Yes, of course. Thanks for talking to me.”

“I always enjoy talking with you,” Miles says, once again murdering Phoenix with the abrupt, forthright honesty of the statement. “If you continue to feel overwhelmed about things, please call again.” There’s a pause. “That’s not to say I only wish to speak to you when you’re unhappy! Merely -”

“Miles! Miles, Miles,” Phoenix interrupts him, and this feels more familiar - Miles spiralling and Phoenix talking him down. “I knew what you meant. Don’t worry.” 

“I…yes. Well.” An awkward cleared throat.

“I’ll let you get back to your investigation,” Phoenix says, before Miles can break out any ‘verilies’ or ‘ergos.’

He sits there, smiling down at his phone, for long minutes after Miles rings off.

*****

Next Tuesday at 10:15 sees Phoenix sitting in the bland, generic waiting room that comes standard-issue at every therapist’s office in the city. He ticks off the features. Ugly carpet: check. Uncomfortable chairs: check. Nondescript plant: check. Bland watercolor landscape print to try and make up for the lack of windows: check.

Dr. Koba is only running about 5 minutes behind, wonder of wonders, so Phoenix is seen promptly. She refers to her notebook for a moment before fixing her gaze on Phoenix.

“We started you on medication last time I saw you,” she begins without preamble. “How are things going?”

“Really well,” Phoenix says, surprised in spite of himself that the words are true. “I’m eating again, and I was able to reach out to my best friend the other day without feeling like I was going to throw up.”

Dr. Koba regards him carefully for a long moment.

“We’re going to double your dose of the medication,” she says. 

“I - what? Oh - okay,” Phoenix says, startled by the non sequitur.

“I’ll get a new prescription sent to your pharmacy, but in the meantime you can double up on the pills you already have. But I’m glad to hear you’re doing well. The last time we met, you mentioned wanting to feel well enough to begin processing your trauma. Is that something you’d like to explore this morning?”

“Uh…I mean…yeah.” 

“Then tell me about some of the ways you feel that trauma or traumatic experiences have shaped your life.”

Phoenix blinks at her stupidly.

“For example, many patients express that parts of their lives continue to be marked by trauma, even if the experiences are in the past,” she gamely tries to prompt him, after his silence has gone on too long.

“No, I - I understood the question,” Phoenix says. He’s just surprised he’s being asked. The other shrinks he’d talked to had seemed to delight in telling him what was wrong with him. He thought that was what they were for. “I’m more, like - trying to figure out where to start?”

“You may start wherever you’re most comfortable.” His shoulders relax a little at that, because it’s something that Miles would say. “But perhaps it would help to start at the beginning of your day - when you wake up.”

It’s as good of an idea as any, he supposes. 

“Well, my alarm usually goes off at around 7, and then I get up and make breakfast for Truce - that’s my daughter - and pack her lunch. I drink a cup of coffee while she eats, then walk her to the bus. She’s old, she’s 15, so I don’t really need to go with her, but…”

“But?” Dr. Koba prompts, for all the world like she’s simply interested in what Phoenix has to say.

“But the last year has been - been a lot. I mean, her dad - that is, her biological father - died just a few months ago. Kristoph killed him. When she first came to live with me, before I’d even officially adopted her, she had nightmares about Zak - that’s her dad - disappearing and abandoning her again. Then, after she’d been living with me for a while, right around the adoption, the nightmares changed, and I became the one who was abandoning her, and…Well, Kristoph tried to frame me and get me thrown on death row in April. She’s started having nightmares again. And she’s a master at putting on a brave face, but - well. I walk her to the bus.”

Dr. Koba had started jotting quick notes on the journal balanced on her knee while he was talking, and now looks back up. There’s a lot to unpack there, he knows - God, he knows - but instead, she says: “So you walk her to the bus. She doesn’t resent the gesture?”

“She hangs onto my hand the whole way,” Phoenix admits. Dr. Koba nods.

“She - she has her own therapist,” Phoenix rushes to say. “She’s been working with the same guy since she was a little girl - it’s the same guy assigned through the school system during the adoption process, and he seems pretty - pretty good? But I don’t really go to any of her appointments any more, because I don’t want her to feel like she can’t talk about certain things if I’m there, and she’s such a little performer that I can’t tell if it’s really helping, you know? Or just helping her refine her happy mask.”

“You seem to be a very attentive father,” Dr. Koba says. Phoenix lets out a noise that’s half weak laugh, half hysterical gasp.

“God, I - I try to be, but those months I was gathering evidence for the MASON trial, I think she barely saw me. But I had to be thorough - I had to be thorough, to make sure the charges would stick, to make sure he wouldn’t come after anyone else…”

Phoenix is feeling overwhelmed again, sweating at his hairline under the cap, and the doctor seems to see it.

“So you walk your daughter - Truce, you said? Trucy, thank you - to the bus. Then what do you do?” she redirects him smoothly.

“I come home, throw out the old pot of coffee and make a new one,” Phoenix says, refocusing on the question at hand.

“Insist on freshness, do you,” she says idly, but Phoenix still pauses.

“No, I. Uh. I just don’t drink anything that’s left my line of sight,” he admits. Dr. Koba pauses.

“Because of what happened to Ms. Misham?” she asks, and this time Phoenix really does laugh. 

“No, it’s a habit from college. Believe it or not, Kristoph isn’t even the first poisoning mass-murderer I’ve slept with.” 

Unsurprisingly, the conversation goes off the rails from there, but not in like, a bad way. Phoenix mostly talks about his complicated relationship with poison, except it turns out it’s not complicated so much as definite, immovable, concrete: he hates it. At the end of the 60 minute session, Phoenix feels wrung out and he isn’t sure why, and the doctor is telling him:

“It’s clear you’ve accumulated a number of coping mechanisms that kept you afloat through times of turbulence, but don’t serve your long-term health and growth. I think this is something we can work on together over the coming months.”

Phoenix squints at her suspiciously as she goes to check her planner. When she finally looks up, she simply makes a neutrally interrogative noise. 

“That’s it?” he finally says, incredulous. “We’re going to work together on better coping mechanisms for me? You’re not going to, like - diagnose me with schizophrenia or say I’m a danger to my daughter or ask me to explore my unfulfilled sexual desires?”

Dr. Koba very genteelly wrinkles her nose. “The works of Freud have mostly been overwritten,” she says diplomatically, and Phoenix barks out a laugh. “This same time next week?”

“Okay,” Phoenix says, helpless, and accepts her little cardboard scheduling card.

*****

Once he gets started, getting his life back is almost heartbreakingly easy. It’s by no means effortless, but it’s easier by far than it had been to force his mind and limbs to operate through the mud he’s been drowning in for the last seven years. A part of him has always worried that medication would turn him into a different person, but it feels instead like he’s turning back into himself. Pieces of himself that had seemed to have phased halfway out of existence over the last seven years are snapping back into place every day. He takes a different route home from Dr. Koba’s office one week and stops at a coffee shop he’s never seen before, which is how he knows he’s getting his impulsiveness back. His generosity comes back online when he’s eating a sandwich in the park and finds himself throwing half of it to a bedraggled raccoon who is, by the looks of it, definitely having a worse day than he is. He’s started running into Larry more frequently, which is a sign from the universe that his capacity for the absurd is creeping back in.

Even breaking down his old coping mechanisms to replace them with something better is easier than he anticipated. He supposes it’s partially because he’s in a position of transition already: With Kristoph in a maximum security facility awaiting execution, the hyper-vigilance of the past seven years doesn’t feel necessary anymore. At the same time, the habits and behaviors of his early twenties are rusty and only half-remembered, making it easier to spot their contradictions and break them down. 

Of course, just like in court, spotting the contradictions is far easier than knowing what to do with them. Dr. Koba helps him to see that he’s always been terrified of being abandoned, has always tried to be all things to all people, has always tried to ‘save’ people by putting their needs before his own. She makes him realize that he can be a good father and take care of himself, that he can have a sense of justice and a sense of self-preservation, that not everything from his seven-year mask was an act, and he can have a twisted sense of humor and be a whole person, too. The more he improves, the more the bulk of the past seven years feels like a fever dream or a shared hallucination. 

But it wasn’t, and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that he’ll have to reckon with that. 

His talks with Miles are up to every other day at this point, and they are, with the exception of the time he spends with Trucy, the highlight of his week. They usually happen while Miles is eating dinner and Phoenix is staring at a wall of his apartment after walking Trucy to the bus.

“Have you - ah.” Miles clears his throat delicately, which is how Phoenix knows that what he’s going to say next is terribly important to him. “Have you given any more thought to what we talked about before? To finding your new…conviction?”

“...Some,” Phoenix hedges. He has and he hasn’t; getting his head screwed back on straight has been taking up most of his time. 

“Ah.” Another sweet little throat-hitch. Phoenix is sure his smile is nauseating right now; he does kind of miss how much easier it was to not be ridiculously in love with Miles Edgeworth when he was cripplingly depressed. “In that case, I have a recommendation - or rather, a proposition for you.”

He explains it in broad strokes: a prosecutor falsely accused of murder sitting out a death row sentence to protect his mission of catching a ruthless killer. Phoenix sees the flaw immediately - the gaping, plan-ruining flaw.

“Miles,” he says. “In order to have a chance at helping with this, I would need to be the one to defend him.”

“Yes.”

“Miles,” Phoenix says, unable to articulate everything that is wrong with this idea in that one syllable.

“The ban on reapplication after disbarment is seven years,” Miles says.

“I would have to reapply to the bar,” Phoenix says.

“You’ve done it once before.”

“I would have to retake the exam.” 

“As I said.”

There’s a reason - a real, solid, compelling reason why Phoenix absolutely cannot do that, but it sticks in his throat when he goes to tell him. It takes him until after the conversation is over to understand why: he wishes he could do it. He wants it so much it makes him ache.

*****

Because his life is fundamentally a comedy to everyone but him, the reason comes up not two days later. Apollo is rooting through one of the Agency closets looking for God-knows-what. He’s muttering what Phoenix assumes are criticisms of his housekeeping. Phoenix tunes him out; Apollo should try living with a professional magician for eight years and see how well his cupboards stay organized. Then he hears:

“What on Earth - oh.” The last syllable causes his dad-ears to activate; the kid sounded like he was in real distress. He heaves himself out of his chair.

“Apollo? What’s wrong?” he asks, then he sees what he has in his hands. “Oh,” he echoes.

It’s a little plastic baggy with a dropper of carmine red paint and an Ace of Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs in it, each sporting a nearly identical “blood” splatter. Apollo whirls to face him, suddenly furious. 

“You had Trucy forge the Ace for you,” he hisses. 

Phoenix closes his eyes. Suddenly he is so, so tired. “Yeah,” he says. 

A second later, Apollo yelps, and Phoenix tears open his eyes to see Apollo cradling his wrist. 

“Ow! Wait, what? Why would you lie about th- you mean she didn’t forge the Ace?” 

“No,” Phoenix says, eyeing Apollo’s bracelet suspiciously. Trucy had tried to explain how it worked to him, but he still doesn’t trust it. “No, she did.”

Now Apollo is frowning. He rotates the bracelet on his wrist.

“That was the truth,” he says, and Phoenix wishes the rush of hurt he feels at the disbelief in the kid’s voice was in any way justified. “So I don’t underst- wait.”

Phoenix can almost see him working it out - turning his thinking around. 

“You didn’t ask her to forge the Ace,” he says slowly. “It was her idea, wasn’t it.” 

Phoenix winces. “Don’t be mad at her,” he pleads.

“Of course I’m not mad at her!” Apollo barks. “She’s fifteen and was about to lose her father!”

“Had just lost her father,” Phoenix corrects, only for Apollo to eyeball him furiously.

“I meant the father she cares about,” he says. “You knew about the Ace, though,” he says, so in spite of how angry he is, he does want to talk. “You gave me hints that I should present it during the trial.”

“Yeah, I knew about it.” He sighs, eyeing Apollo. He’s never felt compelled to give people answers just because they’re curious, but if anyone deserves the whole story, it’s Apollo. 

“Sit down,” he says, nodding to the couches. “I’ll tell you all of it.” 

They wind up facing each other, and Phoenix places his palms on his knees to keep from fidgeting.

“In the detention center,” he begins, “Trucy was my one phone call. Obviously.”

“But-”

“I called Gavin before I was arrested,” Phoenix reminds him. “Besides, I had to tell Truce about Zak. While we were talking, she wanted to know if I would be okay. I wanted to reassure her, but I mentioned that a piece of evidence was missing.” Phoenix isn’t wearing the beanie, hasn’t for the past couple of days, so there’s nothing stopping him from raking his hands through his hair. “But I didn’t tell her what it was or even if it was that important. I guess she could tell it was important just from my voice.”

Apollo’s hand doesn’t twitch, his expression doesn’t sharpen, and something inside of him is so, so relieved. A part of him - the part that doubts that there’s any good left in him at all - had thought those words would wind up being a lie. 

“But the little terror went to the club after hanging up with me, and after one look at the card she knew what happened. I guess Zak had pulled that Fifth Ace trick often enough when she was young that she remembered it. But there was no way for her to know what suit the ace had been. She prepared all four and tried to hand them off to me when she came to see me in the detention center. Got pretty upset when I wouldn’t take them.”

“But she did know which Ace to give me,” Apollo says slowly, working it out. “And only you could have told her.” He looks at him, hard and calculating. “During the trial, you must have changed your mind.”

Phoenix nods. “During the second recess, the prosecution was interviewing Gavin, and I overheard part of it. I realized he’d wriggle out of it. So I told Truce to give you the Ace of Spades.” 

“So it was your decision,” Apollo says flatly.

“It was my decision. A lie for a life.”

Apollo’s face twists, and eventually, he sighs. 

“I guess I understand,” he says finally - grudgingly. “I don’t like it, but I get it. When it’s your own life on the line-”

“Hold on - what?” Phoenix says. “What does my life have to do with it?”

Apollo squints at him. “But you just said-”

“Apollo, it wasn’t my life I was talking about,” Phoenix says. “I never would have gotten the death penalty at that trial - probably I only would have gotten 20 years, since I swiped the locket off Zak that would’ve proved the connection between us.”

Apollo glances down to where he wears it around his neck, deeply disapproving. 

“What, I was supposed to just leave the only proof I could give my daughter that Zak had been thinking about her for the 7 years he was gone?” Phoenix asks, feeling uncharacteristically defensive. “And then she said she wanted me to have it, so - this isn’t important. Apollo, Gavin was tying up loose ends. Killing Zak, framing me - it was to make it easier to go after the biggest loose end.”

“The biggest…”

Apollo is clever, but he’s not always quick - more methodical process of elimination than flash of insight. 

“Who was it who gave me the diary page?” he asks, as gently as he can under the circumstances.

Apollo’s face brightens with realization before turning white.

“Oh my-” he says, sounding stricken. Phoenix looks at the ground.

“So - yes. I was willing to trade a lie for a life, so long as the life was Trucy’s. So long as I knew Gavin would be finished, and wouldn’t be able to get to her.”

The next time Apollo speaks, his voice is softer.

“Why did you tell me the Ace was forged?” he asks finally. “I might not have ever figured it out, if you hadn’t told me.” 

Someone had to know the truth, he doesn’t say, both because it isn’t quite true and because it’s not fair to make the kid his confessor. 

“Using an innocent to hand off a forged, ‘perfect’ piece of evidence was one of Gavin’s favorite tricks. Now that you’d fallen for it once, I knew you’d never fall for it again. It was the best way I could think of to protect you, at the time, even if he did get to me from jail.”

Apollo is quiet for a long time, studying him. He feels like a specimen pinned to a card. In any other situation, he’d probably complain about it, but as it stands, he sits still and lets himself be examined.

“Mr. Wright,” Apollo says. “Would you have presented the forged Ace? If you’d been the attorney, and you knew the Ace was a fake? Or would you have held out to find some other way?”

He opens his mouth to say that of course he would have, if his daughter’s life depended on it, but the words get caught in his throat.

“I knew it,” Apollo says, sounding resigned, rather than angry. He stands; whatever he says next is going to be his last word on the subject. “God, I hope you do get your badge back. It would be safer for everybody.” 

Apollo goes back to rooting around in the closet, completely unaware that he couldn’t have felled Phoenix harder if he had slammed a gong over his head.

*****

It takes Phoenix many moments of disassociation while staring at a wall for the reverberations in his brain to peter out. As soon as they do, he starts moving, hauling himself off the couch and tripping his way up the stairs, back to his apartment. The door closes behind him, and he has his cell phone in his hand before even clearing the entryway. He dials Miles, breathing hard, brimming with frantic energy as he waits for the call to connect.

“Wright,” Miles says, sounding sleep-soft, and Phoenix winces, even as his heart constricts with unbearable affection. God damn timezones. “We just spoke earlier today.”

“I need to tell you something,” Phoenix says. “And when I’m done, you can tell me if you still want me to be a lawyer again.”

“...Alright,” Miles says, sounding suitably suspicious given the circumstances.

“Trucy forged a piece of evidence during Gavin’s first trial. I didn’t ask her to, didn’t tell her what it was, even, but she figured it out and did it anyway. Then…” he takes a deep breath, lets it fill every corner of his body: “during second recess, when I could tell everything was about to go to shit, I told Trucy to give the forged evidence to Apollo.” 

“The Ace,” Miles says, more a statement than a question. 

“You read the transcript?” Phoenix asks, slightly hysterical. 

“Of course,” Miles snaps. He sounds almost offended by the question. “Of course I did. It was clear there was something suspect about the Ace, given Gavin’s reaction - I assumed someone had found a way to lift it from his office. Justice worked with him, I believe.”

“He wouldn’t have kept it,” Phoenix says. “He would have burned it or something.” 

Miles is quiet for a moment.

“Phoenix,” he says finally. “Why tell me this?”

“Because you asked me to become a lawyer again when I just did the thing I was thrown out for to begin with. Knowing that, do you still want me to get my badge back? Do you still want me to defend your friend?”

Phoenix grips his hair in the silence.

“Yes.”

The syllable makes his palms sweat and tears burn in the back of his throat.

“Why?” he breathes. 

“Many reasons,” Miles retorts, then sighs, resigned to actually answering. “You are an exceptional defense attorney - arguably the best in a generation. You are an excellent judge of character. You have an unshakable belief in your clients. 

“I admit there are…other, more personal reasons, as well. You defended me when I was at my lowest. You saw good in me when there was precious little. You saved me - multiple times. You make me want to be better, and with you beside me, I feel I truly can be. No one action, taken when you weren’t even practicing law, done to even the playing field when everything was stacked against you while you simultaneously worked to reform the rules that had trapped you, could change that.”

“How can you say that?” he asks. He’s crying in earnest, now - he wonders if Miles can tell. “Now that you know what I’ve done?”

“What you’ve done,” Miles snaps, dismissive. “Have you forgotten that without you, there would have been no reform to our legal system that seemed otherwise willing to self-immolate through corruption and stagnation? No end in sight to the Dark Age of the Law? Does that count for nothing?”

“But -”

“Are you forgetting that I, too, have done terrible things before the law? You can’t be insinuating that you are somehow more irredeemable than me.”

“You never got false evidence presented on purpose -”

“No, I just blindly sent innocents to their deaths on charges that defied all - all logic and reason at the say-so of powerful, corrupt men.” Miles’s voice says he isn’t going to budge on this. “If anything,” he continues, softer now. “This guilt you feel, these…histrionics…have me more convinced than ever that you should be standing at the bench. You…are my opposing counsel.”

“Okay,” Phoenix says, voice thick, as water from his face drips onto the kitchen table. “Okay. I’ll do it. But only on one condition.” 

The ultimatum has no teeth - Miles emailed him his itinerary two days ago.

“Name it.”

“You have to come home. I can’t…I need someone to keep me in line. To tell me if…” he sniffles. “I can’t do it without you.”

He can almost hear Miles smile down the phone. “Deal.”