Work Text:
It was a crisp Fall morning at the Wright Anything Agency and the firm’s owner, the titular Phoenix Wright, was passing the time on what was looking to be a slow day by reading the news on the office computer. He was halfway through an article about the upcoming 2028 Presidential election when his phone started to ring. Phoenix blinked his eyes blearily at it, his still half-asleep mind trying to remember how one would answer a phone. After a second, he picked it up and said into the receiver “Wright Anything Agency, the best service in LA for both magic shows and legal expertise.”
A familiar chuckle came through the other end and Apollo Justice replied, “Mr. Wright, I thought we told you that you needed to think up something better than that for answering the phone.”
Hearing Apollo’s voice made Phoenix smile a little. It had been a few months since he’d last seen the up-and-coming lawyer, and they hadn’t talked in weeks. He looked at the time reading on his computer and asked, “Apollo, what are you doing up at this hour?”
It felt as though Phoenix could actually feel Apollo’s smile in his words. “I couldn’t sleep, and thought I would go through some of your old case files. I wanted to ask you a few things about the Big Berry Circus case from ’17.”
A shudder went through Phoenix at the mention of the case. “Ugh, yeah. That case was quite the tragedy.” His mind flashed back to the crippled man sitting in a wheelchair at the witness stand, his eyes overflowing with tears. “Poor Acro…” he muttered, not even sure at first if he had said it aloud.
“Poor Acro?” Apollo asked, sounding very confused. “Wasn’t he the actual culprit in the case?”
Phoenix frowned. “You weren’t there Apollo. He never wanted to hurt the Ringmaster, but in the end his need for revenge made him accidentally kill the man who raised him. All of us felt bad for him, he wasn’t a bad guy.”
There was a short pause before Apollo responded. “His need for revenge led him to try and murder a sixteen-year old girl. Honestly, Acro doesn’t seem that different from the person who tried framing Trucy last April.”
“What?!” Phoenix’s mouth hung agape. “That’s ridiculous! The person who did that was a monster! Acro was sorry about what he did!”
Apollo’s skepticism bled through every word he spoke. “They both tried to hurt teenage girls who they blamed for things they didn’t do and ended up killing someone completely innocent in the process. Mr. Dingling was remorseful sure, but he plead guilty to manslaughter, attempted murder, perjury, and obstruction of justice. He’s still in jail.”
Despite how badly Phoenix wanted to object to those claims, he couldn’t find a hole in the logic. With a sigh, he instead just replied, “Apollo, you weren’t there. I was. Can we please drop this?”
Sounding profoundly embarrassed, Apollo said, “Oh, uh, yeah. Sure. Sorry.” The resulting silence was deafening, only ending when Apollo said, “Um, well, I better go to bed. Talk to you some other time, Mr. Wright.” The call ended, and Phoenix leaned back to look at the ceiling, confused. What had happened to Apollo? Who wrote that case file? Why couldn’t he see that Acro was just an innocent victim in that case?
It must have been his lack of sleep, Phoenix decided. Just because Acro had planned on brutally killing a teenager didn’t make him a bad guy. With that matter settled, Phoenix Wright went back to reading his internet article and trying his hardest not to think about the matter any further.