Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's raining, cold raindrops falling on them in an unending stream. They'd be soaked, if it hadn't been for Wright's foresight in bundling them into long waterproof cloaks.

Miles almost wants to ask Wright how he knew about the rain, or why cloaks of all things, but he holds his tongue. After all, the one predictable thing about Wright is that his actions can rarely be predicted or explained. 

Besides, a part of Miles already knows the excuses Wright will give. Wright just knew about the stormy weather approaching despite the cloudless blue skies gracing their day just an hour prior, and umbrellas are highly impractical in their line of work.

Miles considers that thought and concedes to the last point. Cloaks might be conspicuous, but considering what they do for a living, Miles hardly thinks that matters.

"Beautiful weather," Wright says, his voice pitched low to carry over the pouring rain. Miles lets him talk. Wright goes in and out of moods, and it seems he’s in the mood to be chatty today. "Pretty poetic for what we're doing—" Wright throws a look over his shoulder, and Miles meets his gaze right on "—don't you think, Miles?"

The invocation of his given name makes Miles want to twitch, but he masters the reflex with barely a thought and channels that annoyance into a rebuttal. "I can't comment. I'm just here to watch your back, after all."

"Fair enough." Wright smiles at him, but it's the type of grin that seems full of substance until one pulls back and looks beyond the expression, just an empty twist of the face. 

Miles tucks his hands further into the folds of his cloak, pulling at it harder than he normally would. The swirling fabric hampers his movements and more importantly, blocks easy reach of his two primary guns, the first strapped under one arm, the other tucked at the small of his back. The entire set up forces him to rely on the slim dagger tucked up the length of his forearm, but at least he wouldn’t have to grapple with his and Wright’s umbrellas when they wear cloaks. Wright, as far as he knows, carries no weapons – in fact, Miles has never seen Wright in a combative situation, whether by luck or by choice. Miles suspects the latter; Wright, after all, is the organization's pet interrogator. No one, save Gavin perhaps, has ever witnessed Wright in his element.

Wright is a wild card in the upper echelon of Kristoph Gavin's highly secretive revolutionary organization. Miles couldn't afford to trust anyone, but Wright's primary talent is prompting others to talk, to open up, to trust, and that Miles finds the most dangerous of all, perhaps even more so than Gavin.

That cliché – keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer. 

Miles couldn’t decide which category Wright fell under, and so he keeps the man closest of all. 

I suppose they become clichés for a reason. 

Miles blows out a quiet breath, condensation feathering out before his face, and keeps his step just a barest half pace behind Wright, holding the position even as Wright ducks into the twists of the alleyways and stops at one of the dark, nondescript doors - one of their smaller bases.

"No need to be so uptight, Edgeworth." The hood of the cloak and the rain hides most of Wright's features from Miles' trained eye, but there is no mistaking that tone of voice, so very different from before – deadly calm with just the barest hint of dark amusement. "After all, it's an easy job. Just get the information out of the target and walk away."

The target. Miles can't help the single glance he makes towards the front of the building, but there are no hanging signs, no characterizing objects sitting innocently outside the door to indicate that within sat a man who had been kidnapped and brought here – the man they have come to visit, the personal assistant and secretary of one of Los Angeles' most influential politicians. He might have a significant other, a girlfriend perhaps, maybe even a child. He might enjoy tea on a Sunday morning or a simple scotch after a long day's work. He might twist truth and facts for the betterment of his employer, but as far as Miles knows, the assistant’s only real "crime" is working for a man Gavin wants dead.

The hardest part about being an undercover agent, Miles thinks, is having to become the very kind of person he hated.

“Situations like these are always so straightforward in theory,” he says aloud. “It’s a shame that reality is not quite so accommodating.” The words come out sardonic. The rain patters to the ground around them but it’s dryer under the low awning, a tiny quiet space, but it’s easy to gaze steadily at Wright. Miles plays the cold and disdainful facade well; it’s always been in his nature, after all. 

A pity that protective persona didn’t quite work on Wright. 

Wright throws his hood back, pausing on the doorstep. His eyes, when he looks back and catches Miles’ gaze, are laughing – whether in teasing jest or condescending amusement, Miles can't tell. “Really, Edgeworth. Relax. No one’s scheduled to die tonight.” 

Easy for you to say. Miles unhooks his cloak and steps forward, rapping smartly on the door. The gun under his shoulder is a familiar weight, now within clear reach. You’re not the one who pulls the trigger.

It’s twenty-three minutes later when Miles hears the unmistakable crack of a gunshot. 

Miles is out of main room and into the corridor before the echo dies away, gun already in hand, barking a sharp order at the other men to stand down and get out of the way. It's an impossible maze of walkways and unmarked doors, but years and years of self-imposed perfectionism and grueling practice has honed his instincts and his memory, and his previous visit three months prior allows him to sketch a mental map of the building and deduce the most likely spot for an interrogation room. 

His deduction is slightly off; he swings around a corner and almost past an ajar door, but catches a glimpse of Wright, standing there calm and cool as he pleased, his distinct spiky hair barely worse for the wear for their time under the cloak’s hood. Miles ducks into the room, gun up and leading his entrance. 

"Edgeworth." Wright's eyes are oddly bright under the swinging lamp hanging from the ceiling, and Miles takes the barest moment to glance at their surroundings, a library room with simple wooden bookshelves and a sleek study table at the center of it – a room that felt badly at odds with the stark bareness of the rest of the building. 

Miles has to twist his head to see the bullet hole on the wall, and follows its supposed trajectory past Wright to the unconscious body half crumpled out of the chair. At the back of his mind, behind the part of him that is hyper-alert and assessing and analyzing their surroundings, Miles wonders what this situation says about Wright, who would pick such a spot for an interrogation and yet could leave an armed man unconscious. 

Miles puts the thoughts out of his mind and strides up to push the man upright, using the muzzle of his gun to flick the man's limbs aside to check for injuries. Wright chuckles lightly behind him and the sound of it rankles.

"He had a gun." Miles says, the glint of light reflecting off the tiny pistol on the floor speaking for itself, and leans back to set the barrel of his semi-automatic to the assistant’s stomach. A single non-lethal shot, and they’ll dump the body on the border of two gang’s territories, letting the man bleed to death on some lonely street corner. An accidental casualty in a gang fight. Caught in the crossfire. Very tragic. 

It isn’t hard, to think in terms of blood and death. Pick an end result and simply work backwards, building the story, the strategies behind the story. He’s been trained a prosecutor, and he knows how to weave a dozen scenarios from a handful of evidence. It’s not very different at all. 

Miles smiles a little, morbidly amused at how adaptive humans can be, and at how the mind wanders around the subject it least wants to confront. 

Still, it’s a mission. Miles looks down at the secretary’s dark head for a moment, then leans over, to use the man’s pistol instead. 

"We're done here." Wright says, and Miles’ head snaps back. 

His voice is surprisingly steady. "Let me expound on what I believe you just said. You actually plan to leave this man alive, even though he has seen your face.” 

Wright waves a hand flippantly at him. “I told you, didn’t I? No one’s scheduled to die tonight.” 

Miles narrows his eyes. It’s a little too far along their partnership for tests, but Miles won’t bet his cover for it. He presses his gun decisively against the man's temple. "Don't tempt me, Wright. My job is to clean up after your interrogations, to watch your back, and most importantly, to neutralize anyone who poses a threat to Gavin's plans. I hardly care if you think otherwise; I will not bend the rules simply because of your inexplicable flights of fancy." 

“You know, one day you’ll snap like a twig – you’re always so tense.” Wright actually has the gall to lean one hip against the table, almost relaxed. "Call it a flight of logic, then. You were always a man of logic, Edgeworth. Do you believe killing him," Wright nods to the secretary, "is truly the best course of action?" 

Miles steps around their victim, circling the chair, sweeping his gun up and pushing the man’s head back. The man’s skull thumps dully against the heavy wood of the chair’s back; his hazy eyes under half-opened eyelids are a dusky grey. Miles is stalling for time, but he knows a challenge when he sees it, and he hardly trusts Wright's motives enough to throw himself headlong into it. That’s one of the problems with Wright; Miles simply couldn't figure him out, and these conversations – hidden hooks within questions, verbal battles masquerading as a debates - he often has to play by ear. 

It’s an exponential round of question, answer and parry. Too many possibilities and motives and only minutes to attempt to figure them out, in the very rare moments when Wright openly invites these types of conversations, deadly serious behind the teasing. 

"If you're asking my expert opinion... then no, I do not believe we should kill him." 

Wright's eyes flash, and the smile has a little more substance to it this time. "You think so?" 

"This is a man who has the foresight and skill to carry a gun with him. And hides it well enough to conceal it from our men's search." 

"There's always a chance," Wright mutters, "that our men are simply incompetent at their job." 

Miles gestures to their captive’s left hand, dangling limply over the chair's handles. "He practices on a regular basis, often enough to have gun calluses. He's no simple secretary and assistant, but his public position beside Ollivier, our politician, also suggests he isn't merely an undercover bodyguard either. There are more layers to this story." 

"Agreed." Wright leans on the table, leaning forward so he can study the slumped assistant. "The simple truth is often the hardest to see. Many tend to go for the most conspicuous thing and build their expectations around that. But I suppose that's how you got this far." 

Miles takes the half-compliment and half-hook in silence. "And then there is the very obvious flaw inherent in disposing of this man. We'd only spook Ollivier. A murder is powerful statement. It's not the time to close the trap yet." He arches an eyebrow at Wright and speaks the last sentence with slight emphasis, a fishing question of his own. "I think so, at least with the information that’s at my disposal."

Wright chuckles, and Miles knows the round is over. It's never a question of who wins or who loses; simply how much he can extract from Wright, and how little he can reveal about his person. 

“You're very good at this, aren't you, Edgeworth? We’ll need him later. That's indisputable. The men here can’t question our methods. And I’ll deal with Kristoph, if he… inquires.” 

"He'll inquire." 

"He will. He always does, even the simplest little thing. Kristoph pays attention to finesse and detail. They matter the most to him." Wright's smile goes a shade darker, and he pushes himself away from the table with a movement strong enough to scrap the furniture forward so it crunches against the chair's arms, caging the unconscious secretary into his seat. "But he'll listen to me. Whether he'd go with what I say, though, is another issue." 

Miles nods and quietly files that thought away to piece over and dissect in the security and privacy of his room. He folds a sleeve over his fingers and goes back to pick up the tiny pistol. "Well then. I suppose I'll do the dirty work." 

Wright makes a quiet sound of inquiry in his throat. "What are you planning?" 

The question is so direct and free of undercurrents that Miles actually glances at Wright, just to check if Wright’s body language and expression matches the candidness of his question. "No one’s supposed to die tonight, correct? I'm not going to kill him, Wright.” 

Wright nods, his eyes falling away and then drifting back to Miles’ face, his expression back into that placid neutrality, the previous intensity hidden away. “Okay.” 

“The real question is what you want to do about him knowing your face." 

"I'll handle that." Wright has ducked through the door now, watching Miles through the frame. He makes a show of digging through his pockets, and Miles sighs in exasperation when Wright pulls out a worn blue beanie. "He'll hardly recognize me. And if he does, they won't find me." 

"You do that," Miles says dryly. “It’s your life that’s at stake.” 

Wright chuckles. “And it’s your job to protect that life, my friend.” 

Miles merely looks at him for a long moment and then turns his back on Wright, sliding his weapon away and taking the secretary’s pistol apart into dozens of ineffectual bits before focusing his attention to their captive. He'll do the job personally; it's the only way to ensure the grey-eyed assistant survives. Violence is what drives this group of Gavin’s underlings – if they could even be called that, since Gavin hardly considers them men. In Gavin’s eyes, they are merely goons to manipulate and throw away. 

Miles knows he’s ranked substantially higher in Gavin’s eyes, and he plans to keep it that way. 

“How long do you need for clean up?” Wright asks. 

When Miles glances over his shoulder, Wright has the blue beanie pulled over his head, burying his hair and all. He doesn’t ask for any details, as if trusting Miles to do the job properly, to take the appropriate steps to ensure no one would come looking for a spiky-haired, blue-eyed young man for retribution. Miles wouldn’t be so trusting if he was in Wright’s shoes. But for all his suspicions about the man, Miles does trust Wright’s word, if not his motives. 

He drops the last of the unassembled hand gun onto a thin cloth, then rolls the entire thing up into a bundle he hands to Wright. 

No one died tonight, after all. 

“Two hours,” Miles says. 

Wright buries his hands into his hoodie pocket. “The bar in two hours, then.” 

Miles nods once, then turns back to the assistant. He waits for the click of the closing door before he throws his first punch. 

Miles hadn’t recognized Wright because of that ridiculous beanie, the first time they met in Gavin’s office over a year ago. 

Kristoph Gavin was a charismatic man, Miles could not deny. He dressed well, cuff links and crisp starched sleeves and collars speaking plenty, and he held himself like an aristocrat.

"Miles Edgeworth. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

There was just a little lilt of accent in his voice and Miles recognized it – Germanic roots. Gavin smiled at him and his next words, spoken impeccable German, hammered home just how careful Miles had to be with his expressions. 

"Yes, I heard you moved shortly after your father's death, learning the ways of the law under Manfred von Karma's tutelage, becoming his protégé… becoming his target and would-be victim. That was quite a twist, wasn't it?" 

Miles didn't bother forcing a smile; Gavin was smiling enough for both of them, and they both knew he would be faking it. "Indeed. Germany had welcomed me, but it was time for me to return to my home country and carry out my father's legacy."

Gavin tented his fingers. "And the pursuit of that legacy led you to me? I must be mistaken – I thought your father was a defense attorney." 

Miles smiled, and meant it this time. "The law, as my father's death demonstrated, does not fulfill its duty. Seven long years dragged by before the perpetrator of his murder was revealed, and that by von Karma's own actions, not the police force's efforts. I cannot fight my father's cause, but I can strike down the corrupt and power-thirsty who believe they are untouchable." 

He strode daringly forward to stand before Gavin's desk, a position that left him just shy of towering over the seated man. "I hoped by coming to you, Gavin, that we could reach a mutually beneficial agreement. I do not know your agenda, but my skills are yours to deploy. And in return, I hope you would help me strike at my most desired target... once I have proven myself, of course." 

Gavin tipped his head slightly and light glinted off his glasses, hiding his gaze. There was something about Gavin that made every danger sense Miles possessed flair up. It wasn't the smile, or his eyes, or even the way he stood – it was all of that together with a sharp air of danger, like killing mist encroaching and enveloping a forest in its deadly grip. Miles hadn't looked at anything else in the room the moment he stepped in, deducing immediately that Gavin was too proud and too damn self-assured to keep guards, and that was his first mistake.

Gavin made a sudden movement, his eyes flashing back into sight, but his smile was directed past Miles. 

"So, this is the new asset you've been talking about." 

Miles turned slowly, and there stood a man with piercing blue eyes under worn blue beanie, staring at him. He looked badly out of place in Gavin's perfect and arranged office, but his self-deprecating grin and utter air of disregard for Gavin spoke volumes. 

"You were supposed to be here an hour ago," Gavin said, his words now in English and pitched to carry. 

"And you were supposed to tell me who the newest candidate you’d try to foist off as my partner would be, but you didn't, and so we're all here now, in our present situation." The man wearing the beanie skulked into Gavin's office, and the grin he shot at Miles was off. "Hey, Miles. Fancy meeting you here." 

The use of his given name and the intimate, knowing tone threw Miles off, badly, and he had to choke down the instinct to explode into action. All it would take was a flick and he could send the thin blade up his sleeve across the room, but—

But. He had better control than that, and shouldn’t be overreacting so much. 

Miles swallowed once, then said in his calmest, coldest voice. "Do I know you?" 

The man chuckled and the sound echoed oddly off the walls. He reached up and pulled off the beanie, then shook his head out, the spiked hair falling back into place.

Miles stared.

"Come on, Miles. It hasn't been that long, has it? Or perhaps it has... I haven't heard from you in years. We stopped with the letters when we got into high school, didn't we?" 

"Wright," Miles bit out, his mind whirling, feeling Gavin's eyes on his back like a physical touch. His right hand twitched towards his left elbow, an old habit of anxiety from his childhood, and he turned the movement into a sidestep that allowed him to see both Gavin and Wright in his field of sight. 

"What a coincidence. It seems like you two know each other." Gavin's voice went light and airy, but Wright broke off eye contact and turned his attention to the man instead. "Edgeworth and I were just talking about his... initiation into our organization. What do you think, Wright?" 

Wright gave a dismissing flip of his hand, returning his gaze to Miles, and Miles stared back, trying to reconcile the memory of his nine-year-old best friend and the idealistic tone of voice in the letters Wright had continued sending him until they were in high school, when von Karma's involvement in Miles' father's death blew open. Miles hadn't written or spoken to anyone from his old life back in America since. 

"I didn't think you'd be the type to end up in our line of work," Wright said conversationally. 

"Neither do you," Miles snapped back, and that made Wright laugh. 

"I suppose a decade-old memory can't live up to reality. So what brings you here, Miles?" Wright scrunched one hand through his hair spikes, then tipped his head to meet Miles' gaze. His eyes were very blue. "Money, revenge, or the taste for violence?" 

Miles straightened. "Justice." 

Gavin laughed quietly behind his seat, like a man enjoying a secret, but Wright went silent, his expression thoughtful. "Justice is such an ambiguous word. Whose brand of justice do you advocate?" 

Miles breathed, once, twice, fighting an odd compulsion to say too much. "My own," the words slipped out, and then Miles bit down hard on his lip, narrowing his eyes at Wright. "Just what my definition of justice might be is none of your business. Von Karma, despite his deeds, has taught me well. I know how to manipulate evidence, how to twist truths and lies alike, and more importantly, I know how to turn that on others. And I have the physical skills to back that all up. Like you so flippantly said earlier," Miles snapped the words out like the crack of a whip, "I am an asset." 

Wright held his gaze, then shook his head once, breaking the contact. 

"You've changed, Miles, but that stubborn side of you hasn't." His mouth slipped back into the grin Miles would soon come to recognize as his game face. "I’ll take him on as my partner, Kristoph. I think we'll work well together." 

The look of satisfaction on Gavin's face twisted, and then he's smiling, his voice gentle and silky. "Are you sure, Wright? You didn’t get a chance to hear what Edgeworth said to me earlier. Perhaps you two would like to catch up elsewhere." 

"No, Kristoph. I was watching earlier, and I'm sure. We can catch up when we're on a mission. There will be plenty of time to talk then." 

The undercurrents in their conversation pushed and pulled at Miles; he could ride the currents and see where they took him, or he could wrest control of the tides and fight. He slammed one hand onto Kristoph’s desk, the impact toppling over the row of snuff bottles arranged artfully on a raised tray. 

"My apologies, gentlemen, for so rudely interrupting,” Miles said into the ringing silence, keeping the barest amount of deference in his tone of voice. “But I think that would be fine."

Gavin and Wright turned towards him, Wright's face going blank, Gavin's smile sharpening. Miles flicked his bangs out of his face and stared back at both of them with equal force. "A partnership would align me with your agenda far faster than if I worked alone," Miles added. 

"Very well, then," Gavin said after a moment’s silence, tapping his fingers against his desk, quiet staccato noises. Gavin's nails were painted, a delicate lavender that didn’t seem the least bit feminine or ridiculous on the man. Like his glasses, Gavin wore the polish not as armor, but as a weapon. "Welcome to the team, Edgeworth. Wright will show you the ropes, I'm sure. I do believe this will be a most satisfying partnership for all of us involved." 

Miles inclined his head. "I'm honoured." 

"Good. Now, if you'll both excuse me, I’m sure you have much to do in the fading hours of the day."

They both knew a dismissal when they heard one, and Miles followed Wright out, the door slamming shut behind them. They stood there in awkward silence in the scant privacy of the corridor, Wright’s hands in his hoodie and his hair covered once again with the beanie, and for the first time since he first threw himself into this undercover mission, Miles found himself at a loss for words. 

Wright shrugged, then finally tipped him a small smile. “Nice seeing you again, Miles.”

“… I don’t know if I can say the same, Wright.” Miles went with brutal honesty, his instincts still on high alert after the undercurrent of tug-and-war in the office. He paused, considering. “But I would say this meeting is opportune.”

“That’s interesting.”

“I could say the same of you.” Miles couldn’t help shooting back. 

“Why are you here?” 

It’s the third time someone had asked him that question today. “It’s a means to an end.” 

Wright chuckled. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Miles. Don’t be late.” 

“I won’t,” Miles said. 

Miles reaches the bar just before his promised two hours are up. He meets Wright’s eyes from across the room, Wright extricating himself from the shadowy alcoves and their informants there, and approaches the bar, falling into step beside Miles along the way. 

The bartender brings him his usual red wine with nothing under its stand, and Miles relaxes slightly, rolling his shoulders once to loosen tense muscles. The people working behind the counter know nothing about his identity, but like all bars with brushings with the underworld, the staff here know to take and give secrets. To them, Miles’ tab is always picked up by someone else, and if that someone chooses to order Miles a scotch or a Cosmopolitan or whatever other drink on the menu for his next visit, they simply carry out the request and add a premium to the tab. But if there is no special order, Miles only ever takes red wine, and he knows it means that nothing is amiss back at home. 

His knuckles sting, raw from repeated impact. He’ll have to wrap them later, and remember to wear gloves for next time. 

Miles swirls the wine idly in his glass, breathing and clearing his mind of dark lingering thoughts, and watches as Wright asked the bartender for grape juice. The brew that comes back in a pretty crystal glass has a hue lighter than Miles’ own drink. He intercepts the glass, takes a breath, and smells only light sweetness, not the sharp bite of alcohol. Miles arches an eyebrow at Wright as he hands the drink over. 

“A little too careful of yourself, aren’t you?” Miles tilts his glass towards the companion one in Wright’s hand. “You can afford to let loose, Wright. We’re partners, after all… unless you think my senses would be dulled after a single glass of wine?”

Wright stuffs one hand into the pocket of his hoodie and lifts his glass in salute with the other. “I am actually quite reassured by your skills, Miles. But I don’t really like the taste of alcohol, that’s all. Nothing more than that.” 

“And yet you order grape juice, of all non-alcoholic beverages,” Miles tests, and is oddly satisfied when Wright smiles one of his empty grins instead of dodging the not-quite-question. 

“People are strange when it comes to appearances. I like grape as much as any other fruit, and if it gives me the illusion of fitting in a bar, why not choose it? It’s a means to an end. Only the bartender and you would know better.”

I have you, Miles thinks, because those words, the inflection on the way Wright had said “means to an end” – they are an echo of Miles’ own response to Wright’s question, once. Wright had always worked on his own schedule and agenda, and if they happened to diverge from Gavin’s chosen one, well, so far it hasn’t gotten Wright in trouble. Miles knows he’s one of the very few to suspect so, and it’s the first time he heard such an open indication from the man himself. Wright is too good of an actor to let something like that slip unintentionally. 

Miles leans back against the counter, letting the bar chair take his weigh, and allows his nonchalant mask drop just a little; he meets Wright’s gaze right on, and watches Wright stare back, steady. 

“Here’s a sparkling water because I know you like that after a wine, Mr. Edgeworth,” a light, familiar voice cuts him off, and the moment shatters. Surprise flickers across Wright’s face, and Miles twists on his seat to stare into Kay Faraday’s grin. “On the house.”

Miles’ heart gives an odd, painful thump in his chest, and he’s sitting upright, adrenaline and tightly leashed tension humming under his skin because it’s Kay, little Kay just barely out of high school and standing in the one of the main rendezvous points for the underworld, and because something must have gone horribly wrong for Tyrell Badd to even think of sending Kay here. 

Kay might have come anyway if she thought she could help him, authorization or approval thoroughly disregarded, but only Badd knew his current location.

“My dear.” Miles’ voice comes out odd on the rarely voiced endearment, because he couldn’t reveal her name, not in front of Wright. He has to take a subtle breath to clear the buzz at the back of his mind. “I wasn’t expecting you.” 

“Of course you didn’t,” Kay agrees gamely, and there is the barest undertone of anxiety in the gaze she carefully hides from Wright with her bangs. She quirks a tiny smile at Miles, and then turns her grin on Wright, the key ornament in her hair catching in the bar lights. “Sorry to barge in on you two like that when you’re in the middle of a conversation, but I just had to talk to Mr. Edgeworth, you know? I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not.” Wright’s usual grin is back on his face. “And who is this, Miles? Not a lot of people around here would call you ‘Mr. Edgeworth.’” 

Wright’s eyes are too bright again and despite being so used to the sight, this time Miles wants to grab him by the throat of his hoodie, throw him up against a wall so he can grab Kay and run, subtlety be damned. This is why Miles prefers to work alone, all the variables under his direct control. But now he doesn’t know how Kay would fair against Wright, hates to admit that he doesn’t know how she would fare in a potentially lethal direct confrontation when he knows her so well, as a normal if quirky girl. 

He isn’t going to try covering for Kay either, not when he lacks the details, especially when he can’t tell if Wright is asking as Gavin’s interrogator or for his own sadistic pleasure. It’ll only encourage Wright, the interrogator possessing a single-mindness when he locks onto a lead, anything that sparks his interest, and Miles hasn’t seen Wright with this level of curious intensity in a long time. 

He catches and holds Kay’s eyes. Show no weakness. “Perhaps the lady in question would like to answer herself.” 

Kay stares, seemingly caught off guard, before her expression falls, a grin hiding under the pout. “Hey, no fair! I don’t know anything about him. Who’s your friend?” 

Miles edges Wright a look. “He’s my partner.” It’s as true as any other statement Miles could have made. 

“… partners?” Kay tips her head one way then another, studying Wright, his too bright blue eyes under that out of place beanie, the hoodie and the half slouched posture. “Like, in a team?” 

“Something like that,” Wright agrees. “And you are?” 

Kay fidgets, but from the way she flips her hair over one shoulder, Miles knows it’s deliberate. He hadn’t thought about it then, but he’s glad she followed him on some his earlier practice missions, when he first returned from Germany and needed to quickly assimilate his senses and expectations to an American context. She had mimicked and observed him the entire time, and evidently picked up some of the skills she’s displaying now. The rest of it, he has to admit, is plain Faraday flair. 

“Mr. Edgeworth got me out of a really… crazy kind of situation, a long time ago,” Kay says. “And he doesn’t exactly drop by that often. I hardly see him even when we’re now in the same city, and I miss him sometimes. You should know, if he’s your partner. He’s a workaholic.” 

“That, he definitely can be.” But Wright’s eyes have sharpened. “But a social visit took you all the way here?”

“Yeah, kind of.” 

“Not exactly the safest place for a young woman like you.” The look Wright throws Miles’ way is indecipherable. 

“She goes where she wishes,” Miles says to that look. “I trust her to take care of herself.” 

Kay laughs and plants one fist on her waist, self-assurance in her every move. “I can take care of myself. I don’t forget to take meals the way Mr. Edgeworth does when he’s in the middle of some important whatever.”

“I’m sure you’re very capable.” Wright slants Miles a sideway look. “But you must be important to her, Miles, for a girl to come all the way over to a bar to see you so late at night. She can’t just be a normal girl.”

Miles grimaces slightly. To anyone else, Wright’s question sounded innocuous, the jibes of a good friend prying about a lady friend they hadn’t seen before. Miles knows better. 

Kay coughs, and makes a show of looking around her surroundings when Wright turns back to her. “Okay, I’ll tell you, because you’re obviously fishing,” she says, leaning conspiratorially towards Wright. "I’m a thief.” 

Wright’s eyes flicker towards Miles once again, and Miles holds a hand out and shakes his head, dissolving all association with Kay’s mad-hatter ways. But he is oddly relieved that Kay chose that route, because as unbelievable as it sounds, it’s the truth. 

“You’re a thief,” Wright repeats, his tone conveying the barest hint of a doubt. 

“You know the Yatagarasu? They stole a forged painting two months ago. According to the news story, the painting was key evidence in a murder trial and was due to be auctioned off in a high-profile private bidding. Yatagarasu took the painting before the perpetrator could bid and win it. Now that’s a thief to look up to. Lots of thieves aspire to be her.” 

“Her… I see.” 

“Mmm-hmm. So a girl’s got to be careful of what she says.” Kay holds one finger lightly to her lips and winks. “If I’m not careful, the Yatagarasu could steal the words right out of my mouth!” 

Miles sets his wine glass done lightly, deliberately, and the sharp clink of glass is enough pull Wright’s attention away, his eyes flicking from Kay. “And we wouldn’t want that to happen,” Miles says, and shoots Wright a warning glare. 

The man blinks, and the usual grin slips back on his face, but at least his eyes are back to being merely blue, losing their sharp intensity. For now, Miles will take that, and he twists his wrists to loosen some of the tension there, fits his hand back to the wine glass, back to nonchalance. 

“My dear,” he says to Kay, “it’s all well and good that you’ve decide to reveal your line of work to my partner, but this is hardly the safest place to do so.” He taps pointedly on the bar. “Tables have ears.” 

Kay twirls one of her earrings with her fingers. “Gotcha,” she says quietly, then tilts her head towards Wright. “You’re really his partner?” 

“That hasn’t changed in the past fifteen minutes,” Wright says, and Miles gives Kay a tiny nod. 

“Well, I’m a thief and sometimes I get to pick up some good stuff. I don’t really condone violence, but… if it will help Mr. Edgeworth and keep him safe, I can do it. I help with some of his weapons. So it’s a social visit and a delivery all rolled up together.” Kay drops under the counter and comes up with a neatly wrapped bundle in wax paper, tied together in a spider web of twine like a lunch package gone insane. “I just got it, and it couldn’t really wait. I can’t get you anything for a really long while. I’m not going to be able to see you after this.” 

Miles is careful not to let their fingers brush when he takes the package from her, but Kay’s eyes are wide behind her shielding bangs as she moves from under the bright bar lights into the shadows between the spotlights. Something is shattering behind her happy façade, worry and fear clear in her almost desperate gaze before she schools her expression with a sternness that almost makes Miles wince.

“I’m leaving the city,” Kay says briskly, stepping back, the lights sparkling off her hair ornaments and simple jewelry, speaking a little too loudly to cover her emotions. “For business,” she adds, glancing at Wright for the last sentence, drawing the man’s attention back to her. 

Miles closes his eyes, hearing nuances in her voice, her words dragging over him like heavy, choking water. He’s painfully aware of his own heartbeat in his chest, and that traitorous voice at the back of his mind wonders how long it would continue to beat, how long Miles has left to live, if Kay with her eternal optimism could look like that. But the momentary panic subsides quickly, filed away to a corner of his mind to deal with later, and Miles opens his eyes, centering himself back into the conversation in time to hear Wright’s response. 

“Business trips are quite a pain,” Wright agrees, and Kay flicks him a smile in acknowledgement of his words, although she doesn't bother to respond. 

The three of them sit there in silence until Miles clears his throat pointedly. “Wright. Go away,” he says in a tone that just dares Wright to disagree. He tosses Kay’s package at Wright; Badd knows better than to put anything incriminating in there, and it’ll appease Wright’s sleuthing habits to go through it long enough for Miles to make his farewell to Kay. “Can’t you tell when a lady wishes to speak to a friend in private?” 

Wright has the audacity to chuckle at him. He drains the rest of his grape juice, then waves the package. “A pleasure to meet you,” he says to Kay, and directs the rest to Miles. “I’ll be outside. Don’t take too long. We need to check in.” 

Those simple words catch at Miles for a moment, threatening to untwist the fragile calm he had wrapped around himself. “Wright,” Miles says, and wonders if he had meant that to come out as Wright’s name or as an agreement. 

Wright looks at him for a moment, then turns and brushes a fleet-quick European kiss on Kay’s cheek, who squeaks and tips backwards, staring at Wright in surprise. “I won’t kiss and tell,” Wright tells her. “Your little secret – that stays with me.” 

But he catches Miles’ gaze for the last of that sentence, and Miles feels something within him settle, lulled back to numbed steadiness. He nods once and doesn’t watch Wright’s departure. 

Kay follows Wright’s movements right up to his exit out the front entrance, her face scrunched slightly in confusion, then finally notices Miles watching her. She looks uncertain for a moment, and then with a flash of what Miles recognizes as steeling determination, she vaults up and over the bar counter, landing on Wright’s vacated seat. The leftover wine in Miles’ glass swirls and there are some whistles from the corners of the bar, but Miles ignores them as Kay leans forward and curls into his chest, her hands hooking almost painfully around his neck. 

“Are you all right?” Miles asks instead of the question he really wants the answer to, but Kay hears all of it and for a second her hold on his neck and shoulders almost becomes a death grip. 

She pitches her voice high, for the benefit of their audience. “I’m going to miss you, that’s all.” 

Miles doesn’t say anything and merely strokes at her hair. He can feel her heart thudding and wonders what kind of person he’s become, for him to be so calm and collected in face of so much that has seemed to have gone wrong. 

“Please be careful,” she mutters into his shoulder, and she clings to his jacket a little too tightly. Miles simply holds her in for another moment, and then lets go. Kay slides her arms away and reaches up to straighten his tie. The little note she folds into his collar feels rough against his skin. She gives him a wobbly smile. “I… really gotta go now.”

“You should,” Miles agrees quietly – it’s been more than twenty minutes since Kay first set the glass of sparkling water in front of Miles, and that’s pushing the boundaries of what’s safe for Kay. It’s already nineteen minutes too long for Miles’ own peace of mind. “Do you have a safe way home?” 

Kay’s eyes drift through the bar, as if she’s making a curious survey of the décor. “Yeah. I’m good. I’ve got an escort.” 

“Good. That’s all I need to know.” 

Kay’s eyes widen and she clutches hard at her shirt, as if to stop herself from clutching at Miles. She ducks her head slightly and the ponytailed top of her head quivers, but when she looks up at Miles again, her eyes are tear-free and almost angry. 

“Be safe, Kay,” Miles says. 

Kay brushes her fingers against his knee as she slips by. She walks with no hesitation in her step, nor does she turn back. She heads unerringly for the side exit and with a final swish of her ponytail, disappears. 

She’s a mischievous little thief, after all, with all the wit and agility and luck of one. 

Miles tells himself that before leaving to meet Wright, the little note in his collar chafing painfully against his skin.

There’s something about the quality of light in the room always reminds Miles of the two months he spent at one of the precinct’s safe houses, waiting for the paperwork and the authorization to go through, en-route from the job he resigned from in Germany to his undercover mission.

It’s an empty room, beyond the furniture that came with it. A bed, a small bedside cabinet, a wardrobe. The wide mahogany desk that was both a present and a warning. Gavin had arranged to have the beautiful writing desk moved to his quarters two weeks after Miles' official acceptance into the group. Some others had looked at him in shocked jealousy; Miles only felt the hair at the back of his neck rise, his skin crawling with tension.

Now, every time he sits at the desk, Miles remembers Gavin's eyes, sharp and piercing behind his glasses.

He didn’t have a chance to take a look at Kay’s note that night. He had removed it the moment he was alone, in a washroom in another hideout he and Wright had been called to on their way back to base, but he wouldn’t risk reading it in anywhere but the scant security of his own room. 

The room is dim when he finally gets back and Miles leaves it that way, leaves the curtains drawn and letting shadows pool in the corners. The note Kay left him is a worn little thing, barely a scrap bearing a series of numerals and numbers. If anyone high up enough in Gavin’s organization to know who he is saw and noticed, Miles will reply that it’s a serial number of his own creation to mark his numerous sidearms, and he'd show them the markings he'd etch onto the shining barrels of his gun or the soft leather handles of his favorite hunting knife. They'd believe him; Miles hides an unholy amount of weapons on his body, and if anyone ever learned anything about Miles, it’s how meticulous he is about them.

He drops Kay’s package on his bed – a pair of blades with matching sheaths and a small satchel of tea leaves, carefully sealed – then opens the note. He deciphers the code in a glance, the numbers and letters like a dearly beloved second language, and has to slam one hand on the desk to steady himself.

The code itself is a sparse, undetailed message, but Miles can fill in the gaps himself. 

Four other agents have been discovered and killed. 

Code black. The neutralization of the operation is of utmost importance. The primary mission is now to shut down the operation, or to take out the operation's head.

Lone Wolf Running. No further backup will be provided. All restrictions lifted. Use all means necessary. 

Kay’s words from the night before come back in startling clarity. 

He’s been cut loose. 

He glances at the note just once to confirm the fifteen character long code he's already memorized, than pulls a lighter from his pocket. The strike and hiss of flint and lighter fluid is loud in the room, and the tiny flame throws long shadows into Miles' eyes. He barely has to touch the note to the flame before it lights up, the fire eating through the note in scant seconds, leaving only white ash and the acrid scent of burnt parchment in the air. Miles grounds the remnants between his fingers, and they come away with a smudge of white.

He's strangely calm, strangely... numb about it all. Maybe he's really getting into the role of it, to be so unfeeling.

Three thumps resound from his door, followed by three quick light ones, like someone knocking with their fingers instead of their knuckles. Part of Miles resents the interruption, the denied chance of having a private moment to absorb the news, while the rest of him grows calm and collected, all business again. 

Miles flicks the dead bolt on the door, the jump of the lock echoing around his room, and settles back into his chair, rubbing his fingers idly. His knuckles sting from the interrogation mission the night before. He had forgotten to wrap them when he got back.

"Miles," a voice says through the heavy barrier, and then the door swings open, eerily silent.

Miles has thought about asking Wright how he always managed to open that door so very quietly, whether it was a technique – pressure in the right places, a certain speed perhaps – or sheer luck. It always groaned just the softest when Miles opened his door. Paranoia and a healthy dose of concern for his wellbeing makes Miles wary at the traps implied in that creaking door. Is it simply an old, unoiled hinge, or a subtle alarm for someone watching his movements?

But Miles always forgets the question when the door finishes its swing to reveal Wright.

"What, another mission already?" he asks to buy himself a few moments, and makes no move towards his kit on that bedamned table.

He expects Wright to grin at him or jest about Miles holing himself away in his room instead of relaxing, but Wright is quiet, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his hoodie. Miles goes still himself, his thoughts blanking out for a moment before his mind jump-starts to quiet action, now watchful and considering. 

“What is it, Wright.” 

He watches Wright’s eyes. Wright doesn’t lie, but he’s visibly searching for words to bend the truth this time. What he needs to say will be ugly, no matter how much he prettified his words. 

“An eradication. The entire East cell,” Wright finally says, and Miles startles. 

“We’re taking out our own?” At Wright’s continued silence, Miles presses on. “That’s our entire operation out East, and they’re useful people, not—” He cuts himself off, slightly sickened at himself. Not like those goons back at the safe house, only capable of violence and kidnapping, he’d been about to say. 

He, of all people, should not be the judge of a man’s right to live or die. 

“There are quite a few troublemakers in that group, operators who have began moving on their own,” Wright says, leaning heavily against the door, dragging one hand through his hair. He isn’t wearing his beanie today. “Gavin wants the entire group taken care of, as well as anyone else found in the building when we begin.”

Miles clenches one hand into a loose fist, presses it close to his thigh, out of Wright’ line of sight. He can feel gritty ash between his fingers. 

“Pack your essentials.” Wright pushes away from the door, face set in still wryness. “We leave in an hour.” 

It began with a series of case profiles lying innocently on his work desk. Miles didn’t bother with them the first time he saw them. The brown folders they were sealed in looked like any other “confidential” paperwork, and Miles had more important things on his mind. 

It took Lana Skye’s gentle reminder – “Miles, these files have been on your desk for a while; you should really clear them before the week’s out” – before Miles noticed the folders again, and then only because they offered him the perfect excuse to escape when Skye’s partner came looking for her. Miles had grabbed the folders as Young swooped Skye down on one arm for a kiss, and fled for the peaceful gardens outside the headquarters of the joint American-German special law enforcement task force, nestled on the outskirts of their embassy. 

He spent slightly over an hour going through the cases: a poker player killed in a Russian-themed bar, blunt-force trauma to the head; a string of poison victims, with no clues on how the poison was introduced into the body. There were no surviving witnesses in any of the cases. Miles had closed the folder on the last report and stared up into the speckled sunlight streaming through the dense foliage of the tree he sat under, and wondered why someone would leave the details of such faraway deaths on his desk in Germany. 

Over the next few weeks, those brown folders continued to appear, with more diverse contents – captured camera footages, newspaper clippings of dead politicians, a series of photos on the remnants of an arson case that burned a string of warehouses down, onlooker testimonials – but never any accounts of direct eyewitnesses. It was “lucky” he didn’t have a partner that would meddle through his documents and encroach on his personal space, Miles mused, and spent an afternoon removing the lock and clearing out the top drawer under his desk for his mysterious folder-leaver. 

The last folder he received was the profile of a living man, and that discrepancy had Miles flipping through the inch-thick folder within seconds of spotting it. Miles had been at his desk on a Saturday night, tea steaming away in a little pot, his jacket tossed over one stray chair from when he had taken it off after getting back from a mission. The moon was just shy of being full and his favorite pen was running out of ink, fading in and out as Miles attempted to pen some notes on the folder’s contents. He remembered the moment clearly, when he had turned a page over and came upon the photo of the bespectacled blonde, his smile eerily serene as he glanced over one shoulder at the photographer. 

There was something about defense attorney Kristoph Gavin’s profile that set off all of Miles’ danger instincts. His profile – too scrupulously clean. His clients – always so perfectly innocent, victims of the famed “wrong place at the wrong time” syndrome. His connections – a delicate mesh of ties across the board, crossing no boundaries, supporting no fractions, just a perfectly centered presence that knew all but touched no one. No one involved in the law could be a saint, but for all intents and purposes, Gavin appeared one. 

Skye had remarked the next day that Miles practically lived at his office, he always came in so early. Miles had only nodded and settled for yet another cup of tea, feeling worn and tired despite the spare clothing he’d changed into a few hours shy of dawn. He hadn’t gotten more than a few minutes of sleep, but he had the beginnings of an elaborate flowchart set up, the cases of every folder that had appeared on his desk mapped out, with Gavin’s folder at the nucleus of the web. 

“What’s this, a new case?” Skye said, running one hand idly across the folders, although the agents’ unspoken etiquette kept her from flipping through the contents. 

Miles curled his fingers around his teacup for warmth, and thought about the white on black card depicting a three-legged raven he had found tucked into the end of Gavin’s file, a jaunty calling card uncharacteristic of the defense attorney’s profile. A message to Miles himself, then, from his folder-leaver. 

“A pet project,” Miles said. 

It was a bright sunny day in Los Angeles, and Miles sat on a park bench under a shady tree. It was still distracting, the sound of English around him, the weather warmer for this time of the year. He received stares for the suit he’s wearing, the cravat, or maybe it’s the man sitting next to him and his tattered, hole-riddled trench coat, calmly licking at a lollipop.

Not quite what Miles expected of an FBI agent, but then again, the special law enforcement task force headquarters in Germany didn’t breed stereotypic agents, either. Even Skye, the person they always pushed forward when they needed someone to play a normal civilian, never took off the dangerously long scarf she wore wrapped around her neck, a suicidal piece of clothing if Miles ever saw one. 

“Edgeworth, huh?” Badd said. “Still a name to be reckoned with around these parts.” 

“… pardon?” 

“And when you hear the name Edgeworth, you naturally think of von Karma. And here you are, both an Edgeworth and a von Karma protégé. Interesting how that works out.” 

Miles stared at him openly now, his mild headache from the jetlag forgotten. He was used to people reminiscing about his father, or sympathizing about his situation with von Karma, his father’s killer taking in the son and trying to kill him years later, but not like this. Nothing sympathetic or condescending or a fish for inside gossip within those words – just facts, pure and simple. 

It was amazingly refreshing. 

“You’ve sent me quite a bit of mail,” Miles said. “I have an entire drawer dedicated to cases in Los Angeles, now.” 

Badd popped the lollipop back into his mouth, speaking around the sweet. “Interested in seeing where those case files come from?”

“Yes.” That’s what he travelled all the way back for, after all. 

Badd reached inside his battered trench coat and laid three items down on the empty space between them. A slim leather holder that reveals a polished agent’s badge when Miles lifts the cover with a finger, a black notepad, the top most pages listing addresses and meeting points – insider’s information, Gavin’s business card slotted between two pages – and the last, a single bullet. 

“And the crow in your backyard?” Miles asked, thinking of the three-legged crow on its calling card. The Yatagarasu had quite a reputation, the bureaus not quite on a manhunt for the entity because of how popular the “noble thief” was with the public. But Miles had done his research, digging into classified files of his own, and there were two distinct personalities to the Yatagarasu in the cases the thief pursued. 

He was speaking to the one that flew after death and danger, not the one that hunted for truth. 

Badd didn't ever smile – he simply stared at Miles over the top of his lollipop. 

“Strictly a side job. But sometimes, when the law cannot do fulfill its job, that’s when we come in. To help achieve justice by any means. I found you through that side job, of course.” 

Miles nodded, reached over to take the black notepad, leaving the badge and the bullet behind. He wouldn’t carry the badge where he’s going though he’ll have the position and title, and he had weapons of his own, the only ones he'd work with. There was additional information in that notepad, gleaned by the Yatagarasu’s efforts, and Miles suspected he would be working in that capacity, a formal undercover mission with information supplied and gleaned through less than legal means. 

Badd stood, his trench coat flaring out behind him. At full height, he made an intimidating figure, but he pulled out the lollipop and held it in one hand, like a cigarette, and that marred the image, just slightly. 

“You do realize that this is a highly unconventional mission, going in as yourself.” 

Miles flipped through the notepad, came up with Gavin’s business card, advertising his services as a defense attorney. Gavin would notice and regard someone with pedigree, von Karma’s protégé and Gregory Edgeworth’s son both, someone who could keep up with his level of thinking. 

“No,” Miles said softly. “It’s still an undercover mission. The Miles Edgeworth who will be seeking Gavin, disillusioned with the law and jaded over an attempt on his life by his mentor, will play right into Gavin’s inner circle. But I’m not that person.”

He didn’t carry any badges with him, not a prosecutor’s emblem nor his special agent’s insignia; just the guns tucked under his jacket to prove his convictions. He thought of Gavin’s careful, silken smile and the webs of deaths, and simply wanted to obliterate that, whether as an agent or an attorney or an assassin. Any means to take out this lethal man and his operation, and clear Los Angeles of his deadly touch. 

Badd didn’t smile, but the brisk way he took back the badge and the bullet was almost satisfied. “Eager, aren’t you. To the safe house, then. We’ll have the rest of the discussion there.”

It’s horribly anti-climatic, Miles muses, to be told of imminent mass murder to be committed on his part, and to then be forced to hide away and wait. 

The contents of his kit and every single weapon he carries on his person is spread across the wide coffee table. A pair of throwing knives, a switchblade and the blade he always wore strapped to one forearm lie gleaming atop a fold of cloth beside thin coils of wire. His tiny handgun perches beside the suppressor atop the neat little stacks of cartridge magazines. Miles focuses on the oiled cloth and the disassembled parts of his semi-automatics and attempts to tune Wright out.

“They’re practically asking to get burned down,” Wright calls from across the room, where he half-heartedly studies a blueprint of the warehouse the East cell claimed as their headquarters. “I mean, a wood structure that stores expensive but highly flammable ink smuggled from a foreign country, and it’s the height of summer? A perfect firetrap.” 

“Yes,” Miles says in his blandest voice, “which is why I keep asking the reason for the delay.” 

“Patience is a virtue, Miles,” Wright says with a serene smile. “I’ll let you know when it’s time. There are methods to my madness.” 

“As there are to mine.” Miles glances pointedly down at his guns. The only thing worse than Wright in a chatty mood is Wright attempting to be poetic. “Why did Gavin send you along with me instead of someone useful?” 

“But I am useful.” 

Some of stains on his guns are damnably hard to remove. “Only if you can interrogate the dead, Wright.” 

Wright, surprisingly, has no witty quip for that. 

Miles sighs under his breath. Worse than all the chatter in the world are the clamoring thoughts that crowd his head if he doesn't focus on something else. “A fire expert would be useful.” 

“I think you mean ‘arsonist'. And why would we need an expert? We could just drop a match in one of those ink containers, seal it up afterwards, and the explosion and all that ink will do the rest.” Wright chuckles. “And that’s what we plan to do.” 

A sniper would have been best, Miles thinks but doesn’t say. As a special agent, he had stuck to handguns and hand-to-hand combat for the physical part of his training; the task force’s primary role had always been one of intelligence and investigation, with combat skills as added value. Miles glares darkly at his array of weapons and wonders if it would be easier to shoot his targets through the tunnel vision of a scope from afar than to stare into their eyes as he pulled the trigger. 

The only comfort he could take from this entire situation is that of the names he recognized on the list Wright compiled for him, all of them are known criminals who have willingly thrown their lot in with Gavin.

The scrape of a chair scratching across the floor pulls him from his thoughts. 

“Would you have liked someone else, Miles, to join you on this mission?” Wright asks with his usual grin, picking up the thin whetstones Miles had worked with in intervals, sharpening his weapons to their honed edge. 

Miles watches Wright finger the sharpening stones, then set them down to pick up the switchblade, flicking the blade out without slicing his own fingers off. 

“No.” Miles reaches out and takes the switchblade from Wright, depressing the guard and closing the blade in one smooth movement. “I’ve worked with you the longest, after all. I’d have thrown anyone else out of the room after four days of waiting.” 

And he wouldn’t have let anyone else handle his weapons so closely. Actually, he shouldn’t let anyone see his weapons displayed like that, but Wright is Wright, and after receiving Badd’s last message, Miles feels a recklessness that lets him drop his guard. 

But not completely. Never completely. Just enough to flirt with the darkness instead of merely tolerating it, going deeper into the cover than he’s ever had without drowning. 

Wright’s smile darkens into a genuine smirk at that. “You’re right. We’re partners, aren’t we?” 

“Whatever, Wright.” 

Wright laughs at him and mercifully leaves the conversation at that. 

He comes back twenty minutes later, setting something down with a click. Miles eyes the teacup and saucer in near disbelief. It looks like tea, and it certainly smells like the fruity aroma of Earl Grey, but here, in a rundown apartment a block from a little-used warehouse? 

“Yes, it’s real tea. From a tea bag, though.” Wright swings into the chair and folds his arms across the back of it, watching Miles. “You’re as tense as a violin string. Are you worried about your little thief?”

Miles’ gaze flicks up. “Should I be worried?” 

“I’d worry more about yourself, first.” 

Miles picks up the cup, breathes in the fragrance and takes a sip, letting the tea’s warmth sooth his thoughts. “When are we going to begin this mission?”

Wright’s eyes skitter away, and he turns his head to stare out the grimy window. “Soon. It’ll be the most opportune moment, Miles. I promise you that.” 

“Hmm. Very well.” 

Miles goes through three cups of tea in silence, but when the fourth contains honey, he almost drops the entire thing, saucer and all. He forces himself to finish the brew, turning the delicate little cup so it stood with its handle aesthetically to one side on the saucer, then raises his gaze to meet Wright’s eyes. 

“This afternoon?” 

Wright’s beanie is off, his hair as spiky and unruly as ever. 

“Yeah.” 

Wright refuses any weapons Miles offers him. Miles would have forced a gun on him if he thought Wright might actually consider it for self-defense, but Wright had flashed him a grin and said “I'll always turn about to land on my feet,” and slipped away to splash the flammable ink all around the warehouse. 

Wright had indeed timed it well, in the lull hour of the afternoon when the sun is at its hottest and when most stayed indoors, indolent after the midday meal. Miles skulks along the corridors, counting off the doors and the targets in his mind, and the logical part of him is thankful none of them put up a major resistance – some not fully noticing him before he puts the bullets in their chest or back, the suppressor on his gun letting him continue along his stealthy way after each kill. 

Another part of him, the cold reckless part of him that is stupidly honorable, yearns for a head-on battle, a fair fight on both sides, and he’s almost pleased when Matt Engarde ducks, the bullet hitting him in the shoulder instead. Engarde throws himself at Miles in a reckless tackle and although Miles keeps hold of his gun from habit of training, they’re pressed too closely for Miles to get a clear shot. 

The blade slides into his left hand with sleek coolness, and he throws his gun far aside even as he drives the blade into Engarde’s stomach, below the ribs, flicking open his switchblade and burying it into the side of Engarde’s throat a second later. 

He lets Engarde’s body fall to the ground, and blood, warm and sticky, spills over his hands and the sleeves of his shirt as he withdraws his knives. He cleans his hands and the blades absently on Engarde’s once white jacket as the scent of blood fills the air, chokingly coppery, then goes to retrieve his gun. 

Another name off the list. 

Don’t think. Just go. 

He’s prowling through the upper level with three names left on the list when he comes across the sketchbook, fallen open onto a page with a majestic pencil-lined replica of the Mona Lisa, the skill and talent captured within the book’s folds at odds with the childish loop of the name printed on the cover. 

Vera Misham. 

It was late evening, and he had come back to his apartment with the last blazing light of the setting sun. 

Miles twisted the key in its lock, stepped across the threshold revealed by the swinging door and paused, his jacket half-shrugged off and dangling from one arm. 

He continued the act of removing his jacket a second later, quietly tucking the article of clothing into the closet and slipping the semi-automatic from its concealed niche in the wall. The weapon is a familiar heavy weight in his hand even as he set his fingers to it. 

“What are you doing, little brother?” 

Damn. Miles considered thrusting the gun back into its former hiding place, if only to help alleviate the look of distaste that was undoubtedly aimed its way, then swung the weapon around and stored it the holster he had emptied that very morning, when he had turned in his resignation and his badge at the embassy. He drew a breath, then turned around to face the petite young woman before him, whip in hand. “Franziska.”

Franziska narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not having a conversation in a dark corridor like children hiding secrets from the adults.” The whip in her hand quivered, but she merely flung out one gloved hand at him, finger curled in a condescending order to follow. 

Miles caught up to her as she swept into the living room, and walked a slow circuit to turn on the antique tableside lamp and the sleeker, tall light stand across from it, both emitting large warm spheres of light against the growing shadows of the evening. Franziska stalked past him, the lamps’ glow reflecting almost harshly off her silvery hair, and seated herself on a straight-backed hardwood armchair.

Miles watched her quietly, then slipped along the lines of light and shadow to the velvet loveseat directly across. 

Sometimes, Miles didn’t know how to handle Franziska. Fiercely independent and headstrong, Miles imagined that all she had to do was walk into a room and men would fall over to do her bidding, because she would whip them all into shape if they didn’t. But as sharp as her mind was, Franziska had an equally prickly personality. They would have been rivals in the courtroom on the side of the prosecution, once. 

Franziska’s eyes raked across the room, flicking from corner to corner until they settled on the conspicuously empty mantelpiece above the fireplace. Her chin went up in a stubborn tilt. 

“You’ve resigned as an agent. Why are you still armed?” 

And that was Franziska, Miles thought – always prepared to go for the kill. 

“How did you get in?” 

“With a key, fool.” Franziska showed him the teasing glint of the silver key from between her black-gloved hand, then tucked it away in a flash. “You gave it to me yourself.”

That would have been the logical answer, mein lieber, if you had ever used it in the four years since I gave it to you. 

“Ah. This is a special occasion, then.” 

Franziska’s eyes flashed, and had he been anyone else, she would have let him feel the lash of her whip twice over by now. “Put the gun away.”

Miles hadn’t needed to think about that one. “No.” 

The tail-tip of the whip cracked a mere foot from his head. Miles didn’t blink, although he shook his head slightly in a futile attempt to clear the numbed silence left ringing in his ear. 

“Do you choose death, Miles Edgeworth?” 

He didn’t expect that question at all – hadn’t even seen that angle, and it caught him off guard. “What?” 

Franziska was on her feet now. “It’s the only explanation I have for someone who would be foolish enough to take an extremely high-risk undercover job in a country he isn’t even serving in!” 

The look she threw at him was seven-part accusation and three-part anger. What bothered her more – Miles’ supposed stupidity, or the fact that he had once again done something without her permission?

Franziska had never quite forgiven him for abandoning the path of a prosecutor and turning to law enforcement. Sometimes, Miles thought his decision angered her more than her father’s fall from grace and subsequent trial did. 

He waited a bare moment for Franziska to wrest back control of her emotions. “So. How did you find out, Franziska? Interpol wouldn’t be involved in single nations’ internal affairs.” 

“You’ll be using Papa’s name and reputation to aid your cover. They would have to ask for his only living daughter’s cooperation to ensure our stories corroborate, wouldn’t they?”

Did Gavin’s claws extend so far as to check up on Miles’ identity abroad? Miles flipped his bangs out of his eyes, the movement highlighting the added weight of his gun under his shoulder. He had made the right decision, then. 

“And your reply?” 

Franziska’s hand clenched around her whip, then relaxed abruptly. “Do not act the part of your cover with me.” 

Miles considered that, then abandoned any potential line of conversation stemming from that route, switching to something safer but no less volatile. 

“Why did you become an Interpol agent?” Miles asked abruptly, and it was so painfully easy to fall back into the pattern of it, to spar and parry with words and questions. He waited for Franziska to open her mouth to response, then cut her off. “Didn’t you take on increasingly greater tasks than your advisory role as a prosecutor asked of you? After discovering a criminal so very close to home – you needed to do more because prosecuting wasn’t enough anymore, not for someone like you, and certainly not for me!” 

“And did you find what you were looking for as a special agent, Miles Edgeworth?” Franziska asked with silken razors in her voice. “How illuminating that career must have been for you to now throw yourself headlong into the abyss instead of merely staring into it!” 

Impasse. They stared at each other, Franziska standing with her whip flicking in tiny, agitated motions, Miles still ensconced on the loveseat, one hand clenched tightly into the velveteen cushion. If he listened hard enough, Miles wondered, what would he hear in the heavy silence between them? 

“As the prosecution—“ Miles’ voice sounded hollow and impersonal, even to his own ears “—we identity the guilty ones and reveal their secrets and crimes for the world to see and to judge. But we do not bring the criminals to the stand; the law enforcers do. And even they can only investigate what crimes they see. This job, this new role – it will let me dig into the unexposed heart of crime, to hunt the ones who would never make it to the stand otherwise.” 

Franziska’s gaze stayed resolutely on the loveseat’s velvet surface as Miles stood and went to her. He hesitated, and when he spoke, his voice came out gentle and quite unlike him. “I don’t know what I choose,” Miles said. “But I know that I chose it.”

Franziska snagged the shoulder of his shirt. “If it came between killing an innocent against risking your cover, which would you choose to protect?” She slid one slim hand down and pressed against the handle of the gun in its holster under Miles’ shoulder. “You’ve killed in the line of duty before, but not like this. You’ll have to act like one of them, think like them. To become the person you swore to hunt."

She pushed him away.

“I have only one brother,” Franziska told him bluntly. “I do not wish to prosecute you. But I would. Even if you escaped that, even if your superiors vouched for you – can you live with the consequences of your actions, little brother?” 

Miles slid his gaze away from hers, staring at the empty corners of his living room that he had cleared in anticipation of his imminent move. How rare one such like her was, to ask aloud the questions he had only dared to broach in the privacy of his own heart, where no one would judge him but himself. But with her face lifted up to his in steadfast demand, how could his answer be any less than perfectly truthful? 

“If it did come down to that, there is no one I would rather have as the prosecution,” Miles said. “And as for the consequences – yes. I can.” 

He didn’t apologize for his decision, couldn’t have meant it even if he mouthed the words. But he was sorry for leaving her, and he wasn’t sure how to tell her that. 

Franziska beat him to it. 

“You are not allowed to die,” Franziska told him, her eyes blazing and her chin up – where had she picked that up from? Manfred von Karma hadn’t cared enough to engage someone head on like that, and Miles himself was all about cold confrontation, nothing of this banked anger leashed under a veneer of calm. 

His silence seemed to irritate her, because she drove the back end of her whip into his stomach, then grabbed him by the collar when he doubled over, slightly winded. “Are you listening to me, Miles Edgeworth?” 

“Yes,” Miles said, then twisted and flipped her neatly over one shoulder, Franziska’s cry of surprise going breathless as he caught her on the way down, pushing her gently so she fell back first over the chair’s arms onto the loveseat. 

Franziska stared up at him, her right hand clenching in an instinctive reach for her whip, her eyes going wide when her fingers close only on air. Miles looked down at her, at the flush – of anger? Of sheer frustration? – staining her cheeks, the prosecutor and Interpol agent with a presence so fierce that it was easy to forget she was only nineteen and still so very young in many ways. 

But then again, wasn’t he the same? 

The whip was a curled streak of black against the dark wood floor, and Miles took the time to coil it into neat loops before going to his knees before the loveseat. He had to tilt his head back slightly to meet Franziska’s gaze as she sat up and tucked her legs under her in one neat movement, an act so reminiscent of their childhood that Miles almost looked down to confirm that he was holding a whip, not a riding crop. Instead, he pressed the whip back into her hands, curling her fingers around the leather with his own. 

“We walk our own paths, Franziska,” Miles said to their linked hands. “I can’t promise you the impossible.” He squeezed her hands lightly, then let go. “But I don’t think I’d dare to die, wilde stute. You’d find a way to thrash me to within an inch of my afterlife.” 

He could feel Franziska’s stare like a physical weight, and then her hands are in his hair, warm through her gloves. “You’re a man of your word, Miles Edgeworth. I expect you to keep it.”

“Of course.” 

“I believe—” Franziska said, her voice soft but incredibly intense. Her hands in his hair became death grips, pulling sharply with every other word. “—that you will live through this. And that you’ll come back with all your morals intact.” 

“…I certainly hope so.” 

“As long as you understand that, fool.” 

Miles was careful to keep his eyes down, even as Franziska alternated between petting and clenching at his hair. He didn’t think Franziska cried anymore, not since the day Manfred von Karma had been sentenced those long years ago, but if she did, she wouldn’t appreciate Miles catching her at it. 

And Miles would be lying if he said he didn’t take comfort in the presence of his adopted sister. 

He finds Vera hiding in a closet, her knees tucked up to her chest. 

She looks up at him through the curtain of hanging button-downs, calmly quiet, until Miles pushes the clothes aside and sees the silent panic behind her eyes. 

“Hello, Vera,” he says somewhat awkwardly, kneeling down to speak to her at eye level. He sets his gun down on the ground outside her line of sight. What do people say to frightened young women to put them at ease when they are the ones doing the scaring? “…I believe you dropped this.” 

She stares at him over her knees, then uncurls from her tucked position in a flurry of blue overalls and purple stockings to reach out and snatch the book from him, stacks of paper cascading out of her lap in a waterfall of grey lines on white to join the trail of loose-leaf sketch paper Miles had followed all the way up to this particular closet. 

Vera hugs the sketchbook close to her chest, and then her eyes flicker open, homing in on him, although she tucks her chin down, still shy, still hesitant. “Thank you.” 

He had heard of her, the shy and talented forger, from Wright of all people – but she wasn’t on Wright’s list. 

“Vera,” he speaks her name to catch her attention. “Can you tell me why you’re here?” 

She looks at him steadily for such a long moment that Miles wonders if she had heard him at all, and then her sketchbook is open, flipped to a blank page, a spare pencil plucked from a pocket already in hand. 

He doesn’t have time for this, but the flick and sweep of her pencil drawing steady lines across the white canvas silences any protest he could have made. It’s fascinating to watch the story unfold into two-dimensional life before his very eyes, and when she finishes, Vera turns the entire sketchbook around, so he could view it the right side up. 

It’s a series of quick doodles, the first depicting an elder man with a tufted hair style and a young girl, the rest detailing the girl, now older, drawing, then running, and finally hiding, a devil lurking outside her flimsy little hiding space within a closet. 

Vera’s father had instructed his daughter to run and hide in this tiny little safe house if the Devil – Gavin’s most famous epithet – ever came for her life. 

Oh. Oh. 

“Ah. Well… I’m not the Devil, you’re safe with me—” She knows that, Miles berates himself, she obviously does if she’s willing to draw for you instead of running away. “—but I meant… what are you doing here in the warehouse? I thought you usually stayed at home.” 

Another series of sketches. A phone call, the same elderly man listening, then speaking to the girl, and then the girl walking along the streets until she came to the warehouse. 

“You received a phone call that told you to come to the warehouse? Is this the first time you’ve been here?” 

A nod, her blue hair swishing with her movements. 

Miles slides backwards to sit on the floor, glancing away from Vera and down the corridor, as if he could stare into the truth this way. 

Vera had been planted here. She’s a test – and if Wright hadn’t known about her, did that make her a test for him too? Or is Wright part of the scheme, the person who would check to see if Miles would take her life, as Gavin instructed?

No one is to leave the warehouse alive after we’ve visited, Wright had said. And they had waited four days before moving in. 

Miles almost misses the fact that Vera had spoken, her voice incredibly soft even in the tiny space of the closet. 

“Where’s my father?” Vera’s eyes flicker down to the elder man she had sketched just moments before, then swing back up, as if afraid Miles might disappear on her if she looked away for too long. 

Miles feels something clench in his chest, an odd empathy for a child who has lost her father. He doesn’t want to be her anchor in this chaos, doesn’t want to get too close, too attached, but he hears the tiniest little hitch in her breathing and that sound roots him to his position as easily as shackles, as guilt. 

“I don’t know, Vera.” Miles doesn’t know the identity of some of the people he had come across, but he hadn’t killed anyone resembling Vera’s sketched father, not with the tufted hair. “He isn’t here.” 

He couldn’t quite tell, but Vera’s unsmiling face goes even more solemn, and she hugs the sketchbook again, the way a child would hug a favorite toy for comfort. 

“He’s…” Miles hesitates, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie, not even a pretty falsehood to sooth a girl’s fears. “He would want you to be safe. I…” he stops again, weighing the idea in his head, but as Vera stares at him with those soulful eyes, the one part of her that spoke when she couldn’t sketch, he knows he has already made up his mind. 

He had said it, hadn’t he? You’re safe with me. Men like the politician’s assistant, Miles could kill if the need arose, and he’d carry that guilty stain on his soul forever. But someone like Vera, someone so childlike and so blindingly trusting in the world around her – Miles just couldn’t, and he would put her life over his a thousand times over. 

Miles rolls to his feet, snagging his gun along the way and tucking it away in a quick movement. He feels uncomfortably exposed, but if Vera hadn’t noticed it, he certainly isn’t going to flaunt it in her face. “Come with me,” he orders, and reaches down to pull her firmly, but gently, to her feet. “I’ll get you out. I’ll keep you safe from the Devil.”

Vera stumbles the few steps out of the closet, and her eyes catch on the crimson stains on his sleeve cuffs. 

“Don’t look,” Miles tells her, to spare her the realization, and she turns her gaze away obediently, blinking slowly at the brighter corridor. She reaches one hand out and snags onto the tail of Miles’ shirt, her sketchbook cradled in the crook of her free arm. 

Miles looks down at that small hand, Vera’s fingers twisted deep into the fabric, pulling the shirt taunt. He would have to shorten his stride so she wouldn’t stumble, and she would be a terrible liability if anyone attacked, hampering Miles’ movements. 

Vera turns an expected look on him. Miles leaves her hand where it is, and turns his mind to figuring out a route out of the warehouse that would avoid the bodies he had left lying where they fell. 

Wright isn’t anywhere around the warehouse when Miles gets outside; it means Miles didn’t have to deal with the man as he sends Vera away with a detailed set of instructions, locations and timing and people and the magic words to say that he made her repeat back to him until she had it down perfect. It also means that Wright is somewhere inside the warehouse with three undoubtedly now alert targets. 

It’s horribly familiar, then, to hear the gunshots echoing dully through the warehouse, far away enough that the sound reverberates in all the empty spaces of the building, throwing off Miles’ sense of direction as he tries to orient himself each time the gun goes off, seven steady times, and one lone shot an interval later. 

Miles isn’t surprise to find Wright well and alive, but he did not expect the two bodies and the sprays of blood across much of the room’s surface. The redhead has (had) a pretty, delicate face, marred by the way her features are twisted in an expression of sheer hatred. Her once airy white skirt is dark with her own blood, and bullet holes riddle the front of her dress. 

The second figure, lying slummed against the far wall, doesn’t fare much better. As Miles strides across the room, the light in her eyes fade out, and her hand slides out of her lap, the gun tumbling slightly out of her loosen grasp. The hilt of a knife protrudes from her chest. 

The sickening coopery scent of blood and heated metal is cloying, and instead of choking him it makes Miles feel alive, all his senses narrowed down to the here and now. No room to ponder the future, to worry about the past. 

He’s the steadiest under pressure, especially in life and death circumstances. Skye had told him once that he worked best alone, no liabilities and distractions to get in his way, and since then they always assigned a solo agent – him – to some of the most demanding missions, instead of the standard two-person team. 

Miles doesn’t work quite as well with a partner. 

And it isn’t like Miles had truly trusted Wright, who always seems to keep his hands blood-free (except how do you explain all the times everyone else in the room ends up injured, knocked out and now dead?), and it’s incredibly easy to redirect the aim of his gun. 

Miles isn’t the best marksmen in the underworld by a long shot, but he is skilled. At this distance, with his hand steady and Wright staring at him with the barest flicker of concern in his gaze and not moving, Miles thinks he can nail the headshot clean in one. Reckless, so many ways he could miss, if Wright bolts – but death guaranteed if he didn’t. 

“Been busy, Wright?” 

“Why are you still on alert?” Wright asks, and Miles feels reality jerk to a halt, tripped out of time for half a second before his attention snaps back to the situation. “They’re both dead, I can assure you that.” 

Miles eyes Wright over the clear line of his gun. Could anyone be that purposefully delusional, to believe they could bluff their way out of someone trying to kill them by pretending the killing intention didn’t exist? 

“I’ve taken out all but three of the list you compiled for me,” Miles says. “Valerie and Dahlia Hawthorne, whom from your descriptions are here, which leaves one more—” 

“Iris.” Wright says. “She got away, before the fight. Let her go, Miles.” 

There are strange inflections in Wright’s voice, and although Miles wants to call that a bluff too there’s something horribly honest in that voice. The girl isn’t already lying dead somewhere, a test for Miles’ allegiance; she really did escape, and Wright is stalling for her life. 

Miles looks a little closer, and yes, Wright is actually a little pale, the only sign that anything is amiss, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the gun pointing at his head. 

“That’s rare coming from you, Wright. You were always so ruthless in your missions to carry out Gavin’s plans. ‘Gavin wants the entire group taken care of, the entire East cell’ – that’s what you said to me.” 

“Gavin wants his troublemakers gone. Iris isn’t one of them – she’s only here because of her twin.” Wright is looking at one of the bodies. Dahlia Hawthorne, the girl with the red hair. 

Miles should lower his arm, put his gun away, but Wright barely seems to notice it so it hardly matters. “And what about Misham?” 

Wright turns his attention back to him. “Drew Misham?” 

“No. Vera. The forger girl. Why was she here?” 

“The forger gi—” Wright’s eyes darken. “What did you do to her, Edgeworth?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Miles says, taking a sharp, twisted pleasure at the anger that flashes across Wright’s face, as quick as lightning. He wonders if he’ll get to see what Wright’s interrogation victims see, whatever it was that invariably left them incapacitated, one way or another. 

But Wright stays quiet, near unmoving, and it’s clear the next move is up to Miles. 

“Who is Iris?” 

“Someone who was important,” Wright says, finally. A simple statement, and Miles notes the past tense in it. “She’s guilty only by association, I can swear on that.” 

Miles flips his head towards the bodies, not quite willing to turn his gaze or his aim away. “And them?”

Wright’s smile is very thin. “They killed each other. With help, of course. I came in initially to interrogate the instigators of a planned mass defection.”

“The Hawthorne sisters.” 

“No, just Dahlia, mainly.” Wright smirks, and it looks remarkably like all his other smirks except there is very little humor in it this time. “Ultimately, she does everything for herself. When things turned for the worse, it isn’t – wasn’t – very hard to stir up that distrust, to tip her over the edge. Dahlia attacked in rage; Valerie, in self-defense.” He nods towards the other half of the room. “The conclusion of that confrontation, as you can see, lie before you.” 

“And you survived unscathed, simply by staying your hand.” 

“Is it any better, to induce others to kill someone else?” Wright holds up a hand, free of gun or weapon calluses. “My hands might appear clean, Edgeworth, but I do have a death count.” He grimaces, his voice going low. “It’s a lot harder to absolve the illusory.” 

Miles had lowered his gun somewhere along the conversation. There’s a lot Wright isn’t saying but he revealed more than Miles expected, and it’s laughably stupid to think this way, but Miles thinks there’s a bit of trust in that hint of openness, allowing another a glimpse of one’s vulnerabilities. 

“Vera is fine,” Miles says. “She has… somewhere safe to go to. Does Iris?” 

Wright’s eyes are very blue – not the shocking electric brightness that Miles is used to, but something softer, something like hope behind them. “I don’t know. I hope so.” 

They make a perfect pair, the two of them, two underworld agents who have left a victim apiece alive. Helped them escape, even. 

“Let’s burn this place down,” Wright say abruptly, and suddenly Miles can’t wait to get out of that enclosed space of death. Wright evidently feels the same, now averting his eyes from the other side of the room. 

“Yes. Let’s.” 

He doesn’t know if it’s coincidence or calculation on Gavin’s part, to issue the summons six days after the East cell eradication, after Miles has burned off the manic-wariness of adrenaline, his mind and body not quite able to sustain constant alertness, but before he’s had a chance to fully recover his equilibrium. 

Gavin’s study is as ominously normal as it was the first time Miles was in there, the man sitting behind the desk always looking as if he belonged there, the mastermind of all their operations, although Miles knows better. Gavin is fully capable of committing his own murders, through covert poisonings or by more… hands on means. 

Gavin’s smile is razor sharp and very satisfied as he slides the folder delicately across the width of his desk, and Miles thinks of dark thoughts before he flips the folder open, momentarily surprised, the mission more innocuous than he expects. 

Or is it? 

“I do believe it’s about time you received solo missions, Edgeworth. You hardly need Wright’s accompaniment these days, and I can do so much more by sending you two out separately.” 

Miles studies Gavin’s smile over the top of the folder. He isn’t up for a mental spar with the sometimes-defense attorney, Gavin always holding all the cards and changing the rules by the second. He suspects that days ago he would have answered with a similar smile, overt and dangerous, but now Miles merely nods and turns slightly away, letting Gavin read the emotion of anticipation in the smallest smirk on his lips, in his body language. 

Wright had been the one to check in with Gavin, to deliver a full account of the eradication, although Miles had written his own detailed report, penning down the deaths in straight, prosaic lines. He had wondered if his and Wright’s stories corroborated, writing strictly the truth until he got to the Hawthorne sisters’ deaths, paring down to the very basics of that particular scene and carefully omitting any mention of Iris. He had even written about Vera, and recorded his first and only lie, about her death. 

He and Wright had been very liberal with their flammables, after all, the expensive ink only the beginning of it. There were no surviving bones left for Gavin to count the skeletons, even if he wanted to. 

“Well?” Gavin asks, lacing his hands together and waiting in seeming patience. His nails are a pale blue this time, a shade light enough to almost match his eyes. 

Miles snaps the folder shut, looks down at Gavin. “Yes, of course.” 

It doesn’t take him long to put together his kit, more of a matter rearranging than having to restock anything, and of course Wright is standing by his door when Miles comes out of his room, like some lazy guard dog with a horrible blue beanie for a collar. 

“Someone has certainly moved up the rungs. Kristoph doesn’t give out solo missions to just anyone, you know.” 

“I know.” He didn’t know, but he had strongly suspected, and it’s close enough that for once Miles abandons the technicalities. 

Wright falls into step behind him. “So, what’s the mission?” 

Miles spares a glance over his shoulder, to see if Wright is joking. “You don’t already know?” 

Wright chuckles. “Flattering, Miles, but no – Kristoph doesn’t always tell me what he’s up to.” 

Miles had wondered, when he received the solo assignment, whether Wright had been censured, fallen out of favor with Gavin, but even if he had, Wright would always find a way. It’s easier for Miles to just hand Wright the mission’s summary instead of enduring his endless digging questions, and Wright is quiet as he scans it through. 

A scouting mission embedded in a formal meeting with one of Gavin’s contacts, a partner important enough that Gavin would send a proper representative, Miles to negotiate on his behalf. A definite step up from the more covert assignments he and Wright often were on, and it’s absolutely a test and possibly a trap, but it’s also a chance for him to finally see the true scale of Gavin’s operation – the reason why he’s undercover long-term, instead of simply taking out Gavin the moment he had a clear shot. 

“I don’t think you’ve actually had a mission without me,” Wright muses almost idly, handing the summary back, and while half of what Wright says seems flippant, they had to tendency to make terrifying sense several weeks or months down the line. 

Sometimes, they even made sense mere minutes later. 

“I have, actually. In my first several weeks. But not alone.” Miles keeps his gaze ahead. Wright is a familiar presence behind his shoulder even though Miles is more used to following than leading, the interrogator always the one with the agenda. It’s easier, somehow, to converse like this, on the move. “It was with Gavin.” 

He doesn’t say anymore, thinking back to a dark office and the man who had led the botched investigation into his father’s death and a gun between that man and himself, and Gavin’s voice like the devil’s advocate, observing the scene he had orchestrated from the shadows of the room. The silence stretches out and Miles can tell Wright wants to ask even without looking back, but Wright stays mercifully silent and the moment passes as they step through the back entrance into the sunlight. 

“Are you heading to the train station? Now?”

Miles glances at his watch. It’s midmorning and he doesn’t really have to be there until tomorrow, but… “Why not?”

Wright shrugs, burying his hands deeper into his hoodie pockets. “Why not indeed. I’ll walk you there.” 

"Daddy!" 

They are halfway to the train station when that call rings out from across the street. The word is very much off the register for both himself and for Wright, so Miles ignores the call. But Wright freezes so suddenly that Miles almost slams into him, and only a quick slide-turn saves both of them from the collision. 

"What the hell, Wrig--" 

And then there is a collision, as a teenage girl wearing a bright blue cloak flings herself bodily into Wright's arms, her impact strong enough to throw Wright back a few paces. Her top hat, the same shade of light blue as her cloak, topples to the ground and rolls until it hits Miles' shoes. 

Wright looks absolutely shell-shocked for a moment before his arms tighten around the girl. 

“I didn’t expect to see you here, Daddy.” The girl’s voice is muffled by Wright’s shoulder. 

Wright summons a quiet laugh for her, but his eyes meet Miles' over her head, and the expression in them takes Miles back.

Here is a treasure unexpectedly discovered, someone Wright will fight to protect in a way he’s never done before, and she’s just danced right into danger’s sight. Miles recognizes the signs of a man a second away from reacting, and he keeps his hands at his side, open and unthreatening, absentmindedly shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet for the split second’s head start to move and get to his weapons. He spares a moment to consider the irony of the situation, teenage girls as liabilities and throwing themselves headlong into already unstable situations. 

“And who is this, Daddy?" that girlish voice pipes up, and just like that the tension breaks, the girl tucked under Wright’s arm choosing normalcy for them while they were busy trying to decide whether to break or maintain the status quo. Miles shifts back, standing down, schooling his expression to one of polite curiosity, since he’s been told he doesn’t pull off friendly all that well. 

Wright flicks a look at him, and the alert behind those eyes fades into a low-grade wariness, almost hidden all together when Wright turns his attention to the girl. “Trucy, this is a childhood friend of mine. Miles Edgeworth."

Trucy turns her brilliant smile on Miles, and Miles knows immediately that she isn’t Phoenix’s relative. Their ages are far too close for her to be his daughter, whatever she chooses to call him, and she lacks of the physical markers of kinship with Wright – her large brown eyes, her high cheekbones and the turn of her nose painting her face completely different from Wright and the vague memories Miles has of Wright’s parents. 

Strange then, how Trucy’s brown-eyed gaze so resembled Wright’s, despite the lack of blood-relation. 

“Oh, so this is Mr. Edgeworth!” Trucy says. Her voice, girly but alto-rich, surprises Miles, but her words even more so. 

Wright has an expression on his face that resembles how Miles feels. “Trucy, how do you know Miles?” 

“Oh Daddy, the letters.” Trucy slips a hand into Wright’s hoodie pocket and draws his hand out, their fingers linked together. “Aunty Mia showed them to me a long time ago, when I first came to live with you. She told me that even though I was apart from my real daddy, you’d take real good care of me. Because you knew what it was like to be apart from someone you cared about, even though ‘there are obvious differences,’ as she says.” 

Miles blinks. Wright looks momentarily lost for words, so Miles picks up Trucy’s fallen top hat and puts on what he hopes is a charming smile. The cloak hanging off her shoulders doesn’t look the slightest bit out of place on her, and Miles realizes suddenly that this is why Wright wears waterproof cloaks instead of carrying umbrellas in stormy weather. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Trucy,” he says, picking her name out of the conversation. “I’ve heard a little about you, but perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself to me, young lady?” 

Trucy beams up at him and takes the hat, sweeping it low in a curtsy and then back up to perch it on her head in one smooth movement. "Trucy Wright, at your service. As a magician, it's my duty to conjure up happiness for everyone around me, especially my Daddy." Here, she tucks a hand into the crook of Wright's elbow. "And you?"

Miles glances at Wright, who has mastered his expression and now looks fondly down at the girl he claimed as his daughter, and wonders what situation brought the two together.

"I'm Miles Edgeworth, as your father said so earlier. We’re colleagues, now."

"Oh, that's wonderful." Trucy pulls free of Wright and steps closer to Miles. "I'm glad Daddy has someone to watch out for him at work. He's horrible at taking care of himself, you know, and I can only do so much from a distance.”

Miles thinks of all the times Wright disappeared, only to turn up in some room or cellar and miraculously not shot at – his worst injury being a bad headache, from getting hit by a stray fire extinguisher. 

“Indeed. He needs extra governance, this one, or else he’d raise riots on the streets.” 

He’s half-smiling, wry, but Trucy responds to that, lighting up like she’s found a confidant to share a secret with.

“Yes, that’s Daddy all right.”

“I’m still standing here, you know,” Wright says mildly. 

“Yes Daddy. I know.” Trucy leans back, tipping her head backwards, the top hat staying miraculously upright. “Do you have the afternoon off? I miss you, and Aunty Mia wants to see you, and Mr. Edgeworth can come along and oh, I can’t believe how long you took to bring him over; it’s about time everyone met him, you know.” 

The innocent hope in her voice is devastating. Wright certainly feels so; Miles can see it in his eyes, how much he hates denying her anything, but he’d do it anyway, putting her safety above all, but still, the doubt, whether it’s worth it if being safe meant her unhappiness. 

Miles would prioritize safety above all – there isn’t any point in indulging a request if the requestee ends up dead, rendering the entire situation moot. But maybe it’s different, with family, with a daughter. 

He remembers a bar and dim lights, the surprised (but not fearful) expression on Kay’s face and the secretive little smile on Wright’s, but it’s not his style at all, and Wright might take off his head if he dares make a move on Trucy, much less peck her on the cheek and promise not to reveal her secret. Trucy doesn’t even know that there is a secret, that she’s the secret. 

“Why not?” he says, almost too bluntly for the undercurrents Trucy doesn’t know about, watches the flicker go across Wright’s face. “I don’t really have to be at the train station until evening, so we have time to—” 

What do young teenage girls do in their spare time? Kay likes stealing things, most of the thrill in putting the items back after she bypassed security, and Franziska was never much of a teen, demanding the world to treat her as an adult by the time she hit thirteen. Ah, but Trucy had said mentioned something… 

“—spend time with you, whatever a young magician like you does in her spare time.” 

Trucy is smiling at him again – he doesn’t understand girls at all – and Wright surprisingly says nothing at all; simply stares at Miles for a long hard moment before holding a hand out for his daughter, leaving Miles to follow along except Trucy hooks an arm around Miles’ elbow as well, pulling him in line with them. He meets Wright’s eyes over her head, slightly startled, and despite his wariness, it’s obvious that Wright is laughing silently at him. 

They wander a meandering path across the city and Miles recognizes less and less landmarks as they hit the residential areas, the parts of the city too homely and normal to house anything Gavin would be interested in. 

He’s lulled into a state of indulgent amazement; by the time an hour has passed it’s clear Trucy is the darling of this part of town, most people recognizing her from her magic shows. She ducks in to all sorts of shops, stopping to speak with a ramen seller wearing a bowl for a hat and a lady clad in a plum-coloured kimono, standing outside what looks to be a traditional yakuza family house. Miles doesn’t realize anything is amiss when he follows her all the way up to the second floor of an office building until she pulls the door open and proclaims happily from the doorstep, “Welcome home, Daddy! And Uncle Miles too!” 

Perhaps normal isn’t the best word for it. Perhaps the sheer eccentricity of this neighborhood is enough to repel all unscrupulous intentions. 

He knows Wright is watching him, has been watching the entire time, and not doing or saying a single thing as Trucy lead him right into her home; hers and Wright’s personal territory. Miles should school his expression, but he can’t quite get over the sheer incredulity at the risks Wright is taking. 

The man must be mad. It’s a miracle he hasn’t gotten any of them killed yet. 

“Why don’t you go put on some coffee, Tru?” Wright says, and Trucy nods, disappearing around a corner in a flurry of blue, her cloak flaring out behind her. 

They’re going to have to talk about this at some point; this isn’t like the time Kay appeared at the bar, where they can all snip and banter at each other under the illusion that everyone there is part of the underworld, Kay with a foot in that world as a member of the Yatagarasu, even if Badd hasn’t quite let her in all the way yet. 

“Wright—”

“Closet’s on your left,” Wright says, somewhat absentmindedly, like his attention is elsewhere. “Trucy thinks everyone should loosen up, put their coats and jackets and things away and make themselves at home, but she lets me get away with wearing a beanie indoors.” 

Although it’s clear Wright isn’t having the conversation here, in possible earshot of his daughter. 

Miles reaches out, snags Wright by the front of his shirt and drags him bodily into the closet. The door shuts behind them with a snap, the single lightbulb in the tiny space creaking from the force of it. 

He can’t really read Wright’s expression in that first moment, fighting off swinging fabric and the slight stirring of dust, but he can feel it when the man’s attention focuses in on him, no longer distracted. 

“Miles? I’m trying to set a good example for my daughter and I don’t think getting dragged into small closets with good looking men…” Wright pauses when Miles begins taking off his jacket, then, “…good looking, undressing men—”

“Wright, shut up.” Miles would throw his jacket at Wright, and it might be made of light, durable fabric but the weave and cut of it is impeccable, a dark burgundy suit jacket to match the dark glamour and reputation of an underground assassin, and Miles wouldn’t disrespect its tailor quite so. He pushes Wright out of the way to get to a spare hanger. 

“This feels a bit like Seven Minutes in Heaven,” Wright comments somewhere from behind a cloak and several umbrellas. “You know. Two people. Closet. A time limit before Trucy comes looking for us.” 

“What?” 

“Never mind, Miles. I forgot what a proper little kid you were back then. Still are, probably.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but regardless, I object.” Miles hesitates for a moment, then goes about unbuckling the holster and harness together with his guns and pushes them into Wright’s hands, before he can start babbling off again. 

Wright goes quiet at the movement, staring down at the smooth handles and leather and straps in his hands, before his head goes up and he’s giving Miles one of those looks, his eyes dark in the dim orange light instead of too-brightly blue. 

“Really.” It’s not quite a question. 

“No, I just took them off for no apparent reason, and your arms were conveniently there,” Miles says in his driest voice, but Wright’s still looking, hasn’t moved beyond getting a better grip on the holsters, and Miles sighs. “Yes, Wright. Really.” 

Wright’s voice is very neutral. “Okay, then,” he says, and continues staring at Miles with something like wry curiosity behind that gaze, except coming from a professional interrogator the effect is more chilling, like he’s reading Miles’ every intention and analyzing them for their probable causality. 

He must be delusional, to freely hand over his weapons to a partner with ambiguous intentions at best, and a fellow murderer at worst. 

“Something wrong?” Wright asks, as if he isn’t standing there with Miles’ holsters in hand. 

“Thinking too much, obviously,” Miles mutters under his breath. He draws out the switchblade and flings that half-heartedly at Wright’s head, his aim intentionally skewed about a foot to the left, a feat made difficult by how small the closet’s dimensions are. Wright manages to catch the closed blade, and Miles frowns, feeling more and more vulnerable by the minute; he’s traveling light and that’s most of his weapons. “Occasionally, the state of the world in and of itself makes me cantankerous.” 

“Can-thank-a what?” 

“Never mind, Wright. I forgot what a shabby vocabulary you have,” Miles says, his tone a perfect echo of Wright’s words a few moments ago, and Wright grins, acknowledges the hit, and presses a hand against Miles’ arm, the hidden blade a hard line under Miles’ sleeve. 

“Keep that, Miles.” 

It’s his turn to look up at Wright, to measure the man standing before him. 

Wright shrugs. “It’s not like there aren’t knives in the kitchen. And I rather you have something on hand, when I’m out visiting someone.” 

“Wh—”

“A personal friend. She and her sister look out for Trucy when I’m not around.” 

“Daddy!” Trucy’s voice comes through clear through the closet. “Aunty Mia’s left a note saying she wants to see you right now. You didn’t keep in touch with her like you promised you would, did you?”

Wright gives a bark of laughter. “And that would be her.” He digs around a little, comes up with a bag and an old button-down that he swaths Miles’ guns and switchblade in. 

“And just when did you decide you’d go on this visit?” 

“A few moments ago, actually.” Wright arches an eyebrow at him. “Watch over Trucy for me when I’m gone. I shouldn’t be long.” 

And before Miles can say anything, Wright slips out the closet, the bar of light shining through the momentary door gap blinding Miles for an instant. He hears Wright talking to Trucy, their conversation a low murmur, and then Wright is gone, the front door closing with an audible thud. 

"Uncle Miles."

Miles looks up, and there Trucy is, peeking out from behind a wall. 

They ended up having a late lunch, Trucy throwing together some breakfast items that smelled divine even if they are a little burnt around the edges, and then they had sat around the dining table, Trucy asking one and a hundred questions until Miles found himself telling her stories from his and Wright’s childhood, feeling safest in the past. She excused herself towards tea time, something about needing to make some calls to schedule her next show, and Miles had sat there, leaning back against the couch, Trucy leaving a pot of coffee at his side for accompaniment. 

When Miles nods at her, she strides into the room, her shoulders squared but looking much smaller without the cloak flapping behind her. She's younger than Kay, but as Trucy curls up on the couch beside Miles, Miles realizes she is no stranger to grief and death. There is a sad lilt to the curve of her smile and it looks wildly out of place on Trucy's face when previously she had been so lively and buoyant.

"Trucy? Are you all right?"

Trucy's hair, loosen from its tie, tumbles into her face. Kay has impossibly long hair, always flicking here and there and tangling everywhere, that lends her an illusion of maturity; Trucy's short hair simply softens her face and highlights the slant of her cheekbones. She folds one hand over a wooden bangle on her wrist and stares up into Miles' face, her eyes very serious.

"Uncle Miles, can I trust you with Daddy?"

Miles doesn't know why he feels shocked anymore. Trucy tilts her head and settles deeper into her cushion, and Miles realizes with a jolt that she plans to wait, for as long as it took for him to answer.

"That's a very broad question," he finally chooses from the numerous comments he could have made. "Is something wrong?"

"Daddy trusts you, you know," Trucy says. "He doesn't trust a lot of people, but he does with you. Or else he'd be in here, and you would be out on the street with a broken arm or two. Something like that, anyway."

"Oh." Miles says. The entire situation is getting to him -- Trucy's lightly innocence, the homey scent of coffee and the sheer normalcy of the things around him, a living room strewn with pillows and misplaced props like a floating spaghetti mold, and shelves of books from law to plant care. It's as if he had stepped from one world into another and the experience is jarring. He expects from this undercover mission the conspiracies, the violence and the lies, but when he woke up this morning, Miles hadn't expected to find an echo of his lost childhood.

How can Wright have all this and still choose to go to Gavin's office, every single day? Miles has very little to lose and he truly believes in the integrity of his line of work –the undercover one – but what’s Wright's driving force?

He looks at Trucy's face, and knows that she is one of them. Wright will do much for her happiness, Miles thinks, the way Miles would for Kay and Franziska, if the two headstrong girls would let him.

"I don't know if I can answer that question, Trucy," Miles says. "But I can say with certainty that I will not betray him first."

Trucy's eyes flutter close, and she seems to listen for to his words for a long moment before a truly beatific smile breaks out over her face. "Yes…” she murmurs, then in a much stronger voice, “Thank you very much, Uncle Miles." 

Kay doesn’t have that effect on him. Granted, Kay is more intractable and direct in her questions and demands, and she’d never call him Uncle. “You’re welcome, Trucy.” 

They sit there in companionable silence, and Miles is just beginning to wonder where the hell Wright is when Trucy bolts upright with an “Oh!”

Miles’ hand is almost on the flat hilt of his blade, but Trucy carries on without notice or regard for his actions. “Now that I’ve met you – and you’re almost family, anyway; I’ve got lots of almost-Aunties and almost-Uncles – I can finally do this!” 

And with those words, she surges to her knees and passes her hand above Miles' hair, miming the sprinkling of dust over his head.

"...Trucy?"

Trucy mutters something under her breath, claps her hands twice, then drops back to her seat. "I've cast a happy spell on you," she says with a fist on her waist, waggling one finger in front of him like a school teacher warning one of her pupils. "You and Daddy both. It's just a little spell, so it can’t do much, but I hope that in the darkest moments you'll remember it, and that it'll help you smile. You and Daddy need to do that more."

"I... thank you," Miles said softly, a warm feeling pooling in his chest. “I wish you the same, although I have no magic under my sleeves.” 

“That’s all right, Uncle Miles,” Trucy says peaceably. “Just smile, and that’ll make me happy enough.” 

Miles smiles slightly for Trucy, and the sound of her laughter makes the smile a genuine one.

They walk shoulder to shoulder, and Miles keeps waiting for Wright to stop so they can have the confrontation over Trucy that Miles knows Wright needs to have, even if he’s being ridiculous and hasn’t done it yet. 

Wright’s like that sometimes, doing the exact opposite of what logic dictates, but Miles has always favored the offensive, learned the ropes of a prosecutor even if he never held the badge. 

He waits until they hit an empty stretch of streets, quiet in the dim evening light. "I see why you wouldn't say anything about her." 

The look Wright shoots him is a warning, despite the mild expression on his face.

"She doesn't know about my line of work," Wright says, and Mile nods.

"She's a special young woman," Miles offers, and Wright's face breaks into a guarded but proud little smile.

"That, she is."

He doesn’t handle children well; they don’t act logical, rarely think of the consequences of their actions, and their free spirited ways, uncontrollable and untamed, make very little sense to Miles. And the criminals Miles dealt with acted the same way, and yes, he can piece together what moves the criminals, make horrible convoluted sense of their actions, but apply the younger innocence of children to the equation and somehow the calculation doesn’t equal out at all. 

But with Kay, even Trucy, it’s easy. Not perfect – he still doesn’t really understand them – but he enjoys their company, would make the effort to get to know them, even if it meant headaches and much confusion. 

"There's a young lady that's important to me as well," Miles says, and Wright's face goes blank. But his eyes – Wright always did have too expressive eyes, eyes that Trucy inherited the spirit of – gave him away.

That… was almost a threat, wasn’t it? Miles didn’t mean for it to come out that way, the potential for blackmail. 

"Neither of us wants Gavin to know about them." 

Wright gives him a dark little smile that very quickly thins out into a grimace. "No, we don't." 

Miles offers his next words as a peace-offering of sorts; the empathy of surrogate fathers and elder brothers. "Trucy reminds me a lot of Kay."

For a moment, Wright looks at him, a question in his eyes, before his expression clears, his eyes holding just the smallest amount of disbelief. "Kay, your mischievous little thief girl."

Miles nods once, hoping that Kay is very much far away and safe – but Wright doesn't have that option, does he? Trucy lives practically in Gavin’s backyard, and yet there she is, thriving. “I think Kay and Trucy would get along, don’t you think?”

They walk along a stretch of the street in silence, Miles leading slightly and not looking at Wright, and it’s very quiet in the late evening light when Wright finally speaks. 

"A magician and thief team would devastate the local law enforcement.” A spark of humor is back in Wright’s voice. “Please don’t encourage them."

He tosses a black shopping bag at Miles, who catches it, unrolls the fabric, takes an additional second to recognize the black straps and dark metal of his gun and holsters. Wright grins, his usual blank lopsided smile, stepping forward to take the lead, their usual position during a mission, and Miles wonders what motivates Wright. 

Wonders what would tip Wright over the edge. 

The crunch of gravel under their shoes and the wind in their ears is familiar, but Miles isn’t paying attention, watching Wright, and thinking very hard. 

When Miles readies his ticket to enter the train, he leans forward and whispers against Wright’s ear, trusting the bustle of the crowd to drown out his words. “Just what does Gavin have on you to make you go along with his ways, Wright?” He presses closer, slipping one hand around Wright’s neck to pull him nearer, almost like a lover bidding farewell before a long journey. “What’s worth the risk, what’s more important than even Trucy that you would do this?" 

And then Miles pushes away, slipping into the surging crowd and letting it fold around him, following its movement towards the ticket check. He manages to turn around once to catch a glimpse of Wright’s face before a tall man in a grey coat cuts Wright out of sight. 

He wonders what Wright would do when he returns from his trip.

He’s back a day early, ahead of Gavin’s schedule, the negotiation going surprisingly easy. They had been impressed by him, Von Karma’s mark on him a symbol of esteem, and Miles had played that up that persona, cold and arrogant, verbally ripping many of the lesser underlings to shreds and stamping his position high on that foreign hierarchy’s pecking order without ever lifting his gun.

And now here he is, standing in front of the office building like an echo from last week, because Trucy had been waiting by the train station, a dove still perched on her shoulder like she’s been practicing magic tricks when he came through the station exit. Uncle Miles, she called him, smiling like a girl in a picture, forever happy; she pressed a note into his hands and told him to visit “as soon as you can, okay?” before skipping off. 

No one answers his knocks, but the door to the office-turned-home twists easily in his hands, and although the immediate room is empty Miles still leaves his guns on a side table, so conspicuous they could be mistaken for toys among the other magic props. 

Trucy had given him a grand tour of her home that one afternoon he spent there, and there’s one room she bypassed, and Miles is staring at the door of it when the voice calls from within it. 

“Come on in.” 

It’s a simple room; bare walls, no windows, a table, a single lamp, two chairs, and Wright is sitting in one of them. 

Miles has never seen Wright with a gun in his hand. Not like this, not held like it’s a part of him, finger currently off the trigger but it’d be easy to rectify that; Wright is fast, although his indifferent, lazy posture doesn’t advertise it. 

“Hey Edgeworth,” Wright says, very quietly. “Let’s play a game. I’ll lay the ground rules.” 

It’s quiet here, the lack of sound almost ringing in his ears. Miles closes his hands into loose fists, keeps them at his side, and takes a long step into the room, lets the door slip shut behind him. 

“You went through all the effort of passing me that note so we could play a game? A game of poker, then?” 

Wright almost smiles at the piece of paper Miles drops atop the spread deck of cards, on it a doddle of a magician’s top hat encased in house-shaped outline. 

“No.” And Wright sets the gun down, sweeps the cards away together with the note, tucks them into a drawer under the table. “I had to do something to pass the time, after all.” 

“I have another question.” 

“Hmmm?” Wright hums, eyes fixed on him, sharp, and they’ll gain that extra shine in a moment, overly bright and otherworldly. 

“Why did you put your gun down?” 

Wright’s smile goes lazy, almost smug. “That’s for you. I figured you might leave your weapons behind again, if you thought there’s a chance Trucy’s still here.” Wright actually laughs at Miles’ expression, a thread of amusement laced through the laughter. “What, you thought we’d have to battle it out for the gun, like some twisted version of a shoot out? That’s not the game I had in mind, Miles.” 

Miles takes the chair left obviously for him, the gun with its handle angled towards him lying between them, and deliberately folds his hands on the table. Watches Wright’s face for any telltale expression, Wright’s spiky hair distracting without the beanie. “Then what do you have in mind?” 

Wright tucks his hands into his hoodie pocket, his gaze steady. “Ten questions each. The recipient of the question has to answer truthfully. And we each have one object, to help us along the way.”

Miles looks down at the gun, the same model as the semi-automatics he carries, glances back up again, doesn’t ask the question. “And how will either of us know if the other is lying?” 

“Oh, I’ll know,” Wright says, and there it is, the shine in the interrogator’s eyes, the side of Wright Miles is finally going to see. Wright doesn’t have to say anything about himself because Wright doesn’t lie; omits the truth, reinterprets it and bends reality, yes, but never lying outright, and it’s a mix of anticipation and alertness that’s buzzing under Miles’ skin, the verbal battles just as potentially lethal as the physical ones, and he takes a breath, smirks, and makes a show of bowing, his eyes never leaving Wright’s. 

Let’s play, then.

Let’s start with something simple, Wright says, and so they go through a few simpler questions to test the waters – Miles did really love Germany, his life and work there; his handgun was previously his father’s, one of the many secrets Miles inherited after his father’s death. Wright’s beanie is a birthday gift from Trucy and he likes keeping part of her close at all times, and yes, he does know how to use the gun, although he has never shot a person with one. 

Miles turns the answers around in his heads, files them together with all the other small details he’s gathered about Wright, then turns his attention back outwards. Wright’s gazing into the far wall, watching the shadows move as the lightbulb in the lamp flickers and wavers. 

“Do you respect von Karma?” 

Miles’ head snaps up, and of course Wright is now watching him, probably saw the way Miles flinched slightly. It’s easy to talk about von Karma to others who only spoke about his reputation, people Miles barely knew and hardly cared about, but coming from Wright von Karma’s name is cutting. 

Wielded like the weapon Wright intended it to be, of course. 

“I… did.” Not something he can easily admit. Wasn’t something he came to terms with easily, either, but watching Franziska’s career had helped, and time helped with the rest. “Much of what he did was unforgivable – the forging, the manipulation of cases, the… murders, but take all that and his obsession from him and he was a great prosecutor, a good teacher. In his own way, he was dedicated to the law and to perfection and that part, that is admirable.” 

“I see.” Wright says the two words like the weight of the world is on them. Miles narrows his eyes – but he doesn’t have time to think back on what he just said, and instead brushes his bangs out of his eyes as if he could brush the memories of the past from his mind. 

“Have long have you been in your position?” 

It’s a gamble, to ask such an open-ended question; it goes against every grain Miles ever had as a would-be prosecutor, when crafting questions to precision meant getting the answers slanted towards his case; incriminating phrases instead of neutral ones, or forced specificity instead of vagueness. But Wright goes to the other extreme, revealing plenty and leaving it up to the other party to piece the story together, to dig up the gems of truth amidst all the babble. 

“Hmmm. A while.” A flippant answer, but Miles waits. “I did this on and off during university, simple questionings, just helping out with some on-campus issues. I delved around, doing some plays and a few readings, interned at the district court, but this, ah, interrogator business – that’s was a few years down the road. I met Kristoph five years ago, something like that, but only worked with him about two years later.” 

The question-and-answer goes like that, and Miles keeps tracks the flex and flow of it at the back of his head, the way he would during a cross-examination. It doesn’t help that in his mental tally he’s coming out increasingly on the lower side, saying more than he normally would— 

—like he’s being induced to, the same slip of control he experienced the first time he met Wright again in Gavin’s office. 

And Miles has been subconsciously staring at Wright’s hands in his hoodie pockets, obscured by the table and the angle, and he asks the question he put aside earlier, when his turn came around. 

“What’s your object, the one you’re holding in your pocket to ‘help you along the way’?” 

Wright’s face goes blank momentarily, and then his eyes are flickering from the gun on the table to his hoodie, his pockets. Miles catches a glimpse of the smile, rueful, before it slides into something more familiar, the devilish grin, Wright meeting his gaze in a head-on challenge. 

“All right. Since you asked.” 

The entire room is lit up by something furiously glowing in Wright’s hands, bars of pale light escaping through the cage of his fingers. Wright opens his hand, sets on the table a curved stone, a large jade green charm. 

“I’d tell you that it’s called the Magatama, but that name won’t mean much to you.” There’s an edge in Wright’s words, and Miles is up and moving away before he knows it, some instinct demanding instant action, but Wright simply continues on, his eyes now so bright they’re practically glowing, and the question stops Miles dead on his feet. 

“What is your reason for joining Gavin’s operation?” 

Miles stares at Wright in one long, silent moment, and then immediately: no. That is one question he’s not answering—

And then he’s flinching back, the air suddenly ringing with chains and dark crimson padlocks, crisscrossing in intricate patterns; they’re everywhere. 

“What the hell—”

“Miles.” He hears Wright sigh above the rattling. “What secrets are you hiding? Five red locks in response to one question?”

Miles falls back into his seat and grabs hold of the table for physical support, biting at his lip to stop himself from answering, the compulsion to speak so strong that Miles knows immediately it’s because of those chains or that charm, what Wright called a Magatama. 

“Well?” Wright says from across the table and a mesh of chains. 

“I told you before.” The chains shiver, resonating in reaction to his words. “Justice.”

Wright takes a long hard look at the locks surrounding Miles. “Not a full answer, I’m afraid. The question still stands.” 

So that’s it. The locks and chains have something to do with the secrets Miles doesn’t want to reveal, and Wright looks to the locks when he answers because the most honest answer would open a lock. 

The truth shall set you free. Literally. Miles grounds his teeth, tries to use that fury to turn his thoughts around, to stop thinking about his status as an undercover agent. A spike of pain shoots through his head, the beginnings of a migraine and he must have paled considerably, feeling faint and slightly out of touch with reality. 

Wright’s victims always did look a little worse for the wear after he’s through with them. Nothing overt, no physical injuries; just something off about the way they moved afterwards, a certain tightness in their expressions. Miles always thought they were lucky Wright wasn’t a torturer, but maybe the mental scars are something else to be reckoned with. 

“It’s probably easier if you just answer, Edgeworth,” Wright says. “That Magatama’s been fully charged by three Feys.”

It’s an effort to speak at all, not with his secrets at the tip of his tongue, but Miles grits his teeth and bites out his words, one at a time. “I don’t believe in fairytales. The fey don’t exist.”

Wright reaches out, brushes his fingers against the centermost lock, the largest and most adorned of them all, and a shiver runs down Miles’ back, his hands clenching tighter around the table’s edges. 

“Funny.” Wright’s voice is soft, his expression a little wondering, and with the beanie gone and the shadows obscuring the stubble he could be much younger, someone Miles could recognize his childhood friend in. “Because you can see them, can’t you? The Psychelocks.”

“That’s what you call them?” Miles gets out, and it’s getting hard to focus with Wright concentrating on those chains, the padlocks. 

The lock Wright has his hands on – that’s his undercover mission, the central piece to the puzzle and a partial answer to every question Wright could ask related to Gavin and the operations and Miles’ involvement with any of them, and Miles will not; no admission will ever pass through his mouth without his intentions behind them. 

The hidden dagger slides into his hand and it takes only an instant, to glide the blade over the pad of his thumb, and the sharp pain is enough to wash away the growing panic in his chest, to break his mind temporarily away from the effects of the locks. 

It’s easy to see the links now. How Wright interrogates his victims and gets an answer every time; how he gets into people’s heads and unveils their vulnerabilities from inside out, willing or unwilling. How he could stand his ground beside Gavin, using his unique skills to ensure an untouchable position in Gavin’s hierarchy and defend himself against Gavin’s relentless prying. 

One luminous jade charm. And all the cunning in the world to use it to his advantage. 

“You know, any time you want to end the game, the gun is right there.” Wright slides the gun along until it’s practically falling off the edge of the table into Miles’ lap. “The Magatama needs someone to activate and sustain it.” 

Miles glares up through the mass of chains and locks, and Wright isn’t joking, although his tone had been light. 

“A head shot, right?” Wright presses a finger against his forehead, as if marking the target for Miles. “That time in the warehouse, you were quite prepared to put a bullet in my head.” 

Miles grabs the gun, lifts it in one smooth movement, takes aim—

—hits the Magatama in one clean shot, the charm throwing off sparks as it flies across the room, the room going dim, the single lamp guttering as the chains and locks dissolve—

—and Miles throws the gun into the opposite corner and pivots around the table, just in time to catch Wright bursting out of his seat, tackling the interrogator right out of his chair and onto the floor. Miles presses his hands against Wright’s pockets and comes up empty in the moment Wright takes to recover his breath. 

“Why don’t you ask me the same question,” Miles hisses, kicking out with one foot to send the toppling chair out of the way, “when you don’t have your fancy charm on hand?” 

“Miles—”

Miles twists around and grabs at the throat of Wright’s hoodie, just as he’s always imagined doing whenever Wright went into interrogator mode, and it’s just as satisfying as he thought it would be to throw Wright against the wall; on his knees it’s easy to lean over Wright, slam one hand beside Wright’s head, cage him in, and wait for him to retaliate. 

But Wright simply looks up at him, calmly serene, and reaches up slowly, unthreateningly, to rub one hand against the back of his head. “Ow.” 

The world seeps slowly back into focus around the tight tunnel-vision Miles goes into when he’s on the offensive; the way his head still throbs, in rhythm with his racing heart, the cut across his thumb stinging and bleeding again. The way Wright is looking at him, naked emotion on his face, just a regular man when he isn’t playing mind games. 

Miles rocks back, sinking down until he’s seated on the floor before Wright. His hidden blade slides back into his hand and Miles buries it into the floorboard beside them. A warning. A statement. Miles doesn’t know. 

“There is something seriously wrong with you,” Miles says, and it takes a considerable amount of willpower not to just grab the man and slam his head against the wall a few times; Miles isn’t prone to sudden fits of violence like this, but Wright’s obviously a special case. 

Wright laughs, still a little out of breath, and Miles has experienced this before, when a mission turns around on itself and suddenly everyone’s left improvising; a private impromptu act between the rigidity of planned scenes. “That’s coming from someone who doesn’t take the shot, twice? If you’re not careful, Miles, I’d think you didn’t want to kill me.” 

“There is something seriously wrong with your head.” Miles pins Wright with a flat stare. “You are an interrogator. You work for Kristoph Gavin. But you have a daughter you hide away from Gavin, a serious liability and a great potential for blackmail if Gavin learns of her. You don’t carry a gun although you have the knowledge of how to use one, relying instead on a single magical charm and all your own clever mouth to get you out of trouble – a stupid, foolish risk, if you ask me.” 

“I didn’t,” Wright mutters, and Miles raises his voice, speaks right over him. 

“You let one of our targets go, and didn’t report it to Gavin when I allowed another escape. You don’t shy away from death and yet you take off your beanie before every interrogation, because Trucy gave it to you and you need to be able to wear it around her without the taint of the underworld clinging to it.” Miles looks away, stares down at his blade. “And you gave me a way out of that mind trap of yours, a chance to escape with my secrets intact at the expense of your life.” 

And there is no bluff for that one; put a loaded gun in the same room as Miles, and he’ll find a way to take the shot. 

“A thorough analysis indeed,” Wright says, and he’s sitting up now, leaning fully against the wall instead of being slumped against it. “And what’s your conclusion?” 

Miles grimaces, the taste of triumphant at coming up with the perfect logical conclusion bitter in his mouth. It’s too farfetched to be true, and sometimes it really is best to expect and prepare for the worst because shattered hope – it can be enough to break a person. 

“You’re a rare creature, Miles.”

“… what?” 

“Like one of those tundra animals, perfectly capable of withstanding anything the elements throw at them. Blizzards. Starvation. Hunters. Loners by nature. But you know, Miles, sometimes it’s really better, to hunt in a group.” 

Miles has been called a number of names over the years, but not like this, like it’s half a compliment. Wright’s eyes aren’t any easier to read when they’re not gleaming with the Magatama’s power, and it could really be an observation, or just another mind game. 

Wright reaches out, slow, grabs Miles’ shoulder and pulls him closer. “And sometimes an analogy is really just an analogy, nothing more.” 

They’re standing on a crossroad. And Miles takes the step, asks the question. 

“Why, Wright?” 

“You asked me before what my motivation was, what’s so important I would put my daughter at risk.” At this range, Wright’s smile is lopsided and very truthful – no hidden humor, no misleading expression behind them, just the way his mouth is tilted, like all their masks have broken between them. “You said it before yourself, you know. Justice. But more than that – it’s truth. I’m searching for the truth.” 

Miles doesn’t have a pendant to tell him when someone is lying; just intuition and a lot of logic, and it’s a risk, for him of all people, to carelessly believe. 

Wright’s hands are gentle, tangled into the short hairs at the base of his head, stroking a thumb lightly against Miles’ neck. “What is your reason for joining Gavin’s operation?” he asks again, and the Magatama is on the other side of the room, unlit, and Miles doesn’t see any chains or locks; just Wright looking back at him, and it’s feels like he’s swaying on his feet except he’s on the ground and it’s steady under him, all the chaos within his own head. 

Wright always did inspire all sorts of unnecessary feelings in him. Insanity and impulsivity, to get trap in a situation like this – and more damningly, trust. 

He trusts Wright. Trusting not that Wright wouldn’t betray him, but that if he did it would be for the right reasons. 

“I’m an undercover agent. My mission is to infiltrate Gavin’s circle and gain his esteem, to learn the scope of his operations so we can bring it all down, the head of the snake and the rest of the body with it.” 

And Miles is deadly calm, his voice and especially his hands steady, and if Wright gives any indication that he’s still on Gavin’s side he’ll have the blade in his throat within seconds, Miles still the quicker of the two. 

But Wright, as usual, never does as he’s expected. 

“You’ve been doing this on your own, haven’t you? There isn’t anyone else like you in Gavin’s circle.” 

“No, I had backup.”

“Had,” Wright says the word like a curse. “And even then they weren’t this deep, were they? Just contacts, to pass information back to your agency.”

Miles feels the smile on his lips, and he reaches forward to wrap his fingers around the dagger’s hilt, something to focus his attention into, a grounding effect. “If you knew all this already, Wright, why did you bother asking?”

Wright stops with the stroking, Miles not even noticing that Wright had continued doing that until he stopped. “No. I didn’t know,” Wright says, and laces his fingers together behind Miles’ head, effectively holding him in place. “Just like you didn’t know I work for the Feys – famous spirit medium family? – and we’re trying to bring him down too. Like you.” 

Miles’ first instinct is to duck away, put some space between him and Wright so he can think about that statement without distraction, examine it for the lie it has to be, but Wright has a surprisingly strong grip and Miles refuses to let go of the dagger to free his hand for a punch. 

“On Trucy’s life,” Wright says. “I swear.” 

There isn’t anything Miles can say against that, that oath more solid than gold. 

“There have been strings of unexplained deaths these past few years, and the spirits the Feys call back, even they can’t really explain what happened to them. But Mia, she’s good at investigating and picking out the truth, and with enough spirits we finally got a lead, pinpointing Gavin.” Wright obviously took Miles’ silence as an opportunity to explain, and Miles lets him. It’s so rare, to have Wright forthright and chatty at the same time, that he’d enjoy the moment if the moment wasn’t so draining, one revelation after another. 

“The Feys have an obligation to the dead and Mia’s determined to get Gavin, and I was the best choice, having my own motivations for the job.” Wright’s smile is sharp, full of teeth. “Gavin is the reason why Trucy’s living with me, and not with her real father.” 

Miles studies Wright’s expression; reaches up and untangles Wright’s hands from his hair. “And you haven’t killed him yet.” It’s not an accusation; there’s a justification for it. 

“No proof. Not yet. And there are too many layers to his web; we need to get as much as we can before we can take him out.” Wright looks down at their hands and his eyebrow jumps, smirking slightly. 

Miles drops Wright’s hand immediately and goes back to the dagger, fingering the hilt. “I’ve been cut loose,” he says, and it doesn’t feel quite as damning with Wright on the same page. “Gavin has taken out all my contacts. In return, I have all my restrictions lifted, although I had very little to begin with.” 

“The Feys will help. Trucy’s been under their protection all this while, they hide her from Gavin’s attention, and the Magatama – that came from them, of course.” Wright throws a glance towards the corner of the room the Magatama flew off to. “Mia will want to meet you. You’ll like her, Miles. In another life, she would have been a wonderful defense attorney.”

And I might have been a prosecutor after all. “I’d… like that. Thank you.” 

Wright looks at him sideways, puts a hand back in Miles’ hair, ruffling at his bangs lightly. 

“So. Partners? For real, this time?” 

He should be laughing, incredulous at the way Wright’s mind works, and if the humor made it past his usual composure it would come out tinged with hysteria, so Miles simply closes his eyes, and finally, finally, he can relax, let his guard down slightly. Miles doesn’t work well with partners, but Wright is ever the exception to every single rule.

“Yes, Wright,” Miles says. “Partners.”