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It was the longest plane ride of Miles’ life.
His head was still thick with sleep. His mouth tasted like it. He couldn’t seem to get his hands to stop shaking even as he hung up with Larry mid-rambling sentence and called a member of his staff to charter him a jet. Yes, he knew it was two in the morning. No, he absolutely could not wait. Yes, he knew how much it would cost. He would pay it. Up front. In cash.
Wright had… Wright was…? Miles didn’t know. Larry had been practically inarticulate on the phone, words tumbling over one enough, voice a pitch high enough to summon a pack of dogs. But it had to be bad. It had to be desperate, if Larry was calling him. Yes, they’d been friends the three of them back in grade school, but that was back in grade school, he’d been away for all these months, he was barely even in touch with Wright—
Would he come to regret that now?
The question spun through his head as he sprinted from his cab and into the hospital, dragging his hastily-packed luggage behind him. He knew he looked like a madman—unkempt, cravat askew, jacket wrinkled, but what if all the time he had with Wright was behind him? He remembered that thought occurring to him in the weeks after his father’s death, the realization that there would be no future moments with his dad, that he could only ever exist in the past. It couldn’t be the same with Phoenix. It just couldn’t.
Miles couldn’t—he couldn’t—
“Phoenix Wright,” he panted, crashing into the receptionist’s desk and practically spilling over the top of it. The receptionist stared at him, alarmed. “I’m here to see Phoenix Wright.”
“Hmm…” She carefully took her gaze off of him and turned to her computer. “Looks like he’s in room 205. Visiting hours are—”
Miles turned and sprinted off, dodging between two nurses coming down the hall and almost taking them out with the suitcase rolling behind him. He sprinted up a flight of stairs and frantically stared at a sign labeled with directions. Rooms 200—220 —> Miles broke right and kept running.
200, 201, 202, 203, 204… 205. The door was shut. His hand shook as he grasped the handle, ready to push inside the room. He wished he had asked the receptionist for more information, even if just to prepare himself. What state was Wright in? Was he conscious? Barely hanging on to life? He was alive, still, at the very least, but comas were a distinct possibility given how frantic Larry had been on the phone—
He opened the door.
Phoenix was curled up in bed, hair starkly dark against the pillows, a high flush across his cheekbones. He peeled open his eyes at the sound of a door and stared at Miles without comprehension. Miles was still frozen in the doorway, gripping his suitcase in one hand and the door handle in the other.
“Edgeworth?” Phoenix mumbled. “What…?”
The spell was broken. Miles cleared his throat and strode briskly into the room, allowing the door to click shut behind him. “Wright. Give it to me straight: how severe is your condition? What are your chances for survival? Do know that I am willing to foot any medical bill, no matter what the cost.”
Phoenix blinked at him, and the flush in his cheeks seemed to deepen and spread. “Uhh… thanks, Edgeworth, but… I’m… okay?”
Miles glared at home, confused by his confusion. He let his suitcase go and hovered by Phoenix’s bedside, fighting the desire to sit on the mattress beside him, to check his temperature and his heart rate with his own hands, as if the doctors weren’t more than capable.
“I mean, I guess… it could have been really bad,” Phoenix admitted. “I probably should have died. But it’s just a… cold…”
He trailed off, his gaze falling to the bedsheets. “But Maya…”
Fear cut him, spinier than Miles would have expected. Had Miss Fey really managed to get herself into more dire straits? She couldn’t have been kidnapped again, could she?
“Wright. I believe it’s best you start from the beginning.” Miles grabbed a nearby folding chair and dragged it, screeching, to the bedside. Now that his adrenaline was running out, he was beginning to feel the effects of fatigue and his red eye jet across the ocean.
Phoenix nodded, but made no move to begin. Instead, he reached for the glass of water resting on the bedside table and carefully brought it to his mouth. Miles could see his hand shake and firmly folded his own hands in his lap to refrain from doing something foolish, like steadying him.
“How are you here?” Phoenix asked quietly once he’d set the water aside. He blinked his way to Miles’ face, bleary. “How did you… know?”
Miles wanted to say it was gut instinct. He and Phoenix were intrinsically connected; to deny that would be foolish. He wished he could say that he’d felt something was wrong, even from thousands of miles away. That he’d sensed something.
But he hadn’t. He’d been quite at his ease, peacefully asleep, when Larry called.
“I—Larry,” he admitted finally. “He called me and told me what happened. Well, not really. He told me that you might already be dead. So I… caught a flight.”
Phoenix let his head drop to the pillows behind him. “Larry,” he groaned. “I’m sorry he scared you into coming here.” He paused, fisting the covers. “Not that I’m not—I mean—I—I’m glad you’re here.”
And Miles wondered why. Genuinely, why? What could he bring to Phoenix that could possibly make him glad?
Phoenix coughed suddenly, harsh and long, smothering it into the crook of his elbow. Miles clenched his hands all the tighter in his lap, because he was once again going to do something foolish, perhaps rub his back or reach for his hand. “Wright,” he said gruffly once the coughing fit subsided. “What did happen?”
“Maya’s stuck, Edgeworth,” Phoenix rasped, collapsing back against the pillows again, utterly defeated. “She’s in trouble again. And I tried, this time, I really tried, but the bridge was burning and it was already old and so I just—I couldn’t get there. I fell through, I fell into the river, and I didn’t—I couldn’t—what if she dies?”
His eyes were becoming glassy but Miles couldn’t tell if it was from emotion or the fever. “Calm yourself, Wright,” he ordered, firmly but not unkindly. “Take it one piece at a time.”
Instead of doing that, he found Phoenix fumbling on the bedside table again. Miles reached for his glass, thinking he might need more water, but Phoenix instead grasped for two items and pressed them into Miles’ hand. Miles felt the clammy warmth of his fingers as they closed around his and he swallowed.
“It helps you see the secrets in people’s hearts,” Phoenix mumbled, and for a moment Miles felt frozen, open, raw. He looked into his palm and saw a glowing green stone, shaped like a shell, and beside it… an attorney’s badge. “You need to… Iris… Elise was murdered and Iris is—is—”
He shook his head. “She’s not… something’s not… you need to take care of her, please, defend her.”
Miles stared at him, uncomprehending. Who was Elise? Who was Iris? And the badge burning a hole in his palm… he couldn’t possibly mean? “Wright…”
“You need to,” Phoenix insisted, his fingers biting into Miles’ even as he grew less lucid with every breath. “And—and Maya—Maya’s in the temple. She’s stuck and she’ll freeze and she’ll die, Miles. She’ll die.”
The glassiness increased tenfold and a tear trickled down Phoenix’s cheek. His fingers, still draped over Miles’, slackened, and Miles picked up his hand and brought it to Phoenix’s face, and it didn’t feel foolish.
“You’re ill, Wright,” he said softly, stroking his thumb over Phoenix’s damp, flaming cheekbone. “Do not tax yourself.”
He still had no concrete idea of what happened—a burning bridge? Falling into a river?—but he got the important pieces. Someone was murdered. Someone else had taken the blame, wrongly, so it seemed. And in the midst of this, Maya and Pearl were not accounted for. He should have known something was wrong, at least with the elder Miss Fey: why else would she not be here, at Phoenix’s side? The two were practically inseparable, and seeing the state Phoenix was in now, Miles could understand why. There was a deep, almost familial, level of care between them.
“Miles…” Phoenix mumbled, leaning into his hand. “You need to help her.”
“Miss Fey?” Miles prompted. “Where is she, Wright? Where is she stuck?”
But Phoenix was already mostly gone, a couple more tears slipping down his flushed cheeks and his eyes slipping shut. “I’ve gotta help her,” he mumbled, breath catching. “I can’t—you need to…”
“I’m here, Wright,” Miles said forcefully. He wasn’t sure why—of course he was there. He was right there, he was touching Phoenix’s face for goodness’ sakes. “It’ll be all right. I’ll save Miss Fey, I’ll make sure she’s safe.”
Phoenix nodded, nestling into Miles’ hand. Miles resisted the reflex to yank it back. He wanted to provide the comfort that Phoenix so desperately needed, but all he could think about was how this would look if someone caught them. What Phoenix would say if he wasn’t so out of it.
How it made Miles feel to see him so trusting, so vulnerable, seeking out his—Miles Edgeworth’s—touch.
“I’m glad,” Phoenix whispered. “Doesn’t feel… so hopeless now…”
His breathing evened out, save for a soft wheeze on either end of his inhales. Miles carefully retracted his hand, feeling the tacky stickiness on his fingertips from Phoenix’s sweat. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve that faith.
But he’d do anything in his power to keep it.