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The mirrors in Eustace’s room were covered up with old sheets.
Everything was kind of dusty too, half of the room was rarely touched anyways. He hated his room. It held disgusting memories, things that were faded into his subconscious that finally came back to light now that Excelsius was arrested.
He wasn’t there to move back in, obviously. Excelsius was in jail. He was moving in temporarily with Verity Gavèlle. And Miles Edgeworth. Both of them. Alternating. Edgeworth got weekends for work. It was a horribly complicated situation, but it was safe.
No, he was getting boxes of stuff he didn’t want to leave. Old, half rotted things from Excelsius’s closet, and the garage, and he sat on the porch staring out at the garden and the mismatched patch of grass.
One of the boxes in the hall closet caught his eye, the label was rubbed off, and when he cracked open the lid, inside was bundles of clothing and a dead moth.
Ew.
The box was promptly forgotten for a few months as Eustace slowly settled into his new living situations. It was carefully buried in the back of his closet at Edgeworth’s house, forgotten for the time being.
One night, Eustace was bored. Incredibly so. He had finished his case review, and well- Edgeworth wouldn’t mind if he stayed up late.
The box ended up dragged out of the closet and opened right there on the rug. It was even dustier than he remembered, and that darned moth was still there. Ew.
Eustace squinted in the dark, trying to make out any of the details in the clothes. He groaned and stood up again, flicking his light switch on. The light made him blink rapidly, trying to adjust as fast as possible.
He very gingerly lifted out a garment from the box. It was soft, surprisingly so. The fabric felt nice against his scarred palms. It had a pleated skirt and shiny silver buttons, very nice tailoring.
A dress.
Excelsius didn’t wear dresses, obviously, who could it have been worn by… it couldn’t have been…?
His hands shook as he pulled another garment out, a pretty white blouse with puffed sleeves and lace, maybe it would look nice under the dress. The tag on the inside of the neck had a name embroidered.
Viola.
The blouse was dropped instantly. Eustace scrambled halfway back across his room, fully wracked with tremors. Viola Winner. His mother. She had gone missing years ago. Her bones were in his old backyard. Her clothes were in the box he had kept hidden in his closet for months.
He had something of his mother’s.
He disturbed a dead woman’s possessions.
Eustace was hyperventilating. His eyes were blurry from tears, everything shook and his head was spinning. His chest ached. He should’ve left that box alone.
His morbid curiosity got the best of him. The box did say ‘give away’ on it… maybe she had been trying to donate them? She wouldn’t mind if Eustace looked around more, right?
The clothes looked old anyways, probably from when his mother was closer to his age, maybe a little older, but still a young adult. Barely.
Eustace took a catalogue of everything inside, laying the collection out on his floor and standing above it.
Two cute blouses, two skirts of different lengths, three assorted dresses, a pair of cute little kitten heels, a scarf of some kind, a jewelry box full of clip on earrings and pearls, and an intricate white dress that was wrapped in colorful paper. He didn’t dare touch it. The thought made him sick to his stomach.
Eustace sat down next to the array, eyebrows furrowed in thought. It was all basically his size. He could try it on. It wouldn’t be a problem. His mother was giving it away anyways. Who else would wear it? Some random person who had never seen the patch of fresh dirt in the yard after the last time his mother hugged him?
He stood up again, opening his closet back up to reveal the mirror on the inside. He grimaced at his reflection, shaky and pale, his hair a bit of a mess and the scars on his throat standing out more than usual. Eustace looked away from the mirror, shrugging off his jacket and grabbing some of the items off the floor- the cute sleeved blouse and the dress, plenty good enough of an outfit. Edgeworth had started helping him put together real outfits that weren’t his old school uniform.
Excelsius’s voice rang in his mind, ‘Clothes always make you a man.’
He was no man, clearly, he was dressing up in a dead woman’s finery in the middle of the night. But why was he scared? Excelsius was in jail. He was locked up because Eustace had stood up to him. It was just dress up, who cared? Not him. Obviously.
Eustace shrugged off his shirt and kicked away his pants, standing in front of the mirror with a carefully blank expression, tilting up his chin in a mockery of confidence. He wasn’t muscular like his father pretended(?) to be. He was kind of scrawny, scarred across his collarbone and neck and palms, near always hidden. Plus the more recent mark on his cheek from his conductors baton. Verity had fretted over it whenever he was at her place.
The cigarette burns were the worst, the dozen-plus round marks in the hollow of his throat and the bony juts of his shoulders. He was really a disappointment, wasn’t he? A sweet, stupid boy, who couldn’t stand his own appearance.
The blouse fit startlingly perfectly. It would’ve looked better if he had a more feminine build obviously, there was some loose fabric in the front, but that could be fixed. Altered, if he ever wanted. The dress too, he had to loosen the bodice area a little, again, to suit his body shape a little better, but his reflection started looking weird. A little droopy and hazy.
When had he started crying? Eustace roughly wiped at his eyes with the back of his hands, crumpling down to his knees and hugging himself tight. Why did it feel so weird to do this? It wasn’t the concept of taking it from his mother. Maybe it was how… pretty he felt for once. Not like a disappointment of a son to a man who never loved him outside of manipulation.
The dress was shoved back inside his closet for another month. But the scarves stayed out. Those went with his current wardrobe enough. Edgeworth and Verity wouldn’t ask about them.
By the time Eustace remembered the dresses and skirts existed, weeks had passed again. He had taken to wearing a small ribbon in his hair adorned with little music notes. It had been a birthday gift, and who was he to say no? Plus it kept his hair out of his face. Nothing weird about it.
One night, the same thing happened again, he ended up pulling out a skirt and a pretty top, the pearls too. The shoes were tossed aside. He didn’t know how to walk in heels, obviously, but everything else was fine. When he looked at himself in the mirror, smoothing down the fabric of the skirt and adjusting the clasp, he smiled. He couldn’t remember what his mother looked like, but according to the few times Excelsius mentioned her, they looked similar.
Again and again, he kept reaching for those aged garments, humming to himself as he adjusted his skirts. Who cared what Excelsius thought by then? He was in jail. Eustace liked it. To a degree that led him down a rabbit hole on the computer in the living room.
‘what does it mean if I like wearing dresses???’
‘does liking being called a girl mean im a girl’
‘im a boy but i wouldnt hate being a girl’
“What the heck does that mean...” He muttered, squinting at the screen, which was lit up with a pale blue, pink, and white flag, and a long paragraph full of terminology he didn’t know.
“Hey, Stace, what are you looking at?” A voice rang out from the dark rest-of-the-room, the distinct sound of a door closing accompanying it.
Eustace yelped, force quitting the tab. “Kay! Don’t scare me like that!” He was somehow standing now, half shielding the screen, his face flushed with embarrassment.
Kay Faraday, who had broken in (?) for the night, smirked. “Wait wait, Stace, were you looking at ~illegal websites~?” She waggled her eyebrows on the last two words, making little wiggly hand motions at Eustace. “Edgeworth is gonna flip.”
“No! I wasn’t!- Kay!” Eustace groaned, scrubbing his hands down his face. “It was embarrassing questions, I’m going to bed, Edgeworth is upstairs.” He held down the power button, the screen blinking off.
“Goodniiiight Staceyyyy.” Kay called after him as he stalked upstairs in a deliberately sing-song voice. He grumbled under his breath, flopping down on his bed. He heard Kay disappear into the main floor bedroom, the door shutting gently.
The results from the computer was fully burned into his mind. Apparently, there were tons of people who were born and raised as one gender, and decided to be the other. That terrified Eustace.
He covered his face with his pillow. It sucked, he was horribly confused.
Stacey. It sounded like a girls name. Why did Kay call him that? She had always just called him Eustace. Or ‘Stace’, at most.
He- she? Didn’t know how to feel. It was so complicated.
Maybe Edgeworth would be able to help. He always gave good advice.
Eustace slipped down the hall, knocking on the master bedroom’s door. He didn’t get an answer, so in perfect Winner fashion, he just barged right in.
Edgeworth was nowhere to be seen, so Eustace went snooping. The light from the side of the room caught his eye. The bathroom door was just fully open, and Edgeworth was sitting on the closed toilet lid, in his pajamas, a needle right in his thigh and his eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
Eustace, somehow didn’t notice this until the worst possible second.
“Mister Edgeworth I can’t sleep at all and I think I’m a gi- oh my god are you going drugs.” He stared at Edgeworth, eyes wide.
Edgeworth looked up suddenly, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Technically, yes.” He kept his voice deliberately level as the fully pressed down the plunger with the slightest grimace and deposited the needle into the sharps container on the countertop. “What did you say? You couldn’t sleep and-“
“NEVERMIND. I’m going to bed.” Eustace interrupted, covering his eyes with a hand. “And I’m telling Kay you were doing drugs. Ew.”
Edgeworth tried to say something else, but Eustace didn’t hear him. He was already halfway down the stairs, stumbling at the landing and knocking on the guest room’s door.
Without a word, Kay opened the door, grabbed Eustace’s arm, and yanked him inside. “Jeez, Stacey, I heard you yell, what happened?” She asked, clearly having been just woken up, based on the eye mask around her neck and rumpled pajamas.
“Edgeworth’s doing drugs,” Eustace managed, “I saw him, Kay, I’m serious.” He took a few shaky breaths, eyes wide from shock.
Kay stared at him for a solid minute, blinking awkwardly. “Oh, well yeah. But it’s just testosterone, Stace. Not like it’s heroin.” She yawned, looking at Eustace pointedly.
Eustace didn’t get the hint and sat down on the bed. “Well. All of them- ugh, whatever.” He shook his head, frowning. “What does that do?”
The explanation took way, way too long. Eustace kept zoning out as Kay chattered on, her drowsiness disappearing near instantaneously.
“Back up. If he can, like, take medicine and be a guy, can… I do the same and be a girl? Cause the internet said that was allowed and-“
Kay tackled Eustace in a hug, nearly knocking them both onto the floor that pried a fit of giggles from Eustace, “Well obviously, you idiot.” She sighed, matter of factly, “I’m guessing that’s what you were trying to insinuate to Mister Edgeworth?”
Eustace grimaced. “Yeah. I had found a bunch of my mother’s old clothes, and it spiraled from there.” He picked at the scars on his palms. “And when you called me Stacey instead of Eustace. But like- I don’t know.” He shook his head hard, nearly hitting Kay.
She snorted in amusement, “You’re a failure of a human being, Stace. So anxious over nothing. I’ll text Badd so he knows I’m staying here for a few days.” She stretched out her arms and yawned again, back to being tired. She had spent the past few months living and working with Detective Badd, and stopping by to see Edgeworth, obviously.
Eustace looked away, staring at the clock on the wall as the hour hand moved the slightest bit closer to the worst hours of the morning. “So what do I do now? Can I just call myself a girl?” Everything was weird. So weird. So, so weird and wrong and awful. But she liked it. It was new. Exhilarating. Something that had genuinely been buried down for years and years of her life being open to someone.
Kay shrugged, sprawling back on her bed. “Sure, Stace. Do whatever. But you should tell Edgeworth. He’ll be so proud of you.” She tugged her eye mask back down. “Get out, it’s late.” She shooed Stacey out the door, motioning for her to turn off the light.
Stacey huffed and reluctantly left, flipping off the light switch.
Back in her own room, Stacey just stood there. She was in a somewhat mild state of shock, mixed with self loathing that she doubted would ever fully go away. Something something years of abuse and manipulation. Stacey didn’t understand it yet, but her therapist had big fancy words for what Excelsius had done.
She was happy, though.
For once.