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He manages to keep the optimistic smile on his face as Mia waves farewell and walks away with her mentor, but his stomach is uneasy – and for more reasons than just the shards he really shouldn’t have swallowed. He told Mia that he thought the Dollie on the stand must have been a fake, but the more he thinks about it, the more he starts to feel like he’s the one who isn’t real. At the very least, it’s now been proven past reasonable doubt that the life he thought he was living for the past eight months was nothing more than a darkly elaborate fiction.
But the smile on his face is not fake, or at least, not completely. He’s sure he would burst into tears again if he hadn’t used them all up earlier, or if he was in a bit less shock. But despite all of that, there was some genuine happiness, even perhaps some pride, in his proclamation – his promise – to Mia. He is going to be a lawyer. He is going to stop sleepwalking and start building something he could believe in, for someone he could believe in.
He can’t do much to fill the emptiness in his heart before leaving the courthouse, but he stops by the printers and at least ensures he doesn’t leave the courthouse with empty hands.
When he gets back to his dorm room he sits at his desk, looks at the change of major forms in front of him, and signs on the line: Phoenix Wright. His hands don’t shake, then suddenly all of him is shaking, and he’s crying, and he sobs his way through the rest of the paper that proves that he is real and that his life is changed irreparably.
*********
It takes a little while for the forms to be processed and it’s too late in the semester for him to switch classes, so his rebirth as Phoenix Wright: Ace Law Student is delayed until September. He spends a summer frantically studying (whatever else, he thinks, at least I’m keeping my promise to Mia that I’d work my butt off), realizing with the help of his friends and his moms and pretty much everyone he interacts with just how completely absurd it is to start pursuing law out of the blue in his last year of university. His arguments that it’s not out of the blue, that he’s been studying law the whole time (just, you know, kinda in the background of my art major, following different paths, finding myself, but I always knew I wanted to do this, no mom I’m not having a mid-life crisis at age 21, thank you very much, no, mama, not a quarter-life crisis either, can you just pass the salt please) fail to change the doubtful looks on the faces of the people he knows he can rely on for support but not necessarily, at this moment, for blind faith.
(There’s another argument in his pocket, too. He thinks of another person, his age, who’s been practicing law in Germany for three years now. But that’s another person who must be a fake, who would never say or do things like what Phoenix has read in the papers, so he never voices that argument. Sometimes, when his moms try talking to him about his sudden life reroute and then abruptly drop the topic with a glance at each other, he thinks perhaps they know without him needing to say it.)
But summer ends and despite his supervisor’s desperate attempts to get him to change his mind, he shows up back at Ivy University with six law classes on his schedule, a suitcase almost entirely full of books, and a mantra (or, as his roommate kindly called it, a delusion) that passion is an adequate substitute for sleep. He’s ready for whatever the semester throws at him.
He shows up 20 minutes early for his first 8:30am class, because he’s going to get the year off to a great start. He’s surprised to realize that he’s not the first person there, then his surprise turns to disbelief and shock as the other person in the room looks up at the sound of the door. Phoenix isn’t ready. He’s not ready to admit how strangely familiar and disconcertingly strange that face is. He’s not ready to accept that the figure he’s seen in newspapers is a real human, here, in front of him. He’s certainly not ready to acknowledge that shock and therefore recognition is on the other man’s face as well.
Phoenix bursts into tears and somehow, somehow, Miles Edgeworth is jumping up and hurrying over to him and guiding him to a seat, and for the second time in five months Phoenix feels like he must be dreaming.
They manage to get his tears under control before other students start trickling into the room, but there’s no time for anything else. They’re not sitting next to each other – Miles had been sitting in the far corner of the room, and he’d helped Phoenix collapse into the chair closest to the door; he moves wordlessly back to his seat at soon as the first classmate enters the room. Phoenix spends the class in a daze; he volunteers his name and little else (and it’s a good thing roll is called in alphabetical order; forty names between ‘Edgeworth’ and ‘Wright’ to give him a chance to regain his composure), but he takes notes diligently. He has a promise to keep, after all – two promises, really. If some of his notes end up looking less like law and more like absentminded sketches of the face he can just see past the line of people sitting between them, well, he’d always maintained that doodling in class actually helps him focus. And, just like that day in the courthouse, he wants paper proof that this is real.
At the end of class, Miles Edgeworth puts his papers away with practiced speed and moves to the door, hesitates a moment, and then steps out. Phoenix puts his things away slowly and then sits in his chair for another minute after everyone else has left the room. But when he finally leaves the class, Miles is standing outside, waiting.
*********
“Aren’t you already a prosecutor?” It’s the first thing Phoenix says to him after twelve years, and the instant he says it he feels foolish but at the same time he desperately wants to hear the answer. Because if Miles Edgeworth is here in his college law class, maybe somehow the Demon Prosecutor really is a fake.
(He’s not even sure which half of that epithet feels more wrong to him; both are equally unfathomable for the Miles he knew.)
“In Germany, yes. But I intend to practice here. I’m simply auditing a few classes before I take the bar in February.” Miles’ hand taps on the bench between them, absently counting out the length of the silence. “...what about you? I didn’t notice your name on the class roster when I registered. Are you studying law, then, or was your distress this morning due to realizing you’d walked into the wrong classroom?”
Phoenix wants to be offended at that, wants to shout and tell the man in front of him that yes, he’s studying law, that he’s studying law because he wanted to see him again, because he wanted to repay a debt, because he wanted to save him. He looks up at Miles and sees that the other man’s eyes aren’t on him at all; instead, they’re looking down, fixed onto the keychain attached to Phoenix’s backpack. Phoenix thinks he can see something of the Demon Prosecutor in the man’s posture, but his voice has no malice in it, just something tentative and unsure. And he realizes how ridiculous this whole situation is. He’s studying law because he wanted to see Miles Edgeworth again, wanted to repay him, wanted to save him, and now Miles is sitting right there in front of him.
“I was definitely in the right classroom.” When Miles looks back up at his face Phoenix is beaming, and Miles looks as bewildered as he did when Phoenix burst into tears that morning. Phoenix feels a wave of sudden nostalgia at a finally familiar expression, and he can’t help but wink and say “you know me - I’m always in the Wright place.” Miles’ expression turns indignant at the bad pun and Phoenix’s smile grows even wider; that face looks just the same as it used to on a little boy in a bow tie.
“Then I suppose I was the cause of your squalling?”
“Guess I was just happy to see you.”
“You certainly have a peculiar way of showing it.” Miles isn’t smiling, but his posture has relaxed and his hand is resting still on the bench.
Phoenix doesn’t want to ruin that. So he doesn’t say “I’m showing it by studying law for you.” He doesn’t say “why did you leave twelve years ago?” He doesn’t say “are you leaving in February?”
Instead, he says “hey, do you remember that time Larry got his hand stuck in the exhaust pipe of Ms. Terry’s car?”
And the smile on Miles’ face is small, but it’s there, and Miles is really there.
*********
They develop a bit of a ritual. Miles is always the first one to their morning class, and for the next two days he sits in his far corner chair, but on the fourth day of the term Phoenix enters the room to find Miles sitting in the second chair from the door. After class, they sit on the bench and talk until Phoenix needs to leave for his 11:00am class. Phoenix mostly talks about things from their childhood and Miles mostly talks about things from their class; not much is said about the years in between. Occasionally, a few things sneak in. Phoenix gets halfway through an anecdote about last year’s New Year’s Dance before choking on Dollie’s name; Miles mentions that he’ll be missing class next Thursday as his mentor Manfred Von Karma (didn’t that name come up in their class recently?) was going to be prosecuting an important case.
Phoenix can’t very well sketch Miles in class any more, not with the man sitting right next to him. But sometimes he sketches him at night. The Miles he sees in class sits like a statue, posture too perfect to be comfortable, too pristine to be approachable. The Miles on the bench is different. He leans back, he rests, he sometimes deigns to smile. Once, he spluttered when Phoenix noticed a DVD in his bag and asked if he liked The Steel Samurai (“I hope you haven’t completely moved on from Signal Samurai” “I see that you haven’t, Wright”).
When he talks about his mentor, though, Miles unconsciously draws himself back up into that controlled, perfect pose, too much like the frozen photographs in the newspaper article proclaiming “Dark Suspicions of a Demon Attorney”.
As the weeks go by, Phoenix finds it easier and easier to count on Miles Edgeworth being there each day. But as February gets closer, mentions of the bar and of Von Karma and of expectations come up more and more, and it scares him.
In December, neither of them have been sleeping well. Phoenix is up late every night studying for his finals, and Miles... he’s not sure what’s going on with Miles, but there are constant dark circles under his eyes. When he’s not waiting for Phoenix in class one morning, Phoenix has a moment of panic, remembering another time a dozen years ago where there was an empty desk next to him. But the door opens seven minutes after the start of class and there’s Miles, looking exhausted and embarrassed and... scared? As soon as he’s in his seat his body freezes back into that practiced position, but from so close Phoenix can see that his eyes are red.
Their conversation on the bench that day begins much like their first – the last time one of them had been crying. Miles’ hand is tapping on the bench. By now, though, Phoenix knows that the person in front of him is real, and that he’s not going to vanish – not yet, at least. So after they talk about the time Larry tried fly across the river by holding a bunch of balloons, Phoenix reaches out and takes Miles’ restless hand in his own, and softly asks “are you okay?”
Miles doesn’t answer. He looks away, and his hand jerks out of Phoenix’s to grip his own arm. His posture straightens – but he shifts so that their shoulders are just slightly touching, one small point of contact, and slowly, he relaxes and leans in against him. His fingers are still squeezing his arm tightly, and after a minute Phoenix reaches over again and Miles lets him take his hand without resistance. They sit like that for a while, until –
“You’re going to be late for class.”
“We’re just reviewing today. I can probably miss it.”
Miles lets out a shaky sigh. “And here I thought you’d finally developed some semblance of a work ethic.”
“Nah, I’m mostly bluffing. You know me.” Phoenix pulls his best signature sheepish smile. But like his smile to Mia many months ago, it’s not fake. There’s really nothing fake about it at all.
“I wonder.” Miles begins to stand but doesn’t let go of Phoenix’s hand; he scrambles to his feet as well. “...It’s been unseasonably cold recently, hasn’t it? I heard that Gourd Lake has frozen over for the first time in years.”
“Wow, really? I wonder if we can ice skate on it!”
“Only if you’d like to fall right through the ice. You’re prone enough to getting colds as it is.”
“See, you do know me!”
“Everyone on this campus knows the sound of your sneezing fits.”
Phoenix lets out a dramatic sigh. “Fine. No ice skating.”
“No ice skating.”
People hurry by in the end-of-term frenzy, and those dark circles under Miles’ eyes can’t be wiped away so easily but at least he doesn’t look scared. Tentative, perhaps, but his grip on Phoenix’s hand is not unsure. So Phoenix ignores the clock telling him it’s almost time for class, and he ignores the calendar telling him that February is only a few short months away. Instead, he says: “I bet the lake’s pretty beautiful covered in ice.”
“I suspect it won’t be for much longer. The sun’s coming out.”
They look at each other for a moment, and Phoenix grins. “Then what are we waiting for? We don’t have much time left!”
The bells ring out 11:00am and Phoenix thinks a silent apology to Mia. He’ll have to work extra hard to make up for the missed class. But as he leaves the campus, Miles’ hand is in his, and his heart is full.