#and don't get me wrong here! i'm not saying that mia somehow loves maya less or something. absolutely not

[cornertheculprit]

Mia: ...Phoenix.

Phoenix: Mia...! Umm... H-How is Maya doing!?

Mia: Physically, I'm not worried. She'll recover completely. But emotionally, she's been hurt very badly by this case.

Phoenix: I-I see... ...! You don't mean...! She's learned who Elise Deauxnim really was?

Mia: ...Yes. I went to the medical office and talked with her. I told her everything I knew.

Phoenix: ...But why?

Mia: Maya is stronger than you think... I knew she could take it... All of it.

i was thinking about this exchange and specifically mia's line of "maya is stronger than you think" and it kind of got me wondering if it was a moment where mia actually kind of misjudged phoenix's feelings on the matter. because phoenix DOES think maya is strong! even if he doesn't admit it out loud (because he's a moron):

Maya: ...And then you look at me, and, well... I'm the daughter of the Master, but I'm still just a little girl. And on top of that, I'm the suspect in a murder trial.

Phoenix: (Um... But I think you're really strong too, Maya, for all you've gone through...)

it may just be how i was reading it but phoenix asking "but why?" was not a question of whether maya was strong enough to take it but rather a question of "she's physically and mentally exhausted and we just saw her collapse on the ground from channeling dahlia's spirit for so long. why would you tell her that the person she saw get murdered right in front of her was her mother NOW." and yes i do think part of it was because phoenix wanted to hide it from her for a little while longer because he wants to protect her and hiding things is his go-to for pretty much everything but it was never a matter of him not thinking she's strong enough to take in the information. and yknow i think something else to factor into this is that in recent years phoenix has spent much much more time around maya than mia has. because mia's dead obviously i know that but also even before that...at the beginning of turnabout sisters one of the things maya mentions right off the bat is that mia hadn't called in a while. she was getting more and more distant. and meanwhile maya has been hanging around phoenix for almost three years now and spent the seven months between aa2 and aa3 staying with him instead of living in kurain village. even all the way back in aa1 it was to phoenix that maya admitted the heartbreaking thought that she wished she'd never woken up from being tased at all. and it's interesting to me how it seems like in this instance mia looks at maya and sees the strong little sister she left behind who can take anything the world throws at her and phoenix looks at maya and sees his best friend who CAN take anything the world throws at her but who has already been through so much and who he doesn't want to see suffer anymore. because he saw her crying in the detention center more than once he saw her admit she never wanted to see a knife again after 2-2 he saw her in the aftermath of morgan's betrayal and in the aftermath of the engarde trial and everything else. and the different perspectives they seem to have really do affect how they treat her.