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charlieknighte · 2 years

Text

burned, about to burn, still on fire

Phoenix Wright/Miles Edgeworth

Epistolary Fic - Post AA1 - Character Study - Dream Sequence - Pre-Relationship Unnecessary Feelings™

9,965 words

content warnings: discussion of attempted suicide/suicidal thoughts, grieving

In a hastily rented cottage on the coast of France, Miles Edgeworth drafts letters from beyond the grave, trying to articulate the muddled thoughts that led to a rashly written note and a sudden disappearing act. On the other side of the sea, Phoenix Wright lapses into his old habit of writing letters to a childhood friend who isn’t listening, trying to piece together theories with minimal evidence, as is his specialty. Neither aware of each other’s struggle to understand the events that forced them apart—both entirely out of reach.

(This is a playthrough of a hack of a hack of dancynrew’s letter writing TTRPG, Beyond Reach. Play proceeds through letters written by each player, interrupted by a collaborative dream sequence halfway through the playthrough. Each player is unable to read the others’s letters until the end of the game. Edgeworth was played by Stars (starsshine77), and Phoenix was played by Charlie (fixationstn).)

DESCRIBE YOURSELVES ONLY BY THE DETAILS A LOVED ONE WOULD RECOGNIZE YOU BY.

You never really get past the badly tailored off-the-rack suit or the hastily slicked-back hair—you never did stop making snide comments, that’s for sure—but once you grow accustomed enough to start seeing past them, the first thing you can identify me by is the purpose I put into every movement, as if there’s some internal engine or sun-like force bringing fire to every step. After that come the details: cheek dimples that eagerly appear at any twist of my lips, the determined scrunch of my eyebrows, the way my badge is the only polished thing about me. From the moment I enter your life to the last moments we have together, there is the unwavering, ever-present impression that no matter how heavy of a burden I'm carrying, I will always be willing to help shoulder yours, for better or for worse.

~~~

I am a collection of angles and edges - sharp and cold things put together to form the facsimile of perfection. Every stitch of impeccable tailoring, every overly styled hair, the hardness of every leveling glare - this is my armor; you’re meant to roll off of it like water. An unforgiving landscape, an unclimbable slope, but that never stopped you, now did it? What did you see in these eyes, my father’s eyes? A moment of weakness - the point at which I faltered - or was it something more? Did you see that gnawing hunger underneath my skin for something I’ve never tasted, something more? Did you see the white-knuckle grip I had on an ugly lie, or when I had to let it go for an even uglier truth? All I see is a man on the run. Towards something, or away from something else - tell me if you find out which.

DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED THE LAST TIME YOU SAW EACH OTHER.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the last time we saw each other, I was a wreck. I was cold, I was crumbling, I was hurt.

(He lied to me, they both did, everyone is lying to me, how can I possibly be trusted to know the truth?)

I didn’t hide it well; although, perhaps, you could see the wound but not the true depth of it. Perhaps I covered my tracks better than I thought. Or perhaps you looked across the courtroom and saw me crashing, burning, again, and decided that’s all I would ever be capable of. No, that’s not fair to you - No, you would have tried to pull me out of the wreckage, recklessly determined to the last. And I - couldn’t let that happen. I just couldn’t.

I wanted more than to be pulled out of the car crash of myself.

I can’t hope that you’ll understand, but when all is quiet I pray you can forgive me.

~~~

Hi, Miles.

Do you remember those letters I wrote you? You never did tell me if you read them. I don’t know if I even expected you to. I think at some point they stopped being about trying to get in touch with you and became more of… a place to tuck away my loneliness and grief so no one would have to see it. Nobody really got why I was so torn up after you left, and I didn’t want to share that feeling with them if they wouldn’t understand it. Thinking back on it, I don’t think I was really old enough to understand it either.

So, here I am again. Older and still not understanding.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Gumshoe let me into your office to look around. Officially, I was allowed in as a consultant to see if my familiarity with you would help me turn up anything the police had missed (it didn’t, of course, you wouldn’t make it that easy for me.) Maybe Gumshoe honestly was looking to me for answers, but really, I think he just wanted to give me a chance to be in a room that belonged to you one last time. As if one room would be enough to capture the entire string of tragedies that brought you to do this—if it was up to me, every place you’d ever stood in or walked through would be taped up. I already feel like all I’ll ever see in them is a crime scene.

I haven’t been able to go back to my own office either, not since seeing yours like that. There’s something nearly grotesque in the similarity between them, in the way I left things half-finished like I died along with you, left a spirit stuck walking the places where I once lived. Looking at dirty coffee cups left from a friend’s visit, happy clients’ past cases tucked away on the shelves, a pinned-up paper with the number for a dinky phone booth scribbled in pink gel pen. It makes me feel stuck between worlds, half-remembering how good life used to be but unable to pierce the veil to get back to it. Maybe a call to a spirit medium wouldn’t be such a bad idea, if I could find it in myself to go back for her number one day.

(I did take Charley home, though. I’m not a monster.)

You must have made some arrangement for all the things you left behind, maybe a will. I shouldn’t be so angry that I wasn’t a part of it. I know we’re not family per se, but I thought I meant something to you. I can’t help but be hurt that after everything, after how much you meant to me—after everything I did to claw my way back to you, after all we’ve gone through together—that a single document strikes it from the record, makes it all add up to nothing. Maybe it’s fitting, in some horrible way, that the last way you could hurt me was through the letter of the law.

I just wish I could’ve known if you kept my letters.

Your friend,

Phoenix

Phoenix Wright has stopped taking clients. If one were frustrated enough by his closed door and dogged enough to peek through the window of his law office, they would find its contents abandoned mid-use, left strewn about as if he had stepped out only for a moment—but he hasn’t been back in weeks.

~~~

[Unsent] (no subject)

Message body:

Wright-

There are a million and one apologies and explanations I owe you, I know- things I could say and should be saying- but as I draft this letter I find myself bereft, almost, of the very words.

Which is quite a long-winded way of saying that I don’t know what to say.

Things have been- difficult, to put it mildly. Sometimes the simplest tasks seem far beyond my capability; sometimes I look back at things I know I’ve done, countless times, in the past, and can’t fathom how I managed them. Whoever it was who did those things was a stranger, and yet, whoever I am now is a stranger, too.

I’m sure, by now, you’ve inferred what I meant to do. What my intentions were in leaving. I was- straight-forward, to the point, in my note. I wanted there to be no doubt. I didn’t want to leave a mess of half-formed thoughts or apologies. In fact, and I hope this doesn‘t upset you to hear, but it is the truth- I had no intention of leaving a body. I wanted no investigation, no loose ends- no funeral and no gravestone. I wanted a clean break. At the time it seemed like the kindest option for everyone, myself included. I wanted to step gently out of this plane and leave no trace behind, no evidence to substantiate that the twisted creature I had become had ever existed. The end, and the means to that end, were so clear to me.

Now, nothing seems clear to me at all.

Obviously, my plans have- changed, somewhat. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say I have no plans. I’ve left, albeit not in the way I intended, so don’t rush out to look for me when you receive this- I’m overseas and I have no intentions of returning. Not as I am now. Not as someone who can barely summon the energy or motivation to get out of bed, to bathe myself, to- well, I’ll spare you the messy details.

I will admit I feel- better, here. I’ve found a place to stay for the interim (the interim of what, for what length of time, I can’t say, nor can I tell you even what country I’m in - I fear you’ll do something rash, as you’re prone to). It’s quite the change from my apartment in Los Angeles, which I think is a good thing- towards my final days there it felt like the walls were closing in on me, as if a stranger lived there, as if for all the time I had spent there I had left no lasting impression on it at all. Just a passing ghost in the world of the living. I realized I had felt that way for quite awhile. I’m not sure for how long.

I don’t feel that way here, not quite. As it is a rental, the sense of impermanence lingers, but it doesn’t bother me as much. It’s comforting, in a way, to know that should the air start feeling as stale here as it did back home, I could pick up and go elsewhere and leave nothing at all behind. I fear I can’t say the same for Los Angeles. But the air isn’t as stale here- I feel safe telling you that I can see the sea from my window, that I can hear the powerful rush of it as I lay in bed at night, feigning sleep that sometimes comes and sometimes doesn’t. Aside from the sea it is quiet, here. Lonely, one might say, but being alone here is less isolating, less personal. On days that I can feel, it’s comforting. Peaceful.

I didn’t start this letter with the intention of telling you this. I didn’t want to speak about myself. The uncharitable side of me (you’ll joke that you didn’t know I had a charitable side, I’m sure) argues that you know far too much about me as it is. If that’s true, you probably know more about me than I do, currently. And yet I know so very little about you, as you are now. Memories of you as a child, I can summon when the mood strikes me, but now- the only memories I have of you are in court, and I can hardly bear to think of the place at the moment. Still, I can’t help but picture you- shining despite that horrid suit, brave and true, striking to the heart of everything and prying out the truth. You certainly pried it out of me. I will never be able to thank you enough, for that. I wasn’t strong enough to be saved, that much is true, but it isn’t your fault that without the buttress of my false convictions I collapsed into rubble. That’s no one’s fault but mine.

I’m not making any sense. I’ll delete some of this before I send it. You shouldn’t have to bear knowing yet more ugly truths about me. It’s unfair to you.

To the point of this correspondence, I heard- and it doesn’t matter how- that you’ve stopped taking clients, and that concerns me, Wright. I’m not arrogant enough to assume that it’s because of my- absence, although I fear that might be the case. You weren’t meant to take this personally. No, I shouldn’t say that. I’ll strike that out before I send this. Wright- Phoenix, part of the reason I felt confident enough to leave is knowing that you’d still be there, shining a light into the darkness, digging up the misdeeds of our court system. Saving the innocent. You were born to do it, I see that now. I can only hope you’ll meet prosecutors who are true and noble, who will aid you in your mission rather than attempt to bring you to your knees, to humiliate you and cut you down, in a meaningless play for worthless pride and glory.

I’m sorry, Wright. I’m just sorry.

I’m

you’re , this is, I;m really sorry, I couldnt do it anymore I dont know what to do it at all and you just deserve

[Draft auto-saved at 04:38am]

The High Prosecutor’s office is completely untouched. If one - motivated by whatever internal force, be it grief, or reverence, or morbid curiosity - took the time to slip up the stairs in the Prosecutor’s Building, if one knew a detective who had the key, they would find everything exactly the way Miles Edgeworth left it, down to the unfinished tea slowly staining the inside of cup on the desk, the surface collecting dust and putting off an odor. Everything untouched - except for the note that was once placed in the center of the desk, now bagged and locked away in an evidence locker to be slowly forgotten. And yet the relic of his existence remains.

~~~

Hi again, Miles.

So. I did call Maya after all. I put it off for a long time, because I didn’t want to bother her with my sadsack shit when she’s finally in what I think is a good place, but—I started to get this horrible feeling about how two people in my life had left behind notes and vanished, and I knew it was unreasonable but I couldn’t shake it, and—anyway.

If I started to describe how happy we were to hear from each other, I’d fill the whole page and have no room left to write to you. She sounds good. Happy, even. I don’t know how much of that was her putting on a brave face for me, but at least she’s home and being taken care of, and no one’s trying to kill her or accuse her of murder That’s all we can really ask for, right?

We talked a lot about Mia. About how horrible and abrupt and final her death was, and how many things it changed, and how death stings even for someone who deals so much with the afterlife. Even knowing you might still be able speak with those who have passed on, a moment of connection isn’t enough to replace the richness of an entire existence. It still hurts to see the ones you love die.

I started asking Maya about her mom without meaning to. She’s been gone for more than fifteen years now, and at twenty she’ll be declared lost for good. Her aunt has banned anyone from trying to channel her until then (god, what a witch.) Maya’s good mood finally faltered when she told me that she doesn’t know what to believe about her disappearance. That it would almost be easier to deal with the knowledge of her death than the thought of her up and running away, leaving her children behind to an uncertain future. I… couldn’t help agreeing.

I desperately, desperately wish that Maya didn’t need to be so wise on this particular subject, but it was comforting to hear that even for someone who can touch death directly, there is no magic cure-all to grief. There’s no perfect moment of catharsis or straightforward path to processing loss. Sometimes there’s no way to even process it at all. It just happens, and we have to learn to live with it.

It still doesn’t feel like you’re gone, Miles. I thought that at some point it would. Instead I feel like the horrible truth of what happened is hanging right in front of me, and I’m craning my head over it to see where you went and when you’ll come back. We already spent so much time apart from each other, and through all that time I never stopped thinking of you with fondness and love. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop now, either, no matter how shaken up and upset I might be. To fully comprehend the idea of having lost you—if I’ll ever be able to—it might take me twenty years, too

I guess I wasn’t holding it together as well as I thought I was, because Maya started asking if I was alright, if I needed to talk about Mia again. Oh my god, Miles… I couldn’t tell her. Maya has lost so many people. She’s eighteen, and she already has so much grief to deal with that she’ll never be finished sorting through it all in her lifetime. I physically couldn’t bring myself to give her one more person to mourn for.

I can sit here beating the shit out of myself for it all I want, but that doesn’t change what I did in the moment. I lied to her. I lied that talking about Mia had brought up some old shit, but that everything was fine. That I would be okay. And then we said goodbye and I hung up. Just like that.

It was—a really nice call. I’m glad I talked to her.

(Man, I’m the biggest piece of shit alive.)

Your friend,

Phoenix

Phoenix only leaves the house on a handful of occasions during the month that passes. On one occasion, he takes advantage of Detective Gumshoe’s offer to help him with anything he needs and asks to be driven out to the only phonebooth in town that makes long-distance calls. He is quiet and unfocused on the drive out, but for a few moments during the lengthy call that he takes, his laugh is loud enough to be softly heard outside of the booth. Once he’s back in the car, though, his smile disappears. He stares through the windshield like he’s seeking something, eyebrows scrunched together and mouth set grimly. He remembers to thank Gumshoe for the ride before he shuts himself back in his apartment, but just barely.

~~~

[Unsent] (no subject)

Message body:

Wright-

This isn’t how things were supposed to go.

Do you understand that? It’s laughably obvious and yet I fear that you aren’t wrapping your mind around it. Let me spell it out for you- I’ll use small words that even you can’t misunderstand- You. Ruined. Everything.

Doesn’t that sound horrible? Hideously ungrateful? Cruel and selfish? Good. Those are all the qualities I have left to my name. I may as well hold onto them.

I thought, before, that you had ‘changed’ everything, or rather you had brought to light all the ugly truth that was already there. Truth and justice! Everything we’re supposed to stand for! Isn’t it swell, even if it comes at the cost of everything about me? My entire life, as paltry and empty and pathetic as it was? Sure I was - I am - cruel and dishonest and ruthless, a dirty cheat and a liar, a soulless prideful monster- but I could have lived like that. I could have. I could have lived with that, Phoenix Wright, and maybe that will disgust you to hear but you love the fucking truth so much, you may as well hear it. I could have lived with what I was, vicious and hollow as I was- but that just wouldn’t do for you, would it? Doesn’t quite fit nicely into your burgeoning hero complex, does it?

No, you had to come along and- muck everything up. Expose me. Confuse me. Hand me my life back. And for what? What life? The last bit of family I had will never speak to me again, not after you put von Karma behind bars. I have no friends, regardless of what Detective Gumshoe believes, hapless fucking fool that he is. No pets - not even a houseplant. No hobbies, no interests. And now I don’t even have my reputation, my career, my dignity. You’ve taken it all from me. Ripped back all the layers trying to find whatever imaginary person you thought was hiding underneath. How does it feel, to know that underneath all that, there’s absolutely fucking no one? Nothing to save. Congratulations on your victory, Mr. Wright. You’ve beaten me, completely and soundly.

And in the midst of all that, you have the audacity to behave like you’re mourning me? After I gave you the courtesy of being rid of me completely? I’m no longer your concern, Wright. I’m not your - your fucking project, your little bird with a broken wing you can nurse back to health. I’m gone. I’m dead. I’ve cut myself neatly out of the story of your life- the least you could do for me, now, is let me go quietly.

Why can’t I just go quietly? Goddamnit, Wright, what am I still holding on for?

I guess, when it comes down to it, I’m a coward. I’m just too afraid of learning what comes next. Where does a soul like mine pass into, after all this?

Not to the same place as my father’s. That I know for sure.

This is what you worked so hard to save, Phoenix. I hope you come to understand that- that I was beyond saving from the moment you laid eyes on me again. I’ve been dead for fifteen years. It’s funny, almost- all this talk of spirit mediums and you never knew that you yourself were conversing with a ghost.

I’m angry with you, Wright. I am. I was. I was when I started writing this and now I’m just tired. I’m just fucking tired.

[Draft auto-saved at 05:14pm]

[Are you sure you want to delete this draft?]

[Yes] [No]

There’s a basket of lilies rotting on the doorstep of a penthouse apartment in Los Angeles. Whatever card, whatever impersonal, perfunctory message that accompanied them upon delivery, is long gone. It’s a miracle that the landlord hasn’t thrown them out yet, or maybe he’s just afraid to draw the ire of an unfriendly ghost. Little does he know that Miles Edgeworth’s spirit isn’t here - it’s haunting the whole damn city. The apartment door is locked, the rent paid out for the next sixteen months. There might be a spare key, and there might not be - in any case, Detective Gumshoe, despite his offers of help and support, has grown suddenly and inexplicably distant. The door stays shut. The flowers remain.

~~~

INTERMISSION

~~~

Phoenix Wright stands in the High Prosecutor’s Office, or maybe his own office—the crime scene was always more of a workplace than the agency, anyway. He hasn’t been in this room enough times to recall a faithful recreation, although the features that he was jarred by are rendered in sharp detail: the full teacup resting on the desk as if still waiting for its owner to come back, the uncharacteristic lineup of plastic toys on the windowsill, the wilted floral arrangement letting off the sweet stench of death throughout the office. The rest of the room is a blurry pastiche of Edgeworth-isms and Wright-esque clutter, elegant desk decor lost among mountains of loose paperwork and discarded wrappers.

Phoenix doesn’t remember which defendant hired him, and it doesn’t really matter. How many cases has he fumbled through successfully without even the barest of identifying information? He paces the room, scratching at his stubble wearily, trying to surmise the best point to start his investigation.

The body—the only problem is that he can’t figure out where to place the body.

Yellow caution tape stretches from corner to corner of his open office door, tangled and tied in peculiar shapes and patterns. When Miles Edgeworth reaches to press forward, heedless of the visual warning, the tape clings to his outstretched arm like cobwebs, sticky and cloying. The air, too, clings, milky darkness at his back and the corners of his vision, and on his fingers, white powder that flakes into the tangible darkness and onto his clothes like bits of dry snow.

Not snow - chalk, in two large pieces in both of his hands, the oversized, chunky kind intended for children and sidewalks and hopscotch. He curls his fingers right around them, nails leaving crescent moon indents in their surfaces, as he presses through the curtain of tape and into his office.

Phoenix instantly knows that Miles shouldn’t be here, and yet he can’t bring himself to be startled or begin barraging him with questions. It wouldn’t change anything, anyway. He raises a hand in greeting, smiling tiredly. In fact, he had a funny feeling that he’d be seeing him somewhere like this. “Are you on the case too?” He shifts to stand on the side of the room, hands on his hips, giving Miles space to step into the crime scene. They’ve never collaborated like this before, but somehow it feels appropriate today. Miles should know this crime from the inside out, after all.

He rolls the question over in his mind as he stands next to Wright; it’s odd and ill-fitting, yet familiar, like a sweater put away for the summer and brought back out now that the weather has turned. Seeing Wright feels that way too, turns his stomach over and lodges it somewhere near the bottom of his rib cage. Are you on the case too?

“Naturally,” is his eventual answer, and for all that he struggled to grasp it it sounds natural coming out, with just the right amount of loftiness to keep Wright from turning his body in towards Miles’. A quelling of the familiarity before it begins. “And you should be grateful I am - you look lost, Wright.”

Phoenix scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, well…” He grins reflexively, half sheepish, half out of genuine glee at getting to feel Miles’s ribbing again. Oh, he’s missed that, no matter how much Miles intends it to push him away. “I got thrown into the deep end. I can’t make heads or tails of it all. You know, I didn’t even get to see the note before it went to the police, and that’s the... the most vital...” His smile gets stuck in a grimace for a moment, like a stuttering television freezing on a single frame. He lets it go, back to being sober and grim.

He clasps his hands behind his back to stop them from continuing to fidget and looks at Miles, studying his face far more carefully than he ever studied the crime scene. “Where do you think we should start?”

He tilts his chin down to let a curtain of gray draw itself over his visage before he looks at Wright sidelong, a careful degree of separation placed between himself and honeyed brown eyes that are cutting him like knives where he stands; megawatt smiles full of white incisors that are gnawing at him inside, gnawing gnawing gnawing.

“Forget the note,” Miles says dismissively. “You’re coming at this all wrong.” As usual, doesn’t leave his lips but he swears Wright hears it all the same, as if the brief pause in his sentence is just as cruel as the words he didn’t speak into that silence. “The note is…forget the note, for a moment. What you should be thinking about is the body.”

It’s a weight off Phoenix’s shoulders to be able to see Miles again, but their reunion doesn’t seem to be mutually beneficial. Edgeworth is as moody and withdrawn and impassable as he was at his lowest points, and though Phoenix has never been one to shy away from throwing himself against a brick wall, he doubts that it would get him what he wanted right now. He lets himself have one quiet moment of disappointment, and then he tears his eyes away from Miles and put his attention back to the office. He has to take a step back, to look at what this collaboration is really about—function, not feeling.

“Right.” Phoenix sighs, rubbing a knuckle against his eye. He’s tired. It’s late, isn’t it? He takes a moment to notice the pale blue beams of moonlight breaking the office’s velvety darkness. Had they been there before? He doesn’t remember. “The body.” Phoenix spreads his hands around the office sardonically. “Well, I’m not sure if you noticed, but it’s not here.” He drops his arms in emphasis. “No one seems to have a clue where it is.”

Something about that, it… hmm.

Wright is...well, right. His office - is this really his office, this dull and lifeless room, drained of color, shadowed at the edges? - is noticeably lacking a body. Moved, then, but when, and by whom? Miles paws at the recesses of his memory, fumbling for a police report, an interview, a check in from Detective Gumshoe, and comes up empty.

Lord, he can’t even bring to mind the name of the victim. Wright really is a bad influence, isn’t he?

He casts his eyes about the room, seeking...something. An impression. A sign of a struggle. An intrusion in the furniture, in the stacks of papers and debris scattered about the office in a semblance of organized chaos. No body, no, but somewhere there is an empty space, a vacuum, where the body should be.

“We don’t need the body,” he says after a long moment’s internal deliberation. “A body would do, any body, for hypothetical’s sake.” He rolls the chalk in between his thumbs and forefingers. “To fill in the gap, to get a sense of the scene, yes?”

Phoenix looks down at Miles’s hands and takes a moment to identify the white stub in his fingers as chalk, its powder flecking off onto Edgeworth’s otherwise impeccable coat. “Sure,” he says, stepping back to lean against the wall and cross his arms. “Be my guest.”

In the meantime, his eyes trace over the room much like Edgeworth’s had, picking up suspicion like dust off of every surface. Something seems wrong here. There’s no evidence of a crime where there quite clearly was one. But then again, where did he get such a clear impression of a crime having occurred? He gropes around for an answer, but every time he surfaces with something relevant, it seems to slip from his grasp. It’s beginning to worry him that something bigger is going on, and more than that, it’s starting to frustrate him. He should know this. Why doesn’t he?

“It’s funny,” he says quietly. It’s not actually funny at all. “It’s as if they just disappeared.”

Cold, sticky dread trickles down his spine like Wright has just cracked an egg against the base of his neck.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Wright,” he snaps to hide his reaction. His words are barely audible over the quickening of his pulse inside his own ears. “People don’t just vanish into thin air.”

Somewhere, here, there is a trace. His fingers trace velvet upholstery, leaving chalk prints behind as he searches for wetness, blood that would be invisible against the red fabric in this dim lighting. There’s something they’ve missed, here. This is a crime scene; therefore, there was a crime. A murder investigation, so there was a murder.

His dress shoes pause in their passage from the rug to the wood flooring, his head tilting towards the wall of windows, out into the night. He can see the dingy silhouette of his reflection in the shining glass. The glass is immaculate; he’s blurry.

A murder investigation? Where did he get that impression?

Seeing Edgeworth pause, Phoenix slowly pushes himself off of the wall and takes two steps towards him. He had expected them to sound tentative, but instead they land with a certain conviction. “Miles,” he says, still quiet, beginning to take on a grim tone. “There’s something more going on here. Isn’t there?”

Despite Edgeworth’s urging not to think about it, Phoenix’s mind drifts back to the letter. All he’d seen of it was a written-up copy in a police report, printed in a neat typewriter-like font. He remembers the sight of the page and the horrible cold dread that came with holding it, but its words swim on the paper, frustratingly difficult to pin down. It was something about death and decisions. What’s he missing here?

“The victim,” he concludes, speaking it aloud unconsciously even before he comes back to himself. He clenches his fists at his sides, determined, and stares into the back of Miles’s head as if willing him to turn about. “What was their name?”

The glass in the windows is splintering, a web of thousands and thousands of shimmering fractals. A silent breakage, an implosion of force.

Finally, Miles Edgeworth understands where he is and what he’s doing there.

He half-expects the scene to shift upon the realization, for the walls of his office to melt away into smothering, sweltering darkness cut only by muzzle flash once then twice. When the floor stays solid beneath his quaking legs he forces himself to turn, to look, to see if Phoenix is still Phoenix, or his face has given way to another’s.

But no - no, he’s still there, putting off impossible light in the darkness, in this longest of nights. Surely he doesn’t glow like that, not really - this is Miles’ romanticization, a parting gift from his subconscious mind.

Phoenix is waiting for an answer, hanging on his yet-unspoken words.

“You know the name of the victim, Phoenix,” Miles says slowly, thickly. “It was in the police report. It was in the transcription of the letter. Clear as day. No further questions.” The chalk is flaking against his hands. White prints scatter the sleeves of his suit jacket. “It was a perfect piece of evidence.”

As soon as Miles says it, Phoenix finds that he does know the name of the victim. There it is, clear at the front of his mind. He’s disappointed himself for a moment for not seeing it sooner, and then he’s furious, and he doesn’t quite understand why. Maybe it’s the fact that Miles has bested him with twisted evidence once again, his contrary and competitive streak showing through at the worst of times. Maybe it’s anger at Miles himself, at the stubborn nature that makes him at turns a worthy opponent and a miserable pain in the ass, and at the foolish pride he insisted on taking down to his grave

Maybe it’s just helpless rage at something he knows he can’t change.

“Miles,” he says, both as an answer and a shaky question. He takes another step towards him, reaching out urgently as if—despite the misery of it all, despite how futile he knows it is—holding on to him will undo what’s already been done.

Phoenix’s approach makes him shudder, his whole body thrown in every direction as if it might fall apart into individual atoms and scatter him to the wind. Entropy to entropy. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

This Phoenix is not even real, cannot touch him, and yet Miles knows with a conviction beyond conviction that should they meet in this space he will burn away into nothing, or else Phoenix will, and this is the one thing that he still has the ability to spare the foolish, incorrigible, brilliant man before him.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Phoenix,” he says, ragged. “Don’t do this, don’t - wonder. Don’t look for the evidence that isn’t there. Just - fill in the gaps. Make the pieces fit. Whatever pieces you need. Turn this around into something that makes sense to you, please.”

He holds out the chalk with shaking hands. He can’t stand to hold onto it anymore. He has no right. He couldn’t decide where to put the body.

Where Phoenix wanted his hands to meet warm shoulders that he could pull close, he instead finds dusty chalk as Miles thrusts it in front of himself like a defense. Despite Miles once again refusing him what he’d wanted, Phoenix fumbles to hold onto it, desperate to keep one last gift from him. Even then, it crumbles in his hands, embedding dust into the creases of his palms as if it were Miles's own ashes.

“No,” Phoenix growls, out of some bullheaded, foolhardy determination to prove Miles wrong. He can fix this, somehow. He can turn this all around.

He reaches out again with hands that are powder-white as if bloodstained, but the room seems to lengthen with every step. He watches helplessly as Miles turns around and curls into himself, clutching his arms like a child, growing further and further out of Phoenix's reach. The light in the room is no longer cool blue as it seeps through the cracks in the window—it’s a bright blood red, growing blinding as the window continues to splinter. There’s a horrible, sharp sound as the glass finally buckles and breaks, failing to hold back some terrible force. Shards of glass whiz through the atmosphere, fine dust glimmering around shards as big as kitchen knives.

Despite the danger Phoenix ploughs on, breaking into a sprint even as the distance between them stretches as if caught past an event horizon. When he’d told Miles to mark out the body, he hadn’t meant for him to create one.

“Miles!” he screams as the shards finally find their home, and—

—he lands on the floor with an emphatic whumph. A dizzying burst of pain jolts through his shoulder as it bears his full weight for an instant. He groans and rolls onto his stomach. He’d thrashed his way off the bed and brought his blankets down with him, and woken himself in the process. Fuck. He softly thunks his head against the floor a few times.

If only he could have had a few more minutes, he thinks, maybe he could’ve saved him.

~~~

Miles,

Something’s changed. I feel like the last bit of endurance I had has snapped. The shock’s finally worn off and I can feel everything, everything that I haven’t been feeling about you.

I’ve been trying to keep you off my mind, because every time I remember you I feel fucking sick with anger. Every time I hear your name, I feel like I'm burning from the inside out. I can't talk about you anymore—I can barely think about you when anyone else is around. I hate it when they try to give me condolences, and I hate it when they try to talk shit about you, too. It feels like all they can see is one side or another of you, the villain or the victim. You were so much more than the sum of your parts, and if no one can understand that then—then I’m just going to stick to work. It’s easier that way.

But god, when I’m alone, I can’t stop thinking about you. At twelve in the morning when I can’t get to sleep, and at the office when I’m forcing myself through paperwork, and when I’m eating dinner in my apartment alone and can’t stand having the TV on anymore. Miles, the other day I sat on a stakeout in a twenty-four hour diner and I thought about you for four hours straight. I thought I’d nearly shatter my coffee cup from how tightly I was holding it. I think about you so much that sometimes I almost feel like you’re right behind me, waiting to make your entrance with your usual dry quip and haughty attitude and pull a seat up beside me uninvited.

I love you. You know that? I love you, and somehow that doesn’t make it difficult to hate you, too. You mean everything to me, and when I say that I mean everything, all the good and the bad rolled into one. In my mind, you deserve both the highest of honors and the lowest of insults.

Why would you do this? That’s a question I’ve been skirting around for months, stubbornly pretending that I haven’t been pondering it. I mean, I can think of a few contributing reasons off the top of my head, but what I can’t understand is… why would you think this was the only solution? After I worked for so long to get to a position where I could help you, after everything I did to get you acquitted, after everything I did for you, just for you—how could you think you were alone in all this? I could have helped you. I could have done something, anything to prevent you ending up like this. Why didn’t you let me?

Did you care about me at all, Miles? Maybe I was overconfident to think that you’d started to.

I’m realizing now that I structured so much of my life around you, and I don’t know what to do with myself with my keystone taken away. Maybe I don’t have the right to think I understand you, either. I know I’m supposed to move on and find peace or some wishy-washy greeting card crap like that, but I just—I don't even know where to begin. You know that I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that you’re gone? It feels like just another extended leave of absence from my life that I get angrier and angrier at you for, whether that's fair or not. You still feel real to me, Miles. I keep thinking that maybe—maybe one day I'll find you in a news clipping again, and I'll get to go hunt you down and punch you in your stupid smug face.

You always thought you knew better than everybody, and look where it got you. I hope you're happy, wherever you are.

Phoenix

Phoenix has started taking cases again. He's just as forceful in court as he used to be, but he wears a new bitter, lifeless smile. His office is open for business now, the windows open to let out the sickly smell of disuse, the empty mugs and loose paperwork that usually clutter every surface cleared away for once. Still, don’t expect to be offered a seat or a cup of coffee if you drop by. He’s always on his way out.

~~~

Wright-

I know as well as you do that I won’t be sending this letter, so I may as well be honest. I’m the one who keeps calling your office.

I have been since I heard - from Detective Gumshoe, as you may have guessed - that you were taking clients again. I’ve never seen your office but for the crime scene photos from Miss Fey’s trial, but I can’t stop picturing you there. Can’t stop wondering what you’re doing, what you’re thinking. I fear it’s become somewhat of an obsession, but in the absence of anyone to rebuke me, I find myself unable to stop. So I call you, and I wait for you to answer, just so I can hear your voice for a few fleeting moments. It must be getting obnoxious- harassment from an unknown source. Perhaps it’s even affecting your business and your client relationships. Yet another apology I owe you. But I can’t stop.

I’ve been speaking for some time with Detective Gumshoe, and more frequently as of late. It’s cyclical, you see. I wish to talk to my sister, but I can’t, so I call you, and I can’t speak to you, so I call Gumshoe and finally feel as though I have a handle on the outside world, some semblance of control. I didn’t intend for him to be the first to know that I was still alive, but he’s the most valuable source of information that I have, and the most easily convinced to show discretion. Even now, he admires me. Respects me. Fears my rebuke. It’s comical, in a way- if only he could see me when I speak to him, pacing listlessly around a borrowed home, living a borrowed life on borrowed time, unkempt and unshowered and out of touch with everything right down to myself, my own body, my own mind. I’m not even half the man he is and part of me wishes he would realize it and the other part craves his continued attention, his reverence. Two ugly parts, one ugly whole. But I need him, even if it isn’t fair to him. So I call him. He’s the only one who knows how you’re doing.

Today, when I hung up on you, I called him. We spoke of nothing for a time, nothing important. Developments in my life have been rather lean, as you can imagine, so I let him drone on about this and that and the price of gas and the length of police reports and pretended it meant anything to me at all. And then when he was done, he asked me how I was doing. And I said, not very well. (I’m trying the truth out for a change, Wright, aren’t you proud?) And he said, after a moment, that he was sorry to hear that. Neither of us spoke for a moment. And then I said- and still, I’m not sure why, I don’t even believe that it’s true- that I wanted to come back.

He was supportive of the idea, of course. Bloviating about how “they’ve” missed me, how the prosecutor’s office needs me, and so on and so forth. I made my excuses, and he was disappointed. “We’d sure be glad to have you back, Mr. Edgeworth.”

Aren’t those things a person should want to hear? Instead I felt sick. He’s blinded by nostalgic affection for me, blinded to who and what I am, just as you were. Here’s the truth, Wright- I have no business standing in a courtroom. Just the thought of it makes me terrified. I can’t be trusted to do the only thing I’ve ever been trained to do, because the people who trained me to do it were corrupt, and they corrupted me. They twisted me into someone that my father wouldn’t recognize, someone he would have hated, and I’m terrified that I’ll never become something better. I don’t know how to extract a poison that’s sunk all the way down to my bones. How do you undo something that’s woven so tightly into the fabric of who you are?

I can’t come back, not as I am. And yet it seems like the window of opportunity to get rid of myself has come and gone. I am- inactive. Frozen by indecision, paralyzed by fear of figuring out what comes next. I’m afraid if I start looking inside myself I’ll find that my first instinct was correct, that there’s not enough left to salvage. That no matter how much I force myself to change, I will never be able to change enough to be worthy of standing across from you in a courtroom again, of facing you man to man, person to person. If there’s a road ahead of me, it is one of hard work and painful lessons. A demolition and a slow rebuild.

When I had finished speaking with Gumshoe, I thought about calling you back. Wondered how deep it would cut me to hear your voice again. But I didn’t. It had begun to rain and I stepped outside, and I stood there for a long time, battered by it, until I was soaked to the skin. I thought of a dream I had had about you, where you were still trying to save me.

You can’t save me, Wright, anymore than you already have. If I’m to be saved, it’s time for me to put in my lion’s share of the work. And yet it seems daunting, to the point of impossibility, to take the first step.

If I could let you swoop in and save me again, I would. I’m selfish and I’m scared. I don’t want to do this alone. And yet the only recourse I have is that you will never read these words I’ve written down; that you might never know the worst parts of me.

I hope you’re well.

- M.E.

[Saved to drafts at 06:52pm]

The recently back-in-business Wright & Co Law Office has been getting a lot of prank phone calls. Some people just can’t believe they’re speaking to a man who put a parrot on the witness stand, but most of the calls are nothing but bland, uncreative silence; a waste of time that stretches on for a few moments before the click and the dial tone. One could argue that they’re interfering with the office conducting business, but one could also argue that Wright doesn’t really want the business in the first place.

~~~

What is there to say, Miles? Here I am again, taking a night off for the first time in months and using it to write to someone who’s never going to respond. What’s wrong with me? Don’t answer that.

I have a miserable cold. My immune system just loves those. I was too dizzy to make it home and I can’t take pills without my throat closing up, so all I can do is wait it out at the offices. I still have trouble going into Mia’s office, too, so I’m holed up on the couch in the reception. What a piece of work I am, huh? So caught up in neuroses I can barely move.

Maybe that’s why I still can’t comprehend the fact that you’re gone. I saw her. I never saw you. When I see a mole at the corner of someone’s mouth my heart sinks, but when I pick out gray hair and a trenchcoat in a crowd it starts racing. I’m always disappointed when it turns out to be another old man on his way home from the office. Why do I still think you could be out there? Why can’t I shake it? You haunt me beyond rational thinking, Miles. Beyond reason.

Being back at work is good for me, I think. At least, it’s a hell of a lot better than sitting at home, staring at the ceiling and flashing through a million thoughts a minute. It’s good to have someone else’s problems taking up my attention for a change. Sometimes, when I have just enough cases to keep me busy, I can reach this—this perfect whirlwind of chaos, this all-consuming balancing act that lets me forget you for a little while. It makes me realize just how hard it is to remember you.

I just don't know what to do with you. You're not alive to me, and you're not quite dead. I'm angry at you beyond belief, but I love you. I miss you. Every time you come to my mind, it's like touching a raw wound. I don’t know how to balance the raw fury and the heavy misery all at once. The fact that I can’t move on from you is tearing me apart.

So I’m… I’m going to try to stop thinking of you for a while. I hope you’ll understand.

There’s so much I want to say to you in these letters—so much I’d rather say to your face as I shake you by the shoulders—but I know it’s not going to get me anywhere to keep stewing in these feelings. To keep writing to a dead man. Because you are dead—even if I can’t bring myself to believe it, I think I have to start saying it. I can’t live in denial like this forever. Maybe eventually, the idea will start to stick.

I need to focus on my work. On the people who are still here. I need to help as many of them as I can, no matter how much it takes out of me. Maybe I can save a few from going the same way you did, or maybe I can’t. I still have to try.

(So maybe it’ll take some running away, but call yourself a hypocrite if you’d look down on me for that.)

I love you, Miles. I always will, no matter how much distance is between us.

Phoenix

Phoenix’s office… Phoenix’s office is the city now. He does all his work in the streets, tracing the unseen threads of his cases as if he alone can see them shine clearly in the daylight. He takes all his calls on the run and wolfs down his lunches standing on street corners, eyes flicking between faces passing by, never not working. When he absolutely must, he collapses on a couch in his office or catnaps on a bench in a courthouse. Sometimes his smile loses its sheen as he raises his sickly, tired eyes to the skyline, but just as quickly he looks back down to the street and slips back into the crowd. There are people to see, places to go. Weights on his shoulders, eyes on his back.

~~~

[Unsent] (Subject: Phoenix)

Message body:

I woke up full of energy today, motivated and buzzing in ways that frightened me.

I wondered if today would finally be the day- if every day between now and the day I left was just a bit of borrowed time, and with this final burst of adrenaline I would finally put my initial plans into action. It was peculiar to realize that although that step no longer seemed exhausting, daunting in its difficulty, I simply found it- unappealing. I couldn’t stop thinking that there were so many other things I could do, instead.

So I did other things.

I fried an egg and ate it. I washed my clothes. And then I began to gather every bit of paper I had at my disposal; napkins and newspapers, magazine pages and receipts.

I don’t know if you’ll remember this- although you may, your memory seems sharper than mine when it comes to the days of our youth- but in school we were taught to fold paper cranes. As I recall, you took to it immediately, whereas I struggled immensely with the task. It seemed to me that my fingers were out of sync with my mind, that I couldn’t maneuver them the way I wanted to to replicate the intricate folds that came so easily to you. You showed me over and over again, patient in spite of my growing frustration, but I wouldn’t master the process until several years later. I practiced in private until I could fold one the size of a quarter with complete accuracy. Perfectly, just the way von Karma demanded everything to be, although I never would have allowed him to see me engaging in such childish and unproductive activities. And once I had mastered the ability, I was satisfied, and I ceased folding them out of any bit of paper I could lay my hands on. I haven’t folded one in years.

Until today.

The sense-memory, the ghost of all those cranes still left inside my fingers, came back to me nearly immediately, and so all of those napkins and newspapers, magazine pages and old receipts, have now become cranes of various sizes, scattered across every surface of my temporary home. I must have a papercut on every finger. And yet the energy inside me remains.

Tomorrow could be different, or the day after, or the day after. This may be the last reprieve I’m granted from what, until now, has seemed like endless emptiness, endless grief, endless fatigue. Or perhaps it won’t be. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be.

There are things I have to do, while I still have the drive to do them. I need help, and I don’t know where to find it. I need help in finding where to find help. I need to reconcile what it means to be a person in need of help. I need to decide if I can treat myself as a person deserving of that help.

And I need- case files, police reports, something, anything, from Gumshoe. I need your cases. I need to see your fingerprints on the future of our legal system, so I can believe that there is something for me to go back to. I need your tenacity and your faith, even if I’ve forfeited my rights to them. I need to earn them. I will earn them. I’ll earn you, a place in your landscape, the right to stand across from you in court.

I write this not as a letter to you, but as a reminder to myself, my tomorrow self, of the path ahead. When inspiration sparks, we must go on ahead. We can’t go back. We are no longer going back.

Phoenix- I will see you soon.

- Miles

[Saved to drafts at 4:51pm]

There is a sudden, peculiar uptick in the depth and accuracy of evidence and witness statements in the cases that Phoenix Wright defends in court. Though only barely noticeable, to an extremely meticulous observer, it would feel almost as though his cases are guided by a careful hand; one that never pushes, never plays its cards too plainly, but sifts through everything, separating grit from pearl before it ever reaches Wright’s hands. Only one confusing, careless incident slips through the cracks; inexplicably, tucked into a stack of crime scene photos, is an item not listed on any evidence sheet, unrelated to the case at hand: a technically perfect paper crane, folded out of the glossy cover of a foreign language magazine.

~~~

CONCLUSION

~~~

Seeing Phoenix Wright again is a blow that he expects. And a blow that he doesn’t.

There is Wright, in the police precinct, overhead fluorescents washing out the rich tones of his skin, flattening him, deepening the circles under his eyes. And yet it’s more than the lights; Wright is leaner, gaunter in the face. Wary and weary in ways that make Miles’ stomach turn. And his eyes, when he looks at Miles, are flinty and hard until the moment of recognition.

Then they flare. They blaze. And Miles is engulfed in the fire of Phoenix’s furious agony.

It would’ve been better for everyone if you never came back from the dead, Edgeworth!

And yet the show must go on. Time moves, rushes like a river. And they claim to trust one another but they don’t talk. And they don’t talk. And they don’t talk.

Those moments will come, later, wrapped in blankets of snow and strung between the hearts on playing cards. Stuck in the pages of passports and woven through the buttonholes of a waistcoat.

Wounds heal. Scars become memories. And some bodies stay buried.

~~~

There's a box of letters in Phoenix Wright's office. He kicks them into a corner of his closet and tries to forget about them.

Edgeworth looks... better. His sharp angles worn down somewhat, his bitter glare replaced with a steely firmness. Not quite healed enough to be reborn a different man, but far from the vengeful wraith he used to be. A fresh in-between, a step towards something new. It makes Phoenix irrationally angry with him for reasons he can't articulate.

Except to snap at Phoenix when he once implies that the words in his final note were less than truthful, Edgeworth doesn't talk about what happened after he left. Phoenix, stubborn as ever, doesn't ask him. They play a long, silent waiting game, trying to see whose will is going to crumble first, who will finally bring up the elephant in the room and start the cascade of arguments to follow. A game of poker with all their cards on the table, but their eyes resolutely pointed anywhere else.

Despite refusing to say a word, Phoenix loses anyway. Edgeworth leaves for Europe again. This time, he at least stops to says goodbye. Phoenix repeats it hollowly, watches him leave with a numbness in his fingers. No more letters this time. He promised himself.

There's a box of letters sitting in the Wright & Co. law offices. The paper has begun to wrinkle.

#ace attorney #narumitsu #wrightworth #miles edgeworth #phoenix wright

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