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Phoenix lands at MXP jacked up on bad airplane coffee and nerves. He's a soldier conquering new lands, hacking through dense wood and wading through marshland, both of these analogous to pushing through the hoards of people crowding International Arrivals and hunting down his suitcase. The WiFi is a pain to connect to, but he manages, and calls Miles Edgeworth while he marches the long road out towards the exit.
Miles picks up within a single ring. "Wright?"
"And here I thought you abandoned me. Where are you?"
"I'm waiting by the door."
"What door?"
"Wright," and he sounds so fondly exasperated that it makes Phoenix a little giddy, "I thought I was the one who needed glasses."
"What? Oh." He looks up. There are a lot of families, lots of kids chasing each other around, hyper and bored. He's about to say something more into the phone, maybe ask for him to wave or do a flip or something, when the part of his brain that takes care of pattern recognition kicks into overdrive at the sight of a familiar head of grey hair. "Oh! Got you!"
Miles, in the four years since the disbarment, has changed an awful lot. For one, he isn't standing like he has the world's biggest stick shoved up his ass, but rather, like something approaching the stance of a normal human being. There's a look on his face, a kind of gentle bewilderment that overall indicates he feels the world is a pretty okay place to be in today. He's also wearing (get this!) glasses, and a sweater vest under his traveling coat, no cravat in sight. He'd actually gotten the glasses something like two years ago and had acted like it was the end of the world as it was known for a little while, mostly because Franziska had teased him for it endlessly and relentlessly; but now they're as synonymous to his person as the idiot cravat which, again, is missing today.
Phoenix comments on this as they shake hands. "Hey, are you starting an OnlyFans or what? You're practically dressed in lingerie."
Miles drops the look of mild consternation in favour of a more standard-issue scowl, the kind of steely-eyed grimace Phoenix is used to seeing from him. "Do you get paid to speak like an imbecile, or do you do it—"
"For the love of the game," Phoenix grins. "But seriously, it's really good to see you again."
The scowl is reshelved. "It's good to see you, too, Wright. How was your flight? Here, give me your suitcase."
"The great Miles Edgeworth, my butler. The flight was fine, yeah. Bit of turbulence towards the middle. Lead the way?"
They catch up while they walk to whatever distant parking lot Miles has left his car in, taking care to stay under the awnings so they don't get soaked by the pouring rain. Miles asks carefully after Trucy so Phoenix tells him about her grades, the tricks she's been working on, how excited she'd been to go visit Pearls and her Auntie Maya in Kurain. In answer, Miles tells him about Franziska and the fierce personal struggle she's been locked in: "To Interpol or not to Interpol, I believe," Miles says, pushing his glasses up his nose in a manner that gives him a startling and unpleasant rush of déjà vu. "Ah, over here, Wright."
"Jesus," Phoenix remarks, peering down at his slightly-warped reflection in the passenger seat window. "You know, I was really glad when you said you'd gotten a new car. Personal growth, right? But I have to tell you, I think the old one was better than this. I can't believe I have to say it, but how is it pinker?"
Miles, heaving Phoenix's ratty old suitcase into the trunk, says, "Well, I wouldn't expect you to know anything about style. For God's sake, I don't have to take a single piece of criticism from the kind of man who wore that awful polyester suit for years—"
"Hey! That suit was comfortable, you know, and she served me well—"
"Functionality is only half the equation, Wright, and the other half is that items of clothing should look good." He gets into the driver's seat and then, when Phoenix makes no move to follow him inside, he looks at him over the top of his asshole glasses and suddenly Phoenix is twenty-one again, sitting in the advisor's office and promising her that yes, I really do want to change my major, and then he's stumbling into his first 1L Criminal Justice class and he's thinking, I can do this, I can do this for him. He's twenty-six and bawling into Maya's shoulder as the him in question all those years ago nods off on the couch, red-eyed after two consecutive international flights, Pearl and the soon-to-be newly-christened Trucy Wright asleep at his either side. He's twenty-eight and Kristoph is braiding his hair in Phoenix's bathroom, talking about something or the other, and all the while Phoenix is sitting on the closed lid of the toilet quietly compiling grocery lists in his head, remembering that he has to sign Trucy's permission slip, wondering idly at what Edgeworth might be doing in his stupid German penthouse and if he would spare him his voice if he were to call. He's nineteen and twenty-three and, oh God, he's going to be thirty in a few short months and it has to go away one day, right, this itch under his skin, the way that every bad sex scene in every movie reminds him of the tenseness in Miles Edgeworth's shoulders the first time they'd kissed? It'll go away soon. Any day now.
Miles reaches across the car to open his door for him. "Get inside, Wright," he commands, kingly, all rounded-out edges, gentle as an eddying stream. Phoenix gets in the car. They don't speak much over the course of the drive, but Miles takes his hand at some point and Phoenix lets him; this has to mean something, in the long run, but Phoenix is happy to let it go unscrutinized for now.
That night, Phoenix rolls over in Miles' tasteful, zillion thread count bedsheets and says, "Remember how we used to play murder in the dark?"
Miles blinks blearily at him, props himself up on an elbow. "No. Wait. I think so."
"In Larry's attic," Phoenix recalls. Miles' face is all soft planes, high cheekbones, a shadow in the middling dark. He looks like a prized racehorse. Phoenix doesn't want to be the one to put him down. "With those other kids. At his birthday party."
"And you were the murderer," Miles says, cottoning on. "And," he smiles, "you killed me."
"Foreshadowing for the end of this trip." Phoenix remembers the game really well, for no reason. It had been Larry's birthday in the middle of October, so he'd invited more than half of the class and they'd all sat in a big circle up in his attic where his parents kept a lot of instruments, lots of different kinds of guitars and a big harp and a grand piano. Phoenix had been the murderer and Louisa Ganer had been the detective, and Phoenix had stumbled up to where he thought he saw Miles and had genially wrapped his little kid hands around Miles' equally little kid neck, and Miles had let out a weird, squeaky shriek that had made everyone giggle. The point of the game had been to lie when questioned by the detective on if you were the murderer, but Phoenix hadn't been very good at it back then, so he'd been caught pretty quickly.
"Why do you ask?"
Phoenix shrugs, walks two fingers up the length of Miles' smooth arm, squeezes his wrist. "I was just thinking about it," he says. "Isn't that weird? We were both so young."
Miles' face slackens, but not in a way that indicates distress. "Children are generally strange."
What comes into mind then isn't another rosy picture of their childhoods, but rather, Trucy, and the way she'd used to hold his hand when they went to the supermarket, not as if she was afraid she would get lost, but rather like she was afraid that he would.
Those few years had been pretty okay. Sure, Phoenix had been disbarred and slumming through daily life, and sure he hadn't even known why things had happened the way they had yet, but they'd been, comparatively, pretty okay. Ignorance was bliss, or whatever the saying was. The people at the job-search office were nicer to him back then. Plus, he'd had a reason to go out and socialize because of the court-mandated new parents support group down at the local library — it had been mostly young couples, anyway, and the first time he'd introduced himself (Hey, I'm, uh, Phoenix Wright, my kid is eight) he'd gotten suspicious glares from basically everyone else in the circle, but it had been a nice excuse to get out. And all the librarians had loved Trucy, and she'd loved getting a fresh audience to perform for; so it had been a win-win situation overall.
"Yeah," he says. "Generally."
They'd started having sex somewhere around the second Transatlantic flight. Some might have called it overdue; Phoenix hadn't.
Really, it had felt like a natural step forwards from what they'd already been doing, spending their evenings with heads bent over the same laptop, drafting plan after plan and then shooting them all down, sometimes with Miles' clinical logic, sometimes with Phoenix's gut-feelings. Late at night; a little wine drunk; these things tended to go this way. At least, he knew that that was how they went around with Kristoph. What a moronic idea, Miles had muttered, and Phoenix had looked over at him, taken in the dead-eyed, logged-off, waxy kind of look to his face, but also the way his cheeks had rounded out, the way his hair had thickened.
He'd thought, Well, I would still fuck him, the fondness of the feeling only a little belied by its crassness. Not if it meant poison in his salad later, mind you; he had Trucy to think of now, and he knew even then that Kristoph was not of the sort to easily let go of what he considered his. But he realized that he still would, in a different way than he would have in college if, say, Miles Edgeworth, aged twenty and one, had shown up at the door of his two-student dorm and swooned into his arms, an image that had featured embarrassingly prominently in his late-night fantasies back then. Yeah, that kind of fantasy.
But he was all grown up now. He could make serious, adult decisions. So he'd put his hand on Miles' hand, and Miles had said, This isn't, and Phoenix had said, If you want it to be, and it had been almost stupidly romantic, or maybe it had just felt that way because all Phoenix had to compare to was Iris Hawthorne and Kristoph Gavin. Miles' hair was short and he was quiet and he was nice, and he moved his body like a newborn foal, like today was his first day with the ability to bend his knees and elbows and he just had to make it Phoenix's problem and Phoenix hadn't minded, really, and everything had been very clumsy and very warm.
And afterwards Miles had said, in his strange and overformal fashion, Thank you for coming to visit, Wright, and Phoenix had said, Don't call me Wright when you've just jacked me off, you complete freak.
In the present day, Phoenix is in Milan for all of a week and a half.
The first few days go by splendidly. Nominally he's meant to sleep in the guest bedroom, but he spends every night in Miles' bed despite that. Miles has taken a kind of semi-vacation for the entire trip's time, so he's only talking the ear of some poor, under-caffeinated intern off for two or three hours every day instead of the usual six. They eat breakfast together in the bright mornings, usually on the balcony, while Miles listens to the news on the radio like he's in the Dust Bowl or something. In the day, they make excuses to track over whatever incredibly puzzling case Miles just absolutely needed his help to solve. The cases are just the right side of puzzling enough. Last time, it was a locked-room murder of an American diplomat, and this time, it's a multi-city crime ring. It's kind of shocking how little the crime ring actually has to do with anything, because Miles always finds a way to steer him to tourist attractions under the very transparent guise of familiarizing him with the city.
They eat dinner at the apartment sometimes, and out other times; it's very different from getting dinner with Kristoph because he doesn't feel the need to psychoanalyze every word that comes out of either of their mouths any more than the usual amount of psychoanalysis he does on Miles Edgeworth. In the evenings they kiss, yes, and have sex, and he reads aloud to him from his books. They sit on his balcony again and look down at the city aglow beneath them and Phoenix says, This place is really beautiful, and Miles says, Yes, I thought so too.
Phoenix looks across the horizon, at the buildings tall and otherwise, hears the women cursing in Italian on the street below, the dogs barking madly at each other from opposite footpaths and he thinks how bad he would have liked to show Trucy this place. They're doing a pretty good job of not making each other upset. He doesn't see why he has to ruin it. But it's the kind of bruise you cannot help prodding, a toothache bolstered by the text message from Kristoph this morning, the first of the trip, a simple and innocuous So how are you liking Italy?
"Trucy would have liked it here," he says, seemingly apropos of nothing.
Miles looks over at him. Twilight is descending over the city like a duvet. A gentle wind ruffles his hair as he asks, "Oh?"
"Well, yeah," Phoenix answers, leans back in his chair with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie. "She's, you know— she would have liked to come."
"This is a business trip," Miles begins. Phoenix's anger, already riding so close to the surface these days, rears its ugly head.
"No," he says, tone amicable. "It's not."
"And your meaning?"
"I'm not stupid. You already know what the next step of the case is. You left your laptop open," he says by way of explanation.
Miles opens and closes his mouth a few times, like a goldfish, and then: "Why were you going through my emails?"
"I wasn't going through your anything. It was on the kitchen table, already open to the email. I basically only saw the header. Not hard to figure it out from there."
"Ah. I see."
"I mean, I'm sure you do. You know, I don't think you're stupid, but it's kind of hurtful that you treat me like I am."
"I don't think you're stupid," Miles says, clearly a bit wounded at this implication. Phoenix looks out across the city again. It's easy, he thinks, to be cruel. It's really, really easy.
Who cares? It's not like Edgeworth is a real part of his real life. His real life is in Los Angeles, checking his shift schedule at the Bowl, bending down to hug Trucy because she's too big to be swung up into his arms anymore and his back would hurt besides, pestering her about her homework, his real life is Kristoph's one-armed hugs and weird propensities for, frankly, bad wine.
Miles Edgeworth and his vague, unshakeable German accent and his straight back and the way he laughs when Phoenix kisses his cheek and the stubble scratches is all some big fantasy. Milan is a thick storybook he's opened to a random page, the page where, maybe, instead of clinging to his daughter like a lifeline, he never got a daughter at all; instead, he calls Miles Edgeworth after the disbarment and Miles whisks him away into a land of spacious and clean fairytale apartments, complete with long-overdue confessions of total and complete adoration. He hates this other Phoenix Wright, the one who took the easy way out, who never grew out of the stupid undergrad typing miles edgeworth into the Internet Explorer search bar.
"You kind of do," Phoenix says, taking care to keep his voice friendly. He's given up. He's feeding himself to the argument. Why not? None of this is real. Nothing they say counts. "I mean, never as a lawyer. Or, not never, but after the first two cases, after the Powers one, I think you stopped thinking I was stupid after that. But as a person, you do. Why don't you ever invite Trucy, Miles?"
Miles fixes the sleeve of his sweater. The atmosphere, previously so idyllic, sours further. "It's a school week."
"No it's not. It's Thanksgiving. Everyone's off."
Miles' mouth twists. "What do you want me to say, Phoenix?"
"What— I want you to tell me what it is you have against my kid!"
Miles turns to face him very fast. "I do not have anything," he says, and there's an edge of a familiar anger to his voice, "against Ms. Wright. It has been— four years. If I had, as such, an issue, I would have brought it up before asking you to come visit me across the Atlantic."
"Oh, sorry," Phoenix snaps, losing his cool a little. "I'll remember how good you are at open and honest communication the next time you leave a suicide note and fuck off. When you do it, I'll think, oh! He's not mad, he just needs some space."
He feels bad about this jab almost the moment it's out of his mouth. Mostly, though, he just feels pleased that it'll hurt.
"Wright," Miles says, a little helplessly, goal accomplished, "what in the world do you want me to say?"
"I want you to admit it. You think this is some— some fucked up von Karma situation. Well, it's not, and you're just—"
Miles, who'd gone kind of off-air when he brought up von Karma's name, stands up. He suddenly seems much taller than he actually is. "You," he snarls, "are a mendacious pig."
This makes Phoenix laugh. "Wow! Big word! Do you want a treat? Yeah, I am. So what? Some of us don't have the luxury of pretending otherwise. But you know what else? You chose me over every single one of your other contacts. What, you're telling me you didn't have a single other person you could call to fucking Milan on short notice? How about Lang? Lang would have been down for it."
"You don't know what you mean by that," Edgeworth warns, tetchy. He's probably right — Phoenix doesn't really know anything about Agent Lang, but he does know about their dalliance, and that's enough to be good cannon fodder.
"Sure I do," he bluffs. "So the evidence shows that you clearly didn't just want to get laid, you wanted to feel good about getting laid, so you thought to yourself, well, Phoenix doesn't have a life so I can call him over and wow him with my— my hot pink sports car, and, and French chocolates for his kid that I don't care about — don't think I don't notice that—"
Miles throws his arms in the air. "She's twelve! Phoenix, do try and consider why exactly I would think what I was thinking — and all things aside, I offered you my help!"
Phoenix hates him, for a moment. Lightning-strike furious. What the fuck does Miles Edgeworth know about any of it, really, with his teaching career and his truly alienating wealth; about the dinner plates stacked to the roof in the Bowl's kitchen, about the delayed paychecks, about the way he feels like puking every time Kristoph swerves his stupid silver Mercedes a little too close to the highway railing when it's pouring rain. About finding out that you can, in fact, do incredibly, unthinkably, unimaginably awful things, and it won't really matter to anyone because now he's just Phoenix Wright, arbitrator of a thousand mundane things, and he's sick of it. He's sick of it, and it isn't fair.
And he hates Miles because he's right. Fuck, there it is. He's on a different path now. Their roads have pretty obviously split. Edgeworth has rooms full of eager law students and their essays to grade, and Agent Lang's number in his private cellphone, a good job and a good salary, and Phoenix has Kristoph Gavin's blond hair on his sweaters. Kristoph — this whole situation is awfully familiar, isn't it?
Miles walks over to him. He says, something of his courtroom manner shining through: "You are not telling me something. You are keeping something important from me, Wright, and I am going to find out one way or the other; either you will tell me, or Ms. Fey will, or the news will, and when it happens, I will be— righteously upset."
"Yeah. You will. So maybe mind your own fucking business. I didn't ask for your stupid plane tickets." He says this because he knows that Prosecutor Edgeworth is really just a sham facade, and sure enough, something very subtly crumples in Edgeworth's face and it makes Phoenix feel good. Lets him know precisely what footing they're both on. "Your issues with her are my problem."
"Okay," Miles says. "Okay, yes, fine, let us pretend, for the sake of argument, if that is how you wish things to be: Do you honestly not understand how irresponsible it appeared to me, an outside observer, of you to keep her—"
Phoenix pokes him squarely in the chest. "And? And? She's my daughter, she's mine, and I love her a sure amount more than I do you. You don't just get to ignore she exists because it's more convenient for you to pretend like I'm the same."
"I never said that—"
"Oh yes you did. Oh yes you did, you craven, self-deceiving bastard, it's written all over your fucking face. And I know exactly what you thought when I told you I had her, and I know exactly what you're thinking even now. This isn't like that."
Miles grits his teeth. Phoenix honestly, honestly believes that he might throw his teacup at him, but instead he does something much worse: Wordlessly, he opens the glass balcony door and steps back inside.
Phoenix is left in the beautiful Italian night air to toe around what has just happened, what has just been said. A lot of it, if he thinks about it, is that he is angry for his younger self — Phoenix Wright, ace attorney, wheeling a bike home. Checking his email for the next case, the next client, always the next, the next, the next. And now he is in Milan, stagnant, and one of the few people in the world left who might have loved him despite it has just stormed off into his apartment.
What a mess. What a fucking mess.
Who cares?
Okay, fine. He does. He cares.
Maybe it was a bit of an asshole thing of him to do, to bring up von Karma and Lang, especially in the same fight. He doesn't care if Miles is seeing Lang. He doesn't care if Miles is seeing anyone. He doesn't care if Miles calls him tomorrow to let him know that he's found his dream hunk and they've just gotten married and also they're having three children and moving to the U.K. so they can ship all three of them off to Oxford when they're old enough for it.
Well, maybe he cares a little more. Years of convoluted nonsense only to get beaten to the punch by Shi-Long Lang waltzing merrily into the scene — and really, what does Lang have that he doesn't, right down to the exquisitely-shaped eyebrows? Maybe it's the wolf thing. Maybe he forgot to account for the wolf thing.
He thinks about this as he lies on top of the covers of his guest bed, window cranked open to allow in the breeze. Phoenix isn't really one to write dissertations on the fairness of life, but he does have to admit that there's something of a bizarre and theatrical narrative happening between both of their lives as they drift in reverse parallel to one another. Two icebergs at opposite poles.
Maybe it has something to do with how Edgeworth often references this or that work thing that Phoenix knows better than to ask about because it always devolves into him saying something nasty and unkind and Miles getting subsequently quietly offended, saying something that Phoenix would laugh humourlessly at, and how they then would again have to confront all the ways in which they were slowly yet surely growing apart. No amount of kissing during (probably ill-advised) sex could fix that.
The thing is— well. What is there even to say? He literally became a lawyer to save him. In that regards, mission done, right? Miles Edgeworth goes to therapy now, and his pragmaticism borders less on the completely maniacal, his default response to meeting new people isn't a solid veneer of arrogance, and he has pictures of people he likes hung up in his Berlin apartment: photos of the high school graduation of a bushy-haired girl he's never met, and photos of Franziska new and old, and more of the girl, sometimes on her own and sometimes with other people, and one of himself and Lang, and even one of himself and Phoenix, taken shortly after Iris' trial. Phoenix has a hand on his shoulder, laughing with the kind of nutty joy only someone sleep-deprived to hell and back can manage. He'd noticed that he still had his hospital bracelet on in it, when he'd seen it last visit.
All that to say, the old Miles Edgeworth would never have let someone close enough into his life to even get his picture taken with them, let alone gone through the trouble of ordering the photos and framing them; not even his own sister, not back then.
Miles is allowed to make connections, and grow, and— and all of it is happening while Phoenix hustles people at poker in the basement of a Russian restaurant and wheedles his preteen into helping him do it. It's a point of solid bitterness, that Phoenix did so much and then stood idly by while Miles Edgeworth let him believe he was facedown and water-bloated in some European river, and then dicked around in L.A. some more until he became the kind of person who could actually smile for normal reasons, like nice weather and good company, and not only when he made defense attorneys cry out in abject despair.
It isn't fair, is it? A lot of things aren't fair. He wasn't very fair when he said some of those things on the balcony. And Miles wasn't fair when he insinuated that this was a business trip. Miles wasn't fair when Phoenix opened his apartment door to him the day after the last adoption hearing to politely inform him that Yes, this is my daughter, and Miles had asked, Isn't that Zak Gramarye's daughter? and Phoenix had said, Mine, now, and Miles had looked from him to Trucy and then back to him and then he'd said: Are you sure this is a good idea? and his face had been pasted over with the same ashen-faced, tragic expression as when he'd taken Phoenix's elbow during State v. Edgeworth to quietly inform him that the lead prosecutor assigned to the case was the very same man who had fed and clothed and housed him most of his life.
There's two things that can be done now. Either Phoenix can slouch around in this room until his time's up and then go back home, like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs; or he can try and force some apologies out of the both of them. It's pretty damn hard to pick, when both of his options are so good.
Well. You couldn't ever accuse him of being inconsistent. He picks the apologies. He knocks twice on Edgeworth's door and waits patiently as there’s a great shuffling; and then, muffled: "Come in. I’m decent."
Phoenix swings the door open. The room looks the same as it looked this morning, and last night, and last last night, and so on. Same bookshelf. Same desk. It is an Airbnb, but it still has a distinct air of Edgeworthliness about it — something about the severe, unnatural way the bed is set. "You busy?"
"Clearly," Miles answers, even though he's just sitting on the bed. "What do you want, Wright."
"Look," he starts, shifting. The floorboards creak their dry protest at the movement. "I'm sorry."
"You don't get to say that to me right now," Miles says back to him, robotic. Phoenix silently curses the spectre of Miles' stupid therapist for introducing him to the concept of healthy boundaries.
"No, I mean— Okay, to make it clear, I'm not sorry for some of it. But I am sorry for bringing up, well, you know."
Miles shoves his glasses back up his face. "You have been Ms. Wright's father for four years."
"Did you only just figure that out?"
"In that time," he continues, as if Phoenix hadn't spoken, "you did not introduce me to her a single time. You know that I do not come around to the States very often, but when I did, you seemed more interested in picking petty fights with me and less so in acquainting me with the girl who you were now legally responsible for."
Phoenix's carefully-reconstructed patience starts to fray. "Your point?"
"My point is that in all these long years, you have never once reached out to me first. I asked you if you would like to come visit me in, ah, I believe it was Bavaria at the time, and you said no. When I went back to California to prosecute the Groff case, I asked if you would like to get some lunch and you informed me that you had prior obligations. For the entire two weeks' duration. I do not understand," and here he clutches at his arm in that same old mannerism, but continues speaking in a tone that indicates that he has practiced this speech in the mirror and will now deliver all of it, come hell or high water, "what it is that you want from me that I have not already offered to you.
"I was— overjoyed when you propounded your ideas on the Du Lac affair. Even more so when you accepted my renewed invitation to come consult in person. I know that I hurt you— very badly, in our youth. I have apologized, and I have meant it sincerely each time. But I feel as if I have made amends. So you will have to forgive me for the crime of hiding from you that the Conti crime ring is not quite as complex as I made it seem; you will have to forgive me for the crime of wanting to see my— friend."
Phoenix watches him for a long moment. Miles goes awkward under the weight of his gaze, as he is wont to do, but he doesn't break eye contact.
Finally, Phoenix says: "It's not a von Karma thing."
"You keep saying that," Miles answers stiffly, "as if you are trying to convince yourself of it."
"I love her a lot."
"I did not doubt that after the first month, no."
"She's my daughter."
"I know."
"Sorry."
"I know."
They lapse back into silence. Is he sorry? Maybe. But he also cannot quite shake the memory of the face Miles made, wholly unintentional, the way the corner of his mouth had curved, the way his eyebrows had furrowed. Yes, this is my daughter. Are you sure this is a good idea? As if anything was a good idea. As if leaving a suicide note and then tactlessly walking it back was a good idea. As if pretending to be on the opposite side of the bench because the defense attorney you had a conflict of interest with broke a few bones falling off a burning bridge was a good idea. As if kissing your childhood best friend while also having a weird thing with the man who framed you was a good idea. Lots of great ideas all around, between the two of them.
Miles says: "It is not what you think, between myself and Agent Lang. Not any longer."
Okay. Now Phoenix feels bad. "I didn't really mean it. I don't care if you— I don't care."
"You do, though. I understand that what is between us is not—" he casts around for the right word. "Serious." That was definitely the wrong one. The two of them have never been anything if not serious. "Did you want me to— to ask you first?"
Phoenix snorts. "I'm not your dad. Date whoever you want."
"Then do not speak on matters you do not understand, next time. What Lang and I had was nice. But it was casual, and now it is over in that regards."
Phoenix leans against the door frame, tugging at a loose thread in his pocket. "I understand that you deserve to be happy."
The ceiling is kind of low and the bed is tucked into an alcove, so he nearly hits his head on it as he gets up. "Wright," he begins. Gestures raggedly between them. "There seems to have been a misunderstanding, somewhere along the line. I do not know what you— what I thought this was, but—"
Phoenix laughs, a bit more caustic than intended. "I'm not asking for you to play house with me. You're not my other woman."
"Don't make a joke of it," Miles says.
"I'm not. Like," and, oh, he's really underprepared for this situation. If he'd known they'd be getting so deep into the whole feelings thing, he would have made up a mystery illness and stayed in L.A. "I was pretty fucking in love with you. Even during State versus Skye. I mean, I had other stuff on my mind, but it was there."
Miles blinks at him, owlish. "This isn't about you wanting me. Or the inverse."
"It must be pretty nice, to think about what I want. You get to do that because you have friends and a nice car and money."
"Don't make it about that," Miles says wearily.
"It is about that. I've been busy."
Miles doesn't answer, just starts fixing his sheets in a very mechanical fashion. First the fitted one, then the real one. He shakes out the blanket and then clambers into it. He looks over at Phoenix and hesitates before patting the empty space next to him in invitation.
Well. He might as well, right? He walks over, gets under the covers. It's properly dark out now. The curtains are drawn imperfectly, and so a thin line of moonlight cuts across Miles' face, over the crooked bridge of his nose. It's warm. It's nice. Phoenix wants. He wants to swipe the moonbeam off his face like a speck of dust, wants to put Miles Edgeworth up on his shelf where he will remain timeless and waiting.
He wants to tell Miles about the dead squirrel he found outside his apartment as he left for LAX, how sad it had made him. He wants to tell Miles about Kristoph and Kristoph's secret that's not really a secret, not to Phoenix; wants to tell Miles that while Miles was being romanced by Agent Lang, Phoenix had been digging a grave for two. He wants to tell him that he's sorry for his distance but everything is so hard now: friends, work, waking up. Wants to tell him that if it weren't for Trucy, he doesn't know where he would be. Wants to tell him that he's been ignoring Maya's calls, too. He doesn't say any of it.
"We could try," Miles says softly.
"Try what?"
"Being," he says, pauses. "Being."
"Would you want to?"
Miles studies him. "Would you have wanted to, if I had asked sometime around the Skye case?"
"I don't think either of us would have been good for it, then."
"Right now is like then. Like that hypothetical us."
Miles reaches out his hand. Phoenix takes it. Phoenix says: "I think we did try. I think that this is us trying. I don't think it's working."
Miles nods. "That's okay."
"We tried, right?"
"I did. Did you?"
"Yeah. I guess I just always thought that you would stay the same, after you came back from— after you came back. I thought that we could, when you were ready for it. But when you were ready for it, I wasn't. I would— I have to make it clear that I'm always going to pick Trucy over you."
Miles smiles. It's sad, but it's sincere. "Then you are a good father. I would not wish it be any other way."
Phoenix squeezes his hand. "At least we can say that we gave it a shot. A lot of people can't."
"Yes," Miles says, and he looks so tired, awash in exhaustion; Phoenix feels, terribly and distinctly, like he is making a terrible and distinct mistake. Total comedown. It goes like this. A lot of things go like this. Right person, maybe, wrong time. It's so— trite. So overdone. Every B movie and every discount paperback has this plotline. It's a lot less silly when it's actually happening to him in real life. He thinks Miles would have liked Trucy, if they ever really got to meet. He thinks he would have gone to her magic shows, and clapped at every trick. No way to know. He's kept Trucy like a pearl. There's too much out there that would love to get its claws in her — it all points towards one man in particular. He feels another surge of that complicated wanting. "After you leave, when will I get to see you again?"
"I don't know," Phoenix answers truthfully.
Miles closes his eyes.
When Phoenix wakes up in the watery light of morning, Miles is already gone. His side of the bed is made up precisely. He stumbles into the bathroom and sets himself right: showers, dries his hair and forgoes the beanie, dresses. He thinks hard about what he wants to say.
They could avoid each other, but the apartment isn't that big. And he's going to have to tell, eventually. Miles had all but said that he suspected something on the balcony. He comes to a conclusion. Then, he follows the smell of coffee to the kitchen, where Miles is clacking away at his laptop as if trying to distract himself from last night's mess with the soothing sounds of efficiency. He's glaring down at the screen with the kind of expression that suggests the pixels have themselves done something to personally offend him.
"It was Kristoph," Phoenix says by way of greeting.
Miles looks up, blinks. "I'm sorry?"
"Who framed me," Phoenix elaborates, and pours himself some espresso from the shiny, chrome coffee machine. "I was framed, and it was Kristoph."
Miles closes his laptop screen. He looks at Phoenix. "Kristoph Gavin?"
"Yeah."
"The man you're always having dinner with?"
"I only know one Kristoph Gavin."
"And you're sure?"
"As sure as I'm sure that the sky is above us and not underneath."
Miles rubs the side of his nose absentmindedly, fiddles with his ballpoint pen as Phoenix makes himself some toast and spreads it with stupidly expensive and stupidly delicious fig jam. He re-opens his laptop screen and does some more furious typing while Phoenix eats and sips at his coffee, slow and methodical. When he's done, he looks up and says: "Let's go out. No investigating. Just, out."
Phoenix shrugs. "Sure."
They drive out to the middle of the city, to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. They walk around for a while and then stare up at the giant arch, reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe, which Phoenix saw during the Du Lac affair. They walk down from there, through the thin and beautiful streets. The sun is bright and warm. Miles talks idly as they meander, not about anything important; little things, like what to get Franziska for her upcoming birthday and the headaches he's been getting from the German Public Prosecutor General. They link arms and move with the crowds of tourists and locals. Normal things, like normal friends do and talk about. There's lots of skinny, quaint apartments and lots of cafes, and lots of old people sitting outside of the cafes, sipping at truly miniscule thimbles of coffee. They pass ancient church after ancient church, and the sites of ancient churches now long-gone, opening out to historical homes and museums and art galleries and a grand and imposing opera house. This is more Phoenix's scene and he cracks open his mental book of Italian art history fun facts, to Miles' delight.
Further along: a park with wide open footpaths and lots of greenery, big trees, and a castle somewhere off in the distance. Lots of people walking their dogs and walking each other. Phoenix lines his steps up with Miles' so that they march in step, for the first time since, well, probably since they were kids, weirdly enough.
He finds himself thinking about Kristoph, the round frames of his glasses, the soft length of his spider silk hair. When he looks up, they've reached a little bridge that arches over another footpath. They've spent almost all day walking around and it's getting to be late afternoon, the sun an egg's yolk in the sky. Miles leans against the ornate wrought-iron railing of the bridge and looks briefly terrifically handsome and like something he could reach out and touch — he realizes, in an odd and stunted way, that he can, so he raises a hand and puts it to the base of Miles' skull, to the place where his grey haircut ends.
"Wright," Miles says.
"Edgeworth."
Miles does not move to shrug away his hand but Phoenix drops it anyway, swinging it uselessly before shoving it into his pocket. His skin tingles. Miles pushes his bangs out of his eyes and then finally broaches the subject that has clearly been nagging at him all day. "How long have you known about Gavin?"
Phoenix tips his head upwards to peer into the sky, as if the clouds might reshape to give him the perfect solution to all his problems. He wants a drink, but he's trying not to do that anymore, and besides, if he drinks they're going to fight like territorial street cats and ruin things beyond any hope of repair. "After two years. September. I think he must have wanted me to know."
Miles looks down at the joggers on the lower pathway. "I can raise a case against him. If you were able to figure it out, surely his crime is not so perfect — there must be some evidence, some witness."
Phoenix grabs at his arm, shocked by the sudden onset of the panic constricting his throat. This is why I didn't want to tell you, he wants to yell, but that would be— unthinkably cruel. "You can't."
Miles raises his eyebrows in vague alarm. "Why not?"
"I— listen, you just can't, okay?"
Miles takes Phoenix's arm in turn. "Phoenix," he says, slowly, like Phoenix is a very small child who's been begging to plant his palm on the burning side of an iron, "he could go to jail for this. Three years, minimally, if he forged evidence like I suspect he did. More importantly, you could get your badge back—"
"Do you think I don't know that?" Phoenix asks desperately. "Miles, you don't know him like I know him. He knows people — he'll have you disbarred. He'll have your name dragged through the mud. You don't know him like I do. I was a good lawyer, okay? I was a damn good lawyer. But I was soft on my clients. I defended practically every one of them for pennies. You're a good lawyer, too, but you work for the state and Kristoph built his office from the ground up. He's a good lawyer, and he charges an arm and a leg. He got TelCorp off, do you remember?"
"Yes," Miles says, "but I don't understand—"
"He'll do something," Phoenix continues. He's exhausted. He's running on fumes, has been for years. "To you, or to Trucy, or— I know you think that I'm cold but—"
"I see." He does seem to; he's looking at Phoenix like he's seeing him for the first time. Helpless, he asks, "Wright— Phoenix, why in the world did you not tell me this sooner?"
There is a loathsome, cringing part of Phoenix that wishes he had. The moment he figured it out, he wishes he'd dialed Miles up and had him pull some strings from the other side of the world, strings that would supplant him firmly back into his old life, a life in which Maya could still visit him for weeks on end when she wasn't training so hard, where they could go out to the carnival with Pearls and Trucy together, where he could be at Miles' level and tell him in all honesty that he loves him very deeply, and does he love him back? He didn't. He can't. There's too much at stake. "I just couldn't."
Miles' mouth does something small and knowing. Something that says, I understand. It makes Phoenix feel positively wretched. "You can come here," he says. "To Europe. With Trucy Wright. I can get us a bigger apartment in Berlin. There is a good school near where I live." But he doesn't really mean what he's saying, and Phoenix knows it. Not because he wouldn't, Phoenix knows he would, now, in a heartbeat, if that was what Phoenix asked of him. But because the both of them understand that there are bigger cogs in motion than the two of them. There's always more work to be done and the task looming before them is gargantuan, a solar eclipse — total restructure. He thinks about the small notebook in which Miles has written down all of their grand ideas for what is quickly becoming known as the dark age of the law. He is so, so fond. He is so, so fucked.
"You know," Phoenix says softly, "what I'm going to say."
Miles doesn't answer, just drags his hand down Phoenix's arm to take his hand in his own warm, dry hand. He asks: "Are we still trying?"
A brief memory: Miles in his hospital room during State v. Hawthorne turned State v. Hawthorne (???), evening, when he'd thought Phoenix was passed out high out of his mind on codeine — a reasonable assumption, because that was what he'd spent a lot of time doing in that room. He'd only been partially passed out, anyway, and Miles had taken his hand and he'd said, very quiet and uncharacteristically meek, Phoenix, I could really use your help right now, and then he'd been silent until the nurse had kicked him out.
Phoenix answers: "Yes." He's halfway to believing it, this time around. He looks up again at the sky, and the sun winking lazily at him from close to the horizon. Life with Miles is nice. Italy is nice. He likes how his and Miles' heights are almost the same, likes drinking a regular amount of good wine together, and, despite everything, does actually like driving around long, tree-hemmed roads in his idiot sports car. He likes that Miles is always lamenting Franziska's penchant for smoking when stressed, and he likes that he does actually bother to send Trucy French chocolates. He likes having sex with him, likes putting his hands on his hips and his thighs and his smiling cheek. He likes finishing him off and he likes falling asleep after, tangled up in sheets that smell like Miles' expensive cologne. He likes to imagine that they could go to other cities, places like Firenze, where they could eat lampredotto sandwiches, or else Montalcino and its Brunello, or Radda in Chianti. And he likes thinking about Miles fitting himself neatly into his and Trucy's lives. He knows Trucy would be happy for him, at the very least, and just plain happy. They could go to the Golden Gate Bridge, a place he's never seen despite having had lived in California all of his life. "Let's get dinner," he announces.
The sun sets quickly but they find a way out of the truly massive park and duck into a nice restaurant, all burgundy and brick, the most stereotypical eatery possible. They order trout almondine with green beans, and Miles carefully stresses to the waitress in over-practiced Italian that he has a bell pepper allergy, quindi per favore nessuno di questi, grazie, grazie. The waitress is very genial and seems to think they are a couple, which is the easiest assumption to allow someone to make about the two of them. They play footsie under the table like they're fifteen.
Their food is delivered and they eat and talk and sip at Sancerre like the world's worst sommeliers, and then they thank the waitress profusely and strike out to find Miles' car. It's a good hour's walk away and they carry on the dinnertime conversation as they go, a halfheartedly-heated debate about how good Italians are at telling Americans from Germans from Frenchmen. They drive home, yawning wide, and kick off their shoes, worm out of their clothes and stumble into bed and Miles says, I would like to try again with you, and Phoenix says, I'm not making any promises, which is, in and of itself, a promise. They fall asleep caught up in each other's limbs, which is distinctly not Miles Edgeworth's style, but Phoenix is due to leave soon; he can understand that he might want to give into his baser desires. Everyone is entitled a vice or two.
He wakes up sometime around 1:43 AM, or at least, this is what the digital alarm clock on the side table informs him. He reaches blearily out and his arm connects with Miles, who is sitting up, and— he blinks. Miles is sitting with his forehead pressed firmly to his bare, knobbly knees, and his shoulders are shaking like he's laughing, laughing so hard that the only noises he can squeeze out are short, wheezing gasps.
Oh. "Oh," he says, tongue thick in his mouth, voice raspy with suddenly-shed sleep. He sits up and hovers his hands vaguely around Miles' back. "What do I—"
He doesn't do anything in the end, just smooths his hands down Miles' back like he's some kind of agitated horse.
Nothing between them, Phoenix knows, counts, or at least, doesn't count anymore. They've seen the Duomo and ogled the Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie, hands in each other's pockets like any other normal couple with zero weird problems. Phoenix knows: every single fucking thing about Miles Edgeworth. He's an expert. He could write a PhD, if he were of the type to get a PhD, and if they offered those in Edgeworthology. He's seen him fail and at his worst, he knows exactly what cocktail of antidepressants he takes, knows the way his eyes move when he sees his sister's name on his newsfeed, knows he's only broken a bone once in his life, and that it was his nose, and it happened thanks to said sister, and he knows the names of each of the two people he's ever had sex with. He knows what it's like to kiss him, and what it's like to defend him in court. He knows Miles was lying when he said the thing with Lang was casual, and he knows he was only saying it to spare his feelings. He knows Miles Edgeworth has never believed in God, and he knows that von Karma did, and he knows that Edgeworth gradually filled in the space most people filled in with God with von Karma. He knows him better than almost anyone, better than his old, dead guardian. Not better than Franziska, but he likes to think that he's close to the line she's drawn.
And anyway, now he knows what Miles Edgeworth looks like with his head on his knees, shuddering through the last dredges of a panic attack. That has to be, he thinks mildly, at least one point over on the junior von Karma daughter. When he's sure his breathing has petered out into something approaching normal he says, "Well, shows what you know. No more nightmares my ass," and this makes Miles let out a keening, desperate sort of laugh. "That's not funny, Wright," he says, except that it kind of is.
"What was— was it a nightmare?"
"Obviously," Miles says, deeply cross.
"I didn't realize that you still—"
"Obviously," Miles snaps, feels bad for it, gets pliant. "I apologize for my tone."
"That's okay. Is it the same one as before?"
"No, they're... more abstract, now. And less frequent," he adds.
Phoenix thinks on this, hands still making rhythmic circles between Miles' shoulder blades. "Listen, it's not my place to say, but go up to the stupid mountains or something, kick at his grave a little, I don't know. Treat it like a fucking metaphor if you have to. Start keeping a diary. Call Franziska. I don't know."
"That's not funny," Miles repeats, but his heart really isn't in it. They both lapse into silence. Finally, Miles says: "Bring Ms. Wright, next time."
"Don't be an asshole. I'm trying to be nice to you right now."
"I'm serious," he says, forehead still planted firmly on his bare knees. His voice is muffled but it is steady. "Bring her. We will go to— we will go down by the water. The water is nice. Has she ever had truffles? The Italians are obsessed with their truffles. I met a truffle farmer once, you know, he didn't use pigs because they usually eat the things before they can be properly uncovered. And," he's babbling a little by this point, filling in the silence Phoenix is working very hard to cultivate, "I'm sorry, Phoenix, but you must understand that I had my reservations, and it was wrong of me, but you must understand—"
Phoenix takes pity on him. "I know. I was just mad at you."
Miles heaves a sigh, and is calmer. "I am sorry if I have offended you."
"I guess," Phoenix says, "that that makes us pretty equal." Unthinking, he pulls Miles into a one-sided hug. "Let's try again."
Miles says: "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"No. It's probably not. But I want to." His hand drifts again up into Miles' hair. "Let's try again. For real, this time. Now that you know the long and short of it."
He can hear the smile in Miles' voice when he says, "That certainly took you long enough to come around to."
Things are mostly okay after that. Not with Kristoph. Things only get worse in that regards. But him and Miles Edgeworth — they're steady. And Miles kisses his cheek in a fumbling goodbye as he makes to leave for the plane, and that's nice, too.
Months later, Phoenix gets off the plane at MXP for the second time. When he'd booked the ticket he'd asked Miles maybe a hundred times, The same one as last time, right? Right? mostly because he knew that this would annoy him endlessly; and it had, because he'd grit his teeth in the usual Edgeworthly fashion and had said, Yes, Wright, surely you can recall, and now he's here, Trucy yanking at his hand to encourage him to walk faster because Our suitcases, Daddy!
They find their way out of International Arrivals and discover Miles hovering uncertainly by a pillar. There's less people this time because the flight was a late one.
"Hello," he says, unsure and trying to pull his mouth into some semblance of a smile.
"Hi," Phoenix grins. "Miles, I would like you to formally meet my daughter, Trucy Wright."
"Hello." Miles bends down slightly to greet her, teetering and awkward and nice. "My name is Miles Edgeworth. We did not make one another's acquaintance, previously. I am a, a friend of your father's." He puts out his hand for a handshake, which makes her smile wide.
"Hello, Mr. Edgeworth!" Trucy says brightly, shaking his hand with a bit more vigour than it seems Miles was anticipating. "I know who you are! Daddy talks about you a lot!"
"Okay, Truce," Phoenix intervenes, "let's not tell Mr. Edgeworth everything just now, okay?"
Trucy beams. "Sure thing!" To Miles: "Hey, what's that behind your ear?"
Miles raises a hand to his ear self-consciously. "What do you mean?"
"No silly, the other one," she says, and reaches out and produces a whole chocolate bar from seemingly thin air. "Ta-da!"
"Oh," Miles says, and then grins in turn. "Well— how'd that get there?"
"Magician's secret," Trucy shrugs.
Phoenix smiles into his hand. In the coming days he will watch Miles with his pants carefully rolled up to the knees, helping Trucy fish for seashells in the glittering blue waters of the Cala Coticcio. He will, over dinner, regale her with the tale of the Andalusian jewel thief, and Trucy will, in the following months, refuse to stop begging for retellings of the tale of the Andalusian jewel thief; he will snap the chocolate bar into thirds and give most of his piece to her when she asks. They will walk along the beach, shoulders knocking together as Trucy runs ahead of them, all wild glee, the kind of unrestrained kid she doesn't get to be at home. By the end of the two weeks, Trucy and Miles will be inseparable.
It makes something strange ache in Phoenix's chest, knowing this. Part of it is that he knows that this is just a vacation, really, and the more Trucy likes Miles, the more she will miss him when they have to go. He understands that loss because he feels it a lot, almost every day. And part of it is that he is used to keeping Trucy in his shadow and it is strange, to have to shed that cover, to allow her to be her full and total self in a way that he cannot afford to let her be around Kristoph Gavin. She's just a kid; the smartest kid he knows, has ever known; but her chin still wobbles when they have to say their goodbyes.
Things continue on in this way. Trucy starts working at the Wonder Bar, switches the colour of her cape because she says a rebrand attracts more customers, but Phoenix has seen her looking contemplatively at his old suit and therefore knows this for the bluff it is. Miles gets promoted, and then promoted again. The visits start going short, and long-awaited; but there's a lot of phone calls, and Mr. Edgeworth gradually morphs into Uncle Edgeworth, and Ms. Wright gradually morphs into Pink Princess. There's lots of whispered We're so close. Lots of Any day now.
Three more years pass them by.
And then, any day happens.
"Miles," Phoenix says, into his real phone, not the stupid burner. "Miles—"
Trucy yanks the phone out of his hands. "UNCLE MILES!" she shouts. (Phoenix pictures Miles cringing away from the speaker, and the twin smile that must be blooming on his face, how he must have heard by now, even though Kristoph Gavin's formal trial ended literally an hour ago.) "Mr. Gavin has been officially found guilty on all counts of ruining Daddy’s life! Come here right now!"
"Okay, okay," Miles says from the other end. "How could I say no? But at least let me get to the airport first, my dear."
It is a long wait. It is, perhaps, the longest wait; seven years is nothing compared to these few hours. They loiter at LAX Arrivals and get less than the usual amount of weird looks because they are in an airport and also Phoenix is dressed nice, in jeans and his best button-down, mostly shaved except for the shitty moustache, which he's kind of fond of by this point. They're practically out of their heads with anticipation.
"Oh," Trucy says, taps at his elbow. "Daddy, look—!"
Phoenix looks. He sees: a familiar black traveling coat, and luridly pink luggage, a head of grey hair.
Miles Edgeworth comes to stand before them. His hair is a little askew and his clothes are wrinkled from the distance of the flight. Phoenix swallows, says: "Well, I guess all that trying really paid off in the end, huh?" His voice is a bit rough around the edges.
"Wright," Miles says, and he is so, so fond; "Do you get paid to speak like an imbecile?"
"It's all for the love of the game!" Trucy crows, and tackles him in a crushing hug.
Yeah. It was pretty worth it. He wouldn't do it over again, okay? Not for any of their lives — but things worked out okay. He wonders, recklessly, if this is a bad time to propose, and reasons against it.
Some other day. There will be other days. Lots of other days. He's almost lightheaded in the face of it. "Trucy," he says, and his voice still won't come out right, a little wobbly towards the middle, but it's fine. A man can get some slack. "You could hug me, too, you know?" And this makes both Miles and Trucy laugh, and wordlessly, he shuffles into their embrace.
Pretty worth it.