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~~~ HIGH PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE ~~~
Miles sat in his office. Alone.
I got so sick of being on my own
He kept his eyes fixed on the grain of his desk. He didn’t want to look up at the empty room.
But he wasn’t really alone, now was he?
Now the devil won’t leave me alone
The ghosts are there, a silent tribunal from which there is no appeal. Gregory Edgeworth. Manfred von Karma. Beneath them, a ledger of the innocent lives he dismantled. They demand a reckoning he cannot give.
He held the pen, his fingers tightening until his knuckles turned the color of chalk. The nib hovered over the paper. His hand trembled. He couldn’t write a word.
It’s almost like I’ve found a friend
Who’s in it for the bitter end
He couldn’t look up. If he did, he knew he’d imagine Phoenix Wright’s face.
Wright. That relentless imbecile who had pursued him across a span of fifteen years with the stubbornness of a zealot. A parasite upon his conscience. A man utterly incapable of relinquishing the phantom of Miles Edgeworth—the nine-year-old boy who had been naive, hopeful, and who hadn’t killed his father yet.
Wait, no. Who did not kill his father. Ever.
The correction rose in his throat, bitter as bile. For fifteen years, he lived a lie constructed by his own father’s executioner. And he didn’t scrutinize it once. Yet Wright, in his infinite, idiotic blindness, had looked upon the wreckage and decided he was a soul worth saving.
Goddamn Phoenix Wright. Goddamn him and his absurd crusade.
Miles had been perfectly fine before Wright inserted himself back into his life without invitation. His existence had been structured, predictable, and entirely manageable. He understood the rules of the dark he inhabited. Then Wright barged in without asking and ripped open the seams of Miles’ life, dragging him kicking and screaming into a light he was never equipped to survive.
Our consciences
Are always so much heavier than our egos
It ought to have been self-evident. The realization twisted like a knife in his gut, an indictment of his own willful blindness. Even before Phoenix unearthed the truth of DL-6, the evidence of his own nature was entered into the record by his own hand. He had voluntarily jeopardized a prosecution—thrown a case entirely—to wring the truth. He had already committed the ultimate von Karma sin: caring for something other than a flawless verdict. He had cared for justice.
Justice. The truth. God, the truth was a brutal, flaying instrument. Especially the truth of his own life. Phoenix showed Miles that his entire life had been a lie. He had built his career and moral philosophy on a foundation of absolute rot. What, then, was he expected to do with the debris? How was he to look another human being in the eye now? How was he to look at his own reflection?
I set my expectations high
So nothing ever comes out right
Miles brought both fists down on the desk. The impact shook the inkwells and sent a bruising ache up his forearms. He did it again, harder, wishing the wood would splinter, wishing his bones would break. If his hand were crushed, if his skull were fractured, maybe his ears would stop ringing.
He had tried to be a perfect prosecutor. Before that, he had wanted to be a defense attorney like his father. He failed at both. No matter what path he took, he ended up causing damage. He couldn’t exist without ruining lives.
So shoot a star on the boulevard tonight
A drawer screeched open. A half-empty bottle of expensive scotch was yanked out. No glass. Fingers dug into the neck as he brought it to his lips. The liquor bloomed like a dark fire in his stomach.
I think I’ll figure it out with a little more time
He couldn’t look anywhere without feeling sick. He couldn’t see his own reflection without seeing Von Karma’s shadow. Or his father. How disappointed he would be.
The only logical choice was exile. He needed to disappear.
But who needs time?
The pen finally touched the paper. The ink flowed smoothly, cutting through the silence of the room with a sharp, scratching sound.
The Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death.
~~~ WRIGHT & CO LAW OFFICES ~~~
The office had never felt so empty. The desk where Maya used to sprawl out, now bare. Her laughter no longer bounced off the walls. She was gone.
And so was Miles. Phoenix scoffed. Miles. His fake friend who made him believe there was something good inside him, something other than his ego. His “friend,” the coward, who ran away from the truth even when that truth was that he was fucking innocent. His “friend” who abandoned him after he fought tooth and nail to pull him from his own gallows and save him. And he had saved him.
Fall to your knees and kiss the ring
The crowd’s rejoicing
He could still hear the roar of the gallery. He could still feel the vibration of the judge’s gavel coming down, declaring Miles Not Guilty. He remembered standing behind the defense bench thinking he had accomplished the impossible. He had saved his best friend. Things were going to be better. Miles could finally breathe. They would find the boy from fourth grade together.
They had all shared that joy—Phoenix, Maya, Gumshoe, and Miles. They had stood in the hallway, smiling. Phoenix could have sworn on his life that the warmth in Miles’ eyes had been real.
All of my dreams
Wake up to despise a world I once loved
But now the office was dead silent. Maya had left for Kurain. Miles had chosen death. Phoenix woke up every morning, staring at the ceiling until his eyes bled, realizing that the law, the truth, and whatever his fucking optimism was for didn’t mean a damn thing. Everyone he cared about disappeared.
Why would you bring me in
If you knew what you’d become?
Why did Miles let him in, even for a moment? During the Powers trial, when Miles had pushed his own fears aside to help Phoenix corner the true culprit, Phoenix had seen him. Really seen him. And then they took Chief Gant down together. He had been so certain that the old Miles was still alive inside him.
Miles had given him that hope. He had let Phoenix fight for him, shared his nightmares, allowed Phoenix to defend him, worked with him to find the truth. Why would he do such a thing just to run away and prove to the world that he was exactly the monster everyone said he was? If Miles knew this was his truth all along, he should have kept his damn walls up instead of giving Phoenix a reason to believe in his purpose.
So curse everyone and everything
Even the sun
He hadn’t taken a case in months. Life felt pointless. He hated the sound of people walking outside. He hated his badge. The morning light coming through the window just irritated him.
~~~ BERLIN ~~~
Turn off the lights, turn off the lights
The rented flat in Berlin was stifling. Miles sat in a hard chair, the curtains drawn tight. The dark was a mercy. In the dark, he didn’t have to look at his hands and count how many innocent people he had sent to prison or killed. How many people he’d disappointed.
The weight of his own skin felt unbearable. Every breath took too much effort. He hated the precision of his own mind, hated the way it recorded every failure, every forged piece of evidence he had turned a blind eye to, every time he had chosen victory over human life. He was a fraud. A sycophant dressed in tailored ruffles.
He needed his brain to stop working. He needed it immediately, before the walls started closing in entirely.
Turn on the charm for me tonight
He needed to find a dim, loud bar where nobody spoke his language and nobody cared about the concepts of guilt or innocence. He needed a warm body that didn’t hold a single expectation of him. He needed a stranger to press him into a mattress and fuck the agonizing internal monologue straight out of his skull.
He grabbed a dark coat and walked out the door, leaving his cravat lying like a dead snake on the dresser.
I’ve got my heavy heart to hold me down
An underground lounge. A bass-heavy pulse. The smell of stale beer, sweat, and cheap tobacco. Look at you, Miles, hiding in a den of degenerates. The leaden guilt in his chest anchored him to the floor, making every step feel like a march to the gallows. Exactly where you belong.
Once it falls apart, my head’s in the clouds
He wanted, no, needed someone to force him out of his own head. He needed a stranger’s hands on him, a physical distraction heavy enough to quiet the noise in his mind. He wanted his thoughts to shatter, to be obliterated by an unrelenting, merciless friction of skin against skin.
So I’m taking every chance I’ve got
Through the haze of cigarette smoke, Miles caught the eye of a man sitting alone at the bar. The man was broad-shouldered, wearing a scuffed, clearly fake leather bomber jacket, his hair unwashed. He looked rough around the edges, dangerous enough to be careless. Surely he’ll suffice. Miles held the man’s gaze with a deliberate intensity until the stranger raised an eyebrow and subtly tilted his glass in invitation.
Like the man I know I’m not
This wasn’t his behavior. He was a disciplined man. But Miles Edgeworth didn’t exist right now.
He sat down at the adjacent barstool and ordered a drink.
~~~ LOS TOKYO ~~~
Stall me, stall me, I’m all in
Neon blue lights buzzed overhead, casting sickly, fractured shadows across the packed dance floor. The bass from the speakers was so loud it vibrated through the rubber soles of Phoenix’s shoes.
Stall me, call me up or break me in
He was in some dingy downtown Los Tokyo bar on a fucking Tuesday night, losing track of the hours. He stayed near the back wall of the club, his fingers wrapped tight around a condensation-slick glass containing a drink he didn’t really want.
A dark room in the wallflower garden of the party
Normally, Phoenix was the type to joke around, to talk to anyone, to blend easily into a crowd. Tonight, he was a ghost. He pressed his back against the damp brickwork, completely isolated in the middle of a hundred sweating bodies, his eyes unfocused.
She’s got four on the floor, she’s waiting to kickstart me
A girl with dark eyeliner approached him, her hand touching his arm.
She was shouting to be heard over the music, pointing toward the back hallway. Phoenix didn’t really care about her name, but she was there, and she was looking at him.
“Hey,” she said, sultry and suggestive, closing in on his ear. “It’s too loud in here. Let’s go somewhere quiet.”
So just stall me!
“Alright,” he said, his voice sounding vacant even to himself. He let her take his hand and lead him away from the crowd.
~~~ BERLIN ~~~
Miles took a shot, the liquor burning his throat, but it wasn’t enough to stop his thoughts.
Got so sick of wasting all my time
God, his entire existence had been an exercise in futility. His childhood reverence for his father—a waste. Those naive, idealistic ambitions of becoming a defense attorney—dead and buried with Gregory Edgeworth. And the path he had chosen instead? To mold himself into the image of a von Karma? That, too, a waste. He had failed spectacularly.
The myth of his flawless perfection had been shattered the moment he lost to Phoenix Wright. Far more damning, the very perfection he had cultivated had proved useless in the pursuit of actual justice. His entire career had amounted to a vacuum of meaning, leaving behind nothing but unnecessary suffering—and quite possibly the executions—of innocent human beings. Disgraceful. He had not accomplished a single worthwhile thing from the moment of his wretched birth.
How in God’s name did I survive?
He took another shot, slamming the small glass onto the sticky bar. Every tragic thing in his life flashed before him.
The elevator. The suffocation. The sight of his father collapsing to the floor and bleeding out. Manfred von Karma’s monstrous figure. The endless, mocking rotation of nightmares that followed. Every single trauma he had endured, every forged piece of evidence he had conveniently overlooked, every meticulously crafted lie he had ever survived—it all flashed before him.
How had he managed to breathe for so long in such deplorable skin?
I need a little sympathy
He needed some relief. He needed someone to look upon him and grant forgiveness, to show a modicum of mercy for his miserable soul, to drag him out of this abyss of self-pity. Phoenix Wright would do it. Wright would undoubtedly exhaust himself trying to do exactly that. But he could not. Because no one could salvage his soul.
Disarm my insecurities
He looked sideways at the man sitting next to him. He had a direct, unblinking gaze that felt entirely transactional. He looked at the stranger’s calloused hands on his glass and wondered if those hands would be good enough to tear him right out of his flesh.
Miles shifted his weight on the barstool. He forced his posture into a semblance of ease, caught the man’s appraising eye through the dim light, and started a conversation.
Our consciences
Are always so much heavier than our egos
As the empty pleasantries left his mouth, he felt nauseous. Miles Edgeworth, reduced to picking up a nameless stranger in a squalid, underground dive, he taunted himself. It was a pathetic, low display. Yet, as he watched the man track the movement of his lips, a grim certainty settled over him: nothing was beneath him now.
I set my expectations high
He had fallen too far to care about dignity. Look at you, whore, he scalded. Sacrificing any trace of your pride for the desperate promise of a good fuck.
So nothing ever comes out right
Shut up, Miles thought, his teeth grinding together until his jaw ached. Just shut up!
~~~ LOS TOKYO ~~~
As Phoenix followed the woman down the dark, trash-strewn sidewalk toward her place, he wasn’t even looking at her. He was thinking about Miles.
I had a rosy dream
You gave up on you and I gave up on me
They could have had something—something real—if Miles hadn’t chosen his goddamn ego. If Miles hadn’t chosen to run away rather than face the person he used to be. If only Miles had listened to him, had actually heard Phoenix when he tried to show him that he was worthy of existing. If Miles could have just let his guard down, allowed himself to be vulnerable with Phoenix instead of fleeing the second his armor cracked. They could have let everything go and figured out a new life, together.
Well, love came along and said
"Leave them be”
He thought about what it would be like to actually love Miles Edgeworth. To have Miles let him do it. It would be so simple, if Miles would just let it happen. Phoenix fantasized about the quiet spaces between them. He wanted to learn the cadence of Miles’ voice when he wasn’t performing for a gallery. He wanted to be the person who got to hold him when the nightmares hit, to be the steady weight that kept Miles anchored to the earth when his mind tried to drown him. He loved Miles enough to take every broken piece of his history and help him carry it.
We were wrecked on every rock, you tasted
Like cork, my pretty little angel
But love required two people to stand still, and Miles had run.
Miles had to wreck them both on his fucking pride. He couldn’t just accept a lifeline; he had to view it as an insult to his dignity. Miles would rather sink the entire ship, drowning them both in the process, than admit he needed a hand. He had to be the tragic, untouchable figure, martyring himself to a warped sense of penance because he couldn’t bear the thought of being seen as less than immaculate.
And now, because of Miles, Phoenix was walking up a flight of creaking stairs into some chick’s room whose name he couldn’t even remember just to feel a pulse.
I’m singing to empty bottles everywhere
Everywhere
The apartment door shut. Phoenix didn’t look at her.
"Do you have any more to drink?"
~~~ BERLIN ~~~
So shoot a star on the boulevard tonight
Miles forced another swallow of liquor down his throat.
I think I’ll figure it out with a little more time
The German stranger was talking to him but the words were all completely meaningless. Miles nodded along mechanically, offering hollow murmurs while trying to pretend he was present. He hated himself for being here, hated himself for using this person as a meat shield against his own mind, but the panic in his chest was rising like a black tide, threatening to choke him. He needed it to stop. Now.
But who needs time?
That's it. Enough.
He reached out and grabbed the man’s thick wrist mid-sentence. His grip was tight, his fingers digging into the stranger's flesh. No more waiting. No more thinking.
“Come back to my place,” he commanded, hungry and feverish and without feeling.
The situation was dire. His mind was about to swallow him whole.
The man nodded.
Miles dragged the man behind him, his pace frantic as they hit the stony streets of Berlin. He looked like an angry mother dragging a misbehaving child.
Turn off the lights, turn off the lights
The door to Miles’ apartment slammed shut. Miles shoved the man hard, sending him sprawling backward onto the mattress. This was no time for foreplay. There was no kissing against the wall, no gentle buildup, no time for anything fond or caring or slow. Fondness required a soul, and Miles had none.
He didn't turn the lights on. The room remained pitched in heavy shadows.
Turn on the charm for me tonight
He climbed onto the bed, smashing their mouths together with a desperate, bruising force. He pressed his tongue past the man’s teeth, tasting stale tobacco and cheap beer. He didn’t even care. With a hitch of his hips, he stripped his trousers down, kicking them away along with the man’s jeans in one single motion.
I’ve got my heavy heart to hold me down
Pants hit the floor. Miles buried the man back down against the pillows. Trailing no other part of the man’s body, offering no touch to his chest or waist, Miles brought his mouth straight to the man’s cock. He needed to drain the oxygen out of his own lungs; he wanted to choke on it. He immediately bobbed his head rapidly, creating a harsh vacuum, slurping the air as he mouth-fucked.
The man beneath him let out a sharp, ragged shout, his fingers tangling roughly into Miles’ hair. Miles didn’t even hear it. The sound was just static.
Once it falls apart, my head’s in the clouds
Miles pulled back, his lips wet, his eyes dark and wild. “Fuck me like your life depends on it,” he begged hoarsely, his voice cracking.
Miles welcomed all the pressure he could get. He wanted the blunt, physical impact of the man’s body to break his train of thought, to crush the agonizing memories out of his head. He gripped the sheets as the stranger moved against him, the friction rough and heavy. Miles started rutting frantically upward, meeting every movement, clawing at the man’s shoulders as if he could claw his way out of his own heart.
So I’m taking every chance I’ve got
“Get on with it!” Miles yelled into the dark room.
The man drove into him, and Miles finally got the violent fucking he craved. With each thrust that jostled his spine, Miles mentally willed a memory out of his head. Nothing but heat. Nothing but pounding. Fuck me, torture me, Miles thought. This is what I deserve.
Like the man I know I’m not
Miles came with a roaring scream. It wasn’t a scream of pleasure. It was a scream of rage. It was a scream at Von Karma for ruining his life. It was a scream at Phoenix. It was a scream at everything he couldn’t change. It was a scream of irateness at the damning reality that he is stuck in the purgatory of being Miles Edgeworth forever.
Not even five minutes later, the door clicked shut. The stranger was gone, taking his clothes and his cheap leather jacket, leaving nothing but the lingering scent of beer and sweat behind.
Miles didn’t move from the center of the bed. He reached over the edge, grabbed the scotch bottle from the floor, and took another long drink.
~~~ LOS TOKYO ~~~
Stall me, stall me, I’m all in
Inside the woman’s kitchen, Phoenix tipped his head back, letting vodka wash down straight from the bottle. He set it down on her counter with a careless thud.
Stall me, call me up or break me in
He knew he looked pathetic. He was messy and rude, but his capacity to care about manners had vanished weeks ago.
A dark room in the wallflower garden of the party
She kept talking, a stream of words about her roommates, or her job, or some drama he couldn’t process. Every syllable went in one ear and directly out the other. He stared at the movement of her mouth until the weight of the silence in his own head became too loud to bear.
“Hey,” Phoenix interrupted. “Do you want to fuck?”
She’s got four on the floor, she’s waiting to kickstart me
She didn’t take offense. She just let out a low, breathy laugh, set her glass down, and took his hand to pull him toward the bedroom.
So just stall me!
Shirt over head. Bra unclasped. Impatient, clumsy fingers. Belt unbuckled. He slid her skirt down her thighs and pushed her back onto the mattress.
She counts on stars, astrology
As she shifted beneath him, Phoenix’s gaze drifted to the nightstand, catching the crumpled page of a horoscope open under the dim light. How goddamn stupid, he thought. What would Miles think of him right now?
My moods are mercurial
His thumb slipped beneath the lace of her underwear. The girl arched her back, tilting her chin up as she let out a breathless moan against his neck.
He found himself wishing that astrology actually was real. He wished there was some cosmic, unpreventable alignment that could explain why it was impossible for him to stop thinking about Miles Edgeworth. Why every single thing the man said or did had the power to completely upend his world.
But I’m no mercury,
Miles. The man he saved, and the man he failed. Miracles behind the defense bench hadn’t been enough to make him stay.
don’t hold your breath
She reached up, tangling her fingers into his spiked hair, pulling his face down to force a messy, wet kiss.
Baptized in the river of you
Phoenix realized he’d been drowned in Miles from the very moment they met. Every choice he had made since then—law school, the badge, the defense bench—had been an effort to reach him. His whole life was just a river of Miles Edgeworth.
He pinned her knees back, lining his hips up with hers, and drove into her with a blunt, heavy push.
Hold on, death
Why couldn’t he stop him? Why did he let him walk away into the dark?
He slammed his hips forward fast, the bedframe rattling against the drywall. Flashes of Miles’ features burned behind his eyelids—
The moon’s
His hair falling into his silver eyes—
just
The slope of his nose—
a sliver
His maroon coat and that stupid cravat—
of you
Phoenix came with a sharp heave of his chest, his fingers digging, his eyes clenched completely tight because his head was entirely, ruinously full of Miles.
~~~ BERLIN ~~~
A heavy heart on the boulevard tonight, oh
Miles pulled his stiff trousers back on, grabbed his coat from the floor, and wandered back out into the cold German night. He walked aimlessly, his fingers wrapped around a small metal flask he’d filled from the bottle. The sidewalk was loud. The streetlights taunted him. He muttered low, venomous curses to himself with every step.
Shooting stars, watch me fall apart tonight, oh
He stopped beneath a flickering streetlamp, his stomach turning. He doubled over, grabbing the metal pole of the lamp, and threw up violently into a bush. He missed, and a splatter caught the edge of his coat sleeve.
What a pathetic sight I must be, Miles thought, a bitter wail rising in his throat. My father would be so proud.
His stomach seized again, and he puked a second time, his eyes watering.
… Turn off the lights, turn off the lights …
What an idiotic delusion it was to think he could purge this sickness with alcohol or the friction of strangers. No remedy existed. The rot went too deep. It was baked into his bones. He was beyond redemption. His life was meaningless. He was useless. He was a stain on the earth. He wanted to curl up on the damp pavement and die.
… Turn on the charm for me tonight …
But even curling up to die was a cowardly surrender—just one last submissive act from a man who never once controlled his own life.
I’ve got my heavy heart to hold me down
If he died here, his life would end under the authorship of others. He would remain trapped forever between his father’s dead dreams for him and von Karma’s sick ones. He would have gone to his grave without ever once touching his fate with his own two hands.
Once it falls apart, my head’s in the clouds
The execution had already taken place. Miles Edgeworth was already a corpse cooling on the pavement. The autopsy report was final. The person he was had died under the weight of the truth.
He’d have to find another purpose for his still-breathing body.
So I’m taking every chance I’ve got
The total collapse left behind a vacancy. For the first time in Miles’ memory, there was a space inside him that did not belong to anyone else.
Completely unwritten. Waiting for a new entry.
Like the man I know I’m not
Miles wiped his mouth with the back of his clean sleeve. The man he wanted to be when he was a kid was long gone. The man who lived by Von Karma’s rules was gone. He was nothing.
And if he was nothing, he had nothing left to lose.
He could become something new.
~~~ LOS TOKYO ~~~
… Stall me, stall me, I’m all in
Phoenix got dressed quickly and stumbled out of the woman’s apartment into the street. The biting night air hit his sweaty neck, but it did nothing to clear the fog in his brain.
Stall me, call me up or break me in
The woman walked out onto the concrete steps, her jacket thrown hastily. She looked at him through the dim street lighting, her hair messy.
A dark room in the wallflower garden of the party
“Come back upstairs,” she said, her voice small and sweet against the empty street. “You don’t have to go yet.”
… Fall to your knees …
Phoenix turned around slowly.
Stall me, stall me, I’m all in
He didn’t want to go back to his empty apartment.
Stall me, call me up or break me in
He didn’t want to face the silence.
A dark room in the wallflower garden of the party
He walked back up the steps, letting her pull him inside.
She’s got four on the floor,
She dropped to her knees between his thighs.
she’s waiting to kickstart me
Phoenix stared blindly up at the ceiling.
She says she’s got more
She sucked him aggressively.
Where that came from
Miles’ face seared in his mind.
To spark me
He closed his eyes, holding onto the image of silver hair and grey eyes.
So just stall me!
He wondered where Miles was right now.