Chapter Text
“Hey uh, Edgeworth? Can we talk?”
Phoenix hadn’t been in the prosecutor’s office since Lana’s case. Despite this, it still felt like the first time he was there. There was no sense of familiarity or comfort, the air between the two men thick with so many words still unspoken.
Maya was safe, thanks to Edgeworth. It had been a few exhausting days. But everything was okay now. Everything was resolved.
Except for one thing.
Edgeworth gave a small nod in acknowledgement. “Wright. Please do come in. I happen to have a moment or two to spare.”
Phoenix swallowed and entered the room, trying to hide how nervous and tense he was. He forced his arms next to his sides, resisting the urge to fidget with his hands to comfort himself.
“What did you want to talk about?” Miles asked so casually. Well, as casual as Miles Edgeworth could be. There was still some distance in his voice. It was as if he had no idea what Phoenix wanted to talk about. But he did. It would be foolish of him to think he could avoid this topic forever.
“Look, uhm… I know this is… a difficult topic to talk about, but… I feel like we really should discuss this.” Phoenix sounded nothing like the confident lawyer he usually was in the courtroom when he wasn’t grasping at straws. He was shorter than the prosecutor, if only by an inch, but he looked so small. He reminded Miles of the 9-year old version of Phoenix, when he told the 9-year old version of Miles he lost the ball he had lent him.
He tried to distance himself as much as possible from the conversation, but despite his best efforts, he still felt a pang of guilt go through him. This time, it wasn’t Phoenix who did something to hurt the other. And yet he looked so apologetic as if he did. He dissociated as much as he could from the conversation while staying present enough to respond to Phoenix.
Miles took a deep breath before answering. “I assume this has to do with my… departure.”
“Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”
Miles stayed quiet and gave Phoenix a look to encourage him to keep talking. There was a brief moment of silence that felt like an eternity. Phoenix nervously thought of what to say while Miles nervously waited.
“I’d like to start off by saying that I’m sorry. For what I said at the police station. I, uhm, didn’t mean it.”
As Phoenix was talking, he looked everywhere except straight ahead, trying to avoid eye contact with Miles. Phoenix gave up on trying to force his arms down and started reaching for the back of his neck, a habit he had had ever since he was a child.
Internally, Miles was tripping over every single word. There were too many words going through his mind and too few to form a coherent sentence that properly expressed what he needed to say. Somehow, he managed not to show it at all. He chose to not express his feelings, instead opting for staying as objective as he could.
“I know you didn’t. You don’t need to apologize.”
“No, I do, Edgeworth. It was a really fucked up thing to say. I was just really emotional seeing you again and all the grief I went through over the past year, I was suddenly reliving it when I saw your face and I thought I would never see your face again so when I did, I just didn’t know how to react and I just kinda short-circuited—“
The defense attorney was rambling. He looked like he was still processing the emotions as he spoke. Miles cut him off to save Phoenix’s breath.
“Wright, there’s no need to explain. I understand perfectly.”
Phoenix looked back up at Miles. He was inspecting he prosecutor’s face with a look that was a mix of concentration and confusion. His brows furrowed even further when Miles’ face was a blank slate, not a single emotion visible on his features.
“I… don’t understand.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I don’t understand how you can be so casual about this. You… you left a suicide note. You were dead for a year, I told you it was better if you stayed dead. So much has happened. Did it just… not affect you? At all?”
Miles’ pokerface did not falter one bit. Not a single crack in his porcelain mask.
“I would prefer to move past what happened. There’s no use in dwelling on the past. Will that be all, Wright?”
Phoenix was flabbergasted. Will that be all?
No, that will not be all, Edgeworth.
“I’m sorry, are you just… not gonna talk about this?” Phoenix was smiling slightly in disbelief.
“What is there to talk about? I don’t see any use in doing so.”
Phoenix was feeling so many things. I guess since Miles seemingly wasn’t feeling anything at all, he felt enough for the both of them. One of the feelings he was almost able to discern was… disappointment? Exhaustion? Anger? Maybe it was all three. He was disappointed that this wasn’t going at all how he expected. He was exhausted from having to scale yet another wall Miles had put up. He was angry that he was so unaffected, when it was all Phoenix could think about for the past year.
Phoenix scoffed. “Are you— are you actually serious right now? You don’t think this is worth going over? How I thought you were dead for an entire year? How we held your funeral without a body to say goodbye to? How I fucking mourned you?” He was slightly raising his voice now. Despite this, Miles kept up his facade.
“This seems to be mostly about how you’re affected by what happened. I would advise you to talk to a therapist as I have no interest in discussing this. I can recommend you one and pay for the sessions, if you’d like.”
“… You actually think that that will solve this.” It was more a statement in disbelief than a question. “So what, you just throw money at a situation and hope it’ll go away? Is that how you became the undefeated Demon Prosecutor?”
A crack ran through Miles’ porcelain mask, once pristine and seemingly unbreakable. As his emotions threatened to surface, he had no choice but to not mince his words.
“Wright. I am going to have to ask you to leave.”
Phoenix shook his head and laughed incredulously. “Or what? If I don’t leave, you’re gonna offer me a grand to get out of your sight? That’s how you do things, isn’t it? I wish I could just fly to the other side of the world when I’m having a mental breakdown like you can. Is that also the ‘von Karma way’, huh?”
Another crack in the mask. He needed Phoenix to leave desperately. He did not want to show his feelings.
Despite this, his annoyance was evident. “Wright, if you’re not going to leave, I will have to call Gumshoe in. I did not want to do this, but you’re being incredibly stubborn.” He reached for a button on his office phone that’s directly connected to the detective’s pager. Phoenix heard footsteps approaching and immediately went to lock the door behind him.
“I am not leaving. We have to talk about this, Miles.”
As desperate as Miles was for him to leave, Phoenix was desperate to leave nothing unspoken.
The door handle rattled before there was a knock on the door. “Sir? You called me in?” The voice was slightly muffled through the wood, but it was unmistakably Gumshoe.
“Never mind, detective. Everything’s okay. It’s me, Phoenix.”
Gumshoe seemed to have stood down, no response coming from the other side of the door.
“I refuse to leave until we properly talk about this. Yes, this is about how it affected me. But can you fucking blame me? I mourned you, for an entire year, dammit. And it felt like it was my fault because I couldn’t save you. You have no goddamned idea what that feels like!”
You have no goddamned idea what that feels like.
That was the final straw. His mask shattered into a million pieces, his emotions now laid bare with nowhere to hide.
“…Excuse me? No idea what that feels like? Need I remind you that I felt guilty for the death of my father for 15 years and that I am still mourning him?” His voice raised slightly with every word, building up the anger inside him. “You want to talk about this? Fine. Fine! I left because you came into my life again when I did not even ask you to. You just had to barge in and upend my entire world. You made me out to be a fool in court, you exposed my mentor, and left me questioning everything I have ever known. Forgive me for wanting to get away from that. You got your explanation. Now leave.”
“But a fucking suicide note? What the fuck were you thinking making us think you were dead? I at least deserve an explanation for that.”
“You want an explanation? I wrote it because I intended to be dead!”
“…”
“…”
The silence was suffocating. All of Phoenix’s anger, exhaustion, disappointment, it was replaced with pure and utter guilt. If only he had known. If only he could’ve saved Miles.
“… Why didn’t you tell me? I- I could’ve gotten you through this.”
Miles’ anger, however, was still present.
“Why? So you can ‘save’ me again like you did previously? Okay, yes, fine. You saved me from going to prison, thanks. But you also ruined my entire life and everything I thought to be true. Not to mention that I never asked you to save me. I didn’t ask for you to come back! Couldn’t you take a hint after I didn’t respond to a single one of your letters? Maybe you’re the one who would’ve been better off dead instead of… me… Phoenix I- I didn’t mean that I’m sorry—“
Phoenix didn’t even let Miles finish before heading for the door, swiftly unlocking it again and bolting out. Miles tried to chase after him but was met with a closed door. Phoenix probably took the elevator and there’s no way Miles would be able to catch up with him via stairs.
The door swung open again, maybe Phoenix did come back— oh, never mind. It was Gumshoe. “Hey, sir? Is everything alright? I just saw Spiky leave and he seemed pretty upset.”
“That is none of your business, detective. You’d better leave before I review your salary for next month.”
“Got it, sir! Sorry!” Gumshoe wasted no time in leaving the office. He could barely afford ramen at this point so he didn’t want to take any risks disobeying his superior. Miles was left alone in the room now.
He stood in the middle of his office thinking about how he messed up. Majorly. He really shouldn’t have said that, but his emotions simply got the best of him. Miles Edgeworth was not a man of swears but…
“Fuck.”