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It is 6:34 AM in L.A., 3:34 PM in The Hague, and Miles Edgeworth can feel every second between them tightening up around him like a coil.
He'd chartered a plane as soon as he could, but — what if he's too late? What if Wright is — gone, already?
The thought is so painful it nearly breaks him in half. He wouldn't forgive himself if Wright died before he could have paid him back.
There's the beep of an ECG monitor coming from somewhere in a room, its muffled sound rotating in his heart like a flashing light of worry that reminds him of another crime scene, and as he walks the sterile grey linoleum of the hospital floor slowly morphs into dark brown wood groaning under his feet, the handle of his briefcase heavy as a gun, and he's —
He's — Well. He's back in the elevator once again; there's no real escape from a crime scene that keeps rotting inside his chest, he supposes. How can he finally part ways with the scared boy of nine who lives in the teenager of twenty who lives in the man of twenty-six?
And, so: Miles Edgeworth is back to a city that hates him, a forever expanding crime scene that keeps pushing him away, his common sense hastily left behind the gates of a Dutch airport. The insanity of it all will hit, eventually, and hit hard, but in this very moment the past inside of him is stronger than the future outside of him, and he does not care.
He has to stop walking for a moment to catch his breath. There's some dark patches of night still sticking to the morning sky, and in the window he briefly sees an entirely different face being reflected back at him, a sleep-deprived creature with eyes made bleary from too much worry. Had it been the same — for him? Back when Miles had disappeared, and the only thing he'd left behind was a note?
Miles wants to find a corner and peel away the paint to hide and scream under. God. Wright, how did we let this happen? When did we let in so much death into our lives?
He has to force himself to keep moving. The only thing that matters now is that man being alive. It seems like hours before he’s finally in front of the right room, Phoenix Wright scribbled hastily on a note taped next to the doorframe.
He takes a breath before he opens the door, the weight of it making his lungs rattle, and there Wright is, sitting on his bed, visibly unharmed except for the few purple smudges he can see bruising along his arms. The ten-page eulogy slash teary confessional speech he’d written on the private jet suddenly dies in his throat, because Wright is — Wright is —
Distantly, he can hear the dull thump of his briefcase hitting the floor.
“You’re not dead.”
And Wright, the fool, just looks down at his chest, and smirks.
“I — last time I checked, no, I wasn’t.”
Relief washes through Miles’ lungs, so heavy and bright he has to brace himself against the wall so his legs don't give out, and so here they are, six feet and seventeen years apart. Together, and without any dull screen standing between them, this time.
“Miles,” Wright starts, his voice catching on a wheeze, as he finally takes in just who is in his hospital room, “what are — why are you —”
The first name does take him by surprise, but Miles simply shakes the thought away as he picks his briefcase back up and walks to the hospital issued plastic chair, sitting down on it at a distance he’d describe as carefully respectful, yet still close enough to remind Wright he’s here as a support. Wright looks exhausted to his bones, and Miles notices that his hands are clutched around a white hood, its fabric half-burnt along the seams. Right. Larry had talked about a bridge on fire.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is you. What happened, Wright?”
Wright’s face shifts abruptly, his eyes so serious and his teeth biting into his lower lip. Miles holds his own breath, something ugly twisting in his stomach.
“Maya,” Wright simply says, and all at once Miles registers the silent emptiness of the hospital room — and, really, how could he have not noticed it before?
Where are the two girls who'd been clutching at Phoenix’s blazer like a lifeline?
He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Wright without his trusted assistant, except for that accursed case the year before, and the memory forcefully throws him back to a police precinct staring into Wright's betrayed face, guilt and fear washing over his heart like an ocean swell at high tide.
“She’s stuck, Miles," Phoenix says, his voice worn out, "she had this — this — training, and went to a cave, but the bridge was hit by lightning, she’s stuck and the bridge was on fire and —”
He’s shaking, and Miles knows it's not only because of the cold. He removes the distance and sits down on his hospital bed, braces himself, and holds him by the shoulders in a gesture he wants to be reassuring.
“Wright. I need you to start back from the beginning.”
And so Wright inhales, exhales, an anti-anxiety pattern he himself has grown to know by heart, and tells him. Later, neither of them will remember any specific detail, half of Miles’ mind still asleep in Europe and Wright delirious from painkillers, but what Miles will take out of it is a strong feeling of reverence. He’s grown to understand the need to run over a burning bridge in the middle of the night , something he’d have called absurd and foolish not even two years prior, and yet is still taken aback by Wright’s endless selflesness. We have grown, you and I, and I could never thank you enough for it.
So, when he asks him what can I do to help and Wright hands him his attorney’s badge, he genuinely doesn’t understand it.
“I — Wright, I’m not involved with this case.”
“I know. But I… I need you to defend Iris.”
“You can’t possibly be —”
Wright cannot possibly — Miles cannot be trusted to wear an attorney's badge. Has Phoenix forgotten already, about how Manfred von Karma had picked him up by his loose ends and knitted him into a new pattern as only he saw fit? Has he forgotten about all of the defendants who were too perfectly guilty? How can Wright, Phoenix Wright, still believe in him, even after all of that? Wright, who still cares, somehow, and who gives love away like it’s free and he doesn’t mind losing the receipts, who loves too hard and too much and who loves like he might love him and the thought alone is enough to terrify him.
How can Miles deserve his trust? He's spiraling, he knows, but he can't even do this one fucking thing right, because Wright trusts him and it was supposed to be the other way around this time it was supposed to be him helping Wright this time and —
“Miles?” Wright’s voice reaches out to him as if from far away.
“I hate hospitals,” is the only thing he manages to say.
Wright understands instantly, because of course he does.
"Franziska."
Miles nods. "And they — they brought me here. After."
There's a beat of silence, and then Wright grabs his hand, his cold badge the only thing standing between their two palms. The gesture would almost feel like a handshake if it wasn’t so terribly intimate.
There's only one truth left, in the end: Phoenix Wright’s oldest friend has always been hope , even before it was him, or Larry, and that's not a fact anyone is allowed to change, least of all Miles Edgeworth; and he will always have guilt, something that has taken him a long time to name and even longer to accept.
"Why do you trust me?" he croaks out, his other hand clenching over thin air.
Phoenix's reply is immediate. Honest. Unguarded.
"Why shouldn't I?"
Miles does not remember how to breathe. Wright places his hand over his chest, right where a badge should be staying, and he can feel the warmth seeping through despite all the layers.
"I trust you because I know you, Miles Edgeworth. You trusted me to defend you and it was your decision. When you came back it was your decision. You chose to do that! You decided to help me, with State v Engarde. You came here. Would — would a selfish person do all that? I’m being serious here, Miles. I know — I know your past, I know what I’m saying.”
They’re both aware Wright is asking him to hold hands with ghosts here, and for a split second he's back in the quiet of a house that is more of a mausoleum than a home, looking at secret family pictures he’d managed to bring with him, the shadow of a murder that had been so carefully rebuilt to look like devotion still scratching against its windowsills.
“Miles, please. For her.”
Something in Wright's voice actually breaks, and, and —
He thinks of Iris, standing in the middle of all the defendants he’d sentenced, back when his perfect court record had been his only truth, and he thinks of Maya, alone and stuck in a cave, and he thinks of Franziska, crying in an airport that’s too big for its own right, and, maybe, maybe, this is his chance to break the status quo. His chance to scratch the scars and let the pain flow out. His hand clenches Wright’s tighter, the other man’s skin so strangely pale against his. He trusts him —
“von Karma would hate me for this, you know.”
“Good, I really hope so.”
And this is why he’s here, now: to fight for the truth. As colleagues. As friends. But there’s something else there, the broken lines of a record he knows by heart, scratched deep along the hollow creases of his throat from repeating it to himself too often. He’d only have to exhale for the sound to come alive.
You gave me back my name, and it's slotted high against his heart. You gave me back my name and I cannot give you anything. He'll have to tell him, one day. He has to — at least for Wright. Wright deserves to know.
Wright always deserves to know.
“So, Iris?”
Wright turns to look at him.
Seeing the courtroom from the other side on the morning of trial had been strange, and Larry's theatrics harrowing. Wright had listened to him all afternoon, still looking tired, from his hospital bed, and had grabbed Miles' wrist before Miles could leave the room. "I'll come with you," he'd said, with such conviction Miles hadn't been able to refuse him.
And so now Wright is here, sitting next to him in a car pulling them both back towards Hazakura Temple.
Wright — it's still easier, calling him by his last name, a last emotional barrier when Miles has willingly broken down so many physical ones.
A very dear and indispensable friend, he'd called him, cowardly and anxious, behind the safety of a plexiglass screen. Indispensable. Someone he could not bear to lose, could not stand to see walk away — loss is unthinkable, and replacement not even an option.
“Huh? What’s there to say?” Phoenix asks, startled.
And, really, what is there to say? Miles wishes he could ask Wright this kind of question without having to tell himself there really is no second intention hidden somewhere in his words, but the lie is so heavy over his tongue. What’s there to say? You almost died and you would die again only to defend her. Who is she to you? How can you care so much and still have so much more love to give? What happens when you inevitably give this love to the wrong person and it kills you?
He doesn’t know how to summarize these feelings and deliver them neatly packed up in a black box that forensics will retrieve when his heart finally gives out, so he settles on the easy, “she’s very pretty.”
Their eyes meet, and he feels the same way he’d felt at the hospital — a fleeting moment frozen in time. We could start over. We could have this. But Wright looks away, and the moment slips out of his hands.
Time is closing in on them. He doesn't have much of it left. Soon they'll be out of the car and back into a courtroom, friendship left behind once again to make way for justice.
Phoenix looks out of the car window, at the trees disappearing fast and the snow clinging to the edge of the road. It's still winter. It's been winter for a long time, for Miles, but he thinks he finally is ready for the thaw.
“She — she is, but I’m not interested in dating anymore, I guess.”
Miles can feel them appear before he sees them, really, tugging at the broken strands of his heart. Three psycholocks, so striking in his car he almost stops driving. So Phoenix is hiding something, too.
“Why are you asking me about her, anyway?” Wright says with a surprised laugh, though not upset.
"I care about you, is all. And — you deserve something better."
Phoenix chews on his lips, seeming unconvinced, and they fall back into an uncomfortable silence almost palpable in his car.
“I’m not really, by the way,” Phoenix says eventually, as they near the toll gates. “interested in relationships, I mean.”
Something rattles in Miles' lungs, making it difficult to breathe. He's not sure what Phoenix's statement has just broken down — a lock, or his own heart. He wants to reach out a hand over to Phoenix who, somehow, still feels impossibly far away.
"But," Phoenix says, his voice soft and hesitant, turning to look at him again, "I could be willing to try."
Miles Edgeworth is not there yet.
But he is close.