The fanfic barrage continues!
God, this kinkmeme is addictive as hell. So, I took a prompt to writena AU of case 3-1, and then it kind of...ballooned, and now it's looking like a MULTICHAPTERED fic. honestly. I hate being so longwinded, but it's true. I'm putting the first two chapters up right now, so I can work on more prompts (sorry if yours got delayed), and I'm betting on one or two more chapters, maybe three.
Title: Turnabout Timeline
Rating: PG (I suck at rating these ^_^;)
Characters: Holy Edgeworth/Phoenix/Dahlia love triangle, Batman!
Part: 1 & 2
Wordcount: 3,279 total
Summary/prompt: I'd really like to see an AU of Case 3-1, where DL 6 never happened and Phoenix asks Edgeworth to defend him (IIRC as long as there's an actual lawyer supervising the student... it still works right? How about his dad?). Bonus points for working in a Dahlia/Phoenix/Edgeworth love triangle (and Edgeworth "comforting" Phoenix afterwards ;) ).
I'll leave the writer to work out how exactly everyone still ended up in that situation.
Edited for a logic flaw. If it's still a bit wonky, let me know and I'll try to fix it.
Nobody really wanted to trust their lives to a college kid, especially one who’d never had a trial before. That was the message coming through, loud and clear as a bell. No matter how often he dropped his father’s name, as casually as possible into the conversation, nobody particularly wanted him to defend them. “So what, your father is an attorney? Are you?” they all said, if not with their words, then definitely with their expressions. He wasn’t an attorney, not yet, not until he took his first case.
He had the badge, of course, and he hadn’t removed it from his magenta suit’s collar since he received it. He’d called up all his friends, still in the single digits, and even a long lost relative from London, England, the day he passed his bar exam. Nobody seemed to understand how much the little disc of gold foil meant to him, with two notable exceptions. One was his father, who called up all the prosecutors, even von Karma, and warned them to watch their records very closely, because they were about to plummet.
The other was Phoenix Wright, a close friend of his since grade school, who cancelled a date with his girlfriend just to have celebratory drinks. Normally, Miles Edgeworth did not go out for drinks, but his logical mind had been overruled by a mixture of pride, joy, and a little champagne. Luckily, he did not say anything incriminating, nor did he total his new sports car. He did get Wright in trouble with his Dollie, and even though Edgeworth would never admit to it, a small part of him was happy about that. Wright deserved it, either way, considering how he showed that damn bottle necklace of hers to the busboy, the bartender, and some football players next to them.
Behind the glass between them, Wright turned the same necklace over and over in his hands, trying to control his endless sneezing. His spiky hair seemed to be acting like a moon ring this afternoon, and it looked like it had been picked apart and put back thirteen times. His friend had dark rings under his blue eyes. Whether they were caused by the cold, or by going to jail, Edgeworth couldn’t tell. “I can’t afford a lawyer! I’m a poor, starving artist! I can barely pay back my tuition, let alone some high priced lawyer! Can’t you just ask your dad to take the case for me?”
Edgeworth wanted to turn him down. Say no, firmly. Call him an idiot for getting into this mess in the first place. Say something very clever and biting, like he normally did. Just say no, damn it, and find someone else to represent. Call his father, make him do it. Call Larry, brag about it. Refuse, point blank. Make Phoenix work for it. Make Phoenix go out with him in exchange. Make him do something in return, anything. Just don’t back down. For once.
He didn’t do any of those things. He couldn’t do any of those things. Instead of anything he should have done, he passed the slip of paper underneath the slot in the window. It already had his meticulous signature on it; all it needed was Wright’s. “Anything for a friend,” Edgeworth muttered, refusing to look him in the eye. Instead, he focused on Wright’s hand, as it scribbled out his name after a moment or two of thought.
“You’ll do fine, Miles,” his father said. Actually, he had said it about twenty times since breakfast, every time his son started pacing back and forth again. A nervous habit, nothing more. And why shouldn’t he be nervous?
“What if I don’t?” Miles said. He looked downwards, but at least it stopped the pacing. Numerous things could go wrong, the very least of which would be losing the trial and getting his friend killed. Then there’d be the associated shame of letting his father and his name down. Not to mention the inevitable gloating from von Karma, who built a legacy upon name-based hatred. Oh, to deal with him at any point was trying, but after a loss? Oh, the very idea was enough to make him hide under his desk like a five year old.
“You’re up against Winston Payne. Your dog could win against Winston Payne, and all he knows how to do is bark and shake hands,” his father said, a smirk plastered on his face, and his eyes gleamed behind his glasses. His cane rested across his knees, and he used the carved walking stick to support his elbows.
His father did the impossible on a daily basis, but Miles would never forget the day ten years ago, when Gregory Edgeworth put the first, and so far only, black mark on von Karma’s record. How immensely happy it made his father, and that the happiness quickly turned into smugness. Miles blamed the smugness for his father’s bad leg, the right one. His father, not as prone to romanticism, blamed von Karma. More specifically, the hitman von Karma had hired, and the hitman who, Miles thanked God for this every single day, had terrible aim. Even though Gregory had poked a hole in the bastard’s perfection, von Karma managed to fabricate enough evidence to prove that no; he did not have anything to do with the incident, not at all.
Neither of them believed it for a second. Much like how now, ten years later and about to defend his best friend against murder charges, Miles didn’t believe that everything would be fine. He cursed his mind, not for the first time, for making everything so complicated. “Well…yes. But… I just don’t know. What if…I can’t do this?” he said, massaging his visible stress headache.
“Firstly, I’d just take over for you, and we’ll try again another day. No harm, no foul. Secondly, you will do fine because this is in your blood. You can do this. You know it, and I know it. Just have a little faith,” Gregory said, standing up. This action took a few minutes, especially as he rearranged the cane, and pushed against the wall to stand upright. He crossed over to where his son stood, and placed his right hand on his shoulder, and hugged him lightly, before moving apart. Miles appreciated that, since he didn’t want to be seen being hugged by his father in public. “Just remember the three rules of law. What are they again, Miles?”
This, for once, was something Miles knew by heart. He recited from memory, closing his eyes as he recited the words imprinted on his soul since he started law school. “Rule one: When in doubt, make it sound convincing. Rule two: Everybody in there has something to hide. It’s your job to bring it out, by any means necessary. Rule three: This is about the truth, not the verdict.”
At the moment, Miles didn’t believe a word of it. That’s why, seconds after finishing, he added, “But if I lose, then…”
“You won’t lose. I guarantee that. Now, let’s go and save your friend.” With a grandiose gesture, he pushed open the doors to the court room, and then stood to the side, holding the doors open as Miles walked through them.
As flashbulbs went off and the judge stared down at him, Miles felt as though he were nothing more than an ant. Everything was much, much too big, and much, much too real. It overwhelmed him, and he fought the urge to sink to the floor. His body and his brain compromised, and he turned his head around, meaning to bolt, to run, to escape this mess. That was the moment he caught his father’s eyes, which were filled with indescribable pride. Nothing else mattered, it really didn’t. The courtroom shrank back to normal size, the statues and pillars not intimidating anymore. Miles Edgeworth, attorney at law and son of Gregory Edgeworth, walking into the courtroom, his head held high. He felt for the first time that day that yes, he would win, and yes, he would save Phoenix.
Winston Payne didn’t stand a chance.
The second the doors closed, and the three of them had spilled out into the defendant’s lobby, Miles’ mask of confidence vanished like all the mashed potatoes after Grossberg got to the buffet. He wished that there were couches here, somewhere he could sit down and think, long and hard. Everything moved too fast in there, and out here it slowed to a crawl. He found a wall, which was the next best thing, and began to present himself all the evidence that had been collected, as he played out a trial in his mind. He kept rearranging the items, the photographs, and the bottle of cold medicine, on the table in different orders, as if this time, they would start to fit together and form a sequence of events. As it stood, a cog was missing in the clock of this case. He determined that, through a mix of predisposition and vague hints in the evidence, this cog was named Dahlia Hawthorne.
Jealousy did not have any place in the court of law, and was not admissible as evidence in the first place, so he needed to find concrete proof instead of the bitterness in the pit of his stomach. His left hand fiddled with his badge, twisting it back and forth, as he leaned against the wall while his friend showed off the infamous bottle necklace to the guard. He refused to look at Wright as he made an idiot out of himself, which, admittedly, was not very hard to do. Miles was perfectly content to glare at the tiled floors for five minutes, until he heard his father’s voice cut through his own internal monologue.
“That is a very interesting necklace, surely. Where did you receive it? It is a present, right?” his father asked. He used the “you’re going to tell me no matter what I ask, aren’t you?” resigned tone of voice, most often used on celebratory phone calls and any time after eleven p.m.
Miles heard this story approximately fifty-three times so far. If he wasn’t being so completely pathetic and petty at the moment, he’d have mouthed it along with Wright. Really, now, Wright was happy, and that should be enough, right? Granted, if “Dollie” called him “Feenie” one more time, Miles would die of acute Sweetness Poisoning. Even so, Miles had no right to bitch. It was his fault they met in the first place.
“Dollie gave it to me the day we met, Mr. Edgeworth. It was her present, to show how much she loves me. She gave it to me the day we met,” Wright paused, counting dates, before continuing, “Eight months ago. It was in this courthouse, actually, the courthouse reading room, um, yeah. I was there, waiting around all bored, and then just as I was getting ready to leave, she walked through the door. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I know it was something amazing. She was so quiet and so wonderful. She still is, actually. And I couldn’t help falling in love, I really couldn’t, and before I could say much of anything, she gave me this.” He beamed so brightly and proudly that Miles could see it through the germ mask. Wright blushed as he spoke, holding the golden necklace aloft so that it caught the fluorescent lights. “She actually asked for it back, once or twice, but I know that’s just her being shy again…”
Not a single person ever asked what a fine arts student was doing in the courthouse. Miles smiled at that every time it never happened.
Gregory didn’t say much of anything. He tapped on his cane top once or twice, a sure sign he was thinking about something important, before asking, “Do you remember what day this was?”
Wright nodded, his blue eyes gleaming. “August 27th.” He didn’t even pause to think about it.
“Hm. That’s interesting. Excuse me for a moment,” Gregory said, and he walked over to the wall his son leaned on. “Stop moping, we have a case to solve.”
Miles detached himself from the wall, arms crossed against his suit vest. “I wasn’t moping, I was…considering things.”
“Consider things after the trial. Do you remember the murder here on August 27th?”
How could he forget? A DA was poisoned, over lunch and a cup of coffee. A mixture of cops, lawyers, and law students milled about, doing nothing useful but spreading rumors and bothering people. People like him, who really had to meet someone in the reading room. But no, everybody had to ask “Where were you during lunch? Did you see anything? Do you know the victim? Do you want to file a civil suit?” until they were blue in the face. Miles sent out about ten text messages that day, nine of them asking his father for more information. Information he gladly spread to the rest of his classmates, making him a very awkward rumor messenger. One text went to his friend, accidentally around the scene of the crime now, and all it said was “Wait for me, I’ll be there soon.”
Miles regretted that text message only slightly more than the one he sent to Larry Butz upon passing the bar. People who could not type in full sentences did not deserve the ability to send messages in the first place.
Back in the present, Miles nodded. “Yes, I think so. I don’t see what that case has to do with this one, though.”
His father shook his head, a strange gleam catching his glasses. “Don’t you remember the primary suspect?”
“I thought--” Miles began, racking his brain to come up with less personal, more important information about that day’s events.
“There was a suspect, and the suspect went to trial, too,” Gregory said. He tapped on his cane with more frequency, which meant he was on a roll.
“Funny, I don’t remember that at all.” Honestly, wasn’t it a mystery who killed the attorney, something unsolvable to this day?
“Three guesses who prosecuted the case, and the first two don’t count,” Gregory said. He had a wide variety of eye rolls and eyebrow rises in his repertoire, and this one had Karma written all over it in permanent marker. “Not a win, and no one innocent went to jail, but it was deemed a mistrial, which is enough for him. But there was a suspect, and if it weren’t for the lack of evidence, she’d be in jail.”
“Oh. That explains things. Who was the suspect, then?” Miles said. He tried to ignore the ‘she’, and pretended instead that his father had misspoken, and simply meant to say he. This tactic was not going very well, and screeched to a grinding halt when his father said the name.
“Dahlia Hawthorne.”
The name came from somewhere, probably his father, but Miles’ vision became a little blurry at that point, and he missed where the syllables came from. The bitter pit in his stomach grew, and he balled a fist into his shirt as he winced. His skin paled a bit, the nervous smile on his face fading away.
There was the cog. And like magic, all the pieces started falling into place. Bottle necklace, a bottle, how could anyone miss that? The evidence disappeared, and despite von Karma’s knack for those tricks, Miles had a fairly good idea where it went off to. And of course, his friend showed it to everyone, so she couldn’t let him go around showing the evidence forever. They’d started asking questions. Ones with very difficult answers, he imagined. She asked for the bottle back, at least twice while Miles was around and probably infinitely more times. And of course, Wright would never give it back, not when he was convinced it was a present from her, a present that proved she loved him. So she’d have to get him to stop…
Didn’t Wright’s medicine go missing yesterday, only to pop back up again in the victim’s hand? Could she have, would she have poisoned it, like the coffee cup eight months ago? Like the dead lawyer from eight months ago, the day she passed the evidence to his friend, her boyfriend? Did Dahlia even like him at all, even love him at all?
He felt jealous before. Now he felt guilty. The guilt hurt more. He needed to sit down, needed some time to think, as his head whirred with terrible possibilities and dread. Miles felt a stage-three headache developing, as he mashed his grey bangs with his left hand, his right still crushed into his vest. That’s when he felt a steady hand on his shoulder, and a slight shaking motion.
“Miles, calm down. We need more evidence to prove this, at the very least. I shall be going to the reading rooms for the case files. You get the necklace from Mr. Wright; can you do that for me, Miles?” his father asked, from some place far away that seemed to be getting closer. Miles opened his eyes, ones he didn’t know he had closed, and nodded. “Good. Now, I might not be back before recess ends. If that happens, do the best you can without the files, and stall if you have to.”
“Wait, you mean I have to do this by myself?” Miles asked. The note of panic returned to his voice once again, and he would have wilted against the wall once again. If his father hadn’t given him a quick hug, at least.
“Just for a little while. Remember, you can do this, Miles,” his father said, beginning to walk towards the doors out of the lobby. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to bribe a records keeper.” He winked as he said it, or else the glasses caught the light oddly again. His cane echoed with his footsteps as he exited the room, nodding to Wright before he left through the double doors.
Miles took a deep breath, and crossed the room, walking over to where Wright stood, fiddling with the end of his scarf. He tried to smile, but couldn’t get his brain to cooperate, as it had gotten stuck on panic-mode. His hands stopped twitching, and he stopped clenching at his gut for five seconds, so he took that as a sign that his mouth could form words, too. “Um.” Brilliant way to start, Miles. Wright gaped at him, as Miles’ brain kicked itself for being unable to string together a single sentence without stuttering through it. “I…need to borrow your- the necklace. Um, please?”
Wright tilted his head, before nodding slowly, pulling the necklace out of its safe place behind the scarf. “Sure, just please, please be careful with it. And give it back, too.”
“I will, um, I promise,” Miles said. He looked at the clock above the huge doors to the courtroom. One minute to go. One minute until everything would crash into each other, and what could quite possibly be the worst moment of Miles’ life thus far. If he was right, then the…then the person he loved could have, probably would have, died last night. If he was wrong, then there was a fair chance that Wright-call him Phoenix in here, and the worry would start again, and that would manifest as moping-would go to jail, maybe forever. Either way, he’d be puncturing the perfect bubble of Wright’s relationship, which would be ugly and awkward and bitter.
So that’s why, three seconds before the doors opened again, Miles Edgeworth turned to Phoenix Wright and said, as clearly and as carefully as possible, “I’m sorry. You aren’t going to like this part.”
Oh, and I've been writing lots of these prompts, and I've been wondering if any of these are actually in character, or if they're like...good enough for prompt levels. It's hard to explain, really, but I feel a lot of fics coming on, and if things aren't piecing together now, I'd rather not be like, five chapters into something badass before realizing it. (Hooray for insecurity!!) So really, any concrit or whatever would be really really boss. Um, thanks for reading, too!
Title: Turnabout Timeline
Rating: PG (I suck at rating these ^_^;)
Characters: Holy Edgeworth/Phoenix/Dahlia love triangle, Batman!
Part: 1 & 2
Wordcount: 3,279 total
Summary/prompt: I'd really like to see an AU of Case 3-1, where DL 6 never happened and Phoenix asks Edgeworth to defend him (IIRC as long as there's an actual lawyer supervising the student... it still works right? How about his dad?). Bonus points for working in a Dahlia/Phoenix/Edgeworth love triangle (and Edgeworth "comforting" Phoenix afterwards ;) ).
I'll leave the writer to work out how exactly everyone still ended up in that situation.
Edited for a logic flaw. If it's still a bit wonky, let me know and I'll try to fix it.
Nobody really wanted to trust their lives to a college kid, especially one who’d never had a trial before. That was the message coming through, loud and clear as a bell. No matter how often he dropped his father’s name, as casually as possible into the conversation, nobody particularly wanted him to defend them. “So what, your father is an attorney? Are you?” they all said, if not with their words, then definitely with their expressions. He wasn’t an attorney, not yet, not until he took his first case.
He had the badge, of course, and he hadn’t removed it from his magenta suit’s collar since he received it. He’d called up all his friends, still in the single digits, and even a long lost relative from London, England, the day he passed his bar exam. Nobody seemed to understand how much the little disc of gold foil meant to him, with two notable exceptions. One was his father, who called up all the prosecutors, even von Karma, and warned them to watch their records very closely, because they were about to plummet.
The other was Phoenix Wright, a close friend of his since grade school, who cancelled a date with his girlfriend just to have celebratory drinks. Normally, Miles Edgeworth did not go out for drinks, but his logical mind had been overruled by a mixture of pride, joy, and a little champagne. Luckily, he did not say anything incriminating, nor did he total his new sports car. He did get Wright in trouble with his Dollie, and even though Edgeworth would never admit to it, a small part of him was happy about that. Wright deserved it, either way, considering how he showed that damn bottle necklace of hers to the busboy, the bartender, and some football players next to them.
Behind the glass between them, Wright turned the same necklace over and over in his hands, trying to control his endless sneezing. His spiky hair seemed to be acting like a moon ring this afternoon, and it looked like it had been picked apart and put back thirteen times. His friend had dark rings under his blue eyes. Whether they were caused by the cold, or by going to jail, Edgeworth couldn’t tell. “I can’t afford a lawyer! I’m a poor, starving artist! I can barely pay back my tuition, let alone some high priced lawyer! Can’t you just ask your dad to take the case for me?”
Edgeworth wanted to turn him down. Say no, firmly. Call him an idiot for getting into this mess in the first place. Say something very clever and biting, like he normally did. Just say no, damn it, and find someone else to represent. Call his father, make him do it. Call Larry, brag about it. Refuse, point blank. Make Phoenix work for it. Make Phoenix go out with him in exchange. Make him do something in return, anything. Just don’t back down. For once.
He didn’t do any of those things. He couldn’t do any of those things. Instead of anything he should have done, he passed the slip of paper underneath the slot in the window. It already had his meticulous signature on it; all it needed was Wright’s. “Anything for a friend,” Edgeworth muttered, refusing to look him in the eye. Instead, he focused on Wright’s hand, as it scribbled out his name after a moment or two of thought.
“You’ll do fine, Miles,” his father said. Actually, he had said it about twenty times since breakfast, every time his son started pacing back and forth again. A nervous habit, nothing more. And why shouldn’t he be nervous?
“What if I don’t?” Miles said. He looked downwards, but at least it stopped the pacing. Numerous things could go wrong, the very least of which would be losing the trial and getting his friend killed. Then there’d be the associated shame of letting his father and his name down. Not to mention the inevitable gloating from von Karma, who built a legacy upon name-based hatred. Oh, to deal with him at any point was trying, but after a loss? Oh, the very idea was enough to make him hide under his desk like a five year old.
“You’re up against Winston Payne. Your dog could win against Winston Payne, and all he knows how to do is bark and shake hands,” his father said, a smirk plastered on his face, and his eyes gleamed behind his glasses. His cane rested across his knees, and he used the carved walking stick to support his elbows.
His father did the impossible on a daily basis, but Miles would never forget the day ten years ago, when Gregory Edgeworth put the first, and so far only, black mark on von Karma’s record. How immensely happy it made his father, and that the happiness quickly turned into smugness. Miles blamed the smugness for his father’s bad leg, the right one. His father, not as prone to romanticism, blamed von Karma. More specifically, the hitman von Karma had hired, and the hitman who, Miles thanked God for this every single day, had terrible aim. Even though Gregory had poked a hole in the bastard’s perfection, von Karma managed to fabricate enough evidence to prove that no; he did not have anything to do with the incident, not at all.
Neither of them believed it for a second. Much like how now, ten years later and about to defend his best friend against murder charges, Miles didn’t believe that everything would be fine. He cursed his mind, not for the first time, for making everything so complicated. “Well…yes. But… I just don’t know. What if…I can’t do this?” he said, massaging his visible stress headache.
“Firstly, I’d just take over for you, and we’ll try again another day. No harm, no foul. Secondly, you will do fine because this is in your blood. You can do this. You know it, and I know it. Just have a little faith,” Gregory said, standing up. This action took a few minutes, especially as he rearranged the cane, and pushed against the wall to stand upright. He crossed over to where his son stood, and placed his right hand on his shoulder, and hugged him lightly, before moving apart. Miles appreciated that, since he didn’t want to be seen being hugged by his father in public. “Just remember the three rules of law. What are they again, Miles?”
This, for once, was something Miles knew by heart. He recited from memory, closing his eyes as he recited the words imprinted on his soul since he started law school. “Rule one: When in doubt, make it sound convincing. Rule two: Everybody in there has something to hide. It’s your job to bring it out, by any means necessary. Rule three: This is about the truth, not the verdict.”
At the moment, Miles didn’t believe a word of it. That’s why, seconds after finishing, he added, “But if I lose, then…”
“You won’t lose. I guarantee that. Now, let’s go and save your friend.” With a grandiose gesture, he pushed open the doors to the court room, and then stood to the side, holding the doors open as Miles walked through them.
As flashbulbs went off and the judge stared down at him, Miles felt as though he were nothing more than an ant. Everything was much, much too big, and much, much too real. It overwhelmed him, and he fought the urge to sink to the floor. His body and his brain compromised, and he turned his head around, meaning to bolt, to run, to escape this mess. That was the moment he caught his father’s eyes, which were filled with indescribable pride. Nothing else mattered, it really didn’t. The courtroom shrank back to normal size, the statues and pillars not intimidating anymore. Miles Edgeworth, attorney at law and son of Gregory Edgeworth, walking into the courtroom, his head held high. He felt for the first time that day that yes, he would win, and yes, he would save Phoenix.
Winston Payne didn’t stand a chance.
The second the doors closed, and the three of them had spilled out into the defendant’s lobby, Miles’ mask of confidence vanished like all the mashed potatoes after Grossberg got to the buffet. He wished that there were couches here, somewhere he could sit down and think, long and hard. Everything moved too fast in there, and out here it slowed to a crawl. He found a wall, which was the next best thing, and began to present himself all the evidence that had been collected, as he played out a trial in his mind. He kept rearranging the items, the photographs, and the bottle of cold medicine, on the table in different orders, as if this time, they would start to fit together and form a sequence of events. As it stood, a cog was missing in the clock of this case. He determined that, through a mix of predisposition and vague hints in the evidence, this cog was named Dahlia Hawthorne.
Jealousy did not have any place in the court of law, and was not admissible as evidence in the first place, so he needed to find concrete proof instead of the bitterness in the pit of his stomach. His left hand fiddled with his badge, twisting it back and forth, as he leaned against the wall while his friend showed off the infamous bottle necklace to the guard. He refused to look at Wright as he made an idiot out of himself, which, admittedly, was not very hard to do. Miles was perfectly content to glare at the tiled floors for five minutes, until he heard his father’s voice cut through his own internal monologue.
“That is a very interesting necklace, surely. Where did you receive it? It is a present, right?” his father asked. He used the “you’re going to tell me no matter what I ask, aren’t you?” resigned tone of voice, most often used on celebratory phone calls and any time after eleven p.m.
Miles heard this story approximately fifty-three times so far. If he wasn’t being so completely pathetic and petty at the moment, he’d have mouthed it along with Wright. Really, now, Wright was happy, and that should be enough, right? Granted, if “Dollie” called him “Feenie” one more time, Miles would die of acute Sweetness Poisoning. Even so, Miles had no right to bitch. It was his fault they met in the first place.
“Dollie gave it to me the day we met, Mr. Edgeworth. It was her present, to show how much she loves me. She gave it to me the day we met,” Wright paused, counting dates, before continuing, “Eight months ago. It was in this courthouse, actually, the courthouse reading room, um, yeah. I was there, waiting around all bored, and then just as I was getting ready to leave, she walked through the door. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I know it was something amazing. She was so quiet and so wonderful. She still is, actually. And I couldn’t help falling in love, I really couldn’t, and before I could say much of anything, she gave me this.” He beamed so brightly and proudly that Miles could see it through the germ mask. Wright blushed as he spoke, holding the golden necklace aloft so that it caught the fluorescent lights. “She actually asked for it back, once or twice, but I know that’s just her being shy again…”
Not a single person ever asked what a fine arts student was doing in the courthouse. Miles smiled at that every time it never happened.
Gregory didn’t say much of anything. He tapped on his cane top once or twice, a sure sign he was thinking about something important, before asking, “Do you remember what day this was?”
Wright nodded, his blue eyes gleaming. “August 27th.” He didn’t even pause to think about it.
“Hm. That’s interesting. Excuse me for a moment,” Gregory said, and he walked over to the wall his son leaned on. “Stop moping, we have a case to solve.”
Miles detached himself from the wall, arms crossed against his suit vest. “I wasn’t moping, I was…considering things.”
“Consider things after the trial. Do you remember the murder here on August 27th?”
How could he forget? A DA was poisoned, over lunch and a cup of coffee. A mixture of cops, lawyers, and law students milled about, doing nothing useful but spreading rumors and bothering people. People like him, who really had to meet someone in the reading room. But no, everybody had to ask “Where were you during lunch? Did you see anything? Do you know the victim? Do you want to file a civil suit?” until they were blue in the face. Miles sent out about ten text messages that day, nine of them asking his father for more information. Information he gladly spread to the rest of his classmates, making him a very awkward rumor messenger. One text went to his friend, accidentally around the scene of the crime now, and all it said was “Wait for me, I’ll be there soon.”
Miles regretted that text message only slightly more than the one he sent to Larry Butz upon passing the bar. People who could not type in full sentences did not deserve the ability to send messages in the first place.
Back in the present, Miles nodded. “Yes, I think so. I don’t see what that case has to do with this one, though.”
His father shook his head, a strange gleam catching his glasses. “Don’t you remember the primary suspect?”
“I thought--” Miles began, racking his brain to come up with less personal, more important information about that day’s events.
“There was a suspect, and the suspect went to trial, too,” Gregory said. He tapped on his cane with more frequency, which meant he was on a roll.
“Funny, I don’t remember that at all.” Honestly, wasn’t it a mystery who killed the attorney, something unsolvable to this day?
“Three guesses who prosecuted the case, and the first two don’t count,” Gregory said. He had a wide variety of eye rolls and eyebrow rises in his repertoire, and this one had Karma written all over it in permanent marker. “Not a win, and no one innocent went to jail, but it was deemed a mistrial, which is enough for him. But there was a suspect, and if it weren’t for the lack of evidence, she’d be in jail.”
“Oh. That explains things. Who was the suspect, then?” Miles said. He tried to ignore the ‘she’, and pretended instead that his father had misspoken, and simply meant to say he. This tactic was not going very well, and screeched to a grinding halt when his father said the name.
“Dahlia Hawthorne.”
The name came from somewhere, probably his father, but Miles’ vision became a little blurry at that point, and he missed where the syllables came from. The bitter pit in his stomach grew, and he balled a fist into his shirt as he winced. His skin paled a bit, the nervous smile on his face fading away.
There was the cog. And like magic, all the pieces started falling into place. Bottle necklace, a bottle, how could anyone miss that? The evidence disappeared, and despite von Karma’s knack for those tricks, Miles had a fairly good idea where it went off to. And of course, his friend showed it to everyone, so she couldn’t let him go around showing the evidence forever. They’d started asking questions. Ones with very difficult answers, he imagined. She asked for the bottle back, at least twice while Miles was around and probably infinitely more times. And of course, Wright would never give it back, not when he was convinced it was a present from her, a present that proved she loved him. So she’d have to get him to stop…
Didn’t Wright’s medicine go missing yesterday, only to pop back up again in the victim’s hand? Could she have, would she have poisoned it, like the coffee cup eight months ago? Like the dead lawyer from eight months ago, the day she passed the evidence to his friend, her boyfriend? Did Dahlia even like him at all, even love him at all?
He felt jealous before. Now he felt guilty. The guilt hurt more. He needed to sit down, needed some time to think, as his head whirred with terrible possibilities and dread. Miles felt a stage-three headache developing, as he mashed his grey bangs with his left hand, his right still crushed into his vest. That’s when he felt a steady hand on his shoulder, and a slight shaking motion.
“Miles, calm down. We need more evidence to prove this, at the very least. I shall be going to the reading rooms for the case files. You get the necklace from Mr. Wright; can you do that for me, Miles?” his father asked, from some place far away that seemed to be getting closer. Miles opened his eyes, ones he didn’t know he had closed, and nodded. “Good. Now, I might not be back before recess ends. If that happens, do the best you can without the files, and stall if you have to.”
“Wait, you mean I have to do this by myself?” Miles asked. The note of panic returned to his voice once again, and he would have wilted against the wall once again. If his father hadn’t given him a quick hug, at least.
“Just for a little while. Remember, you can do this, Miles,” his father said, beginning to walk towards the doors out of the lobby. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to bribe a records keeper.” He winked as he said it, or else the glasses caught the light oddly again. His cane echoed with his footsteps as he exited the room, nodding to Wright before he left through the double doors.
Miles took a deep breath, and crossed the room, walking over to where Wright stood, fiddling with the end of his scarf. He tried to smile, but couldn’t get his brain to cooperate, as it had gotten stuck on panic-mode. His hands stopped twitching, and he stopped clenching at his gut for five seconds, so he took that as a sign that his mouth could form words, too. “Um.” Brilliant way to start, Miles. Wright gaped at him, as Miles’ brain kicked itself for being unable to string together a single sentence without stuttering through it. “I…need to borrow your- the necklace. Um, please?”
Wright tilted his head, before nodding slowly, pulling the necklace out of its safe place behind the scarf. “Sure, just please, please be careful with it. And give it back, too.”
“I will, um, I promise,” Miles said. He looked at the clock above the huge doors to the courtroom. One minute to go. One minute until everything would crash into each other, and what could quite possibly be the worst moment of Miles’ life thus far. If he was right, then the…then the person he loved could have, probably would have, died last night. If he was wrong, then there was a fair chance that Wright-call him Phoenix in here, and the worry would start again, and that would manifest as moping-would go to jail, maybe forever. Either way, he’d be puncturing the perfect bubble of Wright’s relationship, which would be ugly and awkward and bitter.
So that’s why, three seconds before the doors opened again, Miles Edgeworth turned to Phoenix Wright and said, as clearly and as carefully as possible, “I’m sorry. You aren’t going to like this part.”
Oh, and I've been writing lots of these prompts, and I've been wondering if any of these are actually in character, or if they're like...good enough for prompt levels. It's hard to explain, really, but I feel a lot of fics coming on, and if things aren't piecing together now, I'd rather not be like, five chapters into something badass before realizing it. (Hooray for insecurity!!) So really, any concrit or whatever would be really really boss. Um, thanks for reading, too!