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youngbounty · 3 years

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The Problem with Apollo’s Backstories

It’s very rare I see this. So far, I’ve only seen two posts on Tumblr about this, but I’ve noticed a few posts that make mention about Phoenix Wright having no backstory. Now, whether they were made as a joke to not be taken seriously or not is something I cannot confirm. That being said, it did bring up something that does come up often: the problem with Apollo Justice having too many backstories. The thing is, Phoenix Wright has just as many backstories as Apollo, yet no one seems to make mention of it or perhaps are not aware. It made me question how this is possible. Certainly, if Apollo’s three backstories stick out like a sore thumb, wouldn’t Phoenix Wright’s three backstories stick out too? Shouldn’t Phoenix also have the same amount of complainers about having too many backstories?

I am a true believer that there is no such thing as a bad idea, but bad execution. I think Phoenix’s backstories are an example of Apollo’s backstories done correctly. To understand this, I’m going to go over each of Apollo’s and Phoenix’s three backstories, and explain where Phoenix got it right where Apollo did not.

With Apollo’s first backstory in the game Apollo Justice, where Apollo is introduced as the main protagonist of this game, we find out that he used to work for Kristoph Gavin at the Gavin Law Offices before finding out he murdered Shadi Smith. Later on, we find out his bracelet matches Thalassa Gramarye’s in her picture, proving that they are mother and son. Through Zak, we find out that Thalassa was once married to a different man before he passed away, believing that her first born had died with him. This draws the connection between Apollo Justice and Trucy Wright as being half brother and sister. And… that’s it. This information does not effect Apollo, since we don’t know his life outside of this during the time of the game’s release, and he does not know that Trucy is his half sister. This backstory does draw a connection between the two long lost siblings, but without any knowledge to create a reaction, it feels empty and shallow. It wasn’t until the two follow-up games that we get more of Apollo’s character and development that fans of the game began to care enough to demand the two half siblings discover their long lost relationship they are not aware of.

For Phoenix Wright, his backstory is the all-knowing class trial back in his elementary school. On one school day, Phoenix Wright was accused of stealing lunch money from a student, due to being sick and being dismissed from school that day, leaving him without an alibi. This lead to a class trial where everyone, including the teachers, shamed him, even though Phoenix claimed it wasn’t him, then crying over the humiliation and shaming. Just when Phoenix was about to forcibly apologize to this student, the student stands up and makes the claim that, since no proof was given that Phoenix had taken the money, he is innocent until proven guilty. A second student also defends him, leading to the teacher deciding to pay for the lunch money that was stolen. From that moment on, Phoenix became friends with the two students that stood up for him: Miles Edgeworth whose money was stolen and Larry Butz who was the second student to stand up for him.

The first thing that makes Phoenix’s backstory different is it creates a motivation and relatability. This backstory tells the story of what motivated Phoenix Wright to become a Defense Attorney. He had befriended the two boys that stood up for him when he was accused of theft at school. One of those friends grew up to become the Demon Prosecutor, Miles Edgeworth, who is known for falsifying and withholding evidence. When Phoenix tried to contact him, he would not answer. So, Phoenix Wright became a Defense Attorney both to meet with him and save him. With this, comes with relatability. Phoenix is someone longing for the friend he once lost, something most of us can relate to – if you’ve ever had a childhood friend, whose friendship broke apart over time. This creates motivation for Phoenix and the players to wish for Miles Edgeworth to return back to being Phoenix’s friend again. With Apollo, on the other hand, his first backstory doesn’t give us anything to relate or motivate us to want him and Trucy to discover their real mother or relation. The mention about Apollo’s biological father does come up, but not until Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, which I will get into later. Because of how shallow and empty this backstory feels, it’s no longer Apollo was called a Gary-Sue when the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney first came out.

The second backstory for Apollo finally gives us something concrete. In this second backstory, Apollo had grown up with Clay Terran in a boarding school. We get a flashback of Clay crying because someone in his family died (I can’t remember who. Comment if you know). Apollo cheers him up with his “I’M FINE!” speech. This became a motto for him and Clay. From this backstory, we finally find out that Apollo had grown in a boarding school during his youth with Clay. We finally get a motivation and relatability from Apollo Justice to make us care and cheer for him. There’s just one problem… what does this have anything to do with Apollo’s connection to the Gramarye and his relation to Trucy? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s where Phoenix’s second backstory differs.

For Phoenix Wright, his second backstory tells that he began studying at Ivy University to study on law and art. From there, he met a beautiful lady named Dahlia Hawthorn at the library inside the courthouse. She gave him a heart-shaped bottle as a token of their love and they hit it off. Having dated Dahlia for nine months, he began showing off his little gift to all his friends at the university, even when Dahlia asked him to give it back. Just then, Phoenix came across Dahlia’s ex boyfriend named Doug Swallow, who met with him to warn him that Dahlia was not who he thinks she is. Angry, Phoenix pushes him, then finds him dead not long afterwards. He is arrested for murder, defended by Mia Fey – who is an already established character, in the tutorial first case of the third game of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Through Mia’s defense, Phoenix realized that not only did Dahlia’s gift turn out to be evidence used to poison Mia’s boyfriend, but Dahlia had also tried to poison him with his cold medication and was the one responsible for Doug’s murder.

Just like with Apollo’s second backstory and Phoenix’s first, this creates relatability and motivation. It creates a motivation for why Phoenix was angry at Miles Edgeworth during the second game, why he trusts Mia so strongly and why he would go to Hazakura Temple, once he sees someone that looks like Dahlia. This also reveals one of Phoenix’s major flaws as someone that considers betrayal and murder by poison inexcusable actions, much like how Apollo’s second backstory reveals how and why Clay’s death pushes him to distrust his colleagues. Unfortunately, what Apollo’s second backstory does not show is any connection to the first. With Phoenix’s second backstory, it connects back to the first and second game. It explains how Phoenix met an already established character, explains why Phoenix was cross with Edgeworth in the second game and follows where the first backstory left off with wanting to become a Defense Attorney to meet with Miles Edgeworth. Aside from Apollo growing up in a Boarding School, confirming that he is an orphan, and why he always shouts “I’M FINE!” we get no connection or follow-up from the first backstory. There’s no connection to his former boss, Trucy or the Gramarye’s. Thus, Apollo’s second backstory feels like a separate story from the first, whereas Phoenix’s second backstory feels like a follow-up to the first.

Apollo’s third backstory is that Apollo’s father, Jove Justice, came to the Kingdom of Khura’in to play music inside Durke’s home. One day, a fire arose and Jove Justice was assumingly murdered. Dhurke had miraculously saved Jove’s infant son in the nick of time before the rest of his residence was burned, hiding in the mountains with his eldest son, Nahyuta. From there, Dhurke had raised Nahyuta and Apollo in the mountain as their father, watching them grow up. Unfortunately, because of the laws in the kingdom where Defense Attorneys were prisoned with any client declared Guilty and Dhurke being an outlaw, he sent Apollo to the United States. From there, Apollo never saw or heard from Dhurke or Nahyuta again, believing all his life that Dhurke had abandoned him.

Again, like the second backstory, this gives us relatability and motivation. Leaving any family is something all of us feel saddened about. It also follows up with the relatability of Phoenix’s first backstory of being close with someone, only to grow apart from them with age. But, again, there is no connection between this backstory or the other two. What does this backstory have anything to do with Apollo’s connection with the Gramarye, relation to Trucy, friendship with Clay, growing up in a boarding school as a youth or his reasons for saying “I’M FINE!” all the time? NOTHING! There’s not a single callback to any of these, not even to reoccurring characters from the fourth or fifth game. Nothing on Kristoph Gavin, the Space Center, nothing. There is mention of Jove Justice being Apollo’s biological father, but do we get anything on Thalassa or the Gramarye’s? Even a tiny bit? Nope! Any connection with Jove Justice and the Gramarye’s to explain how he may’ve met the daughter of the famous Magnify Gramarye and they may’ve fallen in love? Nope! Again, I get nothing. It’s sad, because the story could’ve also added Thalassa into the mix as being Jove’s singing partner, a subtle picture of her and explaining why she might be so talented in singing. The fact that the second case does involve the Gramarye, I think, is a missed opportunity to draw a connection to Apollo’s third and first backstory.

For Phoenix Wright, his third backstory is in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, believe it or not. This backstory takes place during the seven years between the third and fourth game. Phoenix Wright was defending Zak Gramarye for the murder of Magnify Gramarye. During this trial, he presents forged evidence unknowingly, which Klavier Gavin reveals to be forged via the surprising Witness. From there, Phoenix is disbarred from law and his client Zak disappears from site. Trucy, who is Zak’s daughter, is left behind and Phoenix cannot find any living relatives, thus decides to adopt her as his own daughter. From here, he turns his law offices into a Talent Agency for his new daughter and takes the job as a piano/poker player. He befriends the only Bar Associate that voted him to be innocent, Kristoph Gavin, who had used his friendship to stalk and watch him.

Again, this creates relatability and motivation as someone losing their job for unfair reasons, entering fatherhood and being manipulated by fake friends. This also is a great follow-up to the trilogy itself and confirming everything that’s already established canon such as Phoenix considering poison and betrayal to be inexcusable, which is what Kristoph does. It establishes the relationship and connection with Trucy and even Apollo. Even as weak as Apollo’s backstory is, it is enough to give Phoenix a strong motivation to take him in as a student. With how strong this third backstory to Phoenix is and its connection to the trilogy as a whole, it makes me wonder why he wasn’t the protagonist of this story. Though, it does conclude what this third backstory does so well that all of Apollo’s backstories do not do: continue where the previous left off.

With every backstory Phoenix gets, it always continues where the previous left off. They connect well like a puzzle. Each piece matches well and never feels separate. With each new backstory, it continues where the previous left off. The second backstory continues where the first and second game left off and the third backstory continues where the trilogy left off. With Apollo’s three backstory, they feel so disconnected, it’s like trying to fit three unmatching pieces together, while ignoring the rest of the 197 puzzle pieces. Sure, the third backstory might’ve mentioned Jove Justice as Apollo’s biological father, but we don’t know anything about Jove or Thalassa, their relationship, how they met or anything. Was Thalassa the lead singer when Jove played, like she is as Lamoure? I don’t know. Even Apollo growing up at a Boarding School or how he went there is never explained in the third backstory. Did Dhurke send Apollo there and pay for his classes? I don’t know.

In conclusion, Apollo’s problem with his backstories are not that there are too many, but that they do not connect. Backstories must fit together in order to work. There has to be a cause and effect. Phoenix Wright has full backstories that have always connected perfectly like puzzle pieces. He has one of the strongest established backstories in Ace Attorney, alongside Miles Edgeworth, who technically has four backstories. That just goes to show you can’t have too many backstories. Although, you can have botched up backstories that do not match up that makes it feel like there are too many backstories.

What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to comment, whether you agree or disagree. I might make a follow-up to this to explain how Apollo’s three backstories could be fixed to where they feel complete. It really depends.

#ace attorney #phoenix wright #apollo justice #apollo justice's backstories #too many backstories

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smolfoxbab · 3 years

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okay here’s the Narumitsu angst (with a happy ending)

its my blog and i get to choose the hyperfixation to post about

((1,830 words //tw for injury + blood// hope u enjoy!))

Phoenix Wright wasn’t the type of person to make enemies. At least, not on his own. His selfless nature and optimistic personality made him a likable man to be around, even if he was often clumsy and oblivious at times. However, being a defense attorney was a different circumstance, one that brought a certain set of unspoken dangers with it. In proving his client’s innocence, the guilty verdict was placed onto another. While most of these people posed no threat behind the bars of their sentences, there was no guarantee a grudge wouldn’t push them to seek vengeance.

Miles Edgeworth had plenty of experience with this concept already. He was a prosecutor-- The Demon Prosecutor. Among the death threats and various other attempts on his life, he was all too aware of the risks that came with his job. But he had learned to shoulder them, right alongside the other burdens he carried. He also knew that Phoenix didn’t consider these things, didn’t consider his own safety as much as he considered others. Concussed, tazed, nearly drowned and beaten to a pulp in an infamously deadly river... none of it seemed to phase him. He never slowed in his pursuit for protecting others, and that... that concerned Miles more than anything.

“You need to be more careful, Wright,” he had said once in passing after a trial where a guilty offender nearly wrung Phoenix by the neck, the defense attorney standing just a little too close when the verdict was handed down.

“One of these days something... serious, might happen to you, and you won’t be able to just laugh it off.”

Phoenix only flashed him that dopey grin and said, “I’ll be fine, Edgeworth. For an unlucky guy, I’m pretty lucky.”

Miles wanted to believe that, truly. The man seemed to get off easy in dire situations more often than not, so perhaps he had a point behind his foolish reasoning. Even so, his worry lingered. Luck always tended to run out at some point.

---

Then one afternoon, his phone rang. He had already been driving towards Phoenix’s office, having been called over earlier on the premise of having an “important discussion.” He’d left as quickly as he could, but the traffic seemed to determined to keep him from reaching his destination. It was slow, and he seemed to be hitting every red light possible. It was at one of these prolonged red lights, as he sat impatiently tapping the steering wheel, that a familiar tune sounded off in his pocket. Sighing, he slipped his phone out and checked the screen, not too surprised to see Phoenix was the one calling. Forgot to tell him something in the first call, most likely. He hit “answer” and brought the device up to his ear.

“What is it, Wright.”

There was a raspy breath on the other end before Phoenix spoke, his voice just as hoarse.

“M-Miles, I... I-I uh...”

Miles’ brow furrowed, and he found himself straightening in his seat, grip tightening on the phone.

“Wright? Is something wrong?”

There was another breath, followed by a rather nasty sounding cough. There was then a sound that could have been a laugh, if it wasn’t so strained.

“Ah... s-something like that... I w-was trying to call... hhhah... I guess it d-doesn’t mmmatter... a-are you almost... here?”

The light turned green, and Miles pressed on the gas. Harder than he should have, perhaps, but he was uneasy now.

“Yes, I am. What is it, Wright? What happened?”

There was a grunting sound, and the rustle of paper.

“W-well... fffunny story, ah... there was s-ssomeone at the door and it t-turns out it wasn’t... w-wasn’t you and ahm... shit-”

The hiss was sharp and pained. Miles turned a corner a bit too hastily, nearly catching a street sign as he swung around it. Before he could say anything, Phoenix continued.

“I’m not... I’m nnnot doing too hot, Miles... It’s getting... k-kind of hard to... focus...”

Miles clenched his jaw, trying to hold his composure. He was on the final stretch of road, he just had to get there.

“Stay with me, Wright. Stay on the phone. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah...” came the reply, but the strength in it was fading, “yeah... Miles...?”

“I’m here, Wright.”

He turned into the office parking lot as he said that, haphazardly parking and exiting the car in record time.

“.....what I w-wanted to... tell you... I... I love... you.”

Miles’ breath hitched as he ascended the steps. He would’ve have stopped completely if not for the adrenaline fueling his movement. A lump formed in his throat, which he heavily swallowed as he pressed on. Damn it, why now did he- Damn that man.

“J-Just hold on, Wright. I’m coming up on the door now. Wright? Wright?”

Silence filled the other end of the line as he approached the door, which sat unlocked and ajar. A red smear stained the door handle, while more splashes led across the floor and deeper inside. Miles only hesitated a moment before flinging the door open, rapidly searching the room for the other man. It didn’t take long.

The defense attorney was slumped against a bookshelf near his desk, various papers and books scattered around him, along with his still lit up phone. He wasn’t moving. Miles sucked in a breath as he practically slid to Phoenix’s side, one hand clasping his shoulder while the other went to check his pulse. Thankfully, he could still feel it, though it was weakening.

“Wright? ...Phoenix, can you hear me?”

He tried to get some kind of response, lightly shaking his shoulder, but got nothing. He shifted his gaze downward, where he couldn’t help but spot the dark stain soaking underneath his jacket. He lifted the blue fabric slightly, trying to get some assessment of the damage. It looked too wide a tear to be a gun wound. A stabbing seemed more likely.

“Damn it. Damn you,” Miles cursed under his breath, shucking his jacket off and moving to put pressure on the wound. He set to call the authorities at the same time, his now-shaking hand nearly dropping the phone entirely. He stared at the unconscious man before him as the phone rang, mumbling to himself before the responder picked up,

“If you die, you fool, I’ll... I’ll bring you back and kill you again myself.”

Emergency services responded quickly, and an ambulance was sent with haste. The police force arrived as well, with the ever-diligent Gumshoe heading the charge. Ever-diligent, and ever-emotional, as the detective seemed to blast through one emotion after the next while Phoenix was being prepped for the drive to the hospital. Miles was given the assurance as he boarded the ambulance himself that, no matter what, the culprit wouldn’t get away with it. In the tense silence of the ride that followed, Miles let that statement repeat in his head- let it hold him together. They wouldn’t get away with this. He would see to it personally... Once he was assured that Phoenix was going to make it out of this alive.

---

Several hours of absolutely nerve-wracking waiting in the hospital lobby followed after, but all well worth it when he was informed that Phoenix was in stable condition. That didn’t stop him from nearly throwing the recovery room door off its hinges upon arrival, however. He needed to see it for himself, confirm with his own eyes that the other was alive.

A tired smile greeted him from the bed.

“Hey Edgeworth...”

Miles stood in the doorway for a moment, silent and stiff. Then, slowly, he drew in a breath, let his shoulders relax, and stepped inside with the door closing behind him.

“Wright.”

Phoenix winced at the tone of Miles’ voice, like a child about to be lectured by his parent.

“Look, before you get m-”

“You are an absolute moron, Phoenix Wright. I mean really of all the idiotic- Not only do you call me as you’re bleeding out, rather than contact the authorities-”

Phoenix attempted to interject.

“To be fair I was actually trying to call the-”

But Miles didn’t let him finish.

“But then you have the gall to go and declare- to tell me that you- in such a dire circumstance you decide to claim-”

“Miles-”

“Not seconds before I walk in on what could have well been a murder scene- And what would I have done then? Knowing you had said such a thing before I could even have a chance to process it let alone-”

“Miles if... if you don’t feel the same I-”

“Reciprocate.”

Both of them fell silent then. Phoenix, slack-jawed and staring straight at Miles while the prosecutor locked his gaze to the floor, feeling the heat begin to burn in his cheeks. Phoenix blinked rapidly, beginning to flush a bit himself despite his currently paler complexion.

“Y-y-you mean you-”

Edgeworth huffed and turned towards him, closing the distance between himself and the bed before closing the distance between the two of them. It was an impulsive kiss, and not the one either of them imagined would be their first, but it was real. Phoenix was real, and still here, returning the kiss like it was the most natural thing in the world. A wince and a hiss broke the moment though, Phoenix pulling back to sink into the mattress he’d started to push off of. Miles pulled back hastily, rubbing at his arm with an awkward clearing of his throat.

“A-apologies, I didn’t mean to-”

“No, no- my fault, really. And look I... I’m sorry for worrying you and... how I said that really wasn’t how I meant to go about it-”

Miles cut him off again before he could start losing himself in his rambling.

“I... I know, Wright. I would be far more concerned if your plan had been to confess to me by having a near death experience.”

Phoenix chuckled nervously and looked elsewhere, giving Miles the chance to take up the seat next to his bedside.

“Yeah that’s... a little far out there... even for me. But Miles, you really...?”

Phoenix looked back with a start as Miles took his hand, his grip cautious but protective. Miles attempted to play it off as if he was exasperated, rather than jumbled mess of feelings he was grappling with. The mess of feelings he had been grappling with for some time.

“Honestly, I would have thought just now made it clear enough, but. If I must say it to convince you. Yes, Phoenix. I... I love you, too.”

There was a pause, far too long yet far too short, before Phoenix smiled. Still tired at the edges, but warm and genuine.

“Okay then. I’m... I’m really glad to hear it isn’t just... I’m glad.”

Miles couldn’t help but smile faintly himself, gently squeezing the hand in his.

“...As am I. Now... why don’t you tell me how you got into this mess?”

#narumitsu #wrightworth #ace attorney #phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #My writing #fanfiction #*twiddles fingers*#idk if this is any good but

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abluescarfonwaston · 3 years

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elevator rides

Also on Ao3

Some days he rides the elevator.

This should not have been a surprise. Indeed, he worked on the twelfth floor. It would be silly to walk up and down twelve flights every morning and night. Occasionally- often- more than that.

It wasn’t as if he had the time to be wasting climbing flight after flight. It wasn’t as if the elevators in this building were in desperate need of maintenance. It wasn’t as if there was any reason to avoid them.

Guilty.

His fingers tightened around the briefcase as he entered the building. Gumshoe trailing a step behind.

Your job as a prosecutor is to insure the guilty are punished for their crimes.

He hadn’t had time to investigate the cases brought before him. Not personally. Not in a long time. They just kept coming and coming and coming.

You just need to trust the police did their job properly and use the evidence you are given. Evidence is king after all.

The incompetent police. The questions he was left pondering even as the defense collapsed beneath the weight of his argument. Why’d she use her left hand? Where was the other round? Why did that testimony grate at him so?

Guilty.

Was she? The evidence-

Criminals will always lie to protect themselves. There is no way to be perfectly confident. Only follow the evidence and get every criminal convicted.

The guilty must be punished after all.

He pushed the up arrow next to the metal doors.

“Pal?” He covered the jolt of surprise. Had Gumshoe been talking?

“What is it Detective?”

“You’re taking the elevator?”

“Obviously. Are you going to continue with your asinine observations?”

“S-sorry sir it’s just… You never take the elevator.”

Twelve flights of stairs. Hauling evidence and case files too crucial to leave in the detectives fumbling hands for even a few minutes. Twelve flights up and twelve flights down.

The elevator dinged. Doors sliding open.

“I’m tired.” It’s not a lie. Every time he closes his eyes he is back in that dark elevator. The Arguing. The Yelling. His father screaming. “You are welcome to take the stairs.”

His hands are cold around the handle of his briefcase. It is December. His coworkers go silent when he enters the break room. Demon whispered on their lips as he leaves. There are letters written and delivered from a boy who believes he was - is - someone better.

He is not. He steps into the metal cage. Gumshoes heavy feet following in behind him.

“My father…” Franziska is too young to understand. But she sits next to him on his bed clutching her doll. She has stolen into his room while a nightmare tore him awake. Patted his back and hair harshly while he cried, telling him not to cry. That Von Karma’s do not cry.

But he is not a Von Karma. He is not perfect and is incapable of perfection and how dare he presume-

“Was killed.”

“Oh.” Her little feet kick out into the darkness from where they hang over the bed. “But the bad person was punished right?”

The grounds outside the window are quiet. Dark and still.

An insanity plea. Not Guilty. They declared.

“No.” He wraps arms tighter around his legs. Presses them against his chest. Father would have-

He couldn’t think about Father. He couldn’t. It hurt too much.

“Oh.” She shuffled closer to him on the bed. Stiffly leaned against him. “Papa would never have let them get away.”

Manfred stands in his doorway. His massive imposing form casting a shadow that covers even him, shivering in his bed. The room seems so much colder than it had when he’d fallen asleep.

“A nightmare?” It is a question only in the sense that he expects an answer. He does not move from the doorway. Does not come and sit next to him. Does not hold him or ask him in a soft warm voice if he would like to talk about it.

“Yes sir.”

“Hm.” It is not a kind sound. Mr. Von Karma does not make kind sounds. Not to him at least. “About your Father.”

He nods because it is all he can do not to cry. To break down into the wracking sobs that threaten his body.

“The guilty,” His voice rumbles through the space. Fills his bedroom like the courtroom. “Must be punished.”

You will never be perfect. He snaps when Miles oversteps his bounds. It is already too late for you, criminal. He sees in the sheer hatred in Manfred’s eyes.

The guilty must be punished.

Manfred has taught him. Sheltered him. Clothed him. But never been kind to him.

Perhaps it is because the perfect Mr. Von Karma knows exactly what he’s done. What he assures himself is only a dream. A nightmare.

Maybe he just doesn’t have enough evidence for another perfect trial.

“I know Franziska.” He forces his right hand to let go of his knee. Wraps it around her little shoulder. “I know.”

Von Karma would never have let his Father’s killer go free.

Perhaps he hadn’t.

The elevator doors close. It lurches upward.

There is no oxygen in the room. He cannot breath. It continues upward. His lungs do not fill. Gumshoe is talking but it is static and noise.

The guilty must be punished.

He is not a child anymore. Von Karma has certainly punished innocents in his decades of tireless work. He does not cradle this illusion like a tender child. It is reality. It settles over his shoulders. Heavy. Dense. Cold.

He has certainly done so as well. Punished the innocent. But how can you know? They will never know for certain. Testimony is flawed and the police are incompetent and everyone lies to save themselves.

His heart hammers in his chest. His lungs do not inflate. Four. Five. Six.

He freezes outside the elevator. Von Karma sneers back at him. Grips him firmly by the arm and drags him in after. He thinks that maybe- maybe it left a bruise in the shape of his hand.

But his memory is a faulting thing. It cannot be trusted. It flounders over the words Von Karma directed him to memorize. Omits entire cases he’d been directed to study.

It was the only explanation. It must have been that he’d forgotten to study. That he’d forgotten what he’d studied. Because Von Karma was perfect and he was not.

Eight. Nine. Ten. He must grip the handrail to stay standing.

“You are still afraid of Elevators?” His Father is speaking. The bailiff is yelling. The gun is in his hand. “You are far too old for this behavior.”

The bang.

The arm around his bicep tightens further.

“Unless, of course, there’s a reason you’re still afraid.”

The scream.

If you were not guilty you would not need to be punished.

The world is tightening down to the elevator doors. Darkness is filling in the edges.

If you are not guilty you would not still be afraid.

He is still afraid.

They open.

He stumbles out. Dragging a breath into his burning lungs.

Von Karma is fifty miles north investigating a crime scene. There is no one who will punish him.

His office is a few measly paces from the elevator doors. He jams the key in and forces the door open.

“Sir?”

Then closed behind him.

If he was not guilty he would not be afraid. If he was not guilty he would not need to be punished. If he was not guilty perhaps he could have been perfect.

His hands shake on the handle as he grips it tight. Breaths quick and shallow.

Darkness still pulls in at the corners of his vision.

Some days he rides the elevators because guilty must be punished.

And with every ride, every quake, and every nightmare his innocence feels a little less real.

Two new cases sit atop his desk. A plea deal and a new incident.

He will get every criminal found guilty. Every sentence passed. He will forge no evidence and follow the letter of the law- if not its intent.

Demon.

Let them call him that. Let them think it. Let them believe it.

Not like it was wholly wrong after all.

Wasn’t it that demons were once angels that had fallen and were being punished for their transgressions? Maybe if he punished enough one day-

But nothing could change what he was now. What he had become all those years ago.

Guilty.

And until he could be sentenced there was little he could do but continue his work.

“Sir?”

He looked up from the papers.

“Detective? Come in.”

“You uh. Locked the door sir.”

He sighed and tucked the new case in his briefcase. Unlocked the door.

Gumshoe smiled at him sheepishly.

“I’ve a new case.” He strode past the detective.

Keep working. Punishing criminals. Until they found him guilty.

And he would finally. Finally. Be punished.

#miles edgeworth #ace attorney #aa #franziska von karma #manfred von karma #hurt no comfort #have i written stuff in the last month? Yes #have I finished anything? No #except this!#Pure angst #funny how that works #writing #i'll post this on ao3 in the morning

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browniefox · 3 years

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The Spectral Turnabout 3/?

Miles gets the truth of his ‘hallucinations’ revealed to him.

oOo

“Please, Edgeworth, let me help you.” Phoenix asked once more, a little quieter this time, a little more sure of the answer he was going to get. He was already knee-deep into the case. The dl-6 incident was dusted off. Phoenix’s single-minded focus had already locked onto this case, onto this murder, onto Miles’ innocence.

The spirit that followed Miles’ had set her head on the table before him, less than an inch from touching the man’s hand, eyes flicking between Miles and Phoenix. She was sitting completely still, and Phoenix imagined if she was a living creature she’d be holding her breath.

“... yes.” Miles said, almost more of a whisper than anything. Phoenix felt the weight of the case settle on him, officially under his responsibility. The spirit tipped her head back and howled with joy, jumping and hopping around in her excitement. She slipped through the wall dividing Miles and Phoenix and ran right into Phoenix, bowling him over with her force.

“Yes yes yes! Thank you thank you! I promise you won’t regret this, I promise! He’s innocent, I was with him all night, he’s innocent and I know it so don’t you worry, you’re doing the right thing!” The spirit cheered, giving Phoenix’s face a lick that definitely felt like being licked by a dog, and he had to wonder if normal people would see the slobber on his face or not.

“Hey, yes, I am, and that’s great, but I need to talk to Edgeworth a bit more!” Phoenix did his best to gently nudge the spirit off, but she was big and heavy. Maya was over in a moment, grabbing the spirit from the back and lifting her off. The spirit made a sad noise, the wings on her head fluttering around.

“You have to get him acquitted, okay? He’s innocent!” The spirit continued to insist.

“We will!” Maya promised. This made the spirit’s wings - both the set on her head and the set on her back - flutter about even more in joy and excitement, pushing away from Maya and flying through the wall again to rest her head exactly where it had been before, nice and close to Miles.

Miles.

Who was still on the other side of the glass.

Who must’ve just seen Phoenix fall backwards for no reason, talk to nobody, and then Maya perform some impressive mime of trying to lift something heavy that didn’t exist.

Who was speechless staring at Phoenix and Maya, not blinking, maybe not breathing.

“Ah, uh, you, your response,” Phoenix desperately fished for a way to explain what had just happened.

“We’re practicing! For a show!” Maya said quickly, coming in clutch.

“Did you hear, Miles? They believe me! They’re going to save you, you’ll be okay!” The spirit said.

And then, Miles eyes darted down to the spirit, and a purple spectral energy began to come off of him.

“Edgeworth?” Phoenix said slowly, cautiously, getting back to his feet and close to the glass again. Miles’ chest was moving quicker and quicker, moving up and down in great big movement that almost looked painful. The spirit touched her nose to Miles’ hand, such a small but very deliberate gesture.

“You’re a spectral?” Maya asked, clearly as surprised as Phoenix.

Miles’ shoulders shook, a chuckle escaping from his mouth, and then he was full-on laughing. The spirit made a pained noise and began to wrap herself around the man, just like Phoenix had seen her do during court; a position that now had a different meaning knowing that Miles was aware of it, let the spirit do so. The spectral energy rolled off of him in disjointed and randomly spiking waves`

“Edgeworth…?” Maya shuffled awkwardly. Miles' laughter petered out quickly, and it sounded more like coughing, like sobbing, but he wasn’t shedding any tears. One hand was raised up and just barely not touching the spirit who was trying so hard to comfort him.

“Say it again,” Miles asked, no, he begged, “Ask me again.”

“Miles,” Phoenix let out a slow breath, “Are you a spectral?” Another dry chuckle forced its way out of Miles’ chest in a way that looked like it was against his will.

“Y… yes, yes, I think I am. At least, that’s what Pess told me.” Miles said. He rubbed his face, making an effort to get himself under control again, and with the action his spectral energy crept back inside of him, hidden once more like it had never been there. It was a subtle difference, considering with the spirit draped over him, her own spectral color a match for his, it was almost impossible to tell them apart.

“Mr. Edgeworth… are you okay?” Maya asked, brow furrowed in concern.

“There’s… I have so many questions, but now isn’t the time, is it? I finally have answers literally right in front of me, and I can’t even reach out and grab them.” Yet another humorless laugh shook him, “When this is over, however it ends… tell me about this then. For now, take this. It’s a request for you to be my attorney.”

Phoenix took it, not knowing what to say. He looked down at it, turning it over in his hands. Miles had come into the room with it in his hands, despite his insistence that he wouldn’t let Phoenix take his case. The thought made something swell in Phoenix’s chest, but the emotion was dampened by the entire exchange that had just happened.

“Miles-” Phoenix started.

And then the world shook, and anything he might’ve said was lost.

oOo

“Spectral.” Miles repeated the word to himself. He’d committed the word to memory years and years ago, from the night that Pess had told him, but he’d never said it out loud since. Now, he rolled it over his tongue, acknowledging the way it sounded when said out loud. It was a word, a real word, with a definition and everything. A noun, a term to describe somebody like him that could see spirits and ghosts.

“I did tell you.” Pess reminded him.

He was lying on the bed in his cell, Pess’s head set on his chest. The meeting with Phoenix had been… quite something. There was the feeling of failure at having been unable to keep the man away from the DL-6 incident, then being shaken completely to his core by the sharp upheaval of his reality with the fact that he wasn’t, in fact, insane or hallucinating all these years, and then the great and final note of an earthquake more literally shaking Miles. He wasn’t aware of what he’d done in the moment, but when he came back to himself Phoenix and Maya were gone and the guard - who until then had stood quietly by the door, for all the world unaware of Miles’ and Phoenix’s meeting - was kneeling over him with concern on his face and had then taken Miles back to his cell.

“Yes, you did.” Miles relented. The words were still a whisper, so deliberately quiet, and he wanted nothing more than to pet Pess and bury his face into her fur, but he wasn’t home. He only let himself acknowledge Pess when they were truly alone. Except… except she was real, she wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

That didn’t change the fact that hardly anybody could see her, and they would think he was crazy if they found him talking to air.

“When you get out of here, maybe they can tell you more about being a spectral.” Pess said, nuzzling Miles as she spoke.

“When I get out.” Miles wasn’t sure how much he believed that would be a thing. The evidence was against him. Then again, if Phoenix had demonstrated anything in his first three cases, wasn’t it that he could and would work against impossible odds?

It was a shame, he thought, that you couldn’t really put a spirit on the witness stand. Pess, as always, had been with him the whole time, and she would vouch for him before a judge given the chance.

He wasn’t crazy.

Something in him hadn’t snapped irreparably that day in the elevator.

Miles stopped as a thought occurred to him. If he wasn’t crazy, if his memory was indeed reliable… he always dreamed of that day, of the man attacking him dad, of throwing the gun and the sound of it going off.

If he wasn’t crazy, then that had really happened. And if it had really happened, then what if that bullet had been the one to hit his dad?

Miles gave in to digging a hand into Pess’s fur and she snuggled closer.

“Everything is going to be okay, Miles.” She said.

Miles wished he could believe that.

oOo

When it’s over, when it’s all over, Miles was left with a business card.

He must’ve gotten it at some point when Phoenix had practically dragged him out of the courtroom, a big goofy grin on his face, Maya cheering behind them. Pess was literally howling with joy, flying circles around the group, which grew in number with Gumshoe, who had been waiting just outside for them. Miles wasn’t entirely sure he could name the emotion he was feeling at the time, but he knew it felt good, it felt fan-fucking-tastic to see the man who’d shaped him into the demon prosecutor killed his father convicted for the act.

That was a few days ago, however.

Now, Miles was standing outside of an office, holding a business card in his hand, looking from the address printed on it to the number on the door, over and over again and making sure he had it right.

Not that there was much question whether he was in the right place or not. The words ‘Wright & Co Law Offices’ were printed in clear white letters on the door.

Miles took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Pess shifted on her feet next to him, and Miles’ head did a weird flinching thing as he was conflicted on whether to look at her or let the years and years of practice doing specifically not that guide him. In the end, he didn’t look, but he did brush his fingers against the top of her head. He raised his other hand and knocked on the door.

The door was answered by Phoenix himself. Instead of finding the man in the blue suit and pink tie he seemed to wear to every court session (Miles wondered if Phoenix even owned a second suit), Phoenix was dressed in a plain black tee shirt and baggy white pants with an indigo sash tied around his waist. There was the thinnest sheen of sweat on his brow, and he wasn’t wearing any shoes. It definitely wasn’t the attire one expected to find from someone at a law office, and Miles wasn’t sure what to say to that at first. Luckily, he didn’t have to as Phoenix spoke first.

“Oh, Edgeworth! I didn’t expect you to drop by. You should’ve called ahead.” He said, blinking away his own surprise and then smiling simply. “Well, come on in. What can I help you with?”

Miles had never been inside of Phoenix’s office, but he was fairly sure it didn’t usually look like this. The main desk, chairs, and coffee table had been shoved to the edges of the room. Maya was standing in the center of the open area, wearing an outfit nearly identical to Phoenix’s with the exception of a purple sash instead of the blue. She had her finger pointed in the shape of a gun, her spectral energy condensed at the tip of it, and she fired it at Phoenix.

Phoenix put a hand in front of him, his own indigo energy shaping into a shield. The little bullet harmless hit the shield with a little ‘pop’ sound. Maya grinned.

“Your reflexes are getting better.” She said approvingly. In response, Phoenix fired off his own little ball of a spectral energy, which Maya dodged with ease. Phoenix shook his head, but he was smiling, and turned back to Miles.

“Sorry, you wanted to talk about something.”

“Yes,” Miles let himself look down at Pess this time, who gave him an encouraging nod, “I wanted you to tell me about being a s-spectral.” He silently cursed himself. For all the times he’d whispered the word out loud to himself, saying it to another person felt strange.

“Oh!” Phoenix binked, and his spectral energy spiked.

“Really? You came at the perfect time!” Maya ran over, hands clapped together in excitement. “Nick and I are practicing right now!”

“Practicing?” Miles thought back to what he’d seen, of how Maya and Phoenix had done something with their spectral energy. He’d had no idea it was so moldable.

“Yeah! You don’t become a spectral master by just sitting around.” Maya curved her fingers like claws, and the spectral energy pooled around it into a form like two bear paws. Phoenix rolled his eyes. “You can join us if you want.”

“I-I don’t-”

“We should!” Pess looked up at him, tail wagging hopefully, “They’ll know a whole lot more about this than I do.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not hard.” Phoenix promised.

It’d be so much easier to turn around now. To just walk back out the door, and stay the way he’d been most of his life.

But the easy way didn’t necessarily mean it was the better way.

“Okay.”

#pnat #paranatural #ace attorney #miles edgeworth #phoenix wright #maya fey #au #the spectral turnabout

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always5hineee · 4 years

Text

Depreciation- Chapter 8: Relay

Chapter warnings: Mild language and violence

Word count: 1295

-----

Y/N was promised complete privacy as she met with "the defendants" before the trial. It had been a few days, and she had triple checked that she had accomplished everything Kun required of her. They were brought in, thankfully unhandcuffed, into a remote office as an offshoot of the detention center. As each met her eyes, they had different reactions, but said nothing until their accompanying monitors were gone.

Once they were alone, Ten was the first to move, immediately getting up from his seat to give her a hug. It took her by surprise, and the others looked on with a bit of awkwardness. In a mostly soft voice, he spoke first.

"It's nice to see you again." He started. "I'm sorry about... about Lucas." This again... she didn't want to think about it. She couldn't believe he was dead. She just couldn't.

"When will we be speaking to the lawyer?" Kun asked, already honing in on the logistical aspect of their little reunion.

"Yeah, about that..." She looked down. His face shifted several times as she explained her situation. The voicemail lawyer, the house arrest, the choice she was given. Finally, everyone was staring in awe.

"You're our lawyer?" YangYang asked. "That's so cool!"

"That's so awful." Hendery commented, catching her off guard. She honestly assumed that he was in their out of necessity, not choice. Although, it did make sense that he didn't like the setup. She held his life in her hands, and if she could find away to get just him fucked over, she would do it in a heartbeat.

"Hendery." Kun warned, looking over. They obviously hadn't had a chance to speak since the arrest, which would cause some tension to say the least. Once he was sure the man had settled down, no matter the hatred pouring from his eyes, he turned back to Y/N.

"Have you been through discovery?"

"Yes."

"Summarize."

"They have three categories of evidence: bystander witnesses, physical evidence, and victim witnesses."

"That's impossible." He commented idly. "I can't think of a scenario in which even a single person we've dealt had made their way back and into the hands of a prosecutor that quickly."

"The prosecution says otherwise." Was all Y/N could comment. She didn't know what to tell him.

"You've been working with him on this?" She assumed Kun was talking about the real lawyer.

"Yeah, we... we think we've got it. It'll be quite the move to pull, but just trust us."

"I do." He said with no hesitation. Looking to the left and right for a moment, he sighed. "With all due respect, none of us want to do this right now, and it seems like there's not much we can do. We all know the cover story, we'll all get to hear each other in court, so..." Clearing his throat awkwardly, he asked, "Maybe we just talk?" She nodded.

"I'd like that. I think we all have a bit of explaining to do." There was a long pause as everyone waited for someone to start.

"Well?" Kun asked.

"I think we all want to hear an explanation from the same person." Ten snarled, looking over to the other side of the room. Henry glared back, asking,

"Do we have a problem?"

"What kind of a question is that? Of course we have a problem. You killed two of my best friends!" He shouted, clearly willing to get violent much more quickly than she had expected.

"And stole half a million dollars." WinWin added.

"And killed a bunch of girls!"

"You think I was just doing it for fun?" He yelled back, standing threateningly as well. He was clearly weaker than he had been in the previous days, even since she'd seen him in the cell.

"Well what the fuck kind of reason would you have?" Ten was screaming at this point, tears practically forming at the corners of his eyes. She'd seen him emotional one time before, but this... this was something different. This was some sort of self-destructive absolute passion. "Lucas is dead and Xiaojun is close. They never did anything to deserve that, especially not from you! When you nearly cut your finger off playing with those stupid knives, XIaojun is the one that fixed it! Who's the one that covered us after we got into gang fights? Xioajun. He'd fix us up no matter what. Lucas would do anything for you because he respected you, and respected all of us! We may not have been a perfect group, and the things we're doing might not be conventional, but they were good men and you're a fucking demon for killing them!" He said, shaking at the knees as if he was going to fall over.

"I bet you would have killed us too if you could! I wish I had done it before you'd gotten the chance! Then Lucas and Xiaojun would be alive! I hope you die, I hope you die, I hope you die!" He cried, sinking to the ground as he put his head in his hands, still muttering the phrase over and over. I hope you die. Just die. Hendery looked shocked as Ten sat on the floor sobbing, YangYang now having taken the liberty to try and comfort him, saying something that she couldn't quiet hear.

"You have no idea what I've had to go through!" Hendery shouted down at him out of nowhere, voice cracking in fury. WinWin rose to try and calm him down, muttering something in his ear. "No, really! You're naive and stupid if you think I'd recklessly make decisions like that for no reason! I thought we knew each other, huh? You want to call these people your best friends and then treat me like shit? Is that what it's come to?" His eyes wide in some sort of crazed state, he lurched forward to drag Ten up off the ground by his collar, practically choking him for a moment.

"You disgust me. You're just a fucking child that wants mommy and daddy to go away, you don't know how the world works. If you even had a sliver of the knowledge that I did, you would have killed them too. Everyone wants the big guys gone until they have to deal with the consequences."

"Hey! Break it up!" YangYang was trying to separate them as Hendery slapped Ten clear across the face, causing his head to snap to the side. He put a fingertip to it, feeling it for just a moment, before jumping forward as well to knee him in the gut.

"Stop!" Y/N was begging as it turned into an all-out fist fight between the two. She wouldn't be surprised if they started biting and pulling each other's hair before long. Finally, she was able to push Ten back by the chest as WinWin dragged Hendery away by the arm.

"Don't blame me when the consequences come." Hendery spat as Ten looked over Y/N's shoulder at him.

"We're giving you the chance to explain." YangYang begged him, trying to be reasonable as Kun looked on silently. "Just tell us what's going on and we can all get past this."

"I'm done explaining." Hendery snarled. "I'll explain in court." And with that, he fell to the ground, eyes shut. Rushing to his side, WinWin put a hand to his neck.

"I think he's just exhausted. He hasn't eaten since we were arrested."

"How is he alive?" Y/N asked, still a little shaken. Ten clearly was as well, as she could feel his heartbeat beneath her hand, racing at a thousand miles an hour.

"Sheer willpower, I guess. It's wearing on him. We'd better hope this gets solved quickly..."

Go to Chapter 9

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

Text

Witches, Chapter 13: no seriously we are finally at the end of this Tenma Taro thing we finally are seeing the last of it.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

Isabella’s trial ends with her acquittal, and no indictment of another culprit. How could they? In the light of day, it’s that much harder to argue that the photos Athena has of scarred-up trees are evidence of a monster and not, say, a bear. (Apparently bears are pretty common out in the Vale and further north around Kurain Village. Who knew? Not Apollo, but Sebastian does, and he uses that fact.) They can argue it, and they do, and they succeed, but it’s a hell of an uphill slog with no real closure.

What could they do, anyway, to the real thief? Tenma Taro is trapped in a hollow iron statue inside a cavern warded with charms, and in a fae-induced coma. They can’t exactly bring it into court. And that’s even if a judge would let them. Maybe this one - a woman of indeterminate age, older than them and that’s all Apollo can guess, the way he couldn’t really at first place how old Iris was supposed to be, who looks like she was carved out of granite, stony and stern - would accept it. Maybe she wouldn’t. She gives no real indication either way through the trial, listening to all of their arguments with an impassive expression, and she asks sharp, cutting questions that throw both sides off-balance. If the judge who Apollo is used to generally trails behind the defense and prosecution, then this one is in line with them but a step to the side, considering a different angle.

When court is dismissed, Isabella thanks them profusely in the lobby, cries some more, and hugs Athena. She's been terrified since they told her yes, they could personally confirm her suspicion was correct and Tenma Taro truly was the culprit, but with the most difficult parts behind them Apollo assures her she won't have to worry about the yokai running about the valley any longer. She stares at him wide-eyed, clutching at the wooden bead necklace she wears - surely another sort of lucky warding charm - and she tells him she believes him.

What does she think he is, he wonders, touching his eye.

"I actually feel pretty good about what we've done these past two days," Athena says, flinging herself backwards into the lobby couch, slumping halfway off it like she's melting down to the floor.

"'Actually'?" Apollo echoes.

"Well," she says, "considering what we made of it the first go-around, but we pulled it together okay. With help, and some bruises." She plucks at her tights and the material snaps back against her leg. "Ow."

"Maybe don't do that, then," Apollo says, vividly sure that some or another time he has had a conversation just like this with Trucy. Less and less coworkers and more the annoying younger sisters he's never had - was he this annoying to Nahyuta? He knows he wasn't, so this doesn't even make sense as karmic justice.

"Eh, it kinda hurts even when I don't do that," Athena says, sticking her legs out straight in front of her and bouncing her heels off the floor. "It's just the tightness of it, but what else am I gonna wear?"

"Slacks?" Apollo asks.

Athena snorts. "You know how hard it was to find a facsimile of a jacket, and skirts, in this color?" she asks, gesturing at her cropped jacket, which Apollo wasn't ever going to comment on to say that she looks like a high school student trying to shirk the dress code when Prosecutor Gavin still comes to court looking like that. "How am I getting slacks?"

"Mr Wright and I manage," Apollo says. "Try shopping in mens?"

"And just hem it, hm." Athena taps at her earring, sending it swinging back and forth. He hasn't ever yet seen her wearing an earring in the other ear, just that crescent, and he wonders whether the other hole closed itself up, she lost the matching piece, or it's a clip-on. "And there'd be pockets to start with, too! Magnifico!"

"You have pockets already," Apollo says. "I've seen you stash food in them."

"I sewed them in," she explains. "One of my - my best friend when I was young, before I moved away, her grandmother taught her how to sew practically from birth, and I picked it up from her, how to modify stuff. Haven't learned to make my own clothes, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. Just—" She reaches into her skirt pocket and pulls out a granola bar.

"Clever," Apollo says. "All I've learned from my best friend is tracking salt all across the apartment floor when you step in your own salt circle" - or really it's just a line across the threshold - "and a lot about constellations." And astrology, but that wasn't learned so much from Clay as it was learned to annoy Clay. Okay, maybe that's why these annoying younger sisters are happening as comeuppance, even though Clay is four months younger than Apollo (by the guesstimated birthday Datz picked out) and is generally much worse to Apollo on a regular basis. "Yours is more practical."

"Is the salt circles because he's trying to summon a demon or keep the demons away?" Athena asks.

"The latter."

"Could we theoretically just have gotten a salt lick and tossed it at Tenma Taro?" Athena asks. She grins to herself, and Apollo rolls his eyes at the image. Like that would work. "Or a bowl of Eldoons? But I guess there's probably someone out there somewhere you can impress with space facts." Like Ema, the few times she and Clay have crossed paths, but Apollo watches the smile fall off Athena's face. He glances around the lobby, surprised to find that it's empty still, that no one has entered, that there's no apparent catalyst to why Widget's blue has darkened. "Someone who thinks it's neat and not - deathly cold and empty and lonely."

"The ol' existential dread hits hard when you think about infinity, huh?" And yet looking up is still less terrifying than even considering what it would be to look across to the Twilight Realm, glean what the world of the fae is like. He asked Klavier; he's sure he can say that it's just as cold, and just as lonely.

"Oh yeah," she says. "Something like that. I'd rather take the ocean; it's still a cold abyss you might die in but you get anglerfish and giant squid with it." Widget lights back up to neutral blue and a second later flashes past it to cheery green. "And penguins! Does outer space have penguins? Check and mate!"

"I am not going to argue to the existence of space penguins, no," Apollo says. He doesn't know of any penguin constellations; off the top of his head, there's a swan, and an eagle, and one summer Nahyuta charted a warbaa'd that Apollo no longer remembers how to find.

"Man, what kind of a lawyer are you if you can't even do that?"

Kay announces her arrival with the nonsense she's made herself known for. She proved herself a detective as competent as any other on the stand today, self-assured as she always is but with seriousness she didn't even muster in their life-or-death struggle against Tenma Taro. When called on a contradiction, she swings back with ferocity, without waiting for the prosecution to square it away himself. She forced Apollo to stay on his toes, kept the case moving, up until Sebastian had to make an explanation that didn’t quite mesh with what Kay had argued, and there Apollo drove the wedge to split open the case. They sit almost on the same wavelength and work well together, miles better than Fulbright and Blackquill or Ema and Klavier, but Kay can lunge forward impulsively and Sebastian hesitate to overthink; Apollo remembers being forced to object to one of Athena's conclusions and sympathizes with the way they fall out of sync.

But the trial is over, the verdict passed, and Kay is Kay, off-hours, Detective Faraday no longer. "Yeah, yeah, we handed that one to you," she says with a sharp grin that suggests she might not be speaking seriously, if the red flash of light that frames her lips doesn't give Apollo that hint. "Next time, we'll kick your ass." Competitiveness lingers, though. "Next time, when we're all not partying it up with the actual monster behind the thing and getting con-cu-ussed!" Her voice pitches into a sing-song at the end as she points at herself with both thumbs. "No biggie, really. You got a job to do so you do it, y'know? Like I investigated a crime scene while concussed and amnesiac, once."

"You what?" Widget yelps, and Athena is too shocked to try and stifle it. Apollo lets that stand as the only response. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap his head around Kay, especially because he knows she’s not lying.

“It wasn’t even your job then,” Sebastian says. Apollo isn’t surprised by his arrival, only that he wasn’t immediately beside Kay when she came bounding in. “It wasn’t even her job then.” He directs his statement directly at Apollo and Athena now. “She was just tagging along with Prosecutor Edgeworth.”

“And I was born to investigate, my dudes,” Kay replies, tipping herself backwards onto the couch, next to Athena. “Though maybe not any more today. I’ve got a headache.”

“You’d better be planning on going home and taking a nap after this.”

Apollo jumps; Kay flinches, sitting up forward, and so does Athena, who loses the last of her tenuous balance and slides to the floor. Apparently none of them had been warned that Phoenix would be in attendance.

The surprise now passed, Kay sinks back into the couch. “Yeah yeah, sure thing, Dad.”

Phoenix sighs and presses a hand across his eyes. “I’d tell you someone should talk to you about your lack of professionalism, but I don’t think anyone we know could give that speech without being a hypocrite.”

Apollo thinks himself plenty professional, but the trouble is no one - not Trucy or Klavier or Kay - responds in kind.

Kay gives Phoenix a thumbs-up. “I didn’t know you were planning to come, Boss,” Athena says.

“It was more a whim than a plan, really.” Phoenix gives them a small smile. “Had to make sure you were all keeping up the good work in the courtroom, too.” Kay shoots him another thumbs up. Sebastian fidgets like he doesn’t know if he should take Phoenix seriously, if he really did doubt how the trial would go. Apollo wishes he had some advice about understanding Phoenix to offer. After nearly a year, he does not.

“If it isn’t Phoenix Wright, the man of the hour.”

Apollo knows that voice only because he spent the last several hours hearing her speak: the judge, still with her gavel in hand, tapping it against her palm. Her black hair sits immaculately braided into a crown atop her head, and her layered white cloak flutters delicately for several seconds after she stops moving. “Hello, Judge Courtney,” Phoenix says. Of course he knows her by name too; doesn’t he know everyone in the legal world? “Long time, no see.”

“Indeed it has been,” Courtney agrees. “I expect to see you soon again behind the bench, yes? Having made your latest turnabout last year.”

“Is there anyone who hasn’t been told that I’m retaking the Bar?” Phoenix asks, turning his eyes and hands pleadingly ceilingward.

“Oh yeah, that’s really soon, isn’t it?” Athena asks. “Next week? You should probably be panicking more.”

“If that’s your official analytical psychology-based advice…” Phoenix shrugs again. Athena frowns, apparently considering whether she wants that to be her actual stance on the matter. “Anyway, Courtney, can I assume that you were put on this trial for a reason?”

“You may assume whatever you like,” she replies. “Though I do wish to speak to you about this entire matter, if you have the time.”

“I do have to run pretty soon,” Phoenix says, “but if you’re heading out too, then yeah, sure.” He turns toward the door, stops, and adds, “Why do I have this horrible feeling of dread already?”

“That’s your problem, not mine,” Courtney says. Her next words are directed at Apollo and Athena. “Mr Justice, Ms Cykes, I’ve heard promising things of you both. Forgive me for brushing you off in this moment, and for not introducing myself properly. You may call me Justine Courtney.”

A part of Apollo that considers itself both weary and savvy thinks that he should have expected it.

Outside of a trial he’s surely allowed to address a judge by name. He knows this. “It’s very nice to meet you, Your Honor,” he says. Nailed it, but has anyone ever had problems born of being too respectful of the fae?

(Actually, probably. He’ll ask Clay if he’s ever heard of that one.)

“Oh!” Athena jumps like someone just hit her in the ribs. “Nice to meet you!” She flashes a nervous smile, having now remembered basic manners.

Courtney smiles. It’s almost imperceptible; Apollo wouldn’t consider the expression on her face a smile if he hadn’t just watched the corners of her mouth twitch upwards a minuscule amount. “Sebastian has told you of me, I see.”

“Huh?” Athena asks, her fearful grin still frozen in place. “Why would you think that?”

“Those expressions of terror on both your faces tell me you surely know something of me.” There, more obviously a smile. “I assure you, unless you commit a crime, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Athena’s shoulders sag with relief. “Oh,” Apollo says. “Um. Thanks.”

“Good day to you all.”

She has barely left with Phoenix when Athena rushes over to the lobby doors, putting her ear up to the crack between them. “What?” she asks Apollo’s glare. “They might have something interesting to say! This isn’t a crime!”

“Just horribly impolite,” Apollo says. And fae society is founded on a thin veneer of politeness, with terrible consequences for its breaking. He might have thrown some eighty percent of his self-preservation instincts to the wind with Tenma Taro, but Athena is extra ridiculous.

A minute passes. Athena’s forehead creases, her eyes narrowing. “Well?” Kay asks.

“They’re just talking about their kids,” Athena says, and her disappointment couldn’t be more obvious if both she and Widget screamed it.

“And what’s John up to, then? Shit, how old is he now, even? Nineteen?”

“Twenty-one, actually.”

“Where’s the time even go?” Trucy turned sixteen early in the spring and since then he’s had the nagging feeling that the world is ending. Isn’t she still the baby in his locket? Sometimes he thinks about how that little girl in pink, her round face and the eyes too big for it, is the last memory Zak had of her; he never got to see her grow up. (Never bothered to.) And here’s Phoenix, the one who gets to, dreading it. Funny thing, fatherhood.

“I have no idea,” Courtney replies. And they say it’s only in the Twilight Realm that time works differently. “He’s taking a bit of a hiatus, you could say, from acting, considering what he wishes to do next. He’s concerned if he doesn’t do something he’ll be typecast for life in kaiju movies as the one human who the monster finds fondness for.” With a chuckle and a shake of her head, she adds, “Though I suppose there is some art imitation of life in that.”

“I wasn’t gonna be the one to say that,” Phoenix says. Think it, certainly, but say it? No. “Though you’re up to maybe half a dozen humans now?”

She raises her eyebrows but smiles and accepts the joke for what it is - a joke, and not Phoenix counting up her family, acquaintances, and coworkers and deciding which she presumably likes enough to spare when she smashes up Los Tokyo, which Phoenix would swear is a city name he once heard in one of those movies when he and Trucy went. “Something close to that, perhaps.” She smacks her gavel into the center of her palm and her long nails, even now reminiscent of the claws Phoenix could see if he looked at her through different eyes, curl around it. “Now. Mr Wright.”

He’ll probably never get used to hearing his name from her lips; she’s like Mia in this regard, a creature of the Court so determined to perform humanity that she overcomes their cultural hangup on names - somewhat. Mia still tripped, and Courtney has her own particular patterns. It makes her sound like an extremely polite person, he’s come to notice: it’s Mr or Ms and a surname to everyone, first-name basis reserved only for John and Sebastian.

“Why was I not informed of everything that was planned to deal with the monster Tenma Taro until after the fact?”

“Sebastian didn’t tell you?” Phoenix asks.

Courtney levels a cold stare at him. “Do not shift the blame. He did not, because, as he explained to me this morning, he was aware that I had dinner plans with John last night and thus he didn’t want to bother me. You, however, Mr Wright, have no such knowledge of my schedule but do have my contact information, and therefore, had no reason to not have kept me abreast of the entire situation.”

“That I think Sebastian is a competent kid who’s more than capable of handling this? Is that not a reason?”

Her expression darkens into a scowl, her fingers tightening a little more around her gavel. “If you think him so, then, pray tell, why you also called upon one of your... ‘friends’ to deal with the beast?”

Something got lost in the telling, but it’s a relief if this is all she wants to chew him out for. “No, I didn’t call on anyone, beyond, y’know, the kids - it was a decision they made, no input from me.” Trucy had said that she was glad for Iris’ help, though, and also that Iris was terrifying, and Edgeworth gripped the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles went white.

Courtney’s brow does not relax. “And that does not concern you? You may be content to place your child into the hands of one of Them, but do not expect me to be so nonchalant about mine.”

“I’d argue that Sebastian isn’t your child, but you have that look that says you would argue that on a technicality.”

“I in fact could,” she replies. “But you know as well as I that you are arguing on a technicality yourself, rather than address my concern.”

Phoenix glances back up the stairs. He doesn’t know how far Athena’s hearing ranges, but he does know that she’s damnably curious, and when it’s that easy to eavesdrop, he wouldn’t put it past her. “I’d need to fully grasp your concern to make an actual rebuttal. I mean, I understand in some capacity - they’re the royalty.” If he remembers the timeline, which he’s not sure he does, Courtney would have left the Court before Morgan’s incarceration. She would have known it as the nightmare it was under Elise’s absence and Morgan’s ambitions, and he can’t fault her for being wary of the next generation of women to rule over that den of vipers.

“No,” she says. “That is not why. Mystics or no, I do not trust any of my kind who claim to love humans but then return to those frigid halls.”

How many stolen children had she known - disregarded, perhaps, back then - before John came into her care? She without a doubt knows what would have become of him had she raised him in the Twilight Realm. Thalassa and Klavier have gifts not worth the scars. Even a kindly fae guardian couldn’t protect a human child there.

“I’d tend to disagree there, because they’re the Mystics,” Phoenix says. The courthouse doors swing closed behind them and they step into the bright sunlight and the noise. It’s easier to talk out on the street, their voices drowned out by the rest of the bustle. This is Los Angeles, crowded and noisy and the background radiation of Kurain, the fallout that drifted here, makes the city so damn weird that this conversation can’t be breaking the top ten of most bizarre conversations happening within this hour. “If they were just anyone, like you, I’d say yeah, leaving is best. But they’re at the top of the food chain - don’t they owe it to try and change things from up there?”

Had Elise and her fondness for humanity kept the throne, what then? Where would the Court be, anything or nothing changed? Or if Maya and Pearl left now, if Iris had kept to her self-exile, what would become of it? At the end of their bloodline, who would take their place as Mystics, on the throne, as Queen? How much worse can it get? (Better not to ask. Don’t tempt fate.)

“Would you tell Edgeworth to abandon the title of chief prosecutor because half the office is corrupt?” Phoenix adds. “That’s exactly why we need him there.”

On the sidewalk, Courtney stops to face him. “And I find that a very imperfect analogy,” she says.

“It’s an analogy - if it were perfect, it would be—”

She holds a finger up to her lips. Sometimes Phoenix would swear it’s more than just intimidation in that motion and that she puts magic behind it to make him or anyone trip over his tongue when she has a point she wants to make. “We need a justice system; we need prosecutors. We need to reform, to shine light on the shadows, for all our sakes. We do not need the Winter Court.”

“So you’re an advocate of fae anarchy?” Now there’s a sentence he didn’t expect to say. While he, and even Maya and Iris and Pearl, use it also to mean fae society as a whole, “the Winter Court” should, pedantically, refer only to their governance. He doesn’t know which Courtney means: that the fae hierarchy is unnecessary, or that they are.

“I am an advocate of us intermingling with humanity enough that we fade away entirely.”

The latter, then. “You might get that wish,” Phoenix says. He’s heard from Maya that they kill each other faster than they have children, and then those children that do happen get swapped for human ones, and every decision is one of impulse, a whim in the moment, no forethought, no concern for the repercussions, the inevitable societal collapse. And Maya has never sounded grieved by this. It’s a simple fact. Their dynasty will end with a whimper: that is their prophecy, and a self-inflicted one.

“I look forward to it. In the meantime, though, I must as of your ‘friends’ - do they think change is needed in the Court? Do they understand what it is that is so wrong there, or do they humor you and our morality as one would humor a child or a favorite pet?”

“If it’s getting a cat that makes you get rid of the toxic waste in your backyard, that’s still a good thing, right?” he asks irritably. If it ends at the same damn place— “You aren’t something different from them either, you know.”

“Of course I know.” She straightens her back, drawing herself up even straighter, and her cloak rustles, its movements continuing independently of her body, belying the two pairs of wings that under glamour pretend to be a garment. So far as he knows she can’t support herself to fly with those wings. They’re an aesthetic, part of her self-styled position as an avenging archangel of the Goddess of Law. “But that means I know how they are, as I once was. A question for you, Mr Wright, that I mean in the kindest way possible.” Part of him doubts that. “Do you believe, truly, that you have made enough of an impact on them that when you are gone, they will continue to respect the morality that you currently ask them to live by?”

“I—”

Iris would. Pearl - might. But he hasn’t seen Maya in years because he was afraid that even with him present, here, alive, she would go against his wishes and enact bloody vengeance on Kristoph. She offered it as a gift for free, like a cat would turn up a dead mouse on the doorstep. He can answer half the question, that he’s made an impact. She loves him. That isn’t what Courtney wants to know.

“We’re a bit off-track from your main concern, aren’t we?” A feeble redirect, but she doesn’t look smug so much as sad that she’s tripped him up here. ��You wouldn’t trust them yourself, fine, but the question of what happens when I’m gone doesn’t have that much in common with you currently being angry that Sebastian was around them, now, when I’m still in the proximity.”

“I am what they are, of the fae. Sebastian is a witch - is my witch, you might say. In the Court, we hardwire ourselves into a particular way of thinking, whether we mean it or not. To survive, you learn that all others are threats, now or soon to be in the future, and if you cannot get at the threat itself right away, you wage a proxy war and strike against their resources, their tools, and their humans - who you would consider within the first two categories.”

Implication: obvious. Sort of. Part of it. “Why would they see you as a threat, though? You exiled yourself. You’ve said yourself you’re never going back.”

“It’s an instinct. Even I struggle with it.” Courtney steps closer to him, allow the sidewalk traffic to flow around them. Maybe they should start walking again, get out of the courthouse vicinity before the kids catch up. “Seeing another of my kind, or a changed child - my first impulse is to lash out. I find it incredibly unfortunate, not to mention distracting. I presided over a case the other day that Prosecutor Gavin was in charge of, and I believe we both found that profoundly uncomfortable, no matter how we reasonably know that we are very removed from that life.”

Profoundly uncomfortable is a decent way to describe how Phoenix feels at this thought, too. “Oh,” he says. “I see.”

“Yes. You understand, then, my concern that Sebastian will come to harm? You friends may protect your daughter and your proteges, because they are yours. But Sebastian…”

Those two are Edgeworth’s, not mine. He said it himself, shifted responsibility for their lives, because he’s already failing to convince himself that Athena and Apollo aren’t his responsibility, aren’t his kids. Didn’t he tell Iris they were, or at least implied it?

(And then Iris implied that Kay was right, that she and Sebastian were Phoenix’s too, by saying that Kay had decided for him. Of all that happened last night, that’s an inconsequential piece, and he remembers it vividly.)

(Which, actually, even if Iris hadn’t agreed, there’s still another question raised.)

“Yeah,” Phoenix agrees. “But, they know Edgeworth. My friends, I mean. They know he’s my friend. And they know who his - his people are, Kay, Sebastian, whoever else. That he wouldn’t be happy if anything happened to them, and I wouldn’t either.”

“Believe me, I do like to hear that,” Courtney says with a tiny smile. “But that is a chain too long for me to fully place my trust in. Understand where my concern comes from, and tell me in advance whenever you need the assistance of Sebastian the witch as much or more as Sebastian the prosecutor. Can we agree to that?”

“Absolutely,” Phoenix says. He could’ve agreed to it without the passive-aggressive shaming but - well, she probably thought she needed to do that to properly make her point. To make him understand, she would have thought it best to make him doubt first. How could she trust his fae when he isn’t certain that he himself does? Courtney’s won every hand this round. Probably time to step away from the table.

She smiles. “Good. Best of luck to you; I hope the Bar goes well.”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh, thanks.”

And then he winces, and she raises her eyebrows. The whole damn conversation, he was reminded, he was extra aware, of what she is, and then he slipped anyway. One of the first bits of advice Mia gave him, to never say thank you to Them. It’s an admission of owing a debt, however slight, and thank you does not fulfill a debt. “I hope you haven’t lost your touch,” Courtney adds, and it means double now. “I’ve wanted to someday see you in court, given how highly the chief prosecutor has spoken of you all these years.”

Implication: she can’t believe that the man Edgeworth so highly respects is the man standing before her. (Or maybe she does, and the one here who doesn’t believe such is Phoenix.)

“Well,” Phoenix says, “if you aren’t the judge on my first case back” - presumptuous to say he’ll be back, but confidence is a key point, though he’s pretty damn confident that Courtney wouldn’t be the judge, because he thinks he probably sealed some sort of accidental exclusivity pact with the one judge a long time ago - “you can come watch. I’ll let you know when. Or Edgeworth will.” Edgeworth might make a damn party out of it if Phoenix isn’t careful.

“I will look forward to it.” Courtney nods at him, one last acknowledgement. “Until next time.” She spins on her heel and weaves her way through the people on the sidewalk, a most mundane exit. Phoenix turns his eyes from her back, stares up at the courthouse behind them. Always something new to ponder, always another issue.

But dragging Sebastian out anywhere isn’t in future plans, so most of what he needs to concern himself with vis-à-vis Courtney is to extend to Trucy her offer that, if Trucy is interested in performing on the big screen and not the stage, Courtney will smack John into being in a good enough mood to accept any inquiries Trucy might have.

Small mercies, that among everything else, Phoenix’s teenager has never been a moody teenager. He’s not sure how he would handle that.

Trucy arrives at the office after school, beaming once they tell her of their victory, and promising them that they are becoming the go-to law firm for the people of Nine-Tails Vale and Tenma Town. How is one supposed to feel when told that he might be the lawyer on retainer for a haunted valley? Word-of-mouth advertising is just about all the Wright Anything Agency has, and Apollo decides he’s going to skip thinking about this unless it becomes a problem again.

In a way that’s becoming a habit, the girls tear out of the office when the clock strikes five like their horses are going to turn into rodents again. “I’m too busy on weekends,” Trucy says, and she is, often, as a real magician trying to reintroduce stage magic to a city culturally wary of both, “but I’ve gotta show Athena all the coolest places around town as soon as possible!”

“Didn’t you grow up here?” Apollo asks her, and Athena shrugs, and she and Trucy clamber into her car and honk and wave at him and are gone from the lot before Apollo has even unlocked his bike from the rack.

Takes some getting used to, still, the new routine. Trucy going home with Athena even though Athena’s found somewhere to live that isn’t the Wright family couch. Since Christmas, Apollo and Trucy would bike part of the way home together - she had gotten hers as a present from “Uncle Miles - er, Mr Edgeworth, he’s awkward about me calling him that in front of people that he works with, I think it’s like a professionalism thing?” - but now—

Well, he can’t resent Trucy if she’d rather hang out with another girl her own age, and Athena’s a nice kid herself, and he doesn’t know where this thought is headed. Athena had offered to give him a lift, too, but accepting a ride from his coworker five years his junior, for more than heading to a crime scene, definitely feels undignified. What little dignity he has left.

Trucy never bothers to lock up her bike when she leaves it here, saying that Mia would make sure it wasn’t stolen. And it hasn’t ever been, yet - the only thing ever stolen from this office, far as Apollo knows, were Trucy’s magic panties; maybe Mia shares Apollo’s disdain for those things. But Apollo would rather trust something solid, and he still meticulously locks up his bike, and he still locks the office door behind him when he’s the last to leave.

About ready to go, sliding his lock into his backpack, someone behind him speaks. “Little dragon.”

Apollo whirls around, reflexively raising the lock in his hand like a weapon, letting his bicycle clatter to the ground. Iris flinches away, her hands coming up to protect her face, as though she couldn’t flatten him without touching him if she really wanted. Would she look more or less frightening if it was in the light of day that he saw her charcoal skin and red eyes? Kristoph under the clinical lights of the courtroom simply was.

“Why are you here?” Apollo asks, slowly lowering the lock, because it’s steel, not iron, and is not going to be of use. Hell, even iron doesn’t feel like enough, right now, not when he almost asked what do you want, a question that could surely be extorted into wrenching something away from him. What do you want, inches from, what can I give you, and the fae, tangling the lines.

“I have a piece of advice to offer,” Iris says.

Apollo leans down to lift his bike from the ground, not breaking eye contact with her. Not enough eye contact is probably an offense. Too much is also probably an offense. The winning move is to not play and it’s far too late for that. “Am I allowed to refuse it?” he asks, and then he wants to stick his entire foot in his mouth, because advice doesn’t imply something binding, and he could disregard it without telling her that. Because this definitely is an offense, and Iris’ dark eyes narrow. He’d swear they flashed in the light, not red, but a white shine. He curls his hand around the handlebars and squeezes until he can feel the iron ring digging into his finger.

“Yes, but I don’t believe you are so selfish, are you?” She scrutinizes him with a hard stare, wide eyes and a slack, blank face.

“Er,” Apollo says. If he wants to ignore advice from dubious sources and gets ruined for it then that’s his problem, no one else’s. “Selfish?”

“Perhaps ‘advice’ is not the way to term it,” Iris says. She leans on the bike rack and her nails when they hit it make the soft tink of metal on metal. “An assurance, perhaps? And not only for you.”

“O...kay?” Do the fae enjoy being cryptic, or is it not on purpose and simply an impulse hardwired, a manner of speaking they think nothing of? Or is it for the sake of dramatics - it would explain a lot about Klavier if needless dramatics are a key cultural aspect of living among the fae. “For who, then?” If it was for anyone else - Trucy or Kay or Sebastian - she could have just said it last night, when they were all together. Why just ambush Apollo?

“Your friend,” she answers. That means nothing despite Apollo’s very limited number of friends. “The changed child, the lost boy. He is far from mad, I assure you - he is not twisted only in his own head, and he is not the only one who have ever seen through a looking glass a life that could have been.”

“Oh,” Apollo says. He hadn’t lent much credence to Klavier’s thought that his visions were just a psychological coping mechanism, honestly, but if Iris has insight then he won’t pass up the chance to learn more. “So, who else, then, has had that happen? If you can say,” he adds hastily. Maybe she can’t, or won’t, the way Klavier clams up.

“Little dragon,” she says, and Apollo doesn’t know if she’s teasing him or scolding him with that tone; it’s something almost in between, and a strange uncomfortable familiarity. “You have an eye for the Truth and a brick for a brain.”

“Eh?” Definitely not the best objection he could make to refute that. Even yelling “Objection!” might have been better.

“Dense,” she says. “It’s me.”

“It’s - ah.” Right. Should he have guessed that? She knows about Klavier without - surely she hasn’t met him? She knows about something he only ever told Apollo. If she knows that, she might know anything, and she could be talking about anyone. “Why - why’s that happen, then? To you and Prosecutor Gavin but not - not—”

Not me, when I could very easily have lived several lives unfathomably different from each other?

(Not that he wants to see it. Not that he envies Klavier at all. He doesn’t know if his heart would hold together at a glimpse of a life beside his brother.)

“I cannot say with total certainty, but he and I share something,” Iris says. “A complex, unfortunate entanglement with the name and life of another. His twin stole his life and name, while I borrowed both from mine.”

He feels like an echo in this conversation, adding nothing, just standing here in bewilderment asking for constant clarification. “His twin?” Apollo repeats. That’s - one way of putting it. Technically they are the same age, or supposed to be.

Iris nods solemnly, lowering her eyes, her lids heavy and hiding them entirely. “It is not quite the same. My sister was as fae as I am - we were born together, she the last red rays of a setting sun, and I the shadow of the horizon when the light sank away.” She pushes herself up off the bike rack, no longer leaning in toward Apollo but withdrawing into herself. “And I was indeed her shadow. We were not the daughters our mother wanted - my sister was powerful but not malleable, and I was weak and loved her more than I ever would our mother. She cast us aside and my sister set her sights on power among humans, not within the Court. I followed, because I was sure I would not live without her.”

My sister was, she said. Was. And that’s enough to know before Iris continues, lifting her chin and shaking her hair back out of her eyes. “But she is dead and I am still here, because her cruelest deeds caught up to her and I, all she had for a heart, could not shield her. All she knew was how to shed more blood, and she meant to, and instead I asked her, would she please not dirty her hands further, would she let me try to fix this my way; she allowed me to, and for the better part of a year our places were switched. Our name was Dahlia Hawthorne.” She tilts her head, studying Apollo intensely again, like she’s checking to see if the name means something to him. He isn’t sure that it doesn’t.

“And I failed,” Iris continues, “and she acted her own way as she had wished to from the start - and then she failed, was judged and sentenced and taken from me and then from the world of the living, and I was left behind an echo. For years after that, I saw - not quite like your friend, not the one simple life that would have been, but many. A diamond, and its every facet a different alternative. A different possible life for Dahlia.”

She lifts up a hand, her palm facing the sky, her fingers curled just slightly around a beveled gem that appears in her hand. Its clear body sparkles in the sunlight and Apollo sees flashes of movement inside of it, colors and shapes and people. “In one lifetime,” Iris says, and the gem, the diamond, floats in the air a few inches above her hand, “I never was her at all. I stepped aside and let my twin do what she would and never cared about the darkness we damned the legal system to languish in.” She twists her wrist and the diamond turns with it. “In another, I was Dahlia and after I did what I meant to I stayed, and then my sister killed him anyway because she could not bear for me to love anyone but her.”

“So your sister was a monster too,” Apollo blurts. He hopes she realizes the “too” refers to Kristoph, not to Iris.

“Oh yes,” Iris says. “She was a demon; she was selfish and cruel and manipulative and she would have been an archetypal fae queen had she decided to fight for the throne. From the day we were born until the day she was executed, she cared about no one but herself. And from the day we were born, I have loved her, and until I die I will love her still. She is my sister and she is me and I was her - it’s a knotted mess, is it not, when there is someone else who is and isn’t you, and a name that is and isn’t yours.”

Apollo nods mutely. Did your sister care about you? he doesn’t ask, because while Iris has been open so far about her life story, and it’s a valid question given the way she talks about herself and her sister being one person, there’s got to be a line somewhere and he doesn’t want to meander across it.

“I never did see a life where I did what I meant to and escaped without incurring an unpayable debt, nor did my sister ever choose a way to hide damning evidence that was not pawning it off on a naive boy who has since willed his heart to turn to stone because he loves so strongly that time and again it breaks.” Iris snaps her palm closed into a fist and the diamond vanishes, but her eyes hold a far-away look softer than the sharp movement. “It’s hard to believe in destiny when I’ve seen so many disparate possibilities, but I suppose it must exist in some form, and he always destined or damned to cross paths with the faes of Kurain.”

She isn’t talking about Phoenix, is she? “Do you still have visions?” Apollo asks instead. “Or how did you stop them?”

“For myself,” she says, and that sounds like a veiled warning that this isn’t going to help Klavier, that this is all subjective guesswork, and the fae’s prying eyes don’t have much help, “I needed a certain amount of closure. To see again the man I had most wronged, to tell him the truth, and that to see in spite of myself and my twin, he had survived and found people who loved him better than I ever could.”

He can’t not ask. The question is going to eat him otherwise. “So, erm, is this Mr Wright you’re referring to?”

Iris stares at him with lifeless eyes. Apollo rubs the back of his head and decides that the best way to play is this is to make a plea deal by naming his co-conspirators. “And we were wondering, uh, me and Trucy and - and Athena, and Detective Faraday and Prosecutor Debeste - we were wondering, are you in love with Mr Wright?”

“No,” she says curtly.

“Oh.” He’d still sort of believe that single word, sharp and clipped as it was, to be a lie if she wasn’t fae. (And if he couldn’t see when humans are lying, sometimes. Most of the time. Whenever Blackquill isn’t involved.)

“Why did you think so?” she asks, studying him, her head tilting back and forth. Apollo regrets everything that brought him here, his bad choices and his friends who are bad choices themselves. “A moon rabbit heard something she thought was that?”

That has to mean Athena, “rabbit” an epithet commenting on her ears, though why “moon rabbit” in particular? (Apollo knows that some Asian cultures call it a rabbit in the moon, not because it was a Khura’inese story too - it’s not - and definitely not because he and Clay spent all of middle school and half of high school intensely into Sailor Moon - they definitely, totally didn’t.) What’s that got to do with Athena? Trucy a firebird, Apollo a dragon - what does Iris think she knows about Athena?

“No,” Apollo says. “It was just a kinda vibe that all of us felt?” He expends too much effort stopping his voice from cracking into a fearful squeak. “Can we forget that I asked that and just move on?”

“No,” Iris answers. Apollo’s heart sinks. “If I agreed, little dragon, that would be a deal, and a debt you owe to me.”

Shit. He’s done it again, said something wrong to her again, and he’s lucky that she’s - kind? Has a steep debt or her own and sympathizes? Or is she hoarding his missteps even while she points them out, waiting until there’s something she can get from him?

“Didn’t your father teach you to better watch your words?”

Apollo tries very, very hard to pretend it’s just random that she said father over mother or parents - tries to pretend past the sticky dryness in his throat that she’s not fae, not of a habit of knowing things she has no way to know and not of a disposition to select every word with intricate care. And he tries to pretend that the most he learned from his father wasn’t the shapes of magatamas and mitamahs, an edict to hold his soul close, but that the people he loves are going to let him down sooner or later, or later.

(Kristoph and Phoenix just reemphasized that one.)

“Entirely different question,” Apollo says. Better to move on. “Why did you tell me all this and not Prosecutor Gavin when he’s the one who actually…”

Actually is living with it and isn’t just Apollo, on the sidelines, the one who knows so many secrets, about Klavier, about Trucy and the Gramaryes, and now about Iris. (One of the fae, and he knows something so - so - about her.)

“And just how much do you suppose a man who was so stolen and changed wants to hear, unsolicited, anything from a royal creature of the Court that did this to him?”

Royalty, monsters, and Iris’ twin, the monster, who would have been the classic image of a queen. What’s their relation to Mia? How many are part of this royal family, and does Phoenix know all of them?

“Ah,” Apollo says. “Right. But I don’t really think he’s going to be much more receptive to me coming up to him and telling him what I’ve heard from one of the fae who impossibly knows things about him that she’s got know way of knowing!”

“Everyone you meet who’s magic brushes something off on you,” Iris explains. “Distinct traces, and one can learn a lot about someone else if she knows how to read it. And I am very familiar with your friend’s particular problem to recognize it.”

(If she sees all this about Klavier, could she tell Apollo what Dhurke is? And Nahyuta? If he wants information from her, what payment would she demand in return? Does he even want to know this?)

“It’s still creepy,” Apollo says. “And I’m not—” Not what? Equipped to handle any of this bugfuckery? Responsible for Klavier in any way? He’d like to be able to help him, sure, but this is - how much would it actually help?

Iris waits for him to finish the thought.

“We’re barely friends,” Apollo adds, because she really looks like she’s going to stand there silently until he can stumble though some more words. “What am I supposed to do? Say ‘hey, I have it on good authority from one of the Fair Folk that you haven’t lost your mind, no she couldn’t tell you how to stop it, said some vague thing about getting closure’—”

“Come to think of it,” Iris muses, and dread coils up again in Apollo’s chest, “another factor in my visons ceasing may have been that at the same time of my gaining closure, or immediately after, I spent several years locked up in the iron hell that is prison, as an accomplice to covering up an act of voluntary manslaughter.”

“I - I’m sorry, you what?”

With a tight, pursed-lip smile, Iris shakes her head. “That one is not a story that needs telling now.”

So her experiences are even less applicable to Klavier’s situation, then. Fantastic. “Why are you even telling me anything?” he asks. “I know you said it’s reassurance, for peace of mind, but, why?”

Why does she care?

“I believe that last night I assured Feenie that I would look after his children, yes? That I would not let them come to harm?” She sweeps her hair away from her face, back over her shoulder. “I am doing so.”

“I’m not - Prosecutor Gavin definitely isn’t - I don’t think that’s what Mr Wright meant.”

Her black eyes fix on him, stare straight through him. He’s pretty sure he knows what she’s saying. Do you think I don’t know that?

But he’d rather think that she’s misunderstanding than consider the prospect that one of the fae has taken a kind of maternal interest in them. She’s still fae. Their families don’t function well, do they? She’s got to be expecting something in return, see something useful in them.

And Apollo’s not going to be anyone’s human weapon.

“At any rate,” she says, finally ending that chilling silence that can’t have been more than ten seconds but also felt like it lasted about a thousand years, “you have more information now. Use it if you see the opportunity, as you judge fit and deem best. You know him better than I do.”

That can’t be hard, and doesn’t mean much. Apollo still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to say anything. It would be nice to give Klavier some reassurance that he isn’t cracked in the head more than any man who makes those deliberate aesthetic choices has to be, but this would probably just make him more paranoid. It’s making Apollo more paranoid, to begin to know the scope of what the fae can know, like he wasn’t freaked the hell out and has been ever since Iris called him a dragon. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

“I regret that I know no better way to help than to put this on you,” she says. “That I ask you to be so responsible for someone else’s pain.” At least she acknowledges it. “You have enough troubles of your own to be concerned with.”

Coming from one of the fae, that is the single most ominous statement Apollo has ever heard. He decides like so much else, he’s going to ignore it. “It’s fine,” he says. Not the trouble part, but Klavier. It’s sort of like Phoenix asking him every so often - less frequently as the months pass and October is further away - if he’s heard from Prosecutor Gavin lately, how he’s doing. It’s the same concept, just with more mad fae magic.

Iris scrutinizes him again. He doubts her eyes could be any more piercing when they’re glowing red. “It’s a difficult thing, to care so much for someone who has the same face as someone who so hurt you,” she says. “And a harder thing to see in a mirror.” Again, she sweeps her hair back out of her face, and the glossy red that hides in it the black catches the light. “I suppose I probably will see you again sooner or later, little dragon. Best of luck to you in the meantime - and if there could be any words that he might accept from a faery monster such as myself, I hope one day he will hurt less than I do.”

She’s fae. If she says it, it has to be the truth, in some way or another, but this one seems plain.

Iris scuffs at the sidewalk with her sandal. “I wonder,” she says, “if one of my cousins purposely cracked this so circular.”

And without glancing at Apollo again, she vanishes instantly. None of the pomp of leaving the manor, no flowers left behind. Nothing but a gust of cold air.

Apollo has been home for half an hour when he realizes something else he did wrong. Like a note that would have been left in the margins of one of his clunky middle school essays, reminding him to watch his tenses. What he should have asked Iris was, have you at any point been in love with Mr Wright?

#fic: the witches of los angeles #roddy fanfics

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istadris · 7 years

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LET THE TRIAL BEGIN!

So Phoenix got his badge back only because of the Blackquill case. And because Edgeworth asked him to. I’m moved because obviously it’s sweet that Nick became a lawyer again for Edgeworth, but I’m also emotional about Blackquill and Edgeworth’s relationship. 7 years of an apparently definitive verdict and yet Edgeworth was determined the real truth was still out there. Pretty moving.

You know I was wondering how Blackquill as the defendant would work since Edgeworth clearly doesn’t want to have Simon declared guilty....

AND THEN AURA WENT AND THREW A DAMN BRICK IN THE PUDDLE.

Now we got to defend Athena, and since she’s Phoenix’s protégée and not Miles’, he won’t hold back . Demon Prosecutor ready for battle.

And so far we don’t have yet the explanation of how a kid killed a grown woman, but...from what Athena told us, she has a pretty good mobile.

And Miles knows it. And he’ll use it fully

On a lighter note, I swear I’m not trying to ship google everything, but ...look at these dialogues. Even the Judge calls it an “invigorating tense atmosphere”. Like. How less subtle can you get. Every character comments on how legendary their UST is. Even people who have never seen them face to face.

Oh and WHAT THE FUCK ATHENA WHY DO YOU HAVE BLACK PSYCHLOCKS

#Objecte sa mère: an Ace Attorney liveblog

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tfwlawyers · 7 years

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so a while ago someone asked me what my hcs on phoenix’s (lack of canon) parents/guardians was and I gave some boring answer but recently I’ve changed it !! a lot !! here’s 2.5k of hc under the cut !!

spoilers being that I don’t think he actually had parents

more spoilers, I specifically hc he was a child in foster care who was never adopted and had to leave for independent living once he became a legal adult (and if my wording on any of this is off, plEase do message me about it!! I’ve been doing some research/have a bit of personal experience with this on my own but yeh; also localization-based so)

my hc for phoenix’s parents used to be that they were just pretty okay people who supported him well enough but they were never /that close of a family, they moved somewhere else after high school and he stayed behind for college and then the rest of his life basically - they were fairly average people who just. didn’t quite care enough to keep in touch with their son and vice-versa for phoenix

and I love when people give him loving parent(s) hcs (like him having two moms being so popular on the kink meme a few years back) and it’s sweet and hell yeah for aus, but it just? doesn’t make sense to me in canon; there’s no mention of his parents anywhere aside from a passing comment about his mother (and if I remember right it’s because someone brought up I want to ssaaayy morgan? maybe? as a sort of ‘[someone’s] mother’ comment and phoenix being phoenix just went ‘my mom?’ like Babe), no one was there to help him during his disbarment/trucy’s adoption except for a handful of friends, no one showed up for him during college when he was on trial for murder, so ??

there’s just that single brief passing mention of a biological mother and he has no issues with calling yanni ‘dad’ for that bit in 1-4 / ema ‘what are you, my mom’ in 1-5 and obviously great-grandad ryuunosuke, but that’s all I can think of regarding canon mentions of any sort of family? which, wow what a lot to work with

so. yeah. maybe his biological parents died or couldn’t support him but regardless, he wound up in a home and was never adopted and just booted out once he turned 18 (or whatever the respective age for that state/district is, I do base most of my hcs off weird localization so heyo LA)

like. here’s all we know about phoenix’s childhood (and if I’m forgetting anything, hmu):

-what happened at the class trial (and a lot of homes do have their children attend public schools)

-he’s an only child

-it was raining during his elementary school graduation

-dahlia/his murder trial in college

-he fuckgh tipped cows once goddamit phoenix

like that’s…. it, that’s all we know about him/his past prior to college, so this hc does make the most amount of sense to me considering canon + just his character overall?

it explains his fear of abandonment/hatred of being alone and maybe why all the kids turned on him so easily in the class trial (if he was the ‘weird’ one without parents then imho it’d be even easier for those kids to believe someone ‘out of the norm’ could steal money, like if they were already so willing to turn on him based on the simple fact that he wasn’t in gym that day mmMMM add that in and you’ve got even more to it), why he clings so fiercely to people and will do anything to protect them (eating glass for dahlia, changing his entire career for edgeworth, running across burning bridges and kicking down doors for maya, etc), why he adopted trucy so damn quickly when he honestly had no real reason to other than being /phoenix and not wanting her to wind up lost in the same system he did

it explains his immaturity in college before mia rolled in, if he never had a lot of individual attention/guidance growing up it honestly does make sense he’d be a bit more immature than other 20-somethings (mia is 100% his mom but like. adding in this hc, mia is his mom, one of the first people who wanted to genuinely help and guide him when he never really had that before)

it explains his quiet jealousy/self deprecation of wealth/appreciation for finer things but why he still spends his money on things like taking maya and later pearl out to lunch so often (off-track but phoenix wright wants to be domestic ok he wants to be So domestic, he wants a big open home with comfortable furniture and nice dishes and a loving family and uGH HE’S GONNA HAVE IT ALL… SOMEDAY……), why he acts like such a big brother/paternal figure to maya and pearl right off the bat even at just 24-25 years old

it explains why he wants to help people so much and is willing to sometimes do it for free if they really have nothing, he’ll gripe about it later for sure but he does occasionally view his job as an attorney and helping those with no one on their side a bit more highly than a paycheck (also tangent but I never really understood the hc about phoenix hating ~charity?? it’s such a popular one and if there’s anything in canon that supports that plS message me because I genuinely just don’t get that one, in 1-4 he thinks something along the lines of ‘wonder if I can get edgeworth to pay this month’s rent, too’ after edgeworth posts bail for maya, like Yeah it’s played more of a joke than anything else but idk I? never really got that he’s too prideful to ask for help, financial or otherwise - he’s never been the greatest with money between sometimes letting clients off the hook/only taking a handful of cases per year and that’s a flaw on its own, but disliking any sort of financial assistance so vehemently I never understood for him? ANYWAY TANGENT SORRY)

it explains why he kind of just did whatever the hell he wanted with his life (I’m a third year in college right now which was the same year phoenix was when he switched his major from art to law and if I changed my major rn my parents would be sO pissed with me lmao ((another hc that the reason phoenix is so poor is that he’s still paying off fuckin 7+ years of student loans ,bye))

so. yeah. phoenix who hit the respective age limit for foster care and wound up entirely on his own, lost and clutching vague ideals like a family through theater (getting to that, hang on), then to dahlia’s love and then the desire to save/see edgeworth again (phoenix has pretty big issues with motivation too, especially when he’s alone (why he gets all mope-y whenever maya’s gone djfld) so if something more tangible shows up he’s more likely to see it through; he’s extremely single-minded and he clings a lot to people who are important to him, like he was willing to swallow poisoned glass for dahlia and change his entire goddamn life for edgeworth So these leaps make sense to me here too considering the shift from something less concrete to /more)

and I’ve fully embraced takumi’s idea about him wanting to pursue shakespearean acting in college rather than any sort of visual arts (‘I’m in the art department!!!’ college phoenix says, 'WHAT KIND OF ART’ I yell at my DS), and when I factor this new hc into his college life it makes a lot of sense there too?

his wanting to be an actor was never his Dream or anything, he dropped it in a heartbeat for law and he explicitly says he never once regretted the change in 3-5, but? I have a fair amount of theater friends and they all agree that being in a theater company is like having a family and that’s something he would have really wanted; he always liked language and the drama and tragedy and comedy and romance of shakespeare’s works too (hc the only other thing he bothered taking with him besides clothes and a bit of money when he left was a dog-eared volume of shakespeare’s best), but those being the only reasons he kinda just decided 'why not, I’ll go into acting’ - there wasn’t anything deeper beyond that, he just. didn’t have anything else /planned for his future, no matter what he chose it didn’t really matter so why not pick something he had an interest in and where he’d be guaranteed to be around other people??

my mom never went to college and she says a large part of that was because her family didn’t support her so she never felt she could amount to anything in school (she wanted to go into theater herself, interestingly enough), so kinda just? phoenix never having that attention and support from a parent/guardian/anyone (again, leading back to his lack of maturity in 3-1), he just picked something he thought he might enjoy in acting and the second he saw that newspaper article about ~demon prosecutor edgeworth he started hunting down some law books on the side too

because acting never meant /that much to him, not over saving someone (especially /this someone hahHA)

I always had the impression that miles and larry were some of phoenix’s first real friends, so if you think about miles being his first friend/first person to stand up for him in the class trial when !! kid with no parents that no one liked !! it makes it all the more aaAAAAAAAGHH and his determination to save edgeworth /back even !!! more !!!!!

plus phoenix later learning that miles only has a single father himself and finding a bit of comfort in that is really sweet to me too? miles doesn’t have the most conventional family either but he loves gregory and gregory loves him and they’re doing just fine on their own; gregory meeting phoenix a few times and being so happy that miles has friends/phoenix always being genuinely interested whenever miles brings gregory up is. pure

((another random bit soRRY LMAO I DON’T POST MY OWN META A LOT, BEAR WITH ME - my hc for miles’s biological mother is that they kind of just dropped him off with gregory as a baby and bowed out, they were never a part of his life and never really wanted to be but miles never felt he missed out on anything growing up either; gregory is like the Ultimate Single Father, he loves talking/thinking about miles in his flashback case but if I remember right he never brings up a partner or anything, so just ?? single dad gregory… ye boy….))

oK so that’s over, I’m almost done with this post I swear

takumi put a lot of himself in phoenix and I always found it interesting that we never really got any information about his childhood/guardians beyond the class trial and random bits and pieces of memories, especially considering the fact that phoenix is one of our main leads (and would have stayed our only main lead in trilogy if capcom hadn’t wanted him back for AJ); for ema and lana we got a passing comment about how their parents died in a car crash and it was never gone into further detail than that but it was still /something, for phoenix we don’t even have that

aa deals a lot with broken families (fey and edgeworth and skye and von karma and gramarye and sahdmadhi and khura'in), intentionally or not, so? having one of its main protagonists be a man who never once actually /had a blood family of his own but works to mend/help others (like… ignoring… how trucy and apollo still don’t know… and that’s something I honestly can’t fault phoenix for entirely as he waited to ask thalassa what she wanted to do as their biological mother and she asked to keep her relation to them private for a little while longer, like it still drives me up the wall that it’s gone on this long and as trucy is his /daughter he should at least be able to tell them they’re //siblings if not necessarily reveal who their mother is until thalassa is ready lmmao, but I blame the writers for that more than anything else at this point) is something I really really love, and along the way he crafts his own family and clings to them so tightly and mMM YEAH

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO END META POSTS BUT THERE U GO, THAT’S MINE

#text #hcs #still bleh about posting my own meta but w/e im doIN IT

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