Patientia nostra
Despite someone else's plans, they both live to see the new decade of the twenty-first century.
It finds them mostly well, certainly healing. Even averted, completely or not, a destiny of scapegoats is a heavy burden. Life could have gone easier on them both — in the rare times they mention it, they always agree. Still, if it had, the two of them would never have made it this far.
On that, and other things, they prefer to agree in silence.
There is never much talk about it, in any case. The facts that matter are simple. Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth has made it to another decade, accompanied by the oldest of his friends, and together they travel to new people and places.
They seek beyond language and distance, taking the time they need. They do their best to find different forms of the one meaning they gave to their lives — they visit foreign places to learn, right there, how much all human beings are equal.
They never are, sadly, as it should be. In their travels, they find more than one detail to remind them.
More or less everywhere, fairness is a dream. Not so much like the truth, hard to achieve, yet not impossible — that is what they believe, until they get to a country that has not dreamt in centuries.
When they return, the way they call the name of justice is never the same again.
A few hours out of the airport, they stop by an old building, thrown in the mess of that small and chaotic thing the locals call a metropolis. Ivy is the first thing to catch their attention in Italy. It clings to the walls like lace, elegant and light, as it devours its way in between the bricks.
It is not much later when they learn, on the expensive leather couch of an office, that crime is entwined to the law in the very same fashion.
It is a balance that looks good, from the outside. In the first evening of their stay, Miles already comments on that — the quiet of the small restaurant lets him speak freely, isolated by his precautions and his language.
He says that this country may not be so hard to pinpoint, if it is all about pretty façades and crumbling walls. A glance is enough of an answer. Yet, as time passes and their knowledge grows, they gain just enough consciousness to realise theirs will never be enough.
The point is, evil and wrong are not part of the game. They are the foundations, the core of the plan, and have been such for hundreds of years. Evil is done, multiplied and forgiven — evil is used to hide itself, shaped in countless forms, voices and speeches, just to give the world a light coating of beauty.
However, there is no truth in that beauty. There is no care. Most people who used to care — because there are, there always are some — were either killed or killed inside.
Concealing the truth seems to be the most frequent form of art ever practiced here. What is least clear to them, actually, is why no one fought back.
They try to observe the people for the rest of their journey.
The lawyers of this country all whisper when they talk, Phoenix notices one day. They make loud declarations, whenever they can be seen, and switch back to cracked voices as soon as they know they are alone. The two of them listen and listen, as these lost souls describe problems that were born too long ago to understand. They all seem to believe there is no cure.
One afternoon, they are given a report on the force that devastated the most cities and lives. Text after text, they go back in history, just to find that the law has suffered the same fate from the beginning. It is enough to make them cringe for the rest of their stay.
At the heart of that very night, Phoenix wonders what or who may be responsible for all of this. He soon understands no one could answer in a million years.
They spend part of the last evening on the heights of Rome, a town built on the ghost of itself, where glory is only alive in the voices of a few and disgrace lives on in front of everyone's eyes.
The streetlights, burning after the sunset, throw their yellow gaze on inelegant buildings and monuments alike. From the heart of the city, the ruins throw shadows of millennia on this prisoner land — a land that, blinded by its past, never knew any future.
Even in that evening, time does not seem to pass. Despite the moving hands of their watches, they feel it there, like clouds, gracefully suspended on a landscape of misery. The voices and the sights below are all muffled.
"So, we are done here, I guess."
"Yes," Miles whispers in response. "I really have no reason to say otherwise."
He wishes he did, but that stays unspoken. There is no need to talk about disappointment, nor lost opportunities, when he knows they feel the same.
"I do not understand," Phoenix grunts in frustration. "I-"
"We can't."
And, really, there is no way for them to share that idleness, when the facts are open to everyone and a whole mass of people has the power to act. The terror must be older, complex, unreadable for anyone else.
"There is nothing left for us to find here," the prosecutor adds bitterly. "Anything we could have thought to be interesting is gone. And there is so much to be fixed. Still… in some cases, one just has to quit — no matter how hard it is for you to wrap your head around the idea."
"I already changed my mind about it, you know."
"No, you didn't," Miles smirks. "You never did."
Phoenix's smile is infinitely sad. It is sad for the fate that led him here, and the history that led this place to where it is now. Even after all the awful things he has witnessed in his life, the melancholic abandon of this country, with its beautiful scarred surface, will always occupy its own bitter shard of experience.
"I am still pretty sure I understand now," he replies. "What we have seen here is the definition of giving up."
And it is hard to disagree, now that they have heard about how the truth works here. It was hard for them, yes. It may never have been this hard — at least, their facts were never created out of compromises.
Had it been like that for them, it is hard to say if they would have lived, or been able to watch so many years unravel, side by side.
"Let us leave, then," Miles concludes, feeling deeply guilty and powerless as he pronounces those words.
Their flight takes off the following day, bringing along notes, books and a heavy burden in their memory.
They leave behind countless people just like them — except they are alone, desperate and mute.
Mostly, these people are forever waiting.
They are too tired to expect hope, or a chance to come along. They seek a temporary peace, maybe, or idly wait for the ashes to crumble more. They never try. After such a long time, it doesn't really matter.
Their despair was not built in a day.
But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. — V for Vendetta
Of their AJ-DD European travels, and their most likely bitter encounter with a place where what they care about is not truly cherished. They are lucky enough to be visitors. Better yet, it is not their homeland, and they don't love and hate it as much as I do.