It rains for the third time that week the night after the Hammond trial. It comes down in harsh, thick silver sheets, battering Phoenix's clear plastic umbrella. It isn't actually his umbrella, he figures it had to have been Mia's. Even though the plastic sags and threatens to give way, it stays and Phoenix draws his shoulders as far in as he can underneath his tiny safe haven. Edgeworth's umbrella breaks.
Truthfully, Phoenix didn't really even notice him there. He'd figured that he must have gone back to the precinct with Gumshoe or taken a car service. He now has to wonder who on earth was taking the limo that had parked in front of the sushi restaurant Gumshoe had picked for the post-trial dinner. But nonetheless, his umbrella snaps with an audible crack.
His hair is slick against his face with rainwater and his magenta suit is soaked almost black. In the eerie light cast by the Los Angeles streetlights he looks like a ghost. It's probably too late to pretend he hasn't seen him, so Phoenix says the fateful line.
"Do you need any help?" He shuffles over to Edgeworth while still awkwardly trying to keep himself from getting wet.
"What? I can't hear you over the rain." Edgeworth practically deadpans the phrase, and Phoenix can't help thinking that he must be able to hear him perfectly fine. He must be giving me one more chance to screw off, Phoenix thinks.
"I said, do you need any help?" Aw, hell, there's no backing out of it now.
Edgeworth doesn't say anything, and shies away like a spooked animal when Phoenix offers him space beneath the umbrella. He seems to consider it-The calculating grey eyes of the Demon Prosecutor flash momentarily and he ducks underneath it.
Edgeworth is clutching his umbrella in cold, shaking hands and Phoenix can't help noting with a slight chuckle that the umbrella is the same color of his suit. And it looks more like a parasol than an umbrella. Edgeworth seems to notice his poorly masked laughter and gives him a look, so Phoenix decides to make conversation. "Where are you going?"
"My apartment."
"Is it far?"
"No."
The rain is loud and constant, but between them it feels like silence. Phoenix wonders for a moment if he's drunk, because he's just so quiet. But then he remembers it was a sushi restaurant, and a party held by Detective Gumshoe, who Phoenix doesn't think has touched a drop of alcohol in his life. Finally, Edgeworth clears his throat, meeting Phoenix's eyes. "In case you don't remember, I've already said thank you, if that's what you're waiting for."
Phoenix's face reddens. It's amazing how Edgeworth can simultaneously make him feel both selfish and stupid. "It's not that. Honest. I just kind of thought you might be drunk."
Edgeworth doesn't smile, but he looks a little more human. There's an emotion on his face that Phoenix can't quite place. It certainly wasn't on the faces of any of the illustrations on the feelings charts on his grade school classrooms. Phoenix thinks it might be longing. "I apologize," he says, looking down the moment he realizes Phoenix is still looking at him. "I am on edge."
"Edgeworth on edge. Sounds like an advertisement." Phoenix laughs sharply at his own joke. Edgeworth falls back into the silence, and somehow Phoenix can't stand that, so he tries again. "I hate this rain. I always thought it was a real cop-out that California is advertised as being all sun and fun but it's really mostly rain and heat waves." He pauses. "You gonna buy a new umbrella?"
"Wright, this is all fine and dandy, but why are we suddenly chums? Why not let me walk through the rain, which I am perfectly capable of doing?"
He thinks about it. He could go on a whole tirade about how it's Edgeworth, and Edgeworth is about as good a conversationalist as a lump of coal, but he's Edgeworth and that's enough to make Phoenix never be able to leave him hanging. "Because I know when you need help," he says. A decent enough paraphrase.
Edgeworth's eyes keep darting up to the umbrella. It's like he's looking to see if he's being watched through the clear plastic. The rain begins to let up, just a little. "Here's a question for you, Mr. I-Don't-Need-Anyone Prosecutor. If you could walk by yourself, why don't you get out from under the umbrella even when the rain's letting up?"
He doesn't answer the question. Instead he says, in a hoarse, quiet voice and almost to himself, "I thought you were the only good thing left in the world, Wright." And for once, Phoenix doesn't have to ask what he means because he can imagine a little boy with his dreams and zest for life sucked out of him like the oxygen from his lungs in that elevator reading letters signed Phoenix Wright and smiling a little.
"Even when there were so many good things around me, you were the best of them and the only thing I was missing."
The rain hushes to a stop. "The rain here isn't so bad," Edgeworth says. "In Germany the rain was cold. Here it is warm." He ducks out from underneath the umbrella and walks away.
As stated in the summary, Feystivus 2014 gift for tumblr used belltreemaster. Fun fact, I've written a fic of little Miles and little Phoenix sharing an umbrella, so this provides a bit of a fun contrast to that. Coincidentally, that was my first AA fic. Cheers, AA fandom.