Warning: An adequate spoiler for PW2 - not quite huge but not quite small. And an inconsequential spoiler for PW3 as well, and you'd probably miss it if I didn't give you this hint: it'll sound like I'm making it up, but it's completely true. ;; To answer the question you may be asking - I have the Japanese GBA version, nyaha.

The 'jewel' spoken about in this fic is Maya's Magadama (I don't know what it'll be translated to) that shows the holder a physical representation of a secret a suspect is hiding, in the form of locks that have to be broken with evidence.

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Maya knew she wasn't brilliant, especially compared to her sister or even Nick. It wasn't that she couldn't tell that something was bothering her friend/brother/boss; that much was obvious enough for her. It was just that she had no idea what to do about it.

Since they spoke to Detective Gumshoe at the circus, he had decided on being quiet and distant. It wasn't just the case that was bothering him - as far as their cases tended to go, it was becoming a fairly simple investigation. He believed his client - believed in his client. No, it wasn't the case. She crossed her arms, pretending to look interested in his conversation with the beast tamer while remembering the slightly pained face he made as he gave her a quiet request: "Please, don't ever mention that name again."

Gumshoe had jumped in and changed the subject abruptly, much to their relief, but it made Maya think. He had said that last time, too, when she brought up the topic of Miles Edgeworth.

The most she had been able to get out of anybody was that Edgeworth was dead, and had died a year ago - soon after Maya had left for her home village. Besides that, the only thing she knew was that whenever she brought it up it made Nick sad, which was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted to know why it upset him so - weren't they rivals? - but something in his voice made her stop. Instead, she planned to tell him why herself.

After working on five cases with him, she knew what to do with evidence and how to use it to make people talk. All she had to do was steal the gem she had given him - and turnabout is fair play, right? With it she could see the locks that protected his secret, and see them break as she unlocked them one by one, but she was on her own otherwise.

"Maya? Come on, let's go talk to that acrobat again..." She started out of her thoughts at Nick's voice and scurried to follow him back into the snow, starting to plan what she would say later on. First of all, she would have to steal the jewel...

-----

"I know what happened now," Nick was saying to himself as he looked through the evidence. "The pepper..."

Maya hadn't been paying attention for most of the afternoon and thus had no idea what pepper had to do with the murder of the circus's ringleader - maybe he sneezed to death? - but it didn't matter. She was waiting for him to notice something was missing, being too nervous to bring it up herself. "Right, of course, the pepper!"

Finally he looked up at her with a slight grin on his face. "You have no idea what I'm talking about."

"Not at all!" she said proudly.

"Well, you'll find out tomorrow." His face fell as he thought about the trial, probably thinking the same thing she was - Francziska von Karma. He rubbed his arm in memory of a particularly nasty cut he had received from her whip that nobody ever actually questioned the presence of. Was that sort of abuse even allowed in a court of law?

She couldn't help the smile that started to creep through her lips as she watched him put away the papers and reach for his jacket and notice something off about the weight. He did a double-take, his confusion leading to that stab of realization that something important was missing.

"Oh, no... Looks like I'll have to go back to the circus... I think I forgot something."

"You mean... this?"

He looked at her, his relief at seeing the jewel quickly turning into suspicion. "Why do you have that?" he asked slowly.

"I wanted to ask you something," she said, pretending (and failing) to seem innocent. She almost considered backing out as she watched his expression darken with realization.

"This is about - about Edgeworth, isn't it."

"Yeah. It's just -"

"I told you all I know about what happened to him," he cut in quickly, turning away. "If you really want to know more, try Gumshoe."

"That's not what I wanted to know." She looked over at him and waited until he met her eyes. He wasn't lying about that part - there were no Psyche Locks surrounding him. "I want you to tell me... why the fact that he's gone makes you so upset."

Nick merely stared at her in surprise. After a pause, he said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

She squeaked slightly at the appearance of the locks - the area around Nick seemed discolored as intangible chains wove around him, connected by four locks. Now she knew why he looked so odd at suspects when Psyche Locks appeared - it wasn't exactly a normal sight. She almost couldn't believe that he couldn't see them without the jewel.

"Liar!" she couldn't help but exclaim, but then faltered. "Um..." How did he start it again?

"I don't see what this has to do with anything," he started to protest.

"Oh, well... I mean..." It wasn't going the way she had hoped. Time for a distraction, she thought. She knew where she was going with this, but she had to figure out how to unlock it. How did he start it? "A question! Um. You..." Every thing she thought of was where she wanted to end up, not start with, but she had to think fast.

"I... what?" he prompted unhelpfully.

"You... you... Oh! Everybody always says that he's your rival!" she said in a rush.

"Yes, he is. So what?" Nick pulled at his tie - that red tie, didn't he have any others? - nervously.

"So... I don't believe that." She almost giggled. She sounded just like Nick!

"But you say that more often than anybody else," he pointed out.

"Yes, but... he helped you prove that Dee Vasquez was the one who murdered Jack Hammer!" she said, proud of her memory and the way it made Nick twitch.

"He said it himself, he hates crime and the people who commit it. His 'perfect record' had already been ruined, so he probably didn't care if it involved him losing if it put the real killer in jail..."

"More importantly," she said over his trailing-off argument, "how could you say he's your rival if he's the reason you became a lawyer in the first place?"

Nick made a small noise at that and tugged on his tie even harder. One of the locks shattered, which boosted her confidence. "Okay, so he was my friend. That's why I - miss him."

"Sorry, Nick, you're not getting away that easily." There she paused, unsure of if it was time to push forward with her claim or not. She guessed it was a good thing she didn't want to become a lawyer herself.

"Then what do you think it is?"

That answered that, so she took a breath and said, "It's because you -" The breath suddenly left her along with her courage. It was a hard claim to make, knowing that it could put him off if she were wrong. "You... You are... in love with him," she finished in a small voice.

"..." Nick's face turned beet red as what she said sunk in and another lock broke. Gotcha, she thought.

"Am I wrong?"

"Of - of course you are!" he burst out. "I-I'm not..."

There were still two more locks to break until he would admit it, so she dug around her head to find things to point out to him. "Sis once said that you became a lawyer to help a friend... And it must be a very special friend for you to base your whole career around it." There was that slight pang as she thought of Mia, though time has softened the sting.

"And what makes you think that Edgeworth is that person?" Nick looked even more nervous now, loosening his tie rather than trying to rip it off.

"You just admitted it yourself that you became a lawyer for him!" The third lock broke but the blush only deepened. One more lock, she had to think of one more thing...

"I was worried about him. Besides, it was a spur of the moment thing - I graduated as an art student you know, then saw something about him in the newspaper..." If it had been any other time she would have pestered him until he drew her something, but she had the key to the last lock.

"Finally, whenever anyone mentions him, you get that look." She let her eyes drift away this time. "There was this friend of my aunt's... she lost the man she loved. When his name was brought up, she would look just like that... Completely heartbroken."

This time she heard rather than saw the last lock break and the chains slide away. "Alright, you win."

"I do!?" she exclaimed, unable to contain her excitement. She calmed herself down and scooted closer to Nick and put a hand on his arm as an offer of comfort and apology for causing that defeated tone.

"Yeah. I... do. I did. He's gone now, so it doesn't matter."

Tendrils of regret started to creep into her mind. Why did I do this again? "How can you be sure of that? I mean, how did he die?"

"... That's not the important part. Besides, I'm not even sure of that myself."

"But you have an idea, right? Pearl told me you said he died hanging on to his foolish pride or something like that," she added, remembering the strange comment her little cousin had made.

"... He left a note."

"A note? What did it - oh. Oh oh." Something clicked in her head - he left a note behind and now he's dead. That usually meant... "Suicide!?"

"Quiet down, would you? I don't know. It wasn't certain."

"So he could still be alive. In fact," she said slowly, "I bet I could tell you if he is."

"And how could you do that?" he asked, sounding either tired of the conversation (likely) or her (more likely).

"It's just like how I know my mother's alive," Maya said with a small smile. "I can feel her. I mean, I can't feel her." Nick looked extremely confused, so she elaborated. "When I reach out to her spirit, I can't find it. If I can't channel a spirit, that means they aren't dead. So if I can't find Edgeworth's spirit, then that would mean that he is... not dead."

"Don't."

"Okay, just let me -" she started before what he actually said sunk in. "What? Wait... what?"

"I said I don't want you to. I'm just going to move on. I'm trying to do that now. So I don't want to know. He's gone, either dead or just somewhere else, so it's best I just forget."

"Nick..."

"We have a trial tomorrow, Maya. Go get some rest," he said abruptly, standing and putting on his jacket.

"I'm sorry..."

"It's all right. I'll see you in the morning."

Maya sat where she was left, thinking. Nick was always there to help her, and when he needed her all she did was make him even more depressed. If it were Mia comforting him, she knew, it would be different. But it wasn't Mia, it was Maya, and Maya would fix everything. And so she thought, and reached out to find a spirit.