Author's Note: This was written for a prompt, where one character cries for another's pain. It felt absolutely perfect for Nick and Maya. Spoilers through parts of game four.
What You Cannot
Phoenix cries at Mia's funeral.
Maya holds the funeral in the city, where Mia's friends and acquaintances from the legal world can attend. It makes everyone in Kurain angry—the heir to the Kurain Master's position should have been celebrated in Kurain, they tell her—but it's what she thinks Mia would have wanted.
Mia would never have been the next Master, after all. Maya consoles herself with that fact, even as she tries to ignore the new pressures that have fallen on her shoulders. They never talked about it in detail—one of many things that she will never get an opportunity to discuss with her sister, now—but Mia's world was here, in the courts and the busy streets. She was never going to return to tiny Kurain, no matter that she had the talent and the political savvy needed to do well in the position.
Only a handful of family attend the funeral. Aunt Morgan and little Pearly stay home. Morgan says it is because Pearl is too small and impressionable to be forced to attend such a traumatic event so far from home; Maya can read the censure that is only partly masked by the words, the condemnation of Maya's decision to give Mia a funeral that is more fitting to her life.
The priest who does the Buddhist readings is kind to her, his voice soft and melodic. The strange adults who come up to wish her well and give their condolences for Mia's passing are generally kind, but their eyes are dry and Maya trusts none of them.
Even Grossberg, whose eyes shine with sympathy and whose hands are warm and gentle, wasn't willing to stand with her—to stand with Mia—when Maya most needed them.
No one but Phoenix, who is the only one who cries.
He doesn't make much noise. There are only two times when she thinks she can hear him sob, his breath catching. But he cries steadily, a torrent of grief, and Maya loves him for it—loves that he cared for her sister, that he respected her so much, that he can feel so deeply and is so unashamed to show it.
He is the last to come up to her, the last to wish her condolences on a life cut short far too soon. She can feel Mia's spirit at her side as Nick approaches, a tingling, prickling sensation that makes her yearn to reach into the spirit world and pull her sister tight to her.
The urge won't help anything, though. If she channels Mia, she will see and remember nothing. She will not get to speak with her sister again. She will not get to touch her again. If Nick needs Mia, then she will call her sister; if he doesn't, then Maya will wait until she is home to call her sister. Until she has a pad of paper at her side, and they can talk, at least a bit, though they can never write enough to make up for all the words that are forever unsaid.
"I'm so sorry, Maya." Nick's voice is low and rough, filled with the same grief that has reddened his eyes and dampened his shirt and tie. "Mia was one of the most amazing people I've ever met. I owe her my life, in so many ways... I wish... I wish I could have done more."
"You've done plenty." Maya smiles at the strange young defense attorney, struck anew by how easily he displays his emotion. She would think a lawyer should be better at hiding what they felt... but she appreciates it, really, this openness, this simplicity. "You saved me, after all."
"You helped me. A lot." Nick smiles back at her. "And any time you need me, you just call. Not just because you're Mia's sister, either."
"I know." She smiles again, though she can feel something stretch taut in her chest. She does not, in general, trust men—she has seen too many men who seemed nice enough become bitter and vindictive. But Mia trusted this man, and he has been nothing but kind and concerned, and he has cried for her sister more than anyone else.
"Maya..." Nick hesitates, his uncertainty as clear as his grief. "Are you... are you okay?"
No. Her sister is dead, and with Mia's death Maya has lost any choice in her own future. Her mother is still missing, a hazy hole in their lives that Mia had always done the best she could to paper over with sisterly affection. The man who destroyed their lives—who drove her mother away—almost succeeded in pinning Mia's death onto her. She has been interrogated by the police and questioned by a man they call the demon prosecutor until she wasn't even sure of her answers anymore and she will go home this evening to Mia's empty apartment, which she will need to have cleaned out by the end of the week so that someone else can rent it. Someone who will not know that a brilliant, brave, wonderful woman who chose her own path despite what her family wanted and what the world demanded once lived there, breathed there, hoped there, dreamed there.
But didn't die there. Mia died working, trying to shed light on the darkness of the past, to be light for the future, and Maya forces herself to draw a deep breath that only shudders slightly. "I'm fine."
He doesn't believe her. She can see that in the concern around his crinkled eyes, in the way his lightning-brows draw together.
"I'll be fine." Reaching out, she brushes her hand against his. "Thanks for coming, Nick. For caring. For... for crying for her."
She hasn't cried since the night she found Mia's body. There hasn't been time and there hasn't been space—she knows better than to cry in front of people who want her blood.
But he has cried tears enough for both of them, and once again Maya finds herself growing very fond of her sister's apprentice.
"Not just for her." Phoenix's fingers brush against her hand, and there are tears in his eyes again—tears that begin to fall as he turns and walks away, leaving her with the lingering warmth of his hand and an insistence that she call him if she needs him.
She doesn't cry that evening, either, but she doesn't feel the need to.
Instead she channels Mia, pen and notebook by her side, and asks her sister important questions (did she actually care about any of the clothes, do any of the decorations mean anything, is there anything Maya can use as a keep-sake) and unimportant ones (where did Mia find such a hideous lamp, why does she have books that seem to be written primarily in Latin, what is that thing growing in the freezer).
When Maya writes that Phoenix is a good person, Mia's reply is short and, for her, almost saccharine.
The best. Take care of him for me, okay ?
Maya writes back that she will treat Nick like a big brother, because he's the type of man who seems like he needs a little sister; she ends the message with a more serious promise to watch out for him, to make sure he's all right.
How could she not, when he fights for her and cries for her with equal abandon?
XXX
Nick cries when they read out Morgan's sentence.
"It's all right, Nick." Maya smiles at her friend, though she doesn't feel much like having any expression right now. "It could have been worse. At least I don't have to tell Pearly that her mom's going to be executed."
"God, Maya." So much emotion, packed into those two words, and his eyes are red and glistening as he turns to her. "I'm so sorry."
And he is, and not in the way that most of those who have wished her condolences over the last few days are. He isn't sorry with a side of fascinated horror, trying to decide what she might have done or what might be wrong with Morgan to allow something like this to come to pass. He isn't sorry with a sense of blame, like some of her family, as though the entire situation with Maya's mother being missing and Mia being dead and Morgan's betrayal were somehow Maya's fault... as though there were something she should have seen, something she should have done to keep it from happening. He isn't sorry with the callous disregard that says better her than him.
He is just sorry, truly, deeply sorry that this has happened, that she is hurting.
Throwing her arms around him, Maya hugs him fiercely, feeling his tears soak into her shoulder. Warmth and salt and grief enough for both of them, and if he will cry for her so easily she will maybe, hopefully, be able to keep doing what she has to in order to keep her remaining family whole and unhurt.
XXX
Nick cries the night she escapes from Shelly de Killer.
Which isn't really what happened—she was let go, after a great deal of work from both Nick and a thankfully-not-dead Mr. Edgeworth—but she likes thinking that she escaped.
If she thinks of it as escape, which she was trying for, the entire time she was captured, then she doesn't feel quite so helpless. Her throat doesn't feel quite so tight, and it doesn't seem as though there's no point in ever doing anything.
It isn't until after the party that she finds him crying. Pearly is sleeping, the girl having dropped off as soon as a flat surface was placed beneath her.
Maya had tried to sleep, too, but the darkness feels too pressing, the blanket too restrictive, and as soon as she crawls out of bed she hears the soft sound of him sobbing.
She goes to his side, settles a hand gently on his shoulder.
Nick raises his head from his hands and turns to look at her, and she can just make out a sheepish smile in the darkness. "Hey, Maya. Sorry. Hope I didn't wake you. I just..."
"It was a rough couple days for you. Finding out Mr. Edgeworth isn't dead. Figuring out that Mr. Engarde was a horrible person. Having to do the trial with Mr. de Killer hanging over your head..."
"Harder for you." His hand covers hers. "Being kidnapped, when you should have been safe. Being kept as a hostage to cover up someone else's crime. Being starved. Being used as a bargaining chip, and I'm so, so sorry it took us so long to get you back and—"
Throwing one arm around his shoulders, she uses the other to cover his mouth. "Don't talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. I'm here and I'm safe and you and Pearly are safe and even people we thought were dead are safe and Mr. Engarde is going to hang, if Mr. Edgeworth and I have anything to say about it, and we're going to be all right. We're going to be all right. So please don't talk about it."
"I won't." His words are the barest whisper against her hand, and he sniffles sharply, blinking fiercely. "I know everything turned out all right. You're fine. I'm fine. We're all fine."
"We're all fine." Resting her head on his shoulder, Maya moves her hand away from his mouth. "And I don't want to talk about it. But if you need to cry... if you want to cry..."
If he wants to cry tears for her, as he has done before, the tears she can't allow herself to cry, she will not stop him.
He is quiet in his grief and pain, as he has been before, but she can feel his body shake in her embrace, smell the salt and water of their shared agony, and she stays with him until it passes. Keeps her head on his shoulder, her arm around him, and lets him cry out enough of what's happened for both of them to sleep.
When they take Pearly out on the town the next morning, they're both smiling, and because Maya knows that Nick's smile is as real as his tears were the night before, she makes sure that hers is, too.
XXX
Nick cries at Misty's funeral.
She knows those tears are for her. He doesn't even have to tell her—doesn't have to say anything. She knows him too well, now, after all their adventures. She knows that he regrets that Misty is dead, but the tears he cries are the tears he cries for those he knows—for those he loves.
Tears for the choices that have been made for her, again. Not that she would turn down the Master's position—not when she knows there are others who would use it for their own gain, rather than to help the family and the world.
Tears for the mother she has lost. Not that she ever really knew her mother, but Nick will cry for that, too, for the opportunities missed through the years and the ones cut away forever by a vindictive woman's ghost.
Tears for the way the world can work, sometimes, good people suffering so much at the whims of those without empathy and compassion. Because there was no need for it to come to this—no need for any of this, for Morgan's frustration and betrayal, for Misty's frantic running from all that she was and all that her children embodied, for Dahlia to carry her hatred and need for control so far.
Tears for everything that has happened, for everything that can't happen in the future due to the horrors of the past, and Maya sits dry-eyed as another priest intones prayers and watches Nick cry for the both of them.
When she hugs him, later, he tells her that it's all right if she needs to cry.
She hugs him back, and whispers that she will when she needs to, knowing all the while that the fields of her grief are well-tended by the waters of his compassion.
XXX
He doesn't cry when he tells her that they took his badge.
She missed the trial—she doesn't have the time, anymore, to spend months down in the city with him, and it had seemed like any other. He hadn't thought he needed her, and she can't blame herself for that.
She missed the bar association hearing. He asked her if she could come down, and she knew by the sound of his voice, even filled with the static of distance, that he needed her. She told him she could come down immediately; he told her to finish whatever she had scheduled for the day, but if she could make it down the next day he would very much like to see her.
She should have been there. She tried to be there, was on the train in plenty of time to be there, but the tracks through the mountains had to choose that day to have a tree across them and...
"It's okay." He smiles at her. He is standing, still as a wounded animal in the center of his office. His suit looks wrong, so very wrong, the lapel empty, and his smile is just as wrong. Forced, she thinks, but more than that—dishonest, in a way that Phoenix has never been dishonest about his emotions before. "I'll just... have to find something else I can do. Must be plenty of jobs out there for someone like me, huh?"
"Nick..." It's not fair.
It's not right.
And they both know it, they both know that what's happened is cruel beyond belief, that by doing this the world has been made a darker, more terrible place, but he just sits there smiling and—
The first sob catches her off guard.
It has been years since she cried.
It has been years since she had to cry... years since it was acceptable for her to cry, no matter how awful everything becomes around her.
There is no one but Nick to see her cry here, though, and she gropes blindly for his arms as the tears blur her vision. She clutches his sleeves and she buries her head against his chest and she bawls out all the emotions warring in her chest, as his hand strokes her hair and his voice tells her that everything will be all right.
XXX
She stays long enough to make sure he will be all right.
She worries, at first, that he will do something foolish. That this last little bit of personal cruelty from a world or fate or God that seem intent on their sorrow will push something past the breaking point—has pushed it past the breaking point, as he smiles and doesn't cry.
She knows that she's wrong within three days. There is something new in Nick, now, something she never wanted to see—a wariness, an unwillingness to talk about all that he is doing and all that he plans, a distance to his eyes and a bitterness to some of his smiles that she doesn't like.
But there is still Nick in there, too. There is still Nick in the man who asks her to come with him, to help him fill out the forms that will give him custody of the child of the man who ruined his life. Not so he can hurt her, not so he can take out his anger and justified pain on the innocent girl—so he can protect her, from a threat he can't or won't articulate to Maya, from a world of loneliness with no one there to defend her.
There is still Nick in the man who files an appeal, though there is also this new, cagey, hurt man in the way he shrugs and says it will likely go nowhere.
There is still Nick in the man who takes her to dinner with the only person on the bar committee who didn't vote to revoke his badge, though there is the new wary man in his request that she tell him her opinions of Kristoph and his warning to her to be cautious of the man.
There is still Nick in the man who asks how her training is going, how her role as Master is going, how Mia's ghost is doing, and she tells him all she can, delights when she draws a true smile from him or a real laugh.
But it is the new man who puts her on a train, when she is finally willing to leave—when she has arranged for what financial assistance he will allow, until he has his feet under him again, and is certain he will at least live. It is the new man who wears only casual clothing, who covers his trademark hair under a hat and slouches his shoulders and ducks his head to avoid reporters that Maya would gladly see spontaneously combust if she had the ability to.
(The hat has the pin that Ema gave him on it, and that is why Maya can wave back to him, can get on the train and leave though it feels like a part of her heart has been ripped out and stomped on as she watches Nick fade away.)
She cries, once she can no longer see him, sobbing into her hands.
He cries for her when she needs to and cannot; she will cry for him when he cannot, when the grief is too deep and the needs of life too sharp and immediate for tears to even be an option.
Hopefully, in the balance of their tears, they will both find what they need to keep going forward.