opportunities

(or phoenix wright ponders the people he could have fallen in love with)

i. Iris

Once upon a time, there was a sickeningly sweet couple that called themselves Dollie and Feenie. Their relationship really was too sweet, Phoenix thinks when he remembers, and it left such a horrid aftertaste, like cheap Valentine's chocolate. Dollie and Feenie's relationship eventually fell apart and the aftermath led Phoenix to become who he is today. Dollie and Feenie are long gone. Phoenix wishes he could look back fondly on the relationship, but he can't.

The discovery of Iris makes that longing only more profound. Iris is sweet and good and everything he thought Dahlia was and she has that way of scrunching her nose when she thinks that he loved. Iris has that gentile smile that she almost hides when he says something the slightest bit silly and her eyes are warm and soft and she gives him that look that makes him feel like twenty-one-year-old crazy-in-love art student Feenie.

She also says she still has feelings for him.

In any case, he's no longer Feenie or really anything she remembers. (He can't help but think she's in love with a memory after all.) He's twenty-six-year-old ace attorney Phoenix Wright and when he looks to his side, Iris isn't the one who stands there.

He thinks that maybe if he had met Iris (not Dollie) when he was twenty-one, he could have truly loved her. Maybe they would have gotten married and had kids and a nice house and a normal life. It would have been nice.

But he didn't and they didn't and now when Phoenix looks at Iris, he can think of her and the relationship fondly, but he wouldn't want to return to that any day.

ii. Maya

Maya isn't wild, he thinks. At least not the type of wild that the word typically implies. Maya is like a wildflower (he ignores the thought that his attraction stems from a reminder of a long ago love for flowers like dahlias) and she grows freely and makes it through situations that would seem impossible.

He loves Maya. He knows that. There is very little Phoenix wouldn't do for Maya. His love is slow and soft and protective. It's just not romantic.

Maya is beautiful, for sure, and her personality, while a little strange at times, is endearing. Maybe there'd been some sort of flutter in the beginning, after the whole murder mess. Maybe it had been a desire to protect his mentor's little sister and a small amount of hero worship from Maya. (Phoenix wasn't really a hero, she says now, but he had been there and he never left and that's why they were together now.)

Pearl sees this and latches on because this love, had it blossomed, might have been stable and it might have lasted and Mr. Nick surely would never leave. (Is that why it didn't happen? Was it pushed on him too fast and did he run scared that he would abandon those girls like everyone else had?)

He spends three years by her side and whatever might have been no longer has a chance, trampled under their feet as they move forward. She goes home and then Mystic Maya is Master of Kurain Village and he's so proud of her and he misses her, but it's not romantic.

And sometimes when one of them visits, he looks over at the wonderful woman who's his best friend and sees all those could-have-beens. But he doesn't see any regrets and if Phoenix thinks that maybe he could have fallen for Maya, it's not with bitterness. Her friendship is more than enough.

iii. Mia

Mia Fey is a talented woman. Phoenix was awestruck from the first moment he saw her in the defendant lobby. She states her points firmly and holds gazes with a look that could make any lying witness cower in fear. As far as attorneys go, Mia Fey is remarkably formidable.

She is gentle with her clients though, or maybe she's just gentle to the good people, because after his trial, Mia is there to help him adjust to life without Dollie and he turns to her because she doesn't blame him for being caught up in her lies and it's so nice to have someone look at him with understanding sympathy instead of that half-hidden you-should-have-known. She's the only one he tells that he was saving up for a ring. In return, she tells him a little about Diego and they mourn their losses together. (Lost love is never easy, no matter the manner in which it's lost.)

Phoenix admires Mia so much that when he earns his badge he goes straight to her.

Working under her may have eventually led to something, but then Mia is murdered and life changes and suddenly Phoenix isn't a rookie at Fey and Co.; he's the owner of the Wright and Co. Law Firm.

When he looks at her while she's channeled through Maya or Pearl, he looks at her thinking of lost chances. He's never sure if they're his chances or hers.

iv. Edgeworth

For the longest time, when Phoenix Wright though of Miles Edgeworth, he thought of a silly little kid in a tiny stuff suit and the silly idea that hey, instead of marrying icky girls, they should just marry each other. Maybe it was that that made Phoenix send those letters. Maybe it was just that feeling that he needed to send letters to Miles Edgeworth-Miles Edgeworth needed him to send letters.

The idea is lost in the years. Phoenix one day discovers that girls aren't icky and he really likes them, but he still thinks that marrying MIles (or some other guy) would be cool too. His letters are sent less and less and slowly they become less of an attempt to stay in contact with his friend (fiancé?) and more of just a wondering whatever happened to him.

And then the letters kind of stop.

When Phoenix begins his life at Ivy U, he's an art major. He'd fallen in love with drawing and painting during high school and he doesn't want to give that up any time soon. He minors in law, thought, because that incident he had as a kid won't release him. He's only spurred on by the rumors he begins to come across about Miles Edgeworth. (And if the pictures of Miles Edgeworth make his heart beat a little too fast, well, they'd see what would happen when they met up.)

When they meet again, it's a mess and eventually a friendship formed from old memories and gratefulness. But there's a bridge that's never crossed and they don't develop a closeness that could border on romance. The most that ever comes of it is a drunken joke that they should fulfill their promise and occasionally awkward hugs where Phoenix almost lays his head on Edgeworth's shoulder (because he smells good, a sharp kind of cologne and tea and a shampoo he can't name the scent of) and Edgeworth's lips are probably a little too close to Phoenix's cheek.

Any attraction towards Edgeworth feels like he's on a road trip with a map of all the exits he could take to get to the place he wants to be and he still misses them all.