Title: sister mine
Fandom: Ace Attorney, Gyakuten Saiban
Characters: Maya Fey, Mia Fey, Phoenix Wright
Summary: Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer. – Maya Fey and moving on.
Notes: Sorry for dying, but Ace Attorney ate my brain again. (I'm on AJ now!) This takes place before Turnabout Goodbyes.
Contrary to popular opinion, Maya does not, in fact, spend all her time watching Steel Samurai reruns when Nick is out of the office. Sure, that does take up a decent bit of her time, but even Maya Fey can only take the Evil Magistrate's harrumphing defeats a certain number of times.
She's tried several things to occupy herself. Baking was a resounding failure; who knew cupcakes could go so wrong? Art was another failure; her sketches of Charlie looked more moan instead of Monet. Neither can she meditate, which is strange; the quiet stillness of the office should, in theory, be a perfectly conducive environment to meditation, but Maya has lived her entire life in the midst of gangs of women. She cannot meditate without Pearly's soft breathing in then background, or the rhythmic scratching of Nick's pen, or the swishing flip of page as her sister reads.
Read. Past tense. Mia is past tense now. She read, she lived, she loved, she was.
So one day, when she's bored beyond comprehension and Nick is away giving legal advice (though Maya thinks anyone who wants legal advice from Nick, Bluffer Extraordinaire, needs their head checked), she decides to check out the bookshelf.
As bookshelves go, it is pretty big. Made of steel, affixed to the wall; not even Nick accidentally tripping into them dislodged the books from their positions, even though Nick is, as guys go, kinda big. Edgeworth called him a bull in a china shop once, but rescinded his statement when Gumshoe broke his computer again.
Okay. No reminiscing about oversized lawyers. Bookshelf.
Maya drags a finger along the spines, revealing lettering; peeling gold on fading leather, plain black on shiny blue, scribbled marker on grubby paper. She pulls one out at random; Criminal Litigation, it proclaims, displaying a court house against a blue sky backdrop. There are no less than seventeen authors. Ugh. Looking at it makes her head throb. Maya was never particularly smart; Mia was the one who won the genetic lottery and got the brains, the beauty and the boobs.
Maya selects a tag at random. The title is Competence and compellability, and it proceeds to talk about witnesses. Apparently kids under fourteen are allowed to testify, but from fourteen up on the stand, you're an adult. She makes a face; Maya is seventeen and she feels nothing like an adult. People with physical disabilities are okay, but people with mental disabilities need to make sure they understand what's going on. One heading catches her eye; apparently, up until a few decades ago, the defendant's spouse couldn't testify. Huh.
She grows bored, and flips on to find that several pages have been rendered illegible. The tag has been scribbled out, but when she wipes at the ink she sees Jury. The jury system was abolished a couple years ago, but few had mourned its passing. She remember one of the mystics complaining about being called to jury duty on the day of an important ceremony.
As she reads, she stops paying attention to the words, but instead takes heed of the modifications. Her sister was an underliner, apparently, as opposed to Nick, who prefers highlighting. She complained to him once that it showed through the other side of the page, but he replied with an admission of being unable to memorise the material if it wasn't covered in gaudy ink.
Mia underlined in blue, but there are little additions along the way in red and green. The red changes are always accompanied with a pithy joke or a reference to another book or a case, and signed with drifting clouds. The green writing is mostly illegible, but is much more cryptic than the red additions, and is generally accompanied by coffee stains. It also seems to be newer, its colour more vivid than that of the faded red.
Suddenly, a memory hits Maya. Her memories are always strangely sharp; perhaps it's the spirit medium thing, but Maya likes to think of it as a symptom of her higher intellect. It is a memory of her sister, on one of her infrequent visits home, when she asked her to help her with her books. Maya complied happily, holding the book upright as Mia drew lines on its edges and added tags.
"Never become an attorney," Mia said finally, collapsing onto the tatami beside her sister. "Too much reading."
Maya flapped her hand. "I'm gonna become Master, remember?" Mia laughed at that, but there was something sad in her eyes that was quickly banished when Maya asked her if the city was nicer than Kurain. Mia's answer was yes, and she went on to describe the lights, the people, the food. Not once did she mention the loneliness, the homesickness and the uncertainty that Maya has experienced.
She thinks again how lucky she is to have Nick. He's like a rock in this crazy place. A kinda dumb rock with silly hair and narrow-minded cultural assumptions, but still. A rock. The office is, too; though it was her sister's and she spent more time there, it bears less of her personality than her old apartment does, the one that Maya is living in. Who knew Mia had enough money to buy a two-bedroom apartment?
She tries not to spend too much time there; from the crimson curtains to the comfy bed, it is so Mia that sometime she wakes up and catches a glimpse of her sister, her scarf flapping behind her and her loafers clicking on the hardwood floor. When Maya rushes out of bed into the kitchen her sister is gone, and she trudges into the bathroom and tries her hardest not to cry. When it gets too much, she finds the bottle of expensive perfume and puts it on. Instantly Mia is there, brown hair tickling her cheek as she hugs her, and Maya feels worse and then she feels better.
(But she doesn't do that anymore, because one time she went into the office before the perfume wore off and Nick looked up, pen rolling out of his hand as he looked around wildly, and he said Chief? But it was only her, only Maya, and he looked so bad after she felt like crying again.)
With a start, Maya realises that she's not alone.
"Hello?" Nick is standing in front of her, craned over to look her in the eye. "Anyone home? Earth to Maya Fey!" He waves his hands, eyebrows knitting together.
"N-Nick!" She shocks back, colliding with the bookcase. "When did you get back?"
He makes a face. "...Two minutes ago? You were standing here spaced out with that book.." He takes it carefully from her hands, examining the cover with a groan. "God, this one. Mia made me read this four times. Matter of fact, why were you reading this? Run out of Steel Samurai episodes?" He's teasing her, she knows, but there's a strange look in his eyes that makes it feel more like he's cross-examining her.
Maya decides to fib. "Not at all! I finished that Dostoevsky book Edgeworth told me to get from the library so I decided to go for a little light reading." This isn't perjury, but why does it feel so like it?
Nick laughs, the glint in his eyes disappearing, and steps back to allow her out from behind the desk. "Snob." He slides the book carefully back into place as Maya collapses onto the couch.
"Why are you back so early? Wasn't that thing over custody of a child?" she calls, folding her legs beneath her.
"Turns out Melinda was actually their Bichon Frisé. I gave it up as a bad job, but I still got my fee. Some people have too much money." He disappears beneath the desk, not to put away files but to access the safe underneath. He must have gotten a lot if he's using the safe; Maya doesn't even know the code for it.
"Nick! Can we get a dog?" Maya's never had a pet, unless you count that one caterpillar that Pearly almost ate.
Predictably, he bangs his head on the desk as he straightens up. She stifles a giggle. "No," he begins, and then pauses and sighs. Maya knows she's hard to argue with; she learned from the best. "Just...no. Food, though, You can have food."
"Food!" She hops up from the couch, rocketing over to the desk. "Burg-!"
"No!" Nick fixes her with that look, the one he uses on recalcitrant witnesses. He tries so hard to be stern, but mostly he fails. Give it a few years.
She pouts, giving him her best puppy-dog stare. "What about ramen?"
"All right," Nick relents. Maya fists-pumps.
"C'mon, I'm starving! I've been here aaaall day, all alone... See, this is why I need a dog! To keep me company!" She latches onto his arm and begins to drag him out the door, ignoring his protests and collecting his keys and jacket along the way.
"Isn't Charley good enough for you?" he says weakly as Maya opens the door.
"Charley photosynthesises."
"... I guess you're right." He shrugs on his jacket and huffs when she takes the stairs, but he follows her anyway, dismissing her plan to steal a police dog fro Gumshoe on the basis that one peed on his leg once.
But Maya doesn't care, not really. She comes to this realisation at Eldoon's, stuffing her mouth with noodles as Nick stares into space (he's one of those weaklings that waits for their ramen to cool). Because, no matter how weird it sounds, Maya has never really felt like she belonged anywhere; not in Kurain, where Aunt Morgan's cool remarks and cooler glances left her feeling always slightly superfluous, and not in the city, where all she did was trip along in Mia's shadow. Here, though, she knows where she stands, and that is at Nick's side, and nothing short of a miracle will take that away.
(And, indeed, a miracle does.)