Note: No, I haven't written Ace Attorney fanfic in a very, very, very long time, but this idea struck me the other day and I haven't been able to shake it since then. I hope it hasn't been done to death already. I imagine it will be two parts, possibly three depending on how well I get into the second part. There will be a lot of angst to be had, so sorry for that, but there you go.

I can't imagine it -not- eventually leading to Phoenix/Miles in some way, but the rating won't get any higher than it is now.

Bear with my creative liberties, please; I know that the logistics of bombing a department store are kind of... lacking, but it was meant to be a senseless act of violence so, by definition, it doesn't have to make sense. You can think of this as Japan or as California. Really, it doesn't matter. It's sort of semi-AU as it is, so please also forgive the fact that Edgey is around for Trucy goings-on.

Alright, all that aside, please enjoy. :)

Begin Again

Chapter One

Miles Edgeworth would never remember exactly what it was that had led him to go shopping at that particular department store on that particular day, but for the rest of his life he would regret that decision and look back on it as the worst he had ever made.

The day had been a sunny but cool one, on the cusp of winter and spring; Miles always silently welcomed the return of the sun and the escape from the colder months. He would much rather deal with a few allergies than an onslaught of December memories, after all, and there was something strangely exciting about the touch of life in the air as spring neared. And so, despite having the day off, he had decided to go out and get some necessary shopping done. His more casual warm weather wardrobe was in need of some updating. The department store a few blocks down from the court house seemed the best option for remedying this problem. He set out at noon, stopped for a quick lunch, and then moved on to his shopping destination with the thought of new cotton shirts on his mind.

Unfortunately, that department store (one of the busiest and most well-known in the city) also served as someone else's target that day. The papers the next day would refer to the group as anarchists; whatever label they were given, it did not change the fact that they, for whatever reason, had seen fit to simultaneously set off a total of seventeen homemade bombs throughout the building at precisely 1:03 in the afternoon.

Miles had been thumbing through a rack of short-sleeved button-downs on the first floor of the two story building at the time, grumbling to himself that none of that season's colors at all suited him. In one instant he turned to move toward a different part of the store, and in the next, he could hear something akin to a deep ripping sound.

"What in the world?" he said aloud, and then the screams of his fellow shoppers and the explosions of the other bombs drowned out all else. His mind processed a little too slowly - an earthquake? but no, it's not the same, and why is there fire? - but still he ran, as running seemed the proper thing to do - but shouldn't I be taking shelter somewhere? - until a chain of fire devouring racks of clothing stopped him abruptly.

There were others around him, but he hardly registered them. Babies screamed (screaming is not helping the situation), mothers cried (can't you try to be a little more brave?), a girl gave a piercing shout for her father (oh, god), and Miles stood in mild shock and tried, tried to find some logical answer as to what had happened and how to get away from it.

With a creaking and a deep sigh as if it simply could not find the strength to go on, the burning ceiling began to collapse, bringing the second floor with it. In some strange way, Miles found himself staring at the sagging ceiling and thinking simply, "Well, this is an old building, so it makes sense, really," before it gave way and everything around him grew suddenly much more quiet and dark.

It seemed as though he had been unconscious for only a minute or two when Miles again opened his eyes. He could hear a man groaning in pain - is that me? - and feel sharp spikes stabbing various points throughout his body as his vision slowly, very slowly, began to clear. Instead of the pile of destruction he was expecting to see as the memory of what had happened reinserted itself into his thought process, he found himself gazing around at a token mostly-white hospital room. The beeping machines nearby and the chatter and barked orders from just past the partially-open door to his room solidified that fact, and he groaned again upon its realization.

"Awake?" said a voice, and Miles jumped a little, started to find that his peripheral vision was so poor and he had not even begun to notice that he wasn't alone in the room.

He turned his head to look to his left. There was another bed in the room, and in it, a girl sat propped up against a pile of pillows, reading a book called "Extremely Advanced Magic Tricks for Pros" that had a library sticker on its spine. He raised an eyebrow at this, and somehow that hurt and he said something not unlike "ugh" in response to her question.

"I bet you're hurting a lot," she said. A look of genuine concern passed over her face, but then she broke into a wide smile and added, "Want to see my magic panties? I bet that'd cheer you up!"

"What?" Miles croaked back.

"Magic panties!" she repeated.

Convinced that he must have been hit in the head by something very large, he shut his eyes tightly and took a deep breath before letting it out in a sigh. "I'm very confused right now," he managed to say after a moment.

The girl was quiet until he opened his eyes again. "You were in the department store too, weren't you?" she said. "You got hurt by the bombs."

The memories, still flitting back and forth through his mind, landed on the collapsing ceiling, and he gave a painful nod. "Were you… screaming for your father?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"Was he alright?"

She gave him a look that clearly said why are you asking me that?, but nodded. "He was outside waiting for me. He saw the blasts from out there and he was one of the first people to call for help."

"Oh - good."

Silence fell between them, and Miles dozed off for a few moments, only to be awakened by voices once again.

"He was awake a few minutes ago. Oh, see? He's awake again now," said the girl.

"So he is."

Miles whipped his head around to look at the owner of the second voice, which of course sent another spike of pain down his spine, and he bit his lip to stifle another whimper. The man who had spoken was staring at him with a fairly unreadable expression (something like surprise and a little concern and that better not be pity), and he smiled in a distant way and sat down on the side of the other bed.

"How do you feel?" he asked, and Miles did not reply.

The girl poked the man and said, "He was talking to me, really, Daddy."

Miles coughed.

The man shrugged. "He can't possibly be feeling well," he said.

"Stop… talking about me as if I'm not in the room," Miles finally spat.

"Will you answer my question now? How do you feel?" said the man.

"I feel like a building fell on me."

The girl frowned. "You were being much nicer when it was just me. What happened?"

Miles took his time in mentally forming his response to that, since neither of the other two seemed in any great hurry to hear it. Finally, with a deep breath, he said, "I didn't know your father was Wright."

"Oh." The girl looked at her father and then swatted him with the book she was reading. "What did you do to him, Daddy? You better not have done something really bad!"

It was him. He never denied it and the girl simply confirmed it, and Miles wondered if his mind was reeling more from the apparent bombing he had survived or from the unkempt father who stood there blinking as if through the haze of a hangover. The man - Phoenix, somehow - merely chuckled and shook his head. "As far as I know, I didn't do anything 'really bad' to him, so don't worry, Trucy."

"Then why is he so mad at you?" she asked.

"No," said Miles, and both Phoenix and his daughter turned to look at him again. "I'm just… what are you doing here?" He struggled to move out of the prone position he had been lying in, to try to sit up so he could have a better view, because Wright was here and it had been so many years, and because looking weak and injured to a young girl and looking weak and injured to an old rival were two entirely different matters altogether. He managed to heave himself into something a little bit less like lying down (at least Wright wasn't trying to help), but in doing so something clicked and he froze in place.

The room seemed to freeze with him as the realization dawned on him and he clenched his eyes shut in an attempt to steel himself against vomiting. Something was very abnormal. Something felt extremely wrong. Finally, a quiet utterance broke the spell:

"Miles?"

Surprised by his own voice, Miles replied. "What… happened?"

It was the girl - Trucy - who answered him first. "A couple of people died," she said. "Some people were really lucky like me. And some were hurt really badly… like you."

Phoenix put a hand on Trucy's shoulder as if to tell her to be quiet, and Miles stared at him, growing more and more unnerved by the second. There had been a bombing - he had been injured - the hospital room he ended up in had also contained one Trucy (was it Trucy Wright?), Phoenix's daughter, and now… this. He wanted to tear his gaze away from that sullen, scruffy face, but he couldn't, because he knew he would look at his own body then and that would be the end of it all.

"Wright," he said after a long while, and he wished he sounded less like an animal than he did.

"Miles," Phoenix said again, and added, "It's going to be okay."

"My leg," said Miles, and he turned to look.

Phoenix nodded. "I know."

Miles could see beneath the thin bed sheet, now, that his right leg was simply not there; he could feel (or rather, not feel) the sensation of a missing limb, strange and foreign and excruciatingly uncomfortable despite all of the numbing agents that must have been administered. But pulling back the sheet was fairly impossible right then, and he mentally, stubbornly refused to do it. Instead he swallowed and stared at the empty space the sheet seemed only to accentuate.

"it's going to be okay," Phoenix repeated.

And Miles could only stare, and think, and wonder, and wish, and couldn't he offer a pat on the shoulder when he says that? and how can he even say that at all? A thousand thoughts chased each other around his head, and in the chase, began to trip and fall and plummet all around him as he sat there in their midst, at a loss for what to do or say or think about what had happened.

Where could he even begin?