A/N: This fic is based on a prompt on the Phoenix Wright Kink Meme. :) I'd been prowling around exploring for a bit now, filling the occasional thing, but this idea got stuck with me. I absolutely adored the different perspective it took and I simply had to write it. :)
The prompt was this:
When Edgeworth was living with Von Karma, he actually did try to get into contact with Phoenix, via letters or otherwise, but Von Karma would always secretly get rid of them.
Cue Edgeworth believing his friend has forgotten him and beginning to grow bitter.
Thanks to anon for the fantastic idea!
*
9 years
"Mr. Von Karma."
He feels faintly nervous, holding the completed letter in his hand and standing awkwardly at the kitchen door. The older prosecutor is seated at the table, reading the news with a contemptuous eye. At Miles' voice, he looks up, eyes harsh and condemning.
"What is it, Edgeworth?"
His voice makes Miles flinch, even if there isn't any reason to. His finger plays listlessly with the sharpened corner of the envelope. "I..." He swallows, and has to start his sentence again. "Sir, I have a... Letter to post."
Von Karma's eyes narrow into steel slits. "A letter." He repeats, shortly.
Miles stares down at the envelope. He feels somehow ashamed. "Yes," he acknowledges, quietly. "It's for a... A friend."
There is a rustle, and Von Karma sets down the papers. He looks interested now, the corners of his mouth turning into a smirk that was almost taunting. "Phoenix, isn't it?"
Miles shivers. Von Karma enunciates the name like a knife to his throat. It makes him feel somehow more vulnerable every time it was repeated.
Still, he nods, hands clenching even tighter now. "Yes, sir."
For a long moment, Von Karma is silent, thoughtful. Miles awaits his words as though they are the final judgment. His chest feels tight with an unfathomable pressure. He is so scared even his breathing is becoming unsteady. Eyes prick suddenly, as though they are about to fill with tears. God, why...?
Eventually, Von Karma moves. "Give it to me." He said.
It is as though a boulder has dropped from Miles' shoulders and, releasing a breath he has been holding subconsciously, he moves forward and places the letter on the table.
"Thank you, sir," he doesn't forget to add, before he turns to leave, too glad to be free of the prosecutor's suffocating presence.
But unexpectedly, the older man is not yet finished.
"Did he reply to your last letter?"
Von Karma's voice is like thunder, and, abruptly frozen, the boy stops in his tracks. He turns, biting his lip. "Sir, I..."
The prosecutor smirks. "He didn't, did he?"
Miles hangs his head. "H-He doesn't know." He protests, softly. "My new address. That's why I'm sending it to him now." His small hands clench. "He will answer. He and Larry are..."
"Hmph." Von Karma folds his arms. "I'm not interested in your story, boy." He states, and his eyes sharpen. "... But postage stamps are expensive."
The boy turns and faces him fully, and his eyes shine, just that little brighter, with a childish defiance.
"I will buy my own stamps, sir." He says, quietly, and then, bowing with a swift 'excuse me', he turns and leaves.
Behind him, prosecutor Von Karma gives the boy's letter one final, scathing scrutiny.
... And tosses it directly into the flames.
*
10 years
He writes fervently, if only intermittently. Under Von Karma's strict schedule of studying, he has no choice but to slave away between the endless piles of law books. Usually, at the end of the day, he would be too tired to do anything else, and sleep would claim him before his head even hit the pillow.
On certain days, however, he would drag himself away from his studies, and he would write.
'Dear Phoenix...' the letter would start, and from then on the words would flow with ease. Somehow, to write was relieving. To his friend he would pour out his heart, his frustrations, his delights, his victories and his shortcomings. Writing to Phoenix could almost be considered the highlight of his days.
But Phoenix never, ever replied.
As soon as the letter is safely deposited in Von Karma's hands, the boy would wait.
Some days, he would lift his head from the textbooks he is studying, and observe the calm, blue skies of Germany, much like the other boy's eyes, and wonder what it is that he is doing. Has he read Miles' letter yet? Is he writing his response? Or perhaps the letter is still on its way, tucked in a truck, ferried across Europe, or boxed on a plane across the Atlantic... Perhaps, even as he is observing the clouds, it is sitting at the bottom of a postman's bag, closing steadily towards the other boy's home...
Of course, he does not realise that the letter from the both of them were crumbling steadily in the fireplace. Heartfelt words blackening, choking, until all that is left are the crumbling ashes of a fragmenting friendship.
Miles waits under the clouds. He waits in hope. He waits in futility.
*
12 years
He hasn't written to Phoenix in a while.
The boy scarcely crosses his mind now. He is too busy. Von Karma has hired a tutor for him, and with this new teacher came new work that swiftly became overwhelming. He became weak from stress. His face is pale now and he finds himself occasionally unable to concentrate. His mind would blank, and as time passed, it is no longer rare for him to fall asleep under his homework.
He is ill, and the fever came slow and tormenting. First a slight discomfort in his throat, a prickling, the occasional, rasping cough. Then breathing became a chore, and he would be forced to pant without elegance through his mouth. After that, came the throbbing headache. It is as though someone had stuffed cotton wool over all of his five senses. He drifts in and out through consciousness, floating around the house as though disconnected from reality. Never quite himself.
During his illness, the nightmares come fiercer than ever. His body would burn until he began to hallucinate. The elevator haunts him even when his eyes remain open. He would lie in bed, crying and suffocating, and even when the lights are turned on and his mentor is staring down at him from a great height, and Franziska is tugging nervously at his hand, he would see his father, lying still and unmoving, blood pooling from his chest.
He remembers dimly - a memory of crying so fiercely he is sick. Remembers feeling a hand through his hair, but turning, sees only Von Karma. Not Gregory. Not Father. Then he would vomit all over again, shivering and clinging to the cold, splattered sink as though it is the only thing he has.
In his feverish state he remembers scribbling fiercely, clinging towards the one aspect of his past life he could still reach out for. 'Phoenix,' he writes. 'I can't stand this. Please do something. I want to go back to the way things were. Please.'
But this time it is he who shreds the letter and discards it. Knowing that there is no going back from the nightmare that is destined to haunt him forever.
Knowing that there would be no response, from his one fading hope.
*
15 years
Phoenix has always been a boy of determination.
Granted, he has never been anything short of average where the school's curriculum was concerned, but he has a fire about him.
It is not a bright, blinding flame, but a steady light of hope and determination. Phoenix Wright does not submit. If his heart is set upon a goal, then nothing but death itself will stop him from moving forward.
It is the one aspect of the other boy that Miles admires above all else. Even if he has never admitted it to the other before. His strength, his courage. Phoenix's will is far stronger than his.
Miles is not that strong.
He is reminded of that fact every time another nightmare shakes him. Every time he treads up another flight of stairs. Every time his face pales at the slightest of tremors beneath his feet.
And Miles cannot wait forever.
His final letter is written in pain. A Christmas wish that is fraught with the agony of loss. He rewrites the message repeatedly. At one point, the pen shatters in his hand. His heart bleeds simply to carve these letters. How could he, how could he possibly wish another for a Merry Christmas when his own would be one of suffering?
In blinded anguish, he punctuates the card with his signature, and all but throws it on the table when he passes it on to his mentor to send.
He cannot stand to be in its presence any longer.
Miles Edgeworth cannot wait forever.
*
18 years
"You have not been writing, Edgeworth."
Miles starts. Von Karma does not speak to him often and to hear the sound of his voice so abruptly surprises him.
"I'm sorry, sir?"
"You have not been writing." Von Karma states. He prowls into Edgeworth's room, and inspects his books and workings with eyes as harsh as an eagle. "Your friend, boy. Phoenix. You have not been writing to him, as of late."
The boy hangs his head, not meeting his gaze. "No, sir."
Von Karma's eyes continue to bore into him. "Any reason, Edgeworth?"
A long pause.
"He doesn't reply, sir." The boy's voice is quiet, soft. "It doesn't matter."
"Ah. But it does," unexpectedly, Von Karma's voice rumbles in disagreement, and his student looks up at him with startled eyes. "This boy... Is important to you, is he not?"
Miles' bangs slide over his forehead, and he dips his head, features shadowed with trouble. "Sir..."
He gasps as a hand lands abruptly on his shoulder, harsh and heavy. Von Karma is looking down at him, something - not quite a smile, not quite a smirk - crossing his features. "Tell me, boy," he rasps. "What is the relationship between you?"
Feeling somehow violated, he shies away. "Nothing, sir."
But it's the wrong response, for abruptly the hand upon his shoulder tightens and he gasps involuntarily at the pain. "Do not hide from me, boy," Von Karma growls. "Speak the truth, or be no better than the criminals you seek to punish!"
He trembles. Not quite out of fear, but a mixture of sudden anger and indignation. Then, with head lowered, eyes hidden, the story pours out. He speaks of their friendship. Of his lost lunch money, of how he had stood to defend him when he was alone, how the other had looked at him with such sincerity in his large blue eyes and told him that they would be friends forever. How they had made promises to each other. Small, childish promises, but promises all the same, and he'd kept them until they were breaking him from the inside. As he speaks he could taste the pain, the betrayal, sharp and stinging on the tip of his tongue, sliding down his cheeks like liquid salt. The first stray droplets fall, with him only dimly aware, upon his hand.
Abruptly he starts when the sensation settles. Back straightens, arms stiffen, and he is wiping his eyes with something akin to panic. His voice shakes. "S-Sir, I…"
He has to stifle a gasp when the hand leaves his shoulder and suddenly settles upon his head.
It is warm and heavy, comforting yet pressuring, all at once. Von Karma does not speak, yet his hand, callous and harsh with age, ruffles through his hair. For a moment, he is like father, even if his presence felt different. And when he opens his mouth to speak, it is starkly different from usual. No longer the cold bark of a God, but a distant, quiet rumble, like the coming of a storm, like the humming of a predator protective of its prey. And when he spoke, for the first time, it is not a rebuke:
"Let it out." He said.
It is not an order, but Miles obeys and his shoulders shake with emotions he has spent too long suppressing. He struggles to maintain the silence, but still a fragile gasp breaks it, and the tears are mixing with the ink of an afternoon's work and it should be father, should be Phoenix, heck, even Larry, standing behind him and comforting him and not this man, who was both his saviour and his captor and who could never be the one he wanted by his side.
He weeps, each tear another letter met with silence, whilst behind him Von Karma says:
"Let the pain out, Miles, but do not forget it. There is no meaning in saving the ungrateful. No hope in allowing others to venture too close. Sometimes, it is better, boy." His hand tightens, minutely, upon Miles' skull. "Sometimes, it is far better to be alone."
Eventually, his mentor leaves him to reflect. Sitting at the desk of his room, cluttered with books, he clenches his hands together and finally, lets go.
In that moment, Miles Edgeworth truly ceases to wait.
In that moment, Miles Edgeworth is truly alone.
'Sometimes, it is far better…'
A/N: Thank you for reading. Thoughts are appreciated!