Disclaimer: I do not own the Ace Attorney franchise.
The walls were cold, and constantly closing in on him.
The others jeered at him daily, made worse by his poor English. Often, Machi understood not what they were planning until it happened, and by then it was too late to do anything. The guards didn't care, so long as no one was injured severely and they were still getting paid. The one person he'd believed had cared was absent from his life now; he'd been discarded without a second thought.
Machi sat in his cell at night while the others raved around him, musing, with dark humor, over how desperate he'd been to avoid death at the courthouse. If he'd had known what the alternative would be like, would he still have chosen to survive?
He was in this for the duration of his life. But the attorney, Justice, had filled him with a certain hope. He'd known prison wouldn't be a cakewalk, but Justice had painted a pretty picture for him, as Lamiroir had used to do with her songs. It had co-oped with his fear of death, and filled him with inspiration to live.
He was sick of people who painted pictures with words.
If Machi had been lacking one or the other – fear or hope – he might have made a different decision. However, even now the thought of death terrified him. Already, in the duration he'd been locked inside these walls, someone had died. They found the man hanging from the window bars of his cell in the morning, with a rope of knotted bed sheets, so suicide wasn't impossible. Machi himself had even contemplated it, before the bulging eyes and swollen tongue of the dead inmate had burned a permanent, macabre image in his mind. It terrified him all over again.
Sometimes, he spent the night feebly hoping the Siren would come back for him, accept him again. He'd done something wrong, but he'd done it for her sake, not because he was evil. Even on the most optimistic of days, he knew this hope was absurd. The chances Lamiroir would sympathize for him were slim, because she felt he deserved retribution for his crime. But even if that were to pass, the chances she could afford his bail were even slimmer.
These were the things he'd contemplate most nights, when the insomnia set in. And afterward, he would quietly muse himself to a dreamless sleep, contemplating the ridiculousness of it. How unrighteous was it that a fourteen year old would be forced to choose between death and torture? How many other children his age were betrayed like he had been? It didn't even console him to realize that Daryan was suffering just as much, albeit in a different containment center. Machi was bitter, but he'd maintained his passive nature from before; he wouldn't have wished this sort of affliction on anyone.
And so it went on, every day exactly the same, eventually fusing together until he lost track completely. It mattered not; he'd already lost all warmth in life.
Anyone else remember the ending of episode three? Yeah, I didn't really like Lamiroir after that. For someone so close to Machi, she seemed rather passive about his prison sentence.
In other news, I forgot if the game stated how long he was in for. Vaguely, I think I can recall a life sentence. At the same time, that doesn't sound right.
Drabble. It doesn't feel like I've accomplished anything. Critic is still appreciated though.