Feather Moon.
T: More playing around with the AJ time line thus beware the spoilers…there is also going to be slash, and lots and lots of angst. The wonderful 'Feather Moon' by Vienna Teng has inspired this fic, though you needn't have heard it to understand the thing!
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Settling in front of the piano, he begins to play the haunting, desperate, melody that the customers and his employers believe to be alone in his repartee.
In truth, he had, during his more artistically driven teenaged years, learned to play the piano with a passion and a perfection that'd brought tears to the eyes of his tutor. That he had been employed for his skills as a poker player, rather than this well hidden talent, had allowed him to retain the seemingly pointless illusion, as well as raw ache that it protected.
His eyes slide close as his fingers continue their dance and, as always, the melody teases a kaleidoscope of images in his minds eye.
It has been a month since the conclusion of the 'Misty Fey' case and at last, normality seems to be settling on their lives.
He and Miles are walking back from a long lunch in which he had, finally, convinced his friend to "become the 'co' in 'Wright & co'."
"Wright and Edgeworth." The remark comes after a long period of silence from the other and, smiling to himself, he enquires,
"Pride got the better of you?"
Miles shakes his head and is about to voice some intelligently worded objection when everything shuts away.
The next he is aware he is sat in a hospital foyer, his suit stained in blood and his hands held firm in Maya's delicate fingers.
"Hello." Her voice sounds strangely small and the bright fear in her eyes has him enquiring,
"What's wrong?"
"I thought I'd lost you."
"Why would you think such a thing?"
Her hands grip his even tighter than before and, her voice so very tight, she responds,
"You wouldn't look at me…wouldn't even move until the paramedics made you…"
"Then is this my blood?" He enquires as he gestures to the staining on his clothes.
She shakes her head and, tears in her eyes, she informs him,
"It's Mr Edgeworth's."
A flicker of a memory pushes at him then and, feeling so very numb, he enquires,
"He's dead, right?"
"Yes."
His finger pause a moment as he recalls and embraces the grief that'd swallowed him in that instant, before they begin their dance once more,
He carries on as normal for a month after the 'event', work and Maya's comforting presence keeping him 'sane'. On the day that Maya returns to her duties at Kurain, Gumshoe phones to inform him that they have, at last, caught the one responsible for the 'event'.
He goes to visit the killer in the belief that doing as such will give him some form of closure, however, listening to the man's fragile reasoning fills him with a hot anger that eventually vents itself in the sharp enquiry of,
"Did you ever think about those that'd be left behind?"
The man laughs remarks, "Why the hell should it matter to you that he's gone? If anything you should be thanking me for getting your rival out of the way." He pauses momentarily, then, face twisting into something ugly, he says, "Unless, of course, he wasn't actually your rival…you did seem rather cosy before I took my shot."
The urge to lash out and, pulling his coat from the back of the chair, he remarks, "I hope you rot," before he leaves the room.
He is sat working on case notes when the man's words finally sink in and, as the grief washes over him at last, he realises that he had been in love with Miles. He had wanted to cry, to do anything that might drain away the terrible agony that that revelation had caused him and yet he had found himself incapable of doing anything other than dwelling on all that might have been.
He should, in all honesty, have stepped away from the practice for a few weeks and yet the desire to distract his mind, if even for the briefest of moments, as well as his unfaltering loyalty to Mia's memory, meant that he had continued on as though everything was still as normal.
Emotionally drained, worked to the point of exhaustion and so very alone he'd taken on a case that, otherwise, he would have avoided.
A day later, he had lost his badge and with it his final tie to any semblance of normality. The knowledge that he had now a life other than his own to consider keeps him from responding to this 'development' in a 'desperate' manner, but is not quite enough to prevent him drifting away from his 'old life' as well as all those that'd been a integral part of it.
Drifting aimless he's stumbled, entirely by accident, upon the melody and had felt an instant connection with the emotions contained both in the tune and the powerful vocal that'd accompanied it.
He'd focused his mind onto learning all that he could of where the melody had come from and, once he'd felt confident enough to do as such, he'd begun to teach himself to play the thing.
Almost instantly, the melody had become his outlet for the pain that he could not share with his 'daughter', his reliance upon the relief it gave him enough that he'd started lying about his musical talent in order to have an excuse for playing it at least twice daily.
The melody had also allowed him to distance himself a little from the pain connected to the recollection of Miles and form a clear understanding of what he might do in order to honour the other's memory.
Seven years on he had, at last, achieved this aim and as his fingers sound out the melodies final chords, he knows this shall be the last that he plays the tune.
Knows that it is, at last, time to lay the ghost of Miles Edgeworth to rest.
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T: Blame all the angst on the song! Review??