Fantastic & AWESOME thumbnail artwork is a commission that StudioKawaii did for me! THANKS! :)
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A/N: Phoenix Wright & Miles Edgeworth do not belong to me; they belong to CAPCOM. The plot, Col. Mason, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Edgeworth, Mr. Meyers and Mrs. Wright's household staff are mine. General James Longstreet, Elizabeth Van Lew and General Robert E. Lee are real historical figures.
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The country is on the verge of civil war... and both Phoenix and Miles can't avoid the deluge. With secession in Virginia now a reality, Phoenix made the agonizing choice to stay with Virginia while Miles joined the Union. Can they survive or will their love be another casualty of War?
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*This was originally meant to be a oneshot but, at about 12,000 words, I thought that it was a bit too long for a oneshot so that's why I split it into three chapters. Makes it easier to digest*
Story 2 in my Civil War NaruMitsu series. The American Civil War has been a passion of mine since the summer of 1991; I find it to be an extraordinarily fascinating, though tragic, subject of study. It pitted brother against brother, father against son, male relatives against male relatives, North against South. For some, it wasn't a difficult choice to decide where they would put their loyalties but, for others such as Robert E. Lee, it was an agonizing decision. This is also true for Phoenix who loathed slavery but couldn't turn his back on the State that he loved-and the reason why he joined the Confederacy-and for Miles, too, who couldn't fight for the South because of slavery and chose his country, the Union, over his State.
Wretch: [noun] A deplorably unfortunate or unhappy person. This is the definition of the word that Phoenix is using to describe the pitiable existence of African-Americans in the antebellum South at this time. It is also true that some female slaves were used as sexual partners by their masters much the same as the Romans made use of their slaves for sex over a thousand years earlier. *As Phoenix noted, it wasn't hard to figure out when some of the younger slaves looked a lot like their owners.* It wouldn't have been talked about openly in polite society but it was known by those who lived in the South that this happened. I use "black," "black race" or "Negro/Negress" which were also in use at the time.
You may notice that, depending on whose view I'm writing from, that the battles I will be writing about will be different depending on whether or not its in Phoenix's, or Miles', P.O.V. North and South used different designations for naming of battles: taken from news/ask-history/why-do-some-civil-war-battles-have-two-names: Northern soldiers, far more likely to hail from cities or urbanized areas, are believed to have been impressed with the geography of the south, including its mountains, valleys and abundant rivers and streams. In unfamiliar territory, they named many of their battles after these natural features. For Confederate troops, familiar with the rural, natural terrain, towns and buildings were more memorable, and in the south many of the same battles were referred to after the man-made structures nearby.
As incredible as it might sound, people actually DID bring picnic lunches to the First Battle of Bull Run and to watch what they thought would be a quick Union victory. It turned out to be anything but that caused, to use James I. Robertson Jr.'s words from an episode of Civil War Journal, "the mother of all traffic jams." Imagine the chaos when you have fleeing Union soldiers getting caught up with carriages and panicked civilians; perhaps some civilians had accidentally been hit with some kind of shrapnel and were hurt. It would have been absolute pandemonium not to mention quite an eye opener about the exact nature of battle when you've seen row upon row of soldiers mown down by bullets, had their heads blown off by canon shot, disintegrated when a cannonball hit their body; it would have been quite a horrifying sight and unlike the peaceful repose of the dead that they were expecting. *They had only experience of the Napoleonic wars up until this point and neither the North or the South had any idea what war would be like. Paintings showed the dead in peaceful repose so this is what I assume they would be expecting to see. Quite a shock when they saw what it would really be like! The Civil War was the first real modern War.*
I've also tried to be as faithful as I can to the style of letter writing during this period. It might not be exactly be grammatically correct now but it was then so that's what I've gone with.
Not everyone in the South was a flaming Secessionist; there were those who lived there who hated slavery and quite openly said so as well. Elizabeth Van Lew, for instance, lived in Virginia. She was a staunch Unionist and she was also a spy for the Union.
1861 by Adam Goodheart was an amazing book and was quite an eye opener.
Mrs. Wright's hyphenated maiden name, Thurber, and Lucinda are shout outs to both my late paternal grandmother and great grandmother.
Links to the various sites I consulted in my profile.
Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Thanks to my readers and all those who have favourited, reviewed, story alerted, favourite author or author alerted me. I appreciate it more than I can say! :)
Thank you to my beta reader, Pearls1990, for her AWESOME beta reading! Much appreciated! :)
Special thanks to my beloved husband, DezoPenguin, for all his help, support, advice, the title, nagging (when necessary) and encouragement! I appreciate it more than I can say! Love you!
Comments are appreciated and welcome! :) I'll probably change some things at some point; always room for improvement! :)
Rated Mature for sex in chapter 2, Drama, male/male relationships, Phoenix x Edgeworth, historical, American Civil War (1861-1865)
Lyrics at the end of the fic are from Behind These Hazel Eyes by Kelly Clarkson. What a most appropriate song for this point in United States history. It was also the inspiration for this story.
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February 4, 1861
Outside of Alexandria,Virginia
Phoenix Wright x Miles Edgeworth Residence
Master Bedroom
7 P.M.
I lay on the bed in our bedroom and stared at the ceiling for a long time in silence, my hands interlocked behind my head, my eyes shimmering with unshed tears. The lump in my throat was so large that I was surprised that it didn't choke me and my heart ached with a searing pain that refused to go away.
Miles had left some time earlier but I could still hear the slamming of the door as he walked out of the home we shared together echoing in my aching heart. I bit on my bottom lip hard, trying to silence the mewls of pain that I could feel welling up inside of me and the effort to try to keep it down was stretching the limit of my endurance to its near breaking point.
The sun had set some time ago if the moonlight streaming in through the bedroom window was any indication. My heart was in mortal agony, the hard words that we had flung at each other before Miles stormed off, perhaps forever now, echoed in my mind.
Why can't he understand? I thought miserably. Why can't he understand how I feel, that I can't turn my back on my State even if it means that the country disintegrates?
We'd been having this same argument more often these days and, more often than not, it ended with one, or both of us, leaving the house for an unknown period of time until one or both of us cooled off.
A moan escaped my tightly pressed lips and I finally gave up trying to hold back the tears and let them find free expression. Loud, keening wails bubbled up and escaped, transforming into agonizing screams that seemed to echo in the silent room sounding more like a den of the damned than a person's bedroom where comfort and repose could be found.
Scalding tears poured down my face, deep choking sobs being torn from deep within. My life was in shambles, Miles had probably left for good and my heart was a tattered, bleeding rag. The State I loved was now considering seceding from the rest of the country and there was a very real danger that it would take my lover along with it.
I felt so empty and alone and felt worse than I had for as long as I could remember. Why did this have to be so difficult? Why couldn't Miles understand how much Virginia meant to me? More troubling questions replaced those: How could he not share that same love? He'd lived here as long as I had; in fact we had both been born here so why was he even considering fighting for the enemy when he rightly owed his allegiance to Virginia? How long had he felt like this? And, worst of all, why didn't he tell me?
This was a hell of a way to find out and I couldn't help being angry with him for hiding that fact from me for so long. I didn't know how long he had been feeling this way but the revelation was poisoning our relationship and it seemed to me that I didn't, and had never, known the man who had my heart.
Through a fresh well of tears, I well remembered the angry exchange we'd had two weeks earlier like it had only happened yesterday... and it made my heart bleed.
2 weeks earlier
January 19, 1861
8 P.M.
"How long have you felt this way, Miles? And why didn't you tell me?!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
We had retired to the library after dinner with two snifters of port to relax and discuss the day's events. Normally, we enjoyed our time here, talking and laughing over a hundred different things but tonight was proving to be a very different story.
He was facing away from me so I couldn't see the expression on his face but I knew that my barb had struck home by the stiffening of his back, the clenching and unclenching of his hands that had, up until this point, lain limply by his sides.
I saw his shoulders shake and I couldn't help but wonder what was going on inside his mind. Part of me longed to reach out to him, to take him into my arms and tell him that we were okay and another wanted to lash out and hurt him as he had done to me in hiding his Union sympathies. I simply couldn't understand why.
"When? When did this happen?!" I continued to rail at his stiff back. "And why did you keep it hidden from me? Don't you trust me?!"
I heard the sharp intake of breath and his shoulders shook once again. I was about to say something else when he turned to face me, and my angry words died in my throat when I saw the anguished look on his face and all of hell in his eyes.
"Miles?" I stepped forward anxiously, my hand lying on the crook of his arm. I knew that something was very wrong and I wanted to find out what that was. He had to have had a reason for keeping his Union sympathies from me and, although that alone nettled me, I decided to put my personal feelings aside and listen to what he had to say.
He took a few deep breaths and I waited in an impatient silence for him to compose himself enough that he could speak.
"You know that I went down to Charleston, South Carolina three weeks ago to visit my family," he began slowly, his eyes wide.
I nodded. He'd been gone for a few days while he visited his sister and her family, to return her Christmas visit and to catch up with other family and old friends who lived there.
"We were going down Chalmers Street when I...saw it."
"Saw... what, exactly?" I waited for him to continue speaking in expectant silence.
"Slave Market." He spat out the name of the place like it was poison.
"Oh, my God..." I drew in a sharp breath between my teeth when he said this, my hand clenching into a fist at my side, a shudder racing through his body. I knew all about the Slave Market on Chalmers Street in Charleston. Most everyone in the South knew about the hub of the slave trade where men, women and young children were bought and sold like cattle. Love my state though I did, and want to defend her I certainly did from any aggressor, but this I had no desire to preserve nor did I have the stomach for it.
My mother, proper Southern belle she was, surprised some members of her immediate family and friends by steadfastly refusing to have anything to do with this most noxious of enterprises and freed every slave that she could although, to her sadness and mine, many were re-enslaved despite her best efforts to keep them out of harm's way.
I still had nightmares over the scene I had witnessed a few years back when I was in Charleston. It was a terrible sight to behold as weeping and wailing women were separated form their families; some slaves were presented with terrible scars crisscrossing their backs; women stripped naked to the waist with their breasts exposed to their humiliation to be pinched and prodded like they were cattle at market; screaming children were torn forcibly from their parents' arms to be dragged off by some Plantation owner to God knew where and God knew what fate.
I had a pretty good idea what would happen to some of those poor wretches: the most comely of the female slaves would become the sexual playthings of their Masters. It was the South's dirty little secret that everyone who lived here knew but most never openly talked about. If it was even mentioned at all, it was talked about in the quietest of whispers and in the lowest of voices.
I'd been a guest to many plantations over the years and I'd noticed that some of their Negro servants looked a lot like their owners which didn't surprise me; after all, many owners did make sexual use of their female slaves, much like the Romans did over a thousand years earlier, and I knew some owners who had Negress mistresses and had for years.
The fact that they seemed proud of this made me sick to my stomach and I made certain that my visits to these houses were concluded as soon as I could decently get away. I always felt like I needed to take a bath after I'd arrived home and I'd scrubbed my skin until it was red and raw to get that slimy film off of me.
My hand tightened on his arm as he shook, his lips trembling and his face as white as a sheet of parchment and pulled him forward. He resisted only tentatively before he fell into my arms, burying his face in my shoulder, his arms wrapping around me in turn.
My fingers wreathed themselves in his grey hair, my cheek resting against the side of his head as I crooned soft words of comfort to him, my earlier anger with him all but forgotten. That the sight was a terrible one was clear and I couldn't help but wonder what else it was that he saw that day on Chalmers Street.
"I'm sorry," he whispered brokenly, his voice choked with tears. "I should have told you earlier but I just... couldn't." His voice hitched and I held him even more tightly than I had before. "I... couldn't get that horrible scene out of my mind and its really poisoned me against the Confederacy." His voice held a note of bitterness and I could feel his hands clench into fists behind my back. "I could... never fight to preserve that, I just... can't."
"I know," I whispered softly, feeling tears prick at the corners of my eyes and a lump starting to form in my throat. "I know."
Even though I disagreed with him, I had to admit that he had a point. If fighting against the Confederacy meant that slavery would be ended forever in the South, then I was all for that but what it meant to me was that the North was openly threatening us by not allowing us to leave and have a say in our own affairs; this was something that I could not abide by nor, in good conscience, could I tolerate. That was why I had decided to fight for the Confederacy and attach my fate to the fate of my home state which had decided to follow South Carolina and six other States in separating from the Union.
I closed my eyes as tears trickled down my face, feeling a lump forming in my throat.
But... do you understand why I must fight for the Confederacy, Miles? I can't do otherwise or else I would feel I was a traitor to my own home. I wish I could follow you but...I just can't, anymore than you can follow me.
Silence reigned between us for some time as we stood there, holding each other close. I could feel his body shake with suppressed sobs and I told him it was all right to let them go. He did a moment later, weeping as if his heart would break. I continued to hold him, whispering words of comfort and love to him while he cried. I'd gotten myself under control by this time and I was there for him while his anguish and pain broke forth and found free expression.
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I sighed as I turned over to face the wall, its usually cheery color all but diminished as I lay there and stared at it.
"Miles," I murmured softly, tears trickling down my cheeks once more. "What's happening to us?"
The silence of the night was my only answer, not that I was really expecting one to begin with. Events were spinning out of control and I dreaded the denouement when everything around us would descend into madness. And take us with it.
I rolled over onto my left side, clutching the comforter in cold, nerveless fingers and wept throughout the rest of that long, lonely night. He never said a word at breakfast the next morning and it seemed like he, as I myself, didn't have much of an appetite and left shortly after for our law practice, his meal barely touched.
As it turned out, we wouldn't have long to wait before our world exploded... and took us along with it.
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April 24, 1861
Phoenix Wright x Miles Edgeworth's Residence
Outside of Alexandria, Virginia
Master Bedroom
11 P.M.
It had been another awful week of arguing between Miles and myself and he had stormed off earlier this evening. I had retreated to our bedroom after this latest fight, too depressed and sad to do anything except wanting to hide away from the world that had, in one fell swoop, become a living Hell.
I couldn't believe what was happening to us. Why was this so difficult for him to understand? How could he not love Virginia like I did and why did I feel like I was on the defensive? Truthfully, I didn't like slavery anymore than he or his family did and, if it were only that consideration that would be necessary in order to fight for the Confederacy, then I would have damned it and went, instead, to the Federal side. It was clear to me, however, that the North was determined to have its way with the South, despite convention, and that I could not abide.
I felt that we should be able to decide for ourselves what was best for us instead of having someone in Washington telling us what to do and it was for this alone that I went to enlist in the Confederate Army. It was clear to me that something had changed and I had a feeling that it all tied back to that incident of the Slave Market at Chalmers Street back in January of 1861 that had been the catalyst that started him on the path of moving away from me.
The final nail that had prompted his flight, and one that I was afraid would be the last time I ever saw him, from our home was the news that Virginia had seceded April 17th. I felt a cold sweat come over me that morning as I read the news.
In shock and barely able to comprehend was I was reading, the paper fell from my nerveless fingers and slid to the table to land in a crumpled heap, the traitorous front page lying face up. I put my face into my hands and wept, knowing that I could no longer delay the inevitable and, split us apart though it might, I had to follow my conscience; I couldn't ignore it, nor my convictions, as I knew that he would not be able to ignore his. I wished with all of my heart that it could be different but it wasn't and I couldn't lie to myself and say that it didn't mean anything because we both knew that it did.
My heart ached with the implications and I knew that it wouldn't be long until we reaped the whirlwind... and wasn't long in coming.
Miles came in to breakfast that morning to find me weeping into my hands; I heard his startled exclamation and footsteps hurrying to my side in order to comfort me, he couldn't have helped but to see the reason for my sorrow that was spread out on the table in front of my breakfast dishes: VIRGINIA SECEDES! I didn't even look when I heard the gasp fall from Miles' lips before I heard him abruptly turn and, without a word, left the house, the slamming door echoing in my wounded heart.
Some time later, I managed to compose myself and, after wiping all traces of my sorrow from my face, I went down to the local recruiting office-I didn't have much of an appetite anymore and the sight of food was beginning to make me feel sick-and enlisted in the Army of Northern Virginia. I was scheduled to report for duty three weeks hence and I went to the local tailor to have my new uniform made.
I didn't see Miles for some time after that and I couldn't help but wonder which regiment he would sign up for duty with although I had the thought that he would sign up with one of the Brigades in the Army of the Potomac. The days seemed to fly by and it was with an aching heart that I went to bed early that evening, throwing myself, still fully clothed, on top of our bed.
I was heartsick; I hadn't seen Miles for the past five days and I had no idea where he was or even if he had already shipped out with his regiment, whichever one that might be. I couldn't help but wonder, for the fifteenth time, if what I had done was really the right thing to do. I loved Virginia; I had been born and raised here with Miles and his family and my mother and father considered him a member of our immediate family since we were so close.
I could never have imagined that this love for my home State would be the linchpin that would split us apart. Like Robert E. Lee, I could not lift my hand against Virginia and it hurt that Miles did not seem to share this same love considering that he had signed up to fight for the opposing side.
It was with these thoughts that I stared up at the ceiling of our bedroom, swallowing hard over the lump in my throat. I wished I knew where he was and I couldn't help but worry if he was all right.
My mother, Melissa Thurber-Wright, and Miles' mother, Lucinda Deane Edgeworth, still got together for tea every week as they had for the past sixteen years and it comforted me that they, at least, were reconciled to the fact that their children would be fighting on different sides in this conflict but were determined that this should not destroy their long, deep seated friendship. Knowing Miles to be the honorable man that he was, this gave me hope that perhaps things could be worked out in some manner between us for I certainly had no interest in anyone else.
I closed my eyes, tears slowly sliding down my cheeks. My heart ached for Miles and myself; I loved him to distraction and knew that there wasn't much that would destroy that love for him in my heart, regardless if I agreed with his decision to enlist in the Federal Army or not.
"Miles..." I murmured softly, my throat constricting with pain. I wished with all of my heart that I could see him just one more time and let him know that, no matter what happened, I would never raise my hand knowingly against him nor would this destroy the love that I had for him.
This seemed like a vain hope, to say the least; he had simply left and disappeared somewhere. I know his Mother and brothers and sisters had come here over the past few days to ask me if I had seen him and I had to admit with sorrow that I had not nor did I know where he had gone to. It hurt... God, did it hurt!
I had no idea where he was or even what he was doing and it was this thought that followed me into a fitful sleep...
Miles...