There's a trick to being damaged goods: don't let on to just anybody.
Seven years is a long time, even when you're not counting, and I never really wanted to go back to being the man I'd been before because as good and brave as Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney was, he'd been an idiot. It had taken a rude awakening and a forced adoption to make him grow up, and…
Life had a funny way of catching up to you.
So it is that I find myself sitting on a park bench all alone – very alone, I'd made sure of it – staring off at the horizon, not frowning but almost wishing I could be so frank about my feelings, leaning with an arm slung casually over the back of the seat and tracing the outline of the city skyline with my eyes as it was thrown into stark silhouette by the setting sun.
A lawyer can only cry when it's all over. But…what do I do now that I'm not a lawyer anymore?
When I'd been a kid, my aunt had told me not to make faces, or they'd stick. I can't help but suppose, however absently, that my poker face had done it. Seven years of harmless smiles and I can't shift it off of my face unless I try. I hate that it makes me that much more like him…and at the same time can't help but be surprised that more hadn't rubbed off.
How do you tell if you're going mental, anyways? Where's the cutoff point that stands between a normal, hardworking man and the kind of guy who'd kill because of a poker game? And do I stand a chance of knowing when that point's going to jump out at me? Now that the world's back to being normal and as safe as it ever gets in this town, now that the new System is chugging along happily, out of my hands and beyond my reach…what have I got left but poker?
Heroes never get fat paychecks. A Father's greatest reward is the knowledge that his children are making their own ways through the world, strong and safe and smart enough to solve their own problems.
A lover's greatest ambition is to let their other go, and know, and trust that they'll come back home.
So I sit here on this park bench. The bench that's seen me come and go and think and reminisce and definitely not cry…
And I wonder why my cheeks feel wet. Why I have a bottle in my hand that has nothing to do with grapes and smells of juniper and old promises. Why I suddenly feel more alone than ever because I'm a hero.
And eventually, after a long, long moment, I gather my poker smile up again and make my way home.