A/N: This was written for a prompt on the PW kink meme that requested a Cykesquill death fic. I'm not huge on either, but I felt weirdly inspired at the time, and I actually kinda like how this came out. It's rather different from my usual style. This is based on one of the bad endings for the last case of DD, so yeah, serious spoilers ahoy!

Rated T for violence, character death, and general angst.

Spoilers for: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies

She, of course, attends his execution.

It isn't a public hanging like they show on those historical dramas she watched in Europe. There are no drummers here, or soldiers, or eager onlookers starved of entertainment. There is only a small assemblage gathered at this execution – a handful of prison guards and the executioner and her.

And him. In the world of one of her dramas, and in this world, too, he's nothing short of the main attraction.

His hands are shackled behind his back now, tighter and closer than before, and he holds his wrists limp, palms bared to the open air, long white fingers curling inward. She can't see his eyes – he's blindfolded – but he isn't smirking, or scowling. His mouth is a straight, short line, not even enough for a frown. And though he stands tall and steady, his shoulders sag forward.

One of the guards clears his throat, like he's going to announce the winner of some award, and reads out the crime and sentence: For the murder in the first degree of Ms. Metis Cykes, Simon Blackquill is hereby condemned to death by hanging. Nobody says, "May God have mercy on your soul" like in the dramas, but she thinks it. That's when she remembers she stopped believing in God a long time ago. She wishes mercy on him anyway, by whatever power she or some loitering unseen deity may have.

Two guards take hold of his arms and lead him up the scaffold. She's told not to get too close, but she can't help but lean forward to watch. She can only see his back, and it reminds her of when she was younger, when she would sit and gaze up at his broad shoulders while he and her mother worked. Sometimes, he would carry her on his back, and she would nestle her face into the crook of his neck, smelling the sweetness of his hair and feeling the softness of his clean-shaven face against her cheek. She brushes her thumb from her mouth all the way over to her ear, trying to remember what it felt like.

Now his hair is longer, and the guards move it aside as the executioner puts the rope around the fragile white skin of his neck. That's what it seems like to her, at least, because prison has robbed him of light and strength and color. They tighten the noose, and she flinches, then reaches out her hand with a shrill, garbled cry, like she's objecting. Someone holds her back, yells at her to compose herself. She ignores it, though, because he's heard her, and he turns his head to the side to look at her through eyes bound with cloth.

She thinks she says his name, but tears fill her mouth and she can't tell if she's said anything intelligible at all. She's heard that some people die smiling. She doesn't know if it's true, but she wants to see him smile, just once, just to let her know he's okay and she's okay and everything is going to be okay. She's selfish and wants this for herself even though she knows it's not true, not any of it.

Because he's going to die, and that's the only truth.

Even though she's making a lot of noise, she hears him. He says her name – her first name, without any embellishments, just like he used to. That's all he says, and she stops to catch her breath and listen, listen for more words, words she knows won't come.

He doesn't smile.

The next thing she sees is his boots dangling below the scaffold. She falls to her knees and sees the rest of him. She sees him at twenty-one, innocent, earnest, handsome. Then she sees him at twenty-eight, haggard and crooked, dark-eyed, still handsome but in a rugged, jaded way. He didn't deserve this, she thinks, and as she leans forward on her shaking arms, she retches. Her mouth is bitter, and her heart is bitter, but what does any of that matter? He's dead now and doesn't feel anything.

And then, suddenly, she doesn't feel anything, either.