This is a work in progress inspired by an irresistible prompt, but I wanted to FF it too. So shoot me :3

Miles Edgeworth was initially reluctant to leave his father's car; it was a foggy morning in late October and the temperature was cruel outside of the black Sedan. Gregory killed the gas, got out the driver's side and walked around the front of the car to open the passenger door. The icy air hit Miles like a bullet.

"If you will, Your Highness." Edgeworth senior held out his hand to his son. Miles tried to feign an affronted look, but internally reveled in his father's attention.

Gregory escorted his son up to the school gates, as he did every morning. Before he returned to the car, he made sure that Miles had the house key on him, so that he could let himself in after school. More often than not, Gregory Edgeworth worked until the early evening, even occasionally not coming home until after Miles had put himself to bed. It looked to be that way that very evening, for he had an important, well-publicized court case to attend that day.

But Miles didn't mind. He was used to it. Gregory more than made up for it on the weekend, or whenever he was at home, and Miles was mature enough to understand that his father did important work. He always was in awe whenever Gregory told him stories about court. He was like a superhero, because he 'protected the innocent' and 'searched for the truth'.

Miles was happy enough by himself at home, because he liked his own company. But it was different at school; he didn't choose to be a loner there. He didn't really have a say in the matter.

He was, and had always been, top of the class. No, higher than that; there had been talks amongst the teaching staff about moving him into a higher grade altogether, because he was more than 'exceptionally bright'. If there was an award to be won, he won it. His was always the work chosen first for classroom displays. His projects were always superior than those of anyone else. It wasn't that he went out of his way to be the best; it just came naturally to him.

Nevertheless, he was avoided and antagonized by his classmates. 'Snob boy', they enjoyed calling him. They would steal his belongings and hide them, rip up his books and comics. They pretended that he didn't exist should he try to talk to one of them.

Needless to say, his self-confidence was in tatters.

There was only one boy who ever went out of his way to acknowledge Miles' existence, only one that didn't recoil in horror if he ended up with Miles in paired activities. But Miles knew it was only because of his polite nature; that kid fit in well with a large group, why would he ever feel the need to befriend a 'weirdo snob boy' like Miles?

But as much as Miles valued his pride, as often as he told himself that he didn't need to associate with idiots like them, he couldn't help but be drawn to this one particular boy. How he was always so outgoing, how he always seemed to be smiles, how he would just casually brush off jibes about his unusual name. How he could be so mischievous in class yet still be one of the teacher's favourites, and of the out-of-school antics he proudly boasted about in the playground ("Well, nobody else would do it, so I just ran in there and pushed it! And then it just rolled over and made this mad noise, and then that farmer, he came after us with with a GUN!")

Waiting quietly by himself in the corner of the playground, watching his father drive off in the direction of the city centre, Miles noticed the boy and his mother walking towards the school gate. That weird hair looked even pointier than before, perhaps because of the frosty air. The boy was wrapped in innumerable layers of clothing, and seemed to be suffering from 'a case of the snuffles', as Gregory would have put it. Idiot should be in bed, not in school. The boy responded to Miles' mental musings with a violent bout of coughing. He begged his mother to take him home, but she replied sternly, 'You'll just spend the day playing games! Besides, I can't take a day off to look after you. Just give your medicine to the nurse first thing and she'll help you with it. And don't take that off!" she added, pointing at the respirator mask over the boy's mouth. He looked miserable when she left.

Miles felt a sudden, uncharacteristic urge to go give the boy a hug, but he soon quelled it. He didn't want to be catching that cold, he promptly told himself.

Though even after the morning bell had rang, and all throughout the school day, Miles couldn't help but watch him. The spike-haired boy was getting progressively worse, and the class were giving him a wide berth. This seemed to upset Miles more than it was visibly upsetting the ill boy.

After lunch, when most of the kids had migrated to the chilly schoolgrounds, Miles headed for the cloakroom to get his mulberry gloves and a book for him to read in some secluded corner. Miles devoured literature, and was even beginning to make short work of his father's big 'grown-up' books that were kept in the study. However, Miles had brought with him one of his favourite 'boy's books', one that was part of the 'Samurai Pirate vs Zombie Ninja' series. It was a popular and lucrative franchise aimed squarely and unashamedly at sugar-addict minors, but Miles was quite partial to it, perhaps even borderline obsessed - his father had even taken him to see the stage show, 'The Great Millennium Battle of Sea and Shadow', the previous year.

After replacing his schoolbag to its place under a laminated nametag ('M. Edgeworth') he was startled by a sudden, yet quiet, coughing fit coming from the other end of the room. He glanced over at the source and saw that there was a large pile of coats hoarded under the nametag of ''. It moved only slightly under Miles' gaze, and was then suspiciously still and silent, apart from a few faint electronic 'beeps' and 'bangs'.

"Uhm...hello? Are you okay?"

A shock of spiked black hair popped up from under the pile of coats. "Shhh! I'm not here- omigawsh, is that the new Samurai Pirate book?" More of Phoenix emerged from his hiding place, a childish excitement in his eyes. "O-hhhh, I really want that one, but mum won't buy it for me, says I already have enough and that I should wait for Christmas! Can I see it? You're like the only person I know who has it! I tried the library but they only have like five copies and there's a waiting list like thiiiiiis long!" He moved his hands far apart to demonstrate his point to Miles. He then paused for a few seconds before being seized by a sneeze attack.

Miles, meanwhile, just stood there. How on earth can someone be capable of gabbling on so much in so little time?

And also...was Phoenix trying to initiate a conversation with him?

"I, uhm...yeah?" he replied, feeling a bit stupid. He could feel himself beginning to flush with embarrassment. What do I do?

Phoenix looked at him curiously, his weird yet distinctive eyebrows furrowing into a frown. "Why are you always so square, Miles? Am I annoying you? Sorry..." He began to retreat back into hiding, his attention returning to the Gameboy in his hands.

"N-no, wait, I'm sorry! Here!" Miles threw the book at the pile without thinking. It hit the ebony-haired boy smack on the head.

"Ahh! Miles, what-" but Phoenix realized that he was talking to an empty room - for Miles had turned and fled, face burning.

That afternoon was devoted to art, as all Tuesday afternoons were. The students were usually allowed free reign of the drawing and painting materials, and were given a project or a theme by the teacher. Today, the task was called, 'When I'm Older'.

Miles wasn't exactly enthusiastic about art lessons (he preferred English, Science, or anything with an element of 'learning') but he wasn't particularly bad. For a year three student, anyway. It was quite obvious to him what he would draw. To begin with, he reproduced, to the best of his ability, the courtroom he'd been to with his father so many times. He drew the judge up on his bench, with a long white beard. He came out looking rather like Santa, Miles thought, but he didn't mind. On the left he drew an imposing man dressed in blue, a representation in crayon of the scary prosecutor with the deep, iniquitous voice that he often saw his father battling. On the right bench, the defense, he outlined a lawyer that looked somewhat like his father, but he gave the figure the same bangs of hair that Miles had. He was just finishing off the face when Phoenix, inexplicably from nowhere, made his appearance next to the lone boy.

"I wanted to see what you were doing! Actually, I just want to ask if I can borrow your book, but mummy says you have to be polite to people when you want things." His brow furrowed as he thought silently for a moment. "Aaaaand...you have nice clothes and, er, hair? So I can have the book, right?"

There was a reason, other than unpopularity, that Miles sat by himself. He wasn't an outgoing sort of boy, to put it lightly, and talkative people frazzled him into confusion. But when someone was actually paying him attention, and positive attention at that, his brain pretty much exploded. He stared at the Wright boy for what must have been an unnerving period of time.

"Uh...Miles? Are you okay?"

"..."

"So, um..." Phoenix looked at Miles' picture. "Oh, wow! This is awesome! I didn't know you were so good!" The surprise in his voice was honest, Miles noted. He didn't know how to feel about it, but the praise did bring a smile to his sullen face.

"It's a courtroom," he quietly explained. He felt like an expert in this field, so he found it easy to find words this time. "It's where I want to work when I'm an adult. People who've done bad things have trials there, but sometimes they're not bad. I want to save the good, honest people, like my father." He blushed slightly. This was the most personal he'd ever gotten in a conversation with anyone other than his father. He promptly shut his mouth, thinking that Phoenix wasn't interested.

"Your father? Oh, he's a whatchamacallit?"

"A...lawyer." Miles felt a pang of irritation. The ignorance of the youth today!

"Oh! I bet I know what your daddy does!" said Phoenix, excitedly. He got up and pointed a finger at Miles. "'Your Honour, this witness is a lying son of a bitch, sir!' I'm right, aren't I! That's what he does! He puts liars in jail, doesn't he! In those courtrooms!" He smiled triumphantly. "I saw it on TV!"

To say that Miles was taken aback wouldn't do his reaction justice. "N-no! He's nothing like that! For one, he speaks like a gentleman!" But often not to that von Karma man, though.

"Yeah, but he catches criminals, right?"

"No! Well, yes, he knows when someone is lying. He's very good at that. But sometimes he knows who they really are, even if the judge doesn't. That's what he does. When the person that everyone thinks is the criminal isn't, he saves them and accuses the true criminal!"

"So you want to be like your daddy! That's so cool!" Phoenix pointed to the defense attorney in the picture. "Is this him?"

"No, that's supposed to be me..."

"Oh yeah. I forgot. Wait, you haven't coloured him in!"

"I was getting to that."

"I think," started Phoenix, as he rummaged through the crayon box and subsequently producing a dark pink pencil, "he should be this colour!"

"Pink?"

"Yeah! You seem to like pink a lot!"

"I like magenta!" Miles was burning. Sure, magenta was basically pink, and it was his favourite colour, but...it was a girly colour, wasn't it? He thought that Phoenix was mocking him.

"Magenta, pink, whatever. Same thing. It's a nice colour! It suits you!" Phoenix had started to colour the future Miles in himself with the pink pencil, ignoring Miles' shock at having his picture hijacked. "My favourite colour is blue! It goes really nice with pink, though. Larry says it's a girl colour but I don't care. Hey, maybe we should give adult you blue hair!"

Miles couldn't help but laugh, but all too late he realised that Phoenix meant business as he took a blue pencil from the box and hastily coloured in the hair.

"NGHHHOOOOOOOOOOH! My hair!"

"See! It looks awesome! Wow, this is a really cool picture now!"

Now? It was 'cool' before you ruined it!

"Hey, wanna see mine?"

Miles practically grunted in reply, instead concentrating on a way to rescue his picture. He had Tipp-Ex in his bag somewhere, maybe he could use that and then recolour the hair...

Whilst he was contemplating his dilemma, another picture was thrust in front of him on the table. "It's me as the Samurai Pirate!" The body of the Samurai Pirate was, Miles noticed, copied from the front cover of the book he'd...thrown...at Phoenix, but with very prominent black spikes for hair.

"You know that the Samurai Pirate isn't real, Wright?"

"Yeah, but I'd be him and so he would be real," Phoenix replied, in a tone that meant 'obviously' and that accused Miles of being slow. "Oh yeah, I can borrow the book, right? Have I been polite enough?"

"You coloured my hair blue."

"Great! I'll look after it well!" With a content smile on his face, Phoenix left the table, taking the two pictures and handing them to the teacher before Miles could even react. His face betrayed his horror as he saw his teacher raise an eyebrow, but he couldn't tell what picture she was looking at.

Please be Wright's please be Wright's please be Wright's.

But on his way home after the class had concluded, Miles realised that as awkward as their mostly one-sided conversation had been, it had been fun. Perhaps company wasn't so bad after all, even if they did have awful colour coordination skills.

The next day was even harsher than the one that had preceded it. The sky even threatened the world below with snow, which wouldn't have been unwelcome to Miles. Heavy snow meant school closure, which meant less time spent with those philistines he knew as his classmates.

That morning, however, he was joined in his quiet corner of the playground by Phoenix, who had obviously worsened overnight.

"Have you finished with my book yet, Wright?" Miles gruffly asked. Not so much out of irritation with Phoenix - he was secretly grateful for the company - but because he was freezing his proverbials off.

Phoenix looked bashful. "I'm about thirty pages in. I'm not a great reader..."

Miles, who was known amongst his peers as 'The boy who read Philosopher's Stone in a day', couldn't help but sniff in superiority. But he regretted it; he wanted a 'friend', and as Phoenix's mother had said, you had to be polite to get what you were after. And though he wasn't by any means a spoilt child, Miles usually got what he wanted.

"It's okay. I'll just have it back when you're done. Take your time."

Phoenix (who also sniffed, albeit for a completely different reason) beamed at Miles. "You're awesome!"

"Nice to see that somebody notices my existence," Miles replied, staring bitterly at the other students playing football on the other half of the playground. It was meant to be a quiet remark; he hadn't meant for Phoenix to hear it.

"You know they're just jealous of you, right? That's what mummy told me; when you get bullied, it's 'cuz they're actually really jealous."

"I'm not bullied, Wright." Miles was not one to let weaknesses show.

"Doesn't the name-calling hurt you? It's always hurt me. I get called Porcupine-Boy, or Phoenix Wrong-"

"What name-calling?"

"Oh. You know. Posh-boy, Lord Fauntleroy, 'I wouldn't go within miles of Miles', you know?"

"No. I've never heard. And you're popular, Wright. Why do you get bullied yourself?"

"Popularity has nothing to do with it. I'd rather people laugh with me than at me." Phoenix looked thoughtful. "...well, like I said, it's 'cuz they're jealous of. Butz thinks so too. You know, he always used to get bullied for being poor. We tell them to stop, you know. But mainly, we just ignore them. We play Samurais and Ninjas by ourselves, even though they sometimes laugh at us. Maybe you should come join us one time! Actually..." he trailed off, looking around. "Have you seen Larry?"

"The dirty one with more offensive hair than you?"

"Him's the one. He's usually here by now; teacher called his parents to complain about his late record and so they always make sure he's here on time." As if on cue, the school bell rang. "Oh. Maybe it's just us today, then?"

"You shouldn't even be here yourself, Wright. You look inches from death." Miles wasn't lying. Phoenix looked rougher than a cat's tongue.

Phoenix pulled the zip up on his coat higher as they walked to class, still punctuating his speech with violent coughing. "I know, but mummy won't let me. She has to go to work so she can't leave me in the house on my own."

"I'm allowed on my own. It can't be any other way, so I got used to it. You know, Father's job."

"What about your mum?"

"I don't have one." Miles' tone conveyed the message: I don't want to talk about it.

"Oh. Well, mine won't trust me on my own. She says I'd just play videogames all day. She's right, but still!" They arrived in their classroom and began to unpack their bags, making sure to hand in their lunch money for the month to the teacher. Miles wasn't fond of the school food, but his father didn't have time to make him a lunch to take in, and Miles wasn't much of a cook. Rather dry chips and cardboard-esque meat than nothing, he thought.

Miles noted that Phoenix had plonked his stuff next to his space on his usual empty table, but he didn't mind. It was because Butz wasn't in; Miles would be left on his own again the next day, he knew.

Miles came to learn that morning that Phoenix was certainly a talker. He was one of those boys that generally knew the stuff they were learning (surprising to Miles, Phoenix was fairly bright; certainly more so than he let on) but spent so much time talking that he was lucky if he'd finished half of his work. Miles had learnt to switch him off occasionally, but his concentration was somewhat thrown when their conversation moved on to Samurai Pirate, the one common thread between the vastly different children. When Miles told Phoenix of his merchandise collection, acquired through birthdays, Christmases and pocket-money burning, the noisy boy's eyes grew wide with admiration. "Can I come and play with it all?"

"None of it's for playing, Wright, it's for display!" Miles protested, slightly offended. However, he enjoyed the power of awe he held over his new friend. He wouldn't admit it, of course, but even so he considered Phoenix's proposal. "I'll ask Father this evening."

Unbeknownst to him, Gregory Edgeworth had been worried about his son's school life and how he never spoke of any of his friends. He would never push the matter, knowing how reserved Miles was, but he would be accommodating should the quiet boy ever want to have a friend around.

"So awesome, Miles!"

He could get used to this friendship thing.

They spent the rest of their indoor lessons that day together, chatting about this and that. Miles surprised even himself sometimes, as he was reprimanded by the teacher twice for talking. Truly, Wright was a bad influence on him, but the feeling he had was a good one. It almost seemed like he didn't care. The streak of rebellion that Miles allowed to surface that morning gave him a thrill, though he was too proud a child to admit it.

They even played together at lunch; Phoenix forced himself out in the cold so that he could teach Miles about his Samurai Pirate game that he and Larry played outside. Whilst Miles initially felt childish and silly, something in his head told him that once in a while, silly was a good thing. This thought, coupled with Phoenix's cute enthusiasm, meant that he couldn't help but join in. It was the first time he'd spent playtime in the company of others that year - it reminded him of pre-school, where he had a close friend who had moved cities, and inevitably school, in Miles' second academic year.

After lunch was PE, before which Phoenix had presented a note from his mother to his teacher. He was excused from the lesson due to his health, on his mother's request, and was set some work to do by himself in the classroom. When nobody else but Miles was looking, Phoenix winked at him and pulled Miles' book out from his bag.

"As if I'd do any work!" he whispered in the mischievous tone that Miles found so fascinating.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Miles was in perfect health and so had to accompany the rest of the class outside to participate in what he believed was a load of trivial prancing. On top of it being absolutely bloody cold, it wasn't even proper exercise, or so he thought. True, not much could be learnt from kicking a ball about.

He began missing the company of Phoenix, much to his vexation. The boy was brash, messy, loud, uncouth and demanding, qualities that would normally appall and repel Miles, but there was something else about Phoenix that fascinated him. The fact that he had befriended Miles so easily over the past through days; the fact that Miles had actually let him; the fact that he loved the Samurai Pirate as much as Miles; the fact that he, too, wasn't socially perfect and didn't make it through school emotionally unscathed himself - and, Miles suspected, the fact that he was hiding a vein of maturity behind his childish mask.

Yes. The Wright boy was a strange one, but Miles liked his odd qualities. How much he appreciated his friendship, and indeed how valuable he'd soon find it, wasn't known to him at the time. However, Miles concluded to himself that lesson that perhaps school wouldn't be too bad anymore. Sometimes you just had to open up to people, drop the shield of ice as it were, and they would understand you. If not that, then perhaps at they very least they would acknowledge you. Of course, it also helped if they liked fictional action heroes.