Risenfromash: The other stories I am working on right now are about proving that Santa Claus exists and Nick and Maya's confusion over the nature of their relationship. This couldn't be more different.
Riding the TrapezeIn a dark room in the dirty city a radio played on low. It was supposed to provide comfort to the seated man, but it did not. He couldn't tell you what song was playing or even what type of station it was tuned to. He was no longer in contact with the world. He was separate from it, everything in the world being filtered through a veil of misery and loneliness.
Moments played out in his mind over and over. Being escorted from the courthouse, bright lights pointing at him. Being seated at a long table before the bar. Only one person voted not to disbar him and it was Kristoph, which meant that it was probably more a vote out of pity than out of faith or belief in him.
The last thing he had seen that had brought him any joy was the light glimmering off his golden badge as he handed it to the chairwoman. Every time he thought of that moment he felt his guts heaving. He remembered the years of schooling, the hours spent studying, and he remembered Mia. She would have been so disappointed. Why couldn't he have died, instead? He offered nothing to the world. He had no family, no friends. That much was now obvious.
He had held onto a glimmer of hope that as he walked out of the Macadam Building after handing over his badge that his friends would be there. Maya had never let him down before. But she wasn't there. Edgey and Gumshoe weren't there. Larry wasn't there, either but that wasn't surprising. He was probably having a crisis of his own related to whatever woman he had decided he couldn't live without that week.
Life. "What makes a life worth living?" The man pondered. Thoughts of doing what you love and being with the people you love came flooding to him, but the thoughts brought no comfort. He had lost all those things. He had lost his badge. His friends had not come to him. He had no one who loved him. He had been publicly disgraced. He saw people on the street look at him out of the corners of their eyes afraid to stare at him too obviously for fear they might send him into a rage. They knew him only as an unsavory character, untrustworthy and disgraced.
He opened the bottom drawer of his desk. There were a lot of papers in it. He grabbed them carelessly and jammed them into the waste paper basket. He should have burned them with the suit. It had felt so good to see something he cared about destroyed. His heart was broken. He wanted to destroy everything everywhere. All life, all love, all happiness. He could no longer experience it; therefore, it had no right to exist in the world. That's why he had decided to obliterate his suit from existence.
He had attacked it as soon as he had gotten home from the hearing. First, he had yanked it off his body with such a force the seams at the shoulder had burst. Then he had thrown it down upon his bed and pulled and ripped and torn at it with his hands. He told himself that he hated that suit. In his delirium, he even tried to convince himself he had hated being a lawyer, but a part of him fought against that mistruth. But it didn't matter one way or another, he reasoned, because now he didn't have it to hate or love. He wasn't a lawyer anymore.
He dressed himself in a set of sweats he found in the back of his closet. Then he grabbed a book of matches from the kitchen and marched out to the dumpster armed with his suit and tie. He flung them into the metal dumpster with the determination of a man whose very life depended on his actions. He lit a match and threw it in on top of the suit, but it failed to ignite the offensive clothing and he stamped his foot and cussed to the high heavens about whatever wet junk in the garbage had robbed him of the dramatic end he wanted for his blue suit.
He was obsessed with annihilating his suit. Its destruction was important. It was all he could think about and that felt good. It blocked out the sense of abandonment and the overwhelming sadness he was experiencing. Yes, killing the suit was good; because it felt great to destroy something he had once loved.
But the suit wasn't completely obliterated yet and he knew he might have to take more drastic measures such as dousing the contents of the dumpster in gasoline to be able to truly eradicate it from the world, but he wasn't ready to give up. He needed to finish the suit now. Its death was imperative. So, he tried one more time. This time throwing every match he had into the garbage can. The suit started to ignite and he grunted.
This was good. He had done something right. He had managed to kill his suit. He started to stuff the matchbook back in his pocket, but remembering it was empty he tossed it in the dumpster, too. He saw the words written upon it for a split second before the Borscht Bowl Club matchbook disappeared from view. He took a mental picture of the sight just as he used to do at crime scenes. Now, instead of collecting mental images in order to help him in solving court cases he was now gathering artistically macabre moments to torture himself with later, like his badge glinting in the sunlight as he placed it in the chairwoman's hand, never to be his again. Never…never…never…
Even now as the man sat at his desk nursing a drink, listening to the fire department working to put out the trashcan fire he had started he still felt disconnected from the world. All those images he was amassing ran in his mind like a slideshow, their accompaniment the voices of his friends telling him they would always be there for him. There was Maya with her bubbly, child-like intensity, Edgeworth with his reserve always too aloof to say what he really felt, Gumshoe the perpetually clueless, and Kristoph always so fake with his silky smooth voice telling him how sorry he was that he had been unable to convince the bar-
The dark haired man grabbed various objects off his desk and threw them into the wastepaper basket. Haphazardly he grabbed another item. It was a glass statue in the shape of a flame. "World's Greatest Attorney" was etched on it. He looked at it and his nostrils flared. She had given it to him. He set it back down on the desk and shut his eyes.
"Don't think about that day. Don't think about it. Don't!"
But the memory was forefront in his mind before he could block it. There she was with her innocent face looking so happy, so sincere, so loving, presenting him with a knickknack for his desk. The memory was a mockery to him now as it was all entwined with the pain of his loss. He wasn't the world's greatest attorney anymore. He wasn't the world's greatest anything, nor would he ever be again and his friends didn't even care.
Everywhere he looked there were memories. Everything reminded him and everything hurt. He had once broken his arm falling off his bike as a kid, but now he wondered why he had even cried then. That pain was nothing compared to this. Then he could still eat, he could still appreciate a good joke, and he could still show his face in public. Now he could do none of those things and there was no one to hold his hand in the dark.
"I've got no one." The phrase repeated itself in his mind like a Gregorian chant. His life had been destroyed. He would make his office match it. He threw the glass statue at the wall and chunks of glass came flying back at him. He smiled manically. This was good. This felt good. Destruction was good. This he had control over. He had no control over anything else, but he could control these objects in his office. They were the tools he had used for a trade he had stolen away from him and so he eagerly channeled his rage into the destruction of everything associated with his professional life.
He pulled folders from filing cabinets flinging them across the room so their contents spun out of them. He knocked over the office chair, broke pencils and stamped up and down on papers, till he was crying so hard he could no longer see and he stumbled and fell. He didn't even bother to put his hands out to brace himself. He no longer cared for himself. No one else did, why should he? The shattered glass bits that were scattered on the floor dug into his face leaving bleeding cuts. He liked feeling the pain and intentionally mashed his hands into more of the shards. Nobody cared about him. He couldn't do anything right. This was all he could do. There was nowhere to go from here. This was the end.
Lying on the floor he spied the many electrical cords under the desk and he crawled over to them leaving smears of blood upon the floor. From under the desk he pulled open the middle drawer. His fumbling created a cascade of writing implements, notepads, and paper clips, but he didn't care. He paid it no mind. He felt his hands grip what they were looking for. Scissors. He took the scissors and cut all the cords and tied them together to fashion a long rope.
He had no reason to live. He had no future. All he had was the slideshow of misery and abandonment. The pain betrayal overwhelmed him. His bleeding hands and bruised knees did not compare at all to that pain. The pain that made him open his mouth to scream, just to discover his voice was unable to function. With the bar's decision he had lost his very life and with no one to support him, his life was over. All the things that living for him had been was now taken away and nothing would make things go back to the way they were.
He looked up at the ceiling and decided that the ceiling fan would have to do as his anchor. There was no point in writing a note. No one loved him. No one cared what became of him other than the reporters selfishly seeking to make money off another man's misery. He could hear the sound bytes about how the disgraced attorney had been found dead.
He laughed. He was already dead. He had been robbed of his life and the absence of his friends proved that everything they had shared with one another had just been an illusion. None of the love had been real. His life had been one big lie and now it was all over.
He slid the desk over so he could more easily secure the noose. Soon all the noise in his head would be gone. There would only be quiet and the pain would be gone. He would do anything to stop the hurt that had control of every cell of his being.
This was good. Nothing and no one had helped him. The world was full of liars. He had thought he had friends, but he did not and he had nothing, but this would make it better. This would make the pain go away. It was time to end the misery. Once and for all. He closed his eyes.
"Please, God. Let the pain stop."
He leaned forward in order to put his head in the loop. His hands gripped the loop as he planned how to swing himself off the desk. He took his final breath. His tears poured like waterfalls now. He couldn't see. He was going under, under that horrible sea of pain, never to resurface.
"Is that a trapeze?"
The man's eyes flew open. It was so dark and he had cried so much that the speaker was blurry and it took what seemed like an eternity for it to dawn on him who it was.
"We use ropes and stuff in some of our acts. But that doesn't look very safe. You should probably come down from there and we can work on it together tomorrow."
The man's body quaked and he sobbed.
"No, Lord. Let me do this. I want to die. I can't live with all this pain. I can't. I'm not strong enough," he thought to himself.
The little girl walked through the mess of broken glass and papers like an angel floating peacefully over a battlefield.
Holding her hand out to the man, she said, "Mr. Wright, I can't sleep. I need you to read me a story."
Phoenix let go of the noose. "You want me to read you a story?"
The little girl nodded and handed him a book she was holding in her other hand.
"Happy Ending Tales," he croaked.
"Yeah. Please, sir," she said starting to quiver. "I'm lonely."
Phoenix got down from the desk and walked with the little girl to the couch she was using as a bed. He sat down and she snuggled up next to him. He read the words on the page without knowing their meaning. The story could have been Rapunzel or Cinderella or Snow White. He wasn't even sure, because he was reading it without listening to himself. His mind was fighting with God and he found himself often having to pause as he read because his voice was wobbling too greatly for the little girl to understand him, but she listened patiently occasionally placing her hand on his arm as encouragement.
He wanted to die. Everyone he knew had abandoned him, but now he was saddled with this child. This was not his problem or responsibility. He didn't love her. He didn't even know her. He needed to make his exit. The pain was too great. He couldn't continue. There had to be someone else for the child. He told God all this as his mouth vocalized the words on the page about princesses and balls and spinning wheels.
"What's wrong?" the little girl asked drowsily as she felt his tears fall upon her cheek.
"Nothing," Phoenix responded automatically.
"I feel sad, too," she said closing her eyes. "But now that you're here I feel better. I love you."
Phoenix Wright looked down at the little girl in his arms drifting off to sleep. He pulled her close to his chest.
"Oh, Trucy! Don't be sad. Please don't be sad. You're much too young to be sad."
She looked up at him. "So are you."
Phoenix thought about this. He probably did have a lot of years ahead of him if he could make it through this. He felt like his life was at an end, but gazing down at the little girl in his arms he thought that perhaps it was just a new beginning.
Were it not for her he would be dead, so she would be his focus now. He would shut himself off from all he knew before. He would devote himself to this child and he would never again contact the people he had once called friends. From now on, he would be alive only for her. He would force himself to endure the pain so she did not have to lose another person.
"How would you like to live with me?" He asked while flashes of asking Maya the same question played in his mind. Tears poured from his eyes. He had been there for her. Why wasn't she there for him? Why? Why? Why had Edgeworth vanished again? Why was everyone disappearing? How could Trucy's dad abandon her like that? How could people be so cruel?
"Trucy, I'll protect you. I'll take care of you. If that's what you want."
Trucy raised her head and put a hand on the side of his face.
"Would that make you happy?"
"I don't know," he said honestly. "I don't think anything can make me happy."
Bursting into tears she whimpered, "I know. I want my Daddy!"
Phoenix held her so tightly he almost crushed her in between his strong arms.
"I know, sweetheart, I know! But I'll be your Daddy until he comes back, ok?"
The little girl nodded frantically. "Thank you, oh, thank you. I've been so sad. I felt like I had no one."
"No, you have me and I'm not going anywhere, ok."
She smiled. "Good, and you have me, Daddy. I'm not going to go anywhere, either. I promise."
Phoenix held her till she fell asleep and then he retuned to his office. He stared at the noose hanging from the ceiling fan and imagined himself dangling there. He had wanted it so badly. He still wanted it so badly, but he had always served people and Trucy Gramarye needed his help. He couldn't turn his back on her. He would have to find a way to live through this pain.
He walked across the room and reached into the open middle drawer of the desk and slid his hand around until he found a silver key with a keychain with a round insignia. He stepped out of the office, gave one final longing look at his do-it-yourself hangman's rope, and locked the door behind him. Then he took the key with the keychain with the image of a defense attorney badge on it and he threw it into the kitchen garbage can.
"Goodbye, Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright," he mumbled to himself as he opened the refrigerator to grab himself a grape juice.
~xxxx~
"No, Apollo it's really no trouble having you stay with us," Phoenix said smiling. "As soon as the locksmith gets the door open, I'll clean it up and you can start moving your stuff in."
"There all done," the burly locksmith said. "I can't believe you didn't have a spare key to this door. I made you two copies of the new key."
"Thanks," Phoenix said while reaching for his wallet off the kitchen counter.
"Mr. Wright, no worries about cleaning up the room. I'm sure it can't be that bad-"
The door to the former office swung open to reveal everything as it had been seven years ago. Apollo stood speechless staring at the noose, the dusty computer, the broken glass, and the streaks of blood on the carpeting.
Trucy watched as her father stared at the noose. He had moved forward from that low point in his life, but she knew there were times when he still struggled. He tried to hide it from her, but she knew about the nights he would drink grape juice after grape juice as he was haunted by the memories of his previous life, a life in which he had had more freedom, more friends, and more prestige.
"Daddy," she said hastily, "don't worry, Polly and I will clean it all up. You don't have to think about it."
"Mr. Wright, what happened here? Did somebody get killed?"
"Daddy and I were having a very bad day," Trucy said running to get the vacuum from the hall closet.
"You were going to hang yourself, Mr. Wright?" Apollo said with appall.
"I get a little overly dramatic sometimes," his mentor said shrugging.
The truth was Phoenix still felt abandoned by his old friends. Whenever he thought of Edgeworth it was as though his heart had been pierced by an ice pick. Sometimes he couldn't shut off the pain and would stay up all night crying over the betrayal of being abandoned by those he loved.
Kristoph's friendship had been a lie. Maya only sent movies and he never heard from Edgeworth or Larry or Gumshoe. The sorrow hit him like a tsunami and he found himself thinking that perhaps it was time to do what he had set out to do seven years ago. He would never again have to think about why he was no longer loved and Trucy would be fine. She had Apollo now.
The former attorney shook his head. "My old friends must have their reasons," the logical part of his brain told him. He was ashamed that unsealing this long closed room had made the sorrow come back to him so violently. He had thought he had finally found peace now that Apollo had cleared his name but the darkness could still clutch onto his heart, apparently.
He sighed and reminded himself that Maya had not abandoned him entirely. She had contacted him about a week and a half after the disbarment with a little note about how sorry she was she hadn't been there at the hearing. She had been in bed with the stomach flu and when she got better Pearly got it and they hadn't been able to go anywhere and would he please watch the enclosed DVDs and tell her what he thought.
Good ole Maya. She hadn't abandoned him, but she did only mail movies. She didn't come for visits or call to chat. It was different than it had been and that was hard.
"Man, I can't imagine how awful what the two of you went through was. What a nightmare," Apollo said.
"Yeah, it was really, REALLY bad. But Daddy made it so much better. I don't know how he managed to stay so strong."
"I'm not strong," Phoenix said, tears beginning to flow from his eyes. How could he still feel so terrible even after all these years?
Standing directly beneath the noose he had intended to take his life, he acknowledged once again how his old life was dead. Things after the disbarment were never the same. Sometimes that sense of lose was all he could think about, but here he was with a new family. A family that loved and cared about him. It had taken time and it had taken work, but he never forgot the promise he had made to Trucy. God may have seen fit to turn his life completely upside down, but He had been merciful enough to send him an angel as well.
"I won't be needing the trapeze," he said climbing onto the desk to loosen the noose from the ceiling.
"I'm very happy to hear that, Daddy. It's not a good idea for people who are scared of heights."
"Mr. Wright, do you think you might want this? It's still kind of intact," Apollo held up the partially shattered "World's Best Attorney" statue. "You might be able to have the corner sanded down and reformed or something."
"Yeah, I think I would like that. Maya gave it to me."
"She's the one who sends you all those DVDs isn't she?"
"Yeah, she was my assistant."
"That's cool that she still keeps in touch with you. I'll just put this in the kitchen, ok, Mr. Wright?"
Phoenix smiled. Apollo was a good kid. Trucy was a good kid, too. How had he ended up with two great children when he hadn't even had a girlfriend since college?
"You know Apollo, you can call me Phoenix now. You're family."
"Or you can call Daddy 'Daddy' like I do. Cause I think of you as my brother."
Apollo smiled. "That's really sweet, Truce, but I think I'll stick with calling your dad, 'Mr. Wright' or 'Phoenix.'"
"I'm so lucky to have you two!" Trucy said as she squatted to pick up some of the papers scattered on the floor. "Friends come and go, but family is forever."
"Ironic," thought Phoenix, "that a girl abandoned by both her parents should say that."
Yet, he smiled. He was honored to be Trucy's family. She had saved his life in many ways not just by coaxing him off the desk that night, but also by giving his life purpose and meaning when all that he had formerly known had been stripped away from him.
"That's right, Trucy. Me and Apollo will always be here for you. No matter what. We're family."
Epilogue:
Dear Nick,
So sorry about not being at the hearing. I had the worst stomach flu of my life and then Pearly got it and it feels like forever since we've gotten to go anywhere.
You must be so sad. I feel terrible.
Master training is awful. I never seem able to get away, but I thought it would seem like we were together if we watched some DVDs. Don't groan, you big baby. You know you like Steel Samurai! So watch these and report back on them, Old Man! K?
Love you.
Maya