part one
He's in Brussels on business when it starts. He knows already that the Law Courts of Brussels are but a few short stops from the Gare du Midi, where his train deposited him this morning, yet he finds himself squinting at the onboard Metro map suspended over the passenger handholds. Never mind that his brain automatically catalogs and processes the overhead announcements in all three languages; the information isn't real until the letters form up, proclaiming Louise and its Palace of Justice to be his destination of choice.
Miles Edgeworth steps off the train and marches out, up, into the soft sunshine. His earlier difficulties are already forgotten – if they ever registered at all – as his mind whirls through systems of law. He never sees the ceramic tiles of Dubrunfaut's "Flowering Earth," though the escalator takes him right past them.
Of course Franziska notices immediately. They meet for lunch some weeks later, and he's barely opened the menu before she raises both of her eyebrows at the hint of a crease forming up between his. "Foolish little brother," she begins with a smirk as her voice warms to lecture pitch. He reaches a hand up to rub away the incipient headache, and her smirk widens. He drops the hand in favor of studying the menu and trying to control the twitch that's beginning in the corner of his left eye.
"I see you're not taking care of yourself again. You're slipping, little brother. How disgraceful."
"I am doing no such thing, Franziska," he replies, confident and unconcerned. "It's merely a little headache. It happens to we mortals at times, even the best among us."
That's met with a finger-twitch and a small shake of her head. "Miles," she scolds, "the evidence says otherwise: you've shown a noticeable increase in squinting and rubbing at your eyes, and now the headaches, combined with your, ahem, advanced age –"
"Now just one moment –!"
"And unlike me," she finishes with a particularly vicious smile, "you don't have perfect genes to fall back on."
That rankles more than it should, and this time he doesn't bother to mask his irritation. "I will thank you to cease this line of questioning, Franziska. My ocular health is in fine form – to say nothing of my lineage, for heaven's sake – and you have no standing to comment on either." He pauses for a breath, expecting a rebuttal, but she's just watching him calmly, waiting. The exasperation leaves him as quickly as it had reared up, and he sighs. "Now if you don't mind, I'd like to get on with our meal. Where did that waiter go?"
He catches motion at the edge of his vision as he signals the waiter and worries for a panicked moment that she's reaching back for the whip, but instead Franziska brandishes a business card – for an exclusive and highly-regarded ophthalmologist. He pockets it with another sigh and changes the subject, and it's a measure of Franziska's seriousness that she allows him to.
But the headaches worsen, and Edgeworth starts to think Franziska might have been on to something. It's easy to brush aside in the bustle of his daily life – so much else to do, so many more important things to think about – and it's not until he's back in the States that he's forced to confront it: his driver's license is set to expire in a month. He does a quick search for eye charts, and with a sinking feeling finally acknowledges the truth he's been avoiding all this time: his close vision is tolerable, if not perfect, but his distance vision is abysmal. There's no way he'll pass even the rudimentary vision screen the DMV will foist on him, not unless he sneaks up close to memorize the chart, and stickler for the law that he is he can't quite bring himself to cheat even on a vision exam. It's for his safety and the well-being of the general public, he chides himself, and resigns himself to looking up a reputable optometrist.
Compound myopic astigmatism, the OD pronounces, and Edgeworth mostly tunes out the ensuing explanation of diopters and axes of rotation except to note with curiosity that the messily scribbled prescription appears to differ in each eye. He picks up the prescription paper and walks stiffly to the front of the office, where an overeager salesgirl is only too happy to suggest some designer frames that would be just perfect for him. No doubt perfect for her commission, he thinks, though he suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. He starts to ask about a style he saw in Zurich once, some barely-there model anchored at the temples rather than all the way behind the ears, when a stylish sample pair in a mirrored display case catches his eye. His voice dies out mid-sentence and he's moving on autopilot, reaching toward them as if on instinct.
"Oh, those are very popular among our professional customers, serious without being too stodgy," the salesgirl chimes in. "Would you like to try them on?"
"Ye-" His voice catches on something, and he coughs a little to clear it. He's not sure why his heartbeat has picked up. "Yes. Please."
"Right away, sir." She unlocks the case and slides the frames over to him. They're sleek all right; semi-rimless, with pronounced black metal frames and rectangular lenses that are rounded at the corners. His pupils are still dilated from the exam, and when he regards the mirror, his eyes look almost brown. He stares at his reflection, motionless, until the salesgirl discreetly clears her throat and he jumps. He hadn't even heard her approaching.
"Those look spectacular on you! Shall I put the order in?" she gushes.
Edgeworth pulls off the sample frames and puts on his best nonchalant expression as he hands them back to her. Going by what he can see in the mirror, it winds up closer to annoyed. He doesn't mind. "Yes, thank you," he replies, "and when will they be ready?"
"Um...with processing time and everything, about three weeks?" She's unprepared for the glare he levels at her, and she swallows audibly. "Two weeks?"
He glares harder.
"I, um…" she taps frantically at her computer, "will five days work for you?"
"Fine," he says, nodding once. Then he turns and leaves the building without another word.
He hopes the glare will still work from behind the new lenses.
He had expected the unfamiliar weight on his skin, had accounted for the moments of disorientation when he'd catch his reflection and have to remind himself to update his mental schema of his appearance. He had not expected motion. They're prone to falling down; so once or twice an hour, he extends an index finger toward his own face and shoves them back up. It's persistent, distracting, like a gnat alighting periodically on the bridge of his nose, and he observes with dark humor that the way he addresses it feels like objecting to himself.
He does it anyway: droop-shove, droop-shove, until eventually that too becomes second-nature, unnoticed. Well, unnoticed by Edgeworth.
Phoenix notices.
.
.
.
part two
Phoenix can't do anything but notice. The first time he stops by Edgeworth's new office, Phoenix actually feels his jaw drop open in surprise. Edgeworth is staring at him with this expectant expression, clearly waiting for him to comment on his new accessory. But Phoenix Wright has faced Edgeworth enough times to know when he's walking into a trap, and the senses that warn him when he's skirting a penalty in court are blaring at him now, loud and clear. He rubs the back of his neck and puts on his best shit-eating grin and says "So, glasses, huh?"
Edgeworth narrows his eyes and frowns, and Phoenix comes to the sudden, highly uncomfortable realization that he'd never found that particular expression attractive – until just now. "Yes," Edgeworth bites off.
"Okay then!" Phoenix rejoins, perhaps a little too quickly and a little too cheerfully, but if Edgeworth has any objections he's not voicing them. If anything, he looks a little stunned that Phoenix managed not to take the bait for once. That expression looks good on him too, and God, Phoenix is not thinking about this right now. "So tell me about your case," he says, because unraveling the truth behind another murderous prosecutor is practically a vacation compared to sorting out the mess of the last seven years.
Phoenix notices: The extension and retraction of Edgeworth's elegant finger, precisely applied and removed as he unconsciously nudges his glasses back up while Edgeworth himself leans over his desk, wholly immersed in paperwork. The subtle adjustments of position, brought about by careful touches and taps on the earpieces, as Edgeworth finds the best angle to take in the intricate movements of sleight-of-hand at Trucy's magic show. The little maddening sounds that might or might not be fiddling, folding and unfolding, reverberating into the cell phone when they talk late into the night. The way light glints and reflects off the polished, glare-proofed lenses as Edgeworth tilts his head in approval of some witticism Phoenix barely remembers uttering. The whole devastatingly attractive intellectual look Edgeworth suddenly has in spades, really, and the appreciative glances he's been attracting on the sly, from as many men as women these days.
Phoenix notices his mouth running dry, his heartbeat lurching, and a global hit to his ability to focus on the terribly important and not at all sexually charged things Edgeworth has been discussing with him. If Edgeworth is aware that Phoenix is regressing into an adolescent version of himself, he certainly isn't commenting on it. Just as well, Phoenix thinks – it's not like he was there for it the first time.
Phoenix still doesn't know how the glasses happened, or why. Edgeworth never told him about the headaches, or the lunch with Franziska, and they don't talk about fiddling or adjusting or appearances at all. There's a lot they still don't talk about.
So when Edgeworth finally catches him staring and trots out that stupid smirk and drills his fingertips on his arm, he can't very well say "Christ, you're beautiful," even if it's what he was thinking. What he says instead is, "You know, you look a lot like your father with those things on?"
Edgeworth starts. He grips his arm just for a second, and his mouth parts before he schools his expression back into his usual demeanor, but Phoenix didn't spend seven years playing poker for fun and he doesn't miss the surge of emotion there. "...What?" Phoenix challenges. He has the sense that Edgeworth expected him to say something, anything, other than that.
"I wouldn't know, Wright," Edgeworth answers, though it's tinged with something Phoenix didn't expect to hear. Anger? Embarrassment, maybe? "I..."
"You don't think so?" Phoenix interjects, surprised. This bickering, at least, is comfortable ground. "Your style's a little different, obviously, but man, it's distracting."
"...don't remember," Edgeworth finishes bitterly, and oh, Phoenix thinks, that wasn't anger or embarrassment he heard. Maybe he ought to spend more time with Athena's mood thingy. He'll get right on that, he thinks, as soon as he can figure out how to extract his nicely polished shoe from his mouth. Well, shit.
"Well, shit," he says aloud. "I'm sorry, Edgeworth. I thought..."
"You didn't think," Edgeworth snaps, "that's the problem." Phoenix knows he earned that, and remains silent. Edgeworth buries his head in his hands for a moment; when he releases it again, his expression is calm but closed off. "Forget it," he says quietly.
Like hell Phoenix will, and Edgeworth knows that, so Phoenix isn't sure why he bothered to say it. "No, really, Edgeworth," he counters earnestly, "I'm sorry, that was totally out of line and I should have realized – "
"Realized what, that some of us aren't dealing with the losses of age as well as we could be?" Edgeworth laughs a little, though it's self-deprecating. "Time ravages us all, Wright. Vision failure has a mechanical solution – " he taps his index finger against his temple, making a tiny thwack sound against the metallic frames – "and memory failure can be counteracted with a good search engine. I know how to compensate for my own limitations; I've been doing it for decades."
Phoenix has spent most of this little monologue staring at his hands and feeling increasingly like a heel, so when he looks up to see Edgeworth's expression go wistful at the end, it leaves him breathless. He wants to freeze this moment somehow, capture it in a photograph or painting or something, but the one thing he absolutely cannot do right now is sit still. He clears his throat and takes a step towards Edgeworth, and his voice drops in pitch as he murmurs, "Take the glasses off."
"What?" Edgeworth looks up at him, and the perfect wistful expression is gone now, replaced by confusion and a hint of annoyance.
It doesn't matter to Phoenix; his mind's eye is still showing him what he wants to see. "Your glasses," he repeats. "Take them off. I told you, they're distracting."
Edgeworth crosses his arms, unpersuaded. "Have you gone soft in the head? They're not a fashion statement, Wright, I need them to see."
"Take them off," Phoenix insists. He's advancing into Edgeworth's personal space now, and distantly he notes that for all the verbal fight Edgeworth puts up, the dilated pupils and slight hitch in his breathing tell a different story.
"Fine, you ridiculous excuse for a human being, they're off!" Edgeworth yells. He wants to fold his glasses and shove them into his jacket pocket with a dramatic flourish, but he finds his arm is outstretched and he's too busy gesticulating with them to do anything else. "And another thing, why do you eve-mffffff!"
And then he's too busy being kissed by Phoenix Wright to do anything. Somehow Wright manages to duck inside his reach and get both hands up to his face, to the newly-sensitive spots between his eyes and ears where the frames no longer rest, before Edgeworth comes to his senses and stumbles back.
"What the– I'm not blind without them, you moron!" he retorts in the most affronted voice he can manage. He tries for a glare, too, but it must be stunted because Wright is still grinning.
"And yet you didn't move to stop me," Phoenix says, his grin turning predatory. "What does that tell you, Chief Prosecutor?"
He presses his advantage, and Edgeworth's glasses fall, unheeded, onto the desk behind him.