It's four-seventeen in the afternoon and already the days feel longer than they do in the States. Khura'in is a colorful mountainous country, and the cool air and high peaks make for a stunning view. Miles is contemplating the slopes of the view of the mountain range relative to Temp'uhl Temple as the sun casts long golden rays over it, pretending he's not watching Phoenix Wright's every move in the other room out of the corner of his eye.
He'd watched him the whole plane ride, too, nervous and jittery and flitting in and out of sleep, but there's a sense of relief in Wright now, even as he watches fluid patter down the IV drip next to Maya Fey's bed, even as the looming murder trial approaches and their only witness is unconscious due to exhaustion.
Quite frankly, it's a mess.
Wright gets up from the bedside chair to rearrange the get-well-soon flowers Miles had picked up from the store earlier for the third time in twenty minutes, and that's when Miles decides that enough's enough.
He puts down his lukewarm mug of tea and moves into the bedroom where Wright's slouching next to the bed, suit jacket draped over the back of his chair, glassy stare looking out at the same view Miles had gazed at earlier. He's pointedly not looking at the heartbreaking hollow of Maya's cheeks or the telltale rope burns around her arms, and Miles can imagine Wright turning these over and over in his head – six days, six days she was with Inga, and he would have been powerless to do anything except prove a guilty man innocent.
"Wright," he says, placing his hand on the other man's shoulders as a gesture of comfort.
His companion flinches. Miles recoils as if stung, his hand snapping back to his side. "I apologize for the intrusion."
"Hey, no, sorry." Wright's turned to look at him, eyes wide. "Sorry, Edgeworth. I was just lost in thought, is all. Don't have to be so stiff about it."
He gentles his voice. "You need to get some rest, Wright. Frowning by the bed won't do you or Maya any good."
Wright pauses. "It won't help Apollo either, will it," he sighs. He rubs his face one more time, huffing heavily before standing up. "Yeah, I'll just–" He gestures broadly towards the sitting room and gets up to pour himself a glass of water. Hapless, Miles follows him out of the bedroom.
"Thank you for doing this," Wright says, gesturing tiredly around the room. It's one of the hospital's finest private suites, with a stylish bedroom and a comfortable sitting room outside, easily obtained from Miles's influence and the overhanging threat of national scandal. But Wright is looking at him with those damned puppy-dog eyes, and Miles knows he means more than that – more than Maya's soft cotton sheets and mountainside balcony view, more than the tea candles and the altar and the paintings in this otherwise insufferably sterile hospital, Wright is trying to say, thank you for keeping her alive.
It's not the first time – that trial nine years ago springs to mind, a glass of chianti on the witness stand, Wright bending the truth to defend a guilty man, Maya Fey, all of nineteen, small and scared. And then even further back, Miles trying to get Maya the death penalty, and the memories of that year come rushing back so quickly it gives Miles whiplash.
His hand clenches. He wants to say, no, thank you, nothing can make up for what you did for me, this is all because you guided me back on the right path. But as is increasingly common with Wright these years, the words lodge in his throat where they would normally flow freely, and he's instead left staring tongue-tied at his oldest friend. "Think nothing of it," he says instead. "It was the right thing to do."
There's a pause. Wright keeps glancing back towards the bed, and Miles finds himself not knowing what to do with his hands. This stilted quiet hasn't been present in their conversations for years. "The first time I see her in years, and it's like this," he starts. It's a loaded attempt at conversation, and he curses himself internally for it. "She doesn't miss a beat, does she." Maya must be twenty-eight now, the same age as Franziska, and the awkward angles and childish features of her teen years have given way to the gentle kind of beauty her sister had been so famed for.
Maya's gotten older. They all have.
That, at least, brings a smile to Wright's face, and no matter how small, Miles warms at the sight of his lips turning upwards and his shoulders relaxing. "Yeah. First time I see her in two years? Accused of murder. That's our Maya." His smile is fond, though, and Miles doesn't let himself linger on the casual way Wright says our. "I wouldn't have given that up, though. It's just like old times, right?"
"It has been quite a while since you started out." Almost eleven years, and the world has been all the better for it.
"Yeah, well. I'm lucky." Wright's voice is serious. "The law isn't so kind. I'm grateful to you, really, for helping me get my badge back."
"You were going to get it back," says Miles. "I just…expedited the process." And how could he not, when Wright had brought one of the Dark Age of the Law's trickiest villains to his knees? And how could he have regretted it, when a year later, Simon Blackquill walked free?
Phoenix Wright was always known for shaking things up, both here and back home, and Miles knows he might not have accomplished half the things he has if Wright wasn't poking around on the defense side of things.
And yet you cast yourself as hapless, he muses, watching Wright fumble around with his phone. You must know – you have to know how the legal world sees you. The Turnabout Terror, they call him back home. The Fighting Phoenix, they call him here. But Miles knows better than to think that a single person can save the whole system, knows better than to put figures on fragile pedestals, and for all that Wright has done, he's grateful that he can see him now, quiet and thoughtful, as human as he needed to be.
"I, uh, I won't be going back to the hotel later," Wright says, awkward. "I – Maya needs me here."
Miles bites his tongue before he says something stupid like but I need you there. He's never questioned Wright and Maya's bond. It's an odd thing, forged in Mia Fey's murder and strengthened by years of blood, sweat, and tears, and Miles is seeing it now, in the nonchalant way Wright talks about the trial, in the way he keeps looking towards Maya's prone form, as if she would have recovered in the seventeen minutes he was away. So instead, he nods. "Going to bed already, old man?"
There's another pause.
Wright smiles then, all teeth, and it's startling. In his youth, he had always been laughably easy to read, his heart always on his sleeve and his emotions ringing loud enough to fill a room. But the years have been long and so much has happened – those dark years of being on the bottle – and there are times Miles sees his posture straighten and his eyes sharpen, the familiar man transforming into a stranger, and right now Phoenix Wright's fingers are on his chin, his gaze shrewd and calculating, as if weighing a decision.
"Not quite," he replies finally. "I believe I've got some sleuthing to do. You said it yourself – me being here won't make Maya wake up, but Apollo will agree to defend Dhurke, and I need to help him in any way I can."
"Then let me come with you," Miles says, with no hesitation. "I'm no use here, either, and surely one of California's chief prosecutors can open quite a few doors."
"Investigating," Wright teases, a sly smile creeping onto his face. "I bet you just miss it, huh."
Miles snorts. "Not on your life."
"Well," Wright says, "I have it on rather good authority that you used to do it quite a lot." He's smiling at Miles again in that dumb do-gooder way. "Just like old times, right?"
Miles holds his gaze, and despite himself, he cracks a smile. "Just like old times." He glances around, runs the case details through his head. "I'll have the nurses contact us as soon as Maya wakes up. And I'll call Em–" Miles catches himself. "– Detective Skye. She'll help us out on this."
"Of course she will," Wright replies with no heat as he puts on a coat over his suit jacket. "She always did like you more."
The thought of Ema Skye's longstanding adoration actually makes Miles laugh a little, and Wright blinks at him, stunned, before honest-to-god giggling as well. They stare at each other in the doorway for a beat too long, Wright with his gentle smile and warm eyes, with his I'm glad you're here, and Miles's heart squeezes before he steps out of the hospital room, waiting for Wright to close the door behind him. The hallway air is chillier than the room, and Wright frowns about the even colder air outside.
He's in a whole other country, in the middle of something much bigger than all of them, and there's a ton of work he'll have to catch up on, but Phoenix Wright's face is flushed and his sheepish laughter rings bright, so Miles finds that he doesn't mind so much.
this work's title is from: "human qualities" by explosions in the sky
hello! i will slowly be crossposting work from my AO3 (purplevanity) to here, especially since I have just finished soj and i need to write about it. I wrote this primarily because edgeworth, phoenix, and maya are in a proper, main series, non-crossover game for the first time in 11 years and I am emo about it.