Disclaimer/Notes: I do not own the Ace Attorney games, or any of the characters mentioned here. They belong to Capcom, and no money is being made off of this piece of fiction. This story was written solely for entertainment purposes, and no copyright infringement was intended. Please, do not sue. All original ideas are original (duh) and belong to me, unless otherwise mentioned. This story has strong language and is unbeta'd, but otherwise needs no warnings. Enjoy.

Burning Bridges

"How good of you to visit me, my boy; how are you?" Damon Gant smiled at the young man on the other side of the glass, pressing the small black phone closer to his ear as if that might – somehow – make their conversation less volatile if he could hear it better. Their last visit had not gone so well: it had been almost a month since then, but Gant could still remember the way that the young man had lashed out at the partition, his knuckle glancing off the safety-glass. He remembered the way that the identical black phone on the other side had hit the tiny, chipped formica tabletop, the way the young man's chair had toppled backwards when he stood to rail against the former Police Chief. Although he had been unable to hear him at the time, he knew what kind of terrible things had been said, the dirty language that was normally reserved for bad men and stubborn inanimate objects. The guards had forcibly removed the young man during their last visit. He hoped this wouldn't be a repeat of that incident.

The young man had his head down, his dark eyes fixed on a sizable stain on his side of the glass partition. Gant would have liked for them to be in the same room; it would have been nice to sit down together like civilized people, the way that they had once a long, long time ago. It would have been nice to reach out and touch him, to toy with the young man's long dark hair and joke about how long it was getting. Gant's hair had looked like that when he was younger, before he cut it short for the police force and experience had slowly dyed it grey and white. He wondered if mentioning such a fact would prompt the other to cut it all off. It seemed like the kind of rebellious thing he would do just to spite him. "How is your mother, Dee-Dee?"

"She has cancer. An inoperable brain tumor." The young man spoke in short, clipped sentences. He tried to sound like he didn't care about anything. Gant thought it only made him sound tiny and much younger than he really was. It sounded like he did care, like he cared about everything and was too afraid to admit it because he thought someone might use it against him. He sounded guarded and terrified, and like he needed his father to hold him close and tell him he would make it all better. Gant gripped the phone tighter.

He should have been there. He should have been able to fix it, somehow, and to make things okay again.

"The doctors say it's terminal."

"I. . . I hadn't heard th-"

"I know you haven't heard. Mom hasn't talked to you since the divorce, right?"

"That's right, Dee-Dee," he responded quietly, not really sure what he was supposed to do in this situation. Gant had been a mover and a shaker of worlds before his conviction: he was a man of action, and being forced into a cramped little cell in the special population block of a federal penitentiary had put him in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar position. A position without power. He had forgotten what that felt like. It had been a long time since he had had to watch his life fall apart without being able to do anything to stop it. Being served with divorce papers only hours after the guilty verdict had been handed down had been like a slap in the face or a twisting of a knife in his back.

"Don't call me that," the young man looked up with a sneer, his pale face twisted in an angry expression. He looked like his mother, Gant thought: all sharp clean angles and volatile temper, a quick burning fuse connected to too much dynamite. It would have been so much better for him, he thought, if he could have inherited some of Gant's calm, jovial nature. Maybe he would have laughed more or scowled less. "I figured you should know, that's all. That's the only reason I came today; I don't have anything to say to you."

"You. . .you think I'm a horrible person, don't you?" Gant asked, unsure what the answer to such a question might have been. He hoped the answer was 'no,' but was fully aware that he didn't deserve that kind of evaluation. There were a lot of things he had done while Police Chief that he wasn't proud of, and the way he had mishandled the State v. Skye case was only the most recent in a long line of dark dealings. He wondered how much his son knew, and decided that he'd rather not know.

". . .I don't know. I just know that I'm angry. I know that it's gonna be hard for me and mom, and then it's just gonna be me, 'cause you'll still be in here," the young man looked back down at the stain. How appropriate for him to be focusing on the little dark smears, on the ugly parts that just couldn't be scrubbed away, no matter how much effort and force were put into getting rid of them. Gant thought back to all the things he'd done. He didn't really believe people when they told him he was a bad man. He knew better. He knew himself, and that should have been enough. Why wasn't it? Why wasn't it enough to know in his heart that he was not the kind of monster they painted him to be in the news reports?

He was reminded of a time when his son looked up at him with wide, awe-struck eyes, tugging on his uniform and telling him that he wanted to grow up and be a police man just like 'Daddy.' It was a cruel memory now, and he ached for the days when the young man on the other side of the glass was not a stranger.

"I hate you, a little."

"Because I killed a man?"

"Because you were caught." They were silent for a long moment after that statement, fingers tight and crushing where they squeezed the black plastic phones like lifelines. His son continued, spitting the words out like acid that burned his tongue: "I hate you because mom and I had to change our last names and move out of the old house and leave the neighborhood. Mom had to quit her job. I had to change schools. I hate you because everyone is always going to wonder if I got into the police force because you were my father. I hate you because my mother is going to die in shame and no one's going to come to her funeral because you are a felon and a murderer and a dirty fucking scumbag."

"I did a lot of good things for this city, too, you know. You shouldn't boil down my entire career and my entire life to one case, or one blinded moment."

"You didn't have to be Police Chief. You didn't have to be the most powerful man in Los Angelos. You could have just been a good father," he retorted, shaking his head and looking away, this time towards the wall. "That would have been enough for us."

"I'm. . . I'm sorry you feel that way, Dee-Dee."

". . .They said they were going to try to give you the death penalty."

"Criminals have gotten it for less."

Another long, silent moment, and Gant waited, hopeful, for some kind of kindness from his only living blood relation. There was nothing but that empty anger, teenage frustration and helplessness all rolled into one confused emotion. He supposed that he didn't deserve much more.

"You realize that if you get it, I'll have to watch you die like so many of those fuckers you put away."

"I'm sorry."

"You're going to be saying that when they put a fucking needle in your arm. You're gonna say 'I'm sorry' like it means somethin' but it doesn't change anything. It doesn't make anything that has happened in the last three years okay. If you say 'I'm sorry' when they kill you, I'm never gonna forgive you. I'm gonna spit on your fucking grave and take a sledge hammer to your tombstone. "

"Dee-Dee. . ."

"I'm not a little kid anymore, Dad! You can't. . . I'm an adult now!" his son thumped a clenched fist against the glass ineffectually, prompting the attention of one of the guards. "You hear me? If you say you're sorry one more time, I'm gonna-"

"Mr. Gant-!"

"Dee-Dee-!"

"Don't fucking call me that!" he was screaming, the phone falling from his hands as he lunged for the glass, knuckles thumping off the partition. Gant put the receiver down and watched the guards pull his son away, watched the little metal chair topple over silently in the struggle. He couldn't hear them, but he knew what they saying, 'sir, you need to calm down,' 'I hate that man, he's not my father,' 'don't call me Dee-Dee, I'm not your son.'

The guards dragged his son out into the hallway, where the young man pushed their hands away and straightened out his jacket, smoothing his dark hair back where it had fallen forward.

"Mr. Gant, we're going to have to ask you to le-"

"You don't have to ask me fucking shit," he snarled, and stuffed his aching hands deep into his pockets as he prepared to leave. "And it's not 'Gant;' it's 'Crescend,' you fuckin' moron."