It was strange how very like Josef's father his brother looked. He stood tall in the doorway and stole the sunlight into the thick energy of his bemused downward glance, face cocked sideways in an infuriating show of superiority. He had seen this before from Manfred in court - victory, a haughty stare. He stood a little straight in his silk pajamas.
"Josef," Miles said. "Don't you think it a little early to retire?"
His brother flicked his gaze across the dark silk and an arrogant laughter crept into his eyes. Most days this would warrant deadpan replies and withering taunts.
Today, mocker didn't even come to mind.
Miles' eyes turned dark after the laughter fled. They mapped Josef's face in quick, short motions; Miles worked rapidly but absorbed information obsessively. He stepped aside neatly. "Come in."
Miles treated his bedroom as a professional might his office. Whilst Josef studied in the open spaces of the mostly empty drawing rooms and sun rooms that made the house so large for three people, his brother rarely left his own small personal space. As a result the walls were mostly bookshelves, and the bed half dedicated to piles of loose papers; the area felt coolly impersonal and adult. Josef made a quick connection between the well-made and occupied bed and the soft dark crescents under his brother's eyes. He sat himself at the foot of the bed and stared at the floor a few inches under his feet. He heard a soft click and Miles saying something that hid concern and the plastic spin of wheels. Polished shoes rested in front of his white socks.
"You know as well as I do that worry is not my expertise," Miles said. The similarity to their father was stunning. Miles had that awkward, shifting expression that came with a von Karma's uncertainty; he aimed for concern but landed closer to discomfort. He settled for looking over his shoulder. "Maybe we could cut to the chase."
Everything Josef could have said died quickly in his throat. That low, tingling lost feeling swelled from the hollows of his chest to the apples of his cheeks. Something burned in him to punish himself for such weakness - words were all a lawyer had! Words, and evidence - but there were no fingerprints that could explain feeling. If he could fall prey to inarticulateness at simple emotion, how did he expect to survive the court of law? The words of his father surfaced in his memory. "There is no forgiveness in court ... you must learn not to need it." Something like that.
He swallowed dryly.
"Ah." Josef saw, through the haze of confusion, that Miles' sly smile had returned. "I see emotional ineptitude runs in the family."
"Don't pull the von Karma name down to your level, Miles Edgeworth," Josef muttered - almost reflexively. Miles watched him over the ridges of his cheekbones. "You may be inept, but a von Karma is-"
"Perfect, as I understand." Somewhere between the words, Miles had become neatly serious. Josef understood that the stab had been a ploy to coax him towards speaking. He tucked the strategy to a place in the back of his mind. Miles leaned onto his knees and bore through Josef with his stare. "What is it, then, that makes Josef von Karma ask for help?"
His mouth was having trouble deciding whether it was wet and sticking like a labyrinthine swamp or dry and creaking as the door to the attic. There was the strangest moment of shivering in his chin.
"I." The voice he was using cracked like it was something he usually kept locked in the dark - it was, he realized; it was the voice saved for speaking about personal matters. "It's."
There were no windows in this room, he thought. He stared instead at the titles on the many books. He breathed.
"I want to put it into words, but there are no words in any language I know with which to describe it. I want help... I want to know what is happening, but I don't understand the symptoms. I don't... know."
Speaking it to the wall made it that much more bearable. He couldn't understand, though, what about it was painful, other than the teeth driving into his bottom lip. There was that long and horrible silence in which his brother weighed words, and he lost track of things in it. He didn't know: how long he stared there, blurring books into mashes of color; if he was looking even in Miles' room anymore, or if he had left it for some nightmare place; if Miles was actually present in this universe or a well-constructed figment of his imagination.
Something fell next to him with the momentary ruffle of a thick book, and snapped him unexpectedly back to reality.
Miles sat back in his wheeled office chair and crossed his legs at the knee. He gesture lazily to the volume sitting next to Josef. "As usual," he said, as Josef thumbed through the DSM IV, "studying shall set you free."