Chapter 4

Chapter 4. Ozymandias

Edgeworth's car pulled up in front of the office building at 4 PM sharp on Friday. Phoenix had seen it circle the block twice already, but he decided not to mention it as soon as he caught a glimpse of Edgeworth's face.

"Are you sure you're all right to drive?" he said instead.

Edgeworth moved his glare from the road to Phoenix's face. "I haven't been drinking."

"Oh." Phoenix paused. "Why not?"

Edgeworth actually seemed to consider it. "I have enough trouble facing this man sober."

"Understandable. I only met him a few times, but…"

A brief smirk. "You hated him, didn't you?"

"More then I ever thought I could hate someone." Phoenix examined Edgeworth's expression carefully. "Did you… I mean, we've never really talked about what happened."

"And we're not going to," Edgeworth said, firmly. "Not today, at least…"

"But we are going to talk, right?"

"Yes. There are things I need to say to you, and I think you have things to say to me as well."

"You could put it like that."

Edgeworth pulled out into the road with exaggerated calm, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles had turned white.

"Have you ever been to one of these before?" Phoenix asked.

"Yes." Edgeworth's voice was flat, controlled. "A few. I've been involved in cases where…I just wanted to see it to the end. See, with my own eyes, that justice was done."

Phoenix nodded thoughtfully. "I know what you mean."

"Do you?" Edgeworth almost laughed.

"You remember Matt Enguarde."

"Oh… Yes." Edgeworth eased carefully into the next lane. "But he wasn't executed…per se."

"No. But I went and saw the body." Phoenix stared down at his hands. "I'm still not entirely sure if I should have. I wanted to know for certain that he was dead… but I still sometimes dream about his face. All scarred and pale…and those scratches on his neck." He shivered. "He was a terrible person, but I wouldn't wish that on anybody."

"To wish death on someone is as good as killing them yourself." Edgeworth met his eyes in the rearview mirror. "Is that what you mean?"

"I think so… I don't know if I wanted him dead, so much as I wanted him gone. Just… away. Out of my life and out of the lives of everyone I care about."

"Hmm."

Silence stretched between them. Phoenix knew what he wanted to ask, but he just couldn't. Not while Edgeworth held his life in his hands. Those knuckles were still a couple shades too light.

"Also!" Phoenix was a little surprised to hear his own voice. "Er, that is… I used to save the articles about you. When I was in college. I saw…you prosecuted some big cases. Some really disturbing stuff. So I might not know exactly how you feel, but I can imagine." He considered that statement. "Except for now, I mean. I can't imagine how you feel now at all."

"You will," Edgeworth said, flat again.

"I will?"

"I looked it up, a few days ago." His eyes flickered toward Phoenix, then back at the road. "Redd White. His execution is set for three months from now."

"Oh…" Phoenix swallowed hard. "I- I don't know. I mean… Oh god." He shook his head. "I don't have anything to say to him."

"Maybe not, but don't you want to see it to the end? Witness justice with your own eyes?"

It was several minutes before Phoenix collected his thoughts enough to answer. "I don't want him to die. I just want Mia alive again."

Silence, again. Phoenix glanced at Edgeworth once, and saw that he'd ducked his head so that his bangs hid most of his face.

"Life isn't fair, Wright," Edgeworth said softly.

"No," Phoenix agreed. "It's not."

Neither man spoke until they reached the state prison, twenty minutes later.

Edgeworth had to give his name to three guards and both he and Phoenix had to empty their pockets and sign four clipboards before they were led down an industrial gray hallway and down a flight of concrete stairs. At the end of another hallway and some complicated doors, they found a small green waiting room filled with stone-faced people.

Franziska was in a corner, without her whip for once, fiddling absentmindedly with one glove. She was staring firmly at the wall and ignoring the woman beside her, who looked so much like her that she could only be her sister. The rest of the people were older, mostly male, and a good half of them looked like they were trying not to smile.

"Anyone you know?" Phoenix murmured.

"Colleagues. He didn't have friends." Edgeworth nodded at the third and final female in the room. "And the lawyer who prosecuted his appeal."

She was a short young woman with coffee-colored skin and the type of curves that would have been in fashion fifty years ago. She had a clip shaped like a bat in her hair, and was wearing far more fishnet then Phoenix would have thought safe for visiting a prison. When she saw Edgeworth she rose to her feet and crossed the room, high heels clacking on the linoleum.

"Good to see you, Mr. Edgeworth," she greeted him. The words were polite, but her tone was familiar.

"You as well, Ms. Chirop." Edgeworth gestured to his companion. "Tera Chirop, Phoenix Wright. Wright, this is Tera Chirop, the best appeals attorney in the state."

"You flatter me, Mr. Edgeworth," her smile was subdued. She offered a fingerless-gloved hand for Phoenix to shake. "Mr. Wright, I've heard good things."

"You have the advantage of me, then," Phoenix admitted, sheepishly.

"That's to be expected. Appeals aren't newsmaking, for the most part. And you're a defense attorney. Once you get your client off, that's the end of it. The only client of yours who got convicted… well, he didn't make it to his appeal."

"Yeah…" Something Edgeworth had said registered in Phoenix's mind. "Wait, you prosecuted von Karma's appeal? So who defended him?"

"He did, of course." Another subdued smile. "He would never stand to have what he thought of as a lesser being represent him."

"But if he's being executed, then does that mean he lost?"

"That's right."

Phoenix felt himself starting to smile for real, but squashed it. "I'm impressed."

"Don't be. It was inevitable. Appeals court is very different from what Mr. von Karma was used to. Not to mention he was already shaken from having lost once. Really, what it all boiled down to was that he did not intimidate me." She tilted her black cat's-eye glasses and looked up at Phoenix. "And I believe we have that in common, you and I."

"Not really." Phoenix laughed weakly. "He intimidated the hell out of me. It's just that… I was fighting for something I… couldn't lose."

Tera glanced, once, at Edgeworth, and the corners of her mouth twitched. "I see."

Edgeworth had the grace to look uncomfortable. "Will you excuse me for a moment? I should speak with Franziska and Ingrid."

"Of course," Tera said.

"Sure," Phoenix agreed.

They watched him go.

"Would you like to sit down?" Tera gestured at the chair she'd vacated. There was an entire row of them empty, most people having chosen to stand in clumps around the room.

"Oh, sure." A strange place and a strange person. Phoenix had been in the situation before, but never quite like this… "So," he said awkwardly. "Do you, uh, always come to the executions of prisoners you've prosecuted?"

"Yes," Tera said, surprising Phoenix with the steel in her voice. "Always."

"Really?"

She nodded curtly. "Appeals court is, as I said, different from the one you take part in. In the court of law you are searching for the truth. That's what it's all about, really. You find the truth, no matter what it may be. And that is admirable. But in appeals court… we seek justice." Her eyes went distant. "You are not responsible for what you find out in the course of your investigations. I, on the other hand, must use my own judgment to decide what I believe is an appropriate punishment for the people I face in court. It is not simply about what they have done, it is about who they are. Whether they might do it again. If they could be a danger to others. I have to figure that out on my own, and make my choice." Tera shook her head, and seemed to come back to the present. "So, yes, I always go to these executions. I need to see for myself the weight of my decisions…so that I do not ever forget that it is a person's life I am toying with."

Phoenix stared at her.

Tera made an awkward face. "I'm sorry. I went off on a bit of a rant there. Is this your first time?"

"Yeah…"

"What was your relation to Mr. von Karma? Other then the trial?"

"It was…uh, just the trial, actually." Phoenix thought carefully. "I don't have any… personal reason to want to see him executed. But he hurt Edgeworth. He hurt Edgeworth in ways I can't even begin to imagine. So when he asked me to come with him, what could I do?"

"Admirable," Tera said again.

"No," Phoenix disagreed. "It's selfish."

"It's selfish to be there for a friend when he needs you?"

"It's selfish to do so only because you're hoping it will lead to being more then friends."

It wasn't until Tera's eyes widened that Phoenix realized he'd said it out loud.

"Oh…shit."

"I won't say anything," Tera said, a bit too quickly. "It's just surprising, that's all." She smiled wryly. "Does he, ah, does he know your motives?"

"Yeah. We're going to talk after. Look," he glanced around the room and lowered his voice. "I shouldn't have told you that. I don't know why I did."

"You're about to watch a man die, Mr. Wright. It's perfectly understandable if you're a little emotionally vulnerable."

He grimaced. "Just don't tell Edgeworth I told you. He doesn't like acknowledging that he has feelings at all, much less for me."

"Don't worry. I don't see Mr. Edgeworth that often, and I don't think we know many of the same people. It won't be an issue."

"Okay then." Phoenix glanced at the clock on the wall, and made up his mind. "Can I ask you something? Something kind of personal?"

"I suppose it's only fair."

"Do you really think Manfred von Karma deserves to die?"

Tera looked down at her hands, folded primly in her lap, and when she spoke it was so quiet Phoenix had to lean in to hear her.

"I do. Not only because he killed a man, but because he hid it. He kept the secret for years. He took in the man's son and twisted him into something his father would never have wanted him to be. He manipulated an already-unbalanced elderly man into committing another murder, and then he framed that same young man, who looked up to him as a mentor. I have spoken to Mr. von Karma. I have spoken to Mr. von Karma's children. I have spoken to Miles Edgeworth and Yanni Yogi and dozens of people he has worked with over the years. I really truly believe that man should die… so that he cannot hurt anyone again."

Tera took a deep breath, which with the fishnet would have been very interesting to Phoenix a few years ago.

"Sorry. It hurts to say that sometimes. I believe that if you want someone to die you should be willing to take their life with your own hands. But it should hurt. It should not be easy to want that."

"I agree," Phoenix said. "This whole thing is…getting to me, I think. I understand now why Miles drank himself into insensibility a couple weeks ago."

Tera chuckled. "I never drink alone, for just that reason."

"There's something else…"

"Oh?"

"Were you involved in the case of a woman named Dahlia Hawthorne?"

Tera blinked, and her expression went blank. "Ah."

"What?"

"I thought your name was familiar from before…"

"You were then?"

"I was," she nodded. "But only at the end. There was a long battle, drawn out over many years, and I was brought in about a year ago because no one else could handle it. I do not know if I am really the best appeals attorney in the state, as Mr. Edgeworth said, but I can't think of anyone better."

"So you're the one who finally got her the death penalty."

"Yes," she said. Her voice was without inflection. "I did what I believe was right. That woman was a murderer and a manipulator and may have been the closest thing to pure evil I have ever had the misfortune to encounter."

"Yes," Phoenix agreed. "She was."

Tera seemed to relax, her face assuming a natural expression again. "You understand. I was afraid…"

"No. I may have thought I loved her, once, but half the time it wasn't her, and the other half I was being used." He bit the inside of his lip. "She didn't even let death stop her…"

"I heard about that," Tera said. "It's a terrifying thought."

"You should have been there."

"I think I'm glad I wasn't."

There was a sudden hush as half a dozen conversations all wound down at once. Phoenix glanced at the clock and felt the blood drain from his face. It was time.

Scared as he was, Phoenix got to his feet without thinking and crossed the room to stand beside Edgeworth.

No one said anything.

A man in a guard uniform appeared through the doorway, asked them all to come in and take a seat. Only about a dozen went, most of the unfamiliar men apparently not important enough to warrant a place. Phoenix reminded himself to ask, afterward, why he was being allowed in.

Two rows of surprisingly decent chairs, in a narrow sort of half-room. There was a window, the type with wire in it to keep it from breaking, taking up one entire wall. On the other side was a sterile room, with a chair that looked like some perverse combination of a barber's and a dentist's. No cupboards on the walls, no storage of any kind. Just that industrial gray. It wasn't a doctor's office, after all, it was a room to kill people.

Franziska and her sister took seats in the first row, the sister looking at the floor, lost in thought, Franziska staring around as though daring the room to talk back at her. Edgeworth paused, just for a second, glanced at Phoenix, and then took a seat near the end of the second row. Phoenix sat beside him, last seat in the row, closest to the door, noting that Tera was directly in front of him.

And then they waited.

A few other people were talking softly. Phoenix wanted to say something, anything, but he couldn't think of what to say. After not nearly enough time (would there ever be enough?) two men in neat uniforms and white coats entered and held the door open behind them.

Manfred von Karma was escorted in, by two armed guards, his hands cuffed behind his back. Another two guards entered after them, leaving a total of six people there to be in von Karmas way.

Phoenix wondered idly if that was standard procedure, or if von Karma was just that dangerous.

He didn't look it. He was old. His hair had been cropped short at some point, and without all the frills and gold edging he seemed…smaller, somehow. But he held himself the same way he always had. Back ruler-straight, eyebrows pulled down into a permanent scowl. That damn haughty smile was nowhere in sight, but it was obvious, even now, von Karma thought he was better then everyone around him.

The guards let him go, and von Karma took his place on the disturbing chair without hesitation. The handcuffs stayed on though, and one of the men in white coats stepped up to the wall, pushed something, and the watchers could hear him.

"Does anyone have anything they'd like to say to the prisoner?"

The prisoner. Not the condemned, like in movies. Still the prisoner.

Franziska jerked to her feet, her usual sharp grace gone. She stood directly in the center of the window. From his angle, Phoenix couldn't quite see if von Karma was meeting her eyes, but he couldn't imagine him not.

She spoke, briefly, something in German. She sounded strong, but the snap was gone from her voice. Anyone who didn't know her would never have noticed it. Her father listened to her with his eyes closed, a look Phoenix recognized from court. When she was done, he opened his eyes.

"I knew the risks when I did it. My only mistake was not covering my tracks more thoroughly. You are right, Franziska. You do not understand."

"I hope I never do," Franziska said, so intense it was almost painful. She took her seat, just two steps away, and stared at absolutely nothing.

"Anyone else?" the man in the white coat asked.

Edgeworth twitched, but did not move. A few other people shifted in their seats. Tera slumped forward slightly, but Phoenix figured she had probably said everything she wanted to say to von Karma in court.

Franziska's sister sobbed, and no one made a move to comfort her.

"All right," the man said. "The prisoner will now give his final words."

Von Karma stood up, still handcuffed, still haughty. He closed his eyes and recited.

"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Then he sat back down. Two of the guards took off his handcuffs and strapped his arms to the arms of the chair. The man in the white coat rolled up von Karma's sleeve and cleaned a spot on his arm with a cotton ball and alcohol. A bit of irony there, but Phoenix kept his mouth shut. The other white coat, the one who hadn't spoken, had produced a syringe from somewhere. It was small, and filled with clear liquid.

He put the tip of the needle against von Karma's arm, pressed it past the skin, and pushed down the plunger.

At the last second, something in von Karma's expression changed. As he felt the needle his eyebrows drew in, and up, something like confusion drifting across his face. Then he leaned back in the chair and his eyes closed.

And then, nothing. Silence. The man in the white coat took out the needle, cleaned it off, and put it back onto the tray that it must have come from. The other man threw away the cotton ball, then put two fingers to von Karma's neck.

He nodded.

That was it.

The guard in the viewing part of the room picked up his radio, murmured something in response to something no one else had heard, then stood up straighter and moved to the other side of the door, out of the way.

"Thank you all for coming," he said. "Will the family please come with me to retrieve his effects?"

Franziska and her sister got up first, followed by Tera, and all the unfamiliar men. Edgeworth, Phoenix realized belatedly, was still staring at the room beyond the window. Phoenix couldn't force his brain to think of it as the execution chamber. The six living men had moved von Karma's body to a stretcher and covered it with a gray plastic sheet.

"Let's go," Phoenix said.

Edgeworth nodded, reaction time just a hair too slow.

He walked straight out. Signing all the appropriate forms, getting his gold pen back from the guard at the entrance. Phoenix followed, not really surprised, but wondering if he should ask anything. Did Edgeworth want to stick around and talk to anyone? What about Franziska and…what was her sister's name?

Edgeworth went straight for his car. He unlocked it, got into the front seat, and leaned his head against the steering wheel. Phoenix opened the door on the other side, but Edgeworth stopped him before he got in.

"Go away, Wright. Go stand by the entrance for a while."

"Edgeworth-"

"I know we need to talk. But I need some time to scream my head off and maybe cry hysterically. As much as I love you, and I do, I don't want you to see me like that. Not yet."

Phoenix blinked, stunned into silence. "O- okay. Half an hour good?"

"Sure."

Phoenix was twenty yards away when he heard the first of the muffled screams coming from the car. It was going to be a long half hour.