4. Dark truths.
T: I'm so very sorry about the delay, real life sort of got in the way of things for a while! This is the very last chapter and both the angst and the slash quota creep up just slightly because of this fact! Oh and I own nothing you see here other than the lousy, lousy, plot!!
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"So where did you rush off to this morning?" She has long since gotten used to her father's gift of identifying people simply by their footsteps and thus it is more the content of the enquiry, rather than the fact that he has asked it despite the divide of his bedroom door between them, that surprises her.
"I thought that you were asleep." She remarks as he crosses the living room and into the gentle warmth of his room.
"As I was," he responds before adding, "However, Eladoon was not."
Of course it was natural for one of her father's oldest friends to have mentioned seeing her out at a time that was not usual for her and thus she responds, "I see," before informing him, "I was doing a little legwork for Polly."
"Hmm, I was certain that he'd last at least a week before he got bored enough to start some random investigation," he remarks, before enquiring, "So what's he got you researching?"
Though she understands well how simply it would have been for her father to see through her brother's ruse she is tempted to question the fact in order to delay things a little. It is a temptation that she suppresses quickly and, removing the file from the pocket inside her cape, she says simply,
"This."
Brow creasing her father lifts himself out of his previously relaxed position on the bed and stretches across for the file.
There is a long, tense, silence and then, in a tone of voice that she has not heard since the conclusion of the Misham case, he enquires,
"Why is he looking into this case?"
"Miles Edgeworth."
A shock of something indescribable passes across his face at the mention of that name and, head turning a little from her, he enquires,
"What do you need to know?"
"It seems to me as though this entire matter is very simple, that the rumour of Mr Edgeworth using his 'power' to remove the trial from the courts was enough to drive him from the country. Yet Polly treats the entire thing like some complex murder mystery. What I wish to know is why, Daddy."
"Because he remained in America for a month after the conclusion of that case, because it seemed that, this time at least, he would not be so easily affected by such things."
"But then he left and, to you at least, it seemed as though their words had hurt him after all?"
"Correct, to both the press and those that he called his friends, however, it seemed as though he had left without due cause…as though he had simply vanished from the face of the earth."
"Daddy, if it turned out that there was reason other than the case for his choice, would you wish to know?"
"Why are you asking me such a question?" There is a note in his voice that, in other circumstances, she would have taken as clear warning to let the matter go. As things were now, however, the note simply prompts her to respond,
"Always when you have talked to me of him there has been a weight in your voice. For so very long I believed that that was because of the significance of his presence in your life, that what I was hearing were the lingering traces of the childhood idolisation that you had had of him."
"And now you realise that there is more to the story, that he was so very much more to me that that childish ideal of perfection?"
"Yes."
There is the faintest of smiles there now on his lips and, hands lifting to pull the beanie from his head, he says,
"It took me a great while to realise that that was the case, that the reason both his 'betrayals' had hurt so very much was because of my 'true feelings'. For a little while after that realisation I was desperate to see his face again, to assure myself that he was well and I felt that that longing would consume me. The understanding that he had left over something so very simple, that he had consciously chosen to leave without warning, eventually brought me back to 'reality'. Thus the thought that it might be otherwise…" He trails and looking at him now she is reminded, forcibly, of how he had looked on the evening after he had lost his badge.
She can recall her younger self looking at the utter sense of displacement on his face and coming to the sure understanding that she never wished to see such an expression on his face again. That she would do whatever she was able to insure that this man lived a happy life.
Almost eight years later the self same expression fills her simply with the desire to hug him tight in her arms, a compulsion that she follows with but the barest of thoughts and, once the comfort of his weight and warmth is pressed there against her shoulder, she says,
"I'll tell Polly what you have told me and then we shall let him do what he does best. We can face whatever comes from that choice when it comes."
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Miles Edgeworth is sat at the hotel bar when he eventually finds him, a delicate china cup balanced in one hand and an intricately decorated saucer clasped in the other.
"Ah, good evening, Mr Justice," he remarks as he places both cup and saucer onto the bar, "You are here to discuss the aftermath of the Guard case, correct?"
"Yes."
"I took the case in order to lessen a little of the burden that had been placed onto Phoenix's shoulders and thus its outcome…the opinions that others formed of that outcome…mattered little to me."
"But then why leave?"
"It was the only way." As he speaks the words all the confidence and surety that had been present in his face melts into something infinitely more vulnerable and, somehow, more 'realistic'. "The more that a rumour travels the more it diverges from what it had originally been. I could listen to whispers of my corruption without reaction, yet when those whispers twisted and begun to question Phoenix's integrity…"
"You reacted."
"Correct."
There is a moment of silence as he takes in this dark truth and adds it to the other 'clues' that he has collected. Then, mind focused simply on seeing the investigation through to its conclusion, he enquires,
"Mr Brody believes that you have pulled me into this matter to gain some form of redemption, is this true?"
"Yes."
"Mr Edgeworth, I understand what you have done and why you have done it, however…"
"You are not Phoenix," he responds before smiling a gentle smile and saying, "Thank you for taking the time to indulge me a little, Mr Justice and for keeping Phoenix out of jail."
Gaining his feet the other bows an elegant little bow before stepping away from the bar and heading out of the room.
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Polly had rung to inform her that he'd gotten a flight at some unreasonable time in the evening, that he'd arrived home not two seconds previous and that he'd tell her about 'everything' once he was a little less jetlagged.
Then, almost the very instant that she'd placed the phone on the hook, there'd been a knock on the door.
The man on the other side had looked familiar to her somehow and had been kind enough that, when he'd asked to speak to her daddy, she'd not given it a second thought.
The shear volume of their 'conversation' had been enough that it had taken three blankets and a pillow to muffle it enough that she could no longer make out distinct words.
About a half hour after that her father had come into her room, eyes red for crying, and told her that he was going out for a little while.
Which was when she had decided that, jet lag or no, she needs to talk to her brother.
She spends what seems like an eternity in Polly's poky little apartment, discussing the man that her father loved and whatever else crept into her brother's sleep addled mind.
Eventually, feeling 'a little better' she returns home and, as she steps into the living room, her heart swells.
For there on the sofa lies her father, arms curled tight about the stranger who had been at the door, face lit with a joy that she has never seen before today.
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T: There, it's officially dead! Review??