A/N: AAAAGRHHHGH... I am SORRY. I do still love you all, i promise 3

I got a job recently, and it's running me into the ground (though it's great to have money.) That leaves very little time for writing, and even when i do manage to scrounge up a spare hour or two my motivation for writing is at an all time low. I finally finished the next chapter for you though! It's not one of my best, in fact i'm ashamed that i've been quiet for so long and all i have to offer is this piece of crap. Consider this chapter experimentation... the feeble desperate scratching at the ice which is the shield surrounding our Dearest Miles Edgeworth's true personality. Not a lot happens, which is against everything i learned recently about how everything is supposed to progress plot... so after this chapter PLOT PROGRESSION AHOY.

Again i apologise for the shittiness, and extend the usual thankyous to the appropriate individuals who know who they are.

The next update will not take so long, i PROMISE.

It had been hard for Miles to follow Gumshoe as he explained the details, shocked into a completely stunned silence by the revelation.

"You're telling me that Phoenix Wright has a sister?" he asked with disbelief.

"That's right Sir, and I can tell you one other interesting thing too..."

"And what's that Detective?" Edgeworth asked impatiently.

"That the payments for her phone-bill come out of Mr Wright's bank account, that's what."

"So he's financing her... maybe that's what the money is for..." Miles mused out-loud, tapping his fingers in a rhythm on the desk. "Though that doesn't explain the strange numbers, or this attack."

"Maybe the sister knows more?" Gumshoe offered hesitantly, too used to Miles berating him whenever he tried to be smart.

"Perhaps, but we don't know where she is."

"Phoenix mi-" the detective began, but Edgeworth cut him off abruptly.

"Wright would. He's been no help at all so far though."

The prosecutor massaged his forehead as he glared down at his notes, despising the illusive number that seemed to remain the centre-point of this investigation.

"Surely if you work out enough alone he'll have to cave in?"

"Not likely," the prosecutor scoffed. "Wright is as stubborn as a mule, if he decides on a course of action neither hell nor high water can sway him from it."

"Maybe you're approaching it wrong," the Detective mused absently. "Ask him as a friend rather than the prosecutor on the case."

There was silence on the prosecutor's end of the phone then, no witty sarcastic remark or scornful comment, just the usually inaudible buzz of the phone-line.

"Mr. Edgeworth?"

"That hardly seems like a professional approach Detective," Miles quipped emphatically, though there was an insecure edge to the statement.

"I dunno pal, sometimes being a little different in your approach works quite well. Take me for example! Nothing professional about my work!" the Detective admitted that fact with a uncanny amount of pride.

"Not something I would admit so freely, Detective," the prosecutor scolded, scowling at the page of his organiser that was covered in an indescribable jumble of unconnected observations he'd been able to make about the case thus far. "So what you're suggesting is that I talk to Wright on a… personal level?"

He sounded rather unsure of himself.

"That's right, pal! You sit down and talk to him as a friend. You two have known each other long enough, I'm sure he'd tell you everything if you gave him some time!"

Miles sat in silence, contemplating the Detective's words. He wished he could share his confidence, but the very idea of sitting down to host a casual conversation with Phoenix made him shudder, though he wasn't entirely certain why.

"What exactly would I say?"

"Conversation isn't something you can plan pal! You have to just say what comes natural!"

'Natural?' Miles thought with disdain, his head hanging tiredly in his hands. 'There is nothing 'natural' about having a voluntary conversation with Phoenix Wright.'

"Well thankyou, Detective," he concluded, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "I will consider talking to Wright again. Be sure to contact me if you find anything else out about this 'Karina Wright'."

"Sure thing Mr. Edgeworth sir!" the detective declared before the monotonous beeping of the engaged signal was all that the prosecutor could hear.

Edgeworth now found himself suspended in one of those rare moments where he had no idea what to do. He sat at his desk, staring blankly across the empty expanse of floor in front of him towards the door.

'This is when you get up and go back to talk to Wright again...' he mused to himself, feeling all of his muscles convulse in rejection of the idea. 'It's just Wright, it shouldn't be such an intimidating prospect.'

He felt quite ashamed of himself as he began to pack up his desk, acutely aware that he had no intention to go to the hospital and see the defence attorney. Despite all his greatest efforts he'd reached his car and still not changed his mind.

'I'm not going to talk to that pig-headed buffoon,' he declared arrogantly as he started the car. The sports-car's engine had well and truly growled to life and idled patiently for several minutes before the prosecutor realised he'd zoned out again. He looked down at his hands, which were curled tightly around the leather steering wheel, waiting expectantly for him to turn the wheel.

'You do consider Wright a friend...' a voice mused calmly in the back of his head as he rested his forehead on the steering-wheel. 'Is it really that hard to talk to him?'

"Yes," he answered himself out loud, murmuring to his feet. "Talking to Wright is just about impossible."

He sat back in his seat and put the car into reverse, heading for his apartment.

"Not that it should be."

There was nothing but pitch darkness in his apartment when he got home, the shutters drawn over the large windows drowning out what little light there still was outside. He threw his keys down on the side-board and reached out for the light-switch, waiting for the blue-white light to fill the entire room. He then set his suit-case down and proceeded into the lounge, untying his cravat as he walked.

"Pess!" he called tiredly, glancing around the room for the dog. She looked up from the couch and yipped happily, jumping down and trotting over to greet her master.

He spent a minute or two stroking the soft fur between Pess' ears before he stood, brushed his suit clean of fur and headed straight for the kitchen to get himself a cup of tea. The kettle was agonizingly slow to boil, and as he stood staring at the little red light on the kettle's lid that signalled when it was ready he could hear the Grandfather clock in the lounge-room ticking monotonously. Every swing of the clock's pendulum was accompanied by a mechanical click that grated viciously on Miles' nerves, aching through his teeth and bouncing around in his skull like a deflating balloon. With a groan he leaned on the counter, grinding his teeth and massaging his temples in a circular motion, trying his hardest to shut out the almost deafening ticking.

"Aspirin," he concluded tiredly. "I need an Aspirin."

The medicines were stored in his bathroom cabinet, so he passed through his bedroom to get to the ensuite where the cabinet hung on the wall. Luckily the Aspirin was right at the front of the cabinet with his sleeping medication, the bottles being the two most frequently used. With a single shake he extracted two of the round orange pills from the bottle and curled them tightly in the palm of his hand - the tablets were quite small and easy to lose. As if to prove this point one of the capsules still managed to drop from his careful palm as he moved back through the bedroom. He cursed as the tiny tablet bounced across the carpet and disappeared beneath his bed.

For a moment he considered leaving it there and returning to the cupboard to get a new one, but it occurred to him that Pess might find the pill at some point and the last thing he wanted was to poison his dog. So the prosecutor knelt down by the bed, bending to peer into the darkness underneath it. He wasn't able to see much in the darkness, so instead he reached in with a hand, feeling around for the pill. His hand soon hit something much harder and larger than the tablet and though he briefly considered leaving whatever it was be, his natural curiosity got the better of him and he was soon drawing it out to find out what exactly it was he'd re-discovered.

It was a shoebox, a rather tattered old thing that had been repaired with duct-tape one time too many. It disgusted Edgeworth to think that something so repugnant and decrepit had been hiding underneath his bed all this time.

'Dare I look at its contents?' he mused hesitantly, hands poised above the lid of the box. 'At least I can dispose of it should it be something irrelevant.'

He removed the lid somewhat callously, destroying the tape that had so tediously held the brittle cardboard together. Sitting inside was an aging jumbled mess of photographs. Many were fading from mistreatment, or were folded and creased in ways that all but destroyed the image they showed. There was one photograph - the largest in fact - that was still in relatively good condition. It was a school class photo, still in its protective plastic casing.

Glancing briefly at the year Miles felt an age old knot contort in his stomach. 'I was sure I had disposed of these...'

He recalled little of the faces, that smiled up at him with varying degrees of legitimacy. He found himself desperately scanning the rows, searching for a face that he could actually put a name to, all the while ignoring the squeal of the kettle as it finished boiling. He'd finished his perusal of three of the five lines of students without so much as blinking twice at a single face, finding nothing even remotely familiar about any of his class-mates. He was about ready to shove the useless memory back into its crumbling box and return it to the dark netherworld it had come from when a pair of eyes caught his attention. Their mischievous glint and ridiculously hooked eyebrows were unmistakable.

'Of course you recognise Wright,' he scoffed, glaring at Phoenix's childish face, which grinned stupidly up from the photo's glossy surface. 'The fool hasn't changed a bit, he still has that stupid grin...'

He found himself frowning though, his own explanations seeming somewhat inane. Sure, Phoenix was easily recognisable to him, with the iconic eyes and ridiculously spiky hair... but his deduction, that he recognised him simply because he recognised him, was not at all logical. It was more like reasoning himself into an endless circle.

"I recognised him when he first walked into that blasted courtroom," he snapped to himself, angrily casting the photograph away. "It'd been fifteen years and I didn't even have to think about who it was that walked through those doors."

The realisation felt more like a ton of bricks than anything, which was rather stupid to the Prosecutor's rational mind.

"You recognised him because his was the face you worked hardest to remember," he berated himself, reluctant to accept his own realisation. With an angry jerk he jammed the photo box back together and pushed it back under the bed where it had come from. He then stormed out to the kitchen to finally silence the hysterically whistling kettle, muttering to himself all the while.

"If I really must talk to Wright, he'd better not waste my time."