Miles Edgeworth found his long-time friend and rival sitting alone on a bench overlooking the ocean. In the back of his mind, he commended the attorney's choice; he, himself had always enjoyed this part of town to come and clear his head. He supposed it was no real surprise to find that the other man had already beaten him here. The bench punctuated a paved walkway through beautiful white sand with little overlooks cut out in front, decorated with wrought iron fences high enough to keep children from tumbling down the cliff on the other side. Far below, the ocean waves beat mercilessly upon massive crags. He approached Phoenix silently from behind, simply watching the man, knowing that this would be a delicate moment to navigate.

The party had been near physically painful. Compounded with his introverted side simply preferring not to attend large, boisterous gatherings, it was now obvious to him that he did a great deal more damage than he had intended from his disappearance. Maya had obviously been happy to welcome him back, glad for his safety and eager to pick up where they left off. Gumshoe, he snorted, had known the entire time and was a poor actor when trying to hide the fact. It was everyone else in attendance that had tried valiantly to smile, to ask about his travels, to offer him a drink or a story of what he'd missed... Years of practice, however, had attuned him to seeing behind the facade. Even if he had tried not to, it would have been impossible to miss the very real pain and bright sadness barely concealed by the tacky Styrofoam plates full of half-eaten finger foods and foil signs spouting, "WELCOME BACK!"

It as an absolutely spirited collection of everyone whose hearts he had shattered upon declaring he was dead. If he didn't feel so much like an asshole, he mused, he would have been tremendously flattered.

Then there was, of course, the matter of Mr. Phoenix Wright, who was still thankfully unaware of his presence, or at least unwilling to acknowledge it. Maya's words crept silkily across his thoughts:

"Nick...took it the hardest out of all of us, you know. He wouldn't even let us say your name. You really do mean a lot to him, even if you don't believe it..."

He cringed gently. Hindsight offered him twelve other ways he could have handled the situation less abrasively, and yet here he was now, forced to continue running or to confront the man in front of him. A brief urge to simply smack the back of the attorney's head and tell him to get over it flared within his chest and he entertained it for a moment, knowing that it would be childish but having no other example to take precedent. von Karma had never been particularly attentive to cultivating their emotional intelligence, always insisting that he grow up to be the impassive, perfect prosecutor who didn't feel or care, simply planned and executed and won. His lip curled in contempt. He had no idea what he was doing, but damned if he wasn't going to try. If nothing else, he would do it simply to spite the old bastard.

The ocean breeze kicked up for a moment and he shuddered against the chill it carried, lamenting for a moment that he had chosen to leave his coat in the car. A quick glance at the crystal-clear sky encouraged him a bit—at least it wouldn't rain on what was inevitably about to be a spectacular failure. "Wright."

If he had expected any kind of response from the man, he was disappointed. The lawyer sat, quiet and still, shoulders sagged against his own brooding. It was odd to see him dressed casually for once, a thick black hooded sweatshirt draped over his torso and lightly faded jeans peeking out from underneath the bench. Even his hair seemed to be a bit more relaxed with a few stray tendrils of black hair falling around his head. As he approached, he rounded the bench and put his hands in his pockets, thankful to have somewhere to put them to hide his nervous ticks.

Still, he had survived worse battles.

The other man stared blankly ahead for a moment, and then almost imperceptibly, appeared to square his jaw. His Adam's apple bobbed a bit and his eyes closed. The prosecutor frowned and took him in further, noticing the five o'clock shadow lining his cheeks and neck. There was a distinct odor of alcohol carried along the breeze that persistently pawed at them. At a loss for words, he sat next to his partner and stared at the ocean just the same. This wasn't going as planned.

As he was about to try to initiate a conversation once more, Phoenix moved beside him, leaning awkwardly back on the bench so that he could tilt his head to the sky. "Draco," he murmured, and then pointed upwards to the stars, "right there."

"W-what?"

He watched the other man for any clues as to why he was blurting nonsense (he snorted and reminded himself that the attorney literally made a career out of doing just that) and saw that despite his depressed appearance, Phoenix was actively scanning the sky. A moment later, his hand shifted and pointed at a different, equally ambiguous spot. "And the Phoenix."

Edgeworth turned his face back to the sky and searched in earnest for what his friend could possibly be pointing at. After a few seconds, he sighed, dejected. They all just looked like stars to him. "Wright—"

"I've built my entire life around you, you know."

He swallowed what he was going to say, sensing that the other man would probably shut him up, anyway. He shoved his annoyance aside; he wasn't like that anymore. At least, that's what he told himself.

"When you left, I called you every day. Sometimes twice a day, if I thought my parents wouldn't find out about it. I had von Karma's answering machine memorized by the third day." Phoenix let his hand fall back and draped his elbows over the back of the bench. His face was pensive. "When the phone calls didn't work, I started writing letters. I got my mom to help me with the stamps and address. She even let me put it in the mailbox every morning so I could be sure I did it right. You still never answered me."

Miles felt a pang of guilt ripple through him, laced with a bit of anger. He had only found out about the letters years later in passing conversation with Franziska. They had indeed successfully made it to the house. However...

"When the letters didn't work, I thought maybe I still did it wrong, so I walked to the house every day and put it in von Karma's mailbox, myself." The attorney's head rolled gently to the side, his eyes still trained on the stars above them. Edgeworth listened intently, unsure of where Phoenix was going with this. It hurt him to hear it even if he had never asked the other man to pursue him for so long. His mind flashed to the keychain still attached to his briefcase and his eyes fell in shame. He, too, had held on to the childhood memories that had comforted him on all of his lonely, most terrible nights, but had he ever made an effort to reach out to Phoenix? It was tempting to blame that on von Karma, too, who had so expertly slaughtered his initial attempts to maintain correspondence with his best friend. Once he had been older, however, it would have been much easier. He was such a different person at that point, though, that he had been certain the brunette boy wouldn't have cared to hear from him then...

"Those didn't work, either." The voice jarred him from his thoughts and he looked back to the other man who was staring back out at the sea. "For a while, I was pretty sad. I didn't know what else to try. I was afraid of throwing rocks at windows because I didn't know which window was yours." Phoenix gazed anew at the sky. "So when we learned about constellations in school, I heard about two in particular that I thought were pretty cool. Draco the Dragon was one of them." He moved once more and startled Miles when he took his hand, gently, and formed it into loose fist with his index finger extended. He raised the prosecutor's arm and pointed it at the sky. "See there? It kind of looks like the little dipper with a big loopy tail."

The prosecutor strained his eyes and genuinely looked for the collection of stars, sensing that it was important to the other man that he grasp this. Just as he thought he saw what he was looking for, Phoenix continued on.

"Draco actually represents a lot of things, but my favorite story was about Ladon, who was a big dragon that guarded a tree full of golden apples." A rueful smile curved the attorney's lips. "He totally reminded me of you."

"Ridiculous."

"Nah, he definitely reminds me of you. All posted up in your office guarding all those bouquets of flowers from Oldbag, fancy as hell. Ladon probably drank from fine china on a Tuesday morning, too. And you may as well breathe fire in court. It's perfect."

If Miles Edgeworth weren't so confused by the attorney's change in character this evening, he might have had it in him to be offended. I am not a fancy fire-breathing dragon, Wright...

"And the other one was the Phoenix. It had the same name as me, so for a nine-year-old boy to find out there's a group of stars in the sky named after him, it was pretty much the coolest thing I had ever heard." He navigated the prosecutor's hand to a different group of stars, just as he had done with his own finger earlier. "This one can be pretty hard to find. It looks like two diamonds shoved together. There, see?"

"No, Wright, I don't see."

Phoenix let his hand go with a sigh, then, and he found himself momentarily disappointed. Biting back a scoff, he instead tried to focus on the lingering warmth on the back of his hand where the other man had cradled it moments before. I'm not like that anymore. It's okay to feel.

"Everyone knows the story of the Phoenix, where it dies and rises from the ashes, but that wasn't the coolest part to me..." Edgeworth's eyes lifted from his hand to meet the other's gaze for the first time since he had shown up that night. They were glossy and a little pink, and Miles came uncomfortably close to seeing for the first time just how deeply his "death" had affected his friend. "The Phoenix is actually on the Southern Hemisphere. So it's over there and you," he pointed back to Draco, "are up there. Just like when we were kids and you were just up the street, but you may as well have been on the other side of the world."

Edgeworth frowned. So this is where he was going with all of this.

Phoenix held his gaze for a moment more before he turned back toward the ocean. "I laid awake every night staring out the window, wondering what you were doing that was so important that you couldn't write back. Even Larry asked about you once in a while, when he wasn't chasing tail. I couldn't sleep until I found both of those constellations every night. I told myself that if nothing else, at least you were under the same sky I was. Maybe sometimes you were even looking at the same stars. As long as I kept thinking that, there was still hope, even after we saw each other again. I never stopped believing that I'd get you back somehow, especially after that DL-6 stuff." His eyes blinked rapidly for a moment and his throat worked awkwardly; he was choked up. "I did that all the way up until Gumshoe handed me that letter."

"He gave it to you?"

Phoenix barked out a laugh. "I guess I kind of forced him to. He didn't want to. Said it would only make things worse." His smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. "I read it every night. Obsessed over it. I couldn't sleep, I wouldn't eat... Maya begged me to take some cases just to get my mind off of it. I kept asking myself why I wasn't enough. I wondered what I could have done or said to have stopped it, wondered how I had missed the signs... I threw my badge in the trash."

Miles blinked in shock. "W-why?"

"What was the point?" The defense waved his question off as if he'd been asked what he'd like for breakfast the following morning. "Half the point of becoming a lawyer in the first place was to repay what you had done for me and to get a chance to see you again. Even if it meant getting raked across the coals in front of my clients, at least you were there." Despite himself, a quiet, sad chuckle escaped his throat, rough with emotion. "Still wearing the same bizarre clothing and everything. I was so excited you were there and you were okay and you were still the same Edgeworth. Well, most of you was, anyway." There was a strange little pause. "Some of you was."

The prosecutor winced as he remembered their initial passing. "I think you've changed a little too much, Edgeworth..." It had been the first comment in fifteen years that had genuinely struck a chord within him. The beginning of the end, he supposed.

"Anyway, Maya found it when she was getting the garbage together. She fished it out of the can and came in clutching it in her fist. Boy, did I get an earful..." He shook his head against the memory. "She all but demanded that I keep going, if not for you then for Mia. It hurt. She was right, but I really didn't want to hear it at the time. So I mourned you the best I could. I'm not sure I ever really got over it."

Miles felt that it would probably be appropriate to say something comforting at this point, but his throat felt dry and his palms were clammy and he was furious with himself for being so lacking in the ways of reassurance. His knuckles went white as his fists clenched around the fabric of his pants and he glared at them, feeling childish. What good was it being one of the best prosecutors in the world if he was unable to do anything else? What did he expect to happen when he came here, a happy reunion? What was he thinking?

"Why did you come back?"

It took a conscious effort to relax his hands. He found it impossible to look at the man after a question like that, so instead, Edgeworth trained his gaze on the ground in front of them, fixated on an enthusiastic weed that had squeezed itself up and out of a crack in the pavement. "Don't you mean to ask me why I left?"

"No."

He fought between rolling his eyes and wincing.

"You had every opportunity to stay there and build a life for yourself, didn't you? I mean, all the allegations, the accusations, the rumors... It's not like they would follow you to Europe and stick. You said it yourself, you chose death. You could have stayed there and resumed that life and been just as successful without any of the baggage. So why did you come back?"

The real question was there, hidden between the lines. He could hear the waver in Phoenix's voice and knew the man was fighting to keep even a tenuous hold on his emotions. Given his usual raucous displays in court, he commended him for maintaining such control, considering the circumstances. It was obvious that the lawyer hadn't yet considered the possibility that he had left to rebuild himself and was assuming he simply ran away. Any other time, he mused, he probably would have been correct.

Still, he wasn't sure he was prepared to weather his closest friend's reaction to what he had to say. It had taken nearly a year of isolation from almost everyone he cared about to get him to this point. If Phoenix Wright rejected his explanation, and subsequently his new proposal, what would happen moving forward? He tried to envision standing across from the other man in court after such an event and shuddered. At least he still had a home in Germany. For all the things Miles Edgeworth had purged himself of over that year, he'd never gotten rid of his contingency plan…

"I...realized that I am half a man when I stand alone."

Blissful silence met his ears and he struggled to exhale quietly enough that the other man would not realize he had been holding his breath. Bolstered by the lack of response, he continued on, trying to choose his words carefully so as to not make things worse.

"When I wrote that Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death, I meant it," he remembered all of the copies he had thrown into the trash, having struggled through the night to put the correct words on paper only to arrive at such a sterile declaration, "I knew that the person I had become was not who I wanted to be. Especially not after..." He ground his teeth together, working against fifteen years of training, forcing the words out. "Not after you had shown me that there was still something left to believe in."

There was silence still, heavy in the air. Even the wind seemed to have paused to hear what he had to say.

"I shut myself away from everyone and reexamined my life. I hated what I had become, what I had the potential to turn into, but I didn't know where to start. I was furious with you for showing me that everything I had fought for and all of my hard work had turned me into nothing but an arrogant farce." His eyes burned as he talked and he blinked, finally leaving his eyes shut. He could feel his fists trembling against his thighs as he continued, knowing that if he stopped now, he might never talk about it again. "I toiled for months, putting myself under a microscope, meticulously dissecting every last skeleton I held in my own closet. It was positively torturous. If you thought I was a miserable prick to deal with as a client, you should see how hard I can be on myself."

He opened his eyes and glanced at his comrade and found that Phoenix was staring particularly hard at nothing, braced against his words. His courage faltered for a moment. He had anticipated at least a small reaction by now. Even so, he found it more difficult the further he explained himself, unused to having to express his emotions at all, much less with words, and certainly never on his own. Frustration bubbled within him. He thought he had made more progress than this.

"Wright, look at me." There was an excruciating pause before blue eyes slid over to meet his own and Miles Edgeworth suddenly became very aware of how close he was sitting to the other man. It did not ease his nerves. He thought he had prepared his next statement—he'd mentally practiced it hundreds of times, after all—but when ensnared by his rival's gaze, he found himself at a distinct loss for words for the first time since childhood. His heart thundered in his chest and he wondered briefly if Phoenix could see how anxious he was. There was still pain in his friend's eyes, but now, he saw, there was also curiosity. Thank god, he mused, that even after all of this, he's the same as he ever was...

"What is it you really want to say, Miles?"

He stared back at Phoenix, speechless and floundering and growing increasingly frustrated that he couldn't just make the words come out. He was one of the youngest prosecuting attorneys in history and had gone toe to toe with murderers, rapists, kidnappers... He had seen his father killed, had been plucked abruptly from his home to be raised by a sinister monster with ulterior motives. He had served as a sibling to Franziska von Karma. Yet after all of it, after every terrifying and painful trial he had been through, he had never remembered feeling the sort of fear he was feeling now under the baleful, vulnerable gaze of his friend of almost twenty years.

There was one last trick in his pocket, one last resort to make the other man understand what he had gone through and was still going through and what he wanted to tell him. He desperately wanted to apologize and to keep explaining himself, to paint a picture with words like Phoenix did when he caught on to something in court, to do things gently and at the right pace and to repair it properly, but... He took a deep breath. Now or never. Get it over with. Deal with the feelings afterward.

Just as Phoenix started to turn away from him, he reached out, desperate to do something, anything, to salvage the situation he had created. The stubble on the man's cheek was rough on his palm as he cupped the clenched jaw and turned the attorney's attention back to him, giving the lawyer no time to register what was happening. In one swift movement, he leaned in, eyes tightly shut, and closed the distance, pressing his lips against his rival's.

For a moment, time itself seemed to stand absolutely still.

Hypersensitive, Miles could feel his pulse racing in his thumb pressed against the man's cheekbone while they were frozen against each other. He dared not move, focused on the way the lawyer's bottom lip shook ever so slightly against his own. The smell of the salt in the air mingled with the faded cologne that drifted off of his friend's sweatshirt and he sampled it gently, breathing through his nose, terrified that the moment would end before he could imprint it on his memory forever. If everything else failed, he could save this one experience, could have it selfishly to himself as a distant escape...

Fully expecting to be shoved backward or punched or even bitten, the prosecutor startled violently when he instead felt a gentle pressure sliding along his collarbones. A moment later, there was the gentlest pressure at the back of his neck as Phoenix formed a fist around his silken cravat and held him there while his lips pulled away a fraction of an inch. He allowed his eyes to slide open, sneaking a peek at the man keeping him hostage, and found that at some point, the attorney's eyes had shut and he was hovering in place, moving neither forward nor away. Distantly, a small, triumphant firecracker of delight went off in the back of Edgeworth's mind but was stifled immediately—it was not time for celebration yet.

More pressure, then, as Phoenix pulled him forward by the soft ruffles at his throat and kissed him in earnest. He let his hand slide into the ebony spikes that jutted stubbornly into the humid air, wishing that he could feel them without the waxy product put there to secure their position. He could no longer hear the ocean below or the seagulls or even his own heartbeat rushing in his eardrums. For the moment, there was only Phoenix and the way it felt to slide his tongue along the other man's, and the way he tasted of alcohol and something else uniquely him, and the fact that, for now, things had finally seemed to turn to his favor for once.

Their lips parted a second time but Phoenix did not release his grip, instead leaning forward to rest his forehead against Edgeworth's. His eyes remained shut, eyebrows drawn, and he exhaled sharply. The prosecutor held him there, refusing to be the first to relent, and for a moment they simply embraced each other, unsure of where the moment would take them.

Phoenix opened his eyes partway and Miles was surprised—and disheartened—to see that they were still filled with sadness. Despite this, the lawyer did not attempt to pull away, but couldn't seem to bring himself to make eye contact, either. "You came back for me, didn't you?"

"I told you, I was half a man on my own. What point was there to continuing the fight for justice if you weren't there to fight alongside me?" He swallowed against the feelings of loneliness that threatened to overtake him, memories of what it had felt like to stand there surrounded by people in the courtroom yet somehow strikingly alone after he had arrived in Germany, wondering why it felt so empty the second time around. "You were there as a child, you were there when I was a monster, and you were there when I needed somebody to show me that there was still something left that was worth fighting for. It… There was no other answer, Wright. I had to come back."

"And...this?" The lawyer leaned back to finally look him in the eye, retaining his persistent hold on the white fabric around Edgeworth's neck, slipping away from the hand threaded through his hair. Despite the fire behind the statement, the lawyer's stare belied his true emotions and the prosecutor could see that the other man was even more terrified than he was.

At a loss for how to fix the situation, Edgeworth instinctively defaulted to his usual blunt self. "An unexpected development, to be sure. I tried to stay away, to give myself more time to prepare..." He winced internally at the way the words sounded. If only he could master making things sound the way they did in his head... As expected, it didn't exactly comfort the other man, and he watched the spell slowly breaking in the blue eyes across from him. Mustering everything he had left in him, the prosecutor pushed forth. "It's...in your hands now, Wright. I came back to start with a clean slate. To build something real this time. None of it..." he could feel his jaw tightening against what he was about to say, every urge in his body screaming at him to conceal his vulnerabilities, to hide it all, to keep hold of the power he was about to hand to the other man. "...none of it really matters unless you want me to be here...with you."

A pregnant silence fell over the two men, punctuated by the wind beginning to howl around them. He was starting to shiver, partly from the cold, mostly from the emotional exhaustion wreaking havoc on his body. He wouldn't leave, though, not until they reached a resolution for better or worse. Edgeworth could feel his fingers knotting against each other fervently and he found solace in picking at a hangnail, thankful for the minor release of tension. Finally, Phoenix's shoulders sagged in defeat and he looked away, unable to fight any longer. "How do I know you won't just leave again?"

It was a valid question, and yet it still stung. He wondered if it was better to pull the man closer or to leave him be, allowing him to preserve whatever pride he had left. Awkwardly shooting for something somewhere in the middle, he slid his palm against the side of his friend's neck, drawing his gaze back to his own. "It would be ludicrous to expect you to trust me after everything that's transpired," he hoped that even a modicum of sincerity had made it from his heart into his words and his eyes so that Phoenix could see that he really meant it, because he needed the man to believe him one more time, "and I can't promise that I won't need to leave again."

As expected, he could almost physically feel the reaction in the other man's body, the expectation of the last knife tucked neatly away next to all the others in his back. His hand held steady against the tanned flesh, however, and he maneuvered to maintain his eye contact, insisting on the other man knowing he was genuine. "But I can at least let you know about it. Where I'm going, what I'm doing... When I'll be back. My work isn't finished in Germany, Wright, but if this is what you decide, if you want me here... Then I'll be here."

Immediately after the words left his mouth, he felt the need to gag on them. If there were any way to be more sycophantic and infantile than that, he couldn't think of it. As usual, what transpired in his thoughts did not translate well to his mouth and he cursed himself, feeling as though he most certainly attempted this far too soon. Damn his impulsiveness. How many times had he gone over this conversation in his head? Hundreds of possibilities had rolled through his mind, pervasive even in his dreams, and yet none of them, good or bad, had come out sounding nearly so tacky. At least if he had ruined his future as a prosecuting attorney, he apparently had a brilliant career waiting for him in daytime television script writing.

"I can literally hear you tying yourself into knots, you know."

Snapping out of his self-loathing for what felt like the fifth time that evening, he was surprised to see Phoenix smiling softly at him. Having convinced himself of what he was certain would be rejection, he was entirely ill-prepared to defend himself against the other man's acceptance. Stuttering, all he could manage was to shake his head.

"I'm not sure where you're going to find it in you to make up for almost twenty years of forcing me to chase after you," he chuckled lightly at the implication, knowing full well that it would take vastly more time, effort, and communication than either of them had available in that moment to even begin to rebuild two decades' worth of their strange relationship, "and leave it to you to lay it on thick with that kiss earlier." The dark-haired attorney reached up with his free hand to rub absentmindedly at his bottom lip. "Just like in court. Always have to drive your point home with that ace up your sleeve."

He snorted, having regained at least some small semblance of his confidence, grateful for the stab at his strategy. Finally, finally, it was something that he knew how to respond to, even if it was obvious that the attorney was throwing him a bone. "If I recall correctly, your response wasn't exactly lacking. Unless, of course, that was also a baseless bluff to buy yourself some time...?"

The laugh that rang out in the air surprised him. At long last, Phoenix released his hold on Edgeworth's cravat and ran his hands back through his hair before he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Suddenly aware of the tension in his body from sitting at such an awkward angle, he leaned back and rolled his shoulders against the back of the bench. Allowing himself the smallest sigh of relief, he stretched, grateful that the worst of the storm between them seemed to have passed.

"I've never really thought about being with a man before, you know. It might be a little weird at first. I guess, though, if it were to be any man, it would have to be you…" Phoenix was gazing at the sky again, and Edgeworth found it strangely fitting for the man. Ever since they had met as children, he had felt that his rival's head was cemented in the clouds, desperate for an anchor if only to bring him to float somewhere in the middle. Then again, he mused, he supposed the opposite could have been said about him, with his nose constantly in a book...

He stood, then, and shivered anew at the breeze rolling in off of the ocean. As he glanced around, he noticed a distinct lack of any sort of transportation, shy of his own car in the distant parking lot. Surely he didn't walk here all the way from his office…?

He turned to address the other attorney and found that the eyes that met his were surprisingly hesitant. Realizing that it might appear as though he was throwing away the subtle request for patience, he held out his hand and attempted to smile. He wondered if it worked. "At least let me give you a ride home. Neither of us will be any good to anybody if we both catch our deaths out here."

He knew what it sounded like after he had said it and hoped that the other man realized that he didn't mean it that way. Not yet, anyway. As Phoenix tentatively reached for his outstretched hand, he felt the sudden urge to pull him into another kiss, reeling with the dizzying high of at least generating the potential for something to be rebuilt between them. He suppressed the desire as best he could, insisting on being as patient as he could for things to be done right. The last thing he wanted to do after all of that was to push things too far and ruin it for both of them.

To his surprise, the brunette leaned forward and pressed his temple against Edgeworth's. It was as much of a thank you as needed to be said. Turning, he started off toward the car, feet awkwardly sliding against the soft white sand beneath, forcing his leather dress shoes to navigate the beach. While they walked, he felt his friend's fingers intertwine with his and he finally allowed himself to breathe again.