Construction work suited forty-year-old Phoenix. Strong, sharp, and observant, he was about as good an employee as Kurain Konstructions could ask for. His one flaw was a tendency to wander into danger, and his boss Gruff Billie fretted the first few times he walked under a forklift, but Phoenix was preternaturally impervious to injury. After dozens of incidents and nothing more lasting than a sprained ankle, even Gruff Billie got off his case.

The long hours of physical labor suited Phoenix: they kept his thoughts at arm's length during the day. At night, he fell face-first into his couch, too weary to think or brood. That was important—after that case, he'd washed away the first year in a haze of drugs and grape juice. The back-breaking labor was better. On a busy day, with the pounding hammer reverberating through his body, he could almost drift into a meditative calm.

Phoenix let the buzz saw's screech fill his ears, drowning out his thoughts. He closed his eyes. Pretended to forget.

- O -

His demons were fifteen years in the rearview mirror when the letter came careening into him, naming him the beneficiary of the vast von Karma estate.

"There must be some mistake," Phoenix stammered.

"Miss Franziska von Karma refused her inheritance in no uncertain terms," the harried solicitor explained, unconsciously touching the stripe on his cheek—a single whiplash. "As she has provided no next of kin, the assets fell to the late Mr. Miles Edgeworth."

On the first day, Phoenix toured the grand living room, the dining room set for twenty, and the kitchens. He took a stroll through the private museum, an elegant atrium housing a distinguished collection of rare books, original paintings, and antique instruments.

In the center of the back wall stood a floor-to-ceiling display case of wine-red mahogany, set with ivory handles and polished to a gleaming shine. It was closed and locked, the contents hidden away. "Ah, no one knows where to find the key," the solicitor said, gesturing at a crowbar propped nearby. "If you'd like, we can pry it open. It seemed a shame though."

A chill was settling in his bones. "No, that's alright," Phoenix hurriedly replied. He left the room and shut the doors tight, and resolved to avoid the museum thereafter.

So Phoenix found himself idly wandering through the empty halls. Lavish portraits covered the walls, with a face Phoenix had not seen in fifteen years. His face, sometimes scornful (How could I have trusted my defense to such a rank amateur?), sometimes angry (Don't ever show your face in front of me again!), and sometimes inscrutable. Phoenix imagined that the stony eyes held a hint of reproach, a message encoded in his brow and captured by the camera, sent from the past and delivered in the present. You failed me.

The very last portrait, tucked away in a corner from when Miles was just ten, was filled with an unbearable sadness. Miles had not fully learned to school his face yet. The clenched jaw and the too-bright eyes filled Phoenix with an miserable fondness, as familiar and as unwelcome as the sorrow. Phoenix turned away, shoved the fresh pain back down. He'd let it loose before, and it had nearly killed him.

Over the coming days, Phoenix explored the endless rooms. Every surface in every room was freshly polished and dusted, but the peripheral rooms bore a musty smell, as though a weekly housekeeping couldn't quite scrub away seven days of disuse. Phoenix opened every drawer, inspected every nook and cranny, scanned over the titles on every book shelf looking for something he couldn't name. He thought wryly that perhaps his old habits—indeed, his former life—had come back to haunt him.

- O -

It was in one winding hall that Phoenix found Miles's old bedroom.

The bed was neatly made, a towering queen in mahogany, which would have spoken of fatherly indulgence in any other household, and instead spoke of appearances in this one. The walls were elegantly decorated with only tasteful art, the proud symbols of a cultured upbringing. But wedged in a drawer, Phoenix found a Signal Red keychain, worn and chipped and well-loved.

The grief was back. Phoenix would not let it take him.

That night, he moved his suitcase into Miles's old room. Lying there on his friend's bed with the keychain tucked under the pillow, he imagined that he was a tiny sideways step closer to Miles. An inch on a bridge he couldn't cross in time.

After his initial discovery, more and more glimpses of Miles appeared each day: his handwriting on case files, his handkerchiefs in the closet, his imported tea in the kitchens. His favorite book sat atop an antique piano, the dignified and respectable Great Expectations, which Miles had delivered a book report on at age ten. He'd later confided to Phoenix that he chose it for its initials. "Like my father," he'd said.

Slowly, Phoenix settled into the house. It wasn't so cold and unforgiving as he'd once thought. Miles was there in the house, around every corner, present in a thousand ways. He only needed to look.

Like a breath from a ghost, the house offered him the letters. A stumble on an old plank, bent and cracked with age, revealed the hidden compartment, and in it, Phoenix found bundles of letters spanning ten years, from the moment Miles had landed in the house at age ten, to the last letter dated the day he became a prosecutor. I miss you every day, began the first. I've never forgotten you, ended the last. Trembling, Phoenix devoured the letters one after another, tears flowing freely for the first time in years, every emotion pouring out until his insides felt hollow.

The house's whispers caressed him, covered him like a blanket, and for the first time, warmth reached through his heart and settled in his bones. As he drifted to sleep, burrowed in Miles's sheets and surrounded by his words, he was sure that Miles was there with him.

- O -

Phoenix found the key the next day.

A passing ray of sunlight glanced off the shining metal, and he barely caught the gleam out of the corner of his eye. He reached up above the portrait, to the top of the silver frame just above the crown of Miles's silver head, and took down the shining key.

Clouds swept over the sky as Phoenix opened the museum's doors, the house's warmth vanishing in an instant. His feet dragged like lead, like the ball and chain that trailed Miles to his execution. He turned the key, and the lock clicked under his hand. Phoenix threw open the doors.

He instantly recognized the corpse. Flayed, dissected, and transformed into rubber, it stood spread-eagle, muscles and organs painstakingly labeled, bones bared for display. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, the plaque read in bold letters, and beneath it, anonymous donor. Yet even with the face stripped away and the eyes replaced with glass, Miles was unmistakable. Phoenix would recognize his cheekbones and the set of his shoulders anywhere.

Phoenix fell to his knees with a cry, his skin crawling, his insides heaving. Those glassy eyes bored into his, sharp through his tears, reproachful. Look what I've become, the corpse seemed to say. Look what you did to me!

"No, Miles. . . I'm sorry!" Phoenix sobbed. "I tried to stop it! I tried so hard! But that's no good to you now, is it? I couldn't save you. But I'll set you free." He staggered upright and grabbed the crowbar. Blinking away tears, he swung it with all his might.

It stopped inches from Miles's head. For a long moment, Phoenix stood staring into the plastinated face, horrible yet achingly familiar.

The crowbar fell from his hand like hot coal.

Tenderly, he stroked Miles's frozen cheek. Soft flesh brushed against hard rubber as Phoenix laid a gentle kiss upon unfeeling lips. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "Good-bye."

He locked the display case with a last, lingering look at the man inside. He closed up the museum and fled to the tallest turret. He climbed up onto the wall with the wind whipping around him, nothing between himself and a thousand foot drop. The key burned in his hand. This was good-bye; Phoenix Wright would never gaze upon Miles Edgeworth again. He raised his arm, reeled it back, prepared to throw.

Time and space hung still as Phoenix fought desperately to let go.

Phoenix stumbled back, back off the wall, leaning against it from the safety of the turret as he gasped for breath.

The key went back in his pocket. He turned and went inside.

- O -

Author's notes:
Characters: Phoenix, mentioned Manfred von Karma, mentioned Franziska, a minor solicitor (OC), and. . . Miles Edgeworth's plastinated body. Yup.
Content tags: major character death, plastination, graphic description of plastinated body, tragedy, implied unhealthy coping mechanisms

Yeah no clue where this came from.