In the von Karma household, Miles learns patience.
He learns a lot of things there, many of which he'd rather not talk too much about. He learns that silence is cold, but approval can be even colder. He learns that love can be subtle, come creeping in under cover of angry words and whipcracks – and that it can hold hands with envy, maybe even hate. He learns to guard every part of himself from the outside in, starting with his smile and ending with his heart.
He learns that hope is worthless; it implies doubt. Only certainty will do.
(His nightmares place him in the worthless category. Luckily he's learned to smother any urge to admit so out loud.)
Most of all, Miles learns patience. He spends eleven years waiting – then waits two aborted trials more. The deaths aren't a promising beginning to his career, but he's learned not to let outside circumstances get in his way so he tries not to dwell. Even so, his patience is becoming stretched by the time he faces down Mia Fey, with her foolish insistence on the innocence of a criminal. She's wrong. She has to be, because the man is on trial and Miles has learned that nothing else matters.
It's his job to assume guilt.
It's his job to ensure guilt.
When he finally sees his third trial through to a proper conclusion in the form of a guilty verdict, some part of Miles expects his patience to be repaid, his waiting to end. He's spent so long working for this moment, has built his life and even himself around finally achieving it: surely, this will fill his hollow spaces.
Of course, sending one man to jail does nothing. In retrospect, that's no surprise – how could a single person ever match up to all those years? There are thousands more, always will be thousands more because people don't ever just stop being evil to one another. There's no way to get ahead or even catch up. All he can do is try to stem the tide… even if those empty spaces remain that way.
In the von Karma household (and his apartment in L.A. still is, for all he's alone and thousands of miles away), worth can be easily measured. It goes by the name perfection.
So long as he keeps winning trials, he will matter. So long as he sends them to prison, he makes a difference. So long as he is perfect, he will be okay, he will be able to get by on that knowledge, ignoring all else, remembering to hide love under whipcracks, remembering not to smile, remembering to hide all evidence of his worthless nature deep down, that gnawing gaping hole in the center of his heart.
It's an act of patience more than anything else, because Miles knows he is not capable of remaining perfect forever. He's just waiting to be revealed as a failure, putting away as many people as he can in the meantime.
When the moment finally comes, it does bring something new after all. Or perhaps not new: Phoenix Wright steps straight out of his memories into real life. Staring across the courtroom, Miles can almost smell the paper and ink, can feel that ache he boxed up sixteen years ago as fresh as ever. As his win crumbles away before him, he is left deeply shaken.
He thinks about all the lessons Phoenix has clearly learned, diametrically opposed to his own. He wastes time and brainpower and emotion worrying about which are right.
It's agonizing.
He wants the emptiness back.
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