Note: Everyone! Thank you so much for sticking with me throughout this fic. It's been my pride and joy, and I've had a lot of fun working on it throughout 2011. This year has been tumultuous for me as far as "real life" goes, and all your reviews have meant more to me than I think any of you could realize. Thank you, all of you!

And so, we come to the end. I tossed around a ton of ideas on how to finish this thing up, and finally I opted for… this. You'll just have to read it and see.

For this chapter, expect the Phoenix/Edgeworth pairing to be there, but not smutty - it's tame compared to my original intentions for this final scene.

Begin Again

Chapter Four

"Get off of me."

Miles seethed; Phoenix grinned back at him. The two remained locked in a silent, still, mental battle on the sofa for a few moments before Phoenix spoke up.

"I'm only letting you up if you'll come in the bathroom with me and look at your leg."

"I hate you."

"I'm aware," Phoenix sighed, his grin slipping and his eyes unfocusing just a bit. "Doesn't matter, though, I'm not letting you get out of this."

Miles wanted to argue, wanted to rage and shout and pull out all the stops because he knew the man who was kneeling over him was so broken and vulnerable, but god the pain. The position he had landed in on the sofa was uncomfortable at best, and he was beginning to feel the fire lancing from the place where his leg had been, regardless of his painkillers. So instead, he pulled in a long, slow, shaking breath and said, barely audibly, "Fine, Wright. I will do what you say."

Immediately, Phoenix was on his feet and helping Miles stand as well. "This is going to be good for you, Miles," he said. "I promise. You need this more than you realize."

The two hobbled together to the small bathroom in the back of the office-turned-apartment, Miles scowling as he alternated supporting his weight on first his cane, then Phoenix, and back again to the cane. The walk wasn't a long one, but it was excruciating in more ways than one; Miles wanted desperately to run the other way, to get away from whatever it was Phoenix was going to force him into doing, but that was not an option, and he knew it.

Soon enough, they had reached their destination. Miles perched on the lid of the closed toilet, and Phoenix sat alongside him on the edge of the bathtub, as they once again stared each other down. "I won," Phoenix said after a while, a hollow chuckle hidden behind the words.

"What?"

"I won an argument with you."

"…this is a shock to you?"

"Nowadays, yes, yes it is." An anxious shifting of his weight, then: "But this is about you, not me."

Miles crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't want to do this," he said. He wrenched his eyes shut tightly, but opened them quickly once again when he felt Phoenix's hand resting on his knee. The other man's blue eyes peered upward, and he half-smiled - testing the waters? For the briefest of moments, Miles relaxed, but just as quickly he tensed again.

"It's okay to be scared," Phoenix murmured. "Would it help if I turn out the lights? You can take off your pants first, and then we can turn the lights back on when you're ready."

"Yes. Alright." Miles nodded, nearly imperceptibly. He watched Phoenix stand and move to flick off the lights, and then saw nothing, as darkness descended upon the tiny, windowless bathroom.

Phoenix's voice came out of the air near to him. "Is that good?"

"No," Miles replied instantly. He groaned at the strained note in his voice. "No, Phoenix, no, I'm sorry. This isn't going to work."

"Huh? What's wrong?"

The hand on his knee again; that moment of relaxation before the panic swelled once more. "I can't do it like this. Turn the light back on and open the door, please."

"That isn't going to -"

"Phoenix, please."

"Okay, okay."

When the light had been restored, Miles turned his head to face the bathroom sink. He could feel the heat of anxiety flushing his cheeks and the tears streaking down his face, and he hated himself for both. "I'm sorry," he croaked, more to the porcelain than to the other man.

"No," said Phoenix presently, and Miles was surprised by how soothing the tone had become, "I'm the one who should be sorry. How could I forget? Pitch black and tight spaces - god, Miles, what was I thinking?"

"It's alright. R-really."

Phoenix took a facecloth from the towel rack near the door, ran it under the cold water from the sink, pressed it against Miles's forehead. Against all of his better judgment, Miles sank into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut, and Phoenix took the opportunity to scoot back to his seat on the bathtub and pull Miles as close as the awkward positioning could allow for.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I really suck at taking care of you, don't I?"

Miles smiled ruefully. "You're doing far better than anyone else I've ever known."

"Maybe that's because you're actually letting me in for once?"

"Something I question every day," Miles muttered in response.

Phoenix laughed, and in the space following his laughter, a comfortable, relaxing sort of silence fell between the two of them. Miles felt it wrap him up, safe and warm and thick, and suddenly his mind swam with a thousand things he wanted to say - thank you for being here, thank you for trying, I know I'm impossible and thank you for wanting to help me anyway, don't you have enough on your plate as it is? - but years of keeping emotions from bubbling forth stopped him just short of blurting everything on his mind. Instead he just smiled - a flicker, a small little twinge at the corners of his mouth, but it was enough to get across his gratitude, and Phoenix (with a newfound resolve not to let this moment go to waste) leaned forward and pressed his lips softly against Miles's cheek.

And in that instant, Miles's guard came crashing down around him, and he shuddered visibly to know how weak he'd just become. Regardless, he forced himself to speak: "I thought you wanted me to look at my leg."

"Right. Off with your pants, then."

"Really, Wright, it was just a peck on the cheek -"

"Oh hush." Phoenix stuck his tongue out and turned around. "I'll look at the wall while you take them off. Just tell me when you want me to turn around."

Miles struggled to wriggle out of his pants while remaining seated on the toilet; the feat was difficult enough when he had a whole sofa to sprawl across, but he managed, all the while reminding himself don't look, never look. "There," he said, when the pants were folded and carefully placed on the edge of the sink (the floor being a bit too questionably unclean for Miles's liking).

Phoenix turned around and tilted his head to one side. "You don't wear pink boxers. My fantasy is ruined," he said, as though this was the most natural thing in the world to say in the present situation.

Miles frowned and stared at the ceiling. "No need to make this harder than it already is," he retorted, and then added, "That was not supposed to be quite the Freudian slip it turned out to be..."

Chuckling, Phoenix sat for the third time that afternoon on the bathtub's ledge, fixed Miles with his distant gaze, and said, "You ready?"

"No."

"Take your time."

"Don't tell me that, or I'll never go through with this. And as much as it pains me to say so, you're correct... I know I need to." Miles inhaled deeply and bit his bottom lip, and slowly, purposefully, lowered his gaze past the shower curtain, past Phoenix's shoulder and elbow and thigh, to rest on the sight he'd been doing everything in his power to avoid taking in since he had awakened in that hospital room.

He had expected to see something bloody and mangled where once there was a leg; he had not expected the surprisingly clean and well-bandaged stump of a thigh that he instead found attached to his lower body. The remains of his leg ended some inches above where his knee should have been, and the majority of the thing was encased in a tight, white bandage. He had felt the bandage there, yes, but somehow never registered it. Looking at it now, he allowed himself a moment to be grateful that the sight had been far less gory than he'd imagined.

But that moment was brief, and the full weight of what he saw made him swoon, woozy and ill. There should have been a leg. He could even still feel it, sometimes, but it wasn't there. The stump he was left with didn't look like a leg, but more like a rounded cone, devoid of any real purpose or meaning. In his dizziness, Miles wondered why losing a leg felt so similar to losing his father, and he let out a soft groan before leaning over and heaving.

And Phoenix was there, one hand rubbing Miles's back and the other holding the little plastic bathroom trash can within easy vomiting range. Miles trembled as he heaved, but the warmth and rhythm of Phoenix's hand on his back soothed him, and he soon shakily wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat up as straight as he could manage.

"That's all," he croaked. "I can't look more. Not today."

"That's plenty," Phoenix replied, collecting Miles's pants. "It's probably easier to get these back on when you're not crammed into a bathroom, huh?"

Miles nodded. "But I don't know if I can stand right now."

Before Miles could put up much of an argument, Phoenix had hooked one arm under his remaining leg and the other behind his shoulders, and hoisted him up in the air in the same manner that a prince might carry a princess off into the sunset. "To the sofa!" Phoenix said, his voice only slightly straining; Miles wasn't heavy, particularly with one less limb, but Phoenix wasn't exactly in shape either, and the journey back down the hall was slow and more than a little perilous. At one point, Phoenix dropped Miles's pants and declared loudly, "I will return for them!" which, in turn, led Miles to dissolve into soundless, shaking laughter.

By the time the two of them had collapsed onto the sofa once again, they were both laughing aloud. "What would Trucy think of us now?" Phoenix asked as he gasped for a breath.

"She would probably be happy to see us getting along much better than we were this morning," Miles replied, matter-of-factly. Still recovering from his laughing spell, he leaned against Phoenix, resting his head on the other man's shoulder and distantly wondering when the last time was that hoodie he always wore had been washed.

Phoenix smiled. "I think today was a good turning point, don't you?"

"Mm," said Miles.

"Are you falling asleep?"

"Mm."

Phoenix rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "I'm not your pillow."

"It's been a difficult day," Miles murmured, stirring long enough to rest his head against the back of the sofa instead.

"I guess it has. You take a nap, and I'll go pick up some dinner."

"Oh, please, no more noodles. Get something Italian. Take my wallet."

Phoenix grinned. "Alright. No more noodles. See you soon, Miles."

"See you."

Once again, thank you so much, everyone who read this. Your reviews and critiques have absolutely not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. And a special thanks, too, to the friend and reader who helped me research the after-effects of lower limb amputation. I was lost without that information!

And if any of you out there in reader-land are wondering, I think Miles will go on to have a successful prosthetic leg attachment and be back at his job in a relatively short amount of time, all things considered. He's not going to let this slow him down!

Peace to you all, and happy fic reading.