[fic update] Piano Man Memory 07: Sympathy for the Devil (part 1/2)

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Title: Piano Man
Author:trenchkamen (via ms_asylum fic-journal)
Fandom: Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney
Genre: General, romance, memory, songfic

narumitsu

Central Prison
Visitors’ Waiting Room

Phoenix wished the air conditioner wasn’t turned up so high. He huddled into his hoodie and adjusted his cap lower over his ears, clasping an open book between his knees. The cover and pages he had already read flopped over his thigh.

“Stop fidgeting. You keep blasting me with static.”

“It’s cold in here,” he muttered, seemingly to himself.

“You’re going to draw attention to yourself.”

Phoenix looked around the waiting room. He was utterly alone, save for a guard lounging behind his desk with his feet up and a laptop in his lap. Phoenix was almost positive he had seen a second of a porn website before the guard had minimized the window and straightened to allow him through security.

Passing through the metal detector was nerve-wracking. Ema had assured him that the camera wires coiled under the upfolded hem of his hat and the camera itself set behind the button she had given him so many years ago were amply shielded so long as he turned off the transmitter for that duration. He kept the hat pulled low over his ears as he passed through, hiding the bug in his right ear. He had taken to calling it the ‘cricket’, as the imagery from Fahrenheit 451 had rooted itself into his psyche. Every time Edgeworth spoke so far back into his ear it felt as though the voice was in his brain, whispering calm and rooted, logical things, anchoring him while submerged in a twilight world that was either void of logic, or taken so far in the direction of cold, imperical thought as to come full circle into the realm of madness.

Central Prison was one of the last places Phoenix had ever wanted to go. For all that it was only a state penitentiary, a long car ride north to the ass middle-of-nowhere Lancaster, there were more than enough lunatics here, many of whom Edgeworth or Phoenix had helped put away. He felt guilty, exposed, knowing lives had ended here in a stunningly barbaric and archaic fashion at the gallows, and that some of these convictions had been guided by his hand. When face-to-face with the fate of the condemned he felt the worm of doubt stir and gnaw at his gut, and he wondered if maybe, maybe, he had helped to send an innocent person to a hideous death.

The controversy surrounding lethal injection had come to a head while Phoenix was finishing law school. Following on the heels of the abolition of trial by jury in California—an agonizing, grueling road transferring the powers of the Sixth Amendment to state-level delegation worthy of its own bevy of scholarly tomes and studies— hanging had been reinstated as the method of execution in California. That had made absolutely no sense to Phoenix. Hanging was notoriously a hideous death, designed with the intent to inflict maximum torture to the victim before the body finally lost consciousness, but new, highly-contested studies some suspected were underwritten by government agents indicated that if performed properly the snapping of the neck would ensure that the condemned lost consciousness without pain. He recalled reading historical documentation of hangings in his History of Capital Punishment class in which the condemned would be strangled slowly and repeatedly lowered back to the ground when they started to lose consciousness to be revived, to be able to experience the agony of slow oxygen deprivation fully conscious. They would beg, spectators said, hardened criminals blubbering for mercy, screaming, screeching when they had the chance, those moments when their feet touched the ground. In their final spasms they voided their bowels, wet themselves, and hung limp and rotting in the wind with death-erections, putrid and bloated, defiled and shamed in their last days as a physical entity.

That was the cruelty inflicted in bygone days, thousands of years of human malice reduced to a single focal point, a rotting body twisting in the wind.

The modern procedure was clinical, a sterile pantomime of the noose’s heritage. The condemned was weighted down with masses calculated to provide the proper force from freefall acceleration to snap the neck instantly, and the noose was fitted, adjusted to concentrate pressure at the second and third cervical vertebrae. The gallows were tall, ensuring acceleration to a force necessary to snap the neck, but not to decapitate the prisoner, as had happened in some unfortunate earlier experiments with the ‘long drop’ hanging execution method. The public was assured it was a clean death, painless and dignified. Phoenix’s mouth curled upward ironically at the memory of a pedantic professor, a champion of the government’s new system, trying to feed the class the party line with all the patience and conviction of a priest assuring his parishioners the worst atrocities imaginable to mankind are part of the greater good orchestrated by a loving God.

As part of a state policy that criminal law students should view an execution to fully understand the gravity with which they were entrusted, the law school arranged for all those concentrating in criminal law to make a trip to the Central Prison to witness an execution firsthand. It was a harrowing parody of a field trip. The students were filed onto a charter bus, shuttled out of LA into blinding California sunlight and desert, and filed into a sterile, white viewing room, glowing with harsh halogen light, in which a few rows of benches staggered stadium-style faced a large window onto the gallows. It was like all those old courtroom reality TV shows Phoenix’s mother watched, except instead of a gurney with spread-eagled arms awaiting the condemned, a tall, stainless-steel gallows adorned the center of the execution floor. The tile floor had a large drain set into its center, efficient and sloped to easily wash away the fluids inherent in human demise should things not go according to plan. It was supposed to be a packaged deal with minimal clean-up, but as the professor pointed out with rueful good humor, things do not always go according to plan.

The man whose execution they were to view had no family, no next of kin to be horrified at the prospect of his last and most vulnerable moments being viewed by a gaggle of law students. His death was attended only by Phoenix’s class, the press, and representatives of the California justice system. The man was lead out in handcuffs, blinded by the dark hood over his head, and was read his sentence. He stood, head bowed, shoulders tensed, as a chaplain in worn clothing read him his last rites, and asked him if he wanted one last chance to ask Jesus Christ to be his lord and savior. Though his sins may have been as scarlet, the blood of Jesus would wash him as clean as snow. The condemned man was silent. The preacher backed away and bowed his head, mouth moving rapidly in prayer for this lost soul, the only person in the entire room showing mercy and sympathy to this condemned man. The executioner asked the condemned if he had any last words. The man remained silent.

It was quick after that. The noose was lowered over his head, tugged securely so the knot would break his neck immediately, and his feet were strapped into sizable weights resting on the trap door. The last human to touch this man alive stepped off the platform, and there he stood, alone, head bowed, strapped to the masses that would drop him to his death.

He trembled.

There was a loud, mechanical snap, and Phoenix buried his head in his hands, realizing that he had been holding his breath in horror this entire time. Silence. He felt some of the students around him shift uncomfortably. He clutched his hair, twisting it around his fingers, and hissed. In his mind’s eye he saw a beautiful, lithe figure, long legs dangling in the sunset, a shadow, a silhouette in a sundress with flowing red hair and eyes like glass twisting, twisting in the wind, rotting.

In death, all became equal.

He knew he had touched that body—in retrospect he could see when he had been with Iris and when he had been with Dahlia—had felt the softness of her thighs beneath nervous, young hands, the smooth hollow of her stomach, the curves of her hips, even when she looked away from him in cold disgust, when she flipped her hair over her shoulder in distain before recomposing herself and giving him that sweet, hypnotic smile, edged with disgust he now realized she had felt for him all along. The realization that he had touched a woman repulsed by his attentions made him feel disgusting, ugly, lecherous, accentuated his clumsiness and angular, harry body next to her relative perfection. He thought tenderness and enthusiasm could compensate for his relative lack of skill at that point, but Dahlia had seen none of that.

It was the first and only time he had sex with her.

He had finished too soon. They had only been going for five minutes or so, and despite his best efforts he came, silent and fast, deep inside her. He collapsed back against the pillows, gasping, and noticed that she had stopped moving. The pressure of her hands on his chest lifted, and he opened his eyes to see her crossing her arms and glaring sidelong at the wall of his dorm room, displeased. He sat up and considered stroking her face, but the scowl stayed his hand.

“Dollie, I’m sorry. I, uh…” He sat up and reached under her labia where they were connected, feeling through slickness for her clit. “Here …”

She smacked his hand away. He stared, wide-eyed with horror and shame curling in his stomach, as she lifted herself off him with a wet squelch and moved to sit on the end of the bed, fingers playing over her forearm, staring out the window with an incomprehensible expression. He coughed, still fighting that damned nasty cold he had gotten a few days ago, and pulled the full condom off his softening dick, tying it off and tossing it into the trash. He scooted to the end of the bed and touched her shoulder, covering his mouth with his other hand as he coughed.

“Dollie…” Cough, cough. She had been so sticky-sweet and seductive despite his repeated protests that he did not want to get her sick, this embodiment of sweet and dirty all at the same time and damn it drove him insane— “I’m really sorry. It’s, uh, been a while, actually since high school, and, uh…” He trailed his fingers over her arm, down over the curve of her breast, brushed her deep auburn hair over her shoulder, and wrapped his arms around her waist, kissing up the back of her neck. “Let me take care of you.”

His fingers trailed down her stomach, dipping low in promise of pleasure he wanted to give her, and his kisses against her shoulders got more heated, wetter, in parallel promise of the pleasures he could also provide with his mouth.

She shoved him off roughly and stood, pulling on her discarded thong and sundress as Phoenix stared in horror. He felt as though he was going to be sick. She smoothed out her hair, shoulders tense, and found her sandals. Picked up her parasol and purse. Started toward the door.

“Dollie, please…”

It came out sounding more desperate than he had intended. She stopped, tensed, and turned around, smiling that radiant, sweet smile he had fallen in love with.

“Sorry, Feenie, but I have a lot to take care of before class.”

Phoenix’s tongue was dry. She gave him a little wave and left, closing the door firmly behind her. He stared at his closed door, at the tattered and creased Zeppelin poster he had tacked there, and collapsed back onto the bed. The room still smelled of sex and Dahlia’s perfume. He picked up a pillow and shoved it onto his face, coughing, hard.

For the first time since they had met, she had not asked for him to return the necklace she had given him at the courthouse.

He skipped class for the rest of the day.

The next day, Doug Swallow was electrocuted.

The condemned man’s body hung limply from the prison gallows. Minimal blood, no mess, clean and according to plan. Blood leaked from his ears. His death-erection pressed against his pants. He showed none of the signs of death from asphyxiation, which, the professor pointed out, meant he had not suffered. It was a clean, propaganda-worthy execution, and the professor seemed glad things had gone according to plan with his students in attendance. The doctor pronounced the convict dead, and he was unceremoniously cut down and removed from the room. The cadaver would go to a medical school.

In death, all became equal.

The image became juxtaposed with his image of Dahlia’s body swinging in the sunset, and haunted his nightmares for years to come.

“Our bodies break down, sometimes when we're ninety, sometimes before we're even born, but it always happens and there's never any dignity in it. I don't care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass. It's always ugly - always! We can live with dignity - we can't die with it.”

It was something all criminal lawyers had to reconcile, or go mad. The same way doctors had to reconcile that some of their patients would die, whether of their own mistakes or not, it was possible that a lawyer’s misplaced trust or convictions would help condemn the innocent. Each lawyer is ultimately a human, and in the long, morally-ambiguous twilight of their career they walk the razor’s edge of truth and illusion, trust and skepticism, intuition and hard logic. It is a statistical inevitability a misstep will occur. But humans are flawed, and humans are the only maintainers the system has at the moment. Humans stand in judgment of other humans. And it’s better than the alternatives, and so, they endure, for the sake of the net effect of good. But tell that to the people who were wronged.

This is the mantra Phoenix had inscribed in his consciousness; it was the only alternative to lobotomizing his empathy as so many criminal lawyers had done, or going mad.

“—nix. Phoenix.”
Phoenix snapped out of his reverie, and the immediacy of being in the waiting room returned to him. The cricket in his ear was chirping. He rested his chin in his hands, staring off into space. The book was still clasped between his knees.

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Hmm.”

He considered picking up the book just to show Edgeworth he was doing okay, but found it difficult to stir himself out of the rut of uneasy waiting into which he had entrenched himself. He wanted to click open his locket to look at the pictures of eight-year-old Trucy and nine-year-old Edgeworth—a comforting reminder of why he carried on in any tough situation—but he knew he would never live it down given that Edgeworth could see everything he saw at the moment. He stared at the opposite wall, sifting through fragmented memories linked by the strange, intuitive web of the mind, until a guard came to collect him and lead him to the solitary cell block. He marked his page and shoved the book into his hoodie pocket, adjusting the button on his cap until Edgeworth whispered that the focus was clear. Henceforth his conversation with Edgeworth was going to be one-sided.

The guard was far too chatty for Phoenix’s comfort. She was surprised that he—no offence; she didn’t mean anything by it—was close enough with Prosecutor Edgeworth to have him demand a visit with Mr. Gavin, and it was such a shame such a nice man as Mr. Gavin was in jail, as he was so nice and such a gentleman and remembered her husband’s and kids’ names and always asked after her and her family with the utmost courtesy. She unlocked the door to Solitary Cell 13 and bowed Phoenix through, reminding him that she would be waiting whenever he was done, and closed the door behind him. Now he was in the lion’s den.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the poor light. The only source was from a barred window hewn high into the brick wall, but aside from the lack of illumination, the solitary cell was damn near palatial. Kristoph Gavin was lounging in a plush, purple chair centered in the window’s light, reading a handsome leather-bound book. The desk near the door had a glass vase with red roses and a glass bottle shaped like a fine, feminine hand, fingers splayed as though showing off the nails. The wood bookshelf against the back wall was filled with hardbound books stamped with gold gilt, the sort of books that smacked of ‘collector’s edition’ or being as much a decorative statement as a show of intellectual prowess or good breeding. He wondered if Gavin could play that violin propped up against some of the books.

“Well, well, isn’t this an unexpected surprise?”

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man's soul and faith

Kristoph finally closed his book with a contented sigh and set it behind him on the chair as he stood, smiling with poison saccharine. He looked as immaculate as ever in a tailored, pressed suit, hair carefully styled and swept out of his face.

“What errand brings you down to my cramped confines?

“Congratulations, Wright,” Edgeworth murmured dryly in his ear. “You officially look more unkempt than a convict.”

“Gavin…”

“Is… this your idea of revenge, Phoenix Wright? Revenge for the events that took away your attorney’s badge seven years ago?”

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

“My past is like my logic, straight and true. Nothing’s changed.” He smirked. “All I did was point the finger of justice in the right direction.”

Miles groaned into his ear. Gavin narrowed his eyes, the implication of what Phoenix had said clearly not lost on him, and pushed his glasses up his eyes in a vague attempt to hide his wounded pride.

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name

“…fine.” He smiled cuttingly. “I’m glad we could have this little tête-à-tête, Wright.” He looked Phoenix up and down slowly, eyes unfathomable, and pushed his glasses up his nose. Finally, he exhaled quietly.
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

“You look well, Phoenix Wright.”

“You too… Gavin.”

------------------------------------------

“Because you’re an evil human being”, huh, Gavin. Bullshit.

Edgeworth was stretched out in the front seat of his car with his laptop on his thighs and his cane propped beside him, seat scooted back as far as it could go and air conditioner running with the car plugged into the electrical port just outside the prison. The sun was setting right into his eyes, and he pulled the visor down over his seat. Phoenix had finished his interview with Gavin, and the camera on his hat was filming a walk through the prison’s hallways toward the front door. Edgeworth sighed and saved another copy of the entire movie onto his hard drive, saved another copy onto his flash drive, and was burning a hard copy onto a disc when Phoenix exited the prison’s front doors with his hands shoved in his hoodie pockets, head bowed in thought. Edgeworth unlocked the car doors and moved his briefcase into the back seat as Phoenix opened the passenger door and sat down, slamming the door behind him. He pulled his cap off and ran his fingers through his hair.

“We have to get ahold of that letter.”

“Well, at least you got some nail polish.”

Phoenix pulled the hand-shaped bottle of Ariadoney out of his pocket and turned it over in his hands, brows furrowed.

“Is it still called ‘nail polish’ when it’s clear?”

“Probably. Why?”

“I thought you would know. It kind of goes with the foppish territory.”

Edgeworth shook his head and rolled his eyes as he closed his laptop and slid it back into his briefcase.

“Right, didn’t see that coming.”

“I know I’ve seen this somewhere before.”

“It wasn’t in the grocery store?”

“I don’t shop for cosmetics.”

“Trucy hasn’t dragged you back there?”

“A few times. I honestly wasn’t paying attention.”

“Hm.”

Edgeworth slid out of the car to unplug it, still slightly hobbling on his good leg, and when he got back in, Phoenix had slid the nail polish back into his pocket and was turning his magatama over in his hands. Edgeworth started the car and switched into reverse, looking over his shoulder as he pulled out of the parking space, and shifted into gear to begin the slow crawl out of the prison grounds.

Phoenix was silent a good portion of the drive back to LA. He had curled up in the passenger seat like a teenager and was staring out the window at the passing desert. The shadows grew long in the setting sun, and cars began to turn their headlights on. They finally turned back onto the 134 and gridlocked in traffic as the sun sank below the horizon.

The silence did not bother Edgeworth. They were well beyond the stage of being bothered by extended silences, and he gave Phoenix the space he needed, interrupting only to ask if he minded if he turned on the radio, to which Phoenix mumbled consent. They were through the Bach section of Miles’ mp3 player and beginning the recordings of Beethoven when Phoenix shifted, and Miles felt his attention shift from his inner world back to the present. He turned around and sat up.

“So, Gavin had five black psyche-locks around his motive for murdering Enigmar.”

Miles tapped his finger on the steering wheel.

“…really. Black.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve never seen that before?”

“Never.”

“And you’ve interviewed quite a few nasty people with your magatama, haven’t you.”

“Yup.”

Miles glanced over at Phoenix. He was staring straight out the windshield, brows furrowed in thought.

“Do you have any idea why?”

“It’s difficult to explain.” Phoenix ran his fingers through his hair again and dropped his hand. “…it felt so dark and cold. I mean, even moreso than other times I’ve tried to pry into people’s darkest secrets. I really can’t explain it.” He paused. “It’s almost like the manifestation of the most primordial source of human cruelty. You know, like the devil in everybody.”

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

“Spoken like a true Judeo-Christian Westerner.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, as did every human culture in existence. Can you break them?”

“…I don’t know.” He paused for a moment. “I had the feeling that if I tried, the energy they released when they broke could be deadly. It was like my soul was in danger of being ripped from my body. Like, that would be the price I’d have to pay to shatter those.”

“Well, we certainly don’t want that.”

Phoenix turned and glared, eyes hard. Edgeworth sighed.

“Phoenix, you know I don’t take much stock in the supernatural, but I’ve used the magatama before. I know by whatever mechanism, it works. And I trust you know what you’re talking about.” He paused and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Don’t risk it.”

His voice had come out quieter than he expected.

I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the Blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

“I wonder if everybody has the capacity to harbor so much hate for so long. I mean, I’ve seen people hold grudges and hate in their hearts, and it’s rotted them from the inside out, but this—this is insane.”

Miles’ grip on the steering wheel tightened.

He reminded him constantly that the values of the world were at odds with the values of perfection. The voice was punctuated with sharp, bloody lashes of the switch whenever Miles showed emotion or screwed something up. The voice that lashed him from without seeped in through his myriad wounds, and instilled itself in his consciousness.

The voice was small, still, and at utter odds with his gut and heart, but powerful. It was ancient, timeless, the voice of a legacy of self-destruction permeating mankind. It told him that he did not need people, that emotion would only cloud his judgment. It rendered him an incomplete human being by severing his mind from the rest of his consciousness, and eliminating the emergent, complex, intuitive consciousness inherent in well-balanced people. The isolation from others left him with nothing but his own mind and memories, churning, churning. It prevented him from re-gaining perspective. It encouraged him to shield his heart from the sunshine of the world, to allow it to atrophy and rot. His intellect became unparalleled, but his heart and his intuition lay dormant, and his potential to improve with those limitations intact hit its limit. He sensed that.

The voice called it ‘despair’. The voice suddenly made him acutely aware of the dearth of his heart, and made him think it was dead. The voice told him to choose physical death. The voice told him there was no other way out. The voice told him death was what he deserved.

Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chose death, and the devil that flowed to him through Manfred von Karma and through every human atrocity and cruelty ever committed laughed as he left his mark on the brow of humanity. Nothing ever changed. And that mark was as old as human consciousness. That perpetuation of that mark had been insured the moment the first human was able to say “I am”, and was in that self-realization forced from Eden.

“I didn’t have the magatama when I was dealing with Dahlia or von Karma,” said Phoenix. “It kind of makes me wonder…”

Miles smiled sardonically to himself. His knuckles were white.

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name

“You’d be surprised.”

Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game</i>

----------------------------------------------------

“We’ve got it.”

Edgeworth slapped a paper down onto the kitchen table, smirking triumphantly. Phoenix looked up from the meticulous notes he was taking on constitutional law and rubbed his eyes, then picked it up and scanned it.

“The referendum to try the reformed Jurist System in a real trial is going to be presented in state legislature next week. Constitutional lawyers who objected to the abolition of the Sixth Amendment are lining up and salivating over this. We’ve got all the help we could ever hope to have.” Edgeworth sat down, seeming more jubilant that Phoenix had seen him in ages. “This is our best shot. We couldn’t have been dealt a better hand.”

“It’s going to the state legislature next week?”

“It’s being ushered in as top priority.”

“But, I’m not—” Phoenix looked at his scattered notes despairingly. “—I’m not ready to present this.”
“You’re not, and even I don’t think even you could manage to wing it in front of politicians. I’ve got several lawyers from the DA’s office who were happy to collect colleagues who could speak elegantly on our behalf. Politicians don’t want to hear logic. They want to hear a pitch they can spin to their constituents. It will be almost sinfully easy. Placing the power back in the hands of the people and out of the hands of judges with government interests, play up some paranoid sensibilities and conspiracy theories—the legislators are not idiots. They know they can look like champions of the people reclaiming power on their behalf. Any counterarguments to the effect that the people are idiots who cannot be trusted to make deductive decisions will be met with howls of rage from the public. No legislator can risk taking that stance. Besides, this is California, for Christ’s sake.”

“It was abolished once.”

“Under the sovereign powers enacted under the Second Patriot Act. As far as many people are concerned—and many of them are now on our side—the abolition of the Sixth Amendment was illegal, and the right to a trial by jury still stands. The American public gave silent consent to this abuse of power. They’re as much to blame as politicians. They let blind fear and hysteria stay their hands. But that doesn’t make it right that this has gone on for so long.”

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the Gods they made

It was a speech Phoenix had heard many times before. In 2011, when he was just a freshman in college, Islamic militants bombed the U.S. Capitol Building and brought about a refreshed wave of vehement nationalism and fear just as post-9/11 paranoia was finally starting to clear the country’s system. That day was vivid in his memory; though for the most part Ivy University students handled the crisis very well, the television showed nonstop footage of the carnage and resulting violent backlash against Muslims around the country. He was only nine years old on September 11, 2001; he had not been able to appreciate the secondary, more subtle horror unfolding on television that entire day, beneath the clouds of smoke and bloodied bodies. His mom had kept him home from school that day, as much as he wanted to talk to Miles and Larry about what had happened, and the television in the living room stayed on CNN. She sat upright on their couch fingering her rosary nervously, intermittently praying quietly in Spanish and bowing her head. Phoenix asked her cautiously why she was crying.

“When things like this happen, it is us immigrants that get blamed.”

That did not make any sense. Mama was Mexican, and he was born in America; the news said that the people who attacked the World Trade Center were Muslim. Mama smiled sadly when he pointed that out and said that he would see soon enough what she meant.

That conversation was vivid in his mind as he watched the same hysteria envelop the country ten years later. But now he was old enough to see the far-reaching implications. He knew now that people who were afraid would consent to the revocation of rights in the guise of increased safety. They had proven that before. They would prove it again. They did prove it again.

I shouted out
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me

Conservative politicians rallied in a collective stance that amounted to “I told you so”, mostly in response to allowing the original Patriot Act to expire. “If only we had maintained due vigilance, this never would have happened,” they bleated, again, again, to the footage of bodies being dug from the wreckage. It was a refrain of the months after September 11, additionally punctuated by the fact that this was a repeat, no longer seeming an anomaly. Opponents were said to value privacy for selfish reasons over the safety of the American people, and, as they were frequently asked, if they were doing nothing wrong, why had they anything to fear from surveillance? Conservatives called liberals paranoid, liberals called conservatives paranoid, and either side remained convinced the paranoia and baseless fear of the other side would contribute to the downfall of America and Democracy and Freedom.

Fifteen years later, of course, nothing had changed.

“But how are they going to account for all the people tried since the Court Reformation? Or executed?”

“Nobody said it would be neat and easy. This still needs to be done.”

“I can’t believe you’re placing trust in the average citizen to judge a court case.”

Miles smirked.

“What the hell foolish reformation are you trying to instigate, Miles Edgeworth?”

Edgeworth sighed heavily and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Not for the first time, he dearly wished Franziska was not nearly as connected as she was.

“Franziska…”

“I honestly thought the foolish backwards American legal system was progressing with the abolition of the antiquated, foolish jury system, but instead of furthering progress and abolishing capital punishment you foolishly deem it a good idea to regress back to a system that relies on the wisdom and insight of easily-manipulated, blue-collar fools.”

“We have to reverse this trend before it gets worse.”

“The slippery slope argument? Really, Miles Edgeworth, I would have expected you to have an argument of better quality than that.”

“You’re not the only one.”

--------------------------------

They worked feverishly through the next month. To surprisingly little fanfare their proposal was approved by the state legislature, and the Los Angeles County District Court was designated the trial’s location. The exhaustive logistics for setting up a jury trial system distracted Phoenix from his case against Gavin; he could work on securing his innocence once the jury system was underway. He quit playing poker to focus full-time on the jury system, as much as it hurt his pride to rely on Miles financially even if only for a short while.

Miles’ recovery continued; the physical therapist finally cleared him to walk without a cane some weeks after he had gone back to work, though he would have a slight limp the rest of his life, and the scars across his body faded to white. His joints ached when rain approached, and seeing him stop writing to wince and rub at his wrists and dislocated elbow, or wince slightly as he walked, on overcast days cut through Phoenix like a knife. Both he and Trucy had taken to making Miles more pots of tea than he knew what to do with on those days, until he told them both that they just burned and over-or-under-seeped the tea every damn time, which was a considerable talent, and to waste their efforts elsewhere. So he started getting more warm washcloths and ice packs along with massages and dogs hanging all over his knee giving him the puppy eyes. No matter how much he sputtered, it was painfully obvious to both Wrights that he was touched. For some reason Trucy was convinced that the reverse-color PaPa hat she had made for Miles would make him feel better if he would just wear it, for all his excuses that hats drove him insane and messed up his hair and just made his head feel hot. He still could not bring himself to wake up and take it off when he was roused out of a drugged doze by Trucy jamming it firmly over his head. He knew she and Phoenix got some strange kick out of seeing him wear it, and wearing it in sleep allowed him to preserve his protests and their feelings when he was awake.

The first time after the accident Phoenix saw Miles naked Miles was horridly self-conscious, which he, as per usual, hid poorly with curt gruffness and cynical faux-indifference. Of course Miles was still beautiful as he ever had been, but the scars knotted guilt in Phoenix’s gut, and served as a constant reminder for every reason his revenge against Kristoph Gavin was not complete. He mapped every scar with his fingertips and his lips, slowly, lingeringly, savoring every pulse and barely-audible moan and every indescribable awareness that Miles was alive. He integrated the new imperfections into his mental map of his lover’s body. He kissed slowly, repeatedly, every shattered bone with the vague hope that he could direct love and tenderness into their healing. He knew all of it was a painfully cliché gesture, and despite Miles’ dry comment to that effect it was obvious that it melted him nonetheless. Phoenix kissed his hideously-scarred palms and fingertips that had lost so much sensation, and Miles said that he wished he could feel that as vividly as he had before. It was then that he teared up for the first time since the accident, and as much as Phoenix hated to see Miles upset it was a relief to see him get it all out. He so seldom indulged in that release. Of course, it was not long before Phoenix started crying too and apologizing profusely about what had happened, and they had an intensely manly night of cuddling, nuzzling, and kissing, though Miles said dryly that even if he were up to fucking like men—which he wasn’t, so don’t get any ideas—he would rather stay like this. Phoenix chalked that up to the painkillers, and Miles whacked him in the face with a pillow when he said that he was starting to like the doped-up, uninhibited Miles better than his sober evil twin.

Miles had been well enough for sex for a couple of months now, and Phoenix had quickly learned how to avoid jarring or hurting his body, had quickly learned his limits and how to sense when they had expanded and where to stop by listening to the catches in Miles’ breath and the sudden clenching of hands around his wrists. For all that Miles was still sore he was insatiable, and he had admitted to Phoenix that in some ways his close call had reignited in him a lust to live each day to the fullest, which when they had the time and privacy meant wearing themselves out in every way they could think of that would not make Miles yelp in pain. In one early encounter Phoenix had overbalanced and smashed Miles’ dislocated elbow, which had made the latter man howl in agony and curl up in a ball as spasms shot up his arm for quite a while after. Phoenix, of course, felt like an absolute monster and cradled Miles and apologized profusely on the brink of tears until Miles was the one comforting him. It was going to be intensely vanilla for a while, which was perfectly fine with both parties. They had a mutually-beneficial agreement that while experimentation was fun, just being able to make love to one another in some way or another was more than enough. Whether he was giving or receiving Miles was invariably lying or sitting on the bed, as balancing for any protracted time on his wrists or elbows was still extremely painful. By virtue this meant Phoenix was doing most of the work, but he usually had more than enough enthusiasm for the both of them anyway, and he had a working tally of all the times Miles would owe him the fucking of his life once he was fully healed.

It was originally quite difficult to convince the court to give the chair of the Jurist System Simulated Court Committee to a disbarred attorney of some notoriety, but they consented under the condition that Miles Edgeworth oversee the operation. All executions were put on hold until the establishment of the new court system, which gave Phoenix more time to investigate Gavin once this job was done. There was no rush.

He was going to leave it on the backburner. That was his full intention.

He did not anticipate that Drew Misham would die of atroquinine poisoning in the beginning of October.

Continue to part 2