Chapter Text
Miles Edgeworth was a simple man. Elegant. Sharp. Strict. Some would even say attractive.
In other words, he was perfect. Simply perfect. That's how he was raised, and that's how he'll live. Perfectly. From the moment he was taken in by him, his future had already been decided. A perfect prosecutor. He would go to court, win a case (though maybe not quite as quickly as his mentor), walk off, and celebrate his victory at the Karaoke bar as always, with the man who raised him.
Or that's what he thought—until a certain man came running headfirst into his life.
Phoenix Wright. Phoenix fucking Wright. That man, in his idiotic blue suit with his idiotic haircut and his foolish nieveté, managed to take away all Edgeworth held dearest and replaced it with unnecessary feelings. Ugh. How such a simple greenhorn lawyer was able to humiliate him to such a degree escaped him. He walked into the courthouse, bluffed his way through the entire case over and over, and continued to pull out victories.
Miles was no longer elegant. Nor was he sharp, strict, or attractive. He was—for lack of a better word—disgraced. Even his mentor, whom he had valued greatly, had been exposed as a murderer who had offed his own father over a penalty and framed Miles for another one years later. Wright was behind unmasking that too. While he can't deny that the man deserved to rot in prison, there was a small part of him that still respected the man. Not even his adopted sister, Franziska, who had also toiled under Von Karma's strict guidance, seemed to have any fondness left in her heart for him. Granted, she rarely did, but it was... different now. More hollow. He wasn't family anymore.
Miles was left aimless. He had no more purpose. Everything he had built up over the course of the last 15 odd years broken down in the matter of a few months by this man. He couldn't even bring himself to hate him, either. Back in grade school, when Miles still had his original father and original childlike wonder, he had known Phoenix briefly, and found him to be a nice companion. Miles longed for those simpler days, when everybody got along.
Regardless, one thing was clear to Miles. He needed to change, and he needed to change fast. Miles wasn't perfect anymore, and with that came the realization of how hollow he really felt. Despite all the awards he had won and all the fame he had garnered, a couple nasty spots on his record were able to shatter his self-image. Miles hadn't felt truly alive in years. Hell, maybe he hadn't even felt human. So, he ran away. From everybody. Putting his career on hiatus, he booked a flight to the foreign land of Borginia, looking to find himself, and he didn't look back. All he left behind was a note to one of his most trusted (and somehow most stupid) companions, Dick Gumshoe.
It read: "Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death".
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If you could say something about Miles Edgeworth, the opposite could probably be said about Phoenix Wright. Simple? He's had the most complicated life of anyone he knows. Elegant or Sharp? Far from it! The only way he can win trials most of the time is due to extreme bullshitting and ghost magic he barely understands. Strict? He's overly compassionate to his own detriment and passes out on the couch in his office regularly. He's not attractive either. He was a blundering idiot when he was younger too, and the only woman who had ever tried to date him wanted him dead because of something he didn't even know he did.
No part of Phoenix Wright was perfect, and yet here he stood. Chasing after a perfect man because of a dream he gave him all the way back in 4th grade. Phoenix stood accused of stealing Miles' lunch money.
And yet—Miles defended him.
He stood by him when nobody else would. It really inspired Phoenix, to the point he aspired to defend people the way he was defended back then, lest they experience what had. Phoenix also had an insane crush on Miles after that, though he would never admit it.
Flash forward to university, and Miles comes back up again. He hears things, whispers. They start quiet—they always do—but they only increased in volume. "I heard he forges evidence to win." "Well I heard he bribes the judge." "Demon Prosecutor." "Liar." "Cheat." "Fraud."
This didn't sound like Miles at all to Phoenix—not one bit. He had to figure out what was wrong with him. Phoenix began to pick up law classes on the side of his current major. One chance encounter with attorney Mia Fey and a crazy girlfriend later, Phoenix figured he might actually have a chance at closure. Eventually, he swapped majors, fully moving from art student to law student. He passed the bar, and got a job at Fey and Co. Law Offices, where Mia worked.
Things weren't easy for long. Mia died. Multiple accusations were tossed, including one at Phoenix himself. After all was said and done–the culprit was caught, Phoenix took over the office, and he found a new assistant in Mia's little sister: Maya Fey.
She was a spirit medium, and had the power to channel the dead. Sometimes, she would channel Mia, and she would give him a helping hand with the case at hand. It was a nice perk, though he barely understood how it worked.
Phoenix met Miles for the first time in court then, and... well... he was different, to say the least. Phoenix barely recognized the man. But he had that fuschia suit-donning man right in his grasp, and he wasn't about to give up on him now.
A couple cases later, Phoenix found himself face to face with Miles' mentor, who had a 40-year undefeated win record, in a case having to defend Miles himself.
It all made sense now—Miles' mannerisms, the rumors, how he refused to acknowledge their past, everything really. If this man was the cause, if Manfred von Karma was the cause, it was a perfect explanation.
He was everything Phoenix hated about lawyers—everything they accused Miles of. Everything Phoenix knew he didn't do.
Throughout this case, Phoenix would come to learn of the tragedy of the DL–6 incident. Of what happened to Miles—and his father. Maya's family was tied up in it as well through her missing mother, Misty Fey. There was loads of interpersonal drama, and after that win, Maya elected to go back to her village to train her spirit channeling powers for a while.
Phoenix would have one more high-profile case in which he met with Miles, but after that—the trail went cold.
With no sign of Miles anywhere and Maya out of town, the newly-named Wright and Co. Law Offices was doing quite badly. Phoenix was one man still trying to pay rent on this building he stupidly decided to inherit. He didn't have the cash to hire other people nor to advertise very often, and with his name out of the papers since Miles left and their so-called "rivalry" ended, he wasn't getting many clients to keep the cash coming.
He kept correspondence with Maya, and occasionally went to dinner with his favorite detective—Dick Gumshoe— but that was about it. For all intents and purposes, he was washed up. To add onto that, even when he did get cases, they'd always go terribly for him, regardless of if he won or not. Hell, just a couple weeks ago, a desperate culprit conked him on the head with a fire hydrant in the hopes of giving him a concussion to throw Phoenix off his game and give himself a higher chance at getting away.
Phoenix got amnesia.
Or well—temporarily, anyway. His memories slowly came back to him as the case dragged on, until he was back to his old self and caught the perpetrator. Maya did say in her letters that she was almost done with training though, so Phoenix hoped she would come back soon.
Gumshoe—on the contrary—was doing much better for himself. With Edgeworth missing, the standards at the precinct dropped heavily, and his salary wasn't getting cut anymore. In fact, he'd even get the occasional raise. He'd found himself a girlfriend in the wonderful—if unlucky— Maggey Byrde, and he stopped being limited to a diet of instant noodles. However, there was one thing always nagging at the back of his mind. That note. The one Edgeworth had left him before he dropped off the face of the Earth. "Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death." Gumshoe never had the heart to tell Phoenix what it said. It became incredibly obvious whenever Phoenix got a little too drunk at the bar that he still had a massive crush on the guy, so he didn't want to crush the spiky-haired man's dreams. Phoenix kept abreast of legal news in search of his name, and by now Gumshoe knew this. It wasn't just Phoenix he couldn't tell. He couldn't tell anyone.
And it ate away at him. More than he'd like to admit. Maggey knew, and that was about it. It was June 12th—he remembered the day well—when he walked in on Phoenix alone in his office yet again, this time praying for Edgeworth or Maya to return. He felt bad for the guy, this was just desperate. Gumshoe knew Phoenix as many things, and religious wasn't one of them. Gumshoe could've sworn he noticed a single tear bead up at the edge of the man's eye.
Gumshoe walked closer and knelt down to Phoenix. "Hey pal. I... I have some bad news. I got this by mail. A couple days ago. No return address. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," Gumshoe speaks, sliding Phoenix the note. Phoenix was scared to even touch the thing. "I just didn't know how you'd take it. I wouldn't want you to be inconsolable, quit your job or something. You're still doing great work out there."
Phoenix reads the note. "Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death." Death. Death. Death. The word rang out in his head again and again like a church bell. Miles Edgeworth was... dead. Phoenix would never get to see him again. After all Phoenix had done for him, all he had powered through, he went and killed himself.
"There, there, Pal. I'm depressed about it too. What do you say we go drink our sorrows away, just this once?" Gumshoe said apologetically. They both knew it was not the first—and would not be the last time such a thing happened.
"No. not today," Phoenix stated solemnly. "I need a moment to myself." Gumshoe said nothing, stood up quietly, and left. Phoenix's thoughts were a hurricane inside his head.
"Miles wouldn't just go and die like that. That isn't him." "But didn't you see how he acts in court? He's not the same anymore." "But he was so thankful after we cleared his name! He has no reason!" "You can't know that for sure!" "But my heart knows! And it knows he wouldn't do this!" "Yeah, sure. Keep being sentimental. See where it gets you."
All of these were thoughts zipping through Phoenix's head at top speeds. But at the eye of that hurricane within his head, one of those thoughts stood above the rest.
"I will come find you, Miles—no matter what it takes. No matter where I have to go or what I have to do, I will see you again."
Luckily for Phoenix, he didn't have to wait long to know for a fact if Miles was actually dead or not. Just 2 days later, he received a knock at the door.
"Hello there, sir. My name is Dr. Turner Grey. I need to speak with your associate, Maya Fey."