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It’s still dark when she leaves, but there is a slight tinge of greyish pink in the light outside the window. Maya’s a little thankful for that, together with the screen of her phone there’s just enough light to pick her way through the abandoned remnants of their victory party, glasses and bottles and people she’s come to consider friends napping on Nick’s sofa. The last thing she wants to do is wake him, after all, she was never all that good with saying farewell. The letter will just have to do, as hastily scribbled as it is. She can always call later and knowing Nick he will accept it and forgive her, like he forgives everyone sooner or later. She closes the door softly and makes her way out of his apartment, throwing a little wave at the door as she goes. She’ll be back; she knows that much. There is no way that Nick gets rid of her that easily.
She’s a little engrossed in trying to remember when the first train is, so much so that she almost collides with a tall figure as she exits the block. Maya yelps, trying to dodge as the person standing outside rears back away from her, and just about succeeds in avoiding an outright crash, though her shoulder brushes against the back of a suit jacket.
“Oh, wow, sorry-”
“Nggh, I-“ The figure turns, and if he hadn’t been recognisable enough from the colour of his suit in the dark, the hair is unmistakable. After all, she’d been there to pick him up when he’d finally been released from the detention centre, late in the evening. After that, Larry had dragged everyone back to Nick’s apartment, and the whole night had got a little messy.
“Oh, Edgeworth, it’s you!”
He inclined his head gracefully, as though trying to pretend the last ten seconds hadn’t happened. “Miss Fey.”
“I didn’t realise you were still here! You disappeared ages ago! What, were we so boring you’d rather just go hang around outside in the dark?”
Something appears at the corner of his lip, almost a smile, but Maya’s never known someone who smiles so small before. “Boring is hardly the adjective I would use to describe any of you.” He sniffs in the cold a little. “Perhaps the opposite could be said - that it was too raucous in there for me.”
Maya frowns, feeling a little guilty for waiting to sneak off until there was nobody to stop her. “Not anymore. They’re all asleep.” She forces a laugh. “Gumshoe’s snoring so loud I’m surprised he didn’t wake the others up! Still I guess it beats the singing from earlier!”
“I see.” Edgeworth says, but he’s distant, like he was before the trial earlier. Mind elsewhere. She may not be the best of mediums, but she can tell when someone’s spirit is so obviously in conflict.
“Are… are you ok? You’re looking kind of… strange.”
“You spend too much time with Wright. You’re beginning to sound like him.” He doesn’t look at her, not once, his eyes trained on some distant horizon. “Don’t concern yourself with how I feel.”
She considers poking, but she’s barely spoken to him, usually even when they’re in the same room Nick acts as a mediator, like there’s two conversations going on with the same person. He has a habit of doing that, probably has always been that way. Mia once mentioned it in one of their calls; “I work with this kid, oh you two would get on well. He has charisma coming out of his ears, but I only wish he knew when to stop.” Mia was always the better judge of character out of the sisters. And she always knew what to say. Maya always feels like she’s just guessing in comparison.
She twists her hands in front of her, aware she’s left the silence too long for it to not be at least a little awkward. “You know… it’s probably pretty weird. To have your whole life just… change like that.” He doesn’t respond, continuing to stare ahead like he can make her leave if he ignores her long enough. He’s looking down into the city, she realises, and if it wasn’t so dark you might even be able to see the courthouse from on top of this hill. “After… after my trial.” she says, and she sees him startle just a little and her hands are starting to shake, because she doesn’t talk about this anymore. “Afterwards I didn’t want to go home. Nick took me out for food, and I stayed on his sofa. So, I guess maybe it’s like that, right?”
He doesn’t acknowledge her, just closes his eyes, and breathes out, breath frosting in the mornings bitter cold air.
“Okay…” She sighs. “I… I guess I’ll be going then.” She turns to leave and just when she thinks he’s not even going to say goodbye he seems to shake himself into action, voice cracking just a little when he speaks.
“Miss Fey – “ He says quickly, urgently, but then stops.
She looks back, and his eyes are trained firmly to the ground to his right, and she’ll never understand how someone who never seems to stop arguing in court gets so easily tongue tied whenever any of them speak to him outside of it.
“What?” She blurts out, and if anything, that makes him look even more uncomfortable, and she is really bad at this, if only Mia were here, so Maya could just let her sort everything out.
“I… I have come to the realisation that I never truly thanked you.” He said, and he’s still not looking at her.
“Thanked me?”
“For… your objection. During Ms Hart’s testimony. And Wright said that you were the person who kept the evidence from… from him. I would be remiss if I didn’t express my gratitude.”
“I keep hearing you say a lot of fancy words but none of them are actually thank you.” She notes, amused. He’s even worse at this than she thought.
He finally looks at her, and his cheeks have coloured with something akin to embarrassment. “…Thank you. If there’s… if there’s any way I could repay you then…”
“You already paid my bail. And you gave Nick that cheque!” Her jaw had dropped when she’d seen just how many zeroes had been on that little piece of paper, and so had Nick’s, though he’d been less obvious about it.
“I know that Wright & Co is fond of pro bono work, but traditionally private law offices are paid by their clients.” His voice is back to that wry amusement she’s more used to hearing from him. “One more example of Wrights inexplicable need to put saving people above any form of common sense.”
“He saved you.” She points out, a little annoyed, and then feels her irritation slip away as Edgeworth immediately acknowledges her with a nod.
“He did. As such I guess I lose the right to pass judgement upon him.”
“Nah, judging Nick is kind of necessary to be his friend, cause otherwise he just thinks he can get away with stupid stuff. I do it all the time, it’s a pretty fun hobby!”
“I’ll bear that in mind, although I think it’s 15 years too late to consider what we have friendship.”
“He still thinks you’re his friend.” She points out, and his gaze skitters away from her again, and she can barely see his face with how his hair drapes over it.
“As you have already pointed out, Wright has a terminal lack of restraint.”
“And there you go passing judgement again! See, you have to be his friend now!” She grins, and is rewarded by another of those tiny smiles, though it slides away almost as soon as she notices it.
“I acquiesce to your greater knowledge of the subject. For now.”
“Subject to review in a higher court?” She asks, with a laugh.
“Is there any court higher than that of public opinion?” He muses. “Or even just the opinion of Miss Maya Fey?”
“Huh, and when we met, I thought you hated me.” She says, and she’s not bitter, she’s really not anymore, not since the earthquake in the detention centre, but for a long time when she saw him it would immediately throw her back into the defendants’ seat. But she guesses he knows how that feels now, which saps any remaining ability she has to be angry, because no matter what he said to her, she couldn’t wish that on anyone anymore.
“I didn’t… It was never about you.” He says.
“I know.”
“Nevertheless… I know that my actions were… unacceptable. I allowed personal matters to blind me to what was just. And even more importantly, I was blinded to the truth.”
“And now you see.” She says, because even on her tenuous connection to the legal world she knows that this is going to change a lot of things in the courthouses of Los Tokyo, not least Edgeworth himself. She wonders just how much will be different by the time she finally manages to return from Kurain.
“There’s a lot of evaluation that will need to be done. Starting with…” His eyes find that spot on the horizon again. “Starting with his previous cases. They will need to be reassessed now that manipulation of evidence has been proved.” His hand has found his arm again, fingers knotted up in the sleeve at the crook of his elbow, a gesture that’s become familiar to Maya in the last week. “But I suppose there is an obvious place to start.”
“Is there?”
“Yes, I… It seems pertinent to apologize to you Miss Fey. When you were a defendant, I mishandled your case and it must have caused a great deal of distress. I can’t ask you to forgive me, but… well, I suppose saying that it won’t happen again sounds a little pathetic. You’ve acted with a great deal of grace towards me that I hardly deserve after how I treated you and your sister.”
“How you treated Mia?”
“You never saw it but… the senior Miss Fey and I had faced each other in court before. They weren’t always pleasant meetings, and I was not always as respectful as perhaps I should have been, I realise that now. I was young at the time, but I cannot really consider that an excuse… The two of us actually began to practice at the same time. She was the defence counsel on my first court case as a prosecutor.” He seems a little lost in thought. “In fact, if I recall correctly, it was her first case as lead counsel too.”
“I never knew that.” Maya said quietly. “I guess there’s a lot I don’t know about what Mia used to do in court. I just used to hold evidence for her sometimes, but she never took me with her. Nick says that she was brilliant, and I can kind of guess that from watching him, but…it’s not the same.”
“They have a similar style. But I believe Wright has more of a tendency to bluff. Then again, I’m not sure I could always tell when your sister bluffed. She was quite calm compared to a lot of the lawyers I know, though I suppose that could have been a bluff in itself.”
“She always seemed to know what to do. Especially once she moved away, she became so… so grown-up. And I thought, well maybe if I move away, I’ll be all sensible and wise too, but it never happened and now I have to go home anyway, and everyone treats me like a child in Kurain because they all think Mia should have been the master anyway, but she’s gone.” Maya rubs at an eye with her hand and Edgeworth seems to purposefully look away, allow her a little privacy. She’s not crying, not really, not that it matters anyway, because Edgeworth seems perfectly content to ignore any emotion that’s not mild amusement or triumphant pretentiousness, and she thinks that as soon as she walks away, chances are he’ll pretend this conversation never happened, for both their sakes. “I don’t think she cared what you thought of her. So, I guess I’ll forgive you, on her behalf, even if you are a bit of a dick sometimes.”
“I see. I appreciate that, Miss Fey.” She glances back over at him, but he’s still focusing on the horizon, which has slowly started to brighten even as they’ve been standing there talking. “I am… I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I guess you’d know how it feels, right?” The words slip out before she manages to catch them, but he was the one who bought up Mia in the first place, and the comparison isn’t that hard to make once you begin to think about it. Edgeworth’s not the only one who got some kind of closure from the resolution of DL-6, after all, even if Misty Fey is still missing, even if Mia is still gone.
“I suppose I do.”
“Does it ever stop?” She says, and then feels like kicking herself for the question, because she already knows the answer, she’s already heard all about the guilt and the nightmares, which are a matter of public record now he’s testified in court about them. “Stupid question, huh?”
“I believe the traditional answer is that there are no stupid questions, but we’ve both seen some of the objections that get raised in court, so I think we know better.” He frowns. “As for the answer, I don’t know. I… perhaps I feel a weight lifted now. I never believed that this kind of absolution would be possible, and yet somehow you and Wright achieved it for my sake. I don’t know what the equivalent would be for you, but I truly do wish you the best when it comes to finding it. Maybe Wright could help you? He’s… much better at this sort of thing than I am.”
“I think he bluffs through emotions too.” Maya sniffs, and pretends it’s the cold. “I can’t anyway, Mia told me to look after him. I don’t want to dump all this stuff on him when he’s hurting too. That’s one of the reasons I have to go home, I need to centre myself.”
“Good luck.” He says, with a small smile and an incline of his head. “I am aware that my opinion amounts for very little, but from what I knew of your sister, she was a resilient and compassionate woman… traits which I believe you share. And from the way you and Wright speak of her, I’m sure she would be proud of you.”
“You reckon?” She smiles. “I think your dad would be proud of you too.”
He clenches his hand into a fist at his side, knuckles white and bony, and then slowly uncurls it. “…Perhaps if I fix some of what Von Karma has done… There’s still a long way to go before I can consider myself worthy of my father’s pride. But I’ve finally found a path that could be considered just. I’m willing to walk it.”
She looks over to him and makes the decision before she really thinks about it, reaching over and resting a hand on his arm, a small gesture of comfort that nevertheless makes him startle like he wasn’t expecting it. But maybe he needs human contact as much as she does, because he leans into it, and they end up almost bumping shoulders on the steps outside Nicks apartment, standing, staring at the horizon and the distant city centre as the sun begins to finally rise.
“I…I need to go and pack.” She manages to say finally.
“You said you were going home?” He questions, and his tone is more what she’s used to, almost prosecutor-like as it seeks out confirmation of what she’s already said.
“Kurain village. I was never supposed to leave for this long in the first place.” She says. “I need to go so I can get to the train station before Nick gets up.”
“Not fond of farewells?” Edgeworth asks, and gets a grimace in response. “I was never very good at them either.”
“I won’t say anything to you then.” She says but gives him a wave anyway. “I… I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”
“The same goes to you, Miss Fey.” And he stands there watching silently, exhaling dragons’ breath into the chill air as she walks away into the sunrise.