[Fic] Ace Attorney: Requiescat Regina

[mllelaurel]

It occurs to me that I should cross-post the fic I've been posting to AO3 here. And so I shall. I'll probably do one fic/chapter a day, so as not to spam overmuch.

Fandom: Ace Attorney
Title: Requiescat Regina
Characters: Miles Edgeworth, Mia Fey
Pairings: None (mention of Mia/Diego, if you squint)
Rating: T/PG/PG-13
Warnings: Canonical character death, including one by suicide
Summary: One funeral Miles Edgeworth attended, and one he did not.

He does not attend Mia Fey’s funeral. It would not have been appropriate, nor would he have been welcome. He would have felt the same, he imagines, if someone had tried to convict him as Franziska’s killer, only to make attempts at ingratiation afterwards. (He can practically hear his adopted sister’s voice at that thought. “As though a fool like yourself could ever hope to bring me down, Miles Edgeworth,” and he almost smiles, despite himself.) At any rate, he’s had about enough of Wright and the younger Miss Fey, and he’s certain they’ve likewise had enough of him.

Still he'd known when she would be buried, with time enough to make a few calls, a couple of arrangements. And a week later, he finds himself at her gravesite, black coat over his shoulders despite the late August heat. God, but he hates California. He’s not so sentimental as to have brought flowers.

‘Beloved sister, teacher and friend,’ says the stone. ‘Gone beyond the veil but not beyond our reach, nor from our hearts.’ Confusing and overly poetic, but he supposes it’s their due, whatever they want to carve. Gravestones, funerals, quiet cemeteries that smell like roses and freshly mown grass - all of those exist for the living and not the dead. Small comforts people use to delude themselves and dampen the blow in the wake of loss.

This is the part where you are supposed to talk to the dead. Say, perhaps, what they had meant to you, or apprise them of your day to day goings-on. He’d barely known the woman, though he’d give her enough credit for being a halfway-competent defense attorney. He remains silent and, instead, remembers another gravesite.

***

He hadn’t expected the turnout of the century at Terry Fawles’ funeral, but having only members of the legal profession present is nothing short of laughable. Hawthorne certainly hasn’t shown, nor is it precisely expected of her, all things considered. Hell if he even knows why he’s here.

The priest’s voice drones on. A Bible passage, Miles is fairly certain, though he wouldn’t be able to say which one, nor analyze its implications. The Von Karma family is hardly religious. He’s tempted to check his watch more than once.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Mia Fey’s eyes are puffy, even under carefully applied makeup. Her partner, Armando, has got an arm around her shoulders, murmuring something in her ear, far too intimate for the professional relationship the two should maintain. Neither of them look in his direction. After the sermon is over and the body is lowered, Armando says something to her again, too low for Miles to overhear, and she shakes her head in return. After a moment, Armando retreats, leaving Fey alone. She stands there, oblivious to the world, arms crossed over her chest - defensive or lost, he can’t quite tell. He’s ready to walk out himself, when she finally acknowledges his presence.

“Edgeworth.” Unspoken: why did you come?

If she won’t bother to ask the question, then he’s certainly not going to meet her halfway. It’s one of the oldest interrogation techniques in the book. Leave your words unfinished, and let your target’s guilty mind and tongue fill in the rest. “Fey,” he says instead, acknowledging that he’s perfectly aware of her name, just as she is of his.

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“I don’t.” He remembers Fawles’ body hitting the floor. The man was still warm when Miles had grabbed his wrist, searching in vain for a pulse. “I simply thought I would see some sort of end to this-”

“Clusterfuck. The word you’re looking for is ‘clusterfuck.” She wipes the back of one hand over her eyes. It comes away stained with mascara. “So few people… I’d have thought at least a couple more would have shown up.”

He shrugs, mouth pulling into a tight line. “That’s the price you pay for being a murderer.” Though if he doesn’t drag his career out of this gutter and fast, he suspects that’s exactly three more people than his own funeral might host.

“You still think he was guilty, after everything!”

What he thinks is irrelevant. What matters is the case to be presented in a court of law, and as compelling a public speaker as Fey might be, she hasn’t won him over to her side just yet. (‘Just yet.’ He ignores those last two treacherous words, hanging like hitchhikers on to the end of a perfectly good sentence. No point in thinking there was even a chance he might have lost.)

“There was no verdict,” he says. “I’ll stick to my side of the story, if it’s all the same.”

“Edgeworth,” she says, and it’s not the first time he hears distaste married to his name, nor will it be the last. “You are neither an idiot, nor as amoral as you’d like to pretend.”

“Paying dubious compliments to the prosecution? How sycophantic of you.”

She snorts. “I’m not interested in whether or not you like me, Edgeworth. I’m interested in the truth. And I’m interested- no, I am incensed that a good man has died thanks to you and me.”

“I didn’t tip that vial of poison into his mouth, and I would be surprised to hear you had. Though if you had, please save your confessions for the stand. I would vastly prefer to serve as prosecution, rather than witness.”

“I could have saved him.”

“Last I checked, saving people wasn't our job.”

“And what, pray tell, is?”

“Argue your case and win. Or lose as graciously as you can, if you’re facing me.”

“So who wins this, then?”

‘No one’ is the correct answer. He lets it hang in the silence.

“Then it’s not over.” Her shoulders shake slightly in what could be a sob, or a particularly grim burst of laughter. “A lawyer doesn’t get to cry till it’s all over, right?”

If by ‘till it’s over’ she means ‘until one’s own death,’ then she would be entirely correct. Clearly whichever mid-tier law school Fey had attended had failed to teach her the basic lesson of the profession: never show your throat. Not to your opponent, nor to those you are foolish enough to believe are on your own side. Tears are for children and funeral corteges. Though he supposes the two of them qualify for the latter, as they are now.

“Do you want to finish the case, Fey?” he finds himself asking.

“Of course I do, but-”

“Then do it. Here and now. You argue your side, what little of a one you have, and I’ll argue mine.”

“Does it matter anymore? He’s dead.”

“Convince me, Fey.” The words come out terse, mocking. Some part of him wonders what in the seven hells he’s doing. As though he wants her to be right, here, off the record, where it wouldn’t sink his career trajectory like a cat in a bag.

Perhaps, just like her, he doesn’t want this nothingness for his only answer. A hoarse demand to stop the trial is not a verdict. Not a conclusion. Nothing like a real win.

He hadn’t expected her to take his bait. As the sky darkens above their heads, they argue the Fawles case one more time. The evidence is not on display here, nor the witnesses, but both have memories sharp enough to serve. He tears her first argument to shreds, and her second.

Her counterargument gets through his guard, takes him like a bullet to the sternum.

It’s dark enough he can’t see the rain when it begins, though he resents its feeble attempt at pathetic fallacy, as well as the damage it’s doing to his suit. One prosecutor and one defense, soaking wet, arguing desperately over a moot point.

In the end, he freely admits she’s right about one thing. This mockery of a mock court would not, and does not change a thing. No judge, no verdict, no resolution. Just two black suits, getting wetter and muddier by the second. It’s all in another proverbial country, and besides, the wretch is dead.

They don’t, exactly, part good friends, nor even civil acquaintances, really. In the end, as he turns to leave, he bats her earlier question back to her. “So, who wins this, then?”

“Ask Dahlia Hawthorne.”

A year later, Mia Fey would go on to do just that.

***

He has no interest in overhearing Wright’s conversation with Maya Fey in court, before the start of the Powers trial, but they’re loud enough he has no choice in the matter.

“I called Kurain,” Miss Fey says. “They say they would have paid for Sis’s funeral, but Nick? It wasn’t them!”

“So, who do you think it was.”

“I dunno. They don’t know. The funeral home director didn’t say. I guess they could use their powers to find out, but…”

“But?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. Someone did a nice thing. If they want to keep it secret, I guess that’s their choice.”

So Fey had wealthy relatives who could have dealt with it after all. He feels like an utter clod. Still, he supposes he owes her, for having the tenacity to take down Hawthorne. As well as for Wright’s continued bumbling presence in his life, apparently, though he would hardly thank her for that.

As he leaves the courthouse, he imagines for a moment that he hears a woman laughing, the timbre of her voice galling but not unkind.