[Fic] Ace Attorney: Close The Wall Up With Our Dead

[mllelaurel]

Fandom: Ace Attorney
Title: Close The Wall Up With Our Dead
Characters: Mia Fey, ensemble
Pairings: Background Mia/Diego and Aura/Metis
Rating: M/R
Warnings: Violence and major character death
Summary: Marshal Mia Fey knows the costs of trying to save the world. (Pacific Rim fusion)


“Trust your instincts and trust each other,” Marshal Fey tells them. “And trust me when I say that you’re humanity’s last defense. No pressure, right? So don’t screw up.”

It’s been years since she’s set foot in a Jaeger, herself, since they discovered that hemorrhage inside Diego’s brain. Since the doctors told her that her own time might be limited. It’s not that she’s reckless with what’s left of her life. More like she’s biding her time. If you’re broke, best to spend your savings when and where they’re most needed.

For now, the Earth is better served by the magatama at her throat. With it, she can predict where the Kaiju might next arise. She can make an educated guess as to which pair will Drift smoothly, and which will fracture; which will focus on what’s in front of them, and which will sink into the past.

It’s an imperfect science, on the best of days. Sometimes the future is clouded, and the souls don’t speak when they should.

Sometimes, she guesses wrong.

***

2020

This is how the Drift breaks you down.

They were supposed to be a perfect match. Brothers, so alike some joke they must be twins, despite an almost ten-year difference. Kristoph’s always been there for him, literally since the day he was born. Kristoph’s the one who pulled him from the wreckage, when the monsters came. Grabbed his wrist and told him to run.

Don’t look back. Never look back. It doesn’t matter who you leave behind: friends, parents, anyone at all. Everyone who matters is right here.

Sometimes, when Klavier closes his eyes, he can still feel the bruises from his brother’s hand pulling him along. Can still hear the roar of every monster from his childhood nightmares gone real. On those nights, he wishes he could feel Kris’s mind around his, outside of a Jaeger.

But in reality, that mind doesn’t feel anything like he’d imagined it would. The first few seconds are blinding light and connection. Everything he’s ever wanted, and the knowledge that he’ll never be alone again. He’s aced the training, he knows the drills. Everyone says he - they - will be the best the program has ever seen.

The bottle is a solid weight in his hand. He thought he’d feel more rage, as he readies himself to do this, but the only thing on his mind is cold satisfaction. The man in front of him had been weak. Had promised him glory as a pilot, then dumped him among the rank and file, instead.

‘Not good enough,’ he said. The kid had been good enough for this worthless bag of meat and bone.

Klavier lifts the bottle, as the man turns around. It makes a dull thwack against the back of his head, right where it meets the spinal column, where the skull won’t protect him. Memories of an aluminum bat striking a baseball, making it soar high above the field, into the blue sky overhead.

Baseball is a story from another lifetime. The elder brother’s game, far more than the younger’s, and even that was before the Kaiju came. That’s when Klavier should realize that the memory’s not real. That it’s not his.

That’s when he starts screaming. He can feel the man’s blood splatter against his face, and he can feel his own blood seeping from his ears, when they pull him out of the Jaeger. He can hear Kris yelling to let him through, and he can hear his own voice coming from someone else, shrill and distorted.

This isn’t him, and he can’t tell where Kris begins and he ends anymore, even with the neural link severed. His brother’s arms are around him, shaking his shoulders, and he can’t remember the name of the man who dies at his feet.

He’s irrelevant, whispers a voice inside his head.

Help him! Please, someone help him! The man isn’t moving, and Klavier’s own body can’t - won’t - move to even check his pulse.

He’s nothing but trash. An obstacle.

I killed him, Klavier thinks. I fucking killed him.

***

He’s supposed to have been their ace. His face, along with his brother’s, is already splattered all over a thousand billboards, the merchandising alone could keep the project afloat indefinitely. Mia finds him in her office, later that day, back ramrod-straight in the visitor’s chair, hands choking the life out of the armrests. She listens as he confesses, in graphic detail, to murdering an officer. The boy’s a hot commodity, but rules are rules, and the world is under martial law. She knows that if he’s telling the truth, Klavier Gavin will face the firing squad.

Mia has no choice but to place him under arrest, regardless of his brother’s protests or her own misgivings, but in her gut, she knows there’s something wrong with his testimony. What made it come pouring out, all of a sudden? Why now? She has a hard time believing this white-faced, guilt-stricken boy would be capable of cold-blooded murder, but this is a matter for facts, not for for psych evaluations or personal opinion.

“Justice must be served,” he tells her, gravely. He sounds nothing like the cocky class clown she remembers, who’s flirted with every squadmate, regardless of shared language, gender, seniority or even relative attractiveness. Who fills the empty air of the dome with the sounds of his guitar. “It’s the least I can do, for the man, or for anyone he might have left behind.”

“Start at the beginning,” she orders him. “Tell it all over again.”

Over and over. The empty chill inside his chest when it happened. The bottle shattering as it struck. The cracking of bone. The man’s face slackening as he fell. The man’s blood mingling with his own on his fingers, till he couldn’t tell which was whose anymore. The scar on the back of ‘his’ hand still holding the neck of that bottle.

Klavier’s manacled hands lie flat on her desk, totally unblemished. The two of them face the truth at the same time, but it’s more personal for him, isn’t it?

“He got that scar when he saved me,” and Mia remembers that Kristoph Gavin had arrived in their care with his hand in near-ruin. Falling debris, a spike of wood or metal going right through the palm, but the little brother underneath all that rubble had been more important. He’d needed multiple reconstructive surgeries to make use of it again. “He saved me, so why-? How could he?” She wishes she could give him any sort of meaningful answer, as he sits in her office, dry-eyed and unmoving, but none are forthcoming.

She watches him watch his brother’s court martial, his face a gray mask as they read out the verdict. Mia can see his mouth forming the words “please, please, please,” knows how desperately he wants to beg for the older man’s life. But justice must be served, he’s told her that already, and he refuses to be a hypocrite.

“You don’t have to look,” she tells Klavier, on the day Kristoph Gavin is executed. He reminds her of Maya so much, on that morning, all fists-clenched courage and bruised-over empathy. Mia has never been more glad of her sister’s desk job. A medium- A Fey- is too valuable to spare, especially after they learn how the Drift interacts with psychic ability.

Mia can’t see Klavier’s eyes behind the sunglasses, though she hopes he’s closed them, before the guns fire.

She’s the first to see him crumple, hands clapped over his ears, and even she thinks it simple grief, at first, until she sees the spatters of blood on those hands, running in a line from his nose, out of the corners of his eyes.

These are still the early days. Before they work all the bugs out of the neural cross-wiring. The Jaeger’s technology intermingles the minds of its riders, each signaling the other over the link. The link that’s supposed to disconnect harmlessly, once you step outside.

Mia had been the one to sign off on the Gavins’ partnership. Their Drift compatibility had been off the charts. Perhaps that was the warning she’d missed. ‘On the charts’ might have been better.

Sometimes, your partner dies in the Drift, and if you survive them, their final cry of pain and terror will wake you up, maybe every night for the rest of your life. The same thing isn’t supposed to happen when your feet are firmly planted on army base concrete, without the Jaeger’s failsafes to hold your own mind intact.

Imagine the monitor, next to the MRI. Imagine the med technician tapping a few keys, lighting up the parts of your brain which allow you to connect in a Drift and pilot a Jaeger. Now imagine having all of those lit-up neural pathways ripped out of you in a moment, like someone swiping a broom through the cobwebs.

That’s what happens to Klavier Gavin when his brother dies, more or less. He’s already beating the odds, when he comes out of the resulting coma, but he sure as hell can’t pilot again, after that. The necessary synapses just aren’t there anymore.

“So I’m useless now?” he asks Mia, as she sits by his bedside, and she can’t think of a tactful way to say ‘probably, yes.’ He’s still a kid, still a minor with no family left, so she can’t exactly send him off-base with a nice watch for his troubles.

He stares at her, past the bandages swathing his face. “Then please, find another way to make use of me.”

***

2021

This is how they lose some of their best and brightest.

It’s a Category III, two-Jaeger job.

Simon Blackquill wakes up at two AM, to Aura shaking his shoulder.

***

Miles Edgeworth is already awake, in the hangar bay, watching his father suit up and doing the same.

***

“Take care of her for me,” Aura says, and Simon nods.

“Haven’t I always?” It’s their fourth drop. Sixth, for the Edgeworth duo. It’ll be fine.

***

“Are you ready, son?” Gregory asks, and there’s no doubt in Miles’ mind.

“Five kills is an ace. What’s six again?”

“Six is overconfidence.” Miles shrugs. It’s not overconfidence if your assessment of your own capabilities is entirely accurate.

***

Metis moves through her sword drills, as Aura gets the Steel Samurai ready. This isn’t the first time Simon looks at her and thinks damn, my sister is a lucky woman. He hasn’t let it interfere with his job, or their bond. Secrets like that don’t get to fester when one’s mind is an open book. Metis knows. They’ve talked about it and laid it to rest, and Simon thinks he’s all the better for it.

There’s a shout, and Metis’s daughter comes tearing through the hangar doors. Simon sees the look in Metis’s eyes, as she wraps her arms around the girl. “Go back to bed, Athena.” This. This is why she fights.

***

Miles makes a disgruntled noise. “Who let the kid in here?”

“I heard that!” Athena stamps over to him. “Just wait till I’m old enough to pilot a Jaeger myself. Then I’ll show you ‘kid.’”

“You are a kid,” Miles says. “But I’ll look forward to your attempt at ‘rematch,’ if you’d like.”

“You’re on!” Gregory laughs, when he sees their matching determined faces.

“Maybe she’d make a better partner for you, then an old man like me, huh, Miles?”

Miles clenches his fists. No way. Just… no way! He can’t imagine fighting with anyone else by his side. Tries not to show it. You have to be cool in a crisis, not get all sentimental. What would it sound like, if one of their greatest heroes said he was afraid to go out there, without his dad backing him up? Stupid...

His dad ruffles his hair, and Miles is glad there are no cameras around, right now.

***

There’s an all-clear from Aura, as she hops down from her ladder. “Hey, Princess. Want to come up and see the controls with me, get you out of your mom’s hair?”

Metis watches them fondly, as Athena peeks at the schematics in Aura’s hand. “What, don’t I get a goodbye kiss, before I’m off?”

Simon laughs, as he watches the blush rise on Aura’s throat. She’s never been very good at public displays of affection. He’s her little brother, he should know. He turns away and lets them have their privacy.

***

All in the space of ten minutes, no more than that.

***

The water is churning round the Jaeger’s feet. Acidity levels rising. Maya Fey’s voice in his ear, “target at three o’clock. Half a mile from the ocean floor and rising, moving West, toward you.” Right now, it’s nothing more than a pinging RADAR blip, but Miles’ imagination can fill in the details.

“T-minus?”

“Five minutes, give or take.”

“Cauterization crucial?”

“Ooooh yeah.” He can practically see the face Maya is making, right now.

A minute flare of mental chatter, from his dad. Gregory tends to stay quiet during the mission itself, focused on the task at hand with everything he’s got. Miles closes his eyes, shakes his head, wishes he hadn’t remembered his mother, right then. Now’s no time for sentimentality, or for the pain knifing through him, when he thinks of her.

“Focus,” he grumbles, maybe at his dad, maybe at himself. Probably at both.

He can feel the impact of the waves, the seismic roar as the breach spasms, closing the dimensional doorway once again.

***

“Are there any civilian vessels within range?” Simon double-checks.

“Negatory!” is the response from Maya.

“The larger picture, Simon,” Metis chides him, half-vocal, half inside their currently-shared brain. “There are thousands of civilians, up in Anchorage, should our bogey make landing.”

“Not a bogey, if we know what it is.”

He gets a mental impression of her elbowing him in the ribs. “Smartass.”

They both raise their hands at the same time, and the Jaeger’s energy sword (it’s not a lightsaber, no matter how many times Aura calls it that,) flares to life, lighting up their corner of the Pacific Ocean.

***

The Kaiju emerges on Gregory’s side, its hammer head plowing into the Jaeger, making the world around them dance. Miles doesn’t have the time to feel his heartbeat exploding, or to taste the bitterness at the back of his throat. He just swings the gun arm around and fires, once, then again searing the wound shut as the Kaiju roars. The drumbeat in his ears begins to recede, as it falls.

“Six down-”

“How many more to go?”

“As many as it takes!” It’s an old exchange. His dad’s the one who started it, after their first kill, and they’ve switched off since. Miles has got the lines all memorized. They’re comforting, like someone bringing him home. He can do this is doing this, will do this again, as many times as it takes.

“Blackquill, Cykes, get your slow behinds over here and help with cleanup-”

Maya’s voice over the intercom. “Miles, you dummy, watch out! It’s still on our RADAR!”

Not dead? But how is that possible? He knows the energy output necessary to kill one of those bastards, and he’s applied every watt of it in his blast…

The strike comes on his dad’s side. There’s nothing Miles can do. Can’t turn to take the hit fast enough, as the Jaeger’s shields sizzle. “We’ve got a breach!”

Maya’s voice crackles and fades, as the radio controls are damaged. One by one, the lights inside their metal cocoon flicker and die, leaving Miles blind.

***

Simon doesn’t need to look at Metis to know where they’re moving next. “Objection Alpha is down. Intercept at seven o’clock.”

“Any survivors?” Metis fires off at mission control.

“Can’t be certain. Life monitors are offline.” That must mean oxygen is, as well.

***

“Father?” There’s no response. “Dad?”

Miles isn’t thinking about their link cutting off. Isn’t thinking about the knife through his mind, the taste of blood, the-

It didn’t happen. Just keep going. It didn’t happen. The controls have been damaged. It can’t be healthy, having them go out mid-Drift. He’s going to scream at the mechanics till he’s blue in the face.

The armor digs into the edges of his spine, useless.

***

Up close, Simon can tell there’s a hole right through Objection Alpha’s hull, jagged and acid-worn. He pries at the metal, finds the emergency hatch, as Metis takes point.

“Kaiju, one o’clock!”

Metis slashes at it. Gobbets of acidic blood congeal in the air. The sword’s electric output should have been high enough to cauterize. Why didn’t it?

***

When the hatch opens, Miles doesn’t think. He just strikes at it. Pointless acts of heroism and desperation, as a metal hand closes around his torso, and he recognizes another Jaeger.

Night sky in his face, illuminated by stars. He should be able to see Anchorage’s lights from here, but the city’s in blackout. His father used to have family in Britain. A great-uncle who’d remembered the Blitz. Black cloth over the windows, like a funeral for the still-alive.

He doesn’t look back at the fallen metal behemoth he’d been torn out of, or at his father’s body.

***

They deposit the Edgeworth boy in a subsidiary space, developed just for such eventualities, in case the pilot would have to carry civilians out of the line of fire. Not that Edgeworth would appreciate being called a civilian, Simon thinks.

Not that he’s thinking much at all, right now, Metis cautions. The shock of it must have numbed him. It could have been worse. Better this than panic or hysteria in the middle of a battlefield. Still, Simon can feel her empathy for the younger pilot. I don’t envy his therapist.

Hey, Simon shoots back. For all we know, that might be you, Cykes-dono.

Conflict of interest. But she knows, as well as anyone, that she’s one of their best specialists. Perhaps precisely because she’s a pilot, herself. She knows what it’s like. The fear, the triumph, even the crippling loss.

“Watch out!” Edgeworth screams. Not so zoned out, after all. His vantage point allows him to see what they’re missing. The Kaiju’s tail, sweeping up, like a stinger. It’s a bad position for a sword counterattack. Simon’s strike leaves it half-severed, but still hanging on.

Metis is muttering inside her mind, filing through her half of the controls. The Jaeger’s body twists, trying to lose the attacker for a critical split-second. If they can wrangle back their freedom of movement, the freedom to go on the offensive, instead of just react…

For a moment, Simon thinks he’s the one who’s just been struck, and he screams at the pain of what he thinks is his arm being severed, flesh and tendon tearing agonizingly away from the joint. Then, he sees her face, white and spattered with blood.

“Keep… going,” she tells him, but he can’t. He can’t look away from her. Why isn’t there some kind of medical backup, in here? A first-aid kit! Anything!

Because we're already already counted among the lost. He doesn’t know whose thought it is. His. Metis’s. Edgeworth’s, though that’s not even supposed to happen. Our lives have been deemed a worthwhile risk, against the lives of hundreds of thousands.

Metis doubles over, eyes going dark with pain. “Look after Athena for me.” He’s as covered with arterial spray as she is, in that moment, but he’s still alive. Still has his own blood pumping through his veins. By the time he reaches her, her eyes have already gone opaque, and she has no pulse.

He doesn’t remember screaming for backup over the radio. Doesn’t remember stabbing the Jaeger’s sword into the Kaiju’s midsection, over and over again, till it falls. Till its dot disappears from the digital map he’s not looking at.

He doesn’t remember sinking to his knees and the Steel Samurai’s mirroring actions, but he remembers when the cockpit begins to fill up with water. Someone’s hands tearing away his harness.

Edgeworth.

***

“Come on, you idiot!” Miles slams his fist into Blackquill’s face. The other pilot doesn’t respond. “If you stay interfaced, you’re going to die. Your brain can’t handle the load.” He’s probably messing up every protocol imaginable, but they’re falling and sinking, and Blackquill’s going to get him killed, too.

They’re the only ones left…

That’s when it hits him. His father is dead. Metis Cykes is dead. Even the thrice-damned Kaiju is dead. Probably. Miles’ hands shake, and he can’t get the other pilot free. Can’t think. Can’t-

He’ll always be here, in this place, won’t he? Even if they get out, he’ll always be here.

Blackquill’s harness gives way, and Miles scruffs his collar. At least the taller man doesn’t weigh anything, afloat.

He feels the acid sting of the water against his skin, but only dimly.

***

Mia remembers the emergency crews’ arrival, pulling the two of them out of the water. Critical condition, but a two-out-of-four survival rate is almost more than she’d expected, that night.

Blackquill’s gone, the moment they discharge him from the infirmary, before she even gets the chance to arrange his debriefing. She finds his letter of resignation on her desk, along with a furious Aura Blackquill, screaming about how her idiot brother had tried to take her partner’s daughter along with him.

Her arms are wrapped around Athena, as she glares bloody murder. Anyone trying to make her let go right now would be putting their life in their hands, Mia’s pretty sure.

The girl is crying. For her mother, for Simon himself, for the world to go back to the way it once was. Aura kneels next to her, strokes her hair, smooths down the headphones over her ears.

“It’s okay, Princess,” Mia hears her say. “It’s just us now, and the world be damned. We’ll be fine. We’ll be just fine.”

Miles Edgeworth’s injuries are the more severe of the two, but he remains on-base, for all it’s worth. With his father gone, there isn’t a single veteran or recruit he might be Drift-compatible with. Mia’s eyes linger on Athena Cykes, but she is far, far too young, and even if she weren’t, Aura won’t hear of it. Not that Mia can blame her.

Edgeworth remains ‘on call,’ even if, in practicality, all it means is doing Mia’s paperwork and putting himself through officer training. He chafes at it, but doesn’t say a word against the regimen, too proud to leave.

***

2017

Is it worth it, for the lives they save?

Los Angeles is in ruins, and Diego is hiding something from her. Yes, even over the link. Yes, she can tell, damn it! His mind cycles through the safety protocols, free to roam, now that the Kaiju has been dispatched.

“It’s a secret,” he tells her, when she presses, lopsided grin on his face. “Come on, Kitten, don’t spoil the surprise.”

“Fine,” she tells him, and that’s when she hears crying. Loud, to be heard from all the way down the street, like it's pitched straight into their receivers.

It’s a matter of minutes, suiting up, in case there is radiation, and then she’s rappelling down the Jaeger’s legs. She’s got a radio in her HAZMAT suit. They’d have told her, if the Kaiju they’d fought was still a risk, or if there was another danger on the horizon.

Mia can imagine what the boy sees, when she comes into view. A monstrous silhouette in black and orange, arms outstretched, voice distorted through the speakers, as she says, “hey, it’s all right, come on.”

He’s small and bawling, t-shirt torn in several places, one of his sneakers gone missing somewhere, but he’s alive and suffered no major injuries, at least to her naked eye. Mia drops down to her knee next to him. “I’m Captain Mia Fey. Not a Kaiju, I swear. What’s your name.”

The boy sniffles. “Nick. Phoenix Wright.”

She keeps herself from asking where his parents are, but only just. Where the hell does she think they are?

“My partner, Diego, and I are Jaeger pilots,” she tells him, instead. “Would you like to come back to the base with us? It’s not safe, out here.”

“I know,” he says, and starts crying again, and God damn it, there are those maternal instincts she claims not to have. Diego will never let her hear the end of it, she thinks, as she puts her arms around the boy’s - Phoenix’s shoulders.

It’s such an appropriate name, she thinks. Nothing but ashes to rise from, around here, but now he’ll have that chance, at least. She’ll see to that.

***

Diego finds her at the base, afterwards, while they’re cleaning up, gets down on one knee, pulls a ring out of his pocket. It isn’t what he’d been hiding from her, not in retrospect, but hindsight is twenty-twenty. What’s a headache or a bout of blurry vision, to a lifetime together. A lifetime for him. Not so much for her. If she could go back in time, God above but she would kick him for being a stubborn macho dick!

They never turn up any of Phoenix’s relatives, but that’s not exactly a surprise. Mia’s not planning on raising the boy herself, much less doing so on her own, after Diego collapses, but when has anything in this world ever been planned, short of strategic battle maneuvers, and even those rarely survive first contact with the enemy.

Someone jokes that all her soldiers, all her pilots are her children, and she barks at them to cut the sass, but there’s some truth to it, even so. Far too much truth, in how young some of them are, from Klavier Gavin to Miles Edgeworth, and she knows there's a very real chance Phoenix will be called to battle some day, no matter that he's hers. They're all barely more than kids, and Mia knows she will lose so many of them, along the way. It’s all she can do, holding on to as many as she is able.

Is it worth it? It will have to be.