damned_institute | Day 35: Twin Pines Restaurant

From an outside perspective, it must have looked like Phoenix had forgotten how to do anything but stare dumbly and blush. Unfortunately, included in 'anything' was swallowing one's saliva rather than breathing it, so the stare was cut short after a few seemingly eternal seconds by a violent coughing fit he found himself muffling into his sleeve.

We already--? His brain glanced off of the last few words in that sentence, mirror-smooth with denial. It wasn't that the thought was unpalatable -- hell, he'd dreamed about-

Okay, remembering that was definitely not helping with the coughing.

Edgeworth didn't say anything in response. He simply walked up to Phoenix and pulled off the offending hat, sticking it in one of his pockets until he could dispose of it. If he had been the type to do so, this action might have been accompanied by a victory dance.

I wonder if they keep books of matches by their cash register,, he thought.

"...come on inside with me. We'll grab lunch, and we definitely need to get you a glass of water. And - er, I guess we should talk about this whole thing, shouldn't we? We didn't get much of a chance to do it yesterday or last night. I certainly wouldn't want to discuss such a...private topic around Gumshoe, and last night was not exactly the best time, either."

Phoenix managed to nod and croak a 'right', catching his breath by the time they got to the door. Guess I deserved that, he thought with no small amount a chagrin, trying to finger-comb his hair into something marginally presentable as he followed Edgeworth back to his table.

He pulled out a chair for himself and sat down slowly, giving a quiet sigh and leaning back. Even if he'd been fairly aimless in his explorations, he'd been wandering all morning, and getting a chance to sit down was a relief. He dragged the second menu to his place setting, flipping it open without making any real effort to read what was inside.

Well, I guess that does a good job of explaining the yelling, he thought, after a few quiet seconds glancing up at Edgeworth.

Their waitress popped by a moment after Edgeworth sat back down. "We need a few more minutes," he explained. He followed her with his eyes as she walked away, then turned back to Phoenix.

"...where do you want me to start?"

There were a number of reasonable questions - how it all had started, what brought it about, the questions of how far they had gone. He thought he knew all of them, and probably could have started to explain, but the starting point would be helpful.

"The beginning, if you can," Phoenix answered, voice self-consciously hushed. He drummed his fingers on the slightly-scuffed laminated menu, taking a moment to think. "You said that I was already here when you arrived. And . . . it was that night when . . .?" He trailed off, unsure how he wanted to phrase it. When they put your dad's voice in your head? When we got together? When I apparently became an action hero? None of them were really things he felt comfortable saying in a restaurant, now matter how quiet the tones.

Edgeworth took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, composing himself enough to begin. He kept his voice low; while he was fairly sure that the crowd noise would keep any potential eavesdroppers away, he wanted to be sure.

"You hadn't been here more than a day or two when I arrived - long enough to find out the basics of the place and see a bit of them, but that's about it. I woke up here towards the end of the night. We didn't meet till the next morning.

Our positions were just about reversed from what they were when you appeared the second time. As you know, I was brought here directly after the Skye case, but you were from about two months after. You said you had spent a good portion of those two months looking for me, because of that note I left behind."

He reached for a napkin, twisting it nervously in his hands as he continued. "That night, I was taken for that experiment. They were in the habit of announcing who had been taken over the intercom. That's how you knew I'd been taken. This was before maps were so easily available, so you found a couple of people who had been to the second floor, where the experiment rooms are, and had them take you there. Your group wasn't the only one with the same idea. There were a lot of people up there, which turned out to be a good thing. A large monster attacked the group."

"The trained fighters out of the group insisted that you get me out of there. You agreed, and since your room was closer to the stairs than mine was, that's where we went. You got me back there, we talked for a bit, and well, it's when I kissed you for the first time. We talked about it the next day, as awkward as it was, and well..."

Edgeworth swallowed hard, feeling the blush that had only just begun to fade regain its intensity. "Time in the Institute is funny, and it affects everything. It has a way of speeding things up at times. We...well. We escalated things perhaps more quickly than we would have otherwise. That next night, in fact."

"I . . . see."

Phoenix blinked, stunned, fingertips belatedly falling still against the menu. Oh, damn, he thought after a bewildered second. I'm easy.

No, wait, evil Narnia rules, remember that, so if two years equals about a week here, then (divide by seven, remainder three-) theoretically a day is almost three and a half months here, and that really isn't that bad, it's not like I OH GOD WHO AM I KIDDING it was one conversation past the first time we kissed I am so totally easy.

I should have known. Even under normal circumstances I fall too hard and too fast. I wouldn't even be surprised if I-

That thought stopped him cold. He knew what he'd done, now, but what exactly had he said? The Big Three Words did not seem entirely out of the question anymore. It was all he could do not to groan, and he finally looked down at his hands, failing at both not fidgeting and not flushing.

I could have said it. I fall hard. Worse than that, I fall stupid. Ugly sweaters and hero worship stupid. Love sonnets stupid.

If there is a God in heaven, please let me not have composed a love poem.

Edited 2008-09-13 01:30 (UTC)

Edgeworth closed his eyes, rubbing slow circles over his temples.

...I am an idiot. A well-intentioned idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. I just keep dumping information onto him, and I expect him to just process it like it's nothing. It does not work like that in this or any universe that may be out there.

I wouldn't blame him for walking away and never giving me the time of day again. I'd have it coming, for letting him down in the first place then and now, the...everything. The voice, the relationship, the setting, the timing.

He looked up at Phoenix, still blushing. "I know this is a lot to process."

Understatement of the year. Dig that hole a little deeper, don't you.

"But, you asked me for the truth. I don't see any sense in holding anything back from you. What didn't I answer?"

". . . um." He closed his eyes tightly, rubbing at the back of his neck and hoping to regain even a tenth of his usual composure.

He wanted to ask what he'd said, but he wasn't sure that mattered. Whatever he'd said were someone else's words by now, effectively. He was going to have to make his own way from here on.

And when -- if -- he said what he might have said, he didn't want to even suspect that he might just be trying to fill an expectation.

He released a breath, letting himself steady a bit before looking up again. He still felt strange, head tingling warm and faintly spinning, stomach completely uninterested in the prospect of food. But he'd be fine. He had to be fine. The truth couldn't kill him.

"Edgeworth -- you're right. You're not the person I go to if I want a careful, filtered version of what happened. You're the person I go to when I want the whole truth as you see it, regardless of whether it's going to leave a bruise." He smiled, a little shaky but unmistakably sincere, leaning his elbows on the table. "So thanks for that. I think I'm more or less caught up."

Edgeworth nodded. "You're welcome. I don't have much else to add, really; I fell ill and was sent to the infirmary, and when I was released you were nowhere to be found. I started an investigation almost immediately after. This brings us to the present."

The silence that followed that last statement was almost deafening. The details were out in the open, and that meant it was time for the conclusions. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to hear them. Edgeworth twisted the napkin he was holding between his fingers, first one way and then the other. After a long moment of silence, he asked, "Penny for your thoughts, Wright?"

"Thoughts. . . .?" He ruffled at his hair, then straightened it again, after a few moments of thought shaking his head. "You'll get more solid ones in a day or so, but I can give you my best impressions right now."

He wanted to filter what he said. He wanted there to be more careful consideration and judgment behind his words. But in the end, his heart usually beat his brain in the race for his mouth, and today was no exception.

"I just . . . I wish I wasn't making everything this awkward. I wish it still didn't seem so unbelievable. Knowing what happened helps, but it's not the same as remembering it. Right now all I can do is keep trying -- and that's okay, I'm used to that," he admitted lowly, averting his eyes. He vastly preferred extracting confessions to giving them; he had to force the next words out, picking at the cuff of his sweatshirt nervously. "But if I could just start where we left off -- completely seamless, just like you say it was . . . I'd do it." He looked up, swallowing, and the unease of newness shone clear in his eyes beneath the dogged honesty. "I'd do it in a heartbeat."

He let out a breath he hadn't even realized he had been holding. He had expected to hear Phoenix say 'I need some time to think about this', or 'I can't do this with all the history'. What he'd said instead was unexpected, surprising, sentimental - all the things he found endearing.

If we weren't in public - and not just in public, surrounded by nurses - I would lean over this table and kiss you.

They were in public, in broad daylight, and though a part of Miles' brain, aged sixteen, wanted to ask 'hey, wanna go make out behind the bookstore?', or 'you know, I had this crazy dream about you last night, do you want to go re-enact it?', he refrained, instead, just smiling.

"Then, let's pick up where we left off, with one condition - no disappearances on either side. We leave this place together."

With that, Edgeworth extended a hand to Phoenix. "Does that seem fair?"

A thick band of tension that Phoenix had barely been aware of melted between his shoulders, and the smile crept back onto his face, little by little.

This wasn't as new as it looked. There was still trouble, and there was still danger, and they were both still going to beat it. That was all there was to it, and when he looked at it that way, nothing seemed quite as daunting. For a pair of lawyers, nothing was more natural than following precedent.

He took the proffered hand, squeezing it more than he shook it. "'Fair'?" He chuckled, lifting an eyebrow slightly. "Mr. Edgeworth, that sounds perfect."

"I'm glad you see it my way, Mr. Wright." Edgeworth returned that squeeze, smiling back.

The bad mood he had been in just a little while earlier was gone, replaced with a newfound determination and spark. Things weren't as bad as they had seemed only moments ago.

Though he wasn't really in the mood to eat anything now - his stomach was too fluttery, too strained by the shifts between tension and relief - he realized he'd regret it later if he didn't, and Edgeworth flipped the menu open.

"...you know, if we're stuck here after the Institute falls, I have half a mind to build at least one decent Italian or French restaurant here."

Phoenix looked a little green for a moment, then shook his head, looking back down at the menu. "I, ah -- I'm not sure I have a lot of experience with French-" he began, only to halt as the waitress sidled up, looking at them curiously.

"Still need some time?"

Oh, right. Wait staff. Waiting on our entire conversation. Oops. Phoenix at least had the good grace to look chagrined, scanning the menu and answering with the first thing he saw that was boxed in with decorative dark red in that distinctive small-restaurant 'we like this one!' way. "Country-fried steak?"

"Good choice!" She scratched out the order on her notepad, not looking up. "What kind of potato? And soup or salad?"

". . . fries, I guess. Salad with Italian dressing. And can I just get a water?"

"Sure thing." She glanced to the other occupant of the table next. "And you, sir?"

It was Edgeworth's turn to quickly scan the menu and decide on something, also looking a bit chagrined. "Um, I'll have the same, with a baked potato instead of fries, salad with raspberry vinaigrette if you have it and Italian dressing if you don't, and iced tea with lemon." It wasn't his usual style - definitely not - but if every newspaper clipping in the window proclaimed how good their country-fried steak was, there had to be something to it.

Their waitress scribbled the order down, smiling. "I'll get that right out to you."

That bit of business aside, he turned to Phoenix again. "I hate to change the subject so dramatically, but. The voice. It was reacting to something on the bus ride over this morning. I don't think it was anything to do with the kid sitting next to me. Did you notice anything unusual? It could be leftover anxiety from last night, and very likely is, but it's worrisome."

"The voice?" He'd almost forgotten about that, and took a half-second before correcting himself hastily. "Oh, right. The voice." He leaned his chin on his palm, frowning thoughtfully. "I didn't see anything happening along the roadside from the window, so . . . no, not that I can think of. But I don't really know what makes it . . . you know. Speak up."

He tried to sound as nonplussed by the whole matter as he could. After all, if this was weird for him to just hear about it, he couldn't imagine experiencing it. But he couldn't shake the uneasiness that gripped him when he thought about it, either. He'd worked with mediums, but it was easy to tell when they were channeling someone who could potentially hear him and when they weren't. It wasn't anything like this. This was like being in a room with a window of one-way glass, only able to guess whether there was a person watching from the other side.

"It doesn't usually react that strongly most of the time, unless I'm overly stressed or in some kind of trouble - at least that's its usual pattern. It's not reacting right now, and hasn't, really, since I got off the bus, aside from a twinge here and there. I can only guess that stress hormones or fear are the major triggers. It's still strange, though, which is why I was asking if you'd seen anything or run into anyone unusual. It's never reacted like that before, but I wanted to rule it out."

Edgeworth fiddled with a lock of his hair that had fallen into his eyes. When he spoke again, it was in a distinctly apologetic tone. "I'm sorry. I know it's weird. This is going to sound terrible, but I almost wish Maya was here, so I could brainstorm something with her, and maybe figure out how to control it a little better."

He glanced around the restaurant. Any time you want to interrupt us with food, that would be welcome.

"It's okay. I know what you mean." I don't know how much she'd know about something like this, but it has to be more than me.

He glanced up as the waitress came by with their drinks and salads, giving a low 'thank you' and smile before turning back to the conversation.

"I can't think of anything that would have set it off." He looked down to the straw the waitress had left, peeling the paper off slowly. "For what it's worth, I spent the ride over talking with someone who apparently knows me in the future. I couldn't figure out much about him -- his name is Kristoph Gavin, he said he's known me for seven years, and he's probably a lawyer. He recognized me right away, too, so we must've known each other pretty well. It was hard to get a bead on anything else about him, though -- he didn't seem especially happy or unhappy about seeing me." He plunked the straw in his water glass, crumpling the paper into a ball between his fingers. "I wouldn't say I was scared or anything, though."

"You met someone that knows you in the future?" Miles raised an eyebrow as he added sugar to his tea and stirred it carefully. "Did he fill in any details at all, other than being a lawyer? Court cases, what type of lawyer he is, how you met, that kind of thing?"

The idea of meeting someone from the future shouldn't bother him, he thought. He had met a lot of people who claimed to be from after his own timeline, and just as many who were from before it. That, in and of itself, wasn't a problem. It was just a fact of life in Landel's Institute; you met people from different points in time. No, that wasn't what was eating at Edgeworth.

The fact that Wright hadn't been able to read Gavin bothered him. It could have the man's personality type - some books were more open than others. Phoenix had always had the uncanny ability to see past that, however, and get at the truth of a person.

"Did he mention anyone else he knew?" He intentionally left the question vague. If Wright wasn't scared or worried, I shouldn't be, either, but something isn't adding up.

Edited 2008-09-14 02:27 (UTC)

". . . no, actually." Phoenix poked around his salad, pushing the slices of cucumber to one side. "Which is why the whole thing was weird. I mean, apparently he arrived yesterday, too, so he could just still be stunned by the whole thing -- he seemed like the polite, restrained type. But . . ."

But he's right. He didn't tell me anything, hardly. Wouldn't someone who was friends with me for that long want me to know . . . I don't know, something? He sighed, spearing a wedge of tomato. "Anyway, why would the voice even react to something that happened to me?" His mental impression of Mr. Edgeworth was a rough-stitched quilt of photographs and documents, bagged evidence and faded impressions from nearly two decades ago. From what he'd been able to tell, he'd been a good man; the memory of a spare, calm kind of humor smoothed down what otherwise would have been hard edges of dedication and focus. But he'd also been basically human. Thinking of him as some sort of extrasensory other, vaguely warning not only his own son but his friends? That seemed like a stretch.

That moved the whole situation from odd to suspicious. "It could be the shock of the situation, you're right, but something still doesn't sit well with me. Am I correct in assuming that you explained you didn't remember him? If so, then why wouldn't he want you to know the details? That doesn't make sense."

Edgeworth took a bite of his salad, using the time to think.

That's right. It makes sense that the voice would react if I'm in danger or if I'm stressed, because it's my father's. It doesn't make sense that it would react to anyone else. If it was going to react to anyone, it would be to Phoenix, but it didn't do that before. Why would it start now?

"I don't know why it would react to something that happened to you, no...unless it's some strange side effect of the experiment. It's never reacted like that before, though, so it doesn't seem likely that it would change suddenly..."

Then the realization hit, and Edgeworth very nearly dropped his fork in response. "...unless the shock of running into von Karma last night sent it into overdrive, and it's reacting for people he's threatened."

That's ridiculous. If that voice was reacting on behalf of everyone von Karma had ever threatened, it would never stop. Phoenix continued to work at his salad, jabbing at the lettuce a little more viciously. Though . . . alright, I guess I defended Edgeworth and did that whole bringing-the-murderer-to-justice thing. That could put me in some good graces.

"I'm not sure it's everyone he ever threatened -- that's a pretty long list. But I can see making a case or two for me being singled out." He hummed a little, raking the remaining lettuce into a little pile directly opposite the stack of cucumber slices. "We'll see if it happens again, and for now I'll be careful with Mr. Gavin. I think that's the best course until we have more information." It wasn't as if he'd been completely incautious around him already, albeit for different reasons than the ones he suspected now. But until he got a clearer indication of the exact circumstances of their acquaintance, he might as well play this close to the vest.

"I think it would have to be more specific than the entirety of the list - I'd be in a straitjacket if it wasn't." Edgeworth pushed his salad plate to the side and took a sip of tea.

"Here's what I'm basing the conjecture on: the voice reacted more strongly last night than it has at any other time since the experiment. It was clearly reacting to von Karma, which makes sense. You and Gumshoe happen to be two of the people he's threatened, and you were both there when the reaction was so strong. If it was going to extend outward - and I'm not saying for sure that it did, because one incident does not a pattern make - it makes sense that it would extend to the two of you."

He reached for his journal, making a few notes, and nodding. "I think that's a wise course of action. There's no sense getting overly worried until we know more about what Gavin's intentions might be."

"That was my thought." He nodded, finishing the rest of his salad before nudging the plate toward the corner.

I wonder how he recognized me so quickly. It even took Edgeworth awhile, and if anyone's going to know my face, I'd think it would be my . . .

. . . boyfriend? That just didn't sound right -- too diminutive. But 'significant other' sounded far too committed for something this new and strange, 'partner' and 'lover' were just off (and not words he could see himself saying with a straight face, one too clinical and the other too flowery), and 'manfriend' . . . wasn't actually a word.

It figures I'd have to come up with a new word for you, he thought ruefully, glancing at Miles with a bit of a smirk, only to be interrupted by a plate clinking to the table in front of him.

"Thank you." He glanced up at the waitress, already reaching for the ketchup.

Day 35: Twin Pines Restaurant

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