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Trucy hadn’t really known Phoenix Wright as a lawyer.
Obviously, that had been her first impression of him. He was the lawyer that was going to defend her daddy in court, and she was meant to help. But she’d only known him a day when that changed, and he’d lost the job (in part because of her).
It was interesting, knowing someone in ways that most people didn’t. The majority of people, when they heard the name ‘Phoenix Wright’, thought of a defence attorney who took on wild murder cases and had quite a winning streak but was disbarred after presenting forged evidence. Trucy, when she heard the name ‘Phoenix Wright’, thought of the person who would braid her hair and take her out for noodles and sit in the audience of her magic shows. Her daddy.
He was sometimes similar to her other daddy, in some ways. Especially in poker matches, when he had something to hide and a face to maintain. But he was also dramatically different- he didn’t dress himself up, he didn’t teach her magic tricks, he didn’t do disappearing acts.
Selfishly, Trucy didn’t really want him to change.
It was stupid. There was nothing wrong with him being a lawyer. In fact, it was good. Really good! He’d always been sad that he couldn’t be, for as long as she’d known him. It was a job he really enjoyed doing, and as good as he was at poker, he didn’t have as much passion for it. So when he told her he was taking the bar again, Trucy smiled and wished him luck and pretended she didn’t want to beg him to stay.
The thing about change, even good change, was that things got left behind. The person he used to be, the person he’d been for seven years, was about to do a disappearing act. Disappearing acts were Trucy’s least favourite magic trick.
Of course, he wouldn’t completely change. People didn’t generally do a complete 180° out of nowhere. But he wouldn’t need her to come in and help with poker matches, and he wouldn’t need her to do shows to help pay the bills, and he wouldn’t come home wearing the comfy sweater and beanie. And she remembered, she would always remember, that a courtroom was the place her first daddy disappeared from.
She didn’t know what it would look like, when Phoenix Wright became a lawyer again. Maybe it would just be a costume change, maybe he would just be her daddy but in a suit, and nothing between them would be different.
His costume wouldn’t change back, though. And sometimes Trucy really, really wished the show would end and she could go back home.
——
He’d gone suit shopping, with Edgeworth. Came home with a neat blue suit, untouched by grape juice stains. Trucy tried to adjust herself to the sight of it. Tried to think of the colour blue as similar to her own hat and cape, rather than similar to his old suit he wore the day Zak Gramarye vanished. Tried to imagine him wearing it every day. It didn’t look right on him- too neat, too professional, too performative.
Edgeworth stayed home with them the rest of that day. While her daddy worked on making dinner, he sat down on the couch with her and they talked. “How have you been?” He asked. She tried to think of an answer that didn’t feel too honest, but wasn’t a lie either.
“I have a show in a week, so I’ve been preparing for that,” she said, smile sitting just right on her face. “I think it’ll be a good one! Will you be there?” She did not, actually, think it would be a good one. She’d been losing focus. Her heart wasn’t in it. But if her family was there, she’d pull through.
“Yes, I think I can make time for it,” Edgeworth said. She nodded, committing to putting in effort now. She wondered at what point magic started to become a chore to her. Everything felt a bit like a chore lately, as if getting up out of bed implied she’d never be able to go back to bed later. Like she’d be ripped from her home if she spent too long outside of it.
Would it still be an ‘anything’ agency, she wondered, when it was packed full of lawyers? Would she be too out of place? Would they want her to move her props out of the office, so their clients wouldn’t be weirded out? Would they want her to move herself out of the office, so she wasn’t in the way?
“… I don’t want to pry,” Edgeworth said, and she tried not to visibly tense, “but your father said you’ve seemed upset, lately.”
Of course he noticed. She was pretty sure she saw him sticking that shiny green rock into his pocket earlier this week. He’d always been good at catching people in lies, collecting evidence to trip up the culprits.
She was good too, of course. He hadn’t been lying. He wanted to be a lawyer, and he wanted to go back to how things were, and she was supposed to be happy for him.
Edgeworth was not as good at catching people in lies. Perceptive, sure, but he didn’t have special abilities. So, at her cue, she smiled and said “Just tired! Had a busy week, is all!”
He hummed, unphased, but did not argue. He was never good at emotional conversations, she knew. Even if he’d caught onto her mood, he wasn’t likely to push. Sometimes she liked that about him. Sometimes she hated it. She didn’t know how to feel, now, but continued to smile.
Before he left that day, he’d quietly told her “You should talk to him,” and she pretended not to hear him.
——
She was being ridiculous, she knew. Her daddy wasn’t going anywhere, he wasn’t changing who he was, he wasn’t leaving her as far as she knew. There was nothing about him being a lawyer that should bother her. Costume changes didn’t make the actor a completely different person.
She couldn’t get her tricks right. The props felt flimsy in her hands. It was hard to misdirect an audience when she felt unfocused herself. The show was just a couple days away, and her family would be in the audience. She’d rather there was no show and her family would watch the Steel Samurai with her at home on an old worn couch.
“Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” Her daddy asked, when he entered the room. He had shaved, his clothes looked cleaner, he looked less tired. These were good things. She fumbled with her props and dropped them clumsily.
“Both,” she said, quite honestly. She was working hard and nothing was working. She was tempted to cancel the show altogether.
Her daddy frowned, brows furrowing. He walked up to stand beside her. “What’s wrong?” He asked.
And well, she couldn’t just say ‘you’, could she?
“Just. Having trouble with these tricks,” she said, not a lie. “Might need to change my plans a bit or something.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at it and not him. The hand was familiar, safe. “That’s not all,” he said, not a question.
“I’ll get over it,” she said.
“Trucy,” he reprimanded.
There shouldn’t be a rift between them. Nothing had changed. He sounded the same, he acted the same, he was the same person, he hadn’t disappeared. But talking to him lately felt like she’d missed a step on the stairs.
She smiled, because she couldn’t stop performing. “Promise!”
He didn’t smile, because he wasn’t performing. What did it mean to change costumes, for someone who wasn’t a performer? Did that mean it wasn’t an act? Did the whole of him change with it? He didn’t even wear his locket properly anymore most days, keeping it hidden away in a pocket. What was she meant to think?
“Trucy, I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” he said. He said that pretty often.
Good, she thought. Good, I don’t want you to help. She shrugged his hand off of her shoulder. She still didn’t look at his face. She was being sort of mean, she thought- this couldn’t be fair to him. But what was the other option? Telling him she liked him better as the miserable poker player? Telling him she wanted him to abandon his goals? That was meaner.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, which was true. If anything was wrong, it was her. Her daddy was doing great, and she should be happy for him. This wasn’t a problem. “Just need to practice more!” She said, picking up the props scattered on the floor.
“You don’t have to do the show,” he said.
She laughed. “Uncle Edgeworth already agreed to come! And I don’t back down from a challenge.” She put her hands on her hips. “I won’t give up just because this magic trick is a little… tricky.”
He didn’t laugh. She usually got him with a dumb joke. She just wanted to go back to normal.
“Did I do something wrong?” He asked, and she tried not to flinch. “I feel like you’re shutting me out.”
“Are you using the magatama?” She asked, because this felt like a needling lock-breaking kind of question. She felt tense. She didn’t want to be interrogated, that wasn’t something her daddy did. Not to her, at least.
“I- I don’t use it on purpose, it just-” He stammered. That answered that. “I can put it away. Is that what’s bothering you?”
She didn’t want to answer that. She wondered if a lock broke, or if it would only do that once she said something. She’d never seen it happen, she didn’t know what it looked like. Pearl told her no one could feel it happening, it was just there.
“Put it away,” she said, voice quiet. Even that felt too open. If a lock broke, she didn’t want to know.
“Okay,” he surrendered, reaching into a pocket and pulling out the rock to place it on a table and leave it there. “But we’re still talking about this, okay?”
She sighed, pouting a little. She hadn’t even directly lied about anything, had she? She walked over to the couch and threw herself down on it. He awkwardly sat beside her.
It was quiet for a bit. He tapped his foot restlessly, and her eyes were drawn to it. He was probably waiting for her to start talking. She stubbornly said nothing.
She knew she wasn’t escaping the conversation. But without the magatama, maybe she could at least misdirect him a little. She did not want the whole truth clawed out of her by force.
“Was the magatama the problem?” Her daddy finally asked, when he realized she wasn’t going to talk first. He sounded like he knew that wasn’t it, but he didn’t have a better lead.
She didn’t know how honest she should be. She chewed her lip.
“I won’t judge you,” he said. “I don’t have to have it on me at home, if it bothers you.”
It wasn’t fair, she knew. She didn’t complain about Apollo’s bracelet. No one complained when she used her own power. It was normal for her family to catch people in lies.
But he hadn’t been keeping it on him, as a poker player. He rarely kept it with him, for most of the time she’d known him. At least not at home.
“Okay, yeah,” she said. She did not elaborate. She knew he wouldn’t drop it, but the idea of saying more made her tongue feel tied.
“Okay,” he agreed, “I won’t, then.” She relaxed, a little. She hoped maybe that would be enough to help things feel somewhat normal again. She knew it wouldn’t be. “Just… what about it bothers you?”
She could lie. She could say ‘I don’t like that you have a lie detector with you all the time, it feels invasive’. It was believable, if unfair. He’d probably know something was still wrong. She sighed. “You didn’t used to keep it on you all the time,” she admitted.
“Right,” he nodded, sounding a bit confused, “I didn’t. So… you’re not used to it?”
“I guess,” she said, because she hoped she could get used to it. She hoped it would just be a bit of an adjustment and then it would be fine.
“… What do you think’s making it hard to get used to?” He asked.
She didn’t know how to answer. She knew the answer, it had been twisting her stomach into knots for weeks, but she didn’t know how to put it into words in a way that made sense. She didn’t know what to say that didn’t sound mean, or selfish, or irrational.
“It’s just… different,” she said, pathetically. It didn’t really work as an answer. “It’s all different.”
“All,” he repeated. She nodded, mouth twisted shut in an unhappy line. “What’s all different?”
He didn’t play piano anymore. He didn’t make her lunches for school. He didn’t leave behind messes around the house. He didn’t shut people out- he’d been spending time with people a lot, lately. He couldn’t carry her on his shoulders. He didn’t take her out for ice cream. “You,” she said, and it felt like confessing to a crime.
There was no banging of a gavel. No ‘I rest my case’. No courtroom. There was a cluttered living room where she sat with her dad, and it was quiet.
He put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into his side. She felt a little like crying, but she didn’t. “What do you mean?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’re just… changing. And it shouldn’t bother me, but it does.” She fiddled with the end of a glove. “I don’t want you to….” Be a lawyer again, be a different person, disappear, leave me alone… “I don’t want you to change.”
He gave a single, brief, quiet laugh. “I don’t think I can help that.” He traced circles into her shoulder. It was familiar and safe. “I didn’t realize I’d changed all that much?” He said, more question than statement.
Of course he didn’t. It probably felt natural to him, falling back into something familiar. No one else had been reacting strangely. Just smiles and ‘it suits you’s and ‘you seem happy’s. People missed Lawyer Phoenix. To them, Pianist Phoenix had been the costume change no one wanted.
“I want to be happy for you,” Trucy said, clinging to him. “You’re… happier. And I should be, too.”
He ran his fingers through her hair. “You can’t control how you feel,” he said, voice soft. She felt shaky. Tired. “Can I tell you something?” He asked, and she nodded miserably into his side. “I’m scared, too.”
She peered up at his face. He was soft and kind and sincere. “But you weren’t lying,” she said, “I’d have noticed.” She knew he wanted to be a lawyer. She knew he’d been happier. She could see it plain as day, all the time.
“Doesn’t mean I’m not scared, too.” He shrugged, still smiling at her. “I mean, some of the worst times of my life happened in courtrooms. And I have no idea if I’m still cut out for it, after everything. And… Hell, people still treat me like a criminal sometimes.”
She’d been the one to hand him the journal page. He’d told her, many times, that it wasn’t her fault. That if anything, he should’ve known better than to present it. He’d handed her that playing card, to give to Apollo, as if he’d had nothing left to lose. She’d never thought of him, or Zak for that matter, as criminals. It didn’t suit them in her mind, didn’t connect to the warm hands that would tuck her into bed at night and the soft presses of kisses against her forehead. But then, she’d never viewed her daddy the way other people did.
He didn’t need her to tell him he wasn’t a criminal. That wasn’t his point, anyway. Anger still clawed at her on his behalf, though, and she had to swallow down her words.
“It’s okay if it’s kind of scary, or overwhelming, or just hard to adjust to,” he said. “I am happy, but it’s a big change, too.”
“Why…” she sniffled, eyes wet, “why do you even want to be a lawyer again, anyway?” She asked. She knew why he’d been one originally- she’d heard the story of the class trial, and the elevator, and the demon prosecutor. Edgeworth was perfectly fine without him being a lawyer, now, though. And if they ever did need a lawyer, they had Polly and that new girl, Athena.
He paused, thinking it over. “I like… helping people,” he said. “And I like puzzling out a tricky case, that’s always rewarding. And I guess it just… it’s a big part of my life. It felt like something was missing, without that.”
“Is lawyer-you the real you?” She asked, unsure if the question even made sense.
“I mean…” He rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. “I was still me. I do think being a lawyer is more my speed than poker. So, in a sense, I’m more myself as a lawyer, but… I guess… would you still be you if you weren’t a magician?”
She couldn’t imagine not being a magician. She’d grown up with it. She’d been learning card tricks as a toddler. She’d been wearing a cape and a top hat for most of her life. “No,” she said.
“Hm.” He tilted his head. “If you’d asked me, seven years ago, I think I’d have said the same thing about being a lawyer. But now… I don’t know. I’ve changed, but I’m still the same person. And this doesn’t undo all those changes.” He grinned, meeting her eyes. “The office just wouldn’t be right without you, after all.”
The tears spilled out. She hid her face in his side, and he laughed. It wasn’t a mean laugh. He hugged her, and she clung to him, and she thought maybe things would be okay after all. “It needs two Wrights to be right,” she mumbled, and he laughed again. “We need to outnumber Polly, or else he’ll think he’s in charge.”
“Ah, can’t have that!” He said. She shook her head.
It didn’t feel as scary, anymore. Knowing she had a place in the agency, and in his life… there was permanence, there. Maybe he hadn’t changed all that much, she decided.
It was warm, and safe, and she decided maybe his costume had been outdated anyway. The Wrights looked good in blue.