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Maya Fey is standing at the train station in Kurain and trying very, very hard not to be mad at Nick before he even steps off the train.
He makes it very difficult, is the thing. What, six months, now? of barely texting, barely calling, their phone conversations brief and cursorial, Nick refusing, over and over, to talk about himself, to do anything other than politely say he’s doing well, Trucy’s doing well, do you want to talk to her Maya? I’ll call next week - and Maya Fey isn’t an idiot, she can see the distance he is putting between them as clearly as if he had walked to the opposite side of the room and physically turned his back on her, a motion she imagines complete with crossed arms and a sulky-teenagerish ‘hmph’. Well, fuck him, then, it’s not like it’s a secret he’s hiding something, if he doesn’t want to talk to her -
Polite, Maya, she reminds herself, we have to be polite, Pearl is excited to see Trucy, etc. Just because she feels nothing but dread wound tight in her gut at having to see her best friend pull further and further away from her when he’s standing right there in front of her doesn’t mean that she can’t, at least, pretend to be excited for Pearly’s sake. Deep breath in. The distant rumble of the train, the wind in the branches around them, a little flock of sparrows pecking at the ground by the tracks.
Pearl next to her squeezes her hand, peers up at her sidelong. “Is everything alright, Maya?”
She’s too good at reading people, Pearl is, especially when those people are Maya. She can’t hide anything from her. Maya sighs, shrugs, squeezes Pearl’s hand back. “I’m just worried about Nick, Pearly. You know how he’s been lately.” That little pinch of worry in Pearl’s brow that she wants to reach out and smooth out with her thumb every time she sees it. She smiles, careful it’s not too forced, swings their linked arms a bit. “It’ll be really good to see him, I think.”
And Pearl smiles back (thank god), leans forward to look down the track for the coming train. “I think so too. I hope Trucy has some new tricks to show us,” she chirps, and okay, fuck Nick Wright but thank god for Trucy, for the genuine excitement shining in Pearl’s face.
She can do this. She can do this, for a weekend, for Pearl. And she’ll only consider murdering him as like, the dead last option, which is only partially because she knows his spirit would be so fucking annoying, like really -
The train rounds the corner and whistles up to the station, breaks squealing, the orange and white body slowing to a shuddering halt. The PA system dings, tinny and quiet from some ancient speaker, and the doors open with a pneumatic hiss, and when the Wrights step off the train it hits Maya with the force of a kick to the chest that she can’t be mad at him, she just can’t. Nick is beaming, his whole face split open, and when Pearl bolts towards him he lets go of Trucy’s hand and drops the bag he’s holding just so he can lift her into his arms, spinning her as she giggles. He’s saying something to her, but Maya doesn’t quite hear it because Trucy has slammed into her with an excited shriek of “Aunt Maya!” and Maya plays at stumbling back as if Trucy is much stronger than she is before wrapping her up in a hug.
“Trucy the Great!” she says, and Trucy beams proudly, as if the nickname is a statement of fact. “How was the train ride?”
“Great! I was trying to teach Daddy card tricks but he’s not very good at them,” she says, leaning in conspiratorially. She smiles, and oh, is Trucy Wright nothing if not infectious in her sheer, bright, joy. “He said that the only trick he’s good at is counting cards.”
Nick has put Pearl down and is walking towards them, and Maya looks over Trucy’s head at him to call out, “Hey, your daughter says you’re cheating at poker.”
Nick shrugs, gives a little half smile. “It’s not really cheating, actually, if you read the rules -“
“Oh, my god,” Maya is laughing, and then Nick is hugging her and really, she had no chance of staying mad at him, none at all, not really. She could cry, from the familiarity alone, from his chin pressed against her temple and the way his arms wrap around her shoulders and the constant rabbit-paced thrum of his heart against her collarbone and the smell of the same stupid cucumber-melon two in one shampoo he’s used for as long as she’s known him.
There is still the part of her, seventeen and scared, that hums with the satisfaction and safety of Nick’s here, everything’s gonna be okay, and it’s a part of her she hasn’t needed in a long time but she can’t shake the feeling, anyways. She just can’t.
She’s laughing when they pull apart, half relief, half act, half to cover up the fact that she kind of wants to sob. “I didn’t know poker had a rulebook you could, like, read.”
He shrugs. Trucy has scampered back to retrieve their forgotten bags, and he half-turns his head to keep one eye on her as the train whistles its departure. “Sure it does. Somewhere. Probably.” He takes the bags back from Trucy, and she and Pearl waste no time in sprinting up the road together and vanishing into the woods.
“Hope Trucy’s cape is okay with a little mud,” Maya says, as the two of them watch them go. “Pearl has been promising all week to teach Trucy to catch tadpoles. We are absolutely not gonna see them again until it’s dark and they will both be covered in mud, I can tell you that much.”
It’s harder, these days, to read Nick, all false barriers and careful acting, but there’s a real gentleness in his gaze, now, one she can see clear as day because she knows her face looks the same: it is good to see the two of them acting like kids.
“Oh, she’s come home with stains on that thing from who knows where. It’s very machine washable, it’ll be fine.” Maya reaches out to help him carry Trucy’s bag, and he turns to her, the same warmth still in his eyes, all the shutters not in place yet. “It’s good to see you, Maya.”
Something in her chest twists uncomfortably, tension pulled like a rubber band about to snap across her knuckles, the high pressure front of a storm. But she smiles back up at him, real and honest, and says “It’s good to see you, too. I missed you.”
“Missed you too,” he says, knocking their shoulders together, and Maya thinks okay, maybe it’s all okay, maybe he’s not as far gone as I thought, maybe I’ve just been paranoid because I haven’t seen him in so long and I know how he is and I’m worried about him. Maybe it’s just that.
But then halfway on the walk back to the village, she sees it happen, like watching the moment a clock ticks over to the next day, all the numbers clicking into place. It’s nothing she says - she’s telling him about Pearl’s online classes, the trouble she has with math - and his expression changes, goes flat, a single moment where it looks like all the muscles in his face relax and then that same polite smile back on his face, distant, perfectly composed. He’s still listening - reacts at all the right places, laughs along with her jokes, but god, compared to his expression when he got off that train, it is night and day.
Maya feels very suddenly as if she is tossing pebbles into a well she can’t see the bottom of, calling out to hear the echo. Is anyone down there? Can anyone hear me? and the echo coming back.
…
“It’s honestly not that complicated of a game,” Nick says, leaning forward with his elbows on the table as he shuffles the deck, the shf-shf-shf of cards slipping past each other. He splits it, taps the two halves against the table to line them up, shuffles them together again, folding them up to slot them together. “I mean, I picked it up pretty fast.”
“Oh, right, of course,” Maya says, laughing, “way to brag.” She imitates Nick’s voice, leaning forwards and holding up one finger, “If I, the great and very humble Nick Wright can do it, anyone can!”
Trucy laughs, sitting at the table next to her dad and watching him shuffle the cards. Maya was right: both her and Pearl had come back to the manor mud-covered and absolutely delighted about it, so her usual dress is replaced with a t-shirt and leggings, though her hat is still balanced on her head. Well, just in case I need to pull a rabbit out of it! she had said, by way of explanation. “Aunt Maya, you sounded just like him!”
“Hey,” Nick says, false-wounded, as he starts dealing cards across the table.
“I’ve had a lot of practice. He’s very easy to make fun of, y’know,” and Trucy laughs again. “Are you actually gonna explain how to play the game, or just talk about how easy it is?”
“I was getting to that, I was getting to that.” He pushes one hand across the table to her, sets the rest of the deck between them. They’re in a side room of the manor that Maya has turned into a living room in her own style: string lights, Steel Samurai posters, low comfortable chairs, an absolute mess of Pearl’s half finished craft projects and Maya’s failing attempts to alphabetize her DVD collection. The coffee table they’re sitting on either side of was stolen from Nick with Mia’s help, wood finish scratched and coffee stained and paint splattered. Nick’s picking at a scratch in the varnish with his thumb while he leans back against a chair behind him and appraises the cards in his hand. Maya does the same: two jacks, an eight, a seven and a five. Which could mean absolutely anything. “The overall goal is to get a higher hand than me by matching cards. Lowest hands are a pair or two pair, which is - well, what it sounds like. Two of the same number. Then there’s a straight, which is five cards in order, a flush, which is all of the same suit, a full house, which is three of a kind and a pair, or a straight flush, which is five in order of the same suit.”
Pearl, next to Maya, is muttering under her breath with her brows furrowed, clearly trying to keep the hands straight in her head. Maya gives Nick a mildly exasperated look. “Okay, there’s no way I’m remembering all that.”
Nick scratches the back of his neck, bashful. “Yeah, I…actually took a really long time to start memorizing all of them.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, what happened to I picked it up really fast now?”
Nick laughs, then taps Trucy on the shoulder. “Hey Truce, wanna work with Aunt Maya this time? You can help her remember all the hands,” he says, with a half smile and a funny little gleam in his eye. When Trucy turns to him, he gives her an exaggerated wink, and, okay, it is so sinister to see the Wrights plotting something, really. Maya raises an eyebrow at him, and he just shrugs, all nonchalance. Bastard.
But Trucy chirps “Okay!” and dashes around the table to skid to a stop next to Maya, sitting next to her with her knees tucked under her and tugging on Maya’s sleeve to see her hand. Maya turns it towards her, and she hmms at it, tapping one finger on her chin as she thinks.
“Three on one?” Nick says, shaking his head. “You’re ganging up on an old man.”
“You’re thirty.”
“Practically ancient.”
“Oh, shut up. Pearly, you wanna be on Nick’s team?”
“Yes, please!” Pearl says. “Although I don’t think I can remember all the hands either…”
“That’s alright, Pearls, that’s my job,” Nick says, shuffling to make room for her as she settles in his lap. He holds his cards in front of her and she squints at them.
“Yeah, Pearly, your job is to make sure Nick doesn’t start cheating.”
Pearl turns to glare at Nick and he holds up his hands in false surrender. “Me? No. Wouldn’t dream of it!” Trucy giggles behind her hand. “Look, do you wanna hear the rest of the rules, or not?”
Nick walks them through the rest: call, raise, fold or check, big chips are worth less and little chips are worth more, discard and draw to try to get a good hand, fold if you think your opponent has the higher hand, or bluff them into folding before you. Don’t let them see it on your face, or let them see something that’s not there, act at nervousness or confidence or act at neither, and the pieces start slotting together and Maya can feel that same anger curling in her gut again but this isn’t the time, she dismisses it out of hand. Fine, she can see the pattern, whatever. Later.
They play the first round slow, Trucy whispering advice in her ear, Nick across the table quietly re-explaining the rules to Pearl when she starts getting confused. Maya loses: three of a kind against Nick’s flush, all spades.
“Right, I forgot,” Maya says, pushing the chips she’s bet across the table. Pearl reaches forward and scoops them up. “You’re unbeatable now, or something.”
“So far,” he says, with a shrug, re-shuffling the deck. He deals two new hands. She picks hers up and shows it to Trucy, whose shoulders tense where she leans against Maya - bad hand, Maya guesses. Two of clubs, five of hearts, seven of spades, eight of clubs, an ace of spades. Bummer?
Both of them discard and draw a few times, though Trucy still seems unhappy with Maya’s luck, both of them raise. Maya is doing her best to school her face into something unreadable, but Pearl is glaring at her intently and Nick is watching her with a similar scrutiny, though his pose is much more relaxed, his observation hidden behind a veneer of almost-carelessness in the way he holds his cards, the way he leans back, one arm looped around Pearl, an air of oh, poker, is that what we’re doing? Didn’t even realize.
He draws, glances at his cards with the same nonchalance, shows them to Pearl, and Trucy, tucked under Maya’s arm, inhales sharply.
“That’s Daddy’s tell!” she whispers up to Maya, cupping her hand in front of her mouth. “Did you see it?”
“No?” Maya whispers back, barely stopping herself from shaking her head. “See what?”
“Hold on, watch,” Trucy says, sounding absolutely gleeful.
Pearl is also whispering something to Nick, dead concentration on her face, and Nick nods. “Your honor, my co-counsel has advised us to raise,” he says. He stacks two big chips, looks down at Pearl for confirmation, eyebrows raised, and she nods, face serious. With her approval, he pushes his chips forward.
“There!” Trucy whispers again. Maya still hasn’t seen anything, and she furrows her brow at Trucy. “You can see his thumb twitch, ‘cause he wants to tap it on the table but he knows it’s too obvious. It’s his tell!”
What, Maya thinks, the fuck, because how in a million years would she have ever even seen that, let alone noticed it in the middle of a game, and Trucy is beaming at her now, still hiding her expression (mostly) behind her hand. Maya looks down at her with an open expression of wonder. “You could see that?”
Nick, across the table, seems to have noticed something about the conversation they’re having and fully grimaces. Trucy is still whispering to her, rapid-fire. “You only have a two pair, now, but it’s a ten and an eight, at least, and Daddy only does that when he’s nervous so I bet he only has a pair or a two pair that’s pretty low.” She tilts her head a little bit. “Or he’s tricking you into thinking he’s nervous but I don’t think so.”
“Wow,” Maya says. “You’re really good at this! What should we do?”
She thinks for a moment, and then her eyes flash, the same way that Nick’s had earlier. “I say we go all in! That’ll really freak him out.”
“Pearls,” Nick says in a stage whisper, “I think we might be in trouble.”
“Excuse me,” Maya says, “The magnificent Trucy the Great and her faithful assistant have decided to go all in.” Trucy, grinning now, pushes all their chips forward.
Nick grimaces again. “Uh oh. That’s what I thought.” He shakes his head at Maya. “My own daughter, trying to undermine my perfect record.”
“Oh, my god,” Maya laughs, “don’t phrase it like that, it makes it sound like there’s a von Karma in the room.”
Nick laughs, clear and loud. “Believe me, I refuse to teach either of them. They’ve asked, but I think they might kill me over it.”
“Uncle Miles let me teach him Bs, but he’s really bad at it,” Trucy explains, matter-of-factly.
“That is a game I need to see,” Maya says, laughing at the image of little Trucy Wright shouting BS! at a baffled Miles Edgeworth.
“Hold on, I have a picture of it -“ Nick says, reaching in his pocket for his phone.
“What’s Bs?” Pearl asks, and Trucy claps her hands delightedly.
“I can teach you later!”
Maya shakes her head, taps on the table. “Wait, Nick, stop - you’re stalling -“ she’s still half-laughing - “take your turn already, you know we got you.”
“Fine, fine, I call.”
Trucy gasps. “Aunt Maya, wait -“
“I call too,” Maya says, maybe a little too fast. “Show?”
Both of them flip their hands over, Maya with two pair: eight, eight, ten, ten, and a jack.
Nick has a full house. Three kings, two aces.
Nick is absolutely howling with laughter, and Pearl leaps up excitedly to scoop up all the chips again, looking down at the cards like she can barely believe it. Trucy shrieks out “Daddy!” and launches herself across the table to tackle Nick, crawling behind him to wrap her arms around his neck while he cackles. “You liar!”
“Sorry, baby,” he says, while Trucy shakes him by the shoulders, “I knew you’d be watching, I couldn’t help myself.” He turns back towards Maya, face split into a grin. “What’d’you think, Maya? She’s a pretty great good luck charm, right?”
“Yeah, and you’re horrible to play cards with. We’re playing monopoly next time.” He shrugs, a what can you say? expression on his face. “Trucy, wait, come here, I wanna see you do that again, that was really cool.”
“Yay!” Trucy says, and leaps down from where she was climbing on her dad’s shoulders to sit across from Maya, peering up at her with wide eyes. “Okay, now tell me something that’s not true.”
…
The second game goes like this: no cards, this time, just the Wrights on one side and the Feys on the other, both trying to catch each other in a lie. Maya says something and Trucy tries to find a tell, Nick says something and Pearl uses her magatama to look for any psyche-locks. Lie for lie, truth for truth. Ferreting out which is which, that feeling old and familiar.
It gets more outlandish the more it goes on, Maya and Nick both reaching for more and more unbelievable stories to try to trip up the two little lie detectors, the whole room howling with laughter as Maya says no, no, it’s really true, Mia really did get stuck on the roof for a day and a half when we were kids! only for Trucy to chant out lie, lie! everything spinning out into grandiose falsehoods, a thing she could almost, very nearly, laugh at.
And then: Nick says hmm - once when I was in law school I accidentally got locked in the records room at the courthouse at night and had to climb out the window and use the curtains as a rope and Maya’s heard this one from Mia, almost laughs and says nice try, but that’s obviously true except before she can Pearl is squinting at him and saying there’s two psyche-locks! Nick, you’re lying. and then Maya’s stomach drops out from under her even while everyone laughs, even while she tries to laugh along, because she can nearly see it in the air, layers and layers of falsehood like paint chipping away and revealing more paint underneath, and underneath that she doesn’t know if she’ll see anything at all, just blank space, just empty air.
…
It gets dark earlier than it should, a low haze of clouds on the horizon, light already thin and weak. It’s late spring, easing into summer, and Maya groans when she steps outside at the way that the darkness and the crisp breeze make it feel much earlier in the year than it is. February, maybe, March.
“I want it to stop being cold already,” she complains, sitting down with a huff next to Nick. He’s balanced on the edge of the walkway, feet propped on the stairs in front of him, arms on his knees and leaning forward just slightly. He looks unbalanced, maybe precarious, as if there is equal chance that he will tip forward like those desk toys of drinking birds, or that he’ll take flight like a startled grouse. He does neither. He looks at her, placidly, instead, nearly impossibly still.
To anyone who knows Nick Wright, even a little bit, ‘impossibly still’ is a deeply unsettling state to see him in.
“This winter wasn’t even that bad,” he observes, mildly. “We had an early spring.”
“Not up here. We got a ton of snow,” she says, gesturing expansively forward as if to demonstrate exactly how much snow they got.
“You’re not even that far north. Can’t’ve been that much worse.” He squints, thinking. “We got snow, like, once.”
“It’s the altitude, Nick,” she says, matter-of-factly. “It makes it a lot colder. I think.”
He shrugs. “If you say so.”
Maya fucking hates talking to him like this. Grasping for some distant impression of familiarity, some old pattern of call-and-response that they can fall into, watching as he deliberately and carefully takes two steps back, draws an invisible line in the space between them. This close and no closer. She imagines grabbing him by the shoulders and fucking shaking him and saying stop doing that I know exactly what you’re doing, his head rolling cartoonishly because he is too calm and too quiet and too still. Maya breathes deliberately past the tightness in her throat.
Fine, then. Another attempt, another shot in the dark, toss another life preserver out for him to turn away from, why not. “Pearl and Trucy are cleaning up from dinner.” A beat. An affectless nod. He’s trying to hide the fact that he’s smoking, the cigarette held loosely in one hand just behind his thigh. For all the impenetrability of the rest of the stupid act, he’s doing a remarkably bad job of this. “Your hair’s getting long, you know.”
“Is it?” he says, as if it has just occurred to him. This is a blatant lie. Maya knows full well he still styles it every morning just to put that stupid beanie on over it, he knows exactly how long it is. Nick reaches up and tugs at the ends of his hair aimlessly, as if considering Maya’s statement, Oh, wow, it really is long, huh? Everything an act, everything performance.
Maya pictures the stagelights crashing into the audience, the horrible noise of it. She nods. “I’m imagining the spikes getting longer and longer until you just like, turn around and accidentally stab someone in the eye and kill them.” She acts out both parts while speaking, as if she were both Nick theatrically turning his head, invisible hairdo extending behind her, then grabbing at her eye and falling backwards dramatically. “You’d have to use armature wire to keep them in place.”
He laughs, too articulated to be real, ah ha ha ha. “They’d find the armature wire in my apartment and use it as evidence.” There is, maybe a little curl of bitterness somewhere beneath that, or maybe Maya is looking for something she wants to see.
“And you wouldn’t even have anyone to defend you because you already used your one free ‘Edgeworth Defense Gambit’ on Iris.” Her voice doesn’t even hitch at the mention of Iris’ case. Look at her go!
“Mm, true,” he says. He rubs at his neck nervously, smiles to himself, as if at an inside joke. “Though, I dunno. I have some friends I could ask.”
He says this all too seriously, as if he is earnestly considering what he would do if he were accused of murder from Maya’s largely-unlikely hypothetical. There’s even a little furrow of concentration in his brow, for a half second, before he straightens and his face goes slack again. Maya nearly hears the sound of a door slamming shut.
Some night bird calls across the garden. Three years back here and it still feels too quiet, after the city, that tiny period of her life telescoping out to make everything else a comparison. She sighs. Nick takes a drag from his cigarette, almost bashfully, head turned to the side and shoulders tilted away from her.
She barks out a laugh. “Nick, it’s fine. I’m an adult. I know you got it from Mia, anyways.”
“Sorry,” he says, shrugging, which seems like the wrong gesture for that phrase, like the pieces don’t match. “I’m used to Trucy, I guess. I don’t want to…set a bad example.”
His tone turns up slightly at the end, as if it’s almost a question. Maya could be mean here, could dig into that, could laugh again and say right, a bad example. Come on, Nick, let up the act, snap, do something. Press until the witness breaks. “You weren’t drinking, tonight, I noticed,” she says instead, treading the line somewhere between gentle and flatly observational, no judgement in it. “Same reason?”
She’s only half looking at him, giving him the space to turn away, to give himself that privacy. He doesn’t. He takes another drag, looking straight out at the garden. “No,” he says, and he does not elaborate. It’s unclear if this is no, I’m not having this conversation with you, or no, it wasn’t for the same reason, or no, actually, Maya, I was drinking tonight by a convoluted mechanism that meant I could do it without anyone noticing and I will now explain to you that mechanism, in detail. Maya feels the pressure of a headache needling behind her right eye.
“Edgeworth hates it, you know,” Nick says, casual, as if he’s observing a fact about the weather.
“Which one?” Maya asks. Yikes, Maya, harsh - but Nick doesn’t react, unmoving, still leaned forward and just a bit unbalanced. He gestures with his cigarette by way of an answer. She waits a moment, breathes in slightly. “He’s worried about you, you know.”
“Sounds like him,” Nick says, and there, yes, it is the same twist of bitterness in his voice. He turns suddenly from the garden to look sidelong at Maya, a half-smile still on his face, polite, distant. “You guys talk often?”
“Every once in a while.” More, lately, because Miles is worried about him, and fuck it, so is she. And neither of them have any idea what to do about it, but they knew that Nick was coming to Kurain this weekend, so they’ve been - well, strategizing. Unsuccessfully, she might add, if this conversation is anything to go by. “Are you guys…doing okay?”
It’s a trick question, a thing Maya already knows the answer to, a litmus test, of sorts. A trap she’s backing him into. Tell the truth about this one thing, this one thing.
“Mm, on and off. We’ll be alright, I think.” A shrug. The same mild smile.
The needle on the lie detector swings, spikes up and down the line. “Oh,” she says, voice measured. “Because he said you guys just broke up?”
She tries to frame it as question, not accusation, here, I’m asking you for the full story. I’m trusting you more than him. Phoenix barely reacts. He shrugs. Holds his hand out flat in front of him, tips it back and forth, so-so. “Yeah, kind of. He needed some time, I think. But you know how we are, haha.”
Deflection. Shuttle it off to something else, make it a joke. You know how we are. Does she, she thinks, does she?
And what can Maya do about it? What, outright call him a liar to his face, watch him retreat that much further behind the mask? Wave the proof in his face, the text message conversation she had with Miles two nights ago? Keep the conversation going until she gets the truth out of him by force like a witness on the stand cracking under the pressure? All she has done, since he got off that train, was open door after door after door, tiny openings in conversation for him to step through and speak truthfully to her at last, places for him to admit - something, anything, she doesn’t even care what, and all he has done, since he got off that train, is slam every door in her face. She loves him, she’s dead fucking angry, she has an early morning taking a new acolyte up into the mountains tomorrow, she’s so sick of this stupid conversation, she wants things to be simple again, throwing fries at the side of his head while leaning over the couch in the office, Nick pretending not to notice, Pearl acting scandalized and scolding her while she laughs. But she’s 23 and nothing really seems simple anymore, or maybe it never was.
So she says the cruelest thing she can think of: “You’re reminding me of Mia, you know.”
Nick freezes. If he was still before, this is absolute zero, this is turning to stone. He turns to her slowly, like a statue articulated, and offers her the same placid smile.
“Can’t say I’ve heard that one in a while,” he says, perfectly polite, mildly interested. “In what way?”
“When she was investigating Redd White. Before she died,” Maya nearly spits. “She - she was so focused on the investigation that she barely called me and she only saw me when she wanted me to help hide evidence. I just - I barely talked to her, Nick, and then she died. And I know - whatever, we’re Feys, it’s different, we’ve talked about it and it’s fine, but - but I didn’t know what to say at her funeral, because I didn’t know her.”
Nick opens his mouth to say something - an apology, probably. Maya doesn’t let him. “I think you’re doing something stupid and dangerous and I don’t want you to get yourself killed. And I don’t even know what you’re doing, because you won’t talk to me but I don’t want to go to your funeral and not know what to say.”
She’s not crying but it’s very close, her voice stretched thin and high. Nick is looking at her sideways, eyebrows knitted with real concern. He straightens up a little, chuckles, says lightly, “If I die, odds are you’ll somehow end up on the defendant stand. And like you said, I already used up the Edgeworth Defense Gambit, so…”
“That’s not funny, Nick.” Her voice cracks halfway through. She hunches forward, buries her face in her hands.
“I’m not gonna get myself killed, Maya,” he says, gently.
“You don’t know that.”
“I’m being careful. I promise.”
“Mia thought she was being careful, too.”
He doesn’t say anything. He shuffles closer, puts a hand on her shoulder and rubs his thumb between her shoulderblades. Again, the familiarity, the urge to fall back into some pattern between them that doesn’t exist anymore. “I’ve got Truce, Maya. I’ve got you and Pearl. Hell, I’ve got Edgeworth. I know -“ something hard-edged enters his voice here, some firmer bedrock - “what I’d be leaving behind. I have it under control. He has no idea I’m investigating. I’ll be okay.”
Maya feels like she’s listening to one side of a phone conversation: none of the context, no framework for who or what Nick is talking about. “Can you tell me about it?” she asks, moving her hands away from her face so she can tilt her head and look at him.
He sighs, long and low, face closed off but…crumbling, somehow, some impossible weight behind the shutters bleeding devastation through the mask. “No,” he says, sounding tired, “no, I can’t. I don’t want -“ he pauses, looks for the words. “I don’t want anyone else caught in the crossfire.”
“He’s that dangerous?”
He scratches at his chin, eyes averted. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Maya pauses. Nick knocks the ashes off his nearly-forgotten cigarette, takes a final drag down to the filter. Silence sits heavy between the two of them. Nick keeps his hand on her back.
She takes in a long breath, finally. She hopes Trucy and Pearl are distracted somewhere inside, that Trucy is showing her that card game, that they’re not eavesdropping this stupid horrible conversation. They’re not the kinds of things that kids should have to hear, those kids especially. Maya crosses her arms over her knees. “Can you just - talk to me, then? It doesn’t have to be about your investigation, I guess, just - anything, I don’t know. I really miss you.”
Nick’s face is strangely unreadable, but he offers her a smile that seems more genuine than his earlier ones. “Yeah, of course, Maya. What’d’ya wanna know?”
Maya grins sweetly, blinking innocently at him. “Why’d you and Miles break up?”
Nick laughs, the sound sudden, leaning back and tossing his head back. “Alllll of this,” he says, gesturing forward with one hand “and you just wanted the gossip. You should’ve led with that, Maya, I would’ve told you.” He grins slantways, tilts his head. “What, he didn’t say?”
“You think I got sensitive emotional information out of Miles Edgeworth?” she says.
“Ah, touché.” His expression turns bashful, an almost shy smile, hand scratching the back of his neck. “Well, it was my fault anyways. I was - ah - I was seeing someone else?”
“You were - what?” She whips her head towards him, but there’s laughter in her voice. “Nick - who the fuck am I talking to right now? You were cheating? On Miles?”
“I sort of thought he wouldn’t find out?”
“We’re talking about Miles Edgeworth the prosecutor, right? The one who investigates crimes for a living?”
Nick huffs defensively. “I mean, it worked for two and a half years.”
“Two and a half - Oh, my god,” Maya laughs. “Nick. There is something so wrong with you. I like, morally should be mad because it is a fucked up thing to do and Miles is my friend but you’re the only person I know that would do something this stupid, holy shit.” Nick shrugs, chuckling along with her. She shakes her head suddenly, squints at him. “Wait, with who?”
“Wow, no need to sound so shocked.” Maya raises her eyebrows, grimaces at him. She holds her hands behind her head to imitate his spikes again, scrunches up her face. “Harsh, Maya, harsh. I’m wounded.” The half grin he gives her ends up nearly genuine. “Anyways, you don’t know him. I met him pretty recently.”
“By recently, you mean over two and a half years ago, right?”
“Yup. I’m old now, ‘a few years’ counts as recent.” He leans in conspiratorially, and she shoves him away.
“You are so annoying. But you are old.” Maya knocks their shoulders together. There is maybe a little part of her that is still mad, or…something, she doesn’t know, just some part of her that registers older than Mia was. She pauses for a moment, tilts her head a little, catches his eyes. Her voice is softer, genuine, when she asks “Is he nice?”
Nick pauses. Something in his face twists, near imperceptibly, as if he is trying to control a grimace. This is not the reaction you want to see from a friend who you are already worried about when asked this specific question. Maya’s stomach drops out. “He’s…really important to me, Maya. He’s been there for me through a lot.”
Maya thinks about Trucy, earlier, her preternatural ability to read all of her fathers little tics and quirks, some ability to see past the facade. She has her own ability to read Nick Wright born of time and a sort of fast-forged necessity, but she wishes for Trucy’s clairvoyance now. The tension in his shoulders, the way his hand is twitching just barely in his lap, wrist turning in and out, the way he’s tracing the wood grains in the step next to him with his eyes, some part of this that she could read clearly, could understand. Is it the act of admitting it that makes him nervous, is it something about the unnamed subject, is it something about talking to her, is it something else, something buried deeper that she can’t see? The sound of imagined chains, the thunk of the lock clicking shut.
She leans their shoulder together, catches his gaze again. “I hope you’re happy, Nick.” He blinks at her with an uncharacteristic distant confusion. “Really. I know - I know things are hard for you, right now -“ right now being four years running, “and I want you to be happy. That’s it.”
Another long pause. Where their shoulders are pressed together, Maya can feel the rise and fall of his chest as he tries to control his own breathing, body betraying the shutters that remain firmly closed. Their roles reverse; Maya puts her hand on his back and feels those hitch-caught breaths.
“I missed you too, you know,” he says at last. There’s a night bug clicking in a tree nearby. Maya knows what it looks like - big brown beetle, long antenna - because once Pearl had caught one and the kitchen had been full of that same clicking.
“Then call more, idiot,” she says.
He laughs, something close to the one she remembers. “Yeah, I should. I’ll try.”
It’ll be three weeks before Maya calls him with a funny story - bat in the channeling chamber, Pearl leaping to catch it mid-air - and Nick will make some excuse, pass the phone to Trucy after a minute and a half, two steps back. Another month after that when she hears from Trucy that Nick’s out of town, some important part of his investigation, and she’ll text him something unrelated and wait for days for his one-word response, just as confirmation that he isn’t dead, another two steps. A year later and a client at a poker game breaks his hand and he doesn’t tell her. Two years and Miles mentions that they’re getting back together and she calls Nick to annoy him about it and he doesn’t pick up. Three years and an afternoon in April, something like this one, too cold for the season, and she hears on the radio something about a murder case in which former attorney Phoenix Wright has debuted a new system for legal justice, clearing his own name in the process. On the radio. She’ll hear it on the radio.
But now, on this April evening, sitting in the cold next to him, she, impossibly, believes him. Call the band off stage, let the curtains drop, let the lights go down. All the actors smiling backstage. Maybe it will be like it was again.
In four years she will think of this, standing here and looking out at the garden, phone in her hand, third call to voicemail. Of sitting next to him and believing. Of dropping pebbles into wells for the echo.
She will pick up a stone in her hand and weight it in her palm. She will picture the well, tilt the stone out of her palm.
No echo.