No death au where Gregory and Misty merge their families
Gregory meets Klavier right before his first trial and thankfully convinces him that Kristoph is up to no good. Klavier is in awe that Famouse Attorney Gregory Edgeworth is speaking to him, and he's so moved. He knows what to do.
Right before Mia goes in to defend Zak Gramarye, Trucy runs up to her to hand the evidence. Klavier stops Mia before she can go in. He tells her to toss the evidence. She'll understand later when he has time to explain it.
So Kristoph never gets Mia disbarred. Zak still disappears, and Phoenix and Miles take her in.
And Kristoph really amps up the abuse towards Klavier. How could he do that? He let a guilty woman off the hook. He ruined the case. Is he really fit to be an attorney? Really, Klavier, you confuse yourself too often. I thought you outgrew this.
Klavier eventually ends up walking into Gregory's office, shaken and confused. He tells Gregory everything, backtracking and stammering and doubting everything coming out of his mouth. He doesn't look like the confident teenager Gregory had just met a few weeks before.
So Gregory tells him he thinks Kristoph is getting in his head. It'll maybe be best if Klavier just spends some time away from Kristoph.
"But I have no one else. He's always taken care of me."
And that's where Gregory puts his hand on his back.
"I have a bit of reputation," Gregory says, "for taking in every stray kid I come across. How about you join my family for dinner this evening? You can meet all my kids."
"I've already met Mia and Miles. Haven't I?"
"You have. But there's Miles' husband, Phoenix. They just took in little Trucy Gramayre. There's Ema, the sister of one of Mia's friends. She's been staying with us. We have our niece, Pearl. And then our two youngest daughters, Maya and Franziska."
"It's not the Franziska who works in the prosecutor's office, is it?"
"It is! Have you met her?"
"I have... she frightens me."
"She frightens many men. I'll tell her to behave herself tonight."
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"Okay." Danny slowly laid the already cold body back onto the table, ready to slide back it into the refuge of cold storage. "Okay. Dead guy. Stay there."
The body didn't move.
"Fantastic. Now. Hang out while I pour the embalming fluid into the pump, alright? It should only be a minute."
And it usually did; working in a funeral home wasn't extremely glamorous, but it paid the bills, and Danny had already been used to the rhyme and rhythm of negotiating death with the public by the time he sent in his mortuary school application. It had been a transition that made sense. And in the end, the degree had only cost him a few extra years post-graduation and a little dig into student loans, and now Danny had a stable 12-8 job and health insurance valid in the state of new jersey.
Today, though, the pump had that decided enough was enough. With a bang and a boom, the pump spat out a cloud of smoke and clunked uncomfortably.
The dead body sat up.
Danny scrambled over to push it back down. "No. We talked about this. Dead people don't move. If you want to stay here and have me put you back together all the time, you have to stay put. Got it?"
Whatever the weird gold-eye corpses were on in Gotham, they at least listened to him on occasion. They weren't ghosts, per se— they never pinged on any of the ghost detection devices Mom and Dad had packed in his going-away-to-college bag— but they were, despite being occasionally animate, perfectly deceased.
Weird. Danny had never gotten used to it. Still, they came in droves, too eager to sit on the top of the basement stairwell and lurk in the corners and stare endlessly at them with their weird, avian eyes, and sometimes they heralded the arrival similarly weird-ass bodies that had lost their heads or their arms or their limbs through the more conventional channels.
"I'm losing too much thread to all y'all coming in all the time," Danny complained to the dead body, who, at the moment, was the only person present to blame. "Stop getting your limbs cut off. This stuff is expensive, you know. It's a specialty order."
The body didn't even have the courtesy to blink. Rude.
"At least let them bury you this time. Every time one of you darts off when my back's turned, my boss thinks I'm stealing corpses. My coworkers think I'm building my own Frankenstein or something."
The corpse neither verbalized nor blinked, but Danny hadn't expected it to; with a sigh, he rolled the corpse back into cold storage, locked its little door (not that locking it in had ever stopped it) and called it quits for the night.
It's not like anyone was paying him for the extra hours anyway.
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Gregworth Week Day 3: Lost
no dl-6 au, takes place after master’s appeal. little miles learns a lesson.
join us for the last stretch of Gregory Edgeworth Week and check out the prompts!
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Gregory held Miles’ hand leaving the courtroom. In the lobby, Gregory breathed a bit easier. The prosecution had left. Spectators had filed out long ago. Raymond had headed back to the office already. Gregory made sure that it was just him and Miles leaving, alone.
Miles’ little hand squeezed Gregory’s fingers. They were both nervous, it seemed.
Gregory looked down to tell Miles that it would be alright. They would take the stairs and then be out to the car in no time.
But when Gregory looked down, Miles was looking back up at him with his little brow furrowed in a way that was far too mature for a 10-year-old. He was studying Gregory with a slight tilt in his head and piercing eyes that were new to him.
“We lost,” he said.
Miles didn’t say it with fear or with accusation. He stated it as though the idea of losing the appeal had never crossed his mind. As though the idea of a complete loss—no more chances, no more trials—was such a foreign concept he couldn’t understand it. Even after he watched the whole thing play out right in front of him.
“We did,” Gregory said.
“Why?”
“Mr. Master had already confessed to the crime last year, and the evidence wasn’t strong enough to work in his favor. I couldn’t convince the judge that it was a false confession without Mr. Master’s cooperation.”
“Why didn’t he cooperate?” Miles’ mouth had a hard time forming around the word.
“I suppose he was tired of it all. He was done taking our chances. The man’s been through this trial for a very long time, Miles, we have to remember that. Sometimes people just take their fate into their own hands. Even if that means he goes to prison.”
“But he made you lose.”
Gregory kneeled to Miles’ level. He touched his son’s cheek, brushing his thumb over the emotional flush. “Being a lawyer isn’t about winning and losing. When we focus on that, we lose sight of what’s important—and that’s finding the truth.”
“But if you win, doesn’t that mean you found the truth?”
“Well. No, not always.”
Gregory sighed. He brought himself off the floor, his back aching and spreading a dull throb to his shoulder. He took Miles’ hand again and led him to a bench along the wall. They sat together with Miles pressed close to Gregory’s side and Gregory’s arm holding him tight.
“I still found the truth for Mr. Master, didn’t I?” Gregory said. “And I would have preferred to have him acquitted, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t find the truth. I think Mr. Master made up his mind long ago about how he wanted this trial to go, but I’m not going to give up on him.”
“Can you appeal again?”
“I can’t. The law doesn’t allow it. But I think I can figure something out for him. See, when you only think about winning and losing, you give up at the end of the trials. You let the final verdict be the end of your case. I have no intention of leaving Mr. Master alone in a prison cell for the rest of his life without anymore help. Do you think you understand?”
Miles shook his head.
“Well, let me put it this way.” Gregory pulled Miles into his lap, groaning. Miles was getting a bit too big to be held like that. “You defended your friend Phoenix in class. Why did you do it?”
“To prove he was innocent!”
“Yes. And did you prove he was innocent because you wanted to be right?”
“No. I wanted everyone to know the truth and to be fair. If there was no evidence he stole the money, it wasn’t fair that everyone was accusing him of it.”
“Very good. But what would have happened if he still got in trouble? If you fought for him and people still believed he was guilty?”
Miles’ eyes had always been so bright. From the day he was born, he looked at Gregory with eyes that seemed to soak up the entire world around him. But as he was gradually leaving his childhood behind and growing up, the brightness was changing from wonder and awe to something sharper, something more experienced and intelligent. Right then, Gregory could see that childish wonder slip away.
“I would still be his friend,” Miles said, voice firm.
“You would be. Because you exposed the truth for him. You trusted him. You still stood up for him. That means a lot more than winning.”
Miles lowered his gaze. He touched Gregory’s badge, pinned on the lapel right over where he had been shot. His little finger traced the circle, taking the time to feel every curve and indent.
“But Mr. Master is going to prison,” Miles said.
“He is.”
“It’s not fair.”
Gregory took Miles’ hand and pulled it from his shoulder.
There was so much that was unfair about it all. All from the rotten beginning. Gregory thought they had a good chance with the appeal. More than a good chance. With von Karma mysteriously gone from the case, Gregory was certain he could get around the new prosecutor. It should have been easy to slip through their arguments and crumble the prosecution’s case. Especially since Gregory still had proof that von Karma had coerced Master’s confession out of him.
Gregory was so sure he would get Master cleared of the murder charge. It should have been easy.
But maybe it was never meant to be. If it was the case he incidentally shot during, the case Miles would always remember as being the time he was traumatized in an elevator, then maybe Gregory should have accepted that as a clear sign that nothing about the case would be easy.
The entire trial, Gregory struggled to remind himself that the chances of being caught in another earthquake with another bailiff with a gun were slim. Almost impossible. He tried using logic to chase the fear away.
It hadn’t worked. Even as Gregory eased into the trial, making his tight arguments as smoothly as he always did, he still flinched when the gavel pounded. He turned around often to check on Miles who watched behind him, his face determined if a bit pale.
“Do you still want to be a defense attorney, Miles?”
Miles nodded. The little bit of childlike wonder had slipped back into his eyes. Gregory patted his back and tucked Miles' head under his chin. He really was getting far too big to be held like that, but Gregory would manage for just a little longer.
"Why don't we go home and have dinner?" Gregory said.
And start to put this whole thing behind us.
"Are you hungry?" Gregory asked.
Miles shook his head. The slight thing had become even slighter since the incident. Anxiety had stolen his appetite.
"Not even for katsudon?" Gregory asked, squeezing Miles.
Miles smiled and looked up at Gregory. He nodded.
"There we go. I know you can't resist."
Miles slid off his lap and grabbed his hand on the way through the halls. Quietly, they walked down the stairs and out the front door. Gregory flinched but didn't look back as it slammed shut behind them.
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