December 24th, 6:45 pm
There was no getting around it. Even if the chief prosecutor had arranged for a room with two beds, Simon would have had to insist that they sleep in the same one. There was no way for him to lock Halblicht into the room with him all night, so he would have to settle for handcuffing him to himself.
Awkward and terrible as it would be, there was nothing for it. Simon imagined the night ahead and he remembered a sign he had once seen on an electrical box. ‘Not only will this kill you, it will hurt the entire time you’re dying.’ That was how he felt about getting into bed handcuffed to the former Bobby Fulbright.
As he dug through his luggage to retrieve the handcuffs Edgeworth-dono had given him, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and whipped around suspiciously.
Halblicht’s jacket was laid out on the bed, and the man was unbuttoning his vest.
Simon suddenly felt very hot and very cold at the same time.
“What are you doing, detective?” Simon demanded.
Halblicht looked up at him with a mostly impassive expression. “Getting ready for bed. I’d rather not wrinkle my suit. I only have the one with me.”
“Ah.” Simon should have thought about it before. Of course Halblicht wasn’t going to go to bed fully dressed, that would be stupid? And what was Simon planning to wear? He hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“What about you? If it’s alright for me to ask. Looking for your pajamas?”
“For the handcuffs, in fact.”
A pause hung in the air as if chaining one moment to the next.
Was Simon imagining it, or did the blank faced man almost look embarrassed? Certainly not..
Halblicht pushed up his glasses. “I appreciate your caution, prosecutor Blackquill, but I promise you it’s unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary,” Simon spat incredulously. “As if I’m going to let a murderer wander around free in my bedroom while I’m sleeping.”
“I’d say you had before, but as I recall, you were handcuffed to me at the time.”
Simon felt even more heat bloom in his face. They’d only slept in the same room together once, months ago, on a case at the outskirts of LA, in a motel room much like this one.
It was the only time he could recall being with him in an actual bed, rather than a jail cot, or a bathroom somewhere. He remembered the clink of the handcuffs as they moved, and the way Bobby looped them around the bedpost. The memory of it made his mouth go dry, as he tried to shove it away, and put it in a box where it would make him sick– or worse, turn him on.
“So we were,” he admitted hoarsely. He glowered at the other man, hoping he wouldn’t notice the heat in his face. “And now our situation is reversed. You the murderer, and I the jailer.”
“Quite the turn around, isn’t it, Prosecutor?” there was a thin smile on his face, and he hadn’t stopped undressing. He took off his vest, and lay it smoothly on top of his jacket.
“The difference,” Simon hissed, trying to distract himself, “is that you very much knew I was innocent the whole time, but I know that you are very much guilty.”
Halblicht sighed a deep, Bobby Fulbright-ish sigh, and fidgeted with his buttons. “Yes, I guess that’s sure true. I– have I said I’m sorry yet?”
The shift from the cool demeanor to nervous discomfort jarred Simon, and recalled what Athena had been saying earlier about her assessment of the man’s mental state. Was it true that there was some part of this supposed emotionless killer that was actually sorry?
What would it matter if there was? ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t bring back the dead even if it was true.
“Would it matter if you had?” he murmured back. He finally managed to fish the handcuffs out of the suitcase. They felt heavy in his hand.
“No, I guess not.” Halblicht sniffled, and Simon watched him push his glasses up to rub his eyes.
It was painful to watch. The sort of thing that would, in weeks prior, prompted Simon to bully the man a little until he cheered up.
Now it confused and frustrated him.
“Why must you continue this pathetic display?” he grumbled. “Are you really, actually broken up over your crimes, Halblicht?”
“I–I am, yes!” he whimpered, he rubbed his face again, and his expression took on a stiffer quality. “It’s difficult to explain.”
“Difficult to explain he says!” Simon barked a laugh, and slapped the desk, startling Taka. “Well, aside from needing to sleep, we have nothing but time, half wit! Finish undressing so I can cuff you– or are you sleeping in your clothes after all?”
Halblicht frowned, and continued unbuttoning his shirt. “I’d rather not.”
“I thought not. If only because you seem intent on embarrassing me.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked. He pulled off his shirt, and Simon was confronted with the sight of his bare chest. Broad, flecked with blond hairs, and bearing the occasional small scar. Simon actually hadn’t seen it that many times before. Usually when they’d had the opportunity for sex, they’d had to stay mostly clothed.
He glanced away, rubbing his neck and feeling the heat of it under his fingers.
“I mean– that! Undressing! Like we were going to– like it was last week!”
“Ah. So that is what it’s about. I’m not trying to tease you, prosecutor Blackquill. I don’t have any pajamas.”
Simon’s fingers tightened on the handcuffs. Justitia damn Miles Edgeworth and his whirlwind last minute plans.
“I suppose, for the sake of modesty, I should offer you some of mine,” he said between his teeth. “But we are not exactly the same size.”
“No.” Halblicht slipped his shirt off, and started unbuttoning his pants.
“Justitia damn it!” Simon finally turned away and started taking off his own clothes, starting with the jinbaori. Having his back to the man sent a nervous thrill up his spine, and he warned, “Half wit if you kill me in my sleep, I swear.”
He swore what? He’d haunt him?
“It wouldn’t help my situation to kill you,” Halblicht calmly explained. “In fact it would be a serious mistake on my part. I’d almost certainly die for it, and I’d definitely lose what freedom I have.”
“For all I know, you want to kill me out of revenge or something,” Simon protested. “The risk could be worth it to you.”
“For what? You haven’t done anything that would make me want to kill you, even if I was prone to that kind of desire.”
“I don’t know! For keeping your identity information?” Simon found himself getting increasingly anxious. The idea that the Phantom wouldn’t want to kill him didn’t fit inside his worldview. It strained credulity. Of course the Phantom would want to kill him, that was how the Phantom dealt with problems. Wasn’t it?
“Simon, if I wanted to kill you over that you’d be long dead already.”
The casual pronouncement of it, and the use of his first name sent Simon’s blood cold. He dropped his shirt– standing there in his undershirt and black boxer briefs– and turned toward the man. It felt like his heart had stopped in his chest.
“You actually mean that, don’t you?” He stared in astonishment at Halblicht, who was sitting casually on the edge of the bed in a pair of boxers, his hands resting in his lap.
Halblicht shrugged. “I do, yes.”
Simon narrowed his eyes. “And is every murder a matter of cold, twisted calculation to you?”
“I suppose, the same way anything else is. It’s not something that I enjoy.”
“It’s not something that you enjoy,” Simon repeated heavily. He felt like there was an iron weight on his chest. He remembered Metis’ lifeless body resting on that machine, and young Athena’s far away stare. “Do you enjoy anything?”
Now it was Bobby– Halblicht’s stare that was far away.
“I don’t know,” he answered quietly. There was no emotion in it, it was just a factual answer. “Enjoying things wasn’t part of my training.”
The statement sent a fresh shiver down Simon’s spine. He took a halting step forward, cuffs in hand.
“Hold out your arm,” he demanded tersely. He watched as Halblicht obeyed quickly and without hesitation. It made Simon hesitate– but after a second, he snapped the cuff into place on the man’s wide wrist. He snapped the other half of the pair onto himself.
There they were– bound together again as fate had demanded.
“It’s cold,” Halblicht murmured.
“You’ll warm up to it,” Simon drawled. The weight on his arm was familiar. Almost steadying, as if he had been adrift until now.
Halblicht spoke again, and this time Simon once more heard Bobby Fulbright’s rather whimpering tone in his voice. “This isn’t how we spent last Christmas.”
Simon stared down at the man who had killed Metis Cykes, and remembered the Christmas of last year.
He’d thought that it was going to be the last Christmas he ever had.
“No. You visited me in my cell. You brought cake, and kept trying to get me to sing carols with you. I’d only known you for a month and a half.”
Bobby– there was no way Simon could avoid thinking of him as Bobby right now– pushed up his glasses and rubbed his face again with the heel of his free palm. He smiled a sad little smile.
“It would have been sad for you to spend Christmas alone,” he said earnestly. “And I didn’t have anyone to spend it with either.”
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked bluntly.
“Yes I did, but! Well, it’s a complicated question, like I said before.”
Simon snorted. He didn’t know whether his patience, or his sanity would snap first. He marched around the bed, tugging Bobby’s wrist with him, and he climbed onto his side.
“Oh!” Bobby sat awkwardly at the end of the bed for a moment with his arm out toward Simon, looking at him with large eyes.
“Get in bed, Half Wit, before I pull you.”
“Oh! Yes, sir.” He snapped an awkward salute, and scrambled to the other side of the bed.
Simon awkwardly pushed a pillow between the two of them, where the chain rested. It was unfair. It was monstrously unfair. A week ago he might have done anything to be in a hotel room alone with Fool Bright, and now he was and it was some kind of twisted punishment.
It was so terribly ironic that he found himself laughing out loud, slapping the pillow.
“Sir?” Bobby asked in astonishment
“Nothing, Half Wit– nothing you’d understand. It’s simply, you laugh or you cry!” He laughed again, a choked, forced thing.
“So they say,” Halblicht murmured halfheartedly. He rubbed his neck.
Simon tried his best to compose himself. He pulled the tie out of his hair and let it loose over his shoulders, pushing it back from his forehead.
“So they say,” he repeated. If he didn’t find a way to ground himself, he really was going to start crying. He searched for a topic. A question. Anything. Anything but thinking about being in bed with Bobby on Christmas Eve. “You said something about training. Tell me about that.”
“I’d rather not,” he replied cool and smoothly.
“I didn’t ask you if you wanted to,” Simon snapped back.
He turned and looked away, the chain between them clinking. “You won’t like it, Simon. It’s awful. It’s ugly.”
Was the phantom exaggerating for affect? Was he holding back in an attempt to garner more sympathy with whatever his next lie would be? … or was it really something horrible?
Athena had said the man seemed divided. A trauma in early childhood sometimes resulted in a psychological divide, or a fragmented identity. Was that really the case here?
Or was it all a twisted con job?
“I spent seven years in jail for a murder you committed. I can handle the ugliness of the world. Tell me.”
“There’s a part of me that really, really doesn’t want to, Simon,” he murmured. “I think it feels.. vulnerable?”
“Vulnerable,” he repeated. “Vulnerable like sleeping in the same bed with a known killer? Make yourself vulnerable for me, Half Wit, and maybe you’ll regain a minuscule drop of ocean of trust that dried up between us. Maybe there will be some justice in such a vulnerability.”
If there was anything of Bobby in this man, this killer, maybe that would get to him. If his precious justice was ever anything more than a foolish put on.
Halblicht sniffled, and looked back over at him, turning to face him again.
“You’re right. Of course that would be justice,” he murmured. “I’ll try. I’ll try but it’s going to be hard.”
Simon laced his fingers around the chain that bound them, and he squeezed it.
“Explain it to me. Why is it hard. Because this training of yours was so terrible?”
“Yes, sir. It’s… very difficult to think about. And more difficult to speak about.” Indeed, Halblicht seemed to have difficulty just moving his lips to form words. It was as if he was clawing up a cliff face just to talk to him. “And…”
“And?” Simon leaned toward him expectantly, the cold chain in his hand. The suspense was killing him.
He watched Halblicht swallow. “And he keeps trying to stop me, Simon.”
Simon’s blood went cold.
“Who keeps trying to stop you?”
He already knew the answer.
“The one you call the Phantom.”
Simon’s heart felt like it stopped in his chest.
December 24th, 7:10 pm
How could you tell him that? Robert hissed. How dare you. I told you not to say anything without me! I didn’t tell you you could tell him that.
I know! But he’s so upset! and he deserves to know! It’s unjust to keep it from him! And you didn’t want me to tell him about the training, either, Robert. It was one or the other. We can’t just say nothing to him.
I’ve been trying to do exactly that.
And you’ve still been failing. I know you care about him too, even if you don’t want to admit it.
The chain suddenly pulled at Bobby’s wrist and he realized that they were so deep into their own conversation, he’d missed something that Simon had said.
“I’m sorry!” they huffed out.
Simon’s hand was choked up on the chain, near their wrist, and Simon leaned forward across the pillow toward them. There was a horrible scowl on his face, and his eyes were intense and burning.
“Are you telling me the truth?” Simon demanded.
“Yes! Yes I am! I know it sounds stupid!
Simon pointed a finger at him. “It sounds incredibly stupid. It sounds like a lie made up to convince us into forgiving you for your crimes. It sounds like a ham-handed attempt at manipulation– which is why I’m surprised to hear it from a supposed master spy.”
See, Bobby? I told you he’d assume we were trying to trick him.
Yes but now we have a chance to convince him that we’re not!
I suppose.
Robert shrugged. “Unless of course I was such a master manipulator that I anticipated that you wouldn’t think I’d try to tell a lie that’s so stupid.”
Robert, why would you say that? Now he’s going to think–
“I wonder,” Simon sneered. “Fine. Since you said you’re telling the truth, let;s get the whole truth out, now.”
“Now?” A note of panic slipped even into Robert’s voice.
“Yes now,” Simon said. “I’m sure as hell not waiting any longer. I’m not going to bed not knowing if I believe if you’re the man I knew as Bobby Fulbright or just some ruthless killer who doesn’t care if I live or die.”
“So you’ll give me a chance, Simon?” Bobby’s tearful smile broke through their expression.
“A chance, yes. Consider it your only chance.”
Simon moved unexpectedly, and Bobby and Robert were half yanked across the bed as they did.
“Ah! Where are you–?”
Simon scooped his phone up from on the dresser on his side of the bed.
“I’m calling Cykes-dono,” he snapped. “With her here, it’ll be harder for you to lie to me.”
“That’s true, but…” Bobby bit his lip, and Robert followed up, “weren’t you already embarrassed to be in bed with me? Should we get dressed?”
“Half wit, I am beyond caring. I am calling her into the room now, and damn the consequences.”