August 02, 2028– 2:05pm
In October it would be two years since Vera’s father had been killed, and she had been put on trial for his murder. It was still a little bit unclear to her how exactly prosecutor Miles Edgeworth had ended up in her life, but he had been waiting in her hospital room when she woke up, and since then he had helped her make arrangements in her life.
So far, most of those arrangements had involved helping her understand her finances, securing her living space, and managing her enrollment in an accelerated adult learning program to officially obtain her high school diploma.
Now the fancy dressed man– who was by now the chief prosecutor– was helping her arrange the next step in her education.
He took a sip of his coffee, sitting comfortably in her kitchen with her.
“You’re sure this is what you want, Vera? I remember last year we had discussed an art program.”
Vera’s hands wrapped around the mug before her, letting the coffee inside warm them as she nodded firmly.
She’d thought about it for some time, of course, turning it over and over in her head on one of her many sleepless nights. She’d written back and forth about it, and debated it both internally and externally to always the same conclusion.
Art had stopped bringing her joy, at least as a career choice. Every time she’d put the brush to canvas with the intent to create something she could sell and survive off of, her father’s spirit hung heavy over her and crushed her creative spark to nothing. WIth the joy smothered from her dearest hobby, the idea of it becoming her job felt like an ever tightening box.
“I don’t want to make copies anymore.” she said softly. “That includes copying my father’s life. My eyes, my hands, could help people like how Apollo Justice and Mr. Wright helped me.”
Mr. Edgeworth sighed and sipped his coffee, before putting it down on the counter with a little click. He shook his head.
“I understand, Vera. Sometimes it seems like everyone that this justice system touches ends up becoming absorbed by it. I wondered if perhaps you’d escape the… pattern.”
Curse. Mr. Edgeworth hadn’t said it. But that was what he meant. Maybe he was right. By now of course, Vera knew about the chief prosecutor’s own history. The death of his father. The trial of Manfred Von Karma.
The beginnings of the great prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, in circumstances strangely reminiscent of her own. He’d been dragged into the mire of the legal system. Maybe it was a curse, a fate imposed on those touched by the scythe of death on its path through someone else that you’d find yourself entangled in the complicated and difficult world of the law and justice.
But Vera was no stranger to curses. She sipped her coffee.
“Sorry Mr. Edgeworth…but I’ve talked it out and come to a de-decision.” Her voice dropped low. “I want to be a forensic investigator. Like Miss Skye.”
“If that’s what you’ve decided, then I won’t try any further to dissuade you.” He smiled a rather sad little smile and Vera managed her own fragile one in return.
“Thank you…maybe I’ll..I’ll get the chance to work with you someday, Mr. Edgeworth.”
“Perhaps you will. About all this– I heard you’d also been talking to Pearl Fey about the matter.”
She nodded. “and I have been…Pearl and I have talked a lot about it, actually. She was …one…of the people I talked to when trying to figure things out.”
“I know she’s been quite enthusiastic for herself,” Edgeworth said thoughtfully. “Was she the one who suggested it to you?”
She hadn’t been.
Vera was absolutely certain Miles Edgeworth wouldn’t have approved of the one who had. Her fingers tightened against her mug, a minute and easily missed sign of her internal spike in nerves.
If Apollo Justice were here, she was certain he would have noticed right away. The one who had suggested the path through the police academy had been another person entirely. A demon hovering over her shoulder, or her guardian angel, she wasn’t entirely sure.
“No, Mr. Edgeworth…she hadn’t. But when I told her I was thinking of joining too, she got rather excited.”
“A fine coincidence, I suppose.” Edgeworth nodded, satisfied. “The two of you have a lot in common, in some ways.”
“We do, Mr. Edgeworth?” Vera cocked her head. “..I mean, I feel as if we do, we’ve found a lot of common ground…but I’m curious what you mean.”
“Well. Without meaning to offend,” he said carefully. “You were both raised in a quite sheltered way by a parent who was then… removed from your lives.”
“Ah…”
Vera had heard a little on this, here and there, in her conversations with Pearl. She’d always gotten the sense it wasn’t exactly something she liked to talk about– which was fair. Her own memories of her childhood with her father were complicated and entwined with the gut-wrenching feeling of poison pulsing through her body.
“That’s true, isn’t it..? Leaving us a little adrift when they were gone…”
Miles nodded again. “Ms. Fey I think is a little bit ahead of you in working through that in some ways, and I think a little bit behind. Perhaps the two of you can help uplift one another during your time at the academy.”
Vera leaned forward.
“I’d like that. Pearl’s a stable presence. Nice. Maybe we could dorm together?”
It was better than the mortifying ordeal of being set up with a stranger.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mr. Edgeworth nodded. “It shouldn’t be a problem. Beyond that– I want you to know that if this doesn’t work out, it isn’t a problem or a failure, Vera. There’s no shame in trying something and then wanting to change tracks.”
It was a nice sentiment, but she had no intention of backing out. She’d been raised since she was a child to be an unknowing accomplice to forgery and corruption. Her talented eye and clever hands had rarely created anything beautiful that wasn’t a fake designed to put money in her father’s wallet.
As much as she loved art, this was something that could be all her own..just as she’d said in the letters to the man who’d suggested the academy in the first place.
“I know Mr. Edgeworth,” she smiled warmly at him. “I promise. But I know I can do it. I bel-believe in myself, as frightening as it is.”
He nodded, and raised his coffee cup to her. “I believe in you too, Vera. I shall be watching your career closely.”
August 02, 2028– 3:15pm
I shall be watching your career closely.
Miles Edgeworth couldn’t know that he wasn’t the only person who had said– or at least who had written– those words to her in the last few days. With the chief prosecutor gone now, she was alone in her apartment. Just her, and her correspondence.
She sat at her quiet drafting table, unused paints and brushes gathering dust from where her lack of inspiration left them, pen hovering over an empty page as she scanned the opened letter pinned just beside it.
A simple envelope, and a letter scented with a gentle perfume written in careful handwriting.
Her pen swayed in her fingertips as she read it over once more and formulated her reply to one of the most constant presences in her life since the death of her father.
The letters had begun sometime shortly after she’d awoken from her coma, when she’d been getting settled in the new chance at life Apollo Justice had given her…and despite her better judgment, despite the good sense of men like the sort wielded by Miles Edgeworth, she couldn’t stop herself from responding.
There had been no apology.
Perhaps that was the most striking thing. No apology whatsoever. The letters had simply started with the tone of a casual correspondence.
Dear Vera,
I hope that you’re keeping well and you haven’t had trouble with your accommodations due to recent events. I’m afraid mine leave much to be desired…
That first letter she’d received almost two years ago– it was so casual. So pleasant.
She’d crafted a frame for it, though she never dared display it where her rare houseguests may see it and wonder. It sat, protected by hand-carved wood and glass, in a quiet drawer next to her drafting table.
It’d been just like its sender– so polite and affable, even when tugging the strings of its trap taut around you. It’d been a comfort to see that he hadn’t changed.
She’d responded in a haze.
My life is in a state of flux, but Mr. Edgeworth and Mr. Justice have been very kind to me. I may lose papa’s house, but I’m told I should be given assistance to pick an apartment of my own. Are yours so terrible? Perhaps something can be done…
And just like that, she’d gained herself the strangest pen pal. A correspondence course in life after tragedy, penned at the hand of the devil himself. And yet– here, 2 years later, she still had pen to paper again behind Miles Edgeworth’s back.
Two years later, and she had two years worth of letters saved and boxed. She’d received one twice a week, almost like clockwork in that time. More than 500 letters.
It was her little secret, the secret joy and the secret shame all in one, bundled away for her eyes only.
Her correspondence with the man who’d tried to end her life–and the man who’d ended her father’s.
She began the latest letter, chewing nervously on her lip.
As I’d mentioned in my previous letter, I’ve gotten accepted into the LAPD Police Academy with the intention of entering the detective course on my way to becoming a forensic investigator. Mr. Edgeworth checked in with me, but I think he’s worried about the idea of me getting involved in law because of what happened to my father.
Fathers.
Fathers were something they’d discussed over the course of their many letters.
The devil had never apologized. But he had spoken of his own father. A tyrannical man who had been a famous defense attorney before a sudden and surprising heart attack had made his children orphans.
Any sensible person would have hardened themselves to the story in the face of the devil’s evil, but Vera only ever felt stings of sympathy as she’d responded back. It was through him that she’d started to see the wounds her own father had left on her, and see the lingering spirit of Drew Misham for what he was.
Sympathy for the devil had lead her to respond about a life in isolation after the kidnapping attempt, a father who used her talents for financial gain, the loneliness of being raised in a gilded prison by a man so selfish he’d make a child with a gift into a criminal who knew nothing of the world.
He seems to think our idea is me falling into a curse that befalls those who lose their parents to criminal violence, that it’s somehow inevitable that we’re drawn into the Goddess Justitia’s world of crime and punishment. Maybe he’s right, in a way. Do you think that’s a bad thing? Or is it natural to feel drawn to it like a moth to flame? Some insight from my guardian angel may help.
Her guardian angel– the devil had often referred to himself as such, after Vera herself had used the phrase. And he generally had plenty of advice for her. The advice hadn’t even, as of yet, involved poisoning anyone.
Either way I don’t intend to change course. Pearl Fey, a friend of mine, is going to the same academy. We’d talked about it often after your suggestion and I honestly hope we get the chance to room together. She’s a good person, someone who I think understands the difficulty of growing up like I have. I think I can sway Mr. Edgeworth on it, but if you know anyone who can help I’d be happy.
She smiled to herself as she wrote it in elegant script. No…he’d never offered to poison anyone, or for her to. It might be shocking to many, and even herself, but her guardian angel had always given her sound advice. Despite the incident that had left her comatose and sickly, he’d never steered her wrong. Maybe that was why she was so drawn to him and his every written word.
I know things don’t change often in prison, but I hope things have been going well. Did you receive my last painting? I thought maybe if you hung it up it’d make your accommodations a little less stifling. I haven’t had much of the spark to draw lately, but when I thought of your cell I was struck by inspiration.
He’d sent her a picture lately, of his little cell. It wasn’t much to look at, though she supposed that it might be considered opulent for a prison. There was a bookshelf, and a little table and chair, but not much in terms of decoration. The photo, evidently, had been taken at his request by a friend whose name he hadn’t mentioned.
As comfortable as a cell could be, it was still a cell. Something she knew well from her time cloistered in her father’s moldering old house. So with the inspiration of such a bare confinement, she’d been spurred to take up the brush once more and finished an original painting…an abstract painting of the sunrise as viewed through crystal fingers.
I want to hear all about what’s been happening there, if it’s not too much to ask. Are the guards treating you well? You’ve been on my mind once again…It’s likely too much to wish that you could see me on the day I graduate from the Academy, but I daydreamed that I saw your face in the crowd and could see how far I’d come from the frightened forgery you once knew.
It was unlikely, of course, that she would ever see him outside those bars. Or even outside that smiling picture that he had sent her, settled elegantly in that chair, by the table in his cell. The devil had been convicted of two murders. He had never spoken of it, and the specifics of his sentence were not public record– it was entirely possible that she would not be receiving his letters for many years to come.
It shouldn’t hurt so badly to imagine the inevitable. Vera knew–the devil was a wicked man, they’d all said it to her time and time again. Mr. Wright, Edgeworth, she’d even seen the pain in Mr. Justice’s eyes when he talked about him. He’d even said it in court. ‘Because I am an evil man’.
But even with all the evidence, even knowing he was the devil himself, she couldn’t help but see him as the angel she’d met all those years ago. Her heart felt tight in her chest at the very thought of the day her letters went unanswered.
I’ll imagine you there. I
A tear hit the page to her surprise. She hadn’t been aware she’d started to cry, and yet the evidence lay there smudging the ink.
Evidence, as the devil himself said, was everything.
And the evidence said that Vera Misham cared very much.
She dotted the paper with her sleeve, leaning back in her chair with a quiet hiccup as she attempted to compose herself. Her face felt hot, and her breath felt ragged as it did on the stand years before, when the charge of murder nearly fell on her shoulders.
…can’t imagine a graduation without the one whose encouragement made it possible. I hope that I’ll make you proud, Mr. Gavin.
Her hand shook above the page, speckles of ink joining the damp tear marks from her quivering pen.
August 02, 2028– 3:45 pm
“You know, I keep thinking. It’s nice, in its own way, to see you on the other side of the bars, Lana.” Kristoph smiled his soft, seemingly guileless little smile at her as she stood in front of his cell door.
Lana Skye had been free now for about a month and a half, after more than ten long years in these walls. So why did she keep coming back?
Maybe it was simply the amount of time she’d called the state penitentiary her home. She’d become quite the staple in the lives of many of the men and women who passed through its barred doors.
Lana Skye, the fallen Chief Prosecutor had been there to offer advice, debate, and friendship to most everyone at one point or another. So maybe instead it was those lingering connections to the unfortunates still behind bars and their untold stories that kept bringing her back.
“I’m glad it can bring you at least a little comfort, Kristoph,” she chuckled as she adjusted her scarf. “I’m sorry I can’t say the same to you.”
“I suppose I have to lie in the bed I’ve made, don’t I?” he agreed, cheerfully enough. “Unless someone were to overturn my sentence I suppose. Not very much chance of that.”
“As we all must, my friend…but who knows. I’m not Chief Prosecutor anymore…but I can certainly put in a good word for you should you ever have a parole hearing.” Lana sighed quietly, tucking a lock of her hair over her ear.
She wasn’t chief prosecutor any longer. In and of itself that was a relief, even with the loss of authority and influence that could have helped those she’d gotten to know. But, somehow she’d found herself back in the prosecutor’s office, starting from the bottom by the grace of her old protege Miles Edgeworth.
“I don’t want to see a brilliant light like your own flicker out behind bars if I don’t have to. You’re a smart man, Gavin…” she placed her hand against the bars, “and if I’ve learned one thing behind bars, it’s that everyone has more to their story than the verdict lets on.”
“You have a keen eye for that sort of thing, Lana.” He lingered near the bars, arms crossed and thoughtful. “You may not be the chief prosecutor any more, but I know that you have the ear of the new one. And I have heard some interesting things about what he intends to do with the position, and has been doing already.”
“Yes…he’s asked me advice on it a few times since my release. He’s looking to change the system from the ground up through some rather unconventional methods. One of which, I’m interested to say, was allowing my re-hiring into the prosecutor’s office despite…” she trailed off for a moment before her expression firmed and her eyes hardened, “my part in Gant’s little game.”
Gavin, on the other hand, smiled a little wider, and drummed his fingers on his elbow. “Yes, Mr. Edgeworth truly seems like a man interested in second chances, doesn’t he? It was only last year he had Blackquill prosecuting cases from death row.”
Lana chuckled.
“A bold move, honestly. It worked out well for dear Simon. I’m proud to say he’s back prosecuting cases free of his chains already and has been doing quite well for himself.” She crossed her arms as well, a mirror of his posture, and hummed as she put her fingers to the bottom of her chin. “He seems to believe very much in second chances, and of revisiting facts once thought concrete to find the truth hidden within. He’s a good man, Gavin.”
“I believe that, you know,” Kristoph said with a smile. “One wonders how he came by such goodness. But perhaps you could tell the good chief prosecutor that I am eager to be of use to him, in whatever capacity he might put me. Defense attorneys aren’t the purview of the state of course, but I’m a flexible man, Lana. Let him know that.”
Lana chuckled as her finger hooked against her chin.
“You know, Mr. Gavin…I was going to offer the same thing.” She closed her eyes with a smile “I’ve gotten to know you over the last two years or so… and I think you’d be a great candidate for his rehabilitation project. I know you’re flexible, and willing to do what must be done, so I’ll bring it up to him during my next meeting, alright?”
“I appreciate that, Lana. Even if it comes to no more than a way to pass the time until the end– well, it’s very boring with you gone. All I have to do with my days is read and correspond.”
And cry, perhaps. If Lana understood the meaning of the dark bruises, puffy under Gavin’s eyes.
Lana would never insult a prisoner’s pride by pointing it out. She had been no stranger herself to private tears known only to herself and the guards who pretended not to listen. So she simply smiled instead with a bow of her head.
“It hasn’t been the same without the chance to speak to you more often, Mr. Gavin. I’ll confess, I do miss it.” She closed her eyes. “I’ll see about getting you some sort of diversion. A new book, perhaps, or a correspondence game– though it sounds like you have something of the sort going? I remember you asking me to take that picture of you, after all.”
He chuckled politely and bowed his head. “You’ve caught me, Lana. I am fortunate enough to have my own little correspondence game. But I’ll never say no to another diversion.”