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randomstarmuffin · 3 months ago

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AUgust Day 1: Canon Divergence

dunno how many of these i'll actually manage but yay to at least 1!

cross-posted to ao3 and i'm so sorry but i work in 5 hrs and haven't slept so i'm just going to leave the actually good tagging there, apologies

April 11, 9:48 AM District Court Defendant Lobby No. 3

“Mr.… Swellow, right?”

“Uh. What am I, a Pokémon? Heh. Like, ‘Who’s that…’”

“…A…what?”

Well. Mia’s really off to a rocking start, here.

Mr. Grossberg’s correct, of course, in his little defendant’s lobby pep talk—she shouldn’t let the client see her like this, but she can’t help her frown or involuntarily biting her lip all the same. What the hell is a ‘pokey-mon’? Is that somehow relevant to the case? Did she miss something important in the court record, or–

“Er, you know what, never mind,” Doug Swellow says hurriedly, looking at her in concern—great, Mia, really great work, way to keep the client calm and assured. “I just meant, it’s actually Swallow, not Swellow. Like…huh, actually. Like the bird, I guess—just, the real one and not the ’mon, y’know?”

Mia…really doesn’t know. She’s also not sure if several of those words were even words.

“A-hem,” Grossberg coughs pointedly. “That aside, Mr. Swallow, rest assured, you’re in good hands.”

“Right,” Mia says, possibly a little too grateful for the save, “I promise, if you’re truly innocent, I will do everything I possibly can to save you!”

“Uhh,” Doug replies, leaning back as far as he can, “yeah, great. Would you mind, maybe, letting go of my jacket? Thanks.”

Right, right, right, it’s totally alright. Mr. Swellow—er, that is, Swallow—is the one on trial, and Mia’s got this. She knows what she has to do, and she can totally get through this and there’s no reason to be nervous at all. Once all’s said and done, she’ll be able to rest easy, she’ll be able to tell Diego he can rest easy, and Doug here will be able to rest easy, too…and preferably won’t be looking at her with such a clear questioning of the wisdom of his decision to agree to let her take over his defense from Mr. Grossberg anymore.

On the bright side, things can only go up from here.

April 11, 10:12 AM District Court Courtroom No. 2

Things go downhill very, very quickly.

It’s easy enough to answer the court’s first few questions: the defense is ready; the cause of death was poisoning; the motive, the “bad blood” between the parties involved, was, of course, Dahlia Hawthorne, the victim’s girlfriend and the defendant’s ex. Mia knows all that, even if it’s insulting to be treated like such a rookie she had to be asked the basics of the case at all—even more so that Winston “Rookie Killer” Payne was the one so smugly leading the discussion.

…Even more so, that, maybe, she really had been freaking out enough that some of the fundamental basics of court had fled her mind. Only for a moment, of course! But it still stings that Prosecutor Payne’s annoying needling actually helped her in any way.

Even then, it’s one thing to be treated like a rookie who doesn’t know the basics of the case (even if she had been furiously catching up on everything in the court record as the trial began). It’s another thing entirely for all of the evidence to stack up so quickly and concisely to implicate her client.

It’s another thing entirely to have to cross-examine her right off the bat.

As if that demure, crocodile grin wasn’t bad enough, the crocodile tears Dahlia Hawhorne hits the court with as soon as she steps on the stand are genuinely nauseating. Then again, maybe Mia’s the only one who thinks so—the judge and Prosecutor Payne are clearly charmed, and even Grossberg murmurs, “Poor girl,” from Mia’s side, despite the sharp elbow jab he receives in response.

In fairness, she would be, if Mia weren’t positive that not even an ounce of her so-sad sympathy-sculpting sorrow is sincere. If Mia weren’t sure that this woman is the one behind this whole thing, to begin with.

If Dahlia Hawthorne weren’t so clearly trying to get away with poisoning someone again.

Mia almost misses it, but someone scoffs as Hawthorne launches into her latest round of tearful, sobbing “testimony” (more accurately: accusation)—“I thought Dougie was better than this, how could he let his jealousy get the best of him, what did poor Feenie ever do to deserve this?!”—and when Mia surreptitiously glances askance to find the source, she finds the only other face in the room darkened with clear disdain rather than bleeding sympathy is her client’s.

So maybe there’s hope, then. Maybe despite having dated her in the past, Doug Swallow actually sees this megalomaniac for who she really is. It would certainly be a breath of fresh air, and it’s all the second wind she needs to reaffirm she has to prove this man’s innocence, however she can.

She’ll make sure he walks free, and she’ll make sure to get justice for the victim—for all of Hawthorne’s victims.

As for the cross-examination at hand…

Hawthorne sniffles piteously as she finally answers the question Payne had actually asked her: “We had dinner plans, so that’s why I went to Feenie’s place to meet up, and–! Oh, it’s too horrible!” She punctuates it with some more sobbing, but Mia isn’t deterred.

On the contrary, she calls, “Hold it! When you say ‘it’s too horrible,’ you’re referring to…?”

“F-finding his body, of course,” Hawthorne sobs, “he was just lying there, and, oh, poor Feenie–!”

“Witness,” Mia interrupts, “we are looking for facts with your testimony. We don’t need–”

“Ms. Fey, have a heart! Can’t you see the poor girl is in mourning? I can’t even imagine how hard this must all be for you, sweetie; please, take your time,” Payne cries.

Unfortunately, the judge all too readily agrees that she is, somehow, the one in the wrong here, and Mia is forced to try a slightly less aggressive approach.

“Urgh–! Okay. Fine. Then, Ms. Hawthorne, when you say you had dinner plans, when exactly were you supposed to meet?”

Altogether, it’s, to put it bluntly, a slog. Dancing around Hawthorne’s lies and the judge and Payne’s incessant gooey-eyed protectiveness of her is infuriating, but eventually, they can put together something of a timeline.

The problem is, Doug Swallow was witnessed exiting the victim’s building around 4 PM—and not just by Hawthorne, but corroborated by a bunch of Art Department students who knew the victim as well (not that he would have been hard to identify, considering his obnoxious sweater)—and Hawthorne herself claims to have entered it later at around 5:30, at which point other students heard her scream and someone eventually called 911 at exactly 5:34, which would seem to line up perfectly.

Hawthorne is vague about why she would have been hanging around the victim’s building at 4 if she wasn’t going to go in until later, but Mia isn’t able to press her about it very hard before His Honor stops her from “going too far” for something not particularly related to the case.

In any event, when Payne calls the defendant to the stand to testify himself, Mia meets his eyes and finds again a kinship to her own feelings about Hawthorne, and she can definitively state that the defense has no objections. Besides, Swallow is innocent.

All she has to do is prove it.

April 11, 12:17 AM District Court Courtroom No. 2

“Proving it” is proving difficult.

It’s news to Mia that they’d found the defendant’s fingerprints on the victim’s bottle of cold medicine—even when the judge calls for a 20 minute recess following the change of witness and this revelation, and she takes the opportunity to grill him about it, he just laughs humorlessly and sits heavily on the couch with his head in his hands, saying, “I’m fucked. She got me.”

She’s hoping getting back in the courtroom will make her client more forthcoming, but he clearly doesn’t want to tell them what actually happened.

“What’s the point?” Swallow asks, smiling bitterly. “No one would ever believe me.”

“Mr. Swallow,” Mia implores, or perhaps begs, with how desperate she feels, “I swear to you, I believe in you. I believe in your innocence, and I want to help prove it. But I can’t do that unless you tell me what happened. Please.”

He stares her down for a moment. “I really don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say.”

“That’s fine. I don’t have to like it, I just need to know what really happened. If—if you want me to get—the person who did this—and to get due justice for you and Mr. Wright, I need to know.”

Doug sighs. “That poor sucker. He never knew what hit him… Okay. Okay, fine. I’ll tell you, but…don’t blame me if you have to eat your words.”

Mia wishes she could say she wasn’t worried about it, but she has no idea what to expect. Indeed, she doesn’t expect what he tells them, but it’s not as bad as she feared. That doesn’t make it good, but…

“I called him out to talk—Phoenix Wright, I mean. We were supposed to meet at 2:45 PM after class behind the Pharmacology Building. I was there on time, but he never showed. I waited around for a while by myself, but eventually I figured he wasn’t coming and left. I…got worried, later, and…that’s why I went to his place. The medicine bottle…that…wasn’t my fault.”

Sure, there’s more than enough clearly wrong with that, but it’s also something to work with.

“What did you want to talk to him about?”

“Oh. I…well, to be honest, I wanted to warn him about Dahlia.”

“‘Warn’ him? How so?” Mia presses, hoping she doesn’t sound too eager.

“She’s…” he hesitates, eyeing the judge mistrustfully, “she’s not the person she seems like she is. There were…there were a couple of…thefts. In the labs, in the pharmacology department.”

“Thefts of what?” Mia prompts.

“…Deadly poison. Once the night before the incident, and once eight months ago.”

Eight months ago! Finally, finally.

Swallow continues, “I wanted to warn that guy—Mr. Wright—just in case. I was worried because…Dahlia had come to the lab both times. She was the only one who could have stolen it! I have no idea what she was doing with it, but…well. Rather, I had no idea. Now that it’s come to this, though…I feel like it’s pretty clear.”

Mia can barely hear the murmur of the gallery over the pounding in her own ears. Dahlia Hawthorne stole deadly poison from the pharmacology lab eight months ago. It’s exactly what she’s been waiting for.

Before she gets ahead of herself, she needs to make sure she gets everything she can out of this cross-examination, though.

The judge calls for order, and Mia takes a deep breath of her own.

“Then, Mr. Swallow,” she prompts, “when you say you were worried about the defendant and went looking for him at his place, you mean…?”

“Honestly, I didn’t expect the guy to end up dead! I just…when he told me he’d be there at the meeting time, he sounded pretty set on coming. I guess I was more worried Dahlia had gotten to him first—er, well, not like… Like, that she’d told him not to talk to me, y’know.”

“And when you arrived at Mr. Wright’s room, what happened?”

“I knocked, but no answer. His neighbor saw me in the hall and told me he’d tried to go out earlier but his cold had apparently gotten worse and he barely made it to the end of the hallway before some of the other students had to take him back.”

“Did they see Ms. Hawthorne?”

“I…didn’t ask, sorry. I should have. But, I kind of doubt it…”

“That’s okay,” Mia says. There’s only one last thing she really needs to follow up on, then. “Mr. Swallow. When you said the medicine bottle ‘wasn’t your fault,’ what did you mean by that?”

He lets out a heavy breath, like maybe he’s been expecting this all along. “Right. Well. That would be because…”

His hesitation lasts long enough Mia has to prompt, “Because?”

“Because,” Swallow sighs, “I didn’t end up seeing Phoenix Wright at all that day, but I did run into Dahlia Hawthorne.”

The judge has to call for order. When things have quieted down again, Mia has to reign in her own excitement. She’s so close. She can almost taste it.

“And when was that?” Mia asks, “What happened then?”

“It was while I was waiting for Mr. Wright. She passed by the Pharmacology Department…and ran into me, literally. She bumped into me—I thought because our umbrellas had been obscuring us from each other, and she’d had headphones on, but…”

“You don’t think that anymore?”

He laughs harshly. “Yeah, not really. She fell over when she bumped me, both our umbrellas went flying…and she dropped some other stuff she’d been carrying. Including a bottle of Coldkiller X…which I stupidly picked up for her. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was literally the whole reason she approached me in the first place.”

Prosecutor Payne sneers, “Hah! How convenient! Your Honor, the witness is clearly lying through his teeth to cover his tracks!”

Mia’s pretty sure Swallow mutters, “That’s what I was afraid of,” but she doesn’t have time for that.

She has to convince the judge that her client is telling the truth. And… She thumbs the corner of the newspaper clipping in her pocket. She has to find a way to connect this to Diego’s poisoning. She has to.

She is so, so close.

April 11, 2:59 PM District Court Defendant Lobby No. 3

She never gets close.

There just isn’t any evidence. She can’t prove Dahlia Hawthorne stole the poison from the lab, and all she has is Doug’s word that she was ever there at all. No surveillance cameras, no entry or exit logs, no nothing.

She can’t prove it.

She can, and does, however, prove Doug Swallow’s innocence. The words “Not Guilty” have never sounded so bitter. It’s a fluke, honestly. Most of the end of the trial is a blur. It turns out Swallow has an airtight alibi that somehow they’ve all missed. It turns out, by some miracle, Swallow never had the opportunity to take the specific poison that was used, that he was always with at least one other person in the lab, that—honestly, even if she only just proved it all, she barely remembers the specifics; it’s just, it doesn’t really matter.

It doesn’t matter, because Mia fails. She couldn’t prove she stabbed Valerie Hawthorne, she couldn’t prove she pressured Terry Fawles into taking poison to silence himself for her, and.

She can’t prove Dahlia Hawthorne murdered Phoenix Wright.

She still can’t prove Dahlia Hawthorne poisoned Diego.

The insidious tinkling of Hawthorne’s smug laughter chases Mia out of the courtroom. She was honestly ready to lay everything on the line just for a chance to bring Dahlia to justice, even a very, very slim one, but Mr. Grossberg had stopped her before she’d pressed hard enough to lose her badge entirely. He’d had a point, she supposes. If she loses her badge, she’s that much further from being able to do anything about any of this. If she loses her badge, she’s that much further from her original goal, from finding the man who ruined her mother and her village and bringing him to justice, too.

But it hurts.

Diego once told her a lawyer can only cry when it’s all over.

But fuck, she wants to cry. She wants to scream and bitch and moan and curse until her throat is raw, too, but she really, really wants to cry.

She won’t. He’s right. She still has work to do. But that doesn’t erase the want.

Still. Even if there’s a dark, heavy pit in her stomach, even if this is somehow nearly as bad as the worst day of her life, when she’d had to watch her first client die on the stand before her very eyes, she still has a duty to her current client.

She forces the brightest smile she can muster.

It might not be enough, but it’s something. She has to try. It can be the darkest hour, and she still has to try. She couldn’t live with herself otherwise.

“Congratulations, Mr. Swallow,” Mia manages, turning to him. Smiling.

“Yes, congratulations!” Grossberg agrees, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. Mia’s boss is undoubtedly faring better than she is, but she can tell he’s far from unphased. Still, she appreciates that he’s able to muster a little more enthusiasm—Doug deserves it from somewhere, at least, and it sure as hell isn’t going to get there from Mia.

“Thanks,” Swallow says. He smiles back, although Mia can tell he’s feeling a much more real sense of relief at his acquittal than she is. He winces a little, like maybe he can tell as well. “I’m…really sorry I didn’t have anything else to help prove it was her.”

“No, no, that’s… You have nothing to apologize for,” Mia replies honestly. “If anything, I really need to thank you. Even just knowing where the poison was from…that’s a great clue. Really.”

Swallow looks like maybe he can’t decide if she’s just being nice about that or not, but if he has doubts he doesn’t say anything about them.

Mr. Grossberg asks, “What will you do now?”

The question reminds Mia—she feels terrible she’d forgotten to even think about it, frankly. She gasps, “Shit—sorry, Mr. Swallow. But—I don’t think she’s going to just forget about this. You might still be in danger–”

“Ah,” Swallow says, not sounding particularly surprised, “yeah, I…was kinda thinking the same thing. Then again, if anything happens to me now, it seems like it’d be pretty obvious, so maybe… Well, either way, this is my last year. I graduate in a couple months. Maybe I’ll be a little extra paranoid during that time, but, hey, y’know. I got falsely accused of murder, and all. I don’t think my classmates will find it all that weird if I insist on taking a buddy with me everywhere.”

It’s not a terrible plan—it is, in fact, an exponentially better plan than anything Mia had come up with, which was a big fat nothing, because she’d been so clouded by her dark, bitter disappointment and rage that she’d let Dahlia Hawthorne get away again.

Grossberg seems to agree, for whatever that’s worth, because he says, “That sounds like a wise course of action, but still, be careful out there, my boy.”

Actually, Grossberg looks a little like he’s thinking about how he might need to watch his own back, too—which, in all fairness, is absolutely true.

“Yeah,” Doug agrees, shoving his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “You too. You know…it’s a shame, really.”

“What is?” Mia asks. Which specific shame are we talking, here? There are oh-so-many to choose from.

Doug is looking at the doors to the courtroom like he hasn’t quite caught up with the fact he doesn’t have to go back into it yet. “It’s a shame about Phoenix Wright, I mean.”

“Oh,” Mia says, feeling stupid. Obviously. And it is a shame. She’s feeling keenly her own shame at not being able to catch his killer.

“Yeah. He must have—I mean, they spent so much time together, you know? He had to have known something else—maybe, if only you could ask him, you know? I mean, don’t get me wrong, the guy seemed like a total simp, but still. You can’t spend that much of your time with someone and never give anything away, right? Or pick up on something? He must have known something that could have helped prove it. Then again, I guess that’s probably why he’s, you know…”

“Y��yeah,” Mia says faintly.

Her mind is whirling, overloaded, her processing running slowly. She’s stuck on—if only you could ask him.

If only…there was a way…to ask someone…someone dead–

“Well,” Grossberg is saying regretfully, “if only that were possible, and we might not even need lawyers working court cases after all. Imagine, if you could just ask every victim about what happened. You’ll put us out of a job, Mr. Swallow!”

The two men laugh, albeit more than a little lackluster, not as if it’s something particularly funny per se but more like the only thing you can do about something so ridiculous, so idealistic, so impossible, is in fact to laugh at the mere suggestion of it.

Mia feels like laughing, too, but maybe not in the same way.

April 11, 4:56 PM RosAnzerusu Mia Fey’s Apartment

Mia doesn’t laugh until she’s safely home, and, importantly, alone.

She thinks she said goodbye to them both, at some point. She’s pretty sure they all went their separate ways, considering she’s definitely by herself, now. She’s also pretty sure Grossberg dropped her off at her apartment, not being subtle about doing it because he was worried about letting her walk or take the bus alone after what just happened. She hopes she thanked him. She appreciates it, and it’s not his fault she’s got something else on her mind. It won’t exactly be fun to go back to the office on Monday, but she doesn’t think it’ll be completely suffocating, either.

Still, she laughs.

It’s, frankly, a terrible idea.

The last time anyone tried it for this specific purpose, Mia’s mom fucking vanished into the ether because of how utterly terribly it went, leaving not only Mia but also her 10-years-younger sister to fend for themselves in the downright ravenous jungle of the power struggle vacuum she left behind for them.

Then again, last time, it had been to name the killer, not to find evidence to implicate an already known killer. So maybe not, technically, this specific purpose.

It’s still a bad idea. It’s still such a bad idea.

Mia doesn’t realize she’s picked up her phone until it’s already ringing, and by then it would be far more cruel to hang up first.

“Sis!” comes the phone-distorted young voice to prove her right in no time at all. “What’s up?! You never call on Fridays!”

Even just hearing Maya’s voice is enough to make things seem less bleak. Mia hadn’t realized she needed that right now.

Mia can’t help but chuckle, though she hopes it’s a little less manic than the kind of cackling she’d been doing as she slid down her apartment door as soon as it closed behind her. “Hey, Maya.”

“I– Oh, oops, hang on,” Maya says, and then, slightly muffled: “No, it’s fine, Aunt Morgan, it’s just Mia! Yeah, I– Yeah, I know, don’t worry!” and then once more in her normal voice: “So! Hi! What’s goin’ on?”

Well, if only that weren’t such a loaded question. “Just got home from a trial.”

“Oh, well, that’s pretty— Wait, what?! Like a trial in court?! I thought you didn’t want to do those anymore? You never mentioned you were going back! What gives?”

Mia can’t completely hold back her sigh. She can’t unload all of this on Maya, she’s still so young—only fourteen. Mia is the older one; she’s the only truly loving, reliable family Maya has left in the world. It’s too much of a burden to share with her. Which is exactly why Mia should never have even remotely entertained the idea in the first place, and why she definitely shouldn’t have called, and–

“Helloooo? Mia? You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m– I’m still here, Maya.” And then Mia stops there. And then Mia stops there and doesn’t continue because if she lets herself continue she’s going to say something stupid like: “Hey, Maya? How would you feel about coming for a visit? Maybe stay with me over the weekend, or…?”

Mia’s so busy refraining from smashing her face into her own door frame for her complete lack of self control, she almost doesn’t notice how unexpectedly lengthy the pause is before Maya replies.

She doesn’t have time to question it before Maya is saying, breathless and somehow both trepidatious and excited at the same time, “…You really mean it? Me come there? The whole weekend?!”

There’s too much jumbled around in Mia’s head to fully appreciate what it means that her sister doesn’t immediately believe she could really be inviting her over to her place. She can’t think about that, too. Not right now.

So she laughs a little (and no one can see her if it’s a bit helpless) and repeats, “Yes, Maya, the whole weekend. Unless you get sick of me, I guess.”

“No!” Maya shouts, maybe a little too quick and a little too loud. “No, I mean, that’s– Of course I wanna come! I just– I mean, I thought you’d be calling for a favor, or something. Haha.”

“Ah,” Mia says, wincing. “Well…”

“Oh,” Maya says, though she recovers her lighthearted tone much faster this time, “What, you need a housesitter or something, Sis? For shame, using your one and only little sister for manual child labor…”

“Ha-ha,” Mia replies flatly. “Not that kind of favor.”

In fact, if she can keep a hold of herself and her own better judgment, she might not ask any kind of favor at all. That’s what she knows she should do, at least.

Only…Diego. Only: Mr. Fawles, and Valerie Hawthorne, and Mr. Wright.

“Oh yeah? What kind of favor, then?”

Mia should just let it go. In all likelihood, he won’t react well to the whole thing, anyway. In all likelihood, he won’t be able to give a coherent answer, he’ll freak out, he’ll want nothing to do with them, he’ll—any number of things. A million ways it could all go very, very wrong. Not to mention—bringing Maya here? Now? Right after she challenged Dahlia Hawthorne again in such a direct way?

Mia would never forgive herself if she got her sister involved in something dangerous—and, well. This particular thing already has at least four bodies in its wake—three cold, one warm but unmoving.

Mia can’t do this. She can’t–

She can’t. She can’t let her go. What will she do when the next victim appears? When she could have tried something more to stop her?

“Well…” How to say this. In the end, Mia decides: “There’s someone I’d like you to meet, if you’re willing, Maya.”

And Maya answers, “Oh yeah? Sounds easy! Are they cool?”

“You know? I have no idea.”

“Huh? You mean it’s not someone you know?”

“Not really,” Mia laughs, “no. Want to find out together?”

“I,” says Maya, “have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, but do you even have to ask? Of course! Which train do I take?”

If Mia were smart, if she were responsible, she’d call the whole thing off now.

So of course, Mia asks, “When’s the next one leave?”

And honestly, it might all be worth it just to hear Maya’s delighted laugh in response and to know, if nothing else, at least she’ll get to see her sister’s bright face soon.

It might.

Hopefully, she’s right to wager that it will be.

#au gust #au gust 2024 #ace attorney #uwahhh im!!! attempting!!!!#tbh just writing anything at all at rn is kinda a relief lol so thanks AUgust folks for providing some much desired Writing Motivation #t&t spoilers #i guess just #aa spoilers #in general lmao. kind of. sort of #i mean. tho its Very Much an au lmao thats the spirit of the whole thing #idk like i said better tags on ao3. GOODNIGHT #(and shhh. i did finish writing the fic yesterday it just took me another hour afterwards to post it and whatever)#OKAY well i tried to do a fun thing with the green text but fuck if i know how to fix whatever its doing lmao so. whatever! whatever

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