Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Red… White… Blue…” 

My vision darkens, and with those final words, it’s all over… 

...Except it isn’t. Not yet. Not quite. 

When I come to, there’s a young woman lying slumped against the wall. Long brown hair, professional jacket and miniskirt, a lavender jewel of some kind around her neck—my mind supplies the word magatama, and I see no reason to object to that. She seems… quite dead.

There’s something clenched in her right hand. Something about that strikes me as odd, but I don’t dwell on it. A choked sob draws my attention away from the dead woman, and towards… a little girl. 

Well, a young woman. Seventeen, maybe. I can’t imagine her being particularly thrilled to be called a little girl, even if she isn’t the… tallest. And she’s… crying. Sobbing as she reaches out to the dead woman, to no avail.

I really want to hug her. But just as she chokes out the word “sis” between sobs, and as I reach out to touch her shoulder, my hand phases right through it. Through her.

I look at my hands. They’re translucent.

“I understand that you’re not having a great time at the moment, but can you hear me?” I ask. Better to cover all my bases now.

She cannot, in fact, hear me.

Which means there is a nonzero chance I’m a… ghost. For some reason the idea of being a ghost doesn’t strike me as being odd. Neither do her clothes… ceremonial robes? Yes. Ceremonial robes of the Kurain Channeling Technique.

What the fuck is the Kurain Channeling Technique, and why do I know this?

More importantly, if I’m a ghost…

I look at the dead woman. Her sightless eyes stare down at the ground as her little sister reaches out to close them and promptly starts crying even harder.

Is that… me?  

Fuck. That might be me. Which means, not only am I dead, but—hey, I was pretty good-looking before I got my head bashed in, so I had that going for me at least—but I’ve been found by my little sister.

This strikes me as a bad thing for some reason besides the obvious one: that this is going to traumatize her to hell and back.

There’s a noise. The door opens. I turn. The girl— my sister— doesn’t. There’s a man standing there, clearly dressed down a bit—blue sweater, jeans, and spiky black hair that can’t possibly be natural yet I somehow know it is natural.

I’m probably his boss, cool. But he seems a bit more broken up about my death than the average employee would be, so... hmm. Somehow I can’t see myself dating one of my subordinates, and actually now that I think about it, the thought of dating a guy, any guy, makes my nonexistent stomach turn. So that’s out.

Is this a found family situation? This might be a found family situation. My apparent sister doesn’t look all that much like me either, so… cool, I’ve got two siblings and they both discovered my dead body.

Sadly there isn’t really anything I can do about that except offer silent, intangible moral support and watch spiky boy go through the motions of investigating. He and robe girl talk, for a little while—they don’t know each other already, which is odd. Puts a few holes in my found family theory, unless they plan to speedrun the shit out of it.

Robe girl is Maya. Which is the same thing that was written on the back of the receipt I don’t remember writing. Which… okay, isn’t saying much given that I don’t remember jackshit right now, but why would I have written my sister’s name on a receipt?

Did she… kill me?

I remember distinctly purple hair, an eye-searingly pink suit, and a horrible, horrible laugh.

Maya definitely didn’t kill me. Neither did spiky boy: Phoenix. Weird name, but okay—although really, for all I know, my name might be just as weird: Maya is stubbornly insistent on only ever referring to me as sis and Phoenix, as chief.

There’s also the question of whether or not Ms. Nameless-Sis-Chief is actually me at all, although that’s not a serious one. I can’t imagine anyone else I could be at the moment, and even if I can’t remember shit, there’s too many things that I know, instinctively, for me to be anyone else.

Unless there’s like, someone else dead in the dumpster outside the window or something, but that’s just kind of ridiculous, and the dead body lying there definitely feels… familiar.

I keep watching. I watch as Phoenix goes to call the cops, only for some lady across the street to make it mere seconds before him. Suspicious as all hell, but as it turns out, I have limits as a ghost, and those limits sadly keep me from jumping across the street to that particular window and its occupant.

Said limits also keep me tied to one inanimate object or another, which is… annoying. In the end, both Maya and Phoenix are taken in for questioning, though only Maya is arrested for… the murder. My murder. Phoenix just is asked a bunch of questions, which he answers not as badly as he could have. When he gets released, I take the opportunity to jump to his phone.

He doesn’t go anywhere, though. He runs to a Starbucks down the road from the detention center, chugs down three separate cups of black coffee, then spends the next three hours pacing back and forth in front of the door until visiting hours start. 

They talk. Phoenix is apparently an attorney. Total rookie, though, which is unfortunate. I’m apparently also an attorney. Or, uh… I was an attorney. I think my current occupation is ghost stuck haunting my dead loved ones.

Maya’s a spirit medium. Unfortunately she’s also a spirit medium in training, which would have been helpful to know before I started jumping up and down behind Phoenix, waving my arms back and forth, yelling like a madwoman.

Plus side: nobody could see me making a fool of myself.

Minus side: nobody could see me at all. Nobody can see me still. I’ve been dead for at least twelve hours at this point and I don’t have any fucking idea who I am because both Maya and Phoenix seem to have some aversion to actually calling me by my own fucking name and it is driving me insane. Or it would drive me insane, if I still had a brain to be driven insane with.

Ugh. I hate being dead. And I hate not knowing what’s going on even more.

Let’s see: what do I know for sure?

I’m dead. I used to be an attorney, and Phoenix’s boss. I have a little sister named Maya, who is a spirit medium (in training.) Maya is the suspect they arrested for my murder.

Maya definitely didn’t kill me.

I don’t know, not for sure, who did. I don’t know a name, or a face—but really, how many men wearing that much pink with purple hair can there be wandering around?

I don’t know much about myself. I don’t even know my own damn name.

And then Phoenix mutters, “When I think of the person who did this to Mia…”

“I know,” Maya agrees, sniffling, from behind the detention center glass.

Mia. That’s my name. Mia… probably Fey, if Maya’s my biological sister. Mia Fey.

My name is Mia Fey. I’m dead. I’m dead because… because of… 

Redd White. Bluecorp.

“Motherfucker,” I say out loud. 

Nobody can hear me say it, but it’s still nice to say when it all comes rushing back to me.

What he’d done to our mother. What Grossberg had helped him do to our mother, after promising to defend her from the charges leveled by the police for being a fraud.

I’d been so close. I’d been so, so, so tantalizingly close to exposing him for what he was. He must have tapped the office phone. I’d gotten sloppy. And now I’m dead and he’s framed Maya for the deed, because he wouldn’t just stop with me.

Grossberg refuses to defend Maya, because of course he does. I want to scream at him, for being such a selfish bastard throughout his entire damn life. There were exactly two defense attorneys that came out of Grossberg Law Offices who were decent people. One was me. The other might as well be in the morgue, too, for the all the good he’ll be right now.

At least Maya’s got Phoenix. He’s better than nothing. He’s got good instincts, even if he’s… a bit lacking in experience. And he’s got, you know, actual morals. Unlike certain others.

The first day of trial is a hot mess. I don’t know what baggage Phoenix has involving Edgeworth—although I have a hunch, and I really, really, really hope said hunch is wrong. If it isn’t, all those Legally Blonde jokes I made aged really poorly. Whatever it is, Edgeworth is fucking merciless.

Phoenix barely makes it through the first day of trial in one piece. But somehow, somehow, impossibly, he does—and it’s off to investigate Redd White.

It goes…

...horribly.

“It can’t end like this,” I whisper, my incorporeal hands balling up into fists. If looks could kill, White would be dead too. “You bastard. Phoenix, kid, get up. Please get up.”

Phoenix does not get up. He was lucky—he’d died instantly when White buried a knife in his chest. He’s… fuck, he’s dead too now. And I know White too well to think he won’t clean up his tracks too well. Too. Damn. Well.

Useless as I know it is, I launch myself at White with a furious yell. I phase right through him, because of course I do.

“First you kill me,” I hiss, charging at him again. Nothing happens. “Now him. And you won’t be caught with any of this, of course you won’t. And you’ll just pay off or murder anyone who dares to question you, like I did. Like he did.”

I can’t be here just to watch. I have to be able to do something. Anything. My attention turns to the stack of papers balanced precariously on the edge of his massive, tasteless desk.

I’m not expecting much when I slam my hands down through them, furious.

I’m definitely not expecting the papers to fly out like I’d actually hit them, scattering across the floor. My eyes widen as White’s do. He looks first to Phoenix slumped against the wall, then shakes his head and goes to gather his papers up, leaning down and out of his chair slightly.

Okay. So I can do something. I just can’t directly touch White.

I shove the back of his chair. The force of it sends him flying to the floor entirely with a pained—not to mention panicked— yelp. He kicks the chair backwards, and starts to gather up his files on hands and knees.

I kick the chair back into him.

“What the fuck,” White says out loud, staring back at the chair warily.

Oh, I can have fun with this. Maybe it’ll keep me from breaking down entirely over what isn’t just my death anymore. Let’s see… what do I have to work with? Paperwork… a pen…

I pick up the pen. White’s still on the floor, so I tap the pen against the desk until he looks up. Then I begin to write. By the time he snatches the paper out from under my pen, eyes wide, I’ve managed to write a fair bit.

He reads it.

He goes as pale as the color in his surname.

He crumples my threats up, which is rather rude of him. He reaches for the pen. I make it roll just a tiny bit out of his grab. He grabs again. I roll it out of his grasp again.

“If you think,” White says out loud, “that you can scare me—”

I throw the pen at his forehead. He shrieks, and runs out of the room entirely, which is satisfying and disappointing all at once. With him gone… there’s nothing keeping my mind off Phoenix.

Slumped pitifully against the wall, with a knife in his chest. As dead as I am.

If we can’t save Maya—my nonexistent heart twinges uncomfortably at the thought—then we can at least avenge ourselves and her to boot. If Phoenix can do any of the same things I can, then we can use this.

I take a deep breath to steel myself—it isn’t as if I need to breathe, otherwise—and wave a hand in front of his face. “Phoenix—I need your help.”

Nothing. He’s… he’s not responding. Is he even here?

He has to be here. I reach to put a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t respond, but—my hand isn’t just passing through like it did with White.

There’s something there, something inside him. I reach for it—

And, suddenly, we’re back. Specifically, Phoenix is back. He hasn’t been murdered yet. He’s… still midway through confronting White with the evidence he should never have shown him. A quick look at the clock on White’s desk… four minutes until he’s murdered.

Again.

“Mia was onto you,” Phoenix says furiously. “She was keeping tabs.”

“You idiot,” I mutter under my breath. As he keeps talking, I jump from the phone in his pocket to the newspaper clipping in his hand, then to White’s flashy, ridiculously ostentatious rings. Slowly, painstakingly, I jump back and forth between objects until I can actually see what will become the murder weapon.

There’s the knife, hidden behind his landline. Motherfucker was prepared. Motherfucker came prepared. He brought a knife to an evidence fight.

I take a deep breath, and let it out.

“Even a child could work it out,” Phoenix continues. “You did it!”

White turns, slightly. I channel my inner cat and smack the knife off the desk. It lands on the carpet nearly noiselessly, and I kick it under his desk.

But he doesn’t go for the knife yet. White picks up the landline and hits the intercom button. “We won’t be needing an escort for Mr. Wrong.”

He passes the phone to his other hand and reaches for the knife. His fingers close around open air. His eyes widen, he looks—sees the knife nowhere—and adds, “Instead, please connect me to the public prosecutor’s office.”

I listen, horrified, as he somehow— impossibly— manages to frame Phoenix for my murder in the span of a single phone call. But he isn’t dead. He’s dragged out in handcuffs, but he isn’t dead.

The knife laying on the floor as I leave, anchored to Phoenix’s cuffs, is proof of that. Proof that I… changed something. Went back in time, somehow—to four minutes before Phoenix’s death.

But I don’t have long to think about what the fuck happened, because this time it’s Phoenix himself on trial. Maya’s here for emotional support. And, suddenly—a whole lot more.

I don’t tell Phoenix what really happened in White’s office, the first time. I don’t have time to tell him what really happened in White’s office, not when the clock is ticking to put him away for good. Hell, I’m honestly too relieved that he’s alive to make fun of him for not turning over a single receipt when he’s running off of too little sleep, too much caffeine, and an appropriately large amount of spite.

With what little time I’ve got left before it’s back to being a ghost, I write a note for Maya. Then I try some things.

As it turns out, I cannot in fact use my… spirit powers? Ghost tricks? Ghost tricks, when I’m being channeled by a spirit medium.

But I can use them again the instant I stumble back out of Maya’s body, and my sister blinks back to awareness. I grab the pen I’d been using, and tap it against the wooden table until Maya looks, and reads it.

I underline the I love you, and I let the pen fall. 

Maya catches it, her eyes already welling up with tears. She whispers, “You too, sis. You too.”

You’d think that someone who survived law school more or less in one piece would at least have the basic common sense to not show incriminating evidence to the very person it incriminates.

Given what I knew had happened to him last time, and what had happened instead last time—I’d have at least thought he’d have the sense not to do it again.

It’s less terrifying this time, because this time, I know I can go back and change this… somehow. It’s more terrifying this time, because now it’s both Phoenix and Maya lying there dead, courtesy of one Dee Vasquez. At this point I’m all but certain she’s the murderer—just not entirely certain why.

Yet.

As fascinating as it is to watch her men clean things up—which it is, from a certain morbid perspective—I need to focus. I need to plan, and I need to fix this. Somehow.

How the fuck do I fix this? I don’t exactly have a lot to work with here. I can’t manipulate anything living—not people, not animals, not even Charley—and I’m pretty sure one or another of Vasquez’s goons locked the door when they came in. Making a run for it is out of the question, then… or maybe not, I can probably flip the lock, but they’d have to be in a position to make a run for it and I… can’t see that happening easily. 

Or at all. 

“Fuck!”

It takes me several seconds longer than it should to realize it wasn’t me who swore quite audibly. I look down to see Phoenix, as ethereal as I am, kneeling besides Maya. His shoulders are already shaking.

I sling an arm around his shoulders. “Agreed.”

“Wh—Mia!” In the span of about two seconds he goes through relief, fear, and then all five stages of grief. “Fuck. Fuck. I’m sorry. I was supposed to keep your sister safe, I shouldn’t have…”

“Gone into an obvious trap without backup, no,” I agree. “Fortunately for you, I’ve got a little trick up my ghostly sleeves. You’ll both be heading back to the land of the living soon, I just have to figure out how.”

He blinks. Oh, okay, he’s already tearing up. “What do you—?” 

“Since I died the first time, I’ve been able to… mess around a little with the land of the living. Usually it’s limited to moving shit around—” I nudge the photo where it had fallen with my foot to demonstrate. “But, fortunately for you, I can also apparently travel back to four minutes before someone else’s death and avert it.”

“Why just me? Is Maya…?”

“Dead too, yes,” it’s a struggle to keep my voice even, “but she won’t be for long. You were shot first, though, so we’ll be going back to before your death to give us as much time as possible. I don’t know how many times I can try this, so we’ll need to make it count.”

Phoenix gulps. “Um. Okay. But if she’s dead, why isn’t she talking to us too?”

“Not awake?” I shrug helplessly. “Listen, I don’t know how this works either, but you didn’t wake up the first time—”

“The first time?”

“Redd White murdered you too instead of attempting unsuccessfully to frame you for my murder, you’re welcome… honestly, I wonder if you even can remember being dead. Maybe don’t let that on to Maya, she’s been through enough already, but if you can give me some kind of signal once you’re back…”

“Uh, can we get us not dead first? If that really is possible?”

“Of course it’s possible.” I grin. “And I bet you can do the same things I can.”

Phoenix raises an eyebrow, but nudges the photo with his own foot. It moves, alright—it abruptly swaps positions with a folder on Vasquez’s desk, making him leap back in alarm. “What the fuck.”

“That’s… new.”

A little bit more experimentation later, it’s even clearer that while he can’t directly manipulate objects, he can make them swap positions, if they’re roughly the same shape. Maya is showing no signs of waking up from her own death—which really is for the best, if Phoenix winds up remembering all this—but I’m no closer to figuring out how to stop said deaths in the first place.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to run for it,” Phoenix says quietly. “Even if you unlock the door for us, we’d have to get to the door first.”

“Which means we somehow have to subdue five people, four of which are very big men.” I glare at Vasquez. “Plus side: we know exactly who killed Hammer now.”

“Not how, though. Or—okay actually, that fence outside is probably it now that I think about it, but we don’t know how she got away with it so cleanly.”

“Mafia were probably involved. Or that Manella fucker. Who I would really like to punch, by the way.”

“You and me both,” Phoenix mutters. “So how do we…”

“Maybe that broom in the corner, if I could sweep at least a couple of them off their feet…”

“Wait. Wait. Idea.” He runs a hand over his hair nervously. “Can you, by any chance, operate my phone?”

“I can try? Is four minutes really enough time for someone else to get here?”

“If they’re already on site, it is. And Gumshoe’s just across the studios in the employee area.”

I stare at him for a long moment. “I need a drink.”

“I’ll buy you one after this.”

“I’m dead, Phoenix.”

“So am I.”

“I’m more permanently dead, Phoenix.”

“Right. If you ever find a way to, y’know, un-die yourself… I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Sure, okay. If I ever find a way to ghost trick myself back to life, I’ll need it.” Still, I kneel beside Phoenix’s body, and carefully slip his dinosaur of a phone out of his pocket, careful to leave it on the ground and out of sight of any of the living individuals in the room. “Passcode?”

“Twelve twenty-two.”

I raise an eyebrow but put it in. “That a date, or…?”

“The last time I saw him.”

“Ah. The Warner to your Elle.”

Phoenix flushes. “It’s not like that…”

“It’s fucking Edgeworth, isn’t it.”

“I am not answering that.” His statement—coupled with his deepening blush—is an answer in itself.

“Goddammit, kid. Why?”

“He was a nice person once… and he’s been less actively mean in this trial!”

I shake my head fondly to myself, and start thumbing through his contacts. “Just don’t end up in another Dollie situation.”

“Well, if I did, you’d bail me out! But also he’s not like that.”

“Okay, please do not wax poetic to me about the pretentious little shit you are going to defeat in court tomorrow, let’s make sure I can actually do this.” 

I hit the call button, just as Phoenix is reaching for it himself. Gumshoe picks up immediately. And, suddenly, I’m—in an entirely different part of the studios. I’m in Gumshoe’s phone? That’s… new. What the fuck.

I can travel through the phone?

“Uh, hello? Pal?” Gumshoe asks. He frowns. “This a butt dial, or…?”

I reach for the phone again, and travel back to Phoenix’s before he hangs up.

“What the fuck just happened?” Phoenix demands as I brush myself off, and Gumshoe hangs up with an apology and then a click.

“Apparently I can travel through phone connections,” I inform him. “It would probably work a bit better if it was a landline, and I don’t think I can travel from cell phones if it’s not… you know, actively calling someone, but…”

“What the fuck,” Phoenix repeats. And then, thoughtfully, “Can I do that?”

“Let’s find out.” I offer him my hand. He takes it. “Let’s go back first, though. I hope I can take you with me…” 

Phoenix nods. “Me too.”

I reach into his body again, and find that… thing, I’d found the first time. Whatever it is, I grab it, and— pull.

“What the fuck,” Phoenix says, looking around. We’re back in the trailer—but this time, he and Maya are still alive, and he’s just shown that picture to Vasquez. “I’m guessing I can’t tell myself to not do that.”

“Just over four minutes before your death, unfortunately,” I remark, and reach for his phone. “Time to butt-dial a detective.”

Still-alive, non-ghost Phoenix… past Phoenix? Past Phoenix, doesn’t even feel his phone unlocking itself. Nor does he notice two ghosts zooming directly into it and coming out of it on Gumshoe’s end, just as the detective frowns and shoves his phone back into his pocket.

“Shit! Gumshoe, you can’t just…” Phoenix waves a hand in front of the detective’s face. “How do we get him there now? How do we get back?”

“It’s fine. We just have to get him to Studio Two, somehow, before four minutes are up.” I grab for the pencil behind his ear, uselessly. “Damn. It’s too close to him. I can’t…”

“Maybe I can.” Phoenix doesn’t reach for the pencil, but for a stick on the ground. He touches it, face scrunched up in concentration, and—bingo. “There we go!”

“What the—?” Gumshoe yelps and jumps away, batting furiously at the stick stuck in his hair. He throws it down to the side, then grabs for the pencil. “Hey! Where’s…”

“Dumb idea,” Phoenix says innocently.

“With that tone, I’m sure it is,” I agree. “What do I need to do?”

“Roll the pencil towards Studio Two.”

“That… is completely ridiculous. Possibly one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. The worst part of it all is, I think that might actually work.”

I kick the pencil on the ground. It rolls a little ways. Gumshoe looks down on it. His mouth forms an ‘o’ and he starts walking towards it.

“Shit,” I say, “let’s do it.”

Somehow, impossibly, it works. Gumshoe is apparently determined enough to follow a pencil rolling to the other side of the studios, and lacks the sense to question how or why a pencil changes direction several times.

He reaches the trailer just in time to slam the door open with a, “Hold it right there!”

“Go on ahead, Maya, Mr. Powers,” Phoenix tells our sister and his client. “I just need a minute.”

Maya nods, plastering an easy grin on her face. “Come on, Mr. Powers. And don’t you worry one bit!  We’ve got this.”

“We really don’t,” Phoenix mutters under his breath as he watches them go. Then the door swings shut behind him, he pulls out his phone, and his shoulders sag. “So… Mia. You there? I, uh…”

I put in his passcode for him, and his eyes widen. “Cool… not a horrible dream then.”

Nope, I type in the notes app for him. I pause for a bit, then erase that and replace it with, Do at least pretend you’re confident for your client.

“Yeah… got it.” He nods. “Only time a lawyer can cry is when it’s all over and all that.”

Being caught off-guard in court is one thing. But when it’s just you and your client?

“Smile ‘till the end. But like… don’t lie to them, obviously.”

Of course not. Now, your boyfriend is going to call Vasquez to the stand.

“He’s not my—!”

Give her HELL.

Phoenix nods. “Will do, Chief. Will do.”

He wins the case, of course. I wouldn’t expect anything less from him. What I’m not expecting is Edgeworth of all people to point out a contradiction he missed. I’m really not expecting him to come to the defense lobby after the trial concludes and tell him… whatever that was.

It hits me late that night, what that really was.

I throw his phone at him from across the room. It smacks him in the face, and has the intended side effect of waking him up very quickly.

“Mia, go haunt someone else,” Phoenix mumbles, but he unlocks his phone anyway and stares at the screen blearily. “Well? What late night shower thoughts are you going to subject me to?”

I just realized what the thing with Edgeworth reminds me of, I type quickly. That one Tumblr post. The one where the kid had a crush on someone and didn’t know how to deal with it so they left a note on their locker telling their crush to get out of their school.

“Of course you were on Tumblr.” Phoenix groans and throws his phone across the room. “Go mess with Maya, I haven’t slept more than an hour in three days.”

Yeah, okay, I can’t really talk on that front, I’m guilty of the same for some of my own bigger cases. I shut the blinds for him, before I go—the absolute last thing he needs is to be woken up in a few hours by the sun.

I’d know.

So someone up and murdered that right bastard Hammond. Under any other circumstances, that would be the one murder I couldn’t complain about. Man was a prime example of why people think defense attorneys are sleazebags, and while I probably could attempt to save his life, I also could not, and Hammond definitely doesn’t deserve me going to extreme lengths to fix his death.

The only problem is, the suspect for Hammond’s murder is Miles Edgeworth.

As in that little bitch of a prosecutor Miles Edgeworth.

As in Phoenix’s Edgeworth, who had deliberately sabotaged his own witness in the last case and is now being prosecuted by his own damn bastard of a mentor, which sets off a few alarm bells on its own. 

And Maya can’t seem to channel me, no matter what. 

And writing then passing notes just isn’t going to cut it where Manfred von Karma is concerned.

Then, of course, on the eve of the final trial day—well, I doubt he meant to kill Phoenix. In fact, given how von Karma had left without even looking, he might not have even seen what happened.

This does not, of course, keep me from being extraordinarily pissed off about it. Nor does it keep me from getting progressively more and more annoyed the longer I have to wait for Phoenix to wake up.

“About time,” I greet when he finally does phase into view, standing above his body with a vaguely shocked look on his face.

“Wait, I’m—he killed me? ” Phoenix stutters. “Not again… wait. Shit. Maya!”

“She’s alive this time. It wasn’t the stun gun that killed you.” I gesture to the open locker he’d hit his head on. “Easy enough fix. Just got to close it without a certain prosecutor noticing.”

Phoenix sighs. “Right. Speaking of him—” 

“You really shouldn’t have shown him that letter, kid. That was the only piece of evidence you had linking him to Hammond’s murder.”

“Yeah…” Phoenix sighs louder, and buries his head in his hands. Muffled slightly, he continues, “How many times has this gotten me killed now?”

“Three for three. Phoenix, I am literally begging you to stop showing people the evidence that incriminates them outside of court.”

“Yeah, yeah, lesson learned this time.” He looks down, and wipes his eyes. “Fuck, if we don’t have anything against him…”

“Focus on getting Edgeworth declared innocent in the current murder first. Cross the DL-6 bridge if it comes to that.”

“It’s going to, isn’t it.”

“One way or another, I’d say so. You know, Edgeworth is still a more cooperative client than you were.”

“I think confessing to a murder he didn’t commit beats anything I did.”

“If he does that? Yes. Marginally.” I pause. “You’re sure he didn’t…”

“Edgeworth did not kill his own father. Not even accidentally. I’m sure of it.”

I smile, despite—well, everything. “Then all you have to do is prove it.”

Somehow, impossibly, he does manage to prove it. Somehow, thanks to cross-examining a parrot to prove Edgeworth innocent of the first murder charge and pulling out the entire metal detector Maya had been carrying around to prove him innocent of the second—and to prove von Karma guilty.

I couldn’t be prouder. Though I’m just as proud of the fact that, for a while—Phoenix goes without getting himself killed again, and so does Maya. In the meanwhile, I do some experimenting. I test the limits of what I can and can’t do, as a ghost. And if I save a few lives along the way? That’s a distinct upside.

The first hard restriction I come across relates to, specifically, the four minute thing. I can only go back in time—by four minutes—if I’m dealing with someone who has died less than twenty-four hours ago. It’s cumulative, at least, which could come in handy someday.

The second hard restriction is how far I can reach, when I’m… possessing? When I’m possessing a specific object. I might be dead, but if I wouldn’t be able to reach something new if I was alive, I can’t reach any further now. It’s annoying, but it’s not surprising.

The third… isn’t an explicit restriction so much as a lack of what I’d thought would be one and am kind of relieved to learn isn’t . Through an incident involving a desperate criminal, a fire extinguisher, and a notable failure to save Phoenix’s life the first time around, we learn that there is not, in fact, a limit on how many times I can go back four minutes.

In the end, we can’t actually stop Wellington from whacking him over the head. The best thing I can manage is to make him slip on the newly wet tile at the last moment, still hitting Phoenix hard—though this time, not hard enough to kill him.

It’s still hard enough to make him wake up with amnesia, which brings a whole slew of other problems with it. But it’s fine, in the end. Phoenix still kicks Payne’s ass in court with amnesia— really just goes to show just how pathetic Winston Payne really is.

Time draws on. I watch the world move on without me, and help out where I can—channeled or not. Edgeworth shows up again, just as Maya is kidnapped and all the ghost tricks I have up my incorporeal sleeves do nothing useful in the slightest. Somehow, somehow, they manage to save my sister and put away Engarde like he deserves at the same time.

Edgeworth disappears again, because of course he does, much to Phoenix’s disappointment—though he at least knows his not-boyfriend is alive this time. Maya inserts herself more fully into helping out around the office, as does Pearl, and I want nothing more than to shoulder the responsibilities they shouldn’t have yet myself, but I’m…

Well, I’m dead. Still. As I presumably always will be.

(I do search around, though, as much as I can while dead and limited in how much I can interact with the more corporeal world. I find tales of poltergeists and old ghost stories, but nothing that quite fits with what I can do, nothing that has a chance in hell of being real. And it’s annoying.)

A new prosecutor shows up, in Edgeworth’s stead. Some guy calling himself Godot, with an inexplicable grudge against Phoenix and an oddly familiar love of coffee. It doesn’t click for me until his second case against the kid, and his second case as a prosecutor—but not his second case ever.

It’s almost funny, in a horrible sort of way, what my old friend has become. I’m still brooding over it myself when the current staff of Wright & Co Law Offices (attorney, spirit medium, emotional support nine-year-old) decides to take a trip to Hazakura Temple on a whim. After all, one of the nuns there looks… familiar. Too damn familiar. 

Sister Iris looks like Dahlia.

But Hazakura Temple proves to be one disturbing revelation after another. Mom is here. Mom is here, calling herself by an entirely different name. It’s definitely her—the look in her eyes in Maya’s direction, when she thinks my sister isn’t watching, proves that much. But why is she here? Why is she here now?

I make a choice. I leave Phoenix to handle Dahlia’s lookalike. And, when ‘Elise Deauxnim’ retires to her room early, I follow her.

Nothing could have prepared me for everything that would happen that night.

I’m pissed. Not that I’m not usually when a situation like this is involved. Just because you can undo the deaths of your loved ones doesn’t mean you don’t remember said deaths. And this… this is bad even by my standards. Mom’s dead. Maya’s dead. Godot’s here for some reason and I don’t want to even begin unpacking why.

Mom wakes up first. She looks up at me, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, demanding an explanation in everything but words.

“Ah,” she says faintly. “We failed.”

“No shit,” I reply bluntly. “Why on earth would you think channeling Dahlia Hawthorne was a good idea? Do you even know who she is? Well—you’d have to have some idea of who she is, to channel her at all.”

Mom flinches. “Yes.”

“So answer me, then. Why? Because congratu-fucking-lations! You just got my little sister murdered, courtesy of our dear sweet Dahlia. A shame Godot didn’t get here any earlier—I don’t fucking like him, either, but maybe he could have stopped Dahlia before she stabbed Maya?” I pause to take an (unnecessary) breath. “Right, Godot. Why is he even here?”

“Morgan was planning something,” Mom says quietly. She takes a seat against the stone lantern and sinks to her knees, hugging herself. “Specifically, she tricked Pearl into believing that channeling Dahlia would help Maya via a letter. Prosecutor Godot brought this information to the attention of myself and Sister Iris, and… clearly, our plan failed.”

“Clearly. You’re telling me that you disappeared off the face of the earth, yet a prosecutor who basically snuck his way into the profession was able to contact you somehow?”

“He had access to a greater amount of resources than you did.”

“I’m sure. So, this plan of yours. You ever consider maybe, I don’t know… telling the people involved? Like sitting down Pearl and explaining why she shouldn’t channel this massive bitch—without calling Dahlia a massive bitch to a little girl’s face, I have some standards—or if you had to have someone else channel her, make sure you’re properly restrained so this doesn’t happen?”

“I…” Mom bows her head. “What’s done is done. I failed to protect you in the end.”

“You sure did. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to save both of you.” My glare doesn’t lessen. If anything, it increases in intensity. “Not that you deserve it. You could have come back at any time— any time! —and you just… didn’t. You left us. We needed you, and you left.”

“What do you mean, both of us?”

“That’s for me to know, and for you to not worry about.” And with that, I thrust my hand inside Maya’s chest and— tug.

Four minutes before death. Sister Bikini and Dahlia, channeled by Mom, masquerading as Sister Iris, are helping Maya to make the necessary preparations for being locked in the Sacred Cavern overnight.

Three minutes before death. Sister Bikini’s back is acting up. After repeated assurances from ‘Iris’ that she has it handled, really, Bikini concedes that she needs to rest, and starts hobbling back towards the bridge.

Two minutes before death. Dahlia pulls a knife from somewhere within her robes. Maya catches a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye, avoiding the first stab by nothing more than sheer chance.

One minute before death. Maya flees to the courtyard, Dahlia in hot pursuit. She screams for help. Godot of all people answers—but not fast enough.

Zero. Dahlia’s knife finds Maya’s heart just as the… sword cane? Godot has a sword cane? Just as the weapon Godot has stabs Mom right in the back.

“You can change this,” Mom says from behind me. It isn’t a question.

I scowl. “You weren’t supposed to come with me to the past. Fuck off. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Mom nods, and quiets herself, leaning against the main building of the Inner Temple to wait. I get down to work, though I can’t shake the feeling of her eyes watching my every move.

I repeat those four minutes, once. Then again. Then more. Over and over, changing little things like I always do, and—nothing works. Nothing saves them both. If I manage to save Maya, it’s at the expense of Mom’s life. And if I manage to save Mom, well—Maya’s already dead.

I keep trying. And trying. And trying, and trying, and trying. It’s no use. Nothing I try saves them both. And through it all I’m being watched by the absolute last person I want to be watched by.  

“Mia,” Mom says, gently. Far more gently than she has any right to.

“Shut up.” I watch—we both watch—as Maya is murdered again. “I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

“I know better than to think you’ll listen to them. But wouldn’t you like to know what I do about your abilities?”  

“No,” I say automatically, before I’ve fully processed what she’s saying. Then I think about it. “Fine. Only about the ghost tricks.”

“The… ghost tricks?”

“That’s what I’ve been calling them.” 

“Very well. Not long before you were born, there was a certain meteor shower. Most of the meteors, of course, burned up long before hitting the ground. However, one particularly large meteorite landed just outside of Kurain Village—perhaps others landed elsewhere. Being that the village elders are and always have been… let’s say frugally minded,” Mom makes a face, “they decided they might as well recycle the boulder to craft the village’s magatamas. I doubt it has been completely used up yet—it’s what we call Magatama Rock.”  

“Magatama Rock is a—of course it is. Of course they did. They never change, do they? Probably never will.” I wipe away any hint of a smile from my face. “Keep going.”

“No one thought anything of it, of course, until someone with one of the new magatamas died. She proved to be more… connected to this world, still, than most, and if her twin sister hadn’t died outside the village without her magatama later and not developed some variation on these powers you call ghost tricks, no one would have attributed it to Magatama Rock at all.”

My eyes widen. “It’s not limited to Kurain Village at all. That explains why Phoenix…”

“Phoenix?”

“The kid with the spiky hair making eyes at Sister Iris all evening, he’s been more family to Maya and I than you ever were, and when it comes to dying he’s incredibly unlucky. Fortunately for him, I died first. When he dies too, though, every time there’s been a magatama nearby. Except for the first time, but he wasn’t actually aware of that time…”

I clear my nonexistent throat. “Anyway. You’ve got a magatama. If you ever cared about either of us, then help me.”

“I…” She sighs, and nods. “Very well. For what little it is worth at this point, I am sorry. I see now… the choice I thought was the right one was anything but.”

“No fucking shit.” I rewind time once more.

Mom’s ghost trick is to stop objects in time, which could have and would have come in extremely handy for any number of the other times Phoenix got his ass killed. With that on our side—shit, the possibilities are limitless. But the only thing she does is mumble thoughtfully, “I wonder…” and reach out to her own body.

It works. 

It fucking works. Dahlia is frozen in time, just out of sister stabbing range, the knife in her hand and a manic grin on her face. As I watch, Godot arrives, and—

Stabs her. Stabs Mom in the back, again. Ghost Mom recoils as if she was the one stabbed—which technically she was—and Dahlia stumbles forward. She catches herself quickly, turning to retaliate against Godot. She knocks his mask off. And suddenly—

Well, it’s not a lethal wound, not even close. But it’s still got to fucking hurt.

“There,” Mom says, satisfied. “Is that an acceptable outcome for you?”

Maya is lying collapsed on the ground, fainted from the shock but otherwise unhurt. Dahlia, lacking the strength to pull herself within stabbing range of anyone, is instead writing Maya’s name on the lantern in her own blood. Godot has one hand pressed to his eyes and is fumbling frantically around in the snow for his visor with the other.

“Words cannot express just how much this is not an acceptable outcome for me,” I reply. “We have to stop anyone from dying here. With your ghost trick, I know I can—”

“No.”

I stare at her. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no. This is all I am willing to do with my ghost trick. You may take it or leave it.”

“You’re going to die.”

“Yes.” She smiles sadly. “However, this is the best outcome for all other than me, and… you have made it abundantly clear how selfish I have been, in life. Allow me to be unselfish in death.”

“Absolutely,” I tell her, “the fuck not. You’re going to live, and you are going to explain to Maya just why you had to leave us with Morgan.”

“I was a coward. I am a coward.” Mom shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter now. Take care of your sister, Mia. I love you.”

I can do nothing but watch, horrified, as her spirit fades away before my very eyes, and I’m left with no choice but to allow this to play out as the new present.

“Phoenix, for fuck’s sake, I have had a terrible night already.” I glare at him, floating above his body facedown in the Eagle River. “And then you had to go and die too. What did you even do this time?”

He at least has the good grace to look sheepish. “Well, there was a murder, that Elise lady—wait, too? Did you see what happened?”

“Tried to prevent it.” I decide not to inform him of who Elise Deauxnim really was. Not yet. Not until it hurts a little less to think about. “She was extremely uncooperative. Maya’s safe, at least.”

Well, safe from being stabbed. In other ways… well, it was the best plan I had, unless I wanted to be preventing Pearl’s death via channeling next. It’ll have to work. If it doesn’t, I’ve at least bought us some time.

(I can only be endlessly relieved that when Dahlia was executed, there hadn’t been a magatama anywhere near her.)

“That’s… good.” Phoenix looks down at himself, face down in the river. “Guess I ran across a burning bridge for nothing, then.”

“You… what.”

“Uh, Dusky Bridge kind of caught on fire from a lightning strike—”

“No, no, I saw that. You fucking ran across it?”

“And it collapsed while I was on it. Kind of wish I didn’t remember this one.”

I pat him on the shoulder encouragingly. “Phoenix, let’s focus on making sure you live to remember it.”

Four minutes until death.