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Lana Skye sits in her office, and she hurts (is hurting, has been hurt for a long time now.)
She sits in her office, an actor going through the motions in the role that she’s dreamed of for years, and the electric buzz of too little sleep licks up her bones. In her ears, the blood is burning, and everything is too loud and too soft at the same time, from the whirr of the coffee machine to the distant roar of traffic just audible through the cracked open window. She is on fire beneath her skin, her nerves are charred and falling to dust, and even her scarf, once a comfort, is now a choking noose, heavy around her neck.
Earlier, she had sat through a committee meeting, and the whole time she’d wondered if the hollow smile she’d painted on would get her a look, or if someone would hear the scream in her voice. Instead, Courtney had just politely cleared her throat and directed their attention back to the latest article about evidence forgery in some half-rate tabloid. She’d pretended to laugh at Gant’s flippant dismissal (as though the real joke isn’t that most of the rumours are true). How can it be, that nobody but her can hear her screaming?
She sits in her office, and Mia Fey is still dead, and Lana Skye hurts.
Her mobile buzzes, and she fumbles for it on autopilot. It takes her three tries to read the text blurring together on the screen, pulse still thumping to the point where she can feel it where her thumb presses too hard on the display. It’s Ema, because of course it is, and Lana feels a spike of guilt in her gut. She’s barely been home these past few days, but the message isn’t especially upset sounding, just a text saying that Ema’s ordering pizza for dinner and that she’ll make sure to get a veggie supreme with extra peppers, just how Lana likes it. It’ll be on the side when she gets home.
Lana doesn’t know if she’s going to go home tonight, but she can’t bring herself to text Ema and tell her that, especially seeing as her sister seems to be giving her the benefit of the doubt this time. Ema has made her thoughts on Lana’s frequent absences perfectly clear. At least their parents had the excuse of being dead when they left, whereas Lana is just drifting away, all by herself, untethered and lost in the wind as Ema runs after her, trying to catch up.
She hasn’t told Ema about Mia yet, because Ema had liked Mia back when they were dating (not that Lana had offered dating up as an explanation of Mia’s repeated presence), and Lana can’t bear to shatter yet another of Ema’s happy memories. Hasn’t Ema seen enough death already, stared down mortality time and time again and come out optimistic and young and naïve? It’s more than Lana could have hoped for, under the circumstances. She can’t afford to push her sister any further, both for Ema’s sake and for her own. There’s always the possibility that one more loss will be too many, will trigger some previously missed memory in Ema’s psyche, a memory that could destroy them both.
Lana isn’t sure when she started to fear her baby sister. She wishes she knew how to stop.
Tonight, of all nights, how can she go home and pretend everything is fine, eat cold pizza and watch whatever documentary Ema’s obsessed with this week? True crime becomes far less appealing when you live it, but Ema floats happily above the world ignoring that fact, whilst Lana wades through the mires of morality below. Someday, her sister will join the forensics squad, and become part of the tangled web of politics and liars just like everyone else Lana knows. She doesn’t know how to slam the brakes on those plans without crashing the metaphorical car of sisterhood, so instead she’s watching it happen like a coward, watching her own sister fall in slow motion, whilst Ema thinks she’s flying.
She wonders if this is how Mia felt about her own sister. Lana finds it difficult to match up what she knew of Maya Fey with murder, but Mia herself had once pointed out that youth, beauty, and innocence can all serve as a shroud over something much more sinister. All things considered, it can be very easy to kill someone, all it takes is a slip of judgement, and a force applied too strongly at a certain angle, to put it scientifically. In a city such as this, sitting in an office that is supposed to exemplify justice and law, some would believe humanity to be all-powerful, but Lana’s seen enough crime scenes to know that no matter how strong a persons spirit, a body can be a fragile thing, susceptible to blunt force and sharp objects.
Mia Fey was one of the strongest people Lana had ever met, and now she’s gone forever because of a gold-painted tchotchke and simple momentum, employed at the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s something bitterly, brutally unfair about it all. Mia was, fundamentally, a person who wouldn’t have allowed herself to be twisted from her purpose as Lana had. That had been why they’d broken up, after all. In the end, Lana couldn’t bear talking to the other woman anymore, knowing the secrets she was keeping from someone who valued trust above all else. But some part of her had been reassured that no matter how far she fell, Mia would be out there, making everything right for her clients.
Now, all Lana has left is the aching loss of a dead woman who she hadn’t dated for two years now. When was the last time they even spoke? In passing in the courthouse, perhaps, with that hapless employee of Mia’s drifting along in her wake. She had laughed and told stories about their legal misadventures together a few times, but Lana had never remembered the rookie’s name, too focused upon every quirk of Mia’s lips and every playful tilt of her head.
If she’d known it would be the last time, she’d have begged for forgiveness, because even though they could both claim it had ended on good terms, there are old bones lying in dark closets, and Mia had always deserved better than a half-truth, even though that’s all that Lana can give her these days.
Lana knew the relationship would never have been rekindled, she had known that when she ended it, but some part of her had hoped for a nebulous future out there where Mia would come flying in at the last minute for some glorious turnabout. In Lana’s dreams, she’d be perched on that clunky second-hand motorbike of hers, and would defend Lana with the same fury and tenacity she had her clients, with the boundless strength that she carried in the flip of her hair and the set of her shoulders. She would forgive everything, and hold out a helmet (the same helmet that had once been Lana’s, had smelt of her hairspray and Mia’s perfume), and would pat the seat behind her, and they would ride into the sunset and fix everything.
Before that fateful trial, perhaps Lana would have even taken the chance, but now she’s too aware of the consequences. Running off with Mia, even in a daydream, would leave Ema behind, standing in the dust. Lana has done many terrible things, but there’s one line she could never cross, and it’s the one where she betrays her sister.
Still, it was a nice fantasy, like the one where she pushes just a little harder in the interrogation room and Joe Darke confesses everything, or the one where Gant retires early to go on his goddamned swimming trips and leaves her alone. Like the one where her parents had second thoughts about driving on an icy road, late at night.
She knows that sooner or later, the dream where Mia Fey is still alive will join their ranks. That hurts too.
A phone rings again, this time the work phone on her desk, and she reaches for it, goes to pick it up without thinking, when she suddenly sees the caller ID and freezes.
What is he calling her for?
She had seen the summary of Redd White’s interview when it crossed her desk, but the man had said plenty of times in varying odd combinations of words that he was never a witness to Mia’s murder. Lana wasn’t sure she believed that herself, after all it’s his bank card on record at the hotel, as Edgeworth had pointedly noted. Nevertheless, Gant had made it quite clear to her that they had no hope of pulling the man into court. White has more power over the prosecutor’s office than Lana herself does some days, as much as she hates to admit it. She’s well aware of the amount of blackmail being held over those that she’s supposed to trust. Then again, she can hardly say any better about herself.
Grabbing the phone, she brings it to her ear before she has a chance to think twice about it.
“White?” She says sharply, forgoing honorifics. She may not have his influence, but that doesn’t mean she has to respect the man. She doesn’t need to ask where he got her number from. Her experience has always been that men like him can get anything they want by applying pressure in the right places. “What are you doing calling me at a time like this?” (Doesn’t she have enough to worry about without Mr Bluecorp himself ringing her at all hours of the night).
There’s a scuffle on the other end of the line, and then she can hear White’s voice. It’s as grating as it was the previous time she’d met him, at a fundraiser for police pensions, back before she was even a prosecutor. “Chief Prosecutor.” She hears, volume increasing like he’s moved the phone closer to his mouth. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to testify tomorrow.”
Lana stifles a gasp, and her grip on the phone becomes so tight she can almost feel the cheap plastic cracking under her grip. “What’s this about?” She manages to spit out and feels grateful that she managed to supress her initial instinct, which is to ask the man what the fuck he thinks he’s playing at.
“The Mia Fey case.” He croons, and even though she knew it was coming, it’s like the air was sucked from her lungs. Is this how it’s going to feel, every time she hears Mia’s name? You would think it would get easier to lose people, with the amount of practice she’s had. White, ignoring her, continues. “I witnessed the murder, you see. And thus, as a very important witness, I would like to testify.”
“What? Why now?” She rearranges her thoughts. At least now she’s confirmed what Edgeworth had speculated in his notes, that Redd White truly was a witness. Lana feels her suspicious side kick at her subconscious though, at how suddenly the man’s changed his mind. “I thought you said you didn’t want to go to court.” She says flatly.
There’s another scuffle at the end of the line, and Lana realises with some surprise that there’s someone else on there with White, as he hisses something too low for her to hear. She doesn’t have time to speculate anyway, the other man is already answering. “I told you, I changed my mind.” She can almost hear the smug smirk over the line, and she grits her teeth. For Mia’s sake, she can’t slam the phone down, as much as her hand is already twitching. “Didn’t I? Oh, and one other thing! Send the police over here right away! The man is standing right in front of me. He looks dazed but could be violent!”
She grips harder onto the plastic of the phone. “What?” Would it kill him to make sense for more than a few seconds at a time? “What man?”
“Are you even listening?” White yells, and Lana feels like scoffing. He continues. “The executioner! The hatchet-man! The liquidator… The killer man!” She feels the bottom drop out of her stomach.
“What?” She hears in the background of the call, the voice sounding angry and muffled. It’s the first she’s heard from White’s mysterious companion, but it’s definitely a man’s voice. And of course, Maya Fey is still in custody. The implications are obvious.
“Mr White!” She almost yells down the phone, ignoring just how much she wants this to be true. She’s met Maya Fey. The girl couldn’t be more than seventeen now. Of course, that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have killed her sister, Lana knows far too well that terrible accidents happen, but the suggestion of a second party brings more hope to her than she could imagine. “…this isn’t another one of those…”
“Chief Prosecutor! I do not believe you are in a position to freely offer your opinions to me, correct?” It’s like speaking to Gant, and she bites back her response, as he continues. “I’m telling you to send the police, now!”
Before she can respond, he hangs up with a beep.
“Fuck.” She whispers to herself, in the empty office.
She makes her choices, as she always does.
She sends the police to White’s office and hopes she didn’t just betray herself again.
The bitter tang of relief begins to wash her out, ebbing and flowing around the ache that is loss. It wasn’t Maya. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, and the burden of doing so is lifted. Mia’s sister had never betrayed her, had only been tangled up in the schemes of those older and crueller than her. A familiar tale, and Lana wonders if she’ll ever stop seeing those parallels.
When the reports come back, she orders a copy to be sent straight to her desk, and reads over the pages, skimming past Detective Gumshoe’s frankly horrendous grammar to glean the vital testimony. A name leaps out at her. Phoenix Wright. Mia’s former employee. They’d never directly spoken, but Mia had pointed him out. All Lana remembers of the man is an eye-searingly blue suit. But he had been at the scene. He knew the victim. He was Maya’s lawyer, in the perfect position to frame her for murder and then misrepresent her to the point where she was almost convicted. The first day of court had been a shitshow. Lana is beginning to see why.
Maya Fey is seventeen and alone, having seen one of her few remaining family members lying cold on the ground before her, and then Phoenix Wright, her sisters only employee, comes to her in her hour of need and promises to defend her. Ema would have believed him. No doubt Maya did too.
There is a storm raging inside Lana, and she becomes it.
Edgeworth was the prosecutor for the trial. Lana had assigned him herself, somewhat selfishly, and somewhat selfishly, she will assign him to Wright’s trial too. In her heart she knows that it’s not justice she truly desires, it’s vengeance. Edgeworth can be terribly good at vengeance, that much is common knowledge around the prosecutor’s office, it’s why he gets assigned the cases where they need the cold fury of the man the papers call a demon. Normally, Lana keeps him under her watchful eye, carefully leashed where she can control the collateral damage, the way she wishes she could with Von Karma and Gant. This case is not normal.
She calls him, and to his credit, he doesn’t take long to pick up. She realises with a startle, that he’s picking up from his office phone, and chances are that he’s only a corridor away. She almost slams the phone back down and goes to see him herself, but then remembers that she’s still burning inside, and the last thing she needs is for Von Karma to hear from his apprentice that Lana Skye was wandering the office with red eyes and taut nerves.
“Prosecutor Edgeworth speaking.” He says. She launches into it, going over the details of the case, making sure he’s prepared, offering her personal assurances that Redd White’s testimony will see Mia’s killer jailed.
She only sees the irony in that statement later.
Ten minutes before the trial ends, a bailiff runs into her office, and tells her that Redd White is about to be implicated in Mia Fey’s murder. By the time she makes it to the courthouse, it’s already over.
The inevitable press conference afterwards is a waking nightmare, but someone has to answer for the arrest of one of the cities most powerful figures, and White’s confession leaves little room for doubt in his guilt. He will be convicted; she will see to it. She’s already got so much wrong, in these last few days, but this is something she can fix. She scares off the reporters with the usual vague reassurances, until the locusts of the press become distracted by how the defendant and his assistant are finally making a run for it down the courthouse steps. Lana allows herself to be distracted a little watching them go. Maya Fey still looks the same as she had the one time they had met, all those years ago. With the instinct of a former detective, she can’t help but notice that Edgeworth’s watching them too, but he jerks his head away as soon as he sees her looking.
Later she debriefs him on the events of the trial, hearing the full story for the first time, spat out between guilt and fury. She isn’t so sure what he’s so afraid of, but there is no shortage of options. It could be his record (quite possible, considering he’s just lost a four-year streak), or his reputation (less likely, there’s not much lower you can go after already being the demon prosecutor). In her heart, she knows it’s probably Von Karma. After all, the man can be cruel at the best of times, and Lana is no expert on the faux-parental relationship the two seem to share, but it’s clear to any observer that Edgeworth’s devotion to his mentor isn’t reciprocated.
Lana dismisses him and tries to shove down the pity she feels for whatever combination of self-hatred and grief is boiling over inside the man, even knowing it likely mirrors her own. If nothing else, Edgeworth wouldn’t appreciate it. They’ve both made the wrong choices in the past, after all, and now they both face a life full of consequences for their actions. No amount of pity could change that. (All except the forged evidence from the Joe Darke trial, a choice that neither of them got in the end, even if Edgeworth is the only one who gets to live in blissful ignorance about it.)
State vs. Wright sounds as though it had been messy. Mia’s apprentice had fought just like she had once (just like she had, always). Despite being dead, it seems that Mia somehow won in the end. Lana doesn’t know why she’s so surprised at that. Mia had always been an expert at the last-minute turnabout, when all else seemed lost.
She pours herself a glass of sherry from the bottle she keeps under her desk. Self-medicating is a terrible idea, doing so at work even more inadvisable, but she feels like she owes a toast to someone. To herself, maybe, to a younger Lana who dreamed of the day she would sit in this office, not knowing that her own good fortune would be twisted into an albatross around her neck. A toast to Mia seems equally fitting, and slightly more traditional. Or perhaps even to the both of them: Lana-and-Mia, inseparable like they had once been to their college friends. Both those women are dead now, either in body or in spirit. How had it all gone so wrong?
She raises the glass and tries to think of something suitably witty, but finds herself lost in the past again, Mia’s absence like a solid pressure on her throat. If she chose to believe Mia, spirits could survive beyond their bodies, but Lana doubts she’ll be haunted, except by her own regrets. Mia moved on after all. Lana never could. Lana had mourned the loss of Mia long before her death.
“I miss you.” She whispers into the still air of her office, and she drinks.