Work Text:
November 2014
"... and this is my office," Mia says, sounding prouder than Maya's ever heard when she opens the final door on the left.
Maya shifts Pearly on her hip, tilting her head in confusion. "Really?"
"Huh? Oh! Whoops, no. That one's the radiator closet. Sorry. Still getting used to the layout. This one is my office." She winks, and Maya grins back.
The door opens to reveal a room that looks pretty similar to the one they walked through to get here. Maya doesn't get the hype. The only real difference is that this room includes a sad-looking plant whose pot bears a blue and white sticker with "Hello my name is" in print and "Charley" in Mia's bold, swoopy writing.
"You got a plant! Um, is it gonna be OK? It's looking a little…"
"Aw, don't talk about Charley like that. You'll hurt his peelings." Mia puts on a straight face, but her eyes are glittering.
Maya laughs, unable to resist a good bad joke. "Mystic Mia is silly, isn't she, Pearly?"
Pearly rubs at her eyes and buries her face against Maya's neck. She's never met Mia before, and she's not supposed to be meeting her today.
"You're gonna be in so much trouble with Morgan." Mia sighs.
Maya shrugs. "She's mad at me half the time anyway. Sometimes I don't even know why. And I wanted you to meet Pearly! She's almost three already, you know." That means it's been three years, give or take, that Mia hasn't come home at all. Maya still doesn't quite get what a lawyer does, but it must be hard work.
Mia shakes her head, smiling as she sighs. "She won't even remember meeting me, you know."
Maya shrugs again. "You're the one always telling me how important family is. How important it is to figure out what happened with Mom." Maya barely remembers Misty Fey. The person she misses most is her sister.
Mia's expression falters. "It is important. You're right. And I'm happy to meet Pearl, even if she's not ready to meet me," she teases, leaning in a little to try to smile at Pearly.
Pearly starts to sniffle. She's starting to get heavy, too, but Maya doesn't dare leave her to her own devices in this place that looks and smells like a fancy library.
"So when does the exciting stuff happen?" she asks, bouncing Pearly a little.
Mia laughs. "My office tour wasn't exciting enough for you?"
Maya wrinkles her nose and reminds herself that it would be rude to tell Mia how boring it is here. "You know! Clients knocking down your door, solving crimes, yelling 'rejection!' at Judge Judy. Things like that." She's pretty sure that's how it goes.
Mia just laughs again. "I dunno, I think I might need a couple of years under my belt before I have people knocking down the door. And my job's not really solving crimes so much as making sure the wrong people don't get charged with them."
Maya nods, waiting for the good part. There has to be a good part. Why else would it be worth it to leave home?
"I'm not really taking too many cases right now, anyway. I'm focusing on what I came here for." Her mood darkens a little. "It's… well, it runs a lot deeper than I thought. It's taking up a lot of my time and energy, and – never mind. We can talk about that when I know more. Anyway, Judge Judy is a TV character."
The bulk of her explanation makes Maya's head spin. She barely even gets what happened with Mom in the first place. Aunt Morgan always deflects her questions about it, and Mia's answers spin off into complicated tangents that leave Maya even more confused. She knows how to respond to the last part, though. "All this way and I don't even get to meet Judge Judy? Bo-ring," she sings.
Pearly giggles against her shoulder and echoes, "Bo-ring."
"See? Even Pearly thinks so."
"Oh, well, if Pearl thinks I'm boring." Mia rolls her eyes, but in the nice way that means it's OK to laugh. It's very different from how Aunt Morgan rolls her eyes. "Sorry I can't meet your expectations on all the other stuff, but I do have a trial in a couple of hours. I might even get to make a few, uh, rejections in it."
"Sweet! Pearly, we get to see Mystic Mia at work! Cool, right?"
Pearly's fleeting good mood is already gone. She's probably sleepy; it's way past her naptime since she wouldn't sleep on the train. Then again, maybe she's just bored. Pearly's not much for using her words, and Maya is still just a trainee at interpreting her grumpy expressions.
"I think we're gonna hang out in the other room? Where the couch is?"
"Sounds good. I don't really have any kid stuff around…" Her face twists up a little, like she's thinking hard about something.
"Neither does Kurain," Maya points out. "She'll probably just get a kick out of having a new place to wander around."
Mia crosses her arms, brow still furrowed in concern. "If you say so. Just… try not to let her get into anything important."
"Roger!" Maya watches Mia head for her desk, and then she sets Pearly down in the little hallway. She keeps careful hold of her tiny hand until they make it out to the lobby. There's another desk there, like Mia might have her own secretary one day, and a whole bunch more books and binders and law magazines. Maya heaves a huge sigh as another look around confirms her suspicion: everything looks important.
"Well, Pearly, I hope you're in the mood for a story."
She's not. She's in the mood for walking around the room and pointing at things until Maya tells her their names. When she runs out of things – or maybe when she gets tired of Maya insisting that all books are, in fact, called book – she clambers awkwardly onto the couch for a nap. It doesn't take much convincing for Maya to join her.
— — — —
May 2019
There's kid stuff everywhere.
Maya had halfway expected to find that Nick was joking about his situation in his latest call, but the office is completely different compared to the way she left it three weeks earlier.
The lobby desk is gone. The bookshelves are in different places, and the case files that lived in them seem to have vanished entirely. There's even a TV on a shoddy-looking wicker entertainment center. That's saying nothing of the weirdest items that fill the space: a wooden puppet in a hat and cape, a portrait of a man Maya thinks she vaguely recognizes from… somewhere, and dozens of little knickknacks like playing cards and rubber chickens.
The only things she recognizes are the couch and Charley.
Nick had made little changes over the years as Fey & Co. became Wright & Co., of course, but the general layout and the fancy archive vibe had never really left Mia's old office. This is…
Well. It's not a law office at all anymore, she supposes.
Her heart is pounding now in a way it hadn't when she'd heard the news over the phone. It's one thing to hear that Nick's been disbarred and is adopting a child, but it's something entirely different to see it.
The next thing she notices is a little hat-clad head peeking around the corner of the short hallway. That must be the kid. She doesn't look far from Pearly's age, if Maya had to guess, and she suddenly regrets saying she had to make this trip on her own.
"Hi," she says brightly. "My name is Maya. I'm looking for my friend Nick. Is he here?"
The little girl looks thoughtful, tapping a finger against her lips. "Do you mean Daddy? My new Daddy?"
Maya blinks. "Uh… I think so? About… yea tall," she begins, demonstrating, "and spiky black hair, like this?" She gives her best impression of Nick's hedgehog hair.
"That's my daddy! I'll go get him. You can wait right here, OK?"
Amused, Maya watches her tear off toward what used to be Mia's office. From what she's gathered, that space is being converted into a bedroom.
Nick comes out a moment later, looking frazzled and exhausted in a way she hasn't seen since Edgeworth was on trial. "Maya," he says, obviously trying to hold it together. It's not a particular strength of his, at least not outside the courtroom.
"Hey, Nick. Who's your new roomie?"
"Oh, right. Maya, this is Trucy. Trucy, didn't you say hello to Auntie Maya?"
Auntie. That's not something she ever thought she'd be, not to anyone. It's a simple thing, but it makes her knees go wobbly for a second. Nick must notice, because then he goes wobbly for a second, and the next thing Maya knows, they're leaning against each other in a tight hug.
"I have no idea what I'm gonna do," he confesses, breath shaky and uneven.
"What you always do!" Maya assures him as she steps back. She doesn't really know the scope of the situation, not yet. "You'll bluff it until you make it. And you'll keep smiling until it's over."
"Easy to do when it's a three-day trial," he says wryly. "Might be a tall order for… the rest of my life, or whatever."
"Yeah, but you're not on your own." That's one of the biggest differences between Nick and Mia; Mia always felt like she had to go it alone. Like she had something to prove. Nick might not always love the type of help Maya offers, but he usually accepts it. "So!" She claps her hands together. "What's first on the list?"
"Getting the last few things out of my office, I think. Larry's gonna bring a truck around in a couple hours. Edgeworth has a storage unit I can use. Climate controlled!"
"Cool cool! Literally. Let's get movin'."
When they make it down the hallway, Nick absentmindedly opens the last door on the left. "Uh… yep, that's the closet. Not the office. Sorry," he adds sheepishly, running a hand through his hair. "Haven't been getting much sleep."
Maya can't explain the sense of déja vu or why it makes her want to cry, so she just laughs instead.
— — — —
June 2027
Maya trails her hand over the bookshelf that's been freshly assembled in Nick's office. The lobby is still Trucy's domain, but the office-office is slowly coming back into business. There's a strange kind of peace that comes with seeing legal materials in the place again: magazines and binders of case files and – DVDs? "Whoa, no way! Are these Mia's?" she asks, pulling one from the stack at random. It reads "State v. Wright 2014."
"Oh, yeah! I found them when we were unpacking. Cool, right? I should rewatch them sometime. Gotta get back into my courtroom persona, after all, and I learned everything I know from the chief." He makes a face when he sees which one she's holding. "Let's not rewatch that one, though."
"Oh, no, we are definitely rewatching this one," Maya argues, holding it away from Nick's reach and shoving it into her shirt when he persists. He'll never go after it there.
"Fine," he sighs hugely, "but only after we get everything else set up."
Little sisters always win.
— —
"This's so weird," Maya says around her mouthful of popcorn. She's leaning forward in her seat, absolutely captivated by the grainy image of Mia on the screen.
"Whasso weird?" Nick asks, mouth even more full of popcorn.
"Mia. I mean – she just punched Mr. Grossberg! Are we sure this is her and not, like, a Furio Tigre situation?"
Nick shoots her a weird look. "What are you talking about? She was always like that."
"No way!"
"Yes way. I have all those other DVDs to prove it. There's no way she was an imposter in all of them."
"So you admit she could be an imposter in this one!"
"Maya, this is literally when I met her. If this had been an imposter, she wouldn't have recognized me."
"But she's shaking him!"
"Pretty typical." Nick shrugs.
"She was always telling me things like – I dunno. Like how to keep my emotions under control and how to find the appropriate time and place to express them."
"Yeah, she said stuff like that to me, too. I think it's just that we're better at taking her advice than she was. Uh, no offense, Chief," he calls over his shoulder, like she might be standing there. "Didn't you ever see any of her trials?"
"Nope! She pretty much kept me out of it unless she really needed a pinch hitter for holding evidence." She frowns; that doesn't sound quite right. "No, wait, I did go to one, but I had Pearly with me. She was really little, so I was paying more attention to her than to Mia."
Nick snorts. "You know, I always wondered how Pearls learned to throw a punch like that. She must have been paying more attention than you were."
"I guess so." Maya tries to smile, but it's strange to realize that no matter who she talks to, no one will ever really remember her Mia. The passionate woman on the screen is a far cry from her even-tempered, mature older sister. "You were right, though. This one's boring. It's obvious that guy in the pink sweater is guilty." She clicks off the TV, too weirded out by what she's already seen to commit to learning more about the Hawthorne women.
"Hey!" Nick complains. "We were just getting to the part where she really went all in on defending me." He’s sniffling a little, but it’s nowhere near the waterworks show he was just giving in the recorded trial.
She's sure it's a sight to behold. It's just… not a sight she necessarily wants to behold. "I'm good, Nick. Might go check on the girls, see if they made any progress on tidying up the lobby."
"You know they didn't. Pearls is probably getting her head sawed off as we speak. Isn't Polly watching them, anyway?"
"Oh, they sent him out with a list of impossible errands ages ago. He's probably wandering around the supermarket looking for some oddly specific cake mix by now, if I had to guess." She's not guessing. She's seen the list.
"Well, tell them no cake if there's nowhere to eat cake," Nick instructs.
Maya wanders off toward the sound of Pearl, Trucy, and Athena getting up to no good in the lobby. It's hard to guess what Mia would have thought about having so much excitement in the office, about its status as a home-away-from-home for so many people. The Mia she knew in this space had been all business – but then, she'd been on a mission.
Who might she have become after DL-6's loose ends were all tied up? Would she be "Daddy's boss, Ms. Fey" or "Auntie Mia" to the magician waving from her place sprawled on the floor? Would Trucy even be here to call her either one, or would Mia have intervened in the Gramarye trial?
Everything has unfolded so differently than she could have imagined.
All that’s really left of Mia in the lobby now is Charley. He’s grown well under everyone’s care, and he celebrates holidays with different little hats. He’s nothing at all like the scraggly houseplant with peeling bark Maya met when she was 14. Even his name tag has been replaced a few times, and Maya still feels a little jolt when she glances at it and sees Trucy’s writing instead of Mia’s.
In a lot of ways, this is the furthest thing from the future she imagined when she first entered the office. She’d anticipated Mia solving her mystery and then coming home, all of them living together happily in Kurain. Mia being gone still hurts terribly, but the rest… the rest isn’t so bad, even if spending half her time in the city with her loser of a best friend and his rapidly accumulating family is about as far as it gets from a quiet life in the village.
“Whaddaya say, Charley?” she asks, reaching over to stroke his leaves. Sometimes she wishes he could talk; he'd probably have so much to say, given everything he's seen.
“Charley says, ‘Time for cake!’” Trucy declares. “Polly found the good funfetti and he’s even gonna bake it for us!”
“Um, I don’t think plants eat cake,” Pearl points out shyly, looking between Maya and Athena for support.
Athena shrugs. “Charley might. Everyone else here does weird stuff.”
“We are not putting cake in the plant pot,” Apollo grouses, shutting them down.
“But what if he likes it, Polly? What if he’s just been waiting for someone to offer him cake all these years?” Maya chimes in, because she just can’t stop herself from antagonizing the little guy.
No, she's sure of it: Mia would have loved him. Mia would’ve loved all of them.
“Maya, please don’t confuse them. You have no idea how much stuff I’ve had to save Charley from.” The long-suffering tone of voice and the logical reprimand make her jump; for a second, she expects to see her sister. It's Nick instead, still a little red around the eyes and caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation.
Maybe they did know the same Mia after all. Maybe Charley isn't really the only proof of Mia's life left in the office.
Maybe they're all part of her legacy, in a way.
And maybe, later in the evening when the boys aren't paying attention, Maya and Trucy sneak some cake crumbs into Charley's dirt anyway, because little sisters always win. The crumbs disappear by the next morning with no hint of bug activity. Nick, Athena, and Pearly all swear they didn't clean it up, and Polly makes his angry tea kettle sound at the very mention of the incident.
"I bet Charley knows," Maya says cheerfully. "But he'll never tell us. He's the kind of guy who likes to keep his peelings to himself."
Everyone groans, but in the faintly reflective surface of the window, Maya could swear she sees Mia clear as day, eyes glittering with laughter and pride.