Old Memories and Confrontations

[edge_of_honor]

'Verse: theskytides
Characters: Miles Edgeworth (Neb), Robin Wright (Krystal)
Rating/Warnings: PG. Beware of angst.
Content: For the first time since childhood, Edgeworth returns to Colvus to pay his respects, and has a chance meeting with somebody painfully familiar.

Comments

[fool_npc]

It was chance that Mrs. Wright was passing the graveyard. She bought groceries every Thursday, and also did the shopping for an elderly woman in town. She had just left the charming woman's house, poor thing really was getting on in years, and Mrs. Wright just hoped that when she got to be that age herself someone would be kind enough to do something like this for her, when she passed the graveyard and spotted a figure standing by Gregory Edgeworth's grave.

Now, who could that be? she wondered. She hadn't seen anyone like that man around before. He was better-dressed than most of Colvus' home-grown residents, and from behind, his hair looked like --

"Gregory?" she stammered, nearly dropping her groceries in fright. Was it a ghost...? Was she seeing ghosts? Looks awfully solid for a ghost, the rational, practical part of her commented, the part that always ruined romance novels by pointing out how unlikely a situation was but also let her deal with all the minor emergencies that came with country life with a level head.

[edge_of_honor]

Edgeworth froze as soon as he heard the woman's voice. Gregory...? No, no, she couldn't be referring to his father. People didn't attempt conversation with the dead.

...well, most people didn't, at any rate.

With no small amount of apprehension, Edgeworth slowly turned around. While he may have been well-dressed for Colvus, his current attire was rather plain for him. Garish burgundies were replaced with neutral tones, his ostentatious frills were abandoned in favor of a simple thin necktie knotted in a bow, and at the moment, he had a death grip around an old bowler hat (possibly the most foppish part of his outfit) he held to his chest. His grip only tightened when he got a better look at the woman's face; something about her tugged at the edges of his memory, but he couldn't recall where, exactly, he had seen somebody like her.

"I'm sorry ma'am," he said, his voice stiff. "I believe you're mistaken."

[fool_npc]

Yes. Yes, she was. She realized that the second he turned around. The hair was different. So was the voice. There were no glasses. "Seems I was," she said, shifting her bag of groceries to one hand in order to pat at the apron she wore over her dress, a self-conscious gesture.

But there was something eerily familiar about this boy. He wasn't Gregory, but...

And realization flashed in her eyes. "Good heavens," she whispered, agape with shock. Miles Edgeworth. The prodigal son, returned to his father's grave. It was so good to see him again...!

...after sixteen years.

Without a single word.

On that military ship, fighting perfectly good pirates.

"Well, glory be," she continued, shock and delight tempered with more than a little sharpness, country mannerisms exaggerated just that little bit. "Miles Edgeworth done come back home." One arm held her groceries, the other rested akimbo on her waist.

[edge_of_honor]

At that moment, Edgeworth finally recognized just who she was. His eyes widened to the size of saucers and his jaw dropped about halfway to the ground, and while her tone penetrated deep, he barely registered the actual words. He had feared a meeting with someone from the old days, true, but there was a difference between anticipation and realization.

Damn it, he didn't need this! Edgeworth just barely managed to face the dead; the living were a much tougher crowd. He had enough problems as it was without having to worry about her disappointment - or her anger. The young man gulped down his panic down and said quickly, "I-I should get going now."

It was a stiff, impersonal farewell to someone who had almost been a second mother to him. Or at least, that's what it would have been, if not for the sweat on his palms and the nervous tremor at the end of his sentence. For someone who prided himself on maintaining a stoic demeanor, he was awfully bad at it.