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On the first day that Phoenix dies, he is locked in a stall in the courthouse bathroom, choking on glass and metal and shuddering as he tries to force it down. Somehow, he manages to get it all down, mixed amid the blood and tears already mixed with it. Somehow—and then, he doubles over into a miserable little ball, and collapses. Somehow, suddenly, he’s staring down at a pathetic young man in a bright pink sweater, eyes wide and unseeing and blood dribbling out of his mouth.
That’s him.
He’s… dead?
“That was certainly… anticlimactic,” comes a voice beside him.
Phoenix looks up from what can’t be his body. Leaning against the other wall of the stall, one leg up on it and his arms crossed, is a redheaded man not much older than him. Phoenix’s mouth goes dry. He knows who this is.
“Doug,” he whispers, and feels the tears welling up already. “I’m so sorry, I—I shouldn’t have—if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be—“
“Dead, is it?” The man he’s on trial for murdering shakes his head. “It is far too late for regrets, now. Doug Swallow is dead. And so, Phoenix Wright, are you.”
Strike that, he does not know who this is. He chokes back a sob.
“You’re… not Doug.”
“Correct.” And yet not-Doug still reaches up to tuck his own bangs behind his ear the way Doug always had, back in Phoenix’s freshman year and Doug’s sophomore long before any of this. “Do you know who I am?”
“Um… some metaphysical representation of everyone I’ve hurt over the years?”
Not-Doug blinks. For a moment, he looks genuinely surprised. “That is the single most convoluted, not to mention the single most inaccurate, conclusion anyone I have ever asked that question has come to.”
Phoenix grins through his tears. “I’m taking that as a compliment.”
“It is not. I am Death, Phoenix Wright.”
“Oh. Oh, so you’re appearing as Doug because he’s—”
“Quite dead, yes. As are you.”
Phoenix nods. There isn’t really much of a point to holding back the urge to cry in front of Death himself— Death… themself?—but old habits die harder than spiky-haired idiots eating treasured gifts it seems.
“What now?”
“You… aren’t going to beg for your life?”
He blinks, confused. “Uh… I can do that?”
Death sighs—and he looks so, so much like Doug, still, that it’s painful. “Yes, you can do that, though it’s highly unlikely to do you any good.”
“Okay! I mean, if I’m already dead, it’s not like I have anything left to lose.” And, after all, Phoenix Wright is nothing if not a habitual bullshitter and bluffer. He sniffles—he’s not sure whether from the cold that apparently followed him beyond the grave or from crying—and takes a deep breath. “How do you know I’m dead at all?”
“Is… that supposed to be a rhetorical question? I am Death. ”
“No, no, not rhetorical. I’m kinda curious.”
“How do I…?” Death sighs, again. It is a significantly more long-suffering and resigned sound this time. “Where are you going with this, Phoenix Wright?”
“Well, y’know, I might not even be dead.” Phoenix shrugs. “I’ve eaten glass before and not died.”
“You have what.”
“Yeah, when I was like… nine. Long story. It hurt a lot but I was fine in the end, I just had to get a few stitches in my mouth.”
“Very well,” Death concedes. “You are forgetting that this particular necklace was not just made of glass.”
“Hey, the metal wasn’t even sharp! And, I dunno, people are supposed to eat stuff like iron, right?”
“Not in… very well, I will concede that point as well though I would like to point out that there is a significant difference between health supplements and solid metal.”
“Not if you’re not a coward.”
Death stares. “Did you just call me a coward?”
“In my defense, it is incredibly easy to forget you aren’t Doug when you look like that and I would call him a coward.” Phoenix clears his throat awkwardly, and looks back down to where his own body lies collapsed on the floor. “Anyway—”
“Is this better?”
When he looks back up to Death, he no longer looks like Doug, but someone else. A bulky man in a prison jumpsuit, scarred across the face and holding the ball to his own chain like it’s a baby. Phoenix doesn’t recognize him.
Actually… wait. No, he does. The defendant in Miles’s— in Edgeworth’s first case. The one who had committed suicide on the witness stand.
“Not really,” Phoenix admits.
Death shrugs. “Something to be said for honesty. Continue.”
“Well… like I said, nothing I ate is actually enough to kill me. So, therefore, I can’t be dead.”
“A… spirited defense,” Death says, “but you are forgetting something.”
“...I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Do you recall what your lawyer said about that necklace? That it possessed a deadly poison?”
“There it is.” Phoenix gulps. “Well—for one thing, I don’t believe it for an instant. My Dollie would never.”
“Hm. Are you sure? You are dead.”
“About Dollie…? Not entirely, not… not anymore.” Phoenix looks down again. “But! It doesn’t matter whether that necklace had poison in it or not.”
“Intriguing. Continue.”
“Obviously, Dollie never poisoned that man. She’s innocent. Someone else must have planted the necklace on her. But that incident was eight months ago, okay? And, whoever did use the poison used all of it. There wouldn’t be enough poison left in there to kill me, even if there was poison in it.”
“You are contradicting yourself, you know.” Death tuts disapprovingly. “Though there is a certain… line of reasoning to what you are saying.”
“It doesn’t matter who poisoned that man. What matters is that even if there was poison in that necklace—whatever trace amounts were left wouldn’t be anywhere near potent enough to kill someone.”
Death strokes his chin thoughtfully. Phoenix blinks, and he’s Doug—but not Doug —again. “Would I believe that?”
“I don’t think that matters. You said it yourself—you’re not Doug.”
“True.” Death considers this for a long moment. “You are putting up quite a fight for someone who never intended to do such a thing at all, Phoenix Wright.”
“Didn’t know it was an option. Besides… I’ve got quite a lot to live for.”
“Do you?”
Phoenix nods earnestly. “Well—there’s my Dollie, obviously. And I think Ms. Fey would be pretty upset if I went and died on her, probably more upset than if she got a guilty verdict. And, well…”
“Well?”
He smiles. “Doug told me it was stupid, back before Dollie ever came into the picture for either of us. But you’re not him, and also I don’t really care what he or you think anymore. There’s… this boy I used to know. His name’s Miles, and he was… well, amazing! He stood up for me when no one else would, he and this other boy—I’m still in contact with Larry actually, I… don’t think he went to college actually—went against the entire class. But I don’t think Larry would have done anything if Miles hadn’t stepped in.”
Death raises an eyebrow, and gestures for him to continue.
“Anyway, about halfway through that school year, Miles left for winter break and just… never came back. I thought he might have died, but I managed to find some contact information for him, and I tried to write letters and… well, that didn’t work either. So I gave up for a while. And then! It was a little over a year ago. I read about him in the newspaper!”
“I am starting to realize where this is going,” Death says wryly.
“Yeah, it had this really terrifying picture of him and the headline, Dark Rumors of a Demon Prosecutor. Which was absolutely not the Miles I knew. And he still wouldn’t respond to my letters, which I started back up after that. So…” Phoenix grins. “I’ve been taking some law classes on the side. I’m going to get through to him no matter what it takes. He won’t be able to keep ignoring me if we’re facing each other in court! So… yeah, no, I can’t die! I have to get through to Miles! That’s… about it, I think.”
Death is staring at him, eyes wide and mouth opening and shutting wordlessly. Eventually, he says, “What.”
“Well, this guy is someone I used to know, and I know he’s really a good person, and if I don’t try to get through to him somehow I don’t think anyone will—”
“Yes, that I believe I understand.” Death pinches the bridge of his nose. “Consider yourself quite lucky, Phoenix Wright.”
It is Phoenix’s turn now to blink in confusion. “Huh?”
“It seems you were right. Although eating that was nevertheless a profoundly stupid decision, it appears to have been a survivable one.” Death extends a hand—Doug’s hand—with something on his face that could charitably be called a smile. “Congratulations. You live. Do try not to eat anything else not meant for human consumption.”
Phoenix takes that hand. And, suddenly, he’s on the floor in the bathroom stall, with someone banging on the outside. He must have passed out.
Ow. His mouth hurts more than the time Larry had bet he wouldn’t eat a marble, and then the thing decided to break while in his mouth. But it’s—well, it hurts, but it’s not unbearable.
Swaying slightly unsteadily, Phoenix pulls himself up by the railing, and opens the door. He is almost immediately dragged right back into the courtroom.
He’s already tearing up by the time Ms. Fey looks at him again. He barely gets out the words about what happened to what would have been her decisive evidence before he completely breaks down crying.
(He remembers nothing of what transpired between passing out in the bathroom stall and waking up on the floor. Perhaps that is for the best.)
On the second day that Phoenix dies, it is, quite ironically, the same way that Doug had: death by electrocution. Maya is on the floor beside his body—though she is at least breathing—and he can do nothing but watch and ball his hands up into fists as Manfred von Karma kicks his body to the side and leaves the evidence room.
“Shit,” Phoenix says aloud. “No, this—this can’t be happening. He can’t win. He—why would he—”
“I can’t say I expected to see you again so soon,” comes a familiar voice off to his left. Perched on the drawer that had formerly held the DL-6 evidence that von Karma had stolen is…
“Mia!” Phoenix’s eyes go wide. “Wait, no, you’re not…”
“No, not quite,” not-Mia agrees. “I can’t imagine you remember much of the last time we met like this. Death is, after all, not the most conducive to memory retention.”
“You’re death.”
“Capital D, but yes.”
“And we’ve… met before.” Though he doesn’t remember it. He thinks, then snaps his fingers as it occurs to him. “The necklace. That… I did die there!”
“You did,” she agrees. Death flicks her bangs off to the side the way the real Mia so often did, and that—hurts. “Although Mia Fey was still alive then, of course.”
“Of course. You must have appeared as… Doug… why? Why appear as the dead?”
Death shrugs carelessly. “The newly dead tend to be less cooperative if I appear as anything… unnatural. I do prefer not being screamed at on sight.”
“Makes sense. So I’m…” Phoenix shakes his head. “No, actually, you know what? Death, Capital D— OBJECTION!”
This is punctuated by a yell and a pointed finger directly at Death with Mia’s face, who looks briefly taken aback and then smiles.
“Good. I hoped you’d make things at least as interesting as you did last time.” Death looks at Phoenix expectantly. “Very well, Phoenix Wright—what are you objecting to?”
“Me being dead at all, of course.” Phoenix smiles back. “Manfred von Karma clearly stated that his stun gun is not potent enough to kill.”
“His exact words included a disclaimer: usually.”
“That was just a threat. That… probably would have worked if he was talking to literally anyone but me. It would cause too much trouble for him if Edgeworth’s defense attorney turned up dead—he wouldn’t have wanted to kill me at all.”
“Not wanting something does not necessarily mean it does not nevertheless occur.”
Phoenix stands confidently, hands on his hips. He’s got this. “But! He shocked Maya and I both roughly the same amount of times: once. If I’m dead, Maya should be too.”
“That can be arranged,” Death says, and it is incredibly disturbing for her to be talking nonchalantly about the potential death of Maya Fey with her own sister’s face.
“Shit. Okay. No thank you, my point is that she isn’t dead. She’s smaller, and therefore, since she is very much still alive, I am too.”
“And how do you know you did not merely… hit your head on something when you fell?”
“OBJECTION! Look at the floor! There was nothing to hit my head on!”
“...The floor itself?”
“Ha!” Phoenix shakes his head. “I thought you’d say that. But I remember falling to my knees first, before blacking out entirely. Even if my head had hit the floor, it wouldn’t have done that with enough force to kill me.”
“You make a compelling argument,” Death admits. “So what is it you are so desperate to live for this time?”
“If I don’t stop Karma, no one will. And… I know what happened to Edgeworth now. If I don’t defend him, no one will. Also, if they found me dead in here with Maya they probably would just arrest her for murder again and she doesn’t deserve that, but. Edgeworth.”
“Him again,” Death notes. Her voice has changed, and her face too—Death is no longer a she at all, but the trenchcoat-wearing, fedora-bearing man whose murder fifteen years ago had ruined so many other lives, too.
“That is incredibly disturbing,” Phoenix notes. “Wait, what do you mean again?”
The man who looks like but is not Gregory Edgeworth sighs, and shakes his head. “No matter. You have, I believe, sufficiently made your case.”
“No, I can’t—I have to save Edgeworth. I can still see that boy I used to know, he’s in there somewhere, and if I don’t—”
“Phoenix Wright,” Death says sharply. “Do not make me change my mind. It seems you did indeed survive Manfred von Karma’s assault, as you were likely meant to.”
“Yes!” Phoenix pumps the air. “So, what now?”
“Do try to take a little longer next time.” Death tips his fedora, and—it’s cold.
Phoenix blinks back to consciousness on the floor of the Records Room. He can’t remember what happened. How did he…?
Wait— Karma. The letter. He’d masterminded the plot to frame Edgeworth, and now he has no way to prove it, and—
—and—
Maya!
(He is quite foolish, to be more worried about Maya then himself. After all, Maya’s life had never been in enough jeopardy for her to bargain with Death. This is, of course, for the best—in all of Death’s recollection, no one person has successfully bargained for their life twice.)
(Somehow, Death has a feeling a man named Phoenix will not stop at just twice. At least he can be depended on to make things interesting.)
On the third day that Phoenix dies, he doesn’t see it coming. One moment, he is sleepily checking the time on his phone, debating whether or not to bother texting the man he knows will never respond again.
The next, he is looking at his body slumped over the couch in the defendant’s lobby. Someone he doesn’t recognize steals his phone— hey! —before taking the fire extinguisher to the bathroom, washing off the blood, and replacing it on the wall.
His killer doesn’t seem to have realized he’s even dead. Wait… that must be… the real murderer of Dustin Prince!
“What did I tell you,” comes a voice from a man sitting, cross-legged, on the tiled floor of the defense lobby. He’s in a police uniform. Phoenix knows his face well, though sadly not from before he was murdered.
That makes his question even stranger. “I’m sorry? We’ve never met—not before you were murdered, anyway.”
“We’ve been over this,” Dustin mutters, lifting his cap and raking a hand through his matted hair. “Though I wouldn’t expect you to remember.”
“Remember…” Phoenix pauses. “You’re not Dustin Prince.”
“No. Nor was I Mia Fey, or Gregory Edgeworth, or Doug Swallow, or Terry Fawles.”
“Those are all names of… people who are dead,” Phoenix realizes. “You’re…”
“Death,” not-Dustin greets. “And you, Phoenix Wright, are dead for the third time… unless you can convince me otherwise.”
Phoenix blinks. “I did it twice before? I mean—of course I did it twice before!”
“I will be incredibly disappointed if you cannot find some reasoning supporting your improbable, but not impossible, survival this time as well.”
“Disappointing Death… not something I’d like to do.” Phoenix taps a finger to his chin and thinks. “That fire extinguisher— incredibly rude of that man, by the way—is lighter than Larry’s clocks, with or without the clockwork, judging by the way he hefted it.”
“Yes?”
“And he certainly didn’t look like the type to work out often. I doubt he was very strong. Therefore, he couldn’t have hit me over the head with the force necessary to kill me! At worst, he gave me a bad concussion.” He smiles confidently, and looks back at Death. “Well, how did I do?”
Death no longer looks like Dustin Prince. No, now he looks like—Ini Mimey. The real one, the one who had died long before anyone knew it and who had been memorialized as her very much alive sister instead. Ini yawns delicately and says, “I could keep going, perhaps try to make you justify coming out of this completely unscathed—but the idea of you defending someone with amnesia is hilarious, actually.”
“Ha… sure.” It catches up to him what she’s said. “Wait, what? Hold on—”
But Death does not hold on. He wakes up, with his head throbbing and absolutely no idea of who he is even supposed to be—and the too-cheerful greeting of the woman that is apparently his client doesn’t help at all.
He remembers who he is, eventually. He does not remember Death. He never does, not even when it happens again.
On the fourth day that Phoenix dies, he has about a second and a half to regret many of his life decisions up to this point before he hits the water and blacks out on impact. He is standing atop the cliffs when he comes to, the bridge still burning away, and no sign of Larry.
No sign of Phoenix himself, either, which would be a good sign if he hadn’t just come to the realization that he is a little bit see-through at the moment. That’s never good.
“Six months? Really?”
Phoenix turns to see someone leaning against the rocky sign. Elise Deauxnim, recently murdered and shaking her head disapprovingly. “First it’s three years. Then a bit over one year. And now six months. I’m disappointed, truly.”
“Uh…” Phoenix grins sheepishly. “Six months since… what, exactly?”
Elise sighs. “The last time you died, of course. But of course you don’t remember who I really am this time, either. The short version is that I am not Mis—” She cuts herself off, and shakes her head abruptly. “I am not Elise Deauxnim, I am just taking her form as I take that of many others in my dealings with mortals. I am Death. We have been over this before.”
“We have? I mean… yeah! We have. I absolutely remember that.”
The incredibly unimpressed look she gives him tells him all he needs to know about how much she believes him. “Well? Are you going to argue with me or not?”
“About… what, being dead?”
“Yes! Go on, then!”
“Uh… okay. Well, I guess I fell like forty feet, but it was into water, so that kinda negates the whole thing. I would have floated… that way…” Phoenix points. “Towards Heavenly Hall. Which I’m betting is where Larry is right now. He’s a strong swimmer, and he’s surprisingly good in a crisis despite being… well, himself the rest of the time. How’s that?”
“There are so many things wrong in that statement that I don’t even know where to begin.” Elise flicks her bangs off to the side the same way that Mia so often did. “So this time, I don’t think I will. Sure, your friend pulled you out of the water, if you die again anytime in the next year I will not be so merciful, get out of my hair.”
The last thing Phoenix thinks, before he wakes up in the hospital and forgets everything after plunging into the river, is that he must have done something to annoy Death so much she didn’t even want him to keep explaining why he wasn’t dead.
(If he’d had the time to keep thinking, he wouldn’t have complained. He simply has too much to live for.)
On the fifth day that Phoenix dies, it is almost completely without warning. There is a screech of tires, and then he goes flying, and then—
“A traffic accident? You don’t even drive a car, how did you—just go back already, I am not dealing with you today and it will be far funnier to see how you justify not dying here to anyone but me.”
Phoenix, turning, catches a glimpse of Zak Gramarye—and then he’s on the ground, his head and ankle throbbing and a few concerned faces hovering over him.
Death, for their part, stops counting after the fifth time Phoenix Wright should have died but didn’t. They aren’t paid enough to deal with him.
(Actually, they aren’t paid at all.)