I heard the shots. I heard the screams. But it's the silence after I remember most.

[turnaboutson]

♥ Who: Miles Edgeworth and you!
♥ Where: Throughout the city
♥ When: December 28 / Ranir 28
♥ What: Someone's trying very hard to pretend that he's okay today and that it isn't the anniversary of the worst day of his life. It's fine. It's fine. Everything's fine, Carl.
♥ Rating: CW for PTSD, murder, childhood trauma, emotional abuse, potential discussion of physical abuse

Normally, dates don't mean much to him. He keeps a calendar in his head, true, but he doesn't particularly care what day it is one way or the other. He's even ignored his own birthday.

Not so with December 28. Not so with the date of the DL-6 incident, the date that had irrevocably changed his life when he'd been just nine years old. December 28, 2001. Two-thirds of his life ago now. Eighteen years on.

He didn't have that nightmare every night now, but December...that was different. H-help! I can't breathe!

Quiet! I said quiet! You're not making this any easier!

Stop breathing my air! I'll...I'll stop you! Stop breathing my aaaaair!

(Get away...!)

(Get away from my father!)

The gunshot, and the scream - that scream, the one that haunts him to this day. He knows the source, now; he knows that it wasn't his father, but the man who had raised him after the tragic and untimely death of Gregory Edgeworth. Manfred von Karma. Gregory's murderer. The man who had ruined so many lives with that one gunshot.

He had stayed at home, but found that he was too restless; now he's wandering the streets, looking for something, anything, to take his mind off of things. He's even drinking tea from the replicators (tea is comforting, tea is good, tea would help, tea would help, tea would help) - and sometimes he's absentmindedly ordered that ginger and honey tea.

Comments

[turnaboutson]

[Miles looks like he's about to clam up for a second - he desperately wants to - and then he lets out a sigh, like sorrow is leaving his body when the air does. His throat burns with the need to talk about it.]

My father was a defense attorney. I joined him in the courthouse one day when he was defending a client against an infamous prosecutor. He lost, but he put a mark on the prosecutor's perfect record.

We were in the elevator, getting ready to leave. Me, my father, and a bailiff. Then there was an earthquake, and the power went out. We were trapped there for hours, and we were losing air. My father and the bailiff started fighting...the gun ended up near me. I was hysterical - I screamed at them to stop fighting, and threw it.

And the gun went off.

[He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.]

[the_tailor]

[Well, shit. Lance was prepared for a sad story, but this is far beyond that. A horrifying situation, and what seems to be an absolutely tragic conclusion. From what Miles has said so far, the assumption of what happened is nothing short of traumatic. And even if all isn't what it seems by the tale at the moment, it doesn't really change that fact.]

That... This really isn't meant to be empty platitudes or anything, but I really am so sorry. I could never imagine going through that.

[turnaboutson]

[The attempt at comfort, while it would usually anger him, actually helps.] Thank you, [he says quietly.] But that's not the end of the story.

For fifteen years, I thought that I had killed my father. Then someone desperate to save me, someone who believed in me, proved that I hadn't done it. The man who raised me after my father died had killed him out of pure spite. I was brought up by my father's murderer, and turned into something that he would have hated.