NaruMitsu fic on the WrightWorthyEnigmar family. Enjoy~

"Daddy!" 8 year-old Trucy Wright squealed as she ran into the kitchen that morning. The strong scent of alcohol reached her nostrils and made her gag, but she tried not to show it. He'd had a rough time this past week. She didn't want to upset him.

But one look at the scene told her something already had. He was slumped over at the table, head hidden in his hands. In front of him lay a ripped envelope, and a blotched hand-written letter. Trucy came to the conclusion that it had been stained by Phoenix's tears.

She carefully reached over, trying to pry the note from the table without him noticing. His head seemed to snap back straight at her movement and he quickly reached out and took it back from her. She did, however, catch a glimpse of the name written at the bottom - though that part was the hardest to read.

Miles Edgeworth.

She remembered Phoenix's old friend's name. He was a prosecutor - a demon prosecutor, some would say. He'd rung just the day after Phoenix had been disbarred. Though they'd never met in person, from the stories and one-sided phone calls the only impression he'd ever managed to leave on Trucy was that he was cold and aloof, uninterested in doing anything but lecturing her Daddy about how he "threw his life down the drain, headfirst". Trucy thought this was a peculiar comment - did lives have heads? She'd raised this point to her Daddy casually after the call had ended, but he'd only sighed and huffed about it being a... met-a-four? She hadn't been able to work out the correct spelling. She was always bad at that.

"I-it's just the, um, bill..." Phoenix lied, though it wasn't a good place to start in convincing her everything was okay. His eyes also gave him in - they were puffy and swollen up, two small red pillows over the bed sheet white of his unshaven face. She couldn't tell if they were sore from the alcohol or the crying, but both were as bad as the other. "I mean, we can pay it off alright! I'm just a little worried about the future... No, I shouldn't be leaning on you like this..." His voice trailed off into silence, and Trucy didn't know quite what to say in reply. Tell him it would be alright? Tell him she could work? She'd told him that, the day he took her in, but he didn't ever think she was serious. This only served to dampen her pride, but she ignored it. It wasn't easy to believe an 8 year-old could really work for money.

She still would, though.

"Don't worry, Daddy!" She flung an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close though the stench only worsened as she drew nearer to him. "We can pay it off alright. But listen to what I've been trying to tell you - this place should be an agency instead of an office. Think of it as an upgrade, you know?" She gave him a toothy grin - though she was down a tooth after losing one not too long before.

The ends of his mouth curled over, but Trucy didn't know whether to take it as a returning smile or a trick of the light. She hoped all too much it was the former.

"Thanks, Trucy."

It was the closest thing to a real smile she'd had from him all week.

Since that phone call, at least.

It had come swiftly, just before the letter, and completely out of the blue.

"An agency?" The usually soft-spoken man screamed down his phone to his old friend. "You have got to be kidding me, Wright. Please, please tell me you're not serious."

"Shut up, alright? I need the money. And this kid's got talent." The ex-lawyer replied, just as angry as the man on the other side of the line was but more controlled with his ways of showing it. Miles Edgeworth was usually the calm one, so it didn't fit right that Phoenix had the cool-head in this scenario.

"So what, you're using your client's daughter as some kind of way of making money?" Miles sighed, though Phoenix could never bring himself to do something like that.

"Well, she's more like my daughter now really," Phoenix answered, ignoring what Miles was implying. "She addresses me as Daddy, and it's been a week with not even a sighting of anyone by the name of Shadi Enigmar or Zak Gramarye. Not even word of anyone with some version of those names."

"Sounds like some jackass father."

"Tell me about it. I've been left with his kid."

"You really threw your life into the gutter headfirst, didn't you, Wright?" Miles seemed to enjoy starting on Phoenix. Though he was unsure why. "I wonder how long until you crawl over to Germany and start living with me."

"As if." Phoenix snorted. "And I did not "throw my life into the gutter headfirst". It just... jumped in there."

The two men chortled together at this. It had been time, too - so long it had been they hadn't shared a laugh as friends.

"I miss you, Wright." Miles said accidently through the chuckles. The man blushed furiously, though Phoenix couldn't see it. Feeling he'd said too much, he clicked the red button of his phone and hung up. He'd slipped up. He couldn't ever let Phoenix know... No, it would be too awkward... And obviously now he couldn't call again. At least, not for a while.

There you go screwing everything up again, Miles...

"M-miles...?" Phoenix stuttered, just as embarrassed as the other man. Had he imagined it? Had they already finished their conversation? He didn't know what to think. And it seemed now he'd been thrown into a gutter of discomfort, alongside the rest of his life.

Headfirst into a drain, huh?

From just across the hallway, the young magician had heard quite clearly the conversation between the two men - well, one side of it, at least. From Phoenix's words, she could safely deduce what Miles was saying to him. Though she couldn't pick up the insults to her biological father, she hadn't missed much else.

She wasn't being used, was she?

She shook her head, reassuring herself otherwise.

Mr Edgeworth's just a jerk. That's all.

Settling on this, the girl in red set to work practicing some more of her tricks, though all needed much improvement before she could earn enough to support two people.

She had to plan to help Phoenix find something else he was good at, other than defending people. Phoenix would be able to show Miles who's life was being wasted in no time, she just knew it. She'd work on her act, too. They'd make it through. They didn't need one of them to be a lawyer to make money.

Though making money was the least of their worries.

Phoenix was always drunk. In the evenings, at least. Though he never had a morning without suffering a hangover, so it was almost correct. She could sense the pain in his eyes; not the stinging headache, but the true pain he was trying so desperately to drown in the ethanol-tinged liquids. She didn't know how to get him to let go of a bottle. At night, she found he could be quite violent.

She didn't have long to wait to see her first example of this. It occurred only a month after he took her in.

"Put it down, Daddy, you've got to go to bed." She had tried to tell him, over and over again urging him to drop the glass. He didn't say anything coherent, but he kept mumbling, making strange sounds and flailing out of reluctancy. She didn't know how else to help him, only she had to.

"One.. More..." She had managed to pick out from his murmurs. She shook her head fiercely.

"No, then you'll say "another one" and we'll be here all night. Let it go, Daddy, please!" She almost moaned this, but managed to contain herself. She had to be the grown-up here if he was being the baby.

He raised the bottle up high, and she shrieked, preparing for the blow and protecting her head as he shoved her off him. His hand clasped the bottle's neck tight, but before he brought it down to her head he broke down himself, flinging it behind him instead and collapsing into a heap on the floor, sobbing like a little boy who'd just lost his favourite toy.

"I'm so... so sorry, Truce..."

Looking across at the spiky-haired man, besides that he looked rather like a hedgehog with his face in his arms, all she could think about was how much pity she felt for him. He'd lost everything he'd known - maybe she had too, but that only helped her understand the pain he must have been feeling. She just had to help him. How? She had no clue. But the task was hers and hers alone. Mr Edgeworth didn't look like he was going to come help. Uncle Larry... Well, all she'd seen of him was a drunk man in an orange suit flirting with anything that resembled something feminine. He was a bad influence to this, but she couldn't blame him, either.

"I'm so, so sorry..."

The time ticked past, and she eventually worked up the courage to sit by him, patting him lightly on the back and shushing him calmly as he sobbed and sobbed, resting his heavy head on her weak shoulder. She didn't mind though.