He was devastated. He couldn't believe it. Such a blunder...
Why, why oh why, why did he have to take that piece of paper from the little girl's hands?
But the deed was done already, and he had been called on it. He was given a summons for court two weeks from now, to investigate this incident regarding the fake evidence.
He felt dizzy. The world as he knew it spun in front of his eyes, and in his mind, everything he had held up for himself throughout all these years was crumbling down with deafening finality. And yet, when he attempted to walk away from the place where all this mess had occurred, he felt something stuck to his leg, preventing his movement. He looked down with an unfocused gaze.
There was the little girl, clinging to him with tears in her eyes, clinging to him with a desperate look, clinging to him for dear life.
His first desire was to roughly rip her away from him, and leave her after giving her his most practiced hateful look. But his heart couldn't muster the strength to pull this off, and he felt himself kneel beside the child, gently stroke her head, and ask her with his sweetest voice, "What's wrong?"
The girl was in shambles. Between sobs and jagged breaths, she managed to let out, "M-my d-daddy's gone...! A-and he d-didn't t-take me w-with h-him...!", before succumbing to uncontrolled cries.
Phoenix felt his heart twisting painfully. How could he ever, ever have thought of leaving this poor girl alone? He wouldn't be able to forgive himself for the rest of his life. Feeling the worst of the worst, he hugged her tightly, never stopping his careful caressing of her head, while she incontrollably sobbed harder and harder on his shoulder.
It was a while before she calmed down. When she did, her look of shattered desperation touched very deep inside his heart, and hoisting her up in his arms, he told her, "Well... If you want, you can spend a few days with me while we search for your daddy. How's that sound?" And to his surprise and immense relief, he found his words being met with a small smile, a nod of assentment, and her arms thrown around his neck in thanks.
He carried her the whole way back home. He had a shrewd idea how she must feel, and somehow, his instinct told him that holding her like this would give her a sense of security, of which she was most in need. Leaving her with some colored pencils and an old notebook in his small sitting room, he prowled the extra bedroom he used to keep for whenever Maya and Pearls were staying, and after fumbling here and there, he deemed it in good enough conditions for the girl to use. So, he was fully expecting the many tears and thank you's the girl gave him, but what he did not expect was her clinging to him surprisingly strongly, sobbing in his trousers at first, and his shoulders when he crouched beside her. She asked him how she should call him, now that she was going to live with him for a while, and in a rare stroke of inspiration, his mouth changed into a subtle grin and his mind flew towards a pair of big eyes, a pink kimono and a pretzel hairdo, and said in a low voice, "Mr. Nick will be okay". He could feel a small smile growing in the lips pressed against his shoulder, and a nod of acknowledgement. And that's how little Trucy came about to live with him.
While searching for the disappeared Zak Gramarye, the few days turned into a few weeks, and those few weeks turned into a few months. They shared many an experience -- giggles and smiles over toast in the mornings, luminescent blushes when he had to buy underwear for her, sleepless nights when she fell down sick, truly joyful laughs when he'd play out in the park with her, stumping evenings helping her with tough-as-nails homework from the school she now attended, painful hours when he comforted her in his arms after a particularly scary nightmare.
Nowadays, their relationship was much closer. Oftentimes, he'd get approving looks from older ladies on the streets, and even every now and then a random comment on what good care he was taking of his daughter, and he'd be forced to whip out a long-winded explanation on how she wasn't his daughter at all... But this had gotten tiring, so he didn't care anymore.
Other times, he'd find himself looking proudly and with a hint of another feeling at the little girl, a feeling the name of which he couldn't quite put his finger on. This puzzled him greatly for a good while, but he never really got to find out what that feeling was, except that it made him warm in his heart, so upon deciding the feeling was good enough as it was, he stopped paying it too much mind.
Some other times, he'd meet his extended family, composed of his beloved Maya, her little cousin Pearl and his closest friend and confident, Edgeworth, and after having a hard time initially explaining how this adorable little girl had come into his life, he'd have to make conscious efforts to suppress the urge to, in the middle of a conversation, randomly call her his "daughter".
And yet some other times, he'd surprise and catch himself calling her pet names, like honey and sweetheart, and get even more surprised in return when she answered with a "Daddy" remark, directed at no one else but him.
Time together taught him her habits, her likes, her dislikes. Time together would find him comforting her after a nightmare. Time together would thrust him into giving her paternal advice against the bullies in her class. Time together would throw him on his couch, his face in his hands, wondering and pondering when and where exactly had things started to go downhill, and she'd invariably show up with a new magic trick to show him, or an interesting new adventure she'd experienced at school, or just to cuddle up beside him in silence and eventually fall asleep with her head on his thighs. Time together would find them both, after a while, defending each other, in their own situations (her bullies, his detractors), as fiercely as kin. Time together would, ultimately, find them saying to each other, timidly at first, and then with more conviction, "I love you".
And that's why, when the first anniversary of the day when she was dropped into his care came around, as he prepared a small party with the people he treasured the most (Maya, Pearl, Edgeworth, Gumshoe, and Franziska), he apologized to her in front of everyone, mostly for himself than for her, for not being much help in finding her lost father. The sensation felt painful, very painful, against an already stressed heart, and while he said his words of apology and atonement, he felt the small, delicate hand and the silky, sapphire-colored hair of the girl he loved the most upon his shoulders, in an unspoken sign of support that he was thankful for all the same. And as he finished speaking, he felt his head naturally drop, unable to keep his gaze on the little girl in front of him, due to pain, shame and god knows what other feelings that were squeezing his heart right now.
But he could never have expected what happened next.
Because the girl took his saddened face in her small hands, and pulling him towards her, gave him a small kiss on his forehead, and in her sweet, bright voice, said to him, "You don't have to be sad, and you don't have to be sorry. Because we don't have to look for my daddy anymore."
"...Trucy?" He could not believe his ears. And swift as lightning, he finally understood the meaning of that feeling he could not recognize before...
A feeling of love, the love of a father, a love he didn't think he was capable of feeling.
And yet, it was there, certainly, undoubtedly, irrevocably there.
But before he could utter another word, he felt the thin finger of the slender, dark-haired girl now hugging him from behind on his lips, prohibiting him from talking. Instead, it was her who asked the little girl in front of them, "And why is it that you don't have to look for your daddy anymore, Trucy?"
And all of them saw as the girl climbed up on his legs, threw his arms around him as far as she could reach, and snuggling herself against his chest, said in her brightest voice...
"Because I've already found him."
The whooping, squeals and giggles of joy echoed through the small room, and the man with the spiked hair felt, for the first time in a long, long time, that maybe things weren't so bad after all, as his tears found their way to his cheeks and his arms found their way around the little girl sitting on his lap...
His little girl...
His daughter.* ~ FIN ~ *
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