Once, we were gods, thinks Phoenix as he adjusts his tie and then his hair in the mirror.

The signs of the old days are still there, if you know where to look, which many don't nowadays. The eyes, ever-changing, a window to the soul that, while open, gave more questions than it did answers. The hair, a contradiction of soft and sharp that shouldn't work that way. The way he drew people in, keeping them connected and not letting go.

There weren't many left who actually believed, after all. You had to take what you got, the scraps and leftovers from technological gods and demons.

That was why he had latched on to Miles Edgeworth. It was hard not to latch onto someone who believed in you when no one else did, but it was even harder to let go when belief was something you were starved of, desperate for.

(He'd supposedly been five years old when they found him, scorched and soot-covered, in a burnt-out building. He spent a full five months in the orphanage until a friendly couple took him in, and he'd stayed with them ever since. He never had told them that he wasn't actually five years old, and that he had been the one to start the fire that had thankfully not hurt anyone.

He doesn't think he ever will. The Wrights are human, as human as they come, and Phoenix thinks he needs that, now more than ever. That maybe if he surrounds himself and imitates these humans, he might lose more of what made him different.

He isn't sure he believes it, but it's something he can't bring himself to renounce.)

He looks himself in the eye, and tells himself that this will be enough, and he doesn't need to be anything more than what people see. Not this time. Hopefully, not the next, either.

...

When Miles found him in the hospital, he isn't sure what the man expected to see. Phoenix, battered and bruised, with broken limbs, perhaps?

Surely not simply a bad fever.

The worst of it, though, is that he remembers the words that Miles had once said to him - I didn't want you to see me like this - and he's ashamed, because this is entirely ridiculous-

He's drawn up into himself on the hospital bed, shuddering and shaking like a leaf even hours after coming back to, and every small thing reminds him of the nightmare he's just woken up from.

He isn't afraid of heights, he tells Miles. He's afraid of falling. Of falling, and not flying, and hitting the ground.

He isn't afraid of heights.

Miles thinks he understands, because in a way he does - he remembers earthquakes and a shaking form on the ground, mild concern that would turn into worry. But at the same time, he doesn't, because there isn't just fear here. Fear, he thinks, would be simple.

There is, however, frustration, and there's anger.

He knows the sensation of the wind on his face the same way that he does the ground under his feet.

Phoenix has flown before, flown and risen so high that stories have been told of shooting stars and comets in the night sky, and he remembers what that's like, and the exhilaration of it all, the sense of being himself.

There were times when he was made entirely of air and fire, and that was all the elements were known as, and he remembers.

And now… now, he is all too human and he is weighted down to the earth and he falls, so hard and so fast, and the water has made his tinder wet, the only sign of his fire that's left the temperature he's running, the one that has Miles putting a hand to his forehead.

He sighs, and as Miles is leaving with his badge and his magatama, he breathes a blessing into the air after him. A wish.

May the wind be always at your back, he whispers, and hopes it holds something, coming from an earthed air elemental.

...

"We were gods, once," he says absently.

He's in Germany. He's been having to hide the fact that he's been greeted by just about every one of the fair folk in the area from the moment he'd landed, and he was sure that he'd seen more than one strange-looking clouds peering curiously in through the airplane's windows.

Right now, he's in the von Karma residence, and it feels odd - the air is drifting around him, lazily telling him stories of how things used to be, and how things were, and how things are now, ghosts in the wind. He blinks and shakes his head, to say not now, and it becomes less overwhelming.

Miles looks at him sharply.

"You're speaking highly of yourself. No lawyer has that much power."

Phoenix just smiles faintly under the beanie hat his daughter made for him, and looks out of the window again.

"I wasn't talking about now," comes the quiet, gentle rebuttal. "It was a long time ago. I don't think anyone remembers any more."

He can hear - feel - Miles shaking his head. The frustration and confusion was evident.

"You aren't making any sense."

After everything he's been through, those five words are enough to break the last of his will to keep it all inside, to let the dam burst, and he's flooded with emotions that he's been trying to hold at bay for years now, slumping down the wall, knees up to his chest and his hands covering his face.

"Wright? Wright, are you…?"

So hesitant, even now, not knowing what to do, and it makes him smile, because isn't that just like Miles? But he can feel bits of himself drifting further and further away day by day now, and even this isn't enough.

"I could let go," he says, a simple statement of fact that causes Miles to inhale sharply. The worst thing is that they both know how that could be interpreted, and he can't say for certain that it'd be entirely unwarranted.

"Don't you dare-"

"I could let go," he says again. "I could vanish, and I could just… drift, again. On the wind. No one would find me, because I wouldn't exist. And maybe after a while, that'd be true, and I'd just… go out. Scatter on the wind. There are worse ways to go."

There's a choking sound, and his chest hurts, because he doesn't even need to see to be able to know who made it, and why.

But the words keep tumbling out, as though they and he have no sense of self-preservation.

"Or I could burn up again. I'd need to find a nice place, though - I wasn't careful enough last time. It's a good thing they put me down as dead, because otherwise I'd have arson on my record." He laughs, because it's ridiculous, and he isn't sure what else to do.

"And Trucy?"

He has to commend Miles for the way his voice doesn't waver, although the icy tone and the anger aren't entirelyunexpected.

"She'd stay with you, of course. I trust you most, out of anyone."

There's a long pause, and at the end of it, Miles lets out a rough, heavy breath.

"Wright," he says, and then stops, and then starts again, even more raw this time than before. "Wright, why are you doing this?"

He makes the mistake of looking. The pain on Miles' face is worse than his imagination suggested, simply because it's real. So is the hand gripped at his other arm, defending himself from not a physical attack, but emotions, and this time it's him who brought Miles to this state. Him.

"Because…" his voice croaks. "Because I'm scared." And that's it - it's out. "I'm scared that one day nothing's going to be enough. That I'll miss flying too much. That I'll want to give up on…"

His throat closes up on the words, the words that will make it all real and not something he can take back.

But he can't leave it like that, because he knows what it would sound like if he did, and he can't let that just lie there between them.

"…on being human," he finishes.

And that's that.

He expects Miles to walk out of the room there and then.

He waits. Closes his eyes, so that he doesn't see the red of the back of his jacket as he leaves.

"When I did this to you, you left me with a bruise that took an indecently long time to heal, and I deserved it." Footsteps coming closer, the voice becoming clearer. "Look at me. Please."

That one word, ripped out and pleading, is enough to get him to open his eyes again, and there Miles is, looking awkward as he crouches down in front of him.

"Phoenix…"

Some people believed that a man never died until the last time his name was spoken. There was power in names - the power to remember, and bring to life an entire person in one word.

For some, their name wasn't just who they were, but also what they were.

When Trucy comes into the living room several hours later, she finds her daddy talking with his friend about things that seem to be making them both happy, which is good, but she doesn't quite get yet why they're both on edge so much.

She thinks they remind her of a game where they've both seen someone cheat, but no one's bringing it up yet.

Mr. Edgeworth starts calling her daddy Phoenix more, and even starts to correct himself sometimes.

He's better than he has been all year, and when they leave, he says something about bringing good winds and no pollen, which makes Mr. Edgeworth roll his eyes.

...

The kid's name is Apollo, and Phoenix laughs when Kristoph tells him, and he never explains why.

He's long since told Trucy, and Maya and Pearls found out in an incident that involved someone finding an old photo that the hadn't even known still existed of a person who was supposed to have died a long, long time ago, but when Pearls tried channeling the man, nothing happened other than Phoenix in the other room getting first incredibly disoriented and then unimaginably worried - telling both of them to, with no exceptions, never try that again - he's not sure what it'd do to any of them.

Apollo, of course, figures it out for himself.

"You're afraid of heights, but you're always looking at the sky," he says, "and Trucy said something once about that - the heights thing - being weird in the first place."

He just smiles enigmatically, and doesn't say anything to confirm or deny.

Apollo gets frustrated, and drops the subject for a while.

"You do realise she's drawn you with a great big red bird behind you, right," Apollo says another time, trying again. This time, he's drawing attention to the photo on the office fridge.

"It's a play on words," he offers this time. "Me, Phoenix. That, a phoenix."

Apollo's glare is all the confirmation that he's got the desired reaction.

"I figured that, thanks."

He's having lunch with Klavier two days after the Misham trial, and the sky shimmers. He looks up, and the sky is on fire, literally, on fire. He grabs Klavier for his attention, and the prosecutor looks up, his face paling at he sight, and Apollo thinks that some of the words that come out of the German's mouth can't be considered clean in any language.

They both start to get up, but then by the time they have, the flames have started to move, and-

It's flapping, like it's a bird, but it's a big bird if it is, rising with the air currents and swooping and gliding and singing, singing with a song that sounds less like birdsong and more like that one time Apollo had seen a street performer make music out of glass bottles, beautiful and haunting and full of joy at the same time, and it all lasts until, at long last, it goes out of sight.

"Herr Forehead, did you just…?"

"See the same thing you did? Yeah. I don't quite believe it either."

Something tickles at the back of his mind, and he only realises what it is when he's going through the door to the agency the next morning, seeing the name of his boss all over the place.

"You!" he says, Chords of Steel making the single word far louder than was probably good on anyone's hearing, but damn their hearing. "It was you!"

"Huh?" Phoenix Wright is looking far too pleased with himself. It's almost - almost - enough to make him want to punch the man again. "What was me?"

"Phoenix!"

"That's my name, Apollo. Don't wear it out."

"No. No, you - you are one. A phoenix. Is that supposed to be a joke of some kind? Calling yourself that? Or are you just doing all this to mess with me?"

Phoenix Wright just laughs, and Apollo's taken aback for a moment, because it's not like the laughter he's used to from the man. It seems to bubble up inside and come bursting forth, and somehow, he's reminded of birdsong that sounds like the wind going through glass jars.

He expects to be let down, told that it's all just a joke and a magician's trick, but instead, Phoenix looks him in the eye and asks him what he'd do if it was true.

Apollo says, honestly, that he doesn't know. He's still working it out in his head.

Then, he asks how someone who can fly is afraid of heights. He certainly didn't seem afraid yesterday, if that washim.

He notices Phoenix wince a little, not a tell for a lie, but one of remembrance and pain. The look he gives Apollo next isn't unkind, but it reminds him far too much of his first trial, with Phoenix edging Apollo on to find the truth, even when it hurt both of them to do so.

"If flying was first nature to you," Phoenix says, looking away to the window in small glances, "but you currently don't have wings… how would you deal with heights?"

Apollo pales a bit himself at the very idea. He's not fond of heights either, and even then it takes a minute to get what the man (mythological being?) in front of him was saying.

…

"We are the gods of the modern age," Klavier says, tasting the words in his mouth a week after he'd performed for the Themis Academy festival in the memory of his departed mentor. "It sounds like the name of a song, ja?"

He sees Apollo tense, Phoenix Wright blinks owlishly, and Trucy puts a hand to her mouth. He and the new attorney, Athena, are the only ones left feeling in the dark when the others all start to laugh.

"If I said something amusing, please. Do feel free to enlighten me."

Strangely, the others all turn to Herr Wright himself, who grins sheepishly, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck.

"Sorry, sorry… it wasn't you. Actually, I think that's a great idea. I mean, we have got Apollo and Athena-"

"And you, Daddy!" Trucy interjects, a grin on her own face.

"-and me. I'm assuming that's what you meant?"

Klavier shrugs expansively. "I could say no, but you know me too well, it seems."

They laugh and joke about the idea of a song written about them, by Klavier, and he half expects that by the end of it, half the lines he comes up with will end up being things they've said.

When they leave the table, he finds a napkin that's been written on, and he thinks he recognises the handwriting.

Once, we were gods, it reads. Some day soon, we might be gods again.

He isn't sure why he feels unnerved by it. Perhaps it's the uncertainty of whether it's meant as a suggestion toward the lyrics… or an honest promise.

Then again, he isn't even sure that it was meant for his eyes in the first place, given that Herr Wright seemed to be patting down his pockets, trying to look for something he'd left behind as he he goes out of the door.

...

AN: I saw a single-line prompt that held simply the words the title here. I've already got an AU running in my head of Phoenix as a literal phoenix, but I thought that I could do something a little different with this. I did try and add in the mythology aspects and keep original personalities to the best of my ability.