Turnabout of the Heart

Author's Note: Oh my sweet Lord... I haven't written Ace Attorney in years. Buried away on fanfiction.net, I have an old, Edgeworth-centric Ace Attorney fanfic from 2018, but I haven't posted anything for this fandom since then. However, back in the day, I wrote a lot of it, and this old story from my deleted account was begging to be revamped and posted. I hope you enjoy this little piece of fluff and mild angst!

***

It was slow motion.

That was the only way to describe it. Everything was silent, submerged in an ocean of quicksand, time grinding to a halt. He should have been thinking, calculating and hypothesizing about what was happening and what he should do about it, but his mind was blank. He could only stand there as Edgeworth toppled to the courthouse floor, disappearing behind his table.

"Mr. Edgeworth!"

Phoenix took off, spurred into a run by Maya's exclamation. He bolted around his table, bumping into the witness stand on his way to Edgeworth. He slid around the end of the prosecutor's table, half kneeling and half falling beside the breathless man on the floor.

"Edgeworth." Phoenix grabbed the burgundy lapels and gave a few shakes, trying to catch the half-lidded gaze. "Hey, look at me. Look at me, and tell me what's wrong."

Edgeworth winced, grasping at his chest with his left hand while the other lay limp on the floor. "I don't know. I feel... faint all of a sudden..." Breathing through gritted teeth, he tried to sit up. "How embarrassing."

"Hey!" Phoenix grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back down. "How can you be thinking about that at a time like this? You looked awful when you came in this morning—"

"Well, thank you for your flattery."

"—and now you just collapsed in the middle of a sentence. You're not—" Phoenix stopped suddenly, looking over his shoulder and finding an anxious psychic hovering on the other side of the table. "Maya! Call 911!" He looked back at Edgeworth, cursing his own stupidity as he pressed two fingers to the pale, sweaty throat. I'm an idiot. I'm a complete and total idiot. That's the first thing you're supposed to do in an emergency, and I'm just getting to it now.

"I don't need—" Edgeworth gasped down a lungful of air, "—an ambulance. I'm completely fine. I—I was simply lightheaded for a moment. I need a ten minute recess, not..." He trailed off, screwing his eyes shut and struggling to breathe again.

Phoenix couldn't find anything wrong with the pulse, but Edgeworth's skin was cool to the touch, and he was sweating profusely. "Too bad; an ambulance is already on its way." For some reason—maybe because of the many people Edgeworth had put away—he started considering some kind of hit, and he pushed aside the suit jacket and cravat to look for a wound. "Tell me what's wrong. Give me a—a list of your symptoms or something."

"It's really nothing." Edgeworth waved dismissively, but it was hard to be convincing when he was grunting the words, soaked in sweat, and wearing a pained expression on his face. "I just... have a bit of a stomach bug, that's all." He screwed his eyes shut. "Tch. I've been nauseous on and off, and... there have been some odd sensations in my chest." He spoke calmly, but his hand was trembling a bit, and despite his insistence that nothing was wrong, he had yet to make another attempt to stand. "It's just a little uncomfortable to breathe, and... I suppose the decrease in oxygen made me somewhat dizzy." He forced his eyes opened and looked up at Phoenix. "It's nothing, Wright. Honestly."

"It doesn't sound like nothing." Phoenix was having none of it. "It sounds like something is wrong. Have you—?"

"Um, Nick?"