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wunderkind

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From:

jurisimpudent

No, I am. Naturally I am.

[He answers that firmly - but that firmness fades a moment after into something weaker, something unhappy. He's quiet a moment, holding his tongue out of a full knowledge of how foolish this is, but a moment after he confesses, haltingly, his ideas confused even to himself:]

I suppose I just...I never even thought about it before, because he was always just something terrible, a symbol, but - he was a person, too. I just - on the way over here, I just kept wondering whether he had...a family. Parents. I don't know.

[He rubs unhappily at his eyes - as much from exhaustion as from grief. He's glad that he's dry-eyed now.]

They'd have killed those Muggles.

From:

doggedly

If he had parents--

[Everyone has parents, Sirius thinks, with a swoop of bitterness. No matter who they are or what they stand for, they're your parents, and something of them will always be coded into you, a legacy you can't avoid. Until they knock you off the family tree.]

--If he had parents, then he'd have killed them. And he wasn't a person any longer.

[What the hell gives Sirius the right to speak with such certainty on that? He doesn't actually know anything--but Merlin, facing down Voldemort, having that strange lidless stare trained on him--there's nothing like that in the world, it's subworldly, un-human. Staring into his eyes and seeing nothing staring back at him.]

They'd have killed those muggles, and worse. That was just the start of it. [At parties, you hear the murmurs, he could tell Edgeworth. You see the plans getting started, the ideas being placed--but none of it matters anymore, does it? The planmakers are dead. New ones will come, but for now--] Even if this isn't the end of it, it's better off than you were before. Congratulations.

From:

jurisimpudent

[He's silent for a moment, then repeats, quietly:]

You. "Than you were before."

[He opens his eyes, then, turns his head towards Sirius. Asks, because he has to ask - because all this will have been nothing if it was selfish, because he has blood on his hands but cannot live with himself if he's bloodied from selfishness - ]

What about others? Not just Muggles, and Muggle-borns. It's better, isn't it, to not...worry about a war? To not worry about suffering, dying...

[But he subsides, listless, unhappy. And, after a moment, he says:]

I've ruined your life, haven't I?

From:

doggedly

[The easy answer is yes. If by some miracle Sirius isn't implicated in this--and he will be, even if it's just in rumors his name will be connected to this, forever; they can tell lie after lie after lie and it won't matter--but if by some chance he isn't, if he avoids that--what power do the Blacks have left? What influence? Everything will be turned on its ear by this. High society succumbing to a muggle-born.

They have money. They have influence--it will fade, and wane, but their name will still carry some clout--and they will survive, because their kind always survives. But it will be different. It will always be different from here, and Sirius has seen the other side now, the side of--

What? Good? There's good in killing Voldemort, there's maybe even good in killing Bellatrix--it's a good better than anything he's ever known. But good hardly seems an adequate way to describe it, or frame it, or even understand it.

He shifts, rather than answer, he shifts and digs a cigarette out of his pocket, slips it into his mouth.]

We'll have to wait and see.

[He says it dully, but he glances over at Edgeworth with a wry little smile, as he lights his cigarette. Still with that heavy silver lighter, still carved with the Black family crest. He rubs his thumb over it before he slips it back into his pocket.]

I expect that's how much of this is going to go. Just-- waiting, and seeing. [And he lets a stream of smoke out of his nose, not even wincing at that little burn.] Stop dwelling. Stop being sad about this. You did it. Enjoy that, at least a little. There's people all across the world that are going to be celebrating this one, might as well let the person that actually did it join in.

From:

jurisimpudent

[Stop being sad about this. It's reasonable, rational advice. Because people will be celebrating. Because the world is a better place without Voldemort in it - and of that there is no question, and he feels no hesitation in thinking that - that the world is much improved by the lack of his evil, his cruelty, his pettiness, his prejudice. There was no good brought to the world by the Dark Lord; there was no kindness; nothing but a cruelly expressionless visage and a trail of bodies.

So why is he sad? Because he is; God, he is. And it comes back to this: the world might be improved by the loss of one murderer, but has it truly been improved by gaining another? At its heart, his mourning is phenomenally selfish. He knows that. It stems not from any sort of compassion, not from any kindness, purely from his sorrow over the death, tonight, of Miles Edgeworth who had never killed and who had thought he never would.

Monstrously self-indulgent, maybe. But after everything he's done this night, he thinks he has earned a bit of self-indulgence.

But...not before Sirius. Not before Sirius, who showed more courage by far than Miles had, who has been willing to give far more up. If this act ends up hailed as a heroic one, if Edgeworth doesn't end up deplored as an assassin and a coward, he'll be called a hero. Sirius won't. Sirius will be, at worst, a patsy for the craven villain; at best, he'll be a traitor to his blood, and traitors are never looked upon with admiration no matter their cause. And while Edgeworth had nothing to lose, Sirius had that life to ruin.

And Edgeworth notices that Sirius isn't celebrating, either. He looks just as grim.]

Right.

[He says that heavily; the next sentence is, if not happy, if not jubilant, at least properly ironic.]

Feels a bit different from after a Quidditch victory, though, doesn't it.

From:

doggedly

[He laughs, again, at that--a miserable little laugh, but a laugh all the same--and takes a long drag on his cigarette before he answers.]

Yeah, well, everything pales in comparison to quidditch victories. Maybe I'd better stick to my original plan for the future and just do quidditch, or I'll never end up feeling-- fulfilled.

[The walls around them are bare, but Sirius chooses a point on the wall opposite of them and stares there instead of looking around at Edgeworth, taking another drag on his cigarette. He's monumentally tired, suddenly, and he reaches up to rub his hand over his eyes, sucking in a breath that's more than a little ragged.]

Merlin. I'm tired of waiting here. When the hell are they going to tell us what's going on and what we've got to do.

[The sooner he knows, the sooner he can start to work out what's in store for him, what options he's got for the future. Slim to none, probably. He doesn't think that with any self-pity: it's a fact, that's all.]

From:

jurisimpudent

When they know, I suppose.

[Edgeworth is quiet a moment. What are the possibilities before them? A trial is one possibility, to show that they're being fair, and either a conviction (if the Ministry feels it has a great deal to prove) or an acquittal (if it wants to publicly distance itself from the Death Eaters). Another possibility is letting them go; that's not out of the question, since the two of them could cause quite a mess for the Ministry and this would just wash away the mess. That they'll be killed in this room is a third possibility, if Voldemort survives, or if his followers wrest control of the case from the honest...

Miles doesn't even want to consider the last as a possibility. But as Sirius had said, those days ago - the Ministry isn't pure. Not like Miles would like it to be.]

You can go to sleep.

[He says that to Sirius, a bit quiet.]

I can keep watch. Until something happens. I'll wake you.

From:

doggedly

[He laughs again, quietly, pushes his hand over his eyes again with a long exhale.]

Yeah. D'you think you could sleep, right now?

[The door is still shut when he opens his eyes, much as he wishes it weren't. Someone needs to just come along and tell them what to do, right now--better than this endless fucking waiting.]

Exploding snap?

[It's a joke, really. One of the first real ones he's made, to Edgeworth, and he doesn't look over at him when he says it, but it's there anyways.]

From:

jurisimpudent

[And Edgeworth can hear that joke in his voice. It's strange to hear the humor in Sirius' voice - not because he's not heard it before; many times he's heard it, though it was always cruel, mocking, jeering. Just quiet good humor, a pointless thoughtless joke born of boredom, is...

Nice.

So Edgeworth offers a quietly sardonic suggestion of his own:]

Gin rummy?

[And he offers a little smile. It's an aggressively Muggle game, a game Sirius Black has probably never heard of before, but Sirius will probably get the joke. And they're long past the point where Miles feels defensive about how he grew up.]

Though unfortunately, I don't have any cards with me. Twenty questions, perhaps?

From:

doggedly

[And again, despite himself, Sirius laughs, a little. Because he does get the joke, actually, in that he doesn't have a bloody clue what gin rummy could possibly mean, and like hell he'd play it if he did.]

You mean it's got a name like that and there's not even any drinking involved? Muggle games are miserable things.

[He jams the heel of his boot against the floor and grinds it gently back and forth, letting out another exhale of smoke.]

And your alternate suggestion isn't much better. Beast, vegetable, or-- what's the other. Mineral.

From:

jurisimpudent

Animal, vegetable, or mineral. "Beast vegetable mineral" has the wrong rhythm altogether.

[But that correction is gentle. There's a strange, easy sort of rhythm to speaking about nonsense with Sirius Black. Edgeworth's outlook with regards to talk is usually rather Puritan: a conversation ought to have a point, a use, or else it's frivolous and thereby useless. But simply sitting and chatting mindlessly with Sirius is oddly nice. Even in these circumstances - or perhaps particularly in these circumstances.]

And you'll forgive us our naming conventions, I hope; we haven't anything spectacular, so we have to rely on our imaginations. Not like wizards, who last engaged their imaginations in the fourteenth century.

[And then he leans back and says, idly:]

Vegetable.

From:

doggedly

Sorry we can't be as imaginative as you and your rhythms. I suppose we try to make up for it with, y'know. Magic, and things. Explosions. Games that aren't played with plain boring cards.

[Wizarding superiority is unquestioned--even if in this context, it's the superiority of wizarding games, and mostly (mostly) meant as a joke.

And this is so stupid, all of this is so stupid--but it's also a distraction, better than anything else at the moment, and so Sirius takes another drag on his cigarette and asks:]

Wizard or muggle vegetable?

From:

jurisimpudent

[Edgeworth's answer is surprisingly easy and surprisingly casual. He knows that comparing the muggle and wizarding worlds might lead to interpersonal ugliness once again, but at the moment, at the very least, he's brave enough to risk it.]

Objects can never be boring. Only the people who fail to use them in an interesting way.

[He leans back in his seat, settling the back of his head against the wall.]

Both.

From:

doggedly

[He glances over at Edgeworth at that, mildly. Really, that's what this glance says. They're not really going to argue this now, are they, because that would probably be a mistake.]

I'm not boring.

[It lacks the snarl it might have had before. And anyway, he's playing stupid Twenty Questions, isn't he. Surely that's testament enough to what he's game for.]

Has it got a flower?

From:

jurisimpudent

[Edgeworth's glance is equally mild.]

Then you'd enjoy the game.

[Simple as that. No questioning, and a moment later:]

No, it hasn't.

From:

doggedly

[He snorts, dismissively, like: we'll see. But he hasn't stopped playing yet, for lack of anything better to do, and--maybe a little--for the sake of his pride. He doesn't lose. He certainly doesn't lose muggle games.]

Used in potions?

From:

jurisimpudent

[And Edgeworth shakes his head.]

No.

From:

doggedly

[He nods, absently. Right.]

Used for decoration? And only decoration, not like-- y'know, food, or anything.

From:

jurisimpudent

[He shakes his head at once.]

No.

From:

doggedly

[He's beginning to lose a bit of patience with the game, but at the same time, his determination to win at it outweighs that--at least for now--]

So, used for food?