![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[Fic] PW, "Seventh Night"
MORE MIA/DIEGO. This is the (much happier) actual Tanabata fic, as promised.
Title: Seventh Night
Words: 1,918
Pairing: Mia/Diego
Rating: PG
Summary: On the night of sevens, we meet again.
Prompt: "This month's Gyakuten Snapshot:
http://i27.tinypic.com/28tj60m.jpg
There's your prompt, Anon! Pretty please?"
sasa no ha sara-sara
Diego stared at the paper.
It fluttered innocently at him in the breeze from the desk fan. Who, me? it seemed to say. Why, I've always been here. Didn't you notice?
"Mia," he said.
From the next cubicle: "Yes?"
"What is this thing, and why is it on my plant?"
Mia's chair creaked as she leaned back, her head appearing from behind the partition. "Tanzaku."
Diego turned slowly and blinked his lack of comprehension at her.
"It's July 7th," she said. "Tanabata. It's a festival that celebrates the meeting of Vega and Altair once a year. You write a wish on a piece of paper - that's tanzaku - and hang it on a bamboo tree."
Diego took a moment to recalibrate his mind. The big city suited Mia so well, it was easy to forget where she'd come from.
"...And it had to be mine?"
"Well, it was handy." Mia smiled, apologetically. "I meant to get my own, but it's been so busy..."
Grumbling, vaguely mollified, Diego pulled out his chair and sat down, laying his briefcase out on the desk. One further irritated glance at the paper later: "What does it even say?"
"Ehh?" Diego's back stifferend. He knew that tone; that was Mia's very specific 'I'm teasing Diego' tone. "Hontou Diego-sama wa, Nihongo wakarimasen ka?"
He had no idea what she'd said. "Hablo Español, mi gatita. You hung it on my plant, tell me what it says."
"Now, Diego. You don't just go around telling all your wishes, do you?"
Diego gritted his teeth for a moment, then quietly took out his case files. With Mia, you had to pick your battles.
"Actually," she said a few minutes later, just as he was getting into the thick of the paperwork, "I think you'd like Tanabata. It's romantic. Just your style."
"Hanging paper on your co-worker's plants is romantic?"
"I'll buy my own next year. No, the reason behind it. The meeting of distant lovers. Waiting all year for that seventh night..."
"Sounds depressing," he said, wryly. "Hope your wish comes true, though, kitten."
"Even though I hung it on your plant?"
"Even though."
nokiba ni yureru
"All things considered, Mr. Armando..."
"All things considered," Diego drawled back slowly, "I'm taking an impressively long time to die."
They'd taken his mask away months ago, on the reasoning that its operation required more energy from him than was acceptable, so he didn't see the doctor's reaction.
"I wouldn't have put it that way," the doctor said. His pencil scratched on some paper. Clipboard - it was a stiff wooden sound. Taking notes. "But considering your condition, you are doing quite well."
Careful, diplomatic wording. Keeping it positive. Verbal medicine - and just as bitter. He'd prefer coffee.
"Ha...!" He closed his eyes - he always forgot to blink when he left them open, until the dryness began to irritate - and stared into the unchanged, infinite black. "It's no great accomplishment... I'm just waiting."
"...Waiting for what?"
He tugged at the sheets, shifting in the bed and settling into a more comfortable position. He was tired all the time these days, and they wouldn't let him have more than one cup of coffee a day.
"The seventh night," he muttered.
ohoshi-sama kira-kira
It had been a battle even to get here. Hours of arguing with his doctors to let him go out, let him have the mask, let him have some damned coffee. (The last demand had nearly been the dealbreaker, but some things a man just needed.) Nearly a full day of arguing with his parole officer, several prosecutors, and a detective to allow him to be released from the hospital's custody and go out in public.
Just for this one night, he'd told them. I just need this one night.
He'd nearly lost the chance, and just about to consider withdrawing the demand for coffee when finally someone had the presence of mind to ask him what he wanted to do that night, and had done so in Prosecutor Edgeworth's presence. Sheer good fortune, that Edgeworth had had the same plans, and a fearsome reputation.
How Diego felt about being chaperoned by a man seven years his junior, he wasn't sure.
But it didn't matter. He barely heard Edgeworth speaking as they arrived at the festival, only nodded in vague acknowledgement when the other prosecutor had muttered about not believing he really needed to be attended like a child, and if he could simply refrain from murdering anyone else who happened to look like Dahlia Hawthorne all would be well.
Maya, however, won his undivided attention: the moment she'd caught sight of him, she'd called to him with ridiculous cheer, and bounded over to catch him by the arm.
"Mr. Armando, you made it!"
"Barely. Thank the samurai in the black yukata there; he's babysitting me tonight."
Maya looked confused for a moment - just long enough for Diego to realize the probable error - then tilted back for a second to chirp out a "Thank you, Mr. Edgeworth!" before swinging back close to Diego.
"Ha...!" A dry smirk started on Diego's face. "Not that I'm one to complain about having a pretty kitten on my arm, but what brings on this show of affection?"
"Well, I'm glad you're here!" Maya said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Suddenly, her face softened, her smile becoming something more subtle; she looked older, beautiful, every inch the Master. "Listen, I... well, Nick needed some advice on a case last week, so - well, I guess you don't need to know the details, but my sister... I called my sister."
Diego drew a thin, slow breath, waiting. Maya half let go, still clinging with one arm as she rummaged in her sash with the other.
"She left me this, to give to you--" With that, she thrust a crumpled packet at him.
"It's a note," she said, when he stared blankly at it, "read it!"
The paper hadn't fared so well from being so unceremoniously shoved into Maya's sash, but it was sturdy enough as he unfolded it, with slow, unsteady fingers.
Let's meet by the tanzaku, Diego.
The elegant, angular handwriting would have been unmistakable, even if Mia hadn't signed her name underneath with a tiny flourish.
Diego was surprised to find his hand shaking.
"She's been waiting for this too," Maya said softly.
Carefully folding the note up again, Diego stowed it in a vest pocket with care. There didn't seem to be anything to say.
Maya was smiling at him, that far-too-wise smile again. "Go see her, Mr. Armando."
He couldn't help but ask, as he turned to her, "Don't you want to see her too, kitten?"
"Of course I do." Her voice came out a little thick, and she brought up a hand to hurriedly scrub at her eyes. "But I can see her anytime. Tanabata's only one night, Mr. Armando."
Diego looked away, out over the festival. With the mask, he could barely make out the stand of bamboo, and its many adornments fluttering in the wind.
"So it is," he said.
Maya squeezed his arm, and let go.
He ended up following them anyway. For appearance's sake, largely; it was important that he at least be seen to be in Edgeworth's vicinity for a significant length of time. And at any rate, Maya was fairly unsubtly directing the party - there was Edgeworth, yes, and of course Wright was there if Maya was, little Pearl tagging along with them both, and Edgeworth's wild mare of a sister looking elegant in kimono even with the whip hung from her obi - towards the tanzaku, discussing loudly what sorts of wishes they ought to make.
He felt restless, as he hadn't for a long time. When the party stopped to purchase food, he started to wander (coffee was all right for now, but his stomach didn't seem up to anything more substantial tonight); he'd been seen with his chaperone long enough for now, he figured.
And he had an appointment, after all.
He found himself idling at a candy stall, which by bad luck was apparently operated by that idiot friend of Wright's, babbling about muses and expressing his soul and irises or just Iris specifically, and feeling connected to her when he worked with the candy because candy was sweet and Iris was sweet and frankly, at that point, Diego was wishing he could turn his ears off. Why had he had to go blind, instead of deaf?
As he was staring at the little sugary mascots that were apparently the expression of Larry Butz's soul (his soul seemed to be a terrifying mixture of the Steel Samurai, some freakish monkey thing, and Prosecutor Payne), a soft hand gripped his arm.
"They're cute, aren't they?"
Diego didn't move at first, or speak, being somewhat occupied having to suddenly catch his breath.
Even if he had been deaf, he'd have known that voice.
"Yeah!" the idiot started in. "Yeah, they're cute! Right?! Mia knows, right?! A pretty lady knows real art when she sees it!"
"I was starting to wonder where my kitten had gotten to," Diego murmured, slowly turning his head to face the ghost.
She was radiant, bright as life as she gave him a teasing smile. "Well, you weren't looking very hard."
He raised a hand in a helpless, conciliatory gesture. "Lo siento. For my apology, what do you say to an expression of his soul on a stick?"
"I do requests!"
"How about the Thinker, Larry?" Mia said, smiling.
As Larry started on the (slightly morbid) sculpture, Diego took the opportunity to really look at Mia. She wore anything well, he thought, and the yukata she'd come up with, spangled with firework patterns, was no exception. The familiar yellow scarf hung at her neck, magatama settled just below.
And, most importantly, it was her: she was here not through a medium, borrowing her sister's body or her cousin's, but in her own form... for tonight, she was herself, and herself alone.
"How I've missed you, pretty Vega," he murmured, as she accepted her candy Thinker and they stepped away from the stall. "I hope you don't mind the shape this creaky old Altair is in."
She curled her arm around his, smiling. He thought he heard some outcry behind them, the party finally catching him up; they were worlds away. "You're a fine, bright star, Diego."
He grinned. "I've been working hard to shine this night, Mia."
She tugged on his arm lightly, her grip warm and solid even as her footfalls made no sound. "Let's go enjoy the festival together, shall we?"
kin gin sunago
"Surely you can tell me what it was now," he whispered.
"What what was?" Mia asked innocently, folding her hands over his. She was a streak of life in the sterile room, her colors almost too bright to be real.
The clock ticked on the wall, its hands forming a nearly vertical line. "Your Tanabata wish from back then."
"Ah," she said softly. Her hair spilled over her shoulder as she leaned down. It was almost a kiss, as she whispered softly into his ear.
Diego smiled.
"Ha...!" The dawn would steal her away soon enough, but for now there was time enough to turn his hand in hers, clasping tight. "So it came true, after all."
The italicized lyrics are from the traditional Tanabata song.
Mia's random Japanese in the first scene: "Eh? You mean the great Diego doesn't understand Japanese?"
Diego's random Spanish is even simpler than Mia's Japanese, and so probably goes without translation. XD
Title: Seventh Night
Words: 1,918
Pairing: Mia/Diego
Rating: PG
Summary: On the night of sevens, we meet again.
Prompt: "This month's Gyakuten Snapshot:
http://i27.tinypic.com/28tj60m.jpg
There's your prompt, Anon! Pretty please?"
Diego stared at the paper.
It fluttered innocently at him in the breeze from the desk fan. Who, me? it seemed to say. Why, I've always been here. Didn't you notice?
"Mia," he said.
From the next cubicle: "Yes?"
"What is this thing, and why is it on my plant?"
Mia's chair creaked as she leaned back, her head appearing from behind the partition. "Tanzaku."
Diego turned slowly and blinked his lack of comprehension at her.
"It's July 7th," she said. "Tanabata. It's a festival that celebrates the meeting of Vega and Altair once a year. You write a wish on a piece of paper - that's tanzaku - and hang it on a bamboo tree."
Diego took a moment to recalibrate his mind. The big city suited Mia so well, it was easy to forget where she'd come from.
"...And it had to be mine?"
"Well, it was handy." Mia smiled, apologetically. "I meant to get my own, but it's been so busy..."
Grumbling, vaguely mollified, Diego pulled out his chair and sat down, laying his briefcase out on the desk. One further irritated glance at the paper later: "What does it even say?"
"Ehh?" Diego's back stifferend. He knew that tone; that was Mia's very specific 'I'm teasing Diego' tone. "Hontou Diego-sama wa, Nihongo wakarimasen ka?"
He had no idea what she'd said. "Hablo Español, mi gatita. You hung it on my plant, tell me what it says."
"Now, Diego. You don't just go around telling all your wishes, do you?"
Diego gritted his teeth for a moment, then quietly took out his case files. With Mia, you had to pick your battles.
"Actually," she said a few minutes later, just as he was getting into the thick of the paperwork, "I think you'd like Tanabata. It's romantic. Just your style."
"Hanging paper on your co-worker's plants is romantic?"
"I'll buy my own next year. No, the reason behind it. The meeting of distant lovers. Waiting all year for that seventh night..."
"Sounds depressing," he said, wryly. "Hope your wish comes true, though, kitten."
"Even though I hung it on your plant?"
"Even though."
"All things considered, Mr. Armando..."
"All things considered," Diego drawled back slowly, "I'm taking an impressively long time to die."
They'd taken his mask away months ago, on the reasoning that its operation required more energy from him than was acceptable, so he didn't see the doctor's reaction.
"I wouldn't have put it that way," the doctor said. His pencil scratched on some paper. Clipboard - it was a stiff wooden sound. Taking notes. "But considering your condition, you are doing quite well."
Careful, diplomatic wording. Keeping it positive. Verbal medicine - and just as bitter. He'd prefer coffee.
"Ha...!" He closed his eyes - he always forgot to blink when he left them open, until the dryness began to irritate - and stared into the unchanged, infinite black. "It's no great accomplishment... I'm just waiting."
"...Waiting for what?"
He tugged at the sheets, shifting in the bed and settling into a more comfortable position. He was tired all the time these days, and they wouldn't let him have more than one cup of coffee a day.
"The seventh night," he muttered.
It had been a battle even to get here. Hours of arguing with his doctors to let him go out, let him have the mask, let him have some damned coffee. (The last demand had nearly been the dealbreaker, but some things a man just needed.) Nearly a full day of arguing with his parole officer, several prosecutors, and a detective to allow him to be released from the hospital's custody and go out in public.
Just for this one night, he'd told them. I just need this one night.
He'd nearly lost the chance, and just about to consider withdrawing the demand for coffee when finally someone had the presence of mind to ask him what he wanted to do that night, and had done so in Prosecutor Edgeworth's presence. Sheer good fortune, that Edgeworth had had the same plans, and a fearsome reputation.
How Diego felt about being chaperoned by a man seven years his junior, he wasn't sure.
But it didn't matter. He barely heard Edgeworth speaking as they arrived at the festival, only nodded in vague acknowledgement when the other prosecutor had muttered about not believing he really needed to be attended like a child, and if he could simply refrain from murdering anyone else who happened to look like Dahlia Hawthorne all would be well.
Maya, however, won his undivided attention: the moment she'd caught sight of him, she'd called to him with ridiculous cheer, and bounded over to catch him by the arm.
"Mr. Armando, you made it!"
"Barely. Thank the samurai in the black yukata there; he's babysitting me tonight."
Maya looked confused for a moment - just long enough for Diego to realize the probable error - then tilted back for a second to chirp out a "Thank you, Mr. Edgeworth!" before swinging back close to Diego.
"Ha...!" A dry smirk started on Diego's face. "Not that I'm one to complain about having a pretty kitten on my arm, but what brings on this show of affection?"
"Well, I'm glad you're here!" Maya said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Suddenly, her face softened, her smile becoming something more subtle; she looked older, beautiful, every inch the Master. "Listen, I... well, Nick needed some advice on a case last week, so - well, I guess you don't need to know the details, but my sister... I called my sister."
Diego drew a thin, slow breath, waiting. Maya half let go, still clinging with one arm as she rummaged in her sash with the other.
"She left me this, to give to you--" With that, she thrust a crumpled packet at him.
"It's a note," she said, when he stared blankly at it, "read it!"
The paper hadn't fared so well from being so unceremoniously shoved into Maya's sash, but it was sturdy enough as he unfolded it, with slow, unsteady fingers.
Let's meet by the tanzaku, Diego.
The elegant, angular handwriting would have been unmistakable, even if Mia hadn't signed her name underneath with a tiny flourish.
Diego was surprised to find his hand shaking.
"She's been waiting for this too," Maya said softly.
Carefully folding the note up again, Diego stowed it in a vest pocket with care. There didn't seem to be anything to say.
Maya was smiling at him, that far-too-wise smile again. "Go see her, Mr. Armando."
He couldn't help but ask, as he turned to her, "Don't you want to see her too, kitten?"
"Of course I do." Her voice came out a little thick, and she brought up a hand to hurriedly scrub at her eyes. "But I can see her anytime. Tanabata's only one night, Mr. Armando."
Diego looked away, out over the festival. With the mask, he could barely make out the stand of bamboo, and its many adornments fluttering in the wind.
"So it is," he said.
Maya squeezed his arm, and let go.
He ended up following them anyway. For appearance's sake, largely; it was important that he at least be seen to be in Edgeworth's vicinity for a significant length of time. And at any rate, Maya was fairly unsubtly directing the party - there was Edgeworth, yes, and of course Wright was there if Maya was, little Pearl tagging along with them both, and Edgeworth's wild mare of a sister looking elegant in kimono even with the whip hung from her obi - towards the tanzaku, discussing loudly what sorts of wishes they ought to make.
He felt restless, as he hadn't for a long time. When the party stopped to purchase food, he started to wander (coffee was all right for now, but his stomach didn't seem up to anything more substantial tonight); he'd been seen with his chaperone long enough for now, he figured.
And he had an appointment, after all.
He found himself idling at a candy stall, which by bad luck was apparently operated by that idiot friend of Wright's, babbling about muses and expressing his soul and irises or just Iris specifically, and feeling connected to her when he worked with the candy because candy was sweet and Iris was sweet and frankly, at that point, Diego was wishing he could turn his ears off. Why had he had to go blind, instead of deaf?
As he was staring at the little sugary mascots that were apparently the expression of Larry Butz's soul (his soul seemed to be a terrifying mixture of the Steel Samurai, some freakish monkey thing, and Prosecutor Payne), a soft hand gripped his arm.
"They're cute, aren't they?"
Diego didn't move at first, or speak, being somewhat occupied having to suddenly catch his breath.
Even if he had been deaf, he'd have known that voice.
"Yeah!" the idiot started in. "Yeah, they're cute! Right?! Mia knows, right?! A pretty lady knows real art when she sees it!"
"I was starting to wonder where my kitten had gotten to," Diego murmured, slowly turning his head to face the ghost.
She was radiant, bright as life as she gave him a teasing smile. "Well, you weren't looking very hard."
He raised a hand in a helpless, conciliatory gesture. "Lo siento. For my apology, what do you say to an expression of his soul on a stick?"
"I do requests!"
"How about the Thinker, Larry?" Mia said, smiling.
As Larry started on the (slightly morbid) sculpture, Diego took the opportunity to really look at Mia. She wore anything well, he thought, and the yukata she'd come up with, spangled with firework patterns, was no exception. The familiar yellow scarf hung at her neck, magatama settled just below.
And, most importantly, it was her: she was here not through a medium, borrowing her sister's body or her cousin's, but in her own form... for tonight, she was herself, and herself alone.
"How I've missed you, pretty Vega," he murmured, as she accepted her candy Thinker and they stepped away from the stall. "I hope you don't mind the shape this creaky old Altair is in."
She curled her arm around his, smiling. He thought he heard some outcry behind them, the party finally catching him up; they were worlds away. "You're a fine, bright star, Diego."
He grinned. "I've been working hard to shine this night, Mia."
She tugged on his arm lightly, her grip warm and solid even as her footfalls made no sound. "Let's go enjoy the festival together, shall we?"
"Surely you can tell me what it was now," he whispered.
"What what was?" Mia asked innocently, folding her hands over his. She was a streak of life in the sterile room, her colors almost too bright to be real.
The clock ticked on the wall, its hands forming a nearly vertical line. "Your Tanabata wish from back then."
"Ah," she said softly. Her hair spilled over her shoulder as she leaned down. It was almost a kiss, as she whispered softly into his ear.
Diego smiled.
"Ha...!" The dawn would steal her away soon enough, but for now there was time enough to turn his hand in hers, clasping tight. "So it came true, after all."
The italicized lyrics are from the traditional Tanabata song.
Mia's random Japanese in the first scene: "Eh? You mean the great Diego doesn't understand Japanese?"
Diego's random Spanish is even simpler than Mia's Japanese, and so probably goes without translation. XD
no subject
no subject