Once again, here's your friendly neighborhood DZ, with yet another Nick/Maya fluffer. I came up with the ending to this little beauty a few nights ago, remembering a passage from Louisa May Alcott's book Little Women, and tried my best to work it out in reverse, writing the ending first, and then the start, and then the middle. It's dated a little post-Apollo events, and while it's not one of my best works, I love how it came out to no end.

Also, see if you can catch the not-so-hidden easter egg. ;-)

Title: Empty Hands
Author: For those that didn't notice, yes, it was me that wrote it =p
Rating: All ages; minor references to nudity
Genre: Romance
Status: Completed (one shot)
Pairing: Phoenix/Maya
Summary: They've just gotten married, but Phoenix isn't 100% sure somehow this was the right move. It's gonna take all of Maya's wits and dedication to get him out of this train of thought.



And now, once again... The curtain rises. =D





The girl in her mid-twenties spoke with a vibrant voice, full of happiness and enthusiasm. Her silky, long black hair tied in a top-knot, she was walking calmly on the sand, her sandals in her hands, enjoying the quiet sea breeze.

"...But seriously, this is SOME place, don't you think?"

The man with the curiously spiked hair walking behind her smiled. The bright sun shining on the clear sky made this young woman, now his wife, look even more beautiful, with the clear waters reflecting her gorgeous image, dressed in a cute, tight one-piece red swimsuit, and he could not help but feel immensely proud and happy himself. Unconsciously he puffed his chest out a bit inside his warm flowery shirt at the very instant she was turning around and started to walk backwards, and noticing this, she let out a small giggle.

"Well, tell that to Mr. Powers when we get back -- he was actually willing to fight me if I didn't accept this trip as a honeymoon gift for us. Although it's a little pity that I myself couldn't afford this for you, Maya... I mean, you deserve only the best..." His voice trailed off. The girl stopped in her tracks, pouted, put her hands on her hips, and reprimanded him.

"Phoenix Wright", and hearing his full name spoken in such a tone, the man shivered and recalled a fleeting memory involving a whip and lots of pain, "I did not marry you for what could have bought me or whatever silly idea you're getting in your head right now. I married you for one reason and one single reason only: you're the best thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life, and I'm not going to waste this chance and let my happiness run away from me." Saying this, she walked towards him, relaxing her expression, and let go of her shoes to hug him tightly, resting her head on her wide chest ("how is it exactly that I hadn't noticed before Nick was this well-built?").

"I love you, Nick. And I know you love me. And that's all that matters."

Phoenix hugged her back with all his strength.

______________________


The next day, as Maya woke up in their suite, she felt the happiest woman on the face of the earth. Beside her, the only man she had ever loved; aged a few years, yes, but still the same lovable man. She could feel the giddiness building up, and the happiness warming up her chest... And apparently, said happiness was getting her a little too excited, for she had seemingly trembled on the bed and the man sleeping at her side ("from now on, my frickin' HUSBAND -- HA, take THAT, Franziska!"), snored, sighed and stirred feebly. Maya could not shake the smile off her lips, and decided to rise from the bed and start preparing breakfast for him.

______________________


Phoenix had a very strange dream that night, a dream that kept repeating itself like an old tape, playing, rewinding, and playing again. In it, he was feeling the proudest man alive, wearing a finely cut, delicate white suit, and on his right, Maya, wearing the most beautiful wedding dress he had ever seen (or maybe his sight was playing tricks on him because of the fact that it was Maya wearing it). They walked up to the altar, and as the pastor said the traditional words, "whoever holds a reason in their hearts to prevent joining this couple in holy matrimony, speak now, or forever hold your peace", Larry (!) would stand up, and scream something, and Maya would run to him, and they would run away. At this point, the dream would rewind, and next time it'd be Edgeworth (?!) standing up, and the next time, it'd be Gumshoe, then Will Powers, then Godot, then Apollo ("wait, what?!"), then Matt Engarde ("alright, things are getting weird now"), then Max Galactica, then Chief Gant, then Shelly DeKiller ("this is officially insane!"), then...

With a jolt and a scream, he woke up, sweating bullets. This caused Maya to immediately come running to the bedroom from the suite kitchen, dressed in nothing but a light nightgown and kitchen gloves, a spoon in one hand and a frying pan in the other.

"Nick, what's wrong?! What happened?! I heard you scream and...!"

Taking in his surroundings, Phoenix breathed hard and slow, putting his hands on his face. It had all been a dream... Nothing but a dream, a seriously stupid dream...

"...Nick?" Maya was approaching him slowly now. Suddenly, Phoenix stood up, startling Maya, and just as she was about to fall to the ground, he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him, hugging her strongly. Still sweating, he asked her:

"Maya... You... Me... This... This isn't a dream, right? This is real... right...?"

All too understanding, Maya dropped with a loud CLANG the kitchen utensils, and hugged him back with all her strength, and smiling, she whispered sweetly in his ear,

"No... No, Nick, it's not a lie. This isn't a dream. This is reality; you and I are here, married, loving each other. This can be anything you want it to be, but a dream is definitely not one of the choices."

Phoenix hugged her even stronger, so that she lost her footing and both of them fell on the water bed. Even then, he wouldn't let her go, so she wrestled him until she was on top of him, raised her head to look briefly into his eyes, and closing hers, slowly cleared the distance between their lips.

______________________


That night, they had decided (at Maya's suggestion) to go to the hotel casino and waste some time there. Maya had noticed Phoenix was behaving a little strangely, so she'd come up with the idea thinking that having some fun with her would surely take some things off his mind (she was thoroughly right). After merely a couple of hours, Maya seemed to have extraordinary luck with the slot machines, and they were racking up their winnings. Later, they decided to try the roulette, and hadn't it been for Phoenix's insistence, they'd have lost everything due to Maya's horribly unlucky turnabout.

Afterward, they hit the pool tables, and Phoenix was openly surprised at Maya's proficiency with the cue stick, which she explained with a devilish smirk, "well, whenever I was around in the office, I'd often tag along on Sis's dates with Diego, and he'd teach me to play when Sis would go out of sight". This provoked a laughing fit on him that took several minutes to die out. A bit later, both of them tired, Maya had told him to wait for her in a couple of minutes near the bar entrance while she took their winnings to the room, so having nothing to do in that dead period, he decided to get some fresh air, standing at one of the open windows nearby the bar doors, looking at the sea.

As Maya was coming back down from their room and stepped out of the elevator, she could not suppress her admiration and pride, looking at the handsome man with peculiarly spiked hair that stood near the open glass window. His back was broad, his expression gentle, he seemed to exhale an aura of security and confidence, and yet he felt so simple, so humble, so calm, like any person in the entire world could reach him and trust his helping hand, willing to do anything for those who couldn't do it for themselves.

Slowly approaching him with light steps, she didn't want him to notice, but as she got closer, she was sure he knew she was there. Thus, he didn't flinch or startle when she hugged him from the back, and only covered her hands with him on his abdomen, breathing the sea air. After a while, feeling decidedly refreshed, they sat at the bar, asked for a piña colada each, and made small talk for what seemed like hours, enjoying each other's company and touch.

"...Nick?"

"Hm?"

"I found your letter." She smirked.

...Wait, what?

"Letter?" He had no idea what she was talking about, which amused her to no end.

"You know, the letter you wrote me, the one you did by hand... The same one you hid in one of those old cabinets when you stayed at the manor a few months ago, remember?" Her smirk widened.

Now THIS was one development he wasn't expecting. As understanding dawned on him, his eyes widened, his cheeks went redder than a tomato, and complete shock permeated his face as he stared at her. Unsurprisingly, she was giggling like a teenager getting tickled.

"...You... You found..."

"Yes, I found it. And I don't think I need to actually tell you right now my reply to that letter, considering I already said what I needed to say in front of lots of other people a week and a half ago, do I?" And with a smile, her face neared his to kiss him. She had done this a lot for the past few days, and yet neither of them appeared to get tired of it -- kissing each other had become part of their common routine, and not doing it at least a couple hundred times daily made the days feel as if something was decidedly amiss. As their lips parted, she snuggled even more comfortably under his arms, and they sat there in silence for a long time, sipping their drinks every now and then, both of their thoughts seeming to be lost in limbo, consumed by each other, merely holding on to reality by the their mutual touch.

"...Nick?" Maya asked again.

"Hm?"

"Question."

"Yeah?"

"...Are you scared?"

This, he thought, was a seriously strange question. "No, why? Should I be?" was his concerned reply.

"Well, I dunno. It's just... I am a bit scared. I mean... Am supposed to feel this happy? Is a honeymoon really supposed to be like this?" He relaxed, and smiled.

"Tell you what: I have no idea... But trust me, if this is wrong, Maya... Then I don't want to ever be right."

She broke into a grin too. "Me neither." And an idea suddenly occurred to her. "Hey, now that I think about it, want to go down to the beach?"

"...At this time?"

Now it was her time to blush furiously. "C'mon, just for a walk... I've always wanted to walk with you under the moonlight..."

Blushing himself, Phoenix blinked, then said, "Okay then, let's get going" as a smile brightened his face.

______________________


The white sand felt positively amazing against their shoeless feet, as they walked around the shoreline. Maya could barely believe her senses -- here she was, with the man of her dreams, making one of those dreams come true. And yet, she couldn't help but notice something was odd. Although holding hands, he was staring into space, as if his mind was hard at work, racing.

"Nick?"

He didn't seem to hear her.

"...Niiiiick?"

"!! Oh, sorry, Maya, I was just thinki--"

"What exactly were you thinking?" she interrupted him, with an all-too-knowing expression. He couldn't fight that face.

"Well... I was thinking... If this is right, what we did."

"What, get married?"

"Well, yeah."

No sooner had his words left his mouth when she had released her hand from his, and walked a few steps ahead. He hastily tried to hurry an explanation.

"I mean, you're the current Master of Kurain, so you have all these political and diplomatic power and obligations and responsibilities, and you have to take care of your trainees and Pearls and the Fey manor and all that, and I'm just a disbarred attorney playing the lame role of a crappy piano player in some strange bar, and I have to take care of a daughter and a law apprentice, and you know how Kurain the elders almost rioted against you for marrying me and--"

"...Stop right there." Maya's expression was now hard, cold, even slightly angry. "Are you seriously telling me you're double-thinking what we did?"

"No, of course not! I'd never do that! It's just that--"

"Then are you telling me that you didn't want this?" She asked him coldly as she turned her back to him.

Phoenix got slightly offended at this question, and looked away.

"...How can you even say that? You know better than anyone that nobody wanted this more than me!"

"Then it's settled. I don't want to hear another word about this, Nick. It's what you wanted, and it's made you happy, hasn't it?"

"...Yes." He couldn't lie, he had to admit it.

However, raising his eyes to her, there was still one lingering doubt in his mind.

"...But are you sure this is what you want, Maya? I mean, I don't know how to thank you for all the happiness you've given me, and believe me, right now I'm happy beyond my wildest dreams, but I don't really have anything to give you back except for my pair of old, empty hands---"

"---And that is exactly where you are wrong, Nick."

And as she turned to face him, he saw in that face he loved so much the smallest, subtlest smile he had ever seen in her otherwise usually overly cheerful face, and yet it was to him the sweetest, warmest, deepest and most heartfelt smile she had ever shown him.

"You want to know why? Because aside from these hands, you also have a gigantic heart to offer, a heart for which I fell long ago, full of justice, responsibility, compassion, and love. A heart so absurdly strong, it had the power to hang on all these years so as not to make a little girl cry. A heart so unbelievably powerful, it had enough presence of spirit to keep a level head in the face of the worst adversity of your life. A heart so incredibly tough, it had the presence of spirit needed to carry on with a life of your own and help a new life grow into a fine young woman. A heart so pure in its feelings, it chained and stole my own heart ever since their paths crossed all those years back."

With these words (he absurdly found himself thinking "Jesus Christ, the years sure as heck have sharpened her mouth"), she walked slowly up to him, casting an aura of deepest warmth and intimacy. He didn't need to hear more -- her heart had made things clear enough, and the happiness that was now coursing through his very soul and essence was enough to attest to that. However, she pressed on.

"And finally, you know what you said about these hands of yours? You were also wrong on that account."

His curiosity piqued, he could not manage hiding the minuscule smile born of happiness that twitched his lips.

"How so?"

Nearing him, she took his palms on her own and interlocked her fingers with his. Briefly resting her head on his broad, warm chest, she sighed as if she were finally letting out a huge load that had spent years locked in the deepest corners of her cute little heart, and then her eyes slowly rose to meet his with an indescribable expression on them, brimming with pure, untainted, unadulterated love.

"...They're not empty anymore."

And standing on tiptoes, against the biggest, most beautiful full moon either of them had ever seen, she kissed him.

---

Also, now that you've probably finished reading it, here's some more stuff and trivia about it:

-In my head canon, this is right after Nick and Maya's wedding, as Maya herself says.
-Again, in my head canon, Gumshoe married Maggey.
-Also in my head canon, Apollo and Trucy already know they're half-siblings, and are currently staying with the Gumshoes.
-Once again in my head canon, Edgeworth and Franziska, while not married, are dating and living together.
-I thought up the ending before ANY other part of the story.
-Before I settled for this, the story had THREE DIFFERENT BEGINNINGS:
---One in which Maya got rioted against by the town elders, and got kidnapped, and it was up to Nick to save her,
---One in which the basic idea of the kidnapping was thought up as a clever ruse by two of the female elders willing to give Nick and Maya a little push, and
---One in which the kidnapping was entirely a lie, and was again a clever ruse thought up by Pearls and Trucy to get the cousin and father together.
-None of the three other beginnings showed any path that I could see that led safely into the ending I had thought up, so I decided to, instead of building up so much stuff, just take a few things for granted, and start from there.

Hope you liked it. =)

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Aww, this was really well writen and the added letter post was a good idea! I was pretty happy to finaly see more Maya/Nick fanfics as I've lately noticed a lack of them.
Soooo romantic btw... *sigh*
+ =

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Oh good, a follow up to the letter!

"merely holding on to reality by the their mutual touch." <sweet.

I like it.

...No poker at the casino?

So the elders were originally going to kidnap her to stop them getting married, along with their riot? That's an interesting idea.... How about another fic? Maya can thwart the kidnapping attempt by escaping and..

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Aw..
I was waiting for a story like this!! 10/10!
I want MOAR!! :D

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This was so beautiful, I read it three times in a row
This is definitely one of my favourite Nick x Maya stories now! I especially loved the ending - it was so sweet, so perfect and so fitting.
Please write more - you are such a great author!!!!!

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Trust me, I'd been dying to write this one. =p


Well thank you. =)


Nah, I thought that Nick would've had already enough of poker with his night job, so he'd try something else. =p


Worse. XD As I said, the problem with the other beginnings was that I wasn't seeing any logical way any of them would lead sensibly into the ending I'd written, and I wasn't going to change that ending for ANYTHING. Here's how all three other starts began:

Start no. 1: The village elders would riot against Maya and kidnap her to try and place Pearls as the Master. Pearls wouldn't agree with the plan and would escape to the city to find Nick and Trucy to ask for their help. Neither Trucy nor Apollo would be around (Apollo had had the day off and Trucy had convinced him to go to the pool with her), so it was up to Nick alone to carry out the rescue operation. Maya would have been left gagged, blindfolded and tied to a chair in one of the Fey Manor storerooms, and Pearls would lead Nick through a secret passageway from which they could access the room, but then they'd trap themselves (only Pearls would stay outside) and would have to make do with what they had, and wait for more help.

Start no. 2: Two of the female elders of Kurain would grow uneasy with Maya growing older with no husband, and would plot a kidnapping (in which Pearls would happily help this time, aided by some great acting and liquid glycerin, used by actors in theaters to simulate tears). Maya would indeed get kidnapped, and Pearls would do the same as before, except this time she was in on the plot and would "trap" them both to force them to confess to each other. An amazing diamond ring, "coincidentally" found by Nick in one of the room drawers as he tried to look for tools to help them get out, would seal the deal, on which cue the elders and Pearls would release them from the "trap" clapping and yelling and partying and stuff.

Start no. 3: Pearls and Trucy have been plotting among themselves for MONTHS, dragging Apollo in with them, to get their parent/guardian together, so they plan a so-called kidnapping to get Nick to run to Maya's side. Except for the little fact that when he gets there, Maya's completely fine, overly busy with Master-related paperwork, yes, but fine. So she'd decide to take some time off and have a walk with him, and Pearls, Trucy and Apollo would have blocked all the paths and possible places to "take a walk" in the village except ones they'd laid out with explicit stuff that made them remember their times together, in the hopes that they'd get so in the mood, they'd end up at the very least making out, so both Trucy and Pearl would snap a picture each with their cell phones and bribe them into marrying using the photos as leverage. XD

And as for the rest of you guys, well, I'm not exactly sure if I'll be able to come up with more, but I'll try. =p Hang in there! =D

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^ Well, I meant I like the idea of a story where the elders kidnap Maya to prevent her marrying Phoenix (scenario 1) and I was thinking you could write a totally separate fanfic about that idea. To avoid conflict with this fic, probably Maya should escape by herself, without Phoenix knowing about the kidnapping. The elders can try and brainwash Maya into not marrying Phoenix but they fail and after she escapes they elope or whatever.

...Okay, it's just that I want to read it now.

Also, any expansion on InferiorityComplex!Phoenix would be great. I like this theory too.

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Aahw, it's so sweet and fluffy! I like it!

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Well, thank you, Tessa. =)

And Icer, well, your idea interests me. I could TOTALLY see Maya playing tough girl and getting out of a tight spot by herself, probably with Mia's help even. =p

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super special awesome job!

<dont they look lovely like that?

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I would love to see this as it's own fic, just to see exactly what Pearly and Trucy would have planted along the way.

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That was extremely well made fanfic good job are a good couple hope they make them get together in the next AA

i love it!
i'm sad its just a one shot :(
but i love it!

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