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Charley is dying and Phoenix is desperately, despairingly, and ultimately hopelessly and inevitably failing not to catastrophize and take it as a divine sign.
He noticed it after the first haul of boxes, dropping them heavily on the ground and eyeing the space he occupied by the cabinets and desk. He winced looking at them.
"Trucy, you mind helping me with this?" he asked vaguely behind him. Tiny feet darted up behind him, the tip of her cape fluttering about his ankles. He reached down, feeling vaguely for the feeling of soft, brown hair under his palm to pat her head.
"This here is Mr. Charley," he gestured, "And he needs to move to the other side of the room."
"M'kay," her little voice rang out, and she darted out of range to grab the edge of his pot in her small hands.
Phoenix did most of the pushing, Trucy happy to lead them with her tongue stuck between her teeth and eyebrows tight together, and he looked up at him as they moved – leaves yellowing at the tips, hidden on the side where he'd sat against the corner, out of sight and out of mind. He didn't worry then – my god, he should have worried then! – but he was too distracted, and poured a dusty cup filled with sink water into his dry soil while Trucy carefully carried the lightest of boxes inside.
He didn't check, didn't look again, for the rest of the day, till after the fourth round trip in Edgeworth's annoyingly flashy car that Trucy unfortunately adored, till after he was forced into accepting the gift of dinner under a small, impressionable girl's watchful gaze, till after the heated, hissed argument and smothered barbs were spit out after the small, impressionable girl was put bed where she didn't have to see it, till he finally noticed Charley was dry again and he guiltily fussed and fed him another glass.
Maybe Charley is sulking at the neglect – he hadn't exactly been back to the office for the last month, and was only slinking back now with the pressure of two rents with zero incomes breathing down his neck, and the comfort of his home-away-from-home overtaking the comfort the apartment he'd known for less than half the time he'd sat in any part of the Fey-turned-Wright and Co. Phoenix focuses, keeps him watered and fed, and still he depletes and dries and dies, and the yellowing creeps in further and turns crispy and dead.
Maybe it's the move stressing Charley out, suddenly sharing space with two bodies round the clock, 24/7, constantly overnight, rather than the 9 to 5 and occasional overnight from the last 3 years – 4 if you include Mia, even with her chronic inability to peel herself out of the office, shower and kitchenette and wide couch with blankets and pillows hidden in the ottoman helpfully installed to run the facade that she'd been home and rested. It makes it easier for him, now, making it into a home when it was already halfway there.
They slowly move his furniture in. The back office becomes a bedroom. The minifridge is ungratefully replaced a full one, under his glaring and Edgeworth's lack of eye contact and careful directing to the movers moving and installing it in place. Maya helps him dump out Mia's old case files into labeled boxes to turn her cabinet into a makeshift pantry.
Maya catches him having a panic attack on the kitchen floor.
"Nick," she breathes out softly, hands hovering by her side.
"I'm going to fuck this up," he gasps into his knees. She gives the back of his shoulder a smack then drops to the floor and wraps her arms around his waist.
"It's okay, you'll be ok," she mindlessly soothes, and he just shakes, and tries to shake her off, but she only clings tighter.
"You're not going to fuck it up and you're going to be fine," she hisses stubbornly.
"Leave me alone," he blubbers, and she just shakes him.
"You're going to listen to me now, okay?" she hisses.
He drops his head again body going slack, and she gives him a squeeze.
"You," she breaths out, "Are gonna give me your grocery list and Edgeworth and I are going to take Pearly and Trucy out, and you are not going to make a fuss about it and are going to give yourself the time to chill out, okay?"
Her nails dig in through his shirt, and he keeps his mouth shut and nods, dragged too thin to argue it out.
"If you want to talk, we can do it tonight, so long as you don't try and fight me off too," she whispers, giving him a pat before she gets up.
Trucy likes juice boxes and macaroni and frozen fries that are shaped like smiles, and, if Edgeworth's wallet is to be believed, she also likes eggs and Phoenix's favorite brand of cereal and green beans and broccoli and five pounds of chicken breasts.
Phoenix keeps his mouth shut tight as his fridge and cabinets are efficiently loaded, and takes a hard crash to his calves where he isn't looking.
"Oof," he grunts out, hand now easily and automatically reaching down to cup the back of Trucy's head. She beams up at him, both arms wrapped around his hips. There's something hard and plastic in her hands behind his back and out of sight. "How was the store, kiddo?"
"Good. Big," she replies. She pulls back, shy, and shows him a pretty yellow water can. She hands it off when he reaches down to examine it, and bounces back on her heels and hides her hands behind her back.
"Pearl said that Mr. Charley should get a new watering can, and that if I picked something just for him, it'd help him," she says, quiet but earnest. Phoenix snorts.
"You're a good kid, you know that, Truce?"
She beams at him.
God, maybe it's the fact that the person moving in was wrong, that Charley's new roommates are him and his new daughter – the grief finally kicking in and seeping into the very fiber of his being after he accidentally shoved him and left him for weeks right where she died, after Maya left and Pearls left, leaving just the three of them and his fuck ups and the hollow of something missing. He sticks the magatama in the pot and buries it, shoves it in the roots and tries to forget. Two leaves curl up and fall off his branches.
Mia would be so much better at this, he thinks to himself in a spiral of self-deprecation and delusion. He doesn't think about Mia set adrift and lost with all her strings cut loose, and he doesn't think about Maya left behind at home without someone to guide and protect and love her, and he doesn't think about Pearls still learning how to just be a little girl, and he doesn't think about any other adults in Trucy's life when she has a nightmare and curls up her fingers tight in his shirt where she's tucked up under his arm when they sleep and he murmurs promises into her forehead and smooths out her hair; I love you, I love you, you're my daughter and I'm not leaving you or giving you up.
Maybe he's overwatering Charley, overburdening, pouring too much fear and himself into him over and over. He fusses and fusses and flitters and watches. Trucy's watering can finds plenty of use, but he keeps shriveling still.
Phoenix thinks about moving him but, unfortunately, Mia's grave gets the best sunlight, and all the guides online told him to try that first.
"Can I paint my new bedroom?" Trucy asks him over breakfast.
Phoenix thinks about security deposits and plastic tarps and fumes and doesn't hesitate before he says, "Sure, what color?" Trucy reaches over the table with stretched out fingers to edge the syrup towards her.
"I'unno," she admits, "Green maybe? Can we go look at those funny color squares?"
They go to the hardware store and look at those funny color squares. Trucy waffles and wavers and settles on aquatone and they haul two cans back home on the bus.
They're in the final push now. Today, they'll clear the last boxes out of the old storage room and set out plastic on the floor. Painting will delay it, but Trucy can stay in his room for an extra day or two before he calls up Larry to help him put together her brand new (well, used and free from Craigslist) bedframe and haul in her new bookshelf and box of donated books and set up the rest of the room – all hers, for the first time.
"Are you going to paint your room too?" Trucy suggests, halfway through the room and standing on her toes on a step-stool while he watches nervously. Phoenix grimaces.
"Eh," he mutters. "Probably not. I don't want to move all my furniture again to get to the walls."
Trucy peers down and sticks out her tongue at him.
"I'm going to keep painting my room forever," she declares.
"Oh?" he replies. He takes the roller from her when she hands it down, loading it up with more of the soft blue-green paint. "Are you not liking this color?"
"No, I like it," she corrects him. "It's really pretty! I've never gotten to pick my own decorations before, and you told me I'm staying so I need to start thinking about what else I can do, right?"
"Right, Trucy Wright," he agrees.
It's all over when Trucy finds his art portfolio, and he's conscripted into painting stars onto the side of her bookshelf while she sits on the carpet and carefully examines, skims, and files her selection of new books away onto the shelves. She's gotten caught more than once – stuck in the pages and continuing on until he gently pulls her away to finish her task. She's stuck again, nose embedded in a soft and flexible book full of jungle plants and colorful guides.
"Daddy?" she asks. He feels a pleasant shiver roll down his spine, the shock of his title like a soothing ice cube down the back of a shirt on a hot day – a surprise he can't quite adjust to fully, still awed and giddy at the sound of it.
"Yeah, bunny?" he manages, a second too long of a delay. She also pauses, as he keeps painting.
"Do you think Charley is root bound?" she asks. He freezes, paintbrush in the air. He slowly turns to where she's turned the book around, finger settled on the colorful box bracketing the symptoms of his divine punishment, the solution a singular word in a singular sentence. He chokes and sputters and drops the brush straight into the carpet.
They buy a new pot, double the size, an upgrade in all ways. Charley is hard to remove, repot, re-home, tightly bound in place, roots rotting and jammed into the drainage holes in a dire desperate search for more space. Trucy holds him by the stem while Phoenix wheezes and chokes through laughter, shaking his head as he cuts off the rot and shakes loose the root ball. His magatama falls free to the floor, and he takes it reverently and shoves it in his hoodie pocket, dirt and all.
Charley grows and turns green again and bright and tall. Phoenix paints aquatone and white stripes on his new clay pot. He paints his room a dark navy blue, and hangs up curtain racks in the windows. Trucy paints pink clouds on the walls at age nine, and white stars on the ceiling at age ten. They buy a new pot for Charley again when she's eleven and his leaves are starting to droop and soil starts turning too dry too quickly. Trucy takes over the bookshelf full of Mia's old law books that he can't find it in him to get rid of, and begrudgingly giving them to Edgeworth, who promises to take care of them.
He continues to watch and care; even if it's not perfect it's there. The apartment changes, evolves, turns into a home, and doesn't stop growing.