He is descended from wolves, from curse-breakers. There may be no family lessons to teach him how, but he will find a way. HIS way.
When he swallows down something that by all rights should kill him, and his lawyer looks at him with shock and dismay, he realizes two things very quickly.
One: Dahlia never cared about him one bit.
Sure, he has to go to the hospital almost immediately after the trial, but he’s otherwise physically safe. (The doctors call it a miracle, he remains quiet.) And as soon as he’s released from hospital care and the detention center, he redoubles his efforts to find an old friend and throws himself into law.
He doesn’t yet realize that while he somehow manages to land on his feet after he swallows that first curse down, those around him aren’t so lucky. After all, how is it that Mia becomes his mentor, sees him through his very first trial in court, and is killed so soon after by that damned statue his friend made? He swears to bite down on whatever curse is looming over the Fey family, he swears to save Maya from it, no matter how long it takes for him to swallow down every bite.
(And there is so much more to swallow down than he expected.)
He faces down the curse on Miles, fifteen years later in the dead of winter. It writhes and chokes his friend in a desperate bid to remain right where it is. He ignores its struggle, and he sinks his teeth in deep. He clashes against Von Karma, he pushes and rips away at every piece of obfuscation meant to frame Miles for murder twice over. He gulps and gulps and gulps until the air is clear and the curse is no more.
Miles Edgeworth is Not Guilty.
Phoenix Wright digests a curse.
Maya returns to her village. Miles’s car holds a dead body, with his knife buried in it. Steps are carefully taken to mismanage the trial so that Miles will be forced to take the fall for its mismanagement. He grits his teeth and claws anew at the threads and machinations of a curse trying to take his old friend yet again.
(He begins to worry that he’s done something wrong, and also something he can’t begin to take back.)
He can’t put it into words, but curses taste different. They react differently as he snaps his teeth into them. He only has so much space inside him to digest these curses, but he can’t stop protecting the ones he loves once he begins. He still has one very important curse ahead of him.
He’ll suffer injuries, he’ll take any backlash as the writhing curses fight back, he’ll do anything except let go. He’ll grab the neck of the Fey curse and drag it into himself bite by bite. He’ll do it, thinking of Maya and Pearl and Mia, of those who have been harmed by the curse and who have done harm in the curse’s name.
He’ll take the curses into himself, and give up everything to see them digested into nothing.
(He doesn’t know it will take nearly a decade to do so.)