Work Text:
Sae Niijima had never considered herself “spoiled”, but separating from the Public Prosecutor’s Office has shown her just how well-off she’s unknowingly been.
Sae glances down at the napkin in front of her, stained with soy sauce and sporting an address scribbled down in hasty pen marks. She certainly didn’t expect she’d end up LeBlanc’s neck of the woods, but she supposes that just means she’ll have to stop by for a coffee afterwards. It’s strange how much everything still centers on the kid these days, even many months after he left town.
As much as he and his friends did, there’s always still more to be done. Sae thinks she’s made some pretty good progress as a defense attorney, but she also thinks her old office has done its best to block her at every turn. Even now, she’s at odds with them, and it’s the very reason she finds herself strolling down an alleyway looking for a doctor that a friend of a friend of an associate recommended.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket, just like it has every other minute for the last week. Sae picks it up to scroll through a message from her partner reaffirming that her client has once again refused to pursue anything but a “not guilty” verdict. She feels a headache forming just behind her eyes. The evidence is far too damning to even know where to start, and a part of her wishes the woman would just learn when to take a damn plea deal.
Another part of her knows something is up, and it’s that part of her that puts Sae directly in front of a run-down looking hole-in-the-wall.
Sae admittedly does a double take at the clinic, checking the address more than once and comparing it to the shoddy-looking numbers on the mailbox. She knows she doesn’t have a lot of options, but is this really the best place to look for medical assistance? With a little less paint and little more rust, it’d look more like a murder scene. Options are limited though, so she makes her way inside anyways.
The door chimes and a garbled voice calls out in greeting. The inside is not much better, but it at least makes an attempt at looking like a waiting room. There’s one of those sliding glass doors hiding a receptionist at the counter, and Sae’s suddenly wondering when she had her last check up. She brushes that off as she approaches the counter and gives her introduction: “Hi, there. My name is Sae Niijima, and I’m a—”
The words die quickly on her lips and Sae freezes in place, because she suddenly finds herself staring at a face she’s not seen in many, many years.
Tae Takemi is the one that’s staring back at her, and the woman that Sae formerly knew quite intimately looks like she’s just seen a ghost. “Wow,” is all the doctor can manage at first, brow raised in shock at the sight of her ex-girlfriend. She’s quick to recover, though. Quicker than Sae, of course, and the grin that pulls across her face is suddenly much too smug for the lawyer’s liking. “Four years, Sae? Took you long enough.”
Sae crumples the note with the address in her hand before shoving it into her bag as discreetly as possible. “What are you doing here?”
“This is my clinic. What are you doing here?”
Sae wrinkles her nose at the retort, mostly because she knows she doesn’t have a better one or a better option for medical opinions. Before graduation sent them their separate ways, Tae was undoubtedly one of the smartest people she knew. She fits the bill, as much as it pains Sae to admit as much. “I need some help,” she admits at last, eyes flicking around the office at anything but the woman in front of her, “A case is giving me some trouble and an acquaintance of mine gave me your clinic info.”
The defeat in her voice is more than enough for Tae, but she makes sure to make a show of it anyways as she leans back in her chair and gives her a quick once over. She checks the schedule in front of her (it’s blank, Sae can tell), shrugs, and gives in with a nod. “Alright, then. Come on back.”
As much as Sae trusts her medical expertise, it doesn’t make the clinic any less cramped. The lawyer slips past the door near the reception counter and finds herself immediately in an exam room, face-to-face with the woman of the hour. Tae’s lapsed into an easy smile now that she’s in her element. “What’s on your mind, little livewire?”
Sae’s lips instantly purse at the long-forgotten nickname, and she crosses her arms in the most defensive stance she can muster. “Can we not just be professional about this, Dr. Takemi?”
“Fine, I hear you,” Tae relents, raising her hands in mock surrender. She retreats to her chair and sinks down into it. Sae feels a bit embarrassed that it takes a good moment or two to avert her gaze from a skirt she thinks is entirely short for a physician. “For the love of God, don’t call me ‘Dr. Takemi’, though. That’s for my patients, and I’m pretty sure the number one rule in med school was that your patient population shouldn’t be the same as the people you’ve f—”
“Tae…” the lawyer warns, quickly turning her attention to rummaging around in her bag for the autopsy report. She hands it over and Tae shrugs in return, wholly unaffected but obviously not opposed to the change in subject. “I’m working as a defense lawyer at the moment, but I’m having trouble getting any cooperation out of the police courtesy of some pissed off people at the Prosecutor’s Department. I just need a second opinion on this guy’s death.”
Tae takes a hold of a homemade ID badge on her coat with the words “Internal Medicine” etched beneath her name, shaking it purposefully. “You know I’m not a pathologist, right?”
“I know, I know. I just need…” Sae pinches the bridge of her nose, utterly frustrated that she’s even in this situation. Everything about it has her agitated, and the fact that she’s suddenly not quite sure in what way makes it much worse. “I just need something to go off of. None of this feels right, and the medical examiner won’t answer any of my calls.”
It seems that’s more than enough reason to convince the doctor, because she immediately leans forward to start reading. Tae rolls her chair back across the room effortlessly, managing to make it all the way back to her desk despite the fact that her eyes never leave the documents. She’s quiet as she makes it through the first page, and Sae suddenly feels the awkwardness of being in such a small office-slash-exam room with her. The lawyer leans back on the door behind her, pulling out her phone to fidget with whatever she can find.
“I wondered how long it’d take for you to come for your senses.”
Sae hasn’t even gotten her phone unlocked before the doctor speaks again. The lawyer glances up at her, cocking a single brow in question. “Pardon?”
Tae’s on the second page, and Sae would be lying if she said she didn’t find it fascinating that she’s managing to double-task so well. “Watching you give interviews on TV with that Prosecutor’s Office was a sight, for sure. For a while I thought I had been dreaming all that ‘justice’ pillow talk you went on and on about.”
“Tae, that’s hardly—” Sae feels the back of her neck heat at the memory that instantly springs to mind. Whether it’s over all the “justice” talk she used to spout or the thought of being in bed with Tae, she’s not sure. “I was way younger, then. Being a prosecutor really kicked my ass into shape in that regard.”
“Younger? You act like it wasn’t just a few years ago that you had the ‘justice’ blinders on.” Tae’s on the third page, now. Seems like there’s at least a few more minutes of painful small talk to go. “You dropped the prosecutor job, though. That bad?”
“Just a much more sinister set of blinders, basically,” Sae admits, the subject still a bit touchy when she thinks of her run-ins with the Phantom Thieves and all the revelations that came with them.
For a moment, Tae’s gaze flutters away from the documents to settle on Sae once more. The doctor gives a look that’s hard to decipher, but it’s evident she quickly decides not to press the issue just yet. “Well, it’s good to see you again, Sae. The actual you, that is. Those bags under your eyes don’t make the fire in them any less attractive.”
“Mm,” Sae murmurs, glad that her friend’s too distracted with the documents again to see the blush that’s finally broken through to her cheeks. It’s nice to be complimented, she thinks. Doesn’t have to matter who it is to blush about it, right? “Had a couple of unexpected encounters that really helped drag me out of the muck.”
“Hah, same here.”
There’s a couple minutes of silence that pass as the doctor reviews the last page, and Sae finds herself a bit bored with the lapse in conversation. The small talk hadn’t been as bad as she had feared, and she thinks she might’ve actually... missed talking to Tae, or something like that. Then again, maybe she’s just feeling the effects of not leaving the office for three days straight. There’s not much to go home to when Makoto’s off at university, after all.
Tae interrupts her train of thought before the exhausted lawyer can travel too much down that rabbit hole. “Oh, you’re really being put through the ringer,” the declaration comes at last.
“What?”
Tae reaches for a cup of coffee. It’s probably one that’s been poured this morning and been forgotten ever since, if their time together in grad school has taught Sae anything. “I told you I’m no pathologist, but everything about this autopsy report screams of carbon monoxide poisoning to me.”
Sae’s brow furrows in confusion immediately. “What are you talking about? There was blunt force trauma to the back of the head.”
“Yeah, probably from where the poor guy passed out and hit the floor, I’d wager.” Tae beckons her closer with her mug, pointing at the autopsy pictures attached to the file. “People don’t just turn angry red like this for nothing. Very likely his hemoglobin is all out of whack, and something like that is usually due to one of two reasons.” The doctor presses a thumb to the side of her chin in thought, and for a moment she looks just like the dogged med student that Sae knew all those years ago. “I guess it could be argued that maybe he got slipped some cyanide, but if they found him dead in a garage it’s much more likely he left his car on too long or something. An accidental death.”
It takes a moment for Sae to catch that she’s standing ever so slightly slack-jawed at the notion. At least, that’s what she tells herself. A small part of her is in awe of the physician that Tae’s become, but she decides to brush away those feelings for another time. “I can’t believe that a medical examiner would miss something like that.” She can’t believe it, but she certainly knows why . She’s been a member of the Public Prosecutors Office before. As much as the Phantom Thieves did for Tokyo, they’d all be foolish to think they managed to root out every corrupted heart in the city. “So it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to suggest my client’s getting framed?”
Tae makes a thoughtful noise, running her pen under the time of death and tapping it there a few times. “Timeline shows he was found and pronounced dead pretty quickly. Did the doc get his serum carboxyhemoglobin levels?”
The lawyer frowns. “Tae, I’m standing in your office. Does it look like I know?”
Tae frowns right back at her. “Ask for ‘em, then. Start snooping around. Read an article or two on carbon monoxide, because this reeks, Sae.”
“Bastards,” Sae mutters under her breath, and she tries not to notice how she’s instantly got the doctor’s attention with her tiny outburst. “I’ve got to get back to the office, then. My to-do list just got a hell of a lot longer.”
She feels Tae’s eyes on her once more, this time in a much different sense. It’s softer, a bit concerned but not quite at a stage of pity just yet. The doctor brings her thumb to her chin again, chews her lip, and nods to herself as if she’s made up a plan for something all within the span of a few moments. “You look like you’re about to snap at any minute, you know. Let me write you a prescription.”
“That sounds highly unethical on every single front I can think of,” Sae is quick to point out.
“No, no, it’s fine. Trust me on this one. It’s a sort of...over-the-counter remedy, you could say.” She’s already writing it down (probably near-illegible, knowing her) before Sae can even come up with a proper refusal. It takes a minute or two, and the lawyer shifts uncomfortably in place as her friend bottles the meds quickly and presents it like a trophy. Tae slides it across the table and suddenly gives such a sincere smile that Sae thinks her heart might've skipped a beat in surprise. “It was good seeing you again, Sae. I mean that. Say ‘hi’ to Makoto for me.”
Sae feels a smile forming on her own face all too quickly. For once, she does nothing to stop it. “Yeah, I will. Thanks, doc.” She slips out before she can think twice about staying just a little bit longer.
Sae makes it all the way back out into the alley before she makes a pause, determined to let her momentum carry her as far as she can go. Her curiosity gnaws at her, though, and the weight of the pill bottle in her hand even more so. She decides it won’t hurt to take a look and consider the medication. She’s sure to be stressed out of her mind for the upcoming case, after all.
Inside the bottle, there’s a carefully folded note. It takes Sae a good minute or two to reach the paper, but when she finally does and opens it she finds both a phone number and a note scribbled hastily beneath it on a prescription form.
If you ever want to really catch up over a free meal, give me a call. Best treatment for stress relief I can recommend. Stay safe out there, livewire.
-Tae
Sae tells herself she would rather pull her own teeth than catch up with her ex-girlfriend, but she puts the number in her phone, anyways. The lawyer can’t deny that having an unbiased medical opinion on cases has already proven to be immensely helpful, and begrudgingly accepts the fact that she very well may be having many more conversations of the sort with Tae Takemi now that they’ve connected again.
And if one of those conversations just so happened to be over dinner at a nice restaurant, maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad.