Work Text:
Phoenix is offered only one moment of respite while Franziska stalks off on her own, one he wastes with stiff, frozen fingers trying to clasp the buttons of his coat. They slip from his digits like they’re finely-oiled, and by the time he’s got a reasonable few fixed up his precious time is done with. To her credit, Franziska aims low—her whip kicking up the powder underfoot in a fine spray. A few flecks of snow land under the rim of his shoes, soaking his socks, and with a ferocious shudder he makes a mental note to buy some proper rain boots.
“Snap out of it!” he can hear her say beyond his stuffy hearing, syllabic and rude as ever. “There’s something I want a closer look at over here, and you’re going to make yourself useful and assist me.”
“Of course, Prosecutor von Karma,” Phoenix says, voice scratchy and sickly-sweet, “since you asked so nicely.”
Her lip curls a little, her eyes narrow—that expression of purely performative haughty disgust she always seemed to level at him—and she turns swiftly, choosing just this once to bite her tongue. He follows Franziska over to one of the many stone fences, and without words she jerks her head up towards it. It’s a lot taller than the others that flank the temple, and the snow at the top is just barely disturbed—a chunk missing from the thick layer like someone’s taken an eraser to it.
“I’m in need of a boost,” Franziska says, regarding it. “Kneel.”
That word is a little much, even from her. Another sarcastic remark catches in Phoenix’s throat, and it turns into a ragged cough that he angles off to the side.
“And cover your mouth!” Crack. “Are you a child, or just a plague rat that’s somehow gotten itself trapped in a man’s body?”
He’s got words for that, but Franziska’s got leather for those words, so he moves swiftly along. “Why can’t we just go back to the courtyard? I think I saw a stepladder back there.”
“That was a ladder, Phoenix Wright.”
“God, no, my damn head—ow!”
“We are investigating a murder right now,” Franziska says. “There’s no time to dawdle. I seem to recall you ramming down doors willy-nilly the last time you were on sacred ground, so I know you’re not entirely lacking in strength.”
“I wasn’t cooking alive in my own skin then, either,” Phoenix tries, and Franziska seems to take mercy on him, rolling her eyes and pulling off a heel. He can’t help but cringe when her tights touch the snow, staring in pure disbelief at the way she doesn’t flinch in the slightest at the frozen ground underfoot.
“You poor waif,” she says as she walks a bit closer. “Perhaps I’ll find someone eager to listen to your whining on the other side of the fence.”
Following her lead, Phoenix drags himself over, finding that his throat hurts too much to keep complaining. He doesn’t actually mind helping at all, it’s just kind of a marvel the way Franziska never cares to ask. Her faith in him, today at least, is a little bit misplaced—there’s still a sheen of sweat living on his skin despite the chill in the air, his voice is languid and deep, Phoenix doesn’t feel like he could even raise his arms above his head, let alone be Franziska’s stepladder. Ladder? Whatever. He positions his arms in front of himself, setting his feet at the sturdiest angle he can muster, and—
As soon as her full weight’s on him he begins to give way. She’s a deceptively tiny girl but his muscles might as well be sludge with the way the fever’s melted them down into a useless nothing. Sweat-soaked and trembling, Phoenix swallows through the burn in his throat and puts his legs into it—and for a moment the both of them seem to align, believing this to be their final push. Franziska angles her arms out for balance, and zeroes in on the lip of the fence.
It’s only then that Phoenix feels the oncoming storm—crawling in his face like an army of ants, a stinging tickle that drifts up and into the back of his nose. Eyes watering, he wonders as he fights it with all he is why whichever god that lives above has seemingly abandoned him this week, throwing him into a river and locking his best friend in a freezing temple and infecting him with the most stubborn cold he’s ever had in his life. His breath hitches maddeningly, desperately—and he shoves his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to tell it to shut up and that he’s busy, and Franziska’s nearly got enough of a grip on the fence, he’s mere seconds away from freedom, but—
Phoenix’s foot hits a patch of particularly icy terrain when he shifts, and with the slip of his legs so too goes his self control. He manages to spit out a nasty word under his breath, and it’s all he can give as a warning before his face is scrunching and he’s wavering on his feet and once he starts sneezing he doesn’t stop for a good few seconds, a particularity that on him is as old as time itself. Him and Franziska both go tumbling to the sloshy, muddy ground—she lands hard on his torso and knocks the wind out of his already breathless lungs—and for a moment Phoenix just lays there, contemplating his life choices.
He’s probably about to die, so he takes the moment to look at the sky, admiring how especially cobalt it is today. The overcast of the storm has cleared, and the clouds are big and fluffy and beautiful and so, so close. Phoenix feels like he could reach out and seize them if he were only to climb a little higher. He hopes, at least, that Heaven is the way it always looks in movies—a palace in the sky, pure white on high, golden gates and all he loves waiting with open arms. ‘Whipped to death’ definitely isn’t how he thought he’d finally see it, but it’ll make for an interesting story, at the very least.
“Get up.”
“I’m still alive?”
“Get up so I can knock you down proper!” Franziska pulls her whip taut, jumping to her feet and turning on a heel. “I’ll eviscerate you, Phoenix Wright, you absolute wet dog of a man—”
“I think I’d rather just lay here for a moment.”
“How hard is it to control yourself?!” She cracks her whip at his flank, notably not actually hitting him. “Now I have your foolish germs all over me, if you dare inflict me with that revolting illness of yours I’ll make sure you’re punished—”
“Oh please,” Phoenix says, finally pulling himself to his feet, holding back a shiver as a breeze snakes beneath his coat. “That might as well have been payback on my part.”
Franziska stomps closer to him, a seething squint. “Excuse you?!”
“You’ve been flogging me all day.” He rubs at his nose, flushed red and still streaming. “How embarrassing, I seem to have forgotten the word for that… what was it, ‘karma’?”
“Don’t you dare continue that line of thought!”
It took her way too long to actually whip him, he realizes as he’s hissing through the sharp sting of leather at his legs. She goes for one precise hit and catches a second on the backswing, winding the leathery thing back into a circle and hanging it upon the little harness that lives at her hip. Suddenly she’s holding back, it seems, and Phoenix doesn’t have a lot of time to meditate on that before he’s burying his face in his coat collar and sneezing three more times.
The feeling of snowmelt seeping into his feverish bones is miserable—he’s in three layers and still freezing cold, every movement halted by the ice beneath his skin. They were useless to begin with, but now he feels even worse, and they’ve barely even made a dent in the investigation. It would be a nightmare even without Franziska’s torment, but by some cruel twist of fate she’d shown up to put him through the wringer, allowing no mercy for the piss-poor condition he was in.
He stays there in the cover of his jacket. There’s an immovable wall of congestion living in his head but his nose is running despite it and he really doesn’t need to hear comments from the pissed off prosecutor with the lethal weapon about how uncouth he looks. Instead he hides away like a turtle in its shell, sniffling emphatically in an attempt to make himself somewhat presentable.
“Take it and don’t argue with me.”
Oh, Franziska’s talking again. Had she been talking long? Phoenix was so caught up in not facing her ire that he hadn’t noticed her… well, her ire. At present she’s got a piece of cloth somehow pointed at his face—its corner staring him down like a weapon all its own—and the bitter look she’s wearing betrays the sentiment entirely. Phoenix creeps out from within his fortress, eyeing the thing through a weepy gaze.
It is, all things considered, a very nice handkerchief. Powder-soft, royal blue, and monogrammed with a golden-threaded VK, a sister to the one Miles all but lived in during the spring months. A precious thing, truly, which is why Phoenix can’t help but raise an eyebrow when Franziska offers it to him with little fanfare. He looks at it, and then at her, searching her face for something unseen.
“This feels like entrapment.”
“Phoenix Wright!” Franziska stomps her foot, all but shoving him to the ground again. “When a lady offers her handkerchief it’s customary to take it graciously. Do not mistake this gesture for tolerance of your foolishness!”
Has the definition of ‘lady’ changed in the last ten seconds? is what he wants to say. But Phoenix wants to say a lot of things, and on rare occasions, he’s wise enough to say literally anything else.
Franziska sticks her chin up as he sighs and takes it, and her earrings sway a little, glinting in the reflective snowfall all around. Still a little nervous, Phoenix slowly presses it to his face, feeling like he’s committed some sort of atrocity all the while. If that’s the case, she doesn’t seem to care—Franziska merely leaves him be as he languishes against how soft the thing is, trotting over to her shoes to slip them back on.
“...thanks, von Karma,” he says when he’s done tending to his nose, doing his best to fold the handkerchief carefully, delicately. Franziska only scoffs in response, waving her hand flippantly as she goes back to scanning the expanse for leads on the case.
“Save your meaningless gratitude,” she says. “I’m at my limit just listening to all the noise you’re making. It’ll spare me the migraine if you direct your infernal bazooka blasts into something other than your poor abused sleeve.”
“Yeah, I love you too.” Phoenix rolls his eyes. “I’ll be sure to have this back to you in a few days when you’re just as sick. Maybe by then you’ll have located your sympathy.”
“If you infect me with your foolish plague you will not live to see that day, Phoenix Wright.”
“I probably don’t need to if you keep going barefoot in the snow.” Phoenix points to her feet, undoubtedly still soaked inside her stilettos. “Aren’t you cold?”
“That pathetic constitution is what got you ill in the first place.” She points a sharp finger of her own at his chest. “We’re heading back to the courtyard. On second thought, perhaps the ladder is a valid investment.”
“I’m telling you, that was definitely a stepla—”
CRACK