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Despite everything, Gumshoe consistently found himself wanting to like Ms. von Karma. He’d be the first to tell you that he wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb of the bunch, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see all the reasons why he shouldn’t. Self-preservation wasn’t a strong suit, either, but being flogged left and right would leave anyone a little reluctant to speak out of line, or at all, really. He’d thought her pops was scary, the piercing sound when he’d snap his fingers, how he'd say everything wordlessly with that silvery-sharp gaze—but at the very least, he wasn’t whacking Gumshoe around like a punching bag the way his daughter did.
Gumshoe wasn’t really thinking about the man who came before her when he finally saw her again, though, and maybe that’s the reason he just couldn’t find it in his heart to avoid her entirely. No, he was thinking about Mr. Edgeworth, fuzzy over a busted flip-phone speaker and breathing her name with the softest cadence he’d ever heard from the guy.
My… his daughter, don’t you remember? he’d said, as if he was the one who’d forgotten something important, an edge of something heavy and guilt-ridden crawling into his words.
No one that Mr. Edgeworth loved that much could be all bad. Of course Gumshoe remembered her, too—once you met Franziska von Karma, there wasn’t a chance you’d forget her.
That’s how he finds himself rehearsing lines outside Room 1202’s door, case files in hand. With Mr. Edgeworth on his, uh, top-secret sabbatical, Ms. von Karma had wasted no time in claiming his office as her own—yanking the nameplate off her father's forsaken workspace two doors down. Gumshoe had been there that day, teary-eyed and tight-throated, before he’d gotten a phone call from a burner phone that assured him stop sniveling, detective. I’m alive and well. Back then, Franziska had click-clacked around the space in sharp heels, scoffing at the décor and calling it garish and gaudy and a couple other big words Gumshoe didn’t bother looking up. Still, she hadn’t changed a thing about it—it was the same as the day Mr. Edgeworth left, warm and enveloping as it’d ever been.
Shuffling a little on his feet in a bid to wind himself up, Gumshoe knocks. Franziska clears her throat before calling for him to enter, and when he does he can’t actually help but notice that the very air pressure of the room seems to feel a little different. He knows this room like the back of his hand, and that’s how he knows that the trash can’s been moved—it’s closer to the desk, now, right at Franziska’s flank, just a hair off from touching the overly-fancy rolling chair’s wheels. It’s overflowing with crumpled tissues and stray bits of foil, tea bags and cough drop wrappers and likely a million other things that shout the presence of someone in the throes of a nasty bout of illness. Sure enough, the tapping of laptop keys is not the furious thing Gumshoe’s used to hearing—it’s lethargic and slow, almost dragging, punctuated with habitual sniffling that sounds a touch violent.
The sag of Franziska’s shoulders as she squints bleary eyes at her screen are hardly a surprise, of course—nor is the bright red shade across her nose as she sips at her thermos, putting on a façade of being completely unbothered. She looks tired, like she’s about to fall over any second, and if it were anyone else Gumshoe would be inclined to ask them how they’re doing, but something tells him Franziska wouldn’t be so receptive to anything of the sort.
“Brought you that paperwork, Ms. von Karma.” He holds up the stack in one hand, as if to demonstrate.
“Thought you might’ve perished out there in the elements,” she croaks out, and yikes, that’s not a pretty sound. “Well? Don’t just stand there, Scruffy. Hand it over.”
Her comment has him distracted momentarily, regarding the autumn rain as it patters on the window. His back straightens at the firm tones that wrap around her voice, and Gumshoe strides over to drop the things on her desk with a pinched look on his face. She bears him little mind as ever, and he finds himself lost in his own head once more.
It hadn’t been so obvious, yesterday at the crime scene—she’d been a little attached to her handkerchief, sure, pitching stifled fits of sneezing into it with a general aura of prickly irritation cascading off her in waves. He’d thought maybe it was just a side-effect of being chilled by the downpour—it’d been an unusually rainy autumn, and the umbrella she’d toted from area to area could only do so much for the way the wind was blowing it every which way. By the end of things, even Franziska in her thick jacket and rain hat was soaked, and given that half the offices were already out sick, well. It was really no surprise to find her muddling through a nasty cold.
“If you don’t cease that impolite staring at once I’ll chase you out of the building myself, detective.”
Man, if she yells any louder her voice is gonna give out entirely. Gumshoe throws his hands up in surrender, backing up a little lest she go for her whip, but if he’s being honest it looks like even a single crack might send her toppling with the way she’s drooping at her brother’s desk.
“S-sorry, Ms. von Karma!"
She looks like she’s going to say more, but whatever manner of ire it is dissolves into a sneeze the second she opens her mouth. The only adjective Gumshoe can think of for the way the noise sounds is scrapey, like it was biting and clawing its way out of her throat. Franziska blinks hard on the end of it, making a sour face at a general nothing and going right back to ignoring everything that isn’t whatever report she’s typing up.
“Yeesh,” Gumshoe says, running a hand across the back of his head. “‘Caught the office cold, huh?”
“I caught—” another sneeze, “your cold. You gave it—” and another, “to everyone!”
Oh. Huh. Yeah, now that he thinks about it, he was the first one to go down a few weeks ago, and it’s been nothing but shortstaffing on the law-enforcement side ever since. Both the precinct and the prosecutor’s office had been hit pretty bad, but Gumshoe hadn’t really put it into perspective that he’d been patient zero.
“Geez, I’m sorry, sir,” Gumshoe says sheepishly. “I woulda stayed home if I could, but, well. Y’know.”
Franziska does not, but that thread is not one she can hold him accountable for when she’s neglected to take her own sick day. Back home it was considered incredibly boorish to not take time off, and that was the one thing she preferred about this foolish country. In America no one really batted an eye when she showed up to work regardless.
Still, she hated it here in all other regards, a fact that right now was not at all being made better by how dreadfully sick she was. Already it had been a miserable fall—nothing had gotten better since that sham trial, that bullshit verdict, that—it wasn’t a loss against him, it couldn’t be. Something was amiss, and Franziska had spent every minute in-between prosecuting and overseeing non-Wright cases reading and re-reading the court transcripts, trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps the lack of sleep had gotten to her, she relents as she’s making an attempt to rub away her headache, swallow around the horrible sensation searing her throat. There simply weren’t any other options, though—if she was going to drag Miles out of hiding, destroying his foolish boytoy was the only way.
“Tell me, is there some magic incantation I can chant to will your persistent visage away,” Franziska grabs a handful of tissues and mops at her face, still staring at the detective, “or are you simply so famished you're now settling for the taste of leather?”
“N-No, sir, I just—” he fidgets, and Franziska narrows her eyes, “is there anything I can do for ya? No disrespect, but I hate to see ya feeling so bad, especially if it is ‘cause of me.”
“I would love for you to leave, Scruffy,” she all but spits. “It will do wonders for the headache I’ve been wrangling all morning, the one you are currently making much worse.”
“R-Right. I’ll just, uh…”
Hesitant to exit, he allows her to pin him to the wall with her eyes for a moment before he’s out the door. It really is concerning, is all—Ms. von Karma rarely threatened to use that whip of hers, she usually just went ahead without waiting for an answer. The thing was practically an extension of her arm, if she wasn’t flogging there was something seriously wrong.
Even Gumshoe knew better than to treat her like a child, but the fact of the matter is she was just so young. Her father had just died, and her brother was in hiding, and she’d lost a win streak that’d lasted what, half a decade? There wasn’t a single crack in the kid’s veneer, though, she was steady and sharp and focused as she’d ever been, and Gumshoe couldn’t fathom how she did it.
As he steps into the hall, he feels a little bit like his heart is twisting itself into a pretzel.
By noon, Franziska’s flagging. Gumshoe catches her coming out of the records room with watery eyes, wearing a thick winter jacket despite the heat that’s blasting hard enough to have him shucking his own coat. Her hair’s a touch disheveled—just enough to notice—and he tries not to stare for too long when she pulls off into one of the spare conference rooms to pore over the documents she’s sluggishly dragging around. Gumshoe bites his lip as the next few hours decorate themselves with intermittent sneezes, audible through the too-thin walls. They start quiet, muffled and stifled, and get progressively less contained as the day drags on.
At some point, he casts a nervous glance at the clock, and his shift ended an hour ago but still he’s here, wasting payroll while he pretends to click through case files of his own. The thing is, Ms. von Karma’s usually flitting in and out of crime scenes and offices and meetings like an angry wasp, wings beating hard as she dashes from place to place and only ever stops to sting annoyances. She’s been in that room down the hall for a while now, though, and she’s sounded pretty awful all day, and…
It’s just that, she’s Mr. Edgeworth’s little sister, and she’s all alone. No one should be all alone in general, let alone when they’re sick, let alone in a foreign country after being born and raised overseas. If it were the detective himself, he’d be in tears right about now, and she’s strong, but she’s just a kid. Barely old enough to take meds for that headache of hers. Mr. Edgeworth has done so much for Gumshoe, for the legal system in general, and his heart’s made of gold, Gumshoe knows it is. Gumshoe knows that if he were here right now, he wouldn’t be taking no for an answer—he’d be wrangling his sick sister somewhere more closely resembling a bed, he’d be taking her lashings like they’re nothing.
But he’s not here. And he trusted Gumshoe—trusted him enough to keep his secret safe. It just wasn’t fair, that the detective would never forgive himself if he squealed to prosecutor von Karma in a moment of weakness.
With a sigh Gumshoe rises, grabbing his tattered messenger bag off the floor and flicking his computer off. With the precinct near empty, he’s not met with his usual round of take it easy, Dick!s but instead the grating hum of cheap lighting and the whirling ceiling fan overhead. Mr. Edgeworth wasn’t here to look after his little sister, but Gumshoe was.
He’s not really sure what he’s expecting when he slowly creaks the door open, the instinct to flinch ever-present in the hike of his shoulders. Yelling, maybe. A lash to the toes, a pointed glare, certainly not what he finds—Ms. von Karma is surrounded in evidence binders and case files, her briefcase and thermos abandoned around the multi-seated conference table as she dozes on folded arms. Her mouth-breathing is noisy and laboured, and the nap does almost nothing for the bags that still hang under her shut eyes, the unmistakable pallor of her skin. Even in her jacket she’s shivering, and Gumshoe moves on instinct, at that—pulling off his own and draping it over her shoulders with gentle, careful purpose.
The weight across her back rouses Franziska from sleep, and she coughs herself awake, raising her head and looking around the room with bleary blue eyes.
“What time is it?”
“Quarter to eight, sir.”
She squints at him. He looks slightly more like a kicked puppy than usual.
“What are you still doing here?”
“I mean, I go where you go, don’t I?” Gumshoe tries. “Who’s gonna drive ya home if I bail on ya?”
Franziska sniffs, rubbing at her eyes. Every so often she seems to stare off into space, as if she’s wordlessly begging the nothingness of it for answers. It’d be pretty endearing, if Gumshoe wasn’t so worried about her.
“Start the car, then,” she says, messily pawing at the files beneath her nails in an attempt to reorganize them into their proper binders. “I’ll be out momentarily.”
“C’mon, Ms. von Karma, let me—” he swivels around her side to deal with the stray packets and papers himself, “I got this, let ol’ Gumshoe handle the gruntwork. You know it’s what I was built for.”
She blinks a few more slow, dragging times, as if weighing variables in her head. Gumshoe slides his keys across the table, angling them in her direction and gathering up the files as though he’s performing a trade. Franziska doesn’t argue, nor does she say much, she simply nods a curt nod in an attempt to possess some of her usual authority, takes his keys, and makes out the door to the usual parking spot, still ducked into his trenchcoat as it swallows her.
Franziska wakes up to the purr of an engine in dire need of repair. At least, she thinks she’s awake—the world is ephemeral as though it’s a dream, raindrops hard on the translucent surface she’s braced against. City lights blur all around as the car makes its slow crawl through nighttime traffic, and she realizes it’s a window, foggy in the corners with age. The autumn overcast leaves rivulets on its face, and she watches the moisture glow and dopple with artificial brilliance as the wind moves their shape backward, backward.
She shuts her burning eyes, breathing through her mouth and trying with all she is not to wince from the pain it sends down her throat. Her and Miles are in the back of the limousine on a rainy autumn night, somewhere in Berlin on some holiday. In the far corner, her father is reading—something nonfiction, in English, something she’s too little to care for. Instead, she tugs at her brother’s sleeve with one gloved hand, telling him to pick a raindrop on the window, telling him they’re going to have a race, now, telling him that she will win. Miles rolls his jet-black eyes but complies anyways, analyzing the shape of the tiny things for a moment before pointing to the littlest one. Not a moment sooner he’s won their little competition, and Franziska is crossing her arms and pouting while he laughs that raspy, hidden laugh of his.
She was mad at him, then. So many times, she’s been mad at him—she’s spent half her life snarling at his heel. He’s not here for her to be mad at, anymore, and she is furious about that, too.
The car chugs to a stop at a red light, and the world fades to black, and Franziska flutters back into the recesses of a dream. Gumshoe watches as she draws his jacket closer and curls in on herself with a cough, and as he waits for the light to change he can’t help the urge to reach out and rest his knuckles on her cheek. Beneath his big hands and unconscious from exhaustion, Franziska is impossibly small. He sucks in through his teeth when he feels how hot she is, and she deliriously leans into the touch and mutters out something that sounds like Miles.
Franziska coils around the seatbelt, holding onto it in the same manner a child might hold onto a stuffed toy on a dark night, in the ravages of a booming thunderstorm.
“Geh nicht,” she chokes out, barely above a whisper, and Gumshoe doesn’t know what she’s saying, but her crushed-heart tone doesn’t leave a lot of room for speculation.
The rest of the drive home is blanketed in the same silence as before, little else but the sound of rain and cars and Franziska sniffling every so often. When they finally get to Edgeworth’s bottom-floor apartment, she’s fumbling shakily with his keys at the door for a good long minute before Gumshoe extracts them from her hands with a worried sigh and opens the door himself. Looking at her, it’s a miracle she made it the three steps from the car to the door—her eyes are barely open a sliver, for a moment Gumshoe thinks she might be sleepwalking.
Just like his office, Mr. Edgeworth’s apartment remains untouched, spotless and cozy and fancy as ever. Gumshoe’s only been inside a few times, but the place makes his own abode look like a freakin’ storage closet, the way he could dance through the living room. He’s lost in the sheer fantasy of it before a barking cough snaps him out of his delusions, and that’s when he remembers that he should probably be making sure Ms. von Karma doesn’t fall over and perish right then and there.
Gumshoe finds her toppled on the corner-couch, one arm angled under her cheek like a pillow, the other hanging sloppily off the couch’s edge. She looks like she hasn’t slept a day in her life, knocked out the second her head hit the cushions, buried beneath the detective’s jacket and using it like a blanket. There’s a temptation to dig through the closet and find her a comfier one, or at the very least nudge her to maybe sleep in an actual bed, but she looks like she really could use the rest.
The detective is usually louder than this. That’s the first thought Franziska has as she stirs to a darkened room, hears the warm and rich tones the gravel of his voice are living in.
Weight on her shoulders, chasing away the chills—she remembers his trenchcoat, but there’s a blanket now, too. It’s one of Miles’, one he stole from the house back in Bavaria, one he knew wouldn’t be missed. He underestimated how petty Franziska was—all he ever did was underestimate her. Well. Who was laughing now?
The world is dreamy, car lights chasing the shadows as they dance across the window. She should get up and close the curtains, but every muscle she has protests at even the thought. Someone has turned the fireplace on, and she leans into its heat and sniffles an afflicted-sounding sniffle. Scruffy’s words blur in and out, and Franziska thinks, I’m dreaming.
“—cut from the same cloth, I’m tellin’ ya—”
Franziska pulls the blanket over her head, desperate to shoo off the persistent shaking of her extremities. She can’t remember the last time she felt so miserable, how it was she even survived the discomfort of it.
“—worked herself sick, yeah. No, it’s nothing serious, just one hell of a nasty cold. Didn’t even try to flog me on her way outta the car.”
She’s dreaming. He’s talking about her, is he? Who would he even have to talk about her with? It’s some sort of wish fulfillment dreamed up by her foolish brain, inventing a world where Franziska is loved and worried about and protected, instead of the abrasive thing she is. She’s had this dream before. She will not give it another second of her thoughts.
“Sure, yeah.” A shuffling of feet. “I’ve been trying my best to look after her, but uh… well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell ya how she is.”
Franziska drifts. Impossible, she thinks, because it is, because she’s tired, because just for tonight her eyes are stronger than her will.
“No kidding, just… don’t stay gone for too much longer, alright, pal?”
When Franziska dreams again that night, she dreams about her brother.