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In hindsight, Maya probably could have figured this one out quicker if she’d used just a bit more of her brain power.
Then again, Franziska was just kind of weird to begin with. Maya Fey had very strict standards: weird girls only. She was only interested in befriending and romancing freaks of a similar caliber to herself—even if she met the hottest chick in the world, the sum of her rizz would be entirely moot if she wasn’t a little bit of a weirdo. Franziska was the whole package in that regard—Maya had thought, jokingly at first, that she was pretty sexy in her little ‘sub pretending so hard to be a domme’ getup. Upon closer inspection, Franziska revealed herself to be an absolute freakazoid beneath all that competence and genius, and by that point Maya was utterly doomed.
All that to say she kinda just rolled with things. Franziska couldn’t come to dinner with her because she had to stay up all night watching a 72-episode soap opera for a case? Sure, whatever. Franziska stopping mid-makeout because she was bored and wanted to go answer emails? Maya didn’t take offense to that at all, she sure loved those emails. Franziska re-bagging half their groceries at the self-checkout because Maya hadn’t done it ‘correctly’? Absolutely unhinged, but she was so cute when she was frustrated about dumb shit that Maya forgot to be judgy about it.
So when Franziska got a little more quiet and distant one day, Maya figured she was just in one of her moods. The thing about Fran was that she was a person who was incredibly upfront when it came to most things, both mundane and especially significant. Maya’s anxious heart had learned and grown enough over the years to understand that every minuscule change in the routine of her life did not necessarily mean someone was angry with her—more often than not, people were in their own worlds, not thinking about her at all.
And yes, her heart ached just a touch at the sudden divide in between them, but Maya knew it was likely temporary. Franziska seemed intent on making herself scarce—turning in early, spending long hours working in her study, easing up on the physical affection, and…. It was fine. It was fine. She got like this on a smaller scale when she was overwhelmed sometimes, and the two of them had a long discussion about preferences and boundaries to make sure no feelings were hurt. And Maya was being so brave about it, thinking in the long-term instead of prioritizing what she wanted in the moment. She wasn’t gonna say anything, not yet at least.
Until she wakes up in an empty bed, her fingertips absentmindedly tracing the imprint of silky sheets where Franziska usually is.
This deep into winter, Maya’s sure the chill woke her up. Franziska usually likes to sleep with the window open, the frigid air doing its best job to chase away the dry heat and smog that’s usually so present any other time of year. It can’t exactly be called crisp, but she revels in the oasis of it nonetheless, something just barely akin to home.
Tonight, though, the window is shut. The window is shut, yet the bed is still cold, the absence of the warm body next to Maya feeling like a part of her own is missing. Sluggishly and crusty-eyed, Maya turns her gaze to the bathroom door, expecting to see the glow of a lit line breaking through its closed bottom. It’s ajar, though, dark inside—and as she’s studying its lack of shape, Maya hears stirring down the hall.
Maya squints, as if the gesture will somehow sharpen her ears. It’s muffled, faraway, but definitely Franziska. She can’t entirely make the sound out, but it sounds… painful? Exertion of some sort, definitely, and Maya can only hope she’s not crying. Her whole body protests as she begins the herculean process of rolling to the edge of the bed, swinging her legs over the side of it, and shambling wearily into the living room with her blanket wrapped over her shoulders and dragging inelegantly behind her.
Their living room is dark, but wavering spots of light creep in through breaks in the curtains, offering a bluish sort of half-illumination that gives way to the image of Franziska, curled up in a throw blanket and sitting barely upright on the couch. Despite the conspicuous footfalls she doesn’t hear Maya approach, which is the girl’s first indication that something isn’t quite right. Right when she’s about to call out and make her presence known, though, Franziska curls further into herself and falls into an absolutely wrenching coughing fit, trying and failing once more to muffle the sound into her blanket.
Moving on instinct, then, Maya rushes to her side, and Franziska’s far too caught-up in the grip of things to protest. Maya’s caregiver instincts kick on pretty fast, and then she’s kneeled down and pressing circles into Franziska’s back, willing the onslaught to subside. Franziska’s lungs must hear her, because they quiet down soon after, and then the ailing woman in question is looking over to Maya with unfocused, watery eyes, squinting through obvious confusion.
“Maya?”
“That’s me.” She offers a concerned smile. “You good there, babe?”
Wordlessly, Franziska shuts her eyes, weakly touches at her throat, giving it a few purposeful rubs. “Just… something in the air. You know how I get.”
She waves a hand vaguely, without form, eyes still shut. That’s kind of ridiculous, given that the air quality has been better these last few days than it’s been all year. One by one, pieces begin to snap into place in Maya’s head.
“Uh huh. Why are you on the couch?”
She cracks one eye open, tired and sharpened as it stares Maya down. “So I would not wake you with the racket my respiratory processes are making. Do keep up, my dear.”
“Well, I miss you,” Maya says, drawing her arms around her girlfriend’s balled-up frame. “I don’t care if you’re loud. Come back to bed.”
To that, Franziska says nothing, because she is smart even when she’s not feeling her best. Instead, she just stares pointedly off to the side, too exhausted to even muster her fighting spirit. Impatient, Maya cuddles her closer.
“Why are you trying to hide stuff from me?” she says, as softly and compassionately as she’s able. “Isn’t it easier to just tell me you’re feeling sick?”
“I am not sick,” Franziska snaps back immediately, “and if I was, I would certainly not want anyone taking note of that fact.”
“Not even me?”
“Especially not you.”
Franziska’s eyes narrow, and Maya tries not to flinch back like a beaten animal at that. There’s an immediate realization at how razorsharp the words had come out, and then the hand is back to Franziska’s head, massaging what’s no doubt a painful ache away.
“I apologize,” she backtracks, “I simply mean you have a tendency to… fret.”
“Well yeah, I’m your girlfriend,” Maya says, “that’s my job?”
“You fret even when it’s wholly unnecessary,” clarifies Franziska, “and this is certainly as unremarkable as can be. I’d much rather just let it pass with little fanfare and be on my way.”
Maya fights the urge, of course, to yell objection and point obnoxiously and ruin the tender moment they are having in the quiet of this night.
“And what is ‘this,’ huh?”
“That’s enough of you,” Franziska meets her smug expression with a half-hearted glare. “A good night’s sleep and this’ll all be yesterday’s snow. I promise you that.”
“If that’s the case,” Maya goes in for the kill, “can you please come back to bed with me? It’s easier to sleep with you coughing all night than it would be by my lonesome.”
Franziska looks suspicious, but she always kind of looks suspicious—it’s her job to, after all. Another sign that she’s not feeling her best is the subtle undertones of the face journey she goes on—for all her emotional outbursts, Franziska could be awfully good at keeping her expression stony if she so desired. Tonight, though, her energy is elsewhere, and Maya watches the thoughts play out on her face like silent film.
“If you insist,” she says after a long while, and Maya plants a fat kiss on her cheek in grateful celebration.
After all, she’s not often wrong. It was not in a von Karma’s nature to be wrong—thorough and thoughtful, meticulous and perfect. When Franziska said something, regardless of what it was, it was in the best interest of everyone around her to pipe down, shut up, and follow her lead.
So, that is that, then—she’s going to trudge back to bed with Maya, and she’s going to get herself a good night’s sleep, and when she awakens bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning she will feel entirely, absolutely, perfectly fine.
Franziska is not fine.
Franziska awakens to find that her sleep mask, at some point in the night, jumped from her face and took a swim in some wet cement, because that’s the only way to explain the sensation of weight around her eyes right now. It’s heavy and pressing, and she thinks she better remove the wretched thing before she gives herself a bruise, but her arms don’t seem to work quite right, and she finds herself chilled down to the bone.
Removing said mask and prying her eyes open with great effort, Franziska notices the bed is empty. That was strange, because Maya rarely woke up before…
With a sense of creeping dread, Franziska is suddenly very aware that the sun has risen outside. The sun should not be risen. Franziska von Karma does not wake after the sun, and yet—
Another attempt is made to swing upward in bed, one that sees her head spinning and her stomach going just a touch sour. Her brain feels like a dumbbell in her skull, weighted and tumbling as she struggles to stay upright, and when the sunlight hits Franziska’s face there’s a burning itch that ignites in her airways, turning her eyes rheumy and red. She sniffles it back, sliding her legs off the edge of the bed.
Out of the corner of her eye, then, she spots it—a tissue box on the side table that was certainly not there before. She’d had a couple spares in her hallway closet, of course, but to allow them to exist in plain sight like this was just announcing to the world that she was ill, and she’d simply die before she did that while cohabitating with Maya.
Maya’s not in the room at the moment though, so…
Franziska grabs a handful of the things and miserably swipes at her face, careful not to make too much noise as she’s clearing herself out. Pulling her phone off the bedside, she glowers at the time—she’s not late, she’s never late, but by her own standards? She might as well have slept the whole day away.
The meager trek across her bedroom feels like an odyssey with the way her bones seem to creak. When on earth did she get this out of shape? There’s an impulse to try and remedy it in the moment—to grab her whip from the hook it hangs on by the door and sneak a couple hundred cracks into her morning routine—but she’s already spent any free time on the miserable act of sleeping, ugh, and so she decides against it.
Franziska von Karma has never met an illness she cannot chase away with a boiling hot shower. Or, at the very least, one that a boiling hot shower cannot momentarily scare away. When she’d fall ill as a child, she’s sure she’d run the water bill through the roof with this method, sometimes sneaking into the bathroom to just turn the water on high and sit on the closed toilet seat, inhaling its steam. It might not have been the most frugal method, but it was efficient, and a von Karma was nothing if she was not so.
So, she stands there in the shower, cooking herself alive for a while and willing the vapour to kiss her aching throat, clear out her stuffy head. True to form, it works, but by the end of it she’s stumbling out with trembling knees, overheated and feeling just a bit like all her limbs have turned to goo. Naturally, then, she channels her inner child—wrapping up in a towel and all but collapsing on the fluffy lid of the toilet seat, taking deep, metered breaths. Blearily, she takes in the foggy room while she gets a handle on herself, an attempt to distract herself from the shifting pressure in her head and the ticklish sting now crawling twice as urgently in her sinuses.
Eventually, her eyes fall on the bathroom counter. In her rush to get herself into the shower, she hadn’t noticed before—there beside the sink is a lightly used bottle of ColdKiller, one that she certainly does not remember purchasing for herself. Curious, Franziska reaches over—wincing, and trying to ignore how pathetic of a fact that is—and notes that it’s in pill form, too, which is not exactly her preferred conduit. The liquid stuff kicked in faster, as much as she loathed to taste it.
Definitely not hers. The lid’s on crooked, as well—half-latched into the child seal, uncomfortably uneven in such a way that almost makes Franziska’s skin itch.
Why Maya’s left this out, Franziska cannot say. It was admirable of her to carry it on her at all—very resourceful, if not a smidge out of character. For a moment she considers waiting to properly ask her girlfriend if she may have some, but… she’d really rather not draw any more attention to the dreadful way she’s currently feeling. Franziska nods to herself as she’s fighting with the askew cap, electing to simply pay Maya back later if need be.
Dressing herself is a chore. Every micromovement of it that usually comes as second nature seems to call upon all of her brainpower, today. She’s tying her bow with shaking hands, nearly sticks herself on her brooch as she’s pinning it to the drooping frills. Despite her best efforts, she can’t help the way she looks akin to a wilting flower—sagging shoulders, flat hair, lidded eyes. There’s an attempt, as she’s doing her eyeliner, to make her wings twice as sharp to offset it… but she can’t seem to get the damned things even, and it takes all her strength not to throw her pencil like a cursed artifact into the bathroom trash, snarling like a rabid hound all the way.
She can’t even repeat that anger-curbing mantra of deep breaths, today, because her lungs have the gall to protest when she tries. Absolutely infuriating.
Her nose is running by the time she gets all that situated, and the burning sensation that rankles her from within it shows no signs of stopping. When she grabs her spare handkerchief from the bedroom vanity, she has the foolish urge to apologize to the object for the day it’s about to have.
Curiously, Maya is not in the kitchen on her way out. It’s a mystery to Franziska, why her heart seems to ache at this fact—Maya was never in the kitchen when Franziska left for work, because Maya loved her sleep. That was just fine with the both of them, of course—Franziska would loop back to the bedroom before she went, set her briefcase gently on the floor, and press a kiss to the crown of Maya’s head as she slumbered, cupping her hand around the girl’s cheek. She’d whisper her temporary farewells, and watch the soft way Maya’s lips would curl into a smile, and try not to fall over from the overload of affection she felt thereafter, the unrelenting urge she felt to place a million more kisses across those adorable dimples.
Today, there is no Maya to kiss. There’s only a note on the marble countertops, pinned down with an obnoxiously yellow fidget cube and written in equally obnoxious blue glitter ink.
Franzilla,
Good morning, sleepyhead! I dragged my ass outta bed early this morning cuz I had some errands to run. Sorry I couldn’t be there to wish you well at your trial today, but I know you’re gonna go scorched earth on that fuckin’ courtroom and make me proud. Just don’t overdo it, k babe? For their sake and for yours, lol.
Stay sexy,
Maya <3
The margins are full of meaningless doodles—spirals and swirls, sunflowers and hearts. Maya’s love is so open, so boundless, so freely given—and yet still, Franziska feels undeserving of it, like it is simply too beautiful for someone of her ilk. Wonderful as she is, it’s absolutely no secret that Maya Fey is ten million times the woman she will ever be.
Beside the fidget cube, resting just a little ways off, is a tin of Franziska’s favourite blend of dessert tea. Beside that, of course, is her favourite thermos—lavender, practical, and absolutely massive.
Franziska folds the note, placing it in her breast pocket. It seems to radiate there beside her heart, a point of warmth to scare off the chill she’s battling. Truthfully, she really does not have time to make herself tea, but…
An experimental swallow, one that tingles uncomfortably and shoots a dull spike of pain into her throat. If she’s going to exact perfect justice, today, she’s going to have to do it with the same thorough eye she always does—and that meant traveling down the hypothetical road of every argument the defense presents, striking those branching paths down one by one. All in all, it amounts to an awful lot of talking.
Sighing at the mere thought, Franziska drops her briefcase and puts the kettle on.
Maya hears the sluggish dirge of stilettos on concrete and perks up in the same manner a dog might.
Most days, this forceful click-clack is uniform and constant—keeping even pace, and stopping all at once. Its sharp tenor was actually kind of notorious, she’d heard folks repeating their little poem all across the courthouse—heels on tile, better beware, she heralds herself, that wild mare.
It was kind of hilarious, to hear people making up spooky nursery rhymes about her hot girlfriend. She wonders what they’d think if they saw Franziska in her satin pyjamas, crying her little eyes out because she watched a sad movie with talking animals.
Anyways, those heralding footsteps are more like a zombie’s as they approach the threshold of the apartment. As much as she’s been doing her best to hold back, she can’t help herself from rushing to the door as she hears Franziska struggling with the lock. Careful, so as not to embarrass her, Maya pulls the door open a crack, then fully—cautious not to jerk Fran forward if she happens to be mid-unlock.
Instead, the door slips open easily, and then Franziska is staring dazedly at the key in her hand, brow still knit in concentration as she takes a moment to register the world moving around her. Blinking a few times in quick succession, she finally raises her head to look at Maya.
It’s… bad. It’s pretty bad. Fran’s dead on her feet and looking the part—eyes bruised and tired, skin deathly pale, trying her damnedest to keep her laboured breathing in check, undetectable. There’s a pretty honourable attempt to hold her chin high in that way she always did, but it’s offset by the sag of her shoulders, the way she’s got one arm around herself in an attempt to keep herself together. Her hair’s a bit tussled, and her makeup’s failing around her eyes and nose from nonstop bothering, and Maya cannot resist the urge—she practically falls forward and hugs her.
Franziska usually tenses when she’s hugged. She’d explained with little fanfare that it was years of touch starvation activating neurons she didn’t care to listen to. She liked being hugged, it was just something she’d need some getting used to, and she’d instructed Maya to ignore any vibes that said otherwise.
She doesn’t tense this time, though. Franziska slumps a good half of her weight against Maya, lethargic as she slips her hands around her beloved’s waist and tucks her face into Maya’s shoulder. They stay there in the doorway for a bit, illuminated by the soft orange glow of the light within, and Maya rocks ever-so-slowly on her feet in an attempt to soothe away Franziska’s woes.
“How was work?”
Franziska mumbles a noncommittal noise of general frustration at Maya, and the other girl tries not to laugh at the way it tickles her chest.
“But you won, right?”
“Of course I did,” Franziska says, turning her head to the side, so that Maya can actually hear her. The good news is Maya hears her. The bad news is Maya hears her.
“Oh, Franzy,” Maya coos, “your voice…”
“Occupational hazard,” she croaks out, the consonants dulled by congestion, everything else dulled by the rest. Maya cards fingers through her hair, aching to take care of her, feeling completely insane with the shape of it. Butterflies in her stomach, her heart, her chest, her brain—skittering and fluttering and banging at the walls of her, rioting in shrill little insect voices, dote, dote, dote!
“Still,” says Maya, pressing a kiss into her girlfriend’s silvery crown, trying not to fret at how its skyblue hue has faded so fast. “Here, come inside, it’s cold as balls out here, and you’re shivering.”
In lieu of any protest, Franziska just nods and follows. Maya had been trying so hard to find a compromise here… she’d always been told it was what made or broke relationships, and she was desperate to use that advice as a compass. In all other areas, Maya found that she was a person who rarely handled things delicately—it was easier to act first, to apologize later, rather than to just sit there paralyzed with the weight of those what ifs.
Franziska changed everything, though—suddenly, Maya cared to pick and choose her words, suddenly Maya was looking before leaping, desperate not to ruin this wonderful thing the two of them had. There was a voice that always existed before, that told her nothing so easy to ruin mattered in the long run… it silenced itself around Franziska, though, inadvertently shaping her into a more considerate person.
Franziska didn’t want to be fussed over. Maya couldn’t help worrying, of course, but… she could make her fussing quieter. And so that’s exactly what she did.
To have the soup ready right when she got home, well, that’d be a little too obvious. It sits on the stove simmering, instead, daubs of condensation forming an earthtoned kaleidoscope out of the vague shape of Franziska’s kitchen. Undetectable, and in the background, and hardly reading like fussing, the soup just happened to be there, and Maya just happened to ladle some into a bowl while Franziska shakily unbuttoned her waistcoat, unpinned her brooch, loosened her necktie.
She’s going to be as subtle as she can be about it. Grab a bowl of her own, casually offer Franziska some, make it a group activity with no relation to the current state the addled one is in. Before she gets to that point, though, Franziska breaks the relative silence, wearily gazing at Maya from the living room couch.
“Is that edible?”
Maya has to choke back a laugh. There’s just something about the slurred shape of the sentence, the way her accent is always thicker when she’s tired. Most of all, the phrasing—Maya speaks von Karman, so she knows what it means: did you pack that shit full of spice?
“Yeah, I made it to share,” she says through a wobbling smile, “you want some?”
Weakly, Franziska nods. The sight of it cleaves Maya’s heart in two.
In truth, she hadn’t made the soup to share at all—she had made it to Franziska’s (incredibly picky) liking, salty and bland and with chunky noodles and few veggies, just the way she liked it. Still, she wasn’t expecting her to outright ask for it. Maybe things were worse than she thought.
Maya sneaks off to crank the heater and grab a blanket when she catches Franziska’s hands trembling around her spoon. Her poor sick girlfriend eats at a hesitant pace, cringing with every swallow as she forces down the stuff. For a split second Maya wonders if maybe she made the soup too salty, but then Franziska catches her staring and sighs into the bowl, sending little ripples across its golden surface.
“Forgive me,” Franziska says, sliding her spoon back into it for a moment to rub at her neck, “it’s this blasted sore throat.”
“Aww…” Maya tuts, inching beside her on the couch and draping the blanket—crucially—over the both of them. “Hey, um, can I…?”
She raises a hand cautiously, hovering it a scant few centimeters from Franziska’s face. The whole gesture is honestly pretty performative, Maya notes that even at a distance she can feel waves of heat radiating off her usually icy girlfriend. Franziska doesn’t look at her, still staring into the murky waters of her soup. Something… a bit childish creeps into her expression—not quite a pout, but something akin to a phantom of it, indignant and eager to throw a tantrum at the circumstance. Despite it all, what follows is a glacial, resigned nod.
Maya scoots closer, letting her palm slip easily beneath Franziska’s bangs, touch her fever-hot forehead. Franziska, in turn, shudders despite the heat that pulses off her, clenching tighter the bowl in her hands, eyes shut tight.
“You’re cooking, Franzy,” Maya says, trying not to sound as worried as she is. “Can I please take care of you? Just a little?”
A laboured swallow. A metered breath, in through her mouth and with a notably developing wheeze. “It truly isn’t necessary. You know, I can weather this foolish virus just fine on my own.”
“Of course you can,” says Maya, “but you don’t have to. Just because you’re the most powerful person in the freakin’ universe doesn’t mean you gotta do this all alone.”
Franziska’s jaw goes tight. The squeeze in her throat is different, now, a trembling, hot sensation from somewhere else entirely. She tries to ignore the way it radiates in her chest, up her jaw, watering her eyes. Try as she might, she has no argument to that.
“You are very kind,” she rasps out instead, so weak and soft it is nearly a whisper, “Maya Fey.”
“Pfft, I think I’m just normal, babe.” Maya draws the blanket tighter around them. “I don’t have to baby you. But I can make you some tea, heat up more soup for you. Maybe run you a bath to warm you up, and I’ve got some lozenges to help your throat too. Does any of that sound good?”
There’s a momentary pause, “...perhaps in a bit.”
“Roger that, my prosecutorial paramour.” Maya gives her a lackadaisical salute. “Anything I can do for you right now?”
Another pause. Franziska’s eyebrows lived in kind of a permanent downward slant—genetics, she’d said, she came from a long line of stereotypically-shaped Germans with equally stereotypical anger issues that seemed to etch themselves permanently on the family visage. Maya had debates about nature vs. nurture she wanted to run about that, though, because Edgeworth was adopted as shit and he definitely had the von Karma glare.
The point was, Franziska’s face always looked a little scrunchy, especially when she was deep in thought. Right now, though, her concentration seems… not half-hearted, because Franziska did everything with her whole being, but tired. Like she’s too exhausted to even think properly.
She spends a good minute like that, just thinking. Then, rather unremarkably, she shakily sets her half-finished soup on the coffee table, wraps both her arms around Maya’s waist, and slumps clumsily into her beloved’s waiting lap.
“Just,” Franziska says, holding on weakly, voice muffled and sick, “this.”
Maya, of course, understands.
Wiggling herself into tandem, her hand finds the dip in Franziska’s waist. Maya draws ghostly ciphers there upon its curve, imbuing each and every nonsense sigil with a prayer to the spirits that tickle the veil to cast their unseen magic and will her girlfriend healthy once more. She’s not sure spirit magic can be used for that sort of thing, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to try.
“Of course, Franzy,” Maya whispers, and dips down to press another kiss into her scorching temple.
“You have me.”