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Legends said that the disciples of the von Karma house of law were forged in a blaze of sapphire blue, made of iron willpower and domineering disposition. That their steely shells could not be pierced by anything of this world, and that they excelled out of the courtroom just as they did within it. One was warned to never cross these folk in any regard, not to challenge their skill in any way—for anything they put their mind to, they could most certainly achieve.
Most terrifying of all, then, is the sparks that fly when two of these ironclad creatures butt heads. At present, it takes the form of Miles Edgeworth glaring daggers at his ever-petulant sister, firm and almost performatively haughty as he stands over her work desk with arms crossed. She mirrors this gesture with characteristic perfection, her own arms crossed and shoulders hiked high, trying to murder him with her icy blue gaze.
As is often the case, they are a perfect reflection of one another, at present. In posture, in airs, in dress… in all but constitution. Miles isn’t wearing the same sickly pale as Franziska, nor the unhealthy flush of red that adorns it. His nose is not pink and chapped on the underside and his lungs do not protest with every breath he takes. One might take this to assume that he has an advantage in this deadly staring contest the two of them are having, but anyone who did assume that clearly had not met Franziska von Karma.
“This is ridiculous,” says Miles after a long pause, digging his nails into his shoulder sleeve. Franziska does the same, sniffling emphatically and sharply, somehow making the gesture violent despite what it tells of.
“So we’re finally in agreement,” says Franziska in response, her voice absolutely shredded. “Leave me to my work, then. I’ve no desire to sit here arguing with you, little brother.”
“Franziska,” Miles tries again, “it’s nearly sundown. What work could you possibly have left to do?”
“There is always work to do,” says Franziska. “Justice never sleeps.”
“And yet you still manage to leave the offices and return home quite often.” Miles uncrosses his arms, resists the growing urge to point a condescending finger toward her. “So tell me, what has you lagging behind so considerably today? Could it be you’re suffering from some sort of ailment?”
“The line between bravery and foolishness is certainly a thin one.” Franziska bares her teeth, then slams one gloved hand down on her desk. “A line you’ve placed a rather hefty down payment upon. Tell me, Miles, do you find that to be a favourable investment?”
The eloquence of her insults is blunted by the tear in her vocal chords. It hurts Miles’ own throat just to listen to her speak, and he fights the unending urge to touch at his neck, soothe an ache that isn’t there. Surely Franziska would have his head if she caught him leveling anything more resembling pity toward her.
“Very well, then,” he leads, and he watches Franziska’s eyes narrow further, red-rimmed and dulled from exhaustion. “Franziska, should you choose to keep fighting my orders to rest, I’ll be forced to take rather drastic measures.”
“Ha! Don’t make—me—”
Laugh, he presumes she’s about to say, but the first abrasive chuckle catches in her throat and she tumbles to the side, coughing roughly into her shoulder. Nevertheless, she carries on, trying her best to talk through the awful things.
“You get—one—measly promotion—” says Franziska with great effort, “—and you think it—gives you any authority over me?”
“No, I’m not quite so foolish,” Miles tells her, “but I did possess the foresight to come armed with what’s commonly referred to as a secret weapon.”
“Unbelievable.” Finally, Franziska manages to compose herself, though that watery sheen across her eyes remains. “You’ve got that same smug look on your face as always. You really think you can stop me?”
“Oh, I most certainly cannot,” says Miles. “However, she can.”
Franziska has no time to question anything about that statement before she registers the clumsy footfalls growing ever-closer to her office door. She’d know those thundering stomps anywhere, an uneven second heartbeat, an imperfect song stuck always in her head. Most days, it’s a comfort. Today, it sounds a bit more like some sort of dirge. She half-expects her cup of tea to start rippling from its center, like it might in the movies—the steps of some great beast heralded by those little earthquakes, rumbling in tandem across the city.
As soon as the office door flies open, Miles turns to take his unceremonious leave. The smarmy grin on his face, Franziska half-expects him to do his stupid little bow, the way he always does when he wins an argument. Mere moments after he turns away—coward—Maya stumbles in, the collar of her vestments falling crooked as she stands spread-eagle in the doorway, one hand on her hip. She throws the other exuberantly above her head before belting out her hello.
“It’s Maya time!”
Miles is already halfway out the door. Heart sinking, Franziska snuffs out the pre-defeat with righteous anger, standing up in her seat and leaning over her desk as if intent to chase him.
“Miles Edgeworth, you will come back here this instant—”
“Please do excuse me, Franziska, but unfortunately I’ve just been informed it is Maya time.”
“Miles—” Franziska chokes out, coughing so hard she falls back down into her seat, “—Edgeworth!”
“He’s gone, babe,” Maya informs her as she’s tumbling through more horrid coughing. The girl proceeds to kick the door shut, one wooden sandal clunking loudly against it. “Speaking of, I think it’s ‘bout time you get gone, too.”
As much as she’d like to snap back at that, Franziska is much too busy hacking wretchedly into her suddenly-present handkerchief to say much of anything. It’s to Maya’s point, a fact that she refuses to acknowledge when she comes out of it. “I’m a salaried government employee. I’ll get gone by my own determination.”
“I think if the big wigs in charge of the government saw you right now they’d declare you a level three biohazard and lock you in a room somewhere,” Maya says, sauntering over to Franziska’s desk with her ever-crooked grin. “You might wanna take your chances with me. I’ll at least tuck you into bed and give you a lil forehead kiss.”
“Certainly a tempting offer,” Franziska folds her handkerchief and goes back to typing—a pathetic crawl in comparison to her usual speed, “but I do have a rather hefty mountain of post-trial paperwork to get through, so we’ll have to reschedule.”
Despite her current state, she is icy, no-nonsense—that usual softness that settles upon her shoulders when she’s around Maya is nowhere to be seen. This, more than anything else, is concerning, but Maya Fey is nothing if not annoyingly persistent.
“Why’re you so set on staying in this stuffy office, anyway?” Maya pivots as Franziska types, meandering around the wellspring of open space. “You can just work at home, right? The apartment’s actually got proper heating, it’ll probably help with all that shivering you’re doing.”
“I am not—!” Franziska barks out, tenses up, locks her searing blues on Maya’s lackadaisical expression. With a sigh, she goes back to her laptop, the tremble in her shoulders ever-so-slightly muted, now. “I am managing just fine as I am, Maya.”
“Who says you need to just manage?”
Maya eyes her desk, then, taking stock of everything atop it. To the untrained eye, it’s as unchanged as ever—but Maya notices the little things, how her laptop isn’t perfectly lined up with the edge (as per the norm), how her gel pens aren’t organized by exact hex code in their desktop cup, the ripped top of an open bag of cough drops just barely sticking out of her desk drawer.
“That’s not even your flavour,” says Maya, pointing at the bag in question.
“I did not purchase them,” replies Franziska curtly, which is von Karman for my foolish little brother thrust this item upon me in a fit of foolish concern, how dare he cast even a shred of pity toward me in the first place, let alone go the extra mile of making that pity known.
“We’ve got the good shit at ho~ome~” Maya sing-songs, as if to tempt. “That cherry junk you love. With the melty center.”
“I’m past the need for such frivolous luxury.”
“Babe, I’ve seen you eat those like candy when you’re perfectly healthy.”
“Pleading the fifth.”
And then she’s clattering away on her keys again, this time twice as loudly in an attempt to overcompensate, or perhaps to hide the frequency at which she’s now sniffling. Maya continues charting a path around the office, lightfooted and whimsical in that special way only she could be. Alright, fine, then—it was time to lay on the real charm, Franziska was clearly not going down without a fight.
Casual as ever, Maya rounds the desk with a tilted sway, so that she’s behind Franziska. The uncooperative patient in question is too dedicated to her façade to take note or comment on this, and when Maya gives the back of her office chair a cursory poke, Franziska is equally apathetic toward that, too. Brow furrowed in faux-concentration, Maya keeps prodding at the thing, her voice taking on the affectation of some sort of scientist observing a specimen of interest.
“This chair looks pretty uncomfy.”
“It is adequate.”
“I bet the chairs at home are soooo much cozier to work in.”
They are. Maya knows this. Franziska knows this. One would have to be a fool to not know this, and Franziska would be a fool to argue. It’s all a part of the trap, though—because if she were to head home, to pack up her things and do as Maya suggests and sit down in one of their recliners to work, she’d find her eyes growing heavy in mere seconds, it would be a struggle to stay upright. To admit to that would be to admit she needs the rest. Maya’s a tricky one, far wilier than any opponent Franziska’s ever been forced to trifle with courtside.
“The circumstances are fine at present. I’ve no desire to—”
A particularly strident sniffle catches in the back of her throat, and her attempt to swallow the resulting cough is entirely for naught. It blossoms into a rafflesia there in her throat, and then she’s powerlessly hunched over her desk with the underside of one elbow pressed against her face. Maya leaps like a wildcat, her hands sliding up the backside of the chair and directly to Franziska’s shaking shoulders. Tender as ever, she kneads the tight muscles through cotton and starch, soothing her stubborn girlfriend to the best of her ability.
That cough of Franziska’s is really starting to sound ugly. Maya’s gotta act quick.
“No desire to come snuggle with me?” says Maya as Franziska’s falling into a breathless moan. “I could dim the lights… put on those web shows you like about unsolved disappearances… think we still got half a tin of that red velvet tea, I could make you what’s left with honey and loooooads of sugar…”
Oh, the utter temptation of it all. Sitting there watery-eyed with a head full of swampwater, Franziska so badly wants to fold, she can feel herself right there on the precipice of it.
Instead, she clears her throat, careful to hide that involuntary wince. Even-toned, clipped, words cutting like white fire, she carries on.
“When I am finished, Maya Fey.”
Evidently, this is the wrong move.
What spills over Maya’s face is… it’s not true hurt, there’s no trace of that sadness that glistens in her big, dark eyes, no sign of that beaten-animal look. No, it’s a lighter thing—exasperation, frustration, something lesser than a boiling point. She’s baring her teeth when she grabs the back of Franziska’s office chair, literally swivels it to the side so that the one sitting is facing her. Franziska’s so taken aback by the ferociousness of the gesture, her quick instincts so blunted by the fog of illness, she doesn’t have time to plant her feet, stand her ground, do anything besides sit there with her arms braced awkwardly in front of her and typing on a keyboard that’s no longer there.
“What’s your freakin’ damage?” Maya says, sticking an arm high above her head, palm splayed. “Soon enough you’re gonna have to quit and come home. Or are you just planning on sleeping here, too?!”
Snapping to, Franziska crosses her arms, steels herself beneath Maya’s shadow as the girl reigns uncharacteristically lordly above her. Jaw jutting, gaze sharp, Franziska's presence is imposing as ever—though the scarlet tint that outlines her features makes her look less like she’s about to strike and more like she’s about to sneeze.
Unmoved, though, “If that is what it takes.”
“You! Make! Me! Crazy!” Maya says, fingers tangled in her hair as she holds onto her head. If it were earlier in the day, Franziska might scold her for shouting—but this late into the afternoon, the offices are nearly empty, leaving only Franziska and a smattering of other prosecutors with equally dreadful work-life balance.
“As though you’ve any room to speak on that matter.” Finally, then, Franziska takes charge—as she so often does, with everyone but Maya. “Miss Fey, we will have our promised time together in the slot we’d previously allotted. For now, I must insist you—”
Her knees are still half-bent, midway to standing when Maya interrupts.
“You sit back down.”
Franziska obeys without another word.
The gesture fizzles. Her glistening eyes widen conspicuously, her mouth parts just barely, she plants herself back in her chair where she started. Truthfully, Maya hadn’t been thinking about what she was to say next—she rarely did, but especially now—and the voice that had just come out of her almost didn’t feel like her own. Firm, commanding, without room to argue… and Franziska hadn’t. For the first time all evening, she’d shut up and listened, her every micro-movement answering yes ma’am.
To that, Maya can’t help but lose that brief flare of nerve she had. She blinks dumbly down at Franziska, who’s similarly doe-eyed, now with curled fingers half-covering her mouth. The expression on her face beneath those leather gloves is unreadable, pensive, trying to figure itself out. With her cheeks that red, Maya worries she’s running a fever.
A ghost of a smile creeps onto Maya’s face. “What was that?”
“I—” Franziska stumbles, her face going even redder, “my—reflexes, they, um—”
Maya can’t remember a single time in recent memory she’s ever seen Franziska with this little composure. “Your reflexes? I only ever hear that excuse when you’re flogging some poor sap, not…”
Another, more analytical glance at the quickly-deepening flush that’s stretching clear out to Franziska’s ears. On second blush… Maya has the realization that she recognizes the exact hex code of that flush, and she’s almost kicking herself for not noticing sooner.
“Holy shit,” she says with a sly-eyed grin, “you liked that.”
“Maya,” Franziska says in that warning-voice, though it lacks any semblance of authority. She’s still hoarse and shaky, and now impossibly flustered on top of it. Maya bends down slightly, closer to Franziska’s eye-level, still smirking as she leans forward to take her sick girlfriend’s chin in her palm. Poising her thumb right there in the dip beneath Franziska’s lips, she talks slow and sultry to those tired, wandering eyes.
“You like it when I boss you around?” says Maya. “Big tough dominatrix-lookin’-ass Franzy-Vee-Kay gets her rocks off being told what to do?”
“Maya.”
“Looks like…” Maya carries on snickering, “the whipper has become the whipped.”
Much like the very whip in question, that statement lashes through the tension with lightning-quick precision. If not for how much tact it lacks, then for how Maya couldn’t stop herself from falling into a fit of giggles halfway through. She breaks off to the side to snort herself into joyous oblivion while Franziska slowly closes her eyes, presses a tented palm to her aching head.
“You will not take me to bed with statements as asinine as that.”
“Take you to bed,” Maya wipes a tear from her eye, “or take you to bed?”
“We are forgetting this conversation ever happened.”
“Interesting proposal, Prosecutor von Karma.” Maya straightens her spine back out, performatively places a thumb and forefinger across her chin. “I think we could probably cut a deal… I’ll go ahead and strike this one from the record… if you call it a night and come home with me.”
Franziska crosses her arms again, turns her head to the side with a raspy little scoff. If her nose wasn’t throwing such a fit, Maya knows she’d do that cute thing where she huffs out a hot exhale, puts on that affectation of a bothered horse. Oh, how she loathed when people pointed it out, but Maya couldn’t help finding every little quirk of hers to be mind-numbingly cute.
“You’re dreadful, I do hope you know.”
“Babygirl, you know I gotta criminal record.” Maya mirrors her, crossing her own arms and continuing her mission to wear the world’s smuggest grin. “You tried to put me away.”
“A pity I did not succeed.” Turning away to shut her laptop, Franziska makes her best attempt to soften the edges of another unladylike sniffle. “To cease your reign of terror in blissfully romantic domesticity remains my only option, it seems.”
“A fate waaay worse than prison,” agrees Maya, swiveling around to grab Franziska’s jacket and scarf from the coatrack adjacent. Behind her, the ailing prosecutor’s spaced-out sniffles turn into something in much quicker succession, and the resulting fit of however many miserably sodden sneezes sounds almost relieving to Maya’s ears. Something about them heralds the idea of finally giving in, Franziska allowing herself to actually be sick.
“Gesundheit,” Maya says ever-so-sweetly, pressing a kiss to Franziska’s head as she’s wiggling sorely into her thick, black wool jacket. “Just hold out a little longer and I’ll be sure to shower you in lotion tissues and name-brand cough drops, ‘kay?”
Tired, on instinct, her conversation muscles running on autopilot, Franziska croaks out, “Whatever you say.”
Maya, similarly, can’t seem to wrangle the smug look that crawls back onto her face. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Maya!”