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Hoisting his unconscious sister out of the offices' stairwell was not exactly how Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth pictured his day going.
In his time alive he’d seen quite a few strange things go down in that stairwell. It was practically a second home to him, after all—twelve flights up, twelve flights down, it made nearly everyone cringe when he’d tell them how much of his day was spent hiking to and from his high-rise office. He probably could’ve benefited from relocating, but it was honestly very convenient, getting all his cardio in before even his morning cup of tea.
Yes, he’d seen a lot of things going on in that stairwell. Highly dramatic personal phone calls. Potentially shady dealings involving discontinued snacks from the vending machine. Overworked interns sneaking away for naps. Larry, once.
One thing Miles had never seen upon these stairs, though, was Franziska.
When they were children, it was a tradition, of sorts. They’d arrive in front of the foggy elevator doors—it didn’t matter where they were—and Miles would instinctively clench his fists, making the best attempts to muster all his courage. Back then, he was small, and he felt even smaller standing poised before the massive shape of them, his murky reflection refusing to crystallize in tandem with his nerve. Franziska, ever the little empath, would grab his hand tight in hers and drag him to the stairs. After tapping her foot performatively for a few seconds and complaining of how long the elevator took to arrive, we might as well use them with the foolishly slow descent of that foolishly inferior contraption.
Of course, children grow up. Miles never had a childhood to grow out of, but Franziska always did her most to sprint leaps and bounds ahead of him. At some point in their adolescence, she had stopped taking the stairs with him. There were no hard feelings, of course—but she had places to be and was more often than not suited up in stilettos and pencil skirts. I shall meet you at the top, she’d always say, and then grimace at him with her face all red when he (always, effortlessly, without breaking a sweat) arrived at their destination first.
The red on her face is a different shade, this time. A far less fortunate one, it would seem. Despite everything, Franziska is there in the stairwell with him once more. Only this time, she is not dragging him lovingly up the incline, but holding white-knuckle onto the railing as she makes her best attempt to climb, knees wobbling with the effort, drenched in sweat. Miles can see her forearms through the now-transparent sheen of her blouse, and despite how she’s perspiring, the poor girl is shaking like a leaf.
He stops there, at the top of the grouping of stairs that she’s making her best attempt to scale. Rigid, brow furrowed in concern, mouth firm.
“Franziska?” says Miles. “Are you… quite alright?”
Her head, previously dipped toward the floor—watching her feet, nervous that they might fail her—snaps up to face him. The way she bears her teeth is somewhere halfway between a warning and a plea for help, pained and angry all the same. For a moment his blood runs cold as he remembers the last time he’d seen that look—blood coagulating on his car upholstery, a horrible scream echoing in his ears, tear-tracks refusing to dry on his cheeks.
Curiously, her whip is unholstered, coiled in her free hand. As if she were announcing to the world that her guard is up, don’t come near. Despite the acid-drenched sheen of her glassy eyes, she maintains her hesitation in cracking said whip at Miles—instead just pointing, with the leather shaking haphazardly in her hand.
“You… don’t you—don’t you dare—!”
It’s all Miles can do not to visibly cringe when he hears her voice. A truly miserable-sounding affair, like bogie wheels struggling on miscut gravel. Come to think of it, Franziska had sounded a little croaky yesterday morning when she joined him for tea, and she had taken a little more honey than usual. But she didn’t seem ill otherwise, certainly not to this extent…
Miles isn’t really sure what to do, so he just kind of stands there awkwardly, lordly above her all the same. She manages to get herself up one single step before her knees buckle entirely, and Miles is already shuffling down to meet her, his body seemingly moving all on its own.
Franziska’s a small fire in his arms as he catches her. Every square inch of her skin is scorching hot, singing Miles’ grip even through layers upon layers of perfectly pressed ruffles. In sleep, still, the tremors take her, and she’s breathing heavy and hard through her mouth. As he’s arranging her to something resembling bridal style in his arms, he thanks his lucky stars that his sister is such a small thing, hopes she will forgive him even for thinking so. Like this, especially, she looks so much smaller than usual.
“This is unlawful detention.”
“Hold still,” Miles instructs, boredly, but still Franziska’s making her best attempt to slap feebly at his prodding hands. “And stop talking, you’ll throw the reading off.”
Honestly, it’s a miracle the old thermometer in his office first-aid kit still has functioning batteries, let alone that he got it in her mouth. Franziska, perhaps having realized how much more it hurts to speak, remains silent at his command—but the razor’s edge of that look in her eye as he evaluates her speaks volumes regardless. She is most certainly making her best attempt to kill him in her head, her pointed scowl only sort of blunted by how horribly sick she looks.
Her reflexes aren’t fast enough to grab the thermometer before he can, and Miles holds the still-beeping thing in his hands and tries, with all he is, not to shove his face into one of the couch pillows and scream bloody murder. Instead, all he can really muster is a sigh as he reads the numbers—104.2f. Good grief.
“I’m taking you to a doctor.”
“You are doing no such thing!”
“Do you have any idea the temperature you are running, right now?”
“If you weren’t such a blathering fool you’d know that’s a good thing!” says Franziska through a voice that’s paper-thin. “My perfect immune system is doing what it’s meant to!”
“Your perfect immune system is doing so poorly that it’s now resorted to cooking you alive,” Miles says right back, and switches the light on his phone on. “Open your mouth.”
“Your foolish nerve is matched only by your foolishly foolhardy audacity, Miles Edgeworth,” she hisses. “You parade me around like a swaddled babe in your arms at our place of work, and you then have the gall to—”
“You’d have preferred it far less if I left you in the stairwell to die, I surmise,” he says, pulling his hands away from her swollen neck and crossing his arms.
“You surmise wrong!” Franziska spits. “I’d sooner perish than have to face my colleagues after they saw you—after they saw me—”
“They saw nothing,” says Miles. “I covered you up with my jacket and no one bothered us on the way here. The evidence is right there, should you doubt me.”
Loosening his stance, he gestures vaguely toward the velvety thing as he says it. It’s lain over Franziska like a blanket, and it’ll likely need a hell of a wash with how much of that fever she’s sweating out directly on it. Occupational hazards of being a sibling, he supposes, it wouldn’t be the first time someone got bodily fluids all over his work clothes, or even the first time Franziska did so.
Something softens in her as she draws the thing closer. Touched, perhaps, at the forethought to make sure she was not humiliated… or maybe just exhausted in every possible way. Phone in hand, then, Miles tries again.
“I just want a look, Franziska.” He eases her in, like he’s handling a spooked mare, same as always. “Please.”
The furious curl of her lip doesn’t waver, nor do the teeth he knows are pressed tight beneath it. She looks off to the side, eyes downcast, and despite how hard she’s trying to look tough, her brother can see the pain cloaked within. Schooling her expression back into something more flippant and haughty, she rolls her eyes and faces him head on.
“Whatever will get you to cease your foolish rambling.”
It’s a struggle not to visibly cringe when he sees what he’s working with. Whatever’s wreaking havoc on her throat should’ve been looked at long before this point, that much is readily apparent even to a layman’s eye. Barely a moment passes before he lowers his phone light away from the angry, splotchy, white-dotted inflammation, a truly calamitous sigh falling from his lips. Variables and sentiments tangle in his head as he tries to figure out exactly what to say to her—with her fever this high, the fight will likely leave her quickly, but way back in 2018 with a bullet lodged in her shoulder she still managed to throw a pretty mean punch.
“Are you satisfied?”
Her voice is leaving little-by-little. It’s a struggle not to loosen his cravat with one finger, sympathy pains needling at his own throat every time she speaks.
“Not particularly, no.”
His arms are crossed again, and he stares down at her with that look the two of them most often leveled at one another—exasperated concern. Honestly, they could stand to start keeping a tally of who was giving it to who most often, just one more ridiculous thing for the pair to compete at.
“In my completely unprofessional opinion,” continues Miles, “that’s proper tonsillitis.”
Franziska narrows feverbright eyes. “So?”
“So, you need antibiotics and a few days’ rest, for one,” he says, cringing at the memory of the one and only time that same affliction had ever struck him down.
“Don’t be so dramatic.” She makes an attempt to cross her own arms beneath the cover of his jacket. “This sort of thing happens all the time. It goes away on its own.”
“Perhaps it would have if you’d stayed off your feet in the first place…”
From behind him, finally, comes the bubbling rumble of his electric kettle on its base. Miles keeps on talking as he spoons a generous amount of honey into Franziska’s favourite medicinal blend, the one she always took when her near-chronic sore throats were causing her trouble.
“...we’re long past that point, however.”
As he’s traying the steaming cup, placing it down on the coffee table in front of her, taking in the flush on her otherwise too-pale cheeks, he gestures a half-folded palm at her right shoulder.
“I recall you said the same of a certain prior affliction.”
“And I was correct. I played my part as well as I could, with you stuffing me into that miserable hospital bed.”
“In the short term, yes.” He nudges her tea a bit closer. “Immediately followed by you being out of work for weeks to recover from the overexertion.”
“These events are not comparable, Miles Edgeworth.”
When she finally breaches her cover to take hold of his offering, it’s easy to see where the hesitation came from—the world outside his suit jacket is cold and unforgiving, exacerbating her trembling form so thoroughly that she has to close her eyes to steady herself. When she finally manages to bring the shaking cup to her lips, Miles watches with heart aching at the way she winces as she drinks. Even the act of swallowing something that should by all means be soothing is causing her enough pain that she cannot hide it. Franziska, of course, would do anything to cloak weakness.
“I do disagree,” he says, “though I am curious as to why you so stubbornly let it get this bad. Normally when you’re ill I see neither hide nor hair of you until the thing has passed.”
“That’s why I was in the stairwell.”
“Which I frequent often, as I’m sure you know.”
“I did not think I would be so unlucky as to run into your foolish self there!” she barks at him, before cringing again as her vocal chords fray.
“You’re dodging the question.”
“Hmph.” Another sip of tea, another unfortunate twisting of her features. “It felt the same as ever.”
“That doesn’t look to be the case.”
“I did not notice myself getting any worse for wear,” she tells him. “Unlike some foolishly demotivated prosecutors, I take my work very seriously. I was far too focused on the noble pursuit of justice to take much stock of my irrelevant physical state.”
“I see,” says Miles, sipping at his own tea and looking out the massive office windows. “Those sore throats you get have always been quite the thorn in your side, it seems.”
With his back turned, he can’t see the way she’s eyeing him, head tipped almost imperceptibly to one side. Still, Miles can almost feel it there on his shoulders, practiced and quiet—laden with suspicion, her nose all scrunched up as she squints. Where do you intend to lead me, her razorsharp gaze inquires, and still—as always—she follows nonetheless.
“An unfortunate challenge for the powers that be to thrust upon someone whose job it is to speak, yes,” says Franziska. “Thankfully, a von Karma works best under pressure.”
“That much is true, I suppose,” Miles turns back around, the coming sunset painting all his features in warm light. “So you wouldn’t choose to do away with it, then? You’d rather live with that inconvenience?”
“What do you mean do away with it?” Franziska blinks owlishly at him. “Such a thing is too foolishly dreamlike to even think of.”
Miles blinks right back at her.
“...do you seriously not know what a tonsillectomy is?”
“Of course I—!” Her feverish cheeks burn twice as hot, and she looks just as dizzy and encumbered with the fury of it. “Yes, you imbecile, I know of the procedure. Would that truly solve my predicament, though?”
“It would certainly solve this one. I have a hunch your throat will bother you far less.” He walks back over to her. “Of course, you’d have to suffer through the recovery period. But certainly less time wasted, in the long run.”
Franziska pulls the lip of the teacup closer to her face, looking into its still-steaming waters at her ill and wavering reflection. Again, she looks awfully small with her eyes downcast, as if she’s looking not into the remnants of her tea, but a vast ocean—trying to gather the courage to dive headfirst into the churning waves. When she speaks once more, Miles can’t tell if the timid quiet of her voice is the painful rasp’s doing, or something more genuine.
“...how long is the recovery period?”
“For you?” He smirks at her. “Ten days.”
“What do you mean ‘for you’?”
“I mean you have a penchant for recovering at a positively inhuman rate,” says Miles. “Two weeks in von Karman is about ten days.”
She waves a hand at him, shutting her eyes and sipping her tea once more. “I haven’t the time to lay around being an invalid.”
“I’m sure, Franziska,” he agrees. “Let’s get that fever down then, yes? I will personally take you in for antibiotics and ice cream.”
One searing blue eye cracks open, locked onto him with precision. “Are you offering to pay?”
“Come now. I’m not so uncouth that I would make my poor, sick sister buy herself dessert,” he says. “In fact, I’ll even schedule the surgery for you myself, should you choose to pursue it.”
“Fine, Miles Edgeworth. I do believe we have a deal.”
She finishes off her tea, with great effort. Her hands shake ever-so-slightly less as she places the ornate little cup back on its tray, a soft clinking that sings of better things. Then, a heavy sigh, one that tells of all the exhaustion she’s trying to hide from him, coming undone in silent resignation.
“One condition, though,” continues Franziska, expression resolute despite it all. “One which you will deny under no circumstances.”
“Oh?” He picks up her now-empty teacup, absentmindedly eying his watch as he goes. “And what is that, Franziska?”
Bitterly, she scowls. With her whole face. Infusing her ire into the very air that hangs around them, so that absolutely nothing is free of the bite of it.
“This time,” Franziska says, “I will be picking the clinic.”