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By intermission, the bucket seats around them have all cleared, and Franziska trusts her conclusion that they will not be filling back up any time soon.
There in the eye of the storm, it almost looks as though she and Maya have put up some sort of magical force-field—an invisible barrier, warding off anyone who might want to sit beside, behind, adjacent to them. Perhaps the metaphor is not too far off, as there is most certainly a miasma of microscopic peril wafting around them… but magic is certainly not the whimsical word Franziska would use for it, that much is certain.
Maya is nearly bent in half, coughing the world’s most miserably wet cough into her scarf. Even behind both layers—the thick winter scarf, and the little pink mask she’s wearing—the sound is terribly loud and arduous, doing no favours for her throat or for Franziska’s wavering heart. It’s a truly alarming noise, unrelenting, breathless, from somewhere deep in her chest. With the lilting, hummingbird soprano Maya usually saunters through life in, it’s almost impossible to believe that her fraying vocal chords are even capable of a sound like that.
The worst part is the way they tumble into each other—one horrible hacking fit seems to trail off, and then the desperate attempt for oxygen thereafter catches, falters, deteriorates into an even more frightful onslaught. It’s during one of these prolonged barrages that Franziska makes her decision—arm still poised there on Maya’s back, rubbing purposeful circles into the muscles there as they wildly spasm.
“Maya,” she says, right beside the girl’s ear, as tender as can be despite the domineering shape of the sentence that follows, “we’re going home.”
“Franzy, nooooo,” Maya all but wails. “I was telling you the truth! I feel—”
“Fine, yes, I recall.”
She moves her hand up and over, giving Maya’s shoulder a firm squeeze—I love you, it says first, and then, do not argue with me.
“...and I disagree. You are not fine, dearest. You are coughing up the proverbial lung.”
“I sound worse than I feel!” Maya stares up at her with big, watery eyes—whether that’s from the heartbreak or the illness is anyone’s guess. “C’mon, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! It’s the first time they’ve used the Jammin’ Ninja since, uh—s-since like 2019!”
“I am aware of the stakes,” says Franziska, “though I sincerely doubt you are able to hear any of Mr. Ninja’s crooning over the cacophony of your own ailment.”
“I can hear just fine! Besides, all that really matters is that I see the action, so—”
With each word that strings the sentence together, Maya’s voice gets thinner and thinner. Swallowed up by the beastly thing that lives in her chest, gnashing at the bars of its cage and pounding its fists hard against her breastbone. This time, when she crumbles, Franziska instinctively splays her arms to catch Maya—hold her aloft in the theater lights as she coughs and coughs and coughs.
The horrid things reverberate against Franziska’s forearm—a low, barking sound that seems to shake her sick darling’s windpipe like a tree in a hurricane. This morning, Maya had insisted they were ‘getting better,’ through a voice that was ten times less shredded than the one she’s speaking with now. Franziska hadn’t noticed through the winter layers she was wearing—but as she doubles forward and touches her face to her doting girlfriend’s arms, every inch of skin burns red-hot.
“—ugh,” Maya croaks out, still just limp in Franziska’s grasp. “Those ones made me lightheaded…”
Wordlessly, then, Franziska inhales deeply—a long, slow blink, as if to steel her will before she methodically and silently stands, dragging Maya up alongside her. A squeak leaves Maya’s lungs as she’s hoisted, and that squeak turns into more coughing, interspersed with languid protest as Franziska begins the process of bodily dragging her sick girlfriend out of the mazey rows of seats, folded up and rattling their cheap, plastic song. Once upon a time, perhaps, there would be some part of the ever-proper, image-obsessed prosecutor that might feel embarrassed about making such a scene… but with the near emptied theater around them and the way Franziska’s doing everyone here a favour (not to mention the fact that she’s at such a foolishly juvenile event to being with) she can’t find it in her to care, today.
The tip Franziska gives their cab driver might be the most generously large sum the poor, overworked woman has seen in all her years on earth. It’s the least she can do in the circumstances, really, a cent for every wretched microbe that Maya had most certainly plastered across the condemned upholstery. If the weather weren’t so bad, she’d have half a mind to walk—carrying Maya on her back like some kind of primate tending to their weak-legged young.
Outside their window, the downpour has turned into a proper thunderstorm. Fat, noisy raindrops batter the dotted glass, their song almost rivaling the decibel that Maya is still somehow coughing at. The intensity and amount at which she struggles through the ailing sounds doesn’t at all suggest she should have much of a voice left. Yet still, they tear through her, as frequent and earsplitting as ever.
When Franziska arrives back in the bedroom with metal tray in hand, it’s on the tail end of another one of those awful coughing fits. If the noise hadn’t carried through the halls, it would still be written all over Maya’s face—the way she winces in punctuation, eyebrows at an anguished slant, frowning with her whole face, a tired whine barely materializing in her throat. That done, Franziska watches from the threshold as her beloved sinks down beneath the covers of their shared bed—her hair two twin streams of inkspill on the comforter, which is pulled up to her reddened eyes. It’s a dreadful thought, and Franziska’s loath to think it, but… sometimes even her misery can be awfully adorable.
“Go away,” Maya says in a voice that can only be described as petulant, pouty, pitiful. She narrows her eyes with exaggeration. “We’re having a fight.”
Franziska tries not to grin, really, she does. “Oh, are we now?”
“Yes! I’m mad at you!” Maya shuffles beneath the covers, and it’s clear she’s crossing her arms. She snaps her eyes shut with a huff. “You know how much I wanted to see that stage play!”
“Well, you saw half of it,” says Franziska. “Can’t you just be half-mad at me?”
“Half a Steel Samurai vs. The Jammin’ Ninja is worth one whole domestic!”
“Pity…” Franziska heaves a performative sigh, looking down to the mugs resting there on her little tray. “Certainly, a girl who’s this furious with me doesn’t have it in her to accept a warm drink, yes?”
Maya cracks one eye open.
“...what sort of warm drink?”
“Oh, nothing special, of course,” says Franziska, sly-eyed and half-smirking. “Just authentic German chocolate melted down into pure liquid bliss, utterly ruined with American sugar and that wretched, aerosolated peppermint whipped cream you’ve pushed onto me.”
Maya lowers the covers, finally, so Franziska can see the rest of her face. “You love that shit.”
“I am chemically addicted,” Franziska scowls, “there is a distinction.”
For some reason, that’s what makes Maya finally crack a smile. “Well… I guess I could find it in my heart to accept a peace offering in times of civil war.”
“Let the record show that one of my favourite things about you has always been your capacity for mercy.”
“Don’t forget forgiveness.”
“Of course,” says Franziska as she is setting the tray upon Maya’s lap, “forgiveness, as well.”
“And my fat, juicy ass.”
“Yes, well,” Franziska clears her throat in an attempt to shake the heat from her face. “Some things do go without saying.”
It’s obvious just looking at her how badly Maya wants to snicker devilishly at that—holding back only because she fears the laugh will catch in her throat, tumble her into more coughing that ravages what’s left of it. She picks up her hot chocolate, stirred to perfection in the biggest mug the two of them own—a huge, novelty item sculpted in the shape of the Cobalt Crusader’s head. Given how hard it was nowadays to find merch of the character, Franziska’s not sure the thing is official, and it may or may not contain a nonzero amount of lead, but Maya loves it so much that neither of them can really bear to get rid of it.
And, though a nightmare to clean, it is ginormous. Nearly twice the size of the far more modest cup Franziska takes her own drink in, plain grey with black interior, the polar opposite of Maya’s. The creamy melt of the whip atop it beckons her, and so she crawls into bed beside Maya and fusses with their pillows, making sure everything is in order and comfortable for her sick darling’s recovery.
There, with her legs laid flat beneath the covers, Maya holds another flurry of uncomfortable sounds behind her teeth, tries instead to focus on the warmth of the mug as it spreads across her fingertips. Franziska feels the girl’s blazing cheek hit her shoulder, tuts a bit in worry as she shifts her cocoa to one hand to free the other up. It cranes its way around Maya’s torso, up to her crown, still done-up in the trademark topknot she hasn’t the mind nor dexterity to loosen.
Franziska gets to work undoing it for her, then, fiddling with the tie while Maya sighs a sigh laden with equal parts relief and misery.
“Come now, what must I do to lift your spirits?” comes her voice from above as Maya begins the slow process of sipping at her cocoa, still just a little too hot. “I’ve already appealed to your tastebuds. Usually, that fixes you up rather quickly.”
“It’s not your fault,” Maya says, defeated, as if blaming Franziska was somehow invigorating her, and the acknowledgement has knocked the wind from her sails. “I’m sorry. I’m just grumpy. I was so into it, I just… wanted to see how it ends.”
“I’m sure there’s a write-up somewhere out there,” Franziska says, then seems to brighten a little. “Oh! Come to think of it, I do believe Miles and Ms. Kay Faraday saw it on opening day a year or two back. Perhaps they could relay the ending to you?”
Maya shakes her head. “They switch up the plot beats every time they put it on. Something about it being good for engagement. There’s like, six different versions of the show out there, who knows which one we would’ve gotten.”
“Wow. That is…” Franziska blinks dumbly, at nothing in particular, “…quite a choice.”
“Yeah,” Maya pouts, blowing softly on her drink. The cream seems to have cooled it enough—when she takes a cursory sip moments later, there is no recoil that follows, no nursing of her scalded tongue. There is, however, a certain sparkle that enters her big, brown eyes—pupils wide-blown, mouth hanging open in wonder.
“What the hell is in this?”
“Honey, turmeric, cinnamon…” says Franziska, a slow sip of her own drink breaking up the list. “A little bit of salt, of course. That malady you’re nursing isn’t suited to anything other than decadence, my love. Of course, it’s a little too spicy for my tastes, but…”
“God, you’re a weak bitch,” Maya says, her blunt tongue somehow only sort of betraying the way she smacks a big kiss onto the side of Franziska’s face. “Thank goodness for that hot bod of yours.”
“Am I nothing more than a piece of meat to you?” Franziska does all she can to force the words to sound affronted, but the grin on her face is doing the performance no favours.
“You fishing for compliments?” says Maya. “You want me to tell you all about how you’re so doting, and kind, and smart as hell?”
“Speaking of…” Franziska sets her cocoa down on the side table, as if… preparing for something. “I think I’ve an idea for how to remedy your heartbreak regarding the show, as well.”
“Oh yeah?” Maya clears some of the gunk from her throat, to wonderfully surprising success. “What, you gonna wave your checkbook around at all the actors and get ‘em to put on a show here while I waste away in bed?”
“The idea is that you refrain from any wasting,” says Franziska. “And, well… no, that was not my intent, but I was thinking… if the ending is different every time… what’s to stop us from simply crafting our own?”
The words float around Maya’s head like little cotton spores along the wind. Drifting into her ears, slowed by the heat of the fever she’s still running. Franziska watches as they settle in the magma that bubbles there in her poor, addled cranium—bursting alight as they touch down.
“Fanfiction?!” Maya properly guffaws the word. “You want to write Steel Samurai crossover fanfiction?!”
There is nothing in the world I want to do less, Franziska does not say. Only Maya could ever make her bite that poisonous tongue of hers.
“You are ill,” Franziska says instead, “and, as you were lamenting mere moments ago, you deserve a proper ending to the show I so cruelly dragged you away from.”
Maya’s leveling that look at her. The one that lives somewhere akin to smug disbelief. It cuts through anything and everything Franziska dares to say, says I freakin’ dare you without saying a word. Amused and condescending all at once, Franziska mostly just finds herself glad that Maya’s smiling at all, no matter how smarmy that grin is right now.
“Yeah, alright, babe,” Maya says, that wonderful air of mischievousness edging into the low, sickly tone of her voice. “So, how do you think it ends?”
“I—” Truthfully, Franziska hadn’t expected Maya to ask her first. “Why me?!”
“Because you’re the one who made me leave!” Maya gestures her nearly-empty mug accusingly at her girlfriend. “C’mooon! I’m weak and sickly, I’m falling apart—”
“—you said you were fine an hour ago—”
“Trivial!” Maya huffs, and polishes off her cup, slamming it down on the side-table so passionately that Franziska worries it may shatter to ceramic confetti right there. “I’m soooo frail and pitiful, my brain’s too full of germs to work!”
“Oh come now.” Franziska crosses her arms. “Knowing you, babbling about your foolish little samurai characters is far more likely to heal this ailment than anything.”
Franziska watches as Maya’s features all soften, a wave of realization falling over her like cool mist on a summer morning. “Oh! Shit, yeah, that always makes me feel better, doesn’t it?”
“Indeed,” says Franziska. “So… where were we?”
Sure enough, Franziska watches with no small amount of amusement as all the life seems to return to Maya’s body. Her colour resaturates, her eyes lose some of the fog, even her voice seems to gain a bit of its body back.
“We open back in on the scene of the fight!” Maya pumps a fist in the air, for dramatic effect. “There in the courtyard of the Evil Magistrate’s castle, our Steel Samurai believes he has won… the Jammin’ Ninja lies collapsed at his feet, fingers grasping for naught at his guitar as it rests on the cropped grass, just out of reach—!”
“You’re quite the orator,” Franziska says, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Aww, thanks. I wanna make video essays, but Nick won’t let me use his camera,” says Maya. “Anyways! The Samurai turns to leave, noble to the end. He will not strike down an opponent who has already lost. But! The second his back his turned—”
“Don’t tell me,” Franziska looks to her with scrutiny painted all across her brow. “The fool grabs his guitar.”
“He does!” Maya cheers, almost as if she’s rooting for the guy? “And with it in his hands, he plays a dark chord—darker than any we’ve heard before, with a voice just as dark to match!”
“Calling upon the help of his impossibly omnipresent menagerie?”
Maya shakes her head. “Not this time… the song he plays… summons not the helpful creatures of the forests that surround the castle… but the minions of the Magistrate himself!”
“That fiend,” Franziska spits, oddly invested. “So he was on the villain’s side all along… and here I hoped he was of noble heart.”
“Ah-ah-ah,” tuts Maya, “not so fast. ‘Cause, y’see, as the army of the Magistrate begins to pour from every gatehouse and tower… The Steel Samurai swivels back around to face them, y’know, ‘cause he’s brave or whatever the fuck. And he’s not stupid, either—ol’ Steely’s got a pretty sharp eye on him. So he’s like, got his spear in hand and he’s looking on at the crowds as they near, getting ready to take ‘em…”
“And?” The egging-on continues. “What is it that he sees, there?”
“The henchfolk are all being controlled, obvs, they’ve got their eyes all glowing and shit, enchanted with the magic of the Ninja’s song,” Maya says, “but as the Samurai looks into the center of the hurricane… he sees that the Ninja’s eyes are glowing, too.”
Franziska gasps. The thunder off yonder roars alongside her. “Impossible! Maya Fey, do you mean to tell me that we’ve looped back around?”
Another snicker, utter delight at Franziska’s investment. “Whaddya mean, babe?”
“When the two of them met up, I was skeptical that Mr. Jammin’ Ninja was on the hero’s side. After all, why else would he be so far into the stronghold of the enemy?”
“I mean, were you paying attention?” Maya asks. “He said that he was there for the same reason Steely was: the Magistrate had kidnapped Misola.”
“Yes, but… something about that doesn’t seem quite right to me,” Franziska notes, her brow furrowed intensely, the same way it often was when she was poring over her evidence binders. “Her Highness Miss Misola is of phenomenally strong will, Maya Fey. Not only that, she’s physically adept as well. You’ll recall in episode seventy-nine that she near flawlessly took down the Shōgun of Serenade while severely disarmed, and this instance was not the exception but the rule.”
A truly tremendous silence follows this outpouring of information, nothing to fill it but the rain picking up outside. Maya looks at Franziska like she personally crawled up into the cosmos that night, meticulously hung every last star, and cracked her whip at the heavens themselves to make sure those galaxies would spin nightlong.
“Franzy!” Maya grabs her shoulders, relents asymmetrically when Franziska winces in response. “You like Jammin’ Ninja and you never told me!”
“Like is a particularly strong word!” Franziska says, nudging out of her grip. “I’ve merely seen the whole series up to its cancellation!”
“Wh—how—” Maya breaks off to the side when the sputtering turns to more coughing, her eyes a bit wet from the exertion, “—why?!”
“Work?” says Franziska, as if it is obvious. Maya just keeps coughing, prompting her girlfriend to nervously rub more circles into her convulsing back.
“Fucking work?!” Maya takes a deep breath, manages to gain a handle on herself. “You watched like 120 episodes of the Jammin’ Ninja for work?!”
“And 145 episodes of The Nickel Samurai,” Franziska admits, “which I found far more intellectually stimulating, though I do not believe anyone should have died about it.”
“What in the sweet and sour fuck…”
“May we return to the point?” Franziska snaps her fingers for effect. “The idea of the Magistrate capturing Princess Misola is laughable at best.”
“So you thought they were in cahoots?”
“Of course,” proclaims Franziska, a peal of thunder rumbling in the distance, bolstering her claim. “Naturally I was skeptical, then, when he allied himself with the Samurai. And vindicated when he turned traitor! But, in this story we’ve crafted… it sounds like he is being controlled after all!”
“Augh!” Maya cries, dramatically. “You figured my plot threads out, though… the Magistrate was gonna use the Jammin’ Ninja’s voice to lure Misola in. Of course he couldn’t take her.”
“A-ha!” Franziska preens, with her chest all puffed up. “Perhaps I should consider a career change, if scriptwriting is this effortless…”
“Then you finish things up.” Maya weakly slaps her arm, smiling all the way. “How’s it end, genius?”
“I—”
Franziska slots her chin in between her thumb and forefinger, puzzling quietly over the details as they run through her head. The deluge outside seems to shift and waver in tandem with it all, curtaining down over the nighttime and rustling the palms that frame their shared LA apartment.
“...naturally, I think the Jammin’ Ninja is liable to sue Mr. Steel Samurai for slander and battery.”
“Franzy!”
“What?!” She assumes her rigid, artificially big, crossed-arms stance. “Someone ought to be held accountable for all of this!”
“The Magistrate? The actual bad guy?!”
“He shall be tried for his crimes at a later date!” Franziska argues back, trying with all she is to sound serious, stern, as though this is not a bit she is doing with Maya, but a case she is wholly committed to taking to trial herself. “Besides, if we focus on his wrongdoings rather than Mr. Samurai’s, the joke I am attempting to set up will not land properly. As I’m sure you know, we cannot have that.”
“Woah, your one joke a year?” Maya looks at her with half-faked wonder. “Is it finally time?”
“Yes. After much consideration, I have decided that the best time to flex my admittedly atrophied sense of humour is in the presence of your illness,” says Franziska. “With the hope, of course, that laughter truly is the best medicine. Are you ready, Maya Fey?”
“Oh, I am so ready.” She slaps her hands together, attentive and looking more like her bubbly self already. “Lay it on me, babe. Make me cackle all the goo outta my shitty lungs.”
Franziska clears her throat, drags a hand rather uselessly around her sternum, as though she’s straightening a tie that isn’t there. Jaw set, eyes intense, she looks out to some imaginary audience—toward the window, like the raindrops racing down the glass will heckle her if she does not steel her wit.
“A humble node of trivia for you, my love,” Franziska begins. “Did you know that the name of the stage play actually contains a typo?”
“Oh yeah?” Maya looks like she can barely contain herself.
“Indeed,” Franziska says, not a single crack in her composure as she fiddles with the sleeve of her satin pyjama shirt. “In actuality, it is supposed to be titled The Steel Samurai v. The Jammin’ Ninja.”
Another quiet beat of silence allows the words to register in Maya’s head, nothing but the sound of raindrops on the window, cars zooming across the overpass two blocks down. The chugging of their failing humidifier, loaded with eucalyptus and puffing its applause to the ceiling. In her own, strange equivalent to a mic drop, Franziska nudges her way out of bed without another word, and Maya doubles over laughing so hard that it quickly turns to even more coughing.
It’s hard to see Franziska curtsy with her eyes shut tight—their crescent moons there on the borderline where pain and pleasure meet. Somehow, though, Maya knows that’s what she’s doing, having spent enough time beside her beloved that it crystallizes there on the back of her lids. That done, and more than satisfied with herself, Franziska rounds the bed and grabs Maya’s empty cup, eager to get the jump on the quickly-drying remnants of cocoa and spice, before they find their dastardly way into every little niche and dip of the ceramic.
Not before stopping by Maya’s side of the bed, though. The sound of her laughter, even as she struggles through it—stops to hack up a lung, goes right back to howling—is blessed, always, but something about its raspy tenor now sounds twice as sweet. As she listens to it, Franziska envisions the storm whipping at the trees outside clearing, quieting, dark clouds parting to reveal a glorious rainbow, every colour looking twice as saturated in the absence of the grey that precluded it.
Eversoft and impossibly tender, then, she leans over to brush Maya’s sweatlogged bangs back, press a slow and lingering kiss to her forehead. The heat she finds there is far from gone, but the tepid burn it’s simmering at now is far less concerning than it was mere hours ago.
Franziska pulls away, every second of it feeling like losing a limb. “It seems my faith in this treatment was not unfounded. Would you like some proper food now, Schatzi?”
“Yeah, think I can eat something.” Maya’s eyes flutter open slowly, but stay there at half-rest—dreamy, glimmering, their feverish glaze replaced with something more heartsick, smitten. “But only if I’m munching to the tune of you yapping about in-universe toku litigation. Is that doable?”
Charmed as ever, Franziska smirks, her gaze narrowing in that sly, silvery way it always did. She brings her knuckles to Maya’s cheek, holding this wonderful creature in the palm of her hand. There, with the sound of rain on every side of her, she feels like a goddess holding onto the world itself.
“Your wish is my command.”