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Maya’s in the middle of changing out the discs when her phone goes off. Admittedly, she’s actually a little mesmerized by the cobalt-tinted iridescence on the back of the one in her hand, staring at her wobbly reflection and wondering how the hell they get it that blue. If Edgeworth wasn’t on his freakin’ deathbed she’s sure he’d be nagging her, insistent that she hasten things because they’re about to get to his favourite episode or whatever the fuck. Honestly, she’s kinda starting to miss his stupid nagging, or at the very least his voice, whatever coffee straw he’s speaking through now kinda makes him sound like he’s doing a social media challenge where he gargles rusty nails for Tube’s Tube views—
Right. Her phone.
Her phone’s ringing for a video call, and when she answers it, Franziska’s somehow making the most unflattering angle possible look like something that belongs on a magazine cover. All the sharp cuts of her perfectly-sculpted jaw, how utterly kissable her neck looks, the way her silver locks halo her in the supermarket fluorescents… It’s not until Maya catches her own transfixed expression in Franziska’s pitch black sunglasses that she remembers to be a person, actually answer her girlfriend’s call.
“Am I using this foolish telephone application correctly? You appear to be frozen.”
“No, I-I’m good! Look, you can see this, right?”
She wiggles her fingers into the lens, pulling some sort of face as she does so. Franziska does everything in her power to keep the grin creeping up to a modest quirk of the corner of her mouth. Maya can see it written in her features—she’s supposed to be mad right now. She will be mad.
“Just fine, yes,” says Franziska as she schools her face. “How is our dreadful patient?”
“Objection,” calls Edgeworth, weakly from his throne of pillows and misery. “I have been nothing but courteous since we landed.”
“That’s what she means, sicko,” Maya calls over her shoulder. “You suck ass at being looked after.”
“I’m a fully grown, adult legal practitioner with advanced degrees. I can look after myself just fine.”
“Damn, if only they taught you about flu shots in law school,” she swivels around to face him head on, unmoving. “Maybe then you wouldn’t have nearly eaten shit on the way to the car.”
He opens his mouth to say something more, but just doubles over coughing instead. Even this is something that Edgeworth tries to shrink the shape of, putting on the affectation of a dainty little Victorian lady with tuberculosis. Stifling the things into the back of his hand really doesn’t do much for how nasty they sound, though, and Maya can’t help wincing. Resigned, she finally manages to put the next disc into the console, letting it play while she lugs herself over to the plague rat to do... anything that might help.
“That answer your question, babe?”
Franziska’s looking offscreen, jaw stuck out in that way that so often signaled annoyance at the world and everyone who dared to exist within it. Just this once, though, who could really blame her?
Maya had a lot of fun staying in Germany with her, and the fact that Edgeworth was there in the manor alongside them really wasn’t as much of an issue as Franziska had made it out to be. Ever the firm believer in the more the merrier, Maya was pretty stoked to have two stuffy prosecutors to annoy while she was seeing the sights. She’d wanted to talk toku with Edgeworth at some point, as they often did—ask all of his opinions on the new expansions to Steel Samurai canon, bother him for directions to the room where they kept Franziska’s baby pictures, typical not-quite-sister-in-law stuff. She never did get to do any of that, evidently way too obsessed with her girlfriend to do anything other than hang all over her like some kind of love-starved baby spider monkey.
Which might be fine, since they kind of have all the time in the world now, on account of… well.
Packing had gone fine, as had the flight back, as had their first night on American soil once more. The plan was to take a late plane, stay the night in Edgeworth’s fruity little apartment, and then in the morning he would personally drive Maya and Franziska back to Kurain to enjoy the rest of their vacation. All of that would have been very kind of him, if he hadn’t passed out like five steps from his car with a fever so high it could’ve cooked Maya a damn burger.
Shit, now she’s hungry. Mental notes are made to ask Fran for something greasy on her way home from…
The supermarket.
Regal, stuffy, holier-than-thou prodigy prosecutor Franziska von Karma is currently doing her best impression of one of the commonfolk as she plays hunter-gatherer in the Foolish American Supermarket. Because Edgeworth’s house had no real food or medicine on account of it also having no him. Franziska doesn’t seem like the type of person who’d be anyone’s first choice when it comes to grocery shopping, but Maya’s brain is much bigger than the average person’s, and she knows a couple of basic truths about the matter:
1. Maya herself is a broke ass bitch with unmedicated ADHD, who will get easily distracted by food and toys meant for children Pearly’s age. Much as she will insist otherwise, she is not to be trusted with anyone’s wallet.
2. Franziska loves Edgeworth (Awww!)
3. Franziska’s love language is acts of service, and she might not actually know how to show affection in any other form.
4. Germans are obsessed with efficiency in literally every mundane area of life. If Maya has to constantly listen to Franziska insist that there is a “correct” way to bag groceries, then Franziska is going to be the one doing just that forever as penance for her deranged standards.
So there she is. In her Sunday best, like she walked right out of court and right into the OTC section. The OTC section that, at present, is probably in danger of melting into a syrupy grey puddle of medicinal (or psychoactive…) euphoria with the heat of Franziska’s frustration.
“Why are there so many?!” Franziska is growling into the receiver. “There are three different flavours of the same syrup! For what purpose?!”
“I refuse to believe Ms. Cherry-Lozenges-Only-If-You-Get-Me-Zat-Foolish-Honey-Driffel-I-Vill-Flog-You-To-A-Red-Paste is questioning the flavour selection of the cold medicine.”
“Th-that’s not relevant!” Is she sweating? “Lozenges are eight parts comfort and two parts medicine. Cough syrup is wholly medicinal.”
“Would anyone like to ask me,” Edgeworth shuts his eyes and leans back balefully, “if I would even like liquid medicine to begin with?”
Franziska ignores him, squinting at the aisles. “What on earth is the distinction for severe?! If an illness is severe, wouldn’t that warrant a doctor’s intervention?”
“Oh, you sweet European thang,” Maya coos enviously. “Anyways, there should be, like, a dual pack of daytime and nighttime shit. Get that one.”
“Get it in pill form,” adds Edgeworth, in a poor man’s impression of his courtroom voice.
Despite the scowl on her face, Franziska obliges, though she pauses for a beat to read the excessive blend of active ingredients on the back of the box. “Does he even need anything else? You’d think they put every legal pharmaceutical on the planet within this remedy."
“Yeah, that’ll knock him out good,” Maya grins, half-paying attention as the TV distracts her with the sound of clashing blades. “Food, though. Probably important.”
“Food,” Franziska frowns harder, bracing herself for the general horrors of the Average American Diet. “How long should I stock for, do you think?”
“I mean, you said Plagueworth’s for sure got the flu, right?”
“Not my name.”
“Definitely your name right now,” Maya says. “We’re legally changing it. I’m a lawyer.”
“You are not.”
“I can be.” She throws him a sleazy grin, sticks her fingers skyward and tangles them in the channeling position. Maya lives for the fear that flashes in Edgeworth’s eyes, like he’s seriously convinced she’s gonna raise her sister from the dead just to win an argument. It’s like crack, that look.
“Can we please stay focused?” Franziska barks from inside her phone, so loud Maya swears she feels the failing speaker vibrate.
“Right.” Maya turns back to face her. “How long does the flu last?”
A hefty sigh, laden with pre-emptive misery. “Two weeks, at best.”
“Right, so just get like, all the chicken soup they have.”
“Objection,” says Miles again, “no one is making you two stay that long.”
“I have zero confidence in your ability to drive yourself to a hospital should you take a turn for the worse,” says Franziska.
“Who’s to say I will even attempt?”
“You won’t, and that is precisely why Maya and I are staying,” she continues. “Do I seem thrilled about babysitting you? It’s simply what must be done, while you are stubborn and invalid.”
Edgeworth probably has some other nonsense to say to that, but instead he just rears back and sneezes a sneeze so loud it shakes the walls, his attempts to muffle it into the sleeve of his stupid pink pyjamas completely failed. Franziska takes that as confirmation that she’s won, the furiously squeaky song of her shopping cart wheels acting as a response all their own.
“My culinary training is notably lacking,” says Franziska as she’s squinting at the aisle signs, “Maya Fey. Do you know how to prepare a proper chicken noodle?”
“What? Like from scratch?” she says, walking over to the kitchen to survey what meager trappings remain in the cabinets. “Dude, no, in America we put that shit in a can and microwave it.”
“I am not microwaving soup for my sick brother.”
“Then you better get real good at cooking real soon.”
Maya hears the vague clang of several cans hitting the metal of her shopping cart. No one says anything in response to this noise.
Franziska clears her throat after a beat. “How are we on tea?”
“It’s Edgeworth,” Maya rolls her eyes, not feeling like she needs to check, but opening the cabinet for good measure. Sure enough, it’s full to bursting. “Yeah, he’s fine.”
As if to punctuate, she hears him coughing that shitty cough of his in the other room. That’s as good a cue as any to flip the kettle back on, meander around his fancy little kitchen while she waits for it to boil. Honestly, she’d never really expect someone like Edgeworth to have a place quite like this—the marble countertops and hardwood floors make sense, but everything else is just so… cozy. He’s got earthtones everywhere, all warm browns and deep reds—decorative kitchen towels, bowls and plates with black insides and rich, umber outsides. All the little organizing racks and towers are made of ebony steel and polished wood, but they don’t have that… sanitized, just-off-the-shelf look to them that Maya’s used to from bougier places. The wood is dented and scratched, changed with time, and she finds that endlessly lovely as she’s cloudwatching in the shape of that wear. At her flank, the kettle rumbles for her attention.
“You know tea, right?” Maya asks Franziska, who is lost in the grocery aisles. “What’s best for illness?”
“It depends on the symptoms, really,” she responds near-instantly, the annoyance in her voice undercut with the slightest hint of delight. “For that fool… he thinks honey lemon is his best bet, though I sincerely doubt its medical efficacy.”
“Caretaking can’t just be about efficiency, y’know?” Maya pours messily, wincing a little as some of the hot fallout gets her arm. “Comfort matters, too. You gotta strike a balance between making someone get better and making someone feel better.”
“That is a wonderful sentiment, and I do love that you see things the way you do,” says Franziska as she continues to wander. “However, Miles is my annoying little brother and he is twice as annoying when he’s ill.”
“Oh please, everything annoys you.” In dips the tea bag, and then Maya’s making her way back down the hall to where the patient in question is convalescing. “He could cough the most delicate little lady coughs and you’d still threaten to beat him.”
“Nothing about the noises he makes is delicate.”
“Sorry not everyone in the world can be blessed with your sweet little kitten sneezes, Franzy.” A sly-eyed smirk, lopsided and flirty. “We can’t all be as perfect as you.”
“They’re not—” Her face goes red, and Maya preens. “Why am I arguing about this? Maya Fey, release me from this prison of overprocessed food items and rampant consumerism.”
“You’re the one shopping, babe,” says Maya. “Leave whenever.”
“Do you think this is adequate for his recovery for the time being?”
“Let me go make sure he’s alive, first.”
And so she does. Legendary prosecutor Miles Edgeworth is, in fact, still alive—though the word barely comes to mind as Maya’s taking him in, looking like he’s melting on the couch. The wastebasket stopped having room for all the tissues like, an hour ago, and if Edgeworth were well he’d probably be taking care of that, but… the consumption has completely overtaken the poor guy, and so he’s just kind of got wads of tissues tucked into all the various nooks and crannies of the couch. Half of them are just crammed in the now-empty box in what she can only assume is an attempt at being slightly less gross. Maya somehow hadn’t realized that there was already a tea mug on the coffee table, the bag still quietly damp and rotting inside. There’s that weird… humid quality that always seems to linger around a room where someones been sick, like the repugnance of germs itself is weighing down the air. If Maya hadn’t been nagged to shit by Franziska to get her own flu shot back in like September, she’s certain she’d be down for the count in mere hours.
Out of fear for Edgeworth’s livelihood, Maya angles the phone camera… upward. Toward the ceiling, so Franziska can’t see how much of a damn shitshow the place is. Maybe it won’t be so bad—Franziska does have this weird love for tidying, even if she does it angrily and complains the whole time, Maya can tell she’s kind of having a blast. Still, her patience will definitely be wearing thin after being forced to shop, and Maya can already hear her cries of revulsion and fury ricocheting off the inside of her head like a cute little Fran-shaped pinball.
“What’s happenin’, Nasty?” says Maya to a drooping Edgeworth, buried up to his nose in blankets despite how sweltering the whole place is.
“The continued downfall of Global Studios’ writing staff,” Edgeworth croaks miserably, and Maya eyes the TV to see what’s on. Oh god, she hadn't realized it was this episode, not—
“The horrible Christmas special?!” Maya gasps. “Dude, turn that off, you’ve got trauma and shit!”
“If I did not already loathe the holiday for obvious reasons,” says Edgeworth, “this would have done it, regardless.”
“For real,” Maya says, just kind of gaping at the fact that they really tried to put the Evil Magistrate in a full Santa suit. “Seriously, why are you watching this?”
“My extremities are non-functional.”
“Oh shit, I put on this dogshit and left! I did this to you!” She turns back to her phone. “Fran, he’s alive somehow, but you need to prosecute me for violating the Geneva Convention.”
The prosecutor in question is lost in muscle memory and perfectly rhythmic beeping, probably thinking she’s about to win some award for her self checkout technique. “I have no sympathy for this prisoner.”
She doesn’t even look at the screen as she says it. Definitely keeping time in her head. Maya wants to make out with her, but there’s more important things going on.
“I didn’t even get to answer your question!” says Maya.
“I grew weary of waiting,” Franziska says right back. “This will be enough.”
“If you say so… but you better have gotten everything our poor, suffering patient needs!” Maya puffs out her cheeks. “All the soup in LA. A freakin’ private reservoir of tea. Ooh! And every flavour of ice cream. And hot chips.”
Franziska dares to break her pace to eye Maya sidelong. “Since when are hot chips sick people food?”
“Whaaat? You’ve never partaken in the ancient human art of scalding your sore throat away with spice?”
Suddenly Franziska’s looking at something offscreen, but the beeps of the checkout machine are utterly silent. Maya puts on her crime scene investigation hat she wears at work, combing her memory for the supermarket in question’s layout, and… yeah, they definitely have little snack bags of the spiciest chip on the market on the magazine racks that flank the checklanes.
If Franziska ate even one of those she’d turn red and start crying, all the while refusing to make a single sound and insisting that a von Karma is made of pure tenacity yadda yadda whatever the fuck. And Edgeworth’s not white as a freakin’ sheet like she is so he might last a single second longer, but he is also just some bitch from California who reeks of weak constitution despite the melanin. If Franziska buys those hot chips they’re going directly into Maya’s mouth.
“Your strange foreign methods perplex me as always, Maya Fey,” the crinkling of the snack bag emanates from Franziska right, “but I trust your native expertise, nevertheless.”
“Look man, this is what we do instead of universal healthcare.”
“So I’ve noticed.” Franziska scowls, very obviously flashing back to the first time she heard the phrase medical bill. “I will be home in ten minutes. Goodbye, my dearest.”
“Lateskiiiis,” Maya sings out, and Franziska taps loudly and inelegantly at the phone a few times before disappearing from view. That done, Maya sets the still-warm tea down on the coffee table, specifically so she can dramatically fwump herself down besides the ailing Edgeworth.
“Ugh, where the hell is the remote, dude?”
He’s in the middle of another coughing fit when she asks, drawing the throw blanket miserably around his shoulders and curling into himself like a sad little armadillo. Geez, that hurts to listen to—empathy pangs rocket around Maya’s chest, pounding at her lungs and breaking her heart. All she can really do is rub his back while he unravels, trying not to wince at how the fever blazes through both layers beneath her hand.
“I don’t know,” is what he says when he finally catches his breath, and Maya just clicks her tongue in place of an aww, you poor sick idiot and grabs him his tea.
“Here, drink up,” Maya says, and Edgeworth looks at her with his big watery baby seal eyes, somehow twice as wet and pathetic as usual. “I gotta clean this little freak nest you’ve made anyways. Your hot sister’s gonna dump me if she sees the state of this place.”
Up she goes, then, while Edgeworth sips at his tea. She probably fucked up the steeping, but he doesn’t seem to care—he shuts his eyes as the liquid heat coats every scratch and tear of his shredded throat, looking oddly blissed out despite the bruises beneath his gaze. As she’s clearing out the used tissues—wincing through the grossest game of 52 Pickup ever—Maya supposes it doesn’t really matter if it’s not to his overly-pretentious liking. With all the snot in his big frilly head, he probably can’t taste it right, anyway.
The remote, as it turns out, was jammed in between the couch cushions and buried under a layer of the horrible white biohazard bombs. She believes the thing about Edgeworth not being able to root around for it, though—she remembers the flu. She remembers it well. Aches in places she didn’t know aches could be. It makes sense he’s just growing mold on the couch—the most movement she’s seen from the guy has been the weak attempts to hold himself together while he’s coughing up a lung.
She flicks to the next episode, sparing him the horrible ending. There’s a comment on her tongue about how it’s not much of an improvement—this whole season’s kind of a wash, really—but the words are stolen from her as she hears the failing transmission of Detective Gumshoe’s car, muffled voices, the angry too-hard slamming of a door. Followed, of course, by the furious jangling of keys, the equally furious stomping of winter boots on the concrete outside.
The cleanup isn’t perfect, but Franziska’s eye for perfection had but one soft spot, and thankfully that was Maya. It’s good enough, and that’s what matters.
Finally, then, she looks back to Edgeworth, oddly quiet as she cleaned, and… sure enough, he’s out. Leaning on the armrest with only the top of his head visible, the wheeze in his breathing loud but metered. The sickly red of his face seems to have faded ever-so-slightly, and Maya can’t help staring more-than-a-bit fondly as the pale lights of the explosions on TV dance across his eyelids. On the coffee table, the mugs sit, empty twin sisters.
Maya sits, too. Softly, this time, so as not to wake him up. Remote still in her hand, she turns the volume down low. Franziska’s at the door now, fussing with the lock, because Maya knows without knowing she’s carrying all those bags herself.
“Sleep tight, princess,” Maya whispers devilishly. “Those hot chips are my reward for taking such good care of you.”
Edgeworth, dead to the world, has no objections to that.