Archive of Our Own

Franziska can’t help but take note of how eerie the silence of a college campus is.

Thinking on it for just a minute longer, she supposes that makes sense. It’s not in the nature of a building like this to be quiet—on any other day, the connecting sidewalks would be bustling, the patches of cropped grass dotted with open textbooks and picnic blankets. Knowing the atmosphere of American schools, she’s certain there’d be at least one acoustic guitar crooning out a cliche or three.

Today, all manner of academia and leisure both are smothered by the screaming yellow of police tape. The students, if they know what’s good for them, are following orders to stay in their dorms—though Franziska would certainly not be surprised if they’re using the time off that comes with a murder to party twice as hard.

Revolting. Hypothetically revolting.

For a campus seemingly teeming with scientific genius, the place is oddly compact. When Franziska had heard that not one, but three students had been nominated for one of the more world-renowned grant programs, solely on the basis of their potential for furthering such incredible research, she was expecting only the most paradoxically prestigious of underfunded American colleges. This one was normal as normal could get, though—simply a big building, a couple of smaller ones flanking it like sidecars.

She’d be lying if she pretended not to be excited about her destination, though—the humble little greenhouse on the far end of the campus, its foggy, shining glass now beckoning her as it crests the horizon.

Caduceus Daver was, if witnesses were to be believed, the last person on campus anyone would expect to be the victim of such a heinous act as murder. Franziska could think of a wellspring of reasons why one might be moved to violence during a time as stressful as university. She could think of an equal amount of reasons why one might inflict that violence on a professor. None of them seemed to apply to Professor Daver, though—he was down to earth, he was well-liked, he was good at his job but lenient on his students when they deserved that sort of grace. Franziska had learned of how he asked them to call him by his nickname, Duce. How he would leave the room and snicker ‘duces!’ specifically to playfully irritate his student body. How he was a character, not just a professional, with a delightfully silver-tongue and a way of making his lesson plans undeniably fun. Impossibly, every single person who studied under him even in passing had only good things to say about him.

Of course, Franziska had looked through the last twenty years of his history—trying to find something, a disgruntled ex-student he had failed, perhaps one who had come back for blood. There were a notable few exceptions, but nearly everyone he taught passed every last one of his classes. After all she had heard, Franziska was inclined to believe he was simply that good at engaging them all.

There were those exceptions, though. But before Franziska could look into any of them, the case seemed to nudge itself closed… or, something like that, at least.

Anne Teabody was not one of Professor Daver’s students. She did, however, do most of her own schoolwork in the lab down the hall from his own. Late last night, when engaged in her study, she’d witnessed the woman who was now their suspect fleeing the scene. It was because of her crucial testimony that they were able to make an arrest at all.

This long into her career, Franziska had made a conscious habit not to grow too endeared to her witnesses, lest her faith be misplaced. It was difficult not to like Ms. Teabody, though—she had a very unassuming air about her that was… oddly pleasant. Franziska found herself clashing more often than not with the untidy, unkempt, lazy-looking types (being a woman of extreme professionalism and upkeep herself) but something about Anne made those reservations quiet themselves. Her wild brown hair, her mess of freckles, the upward-slant of her eyes that always made her look a little bit like a tired puppy resting on its paws. The lab coat thrown over the hoodie and sweatpants was certainly a choice, as well.

Teabody was anxious when spoken to, but that was to be expected. Franziska did not find merit in overanalyzing body language, the pseudo-science of it all an eternal thorn in her side. Anne's eyes darted behind big, round, bottlethick glasses, every so often grounding themselves on the black leather that decorated Franziska’s hands. This was, of course, not that deep, but Franziska found herself making an effort to display those hands for her—fold them on the table, when she wasn’t taking notes, give the poor woman something to settle and focus on. It seemed to work, the more that time went on—Teabody’s voice shook less, her fidgeting quieted, and she spoke thoroughly and analytically of what she saw.

Most importantly of all was the deep breath she took before she revealed—with all the courage she could muster—that some crucial evidence had been hidden away in a place where the authorities weren’t likely to find it. Buried in a box in the far east corner of the campus greenhouse, where the botany students did most of their work.

Notably, also quite close to where the murder took place. Right out of the door of the lab where it happened.

The whole thing was so obvious, Franziska had half a mind to be annoyed at her subordinates for not checking the greenhouse to begin with. Regardless, she was here now—the sharp song of her heels echoing through the hall, into the lab where the murder took place. Carefully, she weaves her way around the evidence markers still strewn about. There’s no one here at the moment beyond the pair of officers standing watch at the doors, and so she takes her time in observing the room as it exists in that haunting sort of stasis only a crime scene can. Chairs toppled on their backs, flasks and beakers broken on the laminate flooring, and…

Something blue draws her attention, there near the windowsill. The saturation looks near impossible to her eye—already, blue is not a colour one often sees in nature, and in the rare cases one does, it’s far more washed out. This is pure cobalt, though, bright and vibrant and so thoroughly pigmented it almost hurts Franziska’s eyes. Without another thought, her path diverts—skirting off to the side to admire the wonderful flowers that grapple toward the springtime sun.

Up close, she’s certain they’re begonias, but… there has to be some level of genetic engineering here, begonias don’t come in blue. Begonias certainly don’t come in this blue—the bluest blue Franziska thinks she’s ever seen, edging into spectrums of light that she fears the feeble cones in her head might not even be perceiving properly. They’re speckled with lighter flecks of the colour on the inside, which almost makes them look like their petals contain galaxies beneath the skin. Oh, there’s work to do, but…

But the evidence in the greenhouse is known to no one but she, and the devilish killer she’s snapping at the throat of. Surely, it can wait just a few scant seconds for her to stop and smell the flowers.

Methodically, she gives each finger of her glove a little tug, one by one. Once she’s got the thing off, Franziska reaches down with careful intent and strokes the petals reverently, like she’s cradling something precious and young, intent to protect its soft underside. The petals, too, feel almost heavier with their colour, their majesty, their utter and complete rarity. They’re thick and well-shaped, more like a tulip or an orchid of some sort than what they’re supposed to be. The leaves, too, have shades of blue bleeding from their center into the green of their tips, and Franziska finds herself trailing her left hand down the fleshy stem, intent to fully inspect and admire every last part of this wonderful—

A sharp wince asserts itself across her features, and she has to stop herself from reeling back. Hissing through her teeth, Franziska searches for the source of the pain—angling her head down and to the side, squinting at the flowers once more. The bunch of them is awfully bushy, even in its little rectangular pot, and it’s hardly typical of the species, how was she to suspect these impossible begonias had…

Thorns? What an odd choice. When it came to most decorative florals, thorns were the exception, not the rule. Frowning, Franziska stares at the small trickle of red that beads on her middle finger. There’s a first aid kit in her bag, as well as one on the far wall, and she could take the extra minute to disinfect and bandage the wound, but she’s wasted enough time giving into this frivolous impulse to wander, and it’s awfully small and unlikely to be a problem, and she’s almost always got her gloves on anyways, and no one is around to see her do something as uncouth as what she’s thinking, so…

Swiftly, then, she presses the injured digit across her tongue and swipes at it, scowling at the unpleasant, tinny taste. Diversion thoroughly explored, Franziska pulls her glove back on and snaps to her previous goal—she will ask whoever she can find about the flowers later. For now, there is justice to be done.

Scruffy arrives back on the scene within an hour—honestly impressive, given his track record. By then, Franziska’s got the fabled item in hand, smeared with wet dirt and stinking all the same. Perhaps that pungent scent is what’s currently lighting her respiratory processes on fire, she has but one brief moment of respite to wonder before another fit of sneezing overtakes her.

“—provided by Ms. Teabody—” airy, dry, overlapping little things, “—excuse me. It seems as though this information was correct.”

Several more of them scratch at the walls of her sinuses. Watery-eyed, Franziska resigns herself to the fact that she will not be able to hold any more of the things back, and scrambles to wrest the handkerchief from its place in her breast pocket just in time to smother four more.

“Uh, gesundheit, Sir,” Scruffy says, because he is an idiot, and then continues, because he is an idiot. “What am I lookin’ at, here?”

Franziska clears away the quagmire that’s quickly forming in her throat. “It would help if you opened the box, you bumbling fool.”

“Right! Yeah, that makes sense, uh…”

He does just that, his massive hands making the container look even smaller. Inside, the silver keys are immaculate in comparison—shining in the fluorescent lighting, the engraving on their head spelling out the defendant’s doom.

“She knew where the keys were?!”

“Preciii—” Franziska scrunches up her features, handkerchief at the ready, trying to mind-over-matter her foolish biology away, “Precisely. The very keys we thought to be missing. If the defensive wounds weren’t enough, this will prove it was not suicide.”

“Wow, Ms. von Karma, you’re incredible!” He beams up at her, placing the lid back on the box with a paradoxically delicate hand.

“Naturally. I—ah—!”

She’s got to stop fighting them. Logically, she knows this. Another flurry of sneezes rip through her, each one having a bit more… punch to it. Try as she might to keep them ladylike and delicate, the things feel inflamed and angry as they tear from her lungs and scrape across her throat, which—she swallows experimentally once she can breathe again—is starting to get notably raw from all the exertion. Tears dotting her eyes, Franziska resists the urge to growl like a vicious beast as she blows her nose.

“Sir, are you feeling alright?”

She eyes Gumshoe over the veil of her handkerchief, with a look that snaps his spine straight. It informs him loud and clear that the only reason he’s not being flogged at present is that her hands are tied.

“Just a—f-foolish immune response from—something,” Franziska says as she’s reigning in the floodgates once more. The rioting in her airways seems to bend ever-so-slightly, and she clears her throat as if to punctuate it. “Honestly, they’ve got such a veritable plethora of cultivars in the greenhouse, I’d hardly be surprised if I was allergic to some unseen variety.”

Gumshoes rubs the back of his head a little nervously. “Should we move a bit farther out?”

“We’re fine, Scruffy.” She sniffles derisively, scowling when that coaxes out another forceful sneeze. “Excuse me. I need one last proper look at the crime scene itself, and then I need you to drive me home as fast as your foolish slag heap of a car can muster so I may extricate myself from these infernal, pollen-covered garments.”

That said, she turns on her heel to lead the way while he follows like the hound he is at heart. On some level, Franziska knows that assertion isn’t quite right. She’s dusted a shelf or two, she’s cuddled Pess without her antihistamines, she knows of the horrible itch in her throat and eyes that’s supposed to come with it—this is different. Just as vicious, but far more sore, each outburst pounding some sort of bone-deep exhaustion into her extremities as they ricochet around her lungs. On some level, she knows what the symptoms truly herald, but she’s not going to think that right now, lest it become real.

It’s barely a five minute walk back to the scene of the crime. For whatever reason, it feels like forever, though—her steps feeling leaded on the tile, the incline of her heels aching way up in her calves. Instinctively she finds herself hugging at her midsection a bit—rubbing at her arms in an attempt to stay warm, isn’t springtime in LA supposed to be sunny? The sun is certainly shining out the massive skylight, but its heat doesn’t seem to kiss her skin, warded off by some imaginary barrier that keeps her cold and shivering. Breathing deep, Franziska swallows. It hurts. More than it did five minutes ago.

“Heyyy, Frandango!”

For the love of god.

Eddie Fender, in his Sunday best, jumps to his feet the second he sees her there in the doorway. The speed he’s moving at, it’s a wonder he doesn’t smear the chalk outline underfoot. Already, Franziska can feel the headache budding there in her temple—whether that’s from all her attempts to stifle the ailing noises that escape her, or just the natural result of seeing him there, is to be determined at a later time.

Never show weakness in front of the enemy, says Papa’s voice in her head, which is a mite difficult when her whole face seems intent to leak. Nevertheless, she makes an attempt to straighten her shoulders out, point her chin high. If the sharpened gaze she levels him is at all blunted by the way her mascara’s blurring, he doesn’t say so.

“Mr. Fender,” she says, clears her throat in a bid to chase the scratchy rasp there away. “Are you defending Hendrickson?”

“Rightey-o, I am!” He sticks his hands in his pockets, casting his eyes across the mess that surrounds them. “Pretty ugly stuff here, huh?”

“Yes, ugly is certainly the only acceptable adjective one should use to describe murder by poisoning.”

Poisoning was putting it lightly, Franziska reminds herself as she’s surveying it all. In reality, it was a makeshift gas chamber—Daver had been locked in the connecting supply closet with a toppled mixture of what was most likely hydrogen cyanide. While death had undoubtedly been quick, she could not say the same for it being painless.

“Well, let’s not be too hasty on that detail, now.”

Instinctively she feels her teeth burgeoning behind her upper lip. Something about sharing space with opposing counsel outside the bounds of the courtroom always makes her feel like a rabid dog. “While I’ve little respect for your profession, I do know that you at least attempt to use your brain while navigating it. I must admit I’m a little shocked that you seem to have misplaced it at this juncture.”

“And why would you say that?”

“Firstly, because you are a new designation of properly delusional if you are insinuating that is not how Mr. Daver died.”

She holds his gaze, head tilted up in a bid to keep her nose from running. It only kind of works, and he stares back without a shred of fear in his eyes.

“Less about the how,” says Eddie, “more about the who.”

“You foolish defense attorneys are all the same.” Franziska scoffs. “I refuse to entertain your notions of some secret, unseen individual in the shadows. I will trounce each and every last one of your arguments proper in court tomorrow.”

“Who said anything about another person?” He saunters back over to the open door of the supply closet, staring once more at the curves of white on the tile floor. Franziska scrubs fiercely at her quickly-reddening nose the second he stops looking at her, desperately trying to keep her wits about her.

“Do not tell me,” she sniffles, attempting to make it sound haughty and dismissive, “that you think this was suicide.”

“You got it, Franzilla.” He waves back in her direction. “Whaddya want me to tell you?”

Her whipping hand itches.

“Nevermind any of that,” she says. “How did you get in here? This whole area is under strict jurisdiction of myself and law enforcement! I do not recall telling anyone to allow your ilk within.”

“C’mon now, Franny, that ain’t fair. You guys look just about wrapped up here anyw—”

Quick as a flash of lightning, she cracks her whip hard. Maybe a little too hard, because she can feel herself tilting on her heel… stumbling? There’s a foolish impulse to shake some of the lightheaded dizziness from her temple, one she fights to hold her ground. It’s a warning shot, really—one that snaps Eddie to attention, shoulders at his ears.

“Do not be misled by the way my foolish little brother tends to run his investigations,” Franziska snarls, “I have zero patience for—for—”

For the love of god.

The feathery sensation in her sinuses pulls a deep, premonitory gasp from her lungs. Death grip still locked onto her whip, she’s one-handed and clumsy to duck back into the cover of her handkerchief and sneeze like her very life depends on it. They’re fittish and laden with urgent desperation, leaving her near-breathless in their mission to exorcise whatever insignificant intruder has her in its microscopic clutches.

When she’s done jerking her miserable way through three, four, five of the inelegant noises, Fender’s just clapping like an idiot with the tips of his fingers. Dark thoughts dance around her head about what she wants to do to him, all the best ways to permanently knock the amused smile off his face.

“Gesundheit, Prosecutor!” He grins that stupid, smarmy grin. “Those were cute little things.”

“Are you quite certain,” Franziska snaps the leather at his thigh, which causes him to lose balance and fall over, “you want those to be your final words?”

She’s not going to think about how absurd she probably looks—with one hand on her now-unspooled whip, with the other clutching her ruined handkerchief just a hair’s breadth away from the angry scarlet colour on her irritated nose. Franziska knows, despite how she feels, that these facts will not dull the blade of her.

“Look, look, I can see you’re not feeling so hot, so I’ll be quick,” Eddie says from the floor. “Just gimme a few minutes more to examine the crime scene, then I’ll get outta your hair.”

“Scruffy!” barks Franziska, her voice already gravelly and worn. The man in question shambles in from his post outside the door, and out of the corner of her eye Franziska sees him wearing those pathetic, pitious, sad-puppy eyes. On instinct entirely she sniffles another sharp sniffle, straightens her spine, fights the urge to wince against the shifting of muscles and how it… aches. There’s simply no time for this, she’s on the job.

“Sir!”

“See to it that this nuisance does not disturb the crime scene,” Franziska commands, gesturing vaguely at Eddie with her whip hand. “And if you say anything relating to our case to him, I will ensure your famished state of being meets a swift ending… by feeding you a proper meal of only the finest leather.”

“Y-You got it!”

If she had the eyes for it, she might be suspicious of the look they shoot one another. Infuriated, rather, snapping her whip like a proper beast tamer until the fools clung pathetically to each other in tears. Another derisive sniffle and she, despite herself, chooses mercy instead. There are a million foolish fools within this building that she could turn her lash on, yes, but more important than that, there is an innocent man who's wrongful death must be avenged.

First, an attempt to find her center. Inhale, exhale—through her mouth, quietly, so she doesn’t strike the tinder that seems to have taken root in her airways. The action pulls the air like rusty nails across her throat, but she holds steady regardless—folding her handkerchief inward, stuffing it back in her skirt pocket for quicker access, standing her briefcase up on one of the tables. She’s already walked the scene once, of course—the whole proposed path of the suspect—but there’s certainly no harm in doing it once more before she leaves, to ensure it is fresh in her mind. That settled, then, she pulls the crime scene photos from the file, intent to walk the perimeter and make sure everything is as it should be.

There’s no reason this minute, mundane, every-day occurrence should feel like an ordeal. There’s a uniformity that accompanies Franziska’s stride in everything—her heels clicking down against the floor, perfect step, a herald of the hammer of justice about to fall down hard. As long as her memory stretches, she’s had some sort of metronome ticking inside her heart—time a physical force around her, its rhythm so easy to follow. Like it’s inherent and intuitive as breathing, blinking, being.

She’s out of step. Her feet come down in pitiful, meandering irregularity. That metronome stutters in arrhythmia. Franziska isn’t sure where the ache comes from, but she feels it in her legs before she feels it anywhere else—this anticipation on the edge of itself, like any small flexing of her muscles will send them cramping twice as hard, threatening to topple her.

Her feet drag. She careens, a bit, squinting too hard at the photo in front of her to notice she’s en route to the edge of the table. When her midsection hits it, she has to grit her teeth not to wince in pain. The lab’s lights are suddenly too bright, the rattle of the equipment still left on the table like a roar in her ears. What is going on?

The pain doesn’t leave. It sticks there in her abdomen, a spot of heat and agony, throbbing its horrible leech up into her guts. The air turns to molasses around her, sticky and hot and immovable and… seriously, what is going on?

Teeth grit. One fist balled. Whip in its holster. One foot down after the other, ignoring the cold sweat that blooms uncomfortably across her neck and trickles down the protrusion of her spine. Holding the aborted shivers where they dare to burst free, her jaw feels like it’s seizing—one foot down after the other, there is work to do. Franziska stares at the evidence marker, focuses on the silhouette of its lofty shadow as it buries the shattered glass below. Focus. Focus, there’s no time to be—

“—with me, Prosecutor?”

Shaking herself out of the foggy feeling that kisses the edge of her vision, Franziska squares her shoulder and snaps her head to the side. This, too, hurts like hell. Holding back the urge to hiss through her teeth, she squints as if to hone herself, but Fender is nowhere to be found. Perplexed, she looks elsewhere, only to be met with—

“Down here.”

Indeed he is. Laying on his side, magnifying glass in hand, staring at the wood of the closet door. In better spirits, Franziska might find the will to gawk at him. Today, even the thought of shifting the muscles in her face to do so feels herculean.

“Well,” Franziska says instead, “it seems you have remembered your place.”

“Harsh, Frannycakes. I swear, sometimes you sound just like your old man…”

“Enough.” She spits in lieu of another fierce cracking of her whip, and hopes that he doesn’t notice all she cannot fathom the strength to do. “Can you not see I have my own investigation to run?”

“Crystal clear, bossaroni, I was just curious…” he moves the magnifying glass away from his face, “you fingerprinted these scratches, yeah?”

“The scratches that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Daver most certainly did not commit suicide?” Her brow slants, sharp and silvery. “Those scratches?”

“Those’re the ones,” says Eddie, grinning with his whole mouth.

“Of course we—”

She stops herself. There is a dark, remorseful, beaten-down, foolish energy emanating from somewhere to the northeast. Franziska can feel the hike of its shoulders, the whimper in its throat. She’s honed in on this pathetic aura before, so dingy and dull that there is only one fool it could possibly belong to.

“Scruffy McTrenchcoat!”

“Sir!”

Gumshoe yelps it, his voice breaking as he flinches into himself, chin hitting his chest, waiting for a flogging that’s yet to come. He cracks one eye open and looks anywhere but at Franziska, his mouth trembling in fear as he slogs through the words.

“I—I—” he starts, eloquent and confident as ever, “—I just thought, uh, y’know, there’s no one else they could belong to besides the victim, right? So I didn’t think there was any need to—”

“Imbecile!” Franziska launches the word like searing-hot venom, and it feels about the same as it cuts across her aching throat. “What part of leave no stone unturned refuses to compute with that pea-sized brain in your foolish little skull?!”

“R-Right, Ms. von Karma, sir!” cries Gumshoe. “I can get the area dusted right now, just give me—”

“I will give you nothing, certainly not access to the forensics in lieu of your appalling lack of foresight!” She stomps over to him, hiding the agony in her stance with the knit in her brow—I am furious, not in pain, it says. “Need I remind you that these are lives we are dealing with, detective?!”

At this point in all their time together, Gumshoe knows that the less he speaks, the better. He hangs his head instead, doesn’t dare to look at her beneath the shape of his bushy eyebrows. Like a pack animal signifying submission, deferring to its alpha, he allows her to reprimand him, which… almost makes her angrier.

No matter. Franziska grabs the necessary supplies, trying to ignore the malaise as it creeps into even her fingertips. She’s breathing heavy, winded simply from walking mere feet to her things, and the sudden realization that she may no longer be able to hide the drag of her every bodily function creeps upon the horizon like an ominous stormcloud. Every ounce of energy she has left must be allocated, sorted, converted into a percentage and properly filed away, but the ever-shifting room of cabinets that her mind comprises of is nothing but scattered papers and erratically thrown-open drawers.

She’s got to—

If they see her falter, then—

She’ll just—compensate, she’ll compensate!

No, it will not be Gumshoe who dusts for prints, or clears the scene, or finishes the reporting for this investigation. Franziska will do it all herself, and she will do it with von Karma precision, because right now she feels as though she might stumble and fall at any moment, and if they see her hit the floor they at least better believe it’s from the dutiful pursuit of justice instead of something as insignificant as a common virus.

“Move,” she demands of Fender, and he flips himself up childishly, sitting with his legs crossed. Notably, he remains in place, smiling directly at his imminent demise.

“C’mon, now, you don’t have to do it for me.” He splays his palms wide, wiggling his digits. “I got ten fingers and nothing but time, why don’t you take a load off and—”

“I will do no such thing,” hisses Franziska as she’s stretching masking tape below the floor, gathering a rather generous helping of powder on the brush. Mere seconds of her actually dusting are able to pass before her unruly nose starts its ceaseless twitching, and she scrunches the thing in defiance with stubborn focus and watering eyes.

“You are truly a foolish pillar of the ever-present foolishness inherent in your line of foolish work if you think that I will be so foolishly foolish enough to allow you t-to—contaminate my crime s-scene—”

To her credit, she’s at least able to get enough powder on the thing before she completely loses herself to the reignited buzz in her sinuses. Fender sees it coming before she’s ready to admit it, leaning back ever-so-slightly, out of the splash zone. White knuckle on the brush still in her hand, Franziska’s bullheaded notion of sticking to the task sees her sneezing uncovered—mortifying all its own—onto the task in question. The second, third, fourth of the fittish outbursts are much more miraculously caught in her elbow, impressively rigid as if glued to her work. What the hell kinda class she had to take to get an arm that steady, Eddie finds himself a lot more awestruck than anything.

Before she’s able to observe her handiwork, she’s just kind of muffling a half-groan, half-growl into the (undoubtedly sodden) fabric of her sleeve. He does her the service of not looking directly at any of that, instead just leaning back on his hands in an attempt to keep the morale somewhere light.

“Gesundheit. I’d say right back atcha, but…”

Directing his gaze at the door, Eddie drawls out a low whistle, as if to say, dang.

“That’s definitely one way to obliterate the excess.”

“I’ll obliterate you,” says a miserably raspy Franziska, punctuating with a sniffle that’s addled and… liquid, for lack of any less revolting adjectives. Through teary, still-itching eyes she is finally able to register what Fender is even talking about—what could be called a smattering of prints not only around the scratches, but the surrounding area as well. The sheer amount of lung power behind that first sneeze had done her work for her.

Hazily, and with her vision blurring, Franziska ducks into a fantasy where she is a powerful sorceress, using her endless knowledge of all things arcane to cast a spell that wipes the memory of every last living soul in this room.

“You see what I see though, right, Frantasmagoria?”

“To what are you—” she clears her throat, “Ah!”

Looking at it there, she’s certain it would be visible even to a layman’s eye. The whorl is completely different on one, two—likely even more, but even just one is enough for any foolish defense attorney to to start flapping their foolish gums about—

“The way I see it,” says the fool in question, “we should probably print the whole door.”

The sentence alone falls like a heatwave over Franziska’s shoulders—sweltering and heavy, gravity increasing to ten times its force. It’s a sickening heat, beading sweat across every inch of her, sweat that goes ice-cold the second it hits the overactive AC. Caught in the tug of war between fire and ice, Franziska feels her stomach sour with all the shaking. The words that fall from her a minute later do not feel like words of her own.

“Th-This is a public space!” she protests, despite herself. “It would be foolish to run the prints of every single fool who’s ever set foot in this facility!”

“Aww, that ain’t like you, prosecutor,” Eddie seems to consider—only for a moment—reaching out to ruffle her hair. He wisely decides against it, the gesture fizzling with a noncommittal wave of one hand. “You must really be feeling lousy if—”

“Fine!” Franziska acquiesces, if one can even call it that. “I will personally print this whole room if that is what it takes to convince you and your foolishly foolhardy defense that my case is perfect as always!”

Something… notably concerned breaks across Fender’s face. “Hey now, I never said you had to—”

“Good thing that you do not make the rules here, Mr. Fender.”

The next two hours pass about as well as one would expect.

Scruffy’s dreadful, beat-up, jerky excuse for a vehicle slips inelegantly into one of LA’s world-renowned potholes. Franziska jolts awake in the midst of it, cringing into a pervasive ache that bores like ten thousand tiny drills into her very bones. She knows she’s in a moving car. That its failing transmission is jumpy and sickening, that every rumble over every minuscule rock and bubble in the pavement is like having a hammer swung into her muscles. There is a voice inside of her that tells her she needs to open her eyes, take in her surroundings, make sure she has not been kidnapped or taken or carted away—but even the thought of this is too much. To open her eyes would be too much, the slow crawl of her lids as they lift themselves anguished there in her head.

A crack. She can manage to open them a crack, staring over the swell of her cheeks—the congestion thrums against her face, her eyes, her ears, driving its stakes down into her teeth. She’s parched, like she hasn’t had a drink in days, weeks—fire in her throat, crackling in her lungs, all Franziska can do is curl into herself and cough, drawn out, wheezing things that glide agonizingly slow up her windpipe and leave her completely breathless with how deep they pull up the air.

Outside, the citylight blinds her. The sun has long set, but this artificial, searing onslaught is so much worse. Her head pounds. She can’t stop shivering. Her teeth knock against themselves, oversensitive and excruciating.

She didn’t fall asleep on the job. She’s… sure of that, the mortification she’s feeling right now would be tenfold if that were the case. Hours upon hours of meticulously checking print after print, slapping away the foolish defense attorney’s prodding digits whenever he’d try to meddle or touch her. The will to crack her whip had all but dissipated, despite her mounting anxieties and how bold both he and the scruffy detective had been… it was all just too much. To grab it from her waist, to raise her arm high, to snap the leathery thing down with the force those vermin deserved… every step of it hurt to think about, an exhaustion that had settled not only into the present, but every hypothetical Franziska saw stretch out in front of her.

Still just coughing long, drawn-out, airless coughs, she pinches her eyes shut and tries to remember, but the point at which she faded never seems to come. The clicking of the turn signal is oddly soothing against the cacophony of every other noise in this blasted vehicle, sputtering engines crying out on the overpass above. When she finally has it in her to look around again, she sees Scruffy there in the front seat—he’s thrown both his jackets off and is sweating through his threadbare button-down. Sure enough, Franziska focuses through the dull void of her stuffy hearing just enough to hear the roar of the heater blasting. There in the back seat, she hugs her arms and shakes.

Time passes inconsistently around her as she wastes away in the detective’s wretched car. Not quite sleeping, not quite waking, she doesn’t realize they’ve pulled into her apartment driveway until the silence of the engine stalling seems to unsettle her awake. Out of the corner of her tired eyes she sees Scruffy steal a nervous glance at her in the rearview mirror, thinking he’s going undetected as he debates with himself what to say, if he should open his foolish mouth to begin with. Courage, perhaps, but more likely the knowledge that he can take advantage of her in this… miserably indisposed state she’s in—whatever it is, he speaks in a voice that’s scratchy from disuse, in those unsure tones he’s so well-known to wander in.

“Do you, uh…” he clears his throat, “want me to get any of your things, sir?”

“Stay exactly where you are,” she retorts, with a scratch in her voice that puts his own to shame.

“You… you sure? I can get the door, if—”

“I am not an invalid,” seethes Franziska, her throat screaming out in pain all the way. “As soon as my foolishly traitorous muscles stop their incessant aching, you will see threefold the lashing I have withheld thus far. To give you anything less would be a betrayal to myself.”

All the boasting is betrayed by how lethargically she moves as she’s speaking. Wincing through unbuckling her seatbelt, wincing through the bend in each of her joints as her fingers curl around the door handle, wincing at the otherwise unassuming way she has to lean over to take hold of her briefcase, ten times as heavy through the pull in her arm. With what’s left of her strength, Franziska is not too prideful to admit that she slams the car door with just a touch more intensity than is necessary. In the darkness of nightfall, she’s grateful that no one can see the way every last one of her features wrinkle in agony through it.

Idiotic, sentimental, softheartedly foolish fool that he is, the detective sits there with engine purring in her driveway. Intent to watch her until the last minute—until she’s through the door, until the lights inside are on, until he’s sure she will not crumble under the unbearable weight of an insignificant bout of the most common of common colds. Stubbornly, she straightens her shoulders, points her (chafing) nose high in the air. If he is hoping to catch her in even one more lapse of impropriety, then he is even more of a fool than she initially presumed.

With her back to the car, of course, he cannot see how she nearly drops her keys. How the lock troubles her twice as much, how her hands shake and slip and falter as she tries and fails to slot the foolish thing in. Likewise, he does not see the slump of all her features when she finally crosses the threshold, the inelegant way she kicks the door shut instead of closing it properly behind her. He has long since driven away when she stumbles, breathing laborious, into the bedroom—glancing at the biblical temptation of the living room couch, so much closer, so inviting. It’s a testament to her iron will still buried somewhere that she does not collapse upon its abrasion, one hand balanced on the off-grey of the walls as she struggles—step by dragging step—to the comfort of her bed.

And because a von Karma would never be so lowly as to take ill, there is no preparation of a proper sick day taking place within these walls. No ColdKiller in the cabinets, no soup in the pantry, nothing but a few medicinal blends of tea that Franziska could make if only she had the time or patience or strength to. Were she of another breed, she could take the maximum dose of medicine, make herself a warm dinner to soothe the razor-tracks throbbing their wound against her throat, hole up in her bed with tissues at the ready and the humidifier puffing eucalyptus into the air. Sleeping dead sleep to arise anew in the morning, win her case, and breathe that (admittedly wheezy) sigh of relief.

Even a fraction of that, whatever she can manage, is what makes the most logical sense under these circumstances. Just a cold, how is she to be felled by just a simple cold? There are still ample solutions, even if self indulgent, thorough care is not an option. At the very least, a warm cup of tea before bed. At the very least, a hot shower to soothe the horrible aches and pains.

Her bed’s made, and beckoning, and she’s not even out of her boots—having forgotten to take them off at the door, the idea of reaching down to unzip them too harrowing to bear.

At the very least, she should take her shoes off. At the very least, she should get out of her work clothes.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, that’s exactly what shes going to do. She starts with her gloves, as she always does, and then it’s just a matter of… pulling her hands toward her heart, flicking the clasp on her brooch, tugging the ends of her bow. Unbuttoning her waistcoat, her blouse, shuffling out of her skirt, peeling off her tights…

There are too many steps, meticulous and multiple, and beneath all those layers, the pillowy cushion hugs her screaming thighs in the warmest embrace she’s felt in years. When her fingertips brush the downy blanket underhand, it’s twice as soft as it’s ever been, warm even on her—she should really check, but the thermometer’s across the house in the bathroom—feverish skin.

Everything after that comes from a more primal place than where her right mind lives. She does not do any of the small, mundane step-by-step that comes as second nature, rigid routine when she finally crawls indoors every night. No, instead of undoing her brooch, her vest, her shirt, she just… leans, a bit. Lists to the side like a ship in a storm, or a palm tree in danger of being ripped from its sandy roots. The hand bracing her there against her sheets turns into a forearm. The forearm into her whole left side. Before she can register anything happening, she’s laying—and the second her head hits the pillow, the rest of the night vanishes around her.

In a generous few hours, Franziska will wake disoriented, dehydrated, weak and witless as she shudders. With a headache worse than she’s ever felt, with a sore throat and wall of immovable congestion that makes every syllable an insurmountable ordeal. With her eyes nearly glued shut, and an ache in every limb that rivals the white-hot agony of that bullet that once made its home in flesh and bone.

Until then, though, she’s dead to the world.

Franziska’s voice gives in the middle of an objection. She finds, making some attempt to growl it back to life, that this time, it may be gone for good. Key in the proverbial ignition, she turns and turns and turns through the words as they leave her, the engine giving nothing more beyond half-hearted revs that never catch or crystallize. The stenographer is over in one corner with brow furrowed in intense concentration, desperate to make out the words through the thickening of her accent and the stuffy, dull consonants and the croaky mess her voice is becoming.

“—that is not a clear-cut exoneration!” she protests despite it all, her whip hanging lamely over the bench.

“Yes, no, maybe so…” Eddie near sing-songs. “Either way… that decisive evidence you were puffing up looks like it’s lost that precious plumage.”

Franziska slams her fist down on the bench, teeth bared and whole body wrought with tremors. Where the rage ends and the scorching fever begins, no one is quite sure, least of all Franziska. The air conditioning blasting like a gale on every side of her, the sweat raking its ice-sharp claws down her back—she’s worsening the full-body aches with how hard she’s clenching every muscle, cramps tying her into knots as she leans against her desk and pretends like it’s intentional.

Shoulders up. High above her ears. The disheveled hair and dotting makeup, at the very least, makes her look scary. Makes her look bigger, angrier, like a brooding bird of prey, all feathers and razory eyes. Over and over, that’s what she tells herself—all the while, the room tilts around her.

“The defendant could have very well been wearing gloves!”

“Hey, I never disagreed with ya, Prosecutor,” says Eddie. “Alls I’m saying is, you told us these keys would prove her guilt. And that’s decidedly not the case. So, why don’t we ask the good detective…”

He swivels to face Gumshoe with that ever-smarmy smile. With all she is able, Franziska throws the darkness of her aura like a laser beam at the witness stand—if you fuck this up, I will make sure you leave this courtroom limping, she says through grit teeth, arm still-aching from the last throw of her whip. Without the constant tenor of its satisfying cracks, she feels listless and weak, like she’s missing a limb.

“You said the defendant’s prints weren’t on those keys, right?”

A nervous, aside glance is cast toward Franziska. His voice is scratchier than usual when he talks, the sweat on his brow shiny and conspicuous in the skylight overhead.

“Th-That’s right, yeah,” he says. “Forensic analysis only showed the prints of two people—the victim himself, and, uh…”

Franziska shuts her eyes tight, head dipped toward the polished wood of the bench.

“...a botany student named Susan Nitch.”

The gallery erupts into frantic murmurs around them, coating the room in a low fog of noise. The judge fruitlessly bangs his gavel. Franziska’s breath feels like fire in her lungs, hot and airless as she chokes around the shape of it.

“—another suspect? Why wasn’t she—”

“—summon her? At this rate, we’re looking at another day—”

“—outrageous, this trial’s already dragging—”

What was wrong with her? That it had somehow slipped her unslippable, peerless legal mind? Something so routine, so mundane, so necessary as to fingerprint the crucial evidence she was submitting?

How it even fell by the wayside is beyond her. Through that many shuffling hands, with no one thinking to check, double-check, ask her? Perhaps it had been her own skill and thorough way of being that had spelt out her doom in this manner—who would ever think to doubt the meticulous, exhaustive process of Franziska von Karma? And even those who did, who was brave enough among them to dare speak it aloud?

And this, of course, was where her victory would slip through her fingers. Because Fender was a fool, but he was also an Edgeworth. In all but last name, just as her own Edgeworth was to hers. Therein lied the doubt, the single eclectic thread that Fender would tug until the case unraveled around them, and Franziska would have to rip and tear each of those threads apart like an angry lion gnawing through its bonds.

On any other day, a delightfully stimulating activity. Today…

The clench in her forearm catches and cramps, which makes her wince in pain, which makes her cough a truly nasty, productive cough into her shoulder. Through streaming eyes and reddened features she looks onward still, vision fading cloudier and cloudier by the second. Perfect justice, at this moment, feels like a weight around not just her ankle, but every limb and digit she has.

The keys. High-clearance keys, keys that locked the victim in that horrible, claustrophobic tomb, keys that no one but him should have had. Keys that Ms. Teabody had insisted she’d seen Victoria Hendrickson stealing away into the greenhouse to bury, and Franziska—swears she asked about gloves, but maybe it was too dark out to see, maybe Teabody’s memory had failed her, maybe she hadn’t noticed that there was someone else in the building that night, someone who could’ve—

Like a dragon atop its mountain, Franziska feels the instinct crawl up her aching throat like a flame. Her head snaps higher, her resolve tightens, the von Karma lightning that flows through her veins speaks some ancient incantation for her to carry on. Will cannot account for the state of her voice, but she pushes past it still, without a care for how sickly and pathetic it might sound to the onlookers. Indisposed or not, there is work to be done.

“Objection!”

The headwind she’d been weathering turns tail at her back. Gumshoe notably brightens at the undercurrent of confidence buried somewhere beneath the heavy tones of her failing voice.

“Mr. Eddie Fender, tell me…” Franziska says, “do you intend to follow this throughline and indict Ms. Nitch?”

“Well, that depends on—”

CRACK. Her arm screams in pain, and she braces the other on the bench to keep herself afloat. For a moment, Franziska wonders if the dots of moisture on the wood are tears she hadn’t noticed she’d shed, but… no, that’s sweat that’s fallen from her brow. She keeps on.

“A yes or no will suffice, defense.”

For as lighthearted of a man as Eddie Fender tried to be, he cleaned up his act in court in a way that would be intimidating, if Franziska were of weaker heart. Strong-jawed and rigid despite the slouch he always wore, his dark eyes meet her icy blues across the divide. All at once it dissipates, then, and all he does is shrug.

“Worth exploring the idea, eh, Ms. Prosecutor?”

For the first time in what feels like forever, Franziska smiles.

“Scruffy.”

The man in question straightens his spine, arms locked at his sides. “Sir!”

“What was it you told me at our briefing just before court this morning?” She tips her head faux-inquisitively to the side, squints uncomfortably as the waterlogged cotton balls in her skull shift beside it. “About the security footage you so dutifully went over?”

His lips twist curiously for a moment, no doubt he’s trying to grasp the horizon of where she’s leading him. All at once, it seems to come into view—he lights up like a christmas tree, grinning with his whole face.

“Ah! Yeah, yeah!” Gumshoe beams. “There’s no cameras inside the labs themselves—privacy reasons, from what I’ve heard. But I went ahead and combed the footage from the hallways and the campus lot right outside, at Prosecutor von Karma’s request, of course.”

There’s an impulse to cross her arms, shut her eyes, preen. She fears she may not stay upright without one hand on the bench, though, and so she vaguely loops her whip with the free one and presses it to her hip—a poor man’s attempt at something slightly imposing.

“Will you again confirm that your analysis of this footage was, shall we say, exhaustive?”

“That’s a good word for it, yeah.” He rubs the back of his head, looking at a particularly interesting speck of grime on the floor. “I, uh, didn’t really sleep last night.”

“Your dedication is admirable, Scruffy.” His eyes go a little watery at the genuine compliment. “So, tell the court—what was it that you found?”

“Easier if I show ya, really…”

Franziska nods, eying the judge. “Your honour?”

“Of course…”

He signals to the far more technologically-inclined aide to lower the evidence screens, where Gumshoe then picks up with the remote they hand off. He fast-forwards to the crucial timestamp in question, showing the fuzzy footage of students leaving the building—first in big groups, and then a slower stream of late-nighters trickling out one by one.

“Now, it’s a little hard to parse without showing you the whole week’s footage…” he says, “but mark my words, pal, just tracking who comes and goes, it’s easy to see…”

Early in the morning, Daver settles in. His final day alive is unremarkable as ever—trips out in between classes to grab lunch, coffee, banker boxes of paperwork or assignments or whatever else. As unsure as Franziska is about how on earth Scruffy wound up in the homicide division, she knows of his bullheaded dedication. When he says that he made a note of each and every face he saw, that he fastidiously charted each and every instance of them arriving, leaving, moving room to room—she finds that it is not a terrible risk to believe him.

“See, we figured the most relevant people would be anyone who left after the suspected time of the murder,” he carries on, “but I went ahead and made a note of anyone who was in the building within the hour, just to be safe, and…”

He pauses on a frame of a rather plain looking girl. She’s got long blonde hair down her back like a waterfall, brown eyes beautiful and dark in the soon-coming night. The expression on her face is one of fear and urgency, as though she’s desperate to get out of there, and fast. In a thousand other scenarios, perhaps a point of suspicion, except…

Gumshoe gestures at the timestamp, head tilted back, still just grinning that crooked grin of his. “There she is. Our mysterious Ms. Nitch, gettin’ the hell outta dodge.”

“Ten after midnight,” Franziska proclaims thereafter, throwing her arm out entirely on instinct, pushing through the way it winds her. Her knees begin to wobble, and she grips the bench so hard she swears its due to splinter.

“Nearly a full hour before the murder took place!”

A cacophony of overlapping voices bursts like a dam around them. Frantically, the judge makes another desperate attempt to wrangle them, shouting above the chaos.

“Order! Order!” he bellows half-heartedly, eying Franziska with his brow curiously knit. “Then why the fingerprints? How on earth—”

“Susan Nitch was herself a pupil of Professor Daver,” Franziska says, clearing her throat fruitlessly once more. “Or, rather, a Teacher’s Assistant of sorts. Her field was botany, but she spent a great amount of time helping Daver to grade papers in the chemistry lab. It’s only natural that she would have had access to the keys!”

“That still doesn’t account for the lack of my client’s fingerprints,” Eddie says, fiddling with the brim of his hat.

“Are you daft? As I previously mentioned... do you really think anyone in line for a grant this big would be stupid enough to not wear gloves? Your client is notably intelligent, we’ve all been informed of her work.” Franziska retorts, ignoring the fact that her case very much hinged on that idea mere minutes ago. Her breath feels tight there in her chest, as if it’s a voluntary action, something she has to make a constant effort to keep up. Heatwaves blur around her, and Fender seems… contemplative. Like he knows something the court does not.

It happens too soon for her to register it, but that subtlety on his face turns into something more conspicuous, breaks itself across his features like rain bursting from heavy, grey clouds. He opens his mouth to speak, and…

“Well, I might have a counter-argument to th—”

And the dam collapses.

“You dumbass!”

From the defendant’s chair, Victoria goes nuclear. Across the little railing, Teabody sits in the witness area—not yet dismissed formally, but away from the stand to make room for Gumshoe and his lab results. She’s recoiling into herself, now—averting her eyes from the furious gaze of Victoria, who’s writhing in the bailiff’s grasp and gnashing her teeth like a wild beast.

“I told you to make sure that worthless narc was near the greenhouse!

Ah.

“I tried!” Anne snaps to face her, finally, the sweat pouring off her at risk of rivaling Franziska’s own sorry state. “She was rushing out the door and kept talking about her stupid date, I couldn’t do anything—”

“You’re right! You can’t do anything!” She keeps on, breaking free of her bonds for just long enough to wrap her fingers white-knuckle around the railing between them. “Couldn’t save my skin no matter how many times we went over things. Couldn’t cover my ass even though I promised you a share of shit. Couldn’t even cook up a bug bold enough to stop the pr—”

She’s cut off but the sound of Eddie clapping his hands together—once, twice. Franziska has seen him do this before, oddly unassuming outside of the courtroom—playful, even. On the golden wood of these four walls and all their acoustics, though, it echoes loud enough to steal the words from the killer’s tongue.

“I think we’ve heard enough, eh, kidderino?” Despite everything, he’s wearing that same smile as always, eyes paradoxically intense. “Man… if only you had let me challenge the time of the murder. Sat pretty in your seat and let Uncle Eddie do the talking. We coulda stalled for time just like you wanted, long enough for… well.”

He eyes Franziska across the divide. The sun itself seems to have fallen to earth, broken through the skylight, settled right there on her back like she’s Atlas. She sweats. She sweats with such a ferocity that her palms shake and slip around the wood of the bench she’s grappled onto like some sort of starving, bloodsucking leech. There’s starlight bursting across her back, and yet its warmth eludes her still. Stomach churning, face burning, arms prickled and skin raised, she beckons her victory to run toward her. Just this once, and never again, she stops chasing—in metaphor she kneels like she’s trying to coax a hungry stray into her trap, too exhausted to run any further.

“Indeed,” says the judge from on high. “It’s really just a formality to ask, but… Ms. Hendrickson, are you confessing to the murder of Caduceus Daver?”

Running a shaky hand through her long blonde hair, Victoria takes a deep breath and sits back down. The arms around her loosen as the fight seems to leave her.

“Yeah, whatever,” she spits out the words like day-old gum into a city gutter. “I gassed the professor real good. And the ailing prosecutor over there is right—I could’ve gotten away with it if I had just been smarter and only relied on myself.”

Teabody tenses beside her, digging her bitten-down nails into the fabric of her joggers, arms ramrod-straight. With that, the judge takes note of her, addressing her next.

“And you, Ms. Teabody,” he says, “do you admit to being her accomplice?”

She shuts her eyes tight, like she’s been struck. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. ”

“I see,” he looks toward the skylight, contemplative as ever. “I guess the only question that remains is… why?”

Victoria smirks, her lip pulling back to reveal a canine that looks… particularly sharp in the sunlight. “Wouldn’t you like to know. Just cart me off already. I think we’re all about ready to get out of this stuffy courtroom.”

“Ms. Teabody, do you have anything further you’d like to say on that matter?”

“Nah,” she waves a hand, lets go of the breath she’d been holding for days, lets her shoulders drop. “I’m not cut out for this, man. I’m not a murderer, I’m just a microbiologist.”

Franziska can hear solar flares crackling somewhere in the back of her head. The heat is white-hot, and her legs begin to jelly, and she swallows hard and pushes herself upright, intent to stay on her feet.

“It seems we have more to discuss, but I will concede that this trial has served its purpose. I see no room for misinterpretation of the facts,” says the judge. “In that case, I will hand down my verdict. On the charge of murder in the first degree, we hereby find the defendant, Ms. Victoria Hendrickson…”

Vision whiting on the corners, Franziska breathes as deeply as she’s able. Words turn to syllables. Consonants, to cacophonous buzzing.

“Guilty.”

The gavel pounds in tandem with her heartbeat in her ears, so loud its a miracle she hears it at all. Security moves, silver cuffs glistening on their way to the defendant’s chair, and, as if breathing along one, single, unspoken wavelength… Franziska and Teabody meet one another’s eyes across the room.

I’m not a murderer, the words echo there in the silence between them, I’m just a microbiologist.

Like a puppet with strings cut, Franziska’s legs finally give, and she tumbles unceremoniously to the courtroom floor.

In line with her previous 24 hours, Franziska awakens to sniveling.

It takes her a moment to realize that this time, it is not her own—though, taking a moment to gauge how she feels, the horrible congestion that’s been dragging down her face is still very much present. The source of this incessant noise is coming from somewhere vaguely to the right of her—accented with a whirr of noise from miscellaneous electronic devices that Franziska’s sure grates on her ears and her ears alone.

Once more she has that thought, I should open my eyes. Open her eyes, take in her surroundings, begin planning her next steps. Right now she’s certain she’s just laying there, and while the dwellings are not uncomfortable, they are certainly not somewhere she’s keen to spend the rest of her very busy day.

With great effort, then, she pushes through the feeling of iron sheets draped across her. Pressing her eyelids into themselves, cringing alongside the endeavor as she tries to do something so basic, so simple. Beside her, the blubbering stops itself—cut short by the abrasive squeak of a chairleg moving against the linoleum floor. The shuffling of fabric against itself, urgent before it ceases.

“Sit down, detective.”

Miles.

The warmth that pours into every fractured crack of Franziska’s bones is like salve to the wound of it. Something wet and weak-willed crawls up her throat, threatening to overwhelm her, and she is ten years old suddenly and trying to find his face in a crowded room. Without fail, nearly every time, he finds her first—never saying aloud that he had been looking for her, too.

Grateful that no one can read her mind, Franziska allows herself the childish thought—I’m safe here. With that, then, she opens her eyes.

It’s pure white on every side of her, blindingly so. She wants to bemoan the colour and what it does to her pounding head, but all she can muster instead is to tuck her eyes into her shoulder and wretchedly croak out something about it being too foolishly bright, can’t someone shut the drapes? Miles can’t help himself from chuckling at that, and Gumshoe’s out of his seat before anyone can blink, forever at her beck and call even when he truly doesn’t need to be.

“Franziska, can you hear me?” tries Miles, his voice alarmingly close.

“Yes. Close your mouth. I’d rather not.”

He looses a breath of air. Franziska knows this sound well, can envision the expression on his face even though she is still buried in her arm. A soft, relieved smile. Gratitude that her sharp tongue remains intact.

“How are you feeling?”

All she can do is glare at him. Jaw flexed hard, eyes molten mercury.

“My apologies.” He’s still smiling. Bastard. “I suppose that is a rather foolish question.”

She takes the moment to go back to observing her surroundings, now with slightly more clarity. Outside the door she hears shoes skidding and screeching on the floor, a quiet murmur of scattered, low voices every so often. Everything feels overly sanitized, crisp, starchy—the sheets are too fresh, the bed rails are cold against the bare skin of her arms. The slight itch in one makes sense when she sees the IV there, steels her will not to grow sicker at the sight of it all. She’d not needed hospitalization since… well.

Instinctively, her fist curls beneath the covers, meeting leather instead of itself. Just like before, someone had made sure that her whip remained in her hands.

Franziska’s hadn’t noticed the layers piled on top of the bedsheets until right now—Miles’ suit jacket first, and then Scruffy’s dreadful trenchcoat atop that. Though her sense of smell is nonexistent, somehow she knows it's some combination of cheap aftershave and overpriced cologne that's needling still at her nose. There was no saving these foolish men.

“Perhaps I should ask you if you have any questions,” Miles says into the silence. Franziska leans back, taking a deep breath that whistles somewhere deep in her lungs.

“How many people saw me?”

Miles chokes on his own voicebox. “For heaven’s sake, Franziska—”

“You said any question!” she spits right back at him, the exertion triggering a powerful fit of coughing. The horrid things crawl jaggedly out of her, leaching her of any energy she might have leftover, and they must sound truly pathetic as well—the way Miles shows no fear in what he does next, reaching out with heartsoft touch to place his hand across her own.

“Detective Gumshoe,” says Miles from her side, and the man in question peeks over his shoulder from where he’s still pretending to fiddle with the drapes. “Would you give us a moment?”

She knows what he’s doing. Clearing the scene, getting them in a quiet room alone together, trying to lure her into a sense of security so that she will talk more freely. Her brain feels foggy and fried, like anything more than surface-level thought is entirely futile—still, knowing Miles Edgeworth has become less like analysis and more like breathing.

(Not that she’s particularly good at that right now, either.)

Franziska can’t find it in herself to be mad at him. Really, she can’t find it in herself to do much of anything. Gumshoe bellows out something affirmative that grates on her aching head. Miles must have shot him a dirty look directly after, because he closes the door in the same manner a little old lady might slot back the top of a vintage china cookie jar. This time, when Franziska sighs, she is careful to keep her breathing metered so it does not catch once more. Somehow, her very lungs ache as she tries.

“For what it’s worth—”

“—absolutely nothing—”

“Our good detective said you looked quite dashing as you collapsed.” Miles pulls his arm back, crosses it with the other. “Holding out that final moment, until the verdict was handed down.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh, and what a lovely compliment it is, that miserable fool. He’s probably making me a plaque out of paper mache and tears as we speak.”

“Do have a heart, Franziska,” says Miles. “It was him who barked at everyone to clear the courtroom when you passed out. Not to mention, he was also the one who stayed at your side until I arrived.”

“And the one who called you,” she narrows her glare, “instead of a proper paramedic.”

“Yes, that certainly is our detective.” He rubs at his temple, staring off at the wall. “I’m sure it was just a courtesy. There’s no way he’d be able to pay for an ambulance if someone called one for him.”

“Pay for an ambulance. I hate this country, Miles.”

“I know. It doesn’t seem to favour you, either.”

Franziska groans in miserable agreement. “I suppose this is the part where I ask you why I am here.”

“You suppose?”

“I have some theories,” she continues. “But I would rather learn the facts before I speak on them.”

“Right,” says Miles, straightening out in his seat a bit. “Well, first of all, you’re quite ill.”

“Am I, now? This is news to me.”

“Dangerously so, if you’re making jokes.”

“What a heartless man you are,” says Franziska, “to wound me while I am convalescent.”

“I never claimed to be otherwise.” He doesn’t smile, exactly, but somehow he looks like he wants to. “Regardless, when you were admitted you were running a fever of over 105—”

“—not a real number—”

His face twists up, unamusedly. “Forty point five. Forgive my foolish Americanisms.”

“This crime is unforgivable,” she shoots right back, the words half-slurring, “punishable by death. I’m a prosecuting attorney.”

“You’re delirious, and on a dosage of peramivir that could knock out a rhinoceros,” says Miles. “They swabbed you for just about everything while you were unconscious, but…”

“But,” Franziska picks up where he leaves off, “no one can figure out what’s made its devilish home within me, correct?”

“Not far from the truth,” he continues. “The only thing you came back positive for was influenza. I’m no medical professional, but I’m told the reading was… unclear in some way, and that you weren’t exactly following the blueprint, symptomatically. Gumshoe arrived within the hour to tardily inform me of the... interesting enemy you seem to have made.”

“That’s a word for it, yes,” Franziska says. “I will simply ask outright, then—was this proper biological warfare?”

“Well, innocent until proven guilty, but…”

“Ms. Teabody did not seem particularly intent to hide her role as an accomplice when all was said and done.”

“I see,” Miles looks out the window, eyes fixed on the smoggy grey and whatever lies beyond it. “The details are need-to-know, at present. I have the clearance to peruse them, I suppose, but I was more concerned with staying in your company in the meantime.”

Saccharine as ever. Her face feels hot. Something tells her it’s not the fever.

“One thing did stick out to me, though…”

“Oh?” Jumping at the opportunity to change the topic, Franziska perks up a little in her bed. “Do tell.”

“The medical staff were obviously a little concerned at the implications of some sort of lab-created supervirus spreading to the population,” says Miles, “but according to Teabody’s own testimony, the virus she... somehow managed to infect you with is wholly non-contagious. It’s fascinating, really…”

“Is it?” Testing the waters, Franziska cracks her neck a touch, pulls her arms to themselves to fight off how cold she still is. “She’s been called a prodigy in her field of microbiology. Are we really surprised she’s out here crafting genetically engineered strains of the flu?”

“No, just… it's the hypothetical conduit which compels me.” His mouth quirks up on the side, ever subtle. “Did she get you with some sort of blowdart?”

Franziska’s about to quip at that, sorting through her foggy, addled brain for the tone of voice she wants to take—condescending and barbed in response to the absurdity? Haughty and flattered at the implication that she is not easy to poison? Only while she’s gaining stock of these options does the revelation come to her—a second wave of ice freezes the very blood in her veins over, and she remembers—

“The flowers.”

She speaks it with one hand braced just inches from her lips, as if wanting to catch the words in her fingers, roll them along her palm to examine in more meticulous detail. Miles looks at her quizzically, or as close to the adjective as a man as stern-browed as himself can get.

“Excuse me?”

“There was—” she drags a hand across her face, feeling utterly foolish, “—in the lab, they had some uncommon variant of begonias I’d never seen before, and I pricked myself on one of the thorns, and… I don’t know how that’s even feasible, but—”

When Miles starts up his stupid, wheezy, dying-car-engine chuckle—the one he always tried to choke back to be a bit more polite—Franziska finds herself thinking about how much easier it would be if she just pitched forward and choked him herself. With how forlorn he’s looked the last thirty minutes, there is a brief moment of serenity that comes in hearing that laugh, sure—right now, though, Franziska’s much too cranky to dwell upon it.

“Don’t think I’m too ill to knock that foolish smile off your foolish face.”

“No, you’re right, I shouldn’t laugh, Franziska.” He clears his throat, as if to stop himself. “It’s just awfully amusing, is all.”

“This? This is amusing to you?” She pitches off to the side to cough more, this time holding the things against closed lips in an attempt to not kindle their fire. “I am in the hospital, Miles Edgeworth.”

“Of course not,” he says. “I simply mean… as far as planned crimes go, it’s rather serendipitous at face value. Think of all the things that would have to align for that method of administration to work. And yet it did, I presume because…”

She can tell he’s swallowing another amused chuckle. What she’s doing in response is a little too strong-jawed to be considered pouting, but it’s the closest equivalent that someone as hard as Franziska really has.

“…as private as you are, you’ve never hidden that you’re a savant for the botanical,” Miles says, and the only thing keeping his poor, ailing sister from screaming at the top of her lungs is the fact that if she did, she fears she would no longer have vocal chords to scream with.

Of course. Of course. The few interviews she’d done—outside of press conferences post-trial—she’d not been able to contain herself when asked of her interests outside of her practice. Papa had always told her to keep tight-lipped, that as a prosecutor, her enemies—dangerous enemies—would use any and all information she gave to take advantage of her. All of these truths, Franziska knew, and had memorized like precious scripture, ever-present in the back of her mind.

Yet… she had never in a million years assumed that something as mundane and unremarkable as her love of flowers could ever be used in the same way a bullet in the head of her loved ones might. Feeling utterly defeated, Franziska looks to the waterstained ceiling above for answers. Maybe the illness truly has baked her brain to a charred crisp, because for the first time in what feels like forever, Franziska can think of absolutely nothing to say.

What does it matter, in the end? Their plan failed, after all. The illness was not powerful enough to keep someone as iron-willed as she from standing trial, from doing everything in her power to prove their dastardly guilt.

“All that to say, it seems they did their research on you.”

Miles says it in her stead. Franziska can’t help turning the words over in her mind, though—newspaper articles framed in her study, Freshly Injured Prosecutor Takes The Stand With Decisive Evidence this, What Will Stop Von Karma? Not Even A Bullet that. Her ears catch the sound of phantom ticker-tape singing its metered song as she remembers it all—the last time she heard the buzzing of hospital fluorescents and daytime television, morphine in her blood and bandages crisscrossing her shoulder as she stormed the courtroom, fearsome as ever.

Franziska takes a deep breath. It tickles her airways, but not in a way that can ever hope to matter.

“Clearly, they did not do enough.”