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Maya’s on the floor.
Absolutely phenomenal, the kind of nonsense this girl got up to the second anyone took their eyes off her. Franziska had stepped into the apartment kitchen for a scant few minutes to brew her some tea. The blink of an eye, really. And here Maya was, splayed out on her stomach, blazing forehead pressed into the throw rug. If it were anyone else, her danger receptors might fire off at the sight of her loved one laying there, prone. It’s Maya, though, so Franziska is absolutely certain this is some goofy little bit she’s doing.
“I didn’t think your illness was that dire,” says Franziska, just kind of standing there in the pseudo-archway. “Have you gone and died on me, Schatzi?”
“Franzyyyyy,” Maya whines out, as if to confirm that she has not yet become one with the ones she channels. “I can feel it. The black lung.”
As if to punctuate, she curls to one side to cough that awful cough of hers. Every rattle of it ricochets sympathy pangs around Franziska’s own chest, and she can’t help tutting as she plods forward and sets Maya’s tea on the coffee table.
“Surely, being on the ground is not helping,” Franziska insists, and Maya turns to face her with big, bleary eyes. “I do try to keep tidy, but it’s been a while since I last vacuumed…”
“No, I gotta.”
“Alright,” follows Franziska, “why?”
“I need you to step on me.”
“This again?” Franziska rolls her eyes. “I’ve told you time and time again, Maya, I take umbrage with the idea of causing harm to a woman, even in the interest of her own pleasure—”
“I’m not being horny!” whines Maya, a bit louder, before she remembers how badly her throat hurts. Whispery, then, “I need you to literally step on me. Walk the pain outta my back.”
“Pardon?”
“Or—Or—” she raises her head, “rip my spine out and crack it like your whip.”
“I don’t think that second one is feasible.”
“Noooo,” cries Maya, dropping her head back to the floor like a dog that’s pouting. “Fran, every single muscle I have is screaming bloody murder at me. It’s like my body is just one big ache.”
The tones of whimsy and silliness slowly leach out of her voice with every word. Something croaky, languid, watery replaces them, and Franziska can feel her heart breaking in two. When her and Maya had finally made the whole dating thing official, Franziska expected all their firsts would be… daunting, but wonderful, regardless of the circumstances. After all, what was more wondrous than being blessed to not go those firsts alone?
So far, though, Franziska doesn’t think she likes Maya’s first illness in their time together. She’d been so caught up in the euphoria of getting to take care of someone—protective energy sparking itself up in her heart, Franziska was a big sister first and a person second—that she hadn’t stopped to think about how agonizing it would be to see Maya in pain.
Maya couldn’t just go and catch a bout of the sniffles, either—no, of course she had to come down with only the nastiest of bugs, complete with a stubborn fever and the worst cough Franziska had ever heard.
Though her spirits were still there beneath the illness, Franziska could tell that Maya was reaching her limit. The body aches were so trifling that Maya had barely moved an inch since morning, and they seemed to only be getting worse as the night went on and her temperature refused to budge.
Unsure of what else to do, Franziska kneels down beside her beloved, hands nervously hovering for a moment before making hesitant contact with her beloved’s crown. She cards her fingers through Maya’s hair, breaking up the jungle of tangles that had formed with all her tossing and turning last night. In all her agony, she couldn’t even muster the arm strength to deal with the most mundane of personal tasks. There’s an impulse, of course, to grab her hair brush, run it methodically through Maya’s long raven mane, take care of what Maya is hurting too much to accomplish herself. With it come the other ideas—ever the practical caretaker, Franziska finds herself much more interested in problem-solving than comfort.
She doesn’t have the masseuse chops that Miles Edgeworth does—where he picked that skill up, she hasn’t the foggiest idea, but she’s almost regretting calling it “useless,” now—and she lacks any kind of heating pads or wraps. Generally, attacking physical pain like this is twofold—with anti-inflammatories and topicals, but she doesn’t have much of anything in this medicinally paltry apartment. Franziska is sure her inventory of the little medicine cabinet was precise as anything else she does in life, but she can’t help feeling that impulse to stomp back into the bathroom and—
Oh!
“How does a bath sound?”
Maya rolls her head to where Franziska’s knelt, looking disoriented, like she had only just blipped back into existence. “Wha?”
“I’ll run you a bath, dear one,” Franziska offers her warmest smile, still just running her fingers through Maya’s long hair. “Nothing fixes up aches and pains like a scalding hot soak.”
“Oh! Oh… that’d be so nice… but…”
Her voice goes a bit listless after the initial joy, like a child who’s just been given horrible news on their birthday.
“I don’t think I’ll…” she stops herself, rephrases— “Your tub’s kinda small.”
For some reason Franziska feels a flush of something that’s not quite humiliation spreading across her cheeks. How often she forgot that she had blinders on in so many regards, and yet, this one always makes her feel the worst. Scrawny thing that she is, she tries her best to not think them as afterthoughts, but… yes, wonderfully fat Maya is always going to navigate the world with twice as much body to spare.
Of course Franziska’s stick-thin self saw no problem with the tub. And she hadn’t even the foresight to seek out a larger one, or make any modifications to accommodate her girlfriend, and—
Deep breaths. There are still things she can do.
“That is true…” she muses aloud. “What about just your feet?”
“Will that… do anything?”
“At the very least, it’ll soothe one part of you,” says Franziska, “not to mention it’ll lower your fever. Extremities are some of the most sensitive parts of the body, why do you think I always go for the feet when I’m whipping that sorry fool you like to hang around?”
It’s a much-missed sound, Maya giggling the way she is right now. “Think you could whip the plague outta my stupid body?”
“Let’s try something a bit less heavy-handed, first.”
With that, Franziska lays out the hand in question, beckoning Maya to her stumbling feet and trying, with all she is, not to dissolve into something amorphous and gooey at the feeling of the moment as it springs to life around her.
It’s all… so much more mundane than she used to dream it in her youth. Always charging forward toward her law degree, there was little time to think romantic thoughts, but… they crept in, regardless. There in her study, the sun would fall through the window, past the branches of the old sycamore tree that broke it into imperfect strands. It’d warm her face in such a way, and for whatever reason, her thoughts always painted pictures of her on grand adventures with some faceless woman.
Down the cobble paths of her favourite neighbouring town, tumbling through an open field with long hair tickling at her neck and shoulders. Sundresses, the smell of perfume, every facet of feminine beauty that intoxicated her wholly and completely. Most of all, Franziska dreamt of holding this mystery woman in her arms—drying her tears, petting her hair, keeping her safe from some nebulous harm.
Love was so rarely such a soft thing for Franziska. It burned there in her chest, righteous and white-hot. Franziska knows that if reincarnation truly does exist, she spent a couple thousand lifetimes as a chivalrous knight, eversharp sword in hand. She feels it sometimes, when her whip strikes—the feeling of being bigger than herself finally settling into something more comfortable.
There are no ladies for her to so gallantly slay beasts in the name of. She prosecutes, then, but the itch never quite scratches itself—something about it isn’t hands on enough, grand enough, explosive enough. She never feels there in her calloused palms the lives she saves, avenges, fights for.
Here, though—walking her sick girlfriend to the bathroom, one feverish arm thrown across her shoulders, her own nervously trembling digits cradling Maya’s waist… this feels like the closest she’s ever come. Forward movement, that soft love she’d always heard tell of, burning in her chest and across her face all the same.
This close, Maya’s heady scent swirls around her, and it’s the unmistakable scent of illness—menthol and sweat and the slight sweetness of tea—but beneath the blanket of that is the same coconutty shampoo and crispness of mountain snow and woodsmoke that always makes Franziska feel dizzy. Such a mundane thing, the thought comes again, and yet, it feels so glorious.
Carefully, she sits Maya down on the closed toilet seat. Runs the water nice and hot, but not too hot to burn. Though Franziska would never admit to such a luxury aloud, she is a… bit of a bath expert, her cabinets filled with oils and scents and salts. Nothing as ridiculous as bubbles or bath bombs, but she did like to enjoy herself every now and again—one had to keep the body strong to keep the mind strong, after all. Her prosecutorial prowess would certainly suffer if she were distracted by her aching, heels-tired calves all day.
Franziska allows the tub to fill itself wholly, so that she can envelop as much of Maya's lower half in there as possible. All the while, she’s swirling some sort of jasmine-scented melt into the waters, giving them a shimmery sort of coat. The smell, as always, is magnificent—the florals of that, mixed with the rosiness of her bath salts, oh how she wishes Maya herself could smell it. The poor thing is congested clear up to her eyes, though hopefully the steam will do something for her sinuses, too.
“I think it’s just about ready for you,” Franziska signals, gesturing toward the steaming tub. “Go on.”
Curled in her towel (so as to spare herself the chill), Maya manages to drag herself right up to the threshold of the little tub, where she looks into the cosmic waters in nervous contemplation. Then to her feet, as if trying to puzzle out how to make them work. For nearly a full minute, she just stands there with her features knit into something unsure.
“Schatzi?”
Maya’s eyes are wobbling and shiny when she creaks her aching neck to the side to look at Franziska. “I’m… I can’t.”
Franziska tilts her head in concern. “Why not?”
“I—” she swallows with a slight wince, “what if I slip? Getting in?”
That… is a valid worry. With all the accouterments added, the waters are likely a lot more slick than they would be otherwise. Not to mention that Maya’s already wobbling like a newborn fawn, it would be very easy for an accident like that to happen. Franziska, of course, doesn’t even have to think about what she does next—her body moves on its own, that same sort of primordial energy from before completely taking her over.
Maya’s hand, of course, is warm when she takes it. Even when she wasn’t running such a fever, that was one of the most wonderful things about Maya—she was always, always warm. To prove her arm strength, but not enough to harm, Franziska gives Maya’s hand a gentle squeeze. Nudging her head toward the tub, then, as if to say go on.
“You’ll not falter, I promise,” Franziska assures her. “I’ve got you.”
The ailing medium’s jaw goes hard, like she’s trying to keep herself from crying. “What if I do?”
“You won’t,” says Franziska. “I shall keep you safe.”
Anyone else, and Maya might doubt it—pointless reassurance, a platitude meant to ease her worries so she’d just get over herself. Franziska wasn’t like that, though—Franziska never said anything she didn’t endeavour to see through to the very end. When Franziska says that Maya is safe in her arms—that if she were to slip and fall, her girlfriend would snap to action and catch her before she tumbled down—Maya has no room to question it. She meets Franziska’s eyes for a nervous, fleeting moment, and knows more than she knows the blue of the sky that this woman would rather die than lie to her.
Her heart shudders and spills. She doesn’t want to cry.
“Okay,” says Maya instead, then once more for good measure, “—okay.”
White-knuckle on Franziska’s hand, Maya lifts one leg. It feels like she’s arm wrestling her, the way she puts all her weight into that single, meaningful point where their bodies connect. The feeling of it rushes like a shattering, spilled dam into Franziska’s beating heart—through her veins, into her lungs, reinvigorating like a shot of pure adrenaline. Loving. Caring. Providing. Protecting.
In goes the second leg, twice as careful and precarious as the first. Twice as much weight, then, but Franziska holds steady and strong, feeling utterly alive with the experience of keeping that which she loves aloft. Then, carefully, she is lowering Maya down—keeping her aligned as she bends her knees, sits on the lip of the tub, breathes a watery sigh of relief.
Franziska is smart enough to know that she is not enough of a poet to have words that justify the shape of the look Maya gives her thereafter. She does not try, then—let the more professional lovers paint a picture of the love that she feels when she and Maya share that last, held gaze. Everything settled, then, Maya’s whole body goes slack, and she melts into her girlfriend’s side.
“There you are,” Franziska coos, sitting one-legged beside her. “That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”
“Franzy,” Maya croakily sing-songs, “that feels so good.”
“Yes, well, that is the idea.”
“Sooo good.”
“See, I told you I would not need to remove any of your bones to soothe your aches.”
Meandering with adoration, she slowly rubs circles into Maya’s arm, where the towel’s fallen off. The footbath seems to have warmed her enough to compensate for it, because she lets it fall off into Franziska’s hands immediately after. Those dark-freckled shoulders are something that belongs in a painting, as is every scar and spot and stretch mark around them. Looking at Maya laid bare like this, Franziska finally understands why that unremarkably ugly indent in her own shoulder is the first place Maya always kisses.
For the first time all day, Franziska watches Maya’s colour return—almost literally, the sickly pallor fades from her face and something much rosier takes its place. With it, the lines of pain in the sick girl’s features relax themselves, too. It’s a beautiful thing to watch happen in real time, Maya returning to her body. Like a puzzle piece slotting into place, a peg falling into its designated hole.
Except...
She’s got that look on her face. Franziska knows it oh so well—the look she got when she had an idea. The look she got when she was feeling bold or mischievous or heaven forbid, both. The look that signals that no one is safe.
The look that, only a little regrettably, is what made Franziska first fall for her.
Maya seems to study the waters as they charmingly swish into themselves. Scoots herself—in struggling, still-fatigued bursts—to the very edge of the threshold.
Then, rather unceremoniously, she lets her whole body sink down into the tub.
The resulting calamity is predictably immediate. Franziska leaps like a hissing cat out of the tender embrace, grasping desperately for purchase on the slippery floor as the overflowing liquid floods her whole bathroom. Glittering cascades of it spill across her laminate flooring, their sloshing song accented only by Maya’s raspy, eloquent exclamation of “oh shit!”
“Maya Fey!”
Franziska’s own exclamation is instinct, more than anything. The tone of it comes out stuck somewhere in a tug-o-war with itself—exasperated, fearful, awestruck, dumb. Maya just kind of sits there in the tub, still too weak to do much of anything else and watching the consequences of her dubious impulse control in real time.
“Uhhh,” she says, staring at the shape of her hair as it turns to spilled ink in the water, “oops.”
“You are going to be—” Franziska’s furiously tearing through the cabinets for a towel, pointedly ignoring the one lain across the countertop, “—the death of me, you foolishly foolhardy fool of a foolish girl!”
“Franzy, there’s—”
“—each and every day you find new ways to one-up yourself in sheer foolishness, I—”
As she’s saying it, she manages to throw the one towel she could locate on the mess Maya’s made. It soaks the buckets of water up instantly, turning sopping and useless in seconds, and then Franziska’s tracking water throughout her whole apartment—looking in the washing machine closet, the dirty clothes hamper, the—anything, why does she not have more blasted towels in this damned house?!?!
The second towel she finds, hidden at the bottom of the hamper, does not fare much better. And there’s still, just, buckets of water all over her floor. At her wits end, then, she grabs a handful of Miles Edgeworth’s clothes that’d been right there alongside it—pyjamas, from a case where he’d stayed the night to work with her, and foolishly forgotten to take home and launder. Fine, then—if he’s not going to have the mind to do something as simple as clean up after himself, he will simply have to face the consequences of having his sleepwear be turned into a pair of glorified sponges.
There Franziska is, then, sunk to her knees on her bathroom floor, surrounded in wholly drenched scraps of fabric. Breathing heavy, staring at the still-damp laminate, her bitten-down fingernails just kind of poised there against it. At her flank, Maya is still wordless in the bath, emitting a wheezy, held-back noise that… starts to sound more and more like laughter the more of it escapes her. For once in her life, she’s trying so hard to be polite, but as Franziska slowly cranes her head to stare into the full-length mirror that hangs on the back of her door…
Well, it is quite the sight. Legendary prosecutor Franziska von Karma, braced there on her bathroom floor, disheveled and red-faced, trying to corral the spilling waters like she might corral an unruly witness. The tides, much to her chagrin, cannot be similarly flogged into relative submission.
It’s only natural that she starts laughing too, despite herself. The feeling of it bubbles up in her chest before she can register it, escaping into a tented, still-damp palm that she messily presses against her lips. That makes Maya laugh harder, which makes Franziska laugh harder, and before either of them know it, they are fighting back tears with their heads thrown back in something akin to bliss. Franziska falls back on splayed hands, nearly tumbling blindly on the still-slippery floor. Maya, right beside her, is cackling with so much of her body that the water ripples and sloshes into miniature waves.
“You fool,” Franziska says, wiping a single tear from her eye. Despite the words themselves, there is insurmountable affection laden in every single vowel and consonant of her favourite word. “What on earth were you thinking?”
“Uh. That my legs and feet felt really good, and maybe if I tuck my whole ass self in there it would cure the rest of me,” she says, and then offers a golden smile that begs, forgive me, for I am so very cute. “And that my girlfriend is so nice and cool and chivalrous and good at taking care of me.”
“Flattery will not save you from my wrath, Maya Fey.”
“Uh-huh. You don’t look very wrathful right now.” She points at the unfaltering smile on Franziska’s face, flinging water at her beloved in the process. Franziska lets out an exaggerated squawk of sorts and flinches away, trying so hard to school her expression into something more rigid and furious. It never quite gets there, though—the love inherent creeps into every line of her features, the shape of it too large to contain.
“Anyway, what were you thinking, child prodigy?” Maya carries on, nodding her head vaguely up toward the unblemished countertop. “There’s literally another towel right there.”
“I was thinking that you would very much like something to dry off with when you got out of your impromptu bath,” says Franziska right back, almost pouting. “Unless you’d like to stay sopping wet and worsen that illness of yours.”
“Woah…” says Maya, genuinely impressed. “Franzy… you’re so cool… you think of everything. I just be doin’ shit.”
“Yes, well,” she looks once more to the mess all around her, “how fortunate for our courtship, then. If we put our heads together, we level out in that regard as one extremely average individual.”
“Hell yeah,” Maya agrees, before coughing roughly into her folded arm. It’s not the unsatisfying, ticklish thing it’s been all day—to both her delight and disgust, Franziska can hear movement in those struggling lungs. This is a good sound—she knows this—but still, it rankles her heart a bit more than she’d like. Reaching out to rub Maya’s spasming upper-back is nearly involuntarily, something her hands decide long before her head does.
“Stay right as you are, dearheart.” Leaning forward on her knees, she presses a slow kiss to Maya’s forehead, and is delighted to find it feels a bit less warm. “I’m going to heat up that tea of yours. It has most certainly gone cold by now.”
Maya looks at her with big, shining eyes. “You’re leaving me all alone in here? All by my little self?”
“Not very long, of that I assure you…”
As she’s standing, she swivels back down to tap her index finger playfully on her beloved’s red little button nose.
“Who knows what’ll happen to my bathroom if I do.”