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Failure.
Again? Not again.
Ema Skye stands in front of Office 1202, staring at the stubborn number plate with heavy eyes. She’d been crying for hours obviously, which is great in a sense since she knows she won’t have the tears to embarrass herself in front of her hero. Her back hurts. She should’ve eaten breakfast or gotten a glass of water before coming here.
She can’t just ignore a call from Miles Edgeworth though. Not after everything he’s done for her and Lana, not after all these years of schooling overseas. And yet she’s stuck. Again.
The door magically opens in front of her, slowly. Behind it is the only person she doesn’t want to see and the only person who probably knows how much this hurts.
“Fraulein Skye?”
Ema tightens her jaw and straightens her back against the pain. “Prosecutor Gavin. What are you doing back here?”
Klavier shrugs, his obnoxious jewelry glimmering in her face. “Finished touring. I figured I’d let Herr Edgeworth know my availability.” His eyes soften after a quick scan and Ema can already sense the question from a mile away.
“Okay. Mind moving out of the way? I need to report something to Mr. Edgeworth.”
And she figures by his wince that she’s not doing a great job at hiding the shaking or raspiness in her voice, but he steps aside anyway. Of course he can’t just not say anything annoying and he leaves with a quick: “Have fun with that, Fraulein.”
Then the door closes behind her and she’s left face to face with everything wrong once again.
She can’t stand the attempt at pity Mr. Edgeworth tries putting on, can’t stand the paper he’s left behind on his desk, can’t stand the offer of other options. She tells him that she’s getting this license, with or without him. She gets it though, she can’t imagine all the trouble he’s been going through, rooting through all the dirt in the prosecutors office. Money doesn’t grow on trees and time is ticking down. She needs to take classes again, needs the funds to apply again, needs to think of Lana’s rehab, of her living situation, of what she’ll eat for dinner.
A steady hand on her shoulder pulls her out of her mind. “Ema.”
“What?”
“I understand that you won’t accept any other option than the one you’re passionate about. And I wholeheartedly support you on your journey, but you need to be flexible when that path isn’t as straightforward as you imagined.”
“I know that,” Ema grumbles.
“Then consider my offer a bit more?”
A detective for the city police. A gumshoe doing all the dirty work for uptight snobs all day, at their beck and call for everything. That’s supposed to be her when she gets her license.
Mr. Edgeworth sighs lightly, folding his hands on his lap. “It’s good field experience, Ema. You already qualify with the records you’ve submitted, you’d just need to retake the classes you need to reapply for your forensic licensure."
— — — — — — —
“It’s good field experience” this and “You’ll get it eventually” that.
She watches from a distance, flipping up and down her clipboard of notes mindlessly as the forensic team pull out a bottle of luminol. She clenches her jaw and spins around with a heavy sigh.
They don’t get it. Mr. Edgeworth and Lana don’t get it. She looks down at her pages of test results done by… Forest Sicamore. Freaking Forest Sicamore, not Ema Skye. All she sees is results and paperwork of tests not done by her, but by other people.
“How are things looking, Fraulein detective?"
“P-prosecutor Gavin,” Ema flinches, slamming her pen on her clipboard. “Hey, um, well, the team just handed me the results of their forensic tests just a few minutes ago.”
“For me, right?”
Ema clenches her jaw. “Right. For you.” She shoves the clipboard into his chest. “Here. Leave me alone.”
The purple precocious prosecutor gasps at the push, but quickly recovers and scans at the data. He’s got it covered from here, so she goes back to watching the forensic investigators once again. Stupid paperwork. She should be over there with her people in her environment.
“Fraulein detective?”
If he asks me to grab him another Redbull, I’m going to scream. She takes a deep breath and turns with a sharp gaze. “What do you want now?”
He raises the clipboard between them. “Could you tell me what they found? I’m having trouble understanding the data.”
“Are you an idiot? Give me that,” She snatches the clipboard again from his hand and flips through each page, trying to decipher what she can understand, pointing here and there every so often when something catches her eye.
All the while, she ignores the intense gaze on the side of her face. She finishes blandly, her heart racing after reporting her findings even if she didn’t collect the data herself. She returns his obnoxious gaze, raising a brow at the shock painted all over his face. “What?”
He shakes his head with a laugh. “You know your stuff, Fraulein. I expect a report of your findings on my desk before the trial tomorrow, if you don’t mind?”
“Ugh, can you do anything?” She narrows daggers into his eyes, but he shrugs it off. But… “Fine. Tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
“I can only be fashionably late, Fraulein. You know this,” He comments, turning and walking towards his obnoxious bike. He picks up his helmet and salutes behind him. “Auf Wiedersehen!"
“Whatever,” She sighs, pulling out her tablet. She’ll need the extra space to write than just the margins.
He passes by the forensic team and if only she weren't so focused on not watching him leave, she would’ve seen him tell them to let the lovely labcoated lady check out their equipment and data. “She’s head detective after all, report all findings to her.”
Of course, she doesn’t know that, won’t admit that’s something he’d do. But if she brings her own forensic equipment after this and nobody bothers her, she’ll just have to thank her lucky stars, rock-related and so on.