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They meet, somehow, at a crossroad of parallel tracks.
Lana’s life is changed, now, from its old shape. Mornings no longer feel so heavy. Her time in prison was, in many ways, less burdensome than the days that numbered before it, and two years into her parole, she finds herself taking steps so light she wonders where their weight went.
She sees Ema less than she used to, but their company is better spent. Her sister has endured her own straits for growth, and she emerged from them smarter and funnier and more bitter than Lana could have ever imagined. Lana blames half of the last on herself, and can’t claim credit for the rest, so all she can say is that her Ema has become a woman to reckon with. It’s a point of pride she’s glad to call hers, one of few—though, to her gentle surprise, the list slowly grows by the day.
Her job, for example, is as far from a cage as she can make it. While the law still guides her path, she serves as its advocate, not its executor. It surprised no one, least of all herself, when she left the past behind for the other side of the law. Ema made the transition easy with a call to a familiar face, and so Phoenix Wright dangled a line to yet another; finally, with a reference from Miles Edgeworth—a man who has changed as much as her own reflection in the mirror— she was directed to the door of a strange firm with a name as surprising at its owner.
“Raymond Shields,” her new boss said. “Welcome to Edgeworth Law Offices.”
Raymond is upfront, honest, and refreshingly helpless: the kind of man who heels with the first hard dismissal of flirtation and flounders when he’s excited. In every way that matters, he’s Gant’s polar opposite, and serving as a paralegal for the firm’s pro-bono work is stimulating without wearing her thin. She will never serve behind the bench again, and that’s just fine to her. This is a work where she can use her mind and pay her dues, but never again shoulder the responsibility of a city she betrayed.
So her days have shifted. Her sister calls her once a week. Her office is a backroom full of files and her work uniform is a tee, jeans, and old Converse from her college days. Her boss cries watching sad TV commercials and says “nice work” every time she reviews his case notes. She can fall asleep without help almost every night of the week, and if in the middle of all of it, there’s still something missing, well...
She won’t find it, no matter how hard she looks.
And that’s what she tells herself one hot August night as Ema guides her by the arm, introducing her to every stranger at a party for the district’s fighters and defenders of law, and tilts her head to a woman that Lana can only call “beautiful.”
“Lana, this is—”
“Aura,” the woman says. Her eyes are dark and cold, and her accent sharpens the syllables in a voice that’s deeper than wine. “Aura Blackquill.”
Aura is...
Lana finds there are a million words to describe her, but none fit close enough to capture the whole.
‘Sharp’ is an easy first, with a mind, body, and mouth that delights in drawing blood from her opponents. Aura is freshly released from a sentence of her own, with a smirk and an ankle bracelet to prove it, and her new, highly-supervised job in Forensics prohibits her from working on any mechanical electronic larger than a laptop. ‘Smart’ is a natural second to ‘sharp’, but it fails equally in scope. Aura is smart as an ocean is deep, too vast and frightening for measure; hers is an intellect that’s been made a mace for decimating foes in her path, ruthless and clinical by turns.
If Lana is pressed to select only one, however, ‘stunning’ is probably the word that fits Aura best. Her humor, for one, is shocking, and her temperament is given to violent, earnest expressions of emotion. The first time she laughs, Lana nearly chokes on her drink from the dinner table rattling under her fist. She’s provocative, too—always saying things to incite similar intensity in others, for good or ill. Aura claims she has no interest in world domination, and Lana doesn’t know whether it’s a relief or a concern that her cruel, brilliant mind considered the possibility and left it wayside out of disinterest rather than mercy.
Of course, Aura is remarkable in other ways as well. Her dyed purple hair is thick and silky, the color of night freesia, and the first time Lana sees it loose at her shoulders it takes her breath away. Her eyes, too, are keen enough to draw Lana up short, grey and cold as ice until the very moment they’re not.
Stunning. From the moment they meet. Blunt and unsympathetic and so very forward, mouth slanted crude as if to say, “You’re the most interesting person here, but the bar is low. Impress me.” Stunning, in the way she’d stilled, expression flickering when Lana had met her gaze without hesitation, amused and intrigued despite herself. In the way that— as weeks passed—her first impression had proved perfectly accurate, giving foundation to a friendship of cutting quips and dry wit.
Stunning, in the crumbling of her facade, when the day came that Lana found the courage to ask her to dinner the first time. Aura had frozen, then, going still as a prey animal over her tinker table, before lurching to her feet, practically fleeing the lab with the babbled excuse of a forgotten experiment and an unfamiliar panic in her voice. Stunning, in the moment she’d caught up to Lana minutes later in her mollified retreat, seizing her by the shoulders and kissing her firmly by way of answer.
(“Seven o’clock,” Aura had said, in a red-faced attempt at sternness. “Dinner.”
“Yes,” Lana had agreed, lips prickling hot, and Aura had dropped the grip on her shoulders as if burned.
“A date,” she'd said, firm, with a flicker of uncertainty hiding within. The brief hesitation of a sharp mind afraid it had misunderstood. Lana had smiled, warmly, and nodded.
“Good,” Aura had replied. Then she’d turned on a crisp heel, fleeing once again, and over her shoulder, "Don't be late.”)
Unreal, Lana had thought then, watching her go. And again, when their dinner that night had ended with her back pressed against the side of her car, Aura looming over her in a kiss that weakened her knees. And again, when her hips had hitched up in her bed, half-gasping Aura’s name at the thrust of three fingers deep inside her. And once more, curled against Aura’s sleeping, sweat-sweet body. Unreal, she’d thought. Because Aura felt good. She felt good, and laughed loudly, and made heat twist in Lana’s gut in a way she’d thought she’d lost forever.
Because Aura made her feel like this, and she wasn’t Mia Fey.
At some point, between the trial, her incarceration, and her release, it had become okay.
Memories of law school still sting, but bittersweetly. Recalling old times with Ema is no longer the field of landmines it used to be. The scar tissue over the wounds that formed from them still needs occasional tending, but it’s only natural, considering how long it took her to acknowledge them at all. That acknowledgement is a victory in retrospect, but hard-won all the same. For years, she’d carried on with a wall of glass, mounted between her and her mistakes, waiting for the day consequences came for her and Ema both. It was survival and selfishness, wrapped into one, and as High Prosecutor, she’d never given herself the space to take in air. But eventually, consequences came knocking. Her sister learned the truth, Phoenix Wright won the day, and freedom—and all its burdens—finally caught up to her.
And one week into her sentence, months after news of Mia’s death first reached her, she shattered. It crippled her, like a loss felt twice. The first grief was her own fault, born of a decision made when the shame of Gant’s shadow had ruined what they had. But the second was uglier, and far less fair.
Mia was gone. And the mistakes she’d made against her, the regrets that carved deepest, were ones she’d never be able to make up for.
For a while, that realization had felt like an end. An end to herself, and the potential of being someone to anyone else with it. A while became weeks, became months, became years, and soon stretched into a reality where she couldn’t imagine the touch of another’s hands on her body. How could she? Mia was gone, and who was as beautiful? Who was as kind? Who else could bear to forgive the corruption that stained her hands, and who else could she believe would want to?
But time passes. Wears away at the rough edges of loss. And between one day and another, it faded. Not the love, but the anchor of it, the wet-cloth cling. Begrudging as spring, it had become okay. Okay that Mia was dead, and okay that Lana had lost her.
Time passes, and fixes most things with it. Including her, for the most part. Counseling helps. So does her sister, and her new job, and her new life. Time passes, and one day she finds herself peering over Aura’s lab-coated shoulder, inspecting her latest invention, and thinks, oh.
Aura smells like citrus and cheap tea. Her back is warm. Her gloved hands are dexterous and intent, and her mind is completely brilliant.
And pressed against her, Lana feels an urge that says, closer.
“My eyes are up here, Lana-dear,” Aura says, clipped tone dripping with amusement, but her eyes downcast at the last— a chink in solid armor, a balk of anxiety that the endearment could be heard as something more.
“I know,” Lana had replied, soft and genuine, and she’d slowly smiled. “I was looking at your hands.”
And below the teal plastic of her safety goggles, Aura’s cheeks burned pink, and affection in Lana’s heart crowded her throat like a bouquet of familiar, blooming flowers.
“Is that so?” Aura hummed smoothly, mouth curling, and Lana would have been blind not to see the genuine pleasure it in it, and blinder still not to recognize the feeling burning bright in her own chest. “Are they that interesting?”
Yes, Lana thought, heart shifting. They really are.
Later that week, after swimming through the realization, she plucks up the courage, and asks someone out on a date for the first time since Ivy Law.
It goes well. Astonishingly well.
A year ago, it would have scared her to death. But now?
It only feels good.
Time passes, and she finds herself drawn in a new direction. A new orbit.
Aura Blackquill has a gravity of her own. To Lana’s pleasant surprise, she has no desire to resist it. It’s a rockier tug-and-pull than she’s known before, but the bumps are almost (always) enjoyable.
The first morning after, she wakes up and Aura is gone. Lana spends an hour staring at the ceiling of her apartment and wonders if a single night is all she really wants. Even a hook-up was a surprise, and she hasn’t been capable of more for years. She sits with it, turning it over, and finds the decision made for her when, after agonizing for a solid week, she steels herself, going back into the lab when another case drags her there with her High Prosecutor face on. She finds Aura attaching something dangerous to what looks like a long metal arm, unaware of her presence. A definite parole violation, she thinks, and then, okay, maybe that’s a little petty.
“Blackquill,” she says by way of hello, arms across her chest, and Aura goes stiff as a board over her table.
“Blackquill?” Aura repeats, turning to her with a frown. A flash, almost of hurt, that disappears behind her expression as if it never were. “I see. What do you need, then, lawyer?”
Her crisp voice is sharp enough to draw blood. But Lana’s almost awed to find that she knows better. Aura is disappointed. Which means maybe it meant more to her, too. Maybe it could be something.
And maybe she came in a little too hard, expecting rejection. Swallowing hard, she bites the bullet, forcing away the mask that threatens to seal her expression away. “...Woke up and you were gone,” she says, voice low. “Wasn’t sure if you wanted to keep things professional.”
Aura blinks at her behind her safety glasses, ice retreating. “It was Tuesday,” she says blankly.
Lana looks at her, uncomprehending, and a little valley forms between Aura’s eyebrows. “A work day, Lana. I’ve experiments to mind in the mornings.”
Oh. “You didn’t wake me,” she says, lamely. And oh, she didn’t miss this, the vulnerability of wanting.
Aura scowls, not quite in anger, but perhaps reluctant confusion. “Should I have?” Gloved fingers worry the wire in her hands. “I didn’t realize you wanted me to.”
“Could have texted?” Lana offers.
Aura’s scowl deepens, stormier now, and she looks like the mirror image of her brother. “Lana-dear, you know I don’t have a mobile. Heaven forbid I own anything with a bloody microchip.”
“Ah,” Lana says. She has made a mistake. The mistake of being an idiot.
“You never dropped by,” Aura accuses, and is that- pouting? Lana wonders. That’s actually adorable. “I thought...” Aura trails off, gaze casting downward, and her voice drops to a mutter. “I assumed you were busy. But I suppose I was wrong.”
Guilt wells up in her stomach. Damn it. “Aura—”
“I’m not...good at this,” Aura says, avoiding her gaze. Her chin tilts, briefly, in the direction of a photograph propped on her desk. For a moment, Lana is captured, lost in the gentle smile of the beautiful woman framed within. “Never have been. It was always—” A harsh stop. Wire goes twist-taut in her hands. “I don’t know how to do this anymore.”
Empathy grows in Lana’s ribcage like crawling ivy. Sometimes she forgets, just how alike they are. “Me neither,” Lana admits, soft. Aura glances up to meet her eyes, gaze dark and beautiful with quiet uncertainty, and Lana reaches out. Eases the wearied wire from her grip. “But if you want...I think we can figure it out again.”
Aura’s face flushes pink, eyes darting away, but fingers tentatively brush over hers. “Together,” she mutters. “Perhaps we can.”
And one step at a time, they do.
It’s not always easy. There are days where something sets Aura off, a song or a touch, and she throws herself into her work without coming up for air.
One day, Athena Cykes comes into the station, and Lana finds Aura in her apartment breaking dinner plates, one at a time, in the sink until there’s nothing left but shattered glass for the cupboard.
One day, Lana sees Maya Fey walk into the courthouse, now nearly thirty years old, with Wright chuckling at her side. She wakes up choking on a name every night for a week, eyes streaming, heart pounding in her chest.
Aura doesn’t care that the name isn’t hers, just like Lana doesn’t mind that it’s not her photo on her tinker table. Because things are good, too. Aura listens to metal, and she refuses to dance to music. She drinks and swears like a sailor, and can’t cook a meal to save her life. She’s rude and weird and funnier than anyone Lana’s ever met. She hates horror movies and secretly loves British rom-coms, and she kisses like she’s burning aflame and Lana’s the only thing that can put her out.
When they have sex, she loves leaving marks that pinken after. She loves driving Lana close to the edge, and laughs whiskey-dark when she pleads. She uses toys like tools of the trade and plays with Lana like one of her machines, determined and intent to see what makes her tick, makes her gasp, makes her shake apart to the core.
And Lana likes taking care of her. She likes carding her fingers through Aura’s violet hair, caressing fingers down the column of her spine. She loves stroking Aura’s nipples with her thumbs and making her hum low and graveled. She relishes the thickening of Aura’s accent as the evenings grow late, and the way her voice cracks and degrades when Lana eats her slow, dragging it out until there’s nothing left but broken cries splitting the dark of the apartment they now share.
“Please. Darling, please," Aura says.
“Yes,” Lana promises. And she means it, because now she is a person who makes promises and keeps them. Now she is a person who loves, and when she loves, she loves completely. “Anything. Whatever you want.”
“Lana,” Aura croaks, filling her heart full and warm.
“I’m here,” she says. “I’m right here.”
And it’s good. It’s so good, to finally be the one who gives.
Mia is years gone. Some nights, Lana can still feel the gravity of her, tugging at her skin like a sheet in the wind. Others, it’s the brush of living hands, rough with chemical burns, hot and tender by turns. Neither touch is unwelcome, and together they’re more than she ever once thought she deserved.
Sometimes, she finds herself in the dark with company. She shifts, just enough, in the quiet of their bed, and watches Aura stretch out her hand, tracing an empty space in the sheets beside her body.
Most nights, there are two people in their bed. But some nights, there are four.
And on those nights, if they pull each other closer in the quiet, it’s finally more than enough.