Gyakuten Kenji / Ace Attorney: Investigations, its characters and settings, are property of Capcom and are being used here without permission but for no profit. This fic is rated PG.

I meant to explain that 17 year old Kristoph's legal guardian is a distant relative who lives with him in his father's house--or so the courts believe. I couldn't find a way to work it into the fic gracefully but I didn't want you to think I forgot he's still a minor! Oh well.

Be My Lady

Part 2 of 4

It was a rainy night in September when Kristoph was distracted from his news-watching by the doorbell.

He answered. Calisto stood on the front step; not unusual in itself, except that she was dressed almost entirely in tacky denim and was soaking wet. Her make-up was running and she held a plastic garbage bag close to her chest. "I need an hour," she said.

Kristoph stepped aside and then closed the door behind her.

"I assume the police have been here already," she said as she headed straight for the first floor bathroom. "I let them spot me by the airport, so hopefully that will throw them off the scent for a while. I'll be gone by the time they figure it out and come back."

Kristoph followed her, and stood in the doorway as she stripped out of her soaking jacket. He had been watching the news coverage all evening but had not expected that she would come to him. It was a risk she should have been too cunning to take. "They were here," he confirmed. "Detective Badd and some officers." He adjusted his glasses and scrunched his nose. "They fingerprinted the front door."

"Then you'll have to clean when I'm gone." She pulled her T-shirt over her head and let it fall with a wet thud, followed by her jeans. Her lack of modesty made Kristoph blush, but she didn't say anything so he didn't look away. And he was glad for the strange opportunity; he had seen her in nothing but a suit all the times they had met, except for the first. She had been wearing a dress then. He could still remember the feel of the fabric under his fingers.

"I suppose I shouldn't bother asking if it's true," Kristoph said. He watched her earrings fall and break against the cold tile of the bathroom floor.

Calisto broke the ties in her hair and turned the sink faucet. "You've always said I was a liar," she replied as she washed the mascara trails from her face. "You didn't think I was capable of murder?"

Kristoph frowned, not certain if he should be proud or ashamed that he had indeed considered it. They had known each other for almost three years, and in that time learned a great deal about each other as she tried case after case in his father's name, and he sat in the gallery. They had even shared a few luncheons, talking idly about the approach of his eighteenth birthday when Gavin & Co. Law would be legally his, and the years later when he would finally be qualified to practice alongside her. Seeing her now, pale and half naked in his bathroom, he realized he had never expected that future to be real.

He touched her shoulder, and she flinched--shied away from him in a way he had not witnessed before. She stared back at him, hiding everything, not succeeding, and the truth was easier to discern from her than ever. "Why did you kill them if you didn't want to?" he asked, fascinated by the way her eyes darted away.

Calisto hunched her shoulders and bit her lip. She was uncertain and resentful, and she had never been more beautiful. "I need a pair of scissors," she said.

Kristoph returned with a pair of scissors and a stool. He cut her hair down to jagged inches, and left bangs down to her eyebrows. When she handed him a box of red hair dye from her trash bag, he worked it over her scalp without question. She put on fresh make-up: thick concealer over her freckles, and dark eye shadow so different from the girly pink that was her usual.

He helped to transform her. There was something chillingly intimate about the process. Kristoph appreciated more than most the weight of appearance, and the act of desecrating it. By the time they were both finished she was almost unrecognizable, and he felt, with regret and unexpected satisfaction, that he had somehow killed her.

"I probably owe you the truth," Calisto said as she studied herself in the mirror. "I'm sure you've guessed half of it by now. Me, your father, that asshole Manny...I'd say more, but you know how it is."

"You'd have to kill me?" Kristoph supplied. When she allowed him room at the sink he washed the traces of dye off his hands and forearms like a post-op surgeon. "I know how it is."

Calisto laughed; she had not truly changed at all.

Kristoph fetched a towel from the laundry room while she used the blow-dryer on her hair. On his way back he remembered the news was still playing, and paused to hear the update on the fugitive chase. Detective Badd and his men were still at the airport, having assumed that their quarry had tried to flee the country. Kristoph glared smugly at blue and red flashing on the screen. They would never find her so long as he harbored her.

When he returned to the bathroom Calisto was using the dryer directly on her still-worn bra. He blushed again at the sight, but she did not bother to stop or even turn her back once she noticed he was there. "How much time do I have left?" she asked.

"You've been here for thirty-seven minutes," Kristoph said. She finished with the dryer, and rather than simply hand her the towel he took it upon himself to wrap it around her. She seemed surprised at first, but soon relaxed as he rubbed the remaining chill out of her bony shoulders and back. "But Badd is still at the airport. It's at least a forty minute drive from here."

"He'll be back soon, and you'll need time to clean up after me." Calisto sighed, and abruptly leaned into his chest.

Kristoph froze. The cold of her skin seeped easily through his thin cotton dress shirt--except around her breasts, warmed by the dryer and pressed ever so gently against him. She had been taller than him once, but at last puberty had given him the advantage, and she fit snugly against his body and under his chin. He would never again be able to smell fresh hair dye without remembering the feeling of a woman curled in his arms.

"I think I might miss you, kid," Calisto said, and when she hummed he felt her nose vibrate gently against his throat. "I was looking forward to you being my boss someday. Maybe in my next life."

Kristoph's eyes narrowed, and his hands tightened possessively against her shoulders. "So that's it?" he asked. "You've been using me ever since we met, and now you leave." But he wasn't accusing--he was even smiling. He did better on his own anyway. "Is this where you say I'll never see you again?"

Calisto hummed again. "Not exactly. But even if you see me again, that doesn't mean you'll recognize me."

He scoffed. "I'll recognize you."

And he was right. When she leaned back she looked like a stranger, but he could see Calisto behind the faade. It was not something as obvious or common as the shape of her eyes, or the traces of freckles still visible through her make-up; it was the faint simmer of fear beneath her surface. It was the cold calculation, the bitter humor, the birth of deceit. As long as they were so similar, he would pick her out of the crowds for years to come.

She kissed him. Her lips were assertive, as possessive against his mouth as his hands were on her shoulders. She tasted like lipstick and she didn't close her eyes. Hers wasn't the first kiss Kristoph had experienced, but it was the first he savored: hot, audacious, perfect. Not without regret. Inescapably real.

Calisto touched his shirt collar, alternately plucking at and then smoothing down the little buttons. Deciding. Kristoph waited for her to come to whatever decision she was hesitating over, but he did not let her go, or even let her lips get too far out of range. Thankfully, she did not hold him in suspense for long. Time lurched forward and she twisted her arms behind her back, unhooking her bra.

It wasn't that she wanted him--in fact, he was so much younger and less experienced than him that, had she felt any real desire, he might have thought less of her for it. She was leaving her mark on him. Their bodies forged a new landscape, one that would no longer render courthouse luncheons and justice-scale earrings. Whispered breath exorcised the lawyer-legend that had for three years resided in slender limbs and pink eye shadow. His first was her last, the final deed of a mask already failing, and when she trembled in his arms he felt her death as clearly as he had her birth.

Calisto Yew ceased to exist.

Gone went the wife of Adam. In her wake Kristoph was spurred to frenzy, erasing her every trace. He cleaned the doorknob, the front hall, and the bathroom. He washed the tacky denim and when it was dry packaged it into a box and hid it in the attic, rather than risk it being discovered in the trash or the fireplace. He washed his clothes and replaced his glasses. He turned the sofa cushions over.

Two days later, Detective Badd returned with his men. They fingerprinted his door again, searched the attic and the living room, but no one noticed the extra box already covered in dust and a new couch was no grounds for questioning let alone arrest. They left with nothing and Kristoph glowered triumphantly at their backs. She was still safe by him.

He would never see Calisto again, but he was glad knowing that he would be able to spot her whenever they next met. All he had to do was wait for her to lie.