Author's Note: Wow! What an outpouring of support I've gotten for this fic. I'm super flattered and very glad people are enjoying this. Thanks for all the feedback! This chapter should show you where this story is going, because I think it's pretty damn obvious where it's going.

Titration by HawkofNavarre

Chapter 10

Rules and Guidelines are Basically the Same Thing, Right?

For the first time in days, Ema set foot in a crime scene rather than a courthouse. She hadn't seen much of Klavier since their discussion in his office other than for testimony prep, and so far, everything seemed to be going well between them. When they spoke at the courthouse, conversations remained strictly business, but there was no animosity between them. From her perspective, the prosecutor was doing pretty well in keeping up with what he'd agreed to.

She did, however, wonder if things would be different now that they wouldn't strictly be going over testimony.

Ema knelt down to inspect the woman's dead body herself. The corpse lay face down beside the open driver's side door of her car, clad in bloodstained scrubs. There was a single stab wound in her back from a fairly small knife, but the location of the wound indicated that the murderer was either smart or experienced from the way they had punctured her heart.

"Detective Skye, the car's clean of prints. Nothing inside seems out of the ordinary either," Dayton said as he walked up beside her. He was still annoying, shooting her hopeful looks and searching for an in every time they worked together, but at least he was good at his job.

"Okay, so we need to find the murder weapon or all our evidence is circumstantial," the detective stated, biting her lip in contemplation. "Unless we have solid proof there was someone else here last night, our prime suspect is the other nurse."

"The one the victim was seen arguing with?" the other forensic investigator asked.

"Exactly," she replied with a nod. "I want to make an arrest today." She turned to a nearby officer. "Okay, I want a search done over a three-block radius for the murder weapon, and I want that nurse found. We need to know if he had an alibi and what that argument was about."

She discussed the possibilities of the type of knife used with Dayton just based on the size of the wound as the crime scene started being cleaned up. It was then that Klavier showed up to see what was going on.

"She was stabbed from behind as she was opening the car door. She was seen earlier in the night arguing with her colleague and we can't find him now. We're not entirely sure of the motive yet, but he's our only suspect. We're looking for the murder weapon right now," Ema explained as she typed on her tablet. Sidling up next to the prosecutor, she angled her device towards her boss. "You can take a look at the video of them arguing."

She thought she might be imagining it, but Klavier seemed to shift away from her slightly as he viewed the footage. Shaking it off, she waited for the video to end. "So? What do you think? If we can't find a murder weapon but get the motive, then do you think you have enough evidence to convict?"

There was a particularly loud shriek from a girl standing near the crime scene, obviously a fan of Klavier, but he visibly cringed when he heard her. While she found these girls annoying as hell, she had more or less gotten ignoring the noise they made down to an art. Klavier, who was more inclined to come to investigate for himself now, generally acknowledged them when he arrived and then went about his day as if they were just his personal cheerleaders, quieting them if they got a little too rowdy. Today, he seemed oddly wary of them. They way he had reacted to that louder scream concerned her a little. That wasn't like him at all.

"It certainly won't be a hit with the jury, but a conviction is definitely possible. As long as we thoroughly investigate all the avenues the defence might go down, we should be able to build a fairly solid case," the former rock star answered, a hand on his temple as if he had a headache.

Dayton nodded. "Well, the sooner we get the official autopsy report, the sooner I'll be able to identify the exact type of knife we're looking for, assuming it isn't found before then."

"While you're waiting for that, you can look over her clothes back at the lab. Maybe there's something we missed out here," she commanded her subordinate, happy to get him out of her hair. "In the meantime, I'll run a background check on our suspect. The other officers are getting statements from our victim's coworkers."

Klavier still looked stressed out and honestly seemed more concerned about himself than the case at hand. Sure, he had a massive ego, but he always committed himself fully to his work. She had to get to the bottom of this unusual behaviour.

"Prosecutor Gavin, you look like you could use some coffee," Ema said as she stashed her tablet in her bag. "I'm on my way now. You can come with me."

"Oh? Fräulein Detective is asking me out on a date?" or something flirty along those lines is what she expected to hear, but instead Klavier just sent her a puzzled look. "I don't think that's necessary."

"Ema, I could—"

"Dayton, I asked you to process some evidence, didn't I?" she cut him off mid-sentence before he could capitalize on the opportunity.

He blinked a couple of times, stunned to silence and Ema felt an immense amount of satisfaction at actually shutting him down today. Initial rejection was generally followed by frustrating levels of persistence. Judging by the defeated look on his face, there would be none of that today. To her delight, the male shut his mouth and headed back towards the car to pack up his tool kit.

"That was impressive, fräulein," Klavier told her, looking a little amazed by her accomplishment.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't about to let him worm his way into spending time with me. You're coming to coffee with me," the detective stated, leaving no room for argument. Secretly, she was also a little amazed at herself for doing what had never been done before, but she had another job to attend to.

Again, he hesitated. "Really, it's not necessary."

She shot him a withering look. "Either you come with me or I go over there and tell all your fans that you use women's shampoo," Ema threatened as she gestured to the crowd behind the tape. She had gathered the most useful information that one night she had stayed in his condo and it seemed like a good opportunity to use it.

His mouth hung open for a second, then he started to follow after her as she strode away from the crime scene. "You can be very cruel when you want to be," Klavier commented with the shake of his head, "and for the record, all my other shower products are for males. The shampoo just keeps my hair healthy."

The forensic investigator sighed at his defensiveness. There was no stopping his vanity. "I could care less about your beauty routine. We're going to a coffee shop. You're driving and I'm paying, got it?"

He didn't protest, merely nodding and guiding her to his car.

It didn't quite all go as planned, but it was close enough. Although she managed to get Klavier into the coffeehouse, she made the mistake of putting in her drink order before him so he had the chance to jump in and pay for both. Realizing there was little she could do about that, Ema accepted the beverage a little begrudgingly and dragged her boss over to a table as soon as possible. There were more pressing matters to deal with than rejecting chivalry.

She slammed herself down in a chair. "Okay, something's up with you."

He sat down across from her, raising an eyebrow. "Is that a fact?"

"Of course," Ema replied emphatically. They were little things she had noticed, but they were still quite significant. "I haven't forgotten about how shaken up you were after being held at gunpoint. It's only been a week since then."

Klavier didn't say anything, leaning back in his chair and examining his coffee cup with great interest. She knew she had him at this point. All work issues aside, it didn't change the events of what had occurred that night. Ema had a lot more experience in the area. Years of police work had hardened her to possibility of getting shot. She had even taken a bullet to the abdomen once—though she had been wearing Kevlar and left with nothing more than a really nasty bruise and a bad memory—but psychologically, someone trying to kill you was a traumatizing thing. There was a reason she had blocked the SL-9 incident out of her memories as a child.

"You didn't treat your fans like you normally would today, and you're the guy who still played a concert after nearly being shot. You've even been shying away from them at the courthouse," she said gently, not wanting her observation to sound like an accusation. She wanted to encourage him to open up about the issue because it was the only way he would begin to heal. "Don't act like it's not true. You couldn't even look at them when you walked onto the scene."

"It's really nothing to be concerned about, fräulein," Klavier dismissed her as he took a sip of his macchiato, avoiding her eyes.

Her frustration skyrocketed in an instant. "You know, you can talk to me now or I can talk to my friend, Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth, and let him know you need another appointment with Dr. Rhinke."

If he wasn't so keen to look at her before, he was now. His expression was fully aggravated, eyes sharp. "I think you need to learn how unattractive it is to keep threatening people, Miss Skye."

Startled, Ema blinked, mouth partially open as she shrunk back into her seat. Shit. She really had flown off the handle there, much faster than she ever expected from herself, but she couldn't help it. She was worried about him and when he wouldn't let her help him, she looked for the quickest possible way to fix that. Unfortunately, that was what had gotten her in trouble in the first place. Clearly the lesson hadn't been hammered into her quite yet.

Lucky for her, Klavier seemed to understand that. He didn't retaliate like he had last time, maybe because he realized she was only reacting because she cared.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, swallowing. The words felt strange out of her mouth, especially when they were directed towards her boss. The last time she'd ever said that to Klavier was after the Misham trial, and that was because she had truly felt for him in what he'd been going through. "I shouldn't pry if you don't want me to."

Instead, his expression relaxed and he placed his cup down, sighing. "You really are oddly skilled at extracting information from me," the prosecutor conceded. He was silent for a moment and she thought that was going to be the end of the conversation, but he continued. "You're right, fräulein. I haven't been treating my fans with the respect they deserve. That incident...has been weighing heavier on me than I want to admit. I pushed to play that night because I beginning to remember how good things used to be. I thought that by pretending everything was fine, they would be. Yet here we are..."

"It was my fault," Ema told him, her tone remorseful. Now that she wasn't angry with him, she definitely saw the flaws in her own security plans. For a woman to be able to get backstage to Klavier so easily meant that she had made some major errors in judgement that day. She might've wallowed in self-pity if he'd gotten shot, but he was alive and her own mistakes only made her want to protect him more. She had a gun, a pretty decent roundhouse kick, and a mean right hook she could use to lay out anyone who tried to get at him again. Mental scars, however, were another issue. "I noticed her a bunch of times, but I just brushed her off as another fan even though that look in her eyes was different from everyone else that surrounds you."

"She hated me. She hates me. She wanted to kill me," Klavier said, gritting his teeth. "I keep thinking maybe there's another who wants to do the same."

She kept silent because she didn't know how to comfort him. She didn't have thousands of adoring fans clamouring after her night and day. People didn't pay attention to her when she was walking across the street, let alone care enough to want to kill her. He was battling very reasonable paranoia that she had never experienced before.

"I wasn't ignorant coming into this profession. I knew my work was likely to gain me enemies one day," he explained with a grim expression. "Seeing that become a reality, though... It's harder than I expected."

"Sometimes...justice comes at a price. More for some of us than others," Ema replied.

Klavier chuckled bitterly. "You'd think I would have paid enough of a price by now, ja? I've lost my brother, one of my best friends, and my band to justice. Now a woman tries to kill me and still I continue to chase it."

"Searching for the truth is part of who you are. You told me that yourself. That's something you can't change." She reached across the table, grabbing one of his hands wrapped loosely around the cup. Ema hated seeing him so despondent, lost because something he had always been appreciative of had been tainted. He had been doing those concerts just to get rid of the scars Daryan had left on him and she was angry that there was yet another trauma he had to deal with on top of that. She was even angrier that it was because of something she could've prevented.

She would not let something like that happen ever again.

Ema squeezed his hand in her own, staring fiercely into his eyes. "But I'm going to be with you. If someone ever tries to come after you like that again, I'm going to shut them down the same way I did last time," she declared, fully meaning every word that came out of her mouth. "Your fans love you. As annoying as they are, don't let one person change how you treat them."

He nodded mutely, then pulled his hand away from hers looking a little uncomfortable. "I'll try. I appreciate that, fräulein."

The forensic investigator frowned. Klavier would always be the best at throwing her emotions wildly out of whack. A second ago, she had been entirely resolute, delivering a little speech that would convey her conviction in her proclamation to him. Basically, it was a grand gesture that was followed by a lackluster response, which honestly left her feeling a bit offended. Even his gratitude didn't seem all that genuine. It was frustrating, to say the least.

"Okay..." Ema started, her voice quieting significantly. She took a sip of her coffee to prepare herself for the next confrontation. "Then let's move on to the next subject."

"You mean that wasn't the end of this interrogation?" he groaned, very obviously less than eager to continue with the conversation.

"Klavier, it's not just your fans that you've been weird around. It's me too, and I seriously doubt you're afraid of me," she pushed. She wasn't quite satisfied with his answer yet. His trauma when it came to his near-death experience didn't bear any negative association with her. She had been the one to save him, and that certainly wasn't supposed to be a bad thing. The detective thought everything was going well between the two of them so far, but that didn't seem to be the case on his end.

"I'm not afraid of you," he replied dryly, as if the very idea of that was ludicrous, "I'm just trying to stay within the boundaries of the agreement we made and you're making that very difficult today."

Ema blinked in confusion. How was she the one making anything difficult? She was the one who'd had to drag him to a coffee shop since he was being twitchy all morning. It had already been quite an obstacle getting him to cooperate with her in the first place. Trying to get him to open up to her had been even more troublesome, and she had nearly screwed that up by letting her temper get out of hand. It was pretty clear that she was not the one being difficult in this particular situation. She hadn't even had one thought about him that didn't stay within the context of platonic feelings today!

"I think we're fine," Ema said with a shrug. It definitely bothered her more that Klavier was acting strangely around her in the aftermath of their agreement. "Those trials went well and we're already making good headway on this case."

"I'm not talking about work. I'm talking about this," the prosecutor replied with emphasis, gesturing between them. Even then, Ema had no idea what he was referring to. He seemed to pick up on that quickly and began to elaborate. "We are alone in a coffee shop that you asked me to come to, fräulein. I can't imagine this is something that would have happened a few weeks ago."

Finally, she understood where he was coming from. She had set boundaries with her request, but outside of never mentioning that her confession had ever happened, they had never really defined the extent of their current relationship. Ema thought that all this was perfectly fine. She didn't see anything wrong with talking to a friend one-on-one or trying to protect them. Evidently, he thought something like this would violate their agreement and that was why he was being so distant.

"We're still friends, and this is what friends do," Ema assured him, trying to put him at ease. "We haven't done anything today that normal friends wouldn't."

"You're certain of that?" he asked as he raised an eyebrow, though it was more of a statement than question.

It was then that she remembered the feel of his hand in hers only moments ago. Embarrassed by her own transgression, she withdrew the hand resting on the table and cupped it around her coffee while trying as hard as she could to stave the heat away from her face. She'd been so caught up in the passion of her words that she'd acted without even realizing it. Meanwhile, he was being so overly cautious it was ridiculous.

Nonetheless, she refused to let him know he was right. Excessively formal Klavier was too weird to deal with and she would not lose her upper hand. Stubbornly, Ema pretended as if the whole handholding incident never happened and nodded at him firmly. "Don't change how you act around me just because of what happened. You don't have to police your behaviour. I'll let you know if something ever crosses the line."

Klavier gave her a long stare as if he was considering whether he was okay with this. "...Alright, Ema," he agreed hesitantly.

It suddenly dawned on her that he kept calling her "fräulein" again when he had developed the habit of genuinely using her first name since last month. She felt herself warm hearing the smooth way he spoke her name. It was definitely something she hadn't realized she missed.

Despite the pleasure she derived from hearing her given name coming from his lips, Ema brushed off the notion that it might be something that was too intimate between friends. The thought was ludicrous. The majority of people she knew, outside of standard professionalism, called her by her first name because it was normal; just because Klavier had spent years calling her everything but that didn't make the shift anything special. Ema was her name and he was using it. That was all.

There was a buzz in her pocket and Ema shook off her tangent of thought. Setting down her cup, she fished her phone out of her lab coat and glanced at the screen. Her eyes widened as she read the message. "Well, we have a motive."

Klavier leaned forward with interest and Ema slid her chair over next to his. This time, she noted, he didn't move away. "We asked the victim's supervisor to look into the nurse our victim was arguing with and they just found out that he altered the prescription of one of the residents at the care home," she explained as she scrolled down through the text.

"Only one?" her superior asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

"Only one," Ema repeated in confirmation. "The medication is a sedative. If I had to guess, this guy has information that's important to someone, but his life is as well. They're keeping him alive, but making sure he can't speak."

"We'll need a reassessment of his medications and a protective detail around him," Klavier suggested. He didn't seem so uncomfortable anymore as their discussion parked firmly on the subject of work. He had that serious look on his face that indicated the cogs in his analytical brain were turning. "It could be nothing, but he could very well be worth silencing if—"

Ema's phone began to vibrate in her palm, the ringtone drifting out through the speakers. She tried her hardest not to cringe at song, remembering how she had changed her ringtone to The Guitar's Serenade after Edgeworth's birthday party. Having Klavier murmuring the tune so close to her ear had somehow gotten it stuck in her head. After holding his hand today, she was sure her ringtone choice was not helping her case, even if Klavier had already agreed with her.

She didn't look at him to see if he had acknowledged it and swiftly answered her phone. Her thoughts were quickly diverted elsewhere when she heard the frantic voice on the other side of the line. Her eyes widened as she listened, her jaw dropping.

"Wait, wait! Slow down! Say that again, and please tell me you're joking." The detective clutched her coffee cup tighter, a small indent appearing under her thumb. "...You're serious. Okay...then. I'll be at the scene in ten minutes."

She stared at the table blankly in disbelief of what she'd just heard as she ended the call.

"Was that about the case?" Klavier asked, looking concerned.

Ema nodded, then rubbed her temple with her left hand. "Yeah. They found the murder weapon. And our suspect. He's dead. They're calling it suicide."

He was quite visibly just as stunned by the news as she'd been. However, he was back to business in an instant. "All the more reason to protect the man they were silencing." Sighing, the prosecutor stood with a apprehensive expression. "Let's go. I can drive you to the crime scene."

She complied without a word and began to follow him out of the coffee shop. Things felt more natural now that Klavier was no longer acting distant from her, but this case was turning out to be more troubling than she'd expected. She had a really bad feeling about this.

Ema watched his back as the uneasiness mounted while they headed for his car. The urge to reach out and grab his hand struck her—for her own comfort this time rather than his—but she resisted; seeking the calming touch his skin would offer her wouldn't be right. After all, they were just friends.