Author's Note: This is late. I've been busy. Rest assured, this fic will be finished. Thank you for your continued support!

Fun fact, I wrote 80 percent of this chapter in a hotel room in Korea on my phone!

Titration by HawkofNavarre

Chapter 8

Science Says

It was late when Ema got home from work. She'd had to make an emergency stop at a gas station store to pick up a couple bags of Snackoos because she was almost certain she wasn't going to make it through the night without them. She had been able to follow through with her duties the rest of the night mostly on a fuming autopilot, even as discoveries about the night's plot were being made. A diversion had been planned using prized Gavinners merchandise to scramble guards and the knocked out guards were fine, only having been tased. Klavier had been the woman's sole target and she snuck her weapons by security by disguising the taser as a cell phone and taping the gun to her back. Apparently some movie references were more useful for planning a murder than others. The whole thing was just another reason to be angry, and then she realized there would be a ridiculous amount of paperwork to do for the incident when she went in on Monday, incensing her even more.

Now, at almost one in the morning, her anger at Klavier had faded and she was now feeling deep, deep regret at her actions. Oh hell yes, she was still insanely infuriated at his blasé attitude towards nearly being killed, but it also finally clicked a couple hours after her outburst that he had full control of her career. He could ruin everything she'd worked for with a just few words to the police commissioner.

Too exhausted to shower, she stripped out of her clothes as soon as she got home and changed into her pyjamas, settling into her favourite spot on the couch with her bag of Snackoos at the ready. She tore into them without a second thought, then grabbed her cell phone. Lana worked at odd hours and it was hard to tell whether her sister would be sleeping at this hour or not. Then again, Lana would be pissed if she didn't call in a situation like this one. It couldn't wait.

Ema chose the name from her contacts and waited as the line rang. It only rang twice before her sister picked up.

"Ema, hey. I'm glad you called, even though I'm a little concerned about why you'd be calling this late," Lana greeted her, no trace of sleepiness in her voice.

"Yeah, sorry... Are you working a case right now?"

"No. Just still up doing a bit of light reading," the private detective replied. "Now are you going to tell me why you called?"

Ema swallowed, nervous to tell her sister exactly how much she had screwed up. "I...I think I might have lost my job."

"What?"

She didn't really know how to continue, but she did anyway. "Well, I kind of yelled at my boss."

There was a beat of silence, then, "...Okay, context. I need context."

"You know how I've been working those concerts recently for some extra cash, right? Well, something went wrong today. Someone took out two of the guards backstage and Klavier almost—"

"Wait," Lana interrupted, "as in Klavier Gavin? You never told me you were working security for him."

"Yes him," she grumbled as she took a bite of one of her Snackoos. His name coming out of Lana's mouth somehow brought all her irritation back. "That stupid fop almost died and he just brushed it off like it was nothing. Someone actually had a gun pointed at him and he waves it off like it's not a big deal! I couldn't just stand there and take it! If I'd come in a second later, she would have shot him!"

"You kept working late and allof those concerts were for Prosecutor Gavin?" Lana probed, seemingly inappropriately. It was a little frustrating for Ema. She just wanted her sister's support, but Lana seemed to be having difficulty following the situation.

"Yeah, they were, but are you not understanding his idiotic disregard for his own life?" she asked, exasperated that her sister was not agreeing with her.

"And you yelled at him for not being more concerned about his own wellbeing after you saved his life," Lana trailed on with her own train of thought.

"See? You get it," Ema confirmed, nodding her head. "It was totally justified."

Lana was quiet for a moment, then posed the last question Ema thought her sister would ever ask. "Ema, are you sure you don't have feelings for Prosecutor Gavin?"

The forensics investigator was rendered completely speechless, having no clue how Lana would have even slightly picked up that idea from their conversation. Feelings? Oh, she had feelings alright—feelings of annoyance because of his glimmerous personality, feelings of anger because of his carelessness when it came to his own wellbeing, and feelings of rage because of his stupid pretty boy face! Any remotely positive feelings she had for Klavier Gavin were absolutely nonexistent, especially right now. It was a wonder how anyone could ever like some idiot like him.

"How in the seven hells did that thought even occur to you, Lana?" Ema asked, fully outraged as she tossed her bag of snacks onto the coffee table.

"Oh calm down. Just hear me out," her older sister insisted, completely unperturbed by the beast she had awoken. "I honestly wouldn't have thought anything of it if you'd told me those security gigs were for anyone else, but it's Gavin, Ema. The same guy you kept telling me you hated, but as soon as you transferred back from Khura'in and they were reassigning which prosecutor you had to work with, you went back to Gavin without protest. You had enough seniority to ask for someone else."

Lana didn't pause long enough in her explanation to let Ema even begin to make excuses, though they were at the tip of her tongue. "So you were working long hours with him, and then when he asked you to work with him some more, you agreed. That meant sacrificing your nights off."

Ema was faster this time, lest she let her sister continue without defending her reasoning. "Come on, Lana, you know that was just to cut down on my student loans! I can actually afford stuff now!" she hastily threw out, floundering for a moment.

"And that's great, Ema, but I've seen you twice over the last three months since those concerts started and I can't imagine that you would miss our regular meet ups unless you were actually enjoying what you were doing," Lana pointed out. "Unless, of course, I'm wrong about that."

The detective gritted her teeth. Of course she would never choose money over her own sister, but the allure of the double pay as well as a generally relaxing night (provided nothing went wrong) that she could spend casually engaging in easy conversation with the glimmerous fop was a fairly strong pull. That topped with all the late nights of breaking through cases and it was true that she'd be losing out on a lot of her nights. She never thought much of it because Lana always understood. They still talked on the phone. It wasn't until now that Ema realized how much less she was actually seeing her sister.

"You're...not wrong," Ema admitted as she fiddled with one of the cushions on the couch.

"I'm glad, because I'd be really offended otherwise."

The detective let a smile tug at the sides of her lips. "You're my sis. Money has nothing on you."

She heard Lana laugh on the other side of the line. "But science does, right?" she chortled good-naturedly.

"Science is bigger than all of us," Ema replied seriously, and the two of them laughed.

As the humour faded away, Lana's tone melted back into its sober state. "I don't want to make any assumptions, Em, but the fact that you yelled at Prosecutor Gavin for not being more concerned about himself means that you at least care a lot about him," she said, not bothering to mince words.

Ema winced. "Sis, regardless of what you think, nothing changes the fact that I yelled at Gavin and am probably going to be fired the next time I walk in to work," she responded as she side-stepped the comment and redirected Lana. Besides, that was still the major problem at hand.

"In that case, I guess all you can do is apologize and hope for the best. But don't think I've forgotten about this, Ema. Your last serious boyfriend was six years ago and it's nice you're finally opening up your heart again," Lana stated simply. "You've never been one to actively look for a boyfriend, but I've still always hoped you could find someone to share your life with."

"Alright, alright, let's not turn this conversation into something it's not," she grumbled, still feeling sorry for herself. "Guess I'll try and sleep now. Night, Lana. Thanks for the talk."

"No problem, little sis. Good night."

Ema was too miserable to pry herself off the couch at that hour, so tried to sleep in the spot she already occupied. However, her mind was a cacophony of thoughts from her conversation with Lana, her own feelings, and fears of what would happen to her job. After twenty minutes, she gave up and began pensively snacking on her chocolate munchies. There was no point in trying to sleep if she couldn't calm down her mind.

There was nothing she could do about her job situation barring an apology to Gavin that she wouldn't really mean, but she would do it if it meant saving her skin. Meanwhile, what Lana had said about feelings kept intruding on her mind. Certainly, she knew that Klavier had become a good friend—one that she could banter with, if anything, since they knew each other's buttons so well—but she would never go so far as to say she had feelings for him. It was undeniable they spent a lot of time together, but that was for work. Just because they spent a lot of time together without getting sick of the other person's presence had no relation as to whether or not there were some sort of feelings on her part.

Frustrated, Ema started to drift off. They had such a good thing going for once. Why'd he have to ruin it by reverting back to his dumb aloof persona? Why'd she have to ruin it by opening her big mouth? Why couldn't things have just stayed the same?

She was vaguely aware of the bag of Snackoos falling off her lap as her eyes dropped closed, but that hardly seemed to matter. For a brief time, she would be able to forget about the problems weighing down on her, and that was more than enough for her. It was a relief, really, to fall into the sanctuary of sleep.

She was dusting prints on the antique boudoir that sat in the victim's room. It was a shame, really, when this woman had collected so much gorgeous jewellery only to be murdered in her sleep. Ema could see the golden chains strewn about, scattered from the thief rummaging through the lady's belongings.

She found a clean one, finally, transferring the print on her plastic sheet to put it onto the fingerprint scanner. She waited a minute, going back to dusting for other prints as the results processed. Her tablet made a noise, indicating that the results had been delivered and she was disappointed to see that there was no match.

"How is it looking?" Klavier asked her as be approached her crouched form from behind. She had this nagging feeling that she was supposed to be angry at him, but she couldn't remember why.

"Grim," she replied, biting the inside of her cheek. She didn't like when she could find enough evidence to build a case, even if that wasn't her fault. "I found a print, but we don't have it in the system."

"At least we have something to go on. The other officers are going door to door to see if anyone saw something. Hopefully that will help our case a bit," the prosecutor told her as she stood up to face him.

It was at that moment that she realized that they were the only ones at the crime scene, which made no sense to her. There should have been way more forensics investigators there than just her. There was no way she would be able to process the whole crime scene on her own.

"Ema, what's wrong?"

She looked back at him, mouth slightly open. His eyebrows were drawn together, a little concerned for her as he placed his hand on her shoulder. She didn't know what was happening, but her heart was racing and there was something inside of her that was drawing her to him like a magnet. Suddenly, her hands were on his shoulders and she was pretty sure it was because she wanted to kiss him rather than push him away. The urge was overwhelming as she stood there, stuck in indecision. This was Klavier Gavin, her boss and friend, but never potential romantic partner. She knew she shouldn't kiss him no matter how much he wanted to. Somehow, she held herself back.

"Ema...?" he prodded.

She opened her eyes to see she was still on the couch in her room, the bag Snackoos she had been eating last night now on the floor. Taking a deep breath, she sat up.

What the hell was that?

Obviously it was a dream, but it hardly seemed like there was anything out of the ordinary happening until the end of it. It was a fairly realistic dream where she was just doing her job. She hadn't suspected it was a dream at all. And then it had turned weird.

The feeling of wanting to kiss Klavier had been so strong that she could still feel it when she woke up. Her mind was in a panicked mess and Ema was trying desperately to convince herself that it had just been her discussion with Lana that night about having feelings for her superior that leaked into the dream. That happened all the time; things you were thinking about too much tended to manifest themselves into your dreams. That explained the entirely too normal work circumstance, since she was constantly working.

Still, she couldn't make sense of this. She had to calm down.

Alright Ema, think about this logically. Scientifically.

She separated herself from her inner scientist, getting into her element. It was time to settle this without the interference of outside opinions. Quickly, her mind got to work.

Hypothesis: Ema Skye has feelings for Klavier Gavin.

Observations: Ema Skye currently finds working with Klavier Gavin tolerable, as opposed to prior when she could not stand his glimmerous foppishness. Ema has repeatedly chosen to take on extra work for him, although this is also to help pay off her student loans. A counterpoint is that she has inadvertently blown off her sister to participate in various work shifts with said prosecutor.

Ema believes that Gavin never stops working in one way or another and takes his job very seriously. He is a perfectionist in everything he does, but he is also quite obnoxious in the way that he perceives perfection. He is objectively a physically attractive person, but instead of dressing modestly, he flaunts his appearance with gaudy accessories and statement clothing.

Gavin is honest when she asks him to be and is very candid. However, he generally exudes a rock star personality and likes to charm girls.

Ema also had a dream about really wanting to kiss Gavin in a nearly normal, everyday scenario.

Results: Ema spends a lot of time with Gavin without issue and has incidentally chose to spend more time with him over seeing her sister. She finds his work ethic and desire to find the truth admirable. She finds him attractive despite his terrible fashion sense. She knows that he is a giant flirt, but that he is also a genuine person. She really wanted to kiss him in her dream, and even after she woke up.

Conclusion: In taking all these things into account, it is very likely that Ema Skye has feelings for Klavier Gavin.

And that was it. The scientific conclusion. The one thing she couldn't reject.

"No way..." she breathed as she threw herself forward to gather the bag of Snackoos on the ground. She suddenly had the intense urge to just consume the chocolate-covered munchies without any self-restraint whatsoever.

There were plenty of people she surrounded herself with who she thought were admirable and inherently good. She had thought both Mr. Wright and Prosecutor Edgeworth were amazing people when she was just a teenager, although Prosecutor Edgeworth had always been more of an idol in her eyes than anything. The way he held himself seemed just like a man should in her eyes, and that had been the only time in her life that she had ever fantasized about being a man's "special someone."

But then came the generation that was part of her own, like Apollo and Prosecutor Sahdmadhi. She and Apollo were generally on the same wavelength, but there was zero attraction there. She could never be with someone as snarky as she was though they were good enough friends. And his adopted brother, Prosecutor Sahdmadhi—well, now he was actually surprisingly similar to Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth. He held himself very proudly, worked with a serious attitude, was respectful of others...unless he thought they siding with criminals, in which case they were putrid-minded fools who were on the next train to the Twilight Realm.

...Okay, so Prosecutor Sahdmadhi was kind of extreme sometimes, but he was also highly intelligent and good at his job. Plus, he complimented her forensic analysis skills and Ema was basically putty in his hands when it came to praise on the subject she prided herself on. She enjoyed working with him when he wasn't doling out "punishment" in the form of astoundingly longwinded (and torturously boring) speeches. He had become a good friend while she was working in Khura'in, but he was hardly expressive when it came to private matters. That privilege was for his family only. In the end, she only knew him well enough to know that she liked him as a friend.

But then, of course, there was Gavin, whose intentions she'd doubted ever since meeting him. How could she not? This smug pretty boy was waltzing around flirting with girls while Mr. Wright's name was dragged through the mud. And then seven years of hatred later, of course she found out there was more to the story. Klavier had truly thought he was doing the right thing, which he always did his best to do when he was working a case. She had to face the reality of that when she was working as his subordinate, still holding a grudge against him. He was so easy to hate with his annoying personality, and now he still had that same annoying personality, but she knew him better. Every time she asked him a question, he was so open about it she almost found it frustrating. He gave her the truth when she asked for it and she felt the compelled to do the same in return.

Somehow, along the way, she had gotten close to Gavin. His fangirls might know his favourite movie or his preferred colour or what food he liked to eat (surprisingly, she knew the answer to this one too simply by length of association; it was roast pork knuckle), but she was the one who knew all about the aftermath of Daryan and Kristoph's betrayals. He'd always acted like he was fine, well enough that even she hadn't suspected a thing until she'd gotten back from Khura'in and thrown the weirdest request her way. It had prompted her to ask him the questions that mattered, questions that she now knew the answers to.

Their conversations blended together like easygoing repartee that she had gotten used to. He let her barbed words slide off him like beads of water and retorted with a teasing quip that he knew would get under her skin. Ema tried her best not to let it bother he, fighting him for the last word. That was their dynamic and she had grown to like it.

She had grown to like being with him.

Ema tossed an entire handful of Snackoos into her mouth in distress. Only in retrospect could she really see everything that had actually occurred yesterday. Yes, she'd yelled at Klavier because she cared for him, like Lana claimed, but that had been after fighting off the vengeful wife of a murderer who would have shot him if Ema hadn't thrown herself in the way first. She could easily claim that it was her natural instincts as an officer of law enforcement that kicked in the moment she saw that gun and it would be believable, but a terrible lie. Her mind had been blank. All she knew was that she couldn't let that bullet hit Klavier, and then when she got up to fight, Ema threw down like her own life depended on it. Nothing was because she was his chief of security that night and everything was because she couldn't handle the thought of Klavier getting hurt.

Oh god, Lana was wrong. There weren't just feelings—she actually might kind of actually be in love with him.

Ema sat up on the couch abruptly, staring at the bag of Snackoos with wide eyes. The scientific evidence was irrefutable even to her highly biased point of view, and when she brought her own thoughts into consideration, short of outright denial, it was obvious that her actions and responses were the result of...of...fa—

"I'm not even going to think of the 'F' word," she announced to the empty room as she stood to throw the eaten bag of snacks in the garbage can.

She could not think of the "F" word, because even if it was love, that word changed the context of everything. She loved Lana. She loved Mr. Wright. There was nothing wrong with either of those. She cared for them a lot and would throw herself in front of a bullet for either of them. That kind of love was familial. Platonic. The kind she had just stumbled upon was not.

The detective momentarily thought about calling her sister again. If there was one person she could talk to about her feelings (the less frightening of the "F" words), it was Lana Skye. Of course, some abrupt confession of the things she'd somehow figured out overnight was not something she really wanted to get into at the moment. It was pure coincidence...sort of...that she happened to have some slightly seductive dream about her boss last night after Lana made her suggestions.

I can't just stand around and stew about this all day, she admonished herself, glaring at the wall. She reminded herself yet again that these developments didn't change anything about last night; she'd yelled at her boss! Ema had saved up a little money after taking on those concert security shifts, but she would still be hard pressed to find a job to make sure her rent was comfortably taken care of.

As if on cue, her cell phone rang, the screen indicating that it was the precinct on the other end of the line. Swallowing, Ema picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Oh, hey, Detective Skye? Sorry to bother you on your day off, but I guess the department just wanted to make sure you knew about your meeting with Prosecutor Gavin at his office tomorrow at nine sharp," the female voice on the other end of the line said.

And there it was. The demise of her dream job, gone so soon after having fought for it for so long.

"R-right... Thanks..." she replied weakly.

The receptionist bid her farewell and the call ended. Distressed, Ema sought out her second bag of Snackoos, ripping them open despite the fact that it wasn't even past breakfast yet. She needed all the help she could get.