Chapter Text
In exactly seven days from now, Ema will be picking up her sister from prison and bringing her home.
It felt unreal to think about. After eleven long years apart, they could finally reunite outside the confines of the prison.
Obviously this would be cause for celebration. Perhaps they’d order in. Let Lana choose any of the various restaurants she had sorely missed from behind bars and eat to their hearts content while they…watched a movie or something.
Or maybe not, Ema was never the biggest party person and that was evidently coming back to bite her, but it was a start at least.
Either way, she’d figure it out as she went.
If there was one thing Ema knew how to do, it was figure things out. She’s had to do it for years.
On a similar note however, she’d be late for work if she didn’t hurry up already.
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There were six days until Lana would be released from prison.
Now that it really had time to sink in, Ema was ecstatic. She couldn’t believe that her big sister was really going to be free soon. After so long apart that was a huge deal.
Ema wasn’t working today, so with no distractions, she had a lot to think about.
And by a lot, she mainly meant the celebration of course.
Lana would be moving in with her for the time being, so they’d have loads of time to eat cheap takeout and watch a movie or whatever. For an occasion as monumental as this, Lana deserved something special, not just some boring hang-out session. This needed to have at least a little more effort put into it.
Some distance west of her apartment there was a nice restaurant overlooking the water. It was classy and a different vibe from what Ema usually went for, but it certainly fit Lana’s tastes and she’d heard good reviews from the current Chief Prosecutor himself. Sure it was maybe a little pricey, but Lana deserved to be treated with high-quality food after eleven years of whatever they fed her in prison.
Perhaps they could even go shopping for fancy clothes beforehand. It would be a good way of easing into things, though mostly it was because Ema couldn’t exactly claim to have more than one or two articles of clothing befitting an expensive restaurant.
Yeah. This would be it.
Ema pulled up the restaurant menu online and looked through all the choices. She could already see the impressed look on her sister’s face when she saw the food that was available to her. Then they’d toast to Lana’s freedom and have a nice night with their fancy food. It sounded perfect just thinking about it.
She continued to browse and fantasize about the amazing days to come.
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Five more days left until Lana would be leaving the prison.
Ema stared up at the ceiling after waking up in the middle of the night.
…or morning or whatever other pedantic phrasing people like to use for the time when everyone should really just shut up and go back to bed.
She was…excited. Really. She was.
Obviously Ema was excited to see her sister again. When did she ever say otherwise? She was positively overjoyed at the thought.
But…
It was weird.
Eleven years was a long time.
The last time that she got to truly see Lana outside of the tragically short visitations, Ema was sixteen. Even though Ema visited as often as humanly possible, the jump from sixteen to twenty-seven was not exactly seamless, so to speak. She was an entirely different person from whom Lana had known, and after eleven years in prison, Lana wouldn’t exactly be the same either.
That just felt so odd to consider.
Her and Lana were far from strangers, but how much did they really know about each other nowadays?
Ema had been out of the country a lot recently, so she’s barely even been able to update Lana on her recent exploits, let alone many of the ones from the years intervening.
There was a lot to catch up on. To learn. To get used to, because wow—they’re going to be living together after eleven years apart and that’s something of a big step when Ema has been accustomed to her comfortable isolation for so long.
Though…perhaps in some ways it had been longer than eleven years…
After all, Lana was gone a lot of the time, even before her arrest. She had to be. Ema wasn’t blaming her of course, she was being forced to do these things.
But…
There was maybe a small bit of lingering bitterness that never could fully leave her. She was a dumb and emotional teenager when it all happened, so sue her.
And of course that brought her to the elephant that’ll be in the room. Or one of them at least.
Lana went through a lot. Like…a lot a lot.
Ema did too—how can you not after everything that’s happened, but Lana was in an entirely different sort of ‘a lot.’ Even after all these years, Lana still had things to work through. Especially because she’ll be free now. She was always something of a glutton for punishment.
Or at least that’s how Ema thought of her. Maybe she’d gotten better about that. She wouldn’t know. She couldn’t—didn’t—know.
…she hadn’t known eleven years ago.
How much about her sister did Ema really know? Even before everything. Lana was being coerced and blackmailed for years, but even without that, they had a twelve year age difference between themselves, that was bound to create some gaps in their knowledge of one another.
She supposed this release from prison would let them start fresh. They were both adults now and they were both finally free of the outside pressures holding them back.
Maybe they would keep their eventual celebration lowkey. Ema could crack open one of the expensive alcohols she’d been gifted over the years from the multiple rich people she knew in her life. Then they could just talk for a while, get to know each other for real without any time constraints or people looking over their shoulders.
That could be nice.
Ema stared at the ceiling for a while longer. She couldn’t really fall back asleep but there was no way she’d allow herself to get up from bed before at least 5:30.
Eventually she decided to just doomscroll on her phone. Probably one of the worst options according to various studies but who cares.
At least she didn’t have anywhere to be today…
Or……tomorrow…?
Ugh whatever.
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There were now only four more days left til she could pick up Lana.
Admittedly, Ema may have been a little moody the other day when she was thinking about all this. These things happen though. ‘Don’t trust how you feel about your life past 9pm’ and all that…
Not that she was overreacting or anything, but she really shouldn’t be worrying so much about it. This was an occasion to be happy, not to think oneself into a spiral.
She stared down at the dead body lying just in front of her feet.
There were probably more pressing matters to be worrying about anyways.
This crime seemed pretty straight forward to Ema but she heard that the WAA would be on the case, so she knew better than to take anything at face value.
After the body was taken away for its autopsy, she took some samples and looked for both finger and foot prints right up until Athena Cykes appeared on the scene looking rather cheerful considering the especially gruesome nature of the crime. She must have had a fruitful conversation with her client.
The girl looked around for a while, squinting suspiciously at this and that. Honestly, Ema wasn’t really sure if she was allowed to be here but she was being careful not to touch anything and Ema was certainly no snitch.
Once she was satisfied with her examination of the scene, Cykes finally approached Ema, jumping straight into the questions. Ema was in a good mood and she appreciated that the defense attorney knew how to get to the point, so she shared what she could and sent her on her way.
As she watched her leave, Ema suddenly got the urge to call out. She didn’t. But she thought about it.
Cykes was probably the closest to understanding Ema’s current plight. She too had someone she was close to go through the prison system, though her experience was definitely a lot higher stakes.
How did she celebrate Blackquill’s release? Ema wondered.
Actually, it was probably with noodles.
But there was definitely more to it. From the very little she had overheard, and the even less she had gotten from the prosecutor himself, Blackquill had briefly stayed with Athena, if only for a week or two. How had the defense attorney handled that?
Did she too, have doubts about it? She had been eleven when Blackquill was arrested, and from Ema’s understanding, there was no chance to even visit him in prison. Surely they had a lot to catch up on.
Maybe their celebration also consisted of simply just talking things out.
Or not. Blackquill definitely didn’t seem the type to open up that easily and Cykes certainly had her own demons too.
Also, Athena was too young to drink in this country and she definitely doesn’t have the salary for a fancy restaurant overlooking the water even now, so it was likely that they really did just eat noodles and stay emotionally repressed.
God wouldn’t that be easy.
But Ema couldn’t let herself take the easy way out, no matter how much she wanted to. She was going to make this celebration memorable even if it killed her.
(That would definitely make it memorable.)
By then, some police officers arrived and were about to unwittingly tamper with her crime scene like idiots, so she pushed it from her mind for later.
She still had time after all.
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Lana would be coming home with Ema in just three days.
She felt underprepared and it made her nervous.
After all these days, she still couldn’t decide how exactly she and Lana would celebrate. All of the ideas she had come up with were good, but they had to be great. And Ema just wasn’t sure how to do that.
It had gotten drastic enough that Ema almost (almost) considered asking for help.
But even if she did, who would she ask, anyways?
Cykes wouldn’t suggest anything Ema hadn’t already considered, and even so, Ema couldn’t claim that she even knew the young defense attorney well enough to simply just approach her and ask about something this personal.
Mister Wright could maybe help. He had at least met Lana before, and she was pretty sure he knew at least one or two people who had been convicted and gotten out of prison but…something was keeping her from asking. They hadn’t really had the opportunity talk outside of work for…a regrettably long while, and it would be awkward starting with this of all things.
Maya was a solid maybe, but phone calls were still a little patchy in her village and it was always sort of weird discussing Lana with her because it was hard to avoid how their older sisters were totally…intellectually doing it in college, so to speak. And again, they hadn’t talked much recently.
Kay would try her best, but she tended to think pretty similarly to Ema so they wouldn’t get anywhere that Ema couldn’t get alone.
Blackquill could be respectful about the topic if she asked, but she really didn’t think he’d be helpful.
Same with Edgeworth, Sahdmadhi, or Justice.
Klavier Gavin was a fop and she would attribute none of her eventual success in this celebration to him.
And she couldn’t ask Lana because Ema wanted to do this for her and it was more special if she could put in the work all by herself.
So…that left her alone in this endeavor. That was fine.
Ema preferred to work alone anyways. She was used to it.
Perhaps she could see if the internet can give her any ideas. There was bound to be some random person on reddit or whatever other forum site that needed the answer to her exact problem in the past.
Yeah…
She can just figure it out on her own.
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Two more days, then Lana’s here.
Maybe Ema should just give up with the strict schedules and plans. Once she picked her sister up, they could just go with the flow and see where the night takes them. Easy as that.
Lana wouldn’t mind. She’ll just be happy to be out in general. She’s not the type to expect some massive celebration with streamers and fancy alcohol.
Or at least Ema was pretty sure she wasn’t.
Maybe Lana didn’t want a celebration at all. If Ema were in her shoes, she’d just want to go home and immediately fall into bed. And there’s no reason to rush it either, they’ll have time to figure it out together.
Together…
What did that mean for the two of them anymore?
…What did it even mean back then?
Up until the arrest, they were always together in some stretch of the word. Their mom died shortly after Ema was born and their dad died when Ema was just barely old enough to remember him. For the longest time, all they had was each other.
But Lana had responsibilities, and Ema was proud of her for that, but it meant that inevitably, all Ema had was Lana while Lana—in addition to her sister—had other people and things to worry about. She never blamed her older sister for that, and Lana tried. She tried her hardest to give as much time as she could to Ema alongside encouraging her to make friends and try new things. But as it stood back then, Ema was weird and single-minded on her goal to be a forensic scientist. Not exactly the most conducive to making friends and joining clubs.
So yeah. “Together” in the sense that Lana was meeting new people and getting an education and working her butt off while Ema stayed at home and cheered from the sidelines through it all.
She supposed the roles would be reversed now.
Ema had a job and…something close to friends, while Lana didn’t anymore.
She hoped that her sister would be cheering on from the sidelines.
…She would be. Lana was proud of Ema, she had said so herself many times. Ema had achieved her dreams of being a forensic scientist! She’s made connections with others and done good in the world! What else could you ask of your little sister?
Of course she’ll be proud.
…
She had to be.
Even if it took until she was twenty-six to be a real forensic scientist, and even if Ema was still sometimes weird and single-minded, and even if she didn’t really…have as many meaningful connections as Lana did at her age, she’ll be proud of who Ema has become.
Hopefully.
That wasn’t the point though.
The point was, the celebration of Lana’s release didn’t need to be so regimented.
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Tomorrow was the day.
Ema wasn’t sure why she had been so doubtful about all of this before. It would be fine. It really wasn’t that deep and it made her roll her eyes just thinking about how overly dramatic she had acted about this.
She was confident that no matter how they spent their time after she picked Lana up, her sister will just be glad to be free in general.
Which is why Ema wasn’t going to go all out. At least not immediately. Lana will probably be tired and might not have the energy to go shopping or eat out at some fancy overpriced restaurant.
Ema had decided that she would make a home-cooked meal for her sister to show her that she’s now a far cry from the little girl who couldn’t make anything to save her life. Not that she was still the greatest cook, but she certainly wasn’t bad, and she at least knew how to make some pretty good spaghetti.
Which brought her to her last stop of the grocery trip.
She stared at the shelf in front of her. It was lined with rows upon rows of different types of chips for all your celebration needs. If they were going to watch a movie, (yes, Ema had gone back to that idea), she wanted there to be more snack options than just popcorn and individually packaged Snackoos.
That was all fine and dandy, but the problem was, Ema couldn’t remember what flavor of chips Lana liked.
Ema, herself, usually preferred either the cheesy variety of chips, or jalapeño chips, but this wasn’t about her, this was about Lana, and she had always been judgmental about the food Ema liked (even if she tried to hide it, Ema could tell that Lana was holding back a grimace every time she threw her favorite foods into the cart.)
She could probably play it safe and just buy something basic, but it would be a nicer gesture if she could actually get something that Lana specifically liked.
If she remembered correctly, Lana wasn’t the biggest fan of many spicy foods, so that category was off the counter entirely, but that didn’t really narrow it down as much as she would have liked.
After what was definitely an embarrassingly long time, Ema finally gave in and just grabbed a simple bag of potato chips. It was okay if not everything was tailor-made specifically for Lana. She certainly wouldn’t care. Especially because Ema would be cooking a specially made meal for her before that point anyways.
Though, it really did irk Ema that she couldn’t remember something as basic as her sister’s favorite flavor of chips.
It didn't matter though.
She could relearn it soon enough.
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Six hours left.
Would it make her a bad person if she said she was kind of dreading it?
She couldn’t say why exactly, she just was. There was a heavy feeling in her stomach that made it hard to eat breakfast that morning, and she definitely wasn’t going to be eating lunch right now.
As she paced back and forth in front of the couch, Ema almost wished she hadn’t taken the day off today. At least then she could have something to take her mind off of her sister, if only temporarily.
It was a good thing that the apartment under her was probably empty by now, because she would probably be getting a noise complaint if it wasn’t, what with all the heavy footsteps.
She still had hours until she could even remotely think about going to pick Lana up, but she’d been ready for far longer. The sofa bed had clean pillows with what was probably an excessive amount of blankets, the kitchen was stocked with lots of food and drink, and she had vacuumed the floors in every room. Still, there were many hours left.
It was excruciating having to wait, because the longer she waited, the more she thought, and the more she thought, the more doubts she had about herself. She was a mess…
Ema stared at the clock pleadingly, but it didn’t magically start speeding up.
She sighed.
Worth a shot.
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There were still three hours left…
Ema was currently deep-cleaning her bathroom from ceiling to floor. It was not really helping her keep her mind off of things, and also she had probably inhaled more fumes than she ever has in the many years she’s played with dangerous powders and chemicals.
Before this, she had tried to take a walk outside to get some fresh air and maybe calm the hell down but it didn’t work and she was pretty sure at least two or three people thought that she was on drugs with how fidgety and generally neurotic she looked.
So now she was cleaning.
It was going badly.
This spot on the mirror wasn’t going away no matter how hard she wiped at it and she had a headache and in all honesty she was about to have some sort of nervous breakdown. The tears were already prickling at the corners of her eyes.
Perhaps it was time to take a break…
In the kitchen, she filled up a lukewarm glass of water and chugged it. Then she refilled it and did it again. For a few moments, she considered having a banana because she really should probably eat something, but then she remembered that if she had even one bite of food, she would probably throw up out of nervousness, and that was the opposite of what she wanted.
Anyways on that note, back to cleaning.
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One hour and thirty minutes.
Ema couldn’t take it anymore. She’d sit in the prison waiting room if she had to, but if she stayed in her apartment for even one more second she would probably explode.
Walking down the stairs to ground level, Ema was afraid that she would stumble over her feet and fall down, cracking her head on the pavement, thus being unable to pick up her sister.
That didn’t happen though, she got down just fine.
Honestly, she probably shouldn’t be getting behind the wheel of a car right now, but she really couldn’t care less about that detail as she sat down and turned the key.
Traffic was horrible, driving was horrible, and the weather seemed as if it was going to turn horrible. Overall, everything was horrible.
After parking at the prison, Ema took a while to just sit in her car and breathe deeply.
It would be fine.
She should be excited right now.
She was excited.
Breathe in.
…
Hold it.
…
Breathe out.
It was all going to be fine.
Ema looked at herself in the rear view mirror.
She looked…okay. Her hair was messy so she undid and redid her hairdo and there were dark bags under her eyes but she couldn’t really do anything about that right now.
That was fine. Lana didn’t care what she looked like.
She got out of the car and walked slowly to the door, eyeing the dark clouds above with something akin to contempt, though the closer she got to the building, the less she could find it within herself to care that deeply about the weather of all things.
She was going to get her sister back! That was all that was important at the end of the day.
Admittedly, she was really giddy, even if she was nervous.
The last time she felt this happy was when she passed all the requirements to become a forensic scientist.
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Thirty seconds.
Ema sat in that uncomfortable plastic chair with her leg bouncing wildly and her stomach doing what could only be described as a circus-style trapeze performance.
Someone with a clipboard came out of a door somewhere. “Ema?”
Her head snapped up so fast it almost gave her whiplash.
“Your sister is ready for you.”
Zero.