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Staring out of the train window, Franziska watched the city grow closer, and it started to set in how unready she was to be back.
Two weeks had felt like plenty before she’d left Kurain – much longer, and she was sure she would have started to outstay her welcome, regardless of how many times Maya said she wasn’t. But now, it felt like nothing.
Maya’s invitation had been with the purpose of getting Franziska away from all of that, the physical distance giving her some space to breathe, and it had. For long enough that she’d become used to having it.
Long enough that Franziska could feel the sickness creeping in as they travelled further down the mountainside, because it had a presence again. The collapse that had dragged her down since the end of the Hazakura trial was back breathing down her neck.
She couldn’t have stayed in Kurain indefinitely, as appealing as it may have seemed, but she wasn’t prepared for her life to resume.
Individual buildings were starting to take shape. High-rises, the hospital she wished she’d never visited; the tension in her muscles making the scar on her shoulder ache. The sprawling courthouse. Franziska stared at it until it fell out of view.
Today was a Wednesday. In a different timeline – the one her father would have wanted, that everyone was expecting her to be in – she’d have been there all day. Taking up the permanent job they’d offered her; a promising career and success in this country, making up for the failures that had come before. Or, she’d only have turned it down because she knew she could find the same fortune somewhere else.
Franziska had put in so much effort to reach this point that it would have just happened. Perpetual motion. She knew how to keep moving forward.
But at the end of that trial, she’d stopped running, and now she was here. Realising how much she needed to do if she wanted to walk away.
She had to ship the rest of her belongings over from Germany. Not that there was much, after years built around living out of a suitcase, but enough to be a logistical annoyance. That was the easiest of her tasks to focus on – it had a beginning and an end, steps that she could walk herself through.
If she gave herself a second to think about the conversation she was about to have, Franziska started to feel the same dread as the first moment she’d realised she was about to lose a case.
She’d almost avoided it entirely. Didn’t need to tell Miles when she was returning, even though he’d asked her to. Had she then declined his offer to drive her back, it wasn’t as if he would have tried to persuade Franziska otherwise; Miles was more than aware that he couldn’t make her do anything.
She’d still told him. Still said yes when he’d asked, knowing he was obnoxiously early to everything and so wouldn’t leave her with an opportunity to change her mind.
And now the train was slowing down, the station within sight – Franziska couldn’t catch her breath.
No, she was not about to start hyperventilating in public. Franziska dug her fingernails into the heel of her hand. She could hide feeling like this during a trial, so she could push through it here.
Think about Maya. The number of times she’d promised Franziska that this was okay, that she wanted Franziska to be happy.
By the time the doors were opening, Franziska’s palms were clammy, but she’d avoided making a complete fool of herself in front of the other passengers. Fighting to keep herself calm was another distraction, at least, leaving her with no room to think about anything other than making her way through the station.
Finding the ticket in her wallet so she could get through the barriers, the strap of her bag digging into her fingers. She had to reorient herself on the other side, taking far longer to read the signs pointing her towards the right exit.
It was sunnier here than it had been in Kurain, the mountains covered by a thick bank of clouds for the last few days, and Franziska squinted as she finally stepped outside. Adjusting to the light, she didn’t immediately see Miles’s car; if there had been some sort of miscommunication that would render all her anxiety pointless, or he had a last-minute meeting –
Franziska spotted him. Parked halfway across the mostly-empty lot, for some reason, reading a book behind the wheel. Noticed Franziska, and raised his hand in a half-wave.
When she got closer, Franziska realised that it was actually a case file, coloured tabs along the edges and careful highlighting in every paragraph. The last thing she wanted to see right now. Taunting her.
She didn’t care that this was Miles making up for the fact he was missing work to be here. The effect was the same.
He tucked it away once she was standing next to the car, leaning over the seats to push the passenger-side door open. Said nothing until Franziska had climbed in, bag dropped in the footwell.
“I didn’t know if you’d ever come back.”
He was trying to dig at her, or make a joke, or both; Franziska was preoccupied with the panic setting in. “Hm.”
Silence until Miles had reversed out of the parking spot, waiting for another car to pull out in front of them. Then, “I saw the photos Maya posted.”
As if Franziska hadn’t spent half the journey back staring at them. At one picture buried a few slides in – the one she knew Miles had to be referring to. She must have memorised it, but she’d kept wanting to go back. Reminding herself, as they became further and further apart, that it had all been real, it wasn’t ending just because this trip had come to an end.
When Maya had asked if she could include it, Franziska had known that her brother would end up seeing it, considering he only followed about four accounts that weren’t TV studios or dogs – and had decided it would be easier than having to tell him anything.
“Don’t start with that,” Franziska told him.
“I’m not.” If he weren’t such an attentive driver, he would have rolled his eyes, Franziska was sure of it.
After a few seconds, he followed up with, “You looked… happy.”
On the day it had been taken, Franziska had offhandedly mentioned that she’d plaited her hair when it had been longer, and Maya had told her to see if she remembered how. Franziska had, sort of. Enough to spend half an hour with Maya sat almost in her lap, putting her hair half-up in some Dutch braids.
Maya had loved it, and wanted to take a photo; Franziska had wrapped her arms around Maya’s waist from behind. Revelling in the fact she could do that, how it made Maya’s face light up – and more than a little pleasure in her own possessiveness, too.
So, yes, happy. Smiling with an easiness that Franziska didn’t recognise in herself; hadn’t known she was capable of, until Maya.
And the memory of it hit at the same time as Franziska was trying to figure out how to bring up the topic she desperately wanted to avoid, and she was far too aware of the fact that she wasn’t in Kurain anymore. Two weeks of pretending the rest of her life didn’t exist, but it did, and it was waiting for her.
She needed this conversation to be over with, but she was… scared. Of admitting her failures aloud; of losing her brother, when he’d only just come back into her life.
Franziska von Karma was scared. She thought she’d learned how to ignore the feeling, but she was painfully powerless against it now.
All she could hear was: …Then, this is where we part ways, Franziska von Karma.
This was it. The end of the line.
“Can you pull over?”
Miles raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t ask for an explanation.
Had it been any other situation, his methodicalness would have helped Franziska calm down: watching him check the rearview mirror, slowing down and flicking on his turn signal before he drove to the kerb and cut the engine.
Miles didn’t do anything to break the tension – and he had to know what she was going to say, after the past month. The week in his spare bedroom, their argument not long after. Driving Franziska to the train station.
He knew, and he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Leaving Franziska to hold it until the last moment, this part of herself that she was hardly able to look at, without granting her the relief of taking it from her.
Though she wasn’t sure she’d want to lose the one piece of control she had here.
“I.” Franziska wasn’t used to sounding this weak. So far removed from who she’d tried to ensure Miles had seen.
“I’m not returning to court.” Franziska stared at her hands. “I’m done.”
Perhaps she hadn’t actually spoken. Replayed how this conversation might go so many times that she’d lost the ability to have it. She didn’t catch any movement out of the corner of her vision, any sign that he’d heard.
But she knew he had. For the second time in her life, she’d let somebody else hear it. So different from that late-night phone call with Maya, shaking on the balcony as she forced the words out. Today was too bright, too real, and Franziska was sitting in the knowledge that she couldn’t take it back.
“Do you mind telling me why?”
It had taken him long enough to speak that Franziska had flinched. Chanced a glance up; he wasn’t looking at her.
No matter how many times she’d tried to convince herself otherwise, she was overwhelmed with the feeling that this was it. Miles would never speak to her again. He would hate her, ashamed to have ever said she was his sister. Cast Franziska aside, as he’d tried to before.
She didn’t know how to explain why in a way that he would understand.
“You’re passionate about it, aren’t you?” After a second, she added, “Being a prosecutor. It feels right. You said you understand what it means to you.”
“Yes,” he replied quietly. “Yes. I do. After that year I was gone.”
He was so certain. So steadfast in his conviction that this was what he was here to do.
Franziska had wanted to mirror him, mirror her father, and she’d done such a good job at pretending. Hadn’t she?
“I’ve never felt that way. I never will.”
This time, he shot back immediately: “And you can be so sure about that, because…?”
“Because I don’t want this. I don’t think I ever did. I can’t –” Again, Franziska stumbled, and she wanted to rip her own throat out; if nothing else, she needed to be able to have this conversation perfectly. “I can be a lawyer, or I can be happy. And I’m sorry if you think I’m making the wrong choice, Miles Edgeworth, but I have made it.”
Franziska couldn’t bear this. In such a confined space, everything she’d said took up too much room – too much oxygen, air stolen by everything she’d said. Bit by bit, she’d been falling apart, and she’d finally confirmed it.
Miles had to think she was pathetic. Had to keep trying, push through whatever excuses she was making: because everything that wasn’t success was an excuse, wasn’t it?
For one heartbeat, two, three, Franziska dug her nails into her palms. Until she could feel her pulse under the skin, and the strain was too much to hold, and she still didn’t know what to say.
Then Miles whispered, “Fuck, of course I want you to be happy.”
It was like being hit in the chest, as much force as a bullet tearing through her. Franziska wanted to beg him to say it again; to promise that it mattered to him, really mattered, more than what they’d been raised to make of each other.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” she muttered, slouching down in her seat. Folded her arms, squeezing tight around her waist.
Miles took a deep breath in, and Franziska waited for whatever argument they were about to have. He’d done plenty, or she shouldn’t have needed anything, or it wouldn’t have been worth the effort.
It didn’t happen. Franziska waited, and waited, but the fight didn’t come. Not from Miles – but not from herself, either. Neither of them wanted to pull the trigger.
“I wasn’t asking to prove you wrong.” If he wasn’t wanting to argue, then Franziska hadn’t expected him to say any more. She steadied herself. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t from some idea about victory, again.”
Again. She knew how Miles was seeing her: obsessed with her own success, throwing a tantrum because she wasn’t getting what she wanted. Perhaps that had been true at one point, but she’d been frozen there in his mind. Forever an amateur, a child – trailing after him as an adult in much the same way she had as a baby, learning how to walk.
Miles had allowed her to take up so much space in his life over the last month out of pity, nothing more. Or in hopes that Franziska would pull herself together. Stop being so complicated, act how she was supposed to.
But she couldn’t. Maya’s voice in her ears: It doesn’t have to be like this.
“If I knew for a fact that I’d win every case I took on, starting today, that wouldn’t change my decision.”
It felt strange to admit. Not one of the conversations she’d had with Maya, who had seen the rawness of her decision: the uncontrolled desperation as she’d admitted it for the first time, how the freedom had worked its way through her over the course of her visit.
The afternoon that it had hit Franziska that she really was stopping, and the feeling had been so acute that she’d started sobbing, of all things. Embarrassing, though Maya had tried to convince her it wasn’t.
All Miles had was the memory of last time it had come up. That encounter at the airport. When they’d both been able to convince themselves that it was just Franziska’s fear of failure, the spectre of her father. Something less… fundamental.
Less disappointing.
But what she’d just told him – that was it, wasn’t it? No passion, no drive, adrenaline all used up. Nothing left for her, Miles had to see it now; and wasn’t that a letdown?
The cars driving by outside made a low hiss on the asphalt. Franziska wondered what the people inside were seeing, if they looked in. Whether her and Miles looked like strangers.
And weren’t they, to an extent? Since Miles had finished his studies and moved back to the States, they hadn’t been in each other’s lives with any sort of permanence. The time since the Hazakura case was the longest that either of them had tried. As if there was some sort of reason it could be different now.
Franziska listened to the road, watched the clouds start to cover the sun. She had nothing more to tell him.
Suddenly: “I wish I’d never said it.” Franziska had become so accustomed to the emptiness – accepting of the fact that they were both done – that it took her longer than normal to process what he was saying. “What I told you – back then. At the airport. It wasn’t true.”
Franziska crossed her arms tighter. “You’re a poor liar. I know you meant it.”
“No, I…” He exhaled. Index finger tapping on the steering wheel. “I thought it was what you needed to hear. Motivation. I didn't want you to give up.”
“Well, sorry.” Franziska tried to sound sarcastic, but her throat was closing up. If she started crying, she’d get out and walk the rest of the way home, she decided. Never mind that they were on the opposite side of the city.
“If you’re saying this is what you want, not what you think you have to do –”
Franziska cut him off. “I am.”
She was waiting for the catch. Where Miles would tell her that she could do what she needed, but this was where he left, because this had always been the extent of who they were to each other. Rivalry, not family.
It had taken so long to feel like he was back in her life, that he was waiting for her to catch up, but what could he do with a sister who had no interest in doing so?
“Then.” He was floundering – what, struggling to disappoint her? To leave? He was good at it, packing up and leaving everything behind; better than Franziska had ever been.
“Then I’m still by your side.”
He didn’t hate her.
It made all the buildup seem ridiculous. Herself, over-dramatic as ever; Miles, too invested in his own stoicism. A conversation that could have been far easier – could have happened far sooner – if it wasn’t between them.
But it was. Between Franziska and her little brother, sat in his car on the side of the road. Should have felt so far from a year ago, crying at the departures gate, but Franziska was there; like a fresh wound, the guilt and humiliation and unimaginable, overwhelming relief.
She wanted to say something that would sound like her old self. Call him a fool, overly sentimental. Accuse him of being insincere.
Say she’d always hated him, again.
Franziska ended up with, “You don’t care about me giving up, then?”
It felt good to try and force it out of him. At every turn, he seemed to insist on not acting in a way that made sense, aligned with the Miles she’d known; Franziska wanted to stop waiting for the catch. Push him back from the weakness she’d had no choice but to display.
She wished she could read his sigh, the half-smile on his lips. Whether it was exasperation, or something… kinder.
“You aren’t giving up.” Every time he had to pause, Franziska was a mix of comforted and vindicated. If nothing else, he was hating this overly-emotional conversation just as much. “You’re moving on.”
Franziska wanted to know what had changed. Why Miles didn’t take the opportunities she was presenting for him to assert his superiority; why he was letting this conversation run its course when he had work to do.
Why it felt like having family again.
“That’s not what Papa would have said.” He was her brother in every way that mattered. And that meant he knew this – knew Franziska – and was continuing to tell her all this anyway. Meeting her defiance with his own.
“He’s dead.” So blunt that Franziska couldn’t help but laugh. For his part, Miles didn’t seem to have considered how it would have sounded, and grimaced. “Besides, it's what I like to think my father would have believed. If he knew…”
He’d lost whatever he’d been about to say, but they were left with the weight of it. The almost-admittance. Letting themselves get within touching distance of acknowledging that they’d both spent so long doing so badly.
Franziska had been haunted by not knowing what they would be to each other without the final thread of Manfred von Karma between them. She finally had her answer.
“Are we done?” she muttered. Like a petulant teenager.
“I do need to get back to work at some point.” And he’d probably work late tonight, wouldn’t he? Make up for lost time. Franziska had done the same, countless times: eyes burning, trying to make the hours slip away. Bad instant coffee and a sense of impending doom.
She never had to do that again. No longer had to repeat that this was what she was supposed to do, that she’d worked so hard to get here.
Of course I want you to be happy.
Miles started the car, and Franziska wondered how long it would take to stop getting hit with these waves of emotion. Remembering and re-remembering that it was genuinely over.
If Franziska had thought about it, been able to keep her composure, she wouldn’t have had this conversation within the first five minutes. Because – a consequence that should have been obvious – it resulted in a painfully silent half an hour back to her apartment.
Miles needed to drive in the quiet, and Franziska didn’t want to do anything that might make it seem like she wanted to hide; couldn’t check her messages, or put her headphones on.
It might have been an awkward journey, but it was all she’d wanted. For him to still be there.
So she did nothing, tried to keep her fidgeting subtle. While in Kurain, she’d picked up some of Maya’s: tapping along her jawline, rubbing her thumb back and forth over her knuckles. The first person she’d known since Miles who didn’t think it was weird.
When the streets became more familiar, she started to relax, little by little. She’d be back – not quite back home, but close enough. God, if she was staying, she needed to find somewhere to live that wasn’t a soulless short-term rental. Another task for the list.
Miles stopped on the other side of the road from the building. Didn’t even turn off the engine, this time. But as she reached for the door – “We should see each other more often.”
Franziska froze. “I suppose so.”
“Now you’ve got all this free time,” he added.
“I am not going to be permanently useless, thank you.”
“Then you should make the most of it.”
“What, by spending it with you?”
He was trying not to smile as Franziska opened the door. “Just come over for dinner at some point, Franziska.”
“If it’ll keep you off my back.” She grabbed her bag. “Well, goodbye.”
“See you soon.”
In the time it took her to walk to the building’s entrance, Franziska’s thoughts had switched back to the same nervous energy she’d had on the train. There was so much that she had to do – her life was terrifyingly her own.
She stopped to let out a long, shaking breath. The reflection in the glass-plate facade hardly looked like her. But it was her, and she’d taken another step; one that had seemed insurmountable a few weeks ago. And the step before: telling Maya, dropping everything to go and stay with her, something else she couldn’t have imagined. The impossible kept happening.
Franziska was actually doing it. After an eternity of knowing that she’d be chained to a path she’d never wanted – she’d never been so relieved to be proven wrong.