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She knows what’s coming before the flight attendant’s voice comes on over the intercom. The creak of the armrests under his hands gave it away even before her drink began to shake.
“We are currently experiencing some slight turbulence. We are currently asking all passengers to please return to their seats and fasten their seatbelts.”
Other passengers leisurely settle back into first class, drinks in hand. She tries to focus on them to keep from staring at the person next to her. If only she could still be shocked to see someone of his stature appear so small.
“Tch. Slight.” The way his breath catches between the words betrays their scathing nature.
As if to confirm his displeasure with their word choice, their craft hits a bump that sends her drink crashing to the floor. In the few seconds she shifts her attention to the shards of glass, he’s already unconscious.
Papa had said it was unbecoming of a von Karma to show such insolence. To allow an otherwise perfect finish be chipped by such trivial things. It was implicitly clear that she was to walk away and wait for him to get over it.
She had always trailed a few paces behind, never to interfere when Papa clamped a hand around his wrist and dragged him into an elevator. Never to say a word when the response to the trembling was a scoff and an insult rather than reassurance.
With time and the afterlife between her and that suffocating presence looming over her shoulder, it’s easier to see how ineffective that was.
Last time this happened, she only learned as much after several hours of wondering if he was the culprit in a murder, which of course immediately made her drop such outlandish suspicions. The perfect alibi and he refused to divulge it. Such behavior was easy to write off as foolish if one didn’t know its origin so intimately.
“Miles Edgeworth.” She’s not sure if it’s better to wake him up or let him sleep through it; intervening at all when he was like this was never an option. Yet the thought of sitting here, unmoving, irritates her more than he does. “Miles Edgeworth, snap out of it.”
He doesn’t. Those glasses—the ones that make him look so much like the man whose death still clings to him all these years later—are uncharacteristically askew and his head hangs down.
The whip is buried in her bag, away from the prying eyes of security. Papa had said to never let it out of sight. There are always imperfections in need of corrections and it’s her responsibility to fix them.
The bag stays tucked under her seat.
Her phone doesn’t have service in the sky, but it still has access to anything she saved prior to takeoff. A fourteen-hour flight with her little brother hyperventilating next to her sounded too unbearable not to take precautions for. The jury is still out on whether the silence is preferable or worse.
Checking for breathing is easy enough; even with him unconscious there’s still lingering instability in its rhythm. For once he’s forgone that frilly jabot of his—likely due to the meddlesome influence of a certain unprofessional defense attorney insisting that comfort on a long flight is important—so there’s no need for her to figure out how to loosen it.
And beyond that...there’s nothing she can do, really. If countless flights to and from Europe, the passage of time between the incident and now, and a legally binding verdict ruling that he was not to blame couldn’t cure this affliction, then nothing can.
It’s annoying, mostly. A little nagging voice in the back of her head that her quest for perfection has failed, because she’s focused so much on being a perfect prosecutor that she failed to become a perfect older sister. Or even an adequate one.
Her hands remain balled in fists until the flight attendant announces that people can move freely again. Once the other passengers start unbuckling their seatbelts, she’s storming towards the attendant with her whip in hand.
“I demand to speak with the captain.”
The attendant’s eyes flick down towards the whip. “I-I’m sorry, miss, but I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. The cockpit is off-limits for the safety of our passengers. If you tell me what the problem is, though, I can pass the message along.”
“That’s unacceptable.”
“I’m truly sorry, but I really can’t let you speak to him while he’s flying the plane.”
She sighs. “Fine. Then tell your foolish captain that his flying is awful.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“His lackluster piloting has disturbed my little brother, and there will be consequences for causing such needless stress once we land.”
“Franziska.”
She turns around and he’s right behind her with his arms crossed, standing tall as if nothing ever happened. “Hassling the captain will only make it more difficult to smoothly navigate the plane. Especially if you bring that with you.”
Franziska stares at the weapon clutched in her hand. Unfortunately, Miles Edgeworth’s foolishness tends to manifest in provoked uncharacteristic outbursts, and this is not one of them. She doesn’t acknowledge this verbally, but her retreat to their seats is essentially an admittance. The shattered glass is still sprawled at her feet.
Edgeworth speaks briefly with the flight attendant before taking his seat as well. She is certain he would not have done that a few years ago.
“I was not complaining to that flight attendant for your sake, by the way,” Franziska says.
“I’m sure you weren’t.” He extracts a travel mug from his carry-on bag and pours himself a new cup of tea. Because of course that was something he packed with him. Chamomile, if her memory serves her right; known for its soothing properties. “Do you recall the incident at Kurian Village?”
She’s been involved in a few incidents involving spirit mediums and far too many Feys, but she knows the one he’s talking about. “The one where that fool Phoenix Wright threw himself off a burning bridge.”
Edgeworth makes a face. “He didn’t throw himself off of it, Franziska, he—” He shakes his head. “That’s not my point. The killer turned out to be Prosecutor Diego Armando, who Wright deduced was trying to protect Maya Fey. And he was right about the killer, but Armando claimed his motive was actually vengeance on Dahlia Hawthorne.”
“I saw the trial, Miles Edgeworth,” she snaps. “What are you getting at?”
“It’s simple. You’re not trying to protect me; you’re trying to make up for something.”
“And what would that be?”
He takes a sip of his tea. “You’ll have to forgive me for not having a clear answer yet, Franziska.”
“You’re a fool.”
“An unconscious fool,” Edgeworth reminds her, and he says it with such nonchalance—like she’s telling a humorous story and he’s bringing attention to an insignificant detail he incorrectly thought worth mentioning—but she’s known him long enough to see through it. “I’ve hardly had time to prepare a sound theory.”
There’s a comment on the tip of Franziska’s tongue about how even Phoenix Wright can at least bluff his way through an argument on the spot. She refrains from saying it out loud. For now.
“I suppose I can’t argue with that excuse.”
They fall into a comfortable silence—well, maybe for him, at least. Franziska waits for the inevitable moment when he decides he can’t leave their conversation “unsolved” and interjects with whatever asinine theory he’s managed to concoct. Only it never comes; she spends an hour waiting for him to put down his stupid book on the psychology of criminals (she will never understand why he would want to learn more about the minds of such scum), but he only looks up to drink more tea.
Franziska has half the mind to knock his cup over while his nose is stuck in his book.
Eventually, she can’t take it anymore. “Miles Edgeworth, have you managed to think of anything in your hour of consciousness? Or must I spell it out for you?”
She immediately regrets that last part and bites back a curse. In any other scenario, the chance to one-up him is simply irresistible, but in matters of the heart it is best to keep her cards clutched tight to her chest. Or simply not let anyone know she has cards to reveal.
Edgeworth puts a bookmark from a museum gift shop between the pages. “Well, you’re far less likely to use the whip if I let you go first.”
“That is simply incorrect.”
“Surely you don’t want to hear me hypothesize about your feelings. Especially if I’m right.”
Unfortunately, he knows her quite well too. “Fine. I’ll give you a hint and see if you can figure it out yourself.” She pretends to be incredibly interested in her nails. They need to be repainted. “You’re my little brother.”
“I am.”
It’s hard not to show the pleasure on her face when he doesn’t argue the logistics of that. “And as your older sister, it is my duty to make sure nothing happens to you.”
“That sounds an awful lot like protecting me, Franziska.”
“Don’t be so foolish, Miles Edgeworth,” she retorts. “I’m not done.” It’s no wonder he couldn’t figure out her motive, because she can hardly accept it herself as it’s coming together. “...Papa didn’t like you very much.”
Edgeworth bites his lip. “No, no he did not. He made that perfectly clear when he framed me for murder.” He stops talking but it’s clear that he’s not finished. “Franziska,” he begins carefully, “it is not your job to make up for anything your father did.”
She scoffs. “That’s preposterous. I ought to whip you right now for suggesting something so foolish.”
“But you haven’t. And why bring up von Karma if he doesn’t have anything to do with it?”
“I was only acknowledging a fact. Don’t read too much into it.”
“Except it’s incredibly unlike you to bring up something irrelevant,” Edgeworth insists. “It goes against everything you stand for.”
“Maybe I just wanted to scream at someone and you were a convenient excuse.”
“Franziska.”
Every time there’s an ocean between them, she somehow manages to forget how annoying he is. She maybe even finds herself missing having someone to debate with, until one of them takes a plane and she regrets ever entertaining the notion. Always so stubborn, and after that “choosing death” nonsense he only became more unbearable.
It’s not about perfection to him anymore. It’s about the truth. And god does she know he will spend the rest of this ride drawing it out of her if she doesn’t offer it willingly and save them both the hassle.
“It’s not about what he did,” Franziska says. “It’s about what I didn’t do.”
Their craft hits a bump. The sound of Edgeworth’s breath hitching is almost inaudible over drunken passengers whooping at the disruption. Even if Franziska couldn’t hear it, she still would’ve seen him stiffen up.
Only it’s just the one bump, so he recovers quickly enough to see her hands on his shoulders. She quickly retracts them and wrings them in her lap.
His sigh quavers a bit at the end. “So it’s guilt, then. That you, a child, never talked back to your father.”
Guilt. Normally the finishing blow of a successful case, but in this context she wants to eradicate it from all languages. “I’m his daughter. He would have listened to me.”
“Do you really think that?”
“No.”
Admitting it isn’t as difficult as Franziska thought it would be. Without the famed prosecutor molding her into his spitting image, there’s no longer a need to pretend that image is a flattering one. Or perhaps the fact that she can’t outright tell her own little brother she wants to keep him safe tells her quite enough about the person her father was.
She was furious when he was convicted. At the attorney who exposed his lies, the brother who was relieved by his mentor’s death, the father who preached perfection with blood on his hands, and at herself for not being sure whether to mourn.
Now, she can admit with clarity that he wasn’t looking out for anyone’s best interest, and he made very little effort to hide it too. Edgeworth’s perspective on the matter being so impossible to ignore has certainly helped with that.
“Essentially, you are not obligated to be nice to me.” Edgeworth opens his book again and flips back to his bookmark.
She remembers exactly where it came from now; Papa had allowed each of them to pick one item from the gift shop of that museum since both of their report cards came back spotless. Franziska demanded a hand painted tea set with enough cups and saucers for her favorite stuffed animals and a special guest.
Miles just wanted a way to find his place in a book again when she dragged him out of his chair to join her tea party.
“Why would I ever be nice to you, Miles Edgeworth?”
He smiles. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”