Work Text:
Shadows are a dreadful thing. They may bring temporary relief in the case of a sun that casts down scorching rays, but at some point, even with that sun, you’re going to want to step out of the shade. You’re going to want to feel the sharp and blazing sun on your back and your arms and your face, and even if you go back into the shade moments later, you will still have been in the sun. And what’s more memorable? Staying in the safety of the shade or the danger of the sun?
Franziska knew about shadows all too well. She had spent her life bathing in the unrelenting cage of one. Two, if you want to get specific. Or even three, if you want to include vague, overarching ideas into this already too complicated metaphor.
The point was, men had always cast a sharp and looming shadow over her.
And no matter how much she begged and screamed and cried to be let out of her penumbral prison, the shadows would not go away, and the sun would always be just out of reach.
——
Franziska is 13. Her little ‘brother’ is almost 20. They have both, at the same time, begun their journey into the fascinating world of prosecution, guided by their father. Though Franziska believed that the term ‘their father’ was wrong. It was ‘ her father’.
But semantics of familial relations mattered about as much as a 13 year old bringing a riding crop into the German courtrooms, because no matter how much her father was her own, he never acted like it.
Now, did he despise Miles? Absolutely.
Could Franziska feel this fact simmer in the air whenever the two were in a room together? Without a doubt.
But did that mean he didn’t pay attention to him? Not at all.
Despite having the favor of her father, a right well earned, she knew she didn’t actually matter in his eyes. Not really. She wasn’t a symbol of spite, of revenge. All she was, all she would ever be, was a girl.
And Franziska, aged 13, feeling the pressing and mocking gaze of tens of hundreds of men, knew this all too well.
——
Franziska is 18. Her little brother is dead. She is free, now, finally, from the shade, in theory. In theory, she should be happy, feeling the sun scorch her skin. But only in theory. In practice, she knows that the minute her face is shown in court, she is nothing but a little sister.
She sees the face of this ‘Phoenix Wright’ and she burns with hatred. She had spent so long suffering in a suffocating prison, all so her brother could be cherished and praised and nurtured. She sees the face of Phoenix Wright and she wants to scream until her throat is raw and bleeding.
But she does not.
Franziska, aged 18, stands calm in court, determined to get revenge. Not for Miles, but rather, for her.
——
Franziska is 30. Her brother is alive and well, 37 years old.
She has a family now. A wife. A niece. Various other pseudo-children, all in an assortment of colors.
She’s made a career for herself, seperate from that of her father or her brother.
And she still feels that rage and she still gwts those gazes. Franziska, aged 30, hasn’t escaped the cage, but she has accepted it and made it home. And that is all she can do.