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After her father’s execution, Franziska Von Karma buys a pack of cigarettes at the gas station for the first time. She points imperiously at the pack in question and selects a lighter from the display: cheap metal masquerading as polished steel. She lights one in the car with the windows rolled down. It is the first time she has driven with the windows down, always too conscious of looking windblown and unkempt. It’s noisy. Her cigarette goes out when it is only a quarter burnt.
Franziska gets to the manor and opens the back of the car. It takes her several tries; it is the first time she has ever had to open it herself. Generally Hans or one of the other servants would see to the loading and offloading of goods from the vehicle. High class hotel valets are trained to know how to do such things during her travels. She opens the fuel cap and pops the hood before she finds the lever for the trunk. She grabs the two gas cannisters and heads inside. They are heavy and full, but evenly balanced. Each step feels satisfactory and final.
Here was the place that Franziska first learned to ride a horse; here was the place where Frei had been put down. She had been fond of the horse, but not like Miles Edgeworth. He had loved the thing with a passion, escaping to the stables whenever he could manage. Equine influenza, someone had said. Her father had shot the creature himself, as they watched. It was the first time that Franziska had ever seen something die: the horse on the ground and the light in Miles Edgeworth’s eyes. Funny that she could not recall hearing Frei ever even coughing.
Franziska unscrews the cap of one cannister with a gloved hand. She drops it accidentally and leaves it there, in the grass. She splashes a little of the liquid from the one she has left against the bottom of the old wooden boards, then trails it past the gardener’s shed and the greenhouse. Her first memory was the shattering of glass as her father took a crowbar to each pane personally. Her mother had left the manor after that. The greenhouse had been a particular favorite of hers.
Through the front double doors, swinging open heavily to flank the carpets, to the antique wallpaper. There’s a little spot there, an almost imperceptible circle of dark green with yellow roses overlaid to match the pattern. She had chased after Miles Edgeworth, aged eleven, demanding that he play defense in her doll’s court so that she could be prosecution and whip him soundly. He had panicked at the word defense, shaking free of her childish grip so hard that she had fallen backwards and over, bumping her face into the wall. A little trickle of blood from her bruised nose had dripped onto the floor. She had touched it, and then the wall. Miles Edgeworth had stared at the bloodied fingerprint in transfixed horror. The housekeeper had seen to the floor and the bleaching of her petticoat and the wallpaper repairs. Her father had seen to Miles Edgeworth. He’d been confined to quarters for a month with no visitor permitted save for her father. Occasionally, walking by the locked door, she could hear Miles Edgeworth crying.
Franziska aims a vicious kick at the wall in passing. The sharp edge of her high heeled shoe catches on the patch and drags. The tear is deeper than the paper, deeper than the blood. She kicks so hard that the momentum drags down to bare plank, leaving an indentation in the wood. She splashes the gasoline into the groove and carries onward.
Every passage is the same, every room layered memory. The house is silent and she seethes quietly but the cacophony of injustice is loud, so loud. Weak men, shouting and sobbing: the background music of her childhood. No wonder she had learned to scream.
Her childhood room is as she left it: toys, dolls, lace. She tears the delicate canopy down so violently that one of the four posts snaps; the gauzy fabric drapes around her like a princess cape. She drags it behind her, the wooden post clacking against the floor as she moves, across to the other side of the nursery. She flings open the door to the small dark room. A writing desk. A serviceable bed. The room says nothing. She is taller now looking in. She remembers the angle of girlhood, looking up at Miles Edgeworth through the crack of the door, watching him pull his shirt down over shoddy bloodied bandage work. He was thirteen.
If she ran the Luminol here, what would she see? The angle and distance, the age of the specimens? What conclusions might she draw? Perpetrator 177cm in height, force of injury indicates a male with considerable upper body strength, but one who favors his right shoulder, possibly due to a longstanding injury-
Franziska dumps the rest of the gasoline out in Miles Edgeworth’s room. She pours it on the bed, the desk, the bookcase, the outgrown clothing in the closet. When she runs out of things to douse, she pours the rest on the rug in the center of the room. She fumbles with the lighter- it won’t light, why won’t it light-
A hand closes around hers.
Dreamily, Franziska looks up, through the veil of years and the chemical haze.
“Franziska,” Miles Edgeworth says, and she lets him take the lighter away. “I found her,” he continues, without turning around.
“I’ll say you did, you could follow the fumes a mile away.” Phoenix Wright’s bumbling footsteps sound outside the door.
“Don’t come in,” Miles Edgeworth instructs. “You’ll get it all over you too. We’ll meet you out front.”
Franziska lets Miles Edgeworth lead her back down the stairs, head held high. She does not acknowledge her escort or any of the petty destructions she’s wrought along the way. Her boots make a soft wet sound with each step. She has somehow soaked the suede in gasoline.
“If you had lit that successfully,” Miles Edgeworth says casually, “You would have ignited the fumes in that room. Your lungs would have charred, bronchioles melted, alveolis fused. It would have been a quick, painful death. Perhaps you would have suffocated before your clothes caught, but perhaps not.”
“I suppose you expect gratitude,” Franziska hisses.
“No,” Miles Edgeworth disagrees. “I’m grateful enough for the both of us.”
Chastened, Franziska looks at her shoes again. They are ruined, of course. Most things she owns are, one way or another. Miles Edgeworth grips the handle to the front door, to his partner waiting outside and Franziska can’t bear it. She grabs hold of the back of his coat with two hands, as she had done for one brief and terrible moment before he left for the states, when she had thought him lost forever.
“How is that you always make me feel such a spoiled child?” She asks his back.
“Because you are one,” he says kindly.
Miles Edgeworth goes out from the house, but he takes her hand in his, other hand on her elbow. He escorts her like he did at her debut when she was just a girl, as though her crumpled gasoline soaked court attire is as elegant as a shimmering white gown. He pauses on the step to speak to Phoenix Wright, waiting just outside the door.
“Will you do the honors?” Miles Edgeworth asks lightly.
“Are you sure? I thought you’d want to.”
Miles Edgeworth shakes his head. “We’re in no condition, as you can see.” He lifts his elbow briefly so that Phoenix Wright can better observe the fine residual spattering of gasoline down his sleeve and along his pant legs.
“I can’t believe you, of all people, are in favor of committing a felony.” Phoenix Wright says, a smile in his voice.
“My apologies for the disappointment. I think you’ll find I’m within my rights, in the eyes of the law, private property and insurance claim revoked.” Her brother leads her down the steps to a safe distance away.
“Not disappointed. The opposite actually.” The striking of a match sounds behind them. “Let’s lay these ghosts to rest.”