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Franziska von Karma finds Maya after dinner. ‘Finding’ Maya, of course, means a discovery in only the most abstruse sense: Franziska’s gaze is arresting in its sharpness. Her eyes land on Maya’s sometime between their entrees and desserts and never leave.
“Maya Fey,” Franziska pronounces when they’ve both stood, when they’re waiting for the rest of the party at the restaurant’s door: Larry’s flirting up a storm at their waitress, Phoenix and Edgeworth are squabbling over who’s paying the check, Detective Gumshoe, on the sidelines, looks like he wants to die expeditiously, and Pearl’s at their feet, head swiveling back and forth, more engrossed than if she were watching a tennis match.
Maya’s always been sort of fascinated by the way that Franziska says people’s names; she makes each syllable sound as grave and important as the last, as if ‘worth’ is load-bearing, as sharp as ‘edge’ and as long as ‘miles’, and if she closes her mouth around the end of ‘feen’ it becomes a kind of villain, just like how ‘nick’ on Franziska’s tongue becomes name and wound and the beginning of a firm no, and ‘wright’ isn’t just a direction, but a state of being that she’s always striving for.
Being on the receiving end of Franziska’s attention is different, though. It’s hearing all the raw open-wound spaces of ‘ma-ya’ which is not ‘mee-ya’ and will never be, hearing ‘Fey’ which is ‘Kurain’ and not, ‘fey’ which is strange and unholy and altogether inhuman even though she is and it’s just a name, three letters for her family and four for her own.
Somewhere in the spaces of her name and her family’s, Franziska’s eyes still on hers, narrowed, keen, dark, and somehow altogether still startling, Maya forgets to reply.
Robbed of her own chance to take a stab at her own greeting (A ‘Hi?’ A solemn ‘Franziska von Karma’ that would somehow make only Maya feel absurd?), after a few moments of crippling silence, it doesn’t really feel like the start of a conversation anymore, so all Maya does is let her name hang in the air between them and hope it fades. But it’s Franziska, so of course it doesn’t.
Whip in one hand, the other running restlessly up and down the length of it, Franziska looks like she does when she’s about to cross-examine a witness—like she expects answers. Franziska's looking at Maya like she holds them.
Maya gulps. She’s about say something absurd to fill the silence, because anything’s better than feeling like she’s back on trial, trying to convince a faceless jury that she’s not guilty of her sister’s death even as her own heart indicts her, she’s going to say something utterly and truly dumb and Nick is going to have to scrape her remains, after she’s been whipped to shreds, off of the restaurant’s nice carpeted floor.
“I never met Mia Fey,” Franziska says abruptly and Maya’s mouth snaps shut, all her thoughts of gruesome dismemberment coming to a halt.
Right, thinks Maya. Of course. All that staring. All that frowning. It wasn’t about her ahead all.
But even though Franziska looks deeply perturbed by it, she keeps talking.
“Nor has Misty Fey significantly altered the course of my existence.”
“The only Fey of your lineage I've known is you, Maya Fey,” she finishes with a grimace. “You would do well to remember that.”
“Uh,” says Maya. “Okay, then. Thanks, I guess?”
It sounds hopelessly dumb even to Maya’s own ears, completely at odds with the outsized and strange feeling in her heart, but Franziska nods as if it’s not.
She’s not sure if Franziska wants to say more or not, but the silence stretches between them again, and before either of them can speak, Phoenix and Edgeworth are back, and the moment’s done for.
“Ready to go?” Nick asks her. He has a silly sort of grin on his face, sillier than his normal one, and Mr. Edgeworth looks more annoyed than usual, so she figures she doesn’t need to be an attorney to know who won the bill dispute.
Maya can’t help herself— she glances back over at Franziska.
Franziska’s sort of, kind of half looking back at her, the kind of look that exists only because you're trying really hard to ignore the person who's trying really hard to lecture you.
Maya says bye to her anyway. She doesn't expect a reply and she doesn't wait for one.
In the parking lot, on the walk to the bus stop across the street, Phoenix gives her a sideways look. He's never as subtle as he thinks he is, and this is especially overt. He looks concerned.
“What?” She says. She tries on a frown. It's not super effective.
“Was she being mean to you?”
“Who, Franziska? No— it was weird, she was weird, she’s always weird, but, no. Not mean, no.”
“Hm,” says Phoenix. He sounds extremely unconvinced. She doesn't really feel like getting into it, into the way sometimes his complete and obvious care for her hurts as much as it holds her, like a blanket wrapped around her and set on fire would, because she can conjure spirits and crack jokes, can inhale a seven course meal and ask for more if it'll make him grin, but there's some things that can't be fixed, and the two letters in the middle of her name that won't ever become an i, not permanently, are two of them.
Also, Franziska’s whipped him a lot, and she doesn't want to get into that either.
“So Mr. Edgeworth paid?” she asks instead, deliberately wrong, because she knows it'll get Nick going like nothing else does.
“Edgeworth did not,” starts Nick, and the other subjects quietly drop.
She doesn’t really see Franziska for a while, after. Not until after Hazakura Temple, not until after she loses her mother for a second time, after she’s trapped in Dahlia Hawthorne’s rage, her vengeance— a hungry, hungry ghost. Staring at nothing but the darkness of Dahlia’s soul, Maya wills the tears away because even if no one can see them, if she doesn’t cry, maybe it means the despair won’t come.
She’s in front of the vending machine at the back of the courthouse, waiting for Phoenix and Mr. Edgeworth to officially wrap things up, trying to not think about Mr. Armando, about her sister, about her mother, about anything or anyone, because she really might just break down, curl up in a little ball and never move again.
The machine beeps wearily at her wrinkled, soggy five dollar bill and spits it back out, and Maya wants to laugh, ninety-nine percent hysterical. She wants to scream. She wants to yell. All that, and this really might do it. A stupid, stupid vending machine. And her stupid, ugly, useless wet cash.
She kicks the metal chassis once, with every ounce of strength in her legs she can muster without toppling sideways, and it hurts, socks and sandals and steel don't mix, but something about it is so satisfying that she's winding up again when the sound of her name, cool, crisp and clearly enunciated, stops her dead in her tracks.
“Maya Fey.”
Maya’s balanced on one leg, Bruce Lee-style, skirts raised, sandal dangling from her foot by only the providence of her big toe. She figures she looks too stupid already, so there’s no harm in letting the kick go. It lands with another painful, satisfying thunk.
Franziska’s still there, when Maya turns. She’s holding her whip out, handle first.
Maya blinks down at it, uncomprehending.
“It helps.” Franziska says simply. When she gestures again, a touch more imperiously, Maya takes it.
The whip's heavier than it looks, but the grip is leathery and warm in a way that's almost comforting. When Franziska's hand finds its place atop hers, steadying her, silently correcting the way she’s holding it, it's cool in a way that very much is, even after Franziska releases her a moment later.
Maya cracks the whip against the floor once, letting loose a sound that's halfway between an 'ugh' and a 'gah!!'.
The vending machine’s next, punished with a beating that goes on and on, its stupid screen still flashing with her snack selection, demanding its payment of $2.75, three quarters of her stupid, soggy five still sticking out of its mouth. She lashes out and lashes out and doesn’t know if the ringing in her ears is from the whip glancing off the glass front of the display case or it’s just what’s going on inside her head. She thinks she might be talking, or Franziska is, Franziska’s saying something loudly, and is suddenly close, and then her hands are empty, and she takes a step forward, and then she’s suddenly warm, in the weirdest, most awkward embrace of her life.
Franziska’s built all angles and clearly hasn’t had practice hugging the way Phoenix has, or even Larry, but her strange outfit’s puffy sleeves hide Maya’s face, hide her tears, and Franziska, after a moment’s pause, says something that sounds surprisingly gentle, like “it’s okay, Maya,” though Maya can’t quite hear it from where she’s ensconced in expensive fabric.
She can’t help herself: she sniffles loudly by accident, but Franziska doesn’t speak. Her hand rubs circles into the small of Maya’s back. It's the only thing keeping her from collapsing.
She doesn’t know how long they stand there. It’s a quiet thirty seconds, maybe five minutes, probably more. Franziska steps back eventually, holds her firmly at arms’ length to look her up and down, at once assessing and inquisitive.
Before Maya can speak, her stomach rumbles something awful. Franziska’s shoulders go up, down, then stay down, trembling slightly.
“Did you just laugh at me?” Maya demands, raising her head.
“No,” says Franziska, but the way the light looks, all fuzzy, through a haze of tears, makes it look like she’s smirking, just a little bit.
Franziska refuses to buy the snacks for Maya. It’s devastating until it isn’t, because she’s herding Maya none-too-gently to dinner, where it becomes devastating again because the food doesn’t come fast enough, so Franziska flags down a waiter and summons them a basket of bread.
Maya’s staring at the rolls, perfectly round and mouthwateringly browned and glistening, steam curling off the little family of them— mother and father are the two darker, larger ones, there’s little sister peeking out from between the two of them, and big sister’s the one with that gleaming face sitting right on the very top of the stack of them— when a pale hand descends, and Franziska takes a roll, slides a knife across it, splits it open, and starts buttering its insides.
Maya gasps, horrified.
“Big sister!”
“What,” says Franziska, the edge of the knife frozen atop her bread. “Don’t call me that.”
She looks disgusted.
“Not you—” Maya says quickly. “The bread.”
As soon as it’s out of her mouth, she feels the full shape of its absurdity, but of course it’s too late. She decides to not elaborate.
Franziska, eyeing her, looks like she’d rather not cross examine this either. She holds the newly buttered bread out.
“Eat,” she says.
Maya stares. The bread’s thrust further out.
“Eat,” Franziska repeats, and Maya finally takes it.
It’s warm. It’s delicious. So is the second, though not buttered by Franziska, and so is the third.
Maya's halfway through her steak, medium rare, cooked to that most precise of tipping points between medium and rare where the meat’s just this side of tender, objects when she slices into it but melts on her mouth, when she looks up and realizes Franziska's just pushing her fancy-looking pasta round and round her plate. She's watching Maya shamelessly.
“Uh,” says Maya, suddenly awkward. “Aren't you going to eat?”
“It's 9:24PM,” Franziska replies, with a faintly amused air. “I ate dinner three hours ago, Maya Fey.”
“Oh.”
“I ordered this because Miles Edgeworth is paying,” she adds, as if it explains anything and doesn't just make Maya even more confused, because it means about as much to her as if Franziska had said ‘I ordered this because I'm a von Karma, and von Karmas never lose.’
“Oh,” Maya says again, because it feels better than saying nothing, and Franziska nods and moves on briskly anyway.
“Did Phoenix Wright tell you already? I—”
Franziska pauses. She puts down her fork and steeples her fingers, folds them into her lap and sits up straight. The next words come baldly, flat and unadorned, in fact they sound half-rehearsed, but even if a robot had recited them, Maya still would've been stunned cold.
“I thought I'd rescued you from that cave, but it wasn't you, it was Iris Hawthorne wearing your face.”
“No,” says Maya, softly. No. She hadn't known. Franziska had been searching for her? For how long?
Deeper, in that strange place where all her feelings about Franziska seem to sit, tucked away before they can settle elsewhere, without remark, flourish, or organization, let alone synthesis, a small part of her thinks: Why? Why go to all that trouble for me?
“No,” she says instead, louder. “Nick didn't tell me.”
“Hm,” says Franziska. She's studying Maya, like she studies evidence, like she examines witnesses, like she's cataloguing and analyzing all of this, too.
A long moment passes. Maya isn't sure whether she should be looking at Franziska, who's still got her steely eyes on Maya, or not, so she takes another bite of her steak instead.
She's nearly done chewing when Franziska speaks again.
“Why do you call him Nick?” It's a strange, unexpectedly banal question. In Franziska's voice, it sounds accusatory, but maybe everything does when your family is a bunch of prosecutors.
Maya coughs. It takes the place of a vehement what?!
“Phoenix Wright,” Franziska clarifies, unnecessarily, when Maya doesn't immediately answer mid-attempt to gracefully swallow her overlarge mouthful of food.
Why not? Doesn't feel appropriate here, nor does Why do you call everyone by their full name, so she offers the truth.
“Well, I like nicknames, and ‘Feen’ sounds kind of gross, though ‘Feenie’ is even worse, so I just decided it should be Nick?”
“Hm,” says Franziska for a second time. Maya doesn't really want another steak-filled silence, one near-choke was enough, so she keeps talking when it's clear Franziska won't.
“Nix is the obvious one, but it's kinda awkward because isn't that the name of that one Greek goddess of night or something? It was in a Steel Samurai crossover episode one time. The episode kinda sucked and made no sense but at least I got to learn some Greek mythology, I guess?”
“And Wright feels wrong, too. Only Mr. Edgeworth calls him that, really.”
“Mister Edgeworth?” Franziska interjects. The way her voice lifts on the word ‘mister’ makes it feel like it's somehow condescending to both Mr. Edgeworth and Maya simultaneously. It shouldn't be, really, but it's kind of funny, the amount of disbelief and disdain in Franziska's voice, so Maya giggles, just a bit.
“He's scary, so I feel like I have to use Mister,” she says, dropping her voice and making it sound conspiratorial, because not only is the specific way Franziska comes alive when Mr. Edgeworth’s mentioned, all hot-headed, belligerent, and deeply petulant, objectively hilarious, it feels familiar. Maya knows the shape of this as well as she does that big, ugly college shirt of Nick’s that she keeps stealing to use as a pillowcase when she doesn't want to do laundry. She knows this. She knows siblings. She remembers being competitive with Mia, though only on the most useless things.
Franziska scoffs. There's a knowing edge to the affront in the sound, like somewhere in all that scrutiny, in the song and dance and the smile that Maya’s not hiding very well right now, she's identified exactly what Maya's doing here, but is giving it to her anyway.
“Miles Edgeworth is many things,” says Franziska, “but definitely not scary. He's a fool.”
“So is Phoenix Wright, for that matter.”
“Hey!” says Maya, but it's more out of obligatory, instinctive loyalty than anything else. Nick is a fool. It takes one to know one, though.
Franziska doesn’t eat a single bite of her pasta, and when the waiter comes to take Maya’s empty plate before she tries scraping it clean for a second time, he's also beckoned to take the uneaten pasta away with an imperious wave of Franziska's hand. But she does finally pick up her fork and dig into her dessert, an elegant square of tiramisu. Even the way she cuts into it is fastidious; the fork goes clean through the layers, and the sliced-off square of a square corner stands on its own without toppling into a pile of crumbs. Franziska studies her work, then apparently satisfied, lifts the piece, pops it into her mouth, and chews, dashing the crumbs from her face with her napkin as she does. It's all incredibly neat and economical, so Maya doesn't notice she's staring, her flan untouched, until she does.
Franziska’s eyes lift to hers and stay there.
“Ask,” she says.
Ask what? Maya thinks, indignant. There hadn’t been enough time for a question to coalesce fully. But one is on the tip of her tongue, only half-formed, and she knows it, and Franziska apparently does, too.
“Why?” It bursts out of Maya from that strange place deep inside her, too-loud and rough around the edges. She grasps for the rest of the sentence, but words fail her, and so Why hangs in the air between them like a piece of raw meat flung before a lion.
Franziska raises an eyebrow. She puts her fork down, lengthwise across her plate, without a clatter.
“Because it was the right thing to do,” she says, and her mouth twists, just a little, wry, around the word ‘right’, as if a tiny Phoenix is contained in it, and she thinks if she says it too slow, he'll try to bite her.
“Yeah,” says Maya, unconvinced. She worries her lower lip. “Sure, for justice, then. Cool.”
“Maya Fey,” says Franziska, slowly, like she's feeling out the space mapped by each letter and syllable. It makes what she says next startle Maya, even though she thinks some part of her has been bracing for this question ever since Franziska first set eyes on her at that dinner they all had together all those months ago, and for some reason, decided she'd keep looking.
“Do you really think I don't know what it looks like to be trapped in someone else's legacy?”
"Uh, no?” Maya tries. Franziska looks like she wants to roll her eyes, and composes herself half a moment into the action, opting to instead sigh deeply through her nose. It's very Edgeworthian, and Maya wants to laugh, but stuffs the urge down.
“My father,” says Franziska, “was an unbeatable prosecutor.”
“Nick beat him, though,” Maya says back, before she can stop herself.
“Being indicted,” says Franziska, loftily, “is not the same thing as losing a case.”
It isn’t, obviously. It’s worse. It also might not even be legally true, because it sure does sound like ‘losing, but extra bad,’ to Maya. But Franziska’s also obviously building some sort of argument, and Maya’s already derailed it, so she tactfully keeps her mouth closed, and just nods, conceding the point.
“Karma has many meanings,” says Franziska. “Common people tend to think it means fate, or predestination, but also bandy the word around when what they really mean is comeuppance. Somebody getting what they deserve.”
“After forty years of perfect prosecution," she continues, quieter, “people said my father got what he deserved. Wasn't it in his name, after all?”
Scorn flits across Franziska's face, before she schools it back into her usual arrogance.
“But they're all wrong. Karma is a Sanskrit word for “action”. For “doing”, “performing”, and “accomplishing”. It's not about anything as trivial as fate or destiny at all.”
“What does karma mean to you, then?” Maya ventures. It comes out braver than she feels. Inside, she's unmoored, unsure of where Franziska's going and why she has to evoke memories of Maya's high school history teacher to get there.
“Causality,” Franziska replies, steely and cold and cutting, with the same conviction she had, every trial, in the prosecutor's seat, staring down Phoenix, the judge, the defendant, the witnesses, the very idea of justice itself. If looks could kill, they'd all be dead.
“Causality?” Maya repeats.
Franziska shrugs, and the harsh light in her eyes dims, just a little.
“I am the product of my father,” she says quietly, more to herself than to Maya. “But I will never become him. For better or for worse.”
Oh, thinks Maya. The not-quite word shudders through her, quietly and completely, and finds its way out in a little gasping of breath, like Franziska’s knocked the air clean out of her lungs.
Franziska, unaware of the injury she’s just dealt, continues to speak, and her next words slide between Maya’s ribs, through her breathless lungs, and straight into her heart.
“You will never be Mia Fey,” Franziska says, her voice clear and firm and ringing, like the worst of guilty verdicts.
“For better or for worse,” she adds at Maya’s silence.
“But you are, and always will be a product of her.”
“Uh—” Maya starts. She’s pretty sure you can't be argued out of survivor's guilt and years of family trauma, but then again, she's not a genius prodigy prosecutor who carries a whip around and acts like she could beat the law into a wayward ghost. But Franziska holds up a finger, effectively silencing her and her thoughts.
“Tell me,” says Franziska. “What does 'Mia' mean in Italian?”
“Uh,” Maya says again. Objection, she thinks. Not all of us learned twenty different European languages when we were two years old.
“The name 'Mia' means beloved,” Franziska says, answering her own question in a way that sounds almost smug.
“Okay,” says Maya, lost again and beginning to feel a little annoyed. At this point, she’s half-expecting Franziska to stand up and do that little bow-curtsey thing she’s always doing in court when a particularly incisive point of hers lands. “So what?”
“Beloved,” Franziska repeats. “Being “beloved” is an extrinsic property. It’s a condition. Something that is beloved is defined by being the recipient of love, not the source.”
“Mia Fey is just as defined as who she is to you as you are, by her.”
“Oh,” says Maya softly. She repeats it when once doesn't feel like enough, and she doesn't trust herself with real words.
It's a close one, but she doesn't cry into her flan, she doesn't. She takes a big bite to take her eyes off of Franziska, who's still looking at her with unexpected gentleness, and if the caramel taste that bursts across her tongue is sweet but extra salty, rich with unspoken words and the taste of melancholy, that's for her to know, not Franziska.
A long and comfortable silence passes. Long enough for Maya to inhale the rest of her flan, and three-quarters of Franziska's tiramisu, too, which Franziska picks at then pushes her way without comment when there's nothing left of the pudding except a puddle of caramel sauce, and long enough for Franziska to wordlessly summon the check, produce a black credit card, and sign a name with a flourish that is decidedly not hers.
“You,” says the waiter, looking confusedly from the receipt to her face. “You're not Miles Edgeworth?”
He falters under her stare, turning the accusation into a question that makes it sound like she's the one interrogating him, not vice versa.
“No,” says Franziska. “I am not.”
The words are firm and decisive and clearly do nothing whatsoever to alleviate or resolve his confusion.
The waiter blinks down at Franziska. She doesn't move, just lifts her chin in what's obviously a silent dismissal.
“Uh—” he says, still clearly perplexed beyond words. Maya smiles, just a little bit. It's nice to finally see Franziska have that effect on someone else, after that cold, unyielding stare being turned her way for the entire evening.
Franziska slides a crisp hundred dollar bill across the table with one hand, and smooths the other over the handle of her whip, just barely visible in her lap, coiled innocently but hungry for action, and the waiter finally unfreezes, snatching up the money, contorting himself in a weird little bow, and turning on his heel and hurrying away from them. Maya’s pretty sure he would have kneeled, too, maybe kissed some hands or saluted them, if Franziska had asked him to.
“Maya Fey,” says Franziska, pulling Maya from her mental images of the waiter’s groveling. She's studying Maya again, or maybe she never stopped, chin resting on one hand, her dark eyes narrowed. This time, though, the look is languid, slow and considered, the kind that looks to look and holds no questions.
It makes Maya feel strange, like she's split open from head to toe, like Franziska has her whole heart, still beating, in one hand, in her lion’s maw, like she could be crushed in an instant, chewed to bits with a word and by a sentence, by one cruel look. It makes her dizzy, like she's standing on the edge of a precipice. Maybe she is.
Maya breathes in. Breathes out, and finds she's smiling, somehow. Maybe she is, and maybe she wants to jump, wants to dare that lion, tell it if it's going to hold her like this, if it's going to pin her bleeding heart between its teeth and its tongue, it might as well bite down.
After the whip, after the bread, after this maddening, carefully constructed lawyer's argument to a jury of one, after the almost laugh and the “Did Phoenix Wright tell you,” after the tiramisu, after Franziska first looked at her and said “Maya Fey,” the way she always does, all those months ago— she knows it won't.
“You can just call me Maya, you know,” she says.
“Maya,” Franziska repeats, dubious. Then, again: “Maya.”
“Yes,” says Maya. She's grinning and it's big, it's definitely silly the way Nick’s grins are when he's gotten one over Mr. Edgeworth, but she can't help herself. Franziska looks deeply perturbed. And Maya can't help herself from this, either, all this— a lecture about words and a not-quite argument about family, a half-choked on steak and a kicked, whipped, beaten vending machine and her soggy five dollar bill and Franziska's crisp hundred, and somehow, there's only one place that her mind thinks to go:
Names and how Franziska always says hers, whole.
Franziska had asked, Why do you call him Nick, and Maya had heard, How do you hold him, loose and playful, instead of looking at him and just seeing loss. She'd heard, How do I hold a person’s heart and still keep them whole. She'd heard, Why does he get a nickname, and I don't?
“‘Carm’? Hmm, definitely not. Not ‘Vonnie’, either.”
“What,” says Franziska. For once, she seems genuinely stunned.
Maya tips her head to one side.
“‘Ziska’ is a little weird, too. ‘Anzi’? No. ‘Franzi’? No, not that either. ‘Fran’?”
She pauses, then nods to herself.
“I like Fran.”
“Your logic is appalling,” Franziska finally says, stiffly.
“Can I call you Fran, then?” Maya asks.
“No,” says Franziska instantly, then pauses, something complicated flickering in her eyes. “But you like nicknames.”
“I like nicknames,” Maya agrees.
“Fine,” Franziska allows. “Fran it is.”
“Fran it is,” Maya replies, straight-faced until she's gleefully, blissfully not.
“You're a lot of things,” she says in between gasps, as Franziska scowls and scowls and scowls, “but definitely not a Fran.”
“What am I, then?”
Maya shrugs.
“Just Franziska, I guess?”
Franziska scoffs, but the corner of her mouth’s pulling up into the smallest of smirks.
“Just Maya and just Franziska? I suppose that'll have to do.”
That’ll have to do? Maya thinks, indignant. But Franziska’s still smirking, like she’s baited a trap and Maya’s a step away from stumbling right into it, so she just laughs instead, and saves the thought for herself as Franziska pushes her chair back and stands and strides off without a word and Maya scrambles to follow her out into the night.
The air’s cool, the stars above are twinkling. So is Franziska’s gaze, just the slightest, where it rests on her.
‘Just’ seems apropos. After all, there’s only one Franziska, and she’s fairly, morally, properly, exactly right.