Part two of Metanoia.
"What do you do when someone vexes you?" Franziska asked, doing everything in her power to keep her face free from emotion.
Von Karmas were perfect. They didn't need help from imperfect people, and so Franziska von Karma was most definitely not asking for help from Miles Edgeworth. She was just making conversation, nothing more.
Telling herself that didn't really help. Franziska still felt silly and childish, running back to her brother as soon as something scary reared its head. It took her back to when they still lived together in the von Karma manor, and she would tiptoe to his room some evenings to ask for advice. She knew a great deal more now than she did then, and although she would no longer lower herself to needing Miles Edgeworth, the feeling persisted.
Edgeworth glanced up from his newspaper, only a thin line between his brows betraying his interest.
"It depends on what kind of vexing you mean," he replied after a moment's thought. He spoke slowly, like he were in court instead of a high-end café.
"You know. Vexes! It isn't a word with many meanings!"
"Yes, but many people vex me...for example, you, Franziska. Phoenix Wright vexes me, as does the upstairs neighbor, who persists in blaring music at four in the morning. The three of you each require different courses of action," Edgeworth said dismissively. He looked back to his paper and turned the page.
Franziska scowled, but was forced to concede the point. She knew more than well enough how to handle the usual people who infuriated her—a sharp word and a crack from her whip shut their fool mouths easily enough. She didn't want to lash out at the woman who vexed her now, though. Adrian Andrews conversed in a manner rather like riverwater, cooling heated topics and leaving Franziska's irritation upstream. Franziska couldn't seem to stay angry with her, and that was precisely what vexed her so.
"...I'm sure you won't understand, but perhaps I could simplify it for you," Franziska teased. As always, Edgeworth refused to rise to the bait, merely making an uninterested "mmhm" in the back of his throat. "I cannot seem to keep this fool off my mind, and I cannot seem to find my words when we talk. It makes me want to let my whip talk for me, but I cannot seem to bring myself to hurt her."
Edgeworth's eyebrows raised to his hairline. He neatly folded his newspaper and set it aside. Franziska felt her temper spark, and her hand tightened around the handle of her whip.
"Franziska, do you have affections for someone?" he asked incredulously.
Her whip cracked a half inch from his shoulder, causing him to scowl. The café's employees glanced over with concern.
"Of all the foolishly foolish things to ever leave your foolish mouth! Von Karmas do not get bogged down by such...tomfoolery!" she snapped. Franziska had seen what romance did to other people, and she was sure she wanted nothing to do with it. Half the cases she prosecuted involved love, and the other half involved money. Husbands lying and manipulating evidence to cover for wives, girlfriends putting guns to the heads of cheating boyfriends, would-be lovers hunting down the person who rejected them...People lost all traces of intelligence or reason as soon as they became involved with someone else.
"My apologies," Edgeworth said in a wholly unapologetic tone. The faintest hint of a smile played at the corner of his lips. If Franziska could have torn his throat out with her teeth, she would have.
"I knew I was wasting my time talking to you," she growled.
"I'm merely commenting on what the situation looks like from here," he replied with a shrug.
"I know damn well what's going on in my own life! I just...thought that since you have plenty of experience being foolish, you might know how best to handle a foolish situation like this."
It sounded weak even to her own ears, but Franziska squared her shoulders and scowled at him, putting every drop of fury she had into mending her wounded dignity.
"So, once again, dear sister, you've wandered in too deep and need me to rescue you, and, once again, you're too stupidly proud to actually ask for help."
"...I hate you," she muttered, but her words lacked bite.
"Mm, I know," Edgeworth replied with a wry smile. He took a sip of his tea and continued, "You hate any time someone knows better than you. Ignore your ego for a moment and listen. You're too smart to have just brought this up on a whim, so I'm going to do my best to actually help, though I doubt you'll listen."
She grimaced, but didn't interrupt. Edgeworth always was good at looking right to the heart of an issue and executing the most efficient action, politeness be damned. It was part of what made him so ruthlessly efficient in court, and she felt oddly as if she were the one on trial.
"Very well. I'll allow you to speak," she said tightly. They both knew what she really meant.
"Don't act rashly. I know that's hard for you, but whatever decision you make, don't make it without thinking," he continued, his expression still maddeningly calm. With the ever-present shadows under his eyes and the streaks of grey in his hair, he should have looked tired and washed out. Instead, Edgeworth managed a sort of distinct sagacity that lent weight to his words.
"That's your big advice? Hmph. I should have known you'd bluff competence. You're no better than Phoenix Wright," she taunted, although in truth she was disappointed. Much as she hated to admit it, Edgeworth was somewhat better with people than she was—they feared her, yes, but they liked him, and that knowledge had always been a burr under her saddle. Franziska hoped that she might get some use out of that, if only once, and figure out what to do with a person whose company she somehow actually enjoyed.
"Yet somehow, Wright bested you in court not once, but twice," Edgeworth replied mildly.
"Don't change the subject!"
He shrugged.
"Say what you will, then. I can't offer much more without knowing any details."
Franziska paused, sorting through her thoughts like a scrapper separating parts from dross. How could she sum up the awkward tangle of emotions she felt around Adrian? Moreover, how could she sum up the awkward tangle of emotions she felt around Adrian without making Edgeworth mock her? She liked Adrian well enough—the other woman was intelligent and reasonable, if a bit sentimental—but saying so in as many words would be all too easy for Edgeworth to misinterpret again. Of course, Edgeworth kept strange company himself in recent days, eating lunch with Phoenix Wright and laughing with that foolish scruffy detective he kept around, but that was all the more reason for Franziska to distance herself from that. She was no fool, and she would not encourage her brother thinking of her as such.
Franziska brushed the concern aside. She was a prosecutor—words were her trade.
"I destroyed a woman's life, and I came to America to make up for it. I do seem to have a soft spot for her, though. Nothing so serious as what you implied, mind you! Just...perhaps I feel bad for what I did. And as I do not often feel remorse for actions taken in the pursuit of a guilty verdict, this...vexes me," she said. Her hand drifted to her right shoulder, kneading at the spot where she had been shot six months prior. The wound always seemed to ache when she thought too long about that case.
For once, that damnably smug smile stayed off Edgeworth's face. Other than a lilt of his eyebrows, he kept his face blank.
"Am I correct in assuming the target of your frustrations is one Adrian Andrews?" he asked. At her glare, he explained: "Wright visited her after the trial and he mentioned you left a note with her. I didn't think it important until now."
"Don't you dare judge me, Miles Edgeworth," Franziska spat.
His lips bent in a frown.
"You know my proclivities well enough," he replied bitterly.
Edgeworth took a long drink from his teacup, and he didn't meet her eyes. Franziska felt a surge of sympathy for him, but she mentally crushed it beneath her heel. He had never been so brazen as to become involved with anyone while under the von Karma roof, nor was he willing to damage his career by doing so after he left, but he had confided in Franziska when the weight of carrying a secret alone became too much to bear. She found it abnormal, but no stranger than any other things he said or did, and none of her concern besides.
"Your vices are not mine, Miles Edgeworth."
"Then what? Your newfound conscience? I would be a hypocrite on that front, as well, I fear."
She wanted to snap back that she wasn't weak, not like him, but she doubted the truthfulness of that. If coming to make amends towards Adrian wasn't weakness, then what the hell was it? A year ago, Franziska wouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing, and never in his life would her father have. Edgeworth would. Not before he reconnected with Phoenix Wright, no, but ever since he lost in court...
"What is happening to us, Little Brother? Where are Papa's perfect prosecutors?" she asked quietly. Her thoughts scattered inside her skull like shrapnel from a grenade, tearing her composure to shreds.
"They died when he was incarcerated," Edgeworth said immediately. "And we are better for it."
"That's easy for you to say. You were never a real von Karma," she replied with a frown.
He nodded.
"You're right. I wasn't. But I am a prosecutor, the best in the state, and I know what that means to me. It's like serving under Manfred was a nightmare, and Wright brought me to wakefulness. Did he not do the same for you?"
Franziska thought of Phoenix, of his stupid smile and his fierce determination to find the truth. He seemed to better everyone he knew, or at least bring peace to their troubled minds. Edgeworth certainly seemed more serene than ever before, and Adrian sounded worlds better than the shaking, purposeless thing she had been six months prior. All the same, Franziska didn't feel calm. She felt nervous, for one of the first times in her life, and unsettled. What was she doing with herself? Taking weeks off work, coming to America on a sentimental whim, relying on Miles Edgeworth, of all people, to help her...
"Keep your foolish weakness to yourself," she snapped instead of articulating her thoughts.
"Suit yourself, then," he replied, his deep voice uncharacteristically soft. "You didn't come here to talk about Wright, though. You still have some concerns surrounding Miss Andrews, I imagine."
Franziska grimaced.
"...A few, yes. For once in my life I've felt the desire to befriend someone, but I quite obviously cannot, lest she depend on me. I don't understand it. I don't even like other people! They're silly and foolish. So why her?" Franziska growled.
"That, I cannot help you with. I remain surprised that you talk to me, let alone anyone else," he chuckled.
"I wonder the same thing, myself," she returned, but it lacked bite. Adrian wasn't a thing like Edgeworth, so it couldn't be their similarity that drew Franziska to her. She was easily flustered compared to his professional calm, self-effacing to his smugness, warm and open to his cool distance. She was brilliant, true, but so were many others Franziska hadn't spared a glance.
"I would think, if nothing else, you would find Miss Andrews too weak to associate with," Edgeworth said.
"If you mean her condition, I may have to laugh. A man who faints at the slightest tremble of the ground shouldn't call another weak."
He bristled like a cat that had its tail stepped on.
"You go too far!"
They glared at each other for a moment, neither speaking. Franziska knew, on some level, that he was right. She did go too far. His horrible fear of earthquakes was something he never spoke of, if he could help it, and it wasn't fair fighting to bring up. Franziska didn't understand mental illness, and that frightened her. Seeing confident, powerful Edgeworth reduced to hyperventilating in a ball on the floor made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. The knowledge that something, anything, could make a woman like Adrian slip a noose around her neck made her skin crawl. Franziska didn't know if she found Adrian's dependency weak or not; she just knew that it profoundly unsettled her, and that she would rather not think over long about it.
Edgeworth finally broke the silence with a contemptuous snort.
"I should have known better than to expect civility from you. In any case, I never said that I thought Miss Andrews weak. Merely that I was surprised you did not."
"By all accounts, Celeste Inpax was far stronger than she...but Adrian survived, not Celeste."
"Adrian is alive and Celeste is not, not because she was stronger, but because she was worse at tying a knot," he said, not cruelly, but matter-of-factly. "And, perhaps for both of your sakes, I'm glad."
Franziska tensed, but she didn't argue.
"We're getting coffee in a few days," she replied, her voice tight. To her embarrassment, she felt her face heat up, and she hurriedly brought her teacup to her lips.
"Hopefully you're nicer to her than you were to me today," he teased instead of poking at her discomfort. Franziska wasn't sure if she appreciated his mercy or despised him for it.
"She isn't nearly as foolish as you are, so my whip will not be tempted to bite."
"It sounds like you've sorted yourself out, then. She's no fool and you enjoy her company. Was that so hard?"
That damn smirk was back. She was tempted to reach across the table and slap it off his face, but he would likely only grab her wrist and stop her. Franziska settled for fixing him with a savage glare, which he summarily ignored.
"She still vexes me," Franziska grumbled.
"But she does so by being the one person you don't want to bully into doing what you say, so that's something," Edgeworth said, laughing under his breath in that condescending way he usually saved for defense attrorneys.
Her lip twisted in a snarl.
"I am no bully, Miles Edgeworth!"
He only shook his head and laughed again.
"If you say so, dear sister. If you need any assistance dressing yourself for your date, you can always call me."
Franziska's hand found the well-worn handle of her whip.
"It is not a date, and my fashion sense is as perfect as the rest of me."
"Does Miss Andrews know it's not?"
"Of course she does!" Franziska snapped. She questioned the truth of her own words as soon as she spoke, though. Adrian had never said she was a lesbian in as many words, but the way she talked about Celeste Inpax...The amount of longing in her voice, words soaked through with heart-blood, was more than could be justified even taking her illness into account. Maybe she thought Franziska was coming onto her.
She would be disappointed. Franziska did not trouble herself with such foolish nonsense as "romance," even with clever women with warm, gentle eyes.
Edgeworth shrugged.
"It was just a possibility that, even perfect as you are, you may not have thought of it," he replied with his customary offhanded sarcasm.
"Well, thank you for your wholly worthless advice and condescension," she replied with a grimace of a smile.
"Mm, whenever you need it. I know you'll seek my 'worthless advice' again in a matter of time anyway."
With that he unfolded his newspaper and resumed reading as if he had already decided the conversation was over. Franziska barely curbed the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Instead, she drew to her feet and said, "You're buying. It's the least a little brother can do."
"Yes, yes," he replied with a dismissive wave of his hand.
She gathered her purse and her bullwhip and turned to go.
"Oh, and Franziska?"
"Yes?" she snapped.
"...I'm proud of you."
"I don't need your damn pride, Miles Edgeworth," Franziska returned, but she smiled to herself regardless.