A/N: The first in a series of short interludes I have planned to fill in additional details about the people and places related to Miles who do not/no longer appear or have yet to appear, as well as to break up the 'lessons' theme and to occasionally shake up the mood a little. Some will be happy, or sad, bittersweet, quirky, humorous, angsty…the possibilities are limitless. Regular programming will resume shortly, etcetera.
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Well, I love you all anyway.
Interlude One
With Liesl—1
Liesl remembered her mother. Camilla Verdi had been a sweet, gentle woman, full of life, and that hadn't changed when she'd become Camilla von Karma. Liesl often thought she might have inherited too much from both of her parents—her mother's gentle, loving demeanour coupled with her father's pride and single-mindedness.
They weren't a good mix. Not for a Von Karma.
She believed wholeheartedly in the justice of prosecution, really she did, and even stepping into a courtroom gave her chills. But with her mother gone, Liesl realised, the Von Karma manor had turned cold, lifeless. Papa hardly ever smiled anymore. And Franziska was growing up without ever learning what it was she'd lost. So at night, just before the little girl's bedtime, Liesl would go to Franziska's room and study there, with her little sister perched on the bed beside her and occasionally peering down at the teenager's textbook with a look of combined interest and bemusement.
Life was quieter without Mama. Papa had grown a little sadder, a little colder. Liesl had become a little more sombre, reflective. Franziska…who could say what the difference was there? The only influence Mama had ever really had on her was spurring her into the world through tears and sweat and pain. She'd barely been two before the woman was just gone, vanished forever like a wraith from their lives, her legacy little more than a handful of half-remembered lullabies in a child's mind.
And now there was the boy. Miles. He was quiet, too, and sad, and day by day Liesl could see him growing colder too, just like Papa had. Soon the ice forming on his heart would envelop him until there was nothing left.
Except there was still a flame there and—but why, why on Earth?—Papa was determined to put that flame out. Flesh struck flesh, an unwritten rule cracked with an un-sound still somehow louder than the physical blow. And Liesl realised, all of a sudden, that she'd been gravely mistaken—this whole time, she, inheritor of a name which meant, above all, perfection, had been wrong.
If she'd been sure Franziska could have read a letter through without needing to ask for help, she'd have written one. It would have begun and ended with the words I'm sorry.