Risenfromash: So, this is one of those bridging chapters that I tend to find more difficult. Bear with me, please and keep in mind there is a good chance that I may alienate some of you with where this story goes, but it is the story and sorry it is going to be in more parts that I initially estimated.

PART IV

"I'm sorry. I love you. Please forgive me." These simple sentences were Franziska's mantra now. It had been three days since they had fought and she was desperate to apologize. She paced in her room, which was more bare than usual due to her grief-driven destruction of half of her possessions.

She pulled open a desk drawer and found fancy linen stationary. It had been so long since she'd written a real letter the paper had yellowed a little. She sat at her petite writing desk and tried to compose something that would express all the regrets that she had, all the confusion she felt, and how the only thing she was sure of was that she needed Miles in her life, as her friend, as her brother, and as her lover. Without him she felt incomplete and unhappy. But she stared at the paper wishing it would magically fill itself with whatever words would convey the sentiment to him in the way he needed to hear it to decide that he could return to her.

She got up from the desk and paced. She grabbed her whip and snapped it in frustration. Back and forth she marched, whip cracking all the while, until she finally sat down, grabbed her pen and wrote those eight little words that kept replaying in her brain day and night. "I'm sorry. I love you. Please forgive me." She signed the note "Your sister, Franziska." The words were simple and not elegant, but she had said please and that was for her a significant thing. He would notice that. She hoped. She cursed herself again for her foolishness for fooling around with someone else and she cursed herself for being in love with her brother thereby losing not only her lover, but her family as well.

She held the note in her hand and threw herself down upon the bed holding it wishing she could transform itself into the handsome form of her brother. She missed him so much and she found herself feeling much more like a little child without him.

~xxxx~

"Enter!"

Helga entered rolling in Miles' breakfast on a teacart. Miles sat at the little table by his window overlooking the garden. This had become their early morning routine now and Edgeworth knew the servants were far from thrilled about it because it meant a lot of extra work for them, but they got paid well so he felt they had no right to complain. He and his sister were adults and, therefore, could live life as they saw fit and just as they had chosen to become lovers it was their choice to now be apart isolating themselves in separate wings of the mansion determined to not again be hurt or at least that's what his plan was.

"There was a card tucked for you in the door, sir."

Miles strode across the room and took it knowing it had to be from Franziska. Touching it he remembered this linen paper. At some time years ago she had written him a letter on this same stationary. He couldn't remember the occasion, but his fingers remembered the texture of it.

His curiosity was great. What would she say? Orders for him to "get over it" perhaps or denial that she had done anything wrong or maybe a request for him to move out? He decided it was best to not open the correspondence in Helga's presence. He was still far too in love with Franziska to remain composed while reading whatever it is was she might have scribed to him.

"How long you intend to keep this up?"

"To what do you refer?" He asked innocently conveniently forgetting that never before had he taken all of his meals in his room for days in a row before.

"Exactly how stupid do you think I am? Miles Edgeworth, I know that you and Franziska split up. And I know it's because she slept with another man."

Miles began to choke on the muffin of his eggs benedict. It never ceased to amaze him how blunt Helga could be and he didn't have a whip to use to admonish her.

"Oh, she didn't tell me." Helga snorted. "She didn't have to. It's the only thing that would have made you leave her."

Exactly, thought Miles. Anything else I could forgive her for, but this…this I cannot.

"But you need to remember she's still young and she has no idea of how to behave."

"She needs to learn to control her impulses." Miles mumbled grouchily under his breath. He still couldn't believe Franziska had done that. She seemed too professional to mess around with someone while on assignment, but maybe he didn't really know her as well as he thought.

"I couldn't agree with you more, but I think you are being a little hard on her."

Miles arched an eyebrow. "She had sex with some random guy!" He shouted it and then smoothed his suit embarrassed by his outburst. If he had been more stable he would never have been having this conversation with Helga, but he was still careening between the desperate urge to run to Franziska and such intense anger that he found it challenging to control himself.

"You damn prosecutors are all alike. You fancy yourselves as the judge, but you aren't! Outside of the courtroom the only judge should be God."

Miles scrunched his face in distaste. "If there is a god." Miles was an agnostic; his mind far too logical to believe in such hocus-pocus as God especially after his belief in love had proved so foolhardy.

"True. There might not be and all the worshipping folks in the world might be making complete fools of themselves, but I've always believed that having a little faith in something other than oneself never hurt anybody. You could use some." She said pointing at him accusingly. He guffawed at this, but the servant was adamant.

"Miles Edgeworth, look me in the eye and tell me that you have at least considered forgiving her."

He was startled. Helga wanted him to forgive her? Obviously after more than a decade of enduring the von Karma household's eccentricities she was becoming a little loony herself.

"Not that it constitutes any on your business, but I have considered it. And I will not."

Helga shook her head in disappointment. "Miles, she is your sister."

He snorted. Her status as both Miles' sister and lover made the transgression that much worse to him. It made him feel doubly betrayed.

"You can't ignore her your whole life."

"I don't. We are quite professional to one another at work."

"Miles Edgeworth, quit your pigheadedness and speak to her!"

Miles had had enough of this scolding. Helga was not his parent. He had no parents left, not even evil, horrible ones who faked compassion and love for the purposes of revenge. He would take no more of her unsolicited advice.

"You may exit from wince you came." He growled and Miles and Franziska's most faithful servant turned and exited his chamber shaking her head in frustration and cursing all prosecutors everywhere for their lack of compassion.

Miles was so flustered he didn't want to open the note now, but he did. He read the simple words and scoffed at the sentiments contained therein believing his sister to have no idea how to love. She was a von Karma and, therefore, far too good at weaving half-truths and he had seen too many forgeries in his lifetime. He knew people could write just about anything, so though his heart longed to believe her he couldn't bring himself to forgive her and so he threw the note of her heart-felt sentiments into the fireplace and watched them turn to ash.

~xxxx~

Franziska spent much of her time in the gardens hoping that she would discover her brother secretly stealing away to them. She knew how he enjoyed the outdoors and found walking a good way to stimulate his brain. The outdoors had always acted as a comfort to both of them and as she walked she found herself missing the horse she had in her childhood, wishing she could ride through the countryside upon his back once more.

She sat down on one of the garden benches and stared at the nearby plants without consciously seeing them. Her mind was elsewhere remembering the days in her youth when Miles was merely her crush and her brother. She never should have told him the truth. She never should have admitted the desire she had for him. Then she could have at least retained him as her sibling. Because now she was alone. All alone.

"Would having a willing victim for your whip help you to rebound?"

The voice startled her. She hadn't realized Shelby was working on one of the flowerbeds near her.

"No." The gardener knew she was sad, because there was no threat with the statement, no announcement that he was crossing the line of inappropriately personal topics of conversation.

"Ms. von Karma I'm sorry about-"

"SORRY? Sorry why should you be sorry? I'm the one who did this. It's all my fault. Everything-"

"Now, now. Edgeworth could be a tad more understanding."

"Would you be, Shelby?" The man faltered. He'd been with many women, even a few that had technically "belonged" to other men, but those women's relationships were really already over. On paper they might still be married or technically have a boyfriend but the relationship was already long dead. He had no patience for women who ran around behind your back when they had a good thing going.

Franziska cracked her whip at him. "You're just like everyone else! Get away from me!" She wanted to collapse upon the ground sobbing. She wanted to beg Shelby to tell her what she could do that would make Miles take her back. But it was obvious that all men were possessive, even her brother who claimed to be immune to most testosterone driven impulses.

Shelby left Franziska all the while cursing himself for having spoken to her in the first place and praying that Miles would show her compassion because he was sure that Edgeworth was the only man in the world who could handle her and her issues.