Pinned
winter kill (2/2)
Asking Franziska for her opinion was the best sort of assistance Miles could hope to offer Wright and his sad little plant. The problem was that Miles had not spoken to Franziska since Christmas Eve. ~3k this chapter, 6k total. Narumitsu, plus Edgeworth & Franziska. Set shortly after AA1-4 Turnabout Goodbyes. Complete. Read Part 1 on Ao3.
As a child, Franziska von Karma changed hobbies as often as some change shoes.
Ballet, violin, figure skating, horse riding—for a year or two, they’d consume what little free time she had between schoolwork. She baffled tutors with natural aptitude and a gifted progression, only to abandon a skill just as easily as she’d learned it.
“I got bored,” she told Miles loftily each time her interest waned.
“You don’t get bored,” he’d snapped back once. “You just quit as soon as it gets difficult.”
She’d answered his impertinence with a riding crop upside the head—thrice.
In truth, as a boy, Miles had privately envied her. He’d never excelled at anything but law, while Franziska seemed capable of mastering any passing fancy. As an adult with the clarity of hindsight, Miles saw each fleeting passion for what it was: a child’s desperate attempt to impress a father who regarded perfection as the bare minimum.
Botany caught her eye the summer Franziska turned eleven. Granted control of the flower gardens at the von Karma estate, she pored over encyclopedias and barked instructions to groundskeeping staff like a commanding shadow. She spent the days leading up to her father’s visit with dirt beneath her fingernails and thorn scrapes along her forearms as she primped and pruned rose bushes.
But Manfred von Karma’s eventual arrival at the estate brought with it dozens of difficult questions on legal precedent for Miles and nary a remark on Franziska’s flowers.
Botany was the last of her childhood interests. From then on, Franziska concerned herself exclusively with law.
