Title: Cursive
Rating: Uh, PG? The P for Pure Unadulterated Angst. Probably will get rougher later.
Pairings: Will probably lead into P/E and Friskian. If I add to it anyway.
Summary: Centering around the main characters as children. Basically just a small brainchild I had while watching my tire swing swing outside and reading KingMobUK's stuff. Brief, a little spotty and a serious rough draft, but I kind of liked it. Will mostly turn into a romance or some sort if people care for it enough.

AA spoilers sort of...other than that, not really anything.

Very, very short. D: It's shortness saddens me, but I think it gets the job done. Will probably be one of many brief snapshots.


Cursive


Dear Miles,

The crisp piece of looseleaf paper was brimming with childish purity, and although it was entirely necessary to use the sheet Phoenix almost felt bad staining it with his pen. He quickly got over his guilt, however, and proceeded to scrawl out a first sentence in his finest fifth-grader cursive.

I wanted to write to you before school started, but our teacher said she couldn’t release your new address when I asked her in June. But I asked my teacher this year and she said you were living with a Mr. Von Karma.

Should he explain how he got Miles’ address? Nick wasn’t very sure, but he couldn’t think of how else to start the letter except with an excuse.

Me and Larry looked up Mr. Von Karma online today. We found a lot of websites with weird letters and we think they were in a different language. But then we found his name next to your Dad’s name and it gave a clicky to an address for his office.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to mention Mr. Edgeworth. He didn’t want to make his old friend sad, after all, and the pen made a scratching noise as Nick scribbled the entire passage out.

We think that you are lucky if you are really in Germany but we want you to come home really soon. Tag with two people is really stupid.

Even though Miles hadn’t liked tag very much. He had said it was a rather pointless game whenever his friends had tried to get him to play. Pointless and unproductive.
“Yeah, well, you’re pointless and unproductive.” Usually Larry or Nick would respond with the childish response of the day – to turn everything one said into a mimicking retort – and Miles would give his trademark frown and stutter out some sort of defense with himself. But one of his friends would end up making him “it” and run off yelling anyway, leaving the boy no choice but to give chase.

So if you can you should come home soon. When you come back tell the principal that you want to be in homeroom 17 with me and Larry. Larry got a new scooter for his birthday so if you want to try it you have to come home before he breaks it.

Now that he was actually writing the letter, the boy couldn’t remember what he wanted to say. All summer he had thought of a million things that he wanted to tell his best friend – details of his boyish adventures, mostly, but nothing that he could think of now. Scowling, Nick wrote down his own address and finished off the letter with a flourish, disgruntled he had nothing more to say.

From Nick.

How many stamps did it take for a letter to get to Europe? Digging out an entire roll of the sticky labels from a drawer, Phoenix decided he wasn’t going to take any chances and plastered the envelope with roughly half the roll. He’d never been to Europe, or even anywhere without a Californian zip code. How was Nick supposed to know what stamps to use?

The boy looked down at his work, barely satisfied, and started the long journey down his driveway to the mailbox. A ragged tire-swing hung from the only tree in his front lawn and although he was nearly too young to be able to, he felt nostalgic. He hadn’t touched the swing since Miles had suddenly left, having suddenly lost all desire to play on the well-loved tire.

A memory flashed through his head. His best friend, tentatively standing in the inner tube of the tire and clutching to the rotted rope with a badly-disguised nervous expression written all over his face.
“You’ve never swung before? Really?”
A modest shake of Miles’ head was his only reply. After a moment of struggling to gain his balance on the unruly tire, the boy had elaborated. “I never really wanted to…"

“Well you can’t just stand there.” Nick had smirked, and despite the other boy’s protests he had given the swing a good shove.
The other boy had tried his best not to shriek and only half succeeded. In a panic, he jumped off of the tire and landed knee-first on the soft ground, skidding his clean, unwrinkled jeans on the fresh grass.
Nick had rushed to Miles’ side and grabbed his arm even as Miles pushed him away. “Oh no…”

“I’m okay.” The other boy had lied, trying to regain his composure. “I just…don’t like heights.”
He had stood up, brushed off his collared shirt, and crossed his arms. “Don’t worry about me, Nick.”

Don’t worry about me. No matter how many times Miles had said that, Nick never stopped worrying about him. Especially even more so now that he was gone, with the newspaper headlines crying stories of a murder in an elevator and an orphaned son.

He closed the door on the mailbox and flipped up the weathered red flag before casting one last gaze at the tire swing. Quietly, he ignored it and hurried back inside.

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“Who writes letters to you?”
The only advantage that Miles Edgeworth would ever have over Prosecutor Von Karma’s daughter was that he was taller. Franziska was grabbing for the envelope as he desperately held it over her head. He rushed to his bedroom and tried valiantly to close the door, but she was faster.
“Give it to me!” The four-year-old pushed the meek boy onto his bed and the mattress promptly creaked. Without a word Miles tightened up and let go of the piece of paper as she ripped it away from his hands,

Truthfully Miles didn’t know who would write a letter to him either. He had been too busy running to take a glance at the actual contents inside the envelope. After a moment, his tired eyes opened and he sat up, warily watching the girl tear open the sheet of notebook paper. She bit her lip and shoved the letter against the wall as a makeshift hard surface, running her finger underneath every handwritten line. Miles could see Franziska’s face frown harder with every word she struggled to read, and after a moment she hurled it back at him.
“It’s messy.” She exclaimed with a pout, denying blatantly that she still had difficulty reading - and what was wrong with that? Absolutely nothing, Miles had thought when he had heard her slowly pronouncing a long word aloud and praised her efforts. Most four year olds couldn’t even read at all! That had been his explanation for his applause, an explanation he had cried out moments after she had slugged him.
“I’m not most four-year-olds.” She had snapped with words beyond her years, watching him catch his breath. “I am a Von Karma.”
And a Von Karma is perfect. Franziska had made sure he knew the mantra by heart barely a week into his stay.

He hadn’t complimented her on anything since.
As she scowled, the young boy reached for the crumpled sheet of looseleaf, slowly smoothing it out against his bed. For the first time he was able to get a good look at the handwriting and recognized it almost instantly.
No way…A feeling of nausea ran through his small body as he stared at the letter without even reading the words. Feelings that he had spent hours trying to dissolve suddenly came rushing back into his veins.

“Well? Who’s it from?” The miniature terror next to him barked impatiently, tapping her Mary-Jane clad toes hard against the floor. Miles didn’t answer at first, not even comprehending what she had said. He was trying to remember how to breathe.

After another shove he finally replied. “It’s nothing. I don’t know what it is.”
He looked at her, tried to seem convincing, and nodded. “It must have been addressed wrong.”

For a moment he was scared that she wouldn’t believe him. Suspicion ran across her intelligent eyes and she squinted, but backed off. “Hmph. I told you.”
Miles pretended that Franziska didn’t suspect anything. He knew better than most that she was only accepting his answer because it made her right, regardless of the fact she could tell there was something he wasn’t telling her.
“No one writes letters to you.” Within a moment the paper was in shreds at her feet and she was sliding her hands together in triumphant victory. “You’re no one, Miles Edgeworth. No one at all.”

She flounced off, leaving the boy to stare blankly at the pieces littering his floor. If only, he thought, the writer of the letter agreed with her.



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ANGST FEST WHOOOOOO.
R&R. Please don't destroy it, it has feelings. The abrupt ending is because I'm unsure if I ought to continue it or not. It felt rushed to me :/

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Last edited by MercuryKitten on Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:12 am, edited 3 times in total.

Fraziska is such a witch.
Nice job though.

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Thank you <3 She's an awesome witch.

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Trufax. Now if only i had one of her whips...

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O.o Haha...I think we all want one.

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I think another chapter would be awesome!

Great fic!

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I hope you do flesh this out a bit because I really enjoyed it - especially the part with Nick at the start - that seemed to me to be very true to how I imagine him and Larry as kids - his letter made me giggle.

I also thank you from the heart for having Miles be relatively normal as a child (bookish, but not maladjusted, and hurrah he wears jeans)!

I really enjoy the way your write them all as kids - I'm an old git now so I have to really struggle to remember being a kid (I was also probably not very standardly kid-like so I'm wary of using my experiences as a yardstick!) but your stories make me smile. Writing kids believably is an art in itself, I think. Almost makes me think it would be nice to have some

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:D Thank you. I almost made Miles into a total like, prissy mini-business man, but I don't think he would have been THAT stuck up until later on in his life. I also wanted to make him fall off the swing.

Thank you <3 I might rewrite this with a little more fat on the bone, and probably do some more.

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I think you write Miles as a child beautifully, actually. Franziska too. So I'm looking forward to seeing more of Larry and Nick as well.

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Part two, a few years later. It's a bit of a stretch and hopefully not TOO much OOC. What happened to Phoenix happened to a friend of mine and I feel like Nick's probably the sort of person who'd easily find himself in the same circumstance.



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“Hey Phoenix.”
The kid wore a collared polo and navy jeans, the bulge of his cell phone in his pocket. His target rolled his eyes at him and crossed his legs under the table, his pen scrawling at a sheet of notebook paper.
The kid snorted and threw a packet of paper at the boy before shouting louder. “Hey! Phoenix!”
Phoenix finally looked up and dropped his pen. The other boy was an eighth grader, a year older than him, but it had been a while since Nick had felt any real fear of him.

“Shut up.” He whispered back, glaring as fiercely as his gentle eyes let him. “They’re rehearsing.” The dimmed lights just barely illuminated a paper sign scotch-taped onto the cinder blocks – Everything you say backstage can be heard from the audience.

The older boy glanced at the sign for a half-second following Phoenix’s gesture towards it before promptly dismissing the warning. “Phoenix!”
Phoenix picked up his cheap pen again and resumed writing into the spiral-bound notebook. Miles, do you remember those boys in our grade who always drove us crazy?

“Phoenix, who are you going out with?” The boy pulled out his phone and flipped it open, getting ready to punch the verbal answer he hoped for into a text message.
He represented the two things that made middle school kids popular these days. Expensive phones and girlfriends, two things that Nick lacked.

Yeah, well, they haven’t changed very much.

“No one.” He murmured, keeping his voice down. Beyond the curtain besides him, he could hear the plethora of aspiring pre-teen actors trying to remember their lines. He had tried out for the play on a whim, even though Larry had laughed at the idea of Romeo and Juliet. Larry didn’t laugh when he found out that Phoenix-as-Tybalt got to have a swordfight on stage, even if it meant he died halfway through the show and had to spend the rest of rehearsal time with an annoying Mercutio behind the scenes.

His companion’s groan was audible. “Well, who do you like?”
Nick heard it all the time in the giggles and notes that ruled the halls of his school. Everyone liked someone, everyone who was anyone anyway.

“No one.” The younger boy finally retorted, pushing his wild hair out of his face and carefully scrawling out more cursive letters.
“Liar.” He wasn’t looking up, but he could hear the smirk all over his face from his words.
“There aren’t any girls I like.” Nick shrugged, honestly, as he wrote more. “I don’t really think about it.”

I don’t think you would like middle school much. Everyone here is far too stupid for you. Are the kids in Germany smart?
He’d learned to not expect an answer to his letters, but although he knew he’d probably never know of the intelligence of German children, it had never stopped him from writing letters anyway. Miles had almost turned into a journal, and Nick couldn’t think of a single thing he had refrained from telling him. Even if Miles wasn’t reading, he still felt he had a duty to take the trip down to the mailbox nearly every few days.

The snort pervaded his ears. “You don’t like girls, Phoenix? Is that what you said?”
Nick didn’t bother to waste his time answering.
“If you don’t like girls, that means you’re gay.”
It wasn’t the first time Phoenix had heard that. “Go away.” He responded flatly, deciding what he would write next.

I want to move to Germany with you.
“Do you like boys, Phoenix? Are you gay?” His attacker had snapped his phone shut and pocketed it in his glee.
Is it hard to speak German? Maybe I’ll try learning it when the play is over so if I come to see you we can chat.
“I think you’re gay.” Annoyed that his target was not responding, the older boy picked up his script and hit him with it.

Nick turned to retort, but he was cut off by yells from the stage. Rehearsal was over, and the cast of kids was dispersing through the curtains. The boy took his chance to escape and quickly thrust his notebook into his bag, exiting the building just as he heard his tormentor exclaim, “Guess what? Phoenix says he likes boys!”
As he walked out into the parking lot, Nick thought of how he would finish his letter to Miles.
Whatever you do, don’t come back to the United States. Sometimes, I think you were the lucky one.


“Someone asked me to marry them today.” Franziska declared as she invited himself into her “little brother’s” room, flouncing over to his bed. The boy was seated at his desk and poring over a heavy-bound book. He didn’t look up, but acknowledged her presence.

“Aren’t you a bit young for that?” The last time he checked, eight year olds couldn’t marry legally, at least not without a lot of consent and paperwork. Apparently it wasn’t the reaction she had wanted and she kicked him.

“Some foolish boy asked me today when I went on my walk.” She pouted, crossing her arms. “I kicked his ankle.” Miles had expected no less of her. He said nothing, waiting patiently for her to explain why she had bothered speaking to him. Usually any sort of words from her meant a less-than-encouraging pep talk.
“He was a moron. I didn’t even know him.” The little girl said snidely. “Besides, being in a social commitment would severely affect my work.”

Miles tried not to snort. He was used to her speaking as if she was decades older, but every once in a while she’d come out with something that would take him by surprise. “Understandable.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Miles Edgeworth. Papa says you would have grown up a hopeless romantic if he hadn’t intervened and taken you in. If you had gone anywhere but here after your Father died, you would never amount to anything.”

The boy nodded his head absentmindedly, scribbling some notes onto a piece of fine stationary as he paraphrased the law book. Although he was made to focus on precise detail, selective listening was a skill he had also acquired among the Von Karma family.
“But this is why I am here to tell you.” Her head was held high, as if she bore a crown, and she sniffed. “You’ve got to learn somehow, and seeing as you are my little brother…”

Her dress shoes hit the ground and she stood up. “Don’t ever get a girlfriend. She will only distract you.” She spoke as if she was the boy’s senior, and she certainly thought she was. “She’ll distract you from your studies and we all know how badly you need them…”
“Thank you, Franziska.” He replied only to placate her. Not that he ever planned on seeking companionship – not only because at age twelve it was a ridiculous idea, but also because under the verbiage the girl was right. Hopeless romantics who waxed poetic about another were hardly anything but fools, devoid of any sensible ambition. If he wanted to succeed beyond all others, a partnership wasn’t even an option. It was merely a fact of life.

She growled, stood up promptly, and before he could react she snatched away the large book, revealing the worn envelope hidden underneath. Before Franziska could seize it, however, Miles reached out and grabbed it, hiding it behind his back. It was unopened, and he had never intended to open it, but he still didn’t want her paws on it.
“You got anotherone?” His young acquaintance growled. “That’s the fourth one this month!”
She didn’t jump after him or try to retrieve the letter, much to his surprise. Instead, she placed her small hands on her hips and scowled. “It’s from the same person, too. Fee-nicks. You said you didn’t know who that was.”

Miles looked down and shrugged. “Not anymore.” The letters were the only thing that kept him from forgetting his old life and he wasn’t appreciating it.
“You’re loyal to those…people. Loyal to a fault.” She barked as he stood up, heading for the trash can and holding the letter over her head. He shook his head as his trembling, elegant hands began to shred the envelope.

“One cannot be loyal to a fault, Franziska, if they realize that there is fault within being loyal.” The pieces of paper began to slowly drop into the bucket, glimpses of messy handwriting visible. “Which there is.”
He grabbed the book from her small hands and opened it back up, ignoring her as she stomped out of the room, frustrated with him. Without a single hesitation, he resumed writing in his neat, careful cursive.

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As one can assume, this is going to turn into P/E eventually and probably some Friskian too. Not saying that Nick acts EXPLICITLY gay from what happened, but a lot of middle schoolers do often assume that if one does not have a love interest they're obviously gay. I did want to cater to Nick's "shakespeare" side since I don't see that a lot. I also got the idea of Fran 's situation from a teensy little "perfect" girl who got proposed to yesterday when I was working at a church (gack) nursery with my mom. They were a bit younger but still, I could see Franziska whipping the crap out of nine year old suitors.
Don't eat it too badly D:

r&r please. <3

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I love how apathetic your teenage Phoenix is, as he really does only get properly emotive when around the Feys or someone he truly cares about and the infamous moodiness of the teen years really shows through. Also the fact that Phoenix doesn't rise to 'Mercutio's' teasing (has anyone gotten through compulsive education without being accused of homosexuality?) mimics how he never seems to flustered by the insults he gets in court and from witnesses.

Your writing style is very good at getting feelings and ideas across without breaking into purple prose. I adore the line "glaring as fiercely as his gentle eyes let him", as well as bratty Franziska. She's wonderful, in a totally infuriating way.

I can't wait for more!

~Zizzo

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Thank you very much! Nick never really struck me as a terribly emotional person through the games unless, of course, in the situations you referred to. So although he does get agitated, he doesn't really show it.

Mini-Franziska is the most incredibly fun character to write ever. Nick's inner monologues are fun, and it's kinda neat to go all philosophical and straight for Miles, but Fran is SO theraputic to write. It's like being to go all out and be a total brat under the guise of another character.

But thank you. <33

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Comments adored <3

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