Childhood, Papa, & Miles Edgeworth
all my kin memories are more or less ones of childhood–i lack a lot of memories for the events of the trilogy and onward and what i do have is not very pleasant.
i read a lot of fanfic and people really like to use papa as a catalyst in their writing to #cope, i think, i see him written as this outright monster of an abuser a lot but that’s not really my experience. it’s fine if that’s how people wanna see it but it’s not how i see it at all. papa’s neglect was a lot more sinister, he moved in the shadows in the wicked things he did. he was careful not to let his mask slip, he only ever did once and it was catastrophic from years of perfect facade.
when i was little i loved him, with my whole heart, with everything i was. papa was a superhero! i was little and what i understood was that there were bad people and good people and the court system existed to weed out the bad guys and punish them. and papa fought on the side of justice, to get them what they deserved. he always told me that karma was this force that ran like a current through the universe, watching one’s every move, remembering the sins and virtues of all it saw. and he told me to be proud that this force had chosen us to bear its name, like knights of retribution cast upon the earth. that was so comforting to hear. any time i was scared or sad or angry i just thought about how whatever was hurting me would get its punishment, because the universe remembered, and karma would not let me down.
papa was my hero and i always looked up to him, but i didn’t want to be him and stand beside him until i met miles.
i barely remember a life without miles, i was only like 2 or 3 when he showed up. at this point i was a pretty lonely kid–i lived in this big mansion that absolutely nothing could fill. there are talks in canon of unseen von karmas who never get more than a mention or two but i did not know any of them, if they existed they were secrets papa kept close to his chest. in my lifetime it was just me and papa and all our servants in this old and empty house, and then suddenly there was miles edgeworth, and i latched onto him like a baby spider monkey and never let go.
miles was quiet and shy and sad and didn’t speak german very well and so i whispered sentiments to him in bungled english and spoke with what i could. he was my first and only friend growing up. i think i have been annoying him since the day we met but he never told me to go away. i was so happy to have a friend, to have someone closer to my age in the house (we have a 7 year gap but i was a very precocious child) to have company when papa would work long days and disappear for weeks to deal with international cases. miles and i would lose hours in the library teaching each other our respective languages, and he showed love in how much time he spent with me, even though he almost never smiled. it took me a while to understand it wasn’t about me.
miles had nightmares. ones he couldn’t hide. miles had nightmares and i had rituals: i was the lightest sleeper imaginable, i could wake at the sound of a pin dropping seven rooms away, and every night i woke to miles screaming and crying and pushed myself off my bed and ran down the hall to his room. i entered without asking and he never made me leave even though he’d curl in on himself and try to hide. and i hugged him until he stopped crying, and i stayed with him until he was ready to go back to sleep. he leaned more and more into this as the years went on, and this ritual was every night. miles never slept a full night in the entire time he lived with me, and it broke my heart, and it made me so angry.
when i asked him what was wrong and what he dreamt about he never had an answer for me until he did. i think he knew i was too young to be forced to deal with his problems but i am a very forceful person so i got enough details out of him eventually. he told me that before he came to live with me something terrible happened to him, that someone hurt him deeply and took away things he can never get back. and my response to that was, of course, well, it’ll be okay! because whoever hurt you will be punished. that’s how the world works.
but miles wasn’t comforted by that, and i didn’t understand. he told me that no, they weren’t punished, they got away scott free, the court let them go. and even if they had been sentenced to death or removed from society, it wouldn’t undo what had been done to miles, it wouldn’t balm the wound in his heart that ran so deep he couldn’t sleep at night without waking up sobbing. and i… was so angry.
i was the kind of angry i can’t really put into words, my heart like the lip of a bubbling volcano ready to go absolutely fucking nuclear and rend everything in it’s path. how could anyone do that to miles? miles edgeworth, this sweet boy who barely spoke and held insurmountable love behind his sad eyes and who couldn’t hurt a damn fly? how could anyone hurt him like that??? someone had to do something. someone had to protect him. and if no one else was going to do it, then it had to be me.
so i followed papa. i was going to become a prosecutor. i had to, it was my duty to the world, it was my duty as a von karma. no, putting away the worst of society wouldn’t undo the horrible things they did–but maybe, just maybe, if i became good enough. if i became well known enough, vicious and unrelenting and to be feared, the worst of the world would quake in fear that one day they would cross me. maybe they would think twice, maybe they would hesitate to kill and maim and lie and cheat. if karma couldn’t scare them, maybe Karma could.
i couldn’t protect miles, but i could protect so many like him who still had the spark in their eyes i know he had, once upon a time. i was angry, and frustrated, and i hated feeling so powerless to fell all that hurt him. so i poured myself into law studies every second of every day and i passed the bar at 13 and i fought tooth and nail for my perfect future, where i would fight beside my papa, my hero, to strike down evil and give a voice to the voiceless.
at some point in that interim, i don’t really know when, there was a shift, and miles started agreeing with me. miles started feeling this way, too–like this was something he could do to take control of his own pain, make sure no one suffered like he had. and papa was enamoured with miles when this shift happened, it’s like all of a sudden all his attention went straight to my brother. papa had never shown much besides base level interest in my career as a prosecutor, but as soon as miles wanted to become one too it’s like papa took it upon himself to guide his every move, share with him all the wisdom he had on the matter. he was never, like… encouraging or proud of us, really, but he had this way about him that still pushed us to work for that approval nonetheless. i can’t really explain it, papa has Presence in and outside the courtroom. he like. speaks with his eyes, almost, he can say a thousand words to you without ever saying one.
from the time i was 6ish all the way to my teenage years i felt kind of lonely again, even though i was surrounded by people. i was jealous of all the attention that papa gave miles, it was hard to deal with but i just transformed it into more drive to be better. if papa wouldn’t tell me his tactics like he would miles then i’d just go to every case of his i could and watch them myself. i’d become a genius just like him, i’d work twice as hard. i told myself that papa had to give extra special guidance to miles because he was an outsider and he couldn’t be expected to catch on and intuit as much as i could. eventually it became a rivalry, me and miles, at least on my end. we didn’t necessarily grow apart but we just kinda changed. i didn’t resent miles per se but i just… felt left behind. we were chasing the same goal but he was leagues ahead of me and i didn’t understand how or why. i was a von karma before him, and i wanted to be a prosecutor before him, and papa loved me before him, and yet he had passed me in all those regards it seemed. not only that but it felt like he didn’t even look back as he did so. it hurt. i loved him so much, i wanted to walk this path with him, it was him who made me want to do it in the first place.
all these feelings were of no use to me, and they all turned into anger if i let them simmer for more than a few hours, so i prosecuted. i filled every second of every day with work and i never stopped moving. i picked up case after case after case and i tallied guilty verdicts and i moved. overwork, then and now, was a form of self-harm but was it really when i was so good at it? it had to be rewarding. (all of this was a horrible way of thinking, do not be like me.)
and then, when i was 17, the dl-6 case opened back up. it was the case that took miles’ happiness away, the one that traumatized him into silence and nightmares all those years ago. finally, justice would be served. finally, the world would know exactly who it was who put the bullet in gregory edgeworth’s heart. finally, i got to know the name of the monster that had been living in the shadows of my little brother’s psyche for 15 long years. finally, i had a target for all my rage, my protective fire, my agony and powerlessness. finally, i had the name of the person i hated more than anything in this known universe, and the name on the case file said manfred von karma.
and what can i even say about that? i think i’ve written enough here that it’s more effective to just leave my feelings on the matter blank. one can probably surmise how all that felt.
papa said nothing to me the last day i saw him. the state turned over his badge to me, it lives in a box tucked away in a drawer i only open when i am feeling brave. i cried at his grave, i cried in the detention center, i cried as i screamed at him that i loved him, how could he. i cry about him still though the old dead bastard will never deserve it. shortly after papa’s execution, miles left what many thought was a suicide note and disappeared. my life fell apart in a few short months, i lost everything that had ever meant anything to me, and so i prosecuted. and when i wasn’t prosecuting i was locked in my papa’s empty house, his empty study, crying at his empty desk, pouring over the DL-6 case file and reading it compulsively, as though if i read it enough maybe the ending will be different, this time.
a lot of bullshit happened after that. i knew miles wasn’t dead, or rather i was too stubborn to believe it. i was right because i’m always right. 2017-2018, the year immediately following papa’s death, was the worst year of my life, i spent it in america around people i hate losing my perfect win streak to some foolish rookie who i falsely believed drove my brother to his death. that fool is family now, somehow, and i’m surprisingly alright with it. it took miles dragging my bleeding body to a hospital and me breaking down on him in the middle of a fucking airport to really break the dam on all my feelings and get me to just fucking cry out all that had happened and choose my path from there.
i don’t remember as much from that point on, but i think miles and i went back to how we were–or closer at least–when we were kids. my worldview became more nuanced, and i learned to accept that it was okay that he knew more than me–there was no bigger force pushing us to compete anymore. miles could learn a lot from me, and he was eager to, but i could also learn a lot from miles, too. we both had our own merits and strengths. we were our own people, we could not be each other or anyone else.
most pivotal of all, at one point i tried to run away. i tried to leave miles in my dust, like he had always left me. but he wouldn’t let me, this time, he refused to turn the other way and abandon me like i felt he always had. he chased after me and found me and hugged me and let me cry on him like he had always cried on me, and something in my heart leveled, then. i remembered, there in my brother’s arms, why i chose to fight in the first place.
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Virgo 
Platonic 
