#(( once more i use the prose to talk abt things the muses refuse to ))

[bindingties]

👀 + Franziska, what is the toughest thing you've ever had to do during your career as a prosecutor?

i swear to tell the truth || ACCEPTING

"I don't like cases with children."

The police don't yet respect her, but she pushes past them with the gravity of a true Von Karma. Her hair brushes her shoulders as she ducks under the police tape ( not that she has to bend far ) into the house.

A man's body lies splayed at the foot of the stairs, limbs twisted at impossible angles. His belly is down but his neck is turned far enough that she can meet his empty gaze and read the permanent surprise in his expression.

The defense attorney is going to try to rule this an accident, she thinks bitterly, ready to viciously tear this murderer apart when her gaze travels up the stairs.

There is a girl on the stairs, her age, and she stares down at the body with an empty expression, phone barely held in limp fingers. From here, Franziska can see a fresh bruise around the girl's eye. She breathes through her mouth, blood drying in the spaces between her teeth. Blood rings her nostrils too, not yet dry enough to begin flaking. Unbidden, Franziska's feet draw her closer, she picks up the scent of vomit, notices how it clings to a sweater sleeve scrunched up enough to show bruises just beginning to bloom.

She doesn't know why her fingers go to her own wrist, why her heart thuds in her chest, why her own eye begins to ache.

The girl finally moves, nearly imperceptibly, and her eyes capture Franziska's. She does not know what is conveyed in that eye-contact, has no words for it.

Nor is she any closer to understanding as she stands at the Prosecutor's bench with another win to her name and the girl meets her eyes again.