STITCHED // UNSTITCHED

SUTURCD : FRANZISKA “FRAN” STEIN independant vento aureo oc, written by peach.

It's a simple enough question, spoken with what seems to be a straightforward curiosity, which strangely enough makes it somewhat difficult for Fran to formulate the proper answer. She's cultivated a necessary habit of weighing her words carefully when responding to any sort of questioning, one born from her years within the grinding wheel of Passione, where information is power, and to give too much of it too freely is to seal your own fate at the hands of those who would misuse it against you. She does not quite know what to make of Trish Una within the framework of this mindset yet; a girl who seems to be simultaneously divorced and messily entwined with the circumstances of the gang (or, at the very least, Mr. Bucciarati's team in particular).

With this in mind, Fran wonders if there's some unspoken significance to her coming to Fran with this question--did Mr. Bucciarati direct her to do so because they're both girls of a certain age, or is there something more, some unspoken expectation of her to assist Trish in some way? If so, Fran feels ill equipped for the task, but is compelled to try.

"...I was young," she begins, the pad of a gloved thumb swiping idly over the back of her other hand. "It manifested seemingly of its own volition during a moment of grave personal danger." Her assessing gaze flickers away from Trish. Head tilting in thought, she adds: "...To obtain it as we have isn't as common, but it's not unheard of, either. The vast majority of members, from what I gather, obtained their Stand in a more deliberate process."

Polpo's lighter test. The arrow. Fran does not know what Trish is or is not meant to know, however, so she speaks around it for now.

Fran lets a low, vague hum of acknowledgement sound in response to the initial observation. As for the second half, it's an unexpectedly complicated question, and with a touch of paranoia Fran wonders if that's deliberate--if it's some attempt to measure her morality, or nerve, or loyalty. If so, is Abbacchio doling it out at her own discretion, or was she directed to do so by Mr. Bucciarati himself…?

...No. She'll get lost in the weeds if she zeroes in on that unknown aspect of the inquiry. What matters more is how she answers, not why she's been asked. She needs to consider her answer carefully, though, all the same.

Despite herself, she thinks back to when she was a child; back when administering the clumsiest press of an ice pack to a classmate's bruise or a bandaid to a scrape set her aglow with a quiet sort of pride (doubly so when her handiwork was praised by her mother, who she considered the expert among experts in such matters, as many children do--as she still does, even if she knows that's objectively rather silly). She recalls the drowsy bob of her head against her mother's chest, of blinking bleary eyes over the simplified anatomical charts spread indulgently in front of her in the evenings. She recalls her father passing the two 'studying' and the way he would idly sound out the syllables for bones and organs and appendages in whatever languages were closest to the forefront of his mind at the time from study, and the somewhat-mangled tongue Fran tried to parrot them back in so he would be impressed with her budding expertise in his field, as well.

Heart. Cuore. Shinzou. Herz. Moyo. Corazón. And so on.

Fran can't put that same tender feeling to the work she does now. In fact, there are times when she finds certain people who end up on her operating table so detestable that she spends most of the procedure on something close to autopilot; imagines the hand of God descending from on high, re-parting the sutured flesh down the middle, opening them back up, undoing all her work; some sort of divine retribution in the absence of any justice of the mortal kind. It soothes her, sometimes. Only sometimes, but it's better than nothing.

"…It's like any other job. Some days are more pleasant than others," is what Fran settles on saying, quite diplomatically she thinks. Her index finger draws a line down the open spine of her book, then thumbs and fans at the pages, occasionally snagging an errant, dog-eared page. With a turn of her wrist, she presses the anatomy textbook closed and looks at Abbacchio (or, to a vague spot at the corner of her forehead--close enough to count as basically eye contact, she thinks) with a tilt of her head. "...I'll confess that I don't like the squirmers. And the ones who make a big deal about not being squirmers even less so at times."