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Sibling, only child-
cry only to your pillow.
it matters no more.
When Dahlia Hawthorne was a child, old enough to be alone and young enough to be naive, she visited a museum and saw a butterfly, wings pinned to cork, beautiful and pink and morbid. She told her father she wished it could fly away.
Dahlia Hawthorne should be smiling.
Cleared of all charges- not enough evidence to convict. One half of the team that threatened her removed and the other half grieving. The necklace safely stored away. Really, everything was coming up Dahlia. According to plan, as much of a plan as there could have been while she was running on desperation and adrenaline, flying away just before wings were grasped.
Dahlia Hawthorne was not smiling.
I love you. I do.
Lost words, empty promises,
woman at fourteen.
The idiot with the spiky hair was not part of the plan.
He was simply convenient, standing right there in the library, looking exactly the type to wear a gaudy necklace. He was supposed to be temporary, some young fool who let a pretty face say empty words. He was supposed to forget.
She was expecting to just hand it off and leave, find some way to get her hands on it later, find a new name, and start over. It was easy, routine by now. Pick an alias. Be pretty enough to survive. Cover your tracks, keep moving, don't let them catch a glimpse of the truth, don't get tied down in case you ever need to run again. That was Dahlia's life, familiar, simple. That was all it had ever been, since her father decided to scoop her and Iris out of Kurain and into a new city where everything was louder and her mother wasn't there.
(Dahlia didn't much want to think about Kurain, but it was certainly difficult not to do so when she was looking at Mia. Mia, who had the audacity to not change at all.)
But the boy asked to see her again. Pestered her for her name and phone number, until it was easier to just say yes, let it happen. This was good, really. Easier to find out where he lived, the places he frequented, so that when the time came to take the necklace and slip away, it would be smooth.
Then he told her he thought he loved her, on the second date, because it was easier to just go on dates and plaster on a pretty smile, and it was time to write a letter to Iris.
Dahlia Hawthorne should have expected this. Really, an oversight to let it happen. She could have kept the necklace, figured out some place to hide it. She should have packed up faster, gotten away neatly enough that it looked like just a coincidence, not enough evidence to convict anyway. She should have known she wasn't lucky enough to avoid this.
Men were always telling Dahlia Hawthorne they loved her, and sometimes she would say it back if it got her somewhere. It usually didn't. Whatever it got her usually wasn't worth it, not strong enough to weigh against the words "teen angel" cropping up, unwelcome, in her mind.
Before the first Dahlia Hawthorne died, she had sent a letter to Iris explaining what she was going to do. Detailed, because when they were together, Iris had always lied wonderfully when Dahlia broke some old vase, protecting her no matter what. And Iris wrote back with a suggestion.
Iris had annoyed her when they were much, much younger, yes, but they were older now, and Dahlia was angry at everything, and she hoped Iris would be angry too. Dahlia was a child irritated with her sibling, and their father saw nothing wrong with giving her away because of a sibling spat.
Iris was not angry, not enough, but Dahlia could hold enough rage for the both of them. And Iris, being far too calm, let her down, coward, backstabber, but Dahlia needed a place to recover after plunging into Eagle River, so she put on a smile and let herself be a child again.
Once Dahlia Hawthorne was dead, Melissa Foster visited Hazakura temple.
Dahlia always needed a sister. And Valerie had let her down.
Taking care of you,
smiling at your foolish words,
an act. You want me.
So she confided in Iris, sending updates and a plan to end Phoenix Wright, because Iris would always be there to listen. And, like before, Iris replied with a suggestion, and Dahlia was going to see her sister again.
She still wanted him dead, but Iris wanted him alive, and college was comfortable. And Iris was the only person Dahlia could ever safely trust, because Iris was a pushover, and she was too kind, and she cared about her sister despite everything. So, despite Dahlia’s brain screaming at her that it was dangerous, that she should just run again and leave it all behind, she could humor her sister. She dyed Iris' hair in a dorm bathroom, and made her promise to take good notes.
Dahlia missed analyzing every word in a text, but Dahlia trusted Iris, so she resigned herself to only going to classes when Phoenix Wright would be far across campus. The art department had little overlap with literature, yes, but anthropology and law sat in the same building.
Dahlia trusted Iris. Iris failed.
Love is a funny thing, twisting poison branches into one’s heart and entrapping its victims. Dahlia never quite understood the appeal. It was not trust. Men would flirt and want and stutter over confessions, all for their own happiness. There was never any real care for the object of their affections, self-serving motivation behind it all. In Dahlia’s eyes, it was infinitely better, healthier, to be self-serving without attempting to convince yourself your actions were motivated by anything but personal desire.
She watched yarn twist over Iris’ knitting needles. She watched endless pictures of Phoenix Wright sneak their way into Iris’ camera roll. She laughed at her sister, and she remembered Doug Swallow. She had told him she loved him, months ago, and it had served her well. The pills sat stagnant on her bedside table.
Dahlia made a plan, and she told herself did not need a sister’s advice this time.
Standing in front of a still-sparking wire, willing crocodile tears to well up in her eyes, she allowed herself to think, just for a second, that perhaps she should have sought out Iris. Made a new plan.
A smile-free boy.
If not for young patience lost,
masks wouldn’t be gone.
Dahlia was beginning to tire of courtrooms. Of Mia Fey glaring at her, far colder than the stare Dahlia received as a child when they argued over what to play. Of men she hated in the defendant’s chair, fawning over her, adoring the simpering smile she plastered on her face.
At least this time Mia was alone behind her bench, and the man meant to do Dahlia’s work for her was different. These changes made Dahlia’s smile grow a bit more genuine. She did not miss the cocky, grey-haired, tacky-suited fop staring into her as if she was some common criminal. Dahlia was so much more than any man he had put behind bars. At least Mia seemed to grasp that.
This new prosecutor, his hair also grey, but this time from age, was something Dahlia could handle. Cocky like his predecessor, perhaps, but this man saw doe eyes and a grateful smile and fell over himself to suit her needs. This was normal. This was expected, calculated. Years of experience taught Dahlia well, and she could use this to shut Phoenix up for good. Two dangers gone with one murder charge, two lovers down in a few days, two birds with one stone.
Two birds with one stone, had it not been for Mia Fey. (Why had Dahlia let her continue on? Why hadn’t she found a way to incapacitate Mia beyond grief?) Mia stared at Dahlia, and she stared at Phoenix Wright, and she did not match Dahlia’s smile.
Perhaps Phoenix Wright really had loved Dahlia. Iris. Whoever he saw behind red hair and batting eyelashes. The blood dripping from his lips certainly counted as a confession of sorts. The tears in his eyes, too, said something. Had Dahlia not been sloppy and foolish and unable to just run when things start to look bad, she would not have had to look at them, and wonder what they meant. Dahlia Hawthorne told herself that it was Iris’ fault. Then, she told herself that it was Phoenix Wright’s fault, for trying to get close to a girl who did not want him.
When they handcuffed her and brought her into questioning, Dahlia knew that it was her own fault for allowing Mia Fey to live. Valerie, Iris, Mia. Hope placed in family members who would never stop crushing her under their heels. Everything like the Feys and Hawthornes that had come before them.
Tread on shattered glass.
Softly, let it cut your feet.
Nothing left for you.
Dahlia Hawthorne was never going to get her literature degree, but she didn’t stop reading. No one ever visited, and Dahlia regretted ever writing to her sister. She kept reading. There was nothing else to do. There wasn’t much poetry, and certainly few books of senryu, but novels would have to do. There was nothing else but hardcover spines and paper and tiny, inked letters to fill Dahlia’s days.
A familiar face that she hated hovered above her book, and Dahlia dragged her eyes from the page, and weighed her options.
Laughter was her initial preference. There was no longer any reason to pretend she cared about the feelings of Morgan Fey, who talked of spirit channelling and another daughter so calmly, as if she had not cast Dahlia away from the world that was her birthright.
Then her mother mentioned that Mia Fey was dead, and Dahlia’s mind swirled, and she smiled. It was not pretty, or rehearsed, and it grew wider as she began scribbling notes. Her voice was not soft as she agreed to her mother’s plan, which was so poorly formatted that she could take, it mold it, make it her own. Morgan Fey was an worthless idiot, and she would remain none the wiser as Dahlia planned how to carefully shift the goals laid out by her mother
Dahlia returned to her book, using her notes to mark the page she was on. She would look at the words every time she opened the novel, a reminder of power and revenge and Mia Fey and her mother and Valerie and Terry and Iris.
Dahlia didn’t stop reading until the day they brought her to the death watch cell. She snickered when they offered her a religious figure to pray over her. What was it Iris always talked about? The sins on her soul? She plastered on a docile grin as she was led, handcuffed, into the chamber.
They told her it was sunny, the day Dahlia Hawthorne ended.
Death was a haze. Sometimes there were memories, and sometimes there were the faces of the other dead, who Dahlia could not speak to even if she had wanted to. Sometimes there were glimpses of a world that Dahlia did not recognize after years of imprisonment: a little girl playing in Fey manor, who Dahlia felt she should know, but didn’t. A man in a blue suit, who Dahlia’s incorporeal brain could not place, but who still made her furious. A woman standing under a waterfall, who Dahlia would never be able to forget. All Dahlia knew for sure anymore was anger, and hatred, and a plan to make old enemies feel how she did. And Dahlia knew Iris.
Dahlia Hawthorne woke up in a body that was not her own, and she remembered.
Wings, fragile, breaking.
How could they hold girlish weight?
Down, down, Icarus.
When young Dahlia Hawthorne found a second butterfly pinned to a corkboard, beautiful and trapped, she could not stop small hands from frantically grabbing at pins. It fit in her hands, and it was free. The moment passed, and wings started flaking, coating slight fingers in dust, leaving only head, thorax, and abdomen. She did not cry, would not let herself, as she looked at the remnants of color on her palms.
Dahlia Hawthorne shattered into a million pieces. There was no more Iris. No more Mia. No more Pearl, Maya, or Morgan. No more Terry. No more Diego. No more anger.
Dahlia Hawthorne ended, for the final time. She was not happy. She had failed.
It was peaceful.