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Dahlia Hawthorne and Hazakurain Iris meet once after the former’s death.
The shock of Iris seeing her own face moving independently from any reflection is enough for Dahlia to make the first strike. It’s not like it’s the first time she’s attacked a sister of hers.
“Dahlia?!”
Combat training she has none, but neither does Iris. In a test of strength, they were, and always had been, equals. But Dahlia is prepared while Iris is not.
She forces a struggling Iris into the chill air of the Sacred Cavern and steals the pins from her hair to mimic her braids. Dahlia’s braids.
“Dahlia, wait! You can’t do this,” she sobs, “You can’t leave me in here—”
“Aww, what? Scared to die in here all alone? I wonder what the fuck that feels like.”
“Dahlia! Please. I can help you. We’re sisters.”
“We were sisters when you left me on that bridge, too.”
Then she leaves her in the freezing cavern for dead.
-
What pushes a fourteen year old girl to dive into the icy current of Eagle River?
The bruises she will get from hitting the surface can’t compare to the pain dealt from her mother never really fighting all that hard to keep her powerless, useless daughters.
She may or may not recall stories that say her mother was overjoyed when she learned she was pregnant with twin girls. Yet with every passing year, her shared birthday candles would be blown out, and in the split second of firelight before the dark, Dahlia Fey would see her mother’s impatience with every spark of the Kurain gift she was clearly lacking.
The frigid ice will not compare to her father’s abandonment.
Little Dahlia sits on top of the monkey bars at her new school and shouts, and laughs, and teases about how they are twins, so clearly one of them was an accident, and so that mistake must be Iris. She decides she is the older twin (her parents have never really remembered whether that is true). It buries the fact that while their births may have been intentional, their father wanted an heiress. He did not want a daughter. It was always one or the other.
The water in her nose and ears and eyes will not burn nearly as much as the betrayal from her twin sister.
Iris is a nun now. Iris does nothing but pray. Iris is living in some backwater mountaintop shack and does not know how to talk to people and is scared of everything except stabbing her own sister in the back.
The feeling of someone pulling her from the river into the cold air will shock her less than when her stepsister suggests actually firing the gun.
Valerie is just as trigger-happy in the planning as she is in the act itself. Dahlia hears a gunshot for the first time that day, and she wonders what it would have sounded like if it had hit her in the ear, only a few inches down and to Valerie’s left. She’s never actually known how good of a shot her stepsister was.
She hopes her mother hears the news. She hopes her father is haunted by her ghost. She hopes her sister spends the rest of her life repenting. She hopes she never has to lower herself to her stepsister’s level and pick up a gun, because that ringing sound is annoying.
Dahlia Hawthorne will die today, and everyone will get to wonder the reason why she had to.
As Melissa Foster flies under Dusky Bridge, flaming locks floating above her, she decides she will name the reason Terry Fawles.
-
“I don’t get it,” Dahlia cries tearfully. Loudly. “Why would you say that? Why would I lie? What would I even— I’m so sorry—”
She hiccups and wipes under her eyes.
“What would I even have to gain?”
The girl Dahlia is speaking to is a film student named Camryn with bright pink hair and dark makeup, who looks down at her and scoffs.
“You’re shitting me, right? I was just asking—”
“Woah woah woah, hey, what is going on?”
Doug Swallow pushes past the small group of uncomfortable people around the two women, some of the tension breaking as he wraps an arm protectively around his girlfriend’s shoulders.
“Oh, Dougie,” Dahlia all but sobs, burying her face in Doug’s chest and wrapping her arms around him, “I’m s-so sorry. I-I must be embarrassing you in front of all of your friends. Would it be okay if we went home?”
The girl who is talking to her looks dumbfounded, and Doug winces.
“Hey, it’s okay, Dahlia. Look, I’m really sorry you guys. Dahlia gets overwhelmed easily, I’m gonna head out with her. Can we do a rain check on drinks?”
The uncomfortable group of friends all nods and makes meek acknowledgements, and as Doug ushers Dahlia out gingerly, he swears he hears the girl Dahlia was talking to go, “What the fuck just happened?!”
By the time they’re a block or so away from the building, Dahlia’s eyes are dry.
“Dahlia? You okay? What happened in there?”
“Your friend was calling me a liar, Dougie! After I opened up to her about my mother and everything.”
“Yeah, sorry, Camryn’s… A little touchy about parents, she—”
“She told me all about hers, Dougie, I know,” Dahlia snaps, a bit more aggressive than usual. Doug shrugs it off. “I don’t know why your friends are so… So mean!”
“Hey, it’s okay, I’ll talk to them. We don’t have to hang out with them anymore if they make you uncomfortable. Let’s just go pick up some dinner on the way back to my place and start that show you keep talking about.”
This seems to perk Dahlia up.
“Ooh, the one about the unsolved mysteries? Okay, but we have to keep the lights on, alright? It’s way too scary!”
Dahlia grabs Doug’s hand and lets him lead her home.
Three weeks later, he breaks up with her. He calls Camryn to apologize and ask her what she’d said to Dahlia that night she left the party crying, and Camryn says she’d only asked if Dahlia’s mother had died when she was nine or thirteen.
-
Phoenix and Iris’ happiness angers Dahlia, irrationally, and the irrationality of it angers her more.
Envy, but not for the romance she’d concocted for her sister.
At four years old, Dahlia and Iris were unceremoniously whisked away from the mystical village they would later remember their father calling a “backwater hellscape”.
Dahlia remembers the four years she spent in her mother’s cold, bony arms in flashes at best. The tiredness in what should have been a younger woman’s face. They say a woman’s hands betray her age. Dahlia remembers growing up and reading fairy tales about ugly witches and their magic, picturing her mother’s hands. Dahlia wears floral scented hand cream and keeps her nails perfectly manicured.
She had cousins and second cousins, she thinks, that she may have played with, but Iris certainly played with them more. Dahlia always preferred her mother’s stories and eating strawberries in the quiet of her room, though she doesn’t remember the language she used to be read to in.
She remembers knocking the strawberries over once, and the unknown instinct to hide them, though it did not come fast enough to stop Ayasato Chinami from being shouted like a curse. She thought maybe it was one, with the way Morgan scooped her up under the arms and placed her on a cushion far from the red juice and the bowl and the gathering ants.
Ayasato Chinami, Ayasato Chinami, Ayasato Chinami.
She hates that name. It sounds ugly.
She is perhaps lucky she doesn’t remember the divorce, or really, her father’s presence and Morgan’s in the same room at all. She has always been imaginative about it, though.
Their father bought some extravagant condo and seemed hell-bent on removing any and all ties to Kurain Village as soon as possible— a new home, a new wife, a new daughter. New names for the girls he already had.
The twins, with their straight raven hair and purple kimonos, reminded their father of Morgan, no doubt, and Dahlia cannot remember a time between convincing her father to give Iris away and the day she jumped into Eagle River where she was not actively maintaining her appearance.
When she entered middle school, she began to dye her hair. When she reached high school, she insisted the auburn locks were natural. She spun tales of her old school and how people would pull at it, and how she didn’t know why they hated her so, and no, she couldn’t possibly believe it was beautiful, but she was flattered.
Her slightly-too-light brown contact lenses were natural too. So were her eyelash extensions. So were the white lace dresses her father bought for her, insisting she wear them instead of the mark of her Kurain heritage.
Maybe Phoenix Wright was stupid enough to believe it, Dahlia thought to herself, scowling into her mirror, watching Iris’ hands shake as she tried and failed to put a contact lens in for the first time. The rest were, so why would he be any different?
They aren’t very easy to get in , Iris said. Deal. Dahlia replied.
Phoenix had noticed the contacts immediately. He mentioned he used to wear a colored lens himself to make the distinction between his blue and brown eyes a little less less noticeable, with how kids used to pick on him for it, but he gave up eventually, and then they’d gotten to talk about his Japanese mother, and how she differed from Dahlia’s Japanese mother (who was dead, once again, in the sob story Iris fed him. Dahlia preferred that fantasy).
But of course, if that was what made “Dollie” more comfortable in how she looked, he wouldn’t push her on changing it.
Dahlia hated it. She hated him. Hated her sister, and hated her more for her kindness.
When Dahlia convinced her father to give away Iris, she wanted to make sure Iris felt alone.
Now in this carefully constructed birdcage of a story Dahlia wanted to trap her in, Iris had found freedom. Found connection.
“I don’t want any more sins to weigh on your shoulders,” Iris had said.
Bullshit.
Iris hated collateral damage, and this was her selfish way of keeping it from happening. All because she was too scared to do what needed to be done.
If there was one thing Morgan Fey’s daughters were, it was selfish. They got it from both of their parents.
A nun could not be selfish. Dahlia had counted on that. But right now, Iris was not a nun.
Iris was “Dollie”.
-
“Do you have a Japanese name, Dollie?”
Iris nods.
“What is it?”
Iris makes a choice.
“Ayame,” she lies. Or rather, she doesn’t.
Phoenix grins his bright grin at her.
“Aww, that’s such a pretty name!”
Iris lets out a giggle that comes much more naturally to her than it ever would to her sister, who would snap at you for calling her by her birth name, Chinami. Iris has few memories of Kurain Village, but the ones she has include her twin saying she wanted to be Ayame, because it was a prettier name.
“Thank you. It means iris.”
Phoenix looks puzzled.
“Then why’d they name you Dahlia instead of Iris?”
Iris shrugs and laughs.
“I don’t know! It’s funny isn’t it?”
Phoenix laughs with her as he shatters her heart:
“Well I think Dahlia’s a prettier name anyway.”
-
“Yes, Dahlia?”
“Well you see, Mister Professor, I think the concubine is in a unique position of freedom and power. Would it be alright if I explained?”
“I like where you’re going, go ahead.”
“So, um… I think I might be just a little confused. In this story, any woman’s son can become the heir, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“So, Mister Professor, you’re saying a woman’s power in the court relied on her ability to bear children?”
“Her ability to bear sons, yes. Even a common woman could give birth to the future king, so long as he was the king’s son.”
“Oh!” Dahlia laughs, “Silly me, of course! Sons! So, as long as she can have a child, she can become the ruler, is that right?”
The professor looks, for a moment, like he will correct her once more on her error, but instead he just takes a breath, gives a look that seems pitying, and changes slides at the front of the lecture hall.
“In a sense, yes. Technically speaking, she would have no power, but she could puppet her son’s actions if he rose to power. And actually, Dahlia, this brings me to the next point I wanted to cover. It’s not uncommon in stories like this one, or even history, for women to have gone to extreme lengths to secure that power. The concubine in the novel fakes a pregnancy, but that’s not all. Some women would resort to kidnapping or even murder.”
“Oh my goodness, really?”
“Absolutely. It’s a good thing you don’t see situations like this nowadays.”
“Yes, it certainly is. I could never think of living in a world like that. I think the women of ancient times must have had much harder hearts than mine.”
“Woah, nice wordsmithing, Dahlia. You should save that line for your poetry assignment.”
Dahlia smiles as the professor continues to answer questions from other students. She learns nothing and takes no notes.
-
“Dollie!”
Iris looks back over her shoulder to see Phoenix waving at her from a ways behind the bench she is sitting on. She smiles and gives a dainty wave back.
“Good afternoon, Feenie.”
She startles as he climbs over the back of the bench to sit next to her, then passes her one of a matching set of paper bags of carry-out food and immediately starts digging through his backpack.
Iris pulls out a still-warm container of noodles from a local café and makes a face at it.
“Oh, they forgot the tofu I asked for…”
“Huh?”
Phoenix pops his head back up to look at her, frowns, and continues to dig.
“You can trade with me if you want, Dollie, I got those shrimp dumpling things you said you like.”
Iris immediately waves her hands frantically, even though he isn’t looking at her.
“Oh, no, no! It isn’t a big deal. Thank you, though.”
She uses whatever is distracting him to mask the sigh she lets out.
The faster she gets the necklace back the easier it will be to let him down gently. Iris knows this. But Phoenix is so considerate. He always puts her first. It’s only been a short while, but Iris can see his selfless nature is unconscious and wholehearted. How can she do something so selfish as ask for the gift he treasured so much back?
Maybe, she considers, looking at the necklace hanging out of the t-shirt he’s wearing, maybe she could grab it and call it a practical joke. Then she could pretend to lose it. Although she’s never been the best with her hands and the thought of hiding it smoothly brings fear back to her heart. Maybe she could…
“Here it is!”
Phoenix finally stops shuffling through his backpack and pulls out a neatly folded piece of notebook paper. It’s a prettier set of stationery than the average notebook page, and he holds it out for her to take.
“I know you said you didn’t really get what I was talking about with the plays, and I’m still saying you should come watch Romeo and Juliet, because watching it is different than just reading, trust me… But… I figured when you said that, you probably haven’t gotten a chance to read a ton of Shakespeare’s sonnets, so I copied this one down for you.”
He smiles at her expectantly. It’s sweet. Bright. Almost childlike in its optimism.
Iris starts suddenly, apologizes under her breath for some reason, and when Phoenix laughs and tells her it’s okay, she yanks the page out of his hand and busies herself with unfolding it.
At the top of the page in purple, her favorite color, Phoenix has neatly written “Sonnet 23,” and the poem in question follows it. It’s so simple, but Iris can tell more from the page than from the words on it— neatly written compared to the normally haphazard, scribbled notes she knows he takes in class, then never looks back at. This is careful. This is neat. This is for her.
“I mean, I’ll let you take time to sit on it and read it. You’re the poetry expert here. But I figured you would like this one, I guess? So maybe you’d like… I dunno, analyzing it?”
Iris nods, eyes still focused on the page.
“Oh, I will! I will, thank you. That’s so sweet of you.”
“Haha, yeah… Uh… I have my own ideas about it but I’m more into the play stuff than the poems, so you— woah—”
Iris’ hand grasps blindly at his chest and reaches both the necklace and the front of his shirt. She pulls him down to her height and presses her lips against his, and when she lets him go, his eyes are wide and blinking, and hers are glued to the page, this time focusing on the words on them.
Later she will briefly register that it’s the first time she has kissed him, not the other way around. She will consider that maybe she was too bold in her actions. She will realize the necklace had been pressed into her palm, and she hadn’t even noticed.
-
“Go on and fuck it up, then, Iris. You wanna save me from my sins, huh? Huh? Guess that starts and ends with talk, doesn’t it?”
“Dahli—”
“You know if you royally fuck this up, it’ll all be on you, right? You signed up to be Dahlia Hawthorne when I gave you this chance. Thank God I have the money to start over. I’m gonna need a new face when you get us caught. I’d hate to be Dahlia Hawthorne. You could’ve had that money too if you hadn’t left me on that bridge with that creep and my other backstabbing bitch of a sister. We could’ve split the two million between us, Iris. Did you think you’d be seen as some kind of a saint for turning down the money? Guess what? I know what you’re really like. And I will make sure you live with that forever.”
-
Dahlia all but wrestles her sister into a chair when she returns to their shared dorm room. The paperwork says one person is living there under the name Melissa Foster. Dahlia repeats the tale she spun for the court, about how she had to change her name because of the kidnapping. She needs to live alone because she feels far too scared to live with a total stranger, and she has no friends. She’s always been an outcast. She certainly can’t live with her boyfriend. It isn’t very ladylike, and her father raised her with good, old-fashioned, white-fucking-picket-fence-American values.
“Dahlia? What—”
“Your roots are showing.”
Then she goes to find bleach.
“I wouldn’t have to do this if you used the money I gave you to go to a salon, you know.”
“I’m busy with class work!”
Iris laughs good-naturedly as if Dahlia hasn’t ripped open the packaging with a passive-aggressiveness that was common language among her family, but not among Iris’.
“You know you don’t have to go to those classes, right? You’re not going to be here forever. I can make up some other excuse about needing a mental health break or something. They don’t need to know I’m not on speaking terms with my father to be scared of his money.”
“Oh, but I don’t mind, I like them! I find the poetry interesting. Besides, it will help for that Shakespeare class I signed up for with Feenie for next semester.”
Dahlia makes a disgusted noise in the back of her throat.
“Don’t remind me.”
If Dahlia is gentle with Iris’ hair, it is by habit of how she parts and braids her own, not intention. That’s really what it is, when she’s dyeing it red. It is her hair, and it does not belong to Iris.
In the short time they lived together with their father, Dahlia used to pull Iris’ hair and call it ugly. That way, Valerie wouldn't do it to her.
Once she finishes applying bleach to Iris’ roots, she drags over a bag of popcorn mix they both miraculously agree on, turns on the TV, and lets a movie play.
“You know,” Iris says partway through the film, “times like this, it really feels like we’re sisters.”
The silence hangs between them just enough that Iris begins to doubt it.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
There are moments of quiet where they are sisters. Dahlia likes quiet more than she has ever liked Iris.
“Is it that big of an issue if my roots are showing?”
“What kind of a stupid question is that?”
The truth is that they barely are, but Dahlia is always checking.
“Well it’s not like anyone would be surprised it’s dyed.”
“It’s not supposed to be dyed, remember?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever said that it’s natural.”
“I have. That means you have.”
She says this after staining Iris’ roots with the flaming red she’s always used when salons weren’t an option. Getting far enough away from Ivy University that nobody ever saw her there was a hassle at best. If not for keeping up appearances, then for avoiding the small talk.
“Do you… Not like your hair color, Dahlia?”
“This is my hair color.”
“I’m sorry, I just… There’s nothing wrong with wanting to dye it—”
Dahlia tosses the comb she’s using down onto a luckily covered side table.
“You know you saying it like that doesn’t make you sound any less judgmental, right?”
“No! Dahlia, I was just—”
“Is this another thing you feel the need to pretend you’re better than me about?”
“I was just trying—”
“It’s always about you being better than me. Always has been. You’re a goddamn nun, Iris, I. Get. It. ”
Dahlia huffs before she picks up her tools again and continues her work, her sister quieted for now, and mumbling from the TV the only sound.
-
“...Well, y’know, I’m not really cut out for law, I guess,” Phoenix says as he laughs bashfully to himself, rubbing the back of his neck.
Iris frowns, chopsticks halfway to her mouth when she decides to gently place down the piece of rolled omelet she is eating.
“...Why do you think that, Feenie?”
“Huh?”
Phoenix blinks wide-eyed at her, looking something like a toddler.
“I think you could do it Feenie— I mean… You put your whole heart into everything you do. Why would law school be any different?”
“...Well, yeah, I guess, but…”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to try, right? Worst case scenario, you’re back where you started. I don’t… I don’t think you have anything to lose.”
Phoenix just continues to stare blankly, mouth hanging open slightly.
“I… Know how it must feel wanting to do everything in your power to save someone… And I think if that’s what it takes… If it means that much to you? You should do it.”
“Aww, Dollie.”
Phoenix slings an arm around her shoulders and pulls her into an embrace.
“Y’know, you’re like… The first person who’s ever said that to me? Everyone says they can’t picture me as a lawyer.”
Iris hides her face in Phoenix’s shoulder and exhales.
Yes, she can picture it.
If she completes her own goals, Phoenix Wright can become a lawyer. If she is careful and does everything she is supposed to, Phoenix Wright will graduate from Ivy University. He will go to law school. He will save this friend of his, whoever he is.
Iris prays he will be strong enough to endure heartbreak. Iris prays he will fall in love one day. Iris prays he gets his happy ending. Iris prays, and dreams, and wishes, with all her might, that that ending will never include her.
Yes. She can picture it.
The path is murky and dark where she has tainted it, but there is a future ahead for this brilliant, wonderful person that has nothing to do with her.
She prays every day beyond that, that he will leave her.
Please get tired of me. Please get tired of me. Please get tired of me. Please get tired of me. Please get tired of me.
Phoenix Wright deserves better than she can give, and by any means necessary, she hopes he gets it.
-
When Iris comes back to her Ivy University dorm early one Sunday morning, wearing Phoenix Wright’s stupid art department sweatshirt, the first thing Dahlia does is dig her claws into Iris’ flaming red braids and pull.
“Where the hell were you last night, you little skank?”
Iris cries out quietly as she’s pushed onto the floor.
“I don’t give a shit if you wanted that little brat to nail you because you’ve been such a repressed little goody two shoes all your life, but you leave before he can see what you look like in the morning—”
Dahlia shoves Iris away, then reaches to grab her wrist.
“If you leave any bruises, he’s going to ask what happened. Don’t be reckless,” Iris says with far too much power in her voice for Dahlia’s liking. “He already knew about the contact lenses and it’s not like he noticed anything else.”
Dahlia makes sure to pull hard on Iris’ wrist before letting go.
“…and besides… What does it matter if something happened between us? It’s… more believable, isn’t it?”
Dahlia knows though— this is the beginning of the end. If he spends too much time with her, Phoenix Wright will start to notice the chips in her perfectly manicured nails, her eyelash extensions, the fake shell Iris wears over her own body.
“Some nun you turned out to be.”
So Dahlia Hawthorne slides on a pair of sunglasses, tucks her hair into a hat, and waits for the day Phoenix Wright catches a cold.
-
What pushes a twenty one year old woman to consider killing her own twin sister?
The truth is, in a far less patient soul, it would have come sooner. Iris has thought about it frequently. She has not planned a murder, not once.
She has wondered, if one of these days, Dahlia would lose her sense of self-control, or pity, or sadness, or whatever it was that kept her from killing Iris instead of letting go after pulling her hair or shoving her sideways. Sometimes Dahlia comes in as Iris is making lunch for Phoenix, and Iris takes note of where the kitchen knife is in proximity to her, in case she needs it today.
She never turns her back to her sister for long, and if she can help it, she falls asleep second.
Her lullaby is the resolve it takes to cut out her sister like she’d cut out half of her own heart, and the feeling of a knife’s handle clutched tight beneath her pillow.
Her hands are asleep come morning, most of the time.
She prays that this will blow over one day. Dahlia will get her necklace back, and Phoenix Wright will never see either of them again. Dahlia will have no more sins on her soul than she already carries.
She prays that one day, Phoenix Wright will learn the truth somehow. Maybe she will tell him herself.
She hopes Sister Bikini can forgive her for her wrongs and lead her on the path to healing. She hopes her sister spends the rest of her life repenting.
But then Doug Swallow dies, and everyone wonders the reason why he had to.
Dahlia bursts into their dorm room that day, white lace dress soaked from the rain, and Iris has never searched for something to defend herself so quickly.
Dahlia hangs a coat, a scarf, a hat, and sunglasses off of Iris’ body and tells her to get out of her sight if she knows what’s good for her.
In one last act of cruelty, Dahlia denies Iris every goodbye.
Hazakurain Iris takes the bus back to Hazakura Temple in the rainstorm. Nobody recognizes her.