tvk | ⚔ 016; [video]

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lancer (diarmuid ua duibhne)

⚔ 016; [video]

I-if anyone has a moment, I'm having a small problem. [This was the understatement of the millennium.]

I'd like to ask how...h-how...er...forgive me, I am having some trouble articulating things today. [Diarmuid adjusted the glasses he wore, seeming hesitant to look directly at the camera at first.]

Imagine one that...has gone through life without anger or hatred. This individual had never felt spite, resentment, or even a shred of those kind of things. He did all he could to put others and their happiness before himself and his own, finding contentment and joy in doing so. But after a certain point, that person...he found someone that did something so deplorable that it left that person filled with rage and spite.

He found someone that he hated. And no matter how he tried, that person could not simply forgive what was done to earn that hatred.

I beg of you, Prospero. Someone please tell me how that person can go back to the way he was. Before he could feel anger and spite, back when he could still grant forgiveness.

[Diarmuid looked away for a moment; he was unsure, even worried.]

Fionn, Grainne-- [Gods, what would they think of him when they knew?] ...there is something I have not yet told you. Forgive me for not doing so until now.

Arturia... [Another pause. She had been there when he had died, she knew the horrible rage he had unleashed that day. Cursing her, Kayneth, Kiritsugu, even the Grail itself. Again he worried that she must secretly detest such a hateful spirit.] When you have the time...I would like to speak with you. Please.

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Just...a little. That sense of superiority the one you speak of sounds like he must have had...it's remarkably familiar to me.

His sense of superiority was not entirely unfounded. Though his methods were extreme and his understanding of court and his own importance in it immensely skewed... he was a genius. Statistics alone suggest that he must have wrongfully convicted the innocent several times, and yet I would be unsurprised if the proportion were lower for him than it would have been if anyone else had gone undefeated in court for forty years.

Of course, this does not by any means excuse him; had he only accepted the impossibility of perfection, he would have been a far better man. Indeed, my life would never have happened in any recognizable way if not for his evils.

Kayneth was a brilliant magus, I can not debate that. He was the head of a prominent family, dual wind and water affinity, summoner, alchemist, and specializing in the control of mercury--a weapon called 'Volumen Hydragyrum'.

It's simple fact that he was a genius among magi, and in that respect alone I had an excellent Master.

Similarly, had he but taken a moment to comprehend that others--particularly Kiritsugu Emiya--would decide to wage the Holy Grail War in a manner not fitting of a traditional magus... I imagine we both could have survived it. Had he for even a second focused less on mistrusting me and more on analyzing an enemy he thought beneath him...I'm certain I could have won the Fourth Holy Grail War.

Edited 2012-01-10 07:48 (UTC)

That seems a bizarrely backwards means of treating enemies and allies. Regardless, I believe that I understand why you perceive similarity between the two men.

I can't claim to understand his logic, and I certainly won't defend it. But please continue, it wasn't my intention to interrupt.

No apology is necessary, Diarmuid. To invite comparison is the primary point of this.

To continue, however... that was when he adopted me and took me on as an apprentice. He taught both myself and his younger daughter, Franziska, all that he knew. However, in addition to the fact that this included skewed philosophies and methods that were morally questionable or worse, he also encouraged the worst facets of myself and subtly stoked my fears and my pain. At the time, I mistook this for mere extensions of his strictness and his belief in ruthless, unforgiving treatment of criminals and all who would take their side.

Ten years later, I returned to my previous home district ready to crush every defendant and defense lawyer who crossed my path.

And looking at you now I assume it's safe to say something changed your perspective?

Hatred may have overpowered my morals, but it never quite destroyed them. Even at my worst, I never went as far as my mentor did -- a fact which often prompted him to berate me as inadequate. [The next two sentences are far more ashamed:] Nevertheless, for four years I never truly lost a case. I... have no doubt that I must have blood on my hands as a result of the methods by which I attained that record.

Change began not with something, but someone -- a childhood friend who had apparently been inspired by my previous emulation of my father in the months during which we knew one another. Phoenix Wright was concerned by my reputation as the "Demon Prosecutor", and took it upon himself to become a defense lawyer so that we might cross paths -- whether I wished it or not.

Wright displayed surprising courage, skill, and intelligence in court -- so much so, in fact, that he managed to uncover the truth behind two wrongful accusations on my part in as many months. In this way, my perfect record was destroyed, and my first doubts as to its value were planted. Unfortunately, my arrogance, my hatred for his profession, and my conflation of defendants with criminals prevented me from changing before the events of the year's end.

[Diarmuid remained silent, attentive as ever. A mostly quiet person by nature, he preferred listening to speaking whenever he could manage it.]

On Christmas Eve of that year, I was called out to a lake to meet with a man, only for him to shoot a gun twice, deliberately missing both times, before diving into the water. I was too dumbfounded at the time to process it as anything but a suicide that had taken place before my eyes.

The next day, Robert Hammond's body was found in the lake. I was arrested on suspicion of murdering the man. I tried to refuse counsel, especially once Wright saw fit to try to involve himself, as the fact that anyone would wish to frame me for such a murder had made it far more difficult to tell myself that the nightmare I'd had about my Father's murder all the more credible. Concerning Wright in particular, I still regarded him as the enemy -- when he first showed up at the detention center, I had assumed that he had come to laugh.

As it turned out, Wright refused to take "no" for an answer. Once his persistence in investigating the murder led to him uncovering its connection to the DL-6 trial of fifteen years prior, I allowed him to represent me out of recognition of his dedication.

The prosecutor for the case was my own mentor, Manfred von Karma himself. I had assumed it to be merely coincidental. I should have known better, given his ability to plan and to control circumstances -- indeed, the most valuable techniques of his that I know.

[It could never truthfully be said that Diarmuid wasn't clever. He was brilliant by any era's standards, and so it took only a moment's thought before he followed things through to the most logical conclusion.]

...you were...betrayed by your mentor, weren't you? [There was a look on his face that was at once sympathetic and yet clearly understanding on some strange level.]

Make no mistake, Diarmuid -- I expected neither mercy nor sympathy from him in court. What did come as a surprise, however, is the truth of the matter: he orchestrated Robert Hammond's murder as part of an elaborate scheme of vengeance. He raised and educated me not for the sake of his legacy or the suffering of still more criminals; rather, he wished to see me rise to fame and infamy, and then fall in the public eye and be executed for murder -- whether Robert Hammond's, or my father's. He saw to it that my natural tendency towards isolation was reinforced; it was his intention that once that day came, I would have no one to turn to.

...I am so sorry, Edgeworth.

[Nothing even he'd lived through could quite match up to that. Fionn's betrayal came close in the end, but it wasn't quite as extreme.]

Like so many high crimes, it all revolved around hatred. [Edgeworth's slipping composure reveals anger giving way to despair as he leans his head on his hand again.] Von Karma's hatred of my father for putting the slightest scratch upon his record led him to... to murder Father when power returned and the e-elevator door opened before him to reveal our unconscious forms and... a-and the very gun I'd thrown. And yet, to see Father dead did not satisfy him -- he went so far as to attempt to manipulate my life into ruins in order to sate his thirst for vengeance! My own hatreds... he recognized them as weapons that he could use against me. E-even in my own murder trial... he knew that should I be found innocent of the murder of Robert Hammond, the incident would stoke my doubts and cause me to... to mistakenly confess to causing Father's death.

I-if not for Wright, I...

...I wish I knew what to say, Edgeworth. You and I seem strangely similar, and yet the differences are numerous enough that I find myself utterly at a loss for what consolation I could possibly give.

[Nearly offended:] I am not telling you this in order to earn your sympathy, Diarmuid. [More neutrally:] I merely recognize that hatred is defining of my life. It is my hope that in coming to understand it, you can better understand hatred itself, including that which haunts you now.

Ah...of course, I'm sorry. It's just--no, forget it.

Tell me, then, how is it exactly that one is meant to stop such hatred from overcoming them? How do you live with it?

Patience, Diarmuid -- there is much of my case yet to be presented. Furthermore, the additional perspective on hatred itself may be of use in forming your own conclusions.

My apologies. Go ahead, I'm listening.

[Edgeworth takes a couple of breaths before continuing.]

I wasn't sure what to make of what happened for some time. I was of course angry at Manfred von Karma at first, but he was to suffer and even be swiftly executed for his crimes, to say nothing of all that he had done for me despite his ulterior motives. My misplaced trust was too slow to fade to make the matter of accepting the full implications of his true face easy.

Furthermore, there was the matter of Wright. Although it was clear that he didn't wish me ill, I simply couldn't grasp why. Even if we were friends in grade school, we were still enemies now, or so I thought. My mentor's influence was not so easily disregarded even after the truth of his schemes were brought to light. At the same time, in light of my mentor's betrayal, I couldn't be certain that Wright's motives were what they seemed to be.

Finally, I now had my doubts that I was worth saving to begin with. In prosecution, I had found a calling that suited me better than my boyhood dream of following my father into the role of defense. Even some traits that hinder me elsewhere are strengths in such a position. And yet, I now wondered whether a prosecutor was any better than a criminal himself. I had all-new reasons to hate myself.

Regardless, with difficulty I continued as best I was able for over a month, despite the fact that on many days I couldn't bring myself to leave my apartment. A major factor in this decision was that my coworkers were the last people remaining whom I felt I could trust.

...

[Another nod of acknowledgment--this time with a strangely forlorn look to accompany it.]

[It was an upsetting matter for Diarmuid that he was hesitant to trust others as completely as he once could. More so that it had taken him this long to truly comprehend that one to whom he swore loyalty was deplorable and dishonorable. Defying one he had once called his Master was...well, it was difficult to articulate. 'Conflicting'? No, there was no question Kayneth wasn't worthy of his respect. He had doubted that from the very beginning, but his loyalty to his Master had mostly silenced those thoughts.]

[Maybe 'complicated' was the only word he could find to describe it. His loyalty had been shattered irreparably the night he died; if not by his death, then by all that Kayneth had said less than an hour beforehand. There was no turning back, and Diarmuid would sooner have died again than returned to the side of one so dishonorable. And yet...there was still a lingering part of him that wondered if that anger and hate was misplaced.]

[His self-deprecation was another matter entirely, one Diarmuid hadn't even recognized as an issue before his Shadow brought it up by trying to kill him. Thoughts like 'why is everyone so kind to me when I don't deserve it' and 'if I'm not helping someone then why am I here' had lurked in the back of his mind for far too long.]

[So he understood. Far too well, he knew what it was like to feel like he wasn't worth saving...or worth anything else, for that matter.]

Little did I realize that those rumors about me that went beyond the scope of my actual misdeeds were the fault of those very coworkers -- that is, until my superior was accused of murdering a detective. Wright defended her. It gradually grew clear that she was blackmailed into acting as the Chief of Police's accomplice. He was not only responsible for the murder, but for rearranging a crime scene and forging evidence in one of my most prominent old cases... as well as unsuccessfully trying to pin the detective's murder on me. He... he then claimed that if I was to continue fighting criminals, I would inevitably need to resort to forgery one day myself.

To have betrayal be laid bare again in such a short time, to have another claim that I would inevitably become a worse man... that was too much to bear. The man I was had to die -- figuratively or otherwise. I fled the district, leaving only a note reading, "Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death."

[Betrayal. Even if he didn't know hatred, that was something Diarmuid understood well.]

[There was nothing he could say; even if there was, he wouldn't dare interrupt.]

I had to reassess what it meant to be a prosecutor and whether prosecutors had any place in a just world. To do that, I would need to come to understand what a prosecutor truly was, what one has the power to do. Until I could answer all of that, I had no rightful place in the Prosecutor's Office. If I could find no satisfactory answers to any of these questions... that was the condition under which my proclamation would become literal.

The journey was not easy. There was even a moment when I might have faltered, had a stray dog not insisted on offering her comfort. Ultimately, the solution began with realizing that there was, in fact, one man whom I still trusted: Phoenix Wright. I had grown uneasy and uncertain as to my own path because despite my having perceived his goal as my defeat, what he had truly done was to prove me wrong, time and again, when others might have given in -- including the one time when proving me wrong did not involve my defeat, but my acquittal. Was arguing until the truth remained the true purpose of court? I recalled that Father seemed to believe so. Wright had believed it when I echoed Father's words as a boy.

This is one of the reasons why I say that understanding is the key to not just appropriate action, but also virtue -- it is when I began to truly understand the shared purpose of prosecution and defense that my first inappropriate hatreds could be vanquished. To truly hate something, one must see no place for it in an ideal world.

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