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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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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.

⚔ 016; [video]

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