Disclaimer: I do not own Phoenix Wright in any way. Nor do i own The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists, which is where the title of this fic has been taken.

A/n: Last one. I hope you enjoyed the fic.

8) Epilogue: Courage (Sine Qua Non)

She never thought it would be like this. The time is wrong, the reason is wrong, even the weather is wrong. Plots take place in the sunshine. That's how Iris can find something good about them – because the weather is nice. But now? No, it just doesn't seem right.

Her cell rings, startling her. She swiftly picks it up and looks at the caller ID. Godot.

"There's a problem. Come to the Inner Temple right away."

She doesn't give herself time to think – she simply moves. When she sees that the path to the Inner Temple is blocked, she half feels like laughing. Any plan with her involved is doomed to failure. This is simply the proof. She phones Godot and explains the problem.

"We can't just leave the body here..."

Iris thinks about this sentence. If the body is left there, Maya may be implicated. Godot could be implicated. Anyone could be.

If the plan goes wrong, Iris is supposed to take the fall.

She should be panicking right now. She should be losing control. Her aunt is dead. She's betraying her own mother, and her sister. But she's calm.

"We can use the bridge," she says, surprising herself. "The ropes. I can catch her and ... I can hide the evidence."

A pause. "That's a serious offence with a serious penalty as I told you. And if it goes wrong, you may be tried for murder."

(That feels long overdue. And, besides: what is one more sin among the many she has accumulated?)

"I understand."

"You're very courageous ... Alright, let's do this as you said."

"I'm not-" She stops as she realises that Godot has already hung up. "Courageous," she finishes simply. She shakes her head and gets ready to receive the body. Nothing else should matter right now.

'You're very courageous'.

But Iris isn't. She isn't brave in the way Dahlia was and is. She's only doing this to save Maya and Phoenix and to apologise, in a way, to Godot for making him who he is.

(They never formally acknowledged it. But Iris had seen instantly that the man who approached her was who Diego Armando had become. Who Iris helped him become: a mockery of his former self)

Maybe she's even doing it so save Dahlia. Again. Or perhaps she's simply given up?

She sees the body swing towards her and gets ready to pick it up.

Bikini would say that this courage comes from love – the best sort of courage, she once said. But Iris thinks back to Dahlia's words on the scaffolding: don't love anyone. Dahlia had courage and it didn't come from love.

(But Dahlia's courage got her killed)

Iris catches the body and loads it onto her snowmobile. Two more things which need to be done. She'll probably be tried for murder. She'll definitely spend time in prison. But she's doing what has to be done. From love?

If Iris didn't love anyone, she wouldn't be facing time in prison. She wouldn't be hurting Sister Bikini. She wouldn't ache so much inside when she thinks of all the people she failed.

But, she thinks suddenly, if she didn't love anyone, she would never have had the courage to meet Sister Bikini or Phoenix Wright. She would never have had the chance to save even one person.

And maybe that's the one reason why Iris is alive and Dahlia isn't, she thinks. Because if Iris had never loved ... she would never have had the chance to be happy.

Fin