When You're Broken On The Ground

Chapter 26

Trigger Warnings: talk of murder, court cases, emotionally abusive parents, talk of intrusive thoughts, mentioned past attempted suicide, swearing (it's Remus, it's not being light).

Word Count: 1178

Dee steps down and Remus goes up. The chair is uncomfortable but he puts his hand on the book of law and swears to tell the truth.

"Your name, for the court please?" 

"Remus Romulus Duke." Sharing a middle name with his twin, how fun.

"Age?"

"Twenty seven years old." 

"Occupation?" 

"Criminal reformist." The lawyer snorts at that and he has to resist the urge to yell at him. Yeah he works with criminals, so what? The prison system is fucked and is biased towards keeping whites safe and giving them less time than colored people. And women, gods women are treated so badly in prison. Him being there, working with those people, that's doing more work than whatever bullshit the police are doing in the streets.

"And your name, it's not your real name either, is it?"

Remus rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I changed my last name, so what?"

"Can you list your full born name for the court?" Oh joy, the shitty memories of the oh so wonderful King family... 

"Sure, whatever. Remus Romulus King."

"Your twin changed his name too, just like your boyfriend and his twin. What happened there?"

"Eh, same as Dee and Pat. Distancing myself from my crappy parents and Roman wanted Prince, I wanted Duke. We comprised so now I'm Duke and he's Prince." Yeah, crappy parents. Insulting him for his ideas, comparing him to Roman, calling Roman the good twin and him the bad twin, all the homophobic remarks they threw at him, that's just crappy and definitely not emotionally abusive. 

"Crappy parents? As I recall you and your twin had a good relationship-"

"Lies. We hated our parents and their stupid bullshit."

"I'm sorry but-"

"Look, talk about the stuff you understand and not the stuff you don't. My dead childhood doesn't matter."

"Right. Now your medical records, they say you have heighten intrusive thoughts?"

"Yep," he replies, popping the p.

"What exactly does that mean for you?"

"Oh you know, all those thoughts and voices telling you to randomly jump out of moving car or  tear out your heart are just heighten. I take medication for it," he ends with a shrug. 

"Uh huh..." the guys looks on edge and that reassures Remus a bit. Disturbing people are his specialty. He can deal with on edge people. "Anyway, Mr. Duke, what were you and your boyfriend doing at 9 o'clock on the night of Mr. Smith's murder?"

"Star gazing, duh."

"Why?"

"Because a year ago was the start of one of our biggest traumatic events and he thought it would help." 

"And did it?"

"Yeah."

"And what happened to you that day?"

"Which day?" Remus fires back.

"The so called 'traumatic event'."

"Well first, it was a traumatic event, my therapist told me that acknowledging that it happened helps with acceptance. Second, I tried to commit suicide." He keeps up his facade of not-caring, but he can feel the emotions welling up from that admittance. He hasn't said those words, out loud, in years. 

"You were unsuccessful?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course I was unsuccessful, I'm alive and in front of you!"

"And your attempted suicide, was that because of-"

"Thomas' accident yeah, and yes I wanted revenge, and no I didn't do it, and yes I was with Dee the entire trip, we didn't even go near the place of the murder."

the lawyer guy blinks, stunned, and Remus smirks. "Aww cat got your tongue? I pay attention, I know you're just going to ask me the same questions as my darling cobra and I also know that my answers will be the same as his because we. Didn't. Do. It."

"Very well. Do your memories line up with his recounts of the day?"

"Yes."

"Would you say Mr. Líar holds a grudge for a long time?"

"Eh, it depends on the slight." He doesn't answer it, knowing the truth won't look kindly on Dee.

"Let's it's small, someone eat his reserved food, for example."

"Who?"

"What do you mean 'who'?"

"Who stole his food? It depends on the person too."

"I don't know, one of your friends!"

"Hmm, if it were Roman he'd use it as an excuse to mess with him for months. If it were Virgil he'd get revenge by eating his food and call it even. If I did it he'd do something like repaint my car or some other prank. If-"

"We get it we get it! What if someone hurt you?"

"What do you mean?" Remus asks coldly, dropping his carefree attitude.

"What if, someone neither of you know hurt you? Beat you to the brink of death? What would he do?"

A shiver runs it's way through Remus' body, setting goosebumps off. He doesn't want to answer, but he swore to tell the truth. Sighing, he answers. "Dee would make sure I was safe and then go after them in cold blood. He'd do that for any of the family."

"Oh, so what's to say he didn't do that nine years ago?"

One breath. 

Two  breaths.

Three breaths.

"It took months for all of us to come back from what happened physically. Mentally, we're still scarred. Dee won't have gone after them until we were all okay, and we weren't for a long time. We all got therapists, so he never got the chance to start hunting before he was working through everything."

"Interesting choice of words, 'hunting'. Why do you say hunting?"

"I don't know, there's not exactly a good word for it. 'Tracking' works, I guess. Or 'finding', that works better."

"Right..." the lawyer's losing his edge again, good. "No more questions."

"Good, you weren't doing too good anyway," Remus comments.

Logan stands up. "Remus I will make this quick. These pictures, you took the last one, correct?"

"Yep! I had the camera and I liked how Dee looked."

"And what is the reason there are no pictures between 9:03 and 9:57?"

"It got too dark, we tried but they didn't turn out so we deleted them. Only reason I got the one of Dee is because of the headlights."

"Lovely, thank you Remus."

He nods and walks back to his seat next to his boyfriend. 

The judge stands up. "The jury will discuss. You can not leave the building, and when we are ready you will be summoned." With that she exists, followed by the jury. 

The creeps leave after that, while everyone else gathers up near the front. 

"Well that went better than expected," Dee drawls.

"I believe we have solid evidence to prove them wrong," Logan comments, packing up his papers into his briefcase. 

"Hey gang," Remy speaks up. "Emile's gotta head to work so he's not coming back."

"That's cool, hope he got to his patient in time," Remus says.

"Yeah. Now, let's go grab some god awful government coffee," Virgil cheers enthusiastically.