"The past is gone. It went by, like dusk to dawn."

[nickthewarbler]

Who: nickthewarbler, warble_on_jeff, alittletoolegal and jewhawk (posting order)
What: The verdict
Where: New York County Criminal Court, Manhattan
When: Wednesday afternoon, a couple of weeks after THIS
Rating: Leaving it open

Comments

[warble_on_jeff]

It had only been a matter of weeks that the trial had gone on... Dani, her legal team, and a number of witnesses fighting like hell to clear Nick's name, and to let everyone know, once and for all, that Neil Carter was a horrible person, an evil son of a bitch who'd pushed Nick to the point of having no choice but to defend himself, even when that had come at the cost of the bastard's life. Nick had never intended to kill Neil, and his act had been one of pure desperation not to die himself. Everyone in Nick's life knew that. They all knew the gentle person he'd been, though for some, like Jeff, it had been a long time since the last time they saw him before he fell into this life with his husband. But Nick was not, at heart, cold-blooded, and certainly not a killer. He wouldn't even hurt an animal, much less a human being, unless pushed to it with no other choice. Yes, it had only been a few weeks, but for Jeff, and everyone who loved Nick? It had felt more like an eternity

[alittletoolegal]

Dani was sure she had never felt this bad in her life. The collective amount of sleep she had over the past weeks was negligible and whilst it could be argued that it was all catching up with her, it just felt like something was wrong. She had been pregnant once before, and she knew that maternal instinct could be a powerful thing sometimes. Completely unexplainable. There was also the fact that a woman just knew her body, and you knew when something wasn't right with it. She didn't know what it was, but she knew that whilst they had been waiting in her office that wasn't too far from the court house for the jury to declare verdict, she had privately made an urgent phone call with her doctor for that afternoon, and she had been planning to go whether the verdict had come or not

[jewhawk]

Ordinarily, Puck would've been at Dani's, getting ready for Benny to come home. But his son had football practice, and one of the other moms, whose son was one of Benny's good friends, asked if Puck and Dani would mind the boys having a play date, and Benny had seemed so excited that they couldn't say no. With everything going on around him, it was hard for them to find things that really got Benny excited anymore, and they'd given in to the request pretty quickly

[nickthewarbler]

Probably looking back on this, Nick would never, ever know how he got through it. In fact, he probably would barely even remember most of it. The courtroom was dead silent and despite the fact the room was massive, it felt hot and claustrophobic to Nick, like the walls were trying to close in on him. He could hear a throbbing in his ears and he couldn't ignore how menacing the police guards looked at the side exit of the courtroom where he would be dragged away in cuffs after the guilty verdict to be thrown in prison for god knows how long

[warble_on_jeff]

As the words were read from the paper, Jeff's eyes never left Nick. He was terrified, and Jeff knew it. He fought off all the urges to wish for things he couldn't have, and focused on this moment, on getting through this verdict. Nick and Dani stood close together, and Jeff was grateful that she was with him, holding onto him so he would know he wasn't alone. And then came the first not guilty, and Jeff didn't dare to give himself the pleasure of even a moment's relief, because there were two more charges, and he knew it.

A second not guilty, and his hand was tightening around Mercedes's. If he was found guilty of the last charge, as much as Jeff was fighting the relief, he knew that he'd be crushed. They'd come so far, they were so close, and they had to make it through this last thing. The third not guilty had hit Jeff with the force of a fighter jet, and he couldn't hold back the tears of relief anymore. They rolled down his face freely as he felt Mercedes's hand move to gently rub his back in that protective mama way she had down

[alittletoolegal]

The relief and disbelief hit Dani like a tonne of bricks. In fact, it felt like she was knocked over with just that. At first, she couldn't even process or absorb that Nick was just declared not guilty of every horrible charge the prosecution tried to pin him with, and that all the blood, sweat, tears and heartache with her trying to build this case with every intricate detail was worth it. Her beloved cousin, who was like a brother to her, was free. It would take a lot more than a court verdict to release him from the terrible lingering affects of everything he suffered, but now he was cleared and rightfully so

[jewhawk]

What followed the verdict seemed like the world spinning completely and totally out of control, like it was going a million miles a minute, and in slow motion all at the same time, and Puck was completely and utterly confused. Dani was swaying in place, clearly in pain, and suddenly, he heard Nick's voice crying out in fear that she was bleeding. Why the fuck would she be bleeding? His first thought was something crazy like a gunshot wound from a gun with a silencer, but that was too many gangster movies speaking, and there was no reason for anyone to hurt Dani anyway. Still, he couldn't figure out why she'd be bleeding... not enough for this

[nickthewarbler]

There was no end to horrible scenarios that were abruptly playing through Nick's already-scrambled mind when he saw that Dani was bleeding. It went to the same place as Puck's, and then some, but as far as he was concerned, anyone on that opposing team would have reason to hurt Dani. The very evil bastard they were fighting for seemed to feel he had all the reasons in the world to hurt Nick over and over again, so why wouldn't his own flesh and blood, and team of cheerleaders in his honour have the same tendencies. His verdict suddenly felt irrelevant, and he grabbed Dani as soon as she passed out, managing to catch her before she fell and hurt herself. All he could do was sink down to his knees to lower her to the floor, because the condition he had been in himself these past few weeks, he had very little physical strength left. Dani was petite and tiny, but it still felt like a dead weight in Nick's arms when she went down