Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

[toxicspiderman]

Most days, fish and chips (and a cold beer or three) was pretty goddamned high on S.T.'s list of perfect expense-account lunches. Today, the idea of picking at greasy hunks of unidentified bottom-feeder odds-and-ends (politely known as scrod, to the delight of teenagers all across the Northeast) didn't appeal.

He begged off and collapsed into his bed, after using his damp shirt as an excuse to surreptiously check the contents of his closet. Bingo. His nurse watched his little show, unimpressed but (more importantly) unsuspicious. Not that his hairy chest was much of a catch today, pale and sweating from fever. At least she didn't tuck him in.

The intercom woke up up right on schedule, and pulling the sheets back over his head almost won. But a handful of unanswered missives and a vague sense of duty dragged him out to the bulletin, and from there it was easier to stagger over to the greenhouse.

It was warm inside -- a deep, humid warmth that actually penetrated to the aches in more joints and muscles than he could remember the names of. Like a sauna, without the hassle of finding someplace to look that wasn't a mound of pasty middle-management cellulite. Or a sweat lodge, without the opposite hassle of being conscious that he was the only white guy in the room. In fact, besides the nurses in holding patterns, he was the only person in the room.

He located a tray of tomato seedlings going rootbound in their tiny six-packs, and a potting bench whose location was a quick-and-dirty approximation of equidistantly far from anything blooming. He assured his nurse he knew what he was doing, and after a couple of successful repottings, gently sliding the little seedlings out and loosening the tangled roots, she seemed to agree and backed off. It was, by far, the most fucking theraputic thing he'd found in this hellhole so far, and he let himself sink into the rhythm of the task.

[Free!]

Comments

[hotbitterproof.livejournal.com]

"Don't get ahead of yourself." Frills was too hopeful for his own good, but luckily, he had Godot there to tug on the reigns. "You still don't know where the prior knowledge came from. And you know just how much a prosecutor can get away with based on his good word. Even keeping a key witness off the stand, unless the defense is good enough to drag the cat out of the bag. No doubt the court accepted Blondie Number Two's good word with pressing for more."

And that would be your mistake, Trite. Just one of many in this mess.

"Who knows? The good forger might have come forward himself. Wouldn't be the first leaf to change colors with the seasons." And that's where objectivity came in. Frills wasn't thinking, and he missed that little fact. Trying to force the evidence to match the conclusion was a mistake rookies made--and Edgeworth had been a prodigy even in his first case.

Godot should know.

"Convenience isn't evidence! Don't accept a second place beauty queen just because she winks at you, Pretty Boy. If you want to play the defense, it's the top prize or nothing!" Who knew talk of the future would make him so nostalgic. He wasn't wearing the mask, but somewhere inside Godot, Diego Armando smiled.

"So the storyteller voted in Trite's favor, did he?" Now Godot mulled over the thought: water trickled into the filter, and mixed with the grounds to form the brew. "Interesting little ploy. Now answer me this. What could you possibly have been doing that would have kept you away from those little proceedings, Frills? And not just you, but all of those other moths that gather around Trite's flame. You said it didn't make sense, but you're the one not thinking it through. Water doesn't just become tea because you pour it into a cup!"

[high-prosecutor.livejournal.com]

"I'm all too aware of the fact that with the prosecutor's badge comes a level of trust that the defense is never granted," Edgeworth snapped back. "It's a fact we've both exploited, I'm sure. But, wouldn't it be more likely for a new prosecutor to hide a witness that could turn on them? After all, if the forger didn't come forward of his own volition, and the wrong questions were asked, things could go wrong all too quickly."

He tilted his head to one side. He knew he wasn't thinking about this case objectively, but it was difficult to do so. The voice had reacted violently to the story, and in particular, to the storyteller. It had only acted that way in the presence of one other person. Of course, that wasn't objective evidence, but it hadn't steered him wrong before.

"Question, then: why would the forger come forward on his own? After all, forgery is a crime on its own. I don't see him doing so, if for no other reason than wanting to avoid jail time. It's more likely that he was coerced, or offered something in return for his testimony against Wright. A plea bargain, or something else?"

That last thought, the reasons he hadn't been there...it was that thought that had led to him losing his temper before. He closed his eyes, turning away in order to cool his head for just a moment before he turned back to Godot again.

"In theory, there are a number of reasons that I wouldn't have been there. A delayed flight, another kind of snarl in the travel plans..." He trailed off for just a moment. "There's also the distinct possibility that because of my own past, I...would have been asked not to be there, or not told until it was too late.

Likewise, you know as well, if not better than I, what kind of situation Maya Fey was in at the time. It may have been a simple act of protecting her from further stress. She had just been thrust unexpectedly into what I can only imagine was a difficult leadership position. That's not even getting into the tension between the various factions in the family, each of them wanting their own way. So...perhaps we weren't told until everything was over."