Yeah, this is shorter than normal but it's a flashback so whatever. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys it and I think I have 5 more to write then I'll be caught up with that. I've been working on another fanfic so I haven't gotten around to making the next trial but I'll get it up eventually. So please let me know what you think so far, remember that I'll post the 2nd trial as a crossover (not trying to annoy anyone but this is so new and old readers know), and enjoy! Cheers. C:
Flashback 1:
Helena's point of view:
I was always that off a child. Growing up my parents taught me all sorts of "occult, supernatural, mystical" ideas that were passed on from our ancestors. While other girls played with their dolls dressing them up to look pretty, I was practicing hoodoo trying to heal those who were sick. I studied medicine and practiced fortunetelling looking beyond the visible world for answers I could never find in my everyday life.
People treated me as though a foreigner undignified and not among the normal I was never respected or treated with any form of compassion. I had no friends and no one wanted to even assort with me. Then one day, I saw another kid being beaten up and sought out the teacher to ensure that child received due punishment. He got away with it and that made me upset. That night while bored searching through channels of uninteresting rubbish I saw a courtroom battle. I froze there seeing what I always wanted a well-respected person whom people looked up to and admired. Not only that but unlike my teachers who would see injustice and never delivered due punishment, that man I saw on the TV gave those vile people exactly what they deserved. It was then I knew I wanted to be a prosecutor just like the guy on the TV.
I graduated top of the class determined to get into law school and teach my peers not only that I was worthy of respect but no one was above the law that I could deliver a guilty verdict to those who deserved it. 6 years later I managed to gain a position at the London Prosecutor's offices and quickly delivered merciless justice to those who were guilty.
Even then I was an oddball though whereas most prosecutors went for the guilty verdict I went for the truth. I could never live with myself if I sent an innocent man to the gallows without looking at all possibilities. Soon, witnesses and defendants alike grew to fear me for I wasn't the weak hearted prosecutor who would take the easy way out. I wouldn't stop till I found the truth. In 3 short years, I had earned one of my most impressive achievements in my life at the early age of 27. The queen herself had given me her respect as a Royal prosecutor of her majesty. I was the youngest prosecutor ever to stand in court as her majesty's representative in the Old Bailey amongst my fellow prosecutors. I had earned the respect of the entire nation.
It was for this reason I had to meet the man who would one day become my husband: the infamous Clive Dove. Clive was a young rather good-looking wealthy journalist who ended up doing a story on my assent to the Old Bailey Court. We'd hit it off rather easily and before long he was courting me. Unlike the other males who revered me as some goddess or high school boys who ignored my presence, Clive treated me fairly and as a person and as did I to him. He never showed any signs of his insanity until that fateful day when he tried to destroy London. Fortunately, he regained his senses but now the man who I had married by this point was imprisoned and looking forward to a life imprisonment.
I had appealed to the higher courts for some form of mercy and was left a rather hard choice: Clive would receive mental treatment to ensure he was stable enough to live in society again but would spend 25 years so we'd end up in our 50's by the time he was released or he'd receive his treatments and once he returned to being a stable non-terrorist he would be banished from the European Union never to set foot anywhere in Europe for the rest of his life. It was a tough choice but in the end, I don't think I could wait that long so we reluctantly choose the latter. It saddens the country to know I'd join my husband and we'd leave together heading for the LA district area where I'd received a new position as a high prosecutor of the US.
Little did I know that this single choice would change so much but in the end, I decided to put my needs over my own countries.
Clive was infertile. The gasses and fuel he used for his time traveling scheme had made his salmon dry up and die. There was no way for us to have kids the traditional way. That was fine with me I always imagined adoption: there were over 8 billion people on this planet I figured it was better to deal with what we have then made more down the road.
So here we were at the local adoption center. Thankfully even though I find this abhorrent, the state of California had made their laws rather lax even with something as basic as adoption so Clive's history wouldn't keep us from adopting.
"Hello, Mrs. Fennery. Mr. Clive. Welcome. I am Sheila and I'll show you the wonderful boys and girls we have here at our home." I had kept my last name. What good is it to forget where you came from?
"Thank you, Sheila. I can't wait to meet them." I replied smiling. The home looked rather bare bones suggesting this was one of those people who take kids in to splurge their government funding on themselves and not on their charges.
She whistled and out came a bunch of kids wearing their bests clothes looking excited and eager to leave this place. The woman frowned suggesting not all of them were there.
"Hold on. Let me go see if I can find that rascal Apollo. That silly kid never comes around when I whistle for the kids." she rolled her eyes in annoyance as she left to get the other kid.
Meanwhile, I was looking over the kids asking questions which they answered politely. I wasn't totally sure which child would be best to take in. But then the woman came in with a stern remark about Apollo's unruly behavior.
Apollo was a scrawny 9-year-old wearing a plain red t-shirt with simple cargo shorts and a gold bracelet. He seemed confused muttering in Khura'inese which I knew for a fact that no one in America spoke.
"I'm sorry. I don't understand why this kid never comes when I whistle." the ignorant woman stated.
I rolled my eyes and stated bluntly, "He's from Khura'in. In that country, whistling is used for attracting animals, not humans. You're supposed to ring a silver bell as a sign of calling."
The woman stared at me in what I assumed was annoyance. "Well, it's too loud around here for me to use a bell."
"Then why not say "Soroka Otsuka? That means come here in Khura'inese. Or have you never even tried learning a single phrase of the language?"
This made her fume. "This is America we speak English around here. He should speak our language."
"I didn't know English was owned by America. If I recall it's a bastard language of French, Latin, and Germanic dialects along with other languages jumbled in."
"You can't say that in front of the kids!" she admonished.
"And you shouldn't treat them like dirt. Children who are bilingual are a gift, not a curse. Maybe he doesn't speak English not because he doesn't know it but because he has nothing to say to an ignorant hag who trounces around all day using her care money for frivolous things instead of educating the young." I replied coolly. "What do you think Apollo?"
He blinked at me then smiled kindly. "I think so. She's been treating me like dirt since I got here because I'm foreign and need to be unsalvageable or something like that," he replied in English making the woman furious.
"You can speak English!"
"The nice woman said so herself didn't she. I don't feel the need to waste my words on a hag like you." he stuck his tongue out at the woman.
"Why you- when the guest leaves I'm going to-"
"Sit around fuming while Apollo comes home with me."
This surprised them both with Apollo looking at me in wonderment.
"Really I can go home with you lady."
"It's Helena. You can call me Helena besides I like you. Why not?" I smiled at the little kid.
"Will you let me become a fancy lawyer just like my daddy?" he asked looking eagerly at me.
"Whatever you want to be Apollo I'll be there for you," I replied. "Now then where's the paperwork?" I continued looking at the flabbergasted woman behind me.
This is where it all began. After adopting Apollo, I became a sort of second mentor to him. His step-father Dhurke had instilled him the ideals of justice that I too followed in my career. So naturally, Apollo enjoyed coming in to watch my trials and other trials (being a prosecutor made it easy to allow the young boy roam the halls of justice). His eyes shined every day watching his heroes on both sides of the court duke it out. His dreams of one day standing on the opposite bench of his mother never faltered as he grew older.
At least till the day, I stood in court with a new prosecutor Klavier Gavin. That day Apollo's greatest hero fell from grace. That day changed him forever. That was the day when he choose my career and the career of that cute German girl he met years ago.
But that's another story for another time after all this is merely the beginning, the stepping stone of fate that changed everything for better or for worse.