A/N: Since I've only got two chapters left that I haven't posted, I decided just to get it over with and post them.
Kara Danvers brushed an errant blonde lock back behind her ear as she sat on a bench in the back of the courtroom as she waited for the courtroom to refill. As a cub reporter for the Daily Planet affiliate in Starling City, she had been assigned to cover the trial of Moira Queen, the only known conspirator aside from the deceased Malcolm Merlyn, primarily because she was not a native of the city (having only moved here over the summer because this was the only posting available within the Daily Planet's network of reporters) and therefore would have no bias in her reporting. The editor-in-chief of the Planet in Metropolis, Perry White, wanted it that way to keep the edge the Planet always had when it came to their reporting, or so Kara's bosses had said.
In truth, she was sure she had been selected because she was young, blonde, beautiful, and a fresh face amid the seasoned reporters who Oliver Queen would be more apt to open up to. The man was certain to be a central figure in the trial due to his stand against corruption (for which he was recently shot), a direct contrast to his mother, who had become the face of the corruption at work in the heart of Starling's elite. It probably also didn't hurt in her bosses' minds that she was a near dead ringer for Queen's E.A., Felicity Smoak, whom people believed he made his E.A. solely because they were intimately involved, and his father had had a reputation for getting involved with his young, beautiful secretaries.
Well, that particular theory had been blown out of the water as far as Kara was concerned; Sara Lance and Oliver Queen were obviously involved with the way she had accompanied him to the trial today; if Felicity Smoak was involved with Queen, she would be here to support him no matter how much people talked about it. Though, from the sounds of it, their relationship had essentially begun because Queen had inherited his father's wandering eye and cheated on Sara's sister with her. Kara tried to picture doing that to her sister and just couldn't see her hurting Alex that way. Alex was her rock, her best friend, her protector in some ways; destroying that relationship for a man, no matter how handsome, just seemed wrong to her.
Queen and Lance entered the courtroom along with Queen's sister, Thea, and her boyfriend. Despite how high profile the Queen family was in Starling City, there hadn't been a lot of talk about the boyfriend, who had grown up in the part of the city Merlyn had tried to destroy.
Kara's mind turned to the other major players in the trial: Assistant District Attorney Adam Donner and the defendant herself, Moira Dearden Queen. Kara found Donner to be a completely odious human being (quite literally, since the man was like a walking column of aftershave that offended Kara's Kryptonian senses!) and it was obvious that he didn't care about the people who had died in the Undertaking; he was just using their deaths and this trial against the woman who had become the public face of the Undertaking for his own agenda. The city council were running things well enough for now in Starling City, but soon a new mayor would need to be elected. The District Attorney, Kate Spencer, had no political ambitions, leaving Donner primed to seek election. If he did so while riding high on the wave of convicting Moira Queen for the Undertaking, well, he would practically be writing his own ticket not only to the office of mayor, but potentially to a Senate career one day.
As to the defendant, Kara didn't know what to think of the Queen family matriarch. On the one hand, Kara understood fear, perhaps better than anyone else in this room. Every day, she lived in fear of someone discovering that while she looked human, she was far from it and trying to capture her so they could experiment on her, dissect her to learn her strengths and her weaknesses, and she knew her pleadings would fall on deaf ears. Worse, if she were discovered and she tried to evade capture, her family would be taken prisoner to force her into giving herself up. After everything Alex, Jeremiah, and Eliza had done for her, she would never be able to live with herself if something happened to them.
So, yes, she understood fear better than anyone. But she didn't know if she would be able to keep silent for years, as Moira Queen had, while someone plotted the deaths of thousands. Her parents' marriage had been very strained because of Alura's dedication to justice and Zor's dedication to the progression of science at all costs (a far cry from his brother Jor's belief that all science must be progressed ethically), and Kara's own predispositions leaned more towards her mother's than her father's. Perhaps if she was her father's daughter, she would be able to understand Moira Queen more.
Of course, perhaps the singular most important part of Moira Queen's decisions laid in one feeling: hope. Until Oliver Queen had, presumably, confronted Merlyn and inspired his mother, Moira Queen had been devoid of hope. Kara could understand that, as well; with each year that passed since her arrival on Earth, her hope waned further and further that she would one day see her baby cousin again. Hope, above all else, was what drove people to push beyond their selfish wants and desires. Ironically, the single ray of hope this city had had in decades came in the form of a vigilante with a penchant for turning people into pincushions, who had since been joined by a femme fatale in a revealing black leather outfit and who seemed to be just as deadly, when needed, as her Robin Hood-inspired partner.
The Arrow and the Canary each had their own clear-cut missions, but overall their goal seemed to be to clean up the city, weed out corruption and criminality, and bring the city back from the brink. Kara had to admit that she had been tempted more than once to find them with her powers and observe them, get a scoop that other reporters would kill for. But her ethics, both those she had learned at her mother's knee and those the Danvers family had instilled in her, kept her from following through on such a temptation. Besides, the last thing she needed was to stumble on the two in a combat situation, get shot, and essentially expose herself. Alex would never let her hear the end of it.
The judge entered the courtroom, and Kara's attention was refocused on the matter at hand. Covering the trial of the century was going to be a major feather in her cap and could earn her a job under Perry White one day if she kept delivering. She shoved all of her thoughts and potential biases aside and focused only on getting the facts of the trial, briefly thanking Rao for her nearly-perfect memory recall. It certainly helped in writing her stories.
*DC*
Malcolm Merlyn's hand hovered over the tray of tools he had assembled to use on Laurel Lance, as the young woman herself stared at him with wide, horrified green eyes that were shining with unshed tears, her cheeks puffing in and out around the gag from rapid breathing as the anticipation built. "I spent a long time deciding how I wanted you to suffer, Laurel," Merlyn said. "Seeing as we have the entirety of Moira's trial to occupy ourselves with, I think we'll start small." Merlyn picked up a pair of pliers. "You have lovely hands, Laurel; no doubt you often run your fingers through the hair of those you've seduced, further putting them under your thrall. But I wonder how helpful they'll be in seducing men like Oliver and my son when they are swollen, broken, and missing their nails."
Laurel's hands reflexively closed into fists. Merlyn sighed, as if disappointed in such a mediocre defense, and then backhanded her, disorienting her and forcing her to focus on the pain he had just inflicted and causing her to loosen her grip as a result. Merlyn forced one of her fingers straight with one hand and moved the pliers into position with the other, watching Laurel and waiting for her to become fully-aware again. "Stop," Tommy half-sobbed. "Please, Dad. Stop."
"I'm doing this for you, Tommy," Merlyn replied. "For you, for Oliver, for everyone this siren has put under her spell. By the time I am done, she'll still be alive, but no one will see her as the mesmerizing beauty you and Oliver see her as ever again." Laurel began struggling again at hearing this, but Merlyn's grip on her finger was strong. The pliers gripped her fingernail, and then Merlyn began to twist and pull. Muffled grunts of pain emitted from Laurel as she struggled against her bindings and to free her finger from Merlyn's grip.
The muffled grunts became muffled cries of pain as the fingernail began to separate from the flesh beneath it, peeling back. Merlyn adjusted the pliers so that they now had a deeper hold on the fingernail and then continued his work. With the deeper hold on the fingernail, the pliers pulled the fingernail free with a near inaudible 'sucking' that Laurel's screaming sob covered up. Merlyn deposited the ruined fingernail on the tray. "That's one," he said, releasing Laurel's finger before grabbing another, the pain she was feeling having consumed her attention momentarily.
Even through her gag, Laurel's muffled, repeated sobs of, "No," were discernible. Tommy's cheeks were wet with tears and he was shaking his head, trying to deny the horror he was witnessing. Intellectually, he had known his father was a monster; but there was something detached in his father's plan for the Glades. His father hadn't been personally planning how each of the thousands living there would die and carrying that out. As monstrous as the Undertaking was, it had been a detached kind of revenge and even understandable, given the message he seemed to listen to from Tommy's mother every chance he got. But this, what he was doing to Laurel right in front of him? It was somehow more real, more visceral, being helpless as he watched his father torture the woman he loved because he had gotten it into his head that Laurel was some kind of seductress.
"Please, Dad, stop," Tommy sobbed.
Malcolm said nothing, but instead began to twist and pull at the nail on Laurel's second finger.
*DC*
"Mr. Donner. Call your first witness," the judge ordered the politically-ambitious Assistant District Attorney.
"Your Honor, the people call Mr. Walter Steele to the stand," Donner said, standing. A side door opened, and Walter entered the courtroom, taking a seat in the witness box and purposely not looking in the direction of the defendant. "Mr. Steele, would you please explain to the court when you first became suspicious of your wife at the time, Moira Queen?"
"It was the day after the shooting at the auction for Unidac Industries," Walter replied. "Queen Consolidated's compliance department had flagged a 2.6 million-dollar withdrawal from one of the Vancouver subsidiaries. Moira came to me later on and revealed she had invested it in what she called a friend's start-up venture. I tasked Felicity Smoak, whom I had referred to Oliver to help him acclimate to modern technology when he asked, to look into it. Miss Smoak returned to me with information that led me to a warehouse where I discovered the remains of the Queen's Gambit, with clear evidence that it had been sabotaged." Whispers broke out in the courtroom at this revelation and Grell ordered for order in the court.
"What did you do after discovering this?" Donner prompted.
"I decided I wanted to secure the remains of the Queen's Gambit before confronting my wife and tasked Josiah Hudson, the head of security for Queen Consolidated at the time, with arranging the transfer," Walter replied. "Less than twelve hours after my discussion with Josiah, he was killed in an accident and I called Moira to my office and confronted her. She warned me off further investigating, and I decided to take a trip to clear my head. When I returned, I was initially not going to continue investigating, but Miss Smoak had been very diligent in her work and continued to look into the mysterious LLC Moira had set up to take ownership of the warehouse where the Gambit was stored, Tempest, and had dug up a symbol connected to another party that had been following the money trail connected to the warehouse."
"What happened next?" Donner asked.
"Initially, I warned Miss Smoak not to dig into this any further or I would terminate her employment with Queen Consolidated," Walter replied. "But… I found myself searching for anything regarding that symbol at the Queen Mansion and discovered a notebook, supposedly blank, with that symbol printed on the inside cover. I eventually brought Miss Smoak to my office and asked her to find out everything she could about the notebook. She later came to me, having discovered that a list of names was contained within the book, written in some sort of invisible ink. She further uncovered, as Christmas approached, that the names on this List shared a commonality with victims of the Starling City vigilante, then referred to as The Hood." Again, whispers broke out, and again the judge ordered for order in the court.
"What did you do after these discoveries?" Donner asked.
"Moira eventually discovered I had continued investigating and confronted me," Walter replied. "When I urged her to go to the authorities, that we could stop them, she replied that she was them. Seeing I wouldn't stop, Moira promised me that we would talk once the holidays were over. Barely twenty-four hours later, I was abducted from Queen Consolidated and held prisoner in Bludhaven for months until the vigilante rescued me."
"Do you believe the defendant had anything to do with your abduction?" Donner asked.
"I believe she must have spoken to Malcolm Merlyn about me, and that he arranged the abduction, but I have no proof of that," Walter replied.
"Thank you, Mr. Steele," Donner said. "I'm sorry if you had to revisit painful memories. No more questions, Your Honor."
Jean Loring stood and walked towards the witness stand. "Mr. Steele, how many years did you work for Queen Consolidated?"
"I started at Queen Consolidated just out of business school, so almost twenty years ago, now," Walter replied.
"In that time, what would you say was the relationship between Robert Queen and Malcolm Merlyn?"
"Objection, relevance," Donner called, standing.
"Ms. Loring?" Grell asked.
"This ties into Mr. Steele's presence here today, Your Honor, if you'll give me just a little leeway," Jean replied.
"I'll allow it, but you had best be proving one hell of a point, counselor," Grell said. "Answer the question, Mr. Steele."
"I would say that Robert and Malcolm were very close, thick as thieves as it were," Walter said. "They were the very best of friends, godfathers to each other's sons."
"And how would you rate your own relationship with Malcolm Merlyn in comparison?"
"We were business associates, nothing more," Walter replied.
"Then how is it you are standing here today, Mr. Steele?" Jean challenged with her voice suddenly sharp as the sting from a bullwhip. "Malcolm Merlyn arranged for the destruction of the Queen's Gambit with the intent of killing a man you describe as his very best friend. Why then are you, nothing more than a business associate to him by your own words, still alive today if he could kill his own best friend without a second's thought?"
"I… don't know," Walter said after a moment.
"You can think of no one who might have pleaded to Malcolm Merlyn on your behalf, stopping him from killing you with a car bomb or a sniper's bullet?" Jean pressed. "Did you ever ask Moira Queen why you were still alive, given Robert's fate?"
"No, I didn't," Walter replied.
"Thank you, Mr. Steele," Jean replied. "I have no more questions for this witness, Your Honor."
"Mr. Steele, you may step down now with the court's thanks," Judge Grell said, and Walter exited the courtroom as directed by the bailiff.
A/N: Hope the courtroom scene worked out for everyone and that you all enjoyed the chapter.
