FIVE
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Alan got up, smiling and turning to face the twelve watchers of the jury.
"You've heard Mr Winchester's testimony. You've heard the prosecution ask you to think of Miss White's family and achieve justice for them. But the simple fact of the matter here is that pinning a crime on the first available passer-by is not justice. They cannot prove my client killed Miss Celia White. Why can't they? Because of the complete lack of evidence, caused by the fact that he didn't kill her. No - someone else killed her, someone else he was trying to stop. Is it his fault he failed? No. The man in question - who is known to police from previous arrests and yet still cannot be located, even though they know the make, model and indeed license plate of the 'get away' vehicle - is by all accounts - including those of the FBI--"
"Objection," the prosecuting attorney said quickly. "No FBI files were admitted as evidence."
The judge turned a damning eye on Alan Shore.
"Well of course they weren't," Alan breezed innocently, turning to look at the other attorney, "just as your Satanic knife wasn't. You get to allude to the knife making my client look like a Satan worshipper, plugging the rather large hole where your 'motive' should be, and I get to allude to the 'phantom brother', as you put it, actually being recorded by the FBI as a dangerous individual! We're even!" he grinned ebulliently.
"Mr Shore, just get on with it," the judge grumped.
"Of course," he nodded. "Anyway, where were we… Hmm, clever disruption tactics aside--"
"Mr Shore," the judge boomed.
"Yes yes, I'm so sorry, Your Honour," he grinned. "Ah… yes. So, this brother cannot be located, but he is alleged, possibly by the FBI, to be a strapping twenty-six-year-old in possession of all his faculties. No, it was not Mr Winchester's fault he did not stop the killer in time. Did he try to stop him before his brother stabbed Miss White? Do I really have to answer that for you people after my client's turn on the stand?"
He smiled, appraising his shoes as he waited for this to sink in. He looked at the jury again.
"Here is a man who has spent his entire life - his entire life - looking after his little brother. And wouldn't you? Your mother is killed in a housefire when you're four, your father does what he can but he drinks himself to sleep most nights, and then there's little Sam - innocent little Sammy - starved for affection and someone to raise him. So in steps Dean - the big brother, the role model, the one person who can make someone of him."
Alan put his hands out in helplessness.
"But it doesn't go as planned. Poor Sam has a problem - a problem Dean tries to help with. He does his best, his very best… But you are familiar with this, aren't you? You have children, siblings, younger family members, am I right?" he asked, stretching a supplicating hand out toward the jury. "You know that moment when your brother or sister or your own child comes up to you with that angelic, sweet look of innocence on their face and asks you why the butterfly they caught for you is now on its back with its legs in the air? And you have to explain to them that they killed it, that they destroyed their present to you?" He paused, noticing the water in the eyes of the female juror at the front. "How much more does that hurt, when that poor little sibling is now a young man, unable to comprehend what he is doing to others while under the influence of some popular street drug? That he does not see, cannot understand, that he is shredding his brother's very soul day by day with the struggle with his addiction?"
He shook his head sadly.
"And then one day it gets worse. One day the little brother does something so terrible, so awful, that you have to make a snap decision on what's best for them. So you do. You pull them clear - just the same as every other time you have guided them free of trouble, or say - rescued them from a burning building. A burning building! This man, my client, Dean Winchester--" he cried, turning to point at the solitary figure sat motionless at the defence counsel's table, "--has pulled his baby brother from life-threatening scrapes while still too young to sit a proper school exam, and yet when he tries to save that young man from himself years later, he is incarcerated for it! All he did, ladies and gentlemen, all he was aiming to do, was protect his brother from gaining more of the drug he thought he needed."
He shrugged in surrender, his hands out.
"How many times have you done that, or I? 'No', we say to little Jimmy with his hand in the cookie jar, 'those are bad for you'. Little Jimmy doesn't understand, he doesn't get it, he is angry. But we know what is best for him, we know how to make sure he doesn't get his sugar fix and repeat the sordid sugar-high-comedown-tantrum over and over again. What do we do?" he demanded flippantly. He paused to reduce his volume, letting his hands drop. "We screw the lid more tightly closed… and we place the jar on a higher shelf."
He paused for breath, watching the jurors carefully.
"That's all my client did. That's all he has been doing for the last twenty or so years as he grew up, and then more recently during his brother's addiction - because there was no-one else. With no days off, no holidays, no government-paid-for trips to Walt Disney World for his decades of self-sacrifice. The prosecution will have you believe that he is guilty of the murder of Miss Celia White, just because - and it really is the only reason at all they have to suspect him - he had the knife in his hand. The knife in his hand apparently equals guilt of the murder of a young woman."
Alan stopped to look over his shoulder at Dean. He turned back to face the jury.
"Not so," he said quietly. "You heard him yourself; he is fiercely protective of his brother. All he's ever done, all he's ever wanted to do, is put the lid on that cookie jar and find the right shelf that was finally high enough. He managed to get it one higher that day, and I know that, wherever he has got to, his brother is grateful. But without his brother to help him - to save him, he'll just find a stepladder to reach that cookie jar."
Alan waved a hand at Dean, watching him. "Ignore his record of saving and caring for his brother," he said stridently, his voice echoing round the courtroom. "Ignore how many times he's sacrificed everything he had for him. Ignore too how he tried rather stupidly to do it in this courtroom. But do not ignore what he did not do." He turned to look at the jurors. He raised his hands, touching his index fingers to the tips of this thumbs, waving them to punctuate his next words: "He did not kill anyone." He paused, eyeing them earnestly. "He kept - the lid - on the cookie jar."
He inclined his head, brought his jacket to a close, and walked back to his desk.
The judge took in the stunned silence of the room. He sighed and lifted the gavel. "Court is adjourned while we await the jury's verdict."
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Alan sat in the comfortable chair slowly, relaxing back into it. He watched his client aim himself at the sofa and drop onto the leather surface. He opened his mouth, about to ask after the worried expression on the younger man's face. He abandoned the idea as Dean blew out a sigh and perched an elbow on his knee. He let his forehead sink into the upturned palm and his eyes sink closed.
"I'm guessing no-one's ever noticed what you really do for a living, have they?" Alan offered quietly.
Dean didn't move. "People that need me to hunt down their monsters? Oh, they notice alright," he grunted.
"That's not the burden I was referring to."
Dean opened his eyes and let his hand drop. He looked up at Alan and the lawyer stared back, fascinated by the voracious curiosity in the hunter's gaze.
"If what you say is true about these… monsters," Alan dared, "then I suspect you're very good at what you do. Or you would be dead by now."
"Who says I haven't died already?" Dean said, smiling slightly.
Alan's face took on a whimsical smile. "I suppose the fight for all of us in this day and age is to prove we're still alive. In some way or other." He let his head tilt. "You seem more alive than most people I meet in this job."
Dean snorted in amusement, looking at his feet and shaking his head. "You just don't know me."
"No," Alan agreed, "no, I don't. But sometimes someone on the outside looking in sees these things much more easily than those close to you."
Dean looked up slowly, studying Alan as if unaware of the rest of the room. "I ain't that good at what I do. Otherwise we wouldn't be here," he admitted darkly. "But hey, if you weren't so good at what you do, I'm guessin' some of your clients would be dead by now."
"Odd how the cut-throat world of law and the dangerous underworld of 'monster hunting' seem to share these parallels," Alan smiled.
Dean's face relaxed until it almost looked amused. He looked back at the carpet. "You're good, man. I'll give you that. And you sure can talk."
"We'll see just how good my talk is, in an hour or so," Alan allowed, but he looked smug, there was no denying it.
Dean looked back at him, his face sly. Alan lifted his head and met his gaze. He smiled serenely. Dean's right eyebrow raised in amusement.
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"The court will rise," the bailiff announced, as the judge opened his door and retook his chair. He waved them all down irritably.
"This has taken long enough. Madame Juror, could you give your verdict please?" he asked with impatience and annoyance.
The lady at the end, the one Alan fondly remembered as having teared-up so easily during his closing, stood slowly. She passed the paper forward to the bailiff and it was handed to the judge. He opened it, gave it a cursory glance, and handed it back.
She cleared her throat. "In the case of the Commonwealth versus Dean Winchester, on the charge of first degree murder, we find him: not guilty."
Alan grinned until he heard a noise. He looked to his left, finding his client had plummeted somewhat unexpectedly back down into his seat.
"Thank you, Madame Juror, and the jury," the judge nodded. She sat and he lifted his gavel. "Case is dismissed, everyone's free to go, time for lunch, smoke 'em if you got 'em, yadda yadda yadda," he intoned. "And you, Prosecution, will make sure you actually have evidence before you trap me in this room with Mr Shore again." He ignored the looks from everyone else in the room and got up, disappearing through his exit door in disgust.
Alan heard the noise and hubbub and neglected everyone clamouring for his hand to shake or shoulder to pat. Instead he looked down at his client. "You didn't expect to win, did you?" he asked curiously.
Dean looked up at him, and Alan could have mistaken him for that bewildered twelve-year-old from nineteen ninety-one.
"N-no," Dean managed. He leapt to his feet. "Uhm - thanks."
"It's my job," Alan said curiously. He picked up his briefcase, opening it up on the desk and picking up various files and folders, dropping them inside. "If I may offer another observation?"
"Shoot."
Alan smiled. "Perhaps it hasn't happened in so long that you've forgotten it can happen," he said, closing the briefcase again. "But sometimes you do win. Not because there are rules, but because of what you have done."
"Right," Dean havered, apparently confused. He looked around the courtroom, suddenly realising everyone was leaving. "What happens now?"
"Now? We've won, Mr Winchester, you're free to go."
"We won?"
"As I said - sometimes you do win," he assured him.
"Oh. Right. Yeah," Dean agreed quickly, in a way that told Alan he still didn't quite get it.
"As for what happens next… Try looking after yourself, Mr Winchester, as well as that brother of yours. There are enough monsters in my world to deal with, without the thought of yours - whatever they really are. You go do whatever it is that you do, and I'll pretend I didn't tell you that Sam has already taken your lovely inscribed knife from the exhibits room. I will also pretend that I did not wish you good luck or tell you that I nurse the tiny hope that one day you will be able to bring your brother - and yourself - peace, whatever form that may take."
Alan Shore put out his hand.
Dean looked at it, comprehension dawning. "That's it?"
"That's it," Alan grinned.
"I can go?"
"You can go. You're a free man."
"I wish," Dean grumbled, but he clapped his palm into Alan's and they shook firmly.
"Goodbye, Mr Winchester."
"Goodbye, Mr Shore."
Alan grinned and picked up his case and coat, spiralling around and heading for the exit. Dean looked around the courtroom, shaking his head. Alan stopped suddenly and looked back.
"Oh, Mr Winchester?" he called.
"Huh?"
"If you should ever need my services again, please do not hesitate to call upon me. I believe Sam has my details."
"You'd go through this again?" Dean asked, incredulous.
"Of course! As we have both said, it is my job. And imagine how many cigars and glasses of whisky this will take to explain to Denny! He loves a good case of brotherly love over the Commonwealth. Until next time, Mr Winchester - safe travels."
Dean watched him stride out of the doors with a large, self-satisfied grin on his face. He blinked, snorted in amusement, and then decided he would push a stolen substitute for the Impala to its limits in a straight line to Bobby's place.
Via a cheeseburger.
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FIN
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Hope it wasn't too predictable! I just worship Alan, I can't pretend I don't. And I know this one was a little Sam-lite, but the next will make up for that. :)
Thanks for reading!