AN: OK, so this was a little bit of a heavy chapter to write for me. I did it, though. Please excuse the probable multitude of grammatical mistakes, but once it was done, it needed to be done.

As always, I'm not a professional in all the topics that I write about, so I always ask for some suspension of disbelief under the pretext that this is merely a story written to provide entertainment.

I hope you enjoy the chapter (or perhaps I guess I should say that I hope it's at least decently written, since it is a heavy chapter and I'm not sure how much you can "enjoy" it). Let me know what you think!

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Michonne sat in the back of the courtroom, a new position for her, and Daryl sat on the other side, straight back against the wall. He'd come in under the guise of being support for Andrea and she'd come in as support for Carol.

She didn't know if it was necessary or if it was of any consequence at all, but Carol felt better if she and Daryl didn't come in together. No one was quite sure how the thing was going to play out and Michonne wasn't even sure of who was dealing the cards right now.

Normally she felt like this was her domain, and she had connections with nearly everyone, but she wasn't sure what Blake knew, what he was going to do, or who he had connections with that might trump hers. She was lying about as low as she could right this minute until she had a better feel for the situation.

So it had been agreed that Daryl would come today, the first day they'd have any access at all to the court drama and the only day that Andrea was scheduled to be there. The rest of the days he'd wait outside as a type of moral support for Carol and Michonne would come in with her in hopes of, at the very least, figuring out what was happening so that she could prepare Carol for what might be coming.

Michonne sat beside Carol and she kept the woman's hand clasped in hers. Carol was keeping it under control, but Michonne knew that it was only barely. She was thinking about asking a doctor friend of hers if there was any kind of sedative that might be safe for Carol to take for a couple of days to get some rest because all the tension and stress certainly wasn't good for her and the dark circles under her eyes did more to confirm that she wasn't sleeping than even Andrea's flat out declarations that neither of them were resting from Carol's anxiety.

Across the courtroom, in the back, Daryl sat and fidgeted against the back wall. He was so wound up that Michonne kept watching him out of the corner of her eye and feeling like she did whenever she took her girls into public. She wished she'd thought to bring some candy or a toy or something to distract him with.

She knew that he was nervous. He was almost as torn up about this whole thing as Carol was. The man could very truly use some sedatives himself. He was hanging in there, though, and he was being supportive enough for the moment that Michonne was even considering forgiving him entirely for the month he'd decided to take after his brother and be a giant walking dick…disappearing almost entirely.

Andrea sat a few rows ahead of Daryl, her elbows on the benches in front of her, leaning onto her hands like she was bored with the whole thing before they'd ever begun. Michonne could understand that too. Andrea was worried about Carol and she was worried about Ed getting out of prison, but she had no idea, like the rest of them, exactly how she fit into the puzzle.

And that's what the whole damn thing was. It was like a puzzle…only today they were probably going to get a glance at what the finished picture was supposed to look like if Blake got all the damn pieces to go where he wanted them.

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Daryl was a wreck. He could barely keep his head together and he had chewed on his fingers until they were actually bleeding. He blotted some of the blood on his pants and tried to make sure he didn't bring his fingers absentmindedly back to his mouth.

He hated fucking court rooms to begin with. Nothing good in his whole damn life had ever come out of one. Absolutely nothing. Now he was in one and hoping that this was the first damn time the justice system didn't prove to be full of fucking assholes.

He knew that Carol was freaking out and she didn't look good. She looked worse than she looked most of the mornings that she'd spent lying on the bathroom floor…except this wasn't the baby's fault. This was the fat asshole's fault who was sitting in the front of the court room, almost directly in front of Daryl. Just looking at the back of his fucking fat head made Daryl want to get up, walk directly to the front and simply beat the shit out of him right there in front of his lawyer, God, and any other damn person that wanted to watch.

Daryl was hot and he was uncomfortable. As the time ticked on he didn't know if they'd been in there for six hours or if it had only been a couple and it just seemed like they were stuck in some kind of time warp.

He kept glancing in Michonne and Carol's direction. Michonne made eye contact with him from time to time, but Carol was more or less keeping her eyes straight ahead. He couldn't imagine what she was thinking about, but he wished he knew how the hell to take it all away.

Andrea took the stand finally, but Daryl couldn't focus on what the hell was happening. He was listening to the questions and he listened to Andrea answer them, but he didn't know what the fuck any of them had to do with shit.

Andrea didn't sound like she was too damn happy up there either and Daryl knew she was trying to hold it together but she'd been kind of shitting bricks about the fact she might say or do something that was going to be even the slightest bit beneficial to Ed Peletier…and let's face it…no one wanted to do anything that might get that fucker out of prison.

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Andrea almost felt like she was suffering from the "cold sweats" as she'd heard people call it before. She'd sat up there, in front of the court, and immediately become more petrified of just being there than anything in her entire life. She'd felt like she could have faced nearly anything with more confidence, but as soon as she'd taken the oath and they'd started asking her questions, all her confidence had flown right out the window.

She'd tried not to look at a single damn thing in the room. She'd only gotten through the questions by looking directly at the microphone pole on the stand in front of her and smashing her hands between her knees so they'd stop shaking.

She didn't even know why she was so nervous, except when she'd sat down she'd glanced around at everyone. Everyone in the room looked so serious, so full of expectation. It was like everything she had to say today would be the most important thing she ever said. Daryl looked like he was about to lay an egg, Michonne's eyebrows were so furrowed that you could have hidden treasure between them, Carol looked like she might fall out in the floor at any moment…and those were just the people she knew in the back.

She knew a few other faces in the courtroom and her brain, in its rush to drown her in all the negative thoughts that she absolutely didn't need, had told her that everyone one of them knew her too…or they knew of her. They knew the image of her that had been plastered all over Sweet Junction and every single surrounding town since she was fifteen years old. Now she was on a stand trying to save her best friend from the smug looking bastard that was sitting behind a table a few feet away from her, and she was afraid it was all going to come back and bite her in the ass somehow.

She'd listened to their questions, and felt like an idiot from time to time. Philip Blake was not the man that he'd been at the Watering Hole and she didn't even half understand what he was asking half the time. She would have needed a dictionary and a good thirty minute start on him to even begin to comprehend some of the things he asked.

And the when she asked for clarification…in a desperate attempt not to put her foot in her mouth because of her own ignorance…he'd reworded the questions in such a way and spoke to her in such a way that she'd felt like she was a toddler or something who couldn't understand something as simple as why they couldn't have twenty more cookies before dinner.

She'd done her best, though, and she'd answered all the questions, despite the fact that she'd really thought she might vomit once or twice. When they'd finally released her, and her heart stopped pounding like it had been…waiting to find out if she'd been caught in some kind of legal bear trap…Andrea had gotten to her feet and mentally scolded her knees for feeling shaky and almost feeling like they belonged to someone else.

She'd walked back down the center aisle of the courtroom and sunk into the bench, hoping that she'd done alright. She glanced in Michonne's direction for confirmation, but Michonne wasn't looking at her. She was looking at the front of the room with her eyes locked in Philip Blake's direction and a deep scowl on her face.

Michonne wasn't handing out any kind of smiles and reassurance today, that was for sure. Andrea could only hope that she was offering some kind of comfort to Carol because Andrea knew that if she was feeling as freaked out by the whole thing as she was, Carol was probably about ready to fall out in the floor.

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Carol very nearly tripped on her way to the front. She'd tried to blame it on the carpet, even looking behind her a moment at the carpet as though she were looking for what tripped her, but she knew it was just her step faltering. She'd barely made it out of her seat and if it hadn't been for Michonne heaving her up a little, she might not have made it to her feet.

She'd glanced in Daryl's direction, but he was leaning back against the wall, his eyes focused on something…or maybe on nothing…he wasn't looking at her though. Andrea wasn't looking at her either. She had her elbows on the bench in front of her and her head was buried in her hands with her fingers tangled in her hair.

Carol didn't mean to look in Ed's direction, but she did and it had matched almost perfectly with the moment she damn near busted her ass coming down the little walkway. She'd kept going, though, and made it to the stand.

She would pinch the hell out of herself if she had to, but she wasn't going to cry on the stand. That's what she'd told herself. She wasn't going to let Ed Peletier see her cry…not anymore. He'd seen enough of her tears.

But if she'd thought this entire thing would be easy…if even for a moment she'd entertained in her mind that she was going to be the victim and Ed was going to be the bad guy in this scenario…she realized all too quickly that she was wrong.

The questions rolled out of Philip Blake's mouth in a language that was far too complicated. Just the words alone made her head spin and she lost her will not to cry. Even tearing at her own flesh wasn't going to keep her from crying. Having to repeatedly ask for clarification and repetition was bad enough. It would have brought tears to her eyes on its own.

But then when she heard the simplified questions…heard him reforming her answers…heard the words that he added to what she said…some of which she protested but felt like she was shot down on…that's when she really felt like she'd fall apart.

She felt, suddenly and with desperation, that she was losing this whole thing. She gave answers, but even as she gave them he seemed to twist them and to change them. Right before her eyes he seemed to be painting a picture of her and Ed and their life that had never been there before. It was a picture that was so wrong…so different…and yet she couldn't even figure out which words were making it wrong. It was like she'd been sucked down the rabbit hole or something. Nothing made sense, but she couldn't hold onto anything long enough to figure out why it didn't make sense or what to do about it.

He'd asked so much she wasn't prepared for…things she wouldn't have even thought were important. And the worst of it all was that she knew that he wasn't done. She had two more dates…Andrea's was over. It was done with. The band aid had been yanked off and for better or for worse, Andrea was done with this. Carol had two more days of it to go, though, and she was already failing.

And when the other lawyer…the fat man she didn't know that was representing the state in all of this…had asked his questions she'd almost wanted to scream at him. He'd been so nonchalant. He'd passed things around, asked her to verify things, spoken softly and simply…but she didn't feel like he'd matched Philip Blake. She didn't even feel like he cared and she'd wanted to scream at him that this was her life they were talking about. This was her life and her baby's life and he wasn't even trying to make sure that she got out of the stupid rabbit hole that she'd been pushed down by Philip Blake.

By the time she'd finished all of the questions she'd gotten up and felt her legs shaking. They were so weak that she thought she might have run a marathon without feeling so much like she could have simply fallen over on the ground. She returned down the aisle, trying not to look at anyone or anything, ashamed of the fact that she'd sobbed on the stand, ashamed of the fact that she was sobbing now, and positive that she had failed miserably at whatever kind of test this was.

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Daryl really wanted to come out of his seat when Carol had taken the stand. She'd damn near fallen on her way down there and not a single person had offered to help her. He didn't know if she tripped or what had actually happened, but when he'd saw her almost go down his heart had nearly stopped.

And then when she'd been on the stand he'd tried to focus extra hard on everything the fucking weasel of a lawyer was asking her, but mostly he'd been focused on her. He couldn't stand it when she'd broken down and he'd wanted to bust the damn lawyer in the jaw almost as bad as he wanted to punch Ed Peletier in the face.

Daryl didn't know much about the court system or cases like this. He wasn't well versed in that shit and he didn't know what all the questions meant or what the right answers were. It felt like it was all a big test or something they were taking and nobody had the fucking book to study before they got there.

What he did know, though, was that he didn't like the sound of the questions and he didn't like the lawyer's tone. It sounded to him like the guy was trying to prove that Ed Peletier was some kind of fucking saint. It was like he'd been some kind of victim for all those years that he'd been married to Carol. The man talked to Carol like she was on trial for murder instead of like she was just Carol…and she was sitting up there talking about the man who'd made her life a living hell.

The worst damn part of it was that there was nothing he could do. He had to sit his ass quietly in the back and watch Carol fall apart. He had to listen to a man that he didn't even fucking know from Adam talk to her like she wasn't any damn smarter than a two year old. He had to listen to him make it sound like everybody in that room ought to shake Ed's hand for having been married to Carol instead of taking him out in the parking lot and stoning his fat ass to death like Daryl had figured would be good enough for him.

There wasn't a single damn thing that he could do because anything he might do would just make it worse. All the way around it was just going to make that shit worse. So he'd had to sit on his hands in the back of the room and watch the whole thing unfold.

By the time that they finished asking questions to Carol, Daryl felt exhausted for her. He wanted to go down there and help her back to her seat, if nothing else, but he couldn't even do that. No one helped her. Not a single soul offered to walk her back to her seat.

She'd come down the aisle looking nothing like the Carol that he knew for a moment. She looked destroyed and deflated and it made his blood boil. Michonne had at least gotten up, as Carol had come, and had taken her arm, guiding her into the row that they were sitting in, but that had been all that anyone had done…and maybe everyone's hands were tied like his…he didn't know…but he knew that if he ran the damn court system things would have gone a lot differently.

By the time it was time to go home, in fact, Daryl was pretty damn glad that the next two days he would spend sitting in the truck and waiting on Carol in the parking lot while Michonne came into the courtroom. It wasn't that he didn't want to be there if him being there did anything at all to help Carol, but he was thankful that he wasn't going to have to watch something like that again. He knew now that he couldn't help her at all. He couldn't do a thing to make this easier on her or make sure that things went how she needed them to go. He could only sit there and watch her torture, and he was grateful that he didn't have to do that for two more fucking days.

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Michonne could feel her blood pressure rising as the entire thing unfolded and it started to make sense in her mind. Perfect sense.

It wasn't that the case in itself made sense…no, that was something that she'd never be able to understand from a human perspective…but what Philip Blake was up to? What he was doing? She understood what the hell that was all about.

And what really pissed her off more than anything…what reminded her of why she hated the justice system even though she was tangled up in it…was the realization that sunk over her as she thought about all that unfolded in front of her and all that was likely going to unfold in the upcoming days. Ed Peletier would walk out of this. Not only would he walk out of this, but he'd probably walk out of it with sympathy from the fucking assholes around him.

She hadn't heard Blake's opening argument, and she wouldn't hear his closing argument, but she didn't need to hear them spoken in his nauseating voice for her to already know the gist of them.

Ed Peletier would be painted as a man that lived with a woman who, by all the antequated beliefs that we pride ourselves in having overcome but which haven't really been overcome at all, had lived with a woman who "drove him to his acts." By the time that Philip Blake had finished, he would damn near plea temporary insanity or something of the like for the man.

He'd paint Carol as the scarlet woman. The woman who had been unfaithful, perhaps…untrustworthy…a loose cannon at the very least. Ed, the poor doting husband, would have done anything to save his marriage. Except that of course, with a woman like that, there wasn't any saving it. She was out of control…everyone knew it. The town gossips carried his shame around in their pockets and threw it out at the feet of everyone like rose petals to welcome them to town.

The attacks on Carol, the ones that had been documented and the ones that Blake couldn't wash away as Carol crying out for attention and lying against Ed…the ones that were there beyond a shadow of a doubt. They'd be painted, very likely, as something that Ed did out of desperation…out of insanity even…driven to his madness and his actions by Carol's misbehaving.

Even as Michonne constructed in her mind the web of lies that Blake would make out of everything…what he would construct out of the truth…she wanted to puke at it. He was a clever man in the fact that he'd probably figured out how to make this all sound seamless and convincing, but he wasn't really clever at all. He was simply falling back on the time tested bullshit that people drank up like it was water in the dessert.

A man, after all, was no better than an animal. He had no control over his actions if he was driven to those actions by a woman. He couldn't control his impulses…couldn't act like a civilized creature…not if a woman was behind it. And for men like Philip Blake and all the over padded bastards that filled the room…there was always a woman behind it. She was always the guilty party.

Most of the men in that room had probably spent their lives in loveless, unhappy marriages caused by their own clinging to outdated mentalities, but they'd blamed every shitty moment of their existences on a woman. On their mothers…on their wives…it was all the fault of Eve, right? The downfall of man at the hands of a woman.

And Ed Peletier had been another helpless victim in the grand scheme of life. He'd done what he'd done, but not because he was an asshole with a thirst for beating his wife so that he could feel that he had some control over something living…no…that wasn't the case at all. He'd done it because she'd driven him to it and he'd been just another animal that had answered the call of nature.

Michonne wanted to spit on Philip Blake and she wanted to spit on every single man in that jury…and they were the majority…that would make sure that Ed Peletier walked free from this. And she knew, that they'd be the very same assholes that, when faced with a woman that would tell them the truth about themselves and what they perpetuated while simultaneously proclaiming that as a society we'd come so far, would say that the woman was simply a man hater.

Michonne had a splitting headache from her own anger at what was to come. By the time they left the courtroom and made it to the parking lot, it would have been hard to tell who, besides Carol, was in the worst condition of the group. None of them looked better for the wear and Michonne, herself, knew that she probably didn't either.

Michonne tried to hold it together, though. They all piled into her car and she started the drive back to Sweet Junction.

"What did you think?" Andrea asked when they were on the road for a bit.

Michonne didn't really want to answer that question. She was praying with every scrap of religious faith inside her that she was wrong and that Philip Blake wasn't just another scumbag who had probably driven his wife to cheating on him and then been bitter because she'd done it and now he got his rocks off by making sure that women paid for everything whenever he got the chance. She was praying that he wasn't like that…that she'd been dead wrong because she was on edge…and that Ed Peletier wouldn't walk out of this.

"It's hard to tell," she said finally.

"Did we do OK?" Andrea asked. "I mean I didn't know half of what he was asking me…and I was trying to think ahead…trying to figure out what was the right answer, but I wasn't sure…"

"You did fine," Michonne said. "You both did just fine."

They had done fine. They'd done the best that they could do in the situation. They'd told the truth. Really, though, it wasn't the truth that mattered. It was hardly ever the truth that mattered. What mattered was how the truth was twisted…how it was manipulated. Nothing in life was really about the truth, it was about how you were told to see the truth.

"Do ya think it looks good or bad?" Daryl asked from the backseat.

Michonne took a breath and wished she could mute her friends.

"I think it looks…" she paused. She didn't want to lie to any of them. They were her friends and she wasn't going to lie to them. At the same time she didn't want to say anything in front of Carol. Not when she'd make this trip two more times with her…not when she still had to take the stand. Lessen Carol's anxiety was what she wanted to do, not heighten it. "It's really too early to tell how it looks," Michonne finished.

They seemed satisfied with that, or at least as satisfied as any of them could get. Michonne knew how it would go from here. They'd finish up with the days that Carol had left to be there and then the waiting game would be put into progress. For the time being, until the case was done and closed, they'd all be waiting to hear anything and to know what had become of it. Then, eventually, they'd have a verdict and they'd know if Ed was going to go free…or when he was going to go free if what Michonne thought was correct.

There was no need in worrying more than they were going to do naturally, though, not until they had to. They'd figure out something when the time came, but for now there was no need to add to it, and Carol really didn't need any more stress than she already had.

Michonne dug her cell phone out of her pocket and fumbled around while she drove, thankful for nearly abandoned country roads and favors that could be called in whenever you needed them.

"I'm going to call a doctor friend of mine," Michonne said to Carol, glancing back at the road, her finger hovering over the send button on her phone. "I'm going to get you something so that you'll get a little rest, OK? There's no need to worry."

"I don't want anything," Carol said.

Michonne nodded her head.

"Don't worry…I promise I would never ask you to take anything that would hurt the baby or you in any way. That's why I'm calling a doctor. It would actually be better, I'm sure, for you and the baby if you would take it…just until the court thing is over and done with," Michonne reasoned.

"Maybe ya should take it," Daryl offered from the back seat, his hand coming over the seat and resting on Carol's shoulder.

"Can you do it for me?" Michonne asked.

Carol nodded.

"Sure…I guess so…I mean as long as it's OK," Carol said.

"It will be," Michonne said. "I'll call him now and we can pick it up on our way in…you can get some rest tonight and be good to go tomorrow."

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AN: OK…so the court chapter was heavy and I'm going to go ahead and let you know that I'm taking the "bad author" way out and skipping over the rest of the court stuff. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons, actually. Reason #1 is it's heavy and that drags me down, especially since I write after work and I'm already tired…so heavy stuff is hard. Reason #2 is that I'm not a lawyer and I don't even watch a ton of law shows or anything…so the more details I try to give, the worse I'll probably mess it up. I'll let you fill all those in for yourself.

So yeah…we'll do a little bit of a "jump" type thing before the next chapter instead of detailing the rest of the court case, but I did want to give you at least a little feel for what it was like. I hope it wasn't too bad and you'll forgive me!