Fanfic Time: Don't Pity Me part 37
Very much NSFW fic continued from yesterday:
Fracture Thirty-Seven: Grandstanding
The bottom right-hand corner of the screen read, “Live CNN” and pictured a court room. An otherwise harmless-looking old woman sat proudly with the defence. Only her orange jumpsuit declared her as a felon. A white cane hung suspended from the prosecution’s chair.
A girl in the jury with purple-dyed hair checked her makeup before taking out a notebook and a pen. Another juror was knitting. A third was working on sketches.
Murdock, Prosecution, stood and felt his way to the outer corner of the desk. Then he counted a precise number of steps to the juror’s box before finding it with one hand. The world had seen him do something similar in the pre-trial. The world knew he was blind.
He began his opening statement. “Frau Bruna Hess is a sick person, there’s no doubt about that. The defence will state that she did what she did because she is insane. I intend to prove that she *knew*. She knew *exactly* what she was doing. Every step of the way. She deliberately and repeatedly abused thousands of children. Ruined thousands of lives, families, hearts, and even homes. She has devastated thousands of people and she *chose* to do so.
"Whether or not she is insane is not the point. Frau Hess is competent, capable of dealing with day-to-day life. Capable of making rational decisions. Even though those rational decisions resulted in irrational actions. We intend to prove that Frau Hess deliberately and intentionally raped, tortured, and even murdered *children*. She even conspired to do so with others.” He paced his way back to his desk, and found his chair.
Mason, Defense, stood next. “My client is insane. There is no stretch of the law so vast as to rule her otherwise. As such, she was not responsible for her actions.”
The court erupted in shouts and took five minutes to settle down.
Mason continued. “My client was, in fact, not initiating her own actions, but imitating a trauma she survived. Frau Hess was driven insane by experiments on herself and her twin during world war two.”
“Objection!” Said Murdock. “There is no proof of this in any of her records.”
“You call me a liar?” Hess stood and peeled back her left sleeve. "Here is your proof!“ She displayed a number to the entire court.
"Die ist meine Zahl Opa! Du Fotze! Mach es dir selber und wurfel, du Arschgesicht!” The camera focussed on a teenaged boy with blue hair who was being restrained by the bailiffs. After a moment, the camera labelled him as a Survivor. “That’s my Opa’s number, you *BITCH*! Du Dreksau!” He was dragged out of court yelling, “I’ll kill you myself! Ich beende Sie selbst!”
They cut back to the studio.
“Well, wasn’t that a turn-up for the books, Mike?”
“It sure was, Sal. And we have with us in the studio reporter Judi Bloom, who has been following these remarkable events ever since the Expressway Incident. Is that correct, Judi?
"That’s right, Mike. I was there when troubled teen and Hess survivor, Kurt, had escaped a failed abduction attempt and wound up on the Bayville expressway. We’ve later discovered that Kurt was one of the many that Hess ‘infected’ - if you will - with Multiple Personality Syndrome.” The footage played on the screen of Kurt on the highway. "Here, we plainly see another persona. Note the body language and the crouched posture. The almost ape-like way of locomotion…“
*
Bluebelle’s tridactyl hands curled into fists, scrunching wrinkles into Herr Pryde’s shirt. Mr Peeper was slightly upset to be left at home, but seemed satisfied with the food and water. Bluebelle was more upset that people had dragged Daddy away from the cameras.
"Are they going to lock Daddy up, too?”
Herr Pryde patted her shoulder. “No, sweetie. They just had to take him out of court so that he’d settle down. Hess pulled a dirty trick on him and he got mad, that’s all.”
“What did he mean, that’s his Opa’s number?”
Herr Pryde took a deep breath. “A long time ago, there was a very evil man called Adolf Hitler…”
*
Dr Prinz kept her distance as she watched Kurt calm down. She knew he was one of the many survivors who had a 'thing’ about being touched. She also knew that 'thing’ was a grossly inaccurate word for describing the complex set of quasi-rules the survivors had about touching, but it *was* a marvellous shortcut.
Kurt could touch and be touched by his friends and family, and it took one a significant amount of time to be included in that group. A stranger *could* touch him, but only areas that were clothed, staying away from the front of the torso and - funnily enough - the legs below the knees.
Right now, he was in a typically defensive posture. Curled up into a ball, yet also crouched on the chair, hands knotting into his hair and his face hidden between his elbows and his knees. He was still spitting out epithets about Hess’ stunt, in between sobs.
“You love your Opa,” said Prinz. She rested her hand on his shoulder.
“Ja,” he croaked. “She had no right. She can do what she likes to me… I’m used to it.” More soft noises of mourning. “But she *can’t* touch my *family*. That’s *mine*!”
“It’s all right. They’re going to cross-check that number with the Holocaust tattoo database and find out who it really belongs to. Hess' stunt won’t last long.”
“That’s not th’ point,” said Kurt. “The point is that she *knew*. She knew everything about me and those around me. She was *this* close,” he gestured with his thumb and first two fingers, “to my family. My *tribe*, and I was unaware. That - that - *animal* found my *family*.”
“And family’s very important to you, of course,” she prompted.
“I was adopted,” he said. “My birth mother abandoned me, but the Wagners took me in and raised me as their own. They didn’t care about my condition. They didn’t care how people reacted to me. They loved me. They still do.”
The condition, Prinz knew about. A rare disorder that effected the muscles and ligaments of the hands, making the afflicted effectively tridactyl. There were operations and medication to partially remedy the condition, but the cure was still worse than the disease.
The reactions he just mentioned puzzled her. “How *did* people react?”
He smiled. A weak little ironic smile. At least he was easing out of his defensive ball. “Heirelgart’s a little mountain town in a cluster of little mountain towns. Not many people move about, but superstitions spread like wildfire, ja? Some people think that the devil also has hooves for hands. Anyone with just three fingers could be Satan in disguise. People were scared of me because of that.”
“*Really*?”
“Ja. My village is used to me. Lots of other people aren’t, though. I used to think I’d scare people forever until I got this scholarship. Here, nobody even notices. It’s like a breath of fresh air.”
Light dawned. Dr. Prinz had been studying the whole case, including Hess and the 'lieutenants’ that had been bought in so far. Hess had repeatedly referred to Kurt and his two children as 'little demons’. Now she knew *why*. “And because of *that*, Hess chose you.”
“Hess likes to pick on the different,” said Kurt. “She told me that she was making us into something 'magnificent’.”
“She’s a very sick woman.”
“*Ja*.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Ja. I’ll go back in to prove she didn’t get to me and then go back home as soon as court’s adjourned. Besides, I abandoned Kitty in there. I swore I’d never leave her side.”
He stood, making a motion like putting on an invisible mask. Prinz recognised the emotionlessness of 'the Archivist’. So. He could do it deliberately as well as accidentally. She watched, fascinated, as the personalities merged. She really wished she was working with his therapist. This phenomenon would make a *fantastic* book.
Maybe she could cut a deal into the study of him.
*
Kurt exchanged a long, cold glare with Hess as he strode back into court. He could practically feel the bailiffs tensing in preparation for another fistfight.
One of them even murmured, “You’re not on Jerry Springer, pal. Remember that,” as he passed.
Kurt pretended he didn’t hear the man, and just found his seat beside Kitty. They hugged, and Kitty kissed him behind his ear, and Hess suddenly seemed less significant.
Hess hadn’t touched his family, but she had been near them. That was all she’d done. He had to remember that. The old cow could only threaten his family, but she couldn’t touch them.
Not while he stood between them and her.
Finally, he came up with an appropriate Romani curse. “[May all your attempts to gain freedom put you deeper behind bars,]” he whispered at her.
“Settle down,” Kitty whispered to him, adding another kiss. “She can't like, hurt you any more. She can’t hurt anyone any more.”
He instantly gentled, for Kitty’s sake, relaxing in her embrace. "Sorry, meine geliebt,“ he hissed back. "Hess has very long claws; may she cut herself with them…”
“I like, sorta guessed. Relax. They’re like, going to want to lock her up for like, ever.”
Kurt snuggled into the hug, allowing the Archivist to fade into the background, and laid a string of seductive kisses along her divine neck, making her giggle. “Have I told you how lovely and curvy you’re getting, geliebt?” he purred.
She had a lovely blush, too.