#tht isnt like. mentioned or anythin bt its very vaguely alluded to in snippets of memory so better safe than sry

[lanamemories]

blurring the lines | self

Lana had done a lot of reading, in the run up to the trial, trying to work out what to wear. 

It probably wasn’t supposed to be this important, but it felt easier to pretend that it was -- to pretend the clothes on her back were the most daunting thing, and not the set of eyes that would be blinking at her from across the courtroom. 

Mothers were encouraged to wear sweater sets, thick knit and in a primary colour, because apparently that made a person seem warm. It made a jury think of juice boxes and bake sale cookies, double checking children’s seat belts and turning up early to PTA meetings.

Those accused of a robbery were discouraged from wearing flashy jewellery, anything glitzy, because it it wreaked of coveting material worth. They were meant to go plain and simple -- something cream, and palatable. 

Nowhere had any advice on what you were supposed to wear when you’d witnessed an aggravated assault. When you’d been knelt in front of all that blood.

She’d whirled over discussion boards, scrollbar endlessly tapped until the words all bled into a blur, and found nothing.

In the end, she settled on a short black skirt, a white shirt that was big enough to look like a men’s size, and a clip in her hair with a cartoon strawberry clasp.

Her lawyer pursed his lips at it as soon as she entered the building.

“Jesus Christ, Lana. What the hell is that?”

He reached out to poke at it, but she intercepted before he could make contact. With a notably unsteady hand, she could barely settle fingers on it long enough to adjust it’s position.

“It’s a strawberry.”

“Christ. Jesus Christ,” Vincent muttered, wiping down his face with his hand and muffling a soft scoff against the heel of his palm. “That’s... Right. Alright, Lana. That’s fine.”

It didn’t seem fine, and suddenly Lana was pushing up onto the toes of her feet, ignoring Vincent as he stooped to collect his briefcase. 

“Is, um... Is Zeke here, yet? I want to see him. I want to see Zeke and Leo.”

She’d insisted on staying at Alpha Nu, the night before, since she had a class the same afternoon and “it only made sense to be closer”, frantically clinging to any scrap of normalcy by the fingernails, but now she felt like a horse without hooves expected to race in the Grand National. It was only a few hours of sleep that she’d managed to scrape together, on her own. She’d almost rang Benji five separate times, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear his voice without her own wobbling, and if she started crying she probably wouldn’t stop. 

“He’s in prep, I believe. We should start heading through, actually,” Vincent realised, smoothing over his belt buckle as if it was silk fabric, able to be rumpled by a crease. He was always fawning over his things like it was the be all and end all, to look presentable. Sometimes Lana pictured him as a Ken doll wrinkled by a dozen spins in the microwave. She was always having to contain the urge to reach out and press a finger to his forehead, test if the skin strung away with it in a warm gloop of plastic. “We can sit and have something to drink, before you’re called. You know, water or whatever. A coffee. They don’t take them Irish, here, though. Shame, if you ask me. Would make the whole thing a lot more exciting.”

He looked at the courthouse like it was nothing, something he’d done a thousand times before and would inevitably do a thousand times again, and maybe that was meant to soothe her, but it didn’t. In fact, it somehow managed to do exactly the opposite. 

She didn’t want to be the only one that was scared.

“Vincent?” she called out after he’d walked a few steps, swallowing when he turned back to offer a rather bewildered lift of the eyebrows. When she didn’t continue, he closed their distance and bowed his head, listening like she was about to divulge a secret.

Her eyes dropped to the floor, and there was a strained laugh on the tip of her tongue before she’d even managed to ask it. She leaned in by an inch, voice timid and foreign to her own ears.

It was ridiculous.

She knew it was ridiculous.

“Can you, um... Can you hold my hand?”

Ten seconds of stunned silence passed before he cleared his throat. Leaned back, and itched his nose. 

“No, Lana,” Vincent exhaled, lips tense like they’d been moulded that way and set in clay, “no, I can’t hold your hand. That wouldn’t... be appropriate, what’re you--... No. I can’t.”

“Okay,” she nodded. Then again. And a third time, for good measure. The cherry on top of the cake that made it pretty enough to sit out on a bakery shelf.  “Okay, cool. Yeah, that’s... Yeah, cool. I was just... I was kidding, so.” She flashed a smile like a Monopoly get-out-of-jail card -- ironic, really, considering the situation they were in. “I was totally kidding. Yanking your chain, or whatever. Yankety-yank-yank.”

Eyeing her for a painfully long moment, her face might as well have exploded like a watermelon hurled at the windshield of a moving car, for all of the red that flushed it. She wanted something to beam her up, or swallow her whole. To have her knees braced still by a set of hands she trusted, thumbs soothing the bruises she’d knelt in over the previous week. She wanted something, but she had no more voice brave enough to request it. No ears that wanted to listen.

“Right...” Vincent trailed off, offering an awkward smile. He checked his watch, and mentally calculated whether he’d be able to fit in a stop at the gas station to pick up flowers for his date later. “Well, erm...” His wrist went slack, and he gave a vague gesture of his briefcase. “Shall we, then?”

“Right, yeah.” Pressing her lips together, Lana forced as convincing a smile as possible. Her cheeks ached. “Yeah, let’s go.”

                                                      ___________ 

The lights in the courtroom felt like an interrogation torch shone through a pitch black room, even though, rationally, Lana knew it was just inside her head.

For some reason, she’d pictured being stood during her witness statement, so lowering onto the chair gave a flip in her stomach when it creaked, feeling like she’d unknowingly gained company in the boxed off confines.

So far, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at him.

With her chin tucked down and her hands in her lap, she resisted the urge to rock.

“Will the witness please stand to be sworn in by the bailiff?”

Shakily, Lana rose to her feet.

“Please raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

She could hear the blood gushing in her ears like a reckless tide, lapping up any grooves in the sand. Erasing everything.

“I do.”

“You may take a seat.”

It felt like being a monkey dangling from an artificial tree trunk, in a zoo enclosure, with all of the jury’s eyes on her. A blink towards the first row saw several expectant expressions, all lit with varying shades of scepticism and curiosity. She resisted the urge to fiddle with the clasp of her strawberry clip, aware that one in particular was gawking like she had a live wasp on her scalp, stinger at the ready.

“Miss Jameson, is it correct that you were with Mr. Daniel Nielsen on the evening of July 21st?”

“Yeah.” Lana blinked, then re-phased as she did her best to keep her eyes on the prosecution. “Yes.”

“He picked you up from your sorority’s residence at around eight P.M., is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you were under the impression that you were going to a party?”

“No. Um,” she stalled when there was a murmur from the jury, prompting her to shift slightly in her seat. “He told me we were going to a bar, to meet his friends. I thought we were going for drinks.”

“That wasn’t the case?”

“No.”

“When did you realise that you were going elsewhere?”

“We... He pulled up, and I--... I thought it would take longer to get there, so I asked him why we stopped. I thought maybe he needed to text someone, or something. He didn’t say anything, he just... He just kind of gestured, at the window, so I turned around. That’s when I saw it.”

“Can you please clarify what it was that you saw?”

She made the mistake, then, of catching eyes with him from across the room. He had his fingers threaded together like they’d been stitched that way, meticulously interwoven, and his suit fit him obnoxiously well, pale blue of his tie oddly complimentary to a set of high cheekbones.

Anyone would think he was a model citizen.

She could feel thumbs on the insides of her thighs.

“Miss Jameson?”

Opening her mouth, newly dry, she wrenched her eyes back to the prosecution.

“Sorry, um... Sorry, could you--... Please can you repeat the question?”

A pause.

“Can you please clarify what it was that you saw, when you turned to look out of the window?”

“Yeah. Yes, sorry. It... We were parked outside of The Van Doren hotel. Zeke’s hotel.”

“You’d been there before, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“You and Mr. Van Doren engaged in a consensual sexual encounter, there, previously. Is that the only instance in which you had been there?”

“Yes.”

“And what was your reaction, to being there?”

“I was...” Heart in her ears. Throat tight. Stomach dropped so severely that she could feel it in her toes. “I wanted to go home.”

“Did you tell Mr. Nielsen that?”

“Yeah. I told him I wanted to go home.”

“He didn’t listen?”

“No, he told me to--...” trailed off, eyes flitting to find Danny’s. They were stuck on her with such intensity that she swore she could feel a target sizzling into her forehead, holes burning through -- eyes, mouth, everywhere. She swallowed, and forced her stare down at her hands. They’d subconsciously bunched around the fabric of her skirt. “He told me he didn’t feel like going home, and he told me to text him. To text Zeke, saying I was outside.”

“And you did it?”

There was slight judgement, in that, and Lana was sure the entire courtroom could hear it. She probably would have sounded the same, if she was the one asking the question. It might as well have been re-phrased as something more direct. 

How could you be so stupid?

“I told him I didn’t want to, but--... But Danny doesn’t like ‘no’.”

Her lipstick smudged around Trent’s mouth. Naked, except for her shoes on. The blink of a VHS camera with the screen flipped out at the side.

“So, to clarify, you text Mr. Van Doren to meet you downstairs?”

“Yes. I did.”

“And what happened, then?”

“I... Danny made me get in the back. I was there, when Zeke came out.”

“And just to clarify, Miss Jameson, was there any coercion involved, in this? Physically?”

“No, he didn’t--... He didn’t touch me.” She didn’t have to glance Danny’s way to know that her saying so would be satisfying. Instead of looking to confirm, she glanced at Zeke, instead. Tried to imagine that he was holding her hand. “But he didn’t... need to. I’m--... I was... scared of him.”

“And where did this fear stem from?”

“Um...” faded with hesitance, eyes dropping from Zeke’s like she was embarrassed of something. “I’m not sure.”

The prosecution pressed their lips together, apparently reluctant, but not enough to refrain  from doing what was necessary.

“In your character account of Mr. Daniel Nielsen, is it not true that you said that he once... And I quote, “bit my nipple so hard, during [sex], that it bled”? Despite the fact that you asked him not to?” 

She clutched her skirt so adamantly that anyone would think she thought the pleats were human fingers. Half of her expected them to evaporate into red mist, at any second, forming a cloud that Tommy’s voice could float out from. Or maybe expected wasn’t the right word. Hoped probably made more sense.

“Miss Jameson? Would you like me to repeat the question?”

“No, that’s--... Yes,” she corrected, wetting her lips as she blinked up to meet their gaze, eyes feeling like two microwaved grapes shoved inside her skull and waiting to burst. “Sorry. Yes, that’s true.”

“Is it fair to assume that you didn’t need physical coercion, because you were already scared enough to comply to his demands?”

From the defence bench, Danny’s lawyer lifted to his feet after a murmur into his ear. “Objection, your honour. This is conjecture.”

“Overruled on the grounds of a reasonable conclusion.”

With a tense sigh, he sank back into his seat. Lana felt like her entire head was slowly catching fire, toasting over a hob turned up past a hundred degrees.

“Miss Jameson? Is it fair to assume that you didn’t need any coercion, because you were so scared of him that you’d do whatever he asked?”

Rather shakily, she reached for her glass of water, prompting three of the jury to gasp in surprise when it went toppling out of her grasp and onto the floor with a bang.

The judge called for a recess, when Lana almost started hyperventilating.

                                                     ___________

Only allowed a short period of time in which to compose herself, Vincent muttering useless commentary as he fiddled with his wristwatch while Lana sat between Zeke and Leo in complete silence, she’d slipped into an eerie sense of calm by the time she re-entered the witness stand.

Running through the rest of the recount was stumbling blind, being lead by the arm through a pitch black cavern, voice strained enough that it was fairly obvious she was trying to swallow tears whenever mentions of Zeke’s injuries came to light, but she managed it.

It felt like running a marathon, every inch of her limbs begging to collapse against a mattress, and she almost shakily pushed to her feet to leave until she realised this was only the halfway point.

By all objective accounts, the easy part was over.

Danny’s defence reared from his seat, buttoning the front of his jacket as he side-stepped to enter the floor.

“Miss Jameson,” he began, eyes glinting as they settled on hers. He looked like the kind of hotshot that had connections on Wall Street -- inevitable, really, considering the profession of Danny’s father. “Before I question you about these events that you claim to have witnessed, I’d like to clear something else up, first. Would that be alright with you?”

“Um... Yeah. Yeah, that’s okay.”

“Splendid.” He launched right in. “What was the nature of your relationship with Mr. Nielsen?”

It was a simple question that was expected to have a simple answer, but Lana couldn’t provide one. She was sure he knew that.

“We... We were seeing each other, for a while, on-and-off. We made it official, on July 15th, but--,”

“The date isn’t necessary, Miss Jameson,” he assured, casting a sideways glance towards the jury. It was almost as if he was trying to make her responses seem memorised. Lacking authenticity.

Lana clutched her hands tighter.

“Were you faithful to Mr. Nielsen, during your relationship?”

“That’s--... Technically it wasn’t--,”

“Please may you provide a yes or no answer, Miss Jameson?”

Blinking, Lana swallowed to garner some composure. She felt a little like an animal backed up against a brick wall, snout stuck against the cold of a rifle’s barrel.

“No, technically, but Danny and I -- Daniel and I -- we never... I didn’t think he cared, when I slept with other people.”

“And you would be unfaithful, often?” he replied, spinning her answer in an entirely different direction. It was like he hadn’t even heard her, except for the first word.

“No, that’s... I’d sleep with other people, but it--... Most of the time, he wanted me to. I don’t--... I don’t really know how this is relevant,” she suggested, eyes moving to locate the judge.

Danny’s lawyer held up a hand, shaking his head once.

“Forgive me, Miss Jameson, but it is. Am I correct that you’re implying Mr. Nielsen wanted his girlfriend to be unfaithful? Aspired to it, even? Does that not sound a little strange?”

From his seat at the defence bench, Danny lifted his eyebrows like he was simply inquisitive -- even went so far as to tilt his head, like he was trying to gauge what direction she was going in with the fabricated story. Some acting.

“It... Yeah, it does, but it’s what... It’s what he was like,” she attempted to stick to her guns, shifting so that she could sit straighter. After swallowing, she found the nerve to elaborate. “At parties, he’d tell me his friend thought I looked... He said they had a crush on me. He made it sound fun, so I... So I’d have fun. Sometimes, he’d be there -- in the room, and--,”

“And?”

“And... He seemed like he enjoyed it. Like he liked, um... watching me do things, that he’d asked me to. And I did, too, I think. At first, I did. Or maybe.... Maybe I just... wanted to.” She swallowed. Ignored the smile Danny was inevitably holding at bay. “I wanted to like it.”

Buttoning his lips together, after he eyed the jury’s reaction, Danny’s lawyer rerouted the conversation. Yanked on the clutch, and reversed away from a brick wall.

“Trent Radley is one of these friends that Mr. Nielsen supposedly arranged you to engage in one of these encounters with, is he not?”

“Yes.”

“And what is your response to the statement, in his character account -- sworn under oath, might I add -- that no such encounter ever took place? That none of them did, in fact?”

Parting her lips, Lana simply blinked.

“He’s lying.”

“Lying under oath is a serious offence, Miss Jameson. Punishable by law. Mr. Radley is aware of that. Are you?”

“Objection, your honour. This is needlessly antagonistic,” the prosecution perked up, to which the judge nodded.

“Sustained.”

“My apologies,” the defence relented, thumbing over his mouth as if to conceal something. Regardless of his tactic being nipped in the bud, the jury seemed to have taken something from it, and Lana had to resist the urge to shoot to her feet and demand another recess.

After a short few steps, barely enough to count as a pace, he turned back to study her.

“Would you say that you’re a woman who likes attention, Miss Jameson?”

Eyebrows pinching, she traded a glance towards the prosecution.

“I... I don’t know, doesn’t everyone?”

“Would you say that you go out of your way, sometimes, to get attention? For example... by wearing bright things,” he provided, hand gesturing vaguely like he wasn’t making specific reference to the clip in her hair, “and provoking jealous competition between suitors, perhaps?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.”

His jaw tensed, before he leapt right back in.

“Is it not true that you provided Mr. Nielsen with Zeke Van Doren’s name, prior to the events of the 21st, Miss Jameson?”

Her face must have visibly paled.

“Please could you answer the question, Miss Jameson?”

“Yes.”

“And why did you do that?”

“Because... Because he saw me kissing someone, outside of a bar, and he wanted to know who it was. He wouldn’t let it go.”

“And was it Mr. Van Doren, that he saw you with?”

“No.”

“Who was it?”

Lana swallowed.

“Who was it, Miss Jameson?”

“It was Benj--... Benjamin... Gates. It wasn’t Zeke.”

“Why did you give Mr. Van Doren’s name, and not this Mr. Gates? Did you have some kind of vendetta against Mr. Van Doren, and you were trying to antagonise Mr. Nielsen into doing your dirty work?”

“No, that--... That isn’t true. I didn’t want Zeke to get hurt, I just... I don’t know,” she stalled, opening her mouth when she realised he was about to interject. “I didn’t want to tell him about Benji. Because it--... Because Benji’s different, and I barely knew Zeke at the time, and--,”

“And you knew Mr. Nielsen would be driven into a heartbroken rage? An unfit mental state? You were aware of his fragility, and you wanted to spare Mr. Gates?”

“No, I--...” Wetting her lips, she blinked in the face of the thousand questions. The courtroom was eerily quiet. “I’m not sure, why I did it. I just... I’d fu--... Sorry. I had, um... relations, with Zeke, the same week, so I just... I just said his name. I just... I didn’t want Danny to be mad at me, any more. He said he’d drop it if I gave him a name, and was honest. He said he’d let it go, and leave it alone. That he just... That he wanted closure, and--...”

Gaze shifting to linger on Danny, he stared at her unblinking. By the look on his face, anyone would think the entire discussion was shredding him into bits, twisting organs until they popped. He played victim well.

“So you gave him Mr. Van Doren’s name, despite apparently being scared of Mr. Nielsen? Despite apparently being so scared, you weren’t in control of your own actions, according to the claims in your earlier statement? You gave Mr. Van Doren’s name to a supposed monster?”

“No, I didn’t think he’d do anyth--,”

“So you weren’t scared of Mr. Nielsen, like you stated earlier? You don’t think he’s a monster?”

“That’s not--... No, that’s not what I’m saying, I’m--,”

“So, either you gave Mr. Van Doren’s name willingly, acting as an accomplice and even instigator to these events, or you don’t believe Mr. Nielsen is the kind of person that could commit them? Which one is it, Miss Jameson?”

“Objection.”

“Overruled,” the judge answered, eyes flitting to investigate Lana on the stand. “Miss Jameson, I’d like to hear the answer to the question.”

Her eyes felt hot. Wet, too. She knew Danny was probably getting some sick kind of satisfaction, out of that, and the knowledge only frustrated her further. But she didn’t want to fold. She knew that’s what they were trying to drive her to, shoe firm on her neck as it attempted to press her cheek into the soil, but she refused to choke on dirt. If only for Zeke’s sake, she wouldn’t.

“I was... stupid, to give him the name. I’m... People are stupid, all the time. I thought...” trailed off, humiliated breath parting her lips. “I thought Danny cared about me. I thought he... I thought maybe he finally cared about me, the way I wanted, and I thought, like... being honest would mean... something different. But I wasn’t ready to--... I wasn’t ready to say Benji’s name, because I--... Because he knows me, and he's nice to me, and that’s not--... I don’t get that, a lot.”

“Miss Jameson, you aren--,”

“Please, can I just finish?”

Pressing his lips into a line, you could see the contempt simmering in his expression, bubbling beneath the surface.

Lana cleared her throat, and glanced towards the jury.

Looking at them was less daunting, with Danny’s silhouette becoming hazier in the corner of her eye-line.

“I shouldn’t have. And I wish... I wish I hadn’t, all the time. I wish I’d just let him stay mad at me, and not even... But I can’t... take it back, and that’s... That’s something I have to live with, or whatever. It’s always there, now, and it never... goes away.” Lana swallowed around the tremble in her voice. “But I didn’t want--... I tried to stop him. He locked me in the car, and... And he did it. He nearly... killed him. I gave... Zeke’s name, and I’m really shit and, like... and spineless, for that, but Danny hurt him. I think he would have done more, if I didn’t--...”

Pouncing upon the delayed pause in which she attempted to muster the courage to continue, Danny’s defence leapt back in.

“I think we’ve heard enough of this rather muddled account. Miss Jameson, thank-you for answering my questions. By all means, you’ve been very... convincing. I can see the kind of effect that you have on people, when you’re putting your mind to it.”

“Objection.”

“Sustained. You’re going to need to reign it in.”

“Apologies, your honour. I think we’ve all heard the truth, if we’ve been listening hard enough,” he dismissed, turning his back on Lana and beginning in his tread towards the bench of defence. ”No further questions.”