Chapter Text
December 27, 2019
JOHN
I sit in the pews, anxiously. I've never been so anxious in my life, I'd never been an anxious person.
This is what I prepared for, what we worked so hard for. I don't know what I would do if we failed, how it would feel because all I thought about was that sweet taste of victory.
A loss is unacceptable for us, but we knew if we wanted to win together, there's a possibility we might have to lose together.
And a handful of us lost for this very moment to work.
It couldn't have gone any other way, neither. It's finished, it's done. There are things we could have done better, but this is the best we did. I don't know if it was enough.
I stare over at the jury--quiet, but their whispers echo the entire building, the entire room. Or is it just me? My friends, they're beside me, but they're as anxious as me, so hopeful yet so scared of what might come.
Andre's words are marbled when he speaks up on the witness stand, his right hand on the bible, his face stonecold, pale, but somehow calm.
I feel his gaze on me, and I stare right back at him. He mouthes something, but I can't make it out. So blurry, so... nervous.
Skye glances behind her, staring at me too. She shakes her head, not disappointedly, but in a way where she's apologizing to me. I want to tell her it's okay, she shouldn't apologize.
...
We did this for her, after all.
...
I burst through the heavy doors, falling to my knees on the pavement, screaming at the top of my lungs into the sky, to let it hear my pain, our pain. The pain we had to go through to get this far. All for what? I can't seem to remember, my thoughts have gone numb, everything isn't real.
"Jolo," I hear Andre's voice, finally cleared.
I punch the ground, and still can't feel a thing. Tears in my eyes blur my vision, blur my mind as well. I turn around, wiping my tears so I can face my friends, but they just keep coming out.
I strike the ground again, and screech again, crying, all pouring out.
"We..."