Golden

56

Lucy's POV

"Miss Evans, can you describe the evening in question in your own words in as much detail as you can?" A delayed pause. "Please?"
My mouth was so dry that I wasn't sure that I would be able to even get a single word off of my parched lips. I swallowed harshly and slowly leaned in towards the microphone that was situated directly in front of me, taking a moment to attempt to gather my racing thoughts that were scattered all over the place. A low buzzing sound from my silence resounded throughout the crammed room and the microphone picked up on my heavy and labored breathing that echoed throughout the entire space and made my nervousness blatantly obvious to everyone.
"Miss Evans?"
I blinked at the impatient, unfamiliar figure standing a few feet away, unable to focus on his face or any of his other features except his perfectly tailored dark suit.
Like John always wore.
Remnants of him were everywhere I looked. I still couldn't escape him.
"Yes?"
I heard my own voice respond to my name, booming throughout the speaker system, which jolted me. Even though I had hardly spoken up, it was so loud. Everyone would be able to hear every word, every pause, every breath – everything.
"Do you need me to repeat the question?"
His tone was dismissive, as if he was annoyed by my mere presence even though I didn't want to be here in the first place. In fact, I'd rathe be anywhere else than right here. It made my skin crawl, made me feel like I had done something wrong.
"No." I straightened up, faking as much confidence as I could, which was hardly any. I felt myself withering away slowly as each second passed that I remained sitting here, so exposed and so vulnerable. "I heard you."
"Then please answer."
More exasperation and irritation that rocked me.
"He...he..." I stammered weakly, my gaze scanning the overcrowded room as I sputtered pathetically.
I immediately noticed how many faceless strangers stared back at me, all of them waiting with greedy anticipation. All of them were dying to hear what I had to say, wanting me to retell the worst, most traumatic night of my entire life, waiting for me to explain how I thought I was going to die, how I was going to be killed, how exactly he did it. Everyone was holding out for me to confess all of the secrets and lies that I had been hiding from everyone for years until my own deeply private, personal truth was viscously ripped from me and plastered all over magazine covers and internet articles and TV and phone screens for the masses to speculate about. They would tear apart every word I said, every gesture I made, every gulp of air I took – and try to weaponize it against me.
I couldn't imagine a fate worse than this.
"Please clarify who 'he' is," the irked lawyer snapped before I could even finish my sentence.
"John."
I heard hushed whispers rumble throughout the gaggle of spectators in their seats in front of me. Panic bubbled up inside my chest as I helplessly glanced around the sea of unrecognizable faces, looking for someone – anyone – that I knew. But I couldn't find a single soul.
"Can you please point to John Danvers to confirm for the record who you are speaking of?"
My blood ran cold and the color drained from my face as I hesitantly raised my hand and extended one finger. I couldn't meet his black eyes as I pointed at John who was also sitting to the right of me, though he, along with everyone else in the room, was staring directly at me, his gaze narrowed and unwavering. I felt the air leave my lungs as I struggled to keep my eyes off him, unsure if the terror upon seeing him again would rip right through me and send me on another downward spiral.
"What did John – Mr. Danvers – exactly do that evening?" The lawyer drawled on, crossing back and forth in front of me, pacing and waiting for my replies. A vulture circling its prey, waiting to strike to kill.
"He...he grabbed me from backstage at an event our record label was throwing," I recalled faintly, my voice wavering as I tried to just explain the facts of the night instead of vividly reliving it all over again. I was afraid of what would happen if I spiraled in front of all these people - what it would mean for the trial, the case, me, my future, his punishment. Everything was riding on my testimony, my words, my confessions, my truth...me.
What if I fucked all of this up?
"And then?" The lawyer pressed, pausing to stare at me expectantly. He was trying to rattle me, trying to unsettle me, trying to throw me off, trying to make me fumble.
It was working.
"And then..." I cleared my throat, suddenly very aware of how many sets of eyes were locked on me. It felt like the entire world was watching me as everyone on the room fell back into cold silence. I heard the distant scratching of pens on paper, realizing that people were writing down what I was saying. I wondered briefly how they would turn my words against me.
"Do you remember?" The lawyer barked, his patience wearing thin despite how painful and difficult this obviously was for me to speak on. "Can you tell us what you remember?"
"I remember that he covered my mouth and dragged me out of the party through the exit and threw me into his car," I answered hoarsely before he could interrupt me once more and I lost my nerve to recount the grim details.
I still felt John's hands all over my face, nearly tearing my skin clear off my cheeks as he yanked me out the back door into the parking lot. I still felt the red indentations he left behind on my body, marks that showed where he had grabbed me, where he had hurt me, where he had assaulted me. They had healed over time, but I wasn't sure that they would ever entirely fade from my mind.
"Did you yell for help?" The lawyer inquired, so cold.
John's hands were impossibly strong as he hurled me with all his might against the passenger seat, slamming and locking the door shut before I even had a chance to scream for anyone .
"No." I shook my head, the room tilted, my stomach dropped. "I...I didn't know what was happening."
"So you're insinuating that you didn't go with Mr. Danvers willingly?" He questioned further, eyeing me with growing suspicion and doubt.
This was so dehumanizing.
"I did not go with him willingly," I said as strongly as I could, though my voice was still quivering. "I did not."
"So why didn't you call out for anyone to help you if you did not wish to go with Mr. Danvers?" He pressed me calmly, attempting  to punch holes through my truth, testing me, trying to get a rise out of me to make me seem unreliable. "Surely if you were being dragged to his car against your will and you were at a crowded party with lots of other people around, someone at your record label would assist you if they heard you in distress."
"I...I..." My throat was closing.
This couldn't be happening. Why didn't he believe me? Why didn't he want to help put this monster away? How could he live with himself if John walked free?
I didn't have a chance to answer before he fired off another question at me, making my head spin at the sudden change of subject.
"You and Mr. Danvers were in a relationship, weren't you?" He asked over my pitiful stammering. "You were dating?"
"Not at the time," I answered meekly, fidgeting in my seat. My entire body was overheating. I was afraid I would pass out if I didn't get it together. I took a shallow breath. "We...we had dated...years ago. But..."
"It's my understanding that you and Mr. Danvers were...intimate more recently than that?" The cruel lawyer interjected to my horror. "You had relations upon returning from the leg of your European tour just this past year, correct?"
"I...I..." My jaw was on the floor.
This was beyond humiliating.
"And if I'm not mistaken, you were given a key to his apartment which you used very, very frequently," the lawyer pointed out. "For many nights for many weeks."
"I...I...but we weren't dating," I repeated lamely, my face flushing with harsh embarrassment. I swallowed hard, a sharp lump forming in my dry throat. "He gave it to me in case I needed it."
"Needed it for what?"
"I needed to go somewhere," I replied flatly, wondering how this was even relevant to what John did to me, how he kidnapped me and almost killed me, how he abused me for years and years. "I don't know."
"And so you're saying that you utilized Mr. Danvers' apartment for months on your own accord, whenever you wanted without a single compliant or any issues from you or Mr. Danvers and yet..." The lawyer crossed his arms over his chest and peered at me over his glasses, a domineering look on his smug face. "And yet Mr. Danvers took you 'unwillingly' from this party even though you've admitted that you didn't cry out for help or try to stop him?"
The lawyer twisted my reality right in front of my eyes.
This was my nightmare.
"Those events aren't related," I tried to rebuttal, my chest tightening in sorrow and growing hysteria. I was breaking out into a cold sweat all over my body. "I gave his key back to him before...before this all happened. I broke things off with him. I didn't...I didn't want anything to do with him anymore."
"And so you weren't having sex at this time with him?"
I gasped at the terribly invasive and private question that he just asked me in a room full of strangers. I heard more pens scratching against notebooks, writing frantically. I wanted to scream at them to stop.
I could survive what John did to me. But how could anyone survive this?
"No," I replied with tears in my eyes, struggling to get any words out. I couldn't even believe I was supposed to answer this question. "No, we weren't. Like I said...I didn't want anything to do with him anymore."
"And so...after you were...dragged..." He paused, casting a quick, disbelieving glance at the jury beside us. I heard one of them let out a small scoff. "Out of the party and into his car, then what happened next?"
"He drove me to my hometown," I replied stiffly, feeling ill at how this had turned so drastically against me. "To this bar. The bar where we first met each other. I think it was supposed to be symbolic of our past and how...how I would never be able to really escape it. I think he wanted–"
"And then what happened?" The lawyer was so disinterested in my actual story and what I had to say that it almost shocked me.
He didn't care about me. He didn't care about what happened to me. He was just another monster.
"He...hurt me." My voice was so small, almost unrecognizable to my own ears. I wrung out my sweaty hands on my lap, noticing the faded red markings that still stained the ridge of my knuckles. My stomach flipped inside of me, remembering how I thought so many times how I was going to die that night and how I wasn't ready yet. I kept thinking of everything I never got the chance to do, everything I didn't say, everything I regretted.
And Harry. Oh, Harry.
Breathing suddenly became even harder.
"He hurt you..." The lawyer repeated, still sounding dreadfully bored. "Please be more specific, Miss Evans."
"He..." I willed myself not to cry, though I was dangerously close. I couldn't cry in front of all these people I didn't know. I wouldn't allow it. I cleared my throat, swallowing the sinking feeling. "He hit me..."
I saw John's hand coming down as he wound up slapped me as hard as he could across my face. I collapsed from the gruesome blow to my head, seeing stars even now from the brute force.
"He...he forced himself on me..."
John was over me in an instant, tearing my tattered gown across my breasts as he slammed his mouth down on mine, his teeth knocking against my lips, drawing blood. When John pulled back from me, he was smiling widely, viscously, madly. The blood from my cut lip stained his mouth bright red.
"He slapped me."
He hit me again before I could defend myself, almost knocking me to the ground once more, but he held me upright as I bounced in between his arms roughly. More blood spilled from another fresh wound on the side of my face. I was starting to lose consciousness.
"And he– he punched me."
I felt my own blood pouring down my cheek from one of my open gashes, coating John's fingers in more sticky, red liquid. With his closed fist, John hurled a powerful strike right to my stomach, causing me to double over in blinding pain, losing all the oxygen in my lungs as I curled into myself.
"He was going to kill me."
The entire room, the lawyer included, fell silent at the brutal acknowledgment. They all knew it was true. They all believed me. They all had to believe me.
"Liar."
My eyes darted to the lone source of noise and the false accusation: it was the very same man who was calling me exactly what he actually was.
"What?" I asked him in an appalled whisper, fear choking me as I held his black gaze despite my entire body going numb at the mere sight of him.
"I said..." John rose to his feet and leaned forward, his arms spread out across the wooden table in front of him as he gripped the sides of the desk tightly, his knuckles going white from the sheer force. "You're a liar."
"I am not," I argued immediately, in disbelief that this was allowed to happen. "I am not a–"
Suddenly, I was silenced by the low murmurings of the entire courtroom as they all began chanting slowly in unison. It started off soft and just barely coherent, but I listened harder and their echoing chorus became louder and undeniable:
"Liar. Liar. Liar."
"I'm...I'm not a liar," I sputtered out, quickly glancing up at the judge above me for some help. Surely this was against the code of conduct in a courtroom and they would put an end to it.
I shrieked in horror when I peered up at where the judge had previously been sitting and instead of seeing a justice, I stared up at a faceless figure pointing a long, ghostly white, spiny finger directly at my chest.
"Liar."
I stood up in a panic, nearly falling out of the booth as I scrambled towards the exit at the very back of the opposite end of the room. I bolted towards the neon sign, focusing only on those four letters in the distance, knowing right below it would my sweet escape to freedom. And I was moving so fast.
But John was faster.
He launched himself after me, throwing his arms out as far as they could go and before I could move out his grasp, he latched onto me. He clutched the back of my shirt and grabbed me from behind, holding onto me as firmly as he could before he yanked me back and violently slammed me against the floor.
"John! Stop!" I begged him as he pinned my arms over my head, roughly digging his knees into my hips, preventing me from moving at all. "Stop! Please!"
"Liar," he hissed at me instead, his spit flying off his lips and falling into my face. "Liar."
"Make it stop!" I bellowed helplessly as loud as I could, pleading to no one yet everyone at the same time – anyone who would listen to me, anyone who didn't just want to stand idly by and let John attack me all over again. "Stop!"
No one intervened. No one cared.
"Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar."
John's hands gripped my wrists so tightly that it felt like he was burning me. I struggled against him as hard as I could, but I knew in the back of my mind that it was no use. He was so much stronger than me. He always had been.
"Liar. Liar. Liar."
A swarm of faceless bodies suddenly appeared above me over John's shoulders as my screams became even louder. Camera flashbulbs exploded in my face as I squirmed pathetically underneath John's heavy body. I was blinded by the bright lights, deafened by the wild echoes of their incessant chanting and rendered entirely defenseless against John's overwhelming power.
"Liar. Liar. Liar."
John's dark stare swallowed me whole and I pinched my eyes shut and opened my mouth and screamed as loud as I could, unable to do anything else but wait for the end.
I wanted it all to end. I wanted it all to stop. I wanted – needed – a release.
"LUCY!"
I jolted back into my body, my eyes flying open as I shot up in bed, my body slick with sweat and my throat sore and raw. I clutched my thundering chest and ran my hands over my arms, still feeling the heaviness of John's weight on top of me, suffocating me, tying to kill me all over again.
Gasping for air, I glanced over my shoulder and found the golden sun rising over the horizon, lighting up the city's skyline and the bright rays pouring in through the windows. I peered down and grabbed onto the blankets covering my legs, realizing that I was back in my apartment in New York.
A nightmare, I told myself as I gulped down as much air as I could to fill my depleted lungs. It was all just another nightmare.
I wasn't in a courtroom.
I was in my bed.
I wasn't surrounded by faceless strangers.
But I certainly wasn't alone.
I peeked over towards my side and felt Harry's intense stare on me before I locked eyes with him. He was watching me carefully, waiting for me to speak. My heart was still pounding inside my rib cage, making it nearly impossible to breathe, but I exhaled deeply once my gaze met his, a tiny burst of comfort easing my tight chest. I tugged my legs into my body and rested my chin against the top of my knees, trying to steady my raspy breath.
After a beat, I managed to tell Harry grimly, "I bet you didn't miss waking up next to me screaming..."
"I missed waking up to you period," Harry corrected me evenly, furrowing his eyebrows at me and my pessimism. "No matter how you wake up." I smirked half-heartedly as he added slyly in an attempt to distract me, "Although I definitely prefer you waking up screaming because of my tongue underneath the covers–"
"I'm sorry," I blurted out helplessly, cutting his racy comment short and shaking my head at my own fragility. "I'm so sorry–"
"You've already apologized for what you should be sorry for," Harry interrupted me next, his face becoming somber as he dropped his voice, his playful, teasing tone gone and replaced with dire seriousness. "These things – your nightmares, your past, your fears – aren't anything you should be sorry for."
I mumbled incoherently under my breath, wallowing in self pity and embarrassment.
"Do you...do you want to talk about it?" Harry asked me gently as he reached out and touched the top of my arm, running his thumb down my skin. To my relief, it did comfort me. I couldn't even begin to tell him how much. "What you were dreaming about?"
I didn't allow myself to think much about the incident when I was awake. I was able to function normally during the day, especially when Harry was by my side.
But whenever I tried to sleep, it was an entirely different story.
My nightmares had been more visceral and terrifying than they had been in months, years even, as the court date drew closer and the pressure from the media and the public built and grew to nearly unmanageable levels. I had shut my phone off because it was constantly ringing and I couldn't handle being asked for another comment or public statement. I hadn't left this apartment in a week, terrified to go out and be hounded on the streets where anyone could be waiting for me. I couldn't face it. Not yet.
Thankfully, throughout all of this, Harry had stayed dutifully by my side the entire time, holding me together and serving as my favorite distraction so I could try and fumble through some type of desired normalcy. We cooked every meal together, played board games by candlelight each night, drank wine in the bathtub until we were both silly drunk, and there were even a few shimmering, brilliant moments where he made me entirely forget what was looming in the distance. It was usually whenever his lips were on mine and his hips grounded against my flesh and I saw stars and felt whole and real and like an actual person again – not broken or damaged or a liability. When I was with him, I felt like me again – the best version of myself, someone with a future, someone who mattered, someone who could see the light at the end of a dark tunnel, someone who could almost smell the fresh, clear air after being suffocated for so long.
But whenever I closed my eyes, I was forcibly reminded of exactly what was coming for me, what I had been running from, what I could no longer try to outrun. It had caught me. I had nowhere to go. I had to surrender to it in order to overcome it.
"I was in the courtroom," I admitted to Harry weakly at last, shivering with fear. "During the trial."
"Again?" Harry leaned into me, rubbing my arm to warm me.
I nodded, reminded of how I had woke up screaming last night because I was envisioning the trail as well. Except last night, I couldn't even get through the door of the courtroom. Swarms of paparazzi and media flooded the street and surrounded me until I couldn't do anything but fall to the ground and wait for the masses to overwhelm me until I woke up gasping for air as Harry ran his fingers through my hair until I stopped choking.
"This time I was testifying on the stand."
Harry inhaled sharply and his gentle grip on me tightened. "Oh."
"It was humiliating," I explained somberly, a low whimper escaping my lips, remembering just how dehumanizing the entire process in my dream had been.
Would it be like that in real life?
"All the questions, the stares, the twisting of the truth...everyone calling me a liar." I shuddered, hearing the echoes of the courtroom chants reverberate inside my skull. "I have no control over the narrative."
"Why don't you take back control then?" Harry asked me quietly. He leaned in closer towards me, nuzzling my neck with his head, trying to lull me back to a sleepy state, but I knew I would likely be up for the day now even though he felt so calming and comfortable.
"How?" I glanced over at him, pulling away from his warmth slowly, looking at him for answers I didn't seem to have. "How can I possibly do that?"
"By doing what you do best," Harry reasoned, squeezing my arm again reassuringly. He offered me another small smile that seemed to brighten up everything in the entire room, myself included. "Write about it."