Back and Forth (A Castle Fanfiction)

Witness

Over a month had passed before the day finally came that they both had been dreading. After talking to her father's attorney, Kate had realized that there was only one way to get her father out of jail, and that was to testify. For the sake of getting her father free, for a heart warming family picture, the writer dressed his daughter in a reasonable navy dress, threw a suit on himself, packed up the diaper bag equipped for both Alexis and Henry, and headed out with his wife's hand in his own. Her mother's necklace dangled in front of her high-necked blouse and navy blazer which matched her slacks quite well, and she couldn't stop twisting the thing anxiously for the entire car ride to the courthouse. By the time they got inside, Henry was reasonably wide awake, and Kate was a nervous wreck.

"You'll do fine," the writer promised her as she sat on the bench, her knee bouncing endlessly.

She then answered, "I think I'm going to throw up."

Rick slightly laughed. "You've been preparing for weeks, you're in a courtroom, which is the one place in which I know you are highly experienced and completely comfortable, and you have us for good luck. Besides, like the attorney said, there is next to nothing you could say that would do any harm. He's going to lead you through his questions, and then they are going to attempt to ask questions that will do nothing but waste their time."

"What if this was a bad idea? What if I say something stupid?"

"You won't," he promised. Kate breathed, definitely finding zero comfort in her fiance's certainty.

It was then that the defense called their first witness of the day. When Kate wandered toward the stand and was sworn in, all she could do was feel the world moving at the pace of a glacier while managing to rush through the seconds as though they were non-existent. Her mind could only question itself on how she got to where she was. She could only review the past year of her life in complete disarray. How could everything turn out like this?

One year ago to this day, she was staring at the bottom of a glass in her roommate's bedroom, and both were hungover from the night before. They were talking about how much their first Thanksgivings home after leaving for college were going to be such nightmares. Going home, seeing the family, and having to be fawned over for a short while all sounded miserable to them at the time. Now, she would have given anything to be going home for Thanksgiving with her mother. She would give anything for her mother to be able to meet her fiancé and her son. If only she had known then that she would be where she was. If only she knew that today, the day before her twentieth birthday, not quite two weeks before Thanksgiving, she would want her mother more than she had ever wanted anyone, she might not have taken that turkey dinner for granted.

"Miss Beckett, how are you today?"

"I'm fine," Kate replied, seeing that the attorney was trying to make her somewhat comfortable.

The man then nodded, "Good. And you're my client's daughter, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"So... You were the one who was originally attacked on the day in question, correct?"

"Yes," Kate replied, starting to feel discomfort seep in.

The man then prompted, "Could you tell us about that day? What were you doing at your father's home so early?"

"I was checking on him, trying to see how he was doing. He hadn't been out of rehab for very long and- we hadn't heard from him in a little while, so... I thought I would go see him and make sure that he was still sober."

"And when you got there, what did you find?"

This caused Kate to look up from the lawyer. Her eyes came to rest on her father's, who was clearly in pain, and she watched him for a moment. She then had to look at her lap just to get his face out of her mind, and she was finally able to look at the attorney again. "I found his front door open, so I went inside. My dad was passed out on the chair with a bottle of booze in his hand, and I went to wake him up."