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| Details |
| Author: | Disknight |
| Summary: | Rozalin waits while Winnie returns with news as to the state of Roz's case. The response is mixed. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Arc: Cobalt Manhunt
The 17th of October is overcast and gloomy with heavy rainclouds looming over the forest along the mountains that form the valley, a sense of doom pervading the air over the Elwynn Aspenwood Vineyard, as if the weather is about to oblige an entire pathetic fallacy of the worst possible news.
Winnie is dressed in the same suit as before, her hair done exactly as before, and her briefcase exactly as before. This is just her Lawyer Mode, and she doesn't actually have that many suits. She does what she does because it matters to her, not because it usually pays well, certain high profile death knight murder trials bankrolled by Vice Admiral's richer than the king notwithstanding. When she's shown to the upstairs library, again by Ms. Grace Auden, she scoots into it as timidly as before. It's hard to believe that this is the same woman who successfully won two of the more difficult and controversial cases in the past five years.
Rozalin is waiting in the library again. However this time she is not sitting on the couch but rather pacing back and forth across the far side of the room and biting her nails. Her dress is quite different this time too. Instead of her overalls she's now wearing a charcoal grey gown. It's fitting attire for the dour weather, although the scarlet stockings she wears on her feet provide some amount of cheer.
She doesn't seem to notice Winnie as she enters the room and continues to pace back and forth, her comfortable black leather boots tapping on the floorboards.
Winnie stands there awkwardly, holding her briefcase now with both hands, and seems unsure of whether or not she should break the silence. Eventually though, she has to, because this is her job and she bills by the minute. "Um. Hello. Rozalin?"
Rozalin nearly jumps out of her skin when Winnie makes herself known and emits a very girlish scream before she's able to smother it with a hand. She clutches her breast and breathes heavily at the shock, "Shit, don't sneak up on me like that." Her face is red, possibly due to embarrassment from the unseemly scream.
Winnie screams back with an equally girlish shriek as Rozalin screams, clutching her briefcase to herself. She's as equally red as Rozalin. They make quite a pair.
Ms. Auden reappears in the doorway of the library. "Is everything all right?" she asks.
Winnie whirls around again, looking very much like a rabbit that's about to bolt. "It's startled," she squeaks out. Which doesn't make any sense, and she tries again, "I-I was just startled, a-and I startled. Rozalin. We startled."
"I-I'm fine! I'm fine!" Rozalin yells dismissively, "Don't. uh, let us get in your way. I bet you got all sorts of work to do today, yeah?"
Ms. Auden is squinting at both women that looks possibly suspicious or disapproving but she makes a hmmm sound, and then says, "If you need anything, use the bell. There's not meant to be shouting in the house." This is spoken with all the asperity of a librarian hushing overloud guests in a library, which might be appropriate as they have been overloud guests in a library.
Winnie shrinks down until she is the size of a poppyseed, at least in energy and vibe if not literal size, and she rolls herself shamefacedly over to the nearest couch to sit. "I, um. Rozalin?" she asks, her voice extra sheepish and girlish.
"What is it?" Rozalin asks hesitantly as she wraps her arms around herself and takes a few steps closer to the opposite couch.
Winnie holds onto her briefcase for a moment longer before she puts it down on the couch next to her, and opens it, taking her notes out, shuffling them together over her lap. "I have good news, and um, well, maybe mixed news, I don't know," she begins. "The good news is that the charge of Conspiracy to Commit Treason and Terrorism has been dropped due to lack of evidence, because the Prosecution has no witness. That's the good news. The maybe, um, mixed is that they don't have this witness because there was a clerical error. The man being held in the cell that was listed as…" Winnie checks her notes. "Barnabas Eisner, was in fact another man named Albert "The Disemboweler" Morris. Barnabas Eisner was killed in the chaos from the, um, the dragon aspect attack on Stormwind City, confirmed by the coroner and the death certificate. The records of the Stockades hadn't been updated." Because they are, as we have seen, pretty bad at the whole prison thing. "I'm sorry," she adds. "You were right though. He didn't, um, rat you out."
Rozalin's jaw drops, "What did you say?" She can't believe what she's hearing. That or she simply doesn't want to.
Winnie looks up from her notes. "I, can, um repeat it if you want. Or I can just clarify a point if it didn't make sense?" she asks.
"Barnabas is dead?" Rozalin asks. She tightens her grip on herself.
Winnie makes a sympathetic wince and nods. "Yes. I'm really sorry for your loss," she repeats. "I have, um, copies of the paperwork if you would feel like you need to see it for yourself." She holds out the papers in question in offer. "He's been dead all this, um, time. It wasn't him that agreed to testify, it was Albert 'The Disembowler' Morris. Barnabas Eisner was clearly listed among the dead, th-the paperwork is all signed and dated properly, it just never made its way over to the Stockade records in all the, um, chaos. And, um, without him, and since you can't be compelled to testify against yourself, this means the Prosecution doesn't have any witness for your time in the Defias, and they don't have a case beyond the most circumstantial of evidences like a red bandana and 'feeling sure' you were. Which doesn't hold up in court."
Rozalin takes the papers and looks them over, mouthing the words as she reads them. She slowly moves to sit down on the couch but in her distracted state misjudges how far down it is and ends up flopping down on it quite forcefully. "No… I didn't even know…" She says in disbelief, "He was like a second father to me. He did so much for me…" Rozalin tightens her fingers around the paper, crumpling it slightly while her hands start to tremble and her eyes water.
Winnie winces at the crumpling of her paperwork, and she looks around awkwardly as if hoping, maybe, that a handkerchief will suddenly supply itself. Oh, wait! She pats down her suit, and then opens her briefcase again, sifting through it, until she produces a handkerchief triumphantly! …which has lots of ink stains on it. She rubs at them experimentally — nothing comes off, the stains are very set into the cloth — and then holds it out in offer to Rozalin. "I don't know him, so I can't speak for him really, and I won't say that this for the best, because death is a really permanent thing, but if he was like a father to you, then I bet he's glad wherever his soul is that he isn't being used against you?" It ends as sort of a question, more than a statement, but she's trying.
Rozalin almost slams the papers down on the table in front of her and snatches the handkerchief. She leans back into the couch and sags into the cushions, sliding down a bit awkwardly. She squeezes the piece of cloth in her hand with all her might while tears begin to stream down her face. Her hands and knees are trembling and she has veins bulging out of her head from how forcefully she’s clenching her jaw.
Winnie wilts further and further into herself. Maybe she should just stop talking.
Oh, wait, she can't. She’s being paid by the minute. "So. Um. We still need to go before a judge for a ruling on the, um, other charges, but I do feel like with what we have, including the ambiguity of the guards' statements — y-you'll want to thank Bertrand Aspenwood especially for his questioning, because he created a necessary, um, reasonable doubt on who started using force first — there's a really good chance you don't ever see an actual trial from this. That doesn't mean that you couldn't be, um, brought again with the charges of the Conspiracy to Commit Treason and Terrorism, because there's no statute of limitations, and you weren't tried and then not convicted. So, it's still a possibility, but for now… um. We just have to show up to our hearing for the charges, and then whatever happens from there, either we'll plan for the trial or, uh. That's where we part ways.
"Do you have any questions for me?" she asks.
"He get a proper funeral?" Rozalin asks. She's practically growling the words with how choked up she is right now.
"Oh." Winnie makes an awkward sort of sound in her throat, an euhhhhhhhhhhh, and she scoots forward to pick up her crumpled papers, spreading them out over her business skirt, reading through them. She flips the top paper over, and then looks over another. "It doesn't say, explicitly, just that it was handled 'by the Kingdom of Stormwind,' so. Um. You might have to ask the coroner directly what that meant at the time, if they were buried or…" She hesitates for a moment. And then it stretches. And stretches. Come on, Winnie, any other burial option that isn't too bad. Do not say tossed into the canals for the crabs no matter what you do. "Cremated," she finally blurts out. Whew. Nailed it.
Roz takes a deep, shaky breath and shakes her head, "Why the fuck does this shit keep happenin to me…? I thought I'd made up for it all. I thought I was turnin a new leaf!"
"I… um." Winnie sets her papers down. "You aren't going to be on trial and go to jail for potentially years? That's not a bad thing? If you wanted to turn over a new leaf?" Why are those all questions, Winnie?
"I done bad things…" She says with palpable guilt, "I done run outta luck and now it's comin back to bite me."
"Um. Well. I should mention that if you do, um, go and confess to being in the Defias, and plead guilty to the charges, there's… I mean, there wouldn't be much I could do?" Winnie asks?
"I'm not gettin locked up!" Roz says firmly. She takes a breath, "Sorry… I just…" She trails off.
Winnie flinches back, and some of her papers fall off her lap. She bends to pick them up, scooting a little to get the ones that fell just out of her reach. "Then, um, if you aren't going to confess, and they don't have a witness, that's where we are. Two misdemeanors possible, but if they don't go to trial, then the charges will be dropped, and you're…um." She straightens up and sets her papers back together. "A free woman."
Rozalin nods twice slowly before burying her face in her hands and openly weeping at long last. It seems she ran out of strength to hold it all together.
Winnie's toolbox for social situations like there is limited, and some of her usual ones she didn't even bring with her like stuffed animals, warm blankets, and cookies. After a very awkward amount of time, Winnie carefully moves her notes back into her briefcase, and then shuts it quietly. She stands up, holding onto her briefcase with one hand, and scoots hesitantly closer to Rozalin, reaching out a cautious hand with the intent to there, there pat her on the shoulder.
Rozalin doesn't flinch at her touch. If anything it just makes her let loose even more. She shakes and sniffles as she keeps crying.
Winnie, having exhausted her social toolbox for comforting adults, does another pat, pat, and then says, "Okay. So. Um. If you — uh need anything, um, legal, lawyering things, I am lawyer. I-I mean, I am your lawyer. Still. Because…" Right, Rozalin knows this. "And if you think of any, uh, new questions about it, you can question me. Ask me. The questions." It's only getting worse, Winnie.
The lawyer begins to just scoot away, doing her best to [Fade] into the background, without any of the magic behind it except a sincere wish to not be perceived as she makes her way out of the room.
Rozalin keeps crying for a little while longer. When she notices that Winnie has gone, she gets up and goes back to her room.
After another day of proceedings, given the lack of concrete evidence with which to convict her, Rozalin’s case is thrown out on all charges. The next day a letter arrives for Winnie from Rozalin.
Hello,
I’m sorry for losing it a bit the other day. I know you just doing your job and trying to help me out. Just was a bit of a shock to me. I really cared about him.
Thank you very much for navigating me out of all that trouble I was in. I don’t wanna think too much about where I’d be now if you hadn’t been there to lend a hand, and I appreciate it.
I know I ain’t always had the best reputation, but I’m gonna keep doing my best to keep being better.
Not that I didn’t like seeing you, but I hope we don’t got much reason to meet again. Not unless you wanna stop for a drink sometime or if you’re ever in Westfall I can cook you up something nice.
Anyway, I bet you probably got more important things to do than listen to me prattle on on day.
I don’t even wanna ask Berdie how much it cost to hire you.
So I guess I’ll leave you to it then.
Thank you again and take care,
Rozalin Catarina Graufowl
10/19/28
Rozalin Graufowl,
Court date awaiting setting.Will send info when I have it. Inquiries made re:Barnabas Eisner attn: coroner, attached. Thank you re:offer drinks/food.
Hope this finds you well.
Regards,
Alwynneria Demasco, Esq.
[Attached to the brief note is a statement from the city coroner about what was done with Barnabas Eisner’s body according to the usual practices of the time, and where his remains would have ended up in the general Stormwind graveyard, as well as the mass funeral rites performed by the Cathedral.]