The Manehattan County Courthouse, located between the industrial district and the Bridleway streets, had always been quite the sight to behold. It’d been constructed shortly after the city’s founding and had stayed standing since; while other towns found their court buildings falling to flames, somehow or another, Manehattan’s shone brighter than ever. It, too, had been part of the renovation project just under a year ago, and its pews still gleamed with varnish. More often than not, if there wasn’t a case to be heard, fillies and colts would come from all over the area to gaze at the murals and artwork that bedecked the esteemed building. However, on this fateful day, one very important filly was nowhere to be found.
That much had been one of the few requests Coco had made over the course of the case negotiations. Her side had more than enough witnesses to get by without Babs, yet somehow, the possibility of her daughter missing school had been the last thing on her mind when she made that deal. As much as she hated the thought of leaving Babs behind when she’d been part of the proceedings for so long, there were no guarantees on what the police could keep Mosely from doing. He’d be restrained during the trial, she’d been assured endlessly, but she couldn’t allow any room for mistakes this time.
That much was enough to dissolve most of the fear in her heart. The next time she got home, she’d finally be able to tell Babs that her worst nightmares were gone for good.
The trial itself would only take two days, much shorter than most high-profile cases like it. Nopony quite knew why, but rumors flitted around that it was because so few ponies had been willing to take the defense’s side.
Pretty ironic, Coco thought to herself, considering what an uphill battle this would’ve been a few months ago.
Still, just standing in the entryway was enough to make her feel like she was in the pits of Tartarus itself. She’d been the first witness to arrive, and the loneliness of the situation only amplified the foreboding feeling. Coco, having rehearsed her speech quite a bit already, allowed her mind to flit onto other things as she waited—namely, the one factor that could lose them the case.
Torte Framboise.
In the uneventful days before the trial, he’d come over to her dressing room, claiming he wanted to apologize to her personally. As much as he, and everypony else, thought she’d misunderstood his intentions, the stunt still seemed pretty risky even if he was on their side.
Would I have believed him a few months ago? she asked herself.
Just after that thought came to mind, Coco remembered how Valencia had complained to her about how her husband never got involved in the Oranges, never once attempted to get them out of trouble.
Probably. Or maybe I have gotten more skeptical lately.
Still, she found herself mulling over Torte’s real place in this case until she heard hooves approaching the entryway. Over the past few weeks, she’d trained herself to notice the little differences in the way ponies held themselves—for instance, Cameo’s hooves barely made a sound as they touched the ground, enough to make Coco wonder if she was a ballerina in a past life. On the other hoof, Bambi’s hoofsteps were much too noisy, and Valencia had stopped for coffee with her just a few minutes ago. That left only two ponies, one of which Coco knew never arrived this early.
“Go away, Mosely,” she muttered without even having to look at the source of the noise. “We’re not supposed to interact in this case, remember?”
When she finally decided to turn her head towards him, it took all she had not to burst out laughing. While the former producer looked nowhere near as dignified as he once had—being in a holding center could certainly do that, Coco supposed—the look on his face made him even less so. His eyes looked as though they were about to bulge out of their sockets, and his mane was still standing on end from the shock.
Can’t pull that one on me anymore, now, can you?
Her slight moment of victory, however, was cut short as soon as she realized that one very important item was missing. While she’d been assured that police officers would be trailing him at all times, the two of them were the only ones in the room right now. The cuffs on all four of his hooves were supposed to prevent him from doing anything too drastic, yet Coco remembered all too well how delayed their reaction time tended to be.
Just when Mosely had finally regained his composure, he finally whispered, “Now, you don’t actually think that, do you?”
“It’s not up to your interpretation,” Coco answered, cloaking her anger under a thin layer of strictness. “I’m witnessing for both sides. You could say I was forced into witnessing for one, I could say I wasn’t, but the facts are the same. We can’t be seen together.”
Figuring the cops must be just as late as everypony else, Coco turned her gaze towards the window, practically willing them to arrive. Mosely didn’t seem quite as desperate as he had before—again, something that his time away could’ve done—but she could barely stand another second with the stallion. She let her mind go into autopilot, exchanging pleasantries with him against everything she wanted to say, and for the most part, with the frivolous questions he asked, it actually worked.
“I’ve heard you’ve been mourning my loss with Mr. Stealer, then? Or perhaps he forced you into it?”
Coco suddenly felt the compulsion to bang her head against the bluntest object in the room, but kept smiling regardless. Or, at least, hoping Mosely didn’t notice her teeth gritting underneath.
Keep the accusations to the courtroom, keep the accusations to the courtroom…
“Well, in either case, I think I might have something that’d persuade you otherwise.”
With his reputation, Coco half-expected him to pull a knife out of his saddlebag again. What she saw there, however, was something that made her want to vomit even more.
He now held a teal-colored box with a white bow, gripping the ribbon tightly in his mouth. For a fashion-minded Manehattan mare like Coco, it took all of five seconds to realize what Mosely was pulling. Two of those, granted, were spent glaring at it with utterly horrified confusion and wondering how he’d even managed to get a Hooffany’s ring in his circumstances.
“I know this may not be the best time for this, but I may not get another chance,” he finally said. “Coco Pommel, will you—“
Right when he was about to ask, the escort cops arrived, stopping him in his tracks without even having to say a word. Still, he winked as they guided him into the courtroom, almost as if he expected an answer to his incomplete question.
He’d forgotten it as he trotted in, and for a few silent moments, Coco felt compelled to look at the ring inside. It was probably the most diamond-studded thing she’d ever seen, designed as a clear marker of wealth and a cushy life as a prominent stallion’s trophy wife.
As she trotted into the courtroom, Coco felt like she was barely giving up anything at all. Because as far as she was concerned, even with its gorgeous design, it was nothing but trash. Taking it and accepting his offer would mean selling her soul, after all.
A beautiful, gilded dream that countless Manehattan fillies had spent all their lives dreaming of, because they never thought it would come with worries of its own. A fantasy that Coco, at times, had even found herself indulging, because she didn’t know the darkness that hid behind it.
Everything she’d ever wanted was behind that door. The ring she was holding was little more than another obstacle.
She dropped it into the bottom of her saddlebag and planned accordingly.
****
“All rise for the honorable Golden Gavel. The case of Manehattan v. Mosely Orange is now in session.”
As she prepared for the prosecution to begin its case, Coco couldn’t help but think that case names were more than a little exaggerated. Over the past few days, she’d been schooled by her lawyer on the various aspects that came into play within the trial, including naming conventions, but that didn’t stop her from immediately imagining the entire city of Manehattan taking Mosely to court. And, for that matter, that was basically how the situation was at that point.
The news outlets didn’t dog her near as much as they usually did, but there were still enough reporters around for her to have to smile and give her usual interviews. Practically all of them were hoping for her to bring home a victory and put Manehattan’s newest notorious criminal behind bars, but deep inside, no matter how much she’d reassured them, or Babs, or anypony, her brave face was just that. As the lawyers went into their opening statements, Coco’s eyes were directed towards the ring yet again, almost as if to remind herself just how high the stakes really were now.
She’d hoped to at least recognize some of Mosely’s witnesses, figure out their tactics in advance so she’d know what to say beforehand, but none of them were familiar to her. Her side had far more witnesses and likely far more evidence—but that was the key. Looking at the ring, she couldn’t help but remind herself that neither side was really hers today.
For the first time in the course of the case, victory was uncertain. Or maybe it’d always been, and it’d taken that reminder—the ring, being carted off to Trottingham, leaving everything she had behind to follow a monster to the ends of Equestria—for her to realize that fact.
Coco willed those thoughts out of her mind as easily as any of the other invasive voices that’d permeated her soul, only to hear a sudden voice that didn’t belong to any of the lawyers.
“Tell me that isn’t what I think it is,” Bambi muttered, turning her head towards Coco’s saddlebag.
To Coco’s utter horror, both Bambi and Cameo had noticed the blue box poking out of her bag. Applejack and Scene, who were both about to be called up in a matter of minutes, were too wrapped up in their own preparations to notice, and Coco could only hope they would stay that way.
“If we win this case,” she sighed as she pushed the box back into her bag, “it won’t be.”
She forced herself to listen to the opening statements, even if they were all about things she already knew. The implications of the case, whether or not there was sufficient evidence, all were so obvious she barely even needed to hear it. But at least looking at the judge was a different affair from looking at that ring. Even thinking about it was enough to throw her off guard.
“It’s another one of his tricks,” Coco whispered as she realized this, staring the other two mares in the eye. “Don’t pay any attention to it, and we can power through. It’s just another way for him to throw us off guard.”
However, what she saw next was practically enough to make her bury her face in her hooves. While Bambi seemed perfectly fine to leave it at that, Cameo had barely spoken throughout this whole scene. At first, Coco had thought it was just out of respect or a desire to calculate through the case as she had. But, considering her impact on opening night, just about everypony knew that Cameo had to be at peak performance today.
More importantly, Coco couldn’t help but think of something her fellow mother had told her a month ago: that sometimes, even she still missed Mosely. That ring, more than anything else, meant any spark between the divorced couple was as good as dead.
Had this plan ever really been about Coco in the first place? Or was it a way of efficiently disarming Mosely’s fiercest witness?
All through Scene’s speech, littered with the same sorts of questions and answers he’d been giving reporters for months now, Coco couldn’t help but notice that her focus was no longer on her coltfriend. It quickly shifted to a pair of bright blue eyes, two yellow hooves taking hers into their own.
“I’m going to be okay,” Cameo assured her. “It’s you I’m more worried about.”
With a quick sigh, she whispered, “I never wanted to force you into anything, but there’s one promise I want you to make. Fight with everything you have, even if you lose. Whatever you do, don’t let him take you.”
If it would’ve been any other time, Coco would’ve supposed that Cameo was making her usual warnings, fearing that she would repeat the older mare’s mistakes. Yet this time, even more desperation pierced her voice, almost as if she was remembering something else. Almost as if it wasn’t the fear of repeating the past that plagued her, but rather the fear of losing somepony else.
“I won’t,” Coco replied, her face more determined than ever. “And I’ll make sure he never gets the chance.”
Her coltfriend’s voice still permeated the courtroom, and any other time, she would’ve been as enraptured as ever. This time, though, she had different priorities—and different trials—to conquer.
I won’t let him win. Not this time.
****
The first piece of physical evidence had been brought in only an hour after the trial’s start. It was one of the few pieces they had in a case that relied so much upon spoken records and eyewitness accounts, but it was more than enough to unhinge the defense in such a short amount of time. To put it frankly, nopony had expected it to show up when it did, not even Coco.
All Applejack had said about it was that it was a “surprise” sure to gain them an advantage. And sure enough, there it was—a seemingly ordinary-looking knife, still coated with traces of dried blood. Apparently, being suddenly immobilized during a murder attempt meant being foolish enough to leave the weapon right at the crime scene.
As Applejack said with a confident swagger, she’d found it on her orchard just days after the incident. She would’ve found it even sooner, but everypony at Sweet Apple Acres had been too shaken by the incident to cross those fields before. From there, the forensics were clear enough—while he may have held it in his mouth as he attacked, Mosely had still left some hoofprints on it. Likewise, the dried blood traced directly to Coco herself, while some stray strands of fur told who the real target had been.
Coco had never been so caught between relief and fear as she was when she saw the knife on the table. Even as she listened to Applejack’s confession, she instinctually backed away, but thankfully, its contribution to the overall interrogation was slight at best.
“So, as y’all can see here, the very second we expelled him from the family, he came barrelin’ over and nearly killed my cousin,” Applejack explained. “And that ain’t even the worst thing he’s done. Point is, he’s been nothin’ but trouble ever since he joined our family. Unlike some families, we Apples don’t take disownin’ ponies lightly.”
“Did you make any attempts to reach out to your cousin when she was working in the factory?” a lawyer asked, looking as though even he wanted to change the subject. In response, Applejack merely shook her head.
“We had no idea, and if I can point you to the oath I took earlier, you’ll see I’m tellin’ the truth. We’d just as soon assumed that the Manehattan side of our family had drifted away, or died, even. When she showed up outta nowhere, I kept thinkin’ that same way ‘til she told me otherwise. It’s a darn shame we couldn’t have, but we’re makin’ up for it now, that’s for sure.”
The lawyer took that as a satisfactory explanation and continued on. Sure enough, Applejack had quizzed Granny Smith on what’d made her suspect Mosely all along, and she used those idiosyncrasies for all they were worth. While they were nowhere near as dramatic as the knife, they showed that Mosely had never been an easy stallion to pin down, and was as dangerous as he was unpredictable.
As soon as she confessed all that she needed to, Applejack left the courtroom to attend to a situation within the Orange family, something she’d needed to crack down on even more now that they had splintered into groups. By Coco’s calculations, her time to testify was just an hour and a half away, and so she spent the rest of her valuable time planning out everything she needed to say in as little words as possible.
She’d decided that she’d do the very same thing tomorrow as the defense brought its witnesses forth. It just wouldn’t be the way Mosely had planned.
She turned to her saddlebag, this time pulling out a notebook rather than the dreaded blue box. Scribbling everything she could think of, every last offense Mosely had ever paid her and her family, Coco had never felt surer of herself.
Her time was now. And she wouldn’t lose to anypony as rotten as Mosely Orange.
****
Cameo and Coco gave each other one last knowing glance before the latter moved into the battlefield. They trailed past one another, the biological mother and the adoptive mother, the old flame and the reluctant lover, with more understanding in their eyes than ever.
In spite of Coco’s concerns, Cameo had reprised her starring role in today’s trial, spinning the same captivating story as she had before. If anything, knowing now that the mare would never do anything to hurt her, Coco was even more enchanted by her skills, hoping she could follow Cameo up as well as she had on Spellshock’s opening night.
She placed her hoof on the Elements of Harmony book as stiffly as a robot and as gracefully as a swan. The oath, and just about everything else, came to her as naturally as if it were downloaded into her mind. And so, she found herself starting from the beginning. The first time Mosely Orange had ever weaseled his way into her life.
“I never thought in a million years that night would mess me up as much as it did,” she spoke as she told the story of how she was first blackmailed. “But strangely enough, that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how much he messed me up. Thankfully, my roommate told me fairly early on just how bad he was, but even then, part of me didn’t want to believe it. As much as I hate to admit it, he puts on a pretty good act.”
As she said this, her eyes moved across the rows of the courthouse, finally winking when it was fixed on Mosely’s face. It was a simple plan, really. Take advantage of his delusions when they were at their highest, make him think she was actually going to accept his proposal. Seem just convincing enough to glide through the case, and hide a bit of skepticism inside to make it look like her family really was forcing her. It would be so tiny, nopony else would see it except for its intended target. And then, when it came time for her to present her case for the defense, she would tear it all down. Babs may have left the factory as a broken filly, but by the time this case was over, Mosely would be a broken stallion.
It would be the most ruthless thing Coco had ever tried in her life, but hopefully, it would be enough. Enough to get her out of the engagement if she lost, and enough to pull her out of her months-long living Tartarus if she won.
“But from the way he separated me from my family, I knew,” she spoke, moving away from the hint as suddenly as she’d given it. “Everypony connected with Cameo told me it was the same for her. Mosely drains ponies of any support they have and leaves them at his mercy. Like a changeling, really, straight down to the way they confuse blackmail with love.”
She found herself speeding through the rest of the lawyer’s questions at a breakneck pace, reciting them as if she was an actress on her own stage. Most of them were fairly simple, asking her to recount things that the reporters had already asked thousands of times already, and really, when it came down to it, nothing was really different about it.
All that, however, would change with the cross-examination. Coco had watched Torte interrogate enough ponies to get some idea of how simple it was. Everything for the Orange lawyer was cut-and-dry, as easy as answering questions on a survey, and naturally, his calm tone only added to that impression. Just one look at him, and he could lull anypony into a sense of security.
Deep down, Coco still didn’t know how she felt about him, even after all of today’s events. Even knowing that he could have handled his opponents much harder wasn’t enough to shake off her unrelenting distrust of him.
Yet somehow, all that dissipated in the moment, almost as if she was following orders yet again. In the courtroom, everything had its specific place, everything was asked at a very particular time, and for the most part, Coco felt that she could finally navigate it—
“Judge Golden Gavel,” Torte intoned, “do you believe there’s any reason to question this mare’s integrity?”
Coco’s mane stood on end for a few slight seconds, her brain conjuring up memories of being cornered by Midsweet and being dissected with her insincere questions. Those few heartbeats, she realized, were probably the most nervous she’d ever felt. For a slight moment, she was even reassured that such a question had to be yet another courtroom convention.
But Coco had forgotten just how ponies like Midsweet operated. It wasn’t the questions that pierced her, it never had been. It had been those tiny breaks from the struggle, when she was allowed to regain hope, only for it to be depleted just as quickly.
And just like that, everything she’d planned for was dismantled with a single sentence.
“I have reason to believe that this mare was previously on the wrong side of the law.”
The judge said nothing, taking in everything this lawyer was saying. More than anything she’d ever wished for in her life, she wanted Golden Gavel to unleash an objection. To say something like this had nothing to do with the case. That she really was done with her past, with Suri, with Mosely, with every other pony who’d ever tried to control her.
“If I might so ask, what credibility might a former knockoff artist have to offer in this discussion? Not to antagonize the mare, of course, but all factors must be considered in this case, even ones we might not want to admit to.”
Torte was doing exactly the same thing as she was, from what she could see. Playing both sides, wanting to gain the trust of both prosecution and defense. Only now, she wasn’t so sure if she was going to end up unscathed in her quest to shatter Mosely.
As soon as she thought of him, Coco’s face turned to his bench, where her former tormentor plead all the silent outcries he could, and on the other side, the rest of her family was mirroring him. For once, there was something both sides agreed on. Something so terrible that not even Mosely himself could endorse it.
Coco was done with her past.
Her past, however, was not done with her.