The walk felt like years, each step getting slower every time my foot reaches the floor. Looking hopefully over my shoulder, begging for someone, anyone, to come running down to tell me that he had backed down from this intense battle. That the cries of war had been silenced.
Stepping into the room of silence with capes as dark as his soul and white wigs as light as my innocence. With shaky hands grasping the card in my left and holy book in my right. Stuttering, stumbling, slowly reading the jumbled words that fell upon that damaged piece of laminate that meant I was truthful.
I sat, perched on the edge of a chair, there for a purpose, not comfort. To look from judge, to barrister, to jury and back again. The moment the opposition opened their mouths it felt like a thundering Calvary heading towards me, with me armed with only a single rose held over my heart.
To be made a liar, to be made a fool.