【ER】Golden Rule

Grantaire was busy under the table pouring his whiskey into a water bottle when Courfeyrac pushed the door open.The rattling of the latch made him shudder reflexively, and the glass wine bottle slipped out of his hand, fell to the ground and shattered.

"No way, again?" Grantaire saw his friend raise an eyebrow at him.When he usually does this, a twenty-degree eyebrow tilt means he wants to take you out to have fun, and a forty-degree tilt like today means something bad is about to happen. "I was just about to ask if your bar for drinking in court has expired. Seriously, Grantaire, the district judge already knows about your water bottle trick, don't Busy work - try another trick."

"Why don't you say 'No? Courfeyrac didn't knock again'." Grantaire shrugged and retreated into his chair, letting the sour smell rise from his rug, hoping to use Pretend that he doesn't exist to end Courfeyrac's about-to-be-spoken statement.

"It was just last week. But guess what, I was thinking about how to get myself another one."

"Maybe it's because we share an office." Courfeyrac said kindly, looking familiar with the situation.The dark wine stain spread across the carpet and ran down to his feet.Courfeyrac, the county attorney's triage officer, joined Grantaire the same year.They met quickly in each other's conspicuous and often eye-catching French accents, then became old friends at the drinking table, and they hit it off quickly and decided to occupy this small office on the third floor of the County Prosecutor's Office.The office wasn't comfortable, but it was quiet.The room was dimly lit all the year round because only one narrow window was opened. There was a row of wooden bookcases against the wall on one side, and the floor was covered with damp walnut wood floors and old fur carpets whose original color could not be seen.The building where the County Prosecutor’s Office is located was built in the New England period. There are only three floors in total. Harsh.Their District Attorney General did a renovation on the first floor a year ago, removed the creaking wooden floor and replaced it with marble, and replaced a brick wall with French windows, and finally made the reception floor—in his words - Looks "modern and professional".As for the internal offices on the upper two floors, they still maintain the old look. Courfeyrac just shrugged his shoulders, jokingly saying that this made them European immigrants "have a way to miss their hometown".

"Look what I got for you," Courfeyrac said, waving a folder at Grantaire and dropping it on the desk in front of him. "You'll like it—murder and burglary charges."

Grantaire groaned and sank deeper into the chair.

"Can't you just throw them at Marius?" he protested feebly. "I don't want to do anything! I'm terminally sick of being tired of work."

"You've had it for years," said his friend, waving his hands and going back to his desk.For some reason, he usually had a face full of gloating in such situations, but today he didn't seem to be in a very good mood to play around. "Marius still has two counts of assault in his hands, but it's possible he's in court with you. Ah... by the way, *the* officer sent the case."

Grantaire feels his eye sockets are about to spit out his eyeballs. "You're talking about Javert, aren't you?" he protested. "I can't think of what you're messing with, don't you know how much that guy hates me? Three months."

Courfeyrac looked at him.

"Okay, buddy," he said, a little too heavily even for him. "Do you know who the victim was? Thenardier—Eponine's father. That's why you're taking this case."

Grantaire choked up.

"Also," said his friend, looking into his face, as if he wasn't sure whether to give him another sledgehammer:

"His attorney was Enjolras—you know that? *that* Enjolras."

"... Penny? Love Penny. Damn it, answer my phone."

Grantaire crashed into the bathroom while calling No.20 to Eponine, but no one answered—it was normal, he never knew why Eponine had a mobile phone but never answered it.He swears and smashes the bottle of mineral water in his hand that was supposed to hold wine against the wall.

Eponine Thérardier had been his friend for more than ten years. They had known each other when Grantaire was still in high spirits, so there was nothing wrong with calling them close friends.Éponine had been beautiful in her fifteenth or sixteenth year, and she might not be so bad now, but time still consumed her like Grantaire.Strange to say they've known each other for so long, but she's never told Grantaire about her family.All he knew was that when they were in middle school, she had a sister who was crying all the time. They both dropped out of school later, and when they met again, Eponine told him that she had severed ties with her family.She worked three jobs at once, and even though Grantaire had become a "highly educated jerk" by then, they remained close.Yet three years after they met again, the jerk sent her sister (Azma Thenardier, a name Grantaire will never forget) to jail—the girl who was raped and forced to take readings across the border, but Grantaire couldn't choose which cases he would prosecute.Even if Éponine later maintained a friendship with Grantaire, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the incident destroyed his faith in justice.

"Call me back, Eponine, I won't let you lose your family for nothing this time," Grantaire yelled into the voice mail, but he didn't exaggerate.Even if he didn't know anything about Éponine's father, the case was clearly a certainty.

"His name is Jean Valjean." Half an hour ago, Javert introduced the case to him in the reception room, his voice was a bit gritted. "This guy has a solid record - he was in prison for burglary when he was young, not only that, he tried to escape while he was released on bail, he planned a jailbreak in prison, and the resulting sentence was extended, and he spent a total of 19 years in prison. .Not to mention he disappeared within half a year after those fools granted him parole."

"Oh, that's terrible, sounds like a criminal," Grantaire remembered commenting, "So what happened to him this time? A robbery? Why? ... Cosette ... this girl's What is the name for?"

"Adopted daughter of the Thenardiers—he said the couple abused her. The police had written him before, and he said it was the girl's mother who asked him to."

"Now there's the matter of the mother..." Grantaire frowned, he had never heard Eponine say that they had an adopted daughter, but then again, Eponine never told anything over him.Even Mr. Thenardier's occupation was that of a self-employed hotel owner, he only knew from the brief of the case. "...Then how is this so-called mother now? Is it possible to testify?"

The officer leveled his jaw across from him.

"She's dead. She's a tech girl."

"...wow. Awesome." Grantaire heard himself whistle emotionlessly. "Ex-con, hooked up with tech girls, showing up ten years on the run after parole, breaking into a legitimate hotel, killing the owner and taking a young girl with him - what a treat The script where the pimp wants to keep forcing his daughter to sell money because his woman died. All juries will think so—everyone will think so."

Of course, he said to himself, not everyone thinks so—that Enjolras doesn't.

Thinking of Enjolras, he shivered in the hot and smelly bathroom.

The first time he met Enjolras was a year ago. The other party was a trial lawyer who had just become a full-time regular. He was enthusiastic, firm, eloquent, and had a beautiful face.He remembered the case where Enjolras defended an old black guy over sixty years old, none of his children wanted to hire him a lawyer, and Enjolras did the public interest litigation, and he looked Quite dedicated to this.He delivered a 5-minute brilliant speech to the jury during the questioning of witnesses, lamenting the corruption of the police system and the unfair treatment of his clients, calling on the jury and the judge to give him justice and human rights, and hoping that the prosecution Fang can permanently dismiss charges because all juries have been blinded by undue bias.The speech was interrupted at the third minute, and the judge asked him to continue asking questions instead of delivering a speech, and the jury was asked to forget the "emotional and inflammatory inferences" just now.

The young blond lawyer was annoyed and helpless, but Grantaire on the prosecution table was completely moved. He felt his eyes go straight and his throat dry, not only because of the dry wine in his throat, but also because of the young lawyer's outspoken words. The dizzying power and light on his body.Dizzy, he stood up, posed a few questions to the witness stand, and sat down again with trembling legs.There was no possibility of overturning the case, his question was just a formality, and Enjolras' enthusiasm had no substance to the court at all, and the loss was completely expected.But he knew in his heart that Enjolras, who was doomed to lose, had stepped on him, and in just 3 minutes, he had become his crazy admirer.

"Good job." He walked over to the defense box after the verdict, Enjolras looking terribly upset about the failed trial, his jaw clenched, and he slammed the folder on the table.Grantaire held out a hand to him, "Is this your first independent case? You were like a god when you got angry."

Enjolras did not shake his hand.He turned his head sharply, glaring at Grantaire hard.

"You know he's innocent." He said through gritted teeth, eyes blazing with rage. "Wouldn't accusing an innocent person break your conscience?"

Grantaire froze.His hand hung in the air awkwardly, and he put it down resentfully after a long while.

"I don't know, it's not going to make my conscience any worse anyway," he said finally, trying to crack a joke with a grin.And Enjolras just stared at him angrily, making him feel as if he was on trial.

"You really make me nauseous."

Finally, the blond lawyer said, turned around and walked out of the court without looking sideways.

At the end of the memory, Grantaire yawned hugely, poured tap water into the empty mineral water bottle, and rinsed his mouth with the lingering smell of alcohol.His own face looked at him in the mirror.This face was very handsome when he was young-at that time, he was still fledgling and high-spirited like the blond boy in the defense, and he had read too many books on jurisprudence and legal politics.Whenever he showed up at a bar, there were always two or three girls (or boys, of course) willing to let him take them home on his new pay every night.But those young and attractive expressions disappeared from his face at some point, and now this face is tired and gloomy, with black eye bags, and the sunken cheeks are full of unshaven stubble—for the first time No one among the girls who met would believe that he was a lawyer anymore. Even if he wanted to treat them to the most expensive wine, they would probably just get up and leave in panic and disgust.

"Look at you," he said, lifting one corner of his mouth and toasting himself in the mirror with a plastic bottle.If that Enjolras knew what was going on in his heart, he might only despise him even more.If he knew that Grantaire secretly recalled to him the way he talked in court when he was young, he would probably only feel ashamed-and there was nothing wrong with that, Enjolras was stronger than his ideal age, and Better than the sentences he'd uttered when he was most confident.He was the person he most wanted to be when he was young, but unfortunately, neither did the jury, nor did the judge.Just look at how many times that fair-haired orator was interrupted in court, he thought, laughing suddenly at the memory of Enjolras' expression of exasperation and helplessness.

Someday he'll lose his enthusiasm too, Grantaire thought.All lawyers are like this, lose too many cases when they are young that they want to win, and win a dozen cases that they should not have won when they are old.He likes to see Enjolras' angry expression, but the other half of his brain faintly hopes that the laws of this world are not like this for Enjolras, and that he can always maintain his enthusiasm and youth.

It's a pity that you will lose this case, Sun God.he thought, throwing the bottle crookedly into the trash can next to the sink.

TBC