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This was what Markhel would officially label this entire thing as:
Absolutely. Ridiculously. Abhorrently. Fucked.
He didn’t even want to be awake, much less sitting in a courtroom at 9 in the goddamn morning—the fluorescent lights stabbing his eyes like they personally had a vendetta. His “lawyer” was just Travis. Not Attorney Travis. No. Just Travis, some guy he once saw win an argument at a gas station, whom he bribed with $200 and a suit rental to stand beside him and nod occasionally.
Across the aisle, Jaime sat with all the enthusiasm of a corpse, tapping his fingers impatiently. He didn’t care about the settlement. He just wanted to get this over with so he could run off and elope with Z—mysterious, dramatic, always half-shadowed like they lived under permanent mood lighting.
Markhel didn’t care either. He just wanted the sweet, sweet alimony and a one-way ticket home so he could erase the last eight miserable years from his mental records.
“Let’s move this along,” Jaime muttered to the judge. “We both want out.”
The judge blinked. “…Are you two aware you filed on mutual grounds of emotional neglect, property dispute, and attempted poisoning?”
Jaime shrugged. Markhel scrolled on his phone. Travis nodded professionally, as if this made perfect legal sense.
The judge stared at them like she was waiting for one of them to burst out laughing and reveal this was all a prank show. When neither did, she slowly set her pen down, as if she was genuinely questioning her career choices.
“Right,” she said flatly. “And just to confirm… You attempted to poison him?”
Markhel didn’t look up from his phone. “Allegedly.”
“It was chamomile tea,” Jaime added without shame. “He’s allergic to flowers and feelings.”
Travis clicked his pen like attorneys do in movies. It made him feel powerful.
“With all due respect, Your Honor,” he said with frightening confidence for someone who printed his law degree from a meme generator at 3 AM, “we believe the emotional damage has already been inflicted. Legally. Spiritually. Economically.”
The judge stared.
Somewhere in the back, a bailiff whispered, “What the hell is happening?”
Jaime sighed dramatically like he was being forced to sit through a two-hour indie film about feelings. “Can we just sign whatever we need to sign? I have a train to catch. They’re waiting.”
“They?” the judge echoed.
Jaime smiled—sharp, secretive. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Markhel finally looked up, dead-eyed. “He joined a cult. Or a band. I genuinely can’t tell.”
Travis nodded again, like this, which was completely admissible in court.
The judge rubbed her temples like she could feel her lifespan shortening by the second. “Alright. We’ll proceed with asset division and alimony agreement—”
“Maximum alimony,” Markhel said instantly, not even bothering to look up. “For pain and suffering.”
“You never suffered,” Jaime muttered.
“I suffered emotionally,” Markhel replied. “Every time you breathed near me.”
Jaime rolled his eyes. “Can I just sign the papers? Z is already outside in the car with the engine running.”
“Of course they are,” Markhel said under his breath. “Do they hiss when exposed to sunlight or just evaporate?”
A beat of silence.
Travis, who had started to enjoy this far more than a $200 gig warranted, leaned toward the judge. “My client has endured eight long years of matrimonial purgatory with this—” he gestured vaguely at Jaime, “—man, and seeks only what is legally owed to him as compensation for psychological corrosion.”
The judge blinked slowly. “Psychological… corrosion.”
“It’s science,” Travis lied confidently.
Jaime checked the time on his watch, visibly done. “I’m begging you. I will sign anything. I’ll give him the house. I’ll give him the dog. Hell, I’ll give him my kidneys. Just let me leave.”
“You never had a dog,” Markhel said.
“I’ll buy you one, then divorce it too!” Jaime snapped.
Travis, who had taken exactly one BuzzFeed quiz titled ‘Could You Be a Lawyer?’, raised a hand. “My client is ready to emotionally detach and accept the financial compensation for his suffering.”
“I literally fed you for eight years,” Jaime muttered.
“And this,” Markhel gestured at him without looking, “is why I consider it emotional neglect.”
The judge pinched the bridge of her nose. “…The alimony agreement states that Jaime will pay a monthly sum of—”
“—Hurry,” Jaime said.
“—And Markhel will vacate the property—”
“—Gladly,” Markhel muttered.
“—Effective immediately.”
Silence.
Then, softly,
like a benediction of pure relief, both men said in perfect unison:
“Finally.”
The word echoed in the courtroom like a bell of freedom. Papers were signed, pens were capped, and in less than two minutes, Jaime was already halfway to the exit with the urgency of a man late for a dramatic rendezvous. Markhel collected his copy of the alimony agreement like a diploma he never earned and never cared about.
Travis held the door open like some kind of budget butler. “Pleasure doing business,” he said, even though no business had actually been done legally or ethically.
The judge just stared as they walked out, expression hollow. She had presided over arson cases, attempted murder trials, and a man who once tried to sue a goose legally—but this? This might be the one that finally broke her spirit.
Outside the courtroom, the world resumed as if nothing had happened. Jaime headed straight for the exit, scanning for a black car with tinted windows and an emotional backstory. Markhel checked his bank app, already calculating how many plane tickets and bad life decisions alimony could buy.
Neither of them looked back.
Not once.
On the courthouse steps, Quisha, six years old, sat with her little backpack shaped like a cartoon rabbit. Her legs were too short to reach the ground, so they dangled, swinging slowly.
She hugged her knees.
She had sat very quietly during the entire divorce, like a ghost no one remembered to acknowledge. No one asked her anything. No one held her hand. No one said her name.
Now the doors had closed. Her parents were gone.
Again.
A bailiff walked past, paused, then glanced around as if expecting someone to rush back for her.
No one did.
Quisha looked at the doors, small hands clutching the straps of her rabbit backpack. She didn’t cry. She just… waited.
Maybe, she thought, if she stayed very still, someone would remember she existed.
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”
The words thundered off the courtroom walls like someone had just detonated a marriage. Alberto was on his feet, finger pointed like a loaded weapon, voice cracking with the fury of a decade and a half collapsing in on itself.
“Oh please,” Ethan said, lounging back like this was brunch and not the flaming end of their legal union, “as if you never thought of it too.”
Alberto went still. Very, very still.
Then—
“YOU. THOUGHT. OF. ABORTING. OUR. KID?!”
Joaquin, age nine, sat in the back, clutching a Pokémon plush like it was a life raft.
Ethan rolled his eyes. “I said, considering. Past tense. He turned out okay anyway—”
Alberto didn’t even think—he launched across the defendant’s desk and had to be physically restrained by two bailiffs and what might have been a concerned janitor.
“You give a man fifteen years of your life,” Alberto growled, voice breaking. “You give him a wedding, a house, a child, and he stands there and—” he pointed, shaking—“and says he thought about just… not having him?”
“My client is expressing emotional distress,” Alberto’s lawyer said, mostly to the ceiling.
“YOUR CLIENT IS ABOUT TO EXPRESS HOMICIDE,” Alberto roared.
The judge—who had been silently updating her résumé mid-proceedings—banged her gavel like she was trying to banish a demon. Both men were just using the courtroom as a fighting ring. Hurling insults at each other and enough Ad Hominems to kill an English teacher. In all honesty, she’s stopped listening halfway through.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Alberto shot up from his chair so fast it screeched across the floor. “You’re seriously bringing THAT up in court?”
Ethan leaned back, lounging like this was brunch at a café instead of the legal end of their marriage. “I’m just saying, if you didn’t want me to mention the time you set fire to my yoga mat, maybe you shouldn’t have done it.”
“It was aromatherapy!” Alberto snapped. “You left a candle burning in the bedroom for six hours!”
“It smelled nice!”
“It smelled like insurance fraud!”
The judge pinched the bridge of her nose. “Gentlemen—”
“Your Honor, may I request a moment of silence?” Alberto’s lawyer cut in smoothly. “For my client’s remaining sanity.”
Ethan smirked. “You should request one for your client’s fashion sense while you’re at it.”
“EXCUSE ME?”
“You wore flip-flops to our anniversary dinner, Alberto. In public. That’s grounds for divorce in at least three countries.”
“That was because you ‘forgot’ my shoes in the car!”
“Allegedly.”
The judge slammed her gavel. “Order!”
“Objection!” Alberto barked back, though to what, no one knew.
The bailiff looked up from his crossword puzzle, sighed, and muttered, “Here we go again.”
Ethan crossed his legs, calm as a cat in chaos. “Let’s be honest, Your Honor. The only reason he wants custody of Joaquin is so he has someone to talk to who can’t legally tell him to shut up.”
Alberto slammed both hands on the table. “He’s MY son!”
“You named him after your ex-boyfriend!”
“That’s called closure!”
“That’s called therapy avoidance!”
“THAT’S CALLED YOU BEING PETTY!”
At this point, Joaquin—sitting in the back row with his Pokémon plush—slowly slid down in his seat like he could physically sink through the floor and escape.
The judge rapped her gavel again, harder this time. “One more outburst and I’ll have you both held in contempt.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “Define ‘outburst.’”
“THIS,” she said, gesturing wildly at the entire room. “Whatever this is!”
Travis, from the courtroom next door, poked his head in, still wearing his fake lawyer badge. “Is this… open to the public? Because this is better than cable.”
“GET OUT,” the judge barked.
He ducked out immediately, muttering, “Damn, tough crowd.”
Alberto turned back to Ethan, eyes blazing. “You know what, I don’t even want the house anymore. Keep it. Keep the furniture, the car, the blender—”
“Oh, thank you,” Ethan said sweetly. “I’ve always wanted custody of your emotional baggage.”
The courtroom groaned like it collectively gave up.
The judge sighed deeply. “Do either of you have any intention of behaving like adults today?”
“No,” they said in unison.
The judge scribbled something on her pad—possibly her resignation. “Fine. Custody goes to Mr. Lalamok. Visitation rights for Mr. Bahala-Na. And both of you are banned from speaking in metaphor for the rest of the hearing.”
Alberto pointed triumphantly. “HA!”
Ethan shrugged. “Good. I hate poetry anyway.”
The gavel came down with a final, exhausted crack.
“Court is adjourned. Both of you—out. Now.”
Alberto scooped up his paperwork, muttering under his breath. Ethan stood, slow and smug, as if the fight had been foreplay for his ego.
As they exited, a bailiff leaned over to another and whispered, “Fifty bucks says they’re back in six months arguing over who gets the cat.”
The other bailiff shook his head. “They don’t even have a cat.”
“Exactly.”
The doors to the Courtroom slammed shut behind Alberto like punctuation at the end of a very long, very stupid sentence.
He stood there for a second, still vibrating with post-argument adrenaline. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, the air smelled faintly like burned coffee and lost hope, and Joaquin stood beside him holding a Pokémon plush like an emotional support animal certified by trauma.
“Well,” Alberto muttered, half to himself, half to the cosmos. “That was hell with better lighting.”
Joaquin nodded solemnly. “You yelled a lot.”
“I was passionate,” Alberto corrected.
“You threw a pen.”
“I was expressing passion through flight mechanics.”
They both stood there in the sterile courthouse hallway, the tension slowly dissolving into something quieter — a dazed kind of relief. Alberto looked down at his son, who was still in his little collared shirt and shoes that didn’t quite match, and felt a mix of pride and heartbreak. He’d won custody. He’d won the fight.
So why did it still feel like losing?
He sighed, rubbed a hand over his face, and started down the hallway toward the exit. That’s when he saw her.
A tiny girl sitting cross-legged by the courtroom steps, a rabbit-shaped backpack perched on her lap like it was her only friend in the world.
She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t doing much of anything. Just… waiting.
Alberto slowed. “Hey there,” he said softly, crouching down to her level. “You okay?”
The girl looked up — big eyes, hollow and patient all at once. “My mom and dad were in there.” She pointed toward the courtroom next door. “They left.”
Something heavy settled in Alberto’s chest. He glanced at the door — Oh, the other Courtroom. The one with all the weird noises. The fake lawyer. The allergic tea incident.
“Oh, sweetheart…” he murmured. “Nobody came out for you?”
She shook her head once. “They said they were tired.”
Alberto froze. For a moment, he couldn’t even find words. Then, very gently: “What’s your name?”
“Quisha.”
“Hi, Quisha. I’m Alberto.” He gestured to his son. “This is Joaquin.”
“Hi,” Joaquin said, voice small but kind. He held out the Pikachu plush. “You can hold him if you want.”
Quisha blinked at it, then took it carefully, hugging it to her chest.
“Thanks,” she said. Barely a whisper.
Alberto looked up and down the hall again, expecting some frantic adult to appear — a parent, a clerk, someone. But it was just him, his son, and a little girl who had been forgotten in the bureaucratic wasteland of divorce court.
He straightened, sighed, and muttered under his breath, “Unbelievable.”
“Dad?” Joaquin asked.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Are we gonna leave her here?”
Alberto looked at Quisha again — her shoes too small, her backpack fraying at the seams, the way she kept glancing toward the courtroom door like it might magically open.
“…No,” he said finally. “We’re not.”
Her head tilted slightly. “You’re not?”
“Nope.” He crouched again, met her eyes. “Have you eaten today?”
She shook her head.
“Okay then,” he said, standing. “New plan. We’re getting ice cream.”
Joaquin’s eyes lit up. “Can I get two scoops?”
“After that performance in court? You can get three.”
Quisha blinked, confused. “But… I don’t have any money.”
Alberto smiled — soft, real. “Good thing I do.”
She hesitated, then stood up, clutching Pikachu and her rabbit backpack. When he offered his hand, she took it. Tiny fingers, warm now.
As they headed toward the glass doors, a clerk popped her head out of an office. “Sir! Wait—where are you taking that child?”
Alberto didn’t even slow down. “To the food court. Call it community service.”
The clerk frowned. “You can’t just take someone’s kid—”
“Trust me,” he said, pushing open the doors. “If they wanted her, they wouldn’t have left her.”
Sunlight poured in. Joaquin held the door. Quisha followed, still clutching her new plush, face turned up toward the bright morning like it was the first real thing she’d seen all day.
As they walked down the courthouse steps, Alberto glanced at his son. “Hey. You good with having a sister?”
Joaquin considered it. “Does she snore?”
“No idea.”
“Then yeah. I guess.”
Alberto laughed, threw an arm around him, and squealed. Squeezed his shoulder. “Good answer.”
Behind them, the courthouse loomed — cold, gray, and full of paperwork no one wanted to fill out. Ahead, the city waited, loud and alive and full of second chances.
And as they stepped off the last stair, Alberto thought, Maybe this time, something good actually came out of a courtroom