Prologue: two months ago

His head was pounding and his eyes wouldn't open right away. It was almost too much for him to lift up his hand and rub it over his face, but there was something sticky on it and he needed it off his skin. Had he fallen asleep in his own vomit again? That wouldn't be the first time. And the foul stench hanging in the air around him seemed to suggest something like that. Must have been some party last night… He had been no stranger to hangovers lately, but this must be the mother of them all. He grunted and wiped his hand over his face, wincing when the ache in his head grew almost unbearable. The stench was on his hand, too. It almost made him puke again, but he managed to keep it down.

When he finally opened his eyes, the first thing that he saw was the palm of his hand. There were brownish smears on it. What the fuck had he done? Puke on himself and then shit himself or something? But the smears didn't look like shit or vomit. They looked more like… He swallowed against his hurling stomach again as the question presented itself once more, with more urgency this time. What the fuck had he done?

He sat up as slowly as he could in an attempt to keep his headache at an almost bearable level and tried to focus on the room he was in. The first thing he noticed was that it was spinning around him, and at a nauseating speed too. He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to ignore the smell. When he opened his eyes again, the spinning had stopped. But the sight that greeted him was even more nauseating.

He dropped his head forward and vomited on the black marble floor he was sitting on. Then he clenched his eyes shut, unwilling to take another look at what he'd just seen. But closing his eyes turned out to be no use, because the image was there in his mind anyway, like one of those photographs they sometimes showed on the Discovery Channel.

Blond curls, caked with blood, hanging over the side of the tub. The usually impeccable white of the wall behind the tub spattered with blood. A dangling arm, nearly touching the floor.

"A-Amy?" His voice voice came out a hoarse whisper.

A door opened and closed somewhere in the penthouse and the little beeps of his alarm system being shut off pierced through his head, making him grab it and groan as the pounding worsened. Purposeful footsteps headed into the living area… And then stopped as a woman gasped.

Irina.

"Mr. Farris?" His cleaning woman called out. Then he heard her mutter something in Russian, the language she fell back on whenever she was agitated. "Mr. Farris?"

Her voice was trembling now, and suddenly the horrible idea hit him that the rest of the penthouse would look exactly like the bathroom. What the fuck had he done last night? He needed to know. Because he sure as hell didn't remember. He put his hands on the floor and started pulling his knees up so he could try to stand up, but his hand landed on something cold and hard lying on the floor and he knew what it was before looking down at it.

A gun. He picked it up, stared at it. His gun. He turned it over in his hands, trying to understand why it was on the bathroom floor instead of in the gun safe under his bed. Trying to deny that he could have taken it out and… But the time for denial was over, he knew when he smelled the barrel of the gun. He lost the strength in his hands and the weapon dropped to the floor with a loud thunk as the truth hit him.

He had finally done what he'd feared he would do some day.

Irina must have heard the gun land on the floor, because she called his name again and her footsteps came towards him now. Fast. She'd find him here. She'd find Amy. She'd see. She'd know.

He hid his face in his hands, his body starting to shake uncontrollably.

"Mr. Farris?" The door opened. "Are you…" Irina's voice was cut off by her sharp intake of breath. An eternal silence seemed to stretch out between them as he looked up and saw her horrified face taking in the scene. Then she started screaming.

Ryan Farris started crying.

A/N: Welcome to my new fic… Don't worry, familiar characters will start showing up soon.

This is a crossover fic, which is new to me. But it is also a great opportunity to bring two of my favorite shows together. This fic is for The Good Wife and Necessary Roughness. For those of you who haven't watched both shows, let me include their IMDB blurbs here:

Necessary Roughness (NR): A Long Island psychotherapist's personal life unravels when she finds her husband cheating. Diving fully into her work, Dr. Dani Santino soon finds herself as the most sought-after therapist for high-profile clients. Athletes, entertainers, politicians, and others living in the spotlight clamor for her unique brand of tough love therapy during their moments of crisis. Although her career is reenergized, it wreaks havoc on her life as a newly minted single mom of two teenagers.

The Good Wife (TGW): Alicia has been a good wife to her husband, a former state's attorney. After a very humiliating sex and corruption scandal, he is behind bars. She must now provide for her family and returns to work as a litigator in a law firm.

I thought it would be a nice experiment to bring these two strong women together. Of course, they will be joined by the men I ship them with. What's a fanfic without romance, right?

Although this story is inspired by these shows, it is meant to be a stand alone fic. It will not incorporate any of the events we've seen on the shows (at least not in detail), because that would make things way too complicated for me.

The timeline for this story:

NR was cancelled in 2013, and this story is set two years after the final episode.

TGW is still running, but I am going to ignore season 7, which hasn't even started yet as I write this. At the same time, I would like for you to assume that this story is set two years after the final scene of season 6. I know that doesn't add up since 6x22 aired in May 2015, but I have chosen to ignore the math for the sake of convenience and, much more important, plotting. I needed a two year gap for reasons that will become clear later.

Okay, I think I have now said everything I needed to say for now… Please feel free to ask questions and/or share your thoughts on this project.

I hope all of you who I've met on this site or on Twitter, whether you are an NR fan or a TGW fan, will join me on this new journey. And I hope you will grow to love the unfamiliar-to-you characters as much as I have grown to love them. But if not, then rest assured that I will also keep writing separate stories for both shows in the future.