The old office chair gave a worrying creak as it rocked on its back two legs, wearily protesting the abuse. Creak, crrrrrrck, creak, crrrrrrck, the rhythm as steady as keeping time. And it may have well have been, though marking time seemed more on point. White noise scratching of quill on paper provided the only accompaniment to the clockwork chair, and beyond that the Sheriff's office maintained a quiet, cozy tranquility.
Until the chair dropped to the hardwood floor with a solid clack. The report of it hardly covered the sheepish yawn that stretched on into the silence.
Caitlyn, in full autopilot mode until the bitter end, double checked her i's and t's before looking up, blinking across the short distance that lay between her desk and the battered chair in which her partner slouched. She flicked a casual glance to the actual timepiece that hung over the door, only to draw up short at the ridiculous hour it announced.
"No need for you to stick around, dear," she said with a sigh, turning back to the enforcer with an apology. Vi was a sorry state herself, bags under her eyes and her uniform crinkled where she had tried to take a bit of a rest in the unforgiving chair. "Why don't you head on home, then? I'm sorry to say I completely lost track of the time."
"Don't worry about it, Cait," Vi drawled, waving a tired hand. "Solidarity, you know? I'll wait." Her grin was as carefree as ever, but the light didn't make it into her violet eyes. Caitlyn frowned ever so slightly at Vi's determination to stick it out. The amount of effort the woman had been known to put up had been documented at either 0% or 100%, and there was no way of telling which you were likely to get. Right now seemed to be one of those rare 100% times, even though all she could offer in this case was peaceable companionship.
In other words, solidarity. Caitlyn breathed a gentle sigh, dropping her attention back to the papers piled before her. Vi had been on the force for – what, a year now? – and still she managed to accrue more paperwork in twelve weeks than Caitlyn had seen for years at a stretch. Collateral damage had never been a laughing matter, but at least these days the reformed vigilante had the decency to pay penitence by putting in the hours at Caitlyn's side. Even if the hours were spent in mind-numbing boredom watching the Sheriff sign off on invoice after invoice.
Caitlyn tapped her fingers thoughtfully atop the remaining documents stacked in her inbox. This quarter had not been a dull one, which meant it was far from an inexpensive one, and Caitlyn was looking at no less than several hours of work before she could let herself pack it up for the day. "Are you sure?" she asked, looking to the clock again for confirmation. "I won't be done with this lot until tomorrow, not at this rate."
The Sheriff shook her head without waiting for an answer, planted both palms to the faded leather of the desk's surface and pushed her chair back. "It won't offend me in the slightest if you want to go. I appreciate the 'solidarity,' of course, but your time would really be better spent getting a proper night's sleep. In order to guarantee the high level of performance which I have come to expect from you in these trying times." She leveled a cool gaze Vi's way before stretching her arms over her head and popping a troublesome crick in her neck.
This time a gleam did spark in those violet eyes, a cocky grin twitching on Vi's lips. Turning to the clock, she crossed her arms and settled back in the chair. "Funny," she said, not diverting her attention from the timepiece, "can't remember the last time I got a full eight hours of shut-eye, what with you crawling into bed whenever you damn well please. Don't recall you ever complaining about my performance, either."
This evoked a laugh from Caitlyn, where once she would have remained uncomfortably aloof. How things could change in a year! "Yes, well," she returned, pleasantly distracted from the task at hand, "some things require a different level of preparation. While you are clearly a savant in some areas—" (Vi's grin grew three sizes at Caitlyn's vague hand gesture) "—your ability to successfully complete your assigned duties with a minimum of incurred costs is not without room for improvement."
And like that, Vi's playful expression vanished, replaced entirely with a hang-dog look of pained remorse. It was a look Caitlyn knew well, and it fooled her not a whit. Not this late in the game, anyhow.
"Aw, Cait," Vi whined, an errant puppy eying a brandished newspaper, "I'm doing better, aren't I?"
Without a word, Caitlyn laid her gaze heavily on the contents of her inbox, then shifted down to the papers immediately in front of her, and finally over to the tower of documents stacked neatly in her outbox. She raised one fine eyebrow and threw a skeptical look in Vi's direction. Better – now there was a relative term if there ever was one.
Vi chewed her lip, rocking the chair back on its wobbly legs once more. "I'm working on it," she insisted with a small pout, creak-crrrrrrk-creak.
Caitlyn pulled herself back to her desk, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear. "As am I," she agreed, cracking her knuckles out of habit. "Now if you let me get back to work, I believe I'll have this finished in time for your performance review later on."
The chair clopped to earth once more, Vi leaning forward with a puzzled look on her face. "Review? Didn't we just do that when the year was up – oh." She stopped, blinked, sat back again. "Oh. My performance review. Ri-ght. Back to work, then."
Caitlyn grinned to herself and retrieved her quill, pulling down the next invoice. Motivation, she'd learned early on, was the key to achieving desired results. In fact, it was silly to think that this measly stack of papers represented hours of toil. She could do it in thirty minutes, tops.
As her quill flew over the remaining forms, Vi's chair counted down the time: Creak, crrrrrrck, creak, crrrrrrck.