Rebound

by orbythesea

This is the part of it that they don't talk about, the part that makes her uneasy because they are such different people. Maybe she's just his rebound, too. Alicia and Finn, during Jeffrey Grant's trial. Alicia/Will, Alicia/Finn

"You don't have to stay out here with me," Finn says.

"I know." Her answer is simple and unapologetic, and if he thinks that she means more or less than she's saying, he'll ask. Knowing that he'll ask makes her want to explain anyway, but she doesn't, and she bites down at the side of her tongue to keep it still.

"It'll be a while," he reminds her. She thinks that maybe he's talking just to talk, to fill the silence between them and settle his nerves. "I'm up last. Geneva thought it would be best if I—"

"I know," she says again.

Finn nods, smiles a bit. "Of course. You—" He hesitates, then.

"That was an early decision," Alicia explains. "Before the Chinese Wall went up." She wonders if she should have insisted that it be put in place the day she took office, wonders why she didn't.

"We don't have to talk about it," he says. "I know, yesterday, you said it was fine if I wanted to, but—"

Alicia smiles at him, charmed. "Finn." She smiles, nudges his knee with her own. "I'm fine. If you're fine." It occurs to her that there are probably as many things unsaid between them as hovered, unspoken, between her and Will. The things she doesn't tell Finn are different, somehow. He says more, and maybe that's the difference. She and Will always danced around their silences, but Finn addresses them head-on, as if it's perfectly normal to just say what he's thinking, to ask her if they're on the same page when he's uncertain. He says less than he used to, though. She doesn't know why and she doesn't dare ask him, but there's a familiar loneliness in his silences and it makes her chest feel tight. She wonders if they would be here at all if Will had been brave enough to talk, if she had ever taken the time to explain. She doesn't like wondering things like that. "If you want to talk, I want to listen," she says. "I— I'm in Alicia-mode today, so don't worry about— Don't talk to the office. Talk to me."

"Okay." Finn smiles at her. "What does your schedule look like, next month? My parents are coming," he says, and it's not what she was expecting. "Not for anything, just to come."

Alicia nods. "Should I put it on my calendar?" she asks. She's still getting used to the way he talks, to the way he says what he means without hidden motives or agendas. It's exhausting, sometimes, having to constantly remind herself to take his words at face value. "Or were you just—?"

Finn nods. "I'd like that," he murmurs, watching her. She is as inscrutable as ever, as if she thinks she's unreadable to anyone without a trained eye. The thing is, it never occurred to him that other people couldn't see through the perfectly-tailored suits and subtleties of her expression until Jessica in sex crimes called her a robot three weeks after the election.

She's an ice queen, Jessica insisted. Descended from the same throne her husband sits on, and sent to walk among us mortals because Peter Florrick can't leave well enough alone. Finn didn't say anything, then, just nodded and let Jessica complain. He kind of wanted to defend her, but it caught him so off guard that he didn't know what to say. Instead, he listened, started listening more and more as he tried to reconcile the woman they knew with the one who ate pancakes for dinner and sometimes cried in her sleep. He never tells Alicia what they say, and he's not sure why. He thinks that maybe it's none of her business. People talk about their bosses. It doesn't mean the boss needs to know.

"I really think you'll like them," Finn adds. It's true, and he does, but he doesn't know why he says it, doesn't know whose insecurities he's trying to soothe.

Alicia takes out her phone, taps in her password, then looks back up at him. "What days?" she asks. "I've got the Milwaukee trip, the week of the sixteenth—"

Finn tells her and she taps at her screen and it's done. "I thought we could get dinner, that Friday," he suggests. "Maybe catch a Blackhawks game. Dad likes explaining hockey to people. Not hockey itself, just explaining it."

Alicia chuckles and, for a moment, it feels like any other day and Finn almost forgets why they're here. He thinks that maybe that's the point, maybe that's why he brought it up at all.

"I actually know a bit about hockey," she says. "We had a case against the NHL, a few years ago."

He doesn't have to ask what she means by we, but he thinks that it's a good sign, the way she can say it without looking haunted. "I'm afraid of sounding too rehearsed," he admits, finally. "I've been over it so many times that it doesn't feel like it's something that happened to me, anymore."

Alicia nods, smile fading. "Did it ever?" she asks, softly. This is the part of it that they don't talk about, the part that makes her uneasy because they are such different people. She's spent the past eighteen months trying to remember without feeling, learning to think about Will without feeling the emptiness that rises up from deep in her belly until it catches in her throat and she feels like she's strangling. Finn, though, when Finn talks about it, his voice is plain and soft and it's as if he's explaining the plot of a movie. He freezes, sometimes, too. He will stop and his hands will tremble as he stares past her into the distance. She wants to ask him what he sees in those moments, but she never has.

"No," he admits. "I've always— I see it happening, but it doesn't— It's like it was someone else."

There was a time when the admission would have floored her. When she first sought him out, it was because it did happen to him, and his dissociation would have filled her with rage, as if it meant that he got out both alive and unscathed and the unfairness of it would have sent her reeling. Now, though, she just nods and reaches for his hand. It still hurts him, sometimes, she knows. It gets stiff when he types for too long, when he tries to do too much around the apartment. She wonders if he's feeling it this week, wonders if it mirrors the aching emptiness that she's been trying desperately to ignore. She brushes her thumb over the scar and he winces. "Sorry," she murmurs, but he quickly shakes his head.

"No, it's good," he says. "It helps remind me." He looks down at their hands for a moment then up at her. "Will's reflexes were better than mine," he says. "I remember thinking that, because he was already moving for the gun when I turned around. I think I remember thinking it, anyway. I don't— Maybe I thought of it later."

Finn hesitates and Alicia rushes to reassure him, to fill in as many of the details as she can because maybe if she can do that he can start believing that his memories are his own. "He was a pitcher," Alicia says. "In college, anyway, and I think—" She thinks about that night in New York when Will caught her arm to stop her from falling when she tripped, about the way his fingers burned though her skin and left her wanting and wet. "I don't think that ever left him, really. It was like he had this heightened sense of the world around him."

"He got hit, though," Finn continues, soft and gentle. He hasn't said these things to her since the first night they met; he hasn't dared. He has spent a year and a half wishing that he could take her pain away but telling her now— He thinks maybe time has done a little bit of what he couldn't, thinks that maybe it's finally safe. "I mean, no one could be that fast, to move that far without— I just got down. I got down and Will was down and I went to reach for him but then I got hit and it was like— It was like I'd been shot," Finn says, and he chuckles a bit as he says it.

"You can't do that, on the stand," Alicia tells him. "Laugh like that." The admonishment comes quickly, and Finn wonders if she even hears herself saying the words before they've left her lips or if the part of her that is a lawyer is so ingrained that it's become automatic for her.

"Chinese Wall," he reminds her, gently. "And I won't." She has that look on her face, like she wants to say something but won't let herself and he takes a deep breath, takes a shot in the dark. "It's okay to say that you loved him," Finn says, eyes down and watching the way she's laced her fingers through his. He half expects her to pull away but she doesn't. He likes that about her, the way she's so predictably unpredictable.

"Finn," she says. "It— You know how complicated it is. Was. How complicated it was."

He's not sure if she's making excuses or offering an explanation. He remembers what Brian, back in New York, said when Finn admitted that he was sort of seeing a friend of Will's. He remembers the words of warning, the way Brian kept saying rebound, like that could make it not count, somehow. Like it could be simplified and minimized. He's always known that she befriended him because it let her maintain some kind of connection to Will, just like he figured that being friends with her might help him reconcile his memory with what he sees when he closes his eyes, as if Alicia could keep him grounded. Will brought them together, but he doesn't know if Will is still the glue between them or if there is something else now, if they have become something else. Maybe she's just his rebound, too.

"And it's okay to say that you didn't," he says. "Don't expect me to believe it, but if saying it makes you feel better, go ahead and say it."

Alicia laughs, soft and low, before she brings his hand to her lips. "I loved him," she admits.

Finn nods, and she closes her eyes and he wants to ask what she's remembering but he kind of thinks he knows, just like he knows that there's a voicemail on her phone that she'll never delete and he doesn't have any of the answers that she wants. Still, he thinks, she's here. A few yards away, Judge Politi is probably testifying and he thinks of the way he shouted before he hid, the way they've all been trained to think that truth can be found in adversity even when common sense begs for collaboration. I might love you, he thinks, but he doesn't say it. He thinks about all of the words Will probably wanted to say to her, thinks about the way she froze after the first time she kissed him and the way he told her that he understood.

"Don't let Hobson lead you off track on cross," she says, clearing her throat. "You don't want to open the door for—"

He presses a finger to her lips. "Alicia-mode," he reminds her. "The State's Attorney ceded all of her authority on this case to Geneva, so if she's here, I'll have to respectfully ask her to leave."

"Alicia-mode," she agrees. "Should I pretend not to know anything?" she asks. "If we end up going to see a hockey game with your dad. Should I act like whatever he says is all new to me?" She doesn't know why she asks, doesn't know why she cares. She barely cares what her own mother thinks, bristles at every approving smile or suggestive question. They are decades away from the days when parental approval mattered, but somehow it does.

Finn blinks at her, confused. "Why would you do that?" he asks.

"I don't know," she admits. "I just thought—" She thinks about the way Peter's father took her aside the first time they met to quiz her about Paslgraf, the way she got flustered and mixed up Andrews and Cardozo and felt so very, very foolish. She thinks about Jackie and the disappointment on her face when Peter brought her home for the first time, about the years trying desperately to earn her approval until she finally realized that it would never come, that it wasn't anything worth having. The thing is, Finn didn't know her then. He didn't know her before she stopped caring, before she stopped trying to be liked. When he met her, she was already weary and brittle, had already given up on being kind. By the time he knew her, she had decided that life was too short to construct identities that she could never get comfortable living inside of. Or maybe he is the reason she made the decision. Maybe he gave her that strength. "I want them to like me," she admits, and she feels sheepish, childish. "I mean—Forget it."

He looks even more confused, his brow furrowed, his head cocked. "I don't understand," he admits. "If you want them to like you, why would you think you should act like someone else? I don't want you to act like someone else."

"Then I won't," she says. "Thanks." She smiles. "And thanks for not—" She isn't sure what she wants to say, not really. She's not sure if she wants to thank him for steering clear of clichés, for not telling her that he's sure they'll love her when for all she knows it's probably not true, not sure if she's grateful that he isn't teasing her about her insecurities, even when she's put them on display.

"For not what?" He pushes her like this sometimes, and he's still learning when it's worth pushing and when it's better to leave her alone with all of the things she doesn't let herself say. He's been pushing less, lately, and he doesn't know why. He wonders if Will ever pushed her at all. Six months ago, she kissed him in his car when they should have been saying goodnight. She kissed him and then she stopped, she went stock still and afraid, eyes wide. It's okay, he thinks he said to her, even though he knew she wasn't.

"Thanks for not trying to predict the future," she says, finally.

"Ah." The future is one of those amorphous things that he thinks about less and less, since the shooting. No, he realizes. That's not strictly true. It wasn't the shooting, it was the miscarriage. Before that, he and Ann used to stay up until the early hours of the morning, talking and dreaming as his fingers danced over the curve of her belly until they nodded off. After it happened, she slept with her back to him and winced away from his touch, and he didn't know if it would ever get better, so he stopped believing that it would. Now though, he kind of wishes that he had thought to reassure Alicia that of course his parents will like her, because that's what people do, even when it isn't true.

The thing is, he isn't sure what his parents will think of her. Separated isn't divorced, his father had cautioned when he admitted that he was dating a married woman. Separated is still living in the past. The funny thing is, he's never really thought of Peter in those terms. He knows that she's married, but Peter's always seemed like more of an accessory than a husband and Alicia more like Will's widow than Peter's wife. Still, his mother's never given up on more grandchildren, not even after Ann, and he knows that Alicia's history is the sort of thing that parents worry about. Maybe he should have told them more, given them a last name to see if it would ring the right bells. He didn't, though. He doesn't know why, and sometimes he feels like their relationship is probably the worst-kept secret in Illinois. He's not even sure that it is a secret, not sure that it's meant to be.

"They don't know that you're you," he tells her, and he didn't really mean to say it but he does. He thinks that she's rubbing off on him, a little.

"They don't know that I'm—?"

"The State's Attorney," he says, and it sounds better, sounds truer, than the governor's wife.

"Ah. Are we— are we having that conversation, now?" They probably should have had the conversation months ago, after she kissed him for the first time, after she invited him to stay the night, after— there are so many afters, but they've never had time like this, hours stretching out in front of them without complaining witnesses calling or budget meetings to eat up all of the hours in the day. "Peter knows," she volunteers, after a moment. "Or, he thinks he knows, and that's always been the same thing, for him."

It's funny, she thinks, the way she's never bothered to deny the affair with Finn the way she did Will, and she doesn't know if it's that she has changed or just that Finn doesn't mean the same thing. She thinks about all of the shame she used to carry around, when it was Will, and looking back she doesn't know what she had to be ashamed of. She wonders when she became the kind of woman who could be with a man who wasn't her husband and not give a damn what people thought about it, thinks that maybe the woman she is now could have made it work with Will. They could have been happy, she thinks, but then she doesn't know if she would ever have become this woman if he hadn't—

"And my kids, probably." That still bothers her, and she doesn't know what to make of it. Grace asked about him, last week. How's Finn? she had said, as casual as could be. Fine, Alicia had said, and she started to explain, but then Grace had to get off the phone because she was meeting friends and Alicia wouldn't have had the time to say anything more if she'd wanted to.

Finn nods. "They know I'm seeing someone from the office," he says. "And they know you're married. Separated, but legally—"

"Finn, what you tell your parents is your business," she says, and she can hear the irritation in her voice. She feels suddenly on edge, feels tight and jittery and she doesn't want to be having this conversation. She's become the kind of woman who doesn't panic when her daughter asks about her lover, who doesn't have the energy to lie, and suddenly all of the years trying to keep Will from affecting her children's lives feel wasted and futile. In the end, she thinks they knew about him, too. She thinks that they knew, and now Will is dead, and there are consequences she never could have predicted, so the pettiness of daily life doesn't matter anymore. Not really. "I don't give a damn," she mutters. She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the wall, tries to still the anger that's bubbling up inside her.

Finn blinks. He's almost used to this, the way her moods can shift so quickly. He thinks about all of those summers when he was a kid, of flying kites with Leah, of high school rebellion and sipping beer from paper bags, sneaking cigarettes and sharing joints. He thinks about Keri, his girlfriend when he was sixteen. Her father made glass in a kiln in their backyard and he remembers watching him one night, sitting out beneath the stars holding Keri on his lap as liquid sparks floated up into the atmosphere. It's all just sand, her father had said. A special kind of sand, but sand, all the same. Alicia's face is smooth, clear, and all of her cracks, she keeps hidden inside.

"You're beautiful when you're pissed at me for no reason," he says, as if he can charm his way back into her good graces.

"They agreed to manslaughter," she admits. "Last week. Five years." She looks like she wants to say more, so he waits, lets her talk. "Guilty but mentally ill," she adds. "Maybe he was. I don't know. What does that even mean, really?"

She doesn't say maybe you drove him there, but he hears the words all the same. He doesn't know why, because she never gives him the impression that she believes it, never treats him like it was his fault and so, most of the time, he doesn't have to wonder if maybe it is. "Did you turn it down?" he asks. "Or did you let it be Geneva's call?"

Alicia doesn't say anything, and it's all the answer he needs. "She wouldn't have taken it," he says. "Even if you hadn't stepped in. Geneva's…" Finn hesitates for a moment, tries to think of the words he wants to say. "She's a fighter." He looks up at Alicia, and when she doesn't say anything he just keeps talking. "There's a reason you promoted her, and there's a reason you put her on this." He thinks that Geneva's a fighter, thinks that Alicia is never as comfortable in her skin as when she is doing battle and he likes that about her. It makes her knowable, he thinks, and he wonders if she was always like that, or if it's something that happened since Will died. "You wanted someone who wouldn't be afraid to tell you when it was time to take a step back."

"I—" Alicia looks like she wants to object, but she doesn't say more, and Finn wishes that he knew what she was thinking.

"Am I wrong?" he asks her.

"I could have told her to take it," she says. "Could have guaranteed a conviction."

Finn shakes his head. "You don't want a conviction, Alicia."

She starts to object, but he shakes his head, stops her. He's been thinking about this for a while. He's been thinking of it since that night, two months ago, when he woke up alone at three in the morning and found her sitting in the dark with an empty bottle of wine, a copy of the case file spread open on her dining room table.

"The State's Attorney wants a conviction," he continues. "But she isn't here right now. You need a verdict."

"No," she says. "I need a conviction."

"Yeah," he says. "Okay." He doesn't believe her, but he's not stupid enough to let it become a fight. Maybe she's right, anyway. Maybe she's not the one who needs a verdict. The thing is, if he's the one who needs the verdict, he'll never get it, so it's not something he's thought about. No one's charging Jeffrey Grant with shooting him, and he asked Geneva about it, early on. She said something about not letting the jury get confused, not giving them some lesser offense to latch onto in case they were wavering. Sympathetic. It made sense, and Jeffrey Grant will probably spend the rest of his life in jail, so as a practical matter, it doesn't matter. Not really. It nags at him, though. Every time that distinction is draw—victim versus witness—it nags at him and it makes him feel like he's going a bit crazy. Makes him wonder if he was ever a victim at all, if any of his memories ever actually happened.

"I wish I knew how it was going," she says. "The silence is driving me—"

Finn nods. "You can check in," he says. "You really don't need to stay with—"

"I know." She shakes her head and almost smiles, amused by the the way the conversation seems to go in circles. "Unless you want me to go," she says. It occurs to her that she never asked if he wanted company, that maybe he didn't and he's just been afraid to say go away. He's Finn, though, so she has to remind herself that if he wanted her to go, he'd have said it.

"You have to stop doing that," he says, and he is oh so very gentle. "You have to stop thinking that I'm humoring you."

It's not the first time he's said it, and she knows that he's right, but she can't get comfortable with the idea of being comfortable with him. He's such a nice guy, she thinks, but she doesn't usually like nice guys. She doesn't trust them. She doesn't trust anyone, really, but at least she knows that the bastards are going to screw her over, one way or another. She can expect anger or cruelty from Peter, could expect Will to skate along the boundaries of the rules. Even Cary can be cruel. Finn, though, is gentle and kind and she doesn't know what's wrong with her but she really, really wants him to yell at her.

"I don't," she says, and the lie comes easily. "I just don't get it."

"You don't get why I'd enjoy my girlfriend's company?" he asks.

She can feel herself tense and, as strange and uncomfortable as the label is, it kind of makes her want to laugh, too, because she thinks that she's way too old to be anyone's girlfriend. "Is that what I am?" she asks, and he doesn't deserve the derision she hears in her voice.

"I think if you get to be nervous about meeting my parents, I get to call you my girlfriend," he says, not missing a beat.

"Finn." She shakes her head. "I'm not your girlfriend. We're— We fuck, sometimes, that's all." It's not true, and she knows it, and she thinks about the way Will told her that he loved her and took it back, the way they were only ever some unnamed, unlabeled thing. She thinks about how proud she used to feel when Peter introduced her as his wife, how quickly that pride turned to humiliation and shame after— "I'm not your anything," she mutters.

"Don't do that," he says, and she wonders if she's hurt him. "Don't—" He shakes his head. The thing about Alicia is that she can be brilliant and warm when she wants to be, but she isn't kind. She isn't kind and he's gotten used to the way she uses cruelty as a defense, but he doesn't like it. Doesn't even know that he even likes her, sometimes. "Do you remember what you said about Will? Last year, you said that you never knew what it even was with him and maybe if you did, he'd still be alive."

"You don't get to do that," she says, and there's a kind of coldness in her voice that he's never heard before. "You don't get to— You aren't Will."

"So stop trying to turn me into him," Finn mutters before he can stop himself.

Alicia stares at him, eyes wide and horrified. For a moment he thinks she's going to slap him or scream at him, and he braces himself, prepares himself for it. She doesn't, though.

"Screw you," she says, and it's almost a whisper.

Somehow, he thinks that it's worse than a slap, worse than shouting. It's soft and deadly and he can see the tears brimming in her eyes. He starts to reach for her, to brush the tears away before they can fall, but she shakes her head. She shakes her head and gets up, walks away from him without another word. He wonders what part of him is so sick, so broken, that all he wants to do is follow her.

He wonders if this really is the way it was when things ended with Will, if she let some unspoken pain turn to anger, if she walked away and left Will wanting nothing more than to pull her into his arms and tell her how transparent she was. Somehow, he doesn't think so. Somehow, he thinks that Will never noticed how much of an open book she was, never thought she was transparent at all. Maybe she wasn't, then. He doesn't know. What he does know, though, what's seeped out of her pores and been written on her face for as long as he's known her, is that she loved him. He wonders if Will was blind or if he didn't feel the same way, because he doesn't know how anyone could look at Alicia and not know.

He thinks about that night in his hospital room, thinks about the way she was looking so desperately for answers to questions he didn't know she was asking. He wishes he'd lied to her, that night. He wishes that he'd said something like Will told me about this woman he was in love with, that he'd always been in love with, and we looked at pictures of my son and he told me about her two kids and how he thought that it was admirable, the way she put them first, even when doing that tore her up inside, even when it meant hurting him. Finn wishes that he'd said that, wishes that he could have given her a little bit of peace.

For her part, she seeks peace behind the closed door of her office, but it doesn't come. She can ignore the ringing phone and the surprised, slightly disappointed I didn't expect you in today, from her assistant. She can't, however, ignore the way her hands shake, can't ignore the sob that rises up into her throat, and she presses a hand to her mouth, pushes it down before it can escape. She's done crying over this, she really is. It bothers her that she's let Finn see her cry at all.

Truth be told, there are a lot of things about Finn that bother her. It bothers her that he can't leave well enough alone, that he speaks without thinking, as if every thought that passes through his head is worthy of being given voice. It bothers her that he seems blissfully unaware of the conflict inherent in their working relationship, that he seems not to care that she is, technically, his boss. For all that he treated it as a joke, she wonders if that aspect of their relationship kept Will up at night or if that sort of thing just matters less to men. She wonders if it would have been different, with them, if she worked anywhere else. Finn, though, treats it as a non-issue and it bothers her that he has fit himself so seamlessly into her life, into her bed, into her home, as if it's a perfectly natural thing for him to do. It bothers her that she's let him do it, as if their thing is more than it was ever meant to be.

Mostly, though, it bothers her that he wants their thing to have a label, bothers her that he wants to assert possession, as if he's entitled to something that Will knew not to push her for. It's as if Finn believes that whatever they're doing is real, and it really bothers her that it might be. The thing is, she isn't entirely sure why that bothers her as much as it does, except that she never meant for it to be much more than comfort when the nights got too lonely, a distraction from the fact that her children are gone, and Will is gone, and for the first time in her life she is living alone. It was never meant to be more than that, but she likes him, and that makes everything so much more complicated. This, she thinks, is why she goes for the bastards. It's why she falls in love with men who she only likes half of, because it's easier to walk away. (Not that she does walk away, not really. She's still married to Peter, she still dreams about Will, and Finn, well.) Finn bothers her, but she likes him, and she doesn't know how she made such a mess of her life.

What she does know is that, for better or worse, she told him that she would be there, when he testified, and she doesn't like breaking promises.

He's already on the stand when she slips into the courtroom, and the only acknowledgment he gives is a nod of his head. I'm sorry, she mouths to him, but she doesn't know if he sees it. He does well, she thinks, but she is lost in her own head, lost in the images he describes and it's awful. It's really, really awful. Afterwards, she finds him sitting on a bench outside the courtroom, finds him staring past the flow of people moving through the hallways.

"I didn't know if you'd come," he admits when she sits down beside him. "You didn't have to come."

"I know."

He sighs, and he thinks about all of the reasons that they're wrong for each other, thinks about all of the times that she's shut him out without apology or concern. "I shouldn't have brought up Will," he says, after a moment. "Not that way." He shouldn't have brought him up, but the thing is, he still doesn't think that he was wrong. He wasn't wrong, but for all that there are times when he doesn't like her very much, he thinks that he understands, thinks that those times are forgivable.

She shakes her head. "No, it's fine," she says, even though it's not. "Finn…." She sighs, and he's pretty sure he knows what's coming next. It's written all over her face, written in the curve of her jaw and the way she won't meet his eyes.

"No," he says.

She blinks and looks up at him. "No, what?" she asks. "No… you're not Finn?" She shoots him a tiny smile and he thinks that maybe he was wrong, being cynical and paranoid. She really is rubbing off on him, he thinks.

"I—" He shakes his head. "I just thought, the way you were—I just thought you were going to break up with me. I mean, not break up with me, but tell me it needed to end, and if you're going to dump me, I'd rather it not be here, so I was going to head you off at the pass," he says. "That's all."

"Finn." She shakes her head. "We need to talk."

"Yes," he agrees with a nod. "But see, now we have a problem, because I'm guessing you don't want to do it here, and now I'm afraid that if we go somewhere else you're going to say that thing I was trying to stop you from saying, just now, and nothing good ever came of a conversation that began with 'we need to talk,' so—"

Alicia chuckles, under her breath, and shakes her head again. "It's been a long day," she murmurs.

"It has," he agrees. "I think—I think we need to talk, but I think we both need time, first. I think I need time."

She nods, considering, and she thinks that for all that Finn talks, for all that it sometimes seems as if he says everything that comes into his head, she thinks this may be the first time he's ever told her that he needed anything at all. "Okay," she says, softly. "Then… Then I'll go." She reaches for his hand and squeezes before getting up and leaving him on the bench. She doesn't go back to the office. She walks away from the witnesses and victims and lawyers, and she's halfway to the building that used to house Lockhart/Gardner before she even realizes it. She nearly breaks down, there on the sidewalk, but she doesn't.

She doesn't call Finn, either.

It's almost a week before she sees him again. She smiles at him and scoots over on the bench, making room in the courtroom. Geneva is seated in front her her, back straight and shoulders back. She looks confident, and Alicia wishes that she could share that.

"Hey," Finn murmurs, settling into the space she's made for him. "How are you?"

She doesn't get to answer, because Judge Alexander enters, and then the jury is there and then the forewoman is standing and reading aloud. Finn reaches for her hand and she takes it, clutches it tight.

They find him guilty.

They find him guilty and Alicia squeezes Finn's hand and nearly sobs with relief.

Insanity was always a long shot, she hears the defense lawyer explaining to Grant, to his parents, and she tunes them out. She doesn't want to hear his promises of an appeal.

"I'm good," she tells Finn. "You asked, earlier—I'm good."

Finn smiles at her, steals a quick glance around the courtroom before reaching an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close for a moment. To anyone watching, he thinks that it probably looks like nothing more than a friendly gesture, but he's pretty sure it'll upset her, nonetheless. He waits for her to glare at him, waits for her to pull away, but she doesn't. "Me too," he whispers before he releases her. "Do you want to talk?" he asks. "I mean, if you have time—" He half expects her to say no, half expects her to say that she needs to get back to work and he's prepared to fight her on it.

"I do," she says, but she doesn't make an effort to stand and join the flow of people exiting the courtroom. Instead, she stays exactly where she is, staring ahead at the bench and the defense table and he wonders if she misses it, being a real lawyer, arguing cases and comforting clients. It wasn't so long ago that a conviction was a loss, for her, and it's strange, thinking about that. She was good at it, he remembers. She was excellent.

"I wasn't going to end it," she says after the courtroom is empty. "The other day. I— I was going to explain."

Finn nods. "I want more than this," he says, quietly. "In my life, I want— I want more." It's something he should have said a month ago, six months ago, something he should have said the first time he woke up in her bed. This doesn't have to change anything, she said that first morning, and he'd wanted so badly to disagree, but she had kissed him, after she said it, and slid a hand under the sheets to— In retrospect, he wonders if she knew exactly what she was doing. "I don't want to stay in a place where nothing has to change."

Alicia's quiet for a long time, and she thinks about that first morning with Finn, thinks about the panic she felt welling up in her throat, about the emptiness and the fear and the guilt that threatened to consume her. This doesn't have to change anything, Will whispered to her, years ago, as he held her in his arms. Not unless you want it to. She didn't answer him, then, didn't know how to answer him. She had kissed him, instead, as if that was any kind of answer at all. "I don't want that either," she admits in a whisper. "But Finn—" She thinks about the way Will used to watch her, the way she could feel his gaze without needing to look up to see if he was watching. "When I look at you, I think about him, and I— I don't know if that will ever change. I don't know if it can."

We're keeping each other from moving on, she told Will, once. It was an excuse, then, forced and painful, the kind of admission that made her feel like she was giving up a piece of her soul, just saying it. We're keeping each other from moving on, she told Will, but what she should have said was that she loved him too much to let him go. Finn, though, she doesn't love. Not really. She likes him, and for a while it was enough, but after a week of sleeping alone again she's pretty sure that it's not. Not anymore. "I can't keep living in the past," she whispers.

Finn nods, and she knows that she's hurt him, but it wasn't intentional, this time. She thinks that maybe he knows that too.

"This isn't going to work, is it?" he murmurs, and his thumb is brushing at her cheek, soft and kind.

Alicia shakes her head. "I'm sorry," she murmurs. "It's just… It's not you." She says it, and she wonders if he'll really understand. It's not you, she says, but she doesn't mean it's me. It's not about blame or guilt but the simple fact that for all that she likes him, they're wrong for each other. "I think. I think I need time to be alone. I think—"

"Alicia." Finn presses a finger to her lips. "We've been each other's substitutes for a while now. It's okay."

Alicia blinks. She thinks that he gets it, but there's a part of her that is still surprised, and it never occurred to her that maybe he's been using her as much as she's been using him. "I—"

Finn smiles at the way her brow furrows, at the confusion that clouds her expression. "I've been trying to lose myself, a bit," he admits. "To remember Will for you, so I don't have to remember that I— I wasn't just a witness." He thinks that it's right, what he says. He's had a few days to put his thoughts together and, really, that's what it comes down to. "And you—"

"Finn, I can't just—"

"You lost a love," he says. "And that doesn't just go away." He thinks about Ann, and his son, and the baby whose heart just stopped beating before she could be born. He wasn't there that night. He was twenty blocks uptown, his phone turned off so the sound of it wouldn't scare a terrified rape victim. "You can't just decide," he tells Alicia. "But one day, you'll fall in love again." One day I will, too, he thinks. He thinks about Ann and the way she shied away from his touch. I can't stop resenting you, she had said.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "Finn, I—"

Finn shakes his head. "You really have nothing to be sorry for," he says, squeezing her hand.

"Then… Thank you," she says. "For understanding—"

Finn smiles. "You're welcome," he murmurs. "Thank you."

Notes:

1) A million thanks to PebblySand and DickWhitmansCat.

2) Palsgraf v. Long Island Rail Road, 62 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928) is a torts case that gets assigned to pretty much every first year law student in the country. It addresses the question of causation in negligence cases. Cardozo wrote the majority opinion; Andrews wrote the dissent.