A/N: [1] This was supposed to be a quick fix-it post season 3 one-shot. It's not, anymore.

[2] This is rated T as a whole. Different chapters can have different ratings, though.

[3] Although I have been living in Ireland for a bit, English is not my first language and my English is mostly American. Obviously, even if I'm writing British English for this particular fic, there may be some phrasing/grammatical mishaps along the way. I deeply apologize for this, and please don't hesitate to point them out to me in comments, I'll be happy to edit :). Lastly, my lovely, lovely beta unfortunately doesn't watch Silk so this is un-beta-ed. Again, many apologies for any typos/inconsistencies in the fic. Same let-me-know-in-the-comments policy applies to them, of course.

Anyhow, hope you like it, and don't hesitate to leave some love in the comments :)

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i.

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The cleaners are coming one by one,

You don't even want to let them start.

They are knocking now upon your door,

They measure the room, they know the score,

They're mopping up the butcher's floor of your broken little hearts.

O Children – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

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i.

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When she thinks about him, she thinks about them, and all she sees is children. A boy and a girl and her pale skin against his cheek, pulling at each other's hair, laughing, loud, like Nick and Niamh on court benches, school benches and the autumn leaves scattered around their feet. Well, she's old, now, and wise. The weight of the air digs into her shoulders and it's hard to sit up straight, stare into the reflection of her blue eyes and not see ghosts.

She doesn't jump when she feels him sit next to her. She recognises the weight, after twenty years, the way his body awkwardly fits into tiny chairs, his long legs extending a good foot further than hers. She refuses to look away from the row of empty aeroplanes that spreads out in front of the window, briefly wonders how he got through security. It's too late — or so, so early, — and maybe, just maybe, if she ignores him until 6 am when her flight leaves, he might disappear.

"Mrs Sheridan," he says. His voice is hoarse, tired, loud, drums like a demonstration in an empty terminal. A family of four are sitting in front of them: the parents, and a boy and a girl, light hair, blue eyes, quietly playing with their toys. There are two types of people who are very early for flights, she decides. "She taught Prep School," Clive says. "Had the greatest pair of tits I'd ever seen."

She hears a practised smile curve at the corner of his mouth in the way he speaks, like sugar in his voice. It's one of those stories he's told dozens of times, she reckons, one of the ones that make people simultaneously roll their eyes and think they couldn't spend another minute of their lives without him. Her own mouth's tight in a thin line, lipstick worn out long ago; she's not sure what to say (is very rarely sure what to say, these days).

"It's my speech," he adds. In front of her eyes, a plane moves. "For when women ask me if I've ever been in love."

It's odd how well she knows him. Knows him like the back of her hand, how he functions. Knows that he's prepared this, in his head, ran it over a hundred times like she would have with her own opening arguments; knows that that was his kicker, his only possible verdict, the thing that was supposed to make her look back at him.

Clive's a good lawyer, too, because she almost does. Feels the need to look into his eyes burn in her stomach and consciously makes herself blink it away.

"I've never been in love, Martha. I don't know what to do."

Yeah, she thinks, the sound of her own thoughts cold in her head. Not that. Not what you did, are the first words that come to mind; she lets them melt at the tip of her tongue. Her voice is quiet when she speaks. "I'm done, Clive. I'm not coming back."

She knows him like the back of her hand but she's learnt to read him, too. With time, learnt how his body takes hits, quickly recovers. He ducks his head, nodding, and she recalls how they used to play rock, paper, scissors, when they were kids – pupils, - betting on drinks, cases, on who would stay up all night doing the nightmarish research due the next day. Their hands balled up in a fist behind their backs, staring into each other's eyes; it's how she came to interpret his sighs, his body language, understand that he expected her to say this, expected her certainty, unappealable verdict.

Expected is good, for him, expected means he's got arguments prepared. "Harriet and I, we," he starts. She tenses in her seat. "We never intended to throw you out, Marth. I don't know," he trails off, reconsiders, goes straight to the point. She's always liked that about him. "We always saw you staying on as defence counsel. We took CW on even when we mostly did defence, there's no —"

"Yeah, that worked out well," she snaps, interrupting. Wishes she could light up a cigarette, find something to do with her fingers. She's always found that sarcasm sounded better with the smell of tobacco lingering in the air.

He sighs. "If you put the word out that you're looking to jump ship —"

"No." She says, shooting him a death glare that cuts him off mid-sentence. Billy, she thinks, and Shoe Lane is family.

She can almost hear the steel of the armour he's trapped himself in bend to the sound of his breaths, elbows set on his knees, a hand over his forehead, his face in his hands. "Okay," he barely mutters past his teeth, shaking his head and she's taken back to the pub, years ago, when his hair was longer and hers was too, and 'fuck me, Marth,' she hears him say, in her head.

He seems to hesitate, the pendulum in his head oscillating between saying something and not; he does, in the end (always does.)

"You don't need to run away again," he sighs, almost disappointedly, not an order or a plea. Perhaps, she'd have liked him to be begging, she muses: it would have played into that fantasy she had as a teenager, of a tall and handsome boy running after her under the rain in the street, pleading her not to go. Perhaps, she'd have liked him to be authoritative: it may have helped her muster up strength she doesn't have anymore, built her tougher than she ever was.

He's right, though, she knows, but only partly.

"I do," she tells him. She needs to run, doesn't want to. He'd mentioned it himself before, after all, that she'd burn out, collapse crying on her bathroom floor. He was right about that, she knows, cases like Sean's, people like him, and Harriet, and Billy, they'll kill her, one day. Not literally, but there'll be a point without a way back, where she won't even have the strength to make it to the airport again. She's no Elizabeth, after all; she's not as strong as she thought she was. "I am running away," she reaffirms, her voice cold, clear as the skin of her wrist, the blood coursing underneath. She's running away, but not again. For the first time in her life, actually, she's running from Sean and Chambers and her losses and mistakes, and just like the fact that there are things that a woman should never calm down about, just like there are times when anger and resentment are justified, there are times when it's right to walk away.

"No. You ran away from me. You never said no, never gave me the hint of an adult conversation; we were all trying to protect you and you –"

"Don't." It's the aforementioned strength again, the one she can't muster up anymore, the finger that snapped and isn't being mended. She looks at the gate and the blinking lights of her flight to Frankfurt, sees her toes dipping between sand and water on a beach somewhere far, far away. Don't make me do this, a voice pleads in her head. Don't make me fight you. The words resonate in her ears, the words she wants to say and the words she might have said, the angry slurs and the verbal punches to his face. They beg to come out, cruel and bloody, digging holes into his flesh. She could bite on her lip so hard to repress them it would fill her mouth with that familiar metallic taste that she's trying so strenuously to leave behind. It's a different kind of power, she's learning, to standby.

She looks around and the man who runs the café in front of Gate 22 turns the espresso machine on, the steam coming out in a rush. It must already be 4, she thinks, feels Clive shake his head, thinks he must be about to leave but, "look at me," he says, instead. Pleads, too.

So, she does. Thinks she's strong enough to, but blue meets blue and suddenly, all she can see is the sadness in his eyes. Not the lost, sad puppy look that he always gives her, or the fake angry outrage he gives all the young ones and his stupid death row pick up line. It's something more, something hopeless, like the fight's all gone and done, and lost, somehow. Her breath catches in her throat as she feels his hand in her hair, brushing a blonde strand behind her ear and she lets him. Smiles, even, weak, and her heart breaks, too. "I meant everything I said," he pauses. "You know that, right?"

She wonders what he's referring to: the good? The bad? The ugly? Wonders if she's supposed to believe that he's never ever lied to her, not once over the span of fifteen years. Maybe it's true, maybe not outright, at least. Maybe she's the bad guy, the bent copper, the one fighting restlessly for what's right couldn't even redeem. His eyes are red, she notices, and this is exactly why she didn't want to look at him: it's only going to be that much painful to look away. Say it again, she thinks. Those words too, they burn her lips begging to get out, it would be so much easier, to know that she's not alone, that there's someone out there who still loves her.

Her eyelids shut, for a second. "I know," she says, instead.

His hand is warm as he grabs hers, tight, letting their fingers intertwine. She doesn't know how long they stay like this, how many people fill the gate around them, but for a short while, she feels the time stop. With her eyes closed, she can almost forget he's not a friendly face, anymore.

His phone interrupts the moment, eventually, and she pulls away, counting to five, biting her lip to keep the tears in her eyes from rolling down her face. "Yes," she hears Clive respond to a murmur of words she can't quite make out. Jake's voice, though, she recognises. "Yeah, I'll be there in an hour," he says, hanging up.

She doesn't feel him move immediately, though, feels him fidget, restless, like he's looking for the right words. It's funny this game they have for two people who speak for a living.

"Billy," he begins, shakes his head again.

"Let me go."

As she speaks, she sees his Adam's apple move as he swallows. The decision's in his hands, she muses, passive, when she begs him with a look. Let me go.

But Clive's selfish, too. She braces herself for the worst, knows before he even speaks that her escape window has just closed. "Billy's in the hospital, Marth," he tells her. "Don't go."

.

For two days after that, she spends every waking minute (and there are a lot, of waking minutes — she barely sleeps, her head against the wall, her back painfully stuck on a hospital chair) wishing she'd boarded that plane anyway, and never looked back. Wishing she were strong enough, uncaring enough to be stuck for over twenty-four hours in a box thirty-five thousand feet above ground because at least she could have pretended that none of this was really happening. That Billy wasn't lying on a cold hospital bed, his head resting on a couple of pillows, the blue sheets covering his body, the sun barely coming through.

She blames Clive for it. Doesn't expressly tell anyone but she blames him when she passes him in the corridors, blames him as she looks away every time he tries to provide a pointless ounce of comfort, blames him for taking advantage of a moment of weakness and ignoring the fact that her decision was made, that she'd finally managed to save herself, like they all meant to save her. She goes over it again and again until she repeatedly doses off on her chair, because it's easier than admitting that she could still have ignored him. That she chose to stay. She couldn't leave. He knew she couldn't, not after what he'd said about Billy, and he used it as a weapon against her to make her stay, like the coward that he is.

It's easy to hate him when she's standing outside the hospital, chain-smoking, a lighter borrowed from a doctor sinking into the pocket of her jeans. He tries to grab her hand, make her look at him. She steps aside, kills her cigarette against the wall.

"Fuck you, Clive," she enunciates, clearly, blowing smoke in his face before walking away. In the lift back to Billy's room, she remembers that night, in Nottingham, her body was pressed between his and the wall, his mouth wet against her collarbone. He'd gotten her so worked up she thought she was going to embarrass herself, coming just at the touch of his lips. She mumbled a gasp; he nibbled at her ear.

'What was that?' he smiled and she caught herself laughing, cursing him in her head.

'Fuck me, Clive,' she said and heard him laugh, too, his chest moving against hers. He gladly obliged, though, didn't he?

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Billy's lost weight, she notices. They're feeding him through a tube, and there's a dead light at the corner of his eyes, it makes her look away.

"Miss," he mutters, when she enters the room. His voice is low, breathing laboured. He reaches out for her hand and she squeezes it as strong as she can, tries to engrave that memory in her brain, wishes for time to stop and never run away. She's a waitress now, puts the drinks and bread on the table and wishes there was enough time to wait for the food.

"I'm not sure I'm going to be a miss for much longer, Billy," she confesses and there's something freeing about saying it, about admitting doubt, admitting how lost she actually feels. She'd always thought this would be her whole life, from the age she was twenty-two. The bar, Billy, and Clive. She thought they were going to be there forever, too.

"Oh miss, you'll always be a miss for me," he says, and there's the shadow of a smile on his face. There's a lump in her throat, too, and she has to remind herself that she's not one of those women who cry anymore.

"I'm sorry," she tells him. His eyebrows rise, just a little, like he has no idea what she's talking about, what she possibly could be sorry for. He squeezes her hand tighter, she feels. "I didn't fight, I couldn't fight, I'm sorry," she says. Her voice is strangled, keeping herself at bay; it almost makes it impossible to breathe.

"Nothing," he coughs, brings the oxygen mask back onto his mouth for a bit. She waits. "Nothing to be sorry for, Miss," he finally articulates; she has to lean in to hear it. His other hand presses the pump for painkillers, she notices. Still, unconditional love, she hears in his voice, sees in his eyes; it makes it a bit easier to exhale somehow.

Ten minutes later, they're interrupted by his sister, a tall woman with shoulder-length dark red hair and a sad look on her face. Without necessarily intending to, she makes Martha feel out of place, like an impostor, watching Billy as they check his vitals. She stands up, grabs her handbag, biting her bottom lip. "I'm glad you made it, Miss," Billy says and she can't bring herself to look into his eyes, take the comment for what it is.

She glances at her watch. "I'll go change, I'll be back in an hour," she says, nodding at him.

The corner of his mouth twitches; she pretends not to notice the long silence that follows. "Bye, Miss," he tells her as she opens the door. She smiles, doesn't find the strength to say the words back.

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The thing is, the thing she'd forgotten about herself, is that she's not not a crier. Has never actually been one of those iron clad women that people seem to think she is, one of the ones who walk in and out of court like nothing ever gets to them, like anger and injustice, and sadness don't drive tears rolling down their faces. When she started out at the bar, her main problem was that her voice would always catch in her throat, out of stress or frustration; she would have to make herself pause, swallow, and breathe out before she continued. She taught herself this trick, hiding it behind a harsh comeback, focusing the attention elsewhere, or taking a discreet sip of water. Maybe that's when the misjudging started happening, she reflects, when people started calling her a cold-blooded bitch behind her back. She put up this angry front, played with it and the aura it gave her and the tears disappeared out of the professional arguments as quickly as they'd come. She became someone else, someone she thought was stronger, smarter in her retorts, never letting herself cry in front of anyone ever again. When the tears did come, sometimes still, she let them go holding her own body in the quiet of her flat, listening to Joy Division.

She only ever broke that rule once, didn't she? When her belly hurt so much, cramping like someone had thrust a knife through it, that she had to trust another person with her feelings, and that clearly hadn't been a good choice, now, had it?

When she gets the call forty-five minutes later, she's in the middle of her kitchen, getting ready to leave, and collapses on the floor with her face between her hands, unable to see, unable to speak. "He's gone," she hears Jake's voice say in her ear and lets the phone drop by her side, the batteries tumbling out as it hits the floor. She finds herself rocking her small frame back and forth, her eyes a waterfall.

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On a late second thought, she drags herself to the funeral, one morning, pushes the only dress that she owns down her body, her lips pale, dark circles under her eyes that she doesn't even try to hide. The service has already started when she gets there. She walks in and the crowd is overwhelming, packed at the back of the church like a stack of bowling pins waiting to be blown away, like the whole of Middle Temple made it before her. She spots Clive sitting in the front row, with Jake and Billy's sister closer to the aisle, there's an empty space there by his side, she notices. She stands on tiptoes as she walks to an empty hidden corner to her right, tries as much as she can to kill the echo of her heels, hoping no one hears her.

She doesn't cry, not during the service, or at least she doesn't feel it. If they're there, the tears don't even hurt anymore; her face has been constantly red and burnt since it happened. She's staring out blankly when the Priest lets them know it's time to hold hands and share and cherish, and love again, and she doesn't know how she's ever going to be able to do that. Some strange bloke in a suit and tie she's never seen before takes her fingers in his and she closes her eyes and lets herself imagine for a short, merciful moment that she's squeezing Billy's fingers in the hospital again, she almost hears his voice calling her in her ear. Miss, he says, breathe.

Jake walks past her as they carry Billy's coffin. He doesn't look like a child anymore, and she knows they'll never ever be the children that they were, before. He nods at her though, and it's a small comfort when he mutters, "Miss," with a bow of his head.

Her glance crosses Clive's as they all exit the church; she sees him trying to walk over to her through the crowd, disappears out of reach before he makes it.

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She has a con, that afternoon. It was the last one Billy had booked before everything, the last one on her calendar, set a few days after he knew Sean's trial was scheduled to end. She knows why he booked it, that con in particular: Robin Laurel is a lovely young girl she's had the pleasure of defending half a dozen times before, having the somewhat annoying habit of taking possession of people's purses on busy Tube trains. Her mother, though, Muriel, an overworked, overwhelmed, overspent beautiful woman on the heavier side of the scale, has always hit a soft spot for Martha, with her stunning ability to unfailingly believe in the redeemable character of her daughter. Her daughter who had now gotten arrested on GBH charges for breaking a vase on her boyfriend's head after he'd hit her one too many times. It's the kind of case she likes - used to like, at least - the kind of case with a purpose, and Billy must have thought it would keep her here, even after she'd lost Sean's. She never told him about how she'd actually made it to the airport, that night, and that not even the best of cases could have kept her here.

She considers returning it, while gathering the binder from her flat, while on the way to the con, but when she sees Muriel's friendly face outside the jail, on the way to see her daughter, she can't bring herself to. Billy did know everything about her life before she did, didn't he?

The doorbell rings in her flat that night while she's listening to the police tape recording of the 999 call. She doesn't get up, waits for a second ring that never comes. She finds a bouquet of flowers on her doorstep, later on, a dozen of white roses with a short note in Clive's handwriting. "Talk to us," it just says and she wonders who the hell us could be when he tore through chambers with all he had, and kicked Billy and her out of their own family.

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The trial is scheduled to start on Monday with a procedural hearing set the Friday before, so she works from home until then, only exiting her flat to pick up Indian deliveries. She hasn't turned on her mobile since she left chambers that night, and there's something freeing about it, about knowing that she's alone in this, and that she can walk out, if she wants to, and simply disappear. Robin's case is winnable, she knows, and maybe that's why Billy picked it out, too, but she won't press charges against her stupid boyfriend who's profusely apologised since, and that drives her a bit mad. It will only escalate, she knows, and there'll be other cases, other cases she won't be able to handle because if there's one thing that Billy passing away hasn't changed, it's the fact that she doesn't really want to be here doing this job, anymore. Not after Sean, and not without him.

(One night, she has one of those horrible nightmares she sometimes gets. There's a man, with a bloody axe, he's running after her in the street and her feet are glued to the ground, every step she takes agonisingly slow as he keeps getting closer. For some reason, she can't even scream until she wakes up, her hand strongly gripping at her mouth. Her eyes open in cold sweat and she works until dawn.)

.

Still, Friday goes her way, so to speak. She gets the brother's hostile evidence thrown out on irrelevance grounds, proving that he wasn't even there in the first place. Muriel hugs her at the end of the day like she always does, her body wrapping around hers like it wraps around her daughter's. "Thank you," she says. They linger in the corridors making small talk and prepping for court next week when a familiar voice echoes from further down the hall, whispered arguments loud enough for anyone to hear. She excuses herself, discreetly steps closer.

"Oh, so she showed up for court?" Harriet's voice asks, louder than she probably intended.

"Look, she just needs —"

"She needs what, Clive? We're prosecuting, she doesn't want to prosecute, she doesn't show up at Chambers, doesn't pick up her phone, you expect me to —"

"She needs time," he insists. "Billy and her —"

"Oh, so you're telling me she slept with him too?"

Clive snorts, rolls his eyes, "Of course, that's not —"

Another voice suddenly interrupts him. It's grave, female, CW's. "You should probably tune it down…"

Her head turns in Martha's direction and she hears the words too late to walk away before all heads turn to her, too. Clive's, CW's and Harriet's, but also Jake's and John's, she sees, like the entire bloody Chambers meeting in the middle of the Magistrates' Court. She's never felt that before, she realises, but in the spotlight, now, with all stares fixed on her, she wishes she could disappear. She used to like the attention, even in uni, answering in class when no one else had a word to say, even more so in court, later, with the heels and the lipstick and the glass box she'd built to protect herself.

(Her lipstick's remained shoved out of view in her makeup drawer since Billy died. She supposes it means something, but doesn't know what.)

Truth is: she doesn't know when the box broke. Doesn't know if it was Sean, or Billy, or before that. Doesn't know if it shattered or if there were cracks before, if the first cracks started to appear right away, after that first traffic offence she had to defend, with her brand new wig and case files falling out of her arms. She'll go to Billy's grave after all this is over, she tells herself, hand in her resignation in the form of a pink ribbon on his tombstone.

"Marth," she hears Clive say, and suddenly she knows what the smart thing, the dignified thing to do is. Walk out, the voice in her head argues, right then, and you've had a good day, don't let things escalate. Still, too late, she thinks. "Marth", she hears Clive say again as she gets closer, his voice tense, watching her with apprehension as she walks, stands in front of Harriet, ignoring the stares around her.

Before she even speaks, CW takes a quiet step back, like she knows exactly what's coming, and knows exactly she doesn't have the means to stop it. Her voice shakes with anger as she speaks; it's not a good sign.

"Is there a problem Harriet?" She asks. Her breathing is quick and strong but she still gives the other woman a second to answer before letting things get out of control. Her mouth opens but no sound comes out, too slow to think on her feet. There's no judge and no jury here, and Martha decides, right then, that she's going to destroy her. "You couldn't wait until Billy actually died to take over and now you can't wait until I'm actually gone to —"

Granted, Harriet is actually better at this game than she originally thought, doesn't recoil to denials, leads the conversation where she wants it to go. "Martha, I just wish you would let us know —"

It's funny. She'd always gently mocked Billy for calling her miss all the time, even after fifteen years, but her own name in that bloody woman's mouth, it sounds like an insult. "Oh, don't you dare Martha me!"

It's Clive's voice, interrupting. "Martha, I think you should calm down —"

"Calm down?" she speaks, loudly, recalls when she was asked to move on. "You come get me from the airport, tell me I'm running away, you tell me to talk, and then ask me to calm down? Which one is it, Clive? What expectation of yours am I not living up to, exactly?"

"I just don't think that lashing out at Harriet is the –"

"Oh, come on, just because you're fucking her doesn't mean you have to jump to the rescue, she's strong enough to defend herself –"

She hears a few gasps erupt around her. He interrupts with a denial, it makes her roll her eyes. "You know that's not true!"

(It only occurs to her much, much later that he might not have been referring to the shagging.)

"In bloody Chambers for Christ's sake, and you've got the gall to deny it!"

"Okay, that's it," Harriet interrupts, dismissing the comment with her hand. "You're being jealous –"

No, Martha thinks. "Jealous?" She repeats, slowly, turning to Clive. "How about we talk about your silk party, Clive?"

Harriet shoots a half questioning, half accusatory look at Clive, who in turn glares at Martha. "Marth," he warns, looks around, trying to remind her of the people listening around them, like that's going to make any real difference, at this point.

"You don't want her to know, do you?" She smiles, nodding. "You think you deserve decency, right? Well, maybe you should have thought about that before fucking me over. Kicking me out, kicking Billy out? Because you maybe didn't kill him, but you sure as hell hammered that nail into that coffin, didn't you?"

"Oh, come on! Chambers was going bankrupt! Is that what you want?"

Harriet runs a hand through her hair, steps closer to Clive. "Clive, I don't think this is –" She starts, placing a hand on his arm. He shakes her away with a wave of his hand.

"Oh no, I think this is exactly the way we should have that conversation, don't you Martha? Out in the open?"

"We weren't going bankrupt," she roars back, pointing at him with her finger. "You weren't the only one looking at the accounts! You staged that, told people we were worse off than we were so that Billy and I didn't even have a chance in the first —"

"I staged it? This is bloody ridiculous! What do you think this is, Marth? Everyone agreed to it. Half of Chambers was for Lady Macbeth here," he says, loosely pointing at CW who suddenly looks like she's been shaken out of her latest alcohol-induced coma. "Diversifying, and the other half was with me! And you know what? Defending's comfortable for you, the great Martha Costello Q.C, but have you ever cared about what anybody else felt? And I don't even mean me, I mean everyone else, the little ones with the fraud cases who barely make ends meet, you could have fought for them too!" He rants. His breathing is hard, she stands close to him, she can feel the air coming out of his mouth against her own face. "You want to know something, Martha? The truth is that you're selfish and arrogant, and you get away with it because you put on that fake working-class front –"

"I could have fought for them? You knew bloody well that if you had the vote after Sean's trial I wouldn't be able to properly fight –"

"Oh God, Martha, Sean again? When are you going stop feeling responsible for a bloody psychopath who –"

"Who what?" She accuses, pointing at his chest again. He's trailed off, at a loss of words. "Who what, exactly, Clive? Who's the jealous one here?"

"Jealous? I tried everything I could to help you, Marth!"

She shakes her head. He can't possibly imagine –

"Yeah," she says, "and that was quite the success, wasn't it? Like you were ever really there for me –"

"There for you?" He shouts, anger truly seeping through for the first time, so loud, it actually makes her stop thinking and look at him for a second. "Who was there when you lost your first case at the Bailey, huh, Marth? Or when a client killed himself in front of you? Or when you singlehandedly decided to take on Jody Farr?" He laughs. "When you bought your flat? Got silk? When you lost the b—"

She knows what comes next. She knows what comes next because she's been angry before. And destructive. And he's angry, and defensive, and he wants to hurt. She knows a lot about that, wanting to hurt, wanting to hurt so badly that you can at least tell yourself that whatever is eating at you and tearing your insides apart is nothing compared to what the other person feels. So, she stops him. Out of self-preservation more than anything else. Her hand is quick, hits the side of his face in a loud clap that makes John and everyone around him bring their hands to their mouth. The moment's gone before it's even started; Clive brings his own hand to his cheek when she drops hers. She looks into his eyes and sees anger, resentment, and oddly, fear. There are tears in her eyes like there always are when she gets so angry she forgets to breathe. The whole world is silent around them for a moment, looking in; her voice is cruel and unforgiving when she speaks, like a much familiar punch in the stomach.

"You know who was actually there for all of that?" she tells him. "Billy."

He looks to his feet, silently; her voice shakes so hard, tears streaming down her face, she thinks her heart might actually stop beating.

"And unlike you, he never told me to get an abortion," she adds, glaring straight into his eyes. It's her momentum, she knows, the one when she catches the witness lying in cross-examination, when the jury hangs onto her every word and believes it. She feels sick. At the airport, she remembers, she pleaded with him. Don't, she said. Don't make me do this. And now, she did. They did. Out the corner of her own eyes, she sees the muscles in his jaw tense, doesn't say anything. Can't say anything. She knows how to hurt, too, cut scars deep into his flesh and drop a bucket of salt upon them, but then she's always been the better lawyer, hasn't she?

Her gaze drifts from him to Harriet who's standing there with everything she'll never know spelled out on her face but she has the decency not to open her mouth when Martha says, "and you, yeah, I'm bloody out after this case, if that's what you wanted to know," and leaves.