Jeff became an unfortunate insomniac till Annie's appeal. He just wasn't in the frame of mind to relax. Or sleep.

Because with each passing day, he was getting closer and closer to the appeal, and Jeff had nothing for Annie's defence. Whereas she had a bunch of witnesses, ranging from the police to neighbours, who were willing to tell the world that Annie had gone in to her mom's house with a key, and that she'd been found standing over her mother's very bloody, very dead body.

Maybe before Greendale, he wouldn't have been worried. No, wait. He knows he wouldn't have been worried. He would have been sleeping deeply, with a different woman in his bed on alternate nights, barely caring about the girl sitting in jail, who was depending on her lawyer to get her life back to normal. He wouldn't have been even slightly bothered, because he would've have been certain that even one of his unprepared speeches would have swept away the judge and jury.

Hell, he would have been certain that a stolen speech from some random Law and Order episode would have swept away the judges and jury.

But now he's not that man anymore. And if Jeff is honest, then he'll admit to himself that his confidence levels are nowhere near what they were in the past. Yes, he has been catching up to his original record for winning cases, but this matter is entirely different.

It's Annie.

There's an added sense of responsibility.

So now he's stuck, sitting in his mom's dark living room with a glass of scotch (again), wondering why he doesn't just have the balls to be Tango Winger anymore.

He has about a day and a half before Annie's appeal, and the pressure's not helping.

The doorbell rings. Frowning, Jeff looks up from his glass to the clock on the wall opposite. It's ten thirty. His mom stays in a sweet little neighbourhood that goes to sleep at nine thirty every night. So who is it?

Pulling himself out of the squishy armchair he'd sunk into, Jeff walks quickly to the door before the person can ring the doorbell again. His mom's happy that he's staying with her and all, but he doesn't think she'd be thrilled to wake up because he was too lazy to open the door.

He opens the door and stares blankly in front of him for a second.

"Well?" Britta asks crabbily. "We all just drove here, Winger, and tried to find your mom's house in a neighbourhood that's totally unhelpfully asleep. Are you going to let us in?"

xxxxx

Shirley, Britta, Pierce, Troy and Abed. He's not sure why he's surprised.

Of course, his mom is the strangest person ever, so she goes nuts about his friends showing up and tries to find ways to accommodate everyone, all the time chattering gaily about how she'd started to worry he had no friends at all.

xxxxx

"Okay, are you sure about this, Britta?" Jeff asks, casting a careful glance around them. The streets are empty, but he knows from experience that more often than not, when you're trying to be sneaky, people tend to be looking outside windows.

Britta rolls her eyes. "Look, Winger, if you don't have the guts to do this, just tell me, I'll go in alone."

He sends her glare. "We're not exactly inconspicuous, okay, Britta?"

"Hey, it's not my fault you're a freak of nature, Mr. McTall."

Quietly and quickly, she darts forward, crosses the road and slips through the yellow police tape lines to the front door of Annie's mom's house.

By the time Jeff gets to her, she has successfully picked the lock.

"It's disturbing that you're so calm about breaking and entering." He tells her softly, as he enters and shuts the door closed behind him.

She whirls around. "Whatever. But remember, just don't touch anything, okay?"

He frowns and grabs her arm. "Britta?"

"What?"

"Is there some murky past that I don't know about? Because I kinda want to be prepared for the day I get a call from you to save your ass from embezzlement charges."

She pulls her arm free with a very disturbing grin and walks to a different room, carefully sidestepping the large red blood spot on the cream coloured carpet.

Casting his mind back, Jeff remembers what the medical examiner had said about the cause of death. Annie's mom had supposedly fallen and hit her head on the coffee table.

Shaking his head, he moves to the fancy little chest on the side and pulls the first drawer open.

Thank god Britta gave him gloves to wear. Having their fingerprints discovered at the scene of the crime would kind of screw things up.

xxxxx

"Jeff? Look at this."

He crosses over to look at a large leather folder in Britta's hands.

"It was on the bed."

Carefully, she hands it to him, and he studies it.

Annie's name is stuck on the front, in carefully printed letters. Flipping the folder open, he sifts through a stack of papers and photos.

It takes them a moment to figure out what they're looking at.

"Holy crap."

"Are those… photos of Annie at Greendale? Taken from behind a tree?"

"Did Annie's mom have someone stalk her own daughter?"

Britta lifts a paper entitled 'location' delicately.

"This is so creepy. It's got a list of every place Annie's stayed at till now. Even our apartment addresses, listed under 'Possible'!"

Jeff can feel how close Britta is to her 1984 rant, or her rant about freedom, but he doesn't do much to stop it.

Because what gets creepier than this?

Then he sees it.

Under 'character data', there's a write-up about Annie's personality and habits from the point of view of the stalker. Personal detective. Whatever. There's even a section called 'romantic liasons'.

He flips the folder closed when he sees his own name in that section.

Britta's phone rings and she checks it.

"Come on – Troy said that Abed said that he saw a police car turning onto this road."

"Guess it was a good idea to keep them posted as lookouts, huh?"

Rapidly, they exit the room, making sure they've left everything where it was.

As Britta leads him to the backdoor, simultaneously tripping on an errant scarf while she tells Shirley and Pierce to get on with their part of the plan, she mutters about the trip being a complete waste.

But something niggles at the back of his mind.

He's not sure what exactly it is.

xxxxx

The plan was for Pierce and Shirley to visit the houses on either side of Annie's mom's house, so whoever was inside would have to open the doors and not look out the window in time to see two people skulking out of a crime scene.

Britta and Jeff make it successfully out of the house to Jeff's Lexus before the police car Troy and Abed mentioned drives by.

xxxxx

Britta goes to the house Pierce is in, to help him get information (and not bumble things up), while he goes to Shirley, who is in Annie's mom's best friend's house.

And no, it doesn't matter what happens, but he cannot call her mom Barbara.

It's just weird.

xxxxx

At the door, when Jeff introduces himself to the calm, straw-haired woman (Hailey Clark), he's fixed with a quick flash of recognition that he pretends to not see.

When he walks in, Shirley sends him a quick signal they'd decided on earlier.

It means she's got nothing from Clark.

Yet, he thinks grimly, as he sits down on the uncomfortably flowered futon he's directed to.

xxxxx

"So, um, you're Annie Edison's lawyer, is it?"

"Yeah. Were you close to her mother?"

Clark smiles sadly. "We were best friends, Mr. Winger."

Oh. Well.

Slowly, he weaves a tapestry of magical persuasion and pulls out information from Clark. (He's actually proud of himself. Four years and Jeff Winger still has the power of incomparable charm. And yes. Tapestry.)

Apparently, she doesn't believe that Annie could be the murderer.

"The way Barbara talked about her daughter… quite frankly, despite the pill-popping, I don't see how a girl who sounds so sweet can be capable of murder."

Shirley manages to sweetly get her to open up about her friendship with Barbara Edison.

"Oh, well, I was actually her therapist when she moved here. She was this incredibly bitter woman in the starting… and she never stopped talking about her ex-husband, or her daughter. But suddenly, I don't know what happened exactly, she just… changed. Barb turned her life around. She began building a new one, and started talking about making amends with Annie."

She pauses.

"I encouraged the growth, and I introduced her to my friend, Alex Levinson."

A bulb lights up somewhere in Jeff's head.

"Isn't that-"

She nods. "Barbara's fiancé. Anyway, things worked out so well… we became good friends, and then suddenly, Alex and Barbara were together. She managed to make herself another life, one worthy of envy… even then, she just kept talking about her daughter."

Jeff studies the woman.

"Ms. Clark, if I asked-"

"Would I testify to Annie's character in court? I've never met her, but if you think it will help, I'll be glad to do it, Mr. Winger."

When he and Shirley are leaving, Clark – with an air of not being able to hold it in any longer – asks him if his first name is Jeffrey.

He stops. "Yes. How do you know?"

She looks flustered for a moment. "I heard Barb talking about you, I just couldn't make the connection."

xxxxx

The niggling worry in the back of his mind intensifies.

But he decides not to dwell on it, because the rest of the group wants to meet Annie before the appeal.

Once they're done with registration at the lobby (it takes him ten minutes to get Pierce to understand that he can't bribe the prison official to skip registration for visitors), they follow a guy to some group meeting place (what, he barely remembers this place, it's been years).

As they walk, they have to pass by a large courtyard full of women.

As one, the group tries to find Annie.

They finally see her in the opposite corner - dominating a group of women. As they watch, she carefully issues some kind of orders, before catching sight of them.

For a second, she looks surprised, then Their Annie breaks through, and she sends them a sunny, little wave.

As they wait at their assigned table ("please remember, no contact"), Troy finally breaks.

"Um, how did Annie get awesome at being in jail?"

xxxxx

Predictably, Annie thinks it's horrible that Britta and Jeff did something illegal to help her, and stoutly denies that she's warmed up to her new role of 'jailbird'. (Abed's word.)

"I just realized that there's no point of just waiting around to be picked on, you know? And this place isn't all that bad, really, it's sort of like the kind of place you'd imagine Professor Kane had spent time at, studying Biology."

Annie makes it sound like Kane went to a library and not a jail.

"So, anyway, there's this underground poker session that happens every night, and if you win…" She trails off delicately.

"So cool," Troy breathes out.

"Yeah, I am so proud of you, Annie." Britta says, beaming.

Everyone stops and stares at Britta, who looks self-conscious.

"I mean, you're taking your fate in your hands and stuff. That's why."

Abed sighs. "Can we get to the point and tell Annie more stuff about her appeal and Jeff's preparations? I've seen enough episodes of drama shows to know that we'll waste time this way, and then Jeff will forget to tell Annie something crucial that will end up costing us her freedom."

His curt irritation sobers everyone up.

xxxxx

After about fifteen minutes of briefing (technically, Jeff's not at the facility as an attorney, so it's possibly not in keeping with the rules to act like an attorney, but whatever), another bout of uncomfortable silence descends.

Annie finally looks up at him. "You know, it would just be easier for you to get yourself a new girlfriend."

He hears worry this time, in her voice, so he smiles and fights the urge to let his hand settle on Annie's pale one. In that moment, he knows what to say – to Annie, and the next day in court.

"Please. I'm going nuts without you. I see your value now, Edison."