She doesn't start shaking until she's off the strand and out of the courtroom. She keeps walking briskly until she's out of view of the guards stationed at the door, and then she stops and leans her back against a side-street wall and focuses on breathing. She wants a cigarette, though she hasn't wanted one in years. Angel fumbles in her basket for a paprika potatoes lunch. Her fingers are trembling just enough that she takes a little too long untying the string around the box.
This was how it always was back when she was a detective. Not the paprika potatoes—the shaking and the craving for a smoke. The Cough-Up Queen was as hard and as steady as steel in the interrogation room, but once she had put the finger on a perp, she always needed to go outside for a light. A criminal changes a life with his crime… a murderer takes one. But it works both ways, see? Back in the day, when she testified or wrangled a confession, she changed a life. Or she took one. There were only two differences between what a murderer did, and what Angel did to murderers: what Angel did was just, and afterward her hands shook. Though she always saved those moments of vulnerability for when others weren't around, she has never denied them to herself. Indeed, by now she's flustered enough she can't quite manage the cellophane around the individually-wrapped spork she's trying to open. The point is—
The point is, it matters, what she did then. What she did today. It matters when one takes a life. It matters that Prosecutor Skye killed Bruce, and it matters that Angel, just now on the stand, killed Prosecutor Skye. Her slippery lawyer might drag it out as long as he can—and he will, she can tell—but in the end it will all come down to the truth. In the end it will all come down to her testimony. The cellophane is refusing to tear and her cheeks are beginning to get splotchy and her mind presents her with a sudden, unasked-for image of Lana in the electric chair and Angel's hand on the switch.
She stops. She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply through her nose. She really is tense. She hasn't called Prosecutor Skye "Lana" for two years, not even in her thoughts. She gathers her wits and strikes the business end of the wrapped spork smartly against the wall. The handle pops through the cellophane and she draws it out, crumpling the wrapping and letting it fall to the sidewalk.
She hasn't killed Lana. Angel makes herself think the name, makes herself picture the woman she used to admire so much. She hasn't killed Lana because Lana's already dead. Lana died a long time ago, and now there's nothing left but a filthy prosecutor. A murderer. Bruce's murderer.
Angel stares at the curb. She slowly slides the plastic utensil from between her lips and swallows her mouthful of mashed potatoes.
All the same, she thinks. It matters.