One Year Earlier

Mike's office was cluttered with case files – 102 to be exact, every appeal from every defense lawyer in Manhattan challenging Marcus Woll's convictions of their clients. And with good reason, too; if the prosecutor being a serial killer isn't grounds to retry a case, what is?

While this was one of the most tedious uses of his weekend since his law school days, Mike found that burying himself in work was just the distraction he needed – even if the thoughts he wanted to avoid were of the person sitting directly across from him now. He couldn't think about how badly he'd blundered, how transparent he felt. Woll accused him of feelings he could hardly admit to himself, and he'd all but confessed those feelings to Jack not an hour later. Not to mention his brilliant word choice when discussing trial strategy with Connie, and the lies he spouted about her just to bait Woll into incriminating himself. The tense smile she'd given him when Jack had saddled them with the flood of paperwork that poured in after Woll's conviction only confirmed the rift he'd created between them.

They'd reluctantly agreed to spend Saturday and Sunday in the office wading through the mess. Mike threw on jeans and a sweatshirt that first morning, second guessed himself and scrambled into a suit, only to discard the suit in favor of what he'd had on to begin with. If overthinking didn't help on his LSAT twenty-five years ago, then it certainly wouldn't benefit when making a decision about something as trivial as his wardrobe. (But he kept a baseball bat by his bed, and he swung it a few times before coming into work that day.)

It was mid-November and a thin layer of snow blanketed the streets of New York. It had melted to gray sludge by now, but the novelty had yet to disintegrate into the bitterness of late December and January. (A white Christmas was fine, but anything over that was overkill.) The trees hadn't lost all their leaves yet, and the shortest day of the year still felt like eons away. Some people still denied it wasn't summer anymore.

Dawn hadn't fully broken yet when Mike pulled into the parking lot. He bought two cups of coffee from the usual vendor on the street, nodded politely to the security guards, and rode the elevator up to his office. His stomach dropped when he found Connie already at her desk, typing at her computer, immaculately dressed in a skirt and blazer. A stack of papers peered up at her from the open briefcase lying by her feet, and a metal mug sat dangerously close to her elbow, still steaming with homemade coffee. She hadn't brought any for him, and she looked up before he could duck out and ditch one of the cups in the trash can.

"You're here early," he managed, shifting his feet.

"I couldn't sleep," she admitted, letting the suggestion hang in the air before continuing. "I kept thinking about everything we have to do – I just wanted to get a jump start."

"It's a good thing I brought more coffee, then."

He flashed her a quick smile and she returned the favor; the ice hadn't broken - hell, it wasn't even thawing - but at least the clouds had dissipated for the time being, and the sun was allowed room to breathe.

"Didn't do much good," she said. "The files are locked in your office. I've been chipping away at some of our other cases."

"Work is work," he shrugged, brushing past her. "Remind me to make you a copy," he said, gesturing to his set of keys. The ones for his apartment, car, and safety deposit box had their own ring, completely separate.

"Don't bother," she said, and, he noted, a little too quickly.

He might have lunged at the elephant in the room right then and there had she not recovered herself.

"I'm sorry, I just wouldn't want you to go to so much trouble." She might have sounded desperate, had her tone not made it very clear that her words were precise and deliberate, that she was not completely in control.

He smiled wanly down at the door handle.

Five hours later, they found themselves sitting on the floor, buried to the waist in paperwork.

"It feels like we haven't made a dent," she complained, shutting a file and tossing it into a pile a few feet away.

The corners of Mike's mouth flinched upward in pained amusement. "That's because we haven't," he said.

She smiled in defeat, resting her chin on her knuckles. And she kept looking at him, just for the sake of holding his gaze. It neither promised nor hinted at any emotion, but it was without artifice, no guise of professionalism. She took another swig of coffee (her third cup this morning; she never got around to gulping down the one Mike brought her) staining the rim of her mug with her lipstick. She rubbed the dark circles around her eyes and patted her cheeks, still exhausted from the circus of the previous week.

Fatigue blurred Mike's judgement as well, and on a whim he decided to steer the conversation into more dangerous waters.

"Would you rather we hadn't convicted him?" he asked, falling just short of facetious. He kicked himself for saying it even as the words left his mouth. Helplessly, watched her expression darken.

"I'd rather he hadn't killed all those people," she said, measuring her response carefully.

An uncomfortable silence hung heavy in the air.

"I'm sorry," he blurted. "About the trial. I didn't handle it well."

"You won the case. I'd say that's handling it pretty well."

"It's not all about winning."

"Really?" she jabbed. "Then what was it about?"

Shock rippled across her features, as if surprised at herself for pushing this hard. For a moment, he thought she knew the answer, and, what's more, that she wanted him to admit it to her. But her face became placid once again, save the panic in her eyes. It seemed cross-examining him was more daunting than any witness in court, but Mike was too wrought to revel in it. (It was only much later when he shamefully acknowledged that he'd rather her be afraid of him than indifferent.) At the time, he only considered his response, and how tempting it would be to tell the truth, kiss her before she knew what hit her, pull away before she had a chance to shove him back, and let her smack the taste of her mouth right off his lips. For a fraction of a second he contemplated damning the truth and just doing the rest, come what may.

But he opened his mouth and shut it, felt the right words rise in his throat like bile.

"Justice," he managed, squirming under the scrutiny of his own introspection. "That's all it's ever been about."

("A half-truth is just a convenient euphemism for a lie", someone had told him once, but by who? He promptly buried the memory and ushered his emotions back into solitary confinement – only when they were no longer a danger to society would they be set free.)

Now is not the time to have scruples, he reminded himself, and avoided scouring her face for even the smallest flicker of disappointment. She accepted his response with a nod and turned back to her work.

"How about a lunch break?" he asked, desperate to salvage any progress made in the road to recovery from Marcus Woll.

She acquiesced, but her tone was curt and her smile identical to the one she gave him on Friday. (Shouldn't a hotdog have been a little more exciting than case files?) Her smile didn't become more genuine when he handed her her coat, or when he opened the door for her. He couldn't begrudge her for it; she didn't owe him anything other than her unwavering loyalty, and nowhere in the tacit contract of their working relationship did it say she had to be happy about it.

But, damn him, he'd do anything to see her soften again, just a little bit. Actually, come to think of it, he wouldn't do a whole hell of a lot. But he might swallow his pride (his male pride, as she'd once accused) and apologize for once, but he'd already done that and he wasn't about to try it again.

They sat together on a bench on Hogan Place, their worries only a block away. They clutched greasy, aluminum-wrapped hotdogs in their gloved hands, and they ate them without relish with Connie's handbag acting as a buffer between them. They dispensed with talking for the time being, and in spite of everything, the silence that enveloped them was comfortable. Delicate flakes of snow fluttered down, but they melted almost immediately on contact. Out of the corner of his eye, Mike watched them cling tenderly to Connie's coat and hat before dissolving into splotches of water. He stared down the bridge of his nose at his own breath, biting into his hotdog more out of obligation than desire. He wasn't really that hungry.

"I just wanted to," Connie said suddenly.

Mike turned to search her face for an explanation, but he was rebuffed by a curtain of her hair. Had he been another man he might have reached across the chasm to brush his thumb underneath her chin or tuck her hair behind her ear. And he thought about doing those things, and thought about doing them with increasing frequency. But Mike Cutter was not another man, and the best he could do was keep his mouth shut, even when his ego was telling him to argue with her.

She continued, "That's the question you've been asking yourself since the trial began, right?" It was more of a confirmation than an accusation, but a hint of both played in her tone. "I didn't even like him. He behaved about one step above a pig, but most men don't even make it that far." She paused and spared him a glance, to show she wasn't talking about him. "I only showed up at his house because I knew he'd let me in. It was dumb," she said, and it stung him to hear his words in her mouth, almost as much as it hurt to hear her call herself a damaged witness. "It was a mistake."

Mike kept waiting for a tear to fall in her lap, but none did.

She smoothed her hat and skirt, and moved her handbag from the bench to her lap. She'd said her piece, finished her hotdog, and now it was time to head back, no response from him necessary. She enameled her professional demeanor back into place, making it clear that what she said wasn't so much for his benefit as it was for their jobs'.

As they stood up to leave, Connie scraped her calf on a nail protruding from the bench. Mike was more concerned than he should have been, though all it amounted to was a tense hand placed briefly on her shoulder. A few drops of blood landed on the cement. Connie always left her mark wherever she went.