"The jury finds the defendant not guilty."

Frankie's stomach lurched.

Of course they would. Any hope she had left had dwindled the moment the representative from the jury had stood up.

When Frankie looked over to his table, Anderson was nodding, the grin that had been plastered on his face in varying degrees of clarity for the entirety of the hearing had now disappeared. In its place was the grim, contemplative expression that she'd seen so many times in her textbooks.

Baker's side of the gallery was cheering as though their football team had just won the final, and for the first time since she'd received the files weeks ago, Frankie realised how truly outnumbered she had been. The fan club took up more than half of the seats and the only people who weren't whooping ecstatically were Josh, his friends and Kara, who'd somehow managed to situate herself right in the middle of the mob without realising.

Frankie could only care to wonder how many of them had been paid to be there.

The jury began to disperse, a few of them with disappointed looks on their faces as though they had actually been rooting for Frankie the whole time, but she had a hard time believing it. Josh turned to her, muttering a quick thank you that she could barely make out. Not that she deserved it, but the gesture was still a decent one considering everything she hadn't done for him. Before she could reply, however, he stood up and went to join his friends waiting in the gallery. There were only a few of them, but they all looked just as disappointed as she felt.

Sawyer approached Frankie's table, apparently more eager to speak with her than Anderson had been, and stuck out her hand. The expression on her face was strikingly similar to the one it had held when they'd first met, all full of snark and overstated confidence, except this time, Frankie could more clearly see the way pride built the careful upturn of her mouth.

"I'm sorry things turned out like this, but maybe there's a lesson to learn from-"

"Don't talk to me about lessons to learn," Frankie snapped, pointedly flicking her gaze towards Sawyer's hand without extending her own. "Don't apologise to me when I'm not the one your actions are impacting."

Sawyer looked slightly affronted, but Frankie didn't need to ask why.

"I'll go home tonight, and I'll wake up tomorrow morning and keep living my life the way I always have. The only thing you've done today is make sure that the dozens of kids Baker looks after won't get that chance."

"Danvers, I'm... well, not sorry apparently, but is there something I can do to help you out?"

Frankie shook her head. "I can't believe the amount of nerve it must have taken to do something like this. Did you ever stop to think about how completely unfair this was?"

Sawyer stared at Frankie, unblinking for a moment before she seemed to have had enough. She swayed on the backs of her heels for a moment, looking as though she was spending way too much effort stopping her eyes from rolling, then bent forward and dropped her elbows to the table so that her gaze was level with Frankie's.

"Is there any part of you that thinks that maybe Josh was lying? You got a random tip that the NCPD was being bribed and you just went with it?" Sawyer's voice was carefully lowered, but Frankie got the sense that the longer this conversation went on, the less likely it was that it was going to remain that way. She almost wanted to keep arguing just to find out what would happen. "Danvers, I get that it might be difficult for you to understand, but just because you seem to be inclined to believe the first person you talk to doesn't mean that they're always telling the truth."

"I'm sorry for being the only person who had the guts to stand up for the right thing."

"Fucking hell, would you grow a pair and realise that maybe this was just a huge misunderstanding?" Losing more control with every syllable, Sawyer stood up straight again, her eyes scanning the room for someone behind Frankie but didn't seem to find them. If they'd had this conversation a week beforehand, Frankie might have had something to close the case with.

Plus, she found it a little ironic that Sawyer was the one telling her to grow a pair when she was the one too scared of losing her job to actually do it properly.

"I promise you that this isn't the last you'll hear about this, not if I can help it. I will find proof, and I will make sure that the right people get it."

"Well, good luck to you then, Danvers."

Sawyer turned, scowling, and made her way back to her seat, shaking her head conspicuously at Anderson as she passed him. Frankie realised that he must have been who she was looking for, but why, she didn't care to think about.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Kara frantically waving her over, desperately bouncing from one foot to the other. Whether she'd listened to any of the conversation she'd just had, Frankie couldn't tell, but nevertheless, she ignored her and began to shoulder past the people heading for the exits.

She wasn't in the mood to talk.


The monitor screens flickered between full-capacity and what an ordinary person might call battery-saver mode, but in all honesty, most of them were really only for decoration.

When she'd arrived on Earth, her first goal had been to find her niece, and the other prisoners that she'd wrangled into helping had insisted on a dark cave somewhere near the coast as the perfect hideout, but she hadn't seen the point. Theatrics had never been her goal.

She'd been watching the same security footage on loop for the past hour or so, trying to determine exactly what Kara and her friends at the DEO were doing to stop her, but it seemed as though, for whatever reason, she'd managed to escape the forefront of their minds.

That was no matter.

They may have forgotten about her, but Astra had no plans to extend them the same courtesy.


"That was quite a stunt you pulled in there, Danvers."

Crawford stared at Frankie from behind his desk. She could sense people watching her from outside the office, but she tried her best to ignore them.

"You were in the gallery?"

"Of course I was in the gallery, I got to watch the whole thing fall apart in stunning 4K visuals. I even got a call from some news stations looking for your statement." Crawford closed the file he held in his hands with the air of someone who'd really rather be doing anything other than chastising a twenty-three-year-old screwup. Frankie was reminded of the few times she'd been sent to the principal's office in high school. Most of the time, he'd just let her go with a warning or stern talking to. She had been exceptionally good at charming her way out of punishment, but that skill had vanished the second she'd gone to college.

"Tell me, where do you think you went wrong?"

"Probably the part where I asked Anderson how many times a day he polished-"

"Dammit Danvers, would you stop feeling sorry for yourself already? Messing around just makes you look like you can't take anything seriously." Like she said, completely vanished. She was just glad somebody understood that she was joking. The Dean had not taken that one too well when she'd tried it on him. "Where did it go wrong?"

Frankie took a moment to think, actually think about what he was asking from her. She could get out a pen and paper and list every single thing she could've, and probably should've done differently, but then they'd be sitting in that office all afternoon. No, he wanted her to dig deeper, connect with the root of the problem.

"I got cocky."

"Good," Crawford said, nodding. "Keep going."

"I got too cocky and I didn't have any backup plans, so when the bribery thing fell through, I got stuck."

"And tell me, where the fuck did you get the bribery plan from?"

Frankie winced at his harsh language. Sure, she didn't have an aversion to using it herself, but in the office, in his office, it felt sort of unnecessary.

"I had a tip."

"And no proof?"

"No proof."

"No proof," Crawford said, his voice almost a whisper it was so low. If Frankie had to use one word to describe the expression on his face, it would just be done. He looked so done with her that she almost wanted to just get up and leave to take herself off his hands, but there was no way she was going without at least trying to explain herself.

"I trusted him and I thought I could pull it off," Frankie said, her own voice rising ever so slightly at the mention of Josh. Crawford leaned back in his chair and raised one of his hands in a questioning gesture. If he was smoking a cigar, he would've looked like a perfect corporate billionaire. "I took a risk and it didn't pay off, that's it."

"You know what else was a risk, Francesca? Giving you this job was a risk. I was this close to passing it up, but you promised me that you could handle it. You showed real potential, and I don't want you to throw that all away just because of one lousy case."

He straightened up slightly behind his immense desk and pointed his finger at her.

"If you want to win, you've got to stop getting caught up on who's right and who's wrong. How do you plan on defending the person who stole from a local grocery store? Or robbed a little old lady on the street?" When Frankie simply shrugged, he imitated the gesture, only barely mocking it. "This job is not about morals, you cannot refuse to defend somebody just because they're guilty."

"But if they're guilty, then why should we be defending them?"

"Because that's what lawyers do! They get hired by whoever can afford them and it's up to them to make sure that they win, no matter what. They aren't paid to care, they're paid to win."

A silence stretched between the two of them for a few moments, broken only by the distant sound of chatter from outside. Frankie knew from her experience of being on the other side of the glass wall that people would be trying to listen in to what Crawford was saying, especially after the way her lapse of judgement had spread around the office faster than wildfire. A number of people had already come up to her that morning giving her advice or wishing her luck for the impending meeting when Crawford arrived.

He cleared his throat quietly, settling back in his chair the way he had been before. This was the part where he would have snuffed out the cigar, Frankie mused, her eyes landing on the decorative ashtray next to his pen holder.

"Do us all favour; go out and get some real-world experience. Learn what people are about, how to survive, maybe get a desk job for a couple of years or something and then maybe I'll consider looking at your contract again."

Disbelief shot through Frankie's veins like adrenaline. Crawford didn't seem to notice and started to pack up the files littering his desk, but she couldn't move. The words he had just said took a few seconds to sink in, but instead of changing the effect, instead of her realising she'd misheard something or misunderstood, it only made it worse.

"You're firing me?" Her voice came out more gravelly than she had intended it to, but there was no point in trying to fix it.

Frankie had always figured that disbelief felt a little bit like cement, especially when it was coursing through her every limb. Emotions could feel like certain things; happiness like fresh air, sadness like water seeping through clothes, but disbelief? Anger?

They felt like cement, rock. They felt like steel.

"Until you can show me that you're ready to take this seriously, yes. I'm firing you."

"Can we at least talk about it?" Frankie asked, her voice growing louder the more annoyed Crawford's expression got. If she got louder, it got easier to ignore the disappointment he was only just managing to let slip. "You said it yourself, I screwed up, I want to learn from this."

"I'm giving you that opportunity, but you have to understand, I'm running a nationally renowned firm here, I don't have the time to be teaching you lessons."

Frankie shook her head, her eyes burning with what she was sure would eventually turn into tears. Eventually, because there was no way she would let Crawford see her cry.

"Look, I'm sorry about the case, but-"

"It's not just the case, Danvers. You're a terrible employee. You almost never show up on time and when you do, you're slacking off the whole day." With every word, Crawford grew more and more exasperated and Frankie realised quickly that he'd been thinking about this for a long time. "Your reports are almost picture-perfect, but it doesn't even matter because you send them in two days after I asked for them."

Her throat too constricted to speak, Frankie could only nod. Sure, when he'd arrived at the office that morning and called her over before he'd even had the time to put his bags down, she knew that she was in for deep shit. Never before had she seen someone called into his office before he'd had the time to unpack his bags.

But then again, there were a lot of things that had surprised her that morning; the bus being almost empty as opposed to its usual claustrophobia-inducing sardine-tin style, her mailbox containing not two, but three junk magazines from the service she kept forgetting to unsubscribe to, the text from Kara wishing her luck.

The text from Kara that had really been the beginning of her crappy morning.

Not that it was in any way Kara's fault that Crawford felt it necessary to, what, not teach her a lesson? But she had a nasty habit of showing up just before things started to go downhill.

"Can you get Morris in here on your way out?"

Still refusing to let Crawford see her disappointment, Frankie got up from her chair. She didn't turn and look back over her shoulder, no matter how much she really wanted to. There wasn't enough courage in the world to prepare her for the displeasure, anger, hurt, whatever he would be watching her with.

The moment she left his office, she noticed the eyes of quite a number of people in the office on her, but she really only cared about one. Ignoring the oddly stifled cough from the guy whose desk was next to hers, Frankie looked up to the desk near the entrance, trying to catch the attention of who was sitting behind it.

Louise was, surprisingly, not watching her, instead engrossed with something she was doing on her desktop, and so Frankie pulled out her phone, shooting her a text letting her know Crawford was looking to speak to her. What he could possibly want, Frankie had no idea.


After about twenty minutes of desperately trying to clear out the mess of her desk drawers, Frankie finally resigned herself to the fact that she wasn't going to be able to fit everything in the little cardboard box she'd found lying around.

Changing tact, she unloaded the first few items off the top - her laptop charger, an old manila folder and a disturbingly soft apple - and set about rearranging everything as best she could.

She'd suspected for a long time that this moment would finally come, she'd see the end of her casual tardiness, laziness, whatever else Crawford had brought up, but Frankie had managed to squeeze by just long enough that maybe, especially now that she'd actually been called out, she'd developed a slight invincibility complex.

Consequences didn't matter if you were invincible, Kara could vouch for that any day.

"Frankie!"

Startled, Frankie looked up from her now almost empty desk to see Louise yelling at her from outside Crawford's office holding her own, newer looking folder and looking absolutely delighted. Seeing the glares of several angry lawyers, she hurriedly gave a whispered apology and strode over to Frankie's desk, unable to tone down her grin.

"Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, Frankie-"

"Yes, hello, that is indeed my name," Frankie muttered, trying to avoid looking up when Louise reached her and forewent trying to pack the rest of her stuff up nicely, instead just chucking whatever she could grab into one mountainous heap that threatened to spill over the sides of the box at any moment.

"Dude, guess what?"

"What?"

"Crawface just told me that he had to lay someone off."

Her heart sinking pitifully for the hundredth time that day, Frankie managed to look up at Louise who was still wearing an impossibly huge grin on her face and who apparently still hadn't noticed the pitifully bare wooden surfaces. It was clear she didn't know who had just been fired.

"That doesn't sound like something to be excited about."

"No, but that's not even the best part. Guess what he said next. Guess."

Normally, Frankie would have been amused by the high energy, but in that moment, she just wanted to go home. "He wants you to move to the Bahamas with him so that you can get married and have a huge family of beautiful half-Puerto Rican babies?"

"No, asshole. He gave me their job."

Frankie stopped. Whatever she had expected to come up next, it most certainly hadn't been that.

"I'm finally going to be a lawyer!"

Frankie didn't even have time to think about what Louise was saying before there was a crash behind them.

"Danvers, I thought I told you to clear out."

Crawford appeared in his office door, his blazer thrown haphazardly over his shoulders as though he were being asked to leave in a hurry. Louise, clearly surprised, finally seemed to take in the empty desk and the box filled with Frankie's things.

"Oh god..."

"I'm going sir, I just need another few minutes to clean up," Frankie said, ignoring the stares of the few people around who had only just realised what was going on.

"Good, and I need you to give your key card back to Morris on the way."

Frankie pulled out her wallet, grabbing her card, and held it out to Louise. Louise took it, her mouth still hanging open. She didn't seem to have anything to say at all.

The silence in the office stretched for a number of long, uncomfortable minutes while Frankie finished cleaning up. She was well aware of Crawford watching her like a hawk from his doorway, but it wasn't until she was finally satisfied that everything was off her desk that she turned around to face him.

"I've just got one question."

He raised an eyebrow, silently inviting her to continue.

"Why on Earth did you ask me to run a job like that?"

"I had faith that you could do it, but as I've already told you, that was apparently misguided."

Frankie wasn't ready to let up, so she turned her back to Louise fully and took a step towards Crawford, not at all threateningly, but with enough confidence to prove that she wasn't going home without a true explanation.

She wasn't used to being the person people were worried about when it came to responsibilities, so now, with the knowledge that Crawford had taken a chance on her, a risk that just like hers hadn't paid off, she wasn't entirely sure how to handle herself.

"You completely threw me under the bus, I wasn't prepared for that kind of case and you still pushed me to do it."

Crawford sighed, his hand instinctively finding its way onto his hip.

"When I assigned that case to you, it was still just reviewing evidence and keeping some kids out of trouble. No one asked you to play detective and uncover every single secret they had left and expose them in front of a jury."

"Josh asked me to help him, what was I supposed to do, say no?" Frankie asked, her voice rising slightly. The entire office at that point, if they hadn't already, stopped what they were doing to listen in.

She was sure that this morning would go down as prime lunch-room discussion material for a long time.

"You need to stop treating life like something you can solve. That's your problem. You were trying to solve these kids issues, not win the damn case," Crawford said, gesturing wildly with every word. He wasn't yelling, but his voice carried far enough that he might as well have been. Frankie had never realised that the office echoed so much, but then again, she'd never raised her voice inside it before.

"Because I'm a fucking human, aren't I? I'm sorry for seeing the shit they were dealing with and wanting to do my best to help."

"Danvers, if you ever want to make it as a lawyer, you need to learn to keep your feelings neutral."

"How am I supposed to keep my feelings out of this when I walk into that hell-hole of an excuse for an orphanage and find out that some asshole is paying the NCPD to keep her under wraps?"

"Maybe if there wasn't some fucking cape-wearing princess floating around ruining drug busts, the NCPD wouldn't have to rely on bribes to keep their stations running."

Frankie knew that he was trying to get a rise out of her, apparently above the one she'd already displayed, but there was no way that she could let him stand there and talk about her sister like that.

It didn't matter how mad at her she was.

"Take that back."

"Oh, that's right. I forgot about your weird obsession with Supergirl. Don't think I haven't seen the magazines and the articles. I know what goes on with my employees, that much is certain."

"Then you'd be well aware of the names we like to call you behind your back. I have an itemised list in this box with all the stuff that used to be in my desk, want to see?" Before Crawford could reply, Frankie pulled out a random piece of paper from the top of the pile, making a show of unfolding it.

"Put it back," he snapped under his breath before she could finish. Good thing too, the paper she'd snatched up was her grocery receipt from the day before. The actual list was hidden much deeper down.

Frankie had seen Crawford angry many times in her life, mostly from the year and a bit she'd spent with him breathing down her neck, correcting any and every mistake he could find. She'd been the reason for quite a number of outbursts, but never, not once in her entire career had she seen him go that particular shade of purple.

"Forget about what I said in my office. I want you out of this building within the next thirty seconds, or I will be calling security."


"Baker has publicly confirmed that the child in question has made statements like this before, but that has only served to heighten the outcry from certain members of the public regarding the NCPD's handling of this particular case."

Kara narrowed her eyes at the tv, regarding the newsreader with suspicion. The way her cards were poised stiffly in her hands indicated something Kara could only attribute to annoyance. She was clearly on Baker's side.

Kara had always believed that she was pretty good at reading people.

Language was vital, she would know, she spoke well over a dozen different ones, but the first and most fundamental form of communication would always be body language.

Unlike the words a mother uses to tell her child she loves them, the smile she gives them once they've fallen asleep is universal. Across every planet.

It was the way she could tell friend from foe, hostile alien from scared refugee, whether the Alex that had walked into her apartment twenty minutes before demanding beer and a movie was upset or just tired.

She liked to think that she knew both of her sisters pretty damn well. She had, in fact, determined correctly that Alex's day had just been long and was able to fix it with an Irish hot chocolate. Even if they were still watching the news.

It was how she knew that Frankie had faked every ounce of confidence during the hearing.

The way she had spent most of the day picking at her nails, whispering her thoughts under her breath, pulling apart the papers in her hands, they all pointed to the truth. She had not, at any point, felt comfortable. Any strength she'd displayed had come from passion.

"And with the recent statements being made by the NCPD, it's a real wonder we haven't heard anything from Ms Danvers herself."

"This is bullshit. Last night, they said that you weren't even Kryptonian and had been lying to the entire city for clout. How does anyone ever take them seriously?" Alex asked, her voice only slightly louder than necessary.

Kara had to agree. NC-7 had a certain... reputation for bribery itself, so Kara found it highly ironic that they'd chosen this as their headlining story.

She'd brought up her situation with Frankie to Alex, but she hadn't seemed too concerned. "Leave it alone," she'd argued, unwrapping her fourth piece of string cheese. "She'll let us know if she's not enjoying herself, god knows she does it often enough."

As ground-breaking as that seemed, Kara still felt like she needed to do something about it, like it was at least partly her fault.

Whether it was because her plan to ambush Frankie after her incredible victory in the courthouse so that she'd have no choice but to talk to her hadn't worked or some other reason, Kara couldn't be sure.

The door to Kara's apartment burst open and Alex jumped, almost spilling her drink all over the couch. They both turned to see Frankie in the doorway, her hair in a tangled mess that dripped onto the floor and holding something wrapped in a coat.

Kara hadn't even noticed the rain outside.

"Jesus, Kara, you need to learn how to lock your door," Alex muttered, turning back to the tv, barely batting an eyelash at her sister's dishevelled appearance. It probably wasn't entirely her fault though, the hot chocolate was probably more Irish than actual hot chocolate and she'd already finished one.

Kara quickly reached for the remote and shut off the news before Frankie could see what they were watching, but she almost sensed it wouldn't have mattered. Frankie didn't seem very occupied on the tv.

"I blew it."

Frankie didn't even move into the room. Kara noticed quickly that her eyes were ever so slightly pink and puffy as though she'd only recently been crying. Her pause made it clear that she wanted Kara to ask after her entrance, but Kara had been part of enough of these conversations to know that it was just better to let Frankie talk.

"Crawford fired me."

At this, Alex paused, finally seeming to comprehend that something was wrong. She too turned to watch from the side of the couch, her hot chocolate balanced precariously on the arm. Kara reached over to take hold of it before anything could happen but kept her eyes on Frankie.

"Frank, what happened?" Alex asked, her voice taking on a caring tone that Kara wasn't used to hearing after that much whiskey.

Frankie, after a few moments of silence, took a few steps into the living room of Kara's apartment, placing the coat and whatever was underneath it onto the counter. Kara managed to catch a glimpse of a ratty cardboard box before Frankie stepped in front of it.

"Why?"

Kara got up to make Frankie her own hot chocolate, but Alex's question seemed to be lost on her because she made no effort in replying.

"Frankie, why did he fire you?" She asked, stopping next to Frankie and stooping slightly to try and meet her eyes.

This time, Frankie turned to look at Kara and from up close, she could really see just how tired she looked. It was almost like she'd completely shut down, only remaining standing in the shell of a person.

"Are you still mad at me?"

Alex shifted on the couch so that she was fully facing them, but Kara stood still.

"No." She wasn't. Not after the shit that Frankie had gone through to try and get those kids what they deserved. That alone deserved every ounce of respect she could give her, but it was also difficult to get angry at someone who looked as small and as scared as she did.

"I'm sorry."

Alex looked as though she were about to say something, but she must have changed her mind because she closed her mouth quickly, shaking her head ever so slightly.

"What for?" Kara asked, her voice low.

"Everything."


A/N

God I had such a hard time getting that last scene out, I'm sorry for how dry it is

My teachers are all talking about how this is a time that will be in textbooks for years to come and our grandkids will be doing assignments about what life was like for us right now and like, fuck that's terrifying.

I'm going to try and keep my post schedule regular (especially after last year's abysmal performance), but we'll see how we go. I also never anticipated how hard it would be to write Maggie as an asshole, so that was an interesting experience. Or maybe Frankie was just the asshole? I guess it's up for public interpretation.

Can u tell im bored?

K bye