"Retention"
by CritterKeeper


Darien was grinning from ear to ear as he hopped into the van beside his partner.

"Are you through?" Hobbes asked in a bored voice. "Can we go now?"

"Sure you don't want to go in yourself?"

"I took care of my duty as a citizen this morning, thank you very much."

"Yeah, well you don't seem to enthusiastic about it."

Hobbes snorted. "Personally, I wouldn't have expected you to be this enthusiastic!"

"You don't appreciate all your rights until you've had them take away, you know? I mean, until the Agency cleaned up my record, I was a convicted felon. I wasn't even allowed to register to vote. It feels really good to be able to be a part of society again."

Darien grinned to himself, practically bouncing in his seat.

"Besides, there was one little issue I really wanted to have a voice in this time around."

"You're kidding, right? I mean, this is April, not November! There was nothing on that ballot except a couple local primaries and a school funding referendum."

"And judicial retention." The twinkle in Darien's eye was unmistakable.

"What, you mean all those names on the back pages? I don't know how anyone's supposed to know anything about those guys. I just skip that part."

"Well, in this case, there was one particular judge on the list that I definitely was glad to have a say about."

Darien could still remember Judge John Beale, sitting so smugly on his bench, nearly giving Darien a heart attack. "Death by lethal injection," he had pronounced, pausing for an eternity before continuing, "sadly not being an option...."

Any judge with that twisted a sense of humor, who would do that to a defendant, didn't deserve to keep his seat. And Darien happened to have heard that his retention vote was expected to be close this year.

Every vote counted. And revenge was sweet.