There are three add-ons here. The first one takes place after Sharon's little pep talk with Amy before they all headed home. The second one takes place immediately after the episode ends.
The third one, I wrote in response to one of maidenpride's suggestions. It's more exploratory, I think, and probably way off canon possibility, but I gave it a shot because her ideas piqued my curiosity as well. The scene takes place after the first two, by the way. I hope it didn't suck so do tell me what you thought of it, maidenpride.
The rest of you, too, of course!
The first one
"What is it with her and Mark Hickman?" Andy asked, as they entered an empty elevator on their way to the car.
Watching him press a button to get the elevator moving, Sharon countered, "What is it with Mark Hickman and her?"
Andy scoffed. "Fair point," he conceded.
They grew quiet as they descended a couple of floors and it was Andy who spoke again, a hum starting his sentence. "Never seen her this rattled though."
"Well, wouldn't you be if it had been you on the stand?" she asked, looking at him.
Andy gave her a bland look. "You know what I mean."
She smiled briefly, her eyes falling on the doors in front of them. "I know," she confirmed gently. "I can relate to some of that though," she added on a shrug.
"A rule coming back to bite you in the ass?" Andy asked sarcastically, smirking at her.
She laughed. "Technically, the rule did not, as you so eloquently put it," she gave him an amused look, "bite us in the ass." He shrugged nonchalantly. "This is simply a rule we really ought to pay more attention to," she added, more seriously.
Andy nodded, just as the elevator doors opened at their destination. "Yeah, we're not double checking our phones for nothing," he mumbled.
"Exactly," she said, walking side by side with him as they made their way to her car. "And while I'm glad she's taking this seriously," she added, "I don't think she should be beating herself up this much over it."
"Like Mike said," Andy offered on a shrug, "we still have a strong case against the guy."
"We do," she agreed. After a brief pause, she added, "It's nice to see all of you having her back though."
Andy gave her a puzzled look. "Why wouldn't we?" he asked.
She met his look with a raised eyebrow. "I know it's not the first time that you do, but," she trailed off on a small shrug.
"Oh, come on," Andy rolled his eyes at her. "If you remember, we weren't your biggest fans back then either," he retorted. On a lighter, more amused note, he added, "And look how well that turned out." He punctuated his words by happily waving a hand between them.
She chuckled. "Who'd have guessed, huh?"
He grinned. "Although, going from an ass kisser to as awful a rule follower as you," Andy mumbled, trailing off with a shake of his head.
"Ha-ha," she said sarcastically, bumping a shoulder against his.
"You think she'll call it a night?" Andy asked, going back to the more somber part of their topic. They had reached the car.
She dropped her keys into his open palm and shrugged. "If I were her, I wouldn't," she said.
Andy groaned. "Poor Sykes, she won't sleep a wink then," he muttered, walking toward the driver's side of the car while Sharon went to the passenger side.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked over the top of her car, waiting for him to unlock the door.
"Rules aren't the only thing you two have in common, Sharon," he told her blandly, unlocking the car.
Sharon opened the door and considered that with a raised eyebrow. "We'll see," she finally said, folding herself into her car seat.
The second one
"Ah, so the lost sheep returns to its flock!" Provenza announced when Amy entered the murder room.
Sharon and Andy turned around to shoot him a look, Sharon's a slightly admonishing one and Andy's an amused one. Mike, Buzz and Rusty, standing behind him, quietly chuckled.
Amy, however, faltered in her step and awkwardly indicated at the conference room Julio was sitting in, talking into his phone.
"That Mark?" she asked, clearly surprised.
"Yes," Sharon confirmed on a restrained smile.
Amy frowned a little. "What happened?" she asked, a bit of worry in her question.
Provenza waved her off. "Let's just wait and see first," he told her, before quickly changing the subject and adding, "The better question is what happened to you?"
She walked to her desk to sit down, throwing Andy and Sharon, busy clearing the murder board, a glance. "Coop called," she explained, waving a hand in front of her that had her phone in it.
"Ah," Provenza let out. "Phones," he said, meaningfully. "Gotta love the 21st century," he added sarcastically.
"Yeah," Amy said, somewhat resigned, her focus on her phone as she put it down on her desk.
"There's nothing wrong with phones," Sharon said rather strictly, giving Provenza a pointed look, as she dropped a few more photos into the box next to her. Letting Andy go on with their task, she then turned her attention to Amy, giving her second in command a chance to, unseen by her, roll his eyes at her. "We've merely had another lesson in how to properly use them," she told her.
"A lesson that could've led to a mistrial," Amy said quietly, not meeting her Captain's eyes.
"It could've happened to any of us, Amy," Mike piped up, having been following the exchange from behind his desk now. "It's not exactly something we think about," he added on a shrug.
"And besides," Buzz, leaning against Mike's desk, said, "it ended up helping us put two people behind bars."
"Exactly," Sharon said, offering both Buzz and Amy a small smile. "We can now also make sure none of our other cases are compromised," she added, tapping a finger against the edge of the box in front of her.
Amy nodded. "True," she agreed. "A win for everyone in the end, right?" she added, nodding at Sharon again and smiling more confidently now.
"That's right," Sharon confirmed, an amused smile on her lips.
"Captain?" Provenza interrupted and Sharon turned her head to look at the man. "Did you, by any chance, forget to disclose any evidence from your phone?" he asked, the question having all of them, including Rusty, give Sharon an expectant look. Andy went as far as raising an eyebrow at her, clearly enjoying his partner's line of inquiry.
"Wouldn't you like to know, Lieutenant," she said, an almost devious smile playing at her lips as she casually turned to Andy to take the eraser from him to pick up where he had left off with erasing their writings from the board.
Provenza gave her a brief wide-eyed look before leaning forward in his chair and shaking a finger at Amy. "I'm taking that as a yes," he told her conspiratorially.
When Amy actually quietly laughed, he proudly reclined into the back of his chair, clearly satisfied with a mission accomplished.
"Trust me, Amy," Andy said, folding his arms and giving her a reassuring smile, "there are a lot worse ways you can screw up."
Mike laughed and nodded at Amy. "And he," he waved a hand at Provenza, "the Lieutenant, too, would know."
"Hey!" Andy barked, while Provenza shot him an irritated glare.
It didn't help that Buzz and Sharon laughed at the joke, which had Provenza extend his glare at the younger man, while Andy shot Sharon an incredulous look.
"You would," Sharon said, shrugging, completely unfazed by her two oldest Lieutenants' offended reactions.
Amy laughed. More seriously though, she told them, "Thank you, guys."
They all waved off her thanks.
Sharon, however, smiled and gave them all a serious look. "Let's not make a habit of it though," she told them.
Shaking her head, Amy aimed a wide-eyed look at her. "Definitely not," she said.
When the rest of her team, either nodded or shrugged, Sharon said, "Good. Now," she clasped her hands together, "let's finish this up," she waved a hand at the murder board. "And we can call it an early day then."
While they all more or less went back to what little work was still left for them to do, her eyes fell on Julio and Mark in her conference room. Noticing, Andy quietly mumbled, "At least some of us will be able to, huh?"
She only let out a thoughtful, "Mhm," running a hand down the side of his arm before making her way into her office.
The third one
She heaved a heavy sigh as she sat behind the wheel of her car. It had been a long few days and finally she could head home without worrying about the Bloom case. She put the key in the ignition but did not start the car right away. Instead, her eyes fell on the concrete wall in front of her and she let her mind wander.
Lieutenant Flynn was right. There were worse ways of screwing up, but that did little to help ease her annoyance over the fact that Mark Hickman was the one to have her almost completely screw things up.
The Captain was right, too. It was a mistake that could have happened to any of them. After all even Lieutenant Provenza had to admit he had unintentionally withheld evidence in his reports. However, fact remained, had she not foolishly shared information with Mark Hickman, none of them would have found themselves in this situation in the first place.
She groaned loudly, letting her head hit the backrest of her car seat.
She was played. She had let Mark Hickman play her. Maybe the silver lining in all of this was that her division could now make sure this oversight would not jeopardize any of their other cases, but it felt like a punch in the gut that she had temporarily let her guard down and had inadvertently given ammunition to the defense.
There weren't many cases in which she pushed the boundaries of protocol and even then she had always taken precautions, keeping track of everything, recording her conversations and much more. It was her way of ensuring that even when it looked like she was breaking the rules, she was actually still following them, or at least trying very hard to do so. So, to still end up, albeit unknowingly, withholding evidence gave her usual pride in following rules a rather nasty blow. Disappointing the Captain hurt a little, too, if she was perfectly honest with herself.
She scoffed.
If there was one thing the Captain wasn't, it was disappointed in her. That much was clear. If anything, she had been nothing but patient and supportive of her, something she had not exactly felt she deserved, considering she had let Mark Hickman get to her like this. How the Captain did not have the urge to hit her over the head with a rule book, was beyond her, because honestly, she felt like beating herself up with it herself.
A knock on her window startled her, pulling her out of her musings and she gasped and put a hand over her chest as she turned her head to look at the source of the disruption. Her eyes widened when she realized who it was and she rolled her car window down.
"Coop," she said, taking in his smiling face, "what are you doing here? I thought you were still stuck at work."
He shrugged. "I snuck out to see you," he told her, smirking.
She gave him a bland look.
He rolled his eyes and leaned against her open window. "My partner and I were on our way to the car to pick up a CI when I saw you staring into space here," he finally said truthfully. "You okay?"
Is she okay? Isn't that the million dollar question?
Back when she first ran into Hickman after that fateful morning jog of hers, she had told Cooper about it and he had said to take anything he says with a grain of salt. She had taken offense at his insinuation that she would do anything else, but had later realized he was merely trying to look out for her. And when it suddenly blew up in her face in court, a few months later, he had not told her "I told you so," but she felt like maybe she deserved someone telling her that anyway.
They had argued a bit lately and she had to admit it was mostly because she was rather hell bent on dealing with this whole debacle on her own. She felt a bit guilty for taking her frustrations out on him by shutting him out when all he really wanted to do was help in any way he could, but it was hard to feel guilty about it at the moment when she was still rather upset about the case. Whether she felt guilty about it or not though, this was not the first time he had asked her if she was okay in the past few days, despite the slightly more strained situation they had found themselves in. And because of her mostly.
Okay, maybe she was starting to feel a little guilty about it all.
"Amy?" Cooper snapped his fingers in front of her face, cutting through her thoughts.
She refocused on him.
"Do you want me to call it a day?" Cooper asked when she didn't answer his question. He sounded worried. "I can have someone else pick up the guy if you want."
She suddenly felt rather irritated, her earlier awakening guilt getting pushed to the back of her mind again. "Why is everyone being so," she threw her hands up, "supportive of me?" she asked.
He drew back and frowned. "What?" he sounded genuinely puzzled.
"I shared case information with Mark Hickman and it nearly got our case thrown out, and everyone's just saying," she rolled her eyes, "'Don't worry about it, Amy, it could have happened to any of us.'"
He relaxed and leaned into the window again. "Amy," he said calmly, "you talking to that idiot isn't the issue here. You were careful around him, weren't you?"
"You sound like my Captain," she said angrily. "Because I talked to him I was taken apart on the stand!" She pinned him with a hard glare. "Tell me then, how is that not the issue here, huh?"
"Because," he said calmly, and she rolled her eyes at his tone of voice, the fact that he could be all so stoic about it annoying her in and of itself, "you would have withheld that evidence whether you talked to him or not."
She frowned. "No, I wouldn't have," she argued, now really getting agitated as indicated by the way she defensively folded her arms across her chest.
A loud whistle came from the opposite side of the garage and Cooper looked behind and raised a finger at whoever the whistle came for, clearly asking for a moment longer then turned his attention to Amy again. "You had no clue you even had to disclose that stuff from your phone, Amy," he told her gently. "You would have withheld it," he reiterated, "not on purpose, but you would have."
She sighed and deflated somewhat. "You're right." Her not talking to Hickman would not have changed the fact that she had not disclosed particular information to the defense and, seeing as she was not the only one caught in that oversight, maybe she should get over herself and be happy that they could now make sure something like this did not happen again.
He chuckled. "Of course I am," he told her smugly. At her unimpressed look, he changed topics a bit, "Look, you want me to join this pity party of yours? Like I said, someb-"
"No, no," she shook her head at him, although she smiled a little at his choice of words. She really was having a pity party, wasn't she? "Go back to work," she told him.
He considered her for a moment, then nodded. "Okay."
Before he could straighten up again, she said, "Coop?" He stopped mid-movement to look at her and she went on. "Thanks, and," she rolled her eyes at herself this time, "sorry about," she trailed off, not knowing how to settle on just one thing to apologize for. For shutting him out? For ignoring him while she worked the case? For all but spoiling for a fight a few moments ago?
He laughed and gave her a quick kiss. "Don't worry about it," he told her. "I'm used to your stubborn ways, Detective Sykes."
She laughed too. "Make it up to you with dinner?" she offered.
He smiled. "Sound like a plan," he told her.
When she nodded, he started to walk over to his car. "I'll text you when I'm done," he threw over his shoulder.
"Okay," she said, finally starting her car to head home.
Btw, I'll be posting one more set of add-ons for this episode. :)