Post-ep for 'Pro Se'
Claire couldn't leap tall buildings.
She hadn't needed Jack McCoy to tell her that.
She couldn't leap tall buildings and she couldn't look into the details of every single minor offense that crosses her desk and she couldn't juggle forty-seven cases at one time without dropping a ball or two.
Which meant, when it came down to it, that she couldn't do her job.
Oh, she could do it as well as any other ADA. She could do it well enough for McCoy and she could do it well enough for Adam Schiff, most of the time.
But she couldn't do it well enough for herself.
The system, the system that she was an inextriable part of, had worked the way it had supposed to.
And people had died.
The system had worked the way it was supposed to for Paul Sandig and for Leslie Harlan and for James Smith and for each and every one of them and McCoy had no problem with it.
She found she couldn't keep from crying.
Well, that wasn't strictly true. She had to keep from crying, at work, at home with McCoy, on the street. She was an ADA and she couldn't be having public hysterics all the time. And McCoy had no patience with her tears.
But her car, on the way to or from work on the increasingly frequent days Jack took his bike, her car was private. That is the place she could cry. And in her car, she couldn't keep from crying. She started crying when she got behind the wheel, before she put her seatbelt on, before she turned the key in the ignition. She cried all the way to work, big, noisy, gulping sobs, snuffling away snot and barely able to see the road through the scalding tears that streamed down her cheeks. When she pulled into the car park, she had to stop crying. She wiped her face with a towelette and put on her makeup. At the end of the day she got back her car and started crying again, cried all the way home.
Sometimes she thought, This is untenable.
Other times she thought, if I'm only crying in my car, things can't be that bad.
She was weighed down with misery, exhausted by it. She longed for comfort. She could ask McCoy for comfort. But she was beginning to suspect that Jack McCoy was an inextricable part of what she needs comforting from.
He'd told her that after the Smith trial there'd be an open door. No strings.
As if there's ever not any strings!
As if Jack McCoy could ever keep himself from pulling hers.
A/N: Paul Sandig was the defendant sentenced to death in "Savages", episode 3 of season 6. Leslie Harlan was the young woman charged with murder in "Hot Pursuit", episode 5 of season 6. James Smith was the defendant in 'Pro Se', episode 21 of season 6.
