Tennessee [think clinking whiskey glasses]
They finally land a big case. Good money, interesting investigations. It's a wrongful conviction with political entanglements all to the top of Washington's powerhouse.
It requires them to spend every hour available together—sitting in courtrooms, meeting with the defense attorneys, and watching thousands of hours of video footage from the last 27 years. It's exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.
"You're sure you wanna do that?" he asks one time too much for her taste, but the concern on his face is genuine, so it's hard to put any blame on him.
"Yeah, it's good having something to do again. A real case."
The celebration they have with two finger's breadth of whiskey is reserved. There's a lot of work to do.
Vermont [think leading producer of maple syrup in the States]
"Where's Wallowski?" she asks casually while going through one of the case files. "Haven't seen her around for a while."
By now the tiny, windowless room inside the courthouse that they got assigned to work on the defense strategy along with two of Washington's best lawyers, almost feels like home. The air is already stuffy enough, but her question makes it even harder to breathe.
He repositions the glasses on his nose and keeps on scribbling notes on a piece of paper. Only that now they don't make sense anymore.
"Gone to take care of her ill mother." Any attempt of lying would just backfire.
"You keep in touch?" she wants to know.
"Nope," he just replies and thinks that this isn't a syrupy love story. Not between Wallowski and him, anyway. In fact, he doesn't know what it is.
She lets the topic go.
Kansas [think breadbasket of America]
A lot had happened since the day Claire died. They had been closer than ever in a way, and then further apart from each other than ever before in another. Up and down, up and down. There are no easy explanations, and there's no easy blame or even an easy solution. Little about them is easy.
All she knows, is that she doesn't want them to break apart. However hard he makes it on her sometimes (and she surely makes it hard on him as well)—what they have is a treasure to keep.
She realizes it looking at him during one of the court hearings. Deep in thought, reading codes exposed on seemingly innocent faces, thinking about the strategies they could adopt.
She feels the seeds cautiously growing again—the seeds of them. He looks over to her and wiggles his eyebrows.
Alabama [think Bloody Sunday]
Sometimes he watches her hands and for a moment he is afraid, that he might still find blood on them. Of course he never does.
Missouri [think Elephant Rocks State Park]
Her therapist and her have finally plowed their way through the depths of her feelings, leading to the elephant in the room. Up until now he was referred to as her partner, or simply Cal, but now Judy is pressing her to come up with more terms.
Friend, is what she mentions first, and Judy asks her why she's never used that word before.
She shrugs her shoulders. "Is that important?"
"I don't know. Could be."
She silently thinks of more words and actually comes up with some.
Illinois [think the Windy City]
It's a bad day in court. He would love to stand up and yell how this guy is lying through his perfectly white, shiny teeth, but it would just get him a dismissal from the court premises and not help anyone. He clenches his fist instead.
By now this case is personal and he wonders if that is because he is still looking for some kind of revenge on another one that became truly personal.
When they step outside a couple of hours later, the relentless wind pushes the rain right into their faces. He holds up his jacket over both of their heads and they run through the puddles until they both start to laugh.
Delaware [think the Wedge, or no-man's-land between Mason-Dixon and the Twelve-Mile Circle]
When they make a rare visit to their offices at the Lightman Group, he has two more letters from the correctional facility in Wayne County on his desk. She sees them, but this time she doesn't ignore them.
She sits down while he is still standing and soon enough he is sat down, too. She almost wills him into it and he complies with the reluctance of somebody who knows he can't resist his counterpart in the end. But he would want to, that's clear.
"Those letters," she taps her finger on one of them buried under other paperwork, "the ones from Wayward…" She doesn't finish the sentence, because she doesn't even know what she wants to say or wants to know.
"I made sure they put him in the psych ward."
She nods. "I know that. I'm trying to understand what you're getting out of it. It's not in our hands, Cal."
"That bit was," he lets her know grimly.
Oklahoma [think driving through beautifully creepy, abandoned ghost towns]
He calls his contact at the prison two days later, letting the guy know that he won't need any more updates. He finishes it off with some good old pleas of making the bastard suffer nonetheless.
New Hampshire [think home]
He sits right next to her in the tiny, stuffy room with nothing to see and nothing to do except work, and he feels like home. Sometimes he does that to her.
South Carolina [think firing the first shots of the Civil War on Fort Sumter]
Sometimes when he looks at her now, he tries to think of this one specific moment in the past where he snapped; where he decided to work against her instead of with (or even for) her. Vegas? Burns? Frozen assets? Or something long before that?
It might be a combination of all of the above, but the more he thinks about it, the more he sees the deception he is trying to establish within himself. The long con, all worked out.
With a team of swindlers (several versions of himself from nice guy to utter arse), as well as props (like gambling money and unwritten books), sets (showdowns in industrial wastelands and waiting rooms of porn productions), extras (yeah, Clara and Wallowski), costumes (hart hats and mental hospital gowns), and scripted lines ("You mess with my finances again, you and I are through.")
He fired the first shots a long time ago and the war drags on. Mostly the one within himself, but the visible eruptions are still there.
Maybe it's time to wave the white flag.