I'm so, so sorry it's been so long. I've just sort-of been stuck for a while. I think I'm going to speed things up a little and finish tghis pretty soon.

I don't own Law & Order.

Abbie left the courtroom quickly, glad to get away from the horrible accusations and insinuations. Somehow, she hadn't thought it would be that hard on her. She was tough, she could handle people saying bad things about her. It wasn't even the first time she'd ever been called a vicious, cold-blooded murder. Defendants, their families, even their lawyers said that kind of thing to her all the time, and it never bothered her. This wasn't really that different.

But it was. Maybe because this time, she was the defendant, maybe because they meant it literally and wanted the jury to believe it and so far it was probably working. And she couldn't say anything to defend herself, the prosecution got to put on their entire case first, prove that she was a murderer, before she could say a word, and even then, it would be Jack defending her, not her defending herself, and she really, really, was dreading being cross-examined by Michael Cutter. And maybe it was because she really had killed someone, and even if it was in self defense, that didn't change the fact that there was still the faintest outline of what had once been a bloodstain on her living room carpet. The phrase "the truth hurts" drifted into her mind. She tried to push it away, because the truth was not that she was a cold-blooded murderer, and she did believe that. Really. She did. She had absolutely no doubts whatsoever that she had done the only thing she could do, that if she hadn't killed Matt Bergstrom, he would have killed her. That the only reason charges were being brought against her was because of politics, that Michael Cutter was an asshole, that if she were in his place she never would have prosecuted someone in her position. And she was going to be found not guilty and they'd all go home and live happily ever after. And she'd get her job back, and prosecute real criminals-

Thankfully, her unconvincing chain of thought was broken off by Jack, who had followed her out of the courtroom. "Let's get out of here before the reporters start in on us," he suggested, and she was grateful he hadn't asked if she was okay. She wouldn't have known how to answer.

Abbie couldn't sleep, and the truth was, she didn't want to. Rather than even trying to go to bed, she flopped onto her couch, kicked off her shoes, and flipped through the tv channels, trying to find a show absorbing enough to take her away from her problems, and more difficultly, having nothing to do with murder, shootings, death, crime, or trials. But every channel she tried somehow reminded her of her predicament- police shows, murder mysteries, soap operas that just happened to show someone holding a gun at that particular moment, the history channel talking about famous murders, an episode of a sitcom in which some character happened to be on trial, even the cartoon channel was showing Tom chasing Jerry with a butcher knife.

She finally settled on a Discovery Channel program about poisonous snakes- while it was not particularly absorbing, or comforting, at least she could look at the screen without seeing the image of Matt Bergstrom's body bleeding out on her floor.

TBC

Please review.