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“You’re a fucking monster, you know that?” Casey followed Rita into her office and slammed the door behind her.
Rita sighed, hand flying up to rub at her temples. “How original.” She deadpanned.
“How can you live with yourself?”
Rita ignored her and busied herself with organizing papers left out on her desk.
Casey wouldn’t have it. She stormed up to the front of the desk. “Seriously, how do you live with yourself? Pulling that stunt in there. Now an innocent woman’s gonna live in fear for the rest of her life.”
“Last time I checked, Novak, you’re the one who let your client down. Not me.”
“My client didn’t rape yours.” Casey grit out.
Rita slams her hands on the desk in anger. “What do you want from me, Casey? Does it look like I’m fucking celebrating? I did my fucking job.”
Casey could tell she was getting under her skin. It fueled her.
“I want you to care. Why do you fight tooth and nail for these people, knowing what they’ve done? Why try so damn hard to pull out every card you can, every single time? It makes me sick.”
Rita walked away from her desk, pushing past Casey and to the door, pointing a shaking finger at it. “Get out of my office.” She ordered in a low, commanding tone.
“You don’t even have an answer, do you?How can you not even have an answer?!”
“I said get out of my office.” Rita warned, louder this time. She turned away from Casey and started making her way back to her desk.
“I know you weren’t always like this. I know you used to be a prosecutor. An ADA. What happened to make you such a—an evil bitch?!”
Rita spun back around. Her arms crossed in front of herself. “You want to know the real reason I switched from prosecution to defense?”
“Humor me!”
“Because now I don’t feel like fucking killing myself every time I fail!”
Silence fell over the room. Casey’s will to fight died in her throat.
“When I lose, it’s relief. I don’t have to hate myself for it. And when I win.. when I win I can convince myself that I’m just doing my job. That the other side should have tried harder. Fought harder for the victim. I can blame them. You. And I can afford to pay the bills, and survive another day, and drown it all out.“
For a while, Casey was too stunned to speak. She looked at Rita like she was an entirely different person than the one standing before her five minutes prior. Finally, she found the will to take steps closer. “That’s no way to live.” She responded in a small voice.
Rita stared into Casey’s eyes with a hardened glare. They had to be less than a foot apart, now. “That’s all I know.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“Yes it does. It’s too late.”
“No,” Casey shook her head. Her eyes fell from Rita’s eyes to her lips. Before she even realized what she was doing, she pressed her own to them in a tender kiss.
Rita gasped into it, frozen in shock. But she couldn’t find the will to pull away.
“Let me show you that it’s not,” Casey eventually whispered against Rita’s lips.
With an uncharacteristic whimper, Rita pulled Casey closer by the waist and deepened the kiss.