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Hitting that call button is one of the most difficult things Kasie has ever done (and she’s done some fucking difficult things) but in some ways it’s also one of the easiest.
Parker picks up after only a few rings, as always, he’s dependable like that.
“What’s up, Kasie?”
Dependable and reassuring, just his voice gives her the strangest urge to cry but she swallows it down, instead hearing herself answer, “I need to show you something.”
“Is everything okay?”
The case file on her screen stares accusatorily back at her and she can’t think of anything to say except, “No.”
Hanging up, she dumps her phone down on her desk, then drops her glasses on top and rubs her hands across her face in some vain hope that she can scrub away some of the weariness and tension from the last few days.
He’s on his way down now, she didn’t have to ask him to know. Because that’s the way that this is easy, not because any part of this is going to be painless but because her team have her back – they always have and they always will and she doesn’t have to ask to know that.
It’s like Jimmy says, be a good person and you’ll find yourself surrounded by good people.
And Kasie Hines of the past might have taken what’s on her screen and used it as a reason to pull away but Kasie Hines of the present knows she’s going to need people to get her through this and she knows exactly who those people are going to be.
Behind her the elevator dings and she jolts her head up, slipping her glasses back on and trying to look like she’s not mid-breakdown.
“Kasie?” Parker’s concerned voice comes from behind her and again, emotion rises up her throat.
Still, she doesn’t turn to him, instead keeping her eyes fixed on the screen, on the evidence, as she reveals tersely, “Professor Davis falsified evidence in the original case. Jesse Winston is so insistent he was innocent because… he was.”
There’s a moment of complete silence then he asks carefully, “You’re sure?”
She nods, feeling suddenly exhausted.
“You know what will happen if we arrest her?” If possible, his voice gets even more gentle.
He’s giving her one final chance to keep this quiet. But she can’t just go on with her life. She won’t insult Ducky’s memory by hiding this, not when he took such a chance on her.
When she’d first read Victor’s name on that Bandium alert, her first thought had been denial that he was really dead. Only denial about them all still being in danger had let her keep her head enough to carry on with the investigation. The denial that Craig had been using them to commit a crime had only transferred to a denial of wanting to know the details about what he may have been doing when her trust in the evidence had finally convinced her that he was in fact using them.
She’s had enough of denials.
“I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t want her arrested,” she breathes, finally turning to him, “Parker, this is evidence that she’s done this once but if she’s justified it to herself once…”
She glances back to her computer. How many times has the Professor done this? How many innocent people are in jail because of her mentor?
The thought makes her feel a little sick.
“Chances are she’s done it more than once and that needs to be investigated,” she finishes, determined, before faltering and sucking in a shaky breath, “but… I want to give her one last chance to prove me wrong.”
She follows the evidence, she believes in the evidence, but that woman has been her mentor for nearly a decade.
If she’s betrayed everything she ever taught then Kasie wants the final confirmation to come from her.
“Kase? How’re you doing?”
Kasie blinks. She’s sat on her couch, finally coming off her anxious high from the last few days and sinking into a deep exhaustion, wanting little more than to just curl up and sleep for a week.
It’s a lot how she thought this evening would go except… Jess is here.
The rest of the team had stayed for a while after they’d helped her clean up her apartment, keeping it alive with light conversation and laughter because for all her conviction that she could lean on them, she’d still tried to push them away.
They hadn’t let her though, they’re (her family) pretty great like that.
When it’d got late, they’d seen her flagging and retreated. It had been a collective agreement among them that Jess stay with her, though she’d pretended not to notice that particular silent conversation happening around her, she’d just let herself sink into the warmth of having a team that care.
“I’m not sure,” she answers eventually, smiling dejectedly at Jess, “how… how am I supposed to be doing? She got two of my friends killed. Even if she wasn’t the one who killed them… she never intended for them to die. But her actions still caused that. All because she thought herself above the law. Or because she thought she was doing society a favour.”
She thinks she might still be angry. But she’s just so damn tired.
Under her glasses, she pinches the bridge of her nose, hoping it will alleviate some of the tension behind her eyes.
“It’s a betrayal, of her mentorship of you, of everything she’s ever taught you,” Jess summarises softly and it sort of hurts, that all her thoughts and emotions can be condensed into a statement so short, “I understand that.”
“Do you?” she hears herself ask, slightly disbelieving.
“Yes, Kasie-“ there’s something in her voice that makes Kasie finally look to her face, the pain in her eyes filling her with a burning guilt because she knows what Jess is going to say before she continues and she hates herself for forgetting- “my team… Tom Dalton hand-picked me, you know, right out of FLETC. And he made sure I kept on the right track, got all the training I needed, that I was surrounded by the best people-” Jess drops her gaze and Kasie suddenly finds it difficult to breathe- “he said he saw something in me and I always vowed to live up to that.”
One of the good ones.
Those words had meant so much to her. She wonders if all they’ll do now is haunt her.
She can’t even call Ducky and ask him about all this, she can’t ask him if everything the Professor saw in her was a lie.
“Some days I still don’t know how to process that he got them killed-“ Jess is staring down at her hands in her lap, face somehow blank but still filled with incomprehensible emotion as it always is when she talks about her REACT days, and Kasie doesn’t know whether to reach out or not- “my entire team, gone, because he thought his way of doing things was best. Because he betrayed everything he’d ever stood for and taught us.”
The very foundations they’d built their careers and life philosophies on, gone in an afternoon.
Instead, she has to trust her own abilities. She has to keep herself to a higher standard, she has to do her damn job and follow the evidence.
“So yes, Kasie, I understand,” Jess is still speaking, soft and earnest, “everything you’re feeling, it’s okay to let yourself feel, it’s okay to let yourself be mad. I’ll always be here if you want to talk.”
She reaches out at that, placing a comforting hand on Kasie’s knee.
It’s an anchor point, tethering her to the present as she swallows, trying to piece together how she’s feeling because there’s just been too much going on and she doesn’t know what to think anymore.
“She tried to blame me,” she says eventually, not even knowing it had been weighing on her until it falls out, “said it would be my fault if guilty people go free in the retrials.”
“That’s on her.” The instant reply, filled with its calm determination, goes such a long way to squashing down that tiny bit of lingering doubt that had been ever so quietly whispering she’d made a mistake.
It lets her agree, “I know.”
Because she does, she knows she did the right thing. But the absolute conviction the Professor had that she’d been in justified in her actions… it’s a terrifying thought that her way of thinking could ever be twisted into that.
It helps that she’s surrounded herself with good people – even if they get on her nerves at times – colleagues she can talk shop with.
Except… two of them aren’t here anymore. They’re never going to be again; she’s not sure it had quite set in yet.
At first she’d just been determined to find out what had happened, then she’d been overcome with a numbness at finding out who was ultimately responsible and now…
Distantly, she hears herself say, “Jess? Two of my friends are dead.”
Jess moves so quickly she almost doesn’t register it until she’s being pulled into a fierce embrace, arms wrapping around her and holding her safe.
“It’s okay,” she mumbles into her hair, “it’s all gonna be okay, Kase.”
Feeling the tears prickle at her eyes, she whispers, “I don’t think game night is ever going to be the same again.”