Guts And Glory

ACT IV: CHAPTER TWELVE: HIDING

ACT IV: CENTRE STAGE

CHAPTER TWELVE: HIDING

Chase is nervous.

Chase is shaking hands, unsteady glances, false start sentences and he is Piper's only priority for the days ahead. For all of his gusto announcing how he was shit-sure of his performance on the stand for Ayden's trial, it has amounted to nothing as Piper has to drag him into a small room to divert him from the inevitable dive into a panic attack.

Locking the door behind her, Piper listens to the dull tones of Chase struggling to get his breath back and gather some composure, hunched over in his navy suit with a skinny black tie. "Chase," Piper hisses, marching to his side and pushing him down into a seat, aware that they have half an hour until the trial goes underway-thirty minutes too short as Piper has learnt that when Chase jumps off the deep end, it takes him a while to resurface on the other side. "Get yourself together." She orders.

"Piper?" He talks like his tongue is too heavy for his mouth, garbled words and drawling pauses, blinking up at her but not really aware like Piper needs him to be, the final nail in the rotten coffin of Ayden Peters. Chase blinks up at her then, barely comprehending what's going on around him, and Piper's sigh is irritable-it's exhausted, it's the sound Piper makes when she is two stops past being done-because this isn't what's supposed to happen, not at all.

The plan had been for Chase to be prepared, to know his stuff, to be an impenetrable wall of hard facts and cold words-whole days spent in Piper's office refining his technique, barraged with facts he had to know to work the jury round. Chase was to enter this courthouse a force to be reckoned with, not a weak little boy scared to let go of Piper's hand and prove his worth. "Chase," she tries again, rolling back her shoulders and working herself into something more . . . manageable-less aggressive, less Piper-adjusting the legs of her own brand pant suit. "I need you to do this for me, okay?"

"Need to . . . do this," bleary eyed and barely coherent, Piper can feel the likelihood of Ayden serving a long time behind bars slipping out of her hands, an opportunity she'd been praying for having landed right in her lap. It's not working, she wants to throw a tantrum as the realisation chills her-this isn't working-Chase-fucking-Butterfield isn't working; vaguely wishing he'd managed to fuck up earlier along the line, Piper turns away from him, struggling to control the shaking of her hands as she itches-she burns-to just hit something and have someone react how they're supposed to.

Piper has plans, Piper has schemes; Piper has anticipated moves of everyone she's ever come into contact with. She knows what to expect of people, knows they're actions before they do-knew that placing a rookie amongst the security ranks to allow Ayden into her building was going to end with his arrest, knew it'd be a reason to put all of her own people in place, knew that Felix was going to fail in his one-man quest of lost love, knew his death would be on her hands-this is how Piper plays the game, how she wins the game, but this, this one small fuck-up had been miscalculated.

She's entirely unsure of how it happened, when Chase stopped becoming a person to be ignored, but a step-in for when Annie got so caught up in the now she forgot to consider the future that Piper is providing for her-and then she knows, she knows when it happened, how it occurred, when the New-Troy became an emulation of the man Piper had already kicked out of her life. It's dangerous, it's stupid, and it's gotten her nowhere but here, a dark empty room in a courthouse, trying to help but failing tremendously.