Heart of Steel ~ Winn Schott

Am I Better For It?

"The jury finds the defendant not guilty."

Frankie's stomach lurched.

Of course they would. Any hope she had left dwindled the moment the representative from the jury had stood up.

When Frankie looked over to his table, Anderson was nodding, the grin that had been plastered on his face in varying degrees of clarity for the entirety of the hearing had now disappeared. In its place was the grim, contemplative expression that she'd seen so many times in her textbooks.

Baker's side of the gallery was cheering as though their football team had just won the final, and for the first time since she'd received the files weeks ago, Frankie realised how truly outnumbered she had been. The fan club took up more than half of the seats and the only people who weren't whooping ecstatically were Josh, his friends and Kara, who'd somehow managed to situate herself right in the middle of the mob without realising.

Frankie could only care to wonder how many of them had been paid to be there.

The jury began to disperse, a few of them with disappointed looks on their faces as though they had actually been rooting for Frankie the whole time, but she had a hard time believing it. Josh turned to her, muttering a quick thank you that she could barely make out. Not that she deserved it, but the gesture was still a decent one considering everything she hadn't done for him. Before she could reply, however, he stood up and went to join his friends waiting in the gallery. There were only a few of them, but they all looked just as disappointed as she felt.

Sawyer approached Frankie's table, apparently more eager to speak with her than Anderson had been, and stuck out her hand. The expression on her face was strikingly similar to the one it had held when they'd first met, all full of snark and overstated confidence, except this time, Frankie could more clearly see the way pride built the careful upturn of her mouth.

"I'm sorry things turned out like this, but maybe there's a lesson to learn from-"

"Don't talk to me about lessons to learn," Frankie snapped, pointedly flicking her gaze towards Sawyer's hand without extending her own. "Don't apologise to me when I'm not the one your actions are impacting."

Sawyer looked slightly affronted, but Frankie didn't need to ask why.

"I'll go home tonight, and I'll wake up tomorrow morning and keep living my life the way I always have. The only thing you've done today is make sure that the dozens of kids Baker looks after won't get that chance."

"Danvers, I'm... well, not sorry apparently, but is there something I can do to help you out?"

Frankie shook her head. "I can't believe the amount of nerve it must have taken to do something like this. Did you ever stop to think about how completely unfair this was?"

Sawyer stared at Frankie, unblinking for a moment before she seemed to have had enough. She swayed on the backs of her heels for a moment, looking as though she was spending way too much effort stopping her eyes from rolling, then bent forward and dropped her elbows to the table so that her gaze was level with Frankie's.

"Is there any part of you that thinks that maybe Josh was lying? You got a random tip that the NCPD was being bribed and you just went with it?" Sawyer's voice was carefully lowered, but Frankie got the sense that the longer this conversation went on, the less likely it was that it was going to remain that way. She almost wanted to keep arguing just to find out what would happen. "Danvers, I get that it might be difficult for you to understand, but just because you seem to be inclined to believe the first person you talk to doesn't mean that they're always telling the truth."