Manhattan

Author: Rysler
Date: 09/12/05
Rating: PG
Pairing: Kelly Gaffney/Jack McCoy (Law & Order crossover)
Notes: For the TBJ Ladies Rare Pairs Challenge (#9). Word Count: 1,855.
Summary: Kelly becomes Jack's assistant A.D.A. Slight AU.

Kelly walked into the small, unassuming office that reminded her of everything else in Manhattan. Cramped, clean, but old. She inhaled, trying to catch the scent of paper and law, and her sound alerted the man who'd been built over a laptop. He looked up.

"I'm Kelly Gaffney," Kelly said, walking toward him with her hand outstretched. "Your new Assistant A.D.A.?"

"Right." He stood up and shook her hand. "I'm Jack McCoy. Welcome to the Manhattan prosecutor's office, Counselor."

She flushed at the title, and realized that's why he'd said it. He was smiling at her. She smiled back, and looked around his shoulder. "What were you working on?"

"Ah, that." He moved back to the laptop. "Opening statements. The case file is on the corner of my desk. Have you checked in with Lewin?"

Kelly smoothed her skirt as she sat down in a chair by the desk. "Yes."

Jack nodded. He typed another sentence onto the screen. "Want the scoop?"

"Sure."

"Two kids decided to get their jollies one day after school by doing a push-in robbery on one of the boy's neighbors. Eddie Greer, the one we're trying, stabbed her when she was going for the phone, and he hit an artery."

Kelly paled. She looked at her hands.

Jack leaned toward her. "I guess you didn't see this sort of thing in the State Attorney's office, did you?"

"No." Kelly kept looking at her hands. "I prepared myself. But...I'll get over it. Just, go on."

He nodded. "So, we have DNA and the knife."

"So we know he did it?" Kelly looked up.

"Yes. But that evidence has been excluded. A mess-up with the parental rights."

Kelly squinted. "So why did you tell me?"

"What?"

"The jury's not going to see this evidence, so there's no use using it to convince me. How would you convince me without it?"

Jack leaned back in his chair, smirking.

* * *

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," Jack said, walking toward the jury box, "You've seen the evidence. You've heard the testimony of Eddie's best friend. You know this is all circumstantial. There's a chance... A chance Eddie didn't do it."

Jack paused in his speech and faced Eddie. The boy was in a new suit, his hands folded on the table. He was looking straight ahead, at the flag of New York behind the podium. His face showed no expression. Either he felt nothing, or he was drained by having his life turned chaotic in these last few months, all because he'd done a stupid thing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you know Eddie did it. Beyond everything we've heard, there's what you've seen, and what you've felt. If you know in your heart, looking at this boy, that he did something wrong, you must find him guilty."

Eddie looked down at his hands.

Kelly, watching from the prosecutor's table, crossed her legs. She felt sweat trickling down the back of her neck. This trial was her first opportunity to see Jack in action. Though she'd questioned a few of the straightforward witnesses herself, this had been mostly an opportunity for training. And for awe. She unconsciously wet her lips to ease her breathing as Jack walked back to the table, looking satisfied, as if he'd won already.

The defense attorney had given his closing argument before, but Kelly had barely listened. She wanted to hear what Jack had to say. If the jury... if even half the jury... Had felt the same way, Jack had reason to be smug.

* * *

A day later, Nora caught up with Jack and Kelly as they came out of the courtroom. The district attorney's eyes were wide with anticipation. "Well?"

Jack smiled. "Guilty."

"Good." Nora offered her hand to Jack. "Well done."

Jack shook her hand and then gestured to Kelly. "It wasn't all me. You've finally given me a competent A.D.A., Nora. She's very promising."

Kelly smiled and shook Nora's hand, although she was blushing deeply, reacting as if she were 24 and getting her first job, not pushing 30 and a seasoned attorney. Jack had the uncanny ability to make her feel young and experienced at the same time. He drew legal theory out of her that she didn't know she had inside, and he corrected her mistakes as if he expected her to make them.

Nora moved down the hall to her next stable of attorneys, and Jack sighed, tapping his briefcase against his leg. "Victory. Let's get a beer."

Kelly stopped in the hallway, bristling. She'd wanted to get to know her mentor better, but the phrasing had sounded like a command. Jack's arrogance was a source of irritation that would bring her into conflict eventually, but she was surprised that her heart was beating faster, making her take a stand here.

He had ceased walking when he realized she wasn't beside him, and he turned around to see her. "Maybe coffee?" His tone was conciliatory, and now it was an invitation.

She accepted.

* * *

Jack, of course, knew a little, out-of-the-way place where they could sit in a booth and watch the city go by, a floor beneath them. He was drinking black coffee, his third of the evening, and she was ignoring her green tea, and answering the questions Jack posed her.

"I suspect you could have gotten a promotion within the State Attorney's office up in Albany. What made you come down here and switch careers?"

Kelly chuckled, looking down at her plate of spring rolls. "Have you been to Albany?"

"Once or twice."

"You can see why I'd miss the big city. Oh, sure, it's not Boston--" This prompted a laugh from Jack--"But it's something different. Something vibrant."

"Something worth protecting." Jack met her eyes.

"Yes." She flushed under the sudden intensity of his gaze, and scrambled for something to break the tension. "And, I wanted to litigate."

Jack smiled. "Who doesn't? But you weren't getting what you wanted as a defense attorney?"

"I decided I'd rather be a victim's hero than a criminal. There's a lot of corruption on that side of the aisle. Not to mention..." Kelly's voice trailed off. She took a sip of tea, letting the cool liquid soothe her blood.

"Not to mention what?"

Kelly laughed softly and looked out the window while saying, "The sexual harassment."

"I see. Well, it's a good thing you've come to the old fuddie-duddies."

Kelly turned to smile at Jack, who was watching her with a twinkle in his eye. "You don't look that old to me, Jack."

* * *

Jack insisted on walking her home, because it was a nice night, because there was another case to discuss, and she didn't protest. When he dropped her at her stoop and turned away to hail a cab, she was the one to grab his arm, and smile, and invite him for a drink upstairs. In the few weeks she'd known him, she'd learned a lot about him. He was intelligent, and well-spoken, and decent. He was Catholic. Irish Catholic.

Kelly knew he was kind. She assumed he was discreet. In all of the five boroughs, she probably couldn't do any better.

He had been kind. In bed, touching her gently, he'd made her feel confident, like there, at least, she was his equal. When he told her he'd like to stay, but he didn't have to, she invited him, and in the middle of the night he told her about his parents, showed her the scars his father left, which she tried to kiss away. He seemed younger there, but Kelly was worldly enough to know that the prosecutor's office would be business as usual.

She didn't tell him she loved him. She didn't know if she did. But she was content.

When he stayed over through Sunday morning, she went to church without him.

* * *

The courtroom was in pandemonium. The judge's gavel was banging, the audience was stirring, reporters were tapping into wireless PDAs they weren't technically supposed to have. The jury milled.

Jack McCoy was screaming at the top of his lungs.

Kelly only heard silence. Her ears were deafened by the shock of Jack's stunt, revealing evidence out of context, vilifying the defendant. The witness on the stand looked relieved that he'd offered such a confession of the defendant's character, but no one else did. Finally, the judge overpowered Jack. "Chambers!"

In chambers, it was Kelly's job, as the responsible and naïve paragon of law, to smooth the judge's temper and speak for Jack. She managed to present the case that the jury hadn't been unduly prejudiced, because the information was irrelevant, and testimony could continue.

She was lucky that judges almost always ruled in favor of the prosecution, and that the defense attorney wasn't better paid or better prepared, and he was black. The judge, whose reputation was already well-known to Kelly, barely looked at the defense attorney during the meeting. She was sickened to take advantage of the corruption. Sickened even more when she saw Jack's expression when they were leaving.

He had known he could get away with breaking the rules. He knew the judge so well that Kelly felt Jack had choreographed the incident himself. She argued with him, the day the guilty verdict came in, there in the hallway outside the courtroom.

"I put a murderer away. That's all that matters!" Jack was panting, and she could smell his breath, sweet with breath mints. She wondered what he was covering up.

"That's not all that matters. The law matters. What if the next one is innocent?"

"Then I won't try him," Jack said.

Kelly shook her head. "I don't trust you anymore."

"You don't have to trust me. You just have to--"

"No. I can't. I--" Her conversation was interrupted when a dark-haired woman pushed her way between them to enter the courtroom. The woman was shorter than Kelly, and Jack's age. Kelly found herself looking down, and then through the doors as they swung shut. "Who's that?"

Jack blinked, and looked over his shoulder, through the small glass window on the door. "Tracey Kibre. You haven't met her yet?"

"No." Kelly took a step toward the courtroom.

"Go watch her case. Spend some time seeing how the real world works."

* * *

"I'm transferring." Kelly had strode into Jack's office and put the paper on his desk in front of him.

"Kibre."

"Yes. She sees the line, Jack, but she doesn't cross it."

"You think she's better than me?"

"She may not be the attorney you are, but..." Kelly offered him a faint smile. "She's not the attorney you are."

Jack nodded. "I'll write you a glowing recommendation. Kelly... Everyone crosses the line sooner or later. Even you."

"Maybe." Kelly shook her head. "But not yet."

END


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