to the ruined home

‘ – it’s in brackets. ’

a little, quietly, on the defensive, but look: her memory is either as sticky as flypaper or full of cracks. best bet is not waking up on a bad to worse day and not knowing who the fuck jennifer walters is. sniffing an inhale, she threads out the interrogation room door, a little uncaring if it smacks a mite too hard on its hinges on the open-and-close. 

which cop earns a grimace - she definitely doesn’t need, what, setting up - but a sigh scrapes her teeth, chin tipping toward a late-20s wisp of short-cropped curly hair ( stranded somewhere between chestnut and caramel, like it can’t decide what colour it would want to be if it grew longer ) and giraffe legs that it looks like he just learned how to not trip over. ( he’s taller than her, is the point, and she resents it enormously. )

jen starts --- and abruptly stops --- laughing, when she sees him; makes a noise that might, if you listened closely, sound like an aw.  he’s a cute kid, seems harmless enough to joke about; instead, she files him and his baby giraffe legs away for some future scrape. she turns back, shaking her head, still smiling despite herself. 

     ‘ Um. I don’t think it’s meant to be doing that, actually — ’ 

‘ relax. i’ve got it figured. ’ which is to say she and murdock have one hell of a - complicated thing, but she doesn’t need jen’s professional services. ‘ rookie cop took my phone has a crush on me. thought he was helping. ’ glancing over to the corner: ‘ so can i go? ’

oh, for the love of ---