Her hand drifted to where the voltage still hummed beneath her skin - hours old, already cooling. She pulled it away, sharp. Traffic. Documents. Always something pulling at his periphery.

The motion lasted barely a heartbeat, but Juniper felt the surge building behind her ribs, threatening to arc. Last night’s evidence, she thought, nails pressing half-moons into her palms, inadmissible in this morning’s proceedings.

The constitutional precedents watched from his vacant jurisdiction. She displaced them with unnecessary force. Perhaps some cases were meant to be tried solo. Perhaps dependence was its own kind of precedent - the kind that always ruled against you.

She wouldn’t be the one to break. Not when the cracks were already spidering, not when she could feel the fault lines closing up. Better to file the motion herself.?. Better to be plaintiff than defendant.

Singular party to the proceedings. The thought settled into her chest cavity with perfect, terrible weight. Motion to dismiss all co-counsel.

She sat in the expanding silence of the conference room, in the specific frequency of abandonment. Sometimes the most catastrophic failures happened without sound - no gavel fall, no verdict read. Just circuits locked out and tagged out, jurisdiction quietly ceding, until one realized the courtroom had been empty all along.

The heart, she knew, broke in complete silence. No dramatic shattering. Just this: sitting alone while precedents scattered across an empty table, learning the difference between pro se and solitary confinement.