#1 in MENTALIST
[Cho x OC]
[COMPLETED]
It's The Mentalist but slightly to the left; shifting the spotlight to Kimball Cho and original character Ronnie Masters. Starts from S1E1, includes all casted characters with the addition of one OC. SLOWWW BU...
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Ronnie spent the morning in court.
Despite her weeks of testimony all those years ago, spelling out her case to judges and juries, spilling every gruesome detail that she could remember, Ronnie found herself summoned back to the stand after Carla Masters finally fell into custody.
She'd expected to see or at least hear from her prosecuting attorney Aaron Hotchner, but learned from an entirely new legal team that he'd retired from law and gone on to work as an FBI profiler out in Virginia.
Tensions having lessened between them since Agent Pike returned to Texas, Cho took it upon himself to go with her to her hearing for moral support. In fact, she'd told him that he needn't bother, that she could very well handle another round of cheap shots in the judicial boxing ring by herself, but her stubborn stoic partner couldn't be dissuaded.
It turned out to be just as well that he came.
Every time she found herself staring into the wickedly disappointed eyes of her mother, at least she could turn her head and look at Cho's blank face instead. His deep, dark eyes and foreboding expression yielded a far more familiar comfort.
Any instance in which Carla's defense attorney asked her a particularly vapid question, she could see his eyebrows sink lower and his chest puff fuller as he beheld the matter disappointedly.
After three hours of relentless and gutless questions from defense and prosecuting attorneys, the judge released Ronnie for the day and she and Cho made their exit.
If Carla expected her to sit around and hang on every word, getting sucked in emotionally, she couldn't be more wrong.
She could sit in her chains and her jumpsuit and her discount Toms and she could wonder how her only daughter in the world could leave that courtroom with careless laughter on her lips.
Even better, she could sit there and wonder how she could coerce that daughter to shoot her closest friend and still have to watch them leave together, arm in arm, as though they'd had the nerve to grow closer through the whole experience.
Ronnie and Cho stopped for celebratory milkshakes and fries on their way back.
They'd missed the start of a new case evidently, but a few minutes with Rigsby upon their return to the CBI got them up to speed fairly quickly, despite having to make sense of him talking past the food in his mouth.
Apparently, a 32-year-old Clair Wolcott was found shot to death in her hotel room, where she'd been spending the night with a Paul Fricke. He had also been shot, but fled the scene before it was discovered and sought help from another guest at the hotel, who patched him up and then proceeded to sleep with him.
Clair Wolcott's husband had invited the CBI to work the case discreetly, due to his wife's indiscretions with Paul Fricke. So far, the crime scene had been covered, and Lisbon and Jane had tracked down and interviewed the audacious Mr. Fricke.
