Don't You Worry Child

Roll Away Your Stone

 Okay, so before you read this chapter, I will warn you that what I do know of American legal proceedings comes from watching Ally McBeal, The Good Wife and How To Get Away With Murder on TV/Online, so I can't guarantee that I'm factually correct about some of the legal proceedings involved in a wrongful death suit or a defamation suit. I'm legitimately just going off what Google and the aforementioned TV series have told me. I'm sorry if I've screwed anything up.

Chapter Summary: Samantha meets with her father's lawyer over the Marina Mischenko/Jean Shaw case; the reason for Fury's odd behaviour is unveiled.

Soundtrack: Roll Away Your Stone by Mumford & Sons

Alison 'Call me Ally' Blanchett had been a lawyer for ten years now, for all of those she had worked as a defence attorney for Tony Stark against the personal injury suits his company was prone to. The company had hired her straight out of law school, probably because she was the take no prisoners kind of woman. She'd even dated the so-called 'billionaire, genius, playboy, philanthropist' for a while. That was Pre-Pepper, it had only been a few dates (she could count them on one hand) and one time of sleeping together. She didn't feel she had a right to begrudge him his happiness just as he couldn't begrudge her own. Not that she had a significant other or anything, long nights at the office and a tendency to be snappish meant that finding a man was entirely too difficult.

Now, Samantha Stark stood in her office, fiddling with the sleeve of her blazer. She'd explained the story of what had happened, had explained how she hadn't seen anyone even close to resembling Jean Shaw - that she could remember, the three years of missing memory was going to be an issue - until Marina Mishchenko had shown up in her hospital room claiming to be Jean Shaw. It was an odd case, by far the oddest she had been given in her career, but Alison liked a challenge - both personal and professional. "You know how these things work Samantha, you've got a law degree. So, I need to know everything. Every inch of the friendship you and Jean had. I need full disclosure here," Ally informed the younger woman who proceeded to nod.

"Jean and I we uh we met during our first class, she was undecided on her major at the time - taking a few classes to see which major she liked best - I was convinced that I was going to be in crisis management," Samantha started "It was this Law and Society paper that UCLA makes all of their law students take, anyway, so we got to talking and she mentioned this alcoholic tea party some friends of hers were throwing. I agreed to going just so I could meet some new people - I'd never been the most popular of people. So, I go and she's there and we get along perfectly fine and I get so drunk that I break some of the tea set - which is why she gave me the nickname China Girl. So, she walked me to a cab, made sure I got home safe. She was always a good friend like that. From there on we were pretty much inseparable, we texted all the time, we talked about boys, we went clubbing together, went and saw the same movies together. The last time I saw her was graduation, I umm I went home pretty early on in the party - I didn't want Mom to be alone for too long, she'd broken up with her most recent boyfriend and I didn't think she was taking it too well. I tried texting her so many times and calling her too but never got an answer, I just assumed that she was pissed with me for leaving early, a couple of weeks later my mother and I got in that car wreck and I barely thought of anything except my mother's fate. Sounds pretty morbid doesn't it?"

"And you never saw her again?" Ally asked, trying to get the facts straight as she moved around to sit on the front of her desk, crossing one leg over the other. It was an act that tended to intimidate people into telling the truth but she got the distinct feeling that that was exactly what she was getting out of Samantha Stark.

"To the best of my knowledge, no, not until Marina Mishchenko showed up in my hospital room the other week," she answered, biting her lip as she tried to think about a possible time that she could have seen Jean "The problem is that there's three years of my memory missing that the other lawyer could use to their advantage,"