For archane: Joey and Chris. "We fight - when they ask us / We boast - then we cower / We beg / For a piece of / What's already ours / Once I thought I could make God a bribe / So I said I was in his lost tribe / Getting handouts can be so frustrating / "Get in line son, there's five million waiting""

"You know," Joey said, peeling back one lip in half-disgust, "I'm really just not feeling like sitting here and going over this again right now, so I think I'm going to say fuck it and go and pick up some ice cream, and you people can just sit here and run should-have and could-have without me, okay?" He stood just a fraction too quickly, and the front of his chair banged against the backs of his knees and then scraped against the wall. "If you don't mind."

The three lawyers and one publicist, whose names Joey had never bothered to learn, looked at him with an expression that firmly placed him somewhere between plankton and amoebas on the evolutionary scale. "Mr. Fatone," Shiny Shoes said, and "there isn't much time left before the court appearance," Plastic Hair said, and "You know, I think that ice cream sounds like an excellent idea," Chris said, brightly, and stood up too. "You're buying."

They got some death looks as they let themselves out of the office, but once they were free, the sun was warm and bright even though it felt like they'd been cooped up for a thousand years. "Thanks," Joey said, shooting Chris a glance out of the corner of his eye. "I didn't think I could take much more of that."

"Yeah," Chris said. His voice was edged, and Joey winced, because Chris out of all of them was taking it the hardest. "There's just so much questioning your every move you can take, you know?"

"They're really coming down hard on you, man." Joey rubbed a hand over his face. "I'm surprised that you've just been sitting there and taking it."

"Yeah, well. I sold my soul to the devil in a bad suit, and now we get to take it to the court of appeals." It was in the I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it voice again. "We're going to the place that lets you pick what you want to mix into the ice cream, right?"

"Yeah," Joey said, and wondered for a minute if they should take security with them; it was all still too new to him for it to be second nature. "...You think we're going to win this?"

"If we do," Chris said, without meeting Joey's eyes, "it's going to take a miracle. And I stopped believing in miracles when I was eight years old."

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