JUSTWORLD FALLACY

A/N: I'm going to be completely honest and hope that you all don't think me a monster when you're done reading this. So SYuuri and I were having one of our conversations and she'd mentioned that was there were no fanfiction about Jules being raped. I said that's because it would have to be done perfectly because if the author screwed up at all, there goes the authenticity of the fic. I also said it would be interesting to write because of the reactions and because Jules lives in a male-centric world. After a long conversation with SYuuri about the possibilities, I agreed with some excitement (everything can't be fluffy family picnics) to undertake the task and we brainstormed the plot for this story. I wrote it as realistic without being too graphic, but it is disturbing. Your dear authoress needed to get up and check her door more than once while writing it. I ask from you, dear readers, only one thing: Please do not write me a review or a PM to tell me abhorring me for the story. It is rated-M for your protection and I will state it right now so there is no confusion that the central plot revolves around Jules' rape. Now there is no reason for misplaced rage.

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Double Disclaimer: Strong adult and violent themes.

Just-World Fallacy

Chapter One

Of the Lock

The front stairs on her porch creak as she stomps on the old wood. That was going to be her next renovation project. It's getting too close to winter to replace the old gray boards now; she's going to have to wait until next May to tear up the front porch. The neighbors keep telling her that they see raccoons running underneath the decaying crosshatched lattice. Like she's supposed to drop everything and go under there with garden gloves and a garbage bag. She wanted to fix it up this year, but things happened. Things happened, like her chest getting in the way of armor piercing bullets. Four months of summer dragged by and her porch continued to rot like the stitches in her chest.

Her hand rifles through a pocket on her light fall jacket until the familiar jingle of her house keys greet her. She huffs and a curl of smoke escapes her mouth. She met the guys at the Goose, which happens to be about six or seven blocks from her house. They've had the last week and a half off to deal with Lew's death while the SRU runs trials for a replacement. Ed, Wordy, and Sarge, they're handling it better, with seniority, with experience, with memories and laughs. Spike's handling it by hitting the bottle pretty hard. The first week it was bad, just a spiteful string of words that ejected from his mouth along with the alcohol induced vomit in the cardboard and dumpster filled alley behind the bar. Sam copes by being unavailable. Mentally, emotionally, physically. It's his army boy gone AWOL routine. No one's heard from him since the funeral.

Tonight was one of the better nights. She doesn't understand why they have to meet up every single night, even if it's for a few drinks. She understands that Wordy and Ed have families, have more of a semblance of a life than she does, but the novelty and male bonding are starting to wear thin. After a beer and a half, she left first tonight. Sighed, stood and strolled home in the late October dusk. It's that eerie time of year where night comes to early and the cold comes on too strong.

Her mailbox gags on bills, random leaflets, the Wishbook from Sears. It's over two months until Christmas. She doesn't even want to think about Christmas. She opens the first decorative door to her house, the one that's all square frames and glass, the one she spent hours sanding down. She lets it rest against her back as she juggles the mail and her keys. Then she opens the thick, heavy, door to her house that's constructed out of solid wood. Inside is cold, dark, and unwelcoming even though she's been living there by herself for the last five years.

She tosses the mail onto an end table with stained distressed wood by the door. She picked it up at a garage sale one weekend. The mail splatters and splays out, taking over the surface of the table. The light switch isn't exactly centered but she slaps at the wall until the room lights up, and then kicks the door closed with a booted foot. Her keys land beside the mail and all three locks are done up, internal, bolt and chain. She doesn't live on the bad end of Toronto, but it's not like she lives in a gated community either.

Her living room is stale, unmoving, and stagnant. Santorini walls silently mock her while she throws her coat over the back of a mammoth armchair. It's assembly line new, she hasn't sat in it once. She bought it to read in, and then she got shot and spent four months immobile. Funny how the grass is always greener.

The pub's stench lingers on her. Beer and peanuts. Whiskey and cigars. If she listens she can hear the static hiss of TSN on the broken television that hangs over the bar. The guys are still there, Ed and Wordy trading inside barbs, Spike getting rowdier by the minute until everyone agrees that he's cut off. It usually happens around the third or fourth drink. He's a lightweight. Poor Sarge has to watch them all drown their sorrows in the bottom of a shot glass. It makes her feel awkward. Makes her feel guilty.

Another set of stairs, these ones are new. Reinforced. A rigorous weekend project with an ex-boyfriend. Not one she's going to mention. Not one she may have been thinking of since Lew died. Not one she's forced to see every day. Not one she hasn't seen for a week and a half. It makes her feel dirty, knowing that he's helped her with so many aspects of her house. Like it was his give to take her in the relationship. Like it makes their relationship unreal. Maybe she wants it to be fake.

The upstairs bathroom is a place of solace. She was finished remodeling it before she met him. She did it all herself. Laid every tile down with sniper still hands. The sought after outcome was modern, but the modern style appeared too unwelcoming. She stuck with the classic claw-footed bathtub and shower curtain. It's homey, it reminds her of the farm in Medicine Hat, of how grateful she was to have warm water and that four older brothers didn't use it up before it was her turn. Sometimes they would just let the taps on the tubs and the sinks run dry on purpose.

She shucks her clothes, jeans, long-sleeved top, tank underneath, bra, underwear, and socks. They weave a trail to the tub. To the shower. To whatever she wants to use it as. Really, who wants a tub; she would just be sitting in her own filth for an extended period of time. The hot water kicks in immediately. She had a new hot water heater put in nine months ago. She can afford these privileges because she doesn't have a family, doesn't have kids, and doesn't have prior responsibilities.

Steam evaporates from the porcelain basin. The water hits her back, it's hot enough to streak her skin with blushing red lines. When she steps out of the shower, the mirrors are cloudy, she's not reflected, she doesn't exist, she's unknown to the world. She tries not to remember the days when she would step out and uncover secret messages scrawled in the vapor on the mirror. Even in his absence he was omnipresent.

Towel swallowing her body, she pads feather lightly to her bedroom, her hair drops a bead of soft water every three steps. She paid for the hardwood. She'll use it however she pleases. A clean white cotton tank comes on, clean underwear, clean pajama pants. She finds a gray sweater hanging on the back of her door and pulls it on too. It's still a little too early to turn on the heat. Until November she can dress in layers.

The brush is ripping through her hair while she limps back to the bathroom, dragging the towel under her foot. She did after all pay to have the hardwood floors installed. Bangs are easily segregated from the majority of her hair and the rest of it goes up in a sloppy bun. She folds the towel into thirds and hangs it off of the shower rod to dry.

It's 8:28pm, completely dark outside since a particularly vicious storm knocked out the streetlight in front of her house last week. She wonders when the city is going to come fix it as she shuts off the light in the bathroom and heads downstairs to get a bottle of water. The constant aftertaste of beer hasn't been sitting well with her stomach lately, her liver's probably in a silent revolt.

The main level of her house is empty. The stairs don't speak as clean soles move over their wooden finish. Maybe she'll watch the news until she starts to feel tired, see what mishaps the team missed today. Probably nothing as drastic as landmines. They're the only team that seems to get landmines, the only team that gets military trained snipers. The only team that gets sent out on duty every active day. She can't remember the last day they just ran drills.

The fridge is barely being used for its purpose. There's five bottles of water in its innards, some leftovers from a few days ago and one of those baking soda ventilators. She shrugs and puts off going to the grocery store for tomorrow when she can comprehensibly make a list and slams the door. Magnets holding up takeout menus and pictures of her and the guys, including Lew, jiggle.

She crosses from the kitchen to the living room and back to the front door. She always double checks to make sure that she's shut off the porch light. One time she didn't and the neighbors actually knocked on her door at two in the morning and asked if it was necessary to not only waste electricity but to disturb the neighborhood. She thinks if these bankers and human resource personnel had to deal with half the shit she sees in a normal day their number set brains might explode.

The low hanging porch light is off. But something catches her eye. The pile of mail she thought she threw on her beach house styled table is in a stack, sorted from largest to smallest with the Sears catalogue on the bottom and her hydro bill on the top. The bottle of water starts to sweat in her hand as she stares at the motionless pile of mail with her eyebrows furrowed.

She shakes her head and turns to climb the stairs one final time for the night. If she's getting this mixed up after a one and a half beer buzz she's definitely not making it to tomorrow night's rendezvous at The Goose. Maybe, just to be safe, she'll take her cell phone with her upstairs. Just in case Team One is called in early. In case someone needs a ride home from the Goose and Sarge can't give it to them.

Descending the two steps she's absently embarked on, she bisects the room to get to her coat pocket and the cell phone within it. Only-in her peripheral she spots something different, something out of place. A large, black stain in the entrance to her kitchen. Her hand stops on her coat, light fabric rubberlike under her fingertips and she lets the perspiring water bottle roll down to the seat of the chair.

She knows what to do in this situation. Has training. The family next door, they don't have training. The most important thing is getting her phone and dialing 911. Whether this person knows what she's doing or not. Whether she loses the connection a second after it's made. They can trace it back to her. She may be an SRU officer, she may have training, but her gun is upstairs with her uniform in her closet.

"Hi Jules." The voice is calmer and closer than she expected. It also sounds familiar. She turns with the jacket draped over her arms and in the archway to her living room stands a guy she recognizes from two short-lived dinners and a slew of on the verge of obsessive phone calls.

"Scott?" She gives him the same look she gave the pile of mail a few minutes ago, cocked eyebrows and twitching lip. She hasn't had to deal with him in over a year. She dated him briefly, very briefly, before she and Sam got together. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, I remember you said you were fixing up the place. I always wanted to see what you did." He's never been to her house before. She never gave him her address. Now he's standing in front of her, six foot tall frame, muscles bulging from every inch of him with his hands shoved in his jean pockets like he's a nervous kid with a schoolboy crush.

"That's great Scott. How did you get into my house?" Her fingers delve into the cold depression of her coat pocket. The tips touch the protector on the side of her phone and she's using her memory to find buttons, except they're all the same size and without physically observing the phone, she'll never guess what key is the '9' and what key is the 'T'.

"Oh." He chuckles nervously and rubs at the back of his thick neck. The toes of his boot kick at the floor leaving chucks of dirt lying on her hardwood. "Well, I saw you at that bar tonight. You were with that group of guys and then I didn't get a chance to talk to you before you left so I followed you."

He advances a step; it's a big one because of his stature. The light washes over him, highlighting his dark eyes, hair, and the wispy line of facial hair trailing his jaw line. "You look really beautiful tonight Jules."

"Scott." She holds up her hand to halt him, but the small of her back presses firmly into the armchair.

"Oh, I used your back door. It was easy to get into, you know being in the trade and all." He flashes a toothy grin and winks at her like it's an inside joke. Something about the action unsettles her even more.

"Scott." Her voice remains completely indifferent showing no impression of irritation or fear. "You need to leave."

He shakes his head, large hands leaving his pockets. They're still stained with dirt or oil or whatever else he's encountered on his job that day. "Jules. It's been over a year. I still think about you every day."

"Scott, you need to leave now."

"No," His voice booms through the empty cavern of the house, and his two hands make equally thick and craggy fists. "We had something good and—"

"You need to leave now, or I'm calling the cops." She pulls the phone out to show him she's not bluffing. Then quickly dials the first '9' and '1'.

He nods. It's a firm movement, his jaw set, his teeth clenched, his neck rigid and fibrous. Her hand relaxes on the phone because he appears to be leaving. He's half turned, heel of his boot digging into her floor. The muscles in his back clench and bunch through his shirt and he mumbles something before shouting in aggravation.

She registers his yell, but doesn't have time to jam her thumb into the fatal final '1' and press enter before a fist the size and density of a bowling ball connects straight with her unprotected eye socket. She staggers back against the armchair from the velocity and force of the strike. Her cell phone skitters to the ground and runs for protection under the couch.

By the time he's brought up his fist again, she has both her hands up ready to block it. Her mind tells her that this is no different than sparring with Spike in the workout room. She flings his arm back and shoves her elbow into his stomach. It's solid muscle, tissue feels carved from stone and the collision only makes him recoil for a second.

She tries to run, bare feet slipping over her split blood on the floor. He reaches a hand forward catching the wad of her hair the bun provides and flings her against the Santorini wall. Picture's hiccup and there's a brief black smudge in her view after her head cracks off the drywall. She kicks at him, just missing his groin because of her lapse in vision and he smashes her back into the wall again. Pictures leap to their death. There's a familiar pain in the left side of her back. A stuttered burning every time she inhales that only grows stronger with each breath she takes.

As she tries to inhale he reloads his fist. Her arms are sluggish and stiff because of the fire in her lungs and after the impact of his knuckles, she sags to her side on the ground. Her mouth is warm and tastes salty, tastes like pennies. She coughs, gasps, makes a noise that she would never in a million years admit to making and then he kicks her in the chest.

He kicks her where six months earlier a bullet ripped through her. Ribs that were newly healed crack under his boot, tissue that was newly fused breaks and disintegrates. Everything that she worked so hard for unravels and her vision becomes blurred with a plague of a thousand tiny black dots. Her body convulses as she still tries to push up. To stand, to sit, to crawl. She hears metal clacking over her own heavy gurgled breathing and then the sound of a zipper being undone.

"No."

She claws at the floor with her nails trying to pull her failing body to safety. The dirt clods from his boots are imbedded in her cheek, in the wounds where her blood flows freely. He flips her over in a fluid movement that has the back of her head bouncing off the ground. Then he's on top of her and she feels her clothes dislocating from her body. She swings at him again and a single hand twists her right arm at an awkward angle. There's a crack, a new burst of pain, it's brief and then unnoticeable as it flows in with the rest.

She claws at him with her other hand, digs jagged nails into his tattooed skin until she feels the stickiness of blood. She can't see that well anymore, tunnel vision slowly growing dimmer. Her legs flail as if disconnected from her body. She screams and screams and screams because someone has to hear. They noticed the raccoons. They noticed the porch light. She screams until his fist comes down one final time like a gavel on her face and unconsciousness is immediate.

Just once, she wakes up. It's a split second montage of a million pictures, a million pains, a million lifetimes. It's feeling everything and nothing all at the same time. She doesn't do more than open her eye before his fist thrashes down her face again.

It's challenging to open her left eye the next time. The lashes are covered in a mixture of sweat and blood that's drying and ripping them out by the roots. Her right eye won't open at all. She notices the spiral stucco pattern on her ceiling, the still shadows from her track lighting. Pain floods her body like water does lungs when someone drowns. The feeling is overbearing, like her pinky finger alone is tied to thirty pounds of rocks. Despite the agony, she wastes no time in case he is still here. In case this is an intermission. In case he's taking a bathroom or lunch break.

She rolls very slowly onto her stomach, like an empty barrel floating in the ebb of the tide. Her hands thrust palm first against hardwood floors and slip against blood. Her lungs smolder, the broken bones built up around them like a funeral pyre. Through her mouth she inhales and exhales in quick successions and places her cheek back against the floor. Her hair tumbles in greasy wisps over her face. It doesn't smell like her shampoo. It doesn't smell like anything.

Five feet away underneath the red couch is the cell phone, untouched, un-mauled, and intact. Her withered feet with curled toes ram into the floor to propel her forward at an inch at a time. The gravity of the room is a centrifuge, the solid floor pushes up against her pulverized body and hurts every inch of it, her shoulders, her fingertips, her hips, her thighs as she slides across the ground and forces herself to remain silent. Her pajamas, inexplicably replaced back on her body, constrict her breathing, her actions, and her thoughts. The material touching skin feels acid dipped.

With a huff she collapses the few inches back onto the floor. Her battered cheek digs into the ruts between the pieces of wood and she scans underneath the couch. The remainder of her depth perception tells her that the phone should be within arm's reach. Her left hand untangles from her body experimentally, and fingertips brush the plastic casing on the phone again. She retracts the device like it's worth its weight in gold and the three numbers she entered before are still engaged on the screen. A bloody thumb pad presses enter and she cradles the phone to the side of her face.

It rings once. Then twice. For each period between rings, she breathes in and out six times. Finally there's a click and an unfriendly voice of a female operator. "9-1-1, what's your emergency?"

Next chapter - From a lot of male's POVs

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