JUSTWORLD FALLACY
A/N: Hey Guys. Sorry this chapter took so long to get up. I'm getting to the part in my school where all the Profs are like have a billion assignments and a random midterm where there's a month left of class. Plus job. Plus let's face it, Jules needs to be written properly or not at all. I wasn't just going to rush through her part (I'm not lying Sam's part has been finished since before Halloween). Also the length of the story made me cut the 3rd puke. Tragic. Just-World Fallacy Chapter 4 H-Os & H-O-Rs He always arrives fashionably late to these things. He was the last one to join the team, the rookie. He was the last one at the hospital when Jules was shot, even though she meant the most to him. He was the last one at Lew's funeral because he was fucking Lexus in the backseat of her Camry. He was the last one at the hospital when Jules was— He's the last in the bathroom after Spike went all heavy metal and smashed in the mirror, apparently with an appendage because the counter is a Pollock painting with dollops of blood. Always and forever the rookie. The generic buzz of his phone's vibration echoes in the petite, empty bathroom. The impact in the mirror reflects back eighteen or nineteen puffy, dangerously bloodshot eyes. He's been crying since Wordy told him. Crying because it happened. Crying because he did absolutely nothing to stop it. Crying because it happened to Jules. Crying because if it happened to Jules, it had to be bad because she fought. He knows she fought. Crying because it happens at all. Crying because there's nothing he can do. He can't go out and hit the guy. Beat the guy. Kill the guy. Even though his fists are pulsating with action, fingers twitching. That would be wrong, against the law. He's a cop. He upholds the law. The contents of his stomach churn hard, he's sure the seafood and pasta evolve into a butter-like substance. It blows his mind, like the bullets he's placed in subjects from kilometers away, that he's not legally allowed to do anything to the guy who—being a cop seems overly useless. While Jules endured the trauma, the anguish, four cops sat drinking themselves into a stupor not six blocks away. Six blocks away. Four cops that if any of them took the time to notice how much she's hurting on the inside and offered to walk or drive her home, none of them would be in this hospital now. He realizes he's in no position to debase because he chose Lexus over Jules. If he knew it would be a definitive choice, he would have ignored Lexus at the gym. He would have cut his friend out of his life and not even gone out that day. He would have blown up the gym. It's been two months and he still yearns for her. He goes home to his apartment, which she's never even seen, and he wonders why the fuck he bothers because she's not there. The way the team is disintegrating, he should've been more open to switching to Team Two, or Three, or Fifty. It didn't matter which. But then the rest of Team One would know their business. Jules' business. His business. Teammates would taint something so precious, blaming their love, their relationship for the split of the team. During his first real day at the SRU, after the night of meeting everyone at the retirement party. The night he spent two hours trying to guess Jules first name and never succeeded. The guys approached him, warning him not to fool around with her. Lew said he needed to cool it with Jules before she took him out. Spike added that it wasn't going to be to a restaurant. Sarge told him this was a place of professionalism, they deal with lives and hot calls and his focus should strictly be on the victims and subjects. Wordy ironically didn't say a thing, just shook his head. Ed told him point blank to keep his dick in his pants. He admits that when he first saw Jules through the maelstrom of sniper shots, and broken Croatian phrases she was a contest. Sure, Toronto was full of women, and sure it would probably be pretty easy to get them between his sheets or in his cools pants just by the relational mention of 'army' or 'cop' and 'sniper'. But sinking Jules, that would be the real challenge; he realized that after he uttered his first words to her and he was answered by the barrels of five different guns, one being her own. The process changed, over the next few weeks he adapted in enemy territory. Instead of coming on strong, laying down the suave, blond boy, sly-smirked attitude, he tried to come off as just a potential friend. Friends, as he learned from college blackout raves and keggers, frequently came with many benefits. Coffees in the back of her roomy jeep. How he recounted stories of his past and didn't hyperbolize how treacherous the General actually was. How she nodded with a stern-face before reaching forward to the front seat for her cell phone. How he stealthily checked out her ass. The sequences of the friendship evolved into a rivalry and he felt like he was back in the army with his buddies. It was refreshing that she didn't go easy on him because he was the rookie. It was refreshing that she didn't want him to go easy on her because she was female. They teamed up often and found that they fit together with puzzle piece perfection. In areas he lacked she made up for and in areas she lacked—she didn't lack. She seemed perfect. Then he started getting overprotective. Saw her swan dive off the side of the Eaton's Center and his innards all shifted up a foot inside of him like he forgot about the decompression chamber after deep sea diving. In the green, energy saving, industrial lighting of her 'Jules' locker room he touched her for the first time. Air dense with the post-shower, mock rainforest atmosphere. Heavy steam clasped to the mirror, the tiles slippery with condensation. His hand grazed over her road kill back. She shivered, clandestine skin cultivated goose bumps as ropes of soggy hair hung and cried shower remnants. She felt it too and he knew that his conquest was a success. Except—except, he didn't care anymore. Because somewhere between the first time he saw her holding a sniper rifle and automatically pictured her in a bikini and stilettos doing playboy poses with it and the tiny gasp she gave when his hand grazed her skin, he fell in love and didn't know. He didn't know because he'd never been in love before. He didn't know it could sneak, lie undercover for months and then just pop. After that moment she was perfect. Her cream, no sugar was disgusting, but she was perfect. She had a curling iron he still doesn't know what the fuck she uses for because her hair is always straight, but she was perfect. And one time she bitched at him about just wanting to go home, because she'd fucked up. Because she wasn't perfect. He wouldn't let her go, stalked her down the street as onlookers shook their heads at him. Give it up, Buddy. He sneered an expressional flip-off at them in the streetlights. She didn't need to walk around the city, at night, alone. If anything happened to her, it would be on him. If anything ever happened to her, it would be on him. He told her that he wouldn't talk, that she didn't need to talk. That they could sit in an awkward, manufactured silence and for fuck's sake would she just let him drive her home? She just kept refusing and marching away. He didn't pity her actions. He just wanted to protect her, because someone needed to. He grabbed her and kissed her. It was a little unorthodox. In the middle of a busy street. The rest of the team less than half a block away. He'll remember that kiss until the day he dies. The feeling was indescribable. Relief, like expelling the air in his lungs after drowning for far too long. Epiphanic, like every single thing he did up to that point in his life didn't mean a fucking thing. Cool lips hesitated a few seconds before cautiously parting, like a toe dipping into an icy lake. His hand traced the soft skin from her jaw to her cheekbone and tangled into her hair. He loves her hair. Soft when it curls around his fingers, sexy when it falls over her shoulders, consoling when he buries his nose in it. Their first time was in her semi-demolished house. She led him by the hand up creaky funhouse stairs and told him too late that he might smash his head off a dip in the ceiling. The plunge came just after the landing and it almost took him out; he stumbled back a few steps, covered his forehead with a hand, and groaned a few choice curse words. She giggled at him. Honest to God giggled, and he felt the nervousness boiling in his stomach flush over his body in a new wave of adoration. Her fingertips brushed against his hairline where the nerve endings singed and danced. Under gentle guidance he made it under the depression and she placed those lips on the indent in his head. Eventually they arrived at her bedroom. She leaned across her bed, a queen-size, decorated with a flowered bedspread and patchwork quilt folded in thirds at the foot, and reached into a drawer on her bedside table. She tossed a condom to him as he stood in the threshold; it hit his chest and fell to the hardwood floor. Like an asshole, the effects of his pre-Toronto days still lingered in his bloodstream, which was concentrated well below his waist by that time; he glanced at the square wrapper, then at her and asked, "You're not on the pill?" She had every right to kick him out, which is what he expected if she didn't shoot him first. He winced at his own comment and waited for the a-bomb to go off because he chucked rocks at it. But it didn't. Instead she merely shook her head. With a superior smile and in a seductive voice that shot the rest of his blood out of his brain, she answered, "Maybe one day you'll know, Braddock." They had sex that night for the first time. It was like exploratory surgery. Figuring out where everything goes. Even though it should be fairly obvious, it isn't. Jules is eight inches shorter than he is; it made him being on top awkward to say the least. He always felt like he was crushing her. But then her being on top all the time isn't exactly fair and then sometimes they had to literally flip a coin. He had to figure out what parts of her body she liked, what parts he did. He's a big fan of her neck, but she vetoed hickeys. Working on a team of snipers, well everyone would notice and then ask questions. He suggested her collarbone and she stressed no hickeys as he sucked on her skin like it was candy coated. He wanted to know who the fuck, other than him, would be seeing her collarbone. When she got shot, he understood. There were hickeys on her collarbone by then. The lights in the bathroom start to irritate his eyes as the spider web of his own fucked up reflections stare back at him. None of them have the answer, they're all just waiting for him to do something so they can copy his move and claim it as their own. Classic monkey-see monkey-do syndrome except in this case it's all his neuroses waiting for him to take a single step so they can piss-in-his-Cheerios fuck up his life. His phone jitters in the close confines of his back pocket. At first he didn't see their relationship lasting. They're both dangerously loyal people. To each other, which is a good aspect to have in a relationship, but they were loyal to the team. Sneaking around like double spies poked holes in their morality. They started fighting more. Not at work like the one day they exploded at each other and covered it up with being concerned over the hot call, but at her house. He was still living in a hotel at the time. The one time he swore the end was near at approximately a month in. That their relationship was brain dead and being kept alive by machinery and a prayer. That people were gathered with candles and singing dirges. Then he had to shoot a sixteen-year-old kid in the head because that kid was going to shoot Ed. Sarge called Scorpio. He was Sierra One, Jules Sierra Two. He had the solution. He fired. The kid collapsed like a marionette with cut strings. Ed remained unscathed, but pissed, but grateful out of obligation. He was in the SIU interview for over eight hours. It was almost as long as after the incident of friendly fire, which incidentally was brought up several times. Sarge protected him to the point where his boss grew round and red with rage. The lawyer told him not to answer any more questions after six hours. He was actually relieved to be Sierra One. More relieved Jules wasn't. He was glad this was on him and not her, because he would be worried to death about her. Sarge told him to go home and sleep it off because they had another day tomorrow. Sam nodded but took a taxi to her place instead. Why sleep when kitchen cabinets needed to be retextured, or the couch needed to be reupholstered or whatever crazy shit she was up to this week. He honestly didn't know how she knew to do half of the stuff. He still doesn't. Her porch light was still on. The neighbors would complain. He opened the ornate door, the one he imagined her hands sanding down every time he played with her fingers while they lied in repose on the couch, or in the early morning hours. He never found a single callous. The thicker wooden door opened immediately, a burst of kinetic energy. She wore a gray t-shirt that stretched to her hips and shorts. The shadows over her collarbone and the way her skin reflected the warm porch light indicated that she was working out, which meant that she was worried. Too worried to work on the house. Her hair fanned out behind her head and messy bangs fell into her eyes. "Can I—" "Yeah." She shoved the door open and stepped to the side, allowed him entrance to the house. It smelled like cinnamon and maple. Despite being constantly under construction, her house always exuded the most welcoming aromas. He still expected to see the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, but they tore it down last week. She promised him the wall wasn't load bearing. After he stared at the floor plan for a good half an hour and pretended he knew what the hell he was looking at, he agreed and they took sledgehammers to the feeble drywall. He'd never seen her laugh so much; it was disturbing in a delightful kind of way. "You shouldn't open your door so quickly. You never know who could be—" When he turned to face her, she linked her arms around him, her face somehow rested on his chest. Her grip was tight, almost needy, and definitely uncharacteristic of the Jules he knew. The one who got pissed at him when he brushed against her at work, or let his arms fall on her side of the bed when he was in a deep sleep. "I was so worried about you." Her breathe was hot through his shirt. His arms bent awkwardly at his side because the embrace caught him completely off guard. "I'm fine." "I'm sorry." She released him and he felt cold in her absence. "Did you still want to talk?" Then he remembered for the first time since he shot a sixteen-year-old boy in the forehead that he and Jules were supposed to have a stern talk about their future that night. Generally, he figured it would go a little like: both of them admitting that having someone to talk to, someone who understands the job, is great. The sex is amazing, but it just wasn't working. Too much fighting weaved its way into the great aspects of their relationship. He loved her, but he was ready to let her go because he knew she didn't feel the same way. Now, he wasn't so sure. He gathered her back to him, one of his arms wrapped around her thin shoulders. The other around the small of her back. She has a tattoo there, he doesn't have any tattoos. He'd only snuck the odd, blue moon glimpses of it. Sometimes in the morning sun it peaked out from between the floral patterned sheets, sometimes it flashed by in the shower mist. Every time he reached out to touch it, Jules knew, with her back turned she knew, even in her sleep she knew. "It was just SIU, it wasn't that bad." She shook her head, forehead pressed into his chest, her bun vibrated with the movement. "I was worried about you. To do that and then go through that." His cheek squished against the top of her head. He didn't tell her how he was preoccupied with being thankful he was the one who pulled the trigger. He was Sierra One. He was the one who had his weapon reclaimed. He was the one who had to strip down to his boxers in front of the SIU guys and stood there in uncomfortable silence until someone brought him his gym bag. He's never asked Jules if she's shot and killed someone. Never really cared enough to. He figured she had because it's in the job title and she was a Sierra before he got here. But when he thinks about all the shit she'd have to go through afterwards, he hopes she never has. "I'm fine." "Did they feed you?" He lost his grasp on her again as she padded barefoot over scuffed wooden floors. "I could make you—" "Jules," He laughed her name, because the caring attitude enacted itself out in frantic behavior. "I'm fine. Really." "Okay." She nodded, but he knew she still didn't believe the answer. She stood in the small ghost of a hallway between the now extended living room and kitchen. The living room was a disaster still under construction. White, paint splattered sheets lied crumpled near the baseboards of the still intact walls. She wanted to tear the back wall down, and then rebuild it, all because of faulty plumbing. He honestly thought she just wanted to smash the shit out of something with sledgehammers again. To see the pure happiness on her face, he would end up agreeing. It was a two week project that they finished three days before she got shot. Buckets of primer, some opened, some hoping to be, crowded the corners of the empty room. The only thing that remained intact was the TV and her old ratty couch. "Can't we just watch some Letterman or something?" "Yeah." Again her answer was hesitant and she glanced down at her attire. Bangs swayed and her lower lip actually twitched as she enlightened, "I'm kind of gross from working out though." "Jules." He reached forward and took her hand, one of the hands that spent so many hours sanding down the gorgeous front door, and led her into the living room. "I was in the same room for eight hours. SIU didn't exactly offer me a shower." At first it was uncomfortable. A couch cushion to each of them. Hands situated in their laps. The kind of stature he had when he picked up his prom date, Katy Beamer and her dad gave him the stink eye. He wasn't this rigid with SIU. But he remained in the darkened silence of her front room as the title from the Late Show illuminated the empty space. He tried not to think about how their relationship possibly imploded before his eyes. Then she angled against him. Initially it was just her shoulder that brushed against his, then touched his, then pressed on his as she leaned her head in the crook between his shoulder and his neck. His hand fell to her knee, smooth skin, and then slid tentatively up her thigh, overworked muscles tight underneath his fingertips. Her lips barely touched against the side of his neck, swerved in a delicate pattern until her lips were on his unshaven cheek. His response was slow, he shifted to let his arm encircle her waist, and his hand stroked her cheek before they kissed. The kiss remained tender momentarily, like the weak flicker of a dying flame. Then something in them snapped simultaneously, at first he thought this would be the last hurrah before the end of the relationship, but he understood the next morning it was when they both realized the love was requited. He opened his mouth, deepened the kiss and his tongue licked at her lower lip. She moaned against him, lips parted. The kiss was delicious, wet, like the first bite of a peach. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he lifted her to straddle his lap. She had to be on top this time. He would definitely crush her into the couch. His mouth found her neck and tired not to linger. No hickeys. It was an absurd rule. But her skin tasted so salty, it was addicting. To his surprise she didn't remind him, in that eye rolling tone, about their rule. Instead she sighed into his ear; a do-it-yourself hand dragged upwards through his hair and only encouraged his plundering mouth. Fingers found the hem of her top and lifted it over her head, while one hand pressed into the small of her back, the tattoo, and stabilized her. Her skin glistened as the opening monologue flickered against her back, the dip between her breasts grew an enticing shade as she flushed. His hands drifted lower, over the tattoo and top of her shorts to grip her ass. She pulled off his shirt, black and heavy from the events of the day. When she arched in the pliable material of her bra tickled his chest. Her hand snaked around his neck again, curved into his hair as she kissed him hard. He complied, and his hands kneaded. She bucked against his hips and he broke the kiss, dipping his head, tongue and teeth against her bare collarbone. Her hands fell flaccid from his neck and adept fingers picked at the zipper to his pants. As his mouth traced the first swell of one breast, and her hands successfully liberated his pants, a thought struck him. "Wait." He muttered against her skin as he lapped up one last taste of saltiness. "What about a condom?" He was honestly so proud of himself at that moment, not only for remembering the prophylactic, but because he had sufficient self-control to restrain himself long enough to go get one. In a few seconds he would be rendered immobile, so it was now or never. Jules, however, just shook her head at him and kept her chest pressed square against his. The pocket of time he had to travel in was quickly diminishing. "We don't need one." "We always need one." And they did. There were times when he jumped out of the shower, ran into the bedroom, rifled through the drawers and came back with a strain of them just in case. He kept telling her to keep some in the medicine cabinet. No one would ever know. Part of him thinks Jules just liked to see him panic. She kissed him again. Not hard, not tender. Just a normal, loving, trusting kiss. Her hands were on his shoulders, fingers drummed against his skin. "We only need one if you want to use one." Then he understood. There was enough communication between them, enough feelings, and she felt comfortable enough with him now that condoms were no longer necessary. Of course he wasn't going to throw her off of him, run all the way upstairs, hit his head in the dip, grab a chain and run down. The love and trust they couldn't speak of could be shown in different ways. The sex was over before the Late Show was over. But it was amazing, exhausting, exhilarating, everything sex should always be. Everything he kept reminding himself of when he was with Lexus. Two months later Jules got shot and he reverted back to condoms. He didn't mind, Jules had to learn to walk, bend, stand, sit, and breathe on her own again. He could make the sacrifice of having to use condoms. He never pressured, waited until she wanted to be intimate. On that fateful night they were approaching month three of her recovery. A week prior she'd been cleared for 'strenuous activities'. He had everything under control until he saw it. The smudge, the mark, the scar. The bullet hole. He lost it. Everything, his temper, his feelings, his patience, his arousal. In the narcissistic, fucked up world he lives in, she ended up having to comfort him that night. A soft hand dragged through his hair as his ear rested against her chest, listened to the heavy, laconic, fatigued sigh of her heart. Eyes wrenched closed because that goddamn scar brandishes the ways he failed her. The ways he almost killed her. Now, he stands alone in the whitewashed tile bathroom Spike's handiwork already decimated with the surge of emotions none of them know how to handle. The rage that blooms and spreads like the red tide in their bodies and suffocates their ability to feel. The rage, the guilt, the inability to believe what's happened to Jules knowing that just two months ago she was his. She more than his sexy sniper chick, she was his everything, and moreover, she loved him. She loved him and somehow he let that sift through his hands like her love was as plentiful as sand at a beach. In his back pocket his cell phone vibrates. His fingertips drill into the faux marble countertop, still painted with streaks of Spike's blood. He should have been at the bar; he would have walked her home. The guys' thoughts would have been in the gutter and Sarge would've given him a wary expression, but what the fuck did they know? Jules would've argued with him and he would've trailed her anyway. Just like he did when they left the hotel. Streetlights haloing her hair. Puffs of air floating rhythmically from where her head tucks inside her coat collar. He assumed the team would take care of her. Why the fuck would they take care of her when he didn't have the momentum too? They are all dealing with the black hole that a single bonding landmine created and they forgot to stay aware. A basic rule of war, just because one buddy's gone doesn't mean another can't quickly follow. Why, out of everyone, did it have to be her? He thinks about her. Really thinks about her. Her smiling knowingly at him from across the packed briefing room. Waking him up with a kiss on the cheek and then a less gentle backhanded slap. Watching sci-fi movies with her and the faces she pulls because she hates the genre. A thirty second montage of all the most important moments he's had with her run through his mind as his breathing grows more rapid because it's starting to sink in. What this guy did. What this guy stole. How Jules is never going to be the same person he knew the last time he saw her a week and a half ago. Part of the reason he fucked Lexus, was for closure. Proof to Jules, he was over their relationship, although she was the one who called the time of death. He always knew he'd overreact when she found a new guy, but he never in a million years expected this. He glances down at his hands, brittle nails cracked and bleeding now with the pressure of the night. Pictures where his hands have been on her body. Tracing over the sun faded ink lines of her tattoo, twirling the ring she sometimes wears that's too big for her middle finger, changing the twin gauze pads blocking the hole in her chest. This man's hands have been there. Ravaged her body. Putrefied her soul. Tarnished their memories. His chest ignites and into the stained sink basin he vomits remnants of dinner. Half-bowties and crispy shrimp legs decorate the porcelain in an acidic reduction. He coughs, the acrid taste clinging to his tonsils like a sickness, making it impossible to inhale a deep breath. The water turns on in an attempt to wash his past away, the dinner didn't happen, the sex didn't happen, this night didn't happen. Instead the metal plug isn't elevated enough to allow passage to the half masticated food and it clogs. He didn't go to the bar tonight, for the same reason he didn't go to the bar for the last week and a half. Because he was still furious at her for the way she ended it, without warning after avoiding him for a week. After he spent four months taking care of her because no one else would. Because he wanted too. Because she means everything. If he just went, none of this would have happened. She wouldn't be in his arms, lips pecking the tip of his nose, but she wouldn't— His phone seizes again. Stronger than before, an electric current shoots down his leg. He tears the device from his back pocket and tosses it on the counter. Watches as it skitters like a beetle across the broken glass and dried blood. Something stutters in the phone. For a second its electronic heart stops beating and it remains still. But within seconds a new call initiates and it's back to dancing over the surface, almost into the sink. He picks up his phone between a forefinger and thumb, feels the weak sensation of the tremors and recalls how a little more than an hour ago he got four tragic words that would forever change his life. If he thinks hard enough maybe he can stay in limbo forever, the place where he didn't know why Jules was in the hospital. The fear made his stomach do gymnastics routines, but at least he didn't know it was this. It's got to be the guys. Ed, Wordy, not Spike who's on the same rage wavelength as him, but sans the sanity. They're calling because he's all but locked himself in the bathroom like a teenager going through his first breakup. He's used to leaving, used to coping through absence. It makes the heart grow fonder and honestly not seeing any of them for the last week and a half has been doing wonders for his mentality, his stamina, his physique. But he's going to have to answer his phone eventually and hear Ed's gravelly voice ream him out because Jules is going to need him and he can't be there for her from this bathroom. A thumb presses the green engage button and he brings the phone to his ear, ready to hear how Ed plans to talk him out of the bathroom without being completely degrading. "Hello." His voice sounds like his face looks. Tired, distraught, emotionally confused and beaten. He wonders for the fiftieth time what Jules looks like and lets a hiccup of a gasp out into the phone. He told her once that she'd be the most beautiful thing he'd ever see until the day he died. How is he supposed to place value in that belief if there's nothing singularly 'Jules' left? Body or mind. The other end of the phone connection jolts to life. It's not Ed. He recognizes the voice in the shrill exhale of air and he's never wished that Ed would phone him more. "Sam, I don't know what the hell you think that was? But leaving me at the restaurant with the bill? Tots uncool. Did you think that was funny? Because it tots wasn't. I had to scrounge through my purse for a credit card. The least you could've done was leave one of yours. If we're going to have a legit relationship then—" "Shut the fuck up Lexus." He drags a hand over the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Obviously she didn't get that being left in the restaurant was a metonymy for him leaving their whatever-the-fuck they had together. God she infuriates him. Before she takes a breath and starts her dirty engine ramble again he speaks sternly. "Just shut the fuck up and listen for once. We are not in a relationship. We never were. We fucked a few times. That's it. We're done. Stop calling me." On the end of his sentence as he hears her gaping maw inhale air for a rebuttal, he disconnects, deletes her number and turns the phone off. He understands he was harsh, understands if his mom was there she would've shaken her head at him all teary-eyed and said she'd raised a better boy than that. He also understands that the only woman he ever did and does love is lying in a bed on the same floor after experiencing things he wouldn't wish on Lexus, no matter how much the thought of her makes him want to add to Spike's decimation of the mirror. His focus needs to be free, his time needs to be unoccupied so that he can be readily available to help Jules however she may need it. Half of him considers this proposal to be a tad of an overstatement. He doesn't need to devote every waking minute to her. He didn't even do that when they were dating. Near the beginning he didn't anyway. He stares at his likeness in the broken tortoiseshell, each piece reflecting him back in a different way. The wrong way. No. He needs to do this for Jules because he failed her. He failed her before by letting her get shot and he failed her tonight by not even being there. He shoves away from the counter and towards the door. Towards the rest of the team as they wait the verdict from Sarge. He knows that he's not going to get to see her anytime soon. They won't let him. They'll say some bullshit about Jules' state-of-mind and how seeing him could trigger something. What they don't realize is they were friends before they had sex. They trusted each other, protected each other, and if it wasn't for the rest of the team, still might be that way. He pushes through the door. He failed her tonight because he left her with the team and thought that they would take care of her. One row is down. Doesn't blink or flicker with the distant, offshore hope that filaments are merely disconnected. The right side. The side farthest from the bed is off, in this room, gagged and all emptied for her. The light is stationary, but if she trains her eye on it long enough it sways with a Hawaiian lull. Hypnotic and slow. Deviant, trying to seduce her into a slumber. She's not sleeping here. The active light, Sierra One, looms above her bed. Twin cylindrical bulbs beating with the heat of the stars that swing danced in her vision an hour ago. Maybe more. Maybe less. Time in any hospital slows to a thigh-level wade through thick mud. The same pastel green walls as before. Green's tenacious. She's tenacious. Green's natural. Nothing is natural. Brightness interrogates the only viable eye, the left. A dry wink into the overly contrasted green room. Inhospitable. Impossible to focus. Her right eye won't open at all, not a fraction, not a millimeter, not even in afterthoughts. No one has checked it yet, prodded at it with boney fingertips, leaving fingerprints on her malleable skin. They sent her for some kind of scan though. The machine, like the room, was dehydrated, interrogating and intense. They told her to lie still for twenty minutes. Like she was going to be doing anything that constituted as moving anytime soon. She can't feel her nose. It doesn't really feel like she has a nose, so she hasn't tried to feel for it. Images of half-charred and decaying bodies parade through her mind. Day of the dead. The nose decomposes first. Cartilage doesn't hold up well in comparison to bone. Maybe there's a simple triangle, like she's a human Jack-o'-lantern. An elegiac effigy to where her nose once stood. Her mouth is the Grand Canyon. Lips form two craggy ledges. If they brush against each other sparks might jump forward and catch the bed sheets on fire. A dull throb has rooted itself at the base of her skull. She remembers in flashes, in splices of film and DNA, hitting the drywall in her front room. Maybe more than once. Maybe she's still hitting it and she's in an aptly named 'happy place'. Immediately, she vetoes the idea because her 'happy place' is not a hospital. She remembers pieces of Santorini paint and white plaster drifting off her hair like nuclear winter snowflakes and onto a sheet she was forced to stand on. They gave her two pieces of gauze sandwiched together and told her to smother the wound on her skull. Her throat is almost swollen shut. Vocal chords and windpipe compressing like bagpipes under the boot heel of aggravated neck muscles and flesh. Lungs smolder, plead for air, despite having the oxygen tubes nestled into the negativity of her nose. Fire ignited by broken ribs crawls up her throat, eating up the moisture and her words. Singes her skin. The odd bruise or scratch adorns her left arm, it's generally unharmed. But her rib bones, being a few kicks away from dust, have put a damper on her movement. She can't lift her arm any higher than her shoulder. Her right arm is a perfect mess. They thought it fractured at more than one awkward angle. Now it hangs flaccid halfway down from the elbow, bone not yet breeching the skin, but the area swells and shins like the latex gloves everyone she comes into contact with wears, but blown full of air to entertain a child. Bruises speckle her torso. Create a morbid mosaic of yellow and purple on her collarbone and the swells of her breasts. Some red starbursts stick out where the impact of fists and boots grew too hard, broke veins and capillaries at such an exceeding rate they were afraid to heal. Too nervous to be any color but blood. While changing at geriatric speed into a robin's egg hospital gown, she noticed two large bruises in the shape of hands on her back. Clear enough to be finger-painted. They took measurements, with a right angled ruler. Took pictures while she hugged herself away from the camera. Her hips share the same marks. Darker. Malicious. Each individual finger is distinguishable. Thighs are even worse. Repeatedly battered in patterns. In layers. Muscles torn and overextended. Skin maneuvered and clawed at until color cried out through contusions. Whenever she shifts, even so much as lifting her hips an inch from the bed, her insides hurt. She wants to scream from the sheer infliction of the pain, but she's stronger than that. Instead her left hand weakly bunches the sheets and she breathes staccato through the triangle in her face. Let's tears pool and relieve her barren eye. She was bleeding when they brought her in, she doesn't know if she is now or not, the pain is not worth checking. The exam only made it worse. Two faceless, female nurses floating around wearing empty masks of empathy. Quizzing her on the personal aspects of her life. "Have you had sex n the last three days?" While doing overly personal, painful things to her body. Forcing her to over extend her jaw so they could swab her mouth. The cotton returned dyed red, like everything else she contacts. Sentimental questions wove in between medical jargon and undistinguishable whispers. They asked if she had someone she could call, "A husband or a boyfriend." No. They'd swab something else, the pressure of a jackhammer in that cotton tip. "A mom or dad or sibling?" No. They placed the swabs into containers with biohazard signs. "A close friend or neighbor?" Yeah her neighbors who get pissed at the porch light staying on all night, but don't hear her screaming and begging and—No. She doesn't even know those nurses names. They didn't even bother to introduce themselves to her. She just wants to go home. People, the hospital staff, whoever else, aren't going to let her go home when they find out it happened there. That house is still her home. She fixed it up with her bare hands once, she can do it again. She has far better memories within those walls, than one bad one can ravage. She wants to be alone in the sanctity of her bathroom with the glowing white tile and the drifting scent of lily of the valley, ivory and olive green, watered and coddled. The rubber stop on the door screeches across the floor. Her body seizes. Whenever someone encroaches, the door wails. Dislikes being touched. Teeth crack and powder under the strain of a bruised jaw as a contour of a man enters the room. "Hey Jules." His voice cracks. Infinitesimal. If she wasn't so hyperaware she wouldn't hear it. If her ears weren't the only part of her body still effortlessly perfect, she wouldn't hear it. If she didn't spend the last seven years with his voice stitched into her ear canal she wouldn't hear it. But it's there. He's here, somehow made it past the sentries and into the belly of the beast. Money on the roulette was placed on Sarge getting back here first. Always the parent, never the father. "Sorry." A decibel. A whisper. A waft of humid summer air ruffling a curtain. Good eye cycles up. Bobs in the stagnant water connecting two lids. In the past, the future or the time between she has never required an apology. He swallows, an envy nurturing action. "Sorry it took so long to get back here, Jules." Not a word in response. No need. There's nothing she can say, wants to say, really needs to say. It's awkward. Being here. Having him here. Being here. It's painful. Being here. Having him here. She wants to be alone. She doesn't want to be here. She wants to go home. She'll never be alone again. "It's, uh—" Unasked, by either of them, he takes a seat in the chair to the right of her bed. His fingers massage at the muscles in his neck like he's tenderizing meat. "It's all right if you don't want to talk, Jules. " Eye darts away from him to twin knee peaks beneath the mint green, weakly knitted hospital blanket. The profiling begins. It probably began in the waiting room. Probably began when he found out. Is she a danger to others? To herself? Is there any history of vio— "I'll just. I'll uh, be here if you want to talk." Silence. Tap. Tap. Tap. Leaky faucet from the sink headed with a minimalist's rectangle mirror. From the right angle she might catch a reflection of herself. Eye submerges into the blankets. "Everyone's here, Jules." Tactic number ten, use the subject's name as often as possible. It's annoying, slightly patronizing. She feels like profiling him right back. Instead her crags remain stationary. No San Andreas Fault. "All the guys are in the waiting room." Golden rule defaced. It's boldfaced lie. Sam's not out there, he's a million miles away doing whatever Sam does in times like these. She used to know, thinks she used to know. Shallow breaths reprise as Santorini violence crashes in her head. Head slamming into drywall. Index finger dabbing paint on a rounded nose tip. Body collapsing on the hardwood. Paint smearing ear, tugging lobe, lopsided smile. Thighs bent backwards, pulverized and devoured. Sideways kiss caught the corner of her mouth, cautious tongues embrace, paint roller drops; explodes Sky. A dissonant symphony, a dismembered body, a disbanded team. Lew's not out there. At least not like when he was waiting for her after she came out of a drug induced coma from the surgery. From the bullet. From the pain. Her brain all fucked up on painkillers, addled into a different timeline with long sustained laughter and hallway drifting light. She wanted to dance. She remembered just wanting to dance. Six men. Six goddamn men on her team and with a twirl of her hand, the first thing she says is, "take me dancing." They were a team of seven back then. Back then she had six boys. Six men in her life and now there are five. Well four, because whatever the fuck Sam was up to lately they aren't on speaking terms. But the tall, gangly kid they handpicked as a team of five men, five years ago, would be absent from the waiting room. Six months ago he would still be in a hallway in a different hospital waiting for her to wake up. Two weeks ago he would still be in Ocho Rios. Now there are probably particles of him floating inactive in the atmosphere of the GTA. Two weeks and still visions of his idiosyncrasies are fresh. Even through all the shit piling in her brain. Even through all the pain flaying at the inside of her body. His half-set eyes and pursed lips accompanied by a head tilt at an incredulous statement. The absence of mocking at her whole double 'x' chromosome thing. Just a soft spoken compliment, a grin, a head bob. The afro that he wore right out of Guns and Gangs and for two years after. Through the relentless ridicule and holiday gifts of picks. He was the only one who thrilled her with challenges. Repel racing down the side of the building, blindfolded dismantling of guns, actual sparring. He always offered to let her drive the rig. When they acted out scenes for Rookies where subjects and victims were needed he suggested her as the subject. She hated being psychoanalyzed, Lew knew, said it was good for her. But then everyone agreed she made a better victim. A solid victim. She's tired of being the goddamn victim. Crippled wrist spasms involuntarily against the alveolate cavern in her chest. The expected reverberation, the ratatatat of the tin soldier's drum doesn't function. Instead a mewl of butterflies escapes her throat. The noise is raw, thrusts the skin on the inside of her throat, vocal chords grinding like a street organ. Pressure builds in her right arm, wrist to elbow, cuff to cuff, bicep tingling with talkative nerve endings. The tip of her tongue taps her bottom lip for the first time on reflex, mountain face and all. Copper, salt, sulfur and pennies. The Red Sea. A split straight down the middle almost leading to her chin. Jack-o'-lantern indeed. "Jules." Sarge's body is a little forward in the chair, not too much to make her feel uncomfortable, not too quickly to startle her. A lifetime of reading people has probably made him keen on the undulations of her jaw muscles or the tears seeping from her good eye. "Your arm?" No answer. No movement. No second reprisal of the mewl in A-minor. Stillness in the spot-lit hospital bed ensconcing her arm to her body like it was Lew. A final chance to say goodbye. Another pat in his afroed hair. Another repel down the SRU. Another horribly failed game of H-O-R-S-E. Once she got to H-O and H-O-R he always gave her easy shots and chuckled softly at her gestating rage. No Dutchie left behind. Her good cheek grows hot under a fat, acid filled tear. Its trek a perfect line over the drooping contours of her face. It kamikazes to the hospital blanket. Sarge reaches beside her, pretty close actually. She doesn't notice. Or maybe she does and doesn't care. But she doesn't flinch. She's staring at the wall. Not noticing the mirror in the periphery. He's adjusted the reading light to over her lap and flicks on the switch without warning. Light accosts the area. Beats its way underneath both her eyelids, between each eyelash, into the crevices in her brain. She's sure her pupils dilate until they implode in on themselves. She lets out a displeased groan. "Sorry." He directs the light further down her legs and her pulse lessens behind her eyes by a single jungle drum. He stares at her, lips gone. Curled into each other too much until they adapted away. Jaw clenched, nostrils gaping with each inhalation. He's pissed off, if he could throw something or flip something he'd be doing that. She can't recount all the times she's gone into the debriefing room and found it post-tornado warning from his lack of anger management. A shaky hand rises in the air, hovers, fingers clasped before capsizing, palm up and relaxing. "Can I see?" He nods once to her disabled wrist. She feels like a deer. A wild animal stumbling into a manmade trap and now everyone from PETA wants to aid her. Everyone who isn't responsible wants to remind her they aren't all bad. She's not a deer. Not prey. Not a victim. But his eyes meet hers and they're vibrating. Dancing with the need to help, the need to be needed. The need to right the wrongs and keep the peace. Without a single sound she succeeds her arm, entrusting him not to hurt her anymore. Shifting closer to the bed, her arm rests parallel on his, fingers curling sideways at the pillowing material near the crook of his elbow. He's wearing a light fall jacket made out of brown suede that's gentle on her skin. Thick, round fingers softly touch her ballooning skin. Her toes flex, heels grind pestle and mortar to ignore the pain. The tip of his finger comes into direct contact with the fractured bone and the same sound pulsates her cavernous chest. Immediately his examination stops, all his movements stop and his eyes dart up at her from lowered brows. "Jules, has a doctor looked at this yet?" A sporadic twitch of her head is a symbolic no. "This is broken. In more than one place." Well she knew that. Placing four warm fingers under her arm he returns her injury to her. His face still grim, resentment deeply etched in the lines and bags collecting at his eyes. "I'm going to go get a doctor, okay? Someone needs to—" The rubber stopper howls with anguish as someone enters the room. A cautious eye lift informs of an over six foot man. His approach is strict with daunting, ravishing steps. His eyes are low set dark marbles and his hair is the color of blood. He has the hands of a basketball player, like Lew. Large, but his are unkind, suffocating. They carry manila folders. Right leg twitches, muscles clench at his presence. Sarge's fingers flick at air, unsure of how to treat the situation. "Alright Julianna." The man speaks like he knows her. Like they're teammates. Old friends. Former lovers. Broad long fingers slowly peel over papers, pictures, x-rays. Left hand reaches out, strangles the lamp neck and bends it out of the way. Flinch. Semidarkness. Battleflag. Warcry. Four knuckles planted in her right eye socket to grow. What? Knuckle sandwiches. "I'm Dr. Parsons." Parsons conquers the seat opposite of Sarge's. Left side. Closer to her. To close. Her legs circle in bicycle motion under the sheets, the pain is immediate. "It's okay." Sarge's hand grips the guard rail on the bed, white knuckles, unwatered. His face is lost in the obscure lighting. Body struggles to shift back but nothing. He reaches forward to place a gentle hand on nothing. Enemy plane shoots it out of the air. "Is there any way she could see a female doctor?" "I'm sorry?" Parsons tears his eyes away from the file, smug grin stretched over his lips. "Who are you?" "I'm Greg Parker." A pause. A breath. For her several in tandem. Boss? Friend? Supplemental father figure? "A friend." "A friend. Great." Folder flips closed. A solitary paper rests atop it. Single eight and a half by eleven piece of white paper holds her entire history. What they know. No one knows anything, nothing, everything. Not Sarge, or anyone else on the team. Not even Sam. "Well Greg, we just got hit with a triple MVA and doctors are spread a little thin right now. So unless she'd like to wait another hour or two to be treated I'm going to have to do." "Sorry." Parsons clears his throat. Open vent. Sputtering muffler. "Her MRI results show a minor right orbital fracture, a nondisplaced nasal fracture, three broken ribs, two cracked and a broken wrist in two spots" Long leg crosses over the other. Swings like a pendulum hanging, hypnotizing. "You got lucky." Sarge's head pops from hiding between two steepled fingers. "Excuse me?" "She got lucky. The impacts on the back of her head could have killed her alone. She has no permanent internal damage. Nothing requiring surgery and nothing that won't heal on its own. Aside from her lip which should fully heal, she'll have no facial scars. But she'll have to be admitted for at least three days because of her ribs and medical history." Body half hunched over, pain clusters in her lower back. Eyes on knobby knees. Unsure, unaware of how Sarge reacts. The folders splat against the small bedside table. Paper bowels, slightly dog-eared, spill across the short surface. "I'm going to set her wrist first and then stitch her lip." "Don't tell me, tell her." Parsons clears his throat. She doesn't even give him a wink. "I'm going to need your arm now." Hand, discarnate, buoyant, belligerent, bellicose, launches forward. Grating gasp startles from her throat like a small bird. An inch in retreat and fireworks explode within her body. Pain swirls, ebbing up broken bones as pieces of flotsam. Neon bands of agony ribbon down her legs, spiral around her feet, crimp her toes. She sees it. Really sees it. The living room on the farm in Medicine Hat. Not always the living room. Bathroom, bedroom, basement, kitchen, garage. Adolescent body tumbling to the Berber carpet. Teenage body slammed into tacky wooden paneling. Boxes of empties, beer or scotch jittering, already spreading gossip. Hand, treading air combative and pugilistic. Invades. She bucks off the bed in a motion clear cutting her innards. Healthy wrist forgets its disabled counterpart. It falls with a lifeless thud to her thigh. The pain is unbridled, uncontained like a fire within the parched, brittle, decay of her body. Oxygen isn't helping, isn't arriving fast enough to aid. She's inflammable. She's—cowering in the corner of the living room. A fifteen-year-old girl with a broken arm and a black eye. Sobbing because she misses her mom. Sobbing because there has to be something better. Pure alcohol skyscrapes, shadow of an ex-cop consuming her. Combustible, spontaneous strikes. Pleading— "You're scaring her." "I need to set her wrist." Chin tips her head forward. Good eye scanning to room in hectic buzzing movements. Four older brothers. Not once did they ever volunteer to proxy. Not once did they even mumble a sentence, a word, a syllable. Wild pupil settles on Sarge who is screaming at the doctor. Too late she catches his movement. Hand never ceasing, cuffs metal strong around the exact fracturing under her skin. Wrist screams, body convulses, muscles tighten, organs harden. Sarge pries the hand off. There's a cup of vomit sitting in her lap. Rain puddle with earthworms enticing her little bird voice to come out and play. Thin, acidic, one and a half Molson based. Pools on the pale wool blanket but doesn't drip through. "You need to leave." "Now I have to clean her lip because—" "You need to leave now." There's silence. Something she's missed, like a relative or old friend who lives on the other side of the country that she doesn't get to see all that often. No one she knows. Her lip starts to burn, rocks fueling fire. "I'll send in a nurse to clean her up." The rubber stop shrieks, weeps, pleads. Her good eye wrenches shut. Boots touch the ground three times, then four until Sarge is back by the chair. Cracking her eyelid she examines his stern expression, his jutting chin, set jaw, the way his nostrils gape with each noisy inhalation. He needs to throw something. There's a gathering in the back of her throat. Not entirely physical though it feels that way. At first she think she might be sick again, but there's really nothing left in her to give. There's nothing for anyone left to take. There's nothing anyone should want. The way Sarge's fingers furl and unfurl is almost natural, like a piece of ribbon caught in the wind. The way the privacy curtain drapes mimics a La-Z-Boy chair she used for coverage in a living room. The words are raspy and wet. "I'm sorry." He steps towards her and she flinches. Boot heel in her side. Fist in her face. Fingers crushing her bones. Instead there's crouching. He brings a hand forward and gently tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, settling it in place behind the clear thin oxygen tube. "This is not your fault Jules." Eye rolls downward. Shame. Mortification. Embarrassment. Weakness. Uselessness. Damsel in distress who somehow made it onto Team One. Hand remains at her ear so long she thinks he might pull it away with a quarter. Dry eye lifts and when it meets his he repeats, "This is not your fault. No one thinks this is your fault." A nod. A single nod that ends up more of a muscle spasm than a comprehensive gesture. He grins at her but it's broken. She broke him. The door squeals and sobs as the nurse enters. Her face contorted tightly into a silent mask of pity. As she starts to collect the blanket he points to the door and says, "I'm going to—" Oh God, she broke them all. At the door he turns towards her. Hand lingering on the handle. The same demolished smile pulls at his lips, eyes shrouded by a layer of unshed emotions. He's failing in this negotiation and he knows it so he's abandoning her. "I'm going to go tell the guys how you are." "I want to talk to Sam." A/N the Second: Though there is the prospect of Sam/Jules on the horizon. The far horizon, where you have to squint to see where the sky meets the land, remember that I am not a truthful 'jammer' (ask SYuuri). Also remember that I am well aware of the psychology of the situation. Basically just trust me on this one. I have a reason for EVERYTHING that will happen. Next Chapter - More violence and repercussions for said violence.
That being said, thank you all for the lovely reviews and favorites and what not. I'm glad you're enjoying the story enough to miss it. Hopefully the next chapter comes quicker. I can't wait to get onto the body of this story because I have hings planned for everyone that no one has ever even fathomed before.
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