Protective Cloth Over Warped Pictures

By Cappuccino Girl
Genre: CJ-Centric. Angst.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Property of Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions and Warner Bros. Many thanks for the inspiration.

Notes: Post-ep for Women of Qumar. Thanks to Len who convinced me to publish, and to Eris for the help with technicalities and encouragement. I :heart: you both :-)

Summary: What are memories anyway, but warped pictures of events long past?

It’s tiny, she tells herself, miniscule, and what are memories anyway, but warped pictures of events long past? She had behaved rationally. Anyone else would have reacted as she had done, except they wouldn’t, and no one else did. Just her, little insults thrown around to sting, to hurt back. Tears and words of anger yelled in frustration. “He beats women.” She knows she said ‘they’, she is convinced she did, but it might as well have been ‘he’, for what difference would it have made? The protective cloth covering the warped picture had been pulled away to reveal the angry painting which he had made of her.

He was handsome. Her friend had introduced them, saying how he was a young lawyer, and she had barely heard a word, because she was captivated by his broad shoulders and dark eyes. It wasn’t long before they moved in together, for he had this wonderful apartment, and she was still paying back college loans. When she unpacked her cartons that evening, he had grabbed her
forcefully like he always did. It was harsh and faintly exciting, but there was no place of her own to go to for comfort and safety anymore.

She was wearing a dress one night, as he had an office party to go to, and she recalls looking at herself in the mirror, noticing the bruise on her arm. There had never been any pain, but she knew the mark’s source. She’d felt the hurt at other times. But she was a tall woman, taller than her fiancee, and somehow that erased the concept of her vulnerability, so she’d wrapped her shawl around her arms, remembering not to disappoint him again.

Everyone had commented that they made a perfect couple. She was good at playing the part, and she knows it is here she learnt the art of hiding her emotions. It is why she could go out just now and speak to the press as if nothing had happened, as if her memories were forgotten history. She’d mentioned it to a friend once, how he’d thrown china across the room, and the woman across the table from her had stared in utter disbelief. He was a handsome young lawyer. Who in their right mind would believe her?

She told him once that his ways frightened her, and he’d pushed her shoulders back, flinging her against one of the expensive mirrors which adorned the hallway. The glass had shattered, glistening in the light with her tears. He yelled, hurled an insult her way, and she was shocked by the way those words bounced off her mind, so she replied that she wanted to leave. ‘Leave before you break me as you did the mirror,’ she had thought, but it was barely completed before he laid his hands on her.

The hospital’s empty white walls and ice cold tiles had seemed friendly to her when she came round. The questions were not. She knew where the blood had come from. They knew it too, were aware that he had been in a fit of rage, would not have stopped until the unimaginable had happened. So they locked him away for a while, and she’d tossed away the key to her memories, for women were protected where she lived, and that made her fortunate.

Toby had stood there in the window, hand to his heart for a moment. He’d forgotten that story she had told him late one night, and he feels such indescribable admiration and guilt that she had to be involved in such a personal issue.

He tries to catch up with her as she marches down the corridor, trying her best to hold her head high, keep up the act for a minute longer. “CJ,” he calls, but she doesn’t turn around, for all those self-defence classes she took cannot counter the emotional defencelessness she feels.

~ the end ~

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Visit the author’s web site at www.cappuccinogirl.com