Title: Uncertainty

Author: BettySwollocs

Pairing: Surprise

Rating: PG-13 – Implied sexual situations, non-consensual – or was it?, and disturbing themes

Summary: A worst nightmare cruelly inflicted on a favourite character, just to see what would happen. Me? Sadistic?! Never!

Seven feet by seven feet of still, enclosed, airless space. My own personal piece of hell. One wall adorned with a narrow, hard bench laughingly referred to as a bed, or substitute there of. With only an inch think, blue PVC covered matt to distinguish it as anything other than a shelf I find this hard to believe as I lay down my weary body predominantly through lack of anything else to do with myself. I stare lifelessly at the door, as if by sheer will I could force it to open, to lead me from this nightmare into another chapter of my life, even death, just something, anything to get away. To escape this tomb filled with demons so harmful they could have only been created in the mind.

This territory so familiar to me and yet so alien. I'm looking at it all wrong, like a skewed vision studied in a hall of mirrors only without any premise of entertainment. The new perspective could lead me to contemplate every other time I've visited a scene like this, marching in proudly ready to find the information, convict the scumbag. I guess I'm the scumbag now.

Or am I? Am I the righteous? The innocent imprisoned? The mind plays tricks in the confines of one's personal hell. Thoughts, guilts, sure beliefs and knowledges rebound off the walls playing sadistic games of squash with the very make up of your mind. Things that were once undeniable truths become deformed, misshapen shadows of their previous forms until all that is left is doubt and uncertainty.

I've studied enough psychology in my lifetime to know that memory is not a fixed record of events. It morphs and changes with each addition of data, my very imprisonment could affect my beliefs in my own innocence Vs guilt debate.

It seems absurd that such a vital event in my life as to lead to my imprisonment is one which my mind, for all my trying, refuses to recall accurately. Endless scenarios have been mapped out but my tired brain that I am sure are created through imagination alone. The conundrum is one which cannot even be solved using methods I have devoted my life to: Forensics. They have confirmed all that they can and yet left the riddle unsolved. A situation which until now always angered me: My precious science falling short despite whatever effort I put in, but in this circumstance my emotion goes so much further. Oh how I would love this matter resolved, one way or the other. To know, without doubt what happened, to me, to her. To regain parts of my sanity, to establish my innocence or even my guilt, whatever it takes to end this torturous uncertainty.

The charge lays around my neck like a lead weight. The most serious of all. What I considered the lowest of all evil, the cases I hated most, yet insisted on taking were all concerning this one crime.

Sexual Assault.

Not rape, of course not, for I am a woman and so is she, it can't be considered rape in the eyes of the law. Mine's not exactly the image that is conjured when the word rapist is uttered, no moustache, no steely grey eyes, no ripped jeans.

Yet I am sure she sees differently, and exactly half my grey matter is willing to agree. I am capable, I am lonely enough, I am far enough removed from all human relationships to be pushed to that level. To not hear her pleas, to misinterpret all the signs to be so wrapped up in finally gaining the prise I have sought for so long as to not realise that I was taking rather than being given.

Yet there is also another fifty percent equally convinced of the opposite. She was there with me, she was enjoying our encounter as I was. She wasn't very good at morning afters. She could have panicked and her mind could have spun in loops as mine is doing now, she could have truly convinced herself of crime where there was none for the sake of her own mental well-being just as I could have done the opposite for mine.

I am not religious and yet I am on the brink of praying to any being or deity out there, to end this infernal confusion, to answer me without circumming to the pitfalls of my mind, this one, crucial life defining question: Were you there with me Catherine? Really?