So who else is completely psyched about the finale? Did anyone else catch the part of the trailer were Jack tells Kate he loves her. swoon I can't wait… any way, sorry for the delay in posting. I had a ton of school work to finish before the end of the semester…

Anyway, this chapter is pretty dark and the violence in it is not of the sort I would ever condone but I feel its necessary for this story…It's not super violent of anything but I don't like nor agree with the subject matter in general, okay enough rambling, I will let you get on with it, thanks again for reading….

Chapter 11

No Excuse

This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you
It's the wrong time
For somebody new
It's a small crime
And I've got no excuse

- Damien Rice

She sat with her head cupped in her hands for hours now it seemed. Her eyes were gritty and sore from the time spent with them trained to a single, grainy image. That of a man sitting on the floor of a locked, windowless cell, sobbing into his hands.

His head bent, his shoulders trembling.

She could not bear it - this image of ultimate defeat and yet she could not bring herself to turn her gaze from it.

She was entranced, brought in and completely unraveled by the sight of him.

She reached with trembling fingers towards the screen and traced the outline of him, bowed her head and allowed her own tears to fall from her own eyes.

She felt the sobs whelm up in her own throat, stuck there and she tried to swallow them back but couldn't.

The rawness of his agony mirroring her own. She was drawn to him, drawn to his pain like someone who had been starving. It had been so long since she had witness such true emotion. He had made her feel, made her search herself in ways she found painful but there was release there. A sense that at long last, she knew who she had been fooling herself into being.

She had wanted so much. She had wanted so much more from her dreams then this, staring at the sight of his pain, so palpable and so real, she could not deny that at last she had become someone other then what she had always felt she was.

Someone who helped others, who was good.

She was no longer that woman. Her purpose was to serve someone else, someone who held her in the tight grip of their intricate web. It was a web of her own design. She knew now there is was no one to blame for her misery but herself.

She did not hear him come in, until he spoke and the sound of his voice did not cause her to jump as it normally would have but instead she felt her spine stiffen and her heart begin to beat wildly in her chest, not from fear but with anger, rage.

"Juliet," he said again.

She swung her chair around and faced him, brought her hand to her eyes and calmly wiped the tears from them.

"What is it?" Her voice was pure ice as he came slowly towards her, looming over; he reached down and ran a finger down her cheek. She shuddered as revulsion overcame her and she could not help but turn her eyes from his strong gaze.

"You think me a monster, don't you?"

She looked back at him.

She bit her lip and nodded.

"Then you no longer love me, Juliet?"
"You never let me love you, Ben," she told him truthfully, and bowed her head and wiped away more tears from her eyes.

"Is that what you think?" He seemed almost surprised but her answer as she looked back at him and saw the smallest, faintest trace of sadness in his usually lifeless eyes.

"It is," she said quietly.

"Do you think that I don't know?" He asked, his voice hardening.

"What are you talking about?"

Her answer seem to enrage him, she watched it transform his face, hardening it. His eyes burning blue holes boring into her skull.

She found herself squirming uncomfortably in his hard gaze.

"Do you think I am blind, stupid?"

"I don't understand…"

He turned his back from her, his shoulders slumped, he sighed deeply, as if trying to calm himself.

She sat rooted to her seat, unable to move.

"What is it?"

"Don't!" He said turning back to her and she saw his eyes dance across the monitor behind her and then turn his hard stare back to her face.

She felt a cold stab of fear lace itself in her gut, she started to get out of her seat but the look on his face stopped her.

It was one of quiet, simmering rage.

"Your in love with him, aren't you?"

"I don't…"

He came over and grabbed her by the shoulders roughly, pushing her back down into her seat, his eyes boring into hers.

She gasped and tried to move but he was too strong, surprisingly so, she felt the tips of his fingers, burrow themselves in her soft flesh, instantly bruising her.

"You - your hurting me," she managed to gasp, gritting her teeth against the pain.

"I'll do more then that Juliet - if you even begin to think about betraying me for him."

"Please…" she pleaded, locking her eyes to his, tears of pain flowing down her cheeks.

"Why him? Why - I have never lied to you Juliet…never, after everything! Everything you still refuse to see!"

He was in rage, so furious he could not or did not choose to see the pain he was inflicting on her as she struggled to pull herself from his grip, her hands locked on his own.

His words, hot and ugly being shouted inches from her terrified, tear stained face.

"Why? What is about him? Tell me!"

"Stop it! Please…stop," she pleaded.

"Tell me!" He repeated, borrowing his fingers even deeper into her shoulders, until she could no longer contain the screams looming in her throat.

"Please… please," she pleaded.

"Tell me!"

"Ben, stop it…stop it!" she shouted at him.

"Tell me! Juliet so help me…"

"Because he - he knows how to love a woman!" She shouted, surprising the both of them. He released her, stumbled back and stood there, his eyes slowly filling with tears.

Tears that she had never in the five years they had been married seen him shed and just as quick as she had spied them, he blinked them away. His expression was hard as he stepped towards her again. She cowered in her seat.

"You just remember who it is you belong to, understand?" He told her, as he raised his hand and slapped her hard across the face, rocking her back in her seat.

She brought her hand to her face and looked at him with a fear that she had never felt herself capable of feeling towards him. He had never hurt her physically before and this side of him, seemed completely unreal. She felt herself unable to do anything but sit there and numbly nod her head.

"Answer me," he ordered. .

"Yes, Ben…I'm sorry," she told him weakly.

"I do love you, Juliet," he told her as he came towards, smoothed her hair back. She cringed from his touch, "but even so, I will kill you if you betray me."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the door opened, he did not look up. He felt as if all his strength had been drained from his body. So much so that he could not even bring himself to do such a simple thing as twist his head to see who it was entering the room.

The truth was that since they had taken Kate from him; he no longer cared.

He had failed the one person he had promised himself never to.

The person came closer and he could feel them, hunker down inches from him.

His nostrils stung with the scent of soap and chicken noodle soup, foreign smells replacing that of the musty air, he had been forced to breathe for far too many days to remember. He slowly turned his face and found Juliet looking at him with her curiously bright eyes. She placed a tray of food down between them and then stood and backed away from him slowly.

Her face looked older then he remembered it, lined with pain, a large hand print on her left cheek, ugly and bruised purple.

"Who hit you?" He asked.

She stiffened and nodded towards the tray.

"You need to eat," she told him, ignoring his question.

"I asked you a question," he said, his eyes fixed on hers, she was the first to look away.

"And I am not answering it," she told him.

"Ben hit you, didn't he?"

She didn't answer him but by the way her shoulders had stiffened, he could tell he had been right.

"So I guess we can add sadistic wife beater to his credit."

"You don't know anything about him," Juliet said carefully.

"He's a great man."

Jack scoffed at that and lowered his head to his knees, rested his head on them.

"Great by whose standards, yours?"

"Yes, amongst others…"

"You're a fool," Jack told her.

"Yes, yes I am," she said, "and so are you…"

"How do you figure?"
She went to speak and then stopped herself.

"If you have something to say then say it!"

She tilted her head to one side, her hands twisting nervously in front of her. She took a deep breath and answered him.

"You played into his hands, Jack… like the puppet we all are - you allowed him to gain the upper hand and now, now you are lost…just like me, just like everyone else here."

Her words hit there mark, bring with a fresh look of surprise and pain to Jack's already weary face. She was instantly sorry for telling him anything. The less he knew the better he would be.

"What the hell does that mean?"

She backed slowly towards the door, her eyes searching the intense stare of his.

"I'm sorry, please…believe me, I never wanted to hurt you."

He stood and came towards her, saw the tears in her eyes, the look of pain on her face.

"It's bad isn't it?" He said carefully, not wanting to know but needing to.

She held up her hands as if to fend him off. She was shaking now, trembling.

He reached for her and she pulled from him, afraid.

"Hey, I'm not…I'm not going to hurt you," he told her as he pulled her into his arms and held her, felt her collapse against him and start to sob.

She clung to him, desperately so, her face pressed into the crux of his shoulder.

He rocked her back and forth gently while she cried.

"You said once you would help me, I remember you telling me…"

She pulled back and felt his lips graze the side of her face by accident, his moist breath.

The feel of him, his arms around her. She had never felt this way before and she didn't want it to end, she wanted to shut hers eyes and hold him, till nothing else mattered.

Yet, she couldn't - she couldn't allow herself to even begin, entertain any notion of the romantic not with someone who would never love her, whose heart belonged to a lovely young brunette with startling green eyes.

She pulled herself out his arms.

"I'm sorry I can't help you," she said quickly as she turned and hurried from the room.

"I can't even help myself," she added, as she allowed one more glance at him.

He did not try to follow after her. He just stared at her with those mesmerizing dark eyes of his as she shut and locked the door behind her.