Sorry it's taken me a bit to update, but I really wanted to make sure it read well. Please review... I really appreciate the feedback.

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I'd last seen her in court, when her attorney was making a depressingly thorough case about why she should get the house. Julie had worn some expensive black suit and blouse—again, I'm a horrible judge of clothes—but it was the strictest, severest ensemble she'd ever donned. It was something you'd wear in mourning or if you were about to carry out an assassination—grim, straightforward, callous. Accusatory.

Standing on the courtroom floor, I felt guilty, and I hadn't even been the one having the affair.

That façade melted right in front of me now. Had she been wearing mascara, it would have run like oil rivers down her face. Strange that she wasn't wearing any makeup at all. Her blonde hair was dry and frayed, framing her narrow face like windblown tumbleweed.

And she was crying.

My name dissolved into a smothered cry from her lips, and without another thought I was guiding her into the apartment. I instinctively draped an arm around her shoulders, but she flinched and drew back immediately.

If she hadn't been upset, I think I would've been offended.

In the apartment, she looked strangely out of place, a feral creature slipping into the tamed, learned habitat. We stood awkwardly before each other, as if we could judge by the air would could and couldn't be said, which steps to take where, which glances of concerns and depths of embraces should be shared.

After three divorces, it's still kind of difficult to tell what to do and when to do it. Still, panic and surprise usually overrule all those unspoken rules, and her distress boiled the awkwardness down to a puddle of nothing but concern.

"Julie, what's going on? What happened?"

She refused to look at me. The lamplight illuminated her pale face, making her shine with a waxy, moonlike glow. "I—I need somewhere to go."

Somewhere to go? She'd won the house. She'd apparently won some other man's heart too, or at least something that replaced me. Had she forgotten who'd been tossed out this time? Who'd been rejected?

I was about to say as much, defensiveness rushing up and nearly forcing me to blurt out things I knew, under any other circumstance, that I'd regret later. But then she started talking, in between sharp intakes of breath and straying eyes. And then she lowered her shirt, exposing her shoulders, her back, her pain.

I stared at the crisscrossed, random lines of red welts and bruises, speckling her skin like mistakes on a canvas. The room bulged, reality leaping out from my reach, stranding me there in the middle of what-to-say, what-to-do.

I cursed and enveloped her carefully as she collapsed in my arms.

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"I'm gone for an hour and already there's a problem?"

House was obviously in the middle of New York somewhere, China Town judging by the ethnic jabbering and crisp, fluent haggling in the background. Phone cradled on my shoulder and pressed to my ear, I clandestinely peered around the corner from the bedroom, listening as Julie continued running the water for a warm, soaking bath I'd encouraged her to take.

"She needed a place to go," I said quietly.

House's sarcasm dripped over the phone, clogging my senses like earwax. "What, and she couldn't find a shelter anywhere in New Jersey?"

"Her boyfriend's an ass. She's scared. She has too much pride to check herself into a shelter."

"And yet she swallows her pride to go back to the man she cheated on?"

I sighed, rubbing my temples. "Look, her parents died five years ago. Her sister lives in Connecticut. I'm the only person she knows who's close."

"She doesn't have any friends from work?" I heard him distantly turn down a vendor's offer of a cheap watch. It was his great talent to never lose the tangent he was already on. "Any friends of the family? Old neighbors? Don't be stupid, James. She purposely went running to you."

In the bathroom at the end of the hall, the running water slowed to a modest flow. I could just hear the sloshing sounds as Julie apparently stepped into the tub. "So what am I supposed to do?" I hissed, already knowing what I'd decided anyway. "Turn her away?"

"I think that's what any responsible ex-husband would do."

"I'm so glad I called. I feel much more assured."

There was a pause on the other end. Either House had hung up or had gotten hung up with some rather interesting vendor. God knows selling what. I waited as a screech of tires vaguely floated though the line, followed by a diluted slam of a door and a harsh borough accent prodding for directions. House rambled off the hotel and street, and with another metallic slam the city noise became muffled.

"How expensive is a cab these days, James?"

"Worth every penny unless you want to hobble a couple dozen blocks."

"They don't mug cripples."

"I bet you could get donations if you sat down on the street and looked more pathetic than usual."

I could almost see House raising his eyebrows in amusement. We could've written each other's lines in our verbal sparring; it came so easily.

"So she'll be staying with you, then."

"Yes."

"In our apartment."

"Yes. I already asked if she called the police on him yet. She said she was afraid to."

"Stereotypical. What, was she afraid he was going to track her down for revenge if she did?"

"I think she's afraid he's still going to find her now."

"Wow." There was a pause, and I pictured House leaning back on the flattened leather seat cushions, the taxi pungent with the smell of stale cigarettes and city sweat. "Your marriage really must have sucked if she thinks getting beat up by a boyfriend is better."

"She didn't know he was abusive," I retorted, and felt both parts embarrassed and responsible for defending her, regardless of the divorce. "It wasn't like he went around making a grand announcement of it."

"Has he always hit her?"

"No. Why else would she have gotten involved with him?"

"Maybe she didn't decide to. Maybe she was forced to."

The idea was intriguing and terrifying. The divorce didn't have to be a conscious decision she'd made, in that case. It could have been something someone else forced on us—maybe our marriage hadn't been that screwed up; maybe it could've been salvaged.

On second thought, I shook my head. "No. I saw the injuries. They're new. And no scars or any obvious trauma from the past." I sighed. Voluntary betrayal was much more painful, though the sting was taken off it slightly with the knowledge that this time, this time, I did not bear the guilt. "She told me she'd been seeing him for three months, that first month overlapping our last together, before she finally told me about the affair and I moved in with you."

"Three months. And this just sprang up now?"

"Yes."

"Odd."

"What?"

"Does he have any history of abusive relationships?"

"Yes, and he has a pet cat named Sue."

"I believe that's 'A Boy Named Sue,' Jimmy."

"House." I leaned up against the wall, staring at the ceiling and imaging I was looking at his face to convey my emotions clearer. "This isn't one of your patients. I didn't do a family history on this guy. All I know is he's an asshole for even touching her, much less hurting her—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there."

"I'm sorry, I'm just…worked up a bit I guess—"

"No, not you—the idiot who's driving this taxi. Hey! This is the third time we almost hit something! Keep this up and the both of us won't live to see the bill."

The faucet gurgled, trickled, then stopped in the bathroom. I heard her shift in the water, either sniffling or sighing, I couldn't tell. Probably running a slender finger over the bruises, like they were spilled paint, trying to wash off the burnt umbers and gray-greens and the tarnished yellows.

"…Jimmy. James. Wilson. Hey, you still there?"

"Yeah." I blinked. "Yeah, sorry. I'm here."

"Does Mr. Abusive have any inkling as to where Julie might have gone?"

I squinting, recalling our tense, raw conversation only a half-hour before. "No. Julie said she left his place while he was at work. She wrote a note saying she was going out to the store to pick up a few things and that she'd be right back."

"Oh, brilliant. So in a few hours Mr. Abusive will be issuing a missing person announcement to the police?"

"Apparently not. He's been threatening to leave her, so maybe this will have done the job for him."

"I don't think so," House said skeptically. "Abusers love dangling that as a threat. Women are so clingy. And even if he did want to leave, he would be the one to do it; I don't think he's going to be too happy when he realizes his big 'exit-stage-left' bit has been taken by his understudy."

"You think he'll call the police?"

I could practically hear House's brain clicking into full gear over the phone. Either that, or the reception was horrible. "No. He has reason to think he might not be on good terms with the cops, especially if Julie panics and says something to them. No," House paused, and said something about missing a turn to the taxi driver, "I think he might try to find her on his own."

"But he has no way of knowing that she came here," I said, and then repeated it in my head just to reassure myself.

"As of now, it seems that way... Yeah, right here. The Ramada. Yes, it's stunning, isn't it? The fresh scent of bathroom sterilizers and free coffee for the breakfast buffet. Mmmhmm. Aphrodisiac, if I say so myself. Thank you, Cuddy."

House apparently forked over some ludicrous money for the drive and stepped back out into the raucous chorus of the city.

"So… She'll just stay here until she's sure she can go home without him waiting for her."

"Sounds like a plan. We'll just wait for our man to drop a line whenever the coast is clear, right?"

"Do you have any better suggestions?"

"Yes." There was a whoosh, and I assumed House had opened the hotel's glass doors, marching in leisurely like he owned the place. "I suggest you two sleep in separate rooms, avoid relationship discussions, and—when conversation gets uneasy, as it invariably will—you can always talk about me. There's something you both still have in common."

"Yeah. I'm sure she'll hate you just as much as before."

"Perhaps more so, given the current living arrangements." He paused. "So, are you going to tell her of your new involvement?"

I was relieved that I heard the drain being released and the ceramic squeak as Julie rose from the bathtub. For the moment, I wouldn't have to answer.

"I'll talk to you later, House. Tell Cameron I said to be strong."

"Oh, she'll be fine with these conferences."

"No. I meant, dealing with you."

I couldn't see him, but I knew we shared a smirk as we hung up.

Julie peeked her head out of the cracked door as I set down the phone. Her fair hair, glossy and dripping with water, accented the ruddiness in her heat-doused face. Steam floated out from the bathroom, swirling around her in a silky mist. Her eyelashes were so dark, like stratus clouds sprawled out over the green fields of her eyes.

"Do you have a shirt or something I could borrow?" she asked.

I blinked. "Um… Yeah, sure. Let me find one."

I rummaged through the closet and retrieved whatever I first set my hand on that was mine. She took the striped cotton shirt and sweatpants with a small smile; a modest, youthful look I'd hardly remembered, and one that had faded soon after our first two years together.

But one I remembered all the same.

I mentioned something about finding some salve to apply to her back, and she nodded gratefully, disappearing to change.

I dispersed toward the sink, rummaging through the cabinets until I found the lotion. She met my eyes in the mirror as I looked up. The shirt drenched her in that laidback sort of professionalism that becomes apparent when a suit and tie go untucked; the pants were rolled several times around her trim waist to even stay on, and they pooled around her small feet like an evening shadow.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," I said back.