II. Between the Shadow and the Soul [3]

The first time Catherine felt it, she was taking a hot shower in the bathing chamber just adjacent to Vincent's. Father had come in with his chessboard, and it had seemed a good a time as any to take a shower. Had it only been her imagination or had Vincent's eyes looked somewhat....predatory when Father entered? Rinsing the shampoo out of her hair, she smiled a bit at the memory.

She had just stepped out of the shower and was reaching for her towel when she felt the rush of feeling through the bond. Vincent was...satisfied. Deeply so. Father probably lost the game again, Catherine thought, amused. Then it occurred to her---she was sensing him. Not as a glimmer or a shout in times of need or danger, but she could feel what he was feeling, more strongly than she ever had in any place except Elysium.

Toweling off and dressing in a patched tunnel sweater and jeans, Catherine closed her eyes and focused on the heart-string of their connection. And it was much like Vincent had described it all those months ago, when she was trying to fathom what this bond they shared meant---a filament that bound them beyond friendship or love. What would this mean for them, now? The connection on her part had always been largely one-sided, save for the times he had been in danger or afraid. But now the filament was different, stronger, a braided coil linking their souls.

Pulling on her shoes and hanging up the towels to dry, she walked back towards Vincent's chamber. The sound of voices---Father's, mainly---made her smile. "I think I'll return to the hospital chamber where I can take care of patients who are actually sick," he was saying, and there was a cheerfulness in his voice she'd not heard for far too long.

He saw her at the chamber entrance and beckoned her inside. "Ah, Catherine. You'll be happy to note that Vincent is very much on the mend."

She gazed at the chessboard and smiled. "Let me guess. He beat you?"

Father briefly raised his eyes to the rock ceiling, and Vincent's soft, raspy laugh echoed in the chamber as Father left. There was light in Vincent’s eyes as he watched his parent depart, a light that had also been absent for weeks. "You do look better," Catherine said, and indeed he did. The purple shadows of exhaustion and strain had largely disappeared from under his eyes and the last of the bandages had been removed from his hands. Only the gauntness from his weight loss remained and even that would soon be gone if William’s cooking had anything to do with it, she reflected.

He stood and opened his arms and she rushed into his embrace. "You smell good," Vincent murmured against her damp hair.

"I…what? I do?" She pulled back to look at him. "I don’t think you’ve ever said that before."

A wry smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "I haven’t? I’ve clearly been remiss, then. You do smell good."

Catherine chuckled, clutching the worn fabric of his vest. Abruptly, she noticed that he wasn’t wearing his usual assortment of layers, just a vest over a patched shirt and jeans. His hair, golden red in the candlelight, flowed over his shoulder and the soft tendrils of it brushed her hands. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. "What do I smell like, then?"

"Sunshine," Vincent answered. "Also shampoo and soap and toothpaste. But sunshine mostly."

Catherine swatted his arm with one hand and laughed, leaning against him again. His own scent was something completely different---candle smoke, earth and some spicy smell all his own. She breathed it in now, feeling the soft worn linen of his shirt against her face and the slight roughness of the fur underneath it. The slow thunder of his heartbeat was a rumble under her ear. "You were startled in the bathroom," Vincent said, his voice reverberating through his chest. "Why?"

Lifting her head, she met his crystal blue eyes, darker now with concern. "I...sensed what you were feeling during your chess match with Father," Catherine said. "It startled me. I've only been able to do that when you were in danger or afraid or..."

"In Elysium," Vincent finished. "Yes. Does it bother you?" The current of worry in their bond was mixed with something else...nervousness, she thought.

Catherine grasped the front of his vest more tightly and stared into his eyes. "It doesn't bother me, Vincent. But it was...surprising."

"I'm sure," Vincent replied. "I remember the first time I noticed that I could sense you strongly. I'm sure Father thought I'd gone---what is the medical term?---loony."

Catherine chuckled at the dryness in his voice. "When was that?"

"When you returned above that first time and you'd had your surgery."

She thought of what the anesthetic must have felt like to him. "Oh, Vincent, you felt that?"

He nodded. "I did."

***

Vincent barely managed to restrain the snarl that wanted to emerge at this denial. "No, she’s gone, Father, don’t you understand?"

"Well, of course she’s gone, Vincent. She has a life above. Really, you’re making no sense at all."

Vincent watched numbly as Father urged him into bed, to a rest he did not need. What he needed, wanted with a strength that surprised him, was the feel of Catherine through their bond. Only then did he acknowledge how deep in him his need for her went, how much their bond---far from being a slender thread that would weaken in time---had become a part of his soul.

Despite himself, he had dozed, only to be awakened by the jolt as the bond returned. Catherine was there, and needed him. She was there.

"Oh, Vincent, I never knew," Catherine said when he’d finished. "If I had..." Her voice trailed off. Remembering that other Catherine, half-crippled with fear, only dimly beginning to sense the outlines of a life forever changed, she didn't know what she would have done if Vincent had reappeared so soon.

"You see," he said, his voice gentle and low, "why I did not come. I wanted to, as I've wanted nothing else in my life...but...."

"But," Catherine finished, "you had to let me find my own path, make of my life what I could. I don't blame you, Vincent. If you had come...it would have been too easy to rely on your strength instead of finding my own."

"Yes," Vincent replied, clearly glad she'd understood. "It was hard to leave you, Catherine," he whispered. "Almost past bearing."

She grasped the collar of his shirt and pulled him down for a kiss. "I'm here now," she said, just before the softness of his lips touched hers. "And I'm not leaving."

"I'm glad," Vincent murmured. He nuzzled the galloping pulse at her neck, his hands warm on her back as he pulled her closer.

The faint growl---a hungry, needy sound---that emerged from Vincent's throat echoed in the chamber. He jumped back, startled, his eyes wide and blue. "I am...sorry," he gasped, fists clenching. He sat on the bed, his entire posture a line of dejection.

For a moment, Catherine feared the return of their old agonized dance of "two steps forward, three steps back" that had characterized so much of their relationship, but as she listened to the sensations flooding their bond, she knew it was not that at all. "You're not afraid," Catherine murmured, "not of yourself, not anymore. What is it?"

Vincent was uncomfortable but at least he looked her straight in the eye. "I didn't...that sound....I growled at you...like an animal," he said, fists clenching and unclenching.

She knelt before him, taking his clenched fists in her hands, making his hands cease their tortured motions. "No, not like an animal, Vincent. What did you feel right before you made that sound?"

A faint smile crossed his face. "You have to ask?"

"No, I don't," Catherine said, returning his smile, "but I need to hear you say it as much as you need to hear it aloud. What did you feel?"

His eyes darkened, returning to the color they had been just before he ended their embrace, a fathomless blue, the endless blue of night. "Passion. Love. Need," Vincent replied.

"Doesn't that tell you something?" Catherine said, standing. His head fell forward to rest on her belly and she rubbed the tense muscles of his shoulders. "Those sounds are normal, Vincent." Gently, she cupped her hand under his chin and raised his head. "And I liked hearing them."

He blushed then, a faint copper rose color. "Forgive me, Catherine. So much of...this...is new to me."

"We are something that has never been," she murmured. "And we'll learn together."

Vincent looked up at her and smiled, a genuine smile untainted by guilt or shame or fear. "So...where were we?"

And his words were a promise, new and entire, from his heart to hers. It might not be now...but it would be soon.

______

[3] from "I do not love you as if you were brine-rose, topaz," by Pablo Neruda

III. Under All Silences [4]

Two weeks after leaving Elysium, Catherine returned Above. It was necessary, she knew, to return above for even a few hours; bills had to be paid and plants watered and doubtless there were a million and four messages from Joe clogging her answering machine, all the minutiae of the modern life. Still, she had not wanted to go; there was so much more tying her to the tunnels, to Vincent, now. In the end though, he had smiled and said, "I will be here when you return." And that had been enough, because even though she was still a woman of two worlds, he knew perfectly well which one claimed her heart.

She left him standing at the Central Park entrance, standing in the shadows of an early fall. And smiled as he waved goodbye.

***

"Ah, Vincent," Father said, stepping into his son's chamber. "Catherine has gone above?"

"Yes. She had some errands to attend to above. She will return later today," Vincent replied, turning his head to look at him. The physician's eye noticed that Vincent looked healthier than he had for weeks. The father's eye saw that his son looked happier, more relaxed and more content than he could ever remember seeing. Father didn't fool himself; he knew who was responsible for both of those changes. "It's been good having her here," Father said.

Vincent's eyes widened fractionally, amused. "Don't look at me like that, Vincent," Father replied, trying to remain stern. "She is a lovely woman and we became much...closer during your illness. Catherine must be…quite formidable in court."

Vincent nodded. "I suspect she is, yes. What did you talk about, if I may ask?"

"You, mainly," Father said, sitting in the old carved chair opposite the chess board. "There was much she didn’t know, much I had never told her." He paused. "Actually, that’s why I’m here now. I have not been honest with you, Vincent. There were things I should have told you long before this, about John—Paracelsus---and Anna, but I didn’t. Catherine pointed out my folly in not giving you the whole truth. And I’m ashamed to say she was right. If I’d only told you…"

"Surely you acted as you felt best," Vincent replied. "I know, I have always known, that you had your reasons. But…yes, I would like to know what really happened."

"John murdered Anna with poison in a glass of wine. But I might have saved her, Vincent, saved a woman who wanted to be your mother. That failure haunts me to this day."

***

Deirdre had fled to the tunnels after an abusive marriage. The disdain in her blue eyes had been clear as she spoke. "Sure he might, if he wasn’t the problem."

Her hands, he noticed as he took one in his own, were ice cold, her pulse hammering. Stress, he thought. Or fear. Aloud, he said, "Anna, you do know…if something were wrong…"

"Why is that?" he asked, trying to be gentle. He hadn't missed the way her gaze kept straying to her son. Some dispute over the boy, then, he thought.

"John wants things for Vincent that I...I can't...." Anna's voice trailed off. "I'm his mother, Jacob."

***

"I should have listened to her, to what she was trying to tell me," Father said now, seeing the compassion in his son's eyes and rejecting it. He deserved no compassion, only Anna did. Brave, fierce, loving Anna, who'd been murdered by her husband a few hours after that conversation. "She was terrified and I misread the whole thing. Thought she was just misunderstanding what John wanted."

"What did Paracelsus want?" Vincent asked, and there was no mistaking the venom with which he spoke the name.

"He wanted...control, control of you," Father replied, remembering. "John was...confused. No, that's not precisely it; I don't think I've ever met a man more sure of what he wanted. But he confused love with obedience, with power. If you didn't do as he wanted, then you were his enemy. Anna saw that, too late. And I saw it...not at all until she died." He met his son's eyes, the slanted blue eyes set in that lion's face, and thought again how close he had been to losing him forever. .

"Why didn't you tell me this years ago?" Vincent asked. "Or even when Paracelsus resurfaced last year?"

"I have always felt I had to be perfect for you, Vincent," Father replied, not wanting to meet that intent gaze and yet unable to look away. "And I couldn't admit that my greatest mistake cost you a woman who would have been your mother. After a time...well, we had no direct contact with Paracelsus or his community for years. I came to believe that perhaps he'd found some other target for his obsessions, and after that...what would have been the point of telling you?" He sighed, the sound loud in the room. "I was wrong. I killed Anna, just as if I'd poisoned her myself. And I was a coward for not telling you earlier."

"The fault lies only with Paracelsus," Vincent said. "But it would have made a great difference to know that a woman wanted to be my mother."

"I know," Father replied. "And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her before. But those times were…very painful for all of us who lived through them. After a time, it was just easier to not speak of it than to remember. Those first years after John was exiled were hard, very hard."

Vincent nodded. "I understand, Father. Truly. I carry my own burden of things I’d rather not remember." He paused. "Is there anyone left who knew Anna well?"

Father thought about it for a moment. Deirdre had died in a rockslide the summer after Anna’s death and Winslow’s father Simon had passed away in the 1970s. "Narcissa knew her well, something which infuriated John no end. But yes, if you want to know more about her, I’d talk to Narcissa."

"Thank you," Vincent replied, and Father marveled again at the strength of his adopted son. Another man would, perhaps, have clung to his fury and rage over having the truth withheld from him for so long and yet…there was no sign of anger, only relief at finally knowing the truth, however long-delayed it had been.

He remembered Anna, white-faced, holding the dying infant, stubbornly insisting that the child would survive in spite of the hours of exposure, demanding that he put aside his prejudices and preconceptions and help. What a miracle she was, Father thought now, looking at Vincent, saddened again that she'd never had the chance to see the magnificent being he'd become. "She'd have been very proud of you, Vincent. And she loved you very much."

There was a faint, cryptic smile on his son's face. "I know, Father. I know because...she told me."

***

Bills paid, mail sorted, Catherine leaned against the wall and sighed. Fifteen messages on her answering machine, eight of them from Joe relating to one case or another and all of them relating to cases that Rita was covering in her absence. Damn it, she thought, what does he think "I need leave" means, anyway? But then, she acknowledged ruefully, in many ways she had only herself to blame. How many late nights had she worked? How many times had she taken work home? No wonder Joe thought she was accessible despite being on leave.

She glanced around her apartment, seeing the clean lines and pastel colors. Aside from the furnishings, it was beginning to feel like a more luxurious version of her office. And it seemed strangely sterile when compared to the books and haphazard furnishings, the cheerful clutter, of the world Below. In some deep, essential way, this place was no longer home. Home was Vincent and candlelight and the people Below and the warm tug near her heart that was the bond. It wasn’t this place, not any longer.

The patio doors were still askew, barely hanging on their hinges and she remembered the sternly-worded letter from the co-op board about the noise level coming from her apartment recently, along with a not so polite demand that she have the patio doors fixed. Catherine chuckled a bit ruefully, knowing that if she’d just rented the place instead of owning it outright, she’d have been evicted long ago. Between voodoo cults and rogue cops and stalkers, it was a miracle she hadn’t received more letters.

She gathered the neat pile of bills into one hand and grabbed her purse. It was time to go home.

***

Vincent met her at the basement threshold. She saw him there, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. "Well, hi there," she said as she descended the stairs.

His hands, calloused and warm and strong, touched her waist and braced her on the metal ladder as she descended into the tunnels. "Hello yourself," Vincent replied, gathering her close. "I missed you."

"Did you, now?" Catherine asked, loving the faint candle smoke-spice-leather smell of him. He was wearing a blue sweater and corduroys, patched and faded from many washings, and the color of the sweater made his eyes darker.

"Mmm..hmmm," Vincent said against her hair before kissing her. "I did."

Catherine grinned up at him. "I'll say. So, what did you do today?"

"Father and I talked," Vincent said as they began walking towards the home tunnels, his hand clasping hers.

From his tone, she gathered they hadn't had a casual conversation over a chessboard. Through their bond, she could sense nothing but contentment and relief. "Did your talk go well?" Catherine asked.

"Yes," Vincent replied. "Father told me about Anna...for the first time, I heard the truth of what happened all those years ago."

"I'm so glad you and he had a chance to talk," she said. "How do you feel about what he told you?"

"I feel as if I finally have some answers. For years, Paracelsus’ name was mentioned only in muttered whispers, and those who were around when he was exiled….they would not even speak his name. I understand why, now. And although I wish Father had told me about Anna earlier, at least I know now." He looked at her sideways, the gesture making his eyes even more cat-like. "What about you? I sensed you were…quite frustrated earlier."

"You could say that, yes," Catherine said, and related the story of Joe and the pile of messages on her answering machine. "I take my work back to the apartment too much, and he’s come to depend on me being available," she finished and felt Vincent’s hand tighten on hers. "What?"

"You said the apartment, not home. Is it truly no longer home to you?" Vincent asked.

"Home is where you are, Vincent. I don’t think I fully realized that until Elysium, but yes. It’s not home. It’s an apartment, a mailing address, but it’s not where you are." She tugged on his hand and stopped walking. "What is it?" The emotions flooding their bond were too fast for her to sort out, but a shy hope was chief among them.

The corridors were deserted, unusual for this time of day. She glanced at Vincent quizzically and he smiled. "We’re taking the long way around." He turned to face her and took her other hand in his. "Catherine, I don’t know how to ask this."

She smiled, reaching up to smooth the wild mane. "Don’t worry about ‘how.’ What do you want?"

His arms enfolded her, his words a rumble in his chest. "I can’t believe I have the right to ask anything of you…but…no place is home without you. Not anymore." Vincent ran one clawed hand through her hair and his eyes were the deep blue of the ocean he'd never seen.. "I want you to join your life with mine. Catherine, will you marry me?"

For a time---seconds, an eternity, perhaps---words escaped her. Then a vast universe of joy rushed through Catherine as she stood on tiptoe and pulled his head down to hers. "Yes."

***

They stood there for a time, holding each other, until Vincent stirred. "If you're hungry, I believe William has some dinner saved for us."

Catherine smiled. "I am hungry," she said, just as the rumble in her stomach threatened to reach epic proportions. "And then we can...talk?"

Vincent nodded, though his eyes were on her lips. "Yes. We can...talk."

They returned to his chamber to find a hot stoneware tureen that revealed William's beef stew and an accompanying dish that held homemade bread. Finally, there was a teapot full of steeping tea. Catherine touched the warm teapot, thinking of what care and concern the meal represented. "It's been good, having this time," Vincent said, picking up on her thoughts.

"It has been," Catherine agreed, smiling. "Though I know not to expect it once we're married."

Vincent grinned in what could arguably be described as a roguish smile were it not for the love in his eyes. "No. Lack of privacy tends to be the norm here, though there are always ways around that."

"There are?" she asked, sitting at the old table and pouring a bowl of soup.

"Yes," Vincent replied, tearing of a chunk of bread. "Some chambers have doors or curtains."

Her eyes darted to the entrance of his own chamber, where no curtain or door could be found. "Yet you don't have one."

At his indrawn breath, Catherine met his eyes. "No. But there are places I have gone, the quiet places, the still places, when I've needed to be alone."

And she wondered, briefly, if he never had a door because it was believed he'd never need one. Vincent, the different one, the outsider, the one who had been told---or had come to believe, it scarcely mattered which---that love and its passions and risks and joys was not, could not, be for him. Well, she had the rest of her life to prove differently to him. "Well," Catherine said, "we'll need a door. Or a curtain at least."

He blushed, a light flushing of rose under the golden tones of his skin. The blue eyes that met hers across the table, though, were anything but embarrassed. "Yes, we will."

[4] from "Love is the voice under all silences," by e. e. cummings