Union: Chapter 18

“Love and the Soul (for that is what Psyche means) had sought and, after sore trials, found each other; and that union could never be broken.”
― Edith Hamilton, “Cupid and Psyche”- Mythology

“Where are we going?” Catherine finally asked after walking with him in silence for what felt like miles.  Vincent had waited for the question, dreaded it, but knew it was inevitable.

They had been steadily progressing down.  After begging to go, she would have expected to be taken back to his chamber or to Father, back to known ground, but instead he took her past all the common tunnels, through the mystery of the largest caverns with hewn stone stairs and spirals, and down, always down.

He prayed he was right to take her, worried they’d be too far away…but he needed to lead her to the place where she could not hide, and that required a journey.

Where were you lost?  In the tower, yes, but before… You saved me, but I lost you.  We lost one another.

Cold to colder, then descending back to warm, they proceeded into the maze of tunnels that were the Catacombs, past all the dead.  Each step seemed to change her, batter at her. Through the miracle that was their growing bond, she now could no longer fight his feelings any more than he could hers.  Her numbed distance was breeched by his presence, the hammer breaking her first layer, but the nervousness that took the place of her protective shell quickly transformed to fear as they descended.

He needed that fear.

“Vincent, where are we going?” she asked, her voice rising in pitch.

Where we lost the path… 

He stopped and looked into her stricken face, still pale and charged since the incident with William.  They had paused to get her water, the shortest respite before he had started to lead her down.  They had been moving ever since.

Instead of answering, he replied with a question. “Do you trust me?”

She wanted to say yes immediately, he knew.  She would have in the past.

“I don’t know…”

Good, he thought.  She was raw enough not to lie.  Truth hadn’t left her mouth, and that would help.

She went on, her eyes darting, looking for something to fight, attempting to justify her reaction. “I can’t trust myself.  I can’t believe...”

“...that you attacked William?” he finished.

“Oh, God, I did…” She raised her hands to her cheeks, then to her mouth.  Heart-stricken guilt, disbelief, regret pulsed through her and radiated along their connection.

He lit and took a torch from the wall, since no one from his world went further than this to light the darkness.  He placed his arm around her again and led her on into the intimate black.

“In truth, I’m amazed that it doesn’t happen more often,” he said, hoping he could strike a note of dry humor.

“Vincent, please,” she begged. “They’ll never trust me again.”

She wanted to stop.  She tried, but he took her hand and led her forward.

“Do you think you are the first person who has ever threatened someone here? We are a Community of people living together in close quarters.  We are peaceful, but at times there are altercations; you know this.”  He pulled more insistently.  “And it was just a threat, Catherine.  You didn’t hurt him, even when you could’ve.   Something inside you stayed your hand.”

“But...” she began.

Vincent interrupted her protest. “William pressed you when he shouldn’t have. You were vulnerable. I think he - and the others - will see that.” 

He looked ahead.  “If not...I will…explain it to them.” Promise and steel laced together within his words.

They walked on for a long time, silent except for their footfalls.

As they moved past the edges of the Catacombs, any wind died and the caves drew in close.  Ten minutes more and the air grew stagnant, the walls pressed in, confining them.  He placed the torch on the wall to illuminate the deep place within the earth. That’s when she saw the wet stone entrance. He tried to lead her in but she would not be moved.

“No, Vincent!  No!”  She pulled on his arm, trying to back away from the cave ahead. “Please don’t ask me....”

“Catherine, we must.  The cave is where this part of our journey began.  We must finish this.  I can feel your anger.”

“Because I don’t want to go in there!” she yelled.

“No, Catherine, that’s not why,” he said slowly.  This time, she was the wounded creature needing to be approached carefully, lovingly.  “I feel your guilt, your fear, your rage.  Tell me why,” he commanded.

“Vincent! I can’t...” she pleaded.

“Why, Catherine?”  His questioning voice sounded rough even to his ears. “Why can’t you tell me?”  He could feel her trying to suppress….anger? Accusation?  “Did I hurt you?”

He felt the Beast in him rise. The Beast hunted her; it searched, shadowed, and would not give up until it discovered her.

Find her, it urged.

“I...”

Her hesitancy could almost seem weak, but Vincent knew adamancy from her; he knew her will.  Kindness and care would not be enough.  She was too strong, her fears too encompassing.

“Catherine, did I hurt you?”

He pressed, for her sake.  No matter price or revelation, he would draw the poison out, even if he had to take it into his own body.

“Take me back!”  She pulled out of his grasp.

Her spirit ran from him, and the Beast’s instinct was to pursue.

“I will not do this, Vincent!  You don’t want to know!”

“I must, Catherine.  What is it you think I can’t know?  Tell me!”

Overtake her, the voice demanded.  Cut her, if you must, but rip her free from this!   

“Don’t ask me questions!” she screamed at him.

“Catherine, did I hurt you?” he growled over her.

“Yes!” she screamed, she howled.

The part of her the Beast knew as his own - huntress, predator - unleashed the hurt; the words escaped, exploded past all her barriers.  His greatest fear…

“You left me!  You left me here!”  She pointed into the dark.  “Your heart stopped, and you died, and you left me!” she screamed, to the walls, to him. “I felt your spirit go!  It wanted to go!  It ran away, and then you couldn’t find me!”

This was her fiercest weapon, this blame, the piece of herself that she never wanted him see, the blade she refused to acknowledge, always in her hand.  She had tried so valiantly to keep it sheathed, hidden, but he could not let her. Secreted, it was as dangerous to her as to him.

It cut so sharply that for a moment his bleeding didn’t even begin, and Vincent could see all clearly.

She knew what he had wanted.

Of course she knows you.  She is your other half, his demon whispered. She had months to comprehend, days upon days to dwell on what you tried to do to her, but she didn’t need them, did she? The moment her lips touched yours, she could taste it, your aching heart. It must have tasted bitter with your intention.

She would have taken anything you were willing to give, accepted anything “gratefully,” she said, but it was you who could not.  That wasn’t what you wanted. 

He hadn’t wanted the life she carried - that was so implausible an idea, unreasonable and unforeseen it might have been a fairy tale.  At the time he only wanted what option seemed possible, destined: he had wanted death.  It had been too much - the wounds, the conflicts, the needs he thought he had subjugated, ground so far down; the pressure when it erupted, as it inevitably must, released madness thousands of times too strong to fight.  Death became the only refuge he could believe in, but she believed in only him.

“You left me.  I needed you...you left us...” she sobbed.

…in the dark…

She knew what he had done, but he had not. At the time, he hadn’t understood; at the time…

There was no time.  What is time to madness, to an animal?  She was his time.  There was before her, after her, and after losing her.  Until the last, he hadn’t realized what his desired death would condemn her to, the woman he said he loved - to be alone in the world.   Now he knew.  He had lived without her presence in his heart, her voice gone, her scent fleeting, immensely precious in its rarity.  Alone was itself a type of madness, a sickness, and one he deliberately infected her with.

She loved.  He could behold the depths of it before him - like a physical thing he could almost grab it, treasure it - but her losses, her loneliness like heavy sand buried love and spirit with it, shining for precious moments, but too easily obscured and entombed.

She understood, she reasoned, she loved, but her heart still accused.

And she should.

“I left you.”  He accepted.  “I chose to die and a part of me did.  I suppressed my shame, hid away from myself, and I lost our Bond because of it, and I am sorry. I caused you so much grief…I should have believed.  If I had accepted all your love perhaps none of this…” Her cuts bled him out, the poison seeped into him, but he wouldn’t yield to them.  He would not run from the pain again.  He gathered her to him. “I am so deeply sorry...”

He held her, attempting to show with his grounded feet that he would not leave her.  She needed this, but it wasn’t enough. There was an uncharted land within her.  His “should have’s” had created it.  It had to be traversed and there were monsters dwelling there.  He prayed they could discover them, fight them, and create the safe haven she needed.  Slowly, he led her under the arch and into the cavern, but no sooner had they walked inside then her anger flared through the sadness and she tried to pull away again.

“No!”

Her blame wasn’t the only hazard.  There was a pain even deeper and she would fight to keep it hidden. He pressed the wound; the poison lay so deep…

“Catherine...”

“Vincent, I can’t!” she cried out, trying again to pull away, twice as hard as before. “I can’t face this!” Her rage gave way to oppressing remorse. He could always feel this, ever since their reunion: the guilt underlying everything, self-blame that dwarfed anything she could level at him.  What supposed sin did she feel the weight of?

“You can’t see...” She backed away and would say no more.  She didn’t realize, but she was trying to bar herself into her dull cell a world away, that had held her so long.  It was a place of torment, yes, but familiar, known, unlike the place he wished her to venture.

“I cannot stop loving you!”  His hands were open, outstretched, beseeching her to believe, asking her to leave that place behind.  “You know I can’t! Please tell me why you feel this burden.  Why are you afraid?”

“Don’t ask me...” She stood now against the wall, brought to her most primitive level, ready to fight or run at a word.

“Catherine...tell me why....” Find her.  Free her.

“No!” she shouted.

“Catherine, you are safe with me!  Tell me!  Tell me why!” he growled at her.

 “I HURT OUR BABY!”  She screamed one hand against the hard stone, the other protective over her belly.  She screamed with rage - enough to collapse the Tunnels and all the buildings Above, violence and wrath - enough to shatter the world, but this time only for herself.

“I took that book and put our baby at risk! I knew I was pregnant!  I should have told you.  I should have let it go! I should have fought harder to get away. They hurt me, they injected me, and they hurt our son!  I couldn’t…keep him…safe...” She sank to the floor, sobbing into the earth, the pain too much for her to bear the weight.

I should have known…

I should have fought harder…

He fell to her, almost yelling to be heard above her remorse.  “The baby is healthy.  I feel him!  He is alive...” He clutched her arms as she keened, trying to reach her.  “You saved our child.  You kept silent. You knew they would kill you once they could find the book, is that not so?” He tried to look in her eyes, but she evaded him.  “You kept our child alive until they had a reason to keep you alive.”

Me.

“And still you kept silent. You saved us.  Please do not pay for their crimes. You are not to blame!”

“I am!”  She finally spoke between the ratcheting sobs.  “Don’t you see that?  I put our baby in danger.  And now I’m...crazy!  How can I be here with you? How can you look at me?” Her words fell off to a whisper.

“Catherine…”  He gathered her face to kiss her tears.  “You…are...not…insane.”  He emphasized the each word, so the truth of it was clear.  “You’re hurt. There’s a difference.”

At this pronouncement, her weeping grew, but he could feel the rage begin to dissipate. He couldn’t stop this pain, but hoped his acceptance would allow it the chance to heal.

He lifted her off the floor to hold her close. “You are strong,” he told her with conviction, “and you will survive. We will find a way to safety, and we will care for our son.” His faith in a life together grew stronger each day she lived; the roots were his deepest hopes, and its sunlight, her love…but her prison of doubts couldn’t allow her to see it.

“Vincent, you don’t know...” she said in monotone as if there was no feeling left within her to stop or color her words.

“What don’t I know, Catherine?” he asked like questioning a frightened child.  Yet within her he knew there lived her predator and he would never discount it again.

“I see things...things that can’t be...that aren’t there...” she whispered.

“What you saw…” he began. “You were frightened and tormented.  I think, somehow, it is natural...for us.” he said, claiming her nature as he did his own; with her love, he could accept.   “You saw spirits, demons.  You know I see them at times as well. Your mother said they tormented you, and I did not doubt her.”

For a moment she was too stunned to speak or even cry, the growing knowledge that he truly understood, the relief of it seeming to fill in places she forgot were emptied.

“…my mother?  Vincent, what do you..?” And in a small voice, tears barely held in check, “You saw her too?”

He nodded.  “She brought me here,” he told her, looking around the cavern. “She said you needed me, and that by understanding what you had given me, our connection would be restored.  She revealed what, in my disgrace, I had lost.”  He looked into her eyes. “You have given me everything - love, acceptance...our child.  Please believe I am here with you, always.  I cannot give you less.”

He took her hand and with her in his grasp he made a promise.  “I will not leave you again, not by my will, this I swear.  You are whole, Catherine,” he said slowly, trying to reach her, but instead of looking at him, she peered into the dark, testing it.  He knew what she searched for.  He had scrutinized those black hallows almost his whole life, waiting for the demons to emerge.

“So, you really don’t think I’m crazy for conjuring the ghost of my dead mother?” she asked ruefully through her tears.   There was bitterness within her words, but he could believe she was beginning to trust in his acceptance.

“No.” He shook his head. “You are becoming a mother, and you wished for yours.  It is the most perfect reason in the world to ask for her guidance.” He worked to find her eyes again. “Your father visited you after his death; you needed his blessing. Your mother blessed you as well.  Without her, I may never have found you...”  He placed his hand on her belly. “...found both of you.”

She dropped her head, and rested her hand on his so they all connected - mother, father, child, but she still questioned, she still doubted herself.

“And the other one...” she whispered, asking about her demon that was him but not him.  Her dreams that he had shared, that still held terrible power over her fragile psyche, would not leave until she spoke of them. It relieved Vincent that she brought this vision to him without him asking, that she would trust him with this.

He sighed. “His voice haunts me as well.  I saw him when I was ill.  I have seen him…” he blew out the words, letting go a secret too long hidden, “…for years, Catherine.   I hear him taunting me…”

“But why?  Why did he come to me? He isn’t you!”   She protested. “The things he says....” But she couldn’t describe what he could do to her.

“I know. He shows us our weakness, our nightmares. He knows part of you doesn’t trust me.”

“Vincent...” she tried to object.

“Catherine, you don’t trust me.” He shook his head against her denial. “You didn’t. Why would you have taken that knife in the tower when I carry my weapons, always?”  He held up his claws for her to witness. “You had to stop your captor, and you didn’t trust me.  You were right not to.  I have always protected you, but I could not save you from my fears, and part of you knew this.  I was not ready to accept all that we are together.”

Her eyes would not meet his.  She still grieved for everything they had to endure to be whole.  He had no choice but to continue until she could recognize his full part in this.

“I think he is the embodiment of the monstrous, everything that we doubt, everything we despise within us, all our hate - but he is our passion as well, good and bad.  He is there to defend. He challenges us and we must grow stronger.”

Her tear filled gaze finally met his, and he offered his belief about their tormentor.  “You have allowed me to see what I should have always known. He is not separate from us.  He is us.  We conjured him, and only we can excise his cruelty…with time...” He looked past her into the darkness that she dared the ghosts from and wished he could vanquish all their demons with words, but it would take will and work, and time together.  He could give her the words, and he prayed he could give her the time.

He said nothing more, but let her grief feed on itself until it lost its sharp edges.  Within his arms her tears slowly ended.  For many minutes they simply stayed that way until a question came to him.

“Catherine, you said you saw him while you were imprisoned in the tower? That he looked like me. When I came for you, how did you know it was me and not my shadow?”

She thought for a moment before she replied. “I felt you coming for me.  After so many nights…when I saw you, you felt right, but...mostly...” She looked up at him finally and a small but sweet smile shone through her sadness. “You looked frightened.” A fraught laugh escaped her. “And he never was frightened of me.”

“I wasn’t frightened, Catherine,” he protested. “But you can be surprising,” he said, perfectly serious, with a hint of mirth dropping his voice low. “...unsettling.”

God, how I love this woman. He sighed and brought her to him.

She placed herself into the safe circle of his arms, turning her cheek to his rapidly beating heart.

She had revealed her terrors, her spirit bare to him, and it was time she should know his.  No more hiding, not here, not from her.  “Catherine, I believe...I have failed you, and will fail you.”  He spoke into her hair, trying to hide the worries there.  “I...covet you...I wish so much for you, so much freedom, but my need…”  He didn’t know how to encompass it all.  He sighed and tried again.  “I want you to have the sun, but also want you mine, down here, where I am forced to dwell.  The sacrifices, the boundaries of this existence may cause you to doubt a life together.”

She said nothing in answer to his most basic conflict.

He turned from her, and on a breeze that should have been impossible in this place so far from the world Above, he could smell the faintest mix of floral perfume, face powder, and light smoke.  He turned back to her and lifted her head with his finger.

“But never doubt,” he emphasized, “you have my love, and will always have it; whatever happens, whatever comes….I can promise, I will always love you both.”  He placed his hand on her belly, touching her and their child in concert.

“You did not fail me, Vincent,” she said finally.  “After a lifetime…after what Paracelsus did to you, how could you not fear us...together.  I think...I think we failed ourselves. I was reckless and afraid, but I accept us and everything that comes with our life together, the good and the bad, any light, and any dark...” She pressed his hand on her belly closer, stronger.  “I can promise you, I will always love you both.” Then she reached up on her toes and kissed him with her heart, accepting his worthiness and his fallibility, as he did hers.  She kissed him as she had in this cave so many months before, with all her soul, and he returned the kiss much more quickly this time.

They were bound - by love, by purpose, and by fate.

She wasn’t healed, but she was healing.  She would always feel the guilt of taking on an investigation she felt she shouldn’t have, for putting him and their child in danger, for her breakdown. He would always feel the shame of losing himself, her, and their Bond, for changing and trapping her with his love, but they could live with remorse.  If it meant they could be together, they would live with the past that shadowed them like a cloak.

It was, and would have to be, enough.

After their kiss she seemed to shrink. The maelstrom was over, the waters as calmed as they could be.  She was drained, and he held her steady. His words, his love built a house for her soul -  torn and hurt, but free - where it could rest and anchor itself.  There were still ghosts there, but within his shelter, they were not as frightening, they held less power over her, and the rooms in which they dwelt could be explored without crippling fear.  She was safe and loved.

“We should return soon,” he said to her, kissing her hair.

“It’s a long way home...”

Yes, he thought, a long and rough journey home, ‘and a sad heart to travel it.’* But they had braved the ghosts together.  They had survived.

“It is,” he agreed.

“Can we rest here a while? I’m so tired.” She sank even more into him.

“Of course,” he assured her.  He helped them down slowly, the baby making settling to the floor precarious, but soon he had Catherine gathered into his arms so her head could rest against him.  He sat in the corner against the stone wall of the cave where she had once held him.

He could feel her ease down, trusting his embrace, and finally, truly, rest.

_________________________

*Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

Union: Chapter 19

“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”

― Abraham Lincoln

Joe caught sight of Greg Hughs, hunched over and crossing against traffic a half a block before he walked into Il Sole, at 4:53 p.m. on a wet Thursday.  It was full two hours before Joe even hoped to see him.

Joe had set up camp in the restaurant’s far corner against the cold, rain-splashed window, able to look out at the buildings surrounding him.  Before today, those buildings seemed solid, but that was an illusion, veneer.

Joe felt the calling to public service, passed down from father to son, mentor to student.  He had believed in New York, its people - some bad, most indifferent, but many good. However, she opened his eyes.  Now he saw the rot that could riddle every man-made construction - every bank, apartment house, store, warehouse – anywhere. His perception had been stripped of filters and faith. He could see. No one was safe from the decay that threatened his city, from the poorest kid in Harlem to a rich-girl A.D.A., to maybe the most influential developer New York had ever produced.  The possibilities seemed endless.

There weren’t any other customers in the restaurant that evening, just staff waiting for a dinner rush that Joe suspected wasn’t coming for this unremarkable Italian place in a city full of them.  He could smell the soups on slow simmer, the encompassing aroma of the bread being delivered late, hear his cousin yelling at the prep cooks in his uncle’s financed-to-the-eyeballs kitchen. At Joe’s table a whiskey and a paper lay before him on the new white cloth, both untouched. When he spied Greg, he motioned for another drink from the bored waitress who might have been happy for something to do, but instead looked annoyed that Joe’s request interrupted her conversation with the beefy bartender.

Greg stepped in and surveyed the empty restaurant from just inside the rain-sheltered front door.  Joe waved, catching the detective’s attention, and motioned for the soaked man to take the seat opposite him.

Under Greg Hughs’ left arm was a filled brown paper bag.

“Joe.” He held out his free hand in greeting “Thanks for the drink,” he said, almost a whisper in his sandy, Hell’s Kitchen-bred and -roughened voice.

“Greg.” Joe took the detective’s proffered hand for a quick shake. He felt hard-edged and restless. He hadn’t expected Greg so soon, and he was both relieved and disturbed at his friend’s early appearance. Waiting for word had been impossible, maddening, but it was all he could do.  Now, faced with news of Cathy’s fate or the prospect of just another dead end, he wasn’t certain he could handle either, but he had to know. “Did you guys find anything?”

“Did we find anything?” Greg looked to the ceiling, feigning thought. “Yeah, you could say we found some stuff.”  Hughs put down the bag next to his own chair, pulled off his wet coat, and hung it from the back before he sat down. “I took a couple of the guys last night and we looked into the building. That was quite a tip, Joe.”

Less than a day ago, just last evening - only one night?  It seemed a lifetime of doubts and second guessing, hope, worry, and regret wrapped up in one sleepless night - Joe had found the note in his mu-shu pork and eggroll take-out bag.  At first, his brain couldn’t get past the incongruity of a note-wrapped sandwich, like the ones that wiseass sandwich vendor brought to the desk lunchers at the office, in with the Chinese.  Once his brain caught up, Joe threw down his dinner, pulled out the sandwich - addressed to “Joe” in handwriting he could only pray he knew - and ripped open the short letter. It read:

1900 6th Ave.

It’s where Moreno and his boss kept their secrets.

Everybody has secrets.

If you find any, I hope you know what to do with them. – R.

R.

Radcliffe.

Cathy.

It was Cathy’s handwriting, he was sure of it. He’d seen enough of her scrawled notes on forests’ worth of legal pads to know. It looked as if, against everyone’s predictions and even Joe’s diminishing hope, she might be alive and implicating Moreno. But on forced leave, Joe couldn’t investigate, not officially. He was punching Greg Hughs’ home number into the phone before he realized he had the receiver in his hand, begging him to get a warrant from O’Connell, telling him what he needed, explaining it had something to do with Cathy.

In the scorching light of her few words, Joe could begin to see the rot that may have infected Moreno.  Joe’s mentor, the man who believed in him, gave him a shot, bore the symptoms, hidden before, even from his chief assistant.

Faith was a fragile thing, he had come to realize, as the late-night traffic changed into to early morning traffic, as he read the words all at once, then one at a time, over and over until they re-formed, each word, each letter of the infuriatingly short note taking on a dictionary’s worth of meaning.  Joe’s trust had been lost somewhere between Moreno and his boss.  Too many tests, too many signs, too many truths – forced leave for Joe’s “own good,” to “clear his head,” defeat and obstruction when Moreno would have never given up before, especially on one of his own –  and faith could snap like a dead stick underfoot.  Moreno knew Joe couldn’t stop trying to find Cathy, but maybe it was more concern for what Joe could find than concern for Joe that led to the suspension.

You can’t trust a politician, Joe, his father had told him.  When was that?  Probably at the kitchen table, eating as much eggs, toast and homegrown tomatoes his mother would make.  Maybe when Ted Kennedy had run from his guilt and left a girl to die.    They aren’t evil, just following their nature.  A scorpion can’t help but sting.  There would be more scandals, in New York and in the White House, but his father hadn’t lived to see them, and despite quoting him, Joe hadn’t really believed the advice, at least in John Moreno’s case.  Moreno was brought up on the same streets his father patrolled.  He worked for justice. He wasn’t like the others, Joe believed, and it was the truth.  Moreno wasn’t like the others.  Everything now pointed to him being much worse.

If what Cathy was saying was true, if Moreno had a boss that wasn’t the citizenry of New York, they’d have to invent a new circle of hell for him.  He sinned doubly against loyalty: by handing Cathy over to his “boss," and for making Joe second guess himself for doing everything to find her.

Cathy was one of the best DAs - hell, one of the best people - Joe had ever known. Late into the night, after a few drinks, he would even admit that he was a little bit in love with her. During the light of day, his only motives in his search remained admiration and friendship. She had been a victim, and she had come back from it, changed her life from one of privilege to service. Lightning shouldn’t strike a person twice, especially one as good as Cathy.  And the worst thing, the thing that kept Joe up drinking those stiff drinks, was that he was to blame.  That stupid book...goddamn Patrick.  Cathy should have sat on it, it’s true, but he should have known what type of investigator she was when he asked her to take it.  How many times had he thought that since the fall….

The waitress brought over another whiskey, and Greg took a small sip after thanking her, waiting for the young woman to go back to the bartender and out earshot before continuing.

“The whole building’s a crime scene. We were there all night. You need to send some flowers to Patty. I missed dinner with her parents.”

“Done,” promised Joe. “So, what did you find?”

“Well,” Greg continued, his voice even softer from lack of sleep, “I put a rush on the lab work and got the fingerprints back about thirty minutes ago.”

“And?” Joe couldn’t wait for any long explanations.

“Well, the Chandler missing persons case? It just got turned into a murder investigation,” he said gravely.

“Oh…God.” Joe leapt from the table. “No…Cathy!”

Hughs put up his hands and motioned Joe to sit again.  “Yeah, I’m sorry, Joe,” he added, a smile creeping onto the detective’s face, “but it looks like your top A.D.A. just killed the highest-ranking drug lord this side of Colombia.  We think he goes by the name Gabriel, but that’s just one of ‘em.”

“Wait...what?” Joe was confused. Cathy wasn’t anyone to irritate in a courtroom, but murder?

“Happened maybe two, three days ago.  Gotta wait on the labs to find official time of death, but it was bad - neck wounds, stabbed repeatedly.  She really did a number on him. Since you said it might have something to do with her, I had the guys run her prints against the ones we found.  They were all over the murder weapon. It looks to be her footprints, too, barefoot, and some really big guy’s boot marks in the office where we think she offed the sonofabitch.”

Joe was speechless. He couldn’t think. Cathy killed this guy? Used-bookstores-in-the-Village Cathy?  Symphony-tickets-and-Bergdorf-Goodman Cathy?  She really killed a man, in cold blood?  This was crazy.

From the note she sent, he didn’t know if she was asking him to out Moreno’s secrets or keep hers - maybe both? Clearly, she had a kept a lot from him.  She’d never been chatty about her personal life, but until he began sifting through everything, he hadn’t realized how much she’d withheld, even from friends like Jenny. When he’d done a sweep of her apartment, he’d found notes from a guy dated from just after the time she’d started working with the D.A.

The questions that had assailed him for months rose again unbidden but now colored with the new information. She had been a hell of a lot more than, less than truthful.  Who was this Vincent guy? What was his role in this? None of her friends knew him.  She never talked about a boyfriend until right before she was taken. Why?  Did he threaten her?  Was he involved in her disappearance?  And now a murder investigation? She would have known her prints were on file. She was a field investigator. They would have to keep them to check against crime scene contamination. She didn’t take the weapon, so that wasn’t the secret she might be worried about … or maybe it was, and she wanted him to cover it up?  No, she wouldn’t want that.  Jesus, how much worse could this get?  His introspection was mercifully cut short when Greg continued.

“There’s more, and it is strange. We found an examination room filled with medical equipment, maybe Gyno. stuff - at least Gasko thought so.”

Joe knew Sharon Gasko from reputation only, as Greg’s sometime-partner on the bigger cases.  Until Greg mentioned her name, Joe hadn’t realized how many people this was going to pull in, mostly good, but possibly on the take. How was he going to keep any of this under wraps until he knew what he was dealing with? Was he stupid to even try?

“We also found three more bodies throughout the building, all with their necks broken. I called in Nick from Homicide, but I know Cathy didn’t do these guys unless she’s grown about a foot and started takin‘ steroids. Maybe the big-boot guy from the office?”

Joe put his hand to his forehead and pushed back his hair. God, he hoped she’d gotten away somehow, gone into hiding.

Suddenly grave, Hughs went on, “I think we found where they kept her- a little room near the top floor. Her prints were all over it.  The door was busted in just like one near where we found ‘Mr. Blood and Guts.’  We found her footprints leading away from the body.  She got out, Joe.”

Jerked in opposite directions by both hope and dread, Joe was rendered immobile. Against all odds, she was alive - at least, she was a few days ago - but held by a mobster for six months? Why? Why did he keep her alive? It didn’t make sense. And medical equipment?  Jesus, Joe didn’t want to even think what a guy like that could have done to her for all that time...

“I did like you asked.” With his foot, Hughs pushed the bag under the table to Joe. “Anything we could find - files, security footage, disks, papers - we just took ‘em. They’re all here. There wasn’t a lot, considering how many offices this guy’s operation took up. It looks like he really knew how to cover his ass, but that fits the M.O.” Greg looked at the crumped bag as if it held a pit viper.  “Moreno’s already left me five messages about this case, asking for this stuff.  It’s hot, Joe.” Motioning to the sack, he added, “I hope this doesn’t bite us.”

“Yeah.”  Joe looked down at the bag, now next to him. “Thanks, Greg.  I owe ya...big, and I’ll keep this really quiet, I promise, for Patty’s sake.”

“As far as I’m concerned, this is your case, no matter what Moreno says.   Between leaks to the press, and…otherwise…we can’t take chances.   Cathy’s one of ours.   They can take my pension. Besides, what’s my wife gonna do with it after the pipes play for me, huh? Probably just spend it on clothes and our new pizza guy she can’t stop talkin’ about.”  Greg laughed caustically.

He finished the rest of his drink in one long pull and got up to leave.

“Joe…Gasko and I really hope you find her,” he said as he wrapped his still wet coat around himself and put up his collar.

Joe’s tired eyes looked up at his friend, assessing the man he could call on a moment’s notice.  They didn’t hang out much - they worked too many long days for that - but Joe trusted him over just about anyone else in the force. Greg was clean, Joe would have bet his life on it, and he needed to be right.  He might be betting Cathy’s.

“Yeah, Greg, me too...”

Greg motioned a goodbye with a flick of two fingers, and headed towards the door. He barely opened it before the wind blew it wide, and he stepped into the wet city to go home to his pissed-off wife and some rest.

As soon as the front door closed, Joe’s focus turned to the bag under his feet.  As the toe of his shoe pressed into the yielding, paper outside, he could feel the hard shifting plastic of multiple tapes, square corners of thick files.   Should he call Greg back, have him put everything into evidence right away, follow the rules?

He had heard rumblings of this Gabriel guy, but never linked to Cathy, just hints from witnesses too scared to really talk, or from people, like Patrick, who ended up dead, or disappeared before anything concrete could be found.   This guy could stay below radar; he wasn’t showy like Gotti or Martinez, and worse, if the rumors were true, he had his dirty fingers in a lot of pies – crack, heroin, payoffs, extortion, money laundering, murder - all high-powered, and all completely unprovable in a court of law.  Ruthless, opportunistic, and knew how to cover his tracks, in blood if need be. It was a blessing if Cathy had killed him, but why and how was she still alive to do it?

Cathy Chandler was even more of a mystery now than she’d been a day ago.

Joe shook off his thoughts just enough so he could move again.  He finished his whiskey and pulled a couple bills from his wallet and placed them on the table in spite of the fuss his cousin would make later.  He threw on his coat and grabbed the bag, with all the bombs that might sit undetonated inside. Cathy needed him.  He had to figure this out.

Joe left the restaurant to a half-hearted “Thanks for coming” from the hostess. He took his unread paper and held it over his head as he started walking in the icy rain towards his apartment. There he would need to gather his courage, open the bag, and continue his sifting through Cathy’s life.

Union: Chapter 20

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.”

-William Wordsworth

Awareness

Urgency

Shifting

Drifting into the present, a warmth, like sunlight felt though high chinks in stone, through grates and window shutters, touched Vincent and he bathed in it, until his conscious mind caught up with the fact that this could not be. The deepest rock and circumstance made it impossible. The only light that greeted his newly opened eyes was the light of their diminishing torch.

Vincent wakened further, taking stock of what and when.  Although he didn’t have the tapping of the pipes or the movements of the subway trains to help him estimate time, the lessened flame, the dull ache just starting in his back, and his own internal clock told him they had slept a few hours, perhaps three or four.  Catherine’s body still curled across his lap in sleep; he was grateful for her rest.

Seconds passed and the encompassing warmth persisted.  He could almost smell it.  It touched no part of his body, yet it reached everywhere all at once.

Aware

Alive

It was his son.

His hand had lain protectively over the child while they slept, and now he could feel the baby move under his palm.  Their recent storm of emotions had masked the child’s, but as Catherine’s mind swam deep in a dreamless sleep and his mind calmed with hers, Vincent could focus on the tiny being.

Content

Ready

A new soul grew inside the person he loved, and even more astonishing, Vincent could feel him growing, strengthening.

It was a miracle.

Vincent’s earliest memories reverberated with the emotions of others.  At first a curse, the feelings overwhelmed his young mind, especially fear, sadness, hatred - such basic emotions, especially in the world Above, so easily broadcast to him.  Later he learned control - how to use and also forgo the ability - but he had never before connected to a child unborn.  Perhaps their shared genetic heritage allowed him to glimpse into this new life, or because the baby was a part of her.  Whatever the reason, the beauty of what was shared, the gift of it, caught him as a whirlwind through his heart.  It drew up from the depths pride and love and bewilderment.

He had seen Catherine hold the babies of the Tunnels. He saw the longing she couldn’t hide when he had cradled Lena’s infant daughter. If it had been in his power to give her what she wished then, without fear of what it might bring and what it could take from her, he would have made her his own that very night. It was what he wanted, where his instinct pushed. Mate, it urged. She wants to be yours, it promised, but he had lived in fear for so long, for her and any child he would father.  Terror had been the only thing that could override their connection, the pull of her.

He knew the desire, but only in its denial.  He had watched as friends delved into the sea of creation without hesitation.  He did not blame them; his burdens weren’t theirs.  He was left pacing, contemplating that ocean on a grey stone coast, more alone each love declared, each child born. His questions could not be answered from the safety of the shore, despite the others’ experience.  Would the waves batter him back, shattered? Would he drown in the unknown current?  Worse, would the water reveal him, wash away artifice and expose a monster living in his soul?

 Within this cave she had beckoned him forward, and what resistance remained fell to her siren call.  He had rushed past the feared breakers into her drawing tide.  The consuming sea took him within the lifting waves of desire and Fate, and in their ebb and flow he had found a satiety he had never thought possible - to be loved, to be stripped to his core and find himself a new name: Lover.  That was her power - to find, to hold and accept.   These were gifts he never expected to be given, cherished beyond all others, but they came at a price.  Now he must face where the waves had washed him - a place where his heart lay open, exposed and doubly vulnerable.

Within the dark of her body she had ripened his heart, increased it to live in two separate beings, both infinitely precious, but two who must both endure the narrow passage, the implacable testing ground of life.  He dreaded it more than any battle…all the unknowns, the possibilities.   Yet under all that fear, perched within his soul, plumed with love and reverence for her strength, the thing with feathers.* It sang its forever song: Wait and Hope.    

Vincent tried to hold her steady while adjusting to relieve his back so he could rest with her again, but then he felt…something…although she did not seem to, not yet, more a feeling from the child.  It was a growing sense of curious…different…more as the tightening began.  Less than thirty seconds later, her body loosened, and the baby became tranquil once more.

Part of Vincent grasped the import of this.  She had experienced the clutching heaviness in the last few days and, in turn, so had he.  They had been intermittent and fleeting, or a constant slight achiness with no boundaries.  This was different, more concentrated, acute.

It felt like a beginning.

Questions ran roughly over him, his thoughts battering waves.

Is it truly time for our child’s birth?  

Will she survive?

What kind of parents will we be?

Will she survive? 

What kind of child? 

Will he be like me?

Will she survive?

He had to dam the flood of his thoughts or else she would waken.  He slowed his breath, the way he had been taught as a child - to notice, not judge, just be.

Breathe in and feel the rock beneath you; breathe out the conflict. Sink.  Listen to the movement of the earth surrounding your body.  Be one with it.  Feel her breath on your neck, feel her heart beat slow with sleep.  Anchor under her weight in your arms; anchor to your son under your hand.   Feel her reality.  Sink further. 

It was long enough between sensations to fall into her calm and allow sleep to start to claim him again, but as soon as the tightening began he was back to full consciousness.  Catherine stirred - a hitched breath only - then fell back into rest once more.

Many moments passed, dominated by colliding thoughts that surged, but as the moments passed, they ebbed away in the quiet darkness.   Long enough to think aberration, false alarm, and then another contraction – they were contractions, he had to accede.  He held perfectly still, anticipating.  Another contraction a handful of minutes later and Catherine was beginning to waken, despite his efforts to keep her comfortable.

This cannot be.

Only three days together, three beautiful and torturous days, his heart rebelled.

But his deeper thoughts warned, Nothing is certain.  Life is not manageable and need not be fair.

Vincent could feel the baby’s new anxiety.  His world was changing.  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered as he tried to send calm to the child, but the baby was frightened anyway.

I know. So am I.

Change was coming.

Even the child was cognizant of change.

******************************

At first, all Catherine could discern were Vincent’s textured fingers gently stroking her face, drawing her from an uneasy sleep, and then, a moment later, the tight gathering band low in her belly.  He had wakened her just prior to its starting and, in the split second before it took all her thoughts, she realized these must have been going on while she slept.  Panic gripped her along with the contraction, but then, instinctively, Vincent became her touchstone, as he had so many other crucial times.  Her breath deepened as the twisting inside her grew. She placed herself into his hand, where the pads of his fingers brushed jaw and neck; his hand and his embrace became her focus.

She didn’t need him to acknowledge what was happening; his worry was palpable.

She looked up into his eyes from where she lay in his arms and shared this movement towards the new.  The contraction heralded the dismantling of the certain and the giving way to potential.  She could feel his rising panic - for her, for him, for them.  She wanted to spare him.  Her need to rescue him from his fears, she felt certain, was as urgent and strong as any he ever had for her.

This is an old path, my love, she wanted to say, to bypass his doubts to deflect her own.  We will see this to the end, together.

Once the sensation passed they stayed open to one another, in congruence, gazing into each other.  She spoke with words and without words, through the webs that bound them.

“This isn’t how I wanted to start our life together…”

…In necessity instead of choice, in fear instead of joy.

“But you and our child are what I wanted - the only thing that I have ever, truly, known I wanted.  I love…You.”

She emphasized the last word, hoping the declaration and the feelings she projected behind it would push past his barriers, so he would believe that, out of an entire universe, he was chosen.

You…

Magical

Beautiful

Loved

Fierce

Frightened

Brilliant

Perfect

You

He was about to speak, but before his mouth opened she felt his words tossed away, unnecessary, a sacrifice to a moment too perfect to utter within.  His singular lips kissed her forehead and, for an instant, they were all just one - together.

She smiled as his rough chin rubbed against her. This was a long process, she remembered vaguely, but to ease his mind she knew they would need to start back home, soon.  It was time to face the next step, and the next, and the next…

“All right,” she said, accepting the now and unknown on little sleep, but as long as he was with her, she would, she could.

Catherine turned up to him and kissed his cheek.  “We aren’t going to catch a break, are we?” She laughed lightly into his jaw.

“No.” A smile and a short laughing breath burst from him along with the word, his tension lessened for the moment.

A small victory...

She wanted to just stay and trail her lips back and forth across his skin, to deny, to forget what could be happening, but instead she motioned for him to help her up.

As he did, a change in perspective allowed them a glimpse of odd form from the floor of the cavern.  Only after he was certain of her balance did he bend down and sift through dust after the possible object.  He drew out the metal chain of her necklace, the crystal he had given her still intact, arenose and clouded, but miraculously returned to them.

“Oh, Vincent, I thought I had lost it forever.  Thank you....” She took it from his fingers as pressure seized her again, low in her belly.  She wrapped her palm around his gift, the sharp corners biting but anchoring.  She spoke with effort through the sensation, “...good omen...” then she was silent until it was over.

When done, she arched her back, stretched, took a deep breath and announced, “Well, I guess we have to get back.”

She reached for him, ran her hand along the raised pattern of his cotton shirt, down his arm, and stroked the fur of his hand just before placing her palm in his.  She squeezed, and then drew him forward towards the light.

“It looks like this ship is about to set sail.”

*******************************

It took them three times as long to get back.

The walking, at first, slowed the contractions.  They were entering the Catacombs before the next one came on; but, this was just the calm before the storm.  After the first true set of stairs they returned, but with greater force.

With each pain she would either hold the wall or him and let the wave lift her up and set her back down, just breathing or dancing with the sensation.  She had no guide, she simply moved, unconscious of place and “should.”  As soon as it was over, she slowly walked on.

By far, the worst of the journey was the bridges.  Vincent never questioned the tautness of old rope, the strength of dry wood, or cursed the deficits of design more in his life.  They would wait until a wave passed before striking out in uncertainty.  He pulled her forearm almost painfully, he knew, rushing them across the spans.  She understood his fear, respected it, but their luck held, the contractions waiting until they were safely across on solid ground, before coming on again.

The same couldn’t be said for the stairs.

Not a few times, Vincent fought the compulsion to just pick her up and carry her back to the home Tunnels, especially when faced with another set of steps. It would have made him feel better to be with Mary and Father, but she met his impatience with reassurance and determination.  She would walk back home with him, each step her own.

And this is how we face the future, he told himself, half attending, half supporting her every rise, trying to match her courage; each footfall is one over our terrors.  This is how our life must move on, but it is hard. 

Most of the journey was silent, hands held, words unnecessary, but on entering one of the natural caverns - one they called The Viking’s Hall, for its long length and impossible symmetry - she offered him her wonder.  “I didn’t really notice this place before. It’s amazing.”  He looked as well, his eyes renewed with hers, recognizing that every other occasion she had traveled through must have been marked by blinding concern.  She examined the walls with her touch, and raised her gaze to the high ceiling.

“You were right,” she said unexpectedly, and then turned to him.  “You were right to take us back.  We needed...the time.  I don’t think I could have told you…any of it, without being away from everyone, or going to the cave.  Thank you.”

She offered him confidence when he doubted, gratitude when he expected reproach.

Since their beginning, her gifts had always been astonishing.

After what seemed like endless hours of walking they finally reached the outskirts of the main tunnels.  With Catherine’s permission, Vincent sent a message on the pipes of their location and progress.  He knew Mary would come to them and the others would stay away unless called.  Mary would make sure of it.

Birth does not make good theater - the more people watching, the longer and more painful the acts.

Mary, proud of her knowledge, would remind them of this time and again.  It was easy to forget, between the infrequent Tunnel births, especially for the children.  They so wanted to be a part of everything, but Mary was insistent: unless you had a job, you were hindering the process.

By the time she reached them, with her Pinard in hand, Vincent’s anxiety was increasing with each contraction.

“Oh, my dears,” she started, out of breath, hand braced against the wall, “I knew ‘Christmas’ was coming.” She beamed at them. “I just didn’t know the day, but the baby did, I guess.”

Vincent would have protested that his child had no idea this was going to happen, but concern for Catherine stayed his words.  Catherine stood with her head down, one hand holding the wall, the other on her hip, as another contraction began.

Mary knelt next to the slowly swaying woman, placed the large horn on Catherine’s belly, and took out a broken-banded watch from a pocket in her dress.  She listened on the smaller end, her finger moving up and down in a quick rhythm.  Vincent noticed the watch said nearly half-past ten.

“Simply beautiful,” she pronounced after a few moments, lowering the horn and putting it and her watch back into her apron. “The baby sounds perfect.  And how are you both holding up?” She ducked her head, trying to find Catherine’s eyes under a cascade of hair.  Mary pulled it back with her fingers.

Catherine sighed and smiled under the older woman’s gentle hand, but it was plain the journey and the pain were beginning to wear on her. “Okay, I guess.”

“Good,” Mary said happily.  “Let’s get you to the hospital chamber.  Father and Peter will want to check a few things, but then we’ll get you something to eat and drink.  Do you think you can eat?”

“I don’t know,” Catherine answered. “Maybe…toast or something,”

“Perfect,” Mary said. “I’ll have William send us some.”  At the mention of the man’s name, Catherine’s eyes opened wide in alarm.

“Oh, don’t worry, dear,” Mary said quickly, rubbing Catherine’s arm, trying to soothe. “He’s already over it.”  She dismissed the painful episode, batting the air with her other hand.  “Cullen and James and Father, well, a lot of people, talked to him.  I am sorry I didn’t see your distress.  He’s sorry too, and for William to be sorry, well...I think you’ve done us all a great service.”  Mary chuckled.

Catherine half-smiled at the older woman’s words, somewhat becalmed.

Escorted by Vincent, her arm securely locked in his, and with Mary rubbing her lower back through each contraction, their small party slowly progressed home.

Once they got Catherine to the facilities next to the hospital chamber, Mary pulled Vincent aside, her composed demeanor a blatant contrast to his own.

“We didn’t get time to talk as I hoped we would, Vincent.”  Mary touched his arm. “Father, Peter, and I have agreed, because of...of her blood, and the baby..., because of what we know about your troubles with medication in the past, we don’t want to give her anything…for the pain, unless absolutely necessary.  We can’t predict how she and the baby will react.” She looked him in the eye, contrite, although sure in their decision.

Vincent’s hand moved to his forehead, his eyes closed, trying to grasp what this meant for Catherine, not quite believing what he was hearing.  The labor was already getting difficult for her to manage.

“It’s always hard on the fathers, Vincent…” she tried to pacify him with her experience, “…but for you.... We’ll all understand if you have to leave,” she added for him, an escape.

No, never that, not ever again.

Then she added, certitude from her many births plain in her voice, “But if you stay, understand that at some point she will probably doubt she can go on.  She may say things, feel things…but you must be strong, for her, Vincent.  You can’t doubt her ability to do this.  Just look to us to see how things are going.” And then Mary hugged him around the neck, pulling him down to her level, somehow transferring part of her confidence to him.

She eased her embrace until just her hands held his arms.  Her face beamed.  “I have been so blessed to be a part of your life, Vincent.  I can’t wait to be a part of your son’s.”

“Thank you, Mary, for everything.”

“Try not to worry, dear.  All is well.” She rubbed his arm.

Father and Peter were gathering some supplies at the other end of the room when Catherine shuffled back to them.

Mary was ready with questions. “Did you see any blood, even pink or brown?”

“Yes…some…a little.  Is that all right?” Catherine asked, taking Vincent’s hand.

“Yes, it’s good,” answered Father, hobbling towards them from the far end of the chamber. “I think it’s starting.”

Catherine turned to him, alarmed. “Starting?”

Mary drew her back with an embrace around the shoulders and smiled. “Don’t worry, dear.  First babies almost always take their time.  It’s normal.”

Vincent didn’t need to listen to their bond to feel Catherine’s trepidation; it was plain in her eyes.  Clearly this was a climb far higher and more rugged than it seemed at first sight.

“Yes, don’t worry, Catherine,” Father agreed as he wrapped a blood pressure cuff on her arm.   They all hushed as he placed the disk of the stethoscope on her arm, pumped in the air, and took his reading.  A moment later, the hiss of the final air escaping and the removal of his earpieces signaled he was finished.  He continued, “You seem to be moving along just fine.  Mary is right, everything is normal.”

Catherine eased, and Vincent couldn’t help but inwardly thank Father for the reassurance.

At that moment, to Vincent, normal was the most beautiful word ever spoken.

Rolling up his stethoscope, Father turned and spoke directly to him. “I’ll have food sent to your chamber, Vincent.  Why don’t you two go there for a while, to rest after your long walk?  Mary or I can sit with you, if you wish.”

Deep jade met sea blue.  You, her eyes said.  She wanted quiet and peace and him, only him, to feel safe, and she needed safety.

I am with you, Catherine.  Everything that I am, everything that I can give, I will give.  This is our path.  Every step will be ours.

Unable to look away from her gaze, Vincent replied, “I will call for you if anything changes.  I’ll know…” Astonished, but determined he said nothing more.

“Fine, Vincent, fine.” The older man patted his son on the arm.  Father pivoted and tried to get Catherine’s attention. “Then after a rest, maybe to the bathing pool?” he offered.  But the now-serious woman had no hope of answering while the contraction held onto her.  She grabbed Vincent’s forearms, rested her head into his chest and circled slowly with the pain.

Father seemed to give up and addressed his son once again.  “Just call us if you need us, or if she feels a great deal of pressure, all right?”

He looked back with open empathy at the laboring woman.  “We’ll stop by from time to time to see how you’re faring.”

* Hope is a Thing with Feathers, (254), Emily Dickinson

Union: Chapter 21

Special Thanks to Mumford and Sons for Awake my Soul, best song about all types of birth, ever. 

"Where you invest your love, you invest your life."

.

"Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one."

Gloria Steinem, Ms. Magazine, April 1981

.

Hours passed, somehow, impossibly, without clear reckoning.  Each contraction, like a new gauge of time, formed a pattern more sure than the minutes or hours noted by the clock on Vincent’s dresser.  The only time for them - how long she would be in pain, and how long the respite in between.

They lay curled upon his bed, Catherine facing the room, Vincent’s body gathered around hers, both dealing with the labor without speaking or instruction.  Every contraction was a dance silently orchestrated by their bond.  He could almost hear the music, the deep drumming rhythm of her body.  He welcomed her pain into him as his guide to aiding her through the rise and peak and fall, bringing them closer, (closer, please, please, closer) to the birth.

He felt her body gather, and in response he placed his hand on her belly, under the baby, his warm empathetic touch her cue to release into his embrace and allow the muscles to work without battling them.   His other hand pressed into the ache in her back, sometimes throughout the entire contraction, sometimes pushing and releasing in concert with her breathing.

She opened her eyes with the sensations to focus on the candle and her crystal, now placed safely on Vincent’s table.  The long flame danced with her breath, its light reflecting on the pendant’s hard surface, as she tried, (tried, tried) to let the contractions open her body.

There were times in between when she fell into troubled sleep, and the images, the feelings of her cell returned to her, ghosts and worse - the silence, the emptiness - but then the contraction would come, she would waken, Vincent would hold her, and she was too full of him, the baby and the labor for anything else to stay.   Soon even the past lost meaning to the urgent now, and nothing but the three of them remained.

The pain Vincent and Catherine shared, what he could feel through her, wasn’t sharp like lightning.  It was lightning’s answer, a force drawn up from the deep earth.  It developed and spread while they lay bound together - no longer low in her belly, it encircled her entirely front and back.  It started to grab her, move her and move through her, as the plates of the continents shifted one over another, an earthquake within.   And as the movement of the earth, it would go on forever, she began to fear.

In the quiet at the end of night, after consulting in hushed voices with Father, Peter and Mary, Vincent resolved to take Catherine back to the warm spring.  The elders confirmed what Vincent already knew: the labor was progressing, tolerated by both mother and child, but getting harder.   As the contractions strengthened, unconsciously she began to thrash her legs, mimicking the twisting inside.  She could retreat into Vincent no longer.  She needed more.

Each step he took, leading her to the water away from the others’ immediate help, felt like a towering climb on unstable rock.  His scholar, anxious and concerned, enumerated within his mind the myriad ways birth went wrong, but his deeper self responded that Catherine and the child were healthy, the birth was not imminent, and that the warm water would ease her.

Halting often, grabbing at Vincent when she needed him, Catherine slowly shuffled down the halls, then through the cavern to the edge of the water.   She stared into the pool as if uncertain what to do next.  Vincent, forgoing the confusion of words, gently raised her gown up and over her head.

There was more blood on her upper thighs - not much, but some.  Father had warned him blood was a normal sign of progress, but Vincent couldn’t help but tense at the sight.  He tried to ease into Father’s logic and his own innate knowledge that she and the baby were taxed but fine.  Vincent was anxious she would share his worry in her open state.

He held her hand in support as she entered the water.  In an instant, her body was no longer just an affliction; her relief flooded his psyche. In the water she loosened and unfurled. She could relax and, in turn, so could he.  She moved almost timidly along the rocky wall until she was deep enough to allow the water to fully support her.

He didn’t understand, and she had no words to explain it, but for a moment he had given her freedom.  The water was a warm reprieve from impatience and pain.  It was freedom in his world, within his life, each step taken together in this process becoming their life.  He couldn’t know how important it was to her, but she promised herself she would find a way to tell him, hoped she could communicate it through her hand that held his as he crouched above her on the rocky shore, but then the pulling spiraled and took all thoughts again.  Afterward, she found herself clutching his hand as a lifeline.  The contractions were easier now in the water, to be sure - but not easy.

She wanted to joke with him.  She wanted to laugh at how different this was from the last time he had brought her to this cavern, but she could never get so many words out at once.  The contractions had become her world.  She used all of her strength in between to ready herself, and used all her energy during them to keep from being dragged under by the pain, not just for herself, but for Vincent.

How can he stand this? She thought, fighting to open her eyes, to see into him, to find his strength.

How can he do this? 

I can’t do this.

With care he extracted each clawed finger from her desperate grip and took off his clothes with quick, harried movements. He wanted to get to the water before she needed him.  He rushed to her and she grabbed for him as soon as he got close, creating waves both in the water and in her, the next contraction triggered by her movements.  She moaned with the unexpected twisting.  After it passed he kissed her forehead - in apology, in deference, in adoration.

Her eyes were closed now, even in between.  He kept watch for her.  The universe felt thin, and for a moment Vincent knew “the soft edges”[i] Catherine’s mother had spoken of.  They were fusing, their heartbeats combined into a new song of travail, beauty, and longing.

“I love you,” she said, eyes closed, startling him with an unexpected rush of appreciation, even in the midst of strain and hurt.

“…and I you,” he answered, with a rough and tear-filled voice, “with all that I am.”  Sadness and helplessness engulfed him.  His love was all he could offer her. There was no battle, there was no enemy, no way to rescue her.  There was no place for a hero.  Nothing was broken that need be fixed. He could only be a witness to her struggle.

Perhaps an hour later the water became too hot, and Catherine, nauseous and anxious, needed to retreat.  The urgency she and the baby were feeling Vincent could not deny. They needed the elders now.  He quickly dried them, pulled on his clothes, and helped her on with her gown.  She tore at the collar, as if hating its clinging on her skin, but then gave up as a harsher sensation distracted her.

She bent, her hands on her knees, quivering and flushed from unconscious exertion.  “I can’t walk…” she said helplessly, almost guiltily, as if she should.

He lifted her, carefully, into his arms, but this time she didn’t protest.  The contractions seemed barely moments apart.   She placed her head on his shoulder, exhausted by her body’s efforts to give birth to their child.

He started down the entrance of the spring.  Later he would write in his journal of the things he recalled on their journey - Jamie and Mouse waiting for them outside, ready to notify Father of their movements; Pascal startled and unnaturally still in the Pipe Chamber entrance as he went past; the younger children blithe and innocent to the struggle and pain to create them, playing on their beds before breakfast, clapping the rhythm of life in their songs…

Plant the seeds.

Watch them grow.

Dig, cover, water, weed...

Keep them safe from the cold

And we’ll have flowers for our win-dow…

At the time, he wouldn’t have believed he noticed anything but her, or had any spare energy to divert from the task at hand – getting her to help.  He stumbled, just for moment, outside of the Nursery, under the weight of the debilitating tightening coming again.  It was agony.

How can she do this?

He willed himself the strength to move forward.  He surged, pushing past Michael, Cullen, and Brooke as they pressed up against the walls to let them pass.

Catherine said only three words as they traveled back to their waiting helpers, through the long halls, past anxious and attentive friends - just three words that seized his heart.

“Shut it off…” she whispered, so quiet only he could have heard her.

He didn’t want to.

To leave her alone… to be alone…

He rebelled, despite his implicit promise.  Part of him needed this.  Bound together, he was certain she was alive and she was here.  His scared inner voice begged for her, and if she was to suffer, he asked for his measure of penance. He didn’t want to give it up, but, he knew she was right.  At this moment she didn’t need his empathy, and never wanted his guilt.  She needed his strength, and he could not give it weakened by her, for her.

She was frail, almost shaking in his arms.

She was unrelenting as the waves crashing hard on the shore.

He did what she asked.  It took all of his will.

He closed off the Bond with her.

***************************

“Don’t be afraid the contractions are stronger than you are Catherine,” Mary tried to soothe, folding blankets and placing them on the chamber’s stove to warm them, “because they are you, dear.  You can do this.  You’re strong.”

Vincent didn’t believe Catherine could hear her.

“Yes, honey, you’re doing great,” Peter called to her from across the room as he wrote notes at a small desk.

Vincent was certain she couldn’t hear any of them.

Catherine huddled in a tiny alcove of the hospital chamber about two strides’ distance from him and Father.  Vincent tried to give her space to move despite the irrational desire to just snatch her up and somehow stop this for five minutes - it would be all she needed, if he could just stop it!  But that wasn’t in his power.

Worse than useless…his deeper voice whispered, reproachful and angry.

Since her water had broken a half an hour before Catherine couldn’t stop moving after each contraction.  She tried to find any small comfort, but there was none.  She had lain on one of the larger beds at first, but almost immediately the pressure was too much.  Then she had clung to Vincent, but her legs had collapsed when the waves seized her, which they did with startling and horrific frequency.  There seemed so little time in between them.  Vincent would have held her up, but she pushed him away.

“Too hot,” she groaned, pressing her head into the cool rock, but seconds later she was shaking with cold.

“Vincent,” Father whispered, his back to her to hide his words, “this,” he covertly gestured towards Catherine to encompass her movements and mercurial mood, “is expected this late in labor.”

Vincent tried, but couldn’t quite believe him.

Catherine’s existence had narrowed precipitously since leaving the spring.  With the breaking of her water, that still gushed periodically and freely down her legs, came a pressure and force that she could have never believed prior to this.  She would have laughed at her former audacity - to think she hurt before now, to think that she was capable of doing this.  She was lost between must and can’t.  She wanted them to help her, wished they could, but that was impossible. The pain was completely isolating. They couldn’t understand. She was drowning in it.  She wanted to stay in control, but there was nothing she could do.  There was no controlling this.

She felt it coming for her, rising, merciless, and when it buried her, she screamed.

She was wild, caged by the pain, unable to escape.

After it was over, and she could open her eyes again, Father appeared next to her, concern etching his face into a gentle but condescending mask.  “Catherine, why don’t you lie down?  You should really try to rest…” He went to touch her arm, to lead her back to the bed.

“No! Don’t touch me!” she yelled at the doctor, all pretext and politeness gone. Everything in her wanted to run from them, to try to out-run the seizing of her body. If he touched her too-sensitive skin, she would run (somehow, without question) and never stop.

Vincent could see the readiness in her.  He too had felt the rough wall at his back, muscles anticipating, with only the choice of fight or flee before him.  No longer herself, Catherine was more, possessed by the dark, cruel gods of creation.  He had been right.  She was different now, changed, and in a way greater, more powerful than ever.  He had altered her, changed her.  Father’s son swallowed the guilt, distraught at the loss of who she once was.  His shadow twin, the one emerging now in answer to her need, was fiercely proud of her strength.

Vincent could smell the birth coming.  It was an unconscious knowledge - a welcome sign of progress - but unnerving, smelling of ozone, semen, brackish water and blood mingled.  It stirred the beast in him, the instinct, the protector.

“I think she just needs some room, Father…” Mary tried to stop the older man, to remind him that Catherine would show them what she needed if given the freedom to do so.

But Catherine felt no freedom. Fiery hands squeezed her body, allowing her no rest. There was only pain and greater pain. She was trapped.  There was no escape from this cell.

Scream if you want to, Ms. Chandler.

 No one will hear you. 

No one will help you.

No one will care.

“VINCENT!” 

She screamed for him and he was there, holding her, grounding her.  She gripped his shirt with harsh and terrified energy.

“I’m here.  I’m here,” he whispered to her.  “You are strong.”

And for a moment, from just his words, she was, but then the pain was tearing through her again. She couldn’t do it anymore. The baby was frightened, and she couldn’t block his fear.  She couldn’t soothe him, because there was nothing left to give.

She wouldn’t say the words (couldn’t, never), but she could feel her death. She was ripping open, bleeding out, and they couldn’t stop it, she was sure of it.  She didn’t want to leave him, but how could this go on? She sobbed into Vincent’s chest as the pain subsided because she knew it must come again.

I can’t die. 

I promised him.

 I’m going to die,

Or I’m giving birth to this baby.

Nothing else... 

Catherine’s exhausted body yielded into Vincent’s arms as her tears dwindled. Her body released, almost sleeping as he held her.

“Vincent…” Father began to advise but, unexpectedly, Vincent snarled at him.  A turn and snap was all, but enough for Father and Mary to back away.  Vincent’s primal self had surfaced in response to her call.  Catherine was his, his mate, and she was vulnerable.  No one would touch her but him.  She needed him close.

Another surge was coming; she readied. Vincent felt her drawing in, but even before it reached her, he knew something had changed.

With the next wave the pain transformed, the pressure magnified a thousand fold. The opposite of throwing up, it was as if everything that Catherine was, every part of her, was throwing down, a feeling impossible to deny. She fell from Vincent’s arms to crouch on her heels, gripping his legs as she dropped. She couldn’t help but groan with the irresistible force of it.

Mary, midwife first, moved swiftly towards the birthing woman, intent on her, not even noticing the man who could break her with barely a thought.

“She’s pushing.”

****************************

“That’s it, Cathy,” Peter encouraged her.  “You’re doing it.”

Catherine sat on the bed propped between Vincent’s legs, one arm around his neck, her forehead pressed into his jaw, pushing with the unstoppable energy rushing through her body. In between the contractions she slumped, a spiritless doll in Vincent’s arms, alarmingly still and silent.

Hardly there, “…water,” was the only word that she uttered to prove she was still with them.  Vincent helped her drink, but as soon as she was done she slipped back into her universe, consisting of just her and labor.

“You are doing very well, Catherine,” Father said, looking at the small bit of the baby’s head now visible in between contractions after less than an hour’s worth of pushing.

She couldn’t understand his words.  She just needed this to be over.

The next contraction, she grabbed her legs and bore down, roaring with the intensity of it.  All her strength went into each push. When it was over, Vincent wiped her brow with a cool cloth from the bedside. She sank into his touch.

In the quiet of the chamber, Peter counted instruments, readied metal containers, draped tables. What for? Vincent had no idea, but he could feel the anticipation rising like the crest of a wave.  Father’s eyes followed Catherine’s actions, preparing, calculating.  Mary waited on the side of the bed, helping Catherine hold her legs when the contractions came.

“I can see some more of the head,” Mary beamed. This drew Catherine back for a brief second, reminding her that this might not be forever, but then her head lolled against him and she was lost once more.

Another contraction - Vincent held her up, supported her as she clung to him, one being.  There was no thinking, just instinct, love, and the duty to safeguard.  She disappeared again after it was over.

Perhaps because of his need to find her, help her, he abandoned his promise. He chose to open himself, to allow her to engulf him, and forged connection with her again.

There were no words in this place in between, where they found union. They existed simultaneously -

On a bed in a man-carved cave beneath the earth,

Deep within the strain and press of her body,

Across the Universe where stars coalesced into being and then died in elemental fire and vast space.

They were slaves to the omnipresent forces of destruction, birth and change. Their former selves had been destroyed by the pounding labor.  They were something new.  They had become one being, within the nature of themselves.

She doubts 

She can’t

He loves

They must

He is sure of her, he strengthens

The wave comes, and it is inescapable, necessary, all

They shoot across the Void, and into the molten core of the earth

Movement

Twisting

Stretching

Dancing life

“The baby is coming,” Mary said with her sure voice.

“He’s crowning,” Father announced, as the old doctor placed his toweled hands out to receive his grandchild.

Fire

Screaming

A moment held, the universe, paused

The baby turned, spiraling into his grandfather’s hands, tiny arms outstretched, crying out as he slipped from his mother’s body.

Birth

Blessed release – it washed over them, sweeping all disbelief aside.

The infant wailed in confusion as his grandfather placed him onto his mother. Peter rubbed him down with one of the warm flannel blankets. He was covered in love by all who gazed at his tiny, quivering face.

“Oh…God…” was all Catherine could utter at the baby’s appearance, carefully unwrapping her arms from around Vincent’s neck and gathering their child to her.

Vincent studied his son - his amazing, perfect, human child.

What are you? Vincent’s inner voice asked, as if already knowing the answer.

More than I imagined, and not as different as I feared.

He overlapped his hand above Catherine’s on the tiny, stunned, slick and bloody infant, a claiming within his touch for her and what they created together. The baby cried a short burst of indignation, but soon quieted under his parents’ covering warmth.

“A perfect boy!” Mary laughed, clapping her hands together.

Outside the hospital chamber’s cloth partition, Vincent could hear the din of happy voices, shouting in exultation.  He had forgotten the others’ attendance; they had stayed quiet enough that he could.  Their friends must have been holding their breath as much as he.

Catherine, so achingly grateful that the labor was over, still astounded that the baby on her belly came out of her, tried to imagine a way to pick up the delicate being still attached to her by a pulsing cord.  She pushed off the blanket and reached under his arms to grasp the fragile-seeming body with her shaking hands.  She lifted her son tentatively as he kicked against the air and placed him into the crook of her arm.  Mary was there, trying to wrap another blanket around him, but Catherine took it off immediately. Catherine had to see him, the impulse undeniable. She had to look at her baby, all over him. She had to be convinced by his perfection that he was undamaged by her captivity, whole and here.

Thin wisps of wet brown hair curled on his birth-molded head; his tiny florid chest for the first time breathed in the air of his new home.

“He’s so beautiful,” she whispered to Vincent.

“He is beautiful,” Vincent echoed her, placing his curled finger in the small grasping hand.

You will never be left in the cold to die. You will never be discarded. I promise, you will be protected and loved all of your days.

The baby blinked and opened his grey-blue infant eyes to gaze at his parents.  A moment before, he wasn’t there, just a possibility, a soul only he and Catherine were conscious of.  Now a presence in the world, their son took up space, a gift, and a challenge to humanity to make a place for him.

Father said nothing, could say nothing, silence the perfectest herald of his joy.[ii]   The objective doctor for the moment was gone, weeping with gratitude and relief at the beautiful sight of his son and his son’s beloved holding their child, a small and scared family. Blake had always been too uneven, disproportionate, to be a favorite, but his Cradle Song, When thy little heart doth wake / Then the dreadful night shall break, never was more fitting.  This was all he could not hope…dare not hope…for Vincent, made real.

Catherine turned and looked into Vincent’s eyes – eyes that held astonishment, thankfulness, belief, and disbelief all at once.  She smiled, the pain almost forgotten under his gaze and the sweet weight of the baby in her arms.

“Thank you,” she said simply, and kissed him.

Thank you for your love, and your trust, and you, mixed with me, into this new soul, our child…    

He kissed her in return, and gazed at the priceless, brave woman beginning to nurse his son.

“Thank you, Catherine.” Tears of gratitude openly streamed down his face. “You have given me everything.”

---

[i] Union: Chapter 2

[ii] Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare

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