Chapter 3

***

Every sensible impulse in his brain told him not to believe it was her. Every moment of fighting through his grief told him that it couldn’t possibly be her, and that hoping was both futile and dangerous. His mind was adamant on this; do not believe.

His heart had other plans.

Vincent’s heart put all the pieces together. Jacob’s insistence against his mother’s death. His protestations that Vincent didn’t believe in her death either. Vincent’s desires to watch over to New Jersey. And the hope, just the wrenching, searing hope that had kindled in his heart the moment he heard. Not to mention the horror and guilt at what he had done if his Catherine was still living.

There were no tunnels where he was going, but there was a train, and a dark night, and several hours until daylight. Should he have asked him, Father would have said it was too risky, far too dangerous. Vincent was tired of asking Father.

How could he have hid this possibility from him? How long had he known? Not long, he suspected. He did not believe that Father would have hidden the truth of Catherine’s survival from him. But how long might he hide the uncertain possibility?

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All that mattered was finding Catherine again... if it was Catherine. If he couldn’t find her here tonight he would wait until he heard from Diana before checking again. After all, she might be out, or at a room without a window. It wasn’t as if he could go inside the well lit halls of the institute and ask to see the room roster.

At each window he paused, listening with every sense at his disposal. The night was warm for the first of May, and quite a handful of people had their windows cracked. Vincent walked half way around the building before he found the room he was looking for.

He would have known it even without having listened at other windows. It alone amongst all the darkened, sleeping rooms held the gentle glow of a flickering candle. He remembered Catherine telling him that she had once been afraid of the dark. How her mother had given her a candle to light before bed. If she was alone and – troubled– he knew she would light a candle to keep the dark away.

Catherine, his light. His heart hurt to even think it might possibly be her. It is not her! shouted the sensible portion of his mind. The beast in him growled, and that stopped that nonsense. He would see if it was her.

And if it is not her, said the sensible portion, you must not follow her into madness. Jacob needs you.

This time he let it talk.

The lightly flickering room was on the second floor. He climbed the brick facade, trying not to think of all the times he had climbed down to Catherine’s balcony from the roof of her apartment building. As he neared the window he heard music... a radio, he realized. Classical music. Hope stirred in him again. Who else in this place would keep both candles and music playing through the night? He couldn’t bring himself to quash his hope again. Steeling himself for the moment when it would be dashed, Vincent perched himself on the window ledge and regarded the figure in the bed.

He felt as if he had just been stabbed. The tiny creature who lay curled in the rough blanket and stiff white sheets was clad in a threadbare sweater and an institutional nightgown, not in lace and satin. Her hair was close cropped and dull, not a full golden brown luster carefully and fashionably maintained. Her flesh was sallow and lined, not rosy and fresh with promise. And it was his Catherine for all of that.

For a long time he stood in the window, afraid to stir or breathe, terrified of shattering this most fragile of dreams. He searched for her through the peculiar sixth sense of what had been their bond, but felt the same nothing that had plagued him since his illness; only the distant peacefulness of his sleeping son, with whom he was also always linked, if less strongly than he had once been with Catherine. Their son. This was Catherine. Catherine!

The blood hummed in his veins. The window was slightly opened. He could smell her, now. Her scent was sickly and tainted, but it was her! He couldn’t bear it. He opened the window further.

The gentle sound of wood against wood caused the figure in the bed to start. Trauma had made her senses more acute than they had once been. Green eyes milky with sleep fluttered open and focused on the candles. Then they flickered to the dark figure that stood illuminated in their dim light.

For one second their eyes locked. Vincent felt the world hold its breath, and his hand reached for her of its own accord. Then Catherine sat upright in bed, her eyes wild. "No!" she whispered.

"Catherine," he called, intending to tell her it was indeed him. He had come for her, at last.

Catherine’s mouth opened in a terrified scream, piercing through the halls of the institute, and lacerating his heart. He staggered back toward the window in confusion, part of him looking for an enemy, the other part already knowing that the enemy was him. Catherine continued to scream, the sounds echoing through the open window to the outside air, causing further echos to come from the halls as the nurse on duty rushed to the sound of distress.

Vincent was only just able to find the window, and he fell out of it, down ten feet to the hard ground, flat on his back. A light was flicked on above his head as he lay gazing upward, fully exposed, his hood having come off in the fall. His breath was gone. He didn’t know if it was from the fall or the shock. Voices came from Catherine’s room, soothing voices that finally brought an end to her screams. Words came to him, as the wordless heart of him was stunned almost to death. You are my world, he thought, beloved, eternal, forever. Catherine, Catherine! Forgive me! My soul is yours, my life is yours. I beg you, on my knees I would beg you...

In the back of his mind an awareness joined his. Jacob was joined to him as he was joined to Jacob. The child had awoken at the turmoil in his heart, and was frightened.

His life was not his own. His life was not Catherine’s, either. It was Jacob’s. Responsibility quashed both his heart and his mind, let them wander in circles aimlessly inside him, and forced him to his feet. By the time anyone thought to close the window, Vincent had disappeared into the darkness.

***

It was late morning by the time Vincent made it to the central hub. Many were waiting for him, ready to ask him where he had been, as he rarely stayed away so long without taking Jacob with him. Vincent’s days of wandering the lower tunnels for weeks were over. His mercurial habit of disappearing for days at a time was quelled by his responsibility to his son, who needed routine and stability. And each questioning face, when it saw Vincent’s, retreated to work without daring to open its mouth.

Vincent walked right through the tunnels without meeting anyone’s eyes. He followed common sense and his link and entered the creche, where Jacob was quietly building a tower out of wooden blocks. He looked up as Vincent entered the room, and Vincent could see the boy had been crying.

Without a word he picked the child up from under Mary’s gaze and walked off, cradling him against his chest. Jacob buried his face in his father’s hair and held him very tightly. Vincent walked to the cavern of whispers and found a spot on the board walk where he could sit against the wall. He sank to the boards and let the whispers drown out the voices and the groans in his head, let his son’s scent bury the waves of crushing emptiness that threatened to drown his soul.

Jacob sensed that whatever was wrong with his father was too strong for words. He hadn’t slept much, tormented with nightmares, and when he had finally awoken all was still dark, and his father wasn’t there. He’d run to find his GrandFather, but GrandFather seemed troubled, too. Now, his father holding him securely in his arms once again, he was willing to put up with anything, even an uncomfortable silent embrace in the whispering caverns. He endured for an hour, barely struggling, and then drifted off to sleep.

Finally, exhausted in heart, soul and body, Vincent rested his head on his son’s sleeping shoulder and... did not sleep. What he endured that day was nothing so peaceful and healing as sleep. But he did lose consciousness, and time in fact passed.

***