Chapter 5

***

Journal of Charlotte Bakster

May 2^nd

I’m going mad again. I saw Vincent in a vision last night, and it was neither dream nor imagining. I saw him, heard him, caught his scent, which means full, all out, multi-sense hallucination. I don’t understand. Did I call him out of my psyche with the message I wrote yesterday?

The thing that really scares me is, I’d rather be mad and see him than sane and not. And the truth of that terrified me.

By interesting coincidence, I saw that red headed woman again. Her name is Diana Bennet, and she thinks she might know where my child is. If that’s the case, I need my strength. I don’t know why I trust that woman so. Why do I feel as if she’s a long lost sister, someone who knows my soul as well as I do? I can’t explain it. I suppose it’s inexplicable. Perhaps it’s the air of confidence she has.

She says that maybe I need to talk to my strength, to Vincent, in order to own it again, become fully sane. If my consciousness conjures him up again, I think I’m going to try that. Screaming the hallucination away hasn’t made me feel any better. Let’s see what indulging it does.

 

***

She was in a dreamless sleep when something – a presence – awoke her. She was almost expecting to see the dark figure that stood by the window. Tonight his hood was up, and he stood very still. She took in a deep breath. "It’s you," she whispered.

"Yes," he said. Oh, his voice! It was so familiar, so comforting. "I’m sorry to have frightened you last night."

She grimaced, her brow furrowing. "It wasn’t you."

"So I understand," Vincent said. He was at a loss for what to say. His usual mild empathic sense was useless. The Bond they had once shared was broken, but more, his empathy was blind to the woman in the bed. Usually he knew exactly what needed to be said, to anyone. Now he felt like an actor performing Shakespeare without a script. There were old plays he could draw on, but the lines for this scene were missing. "Would you like for me to go?" he asked.

She sat up a bit. "I can do that?"

"At your word, I am banished forever," he said evenly.

She swallowed. "You’re a very accommodating manifestation of madness."

He couldn’t help it. He took a step toward her. "I am not your madness, Catherine."

She closed her eyes at the name. "I haven’t heard that name in years."

"My heart has uttered it every moment of every day."

Her eyes searched for his in the candle light. "Lower your hood," she asked. She wanted to see him, see him properly. He hesitated, and then did so, revealing the golden mane, the unique face. She measured him for long moments. Then she smiled. "Yes," she whispered. "That is what I longed for. Vincent."

The sound of his name drew him another step forward. She looked so pitiful, pale and weak and weary. It was all he could do to keep from catching her up in his arms. But that would frighten her, and he could never risk that.

She licked her lips. "I miss you so."

"I miss you."

She looked away for a moment, torn. "Why are you here?" she asked. "Why? Did I call you from the depths of my mind? Why now?"

Vincent shook his head. "I can’t explain why," he said. "Not yet. In time you will come to understand all of it. In the meantime, I am here for you. Always."

"Then I am mad."

"You are frightened of that thought."

"I’m afraid of falling backwards," she said. "Of being unable to separate fantasy from reality, of losing myself. I’m afraid to be the creature I was after They were finished with me." She shook her head. "But Diana... a woman I met today."

"I know Diana," he said.

She looked confused, but then her faced cleared. "Of course you do. You know all I want you to know. You know everything I’m feeling."

"No," he said, though it hurt his heart to admit it. "I do not. I wish I still could. But you are gone from me. More, even a blind spot in my senses. It pains me. But I know Diana."

She swallowed. "Diana said I should talk to you. That perhaps I’m coming out of my madness, and that is why you’ve returned. So that I can regain own my own strength."

"I am not your strength, Catherine," he said. "You are your own strength."

She shook her head. "Then I have no strength left at all."

"You are stronger than I will ever be," Vincent said. "It is only you which has shown me the meaning of the word."

She looked down. "I’m not strong. I hide here in this empty, structured world because I can’t bear the life outside. I can’t bear to look on the people and imagine the darkness in their souls. Even the daylight frightens me. I fear this life. I loathe it. As much as I loathe this place."

"Then why have you not tried to find a way out of it?" Vincent asked.

"To kill myself?"

Vincent had meant to end the life in the institute, to take control again and face the world Above, but he supposed her question was legitimate as well.

"It takes more passion to end a life than I have," she said. "It takes conviction. There’s nothing strong enough left in me to even make that decision."

"I’m glad," he said. "Not that you are unhappy. But that you could endure, until I could find you again."

There was something in his voice. "Have you been searching for me?"

Guilt crushed him. "I’ve held you in my heart," he said. "I searched for you in my dreams and memories, followed your shade through a thousand dark tunnels. But I truly believed you were no longer in this world. If I had thought for one second that you were, there is nothing, nothing that would have kept me from your side. I would have traveled the world, risked all, suffered any pain to find you."

Catherine smiled. "That’s the kind of thing I always imagined you’d say," she said. "How lonely I must have been to have conjured such profound love. Nothing realistic, only so powerful it was dangerous."

"You were not lonely when I knew you, Catherine. You had hope and friends and a life in the light. You ended my aloneness, Catherine. You did not need me to end yours."

Catherine’s brow furrowed. "I’m alone now," she whispered. "I’ve been alone so long."

"I’m with you."

She shook her head. "The dream of you is not strong enough, Vincent. Not strong enough to hold me together enough to face this world. I imagined it was, once, after I met you. I think. I’m not sure when I created you, when my memories became corrupted..."

"Think of them as true, Catherine," he said. "To ease your confusion. It will make things simpler."

She took a breath to steel herself. "That’s dangerous territory."

"Our lives have been lived on danger. You can only survive in the mind you have. To create a false truth at the request of another may make things simpler, but it does not make them true."

"I know you can’t understand," Catherine said. "You are what you are, so you couldn’t begin to accept that you are the falsehood."

"I am true in your mind, am I not?" he asked. "I believe I understand you better than any, even as we stand today. For whatever reason, I am the truth you need to hold. Don’t reject it, or you shall only remain lost!"

Catherine buried her face in her hand. "I’d like to believe you."

"Then indulge," he said. "Just for tonight, believe whatever you want to believe."

She stared up at him. "I believe I love you," she said.

He had to go to her. He crossed the room and almost touched her face, but he didn’t dare. This fragile dreamworld she lived in could be shattered, and she would be frightened again. He pulled his hand back. Instead he bent low, kneeling close by her bedside, until her breath caressed his cheek, and he could feel the heat of her across those few scant inches. But he did not touch her. "I believe I love you, too," he whispered.

The moment hung between them, glowing, and then was dashed to pieces as the sound of voices passed in the hall. The nurse on duty poked her head in the door, checking on the patient who had suffered such a difficult night the day before. She was surprised to see the patient awake. "Everything okay in here?" she asked.

"Yes," said Charlotte quietly, banishing remorse. When she looked back toward the open window, Vincent, of course, had never been there.

***

"This is too dangerous," Father said as Vincent again trudged himself in long after daybreak. "There has to be another way."

"There is no other way, Father."

"Someone else can assume the risk," Father said. "Diana, or - or Peter. Surely someone who lives Above can go to her safely."

"No one has a chance of reaching her but me," Vincent said. "Surely, in your heart even you know that."

"I know that your son is asking for you, and I cannot tell him you will surely return."

"I am back below the city by daylight, Father," Vincent said, exasperated as he felt as a teenager, when Father had chastised him for merely walking the park. "It only takes this long to travel the tunnels between here and there. Try to understand. None but I have a chance of breaking through the hard walls of ‘impossible’ which common sense has built around her."

Father hated himself for saying this, but someone had to. "Is it best that those walls are shattered, Vincent?"

Vincent snarled, not entirely surprising his Father. "She is in prison Father! A prison of her own choosing. The world Above has betrayed her, battered her beyond recognition! She has already rejected it, hiding in shadows, in a cold, impersonal cell, in memories of our possibility. How can you believe it best that she remain in a coffin, awaiting her death?"

Father smiled, reassured. "Of course," he said. When it came to Catherine, Vincent knew best. All his warnings and roadblocks, all his cautions and cares came about partially as a test of Vincent’s feelings. If he could not weather Father’s cautions, he could never weather the reality.

"We have never taken a member into our community who needed this place more, Father. Even if it were not Catherine, if it were a stranger in her position, you would be compelled to draw her here. How could you say such a thing to me?"

"So that you could reassure me," Father said. "Nothing more. I know I cannot stand in your way where she is concerned. I only worry."

Vincent took a deep breath. "Where is Jacob?"

"Awaiting you in your chambers. He would not join Mary and the others. Lena is with him."

Lena was sitting in a chair, watching Jacob and Baby Cathy playing on the floor, Jacob with the toy elephant which had once been Vincent’s, Baby Cathy with a much battered and recycled porcelain doll, which had seen its way through at least ten children Below. Baby Cathy was nearly a year older than Jacob, but Jacob seemed the elder of the two. Jacob lifted his head as Vincent came in. "Father!"

Vincent picked the boy up and kissed him.

"You saw Mommy?"

"Yes," Vincent said.

"When she coming?"

Vincent shook his head. "As soon as she can, Jacob." He set the boy on the floor and nodded at Lena. "Thank you."

"Don’t mention," Lena said. "How’s she doing?"

Vincent took a deep breath. "Not well," he said. "She’s frightened. Hopeless."

Lena frowned. "I wish there was some way I could help her. As she helped me."

"You are," he said. "Thank you for watching Jacob."

"He’s too antsy to play in the creche. He’s better here." Lena took a deep breath. "You know, when she died, my heart broke. I felt as if I’d lost my sister."

"Many felt that way," Vincent said. Even the mention brought a darkness back into his soul. Catherine might be alive, but he had traveled through a hell of grief, and that journey was not going to wash away from him in a night. Or ever. He sat down heavily.

"I was thinking...," Lena said. "One of the ways which made it possible for me to come back here, after I left... she asked me, like, what happened. I was able to tell her all of it. And she like understood, because... she felt the same way. About you, about everything." Lena shook her head. "Catherine doesn’t have that. She doesn’t have anyone really listening. All she has is doctors who tell her she’s crazy. Believe me, I’ve been in psych wards, they aren’t very nurturing. Maybe if you ask her about what happened to her, she can, like, purge the poison of it all." She shrugged. "Just an idea. I’m not like you, you’re probably way better at this than I am."

Vincent regarded her. "No," he said, resting his forehead on one finger. "I am at a loss. And you have your gifts too, Lena. You may well be right."

Lena swallowed. "Can I say something? There was a little part of me, when I heard what happened to her... I wasn’t glad or anything, but I kind of thought, maybe, after a lot of years went by, maybe you could see someone else, maybe even me. I liked that idea. I still love you. But... I’m so damned happy she’s okay. Happier even than I would be if you’d, like, fallen at my feet or something." She shrugged. "I just wanted you to know that."

Vincent grunted half a laugh. He looked up at her, his face half shadowed by his hand. "I do love you, Lena," he said, trusting her to know what he meant.

She did. "Thanks," she said, only a trifle ruefully. She scooped up Baby Cathy and turned to Jacob. "Your daddy needs some sleep, Jacob, so he can try and bring your mama back. You ready to go to Mary now?"

Jacob frowned. "I guess," he said. He gave Vincent a kiss before he left with the young woman.

Vincent sat and thought for a few moments before seeking his bed. Lena had pointed something out to him. A great deal had happened in the time they had been apart, hardships, horrors, possibilities. In order for them to be together again, to have a chance at reconstituting their Bond, or even shoring up their dream of a life together, there was much which had to be shared.

***

Charlotte didn’t even go to sleep that night. When he came to her window, she was awake, waiting for him. "Catherine," he whispered.

Her breath caught. "I thought... maybe you wouldn’t come if I didn’t sleep."

He swallowed, nervous. "Is that why you haven’t slept?"

"No," she said. "That’s why I tried to sleep. I just couldn’t."

He smiled, pleased.

"I’m glad you came back," she whispered. "Even if it means I’m completely mad."

"Don’t think that way," he said gently.

"You disappeared last night," she said. "I couldn’t think why."

She really thought she was talking to a hallucination, whom none could see but herself. "It doesn’t matter why," he said. He leaned against the wall and watched her. She was sitting straight, and her eyes were brighter than they had been. "How are you feeling?"

"Better, surprisingly. I’ve been... distant and unhappy. Things seem... more real, somehow. My vision is clearer, scents more sharp." She shook her head. "Maybe Diana is right. Maybe I am getting better, despite... well, you."

"Or because?" he asked, almost amused.

"Well, I might think that, but don’t say that to Dr. Malachy."

"Is she kind to you?" Vincent asked. "Trust you?"

"I don’t know," Catherine said. "It’s not her job to trust me, it’s her job to heal me."

"Does she care about you?"

"I think so," she said. "She tries, anyway."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Neither of them really wanted to discuss Dr. Malachy. Vincent steeled himself. "I wanted to ask you about something," he said. "It might be hard to say."

Catherine licked her lips. "What?" she asked in a tiny voice.

"I know so much of your life," he said. "I knew your heart, you opened your world to me. But then I was severed from you. I know what torments I suffered while you were gone. I do not know what happened to you, when you were taken."

She swallowed. "When I was busy inventing you and the world Below, you mean?" Catherine asked.

"When you were alone," Vincent corrected, without denying her statement.

Catherine shook her head. "So alone. You don’t want to hear this, Vincent. It’ll only hurt you, make you angry."

"I’ve passed through my anger," Vincent said. "Burned through my grief. I endured. One day I will tell you of it. The journey was long and harsh. But to become a part of you again, I need to know yours. Can you bring yourself to tell me?"

"If you can hear it, I can tell it," she said.

"Tell me."

She took a deep breath. "It wasn’t the Spanish Inquisition, but... in some ways it was worse. I was alone, completely solitary the entire time. They would not speak to me. I was taken once every few days to a room... a bright room... where They would strap me down and... put things in me. All with medical precision, but it was so... cold. I was a thing to Them, not even a patient, just... some beast They had to monitor. And all I had was my aloneness and my hatred for Them and this tiny..." she half sobbed, "tiny life I could feel growing inside me, that I knew I wasn’t able to protect from Them. I knew They would take him, and I wouldn’t be able to stop Them. So I thought of you."

Vincent regarded her. "Of me?"

"All the time. Every second of every day. I lived through our life together. What it was to hold you for the first time, the relief I felt when you came to my balcony, how it felt to have you watch over me as I slept, how my heart leapt every time you even touched my hand. I wasn’t alone in these thoughts. I was never alone."

"I’m glad I could be there for you," Vincent said, his heart aching. He would have given so much to have been there through her pregnancy, to have rubbed the swelling from her ankles, to massage the tension from her neck, to kiss her when she felt overwhelmed. Instead all she had was an empty room and her memories. At least he had been there in them.

"And then They took him," Catherine continued, "and the pain was over. I was floating and still and I saw you there. On the roof."

"Yes." Vincent’s voice was hoarse. He wasn’t sure he could relive this even with the knowledge that she was here with him, right now.

"It was so beautiful, Vincent," she said. "How you held me through it, the sound of your voice. And I wasn’t afraid anymore."

Vincent gazed at her. He hadn’t been able to see the beauty through the agony. Now that she mentioned it, it was tragic and sad and beautiful. "You weren’t?"

"No," she said. "I wish I had died then, in your arms, with your tears on my face. It would have been the perfect ending to my life. I wouldn’t have asked for anything better. It was heaven."

"Or the sweetest portion of hell," Vincent whispered.

Catherine smiled wistfully, and then her face darkened. "Instead I woke to pain and terror and madness and grief," she said. "Nothing so easy as death."

"I should have been with you."

"You were too much with me," Catherine said. "You engulfed me. I couldn’t find myself. You came to protect me from it all, surged up through me and gave me a place to hide behind you. I had three tools left in my hands. You, the world Below, and those words... those words... And death shall have no dominion. All else was broken and wounded, gasping out my little life behind those three legs that counted as my only stability."

"I had only the memory of your love," Vincent said, forgetting he was supposed to be playing a part. "And the hope of Jacob. And the chance for revenge. The last nearly consumed me. If you had not told me of Jacob I would have died, let the Other take me until I was raw flesh, shattered on the rocks. But I had to live for our son. And oh, Catherine, he is worth it. Worth every moment. Worth any pain, any risk! Would you could have seen him grow!"

She was staring at him, her eyes wide. "Jacob?" she whispered. "The child is with you?" She began to cry silently.

He wished he knew why she was crying. It was agony being blind to her feelings! "Why do you cry?" he asked, desperate.

"Then he is dead," she whispered.

Vincent broke. He went to her, smoothed the tears from her cheeks with his strong golden hands, held her face tenderly. "No, no, Catherine! He lives! He lives with us, Below, and is loved and cherished by all!"

Catherine tensed under his hands, willing herself not to feel it, unwilling to push it away. "Below is a world that only exists in me," she gasped. "If he lives there, he only lives in me!"

He pulled her toward him. "Catherine!" he whispered, less than an inch from her face. "You must have faith in yourself! Your heart knows the truth."

She shook her head, cradled in his palms. "I fear the truth. If I embrace one truth, I’ll never see you again! But if I follow the lie, I have lost all, and will descend again into that wordless blackness!"

"Your – mind – is – whole," Vincent said, punctuating every word. "Your soul was wounded from what they had done to you, and needed to rest. It rested behind wordlessness and violence, and it is a terrible, dark place. I know. But you must have faith. Put your trust in yourself." Her breath was intermingling with his, and he felt as if gravity’s pull had changed. The earth’s pull was light on his body compared to the weight of her breath, drawing him into her. "Put your trust in me."

Their lips met, and their worlds collided. A sea of grief met an ocean of terror, and they crashed together with the force of a hurricane. For one moment they both stood stunned by it, the sudden relief of feeling whole for the first time in more than two years. Then the seas eddied and swirled, the crashing of a thousand surfs, and Catherine gripped him as if she would break him in two. Her teeth found his lips and she fixed herself on him, again and again, as if she would swallow him. He held his arms rigid, keeping himself as tense as he could to keep from crushing her to powder against him. Yet he could not keep those arms from pulling her closer, his rigid fists from caressing her shoulders as gently as his inflamed body knew how.

She flung herself at him, and he let her, allowing her to control his body, to push him to his back on her bed, to cover him with her tiny strength. She pulled away from his lips, her wild, desperate mouth kissing and biting down his face, his throat, and he groaned. There had not been a single sexual thought that had even touched him since Catherine’s "death". Now it all surged back through him like a volcano, firing every portion of his flesh, burning along every hair, gripping his heart in a vice.

He gripped tight to his words before they fled before the onslaught. No! Not like this! He could not control himself, he knew. He doubted Catherine would even try, as desperate as she seemed to be. They would alert the other members of the institution, the officials, the nurses. They would be found out, and that would be the end of all.

With a monumental effort against the inexorable tide of their need for each other, Vincent took hold of Catherine’s shoulders and forced themselves back to a sitting position. For a long moment he held her there, their breath heaving in a mutual windstorm. "We must end this," he whispered.

"No!" Catherine gripped him tightly and tried to pull him back to her.

"Not this," he said, and kissed her briefly. "Not us. You and I will never be apart. But this half life you lead here... this must be over. It’s time for you to leave this place."

Catherine swallowed. "I don’t have anywhere else to go. The outside world has no place for me."

"I understand that," he said. She still did not believe that he was real, that the world Below was a real place. It didn’t matter. She was ready to accept it, even if it did not exist. That was enough for her, and it was enough for him. To get her out of here, to begin her healing, was the important thing now.

"I’m going to tell you something now, and you must believe me. Tomorrow," he said, "Diana will come to see you again. She will bring with her a guest, a face you will recognize. You will know who he is, but you must not say it. When you see them, I want you to remember that I was here with you tonight, and that I will be with you, always. You hold your own strength. Bear that in mind when they come to you."

Catherine swallowed. "Will I be frightened?"

"Perhaps," he said. "But you have lived in fear, swum in fear, swallowed fear so long it is all you know. See through the fear, and search for the hope. And at the end of that dark tunnel, we will find each other again. I swear it."

"I believe you," she said.

Vincent knew he had to leave. He couldn’t be so close to her, not with the hunger that was raging in his blood. He knew better than to fear that hunger, but he had to fight it now, until the time and the place was safe for both of them. He stood, forcing his arms to release her. "Believe in me, Catherine. Believe in the possibility." He paused in the window. "Believe in the dream."

***