Run To the
Sea
Chapter 9
Sue Glasgow
His head came up slightly, and he rasped, "Catherine, don't do this."
"I have to do this. I care too much about you not...to do this." She left the bed and came to stand by a chair across the table directly in front of him. "Vincent, I'm losing you. When you healed, things seemed better for a little while, until it was time to think about going Above again. I understand why you haven't come to the balcony, but you haven't been Above since it happened." Her words came faster, "You won't walk with me in the park...you wouldn't do simple deliveries for Father...you have argued with him. And just now you wouldn't even let me touch you." She paused. "I have respected your wishes because you needed time...but now you are not in that bed, and you are not in the darkness...I have waited." She pleaded softly, "Please let me help you."
He looked at her blankly. "If you want to help me, you will go home."
"All right. I will go home...if you will walk me home through the park right now. Samantha said it has stopped raining, and the park will be lovely."
He dropped his head and looked down at the table top. In a voice so low she could barely hear, he said, "You know I can't."
His words surprised her. "Vincent," she sat down in the chair and looked up toward his lowered face. "I care for you. I want you safe and out of harm's way...but not like this. Not because of hurt and fear. If you chose to stay Below because this is where you are satisfied and happy I could accept that...I would be glad for you. Father is contented here, and he never goes up. But your feelings about Above are burying you...you are turning your home into a prison. I'm afraid your feelings will destroy what you have here too. And then you will have no place." He did not return her look, and she leaned forward, placing her hands over his on the table. "Just now...when you were running toward the entrance. If you had not met Samantha in the Tunnel...where were you going to go?" She whispered, "Would you have gone out?"
He closed his eyes. Slowly he nodded. "Yes," he said, "I have already made that promise to myself...Catherine, I would never endanger the children...or you."
She released his hands. "So I am to take comfort in the knowledge you will be there for me in the dangerous times...? You will come when my actions put you at risk?" Her voice rose in its own kind of anger, and she stood again. "I can expect you to risk your life for me, but you can't walk with me in the moonlight...or share a poem with me on my balcony." Her chin began to tremble. "Well, I don't want that responsibility."
He looked up in alarm.
She straightened and stepped back from the table. Her anger melted, but her words were biting. "You were the one who taught me about courage and strength."
He stood erect, his eyes flashing with surprise and disbelief. After a long silence he stated, "You think I am afraid."
She felt the sting of tears. "I don't want to think that."
The expression in his eyes was the very same she had seen the day she had asked him if he was the vigilante slasher of the subways. There was the same look of disappointment and hurt, and the very real accusation that somehow she had let him down in her lack of trust.
Her voice broke, "I don't know what to think." She caught her breath. "Vincent, tell me."
"Catherine, there are darker shadows than fear in a man's soul." He turned his back to her and walked across the room.
"If it isn't fear, then what is it? Tell me what to think."
He leaned against his dresser and sighed. "It doesn't really matter. Think whatever you will." He turned toward his bed where his cloak lay. Catherine grasped his intentions, and she darted to the bed, snatched up the cloak, and ran to place herself between him and the doorway.
Vincent blinked at her for an instant. Any other time she would have appeared almost comical... expecting her tiny body to block his way. But Vincent was not in a mood for humor, and there was nothing funny about the determination in Catherine's eyes or the fierce grip she held on his cloak.
For a long moment they looked at each other, then Vincent broke the spell and moved to the ladder which led to the loft and the vestibule beyond. His foot was on the bottom rung when Catherine cried out, "Vincent, I have dreams!"
He stopped in mid-step.
She dropped into the large chair beside the doorway and clutched his cloak around her. She was suddenly so cold. She lifted her eyes to him and tried to steady her voice. "I have terrible dreams...of blurred people I don't know...laughing at me. I can't move, and they are in my face laughing...saying words I can't understand."
The breath went out of him.
"You said our bond makes us almost as one." She paused. "Vincent, am I dreaming your dreams?"
His head hung low, and with his back to her he whispered, "I'm sorry."
She spoke almost to herself, "Sometimes I wake up hot and sweaty...with a bad smell in my face," she paused, "and I get up...right there in the middle of the night...and take a bath."
"It doesn't wash off." She could barely hear his words.
"What doesn't? Vincent...?"
He put his forearm across a ladder step and trembled against it as he answered, "Humiliation...and shame."
Watching him carefully, she asked one more time, "Vincent, what did they do to you?"
Suddenly his control shattered, and his words came in a rush. "Catherine, they threw beer in my face!" His body shook with rage. Hisback was still turned to her as he gave out a great sob and gasped, "I was in chains like an animal, and they laughed. They beat me, and they mocked me...and they shamed me." His voice faded to a rasp, "And they threw beer in my face." His knees gave out beneath him, and he sank to the floor at the base of the ladder.
Catherine was beside him instantly. Great sobs were racking his shoulders as he clung to the sides of the ladder with both hands, and he hid his face. "I couldn't see...I don't even know where I was..., but it was everything Father ever warned me about. And at night...now...in my dreams..." His words faded as he choked back bitter sobs.
Catherine put her arms around him and hoped he would turn to her, but he did not. She buried her face against his hair and clung to him. Together they rode out the most violent of his emotions, until he was finally spent, and he sat panting and quiet. She took his hands from the ladder's bars, and he turned, leaning against the wall at the side of the ladder, with his head down, his eyes refusing to meet hers. She sat facing him, laying herself across his chest and bringing her arms around him. Vincent's arms were at his sides, and for a moment he made no move to hold her. But then finally she felt the warmth of his hands against her back as he enclosed her. And they sat in each other's embrace for a very long time.
With her head against his chest, Catherine could hear his heartbeat clearly. She could feel his every breath and the tension in the muscles of his back. For an instant, when she opened herself completely, she felt emotions and wisps of memories which were not her own, and she knew these must be fragments of their bond, revealed to her for the very first time. No, not the first time, she corrected herself... the dreams.
Suddenly she could remember details which had been forgotten before. She whispered in awe, "I have been there with you...in that place." She felt him hold his breath. "I felt those chains...and I felt those blows... There was a metal club...and some kind of torch."
He lifted his head and moaned, "Dear God, Catherine. No."
She held him tighter. "It's all right."
"I never meant to do that to you."
"I know." She whispered, "I know."
"I'm sorry."
She knew now why he would no longer go Above. The feelings, emotions, and reactions were not of fear. He was not afraid, but in him she could feel a flood of other things...disgust, anger, and an overriding repugnance for Above and all it represented...and for all it made him feel about himself. His words rang in her ears, "humiliation and shame" and then, "like an animal."
"Vincent," she pulled far enough away from him to look into his face, "there was no shame... They could hurt you, but they could never shame you. Your dignity is inside of you...no one can take that away from you."
She leaned against his chest and whispered, "They could never change what you are." Feeling him shake his head from side to side, she pulled back again. She put one hand up to touch his face and brought his eyes to meet hers. "There was no shame. How can I make you believe that?" And then she remembered the other time, the time when she was the one behind the gauze and tape. She drew back from him to take his right hand, and bringing it up to touch her left cheek, she guided his fingers to the scar that was still there just in front of her ear. She felt resistance in his fingers, a reluctance to touch...to feel the memory of that night. But she held his hand against her until finally his fingers released their tension, and his touch turned into a caress. She stroked the back of his hand, partly to keep him from pulling away, and partly because she needed the comfort of his touch. She whispered again, "They hurt me, too. A man cut my face...and I was hurt...and afraid, and angry. But did you ever think there was shame in that for me?"
He took his hand from her face and slipped it into her hair at the back of her neck. "Catherine."
"Vincent, what they did to you, and what they did to me, was their shame...not yours and mine. Your pride and your dignity belong to you...and no one...no one can take that away."
His eyes met hers, and she could not read the thoughts they hid...except that a new tear ran down his cheek. His hand gently pulled her head to him again, and she closed her eyes. Long moments later she murmured into his shirt, "Vincent, I want you to be free. You have to make your own decisions about Above, but you have to be free...to make your own choices." She pulled back again and brought both her hands to his face. With a quiver in her chin she smiled sadly. "I care for you so much." She met his gaze a moment longer, then she took a deep breath and sat up. "Will you walk me back?...as far as the park entrance?"
He nodded and pushed himself to his feet. Without a word he helped her up and lifted his cloak from the floor where she had dropped it. She watched, missing the warmth of his body. He must have sensed her chill, because he brought the cloak up behind her and wrapped it around her. She smiled as he smoothed it across her narrow shoulders. Then she touched his face to wipe away the tear, and he returned the softness of her smile with his eyes.
She spoke very quietly, "I believe you are enjoying this." Her chin quivered again, and she wondered if he would remember.
He took a deep breath and released the tensions. Stepping back from her, he took her hand. "I believe the correct response is...sometimes you just need a good man to take care of you."