Author's notes: This bulk of this tale takes place approximately ten years before we were introduced to Vincent. The beginning segment of this chapter, which serves to set up the story that follows, includes Diana. Having said that, all but those severely allergic to 3S should be able to read it without squirming. If you feel you must, you can skip to the second segment and take up the story there ... but I'd be happier if you just read the whole thing. All you really need to know is that this is a story about the first time Vincent takes a life.

This story contains adult language.

The Sticking Place

By Lydia Bowe

He found Diana at her desk and on the telephone when he came down the stairs from the roof and into her loft. She glanced up as he walked in and Vincent immediately took note of her red-rimmed eyes and the bright patches of color on her cheeks. She'd been crying. Perhaps that was why he'd felt suddenly compelled to come here tonight. It would explain the gossamer thread of disquiet and sorrow he'd felt but hadn't been able to attribute to any of his family Below.

"Yeah, Suze, I know," Diana was saying. "I appreciate it. I guess you just caught me on a bad night, that's all … yeah, I will … you, too. Oh, and give Alex my love, huh? And Terrible Ted? … Okay, later." She gently placed the receiver in its cradle and rubbed her eyes with fingertips before giving him another quick look. He felt her discomfort at being discovered in moment of weakness and chose to disregard it.

"What can I do?"

She jerked a sad, wry grin and came around the corner of the desk, leaning a hip against it and folding her arms across her chest. "Take me out and get me drunk? Maybe the Village or Harlem? Someplace dark and smoky, with a blues trio. And lots of whiskey. Hell, we'll just buy a bottle. Then we can come back here and you can hold my hair outta the way while I pray to the porcelain gods and swear I'll never drink again. How 'bout it?"

Since they both knew that was unlikely to happen, he said nothing. Slipping out of his cloak, he tossed it on the armchair and turned back to face her.

"Right," she said, flipping up a hand in acknowledgement. "So that's out of the question, yeah? In that case, I guess maybe a hug would be okay."

That, he could do. So he opened his arms and she stepped into them. She let herself be held but didn't return the embrace. Vincent knew her well enough not to take umbrage. Sometimes Diana simply couldn't reciprocate.

"Do you want to tell me?" he asked after a minute.

And even though she shook her head as she stepped away, she said, "Had a visitor a while ago. Lou Hornsby. My old partner. Actually, my first partner. They teamed me up with him as soon as I got out of the academy. Within a year I was off the streets, off the force, and back in school. That's when I got my psych degree; when I went back the second time."

Diana moved to the arm chair and settled there, first shoving his cloak out of the way and then immediately pulling it back into her lap. She began to fidget with the laces on the rolled shoulder of the open right sleeve. "Got bumped straight to Homicide when I came back. Back-to-back degrees gets you a leg up, I suppose. I was asked to join the 210 a couple years later and got my shield. Youngest detective in the unit. Guess there's something to be said for graduating high school at sixteen. Gives you a couple year's head start on everybody else. You know why I left the force, that first time?" she asked suddenly, looking up at him with eyes that stung him with their intensity. He shook his head.

"I shot an eighteen year old in the head. Higher than a kite on something; PCP, I think it was - I don't remember now. Domestic call. By the time Lou and I got there, he'd already killed his girlfriend's mother; had a hold of his baby's momma and a gun to her head. The baby, maybe nine months old, sitting in the middle of the living room floor, screaming his little head off. Lou was trying to talk this kid down, but I knew it was gonna end bad; I could feel it. He wasn't watching me: too busy eyeballing Lou. You'd have to see him, he's a big sonofabitch. I saw the kid take a breath and tighten his finger on the trigger. I had the shot. So I took it. Right through his left temple."

"Diana."

"I came out of it in the clear. They ruled it as justified. But it still shook me pretty bad. Bad enough to turn in my resignation and go back to school. And I still ended up back on the force. Guess it's in my blood, just like Pop's. I don't regret shooting the kid: he would've killed that girl, too, and maybe his son. I just hate that it had to happen that way." Diana scrubbed her face and kept it covered with her hands long enough that Vincent found himself settling on a corner of the couch to wait her out. He gave her his stillness: a silence filled with attention and concern, and hoped she would be able to feel it, past her pain.

"So, anyway," she finally went on, letting her hands fall away from her face, "Lou came by earlier to let me know the girlfriend of the guy I shot was found dead by their kid yesterday. Came home from school and found her in the bathroom, needle still stuck in of her arm. She had a pretty rough time of it, too, after the shooting. Lou wanted to be the one to tell me. Didn't want me to hear it from anybody else. So, eight years ago, I made this boy half an orphan. I guess I kind of had a part in finishing the job yesterday."

"Diana, you mustn't think that." She gave no response and he wasn't sure she'd even heard him. He had the sense she'd be talking whether he was there or not. Her memories had become a poison she needed to purge before it made her any sicker.

"Then Sue – my sister? – just called. Said she had a feeling something was wrong. She's got a touch of the shine, too, you know? And of course she got me crying. I hate that. But that's not even the worst part. You know what is – what I still can't get over?" Diana finally pulled her attention away from the floor and focused on him again. "It's the way my mom looked at me when she found out what happened, what I'd done. It was right around the time she started to get really sick, before they found the cancer. She looked at me differently after that, Vincent, like she wasn't sure who I was anymore. I don't think I knew, either - not then. She never looked at me the same way again. And that's the worst part."

She levered up out of the chair and moved toward the kitchen, her motions jerky, tense. He followed her with his eyes, looking over his shoulder as she abruptly turned and propped an arm on the windowsill. She stared out the grimy window and into the city. He turned back and found his attention drawn to her work area and the floor to ceiling bookcases on the southern wall of the loft, crammed with books and music and the eclectic collection of objects that spoke of the woman Diana was.

"I know what it's like," he said after a while, breaking the fragile silence. "I know what it is to have loved ones look at you differently. I, too, have experienced that moment … when everything changes. When you realize what you're truly capable of."

He was aware her gaze had shifted from the window to him. Vincent glanced over long enough to meet that gaze and then turned back the way he'd been.

"Yeah," she said after a minute. "I bet you have. I never told anybody that: about my mom. Not until just now." Diana pushed away from the window and came back, dropping heavily onto the other end of the couch and pulling her legs up tight against her chest. He noticed the very tip of the smallest toe on her right foot peeking out through a tiny split in the seam of her sock. He was surprised - unexpectedly and pleasantly so - to see the nail painted a vivid red.

"So I guess that makes you my confessor," Diana was saying, as she finished settling into the corner. "You're almost as good as a priest, right?"

"Please," he responded, offering a gentle smile in return for the teasing that came even in the midst of her sorrow. "I've neither the justification nor the right to hear anyone's confession. I've too many sins of my own. And, despite what you might think, I've never aspired to live a life bereft of the more common pleasures denied those in the priesthood."

"Oh, really? Do tell," Diana encouraged. He was glad to see a familiar sparkle returning to her eyes. He often wished he could dispel his demons as quickly as she. He knew he tended to brood and lose himself in melancholy instead. He found Diana's easy resilience a pleasant counterpoint to his solemnity.

"Perhaps it might be better to share my experience with you," he decided. "So you won't feel quite as isolated, as … alone, as you do now. I would like to tell you how it was for me, if you'd like to hear it."

"Vincent, I'd gladly sit here all night and do nothing but listen to you talk; you know that." This came as she poked him in the thigh with her foot before folding up tight again, wrapping her arms around her bent legs.

"In my case," he began, shifting to a more comfortable position so he didn't have to turn to see her, "it was Cullen who heard my confession. I think perhaps because he'd not been a part of us for long, and so would ask of me the questions others Below wouldn't. For me, it happened late one spring, the year I turned twenty-three."

….

"Will you get your goddam hands out of the way so I can see what I'm doing?"

"Make up your mind, Winslow! We can't keep jacking this fucker and do that at the same time!"

Vincent glanced behind him at eight year old Mouse, who had firmly clamped his hands over his ears and was looking guilty simply for hearing words he knew he was forbidden to use.

"Gentleman," he addressed the small group of men gathered around the large, rapidly failing pump, "may I remind you there is a child present?"

"Yeah, one who shouldn't be here," Winslow shot over his shoulder. "Why he still following you around everywhere you go? Been almost two years, now. He should be with the other kids, not down here in this muck with us."

He couldn't argue against the last. This was no place for a child - nor for anyone, really, not now. The spring rains had been especially heavy, with the Lower Ripley branches in constant threat of being flooded. They'd been nursing the old pump for months now and, as evidenced by the nearly ankle-deep, cold and muddy water they stood in, it was soon to give up its ghost. The work crew trying to repair the motor was drenched, cold, and wholly cranky. Tempers had increasingly flared in just the few minutes he and Mouse had been there, sent by Father to obtain a progress report.

"Is there any more that can be done?" he asked Cullen and Robert, choosing to ignore Winslow's surly remarks.

"Maybe it's not the motor? I don't know." Cullen shrugged and gave a snap of his head, flinging droplets of water from his short-cropped hair onto already wet surfaces. "Damn thing is, can't figure out why the pump's bogging down. Makes no sense. The motor's cranking like it should be."

Mouse began tugging at the sleeve of his cloak.

"Shall I have Pascal send word to our Helpers? I know Sal has experience with mechanics." Derrick, husband to Olivia and master of all things with moving parts, had died from a fall off the West Serpentine the previous September. Since then the community had been relying on the combined knowledge of several of the men, chiefly Winslow, when a problem such as this would arise. "Perhaps a clean pair of eyes can see something that might've been missed." Off the black man's unhappy scowl, he quickly added, "In what I'm certain was a most thorough inspection."

"Can't hurt," Robert said, slowly unfolding from his crouch next to the pump and groaning as he bowed his back to ease tired muscles. "I think we've run out of ideas."

Another glance at Winslow showed a sullen, resigned expression. Cullen gave another shrug just as the tugging at his sleeve grew more urgent. He laid his hand on the boy's head and braced against the incoming waves of anxiousness, excitement, and ever-present curiosity. "What is it, Mouse?"

The boy raised wide blue eyes at him and screwed up his face, pulling him away from the others with a strength uncommon in a child his age. He allowed himself to be led away a small distance, cognizant that Mouse still wasn't comfortable speaking around most people – especially in groups.

The child's continuing reticence was an issue that would have to be addressed sooner rather than later. Though he had certainly blossomed in the two years since Vincent had volunteered to shoulder the task of hunting down what'd been thought to be a very resourceful rodent and had turned out to be a child instead, Mouse was, in many ways, still adrift in his own world.

Vincent knew the boy was sharply intelligent (the fact he'd survived on his own for as long as he had and at such a tender age was proof of that) but he lacked the discipline necessary to sit through daily lessons with children his own age, or to tackle the repetition required to learn such basics as reading and writing, or even proper speech. He had known almost from the beginning that Mouse was comfortable only with the extremes and had no patience for nuances of any sort; what he considered fillers: stepping stones from one point to another. His quick mind made leaps that required no in-betweens, whether it be words or the expression of ideas. But Vincent was certain, given enough time and attention, Mouse would discover his special talents and, once that happened, he would be set on the path to becoming all that he was meant to be.

"Not go-go," Mouse was whispering urgently as Vincent squatted down in front of him. He squeezed his eyes shut and scrubbed an arm under his nose. "Not go-go," he repeated and then mimicked, with astonishing accuracy, the sound of the struggling machine several yards behind them. "It's good. Better than good. In, out. Up, down. Those. No good. You know, Vincent?"

"No, I'm sorry, Mouse, I don't know what you mean. Can you use the name?"

That got him a sour looking expression as Mouse's features twisted in frustration. Then he glanced behind him and pointed at the pipes running the length of the tunnel. "Like those. But not. Stuff inside. Loose. No good. You know: in, out, up, down."

"The cylinders?" he asked with dawning realization.

Mouse reached and laid his palm against Vincent's cheek, his face brightening with a wide smile. "See? Vincent knows. Mouse, too. Needs new stuff."

"But how could you know?" He didn't doubt him, not for a second. He was simply awestruck by the implications.

"Look, look, look. Poke around. Take apart. No good. Have to listen." Mouse raised his bundled arms and pointed at the sides of his head. "Ears better than eyes, sometimes."

He impulsively gathered the child in his arms and held him only as long as he would allow the contact. "You are a treasure," he told him as Mouse wiggled free. "I think we must find Father straight away and share with him what a smart boy you are."

"Okay, good! Okay, fine!"

He stood and offered a hand that was swiftly taken by Mouse's much smaller one. Then he turned them back toward the men. "Winslow?"

"What? What the hell d'you want? We're trying to work here."

"Have you checked the seals in the hydraulic cylinders?"

As one, the three men grouped around the pump exchanged looks. Then Winslow glared back at him. His expression was answer enough.

"Might I suggest you check them before we ask Sal to make the trip down here? If it's the seals, I know Derrick kept several spare sets in his workshop. I'll have them collected and brought to you."

He waited a moment or two for Winslow's terse nod and, once received, turned back the way he and Mouse had come, studiously ignoring the grumbled mutterings coming from behind him.

"What the hell does that kid know about hydraulics, anyway? And Vincent: if it ain't something he read in one of those goddam books of his, he don't know it, either. All right, what're you two waiting for? Let's get these cylinders tore down!"

….

He nearly choked on his soup when Cullen suddenly appeared at his side in the Commons that evening, plopping down beside him on the bench. He'd been lost in his thoughts, assembling a lesson plan for the reading group he'd recently taken over for Father.

"You always eat supper so late? Or do you just not like crowds?"

Vincent took in Cullen's easy smile but still was made uncomfortable by the blunt inquiry. He often ate later than the rest of the community, that was true - or he would share supper with Father in the study, or alone in his chamber, usually with a book in one hand. He didn't like eating in front of others. The furtive glances only served to remind him of his differences: of his fanged mouth and cleft lip and the hands that remained furred and clawed, no matter how properly they might hold a knife and fork.

"The kid was right," Cullen went on, his toothy grin still in place. "The damn seals were shot. How'd he know that? It was Mouse who figured it out, wasn't it, not you?"

He set down his spoon and discreetly wiped his mouth on a cloth napkin. "Yes, he suggested they might need replaced." He was relieved Cullen's initial query seemed to have been rhetorical and the subject had changed. "The pump is working, then?"

"Good as new."

"Has Father been told?"

"First on the list. You're the second. Thought you might want to tell Mouse yourself. "

Cullen suddenly began slapping the tabletop where they sat, his hands drumming out a series of random beats before they went as quickly still. Vincent sensed the thread of nervous energy that'd provoked the outburst and absently marked it as part of Cullen's personality. Though the man sitting beside him, older by almost a decade, had been welcomed into the community over a year ago, Vincent still didn't know him well. And he was satisfied, for now, that it was so.

He didn't think he would describe himself as aloof, he thought, not precisely. Simply … cautious. There'd been so many adults accepted into the community over the last five years: Kanin had been first. Joshua and his wife, Marlene. Ezra and Trey. Then William - and Cullen, shortly after that. Good people, all, but in many ways still strangers to him – in ways none of the children brought there had ever been.

Adults were harder to read and had more armor shielding them, deeper disappointments and less wonder, than did children. And it was longer in coming, the time when he could pass them by in the tunnels or converse with them at gatherings and not feel their keen awareness of how different he was. Vincent much preferred to be the observer rather than the observed.

"Where is he, anyway?" Cullen was asking, his head swiveling this way and that.

"I can't say. Despite what Winslow thinks, Mouse is very independent and not always to be found at my side."

For some reason, that gained him Cullen's sharper attention. He suppressed the urge to turn away and instead studied his soup. It hadn't exactly been hot when he'd ladled it out of the enormous stock pot in the kitchen, and would surely be cold by the time Cullen left him in peace. He sighed unhappily.

"Ask you something?"

There was no good reason to refuse the man's request. Vincent's shoulders lifted slightly, the gesture neither encouragement nor rebuke.

"You ever get mad?"

He startled them both by abruptly twisting to lock eyes with Cullen. "What do you mean?" he asked, rather more curtly than he'd intended.

"I mean," Cullen responded carefully, spreading uplifted, open hands, "do you ever get mad? I've heard the way Winslow talks to you, for instance. And during common meetings, if folks get pissed about something and don't have the guts to take on Father, they blast you instead, just for backing him. Doesn't that ever make you mad? I'm asking 'cause I would've been more than happy to give Winslow the what-for this afternoon, the way he snapped at you. Why do you let him talk to you like that?"

"It is merely his way, Cullen. I take no offense because none is meant."

"Yeah, you seem to take no offense a lot. That's gotta eat at you after a while."

"I must ask: why the sudden interest in my temperament?" That got him a studious look that lasted long enough to make him even more uncomfortable than he already was.

"Guess I'm still trying to figure you out, is all."

Vincent had a clear sense of Cullen, then, and it was as he'd said: a simple, guileless curiosity. He couldn't help asking, "And what conclusions have you reached?"

Will he dare say it? Vincent wondered. Which of my many differences will he choose to point out? What does he see when he looks at me?

So he was caught completely off-guard when Cullen said, "You got a good heart, Vincent. And I think you've gotten it stomped on a time or two because of that. From what I've seen, you're so wrapped up in being and doing what you think people expect of you that you're not even sure who you are or what it is you want - or if you even have the right to want it. You're strung so tight I figure you've forgotten how to have fun, which is a shame for somebody your age. And I think you'd be a damn sight happier strolling through these tunnels with a pretty girl on your arm instead of towing around a snot-nosed kid who looks to be smarter than the rest of us, combined."

Cullen got to his feet then and delivered a pat and a squeeze to his shoulder. Leaning in close and smiling conspiratorially, he added, "And last but not least, I'm pretty sure the only inhuman thing about you, my friend, is that rigid self-control of yours. I'll let you get back to your supper."

Vincent bemusedly watched him walk away. Shaking his head, he returned to his meal, spooning up and swallowing the tepid soup without tasting it, his thoughts focused inward and on Cullen's proclamations.

….