Authors Note: As AU as AU can get, but they stole into my brain and took it over. It started out as a possible idea of "The Five Times Vincent saw Catherin and the one Time He Didn't" but then it spawned its one life and she got rather bossy about where this was supposed to be going. The title is a reference to Alighieri, as are things within it. Written as a Yuletide Assignment.
ACT I
Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice must be ended.
- Inferno
Week 2
The pony was pastel pink with neon blue hair that waved, covered from hoof to nose in purple and green glitter, the favorite color combination of last week, and her name was Lady Laurabell.
She had been stolen a week ago.
Lady Laurabell had been replaced with Lady Angelina before that day had finished, her father easily moved by her confused cry. Even though it was more a wound of being stolen from than of something being lost, her father saw it as a new plea for attention from his little girl and brought forth something new.
Lady Angelina, with a violet body and white hair, had been tinkered with and cast off in days. She didn't have scrape marks on her side from tumbling down while rough housing on the hill, or the same stance. She'd been a poor replacement for the thing she truly wanted.
She'd convinced herself she'd have no more of them.
Yet there Lady Laurabell was.
Sitting on the pavement near a sewer tunnel opening where she'd been accidentally dropped from the top of their favorite tree that week earlier, breaking the foreleg and landing her in the sewage runoff. Which one of these had bothered young Catherine more was hard to decide.
But Lady Laurabell had definitely been gone by the time she'd made it down the tree to retrieve her fallen friend.
The foreleg now had a tiny bandage on it, which she fiddled with to reveal the glued line, where it had been broken, before tying it back. She looked around but there was no one nearby. There was nothing but the park and the sewer tunnel and the sound of the children playing in the distance.
Unsure of what to do, yet knowing her father expressly said 'you never got something for free' and 'don't forget to repay the favors done to you', Catherine wandered off clutching Lady Laurabell only to return to the spot again.
It was poor payment for her precious treasure but, she left a collection of the beautiful rocks and wild flowers collected earlier that day.
When she came back two hours later her pile was gone.
Week 4
Catherine and Lady Laurabell were half way up the tree again, when the clearing caught her eye and then she was back down there. They poked about the area, but there were no more shoe prints or clues to the rescuer now than there were then.
She frowned peevishly, stalking away from the area, stopping at the opening to look back with narrowed eyes before a smile spread across her lips.
Week 5
When she returned next she left a New York snow globe in the place she'd found Lady Laurabell.
After a considering look at the area, she'd run off to play in the park.
Hours later when she returned it had been replaced with a small white statue of a cherub, the area just as empty of foot steps and clues as before.
Week 6
She left a yellow and orange slap bracelet with shiny stars.
She found a tiny brown teddy bear, covered in red dots, with one mended ear.
Week 7
She left a small mime-jester clown doll.
Catherine tried to watch the area and her gift for the unseen companion, but a bout of boredom had caused her to look away to three children flying a large, orange tiger kite.
When she looked back there was a picture frame decorated with colorful feathers.
Week 8
She left a thin, black book.
Her eyes didn't move from the spot where the book lay, as she rested on the hill above the pipe, watching the entrance from the park—the only way to enter the small cove. She didn't look away to any noise, or close her eyes when she had to scratch her nose.
Her surprise in the direction the cloaked form came from - out of the tunnel, in halting steps, looking about the area until they reached the middle point - silenced her until they'd gotten to her small gift, crouched down, to pick it up, turning it so the spine might be read.
"It's a book of famous quotes," Catherine called out, pushing herself up from her hiding place.
The figure spun on its heels, glancing in her direction, and started back for the tunnel immediately.
"Hey! Wait!" She called out, dashing down the hill, regretting that it might be perfect for watching, but it was more trouble to get down from quickly.
The cloaked figure had made it into the tunnel before she'd hit the clearing area and she followed, determinedly, splashing sewage on her neat white stockings and saddle shoes as she ran down it's length.
It emptied out into an exchange of tunnels, each with a dead end.
She knew. She'd checked three times each way.
Catherine made her way out, picking at her stockings, confusion and annoyance premier among her emotions, before she spotted the trinket that had fallen in the cloaked figures dash between gathering up her book and the tunnels that went no where.
It was cord necklace with a pendant that resembled a peacock feather.
Week 9
She left a box of chocolates.
She watched it, but nothing happened.
She left the area, but it was still sitting there.
Week 11
The first week had passed with no change at all.
The chocolate box was gone when she returned but the small brown candy wrappers were littered all over the ground and an investigation of the area turned up an ant-covered bottom of the box.
She tried to leave a peace offering of a very pretty silver watch with a yellow face plate, but it didn't move any more that week than the chocolates had the week before, or the set of playing cards with the art picture backs the next week.
Dejected Catherine lingered by clearing all day, tugging at a piece of honey-brown hair.
She wandered into the tunnels, looking at the walls. She covered these areas endlessly trying to figure out how one might vanish, but she had never found anything changed any of the weeks.
"I didn't mean to scare you off. I rather liked your gifts, our exchange of them, and I thought I would rather like to meet you, too. I won't hurt you. Truly, I won't. I just wanted to say thank you."
She kicked a rock into the tunnel, before leaning her back against one side of the big pipe.
"You aren't even here, are you?"
"Catherine?"
Her head snapped up to see her governess at the edge of the clearing, with a look of dawning horror as the girl emerged from the tunnel.
"Catherine, what are you doing in there? Come out this instant!"
The woman rambled on in her atrocious fashion gathering Catherine's attention entirely. Regretful for being caught, more than being there, she trudged out, offering up half heart excuses.
Caught up in her encounter, she missed the shadow that shifted at one of the divergent tunnel openings.
Week 15
The lecture her father gave was far more blistering than her governess, especially as he decreed she wouldn't return to the park for a month. When she was finally allowed back she didn't venture toward the area or bring gifts.
She had soda and lunch on a blue cloth in the middle of the park, while reading a book and playing with her ponies.
Week 17
Catherine hadn't meant to go near the sewer again - her father had been full of talk about taking away her bower playtime for longer, or worse - but she couldn't keep away from her favorite tree.
Her governess had relented to let her play near it.
It was when she was sitting in the tree top she spied the thick blue book settled on the ground in the clearing. She eyed it, moving down the tree, and entered into the area warily.
She stared at it on the ground, with the silver scrawl of Dante Alighieri on the cover, before giving it a hard nudge with her shoe.
"That world did nothing so evil as to deserve your abuse of it."
Catherine's head snapped up to see someone shifting in the shadows inside the sewer tunnel.
"I was" - The book forgotten instantly, she looked at the person, then back over her shoulder to the park, and then again to them. "They told me I'd imagined all of it. But you're real. Aren't you?"
"As real as you are." The figure backed up as she took two steps toward the tunnel. "No, don't. Please."
The panic, more than the words, stopped her. She looked around, eyes landing back on the book.
"I didn't bring you anything. I could bring you something for it next week." She rambled onward, torn between running forward and picking up the gift on the ground behind her. "I only get to come to the park once a week."
"I know."
"Do you? How?"
"I see everything that happens in the park."
It was the bravado of the boy's voice, for he must assuredly be a boy, which made her laugh. "Right. And how old are you?"
"I don't know exactly."
"Why not?" When there was no forthcoming answer, Catherine pressed her lips together and tried again. "What do you think it is?"
"Fourteen or fifteen."
"You are not too very much older than me, and I will older soon enough."
"Your birthday is coming?"
"Oh, yes," Catherine said, with a bright smile. "Father is taking us to Italy for a two month holiday, for his business and my birth-"
She looked over her shoulder at the calling of her name.
"That's Miss Hilda. She's must have come looking for me. I must go. I can't be found here or they won't let me come back. I have to go," she repeated, picking up the book on the ground and dashing toward the opening. She stopped at the top and looked back.
"You'll be back next week, won't you? Pretty please?"
Her name was called again, much closer, and she ran off before she could hear the answer.
ACT II
He goes seeking liberty, which is so dear, as he knows who for it renounces life.
- Purgatorio
Week 18
He knew what Father would say. He shouldn't have come. He shouldn't have spoken to atop worlder. He shouldn't have left things. He shouldn't have fixed her toy months ago. Children weren't allowed out into the park without a chaperone. It was a rule.
He was the exception to that rule.
He was the exception to near every rule.
Vincent had decided four times he wouldn't go, and five that he must.
His word had been given, in each action shown; in the hundred moments he watched her playing in the trees, in the park, in the giddy whirl of their exchanges, in the boldness that moved him to defend the printed words he cherished.
Two hours had passed beyond the latest he'd seen, and he was turning to make his way back through the metal door, when he heard the scattered rocks that announced running feet and she broke into the space before the tunnel.
She was an angel; even with her honey-brown hair escaping every way and face flushed full red, her mouth already pouring forth words before she even stopped to catch her breath.
"I'm here, I'm here! The car broke down and daddy decided I wouldn't come to the park, but I threw a fit and told them I only got the one day, that I had to come, I had to. Because of the lateness I've only been allowed half an hour, but I'm here!"
Her breath was rushed; she swallowed and panted; in the silence that settled in the echo of her loud words in the tunnel. Even in her panting, she was starting to smile as her eyes adjusted to the dimness and settled on his shadowed form watching her.
"I'm here," she said again, her tone shifted from desperation into glory. And then, breathing hard, still, "I'm Catherine."
"I know," he said, hand still on the wall, considering running from her and walking closer, especially as his words caused her to laugh.
"Oh, that's right. I remember. You see everything."
"Not everything."
"No?"
"Your care giver called for you last time and you answered to it."
That earned him a smirk. "The proper response when someone tells you their name is usually to tell them yours."
"My name is Vincent."
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Vincent. I brought you a cupcake today, because I had to rush away so quickly from my house," Catherine said proffering it on an open palm. The top covered in pink icing and the bottom oddly shaped from being clutched while she ran.
He watched her from the end.
"You don't dislike cupcakes, do you? It's double chocolate. We made them yesterday afternoon."
He edged closer to her, heart thundering in his chest, louder than any voice or sound in the world, until he could reach out and grab it from her hand, then scurry back about five feet from her.
"You wear gloves, too? Don't you find yourself burning up?" Her voice was concerned and curious, but she hadn't moved from where she was standing.
"It is nothing."
Week 20
"I tried to read your book."
"And?"
Catherine kicked the dirt with her shoe and shook her head. "It's an interesting topic, but the poetry is dense. I mean, I am trying. I haven't given up."
"It is the rise and fall of mankind, the intolerable suffering followed by an incredible grace. It isthe truth of the darkness and the light, the worlds where they intermingle, and the impermanence of life's assumptions."
He reached up to rub his face.
"You don't talk like anyone I know," she said, the awe louder in the air than her voice.
He settled his hands back down in his lap, looking toward her. "Neither does Dante, but the Inferno will be worthwhile if you continue to persevere."
"So says you."
"It will be."
Week 21
"So that was when I told Marcy that Samantha had rocks in her head if she believed - I'm boring you, aren't I?"
He could tell that she was frowning by the tone in her voice, but felt her greater concern for being foolish in possibly having wasted what there was of their tiny time.
"What were you looking at?"
Vincent pointed upward at the sky and the nebulous green bower of leaves on the trees beyond them in the clearing. He didn't leave the tunnel and he'd grown marginally comfortable with her need to sit nearer to him.
"Wow. I really must have been boring you."
He looked down at his lap, smiling faintly even as she couldn't see it for over-sized black hood. "I am capable of doing more than one thing at a time."
"And what was I saying then?"
"You think your friend should show more compassion for people who've been through hardships and who are new to your known surroundings." A tinge of amusement was in his voice, and he went on as she only answered with a noise of acceptance.
"I was thinking it is so bright out here. There are so many colors and shades that it becomes another world - better than a painting or a dream."
When he found himself bereft of words, Catherine supplied herself into the silence. "Your home is not like this? Where could you-"
"Home is beautiful."
He winced at how quickly he said the words, how proud and defensive they sounded, and the trill of an almost growl in his tone.
"Certainly it must be," she agreed, very softly. He felt her eyeing him even without looking, something both doubtful and compassionate shining in his minds eye where she was.
She shifted her saddle shoes, clapping them against the pipe twice as she moved, before she carried on and he could not help but feel lost in her spirit. "I think the park is prettier than my home. There are no trees in my house."
Vincent laughed at the last part, and Catherine joined him.
After a minute had passed, he admitted, "I miss the noonday sun when I am home. It is never as bright, as golden as noon is here."
"And I miss the company," she piped in, reaching out and stealing his hand. It was an impetuous gesture, which came only with exuberance. "No one at home is like you."
He looked down at the small pink hand curled curiously around his black leather one.
He squeezed her hand as gently as possible. "Nor you, Catherine."
Week 24
"You can not be serious," she was laughing, pulling him about his upper arm. "Tell me you aren't? Never?"
Vincent made a move as though trying to shake her hands off, but she knew he wouldn't harm her, even as he stalled her ministrations.
"You must then. You truly must. A life isn't complete until you have. How can you have read plays and talk about the stars and not have done it?"
"I can not." He did not quite like this turn to her, even as he allowed her to pull him the step closer to the edge of the tunnel. "I do not leave the tunnels. You know that."
"You left to leave me gifts," she wheedled, eyes bright and shining.
"That was only half way into the clearing."
"Please," she said plaintively, drawing out the 'e' sound until it was a word alone.
"I can not."
"You can. You simply think that you can not." She was starting to frown, the flush in her face rising as she strove to use all her little strength to pull him off balance. "It is only because you have not tried. It is very easy to climb a tree, and fun. You will see. Come."
He didn't budge an inch, but looked at the ceiling. "I can not go out there. There would be-"
"Yes?" Catherine demanded when he huffed instead of finishing his sentence, pulling her forcibly toward him when he jerked his arm away.
He turned away, taking wide steps from her.
"You aren't even going to tell me?"
Even now, anger starting to redden the edges of her mind, he couldn't help but see how harmless she thought it all was and how dangerous it all would be.
"Fine!" She shouted, picking up Lady Laurabell, and turned around storming away.
"I can not," he said, too low for her to hear. And then louder, "There would be other people. People can not see me."
She'd stopped at the end of the tunnel. He was sure because of her words. He could feel the press of her lips, the determined anger which now threaded with confusion, and the curious sensation of her eyes pricked with tears.
"No one sees you," Catherine said coolly, not looking back, but he felt the tears that slipped the high wall of her will. "I don't see you. You're just here. You just talk to me, just give me things. You don't trust me. You've never trusted me."
Vincent wanted to scream at her. She did not understand. She did not know the risks he took, the rules he broke, just in coming to see her on this day every week.
She did not know how she would never come back if she knew, truly knew what she asked. She did not know how he longed to give in to each demand.
Please.
He heard it even though the word did not echo in the metallic chamber, heard it even as it did nothing but address a maelstrom that surged free from constraint on her outburst.
"I can not," he said again, futile, and angry, himself, now, before stumbling away from her back into the darkness.
Week 25
When she reappeared the next week, they were quiet and contrite and awkward; a moody, dangerous, tripping place where each was not sure what to say or how to respond.
Catherine brought a small tea set because she'd promised earlier into the day the last time, but she poured it and they now sat drinking in the very quiet they'd never found themselves in before.
Eventually, she set her tea cup down, and stated, "I'll be leaving next week."
"Leaving?" He asked, sounding confused. Surely the last week could not have damaged things so much?
"To Italy for the holiday."
"For your birthday." He felt his heart spasm in relief, then dread. "Two months."
"You'd forgotten?"
"You did not say when only soon."
She nodded, pursing her lips.
Vincent broke the silence after it sat too long once more. "What would you like for your birthday?"
"You wouldn't give it to me," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "Pick a book or a toy or a lark or a poem. I'm sure you know something that would be fitting of a birthday gift to a girl."
"What do you want, Catherine?"
She looked over at the tunnel opening, before she looked back to him, and then she looked away again. "I would like to see what you look like."
He shifted uncomfortably as she looked back adding, "See. You wouldn't."
"You would not like what you saw." Vincent felt the words twist into something tiny and thin, thinner than air and tempered in broken china, even as he strove to keep his voice calm.
"Isn't that for me to judge?"
Vincent watched her watching the edge of the tunnel. She was so close and yet far away. The openness he'd seen her express for all these weeks closing behind a door. She'd come without her books or toys this time, only the set, and he thought only because she'd promised before.
Catherine, he knew, intrinsically, was not one to break her word.
He reached up very slowly, his own hands black blurs at the edge of the black shroud which held him, which betrayed him to the open air. He winced at brighter light, blinking and swallowing, and he heard himself say her name, but his voice seemed to come from a long distance away.
She turned back, hair caught in a honey-brown halo of light, and she stilled. He thought, even as they widened, even as the shock hit him like punch, that he'd never imagined her eyes would be so beautiful, so alive, so stirring, so scarring.
Her fear was a torrent of darkness, sharp as a knife, slashing deep as he raised his hands to tug against the hood cloth that had dropped behind his head.
"Don't do that!"
The sound of her voice startled him more than the fact she'd spoken. The steel of demand, which didn't even claim to be under the guise of request, and it's ending note of plea.
Vincent's hands clenched the fabric, claws ripping through the leather in the gloves, staring at the rapid rise of her chest because he couldn't bring his gaze back to her face. Her fear was deafening, even as it abated under gusts he couldn't feel through his own deafening fear.
"Can I-"
His eyes shot up, his form tensed and ready to run, having somehow missed the steps she'd taken to get closer to him. Everything was shattered silence in the mesmerization of the pale slim fingers reached out toward him. It seems strange, seemed sadly ironic; his heart seemed to hammer in the same way her coltish fingers shook.
Then suddenly coolness against the skin, rising from his nose to his forehead—a slow, very determined movement—the breaking waves of her fear giving way to an even more fragile ocean of curiosity.
"Does it hurt?"
Vincent stared at Catherine, at the press of her lips, the tip of her tongue, the way her eyes moved to follow her fingers when they rounded the side of his forehead to his cheek.
"No. I was born this way."
Her fingers stopped in places to trace little things, to hover, trembling, against the hair, before her eyes settled on his, her fingers still on his cheek. He wondered, even against the quiet of her mind, if she knew the power she held.
"I'm sorry."
He winced, and her hand stiffened at his cheek to keep him from pulling away, to make him look back. Her cheeks had flushed and her silence broke upon a scarlet embarrassment. "Oh, no, not about that, not about your being born. I meant about last week, about not knowing."
"You did not know," he whispered, diplomatically.
"No. I didn't." Catherine agreed, and then she smirked, causing his stomach to rebel in an entirely different way to their closeness. "Happy birthday to me."
And then, she added. "You have not told me if you wanted anything, either."
"Wanted?"
"From Italy, silly. I could bring you back something. Is there anything you'd like? Maybe a copy of your Dante in the natural Italian?"
"That would be fine." Vincent pulled away from her fingers to settle back on to the ground. He was overly aware of the open tunnel only ten feet from them. He did not do things like this, any of this. These months of this.
The distraction of staring at it made him jump when Catherine suddenly laid her head against his shoulder, where she'd sat back down. Reluctantly, shyly, he reached out and put his arm around her shoulder, almost sighing when she curled in closer.
He felt the current of her emotions, the still slowly fading confusion, but the undeniable calm that was appearing for the first time that today.
"Will you forget me? Two months is an awfully long time."
"Now I know you still haven't figured out Dante."
Catherine made a noise between a question and laugh, tilting from her temple against his shoulder so that her eyes were peering up at him from a tussel of dark hair, pale skin, and the contrasted blackness of his cloak.
He said the words calmly but his heart had not stopped racing.
"No one could forget Beatrice after they'd met her."
ACT III
I saw within its depth how it conceives all things in a single volume
- Paradisio
Week 29
The golden sun streamed through the opening at the end, the breezes rustled through the high tall trees, and in the distant children were playing among the falling leaves and the last bits of flowers.
Vincent knew she wouldn't be there, but he came regardless.
If he sat very still he was sure he could hear their voices, her laughter, echoing in the tunnel.
The quiet weeks rolled through his world and her absence was noted every passing week, with an empty day. Nothing fit him on these days, but to come up and sit. When he stayed he only became irritable and Father questioned him to what was wrong.
There were never words to explain.
As much as he was her secret, so was she his.
Week 34
The morning of the ninth week, the first week after the end of the second month, Vincent was up and ready early.
He did his errands and chores and classes with an exuberance that made the adults laugh, amused and concerned. He spoke brilliantly through Shakespearean recitation and didn't mind running supplies to the furthest canyons.
He accepted anything and everything that someone said needed doing. Anything that would make the hours pass quicker toward afternoon.
And then, when the afternoon came, he made his ways to the tunnel, his excitement any stronger it would have left him shaking.
The first two hours passed in a flurry of golden sunlight.
The next hour passed into a bundle of nerves.
The last normal hour passed with concern and starting at every noise.
Still he waited.
He would wait until she arrived; it was possible she might be late. She'd been later before.
He'd wait another hour or two.
Just in case.
Week 36
Waiting until nearly the next day the last time had gotten him into a deal of trouble, especially because his absence had caused a search and because he refused to tell anyone where he had gone once he returned.
The resulting fight with Father had resounded through the chambers.
Even though he had apologized the next day, and he could not catch their eyes often, he knew he was being watched much closer than normal.
He knew it because they gave him things to do and kept him within their line of sight, making it impossible for him even to leave the following week and half to any place alone. Not to the tunnel in the park, not even to the hall of whispers.
Vincent was reluctant, even as the excitement spiraled up into him, when he went toward the tunnels in the next week once they'd relaxed.
He waited until the late afternoon shadows cast themselves about the clearing and then he went back with sighs, torn by the whispered voices of his mind.
Week 38
Vincent returned for less time each week, and this one he'd convinced himself he wouldn't come at all until his feet led him to the door.
Forehead resting against the door he reflected that it had been a mistake.
Of course, she wouldn't return now.
She was a top worlder and she had seen his true face.
Father had always said the people above wouldn't understand. That they would try to hurt him or cage him, to study him as an animal fit for nothing more that experiments.
But this - this sudden withdrawal - was worse.
She was gone.
She wasn't coming back.
It was all his fault; the fault of who he truly was.
Week 41
Vincent was running.
He'd overturned a table in his surprise. A splash of excitement, not his, shot through him and he knew Catherine was near. He didn't even remember what words he'd said before he was out of the room.
The path was too long, the doors too slow, he was wrong, he must be, she was gone.
The last metal door opened into the tunnel intersections, where a stack of thick brown paper wrapped parcel's sat in the way on the other side of the door. He knelt down, hesitant to touch them, when his head snapped up.
"It's all three of them!" Catherine cried out, popping into the tunnel, unable to master her patience.
She launched herself from her hiding place and threw herself into his arms, without request, without hesitation, and, torn between gasping and screaming, he crushed her to him.
She smelled of a strange flowery soap mixed with the tang of the air from above, clean and sweet. Even as she laughed into his shoulder, he felt he might cry, like his heart might explode from her sudden nearness; sudden dearness.
"We stayed an extra month," she said pulling away. "And having no way to ring you or write you I couldn't tell you, so I thought maybe the other books would be a good way to make it up to you."
He hardly made out the words and yet he understood it—an apology, an explanation, the sincerity. She was babbling; her voice was a current of music, so true and known and deafening from the silence of his sentence.
"I always think you must be smirking at me when you have this up." Her hands were tugging away his hood, impetuously, forcefully, until he might be blinded with her smile and her pertly expectant expression.
"Well? Say something, Vincent."
"I thought-" His voice was a poor conduit, he could feel the fragility of it and he crushed her to him again, tighter, closer, as though to explode her into air and breathe her in might not be near enough. He muttered it against her hair, hope mingled with lingering resentment and shame with understanding. "I thought you were never coming back."
"Never?" Catherine looked up, and placing her hands on his cheeks, said it again. "Oh, Vincent, not never. Not ever. If I could have told you about Italy every day I was there I would have. To share with you the plays and the museums and the buildings and the books."
It was almost too much just to be able to murmur her name.
But she laughed, slipping from his arms like the wind, and was crouching down by the packages, pulling off the strings and paper. "It's all of them in Italian, all of the Divine Comedy. I read them while I was there. Well, the English translation ones. Did you know Beatrice is the one, in the third book, who leads him from the darkness into the light?"
Vincent watched her, how simply she went on, before nodding as he lowered to the same level. "It is her goodness, her innocence that saves him."
Catherine looked up, smiling, holding an unwrapped book to him. "She loves him. There's no way she can't."