A/N: I wanted to keep to the schedule for this one, but I won't be posting over Christmas weekend. Happy holidays :)
Part VII
"Vincent," Father said into his son's restless pacing. "I didn't expect you here."
Vincent stopped moving, peered up at him, then at his surroundings, surprised to find himself back in Father's chamber. Sense caught up with him; he could be well out of the most densely populated tunnels by now. What had possessed him to return here?
Father descended the metal stairs. "I was afraid you would leave." He stopped in front of his son. "I'm glad to see you haven't."
"I should have," Vincent answered. "I don't know why I came back here."
"Perhaps solitude isn't really what you seek right now."
Vincent didn't respond. He went back to pacing, the rhythm of his steps slower and more agonized this time.
"Mouse was quite upset with the way that you left."
Vincent paused mid-step, but then he continued without a word.
"He asked me if he had said something wrong," Father continued. "I told him that he hadn't. I told him I had no idea why you had fled. I think that upset him even more."
Vincent heard the words, took their meanings into the torrent in him, but he said nothing.
"Vincent, please." Father's forced calm gave way to outright pleading. "Talk to me. Whatever has happened, it cannot be more difficult than anything you and I have faced in the past."
Vincent stopped, leaned against the desk. "Say it, Father. Please."
"Say what?"
Vincent struck the desk with one fist and went back to pacing. "What no one else seems willing to acknowledge. The silence, the blatant omission, is worse than the truth."
"What truth? Vincent, I don't understand."
"That Mouse has such faith in me, and no one cares to contradict him, even while he lies in his sickbed because of me. That I brought this danger upon us."
Father tried to approach his son then, but was rebuffed by the force of Vincent's movement. "There's no truth in that. No one has said the words because no one here thinks them. Vincent, how can you take any blame for what has happened today?"
Vincent made several more laps of the chamber before slowing and finally pausing, teasing one thread out of the jumble in his mind to follow. He said, "I have faced dangers in the world Above. But to have this, in my own home—am I to hide away every time we have a new face in the tunnels? Should I turn away at every sound, every footstep? The dangers from Above have never touched me down here. And now suddenly that fear threatens not only me, but also the people that I love. I dared to think that I protect the people who protect me, but today, I have brought nothing but brutality and blood into our home, into our place of peace. Tell me, Father, what am I to feel, except some great portion of the blame? I cannot continue to pretend that harboring me is not itself a risk that everyone here shares."
Father stood before Vincent and put a hand in his hair, at once giving comfort and forcing his son's focus. "No one here has ever harbored you, Vincent. You are a part of us, not some criminal hiding in the dark."
Vincent turned away from Father, pulled away from his touch. "And yet I must hide. And yet my face is a danger to all of you, as good as any wanted criminal's. For all the good intentions in our world, those closest to me can still be hurt, simply for knowing me."
"Do not cheapen what Mouse did for you," Father answered, his tone full of warning.
Vincent looked at him over his shoulder, the fear and pain of the last hours writ large and piercing in his gaze. He looked away again. "What Mouse did was foolishness."
"Yes. And it was love."
Vincent's head dropped down, and his shoulders slumped under the weight of the afternoon. "He shouldn't have done it."
"Vincent, you do protect us. More than that, you serve the community in any way that we ask. Sentry, teacher, messenger, hauler, digger, worker. And how many of our people turn to you for counsel? These last years, I've watched you not only becoming a man, but also coming to be respected by all those who know you. They see that you embody and live by all of the highest ideals upon which this community was first founded."
"We both know that is not true."
"It is true. You reach out to so many people with love and, and an understanding that is practically unheard of in the world Above. And they are grateful for it."
"It's no great feat to offer understanding when I can as good as feel their fear, their sorrow, their helplessness."
"And what you did for Mouse when he was a child? Finding him, bringing him to us, teaching him? The boy could not speak when he first came to us. Is that worth nothing?"
Vincent strode a few steps across the chamber, turned and strode halfway back. "It's worth nothing that Mouse must feel compelled to pay back. He owes me nothing, least of all his life. There will always be someone with a knife, with a gun, with some means and some reason to come for me."
"Then what? The people you care for as family are meant to stand by and watch when that fear and that ignorance are brought down to our doorstep? Do you expect Mouse or Jamie or myself or any of the others down here who love you to let the men with knives and guns come for you? Don't be ridiculous."
"There is not a man with a knife that has menaced me yet. These two hands are capable of worse, have done worse."
"This man stabbed you."
"And I might have murdered him in front of his children if Jamie hadn't stopped me!"
The admission rang through the chamber, leaving father and son in silence, staring at one another. Then Vincent turned away in frustration. In shame.
"He was afraid and helpless in my hand, Father. I felt the frantic beat of his heart where I held his neck. I saw terror in his eyes. And still, still I pressed."
"You were provoked," Father said.
"I was enraged," Vincent answered. "I was in a place that knows nothing of love or mercy. It is a dark, savage place, and it is in me. At all times, I feel it. Threatening. His fear might have started as a weak, baseless thing, but I earned his terror in the end. That is why Mouse should not have risked his life for me, why no one here Below should."
Father tried to approach his son, but he only pulled further away. "Vincent—"
"I killed a man, Father."
The confession came out hardly above a whisper, but it brought every movement in Father's body, every word on his tongue, to a halt. The silence continued, and Vincent kept his head turned away, his face hidden.
"How?" Father finally asked. "When?"
"Three weeks ago." The words were slow, but for the first time in weeks, he could force them out, drag the truth out of himself, inch by grating inch. "I was Above. There was shouting. And crying. And I found them, a man and a girl. Not even Jamie's age. Beaten and crying, her clothes torn away, and—" he drew in a long breath. "I was too late. I could see, he had already—she was—" His throat closed up.
Father closed his eyes.
"I killed him." He flexed his clawed hands. "I tore into him. Even as she watched, I tore him apart. She screamed. It was her screaming that…that pulled me out of the darkness, the man's blood on my hands, on my cloak. And I saw her, the way that she looked at me, like I would—I tried to talk to her, calm her, but she kept screaming, and I had to run. The police were coming. I ran to the tunnels. I cleaned my hands, and I threw my cloak into the Abyss."
Vincent let his father approach him, desperate for condemnation or absolution, anything to still the torrent in him.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Father asked.
"How could I? I couldn't even stop him, Father. All I did was add witnessing murder to the girl's traumas."
"You made sure that he paid for his crimes. You made sure that he could not commit them again."
"I terrorized a girl that had already endured too much!"
"You delivered a swifter justice than their system would have."
Vincent turned to face Father, his gaze imploring. "How can you speak of justice when I tell you I have a man's blood on my hands? There was no justice in what I did. There was only the darkness. The rage. The need for blood. Like I haven't felt since the darkest times of my youth. And I thought, if that's what waits for me Above, then I should stay Below. I should content myself Below. But even here, I'm not safe from myself, from what I am. And neither is anyone else."
Father put his hand in Vincent's hair again. "That is not what you are. You have never struck an innocent. You have never used your might against those who depend on you. The darkness that could allow anyone to do what that man did—that is the enemy. That is what you have never been."
Vincent reached up with his hands, wanting to shake Father into seeing reason, but he curled his fingers in on themselves and held back. "I could," he said. "When I'm in that place—there's no love. No kindness. Only blood. I could—"
"You couldn't." Father placed his free hand on the other side of his son's head. "Vincent, I know you. If the darkness were so strong in you as that, Jamie wouldn't have pulled you from it so easily. No, your love for Mouse, your worry for him, was stronger. Whatever you have felt in you, the love you feel has always been stronger. That is what you are. Who you are."
Vincent shook his head, pulling away from his father's solace. He couldn't, couldn't accept it, not with the memory of a man's last gasping breath still bright and sharp in his mind, like the reflection of the noonday sun in the Mirror Pool. The smell of his victim's blood, still hot on Vincent's palms, even as the body gave out, rent and torn too deeply to continue functioning. The screaming, still high in Vincent's ears, still trapped in his skull, burning through every thought and every waking moment, a physical pain lancing down his spine. And hardly hours old, the abject terror in a stranger's eyes, the certainty of death settling in Brian's pulse, the ancient subjection of prey to predator in the space of those final heartbeats.
But worse. Worse than worse. Worse than worst, the crystalline memory of such deep satisfaction, cold and sharp and undeniable in his chest. Above, his victim's blood had smelled of copper, bright and tangy in the darkness, what rare and glorious spice. Flesh had parted with such decadent ease under his fingers, spilling life out onto rain spattered pavement. The man's body had convulsed and gasped as Vincent followed it down to the ground to share that last moment between living and dying, that last moment when every detail of the murder felt good and right, when the inhuman power hidden in his limbs rejoiced to be released.
He would have done the same to Brian. In front of Brian's own children, in front of children Vincent had himself nurtured and helped grow, he had wanted the satisfaction of that power. The unforgivable conviction of that want made him sick with shame and revulsion. Words stacked up in his throat, backed up into his chest, pressing against his lungs and his heart, but he couldn't let them out. He cowered from the knowledge of what the words would do once released out into the world, once his father began to grasp them, finally grasped what his son had done, had felt.
The persistent calling of his name, Father's insistent, demanding voice added to the din in his head, and when Father touched him, tugged his arm, like he had any right to command Vincent's attention—
Vincent turned on him, fury and anguish melding into one violent roar, his eyes wild, his teeth bared, sharp and threatening and bared in his father's face, against his father's persistence. It was the roar of a creature possessed, cruel in its pitch, hewn of every deep shadow in Vincent's heart, echoing on the stones of his father's chamber, long and unyielding and desperately, agonizingly inhuman to his own ears.
When he had no more breath left, the moment receded, and realization brought self-recrimination flooding in to fill the void. Father had pulled away from him, retreated from him with wide, wary eyes, and the bald truth of what he was landed in Vincent's chest like a physical blow. He stepped backwards, turned his face, his body away in shame, and when Father spoke his name again, softly this time, and touched his arm, he flinched away, terrified by the power thrumming in his own limbs, still there, just under the surface, so tightly coiled and ready to lash out, to destroy. He tried to draw further in on himself when Father circled around to force his attention, and Vincent wanted to run, wanted to escape before he could see the fear or the reproach in his father's gray eyes.
But Father reached up to him, touched his hair, the back of his head, brought their foreheads together. He drew his son into a tender embrace, whispered soothing words that carried no hint of fear, no hint of reproach. Vincent didn't even know he was shaking until the tremors started to ease, and something in him fractured, splintered, fell apart. His next breaths shuddered with the release of untold horrors as Father drew his fingers through his hair in a rhythm he knew as well as his own heartbeat. There were hot tears on his face, but he didn't remember shedding them. He reached up and returned his father's embrace, too grateful for words.
"I've always feared that something like this would come to pass for you, Vincent," Father said. "But you did act out of love, out of compassion for another's suffering. I never wished you to know this hurt, of all the others in this world, but you mustn't carry this blame against yourself.
"And nothing that happened today was your fault," he continued. "Not Mouse, not this stranger. You've done nothing to deserve this."
Vincent let out a shuddering breath, anxious to disagree but out of strength for words. He heard quick footsteps in the corridor outside, but Father wouldn't release him to look. The footsteps receded. A moment later, an all clear went out over the pipes. Of course; the violence of his outburst would have echoed through half of the tunnels of their community. He rested his forehead on his father's shoulder and fought against thoughts of what they would all think to look at him in the morning, berated himself for giving them a reason to remember exactly what he was not.
Father kissed his hair. "I'm grateful that things did not turn out any worse today. What could have happened doesn't bear thinking about."
"The man Above," Vincent said, his voice low and broken, "I felt him die. I watched his eyes fade to darkness. And I can still hear the girl's screaming." The words burned his tongue like bile, but they offered some small release for being the closest he could come to the true terror of it all. His throat threatened to close, but he forced out the most haunting question. "What man tears another apart with his bare hands, Father? The monster that Brian saw—"
"Was his own fear, reflected back at him. Your abilities do make you different, Vincent, but they do not make you any lesser. They do not make you wrong."
Vincent submitted, worn down to nothing. He stood under his father's soothing touch and felt his breath and his heartbeat begin to normalize. It wasn't all right; nothing was all right, but it was better than it had been before. The persistent buzz under his thoughts had dissipated, and his mind felt more his own than it had in weeks.
Father pulled back. "Perhaps you should try to sleep now. It's been a difficult day."
Vincent shook his head; as much as he had craved darkness and silence only minutes before, neither held any appeal now. Perhaps he'd make his rounds of the community, assure himself that all was well, or else soothe his mind with poetry in the Whispering Gallery.
Father nodded. "Then have a seat. There's something I've been meaning to ask you about for a few days now."
Vincent regarded him warily, but Father only crossed to his desk to retrieve a book, an aged copy of The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, if memory served.
"I was reading the Pardoner's tale the other day, and I found a particular passage that I was having trouble translating," Father explained as he worked his way back to his favorite chair. "Perhaps you could help me?"
Vincent knew when he was being offered a distraction; Father had taught him to read Chaucer as a boy. But the distraction was welcome, along with the easy companionability of discussing literature, and he sat down with every impression of aiming to be helpful. After the day's events, he knew that any return to normality would be a comfort to the both of them.
