Trust Issues

by ChiefPam

This is fanfic for Beauty & the Beast (2012). They own it, I don't, I'm just borrowing their toys. This is based loosely on spoilers for Season 2, and will no doubt be an alternate universe as soon as October 7th, 2013 gets here, but I needed the emotional fix.

It's a longer part this time! Thanks for all the reviews, guys, you're making the story better.

Previously: Vincent called the base, and Muirfield offered him a job. He and JT took a road trip to try to determine what they're up to.

"Why did they have to schedule this meeting today?" Cat muttered across her desk to her partner.

Tess shot her a quelling glance. "Because they didn't know you had a romantic road trip planned."

"It wasn't going to be romantic. Exactly. I just don't want to be apart from him right now, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. But duty called – besides, the big guy and JT can probably use the male bonding time. Can we focus on the case here?"

Because it was Tess, and Catherine owed her big time, she tried to focus. She even managed to get some work done, but then her phone rang. "Chandler."

"Hey, there, detective."

She smiled at the sound of that sexy voice. "Hey, hang on a second." Quickly, she found a vacant conference room and slipped inside. Tess followed, barely avoiding having a door slammed in her face. Cat mouthed a "sorry" at her then returned her attention to her phone call. "Okay, it's private. What's up?"

"I can't believe I'm about to say this, but… I really think they're for real. I skulked around and listened for a while. The big boss was talking about getting my paperwork processed, and I caught him on the phone to someone trying to talk them into offering me more money."

Cat laughed. "Did it work?"

"Hmm, don't think so, but then he said they'd have to think of some other way to 'sweeten the pot' as he put it. The other guy said something I couldn't hear, and my guy sounded impressed. So maybe we'll find out what that was about when I call him tonight."

"Wow."

"Yeah. I'll be home in another hour or so – meet me at my place?"

Catherine looked at her watch. "Might take me a little longer – there's a mandatory meeting – but I'll be there."

"Great. See you later."

"So?" Tess demanded. "What did he find?"

Cat shrugged, tucking her phone away. "He thinks they're legit."

They left the conference room and headed back to their desks. "It would be kind of awesome if they were," Tess commented.

"Yeah. The sneaking around gets old after awhile."

"Tell me about it."

Catherine sat down, thinking hard. It sounded like a dream come true – if she could have Vincent *and* a quasi-normal life. He still had the cross-species DNA, and there would always be the risk that he'd change at an inconvenient moment, but that was all part of the package, and she'd accepted that a long time ago. It was Muirfield's angle that was worrying her. There had to be a catch, somewhere, but she couldn't see it. She realized she was back to where she'd started – Muirfield had taken Vincent alive because they wanted him alive. And cooperating, apparently. So they were willing to make it worth his while. Wow.

"Chandler!"

She looked up to see her new boss standing in the doorway to his office. "Sir?"

"Need to talk to you."

Tess threw her a questioning glance as she got up and walked into the office. She still was sometimes surprised that Joe wasn't there any more. He'd been such a fixture, even with all his complications. The new guy, Michael Reynolds, seemed competent but he wasn't very approachable, and she hadn't interacted with him much. Hopefully this wasn't about how distracted she'd been, the past few months.

He waved her to a seat but remained standing, starting to pace. "You've probably heard we'll be announcing a new inter-agency counter-terrorism task force. Well, its remit will be larger than just terrorism, but that's what we're calling it. We need a centralized response team to all kinds of threats. DHS and NYPD will be cooperating, with some assists from other agencies." He caught her eye for emphasis. "I want you running the cop side of things."

She blinked, not expecting that. "Sir?"

"Don't say no yet. You're good, Chandler, and you're uniquely qualified. I think you're ready to kick it up a notch. It'd be more paperwork, but hell, hire a secretary. You'd have a pretty free hand in running your side of things."

It sounded interesting, but might make her life much too complicated. "I don't know—"

"I want you running this, Chandler. You'd be working closely with the guy from Homeland Security. Interesting guy."

She wasn't sure where he was going with this. "Do I know him?"

Reynolds didn't exactly answer her. "He's a special forces guy. Until recently most everybody thought he'd been killed in Afghanistan, back in '02."

Catherine froze, looking down at her lap.

"Turns out, though, he's been working deep undercover with some secret group for the last decade."

Her heart started pounding. Could this be a coincidence?

"But he's ready to come back to the land of the living, so they're getting his paperwork straightened out. Get him all nice and legally alive again. He hasn't actually agreed to take the job yet, but he'd be a fool to pass up on the chance to get out of the shadows."

Catherine forgot to breathe. Reynolds seemed oblivious, pacing around, not paying attention to her. "They're going to set up a joint office for you. Semi-autonomous. He's got some pretty nifty skills, but you'll also want to build a team. There's going to be a good budget for it, too."

Abruptly, Reynolds turned to face her. "You in?"

"Uh, well, it sounds like a great opportunity."

"We need you to do this, Chandler. So what can we do to sweeten the pot?"

She blinked, and as she recognized the phrase she felt a little dizzy. There was no way this was a coincidence. How much did he know?

She kept her face straight with some difficulty, and rose. "I'll need to consider it."

"You do that. I think you and he would make a hell of a team."

"Really?"

"Just a feeling. And, to be clear…" Reynolds turned to pace, seeming uncomfortable all of a sudden. "If you did happen to hit it off, and you wanted to start dating, well, you wouldn't have to sneak around anymore."

Did he say "anymore"? There was a ringing in her ears, so it was hard to tell. "Excuse me?"

"No regs against cross, um, agency fraternization, is all I'm saying. None of my business. So, you go consult whoever you need to consult. Let me know in the morning. Dismissed."

"Sir, did you say—"

"I said you're dismissed, Chandler."

"Yes, sir." She shook her head at little, hoping to clear it, and then walked out still in a daze.

By the time she got to Vincent & JT's place, Catherine was starting to get past the panic stage. They still had a very important decision to make. She let herself in. "Vincent?"

"In here, Catherine. I just got off the phone with the base."

She walked in and nearly threw herself into his arms, feeling them enclose her, giving her a sorely-needed feeling of security. No matter what else changed, she had this.

"You okay?"

"I will be," she murmured, snuggling in closer. He just stood there for a long moment, gently rubbing her back, until she collected herself. "Okay, I'm okay."

"You will not believe what they just offered him," JT said with a laugh.

"I'll bet I will."

"He'd be working for Homeland Security, based out of New York, doing threat assessments and all kinds of cool stuff. And the salary is sweet. Not that I minded supporting you all these years, pal, but I'm ready for some payback."

"It sounds a little overwhelming to me," Vincent admitted, but he was clearly interested. "It'd be nice to have a job again. And they said that if I did lose control in public, they'd cover it up."

"Imagine being able to go to dinner and a movie."

He smiled shyly at her. "I'm imagining a white picket fence."

She smiled. "That sounds great."

"It would involve working with a couple of different agencies, though, and I'm not real comfortable working with people I don't know."

"Yeah, I think they know that," Catherine sighed. "Which is probably why they asked *me* to be your liason with NYPD and help head-up the Counter-Terrorism Taskforce."

The silence was thick for a moment, then JT managed to say "What?"

She shrugged, stepping away from Vincent. "This afternoon, my boss offered me a promotion to this task force, working really closely with this guy from Homeland Security. A guy who'd been presumed dead in Afghanistan in 2002, with some special skills - nobody mentioned your name, Vincent, but it had to be you. And my boss said I was 'uniquely qualified' for the position. And the kicker? He said if we wanted to date, that would be okay, and we wouldn't have to sneak around. Anymore."

"Damn."

"Oh, this is bad. Really bad."

"They might not know about you, JT. But I was there when Vincent was captured, so I guess I should have expected they might have figured out about me." She turned to Vincent and pulled a face. "Especially after I showed up on the base and you ran away with me."

"This could be really bad," Vincent agreed, slowly. "Or it could be good. At this point, what do we have to lose? They know a lot. And nobody's rappelling in with machine guns."

"Either we tell them we'll do it, or we run. And I would leave the rest of my life behind in a heartbeat if that was the only way to be with you, Vincent. Don't ever think otherwise. But it looks like we might have a chance, here."

"I honestly think this could work." Vincent reached out to gather her close again. "Maybe we should try trusting them."

"I don't like that idea, but I trust you. And we can always run later, I guess."

"Yeah. One thing, though." He smiled a little.

She managed a smile in return. "Yeah?"

"Your sister needs to get her own apartment."

"Oh, definitely."

"So if we're going for this, we're going to do it very carefully," Vincent said. "They can't know exactly what's going on with me and Catherine, so we should try to downplay things. We need to make sure they don't even suspect Tess and JT."

Catherine nodded. "Okay, tomorrow I'll tell my boss that I'm interested in that promotion he offered me. I don't think he'll suspect anything if I take Tess with me; we've been partners for years."

That surprised him. "You have?" The look on her face let him know that he should have known that. "Okay, JT, we have got to get my memory fixed before we make plans."

"Fine, you sit there and I'll get the lorazepam. Cat, stick close please."

"Absolutely." She pulled her chair a little closer to his and reached out to hold his hand.

"So what happens?" Vincent asked her.

"JT gives you a shot, you zone out a little bit, and then when you come to, you've got a bunch of new memories. At least that's how it worked last time."

JT came back into the room, sitting on the other side of Vincent and arranging some medical paraphenalia on the table. "What you're thinking about when you go under seems to be what you remember, so, I guess, think about Cat."

He smiled. "Not a problem at all."

"Okay, this'll sting a little."

"I've had shots before, JT, just do it."

"Right." Quickly and carefully, JT injected Vincent with the lorazepam cocktail. "Think about your history with Cat, about how you watched over her for years, in a totally not creepy non-stalkerish way."

Cat grinned. "He was protecting me; it was sweet."

"He's lucky you think so."

As the medicine started to affect him, Vincent felt himself drifting away, but had to agree with his friend. He was definitely lucky.

Catherine watched Vincent's face relax; his eyes closed and his head drooped sideways. She put a hand on his shoulder to keep him upright, but he didn't seem to need much help. A frown gathered on his face, and she saw different expressions flicker across his face. She almost wished she could pick which memories he regained and which ones stayed lost, but then again, as wonderful as this new Vincent was, she wanted the old one back. The one who'd lived those good and bad memories with her.

The one who might remember that he'd been practically cured until she'd brought the beast back with that vaccine. She didn't regret that decision - it had kept him alive - but she wasn't so sure what he'd think about it. He'd wanted for so long to be normal, had hated what they'd turned him into. He'd even wanted to take those damned poison pills, thinking a few normal years were worth dying early for.

He stirred restlessly, and she gently stroked his arm. "It's okay, Vincent, I'm here." After a few moments, his movements subsided and he looked more peaceful. The cycle repeated a few times, until eventually his eyes fluttered open. He looked around, seeming disoriented and still somewhat out of it. She touched his cheek, and he turned towards her, tipping his head into her hand, sighing softly. His eyes closed, then re-opened as he finally woke up.

"Are you guys okay? Did I...?"

Catherine laughed softly. "We're fine. Are you?"

He stretched, considering the matter, then smiled. "I'm okay if you're okay."

"Did you remember anything?"

His smile slipped. "Yeah, a lot. God, Catherine, when they took me..." He stood, and reached out for her.

She went into his arms with a little sob. "I've missed you, so much."

"I'm back, sweetheart; I'm right here."

JT cleared his throat. "Well, I think you two might have a lot to, ah, talk about. So I'm going out. For a while. We can talk about Muirfield tomorrow, okay?"

Vincent frowned. "Yeah, we'll need to do that. I just might need a little time to get all my memories straight."

"I'll help you," Catherine promised. "See you later, JT."

"Night!" JT grabbed his wallet and keys and made himself scarce.

Vincent kissed her hungrily, then pulled back enough to rasp out, "I love you, Catherine. Even without my memories, I loved you. Thank you for finding me."

"I had to," she whispered. "I can't live without you."

To be continued, as soon as I can get twenty quiet minutes at a time to do some writing! This week has been insane. I've got about half of the next chapter written. Reviews are always appreciated :)