Catherine stood on the balcony, watching Vincent prepare to leave, and felt her heart sinking all the way down to her feet.
She had screamed at him, she had called him a monster, she had told him to leave and never come back, she had been terrified of him.
She had known, she had known that he was trying to kill her. Trying to hurt her, trying to destroy her.
But he hadn't been. He never had. All he had ever done was try to help her, and it was only that cursed zombi-powder that had ever made her think otherwise.
It had twisted her thoughts and her mind, making the things she knew to be true suddenly seem like lies. Vincent would never hurt her. Vincent was trying to kill her. Vincent was a good person. Vincent was the demon that even the boko were afraid of. She was safe with Vincent. Vincent was going to hurt her.
She had never felt so horrible in her entire life.
The past few months had been hell on Earth, but nothing could compare to how it had felt to be so suddenly alone in her terror. Before now, after everything that had happened, after the attack, Vincent had been her one constant, her one source of comfort. Whenever she felt lost or afraid, he was there, standing on her balcony, ready with kind words and gentle wisdom.
But now there was a burn on her shoulder, and a tickle in her throat that wouldn't leave no matter how many glasses of water she drank, and the floor beneath her feet still felt like it was wavering like the ocean, and Vincent was standing on her balcony, one hand on the railing, preparing his descent.
She didn't want him to leave. She didn't want him to leave, because she knew that when he came back-when she saw him again-it would just mean that something else was going wrong.
She only ever saw him when she was in danger, or someone from Below was hurt, or missing, or had seen something horrible that she needed to stop.
She knew that if he left her now, when she was still reeling from this latest disaster, this latest attack on her safety, she would never be able to look at him the same. It would be one time too many, the final straw that broke the camel's back, the final blow that would destroy her sanity.
He couldn't just appear out of nowhere when she was afraid, and then disappear without a trace. He couldn't. It wasn't fair. If he left her now while she could still feel the grip of scales winding around her legs, she wouldn't ever be able to forgive him.
But she couldn't move. She was paralyzed. Vincent was still moving, he was lifting himself up onto the railing so that he could swing down and climb to the ground.
She sagged against the door, the dread weakening her limbs. This was it. Vincent was going to leave, and then the cycle would begin again.
But then-
She jumped, fear cutting through her like a knife.
The powder was still in her system, still poisoning her blood.
She had forgotten, she had forgotten, she was still numb, he was still distant and far and silent-
A shape-dark and filled with points of light as though it were the embodiment of the night sky itself-brushed past her face suddenly, and without any warning at all.
It felt like time slowed down.
She watched the owl-so distant, so faded, she could barely even comprehend what it was and what it meant-as its wings cut through the air softer than a whisper, as it flew like a ghost out from behind her open apartment door and headed straight for Vincent where he posed to leap.
She couldn't feel the whisper of the wind beneath the owl's feathers, she couldn't hear the thudding of her own heart, or the rattle and clank of cars on the streets far below.
She could only watch, numb to everything but the swaying of her dizzied mind and the coil of serpent scales around her legs, as the owl alighted on the railing next to Vincent's hand.
Its face was turned away from her when it spoke. She could barely imagine what its face looked like. Its voice was dull to her ears, flat and emotionless, disconnected.
"Vincent, no."
Almost silent, almost too quiet to hear with half of her mind cut off from her body.
But Vincent could hear it.
He paused.
He stopped.
He looked down at the owl.
He spoke, and his voice was a soft, rasping whisper. "Jato, I-"
"No, Vincent!"
It felt like someone had tied a cord around her heart, and yanked her forward. Catherine found her feet moving-as though shoved from behind-before she could even find the energy to stop herself. It was like a jolt of electricity running down her spine, the sudden influx of emotion that she could almost see boiling off the owl's hunched shoulders.
She felt it like it was a physical sensation. Something cold seemed to press against her mind, and one of her hands instinctively moved to her head, fingers automatically trying to staunch the flow of something that felt like it was running down her face.
But her fingers came away bare and naked. Her wounds had not returned, her nightmare had not been revisited.
Her gaze darted toward the owl's hunched form, and she jolted in place when it suddenly sat upright, staring up at Vincent defiantly, its back still turned to her, but the barest trace of a silver mask visible at the edge of its darkly feathered head.
Its voice was sharp like glass, and Catherine almost imagined that Vincent would bleed under the pressure of the owl's anger. "Vincent, if you leave now, don't you ever come back! Have you even looked at Catherine? She can barely stand! Did you see the burn on her arm? I can't even feel her! How can you even think about leaving us like this?" Its voice rose to a shout, and the last word transformed itself into a wordless shriek of rage and pain.
Vincent didn't move. He was half-way up onto the railing, only one foot still on the floor. But he didn't move. "Jato," He started again, "I can't-"
"Can't what?" The owl snapped, suddenly and violently ruffling its wings, as though contemplating the thought of launching itself at his face as it as demanded, "What can't you do, Vincent? You can't take her to Father? Can't call an ambulance? Can't even call Joe and Hemata? Or Edie and Kaij? Or even our father? You're just going to leave us here, alone, while Catherine still has that poison in her?"
Suddenly it hissed, and then its wings shot out to either side so that all that Catherine could see from her vantage point was the undersides of the wings. It held them out besides itself in a way that had Catherine suddenly imagining someone waving their arms in the air to scare away a wild animal. "You think I can pick up the phone or open the door by myself? How exactly do you expect Catherine to get help if you just leave us here by ourselves? Unless you want me to start screaming until one of the neighbors calls the police? Rah!" It let out another wordless shriek, its entire body quivering with emotion. "LOOK! AT! HER! VINCENT!" With every word it stamped one of its taloned feet against the concrete railing, and then swung its head around, and-
-And Catherine found herself lost in the silver mask of its face.
Its eyes were as black as the deepest darkness she could imagine, and the feathers around them were the color of smoke. She stared at it, uncomprehending to anything else around her. Its pale beak opened and closed, but she couldn't hear a single word it spoke.
She stared at its eyes, and realized-remembered-suddenly, why one of those abyssal pools seemed dimmer than the other.
She flinched.
The owl was missing one of its eyes. It was almost impossible to tell, because the eye that remained was as jet black as as the deepest darkness, and the violence that had lost it the other one hadn't reached beyond its eyelid.
It was as though someone had simply reached in, plucked its eye out, and been done with it.
And it was with a chill of horror that Catherine realized-no, remembered-that that was exactly what had happened.
Sound returned suddenly, as she wrapped her arms around her chest to ward off the sudden chill in her bones.
"Narcissa assured me that the poison would fade within a few hours, and I cannot-I cannot stay. The sun is almost rising. I must leave before the city awakens. If I am caught in the daylight-"
The owl stamped its foot again, and Catherine heard a sharp clacking sound, and knew without knowing how she did that the owl had snapped its beak shut to make the sound. It was surprisingly alarming.
"So you're just going to leave us here on our own so you don't get caught when the sun rises? That's your great excuse?" The owl made a scoffing sound, and Catherine blinked, part of her returning to life.
That wasn't fair, she thought, wanting to open her mouth to defend Vincent. He had already been caught twice before-she wasn't sure he would be able to handle it a third time. He had been abused and neglected, treated like worse than an animal. Jato couldn't just go accusing Vincent of being a coward.
That wasn't fair to him.
But the part of her that wanted to protest couldn't find the energy to do anything about it, and so she stayed silent, staring at the owl's back and the wings it still held out in a stiff threat display.
Vincent remained silent, and she felt a new emotion enter her muted mind. Hurt. Fear.
He was afraid of being caught again, and hurt that Jato seemed so dismissive of that fear.
But Jato didn't seem to care. He stamped his foot again, and clacked his beak, seemingly as lost for words as everyone else.
Finally, Vincent spoke, his voice gentle.
"Jato, I…" He trailed off, turning his face towards her, his gaze catching on hers like a fishing net tossed into the ocean. Once he caught her gaze, she couldn't look away, and her eyes searched his face for his thoughts, tracing the gentle patterns of his tawny fur as the moments passed in silence as he hesitated. Finally he lowered his eyes to the ground, and when he lifted them again, they were on Jato once more. "I can see no way out of this situation that will not lead to pain. Tell me, brave daemon, what would you have me do? Remain with Catherine for the few hours that it will take the poison to leave her system, and risk my own safety when I must inevitably return to the World Below? How would that be any safer than my leaving now, while you and she are out of all danger?"
The owl twitched its wings once, then slowly dropped them back to its sides. Suddenly it seemed unsure, and its head lowered to the ground.
"I'll tell you, Dar'vincy Inani." it said quietly. "You have never had a daemon. You have always been alone. You don't know what it feels like to be alone. You don't need to leave. You can stay. You can stay until the poison wears off, you can keep Catherine company, and then when the poison has worn off, you can stay a bit more, until the sun has risen, and even after that. You could stay here with us for the entire day, safe and hidden with us, away from prying eyes. You have stayed awake as long as we have, you can rest here." It slowly looked back up at him, and Catherine felt something tugging at her heart that she couldn't fully comprehend in that moment. "You could stay with us, Vincent." Jato said softly. "You could stay with us, just this once."
And it was only then that Catherine recognized the feeling in the owl's voice. It was the same emotion tugging at her heart, and filling her throat, and making her eyes suddenly burn with the threat of tears.
The owl was crying.
Jato was crying.
Her daemon was crying.
Catherine was crying.
He knees suddenly felt weak, and she barely understood what was happening when the ground was suddenly much closer than before, and her knees were resting on the cold concrete floor. She had sat down without even thinking about it.
Tears were burning at her eyes, but they refused to fall.
She needed to speak.
But she couldn't.
But nothing was stopping Jato, or Vincent.
"You could stay here with us." Jato repeated, and the desperation in his voice was now impossible to miss past the shield of his anger. He shuffled closer to Vincent's hand, his talons scraping against the stone of the railing as he moved.
There was a moment where it felt like the air caught in her lungs, but then she breathed out, and Jato stepped up onto the back of Vincent's hand.
She couldn't feel the sensation of the downy fur beneath her talons, but she felt the jolt of electricity that shot through Jato, and she felt Vincent's quiet surprise as though it were her own.
For these few moments, for now, she was closer to Vincent than she was her own daemon. She could feel his heart beating next to hers, even though she couldn't even hear through Jato's ears.
And she could feel, through Vincent, the sudden surge of emotion flooding in from the point of contact between his hand and Jato's feet. Sadness, grief, dread, terror, hope, joy, happiness, contentment.
Jato was saying everything she couldn't, and he was skipping right past putting them into words. Vincent lived in a world of emotions, it was the language he understood best.
If this...relationship, of theirs was going to survive, things needed to change. Things needed to be understood. Barriers needed to be crossed, and lines had to be redrawn. It wasn't enough to see Vincent only when there was danger. That was cruelty, plain and simple. That was a constant reminder of what had happened to her, a constant reminder of how they had met in the first place.
Danger and threat could not be the basis of this friendship, not if she could do anything about it.
And not if Jato had anything to say about it.
She didn't know how long she sat there on the cold concrete, watching the silent, endless conversation happen somewhere beyond her grasp. She felt the emotions that were traded back and forth as though they were from a dream, drifting just beyond the edge of true reality.
She knew that the zombi-powder was still in her system, she knew that it was slowly fading with every moment that passed. She was still weak, she was still in pain from the burn on her arm and from the smoke she had inhaled, but as she sat there and watched Jato-her daemon, her daemon that the zombi-powder has started to take away from her, because Dr. Ross had wanted her as a slave, and he needed to make her a daemonless inani first before he could even think of trying to control her-she felt her mind beginning to slowly, slowly reawaken.
It was nowhere as clear as it should have been, but as she rested on the ground there, her ears caught the faintest trickle of sound from the streets below. A sound that her human ears would never have been able to catch, but a sound that Jato's owl ears heard with ease.
Their connection was returning, slowly but surely. She couldn't feel it yet, but she knew that soon she would be able to reach out with a mental hand and brush against the now-shared string of emotion that was the conversation between Jato and Vincent. She would be able to reach out, and lose herself in the flow of emotions and images, and she would understand more clearly than words would ever allow, the relationship that she had formed with her mysterious Vincent.
She didn't know how long she sat there, but it seemed like centuries passed before her daemon moved.
He twitched his wings, and without a word, Vincent straightened, bringing the hand that Jato sat on up to his chest, so that Jato could step onto his shoulder as he finally turned towards Catherine, the first time he had really looked at her since rescuing her from the fire and the zombification ritual.
His expression was gentler, sadder.
He moved towards her with silent footsteps, his tail sweeping the ground.
He knelt down infront of her, putting their faces level. She stared back into his blue eyes, and didn't even look when Jato's weight settled itself on her shoulder.
She had been cut off from the conversation, from the heart to heart, but she could see its effects in Vincent's face, in the way he moved so slowly as one of his hands came up to cup her cheek, his fingers warm and gentle and soft, in the way his mouth slowly formed a small smile.
"I am sorry, Catherine." He whispered softly, "I truly did not understand the pain I was causing you. I will stay with you, for as long as you need me to."
He tilted his head forward, in invitation, and she found the strength to mirror him, until their foreheads touched in a gentle motion that carried all the weight of their love for one another.
She wanted this to work, she really did. She loved Vincent, and his world, but things couldn't go on the way they had been. She didn't want to just wake up and return to the world she'd lived in before she was attacked. Maybe that world had been safer, and less insane, but maybe the truth was more important than that.
She wanted to stay with Vincent, wanted to stay in the new world he had opened up for her.
And maybe now, as he helped her to her feet and guided her back inside, her daemon resting on her shoulder and more sounds beginning to filter in from his ears, and the barest trace of his thoughts dancing at the edge of hers, maybe now she would be able to live in both worlds and stay sane.
Vincent sat her down on the edge of her bed while he went to fetch a cup of tea, and as she lay back against her blankets and pulled Jato to her chest, tears of relief and happiness swept down her face.