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Chapter Four - An Honorable Villain

Evan tried to laugh but it came out somewhat strangled, what with his heart lodged in his throat at the way Vincent was glaring at him. "Y-you're in love with her are you? Doessheknow this?" He felt triumphant when he saw the smile disappear off Vincent's face. His victory was to be short lived, however.

"Yeah- er, well… shedid… I think. But I did something really stupid tonight and I'm pretty sure she was coming to find me when the accident happened. God, I was such a fool to think I could walk away from her like that." Vincent turned so he was no longer hovering in Evan's personal space, jamming his hands into his pockets in a defeated gesture. Tears welled in his eyes and he swallowed hard against the emotion that overwhelmed him. "If anything happens to her because I wasn't there to protect her…"

"Wait… tonight? But Catherine was at her father's wedding and reception. How could you-" Evan's brow furrowed as he got a flash of insight and some more of the dots seemed to be connecting themselves. A memory of the beast holding Catherine wearing a suit skittered across his consciousness. "She told you about my research, didn't she? That's why she was grilling me for information. You werethere?"

"Yeah, I was. But when she told me what you'd found, I kinda freaked. Said some things I'm not proud of, and walked away from her because if what you say is true, how could I ever ask her to go through that with me? Although I'll admit, I was kind of hoping she'd try to stop me, but… she didn't. I guess in the end it reallywasjust too much to hope that this thing between us would work out."

"Wait a minute, back the bus up," JT interrupted. "Whatresearch?Findings? Vincent, what the hell are you not telling me?"

"Sorry, JT, there just hasn't been time…"

"I've been studying Vincent's DNA from old crime scenes where allegedly he was trying to help victims." Evan's voice held a note of skepticism, but he refrained from making any overt accusations, even though there were several other people that it seemed Vincent had clearly murdered along the way. He'd deal with that later when he talked to Cat. If I get a chance to talk to her again….He looked toward the ER entrance with concern. He wished they could just know if she was going to make it or not so he could stop worrying.

"Monster Headquarters to Evan." JT's voice broke through the haze Evan had slipped into thinking about Catherine. "So you've beenstudyingVincent?" He rubbed his temples to try and stave off a raging headache. "Seriously, I'll wait and freak out about that later. What did you find?"

"It's his uh… DNA… specifically the L2 capsid. It's mutating. Basically, the animal nucleotides are taking over for the human ones. He's becoming less… human."

"Hey, standingright here," Vincent interrupted with a wave. "Stop talking about me like I'm invisible. And like I told Catherine, I feelfine. Never better."

"Yes, well clearly there are things about you I don't know or understand," Evan allowed. "Like, how it is, you appear to be a perfectly normal male one minute, and a beast the next? And how this even happened to you? JT mentioned 'super-soldiers'?"

Vincent briefly explained the whole Operation Muirfield thing and how adrenaline triggered the change in him. "Muirfield is the reason I pretended to be dead. They put out an order to exterminate all of us. I'm the only one from the project that has survived because of it. Up until a few months ago, JT was the only other person who knew I'm alive. But Catherine found out, and Muirfield sent assassins out after her, kidnapped her, and tried to get her to turn against me and give me up. His head dropped in shame as he thought of how faithful she had been to him, and how he'd failed to give her the one thing she apparently needed – hope. He continued without looking up, but his voice was softer and strained with emotion for the remorse that was gripping him. "She never even entertained the idea of turning me in, you know? She kept insisting that I'm not a monster, even though they showed her pictures of things I'd been involved in. She had doubts about me, but she never gave up on me, even when I did. I turned myself in to protect her and JT, and she stormed the place to get me back." He did lift his face then, staring up into the night sky, and Evan could see a lone tear sliding down his cheek as he added, "She is the most…amazingwoman I've ever known."

"Yes, she is," Evan agreed, "even more than I realized, apparently. It makes sense now why she has been keeping us all at a distance lately, but I can't believe she went through this alone. At any rate, I don't want to see her hurt. Surely you can understand that."

"I would never hurt her!" Vincent insisted.

"Maybe not physically," Evan allowed. "At least… not yet. But if we can't do something to stabilize your DNA and stop the mutation, eventually you'll become too dangerous for her to be around. But that's not what really worries me. I don't want to see you break her heart. Cat is… one of the kindest, gentlest people I know, sometimes to a fault. She wears this tough shell to keep everyone around her at bay, but there have been rare moments where I've seen her vulnerable when she thought no one was looking. So if she's let her guard down with you, it's pretty serious, and you could hurt her badly without even realizing it, because she's gotten so good at hiding from everyone. For example, you said you wanted her to try and stop you from leaving this evening… but did it ever occur to you that she thought you were rejecting her? And that's why she let you go? Because she thought you really just wanted to get away from her?"

"No, I would never-!" Vincent was devastated. Could Catherine really have thought he wanted her out of his life? After all they had been through? Once she had told him that it never occurred to her that he didn't know he was the best thing in her life… but had he ever told her she was the best thing in his? Let her know how much he cared for her, even if he hadn't dared tell her how much he loved her? No. He'd been just as guilty as she of assuming that they were on the same page regarding their feelings. How could he have been so blind? Not to mention selfish. He was so busy feeling sorry for himself for this whole miserable situation that he hadn't fully appreciated the beautiful gift that Catherine had given him – herself. Her hopes, her dreams, and her acceptance… she had put it all out there for him, and what had he done? Walked away and left her standing there, all alone in it. He sorted through his feelings in silence, and Evan waited patiently as he did so. Finally Vincent spoke. "I swear to you… Iwilltalk to her and get this sorted out."

"Well this is all touching," JT stated, "but can we get back to business? Marks, you said something about 'we' when you mentioned stabilizing Vincent's DNA. Does this mean you're willing to help us?"

"Are you kidding? Do you really think I would miss the chance of a lifetime for this kind of research experience? Besides, I already got a huge grant for this project." Evan grinned like a little kid who'd just been given the keys to the candy shop.

"What are you…nuts? We can't do this out in the open and then justpublishit. Vincent's life is at stake here! Nothing has changed. No one can know he's alive. Muirfield has already figured it out, but if he gets named in some cross-species DNA study, everyone that works on the project will be on the Muirfield hit list. These people don't play nice."

"Well maybe there's a way that we can research theprinciplesthat we'd need to formulate a cure for Vincent, without actually naming him as a subject in the study." Evan grew thoughtful. "It's too bad we don't have the original research from the project that created you. It might make things easier." Something was niggling at the back of his brain… something that JT said earlier… "Wait a minute. Did you sayVanessa Chandler'snotes helped you make that serum for Vincent?"

"Yes…" JT answered hesitantly.

"Are we talking, Vanessa Chandler as inCat's mother?"

"One and the same."

"She was an infectious disease specialist. What was she doing with notes on cross-species DNA?" Evan was feeling confused, and yet he sensed some more pieces were starting to line up, about to fall into place.

It was Vincent who answered. "Catherine's mother worked for Muirfield. She's the one that headed the project."

"Oh my God," Evan murmured. "So then… her murder… it wasn't random, was it?"

"Not in the least. She knew too much, and she was interested in helping us, not having us all killed to clean up their mess. I think she became too big a liability, so they killed her to shut her up."

"That means… the night that she died… you were there obviously.Yousaved Cat's life, didn't you? That's why you killed those men. You were protecting her." Evan was beginning to understand why the bond between Catherine and Vincent was so strong.

Vincent scuffed at the ground with his foot. "I wasn't there in time to save Dr. Chandler," he confessed sadly. He lifted his head and stared into Evan's eyes with such intensity, Evan swore they were starting to…glow. "But as long as I live, I willneverregret killing those men. They were hired assassins, and if I hadn't killed them, Catherine would have died right then and there. She was just a kid practically, with her whole life ahead of her. What wouldyouhave done?" Vincent threw the ball squarely into Evan's court and waited for a response, while he struggled to get his heart rate and respiration back to normal. The moment of truth had come – would Evan finally realize that Vincent didn't like to kill? That he did so only when innocent lives were threatened?

"And if you hadn't come into that tunnel when you did and killed Hollingsworth,Iwould be dead." Evan couldn't condone vigilantism, obviously, but it seemed that there was at least some moral justification for the situations where Vincent crossed the line. "Tell me… what about the FBI agents in the subway tunnel? That was obviously your… work. Why them?"

Vincent's hands balled into fists as he remembered the horror of that night. His jaw tensed, and his voice was little more than a controlled growl. "Muirfield assassins. They were trying to kill Catherine. They had thrown her down onto the tracks and were going to kill her and leave her for the train to destroy the evidence."

Evan recalled how they had found Catherine's cell phone on the tracks. Neither he nor Tess had gotten a satisfactory explanation as to why she'd been on the F train platform that evening. Until now."The bastards."Evan was starting to get angry now, too. They had tried to kill Cat! And the one thing he hated more than a vigilante with a moral compass was "The Company" killing innocent civilians and somehow thinking they could operate above the law. He had to agree with Vincent in spirit, if not in methodology, that these criminals needed to be brought to justice.

Vincent started to relax marginally, seeing that Evan was beginning to comprehend the stakes in this dangerous life he was being forced to live. "I don't know what else to tell you, man, except that I don'tlikekilling. I was a doctor. It goes against everything I ever believed in. But when it comes to kill or be killed? Or worse – to have Catherine's life threatened? I won't hesitate to kill again. If that makes me some sort of evil monster, so be it. But I think self-defense is still justified under the law, isn't it?"

Evan gave him a sad smile. "Yes, it is. It's just too bad you have to repeatedly be put in that position. Perhaps one day you won't be. In the meantime, however, we need to figure out how to stop your DNA from mutating any more than it already has. I don't think I have to explain why that has to be priority one." Vincent nodded in agreement.

"Well we still don't knowexactlywhat the serum we made was designed to do, or how it affected Vincent's…condition," JT interjected. "I mean, I had no way of running DNA analysisafter Vincent injected himself with it, against my better judgment I might add…" He gave Vincent a reprimanding look.

"Hey JT, chill man. I haven't had any blackouts since I took the serum, and for the hundredth time,I. feel. fine! Maybe Catherine was right. Maybe that's what those fugue-things were – my DNA starting to mutate. And just maybe, that's what Dr. C's serum was supposed to fix."

"The serum wasn't an antidote, Vincent. It was designed to treat the evident symptoms of the condition, not cure what ails you… so to speak."

"Well once we know that Catherine is out of danger we can start running some tests and see what's what –" Evan broke off mid-thought as Vincent dove for the bushes. "What the -?"

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