Chapter 15

"I don't believe this….it can't be true…there is no way."

Catherine is pacing back and forth talking to herself. Tess is watching her, worried, maybe this is all too much, maybe Cat has hit her breaking point. Scared for her friend, she turns to Vincent.

"Vincent, she is freaking out. I have never seen her like this….." Tess stops. "Well actually I have, when you went missing. She paced like this for days, Vincent, she didn't eat, she didn't sleep, almost as if she could keep moving, then she was moving toward you, toward finding you. I hate to see her like this."

Vincent has been watching Catherine like the predator he is, her heart is racing and he can only imagine what her mind is doing.

"I think I need to talk to Catherine, alone."

Tess is reluctant to leave her best friend. JT sees this and puts his arm around her.

"Tess, Vincent's got this ok?" Looking at Vincent and Catherine. "I have a feeling there is more they need to talk about than just Ray. We should probably check on him anyway."

As they leave, Tess looks over her shoulder at both of them. Vincent nods his head at her to let her know he understands.

Ray is hooked up to a heart monitor. JT walks over and looks at the results.

"So far so good, no Arrhythmia. Strong and steady. I'd like to keep you here a little while longer just to make sure. How are you feeling otherwise?"

"Great. I feel…..normal. It's so weird JT, I still can't wrap my head around the fact that it's true, Catherine really did free me. No more hiding in the shadows, no more fear that I would lose control and most importantly, I am no longer vulnerable."

That statement caught JT off guard.

"Vulnerable? I would think it would be just the opposite, that you would feel vulnerable now, with no beast side."

Ray shook his head.

"Not at all, before I was always scared someone would find out what I was. Then Barnes found me and used me….he made me feel like it was the only place I belonged. I was trapped, my only reason for being was as a weapon. But now I am free…..I have no idea what I am going to do next, but that is the beauty of it. I am free!"

Catherine is still pacing, muttering to herself.

"Catherine…..Catherine." Vincent walks up to her arms spread like he means no harm. What a role reversal. She is usually the one calming him down. Hearing Vincent call her name she turns towards him.

"I have been giving this a lot of thought Vincent and I think…."

He stops her by closing his arms around her.

"Shhhh…..no thinking, we can't think ourselves out of this one Catherine. Just stop a moment."

He tucks her head under his chin and placed a kiss on her temple. He holds her a few minutes. She is vibrating with energy and he only knows one way to deal with it.

He steps back, takes her face in his hands and kisses her. Slowly at first. He tilts her head, changing the angle so he can kiss her more deeply. When he can feel her relax against him he stops. Placing his forehead against hers and looking into her eyes. He says.

"I love You, Catherine, you are amazing to me, no matter what we decide and no matter what happens I want you to know and believe that." He kisses her again, gently.

She closes her eyes, and now that she is calm she realizes just how out of control she was. She takes a deep breath.

"I am so sorry about this, I haven't felt this way in so long, not since."

"I was taken."

Catherine nods her head, her throat tight and tears threatening. She shakes her head violently.

'I don't want to think about that."

"I know, but we need to talk about it. I need to know what you went through Catherine, just like you need to know what I went through." Vincent cups her cheek in his hands. "It's important, we can't keep things from each other, thinking we are protecting each other. It's too much for either one of us to take on alone. My nightmares, your need to push all of your emotions aside. We have to get through this together."

Vincent drops his hands.

"I am tired of feeling broken Catherine. I want to be whole again, I want to be who I was before I was taken. Don't you want the same?"

Catherine laughed, but it was the desperate kind.

"Vincent it's been so long since I have felt anything other than broken, I don't remember what the old me felt like. Watching as you were ripped away from me, knowing that there was nothing I could do. I have never felt so powerless in my whole life. I even saved Gabe, I was so desperate to find you. I had no trouble using the monster who tried to kill you. I didn't care what I had to do and who I had to use to find you. I looked for you every day of those three months. I couldn't close my eyes without seeing your face or hearing you call my name as they took you away."

The wall she had built to protect herself was coming down.

"I ached every day for you Vincent, I had nightmares about what they were doing to you, wondering if you were still alive. Cursing myself for reversing your cure. I blamed myself for them taking you. If you had not beasted out to save me, they never would have known about you. Sometimes I even prayed that you were dead, and not suffering. Can you imagine? I actually hoped you had died!"

Vincent could tell that she was close to losing it and stepped toward her, but she raised her hand to stop him.

"And then after all that, I found you. That day in the warehouse, just like the first time I saw you. Only this time you didn't remember me, after all I had been through, after months of searching for you, crying for you, dying inside for you. You didn't even know who I was!"

Catherine voice had risen with the last sentence.

"How was that even possible? There was nothing, not one shred of feeling for me, NOTHING!"

Catherine collapsed, exhausted and Vincent was there to catch her. He sat on the ground holding her, she was crying, great wracking sobs that shook her whole body. He held her and rocked back and forth with her like he would a small child. She clutched at him as she gave in to all the pain and fear she had been holding onto for the last few months. He curled himself around her, she was tearing his guts out, but he held on. He would never let her go.

Eventually she quieted, she pulled back, wiping at her face, embarrassed by her breakdown.

"Don't pull away from me Catherine, not now, not ever. Thank you….." She looked up at him surprised. He continued. "Thank you for trusting me enough, I won't pretend that hearing all of that didn't tear me up inside, but you are not alone in this, you will never be alone again."

He kissed her. She smiled.

"I do feel better, I feel like a weight has been lifted off me, Vincent. Now I think it's my turn to do some heavy lifting for you."

After her emotional breakdown, Vincent's gut was telling him to protect her from any more pain, but he had made a promise to her, no more secrets.

"The sight of you reaching out for me and the look on your face stayed with me for months. Every time I closed my eyes I would see the anguish in your face. I knew you were trying to find me and I trusted that you would. I fought every day to get out of the cage they put me in and get back to you. No matter what they did to me, I fought them. I fought them until I was bruised and bloody, I fought them until they pumped me so full of drugs that I couldn't move. But I could still see you, I would close my eyes and there you were. Sometimes it was the look on your face, when I kiss you, or the look on your face when I am inside you. Sometimes you would laugh and smile at me, I could feel you touching me."

"Because of the drugs I would hallucinate you, actually reach out to touch you, and I would touch a cattle prod or an iron. The pain would jolt me out of the hallucination. But it didn't matter, I kept going back to find you to see you. I didn't care that it wasn't real and I didn't care how much it hurt, I only cared that it was you."

"In the end, I think that is why your Father erased my memories, I think he was shocked at how long I resisted. He knew I would never cooperate, I would never tell him anything. At least with no memory I was useful to him as an assassin and you were safe.

"I fought those drugs too, I realized what they were doing when it became harder to and harder to summon you. The drugs made me so sick, I think they thought I would die, but even though I fought them as hard as I could and as long as I could, eventually the drugs worked and I couldn't remember why I was fighting so hard."

"Your Father sent me out to find the head of Murfield, my instructions were to not let anything or anyone stand in my way. You got in my way that day." Vincent smiled. "I know you think that there was nothing there, but if that were true, I would have killed you that day. I might not have been aware that I knew you, but the second I saw you, their programming started to fail. I stopped because of you and I believed you, after I left JT's I asked my handler about you. I could sense something familiar about you and even after having been brainwashed not to trust anyone. I trusted you."

Catherine looked into Vincent's eyes.

"I am sorry for not protecting you that day, and I am sorry it took me so long to find you."

Vincent took Catherine's hands in his own.

"I am sorry it took me so long to come back to you. Thank you for fighting for me."

Vincent kissed her and raised her up off the floor, wrapping his arms around her as he pulled her close, Catherine stepped into him, arms going around him and her head fitting under his chin.

"Do you want me to try and cure you Vincent?"

Immediately he answers, leaving her no doubt, no room for second thoughts.

"No I would rather be a beast with you by my side, than a man without you."

"I love you Vincent."

"That is good, because I plan on loving you my whole life Catherine Chandler."

The End