Maiya Wright and Vincent Keller: Beauty's Beast

Chapter 3: A Beast

Stunned. How often do you come by someone who is proven to be dead, only you don't have the full conclusive evidence and you find out otherwise?

I sit, perched on the edge of a rock by the lamp as Vincent treats the scrape wound in my leg; his records said he was a doctor, even after seven years that hasn't changed. The pain stings and eats away at me as though the wound is like a mosquito eating away at my skin and leaving a bite in the surface. Little by little the pain begins to dissipate completely, Vincent stifles the bleeding with a bandage which he wraps around my leg until the wound is invisible for the naked eye to see.

Everything that Vincent used or didn't gets packed away into a leather bag that moves out of sight, underneath a rock. He then sits down on a rock opposite from me. But he doesn't speak.

"Thank you." I award him my gratitude.
"You shouldn't have come down here." he finally speaks to me, but like a little girl.

"I had a mission to d..."
"Oh, I'm very well aware of what drove you here." Vincent looks at me like I'm a criminal.

"You work for Muirfield." he accuses me.

"My mother did, I trained to work for them, but after what they did to her, I am now a double agent, I work for Muirfields enemy, my goal is to bring Muirfield down, and I will." spoken like inspiration, but Vincebt is not impressed.

"Muirfield agents are the ones that come here. You know what those names are?" Vincent reminds me of the names carved into the wall.

I nod in confirmation.
"Those are the names of civilians who were once beasts, Muirfield blew the place up to try and destroy any evidence or record of their experiments from being exposed. If they still come here, then what are you doing here?"
I throw Vincent's volatile words back at him to as though I'm saying that he's not anymore innocent in all this as I'm not.
Vincent gives no reply.

"We all have our secrets, Dr Keller."
"Maybe. But I have more to hide from and fear than you do." he says.

We don't say anymore words.
He starts tending to the wound on my leg, the stings I receive from the dabbing of water that he applies makes me squirm like a four year old, but it's nice having someone help me for a change and knowing that there is someone whom I can trust. Vincent completes the process by wrapping a bandage around my knee, erasing any traces of the blood or the surface-scraped wound that can be noticed on my kneecap.

"There. You should go, now. And not a word about this place or me, to anyone. Please." he doesn't beg, but his eyes lightly produce a sense of fear on his face; he's desperate.

"I promise, but don't think that I won't stop until I've found you again." this can't be goodbye.

"You should be careful. The world we're both living in... It's dangerous. Seven years ago I saved a young woman who's mother was shot dead by two Muirfield agents, she thought she saw a beast, she's now a homicide detective for the New York Police Department, the 125th Precinct. Her name is Chandler. Catherine Chandler." I paid attention to all of that, but the part at the end really gripped me.

'Catherine Chandler?!' That's the name of my twin sister my mother told me about. So Vincent was there?! He saved her?! All of it is mystifying me, but one last question remains:
Why didn't he save my mother?