Chapter Text
The smell of Oakvale is pervasive and stifling. Warm sun—too warm, soft green light through leaves, soporific—earth—not wet and growing, rot and cycle, but dry dust and cold stone—and greenery—petrichor despite the beautiful and clear weather, cut grass on summer days, chlorophyll without broken branches or crushed leaves—burns. It burns. Burns his lungs, his skin, his heart.
Hen can't breathe. He can't—he can't—he—! In his chest, his heart, his mouth dry, his body catches and clenches—he can hear, in his head, calming, slow, Bear Ri'Oak calling for him to breathe, in, out, but the burning hatred of being told what to do and need to run to run to—!
He can hear someone—round shape, calm, nervous, a cycle of panic, dirt to blend but not from Oakvale, not from here—call his name—not his name, he's Hen, they say Henry, where is the last bit, the Oak? Who is this person?! But he doesn't hate that voice—not like Bear Ri'Oak’s, which curls his insides and makes his fingers tense into claws and his ears pin back—and he wants to help that voice but he is Not Safe and he needs to Be Safe and he needs to be Home and Home is—Home is—
It’s not Oakvale. Oakvale is bars and Bear and hurting and he can’t breathe and—but Home is...a warm voice and soft face and hands that hold and help and he—
Hen reaches. He Reaches. Grabs the sides of the world and Dreaming and Pulls.
He wants to go Home.
So he Pulls. Tears. He is going Home. Away from here. From the hurting and the hands and everything that he hates—insofar as he hates anything but—
He Pulls and everything goes black.
Ron Stampler is having what could be classified as a Very Bad Day. If he’s being completely honest with himself, he’s been having a Very Bad Week. Month? Time is hard to keep track of.
Still, from the whole fiasco with Willy and the other fathers—which he’s going to just bury in the box in the back of his head for a while, until it’s his turn to deal with his issues and his Anchor—to this whole revelation with Henry—which he, himself isn’t actually sure what’s going on, but never let it be said that Ron F Stampler wasn’t willing to roll with the punches—Ron was having what can be quantifiably classified as A Very Bad Time. Especially since Barry did something to Henry that made him...different. Like pieces of him were gone. A little like how the people here in Oakvale are. Blank. Weird.
Wrong.
It makes his skin itch.
Or it would, if he wasn’t seconds away from a solo combat encounter with a decidedly not-calm Barry Oak.
When Henry—or whatever was Henry after Barry did that thing with the magic and his words and maybe just being a really bad father, but that’s a little beyond his comprehension right now—left, it was just Ron. Ron Stampler, by himself, no pants to hide in, no one to help him out. All he has is his business cards, that Barry appears to be visibly shaken by whatever the heck Henry just did, and the fact that he seems to have not even noticed Ron is even there.
Barry’s facade of kind fatherhood crumples, his face a rigid snarl—something more animal than human or elf or whatever it is that Barry and Henry actually are—and he lashes out, scrabbling for where Henry had been, hissing something in a language Ron can't understand. While he’s off-kilter, Ron makes a Decision.
Ron runs.
He knows the others are out by the road, just south-ish—or what passes for south in the Ron Stampler Compass of You Are Here—and he doesn’t have time to worry that maybe they realized that this is some kind of trap or got captured or anything else. So he just tucks his chin and uses every bit of his speed to make his way back to where he last saw them.
Then he runs face-first into someone and falls clean on his ass.
“Fuck!” Ron barks.
“Shit!” The person he ran into echoes. It’s Glenn, rubbing his chest. Behind him are Darryl, Lark, Sparrow, and Paeden. All of them look concerned—save Glenn, who rarely looks concerned but that’s beside the point. All of them look okay though. That's good.
Relief sweeps over Ron, settling liquid in his bones. It jellies his muscles and, for a brief moment, he forgets why he was running. Then he remembers.
“Henry! Barry was there!”
“We know! Some bird told us!” Darryl says.
“Spoke English and everything,” Glenn adds. He looks very nonplussed for a man who’s had a bird talk to him, but Glenn also seems to be quick to roll with the punches. Even for a man who shot at a bird with a gun. But, in Glenn’s defense, it wasn’t a bird. It was Barry. And he sucks. So that’s okay. Point and shoot.
“So we came to help Henry! Where is he?”
“Gone.” He doesn’t mean to be callous but...it’s easier to speak plainly. He’s less likely to lose his words than if he thinks about what he’s going to say first. Samantha always said his brain was like a colander and he needed to spoon the thought-soup out faster than it could slip through the holes. So speaking first and thinking second always served him well. “Barry did something to him and he...freaked out and just...did some magic thing and disappeared. Gone.” He splayed his fingers out, imitating an explosion or a puff of smoke but..it was closer to a heat-haze. Just a ripple of magic and then...nothing. Dropped the stomach out of him.
“He’s...gone?” Darryl’s voice cracks. Behind him, Ron can see the twins exchange looks, their brows furrowed in a strange manner. He’s never seen them look like that before. Worried. They’re usually more carefree. That look is better suited for Terry or Grant—as awful as that thought is.
“Where did he go? What did he do?” Glenn pushes. Ron shrugs.
“I don’t know.”
“Is he okay?” Darryl asks.
“He didn’t seem okay before he ran.” Discomfort swirls in his gut, deep and sour.
“Does that mean...he left us?” Lark—or is it Sparrow? Ron always has a hard time telling them apart—asks. He sounds subdued. Concerned. He reaches out to his brother and grabs his hand. Ron watches them press their tattooed forearms against each other's.
He doesn’t have a good answer for them.
His confused silence is answer enough.
Mercedes trusts her husband. She loves her husband. She believes in her husband and his cause and his skills. So when she got a phone call from Carol Wilson saying she just got off the phone with their husbands—not just her Darryl, but also Henry and Ron and probably Glenn was there as well, though Carol didn’t have anything to say about him specifically—and that they sounded distressed—something about time travel and a funeral and a pyramid—and that was enough to put her off being at work for a little bit. It’s not as if she doesn’t love her job—she does, very much so—but there are more important things than her job at the moment.
Like her husband. And her sons.
And the niggling feeling in the back of her head that’s telling her she really needs to be home right now.
If there’s one thing Mercedes Oak-Garcia knows about life, it’s that she needs to trust her instincts. They’ve never led her wrong once. Even led her to her husband, way back when.
So she walks home, as she always does, thinking cyclical thoughts. Idealizing her future. Counting her breaths. Thinking about seeing her husband and children home, safe, happy. Counting her steps.
Just as she gets home—thoughts in her head about Henry, her sons, about the sun, the birds, anything to keep the panic from settling in her bones—she hears something. No, not just hears, feels. Like someone taking one of her more sturdy dresses, clenching it in both of their hands, and pulling it in two. A low bass noise—standing next to a speaker, low enough that it reverberates in her collarbone, plays windchimes with her ribs, rattles her teeth—and then...there is a flash of color—more colors than she’s ever known could have existed and it hurts to think about them, to look at them, to conceptualize these colors, if they can even be called that—and someone collapses in front of her.
There is no hesitation. She dashes forward, on her knees in their front yard, hands outstretched. She’s not touching this person—you don’t touch someone who might be in shock—but she is hovering. They’ve curled in on themself, knees pressed against their chest, shaking slightly. Pale skin, blonde hair—fluffy and wild, unkempt and around their neck in a wild mane—fingernails almost like claws digging into their arms, drawing blood. And, barely visible in the mess of their hair, their ears—long, rounded, like a rabbit’s without the fur—press flat against their head.
“Are you okay? Do you need assistance? ¿Hablas inglés o español?” Low, quiet, like when she found Henry. Careful. Enunciating.
The person shifts beneath her, whimpering slightly, and she draws back to give them space. They uncurl, pulling their pale, almost burlap robes away from their skin like it’s causing them discomfort. And as they unfurl, like a plant searching for the sun, Mercedes draws back in shock and horror. She would recognize this person anywhere.
“Oh, mi león, what happened to you?”
Henry, almost no recognition in his bright eyes, reaches out to her, seeking some form of comfort, and she envelops him in a hug.