Chapter Text
Lucas draped a blanket over his shoulders, Hanson told him good job, and Jo gripped his hand and promised that they were all there for him.
Henry's heart swelled.
Adam called. He'd been his therapist all along.
And Henry's heart ached.
Casework resumed.
Henry was backed into a corner in all sense of the word. He gripped the knife he'd grabbed for self-defence - it was a butter knife, for crying out loud - backhand, his fingers tight around the cool metal and his heart hammering in his chest.
"Henry!!"
His eyes instinctively flew over their suspect's, who was the one who had him caged in in the corner of the home, knife bared, shoulder to Jo, who had just run into the room with her gun held aloft. He met her gaze; she was defiant and as dangerous as Henry knew her to be, but there was a spark of concern under her gaze
and Henry was right back to that night in his lab, staring down the man he had thought was Adam, thinking the worst and then faced with the possibility of losing a loved one in front of his eyes and it wasn't Adam at all, just a mortal man, and Henry was a killer, just what Adam wanted.
He could feel his hands shake.
"Henry. Henry."
Henry breathed in sharply, focussing on Jo in front of him. This was the present, and that was the past. This was Hanson wrestling the suspect out of the room, already captured and cuffed while Henry had been off in his catatonic state, and that was not Adam and murderer.
"Hey." Jo gripped his wrist loosely. "It's okay. Alright? You're alright." She gently wedged the butter knife away from his fingers. "We're good."
Henry let go of the knife. He drew in another deep breath and let it out, pretending to be oblivious to the way it trembled. He smiled one of his polished smiles. "Yes. I knew you'd come through. Never had a doubt."
And he wanted to thank her, but there was something about the way she looked at him, and Henry didn't want to talk about it right now, so he dodged around her instead and followed the boys back outside.
It wasn't as though a death didn't stick with him. It did. Some instances less than others, but watching Adam kill himself only to then drown himself stuck with him.
Staring at the waterlogged drowning victim, Henry felt sick to his stomach. He straightened amidst a wave of vertigo and reached out for the nearest thing to hold onto; in this case, it happened to be Jo.
"Henry?"
Henry blinked rapidly, clearing the mental salt water out of his eyes. He felt foggy, and he wasn't even drowning. "Sorry." His voice sounded distant to his own ears.
"Are you alright?"
Henry shook his head slowly. "I'm not feeling well. I think I'm going to have to take a raincheck." Wasn't that a poor choice of words? Rain, water, drowning, Adam.
"Sorry," he said again, and pulled himself away, stripped his gloves, and headed back for the street.
He tried to ignore the rushing of the water in his ears.
"Henry! Henry, wait up!"
Henry barely noticed that Jo was following him, and only just stopped a half second before she reached out to touch his shoulder.
"Hey, you need a ride?" she asked, concern etched onto her face.
Henry smiled wearily. "I'll be fine. I can walk."
"You just said you don't feel good," Jo said incredulously. "Now you're going to walk home? Look, it's not that far, I'll take you."
Henry clenched his hands into a fist at his side before relaxing his grip. He forced himself to smile. "Thank you," he conceded, and mutely stood by as Jo mimed for Hanson to go ahead with the investigation.
They resided in silence afterwards. For awhile.
"... I'm worried about you," Jo said shortly, breaking the silence blanketing the car.
Henry feigned ignorance, looking over. "It's just a touch of vertigo, nothing, I'm sure, that you need to be-"
"Bullshit."
Henry, momentarily taken aback by her sudden use of profane language, sat silently.
"Sorry." Jo glanced over briefly. "But you haven't been the same since we wrapped up your stalker case. I swear I'm not trying to get into your business, Henry, but that stuff takes a toll on you. A kill takes a toll on you, it doesn't matter the how or the why. And I'm a cop. I've been there before and it's not a good place to be."
"I'm... really fine," Henry said shortly. "I was a-" He caught himself about to say I was a soldier; I killed people. "I was, uh..."
Jo sighed. "I'm just asking, Henry. I don't want your life secrets. But, if you want to talk..."
"Thank you," Henry said, seriously. To then continue on to say: "But there's nothing to talk about."
Jo fell silent until the next stoplight. "Did you ever go back to your therapist?"
Henry cringed internally. "No," he said aloud. His voice was more steady than he thought it had any given right to be, considering the circumstances. "He... He transferred out. Just after the case."
"Oh." Jo shifted. "We could set you up with someone else."
"That's really not necessary."
"Okay." Jo's tone was resigned, and that was the end of the conversation.
For now.
How had Adam been able to so flawlessly imitate his autopsy work, Henry wondered. Yes, the man had been watching Henry for how long, even he didn't know. But was he really that skilled as to copy his work, down to the same strokes Henry would have used to slice open a cadaver?
Who was he kidding? Of course he was.
"Okay."
Henry startled back to reality, looking at Jo over the autopsy table. "Okay?"
There were fires of determination burning in Jo's eyes as she wound around the table. She surprised him by taking his hand and holding onto it tight enough that he couldn't pull away without meeting resistance, and then surprised him once again by taking him back to his own office and closing his own door behind them.
"Sit down," she said, releasing his hand.
Henry frowned. "I'm sorry, what's this about?"
"Sit."
Henry blinked rapidly. "Very well, Detective." He sat down on the edge of his chair, watching her in puzzled thought.
Jo moved over the uncomfortable, wooden chair, sat backwards on it, and leaned forward. "Talk to me."
Henry looked at her and then around the office slightly. "About what, exactly?"
She gave him a look that said cut the crap, without needing to say the words.
Henry heaved a breath and reached to straighten the papers on his desk. "I promise you, Detective, I am fine. I was thinking, that's all."
"You weren't thinking about the autopsy, not this one," Jo replied. "So, I'm asking you, friend to friend, to talk to me."
Henry watched her idly. Her heart was in the right place, he was certain, because she hadn't been lying before; she had been there. He had watched her freeze up on her first victim after emptying a clip into a man. That was the frailty of mortality - and, in his case, immortality - to freeze up when something caused indecision. Just like he had frozen looking in the eyes of a murderer after his first kill, like he had nearly drowned in the memories of water rushing into his lungs, or how he simply floated off to a dream world contemplating a psychopath over an autopsy he was meant to be performing as part of his job.
The most striking of all of his inner rationalisation was that it was affecting his job. The one thing that he had had centuries to perfect, and he was lost in what had passed.
"I'm not the type of person to unload my troubles onto someone else, Jo."
"Neither am I," she replied, "so I know that whatever's going on up there is swirling around and attacking you at the worst moments."
Henry stared at her for a moment before reaching for his pen; it wasn't there. He must have left it on the table. His hands settled back onto the desk, fingers interlacing. "I don't know what you want from me."
"Just wanna talk. That's it."
Henry had to force himself not to sigh. He never did well with these conversations. It had been bad enough explaining to the 11th precinct that he had a stalker, in front of Jo and Reece amongst others, with nowhere to run and no lies to offer. Now it was this, and Henry wondered, if he and Abe had gotten to the airport before Jo had showed up to find him with the hunting knife, if he would be happier wherever they would have ended up.
But, of course he wouldn't have. He loved his life here. He loved New York, he loved the people around him, he loved his job. They had the antique front and he had Detective Martinez, and increasingly patient assistant in the lab and an incredibly loving son at home.
All that combined, having a conversation with Jo seemed trivial. So, then, why couldn't he shake the uncomfortableness?
He cleared his throat. "What do you want to talk about?"
Jo folded her arms on the back of the chair. She shrugged. "How're you?"
"I would say that I'm fine, but I don't think that you're inclined to believe me," Henry replied, looking around his office again. "So, we'll settle with the idea that I'm okay."
"That's good."
Henry glanced back at her, and then away, unable to keep her gaze. His neck felt flush. He fidgeted as the lab coat brushed against his skin. "And you're doing well, I take it?"
"I can't complain," Jo replied. "Well, I could," she added, with a small smile that Henry barely caught, "but I won't." She followed his wandering gaze around the office. "You don't keep anything very personal in here, do you?"
"Well, work is work," Henry replied. It was a half-truth, given half of his life was his work to begin with.
"I'm just surprised you don't have a picture or two here and there." She looked back at him. "How is Abraham doing, anyway? I haven't seen him lately."
"Good. He's good." Henry nodded. "Ornery as ever, if you can believe it, but... can't complain," he said absently.
"Yes, you could."
Henry managed a small smile. "But I won't."
Jo smiled back at him. "We'll have to do dinner, drinks, one night, you, me, and him. I'd love to get to know him better, hear some of those stories about you growing up."
Henry scoffed. "Trust me, I was a boring child."
"Oh, I doubt that," Jo said. "You're probably the most interesting person I've met on the team, Henry. You didn't just acquire that overnight. I know you had to have had an interesting childhood."
To be fair, his childhood had been rather lacklustre. It was only after childhood and adolescence that things had started to get dicey. Looking back at it now, his childhood had been a dream compared to his adulthood, but that was the story of anyone's existence.
"Seriously, though, you, me, and Abraham," Jo said, drawing him out of his thoughts. "I'll have you both over for dinner to make up for that lovely dinner you treated awhile ago."
"It's really not necessary-"
She held up her hands. "Nope, I insist. Make sure you tell him." She got to her feet. "Come on." She gestured back to the autopsy awaiting him, and strode out of his office.
Henry sat in another briefly stunned silence; she had wanted to talk and then just- wait. He stopped twirling a loose thread of his lab coat between his fingers. Abe. Jo had been persistent about Abe: how is Abe, you, me, and Abe will have to do dinner. So the whole thing had been about Abe.
And "Make sure you tell him"... because he could tell him. Because he was alive. Because of Henry taking action that day.
She'd transitioned from casual conversation to slightly off-kilter therapy without him noticing.
"... Consider me impressed," he muttered to himself, and got to his feet to follow her.