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“So. Weird day, huh?” Henry chuckles awkwardly. Piper pushes down her instincts to yell at him and sighs, waiting for him to say whatever it is he’s nervous to say. Sure enough, Henry’s checking if their parents aren’t there and then approaches Piper looking conspiratory.
“Listen, Piper, you really can’t tell anyone about what you’ve seen today. It’d put you in so much danger and me and Ray, too. Can you promise that you’ll keep your mouth shut?”
“I’m not an idiot, Henry. I get it.”
“Oh. Okay, good.”
Henry sits down on the couch and Piper notices just how exhausted he looks. It’s not the first time she’s noticed it; it’s just that then she was writing it off to him being such a workaholic. She suspects she wasn’t entirely wrong, just right in a very roundabout, weird way. Kid Danger - her brother - is on the news all the time. Kid Danger and Captain Man defeated this criminal, they saved these children. Barely a day goes by without them protecting the city somehow. Barely a night, either.
So, Henry is probably very overworked because he is Kid Danger and Piper can’t just accept that. There were more pressing matters back in the Man Cave, but now that they’re back home, Piper’s starting to really realize what this means. How can Kid Danger, a person she’s admired for over four years, be the same person as her brother, a person who annoys her endlessly? It doesn’t make sense. It really doesn’t.
“You okay there?” Henry asks, though he sounds half-asleep. “Looking kind of like you’re having some sort of existential crisis.”
“I’m not,” she tells him sharply, and he puts up his hands in surrender. “I just can’t believe this. You’re so different from Kid Danger. You’re annoying, and loud, and stupid and everything, and Kid Danger’s brave, witty, pretty much the opposite of you.”
“Jeez, thanks. Love you too, Piper.”
Piper rolls her eyes. “I guess you can be nice, and brave in a stupid way. But that’s not the point. Kid Danger and you are not the same person.”
“Yeah, but see, here’s the thing, we kind of are, though.”
“How did Charlotte and Jasper handle finding out about this?” She’s asking how Jasper did something. That is one thing she never thought would happen, but, well, she never expected Henry to be Kid Danger, either.
Henry gets that look on his face that indicates that for once there are thoughts floating around in his head. “Charlotte found out after, like, two weeks, and I’m pretty sure she was suspicious all along, so it was no surprise for her. I don’t think anything really changed in Jasper’s head, either. He already liked, maybe even admired me; it was pretty easy for him to believe that I was someone else he admired. He was just… proud of me.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t help.” It really doesn’t. Piper still has no clue how to feel. In a way, maybe she is proud of Henry. She would not have expected him to be able to deal with all the shit Kid Danger gets thrown at him while not causing too much suspicion and also handling his normal life. That just makes it harder to process, though. This whole thing doesn’t sound plausible. It’s not the Henry Hart she knows.
“You know, Piper, these past few years haven’t really been easy,” Henry says. “Like, remember when you got ox pox? That was because of something weird that happened at work.”
“That was your fault?” Piper screams. Henry puts up a hand to silence her.
“It was Schwoz’s fault. And I just, I was so worried about you. Ray went back in time and almost froze to get the cure, just because he saw how much it hurt me to know that you were that sick. And the green finger disease, that was Schwoz’s fault, too. I hate that it affected you. And, and when the Game Shakers were here, that Hudson kid blew a bubble and they all saw what happened and then I zapped them and then I zapped you and I freaked out. The point is, I really care about you and I never wanted anything bad to happen to you. At least now that you know, you can understand why all this happened and why I’ve been so weird. I was kind of hoping maybe you’d appreciate that, too.”
He’s looking down and fiddling with his hands, all signs of the previous exhaustion gone from his features. Piper wonders how good he got at hiding his tiredness over the years. Actually, he wasn’t even that good at it. How didn’t she connect the dots? There were so many clues, not the least of which the time Henry broke his arm the same day Kid Danger did. In hindsight, his being the playground pooper is pretty out of character for him.
The thing is, Piper never thought Henry was capable of any of that. Of making a meaningful change to Swellview, doing good, whatever. But here he is, saying from the heart that he cares about Piper, and that’s making her feel things she’s not very used to feeling. Maybe she didn’t know her brother as well as she thought.
“I think I’ll turn in early,” Henry says quietly.
“Wait!”
“Yeah?”
Piper pulls him down by the wrist back onto the couch. “I don’t care about all those bad things that happened. I mean, we’re alive and kicking, right? It’s just, I never really considered you had this soft side.”
“Listen, it’s not soft. It’s-”
“Yes, it is, shut up. I’ve just always thought of you as my annoying brother, because you are annoying, but maybe you’re more than that, too.”
“You think?” Henry says dryly.
“Yeah. I guess I just kind of have to get to know this part of you before I can really process that you’re Kid Danger. Maybe I should ask Jasper about it, if he adores you so much. God, I’m thinking about asking Jasper for advice. What have you done to me, you monster?”
She’s mostly joking, but Henry’s still frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“I wanted to show you that I care,” Henry says slowly. “I really did. I mean, I know you’ve been having a hard time keeping up with all your homework so I wanted to at least try helping with that, but every time I was home and had finished all my chores and my own homework and stuff, my stupid watch beeped and I had to leave. You shouldn’t have to find out only now that I can be a nice person. I should’ve shown you a long time ago. In between work and school and mom and dad, I just haven’t had the time or energy.”
He is looking extraordinarily guilty. Piper remembers Kid Danger recently lost his powers and wonders about the fallout of that. She’s sure Henry’s had some problems fighting bad guys after that, maybe it’s messed up his feelings of guilt? Speaking of messed up, it can’t have been good for him to be under such stress all this time. She shakes her head: not important right now. Henry’s got one smart friend and she’s probably talked to him about it already.
“Well, I’m going to give your boss no choice but to give me a job. It’s clear you’ll be better off with me,” she announces. “So, I’ll be part of work from now on. I’ve got all the time in the world to find out just how nice you can be.”
“Not nice enough to give you money,” Henry says almost immediately. Piper laughs. “It would’ve been worth a shot.”
Henry just smiles.