A/N: So I just watched episode 1x17, "Social Engineering," and I thought that the gas mask scene could use some extending. :) I love scenes where Henry and Jo have good conversations, so I wrote this little fic specifically for the purpose of letting them have a good talk.

Pairing: I wrote this as a Henry/Jo friendship. To be honest, however, you could view it as platonic or pre-relationship. Either works :).

Disclaimer: I don't own Forever.

Warnings: brief conversations about suicide

"So, why, Henry? Why death?" Jo asked once more when her question was met with silence. It was a question she'd been asking herself since she'd met Henry Morgan, and the more she learned about him, the less sense he made. At first, she would have accepted his explanation of the joy of problem solving. After all, she was quite the problem solver herself. Hence her choice of career.

But, Henry's motives were different than hers. Before his work in the morgue, he had been a grave digger. That wasn't exactly a desirable profession to the common person. And then, he had this massive martyr complex. He was always willing to sacrifice himself- no, he seemed to jump at the chance to die for someone else. For anyone and everyone. My God, it was stressful.

She had been trained to save others, and here he was, this medical examiner, stepping in front of bullets and having standoffs with moving cars. He made her job very difficult.

It definitely didn't help that she cared about him. She couldn't be apart from him for a second without worrying about him. My God, it pissed her off.

"Do you want to die?" she probed in a whisper, adjusting her gas mask slightly. No matter what his opinion was on the subject, she wasn't looking to bite it anytime soon.

He looked at her thoughtfully, the slight smirk sliding briefly off his face. For a moment, Jo had the slight inclination that she was closer to the mark than she would've thought, or liked. "Henry-" she reached out, placing her hand softly on his arm.

"No," he cut her off, and his warm humor was back in his expression. "At this point in my life, I'm happier than I've been in a long while." And I owe it all to you, he thought briefly. "I did at one point, though. Want to die."

Henry rolled to his back again and looked up at the ceiling. He turned his head to look at Jo again. She looked sad. Henry hated that. Out of all the people he had met in this life, she was the one with the least happiness in her eyes, the one with the heaviest burden to bear. He wanted to give her smiles, not make her worry. He didn't want to add to those sorrowful reserves in her eyes.

"After Abigail," she said, and it wasn't a question. Henry liked that about Jo Martinez. She had intuition unlike anything he'd ever seen (except, perhaps, in himself, but that came mainly from his many years of experience), and she was confident about it. But she never pushed anyone, unless it was her job at the moment to do so.

Henry Morgan studied her, eyes squinting a little. He didn't share easily. After all, he'd had to deal with more betrayals than the average person, and he wasn't exactly itching to experience another. But he needed to trust someone. And although he could trust Abe with everything, this wasn't exactly a father-son conversation. Henry was supposed to protect his child, he was supposed to be the rock in their relationship. And he couldn't do that if he was talking about how suicidal he'd been at the lowest point in his endless life.

"Yes. After Abigail," he finally answered.

Jo looked down, nodding. "What happened?" she whispered tentatively. Not unlike him, she wasn't much of a talker, and she didn't want to push the man who'd quickly become her best friend into a conversation he was uncomfortable with.

Henry sighed. "She died," he said matter-of-factly. He cleared his throat and clenched his jaw for a second before he continued. "She was... the world to me. She was everything that I knew and loved, and then she was... nothing. She was gone and... she left me empty. Abigail died and took me with her." He paused, giving himself time to breathe. "The way I saw it, I was already dead, and it was some horrible mistake that my body was still walking the Earth." He remembered those years. After Abigail slipped away. He remembered being so angry. He was so terribly enraged and yet too numb to do anything. That was the first time he had truly wished his... affliction on someone else. Anyone else. His life was a two-hundred-year-long nightmare and he wanted to wake up. He wanted to die.

That was when he committed his first suicide. For two months he had tried so many different ways, but, of course, none of them had been successful. He had ended up just as alive and just as miserable as he had been before his attempt.

It had taken Abe almost two years to pick up the broken pieces that Henry had become and fit them back together again.

Jo didn't know what to say. Henry had just put into words everything she had felt for quite some time after Sean died. She had felt so alone, so unreal. Until Henry showed up. He walked into her life, and everything changed. Yes, she still did a bit more weekend drinking than was probably wise, but she had stopped having one-night stands and had cut back considerably on her alcohol intake. Jo found herself walking a little taller in her boots. She started to feel human again. And I owe it all to you, she thought. But how to express that deep level of gratitude? She didn't know. Finally, she said simply, "I understand."

From the way Henry looked at her, she knew he knew just how deeply that understanding went.

The partners laid on the bed for a while, the room filling up with gas, their breaths making little fog spots on the gas masks they both donned.

Henry and Jo enjoyed each other's company more than they figured they would, or could, in the slightly numbed states they'd been in when they'd met.

Jo shook her head and smiled. If this had been a few months ago, and Henry had been just anyone, she would have slept with him. She would have slept with him and never seen him again.

Thank goodness she hadn't. This was a friendship she didn't know she'd needed, but she definitely didn't want to let it go.

Henry looked at the ceiling. He felt completely comfortable laying next to Jo, even if they were discussing grief and despair. And death. Although he had devoted his life to it, he didn't much share his obsession with others. He usually found conversations like this to be much like treading on thin ice. One never knew where talk of dying could lead, especially with his... unusually large amount of experience.

Finally, after many silent minutes, Henry spoke, his tone light and good-natured once more. "Abigail wasn't why I entered the business of death, however, although she played a part in the interest. I started because of this," he gestured lightly to his chest, where the scar tissue from his first death still marred his chest.

Jo propped herself up on her elbow. This was a story she'd been, well, dying to hear. "What did happen there, Henry? You said you got shot." Jo knew what coming close to death was like. To someone who wasn't exactly loving life, it was... not terrible. But being shot, as she had discovered, was an exceptionally painful experience. Although, if you had a big enough heart, and a hard enough past... Maybe this explained the doctor's boundless martyr complex.

"Yes, I did," he said, a grin sliding onto his face. How the hell was he going to explain this? He couldn't exactly say that he had been a doctor to slaves being forced to take the Middle Passage. But he didn't want to lie to someone he cared about. Not to Jo. "It was a... racial dispute of sorts."

"Henry Morgan, don't tell me you're a racist," Jo joked lightheartedly.

"What? No, of course not," he smiled at her, eyes sparkling. "I was on the other side of things." When Jo gave him a funny look, he rushed to explain. "Not in the way you'd think, of course. I know how lucky I am to have been born a white male." He said the words with a touch of irritation. If there was one thing that angered Henry Morgan, it was racism. It started, really, with his father. That betrayal was one of the worst. He couldn't stand the idea that innocent men, women, and children were being carted like animals, abused, and sold as property because of nothing more than their skin tone. And his father was a major part of that catastrophe. The fact that he had lived two centuries and still lived in a world where white privilege existed made him a bit sick to his stomach. "I was... on a boat, and there was an argument that got rather... heated. It was the middle of the night, and no one was out on the decks except these two men and myself. One man was the captain, and the other was a young, black businessman who had come down with an illness of sorts." Not exactly a lie.

Jo looked up at him, intrigued. Henry had so many stories. It was like he'd lived for centuries based on all the adventures he'd had, all the languages he knew.

"The captain was convinced that this man was going to infect the passengers. Or maybe he knew there was no danger. Anyway, I wandered in on the scene just as the captain drew a gun out of his coat. I informed the captain I was a doctor, and he let me examine the passenger, although I suspect it was just for appearances.

"When I informed both men that the passenger was absolutely fine, the captain refused to put down his weapon, and I refused to move aside, and, well... he fired. He fired and threw me overboard."

Surprise was evident on Jo's face. "Henry, holy crap," she paused briefly and got her thoughts together. "What happened then? How did you survive? Did the captain get caught? Tell me he got caught."

Henry smiled, but it was a sad smile. "No, he did not, unfortunately. After I was gone, the captain shot the other man and sent him after me. He was dead instantly. I fell unconscious, and awoke a week later in the hospital. I tried to get the shooter incarcerated, but unfortunately, I didn't remember his name, or even the name of the ship I was on. And in that day, the laws against crimes like that were very different."

Jo was shocked. She didn't know what to say. This story had done nothing but raise more questions. Where the hell had he been, where the laws were so unjust? How did he not remember what ship he was on? And how the hell had he lived? The wound was right over Henry's heart, she'd seen it. And how old was he when this had happened? He couldn't have been more than, what, twenty?

Henry continued, "The feeling of death, it was something I'd never felt before. My nerves felt... on fire, but also so unfeeling. It was fascinating, every second of it. I found out later that my heart had stopped. I did die. It was a sensation unlike any other, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life studying it. After all, I wasn't lying earlier. It is one puzzle that humanity may never solve, and there are many secrets to uncover." More than you know. He drew his story to a close. Of course, there was so much more to say, but tacking on the truth of his immortality onto the end of his tale wasn't exactly an intelligent choice.

"Henry, my God, that's..." Jo had no words.

"I didn't truly dive in, so to speak, until Abigail, but my near-demise was the beginning of my dalliance with death," Henry looked over at her. One side of his face pulled upwards into a smile as he noted the surprise and slight confusion on her face, even through the gas mask.

Jo shook her head. This man was a mystery. He himself was a puzzle, one that she was determined to solve. "But, Henry, why a grave digger? And why an M.E.? Why not... a funeral director? Or... When did that happen to you? Henry, why-"

She was cut off by the incessant sounding of Henry's device.

"Ah, I do believe our time is up," he observed, noting the gas levels before removing his mask and standing up.

"Henry, don't-" Jo warned.

"Don't worry, Jo, the levels are much too low to be lethal. It seems our victim was asphyxiated, but..."

"Not by the gas," Jo finished. She was tempted to ask Henry more about his life, but she stopped herself. She knew when a moment had ended, and this one certainly had.

Henry gave her a curt nod. He made a motion to leave the room, but Jo stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Henry. Thank you. For sharing." She knew how difficult it was for him, because she knew how difficult it would have been for her, and she didn't seem to have had nearly as traumatic a past as this man had had.

"Of course, Detective," he said fondly.

"No, really, Henry. I know how hard that was, and... you made sense of... everything I felt after Sean, and... it meant a lot. So, thank you."

Henry cocked his head and smiled his soft, meaningful smile. "You are most welcome, Jo," he replied, offering her a gentlemanly arm. Shaking her head at his old fashioned ways, she took it, and they left the crime scene together.

"We've been through a lot, haven't we?" Jo asked.

Henry furrowed his brows. Although he had certainly experienced more than his partner, including many more traumatic events, she had been through a lot in her short life. "Yes, we have," he said thoughtfully. He paused. "But, we're going to be okay, you and I," Henry observed.

Jo replied regardfully, "Yeah. We really are."

They both finished Jo's sentence mentally, thinking,

As long as I have you.

A/N: Thank you very much for reading! I appreciate it greatly :). Also, I must apologize for any errors I may have made. I wrote this at 1 am yesterday, so there are probably some mistakes I missed...

Also to my guest reviewer on my last Forever fic, Infinity (I don't know if you'll read this, but just in case...): There is a possibility of a Henry/Jo romantic fic in the future... Personally, I view them as more of a friendship, but all the fics I write seem to have a bit of romantic subtext, so if their relationship develops a little more onscreen, there's a chance of a romantic fic, I suppose. Keep your eye out...?

Thanks again for reading! Reviews are always appreciated! :)