okay I wasn't even expecting the amount of feelings I had over this, but? come on, you can't break me by making Henry believe he lost his family.
Sometimes, on nights like this when he wakes up gasping and he's buried under his pillows and his blankets are too hot, he finds himself on the roof.
The breeze calms him, cools him down. He lets the sounds of the city at night drown out the screams in his mind.
The worst part? He wasn't even there.
The bookstore in Oklahoma had been busy. Photos and book signings and gifts and way, way too much smiling and small talk, Henry had gone back to his hotel room exhausted. His wife had texted him three times with updates about their daughter - she was walking now, started right before the book tour, and now apparently she was determined to start running - and all Henry had been able to do was text back a smiling face and plead exhaustion and an early flight to Santa Fe in the morning. He'd promised to call when he landed.
Only...
The coroner's reports said they'd died in their sleep. Suffocated by smoke, they wouldn't have known, wouldn't have suffered. Quick. The fire didn't touch them, the funeral was open casket.
An accident. A candle left burning, an open window and those gauzy curtains Henry had hated.
His entire world, gone in an instant, and he'd what, been too tired to talk to his wife? Never got to tell her he loved her one last time?
He hadn't even been there, but the nightmares still come. Nights when he's too hot, nights when he's on his stomach and it's hard to breathe, his imagination - the same damn one that can't create his sophomore novel - runs wild with images of the house burning and his family screaming and he can't move or breathe and he can't save them.
He's no hero, not like the ones he once envisioned. A house fire isn't a dragon to be slain or a pirate to swashbuckle. He's just Henry Mills, the man who wrote one book, cancelled half a book tour, and lost everything he ever cared about.
Tonight though, tonight's nightmares had faces. Lucy and Jacinda, which is - strange. Henry can call to mind his wife so clearly: the curve of her... no, that's not right. Her smile though... wait, her smile? Well, she'd been beautiful on their wedding day, he remembered that: her dress fit perfectly and there were... hyacinths? Yeah, she loved those, they were in her hair - wait, what color had her hair been? Blonde? No, brunette...
And his daughter - no, she wouldn't look like Lucy, would she? She'd had his nose, her mother's... ears? That didn't seem right...
Henry's head started to ache and he swiped at his eyes.
It's been seven years and he can't even remember their faces clearly, what kind of husband is he? Their photos destroyed in the fire, the ones on his phone lost when the data was corrupted.
In typical Seattle fashion, a few drops of rain splatter on his head and rattle the metal A/C unit behind him. He's tired, he decides. He's tired and it's been a weird couple of days, that's why he can't remember right now. Sleep and some good coffee in the morning, everything will be fine.
As he goes back to the stairwell, a flash of blue catches his eye. Hyacinths, bright blue and growing strong in a flower pot one of his neighbors keeps on the roof. His heart pangs with grief, but he reaches out and brushes his fingers against the lively petals.
Her smile had been bright too, curling up at the edges and making her cheeks full and glowing.
Henry smiles too, wistfully, and heads inside, thinking that Jacinda's smile had looked much the same way as his dearly departed wife's.