Author's Note: Hello everyone! I wasn't expecting it to take so long for me to start publishing my take on Season 2, but life got in the way and this was postponed. So, without further ado, here is my take on what could have happened in Forever season 2. For those of you who have read my Castle and CSI stories, you know that I like to structure character stories around cases, and this story will follow that format as well. As always, I have a broad idea of where this story will go, but I'm open to case/story ideas if you guys want to share them with me. Don't be afraid to leave an idea in the comments or PM!

I'm starting this story right where season 1 left off, so the last scene of the episode is shown and then I take it from there. Enjoy!


Chapter 1

Dr. Henry Morgan had gotten tired of waiting for Abraham to make his move and his thoughts drifted to Abigail. She had found out about his secret when he'd died in her arms and then snuck in to say goodbye to the infant Abraham before starting his life over yet again. She'd come into the room before he could leave and he'd tried to talk his way out of her astonishment, but she was far smarter than he'd thought. Abigail had needed no fabricated explanations. She just pulled him into her arms and whispered "Poor man." From then on, they'd been nearly inseparable for forty years. It was her acceptance of his curse that had made life with her so wonderful.

Henry had risen and stood holding her black and white portrait when Abe finally made his move. "Hey, Methuselah. Your move." Henry turned to face his son. "Not all of us can live forever."

"Apologies, Abraham." Henry took one last look, set the picture down, and returned to the chess game. "Right. Where were we?" He looked over the board and then moved his chosen piece. He didn't let go right away though. No, there had been enough games where he'd almost lost because of a careless move. He kept his finger on the piece, carefully looking around the board to make sure his move hadn't opened up a way for Abe to checkmate him or take his piece.

A knock on the door drew his attention. The sign hanging on the door said closed, but the woman on the other side of the glass wasn't likely to be a customer. Detective Jo Martinez was standing outside looking in. She waved when she saw him looking at her and Henry straightened up, striding to the door to let her in. He couldn't help but smile when he saw her, despite the way things had been between them when they had parted last. Somehow she just had that effect on him.

He unlocked the door and opened it. "Hello, Detective. Do you have a new mystery for me to solve?"

"Yeah, I think, uh, you could say that." She reached into her pocket and held his pocket watch out to him.

He sighed and looked at her in gratitude. "Thank goodness." He laughed, a quick lie forming in his brain to explain how she'd found it. "It was just stolen. I was about to file a police report, and… well, here you are."

She was not convinced. "You know, I figured you'd say that. I… also found this." Jo held up the photograph Adam had held up when they were down in the ghost subway station. In the photograph, a smiling Henry stood beside a smiling Abigail, who was holding a young Abraham. Henry's smile faltered. The sepia photograph was clearly old, which was why Jo was asking about it. "I was hoping you could explain it to me."

Henry couldn't tear his eyes from the photograph. It had been in Abigail's possession when she'd killed herself to protect her husband and son. Adam had taken it from her and used it to eventually track Henry down. Now Jo was handing the worn picture to him and was full of questions on how such an old photo could contain the same Henry Morgan she'd known for a year. Henry was thinking of various excuses on how it was possible, but nothing came out of his mouth. He was torn. Jo was his friend, his partner. She had earned his trust and should know the truth, but his memories of what the first woman he'd told had done to him made him pause.

Abraham had come up behind Henry during the exchange. "Tell her."

Henry looked at Abe and he realized that the choice really was clear. Jo had stood beside him and supported him in even his most crazy theories. If anyone deserved to know the truth, it was the woman who had come to him for this explanation. He looked at the photograph again, remembering the woman who had believed him and stood by him too. Jo and Abigail had much in common.

He looked the detective in her eyes. "It's a long story." He stepped out of the doorway. "Will you come in?" Jo nodded and stepped inside. Henry locked the door behind her and they went up to the living room. He was unsure where to begin.

Jo cleared her throat. "Before you begin, I want you to know that I don't want to hear any more lies. I'm your friend, Henry. After everything we've been through, I deserve the truth."

"Yes, you do. I'm just trying to figure out how to begin." He gestured to the sofa and Jo sat. Henry took a seat in his armchair. "I guess at the beginning. I'm going to tell you some things that may seem impossible at first, and I would appreciate it if you would keep an open mind."

"Henry, what are you so afraid of? Why insist that I keep an open mind?"

"Because the first person I told my story to... had me sent to a sanitarium."

Jo leaned into the couch. "That's… not in your file."

Henry nodded. "Well, it wouldn't be. This was many lifetimes ago. Back in 1815."

Jo cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

Henry held up his hands. "Please. Keep an open mind. I will explain everything."

"Okay."

"I was born on the nineteenth of September in 1779. I died for the first time on the seventh of April in 1814 while on board a slaving ship called the Empress of Africa."

Jo sighed. "Henry…"

"Jo, you said you wanted the truth. I promise you, I'm not making this up. The scar on my chest is from that night on the Empress of Africa. It is the only scar that stays with me. You see, I can't die. I can be killed; I've been killed a great many times. But I always come back. The public indecency charges are not me sleepwalking as I told the lieutenant. That is how I come back to life."

"I don't understand."

Henry paused. "Every time I die, I always return in water. And I'm always… naked. So when I'm arrested, it's because I wasn't able to hide before I was seen by the police. As I was saying, I died for the first time in 1814. When I was finally able to return home, my wife at the time, Nora, had been told that I'd fallen overboard and most likely perished. At first, she was very relieved that I was alive. She was the first I told. After all, she was my wife."

"But she didn't believe you."

Henry shook his head. "I told her what had happened on that ship and offered to prove it to her by slitting my wrists. She told me she believed me before I could do so, and a few days later, I was taken to the sanitarium in a strait jacket. I was later sent to prison. To escape, I hung myself."

Jo was stunned. "You hung yourself?"

"It was the only way I could escape without being seen."

Jo nodded and paused to process what she'd heard so far. "Did you ever see Nora again?"

"Fifty years later, yes. She saw my picture in the paper after I saved a young boy from a fire. That picture convinced her that I had not lied to her after all. When she came to the hospital I worked at, I sent her away. I was courting a nurse I worked with at the time and she was confused why a woman in her seventies would be claiming to be my wife. I said she must be confused. When I denied Nora's claims, my superiors wanted to send her to an asylum; they assumed she had gone mad. I didn't agree with them."

Jo looked confused. "What did you do?"

"Well, she had rejected me fifty years earlier and I couldn't accept her back into my life after a betrayal like that. I had rebuilt a life for myself; I was romantically involved with someone. But she was still my wife, and I did still love her, so I sent her home to rest. She couldn't let me just ignore her and decided to prove I was immortal in front of a crowd. The nurse I cared for, she threw herself in front of me and was killed. Nora was taken to a sanitarium then. She died in there." Henry frowned, and then smiled as a more pleasant memory came to mind. "I met Abigail during World War Two while we were treating soldiers and the people recovered from a hastily abandoned concentration camp."

Jo looked down at her hands. "So, if I understand this correctly, you are immortal and that started two hundred years ago. You've been married twice, one sent you to an asylum and the other believed you. People can kill you, but you don't die." Jo was quiet for a long time. "How is that even possible?"

"I don't know how, exactly. Or why. What I do know is that I'm not the only one. There is one other that I know of. He calls himself Adam, though I would imagine that wasn't his original name. The photograph you found by my watch was in his possession. That photograph was taken in 1946, just after the war. That is me, my wife Abigail, and our adopted son Abraham."

"Wait, Abraham? As in…"

"Me." Abe had come upstairs. "I know we told you that Henry's father and I were business partners many years ago, but we've gotten pretty good at the whole lying thing by now. Most people wouldn't understand."

"Abigail and I met at the temporary hospital my unit had put together; that's where Abraham was left in our care. We raised him as our own, and he has been with me ever since."

"So the body we found a couple weeks ago," Jo turned back to Henry, "the one you would only refer to as Abraham's mother; that was Abigail? The wife who believed you, but then left you?"

"She left because our ages appeared to be so different. At the time, she was 65 and I looked no older than the day we first met; no older than I do now. She felt that people would talk or mistake her for my mother. That did happen once. It was hard on her and she left a couple years later to avoid the gossip." Henry stopped and took a deep breath. "While investigating Abigail's murder, we discovered a motorcyclist had been hit by a future federal judge, a girl who was murdered by her law enforcement boyfriend and then buried in a garden, and the nurse who attended to both of them had gone missing."

Jo nodded. "Right."

"Adam was the motorcyclist who was hit and 'died' at the hospital. He asked the attending nurse, Abigail, to kill him so he could be reborn in a healed body. She believed him because she'd known me. He killed himself when she ignored his request and then he tracked her down. She drove off the road to try and kill him. He survived the crash, so when he revived her, she killed herself so he wouldn't be able to find me."

"But he still did."

"Thirty years later, yes. Now he is trapped inside his own body. Down in that train station, after he'd shot me, I used an empty syringe to cause an air embolism in his brain stem."

Jo was shocked. "Why would you do that?"

"It was the only way to stop him. You couldn't arrest him because he would only have to kill himself to escape, as I did all those years ago. The only way to make sure he couldn't do anything to me, or anyone I cared about, was to trap him in his own body. He can no longer use his body, which means he can't kill himself to heal, and he can't speak, so he won't be able to convince someone else to do it for him." Henry was watching Jo's face. "Do you believe me?"

"I'm not sure yet. Why was this 'Adam' after you?"

"He had a theory that the only weapon that could kill you permanently was the one that killed you the first time. That's why he wanted to find me. He wanted to test his theory, but not on himself. Finding me gave him a lab rat to experiment with. Down on that platform, he shot me with the same gun that had killed me on the Empress of Africa." Henry gestured to himself. "Obviously his theory didn't work. I'm still here. But I couldn't let him hurt anyone I cared about if I did die. Killing him with the dagger might not stop him, but trapping his mind in a body that couldn't do what he wanted, that just might."

Jo shook her head. "I'm not sure I can believe this."

"Which part?"

"All of it! This is impossible! People don't die and come back to life like that."

Abraham looked at Henry. "Do we need to show her, Pops?"

Henry shook his head. "I'd really rather not. At least, not when it's day out."

"Tonight then." Abraham pushed off the wall with his shoulder. "I'm gonna get dinner in the oven. Will you be staying for that, Jo?"

Jo looked at Henry. "I think I need some time to process this."

Henry nodded. "Of course. But I must ask that you keep my story a secret. Most won't believe me or you; others would want to experiment on me." Jo's eyes widened in surprise and Henry pulled an uncomfortable face. "Trust me, I've been there. I've been dissected will still alive. It's not a very pleasant experience and one I would rather not repeat. Please?"

Jo nodded. "Yeah. I'll keep this to myself. I'm still not sure I believe it, but I'll keep your secret. For now."

"Thank you, Jo. I know I'm asking a lot from you."


Jo climbed into her department issued vehicle and just sat there, processing everything Henry had just told her. She'd expected him to start answering her questions with more lies or half-truths. But to say that he couldn't be killed no matter how many times people had tried? That was bordering on the insane. The man Henry had killed in self-defense believed that delusion. There was no way that Henry could really be immortal.

But there were inconsistencies in Henry's behavior. One of the first cases they worked on together, Henry had confronted the killer alone without any fear. Moments later, when his life was being threatened and in full view of the cops, he was practically screaming for them to shoot the suspect. Jo glanced back toward the antique shop. Had Henry been more scared of them finding out his secret and not death itself? He'd stepped in front of several cars and was willing to take a bullet for her in other cases, not to mention the time she could have sworn she saw him tackle a suspect off the roof at Grand Central Station after she'd been shot. She had claimed he didn't have a self-preservation instinct and maybe this was why. You didn't need one if you really couldn't die.

Jo jumped as her phone rang. "Martinez."

It was Hanson. "You okay, Jo?"

"Yeah, no, I'm fine. I was just thinking... about Sean... and the phone startled me."

"Oh. Well, we got a body. I'll text you the address. We might need Henry, if the two of you have gotten over... whatever it was that was going on."

"I'll let him know. See you soon." She hung up and her phone chimed a moment later with the texted address.

Henry was back at his chess game with Abe when she reached the door again. He turned when she knocked and quickly opened the door again. "More questions?"

"Not at the moment. Uh, we've got a body. Interested?"

"Of course." Henry retrieved his coat from the rack beside the door. "I'm not sure when I'll be home, Abe. Let's pick up this game tomorrow."

"No problem. I'll try to keep a plate warm for you."

"Shall we, Detective?"

Jo nodded. "I'm parked down the block a little."

"After you."


A/N: I will be posting a new chapter every week, just like I normally do with my other story. Stay tuned!