Author's Note: This story comes from an idea that had suddenly popped in my head a few months ago. While working on the basic outline for it, I discovered Camp NaNoWriMo—the spring and summer versions of National Novel Writing Month—and I had decided to challenge myself to writing a 50,000-word fanfic in one month. A couple of minor things have been edited to fit the story better and to correct factual errors, but this is essentially what I had written during the month. (It is completely proofread, though. I'm not calling Henry a girl again like I did in one flashback for another story if I can help it!xD)

For the basis of the story, I had set Henry and Adam's confrontation in 1x22 on April 29 instead of May 5-7 like most fanfics of this nature. It actually works out weather-wise later in the story. (All weather conditions for the cities used as settings were obtained from Weather Underground and Weather Finder.)

I hope that you will enjoy the story.

There are general spoilers for every episode.

Chapter 1

"You've got this, girl."

Jo closed her door and took a moment to gather her courage. This was the first time that she had to deal with anything like this. Two days before, she had expected to attend another painful funeral, this time for Henry. Now, she had no idea whether he was dead or alive.

She wiped tears from her eyes. He was a kind, reasonable, and eccentric man…a geek with a heart of gold and a sense of chivalry that seemed to be right out of a Jane Austen novel. He was her friend and someone whom she cared about tremendously. He had his whole life in front of him….

She heaved a frustrated sigh. From the second that they had begun their most recent pair of cases, though, she had seen a different side of him, one that had suggested that he wasn't as honorable of a man as she had always believed. Her more cynical side had told her that part of his nature was the thing that he had been hiding since they had met and that it was in her best interests to end their partnership before she got hurt…or worse. What had stopped her from giving into it was Henry literally bringing a knife to a gun fight.

With each step, the sidewalks leading to the antiques shop morphed into the abandoned subway tunnel under the Fort Hamilton Station. Her ears still rung from the two gunshots that someone other than Henry had fired just moments earlier. Her heart sank as she sensed that the second bullet had found her partner's heart, and her anger at herself for their last conversation—similar to her last argument with Sean—rose with each step. The pungent smell of gunpowder filled the air as she stepped onto the landing leading to the platform. Her heart raced as she expected to see Henry's killer around the corner. Confusion filled her when she discovered a platform devoid of anything indicating that a crime had been committed, and it deepened when she found an unusual photograph on her way back to the other platform.

She looked around one last time to see if she could find Henry. Maybe he had escaped in time and was hiding himself from his would-be attacker. Maybe he was injured, and he was seeking medical assistance for himself. Maybe he had hidden a gun in the tunnel before she had tracked him into it and had used it as a ruse to keep her busy while he had gotten rid of the pugio. Maybe whoever had confronted him had killed him on a different platform and had left the two items here for her to find.

Each possibility jockeyed for her attention, with the latter becoming the dominant one as she realized that Henry was nowhere in sight. One more explanation for everything gnawed at her mind, one which had its roots in their confrontation of Hans Koehler last year. Maybe she was right. Maybe Henry had really been shot in the chest again and had somehow survived the fatal wound like he had miraculously survived his shooting and fall off Grand Central's roof then.

She shoved that thought out of her mind. That was ridiculous. Immortality only happened on TV or in movies. It didn't happen in real life.

A car's horn jarred her back into the present and alerted her to the traffic at the intersection near the shop. Her chest tightening, she drew in the cool midday air to release its grip. How many times had she made this walk over the past year? How many times had she seen Henry tending to the shop or looking at something for sale? She had become so used to him being there….

She clutched Henry's watch as though it were a lifeline to a past that she had once known. She was hoping that he was still alive, that he could explain things to her, that he could help her make some sense out of what she had recently seen and heard and of the events of the past few weeks. She, however, was bracing herself for the possibility of Abe informing her of the time of Henry's funeral. If Henry had indeed died, she would never forgive herself for their last conversation, and she wasn't sure if she would ever be able to cope with losing him forever.

As she neared the door, the sight of Henry leaning over a table and resting a finger on a chess piece greeted her… as if the events of the past couple of days had never happened. She could not believe her eyes. How…?

She couldn't stay there all day and watch them in an effort to determine whether what she was seeing was her imagination or real. Hoping to get his attention, she knocked on the door and swallowed. Sure enough, he turned toward the door and quickly noticed her. He stared at her as though he couldn't believe that she was standing there.

Wishing that she could be close enough to him to see that he was really there, she waved at him. As he strolled to the building's entrance to open the door, her heart raced at the sight of his smile. It slowly convinced her that she didn't need any more evidence to draw the logical conclusion. He really was alive.

He swung the door open. "Hello, Detective. Do you have a new mystery for me to solve?"

She smiled back at him. If he had felt hurt when she had kicked him out of her car, he wasn't showing it now. In fact, it had seemed that he might have forgiven her for the angry words that she had said to him just before….

Remembering what she had found at the latest scene, she reached into her coat pocket. "Yeah, I think that you can say that."

She pulled out his watch and offered it to him. He looked down at it, and, at that moment, a slight flicker of nervousness flashed across his face. He widened his eyes and sighed with relief in an unsuccessful attempt to hide it.

"Thank goodness." He reached out and took it, his fingers brushing over her palm and sending a slight tingle through her in the process. "It was just stolen. I was about to file a police report, and, well, here you are."

Her heart instantly sank at his words. His explanation was not what she had wanted to hear. The two previous times that she had held his watch, he had either come up with an incredible excuse to explain how it had shown up at a crime scene or refused to say anything about it. This time….

She fought back the thoughts and the questions that were forming in her mind. "I figured that you would say that." She lowered her eyes to steady her emotions.

She reached into her pocket and removed the photograph that she had found with the watch. "I also found this."

The moment that she showed it to him, his smile dropped, and he stared at it as though he had seen a ghost. "I was hoping that you could explain it to me."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Abe joining them. He glanced at the photo, and, from what she could tell, he appeared to immediately recognize it.

Henry looked back at her in stunned disbelief. He gingerly took the picture from her and continued to stare at it. For a moment, she thought that she saw a hint of sadness in his eyes, almost as if he was missing the people in it.

Abe leaned over Henry's shoulder. "Tell her."

At the sound of Abe's voice, Henry looked up at her with fear surfacing in his eyes. He turned to his roommate, and their eyes met. Henry opened his mouth as though he was about to protest. Abe, however, maintained their eye contact and nodded.

Not noticing that he wasn't looking at her, she nodded toward the picture. She finally directed her attention back to Henry. What was it about the picture that had made him want to hide the truth about it? And why were Henry and Abe at odds with each other about it? The only times that she had heard them disagree on anything were the need to tell her about Henry's stalker and the hidden Tang Dynasty horse that Abe had believed to be stolen.

Henry studied the picture for a few more seconds, trying to decide whether he should comply with Abe's order. He finally looked up at her, and his nervous gaze met her determined one.

"It's a long story."

He took a deep breath, swallowed, and stepped back to let her into the shop. As she eased around him, her gaze met Abe's. His eyes pleaded for understanding, something that she wished that she would be able to give them. She offered him a small smile which she hoped would reassure him of her willingness to be open-minded about whatever Henry had to say.

Henry and Abe moved to the table where their chess game now sat forgotten. He worriedly directed his look to the black-and-white photograph in his hands before raising his eyes to an insistent Abe. After a moment, he then gave her another uneasy glance before slowly making his way toward the door leading to their apartment upstairs.

She swallowed as she fell behind him. There must be a logical explanation for the familiar person in the photo. According to Henry's arrest records and his background check, he was born on September 19, 1979, and he had mentioned that he and Abigail had never had children. Yet, there he and, apparently, his wife were, standing in front of a house with a child in her arms. The only differences that she could see in Henry were his old-fashioned clothes, being clean-shaven, and having slicked-back hair like Mike. At first, she had thought that the picture was a fake. Upon closer inspection and after remembering seeing a similar photograph of Karen's grandparents in the 1940s sitting on the mantle in Mike and Karen's living room, Jo was quite convinced that the photograph was real.

She sighed as they neared the top of the stairs. To be honest, he had always been so tight-lipped about his life, and she had always wished that he would tell her about it. If he had let her in when they had met, maybe she would not be in this situation. He had recently said that she was one of the few people he trusted, but why couldn't he trust her with the truth about his life?

Abe turned and looked back at Jo as she mounted the last step. "If you need anything, just call me. I'll be around." A moment later, he disappeared into the hallway presumably heading toward his bedroom.

Henry extended his hand and gestured toward the living room. She stepped around him and headed for the sofa. As she took a seat, she noticed him taking one last look at the picture before carefully and reverentially setting it on the coffee table. His eyes trained to the ground, he slowly lowered himself into a chair near their fireplace.

She narrowed her eyes in confusion. The last time that she had seen him like this, he had admitted that he had that his stalker had believed he was immortal. Why was Henry acting this way now?

After a few long moments of silence, he inhaled and finally looked up at her. "When we, um, we had first met, um, you had commented that there was something that I wasn't telling you. Well, um, you were right. I should have told you then, but I could find neither the courage nor the words to tell you." He sharply inhaled. "Th—there is no easy way to say this, but I—I'm, um, I'm immortal."

Huh? She didn't hear that right.

"Immortal?" Surprised that he had brought up her most insane theory to explain everything, she repeated the word. "As in, you can't die?"

His eyes roamed her face. Then, suddenly becoming emboldened by what he was seeing, he straightened his slouched posture. "Actually, I can die, and I have done so on numerous occasions. I, however, have always returned to life in a local body of water—naked. Here in New York, even when I die in another body of water—natural or man-made—I always awaken in the East River."

"What…? How…?" The way that he described immortality was nothing like she had heard about or imagined.

"Maybe I should start at the beginning." He leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him. "I was born on September 19, 17—."

Before he could finish his sentence, the sharp sound of a ring pierced the air. Thinking that it was her cell phone, Jo instinctively reached into her pocket and started to pull it out. It took Henry bounding out of his seat and walking toward her for her to realize that it was his phone sitting on the end table beside her.

He quickly picked up the receiver and turned to her. "Yes…." He licked the inside of his lower lip and looked her in the eye. "Do we require homicide's presence?" He sighed at the response, and the light in his eyes began to fade. "I see…. I'll be at the scene within a few minutes. Lucas can meet me there."

He gave her a small smile, one that failed to reach his eyes, as he hung up. "My apologies, Jo. It appears that Lucas and I have a body to process. I must be leaving."

"Yeah." She slowly rose from her seat, and her legs wobbled under her like jelly. She instinctively steadied herself and began to trudge to the door.

Henry brushing against her brought her back to her senses. She stopped and watched him as he headed toward the hallway. "I guess that I'll see you at work then." The words tumbled out of her mouth automatically; she wasn't sure if recent events would jeopardize their ability to work together.

He spun toward her voice, and his wary expression met hers. He simply nodded and set off for his bedroom.

"I take it that he's told you."

Jo startled at the sudden sound of Abe's voice in the kitchen. Uncertain as to what she could say, she nodded.

He studied her as he leaned on the table. "You're one of the few people whom he trusts, and he has recently implied that he doesn't want to lose what you two have. He's been hurt in the past, and I think that his fear about what could happen if the truth is discovered has made difficult for him to tell you about himself. Regardless of what you believe, just take some time to think about what he has said. Maybe you'll accept it; maybe you won't. But remember this: usually, he likes to keep this part of himself hidden, even when confronted with evidence of it. It took a lot of courage for him to tell you the truth."

She huffed. If he cared about her, then why had he told her that he was immortal?

As she heard Henry's footsteps in the hallway, she exchanged one final look with Abe. "I'll think about it."

Once outside, the slightly cool mid-spring air cleared her mind. Henry's words—both past and recent—began to echo in Jo's thoughts. She scoffed at them. His claim that his stalker had believed that he was immortal was acceptable. Saying that he, a man of science, believed in the idea that an antique weapon could make someone immortal was a shock. Yet, billions believed—and a small part of her hoped—that the pugio's use to kill would usher them into an afterlife somewhere else or a new life in a different body after death. But claiming to be immortal…? He—a medical examiner, of all people—should know that people did not come back from the dead…and especially not the way that he had described.

She crossed the street, quickly unlocked her door, and slid into her seat. His statements threatened to suffocate her, and she willed herself to breathe. She had always known that his job was stressful, and he frequently didn't tell her—and maybe Abe also—what he was feeling. At the same time, he had taken the last few cases quite personally…like he had had a stake in them. After hearing how Abe's mother had died, he had finally snapped. Henry would hate her for it, but, as soon as she returned home, she would call Bellevue and schedule him for another appointment with Dr. Farber.

The moment that she pulled out of her parking space, the memory of the last time that Henry had met with the psychiatrist crossed her mind. While she was leaving his office to follow after Henry, she had not heard Dr. Farber mention Henry's need for another visit. If he had noticed any issues, he would have scheduled more sessions or would have recommended some form of treatment.

She rolled through the yellow light and sighed. As far as anyone else was concerned, Henry was just an eccentric man. Even if she mentioned the few times that he had a death wish—usually while confronting suspects—no one would believe her. Maybe they were right. Maybe she was just imagining things.

She shook her head as their conversations over the past year tumbled in her mind. His eccentricities were nothing like she had ever seen. She still felt that it would take years or several lifetimes for someone to develop everything from a Sherlockian ability to analyze any situation that they were in to having enough knowledge to sustain one very long winning streak on Jeopardy.

"How about centuries?"

"Or just one very long one."

Her jaw dropped. Did he really say that? Did he really imply…?

She huffed. It didn't matter how much time that it had taken Henry to pick up everything. He was one very eccentric man.

His expensive tastes, she could give him that one. His father was rich enough to send Henry to Oxford and to co-own an antiques business with shops in London and New York. Likely, Henry had inherited his family's wealth after his father's death, and he was using that to splurge on his luxuries while saving his leftover paycheck for the future. He probably hadn't said anything about it because he was afraid that he would come across as being stuck-up.

She bit her lower lip as she caught sight of Alphabet City's tenements. She was born and raised in the city, and, through her job, she had visited many of its neighborhoods for the first time. Yet, for a Londoner, his knowledge of the city was uncanny. She had patrolled Alphabet City for a couple of months when she was a beat cop, and she had never known that there were tunnels running under the neighborhood's buildings. Henry, however, had moved through them like he had played in them every day when he was a child. Furthermore, on several occasions, he had talked about life in the city in the past as if he had seen it with his own eyes.

There was a perfectly logical explanation for that. When he was growing up, he had probably developed a love for New York after hearing his parents talk about it, and he had read everything about it that he could get his hands on. During their trips to visit Abe, his parents were permissive enough to allow their son explore the city on his own. He had stumbled on the tunnels one day, and he had never forgotten them.

Still, that didn't explain why he had stroked Gloria Carlyle's hair when he had conducted her autopsy or why he had so much personal knowledge about the ornery old woman. It did not explain how he had known that Miranda Browning's family had owned their townhouse in Morningside Heights since the early 1900s or why he had stated that she resembled one of her ancestors. It also didn't explain…

She tapped her steering wheel. She could always ask Abe what he knew about Henry's knowledge of the city. He knew quite a bit about the mysterious medical examiner.

Then, there was Henry's relationship with Abe. The two men were very close, and Henry had said was that Abe was the closest thing to family that he had. Their relationship became more obvious when they were worried about each other. There were times that Henry had acted almost….

No, no, no. That could not be the case. There was no way—.

A splash of beige suddenly appeared in front of her and snapped her out of her thoughts. She slammed on her brakes to keep herself from running into the car sitting at the red light. She panted as adrenaline raced through her. She couldn't believe how distracted she was.

The moment that the light changed, her thoughts went back to the two men. They had never convincingly explained how they had known each other. When she had asked them, their nervous expressions, their inability to maintain eye contact with her, and their overlapping conversation revealed that they were coming up with their explanation while she was sitting there.

Anger at herself rose in her. She shouldn't have believed their story about Henry's past. They were lying about that like Henry had lied about his watch. Were they also lying about their connection to Sylvia Blake?

Her anger subsided at the thought of one of the most important women in his life. Apparently not; she was one of the few things about his life that he was honest about. Henry was obviously very close to Abe's mother—a woman who had died when Henry was only six. Jo barely remembered much about her own life at that age. What was it about Sylvia that had stayed with Henry throughout his life and had driven him to obsessively pursue the truth about her fate when he reached adulthood?

Then again, why did Abe share Henry's last name instead of Sylvia's? She had seen it on the shop's business cards when she and the unis had searched the building for a link between Henry and the subway crash. She didn't think anything of it at the time, but now…

As she approached another red light, a white van with the words "East River" written in blue caught her attention. She shook her head. Many people skinny dipped, and he seemed to have a fetish for it. Yet, why did he always select the East River, and how did he survive the currents when others didn't? And why did her fellow colleagues in patrol choose to arrest him instead of taking him to Bellevue every time that it happened?

An unbidden smile spread across Jo's face as she thought about the time that she had seen him shirtless. Whatever he was doing to stay in shape, he needed to keep doing it. Abigail had likely enjoyed his efforts, and, one day, another lucky woman would as well. She would probably finger his scar…

"I was shot."

Jo instantly sobered. The mysterious scar over his left breast looked nothing like the one that was on her right shoulder or like the one that should have marked his body. If she had to guess what type of weapon it had come from, she would say that it had come from a gun that she had seen in the BBC miniseries version of Sense and Sensibility.

She crawled through the intersection, only to find herself sitting at yet another red light. On a hunch, she reached up and placed her hand on the area that corresponded with the location of Henry's scar. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she felt the steady rhythm of her heart under her fingers.

The gunshot should have killed Henry. How could he still be alive?

Unless…

What if he was telling her the truth? What if he was really immortal?

A series of honks yanked her out of her thoughts. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and pulled away from the intersection. If she didn't get a grip on herself, she would wind up on Henry's autopsy table. She didn't want that. There was no way that she was going to add to his grief today.

She sighed as she turned toward Midtown Manhattan. Everything was still confusing to her. She hoped that the drive home to Washington Heights would provide some time to process her already churning thoughts.

Jo raced through her garage and jogged up the stairs toward her living room. Throughout the drive home, the memories of Henry's odd comments and behavior had intruded her thoughts. She had tried to push them back, but they kept coming. It had taken everything within her to concentrate on the traffic.

She threw her keys and her purse on the kitchen table before going into the living room and collapsing onto the sofa. A slight chill racked her body, and she grabbed a pillow and wrapped her arms around it in hopes of warding off the cold.

She could not possibly be thinking what she was thinking. Her partner was immortal? That he could die—had died—and return to her? If she didn't know any better, she would think that she was going insane.

She looked around her living room. The townhouse was filled with memories of the way her view of life and death had been. The sofa that she and Sean had argued over while they were pulling it through the front door and had later happily collapsed on after moving in everything. The vase that he had given her for her birthday. The bed where she had felt him sleepily slipping his arm around her waist as she climbed into bed after a long, hard day at work. The bedroom where they had had their last argument. The door that she had spent almost a year expecting him to walk through and to say that he was home. The empty hallways that now echoed with her footsteps.

She reached up and wiped the tears which were freely streaming down her face. Sean had died, and he was never coming back.

Now, with one conversation, her beliefs about life and death were turned around, flipped upside-down, turned inside-out, and then shredded into confetti. Why were some people granted a second chance at life? Why was Henry allowed to come back from the dead—multiple times, according to him—while others remained in the afterlife? What was it about Sean that had kept him from receiving the same gift as Henry?

The image of Henry and Sean sharing the gift of immortality coaxed a long, deep sigh out of her. The geeky, quirky medical examiner who shied away from anything popular and the more normal assistant district attorney who couldn't resist ordering take-out, popping in a DVD, and enjoying a movie date night. She could imagine her and Sean, or even just Sean, going down to Henry's morgue and both men discussing the way that the latest victim had died. Who knew? Maybe they would have become good friends in spite of their differences.

Her throat tightened, and tears dampened the corner of her eyes. There was no way to know that for sure. Sean was gone, and he would never have the chance to meet Henry.

"You must deal with Sean's death someday. Not tonight."

She drew a deep breath through her clenched teeth. Henry was right, as usual. Right now, she was starting to wrap her mind around the idea that immortals walked among everyone else, and her unofficial partner for the past year was one of them.

She peered at the front door, almost as though she could see through it and find the step where they had once sat. She had almost fallen completely apart earlier in the year, and she knew that she would if she were to go it alone when it was time to deal with Sean's death. When the day would come, she would rather have a good friend by her side. Someone who had been through it years ago…someone like Henry.

"How about centuries?"

"Or just one very long one."

Her mouth fell open. No, she was not imagining things. Henry had indeed suggested that he had been alive for centuries.

The memories of every conversation that they had ever had and everything that he had ever done in her presence danced before her. So many memories, moments that had once stood out because of the unusual nature of his comments and actions, now took on a completely new meaning. Each bit of knowledge was something that he had experienced firsthand. His knowledge of New York had come not from visits to the city but from a life here. He had no sense of self-preservation because he knew that he could come back.

She gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth. Each arrest for indecent exposure near the East River had marked one of his deaths.

And yet….

"You could find neither the courage nor the words to tell me?" She scoffed. "You've told me that you've had one very long life." Her breath caught in her throat as the memory of waking up to Henry at her hospital bedside and wondering how he could have survived his injuries flooded back. "You had even let me see a part of one of your deaths."

"Henry Morgan, what's your story?"

She bit her lower lip. What if he had been trying to tell her his story the entire time that they had known each other? Maybe she could piece together a basic outline of it using what he had told her about himself.

Energized by the idea, she pushed herself off the sofa before jogging upstairs to her bedroom. She quickly found what she needed and brought them downstairs. She set her laptop and notepad on the dining room table, took a seat, and set herself to work.

Author's Note: My apologies if the opening paragraphs seem to parallel another story. It's completely unintentional.

For any nitpickers, I have deliberately decided to ignore any of Matt's tweets about the length of time that will elapse between the end of 1x22 and Henry finally revealing the truth to Jo since they do not fit the story that was in my head. This is not the first fan fic that ignores those tweets, and I'm sure that it won't be the last.