Forever - not mine. English - not mine (not my native language) ... My brain - apparently also not mine - Because I originally wanted to write something totally different, but ended up with this. Huh.
Spoilers for 1x21
Jo had enough.
Yes, they've found Abe's mother left to literally rot in the wilderness for thirty years. Yes, the circumstances of her death were still a mystery. Why would she take her own life? Who would she have tried to get away from so badly? Also, she understood that, since Abe and Henry were family in their own weird way, Henry was personally involved and affected.
But this was getting ridiculous. Henry's been off work for over a month now. The funeral had been a short and quiet affair, just Abe and Henry for the family; Jo, Hanson, and Lucas had joined as friends. And that had been it. Afterwards they had quickly disbanded, Abe taking Henry home, Lucas, Hanson and herself sharing one drink before also going back to their own respective homes.
And sind then nobody had seen hide nor hair of Henry.
And Jo finally had enough of that. She knew that there was something going on, had known even before they'd found Silvia's bones. And even though she had to admit her curiosity in the matter, she mainly wanted to just have Henry back. She missed him, and Dr Washington was just impossible to work with.
"Be right there!" Abe called from the backroom, as she walked into the shop. "Oh, it's you." He stopped short. "Sorry, that sounded terribly disappointed just now. Be assured that I'm not." He quickly glanced at the stairway leading to the upper floor. "You're here to see Henry, I guess. He's upstairs. Brooding." He gave her a look, that was full of worry. "Maybe you can get through to him, cause I sure as hell can't, and he won't even tell me what's bothering him so much this time."
She touched his arm comfortingly. "I'll do my best, but I think I don't have to tell you how stubborn he can get."
Abe chuckled. "Oh, you have no idea. Just go on up."
Jo nodded and left Abe to whatever he'd been doing before she'd walked in. Upstairs, she called out Henry's name. There was no reply. After a moment of hesitation she resolved to open each and every door, check each and every room until she'd find him. She found him, finally, on the roof terrrace, sitting in one of the deck chairs, feet up on the parapet, staring up into the darkening sky.
"I've been calling you. You could have answered."
He didn't move. "Well, you did find me. So obviously me answering was not necessary."
Jo swallowed a reproachful reply. Instead she pulled a chair over next to his and sat down. Mimicking his pose she also stared up into the sky, watching tiny wisps of cloud slowly float overhead.
"What do you want?"
Wow, she'd never thought he could sound hostile. "What I want? I want you back at the office, I want you back with me, working on cases. Dr Washington is a pest."
To her surprise, he chuckled. "I bet. How many mistakes has he made so far?"
Jo thought about Abe, being hurt and alone downstairs. He was worried about Henry, when he should spend the time griefing for his mother. Yet she decided to first engage him in an easy conversation. "Lucas refuses to say, but by the way he's seething, whenever he talks about him, I'd say, a lot."
Henry sighed. "Maybe you're right, maybe I should come back to work, but..." He raised a bottle to his mouth and took a long drink.
Jo took the bottle from him with force. "Scotch?" she accused, "seriously?"
He finally turned to look at her, and he looked nasty. Another thing she'd never thought she'd get from Henry: A thoroughly nasty, hateful grin.
Jo set the bottle on the floor beside her, out of Henry's reach. "Well, what I want isn't important anyway, in comparison to what Abe wants."
He dropped his feet from the parapet, sat up and turned to fully face her. "What?"
"He is worried sick about you. He's not saying so, but it's clear as day. And that, when he has the death of his mother to work through. You are supposed to be his friend, his family even. You should try and help him through this."
He abruptly turned away again, but not fast enough that she couldn't see tears springing to his eyes. He stood up. "I should, you're right. I'm... I'm useless to him, and I'm sorry for it, but..." His voice was strained.
"Just talk to him, maybe?"
Henry vigorously shook his head. "He'd only ask how she died, and..."
"What, you haven't told him?" Now Jo stood up as well, making her way around Henry until she faced him. "No matter how bad it was, do you really think he's better off not knowing?"
Henry shook his head again. "You don't understand. It's my job to protect him, I'm..." He sucked in a calming breath. "I told him she died in the crash. Which, strictly speaking isn't even a lie, because she did die in that crash."
"And then she was resuscitated."
"After which she took her own life!", he added in an urgent stage whisper.
"Right. I guess he really doesn't need to know that bit," she conceded.
"No, he doesn't." He turned away from her, picked up the bottle and took another long drink.
"But still. You, drinking like... like this?" She walked over and took the bottle from him once again, this time, though, she kept it. "This is not you. No wonder, Abe is so worried."
"Abraham..." There was a tenderness in his voice as he said the name. He sighed. "I know I worry him, and I wish I could stop, but I don't know how. It's my fault, she's gone. My fault she left, and my fault that she crashed, and my fault that, after being resuscitated, she slit her own throat, just to get away from me! - How do I ever even meet his eyes after that?!"
"What? Henry, how could any of this have been your fault? You were like five years old, when she went missing."
"Oh, I'm older than I look."
"So what, you were six?" she challenged.
Another look, she had never thought she'd see on him, hit her: Contempt. And to be honest, it frightened her. Because something was seriously wrong with him if he showed all those unexpected sides.
"As I said, I'm older than I look," he repeated.
"Henry..." She was getting exasperated. "Just tell me the truth. Tell me what's going on, and how in God's glory name you could be responsible for something that happened, whe you were a child!"
He stared at her. Long and pensive. She could almost see the gears of his mind working behind his eyes. He opened his mouth twice, but both times closed it again without saying anything.
"Look, Henry, I don't mean to pry, but something is wrong here. You are freaking out over something, hurting Abe in the process and, frankly, making absolutely no sense." She looked at the bottle of Scotch in her hand. "Well, maybe the last bit, at least, is to be expected."
"I'm not drunk."
She merely raised an eyebrow.
"Not that drunk."
"Then what?"
Another long pensive look, before he dejectedly dropped his head. "I wish I could tell you, but..."
"You can tell me everything, don't you know that?"
He shook his head. "What I have to tell, my first wife had me committed to an asylum for it."
Woah, that came as a surprise. "You were married? More than once?"
He looked at her sheepishly. Seems, he hadn't wanted to disclose that, but the alcohol had pulled it from him. He cleared his throat. "Uh, yes. Nora... her name was Nora."
"And Abigail?" It was off the topic, but Jo couldn't reign in her curiosity. He always made such a big secret about her, the intrigue was too big to resist.
"She was my second wife."
"I gather there's no third wife."
"No, no third wife. Those two were enough to, between them, mess my life up completely."
Joe cleared her throat and forced herself back to topic. "And how does Silvia fit into this?"
"Who? - Oh. Abraham's mother."
Joe frowned. It seemed weird, that with all the fuss he was making, Henry wouldn't know the woman's name.
"It wasn't her real name." He said, as if he'd read her mind.
"But..." They had buried her with that name.
"It's complicated."
Why was it, that everything always was complicated with him?
"Just tell her the truth already." Abe stood in the doorframe leading back into the house. "For God's sake, you know you will sooner or later, so why not shorten the lies and deceit and just put it out there?"
"Nora..."
"Nora, sorry for saying so, was a stupid shiksa who didn't know jack squat."
Unexpectedly, Henry laughed.
"Now tell her. Or I will."
"No! No, Abraham!" Henry quickly walked over to Abe, stopping in front of him, holding up one warning finger.
"Henry." Abe was unimpressed.
"I forbid you."
"Really?" Abe was still not impressed. "How long's it been since you forbidding me something has actually worked?"
Henry was silent.
"Right." Abe stepped around Henry.
"Abraham, please," Henry tried.
"Don't worry, I've got this, Pops."
Pops? What? Jo's eyes jumped between the two men. What the hell? But where she was dumbfounded, Henry was... shocked... betrayed.
"My mother's real name was Abigal Morgan," Abe said, his voice calm and controlled.
"Abraham..." Henry's voice was weak now, mortified. Like he'd rather have the earth swallow him up whole.
"And my father's name is Henry Morgan," Abe continued.
Jo tried to straighten those words out in her mind. Abigail? Henry? What? " You mean: Henry's father? You're... brothers or..."
"No, I'm his son." Abe corrected.
"But..." She laughed nervously. "Just look at you! If anything, you are his father, not..."
"No," Henry interrupted defeated. "Remember? I told you I'm older than I look."
She could but stare at him now, at a loss for words.
"Call it a freak of nature or something."
"Normally he likes calling it a curse", Abe supplied. "Or, when in a good mood, affliction."
Jo shook her head. "Meaning what exactly?" She still wasn't over the fact, that Henry was supposed to be old enough to be Abe's father. "No offence, but to be Abe's father you'd have to be what ... ninety? A hundred? No way you're even sixty!"
"More like..." Abe started, but then stopped and looked over to Henry, as if for permission.
Henry waved his hand in a grandious fashion. "Oh, by all means, Abraham! Why stop now?"
"More like two hundred."
"... and thirty-five", Henry added. "If you're going to do it, at least do it right."
Abe gave an apologetic shrug.
Jo was reduced to just staring once more.
Henry stepped a little closer to her. "Do you see now, why Nora had me committed?" he asked beseechingly.
Truth be told, Jo was considering the very same thing right now. Only she would have to have both of them committed. Folie-a-deux, she had heard of the expression. Maybe they were really father and son, but for some strange reason at one point in their life had flipped the roles?
"What d'you say, shall we take her out to the East River for the rest?" Abe asked in a voice far to casual to provoke anything than panic in Jo.
Ice rushed through her veins. What sort of lunacy had she landed herself in? What the friggin hell was going on here? Who were those two psychos? Talking of impossible marriages and centuries-long lives, only to top it off by discussing killing her... dumping her in the East River...
"Jo, Jo!" Henry's voice filtered through to her consciousness. He stood right in front of her, his eyes pleading, his brow furrowed.
"Get away from me," she demanded in a shaky voice.
"We mean you no harm, Jo, how could you even think that?" Henry seemed earnestly upset.
"Just get away from me," she repeated, made her way over to the door, but Abe stepped in her way.
"Dad, much as I hate suggesting it, but..."
"I know," Henry said. "Jo? Look at me."
She didn't want to, she really didn't, but his voice made her turn around and do it anyway.
"It shouldn't be like this," he apologized, "and if Abe here had just kept his big mouth shut for a change, I could have given you more time to adjust. But I see that you're frightened, and there's only one way to end that." He cocked his head slightly to the side. "Sorry, it's going to be with a shock." In one fluid moment he jumped forward, snatched the bottle from her numb hands, and crashed it against the parapet. He picked up one of the bigger shards that had landed by his feet, inspected it for a moment in the last light of the day.
If at all possible, the ice in her veins turned even icier. This was it now. Who would have ever thought that she would end her days like this? On the roof-terrace of two whack-jobs who used to be friends?
Henry cleared his throat, shrugged his shoulders. He looked nervous. "God, I hate this way of dying", he muttered, and then put the shard to his neck. Another second of hesitation, then he pushed, pulled, dropped the shard before he dropped onto his knees right next to it.
Jo shrieked, Henry made awful, gurgling noises, looking at her, then at Abe, before he toppled over.
Jo looked at Abe as well. He looked sympathetic, wincing slightly, but didn't move. "Look at him, Jo, or you'll miss the important part."
She turned her head, almost against her will, and caught a glimpse of a bright light before...
"Did you see it?" Abe asked.
She was not sure what she'd seen. "He's... gone..."
"Yes. And he'll reappear in the East River, just about... now. Come on, let's go."
"What?"
Abe stopped in his move. "Let's go pick him up."
She was like frozen to the spot.
"He dies. He dies a lot. Actually, he dies a lot more often than should be statistically possible," Abe explained. "He just doesn't stay dead. Now come on, I'll tell you the rest in the car."
Jo was not sure she wanted to come. But... Her legs miraculously regained their mobility and coupled with her natural curiosity that was all it took. She followed Abe, who picked up a little sports bag on the way down.
The drive was filled with more impossible stories. 1779, the Empress of Africa, the Stalker, Abigail. Jo's head was swimming with confusion.
Abe parked the car at the river bank and got out. "Henry!"
For a moment there was nothing, then the bushes a bit to their right ruffled, and a naked, very embarrassed looking Henry stepped out, holding his hands protectively over his private parts.
Even though Abe had told her, it was hard to believe... hell, it was hard to just see. Like it was an optical illusion. Like if she blinked, he would be gone.
Henry slipped into the backseat, grabbed the sports bag and pulled out a towel and a set of clothes. "I'm sorry, Jo," he said. "I didn't mean to..."
She shook her head. "Didn't mean to what? Freak me out like I've never been in my entire life? What the hell is this? What...?" Her words failed her.
"Abe, didn't you..."
"I told her as much as I could in the time it takes to drive over."
"He did. He didn't shut up the entire time," Jo corroborated. "But this," she waved her hands around wildly, "this is a little hard to take in, believe it or not! I'm still not sure I don't have a psychotic break or something."
"You don't," Henry said matter-of-factly. "Believe me, I could tell." He pulled on a sweater, that looked terribly wrong on him. "What's more, I not only could, I also would."
"Not necessarily if you're part of my psychosis."
Henry snorted, he honest to God snorted. "Like you could dream up a version of me that wouldn't."
"I obviously could dream up a version of you that jams a shard of glass into his throat, disappears and turns up half an hour later naked, dripping wet, at the shores of the East River. Now, tell me that's not crazy as hell."
He looked outwitted.
"She's got you there, Dad."
"Please stop that," Jo pleaded. "You calling him 'Dad' is... creepy."
Henry finished dressing in the backseat. Now he leaned forward. "I'm really very sorry, Jo," he apologized.
Funny, he didn't seem drunk. To make sure, she sniffed in his direction.
He smiled his crooked half-smile. "What, you think, my condition can restore a mangled artery but not my sobriety?"
"Good point... I guess." For the moment Jo decided to just go with it. Obviously, whatever this was, nobody wanted to harm her. Nobody wanted to toss her into the East River.
Henry leaned back in the seat and yawned extensively. "It also always leaves me dead tired." He paused. "No pun intended."