Omnipotent: A Menry Story

Hey everyone, I'm glad you're enjoying this story; I'm finding myself getting more into it as time goes on. This one has a lot of deduction, so I hope you are enthralled. Read along, my fine audience, read along.

"The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy." – Jim Rohn

The word 'happiness' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. – Carl Gustav Jung

Letting go doesn't mean giving up... it means moving on. It is one of the hardest things a person can do. Starting at birth, we grasp on to anything we can get our hands on, and hold on as if we will cease to exist when we let go. We feel that letting go is giving up, quitting, and that as we all know is cowardly. But as we grow older we are forced to change our way of thinking. We are forced to realize that letting go means accepting things that cannot be. It means maturing and moving on, no matter how hard you have to fight yourself to do so. – Unknown

P A R T / T H R E E

"Henry, what the HECK is going on?" Maggie Winnock demanded, confused, as the blonde haired teen grasped gently at her upper arm, pulling her faster in the direction of his bedroom.

"I'll explain when we're alone," the boy insisted, tugging her along faster, to her apparent dismay.

"This is something to do with Jasper's death, isn't it?" Maggie questioned sharply as Henry closed his bedroom door slowly, waiting for the quiet click of the lock turning before allowing his shoulders to slump.

"Sit down, I have a lot to explain to you," Henry mumbled, glancing distractedly around the normally spic and span area. The blonde haired youth's side was as neat as usual; Jasper's however, resembled Louisiana after a ferocious tornado hits.

"Not until you tell me if this is about Jasper or not!" Maggie put her foot down, sticking out the pouty lip for extra effect.

"What else would it be about? God, Maggie, you can be just like a crow with a brain defect sometimes!" He snapped before he could filter his sentence. Instantly he regretted it.

Maggie's eyes widened first with shock and then the hurt slammed into her like a brick wall. She fell back on the bed, her lips trembling as she turned towards the window. It wasn't typically in her nature to cry, but damn, it still hurt.

"Mags, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," Henry apologized, a frown twisting his face when his best friend didn't reply. She only turned more towards the window and he swore that he saw her wipe something from just under her eye. And that's when he realized that he'd made her cry.

Big, salty tears squeezed out of the girl's eyes, trailing slowly down her cheeks on the way towards the bedspread. Taking in a deep, shaky breath Maggie turned her blurred vision towards a picture of Henry and Jasper several years ago during the latter's birthday.

A moment later she felt Henry's warm arms weave smoothly around her petite waist, hugging her into his chest. His breath tickled her ear as he mumbled, "I ruined his birthday every single year…and I never apologized."

Maggie nodded, forcing back a joyful smile from bounding onto her face as his fingers began to gently stroke her skin. "Yes, you did."

"I thought that he would have hated me for sure after everything I'd done to him, and yet he forgave me each time," Henry hinted sadly, resting his head on her shoulder.

The brunette could feel her heart hammering in her chest, yet she managed a chilly response, "Is that your way of telling me to forgive you?"

"Possibly," Henry revealed, the smile that she loved so much stretching onto his tanned face. "I'm really sorry, Mags."

"I know," Maggie whispered with a sigh, tears clouding her vision once more, twisting in his arms so that she could relax her head on his shoulder, her lips pressing into the crook of his neck. She swore she felt him shiver at the close contact, but she brushed it off.

Henry hesitated, dropping the confident mask from his face in front of her for the first time in what seemed like forever. He'd always attempted to remain strong for her, no matter how broken up he was inside. "Sometimes…I still get nightmares about the crash," he admitted hoarsely.

"Me too, all the time," she echoed him quietly, burrowing closer into his embrace. "They leave me screaming and crying…I wish I could have saved him, Henry." A tear slipped from her left cheek onto his shirt, staining the fabric.

"We all do, but we can't blame ourselves for his death," the blonde haired teen extrapolated slowly.

"You're right," Maggie admitted despondently, pulling out of Henry's grasp reluctantly, the choice taking it back into comfortable territory. Sniffling and brushing the remainder of the tears from her chocolate gaze the brunette glanced towards the desk. "Now what was it you wanted to show me?"

Henry frowned but accepted the change in position, understanding that his friend needed a moment to compose herself. Girls detested it if you brought up the fact that they looked horrible, so he'd learned quickly. "The man we met with gave me this letter Jasper addressed to me six months ago and there's something alarming about it."

"How so?" Maggie questioned in her basically normal tone, the reddened skin under her shimmering orbs the only indication she'd been crying.

"The most basic proof – Jasper wrote it bluntly," Henry responded as he traced the bedroom once more, the faded paper now in his hands. After handing it to his best friend he leaned back against the dresser, waiting for her to read it.

Maggie's expression went from vague interest to shell-shocked in a matter of moments, her skin paling drastically, "My God, how could we not have been aware of this?"

"Simple, Jasper must have been threatened, or else he probably would have disclosed this immediately," The blonde haired male concluded quickly.

"This just complicates things. I mean, Jasper gets in a fatal car accident and just several weeks later we discover that he'd been getting harassed and near murdered on several occasions." Maggie fretted, pacing back and forth beside the bed, her stormy gaze zeroed in on the carpet.

"I know, and wait until you hear the rest of the story," Henry told her seriously, pulling up the desk chair and grabbing Jasper's laptop in the same motion. The brunette shadowed him closely, propping herself up against the edge of the desk as her best friend turned on the computer.

"What does Jasper's laptop have to do with anything?" She asked, totally bemused.

"When Uncle Bryan and I were chatting with the executive at the office, he told me that Jasper had written his will a number of months ago," Henry began, frowning as he reached a password block. A moment later, however, he broke through it.

"So? That's something Jasper would do," Maggie responded, her eyes doing a brief 360.

"Yes, I agree, but something Mr. Torante said caught my attention. Jasper saved the will under a file that he named My Diary." Henry told her, waiting for her analytical response.

"Okay, a bit strange…where are you going with this, Henry?" Maggie asked him exasperatedly.

"Jasper told me that he saved his private diary under that file and that he was printing it off on a hard-drive. He lied to me, and I wasn't sure why, until now. I think." The male teenager finished, eyeing a row of DVD's on a filing system keenly.

"You think that Jasper might have written something for our eyes only on that hard-drive that he hid and left a meaningless dead-end for the authorities to discover." Maggie stated with a slightly disbelieving gaze.

"Exactly," Henry nodded, getting out of the desk chair so that he could comb the shelves for the disk. "I just don't know where he would have hidden it."

"Give me that letter again…" the brunette extended her hand beseechingly, her eyebrows quirked upwards.

"Why?" Henry wondered, giving her the folded slip of paper.

"I think Jasper left us a clue in the letter," Maggie delivered bluntly, her sharp gaze reading over the slanted print.

A moment later, she paused, "Try looking for a file either on the laptop or in the hard-version stacks named JUNE."

Henry did, for a result of absolutely nothing. "Keep looking," he suggested, smiling supportively while inside he was wracking his brain for any possible clue his cousin could have left them.

"Maybe EURO?" Maggie suggested with a brief lilt of her shoulders. "I don't know."

Again, there was nothing, and the clock chimed six pm in the corner. There came a rap on the door and both teenagers froze in progress, nearly flipping out with momentary panic.

"Maggie, would you like to stay over for dinner?" Bryan Bartlett asked, his voice slightly muffled through the wood. "I'm fixing a nice bean and spinach salad that I think you might enjoy."

"Uh…" the girl paused, smirking as she noted Henry waggling his head rapidly up and down. "Sure, thanks Mr. Bartlett."

"No problem, it should be ready in about fifteen minutes," the older man pointed out before thumping noisily down the stairs.

"Why did you want me to stay for dinner?" Maggie questioned her best friend, turning back to the letter as she combed it for nothing in particular. Her brain was starting to feel like mush.

"Because, we need to figure this out. Do you mind spending the night, only if it's alright with your parents, of course?" Henry pondered, the tips of his ears burning.

"My parents are away on a government political retreat," Maggie explained, biting her lip as the blonde shot her a concerned glance. The main reason she hadn't earlier disclosed this information was because she knew Henry would flip out; she was perfectly fine on her own, but spending the night here sounded a lot more appetizing.

Sure enough, Henry's lips pursed in a disapproving expression, "You shouldn't be living at home alone. Just stay here until your parents come back," he suggested.

"No thanks, tonight will be good," Maggie declined reluctantly, knowing that spending more than one night in the same house as Henry Griffin would most likely send her imagination rocketing, and that wasn't a good investment.

"That was really good, Mr. Bartlett," Maggie complimented sweetly as she carried her empty plate over to the sink. "Thanks for letting me crash here tonight."

"It's no problem at all, Maggie," Bryan insisted, flashing the duo a warning smile before heading into his office.

Henry turned on the sink, washing off both his and the brunette's plate as she rubbed her forehead and released a reluctant yawn. "You're exhausted. Have you been sleeping enough?" He asked, already knowing the answer.

"No, the nightmares keep me awake most of the night," Maggie admitted softly, brushing back a few renegade strands of her hair. She smiled weakly in the blonde's direction as he shot her another worried glance.

"Well, you'll be safe here tonight," Henry pointed out quietly, emotion glinting in his hazel orbs.

"Yeah," she mumbled, a red flush creeping up her jaw-line. "We'd better get back upstairs and figure out what Jasper could have left us before I faint." She joked.

"I could make you some coffee," he offered nicely, already heading towards the empty pot on the counter.

"No thanks, coffee just makes me jittery and nobody wants to see that," Maggie told him, a smirk playing on her lips. "But I could go for a Pepsi."

"Pepsi it is, Madame," Henry mock-bowed, a chuckle emitting from his chest, before reaching into the nearest cabinet and extracting two finely sculpted glasses.

"How…empathetic of you sir," the brunette commented with a regal toss of her raggedy tresses. "And why do we need glasses when we can just drink straight out of the can?" She asked, secretly waiting and hoping he'd answer correctly.

"Because, M'lady, you have always preferred to drink your Pepsi out of an ice-filled glass," Henry played along in his squire position, opening one of the cans of bubbly soda with a quick twist.

"Correct," Maggie applauded, shaking her head as laughter spilled from her mouth. "Can we quit the regal obsession now?"

"Sure," he agreed, laughing along with her as he poured the contents of the first can into a sparkling glass. He watched cautiously as the bubbles fizzed up to the very edges of the container before fading back down just in time.

Maggie waited until he'd poured both of their drinks before snatching hers from his clinched hand, "Thanks, Henry."

"No problem," he replied immediately, shifting his glass from his left hand to his dominant side. "Now let's go."

"Did you find anything yet?" Maggie moaned, forcing her eyelids to spring open once more. Fatigue was quickly draining her of brain power and now all she could think about was curling up on Jasper's bed and falling fast asleep. That is, until the nightmares came later.

Being the gentleman he was, Henry had agreed to take the hammock, and for that she was glad. She really didn't want to crash on the cold ground, not when thick covers and plump pillows awaited and Henry's preference of a swinging hammock seemed rather risque.

The clock on the wall chimed midnight just as the blonde haired boy muttered, "No, it's like there's nothing to find." His tone sounded discouraged.

"We're just not looking in the right places," Maggie comforted him gently, forcing herself to sit up, though every muscle in her body protested.

And that's when she thought of it. "Wait!" She gasped, grabbing the letter from the nightstand and scanning an assortment of letters quickly. "I've got it!"

"What?" Henry wondered curiously, seating himself next to her on the bed. She shivered as his leg brushed hers.

"Do you remember there being a huge panic about a gang in the news several months ago?" Maggie asked him seriously, her gaze shooting around the room as Henry shook his head, confused. Jasper has to have a copy of the article in here somewhere.

"Where can we find an extra copy of the newspaper?" She mumbled, biting her nail in a nervous habit.

"I'm sure Uncle Bryan has it," Henry exclaimed, grasping Maggie's hand as he shot off the bed, taking her with him. They crossed the hall, their voices fading to whispers. "He always collects the newspapers and re-reads them. It's one of his many hobbies." He told her.

When they finally reached Mr. Bartlett's office the blonde haired male knocked, to no answer. "He must have gone up to his bedroom," the boy determined, traipsing hurriedly across the hallway.

Maggie shrunk behind Henry as he rapped smartly on his uncle's bedroom door, an embarrassed flush suffusing her cheeks. "Um, can I wait in your room?" She inquired suddenly.

"Why?" Henry turned to shoot her a bemused glance.

"Um…I'd rather not see your uncle in a scarce amount of clothing," the brunette explained hastily, blushing more furiously by the moment. Henry's eyes widened a second later as he understood.

"Yeah, I'll be back in there in just a moment." He ruffled her hair fondly before allowing her to slink off.

Bryan's door opened a moment later as the older man appeared, rubbing his eyes drowsily. He was clad in nothing but a pair of plaid boxers and a sky blue robe; his gaze was bloodshot and drooping more by the second. "What is it, Henry?" He mumbled sleepily, rubbing the corners of his eyes.

"Do you have a newspaper published around six to seven months ago about a huge gang panic?" Henry asked the man curiously.

"Why do you…you should both be asleep…" Bryan scolded with a slight shake of his pointer finger.

"Please, Uncle Bryan, it's really important. Just trust me on this," the blonde teenager pleaded thickly, shifting his footing as more time elapsed.

Even though it was a Friday night and they had the rest of the weekend to work on the mystery the boy still felt a sense of imminent urgency.

"One second, Henry." The door swung shut, throwing the hallway into dark shadows. The fuzzy headed male leaned against the railing as he waited for his uncle to appear back with the article. More time passed.

Finally Bryan Bartlett appeared again, clutching a slightly ripped edition of the Times. "Here, now stop bothering me and please just go to bed, Henry." The elder man pleaded in a mutter before collapsing back onto his bed.

"Goodnight," Henry called out as he took the article in his strong grasp before heading back into his room.

"There you are," Maggie commented with a relieved sigh. Somehow her mind had started concocting scenarios in which her best friend was stabbed or shot in the dark of the hallway, disturbing scenes that left her shuddering. When had she become so soft towards the hard-headed boy?

"You got the article, I presume," she noted, her head jutting in the obvious direction of the newspaper. Henry nodded before seating himself at the desk again, the brunette joining him a minute later.

"So this is the gang that got everybody panicking?" Henry inquired, pointing at the dull picture of several masked figures.

"They called themselves the Hilabiti, an organization supposedly founded to mimic Hitler's drastic measurements of force and massacre against the Jews. Except the Hilabiti strike not just Jews, but everyone. There is no racial, ethical, or gender preferences in their slaughter patterns, although they have been known to go after close knit groups at the same time." Maggie defined primly, a frown distorting her face.

"Go on," Henry encouraged, giving her hand a quick squeeze before turning his attention back to the article. "Authorities say that the deaths seem to be connected by several similar phenomenons. First, an axe-head buried in a tree and then cuts lacing the target's skin. The final operation of death varies based on the victim,"He read articulately, his skin paling with each word on the page that his tongue pronounced.

"See?" Maggie pointed out. "Jasper wrote about these exact incidents in the letter. Now look at this."

The brunette's finger traced over the first letter of each line of Jasper's written script, "There are several words on the beginning of each paragraph that shouldn't have been capitalized and yet they were. Coincidence, I think not." Printing the specific letters in bold on another piece of fresh paper the duo stepped back and nearly gasped.

H – I – L – A – B – I – T – I

"You were right," Henry breathed, shock lancing through his system and sending jolts of adrenaline rushing through his bloodstream. "So we have to search for Hilabiti?"

"No," Maggie corrected him firmly. "The authorities would have known about the Hilabiti and it would have been stupid if Jasper had saved it under that cult name. So he hid it in the simplest place possible." She circled three of the letters and showed them to Henry.

L – A – B

"The investigators probably would have passed over his homework," Henry admitted excitedly, his fingers flicking through the files in the corner until he found the one he was looking for.

"Here it is," he whispered in disbelief, holding a DVD case up to the light, the name Hilabiti clearly engraved on a plastic slip just off-center on the container.

"Put it in the laptop," Maggie attested, gripping the edge of the desk tightly as the boy did what she said. The disk began loading and a moment later the computer began humming. Then, a password box popped up.

"This must have been extremely important if Jasper blocked it with a password," the brunette pointed out.

"Jasper put passwords on all of these, but it had to be something he knew we'd break. He knew we'd be investigating this." Henry mumbled, trying out a combination that failed.

After several denied attempts, it clicked. "Could it really be that simple?" He whispered, his mind flashing back to the evening when Jasper had been loading this very disk off his computer.

The light flashed green, giving them full access to the file.

"What was the password?" Maggie asked him, scooting a little closer to the monitor as it began loading the surprisingly tiny file.

"My Diary," Henry told her matter-of-factly.

"Of course," she mumbled, slapping her knee and then jumping as Henry let out a sharp exclamation at the symbol. "What?" She cried.

"Do you recognize that symbol?" The blonde teenager asked her solemnly, his wavering finger pointing to the image on the screen. The only decoration on the page was the drawing of Hitler's revered and feared German sign. It resembled a windmill, except the edges were crooked perpendicular to the rounded center.

"My God," Maggie whispered, covering her mouth with the palm of her hand. "First Hitler's symbol and now used by the Hilabiti. Do you know what this means?" She hissed, tears budding in the corners of her fierce gaze.

"Jasper's death wasn't an accident," Henry concluded darkly, covering his face in his hands for a moment as the truth sunk in.

Tears began rolling down Maggie's cheeks, no matter how much she strained to keep them hidden inside. The simple thought of someone hating Jasper so much was…sickening. She fought back the instinct to puke into the toilet; she could survive this shocking news, no matter how much it threatened to tear her apart.

And this was just Jasper, she reflected, the boy who was always like a brother to her. If she was correct in thinking, then the Hilabiti were coming after Henry and her next. If she lost Henry…the thought nearly sucked her into a black hole, the desperation nearly tangible between her shaking fingertips.

Henry hugged her into his body and she sobbed for what felt like hours, although in reality it was only about twenty minutes. "We're next," she managed to blubber.

"I know," he answered, not bothering to try and cover it up with lies. Maggie already knew, and it was shredding her into tiny pieces. "But I won't let them get you."

Finally, she managed to get the damn treacherous tears back into place and, sniffling, she gazed up into Henry's tortured gaze, "I'm so sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" He asked, clearly out-of-it.

"I'm staining your shirt with my tears," Maggie pointed out with a choked laugh at his twisted expression.

"Does it look like I care?" Henry answered her softly, smoothing her damp brunette locks back from her forehead before placing a gentle kiss there. It was just a friendly kiss, like one on the cheek, she attempted to convince her bounding heart.

"Can we go to sleep now?" She wondered, another yawn escaping her pursed lips. The last of her tears drained sluggishly down her cheeks and Henry wiped them all away before leading her over to his bed.

"Do you have anything to change into?" He asked her and she shook her head 'no.'

"You can borrow something of mine," he offered and reluctantly, she accepted the gesture of kindness.

After waiting for her best friend to leave the room she sifted through his drawers before finally deciding on a long t-shirt that fell to below her knees. The word Billibong was stitched into the front and slight stripes decorated the hem.

After crawling into the covers she called out, "Come on in."

Henry entered the room again. "I'll go change in the bathroom," he told her and she accepted the fact that he needed his privacy. It only took a couple minutes for him to drift back in, wearing nothing but boxer shorts.

"Hey Henry," she whispered as he flicked off the night and closed the laptop, throwing the room into complete darkness.

"Yeah?" He inquired in lightly muffled tone. She heard shifting noises from the floor and figured that he was settling in.

"Would…would you mind sleeping in the bed with me?" She asked him, her voice wavering with mixed fear and embarrassment. "I'm afraid of the nightmares coming back and...it's Jasper's bed, and..." Her breath caught in her throat.

There was a long pause and Maggie felt tears of rejection slithering down her face. "I'm sorry," she muttered, mortified, "I shouldn't have asked."

"What are you talking about?" He questioned and only then did she notice that he was sliding the covers on the other side of the bed aside. Clambering in, he faced her, his hazel orbs shining brilliantly in the moonlight.

As he spotted her tears his fingertips quickly reached out to stroke them away.

"Don't cry." His voice was like velvet as he crushed her against his bare torso. Although the circumstances should have felt totally uncomfortable Maggie felt more secure than she had in a long time.

Weaving her arms around Henry's waist the brunette met his warm gaze. "Thanks, Henry, you're the best friend I could ever ask for." Snuggling closer to him, Maggie allowed her eyelids to flutter closed.

Sleep overtook the exhausted duo instantly.

SPARKNOTES:

Hey everyone, I hope that wasn't too mushy. It took me awhile to figure out how I wanted to plan this but I'm excited at how it turned out.

By the way, the Hilabiti are not an actual gang; I made them up and I own them entirely.