A/N: Thank-you for your patience. I appreciate I have a few readers out there for this story. I was hijacked by one of my TV OTPs for the month of May, but steadily this month I've been catching up to my other fics & I've finally gotten around to this one. Thrilled there are more Henry/Valerie fans out there! Hope you enjoy.

*I own nothing. No copyright infringement intended.

…

Chapter 4 – Breadcrumbs and Broken Silence

He'd been grinning since he received Valerie's impromptu gift the night before. Just a few steps till he reached her door and he told himself he needed to be calm, composed, serious. But she opened the door before he got there and he smiled so wide his cheeks hurt.

"Henry!"

Her forced surprise made his heart race. She'd been anticipating his visit – anticipating it.

Valerie frowned when she glanced at what Henry held in his hands.

"You didn't eat it," she accused.

Henry refocused and uncovered the bread she'd sent to him the night before, revealing a portion of it missing.

"I ate some," he assured her eagerly. "I just…wanted to share some…with you."

She smiled, barely hiding her teeth and stepped away to invite him in.

"Come in," she said when he stayed put on her front doorstep. "Let's eat."

…

Some time later, with only the kitchen table and slices of bread between them, Henry ever so casually found himself describing to Valerie how his time in other villages, amidst wolf-hunting, had been. Particularly, the perks.

"Stale bread and crackers?" she laughed.

He decided he loved her laugh. He couldn't remember ever having heard it in direct relation to something he was saying. That made him love it even more.

He smiled around the last bite of bread he'd stuffed into his mouth, and he nodded.

"I don't believe it." She leaned back in her chair. "You guys go around to villages across all the land, saving people from these vicious werewolves, and all they have to give you is stale bread and crackers?"

He swallowed his food and tried to suppress his grin.

"Well, they give us beer too," he assured her.

Her smile was so wide, her eyes sparkling with so much laughter that he had to catch his breath before continuing. He was afraid his heart might give out.

"And, in their defense, they have to pay us a lot in gold just to get our services. What do they have left but scraps?"

Valerie rolled her eyes, unconvinced.

"No way. You're their savior. I mean, when the guys were here for us…" Her brows furrowed and an adorable pout formed on her lips as she tried to remember what exactly they had done for them.

Henry looked at her innocently enough when she resurfaced from her deep thinking.

"Well, I'm sure we didn't give them anything stale."

Henry smirked. "They also had a pretty tough guy as their leader then."

Valerie sank into herself, remembering, and Henry wished he hadn't brought it up.

"Someone like that wouldn't have any qualms about pushing the townspeople around for a lavish meal," she murmured.

Henry nodded, avoiding eye contact. Silence ensued.

"There may have been fish," he finally said, to which she burst laughing and threw another piece of bread at him.

"I bet the crackers weren't stale either!"

He ducked away from further pieces of food being thrown at him and laughed, his heavy heart light again. When he looked up, Valerie had gone into the kitchen.

"Is it safe?" he asked hesitantly, crouching alongside the table.

"Come by the fireplace," she said ominously, "and you'll see."

He was slow getting there but the sight of her silhouetted near the flames and pouring hot cider for the both of them was worth it.

"Tell me more of your adventures," she said as he took a seat on the large chair in the center of the room – the one she usually chose, of course, but living alone had its privileges.

Henry asked lazily, "What do you want to know?"

"Well…" She sat down in the chair adjacent to his. "You told me you were going to leave to find your courage."

He nodded, somber. He understood now why that time was difficult for Valerie to acknowledge in conversation. There were few happy memories for him then either.

"Did you?"

He blinked, rousing himself from his thoughts.

"Did I what?"

"Find your courage."

Henry leaned back in his chair and let his mind wander back to the beginning, to when he'd decided there was nothing left for him in the only place he'd ever known. He'd thought then that either Peter would be discovered as the wolf and be killed, or that Valerie would find Peter, untainted by any wolf curse and they would finally get their happy ending. The true wolf would still be found and killed and that would be the end of it.

The wolf was never found, but there were no more deaths, so the people in the village had to assume that the creature had somehow escaped.

Henry didn't wait around to say goodbye to Valerie or to find out what her next steps would be. In his weakest of moments, part of him had wanted Peter to be the wolf. It wasn't that he despised the guy so much he wanted him dead, or even the fact that with Peter out of the picture, he might have a chance with Valerie. It was the thought of Valerie trusting herself so completely into someone else's hands and maybe being hurt because of it. The fact that Peter seemed to be the one person she thought could never be the wolf made her vulnerable.

At least that's what he told himself at night, so he didn't have to justify the fact that people's growing suspicion that he was the wolf made him want to throw the blame on Peter, who was not only free from blame but also held the heart of the woman he loved and was more or less set to marry her.

It made him mad that Valerie's grandmother suspected him so strongly and found it so curiously odd that he would still care for her granddaughter even after their engagement had been broken.

It was as if she didn't know, and maybe she hadn't… that it was he who bartered with his father to convince Valerie's parents why marriage between the two of them would be a good idea, an excellent idea in fact.

Henry had watched Peter and Valerie growing up together, hardly paying attention to another soul, so wrapped up in each other, so in love since the time they were children. And then him – Henry – watching from the sidelines, gazing after Valerie hopelessly as if she was a dream brought to life, an angel from above. He was very subtle in his occasional attempts to pursue her, but it was all in vain. By the time they were all thirteen, he'd accepted she wasn't going to even try to see him in a different light as long as Peter was in the way.

So, he became the dark brooder, desired by many of the other girls in the village, but completely unattainable. When his mother died, his mood only intensified. And then his father…

"Henry?"

He blinked again, refocusing on her face, which was now full of concern.

"Huh?"

"Are you alright?" she asked, holding up a cup of cider to him.

Hesitantly, he took it from her and drank.

"This is good," he said, and forced a smile.

"My grandmother's recipe."

He drank some more.

She sighed and sank into her chair.

"Did something…happen to you out there, Henry?"

Not out there. Here. Before I left.

"Maybe I'll tell you sometime," he said instead.

Shakily she forced herself to relax.

"Nothing really bad," he assured her, and she nodded, relaxing for real this time.

The tension had returned though, and he hated it. It occurred to him that maybe if he had just told her what he was thinking, it wouldn't be quite so bad as it was, but he doubted it. He seemed to have a knack for screwing up perfectly pleasant conversations with her. Maybe that was why there had been no lasting spark between them.

He wondered then if there would ever be a time when any talk of the past could avoid awkward tension, no matter how brief.

"Can I come back tomorrow?" he asked, making no attempt to move.

This would be the true test, he thought. If all this unintentional awkwardness he kept creating was making her too uncomfortable, he was sure she'd come up with a good excuse for him to stay away. Or maybe a bad excuse. He wouldn't be blind to the meaning behind whatever it was she said. The latter would just hurt more.

"Are you leaving?" she asked, a crease forming in the middle of her forehead. That was enough for him.

He relaxed again and told himself not to smile too wide.

"No," he said, "Just thinking ahead."

She smiled tremulously and nodded.

"I'd like if you came again, Henry." She took a drink of her own cider, and then turned to tend to the fire. "If you're not too busy that is."

His smile widened for as long as she was turned away and his heart beat faster.

He knew he had a habit of overthinking things, mostly because a lot of what happened to him tended to be negative.

But this time, he considered, maybe there was no need to.

"I won't be too busy."

…

A/N: I know maybe this still feels a little filler, but I've done some work on my outline and I promise the story will start to pick up in the next few chaps.

Happy reviews are love!