A/N: SPOILERS below for Henry's backstory in ep 1x14, Hitler on the Half Shelf, as well as previous eps.
Previously in Coming to Light:
The truth was that she and Henry were not together. Which made what she was about to do even stranger.
CHAPTER 9: TRUTH, LAID BARE
The naked truth is always better than the best-dressed lie. ~Ann Landers
Henry sat at the desk in his basement laboratory. His current "death diary," as Abe called them, was open in front of him. He was midway through the entry for his recent shooting, but he wasn't making very quick progress. Every few minutes he found himself lost in thought. Sometimes he was reliving times when people he trusted had reacted badly to learning his secret; sometimes he was reliving good reactions. Mostly he was thinking about his partner, or maybe his former partner; he wasn't certain what she was now. She hadn't told him one way or the other what they would be to each other moving forward, but his personal history had taught him that getting his hopes up would only make the disappointment more painful later on. At least this time I don't need to flee, he told himself. Even if she keeps her distance, Jo will honor my secret. The thought should have been a comfort, but it wasn't.
He was lost in those thoughts when he heard clipped footsteps descending the stairs, and he looked up.
"Detective," he said in surprise, and rose quickly to his feet. "How did you—"
"Abe let me in," she answered shortly. She came to stand a few feet in front of him, folded her arms across her chest, and looked at him.
"I…wasn't expecting you," he offered.
"No, I bet you weren't," she answered, then waited a beat before continuing. "Take off your shirt."
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me, take off your shirt."
After a pause, he replied, "All right…" He began to unbutton his waistcoat—vest, as Americans insisted on calling them. After a few buttons he asked, "Did you read my letter?" She was pinning him with a very pointed look and he wasn't sure what the protocol was for small talk in this situation. He wasn't even sure what this situation was, to be honest. Meanwhile, his fingers continued to work.
"Yeah, I got it," she said, but did not elaborate.
He slid off his vest and folded it deliberately over the back of the chair he had vacated. When he looked back at Jo, she hadn't stirred from her slightly impatient pose, so he unbuttoned his cuffs, then started working his way down the central row of buttons on his shirt.
Jo was struggling a little to stay focused. She had seen Henry shirtless before, but it had been a life-threatening situation, or so she had thought at the time. However, watching his actual act of undressing in front of her, his eyes never leaving hers, was unexpectedly intimate. She refocused on why she had come.
"The answer is no."
"No?" He creased his brows, trying to remember the question.
"In your letter, you offered to 'maintain our professional relationship without getting personal,'" she air quoted. "Remember that?"
"Those weren't my exact words," he protested, and she glared. "…but that was the general sentiment."
"Well, the answer is no. I do not accept your offer," she repeated. "Henry, you're my best friend. Have I mentioned that yet?" For such a meaningful statement, she laid it out very factually.
He was surprised and honored, and unsure how to respond. "Jo, I—"
"—because it's true; you are," she plowed on. "Was I surprised by what happened to you? Yes. Was I upset? Hell, yes. But you are still my partner, and still my friend. And now I have questions."
The resignation and loss that had been seeping through him all evening like spilled ink suddenly halted, and for the first time since dinner on Saturday, he started to hope for better. "I'll answer as best I can."
His shirt lay open now, and she let her gaze drop to the strip of exposed skin. "Show me your scar."
He drew the left panel over to reveal the puckered circle on the surface of his chest. Jo took a step forward, then two. She brought her hand up to trace the ragged edge.
"What happened?" Her voice was the mix of gentle and firm that she might use with a witness, questioning but not accusing.
At last, he told her the truth. "I was traveling to the New World as the doctor on a slave ship—my father's slave ship," he added, and the hint of bitterness in his voice told her that was a long story for another time. "The captain wanted to dispose of one of his 'cargo,' and I protested. When I stepped in front of my patient, the captain shot me instead, and his men threw me overboard. I thought I was dead, but the next thing I knew I was breaking the surface of the ocean, naked and gasping for breath. A passing ship spotted and rescued me." He paused. "Now you know as much about the "why" of my condition as I do."
She caught the undertone of old frustration in his final statement. For a man like Henry who thrived on knowing and finding the truth, the mystery of his own existence must have been a constant trial.
Her hand travelled to the other side of his chest and his right shoulder, still half-hidden by his shirt, to the unmarked flesh where there ought to have been a bullet wound. A sudden revelation made her gasp a little. "Last month—you died on that yacht, didn't you?"
He nodded reluctantly. "After I reawakened, I shot myself in a less fatal place to mask my recovery."
"You chose to shoot yourself rather than tell me the truth?" The question still held a dose of accusation, but Henry heard the genuine curiosity mixed in as well. Her fingers unconsciously continued to probe his shoulder, gently testing his wholeness.
He shrugged his other shoulder slightly. "I wasn't ready. The moment came so suddenly, and I didn't want you to find out that way, without a word of warning. I'm sorry that you did anyway, in the end."
Another question occurred to her. "Henry, how many times have you died since I've known you?"
He thought back. "Well, there was the day we first met; I was on the subway car, as you know…"
One by one, he listed his deaths since September. For each one, she placed her hand on the site of the wound if she could; when he admitted to being hit by a truck on the bridge, she just shook her head at the stupidity.
When he told her that the Soul Slasher copycat had stabbed him in the back outside the Frenchman's shop, Jo gave an indignant "What?!" and pulled his shirt down by the collar to see his back, tossing it dismissively over the chair alongside the vest. "I told you not to go after him by yourself!" Her touch to that not-wound was closer to an irritated whack.
He told her about drowning in the taxi, and she rested her hand in the center of his chest, over his heart and lungs. Whenever a death involved Adam, Henry glossed over that element. Jo saw clearly that there was a missing piece, but she let it go for now; there was obviously a separate story there as well, and a big one.
They were almost caught up to the present when Henry ventured, "May I ask you a question?"
"Shoot."
He gave her a pained look at her choice of words but continued. "Are you being completely honest with me?"
"About what?"
He searched for the right words. "About your level of comfort with our friendship. About what…and who…you see when you look at me now."
She dropped her hand from him, exasperated. "Henry, I told you: the issues between us this week have nothing to do with Sean. I asked for your help as a friend, and you gave it—how can you think I would resent you for that?"
He wasn't convinced. "You asked for my help because I was the best man for the job. That doesn't mean it didn't affect your view of me."
Her hands went to her hips. "Want to know what affected my view of you? Seeing you die, disappear, and then reappear on my doorstep!" She held up a finger. "And don't you dare ask again if I find your condition 'repulsive'. My reaction was never about who or what you are. It was about not knowing who you are; about you not telling me."
She gave him a long look, then circled around behind him. He tried to turn, but she stopped him with a firm hand on his back. He felt her hand move to rest between his shoulder blades. She pressed her fingers between two vertebrae.
"Was it here?"
He knew what she meant. "A little lower." Her fingers felt their way down a notch at a time until he said, "right there," and she stopped.
"Did it hurt?" she asked simply.
"Yes." He could see out of the corner of his eye that she was waiting for him to continue, so he did. "I was bleeding heavily, both externally and internally; that's what killed me. The bullet also severed my spinal cord, so I couldn't move my legs. Thankfully it was quick, but it was...unpleasant. I was glad to not be alone," he added.
She continued to work her fingers along that small spot on his spine, pressing lightly on the phantom wound she had been unable to staunch the night before. "So the next time a body comes into your morgue with this type of injury, you will know exactly how the victim felt when he died."
"Every death is different, but to some degree, yes."
She circled back around to face him. "And you've died, what? Hundreds of times? Thousands?"
He shrugged. He knew the number, of course, but didn't care to say it. "Enough to fill those shelves." He nodded to his notebooks.
She followed his gaze, then looked back at him. "And each time, you understand one more type of pain, one more human experience, in a way that no one else can." Although he remained silent, she saw confirmation in that familiar faraway look of his that she finally understood. "I don't think it's repulsive." She picked up his shirt off the chair and handed it to him, then placed a hand over his scar. "I think it's remarkable."
She held her hand there, warm and sure, for one, two, three beats of his heart. Then she turned and walked up the stairs without another word.
TO BE CONCLUDED
Next time: Jo and Abe's talk, and Dinner Revisited.
