Disclaimer: The characters in this story are the property of CBS and are only used for fan related purposes. Any recognizable dialogue from the series included is used only to further the story.
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Sacrifices
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After J.D., he's understandably hesitant. His father, in a rare act of compassion reserved only for his son, agrees to kill the girl for him in his stead. They discuss a plan and together they are confident it will succeed without any failure this time; time is short, besides. Wakefield will knock at the door and he will depart, leaving his hapless fiancée to be the next victim.
But nothing goes according to plan—or, at least, not to Henry's plan; somehow, he thinks, what happens next is all part of his father's elaborate scheme.
Something goes wrong and Trish—he should've given her more credit—she gets away. In bare feet and running in the tight wedding dress she wasn't meant to wear, she dodges Wakefield and flees into the woods. Recalling him to their aims, his father barks an order for him to cut her off, and he obeys without question.
He arrives at the other end of her panicked flight, ready to receive her trembling body in his open arms. He likes acting the part of the savior—Richard Allen beat him to it at the poolside but a harpoon through his chest took care of any further heroic intentions—but it's his role as her betrayer that he's come here to play.
She runs right into his arms, oblivious to the fact that she should have just kept running.
He's certain he loved Trish once, he thinks as her fear and her relief leads her to tell him she loves him, but, even so, it pales in every way to the adoration he feels for Abby. A flickering flame compared to a roaring fire… and it's time for the candle to be snuffed out.
He hardens himself for the act by confessing, by finally being honest with her. It's like he's cleansing his soul of the bloodshed that covers him, tainting him; it's the same thing as wiping his knife clean after every kill.
It's simpler than he thought it would be, despite the horror reflected in her big brown eyes. It's only when her expected cries of denial anger him and her feeble attempt to escape annoys him that he forgets himself and he snaps.
Like the antiquated stereotype of a man, he pulls her hair and he pulls her back to him. He knows what has to be done and, once she's back in his arms, he does it.
Her last gasp of air revives him and, the bloodlust fading, Henry realizes just what he has done—what he has meant to do since the day he asked a naïve young woman to be his bride.
He really had wanted to give her her wedding day first…
With his father as a witness, he holds onto his (former) fiancée as she dies. He's murmuring something over and over again—"it's not fair"—and it doesn't matter who hears. But Wakefield is too far away and Trish too far gone and only Henry is left with another dead body of someone he once thought he loved.
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You killed them. You killed my father, and JD… You bastard… you bastard, you bastard! Why?
Author's Note: This was probably -- after the death scene in the end of the eleventh episode -- my favorite death in the series (And how morbid does that sound? My favorite death scene? Ah, I love this show). For Trish to have donned her wedding dress only to have the man she wanted to marry end her life... it gave me chills. I only hoped to show the emotion Henry must have felt during that moment. I'm actually in the middle of working on a plotbunny that focuses on Trish's point of view -- keep an eye out for that soon -- and it was interesting to write Henry's vignette before tackling a much longer, more detailed Trish-centric fic. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this ficlet!