Sorry for the long wait, all. Suffered from writer's block for a while, and then just as inspiration was starting to flow back had some massive technical problems. Fortunately everything's been resolved and nothing was lost. Thanks for sticking with me.

Also, I've been revisiting some older Psych episodes lately and it's just making me really sad that I can't write these characters in more lighthearted situations, because that's the way we all fell in love with them. And yet angsty fics are a really enriching and necessary way to expand upon them and get to know them better. I don't know. Just wanted to clarify that I am quite aware that this is not Psych's usual song and dance, and I'm really trying to stay true to the characters regardless. Again, thanks for sticking with me.


When Henry first heard that Shawn had been declared missing, he immediately flashed back to Gus's call just the other day. He really hadn't thought anything of it. Apparently the police disagreed with him.

He showed up at the precinct sooner than he should have been able to given his distance from it and speed limits. A lot of them knew that, but no one said anything. Lassiter, of course, was immediately telling him to leave, that he was too closely involved, that he'd just get in the way. Henry very nearly socked him in his already crooked nose.

When they found Shawn's phone in that station wagon, he tried not to get his hopes up. But after the incident put Juliet and Gus in the hospital, he knew it couldn't be an accident. Somebody had tried to kill them, or else send a very strong message. And he would have bet anything that it was the same somebody who had taken his son away.

After that, there was radio silence for the longest time. He did everything he could, but that basically amounted to nothing. The precinct became his default space until Vick finally had to tell him to take some time off. And things didn't get any easier from there.

It would have been different if there were leads to follow or evidence to examine or anything, anything at all to do. But the only course of action available to him was to wallow in helplessness and try not to think too much about his son.

Henry had never really been a praying man, but finding himself with no other option, he took up the habit.

After some time he went numb. Everything dulled around him and on a daily basis he had to question whether he was actually alive. He tried his best to act as he always had, at least when he was among others, but it was a conscious effort. And when he was alone, he couldn't find the energy to do a thing further than he had to. He stopped checking up with friends, eating out, listening to music in the car—at least until Gus recommended that station with the slow, somber instrumental music. Occasionally a song with lyrics would pop up, and he always switched it off when that happened. He'd still try to force himself to engage in leisure activities like fishing and walks, but never anything higher energy than that.

When he woke up in the hospital to be told that he'd been under for about nine hours, his first thought was to ask if any leads on Shawn had arisen during that time. Lassiter's expression started as controlled immense relief at hearing him speak coherently, and quickly morphed into what was more than a sufficient answer to the question.

Recovery hasn't been a cake walk, but he hasn't once complained. It's provided a distraction from all the empty spaces left by Shawn.

So now that he's back and Henry is left trying to guide his barely-hanging-onto-consciousness son upstairs, he really wishes he could move the way he used to. He spots him all the way up the steps, all the while just praying to God that he makes it without mishap, because he doesn't trust his own abilities to catch him, particularly when he's got one arm in a sling.

Finally they reach Shawn's door, and he makes a failed attempt at the doorknob before managing to grasp and turn it. Henry pushes him gently forward and follows him into his old bedroom.

He's spent far too much time in this room in the last year, just wandering in hoping to see Shawn sitting in the corner playing with his army men. Invariably, of course, the room was empty, so he'd sit on the bed and stay there till he nodded off, or pull out some of Shawn's old school reports and projects and pore through them till they made him smile, or just stand in the middle of the room for several minutes at a time, just drawing in his scent. He always left everything precisely the way he'd found it. Tried not to think about one day having to go through all this stuff and decide what to do with it.

Even now he grimaces at the thought and tries to fill his brain with white noise as he continues to spot Shawn on the way to the bed. Just before he can drop himself down, Henry grasps his shoulder. "Hang on a second, kid, you should take the jacket off."

Shawn goes rather still at this, and nods, shedding the jacket and letting it drop to the floor. The room is very poorly lit by the streetlight outside but Henry can make out the large dark spot on his already dark shirt, and he turns his head to the side. "The shirt too," he says softly, heading for the dresser. "I'll get you another one."

Shawn's not even halfway down the buttons by the time Henry pulls out a T-shirt that he thinks ought to still fit him, so he sets it down and helps him. Shawn lets the shirt fall to the floor as well before accepting the offering into his hands, staring down at it with something akin to awe.

It's likely been a very long time since he's worn his own clothes.

Henry assists in his clumsy and somewhat desperate attempt to pull the shirt on over his head, and once that's done, Shawn immediately turns towards his bed. Anticipating the movement and hoping his own limbs don't fail him, Henry quickly reaches out to yank out the corner of the blanket and throw it to the side just before Shawn drops himself into bed. Henry is able to tug the rest of the covers out from under him and lay them back down across his still form.

He goes to the window then and closes the blinds, plunging the room into near-total darkness—which he supposes would be a problem if he didn't know the layout like the back of his hand at this point.

"I can't believe you started listening to his dumb violin radio station," comes a murmured voice from across the room.

Henry quickly sets the blinds so as to slightly illuminate the room again, but Shawn appears to be out like a light, already snoring softly. Immediately Henry's mind is going in multiple directions—he's clearly talking about Gus but didn't use his name, and given what Henry knows this shouldn't be a surprise. How did he know about the music? It's doubtful his captor would have told him. He runs through the last few minutes—did he start humming something without realizing it? He tosses that idea out the moment it occurs to him, knowing he didn't. But how else could Shawn have figured it out?

His mind flies to the moment he found out that Shawn had known what he was going to get him for Christmas even before he did. His proud grin, that smug little victory dance. His son is a genius, always has been. He guesses he pretty much forgot that somewhere along the road; all this time he's only been picturing him as his lost little boy.

He realizes he's still standing by the window, and quickly heads for the door, but he pauses before closing it, looking into the room, in the general direction of where he knows his sleeping son to be, and whispers two words he hasn't said in sequence in he can't remember how long: "Goodnight, Shawn."

Easing the door shut leaves him in a hallway that looks exactly the same as it did when Shawn was missing, but he sharply tells himself he can't start losing it now; Shawn is back, asleep behind this door, and he needs to keep it together to make sure he stays safe.

He could just go to bed right now, and he really should. There are trustworthy officers outside his house charged with keeping him and his son safe—his son, who is, after a year of terror, back with him. This night should be the best night of sleep of his life.

But Henry's never been one to conform to expectations, nor entirely trust anybody other than himself, at least where Shawn's safety is concerned. He manages to amble downstairs and drop himself on the couch, where he has half a mind to keep an eye on the door, though the rest of him knows he won't last long before dozing off.

He gives up within minutes, his last thought before he loses consciousness of the possibility of getting up early and making Shawn breakfast.


He is rudely awakened in the middle of a deep and dreamless slumber by… by he's not sure what. But his thoughts immediately fly to Shawn.

At first he assumes it's because Shawn has been the first thing on his mind every morning he's woken up since the day they declared him missing, and is ready to settle back down for another hour to try and fail to get back to sleep.

Then he remembers.

For another second he has to wonder if the events he's remembering weren't just a part of some cruelly vivid dream. He's been fooled before. But the longer he thinks about it, the more details he's able to conjure up, and he is certain that his son is alive and well and sleeping upstairs.

He rises to his feet before considering what he's doing, and stands there uncertainly for a moment, wondering if there's really a reason he should feel the need to check up on his son.

To hell with reasons. He's Shawn's father. That's all the reason he needs.

He struggles upstairs, the soreness left by sleeping on the couch not exactly an aid, but he manages just fine. And halfway up the staircase, a scream rips through the dark house.

He comes as close as he can physically manage to sprinting the rest of the way, and throws Shawn's door open so wildly it's a wonder it doesn't fall off its hinges.

The only light in the room comes from Shawn's old alarm clock, reading 2:37 AM. The kid probably hasn't even been asleep for a full hour. Henry flips the light switch, though he immediately regrets it, squinting in mild pain as he hobbles the rest of the way to Shawn's bed.

He's fast asleep, lying on his back, his face twisted in a profound fear that Henry hasn't seen on him since he was very small. One fist clutches the blanket while the other grasps desperately at the opposite arm. He's breathing hard, obviously exerted from the scream—and it probably wasn't the only one; Henry woke up for a reason—but other than that he's pretty still.

The nightmare clearly has its hooks in deep, but Henry hesitates, watching him, not wanting to wake him up because dammit, he needs to sleep and if there's the slightest chance he'll be able to settle down, he shouldn't disturb him.

From downstairs comes the sound of the front door opening, and Henry instinctively turns to meet them halfway. He's descended only a few steps when two of the police officers who have been sitting outside, one manning a flashlight and the other with a gun in his hand, come into view. They look up at him and one opens his mouth, but before he can ask the inevitable question Henry waves at them in a shooing motion, hissing, "We're fine. He's fine. It's just a nightmare."

Almost perfectly in sync, they blink, nod, and turn to head out the way they came. Henry feels a sigh coming on but knows he doesn't have the breath to spare, so instead he just starts the short trek back to Shawn's room.

He approaches the door, which he curses himself for leaving open, and peeks inside.

Shawn is sat up with his feet swung over the side of the bed, hands pressed into the mattress on either side of him, elbows locked. He looks up at Henry, meeting his eyes, and… Henry knows his son. He knows him well. He can find him easily behind the overgrown facial hair, the ink on his forehead, and the raw, stinking desperation and misery that rises from him now, but… that doesn't make the sight any less jarring.

"Shawn," he says softly, drawing closer, "you okay?"

It's a dumb question and he knows it, but maybe, just maybe, Shawn will answer honestly.

But Shawn doesn't answer at all. He just drops his chin down to his chest and wraps his arms around himself, rubbing them hard. The sight is more than Henry can stand, and he ventures further forward with the intent of… of what, he's not sure. Just sitting next to Shawn and wrapping his own arm around his shoulder, or pulling him into a hug… whatever feels most natural.

But when Shawn looks up and sees that he's gotten closer, he immediately flinches backwards, hand out protectively. Henry stops in his tracks, blinking down at him in befuddlement, recalling Juliet's failed attempt to take his hand.

Shawn just stares at him with wide eyes for a moment, still breathing harder than usual but starting to calm down, and finally lowers his arm as he says, "Dad, could you cut my hair?"

Out of all things he could have said, that didn't even crack Henry's list of expectations. His brow furrows deeply, and he repeats haltingly, "C-cut your hair?"

Shawn nods, apparently to himself just as much as to Henry, and surges suddenly to his feet. "Yeah. I'll go shave. Right now. You gave me a couple haircuts when I was a kid, it was never too disastrous."

"What, now?" His voice rises in pitch only a little with the second word but he sharply reminds himself to stay calm, to roll with the punches. He can't expect Shawn to keep it together if he can't.

Shawn nods vigorously. "Yeah, of course. Gimme a minute." And before Henry can find a response, he's gone past him and out the door. By the time Henry arrives in the hall, the door to the bathroom is closing.

He stands there in the hallway, totally bewildered, listening to the sound of the sink drawer opening and Shawn rifling through it in search of the pair of scissors. The faint snip snip reaches him soon enough, and he doesn't move, simply listening to the sound of his son performing the most mundane of tasks, surprised by how peaceful it is.

It makes sense that Shawn wants the scruff gone. Of course it does. It'll probably feel like a weight off his shoulders. But now? While the moon is in the sky and Shawn is, by his own account, in desperate need of sleep?

What was he dreaming about?

Henry doesn't move until the sound of his electric razor starts up. He slowly makes his way downstairs and eventually enters the kitchen, but stubbornly takes a seat at the table without getting out the scissors. And there he waits, trying to figure out what to do with his arms and what to say when Shawn finally appears at the entrance to the kitchen.

Shawn has, as far as Henry is aware, never had nightmares. And heck, he wouldn't have minded if he did, every once in a while, but the only reason he and Madeleine were ever woken up on account of their son was his turning up the TV too loud or knocking things over—or, on some occasions, his excitement, when he made some kind of breakthrough on his newest project and couldn't wait till morning to tell them about it. Henry never met those awakenings with patience or kindness, but he was at least able to shut up and let Madeleine take over, quietly congratulating her little boy and sending him back to bed glowing with her praise.

He was a happy kid. He really was.

At least at first.

Henry looks up, snapping out of the memories, and Shawn is standing in the kitchen door. His beard is completely gone, leaving four or five cuts in its wake significant enough to warrant small bandages. In the bright glare of the kitchen light, his face looks sallow, and maybe unjustly so, but the dark purple bags hanging underneath his eyes are certainly not just Henry's imagination, nor is the horrible prominence of the tattoo above his eyebrows. He looks ghastly, and with the added touch of the bandages Henry would normally almost be ready to load him up in the car and take him straight back to the hospital, but the stark contrast between the man before him now and the animated child he was just seeing in his mind's eye is enough that Henry's heart drops straight to his stomach and he has to consciously stop himself from gasping aloud. Not to mention the prominent tattoo on his forearm, up till now covered by either a jacket or the dark of night—just another physical piece of evidence that Shawn has been through more than they can possibly know.

Once he recovers his faculties, he says the first thing to spring to mind: "That ain't a good look, kid."

Shawn could read him like an open book, and this is completely obvious by his face. His expression quickly clears, but he still looks awful. "I'm still so freaking tired," he admits, a halfhearted grin curving the corner of his mouth.

Henry sighs silently. "Then you should be sleeping. We can do this in the morning."

"It is in the morning."

"Shawn…"

"Please, Dad." His voice is quiet and even, and his eyes lock with Henry's. "Indulge me. I need this and I think waiting a second longer is going to kill me."

It's just an expression, Henry tells himself even as he robotically climbs to his feet to retrieve the scissors. Obviously it's an expression. Just a turn of phrase. Shawn is safe here, and he has to know Henry won't let anyone lay a finger on him.

Heaven help anyone who tries.

He sits Shawn down at the kitchen table and doesn't do any setup at all; he can sweep up the hair that falls to the floor easily enough. As he stands there with the scissors clutched in his hand—he was very fortunate that it was his non-dominant one that was put out of commission by that bullet—staring into the mane on his son's head, he notes that while it is indeed something of a mess, it does look like it was washed fairly recently. He could choose to take comfort in that small fact, but it's not in his nature.

And he starts snipping. It's been a very long time since he's done this. Shawn was sixteen when he stopped letting him give him haircuts. The length of his hair rapidly got completely out of control, and then there was the first time he dropped off the grid when he was nineteen. Henry had never thought he could save enough money to live on his own so early on, and resolutely refused to offer any sort of assistance, but somehow or another, Shawn managed it. And the next time Henry saw him, his hair was shorter. Henry has never asked him how, whether he schedules appointments or cuts it himself or maybe has Gus do it. He's always carefully kept himself from demonstrating how much he cares.

"Don't go too far," Shawn says softly, and Henry's hand freezes in the instant before he closes the scissors around the chunk of hair he was about to sever. And it was quite the call—he was distracted to the point of nearly creating an admittedly small almost-bald spot on the side of Shawn's head.

"Don't worry" is all he can think to say as he adjusts his grip on the pair of scissors—there's really no other way he can think of to respond to that bizarre… whatever it was.

After just a few more snips his hand trembles, and he quickly shifts the scissors to the other one, giving it a good shake in an attempt to regain control over it. Shawn sits very still, not turning, not acknowledging the interruption at all.

Henry finds it at once suspicious and unnerving, and he doesn't like it one bit. Immediately as he resumes cutting, dropping large clumps of hair to the wood floor, he starts looking for ways to break the silence, but none of the possibilities seem safe. He can't risk being too abrasive with Shawn, can't bombard him with questions when he's barely even awake, and trying to make small talk is absolutely out of the question.

Think, Henry. Use that shriveled-up brain of yours. What do you know without him having to tell you?

Shawn's lost about twelve pounds in the last year and his skin is a shade or two paler than when he was living in Santa Barbara. The changes are far from drastic and probably mean that he was actually pretty well taken care of, but couldn't find it in himself to eat or go outside as much as he normally would. Which is preferable to him coming back with pallid skin hanging from his bones, but points towards something Henry could do without.

He seems physically whole and healthy, which means he had nothing to distract him from the psychological trauma. And whatever it was, it was bad. Henry knows how much blood a man can survive losing—it was bad enough that when Shawn tore himself away from his prison, facing up against the man who put that bullet in Henry's chest, he didn't stop at killing him.

His hand brushes against Shawn's ear, and his son instantly stiffens, clutching the arms of the chair he's seated in in a very noticeable way.

He's really only doing cleanup at this point, painstakingly snipping away small bits that seem to still stand out amid the rest of his hair. "Not my best, but that oughta do it," he announces, and takes a step back, surveying his handiwork, and, finding it admissible but not feeling any real pleasure in his success, he places himself at Shawn's side.

But Shawn doesn't turn to meet his eyes. He looks lost in his own head. And that has never been a good thing, even when he was as fine as he'd ever been. "Come on," he instructs, pushing the pleading note out of his voice and filling the void with a tone of authority, "let me look at ya."

Shawn turns, but it's to lock eyes with his father and ask flatly, "Have there been any psychological effects at all?"

Henry blinks. And blinks again. "…What?"

"You almost drowned. Sometimes people spring right back without any injury or damage of any kind, but certainly not when they're comatose for some weeks. You can't be fine."

"I am—" he starts, but cuts himself off, processing the entirety of what Shawn has just said. Weeks?

"I saw when you stumbled, okay?" Shawn snaps before he can formulate a question, and immediately presses his fingers against his eyes, taking a total of one second to compose himself, and stopping before the job is done. "Every little hesitation of the hand—I was good before, and you have no idea how good I am now. And there are things you should have noticed and commented on. You normally would have." Oh God. Tears. There are tears in Shawn's eyes. Henry can't remember the last time that happened—except he can, down to the minute. His son made a conscious decision never to cry again after that day. He's an attention-seeker but he would never try to use pity to turn eyes towards him. He's all about keeping people happy and entertained.

If he's crying, it means he physically cannot stop himself.

He manages to keep the blubbering to a minimum as he raves, "You were supposed to figure it out yourself. You probably still wouldn't have believed it, but… you were supposed to arrive at the conclusion on your own. I shouldn't have to tell you anything."

"Shawn," Henry says seriously, forgetting for a moment the "weeks" confusion, "What are you talking about? What am I missing?"

Shawn leans over, his face in his hands, and Henry holds himself back, afraid to touch him, afraid of triggering something even further. His son stays silent and still for about three seconds but they have just about stretched into eternity by the time he suddenly raises his fist and slams it down onto the polished wood of the table. Nothing cracks—Henry's always had a thing about carefully choosing well-fortified furniture—but he can already foresee the bruise purpling the side of his son's hand. He rubs roughly at his still-obscured face with the offending fist and suddenly sits straight up, a sardonic smile stretching across his mouth. "Of course, your not being able to do this is my damn fault," he continues, voice raised so as to be strong enough to overpower any cracks that may otherwise manifest in it.

Henry finally realizes exactly what is happening in his son's head right now. Chalk his current slowness up to tiredness—but his mind is as sharp as ever. This has gotten way out of hand. "Shawn, you idiot, I am fine," he asserts, eyes wide, coming far closer to shouting than he intended. He lowers his voice and goes on, speaking with all the candidness his son deserves, "All the side effects have been motor. Occasional bouts of dizziness are as close as they've gotten to being cognitive. I was unconscious for less than a day."

Shawn freezes, and looks him dead in the eye. "What?"

"I was shot in the early afternoon and woke up in the middle of the night," Henry clarifies, brows still drawn in confusion, until his expression suddenly clears as he realizes what must be the source of this misinformation. He stares right back at his son, and asks darkly, "What did he tell you?"

Shawn is giving him a blank, wide-eyed stare. It was bad before, knowing that this… this Master lunatic forced this irrational guilt on his son and he must have spent this whole time just drowning in it, but the hell he could have put Shawn through… feeding him lies day after day…

"He made it sound awful, didn't he?" Henry spits. "He showed you pictures or a newspaper article or something and told you I was dying. He told you that for weeks." Calmness is what Shawn needs to see right now but he can't keep the anger out of his voice or his face. "Who is this bastard, Shawn? What did he want from you?"

Trails of tears run from Shawn's eyes to his chin but Henry can't be sure whether they're still streaming steadily. He's still staring at him like a deer in the headlights, and Henry knows he's not going to get answers to his questions—now's not the time to expect any. An interrogation isn't what Shawn needs from this moment.

Finally he dares to ask, "You're really okay?"

Henry replies promptly, "Better than okay."

Tentative relief shows on his son's face, but he quickly seems to banish it, apparently unwilling to allow himself any kind of solace. "Dad, you got shot. I saw your—"

"I've been shot before, kiddo."

"It's not like you build up an immunity to bullet wounds," Shawn mutters sourly.

It's the kind of thing that Henry knows would make him crack a smile were he a normal parent. Though he knows that in striving to be better than normal, well… he kind of reeks at it.

His mind suddenly replays what Shawn said, and instantly he's thinking of a thousand implications that he doesn't want to consider. "Wait, you saw my what?" And backtracking even further, he asks before Shawn has time to answer, "What is it that I haven't noticed?"

Shawn's mouth snaps shut, and Henry can see how carefully he tries not to blink, lest more tears be released. In the silence he strains to gather together what data he does have. Shawn is having… some sort of freaky psychological issue that's keeping him from remembering names. His abductor kept him at a carnival, of all places, and kept him compliant by exploiting his pressure points—his family and friends. Just as Henry suspected from the jump, the same man has been responsible for both calamities that have befallen those in Shawn's inner circle in the time he's been gone, and he has made Shawn believe that the incidents were his doing. Shawn returned home with blood on his clothes and ink on his skin, and by his own admission, he killed a man.

For all the time he's been working with the police, constantly associating with dangerous people and putting his own safety at risk, Shawn has never killed anyone before.

Henry has still reached no conclusions on what Shawn might be referring to but he has plenty of reasons for him not to be okay, and while he's thought Shawn has dropped his chin to his chest and wrapped his arms around himself like he's trying to hold himself together. His shoulders shudder and he keeps emitting weak coughs.

At least his hair looks much better.

"Kid," he says seriously, "I'm just a little rusty. If you think I can't still run circles around you, you've got another thing coming."

A strangled chuckle escapes Shawn, cut off all too quickly and intentionally, but he plasters a smile across his face in an apparent attempt to restore the expression and replies, "There are circles you're still running. I'm just used to it at this point."

That's true, that's very true. Several examples spring to Henry's mind in an attempt to crowd out the massive storm of confusion and worry rolling in the center of it. The unfinished scavenger hunt, the unrecovered contraband, the unfound Easter eggs…

"Like the Easter eggs of 1985."

Henry blinks, an image of his eight-year-old boy dressed up in his Sunday best and carefully searching through the grass on his hands and knees springing to his mind. It's almost enough to make him smile.

Shawn stares at him, and the tears are still flowing but his suddenly blank expression seems oddly disconnected from what his eyes are doing. "Stuck in a hole in a block of cement in the side of the house immediately underground and disguised as a rock in that tiny excuse for a garden you have in the back. Clever, very clever."

Henry's first thought after a moment of blank shock is to wonder how long he's known the locations of the last two objects of his never-resolved search, and why he chose now to speak up about it. Though both these questions pale in comparison to that of what the hell happened to his expression, as in where did it go. Shawn's features are still completely vacuous.

And suddenly life snaps back into his eyes and he comments in his trying-to-be-casual voice, "Bet the candy's slightly expired by now though."

Henry is completely at a loss as to when this conversation became about the damn Easter eggs, and his frustration is beginning to win over. "You're intentionally derailing."

"And are you surprised?"

Henry snaps his mouth shut, but only for a moment. "You said there was something you wanted me to notice. This isn't one of your psychic acts, Shawn." For some reason he seems to flinch at this. "It's just me. No need to be histrionic."

"You don't get it, Dad," he whispers. "I can't just say it."

"You never tell me anything, Shawn. Tell me now. Please help me understand."

He shakes his head, lips pressed together. "You won't believe me. No way in hell."

Preposterous, Henry says to himself. Of course he'd believe anything Shawn told him. He deserves to be believed. Then again, he knows himself well enough to admit that he's quite the skeptic and has failed to be in Shawn's corner often enough that he understands why he'd be reluctant to bare his soul now.

Of course, understanding doesn't make it hurt any less.

"Shawn, I'll do my best," he whispers. "We can work this out."

Shawn blinks at him for a moment, then screws his eyes shut, drawing in a sudden, sharp breath. "It's not about believing me," he mutters, voice strangled. "I can prove it to you. But then… you'll need time, a lot of time, to work through it, and the way you'll look at me…" His breath hitches. "And I just want it to be simple. For once. For a little while. I just want—" He cuts himself off, because his voice has started to wobble dangerously, and Henry can only watch helplessly as he stutters and shakes, snot bubbling from his nose, which he wipes roughly on his sleeve. Henry grimaces, slightly in parental disgust but primarily in pain at seeing his happy-go-lucky son reduced to this. He feels prickles in his own nose but roughly admonishes himself—he absolutely cannot cry in front of Shawn. He has to be strong.

When Shawn finally finishes his thought with the shaky words "I just want to be home," Henry deems it time to pull his son into his chest—if for no other reason than to hide his own expression in case it slips out of his control.

"It's okay, buddy," he murmurs into Shawn's newly trimmed hair, clutching his head to his shoulder. "Shawn, it's okay. You're okay. You're here with me. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

His son shakes in his arms, body racked with silent sobs, and he comes very close to wailing, "It's different, Dad. Everything is different and I can't deal with it, I really can't. H-he did something, or else knew this was going to happen, so either way he has answers, and if I c-can't make everything go back to the way it was then the next best thing is answers."

"We'll get your answers," Henry promises lamely, despite having no idea what the hell is going on. "We'll find him. We'll fix this, no matter what it takes." It is usually his firm philosophy to not make unkeepable promises, and he will move heaven and earth to uphold this one, but he still feels the need to add something that Shawn can hold onto even if everything else slips away.

He settles on "You're out. You're home."

Finally he feels Shawn's arms wrap desperately around his midsection, and he tightens his grip on his son, and for the longest time they just sit in their respective chairs, holding each other, the only sounds in the kitchen the ticking clock and Shawn's relatively steady but muffled weeping. Henry quickly gets sore but the idea of moving never occurs to him.

Finally the crying trails off to occasional sniffling, and Henry carefully and subtly adjusts the position of his hands on Shawn's back, just to let him know it's okay to pull away now if he wants. Shawn responds in kind but waits for several long seconds before leaning back.

Fairly unsurprisingly, he looks like hell, more so than he did when he first stepped into this kitchen. His face is a wet mess and the sight of his red-rimmed eyes complete with dark, pronounced bags underneath almost makes Henry wince.

Shawn obviously isn't fooled by his restraint, but all he says are the hoarse words, "Dad, I'm so goddamn tired."

There's that prickle again. Henry keeps his voice as even as possible as he responds, "Then let's get you back to bed. I one hundred percent guarantee you that things'll be better in the morning."

This is a mantra that Henry knows Shawn can nearly always get behind, but right now he doesn't look overly convinced.

Shawn has never needed sleep more. In this moment, Henry is utterly convinced of that, and for the briefest instant, he is set on slipping Shawn some kind of pill to get him to go to sleep and stay that way. The idea of drugging him without his knowledge or consent is questionable enough on its own—when he considers what Shawn might have been through all this time, it suddenly becomes potentially monstrous.

Again he spots him on the way upstairs, though once they reach the top Shawn makes a beeline, stumbling almost drunkenly—a good thing, as it means Henry can keep up—towards his room. He makes no attempt to reduce the noise as he drops himself into bed nor adjust his position once he's there. Henry waits just until the springs in his mattress stop their brief crescendo of squeaking before saying quietly, "Shawn, I have some Nytol in my medicine cabinet, and I really think you should take some to help you sleep."

"Give me as much as you safely can and then some," Shawn murmurs without hesitation into his pillow.

Henry knows it's irrational but he feels all the apparent catharsis of the cry session being nullified by these words. He already knew Shawn could really use medication to sleep, and Shawn knows it too; he's not a complete idiot and he does have the ability to cooperate, albeit rarely activated.

He brings him a pill and a glass of water and helps Shawn down it, and thinks he catches a murmured "Thanks" just before he closes the door. He withdraws to his own bedroom just down the hall—not only does he doubt he has the energy to go back downstairs, but he's beginning to realize the demons lurking outside aren't the only ones his son is doing battle with. There's greater need for him here.

If he has anything to say about it, and he certainly does, Shawn is never going to be alone again.