"Oh. Harry. It's you."

The beam dropped to a spotlight on the floor. Slowly, Harry lowered his arms and squinted, disoriented and vision burned with white, into the cafe. The flashlight dimly reflected back on its handler, and Harry could make out simple definitions of the very civilian he had been wondering about.

He exhaled sharply and swung the pipe loosely at his side. His heart was thudding a mile a minute and he took two more deliberate breaths to encourage it back to relaxation. Then he rubbed the back of his hand into his eye to try to get out the spotting from the violent assault with the flashlight. "Jesus Christ, James," he grumbled. "You scared me half to death. How long were you going to wait to say something?"

"Sorry," came the embarrassed apology. "I was asleep."

"You were asleep?" Harry clarified incredulously, looking up. James remained seated behind the table, and only got to his feet when Harry began to make his approach. Harry stopped where he was, and for the first time was able to get a full impression of Silent Hill's ward.

James turned his flashlight to point at the ceiling. He held a compact device meant to be pinned. With the light shining into the stucco sky, it showered the immediate vicinity with a strong enough light to see most of the room. It also meant both of them could see eye to eye. Though they had a brief time to do their first impression studies in the park, now they could get a more comprehensive look at each other.

Their meeting at Rosewater Park felt like such a long time ago, anyway.

To Harry, James nearly reached his height. He wagered James stood an inch or two beneath him. He looked about average build, but the jacket seemed a little big and his jeans appeared to hang looser in the legs. The boots on his feet looked dark and stained, or maybe they were wet. He didn't recognize any of the patches save for the all-American flag sewn on the pocket, and besides all that, his wardrobe was truly unremarkable. James dressed like he'd either been in a hurry, or simply threw on whatever was in arm's reach.

Or maybe this was the look of a man who didn't care. Harry frowned gently into the pale face that was ordinary at best and averagely-handsome-on-the-verge-of-averagely-pretty in the right light. He saw his face better now that they were directly in front of each other, and the overhead light that James made cast hollow shadows on his sad, tired self.

James was the most depressing man he'd ever met. It was crushing to look into his eyes. They were distant and foggy, as though he were in a waking dream. He felt regarded by him in the same way that told another person that he was zoning out; he didn't feel seen. These eyes were dead and set in a shell of a man. He recalled them being green but in this meager light, they looked like muddy sewer water.

Looking at him again, wardrobe was definitely on a mid-to-lower-tier effort of looking functional. He could pass as normal, if not a little troubled, if no one considered him for very long. He was eye-catching for his hair and perhaps could turn someone's head, but Harry saw an unremarkable face. As he'd thought before, James was average. He'd suit a person looking for traditional expectations and an average life. They'd get married in a modest ceremony, probably at a church and reception in someone's family's back yard. They'd live together in their plain one bedroom apartment until they saved enough to purchase their own house. Then they'd move in, to a street that was dotted with houses of various sizes, but all were the same in that they were were boring, unoriginal, and would be fondly called 'safe and sound' by older people chatting in the supermarket. And they'd be perfectly happy with that.

The longer he stared into James's face, the more drained he began to feel. James oozed a pathetic sadness that made him want to spend as little time as possible around him. He should have been feeling relieved to see him, but James was an uncomfortable person and Harry didn't know yet if he wanted to endure that any longer than ten minutes tops at a time.

Harry offered him a strange, uneasy smile.

James offered him nothing in return.

"Yeah. I figured this was a safe place to take a quick nap. It's dangerous out there."

If he had met Harry when he first arrived in Silent Hill, he would have been worlds happier to see him. He would have been more congenial, even show more emotion. It would have been easier to bond with him over being on the same mission to find their missing persons.

That would have been pretty nice.

Harry drew his lips together and looked towards the lobby. "Yeah, so you know about all that, too?"

"Yeah. It's hard not to."

What a riveting conversationalist James was turning out to be. Harry stuffed a hand into his pocket and glanced at him. "It seems kinda quiet out there."

James's shoulders lifted a fraction to shrug, and he too took a gander towards the main entrance. What Harry said seemed to catch up with him then, and he turned a muddled frown back to him. "Wait, what?"

"Hm?" Now both men were frowning at each other, confused and wary.

"What do you mean, 'so you know about that too'?"

Harry took the defense. "Well, what did you mean by 'it's dangerous out there'?"

"There are monsters out there," James told him firmly. "This is not a normal town."

"I know. We've been over this. Kind of." Harry sighed as James clearly struggled to connect the dots. "We met before in the park."

"Yeah. I remember that. You're looking for your daughter."

"Right, and you said that this wasn't a normal town, and I agreed."

There was a pause. "Okay. But how did you know that there were monsters out there?"

Harry stared at him. He collected that James wasn't playing with a full deck, but now he suspected that even the dealer was out on a smoke break. "I've been here before. I know there are monsters. The problem I was seeing was that I haven't seen any yet. It's really quiet out there for a town that was stalking me for most of my time here."

He quickly felt guilty. Harry had gotten impatient and frustrated with James in record time and he was taking it out on him. He mentally took a step back, drew another one of his learned calming breaths, and recomposed himself. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to come across so curt. I'm just having a hard time readjusting to being back here."

James didn't seem offended. Somehow that made Harry's guilt a little worse, and he pushed right past that for the sake of his sanity. The flashlight was lowered and placed on the table, reducing their overall light, and bringing the more unflattering, disturbing shadows to their faces. James took his seat again, leaning back into the coarse padded booth, and put his hands on his knees to stretch. Harry awkwardly stood there another moment as he realized that they were going to have a longer chat, and drug a chair over to get comfortable across from him.

Sitting down felt good. He didn't notice how tired he was already until his legs were thanking him. He placed the pipe on the table, drawing a glimpse of it from James. Once they'd both settled, James fixed Harry with his attention.

"How the hell did you get out of Silent Hill? What were you even doing here in the first place?"

Harry's laugh sounded exhausted. "That's a really long story, man. I was here.. oh, seventeen years ago? Yeah," he chuckled at James's incredulous face. "that puts some age on me, huh?"

James shrugged. "I don't know. I've never really been good at guessing peoples' ages."

"I'll take a compliment where I can get it," he grinned. "But, yeah.. seventeen years ago." Harry sobered. "My daughter was having some nightmares. She wanted to be taken to Silent Hill, and I had no other choice. I loved her, so if she wanted to go to Silent Hill we were going to go to Silent Hill if it meant she could get rid of those nightmares.

"We got in the car and we went. There was an accident as soon as we got here, I got knocked out, woke up, and Cheryl was gone."

James cut him off. "You said your daughter's name was Heather."

"Yes. She's Heather now," Harry confirmed, not without a wince. "But she was Cheryl then. Don't think about it too hard," he said, waving his hand in the air. "I'm not going to get into all of it now. The point is that I drove my daughter here when she was a little girl, and she got lost, and I went looking for her. I ran all over this damn town looking for her, saw all sorts of depraved things and monsters and things I didn't ever want to see again, hell - I didn't ever want to be in this goddamn place again for as long as I lived."

Harry's shoulders sank, and he slowly ran his hand down his face. It hit him again that he was really here one more time, and that he couldn't save his little family from hell on earth. He shook his head at himself, and sat up straighter in the chair. "We got out. Things had happened and when we left, Cheryl wasn't the same, and.. I'm not going to get into the specifics, James. It's hard to explain and it doesn't make sense and I've never been able to make any sense of it. The point is that I'm here again for the same reason: my daughter is lost and I know that she's here. I have to find her and take her home and get this horrible place out of our lives forever."

James was forced to accept that. He nodded, and looked away. "That's.. sure is a lot. Wow." Harry glanced at him, and smiled the same little smile that popped up on James's face at his flub. "I don't know what to say. If she's here, we'll find her." He looked at him, sad and certain. "You gotta get out of here for good."

"Thanks. We will." Harry turned in the chair, setting his elbows on the table and threading his fingers together. "What about you? What are you doing here? Are you from Silent Hill?"

James avoided his eyes as he prepared an answer that he wouldn't have to say. The radio in his pocket screeched awake, and jolting Harry so hard he nearly fell out of his seat. The noise was piercing, crackling and popping and tuning itself between jarring frequencies. James immediately rose, Harry following in a fraction of a second, and he snatched the light from the table.

"Take this," James said, tossing it at Harry's chest. Harry caught it in the nick of time, fumbling to find the tight pinch clasp to tuck onto his jacket as he grabbed his weapon. "Let's go."

"Don't you need it?" Harry asked belatedly over the din of the radio. James pushed past him, heading for the back of the cafe, and clicked on the light that Harry neglected to notice.

"I have my own."

Harry took off after James right as his heels. The radio screamed its gravelly warnings, throwing this poor loyal father right back into his tormented memories, and his heart thrummed so hard he wished he could rip it out of his chest and throw it as far as his arm would take it.

This was his reality again. This was Silent Hill.