Prompt: Ribbons, from the one-word prompt list.

Henry learned to braid hair at the age of nine.

His older sister, Maureen, was not fussed with ribbons and bows, and certainly did not want to sit and have her hair braided.

But his little sister, Erin, was as fussy as they came in her childhood. The youngest of four, she loved pretty dresses and hairbows, and perhaps more than that she loved her big brother, Henry, who was usually the only person who had much time for her. The second-born child and eldest son, and the baby daughter of the McCord kids had struck up an unlikely bond early on. And when Henry was nine, and Erin was five, precocious little Erin broke her wrist trying to do the monkey bars on a dare.

And she could no longer braid. Though she was young, she had spent hours in her shared bedroom, practicing the braids she learned from an instructional library book first on her dolls and then on herself.

It was more or less out of necessity when she recruited Henry to learn them, too.

But Henry found, as he wandered into Erin's room each morning before school to braid her hair, that he actually liked to do it- no matter how much Shane tried to tease him for being girly.

"I'm helping Erin," he would insist each time, but what he kept to himself was that the patterns of learning one braid and then another, the silken feeling of his sister's long hair in his fingers, and the repetitious monotony of it calmed Henry.

As spring crept toward summer and Erin's wrist healed, Henry's braiding skills soon fell out of practice.

By the time he met Elizabeth Adams, the summer of being nine years old had faded to a hazy memory, and he wasn't quite sure he remembered how to braid her.

But then Henry went to war. And when he returned, his hands were restless. Much of Henry was restless now; his deployment had brought out something in him, something that he was not sure could ever be completely tucked away again. He was beginning to think that he would simply have to learn to exist with this new part of himself. It was not until one spring afternoon after he returned home, when he found himself fiddling absentmindedly with the marking ribbons attached to the inner spine of the Bible he'd taken overseas with him, that he he remembered braiding Erin's hair as a child, and the strange sense of peace it had brought him.

Looking down at the red, green and blue ribbons where they lay against the thin pages and small dark text, an idea began to bloom, somewhere in the back of Henry's mind. He stood from the chair in the corner of their living room and went in search of Elizabeth.

He found her in their tiny shared office at the back corner of the house, tucked into her cramped desk by the window. Light streamed in and spilled over onto her skin, dappled with the shadow of the oak leaves outside. When she looked up and saw Henry standing before her, a smile lit up her face.

"Hey, you," she said; her voice was all openness and warmth, the kind that drew Henry in no matter how he might be feeling.

Elizabeth had been very patient with Henry, and he was grateful in a way that he could not quite manage to articulate to her, though he hoped he might be able to, someday.

"Hi," he said now, instead.

"Something on your mind?" Elizabeth asked, leaning forward in her chair until her elbow was on the desk and her chin rested in her hand.

The truth, Henry thought, would take a very long time to untangle and lay out for her.

"Braids," he said, more simply, as he crossed the room to the window and lifted himself easily up onto its wide ledge. Elizabeth spun in her chair to face him.

"Braids?" she repeated, puzzled. Henry nodded, and gestured to the Bible that he had carried in from the living room and was still holding in his hand. Against its closed spine, the three ribbons hung in a neat braid that stopped halfway down and gave way to three separate strands fluttering loosely.

"I started braiding these without even thinking about it," he said. "And then I remembered how I used to braid Erin's hair when we were kids."

Elizabeth looked up at him in surprise, and then a smile flickered over her sharp features, lighting up her eyes.

"I guess there are still things I don't know about you," she teased, and he smiled back; for all of the turmoil that was stirring in him right now, Elizabeth and their familiar banter were steadily making up for it.

He looked back down at the braided ribbons for a moment, remembering.

"I never really told anybody," he began, "but learning how to do all of those braids and practicing them…I think it really-"

He broke off, like he wasn't quite sure what he was trying to say.

"I think it really touched some part of me," he said finally. Looking up at him, Elizabeth was struck by how handsome he looked, sitting there in the window frame and lit by the afternoon sunshine that streamed in behind him.

"How?" she asked softly.

Henry smiled, looking vaguely wistful, like some part of him was still a child braiding his baby sister's hair.

"It made me feel…calm," he said carefully. "Something about the patterns, the- the hair in my hands." He shrugged his shoulders.

"I think it was good for a sensitive kid like me," he added, "when everything around me was so…hard."

Elizabeth thought of sheets of ice, and of her father in law, and vaguely wondered how much difference there was between the two.

"Anyway," Henry said. His voice had shifted; there was a note of hesitance there now, a stalling pause.

"Yeah?" she prompted gently.

"I was thinking…" Henry started. "Well. Can I braid your hair?"

When Elizabeth looked into his face, she found it vulnerable, bearing the shadow of a plea, and almost unbearably young.

She smiled, and all Henry saw was sun.

"Of course," she said, and a moment later she was sitting in front of him on the wide, broad window ledge, her back to his chest.

Henry smiled, even though he knew Elizabeth couldn't see him, as he placed his hands on her shoulders.

He took a moment to watch as the wind blew beyond the window and the dappled sunshine danced in the strands of golden blonde in Elizabeth's hair where it hung long and loose down her back.

"Wait," he said. "One second."

He eased out from behind her and reached for her desk drawer, rummaging through various things until he found a pair of scissors. With the Bible still in his hand, Henry untangled the little braid and carefully took the scissors blade to the blue ribbon and sheared it neatly off of the others.

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth asked; there was no trepidation at all, just curiosity. Henry smiled at her as he slipped back into place behind her on the window ledge.

"When Erin was little," he started as he began combing his fingers ever so gently through his wife's long blonde hair, "she had this little doll with ribbons in her hair. She loved that thing. So I started thinking maybe I could braid ribbons into her hair, and I figured out this way to do it."

He laughed lightly.

"I think it got me into her good graces until she was at least fifteen, which was a couple of years later than everyone else."

Elizabeth laughed, and the sound rang out in Henry's chest like bells on the clearest day.

"That must be why she always sits between you and Maureen," she said, and Henry laughed too.

"Something like that," he murmured as he carefully worked his fingers around a piece of Elizabeth's hair and gently tied the blue ribbon around it.

Comfortable silence settled over them, warm and familiar, as Henry set to work on a French braid that started at the crown of Elizabeth's head. The movements came back to him a little at a time, like pieces of his brain were lighting up as he focused in on the task.

With the silken blonde strands of Elizabeth's hair between his fingers and the pattern of her light tresses and the thin blue ribbon emerging before him, everything else fell away, and something calm settled in on him. The tension slipped out of his shoulders and he found himself unconsciously matching the steady way that Elizabeth breathed, taking note of the warmth of her leg where it was pressed against his own.

And by the time he reached the end of the braid between Elizabeth's delicate shoulders and tied it off with the hair tie she silently provided him, he felt more himself than he had in a while.

"Well?" Elizabeth asked softly, turning her head to look over her shoulder at him, her blue eyes sparkling. She didn't say it, but Henry knew that it was layered; the braid, the ribbon, him.

He smiled, and ran his fingertips over the length of the braid before trailing them all the way down her spine.

"It's my first time in a long time," he murmured. "It's not perfect."

Elizabeth turned so that she was facing him, and pressed her hand to his chest, right over his heart as she met his hazel gaze.

"It'll get there," she said.

And Henry found that, perhaps for the first time, he sincerely agreed.