Give it up for day 2! *no one cheers* Haha, ha, yeah!
Okay, so it technically isn't day 2 of Stickvin Week anymore, but! I've got the prompt written out! And I'm gonna give it to you, whether you want it or not! Today's day 3, but I don't have that prompt written out, so I'm going to hold off till tomorrow and try to do day 3 and 4 then. We'll see how well that goes.
Anyway, today's prompt is: Angst! You might be expecting Valiant Hero or Revenged or something, but I'll do you one different! Whether or not it's any good, you'll have to tell me, cause I sure don't know. Anyway, see you at the bottom of the page!
Henry's apartment had never been anything to sneeze at. On a good day, it was a heaven of splinters and asbestos, with the heavily stained bits of furniture he'd scooped up from the side of the road over the years scattered around at random. It had not been a good day for a while, though. Now, the whole apartment seemed stuck in a veil of gray depression and emptiness, near silent where there had once been at least some audible signs of life. And Henry was entirely to blame for it.
Henry sat on the ratty, stained arm chair that he was pretty sure had been a host for moths at least twice, playing a video game on an old console he'd stolen when he was starting out. It was basically Pong with a glitchy coat of paint, but it was the only game that worked on it, so that was that. As broken as it was, it was basically the most valuable thing he owned… well. There was one other item that was more valuable, but… it had lost its charm recently. Again, something Henry was entirely to blame for.
The item in question was a gray box with blinking red lights and a sepia toned screen that occasionally blinked to life at random points in the day. It was his Government Communication Device, a gift from his only friend, one Charles Calvin. Charles had given it to him after the infiltration of the airship, so that they could talk to each other every so often when Charles wasn't busy doing a mission. Getting hired as a government supported private investigator had its perks. Or it had had its perks. Then Henry got locked up at the Wall, and everything changed.
He'd been imprisoned at the Wall for crimes he'd been pardoned for, not that the warden cared. Obviously, they wouldn't let him have a phone call, so the obvious answer had been to escape. If only he hadn't been so one-track minded when he did it.
There had been a girl; he didn't catch her name. Another inmate at the Wall, locked away for reasons unknown. He'd seen a vent in the ceiling, one that could easily be opened if he were just tall enough. There had been a girl. Simple enough to figure out, right?
A part of him knew, as he'd managed to crawl into the air vent and break his cuffs on a lump of metal, that he should go back for her. But in that moment, eyes flicking between the vent and the path to freedom, he just… hadn't. The girl would be fine, he convinced himself, and then he convinced himself not to think about it anymore. It worked, and he managed to get on a boat and travel to a nearby government base, where, wouldn't you know it, Charles Calvin was staying.
Charles- bless him- had beamed like a ray of sunshine when his eyes met Henry's, and Henry was so certain he'd done the right thing… right until Charles asked him what had happened, and Henry- doing something only Charles could make him do without a second thought- told him everything. Including how he had left the girl behind in the Wall.
As soon as he remembered the girl's role in his escape, he was certain Charles could tell what had happened just by looking at him. Charles could read him like a book, so that shouldn't have been a surprise. Still, the raw, open wound of guilt that opened inside him when Charles looked at him with disappointment… It hurt. A lot. And he deserved it.
Charles had shaken his head slowly at him, biting his lip and not meeting his eyes. He'd probably stopped listening after that part of the story. When Henry was done, Charles looked at him and said. "I guess you want me to take you home now?" There was no warmth to the question, no smiles or playful winks. It was strictly business. And Henry, with nothing to say to defend his actions, simply nodded and got into Charles' chopper.
It had been a very quiet ride home. Neither man said a word to each other; after all, what was there to say? Henry's eyes would flick over to the pilot, tracing the strong lines of his set jaw, the grim look in his eyes as he maneuvered them through the snow storm, at his white knuckled hands on the steering device, but never said or did anything. He wanted to; God did he want to. He wanted to brush his fingers across the dry skin of those hands, throw a knowing glance at him like they would before the Wall, heck, share a bag of crappy airplane pretzels that Charles always kept stuffed in his jacket pockets. Anything that would show that things were okay between them; that as much as Henry had screwed up, things could still be fixed.
That didn't happen, though.
Instead, Charles dropped Henry off at the empty lot the city called a park a few blocks from his house, looked at him for a long moment, before lifting off and leaving Henry behind. As Henry walked back to his apartment that night, he thought about the hand touching or the knowing glances or the snacks he could have shared with Charles, and how such things would never happen again. What they had was broken before it ever got the chance to really become something. And it was his fault.
In the present, Henry realized that he'd stopped fiddling with the controller, and the floating pixel had been bouncing past his barrier thing repeatedly, making the CPU's score increase dramatically. Whatever. Who cared?
There was an electronic beep, a different one, right next to him. The comms device. Charles' sticky note with a smiley face was still on it. He couldn't bear to get rid of it. He clicked the "recent messages" button.
A voice started speaking- a Captain H. J. Canterbury- about recent rumors about the whereabouts of the remnants of the Toppat Clan. Henry sighed, only half listening. Technically, he was still a private investigator for the government, but since he was mostly freelance and had basically lost his only real reason for working with the government, he hadn't actually done any work for them for a while. Henry worried about the day someone would come to take the comms device back.
"...worth quite a lot of money," Canterbury was saying.
Wait, what?
Henry clicked the "replay" button and listened to the message in full. Supposedly, the Toppats were planning to launch an orbital space station from the Dogobogo Jungle, and were using a train system to load all of their valuables on board. Weapons, jewels, money, artifacts, a whole bunch of other expensive crap…
A smile formed on Henry's lips; an exhausted, sickly smile. Charles, whether he knew it or not, had left a very large hole in Henry's heart, one that was getting bigger everyday, bound to consume him entirely at some point. Something needed to fill that hole. He'd sworn off of stealing things after befriending Charles, but… they weren't exactly friends now, as much as the thought pained him. If no one could fill that Charles-shaped hole… maybe he could cram some valuables in there and hope that worked.
It won't work, a voice whispered in the back of his head as he grabbed the keys to his scooter, it won't fill the void Charles left. That voice was quickly stuffed into a box in the back of his mind and locked up. Cleaning out all of the treasures of the Toppat Clan wouldn't be nearly as thrilling as his escapades with Charles, but it would do the trick. It had to do the trick.
It had to.
The Cleaned 'Em Out ending is an interesting one. Henry befriends Charles, but abandons Ellie, and when we see him at the start of this route, he's... sitting in his awful looking apartment, looking depressed as all heck. While I was using a video of the opening of this route as a reference, I noticed that a lot of people seemede to think that Henry and Charles were still friends at this point... but then why does Henry look so sad? Better, angstier idea: Henry and Charles fell out after the events at the Wall because Henry abandoned Ellie and Charles doesn't approve. Henry's still a Government Supported Private Investigator, hence why he still has a government issued Comms Device, but without Charles, what's the frickin' point? And even though he's a PI, what's his first thought after hearing that the Toppat's are planning to launch their riches into space? Not work to take them down or anything noble like that, but just... steal it. All of it. Clean 'em out. Knowing him, probably to keep for himself. Add a hint of romantic tension that could have been, and boom! You have this fic.
Charles is either cheerfully clueless or a hundred percent able to burn a man with his eyes; there is no in between.
Where's Ellie? Either still at the Wall, or broke herself out to hunt down Henry. Either way, that's a problem for another day.
Anyway, enough of all that; day 3 and 4 tomorrow! Hopefully! Leave a review and tell me what you thought of this one, and I'll see you later. Until then!
