The moment Henry's eyes opened, he could feel a painful aching throughout his body. Slowly turning his head, he looked around the room he found himself lying in. The room was dark, and he couldn't see anyone else here with him, the covers over the other bed in the room lying flat against the mattress. The curtains were drawn, but from the pale glow of light coming through the gap, he could tell it was sometime at night. He turned his head slightly more and noticed the digital clock sitting on the nightstand, which read 12:15am. 'So, I'm somewhere with technology' Henry thought, and he took another, slower look around the room, and noticed plenty of other things that would have told him that. The large flat-screen TV mounted to the wall, a tall fan whirring quietly as it blew cool air around the room, and lastly, a laptop that had been left sitting on a desk chair close to the bed. On the corner of the laptop was a yellow sticky-note with 'Henry - press Play when you wake up' written on it with delicate handwriting.
'Right Henry, what do you know? I'm somewhere with technology, so this isn't the Enchanted Forest, or Arendelle or any realm from the storybooks in the Sorcerer's house… Is this even a Realm of Story? Am I back in the Land Without Magic? This doesn't look like anywhere in Storybrooke, but if I'm in the Land Without Magic, maybe I could visit home, see how everyone's doing… Going off track, Henry, what do you know? It's night-time, but is it the same day that I came through the portal? It was day when I came through, wasn't it? Yeah, definitely. I remember sunshine, green grass... someone spoke to me, but I can't remember who… I hope this is somewhere with magic, else I'm gonna struggle to explain how I fell through a portal.'
Henry moved his arms to help push himself to sit up and groaned in pain. That hurt more than he'd expected it to. Hopefully with all the advances this realm seemed to have, they would have something he could take to stop the pain. Before moving again, he took a deep breath (and even that hurt), braced his hands by his waist, and gently pushed himself up. The room spun for a moment and Henry worried he was about to throw up. He closed his eyes for a moment, waited for the wave of nausea to pass, then opened them again. Suddenly, there was a low growl in the quiet. Henry looked down at the source and gave his stomach a gentle rub. He wasn't sick, he was starving. He couldn't guess how long it had been since he ate or drank anything as he had no idea how long he'd been asleep.
Thankfully, he noticed there was something else on the nightstand that would be able to help him – a small plate with several delicious-looking cookies on, and a tall glass of cold milk, if the condensation coalescing on the glass was anything to go by. His mouth had been dry, but Henry felt like he was almost drooling as he stared at the snack in front of him. His stomach gave an encouraging rumble, and Henry reached over, snatching up a cookie and wolfing it down, following it up quickly with a couple large swigs from the glass. In hindsight, he should probably have made sure that the food and drink wasn't poisoned – he didn't want to be put under some kind of curse again – but he was thinking with his stomach. Any consequences he'd suffer because of his hunger, he would deal with. It wasn't like he hadn't broken any curses before.
3 cookies and one glass of milk later, Henry was feeling much better. The ache wracking his body had faded away, and he could now move about without having to grit his teeth through the pain. He threw the covers off him, and only now realised that he was wearing less clothes than he had been when he'd been escaping the troll. He wasn't wearing his brown leather jacket, nor his pants, socks, or shoes. Thankfully, whoever had undressed him had left him his modesty, as he had been left with his pale grey undershirt and dark boxer shorts. He quickly looked around the room again and was relieved to see his missing clothing sitting in a folded pile on another desk chair across the room.
Finding no other reason to put it off any longer, Henry swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached over to pull the desk chair to sit between his legs. He angled the laptop, so the screen faced him nicely, and pulled off the sticky note. He read it over a few more times, trying to glean any extra information from the note. The writing looked light and flowy, so he initially thought a woman had written it, but he couldn't be sure. Putting the note to the side, he turned his attention back to the laptop. He moved the mouse slightly, waking the screen up, and clicked on the large triangle in the centre.
The screen brightened up as the video began to play, and a voice Henry didn't recognise spoke.
"Okay Mal, it's going," the voice said, and when the view finally settled, Henry was left with the sight of a roughly 19, 20-year-old girl with deep lilac hair and bright green eyes.
"First of all, if you're watching this Henry, we're glad you're awake." The girl Henry assumed was this Mal person smiled out to him. "If you're still hurting, there's some cookies on the side that I baked with a pain relief spell, so have a couple of those and that pain will vanish. The milk's just there to wash it down." Henry could feel the mixed emotions at the girl's words – on one hand, he was relieved he was in a land with magic because he wouldn't have to find a way to explain the whole falling-out-of-a-portal deal, but he had to admit he was a little disappointed that he wasn't back in his own land and would be unable to go and see his family.
"So, we expect you have some questions, and we're gonna try to answer most of them for you now. I'm Mal, and behind the camera is my fiancée, Ben," the view suddenly spun around, and now Henry was looking at a young man with sandy blonde hair and handsome features, who flashed the camera a winning smile.
"Hi, I'm Ben," he said smiling, and lifted a hand into view to wave out to Henry. He lifted his hand to wave back before he remembered that this was just a recorded video and not a live feed.
"Ben?" Mal's voice perked up.
"Oh, yeah, sorry." The camera spun again and Mal was back in frame, her furrowed brow flattening back out.
"Right, so you've been asleep since you fell out of that magic circle thing. My friends and I have been looking after you while you slept, checking in on you regularly in case you woke up. And this video is for if you woke up when no-one was looking in on you. But if someone was around when you woke up, you wouldn't be watching this… Never mind." Mal sighed, pushing away her frustration at not being clear. "The point is, you're awake now and when we all meet, you can tell us about yourself. Looking forward to it." Mal gave the camera a smile that could only be described as wicked before the screen cut to black.
Henry's eyes lingered on the screen for a moment, wondering whether it was the end of the video, before it started back up again. This time, the screen showed a very large building that looked a lot like a castle. It looked vaguely familiar to Henry, and he recognised it as the building he'd briefly seen after he came out of the portal. Was this the building he was in now? The rooms inside seemed far too modern to be inside that beautiful castle, but then again, Henry knew that appearances could be deceiving.
From the left of the screen, a man ran in, stopping in the centre of the frame. "Welcome to Auradon University!" he cheered, jumping up and swinging his fist into the air. He ran closer to the camera, giving Henry a better a look at him. He wore a dark read beanie over long dark brown hair, had deep brown eyes and a cheeky smile.
The man reached for the camera and picked it up, aiming it toward his face. "Well, the dormitories, at least. Morning man, I'm Jay. I've been helping keep an eye on you while you've slept. Did you know you snore like a chainsaw?"
"Hey!" Henry blurted out, cheeks flushing slightly.
"Ha-ha, just kidding man, you slept like a baby." Henry rolled his eyes and contemplated closing the laptop and going off to find his own answers, but Jay carried on talking. "This is where we've been looking after you." Jay turned the camera back onto the castle and begun to move over to one of the windows on the first floor. He put the camera up to the window, and inside the room, Henry could see himself asleep in the bed that he was currently sat on. "Aww, aren't you precious?" Jay teased. Henry looked up from the laptop screen to the window where Jay had previously been stood recording him from the other side of. Henry paused the video, pushed the desk chair aside, and gingerly stood up. While those cookies had worked a miracle and taken away his aches, he knew it was better to play it safe. Taking quiet steps, he walked over to the window and pushed the curtain open so he could look out onto the moonlit lawns of Auradon University.
Night had well and truly fallen over the campus, with the moon hanging big and bright in the sky. There was something comforting about the glow it was reflecting down, and Henry could feel the anxiety of being in an unfamiliar land slowly slipping away, being replaced with curiosity and excitement. Between the glow of the moon, and the lampposts dotted around the grounds, the lawn was well-lit. The grounds were completely empty of people, but anyone out for an evening stroll wasn't going to have to worry about being in the dark for too long.
At one end of the lawn, Henry could see a flower bed which had a white tent covering part of it. He couldn't see the flowers from this distance, but he didn't need to be a genius to know that the tent was probably housing the part of the flower bed that he had fallen into after being spat out of the portal when he first arrived in this world. 'Wonder who I'll need to apologise to about that…' he thought, a small smile playing on his face. Sure, he did feel guilty that he'd wrecked a part of the campus grounds, but boy, was he grateful it was a flower bed he'd crashed into as opposed to a concrete car park.
Letting the curtain fall back into place, Henry turned away from the window and moved back to the bed. He picked up the laptop from the chair and, sitting with crossed legs on the bed, placed it down in front of him. Before he pressed play, he noticed that in the still image on screen, there was a young man with white hair sat at a desk not too far from the bed. He was leant over, arms folded on the desk and head resting atop them. Henry pressed play, and the view pulled away from the window and turned so it was back on Jay's face.
"Now you know where you are, let's look at where you are," he said as he walked a short distance. The camera began to jostle slightly, and Henry assumed Jay was moving to sit down. "Wait," Jay started, giving the camera a puzzled look. "I don't mean where, like, in there," he pointed his thumb back over his shoulder to the window he'd been stood at previously. "I mean where, like, location. Not the university, but on a map."
The camera turned and spread out on the picnic table Jay had sat at, was a large map. The map had been divided into rectangles where the folds over the years had worn into the paper so deeply that nothing would iron them out. Across the top of the map was written The United States of Auradon. "Heh," Henry snickered at the name. "Closer to home than I thought."
"We're here, in Auradon," Jay started, drawing a circle with his finger on a coastal section of the map. Near the centre of the area he drew around was a large cluster of buildings labelled Auradon City. Just below that was a castle, predictably titled Auradon Castle. To the right, another castle, Auradon Preparatory Academy, and just up above that, yet another castle, the Museum of Cultural History. To the left of the city, close to a body of water, was (unsurprisingly) a castle, labelled Auradon University. 'They really like their castles here,' Henry thought, smiling slightly. 'Not that I can judge, both my mom and grandmother have castles.'
"More specifically, we're here," Jay tapped on the Auradon University landmark. "The full title is Auradon Magical and Technical University, but pretty much everyone calls it A.U. for short." The camera view turned back to Jay's face. "Auradon's been our home for almost 5 years now, but us V.K.s used to live here." The camera turned back to the map, and now Jay had his finger on an island outside Auradon Bay and below the Strait of Ursula, an island called the Isle of the Lost. The image on the map looked grungy and run-down. "When the King Beast and Queen Belle brought all the fairy-tale kingdoms together, they also rounded up all the Villains and shipped them off to the Isle of the Lost, so you can imagine what a crappy place it was to grow up." Henry sighed softly, not really needing to imagine what it was like to grow up in a place where not only was a villain in control, but they were your parent as well. Thankfully, that chapter of his story had come to an end once he'd found the Storybook, and helped Emma bring back the happy endings.
"Our parents were some of the meanest people on the island, and when Prince Ben decided that the kids on the island needed a chance to show they weren't like their parents, Mal, Evie, Carlos and me were picked to be the guinea pigs. Our parents, Maleficent, the Evil Queen, Cruella, and Jafar, only went along with it so we could take advantage of the trip to steal Fairy Godmother's magic wand and destroy the barrier that stopped the villains getting off the island.
"That was our plan, at least to begin with." The camera whipped back around to Jay's face. "Don't judge us, we'd been raised by evil parents, of course we were bad kids." Henry didn't judge them at all. If things had been different in his own childhood, if Regina had been honest about her true identity and had been the Evil Queen Regina raising him, that could easily have been how he turned out. In fact, here there was someone who was an example of how he could have turned out. One of these people was this realm's version of him.
Really, he should have been expecting it. Ever since he'd found the other Storybooks in the Sorcerer's mansion and discovered that there were other realms with different versions of the people he already knew, he'd known that sooner or later, he'd come across another version of himself, even if none of the books in the mansion had him in. Now that it was happening, he wasn't sure how to feel. Excited to meet someone who he could identify with on a level he'd never known before, or disillusioned by the idea that he was just another version of a character in someone else's story. Before his thoughts could spiral any further, Jay's voice brought him out of his reverie.
"But once we realised how great it felt to live out of their shadows and be our own, real selves, we turned against our parents and stayed here. In the end though, the barrier around the Isle still came down, when Ben and Mal decided that not just the kids of the Isle deserved a second chance, but everyone did. Most people left and now live across the U.S.A., but a few really evil villains stayed behind, not forgiving the royal family for locking them away to begin with."
Henry's thoughts wandered to the villains he'd encountered since he'd restarted the clock in Storybrooke. His mother, Regina, her mother, Cora, and his own grandfather, Rumplestiltskin. Peter Pan, Zelena the Wicked Witch, Ingrid the Snow Queen, Maleficent, Cruella, Ursula, Isaac, Emma and Hook as the Dark Ones, Hades, the second Evil Queen, and his great-grandmother the Black Fairy. He come up against so many of them in the last few years, and thanks to Emma and the rest of his family, so many of them were able to turn their lives around and reject the story that had been written out for them. Those who hadn't, well… The world was probably better off without them.
"Anyway, that's enough of me, think I've explained enough about where you are. Looking forward to meeting you properly when you're not sleeping or naked." Henry's eyes widened, had they really seen him naked? As if on cue, Jay began laughing again. "Kidding. Man, you are too easy."
"I can't defend myself to a video," Henry muttered, half tempted to close the lid of the laptop and go explore this place for himself. Before he could, the screen cut to black again for a moment, then came back to life with another video. This time, he could see a close-up view of a young woman's face. Silky royal-blue hair fell at the sides of her face and down past her shoulders, and her dark brown eyes were looking past the camera. The view rocked slightly from side to side, before a bright smile appeared on the woman's bubblegum-pink lips. She then stood up straight and backed up several steps, bringing more of herself into the frame.
"Hello Henry," she beamed, her voice twinkling like a windchime in a gentle breeze. "It's so lovely to finally get to talk to you, kind of," she giggled, and Henry couldn't help himself from smiling, finding the woman's own smile to be infectious. "My name is Evie; I've been helping out with looking after you while you've been asleep. I hope you slept well and are feeling fresh now you're awake." Evie's empathic tone immediately put Henry at ease. He knew Evie was someone he could trust completely, and he'd only seen a few seconds of her in a video.
"I don't know if any of the others noticed, but I think you were having nightmares sometimes. You were fidgeting, sweating and murmuring something about flames, but I got you a cool towel and read you a story, and that seemed to settle you. I'm glad I could make your sleep a little less troubled."
Nightmares? Flames? Henry closed his eyes for a moment, trying as hard as he could to remember if he had dreamt about anything. From what Evie had described, it sounds like he had gone back to the Netherworld while he slept. As much as he wanted to, he'd never be forgetting that place. That room of darkness and fire had been haunting him ever since he had taken the hit for Emma and taken a bite of the poisoned apple turnover Regina had intended for Emma, his determination to show that he had been right all along turning around to bite him in the ass. He couldn't remember the last time he had dreamt about that awful place. Was it the night before he had left to travel the Realms of Story? He'd been so nervous about leaving home, he was sure he could remember being pulled back to that place, his insecurity and fear of being away from those he loved dragging him there. Perhaps the trauma of escaping the troll and crashing through the portal had brought him there this time?
The sound of a door slamming open startled Henry, his attention snapping back to the video. Apparently, it had startled Evie too, as she had a look of shock on her face at whatever had happened off-screen. "Doug, what's the matter, I'm trying to record my piece of video for Henry."
"I'm sorry, I didn't realise I'd be interrupting you," an apologetic voice said, presumably this Doug person.
"Oh, it's okay, cutie. What's happened?" Evie asked as Doug stepped into frame, his back to the camera.
"This letter was delivered for you. You recognise the seal, don't you?" Doug handed her a letter, which Evie turned over in her hands before taking a closer look at the wax seal holding the envelope shut.
"Is this… This is Royal Seal of Agrabah!" Evie broke the seal and unfolded the letter, eyes darting from side to side as she read down the page.
"What does it say?" Doug asked, echoing Henry's thoughts.
"Princess Jasmine has formally requested me to be the designer of her wedding dress!" Evie beamed, throwing her arms around Doug's neck and squeezing him tightly. Doug returned the embrace, lifting her and spinning on the spot.
"That's fantastic!" he said as he lowered her. Evie stepped away from him, eyes pouring over the letter once more.
"She's said that Mal showed her some of my designs for her wedding dress when she and Ben last visited, and now she doesn't want anyone but me to create her own," she explained, clutching the letter to her chest. "I've already got ideas, I'll need to send her a reply right away, find out what kind of dress she's wanting, I'll even offer to design for Prince Aladdin too, I'm sure I can prepare some rough ideas for her, an-"
"Whoa, whoa, Evie..." Doug lifted his hands, settling them on the young woman's shoulders. "Slow down and take a breath." Evie, distinctly red-faced and ever-so-slightly short of breath, nodded and together with Doug took a deep breath in through the nose, held it for a moment, before exhaling from the mouth. "Better?" Evie nodded again, a sheepish smile on her face. Doug leant forward slightly, lightly kissing the top of her head. "Good. I'll get out of your way so you can carry on with your video to the dead guy."
Evie swatted at Doug's arm, brow furrowing. "Henry's not dead, he's- OH GOSH, I TOTALLY FORGOT!" Her eyes snapped to the camera, and she stepped towards it, Doug narrowly avoiding being knocked over by her advance. "I'm so sorry Henry," she said as she plucked the camera from its position and brought it to her face. "As you saw, some big news there, got a teensy bit distracted."
'Teensy?' Henry thought, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"As you can probably tell," Evie continued, "fashion design is my passion, it's what I'm studying here at A.U., I make everything I wear, and I make clothes for other Villain Kids too. I even fixed up your jacket and pants, they were pretty torn up when you got here."
Henry paused the video, slid the laptop aside and stood from the bed. He walked to the chair that his folded clothes had been placed on, and lifted the jacket up by the shoulders, looking the garment up and down. If it had been beaten up after his trip through the portal, he wouldn't have known about it, there wasn't a single rip, crease, or scuff mark anywhere, looking practically brand-new. Henry threw it around his shoulders, arms slipping down the sleeves, and zipped the jacket up. Stretching out and up, and twisting his torso left and right, he found the jacket felt like it always had, worn-in and loved, not stiff and unwieldy like a brand-new jacket would be. He removed the jacket, folding it over the back of the chair, and made a mental note to thank Evie for what she had done. He padded back over to the bed, sitting down and resuming the video.
"I hope you're happy with them," Evie smiled, "I worked a little magic on them to help," she explained, giving the camera a wink. "You didn't seem to have a lot with you when you got here, so I also took the liberty of taking a few measurements while you slept so I could whip up some more clothes for you." Henry blushed slightly, not too keen on the knowledge that a woman he didn't know had her hands on his unconscious body. "Don't worry, I had Doug help me with your inseam," she said, as if she had known what Henry was thinking. Something about knowing another guy had done the more personal part of the job settled him slightly.
"You're welcome!" Doug called from off screen, making Evie giggle lightly.
"Anyway, I only had a rough idea of your style, but I've done my best to give you something that looks as good on you as you'll look in it." The cheery smile on Evie's face slowly dropped, and the young woman looked lost in thought. "My mom always wanted me to look my best, and for a long time, her vanity made me feel like I always had to be the fairest of them all, like I could never make a mistake... But since leaving the Isle, making friends, finally being able to find who I am, I've turned that fixation on beauty that she put in me into something that I can use to help others." Her smile was beaming again, the pride at her journey evident on her face. She then looked thoughtful for a moment. "Although I suppose, in her own way, that's what Mom was trying to do for me. I guess she was right, the poison apple really doesn't fall far from the tree."
So, this was him. Well, her. She was this realm's Henry. He smiled slightly, looking forward to getting to meet her in person and talk about their upbringings. Sure, there were some considerable differences in how they were raised; from what he could tell, Evie's mother had never been anything but the Evil Queen. Henry, on the other hand, had spent most of his life knowing his mom as just Regina, the town mayor. Then he found the storybook and learnt the truth, and it only took a cursed apple turnover for him to be able to prove it.
He couldn't stop himself from lingering in the memories of the years since he took that chance. Finally, he'd made Emma see, made everyone see that he wasn't just some deluded kid. Everyone was awake and could see Regina for the Evil Queen that she was. It was a tricky time. Regina had her magic, and it really scared him at times. Other times though, Regina was doing everything she could to keep him safe. She lifted the barrier that would have killed Emma and Mary Margaret when they returned from the Enchanted Forest, she comforted him after his nightmares from the sleeping curse, she even let go of her first true love because he had hurt Henry.
Then he had been led to believe that she had killed Archie. He'd hated her for that. Then he discovered Emma had been lying to him about his dad, that his grandfather was the Dark One, his evil grandmother Cora was trying to manipulate Regina into becoming even worse. It felt like almost everyone in his family had some kind of black spot on their soul. He'd even questioned himself sometimes. If he came from all this villainy, what hope was there for him? Thankfully, things turned around. While he might have lost his father almost as soon as he found him again, Regina proved she was as much a mother to him as Emma was. She helped rescue him from Peter Pan, and when the town was collapsing, she gave him up so that he might live a normal life with Emma. In another reality, she even gave her life for him.
He blinked away the blurring vision and stinging sensation prickling at the corners of his eyes and wiped away the drop of wetness on his cheek. God, he missed his family. His moms, his stepfather, his grandparents (yes, even Rumple). Right now, he missed them so, so much.
A loud crashing noise from the laptop, of something off-camera falling over, dragged Henry's attention back to the video. "Doug, are you alright?" Evie called, breaking eye-contact with the camera's lens.
"Tuba fell over," a strained-sounding Doug replied, to which Evie let out a soft sigh of relief. "I am stuck under it though, a little help?" Evie's eyes widened.
"Be right there! Sorry Henry, gotta cut it there, looking forward to meeting you when you wake up!" Evie put the camera down and stepped out of frame. "Oh sweetie, you're alright, c'mon..." Evie could be heard from off-screen before the picture cut to black.
"-ink that's it..." A voice said as the screen lit back up again, showing out-of-focus image a black and white leathery material. As the person in frame moved back and into focus, Henry saw a distantly familiar sight. A young man with black-rooted, short white hair styled into elegantly messy peaks. Eyes a deeply rich brown, in stark contrast to his pale pink lips. Thick black brows sat atop his eyes, and his face was densely adorned with small freckles. From what Henry could see of the man, who appeared to be sitting at a desk, he was on the slender side, his black and white vest-jacket over a white t-shirt that had faded dark patches at the sleeves all fitting him well. Henry recognised him as the man he'd seen at a desk in Jay's portion of the video, but there was some other familiarity pressing at his mind. "Red light is recording, camera's in focus, brilliant." The familiar man waved out to Henry, a fingerless red glove on his hand. From the man's dress-sense alone, he didn't need any more clues about who his villainous parent might be. He wondered for a moment, if this realm's Cruella had a penchant for holding children at gunpoint, and hoped the answer was no.
"Hi Henry," he started, "my name's Carlos. It was me who found you when you arrived here." Was that why he was familiar? Henry closed his eyes, trying to remember as much as he could from before he woke up. A fuzzy memory came together in his mind, a white-haired figure looking down him, the feeling of arms supporting him... Yes, this was the one who Henry had practically fallen onto when he first crashed into this realm.
"Honestly, you scared the crap out of me when you flew out of that portal," Carlos sighed, leaning back in his chair slightly and running his fingers through the hair at the side of his head. "I'd been out walking with Dude when that thing opened, and then you and a motorbike come barrelling out. Dude ran off to get some help, and you looked like you were getting up, so I was coming over to see if you were alright, and you just kind of keeled over. Lucky I caught you really, else you'd probably have a concussion on top of all the bruising." Carlos grinned, a glint of gleaming white teeth escaping from between his lips.
The young man leant forward, folding his arms on the desk in front of him. "Is that how you normally introduce yourself? Didn't even give me a chance to tell you my name before you passed out, that's very rude of you," he teased, smile widening. "Like my friends, I've been helping to keep an eye on you while you're getting better. When I've not been looking after you, I've also been trying to repair your bike. It was pretty much totalled, but I know some people, and we've managed to get it back to what I hope it looked like before you trashed it."
Henry really owed these four, they'd done so much for him, expecting nothing in return, all because it was the right thing to do. Living proof that someone won't turn out evil just because their parent did. 'Just like me, I guess,' he thought, a wry smile on his face.
"We don't know when you're waking up, but-" Carlos was interrupted by a weak groaning noise in the background. Carlos turned in his chair, looking behind him. With his body no longer blocking the view, Henry could now see that behind Carlos, lying in a bed and looking rather distressed, was himself. Carlos quickly stood and hurried over to the unconscious Henry. "Hey buddy, you're okay, I'm here," Carlos spoke softly, sitting on the bed at Henry's side. A large bowl sat on the bedside table, and Carlos reached into it, taking out a cloth dripping with, what Henry assumed, was water. Carlos wrung the cloth out, folded it and wiped gently at Henry's troubled face. "It's just a nightmare, you're alright," Carlos cooed as Henry fidgeted next to him.
Henry was starting to feel uncomfortable watching himself like this. It was bringing back memories of when he was first in the Netherworld. He knew Emma was going to find a way to save him, but... 'The flames...' Henry shuddered, reflexively squeezing his arm where he'd been burnt. Sure, it had been magically healed, but those were no natural flames, and even so many years later, he still got the occasional twinge of pain.
"A million thoughts in my head
Should I let my heart keep listening?"
Henry's attention was back on the video, and he watched as Carlos sung while he was dabbing the cloth at Henry's forehead.
"Cause up 'til now, I've walked this line
Nothing lost but something missing
I can't decide what's wrong, what's right
Which way should I go?"
As Henry watched, he could see himself in the video visibly relaxing, the twitching movements slowly stopping, and the groaning growing soft and silent.
"If only I knew what my heart was telling me
Don't know what I'm feeling
Is this just a dream?
"If only I could read the signs in front of me
I could find the way to be who I'm meant to be
If only
If only..."
The Henry in the video had completely settled now, back into his still and silent sleep. He could see Carlos' mouth moving, so the man must've been whispering something, but the camera couldn't pick it up. Henry then realised that Carlos had taken one of his hands in his own, and watched as Carlos gently laid the hand back down on the sleeping Henry's chest. He reached up, smoothing Henry's hair against his head, then got to his feet.
Carlos walked back to the desk chair and dropped down on. He looked back over his shoulder for a moment, to where Henry lay, before looking back at the camera. "Wake up soon, yeah?" He then reached over to the camera, after which the screen went dark.
Henry waited a moment before closing the lid of the laptop and putting it aside. 'I have no idea how I'm going to thank them all for what they've done for me.' He sat back against the headboard of the bed, knees pulled up to his chest and arms wrapped around them. He stayed like that for a few minutes, absorbing everything he'd learned from the video, before he found himself letting out a yawn.
'I guess being magically healed as much as I apparently was can really take it out of you.' Henry stretched out his limbs and laid back down, ready to sleep until morning, but he'd been lying down for only a couple of minutes when he could hear noises from outside the room, like doors were being opened and closed, and things being moved around. Henry sat up again, listening carefully. 'Someone's definitely out there. Maybe it's one of them?' Henry swung his legs over the side of the bed, rose up and walked to the door of the room, pulling it open