Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, Mom and Dad.”

When Kris Hart opened the mysterious black cardboard box she found on their doorstep that morning, she didn’t know what to expect.

She sure as hell didn’t expect it to be from Henry. 

The box held two identical thumb drives in its dark interior, both with names scrawled on them in black marker and a message on a post-it with her son’s handwriting: PLAY ME. So she took the one labeled ‘Mom+Dad’, and plugged it into their TV.

Her look of confusion melted into one of heartbreak as the face of her son appeared on screen, smiling a sad smile that would never be seen again.

She screamed.

“Jake, Jake! Come here!” She said as loud as her voice allowed without breaking, holding back sobs of grief.

When her husband finally arrived from upstairs after some eternities, he didn’t say a word. His face was pale and expressionless. Jake motioned for her to start the video, eyes glued to the screen with its fuzzy image of their son.

The heavy silence was broken by a familiar, albeit somewhat younger sounding baritone as a 17-year-old Henry Hart started talking to his phone camera, just sitting down in his room.

“So if you’re, uh, watching this…” he paused, his dark bedroom uncomfortably empty of his whispering, “I’m probably not around anymore.”

Kris screwed up her face. Because Henry wasn’t around anymore. He was gone, such an irreparable absence in her life she didn’t know if she would survive in the long term.

“God, this feels like such a cliché. Hi, I’m not really back from the dead, but you get to have this video of me!” He said in a sarcastically joyful and sweet voice. “I really am sorry I don’t get to have this conversation with you in person.

“I think you might need some background info here. I’m not sure whether the secret’s out or not, so I’m just going to bring you up to speed. For the past four years, I’ve been acting as Captain Man’s sidekick, known as Kid Danger.”

This came as no surprise. Still, Kris and Jake couldn’t help but smile at it amidst the tears. No toothy grins – those were their son’s own trademark – but a parental, brave and proud kind of smile. And as their hearts broke all over again, their chests swelled with love for their son. Their son who was pure kindness and altruism and died so that others wouldn’t.

“I’m sorry if you had to find out this way. I wanted to break it to you so many times.

“You might remember that time when I was thirteen and wanted a part-time job. Char found a job listing online at this place called Junk ‘n Stuff and so I went.

“I’m seventeen now,” he sighed, a bittersweet sentiment in his voice. “Something sort of happened a few weeks ago? Well, it’s more like I had a crazy few weeks. Dr Minyak attacked a Double G charity concert a few days ago. I know you saw me on TV. It sort of reminded me that my job is kind of… dangerous? And that there is an off-chance that someday, I would not be coming home. So here we are.”

At this point, Jake was crying too. Not dignified tears either.

His son was gone. Forever.

He swore to himself between sobs that, if he ever saw him, he’d either kill Drex or die trying.

Because who tries to kill a teenager repeatedly, over the span of several years? 

“I want you to know that it wasn’t your fault. I’ve been sneaking out of that house well before I got the job. At least this way I was doing something worthwhile.”

He took a deep breath.

“I’d also like you to know that I don’t regret it. Joining, I mean. Becoming Kid Danger. I sacrificed things and I gave up on being a normal teen and I never had my high school experience, and I wish it weren’t that way, but I don’t regret things. Some people get to be alive and well today because I gave up on those things.”

Henry looked straight at the camera again, his doe eyes wet and just so awfully sad.

“There was this time, right after I joined… do you remember how Dad’s favourite bridge collapsed? That was one of my first missions, rescuing people from their cars.

“In a deep fire red sedan, there was this little girl. Katie was her name, I think. Her seatbelt got stuck and her father got knocked out in the explosion. The bridge was still unstable and the firefighters had their hands full trying to get the driver’s side door open. So Katie was left to me.” Henry was almost crying, biting his lower lip whenever he finished a sentence to try and get himself back together. His hands shook visibly as he covered his mouth before speaking.

“So I go up to her and ask, ‘Hi, what’s your name?’ She doesn’t answer. Then I said, ‘My name is Kid Danger. Are you scared?’

“And this little girl just nods. She couldn’t have been more than five. She was freaking out so much, I just knew it, but she kept a straight face. I, uh, I think she was in shock, but we couldn’t waste time. So I said that we needed to get someplace safe. She didn’t answer. Then I asked her if she wanted to hold on to one of my gloves. She said yes to that. It was the most innocent and perfect sound I’ve ever heard.

“I think it goes without saying I never got the glove back,” he sniffled. ”I probably would have said no if she did try to give it back. I carried her to the riverbank and got an EMT to look after her. I think back to that night a lot.”

Henry’s face was just in a painful, nostalgic grimace, desperate not to cry. So he continued while he still could:

“I thought about quitting a few years back. Sometimes I still do. And then I remember Katie’s face, how scared she was, and I think about what could have happened if I wasn’t there. And I don’t mean the heroic shit. This is not a humblebrag. If I knew that I had an opportunity to save that little girl and just didn’t take the job, I… I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.

“So, Mom and Dad… it never was your fault. I don’t want you guys to blame yourselves. You raised a kick-ass daughter who will change the world. And an okay son too.”

Henry picked up the phone, and holding it in his hands, he said, “I love you, guys.”

And then the screen cut to black.

Chapter Text

Jasper Dunlop was close to his breaking point. Not just emotionally and mentally – though the last few months had taken care of that – but right now, also physically. Being Dystopia's only two defenders took a toll on him and Charlotte.

He wished Henry was there. That was the single thing on his mind as he flopped onto his bed, still in uniform, only the blindfold removed. Honestly, ever since the blimp, he wasn’t able to focus on much else. And as the leaves browned and summer turned to fall, he felt more and more a need to move on. A need to wake up.

Because it could only have been a dream, right? Yes, that had to be it. Henry wasn’t dead, Jasper had only dreamt the blimp. He was still asleep and listening to his Spanish-fighting audiobook and everything was fine. Everything was fine and the last two months had not happened; he was still there in Swellview, safe and sound with the family he had made for himself.

And maybe he was. Whatever he was doing did not feel real. Every single day felt like he was observing his body from a distance, trying to keep his head above the water. As he clutched his pillow, smelling of lavender and the salt of his tears, he desperately willed the universe to fix things, for the ocean he was drowning in to disappear. His eyes hurt from so many sleepless nights and endless weeping for his friend, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about much anymore.

His room didn’t hold much décor or furniture or basically anything that would have implied he had a personality. It hurt too much to think about, to try and figure out who he was without his best friend. So he was surrounded by a medium-size dresser, a desk, a stool, and an alarm clock. And of course, the ominous black box sitting on his desk, just mocking him in his despair and threatening to bring back some haunting memories he wasn’t sure he could deal with just yet.

He’d opened it before. Many times, in fact; but after each attempt, he put the lid back on. Two months he’d had it, and for two months, just the scribbly ‘Jasp’ was enough to make him run away from dealing with his trauma and go back to playing pretend.

Jasp.

Nobody called him that in a while. Charlotte used to, but she’s been somewhat distant ever since it happened. No surprises there; she was dealing in her own way. Jasper thought he had heard her cry in the bedroom down the hall. They never talked about it, though. And maybe that was the reason that this time, he didn’t put the drive back in the box. Maybe he wanted to finally acknowledge that Henry was gone. Maybe he missed the three of them getting ready for a sleepover.

Maybe he missed the nickname.

But whatever it was, he opened up the treasure trove of his nightmares and plugged the drive into his laptop. There was only one video on it, named watch_me.mp4. He opened it, the video player popped up, and then his friend appeared on screen.

“Hey, Jasper.”

The Man Cave’s supply closet was poorly lit by the fluorescent lights behind the camera. A young Henry was crouched under a shelf of laundry detergent and window cleaners.

“So, um, you’re actually just upstairs? Well, you should be. I just brought the fiñata up to the store and you weren’t there.”

The fiñata that almost killed your sister, Jasper thought. The one I sold her.

The idea made his throat tighten and his mouth run dry. How could he have been so careless and just give a fiñata full of murderous zom-bees to Piper?

“Yeah, so, uh, I know Ray is sort of giving you a hard time, with the job and responsibility and all, but I just wanted to say,” he said, awkwardly stumbling over some words and sprinting through others, the discomfort clear on his face, “well, I think you’ll do great.”

“Honestly, I was getting really tired of having to blow you off without explanation to fight crime, so… Anywho, that’s not why I am doing this,” he gestured to the camera.

“Ray is great. He’s like a brother to me, and I love him, but he tends to rub off on people. Me especially, since I spend a lot of time with him, even if it’s in uniform. And I just sort of wanted to make sure that you know that like, I really appreciate you? Even when I get annoyed or stuff, it’s never because you did something and I’d like for you to know that,” he explained, the cringe audible in his voice, a wince disappearing and returning to his face.

“This is honestly like, real, in-person conversation material, and I probably should tell you myself and not do this with a video. And I’m going to, someday, it’s just that… I wanna be sure that you know.

“You’re my best friend, Jasp. I hope you know that.”

In the distance, the elevator crashed with its familiar violence, signalling Jasper’s arrival.

“I gotta go. See you bud,” he said quickly as he slapped at the camera and ended the recording.

Jasper was crying again. His guilt came welling up in his chest like so much bile. Maybe he could have done something. Maybe it was his fault. It was his fault Henry died and it was his fault Piper almost did, wasn’t it? Yes, it was. If he had just made sure Drex didn’t get out of containment back then, he’d still be sitting in the Man Cave’s storage room, there’d still be a Man Cave, and Henry would still be around. He wouldn’t be dead, wouldn’t be buried six feet under back in Swellview, he’d be alive, he’d be right there with them–

His hands were sticky. That was what snapped Jasper out of it. He’d been balling his hands into fists too tight. The slick red blood had been seeping into his black shirt and was now dripping onto the beige shag carpeting.

And still, as the metallic scent besieged his senses and begged him to stop, he knew he screwed up. He let his best friend down over and over, and here he was again, just full of forgiveness and ready to flash a bright smile at the sorry excuse of a human being he knew he was, ever since they were five.

He wished he could be sixteen again. He wanted a second chance, he wanted to be better, to try harder and not fail, to keep his friend safe. He wanted to make sure that whatever happened, Henry Hart would always be alright at the end of the day. He wanted things to be alright. He wanted the three of them to be kids again, stubbornly ignoring the calls of the adult world and just enjoying the last few years of their childhood.

He wanted his best friend back.

And amidst all that darkness, all the black mass that was the amalgamation of his thoughts, both conscious and unconscious, there was a new light, a message of better days to come.

See you, bud.

Chapter Text

For four whole minutes, Piper had her brother back. For four minutes and thirty-two seconds, he was back; and now, she let him slip through her fingers again, this time permanently. Now, all that was left of him was a collection of plaid flannels, a half of his domino, and a black box. The black box, which was presently sitting on her bed, the contrast of its dark exterior against her pastel rose comforter all too vivid and somewhat disturbing.

It was just ten minutes ago that her mother came in, carrying the thing, a mournful expression on her face. The summer wasn’t off to a good start, but she didn’t see that look since the funeral. She hoped she would never see it again. Her mom’s deeply sad brown eyes and the very way she grasped at the rough edges of the box held in themselves a message of disappointment. Piper knew that something was going on, but never in her life would have she guessed that it was something involving her brother. Her brother, who somehow set up some kind of dead man’s switch and sent her a message.

Piper Hart thought she knew her brother well. Her brother was dorky and kind and a workaholic and had two friends – that was, until she found out. Ever since, it was like he was a whole other person. The old Henry wasn’t dead, he just didn’t exist anymore. He never even did. But the Henry that she had started getting to know, the one who snuck out every night and fought crime and probably had a pages-long roster of how he had saved Swellview and also the world just lying around somewhere? That Henry? He grieved that Henry even more, to make up for the years lost between them if for nothing else.

So there she was, freshly fifteen and freaking out alone in her room.

When her mother told her it was from Henry, she practically lunged for the box and ushered her out. She opened it right away, finding the now tear-stained yellow post-it and a flash drive with her nickname on it.

He’d been calling her Pipes ever since that one time he was tasked with babysitting her. They may have been 10 and 6, respectively, making chocolate chip cookies and jamming out to Coldplay playing from the speaker on the counter. It was the first time Kris and Jake trusted their kids not to burn down the house. Henry was insistent on making sure that didn’t happen: the better the night went, the more freedom he would get as the eldest. And his little sister wasn’t that bad company either, even if he would not admit that out loud.

So there they were, standing in the kitchen, Piper occasionally stabbing her index finger in the batter, just sitting on the counter by the sink. Her mother would always set her there when she was little, but now she was apparently ‘too big for that.’ Henry didn’t mind though. They’d smile and she would sing the lyrics to ‘Yellow.’ And for a moment, nothing existed, just the two of them, wrapped up in their own little world, waiting on treats and trying to agree on a movie that Piper was actually allowed to watch. They’d sit down and watch Back To The Future for the nth time again and it would still be as interesting as the day they’d first watched it with their dad. They’d simply be kids for a while.

She held the drive in her hands. It was cool to the touch, a sacred air about it. She took it and held it in her hands as if it was the key to some ancient truth, to understanding the secrets of the universe. And to her, it may as well have been. Right in that moment, getting to see her brother one last time meant the world.

So when she opened the video, she hoped that Henry would smile at her, just once more. She’d keep the image of it in her head like a memory in a snowglobe, shaking it at every opportunity to evoke the presence of her brother.

“Hey, Piper,” he said, on his face a look of exhaustion. He spoke softly, as if not to wake anyone up. He was sitting in the living room on the couch – she knew from the backless bookcase in the background, the one the cavemen destroyed. It sat in their backyard now, waiting to be taken away to some dumpsite or other.

“It’s about midnight? I had to sneak out for a work-thing just now. Everyone’s upstairs sleeping.

“I sort of recorded like, a goodbye-video for Mom and Dad some time ago. It’s been a year, almost. I just remembered while at work and I don’t want you to feel left out, so here we go.”

With that, he took something red and silver out of his back pocket, squirming slightly to reach it. He held it out in front of the camera.

It was the domino.

“Yeah, so, I’m kinda surprised you didn’t find out sooner?” He said with a tone of uncertainty as he held the mask to his face, just immediately transforming into the hero Swellview knew for five years. “Well, you may have and this video might be totally outdated… nah, nevermind that. I did really wanna tell you though. Remember that time you developed this huge crush on KD?” He flashed a grin with that.

Piper felt herself cringing. She’d had a whole existential crisis about her brother’s secret identity back when she found out.

“I had to tell myself that you weren’t crushing on me to calm down and keep my mouth shut. Not audibly, but like, I sorta had that voice inside my head for about a week. It felt really weird.”

She would know some things about that, she thought to herself.

“Anyways… I actually turned eighteen today. Or yesterday, come to think of it. I don’t want to get too emotional with you, I know that’s not your style, but… I’ve always sort of wondered if I’d get to make it this far. And now I did and I don’t feel too… different, I guess? Like, I was so afraid of growing up and going out into the world and shit, and that stuff is still there, but I’m also still me, if that makes sense?” He sighed, frustrated at his own inability to vocalise his thoughts.

“And I love Mom and Dad dearly, you know that, but that doesn’t change the fact that they were somewhat, uh, absent in our lives. I’ve been lucky enough to have my boss Ray help me through stuff. And Pipes, I’m not sure if you have anyone like that right now. So, here’s to hoping that I am there at your sweet sixteen, that I get to celebrate your last year as a kid with you, that I can see you on the night of your eighteenth. But just in case that doesn’t happen, I’d like to say something. Promise me you watch this every year as long as you miss me.

“Happy Birthday, Pipes,” he said with a kind smile, a special affection poured into the words.

It was a few hours until she could form a coherent thought. When that happened, she wished she was less bratty growing up, that she was nicer to her brother, that she actually hugged him for the last time before he went away to go down with that fucking blimp.

But there also was something distinct on her mind.

She got the smile she so desperately wanted to see.

And she knew that as long as she was alive, she’d be rewatching that message over and over. Until the day she died, whether that be a week from now or eighty years down the road, she’d never forget her brother.

Chapter Text

Captain Man was reliable. He was a role model, an image of bravery and heroism for multiple generations. He was the picture of perfect loyalty and fidelity. He was, all in all, professional.

Raymond Manchester, however, wasn’t.

Captain Man lost his sidekick. As a result, he worked and fought harder, put an edge into his usual light-hearted banter with criminals. He plastered on a brave half-smile – more out of obligation than anything, a mere PR-stunt. Captain Man did not have time to get emotional. Better yet, he had no need to. Was it a tragedy? Sure. Was it business like usual again the next day? Yes.

Ray Manchester lost his best friend. Maybe his only one, but surely the first he’d made after turning eighteen. The first one in a while that would last.

He couldn’t understand how it could have been only a regular Tuesday for Swellview. He could not wrap his head around the fact that his best friend, alive and well and breathing and so awfully real and hurt, could ever just disappear from the face of the Earth. Alive one moment, and then poof, gone.

After a hydrogen-filled blimp went down near Mt Swellview and the explosion sounded, there really wasn’t that much left to find. Some molten steel, pieces of fabric, a slightly charred Planes-A-Plenty flight brochure. A half of a red and silver domino mask.

And presumably, the ashes of Henry Hart, mixed in somewhere with the dry yellow soil and the mud the firefighters made, trying to extinguish the remains of the aircraft.

He talked to Schwoz. The blimp was not supposed to be filled with hydrogen. They weren’t supposed to be filled with hydrogen ever since the Hindenburg.

Just one last cruel joke, he supposed.

The funeral was a mess. How could it not have been?

He saw Kris and Jake the week before, just after getting down from the mountain. He never took off his uniform. He supposed they knew already. Even if they didn’t, they deserved to.

They were civil, all things considered. They didn’t blame Ray. They blamed themselves.

They felt they had failed their son. Ray thought the same way about himself.

It was a short stay, not much to say or do between the three of them except mourn. Just before leaving, Jake grasped Ray’s hand by the door. It was an odd gesture, to insist so much on a handshake right after your son died. With the man who was probably the sole reason he did die, no less. Yet, Ray felt it was the first time Jake Hart had given him the light of day.

He left the Harts alone after that.

Hart. What an unusual name, he thought after a 13-year-old kid with a blonde mop for hair came crashing down into his Man Cave. He didn’t know what an extraordinary young man he would grow into, what great many lives he would save, how he’d sacrifice himself.

At the funeral, he kept thinking how fitting the name was for Henry.

It came down hard that day. The raindrops kept bouncing off the lid of the black, empty casket. He’d volunteered to carry it. It sort of felt like a last service to his sidekick, a ridiculous attempt at trying to get even.

He kept to the back after that, gave no speech. Jasper and Charlotte would be leaving for Dystopia later that day. He’d promised he’d drive them. It just so happened he would be in no condition to do so.

After the priest went and came and read his sermons and the people decided it was time to go, Ray found himself breaking off the end of the crowd and turning back to the gravesite. He vaguely remembered kneeling down. He had absolutely no recollection of shouting at the headstone, of clawing at the mud the June rain had made on top and ruining his nicest suit.

He knew he was irrational, at least in the moment. He knew that he wouldn’t be bringing Henry back. He knew there wasn’t even a body, that there was nothing but an emotional significance to the whole funeral.

That didn’t matter.

What mattered was his best friend being gone. He was buried if not literally, then in people’s minds, waiting to resurface as a sour, grim look, and then go under, never to be seen again.

He knew he wouldn’t forget. He was absolutely sure others would.

So he let himself be pulled off and strapped into the backseat of Schwoz’s lame little convertible. He went to the airport, said goodbye to another two of his friends, two reminders of the irreparable loss he suffered. He let himself be driven home and sat down in the apartment above the store, which they hadn’t used in years. Not since Henry started working there.

He would start again, he thought. Not immediately, but some day, he would start again. He knew it.

At least, he knew it until Schwoz came into the room, carrying a black box.

He kept it short and sweet, explaining any questions Ray might have had. And he had a lot. Still, they were no match for the inventor’s patience. He hurried out of the room right after the impromptu interrogation was over, claiming ‘it was his to watch and his alone.’

Ray was then left alone in his old bedroom with nothing but a flash drive marked with his name, his old computer, and his lingering sense of confused guilt.

He figured he might as well just watch it at once. He wasn’t quite prepared for whatever he felt right then and there to hit him square in the chest.

“Hey, man.”

On the screen was Henry Hart, alive and well, wearing his uniform sans mask and very apparently hiding in a school bathroom.

“I just had a meeting with my guidance counselor. You triple beeped me, and I had to get out real fast, and now she thinks I blew off a very important decision about my future because ‘I forgot I had brownies in the oven in my cooking class.’ So I think right now might be the best time to record this,” he said in mostly one breath, glancing around between his phone camera and what Ray assumed was the mirror by the sink. Henry stood with his back pushed against the tiled wall, likely facing the door in case someone tries to get in.

“I’m gonna try and make this real quick because you probably did call me to an emergency, so here goes nothing.

“My mom and dad got some letters from the school that I’m not earning enough credits to graduate in those big beige envelopes that have a bold red ‘URGENT’ written over them. I got them too but I kinda threwawaytheonesaddressedtomynamebecauseIgotscared,” he rattled off, not wanting to admit anything more and also not wanting to make the confession any longer. He then sighed, trying to regain his composure.

“The meeting I had with Ms Casey just now was actually about that. We’re still not sure I can graduate on time – probably not – but we sort of figured something out to make sure I can go to college. I’m basically stuck doing makeup assignments. I have to maintain, and I quote,” he tried to imitate the high pitch of his counselor’s voice, “‘a spotless record of attendance,’ and also maybe do summer school if I still don’t have enough credits, but I will get a diploma before September.”

He took a deep breath before continuing.

“Aaaand if all goes well, I can probably start college in the spring.”

Henry was now visibly nervous, his phone slightly shaking. He avoided looking in the camera and just looked down, not so much in embarrassment but rather… fear? Regret? Ray wasn’t sure.

“I was a bit afraid to tell you, but this will probably mean that I’ll have less time for, you know, superhero stuff.”

Ray’s stomach churned. He was immature at times, sure – he was a self-proclaimed impulsive man-child, after all – but the fact that his best friend, his kid, wasn't able to tell him about stuff like this, about prioritising himself for a change? That stung. And looking back on recent events, finding out that Henry was, in fact, not graduating, it hurt even more. He took this boy’s childhood, thinking that no teenager could find a cooler way to spend his time, and then he burnt him out. He took his fuse, his fire, his drive, and stomped it into the ground, all the while claiming that he was doing something noble.

Now, he had something different on his mind.

How could he ever have said that the sacrifices Henry Hart made were all for a purpose? How could he have said that, when they really were to satisfy his own ego and selfishness, his want for a legacy?

“O-K,” Henry said on screen, drawing out the syllables, “the easy part’s done. I need you to know something else, too.

“Everything I said up to here, I could have said in person. Please just stop the video here if you don’t need to watch the next part because I had this delivered to you and I really am not sure how actual and up-to-date this thing is.

“If you need to keep watching, you’ll know.”

Ray did know. It was the one certain thing about the whole experience. The variables that lead up to this moment, however, were unclear. The most important among those variables, the one he questioned the most, was how Henry knew he was going to need something like this. Ray may have been mistaken, and the rest of the video could have been about something silly, like ruining his vibrating soap he’d hidden away in his bathroom cabinet, but he had a gut feeling that wasn’t it. There was a rising suspicion in his chest that his kid was just about to apologise for his own death.

Henry Hart was dead, but he shouldn’t have known about that in advance. Two possibilities came to Ray’s mind. One was blackmail. He tried not to think about the other. He had asked Schwoz if he had thought Henry to be suicidal. He apparently had a vague idea of what was on the drives, and said he had looked into it, concerned for Henry, but had not found anything. Granted, he had no real psychology degree, but he watched Henry for the better part of a week and saw no signs of depression, no hints, no nothing.

Ray hoped Schwoz was right. He didn’t want to add one more item to the list of things he ruined Henry’s life with.

Henry just kept looking at the camera dead on for a bit. Then, his shoulders slumped, his expression darkened, and the usual cheer of his voice disappeared.

“So if you’re still here, something real bad has happened and I was not able to tell you about the stuff I just said. Which is, for lack of a better word, shit.

“I’m not sure if I’m dead or what by the time you’re watching this. I hope not. Still, you should know some things,” he said. The unease was still there, but more in the atmosphere of the video than on his face. He looked dangerously calm and serious.

“I’m pretty sure you know my parents were not too present in my life growing up. They had their own stuff, I had mine, and everything was fine, even if I wish it wasn’t like that. I sort of want to undo all this acceptance, this toleration of being ignored. I love my mom and dad, and I think they love me too; it’s just that… well, they didn’t exactly raise me. Which is where I get to my next point.

“I am really thankful to you, Ray. For these past five years, you were more of a father figure to me than my own dad. And I cannot possibly tell you how much that means.”

In the background, the watch beeped again. Henry slapped at it.

“I don’t want to get too cheesy, but I learned to fly a helicopter while my classmates were in driver’s ed. I feel like kids with normal family connections don’t do that,” he smirked.

“So, um, thank you. Love you, Ray,” he said, before turning the video off, leaving Ray alone in the darkness to think about what a great kid he’s lost. But even in all his grief, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride, too.

Chapter Text

Contrary to popular belief, Charlotte Page did not only read classics. On occasion, she also enjoyed herself some scifi, though that was a secret she kept close to her chest, under the metaphorical lock and key. And yet, as her plane took off for Dystopia, a line from Pierce Brown’s Red Rising was insistent on surfacing in her thoughts again and again.

Death begets death begets death.

She didn’t know why this was the only thing on her mind. It didn’t seem to fit. One death didn’t mean more to follow; that was not their way. It wasn’t the way Ray taught Henry, and it wasn’t the way Charlotte would do things either. (And to be fair, she couldn’t imagine sweet, dopey, oh-so-innocent Jasper ever trying to kill someone.)

An eye for an eye, and the world goes blind.

Lives weren’t something to trade, but she would have still given her own to get Henry back.

So she sat in her seat by the window, trying to decide how she’d spend the next twelve hours until she would inevitably have to reconcile with the fact that she was in a new city, didn’t know anyone, would have to protect said city, and protect it without one of the people she planned to take along. She tapped her left foot anxiously against the ground, attempting to erase any and all thoughts of the box. She tied knots with her fingers, resembling the Gordian puzzle her insides seemed to be tying themselves into.

The box was a small, black thing, slightly larger than the ones you’d store engagement rings in. It was cool to the touch and inexplicably uncomfortable to hold, as if she feared the frigid object might go up in flames from only her touch. So back in her backpack it went.

She got her laptop out of her bag and decided work was how she would kill her time. After all, Dystopia was a new city, and they had police frequencies and underground contacts and takeout places to figure out. Or just her, she assumed, since Jasper alone wouldn’t be of much help.

By hour three, she was ready to give in. By hour four, she craved stimulation, and if the stupid plane had wifi, she would have already resolved to doom scrolling.

Charlotte was worried about Ray. How the older man broke down at the funeral concerned her. She’d known Henry longer, and somehow kept it together. Even his parents did. She wondered if there was anything wrong with any of those reactions, if it was Ray who had been acting normally.

She wondered if there was a wrong way to grieve. It had been two weeks, and in those two weeks, she cried only once, just after the Man Cave collapsed. The well of her emotions seemed to dry up along with her tears, bearing the promise of never coming back again. It left her empty, her eyes devoid of their spark as she looked in the mirror, trying to see if the girl who’d be going to Harvard in a year still stared back.

Schwoz pulled her and Jasper aside right before security. He talked in hushed tones and seemed rather nervous himself.

“Henry wanted you to have this,” he said, carefully holding back his voice from cracking as he whispered. “Anything you have to know is in there. He told me not to tell you anything more. You can open it now, or you can open it later. Just do it. I’d hate to know that his only final wish didn’t make it.”

So that was it. And now, she held an emotional time bomb between her thumb and index finger, trying to figure it out as if it was a children’s toy or some elaborate riddle.

By hour six, she decided to open the damn thing. She did also close it immediately, her courage having apparently fled. Under the lid, she briefly saw a thumb drive with the word ‘Char’ over it. Was that from Henry?

Charlotte Page knew that grief had its five stages. They learned about the Kübler-Ross model in AP Psych. It had all been theoretical then, not something to think about in her personal life. She didn’t know she’d be living through those stages.

Well, it was more being stuck on the first one than living through them. Denial. Because Henry Hart couldn’t have been dead. It was all an elaborate trick, right? And this box was somehow the key to finding him again. He wasn’t gone, not in the metaphysical sense. He was just out of sight, gone around the corner, maybe across the world, but still alive, still existent.

And the box was going to help her find him again.

By hour seven, she had launched a full on investigation. Jasper’s seat was somewhere a few rows ahead, and having known him for the better part of a decade, Charlotte knew he’d be asleep. No one to distract her from her task.

She dumped her laptop, an empty notebook, a black pen, a pack of post-its and two highlighters on the thankfully empty middle seat. Because those were all normal and necessary things to pack in a carry-on, and Charlotte wasn’t weird for it. At least, that’s what she told herself.

She wrote the word ‘ALIVE’ in the middle of the notebook’s first page, followed by two question marks. 

By hour eight, she had three different theories on how someone could pull off a disappearance like that. One involved a travelling circus.

She was starting to question if she was actually doing alright like she said to her mother before the funeral.

By hour nine, she was ready to cave. She plucked off the top of the box, this time for good. She set it by the notebook with all her evidence and theories, and got the drive out. It was a normal flash drive, the kind she borrowed from Schwoz all the time for her school projects. She plugged it into her computer, and was met by the single video named watch_me.mp4. Because what was she going to do with it? she thought to herself, imagining being sarcastic at Henry for being so predictably him. So predictably Henry Hart-ish.

Always playing the mysterious hero, huh.

The elevator crashed with its familiar violence. Henry stepped out after the ding, still absolutely soaked by the rain outside.

“I’d ask how the op went, but really…” Charlotte trailed away as she took in the state Henry was in.

“There was no op,” he said, his black stealth outfit dripping water and leaving muddy footprints on the floor. “The guy somehow got wind of us coming. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ray was too loud getting to his spot.”

“So for the last fourteen hours, you were…,” she supplied, trying to be helpful.

“I was apparently looking at an empty apartment from the top of a twenty-four story building. In the rain. And thunder. I have never been more afraid of being struck by lightning in my life.”

“And where’s Ray?”

“No idea. We both disabled our comms to make sure we weren’t found out. Schwoz came to get me after you saw the perp on CCTV.”

“Okay. You better go get cleaned up.”

“Oh, but Char, I just want a huuuug ,” he drawled, reminding her of the one time she ended up taking over the mantle for a day.

She remembered the smell of petrichor his clothes carried as he pulled her in between laughs.

Ichor of the rocks.

Henry Hart was their rock. He was the one immovably stable point in their lives, their reference point. Not the glue that kept them together, but the foundation they built their family upon. Their source of sunlight and positivity, and even if he didn't bleed golden, his smile still appeared to shine just as bright. He lit up their life like a little piece of the Sun, like local hydrogen fusion.

Her hand hovered over the trackpad, fingers tense and extended. There was no going back from something like this, no way to forget, to purposefully erase a memory.

Even if she wanted to deny it, this was going to be the last she saw of Henry Hart.

Hesitantly, she pressed play.

Henry was sitting on the ground by a pond or small lake, with his back to an old maple. Judging by the lights, it was late afternoon. The Sun painted everything golden, a hauntingly beautiful scene from Midas’s nightmares.

When Henry first spoke, it sounded like a weary, lived-in welcome to a traveller long-missed and finally returned.

“Hi, Charlotte.”

And to her, the Henry staring back from the screen had no age. He was eighteen and recording final goodbyes for God knows what reason. He was thirty-four and just got the gang together again for drinks. He was eighty-six and in mourning, reflecting on a life well-spent and lived to its fullest.

But most prominently, he was eight, flashing her a toothy smile with gaps here and there, with a curly-haired, sweaty-palmed Jasper in tow; just wanting to say hello.

“Hi, Henry,” she whispered at the image of her friend trapped on her computer screen. She quickly caught herself and looked around, a sigh of relief escaping her mouth when she found no one noticed.

It seemed as if Henry was waiting for her attention back.

“I, uh, I wasn’t sure what to say to you. I’ve recorded these for everyone else already. Yours is the last,” he said, contemplating.

“I can’t tell you how… anxious this one makes me. I could always just get by with everyone else, talk around their head but not directly to them. They wouldn’t notice. You were different. You always knew if I was beating around the bush, if I wasn’t telling you something. I guess that’s why you found out first.

“I think you were the one to see me first. Like, ever.”

He sighed visibly, glanced around, and took a deep breath.

“You were always the one I ran to when shit wasn’t working. You just always knew what to do. You always knew how to convince me even when my dumb stubborn head wouldn’t listen.

“I never told you how important you were to me. I never told Jasper, Ray, Schwoz and Piper; and I never told you. You kept my life together. Even after wanting to just quit it all, you were there. Every time I decided I had enough, that I wasn’t any good, there you were by my window, frozen yogurt cups in hand.

“You never even had to talk to calm me down,” he said with a small, unsure smile.

There was no trace of bitterness to his voice, just calm and nostalgia and peace, the sort that comes with acceptance.

“God, I have no idea what to say,” he half whispered, eyes starting to glisten. “How do people do this in movies?”

He sniffled around for a while, not quite looking at the camera but stealing glances ever so often.

“I need you to know that I never would have survived this far without you. You kept me together.

“You kept me alive, Charlotte. I need you to understand how much that means.”

He was crying at this point. Mature, deeply felt tears ran down his face onto his white tee.

“I hope you don’t see this for a while. I hope you don’t need to. I hope we’ll get together and celebrate my twenty-first and get emotional over how time flies after we watch this together.

“Because you are the best of us, Charlotte. You kept us idiots alive.”

The video ended on a cut, a teary eyed Henry looking at nothingness. He looked like his heart’s been broken in oh-so-many pieces and he was left to pick them up one by one.

Charlotte did not cry. She wouldn’t. She sniffed and blinked and tried to rub the feeling out of her eyes, but those pesky emotions wouldn’t budge.

She wouldn’t cry.

Something broke inside of her. Not her heart and not her soul, but a small part of her that was supposed to care. She imagined an exhibition room in a museum, the power out, the only light coming from the stars behind the glass roof. The ground shook and the floor parted and shards rained down.

She imagined it was her punishment to rebuild.

And as she grappled, a tribute to Henry Hart just stood there on the other side of the chasm, looking not smug and confident, but puppy-eyed by a lake, the memory frozen to be kept forever, even if she couldn’t keep her friend.

By hour ten, she gave up.

Even as the first tear drifted down her face, she stubbornly looked ahead, refusing to turn toward anyone who might be staring. She tried to breathe and be alright and closed her eyes.

But when she opened them again, he was still trapped there like flies in amber.

And as she looked at that last frame, there was one particular detail that stuck out. One thing she would guard in her mind for years to come.

Henry Hart smelled of rain, home, and memories.

Chapter Text

He sat at his desk, fumbling around with some new invention or other as hurried footsteps sounded from the corridor. The Man Cave had good enough acoustics — it was a cave, after all — and he’d grown accustomed to this fact in the eight years the hideout existed.
So a slightly disheveled Henry standing in the doorway did nothing to surprise him.
“Can I come in?” The boy asked, his tone so serious, so unlike him it forced the inventor to halt his fidgeting.
The lab wasn’t the most inviting part of the cave — never was, really; most likely it never would have been — and as much as he wanted, Schwoz never heard anyone ask for permission to come in. People would often play him off as the mad scientist, but the truth was, he didn’t want anyone to get accidentally maimed by a laser cutter. The man cared, he always did.
“Sure thing, yeah,” he answered, mirroring Henry’s aloofness and putting down his screwdriver.
Something was up.
Though any one-on-one conversation between the two was few and far between, there was a certain mutual agreement, a diplomatic calm in the air. It was in the spirit of this willingness to listen that Schwoz patted the swivel chair next to his own, encouraging the boy to sit down. Henry made his way over and took a seat with a careful demeanor, as if the chair could snap under his weight, as if at any moment, he would fall to the ground. He breathed in deeply, if only to brace himself, and reached into the backpack he’d been cradling.
And so they sat, for a moment, then two; deathly quiet and all but grave serious. Schwoz looked at the teenager staring either at him or the floor, with what appeared to be a life's worth of regret and guilt on the heart and a soldier's stiffness in his posture. He breathed in again, more quietly this time, all the while clutching his backpack with white knuckles, the same color as his face, seemingly devoid of blood.
But when he spoke, his voice felt calm and a little too practiced. No edge, just a subtle, forced firmness.
“I have something to ask you, Schwoz. I need you to promise you won’t say no,” he said in his crime-fighter voice, all bravado and no emotion, looking like he was trying to decide if it was finally going to be fight or flight; the tone not matching the distress very apparent in his body language and the forcefully blank expression on his face.
“Okay, I promise."
“No, I mean, hand on your heart, ‘I swear I won’t say no’ kind of promise,” Henry said, now seemingly having grown more exasperated in his anxiety.
“Okay,” Schwoz said in a pacifying manner, and put his right hand over his heart, “I swear I won’t say no.”
“Alright,” Henry drawled, as he pulled his hand out of the bag, along with a small satchel he didn't put down as he dropped the backpack on the ground.
“I made some… videos, for you guys. In case…” he sighed, and tried to relax, “in case something happens to me. Something bad.”
He passed the bag to Schwoz, the boy's freezing hand briefly touching his. It was an unpleasant sensation, feeling the frigid dampness, in Schwoz's mind a trademark of bodies lying at the morgue.
“There’s six flash drives in there. One for my parents, one for Piper, and one for you guys each. You are not to watch any of them. Do you understand?” He asked, in the feigned authority of a teacher giving a pop quiz.
“I-I think I do, Henry, but what is this?”
“You’ll know, Schwoz. You’ll know. Just give them out when the time is right, okay?”

He trekked on up, taking breaks ever so often, exhaustion and the physical pain numbing out the emotional one. In one hand, he guarded the small bag of drives like lost treasure; in the other, he held a flashlight.
He replayed the events of the day in his head, over and over: hearing Ray say goodbye to Henry — or was it really the opposite? he wasn't there, but it would make sense; the adrenaline had made his memories murky and uncertain — seeing the blimp's tracker finally blinking out on air traffic control, being the sole ear-witness to Henry pleading and begging for Charlotte to just leave, instructing Jasper to take her back to the surface, to get her out of there. It felt irresponsible, to just leave four newly-superpowered kids lying around half unconscious at a plane rental place, in the company of some certainly very unconscious but also likely murderous cavemen from a few millennia ago.
(But maybe it was also irresponsible to keep quiet about the goodbye notes of a possibly suicidal teenager.)
By his count, he’d committed at least seven traffic code violations and broken every speed limit for scooters in any country on the little turquoise Vespa he commandeered. He wasn’t actually certain if he had the jurisdiction to do that, but as the senior mechanic-slash-mad-scientist-slash-inventor of a (both literally and figuratively) underground crime-fighting unit, he figured he might as well just take it. It wasn’t the worst thing he could have done, and he left a note taped to the bike rack promising to return it.
It seemed easy enough at first, what he was planning: a simple grab-and-go, just before emergency services arrived to investigate the unexpected earthquake that happened to erupt from under the store. He only needed to get there before all the caution tape was put up.
The supports holding up the stairs were separate from the ones keeping up the cave under. The emergency measures held up, and so did his engineering; so for a moment, the operation really seemed doable, easy enough, right until he was met with a fact he knew from long before but which had apparently slipped his mind — because of course the whole thing had to be half a mile underground.
Still he pressed on, and though he was in no hurry to get up to the surface, he still took the steps two at a time, desperate to leave; as if he could keep all the baggage down under, in the ten different floors his friend once perused.

He had been at work with the boxes for some days, four, maybe five; long enough for the heavy, omniscient feeling of the black aluminium to start seeping its way into his bones, for it to overtake him with anxiety. The constant whirring of the mill did nothing to draw him from his thoughts; if anything, it encouraged his familiar tendency to drown his emotions in work. And maybe thinking that these boxes were just for work, as opposed to at least honouring his friend’s last request — a request that would not need fulfilling if it wasn’t for his hubris, for his wanting to prove himself, for that restless insecurity driving him to always go and be the smartest — maybe thinking that these boxes didn’t actually mean that he’d be burying an eighteen-year-old — a child — next week, maybe that was the thing that kept him from breaking down and giving in.
As it was, he didn’t feel much.
He sanded the surface by hand, painted it, sanded it again. Smooth and black and cool to the touch, sort of a casket of emotions, the final resting place of a memory.
That’s what it was, wasn’t it?
The place where the memory of Henry Hart went to die.
He sensed a numbness, a certain emptiness take root in him, like some medieval rot: he imagined his insides blackening just as the shade of the boxes darkened with every layer of paint, until they were just glossy and polished and black; a plague waiting to collapse him and make his pathetic little life end in a cruel, horrific way, scored by the harmony of his newly-brittle bones snapping and breaking into so many pieces.

Five boxes, six drives. Six videos. An infinite number of stories of the old days, now destined to be forgotten. And an even more endless line of ones that will never see the light of day.
He made himself a box too. It felt only right, even though there really was no need for the theatrics — he knew what was inside, after all.
For the memento if nothing else.
He'd finished them all the day before, put in the creased little post-its Henry had left. So he stood around, in the makeshift workshop he'd set up in a storage unit on the edge of town, wondering if he was ready to watch the video. He plugged the drive into the rickety old laptop he'd put together from leftover parts and stuff he'd found in dumpsters before he had any time to change his mind.
Unknown mass media device connected. Play 'watch_me.mp4'?
He clicked yes.
"Hi Schwoz," Henry started on video, sat on his bed, the pictures on the wall partially in the frame.
"Good God, this is awkward. So if everything went right you– okay, not right, fucking wrong actually, but if you did like I told you and didn't watch this before you needed to, well, then–" he choked out, "well, then I'm probably dead. Gone. Most likely forever.
"Now obviously I have no idea what happened, but I sort of hope I went out with a bang. I dunno, meaningfully. Like it wasn't just a truck running me over," he sighed, a little fatalistic, like the how actually changed the tragedy of the fact.
He sat there again for a second, two, and then three, reminding Schwoz of the past conversation they had in the company of these drives: very much like this one, only Henry was actually there to hear him; now, it would only be him drinking in the sorrowful look and unsaid words of the boy.
"I have thought about... you know, all this," he motioned in the air, "like, dying, more than I probably should have. I guess not suicidal ideations per se, more just... being at peace with the idea of going. Maybe all of this hero stuff left a mark, huh. There is this idea of better me than others in my head and it rings really true. Especially now. So here we are.
"I haven't worked out the details yet, but Future Me probably filled you in on some stuff. I left one of these for everyone, and I'd like you to deliver them. At least, that's the idea.
"Yeah, well... that's it for the logistics, I guess," he said, his energy having seemingly fled and been replaced by a wilting quality, an uncharacteristic melancholy, not sad but only the smallest bit resigned.
"I have a lot to thank you, Schwoz. I know you were the butt of jokes too many times and we let Ray pick on you even when you didn't actually deserve it, and I know all this is stuff I should have said while I was still there to say it. But I didn't and know here we are, so this is as good a time as any.
"Thank you for playing our little janky superhero tech support game. Thank you for patching me up after I've taken one too many hits and fell to the ground one too many times.
"Like, you remember the time I broke my arm? You did a really good job on that cast. And I really appreciate you doing all that with the trebuchet. Even after I had to admit to being the playground pooper. All that would've made for a really good story, come to think of it. Too bad I'm not around."
He sighed.
"Listen, this is probably really short, like only a minute or two. The others got longer videos and really, you deserve a longer one too. I just don't know what to say. I can't explain how much it meant that you had my back all this time. And how much it meant to Charlotte to shadow you working. She was beaming with a smile like, nonstop. And you know how big a thing it was for Jasper to not be the weird guy for once? Stuff seems to roll right off him but his shoulders seem to relax every time you step in the room.
"So I don't know how it all happened. I don't know if it was on patrol or if my house burned down or if it was just me. I really hope it was not something dumb. I really hope it wasn't my fault.
"I'm gonna miss you, buddy. Goodbye."

The face of a boy dead a week — the face of a boy who may have very well given up everything already and been fine with dying — had stared back at him from the screen for the past fifteen minutes. It stared at him looking still so full of life and so impossibly frozen in motion at the same time, the paradoxical emotions trying to tear the inventor apart obviously mirrored in his eyes and presence.
He let the tears roll down his face, almost lazily; they seemed to come from a place of apathy and not caring he did not know he had in himself. He'd looked fixedly into the eyes of his dead friend, daring the picture to break their mutual gaze first.
And yet it didn't.
And yet it continued to stay still and motionless and just a little too casual.
Oh well, it said.
And so he cried.
Because Henry Hart, with his doe eyes and his too big heart, was a good person.
And in his book, good people were worth crying for.