New York City

Summer 1985

"What do you mean, a doctor in the alley patched you up?" Her father stood before her in their small living room, hands on hips, eyes narrowed suspiciously at the bandages on her knees. "Doctors don't work in alleys."

"The only bastards workin' in alleys around here are dealers and perverts."

"Tonio!" Papa snapped over one shoulder. "Watch your mouth around your sister."

"What? It's true!" Tonio waited until their father turned away before throwing Jo a smirk of brotherly glee at seeing her in the hot seat instead of him. He was relieved that she was back and safe, but she didn't need to know that.

Her father dropped to one knee and looked her in the eye. "Jo, cariño, tell me what happened."

"I already did! Tonio pushed me and made me fall on the sidewalk," she returned her brother's smirk with a glare, "then I ran away, then Henry called me George and fixed my knees."

"Henry? This bas— this "doctor" told you to call him Henry?" Papa was acting calm, but Jo could tell he wasn't. He pressed on. "Then what happened?"

"He showed me his watch. It was really old. I even got to touch it."

"Madre de dios." Jo was surprised to see the squiggly line on papa's forehead appear. The squiggle only showed up when he was really mad, like the time Tonio drank half the bottle on the high shelf, or whenever the Mets lost to the Yankees. "Did that sicko touch you?"

She answered with a shrug. "Yes." The answer seemed obvious to her, but Papa's lips turned thin and white, and he was staring past her with a scary look on his face, so Jo decided she should elaborate. "He touched my knees when he cleaned them. Then he said I should go home."

Her father exhaled and relaxed somewhat. He silenced Tonio's snigger with a laser glare, then looked back at his daughter and took her by the shoulders. "Jo, promise me that if you ever see that guy—"

"Henry," Jo reminded him, then frowned. "Or maybe Dr. Henry."

"Dr. Pervy, more like," Tonio added, and cackled at his own cleverness.

Papa ignored them both and went on. "If you ever see that guy again, you turn around and run the other way."

Jo's little brow creased in confusion. "But he helped me."

His grip on her shoulders tightened. "Promise me, Josephine! Maybe he helped you today, but trust me, that doctor is trouble."

Jo sighed. She knew that once her father used her despised full name, it was all over. "Okay, I promise." He seemed satisfied with that and moved on to chewing out Tonio for pushing a little girl.

She didn't really understand why Papa made her promise, but she wasn't upset. Even though she didn't usually believe this sort of thing, Jo reluctantly admitted that Henry might be a tiny bit magical. Her promise wouldn't matter either way, because he wouldn't bother to visit her ordinary, un-magical block again.

New York City

Present Day

Jo pulled the car over to the curb and parked in front of a decent but unremarkable apartment building. "Here we are."

"Indeed." Henry glanced over at Jo, down at the bottle of wine in his hands, then uncertainly back at Jo.

"Henry, stop twitching," she admonished. "This is not 'meet the parents on prom night.' Why are you so nervous?"

He smiled a little sheepishly. "It's not nerves, exactly. I am looking forward to meeting your family, and I'm honored that you invited me…"

"But?" she prompted.

"…but I'm curious. Why now?"

She looked through the front windshield for a moment, then responded without turning. "Where were you in 1985?"

Henry blinked in surprise at the apparent change of topic but answered, "Here in New York. Abigail was gone, Abe and Maureen were married—the first time— and I was working in a clinic. Not far from here, actually. Why do you ask?"

"One of my earliest clear memories is from 1985," she said. "I was not quite five years old, and I had already decided I was too grown-up to believe in fairy tales. The world obviously didn't run on magic and happily ever afters—not the world I saw. I'm not saying that my childhood was some awful place, I just didn't see the point of wishing for fantasyland instead." Henry smiled a little ruefully at the image of Jo's stark practicality at such a young age, but he didn't interrupt.

She continued. "Then one day that summer, I got in a fight with Tonio and skinned my knees, and I ran away from home—a whole two blocks away." She smiled at the memory. "A passing doctor found me hiding in an alley. He called me by a hero's name and said I'd been fighting dragons. He patched up my knees and sent me home, and I never saw him again. After that, I still preferred mysteries to fairy tales, but he did put a little magic back in my world."

She finally looked over to find Henry staring at her, open-mouthed and speechless. She could almost see the sparks firing behind his eyes, connecting old memories to newer ones and making sense of what she had just told him.

After a moment he found his voice. "George." It was half-question, half-statement.

She smiled. "In the flesh."

Henry's smile started small and bemused, then slowly grew to include his eyes and the rest of his face in a look of genuine pleasure she had rarely seen on him before. The effect was magnetic. In a voice laced with wonder he said, "You have no idea what a gift it is when life still surprises me after so long." After a moment he seemed to shake off the contemplative mood and, eyes twinkling again, he held out his hand. "It's a pleasure to see you again, George."

"Likewise," she answered, and took his hand to shake it. After a few shakes the bobbing motion slowed, and for the space of a few heartbeats they were simply clasping hands as they both took in this new twist in their story together. There it is again, she thought. That tiny bit of magic, right where I left it.

But enough fairy tales: it was time for the real fun.

"By the way," she said in a suspiciously casual voice, "to this day my father still thinks "Dr. Henry" was some kind of pedophiliac weirdo. You're kind of a family legend. They don't know it was you, obviously, but once Tonio hears your first name, he'll probably call you Dr. Pervy anyway. You're not the only one who hasn't aged since 1985."

At some point during her speech his hand had stopped moving altogether and started gripping hers in mild alarm. She gave him a wicked grin that left him with no doubt that she had planned this, and she would greatly enjoy watching him listen politely to very unflattering stories about himself all evening. She freed her hand and patted his leg in mock encouragement before opening her car door and stepping out. "C'mon, Henry—ready?"

He sighed, then mentally shrugged. At least he was meeting Jo's father now and not thirty years ago. Henry had been lynched before; he would prefer not to repeat it. Dinner he could handle. Anyway, she might be milking this for maximum entertainment value at his expense, but she was also revealing elements of herself in return—her childhood, her family. Henry would accept her double-edged offering with humor and good grace…and use the opportunity to gather ammunition from her family for future payback.

Armed for now with only good wine and his most charming manners, he adjusted his scarf and joined Jo in waiting on the front step. After a minute or two, a man with a compact, muscular build and his daughter's keen eyes opened the door and said without preamble, "Damn door buzzer's broken again. Good to see you, kid!" He pulled Jo in for a quick hug and teased, "I guess you finally got tired of deleting your old man's messages." His sharp eyes turned to the man standing next to his daughter, and he gave him an assessing once-over. His daughter hadn't mentioned how handsome her new partner was—which told him she had definitely noticed. "This must be the famous Dr. Morgan. Rodrigo Martinez." He held out his hand, and Henry shook it. Rodrigo's grip was friendly but firm, a subtle test as well as a challenge. Henry suspected that this wasn't as different from Jo's prom night scenario as she had claimed.

Her father continued. "We've been wanting to meet you forever, Doc."

Jo and Henry exchanged a brief glance. So true.

Henry smiled and said, "The pleasure is all mine. And please—call me Henry."

THE END

A/N: Thanks for reading! As my high school band director used to ask, Questions? Comments? Snide remarks?

In case you're a timeline stickler like me, I realize that the Abigail reference doesn't jive with canon, but I wrote Vanishing Point before we knew when she left. I hit the right decade, anyway…

Looking to the future, I'm kicking around some potential story ideas, but it may be a little while before posting happens. I'm tempted to do a series of "season 1.5" mini-sodes. We'll see if the muses cooperate.

'Till next time…