A/N: This is my first fanfic after a long writing hiatus, and I'm dipping my toes in a different fandom to boot. My apologies to any NYC natives for playing it fast and loose with the cartography of the East River.

Setting is sometime after 1x11, Skinny Dipper. A few minor spoilers to that point.

BOTH SIDES NOW

CHAPTER 1

Henry broke the dark surface of the river with a gasp and began swimming for shore out of habit. When his memories of the last hour came rushing back, he abruptly halted. He treaded water and blinked through the rivulets of salt water running down his hair and into his eyes, trying to get a good look at the shore. It looked mostly like a series of smeared or glowing points of light in the dark of the moonless night, but he exhaled in relief. There were no flashing police lights. Not yet, anyway.

Just as he was about to head for land, he heard her.

"Henry! Henry, where are you?"

Jo was half-running down the sidewalk that followed the waterway through the park, yelling his name across the water and scanning the surface with her trained cop eyes. She was still too far away to see him, but she was closing in fast.

Henry silently berated God, the fates, or whatever strange luck governed his life for putting him in this position. At least Jo hadn't witnessed his death moments ago, but since he had been in the East River when he disappeared, she happened to be looking for him in exactly the right place.

The right place, unless he didn't want his partner to find him emerging from the river naked, yet again; then it was exactly the wrong place. And she was getting closer.

Naked or not, this would all be much simpler if he were still bleeding to death.

He had better be alive when I find him, Jo thought, so I can kill him myself.

She continued quickly down the sidewalk, alert for the smallest disturbance in the water. It was bad enough that Henry's theory had gotten them both trapped on a speeding yacht with a desperate, armed suspect named Donny Sherman and no backup. At least she had managed to convince Sherman to stop the boat, but that had also freed up his hands to draw his gun. That's when Henry had thrown himself right smack into the wrong place.

"Henry, what the hell are you doing?! Get out of the way!"

He was grappling with Sherman, his body between her and the gun.

A shot suddenly echoed across the water, slightly muffled, and Sherman staggered back, apparently shocked by what had happened, but otherwise unharmed. Henry, on the other hand, held his hands to a spreading dark patch under his left clavicle.

He grimace-smiled as he said, "It looks worse than it is–I don't believe he hit any arteries."

Jo frowned as she trained her gun on the suspect and ordered him to drop his weapon. He was still holding his gun, but the fight had gone out of him. Jo was torn between skepticism and worry for her partner.

"Not to question your skills, Doc, but that looks awfully close to your heart." And there was so much blood.

Henry looked her in the eyes, and she could've sworn she saw an apology there as he said, "Don't worry."

A moment later, he groaned, stumbled, pitched sideways, and fell overboard.

Jo shook off the image. That was the last time she had seen him, nearly ten minutes ago, and she refused to accept it as her last memory of Henry alive. She took a deep breath and yelled at the top of her lungs.

"HENRY!"

With a deep breath, Henry dropped under the waterline and waited. She was getting close enough to see him, and he wasn't ready. Hopefully, his lung capacity would outlast her search along this stretch of the river. He hated to leave her so worried, so scared for his life, and he knew he was a coward, but he wasn't ready. His partner had seen him shot at contact range and fall overboard. Explaining away his clothes he could manage; embarrassing as it was, he'd done it many times before. Talking his way out of a bullet wound would prove more difficult.

She had been right: he had not been shot in the shoulder. The bullet may not have gone straight through his heart, but it came close enough to make his death unavoidable. The best he could manage in that moment was to downplay his injury and get off the boat before he died. Once he reawakened, "conveniently" just downstream, he could weigh his options.

Unfortunately, good options were still playing hard to get, and now his lungs were starting to strain. Breathing wasn't critical yet, but staying hidden was increasingly difficult. All he could hear from his current position three feet underwater were rumbles from passing boat motors and honks from cars on the nearby bridges. He had no way of telling where Jo was unless he surfaced.

What was wrong with him? Why had he done it—jumped in to grab an armed suspect? In the moment, he thought he was using his immortality to protect his mortal partner from danger. But he knew she was a very capable officer who had managed to stay alive without him for years. Was this some sort of misplaced chivalry, or a pathetically impossible death wish?

Henry's lungs were burning now. He estimated that he would black out in less than a minute. Yet he thought he'd prefer to die for the second time tonight, rather than let Jo see who he really was.

What was wrong with him?

What was with this guy, anyway? How many times in the last year had he thrown himself in front of a bullet, or a speeding car, or some other ridiculous and deadly thing? He wasn't even a cop, for God's sake; he was a doctor. A weird doctor with a lot of scarves and even more crazy theories, but Jo liked him anyway. Okay, maybe she liked him because of his scarves and theories. The man had his secrets, but didn't everyone?

She continued to scan the water and call his name as she half-walked, half-ran along the shore. Five more minutes and she was calling search and rescue. She hoped to God they wouldn't need the body recovery divers.

Maybe he was unusually private, but he didn't strike her as the suicidal type. At least, he didn't used to. Something had changed since the Clark Walker case, and it wasn't just the normal guilt that every cop feels after taking a life. She was sure that something else had happened between him and his stalker, something he hadn't told her about, and it was making him more reckless.

In the end it didn't matter why he kept jumping in front of bullets; it didn't make him invincible.

She made the call to search and rescue.

Henry knew he wasn't invincible. Immortal, yes, but not invincible. The distinction was important.

For example, if he were invincible, he wouldn't be bobbing under the surface of the East River like an old shoe while his partner frantically searched for him. If he were invincible, the suspect would not have gotten the better of him and pulled the trigger.

If he were invincible, he wouldn't be naked right now.

Or out of oxygen.

Henry's beleaguered survival instinct finally won out, and he surfaced with a stifled gasp.

Jo strained to hear anything at all from where she had stopped to listen, but nothing sounded even remotely like a bleeding, drowning medical examiner. If Henry had come ashore anywhere nearby, he was being incredibly stealthy about it. Unless he couldn't answer her, because—

No. Not that.

Jo was torn between fear and epic levels of exasperation. Since the latter would mean that Henry was still alive and would soon be feeding her some ridiculous story about a rescue by friendly night fisherman, and how he had used rare seaweed to staunch his bullet wound, she chose exasperation.

Just then, red and blue lights joined the other rippling reflections on the river. Jo turned around to see Hanson pulling off from the parkway beside her. He stepped out of the driver's side door and called over the roof. "Any sign of him?"

Jo shook her head. "Nothing yet."

He circled in front of the car to come stand next to her, looking out over the water. "Search and rescue will be here in five." Hanson darted his eyes toward her without turning his head. "Don't worry, he'll be fine. The guy's like a cat. He'll turn up soon, good as new and spouting some classic Henry Morgan theory."

Jo smiled tightly. "Except he wasn't fine. He was shot. And he's been burning through a lot of lives lately. What if this was number nine?"

"C'mon, you don't believe that," chided Hanson with practiced nonchalance, and he turned and started back to his car. "Hop in. They're picking us up at the next pier. You can show them where to start looking, and I can get some footage for next year's Christmas party. God, I love smart phones."

All he needed was a phone. A phone, and some trousers. But he would settle for a phone.

He had managed to stay underwater until she'd passed further downstream. She hadn't seen him surface. Mission accomplished, but now he felt guilty.

Tell her, Henry.

The voice in his head sounded a lot like Abe. He ignored this one, too.

He moved closer to shore and scanned his options, and he spotted his lucky break. A small white cloud was rising from behind a grassy hill near the water, and Henry could smell a very distinctive odor wafting with it. Thankfully, there was no one else in sight for the moment, and he seized the opportunity. As casually as possible, he walked out of the water and around the rise. The source of the smoke was a trio of high school boys wearing black t-shirts with assorted band logos. They took his sudden and clothing-free appearance in stride, as Henry expected they would.

"Whoa, that guy is naked. Yo! You are buck. ass. naked, bra!"

In his experience, potheads made ideal "first contacts" after a reawakening. They nearly always carried cell phones, and they cheerfully loaned them to wet, naked strangers without hesitation. This group did not disappoint him, and a few minutes later Abe was on his way.

Henry politely declined their offer to share a joint and instead walked back into the water, much to their delight. ("Back to the sea, naked English dude! Back to the sea!") The cloud of smoke around them was spreading, and this was a very bad time for him to get caught by a passing patrol. Any officers within a quarter mile who had functioning noses were surely en route already. He swam upstream to the next easy access point, the spot where he had asked Abe to meet him, and waited.

Most of their brief conversation had been the usual (if one could ever call it usual), but Henry had surprised Abe with one final request:

"Bring your gun."'

TBC