A/N: Yet more Tortured!Henry here. I really do put the poor guy through the wringer, don't I? (There's a touch of Tortured!Eileen as well, for fairness' sake.) This was begun, appropriately enough, on Mother's Day, 2006, but I haven't put it up until now because of the two stories that precede it. Although it follows from "Four Nightmares" and "The Hand and the Cloth", you don't have to have read them to follow this one, but you do need to be familiar with Silent Hill 4's "Mother" ending.
This story will earn its "M" rating in a couple of the early chapters, for mentally unhygienic practices. If that sort of thing bothers you, you might not wish to read. Chapter lengths may be irregular, as may be update timing.
Standard disclaimers apply, as always. I don't own Henry, Eileen, or anything of Konami's, and I don't make any money off of it. I'm just a fan, folks.
"Well, I guess I can go back to South Ashfield Heights now…"
Eileen beamed up at Henry from her hospital bed, and he nodded back. She could just make out a small smile there, too. Just a small one, and easily missed. Still, it was the first she'd seen from him since…well, she wasn't sure when, but it had been a while.
There wasn't a lot to smile about down there.
Hers stretched into a full-fledged happy grin. "Henry, I can't believe we're out of there. Really out of there."
Was he relieved too? Probably. Had to be. But with Henry, it was hard to tell.
"Same here." He fidgeted a little, shifting his shoulder.
"You going to be OK?" she asked, nodding toward the bandage under his sleeve.
He shrugged. "Should be. The bullet went through cleanly. Didn't hit anything important."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Uh…don't know. Probably get a sandwich downstairs or something."
The corner of her mouth twitched.
"I mean, after that."
"I'm not sure," he said. "Haven't really thought about it."
Well, there's time enough for that now. No rush, right?
The fresh scent of the little bouquet in her lap wafted past her nostrils. The flower were a bright splash of color in the room, red and pink. The same colors as blood, both new and faded, but this was different…so healthy and alive. So different from where they'd been, what they'd seen. It was real, and this room was real, and best of all, so was he.
He lowered himself onto the stool next to her bed. She reached forward, and he took her hand. It was large and warm, just as it had always been. It was a familiar comfort now, and it made her feel so safe...
"Two more days and I'm outta here," she said. "Thank God. I feel fine now, but they won't let me leave."
"You almost died down there. You need the rest."
"Yeah. And so do you." She squeezed his hand. He shrugged dismissively, but she didn't press the point.
"I'll be glad when they let me out of here," she said as she looked around the bright little room. "This place still gives me the creeps, even though that's all over with now."
"Yeah. Same here."
An awkward silence fell. Henry turned toward the bright sunlight streaming through the window, and then his thumb was absently stroking the back of her hand as it lay in his. It felt good, and she closed her eyes and relaxed into it.
That's Henry. He's always taking care of me, even now.
The room was quiet but for the low hums of the electronic monitors and their own breathing. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, but it still felt a little weird.
Now that it's all over, it would be dumb if we couldn't think of anything to say to each other. Really dumb.
"Your room," she said after a minute or so.
"Hm?"
"Are you OK to go back there? I mean, you were stuck in there for days, right?"
The thumb on her hand stopped moving.
"Because if you're not, you can crash at my place. Remember?"
"No, I should be OK. Things should be back to normal now…and I have a few things to take care of there, anyway."
"Anytime. I mean that."
He nodded. "Thanks." He really seemed to mean it. As if saving my life more times than I can count didn't earn you a place to crash. At least.
The nurse on duty poked her head in the door. "Visiting hours are up," she said. She smiled at their clasped hands, and closed the door behind her.
"Damn," she said.
He squeezed her hand. "You should rest, anyway."
"When I get out of here…let's get dinner or something," she said. "Remember? I'm supposed to be taking you to Fuseli's."
"Yeah."
He got to his feet and stood there for a second or two, looking down at her.
"You OK?" she asked.
"Yeah. Uh...take care of yourself."
"You too," she called as the door closed behind him.
One unexpected benefit of Eileen's forced time at St. Jerome's was the idleness. She'd been put into a single room, so she didn't have anyone to talk to. She didn't have the patience for TV, not then, and she couldn't concentrate on anything she tried to read. There wasn't much else to do.
So, after Henry left that afternoon, she rested in bed and gazed out of the window at the summer sun, and let it all just wash over her. She was in this white, clean room, with doctors and nurses to take care of her and feed her, and there were no monsters or ghosts, no bloody walls, no endless staircases or ladders she couldn't climb…and best of all, no Walter. None of that. It was all behind her.
As the day wore on, she realized that she had to start trying to make some sense of it all. The memories were all jumbled in her mind, and she hadn't had time until then to put it all together, to try to assemble a coherent picture. Not knowing what had happened wasn't going to help her to regain her peace of mind. It was time to sort things out. She spent the rest of that day and the next going over things in detail, thinking, putting things together and letting the memories flow freely. They still made her uneasy, but she knew that they were firmly locked in the past. They couldn't threaten her any longer. That helped a lot.
But two days later, when she finally walked out of the sliding glass doors of St. Jerome's, there were many, many things that still didn't make sense. Although she and Henry had been able to figure out enough of what was going on to get out alive, that wasn't enough now. She knew that she was missing a lot of the pieces of the puzzle, and she couldn't see the whole picture without them. She needed answers. Answers that maybe Henry would be able to give her.
Maybe after a while we can sit down and talk about it. We could compare notes, try to figure out just what happened. He didn't have much time to explain everything, and I wasn't in any shape to listen anyway. I have so many questions to ask him…and maybe he doesn't know all of the answers, but if anybody does, he does.
I hope that he's resting too, and sorting things out…I hope that he's going to be OK.
Henry hadn't stopped by after that one visit. Eileen wasn't surprised. After all, he had always kept to himself, and after everything that had happened, perhaps he wasn't in the mood for company. Isolated reflection was probably his thing, anyway. She was a talker, and liked to bounce things off of her friends to get their input, but he clearly wasn't. It wasn't that he didn't communicate – far from it. It was more that he seemed to be entirely self-contained, not in need of other people or things or anything outside of himself…and thank God that he had been that person. He'd had to be strong for two people that night, strong enough to keep her from completely losing it. She had the gut feeling that he really hadn't needed her, that he'd have been fine – hell, better off – without her.
She'd realized during her ruminations that of all of the surprises and unexpected events that night, he'd been the biggest surprise of all. While she'd been freaking out and putting all of her energy into keeping a smile on her face and trying not to panic, he'd been a rock…calm, collected, reassuring, and there when she needed him. A rock, except for a single moment of weakness in the subway after they saw what he told her was the ghost of a woman he'd met there…and even then, it had been completely understandable. No human could have gone through all of that without cracking sooner or later. But then he'd picked himself up, put himself back together, splashed his face with cold water, and gotten on with it. Five minutes later, the woman's ghost was pinned to the floor of the subway and they were on their way. She knew that she couldn't have managed that…and she'd never have imagined that he'd have been so handy with an axe, either. At this point, almost nothing he might say or do would surprise her, it seemed.
Nothing, that is, except vanishing.
When she finally returned to her apartment, overnight bag in one hand and medication in the other, she dumped everything on the kitchen counter and immediately headed down the hall. She knocked on the door to 302, but got no response.
"Henry? It's me," she called. "Are you in there?"
No response. She leaned closed to the door and cupped her hands around her mouth.
"Henry?"
She knocked again, and then put her ear to the door and listened, but there was nothing but absolute silence.
Oh well. Maybe he's gone out.
She looked up his number in the phone book and tried to call, but nobody picked up, not even an answering machine. So, she left a note in his mailbox letting him know that she was back, and reminding him of the dinner she owed him.
When she didn't hear back, she wasn't too worried. Maybe even dealing with her would be more than he wanted now. God knew that he'd had to put up with her slow, limping, whiny, Walter-possessed butt for all of that time…maybe he'd had enough. That thought hurt a little, but she owed him more than she could ever repay, and if space was what he wanted, then space was what she would give him. Still, she wanted to let him know that she was there for him.
So, every day, for the next few days, she stopped by his place after walking downstairs to pick up her mail, and rang the bell and knocked…and got no response. Today's knock on the door was no different. Now, she was standing there, staring at the peephole, completely at a loss. She was beginning to wonder if he'd moved out.
You'd think he'd have left a note or something…maybe not, though. Maybe he just wanted to get out and forget about this place…about everything that happened...about me…
"Something going on?"
Eileen turned around. Old Mike from 301 was shuffling down the hall.
"Hey. Have you seen Henry lately?"
"Is that his name? No, haven't seen him."
Huh.
"Last time I saw him was days ago. The afternoon after they took you to the hospital. He was carrying some boxes up here around one or so. Thought he might be moving out."
Damn…
"Thanks."
Mike nodded and continued down the hall. Eileen remained at the door for several minutes, staring forlornly at the peephole.
He's gone. And he didn't even say goodbye.
She reached up and traced its outline with her finger. She would have given almost anything to be able to see through it, to…to do what? Check on him? Let him know that she was there? Ask him over for snacks and a movie?
What was the point? There was nothing left for her to do. He was gone.
Why did that hurt so much?