AN:
Hello to everyone reading this/considering reading it. This is the first fanfiction I've done in a number of months. Also, my first Silent Hill fanfiction. As such, let me make a few notes here before you start reading:
1)The story's protaganists will be James Sunderland and Henry Townshend
2)The story follows the Leave ending in Silent Hill 2, and Escape ending in Silent Hill 4
3)The story will start from James' and Henry's first-person perspective, but that could very easily change.
4)I haven't played Silent Hill 2 for quite a few years, so I may mistake a fact or two. If this happens, let me know and I'll change it as I see fit
5)The main pairing (since I know that's all any of you really care about) of this story will probably be Henry and James. Since this is a work in progress, I'm not completely certain. I may possibly add Heather x Alex. But if I do, it won't be central to the plot.
6)I haven't played the original Silent Hill or Origins. I've read up on the first, but there is a very large chance that I'll say something regarding the first that does't parallel with the actual game. Once again, if I do that, please let me know.
7)There is a plot and thematic message I'm trying to convey. This isn't just senseless romance, so if that's what you're looking for, this story doesn't suit your needs.
8)I may accidently call Mary Maria sometimes. I apologize if I do that
9)I make no claims to being an astounding author. That said, I won't be insulted if you want to critiqe my story. Key word there being critique. I'm looking to improve, and flames won't help me there. All they do is make me wish you'd taken that negative energy and structured it into something worthwhile.
10)Sorry, no Walter guys. He's dead. Deadsies. Full of death.

Alright, enjoy!

Divergence

I can't say what it is that brought me back to South Ashfield. When I originally left, I thought that was that. I'd lived there my entire life. I'd outgrown it.

While those are all valid excuses, they aren't the reasons I left. It was a note I'd received from my deceased wife, Mary. She begged me to meet her in our special place. So, without mentioning anything to my father or any of the friends who had weathered my near-catatonia, I left. I'm certain I could write a long novel on the things that occurred to me while I was there, but I'm certain that anyone reading this will get a clear picture of how neurotic, how unbelievably paranoid I am without me needing to explain what I saw in Silent Hill.

I left Silent Hill with an adopted daughter in tow. I'd never been partial to children or the idea of raising them, but Laura was a special case. A few notes of Mary's that I read led me to realize how close the two had been during Mary's long stay in Silent Hill. I also began to realize that Mary had intended to adopt Laura once she got better. But Mary never did get better. So, despite my hesitance and lack of experience in raising kids, I adopted her and took her with me after leaving the nightmarish town.

We made our way across the lake next to Silent Hill to a small town known as Shepherd's Glen. I didn't have enough money to both get somewhere and rent an apartment, so there we stayed for a year. I rented a shabby, two bedroom apartment on the more run-down side of town and got a job in the grocery store. It may seem like a mediocre living, but I was finally becoming happy. Well, perhaps happy isn't the best word. I was a ways from feeling happy again. But I wasn't wracked with guilt anymore, and I was finally making a living without wishing I would die every single day. Laura went to a nearby school, and things felt almost normal for a while. However, it soon became clear to me how similar the town and its history were to Silent Hill. I can't say I was surprised, being that the towns were so close, and Shepherd's glen had been formed by members of Silent Hill's order. When I finally had a decent amount of money, we left Shepherd's Glen as well.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that Laura has never been too pleased with me. She loved Mary, and still feels that I didn't love her enough. However, I can tell she is at least somewhat appreciative of my taking her away from Silent Hill and giving her a home. She doesn't show it, but I'm certain it's true. Perhaps that's just wishful thinking, since I have nothing to go by, no examples to prove my case. In fact, I have more evidence to give to the other side of that spectrum. She finds every way she can to remind me that she doesn't like me. When I'm lucky, that's just with insults and general degradation. Those I can easily handle. Admittedly I sometimes have to find a dictionary afterwards to find out just what she's called me; she's a very smart girl for her age. She says things that I certainly wouldn't have been able to understand or replicate at that age. When I'm not lucky, she hides important or vital things to me. This usually accounts for my car keys, my cell phone, pictures of my parents, and things like that. I was surprised at first that she never stole my pictures of Mary. They're my most prized possession, after all. I eventually thought that it was one of two reasons. The first, and most likely, was that she absolutely adored Mary. Despite knowing the suffering it would cause me, I think that she never took the pictures because she couldn't imagine desecrating something of Mary. The latter explanation being that she knew that while I'm generally a calm, forgiving person, losing a picture of Mary would be more than enough to send me over the edge. Everything else in the apartment was fair game though.

As I said, we eventually left Shepherd's Glen. It was peaceful and beautiful, but I still have a good feeling that it's going the same way that Silent Hill did. With it being so deeply rooted to the other town and the Order, I don't see how it's possible to not. Before that happened, we left. The three years following that we moved around. I believe in that time I began to become happier. Had I been any other person, I may not have been. But after finally overcoming my guilt, shame, depression, and sorrow, anything felt better to me—any change welcome. My main problem was always getting and hanging onto a job. My first job at Shepherd's Glen had been easy. I'd quickly befriended a woman in the town who'd secured the job for me. Everywhere else wasn't so easy. They all expected references, applications, experience, and life stories. The only reference I was willing to give was to the grocery store, which was hardly applicable in any of the jobs I wanted. Applications and experiences were equally difficult, but the true no-man's-land for me were the life stories. Any interview I went to, I was expected to give detailed explanations for my jobs. They wanted to know why I only had one reference and past job on my reference—one that had only lasted a year. In my mid-thirties, it was near impossible to pretend as though I was young enough to have just moved out. I would explain that I had worked under my dad before that. They would ask why I hadn't put him down, and if they could call them. I would say no and they would ask why. I would have to say that I'd lost contact with my dad, didn't want to speak with him, and didn't want him to know where I was. Once again, they would ask why. They would ask me to tell them why I had left a stable home-life and I would tell them it was because my wife had died. I always left out the part about the note she'd sent. When they asked what she'd died of, I never knew what to say. I wasn't eager to tell them that I had suffocated her after growing tired of not having a life because of her terminal illness and I wasn't eager to lie. I couldn't lie about it. So I'd usually just say that she had a terminal illness and leave it at that. Needless to say, there were other strange gray areas of my life that I left unanswered. They were all suspicious of me and skeptical of the past I refused to expose. Most of them probably thought I was a bit insane, and I can't say they were wrong. I had a few jobs that usually paid the rent, but it was never enough.

Laura went to school with cheap clothes and she was spiteful to me because of it. We moved around a lot as well, from shabby apartment to shabby apartment. As I said, any normal person wouldn't have been happy. We were barely living above the poverty line, but I was enjoying it. I liked going to work and finally having a purpose. Laura finally announced that enough was enough. She wanted to go to South Ashfield. I had been fool enough to tell her a bit about my past. I told her about my father, the superintendent of an apartment complex, who I'd always worked with, and who always left the biggest apartment in the building open for me for free rent.

I was nervous to go back. Not nervous about facing my father, but about facing my memories. I first told her that I didn't want to go back because there was too much pain there. My father, the home I had once lived in, Mary's grave; I told her that I wouldn't be able to stand living with all those memories. The truth wasn't quite as justifiable. I had spent my entire life there. Everything about my past was there. Where I'd grown up, where I'd gone to school, where I'd gotten married, where I'd worked, where my wife had been buried. In my mind, I had actually connected my past and all of its negative connotations to that town. I felt that moving out and away from the town would somehow make me feel as though I was finally growing—as if going back to that town meant that I was only regressing back into my past patterns, and into the man I had once been.

But Laura was right. We couldn't live like this. No, that isn't correct. We could've, but she wouldn't have been happy, and despite the way she regarded me, she'd become the most important part of my life. She was my last link to Mary, and the last year before her death. Not to mention that I hadn't really been functioning as a normal person myself. I obsessed over work and trying to give Laura things. Subconsciously I knew that I couldn't truly be happy, but managed to convince myself that in making Laura happy, I might be able to feed off of that. So for the four years after Shepherd's Glen, I was almost a hermit. I had almost no social interaction with anyone besides Laura, no goals of my own, and my sex life was absolutely barren. I don't want to seem like some sex-craving pervert, but take any man of 35 and I can guarantee you that they'd react with nothing short of shock or horror if told that another man their age had gone without sex for five years.

The following three days we drove back to South Ashfield, only stopping to sleep, get gas, and eat. I never called my dad to tell him that we were coming back. In my family, we weren't really big on making plans. We just sort of showed up where we wanted and expected the other to accept it. In retrospect, I should've called my dad. This wasn't like a quick holiday visit to my cousin Alex; this was me coming home after practically disappearing for five years with an adopted daughter. Actually, to this day my dad thinks that Laura is actually mine and Mary's daughter. I had almost corrected him, but Laura didn't want me to. She made a point of letting me know that it certainly had nothing to do with wanting to seem like my actual child, but that she wanted people to think that she was Mary's daughter.

Where was I? Ah, we came back to South Ashfield, parked outside of my father's complex, and walked into the main lobby. The receptionist up front gawked at me when I entered. She'd been working there since I was a child—I assume she recognized me. I pointedly ignored her and walked over to my father's office with Laura. The only way I can express his reaction was comical, though I feel a bit heartless saying it that way. An old man reuniting with his long lost son of five years, and I explain the heart-felt reunion as comical. No way to help it, that's just the way I saw it. He didn't even notice Laura for quite some time. He first stared at me unblinkingly, his mouth open in a gape. I noticed then that the once meticulously clean-shaven man looked gruffer. I can't tell if it was only the stubble, or if it was more than that. I had remembered a pleasant-faced, somewhat stern looking man. I came back to a worn, tired looking man. Wrinkles creased his face in more areas than I had remembered. His skin looked leathery because of that. Still, that face reminds me of the old, musty book in the library that no one has bothered to touch in years, with its cracked leather spine and once golden title now to worn and dusted over to see. In the same way, he looked emaciated. Sallow, parchment-looking skin draped over his sturdy facial structure. At least one part of him became reminiscent as he looked at me: his eyes. They had looked glazed-over when I'd first entered. When he finally recognized me, they came to life with the same exuberance I had once admired.

As for the comical reaction, it was the different stages that truly made it hilarious. First there was complete shock. Silence also. Then there was absolute joy. He smiled and ran from his desk faster than a man his age should've been able to move. He closed the gap between us and embraced me. He felt thin and frail in my arms. Then crying. They were first tears of happiness as he embraced me as if letting go meant that I would disappear again. His words were muffled with his face pressed so close to my forest-green coat, but I caught that he'd missed me (so much), and that he was so happy to see me. After telling him that I'd missed him too came anger and pain. I had been used to guilt, but hadn't felt it as strong as I did then in the five years after Silent Hill. He wanted to know where and why I'd gone, and I wanted to tell him. Unfortunately, there was no way I could. What could I have said? 'Sorry, dad. I went to Silent Hill to kill myself, but before I did, my mind snapped and I instead convinced myself that I'd gotten a posthumous letter from Mary who'd supposedly been dead for three years, ran around the town finding clues, learned the truth, and battled with monsters that had been conjured up from my own subconscious mind'? As much as my dad loves me, he's a realistic man. For as long as I've known him, I've always known him to have about as great an imagination as an accountant who spends all of his free time figuring out logarithms—if that's even a correct math term. Math never was my strong point… the point of this being that my dad never would've believed me. Who could? So I instead told him that one day the depression became too much. That one day, I was either going to have to kill myself or leave town. He understood and forgave me.

The whole thing still feels unresolved. Life has gone on, but there wasn't any closure. My dad was once the closest person to me—I'd always told him everything. Somehow knowing that those years of my life are a lie always lingering over us doesn't sit well with me. There's nothing I can do about it.

He met and loved Laura, who put on a lovely show as a well behaved 13 year old, and my father gave us the keys to our new apartment. It'd been mine during college, and I'd always loved it. It felt more like a home as the only two story apartment in the entire complex. It was on the top and middle floor, had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a study, a kitchen, and a dining room. All fully furnished to my father's taste. That quickly changed after we moved in though, thanks to Laura.

After that, life finally did begin to feel normal. I got a job working under my dad's best friend both bar-tending and working as the bar's financial manager, Laura went to the local school, and I started making a few friends. No close friends, but at least I was finally starting to talk to people. After two weeks of living in my new apartment, I had sex with one of my drunken coworkers. This may not be a notable feat to you, but I assure you it felt like I'd made it over a hurtle after that. Nothing became of it, though she very clearly hoped that something would. She was a sweet girl… but I wasn't looking for a relationship. The thought of a relationship hadn't even occurred to me in years. I'd been desperate for a lay, but a relationship was out of the question. Maybe it was just that I hadn't met the right person. I still think that it had more to deal with what had happened to me. I didn't feel right willingly entering a relationship without being able to let them know what had happened and, subsequently, why I am the way I am. I didn't want to subjugate anyone to the neurotic mess that is James Sunderland without letting them know what they're up against first.

About a month after my initial move in, I was in the lobby of the apartment complex waiting for Laura to get back from school. I think I had some sort of appointment to take her to and had grown restless waiting in my room. Either way, I remember it was a warm summer August day. South Ashfield usually has cold weather, and I remember the change was nice. Rather than my burly coat, I was wearing a plain gray, partial-button up long-sleeve shirt over a black tee-shirt along with some dark blue jeans. I've never been a fashion monger, but I know what looks good on me. I like to wear plain clothes to accentuate the light green of my eyes. Unfortunately there's not as much going for me in the hair department. I've always had straw-blonde hair that I keep considerably well-tamed and short. I'm not degrading myself based on my hair or anything ridiculous like that; it just isn't something that particularly stands out on me.

In the lobby, I tried to engage the woman in the lobby. She, however, was too caught up trying pretend to be busy. She wasn't even doing it in a discreet, believable way. I was glad when my dad finally walked in. We had idle conversation for a bit, but both of them suddenly stopped what they were doing when someone else walked out of the elevator. I looked over to see what had startled them so much. All I saw was a normal looking man. An attractive man, certainly, but nothing dazzling. He had long, dark brown hair, and matching eyes. I remember he looked pretty fatigued—and had the 5 o'clock shadow to prove it. He looked indifferently at the three of us, as if he didn't know that we were staring. I wondered if they were staring at him for the way he was dressed? He was dressed nicer than any of us with a sky-blue, button up shirt and light blue jeans with what looked like leather shoes. When I did realize that I'd been staring, I lifted my hand, offered a small half-smile, and waved. He smiled back with a bit of an effort and nodded back at me. Then, just like that, he left the building.

With him gone, my curiosity got the better of me. I've never been one for subtlety, so I simply jumped straight into the interrogation.
"Who was that?"
I first asked. I looked over at the woman and my father and awaited an answer. My father looked out the glass of the door to make sure that the man was completely out of ear-shot before looking back at me.
"Henry Townshend. Room 302."
I had thought that with the secrecy he'd utilized in answering the question, he'd elaborate past that. I was expecting him to tell me that the man was a registered pedophile, or at least something more than his room number.
"Why did you both…"
I began, but my dad interjected,
"You should stay away from him, James. He's strange."
I was about to comment that I wasn't five and he didn't need to tell me who and who not to befriend, but he continued,
"About five months before you came back here, something happened to him. Suddenly one day, he just locked himself in his room. Didn't come out for weeks either."
My dad paused, but I didn't say anything. There isn't anything inherently strange about locking yourself in your room, so I assumed he'd continue.
"When he finally did come out, it was like he'd just been freed from prison. I asked him what had happened, and he told me some fairy-tale. Said that his room had been completely chained in from the inside and his windows wouldn't open. Then get this! Poor asshole told me that suddenly a hole formed in the wall, and he crawled through to some other world!"
My dad laughed at that, but I'd fallen silent. I remembered reading on one of the wall's in Silent Hill 'There should be a hole here'. My father either didn't notice or didn't care, because he continued with his story.
"He claimed to have witnessed the deaths of all of Walter Sullivan's copy-cat killer by crawling through the hole over and over again. Said it was the real Walter Sullivan, even though that guy killed himself in his jail cell years ago. I think the guy just did some research on Walter, because he found out that the kid had been raised in Silent Hill's Wish House."
The mention of Silent Hill made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. On the outside, I kept a calm, even complacent look as I listened on. Inside, however, my heart was fluttering with each word my father said. To him, he was retelling the story of a mad-man. To me, he was telling what had happened to another unfortunate soul who'd been a victim of the town and its cult.
"He thinks that he saved the girl who'd lived next to him, found the body of Walter, and stopped him before he was able to resurrect the holy mother or some bull like that. Oh! And that Walter thought the room was his mom. Weird stuff. Think the kid lost his mind for a while or something."
I'd stopped listening for a moment, thinking of the best way I could meet this guy.

Finally, I'd found someone I could talk to, and who would understand me. Not only that, but someone who I could learn from and trust to not see my story as the raving of a lunatic. At that moment, I didn't care what kind of a personality Henry had. I didn't care if he was mute, actually. I was overjoyed to know that I would finally be able to talk to someone. Maybe I was just excited because I knew that talking to someone who could relate to me and what had happened to me would make me feel valid again. I knew that what had happened to me was true, but knowing that someone would finally agree with me was incredible.

I considered running after Henry and demanding that we talk later but decided against it. Laura was going to be coming soon, and it would look odd to my dad if I ran after someone he considered to be a lunatic.

I finally had a goal—the first one I'd had in years: Find Henry Townshend.