Chapter Text
Henley knows something's wrong the second that the Mission Impossible score starts singing through her phone.
She doesn't waste time wondering who it is. Her phone lights up with a number she's never seen before, but the ringtone filtering through is definitely the one she assigned to Jack's calls, the strings and woodwinds almost disturbingly cheery in the relative silence of her apartment. The Horsemen never keep the same numbers for long, the Eye making quick work of anyone who tries to track their tech. She's no slouch when it comes to pretty much anything digital, though. It's how she was able to link specific sounds and ringtones for each of them even after she left, just in case they needed her or things went haywire. Common soundbites, songs from popular shows and movies, nothing that specifically links to any of them.
She's pretty sure the Eye knows she did that and just hasn't bothered scrubbing her from their systems yet. Maybe they're planning on luring her back in, maybe they're not. Either way, she knows better than to let one of their calls go to voicemail. She definitely knows better than to do that in the middle of the night. She's got no idea where they are, not after their show in London back in January, but she doubts they're calling her at eleven o'clock West Coast time because everything's okay.
Still, she finds herself staring at the screen for a second, its light washing faintly over the spring-green walls of her room and the fawn-brown of her duvet cover. Resentment twists a little in her stomach. So much for an early night, she thinks bitterly, pushing herself up onto her elbows. She's back to performing for herself, albeit more on the underground circuit, her crimes quietly swept under the rug by whatever strings Dylan and Alma pulled in return for her providing the occasional C.I. services to the Los Angeles FBI office and various Interpol divisions. She doesn't talk about her time with the Horsemen and her audience has long since stopped asking, particularly with her slot officially filled and their latest show knocking it out of the park. She's finally gotten a bit of a break—she loves her shows, she does, loves the stage and an audience and watching them cheer and scream and play right into her hand, but it takes a lot of energy—and now they're after her again.
It's good that she's gone, really. Better for both of them. For all of them. She's never been one to wait when the things she wants are within reach, and the others wanted the team, the Eye, more than they cared about the rush of performing. Even Daniel. She can't say she's surprised by that, not really. The prestige of the Eye lured him in, the promise of greatness, the answer to his ambitions, but she knows him. He's brilliant, frustrating and controlling and clever and cold and unbelievably talented, electric onstage. He's just also lonely. He'd rather die than admit it, but he relished being part of a team as much as the others clearly did.
At some point, for him, it stopped being just about the next show, about the next adrenaline rush, the next adoring audience. Henley would like to think she's emotionally aware enough to know that for her, it never did. She loves the others, cares about them, and they did something incredible together, but she's not much of a believer and love wasn't enough to kill her ambition.
London looked fun, though. She'll give them that.
You could've been there, if you hadn't left. She makes a face at the thought, the same way she always does. It's true, probably. She would've enjoyed it. It was more hands-on than their past performances, clearly more improvised, but watching them reveal the trick to everyone but Mabry and Tressler was absolutely delicious. Running from law enforcement and private security alike—now that's an adrenaline rush.
She left, though, and it was the right choice. There's no point dwelling on it. She watched to make sure that they were safe after the Octa show went wrong and the news startled blowing up with headlines about the Four Horsemen's failure and Jack Wilder's resurrection, wished them well, and focused back in on her own work. If Jack's calling her now, there's only two real reasons for it: one, something's wrong and they need her help, or two, someone's drunk and calling her by mistake, and there's no way she's going to know which one it is if she doesn't answer.
Henley sits up properly, answers the call, and lifts the phone to her ear. "Henley Reeves speaking," she says, as pleasantly as she can given the fate of her long-waited early night.
She waits for laughter, or a greeting, or for someone to say literally anything that'll allow her to remind them that they're only supposed to call her for emergencies, idiots, and whatever stupid competition they want her to be the deciding vote for isn't an emergency, but it doesn't come. Instead there's a small, rasping breath, and Jack's voice comes through, sounding about fifteen different kinds of wrong: "Henley?"
Ice water comes crashing down on her, the hair on the back of her neck standing up, every bit as cold as she is in those brief moments after a water escape. It might have been a while since she heard from him—from any of them—but she still knows how he's supposed to sound. He's always been warmer than Merritt and Danny, a little more sincere even when he was annoyed or tired or struggling to keep it together. It was a miracle, really; he could mimic almost any voice as soon as he heard it string together a full sentence, but keeping his emotions out of his own voice and off his face seemed nearly impossible. She teased him for it once or twice. He'd laughed the first time, looked like a kicked puppy the second, and she silently resolved never to bring it up again. He covered it better during a show, every bit the performer that she thought he could be, but the second he stepped off of the stage his heart was back on his sleeve.
There's no warmth today. There's just fear. His voice shakes over her name, and she can hear him breathing, uneven, trembling inhales that hitch in his chest. There's a distinct shiver to it, a kind of panic that usually comes with desperation.
He's crying.
Someone's dead, she thinks immediately, wildly, her heart starting to run wild in her chest. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth, her answer catching in her throat. Apparently the silence is the wrong move, though, because there's a choked, aching sob on the other line. "Hen," he repeats, small, terrified, and images whirl through her mind, flashes of nights when things were bad, where that easy, charming smile dropped into something shakier, where raised voices and sharp tongues left him pressing his back to the wall and ducking out of the room the second he thought he could get away with it. Talented, clever, scared as hell, she'd thought in the early days, sympathetic and determined not to get too close. She'd been right to be sympathetic. She failed at staying away. "Henley, do you—you remember me?"
What?
It's such a bizarre question that she can't answer it for a second, her hand going numb around the phone. The stretch of silence is enough to catch Dylan's voice somewhere on the other end, and that feels wrong, too, because his tone is icy, irritated, never how it sounds when he's talking to Jack: "Kid, I don't know what you think you're pulling, but—"
"Of course I remember you," she says. She raises her voice instinctively, loud enough for it to echo. Hopefully loud enough for Dylan to hear it, because she doesn't know why he's pissed, but if he made Jack cry there's no way in hell she's letting him use her to make it worse. "Jack, what's going on?"
There's a beat of silence, and then a slow, tremulous inhale and an equally unsteady exhale, like he's trying to remember how his lungs work. "I—I don't know," he chokes out. "It's—it's early, I just woke up, and—and they're all outside, they don't—I don't think they remember me, they don't believe me when I say I live here, that I'm one of them. They think I broke in."
Henley blinks, staring up at the white ceiling like it'll suddenly be covered in perfectly written answers, something in her chest going tight and furious. "They don't remember you," she repeats quietly.
They don't remember you, and they think you broke into their safehouse, so they're treating you like a threat. Something sparks in her throat, searing at the flesh inside it. She's not surprised. She wouldn't take kindly to a random person in her space, especially as an internationally infamous criminal with more than a few enemies, especially someone who seemed unnervingly comfortable and knew way too much about her. Dylan's ruthless, obviously, and Merritt has no qualms about doing what he needs to do to survive, and Daniel would do whatever it took to keep the Horsemen intact. She doesn't know much about Lula, but you don't join a team of thieves without being prepared to handle people who know too much. If they forgot him—and they could, she knows they could if a talented-enough mentalist caught them off guard, if someone decided to fuck with them by ripping someone they loved right out of their lives—they'd see him as a potential threat. An enemy. Someone to be dealt with.
But this isn't a potential threat, or an enemy. This is Jack. This is the kid who believed in them first, and believed in them the most. This is the one who died (a fake death, but still) for Dylan's risky, incredibly-dangerous plan, who destroyed his own life just for a shot at something that might be better. He's loyal to a fault. He was alone before they were brought together.
He was alone, and he had nothing, no one, had known nothing but people who hurt him and people who failed him. The closest thing he has to a family forgetting him, threatening him, intimidating him has to be one of his worst nightmares, and that's exactly what he's living through right now.
They're scaring him. He's scared, and it's their fault, and she thinks she could rip them apart for it.
"I wouldn't have called," Jack says, and bile swims in the back of her throat at the attempt to reassure her, because he still sounds so small, so afraid. "I know you said only for emergencies, and I—I wouldn't have, I promise—"
"Jack—"
"I just—they don't believe me, they don't believe that I'm supposed to be here, they think I'm gonna hurt them or expose them and I wouldn't, I wouldn't—"
"I know, Jack—"
"They were gonna—" there's a horrible, choked sound, and Henley bolts upright even though he's miles away, far beyond her reach "—they were gonna bring me to the embassy a-and Merritt was going to hypnotize me so I couldn't follow them and didn't remember them and—I h-had to prove that I knew them, that I knew you, and nothing else worked and I thought maybe you'd remember, too—"
Fury bubbles up in her chest, her mouth twisting into a snarl even though there's no one here to see it. "They were going to hypnotize you?"
Jack tries to breathe again. She says "tries" because she hears his breath catch, and then choke again, and she realizes distantly that he's trying not to sob again. Not to break down over potentially losing everything or being hypnotized and left for the cops to find—or left at the American embassy wherever they're hiding out, sure, whatever, but the first thing they're gonna do with an internationally-wanted criminal is arrest. "They don't know who I am," he says weakly. "They think they'll just, like, g-get me home or something and make it so I don't remember anything about them. They wouldn't—they wouldn't do it on purpose."
It's true. She knows they wouldn't. All of them have a soft spot for the kid, regardless of how willing they are to admit it. Putting him at risk of capture, interrogation, or worse has been decidedly not an option since the fake car crash. No amount of rehearsal or intricate planning could shake the knowledge that things could've gone wrong, that the wrong car could've crashed if any of them were the slightest bit off, if anyone else on the road was having a worse-than-average day. It was a silent agreement, but as binding as a contract or a blood debt. If it came down to it, one of them would take the fall. Not him.
To hypnotize him, though—to look him in the eyes while he's scared, panicking, begging them to try and remember who he is or at least care that he's upset, and try to override his sense of self—
No wonder he's terrified. Being forgotten is bad enough. Being forgotten and almost having everything you've done for the past two years erased? Being dragged to the steps of a government office and left behind, unable to follow or ask questions? Being arrested, put on trial, thrown in prison for crimes he can't even remember and left alone to rot? Jesus. She would've lost it, too.
"I—I just needed proof that you know me," Jack says, his words barely cutting through the roaring in her ears. She's clenching her jaw, she realizes distantly, and she forces herself to release it. "So we can figure something out. Since I'm not, um, lying."
There's a shuffle, footsteps moving across a hardwood floor, and then a significantly faster scuffling sound and an uptick in his breathing. He flinched. He flinched away from one of them. "Sorry. Uh, I'll let you go. Thanks for picking up."
He's—
He's not even asking for help.
He's in a house with four people who think he's a stranger, a threat, and he's not even calling her to ask for help. He's trying to keep her out of it, to respect that she left, that she doesn't want to be a Horseman or a part of the Eye. He'd be well within his rights to beg her to talk to them, to ask if she had any connections who could fix this, but he's not even trying. He's alone, reset back to square one after over two years, living one of his worst nightmares, and he's not even asking for help.
Fire seethes on her tongue. "You're not hanging up."
A pause. Surprise—not just from him, she thinks. Clearly the others can hear her. "You're not hanging up," she repeats fiercely. "Jack, you just told me you're stuck overseas with a team that doesn't remember you and wants to wipe your mind and stick you in front of the embassy to be thrown in jail—"
"They don't remember I stole stuff with them," he protests. It's not exactly a winning case, in Henley's opinion, mostly because she knows how much they'll hate themselves for it when whatever happened to them is finally undone. That's not her priority, though. She's not risking him getting hurt just to fix whatever was put into their heads.
"I don't care. I'm not leaving you with them."
"I'm not going to ask you to come all the way to London—"
London. She files that away for later. Looks like they're back to hiding out between shows. "Yeah, well, I'm a little too inclined to punch them all in the teeth to be within a hundred yards of them right now." That startles a laugh out of him, wobbly and unsure but real, and she grins. It's not a particularly nice smile. "I can do better than that, anyways. Got some favors to call in. I can have you on a private flight out of Heathrow in three hours and I'll meet you at LAX. I've got a spare bedroom. You're crashing with me."
Jack's quiet for a moment, the silence stretching longer than it should. When he speaks, he sounds small again, on the verge of tears: "You don't have to."
"I know that. You're my friend. And my favorite Horseman," she adds, just because she knows the others are listening and she's not leaving any doubt in their minds that she knows him. That they should know him. The benefit of the doubt is the least they could offer. "So I'm going to. Start packing up, tell them not to fuck with anything you don't take with you, and I'll take care of the rest. We'll go introduce Los Angeles to the incredible Jack Wilder. It's gonna be great."
"You're sure?" Quiet, shaky, hopeful. She'll take that over scared any day of the week.
"Super sure. I missed you." She does mean it. She misses all of them, Merritt's quick wit, so easily aligned with her own, and Daniel's jagged laughter, always sounding like it was startled out of him. Right now, though, Jack's the only one she cares about. "Give the phone to Dylan, alright? It's gonna be okay. I've got you. Kick their asses if they try anything."
"I'm not gonna fight them."
The words come out as a whisper, almost defeated, and she swears something cracks in her ribcage. Loyal to a fault. "Then scream so I can hear you, and I'll handle it. You keep yourself safe. I don't care what it takes."
"Hen—"
"I've got you," Henley repeats, and her chest aches, horror and rage thrumming together in a sickening melody. "Give the phone to Dylan, honey, and start packing. I promise I've got it from here."
Another pause, and then a faint shuffling, the phone passing between hands. She waits until she's sure that Dylan's on the other end, waits until she hears the telltale sound of a backpack being unzipped and things being moved around. When she speaks, her voice burns, vicious and unforgiving as fire. "You touch that kid and I'll bury you so deep that even the Eye can't dig you out."
"Hello to you, too," Dylan says wearily. far too blase for the situation. Some tiny, logical voice in her head points out that he thought his team was exposed, in danger, and he's never reacted well to that; it whispers that this wasn't personal, that he didn't do any of it out of malice even if he doesn't remember a damn thing about it. "Henley, what's going on?"
"You tell me, boss. Your kid calls me in the middle of the goddamn night freaking out because you're gonna dump him on the side of the road for the local LEOs to find—"
"My kid?" Dylan repeats, sounding bewildered, before exhaling roughly. "Henley, clearly you care about him—"
"Damn straight. You did, too, until you decided to wake up and ruin his life." That's a bit uncharitable. Hypnosis or brainwashing or whatever this is removes the whole "choice" element from the equation, but she's too furious to care. She doesn't think she'll stop being angry for a while. Not that she cares. She's got plenty to say. "You might not trust him, and you're gonna regret that whenever you wake up from this, but you know me. Trust me. You're compromised. Something's wrong with you, all of you, and I don't want you doing or saying anything else to hurt him, clear? Or I ruin you. All of you."
"We're not trying to hurt him," Dylan says sharply, sternly. "He broke into a secure safehouse and scared the shit out of the rest of the team when they found him, Hen. We're just trying to get him Stateside and out of our hair."
A noble idea, maybe. Even a merciful one, especially for Dylan Shrike, who doesn't take kindly at all to his people being endangered. If Henley was in a more forgiving mood, she might even say it's encouraging. The fact that the kind of man who nursed a grudge for thirty years and systematically tore apart the lives of his enemies opted simply to send someone who endangered his team away instead of tearing him to shreds means that there's at least a shred of compassion in there, some instinct that gives a shit about the kid falling apart in his "secure safehouse" rearing its head.
She's not in a forgiving mood, though. He won't be when he remembers. None of them will. "Congratulations," she snaps. "You found a better way to get him there than leaving him at the mercy of Interpol and erasing the last two years. If you don't get him to me safely, I swear to God—"
"Who do you think we are? We're not going to hurt him."
Henley barks a laugh at that, bitter and burning. You already have. "You're gonna hate yourself for this later, you know."
There's a long, slow pause. "We're missing something."
"You're missing him." She grits her teeth. "You get a one-time pass 'cause you probably haven't had time to contact the Eye or check your files or do a modicum of research. You want to protect them. Problem is, Dylan, he's one of them, and you don't know what you're taking away."
Because the rest of them—they all came from something. They had funds, connections, audiences to fall back on, ways to ensure they survived and kept a fraction of their fame and prestige and dignity. Jack didn't start with any of that, didn't even start with a safe place to land. Magic was their art, but their success meant his survival. Taking that away from him, leaving him alone, and wiping his memories and leaving him to deal with the consequences of those crimes regardless puts him in more danger than she knows Dylan's ever wanted for the kid. More danger than any of them have wanted for him. They've got more than enough enemies willing to take advantage of a confused, scared kid with a public connection to the Eye and no memory of it whatsoever, and that's without
Losing their team, losing the Eye, would break something in the others. It would destroy Jack.
"Talk to whoever you need to," she says finally. "Do whatever research it takes to prove that you forgot him, and then start fixing it. Mentalists, psychologists, surgeons, I don't care. Hell, ask whoever greenlit your plan for our first show with the Eye about Jack Wilder and see what they come up with, but I don't want to hear from any of you until you've gotten your shit together. I mean it, Dylan. The more you do to him, the harder it's gonna be for you to come back from it when you find a way out of this."
You're never going to forgive yourself for this. None of you are. Henley's throat seizes up as she imagines it—headlines proclaiming that Jack Wilder of the Four Horsemen was caught, that he's claiming amnesia, footage of him looking confused, terrified, his face empty of his usual alertness and mischief, the horror and the guilt and the grief she'd feel, the way the others would've fallen apart when someone finally clued them in to what they lost. He will. Of course he will. He loves you too much. But the rest of you? No, you're never gonna forgive yourselves.
"Keep him safe." There's fire in her chest, rage and adrenaline burning her up from the inside out. "For me, if not for him. Keep him safe, and be whatever passes for nice with the lot of you these days, and remind yourself that he's a person even if you don't remember him, because if I find out that you did anything to him between now and when he gets off that plane, I'll tear down everything you've built and leave you buried in the rubble."
They're two of a kind after all, her and Dylan Shrike. Vicious, vindictive, unable to pull their punches when it comes to revenge and more than able to hold a grudge. She's like him, and she's like Danny, and it's no wonder that she couldn't stay, really—two of them on a team is bad enough, but three is asking for trouble.
None of that matters right now, though. Nothing matters except for getting Jack here safely, and that's a cause Henley is more than happy to dedicate all of her energy towards.
Roughly thirteen hours later, Henley's standing in a private hangar in LAX as promised.
It helps, really, to know so many people both inside and outside of the law. It was easy to get the forged documents on short notice, easier still to bat her eyelashes and make sure there was a jet at Heathrow to pick him up. She got him a real cushy deal, too. First class treatment, private lounges, the works. She's pretty sure it didn't put a dent in the whole storm of terrible things he's experiencing, but at least it gave him a safe place to rest before the plane took off, and then plenty of comfort and privacy on the ten-hour trip across the Atlantic. She hopes he got a little bit of sleep, even though she can't imagine that it came easily no matter how much luxury she tried to surround him with. Losing almost everyone you love and the life you bled to build in the span of a single night will do that.
She didn't sleep much herself, though she's well past the point of being upset about it. Dread sinks icy teeth into her spine whenever she spares a second to think about what would've happened if she didn't pick up the phone, if she said she'd deal with it in the morning. It would've been too late then, probably. Jack would've either bolted before he could be hypnotized and wouldn't trust her to answer, or he'd be stuck in a cell with no memory of who the Horsemen were, Henley included. The news would've already made headlines, spread across the world, and the thought of it makes her stomach churn.
She swallows it, the dread and the panic and the bile, because there's no way in hell she's throwing up over her nice leather boots. She swallows it the same way she's been swallowing it all night, and reminds herself that it didn't happen. Jack called her, and she picked up, and she was able to get him here. She's been up all night making the arrangements, getting him an alias, proper ID. She's added him to her apartment complex's list of approved guests and made a note that he'll be staying with her for the foreseeable future, freshened up the guest room and stocked the fridge with things she knows he likes. She had to stop herself from painting the whole room blue, though. There's this horrible, clawing impulse inside of her to do whatever it takes to fix this, to make him feel better, just a little bit less alone, warring against the logical part of her brain that says there's no way to do that. Painting the place his favorite color might cheer him up a little, but there's no undoing what he's just been through.
Besides, the paint wouldn't have dried fast enough for him to sleep there, and he's gonna need to sleep, she reasons, watching the passenger entry doors of the gleaming jet silently slide open. Henley pushes her sunglasses up onto her head, tucks her hands into her pockets, fixes a bright, beaming smile to her face. Jack's gonna be upset enough as it is. He doesn't need to see how close she was to panicking. She knows exactly what his mind is going to do with that information, and the last thing she wants is for him to sit around blaming himself for inconveniencing her.
She'd rather be inconvenienced than lose him.
The tarmac and flight crews make quick work of the stairs, lowering them down easily and waiting a couple moments before declaring them stable. A flight attendant appears briefly in the doorway, her smile perfectly dazzling, before she glances to the side and softens a little. Henley can't make out what she's saying, but she knows who she's talking to. There's no way she could ever forget. The silhouette that appears in the doorway is as familiar to her as her own heartbeat, and her chest aches a little as he picks his way down the staircase, all that surefooted confidence knocked right out of him.
Jack looks wrecked. He's clutching his backpack like a lifeline instead of wearing it, crushing it to his chest as though it'll turn to smoke and slip right through his fingers if he loosens his grip for so much as a second. His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot, his skin sickly-pale. Distantly, Henley wonders if he's eaten at all in the last fifteen-or-so hours—nearly twenty-four, maybe, since he said he woke up to the Horsemen lurking outside his door and waiting to throw him out. Probably not. She doubts he has any appetite at all. He doesn't so much as turn to look at the flight crew, doesn't smile that charming, mischievous smile as he thanks them or slip anything out of their pockets or spin a card around his fingers. He just makes his way down from the plan, every step reduced to more of a tiny, uncertain shuffle, as though he's expecting the ground to give way beneath him at any given moment.
That ache in her chest turns to pain, as sure and sharp as a knife, and Henley grins a little wider, a little brighter instead of letting the cracks show.
It takes a couple of seconds for his eyes to find her, though it feels longer, time stretching out as slow as molasses. There's no recognition in them for a moment, nothing but dull exhaustion and muted terror, his body curling in on itself. She watches his shoulders hunch, his eyes glaze over, landing firmly on the ground, and her heart sinks in her chest. "Jack," she calls. Come on, kid. It's me. You know me. I see you. I'm not letting you fall. "You okay?"
Stupid question. The stupidest question she could've asked, actually, because there's no way in hell that he's okay. She can tell that at a glance. It shouldn't get a response out of him—but his gaze darts up towards her, and then his eyes go wide, the backpack slipping out of his hands and landing on the ground with a dull thud, and he's barreling towards her—his face crumples, and she watches it, watches the attempt at indifference shatter and watches his eyes well up with tears, his body already shaking, the first sob already rattling through him—
Henley flings her arms around him as he collides with her, rocking back on her heels but refusing to budge, and tightens her grip as he buries his face in her shoulder.
He's crying. He's sobbing, clinging to her like a lifeline already, hands wound in the fabric of her sweater like she'll disappear as soon as he lets go. Henley wraps one arm more tightly around his middle, brings her other hand up to cup the back of his head gently. "Hi, honey," she whispers, and a shudder runs through him, shaking him from head to toe, a wordless wail pulled from his lungs as though wrenched out by fishhooks. It echoes around the hangar despite the din of the airport, the rumbling of engines and the constant hum of electricity, and she watches the various flight and ground crews busy themselves with pretty much anything else as Jack's chest heaves.
There's gonna be a stain on her sweater. It's nice. Cashmere. She should probably worry about that. She should probably care, like, even a little bit, but Jack curls into her, still bawling uncontrollably and the mere concept of pushing him away becomes an impossibility, something that simply doesn't exist. She rests her cheek against the crown of his head instead, stroking her fingers through soft, unkempt dark hair. "I know." She doesn't, not really, but she knows enough to understand why he's falling apart, and that has to be enough for now. "I've got you, I promise. I've got you."
Jack shakes his head wildly without lifting it, a shuddering sob pulling from his chest, and Henley closes her eyes, swaying a little. "I've got you," she repeats softly. "You understand? I've got you. I'm not leaving you. We're gonna get in the car that's waiting for us, and stop for milkshakes on the way home—" not her place, because it's not just hers now, it's home for as long as he needs it to be "—and tacos, too, 'cause there's this place I've been meaning to show you,and I'm gonna introduce Todd at the security desk to my little brother—" there's another aching cry at that, broken and hollow, and she exhales and pretends it doesn't tremble as it leaves her lungs "—and we're gonna spend the whole day watching shitty action movies and not thinking, yeah? Just you and me, and I'm going to be right there the whole time. I'm not leaving. I know you."
I know you. I see you. You're my friend. You're family. I'm not letting you go.
Eventually, the sobs taper off into shaky, whimpering breaths, and Jack lifts his head, his face blotchy and sticky and kind of a mess. He's not a pretty crier. Neither is she. "Sorry," he croaks.
"Don't apologize." Jesus, he loses everything he's ever wanted in the span of a few hours, and the first thing he says to her is hey. sorry for crying about it? She's gonna have to get that self-esteem back up for sure. Maybe take a little time off of performing, or see if she can rope him into it, get him some of the validation that comes with an adoring audience. "Like I said, I'm not going anywhere."
She's a runner. She knows that. He's the one that's loyal, the one that would stay no matter what, the one that believed in the cause. He's a sweet kid. He's good. Better than her and Daniel and Merritt, that's for sure.
She's not running from this, though. She's not leaving him behind. There's nowhere else she needs to be, nowhere else she wants to be. Jack needs her, so she's gonna be right here.
Jack shakes his head again, and Henley catches at his hands, squeezing them tight until his eyes find hers again. "You still like black and white milkshakes, right? There's a place that puts cookies on top of them, like the ones we'd get in New York. They're a little crazy, but good. They've got other flavors too," she adds quickly, just in case he suddenly hates black and white milkshakes and she's made the worst call in the history of the world and everything's about to fall apart again. "Or we can do something else. I know I just gave you a big spiel about our plan and everything, but we don't have to do that. We can go be touristy assholes for a bit, or check out a museum, or stay inside and be garden slugs for a while. Totally up to you."
He blinks at her, slow and uncertain. Henley tries not to grimace—but the corner of his mouth twitches up, the ghost of a smile crossing his face. "I like black and white milkshakes."
Oh, thank God.
It's not a perfect fix. It's barely even a fix at all. Hell, it's barely even a start—but it is a start, even if Jack clings to her hand the second he's retrieved his backpack and quietly hands her his phone and asks her to change the lock screen picture from a blurry selfie of him and the other Horsemen to a default picture so he won't get upset when he has to look at it. Even if he barely touches his food despite letting her order it, and curls up as close to her on the couch as he can get, terrified that she'll forget him the second she leaves the room. Even if he falls asleep halfway through the first Mission Impossible without so much as blinking, even though it usually has him completely enraptured.
It's a start.