You know Ray had to have some sort of breakdown when he saw Henry again. Like, last time he saw him Henry was a legal adult who was taller than him and a hero in his own right. Now he has to look down at this small blond child who still looks up at him with hero worship.
Oh, he'd have to absolutely terrified. One of his greatest fears had always been his own mortality, either by aging or losing his powers. But up until that moment the closest Ray has had to an actual near death experience was on the blimp. And if something/someone had managed to kill him while he still had his powers? The man would be jumping at shadows.
The thing is, this is post-blimp DF era Ray. And DF era Ray fundamentally treats DF differently than he treated Henry, especially in regards to their own safety. He's had his scared straight moment on that blimp where after he refuses to let DF fight without their powers and Mika calls him out on it he says 'yeah, and he almost died a 1000 times'. So he seems well aware he didnt take Henry's safety into account as much as he should have.
So here he has this tiny baby bird of a Henry, who idea of fighting this early on very much just involves throwing himself bodily at the bad guy. There's gonna be some crisis of conscience for him. Like, he's not gonna bench Henry at this point but he's gotta do something to protect him more (like find a way to give him powers earlier).
This particular WIP is just something I had written for the time travel AU I've posted about before. This is set at what would be around the end of the fic.
Shout out to @qcoded who made some fantastic art for this idea here. You can thank them for this wip post since their post inspired to me to make it.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Ray props his feet up on the counter and rests the tablet on his lap, “there was a kid I met yesterday. At the museum heist.” The video he's watches loops around again.
Gooch pauses, holding one of Omar's leaves in one hand and spray bottle in the other. He looks at Ray. Ray doesn't look back. “When you say a kid?”
“Thirteen.”
“Thirteen?” Omar makes a noise of disapproval when Gooch sets down the spray bottle to stare at Ray. In response, he reaches out to pet him absently. Omar snaps at his hand and hisses. “I thought you said you would never have a sidekick that young.”
“I think I already did,” Ray says with an incredulous laugh. He rubs a hand across his face, his eyes never leaving the screen. Nothing has changed from the first time he watched it but he can't stop. He had made peace at not seeing Henry again years ago, with nothing but a strip of photo booth photos his father never knew about, a set of uniform colors, and his own memories as proof he was ever even there. So just seeing him again, even so young and so small (and god is he small), is more than he ever thought he'd have.
“I'm afraid I don't understand.”
In response all Ray does is flip the tablet around, showing him the screen. The security footage is surprisingly crisp and clearing, a twenty five second clip running on a loop. Ray pauses it at the eighteen second mark and it catches one of the students as they were turning around to look back at the fight.
Gooch blinks and stares at the screen for a moment before pulling out his glasses and taking a closer look. The picture on the screen doesn't change. “Is that...?”
“Meet Henry Hart.” He's aware the grin on his face is just a shade away from manic but the war of joy, disbelief, and fear inside him is too much for him to care.
I'm kind of on the fence about how to do that. Part of me wants me to have Henry realize it when he gets back to the present (for the confrontation) but part of me wants him to have that realization while he's still in the past.
Like, past!Ray is concerned because his shiny new friend is having a breakdown and has locked himself in the bathroom. All he knows is that it has something to do with the hero that Henry is the sidekick for. Henry's very tight lipped about the future but he has mentioned things about the hero he works with and Ray doesn't like any of it. He's not jealous, he's not. Just because he knows he'd be a better hero to Kid Danger's sidekick doesn't mean he's jealous.
Meanwhile, Henry is in the bathroom spiraling because is this why Ray hired him? Has he been trying to live up the memory of his current self? Has Ray been lying to him this whole time?
thinking about a time travel au where the time jerker sends henry/kid danger back in time about 20 years where he ends up befriending newly active hero captain man.
I have a half written post in my draft about this, expanding on the idea that I may end up posting.
So, this is a 18-19 year old Ray who is very new, like only been working as a contract hero for a couple of months new. Ray doesn't have much in the way of actual friends due to his upbringing and his dad is still in the picture. He doesn't have the Captain Man confidence yet or even the Captain Man uniform. He's spent years training but hasn't been on the streets very long.
Along comes this 16 year old kid from the future who has years more field experience and mostly on the job training. There's at best 3 years in between them instead of the 20 Henry is used to. For Ray, this is a peer.
And they get along very well. It's a no brainer for Henry. Ray is still Ray at 19 or 35. He knows Ray. But for Ray, who has this new hero-sidekick-peer-friend who is completely on the same wavelength as him, this is an absolute novelty. He's having the time of his life. Henry is stuck there for a while (like weeks or maybe months depending on how long I wanna drag it out) so Ray has time to get very attached.
so Normal about this moment in Back to the Danger part 1
like. throughout the entire scene, Ray keeps himself between Drex and Henry. not once does he put his arm down, nor let Henry get in front of him. look.
I feel like there were times where Henry had to defend Ray to Charlotte and Jasper because even by their standards, Ray would cross serious lines, and he just sounded like that one audio that goes "Okay, so what if he's the devil, Rick? At least the devil has a JOB, at least he's active in the community 😒"
i find it pretty interesting how henry & ray have been consistently shown to get jealous over each other due to the attachment they have, but the way it manifests really goes to show how they express their feelings about the other.
Henry's jealousy is much more open that Ray's. Still subtle in a way, but off the top of my head, I can think of "Hour of Power" as an example. Henry is shown to be visibly upset when he finds out about Drex, and has no problem expressing his jealousy and berating Ray over it for almost the whole episode. It's not only fitting for how his character was portrayed at the time, but the fact that he was still pretty young. (Although, I'd imagine that jealousy lessened as he started becoming an adult and being more distant from Ray.)
Meanwhile, Ray's jealousy was still pretty apparent, but definitely more of a "wait, is this just Ray being Ray?". I noticed his tended to be shown much more through his body language and how he acted rather than saying it out right (and if he did use any words it's not like he would ever admit it, lol. I have an example on the tip of my tongue of this but i can't remember it 😭). Although he did express his fixation + attachment to Henry in a way, it was never direct.
I find it pretty interesting the dynamics switched when Danger Force came along though LMFAO... now that Henry was pretty much gone for most of the time, that protective wall Ray sorta had when it came to expressing his emotions broke down completely. It was really obvious in "Return of the Kid", where he was all snappy with the kids when they interacted with Henry for like a solid minute 😭 I quote;
"Alright, that ends your business with Henry, he's mine now."
Can't remember the episode name, but there was another where he got jealous about Henry picking up other people's calls but not his so. That too.
Can we just appreciate the fact that Ray's weakness is literally just this kid who started taking adults down since he was 13? Villains are terrified of him yet the adult that they SHOULD be scared off is in fact the second issue in their mind. Ray cannot say no to Henry. He needs no convincing from him.
Yes you're so right Ray will do pretty much anything for Henry and it's hilarious because you know he wouldn't do that kind of stuff for anyone else. Generally self-centered man who will whine and groan but will eventually do batshit insane things like pursuing Henry's weirdo teacher multiple times or attending Jasper's birthday party as captain man just because Henry asked him to. I don't think he even realises how willingly he inconveniences himself for Henry
i really like in fiction when they're like oh no!!! the bad guys are about to win!!! and Character Who Keeps Trying To Sacrifice Themself For The Greater Good is like. gentlemen i have an idea
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