despite his family dying years ago, more than a decade ago, there has always been an invisible thread binding him to them, tying him to the remnants of a life once lived, to the tatters of his youth that stick to his skin as if he’s a entity running on excess fuel. he never thought he would last much longer, never thought the world between here and where the finish line would be spanned over a very large amount of space anymore. but still he kept going, driven by some sort of survival instinct, something that kept him moving, that made him want to somehow, in whatever way he could, get back at the people who destroyed his entire life.
and then things changed. he found peace in a small engine room on a beat up ship with no particular destination. he found peace within the metal-alloy plating carrying him through space. he found peace and a home in a ship that would perhaps burn to a crisp, but would never let her soul slip into oblivion if there was still a chance for henry to fix her, to put her back together and help her fly again. there’s an infinity in machines; a way to fix them over and over again, to replace parts with newer pieces until they outlive you by at least as many years as you spent working on them. this is the peace he found; the knowledge that there was one thing in the world that could not be taken from him before he would go himself.
he doesn’t think of the time when he left, doesn’t think of the crazy hunt across the galaxy until he found the person he went looking for. he doesn’t think of the months after, slowly nursing the man back to health, slowly trying to carve out a piece in the universe for the two of them. he doesn’t think of the moment when the realisation came that he’d gone and done something stupid again. he doesn’t think of the pain he felt when he packed up his things, landed their spaceship on one of the major travel hub planets in the verse and boarded something else - anything else - just to get out of there. he doesn’t think of how for a long time it felt like he left a part of him somewhere else.
at some point he ran into the doc then, two wandering souls trying to find purchase, and so they’d decided to travel together. he never asked what doc was running from, doc never asked what he was going towards. they just went, and went, and kept going. and then one day... one day they ended up on a planet doomed to head towards its own destruction, and doc had been asked to heal someone, and henry had found... something. his connection to machines, perhaps. a new challenge he couldn’t say no to, because no beaumondian engineer in their right mind could ever see a mech and decide to leave without getting a closer look. and perhaps he imagined the look on his father’s face if they would’ve seen this together, and perhaps it was just easier to lose himself in what he knew best for a while rather than to think of anything else.
but a planet is a planet. a planet is a sitting duck when someone’s out to target it. there is no moving in unexpected directions or hiding in unseen corners when you’re on a planet. and a planet blows up a whole lot more easily than most people think it does.
so they left. they left and they set a new course. for the first time in the months they traveled together, henry told the doc of his home, of his baby flying out among the stars, and his wish to board her again. and so they’d followed every trail, every lead, until eventually he’d managed to pick up her signal again with his very own tracker, and they’d followed her across the black, until eventually they’d found her on this or the other planet, and henry had finally been able to put his feet back on home soil, bring himself back to safety, find peace again in the steady thrumming of her engine and the dependable rumble of her gears working.
there has always been an invisible thread binding him to his family, tying him to the remnants of a lost youth, of a time when he was still naive and innocent, when he could still afford to be naive and innocent. and then his sister walked back into his life, and contrary to what one would think would happen in the event of gaining back that which he lost, the thread snapped.
he sits with his back against the metal plating like the constant rumble of the ship will somehow chase the emptiness out of him, like serenity will be able to clear all the doubt from his mind, but she can’t. it is as if, like a ship without a pilot, he’s just floating out in the black, directionless, clueless, useless. the more serenity is coming back to full life around him as he works on her parts and tinkers on her pieces, the emptier it seems he grows, as if he’s letting his life force bleed into the ship, as if he’s giving it whatever is left of him, because what is he going to do with it anyway?
harper walked into his life, into the peace he’d carved out for himself, like a memory of everything bad that happened. rather than soothe him with her familiarity, rather than warm him with the recognition, she is an invasion on the home he’s made for himself. she is a stranger stepping into his most treasured space, but a stranger whose familiarity stabs at the softest, sorest parts of his core. a stranger who is a walking reminder suddenly, once more, of everything he has lost, of every little bit of all he once treasured that will never be the way it was again. and it was easier, he thinks, to handle the constant nagging pressure of that loss, when he wasn’t reminded of it every single time. when his sister wasn’t there with him like some caricature version of herself. it was easier when at least his memories were free from the reality of life; that nothing good can ever stay unbroken.
serenity hums all around him, steady and unchanging, but the peace he used to find here, in the heart of her, is gone. because just like his sister, just like everything good that he managed to find in his life, he now knows she, too, can be corrupted, will be corrupted, will become something entirely different from what he once knew.
it’s only a matter of time,
and the clock is ticking.
