do you get along with henry?
askbox shenanigans ft. anonymous
the first time she meets him, she doesn’t know what to do; here’s this kid - about cj’s age, and harry’s height - who has emma’s keen eyes and an air about him that reminds her of her own mum. (this is before she learns who his pops is and then it all slots into place and makes sense. but we’re not quite there yet.) his smile is sweet and his words are honey on the tongue but his tongue is sharp and his wit is even sharper and harriet’s decided to go to bat for him right there and then, even though it’s decidedly not a good idea because she’s seen battles about territory and she’s seen turf wars; she’s been in some, herself, and this kid looks like he’s been through his own boatload of troubles and he looks ready to fight in any capacity.
he reminds her, a little bit, of the people that she used to know: he reminds her of jay, of gil, and hell, he even reminds her a little bit of harry. which makes it so much harder for her to default back to ‘captain mode’ as cj jokingly calls it.
they are - in a way - both the oldest and with that comes a lot of responsibility. with that also comes a lot of baggage. (henry, she learns, had to watch his friends stay stagnant for years while he grew, and in return, she tells him about how she grew up and what she had to do to survive.) granted, she omits some of the harsher truths and bends some others, if only to make the way she grew up more palatable because it’s the least she can do for him.
it’s this push and pull that reminds her of before, before she made her way to storybrooke; before she settled in, before she realised that everything might not be what it seems in this town - squeaky clean as it looks. before she realised that she might not have a place here.
the olive branch gets extended in the form of reading x men comics down at the docks.
“ah like th’ woman wit’ th’ accent an’ th’ gloves,” is what she offers at some point and henry turns to her, smiles that brilliant smile that leaves harriet’s heart panging and her insides aching for a family she’ll never see again, for arms that’ll never hold her again, no matter how much she wants to be held.
(she looks at him and sees her mum in the way he chuckles or defiantly juts out his chin.)
“that’s rogue,” he says and launches into such a dizzying explanation that harriet can scarcely keep up with, but she remembers the way his explanation ends. it ends with: “she’s my favorite too.” and somehow, someway harriet finds that they have more in common than she ever thought possible.
