Who: Henry and Revy What: Monster Hunting When: Last day of the Silent Hill Plot Where Out and about Warnings/Rating Violence and language Status: Complete!
Since coming back from Silent Hill (or South Ashfield, he couldn’t be sure), Henry had ventured out of his apartment twice. The first time was to go visit Kenzi at the hospital. That was when he had discovered the fog thick and heavy blanketing the city and how abandoned everything was, how rundown it looked. It had been weird. He found his phone either had no service or simply refused to work. So he had gone home to send her an email since his computer still apparently worked. That was when he saw the posts. The posts about the fog, how creepy everyone thought it was, that people were missing. News reporters and weather analysts were equally baffled not only by the fog’s appearance, but how it lingered and bled night into day.
Henry had spent the next several hours listening and reading everything he could about the fog, hoping praying his fears weren’t true. The more he read the more he realized that it was. His dreams had become a reality.
Buzzing in his apartment followed by the clock on his wall going completely nuts drove Henry out a second time. He hadn’t even realized his head had been throbbing and heart pounding until he was outside in the cold dank air.
He tried looking for people. Anyone, really, but mostly Revy and Rapunzel. His friends. But his efforts had proved to be in vain. His phone refused to let him call or text anyone when he was outside. So, he wandered. He’d only gone a couple of blocks towards Revy’s apartment when his phone started to crackle and he saw it.
It wasn’t like the sniffer dogs or the hummers he’d seen in his dreams. It was much larger than those. Person sized and shaped. Two heads shared a neck, split in the center. One head was facing the other, mouth wide open and face twisted as if in some kind of perpetual scream. A disembodied hand clamped over it’s eyes. Two similar disembodied hands clamped over the ears of the second head. It faced forward, eyes closed and face twisted as if it were in pain the other head couldn’t see. It appeared to have four arms wrapped around its body. At first Henry thought it was trying to keep itself warm out here in the cold, wet fog. However, as he got closer he saw that one set of arms had been chained in place. They seemed to be clutching at each other’s heads, as if both entities trapped in a single body were at war with each other and had fallen into some kind of stalemate.
Somehow it noticed Henry, standing there and staring. It lunged after him, the two arms that were free reached out towards him. Long gnarled fingers grasping to take hold.
Henry screamed and ran away. He ran back to his apartment, not daring to look over his shoulder until he had his door closed and locked behind him. Coward. He stayed there several more hours just staring at his computer screen, ignoring texts that buzzed on his phone. He had done this. He had no idea how, but he had. He went into his bathroom and looked at the hole. It seemed unremarkable now. He heard nothing from within, felt nothing tugging on him. He’d served whatever purpose it needed him for.
His clock started to go crazy again. Henry had never set it’s alarm before, but it started to go off shrilly as the digital numbers flashed forward, then backward, than forward again at random. Lights in his living room flickered and moaning could be heard coming from his walls.
Henry had no idea what to do, but he had to stop this. He told Rapunzel over the network that he was going to put an end to all of it before leaving his apartment again, this time with the gun his Dreams had so graciously gifted him with. He had no idea where he was going or even what he was supposed to do, but he had a feeling it had to do with that two-headed monster he had seen. So, he went looking for it.
Like a head on collision, Revy had turned the corner (now knowing where the fuck she was, exactly) and had almost walked right into the very fucker she’d been searching for this entire time. Gale had been the one other human being that she found wandering around the haze of weird; they teamed up and conquered whatever the hell was that thing that came at them, though both emerged in a not-so pristine state. Cuts and bruises, a couple bloodier wounds. After their separation there’d been a clinic she stumbled into, and she’d patched herself up to the best of her ability, popped a pill, and went right back out into the fray of creepy crawlies that had this habit of almost landing on her head.
“You fucking shithead,” she growled, splotches of red seeping through the white wrappings on her harm, but she was functional and energized and pissed. With a dash of worry. Really, she’d raised a gun-equipped hand as if she was ready to pistol whip the shit out of him. Hugs were the socially acceptable forms of showing relief that someone was alright, but her knee jerk reaction was rage. “Where the fuck have you been, huh?!”
Henry flinched a little, but he didn’t recoil. He deserved to be yelled at, maybe even smacked. She had told him not to crawl into any holes he found and he’d done it anyway. This, all of this was his fault. He saw the blood on her clothes, the marks on her face, the bandages on her arm. That was his fault too.
He felt awful, worse than he ever had in his entire life. He wanted at once to tell her everything, just blurt it out and suffer the consequences. At the same time he wanted to run away. He didn’t deserve to have Revy as a friend. Not after all of this. He didn’t deserve to have Rapunzel as a friend either. Maybe this was where he belonged.
“Silent Hill,” he mumbled in response. He didn’t look directly at her. Instead his eyes were on the bandages around her arm. “What...what happened to your arm?”
Revy had figured this was his. They were close, alright, they talked about his dreams plenty of times because of the fucked up, mysterious and horror-like nature. His description of how it all felt, how it all seemed, came to life here - and so did the monsters. “I found a guy looking for you - and some kind of monster found us, but we killed it,” she explained, amber eyes tightened.
What the hell was wrong with him?
“It’s just a couple scratches - what the hell is wrong, Henry? Do you know how to fix things?” Revy waved her gun in the air, gesturing towards the silver plague that had blanketed the OC whole. On the bright side he was alive, he didn’t look hurt, but something needed to be done before they came to face with something bigger and nastier.
It looked more than a couple of scratches to Henry. He wished he had his medkit with him instead of that stupid pistol tucked into the waistband of his pants. Revy had fought a monster. Others were probably going to be fighting monsters too. It wasn’t fair. He had to put an end to it, and he wasn’t going to do that standing there shamefully avoiding Revy’s eyes.
He screwed up his courage and looked up at her. “I fucked up,” he told her. “There is a hole in my bathroom and I know you told me not to go in it, but I did. I couldn’t help it. When I did some...something got out. That’s what this is,” he gestured around him to indicate the fog. “I don’t know how to fix it. But I’m going to try. There’s a two-headed creature out there. I think it has to do with that. I’m going to find it.”
It was a little more than a couple of scratches, yet it was nothing she couldn’t handle - Revy was a foul-mouthed tank. “So, wait,” she interjected, pointing the gun at him. Not as a threat, but as some sort of...conversation piece. “You crawled into Orange County’s fucking glory hole?! Especially when we discussed you not going into suspicious holes that show up out of fucking no where?!
Oh, fuckin’ christ. Seriously, Henry? A sigh growled from her throat. Revy rubbed her brow with the back of her hand, like she was doing her best to do away with a migraine. Of course he’d crawl into it. What was done was done. She could backhand him after this was done and over with, because apparently there was a monster.
One he shouldn’t face alone.
She was mad at him and she had every reason to be mad at him. He was mad at himself. HIs eyes flickered to the gun muzzle and back. He wasn’t afraid she’d shoot him. In fact, shooting him would have been letting him get off easy.
“I’m sorry, Revy,” he said. “I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t want to, believe me. It was like..I don’t know...like I wasn’t in control. But I promise, I’m going to fix it.” He still didn’t know how, but the more he thought, the more he found himself thinking back to that two headed monster from before. It had looked, of all things, familiar. Henry felt as though it had been waiting for him and was still waiting for him. He stepped around Revy and kept walking. Was he nervous? Yes. Was he scared? Hell yes, but he wasn’t going to run back to his apartment. Not this time.
What was done was done, no amount of scowling or yanking Henry’s balls from his own mouth wasn’t going to bring the happy goddamn sun back to the OC. He had a way of ‘fixing’ this, supposedly, and it seemed like a good idea to make sure he didn’t get his sorry ass killed in the process. So, for now, Revy wouldn’t shoot him, but he better as hell give her something for her to shoot at.
“This two-headed creature - killing it’s going to end this?” she asked, the killer glower lessening. “I’m not going to let you go by yourself, fuckhead. Only because I’ve got dibs on nailing your ass to the ground after this is done.” Alright, maybe she was being a bit harsh, she was pissed, but Revy genuinely didn’t want him to die or had any literal plans to kill him - despite the words.
Backhand him, yes.
Murder, nah.
Scare him to the point where she shat himself?
...probably.
Henry looked back over his shoulder, shaggy brown hair hanging in his eyes. “I think so,” he told her. He was a little surprised she wanted to come with him. He did feel better knowing the biggest baddest bitch he knew was coming along to help, even if she had threatened to nail his ass to the ground. Henry had no idea what that even meant, and it didn’t sound pleasant, but he figured it was a reasonable price to pay after putting her through all this shit. He would probably be getting a lot of backlash once this was over. That was fair.
He stopped walking so she could catch up. He looked her over again, and again wished he’d had the foresight to bring his medkit with him. It was too late to get it now, besides, he wasn’t even sure he knew which way was his apartment even was at this point and going back there where the air had been thick and things had threatened to crawl out of his walls wasn’t exactly appealing.
He took a deep breath of thick damp fog and started walking again, this time with Revy at his side. They’d only gotten about a block before Henry’s phone started to crackle with static.
The quicker they got this over with, the sooner she’d get a chance to take a nap. Assuming neither of them needed to be hospitalized for blood loss and fatalistic wounds, anyway, and the walking seemed to have had a dampening effect on her temper. Because now it was less of ‘aimless wandering around’ and more ‘aimless wandering around with a light at the end,’ which was an improvement.
Cutlasses tightly gripped, Revy kept protectively close. Especially after the noise - because it wasn’t just Henry’s phone that began sputtering that warning. Hers did, too. This time she had a better idea of what to expect, and she’d shoot whatever the fuck it was in the head - smash the skull, obliterate the brain, all in true horror movie-esque rule.
“It’s about to get ugly,” she scowled. “Don’t get out of my sight, you got it?”
“I got it,” Henry said. He was unaware of people uniting together only to become lost or separated in the fog after a time. But he had no intention of straying too far away from Revy at this point. He pulled the gun from his waistband and checked it the way she had shown him. Fully loaded, round in the chamber, safety where it was supposed to be. Henry’s heart fluttered. He’d never shot anything that wasn’t a paper target on the other end of a shooting range. He hadn’t been a bad shot at the range. He wondered if that was some kind of dream influence. He’d only just gotten the pistol in his dreams and he hadn’t used it very often. Bullets were hard to come by.
Something was coming into view a few yards ahead of them silhouetted in the fog. Henry’s breath caught in his throat. He knew what it was even before it fully came into view. It looked as though it was wandering blindly and aimlessly in the middle of the street, sort of bumbling around making strange low-grade moaning noises.
Henry stopped walking. His breath was caught hard in his chest. He felt very cold and even with Revy standing right next to him, he felt very lost and very alone.
It seemed to know they were there. It altered its wandering course and started walking towards them.
“You weren’t kidding about the two heads,” she lowly growled, knuckles almost white with how tight she was gripping her guns. Gale at least seemed like he had combat training - and no offense to Henry here, but cameras were his area of expertise. Not skilfully handling a firearm and making sure every round of bullets shot made some damage.
Those fucking bomb arrows would be nice right about now.
Standing their like a pair of goddamn morons wouldn’t help their case. It was stand around and hope that the beast wanted to have tea time, or go at it with literal guns blazing and hoping they didn’t get enough physical damage to bleed out in the fucking street.
Bracing herself, positioned right in front of Henry like she was a voluntary meatshield, Revy began firing.
Henry couldn’t exactly explain why, but he was thinking of all the times he’d been shuttled back and forth between his parents’ homes like some kind of prized possession neither of them knew what to do with, but couldn’t stand the other to have. He thought of every time a new school year started, how he stood alone in the halls surrounded by people he barely knew, listening to them talk and laugh amongst themselves, longing to join in, but getting lost and paralyzed in a sea of in-jokes and shared experiences he had missed out on. He’d spent countless afternoons that stretched into evenings on his own. How lonely he had been until finally accepting something his grandmother had once said. The context was lost, but the words had stayed with him forever: “Some people are simply destined to roam this world alone.” How fitting that was for Henry, who’d lived in two places at once and at the same time could call neither one of them home. He’d always just been on the outside looking in, too awkward and clumsy to make his presence known.
The sound of Revy’s guns jarred Henry out of a cold trance. He stood stupidly staring at her, at first not understanding what the hell she was doing.
Moaning had turned into unholy growling. The monster raced forward towards Revy. Her bullets slowed it down at first before it seemed to become aware of what she was doing and tried to avoid them. It moved to either barrel through her, or grab her by the throat.
“No!” Henry screamed. He was moving without realizing it. “Leave her alone!”
Jesus fuck, that thing was fast. And not entirely phased by being shot, but at least there was a reaction - meaning shooting it hurt the beast(s?). Having it come this close was good. Real good. Meant she could keep blowing off the rounds from her gun in a more precise aim to the heads, up until it got too close for comfort. Revy did her best to move backwards, quick on her feet, shoot the fucker dead -
Then it gnarled its claws around her neck, having caught up, and air was constricted.
Still wouldn’t stop the bitch from wasting her bullets in a frenzy, until the pressure was so overwhelming one of the guns was dropped so she could try and pry that thing off her.
Henry’s eyes were saucers and his heart was a jackhammer. He felt as though he were moving through sludge that bogged him down. His only thought was that two headed monster had Revy. It had Revy. It would kill her. It was killing her. It was killing his best fucking friend.
He grabbed the monster by the arm and tried to yank it’s grip loose from Revy’s throat. It’s arms were thin and bony, it shouldn’t have had the strength they did. Henry yanked and pulled and to his amazement not only did the creature not let Revy go, it lifted her up. It lifted her just enough so that her feet dangled a few inches off the ground, but still high enough that she would strangle on her own weight pulling down.
Henry’s heart hammered faster. Revy was choking, he could hear her struggling for breath. It was a god awful sound that made Henry’s blood run ice cold. He saw her face turn splotchy and red as she clawed at the fingers clamped around her throat.
What did he do?! Henry wasn’t a fighter and he obviously didn’t have the strength to pull the monster off his friend. But he had to do something. He couldn’t hear Revy struggling to breath anymore and her arms and legs looked lifeless. Then he remembered the gun still clutched in his other hand. He raised it in a two handed grip and pressed the muzzle between the eyes of the grimacing head.
“Let her go!” He pulled the trigger and felt the gun kick back in his hands with enough force he felt it up his arms.
The bullet buried itself into the monster’s skull. One head screeched and the other one howled, but Henry had gotten the desired result. It released Revy, letting her body fall to the ground. Then it turned on Henry. One of the arms that he had previously assumed had been chained to it’s front lashed out and buried itself into Henry’s chest. No blood, no gore, it just slid right inside. Henry felt it clutch around what he assumed had to be his heart cold like an icicle and chilled him literally from the inside out.
Revy didn’t have an issue with death. Didn’t mean she looked for it on a regular, suicidal fucking basis, but every time those two guns were picked up and she went at something raining hellfire in the form of steel bullets, the risk was a reality - she’d come to terms with it years and years ago, because who gave a fuck if a gutter rat like her bit the dust? Another criminal statistic to rack up the numbers.
It didn’t mean she’d take it like a bitch though. She’d given it every kick, every scratch, every dig of her nails into the goddamn thing - and let it be known that she was strong. Lean muscle, physically fit, thunder thighs and biceps, and against another human? It’d been in her favor.
But this wasn’t human. It was a monster made flesh, teeth and jagged talons, and it’d all gotten dark for a minute there. Not permanently, thank fuck, but a strange in-and-out of consciousness sort of thing. Revy hardly felt the impact onto the ground, though she did feel the ragged, pained breaths trying to down that somewhat damaged throat. It hurt, her lungs burned like embers, and when she finally moved it was because of her body jolting at the coughing fit to clear her airways. Oxygen. Fuck, she needed to breathe and -
Why the fuck am I not dead?
It was so cold. With all the insanity that had just happened all Henry could really think was how cold it felt to have the monster’s hand inside him. It was a funny sensation, feeling something clasp around his heart. He didn’t think it possible, but he could feel it beating rapidly against the creature’s palm. It didn’t hurt, at least not at the moment and Henry felt an odd sort of peace along with the cold that had seeped through his body. Not a calm sort of peace. A kind of eerie peace of utter silence. Of being alone. Of being cut off from everything else. Of people talking, their mouths moving without voices just out of reach, as if on the other side of a great chasm. So quiet. So peaceful. Henry only felt cold until the monster started to squeeze. The silence was broken only by the choked cry that got stuck in his throat. Now there was pain.
He heard something on the ground near him now as well. Coughing, wheezing, gasping. Revy! She was alive! Henry tried to cry out in relief and joy, but the only noise he could make was a painful gasp.
It wasn’t until she blinked and squinted the splotchy haze from her eyes that she began to process just what the fuck was even happening. All senses were overloaded; pain and urgency, ragged, the desperate reach for a fallen weapon. Something, anything, but lucky her those hands were able to bring her close enough to one of her fallen guns.
And one was better than none.
Revy wanted to scream Henry’s name at the top of her lungs, though all that came out was a raspy sound of pitiful croaks that resembled nothing coherent. That monster - that fucking monster - was killing her most tolerating fucking idiot, and when her shaky fingers gripped that firearm, found the curve of the trigger…
Bang bang bang bang, motherfucker!
Henry’s heart thrashed against the monster’s grip and pain spread through his chest and down his arm. He was so cold, so disoriented. It took him a moment to process what was happening, why the monster’s head had seemingly exploded right in front of him. Through the pounding in his ears he could hear explosions next to him. No, not explosions. Gun fire. He was able to turn his head just enough to see Revy with one of her cutlasses raised and firing repeatedly at the two headed monster. Henry had never seen her so pissed off.
That was when Henry truly realized what was going on. It was an odd feeling to know someone was there. Henry swore at himself. Revy always had been there. She had come running when the chains had appeared on his door. She’d been out here looking for him. Fuck, she’d gotten him a the gaudiest looking Hawaiian shirt on the rack because he reminded her of someone important. Neither one of them were perfect, but they had each other. Henry would fight for that.
He still had his gun. Somehow he’d managed to hang on to it. His arm felt like so much dead weight, but he managed to raise it to aim at the other grimacing head and fire.
Her finger kept clicking the trigger even when all bullets were spent, as if the sound of gunfire and the lack of recoil hadn’t registered until much later - not until she was a witness to an extra spray of monster innards due to a gunshot that didn’t come from her. Part of Revy had been certain Henry was done. Dead. Considering the beast had penetrated his fucking chest, she didn’t think any human could survive something like that.
It hurt to swallow even the spit in her mouth. Another ragged drag of air - this time closer to a gasp - and she dropped the spent firearm and reached for its fallen twin a couple feet away. A somewhat clumsy shuffle of feet, scraping of knees, and this one felt heavier, still loaded and ready to go.
Revy had been ready for another episode of die fucker, die but...it wasn’t moving.
Is that thing - ? “Henry,” she warily croaked, molten amber eyes looking over with surprise.
The hand around Henry’s heart had stopped squeezing. The monster wavered before toppling backwards. Henry winced and grunted loudly when the hand yanked itself free of his chest. One hand clutching his shirt where the hand had buried itself up to its forearm, the other raised the gun again to put another bullet in the monster’s remaining head. Just in case.
“R-Revy?” He was still so cold, chilled literally to the core. His teeth chattered behind lips that had started to turn blue, as if he’d been out swimming in cold water just a bit too long. He moved to step towards her, but ended up crashing to his knees instead. His chest hurt badly and his ears were still ringing, but his heart didn’t feel as if it were going to explode and his head had stopped swimming. Despite the chill deep inside him, Henry felt quite victorious. “W-we did it! Th-th-thank y-you!
Uh. Did this mean it was over? Revy was still trying to wrap her head around just what the fuck happened all while making sure she was still inhaling as much air as she could, didn’t matter how much it burned (she wouldn’t be smoking for awhile, fuck). Henry was alive. Moving and talking and a little discolored, but with a beating heart - one that abomination had been so close to either crushing or tearing straight out of his chest.
Arm wounds had begun bleeding through the bandages, yet it didn’t stop her from reaching over to pull him close for what had been the biggest, tightest hug she had given in a long time. “Jesus fuck,” she wheezed. “How the - how the hell are you even alive?! That should have fucking killed you!”
Well. Not that she was complaining, alright? But christ, she shouldn’t ask, this place worked in mysterious as shit ways and she was glad she wasn’t holding his fucking corpse at the moment.
It should have killed him. Henry was amazed he was alive. Hell he was amazed they both were alive. His voice was muffled into Revy’s shoulder. He hung on tightly to her as well, as though he were afraid to let go.
Finally he pulled away just enough to look at her. “I d-don’t know,” he said. “For a m-m-moment I really th-th-thought I was dead, but then, I heard you. You were there sh-sh-ooting it and it was like...I c-c-can’t explain it, but...something happened and I didn’t want t-t-to die. I wanted…it to end. Th-th-the monster and every f-f-fucking thing it represented. B-b-because it’s not like th-ththat anymore and it d-d-doesn’t have to be like that anymore. And - Jesus fucking Christ, your arm!” His eyes grew wide when he caught sight of the blood seeping through the bandages. They moved to her face. “How b-b-bad are you hurt?”
It’d been from that, uh, altercation, grabbed and dropped and scrambling recklessly for a weapon before it all went to even worse shit. “It’s fine,” Revy hoarsely insisted, because it was the truth - she’d live, it wouldn’t kill her, she’d take care of it soon since she wasn’t the biggest fucking fan of bleeding either. Her windpipe hurt the worst, bruises forming all around, it hurt to talk and still breathe a bit but that wasn’t going to drop her dead, either.
“Calm down, fuckface,” she tiredly sighed and helped him up. Both of them at their feet. “That was some fucking trippy shit. But we’re both alive and it’s dead -” A painful swallow. “Is...this it? Is it over?”
Henry got to his feet, wobbly and shaky, but able to stand under his own power, for the most part. Miracle upon miracles. He looked around, squinting through the fog as he caught his breath and attempted to keep his teeth from chattering right out of his mouth.
The fog felt...different, somehow. It wasn’t as if it was closing in on them from all sides and the air didn’t feel as though it were thick enough to drink. The fog itself seemed to be getting lighter, perhaps even starting to dissipate around them. It was still quiet and calm out there on the street, but not eerily so.
“I think so. I m-mean that was it. The monster th-th-that was meant for me so…” he sighed wearily and turned back to Revy. “Thank you, for always helping me. And I’m really, r-r-really sorry.”
Meant for me. Like, what, some kind of purposefully engineered creepy abomination spawned from asshole’s evil meant for him? Revy’s brow quirked, not understanding the mechanics completely, but it was weird, to see him survive what he did. No one got that lucky when anything ripped into their chests. No one.
“Just don’t go crawling into other spontaneously appearing glory holes,” she sighed, not having the energy for anger. She was tired. Relieved. He could be sappy all he wanted; the words were appreciated, even if she’d rather not respond to them. Revy wasn’t the best at verbal reciprocation.
The fog seemed to be lifting, which was the most important thing. Finally. “C’mon,” she pulled him, arm over his shoulder. “Let’s get you home. You can get yelled at after a nap.”