It hadn’t been particularly normal to be stared down by a teenage while he was eating… whatever meal this was, Henry’s perception of time skewed by the unearthly dissonance in his head; but then again nothing had been particularly normal of late, and all Henry had found himself able to do was stare back, almost menacingly though his head was in far off reaches of thought, over his bowl of cereal. He supposed he couldn’t blame the kid when he couldn’t have expected him to understand the world around him and how it exactly worked and maybe that was for the best, Henry understanding well enough just how twisted and disjointed such knowledge stretched across time, space, and the cosmos might have left the human mind. His, after all, wasn’t quite right – not that he would blame Lily for that one.
No, that honor belonged to Celestials who had brought The Black Vortex to San Francisco in the first place and to Hecate who, just as consumed with its power as Henry had been, had been his ultimate undoing, locked away in the darkness of limbo, body destroyed, belongings in the process of being distributed to family, if not sold off to someone willing to support his posthumous career; and though he had found some sense of relief that he could simply start over, it wasn’t as simple as that when Henry Lee still existed, just not in the same form, maybe not even the same mind, as before.
Was it fixable? That had been hard to say, not sure which brand of magic a two year old with resurrection abilities might have tapped into in her successful attempt to rip him out of the afterlife; but did it need to be? As far as Henry knew in that moment of pouring another bowl, something which seemed to grind Gabe’s gears a little more, not at all.
“Your mom told me to tell you to chill out,” Henry said as he turned his attention down to the cereal in front of him, scooping it around with his spoon so the milk had time to settle into the pieces. Yeah, because that would make things better, lifting his eyes up as he took another bite and waiting for some temperamental argument; but it seemed on cue, as if to ensure that the dining room table didn’t end up breaking out into something fouling of a good… he still didn’t know what time of day it actually was, he could feel her presence among the energies in the room.
“Your mom’s home,” he announced, going back to his cereal as if there was no big deal in showing up, smaller in form and different in appearances, from the great beyond, but at least there had been those particular reminders he was indeed who he said he was.
Being able to shunt herself out of 1959 was a relief for Mally. The years before, her magic could have capitulated her from the time stream easily; it was everyone else that was the problem. There had been a hesitance to pull them out, unsure if the issue with Stryfe would completely protect them on one hand; the other was that for all her normal confidence, having to heft a bunch of people all at once felt dangerous. So she'd kept a lid on what she could do, bearing out the years like most things.
It probably shouldn't have felt familiar to go back there. But what else was there to do, when it involved Nate and Stryfe? She'd stayed, done her best with what she had, gotten some distance from some things, and had bit her tongue in frustration otherwise when she had been concerned about her children, about her life.
What did it matter, when she could get back almost the instant she left?
(It mattered, of course. Just not now.)
She had expected to come back within hours to maybe clean up. Instead, it was to three summons — two telepathic and one a petulant teenager's text — all of which had her flags up. Mally hadn't remembered that Henry had died, and as soon as the information hit her, she had teleported herself to the house. There wasn't even time to change out of the 1950s dress she had on or to even kick off the heels. "Henry? Gabe?"
Lily laughed from her spot, and as soon as Mally got into the kitchen, she was in for a surprise. Gabriel was still scowling at Henry, Lily scooped up in his arms. What got Mally's attention was…
"You got shorter," is the first thing she says, eyebrows raising. She didn't have to extend herself to know this was Henry at the table — just not the Henry she was familiar with.
"Ma, what is going on?" Gabriel glances at her dress, "I found him here with Lily."
"That's a good question," Mally reaches over to take a squirming Lily from him. "I'll answer it later. Don't you have work?" Gabriel huffs, glancing at Henry again. He stomps his way upstairs, and Mally bounces Lily, brows furrowing. "How did you get a new body? I thought you couldn't do that?"
“I think that’s why Lily is laughing,” Henry said, no qualm about it necessarily though he did press a look in her direction as if to ask why she had found him a body that was indeed quite a few inches shorter than his former self - not that the other had done him much favors other than making sure he couldn’t blend into a crowd when restaurants in Chinatown had come crashing down. Such was a historical event in his life as a shifter, not sure how the public would react to the departure of The Horror, but Henry saw opportunity in it to step away from the public frame his life had become in some means - it was hard to get information out of someone who more readily stayed at the magic shop or behind closed doors - and, at the most simplistic of understanding, start anew.
The huff from Gabriel doesn’t go without acknowledgement either though it is nothing more than a glance of his eyes from his cereal while the teenager, petulant as ever in his confusion about current events, stomped out of view.
“I’d ask her,” Henry said, pointing his spoon at Lily once he had sat himself up, no longer craning over his current source of sustenance. No, it wasn’t going to be taken from him, but he wasn’t planning on letting it go either - not while his body seemed to be catching up to whatever magic had brought him back, be it reaching somewhere into the expanse of the multiverse to find it or forming it anew. It wasn’t like Henry knew exactly what Lily might have been capable of.
“I can’t otherwise I would have. When you said to come here, I did, and didn’t want to disturb anything, but I think she might have had something to do with it,” he said, his own brow furrowing as he took in her appearance for what seemed to be the first time since she had showed up. While he couldn’t say high heels were far from the clip clop of hooves and if he kept that in mind, he probably wouldn’t have been so plussed by it, the fashion was outdated, speaking to the time spent in the 50’s rather than the current timeframe - something he was glad to have missed, but not for the reasons he had.
“Let me guess: Another time warp?” There had been mention of it, someone reaching out to him to try and find her through linked magical ties; but there was only so much he had been able to do when interaction was something that had to be forced.