Chapter Text
Henry Oak, with a pack of condoms in his pocket on the road to the regional peewee league soccer game, doesn't yet know the fullness of himself. He doesn't know Hen Ri'Oak. He doesn't know Oakvale. He doesn't know the doodler as the curse in his veins, but rather as the drawing of one of his darling boys. The Forgotten Realms, such as they are and were and are meant to be, are forgotten.
He doesn't know the other dads either. Sure he's cracked a joke or two with Darryl, but he doesn't really know him. And the rest of the dads are all but strangers.
For a while this isn't a problem. Well… for the length of an ill fated car ride this isn't a problem. When the cross-county roadtrip becomes a cross-realms roadtrip it becomes a bit more pressing.
In another Forgotten Realms this is solved slowly through forced cohabitation, a mutual goal, and mutual suffering. In that forgotten Realms Henry Oak dies far from the home that he'd made, in a far too familiar land. He dies on the wrong side of tentacles as is so familiar for that Forgotten Realms.
In this Forgotten Realms the problem of strangers and synchronicity is solved a bit more expediently. The tentacles are still there though.
On the road to the Forgotten Realms, with Ron on the verge of vomiting, Darryl white knuckling the steering wheel, Glenn just a little too high for this, and everything going purple, Henry knows something else.
After the grand declaration of the incompetence of every father in the minivan. After Henry's unabashed tears at that naked fact. With the overzealous certainty one would have of the existence of gravity and that up is up and down is down, Henry felt surrounded. Wrapped in something like tentacles, fully and wholly embraced, Henry knew that he had done this before.
Not the tentacles, that was new. But the portal, the purple? He had done this before.
As though his brain was a block of marble, he felt a chisel strike through it. He felt a crack in his very being that had been there for a long time start to widen and fill up in equal measure. He felt certainty and clarity swallow him along with unconsciousness, like the mouth of some unknowable thing below the tides.
He did not drift awake, but was rather asleep and then not at the shouts of Darryl Wilson.
"Roll Call? Darryl Wilson here! Roll Call?"
The same question echoed in Henry's head, along with his own sound off from another time. But he couldn't answer, still disoriented and dazed.
"Roll Call! Grant? Kids?"
In the ensuing pandemonium of the missing kids Henry took a second to try to gather himself. He had the migraine to end all migraines and the others wouldn't stop shouting. He felt out of focus.
The last thing he remembered was a flash of pain and then he was in the water. Jodie and Ron were in the mouth of the aboleth and Glenn and Nicholas were in the stomach. Henry had been the only one not with Daisy and Donald… And then he died.
Death had been cold, or maybe that was just the moat. He'd have to ask Erin.
"Hey Henry, are you alright man?" That was Glenn.
"Why are you asking him that when our kids are missing?" Darryl sounded panicky
"Um, uh, Ha-Henry your nose is bleeding." Ron chimed in.
All at once Henry snapped back into focus. He heard water rushing in the background, a river. He saw the rest of the dads looking at him. He brought his hand up to wipe at his nose and it came back bloody.
He looked past the other dads towards the forest and saw the rustle of leaves. If this was like last time…
"There are people in the trees." Henry pointed out.
Darryl winced. "Are you sure you're not concussed? I don't want to go into the woods and lose Grant cause he didn't really go in there."
"I also saw some movements out there but I'm high as fuck." Glenn chimed in
Henry stopped short. He didn't really remember what happened next but he knew there was a fight.
Then the arrow landed at his feet.
___________________
Battle is good for clearing the mind.
Theoretically at least.
For Henry Oak he can't stop looking at his hands. For a first they are covered in iodine. Why would they be covered in iodine? The boys had been roughhousing in the backseat, but the boys were with Walter. They're shaking too, his hands. Or maybe he's shaking.
No, the ground is shaking, vines are reaching out and holding the remaining red figure in place. He did that, had already done that, could do so much more than that.
He let out a nervous chuckle a hair's breadth from a helpless yelp. Everyone was looking at him, had looked at him then. No, he was shaking.
And then he passed out again.