i hate this island -henrik-

Petra was just unloading the last of the cargo from the shipping boat she worked on. It was a decent enough job. Paid okay, she got to travel and be out on the water, she didn't have to deal with too many irritating clio. The only thing Petra didn't like about it was that it occasionally required her to come to Nadar, one of the last places on Amelia she wanted to be. The whole island just annoyed her. She couldn't wait for this job to be over so she could get back to her apartment in Ughdarras.

"Hey Petra," one of her coworkers called out as they wheeled the last dolleys down off the boat, onto the docks and towards the receiving bay. "We got a last minute return shipment to take back to Ughdarras, so we'll be docked here for a while while we load up. Go ahead and take a break after you drop that stuff off."

Ugh. Fucking great. The longer Petra was stuck on this island, the more irritated she was gonna get.

When she got the last of the cargo to the receiving bay, she looked around for someone who worked there. She saw some guy several feet away, facing the opposite direction. "Hey," she called, already impatient. "I need your signature over here."

"Looks great," Henri said, nodding approval to one of his employees. "Good job."

"Thanks boss," the employee replied before heading back into the factory.

Henri had taken what he hoped would be a "normal" job at a local factory on Nadar back when he and Estela were starting their lives together. Without any sort of legitimate work history, the basic factory work seemed to be one of his only options -- but he honestly didn't mind the somewhat dull work. Henri was invested in starting and supporting a family, and knew that the job would be stable and allow for enough income to make a comfortable life with.

Over the years, Henri moved up to a high managerial position with the company, and he now supervised a large staff. He quite enjoyed it, since many of his employees were in a similar boat as him when he had started there and he liked connecting with them. The work wasn't exactly fulfilling, but he would gladly take this over what he was forced to do for money as a child any day.

Henri started turning as soon as he heard the voice of someone behind him, already responding with a pleasant, "Sure, no problem." His face dropped when he saw that the clio standing behind him was Petra.

"Oh," he muttered, obviously dumbstruck. Seeing her brought back such a sudden flurry of complex memories, each thoroughly vivid even though the two of them hadn't spoken or seen each other in almost twenty years. It was a bit overwhelming. All he could manage to say was a soft, "Hey."

Petra's annoyance vanished and was replaced with some strange emotions she hadn't felt in years. She hadn't seen him in nearly two decades, and she had never thought she would see him again.

"Hi," she said to Henrik, still dumbly holding out the clipboard. She never could have imagined him working in a dull place like this. Then again, he probably couldn't have imagined her with such a dull, mundane job either. The last time they had seen each other, they had taken down a criminal empire together. Now look at them. It almost made Petra want to laugh.

"You look terrible," she finally said after a pause that lasted far too long. She was just being an ass, he actually looked okay for eighteen years older.

She wondered what he had been up to all these years. It looked as though his life had changed just about as radically as hers had. Though she would occasionally see Paisley and Nils' names pop up in the newspapers, she had literally heard nothing of Henrik, and hadn't really cared to hear anything about any of them. But now that he was standing here in front of her staring at her like an idiot, she found herself curious about him.

Henri laughed, looking down at his company uniform. "You don't like my dashing polo and slacks?" he asked jokingly, taking another look at Petra. He just couldn't believe that she was here delivering his cargo.

"So is this your cover for some top secret mission to take down everyone who's ever wronged you, or do you just enjoy the delivery business?" Henri smiled, also being an ass. He mostly said it out of disbelief. Badass, take-no-shit, cynical Petra was asking him to provide his signature?

He had to admit, it was a bit reassuring to know that he wasn't the only one to settle down and find some normality after all of the trauma they had experienced (and that he had inflicted) in the past. He wondered if she had ever started a family like he had.

"So is this your cover for some top secret mission to take down everyone who's ever wronged you, or do you just enjoy the delivery business?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm actually here to kill you," Petra said dryly. The fucked up thing was, she actually had tried to kill him for wronging her once. She waved the clipboard dismissively. "Nah. The job's fine. Paying bills the honest way now, hah."

She looked him up and down. The whole business casual look was pretty ridiculous on him. "So what have you been up to for the last...what, eighteen years? Nineteen? Just working here?" He probably stayed on Nadar to be close to his brother. Even all these years later, it was hard to imagine the two of them apart.

"So what have you been up to for the last...what, eighteen years? Nineteen? Just working here?"

Henri crossed his arms comfortably over his chest and leaned his back against the front desk. "Yeah, I've been working here for almost that entire time," he said, looking around the office. "Not the most exciting job, but that's not necessarily a bad thing these days. It's nice to have a mindless and maybe even wholesome profession," he said with a light laugh.

"How about you? You have any little Petras running around causing trouble?"

Petra snorted. "Well, one, but he's not so little," she said. "He's seventeen. And he's not like me, he's a good kid. When he isn't getting on my nerves, anyway." Petra knew she wasn't always the best mother, and she had made a lot of mistakes raising Axel. But somehow she had managed to raise a pretty decent kid. Pia had probably helped with that.

"What about you?" she asked. "I heard you had about twelve nieces and nephews."

Henri had to admit, it was a bit difficult for him to imagine Petra as a mother. Nonetheless, he was happy to hear that Petra had a good kid. He wondered who the father was, but wasn't about to ask.

"When he isn't getting on my nerves, anyway."

"I know how that is," Henri responded, smiling. Elias had given him a lot of trouble, especially since Estela was taken. He tried to give Elias all of the patience he could muster though, considering what happened. He knew it must have been hard on him.

"What about you?" she asked. "I heard you had about twelve nieces and nephews."

"Nils and Paisley had a few kids, yeah," he said with a chuckle. "They're all great kids. I have a seventeen year old, too. We have our differences, but he's smart and really creative. And he definitely gets his good looks from his father." He laughed a little at his own joke like only a true middle-aged father would.

Petra rolled her eyes at Henrik's stupid joke. "My kid didn't get his dad's ugly mug, thank gods," she said. In reality, Axel's father/sperm donor Cillian wasn't a bad looking guy back in the day (or she wouldn't have fucked him,) but he was just such a colossal piece of shit that he had become hideous to Petra anyways. She shook her head. "I worry about him though. I tried to teach him how to fight, you know, to defend himself. He was never any good at it. I just hope he never has to deal with any of the shit we dealt with."

"Yeah, I understand," Henri agreed, reflecting on his own experiences with Elias. "I hoped that after we took down that organization, we'd be done, but..." Henri trailed off, not necessarily wanting to bring up his wife's capture. It had caused such a rift between him and his son, and he still was at a loss about how to fix it. Elias was great at fighting, but it was the emotional battle that Henri didn't know how to win.

"Kids can be difficult," he said quickly, trying to change the subject. "And unfortunately, we can't always choose what happens to them."

He shrugged, trying to seem like whatever had happened wasn't a big deal. "It's nice to see you again," he said softly with a smile.

Petra frowned and narrowed her eyes. If Henrik thought he was gonna bring up the organization and then try to sneak something past her by changing the subject, he had another fucking thing coming. "Whoa, whoa, hold the fuck up," she told him. "What do you mean, you hoped we'd be done? We are done, Henri."

When she had said she didn't want Axel to deal with the shit they had dealt with, she hadn't meant literally the same organization. All of those clio were either dead or in prison. She had just meant that in general, she didn't want him to suffer or be hurt because of all the fucked up shit that went on in the world.

"Yeah, of course," he said with a thoughtful nod, looking at the tiled floor. He knew that the clio directly associated with the organization were dead or in prison -- he assumed it was the clio connected to those clio that took Estela, if it was actually them at all.

"I can still be pretty paranoid sometimes, and...my wife was kidnapped a few years ago." Henri paused, his entire energy shifting to a more solemn one. "My son has blames me, my connection to that organization. I guess I've started to believe him as the years have gone by."

Petra's eyes widened at that. She didn't know what she had been expecting when Henrik brought up the organization, but it wasn't that.

She watched his whole demeanor change. All the energy seemed to drain out of him in an instant, and Petra suddenly got the impression that there wasn't a whole lot holding this man together. "I..." she hesitated. Petra wasn't a warm and fuzzy clio, and she was probably the last clio anyone would look to for comfort. But seeing Henri look so defeated made her feel like she should at least try to be consoling. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, and squeezed. "I'm sorry. Really." She and Henri had both drawn some shitty lots in life.

She stood there for a moment, probably too long, before dropping her hand. "But I don't think it was them, Henri. No one's ever come after my family, and you'd think I'd be on their list too."

Henri was thoroughly surprised at the way Petra acted, comforting him so genuinely. He smiled in appreciation, accepting her consolation as a rare act of vulnerability. It seemed like she'd changed a lot during the time that they hadn't seen one another, at least to the point where they could have a real conversation without almost killing each other or someone else.

"Thanks," he said. "And you're right. Amelia can be a pretty awful -- horrific events like that aren't necessarily shadows of my own personal past." He tried to laugh lightly, since logically he knew that he wasn't the center of the universe, but it was forced because he hadn't rid himself of his involvement, or maybe what he internalized as complacency.

"No," Petra said. She didn't return his smile or forced laugh. "Sometimes we just have shitty luck."

They just stood there for a second, two fucked up clio who had somehow managed to piece together something resembling normal lives, when all of the sudden one of Petra's coworker's interrupted them by yelling, "Hey Petra! Ship's loaded up, it's time to go!"

"Give me a fucking minute, will you?" she yelled back. Then, to Henri, "Gotta run, I guess. But hey, if you're ever in Ughdarras, we should...catch up some more." She had no idea why she even wanted to. If she hadn't seen him today, Petra would have been content never seeing Henri again in her life. But this talk had actually been, well, kinda nice, she hated to admit. She wouldn't hate talking to him again.

"Gotta run, I guess. But hey, if you're ever in Ughdarras, we should...catch up some more."

"Yeah, absolutely," he said with a nod. He looked down at her clipboard, which they had both apparently forgotten about. "I should, uh...probably sign that, huh?" He smiled, grabbing a pen and leaning in to sign off on the cargo delivery.

This was so bizarre, doing such a mundane task with someone that he used to live in captivity with. This interaction was so different than any other meeting they'd ever had, and he was glad that (even though it took over twenty years) their relationship had made it to this point.