Hello, friends! I didn't think I'd be continuing this story, but a lot of you said you wanted more, and my muse agreed, and thus we have a sort-of sequel event. enjoy!(: Also a shout-out to Kythe42's story Erratic Sensitivities... I kind of took that idea for Henry's death in this story.

In death, it is often said that one's life flashes before their eyes. As the lights of the truck barreled closer and closer to him, Henry's mind flashed a much surprisingly shorter distance back in time...

The first one had been innocuous enough. He'd noticed that his body had a tendency to vacillate upon his tolerance to the stings, and he hadn't recently experienced any sort of reaction to one. So of course his latest incarnation would make up for all that lost anaphylaxis and fall dead within minutes of that imbecilic buzzing insect sticking him in the arm.

Abe had just wrapped up a sale when he called from the river. The timing was genuinely impeccable and considering the nonviolent circumstances, Abe had been all too happy to help.

The second was quite a bit more dangerous. He really shouldn't have gone up there in the first place, but as lacking a self-preservation instinct as he was, he absolutely had to test the security of the poorly-welded trusses. Waiting until Jo, Hanson, and the CSUs were all focused away from the particular joint of which he questioned the stability, he scurried up and stepped out onto the beam, which was as insecure as he'd imagined, and it and he himself toppled to the ground.

Abe was much more begrudging in his assistance that time. Considering Henry had purposed to bring it upon himself with the reckless behavior, Abe felt more like the father reprimanding a wayward son than the familial relationship being the other way around. Plus, he not only had to return Henry home for his clothes, he had to drive him across the city to the precinct. Abe wasn't having any more accidents this day.

The third time was just pure luck. Bad luck, that is. Henry was biking back to the shop, much to his son's chagrin, when a dog ran out in the street. Henry pulled the brakes abruptly, too abruptly, and found himself flying through the air and landing on the pavement with a sickening cracking thud. He'd bled out within a minute.

Abe's sympathy for his resurrected father had completely run out.

"A dog? You're here because a dog ran out in front of you?"

"Yes, Abraham. For the thousandth time, the dog came out of nowhere, and to avoid hitting it my only choice was to quickly apply the brake. From there the bicycle threw me, much worse than any equine has ever done, and I managed to land in such a way that my skull and multiple vertebrae shattered."

"Bikes are the skinniest transportation used by modern mankind. You could've swerved."

"I couldn't know which way the dog was going. To be safest, I needed to stop and let the dog go."

"To be safest? Henry, you killed yourself to avoid hitting a dog with a bicycle!"

Awkward silence.

"It is quite fortunate, though, that all of these incidents happened to me and not someone else."

"How on earth is your dying three times in one day a fortunate event?"

"If it had been anyone else, I would be doing three more autopsies tomorrow. There would be three less people walking these streets. I took the sacrifice for them, in a way, but I remain."

"True, true. Just... Henry, stop dying. You call me one more time with some stupid story about how you were crossing the street and got your foot caught in a pothole and long story short you ended up run over by a semi truck, I'm not picking you up."

Abe, Henry sighed to himself as he resigned himself to his fate for the fourth time that day, was going to be furious.

{******}

At least it is dark this time, Henry thought to himself as he dragged his body out of the East River. Just as he had every other time that day, he ran over to the bushes beside the park's lone pay phone and huddled underneath the foliage, scouring the dirt and dead leaves for enough change to place a call. Having been there three times already in the past twenty-four hours made the penny-pickings slim to none.

The cruel forces of luck were on his side again, though, and a glimmering quarter sparkled in the moonlight. Henry reached out and grabbed the coin before any passersby could notice the human hand in the bush.

One call. He had one call. Abe was out with one of his many female beaus, and that on top of the all-too uncordial reaction from that afternoon's fiasco, calling his son was out of the question. Which left Henry with one hope.

Lucas.

{•*•*•*•*•}

"Lucas, what are you doing here?" Jo tried her best to not sound exasperated, but this was a pretty crazy case, and she'd thought Henry would jump on the chance to take it. That, and he'd do ten thousand times better of a job than Lucas, whose first and best field examination consisted of four words: "For starters, she's dead."

"You requested an ME?" Lucas walked over to where Jo was standing, his brow raised in a curious confusion. "And I happen to be one. Now where's this-"

He stopped speaking at the sight of the blood. It wasn't just pooled around the body as would be expected, it was painted around the body. In the shape of a four-leaf clover. Faint letters were visible in the splatter on the walls, as if they had been posted on the wall before the murder and removed. Lucas tried to read the letters, coming up with a final solution of "Luck of the Draw."

Luck of the draw, indeed.

Lucas knelt down to the body, that of a male slightly younger than himself. He was careful to avoid the dried blood staining the concrete ground as he drew closer to the body to study it.

"Well, he has been exsanguinated," Lucas began, drawing out the word "exsanguinated" as if he either wanted to prove his merit with its use or he simply didn't know how to pronounce it. "The wound that produced most of the splatter would be here, in the aorta. Not a lot of blood would be left after that, and what was left appears to be in this…" he paused to find an apt description and found nothing but dry sarcasm. "...lovely piece of artwork."

Jo winced at the description. She took a step back from the body and dubiously watched Lucas pick his way around the body. "Anything else?"

"Yeah…" Lucas lifted the bloodied skull. "See, there's this contusion-"

The room was suddenly echoing with some sort of psychedelic sci-fi theme music. Lucas sheepishly removed a glove and pulled the iPhone from his back pocket. Jo shook her head as he looked at the screen while still holding a lifeless human head in the other.

"I've gotta take this," He apologized, setting the head back down in the clover of blood and stepping out of the room. As soon as he was out of earshot, he whispered into the device, "Is this for real, Doc?"

"Unfortunately, yes," came the begrudging reply from Henry, who was silently thanking the city planning commision for planting a tall bush within cord's length of the East River Park payphone, the same bush Lucas had found him in a few months prior, in exaclty the state he was currently. Revived, revitalized, and dripping wet without the added hindrance of clothing. Though he'd much rather trade being waterlogged in his suit than have lost it to the cruel forces that controlled his endless fate. "How soon can you get out here, Lucas?"

"Uh, probably fifteen minutes or so," Lucas replied, looking over his shoulder to where Jo, joined now by Hanson and some other detective he didn't recognize, were observing the crime scene. Every so often, she would steal a glance in his direction. "If Jo doesn't kill me first. We're on a really… bizarre scene and…"

"And the good detective would appreciate it if you would escort myself there to help them with it, would she not?"

"I guess… Yeah, that'll probably fly with her. You should've seen the look on her face when it was me coming through the door and not you. She'll probably sing my praises if I leave to bring you back."

"It appears you have your answer," Lucas could hear Henry's smug smile through the wire. "I'll be where you found me last time."

It was Henry that hung up, not Lucas. He was in a combination of glee that Henry had continued to trust him with such a monumental secret and shock that this was actually happening to him. Really, how many people were called to pick up an immortal after he'd died?

He looked up and began walking back out to the scene, conveniently at one of the moments Jo glanced in his direction. "That was Henry," he offered in explanation.

"Is he on his way?" Jo asked. "I mean, not that I'm not glad to have you here too…"

"But Henry's the king of the macabre. I know. It's cool." He offered meekly, if a bit awkwardly. "Actually, he doesn't have a ride here, so he asked if I could come get him. So I'll be back. With Henry. Okay, bye."

Lucas left the room before it occurred to Jo to wonder why Henry would askhim over her.

{*****}

The East River Park was officially the most awkward place in the city.

Lucas stood next to the bush, silently waiting for Henry to dry and dress, all the while trying to act nonchalant and keep the park police from seeing the half-naked man in the foliage. Lucas' brand of nonchalance was heavily influenced by 90's sitcoms and involved a not-so-pleasant sound that was supposed to be a casual whistle.

"Never, in two centuries of walking this earth, have I observed anyone genuinely acting casual in the manner you are conducting yourself." Henry popped out of the bush, then through the leaves and branches, wearing an old pair of sweatpants associated with some college he'd never heard of but assumed was Lucas' undergraduate alma mater, and a standard navy t-shirt that was a smidge too tight. He was a little bit paranoid about whether or not his wound was noticeable under the fabric, but chalked it up to the feeling of dampness that didn't go away for an hour or so after he emerged. "But I have not been arrested, so thank you, Lucas."

The two began walking back to Lucas' car, which sat alone in the parking lot, lit by a weak incandescent streetlamp. "Why didn't you just call Abe?" Lucas asked as they walked.

"Well, for one, he's out on a date, and I suppose you wouldn't want your father interrupting that. Secondly, I've had quite an eventful day as it is."

"Eventful?" They reached the car. Lucas fiddled with the keys in his door, opened it, and unlocked the passenger door for Henry. They slid in the car and, for Henry's sake, Lucas turned on the heat. Even in spring, the river was still quite chilly, add in half an hour of dampness, and it was a given that Henry would be grateful. He was dry now and the heat, hopefully, would dry the last wet starnds of his hair.

"I may have visited the river a few times already," Henry offered evasively. He kept his eyes focused on the cityscape whizzing by, hoping that he would kill the curiosity before the curiosity killed Lucas. Who was he kidding, this was Lucas Wahl, the most curious cat in the bag.

Lucas looked over at his passenger. "How?"

"Oh, nothing major. Bee sting, unstable steel beam, bicycle wreck, and what I believe was a drunk driver. If not, he's quite unsteady when sober, though I am not one to speak, seeing as my driving skills are equal or worse to those of the driver that killed me."

"Nothing major? You died and resurrected. Not just once, four times. In one day! That's, like, legendary, Doc! What was it like? Was it epic? Did you save the city? An old lady crossing the street? A lost puppy? Did you-"

"Lucas." Henry found himself using that tone of voice he'd for so long only used on a misbehaving Abe. "I am not one of your comic book characters."

"Graphic novels." Lucas corrected. "They're called graphic novels."

"Very well, then, " the doctor sighed. "I am not one of your "graphic novel" characters. I am just a regular man with an unconventional relationship with death. I'm not a superhero, and contrary to what you may think, my deaths are usually quite random, awkward, and even clumsy. Take, for instance, the bicycle. The dog got away fine, I shattered my vertebrae and bled out on the pavement. All because, at that moment, a stray hound decided it would be an opportune time to cross the street. Very rarely have I died a noble death, though I excel at dying the senseless ones."

"You're lucky you're immortal," Lucas muttered.

"Have I not explained to you that this is not a blessing but-"

"A curse. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's insanely cool but you don't think so. The grass is greener and all that, I know," The light above turned green, illuminating the intersection in the eerie emerald glow. Lucas hit the accelerator and drew closer to the building in which was the latest crime scene. "I was referring to the amount of times Jo has threatened to kill you. When you disappeared at the construction site earlier, she was…" He finished the thought with a forceful sigh, there not being a word he could think of to describe Jo's lividity for that hour Henry was gone.

"Well, this is the spot," Lucas declared as he parked the car outside of the building, if it hadn't been made obvious by the swarming police officers and yellow tape encircling the entrance. He and Henry alighted and made their way in, Henry's oddly casual attire and still-wet hair garnering curious glances from the law enforcement personnel. They made thier way to the back room, where Jo stood impatiently waiting for someone to examine the body surronded by a clover of blood. She actually was waiting impatiently in the anteroom holding a warm coffee close to her face; the smell and sight of the body becoming too much to handle. Her face lifted at the sight of the medical examiners making their way down the hallway.

"No scarf?" Jo smirked. "And what's with the wet hair? Henry Morgan, I dragged you out of bed for this, didn't I?"

Jo Martinez was clearly gloating. And if he wanted to keep this secret as secret as possible, Henry would have to play along.

"Technically, it was Lucas who did the dragging, but I presume it was at your bidding?" He began walking through the doorway, stopping short when he saw the body and the message on the wall.

"Good thing you don't sleep naked anymore. It's a bit of a biohazard in there."