Henry kept his hands and arms over his head even after the blows stopped coming. He hadn't been so thoroughly rattled since...well...when he'd actually been in the Otherworld. The pain was so strange, too. It came in horrible electric icy waves but it felt...home-y. Like a pair of shoes you'd forgotten about and slipped on for the first time in years. It fit. Familiar. Not comfortable exactly, but Henry had been so submerged in thoughts of his terrible adventure with Walter that the wounds Assumption marked him with seemed to complete the picture. He was in Hell again. Fridged, bleeding, biting hell with bones and meat.

And Henry...didn't want to be a part of it any longer. This was what he'd been wanting to avoid and yet--twice now--he'd thrown himself right back into it, metaphorical guns blazing. This was what Heather was trying to get him to avoid. This was where...Heather would have ended up if she hadn't reined herself in. Henry squeezed his eyes shut to block out the blood and ice and also so he could heave a shaky defeated sigh. She was right. She was right.

It sucked being the Receiver of Wisdom. Wisdom never came cheap.