Chapter Text
"Deep into the night, with the moonlight as my guide
I go wander through the pines and make my way to nature's shrines
And I look up to the sky, and I know you're still alive
But I wonder where you are, I call your name into the dark"
It was three days after Cooper left for DC that Harry first noticed the hawk.
The sun was just beginning to set when Harry finally pulled the heavy glass doors of the station shut behind him. He made his way to his truck, sitting alone in the empty parking lot. The drive home was one he’d done hundreds—no, likely thousands of times, and he kept his mind carefully blank as he took the turns on muscle memory. Familiarity smoothed out any details in the landscape another person might have picked up on; for Harry, there were no distractions to take solace in. At home, at least, there was still half a bottle of Jameson waiting for him, to blur the edges of his thoughts just enough to fall asleep.
A dark shape crossed the road in front of him, too close—he slammed on the brakes and looked out the window of the passenger side, tracking the shape as it moved. There was still enough light to see into the closest trees by the edge of the road, and there it was: a Cooper’s Hawk perched on a branch, watching Harry with severe, hazel-colored eyes. They looked at one another, the moment seeming to stretch on and on within just a few seconds, until the hawk ruffled its feathers and took to the air. Harry craned his neck to watch it through the windshield, tracking it until it disappeared from view. He shifted his foot off the brake and continued up the road, into the lengthening shadows.
His dreams that night were more of the same—following the path of the rocky shore, the scorched scent of burnt engine oil, emptiness in a ring of trees. He awoke, as he had every morning for the past week, feeling as if he hadn’t slept at all. Weak morning light was already pushing through the curtains; he was going to be late getting to the station again. He got dressed as his coffee brewed, then headed out to the truck, turning the crank handle in the door so he could hold the mug out the window on his way to work. He was about to start the engine when an unpleasantly familiar feeling prickled down his spine. Eyes, watching him. His own landed on the rearview mirror, immediately locating his voyeur. The hawk—or rather, a hawk, surely it wasn't the same one—was nestled among the evergreen needles and spindly branches of the tall pine tree outside Harry’s cabin. His eyes flicked down and away, turning the key in the ignition, but he felt its gaze even as he turned onto the street and left it behind.
Normally, Harry was good at keeping his mind clear, but the second episode with the hawk left him strangely unsettled. He took the sloping mountain roads perhaps a bit faster than he should have, barely seeing the crumbling, faded asphalt, the underbrush, or the trees. Memories rushed in, obsessive and unbidden, always starting at the same place: Cooper bent over the bathroom sink, the door thrown against the wall after Harry kicked it down. The clammy slickness of Cooper’s blood against his palm as Harry cradled his face. Though he couldn't articulate it, not then, and not now—not that it even mattered anymore—there was this: a bone deep certainty that something was very wrong.
That feeling persisted, all throughout the days that would become Cooper’s last in Twin Peaks. Harry tried to tamp it down—he told himself he couldn’t judge the man by any previous blueprint; after all, Harry didn’t know what happened in the Black Lodge, what sort of psychological damage might have been done. He told himself the way Cooper was acting—distant, standoffish when Harry tried to approach him—was simply the trade-off for getting out of the Lodge alive. But then Cooper left for DC without even a goodbye, and maybe Harry was just hurt and in denial over it, but still: he had never known his friend to be so cold.
“Good morning, Sheriff Truman,” Lucy called out gently as he walked into the lobby. Harry felt himself relax, ever so slightly, as he returned her greeting. Lucy had been putting in extra effort to bring some cheeriness to the station lately—elaborate arrangements of donuts in the break room, fancy coffee from the health food store the next town over, curt answers into the receiver for the couple of journalists that had called with questions about the events of the past few weeks. Harry made a mental note to find a way to thank her for it.
He made his way to his office, draped his coat over the back of his chair, and pulled a stack of paperwork towards himself, trying to purge the hawk from his mind. It was no use, though: when he peered through the blinds in his office that afternoon, there was the familiar silhouette atop a powerline across the street. When he stopped into the Double R Diner for an attempt at lunch the next day, though his appetite was near-nonexistent, the shadow of a wide wingspan swept across the pavement in front of him. And Friday afternoon, stepping out of the liquor store with a small brown paper bag tucked under his arm, there it was balanced on the edge of an overflowing dumpster in the parking lot. At home that night, even with the curtains pulled tight against the darkness outside, he felt the burn of its gaze, strong as whiskey.
.
Harry and Hawk used to go hiking on the weekends, across all seasons, following the old, well-traveled trails and sometimes forging some of their own. They hadn’t been out since early February, after which any hope of keeping a schedule was lost, along with so many other things. But Hawk had stopped by Harry’s office on his way out the previous afternoon, questioning, and Harry agreed to meet him at the trailhead at sunrise.
Hawk was waiting for him when Harry pulled up in his truck, parking in the gravel and meeting his friend where the trees parted just wide enough for a two person path. They plunged into the woods, breathing in the crisp morning air and listening to the birdsong above them. The tall trees blocked most of the faint sunlight, and there was still snow on the ground in some shadier areas. Their boots crunched over the path, and Harry was glad he’d worn his heavier coat.
The summit of the trail was modest—too many trees and bushes to really offer much of a view, though the sky was grey and overcast anyway. There was a wooden picnic table in the clearing, and Hawk sat down on the bench backwards, his back against the wooden table, looking through the trees to the sky beyond. He pulled a small notebook and pencil from his breast pocket and, after a moment tapping the latter contemplatively against his chin, began writing. Harry watched the clouds move across the sky, wispy and frail, content enough to sit with his thoughts until Hawk flipped his notebook shut.
“Who’s that one for?” Harry asked, nodding towards it.
“For me,” Hawk replied, standing up and offering his hand out to Harry. “Play your cards right and I might let you read it, too.”
Harry grinned as they returned to the trail for their descent; he was always pleased to be the audience for one of Hawk’s poems. Hawk was a good writer; with a few carefully chosen words he could pin down a feeling Harry couldn’t have described if he had a whole dictionary at his disposal. He needed some of that clarity now.
“Hawk, can I ask you something?”
“Mhm?”
“Before Coop left, did he seem…” Harry trailed off, unsure of how to describe his worries. Finally he settled on, “did he seem different, to you?”
Hawk considered this, and Harry, bolstered by his own words, went on.
“Do you remember when he told us about that dream he had?”
“Sure. The one where he said he saw Laura Palmer?”
“Well, what Coop said was that the dwarf in his dream had a cousin and he asked ‘didn’t she look almost exactly like Laura Palmer?’”
“I remember now,” Hawk glanced over at Harry, eyes sharp. “What’re you getting at?”
“I don’t know—this is way over my head, but—Hawk, d’you think it’s possible that… that Coop’s still in the Black Lodge?”
Hawk’s expression changed then, into a mix of understanding and pity, and Harry hastened to explain further, “I know how it makes me sound, Hawk, like I can’t cope with him leaving. I know I… I know I handled it pretty bad the last time. But… look, there's this bird that's been following me. A Cooper’s hawk. This whole week, I’ve seen it every time I go outside. You’ve never heard of a bird doing that, have you?”
“No, I haven’t…” Hawk admitted. “If it were true, it would explain Agent Cooper’s behavior before he left…” he frowned, going over what Harry had told him. “This bird, has it done anything else to try to communicate with you?”
“No. Or at least, nothing I’ve picked up on.”
Hawk nodded. “Maybe it’s waiting on you to make the next move.”
.
They parted ways at the trailhead, Harry watching Hawk’s truck disappear down the road before starting up his own. When he reached the intersection, instead of heading left away from town, he took a right and was soon stepping over the threshold of the Double R Diner. It was mid-morning on a Saturday, and the place was packed, but he told Norma he was going to ask for take-away anyway, and was soon climbing back into his truck with a box of pie and a styrofoam cup of coffee.
Harry held his breath as he rounded the corner of the road and his little cabin came into view. What if it had just been his imagination, or some fluke, and his only lead, if he were hopeful enough to name it so, was gone? But he needn’t have worried: he could see the dark shape like an inkblot in the big pine tree. He collected the food from the passenger side and let himself in through the front door.
In the kitchen, he opened the cupboards and pulled out two small plates, one fork, one knife, and two mugs. His holster was resting on the table, and he paused for a moment before belting it around his waist. Then he carried the dishware, cup of coffee, and box of pie through the backdoor into his little backyard. There were a couple of logs by the treeline from when an old sycamore had fallen in a heavy rain storm last year. Harry righted three of them, the biggest in the middle, then set down the pair of plates and mugs across from one another. He opened the box of pie—he hadn’t been able to decide between huckleberry or cherry, and had asked Norma for half of both. He cut out slices now, carefully placing them on the two plates. He pulled the flimsy plastic lid off the coffee cup and poured the black coffee into the mugs. Then he sat down on one of the stumps and looked up for the hawk.
It was still in the big pine tree, ruffling its feathers. Harry watched it; it watched Harry. He picked up his mug and took a sip, but he was beginning to feel foolish. He was not Dale Cooper: he didn’t use dreams to solve mysteries, he didn’t have visions of otherworldly beings. If there was any magic in the world, anything beyond, as it were—it wasn’t going to make itself known to Harry S. Truman. The simple, small town sheriff who couldn’t even do his job, couldn’t keep his people safe; not the young women walking the same high school halls that he had years ago, not the beautiful stranger harboring secrets he never guessed at. And not, in the end, Agent Cooper.
A sense of inadequacy had followed Harry for as long as he could remember. The second son—the quiet boy to a charming older brother and respected father—Harry was plenty used to trailing along in someone else’s shadow. The thing about Coop, though, was that he cast no shadow. In his presence, for maybe the first time in his life, Harry simply glowed.
There was the sound of displaced air, a ruffle of feathers—and Harry was once again looking into the eyes of the Cooper’s hawk. The bird perched on the edge of the stump across from Harry, shuffling its taloned feet. They watched one another for a good while, until the hawk suddenly spread its wings and took to the air again. Well, Harry supposed he hadn’t really expected it to take a bite of the pie. He set his mug down on the stump and began to follow the hawk through the woods.
Harry had spent nearly half his life in that cabin, and he knew the surrounding woods like the back of his own hand. As he plunged through the trees, keeping the hawk in sight, he couldn’t help but feel that the woods were different, somehow. The placement of the trees, the quality of the light. He couldn’t have traversed more than a half mile away from his cabin, but he had the feeling he couldn’t have found his way back if he tried. The hawk swooped low through the trees, waiting on branches for Harry to catch up as he picked through brambles or climbed over fallen tree trunks. Finally, it came to rest on a low-hanging branch, watching Harry as he carefully waded through the underbrush. Harry blinked up at it, and then felt his heart seize up, for curtains—rich, red, crushed velvet curtains—had appeared before him. He looked up at the hawk. The hawk looked steadily back at him, then spread its wings and flew through a part in the fabric. Harry took a deep breath, grasped the edge of the curtain with his right hand, and lifted it over his head.
.