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Henry couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
The Christmas tree stood at the back of the foyer, just as it had every year he’d lived in the mansion; that is, every year he’d been alive. It seemed as though his mom—Regina—had actually decorated it herself. Usually she hired people to do the job and it looked like it came out of a magazine, but this time, it was just imperfect enough to seem like she’d done it.
Then again, she’d probably used magic. She’s the Evil Queen. Of course she did. And magic is the easy way out. She said she’s not using magic, but Henry doesn’t trust her. Not a hundred percent, anyway.
His real mom would never do that. She works hard, and she does the right thing, every time.
“Do you like it, Henry?” Regina asked.
Her voice was kind of shaky, and she sounded different than she usually did. “It’s okay,” he replied. He was annoyed just looking at the tree.
“Henry, your mom spent a lot of time on this tree--” Emma said, just behind his shoulder. She put a hand on top of his head. “I think it’s awesome.”
“Thank you,” Regina said, and once again, her voice was high and weird. “I—I wanted you both to like it.”
Henry turned around and watched Emma smile. Her eyes were soft, and she looked almost shy. It was confusing to see her this way. Since she’d come back from the Enchanted Forest, she was a lot nicer to his mom--to Regina, rather--and she smiled a lot more at her. They’d been spending all this time together (“Catching up,” Emma called it), and Henry didn’t like it. The Savior shouldn’t be friends with the Evil Queen, even if Regina was trying to be better.
“I love it,” Emma said, and she got that half grin that she gave Henry sometimes, when he said something really nice to her, like he loved her, or that she was the best mom. He didn’t want to see that grin pointed at Regina.
“Come in the kitchen. I’ve made cocoa for you both, and I’ve got eggplant parmesan in the oven. Henry, you still like that, don’t you?”
“I guess,” he said, covering his stomach with one arm when it growled at little. He really loved her eggplant parmesan; it was one of his favorites. He hoped she hadn’t heard his stomach.
“Sounds great,” Emma said, taking off her coat and setting it on the side table. Henry did the same, wishing he could just leave.
He followed Emma into the kitchen, which was just as he’d remembered it, except there were Christmas lights hung around the ceiling, and candles lit, and little decorations all around the room. It looked really pretty and warm and nice, and it made him wish…
Just for a second, he wished he still lived here. His mom wore her regular apron over a nice silky shirt, and her hair was soft and curled, and he felt a pang of longing in his chest. But after a moment, he reminded himself, She’s the Evil Queen. It had been his mantra for so long it was easy to forget the person she’d been before. The mom she’d been.
“It looks amazing in here, Regina,” Emma said. “Smells great, too.”
Regina handed Henry a cup topped with whipped cream and freshly ground cinnamon before giving Emma her cocoa. “That one’s yours,” she told Emma. “No sharing, okay? It’s got a little something special in it--”
Henry reached out and knocked the cocoa from her hand. “Don’t drink it, Emma!” The mug went flying a few feet and fell on the hard floor, spattering cocoa and cream and probably poison all over the place. “You can’t hurt her again!”
His two moms stared at him with mouths open. “Henry!” Emma shouted, much more harshly than he deserved. “What the hell are you doing?”
Henry was indignant. “She was going to poison you! She just told you so herself!”
As soon as he said the words, they sounded stupid to his own ears. Why would his mom poison Emma but tell her in advance?
“It was just a little Irish whiskey,” Regina said, her smile gone now, completely. She knelt on the floor and picked up the pieces of broken porcelain, joined by Emma a second later. Emma grabbed some paper towels and sopped up the cocoa.
“Kid, you’ve got the worst timing,” Emma told him. “Apologize.”
He frowned. “What? Why?”
“I said apologize,” Emma growled, but Regina reached out and put a hand on her wrist.
“It’s all right, Emma,” Regina said. They were looking at each other, and Emma didn’t jerk away or look upset or anything. In fact, neither of them bothered to look at Henry for so long that it made him nervous.
“Sorry,” Henry managed, and that seemed to distract them into action. They finished cleaning up the mess he made (which he was embarrassed about, now,) and his mom poured Emma a fresh cup of cocoa from the saucepan on the stove.
“Still want something extra in it?” Regina asked.
Emma nodded eagerly. “Definitely.”
Regina poured dark liquid from another bottle into the cup. She swirled it around before adding a spoonful of homemade whipped cream and sprinkling cocoa powder on top. She tasted it herself, humming in satisfaction. “See, Henry? No poison. It’s quite delicious. Drink yours, I heard your stomach growling all the way across the room. It won’t be long before dinner is ready.” She handed the cup to Emma, who gazed down on it, running her finger along the rim with a dazed look on her face. She sipped from it with her eyes closed.
He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all. Why were they being so nice to each other?
---
The eggplant was as good as it always was. Henry tried, but it was almost impossible not to scarf it down after so many weeks of diner food and pizza and scrambled eggs. Nobody in the apartment could cook like Regina, not even Snow, who was pretty good in the kitchen. At least she didn’t burn the toast like both Emma and his grandpa did.
Emma leaned back in her chair with a lazy grin on her face. She patted her stomach. “Wow. That was unbelievably good.”
Regina lifted her glass of wine in Emma’s direction. “Thank you. I hope you left room for dessert.”
“We can’t stay, Mom. We have to get back to Snow and David’s for dessert there. We’re supposed to meet them.” He couldn’t think of a better lie quickly enough, so he just left it at that. It didn’t matter though; he was sure by now Emma would want to leave.
“Henry, come on. We’re staying,” Emma said firmly. “I always have room for dessert.” She blinked at Regina, and they stared at each other again. This was the third time it happened, and it made him squirm in his seat. His mom--Regina, that is--looked really happy, and Henry stood up from his chair.
“Emma, what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“Henry,” Regina said, interrupting her. “It’s all right, if you need to go--”
“Regina,” Emma turned to her, “We’re not leaving. I want to stay, and Henry does too, he’s just--”
“I don’t want to stay. I know my mom--” he winced saying the words, “changed, and she’s not totally evil anymore. But she’s—I don’t know. What’s happening is weird. Why are you even here? I get that I’d have dinner here once in a while, because she’s my mom, but you guys aren’t friends. You shouldn’t be friends.”
“We are friends, Henry,” Emma said, her eyebrow arching angrily. “I care about your mom. A lot. I care what happens to her, and how she feels, and I want you two to have a relationship again. You might… have bad memories about some things, but it’s important--”
“You mean about how big of a liar she is? About how she adopted me, and then lied to me my whole life about who I really am?”
“Henry, that’s not true--” Regina said.
“It is true! You’re a queen who cursed an entire land, and you made me think I was crazy. I can’t just forgive you for that.” Henry shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d said all this before, over and over. He’d had months to adjust to the truth, but he wouldn’t let go. More than anything, he didn’t want his mom and Emma to like each other. His mom was going to hurt Emma again, and him, too. Just like she always did.
At least, like she did some of the time. But he wasn’t going to think about the fun things they did together, or the nice times they had, or the holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving they used to spend watching movies and cuddling on the couch, sometimes roasting marshmallows over the fire. He’d watch the blinking lights sparkling on the mantelpiece, wondering if Santa would come down the chimney if the flames were lit, but his mom always made sure they were out in plenty of time so he wouldn’t miss their house.
All of that was over now. He’d figured Santa out long before he realized his mom’s true identity. He wasn’t a kid anymore. And he didn’t want to be her kid.
“I know, Henry, and I’m trying to make up for all that, the best way I know how. I want to be good enough. I want, one day, for you to love me again,” Regina said, and there were tears in her eyes.
“But you tried to kill Emma, and you almost killed me. I wish--” he began, and wondered if he should say the words. But they spilled from his mouth like a waterfall too powerful to stop, “I wish you’d never adopted me. I wish I never lived in Storybrooke, and never knew you. Everything would be better if you weren’t my mom.”
“Henry!” Emma barked. “Stop it!”
“I mean it,” Henry told her. And in the moment, it was true. “I wish I’d never come here. I wish it with my whole heart.”
For a second the world tilted on its axis, and swirled like the colors in a peppermint candy cane. Everything went black, and he closed his eyes and collapsed.
---
When Henry opened his eyes, it was dark. Maybe his mom put him in his old bed or something; he couldn’t remember what happened after he screamed at her. Not that it mattered much. He would end up going home with Emma and his grandparents like he usually did.
The lights flicked on, and he frowned.
“Up and at ‘em, kids,” an unfamiliar woman said. He looked around, and realized he was on the lower mattress of a bunk bed. All around him were other kids, some who looked older than him, and some younger. He didn’t know any of them. “Breakfast in twenty.” The woman, with metallic gray short hair and an oversized button down shirt, scanned the room. “Hey, uh, Henry?” she asked, as though she couldn’t quite remember his name.
“Yeah?”
“Get your stuff, we’ve got a placement for you. You’re going in a few hours.”
“Um,” he said, looked down at the bed where he lay. He didn’t know what stuff was his and what stuff belonged to the other kids. But when he moved his feet, he peeked under the covers and found a big black garbage bag beneath the sheet. He looked inside it and saw a bunch of clothes, shirts and jeans mostly, a pair of ratty sneakers, a few books, a small collection of Fantastic Four comics, and two stuffed animals. Why it was in the bed with him was beyond him.
“It’s so the other kids won’t take your stuff, dummy,” a girl said, suddenly seated next to him on the thin, uncomfortable mattress. “You can’t really lock up your things in a group home. And a couple of months ago somebody took the sneakers you got over the summer, so you’re wearing some that don’t really fit anymore.” The girl, blonde and about his age, shrugged. “Sucks, doesn’t it.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t live in a group home. I live in a house, or sometimes an apartment with my mom,” he said, before realizing he didn’t know which mom he meant.
She laughed, and he noticed her teeth were perfectly straight and white. “No, you don’t. You live here. You have for three months, but they found you a new foster family. You won’t be with them long, though. You never are. You’re kind of a jerk to your families, and when you’re difficult, it’s a lot simpler for them to just hand you back to the system and find another kid. The people that want to collect money for taking care of you want somebody who doesn’t cause trouble. And you, Henry Swan, always cause trouble.” She nodded sagely, and Henry started feeling sick inside.
“What are you talking about?” Henry asked, gripping his stomach as it rolled.
She continued, “I don’t usually tell my subjects their futures, because the bigwigs frown on that, but you won’t remember soon anyhow. I think I’m safe in telling you that you won’t be adopted. You’ll age out, like your mom did, and for the first few years after that, you’ll get by doing odd jobs, one fixing cars, another as a cashier at a gas station. But when you steal from the till one too many times, you’ll get a free ride at county for a few months. After that, things get a little hazy, but it didn’t look too good. Sorry I can’t tell you more--I didn’t have a lot of prep time.”
“Um, I think you’re got me confused with someone else,” Henry said, completely stunned.
“Nope. You’re my subject for sure. I’m here to introduce you to your new life. Your wish changed everything. How’s it working out so far?” the girl asked, eyebrows raised. Her eyes were a really pretty dark blue, and her voice was light and airy. Something about her reminded him of both his moms, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.
“Your subject,” Henry said. “Subject of what?”
She was growing flustered. “Regina didn’t adopt you, dopey. When you make a wish like that and you really mean it, we don’t just throw you into deep end of a new life, of course. That’s not very responsible. Somebody’s gotta explain the deal, and that’s my job. I might look pretty young, but I had a pretty interesting life before I took on this gig. Believe me, I’m a better instructor than almost anyone you could get.”
None of this made sense. He made a wish and now he… What? “Listen, where’s my mom?”
The girl rolled her eyes. “Henry, you’re awfully thick. Your mom’s in Storybrooke, where she’s been for the past 29 years. You never went to get Emma on her birthday, because you never went to Storybrooke. The curse didn’t break, and since the prophesy wasn’t fulfilled, it never will be.”
Henry gaped at this girl who knew everything about the curse and Storybrooke and his mom. “How do you know about the curse?”
“I was sent here. So get your stuff together, dopey, and let’s get breakfast. I assume you’ll want to, you know, do some stuff after you eat, right?”
Henry nodded. “If the curse hasn’t broken, then I have to find Emma and bring her to Storybrooke. She has to go there to find her family. And she has to meet me, too. She’ll want to be with me, just like she did when I first found her.” Henry grinned. Maybe he was dreaming, but if he really hadn’t been raised by his mom, then his life couldn’t be all bad, could it? “Are you my guardian angel?”
“We don’t really go by that, these days. You can just call me Bailey.”
If this girl had special powers, she might be a big help to him. “Can you get me some money, Bailey? I gotta buy a bus ticket to Boston. Where are we, anyway?”
“Arizona.”
Henry’s heart sank. “Geez. That’s… kind of far. It’s going to take forever to get to Massachusetts.”
“Yep. But I can hook us up. Let’s eat, and after that, I’ll make it happen.”
Henry looked down at his garbage bag of stuff. “Think you can get me a back pack instead of this?”
“Not right now. Maybe you can lift one on the way to the bus stop.”
“You mean steal?” Henry wrinkled his nose. “I don’t steal. That’s not right.”
“You don’t? This new version of you does. He didn’t have anybody consistent enough in his life to teach him the right thing to do. He takes what he wants even if it hurts other people.”
He blinked at Bailey, who looked totally serious. “But I’m—I’m not like that. I’m a good person.”
Bailey shrugged. “Just telling you like it is.”
Henry ignored her and got off the bed. He shoved his bag back under the covers and put on the shoes that pinched his toes. With every step, his feet ached, but he didn’t have any choice. He also noticed that his jeans had holes in the knees, and the shirt he was wearing smelled kind of bad.
“Laundry day is tomorrow,” Bailey said. “Looks like you’ll miss the boat.”
---
Two days later, they were still on the train bound for Boston. Bailey did some weird guardian angel thing that let them get on without an adult; she called it “putting the whammy” on the conductor. He wished she’d been able to “put the whammy” on somebody at an airport instead, because this trip was taking forever. It had been so much easier getting from Maine to Boston, but he’d do whatever it took to find Emma. He missed her, and Snow, and Gramps, and everyone in Storybrooke.
He grimaced when he thought of Regina. He wondered what she was doing, or if she even knew that she should be missing him.
His stomach hurt again, and he wriggled in his seat.
“You hungry, Dopey?” Bailey said.
“Why do you keep calling me that? I’m not one of the Seven Dwarves. I’m just Henry.”
Bailey grinned. “I just like the sound of it. Henry makes you sound like an old guy.”
“Whatever,” Henry replied.
He’d learned a lot about his new self since they’d been on the train. Bailey filled him in. Emma had given him up for adoption, just like she had before, but Mr. Gold never came to get him from the agency, so he’d spent the first couple of years of his life at an orphanage. She said he never slept well, even when he was an infant, because he’d never felt what it was like to sleep safe and sound. Not the way he had when he slept at Regina’s house, where it was warm, and comfortable. That morning when he’d shaken himself awake in his uncomfortable train seat, he remembered something really weird. For some reason he had a vision of the mobile of giraffes that hung over his crib when he was really small, and the song it played when it turned above him. He kept that mobile in his room even after he slept in a big bed, because he loved it so much. Then a couple of years ago, he recalled tearing it out of the ceiling, throwing it across the room, and stomping on it.
It was after Mary Margaret gave him the book, and he’d realized who he really was. Who Regina really was.
But the next day, he couldn’t help but regret breaking the mobile. He even regretted the way his mom looked when she’d seen the wreckage, like it was the worst thing he could have ever done. But she hadn’t yelled at him; she’d just taken the broken pieces from his room and left.
Later she’d been angry and made him clean his room till it was spotless, but right then? She’d looked broken too.
“In this life, you never had a mobile,” Bailey said from her seat next to him. It unnerved him that she could tell what he was thinking. “Sorry, it’s part of the gig. And you never even knew that you could have something like it.”
Bailey had also told him that he’d done his share of beating on the other kids when he could get away with it. Henry had argued with her again about being a good person, but Bailey had been adamant that when you grow up without parents, sometimes you don’t know any better. You don’t make the right decisions, because, in her words, “Your brain’s not finished cooking, and without somebody to steer you, you screw up.” He’d rolled his eyes at that, but he thought about it later, too. A couple of days before he’d seen a kid at the group home shy away from him at breakfast, and he’d had a mark on his face like somebody had taken a swing at him. Bailey had said he’d done it, and even though Henry hadn’t believed her at first, he was starting to.
I’m a good person, Henry reminded himself. I’m good because Emma is my mom, and she’s the savior.
He ignored the voice in his head that told him that he was good because Regina had taught him to be good. She couldn’t have been a part of that, because she was evil, and she always had been.
Hadn’t she?
---
Over the rest of the train trip, he learned his grades had never been very good, because he’d changed schools all the time. He’d been held back once already and was on his way to another failed year, and his departure for Boston would surely cement that.
“It won’t matter,” Henry told her. “In Storybrooke they’ll know I’m Emma’s son, and they’ll put me in the right grade.”
Bailey pursed her lips. “Who are you gonna live with, Dope?”
“I’ll live with Emma. As soon as she realizes who I am, she’ll want to go to Maine, and we’ll get to be with Snow and Charming again.”
She just snorted. “Right.”
They got to Boston at 7, which meant Bailey had to shell out more of her magically appearing cash for them to get a cab to Emma’s. It was too far to walk, so he threw his garbage bag of stuff (he hadn’t had the guts to steal a back pack from the train station) on the floor of the smelly car. Bailey crawled in beside him and motioned for him to tell the cabbie where to go. He knew Emma’s address as though it had been burned into his soul, thankfully.
They arrived after about ten minutes, and Henry rode the elevator with Bailey beside him, so ready to see Emma it was killing him. Her door was just as he’d remembered it, and when it opened, she looked not quite same. Her hair was shorter and darker, but her eyes were that same ocean green, and her chin was just like Snow White’s. Just like his own.
“Hi, I’m Henry. I’m your son.”
---
He told Emma mostly the truth, so Emma’s superpower lie detector didn’t kick in, and she didn’t kick him out. But he left out the part where he hadn’t been raised by the Evil Queen, or anything that Bailey had insisted was real now. Last year he’d convinced Emma to drive him to Storybrooke, and tonight he’d convinced her in the exact same way.
Even with Bailey at his side (“as moral support,” he’d claimed,) it worked. Emma put the two of them in her little yellow bug and they’d set off for Maine.
Emma asked the same questions as she once had, but she also seemed kind of different. She had what he thought might be a great big bruise on her side. He saw a bit of when she was pulling on a sweater over her shirt. When he asked her what happened, she just brushed it off. “Rough day at the office,” was all she said, but she’d winced when leaning over to tie up her boots.
“Bounty hunting is a hard job,” he said with a nod of a head.
“How’d you—huh,” she’d replied. “I guess if you could find where I lived, you could find out more. Maybe the talent for finding people is genetic.” She’d frowned then, probably weirded out by considering his gene pool was partly hers. But he didn’t think it was weird at all.
Once they crossed the border into Storybrooke, he could hardly wait to get into town. His heart pounded, and already he felt more at home. “Almost there,” he said to Bailey in the back seat.
“You know the way to your house, kid?” Emma asked.
“Um,” Henry said, wondering exactly how he was going to work this out. He couldn’t go straight to the Mayor’s house—Regina wouldn’t recognize him. Not that Emma knew that. “Let’s go to Granny’s boarding house. You can take me to see my mom tomorrow morning. She doesn’t expect me back until then anyway.”
“Who’s gonna pay for that?” Emma asked. “I didn’t intend to stay the night--”
“I’ve got money,” Bailey chimed in. “Besides, Granny’s is pretty inexpensive. It’s not like they get a lot of business.”
“Why not?” Emma asked. “Something wrong with the place?”
“No,” Henry said. “The town’s pretty small, not much to do.” And it’s mostly invisible to the rest of the world unless you know the way in, he thought. “There will be rooms available.”
“I think I should take you straight home, kid,” Emma said. “Even if your mom expects you tomorrow--”
“You’re my mom, Emma,” Henry reminded her.
She sighed. “Listen, kid. Henry. When I gave you up, I signed my rights away, and since then I haven’t looked back. I knew you’d have a better life if I let you go, and you did. A nice, successful woman--even if you say she’s an evil queen--raised you, and from what I can tell you turned out okay.” She smiled a little. “That’s more than I can say for me.”
“It’s not your fault, though. It’s my mom’s fault. She cast the curse that made your parents send you to this world.”
“Right, I forgot. So where are we going? Where’s the mayor’s house?”
“I really think Granny’s is a better idea--”
“Why is that?” Emma asked. “Because there’s something starting to ping off to me, Henry.” She pulled the car to the side of the road, just outside the center of town. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just don’t want to wake her up.”
“Don’t you have a key?”
He glanced back at Bailey, who shook her head. She was no help when she didn’t want to be.
“No.” At least he wasn’t lying.
“What kind of mother lets her kid run off to Boston without a key to his own house?” Emma asked.
A mother who isn’t a mother, Henry thought. This was going to be way more complicated than he’d anticipated. “Listen, Granny’s is just on the next block. We can stop in and get a room and tomorrow first thing in the morning you can take me home. I just want you to stay for a little bit, Emma, and if you leave now, it might not end up well for you.” Especially since last time she tried to leave after first coming to Storybrooke, she’d gotten in a wreck and spent the night in jail.
“Whatever, kid. You’re trying to fleece me, but I know all the angles. I’m gonna get the truth out of you no matter what,” she said firmly.
“I’m not lying, I promise. We’ll go in the morning.”
Emma pulled away from the curb and drove down the road. Henry turned around and smiled at Bailey, who shrugged her shoulders.
---
Right away, Henry could tell things were… not the way they used to be in Storybrooke.
At the bed and breakfast, Granny wasn’t even there. It was some guy Henry didn’t recognize, and he didn’t even really look at them when giving them a room. He barely glanced at Emma’s ID, and when Bailey handed him a wad of cash he hadn’t flinched. He almost seemed like a zombie.
As they’d departed for their room, Henry had asked the man in a low voice, “Where’s Granny? Or Ruby?”
The man lifted an eyebrow. “Granny died years ago. And Ruby? She’s been--” He blinked at Henry. “You’re too young to know anything about Ruby, boy. Who are you?”
Henry felt the first frisson of panic then. “Nobody,” he said, and scurried off after Emma and Bailey, who were already halfway up the steps.
What the heck? Granny dead? Ruby… gone? This was unexpected.
They kept the conversation to a minimum, and Emma fell into her bed with a thud. “Wake me early, kid,” she said. “I’m going to head home after I drop you off.”
Henry said okay to that, knowing that there was no way he was letting Emma out of his sight from here on out. Especially since everything might be off kilter, starting with Ruby and Granny. He needed to find out more, as soon as possible. But tonight, he’d sleep. He had some worn out pajama pants in his garbage bag that were too short for him, and he tried to keep the sound of his rustling quiet. Emma had never asked what was in his bag, but she’d looked at it strangely more than once.
After Henry started getting ready for bed, Bailey pulled a new pair of PJs right out of the bag too, grinning at him cheerfully.
“If you can get magic up your own pajamas, how come you can’t get me a new pair of shoes?” he whispered.
“Doesn’t work that way, Dopey, you should know that by now.”
“Whatever,” he said. He was saying that a lot lately.
He slid beside Bailey in the big bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time. When he finally fell asleep, he had a strange dream of a big man he didn’t recognize. The man sat in one of those leather reclining chairs in front of a small tv. Not a flat one like his mom had, but an old-fashioned one that had a bad picture. He was drinking a beer and eating something that smelled gross.
“Kid, get me another beer,” the man said.
Dream Henry went to the refrigerator and opened it up. There was no beer on any of the shelves; there was, in fact, nothing at all in the fridge except a lemon that looked petrified and a carton of milk that had expired the week before.
He went back to the reclining chair. “There’s no beer,” Henry said.
“Huh?” the man grunted.
“There’s no more beer-“
A hand shot out and smacked him across the face. Henry fell to the floor. “You were supposed to bring me a six pack when you came home today, little bastard,” the man said. He picked up Henry by the collar, choking him. His cheek stung, and he’d peed a little in his pants when he’d gotten hit. “You’re going in the hole, kid. I’ll let you out tomorrow once you learned your lesson.” Then Henry was tossed into a closet, and the door slammed behind him. He heard a key turn in the lock, and another minute later, he heard the door that led outside crash shut as well. The man must have gone out for more beer.
At least Henry felt safer in here than he had been out there.
He jerked awake and glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even 1 in the morning yet, and already he felt afraid to go back to sleep.
“Bad dream?” Bailey asked. She was awake next to him; he could see her eyes were open and she leaned her head on one hand.
“Yeah. It was strange. It was—well, you probably know, don’t you.”
Bailey just nodded in the darkness. “It wasn’t a dream, though, Henry. It was a memory.”
Henry blinked at her. She appeared totally serious. “That never happened to me.”
“Yes, it did. Three years ago. You lived at that apartment for four months. You went to the hospital twice, and the second time, child protective services got a clue and pulled you out. But your shoulder dislocates pretty easily now, so you have to be careful.”
“What do you mean?” Henry whispered. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re going to remember your real life a little at a time. And eventually, your memories of your life in Storybrooke are going to fade away. It will take a while, though, while you transition. It’s only fair that you should forget your old life, right? You won’t need those memories anymore.”
The thought terrified him. “I can’t forget who I really am!” Henry hissed. “That’s not fair. I’m Emma’s son, the grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming--”
“And since you weren’t raised by Regina, you won’t know any of that stuff, Henry. Don’t worry, it will be a few more weeks before you really forget. But when you’re done, I’ll be on my way, and you can get going with your new life. You won’t even remember what I told you will happen in your future. You’ll just get to… live it.”
“This wasn’t what I asked for,” Henry said, glancing over at Emma. She was snoring lightly. “This wasn’t part of the deal.”
“It’s not a deal, Henry. This was your wish. Your choice.”
Henry felt the tears pricking his eyes. He didn’t want more of those memories if they were anything like he’d just experienced. “This isn’t fair,” he said again, his stomach tying up in a knot.
“Life ain’t fair, Dopey,” Bailey said, falling back against her pillow.
Henry bit his lip and tried not to let the tears fall. “Don’t call me that.”
---
He dreamed all night of the man in the reclining chair. It wasn’t a repeat of the same dream, either; he remembered what felt like days and weeks of his life in the space of a few hours.
It was horrible.
When he woke, Emma was already out of bed, and the shower was running in the bathroom. He was so relieved that she was here keeping him safe that he wanted to dash inside and hug her.
He rooted around in his bag for something passable to put on, finding a second pair of jeans, but these were no better than the ones he’d been wearing for days. At least they were a little cleaner. He’d washed out a shirt and underwear and hung them up in the bathroom. He hoped they were dry by now.
In his old life, he always had clean clothes. They smelled good, too. Even when he got them filthy, or grass stained, his mom always got the dirt out. She complained about it, of course, and told him to “be more civilized and stop rolling around in the muck,” but at the end of the day, he always had nice things to wear. And without his ever asking, she bought him new clothes, like Iron Man t-shirts and silly superhero underwear and socks with bats for Halloween or reindeer for Christmas. He wished he had his reindeer socks now, since Christmas was only a few days away. He couldn’t actually remember when it was, but it had to be soon.
His old life seemed so distant already, even if he’d made his wish only a short time ago.
Bailey wore a new outfit, as she did each morning. No fair, he thought again. She was never hungry or cold or tired, like he was, and from what he could tell, she didn’t dream. He was starting to wish he didn’t dream either, if the last night was any indication of his future.
“It is,” Bailey interrupted. “But it will start happening in the daytime too. Memories will just come up. Don’t be afraid when it happens. It’s natural.”
Except it wasn’t natural at all.
Emma emerged from the bathroom smelling good and looking nice, her dark, damp hair curling at her shoulders. “Go for it, kids. We can get some food when you’re ready.”
Henry couldn’t wait; he’d had two candy bars on the train for dinner, then they’d gone straight to Emma’s. Hopefully Granny’s Diner was still operating, but if Ruby was… missing, he wasn’t sure who worked there.
His shirt and underwear were dry enough to wear, so he showered and dressed quickly. When he pulled his shoes on, wincing as he curled his toes, he had a memory of the loss of his new pair of sneakers. It was just like Bailey said; another kid stole them from under his bed. It had only been a few months ago, and he’d have to wait a while for new ones.
When he looked up at Bailey, her eyes said, “Told ya.”
“Ready?” Emma asked, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Let’s get this over with.”
Outside, the streets were eerily quiet. “I see how there’s not much going on here. No wonder it’s not exactly a tourist trap,” Emma said.
Henry was surprised; there were no kids walking or biking to school, no people milling around on the sidewalks, no Archie walking his dog or Mary Margaret getting coffee with David. Maybe they’d be there, at the diner, like they used to be. He picked up his pace and turned into the entryway of the restaurant.
Inside, the place was empty but for Leroy, asleep and snoring in one of the booths.
“Hello?” Emma called out. Henry figured she needed a cocoa as much as he did.
A girl came out from the back room, carrying a few big boxes. He recognized her right away. “Ashley!” he said, and the girl looked over at him uncertainly.
“Yes?” she replied. “Do I know you?” At that she seemed to remember her professional manners. “Come on in, anyway, and sit wherever you like. Be right there.”
“Considering you live here, kid, nobody’s recognized you. Don’t you get out much?” Emma asked.
Henry chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Not really.”
Ashley came to the table looking exhausted, and to his shock, she was pregnant. Which meant she’d been pregnant for 29 years, since the curse had been cast. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring either, so she and Sean hadn’t gotten back together.
“Sorry for the delay. What can I get you?”
Emma glanced down at the menu. “Uh, a cup of cocoa, with cinnamon and whipped cream, and the pancake breakfast. And a donut, if you’ve got one. Or a bear claw. I’m not picky.” She glanced over at Bailey and Henry. “How about you?”
“I’ll have exactly the same thing,” Henry replied. At least Emma still liked her cocoa made right.
“Coffee with cream, and a hamburger and fries,” Bailey said.
Ashley looked at her strangely, but shrugged. “Can do. The fryer’s not hot yet so it might be a few minutes extra for the fries.”
“That’s okay,” Bailey said. “I don’t get to eat them very often so I don’t mind waiting.”
“”kay. You all aren’t from around here, are you?” Ashley said. “We don’t get many visitors.”
“I’m not, but these two--” Emma began.
“I know the Mayor,” Henry interrupted, not looking at Emma. “We’re very close.”
Ashley’s eyebrows went up. “Oh. Of course. I’ll be back as soon as I can with your meals.”
Emma’s head swiveled in Henry’s direction. “Know the Mayor?” she said. “What the hell is up with you, kid? I’m starting to think this whole story you gave me is a big fat lie.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’m usually pretty good with fibs though, and I would have picked up on them by now.”
“It’s complicated,” Henry admitted, and he would have gone on, but David and Kathryn walked into the diner right then, and Henry’s head felt like it was going to come right off his shoulders in excitement.
David actually frowned at the trio in the booth before leading Kathryn to a table a few feet away. Henry looked across their table at Emma. “That’s David and Kathryn. She’s Princess Abigail in the fairytale world. She’s King Midas’ daughter. She really belongs with the school gym teacher, Frederick.”
Emma pursed her lips. “Oh, kid. This is a lot worse than I thought it was.”
“And the guy she’s with,” Henry continued, ready to bite the bullet. “He’s your father. Prince Charming.”
Shaking her head, Emma leaned back in the booth. “This seemed like an okay idea last night, but right now, it’s not looking very promising.” She covered her eyes. “Look, Henry, after breakfast, I’m taking you to your mom’s, and then heading back to Boston. In three weeks I leave for Philadelphia--”
Henry was startled. Philadelphia? “Why are you going there?”
“Because it’s time for me to move on. There’s a job for me in Philly,” Emma said before adding, “not that it’s any business of yours. Anyway, I’m ready. It’s time. I’ve been in Boston for a while. That’s reality, kid. I get that, um, you’re the boy I gave up for adoption. Really, I’m glad to meet you. You’re a nice kid. I’m happy that everything worked out for you. But there’s not room right now for more in my life. Things are as they’re supposed to be—you’ve got a family here, and I’ve got my own stuff--”
“What stuff?” Henry demanded. “You’re alone. You don’t have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend,” he said, just because he figured he’d better. “You don’t have many hobbies, and you work all the time. What kind of a life is that?”
Emma stared at him. “I don’t know what you think you know about me, but listen. You don’t know me at all.”
“I do know you,” Henry said. “You’re the savior. You’re supposed to break the curse.”
“There is no curse,” Emma replied. “There’s no such thing as fairytales. They’re pretty stories, and that’s it. Snow White and Prince Charming and the Evil Queen? They’re characters from a book.”
“The book is real,” Henry pleaded. “You have to believe me.”
“I believe you believe, kid. But I’ve got a life to live--”
The bell over the door rang again, and Henry glanced around to see David and Kathryn depart, coffee cups in hand. But before the door could close behind them, someone else came into the diner.
It was Regina.
He couldn’t help it—his heart leapt in his chest. She was in a suit like the ones she’d always worn, with a buttoned down white shirt, black skirt, tall high heels and a trenchcoat tied at the waist. She looked… nice. It made him feel good just to see her, which seemed silly since she wasn’t really his mom. But he couldn’t look away, and the smile came upon him inadvertently.
Until she looked at him, and sneered.
His stomach dropped. All of a sudden she didn’t look so much like his mom anymore.
She blinked very slowly, her lips puckering in disapproval. “Who have we here?” she asked in their direction. “Visitors,” she added, and the smile she wore did not spread to her eyes. Her voice was almost sing-song, and it made Henry’s skin crawl. “How nice to have visitors in my town.”
He heard Emma whisper behind him, “Jesus.”
“Hello there,” Regina said, coming toward them. “I’m Mayor Mills. And you are?”
Henry glanced back at Emma, who was staring with wide eyes. Bailey was looking elsewhere altogether, so Henry had no choice. “Um, hi. We’re here to see you, I guess.”
“Kid,” Emma said, and her teeth were gritted. “I think we have a problem.”
“Problem?” Regina asked smoothly. She hovered near their table, leaning down and placing two gloved hands atop it. “Consider me your local welcoming committee. May I ask your names?”
Chewing his lip, Henry went for it. “I’m Henry,” he said, waiting for his mom to be startled by the name of her own father. But her face never moved; her lips were still and frozen as stone. “This is Emma,” he added, gesturing in her direction, “and this is Bailey.”
“How nice. And what brings you to Storybrooke?”
“Would you excuse us for a minute, Mayor?” Emma asked. She was livid.
“Is something wrong, Miss… I didn’t catch your last name?” Regina asked.
“Swan,” Emma said, still watching Henry.
“Miss Swan,” Regina repeated, and the words were so familiar to Henry’s ears it was unnerving. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Only if you can explain to me why this kid made me drive him to this god-forsaken town in the middle of the night for absolutely no reason at all,” she mumbled, and Henry felt his heart plummet.
“Pardon me?” Regina said, her gaze shifting from Emma to Henry. She looked utterly frightening to Henry, who in all his tension-filled exchanges with his mother over the years, had never truly feared her.
But he feared this woman. There was no kindness in her eyes. No affection. No love at all.
“My new friend here,” Emma said, nodding in Henry’s direction, “showed up at my home last night, claiming you were his adoptive mother. He also told me that you were an Evil Queen who cast a curse on an entire world, transporting it from a fairytale world to Maine, of all places, and stealing away their happy endings.” She laughed bitterly. “And me, I’m supposed to be the savior who breaks the curse. I bought into it, because, well, sometimes a crazy story’s worth looking into, right? But turns out this kid pulled the wool over my eyes from the second he walked into my apartment, and I’ve got nobody to blame but myself.”
Regina might have heard Emma’s words, but she wasn’t paying attention to Emma. Instead she was staring intently at Henry.
Only now did he understand that the woman who had brought him up, who had wiped his runny noses, and sewn his Halloween costumes, and trimmed his hair every month with a gentle smile, no longer existed.
This woman was, pure and simple, the Evil Queen.
---
Regina hadn’t stayed long at the diner; instead, she asked Emma to pay a visit to her home before lunch. “Just to hear more of this incredible story,” she’d said. She’d glanced only sparingly at Henry during most of the exchange, until Emma had been distracted by Ashley delivering their breakfast. Then Regina had focused on Henry for a split second, and he thought for sure she would reach over and tear out his heart.
But she hadn’t. Instead the pleasant expression that was a clever façade returned. She’d oozed curiosity and good cheer, and had taken her cup of coffee to go from Ashley with a wave.
“Kid, you are on my shit list,” Emma said as the bell over the door rang with Regina’s departure. “I can’t believe you snowed me. I can always tell when somebody’s lying. My antenna must be screwed up or something.”
“I wasn’t lying, Emma. Whether you believe me or not. She’s evil. And you’re going to find that out today.”
“She might be intense, but I’m not reading her as evil. As soon as we’re done, we’re going back to Boston, where I’m dropping you off with the cops and they can deal with you. Got it?”
“The police? Why?”
“Because they’re going to take you to DCFS, and you’ll go into the system and hopefully get placed somewhere nice.” Her expression was doubtful, but she shrugged. “I can’t take you home with me, kid. And I’m sure as hell not leaving you here. It’s too creepy.”
Henry had a flash of memory again, a memory that wasn’t his, but it felt real all the same. It was of himself, going into one home after another as families took him in then rejected him. He wondered if Emma’s childhood in foster care had been similar. “Because foster homes worked out so well for you,” Henry said, hoping to gain her sympathy.
Emma’s exasperation surfaced then. “How the hell do you know that? I mean, what website did you find out all this stuff on?”
“I didn’t find out anything from the internet except your address. I know about what happened to because I know you,” he insisted. “I know you like cinnamon and whipped cream in your cocoa, and you’re terrible at fixing things that are broken, and that nobody adopted you when you were little. I know you never stay in one place for more than a year or two, except for Tallahassee. You stayed there the longest.” Tears filled his eyes. “I know you had me when you were in prison, but it wasn’t really your fault that you were there, even though you did some bad things. I know you gave me up because you wanted to give me my best chance.”
Emma gaped at him, shaking her head in disbelief.
“You’re a good person, Emma. A lot of stuff happened to you but you have a good heart, and you always make the right choice, even when it’s hard. Don’t you?”
“Kid,” Emma began, but she seemed to run out of steam. “That…” She shut her eyes. “Shit.”
“We can go to the mansion and then take off, I swear.” Henry figured if he couldn’t make some kind of change by then, he’d have to come up with another tactic. Especially if he was forced to forget his old life and remember his new one.
“It’s a mansion?” Emma asked.
Gulping, Henry said, “Did I forget to mention that?”
Emma shook her head. “Unbelievable. You’re a piece of work, you know that?” She pushed up the sleeve of her sweater, and Henry inhaled sharply at the long, crooked scar that adorned her forearm.
He reached out for her hand and pulled it toward him. “When did you get this?” The scar was still red and raised; he imagined he could see where the stitches had sewn the skin back together.
“Geez, none of your business,” Emma responded, yanking her arm away and pulling down her sleeve. “You have no sense of tact.”
He ignored her remark “You didn’t have that before. What happened?”
“Sometimes people don’t want to talk about how they get hurt, Henry,” Bailey said, and Emma raised an eyebrow at her.
“Yeah,” Emma said. “And this isn’t worth talking about.”
“But you must have gotten it recently,” Henry tried again.
“Even if I owed you an explanation, which I don’t, I wouldn’t tell you. It’s not a story for kids. It’s a story about bad guys. Way worse than any evil queen you can magic up from your imagination.”
Emma looked away then, and Henry exhaled. More bad things than he thought must have happened to Emma in Boston since she hadn’t come to Storybrooke. She gazed out the window, and the gloomy light revealed new lines on her face, especially the deepened crease between her eyebrows. That hadn’t been there in their other life either.
He was starting to think he never should have made that wish.
---
They stopped in at Granny’s to pick up their things. He and Bailey waited outside on the stoop while Emma spent some time on the phone, and Henry didn’t ask who she was calling. He didn’t even want to know—maybe she was chatting with the cops to meet them at the state line.
But it didn’t matter. This was his last chance to get the curse broken, but looking at the situation, he had no idea how to even get started. Without Regina as his mother, he had no connection at all to Storybrooke. He couldn’t think of anyone he could convince of the truth of his story. Not Mary Margaret, whom he hadn’t seen, nor Red, who was missing, nor Grumpy, who was as drunk here as he’d ever been in his old life. His only consideration was too risky, and besides, he probably wouldn’t make it to the pawn shop on his own before Emma came downstairs…
Until he realized that Mr. Gold was walking down the sidewalk in the direction of the B&B. His cane made a clinking sound as he drew closer, and Henry knew that Gold had been put him in his path for a reason. This was his chance.
“Mr Gold!” Henry said, leaping off the steps and meeting him near the street.
“Hello there, young chap. How do you know my name?"
Henry blinked. He knew that in his old life, Mr. Gold started remembering his true identity well before the curse broke. But why was that? He’d always thought that the curse started to weaken as soon as he had the book in his hands, and even moreso after Emma arrived in Storybrooke. Aside from Graham, Henry believed Gold was the only person who remembered.
“Hi. I’m visiting Storybrooke with my family, and I think I heard, um, the guy inside say earlier that you owned a pawn shop.”
Gold smiled faintly. “I prefer to think of it as an antiques establishment, dearie. Are you searching for something in particular?”
Henry looked at Bailey, who as usual, offered no help. “Yes. It’s a book. A book of fairy tales, like Snow White, and Cinderella, and--” he cleared his throat, “Rumpelstiltskin and Little Red Riding Hood. Would you have something like that?”
Mr. Gold frowned. “Well, I’m afraid I don’t have any fairy tales, but I do have a lovely edition of Tom Sawyer. Can I interest you in some Mark Twain? Besides, you seem a little old for fairy tales. Perhaps ‘The Hobbit’--”
“No,” Henry interrupted. “I’m looking for a book called ‘Once Upon a Time.’ It’s got nice pictures and tons of stories in it. I need that specific book.” His heart fell when Gold’s face didn’t change. He had clearly never heard of it.
“Sorry to disappoint, dearie. I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere.” He nodded curtly without the dark edge that was so often present in Gold’s attitude. “I’ll be on my way then--”
“Before you go,” Henry asked, “Can you tell me what happened to a few people here? My mom knew some people in town a long time ago, and I wanted to help her find them.”
“Who’re you looking for then?” Gold asked, glancing at his watch with impatience. “I’ve a meeting but I can spare a minute.”
“Ruby Lucas, for one. I heard her grandmother died--”
“Ah yes, I knew Ruby and her poor Granny. It was a heart attack, years ago, I—I can’t quite recall when,” Gold said. “And Ruby, well, after that, she did lose her way. She’s unfortunately been in hospital for quite some time. Sad story, that,” he added, not looking sad at all.
“The hospital? Is she sick?”
He tapped the side of his head, at his temple. “This sort of sick, boy. An illness of the mind. She… hurt someone before she was taken into custody, but I don’t know all the details, nor should you. I try not to get too involved with the more sordid elements of Storybrooke.”
Henry didn’t believe that for a second. “Sure. What about Mary Margaret Blanchard?”
“Ah, dear Mary Margaret. I’m not sure what she’s been up to since she was laid off from her teaching position,” Gold explained. “We don’t really run in the same circles, of course. But I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
Henry tried not to wince at that news. “And David Nolan?”
Mr. Gold frowned at Henry then, as though sensing something untoward. “You do know quite a number of people from Storybrooke, dearie. Have we met before?”
“Please, Mr. Gold, David Nolan, what about him?”
Gold’s smile turned then, to one just a little suspicious. “Of course. He and his wife Kathryn, they’re very happy together, as they always have been,” he added. Henry shouldn’t have expected any different. “Again, they’re not in my circle—they’re a little… shall we say, dull for my tastes. But you—what do you want with the Nolans? Or anyone in Storybrooke, for that matter?” He leaned closer to Henry, and his cane made a sharp noise as it tapped the cement.
Henry put on his most innocent smile and shrugged his shoulders. He wouldn’t get anymore out of Gold, so he’d better let it go. “Oh, you know, we just want to say hi. We’ll probably see the Nolans today. They’re expecting us.” He had no qualms about lying now to get this man off his back. He’d been too pushy. “My mom will be out in a second, and we’ll be going to visit the mayor too.”
Gold’s sneer was reminiscent of Rumpel’s then. “Mm, the mayor,” he ground out. “Well you enjoy yourself, dearie. I must be going. Perhaps we’ll see each other again soon.” He reached out a hand and said, “Tell me your name, boy.”
Henry swallowed. “James. It’s James.”
And Gold looked at him as though he knew Henry’s lie, could see it clearly as if a light bulb flashed above his head. “James. Yes. Good day, James.” He departed then, moving quickly, and not looking back.
Henry sighed in relief and glanced back at the bed and breakfast. Still no sign of Emma. He turned to Bailey. “That was close,” he whispered.
She nodded. “Yep.”
“Why do you think Mr. Gold doesn’t have the book? And why do you think he doesn’t remember?” he asked her.
Bailey rolled her eyes, a gesture Henry was becoming deeply familiar with. “Oh, come on, Dopey. Even after all this time you can’t tell? Gold doesn’t remember a thing because today the curse is as strong as it was the day your mom cast it. Not a single thing has weakened it. So that means Gold never procured your famous book, nor did he give it to Mary Margaret. He’s never had even an inkling of suspicion about his identity.”
Henry winced. “But why?”
“Because you weren’t here, silly. Without you, your mom’s heart stayed as hard as stone. Your Regina Mills might have loved you in kind of a screwed up way, but as her love grew, the curse weakened.” She tilted her head as she watched him. “Did you truly not realize that?”
Henry shook his head. “I never thought about it.”
Bailey looked off at the clocktower, its hands unmoving. Frozen. “Regina’s love weakened the curse enough for Emma to break it. Without that, your other life would have unfolded far differently.” She chuckled. “Who knows, you still might be under that sleeping curse after you ate your mom’s apple turnover. Or worse.”
Henry nodded. It had never occurred to him that his presence in his mom’s life had actually helped the curse break. Something inside him was starting to change, mostly in the way he felt about her. He’d spent so long convinced that Regina Mills was beyond redemption, unworthy of his love or affection or respect. But he’d made her different. His memories were getting all tangled; thoughts of the care his mother had shown him over the years were surfacing at the same time that he was remembering solitary nights without her to love or protect him. And gazing around Storybrooke, even knowing Emma was inside, he missed her. This Emma liked him all right, but… she wasn’t enough. Not anymore.
Emma chose that moment to come racing down the steps. “Okay, let’s get this over with,” she said.
With his new knowledge, Henry changed his mind about their plans. Coming straight to Storybrooke to break the curse was a terrible idea. As far as he was concerned, they needed to get out of the town. He’d have to come up with a way to get Emma to keep him around for a while. “Emma, I’m not a hundred percent sure we should go see the mayor right now,” he began, with a sinking feeling in his gut. He was certain that if he saw this Regina again, nothing good would come of it.
“No way, kid. We’re going. You brought me here, and I want to know what’s so terrible about this woman, who by the way doesn’t even know you. I mean, she must be pretty rotten to be the evil queen, and she seemed perfectly nice and normal this morning. She deserves an explanation, and so do I.”
“No, really, Emma, let’s just go now--”
“Get in the car, Henry,” Emma said. Her voice was firm. “You too, Bailey. We’ll be out of this weirdo town by noon. Let’s go.”
Henry did as he was told. Bailey followed him, and as he fastened his seat belt, he hoped this wasn’t a fatal error.
---
As soon as they reached the landing of the house where Henry had grown up, Henry had another strange flash of memory that wasn’t his. It was of sleeping in a bed in a room with a dozen other children, and he was cold. The sheets were rough, and there was no one to tuck him in at night, or check to make sure he hadn’t kicked off his blankets. No one to calm him down after a nightmare, or wake him up and help him get dressed for school when he was too tired (or lazy) to do it himself.
When Regina opened the door, Henry felt like crying. All of a sudden he wanted to hug his mother so intensely that it pained his heart. She looked down at him coldly, that snake-like smile on her face, and he swallowed thickly.
“Hello, dear,” she said to him, stepping back to allow room for them to enter. “Come right in.”
“Thanks,” Emma said, crossing the threshold after Henry and Bailey. “Nice place,” she said.
“Thank you.”
There was an awkward silence as the four of them hovered in the entryway. There was no Christmas tree in the foyer, and Henry noticed no decorations of any kind outside or inside the house. Emma seemed to be struggling to find something to say until Regina said, “How would you like a glass of the best apple cider you’ve ever tasted?”
Henry froze.
Emma replied, “Got anything stronger?”
Regina just smiled and led them into the study. The word “apple” put Henry on alert. He glanced at Bailey, who patted him on the shoulder and assured him, “Don’t worry, Henry. This is what’s supposed to happen.”
He had no idea what that meant, but he gritted his teeth and followed his two mothers into the small room. A fire was lit; it was uncomfortably warm, so much so that Emma immediately removed her jacket. “I’ll take that for you,” Regina offered, taking all their coats. “Make yourselves at home.” She raised an eyebrow at Henry before taking their things to the closet in the hall.
Moments later, she returned with a tray of drinks. She handed a tumbler to Emma, and glasses to Henry and Bailey. “Juice for you two,” she explained.
As he watched Emma raise the tumbler to her lips, he remembered the exact same scenario only days before, when he’d knocked a cup of cocoa from Emma’s hand, afraid that his mother had poisoned her. He opened his mouth to insist that she not drink the cider, but then it was too late—she’d already taken a swallow and closed her eyes with satisfaction.
“That is delicious,” she said, and Henry relaxed. She didn’t fall over dead, or fall under a sleeping curse.
“I made it myself,” Regina replied. “My apple tree produces delicious fruit every season. I’m glad you like it.”
“We won’t keep you for long,” Emma said, getting down to business. “I don’t want to take up your Saturday, but after this morning, I wanted to get a few things straightened out.” She looked at Henry with a frown. “So you’ve never met this boy before, correct?”
“I have not,” Regina said, sipping her own glass of cider. “I know everyone in this town, and we receive very few visitors. That may seem unusual to you, but I enjoy our sleepy little hamlet.” She smiled, and Henry felt a chill go up his spine. “You have a very creative imagination, young man,” Regina told him. “However did you come up with such a… unique scenario?”
Henry decided not to mince words. “I didn’t come up with it. It’s the truth. You can pretend with Emma, but not with me.”
“Ah,” Regina replied, leaning closer to Henry. “I understand. So we’ll just have a little talk then, you and me.”
“Okay,” Henry said, steeling himself for whatever she might have to say.
“If you know me, then I have to wonder why you thought you could come to Storybrooke and break my curse so easily. How on earth did you expect to defeat me?”
Henry opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He searched his mind for a response, and found only one: “True love’s kiss can break any curse,” he said.
Regina nodded, “So I’ve heard, dear.” She drank deeply of her cider. “But where is this true love you speak of? Whom do you love? And who loves you?”
That was the problem. This woman didn’t have an inkling of love for him, or anyone else.
“There are other ways to break a curse,” Henry tried, before Emma interrupted them.
“What the hell is going on here?” she asked.
“And your name,” Regina continued, ignoring Emma altogether. “It’s always been one of my favorites. Why did you choose it?”
“I didn’t,” Henry said. “You did. You named me after your father.”
Regina paled then and sat up straight. “Shut your mouth, child. Don’t you speak of my father.”
“Hey,” Emma said, “let’s simmer down here. What’s--” She swallowed, and put a hand to her forehead. “Shit, what’s in this stuff?”
Henry gasped, and stared at Emma. “Are you okay, Emma?”
“I feel kind of--” She looked into the bottom of her glass. “Jesus, lady, did you poison me?”
Regina laughed, and it was a sound Henry had never heard before. It was the laugh of a maniacal evil queen, reveling in her success. “Of course I did, you fool. You told me yourself that you are the savior who would break my curse. I can’t have a little blonde nobody come into my town and destroy everything I’ve created, can I?”
“What are you talking about?” Emma cried.
“She’s not a nobody, she’s the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming!” Henry shouted, knocking the tray off the table. “You can’t do this!”
“Oh, dear, that is marvelous news,” Regina said with glee, clapping her hands. “That is just poetry.”
“You bitch,” Emma said, standing, but swaying. The empty tumbler fell to the floor with a thud. “You fucking bitch. Kid, we gotta go to the hospital,” she said, and dropped to her knees.
“No hospital will be able to help you, Savior. You’re about to fall asleep forever, trapped in your own body, dreaming only of your own miseries and regrets. I couldn’t kill you, because that would break the curse, so instead, I’ll find a place for you in my vault.” Regina stood and turned to Henry, grabbing his shoulders. “I had only a thimble-full of magic left, my boy, and when it didn’t work immediately, I was concerned. But magic is unpredictable in this world, and it appears that everything will work out just as I planned.” She laughed again, grabbing his chin. “You and your little friend will be visiting my dungeon before the day is out. Of course we don’t call it a dungeon here, but nevertheless that’s what it is. You’ll join Red, and Belle, and every other citizen of Storybrooke who has crossed their queen.”
“No,” Henry says, shaking his head. “You’re not like this. You’re not really like this, Mom. Why can’t you remember?”
She stares down at him, tiling her head. “Remember a son I never had?” She sighed. “I wanted a child, once, but that dream died a long time ago. There will be no happy endings in Storybrooke, and no Savior will be able to change that--” Regina gasped and straightened. “What?” She looked over her shoulder and cried out. “What have you done?”
Henry realized Emma was standing again behind Regina, and her shirt was covered in blood. He turned to Bailey for help, but she had disappeared from the room, vanished without his noticing. “Emma, what happened?”
Then he saw the long knife in her hand, pulled from a sheath inside her boot. Her expression was bitter and empty. “If I’m going down, lady, I’m taking you with me,” she said, before turning to Henry. Her eyes were unfocused. “Sorry I couldn’t save you, kid,” she said, and slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Behind him he heard Regina fall, and Henry went to her side, turning her over. Before his eyes, his whole world was falling apart. Her skin had gone white, and she was sweating while blood pooled on the carpet beneath her. “Mom! Mom!” She looked stunned to have been injured. “I have to call the ambulance--” he searched the room for a phone, but the one that usually sat on the corner table was missing. “Where’s the phone?”
Regina only blinked, her face twisting in agony. She was coughing, grabbing at him. Her whole body was shaking.
“Mom, you can’t die! Please don’t die,” Henry pleaded, glancing back at Emma too, who lay a few feet away. “Don’t leave me alone,” he begged. “You’re my mom. I need you!”
“I’m not your mother,” Regina murmured, clinging to his hand despite her assertion. “I love no one, dear,” she breathed, blood streaming from her mouth. “Don’t you know that love is weakness?”
Henry wept, watching the life drain from the eyes of the woman who had raised him and loved him so desperately. “That’s not true,” Henry said. “I love you, and Emma too.” He leaned down and kissed his mother’s cheek, hoping it would help. “Love is strength.”
“I loved someone once,” his mother whispered. “He died.” Tears slipped from her eyes, until she closed them again. “Who will remember him now?”
Henry shook his head, wanting to scream. “Don’t leave me, Mom, please. I love you.”
She exhaled once more, and was gone.
“No, no, no,” Henry cried, “this isn’t happening.” He scrambled to Emma’s side, kissing her as well. “Wake up, Emma, wake up.” But this Emma didn’t love him, not the way his Emma did.
So she slept on, while the body of his mother continued to bleed on the floor next to them both.
“I never wanted this,” Henry shouted to the heavens. “This wasn’t what I wanted. I shouldn’t have made that wish—I’m sorry. Bailey, please help me! Send me back—I don’t want this life. I—I need to go back. I want my mom,” he pleaded, his heart breaking in two. “Please just send me back to my mom!”
Everything twisted, and his vision went black.
---
When Henry woke up, he sucked in air like a boy who’d just broken the surface of the ocean after nearly drowning. He sat up and glanced around, only to realize he was in a hospital room with Emma seated next to him, holding his hand.
“Emma!” he cried, his excitement at seeing her overwhelming. “You’re awake!”
Her hair was in a messy ponytail and she looked terrible, but her eyes were open and she was breathing and she was here and alive.
“’You’re awake?’” she croaked. “I think that’s my line, Henry.” Her lips trembled and without warning tears spilled from her eyes as she stood and grabbed him in a fierce embrace. He hugged her back as tightly as he could. “Way to scare me half to death,” she whispered in his ear.
“Where am I?” he asked. “What happened?” Just to make sure he was in the right place, he pushed her away, reaching for her right arm. He shoved the sleeve of her shirt up, and exhaled in enormous relief. No scar. “Thank goodness.” Glancing up at her, he felt love rush into his heart; she was watching him with such tenderness that he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it. In the short time they’d spent together in that other place, Emma hadn’t looked at him this way, like he was the most precious person on earth. “You’re okay.”
She held his cheek in her palm, still crying, but smiling now. “I’m okay? Henry, you’ve been in a coma for three days. Or at least that’s what we were calling it. Whale said you were just… asleep, but that you wouldn’t wake up. Nothing we did helped. You just fell over and slept.” Emma turned toward the door. “Oh my god, we have to tell Regina. She’s been--”
“My mom’s here? Where?”
“She went to get coffee. She hasn’t slept since it happened--”
But he was up and out of the bed before Emma could even finish the sentence, ripping off the monitors stuck to him and tearing out of the room. “Mom!” he shouted, and a moment later she came around the corner and stopped short. Her face changed in that moment, a combination of disbelief and hope and pain all rolled up together.
“Henry?” she said in a voice so ragged he barely recognized it.
“Mom!” he called again and ran, ignoring the fact that the hospital gown fluttered behind him, and that his feet were freezing on the cold floor. All he wanted was to be in her arms. When she dropped the tray and moved toward him, he jumped up and she caught him, swinging him around in a circle like she had when he was smaller, and he’d loved her without reservation. He loved her that way now, again. She smelled like home and warmth and comfort, and even though he was too heavy, she hoisted him up and he tucked his head into her the crook of her neck. “I’m so sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean it.”
She held him and said nothing other than his name, until he slid down and landed on his feet in front of her. Her hands cupped his face as she kissed his forehead and tears rained down on his skin. “My baby, I love you so much,” she said. “Henry.”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry I ever made that wish.”
Regina frowned. “What wish? Henry, we need to get you back to your bed, you’re ill--”
“I’m not sick. I had an experience. I made a wish, and it came true, but it was wrong, it was the worst thing ever, and I know that now, so I wished to come back, and I did! I came back!”
She pressed a hand to his forehead, checking for a fever in that mom way she had, but he just laughed and said, “Really! I was gone--”
But the mom thing took over and she stepped past the spilled coffee and bags of Cheetos (clearly for Emma) and two granola bars (definitely for her) and led him back to the hospital room. Emma was there with Whale, explaining that Henry had just woken up. The three of them maneuvered Henry back onto the bed for an exam, and Henry just rolled his eyes. But he didn’t let go of his mom’s hand either.
A few minutes later, Whale declared, “He seems fine.”
Regina blinked. “That’s supposed to be a professional assessment?” she replied flatly.
“It is,” he said. “He’s perfectly healthy. Of course, an hour ago, he was perfectly healthy too. He just wouldn’t wake up.”
“That’s because I wasn’t here,” Henry repeated, as he had more than once during his examination. “I was in another reality. Emma was moving to Philadelphia, and she had this big scar on her arm, and Mom was like, the super Evil Queen. Red was in the asylum, and Granny was--” He stopped, since the three of them were staring at him as if he was crazy. “And in the end you basically killed each other,” he added quickly.
Emma and Regina glanced at one another and took identical deep breaths. “Dr. Whale, you may go,” Regina said slowly.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind hearing more--” he began.
“Out,” Emma snapped.
Whale jumped, but nodded. “Of course. Family time, I suppose. Perhaps you’ll tell me more later, Henry--”
“Get out,” Emma said, giving him a little shove and closing the door after him.
Again he saw his mom and Emma look at each other like they were having a silent conversation, and both of them sat in two uncomfortable plastic chairs at his bedside. “You say you were… away, dear?” his mom asked.
“Exactly,” he said. “I made a wish, that you--” he swallowed, “that you weren’t my mom. It came true. And it was terrible. There was this girl, Bailey, who helped me. I think she might have been an angel or fairy or something.”
“Bailey,” Emma said, and she laid a hand on his mom’s leg. It didn’t look like she was even thinking about it; she just did it. His mom kind of smiled but didn’t say anything, and Henry knew in that instant that everything was going to be okay. Maybe better than okay.
“Yeah. Bailey. Anyway, when I woke up, I was in this group home--”
“Group home?” Regina said, startled.
Henry leaned back on the bed and got comfortable. This was going to take a while.
---
When he finished the story of his other world, with Emma under the sleeping curse and Regina lying dead on the floor next to him, all three of them had tears in their eyes, again. His mom and Emma had drawn their chairs closer together, and they both held his hands. “I didn’t know how it was going to end,” he said. “It was awful. I was alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Regina said with a weak smile. “You’ll never be alone. We won’t leave you.”
He liked that she said “we.”
“No way, kid. We’re not going anywhere.” Emma stood and hugged him, kissing the top of his head. “I’ve gotta call Snow and David. They’ll be at the diner by now with everybody else for dinner--”
“What dinner?” Henry asked.
Gently, as if not to upset him, Regina said, “It’s Christmas Eve. It was to be a celebration, but since you’ve been in the hospital, it’s turned into more of a support--”
“Christmas Eve! I didn’t miss it!” Henry said, remembering he had something else to be excited about. “Awesome! Can we go to the diner too?”
“Dear, I think you should stay here--”
“No way, I want to go to the diner, then I want to go home. With both of you. Please?” he asked, hoping that this wish would come true.
His two mothers turned to each other. Emma shrugged. “He seems okay. And I’d give anything to sleep in a real bed tonight. These chairs are killing me.”
Regina thought it over carefully; Henry knew she was likely weighing the pros and cons, risks and rewards. “If I feel even a smidgen of temperature you’re coming back here,” she said firmly.
Henry held back his grin. “Okay, Mom. I promise.”
Emma nodded in satisfaction and pulled her cell out of her pocket. “Be back in a few. Get dressed, kid, will you? We’re going to bust you out.” She left, the phone already pressed to her ear as she prepared to spread the good news.
Left alone with his mother, the weight of his story seemed to press down on the both of them. She seemed distraught; even though that version of her didn’t really exist, she’d taken his words very seriously. “Mom, don’t be angry--”
“I’m not, Henry, I promise,” she assured him. “I’m… I don’t know what I am. Disturbed. What you experienced could easily have been real. It could really have happened, or it could have been even worse--”
“But I’m here now. You’re my mom, and I want you to be my mom. I love Emma too, but we’re family. We make each other good, right?”
Her smile was soft, and her face seemed to relax. “Right. We make each other good.” She sat at the side of the bed and pulled him against her, rocking slowly. “You have always been my best chance at happiness, Henry.”
He sighed. “And Emma, too?” he asked.
“Yes, Emma, too, If that’s all right,” she replied. “I’ve come to… care for her, very much.”
“You can love her if you want, Mom. I don’t mind. You told me once that you didn’t love very well, but I think you’re doing pretty good, since I saw what you were like before. You were, um, pretty scary.”
“I was,” she agreed. Leaning close to him, she said, “I would never, ever hurt you, Henry. You’re my son, and I love you.”
Henry gazed carefully into her eyes, searching for the differences in the woman before him compared to the woman who had never taken him in. “I was lonely without you,” Henry said, finding it difficult to get the words out. “And I think you were lonely too, but you didn’t notice as much.”
“Sweetheart, without you, I’d have nothing. Only memories. That’s not a life worth living,” she said. “Believe me, I know,” she added, and Henry knew she was thinking of the last few months.
He looked down at his hand, where she was gently stroking the tops of his fingers. “I always thought people were born good or bad,” he told her. “That’s not true, though. Things happen to people make them a certain way. I wasn’t a very good person in the other place.”
His mother nodded with great sympathy. “I understand. Truly.”
“I love you, Mom.” He said it with as much conviction as he could. “I really, really do.”
When she tearfully kissed his cheek and held him again, he felt all the warmth absent in that other version of the Evil Queen. His mom wasn’t perfect, but she knew what it meant to love, and she would know what it meant to be loved too. He would make her know.
“I have some clean clothes for you,” she said in a shaky voice. She wiped under her eyes and went to get them from a small bag in the corner. “I brought them in—in case you woke up.”
“Thanks. Will you help me get dressed?” he asked, feeling silly, but needy too.
Her smile transformed her. “Of course, dear.”
He washed up in the bathroom first since he’d been lying in a hospital bed for three days. He pulled on fresh underwear and socks, and went back to the bed where she waited for him. The routine began as it had when he was small; undershirt first (this one had a cool iron on of Wolverine that he’d picked himself), followed by jeans. Then she helped him into his shirt, buttoning each button with a proud expression. After he started believing in the curse, he told her not to help him anymore, because her face made him angry. He believed her smile was because she was proud of her creation, of the Storybrooke she’d made. He thought she saw him as a prize to be owned and shaped in her image.
Now he saw it for what it really was. It was just pride in him, because he was good, and because he was her son.
She slid his belt through the loops and smoothed his shirt down after tucking it in. “There we go. All done,” she said, as she always had, and he hugged her.
---
When they entered the diner there was a collective cry of his name from everyone in the room, followed by a cheer of greetings as he was ushered inside. He was rushed by Snow and David, Red (who was definitely not in the insane asylum) and Granny (who wasn’t dead either), Grumpy, Archie, and even Pongo, who Granny had let inside for a change. He got pats on the back and hugs from everyone; he’d never felt so important to the town, not even when he woke up from the sleeping curse. Back then everyone got distracted by their newfound memories, and by the presence of the Evil Queen in their midst. Now, they only seemed happy to have him back.
They didn’t even seem all that hateful toward his mom, either. No one was really welcoming, but he saw a few half smiles pointed in her direction, and David touched her shoulder in a nice way. Emma never went very far away from either of them, always looking over her shoulder to make sure they were okay. During dinner, Emma and his mom sat on either side of him, and it was the most fun Christmas Eve dinner he’d ever had.
After he had two slices of different kinds of pie, plus ice cream, he was so full he thought he’d burst. His mom didn’t complain about all the sugar, or anything else. She even had ice cream herself, even though Emma finished her bowl for her. People were watching them uncertainly, like they didn’t know what to make of the Evil Queen and the Savior being friends, but Henry didn’t care. They’d come around, like he did.
When people started cleaning up and pouring more drinks, he realized his mom and Emma had disappeared, and he went to the front window to make sure they were okay. He saw them outside talking, standing close together. The glass was frosty so he wiped it clear with one hand. His mom took off her blazer and put it around Emma’s shoulders, and they were both grinning at each other. Only they did Henry realize they were holding hands, and Emma started to back up. He didn’t know what was happening until they both looked up at the mistletoe dangling from the string of Christmas lights overhead.
Then they looked at each other, and kissed. Emma’s arms went around his mom, and neither of them paid attention when the blazer fell from her shoulders onto the ground. Henry watched for another second, then fogged up the window with his breath. This was how it was supposed to be, with his two moms together, loving each other and loving him.
“Everything okay, Henry?” Snow asked, coming up to him. “Where’s Emma?”
“I think she’s in the kitchen,” he said quickly. “And my mom’s in the bathroom.”
“Oh,” Snow replied. “Okay. Come and help your grandfather with the dessert plates, will you?”
“Sure,” he said, and rolled up his sleeves.
---
The next time Henry woke up, he was in his own bed. He was warm and comfortable and still sleepy, but it was Christmas morning. There was no way he wasn’t getting up now, no matter what time it was. Glancing at the clock, he saw it was just after 6:30, which seemed like a respectable time to open some presents. Then he wondered if he’d get any presents, since he’d been in the hospital, and figured it didn’t matter. He didn’t really need anything anyway.
He pulled on his reindeer socks that matched the goofy reindeer shirt he’d worn to bed (“Your grandmother made it, so you’re wearing it,” Emma had told him) and straightened out his flannel pajama pants before racing to his mom’s room. Usually he knocked, but today of all days was special. He burst right in, and stared.
The place looked like a bomb made of wrapping paper had gone off. There were ribbons all over the place, bows and rolls of paper everywhere. And in the middle of it all was his mom, sprawled on her back on her bed, still in her clothes from last night. Emma was lying face down on his mom’s stomach, and their arms were around each other. Emma hadn’t even taken off her boots.
He crept a little closer and saw the dark smears under his mom’s eyes. Emma had said yesterday that she hadn’t slept since he’d gone to the other place, and when he thought about what had happened there, he shivered. He was still as grateful as he had been the moment he’d woken up. He wanted to reach out, maybe crawl into the bed too, but he didn’t want to disturb them. Not yet at least.
Carefully he backed out of the room and closed the door.
Downstairs, the big tree in the foyer was still up, and he eyed the door to the study with grim suspicion. He wouldn’t be going into that room again for a while. He bypassed it for the family room, where he was surprised by a smaller tree that hadn’t been there a few days before. When he glanced down at the floor, he saw a trail of pine needles that led from the hallway into the room, and wondered who had brought it over. It was decorated with garland and lights and ornaments, some of which he’d made in school over the years. Beneath the tree, there were loads of presents, some with tags that said, “To Henry,” and others that said “To Emma,” or “To Regina.” He remembered that he had a couple of things stashed upstairs for Emma, including a picture frame. He’d already decided that he was going to give that to his mom instead, and he knew just what photo to put in it. His grandfather had taken a picture of all three of them last night. He’d get her something else, something better, with Emma’s help in the next couple of days.
But he had time. His moms probably wouldn’t be up for a few hours, and he wanted to look at the tree for a while. The lights sparkled and shimmered, so he put his feet up on the ottoman and leaned back to watch. Everything was peaceful until one ornament shifted, and a tiny bell rang on one of the branches.
He closed his eyes and whispered, “Thanks, Bailey.”
-the end