Fic - dream a little dream of me - (Henry Mills, Regina Mills/Emma Swan) - K+
Title: dream a little dream of me
Author: alinaandalion
Rating: K+
Summary: Maybe there’s something wrong with him, maybe he has forgotten something as big as a whole town. Except that he has his memories and he knows they’re real, knows that something has changed but it isn’t him. He crawls back into bed and kicks the sheets down to the bottom. Just a dumb dream.
Spoilers: Canon divergence from 3x13, "Witch Hunt"
Notes: This fic is inspired by the following two posts on tumblr:
http://scullysummers.tumblr.com/post/80042234810/realtalk-though-has-anyone-written-the-fic-where
http://scullysummers.tumblr.com/post/80043792165/insanetwin-replied-to-your-post-realtalk-though
It's canon divergence from 3x13, "Witch Hunt," so spoilers ahead. Basically, what if Regina had put herself under the sleeping curse and when Emma and Henry go back to Storybrooke, Henry starts visiting the red room in his dreams again even though he still doesn't have his memories back.
“Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me”
- “Dream a Little Dream of Me” by Ella Fitzgerald
“He knew the answer was somewhere in his head, somewhere close at hand, but he could not touch it, could not bring it back from the lost places. He sat there, alone and wondering. Was he dreaming?”
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Their first night in Storybrooke, he dreams. Dreams of a red room engulfed in flames, heat that scorches his throat when he yells, and a dark figure in the corner, watching him, coming closer--
He wakes up and he’s in an unfamiliar bed with sheets that are a little scratchy. For a moment, he considers going across the hall and knocking on the door to his mom’s room, but he’s twelve. It was just a dumb dream.
Padding across the room, he opens the window shades and looks out over Storybrooke. He stares at the clock tower, at broken hands stuck at 8:15.
It feels like he’s forgotten something, like there are things he should know about these weird people and how they know his mom and why people he’s never met keep talking to him like he’s lived here his whole life.
Maybe there’s something wrong with him, maybe he has forgotten something as big as a whole town. Except that he has his memories and he knows they’re real, knows that something has changed but it isn’t him. He crawls back into bed and kicks the sheets down to the bottom. Just a dumb dream.
Eventually he goes back to sleep. The dream doesn’t happen again.
*****
His mom won’t let him stay in the room when she talks to Mary Margaret and David. She always hands him his video game and gives him a small shove “this won’t take long, kid, just some case business,” and he knows she watches him until he leaves the room.
Not that he stays away. He crouches next to the door and tries to figure out what they’re saying. There are people who are going missing, near the town line. And now they’re talking about the woman again. Regina.
“And you just found her like that? In a coma?” His mom sounds like she doesn’t believe them, like it’s impossible (she sounded like that last night, when she just blurted out that she needed to see Regina and then tried to play it off like it’s not a big deal when she realized he was still in the room).
“We’re not exactly sure what happened to her.” Mary Margaret mutters something that Henry can’t quite catch but then he hears his mom again.
“And you let her do that?”
“Emma, I don’t know what happened. I can’t imagine what drove her to it, except-”
“You do know.” His mom is almost shouting now. “You just don’t want to admit it because that might mean acknowledging that you didn’t care, that you were too busy going off and getting knocked up.”
Why does she care? If these people matter so much to his mom, then why is yesterday the first time she ever brought them up? He frowns and then his mom is stomping right on the other side of the door before it’s pulled open and Henry tries to scramble to turn on his game and look like he was playing it the whole time.
His mom doesn’t even really look at him, her eyes rimmed with red as she pulls on her leather jacket (another thing he doesn’t remember but it matters now). “Come on, kid, let’s go to the hospital.”
“Why?” He grabs his coat from the rack and puts it on as he follows her out of the apartment.
“Just some stuff I have to do and then we can get some hot chocolate.” She ruffles his hair and he bats her hand away, frowning.
“Mom.”
She flinches at the word and it looks like she’s about to cry before she takes off down the stairs, two at a time. He almost has to run to keep up with her.
*****
He’s supposed to sit in the waiting room and wait on his mom. He does wait. Until she turns the corner and there’s enough space that he can sneak after her. There are a lot of nurses running around, and he overhears them talking about how there’s been another person found and being brought in.
But his mom isn’t headed to the emergency room. He stays about ten feet away from her, and when she stops at the entrance to the ICU, he hides around the corner until he hears her make her way to the big glass-walled room on the far side of the open room. He listens to the doors open and close before moving and getting closer.
He doesn’t dare get to where he can see the person in the bed, but he can see his mom, the way her shoulders slump and her back curves. He has an urge to run to her, to pull her out of that room, out of this town, to go back home where there aren’t all these questions, to where he doesn’t feel like he’s walking around in a mostly forgotten dream.
Then his mom is standing up and walking in his direction, and he has to hide so she won’t see him; once she rounds the corner, he starts back toward the waiting room. She’ll get there first, but he can just say he went to the bathroom.
But he has to know. He jogs up to the brightly-lit room and looks inside. There’s a woman in the bed, dark hair, pretty. He looks at the name on the door: Regina Mills.
*****
He’s in the room again. The flames wall him in, and as he looks for a way out, the dark figure in the corner moves closer. The fire starts to die down and then he’s looking up into the brown eyes of a woman.
The woman in the hospital. She lets out a funny-sounding laugh, like she’s trying to stop herself from crying, and he can see tears in her eyes.
She smiles at him. “Henry.”
His heart pounds as he asks, “How do you know my name?”
Then, “Who are you?”
She’s still looking at him, the way Mom has the past two days, like her heart is breaking, like she can’t believe that he’s real.
“Regina.” Voice soft, familiar, and how how how, he doesn’t know her at all.
And he wakes up.
*****
“Hey, kid, are you even listening?”
Henry glances up from his plate of pancakes and shrugs. “Sort of.”
His mom frowns and nudges his leg with her knee under the table. “Are you getting enough sleep? You seem a little out of it.”
The dreams are happening every night now, but they always end too early and he’s left awake in his bed at three in the morning. Two weeks filled with Regina’s smiles and laughter and undivided attention while he sleeps. And as little time as he gets, it’s still more than he gets from his mom. Except that’s not exactly fair and maybe she would be interested in his dreams. But she’s not even looking at him anymore, too busy staring into her coffee cup. She’s keeping secrets from him; it’s only fair that he gets to have one, too.
“I’m fine.” He drags his fork across his plate and says, “So, when do you think you’ll be done with your case?”
She sighs. “It might take a little while, kid. It’s kind of complicated.”
“It’s always complicated,” he mutters. She still hasn’t looked up at him, so he drops his fork and pushes his plate away. “I’m done. Can we go?”
She starts and then she smiles at him, that weird smile that she’s had ever since she brought him here. A scream starts to build in his throat-look at me, see me, where did you go-but he swallows it down because he is twelve, because he is too old for tantrums. Instead, he leaves the diner without waiting for her.
*****
“So, how do you know my mom?”
Regina frowns like she’s confused and she looks away as she says, “We were acquainted a long time ago.”
“Oh. I just thought-” he shoves his hands into his pockets. How is he supposed to explain to her that his mom is going to the hospital ever night, and he doesn’t think it has anything to do with the missing people? “Nothing.”
“What is it, Henry?”
He shrugs because it doesn’t matter, does it, this is just a dream. “She just seems so sad when she goes to visit you in the hospital.”
She stiffens and asks, “She’s visiting me in the hospital? Henry, where are you right now?”
“Storybrooke. My mom said she lived there for a little while, like right after she got out of prison.”
“Storybrooke?” Regina’s eyes are wide as she stares down at him. “We’re back?”
“Back?” And when Regina flinches at his question, turning her face away, he realizes that she shouldn’t have said that. It’s another piece to this weird puzzle. Back? Where did they go? “I don’t get it. Mom didn’t say anything about that.”
There’s this breath she takes every time he mentions his mom, like her heart stops and starts again. It’s weird.
He starts to ask her about it, why she’s pretending like there isn’t something going on, why his mom is hiding things from him, but the world shifts and fades, and he opens his eyes to only look at the dark ceiling above his bed.
*****
He stares into the room at his mom. She’s not doing anything, not talking, just sitting beside Regina’s bed. His fingers twitch on the door handle; he starts to pull the door open but then his mom starts talking, and he stops.
“I don’t understand why you did this, Regina.” She sighs then laughs, the sound heavy and cracking. “No, I guess I get it. Losing everything…I guess it’s not fair to expect you to just roll with the punches.”
He watches his mom take Regina’s hand and curl her fingers around it.
“But I need you to wake up. Because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and everything is all wrong now. God, just-please, come back. Regina, we need you to come back.”
He holds his breath because it feels like something is supposed to happen, something is supposed to change. Except that-this isn’t a story. It’s not a fairy tale but that’s his mom in there, holding Regina’s hand like she’s her lifeline and then, and then his mom leans over and kisses her.
The light flickers and the air feels heavier, but nothing changes. Nothing happens.
*****
He’s not supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be with Mary Margaret, but she’s nose-deep in baby books and she’s boring and she won’t notice that he’s gone, she wasn’t paying any attention to him before he snuck out of the apartment. And his mom is-she’s busy.
Taking a deep breath, he tries the door handle of the abandoned mayoral mansion; it’s unlocked. He slips inside and turns on his flashlight. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s here for, what he’s trying to find, so he just looks around for a second and tries to convince his feet to start moving forward because he’s not scared, he’s not, he’s just looking around. His mom does stuff like this all the time and she always comes home okay. He can do this.
He heads for the stairs, clutching the railing as tightly as he can as he goes up them slowly, heart hammering against his chest as he reaches the landing. He runs the flashlight beam along the wall then stops. No. It’s a picture of him. A picture of him hugging Regina. He reaches out, his fingers trembling, and touches it. It’s real, he’s not imagining this. He stands there and stares at it like it will give him answers, like this will make sense if he just looks at it.
But he’s running out of time. He pulls himself away from the picture and heads down the hallway. Answers, there have to be answers here, not more questions. He opens the second door on his right and peers inside, his flashlight catching on a bed, a desk, some bookshelves. He drops his flashlight and flips the light switch.
It’s a room for a kid. It’s a room that looks similar to the one he has at home, dark blues and polished wood and stuffed bookshelves. And on top of the bed is a big book. He runs over to it, stares down at the cover. Once Upon a Time. Fairy tales. He traces his hands over the gold script and there’s something there, something familiar but he doesn’t understand how.
Grabbing the book, he stuffs it into his backpack and grabs his flashlight as he races out of the room. He doesn’t stop running until he’s out of the house and down the street.
*****
He’s reading the book when his mom comes back. The stories aren’t like any other fairy tales he’s read before and the illustrations are awful, but there has to be something here, some sort of clue about why it was this book on that bed that looks so much like his own. There isn’t anything, though, except for the fact that the last few pages have been ripped out.
“Where did you get that?”
He looks up from the book and his mom’s face…he’s only seen her face look like that once before, and that was when he had asked her about his dad. She crouches down in front of him and wraps her fingers around a corner of the book; she’s shaking, and he has to look away.
“I just found it.” He shrugs. “It’s just a dumb book of fairy tales.”
“Oh, okay.” She stands back up and says, “So, you want to go get some ice cream, kid?”
Kid. She’s never called him that. Never. Not until they came here.
“No.” He slams the book closed and glares at her. “And my name’s Henry.”
She frowns. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know. What’s wrong with you?” he shoots back before pushing past her and running out of Mary Margaret’s apartment.
Tears run down his cheeks as he tries to gulp in a breath, as he bangs his fists against the railing outside and tries to make the crying stop because he’s too old, but it won’t stop, he can’t stop the stupid little sobs that are stuck in his throat. He hears the door open behind him, and his mom is there, she’s right there but she’s not doing anything and she’s supposed to, she’s his mom.
“Henry. Henry, what’s wrong?” She puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes.
He turns and flings his arms around her. “I just want to go home.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t say anything else, though, and he tries to hold onto her tighter even though she’s already starting to let him go. Everything is wrong.
*****
Regina is waiting for him when he dreams, like always, a smile on her face as he looks up at her. He smiles back before he remembers the house and the secrets.
He doesn’t hesitate. “I went to your house tonight. There are pictures of me in there. Why?”
“I-what?” She shakes her head. “Henry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw them. There are pictures of me in your house and there’s a room that looks like my bedroom back home, and you shouldn’t have any of that, I don’t know you, I’ve never lived there.” He narrows his eyes and asks, “Why do you have those pictures?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But she’s not looking at him.
“You’re lying to me.”
“Henry, I’m not.”
He stomps his foot and yells, “No, you are! I know what I saw. I’m not crazy!”
She turns away from him, and he wants to scream because he is so tired of secrets and lies. She’s crying, though, and he reaches out to take her hand, to apologize. Except that he can’t touch her. He tries again, and his hand goes through her fingers like she’s not even there.
“I can’t touch you,” he says, and he tries again. And again.
“Henry.” And she’s looking at him with sad eyes, tears falling down her cheeks, and he can’t touch her.
“If this is my dream, then why can’t I touch you? Why can’t I hold your hand? This isn’t real, it’s just a dream, so why can’t I do that?” He’s screaming and he knows he should stop, can feel the fire building in the room around him, rising up and roaring as he keeps trying and trying to reach her.
“Because this is real, Henry.” Regina crouches down in front of him and he watches the way she reaches up like she’s going to cup his cheek and then she stops. “This is real.”
He wakes up screaming, and he can’t stop, he can’t swallow the sounds. The room’s light turns on, and his mom is here beside him, holding onto his arm.
“Henry, what’s going on?” she asks.
He looks at her and takes a breath before he says, “I’ve been dreaming about Regina.”
“Regina?” His mom’s eyes go wide and she grips his shoulders tight. “Henry, you’ve seen her? What did she say?”
“So it’s real? It’s all real?”
She doesn’t look away this time. “Yeah, kid, it’s all real.”
*****
He hears the door open downstairs but doesn’t move from where he’s curled up on top of Regina’s bed, his nose buried in a pillow. He breathes in, wonders if this is what she smells like or if it’s even possible for there to be those tiny memories of her still here.
Not that he would know if he found them. He scrubs at his his eyes, sniffling, trying to force back the tears as his mom walks into the room.
“Henry.” She sits down on the bed, the mattress dipping with her weight. She runs a hand along the back of his head, and he flinches away from her. “I really am sorry. If I had known you were seeing her in your dreams, in that place, I would have told you the truth.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?” he asks, clenching the pillow in his fists. “Why did she let me think it was just a dream?”
“Would you have believed her?”
He shrugs but he still can’t look up at her, can’t face the idea that everything he knows is a lie, that she gave birth to him but then gave him away, and how is life supposed to go back to normal now that he knows, how can life ever be good again when he knows the truth but can’t remember it?
“Henry, I know this is hard, I know it doesn’t make sense, but we did what we could to make sure that you will never be alone. That you would always be loved and safe.” She sighs and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Henry, Regina-your mom, she loves you more than anything. And I love you.”
“But you gave me away.” He pushes himself up and glares at her. “So everything about our lives is a lie. I don’t even know anything about my mom, I don’t even know if I loved her. I don’t know anything, and it’s not fair. We were happy and then we came here. Why couldn’t we have just stayed home and been happy together?”
She’s crying now, too, and she says quietly, “Because you were happy here. You were loved here. Because I watched your heart break when we had to leave. Because the life we had wasn’t the truth, Henry. It wasn’t.”
“All of it?” His hands shake as he pulls the pillow up to his chest and holds it close because nononono but her eyes look so sad and lost.
“Not all of it.” She reaches out and tugs at his hand, holds it in hers. “This last year, it’s been-it’s been the best year of my life. Because I had you and you were safe and happy and had everything I ever wanted for you. I didn’t want to come back here. I didn’t want to take that away from us because it was my dream, Henry, getting the chance to have you for every moment since you were born. But I knew that you would never forgive me once you found out the truth.”
He breathes, slow, and asks, “You promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
He looks at her and it’s not okay, it’s not, but it’s better and that matters, it does. He looks at her, and she gives him this little smile, tiny but there, small but his, and he lunges forward, flinging his arms around her. And she holds him, holds him tight and close.
“How do we wake her up?”
Her arms tighten around him as she says, “It’s a sleeping curse so it’s supposed to be true love’s kiss.”
“Mine?” he asks, remembering that night in the hospital, that flash of light and the heaviness in the air and how nothing changed.
“Hopefully, kid.” She sighs and pulls back to look him in the eye. “But if it doesn’t work-it’s not your fault. Okay?”
He nods his head and slips out of her arms as he gets off the bed. Grabbing her hand, he tugs on her arm and grins.
“Come on. Let’s go get her back.”
Emma squeezes his fingers and smiles, letting him pull her out of the room and down the stairs. “Yeah. Let’s go get her back.”
*****
He stands beside Regina’s bed, heart hammering in his chest as he looks down at her. He can feel his mom hovering behind him, but he tries to push past that, to ignore her. He has to focus, has to think about Regina and the dreams and she’s his mom and how much he wants her to open her eyes, to look at him and smile.
Maybe it will be enough. Please let it be enough.
He takes her right hand in his and leans over her carefully, slowly, and kisses her cheek. And waits. Waits.
No.
Tears stream down his cheeks as he lifts her hand to his chest and tries to will her awake because he needs her to open her eyes, he needs to look at her and say that it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember, she’s his mom and-
There’s a burst of light and a pulse that pushes past him, and then she breathes. She takes a breath and her eyes are fluttering open and she looks at him. She looks at him and her smile is wide and brilliant and then, and then…
“Mom.” He sobs around the world as it all comes flooding back, the truth and the memories, and she’s here. She’s here and smiling at him and he doesn’t even think, just throws his arms around her the best way he can.
“Henry,” she whispers, then she laughs and he can feel her smile in every part of him, all the way down to his bones.
He looks up at his mom, his mom, and then he turns to look back at Emma, reaching out for her, pulling her in. There’s something different in her eyes when she looks at Regina, something that probably has a lot to do with that kiss, but right now, it’s just him and his moms and it’s enough. It’s everything.
Author: alinaandalion
Rating: K+
Summary: Maybe there’s something wrong with him, maybe he has forgotten something as big as a whole town. Except that he has his memories and he knows they’re real, knows that something has changed but it isn’t him. He crawls back into bed and kicks the sheets down to the bottom. Just a dumb dream.
Spoilers: Canon divergence from 3x13, "Witch Hunt"
Notes: This fic is inspired by the following two posts on tumblr:
http://scullysummers.tumblr.com/post/80042234810/realtalk-though-has-anyone-written-the-fic-where
http://scullysummers.tumblr.com/post/80043792165/insanetwin-replied-to-your-post-realtalk-though
It's canon divergence from 3x13, "Witch Hunt," so spoilers ahead. Basically, what if Regina had put herself under the sleeping curse and when Emma and Henry go back to Storybrooke, Henry starts visiting the red room in his dreams again even though he still doesn't have his memories back.
“Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me”
- “Dream a Little Dream of Me” by Ella Fitzgerald
“He knew the answer was somewhere in his head, somewhere close at hand, but he could not touch it, could not bring it back from the lost places. He sat there, alone and wondering. Was he dreaming?”
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Their first night in Storybrooke, he dreams. Dreams of a red room engulfed in flames, heat that scorches his throat when he yells, and a dark figure in the corner, watching him, coming closer--
He wakes up and he’s in an unfamiliar bed with sheets that are a little scratchy. For a moment, he considers going across the hall and knocking on the door to his mom’s room, but he’s twelve. It was just a dumb dream.
Padding across the room, he opens the window shades and looks out over Storybrooke. He stares at the clock tower, at broken hands stuck at 8:15.
It feels like he’s forgotten something, like there are things he should know about these weird people and how they know his mom and why people he’s never met keep talking to him like he’s lived here his whole life.
Maybe there’s something wrong with him, maybe he has forgotten something as big as a whole town. Except that he has his memories and he knows they’re real, knows that something has changed but it isn’t him. He crawls back into bed and kicks the sheets down to the bottom. Just a dumb dream.
Eventually he goes back to sleep. The dream doesn’t happen again.
*****
His mom won’t let him stay in the room when she talks to Mary Margaret and David. She always hands him his video game and gives him a small shove “this won’t take long, kid, just some case business,” and he knows she watches him until he leaves the room.
Not that he stays away. He crouches next to the door and tries to figure out what they’re saying. There are people who are going missing, near the town line. And now they’re talking about the woman again. Regina.
“And you just found her like that? In a coma?” His mom sounds like she doesn’t believe them, like it’s impossible (she sounded like that last night, when she just blurted out that she needed to see Regina and then tried to play it off like it’s not a big deal when she realized he was still in the room).
“We’re not exactly sure what happened to her.” Mary Margaret mutters something that Henry can’t quite catch but then he hears his mom again.
“And you let her do that?”
“Emma, I don’t know what happened. I can’t imagine what drove her to it, except-”
“You do know.” His mom is almost shouting now. “You just don’t want to admit it because that might mean acknowledging that you didn’t care, that you were too busy going off and getting knocked up.”
Why does she care? If these people matter so much to his mom, then why is yesterday the first time she ever brought them up? He frowns and then his mom is stomping right on the other side of the door before it’s pulled open and Henry tries to scramble to turn on his game and look like he was playing it the whole time.
His mom doesn’t even really look at him, her eyes rimmed with red as she pulls on her leather jacket (another thing he doesn’t remember but it matters now). “Come on, kid, let’s go to the hospital.”
“Why?” He grabs his coat from the rack and puts it on as he follows her out of the apartment.
“Just some stuff I have to do and then we can get some hot chocolate.” She ruffles his hair and he bats her hand away, frowning.
“Mom.”
She flinches at the word and it looks like she’s about to cry before she takes off down the stairs, two at a time. He almost has to run to keep up with her.
*****
He’s supposed to sit in the waiting room and wait on his mom. He does wait. Until she turns the corner and there’s enough space that he can sneak after her. There are a lot of nurses running around, and he overhears them talking about how there’s been another person found and being brought in.
But his mom isn’t headed to the emergency room. He stays about ten feet away from her, and when she stops at the entrance to the ICU, he hides around the corner until he hears her make her way to the big glass-walled room on the far side of the open room. He listens to the doors open and close before moving and getting closer.
He doesn’t dare get to where he can see the person in the bed, but he can see his mom, the way her shoulders slump and her back curves. He has an urge to run to her, to pull her out of that room, out of this town, to go back home where there aren’t all these questions, to where he doesn’t feel like he’s walking around in a mostly forgotten dream.
Then his mom is standing up and walking in his direction, and he has to hide so she won’t see him; once she rounds the corner, he starts back toward the waiting room. She’ll get there first, but he can just say he went to the bathroom.
But he has to know. He jogs up to the brightly-lit room and looks inside. There’s a woman in the bed, dark hair, pretty. He looks at the name on the door: Regina Mills.
*****
He’s in the room again. The flames wall him in, and as he looks for a way out, the dark figure in the corner moves closer. The fire starts to die down and then he’s looking up into the brown eyes of a woman.
The woman in the hospital. She lets out a funny-sounding laugh, like she’s trying to stop herself from crying, and he can see tears in her eyes.
She smiles at him. “Henry.”
His heart pounds as he asks, “How do you know my name?”
Then, “Who are you?”
She’s still looking at him, the way Mom has the past two days, like her heart is breaking, like she can’t believe that he’s real.
“Regina.” Voice soft, familiar, and how how how, he doesn’t know her at all.
And he wakes up.
*****
“Hey, kid, are you even listening?”
Henry glances up from his plate of pancakes and shrugs. “Sort of.”
His mom frowns and nudges his leg with her knee under the table. “Are you getting enough sleep? You seem a little out of it.”
The dreams are happening every night now, but they always end too early and he’s left awake in his bed at three in the morning. Two weeks filled with Regina’s smiles and laughter and undivided attention while he sleeps. And as little time as he gets, it’s still more than he gets from his mom. Except that’s not exactly fair and maybe she would be interested in his dreams. But she’s not even looking at him anymore, too busy staring into her coffee cup. She’s keeping secrets from him; it’s only fair that he gets to have one, too.
“I’m fine.” He drags his fork across his plate and says, “So, when do you think you’ll be done with your case?”
She sighs. “It might take a little while, kid. It’s kind of complicated.”
“It’s always complicated,” he mutters. She still hasn’t looked up at him, so he drops his fork and pushes his plate away. “I’m done. Can we go?”
She starts and then she smiles at him, that weird smile that she’s had ever since she brought him here. A scream starts to build in his throat-look at me, see me, where did you go-but he swallows it down because he is twelve, because he is too old for tantrums. Instead, he leaves the diner without waiting for her.
*****
“So, how do you know my mom?”
Regina frowns like she’s confused and she looks away as she says, “We were acquainted a long time ago.”
“Oh. I just thought-” he shoves his hands into his pockets. How is he supposed to explain to her that his mom is going to the hospital ever night, and he doesn’t think it has anything to do with the missing people? “Nothing.”
“What is it, Henry?”
He shrugs because it doesn’t matter, does it, this is just a dream. “She just seems so sad when she goes to visit you in the hospital.”
She stiffens and asks, “She’s visiting me in the hospital? Henry, where are you right now?”
“Storybrooke. My mom said she lived there for a little while, like right after she got out of prison.”
“Storybrooke?” Regina’s eyes are wide as she stares down at him. “We’re back?”
“Back?” And when Regina flinches at his question, turning her face away, he realizes that she shouldn’t have said that. It’s another piece to this weird puzzle. Back? Where did they go? “I don’t get it. Mom didn’t say anything about that.”
There’s this breath she takes every time he mentions his mom, like her heart stops and starts again. It’s weird.
He starts to ask her about it, why she’s pretending like there isn’t something going on, why his mom is hiding things from him, but the world shifts and fades, and he opens his eyes to only look at the dark ceiling above his bed.
*****
He stares into the room at his mom. She’s not doing anything, not talking, just sitting beside Regina’s bed. His fingers twitch on the door handle; he starts to pull the door open but then his mom starts talking, and he stops.
“I don’t understand why you did this, Regina.” She sighs then laughs, the sound heavy and cracking. “No, I guess I get it. Losing everything…I guess it’s not fair to expect you to just roll with the punches.”
He watches his mom take Regina’s hand and curl her fingers around it.
“But I need you to wake up. Because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and everything is all wrong now. God, just-please, come back. Regina, we need you to come back.”
He holds his breath because it feels like something is supposed to happen, something is supposed to change. Except that-this isn’t a story. It’s not a fairy tale but that’s his mom in there, holding Regina’s hand like she’s her lifeline and then, and then his mom leans over and kisses her.
The light flickers and the air feels heavier, but nothing changes. Nothing happens.
*****
He’s not supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be with Mary Margaret, but she’s nose-deep in baby books and she’s boring and she won’t notice that he’s gone, she wasn’t paying any attention to him before he snuck out of the apartment. And his mom is-she’s busy.
Taking a deep breath, he tries the door handle of the abandoned mayoral mansion; it’s unlocked. He slips inside and turns on his flashlight. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s here for, what he’s trying to find, so he just looks around for a second and tries to convince his feet to start moving forward because he’s not scared, he’s not, he’s just looking around. His mom does stuff like this all the time and she always comes home okay. He can do this.
He heads for the stairs, clutching the railing as tightly as he can as he goes up them slowly, heart hammering against his chest as he reaches the landing. He runs the flashlight beam along the wall then stops. No. It’s a picture of him. A picture of him hugging Regina. He reaches out, his fingers trembling, and touches it. It’s real, he’s not imagining this. He stands there and stares at it like it will give him answers, like this will make sense if he just looks at it.
But he’s running out of time. He pulls himself away from the picture and heads down the hallway. Answers, there have to be answers here, not more questions. He opens the second door on his right and peers inside, his flashlight catching on a bed, a desk, some bookshelves. He drops his flashlight and flips the light switch.
It’s a room for a kid. It’s a room that looks similar to the one he has at home, dark blues and polished wood and stuffed bookshelves. And on top of the bed is a big book. He runs over to it, stares down at the cover. Once Upon a Time. Fairy tales. He traces his hands over the gold script and there’s something there, something familiar but he doesn’t understand how.
Grabbing the book, he stuffs it into his backpack and grabs his flashlight as he races out of the room. He doesn’t stop running until he’s out of the house and down the street.
*****
He’s reading the book when his mom comes back. The stories aren’t like any other fairy tales he’s read before and the illustrations are awful, but there has to be something here, some sort of clue about why it was this book on that bed that looks so much like his own. There isn’t anything, though, except for the fact that the last few pages have been ripped out.
“Where did you get that?”
He looks up from the book and his mom’s face…he’s only seen her face look like that once before, and that was when he had asked her about his dad. She crouches down in front of him and wraps her fingers around a corner of the book; she’s shaking, and he has to look away.
“I just found it.” He shrugs. “It’s just a dumb book of fairy tales.”
“Oh, okay.” She stands back up and says, “So, you want to go get some ice cream, kid?”
Kid. She’s never called him that. Never. Not until they came here.
“No.” He slams the book closed and glares at her. “And my name’s Henry.”
She frowns. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know. What’s wrong with you?” he shoots back before pushing past her and running out of Mary Margaret’s apartment.
Tears run down his cheeks as he tries to gulp in a breath, as he bangs his fists against the railing outside and tries to make the crying stop because he’s too old, but it won’t stop, he can’t stop the stupid little sobs that are stuck in his throat. He hears the door open behind him, and his mom is there, she’s right there but she’s not doing anything and she’s supposed to, she’s his mom.
“Henry. Henry, what’s wrong?” She puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes.
He turns and flings his arms around her. “I just want to go home.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t say anything else, though, and he tries to hold onto her tighter even though she’s already starting to let him go. Everything is wrong.
*****
Regina is waiting for him when he dreams, like always, a smile on her face as he looks up at her. He smiles back before he remembers the house and the secrets.
He doesn’t hesitate. “I went to your house tonight. There are pictures of me in there. Why?”
“I-what?” She shakes her head. “Henry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw them. There are pictures of me in your house and there’s a room that looks like my bedroom back home, and you shouldn’t have any of that, I don’t know you, I’ve never lived there.” He narrows his eyes and asks, “Why do you have those pictures?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But she’s not looking at him.
“You’re lying to me.”
“Henry, I’m not.”
He stomps his foot and yells, “No, you are! I know what I saw. I’m not crazy!”
She turns away from him, and he wants to scream because he is so tired of secrets and lies. She’s crying, though, and he reaches out to take her hand, to apologize. Except that he can’t touch her. He tries again, and his hand goes through her fingers like she’s not even there.
“I can’t touch you,” he says, and he tries again. And again.
“Henry.” And she’s looking at him with sad eyes, tears falling down her cheeks, and he can’t touch her.
“If this is my dream, then why can’t I touch you? Why can’t I hold your hand? This isn’t real, it’s just a dream, so why can’t I do that?” He’s screaming and he knows he should stop, can feel the fire building in the room around him, rising up and roaring as he keeps trying and trying to reach her.
“Because this is real, Henry.” Regina crouches down in front of him and he watches the way she reaches up like she’s going to cup his cheek and then she stops. “This is real.”
He wakes up screaming, and he can’t stop, he can’t swallow the sounds. The room’s light turns on, and his mom is here beside him, holding onto his arm.
“Henry, what’s going on?” she asks.
He looks at her and takes a breath before he says, “I’ve been dreaming about Regina.”
“Regina?” His mom’s eyes go wide and she grips his shoulders tight. “Henry, you’ve seen her? What did she say?”
“So it’s real? It’s all real?”
She doesn’t look away this time. “Yeah, kid, it’s all real.”
*****
He hears the door open downstairs but doesn’t move from where he’s curled up on top of Regina’s bed, his nose buried in a pillow. He breathes in, wonders if this is what she smells like or if it’s even possible for there to be those tiny memories of her still here.
Not that he would know if he found them. He scrubs at his his eyes, sniffling, trying to force back the tears as his mom walks into the room.
“Henry.” She sits down on the bed, the mattress dipping with her weight. She runs a hand along the back of his head, and he flinches away from her. “I really am sorry. If I had known you were seeing her in your dreams, in that place, I would have told you the truth.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?” he asks, clenching the pillow in his fists. “Why did she let me think it was just a dream?”
“Would you have believed her?”
He shrugs but he still can’t look up at her, can’t face the idea that everything he knows is a lie, that she gave birth to him but then gave him away, and how is life supposed to go back to normal now that he knows, how can life ever be good again when he knows the truth but can’t remember it?
“Henry, I know this is hard, I know it doesn’t make sense, but we did what we could to make sure that you will never be alone. That you would always be loved and safe.” She sighs and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Henry, Regina-your mom, she loves you more than anything. And I love you.”
“But you gave me away.” He pushes himself up and glares at her. “So everything about our lives is a lie. I don’t even know anything about my mom, I don’t even know if I loved her. I don’t know anything, and it’s not fair. We were happy and then we came here. Why couldn’t we have just stayed home and been happy together?”
She’s crying now, too, and she says quietly, “Because you were happy here. You were loved here. Because I watched your heart break when we had to leave. Because the life we had wasn’t the truth, Henry. It wasn’t.”
“All of it?” His hands shake as he pulls the pillow up to his chest and holds it close because nononono but her eyes look so sad and lost.
“Not all of it.” She reaches out and tugs at his hand, holds it in hers. “This last year, it’s been-it’s been the best year of my life. Because I had you and you were safe and happy and had everything I ever wanted for you. I didn’t want to come back here. I didn’t want to take that away from us because it was my dream, Henry, getting the chance to have you for every moment since you were born. But I knew that you would never forgive me once you found out the truth.”
He breathes, slow, and asks, “You promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
He looks at her and it’s not okay, it’s not, but it’s better and that matters, it does. He looks at her, and she gives him this little smile, tiny but there, small but his, and he lunges forward, flinging his arms around her. And she holds him, holds him tight and close.
“How do we wake her up?”
Her arms tighten around him as she says, “It’s a sleeping curse so it’s supposed to be true love’s kiss.”
“Mine?” he asks, remembering that night in the hospital, that flash of light and the heaviness in the air and how nothing changed.
“Hopefully, kid.” She sighs and pulls back to look him in the eye. “But if it doesn’t work-it’s not your fault. Okay?”
He nods his head and slips out of her arms as he gets off the bed. Grabbing her hand, he tugs on her arm and grins.
“Come on. Let’s go get her back.”
Emma squeezes his fingers and smiles, letting him pull her out of the room and down the stairs. “Yeah. Let’s go get her back.”
*****
He stands beside Regina’s bed, heart hammering in his chest as he looks down at her. He can feel his mom hovering behind him, but he tries to push past that, to ignore her. He has to focus, has to think about Regina and the dreams and she’s his mom and how much he wants her to open her eyes, to look at him and smile.
Maybe it will be enough. Please let it be enough.
He takes her right hand in his and leans over her carefully, slowly, and kisses her cheek. And waits. Waits.
No.
Tears stream down his cheeks as he lifts her hand to his chest and tries to will her awake because he needs her to open her eyes, he needs to look at her and say that it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember, she’s his mom and-
There’s a burst of light and a pulse that pushes past him, and then she breathes. She takes a breath and her eyes are fluttering open and she looks at him. She looks at him and her smile is wide and brilliant and then, and then…
“Mom.” He sobs around the world as it all comes flooding back, the truth and the memories, and she’s here. She’s here and smiling at him and he doesn’t even think, just throws his arms around her the best way he can.
“Henry,” she whispers, then she laughs and he can feel her smile in every part of him, all the way down to his bones.
He looks up at his mom, his mom, and then he turns to look back at Emma, reaching out for her, pulling her in. There’s something different in her eyes when she looks at Regina, something that probably has a lot to do with that kiss, but right now, it’s just him and his moms and it’s enough. It’s everything.