Author's Note: So, I know we are supposed to be really into Henry and Cinderella's love story, but I just can't help getting caught up in Henry and Ivy. In 7x02 when he was captured and she was going to torture him, he said she didn't have to do this and she didn't seem as mean as her mother. Even though she denied it, it touched my heart, because that is classic Henry, seeing the good and the hope in others, especially when they don't see it in themselves. And then in 7x04, all their scenes together, I couldn't help but melt. This is my new ship! I've looked online, and noticed that I am not alone in this feeling, but I also noticed that nobody has yet written a fic for them and I wanted to be the first. I hope to write many fics for them in the future. This is just a taste. It's a super-short one-shot that may become longer. Anyway, I hope you like it. Tell me what you think.
Not Jacinda
Ivy wasn't Jacinda. That much was clear. When he met Jacinda, he felt fourteen, like meeting his first crush all over again. He felt like a big dope when he was around her. And Lucy, walking around, claiming to be his daughter, had stirred something too. There was something inside of him that so desperately wanted it to be true. He wanted to be a father. He wanted a family. He wanted back what he had lost. And in some ways, it would be so easy to fit in there. Jacinda needed someone to help her out, and Henry and his school-boy crush, his desperate desire for family, made him oh so willing. That's why he kept spending time with them. Because there was a connection. He felt it. If he was being honest, mostly, he felt it with Lucy. He got tongue-tied around Jacinda, but there was a large leap between a crush and True-Love. Not that he even believed in such things. Lucy though, she made his heart clench with a pain and longing that had nothing to do with her mother. He so wished it were true. He wished he could be her father. And if that meant attaching himself to her attractive mother, he wasn't going to complain.
So why wasn't he there with them? Why was he with Ivy, drinking their fears away? It was because she wasn't Jacinda. She was lost and alone like he was. Not because she had an evil stepmother who actively tried to ruin her life or because she had a daughter she was trying desperately to support. It was because she didn't have anything, and she didn't have anybody. She was defined by her emptiness, and so was he. So when they found their way back to his place that night, he didn't think about it. When he pushed her against the wall and smelt the alcohol on her breath, he didn't think at all. He just acted.
He acted because he was so lost, and so alone, and so was she. They were two lonely, desperate people, numbing the pain for one night.
He did it because she was not Jacinda, and, Henry realized, he was quite okay with that.