But did you see the other guy?

"Henry?"

The boy halted in the middle of the hall, his back still facing Regina as he closed the main door. His back was slightly bended, slouching, a trait he had picked up from Emma and one Regina hated. His knuckles were, however, what Regina focused on, arms crossed and already a look of worry crossing her face when she noticed the bruised skin and dried blood the boy certainly hadn't had the time to clean properly before getting home.

"Henry?" She repeated, taking a step closer to the boy, boy that now towered over her and still was her little prince no matter the years. She had received the call from Snow -now principal- so she already knew what to expect but when the teen finally turned and looked at her, all sad angles and slowly forming bruises she needed her best skills in order to keep herself away from gasping and asking for the head of whoever who had done something like this.

"It has been handled" Snow had said in a soft voice that had done nothing for Regina's, who had made her bristle and had created violet wisps around her fingers, around her eyes. "But I thought that you would want to know beforehand"

"Is Emma aware of this?" Regina had asked, not even bothering to respond to what she thought about Snow's idea of what handling meant. Her thumb was already playing with the ring on his finger, nervously touching it as she thought on Henry, on how he was.

"David…"

"I seriously doubt your husband is the right person to explain my spouse what's happened with our son" She had quipped, coldness seeping on her voice as she rose from the mayoral chair, mentally listing the things she would need to stop and reschedule in order for her to be home when Henry arrived. "Leave that to me, will you?"

She had hung up on the stammering brunette seconds after receiving a "yes" and she had gone minutes after in a vortex of magic, barely bothering to leave a note behind for her secretary.

All of that, however, had disappeared when she had seen Henry through the windows of the living room and seeing him now, in front of her, only made her even more glad she was there.

"I thought you would be working" The boy, voice deep, eyes rimmed with red and a split lip framing the rest of his body as he recoiled, his back almost touching the door, as if he was preparing to run. The movement alone made Regina, a part of her, tremble and cry inside but she kept still, eyeing the boy, wanting to hug him, to keep him close. The sudden silence, however, didn't last and Henry soon enough talked once again, a humorless smile appearing on his face, a sudden flash of pain appearing on his pupils when the lip oozed blood. "Did grandma call you? I told her…"

"Your grandmother has many flaws" Regina interrupted in a gentle voice "But she at least knows that her head would have been in a spike by the end of the week if she hadn't had called telling me what had happened"

Henry's face changed from mirthless to stunned, settling finally into hurt. "I'm sure she didn't tell you everything" He replied, moving already and walking past Regina, going directly to the stairs, backpack hitting the staircase's rail as he moved.

"No" Regina replied, sighing inwardly and following him close behind. "She just told me that you got into a fight, that the other boy needed stitches and that you have been suspended"

Henry stopped, his shoulders seeming to slump even more as he turned, facing Regina on the top of the stairs, a brief look of pride glowing on his pupils. A look the former queen had seen on Emma herself when she had managed to defeat a magical creature with the only aid of her gun. Reckless, both of them, and incredibly proud.

"Henry" She called for a third time, finishing the last bit of distance that separated them and picking up the hand of the boy tenderly, her magic already itching inside of her, radiating from her. "I want to know, please"

She was worried, extremely so, all she wanted was to heal Henry and lock him up, ensuring no one hurt him. Ever. But she had also learnt that there were things she couldn't do, not like her first impulses called for at least.

The teen seemed as worried as her, his tongue slowly prodding the wound of his lip as he remained silent, thinking. Finally, he turned once again and entered inside his room, sitting on his bed and running a hand through his hair, motioning Regina to enter inside, a rule that Regina and Emma had agreed on when the boy had hit 15; to always for him to have the last word on who could enter inside the place.

Stepping inside and sitting next to him Regina picked up the bloody hand tenderly and raised a brow already waiting, her magic tickling as it ebbed inside Henry's skin.

"Remember Harry?"

"The boy from the Dumtpys?" Regina asked back, frowning as she tried to put a face on the boy she had seen back on the days of the curse.

Henry nodded before he kept talking, hissing when Regina touched his face as her magic worked. "He said a few things about me, about the book, about why I didn't change the stories that were already written on the Sorcerers' house"

Regina nodded, encouraging Henry to keep talking.

"I just said to him that I couldn't, that I didn't wrote the stories, that I'm just a scribe. Then… he said a few nasty things about me, about Ma and… about you. About how we were evil, that no matter what we did… I just saw red."

Many things had happened ever since Henry had called her "evil" and things weren't black or white anymore but the term evil was still something treated very carefully on Storybrooke, the taboo of magic, especially coming from the Mills manor, still having a dark meaning in the minds of many Storybrooke's citizens. Something Emma hated with all her heart and Regina looked at it with tired resignation. However, this time had been the first in which Henry had been attacked for this and Regina felt her blood boil as the last wound disappeared from the teen's cheek.

"Hen…" She started, only to be interrupted by the boy.

"I know I shouldn't have, but he kept going, about me, about you, about ma, and I just… I wanted him to stop, and then he pushed me and I hit him."

The aforementioned look of pride had completely vanished from his face, only leaving behind a defeated teen. "I shouldn't have hit him; I know."

"You are right, you shouldn't have" Regina answered back, a hand on the boy's shoulder and a somewhat stern look on her eyes when she managed to get Henry look at her. "You know very well what I think about violence, about fighting like this."

"But" She added tenderly "You aren't evil and what Harry told you was completely uncalled for. Your mother and I… have done a few questionable things back in time, which don't make us evil, not anymore at least. It makes us humans."

She remembered a time she too had needed a very similar talk with Emma and then months of therapy in order to understand what she was and wasn't anymore. It hadn't been easy to unlearn things she had realized were still on her subconscious and she intended to give all of those words back to Henry. Just in case.

"However" She finished, her look stern but warm as she raised a single finger "Talking would have been better. Okay?"

"I'm sure ma thinks differently" The teen replied petulantly, his mouth quirking in a soft smile as Regina rolled her eyes, worry finally ebbing away.

"You two are far too alike, one day you are going to give me grey hairs." Sobering she spoke again. "She will talk to you after she comes back from work. I told her I would be talking to you first."

The teen nodded at that and hugged her, squeezing tightly for a second before moving back. "Thank you" he mouthed.

Regina knew it wasn't only for the healing magic, nor for the talk, but for the things they didn't exactly talk about; like the years they had needed in order to heal, in order to grow as a family. And for that she smiled and hummed, closing the door behind her not before chanting at her back "You will still be grounded though"

The groan at the other side made her smirk.