A/N: This story was written for the Swan Queen Big Bang 4 and was previously published on AO3. It's set around 13 years after the first episode, when Henry is around 23. There are some changes to canon - it basically ignores all of what happened in season 5.
Chapter One: Henry
The past three mornings, Henry has awoken bathed in sweat, not in the least bit rested and with a formless sense of dread churning in his stomach. He can't remember his dreams, but Aaron, whose tent is closest to his, has complained about him shouting in the middle of the night. The fourth morning, he finally remembers and his hands shake so much as he shaves that his face is a mess of tiny cuts. At breakfast, he barely notices the ribbing he's getting from his colleagues over his sudden ineptitude. It's been years since he's dreamed of the room of flames and his mind is heaving with the possibilities, all of them terrifying.
He tries to push the thoughts aside, tries to concentrate on the important task at hand. His fieldwork is at a critical stage and he can't afford to be distracted, but his mind keeps creeping back to that place of childhood nightmares. That night, he dreams again and wakes up in the early hours of the morning, this time with one more detail in hand. There's someone else trapped in the room, an indistinct figure that he's unable to recognise through the flames.
He shoves a few things into a bag, and as the first light creeps over the horizon he leaves the camp behind. He's throwing away six months' worth of fieldwork, a chance at publication and potentially compromising his scholarship, but there's an irresistible force pulling at him. It takes five hours to get to the airport, and then he spends almost all of his savings on the first flight he can get to Boston. He lands in the middle of the night and somehow manages to get a rental car. He drives straight to Storybrooke, and pulls up in front of 108 Mifflin Street as the sun is rising.
He sits in the car for a few minutes trying to psych himself up. With every mile he travelled closer to Storybrooke, the sense of dread had magnified. And now that he's here, he's terrified of what he might find. Finally, he coaxes reluctant limbs into motion, hops out of the car and walks to the front door. He still has a key and he opens the door, careful not to make too much noise.
He's surprised when he sees Ma in the living room, nursing a cup of coffee and staring into space. She looks tired, more tired than he ever remembers seeing her and it's her presence in the house that finally gives form to all his fears. Beyond holidays and family events, as far as he knows, she doesn't set foot in this house any more.
"Ma?"
She looks up at the sound of his voice, starting slightly, before she stands up, a weak smile creeping across her face.
"Henry. Thank god you got the message."
He shakes his head. "I didn't get it. Ma, what's going on? Is Mom okay?"
Her face crumples and he pulls her into a hug. "No, she isn't. But now that you're here, maybe she will be."
She buries her face in his chest, and it's strange to find their positions reversed. For once, he's the one giving comfort; Ma's worn too thin, and even though he suspects what he will be confronted with, until he sees it with his own eyes it won't quite be real.
"Where is she?" Henry breaks the embrace, taking a step back, but leaving his hands on her shoulders.
She doesn't answer. Instead, she turns and leads him up the stairs. He trails behind her and as she turns the handle and pushes open the bedroom door, he pauses, lingering in the doorway. It's been a long time since he's set foot in this room. When he'd been small, he'd woken up almost every morning in the warm, safe, comfortable confines of Mom's arms. He'd been six and a half when he had finally stopped creeping into her room in the middle of the night. When he finally steps into the room, he can't bring himself to look at the bed.
There's a thin layer of dust coating the surface of her dresser and he swipes his finger through it, thinking how much she'd hate that. In the corner of the room, there's a chair with a blanket thrown over it, and a small collection of coffee mugs on the floor next to it, testament to the vigil that he presumes Ma has been keeping.
When he can't avoid it any longer, he finally looks at the bed. There's a horrible wailing, groaning noise and it takes him a moment to realise that he's the source of it. He closes his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut. Ma is beside him an instant later, slinging an arm around him, and he wishes that he was small enough again to hide in her arms.
When he opens his eyes again, nothing has changed. Mom is arranged carefully in the middle of the bed. She's still, so very, very still, the only evidence of life in the faint and occasional rise and fall of her chest. It's jarring seeing her this way; hands that are always busy lie slack beside her and her face, normally so expressive, is like wax.
He's struck by how tiny she looks, nestled there in the huge bed. Until this moment, he's never realised quite how small she is; even after he'd grown taller than her when he was fourteen, she'd still seemed a giant to him. But that stature had been a thing born of presence, of personality, of strength of will and when he looks at her now, he sees none of it left.
He walks over to the bed and picks up one of her hands, wanting to reassure himself that life and warmth are still present, and that the motion of her breathing is not an illusion, his mind deceiving him into seeing what he wants to see.
Her skin is cooler than it should be, but not the cold of death, and when he removes the pressure of his hand, blood slowly returns to her fingers. Her heart is still beating. He likes to think he would know if it wasn't.
"She was in the hospital, until we realised that it was a sleeping curse. When we realised there was nothing the doctors could do, I moved her here." Ma says, and he suspects it's just for the sake of saying something.
He's glad that she did, because he knows that Mom would hate to be stuck in a hospital bed, strangers coming and going at all hours around her.
He turns to Ma and asks, "When did this happen?"
"A week ago. She was supposed to be having afternoon tea with your grandma, but she never answered the door. I came over to check things out, and found her collapsed at her desk in her study."
Looking at Ma, Henry wonders if she's slept for even a minute since then.
"Who did this to her?"
"We don't know yet. Your grandpa is investigating, but I don't dare to leave her for long, in case whoever did this decides that they're not quite finished." Henry can hear the frustration in her voice. Knowing Ma, it's the frustration of not knowing combined with the frustration of inactivity. She's always hated sitting on her hands.
She looks at him expectantly, and he realises that he's been procrastinating, although he doesn't care to examine why. There's a very clear role for him here, and it's to complete True Love's Kiss and wake his mother up.
His mouth is suddenly dry and he can feel his hands shaking as he leans down, supporting his weight on the edge of the bed. He closes his eyes and presses his lips to her forehead and waits for the burst of light. He waits and he waits and he waits and when nothing happens, he opens his eyes to see Ma staring at him wide-eyed.
There's a moment of what might be despair painted across her face, quickly masked when she realises that he's looking at her. He thinks that it can't even come close to the despair he's feeling right now. He's failed Mom, and he can't even begin to think about what it means.
He hears Ma call his name, but he's already on his way out, slamming the door behind him.
He's been there at least an hour before Ma finds him. She's always had a knack for finding him, so he's surprised that she's taken so long. She jumps out of the car and sits down a few yards away.
"Your grandpa is watching over your Mom, and I've put wards up that should hold for now," she says. After that, she doesn't look at him, just sits there fidgeting with some grass, waiting for him to speak.
He squirms but manages to hold out for at least five uncomfortable minutes. It isn't fair that she's using her Sheriff tricks on him. Eventually, he can't take the silence any longer. "How has she been? Before this happened, I mean."
Ma shrugs. "We don't talk much, but it doesn't take a genius to know that she misses you, kid. We both do, but she takes it harder. You should come visit more often."
"I know. I'm sorry." He feels guilty every time Ma reminds him to call, every time Mom sends him a message, every time he picks up the phone and hears her voice, every time he finds another excuse not to come back.
"You don't have to apologise to me. Just try a little harder, okay?" Her eyes soften. "You know, I understand what it's like to feel like a misfit, to never feel quite like you belong anywhere."
She leaves that baited hook dangling out there, and he's reminded that for all her gruffness, all her apparent lack of polish, she's always been far more perceptive than people give her credit for.
Because that's just it. He feels trapped between two worlds. Here, he's the son of the Evil Queen, the Saviour, of two powerful magic users, of heroes. He's the grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming and Rumplestiltskin, and when people look at him here, they see his lineage and nothing more. They see an opportunity to exploit. He was fifteen when he finally realised that his main value in Storybrooke was as a liability, a vulnerability for his family's enemies to exploit. They were busy being heroes, and he was being used as bait or a bargaining chip.
When he's outside, he's just Henry Mills and he lives and dies by his own merits. He's a scholar and he's good at what he does. He always buys his round when he's out at a bar and his friends see him as solid and steady and kind. A good guy, where being a good guy doesn't mean fighting dragons or saving the world. When someone expresses an interest in him, it's not because of who his family is. He doesn't have to worry that they're using him to get at his parents, and it's liberating.
But outside, they also don't know about a boy who gave his heart to save magic, a boy who briefly held the power to change destinies, to shape the world, and chose to give it up. They don't know about the marks that years caught up in the struggle between good and evil have left on his soul.
They certainly wouldn't understand the guilt he feels right now. He loves Mom with his whole heart, no matter the distance between them, but apparently that's not enough anymore. The true love between them appears to have faded, or maybe his heart simply isn't big enough.
"Why wasn't I good enough, Ma? Why couldn't I wake her up?"
"We don't know that yet, kid." He rolls his eyes at the familiar nickname. "Maybe there's something about the curse that we don't know yet."
There's a twig next to his hand and he picks it up and stabs viciously at the dirt and grass next to him. "The rules are pretty simple. True Love's Kiss will break any curse."
Ma shakes her head. "Everyone likes to pretend that magic is simple, that there are rules that everyone knows and understands. It's not. It's never that simple." Her voice is fierce as she says, "We'll figure this out. We'll find a way."
He rolls the twig between his fingers and says quietly, "Sometimes I think I shouldn't have broken the Author's pen. I could have fixed this in an instant." He looks up at her. "Do you think I did the wrong thing?"
She appears to weigh up the idea for a moment before looking at him seriously. "You know you made the right decision. You knew it then and you know it now." She moves closer and slings an arm around him, resting her head on his shoulder.
"Henry, you have the biggest, truest heart of anyone I've ever known and if I had to choose anyone in the world to trust that power with, it would be you. But that much power… It doesn't matter how good and strong and true you are, it can change you in ways you don't even realise are happening."
He knows she's right. She understands the risk better than anyone. He wonders if she still wakes up with nightmares from her time as the Dark One. There had been a time when he'd hear her pacing through the house every night for months on end, or sometimes wake up to shouts or screams, or see the sleepless night clearly etched in her face at the breakfast table.
He knows all of this. It doesn't mean that he hasn't spent long nights thinking about the lives he could have saved, though. It doesn't mean that he hasn't fervently wished that he had the power to actually make a difference.
"I know you're right. I just wish I could save her."
"I know, kid. I know." She squeezes him a little tighter to her. "I promise we'll solve this. She's going to be okay."
They go back to the house and David greets them. He pulls Henry into a brief hug, clapping him on the back before holding him at arm's length, clasping his upper arms. David smiles and nods admiringly. "You've been keeping up with your strength work. We should get the practice swords out while you're here, get in some training."
Henry can't help but find the forced joviality grating; he knows what his grandfather is trying to do, but he's not in the mood. And the truth is, he's never particularly enjoyed swordplay. He'd been so eager to learn when he was younger. Eager to find a way to connect to these newly discovered family members and his heritage and to find a way that he might be able to be useful. And although his grandfather is a good, patient teacher, Henry has never progressed particularly far.
But he smiles anyway, and says, "Sure thing, Grandpa."
Henry goes into the kitchen to make tea, just to give himself something to do. He's barely been here a few hours, and now that his role in this drama has proved to be little more than a bit part, the idea of just waiting around for something to happen is driving him insane.
He drags things out for as long as he can, before he returns to the living room. In the time that he's been in the kitchen, David has left, and Belle has arrived. He sits down in a chair in the corner, sipping his tea, and listens as Ma recounts his failure to her.
Belle is frowning as she listens, and occasionally she shoots sympathetic glances over in his direction. "It's very strange that it wouldn't work, because this appears to be a simple sleeping curse and we have confirmation of True Love between Henry and Regina. But maybe there's more to it."
Ma sighs. "If you have any ideas, I'd be open to hearing them."
"Maybe the problem isn't a lack of True Love. Maybe it's in the requirements to activate it. Henry wasn't born in the old world and perhaps what's missing is the initial spark of magic."
He gets up and walks out of the room. He can't listen to this anymore. He goes upstairs and stands over the bed, watching her sleep. He takes off his shoes and lies beside her and curls up as small as he can, clasping her hand in his. He closes his eyes and tries to pretend it's just a nightmare and he'll wake up in a world that has been righted again, just as he had so many nights when he was a child.
Ma finds him there a while later; he stirs at the sound of her opening the door. He can still feel the lick of flames against his skin, and when Ma brushes a hand across his forehead, her hand feels shockingly cool.
"You're burning up," she says.
He opens his eyes, and she's leaning over him, worry written all over her face.
"I can't get to her, Ma. She's there, but I can't reach her. The flames are too hot and she's too far away."
He realises he's crying when Ma perches on the side of the bed and smooths her hand across his cheek, and she's murmuring his name over and over again like an incantation, like a protection spell.
He's here, in the place he's always felt safest, the two people he loves most in the world by his side. He closes his eyes again, and for a second or two, he can pretend that everything is perfect. Except it's not. Mom is lost in a place he can't reach, and looking at Ma, he thinks she might follow soon; she's burning up from the inside. She looks hollowed out, and he thinks that with just the slightest pressure, she might collapse in on herself. He needs to be strong, needs to fight for them like they've always fought for him.
Three days after Henry's arrival, they are no closer to finding a solution, and no closer to finding whoever was responsible for the curse. The item carrying the curse was a long needle that Ma had found nestled among the paperwork on Mom's desk. It was entirely generic and innocuous-looking, and nothing about it provided any clues to its origins. Ma had attempted to find some sort of magical fingerprint to point her in the direction of the curse's caster. However, the only magical traces she had been able to find were Mom's and she'd concluded that when the curse had been activated her magic must have interacted with the curse, masking any evidence of the caster's identity.
Ma is barely sleeping as she pores through the vast collection of books that Mom keeps in the house and in her vault. And she tries spell after spell, but none of them wake Mom up, and none of them help narrow down the suspect list. The truth is, there are no suspects. Storybrooke has been peaceful for the past two years and while there is a list of people a mile long who might still be nursing a grudge against the Evil Queen, decades later, there is nothing in particular to point towards any one of them.
They're basically flailing around in the dark, and the only progress they've made is determining that Belle's theory on why he had been unable to break the curse is more than plausible. It's frustrating to think that there's nothing he can do to wake her up, that once again he comes up wanting in this world that has never quite been his.
It's getting late, and Ma has been locked up in Mom's study for hours now and he's pretty sure she hasn't eaten anything today. He pokes around in the kitchen and finds a batch of lasagne in the freezer. He finds a tray and puts the plates of food on it, and as an afterthought, grabs a couple of glasses and a bottle of wine.
He pushes open the study door, and Ma doesn't even look up from the book she is poring over, a grunt of acknowledgment the only indication she has even noticed his presence. He slides the plate onto the desk next to the book, and she mumbles a thank you, but continues to read, ignoring the food.
"Ma, you should take a break."
When she still doesn't put the book aside, he makes a frustrated noise and takes the book away. She finally looks up.
"Henry, what the hell? I was in the middle of something." She glares at him.
"Ma, whatever it is, it can wait a few minutes. You need to eat something; you're no good to her if you run yourself into the ground."
She sighs. "You're probably right, kid." She finally picks up the plate and starts picking at her food. He pours her a glass of wine and she takes it automatically. After a couple of hesitant bites, she starts to attack the lasagne. She gets halfway through the serving and stops, her fork hovering mid-way between the plate and her mouth, and he could swear that he can see her eyelashes glistening.
She wipes her eyes, and when she catches him watching her, she says, "Red pepper flakes. I never could get used to that lick of heat."
He knows it's a lie. He knows it because Ma's had plenty of time to get used to it and she'd always complimented Mom on her lasagne. And he knows it because he's pretty sure he's feeling something similar right now. There's an ache in his chest, a dreadful, gaping emptiness, and with every mouthful of his dinner, he feels that void grow bigger and bigger.
He knows it's a lie, but he doesn't call her on it, because his control over his own emotions is just as tenuous as hers. Instead, he takes a long draw of his glass of wine and says, "It's pretty spicy."
Ma wipes her eyes again and says, "Yeah, it is," before draining half her glass of wine.
He'd never really thought about it before, never really noticed the way that Ma looked at Mom, until the year he brought his girlfriend Sarah home for Christmas, eager to show her off to his family. After the celebrations were over, they'd lain in bed together, chatting.
"How long ago did your parents split up?"
He looked at her, confused. "What are you talking about? They've never been a couple."
He'd told her some of the basic details of his strange family, but he'd kept a lot of it deliberately vague and she'd put two and two together and come up with five. After all, he could hardly tell her that one set of grandparents appeared to be the same age as Ma, or that his other grandfather was hundreds of years old and had previously been an immortal embodiment of evil.
"Really? I just assumed when you mentioned that you had two mothers that they were divorced lesbian mommies and I kind of got that impression today."
"Definitely not. I mean, they've been through a lot together, and they were friends for a long time, but, no. If there was anything more, I would have known about it."
"Huh." She frowned at him. "They just have this weird energy about them. They kind of spark."
After that, he'd watched them carefully whenever the opportunity had presented itself, and he'd started to wonder if perhaps Sarah was right. There was something there; somehow, they both seemed to be hyperaware of the other, and it made no sense, particularly given the distance that had grown between them in the past couple of years. There were looks when they thought the other wasn't looking, and he had begun to realise just how charged the atmosphere always was between them. He'd put it down to residual anger over whatever falling out they'd had. And then he'd thought back to all of those times they'd risked themselves for one another, and suddenly, they gained new meaning.
It was Thanksgiving weekend the following year when he'd finally got confirmation that Ma's feelings ran a little deeper than friendship. He'd come home alone and broken-hearted after Sarah had dumped him and he and Ma had steadily worked their way through a bottle of scotch one evening.
"I think I was in love with her, Ma. I kind of thought that we'd spend the rest of our lives together, but I guess she thought differently."
She sat next to him on the floor, leaning against the sofa and poured another measure of scotch into his glass. "I'm sorry, kid." She pulled him into a brief, one-armed hug and he leaned into her for a moment, savouring the contact.
"I just want to stop feeling like this. How do I make it stop?" He was desperate to find a way out of this mire of despair. He'd never quite realised just how much loving someone could hurt.
"I don't know, kid. I'll get back to you as soon as I find a way. Or maybe if you discover the secret first, you can let me know."
It took a moment for the implication of her words to register and when it did, he turned to her, frowning. "Who are you trying to get over, Ma?"
She looked at him, a deer-in-the-headlights expression on her face as she stumbled over a denial. "No one. Nothing. I…"
He narrowed his eyes and looked at her suspiciously. "Is it someone I know?"
"There's no one, Henry."
He shook his head. "Ma, I may not have your gift, but right now I know you're lying."
She laughed, high and false and far too bright. "You caught me, kid. I'm in love with Leroy."
He shook his head, ignoring the obvious diversionary tactic. "I know it's not him. But I think I have a pretty good idea of who it might be." He looked at her, his gaze direct, and he could see her sag a little, the fake humour of a moment ago gone. "How long have you been in love with her?"
Recognition bloomed in her eyes with this last question and she dropped any further pretence, her face open and vulnerable. "At this point, I don't feel like I can remember a time when I wasn't in love with her." A moment later, she grabbed him, her fingers biting into his upper arm, and her eyes were suddenly fierce. "But Henry, you can't tell her any of this. You have to promise that you won't tell."
"I promise. I promise I won't tell. It's not my secret." He felt her grip on his arm relax a little and when he was certain she'd calmed down a little, he took a chance. "Ma, it's not for me to tell. But you should tell her. I think she'd want to know."
There was a momentary flicker of something that might have been hope in her eyes, but a moment later it was gone and she said, "Pretty sure we were talking about your love life, kid." With that, she shut down any further conversation on the topic.
That was two years ago, and neither of them had brought it up since then.
He's never quite been able to figure out what had actually happened between his mothers. He'd gone off to his first year of college and they'd been friends, best friends even, and when he'd returned over the winter break, things had suddenly become very frosty between them. He'd tried to sneakily quiz both of them, but had been comprehensively shut down. Over time, things had thawed a little, and he knew that they made an effort for his sake, but they'd never regained the intimacy that had characterised their relationship for a few years.
It's a puzzle that he still worries at from time to time. He knows how Ma feels, but Mom is a mystery he's never quite been able to solve. And right now, she's telling none of her secrets.
Looking at Ma trying not to cry over a slice of lasagne, he feels a little bit of hope that she might be the solution. Because at this point, just about anything is worth a try.
She picks up the book again and starts studying it, and this time, Henry takes notice of what the volume is. It's a book of fairy tales, a modern book from this world.
"Ma, what are you hoping to find in there?"
She looks up from the page she's reading and shrugs helplessly. "I don't know, Henry. But I've exhausted all the likely magical sources and Belle thought that maybe some of the stories in this world might offer some clues, because there's a lot of detail that's somehow leaked through. It's the longest of long shots, but at this point I'll take hope in whatever form it comes."
He tries to keep the scepticism from creeping into his expression, but he's pretty sure he's failed when she sighs and throws the book across the room. They both wince when it hits the wall and one of the perfectly hung photographs falls to the floor and the glass on it shatters. Ma slumps in her chair, her head in her hands, and all he can think is that she looks defeated and he hates seeing her that way.
He walks across the room and picks up the picture from the mess of glass on the floor. It's one of the three of them from a few years ago, before things turned cool between his mothers, and everyone looks content. He's sandwiched between Mom and Ma, both with an arm around him, and they're smiling at each other over his head, not looking at the camera.
He runs his thumb across the photo, forgetting for a moment that he's supposed to be cleaning up the broken glass, and a stray piece catches his thumb, slicing into it. It's not particularly deep, but it stings and he can't help the reflexive ouch that crosses his lips.
Ma is crouching down beside him a moment later, taking his hand in hers and he feels a pleasant warmth and then the cut is gone. She takes the photo from him, and with a casual wave of her hand, the pieces are back together, and it's like nothing ever happened.
He sometimes forgets just how powerful she is.
She grimaces, and her voice is soft and despondent as she holds out the picture and says, "I can fix this without a second thought. But I can't fix the things that matter."
She slides down the wall and sits on the floor. He takes the picture from her and sits down next to her. He's been studying the picture for a couple of minutes when he finally speaks.
"But what if you could fix things?"
She tenses up beside him and her voice is strained as she says, "I've tried, Henry. I've tried everything I know how to."
"Not quite everything," he says softly. "You haven't tried True Love's Kiss."
He thinks she hasn't heard him until she abruptly stands up and walks out of the room.