Hello again, everyone! I'm back with the second installment of The Hero's Way. Thank you to everyone for the fantastic response to my first story! It was far beyond anything I had ever envisioned. I hope you enjoy Part 2 just as much!
As usual, I don't claim ownership of the show, its characters, settings, or canon plot lines. Any resemblance to any real people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.
Laurathechef has been instrumental in making this story good enough for your eyes.
Enjoy!
The creaking sound of wood grinding on wood sounded throughout the hushed living room. Swinging back and forth in the gliding chair as she watched the snow falling outside, her thoughts turned to concern that her husband and grandson – she still winced whenever she used that word in relation to Henry – would make it home safely from their errand.
She snorted into the near-silence at the irony of Snow White watching white snow falling by the inch. Winters in Maine were far harsher than they were back in the Enchanted Forest, but sitting in a warm room and watching the snow fall still held the same magical appeal. At least, it would have had the snow weighing down branches and powerlines outside mirrored the twin weights of guilt and shame pushing her own shoulders and spirits down.
Coming back from the realization that Emma was so depressed that she felt the only way out was to put herself under a Sleeping Curse had been a long road. Her daughter's letter to Archie had disguised it with a noble-sounding message about saving the town, but the pain oozing from every letter screamed Emma's real plea.
Never in her entire life had she felt so much a failure as the first time she laid eyes on her daughter lying in a cage under a barrier spell. A barrier spell of her own creation, realizing that even under a Sleeping Curse there were those than would exploit her. Knowing that Emma felt abandoned enough that a cursed sleep was her best chance struck at every ideal she held of herself as a mother. Granted, she hadn't actually been a mother until Neal, but it was still a blow to her sense of self. She failed her daughter. Again. Both in their friendship from before the curse broke and now their parent-child relationship. The signs were all there and she'd missed them all. Worse than that, she had added to Emma's burden. She'd behaved abominably toward Emma during her daughter's moment of crisis, and inadvertently helped push her over the edge.
It was that heavy burden that drove her. Sleep had become a fond memory while eating became an activity she did only when her body demanded food to keep going. She was less than useless when it came to helping figure out how to break a barrier spell, so she turned her energies to being the acting Mayor.
The sound of the door swinging open startled her out of her thoughts. David and Henry tromped in, stamping the snow off their boots just inside the front door on the rug, having shaken the rest clear on the porch. David hung their coats while Henry went to change his clothes. Snow shook her head free of her bleak thoughts and made her own way into the kitchen. She fished out a small pot and started heating some water for cocoa, buying herself some time to organize her thoughts.
With Henry upstairs, David approached her at the stove. "Are things settling down out there now that our friends from Arendelle have gone home?" she asked her husband
David gave her a dry laugh. "For the most part they are."
She frowned. "For the most part?"
"Well, everything is basically back to normal," he hedged, moving over to check on the supply of snacks they'd left in the pantry for whomever was on watcher duty. As much as he didn't like it, Neal was spending a great deal of time getting to know his Aunt Ruby while they were dealing with affairs at the farmhouse. It wasn't a great idea to have a baby outside in a Maine winter, either.
"Basically," Snow answered in flat tone, telling him without saying so that she wasn't interested in any word games that evening.
"Gold is gone," David answered with a sigh, "Belle banished him over the town line when he tried to use Hook to cast enough of a spell to break himself free from his dagger. Hook has disappeared, too. Tinkerbell came to the station to report him missing this morning."
Her eyes grew wide. "Gold is gone? The guy with some vague, unknown reason for needing our daughter's magic is missing?"
He nodded. "I know, I know. We've been trying to find him, but nothing's worked yet."
"Wonderful," she muttered, stirring the water.
"How's she doing?" David asked.
Now it was her turn to sigh. "No change," she responded, moving to take out three packs of cocoa and the cinnamon. When she slid his mug over, their eyes met and they shared a sad smile.
Henry's footsteps announced his approach. "Hot chocolate! Yeah!" he exulted.
Snow pursed her lips, appreciating the ability of youth to be distracted from tragedy in life's simple joys. For a quiet few minutes the small family, only half-complete, enjoyed the brief bubble of happiness afforded in that moment. Shaking off the nagging thought of who was missing, she vowed to enjoy whatever moments she could with her family.
Charming cleared his throat, popping her bubble. When he didn't say anything after that, she looked over at him. His eyes kept shifting back and forth from her to Henry, who wore a pensive look, brows furrowed in concentration. "Henry? Is everything okay?" she asked, keeping her voice gentle.
"Well, I've been trying to figure something out, but I'm not getting anywhere. Do you think I could ask you guys about it?" the teenager answered, putting his mug down.
"Of course, Henry! You know you can ask us anything," David replied, setting his own mug on the table to devote his full attention to his grandson. Snow supposed it was his nature to be a leader coming out in his obvious desire to be a role model for the impressionable teen in front of them. Somehow the man kept finding new ways to surprise her.
"Well, I know what Emma did, I just don't know why she did it. I never got to read that letter of hers, and neither you nor my Mom will tell me what was in it," he shrugged, "I guess I'm just trying to understand why she put herself under a sleeping curse in a cage and surrounded by a barrier spell."
Snow and David made eye contact again, trying to figure out a way to answer him. She nodded, silently giving him permission to begin. "We can't tell you what was in the letter, Henry. It's your mother's private words. Telling you would be violating that, and I can't…we can't do that."
"Can you give me an idea, though?" he persisted.
This time Snow answered. "You saw kids get bullied in school, right?" When Henry nodded, she plunged ahead, voice breaking with the realities of what she was saying. "Your mother suffered a lot as a child. Both in school and in her foster homes. Sometimes scars like that never really go away, we just learn to ignore them. Right after your mother got back from the past with Marian, a lot of really bad things happened that reopened those scars. None of us were doing anything on purpose, but somehow we all managed to hurt her. She was in a lot of pain," Snow paused as tears overflowed her eyes and ran their courses down her cheeks. When she tried to continue, her voice choked so much she was unable to speak.
Henry's eyes were glistening, but he remained stock-still, refusing to allow the emotion to overwhelm him.
David took over. "Emma was in a lot of pain, but none of us could see it. She's unfortunately had to learn to be very good at hiding behind her walls, not showing anything to anyone that she doesn't want to allow in. When I think about why she got that good at hiding her emotions, it just makes me so sick," he had to take a pause of his own, along with a deep breath to regain his composure, "We all failed her, Henry. Every single one of us. Eventually the pain got to be too much for her. Add in the fact that Gold and Ingrid each wanted her powers for their own purposes, and Emma felt trapped. She though that the two of them would tear the town apart to get to her, so she decided to make it so that neither of them could hurt anyone to get to her. The barrier spell is so strong it flung Regina across the room. She said that somehow Emma must have gained so much control over her magic that she was able to tap into its full potential. Not even Gold could break it, she thought."
Pride shone out of Henry's troubled face. "So she thought that by putting herself under the Sleeping Curse and hiding her magic, no one would find her. No one could break the spell to wake her, and no one would get to hurt her again. Spending eternity in that fiery room was better than living here with us?" he asked, voice quavering at the end as he allowed his sense of hurt and betrayal to seep into his tone.
Finding her voice again in the face of his anguish, Snow wrapped her arms around the boy, trying to take some of that pain away. "We can't answer that, Henry. She must have thought that it was better than killing herself or leaving Storybrooke. At least this way we have a chance of waking her up. When I think of all the times we've failed her throughout her life, it breaks my heart. There's nothing we want more than to wake her up and start making everything up to her. We just have to keep trying," she promised.
"She's my mom and I won't give up on her either," Henry declared as he folded his arms.
Snow and David both smiled at him. "Good always triumphs," she affirmed, "We just have to have faith in each other."
"I will," the youth promised.
Snow smiled at his positivity before setting her face in a serious expression. "Henry, your grandpa and I need to go talk to Belle. She sent the Dark One over the town line, and we might need her help to figure out from his books what we could do to help Emma."
"Will you be able to handle things here?" David chimed in.
"I'll do what I can," the teenager promised with a nod.
"If you can't, no one can," Snow agreed, pressing him into a hug and giving him a kiss on his forehead. She had to raise up on her tiptoes to do it, a reminder of the changes he was going through as well.
Henry hugged the two of them goodbye before turning back into the house.
Trudging down the stairs, Henry took in the scene that had become commonplace over the past few weeks. Emma lay exactly where she was when they'd found her, unmoving under her barrier spell's dome. The feeble light from a small reading lamp bathed the room in a sickly orange glow, except for the faintly pulsing blueish light from the spell. Cobwebs littered the ceiling, making him duck a couple times on his way down the stairs. The boards creaked at the bottom, making him shift away from the loose areas, as foolish as he realized it was.
Seeing his mother under the same Sleeping Curse he'd suffered made his stomach clench, knowing the pain she was suffering in the fire room. The thought triggered a memory from weeks before, when he had one of his increasingly rare nightmares and Aurora was there. She'd pointed to the shadowy figure in the room. He didn't know it was his mother at the time, a fact which drove his guilt every day she remained in her cursed sleep. Knowing there wasn't anything he could do about it was no help. She'd saved him from his own sleeping curse, so being unable to do the same for her ate at his sense of right.
Looking around the basement, nothing had changed from the last time he came down the stairs. With a sigh, Henry glanced at his other sleeping mother. "Come on, Mom. It's time to go," he urged in a gentle voice, shaking her shoulder.
Regina startled before lifting her head and blinking the haziness out of her eyes and gazing at him like she'd never seen him before. "Henry? When did you get here?" she asked.
He gave her a wan smile. "Just a few minutes ago. Fall asleep again?"
"No, no. I was just resting my eyes," she protested, even though they both knew it for the lie it was, "I thought I was getting close earlier today, but it didn't work. Just like all the others."
Henry pursed his lips. "How about we go upstairs and get some food? You need a break after being down here all day."
She shook her head. "I can't afford to take a break, Henry. Every second I don't spend on figuring out how to break Emma's barrier spell is another second she spends in the cursed sleep. She needs me to be at my best."
"And you're not right now," he chided, treading a fine line, "You're falling asleep amongst every magic book you own, scanning every spell, not eating, not getting a good night's sleep, I could go on. If you want to be at your best, let's take a break, go upstairs and get some food and sleep in a real bed," Henry pleaded.
"Did your grandparents put you up to this?" she asked with narrowed eyes, deflecting his question.
Frowning, Henry moved closer and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "We're all worried about you, Mom. You haven't done anything for the last six weeks except eat when you're on the point of passing out, and you only sleep when you do pass out. I've spent more nights at Grams' and Gramps' than I have at our house. I just want you to take care of yourself, Mom."
She almost broke. He could see the wavering resolve in her eyes, but in the end she shook her head clear of the doubts. "I can't. I'm sorry. I'll use my magic and get some food down here, and I promise I'll take a nap, but I can't leave her, Henry."
He nodded, expecting nothing less. She'd been working nearly nonstop since they'd found Emma, trying to break the spell. If it wasn't for Ruby and the dwarves threatening to literally drag her out of the basement, she would have missed Thanksgiving and Christmas. "How about you come upstairs, magic up some food for both of us, and take a nap in a real bed or even on the couch?"
"Henry Daniel Mills! I'm taking care of myself," his mother promised. She snapped her fingers, causing purple smoke to surround them.
When it cleared, Henry saw a simple meal of grilled chicken sandwiches and French fries with two diet colas on the table in front of them. "Mom?" he asked, hesitating to take a seat next to her.
A shrug. "I know I could use the calories," she answered, "But I can't leave her here. I need to figure this out, Henry. I owe it to her. So my compromise is to share a meal down here, and then I'll keep slogging through these books."
With a sad smile, Henry joined her at the table for dinner, knowing that as soon as he left, she would dive right back into her books.
Regina watched her son leave after the food and conversation had run dry. The sense of emptiness when he left her always seemed overwhelming, but she had a task that would serve as a distraction from those feelings. Setting her teeth, she turned to get back to her task, but with her fatigue it wasn't long before the words started blurring in front of her eyes.
She tried to clear her mind by rubbing her eyes and leaning back in the office chair she'd teleported down for her comfort, but her brain refused to cooperate. Turning her gaze to the woman she was working so hard to save, Regina blew out a sigh. "What am I going to do with you, Emma Swan? If I could take everything back and let you grow up in the life you were born to, well, I don't know if I would, The Curse gave me Henry, but it kills me that to get my happiness you had to lose yours."
Emma remained still.
"I've been seeing you in my dreams, you know," Regina admitted, feeling more at ease talking to sleeping Emma than she ever would have with the blonde awake, "well, you probably don't, but I still am. I see the moment you prick your finger, over and over and over. Every single time I'm screaming and trying to get you to stop, but something about this damned barrier spell blocks even my voice."
She stood up, stretching her back with a groan. "You almost certainly can't hear a word I'm saying. I don't even know why I'm talking to you, Miss Swan. Emma," she repeated in an apologetic voice, "Maybe Henry was right, and I'm spending too much time down here. I just can't get over the guilt. I am the root cause of every bad thing that has ever happened to you, and I don't know how to get over that."
Abandoning her spell books for the moment, Regina paced a slow circle around Emma's cage. The lock taunted her, close enough to almost touch, but behind the barrier spell it might as well have been in the Enchanted Forest. "I'm sure if you were awake to see this, you'd get a kick out of me talking to myself, walking around you, and utterly powerless to do anything about it. I can just see that little smirk of yours as you fold your arms in that god-awful read leather jacket," she choked a bit at the image, swallowing hard on a lump in her throat that refused to go away.
Hand to her head to help regain her bearings, Regina fought back a sob. "And there is nothing except Henry that I would not give to be able to see that smirk again. I know why you said you did this, but I need to hear it from your own mouth, Emma. I need to know what possessed you to think that this was your only way out. You can't leave like this. You can't leave Henry, or your parents, or even me this way!"
As if realizing the absurdity of her situation, Regina shook her head clear of her ramblings and sighed, shoulders slumping inward. Without another word, she went back to the desk and turned her book open to the last spell she had read.
A/N: Thoughts? Reviews, comments, constructive criticism are always appreciated!
