A/N: special thanks to amy (corasqueen) for keeping me on track and onella (corasparasol) for flailing and headcanoning with me.

The conversation is long overdue. It needs to happen because Regina wants and needs Henry in her life as much as he wants to be, and she shouldn't have put it off but she has so much on her plate and it's not been five minutes and she already wants to wrap her hands around someone's neck. In the not so gentle and amorous way.

"Absolutely not," Emma dares to say, and it only feeds the headache that Regina has as she walks from one side of her office to the other. "She's still dangerous."

"And you're still not his only mother," Regina grumbles, her back to Emma. She doesn't look back to see what kind of sting she'd left.

"You didn't even tell me what you were doing," Emma evades, "You kept this from me!"

"You never bothered to check." She briefly turns, points a silencing finger at her, "And before you even dare to think it, yes, I was thinking about Henry when I made the decision to help her. I have never made choices that would affect him without also thinking about him. This discussion we're having is not an afterthought."

Emma crosses her arms, frowns deeply, and she looks so much like her mother, so much that when Regina rounds to complete another walking cycle across the room and sees that inherited look of disapproval, she may need to check herself into the hospital for something like hypertension.

And then, Emma softens. She leans against the desk and sighs, and Regina is quietly relieved.

"Okay. So you've taken her in and she's staying there. Now what?"

"I've laid out precautions, of course. She cannot leave the house unless I or you or anyone with any bit of reliable competence accompanies her. When Henry is here"––Emma is suddenly preoccupied with her thumbs, and Regina glares at her because she knows, the entire world would have known––"and he will be here, because that is what he explicitly wants, she'll be unable to leave her room."

"Sounds solid," Emma replies, voice low and guilt-laden but very, very dubious.

"Good that you think so," Regina says dryly. And then she stops her slow pacing, stands right in front of Emma. "You understand, don't you?" The change in her voice is enough to prompt Emma to actually look up at her. "You understand why I can't just leave her behind?"

And Emma––Emma is unreliable. Emma the one who turns around to scream "he's my son" right after "I know her, I believe her" and Emma who will jump off a boat to stop a storm or fake a goose chase to get everyone off Regina's back. It's just never just one kind of Emma.

But then, there are the good, good moments, when everything is all aligned, when shoulders sag in lowered defenses and eyes reflect genuine sympathy: "Yes. I do."

Days pass and it's okay. Everyone including Regina seems to be holding their breath for something to go wrong, but it's okay. For once in maybe never, perhaps they can all coexist in Storybrooke without something going terribly, terribly wrong.

When it's time for Henry to stay over for the next few nights, Regina instructs Zelena to stay in her room with the exception of when Henry is asleep while Regina is awake, or when both of them are out.

"I have to be thinking about Henry," Regina says firmly when Zelena is averse, "I have to be thinking about his safety."

"I thought you were beginning to trust me. What happened to believing in me?"

"First thing you did to Henry upon meeting him was threaten to kill him!"

It doesn't really matter what Regina believes, if he doesn't feel safe, if he isn't safe, then she can't see her son. And when Zelena crosses her arms, lets out a defeated "fine", it is met with a sharp "thank you" that doesn't really sound like thanks and more like "finally."

The first night he's visibly tense, though he tries to hide it. Her beautiful boy is so brave, but tonight he's scared. He looks up at the staircase and doesn't begin climbing it.

"It's okay, Henry," she says, taking his hand. "She's not going to hurt you."

But then he shakes his head. "I just don't want her to hurt you."

Beautiful, brave, good Henry.

"She won't."

(After she puts him to bed she knocks gently on Zelena's door before opening it, and finds her sitting on her feet with the dinner plate Regina had given her earlier at the end of the bed.

"I wouldn't, you know." She doesn't really look at her. She sounds so small. "Not anymore. I wouldn't.")

But something changes over the course of Henry's stay. Regina notices his line of sight lingering on Zelena's door before he goes into his own room, the way there's no longer worry in his eyes when Regina excuses herself to bring food up to her. When they go out to get ice cream and go for a walk in the park, he says, "Next time, maybe she can come with us? She must be lonely."

And he's not wrong, he's not wrong. "You know Emma would go after me if I let Zelena near you this soon."

Henry knits his brow together, gets chocolate ice cream on the corners of his upper lip. "That's not very fair."

Regina sighs, because she knows it's not. She's trying to make it easy but it's not that simple, they all know it's not that simple, and that everything sucks when they try to make it simple.

"Everyone has to earn trust," she says, and it's insufficient, so much more talking needs to be done but now's not really the time when she has him for so little. "Zelena included. And me, apparently, still."

Henry shakes his head solemnly, like he's so much older than the twelve year old he is, but then he bites into the cone and screeches when the cold wraps around the front of his teeth, and Regina laughs and laughs.

The sun is beginning to set when they come home. Henry is a little tired and he says he'll pass on helping make dinner tonight, so Regina leaves him in the family room to watch TV ("Emma says I'm old enough to watch Game of Thrones now?" "Nice try. But never."). The oven's going when Regina notices that the television isn't even on––Henry likes to have his volume at deafening levels––and she walks in to find him kneeling on the floor looking curiously through the shelves of their entertainment center.

"Is something wrong?"

"Things are out of alphabetical order."

Regina blinks (and then maybe smiles, because the memory of a tiny, meticulous Henry alphabetizing everything he could possibly get his hands on once he had learned how arises and she feels warm with love). "Oh."

"Wizard of Oz was in the player when I got here." And then he laughs, because he understands, then he scrunches up his face. "How much do you think she hated it?"

"Probably very much," Regina answers, smiling but knowing.

"Do you think she wants to join us for dinner?"

"Maybe next time, querido."

And the smile on his face no longer reaches his beautiful brown eyes as he nods. "Okay."

Henry always knows how to bend the rules, though. He is the son of a pair of ex-thieves and moreover he is Regina's, so of course at midnight when she has a feeling that something is off, she finds that he is no longer in bed, and neither is Zelena. She's ready to panic, but that feeling is put on hold when she goes downstairs and the family room emits a blue glow.

She finds Zelena wrapped in the freaking couch throw at the end of the sofa while Henry is curled up asleep on the floor, his heavy stubborn head resting on a cushion.

Zelena sniffs, wipes her eyes––oh gods, why is she crying––and lifts up the DVD cover of Lilo and Stitch and waves it for Regina to see. "Your son insisted we should."

Regina is absolutely at a loss for words. Maybe this is a dream, maybe she's asleep and when she wakes up this isn't happening cause it's actually ridiculous, and her silence is long enough for Stitch to gurgle at Nani, "Ohana means family. And family…"

"…Means no one gets left behind," Regina fills in with Nani.

("Or forgotten. Yeah.")

And then Regina pinches the bridge of her nose, curses under her breath a little because this is her life. She puts her robe over her snoring baby boy and curls up next to Zelena until the movie is done because Zelena, a grown woman and the former Wicked Witch of the West, is quietly weeping over a little girl and her tiny, broken family, and there isn't really much Regina can do but let it happen.

Early in the morning, Emma's waiting in the driveway for Henry. He stuffs his things into his backpack with his eyes half open, and Regina doesn't say anything about Zelena but rather admonishes him on sleeping later than he's supposed to. A groggy kiss on the cheek and a "tell tía Zeta she was fun to watch movies with" later, he's out the door.

She leans on the doorframe, waves in a civil gesture to Emma. The bug clicks and drives away and Regina closes the door, waits for the next round.

"Tía Zeta," she sighs and shakes her head.

"He came up with it," she hears Zelena say above the stairs. Regina looks up at her, and she's still wrapped in the couch throw. "Like Auntie Z but cooler. His words."

She thinks of Henry enthusiastically coming up with nicknames for her sister to properly induct her into his family, and she laughs. "I would've went with tía Greenga."

The joke half-flies over Zelena's head but what she says next is more important anyway. "I can see why you love him."

Regina smiles genuinely, looks down and sleepily scratches the back of her head. "There isn't really a why, in the end."

"He's remarkably forgiving, given all I did. Given all you did."

"That's a recent development," Regina says, her eyes closed and her hand still in her hair. She feels wrong saying it, but she needs to let Zelena know that she isn't the only responsible agent of change in this reconciliation. "It wasn't always that way. But I've learned so much. He's learned so much. And you will, too."

She opens her eyes again, meets Zelena's own and she looks different. Softer. Like this can work after all.

"Come down for breakfast. And put that back where it came from, please."

Zelena gives a defiant huff and wraps the throw around her body tighter while beginning down the steps. "Make me, hermanita."

Regina thinks of Zelena asking Henry, "how would you say…?" and shakes her head laughing, walks in the direction of the kitchen.

"Greenga sin la verde."

"What?"

"Nothing. Waffles or pancakes?"