Author's Note: This is a drabble that occurred to me when I was reading a tumblr post about pockets in baby/toddler clothes. So, I give you…. Regal Believer, Regina and toddler!Henry feels…
Baby Pockets
She kept treats in her coat pockets, in baggies, offering him a shortbread biscuit or a carrot stick when he was teething. They also went walking every day the weather was good at the Storybrooke beach. At first Regina carried him, because he couldn't walk on his own, then she made sure he was in thick dungarees and mittens during the winter as he scooted on all fours. By the time it was spring, and he was not quite one, he moved hand-to-hand around the furniture, or taking her hand to walk for short distances.
She'd sized up his clothes as he grew like a weed. Today they were out in the late summer. Henry was not quite 18 months, and he had just started saying 'mama' and mimicking her speech. When he tugged his hand free from hers, Regina wrapped her arms around herself to prevent herself running immediately after him. He neared the little eddies of water rolling onto the beach. She uncrossed her arms and kept her hands out of her coat pockets, ever at the ready to grab him should he fall. She'd read babies could drown in just a few inches of water.
Damn. Her hands sweat with the thought. She hated being afraid of mothering him, afraid of smothering him, but also afraid of letting him explore, and afraid for him, panicked that the future might not continue to unfold with the happiness she had found. She closed her eyes and wiped at them quickly with the backs of her gloved fingers.
"Mama."
Regina felt a tug on her coat and looked down to see Henry had toddled back to her side. She shook herself and offered him a big smile as she settled down onto the sand to look him in the eye. She took off her gloves and grasped his little hands. Her reward was a gaping smile, showing his four teeth, two up and two down, shining out at her. "Yes, Henry?"
He tugged a hand free of hers. She was worried for a moment as she followed his sand-covered wet hand down his coveralls. Had he hurt himself?
"Mama, fow ew." His chubby hand disappeared into a denim pocket in the coveralls on the front of his left thigh and, after an uncoordinated struggle, the hand emerged again, fisted around something unseen.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Tweet."
His fingers blossomed like a morning flower, opening slowly. She marveled at the perfect tiny white shell glistening against the pale skin of his palm.
Regina cupped her hand under his and watched in amazement through a veil of tears as Henry turned his palm over and the first gift she'd ever received simply because, fell delicately from her son's hand to her own.
"Thank you, Henry."
He screwed up his face, clearly concentrating. He smiled and said, "Tan ew, Mama."
Regina scooped him up and pressed her face to the space between his neck and shoulder, squeezing him as her tears fell out of sight. She breathed against him, feeling his heart beating against her collarbone. Her mind thickened with words, but she was too overwhelmed to try to speak past the thickness in her throat. So she just held on, spinning Henry — her son — there, in the air, over the sand, on the shores of Storybrooke Bay, until his giggles invited the seagulls to join in.
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