Summary: Ten-year-old Henry Mills has a magical mishap that changes him into a toddler and Emma relies on Regina to help restore him to his former self. Will working together resolve some of the tensions between the two mothers or will they take two steps forward, three steps back in their quest to co-parent.
Set in season 2 just after the dark curse is broken and is canon divergence at the moment the Wraith is sent after Regina. In this story, they successfully defeated the wraith by using Jefferson's hat and no one got pulled in after it.
Trigger Warnings: There is physical violence such as slapping and pushing between the women as they work out their... tensions... with one another. I wouldn't classify it as abuse as it falls in line with canon Emma and canon Regina in the first season. There is also lesbian sex, bad language, name calling and general angstiness.
As always, these characters do not belong to me, I belong to them. If you feel the love leave it, I love the love. This story is 95% complete in draft form and as I have free time to do editing I will post new chapters, but I don't have a schedule.
Emma Swan was angry. Angrier than she'd been in a long time. The source of this anger was the former Mayor of Storybrooke, and bain of her existence, Regina "Evil Queen" Mills. It was Regina's default mood to be the vilest, most nasty when she herself was angry, and she's had decades to perfect her craft. She knew all of the Savior's buttons as if she had them queued up on speed dial.
Henry's report card was sent in the mail to 108 Mifflin Street instead of his newly acquired residence on Main with Emma. Upon viewing his grades, Regina marched down to the sheriff's station to rip a strip off of the blonde for the boy's falling marks.
"You live with his teacher Emma! How could you allow his grade to fall this far?"
Emma rolled her eyes and stood up from her desk to file the folder she was working on before the intrusion. "Don't you think it's more the circumstances he's found himself in over the last few months that has affected his marks, rather than my parenting skills?"
The irritated Queen all but shouted, "No!"
"Well, I disagree. I'm surprised he's able to maintain a passing grade in any of his classes!"
"Passing?!" Danger flashed across dark eyes, and Emma took a step back out of instinct. "He is an A student Miss Swan. He's been an A student since pre-school! You'd know that if you were around for the first ten years of his life!"
The shot was below the belt but was also a standard go-to for the Queen, so Emma shrugged it off, "Yeah well, was he an A student because of him or because everyone was afraid of you?"
Regina pursed her lips together and took a deep breath and spat, "He was an A student because I was a parent to him, not his buddy!"
"I'm his parent, Regina! I just don't have a broomstick shoved up my ass twenty-four seven!"
"You're hardly a parent. You're at best a glorified babysitter!"
The mood of the Mayor was agitating the blonde so she herself fell back on what she knew would hurt the older woman. "Yeah well, at least I can love him! I'm not playing mind games with him or making him think he is a nut job!"
"How dare you!"
Seeing her prey in her sights, the blonde stepped closer and took the kill shot, "Truth hurts, Your Majesty, and I may not be a parent, according to you, but I'd bet money he won't run away from me looking for a new Mommy!"
The slap that followed was a surprise to both women, and Emma knew she'd crossed the line when she felt the sting across her cheek.
That was an hour ago, and she is no less pissed off as she'd been watching hell in heels storm out of her office. She paced the ground floor of Mary Margaret's loft and seethed. Every confrontation she's ever had with the Mayor has always been just below her red line when it came to her rage and today's argument was no different.
She paced and thought about how different the kid's life would have been if she had been around. If she hadn't given him up; if she'd had kept him and raised him herself. Would he still have been an A student as the brunette claimed him to be? Or would he be closer to the juvenile delinquent both she and the boy's father had been? She was fairly certain Regina knew her insecurities about her position in the boy's life and used it to undermine her confidence. It was a never-ending battle with the woman, and Emma felt the frustration reach its boiling point.
"Fucking bitch!" Just as she swatted the toaster off of the counter in a fit of anger, the front door opened and her son bounded into the house. He was in the line of fire when white-hot light shot from her palm and enveloped his ten-year-old form in a cloud of white smoke.
"Henry!" Emma cried in a panic and darted toward him. When the smoke dissipated, there was a tiny little person drowning in her son's clothing.
Surprise and fear struck the little boy's face, and he started to cry.
"Holy shit!" Emma was in shock as she looked over the baby that resembled her son in so many ways. From his unruly patch of light brown hair, and large hazel eyes to the family trademark chin; the baby was definitely her son.
"Mommy? I want my Mommy!" the baby cried in his fear and looked around the room, searching for his mother.
"Oh my god, Henry! What did I do?" She carefully got closer to the kid and tried to shush him as he screamed for his mother. "I'm here Henry, it's okay."
"No!" the boy screamed, wiggling away from her and out of older Henry's clothes; he tried to push her away. When she picked him up, he let out a loud shriek and flailed his arms and kicked his legs trying to get away from the strange woman.
She tried to comfort him by holding his wiggling body against her, but as soon as she did, she felt warmth cover her abdomen and realized the baby was peeing on her. In her startled state, she yanked him away from her, and he wiggled out of her grasp and landed on the floor with a thud and a wail. He screamed when he got up then ran from her, and she forgot about her urine soaked shirt and was only concerned about how hard the boy had landed. "Wait, dude, come back!"
"Emma? What's going on?" Mary Margaret was standing in the entryway looking down at her daughter who was scrambling across her apartment after a nude toddler. "Who's that?"
"Kid, slow down! Come here!" Emma seemed to be just a second too slow as the child ran back and forth screaming his cries.
"Mommy! Mommy! I want my Mommy!" The boy's pleads echoed in the small space and in order to get away from the crazy blonde who was chasing him, he crawled under the bed.
Emma reached under the bed blindly and tried to grab the kid who was just out of reach.
"Emma?" Her mother questioned as she got closer to the scene. The Savior stopped trying to coax the crying boy out from under her parents' bed and looked up with a deeply furrowed brow. "Something magic happened to Henry, and now he's a baby," she quickly summed up then ducked her head back down and resumed attempting to retrieve the boy.
The surprise and concern the brunette felt was evident in her voice when she asked, "Did Regina do this?"
Emma looked back up with exasperation and replied, "No, I did. Can you help me please?"
Mary Margaret shook her shock away and knelt on the opposite side of the bed and lifted up the dust ruffle and cooed, "Henry?"
The baby answered in shuddering cries, "Mommy! I want my Mommy!"
In a hyper soothing voice, Snow explained, "You're Mommy is right there angel, come on out so we can…"
The boy's scream cut off the pixie-haired brunette's train of thought, and Emma sighed and said, "I'm not his Mom, Regina is."
Snow sat up and looked over the bed at her anxious daughter and reassured, "No, you're his mother, Emma."
"Not to baby Henry I'm not!" Emma's frustration hit its peak, and she buried her face in her hands.
Snow recognized the stress in her daughter's voice and relented, "How did this happen?"
Emma tossed her hands into the air and cried in frustration, "I have no idea! I was pissed off, and some crazy laser shit came out of my hand and blasted the kid into a baby!"
"Alright, keep trying to coax him out of there, I'll call Blue and ask her to come over and fix this." Mary Margaret abandoned her side of the bed and pulled out her cell phone and dialed the fairy.
Baby Henry was wailing under the bed, and Emma's heart was breaking. She'd never felt so unmotherly in her life. Not only was his current situation her fault, but she couldn't even comfort him.
"How old do you think he is, sweetheart?" Mary Margaret asked as she covered the receiver of the phone.
"I don't know!" Emma barked. "Talking age!"
"He is a toddler, Blue," the Princess recited into the phone and Emma turned her attention back to the kid.
She peeked her head under the dust ruffle of the bed and looked at the shivering scared boy nestled between two Rubbermaid bins full of her mother's shoes. "Hey, Henry. I really need you to come out from under there, kid."
"I wa-want my mo-mom-mie!" Little hands covered his eyes, and he cried large shuddering wails for his mother.
"I know you do big guy. Mommy is at work right now," Emma lied with ease. "Can you come out of there so we can put some clothes on you?"
His little head shook, and she sighed then mumbled, "Well it was worth a shot." She sat back up and looked to her mother as she hung up the phone and asked, "Well?"
A cloud of aqua filled an area in the kitchen and when the smoke settled two nuns stood on either side of Mother Superior. "Where is he?" the woman demanded in a no-nonsense tone toward Snow White.
"Here," Emma answered. "He won't come out. He's scared."
Blue instructed the two nuns to lift the bed and she pushed her way passed Emma to take possession of the screaming boy.
"Seriously?" Emma cried as the screams of her child shredded her heart. She watched the Blue Fairy reach down and snatch up the frightened little boy.
"Mommy! HELP! HELP! HELP!"
"God damn it Blue, stop!" Emma yelled and tried to grab the traumatized child from her hands only to be held back by her mother.
Snow held her daughter and tried to soothe, "Emma she's just trying to…"
"Not like this!" the blonde snapped and felt the tears her inconsolable child's cries brought on.
"We're going to need to bring him back to the convent." She handed the squirming crying child over to one of her nun henchmen and continued, "This is some powerful magic Emma, I'm going to need more of my fairy sisters to help pull apart this spell."
Snow started to nod her head permission and let go of the blonde as she did. Emma took the opportunity to rush the nun who had a hold of her screaming kid and grabbed him from her. "No! You're not taking him anywhere!"
Snow looked apathetic and replied, "He can't stay this way sweetheart."
"I'm not suggesting that he can! I'm just not letting these fairies traumatize him!"
Snow stepped closer to Emma and the flailing baby and said, "You're upset. He's upset. No one is traumatizing him. The Fairies are our only chance to resolve this issue and get our Henry back."
"They're not the only option," Emma countered.
One of the nuns scoffed at the notion, "What are you going to do, make a deal with the Dark One?"
"No. I'm taking him to Regina. She'll be able to fix it without causing him any more trauma."
"Emma I don't think that's wise," the Blue Fairy cautioned.
"I don't give a shit what you think. She's his mother. She'll know what to do." She carried the screaming kid over to where his clothes lay on the ground and forced his struggling body into big Henry's shirt to cover his little nude form.
The haughty fairy looked to the White Princess and said, "When that fails as miserably as I'm sure it will bring him to us."
Blue's condescending tone oozed from her words and grated on Emma who side-eyed the nun in displeasure.
After the fairies vacated the apartment, Snow approached her daughter and her hysterical grandson and said, "She's right you know. Regina is only going to make it worse. She'll probably blame us for hurting him, and the whole town could be in danger."
"I don't care what she thinks or what she fucking does about what she thinks! She is more powerful than the fairies and will fix my screw up without hurting him." Emma's loud voice boomed in the tiny apartment and quieted the shrill screams of the baby to that of hiccuping upset.