A/N: Title taken from Martin Amis' Time's Arrow.
Long Goodbye to Babies
They're walking along the seafront when she tells him. His castle behind them, now nothing more than an empty space where his private place fell to ruins at the hands of her demolition crew. It was for his own good, she had told him, the structure was falling to pieces.
"Any day now, Henry," she'd say, "the foundations are going to rot away and you'll fall straight through. Probably break a leg. Do you want that?" She was just being careful.
She hadn't allowed the foundations to rot; she had ripped them right out herself before they got the chance.
His hands are buried deep in his pockets, eluding the winter air, and hers feel brittle in the cold. His eyes trace the ground, so sick of the ocean and its impossible horizon, hidden beneath the thick mop of his dark hair. She brushes a strand away from her eyes, out of the wind's grasp, and turns to face him.
He's taller, now, and not as gangly as in his boyhood. The awkwardness of his teenage years has blossomed to a brilliant confidence that holds his shoulders broad, but today he hunches against the rough howl of air.
She cannot see his face, but she's sure she knows the expression there; it's one that crawled its way across his features and refused to move for years. Bitter indignation. The 'how could you do this' that her chest refuses to numb her against. She turns away, out to the sea, and they say nothing for a long time. The grating of stone on stone tells her he's grinding his feat against the weather worn pebbles; more land-rock than sea-stone.
"The coach comes at six," he says, his voice deep yet quiet, and she takes a moment to revel in its rawness.
She remembers the days it was nothing more than a squeak or a high lilt, when he'd beg her 'mommy, mommy' and she'd come running with her cookie jar, or their bedtime story book. She enjoys its newness, a paradoxical enjoyment for she knows what it brings. He's no longer her little boy, she knows.
She nods against the frigid air and asks, "Won't you say goodbye to everybody today?" She does not meet his eye, though she feels his gaze on her, holding her hard in an embrace neither inviting nor comforting. "We'll all miss you."
She thinks of the school children who are still children, and their teachers much the same. She, herself, has not aged a day since he was placed in her arms; longer still, before that.
She thought she might have upset the precarious balance of Storybrooke in welcoming Henry to her life, to their town, and yet she's surprised to find that it maddens her – sickens her – that these people are still unaware.
She wants to slap them hard and shout, Look! Look at my boy! Look how tall he grows! She puts it all down to the curse, which she thinks she's earned the right to now call her own, the reason why they ignore his ever changing state when people twice his age, more so, remain as infants.
He still hasn't answered her, though, and she turns to him in wonder why. Her chest convulses like it never has before when she sees his expression, his eyes, staring directly back at her. He's smiling. For the first time in years – god, it's been so long – he's actually smiling. And she knows why. Tears come to her eyes, the perfect, poetic counterpart to his gleaming irises, and she stares back at him suddenly broken, suddenly bleeding from somewhere deep within.
"I won't say goodbye," he tells her, his voice strong, his posture straightened.
She nods, all she can manage, even with the internal monologue of rules and politeness and etiquette running through her mind.
"I'll leave quietly, so as not to disturb you."
Again, she nods, while her insides are screaming at him to take her with him, let her grow, let her live. But she knows he owes her no favours.
They do not fall into silence, but, rather, are caught by it, ensnared. It has her throat in a tight hold and she watches him, eyes bulging, for as long as the oxygen deprivation allows. Then she turns back to the sea, the constant, steady moving water that speaks of lands she cannot begin to dream of. It's a steady comfort, that familiar pain, and she holds it tightly, much preferring it to the new one.
She does not wait for him to say that he'll write, they'll keep in touch. But it's her turn to speak, finally, and it's taken her long enough. There was no getting around this, she concedes, and sucks desperately at the air.
"It's true." She feels his eyes on her, again, harder now, sharper, as though asking 'why now?' "It's all true."
She expects anger, hatred, waits for a shout or a shove or a blow. He delivers the punishment in words.
"I know."
The grinding of rubber on rocks, this time, tells her he's leaving. He's walking back to her car and he's leaving. She stares out at the ocean, grey and seemingly solid the further out she looks, and holds her ribs tightly, surrendering her hair to the wind. It's a long goodbye to babies, she knows, has known from the start, and as inevitable as her parting with Henry is, she finds she's been in this state of premature grieving since the beginning.
Now, though, as Henry leaves and she digs her fingers into the material of her trench coat, she tries to tell herself that she'll be okay. This is Storybrooke; the people of Storybrooke don't remember. That's what Henry said, for all those years, that's what he knows. She fears she'll forget the day her happily ever after hopped on a bus out of town, stranding her in the fairytale void he so insisted on being a part of.
She leaves the beach, leaves his long-deceased castle, and drives Henry home for the last time. Tonight, she decides, she'll buy them cheese burgers and fries. Tomorrow, she can work on remembering.