The first time she holds him, she makes a promise.
He's three weeks old and chubby cheeked, eyes so incredibly wide and skin so soft she can't imagine ever wanting to stop the tender caresses of her fingers, the gentle strokes along his face and down the slope of his tiny button nose.
He's three weeks old and has been in her arms for less than ten minutes and he already has her utterly mesmerized, already fills her heart with that gentle warmth she'd thought was lost forever.
He's three weeks old and small enough to fit into the crook of her arm and yet it's he who tugs at the strings of a heart long dormant, who reawakens a part of her she'd thought to be forever inaccessible, buried under layers of anger and hatred. But she looks at him and, for the first time in decades, feels like she can leave those stifling feelings behind.
For Henry, for herself, and for their future.
And as she sits on the bench outside the adoption agency, reveling in the first moment alone with this perfect tiny human that is so unbelievably small and precious and hers, she makes a promise.
"Henry." She breathes as she holds his tiny body up and brings his round little face up to her level. She presses a kiss to his forehead and holds him close, breathing in the clean baby scent as she takes a moment to remember a mother's vicious clutches and painful punishments, beatings with magic and the remnants of a stable boy's heart slipping through bony fingers like the last grains of sand in an hourglass. She shakes her head and swallows thickly, blinking until her vision clears to reveal her son's wide-eyed gaze and scrunched up little features.
"No." she murmurs, holding him close and taking a deep, stabilizing breath.
"You'll never have to know this."
A small fist comes up to rub at slowly blinking eyes as Henry's little mouth stretches into a yawn. Regina finds her heart beats ridiculously loudly in her chest at the sight, and she can't help but press a soft kiss to her pointer finger before she lays it onto his twitching little nose.
"I promise."
Thick lashes flutter in response.
He's thirteen and taller than her, lanky and klutzy and yet still so very young as he watches his mother's hand delve into the chest of the girl he likes, when he watches that same hand emerge with her bright beating heart.
He's thirteen when Regina's promise is broken, and it hits way too close to home.
Regina finds him in his room with tear tracks on his cheeks and eyes almost bursting with the pain of betrayal. She doesn't know what to do, feels shaken herself at the striking resemblance to the one memory that still haunts her to this very day. The pain hits her two-fold, a resonance of her own demons just as much as it is the birth of Henry's own, and the fact that he'll have these kind of demons at all is enough to make her want to weep right along with him.
He's thirteen when she lies with him in his twin size bed, stroking along his cheeks and down the slope of his nose, whispering over and over again.
"I'm so sorry, Henry."