Super thanks to OnceUponSomeChaos for a helpful and thorough beta!
Emma wanted to do something special for her son, a reward for his recent report card. He was so creative and wise beyond his years; she sometimes joked with him that he was the adult in the relationship. He was having a tough time at school this year; the other boys his age turning towards sports whereas Henry's interests lay in more creative outlets. He had tried soccer last year – and was good at it – but it just didn't excite him the way his drawings did.
The art class was a perfect gift for him - only a few blocks away and Ryan from downstairs was taking it as well, so the boys could walk over together.
Henry threw his arms around her when she told him about it. "I love you mom!" he said into her neck.
"I love you too, kid."
That night gave her a respite from the strange nightmarish dreams that had inexplicably started a few months after her twenty-eighth birthday. That night she slept straight through until morning.
The next night the dreams returned. She needed to climb a tree to save Henry, who stood at the foot of the tree. Although the tree had vines growing up and around it, making it easier to scale, she couldn't reach the top and she had to reach the top before the frighteningly colored smoke came.
She didn't make it.
It surrounded her, its cold tentacles wrapping around her body, pulling her away from her son. Suddenly its embrace turned warm; warm and comforting… It had tangible arms, hugging her tightly, protecting her. It was wrong; it had taken her away from Henry. She fought against the smoke – no longer smoke so much as a warm body – but couldn't escape its entwinement.
She awoke in her bed, her sheets a tangled mess around her and her heart pounding. She raced into Henry's room, her bare feet slapping on the floor, failing to render them silent in her haste. There he was, sleeping peacefully. Relief rushed through her as Emma chided herself for her irrational fear. She inhaled a few deep calming breaths before going back to her bed and wrapping her blanket tightly around her. For warmth, she told herself.
The following night brought another smoke dream, but this time she and Henry stood on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere. Henry ran from the smoke, ran from her, but her legs refused to move.
The smoke watched with eyes that shouldn't have been there; eyes that made Emma want to stay, to be consumed. But she had to reach Henry.
Stay, the eyes beckoned.
Run, her mind screamed.
Stay, her heart begged.
"NO!" she gasped as she sat up, once more safe in her bed, but not really. She was sure to return to that dream world again.
x X x
"It's normal." Ryan's mom, Claudia, told her during one of their "Mom's Night In" evenings when talk turned to the subject of having nightmares. Emma glanced behind her, not wanting Henry to overhear the conversation and worry. He and Ryan sat at the kitchen table, engaged in some elaborate game of make believe involving Matchbox cars, green army men and Pokémon cards while the women relaxed on the couch. "Being a single mom is scary."
Claudia's husband had died shortly after Ryan was born. He had been a firefighter, working downtown.
Died, not left.
The end result was the same.
"I dream about getting caught in a tsunami." Claudia's admission almost made Emma laugh. She wished she dreamed about tsunamis. "My shrink says I'm overwhelmed, is what it means."
What did dreams about climbing trees and being enveloped by smoke mean? Probably the same, Emma thought. Parenting was overwhelming.
But that didn't explain the eyes. Smoke shouldn't have eyes.
"Me too," she lied. "A giant wave I can't escape."
They poured more wine and their talk turned to the unbelievable complexity of fifth grade math.
That night she was awoken by her last name, shouted desperately through the cloying purple smoke by a voice that was just on the other side of familiar.
"Swan… SWAN!"
She sat up in bed as Henry ran into her room.
"What's wrong mom? Why are you shouting?"
She slipped out of bed, trying to slow her breathing so Henry wouldn't notice, walking him back to his room.
"Nightmare," she admitted, too shaken to fabricate a lie. "Too much wine before bed."
"Light a candle." Henry reached for her hand and squeezed it. "It'll keep the bad dreams away."
Emma doubted lighting the whole city on fire could do that.
But did she even want to? No, not when sometimes, like tonight, she dreamed of Henry's father. Only he wasn't quite Henry's father; his eyes had been brown, not blue. And he had never called her "Swan."
x X x
"The earth swallowed him up," she told Claudia's shrink at her next session, recalling the latest dream. "A hole opened and he fell in."
She supposed he was now her shrink as well, but this was only temporary until she got the nightmares to stop.
"And you've also dreamt he was enveloped by smoke; taken by a fire?"
"No, no fire; just smoke." Emma curled into the over-sized arm chair, hugging a pillow to her chest. "But maybe it wasn't him? The eyes are wrong."
"The eyes don't matter," the doctor said, writing on his notepad.
"But the eyes do matter; they're not always him."
"You mean Henry's father?"
"Yes. No. It is Neal, but it isn't because the eyes are sometimes wrong."
"So you're saying it is sometimes a different man."
Emma clenched her jaw and scowled at the shrink. "Isn't that what you're supposed to help me figure out?"
The doctor had the gall to laugh. "I wouldn't get too hung up on the details; they sometimes can be fuzzy in our dreams. The one thing that is consistent is he is taken from you, he leaves you. Let's talk about how that felt, when Henry's father left."
But the details weren't fuzzy. The eyes were clearly blue in the smoke; brown as he fell into the earth's bottomless pit.
The eyes were windows to the soul, weren't they?
"Emma…" He leaned forward, extending his hand and placing it on the table in front of her.
Emma drew in a shaky breath. "It hurt," she said through her teeth. "A lot. When he left me it hurt."
The dreams continued even after her admission, but now there were two men; two Neals. And when the smoke didn't take Henry away from her, it took both of them. It always robbed her of someone; leaving her abandoned.
But the eyes were wrong on one of them.
The eyes didn't matter.
But they did. Those eyes did matter. Neal never looked at her like that. And he'd had brown eyes.
x X x
Henry had his father's eyes. But from where Henry acquired this amazing talent remained a mystery. Emma couldn't even draw stick figures and she never saw any evidence of Henry's father being artistic.
"We don't get to draw people yet." He showed her a very realistic looking drawing of a bowl of fruit. Realistic except the orange had eyes on it. They looked like Emma's.
"Why is the fruit looking at me?" she asked.
Henry smiled in the way that warmed her heart. "I want to draw people. I have so much in my head I want to draw but they made me draw fruit."
Emma smiled back at her son. "So you drew eyes."
"Eyes are the most important part of drawing people."
Even Henry believed the eyes mattered.
The bowl of fruit drawing went on the refrigerator. It stayed there for two days before the need to take it down overwhelmed Emma.
"I want to make a scrapbook of your art," she told Henry. "That will keep it safer than it hanging in the kitchen where it can get spilled on."
Liar.
But what was she supposed to tell him? His drawing gave her nightmares? Or more truthfully, it added fuel to the upsetting dreams that already disturbed her sleep?
She wasn't prepared for the result of his second class.
He held the drawing out in front of him proudly. "They wanted us to draw our favorite cartoon."
Emma stared at the paper, opening and closing her mouth a few times, unsure of how to respond. It was good; he was talented, but…
"It's…" she said.
"I know," he nodded, accepting her hesitation. "I couldn't decide on my favorite."
"So… Aladdin has Mickey Mouse ears and a hook and is walking Pongo?"
"Yup," he said proudly.
"And that's…"
"Belle, from Beauty and the Beast. But she's also the Evil Queen from Snow White… and Tinker Bell."
The drawing went right into the scrapbook.
She was a bad mother. She should be more supportive.
She walked him to his class the next week.
"He's a very imaginative boy," the instructor, Mrs. Brennan, told her. "He comes up with fantastic stories that he wants to draw. He has real talent."
"He wants to draw people," Emma said.
"He will," Mrs. Brennan said, smiling. "This class is just an intro, so we dabble a bit in everything to see where the children's interests and talents lie."
"And Henry? Where do his lie?"
"Your Henry is going to be a great storyteller."
Emma wanted to hear the story that accompanied the picture that came home that day.
"Why is he climbing out of a well?"
"He was trapped by the evil sorcerer in a well – but don't worry, it led to a big room for him so he could move around – and she rescued him."
Emma smiled at her son. He'd made the woman the hero. "How'd she rescue him?"
"She made a portal with her magic. Then she went through it and kissed him."
Emma frowned. "Why would she kiss him?"
Henry sighed and gave her his best exasperated look, "Because they're true loves. When people are true loves they always kiss first when they find each other. Even if there's danger and they have to go do something. The first thing true loves always do is kiss."
"Who told you that?"
"Every fairy tale ever."
Emma smiled and shook her head at his idealism. "Don't you think they should wait until the danger's passed?"
Henry responded without hesitation. "No. Because there's always more danger. If they don't kiss right away, they may never get to."
Emma almost cried. No child Henry's age should be that jaded. Jeez, even she still believed in Happily Ever After at eleven.
It wasn't until later that life stomped out her dreams of a fairy tale ending.
The next week's assignment was to draw your family. Emma anticipated a beautiful picture of her and her son she could hang up, instead of relegating it to the pages of the scrapbook that sat unopened on her coffee table.
Of course it wasn't what she expected.
"Who are all these people in the background without faces?" She wondered if he should come with her the next time she saw Doctor Whatever-His-Name-Was.
"That's our family."
"Oh, kid…" she said, her heart breaking for him.
"What? Just because we don't know them doesn't mean they're not out there somewhere."
His innocent optimism killed her.
She dreamed of faceless people that night. It wasn't scary, surprisingly, until the smoke came and stole them all, leaving her with nothing but fear.
x X x
She was having breakfast with Henry the next morning when someone banged on the door. She left the table and opened it.
A handsome, leather clad man stood there. Adorned with an earring and eyeliner, he looked like a pirate. But it was the blue eyes and the happiness blossoming within them when his gaze met hers that stunned her.
"Swan..."
And he knew her name; spoke it in a voice eerily familiar to the one haunting her dreams. How did he know her name?
How did she know his eyes?
The eyes mattered. Those eyes…
He was talking about her family. But Henry was her family. And she would have definitely remembered if she had a friend that looked like that.
He leaned towards her and she responded automatically, glancing at his lips before shutting her eyes for a split second. But when his mouth found hers and his hand tangled in her hair, a jolt of anxiety shot from her stomach through her whole body.
She reacted instinctively. He staggered backwards.
The first thing true loves always do is kiss.
What was she thinking? She didn't know him. Henry's stories were addling her brain. She slammed the door, cutting off his heartfelt pleas, begging her to remember.
That night she slept peacefully. The smoke returned, but this time a ring of people surrounding her and Henry held the smoke at bay. And when it cleared, all of them remained. Safe.