Henry is three and a half and the stomach flu that has rampaged through the town hits their house (she should have eliminated sickness as part of the curse, but she didn't have a child then, didn't have anything but the desperate need for vengeance, and the idea of Snow doubled over with sickness made her smile and feel like she'd won). He throws up every medicine she tries to give him, every piece of toast, and he shivers under the mountain of covers she has piled on top of his bed. She doesn't fare much better herself.
The only thing either of them can keep down is chicken noodle soup, and only a little bit at a time. She isn't well enough to make her own soup or to venture out to Granny's (and she doesn't have anyone who would bring her soup, who would do her a kindness, but she tries not to think about that because this is supposed to be her happy ending), so she's stuck with the four cans of Campbells she found at the back of the pantry.
She opens a can of Chicken & Stars and heats it on the stove, Henry beside her hugging her leg. He clings to her like she's his life and his anchor and like if he lets go, she might float away.
She will never float away, she wants to tell him. She will never leave him, no matter what (there is a vague niggling thought at the back of her mind about the curse and a child that she can't quite bring forward but it doesn't matter because Henry is here and he needs her and no one has ever needed her before and she can't, won't, disappoint him). She runs a hand through his hair as she stirs the soup and pushes past her weariness to smile down at him.
She serves their soup in Sesame Street bowls and watches Henry poke at it with his spoon before trying to lift a bite to his mouth, getting only a fraction of it inside, the rest spilling down his shirt. He grins, proud of himself. Only her son, she thinks, could be cheerful with soup-soaked clothing and a stomach bug that had kept him up for the past two nights, crying and emptying his stomach almost hourly.
"I like the stars, Mommy." Of course he does. Her little boy, always reaching for worlds beyond his own. "They're the yummiest."
She wipes his mouth and his shirt and helps him eat a few more bites before giving up and taking him upstairs to rest.
"Story," he says when she's tucked him into bed, pulling his covers up to his chin and kissing his forehead. He looks up at her with expectant eyes and she knows she'd give him anything he asked for.
She wonders if her mother ever felt this way about her, if she ever felt soft and peaceful and willing to give up everything in exchange for a smile or a laugh or a brief moment of solace in the throes of illness.
She climbs into bed beside him, pulling his racecar sheets over her legs and leaning against the headboard, Henry tucked in beside her. She tells him a story about the stars, one her father used to tell her when she was very small.
"A long time ago," he would say, "there lived the daughter of a Goddess who lived among the stars." He would look at her and smile and she knew he was talking about her.
He told her of the girl's beauty (she was the fairest in all the land) and her skill at the loom and of her mother's love, strong and fierce and oppressive. The girl abandoned her place in the sky in search of love and adventure and she met a mortal boy with whom she fell in love and had two children.
When the Goddess discovered her daughter had married a mere mortal, she banished her back to the stars, separating her from her family who remained on earth. When the mortal boy, determined to reunite his family, found his way to the heavens with their children, the angry Goddess scratched a river in the sky to forever keep them apart.
But once every year, all of the birds would take pity on the lovers and build for them a bridge across the sky so that they might be together for a single night and relish in their happiness, however temporary.
As an adult, her father's story reminded her a little of Daniel and she wondered if he knew, even then, what fate had in store for her. But when she tells it to Henry now, watching the sweet smile on his face, she sees only his wonder at stars and love and mercy and not her own loss.
She thinks of her father, of all of the people who have died for this curse, to get her here, and she can't be sorry for what she has done, the lives she has taken, the horror she has wrought. Because Henry curls into her side as she talks, his arms wrapping around her middle and his eyes fluttering as he fights to stay awake, and everything was worth it.
The next time he is sick, he asks for "star noodle soup" and will accept nothing less.
Henry is eight when he comes down with bronchitis. He caught it from one of the germ-ridden children at school and for three days, Regina thinks that the wheezing and hacking may never cease.
She lets him eat his "star noodle soup" ("It's just chicken noodle soup, Mom. Stop being weird.") on the couch, which she never does, and he asks her to join him, which he doesn't do very often anymore. There's a distance between them lately and she doesn't know why it's there (but she does - too many meetings, too much town business, too much hurt that won't heal and anger that won't leave no matter how much she loves Henry) or how to get rid of it.
But he's sick now and asking for her and she sits next to him on the couch and tries not to nag him about being careful not to spill on the sofa (but she nags him a little because she's his mom and that's what moms do).
(But really, she doesn't know what moms do because she's never been one before and didn't have a great example in her own mother and Henry is getting more and more difficult and gone is the little boy who loved her with everything he was and without question.)
She has taken the day off from work (and the past two days) but she will need to go back tomorrow because Storybrooke doesn't run itself, as much as she would have liked that, and there's an important budget meeting that can't be put off any longer. Graham will come over and make sure Henry is okay and she will sit in her office and worry all day. She knows it is necessary and important, but he's her son and she's leaving him and he's necessary and important, too.
She doesn't know how to be both the mayor and Henry's mom at the same time. Of all of the things that she's done, this is what she feels guilty about.
"How about a movie?" she suggests, picking up Henry's empty soup bowl fand taking it into the kitchen to put it in the dishwasher.
"Star Wars!" he croaks, and it's the first time he's been excited about anything in a while so she puts the DVD in the machine on her way back from the kitchen and settles in beside him. He's practically vibrating with excitement – she's refused to watch this movie every other time he's asked, even the one time he promised he'd keep his room clean for a week (she had zoning ordinances to look over) – and she thinks that maybe she has been a terrible mother for him to be so excited over such a small thing.
But he turns the movie on and they watch, pausing when he has to cough so that they don't miss the dialogue (or the exploding things because those parts are Henry's favorite). By the end, he is leaning against her with his head on her shoulder (he's gotten so tall).
"Thanks, Mom." His voice is low and it cracks a little bit and she wonders if this is what puberty will sound like. "I love you."
She smiles. "I love you, too, Henry."
Every time after that when she feels him drifting away, she suggests that they watch Star Wars. He doesn't turn her down until he has a book and Emma and the Truth and then there is nothing in the world that could make him watch a movie with her.
Henry is twelve (twelve, God, she missed his birthday) and home sick from school and Emma is beside him, having a thumb war and making fun of his runny nose. She watches them
"You look like you're going to drown in boogers, kid. Go get a Kleenex."
He blows a snot bubble at her (she should have known that if she let Emma Swan raise her child, he'd be blowing snot bubbles) and runs to the bathroom to blow his nose on some toilet paper.
He stands in front of the mirror and she presses her fingers to the glass because she is so close and he is right there and all she wants is to reach through the mirror, rip through the worlds, and touch him, hold him, make him remember that she's his mother too and that she loves him. He lifts his hand and wipes away a toothpaste smudge and for a second he lingers, his hand on one side of the glass in his home in New York with his family and hers on the other in the bedchambers of her empty castle in the Enchanted Forest.
For a second she thinks he can see her before he removes his hand and she remembers that magic doesn't work that way. She can see him (and it's an indulgence, she admits, checking on him like this) but he'll never be able to see her.
He shuffles back into the living room where Emma is waiting.
She waves her hand and watches her son and his mother (his only mother now) fade from the mirror.
She doesn't know exactly what memories she was able to give Emma in a quick squeeze of the hand, but she hopes that she knows about star noodle soup and Star Wars.
A bird lands on her windowsill, drawing her attention from the now-empty mirror and she hopes (only for a second because hope is a nasty, fickle thing that breaks hearts and destroys hard-won goodness) that the rest of the birds in the kingdom would have pity on her and build her a bridge across the stars so that she, like the young girl in her father's childhood story, could be reunited with her family on the wings of birds.