Henry has always been a vivid dreamer, something he supposes can be attributed to his vivid imagination, but it's been years since he had anything like a real nightmare. So when he wakes, sweat soaked and shaking and cheeks covered with tears, it's pure instinct that launches him from the bed and sends him flying across the hall.
"Mom! Mom!"
He catapults himself into her bed without thought, Evil Queen all but forgotten as he seeks to hide from the monsters stalking the edges of his still disoriented brain in the comfort of her arms.
His sharp cries jolt Regina awake and she's got one arm draped around his tiny, trembling frame as she reaches over to flick on the lamp on her night stand.
"Henry! What's wrong?"
His fingers are curled tightly in the silky fabric of her nightshirt but he's calmer now with the warm glow of light to hold back the room's shadows. "I had a bad dream." he manages at long last, gazing up at her with wide, watery eyes.
Regina relaxes and immediately enfolds him in a tight embrace, whispering soothing nonsense into his hair.
"Would you like to sleep in here with me?" She asks, once the trembling has finally stopped, and he nods. "Want to keep the light on?"
He nods again, and he's surprising himself. There'll be time to consider how he feels later, however, when there's daylight streaming through the windows and the dream induced terror isn't pressing in so close.
"Okay."
She reclines back into her headboard, pillow utilized as spinal support, and he snuggles gratefully against her. In spite of the uncomfortable position she's quick to drift off, the hands soothing his back lethargic and slow until they finally stop altogether.
His head is pillowed against her chest and he's well on his way back to dreamland himself when it occurs to him that there's something not quite right. When it hits him, that he can't hear her heartbeat, he seizes in a moment of blind panic. It passes and he chides himself for being silly; Of course she hasn't died, she's breathing, the steady even breaths of sleep. He can feel it himself, in the gentle expanding and collapsing of her ribcage.
He's overreacting, surely. His ear must just be poorly positioned to hear it. She's held him before, all the time when he was younger. He would have noticed.
Of course, a needling voice in the back of his mind tells him, when he was younger, before he got his fairy tale book, he had no reason to pay attention to details.
Checking that she's still asleep he carefully wraps small fingers around an olive skinned wrist, digging the tips into her veins as deeply as he dares, and waits for the steady thudding of a pulse. When several minutes pass and it doesn't come he recoils, horror welling up from somewhere deep within his belly.
She doesn't have a heart. She doesn't have a heart.
Brown eyes open to blink at him blearily and in the dim light cast by the bedside lamp he can't help but think they look... hollow, somehow, and he can't fathom how he never saw it before.
"Henry dear, some of us have to be up at an ungodly hour. What's the matter? Still can't sleep?"
There's real warmth there, in the gentle way she brushes his hair out of his eyes, the tender cupping of his cheek, but he's still so deeply shaken and her eyes are so dark and endless and void, completely disconnected from the comfort oozing from the rest of her. A cold shiver tingles it's way down his spine and stays there.
"Sorry, mom." He says finally, shrugging away from her touch and sinking down into the pillow next to her. His nightmare is forgotten and he can't bring himself to curl into her again; There's no way he'll be able to sleep, not with the empty sound of nothingness beating against his ear. "I was just trying to get comfortable."
"Alright." Regina smiles sleepily, already half gone. She slithers down into a more comfortable sleeping position and Henry pulls his own pillow down so he can wrap his arms around it, seeking comfort in its fluffy contours as he watches her fade the rest of the way back into unconsciousness.
As he watches her , features smooth and relaxed in a way that never happens when she's awake, the possibilities began to flicker between his temples.
He knows from his stories that the queen has a penchant for hearts. Had she removed it herself? Could she even do that? Or was there someone else, someone who had stolen it from her? He shudders to think of someone that evil, to steal the heart of an Evil Queen.
But more importantly, does this change anything?
An indefinable ache has settled into his own chest and really, he just isn't sure.