Author's Note: Thank you all for your absolutely lovely comments thus far. I'm really glad you're all enjoying this! In answer to a couple of questions I've gotten in the reviews: yes, I am planning on chapters for everyone, which means Elsa's up next (and is making me nervous because new characters = scary :)). I've saved Emma for last. Also, I've broken down and made myself a fic/fangirl Tumblr (thanks, AmTheDreamer! ;)). I'm dani-ellie03 over there and have not done much with it yet because I have no freakin' clue what I'm doing, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. :)
Henry Mills couldn't believe that he'd been mad at her earlier.
Well, okay, he hadn't really been mad at Emma specifically, he supposed. He was really mad at Regina. Mad and upset and … hurt, but he figured he was allowed. Shouldn't kids whose moms say they want them to stay away be mad and upset? All he'd wanted to do was help his mom, but she wasn't even going to let him try!
Anyway, Emma had tried to make him feel better but he was way too upset. And the second the lights went out, Henry knew she was going to have to leave him, too. Not forever or anything, but she was the sheriff and sheriffs investigated things, especially in Storybrooke where things like random power outages generally were never really all that random.
In her defense, she had tried to talk him into coming and any other day, Henry would have been all over that. But he'd just been so angry. The absolute last thing he'd wanted to do was sit in the car with Emma and his grandpa while they drove up and down the streets of Storybrooke looking for any reason at all the power went out.
He could tell that he'd upset her when he said he didn't want to come. Or maybe not upset her, exactly, but he'd definitely worried her. As it was, she'd dropped him back at the apartment before meeting up with David, so, as she put it, "At least I know where you are."
He'd sighed and wanted to fight with her but then he'd figured it wasn't worth it and he could be just as angry and upset at home as he could at Granny's.
All of his angry thoughts fled from his mind, however, when the phone rang a couple hours later. Well, okay, he did roll his eyes when he saw his grandfather's number on the screen at first but he answered the call anyway just in case it was something important.
And boy was he glad he did. It turned out to be something very important.
"Henry, it's Grandpa," David said after Henry answered the call.
Admittedly, Henry rolled his eyes again at that. He'd known who it was just from the Caller ID. But then the tone of his grandfather's voice caught his attention. He sounded scared and kind of frantic. "What's wrong?"
"I need you to gather every blanket you can find in the apartment and have them waiting for us when we come home."
Blankets? Why did they need blankets? He could hear Killian saying something in the background but he couldn't make out what it was. He did, however, hear a woman's voice that he didn't recognize say something in return: "She's going to be all right."
Something was wrong, something was really wrong. "Why? What happened?" he asked, his heart pounding in his chest.
"Everything is going to be fine, Henry," David assured him, "but your mom got herself into a little bit of trouble during the investigation and she needs those blankets. I promise I'll explain everything when we get home but for right now, I just need you to do as I ask, all right?"
"Okay," he said, nodding even though his grandpa couldn't see him.
"That's my boy," David said into the phone, pride apparent in his voice. "We'll be there in a couple of minutes."
Henry disconnected the call and, panic rising in his throat, began the mad dash to look for the blankets. There was one on the back of the sofa and his gramma kept a couple folded up on the hope chest at the foot of her bed. What on earth could have happened that his mom needed blankets?
He was just debating whether or not to run upstairs to grab the comforter off his bed when the apartment door burst open. Killian and David and a blonde woman Henry had never seen before walked his mom through the door. And when Henry saw Emma, his heart dropped into his stomach.
She was pale, so very pale. The only color in her face was on her lips, which were an odd shade of purple. David stood on one side of her and Killian stood on the other, and she was shivering. It took Henry a moment to realize they weren't so much helping her walk as they were half-dragging her.
A thousand questions tumbled through Henry's mind. What had happened? Was she okay? Who was the other blonde lady? What was going on? And yet he moved as if on auto-pilot, blanket in hand, his legs carrying him over to them as if without his conscious consent. "Mom! Are you okay?"
"Fine, kid," she said through a shiver.
Fine? She was not at all fine. If this was fine, he couldn't imagine what not fine was. The blonde lady gently slipped the blanket from his hands. His hands now free, Henry tried to grasp onto his mother's but flinched and pulled back when he felt how cold her skin was. What the heck was going on?
As the small group that had clearly become a rescue squad walked Emma over to the chair Henry had set up for her in the warmest spot in the apartment (he'd figured that went along with the blankets), David finally took mercy on his grandson. He quickly filled Henry in on the evening's events, starting with the discovery of the ice wall and its eventual cave-in. Elsa, the blonde woman Henry didn't know, looked both sheepish and proud when David gave her the credit for saving Emma by magically melting a hole in the ice wall.
Only in Storybrooke could someone almost freeze to death when it was nowhere near winter.
Henry knelt down on the floor in front of the chair, holding onto Emma's freezing hand as Elsa and David and Killian wrapped her in the blankets he'd gathered. God, he was so glad she was okay. It seemed silly now that he was so mad at her before.
And then it hit him, right in the gut. The way he'd ignored her … that could have been the last interaction he ever had with her.
Well, he might not have been able to take back ignoring her earlier but he could certainly try to make up for it now, starting with making her some of their favorite hot beverage. That would warm her up in no time.
So he made Emma the hot chocolate and sat with her for a while. Then he moved to the couch with his grandfather when he could tell she'd reached her limit for people around her. Elsa sat with them and after a little bit of conversation, Emma began falling asleep, which meant it was officially time for bed.
Because Elsa was staying with them, Henry got the whole downstairs all to himself. Well, okay, he got almost the whole downstairs all to himself because his grandparents and little Neal were just behind the curtain in the bedroom. But still, it was a lot more room than he was used to having, so he settled down to sleep, content in the knowledge that Emma was okay.
"No, Mom!" he cried as he watched Emma's yellow Bug careen off the road, right into a six-foot-tall snowbank.
But this wasn't any ordinary snow. This was magic snow that had the power to instantly freeze anything that touched it. The car now glittered with ice.
At first he thought Emma was going to be okay. She hadn't been hurt in the accident, just scared. But as she tried to get out of the car, the snowbank collapsed, piling that magic instant-freeze snow on top of her.
"No!" Henry cried again, turning to where Regina was standing beside him. He took a step towards her, aching for a hug, but before he could get any closer, she vanished into thin air.
And Henry was left alone, all alone.
He sat up on the sofa, panting heavily and blinking back tears. Oh, thank God, it had just been a dream! An awful, terrifying dream, but just a dream. It wasn't real, it wasn't real at all. Both of his moms were still here, perfectly fine.
Still, he couldn't go back to sleep. It took him a moment to realize why: he needed to check, just to make sure.
Of course, he couldn't check on Regina at … oh, gross, four-forty-three in the morning, but he could most certainly check on Emma. With a quiet sigh, he threw the blanket off his legs and, as carefully as he could in the gray light of pre-dawn, made his way through the apartment. He climbed the metal steps to the loft and rounded his mom's bed. His original plan was just to come in and make sure she was all right – warm, still breathing, that kind of thing – but no sooner had he knelt down next to her than her breathing changed. She inhaled deeply and, to his complete surprise, blinked her eyes open. "Henry?"
"Yeah," he whispered, cheeks burning. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up."
"You didn't. Not really. It's more of a mom thing, I think. Is everything okay?"
"Yep. Totally fine."
Which was a total lie. Apparently her superpower worked in the almost-dark, too, because she sat up a little and said, "No, it's not. What's the matter?"
He had every intention of telling her about the dream – well, sort of, just in the "I had a bad dream and needed to come see you, it's silly" kind of way – but what came out instead surprised him. "I'm sorry for how I acted earlier. Before the power went out, I mean."
"Oh, kid, it's all right–"
"No, it's not," he insisted, though he had no idea where this was coming from at all. This was not what he'd come up here to talk about but maybe … maybe it was what he needed to talk about. "That could have been the last time I was with you, and–"
"Hey, shh." She drew her hand out from under the pile of blankets and grasped onto his. Tears welled in Henry's eyes as he grasped her hand and then some instinct he didn't quite understand made him stand up and wrap her in a hug.
Emma immediately hugged him back, and the only thing running through his mind was how warm she finally felt. Nothing like earlier and certainly nothing like his dream. "Hey, it's all right," she whispered into his ear. "It wasn't the last time you were with me."
"But it could have been."
"But it wasn't." She pulled away so she could look him in the eye … or as much in the eye as she could with the little bit of ambient light in the room. "Henry, listen to me. I'm not going anywhere, all right? Not for a long time. I know you were scared tonight. Hell, I was scared, too, but I'm fine now and I'm not going anywhere."
He nodded and then wrapped her in another hug. He was old enough to know that she couldn't ever really promise him she wasn't going anywhere. Accidents happened all the time and it wasn't like life in Storybrooke was quiet and peaceful. Look at what had happened tonight, for crying out loud! Still, the hug and the talking had calmed him down and made him feel better. "I love you, Mom."
"I love you, too, kid."
After holding her in the hug a moment longer, he pulled away and smiled at her. He hadn't meant to wake her up but he was really glad she'd woken up anyway. Talking with her had helped a lot. "I should let you go back to sleep."
"You sure you're all right?"
"Yeah, I'm good now." He bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek. "Good night, Mom."
"G'night, Henry."
By the time he started down the stairs, she'd already settled down to go back to sleep herself. Henry smiled. He could have lost both his moms tonight. He had a plan to get one of them back, and he was more glad than words could say that he hadn't lost the other one.
