She could hear the muffled sounds of the television trickling out of the living room and Henry's easy laughter and Snow smiled as she finally dried her hands and hung the dishtowel from the stove handle. She was a little pruny from lingering longer than she had really had to but it was worth it to get to share in the peace of the moment, even if from a distance. It felt like home and family and other things she had forgotten she'd wanted.

She met Charming as he was coming in the door, the crisp winter air lingering about his body and making her shiver as she leaned up for a quick kiss.

"Everything's quiet in the mines." He said softly, as reluctant to disturb the atmosphere as she was.

Snow didn't know that it was strictly necessary to post a guard- The "Queen" as they had taken to calling her was locked up in a cage she had no hope of ever escaping from on her own and she doubted anyone in town would ever dream of breaking her out- but Charming and the dwarves had set up a shift rotation anyway. Always ready, always cautious.

She grabbed his hand gently in both of hers, warming the cool flesh, and pulled him further into the landing. They had a perfect vantage point to view the living room, where Henry was sprawled on the floor in front of The Amazing Spider Man and the two women he called mom lounged companionably close on the couch.

"Look at them." She whispered, nudging his shoulder.

"What exactly am I supposed to be seeing here?" He responded in the same low tone. "Other than proof perfect that we should just leave things the way they are? For the first time in what? Forty years? Our family is safe from that woman."

"Oh Charming. 'That woman' is our family. Especially now, with Henry. And you know as well as I do that we can't sit by while our family needs help. She deserves to be her own person, to make her own decisions with all of her faculties in tact. I meant look at them."

On the television screen Peter Parker was getting beat up by a giant lizard and Regina had buried her face in the blond woman's shoulder while Emma somewhat awkwardly wrapped an arm around her back. Snow couldn't see her expression but while she was obviously out of sorts with her current situation she was also just as obviously uncharacteristically content.

"What? The Evil Queen getting way too handsy with my daughter?"

"No. Yes. It's- Our daughter has a family. I mean… Of course we'll always be here for her. I'll spend the rest of my life making her feel loved and wanted but it's never going to be what it was supposed to. I don't know if she'll ever call me mom, or feel comfortable with us. It's nice that she has something of her own." She smiled in a wistful way that was more Mary Margaret than Snow. "And it's kind of romantic, don't you think?"

Charming stared at her aghast. "It's our daughter. And the Evil Queen."

"Exactly. The Savior and the Evil Queen. It's like…" She smirked, a little sheepish. "A fairy tale."

"I really don't think that's what's going on here." He had the same scrunched frowny face that she'd seen often on Emma, when she was trying to figure something out. Or when she had broken a toaster.

In another life she imagined he would have been the sort of father to sit around on the front porch with a shotgun stretched across his lap, gleefully threatening any would be paramour that came calling for his precious little girl.

Or, she supposed, in their version of a perfect world it would have been a sword or bow.

Snow smoothed her fingers over an invisible crease in his shirt, heart brimming with affection. "Maybe not. We should leave anyway, I don't think there's anything more we can do here tonight. Emma," The last she said loudly enough to get the family of three's attention and Emma popped up to stare at the pair of them over the back of the couch with wide green eyes. She looked almost like a guilty teenager in that moment, caught doing something she shouldn't.

"We're gonna go, honey. Call us if you need anything?"

"Yeah, okay."

"Bye gran...gram...granpants." Henry's voice was muffled by the pilfered couch pillow his face was now smooshed in and his mothers shared a smile that Snow knew was making Charming distinctly uncomfortable beside her.

"I think it's someone's bedtime anyway. Thank you, Snow. For… for everything."

Snow met brown eyes with a smile of her own. She liked this feeling, like things were on the mend. It might have taken them an actual lifetime and a few tragedies to get there but it was good.

"Of course."

###############

Regina took a ridiculously long time tucking Henry in, fussing over him as one might do for a much younger child and he was clearly enjoying and wallowing in every second of extra affection.

When she was finally satisfied and left him to share his goodnights with his other mother Emma flopped unceremoniously down at the foot of the boy's twin bed, narrowly missing his feet.

For a moment she longed wistfully for whole Regina's no nonsense approach to parenting. What had come so easily to her was something Emma struggled with daily. She felt more like a baby sitter, or that friendly aunt that popped up once in a blue moon to spoil the kid and then go on their merry way. But someone had to talk to the kid and it very clearly wasn't going to be his real parent. Tough but fair mind-your-manners-youngman Regina had checked out.

"What's wrong?" Henry sounded far more awake than he had a few moments ago, when Regina had been smoothing his blue comforter over his shoulders.

"We need to have a talk kid. A for really real talk."

"Okay." He sat up, the blanket falling away. "What's up? I mean, I guess, other than the obvious. You know. I'm worried about her too. But tonight was pretty great right? After all the emotional stuff."

"It's not that. I mean it is that, but not in the way that you mean." She rolled over, meeting his slightly quizzical expression with a frown. "You can't go around manipulating people's lives like this, Henry. What you did… It's bad. She can't be angry with you right now but I am."

"I was just trying to help."

Emma sat up, back bone cracking as she did. God she felt old. "How would you feel if I told you there were things about you that I didn't like and I wanted to remove them? And then did so without your consent?"

"Pretty bad, I guess." He looked small and guilty with his big eyes and those ears he hadn't quite grown into yet, slightly too big Superman pajamas hanging down off one shoulder and hair sticking up every which way. She suspected he could understand feelings of inadequacy just as well as she could and that was Emma's fault that he had ever had to think that way, to wonder if someone had thought he wasn't good enough. She would feel guilty if he hadn't ended up in such a loving home, so much better than anything she herself could have provided. "She was just so unhappy. I thought I could make it better. She doesn't have any friends. She doesn't go anywhere or… I just thought things could be like they were."

"So really you were trying to make things better for yourself."

He flenched at the harsh edge to her tone. "Maybe. A little. I don't know."

"You can't make someone else's life better, not like that. Taking someone's choices away and trying to mold them into something you like isn't helping." And she suspected from the things she knew that Regina had had enough of that in her life already, greedy fingers twisting her circumstances this way and that trying to meet their own ends. "The best you and I can do is be here for her and let her make her own way in her own time. And most importantly learn to care for her the way she is."

"So we should try to love her? The other one?"

"We should try to accept her." Emma corrected, privately thinking that 'love' might be a stretch. "And maybe that will help your mom do it too and we can get her back together again."

Henry sank back onto his pillow and his jaws stretched in a yawn that Emma mirrored without meaning too. It had been such a long day. Such a long few days. Someday she hoped she could have normal problems again. Like how does one food without take-out and paperwork. Beautiful wonderful paperwork for stupid small town crimes.

"I think I can do that. For mom."

Emma stood and stretched out aching muscles. Her head still vaguely throbbed and she had weird bruises that she'd just as soon forget and that guest bed that looked way nicer than anything she'd ever slept on before was screaming her name. "Alright. Get some sleep kid. I think I've had enough being the smart one for today."

She made a show of re-tucking him in, earning herself an adorable little giggle in the process as she fluffed the blanket around his shoulders and tickled at his arms.

"You're not so bad at it, you know? The mom thing. I mean I guess you're kinda more like a dad maybe? But that's cool."

"Thanks. I think."