Chapter 7 – C'est la Guerre

Storybrooke, Year 18 of the Curse…

Regina had taken to simply holding his heart for no reason whatsoever.

She would sit studiously in her office, working away quietly, one leg folded over the other. One hand holding her pen as she made annotations to the endless reams of paperwork that plagued her desk and the other cradled in her lap. The warm pulse of his heart throbbing within the cage of her fingers.

Today, however, very little work was being done.

She had done it, gone to Gold, demanded he'd find her a child…and he'd agreed.

She was going to be a mother.

A thrill went through her as well as a streak of stark terror. She had thought she was too jaded to have fear anymore. Any kind of fear. It was such an old friend to her –she had been raised with it after all- that she had thought it far too familiar to her to pull a fast one on her and make her heart race once more and her palms clammy.

How undignified.

No. She would be a wonderful mother. She was sure.

It would be easy. All she would have to do, was think about everything her own mother had done…and do the complete opposite.

Simple.

Then why was her heart still pounding whenever she thought about the moment when Gold would hand the child over to her?

Regina's pen dropped over the papers, scoring a wobbling line over one of them before curling away over the desk. She sat back, holding Graham's heart in both hands and raising them so it rested on her chest over the thump of her own kicking heart.

She didn't notice the flush of purple that thrilled through the enchanted crystal at the proximity.

Everything was going to change.

Terror reared its head again and clawed at her insides and Regina shook it off with a scowl. She lifted his heart further, rolling it between her palms, absorbing the feverish warmth of it. She tucked her chin a little, resting the heart against her lips.

The power soothed her.

All she had to do was speak, whisper even, and he'd come running.

So not everything would change.

Regina's frown deepened. She'd have to tell him. He…he remembered things. Even things she didn't want him to. He was certainly going to notice when she started setting up the nursery. He would notice when she brought the baby home. He would notice the little bundle sleeping in the room next to hers…he would notice everything.

Probably best to tell him now.

Regina leaned forward suddenly, picking up the telephone and punching in the numbers from memory. She'd had a long time to learn the number after all. She waited while it rang, looking down at the heart cradled in her hand still.

It really was quite beautiful.

Quite large, as enchanted hearts went, power thrumming through it in delicious little eddies and whorls. A deep crimson red, so dark in places it was almost purple with flurries of green pulsing along the crystalized veins, sparks of silver and –oddly- flashes of purple deep within it. Like lightning in a tiny storm.

She always thought it odd that there was purple in there. Green and silver made perfect sense to her. His wolf had been silver and he even had streaks of it in the pale green of his eyes. Green seemed fitting too, not only because of his eyes but because he had spent his entire life in the forest. He was a part of it as much as it had been him…but purple?

Regina's musings on the subject were cut off when the phone was finally answered.

"Sheriff's Department." Graham's deep timbre rolled along the phone line and Regina was unaware of her smile.

"Well, you took your sweet time."

"Madame Mayor," she could hear the slow and –unsurprisingly- wolfish grin spreading over his mouth, "what a pleasant surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Charmer. She had taught him well. It had taken her years to train him. Stubborn brute. Her stubborn, handsome, brute.

"I want to see you." Regina studied his heart, watching the storm within. She could and had spent hours watching the tiny tempest rage. He had such power in him. It was really rather intoxicating. One of the many reasons she had decided to keep him.

"Very forward." He chuckled. "Tonight?"

"No." Regina glanced at the clock, it was a little after one, she wanted this over with. "Now."

"Are you alright?"

Regina smirked at the concern in his tone. It was probably one of the things she liked most about the curse. The mirage of his affection.

"No, I just want to talk to you about something. How soon can you be here?"

"And you can't tell me over the phone?" His tone was guarded.

"I'd prefer it to be in person."

"Right. Ten minutes."

Regina's brows rose.

"It's not terribly urgent, if you're busy –I don't know- fighting crime or something then…"

"No. I'll be there."

Regina blinked when the dial tone filled her ear. Had he…?

He had.

He'd hung up on her!

Regina pulled the handset away from her ear and stared at it for a moment, convinced that it must surely be a fault of the technology of this world because her Huntsman just couldn't have hung. Up. On. Her.

Regina's eyes flashed and her jaw clenched. He dared…hurry…to do…her bidding…

Regina thumped back into her chair and scowled at herself. What was the matter with her? She was being madder than usual.

She had to admit that he'd sounded worried on the phone and she probably could have worked harder to reassure him. All that programmed affection of his came at the cost of him being terribly…male at times.

Still, he was on his way and that was what she had wanted.

She cupped his heart in both hands and went completely still, staring down at it. Her eyes flashed to the phone and she frowned again. Huffing out a sigh through her nose, Regina rolled her eyes at herself. What a fool, she'd wasted time on a phone call when she could have simply summoned him with the heart in her hand without ever having to talk to him.

Then again, she'd have missed his voice and the chance to preen under his affections had she simply summoned him with magic.

Regina groaned and lifted her free hand, pinching the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. She was a mess. What the hell was the matter with her?

She sat like that for a while, in deep meditation as to what had so upset her and was so intent on trying to untangle the psychotic weave of her thought processes that she was completely unaware of the passage of time and oblivious to Graham's arrival until the doors to her office opened and he strode in.

"What is it?"

Regina's head snapped up, her hand dropping from her face and she stared at him. She sat forward quickly when she realised she still held his heart in her hand. Well, it wasn't like it would pass for a paperweight, was it?

"I'm sorry, Madame Mayor, I tried to stop him…" Julie, Regina's assistant, quailed under the glower that Graham levelled at her.

"Begone." The single world rumbled from deep within his chest and Regina's brows rose.

He hadn't growled like that in a long time.

She disentangled herself from the happy female things that it did to her and waved at Julie.

"It's alright, Julie. I was expecting him. We shall discuss his manners presently." The last was directed at Graham and he just looked at her impatiently.

"Are you sure?" Julie glanced with concern at the Sheriff and then back to the Mayor. Graham was usually the picture of affable manners, what could have gotten him so riled? Julie couldn't remember a time when the Sheriff had ever given a hint that he even had a temper.

"Yes. I'll be fine. Off you go." Regina shooed the girl away with her free hand and wondered what the hell to do with the heart. Could she get it into the drawer where it was usually stashed without him seeing?

He prowled closer to the desk. Hmm, probably not.

Julie closed the doors quietly behind herself and left Regina alone with her Huntsman.

Well, he certainly looked more like the Huntsman now than he had in years. He prowled back and forth in front of the desk, studying her with glittering green eyes and pupils that flashed silver in the shadows he passed through. She frowned at his behaviour and settled for dropping the heart onto the floor. She let it roll down her leg and off her foot so as to disguise the thud of it meeting the carpet and he watched her intently.

"Well?" He demanded suddenly. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."

"Then why do you look so nervous?"

Regina straightened in her seat and threw her shoulders back, arching a brow at him.

He growled.

"Enough of the bravado, what is it?"

"Well, if you would sit like a civil human being then maybe we could have one of those conversations I've heard so much about. All the rage in modern society if the rumour mills are to be believed."

Graham dragged a chair back from the desk and thudded down into it, raising his eyebrows at her expectantly.

"I…" Regina stalled suddenly, unaccustomed to being hurried into anything. She set the pace. She was never late, she arrived when she wanted to, she spoke when she had all her words lined in a neat row and now…now he was heckling her.

Was it any wonder she said what she did?

"I'm going to be a mother."

Graham went completely still and stared at her. His mouth opened and then clipped shut and then he suddenly shot out of his chair. He rounded the desk in three giant steps and gripped her by the hand, hauling her up out of the chair and into his hold. He settled a hand on each side of her slim waist and stared down into her eyes.

She was about to yell at him when that gaze found hers and the venom died into nothing on her tongue.

She knew of few creatures that could summon such power into a single look and she had been unaware, up until that moment, that the Huntsman had been one of them.

She could only look away after he dropped his gaze and stared down at her middle, he turned her a little, into the light streaming in through the window, and frowned at her flat stomach.

"You're certain?" His voice was so quiet that she couldn't hear a single inflection in it.

It took a long moment for the words to sink in and their meaning to filter through to her.

"Oh!" She shook her head wildly. "No. No, no, no, no. No."

He frowned down at her.

"I'm not pregnant." Her hand rested over her shirtfront and she felt suddenly exposed. "I'm…I've started adoption proceedings. I thought…I should…tell…you."

Her confidence faltered under the hard –hard - stare he levelled at her.

"You thought you should tell me." His hands dropped from her waist. His voice was devoid of emotion still and his face completely unreadable.

He couldn't do that. Not with her. Never with her. He'd never been able to hide what he was feeling from her. Ever.

"Evidently." She was confused. This was a new beast that she had been confronted with. Not the Huntsman, he was decidedly more effusive in his actions. No, this had to be a side to Graham that she had never seen before.

"Adoption." His voice remained flat.

"Yes, I've started the application process." Well, she certainly wasn't going to tell him that she'd hired Gold to find her a child.

"Right." Graham turned from her and returned to his side of the desk and thumped down into his seat again. Staring at nothing and waiting for her to do the same.

Regina carefully sat, not knowing what he was about to do. He seemed outwardly calm but she knew there was something going on under the surface. Something coiled and ready to spring.

"Are you…alright?" She hazarded after a moment.

"I don't know. Am I?" Graham's flint hard gaze lanced her and she nearly flinched. "I mean…is it because you technically outrank me? Because you're afraid to go public about us?"

Regina frowned, caught off guard and opened her mouth to retort but he steamrolled on.

"Don't say there isn't an 'us' because it's MY back that bears the marks of your clawing. It's MY teeth that brand your breasts. It's MY name you scream at night. I'M the only one you cook for. That you laugh with. ME. Not Sidney. Not George. Not any of the other men that pant after you like leashed hounds. ME."

"You dare…?!"

"Of course I bloody dare!" Graham thundered at her, surging to his feet. "You're mine and I'm yours and we are something. Could you not have at least TOLD me that you wanted children?! Did I not deserve to be brought into the loop a little sooner than 'oh, by the way, the baby arrives in the mail tomorrow'?"

"Graham!" Regina was shocked. She'd be angry in a second but she was more dumbfounded than anything else. She hadn't thought him capable of this depth of…feeling. Especially with his heart lying under her desk rather than in his chest where it belonged.

"What? WHAT?!" Graham threw his arm wide. "You think I wouldn't, that I couldn't, step up? I have given you everything you've ever asked of me and you really think that I wouldn't have given you a child as well?"

Regina was aware that her mouth was hanging open and she clicked it suddenly and violently shut lest she catch flies. Her eyes were wide and she could feel that her face was going pale. This was not going at ALL how she had thought it would.

She had thought –in all honesty- that he would smile, nod and congratulate her then trot off to do whatever it was he did all day when he wasn't making her life easier.

Well, he certainly wasn't making it easier now.

"You couldn't…" She tried to get the words out but they stuck on her tongue.

"Why? Because I'm not worth you?" Graham prowled around the desk again, looming over her. "Is that what this is really about? That I'm good enough so long as it's just you that knows? So long as you don't have to admit to anyone that you actually give a damn about someone? So long as you get to keep up the marble hard bitch façade?"

Graham's hand manacled around her wrist before she could even get close enough to slap him. Even then, incensed as he quite evidently was, he didn't hurt her. His hold was gentle but immovably strong.

"Well, at least now I know that you care enough to hurt me. This conversation has taught me nothing but that." He dropped her hand and turned away, ready to storm out of her office and she moved without meaning to.

"Graham," her hand found his wrist and he stopped cold but he didn't turn to look back at her, "I…the fault is not with you. The way things work here means that we couldn't have children."

He snapped back around to stare down at her, silver sparking in his eyes like lightning.

"The way things work here…" He ground the words out from behind clenched teeth and hauled his wrist from her grasp.

She staggered the move was so violent but –even though he was so mad at her he was shaking- he caught her before she could fall and steadied her.

"Yes, I can see that now." His voice was so cold it would not have been out of place in the Arctic. "The way things work."

"Graham, you don't understand, I…" Regina clicked her teeth shut when he leaned in nose to nose with her with an expression so fierce she thought he might bite her.

"I am worth you."

Regina could only blink at that and he had spun away from her in the time it took to do it.

"Graham!"

"Excuse me, Madame Mayor, but I do believe I need to go and get drunk." Graham threw open the doors to her office and stormed out of them without a backwards glance.

Regina gaped.

How DARE he?!

She stood like that for a long moment, staring at the doors as they slowly swung closed. He had…that brute. She'd make him PAY for speaking to her in such a manner. She was going to drag him back here kicking and screaming if she had to.

Regina spun, marching back to the desk and looking under it. She saw the heart throbbing there. Pulsing a much brighter colour than usual. An indigo cloud of purple roiling within it, flashes of almost white blue streaking inside it.

Perhaps she'd crush it.

There were others, after all. Even her Huntsman could be replaced.

She discounted the notion immediately and didn't trouble herself with the reason why. The surety that the very same crushing fate would have befallen any other one of her subjects that had spoken to her in such a manner whilst she held their heart did not enter into her head. She was so mad at him.

Regina dropped to a crouch, picked up the heart and stood again.

She was halfway to her feet before the pain registered and she gasped, dropping the heart out of reflex. It tore away from her flesh, hitting the floor, a layer of her skin flaking from it like snow.

Regina's mouth was open on a silent scream and she clutched at the wrist of her burned hand as if to stem the pain from rolling up her arm in nauseating waves. She watched it roll in a drunken wobble across the floor and stared at the vapour that rose from it.

Cold. It was freezing.

It was so cold that it had burned her just as fiercely as a red hot coal would have.

Regina looked down at her hand. Her palm and fingers turned a chapped and angry red. She hissed out a breath and stared at the heart again.

What the hell?

Regina prowled after the heart and –carefully- prodded it with her foot.

Nothing happened. Well, it wobbled a little, but that was it.

Crouching down, Regina cautiously reached out and tapped at it. Still cold, very cold, but not the burning cold that it had been moments before. Still, cold enough not for her to risk holding. She had no desire to lose any of her fingers to frostbite. Regina rose to her feet, cradling her injured hand still, and tugged her blazer from the back of her chair. Prowling back to the heart, she bundled it into her suit jacket and lifted it, studying it intently.

Sadness.

Regina was very nearly bowled over by the crushing wave of grief that washed over her. Emanating from the heart. His heart. It felt it, all of it, still. Even though it wasn't in his chest anymore, his heart felt what he was supposed to…though he had certainly given a pretty accurate impression of being pissed as all hell a few minutes ago.

…which pulsed from the heart as well.

Regina pondered it. Through the muffling of her jacket, she could actually identify the individual emotions that poured from the heart with such an intensity that it clouded the air around it with a frigid mist. Sadness, anger, pain…they poured from it in waves with a strength and depth that she had thought only herself capable of.

She knew from personal experience that hearts that felt such things so strongly usually drove their owners mad. Quite mad.

Regina slowly stood, cradling his heart once more, her anger forgotten in the face of his quite evident pain. She had never really been confronted with it before.

Oh, yes, he had cried out if she had hurt him. Snarled a growl of agony once he had become accustomed to the rougher aspects of her play but she had never been quite so aware of how deeply and truly she was capable of hurting him. Tormenting him, yes, twisting him, yes, making him like her, absolutely…but this was…this was low. Even for her.

Staring down at the blue throbbing heart, Regina felt something nasty turn over in her chest. Something coil around her own heart and squeeze with an icy pressure.

She had never really thought that he had deserved her but it was only now that she realised what she had meant every time the notion had crossed her mind.

No more.

No more summoning. No more forcing him to do her bidding. He was malleable enough as it was here. He wasn't the Huntsman, not anymore. She didn't need his heart shaped leash to keep him in line.

Regina walked over to her jacket hanging on the peg by the door and carefully put the icy heart into the pocket. She shook the frost from her blazer and resigned herself to it being rumpled for the rest of the day.

She'd take it to her vault tonight. She'd put it back in its box alongside all the others and she'd leave him alone for a while.

Maybe if she left him long enough, he'd forget. He'd forget how…cruel she was.

Regina took her blazer back to her desk and tossed it over the chair again. She prowled about the office for a while, trying to wind herself down from the pounding in her veins and finally halted in front of the window. She hugged her arms about her middle and stared down at her apple tree in the gardens beyond.

She frowned. Someone was down there.

Stepping closer to the window, Regina peered down at the interloper.

He was huge. Built big and broad. He stepped out from behind the shield of the tree trunk so she could see him to about the waist, his top half obscured by the leaves and branches of the tree. He wore heavy leather boots, blue canvas trousers and a gigantic axe dangled from one hand.

Regina's eyes widened in shock and outrage. He wouldn't. Nobody would. Nobody would dare.

Regina was about to spin, to march out there and tear him a new one when she glared at the branches to where she thought his head might be on the other side and saw him looking back.

Regina froze, her insides going cold when she met those eyes. If they could be called such.

Nothing.

Darkness.

He had no eyes, just black pits in his head where they should be. She couldn't see anything else, couldn't focus on any other part of his face if it was even visible through the verdant leaves of the tree. Just black, soulless, eyes boring into her. looking through her like she was nothing. It was a gaze that cleaved clean through her and five miles out the other side.

It was without looking away that he lifted the axe and –with a contemptuous flick- buried it into the body of the tree.

Regina shrieked in pain when a matching wound erupted in her middle. She doubled over unnaturally sideways, a great tear rent into her side. Flesh split apart like a burst overripe tomato, crimson splattered over the floor along with something that looked like it should definitely still be inside her and Regina crumpled to the floor.

The pain was just this side of beyond her comprehension. It took up her entire world, this new plane of existence that was agony, and she gasped, choking on red. Her numb fingers slithered through the meat on the floor that had once been her midsection and she tried dumbly to put it back together. God, she didn't even know where anything was supposed to go.

Something hooked under her shoulder and she screamed a ragged wheeze when she was flipped onto her back. Her eyes going wide when she saw the axe swinging over her neck like a pendulum.

She forced herself to look up, to see beyond the blade, and gargled something that might have been a question or perhaps a curse when she saw those same pitiless black eyes. It was him. He had done this to her.

She still couldn't see his face, she was dying, everything popping in and out of focus, but she could see those eyes. Those eyes of nothing.

The axe rose, catching the light through the window, and swung down at her face.

Now…

Regina awoke violently, biting back the scream burning to get out of her throat and trying to haul her hands up over her face to shield herself from an axe that wasn't there.

It was long pounding moments for her to completely pull herself free of the nightmare. She shivered and twitched in that time, chest heaving, the pain beneath her sternum and all too uncomfortable link to the very real pain she had been subjected to in the nightmare.

What the hell had that been?

Dreams didn't hurt. At least, they shouldn't but her side ached. Not the sharp pain of having a blade buried there –something she was now intimately familiar with- but a dull throbbing ache.

She couldn't stop her chest heaving. She was panicked, her chest hurt with every breath, which made her panic more at the reminder of the dream, which made her breathe harder which made her hurt more…it was Graham that saved her.

"Ssshhh…" His deep voice rumbled in her ear and she stilled abruptly.

She took in her very real situation immediately and it was debatable as to whether or not it was worse than the nightmare.

Graham was wrapped around her in bed.

The man who hated her, who wanted to torture her, and he was coiled about her like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Then again, considering how they had spent the last thirty odd years with one another, perhaps it was. More natural to them than either of them waking up alone at any rate.

Her pillow was his bicep, the heat of him at her back was like a furnace, one of his legs was thrown over hers and his arm was looped over the slim curve of her waist. His hand stroking idle circles over her stomach. Circles that were winding lower and lower…

"Graham…" It was probably best to wake him before he fell into other old habits.

Sheet ripping morning sex being one of them. They hadn't done that since before Henry.

Regina scowled at the yes vote her body put in towards that proposal and she lifted her head, intending to turn and speak louder, wake him that way.

His teeth scraped her neck and she whimpered in an entirely programmed response. He loved to bite and she loved to be bitten. It had been an affectionate little nip, barely enough to bruise, but it still had her shivering.

"Graham." She tried to make her voice firmer, to get through to him before he did something they'd both regret, but it came out breathy and just this side of a groan.

He growled, nuzzling his nose into her soft hair, nibbling at her ear. His arm tightened over her hips, dragging her back towards him so she was flush against him. He rolled his hips against her ass and she could feel that –whilst he wasn't quite awake himself- certain parts of him were definitely up.

He'd always been like this. It must be some kind of pulley. The sun came up and so did he. Not that she'd ever complained before but things weren't exactly simpatico between them at the moment.

"Graham, you need to…" Regina's words choked off when his fingers slid up over her stomach and the skin there tightened in anticipation of what she knew he was after.

His fingers trailed over the gauze pad taped to her chest and he went completely still.

She knew then that he was completely awake and his hand, rather than snatching away, settled completely over the pad. The heat of his palm seeping through the bandaging and soothing her more than any of the drugs Whale had prescribed her.

"Did I hurt you?" He drew his head away from her neck and let it thump down onto his pillow and she shook her head, not quite up to words right then. She was more focussed on trying to get her body to stand down.

A difficult task considering his seemed to be having the same problem and his hard cock was still prodding her back rather insistently.

"Regina, did I hurt you?"

"No." Regina croaked. "I'm fine."

"Aside from pre-existing colander impersonations." He murmured wryly and slowly and carefully disentangled himself from about her.

"Yes, well, I don't think that was entirely my fault either." She was finally managing to get herself under control.

It was awful. She was so used to being able to let go around him. When he was there, in her bed, she didn't have to pretend. She could act on how she felt and –now- she couldn't even sleep without having to be on guard for what he might see in her.

The one person she had thought would always be loyal to her, because he had no choice…and now he had the choice.

So why hadn't he betrayed her?

"Come on, it's going to take us forever to do anything." Graham sat up and tugged the sheets back from her. "Good god, woman, what did you do?!"

Regina twisted to look at him and winced when the throb in her side intensified. It was so powerful that she even forgot about the wound in her chest for a moment.

"Did I…?" Graham's hand came down tentatively on her side and Regina looked down, her eyes widening when she saw the massive welt striped over her side.

She felt Graham trace his fingers incredibly gently over it from one end to the other and realised that it curved completely around her. From her navel on her front to her spine on her back…matching the wound she had suffered in the nightmare.

"No. It wasn't you." Regina accepted his help to sit up. It was either that or remain there for the rest of the day. "I must have done it when I was leaning on something yesterday. The painkillers I'm on, did Whale not say that they were blood thinners?"

Graham's raised from their inspection of her middle, his fingers still tracing the angry red line marking her skin. He looked at her for a long and hard moment.

"It would mean that I would bruise at the least provocation…you've kept your word. You haven't hurt me." Yet. "You could put on some coffee."

"I could." He continued to study her skin and then his fingers traced back up to the bandaged pad on her front. He frowned when he saw the pink stain there.

"It's normal. We both know that wounds seep." Regina's nose wrinkled in distaste. She had forgotten how disgusting killing could be.

Satisfying, certainly, but there was only so much bodily fluids a woman could stand before her first cup of coffee in the morning.

He grunted in the back of her throat and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. This was why they'd had morning sex so often in the past. It was his preferred method of communication before noon. Luckily for her.

Well, it had been.

"Coffee?" She tried to brighten her tone and he narrowed his eyes.

"Why?"

"Because I really do not need the indignity of being escorted to the bathroom on top of everything else." She decided she gained nothing from lying and he smirked at her.

"Very well." He rolled out of the bed and prowled around to her side, helping her to stand and shepherding her towards the en suite door. Then –without any warning at all- he hooked his thumbs in the waistband of her panties and slid them down from the curve of her hips so that they dropped to the floor and pooled over her feet.

"Graham!" Regina turned to look at him, glaring fiercely and found him enjoying the view. He smirked.

"What? You'd only have hurt yourself had you had to bend to take them off." He shrugged and then turned, heading for the door. "Coffee coming right up."

Regina watched him go and growled low in her throat.

So, torture it was. Regina's jaw clenched and she bared her teeth in a savage grin.

Two could play at that game.

Downstairs…

Graham was being domestic and it was a new and somewhat alien experience for him.

"Say when." Graham scrubbed a hand over his face and poured the milk for Henry the boy told him when it was enough and then he sloshed more of it over his own breakfast.

Not quite the eggs benedict and homemade bread toast that Regina could whip up but she couldn't even lift her arms over her head right now, never mind cook for them all. Judging by the way Henry was prodding at his cereal, he was lost in similar thoughts.

Graham took his own seat at the island worktop and studied Henry like he was a new creature he had discovered. Not entirely untrue. He had known about Henry in theory –as it were- observed him from a distance since he hadn't been allowed to play a larger part in the boy's life.

It struck Graham only then, now that he remembered everything, that had Regina been different, made a slightly different decision, Henry might well have called Graham 'dad'.

"What?"

Graham blinked at the question.

"You're staring. Do I have Lucky Charms in my teeth?" Henry bared all his teeth as if for Graham to check in a broad and cheesy grin and Graham smirked.

"Not so loud. Your mum isn't supposed to know, remember?" Graham winked at him and shovelled some of his own Charms into his mouth. He winced at the taste. By the Greenman, they were awful.

Henry grinned like the good little co-conspirator he was and stuffed more cereal into his mouth. He munched happily for a moment and then blurted out the question that seemed to take both of them by surprise.

"How long have you been with my mom?"

Well, now how was he supposed to answer that?

About thirty five years, give or take. What? I look no older than that myself? Hmm, that IS strange, isn't it?

Graham very nearly rolled his eyes at himself at such nonsense and he scraped his fingernails through the growth of stubble over his jaw and mulled it over.

"Since before you were born." Graham shrugged a shoulder and stuck with as much of the truth as he could. "I'm not sure exactly how long, but a long, long time. Feels like we've never been apart sometimes."

"Oh." Henry looked down at his cereal and thought about it for a long moment. Warring with himself. He looked back up at Graham.

"You thinking about the curse again?" Graham reached out and poured his cereal over the top of Henry's. He'd sooner eat nails than finish it.

"Yeah."

"Your book says the Huntsman hated the Queen because she trapped him, doesn't it?"

"Yeah." Henry looked miserable and Graham huffed out a breath.

"Hate's a strange thing, Henry. It doesn't always mean what we think it means and –even if we think we hate someone- it's usually because we really can't stand the part of ourselves that we see in them."

Henry frowned down at the milky soup that was his dissolving cereal and splashed his spoon in the mix.

"I thought the Huntsman was a good guy." Henry looked up at him. "You're a good guy."

Graham smirked and nodded at the compliment.

"What about your mum, she's not evil, is she?"

"Not…here." Henry hedged and Graham nodded.

"So maybe your book is wrong about some things." Graham held up his hand when Henry opened his mouth to so stridently defend his precious book. "It doesn't tell the whole story in the least."

Henry looked down.

"I guess not." He fidgeted with his breakfast a moment more. "Graham?"

"Yeah?" Graham got up to pour himself a coffee.

Her ladyship would be down the stairs demanding some in a moment. He'd heard the shower shut off a while ago. There was only so long she could spend primping. She knew they had to take the boy to school.

He fetched two mugs down from the cupboard.

"Do you love my mom?"

Graham lost control of one of the mugs and he had to fumble and catch it no less than three times before he had a good grip on it. He turned to look at Henry, like a deer in headlights.

"What?"

"You're the Huntsman, and mom is the Evil Queen, but you're Graham and she's Regina too so…do you love the part of her that's my mom?"

Graham blinked for long moments and turned away, staring at the coffee pot. Searching for the answer. His heart, the half that had been newly returned to him, fair screamed the answer at him and his hand shook when he picked up the coffee pot and poured two mugs of it.

"Graham, are you…?"

"Aye." Graham turned again and looked down at Henry, clutching his coffee mug in his hand. "I do. In my way."

And the knowledge horrified him.

Not only that, but her deathbed confession…she had said exactly the same thing he had. She loved him, in her way. They loved one another. In their way.

What the hell was their way?

Aside from royally fucked up that was.

"Wow, mom!" Henry straightened in his seat, grinning. "You look so pretty."

"Oh, thank you, honey." Regina walked into the kitchen a trifle slower than she usually would have had she been completely recovered but the effect was not lessened on Graham in the slightest.

He choked on his coffee and stared at the dress she had chosen to wear.

That dress.

It was a pale yellow colour, decorated with deep red cherries on the fabric. The bodice was tight and low enough at the back to show that she wore nothing beneath it. Held up only through the dint of the ties that were bowed at the nape of her neck. The skirt was flared, made fuller by the ruffled underskirts beneath it that rustled slightly when she walked.

He remembered the rustling as an accompaniment to his heavy breathing, her gasping mewls and the explosion of fireworks overhead.

The last time she had worn that dress, it had been the Fourth of July firework celebration and she'd had him fuck her right there and then in the middle of the park with the nearest bystander not twenty feet away.

That had been just last year.

Regina circled around Henry and dropped a kiss on top of his head. She looked up at him with a smirk and he realised what she was about.

So, it was to be war.