Bae asked, "I thought you were eleven?"
"I just had my birthday right after we got back from New York!" Henry informed him as Grace came shyly over to their table. He scooted over on his bench seat, making room for her, and she slid in beside him. "Dad, this is Grace. Grace, this is my dad, Baelfire."
"Nice to meet you, Grace," Neal answered amicably, leaning his arms onto the table as he asked, "Do you guys go to school together."
"We're in the same class," Henry volunteered.
"Well," Bae said with a smile of rueful affection towards Henry."Since it doesn't look like my kid's planning on trying to escape me anytime soon, do want me to grab you something to eat, Grace?"
"No, no, no," she said hastily. "I'm fine."
Henry narrowed his eyes at her before he slid out of the booth and marched up to the counter, asking Ruby for an extra fork.
"Meeting the parents already, is she?" Ruby asked with a teasing smile and a glance at Grace as she gave Henry the utensil he'd asked for.
"What is with you people today?" Henry asked in exasperation.
"You and her do the same thing with me and Archie," Red pointed out in good humor.
"Except," Henry retorted, pointing at her with the fork. "We're right about you two!"
Ruby pressed a finger to her lips, whispering conspiratorially, "Shhh…"
Henry sighed, grinning despite himself before he turned and went to sit back down beside Grace. He handed her the fork and pointed to his own plate, pushing it towards her so that it was between them both and indicating that she could eat what she wanted – no big deal considering how often they shared after-school deserts here. Then he got a good look at the strange look on her face… and the expectant one on his dad's.
"Did I ask a bad question?" Baelfire asked Grace, taking in her expression as well.
Something had happened in the minute that Henry had been gone, and he didn't know what… or what to do about it.
"I… no," Grace answered slowly, stabbing at the stack of pancakes. "My, uh, I don't even know where my mom is; she's not in Storybrooke."
Ah… Baelfire had asked her about her parents – maybe even who they were – and considering how most people in this town treated her because of her dad, that was oftentimes a hard subject for her. For someone who had been so used to being surrounded by friends – at least as Paige – she was still hurt by the way her friends had forsaken her… and, besides that, she was still relearning what it meant to have Jefferson in her life. The situation was something that she still struggled with, magic-wielding parents were something that Henry had in common with her, and they discussed it frequently.
But that's when it hit him; they were sitting here talking to the son of Rumplestiltskin, and if anyone besides Henry was going to understand Grace's uncertainties, it would be Baelfire! "It's okay," he spoke at the same time the thought came to mind. "You can tell him any of it." Grace and Baelfire both looked at him in surprise as he returned her gaze, adding hesitantly, "I'm pretty sure anything you can come up with is small potatoes compared to his dad."
Neal sat back in his seat then, arms crossing over his chest as he assessed Henry and Grace with narrowed eyes and said, "Alright, I'm listening, what's the big secret?" He looked at Grace, guessing shrewdly, "Does your dad have magic or something?"
Grace blinked, glancing hesitantly at Henry for reconfirmation before she answered that. Henry squeezed her hand encouragingly under the table, and that was all that it took for the floodgates to open. "My dad is, um, the Mad Hatter… and people aren't always, aren't very often…"
Bae supplied carefully, "Understanding?"
Grace smiled gratefully at him as she met his eyes, with that one word realizing for herself that here was someone else who understood what she was going through – perhaps even more than Henry did – and even more than that, he'd lived to tell the tale as an adult. She nodded and Henry just watched in silence, letting himself fade into the background as his dad and his best friend hit it off and talked about their respective fathers.
Henry hadn't seen until then just how starved Grace was for expanding her social circle again, and, sitting watching the two of them, he determined then and there that he would help her do just that.
Twenty minutes later, when Jefferson walked into the diner in search of his daughter, Grace instantly changed the subject, but it was obvious that she had made another friend and gotten things off of her chest that she'd needed to. It was because of that that Henry kept right on smiling even as Grace gave him – and Baelfire – a quick hug before she darted out the door with her hand in Jefferson's.
Watching him watch Grace, Baelfire commented lightly, "She's nice."
And it wasn't that Henry didn't catch the hidden meaning behind the words, it was that he just didn't care to refute them, and answered simply, "Yeah, she is."
Soon after the day spent with his dad, he got one with his mom – Emma, that is – for an entirely different reason though it may have been. Operation Praying Mantis was an absolute go… at least for a few hours… between stakeouts, searching Neal's room, ending in a good old-fashioned bowl of ice cream to soothe Emma's sorrows.
But what happened after that left Henry wishing for times when ice cream was enough to solve the problems.
First, Regina went missing, then Emma told him that his father – the father he'd barely had in his life, barely gotten to know – had died… while Storybrooke was falling apart around them, threatening to leave everyone in town dead.
And in the middle of all of this, he found himself simply returning to Granny's.
