"Did you sleep?"

Regina asks as she enters the kitchen to find Henry sat at the table in his best blue shirt. She notes he's even made an admirable attempt to tame his hair, but doesn't say anything.

"A bit. Not much. Did you?"

"Not as much as I would have liked."

She replies honestly, and she falls into the seat opposite him and watches as he turns the pages of the book with his usual brand of care. She is unsurprised to see that he's reading the blonde's story- what little of it there is at the very end of the book- and pulls a face when the final page falls open to reveal an illustration of herself in the manic grips of vengeance while Henry looks up at her with an apologetic smile.

"I wish you wouldn't read that thing, Henry."

"I know, mom, but it's good for me to know the truth. You said so yourself."

"I did."

She nods.

"It can still hurt, though."

She sighs, and Henry shakes his head with a kind smile- very much like his mother's!- and shrugs his shoulders in a way that completes the look.

"I know you're not like that anymore. And besides, you look much nicer in the pictures I have in my room."

He grins, and she finally joins him as she couldn't agree more; cherishing the small selection of framed photographs from the last couple of years where each of their smiles has been genuine. There had been a rough patch between them- and she rarely goes a day without giving it some thought- but it was nowhere near as bad as she imagines it might have been. She had grown irritable. Self-consumed. Vexed at the inhabitants of the town and their mundane, metronomic lives. She'd lost her temper more and more often as she'd thought about the girl that had once worked alongside her less and less. Henry had known the truth about his mother of course, or at least, the fact that his birth mother and she herself were two different people, but not a lot else. When he'd first started to ask, the topic had been too painful for her to discuss. But then, when his comments on his elusive, MIA blood mother had turned from intrigue to mild resentment, and then eventually- more alarmingly- to mentions of wishing he could live with her instead, she'd realised what was happening and how her increasingly foul mood was affecting the boy, and she'd known something needed to be done before it was too late.

That was when Henry had found the book.

The goddamned fairytale book.

It had been right at the time they'd hit their rough patch. She'd noticed him reading it one day when he should have been tidying his shoes away under the stairs, and had grabbed it from him when he'd seemed spooked at her coming up behind him.

That had been bad.

It had been- and this scares her to this very day- very much like the evening she'd sent the blonde running back to Boston in a whirlwind of chaos. Because she'd seen... She'd grabbed the book and she'd seen some of the illustrations. Her eyes had flickered to some of the words, and it had scared her. Oh, it had scared her badly. She'd yelled at him, throwing the book into the hallway while doing so, and he'd gone tearing up the stairs before slamming his bedroom door. She'd stared at the book for a long time; lying splayed out and hateful on the marble floor beneath the chandelier. Her own face had stared back at her accusingly, and the words forever painted on those static lips had come to her instantly.

I will destroy your happiness, if it is the last thing I do.

And she had, hadn't she? Oh, god, she had!

Memories of her last agonising couple of days spent with Emma had come flooding back to her. Memories of the first time she'd really seen- really comprehended- what she'd done.

And that had been enough.

She'd gone up after Henry and knocked on the door, asking quietly if she could come in. Eventually, being eight at the time, he had let her. His eyes had been pink, and she'd felt her own prickle guiltily as she'd sat on the edge of his bed and patted the empty space beside her. Then they'd talked. It had felt like they'd talked for hours, and she imagines they probably had. A lot of the questions she now fears when it comes to Emma had turned out to be less complicated than she'd been anticipating when speaking to Henry. His age had been both something she'd been warily conscious of and a blessing. He'd asked her why. He'd not asked her how it could be possible. He'd not recoiled from her in fear of madness but rather simple fear of her documented reign of terror. This latter had hurt her deeply, but that night had been the first of many long discussions about why things had been the way they were, and over time, the truth- however complex and terrible- had fixed the young fissures in their relationship before they could become much less simply rectified cracks.

She'd told him about Snow.

About her mother.

About Daniel and the man with the lion tattoo.

And, most importantly, she'd told him everything she could about Emma.

About her friend. About the Saviour. The child-friendly version of how things had been when she'd met Emma in Boston.

She'd even told him about her confused but definitely sinister intentions when she'd first gone seeking the blonde out- although this revelation had come a year or so later when Henry was a little older- because it had seemed important. It had been vital for her to explain the difference the girl had made in her way of thinking.

Eventually, they'd started to plan. They'd talked more and more about Emma's upcoming birthday. They'd talked about how everything might change.

"Are we going soon?"

Henry interrupts her inner musing, and she nods stiffly as she pulls a small mirror from her purse and applies her lipstick.

"Is she how you remembered her?"

The boy asks a little shyly, and she carefully corrects a minuscule imperfection before putting both her mirror and the lipstick away with a silent frown.

"Mom?"

"I suppose. It's been very difficult to keep from pushing her. It feels natural to me to fall into the ways we once had with each other, but refraining has put a slight dampener on this most curious reunion. I imagine she is still just as irritating as she was all those years ago. I'm just going to have to be patient in order to find out."

She smirks, and Henry chuckles evilly before groaning when his mother gets up and switches on the coffee machine. Catching the reasoning behind his impatient agitation easily, she rolls her eyes at him as she fetches a cup from the cupboard.

"I'm in total agreement, dear. I'd much rather leave sooner than later- despite the fact that Ruby's coffee doesn't hold a candle to my own- but I fear one thing I might have failed to mention about Miss Swan is the fact that being on time seems to be something she's deathly allergic to."

Sighing as he watches Regina help herself to the fresh, steaming brew, Henry grins as he fingers the pages of the book idly.

"So how come it's ok when she does it?"

He challenges, and the brunette adds just a splash of cream as she confides silkily

"Oh, I never let her think that it was. But your mother offered so many opportunities to find her infuriating that one had to pick their battles if they were to maintain any level of sanity."

"You're smiling, though."

Henry states boldly, and he can't help but smile himself. He has never asked- and Regina has never made it her business to explain this small, unimportant part to him- what the brunette had meant by telling him that she'd loved Emma. For the best part of the last couple of years, he had simply accepted the statement at face value, thinking Regina spoke of a love much like he has towards her and towards Johanna. It has only recently occurred to him that she might mean something else. This revelation had caused him to blush at first, the way adult things and ways sometimes do. But, he's starting to recognise some of the bemused irritation the brunette puts on when speaking of the time she'd spent with Emma as similar to the way he feels a simultaneous urge to roll his eyes and the desire to smile when talking to Paige at school. The idea is a strange one to him, and he has never quite dared ask his mother more on the matter out of a simple inability to figure out just what to say.

All in all, the concept is both vague to him and ultimately unimportant in the grand scheme of all the other questions he has!

Turning the page back to the large illustration of the infant Saviour and the wardrobe, he swings his feet impatiently as Regina seems intent on taking forever to finish her coffee.

"What does she look like?"

He asks, and the brunette lowers her cup with a sigh, having answered this question numerous times in the past.

"You've seen the drawing."

She smiles, baiting him. Henry shakes his head wearily but fails to hide his own grin. Yes, he's seen the drawing. It's his mother's way of deflecting the question when he begins asking too many. Originally, it had been folded neatly in the top drawer of Regina's desk, but, after a great deal of persuasion, he'd convinced her to allow him to frame the blonde's long-ago doodle and keep it in his room. It had troubled her visibly to do so, but she'd backed down in the end.

"The drawing has rabbit ears."

He points out, not bothering to mention that Emma's likeness of herself is also a play on the character of Alice in Wonderland and absolutely no help to him at all when wishing to appease his curiosity.

"It does."

Regina nods, goading him."

"Mom!"

"Henry."

She answers back smartly, as they have had this discussion more times than she can count. Henry had been completely flummoxed when he'd first asked, at the fact that she didn't own even a single photograph of the girl, much as she had been herself when the thought had occurred to her shortly after sending Emma away. She'd swiftly come to the conclusion that lacking any more realistic imagery of the blonde than the girl's own scribbles was likely a good thing. It would have pained her too much to have looked at what she couldn't have.

Not to mention, if such pictures were to get into the wrong hands back then...

Now, she knows the ways of the town- of the curse- will have erased any trace of the blonde from Storybook's memory.

At least... This is what she believes to be the case.

Hopes to be the case.

Is counting on to be the case.

"What does she look like?!"

Henry insists, and she pushes her empty cup away from her, blots her lips meticulously on a piece of tissue, and reaches for her keys.

"Why don't we go and find out?"