Set in the Robin First Curse AU
It's not often that he and Henry find themselves alone together – it's not as though Regina has gone far, merely to the laundry room to transfer a load into the dryer – so Robin finds himself at a loss of what to say for a long moment though he needn't worry for, as soon as his mother is out of earshot, the boy asks, "Do you love my Mom?"
Robin chokes a little on his coffee, taken aback by the question. He wipes the spilt liquid from his chin before looking to Henry with eyes wide and his mouth agape with no words falling from his lips.
"I mean," Henry continues regardless, "either you love her or you must really, really like her to still be here after what she's done."
"What she's-"
"The curse!" the boy exclaims as loud as he is able to without Regina hearing before barrelling on once more, "She brought everyone here to punish them because she was unhappy, because she wanted revenge on my Grandma for being prettier than he-"
This is where Robin finds his voice. "I'm not sure what your book or your mother has told you about her past with your Grandmother nor am I going to be the one to tell you if she hasn't but what I will say," he tells Henry kindly but firmly, "is that perhaps you should ask her. I'm sure your view may change once you've heard the whole truth."
Henry's brow furrows at this, as though he hadn't thought of such a thing and, Robin supposes, he probably hasn't.
"From what I've seen of your book,' Robin begins – he remembers the boy clinging to it during the curse and Regina had skimmed through it for him a few days ago when curiosity had gotten the best of him – "it tells quite the one-sided story and certainly not one that favours your dear mother. What you have to remember, Henry," he leans forward to brace himself with his forearms on the kitchen island, levelling with the boy, "is that your book was written by a person just like you or I and, like you and I, they would have had their own perspective on things. They can't know everything that happened to us in Fairytale Land, they merely know the key facts."
Henry's head tilts, "So, your saying that maybe not all of the stories are true?"
Robin's head shakes as he smiles kindly at Henry and amends, "Just that, perhaps, they tell only one version of them. There are two sides to every story, Henry. Perhaps it's time you heard your mother's."
"What have I missed?" Regina asks as she breezes back into the kitchen, allowing a hand to skim along the small of Robin's back as she passes him before pressing a kiss to the top of Henry's head – now that he seems more open to her affections having started to spend more time with her – and moving to fix herself a cup of coffee. She smells of vanilla and laundry detergent and something that belongs only to her. It has Robin grinning like an idiot for the simple reason that she is close by once more.
"Nothing important," Robin replies easily, throwing Henry a subtle wink when his mother can't see, pausing to watch the way the boy is looking at his mother as she moves about the kitchen. There's something new in his eyes, something promising that settles something within Robin as he takes another sip from his coffee and lifts an arm for Regina to slip beneath when she moves back over towards him.
Henry doesn't ask that same day but a few days later, when Robin returns home from the forest with Roland's hand held in his own, he finds mother and son napping together on the couch with Henry's book resting on the coffee table next to them and he knows they've probably got far more to talk about but, it's certainly a start.