Chapter five
Henry stuck his tongue out and adjusted a piece of glitter on his latest masterpiece.
It was something the eight year old had done more than a few times since he made it at school two days ago and he tilted his head to see if there was anything else that he could add to it.
He rubbed his fingers together to get rid of the remaining glue as he decided it may be physically impossible to add anything else.
He glanced over to see his Captain America alarm clock read 7.30 am which meant that it was two hours earlier than he would usually walk up on a Sunday.
This Sunday was the exception though because he'd woken up with the express purpose of preventing his mother from catching up on emails.
He grabbed the card and made his way to the kitchen.
As excepted, his mother stood behind the counter in her dressing gown staring intently at the coffee-maker.
The boy smiled when he realised that the groggy woman hadn't seen him yet and he padded over to the counter as quietly as he could in his Marvel onesie.
Finally, he made it to the stool and hopped up onto it with a triumphant smile as he slammed the card onto the counter:
"Happy Mother's Day!" he announced.
Regina's eyes widened and she jumped back a little.
Her tired mind took a moment to catch up with what was going on. She had only been aware enough this morning to know that she didn't need to go into the office.
Henry laughed at the confusion on his mother's face and pushed the card towards her,"I made you this," he said.
Regina finally seemed to understand what was going on as she looked over to the card.
It was obvious that the young boy had spent a great deal of time (and materials) making it and she ran her hand across the 3D effect he had created on the lettering.
"Thank you, this is amazing," she said, looking up from the card with a broad smile.
A grin spread across Henry's face and he said, "you're not doing any work today, I've got plans for us!"
Regina tilted her head and considered what adventures an eight year old could have planned. The year before, he had woken up a lot later and had gotten her to watch movies all day, not that she would complain if he wanted to do the same again.
"And what are these plans?" she asked with a little laugh.
"I've got enough of my allowance for our usuals at Granny's," he said rather proudly, "and then we can do whatever you want to do after, but no work!"
Regina smiled and walked around the counter so that she could envelope him in a hug and drop a kiss onto his forehead.
"Thank you, my little prince," she said, before she released him and added, "I suppose that I should go and get ready."
Henry blinked himself out of his memory and allowed himself a moment to feel the hug before he looked around to see how close to tears he was and he blew out a breath and fell back against the couch.
This wasn't the first time he caught himself thinking about Regina and how she was before he was given that storybook. She may have been strict, but he could hardly deny that she loved him and savoured every moment that she could with him. Granted, he now knew that she only ever spent her time at home or at work because they were living in a cursed town with people that she couldn't stand to be around.
His eyes fell onto the front door that he knew his grandmother would emerge through any moment with dinner from Granny's. With the remnants of tears on his face, he knew that he was guaranteed to get a sympathetic look and she would say 'are you okay?' in the softest voice she could possibly make.
In that moment, he decided that he couldn't be in the apartment anymore.
Some fresh air away from his grandparents would surely do him some good and now was the perfect time while Snow was out and Emma was wherever she ran out of the apartment to earlier.
It only took a couple of minutes for the boy to grab his backpack and pull his sneakers on. His hand hovered over his phone for a moment but he ultimately just left it on the coffee table since he knew that Emma would just use it to track him.
It wasn't as though Storybrooke was particularly dangerous place and he wasn't planning to be gone for long anyway.
He ran towards the door before he could talk him out of it (or before Snow came through the door with a to-go bag and an insufferable smile).
At first, he thought maybe he would go to the park and walk around a little until Snow called Emma out of worry. However, the more he received passerby's looks, the faster his feet took him away from the park until he was running towards the woods.
Once he passed the tree line, he placed both of his hands on his knees and took a couple deep breaths before he straightened his legs and took a quick look around.
He swallowed hard when he realised that he had ran much further than he ever intended to and when he looked around he quickly came to the conclusion that he had no idea where he was.
Henry glanced from tree to tree, considering how big the woods actually were.
Finally, he decided that it would make sense to just walk until he found the barrier and then follow it to the town line.
It wouldn't be the fastest approach, but he wasn't in any particular rush to get back to his grandmother and her concerned face.
At least out here, he could just focus on walking and not think about how he would never get the opportunity to talk to Regina again.
He didn't have the chance to reconcile with her after she got her redemption and became one of the heroes as he had secretly planned.
Henry blinked away a few tears and looked at his moving feet when it occurred to him that he was currently thinking about not thinking about Regina.
This meant that he had a good view of his foot when it caught a protruding tree root and he felt his entire body launch forward with nothing around to grab onto. He was soon tumbling down a small incline until he hit the bottom with a thud.
Henry rolled over on his side and groaned deeply.
This whole running away thing may not have been the best of ideas after all.
He was pretty sure he was currently laying alone in the woods with a couple of broken bones and no way of calling anyone for help.
After a few moments, however, it occurred to him that the stinging pain was not quite intense enough to possibly signify any broken bones, but his clothes were definitely messed up.
He sat up and inspected the dirt caked into his jeans and the small rip in the pocket of his shirt.
He pushed his finger through the hole and wondered how long it would take his mother to sew it; however, he quickly put the thought aside when he realised that Emma may not know how to sew.
Surely Mary Margaret would be able to do it?
The boy just shook his head and decided that he could deal with it later but right now he needed to focus on getting to the town line before it got dark.
He pushed himself up to his feet and started walking with a little limp that lessened as he kept going.
About five minutes later, he found that the trees began to appear much further apart.
His steps faltered and he frowned at the sight since he was pretty sure this was supposed to be a more gradual process; however, he decided that he couldn't complain about it if it mean that he would be finding his way out of the woods soon.
He moved a few more metres until his eyes fell onto something that he was pretty sure shouldn't be there.
Emma had told him about the Mad Hatter's mansion and he was fairly certain that wasn't it.
It was definitely a mansion but it was more Victorian than he imagined Jefferson's vacant residence would look.
Did Hansel and Gretel's witch also come to Storybrooke? He was pretty sure that she was dead.
Before Henry could think more about the issue, he realised that his feet were already taking him towards the unfamiliar house.
He decided to just believe that there was someone in the house who could help him find his way home.
He came over to the front door of the mansion and lightly knocked on it, "hello?" he called.
The door creaked open.
He looked up and down the structure for a second, there appeared to be nothing keeping it completely closed, there wasn't even a knob on it.
That had to mean that no one lived here, right?
Henry received no reply so he considered his options for a moment.
It would be simple enough to just turn on his heels and go back to his original plan, but curiosity got the better of him as it always did.
He had the distinct feeling that he would never find this place again if he left now.
It was for this reason that he just allowed his feet to carry him further into the house.
"Hello?" he called again and moved through the sparsely furnished home.
It definitely seemed like no one lived here, that was until he made it to the next room.
His mouth fell open.
As far as he could tell, about four rooms had been merged to form a massive library with row after row of tomes placed carefully on each available space of the hundreds of shelves right up to the ceiling.
"Wow," he breathed out.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
Henry jumped back and looked around the room to find the source of the chipper voice.
His eyes fell onto a man sat cross-legged on the floor with a book open on his lap.
Henry tried to remember what he was taught to do in this situation, but he remembered that he was currently the stranger in this circumstances still he was pretty sure that he wasn't supposed to trust a strange man.
He started stepping backwards and said, "I...I'm sorry...I was just looking for a way home...I'll go..."
The man raised an eyebrow and closed the book to place it at his side, so that he could stand up, smoothing out his waist coat as he did.
"I can see it in your eye that you don't want to leave, Henry," he said, "I find it hard to believe you would leave such a well stocked library."
Henry was about to say that he really did need to go but he closed his mouth when he processed that the man had just said his name.
"Who are you?" he asked with narrowed eyes since he knew that Emma would probably kill him if anything happened because he trusted a random man, even if he was pretty sure that he has typically right about people. Or so he thought anyway.
"Should I be insulted that my only reader doesn't recognise me?"
Henry brought his eyebrows together in thought before he shot up and asked, "you wrote my storybook?"
The man nodded and smiled broadly as he said, "my name is Isaac but I suppose my official title would be The Author."
S
Emma was still reeling a little about Regina just walking up to her bug and sitting down as if the door wasn't there.
She wasn't sure what she was expecting to be fair.
It would have looked odd if she opened the door for a ghost.
Her look of shock at the time earned her a few curious glances from passersby and Emma decided that she would need to work harder to look normal if this wasn't a mental breakdown considering that she would be spending a lot of time talking to someone who wasn't there.
The problem was that she was currently walking through a cementry with either a ghost or a hallucination.
Neither option felt good.
Her steps faltered when they finally reached the Mills's Mausoleum entrance and Regina turned around with a raised eyebrow at the saviour.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
Emma's eyes stared at the closed doors.
She knew exactly what was behind them and she wasn't sure that she was ready to cross the threshold.
She had told herself that she wouldn't come back here until Jefferson was in jail.
"Nothing," she mumbled, shoving her cold hands in the pockets of her jacket as she shifted from foot to foot.
Regina just narrowed her eyes, decided that she couldn't decipher what the look meant and just turned to walk through the door.
Emma stared for a moment, but rolled her eyes before she extricated her hands so that she could stride forward and pushed the doors open to find the woman stood on the other side with her arms crossed.
"You need to warn me before you do shit like that, Regina," Emma exclaimed.
"You could open doors for me, but people will start to think that you take a very long time to leave a room," Regina shot back, "or you could accept that your ghostly companion can walk through things."
Emma just let out an exasperated sigh.
This wasn't really what she meant when she thought that she wanted to spend more time with the former Evil Queen. She enjoyed Regina's company but she couldn't think of a single person that she would want to spend 24/7 with. She could see a lot of bickering in her future.
She stepped further into the mausoleum but the sheriff's feet stopped moving when her eyes fell onto the glass coffin.
Regina followed her eye line and her mouth fell open slightly.
Logically, she knew that she was dead.
She remembered being shot and she knew that only one person could see her, so she understood her circumstances.
But seeing her body laid out in a coffin was still more than strange. The jury was still out as to whether it was the weirdest thing she had ever seen though.
"Why that dress?" Regina asked and looked back over to the younger woman.
Emma forced her eyes away from the coffin and replied, "what do you mean?"
"That dress, you've never seen me wear it. Why would you choose to lay me to rest in that?"
Emma brought her bottom lip into her mouth and admitted, "I felt a little...creepy going through your closet so I just went with what I thought you...would look best in."
The saviour allowed her eyes to move over the standing version of Regina to confirm that she did in fact look good in the dress.
"I see," Regina replied and watched Emma's eyes rake over her body. She didn't mind it to be honest. She just gestured towards her father's coffin and said, "you need to push that aside to access my vault."
Glad for the change of topic, Emma walked over to the structure and placed her hands on it.
She hesitated for a second.
This was the ultimate test.
If there was nothing here she would need to get a doctor's appointment.
If there was though, well...she didn't really know what it was that she would do next.
Hopefully Regina would know?
"Emma?" Regina prompted.
The saviour didn't look back at the woman, she just took in a deep breath and pushed as hard as she could.
She wasn't quite sure whether she was surprised but it moved aside with relative ease, revealing a set of stone steps that led downwards.
It felt like the start of a crappy, poorly lit, horror film. Was she the stupid one who got murdered? She was following a ghost to a hidden room in a cemetery after all.
None of this diminished her need for answers though, so she started walking downwards, keeping her hand on the wall as she went.
"You may need to light some candles," Regina announced when they reached the bottom of the stairs.
"How do I light candles I can't see?" Emma shot back over her shoulder.
"Are you seriously telling me that you haven't tried to light a candle or two since your little adventure in the Enchanted Forest, surely Henry has no issues with the saviour practising magic?" Regina asked, just a little bitterly.
Emma turned and raised an eyebrow at the first mention of Henry, but now wasn't the time to dwell on it.
"I've been...busy...you know..." Emma lied.
"You have incredible magical potential, it would be a waste to not try," Regina replied, admiring how adorably afraid the princess was at the mention of magic.
"It's not like I had any one to teach me," Emma defended, "and I don't want to burn anything down."
Regina rolled her eyes and stepped up beside the other woman as she began to explain, "you need to allow yourself to release the magic for a moment and think of what you want to happen. I know you're probably not aware of this, Emma, but since Gold brought magic to Storybrooke, your body has been constantly fighting against the power inside so you have to temporarily stop fighting it. When you do that, you can make basically anything happen...given the correct tools, of course."
Emma looked very much sceptical, she wasn't quite sure she could do any of that without some immediate danger.
Naturally, when she cracked her eyes open, nothing had changed.
"This isn't going to work, why didn't you tell me to bring my flashlight?" Emma asked, throwing her hands up in exasperation.
"Why would the saviour need a flashlight?"
Emma sighed and shook her head.
"You defeated my mother, you are more than capable of lighting a candle," the former Evil Queen tried again.
Emma closed her eyes and tried to remember the last that she had managed to perform magic.
It was during the 'school incident'.
She hadn't over thought it that day because there was no time.
She tried the same tactic this time and when she opened her eyes, small lights flickered on a few of the candles in the room.
She smiled, but it quickly fell away as she finally saw the room.
Everything looked immaculate.
It could have almost just been a normal storage space if it wasn't for the white marble.
Plus, the items lovingly placed around so neatly would make for a very suspicious storage space.
"Is that an alchemy set?!" Emma almost shouted.
"I suppose it is," Regina replied, with some confusion at Emma's reaction.
"That is so cool," Emma breathed and went over to get a closer look, Regina looked on in amusement.
"You're missing the point, Emma," Regina said, gesturing towards the bookshelves.
Emma sighed at the volume of work that the spirit was giving her, before she could move towards it, her phone buzzed in her jacket.
Since the incident, she had gotten into the habit of pulling it out straightaway without any hesitation and she would certainly never leave a room without it again.
She pulled it out to see 'Mary Margaret' on the screen.
"Hello?" she asked.
"Thank god," Snow breathed on the other side of the phone, "I went to Granny's to get Henry some food but when I got back, he wasn't here. I think he…"
"He ran away," Emma supplied.
"He left his cell phone on the table, Emma."
Of course he did.
"It's okay we know he can't leave town. We'll just start looking around," Emma replied.
"Storybrooke is bigger than you think," Regina scoffed.
Emma glanced up at Regina but still said to her mother, "can you call David and ask him to canvas around to see if anyone has seen Henry?"
"Okay…"
"Thanks," Emma replied and hung up and then shoved her phone into her pocket and moved towards the exit.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to look for Henry," Emma replied and gestured toward the stairs to emphasise her point.
"It could take hours, Storybrooke really is bigger than you think, Emma," Regina replied.
Emma inspected Regina for any sign that she actually cared that her son was missing.
But all she saw was confidence.
"Do you have any suggestions, Regina?"
Regina pointed back to the books and replied, "I would obviously suggest a locator spell."