A/N: Not quite done yet. The way to healing is not short nor direct. And look, not months between updates! =)

Chapter 13

"I saw his house, you know. Emma didn't want me to, but I saw it."

Regina paused, fork mid air, and gulped. She couldn't quite seem to react. Her chest ached from not breathing. Her eyes remained unfocused, staring ahead and not looking at all. And the fork remained there, between plate and mouth, the piece of meat no longer appetizing in the least.

"Mom?"

It was just him and her, sitting in the dining room, having one last dinner before Henry went to Emma's to spend the weekend. And somehow, Regina knew this had been heavy on his mind for sometime now, even if she hadn't known what it was exactly that he had been striving to find the words to tell her.

The fork finally came down at last and Regina breathed in deeply. She swallowed hard, before slowly rising her gaze to meet her son's. He looked so young, so scared. His eyes held pain, she never wanted him to experience.

"I saw it. I saw… there was blood and, and…" He wasn't crying, wasn't exactly sad. No, Henry looked angry and his eyes were filled with despair.

Regina honestly didn't know what to do, what to say.

I deserved it, echoed through her mind, suspiciously like the Evil Queen's voice, taunting her. But did she really deserve such pain, such violence. Did anyone?

Words failing her, Regina did the only thing she could think of to do. She rose from her perch, approached Henry and his chair and his tear-filled eyes and pulled his chair sideways so she could crouch by his side. There they remained, gazes locked, her hand sweet and soft as it caressed his cheek.

"I went to Mr. Gold", he explained. "I asked for help to find you. And he didn't! He didn't ask for anything!" The clarification quickly followed, in response to her frown of worry. "And he gave me a potion and told me how to use it."

It was Henry's turn to put his hand to her cheek, like he couldn't quite believe she was there with him after all.

"It was like a summoning or something. It was you, but you had long hair and you had a long, Enchanted Forest dress and you didn't speak and you only listened to me." Henry traced her eyebrow with the tip of his finger and brushed an errant tear before it could travel down.

"You took us to mansion, but you didn't let me go in." He quickly brushed away a tear of his own and sniffed. "But I came back later. I had to!"

"Henry…" Her voice faded. She still didn't know what to say.

"He hurt you."

It wasn't a question. There was no doubt left hanging in the air that she could dispel with a few words, even had she managed to find the right ones. Henry had seen and Henry knew.

"I never wanted you to hurt like that." Henry folded at the waist, still sitting on the chair, and threw his arms around her neck, his face finding the spot where her head met her shoulder like an old, comfortable place he had always sought out as a baby and later as a child.

"Even when I found about about the Evil Queen and even when I told you you were a villain and not my-not my mom…" He hiccuped and Regina made no move to wipe her own tears away as she hugged him back fiercely. "I never wanted you to hurt like that."

Why wouldn't the words come! How could she allow her precious son to cry and say nothing! Regina tucked her head on his own, thin shoulder and clutched at the back of his shirt.

"I love you, mom. Always. No matter what."

And here, Regina finally finds to words to respond. For no matter what else occurs in life, there is something that will always be true. She pulled back and caught her son's blotchy, tear streaked face with both hands, making sure their eyes were level and connected.

"I will always love you, Henry. No matter what. And there is absolutely nothing you can say, or do that will ever change this."

Henry smiled and laughed and sobbed all at once. "Are you… are you going to be okay, mom?"

Such a loaded question. Regina was quite sure that she would never be quite okay and that had nothing to do with Jefferson's house and the land of neverending pain. Yet, looking at her son and being here with him, she found that the future was not quite as bleak. There was good in this world and even for reformed Evil Queens, there was a sliver of happy endings. How else would she describe Henry still being here, her son, but a very happy ending?

"I'm broken, Henry. I've been broken for a long time. And I did things that will never leave my soul. But…" She breathed in, breathed out, a small little smile blooming on the corner of her lips. "But," she emphasized. "My love for you not only makes me better. It makes me a little less broken than before."

She played with his new, shorter hair, and wiped again his newly freshed stained cheeks and kissed his brow.

"We're okay, Henry… we are going to be okay."

.

.

.

The white door is solid and still and more daunting than anything Regina had ever faced in her life. Hordes of soldiers? The Dark One? Her mother? All easier than being here, in front of this door and thinking about knocking.

Swatches of pain and blood and loss all paled in comparison to her own demons, to baring her soul and allowing herself to be vulnerable. Sometimes she wonders if screams started coming out, if they might ever stop.

Sighing, she straightened her back and chided herself for such melodramatic thoughts. Certainly she had left those streaks behind her in the Enchanted Forest, where the Evil Queen hopefully laid bare and dead.

Regina knocked.

Not long thereafter, the door opened and Archie's kind face came into view. He didn't seem surprised to see her and she wondered if he had just been waiting for her to gather the courage to knock. His voice echoed in her mind, like the cricket consciousness he had been, reminding her that it was not others, but only ourselves who could heal our inner wounds. She snorted at it and grasped at it, all at once. There was power in this though. Comfort in thinking she had this power and strength within her.

"Regina."

"Cricket."

He smiled at her quip and she found herself smiling in return. When he stepped aside to let her enter, she did so with only a second of hesitation. That was progress, right? She liked to think it was.

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