vii. bifurcation

Cora, dear, I finally got my hands on your firstborn. Never thought I'd find her, did you? Now I know why. She's the most powerful sorceress I've ever encountered, even more powerful than you. Stunning in every way.

Regina folds the letter again, dropping it into her pocket as her mind, unbidden, echoes the words again and again. The most powerful sorceress I've ever encountered. She's read this letter before, been inspired and driven by it, and it hadn't been about her, after all.

Zelena is her sister, and with that knowledge comes a surge of sorrow and fear that she doesn't expect. She leans against the wall of her father's crypt and wonders, for a moment, dreams of a sister to grow up with and whisper secrets to and to protect and be protected by–

A sister to kill, who wants only to destroy her.

She thinks back to the night before, being hurled into the clock tower and Zelena leaping after her and the sudden knowledge that this had been a woman she had had no chance against. That her magic had been outmatched for the first time ever and she's as close to helpless as she'll ever be with it.

Zelena can't be her sister, not in her thoughts or heart. Not if she wants to protect her family against her.

And what can she do? Get thrown into another car? Another building? The hopelessness rises as she touches her pocket again, processing Rumple's words once more. Zelena is hugely powerful, has the Dark One doing her dirty work, and all Regina has is…

Emma. There'd been a time when she might have craved that kind of power, sought to control it if only to keep it from anyone else. But now she finds that all she wants is to fight beside Emma and do what they do best as a unit. And Emma is Regina's own powerhouse, still gawky and untrained with her magic but powerful enough nonetheless.

She turns for the exit, new confidence brewing. Her chest still hurts where Emma had struck her on the day they'd visited Zelena's house, the magic not lethal or scarring, just as Mother's had been back in her heyday. But Emma isn't Mother, her magic instinctive and uncontrolled, and she's only dangerous for as long as she still struggles to use it properly. And under Regina's guidance, she'll be more than adequate.

Her phone beeps as soon as she leaves the crypt and she fishes it out. One missed call from the hospital. She'd been waiting for that one since last night, and she bites back her irritation at Whale's tardiness and dials the number again.

"There's nothing there," he says when she's patched through to him. "No lasting damage, no harm to the heart at all. I can see bruising from your fingers on the x-rays, but it didn't leave any other effects. Whatever you did to him, you did it very neatly."

There's clinical admiration in Whale's voice, one expert to another regardless of what they've both inflicted on each other in the past. Scientists, she thinks scornfully, and says, "Yes, I did. Thank you," and hangs up, troubled.

Because Emma uncontrolled makes sense. Emma without the skills to tame her magic is their problem to address, their only concern until now. She's lashed out and leaked magic and lost control more times than Regina can count on one hand at this point, and it's all been expected, all a side effect of a very volatile woman learning to take the reins of the power within her.

But Emma had had her magic completely under control when she'd attacked King George, using the kind of precision that Regina hadn't learned after years of practice. She'd struck out, sustained her magic with astounding focus, and been so exact that she'd only hurt his heart. Bruised it. Regina has never so much as thought to demonstrate how to take a heart, and Emma had mentally reached inside of George and squeezed his heart until it had nearly turned to dust.

She stares at her phone, disturbed, and scrolls down to Emma's name on her favorites list. She feels…wrong, lecturing Emma on responsible use of magic and what anger can do to her, as though she's reducing her whole past to anger management issues instead of the early devastation and desperation that it had been, but Emma can't go on like this and there's no one else who can teach her moderation. Certainly not the Blue Fairy, who's made her disapproval of Regina's corruption of Emma clear.

Had she corrupted Emma? Had she somehow repeated the mistakes of her own training on Emma to bring out something far more dangerous there? She's never placed much stock in the insistence of differences between dark and light magic or of Emma's supposed goodness from being the child of true love, but now she wonders if she'd been careless. If she'd let her own perceptions of Emma as the savior, as someone inherently good, color her confidence in Emma's training.

No. That's ridiculous. Emma is Emma and Regina doesn't give a damn about what titles she's been given. She's had enough of labels and separations between good and evil as though there's no way to bridge that gap, and she knows that Emma feels the same way. Whatever had happened, it isn't her fault.

And yet she's still uncertain, replaying memories of her telling Emma how to use her anger. How to focus. How to protect. She has rarely manipulated as Rumple had delighted in doing, but she's been frank and straightforward about which of his methods had worked. She's still responsible as Emma's teacher, and she needs to warn Emma about what she's capable of no matter how close it might be to hypocrisy. She won't let history repeat itself with another floundering woman too strong and hurting too much.

Her finger touches down on Emma's number just as she looks up and catches sight of a familiar figure across the cemetery. Henry. She ends the call before the first ring and walks purposefully around winding paths until she's just behind him.

He's crouching beside Neal's grave, notebook in hand, and he writes another sentence in it before he looks up. "Hi, Mayor Mills." He stands, looking down guiltily at some crushed flowers. "I was just…visiting."

"Does Emma know you're here?" She can't believe that Emma would leave Henry alone just after Zelena had announced her intentions with him, and she feels fury and fear creeping through her at the thought of it. "You shouldn't be out alone."

Henry shrugs, chin set and almost at his raised shoulder, and she reads him as easily as she always has. "You can't sneak off like that, Henry," she says, a tightness in her throat at the thought of it. "There's a dangerous–"

"Stop!" Henry snaps, harsh and angry, and he looks like a little boy convinced that his storybook is real. "Stop telling me things that don't mean anything! Everyone keeps saying that, telling me it's dangerous and it's about my dad, but no one will explain to me why!" He gestures wildly, notebook still clenched in one hand and his pen in the other. "It's like this whole…this whole town knows a secret and I'm the only one no one's bothered to share with." He glares down at the ground, and Regina hurts, hurts for her baby boy who only ever wants to know everything. "I don't know why other kids are walking around alone and I'm the only one being supervised and locked up like I'm in danger from this…this…"

"Zelena," she says, and maybe it's a mistake but she can't bear to see Henry like this again, not after the year she'd loathed herself more than even Emma Swan. Not after lies and danger and knowing that Henry would rather sacrifice himself for the truth rather than accept a lie.

He falls silent, startled, and stares at her. "I can't tell you everything," she murmurs, sitting down on a bench at the side of the path, and Henry takes a seat beside her. "I'm sorry. I wish I could."

"You're telling the truth," he says, amazed, and she wonders if he's inherited his other mother's gift for reading her. Or perhaps he'd had it long before Emma Swan had ever come to town. "Who is this Zelena?"

She almost wraps her arm around his back but remembers herself at the last moment, placing her hands on her lap and twisting her fingers together. "We don't know much about her. She was…in town for the past year, but no one remembers seeing her before Neal's death." She takes a long breath, watching it puff out in a little white cloud in front of her. "And it appears that she may be my sister."

Henry gapes. "What?"

"I'm as surprised as you are. My mother told me many lies, but I didn't expect that one was that I was an only child." She feels an odd sort of comfort with Henry here, even a Henry who doesn't remember her. They'd spent ten years together being all the other had had, child and mother in a secret world of their own, and these kind of confidences had been theirs and theirs alone until Henry had been given his book. And now Henry is older, more mature and on the cusp of teenagerhood, and speaking to him feels almost as though she's speaking to a friend. "She hates me for having the life she'd wanted." Angry children, lashing out at anyone but the one who'd made them that way.

Henry's eyes are very wide. "Is she going to hurt you? Why don't you have someone protecting you?" He scoots a little closer, his face hardening with the kind of determination she's seen when they'd run afoul of some of Storybrooke's angriest citizens just after the curse had broken.

"Because I'm not the one she wants to hurt, sweetheart." She dares to smooth down some of his ruffled hair, stroking the back of his head as she watches him.

And he's smart enough to understand right away, to shake his head and open his notebook to a new page, writing ZELENA across the top in bold letters. She watches fondly, yearning for something she may never have again. "Me. Why does she want me? Because of my dad?"

"That's one of the things I can't tell you."

He turns to stare at her with sudden outrage, and she knows he's going to push her, to demand more until he's angry and frustrated again. "This is about me! If I'm in danger, shouldn't I know why?"

"Yes," she agrees. "You should." And Henry must recognize the sincerity in her voice because he deflates, pen scraping doodles onto the page. "I don't think you'd believe it if I told you, anyway."

"Try me," he says in a challenging tone, and she only smiles sadly at him until he sags again, scowling. "Thank you for telling me that much, at least. No one else would. Momwouldn't."

She hears the resentment in his voice and suddenly she doesn't want Emma to be the villain of this story. She doesn't want to emerge the hero at Emma's cost. It's karmic retribution, maybe, but it isn't what they do, not anymore. They're not rivals, and they'd torn each other and Henry apart when they had been. And she has no interest in hurting Emma Swan anymore. "She's trying to protect you from all of this."

"Whatever." He sits back with a loud huff, looking cranky, and they remain in silence for a few minutes before he ventures, "So what are you going to do about her?"

"I don't know. She has more…resources than I do," she says carefully.

"My mom has lots of resources," Henry shoots back. "She can beat anyone. And she's got a gun."

"I know. We're counting on your mom," Regina says, smiling at him, and it doesn't feel weak to admit that. It feels like stopping triggers and opening portals and moving the moon, energy coursing through them and We did it a thousand times more satisfying than I did it.

"My mom's kind of a superhero, isn't she?" Henry says, smug and proud and his resentment forgotten.

She laughs. "Show your work."

He ticks points off his fingers, one at a time, like he used to when they'd practice his spelling. He'd stand at the front of the room like it was a stage and he was a spelling bee champion, and she'd deliver the words to him in her most imposing Mayor Mills voice and try not to smirk, lest he see and think she was mocking instead of proud. "She was an orphan. Check. Tragic past." He nods to the tombstone. "Check. Beats the bad guys. Check. Multiple love interests."

He sneaks a peek at her and she says obligingly, "Multiple?"

"Walsh, of course. Then Killian's really into her. And…anyone else in this town who might like her?" He glances up at her again through his eyelashes, and she suppresses a strange flutter in her heart at his implication.

"Maybe Leroy," she says, face smooth and impassive.

Henry kicks at the dirt, a pout he'd learned from Emma on his face. "Yeah. Sure."

"Henry…" she begins, and then there's a second voice behind them, echoing his name in urgent tones.

"Henry! Henry!" They both stand and twist as one and see Emma running toward them, wild and stumbling and- Regina looks down sharply- trailing puffs of blue magic like dust at her feet. "Fucking hell, you can't run away like that!"

"Emma!"

"No." Emma points a finger at her. "No, you don't get to reprimand me. You couldn't have called me? I thought he'd been taken, I thought he was gone–" She stops short, breathing hard, and now Regina can see the tears streaking her face, the way she looks so pale and splotchy that it's as though her skin is translucent and everything below is on display.

Henry's face is nearly as pale, his with guilt, and he shuffles and looks ashamed for a moment before stubborn defiance sets in. And Regina thinks back to a dozen times that Henry had run off with Emma during the curse, the first timewhen he'd left town and she'd thought she'd never see him again, and she closes her eyes and feels only sorrow as Henry hurls back a barrage of hurt. "You've been lying to me! You won't tell me anything, and people are dying, and now Zelena wants me and you wouldn't even tell me that!"

She opens her eyes and sees Emma staring at her with abject betrayal and terror in her eyes, and then–

The magic is so automatic that she'd think it was instinctive if not for what she can feel is its purpose, because she's standing so close to Henry that his knuckles are brushing against hers and Emma's magic is still familiar enough that she knows it the moment it comes. And it's direct with clear intent that she recognizes at once and Emma is still staring, still horrified and betrayed, and she twitches her hand and the back of Emma's jacket catches fire.

Henry shouts a warning and Emma swivels in place, Regina sliding around the bench to her the moment she feels Emma's magic dissipate. "What the hell are you doing to him?" she demands in a harsh whisper. "Taking even more memories from him?"

"He can't know about Zelena!" Emma hisses back. "Do you know how much it'll screw him up? If this is some twisted plan to keep him in town–"

"No, you idiot, this is a plan to keep him from running off because no one will tell him anything!" she growls, aghast. "We don't do this anymore. We don't manipulate Henry to keep him." She'd lied about the curse and Emma had lied about believing in it and they'd lied, lied, lied and struggled for the son they'd both needed and thought little of his own needs. Never again.

"I know. I know." Emma swallows loudly. "I just…I went to the bathroom and came back and he was gone. And I couldn't find him anywhere." She rocks back and forth, unsteady, and Regina is furious but she catches her anyway, guides her back to the bench where Henry is still staring at them.

And maybe Emma isn't that far off in her accusations, because Regina hates this and loves it all the same. Because it's still Henry but he isn't hers, but he trusts her anyway and isn't it time she gets to be the mom he talks to again? She should have called, she should have thought of Emma, she should have made more effort to include the one Henry had been frustrated with when they'd told him the truth. And she's guilty and Henry's guilty and Emma's guilty and they're all so wrong, so wrapped up in their own fears and desires that they've disregarded the others.

Emma is at the center of the bench and she's hanging onto Henry with one arm, holding him so tightly that he mutters a protest, and her other hand is wrapped around Regina's wrist like a vise. And they're silent and angry and afraid- of each other, of Zelena, of secrets and pain and the things they don't know- and Regina can feel Emma's magic skipping through her body, flowing as easily as her own does through her veins.

It scorches her skin and grazes her heart and it's so angry and lost that it's like an addiction, feeding off her fears and magnifying them until all she can remember is a sunny day one year ago, when she'd waved a careful hand and let Henry's memories rewrite themselves. And she'd been desperate and afraid of losing him, enough to let the town burn as they'd escape, and Emma…

Emma isn't supposed to be repeating her mistakes. Regina isn't supposed to be passing them on. None of this is supposed to go this way. They're the ones who have to defeat Zelena together, and they can't afford to stumble along the way.

Emma's magic burns bright and hot inside her and it's easier to stop worrying about what she might have done to someone she– she cares about, an infinitesimal bit– and to lean back and close her eyes and let the rage match her heartbeat and suffuse her completely.

Oddly, the sensation isn't far off from absorbing a death spell.

viii. mystification

The problem with having a suddenly overprotective mom- two, it almost feels like these days, Mayor Mills present and hovering with equal concern- is that, even when he's getting answers, they're carefully sanitized and he can't run away to figure them out on his own. He's stuck in Mayor Mills's house, Mom and the mayor both in the living room with him, and he can't so much as walk to the kitchen without one of them casually trailing behind. And he has questions.

His dad's tombstone, for one, because all it says is beloved son but when Mom had spoken about him over the years, she'd always emphasized that he had been an orphan, just like her. And if his parents are somewhere in this town, then where had they been at his funeral? Henry had already met almost all the people attending, and the few he hadn't had been much too young to be his grandparents. It doesn't make sense.

Nothing about this town makes sense, and even knowing about Zelena has given him more questions than answers.

"So we all kept doing dinner together so you could keep an eye on me?" he asks Mayor Mills, and she smiles uncomfortably and says, "That was a part of it, I suppose."

She isn't lying, exactly, but her face changes when she's trying to hide things from him, like it physically pains her to do it. "What else?"

"I wanted to spend time with you." Mayor Mills's face is gentle and there's no discomfort on it now, just affection that has warmth spreading through him. (And, yeah, maybe she wouldn't be the worst mom to have, if Mom ever stops being a butt about it.) "You're wonderful company."

He squirms, blushing, and sits down at the piano again, letting his fingers trace keys they seem to know already. Another oddity of this town, like the time he'd gone walking on his own and found himself standing in front of a school he'd never seen before, and somehow his feet had just…followed the right path back to Granny's. Or how he'd walked past an unfamiliar girl who'd greeted him by name the day before. Storybrooke has a way of sucking you in, making you feel like you've been there forever and you're going through the same motions, day after day, and his fingers seeking out a melody he's never learned is just another effect of it.

Mayor Mills sits beside him and this time she plays an accompaniment in a higher key, pausing and skipping notes to accentuate his own. It's pretty, vaguely familiar, like a lullaby from the nursery he can't quite remember. "I don't know how I can do this," he admits to her, frowning as his fingers skitter across the keys. They're clumsy and awkward next to the mayor's graceful hands, but they know their course as long as he doesn't think about it.

"Sometimes we have no idea what kind of strengths we have hidden within," Mayor Mills murmurs. "Not until we're tested." She glances once at the couch where Mom is hunched over her laptop, tongue caught between her lip and her teeth, and her face does the same funny kind of thing it does around him, where he can't tell if it's fond or sad.

Maybe it's both.

Whatever it is, Mom's glower grows deeper and she hunches lower and the mayor says, still quiet as the music surges around them, "Emma, we do need to talk later."

Mom looks…suddenly angry, stubborn in all the ways that Henry knows he reacts to being wrong and guilty for it. "I don't really think we do."

"You–"

"I've got it covered." Henry thinks it's meant to sound flippant but instead Mom just sounds tired. "I know what you're going to say and I know. Okay? I know." They're speaking in riddles again, conversations he isn't privy to, and he grits his teeth and moves to flop onto the couch, yanking his notebook off the coffee table to write in it.

Mayor Mills looks irritated and equally tired and she says in a curt tone, "I'll go get dinner started." She walks out of the room, head high and back very straight, and maybe Henry's imagining it but Mom is looking after her with a hangdog expression that clears up absolutely nothing.

"She seems angry," he comments, watching as Mom seems to sink lower into the couch.

Mom massages her forehead. "Give it a rest, kid."

But Mayor Mills is important to Mom and to him and he doesn't want to see Mom push their friend away like this, refuse to give in to whatever the mayor wants to talk about. "I'm just saying, maybe you should try–"

"I am trying." Mom closes her eyes, and when she opens them she's staring blankly at the mantle. "I'm trying to protect everyone and stop Zelena and…and be what I need to be. Who I need to be. I can't second-guess that just because Regina's decided it's time for a heart-to-heart. I'm supposed to be the one who wins this." She waves vaguely at nothing at all. "It's what I do."

"I know, Mom." She used to grin and tell him tall tales when he'd ask her about her cases, spin together truths and outrageous lies like work was all a joke. The longer the case takes, the later she's out, the more outrageous the stories get. The one time she'd had to go to the hospital to get stitches, back in their second month in New York, she'd insisted that her mark had been an alien who'd tried to abduct her and she'd made him laugh so hard that he'd almost forgotten why they'd really been there.

But here it's like she can't hide the weariness from him anymore, like it's so oppressive and all-consuming that she has no choice but to display it to the world. It scares him when he sees her like this, all hard edges and knotty muscles, completely changed from the moment they'd entered this town.

But then there are people who make it less, who make Mom grin and forget for a little while, and he has to look out for Mom when she isn't looking out for herself. "But Mayor Mills is your friend, isn't she?"

Mom shakes her head on automatic and then stops as though she's reconsidering, slumping even more. "What do you want from me, Henry?"

He thinks about it, thinks about Mayor Mills and about Mom and whatever they won't talk about, and he says, "You should make dinner."

"What?"

Mom looks taken aback, and he rolls his eyes at her. "Go to the kitchen and help her out, okay? She actually gets a little nicer when she's holding a knife. Have your stupid conversation that you won't tell me about and make her happy. We can't lose her."

Her face softens at his last statement and she stands up, wraps an arm around his back and kisses the top of his head. "I love you so much. You will never lose her," she says tremulously, and Henry doesn't know why this is so important to her but he knows without doubt that it is. "I swear to you, no matter what happens, you're going to get to hang on to her."

"Uh. Okay." He likes Mayor Mills but Mom veers from hard-eyed to tearful when he talks about her and it always seems disproportionate, somehow. "Mom?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you, like….come here with Mary Margaret after Phoenix? And date Mayor Mills when I was a baby?"

She stares at him for a minute, blowing a sigh from barely parted lips. "That would have made a hell of a lot more sense, wouldn't it have?"

She raises her face to the ceiling in a halfway plea, and he says, "Yeah, probably," and gives her a little shove toward the doorway.

As soon as she's clomped through the foyer and into the kitchen, he follows, but takes the long walk up the stairs instead. He knows instinctively- he isn't sure how, maybe he's spent time with some childhood friend with this kind of big mansion- that an old house like this one has openings from floor to floor, cracks in one floor that open onto the next ceiling. And the kitchen is just below a linen closet that looks promising.

He winces as he pulls out a stack of perfectly folded towels from below the bottom shelf and hopes very hard that he'll be able to replace them without giving himself away, and yes. A tiny crack at the place where the wall hits the floor, looking directly into an open cabinet in the kitchen. He can barely see Mom, hovering behind Mayor Mills as the mayor reaches for a dish.

"You can scramble eggs, I hope?"

Mom's brow knits together. "Is that your way of asking me if I've fed Henry anything but takeout in the past year? Because Manhattan has some very classy–"

"Emma," Mayor Mills says patiently, holding out a carton of eggs. "That's my way of asking you to scramble some eggs."

"Oh." Mom blushes and Henry chews on the inside of his cheek, impatient. He isn't spying on them to watch more of Mom being an overgrown teenager around the mayor. They're the only two people here who seem to be doing much when it comes to Zelena, and he knows that anything they talk about might give him some clues.

"And please tell me that you didn't feed Henry takeout for a year."

"Never," Mom promises, taking the carton from her. "We lived in a perfect little bubble where I managed my home life and work life and…" She stops.

"Romantic life," Mayor Mills says mildly, but her face is suddenly stiff where she's facing the cabinet, away from Mom, and Mom's jaw is moving like she's grinding her teeth together. "I think it's safe to assume that Henry is listening in," she adds, and Henry jerks back as her eyes move to the top of the cabinet. She can't see him from that angle, but he's careful anyway, pulling his face from the listening spot and lying flat against the floor instead.

"Yeah, I figured," Mom says. He can hear amusement, tinged with pride, in her voice. "That's…the kid for you."

Silence from Mayor Mills for a long moment. "We do need to talk, though."

"No, we don't." Mayor Mills starts to say something but Mom hurries on. "Here's the thing. I know what…what you're going to say. And yeah. I can't say I won't…if anyone tries to hurt someone I…" Her voice trails off and Henry is just confused enough to press an eye against the crack again and see Mayor Mills still in front of the cabinet, eyes shiny and staring straight ahead as Mom stumbles over her words. "I'm going to try to do better."

So Mom had done something, something she doesn't sound very sorry about even though Mayor Mills is upset about it. "I won't get Henry involved in…it," Mom murmurs, and the mayor's shoulders drop like a load's been taken off. "I swear."

I wish you would, Henry thinks crankily, but then Mayor Mills is speaking again. "It was a mistake to encourage you as I did." He can't see anything below her neck but he thinks she's chopping an onion and maybe that's why her eyes are glistening.

Mom turns from her place at the stove, looking as though she's been struck. "I was that bad?"

"You were that good." And now the mayor is turning to face her, smoothing a hand along her shoulders as Mom's hair falls forward and then dropping it again, and Henry can't see her face anymore. "You are talented and you've taken to…exploiting your resources with frightening ease. More than I was prepared for."

"But only when I'm mad." Nothing they say makes sense to him, and he can't even put the pieces together to figure out how they connect. It's like he's doing a puzzle and he's missing all the edges, and without them he's stuck making lonely matches that have nowhere they belong.

"No."

"No?"

"Only when you're afraid," Mayor Mills corrects her, and turns back to her spot with such a look of agony on her face that Henry's heart skips a beat in response. Mom stands very still over the eggs as she draws circles into the frying pan. "We can call it anger, but I don't think it's that that's making you react the way you do."

"Oh," Mom says softly, and she shuts off the stove and steps over to where the other woman is standing. "Oh." She's looking a little bright-eyed too, staggered by what seems to be a revelation, and they're silent and way too close and Henry wonders if they're going to kiss.

But they don't. Mayor Mills just finishes her onion and slides it off a cutting board into the eggs. She adds rice and sliced turkey from another pot on the stove and turns the flame on again. "Hoo- Killian was wrong to bring you here, after all," Mayor Mills whispers. "It's too dangerous for you."

Mom laughs wetly. "Don't you remember what happens when you tell me to leave town?" Her hand slides up and down Mayor Mills's arm, and the mayor leans into her touch, and that part is a heck of a lot less confusing than the part about the mayor telling Mom to leave town. "Hey. I'm not going anywhere until Zelena is gone. That's what I'm here for. I can handle my–" She pauses, turning toward the doorway with suspicious eyes. "I can handle it," she says instead, and Henry nearly groans in frustration.

"And after Zelena?" Mayor Mills asks, stirring the rice mixture.

Mom shakes her head. "You won't lose anyone you love ever again." That sounds…surprisingly forthright for Mom, and he's even further confused when she says, "He'll be back."

He. Henry frowns. Me. Mayor Mills…loves him? He knows she likes him, likes how much she likes him, but Mom says it so firmly that he doesn't understand it but feels a deep warmth nevertheless. It's nice to imagine mattering to someone other than Mom, especially someone who's already fit into a weird space in their family that he'd never really imagined needing filling. Walsh is great for Mom and good to him, but Mayor Mills is theirs, both of theirs, and she isn't going to let him go even once they move on.

"You won't," Mayor Mills points out with certainty, and Mom squirms.

"I don't know that."

"Yes, you do." Henry thinks about how Mayor Mills had said that Mom is afraid and he doesn't know why, but yeah. Mom gets scared a lot, even when it's just of feelings or new things or admitting the truth.

She heaves a sigh with just her shoulders and she looks kind of small as she admits, "Yeah, I do. But he'll be back. I swear." Her hand is still rubbing soothing lines against Mayor Mills's arm and they both look troubled from this angle, scrunched brows and elbows forward and heads half bowed.

Mayor Mills moves to take the sauce from the counter in front of Mom and they're half tangled into each other and speaking very rapidly and stammeringly about the rice by the time Henry realizes that he isn't going to get anything else from them. Fine. He pulls out, banging his head against the shelf, and pushes the towels back under the shelf as neatly as he can.

There are still a lot of places for him to snoop up here, and maybe get more hints to add to his notebook. He creeps along the hall, peering into doors. Maybe another study, or a secret James Bond-esque laboratory where the mayor is teaching his momwhatever they're talking about, or…

He opens one door and stares.

It's a kid's room, blue and neatly arranged, and he can see a half-empty closet and a number of gaps on the bookshelf but otherwise, it looks like someone lives there. Like there's a kid who could easily be his age who collects comic book issues and plays games on the computer and has way more clocks than anyone needs.

He gapes at the room, stepping inside with trepidation, and he doesn't understand what this means. He doesn't know why Mayor Mills is hiding a kid from him, or why she'd have a room like this at all. His head is spinning and he sits down on the bed unsteadily, struggling to comprehend this and why all he wants to do is lie back on it and close his eyes, when his phone squawks loudly.

Walsh. It's always Walsh, checking in- now giving him away- and he scampers from the room just as two sets of feet pound against the staircase and Mom and Mayor Mills are hurrying toward him, catching sight of him just as he stands outside the doorway.

"Oh, Henry," Mayor Mills whispers, and she looks frightened as she approaches him, as though he's a skittish deer about to charge past her. Mom stands back, a hand pressed to her mouth.

"You…You said you weren't a mom," he manages, and he hates the fact that he feels so betrayed over it, that he can cope with secrets when Mayor Mills only admits that they're that, that he'd counted on her not to lie to him. He's so stupid, so naive, and he's still running through thoughts in his mind as she wavers, rocking slightly as though she's already falling from his disappointment. Maybe it's a nephew's room…but no, Zelena is her only sister. Maybe she just…keeps a guest room for visitors that happens to have clothing all hung up in the closet. Maybe she…

"I'm not a mom," Mayor Mills says, and this time he hears something more in her words like a sob and Mom lets out a muffled sound behind her hand. "But I was."

Oh. Mayor Mills is trembling like she might break and Henry is the worst person in the world, pushing her to that admission when it looks like it's going to tear her apart, and he sags back against the doorjamb, furious with himself. She rushes to him, crouching in front of him just a tiny bit so they're staring into each other's eyes, and taking his hands. "Oh, no, Henry, don't look so… I should have told you. I didn't mean to mislead you. I lost him a year ago and I don't remember most of…it's very painful to think about."

Mom is still staring at them and Mayor Mills's eyes are so sad and he chokes out, "I'm sorry," before she's pulling him into her arms and he doesn't know why it hurts so much, why it feels like his heart is too tight and small and big all at once and hugging the mayor is like coming home. "I shouldn't have been looking around. I just wanted to…"

"You just wanted to know everything," Mayor Mills says, smiling behind that veil of grief, and now he can feel the love his mom had mentioned bathing him with light and hope and joy, and he's never known before how acutely he'd been missing it until just now. He tightens his arms around her and looks up for a moment, just long enough to see Mom still standing across the hall, arms stiff and eyes dark with something that isn't anger, not at all.

But it might be fear, and yearning so acute that he hurts again and doesn't know why.