ix. trepidation
"You're sure you'll be okay?" she asks, not for the first time.
Regina fixes her with an unimpressed glare. "Emma, I've destroyed whole kingdoms. I think we can handle an afternoon without you. We'll see you at dinnertime."
They haven't been apart in days, tense and on edge from Zelena's threats to Henry, but as the days pass silently and their caution wanes, Emma's been itching to do something different. Something actually constructive.
So she's putting together a crib while Regina and Henry go to Town Hall and supposedly work on the math homework Henry's been neglecting. I have the basic skills to help a seventh grader with his homework, Regina had sniffed when she'd checked on that, and Henry had rolled his eyes and informed them both that he's good at math now.
Regina's eyes had lit up like a proud mother and Emma isn't asking her if she'll be okay against Zelena, she's thinking about her son's other mother who he doesn't know about, still fragile and too easily bent to his will. Which had been nice back when she'd been set on, say, the destruction of Storybrooke, but now it just seems like another new stress Regina doesn't need.
But the other woman is proud and like steel when it comes to Henry, faintly possessive even now, so Emma smiles wanly and pats her hand- weird and awkward, like they hadn't been kissing barely two weeks ago and are still pretending exactly that hadn't part- and then kind of leaves it there, uncertain, and says, "I know."
Regina closes her eyes and Emma dares to keep her hand in place against her wrist, sliding it upward ever-so-slightly, and her arm is just as soft and smooth as she remembers, not devoid of muscle tone but not hard from it, either. "Emma," Regina murmurs, and Emma pulls her hand away, flushing.
"I hate this waiting game," she says, changing the subject before she can be interrogated as to her intentions. "I want to be on the offensive. I want to make Zelena afraid of us."
She gets a half-hidden smirk for that bravado, infuriatingly mocking, and she rolls her eyes in return as Regina repeats skeptically, "Make Zelena afraid."
"You don't think you can do it?"
Regina settles back against the doorframe to Emma's room, lips pursed at the challenge. "You'd have to find her first. Still nothing from that house?"
"Hook and David are going to check it out again today. Hopefully not get mortally injured in the process." If she'd had her way, she'd keep them both at home and do all the heavy lifting with Regina, but they'd looked so hurt at the implication of that that she'd thrown up her hands and told them to go get themselves killed. What's a Dark One or a witch to two guys with swords, right? She rolls her eyes again.
Regina frowns. "Don't you have the Merry Men on 24-hour guard there?"
She shrugs, tucking her thumbs into her waistband. "Yes, but…we don't really know them, do we?" Regina's face is carefully expressionless, and Emma doesn't know why it bothers her so much that Regina had apparently made such an impression on Robin Hood and hadn't mentioned it since. It just…does. "We don't know whose side they're on or what happened during the missing year. For all we know, Little John was always a flying monkey." She affects a casual tone. "You met Robin around there the other day, right?"
Bingo. Regina twitches in place, eyes narrowed like Emma's attacked her personally, and she says, "A while ago, yes." She looks guilty, defensive, and what the hell happened there that day? "It was a very brief meeting."
"Yeah? Who ended it?"
"I did."
"Who started it?"
"He shot an arrow at my head."
"That doesn't seem suspicious to you?"
"Run-of-the-mill, actually."
"Huh." She glares at Regina, who's giving her nothing now, her face wiped clean of discomfort and now smooth and emotionless. "Forget it."
"Right."
"Yeah."
"Mom?" They both look up, and Regina's mouth is open to respond before Emma seizes her hand again and she clamps it shut. Henry blinks at them, closing his door behind him and slinging his backpack over his shoulder. "Hey, Mayor Mills."
"Henry." Regina's eyes light up like she's found the sun in their dingy little hallway, and Emma's thumb runs circles around her knuckles. There's so much love around her suddenly, overwhelming and all directed toward the boy they both adore, and seeing them together leaves her with a fullness she can't describe and an emptiness she doesn't dare to. "All set for today?"
"Sure." He heads for the stairs and Emma doesn't drop Regina's hand as much as watch it fall from her grasp and wind around Henry's shoulders, the two of them tossing careless goodbyes back at her as she watches.
There's a peace to the three of them when they're together. Regina is all sweet smiles and gentle touches around Henry, even to Emma, and Henry responds to her with an eagerness that she hasn't seen since she'd first come to town. He doesn't know she's his mother but it's still so apparent when it's just the two of them and Emma, hovering in the background like she doesn't know where she belongs.
It would be like a nightmarish version of that first year when she'd met them both except that there's no hostility now, no tug-of-war, just this Regina who smiles at her like she's a friend and scowls like a child instead of a woman with her future in her hands. And no one is laying claim to anyone and sometimes Regina forgets herself and leans into Emma's touch and Emma's magic is strong and easy then, flowing between them until she can almost see it and she's grinning like an idiot.
She rubs at her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. Whatever she thinks about with Regina- whatever that fucking kiss had awakened between them- it's not the time. She's just lost Neal, Walsh is still out there, lurking like a bad stomach bug that won't quit, and there's Hook trailing behind her and she–
She wants to run from the hallway and chase them down, sit cross-legged on the couch in the mayor's office with Henry and get scolded by Regina, bathe in the silence and ease of time with her family. With her son, she corrects herself, wincing, and heads off to the only other people in town she can call family.
Mary Margaret is asleep on the floor when she enters the loft, head tucked in and a couch pillow hugged to her, and Emma crouches down to lay a blanket over her. Which is only partially about hiding her baby bump from view. She looks peaceful like this, more Mary Margaret Blanchard than Snow White, and for a moment Emma can pretend that this is before the curse had been broken, that she's just…a cast-off kid from the foster system who'd found a new family of friends in Storybrooke. The modern fairytale, no Disney movies necessary.
She feels guilty for even thinking it and shoves it away back into the well-sealed part of her mind labeled Don't. It's like being in foster homes again, shivering on bare beds or getting beaten up by foster brothers and reminding herself at night that she's lucky just to be there, that she can't be ungrateful or they'll send her back. (And they always did, and she'd wondered then if she hadn't appreciated them enough, if every silent complaint had somehow been given voice through defiant eyes.)
Her parents love her. And they can't send her back anywhere even if they'd want to (They don't, they don't, they don't, chants the voice in her head, and she knows consciously that it's true, that they've never actively pushed her away from them without reason, and thoughts to the contrary belong behind locked-up doors in her mind, too). She's the one who's going this time, back to where she belongs. And now they're content with that and she's content with that and she hates these feelings that emerge unbidden every time she's in this house that was once her home.
None of this is their fault, and she knows better than to cling to past resentment. Hell, she's sharing a son with a woman who'd tried to poison her on one occasion, and that's going just fine. There's no point in taking it even more personally when it's the people who love her most, presumably.
She finds a smile halfway to the box leaning against the wall and turns to Mary Margaret, only to catch a sleepy smile of her own. "Emma." Mary Margaret sits up, rubbing her eyes.
"Hi."
"You came."
She nods to the crib. "Someone's got to put it together, right?" David had offered to do it with her, but then Hook had arrived with his seductive-to-someone talk about taking on Zelena and digging out her secrets. She hadn't been tempted, but David had lit up at the idea of it. "I said I'd come by today."
"I know, but you've been so wrapped up with Zelena and Henry…" Her face splits into a warm smile and Emma's chest hurts from it. "I'm glad you're here."
She smiles back, and she really does mean it. "So am I."
She digs out the pieces of the crib as Snow settles back down onto the couch. Her vague memories of Henry's crib had been a standard, simple one, five pieces to be screwed in to be walls and a bottom. This is…a monstrosity. Is every single bar packaged individually? She's beginning to reconsider her determination to build this thing. "Maybe I should wait for David."
"If you think you can't handle it," Mary Margaret teases, and she growls in response and crouches down again.
"Never mind."
Mary Margaret laughs. "You're just like him, you know. Everything he'd dreamed of." She grows wistful and Emma's heart is hammering against her ribs. She doesn't want to have this conversation now. Or ever, actually. They'd done this in the Enchanted Forest just after the curse had broken and she's supposed to be over it, she is over it, except that now she'd rather another cruel talk with Walsh than a well-meaning one with Mary Margaret. "I thought I'd go with you, but David…he knew he wouldn't be there for you." Mary Margaret shakes her head. "There was never going to be a little curly-haired Emma toddling after him with a toy sword or running off on missions to save the kingdom with the two of us. We're so proud of what you've become without us, you know that, right?"
"Right," Emma chokes out, and wafts of blue drift across the crib pieces like stardust.
"I only hope we can do the same with your baby brother or sister." Mary Margaret pats her stomach, soft-eyed again.
She manages a grin. "Well, you can try putting him in the closet and bidding him bon voyage, but that doesn't always work out as great as it did for me."
If Mary Margaret senses any tension from that, she doesn't react to it. "I still can't believe this is happening," she says. "A new baby, one I'm going to get to keep. To do all everything I never got to with you." Emma's skin feels gritty and too large, like she could just peel it off and there'd be raw muscle and bone and no human under the surface. A crib slat quivers in front of her.
"I'm happy for you." She is, sometimes, when she remembers to breathe and see beyond her own self-absorbed stupidity. Because she's an adult and no matter how much Mary Margaret tries to tell her otherwise, she isn't what they'd wanted. Maybe David had expected her like this once they'd found out about the curse, but not Mary Margaret. Mary Margaret wants to be a mom, just like Emma herself had craved for so long, to have a tiny baby to raise and look at her with eyes that don't see shadows where their mother should be. She doesn't want an overgrown thirty-something with abandonment issues, she wants little curly-haired baby princesses who can never disappoint her. And Mary Margaret somehow always does get what she wants, eventually.
"Do you think we could take back your mobile from Gold's shop?" Mary Margaret muses. There's a sound like cracking wood in Emma's head and she rubs at her temples.
Wait. Not in her head. She jumps back, noticing for the first time that there's blue everywhere, magic swirling around at her hands and into the pieces of the crib and spreading out through the room. "Mary Margaret? Do you see that?"
"See what?" her mother asks, blinking at her, and then she meets her eyes and the magic goes wild. It's whirling around the room, picking up speed in an instant and moving faster and faster until the crib pieces are rising, caught in magnetic energy as Mary Margaret's mouth falls open. "Is that magic, Emma?"
And the protection spell isn't supposed to let her do this, it's supposed to protect from magic except maybe not hers because Regina had thought it'd be a good idea for her to help cast it. And she's unstable, wavering, and there's blue and white all around her, sucking in cups from the kitchen counter and a book from the coffee table all racing around like they're caught in a tornado. "I don't know how to stop it!" she shouts over a rising hum, feeling frantic terror rising within her. It's been her greatest fear since her magic had started acting out, out of control and nothing she can do to focus is enough.
The magic moves outward in larger and larger circles, lifting up the armchair before Emma can stop it, the coffee table following. And Mary Margaret is right in its path and she can't move, neither of them can move, and the magic surges around and into and then right out of Emma and she still can't do a thing. "Emma! Emma!"
The shouts are getting louder, the magic crackling and whooshing and the pieces of the crib are smashing into each other. Emma drops to the floor, shoves her hands against her skin and each other and crouches into a ball and nothing. There's nothing. She can't stop this thing coming out of her and she closes her eyes and tries to filter out Mary Margaret's screams and focus. Think of who you want to protect. Stop dwelling on your fears.
"That's gonna be a hell of a job," she mutters. Currently, her fear is accidentally killing her mother. Regina. Regina can stop this.
She fumbles for her phone and Mary Margaret cries out again, "Emma!" as it flies away into the macabre glowing circle she's bordering. "Emma, do something!"
"I'm trying!" She can't think, can't focus, and Mary Margaret's cries are beginning to grate at her. She doesn't need reminder after reminder of what might have set her off, what might have–
"The baby!" Mary Margaret's tone is strident and Emma looks up, catches sight of her mother holding onto her stomach and hears the half-drowned out sobbing and suddenly all she can think is a spiteful little You can always just replace this one if it doesn't work out, too.
She chokes on her breath, horrified at the thought, and the magic buzzes like a swarm of bees in her ears and under her skin and inside her blood. And then she feels it, the thing that's powering this magic under the surface. Resentment. Frustration. It's all there, stronger than accidental blasts of magic or unintentional attacks, as powerful and sustained as it had felt when she'd struck at King George.
As vindicated, watching Mary Margaret crying and afraid, and she trembles under her own bitterness, her own desire to lash out and hurt. And for an instant, she lets herself wonder if this really is accidental and her entire world crashes, crashes, and she's bare and exposed before herself, every nasty thought and desire there for her to see.
She knows then without question that she'd meant for this somewhere deep down, that there's an awful little place within her that wants to hurt as she's been hurt and just make her mother stop. And now…slowly, suddenly, like it's barely begun and it's already done, she finds the place where the magic is surging from and seizes control of it, divorces herself from all the emotions that she's spent her whole life tamping down, and it's suddenly so easy to hold up her hands and change the flow of the energy, to see how it works and how it's coming from her.
And it's weakening now the less she feels, the energy racing around the room slowing, and new frustration builds in her at the unfairness of it. She has this, finally. It's hers and she doesn't think she's afraid anymore, not when it feels so easily to touch it and maneuver it like the tool it is, and she can't let it go now. She's so close–
She closes her eyes again and surrenders to the emotions that had powered her magic all along, thinks of lonely nights dreaming of her parents arriving and whisking her away from a loveless childhood. Thinks of her parents, so quick to surrender her to whatever new destiny each curse brings and have faith that she'll suffer happily through it all. Thinks of standing in the Echo Cave and hearing Mary Margaret sing her praises and wait for the moment she'd be told that none of it is enough. Thinks of David and Mary Margaret happily raising new children in another realm because family for them is just the two of them and she's their afterthought.
Thinks about how fucking Hook had managed to get back to this world to slip her a potion, about how her parents had returned to Storybrooke and made no effort to find her again. She isn't what they'd wanted, too old and too damaged and not good enough for Snow White's fairytale existence, and for that they'd lose her and begin work on replacing her barely months later.
She lets a dozen emotions, rational and irrational both, take hold of her, and she's seeing more clearly again in an instant, reclaiming the power that had been slipping away. And she feels free in a way she's never allowed herself to be before, dozens of years of rancor toward imaginary parents springing to life and blossoming within her, terror and anger and self-hatred all spinning through her until it's the easiest thing in the world to flick her hand like she's Regina and suddenly the chair is back in its place, a china teacup is whole on the counter, the crib is fully constructed, and Mary Margaret is seated on the couch, breathing hard.
And only then, seeing her mother bent over and gasping with sobs still, does it occur to her what she's just done.
New terror ruptures within her and she's frozen in place, her heart beating so quickly that she thinks it might spontaneously combust, and there's a weight that settles around her that feels like too much. A thousand blasts that rip into her, tearing her apart and setting the pieces on fire. And she's everywhere at once, drowning in depths she's never dared scale before, and why does she feel so deeply, how can she function when all she is is fury and fear?
She can't be this person. It's going to swallow her alive. This whole town is going to swallow her alive. And Mary Margaret ventures, "Emma?" and then there's blue smoke all around her and she's gone.
She moves as though she's in a dream, and she can't remember anything from the next few hours but blinding terror and motion that ranges from stilted to frantic. She paws at clothes and opens drawers and fills suitcases and all she knows is that it's too much, there's too much here and it's going to destroy her if she remains. She's going to destroy everyone she loves if she remains.
She makes one stop along the way before she's swerving around corners and running stop signs, and she hurtles down the path to Regina's mansion before she remembers that Henry might not even be there.
But he is, and Regina and Henry both do a double-take from their spots at the dinner table when she bursts into the room.
"Mom?" Henry says, eyes wide as he takes in her disheveled state. "Are you okay?"
She stops moving for the first time since she'd left the loft, breathing hard and staring at them, and she squeezes her hand around the item in her pocket and announces, "We're leaving. All three of us. We're getting the fuck out of town."
And it's the first thing she's said in days that feels right.
x. frustration
Henry had been expecting the announcement that it was time to leave for days, maybe even weeks. They've been jumping from city to city his whole life, but rarely when they settle down do they leave again until it's time to leave for good. There are no relatives to visit, no job to keep down, just the two of them squatting in whatever new apartment they get until Mom decides that it's time to move.
And Storybrooke is an anomaly, a visit that's been going on for nearly a month now, and Mom had been saying Just a few more days, we'll go back soon, until one day this week she'd stopped. And he'd stopped expecting it quite so much, and started instead asking Mayor Mills and David about the school here and that open sheriff job that David seems all too willing to pass to Mom.
So he's taken aback by Mom's proclamation and it's Mayor Mills who says, "What are you talking about?"
"Here. I got this from Gold's shop." Mom holds up a little bottle. "And…you need this, right?" She grabs Henry's scarf from where it's draped over a chair and puts it around Mayor Mills's neck. "Now you can come with us."
Mayor Mills is still staring at her, angry like she isn't quite sure why, and she puts a hand on the scarf. "What if I don't want to?"
"Regina." Mom is weird now, buzzing with so much energy that it takes her a few moments to keep going. She'd run into the house like it had been on fire- or she'd been on fire, maybe- and she's still breathing too fast and other hand is fisted against her jacket and the words come out like a plea. "You don't want to be here. Storybrooke has been terrible to you." She lowers her voice, and Henry leans back, affecting boredom as he takes in every confusing word. "Haven't you sacrificed yourself enough for them? You don't owe them anything anymore. We could be–" She breaks off whatever she'd been going to say and then says instead, equally urgently, "Happy. Safe."
Mayor Mills looks down at Mom's free hand, holds it up and stares at it as though there's something under the surface that Henry can't see. "What did you do, Emma?"
Mom shakes her head. "Nothing. I swear, nothing yet. Regina, please. There's no–" She stops, catches Henry's eye. "There's none of this out there." She wiggles her hand in Regina's. "Zelena's after you now, not this town. And if she follows us, I'll put a bullet through her skull."
She rocks back and forth in her boots, still on edge but whatever energy there'd been dying down, and Mayor Mills says, "All right."
"Mother Superior is still here to take care of–" Mom stops mid-argument. "What?"
"Yes. Okay. Do you really need this spelled out?" But Mayor Mills doesn't sound annoyed as much as she does uncomfortable, tense as Mom tightens her hand in hers and turns to Henry. "I'll come with you."
"Okay," Mom says, and her shoulders fall as though the mayor has taken a load off them. "That's, um. Okay." She sits in front of the empty plate at the table and Henry can't stop staring at her, at Mayor Mills as she murmurs something about packing and vanishes up the stairs, at this room he's spent so much time in that it's starting to feel like home.
"We're leaving?"
Mom smiles at him, her eyes dark but her lips stretched across her face. "Isn't it time we got back home?"
He shrugs and twists his fork in his chili and he doesn't know what to say except this could be home, this feels more like home and that's ridiculous. They've spent a year in New York and three weeks in Storybrooke and he doesn't know why leaving makes him want to cry but somehow it does, somehow it feels like taking a piece of himself away when they go. "I kind of like it here." There are mysteries and shadowy villains but there's also a diner he likes and the docks are always open and there's this cool playground at the edge of the woods where he's wistfully watched kids his age hanging out together.
And Mom has people here who've taken them in, friends who feel a lot more like family and Mayor Mills who's begun to feel more like theirs than any apartment they've ever been in. Mayor Mills who's going to uproot herself and run off with them when this town is all they've been searching for for years. "Couldn't we stay here instead?" he says, and Mom's face goes pale and strained.
"You have school in New York, kid. Friends. No evil murderers out to hurt you."
"School won't change here," he points out. "And friends are…" He has vague memories of struggling to make new friends everywhere they've been, never quite connecting to people, just like his mother. His New York friends had felt more real than any of the others. And yet. "I could make new friends. Jesse and Rico are idiots anyway. I don't think we could…" He hesitates. "Doesn't it feel like family here?" He's never had roots before, and he thinks he must have craved them for longer than he can remember, to find a place where he belongs outside of just the two of them.
But Mom looks absolutely devastated now, forlorn and defeated with just the question. "I thought we were a family."
"We are," he hurries to assure her. "We're just…doesn't it seem like something's missing?" It's felt like that for the last year, since they'd left Boston after the fire. And it doesn't feel like that here. Not with Mary Margaret and David, as boring and small town as they get. Not with Ruby or Killian or Archie or even at that school that he doesn't know how he'd found. And never in the mayoral mansion, tucked under Mayor Mills's arm. Home feels like it could be this place, these people, and bringing the mayor with them just feels like taking another person away from home, too.
"Regina's going to–"
"Because you want to leave." Mayor Mills, he's pretty sure, would follow them to the end of the Earth if they asked her to. "Why do we always have to run?"
What did you do, Emma? Mayor Mills had asked, and he knows that Mom had done something, enough to spook her like it had that time she'd gone out a few times with a man who'd wound up being married. Mom had woken him up with all their bags packed and they'd left town that night in another rush, and she still doesn't know that he knows about that. "I'm tired of running, Mom. I don't want to run away from here, too."
"We're running from a psychopathic murderer, Henry!" But Mom isn't meeting his eyes and he knows she's lying to both of them. "You don't want to need a chaperone every day for the rest of your life, do you?"
He rolls his eyes at that insistence. "You always beat the bad guys." She used to tell him it all the time, back before they came here and her smile got heavier, like it meant more but hurt more all the same.
"I don't want us to spend our lives having to beat bad guys." Mom takes his hands in hers, and she's blinking hard and he suddenly feels like crying too from the despair that permeates the air, Mom's fear of things she won't name so acute that he holds on tight. "I don't want to be that person anymore, sweetheart. We don't need to be heroes."
She remains resolute, and he can see in her face that this is it. That she isn't going to change her mind this time, that they're going to run away from people who love them and bring Mayor Mills into this messy, lonely existence. "You're not a hero," he says, bitterness overpowering his mother's fear. He'd thought they didn't believe in heroes, had joked about it with Mayor Mills just days ago. "A hero wouldn't run away all the time."
Mom jerks away from him as though she's been slapped and he doesn't care, he doesn't want to worry about being sensitive and understanding when she's hurting them both. "Fine. Fine, Henry, I'm not a hero. What am I doing here, then? How the hell do I belong here?"
He stares at her, confused again, and Mayor Mills says from behind them, "Henry doesn't want to go." She sounds dazed, disbelieving, and Mom looks from one of them to the other as the firmness fades from her face.
He shakes his head and Mom sags in her seat, defeated with just his motion. "Yeah. Henry thinks it feels like family here."
"I see." And Henry doesn't understand her tone or why Mom's fists are clenching and unclenching again and she isn't looking at either of them, but Mayor Mills clears her throat and says, "Why don't you bring your bags inside? We can revisit this in the morning."
Mom gets up without another word and leaves for the car, and Henry stays inside, pushing his cauliflower into his chili in sullen silence. "She does this every time we find a place we love."
Mayor Mills takes Mom's seat, twisting her fingers around each other and spearing a piece of cauliflower of her own into the chili and eating it. Henry tries his. It's a weird combination but it tastes so familiar that he's sure he's had it before and forgotten how good it is. "Emma has spent much of her life being let down by the people in places where she's thought she'd belong."
"Well, yeah, if she doesn't give them a chance." But he remembers the dad that Mom is now calling a hero but hadn't until this town, until suddenly here she has friends and history and maybe his dad did, too. And he turns to glare at Mayor Mills. "And you're letting her! I thought you cared about us."
Mayor Mills looks stricken. "I do, Henry. More than anything. How can you doubt that?"
"How can you just drop everything and follow her?" He's angry now, even with the reassurance that Mayor Mills isn't going to run off if he doesn't want them to. He's lost and confused and so furious and Mom didn't even give up because of what he wanted, Mom put running before a family, and no one even has the decency to explain to him why. "There are important things here! There are people who are counting on you and you were just going to run away too."
"Because I care about you. And this town is dangerous for you." Mayor Mills wipes at his chin with a napkin, and it's so motherly that he wants to cry. He's twelve years old and he's found someone he's never known that he's needed until now, and she's just like Mom. She's hiding things and running and she's the best part about running this time, but it's all wrong for all of them.
"Because of Zelena?" Mom had thought that Zelena would follow them anyway, and she didn't sound scared about it anymore.
But Mayor Mills whispers, "Not Zelena," and he's startled into silence. And then there's the sound of Mom heaving in their luggage and Mayor Mills looks even more pensive and he doesn't understand, more secrets and more lies and so much left unsaid to him. "Why don't I get you settled upstairs? It's getting late."
"It's seven o'clock," he says dumbly, but he follows Mayor Mills out into the foyer and up the stairs, Mom behind them with his suitcase and backpack.
He's surprised when Mayor Mills nods toward the room he'd discovered earlier in the week but it's Mom who says, "Are you sure that's wise?"
"It's just another guest room now," Mayor Mills murmurs, and now he sees that there are even more books gone from the shelves, a stack of photo albums he'd spotted last time gone as well, and a few other bare spots on the wall. "Make yourself at home."
He digs through his suitcase under two sets of watchful eyes until he finds a pair of pajamas and his PSP, and he dumps the former on the bed and buries himself in the latter until he hears the door click closed, retreating footsteps, and Mom and Mayor Mills talking in low voices.
They're careless this time. They don't even leave the foyer before they begin discussing him. "If he doesn't want to go, we're not going," Mayor Mills is insisting. "I will not uproot him again because you're having control issues!"
"Control issues?" Mom snaps back. She lowers her voice and Henry leans closer to the wall beside the stairs, ears straining. "I sent my mother into some creepy crib tornado today! And it felt…" Her voice trails off and she looks suddenly horrified, and Mayor Mills's eyebrows shoot up. "I don't want to talk about how it felt."
Wait. Mother? Henry gapes down at them, eyes wide. Mother? Is this some weird code word that they're using, because Mom doesn't have parents. Mom has never had parents, unless his whole life has been some huge lie that no one will explain to him.
He clings to the wall in disbelieving fascination, but Mayor Mills doesn't pick up on the word or comment on it, just dives into the equally enigmatic crib tornado comment. "You're allowed to feel some hostility toward her, you know. If you keep pretending you don't, it's all going to explode like that again and again until it's finally something you both can't ignore."
"I'm not ignoring! I'm trying to get the fuck out of here!" Mom hisses. "That's the answer to this. The three of us anywhere but here." She slumps against the little table by the wall, palms pressed to it as Mayor Mills moves closer. "I don't know why we can't have that."
"Because Henry's right. Running away from your problems is just as potent as ignoring them." Mayor Mills slides her thumb along the space between Mom's forehead and her ear, brushing stray hair to the side. "Whether or not you have something else powering you at the time."
Mom shakes her head. "You don't really think that."
"I think I once spent the bulk of a decade letting myself fester in bitterness and hatred," Mayor Mills says, and Mom's eyes close like she doesn't want to hear it. Mayor Mills's voice softens. "You aren't me. We don't know how you'd react to it. But I don't want to see you build yourself a prison of darkness like I did."
Mom laughs, wet and hoarse. "Isn't it too late for that?"
"Oh, please. Don't oversell yourself like that." But the mayor is still stroking Mom's hair, soft and gentle even as her tone is biting, and Mom leans into her touch. And Henry doesn't know how Mom had done this until now, how she must have hurt so much and been hiding all these things from him and had never folded like this. Mom is strong, the strongest person he knows, and not just because she does a lot of chin-ups. And he can't imagine her like this with Walsh, quiet and scared of demons she won't tell him about. "You're hardly an evil queen," Mayor Mills sniffs. "Maybe a vaguely malicious peasant."
Mom juts out her jaw. "Princess," she says, and laughs helplessly as her hands move to rest on Mayor Mills's hips. "I wanted to…I don't want us to be any of that anymore. I thought we might…we might be a family, the three of us."
"You thought that," Mayor Mills breathes, and Mom's eyes are still shut and the other woman presses her lips to her forehead, very carefully. Then another set of gentle kisses to Mom's eyelids. She traces a path to one cheek with gentle fingers before she replaces them with her lips, then the other, and finally she settles on Mom's lips so sweetly that Henry forgets to be grossed out for a long minute.
Mayor Mills pulls away and now Mom's eyes are open and they're both gazing at each other with solemn eyes. And Mom says, "I should…I didn't eat dinner yet."
"I left it on the stove for you," Mayor Mills murmurs, and they're moving back toward each other with more focused kissing an instant later. Then there are little sighs and Mom is pulling the mayor closer and Henry nearly trips in his hurry to slip back into his room.
He closes the door carefully and flops back down on the bed, reaching for his PSP where he'd stuck it under the pillow, habit from staying at a B&B where doors are rarely locked. And his knuckles brush against something hard just under the PSP, something he's sure hadn't been there when he'd put it there.
He pulls it out. It's a large, thick book, old-fashioned and worn and embossed with the words Once Upon a Time across the front of it.
And when he opens it, brow creasing, he sees writing across the inside cover, just under the This book is the property of: stamp.
Henry Mills, it says, and it's written in his handwriting.
He jerks back, throws the book nearly across the bed with wide eyes, and then looks around quickly to see if anyone's watching him. If this is some creepy trick that Zelena or even Mom is doing on him. But there's no one, the house is still quiet, and the window is closed. Maybe he'd read it wrong.
But when he retrieves the book and opens it gingerly, there's the same text again, still in his handwriting.
He digs through his backpack and writes the same words, Henry Mills, across a page of his notebook. And again. And again. Henry Mills. Henry Mills. Henry Mills. HENRY MILLS. They all match the writing perfectly, and he seizes the book, heart pounding, and none of this makes sense. None of this is possible.
It's a trick, just like Mom talking about having a mother and that thing that Mayor Mills is afraid enough of that she'd been willing to leave town. It's got to be some weird code, something to fool Zelena and make her think that he isn't who she wants. It's got to be.
The alternative doesn't make sense, nothing about this town makes sense, and he's angry and scared and they can't leave town and not explain all of this to him. They're going to run in the morning, Mom will get her way like she always does, and Henry can't stop them from taking him away from this place.
He doesn't trust either of them anymore, not when Mayor Mills is hiding things too and this house doesn't feel like home when there are things here that are impossible. When he's still adrift and no one is pulling him back to shore with anything that connects here. There are no answers and for the first time, he understands where Mom is coming from when she wants to run.
Maybe that's genetic, in the end, for all his fury at her for falling into old patterns again. Maybe he's just a runner like her when he's so distinctly unsettled by a world that isn't working the way it should.
Except it isn't Storybrooke he wants to run from, it's lies and deceptions and danger he doesn't even know well enough to avoid. He wants to…he wants to get away from all of them, and he has no idea who there is in the entire universe he can count on. Not Mom. Not Mayor Mills or anyone in this town.
No. There's one person out there who he can count on, someone with a car who's told him time after time that he's still there for Henry if Henry just gives him a call. He dials the number with trembling fingers. "Hey."
Walsh picks up immediately. "Henry. Is everything okay?"
"N-no. No, it isn't." His voice catches on the first word and he flushes, annoyed with himself. "Listen, I'm in Storybrooke. Maine. Can you come get me?"
Walsh doesn't ask any questions, and Henry's grateful for it in that moment. (He doesn't even think to be suspicious until much later, when they're in the car and driving deeper into town, when a redheaded woman seizes him and calls herself Auntie Zelena. And by then they're all screwed.) "I'm about an hour away from Maine," he says after a brief pause. "I should be there at about nine."
"There's a bus depot near the road in." Henry recalls it from the drive in, late at night on his way to a strange town that feels homey from the start. "I'll meet you there."
He lies in the bed and it's more comfortable than any he's ever been in, more familiar than even his bed at home, and he trembles and doesn't understand and trembles some more in the dark. Mom looks in on him once and he pretends to be asleep; she speaks in low tones to Mayor Mills and they agree to go downstairs and "do some training." He doesn't follow them, for once.
And at eight forty-five, he slings his backpack over his shoulder and climbs out the window and down the tree beside it.