A/N: Inspired by a convo with hooks-and-hero-ness on tumblr. I tried to play with the narrative style a bit in each scene, not sure if it works or if I even do Regina's selflessness justice...
They had all spent the morning training on the northern pasture, the livestock long gone in the desolation her curse had brought upon the land. Sword fighting, hand-to-hand combat, even archery—the sounds of the preparation for war buzzed around her like the industrious drone of hornets in their nest. She tried to concentrate on the book she'd brought along for the day, leaning as comfortably as one could against a tree. But as had been the case every day for the last two weeks, it really was pointless. She couldn't focus. The pirate should have been back by now. Had something gone wrong? Damn, she wished—for the countless time—she could just magic the three of them back.
She shook her head and sighed, knowing it was better to put it out of her mind than to fret for hours on end. She pored over the page again in a renewed attempt to memorize it and spent the next few minutes absorbed in incantations before the sound of shouts fractured her attention. It was drifting across the field from the direction of where the dwarves sat around the fire, sharpening their pickaxes.
"They're back! They're back!"
Was it true? She pushed away from the tree for a closer look at where Leroy was pointing to a break in the forest. She couldn't see—move you idiots! They were all too far away from her. But then the sunlight glinted bright off a certain tumble of golden hair. The princess and her pirate had made it! They were engulfed by open arms and cheers; but for her, she only had eyes for the dark-headed boy tagging along with them, the boy with the smile as wide as the sky itself.
"Henry!" she gasped, not noticing the sudden lightness of her hands and the squelch of a spell book landing page down in the mud. "Henry!" she yelled, abandoning decorum and cursing this realm's full skirts and corsets as she broke into a heedless run. His head craned over the dwarves at the sound of his name, and the searching look—for her!—so evident on his face moved her legs with a speed only possible because magic was literally pumping unchecked throughout her body.
"Mom!" he cried out as his eyes found her. He began pushing through the crowd.
Fifty paces, she thought. So far, yet so much closer than she ever thought she'd be ever again.
Forty paces. This was happening. He was here.
Thirty now—why hadn't she sprouted wings by already? She felt capable of anything.
Twenty paces and a brief, abrupt panic when his sprinting form blurred and began to shift. A sob hitched in her throat, preparing to shatter and slice at anyone who dared take him away from her now—she would shred them with her bare hands…until the wetness stung on her face and she laughed—oh, tears.
Ten. His name was the pounding of her heart, the air burning her lungs.
And with a force she was certain rocked the earth off its axis and recentered it around them, they collided in a mash of mother and son, graceful brocade and gangly jersey. She crooned his name over and over as she rocked him, despite the fact that her neck pinched slightly from the stretch it now was to tuck him into her. And when she breathed him in—all sunshine and summer wind—the last year spent longing for him, for his voice and silly jokes and his dirty socks laying on the stairs, meant nothing, was nothing, in light of this. In light of the certainty she now had that she was as much his as he was hers.
Looking up at the approaching princess, all she could say was, "Thank you, Emma."
Despite the late hour, the revelry and laughter carried on as exuberantly as it had begun hours ago. She'd asked the dwarves to haul out the best wine from her neglected cellar, and the rest of them scrounged up enough ingredients for Granny to turn into a proper feast. They were now all circled around the campfire, everyone's smiles eclipsing the flames themselves (though she fought to keep her gaze from flitting to one magnetic grin in particular).
What's next? Kumbaya?
The thought held no derision, merely wry amusement. Evil queen title aside, even she could appreciate a beautiful night under the stars and the short-lived respite they were all allowing themselves. The magic within her still felt like a current of warmth tingling in her fingertips and toes, especially sitting with her arm around her son who in turn was happy being nestled between her and the princess.
She marked the night's progress as the cacophony turned to impassioned tales, and from tales to hushed tête-à-têtes, until finally people were leaving to return to their castle beds. The crickets trilled their nocturne and the boy finally fell asleep to their lullaby.
"Regina?"
Looking up from her son's peaceful face now resting in her lap, her hand paused mid-stroke over his hair, she remarked that she and the princess were the only ones still awake.
Interesting. "Yes?"
The other woman sucked in a breath to speak and then…said nothing. This was interesting.
"Cat got your tongue, Swan?" she said, slightly unnerved that she was joking in the first place, let alone with the princess of the family she detested. Had detested, she corrected. The hatred had long faded away, but decades of barriers and essentially living without a heart do take their toll. Whatever was left in its place, well, she was still trying to figure out. Right now, though, the gleam in the other woman's eyes as they studied her, then her son, then her again, had her holding her breath, too.
"I…" the princess began, "I just wanted to…thank you."
No, that was definitely not what she'd expected. "I'm probably the last person you should thank," she said, masking her surprise with a snort and her own wave at the surrounding forest. "The state of affairs here isn't exactly a fairytale, but your boyfriend probably forgot to mention a few things in his excitement over your reacquaintance."
That last effort at deflecting earned her an eye roll (but surprisingly, no objection), and the princess plowed on undeterred. "That's not what I meant." She paused, staring down at the boy and taking a breath like she was gulping down courage. "I meant for Henry."
"Again, you're wrong," she countered, now wary. Where was this going? "You're the one who brought him back here. You're the one who took care of him all by yourself these past months, which might as well have been for the rest of your lives. I had no part in that except make you think—"
"And that's exactly my point!" the princess huffed with a frustrated jerk of her hands. "When I first got my memories back—my real memories—everything was all jumbled together, what had actually happened and what hadn't. Like on one hand, me taking him to get ice cream at Granny's, and us in our apartment in New York, decorating the Christmas tree—that stuff I knew was real. But on the other hand, the smile on his face when he rode his bike the first time without training wheels. Or when he tried to stay up all night to catch Santa coming down the chimney and I ate all the cookies before he woke up. Or that he would ask me to read Goodnight, Moon twenty times in a row. Those things—" her voice cracked on its heightened pitch, thick with emotion, and she took a breath to calm herself, "those things weren't me. They were you." She paused again. "I don't know how you did it, how you gave me your memories with Henry. But I know why you did. Because it's the same choice I would have made if I thought I'd never see him again. I'd want him to have someone who would love him as much as I did."
At the moment the last word faded, when silence swooped in over the exposed and defenseless newness left in its place, Regina, mayor of Storybrooke, the Evil Queen herself, found that it had rifled through her brain like a greedy thief and had robbed her of all words, thoughts.
All but three.
"You're welcome, Emma."