A/N: Italics read as a flashback in this chapter.

Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon A Time or any of the characters or snippets of scenes borrowed from the series contained within. Just borrowing, and I hope you all enjoy.


Chapter 9

Henry

The night August left the two girls behind, he didn't get far. He only wound up one town over, drunk off his ass in a crappy motel room. "Dear Pinocchio, if you spend all your life running from the past, you are doomed to make the same mistakes," a voice said to August from nowhere, startling him half to death.

He was sitting on his motel bed in a green, fuzzy towel when the bathroom door to his bedroom swung open, and out walked a familiar figure to the writer in a three piece, light gray suit. The man's long beard was combed in neat tracks down the front of his suit, and the top of his bald head shined in the dim light of the TV, making the Apprentice look as wise as his many years as he stood before a dumbstruck August.

"How shameful," the bearded old man tsked. "Surely you must know by now that the only way to help yourself is to help Emma Swan. You have to help her break the curse, whether or not you are ashamed of yourself is of no consequence. Need I remind you, that all you have to do to return to your former, fleshy self is to remain brave, truthful, and unselfish as the Blue Fairy bade you do to retain your true form."

August hung his head in shame, unable to admit that it wasn't in his nature to be unselfish anymore. Selfish was pretty much the epitome of what August had been his whole life in this world, looking out for himself first and always. No one else was going to, and August had discovered that sad fact as a child in this harsh world without magic he'd found himself in.

Even though he was sick, his leg was turning into wood, and he desperately needed magic, August stubbornly wasn't ready to turn over a new leaf in life and let go of his old ways. He was drowning his sorrows with a bottle of vodka, and the Apprentice made the poisonous liquid disappear without a trace with an impatient swish of his hand that caused August to scowl.

"You're of no use to anyone in this state," the Apprentice said darkly, not wishing for things to be deterred or derailed off course because of August's inability to pull himself together. He was just going to have to assist the poor slob. "Clean yourself up, and be sure to deliver that book of yours to Emma's son, Henry," he said matter-of-fact, and August's head shot up in disbelief.

"Emma?! Has a kid?!" His blue eyes were wide and astonished. "Since when?" he demanded to know. "You ought to know when," the Apprentice said with a judgmental look in his eye. "You're the one that landed her in that prison, where she had him," he explained, and if August felt like he couldn't hate himself more, he was wrong. August hung his head. He felt like he'd been punched.

He told himself he had no way of knowing when he had Baelfire make that call that their savior and princess could possibly be pregnant, but it didn't make him feel any better. Poor Emma, August thought. She has a ten year old kid she had to give up because of me, he guiltily reflected. The Apprentice had never bothered to tell him about the child before in their time together over seas, preferring always to let things come to light at precisely the right time, and not a moment before they were essential details.

"Yes, and this boy is the key to Emma breaking that curse, and she must break the curse," the powerful magician said. "But in order to break the curse, first she must believe. I'm afraid you're in no shape to help her in that department, so we will just have to leave that very important task to her son. He is the one with the real power to make her believe," he explained, and waved his hand, and August was suddenly dressed decent.

"Come with me," the Apprentice commanded and August stood, unstable on his feet. The elder man rolled his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with a pained sigh. He raked his hand down his face, and looked around the small motel room. He spotted the item he was needing; the story book of fairy tales was on August's bedside table. The writer had stolen an opportunity to snatch it back when they were all packing for their trip. The magician levitated it from across the room into August's clumsy hands.

The Apprentice made a magical doorway appear, and he gestured for August to walk though. When they emerged on the other side of the door, it was dark outside and the dim light of a orange street lamp illuminated them. They were in Storybrooke. "Leave it just there, for the boy to find," the gray haired magician urged, indicating a lone bus stop bench. This time, when August leaned down to put the book under the bench, the Apprentice produced a tin, brown box from thin air and August dropped the book into the box and latched the lid shut to protect it from the elements until the morning.

"What now?" he asked, his words slightly slurred. "Now, we're going to work on you," the magician said, and in the next moment, the two had vanished in a puff of air.

* ~ * ~ * ~ ONCE * UPON * A * TIME * ~ * ~ * ~ *

It was unfortunate circumstances that lead Henry Mills to go searching for his birth mother.

Henry had been inexplicably unhappy for as long as he could remember. The sameness of each passing day mystified and baffled him. His mother never really seemed to be all there, distracted, sad, and alone. Henry may have been young, but he was intuitive and he wasn't blind to the fact that the townspeople feared his mother.

His mother had no friends to speak of (neither did he), and she worked tirelessly as the mayor of their small town. Despite her unpopularity, she was almost always kept busy at work for one function or another and often times didn't return home until late. On his therapy nights, however, she unfailingly always made time to take him to dinner before his session and escort him to see Dr. Hopper herself.

However, most nights of the week until his mother got off work, Henry was left to fend for himself. Henry grew up a latch key kid, coming home alone at the end of a school day to an empty house more often than not. Henry was a smart kid and did his own homework and learned how to microwave all the basic essentials his mother left well stocked in their kitchen. He flipped through comic books and watched TV to pass the time.

The mayor didn't particularly worry about Henry's safety because she trusted him not to go gallivanting about after school, mainly because she knew first hand that the boy didn't have a social life to speak of. None of his classmates ever invited him to play at their house after school, and Henry never asked to have any of them over. All his life, he had been treated differently than the rest of the children because he was the feared mayor's son. No one slighted Henry, lest it get back to his mother.

Besides feeling lonely all the time and receiving the sharp end of his mother's tongue more often then he liked, the tipping point came for Henry one day when he off handedly mentioned an accident he had in Ms. Blanchard's class at dinner. Regina flew off the handle and went down to his school the next morning to demand his favorite teacher's termination. Ms. Blanchard ended up suspended without pay for a whole month, and Henry visibly drooped in the sweet, young teacher's absence.

Ms. Blanchard was one of the only teachers that encouraged the other kids to include him and treat him normal. The kids excluded him because he acted like an egg head and they thought he thought he was better than them because he lived in the mayor's mansion. If only Henry could share with them how miserable it made him to live in that big, lonely house with no one to care for him.

Henry didn't trust his mother after that and was convinced that she didn't really love him. That all ceased to matter one day though shortly after the school term started and the monotony of his usual routine was smashed to pieces forever for Henry. Fall was upon the small town, and orange and red leaves littered the street around the bus stop when Henry walked up one morning.

He noticed immediately under the bench that there was a brown rectangular box, and looked around to see if someone was closeby, perhaps someone had forgotten it. There was no one else at the bus stop though, so Henry got down on his knees and opened the box up.

Inside, he discovered a mysterious volume of fairy tale stories and his life changed for the better. The more he read, the more he was startled to recognize how the illustrations in the book resembled some of the people that he lived with in town. Ruby from the diner looked exactly like the Red Riding Hood of the stories.

The more he lugged the book around town with him obsessively reading it, the more he started to see parallels and connect the dots. He was able to start piecing things together and began filling his therapist Dr. Hopper in, whom he had always liked and now knew why, seeing as he was Jiminy cricket, Pinocchio's conscience.

When Henry turned to the last few pages of the book, he stared unblinkingly down at the pages before him. He had received this book around the same time the two new strangers came to town. The last pages of the book revealed to him that a woman named Emma, Snow White and Prince Charming's long lost daughter, was destined to break the Evil Queen's curse in this world. Henry became a true believer in the book then. It was too much of a coincidence. Henry could remember meeting the woman and her friend, Lily, for the first time.

* ~ * ~ * ~ ONCE * UPON * A * TIME * ~ * ~ * ~ *

While he didn't get into any shenanigans after school normally, Henry did sometimes stop by the local ice cream shoppe on his way home. He stepped into the shoppe one day only to hear the two women laughing, sitting at a table together. The brunette Lily had an ice cream sundae before her and Emma sat with a huge waffle cone of pink, strawberry ice cream in hand. She was rushing to lick it before it melted down the side and made her fingers sticky.

"Hey," Henry said, boldly coming over to introduce himself to the new strangers in town. Henry was after all a very curious and friendly kid, if given the chance. "You must be Ms. Swan and Ms. Page," he said. "It depends on who's asking," the spunky blonde said to him. "Where's your mom, kid? You shouldn't be alone," she chastised. Lily gave a little chuckle. "Please, call us Lily and Emma, you'll make us feel old otherwise," she said with her nose wrinkled in distaste. Lily was not the best with children, had never desired any and didn't appreciate how needy little ones could be. She liked other people's kids just fine, just so long as she could give them back without a moment's hesitation.

"Didn't your mom teach you not to talk to strangers?" Lily asked of the child. "Well, my name's Henry, so I guess we're not strangers anymore," he said, beaming as he introduced himself to the pair. He clutched his peanut butter cup ice cream cone in hand and turned to leave. "No really, kid, where's your mom?" Emma asked with concern, looking out the front window of the shoppe for any sign of a parent. She found none.

"She's at work," Henry replied glumly, peering out the window with Emma as if looking would somehow magically get his mother to appear, like he wished she would to walk home with him. Instead, Emma looked down at him with worried, big green eyes and decided her conscience wouldn't let her rest unless she escorted the poor kid home. "Alright kid, let's get you home," she said with a put upon sigh.

"I just live right up the road. I'll be okay," the boy said, and Emma pursed her lips in indecision. Maybe he would be okay. He wasn't her kid, after all. It wasn't her responsibility to make sure he made it home alright. "Okay, but get home quick, kid. Your mom could be worried if she got home and you weren't there," she explained hurriedly to him, walking him to the front door of the shoppe. The little boy shrugged his shoulders, unphased, and simply said, "I'm not her real son, you know. I'm adopted. She's not gonna miss me."

* ~ * ~ * ~ ONCE * UPON * A * TIME * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Henry had figured out through his reading that the Evil Queen didn't have a son, so he couldn't be her real son. But then, if she wasn't his mother, who was? It was almost Halloween and the class was busy decorating for the open house that weekend. Ms. Blanchard left the classroom to go supervise some task in the hallway, and Henry seized his opportunity and "borrowed" his teacher's credit card. He was determined to track down the identity of his missing mother and nothing was going to stop him. He rushed home that evening and found the website he'd been searching for, and before long he had a name.

He was shocked and excited when he found out the name was Emma Swan. The blonde haired stranger in town. She's here, and she doesn't know that I'm her son! Henry was more than happy to bring that fact to her attention, and soon.