"Ms. Mills?"
"Yes, who is this?" she demands.
"This is Sandra, at Storybrooke Secondary—"
She wants to vomit. "Is it Henry? What happened?"
Whoever this Sandra is sighs, clears her throat. "There's been an altercation. The principal is requesting a meeting with his mother and that he be picked up."
His mother. Regina closes her eyes, tries to pay attention. "What do you mean, altercation? Is he—"
"The Sheriff requested that I tell you she's on her way to pick you up. Good day, Ms. Mills."
The dull click and silence that follows is enough to send her into a rage, and she almost throws her phone against the wall but stops mid-motion, feels something in her shoulder grinding against the socket at the unnatural halt. The cruiser is outside and honking, and Regina bites her tongue, heads towards the front door and grabs her coat.
As soon as she closes the passenger door, Emma steps on the gas and rockets them down the street. "I'm sorry," she starts with, and Regina looks up from fumbling with the seatbelt, confused. "I left my cell at the apartment and these fuckers, they're fucking idiots, apparently all this happened two hours ago but I was stuck on that webinar with Portland PD and they assumed that having you down as primary emergency contact was a mistake, some shit about not updating records, so they left me messages for two hours and then finally called the station again. I chewed that Sandra bitch the fuck out for not calling you when—"
Regina reaches out and puts a hand over Emma's, tries not to pay attention to how her fingers fit so well between Emma's raised knuckles. "You don't owe me any apologies. Do you know what happened?"
Emma's grip on the steering wheel tightens momentarily, then loosens, and she spreads her fingers out to take Regina's between them properly. "A fight," she sighs, and takes the left turn quickly, letting the steering wheel spin through her stationary right hand. "Actual fist fight."
"Is he all right?"
"They said they had the nurse look at him."
"Two hours ago."
"Two hours ago," Emma repeats grimly, and guns it through a yellow light.
They don't speak until they've parked in the fire zone in front of the school and gotten out of the car; Regina tugs on the sleeve of Emma's uniform jacket, makes her turn to look her in the eye. "We'll deal with their… ineptitude about contact procedures later, okay? Right now isn't the time."
Emma nods, doesn't even try to act indignant. "Yeah. I know."
Inside, Henry's sitting on a plastic chair outside of the principal's office with a smear of dried blood on his shirt, and Regina can't help the sound that comes out of her mouth, the way she kneels in front of him with trembling hands and inspects every inch of him that she can.
"It's not mine," he tells her softly, and when she looks up at his face, he's looking over at Emma and his mouth is making that funny shape, that I'm not smiling shape. "I'm fine."
"Henry," she hisses sternly, and pinches his knee. "This is not—"
"First blood?" Emma interrupts softly, and when Henry nods she offers him a fist bump. "Atta boy."
Regina closes her eyes, rests her forehead on her son's knee for a moment. "Tell us what happened."
He opens his mouth to explain but the door to the office swings open. "Emma." Snow clears her throat loudly. "Regina. I didn't expect to see you."
She can feel Henry tense up and sees how Emma shifts her body just slightly, squaring off against her mother. "You asked to see his mother," Emma replies. "I brought her."
With a squeeze to Henry's hand—blood crusted on the heels of his palms—Regina gets to her feet, watches Snow White fold her lips and cross her arms in clear displeasure. "Come in, then," Snow finally says, and steps aside to let both of them into the office.
Emma hesitates, gives Henry one last glance and a touch to the shoulder before looking back at Regina and nodding. Only then does she step into the office, and for a moment Regina is frozen, just wondering, until finally Henry nudges her and she follows Emma in.
Snow's office is, of course, a pastel horror, with whimsical white wood furniture and more of the "rescued" decor that Mary Margaret had been so fond of. Emma doesn't sit when Snow gestures to the mismatched visitors' armchairs, but does pull one slightly back from the desk. Regina takes the cue, sits confidently with her back against the uncushioned wood. She can feel Emma's hands behind her shoulder blades, focuses on the knobs of the three rings Emma wears and how they press into her flesh, uses that feeling to disperse the tension in her jaw and around her eyes. "Well, Snow?" she starts, and suppresses a smile when Snow White flinches.
It's the little triumphs that matter, because Snow always seems to have the winning hand in the end. "Henry punched John Dorman. That's how the fight started. John is now at home, nursing a nosebleed."
Very carefully, Regina pushes one shoulder back to press into Emma's hand as a warning. "Henry doesn't start fights," Emma says stonily, and Regina eases up the pressure.
"He did today."
"According to who?"
"Several student witnesses and Henry himself."
Their son's selective use of honesty is beginning to become an obstacle. "Why have you called us in, Snow White? We are all familiar with the school code and how no one approved the zero-tolerance policy in the last referendum, so any disciplinary action Henry faces is entirely at your discretion." She feels Emma's fingers press forward, blunted nails catching on her silk shirt.
"It is," Snow agrees. "I've called you in because we are all also familiar with Henry's… special situation."
She can't help it, then; her jaw snaps shut with a click and she's broadcasting anger loud and clear. Emma steps in, still pressing her fingers into Regina's back. "What does that mean, Mom? It was two years ago."
For a moment, Snow looks to have aged a decade; there is a peculiar weariness around her eyes, fatigue in the way her shoulders droop. "Look, you understand that I have to toe the line between being his principal and his grandmother." Regina zeroes in on the way Snow twists her pen around in her hands, chews at her lip between sentences. "The Dormans want him expelled, and I want him to start up counseling again."
"He does not want therapy," Regina says, clear and clipped, and the weight of Emma's whole hand is suddenly on her right shoulder, squeezing lightly.
"There have been… complaints, all afternoon, of Henry displaying unusual aggression towards other students over the past few weeks," Snow informs them.
"Only this afternoon?" Emma asks, and her thumb draws circles above the peak of Regina's shoulder blade. "Odd that they'd only come forward now."
Snow looks between Regina's shoulder and Emma's face, purses her lips. "Apparently, no one really thought anything of it until today." She shifts her weight, takes a step back to lean against the filing cabinets behind her desk. "I think it's clear that he does need anger management lessons. And you know that if you don't voluntarily take him, I can mandate sessions."
Regina's anger is white-hot and so quick in its flare-up that she barely registers that Emma is speaking. "Do you know what made him throw the punch? What provoked him?"
"John said he and a few other boys were practicing jokes about magic for the talent show next week. I verified it; they are signed up to do a comedy act."
"And what did Henry say?" Regina asks pointedly.
Snow looks at her for a long, quiet moment. "Nothing," she answers. "Henry gave no details about anything that happened beyond admitting that he threw the first punch. I can't say I'm surprised, because Henry barely talks anymore."
"He talks plenty," Emma mumbles distractedly, and Regina can't help the single huff of laughter she releases. "So you're gonna go with whatever this Dorman kid said, and you're—what, you're gonna expel your grandson?"
Snow frowns, and it looks so much like Henry's own scowl that Regina has to look away. "No. Like I said, I have to toe the line between being a principal and being his grandmother." There's a long pause, and Regina can't bring herself to look. "In school suspension for two weeks, including mandatory morning sessions with Dr. Hopper."
"He doesn't want to talk to Archie, Mom," Emma says, and her voice trembles, and Regina reaches across her own body and covers Emma's hand with hers. "We tried and tried and he won't do it. You know this. You know we took him in, we sat with him, we waited outside, we brought him in for whole mornings—"
"Dr. Hopper will be instructed to pursue anger management counseling, not active therapy," Snow interrupts, and the clinical bureaucratic tone to her words makes the plaintive way Emma was speaking hurt even more. "Henry's been through a lot, and he's still just a little boy. We have to do whatever we can—"
"Because forcing your will on an unsuspecting youth has worked out so well in the past," Regina hisses, and rises from the chair.
"Regina—"
"Enough, Snow. You know full well that Henry would never—he wouldn't even defend himself. You have to know that he's been coming home hurt, attacked, and yet you're standing there talking about helping him by—"
"I have to go with the facts I have as principal," Snow says softly, and Regina scoffs.
"And you always have all the facts, don't you?"
Snow's chin wobbles for a moment, but her eyes are hard and her mouth sets quickly. "Perhaps not, but at least I do the right thing with what I've got."
"Mom," Emma warns, and steps forward, edges Regina towards the door with a hand to her elbow. "We're done here."
"You have nothing to say about Henry's punishment?"
Emma sighs heavily, pushes her free hand through her hair. "Do whatever you want. We're stuck doing damage control no matter what you choose."
Outside the office, Henry is flexing his fingers, watching how the skin over his knuckles stretches and discolors with the movement. "So, Archie?" he asks, and Emma reaches out past Regina's body, ruffles his hair.
Regina just looks at the bruises on his jaw, and how the not-quite-healed cut on his eyebrow is leaking red onto the bandage. "Molida for dinner?" she asks.
Emma says yes before Henry has even processed the question, and when Regina rolls her eyes, Henry laughs and laughs.
Anger management apparently consists of deep breathing exercises and mindless mantras of "I am not my rage." Henry tells both of them about the first two days of ISS with eye-rolls punctuating almost every sentence. "I don't even have rage, Mom," he complains, and plops another serving of rice onto his plate.
"Jeez, kid, save some for the working stiffs," Emma grumbles, and takes the spoon from him.
"Save some for the growing boy, Sheriff," Regina reminds her pointedly, but it is Henry's third helping, and Emma said something about missing lunch. "I know you don't, Henry."
"Well—wait. I mean, do you? Have… rage?" Emma asks, spooning red beans over both her and Henry's plates.
He scoffs, but then thinks about it. "I—I dunno. I don't think so?"
"So every time you fall," and Emma emphasizes it with an ugly sneer, "you don't get mad? You don't want to just… beat them down?"
This is so far off-script that Regina feels her throat tighten with that old, old panic, and she kicks Emma square in the ankle under the table. Emma doesn't react, though, except to inhale sharply.
Henry glances over at Regina like he knows what's going on, but chews quietly for a few minutes. "I'm mad before… before I fall," he says. "I get pissed off—sorry, Mom—I get mad before anything actually happens."
Emma's put her fork down and her left hand is twitching in the space between their place settings. Regina keeps her eyes on Emma's index finger, on the thin silver and black band that never shines. "Why?" Regina asks softly, looks up just in time to meet Emma's eyes.
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Henry fidgeting, working out the words to tell the truth without telling the truth. "People say things," he mumbles.
They wait, and wait, looking at each other and not at their boy, their precious baby boy who needs them so much—they wait but that's all he gives them, and there's something in Emma's eyes that says don't push.
"Don't eat too much," Regina says softly, and finally looks at Henry again, manages to make a smile reach her eyes. "You have another lesson tonight."
"Arms up," Emma snaps, and Henry lifts his tired arms into his basic guard position. "You couldn't run, so now you fight. What's behind you?"
"Solid."
"Left side?"
"Solid."
"Right side?"
"Escape."
"Ahead?"
"Mark."
Emma circles him slowly, eyes scanning for right and wrong. She steps in behind him quickly, touches the middle of his back. "Too tense at the butt."
"Maaa," Henry squirms away from her, nose crinkled in embarrassment.
"Fine, strain a glute, come to PT with me every three days for the rest of your teenage life."
They might disagree about what Henry should learn and know about when, but Regina can't ever disagree with the way Emma lays out the stakes. Henry sighs, grumbles, resumes his position, and somehow meets Emma's approval.
She circles around to face him, smiles. "What's your weakness?"
"Size," he says, and sidesteps Emma's forward kick.
"Strength?"
"Surprise, speed."
"Hit," Emma commands, and holds up one hand with a punching pad strapped to it at roughly four inches above Henry's eye line. He pulls back his arm and thrusts forward with an open hand, striking the midline of the pad with the heel of his palm, then returning to his basic position. "Again," Emma orders, and again, and again.
This is how the lessons go: words and drills and words and drills until a drill turns into a spar until Henry is sweating and panting and Emma is winded and holding the small of her back and they are laughing and still trying to score hits and it doesn't matter that they have matching scars on their eyebrows or that Emma is teaching him to fight so he can stop coming home with black eyes because this is all they have now—
They move on to block-and-hit combos, and Regina watches carefully for Emma's small nod, rises from her chair in the corner and moves like she means to exit the room, then slips on a set of pads and circles around to Henry's right. He's focused on Emma until a blur of blue comes at him, and he shifts his stance and blocks all in one fluid motion, quick enough to bring a smile of approval to Emma's face. "Good," she says, almost shouts, and Regina winks at Henry, comes in with her left and holds up her right. He blocks and hits in sequence with his right, keeps his left up against Emma, and for a moment there's something fierce and bright in his eyes, as foreign as his smile when they first found him on the island.
And then he is Henry again, and dodging her swing and ducking under her raised hand to tackle her back into a pile of cushions, tickling her before she can even begin to get the pads off her hands, and Emma rushes in and she thinks she's about to get help except Emma pins her arms, still with the red pads on her hands, and it's unfair but Henry is laughing, Emma is laughing, and isn't laughter the point?
Didn't they give up everything for laughter?
Emma stays after Henry goes to bed, sprawls out on the cushions still littered across the living room floor with her tank top rucked up to bare her stomach and a towel draped over her shoulders. "We should drink," she mumbles when Regina re-enters the room. "We should drink a lot."
"Should we?" Regina says carefully, and takes Emma's hand, curls her rough fingers around the glass of water she brought in.
They look at each other in silence for a moment before Emma looks away, huffs, takes a few sips of water. "Maybe we should have stuck with the therapy thing."
"We tried for almost a year, Emma. He wouldn't—"
"I know that," Emma says, and it's half a howl, half a whimper. "I know that."
Sometimes she forgets that this is so very brand new for Emma—that feeling so much for someone so dependent is a completely foreign sensation. "You were hard on him today," Regina murmurs, and sinks to her knees next to Emma, sits back on her heels. "What are you thinking?"
It's not accusatory, even though Emma's first reaction is to tense and start to sit up. The muscles of her upper abdomen flex into stark relief, then soften and recede as she lays back again. "He gets mad at whatever they're saying, and that makes him want to fight, and then he gets beat, and he doesn't get mad at that part." Regina waits and wishes she didn't, because Emma chokes on a sob and tries to bury it in the water glass but fails miserably. "He doesn't get mad that he's getting hit, Regina. He doesn't get mad that he's getting hit."
Slowly, slowly, she takes the glass from Emma's hand, sets it to the side and reaches an arm around Emma's shoulders. She hates how easily Emma curls into her side, how easily Emma shifts to muffle her cries in Regina's lap, how easily her fingers take to undoing the loose ponytail Emma kept her hair in for Henry's lessons. She won't shush her, won't tell her it's okay, but holding her—after everything, holding her is nothing.
"We did it all wrong," Emma finally whispers, fingers curling against the inseam of Regina's yoga pants. "We did it all wrong. He's broken and we can't fix him because we broke everything that could help." A particularly brutal thought hits her; her whole face clenches and reddens in a burst of pain that makes Regina's lungs tighten and burn. "He wasn't supposed to be like us," she whispers, and Regina closes her eyes, stills her hand at Emma's temple.
"Emma," she says softly, and moves her fingertips to tuck a few strands of hair behind Emma's ear. "Have hope."
Emma opens her eyes, looks up at Regina in—shock? After everything, she'd thought they were done surprising each other. "But—there's no magic," Emma rasps, and her grip on Regina's thigh tightens painfully.
"Silly girl," Regina smiles. "There wasn't for you, either."
"He's not supposed to be like me."
"He has two parents who love him past all reason. He has two grandparents who spoil him rotten. No matter what he goes through now, he'll never be like you, Emma. He'll never be like me."
Somehow, looking at Emma's red-rimmed eyes and seeing the glittering dust of the diamond spilling out across the water of the Mermaid Lagoon, remembering how they'd shivered together with their baby boy in the abandoned captain's cabin—it all makes her believe in beginning again. "He has true love without end," she adds, runs the pad of her ring finger along the soft and creasing skin at the corner of Emma's eye to stop the last traces of tears, "and true love is the most powerful magic of all."
Later, she'll think it should have been her, should have started with her, but when Emma reaches up to cup her cheek, draws her down to press their lips together—softly, just a whisper of a kiss—she surrenders to it with a small sweet sigh and a smile.