Note: Some small nudges to the Rules of Magic that we are all just going to pretend are canon, because goddamnit, someone should be thinking of these things.
"No, sweetheart," she whispers. "You didn't."
"I did," he chokes out, emphatic and angry. "I stabbed Pan, I did that."
Emma's voice, low and gentle, comes closer, and Regina feels the weight of her arms settle around them, her halo of salt and pine and warmth. "Yeah, that's true," she says, and raises Henry's face with a finger under his chin, smiles at him gently. "But that fuck had you kidnapped and imprisoned and kind of wanted to eat your soul, or something—"
"You're not listening!" The force of his yell makes him wince, clutch briefly at his still-wrapped ribs, and Regina loosens her hold on him and goes to check but Emma's hand on her arm stops her, holds her back. "You're not—I need you to listen," Henry whispers.
She looks at Emma, feels her vision darkening and blurring. "We're listening, baby. We're here."
He cries. Openly and achingly and it feels like her ribs are cracking every time he sucks in a breath and she can't—she can't make it stop. "I took the dagger and I made him tell me how to make it all stop. And then I did it, exactly like he said. Pan, at the tree, with the Dark One's dagger. I pinned his shadow back to his body and it made it all stop. I took all the magic out of Neverland. I put Gramps in that chair and I hurt you, Ma, I did that."
It takes her so long to make sense of it, to thread the pieces together, to remember the concentric rings of bodies and how everything and everyone surrounded that tree. To remember how, when she and Emma finally made it to the top of the ridge—Emma, gritting her teeth through the pain—there'd been two small boy bodies lying on the ground. Henry, unconscious. Pan, dead, blank-bladed dagger through the heart. And further back: Rumpelstiltskin, a mere man again, and withering with every breath; Hook, twisted and decaying like all the Lost Boys, three hundred years catching up at once.
"We don't blame you, Henry," Emma says, and the way she is still gentle with her voice and her hand on Henry's shoulder—Regina is grateful, so grateful. "You couldn't have known—"
Henry shakes his head again, and looks at her like if he thinks it hard enough, she'll understand it. And, oh, God, she thinks she does, but—but she knows the rules. There are rules.
"Henry," she says, so softly. "Listen to me very carefully, all right?" And she waits until he meets her eyes again, until she can see him again. "There's no power in the dagger unless there's darkness in the bearer. That's the rule. You couldn't control the Dark One unless there was already darkness in you. So whatever you think you made him do—that's how he worked, Henry. He made you think it was you when in reality—"
But Henry's shaking his head, eyes still locked with hers, and she starts to truly understand. "I know," he whispers. "I knew. I made him tell me everything."
His whole jaw is trembling and he's not a little boy, not anymore, not ever again. How long has he been so old? How long did he think he could carry this alone?
She should make him say it himself, but she doesn't know how to be cruel. "Greg was you," she says, and when Emma—Emma who'd found Greg's body, Emma who'd whispered don't look don't look you don't want to see it don't look—doesn't flinch, she knows they are all in this together.
Henry, Henry, her baby boy Henry—Henry takes a deep breath and nods and there are still tears streaming down his face. "They both were. I—I shot them both. Tamara and Greg." And then he closes his eyes, and his thin tiny body—too tall, now, getting lanky—trembles. "I shot them both."
When they'd found Tamara—it came down to Regina, in the end. She'd expected no less, had been ready for murder from the moment she'd looked around an empty mine, but Tamara… Tamara had required something else from her, something she'd only learned she was capable of through Henry and his sweet, slanted smile.
From the way Henry says, "Tamara—Tamara went down first," she knows he thinks the shot was fatal. "They didn't realize I had the gun. Greg saw me first and he—he ducked. He tried to duck and I shot her."
Emma had said don't look for Greg but Regina was the only one who could look at Tamara. The only one who went to her side and touched her kindly. She'd quieted her cries of please, please, it hurts, please with a soft touch to her forehead, with a small pulse of magic to ease the pain. She'd looked at the wounds—two bullets to the gut, straight through—and even though it was far too late for magic or medicine or even miracles, she'd smiled at Tamara, who'd earned her wrath and nothing else, and told her it would be okay, that she'd be fine, just close her eyes. Rest now.
She closes her eyes and focuses on the weight of Henry's head on her shoulder, on the tension in his fingers clutching at the material of her sweater, on the brush of Emma's fingertips against her shoulder from where she's clutching the back of Henry's neck. Emma, who'd seen Greg's body riddled by thirteen bullets, who'd dug him a grave as best she could, who hasn't and wouldn't recoil from Henry. "And then him," Emma whispers, and her voice is striated and so sad, so sad.
"And then him," Henry repeats, and she can feel his whole small body turning in on himself, turning against himself. "Until I knew—until I knew I could run and he wouldn't come after me." He scoffs and the choked loathing when he speaks again—all she can do is hold him. "Not that it—Pan got me anyway. But I thought—I thought I could make it. I thought I could last until you found me."
Emma flinches, and Regina quickly shifts her hand to cover Emma's, to press into her fingers, into the very edge of Henry's hair, because they'd found him alive and whole and that had to count, that had to count. "You did make it," she whispers. "You did."
He's still her boy, still her little boy, because she knows everything in his heart when he burrows further into her arms. "I killed them."
Emma looks at her, then, and they could do it her way and tell him that he did what he had to do to stay alive, that it was about survival. They could.
"Yes," Regina whispers. "You did."
And Henry is quiet.
It's long past midnight when Henry gives in to exhaustion. Regina doesn't leave him, just shifts him slightly to relieve the pressure on her biceps, and when Emma draws the woolen blankets up over both of them, she reaches for her hand, squeezes tightly.
Emma holds on, and stares at her until finally the question rises out of her. "Is that—was that the right thing to say?"
"I have no idea," she whispers.
Emma folds. Bends until her forehead is pressed against the back of Regina's hand with silent tears falling hot against her fingertips. "If we'd kept the dust—you could do it, couldn't you? Make him forget."
But she doesn't mean it. Regina knows she doesn't mean it. "If he were like us," she says softly, and turns her hand over, touches her thumb to the fresh tear on Emma's cheek, "he wouldn't feel like this."
"I don't want him to feel like this!"
Regina waits until she's sure Henry is still asleep; he stirs slightly but his breathing evens out again. "And the alternative? Where there's enough pain everywhere else to make this pain negligible? You wouldn't wish that on him, Emma. Never."
"I don't want him to feel any pain," Emma says helplessly.
"I know." This time, when Regina touches her cheek, Emma turns into the contact, holds her hand there. "I know."
She doesn't know what time it is when she wakes; the room is that hourless, pre-dawn gray. There's just enough light to see Emma, sitting in the chair on Henry's left, head bent over her clasped hands, although it takes her longer to realize that Emma's speaking, murmuring against his splinted forearm.
"I'm sorry. We should've been faster and worked harder and gotten to you sooner and I'm sorry, Henry, I'm so so sorry. I wish—I'd do anything for you to never have had to—I would've done it for you. I would've done it for you, I swear I would—"
Her voice breaks, and the room is quiet.
In the morning, Regina's arm is numb and no one talks much while Nurse Fisher brings in breakfast for all three of them. But Emma—sweet, sweet Emma—steals Henry's fruit cup while he's struggling to cut his pancakes with a spork and there's light in his eyes when he steals it back, a smile just starting for a moment. Just a moment, but it's there.
She thinks of life before, when the light in his eyes never flickered and his smiles came as steadily as sunrise, when his darkest secrets were weightless. Of life now, when he watches joy and pain and she can see it soaking into his skin.
Of life now, when he tries to hold the weight of three worlds by himself just to show her kindness.
She reaches over and spears a piece of pineapple from his cup, kisses his cheek before feeding it to Emma with a laugh.
It isn't until Emma's hand covers hers, when they are sitting outside while Henry has his daily physical therapy appointment, that she can get real words out. "He's going to ask you to call Sam and Mulan," she says quietly, and Emma grips her hand tighter.
"Like hell."
"And you're going to do it."
"Like hell."
Carefully, carefully, she squeezes back, presses her thumb over Emma's black and silver ring. "You will."
Emma starts to speak, and then pauses, studies her for a moment. The wind's whipped color into her cheeks and chin, and when she looks like this—bright with cold, fired up, open—it makes Regina wonder how they took so long to get here. Here to the space between their palms. Here to side by side in the winter wind. Here to our family.
"That's a hell of a gamble, Regina."
"It's not a gamble." She knows better than to take offense to the word.
"Still."
She doesn't say anything more, because of course Emma is afraid, and distrustful. These years with a badge won't ever balance with seventeen years with nothing, ten years with felon. She doesn't say anything more, just lets them sit with it, with the wind whistling down through the courtyard.
Finally, Emma sighs and slouches lower on the bench, leans her head back and closes her eyes. "It was right there, the whole time. You know that, right? If we'd just looked. We would've known."
Regina frowns, turns slightly, further into the wind. "What are you talking about?"
"Greg's wounds weren't clustered. He had thirteen holes in him, all over his body."
She has no idea what that means.
"When people shoot to get away, they shoot in bursts. Clusters of shots, all aimed identically, fired off in between running away. Greg's… only three were together." Emma won't look at her, won't open her eyes. "Three together, and ten paired off all over his body. Two in Tamara, thirteen in Greg. Fifteen bullets. That's the whole mag."
"What are you saying?" She whispers it because she doesn't want Emma to say it. Emma shouldn't say it. They don't need it to be said.
Emma doesn't say anything for a long time. "He watched you, when you were unconscious. Sponged off your burns. Fed you ice chips. Kept fussing with the blankets, trying to get you the best ones. Getting him to leave the apartment was—a fight. A fight."
She doesn't want to talk about that. She never wants to talk about that. It's been put away with all the other years of her life she doesn't talk about and she wants to keep it away.
"I thought it was Pan. I thought—that only Pan would—thirteen bullets, I thought it was Pan. But that was stupid, wasn't it? When he's ours like he is."
"What are you saying," Regina rasps out, and she thinks she's shaking.
But Emma's holding both of her hands now and finally looking at her and there, there, calm and clear and beautiful. There's Emma. "I'm saying that I would have done it for him and I would've done another clip, too. I'm saying that I don't want to call Sam and Mulan because I don't think he did anything wrong."
Gently, gently, she tugs her hands free of Emma's, tucks a few loose blonde strands behind her ears, cups her cheeks, kisses her once, twice. "It doesn't matter what we think," she whispers, and feels Emma give in. "He needs to try."
"What if—"
"Emma," she whispers, and Emma is quiet. "He needs to try."
Sameer, in another grotesque sweater, barely lets Henry finish his first sentence before he's closing his portfolio and reaching for his coat. Henry trails off helplessly and watches him and Mulan get to their feet with wide, helpless eyes. "But—Mr. Joseph—"
"It is the decision of this council," Sameer recites, toneless and bored, "that acts committed in other realms are not within the jurisdiction of Storybrooke and as such will not be investigated, pursued or prosecuted."
"But that was about before—"
"Nope. Believe it or not, all that revising and arguing and revising, not a single phrase about when those other realms were accessed came up. Not one. Crazy bureaucracy, never manages to do the job right."
Henry's hands twist in his lap, and he's biting his lip and looks so lost, so lost—Regina reaches out, but Mulan steps forward, crouches next to Henry's chair and looks him square in the eye. "It doesn't get lighter," she says, "but you get stronger." And then she smiles—kindly, brightly—and inclines her head slightly before getting to her feet again. "An honor as always, Mr. Mills."
Emma, leaning against the wall, turns away with her fist over her mouth. Regina finally feels her hand connect with Henry's shoulder, feels the tension and the way he's struggling to breathe calmly, holds on until his hand comes up to cover hers, until his body is still again.
On the way out of the room, Mulan tugs Emma aside, digs the dull golden star out of her inside coat pocket and hands it back to Emma with a gentle smile. "Bring donuts when you come back in. No glazed."
"Smartass," Emma grumbles, but she holds onto Mulan's fingers for an extra beat, and Regina can hear her trying to form a sentence.
Mulan cuts her off with a scoff, pulls her hand back slightly to form a fist, bumps Emma's knuckles and then looks up, checking to see if she did it right.
Emma laughs, and nods at her, and keeps smiling.
Sunset is so early—it can't be much past four—and Henry's still sitting by the window, staring out into the courtyard. His face looks so much sharper, now, even from a month ago, and she's sure that he managed to grow even while stuck in a hospital bed.
It takes her a moment to realize that he's looking at her, now, just blinking at her quietly. "What is it, sweetheart?"
He looks at her for a few beats longer, takes a deeper breath. "I think I want to call Archie, tomorrow."
She smiles for him. Always, always, for him. "All right. Tomorrow."
Note about Tamara:
The show did Tamara wrong. Her character as treated by the narrative… it was a travesty, what the narrative put on Tamara. Let's not even get into her canon death.
It's important to me that you all understand that her story needs attention and rewriting and that I did not do that here. It didn't occur to me until too late that to treat Tamara right in this story would require revising most of her screen time in season 2—something that would then basically require replanning this whole story. So, I did what I could for her within the confines of a story that already required that everyone in Neverland die, and tried to make sure that what mattered most about her, in the end, was her humanity. The bar set by canon is already pitifully low, so—yes, this is kinder to her than canon, but it's not good enough. I know that, and I need all of you to know that, too.
If I write something that involves her again, I will do better. And I'm sorry I couldn't do that here.