The cruiser is already in the lot when she and Henry pull up, Mulan leaning against the hood with the report binder in hand while Emma paces on the sidewalk. Regina grabs her purse and Henry's backpack from the backseat, ignoring his half-hearted protest, and waits until he's on the sidewalk and stabilized before handing his bag to him. Of course, he starts walking before it's on properly, and she has to bite her tongue to stop herself from pulling him up short by his jacket and demanding that he situate himself before moving again.
The backpack is on somewhat properly by the time they stop in front of Emma, who looks between the two of them with that particular awkward smile. "Hey," she says, and almost immediately yawns.
"Busy night?" Henry asks, tugging on the straps of his backpack a little more.
Regina scoffs, and stifles a yawn herself while Emma sticks her tongue out but admits, if petulantly, "No. Which is usually worse."
Way worse, because Emma spent the whole night texting her every anxiety about today. As if Regina didn't have her own infinite list of worries. "Yes, I can see how the adrenaline rush of rescuing cats from trees would keep you energized for a whole night."
"Actually, studies show that fulfilling a rescue role releases a flood of dopamine and oxytocin into the system, both of which make you feel more alert and capable," Mulan says mildly, without looking up, and flips another page in the binder.
She feels Henry's eyes on her and glances back at him with uncertainty; they both look at Emma, whose frown is deeper than ever. "Bullshit," Emma finally says.
Mulan's placid expression doesn't change.
"I think?" Emma adds.
It takes a second, but then the corners of Mulan's mouth turn up into a smile, and she inclines her head slightly. "Good."
Henry laughs, bright and bold, and Regina sees her own surge of affection reflected in Emma's smile. "How many times did you get her last week?" he asks.
"Twice, but, to be fair, she was coming off the night shift those times, too."
"Superpower, my butt," he teases, and Emma reaches for him, ruffles his hair until both of their noses are scrunched up with the same mix of adoration and exasperation.
"Whatever, Rambo," she retorts, and Regina clears her throat pointedly, only to be just as pointedly ignored. "So, you ready to do this?"
Henry's smile fades considerably, and she's got her hands on her car keys instantly, but then he sets his shoulders, nods. "Yeah, Ma."
"Got your books?"
"Yeah."
"Cell and charger?"
"Yeah."
"Numbers memorized just in case?"
"Yeah, Ma."
He sounds like an ordinary teenager and just the thought, just the thought of him as just like everyone else, finally—Regina swallows her tears and sees Emma trying to do the same. "Don't do anything heroic, okay?" Emma whispers, and pulls him into a tight hug, presses her mouth to his temple again and again. "Just—be Henry and be safe, okay?"
"Yeah, Ma," he whispers, eyes pinched shut.
He can't be an ordinary teenager—he's still their little boy, they have to wrap him up and keep him safe and loved—
Emma clears her throat, releases Henry and roughly straightens his scarf, nods a little gruffly before stepping back. "And if you get a chance—Operation Cufflinks, yeah?"
Henry grins, and rolls his eyes. "You know she's gonna check on me at least twice. So yes. Operation Cufflinks."
Regina crosses her arms and clears her throat, and Emma smirks, taps her badge. "Sorry, ma'am, it's need to know."
Quirking an eyebrow, she looks at Henry; he caves in two seconds. "We're trying to convince Grams that nobody wants a fancy dinner for Gramps' birthday, not even Gramps."
"Well, well, Miss Swan," Regina drawls, and Henry practically beams at her. "Planning an operation against your mother without me? I don't know whether to admire your commitment to betrayal or mock your inevitable failure."
"Jesus, kid, what kind of secret operative are you," Emma groans.
"The kind who knows where dinner comes from," he retorts, and Mulan starts coughing into the collar of her jacket to cover her up laughter. Emma scowls at her and sticks her tongue out at Henry and he just laughs, warm and light, and moves to hug Regina.
She thinks the hug will be quick and brusque and teenagered and so when he holds on after five seconds, when she can feel that he's taking long, slow, drawn-out breaths, her smile fades and her grip on his shoulders tightens. Neither of them speak; when Henry finally takes a step back, she can't quite let go, holds his face in her hands and manages a wan smile.
He covers her hands with his and just looks at her, with fear and faith shining from his lovely hazel eyes, and nods a little, tries to smile. "I better go."
"Yeah," she whispers, and takes a deep breath, nods back at him and lets him go. "Careful on the steps."
"'Kay." He looks at her for a half-beat longer, then steps back. "See you later, moms. Bye, Mulan."
"Mr. Mills," Mulan says, and nods at him.
It's only when he's made it up the front walk and greeted a friend—Grace, she thinks—that Regina can feel herself exhale, and senses Emma's hand on her back. "Are you okay?" she whispers.
Emma clears her throat, blatantly stalling. "Yeah. Of course. You?"
She nods, keeps her eyes on the front door of the school. "If your mother checks on him too many times—"
"I wouldn't worry," Mulan interrupts. Startled, Regina turns to face her and catches the surprise on Emma's face, as well. But Mulan just taps the binder she's still holding, face placid. "Quarterly safety inspection scheduled for today. SFD will need her to walk them through every alarm and exit protocol." And then she grins, secretive and sly, and adds, "I'll be monitoring the inspection. Intermittently, of course."
Regina wants to laugh, feels it bubbling up into her throat and covers her mouth to keep it in.
"So you'll just be… wandering the halls of the high school. All day. By pure coincidence," Emma says flatly.
"Correct."
Regina does laugh, then, almost hysterically, and Mulan's smile gets just the slightest bit wider. "How—" and she cuts herself off, shakes her head. "How can we thank you? For this? For everything?"
"Get your girlfriend to stop buying glazed donuts for the department," Mulan says immediately. "No one ever eats them. That's a whole donut, just wasted. It's criminal."
The spark in her warm, dark eyes is so subtle that Regina almost misses it. "You're personally ensuring the safety of our son… in exchange for better donuts."
When Mulan nods with complete seriousness, Emma gapes at her, and finally she bursts out laughing, the sound, rich and warm, floating through the cold morning air.
Archie's office is warm, just shy of stifling. Henry keeps tugging at the v-neck of his sweater, but it's hard to tell if it's from discomfort or distress and she won't interrupt him to find out. Not now, not when he's drawing words out of wherever he had them locked away for two years.
"It didn't feel like when I took the dagger," he says, and hesitates. "The dagger—taking it, using it, it felt… fast. Like sprinting in the summer. Fast and hot and a rush like—like—like that time the car spun out. That kind of rush."
Slowly, Archie shifts his gaze from Henry to Regina, nods at her gently. "But not all fear?" she asks softly.
Henry shakes his head. "Mostly, but not all of it."
She wants to reach out and hold his hand. Rub his back. Just touch him, hold him to her so he remembers the most important things.
Archie tentatively clears his throat, ducks his head slightly to catch Henry's eye. "You remember what we went over, about adrenaline?"
"Yeah. It—it sounds like that, I think. Like the rest of it was adrenaline."
His shoulders hunch up slightly and there's so much space between his words. "You think," Regina repeats, and when Henry's eyes flicker towards her but he doesn't turn, she knows she caught it. "But you doubt."
"Yeah," he whispers.
She waits, waits, waits until she knows her voice will be gentle, inquisitive, forgiving. "Why?"
Two whole minutes pass while Henry searches or struggles or self-censors. She wants, so badly, to hold his hand. "Because of the gun." He takes more time and neither Regina nor Archie move.
Henry does. Henry fidgets, and itches, and trembles, and finally takes three slow breaths. "Because of the gun. Because that feeling… it didn't… it didn't go away." He looks up at her, eyes so sorry. "You saw. When you saw me. Before the tree and the dagger, you—you saw it."
She had. She knows that now, knows that she'd known it then, too. But the important thing had been seeing him alive and whole, alive and whole and real. What did it matter if he'd looked—what did it matter if he'd smiled?
"When I picked—no. When I shot Greg. When I picked it up and shot Tamara, it—it felt heavy and awful and it hurt. It hurt to shoot, at first. Less on the second. But then I shot Greg and it felt… I felt warm. I felt clean. I felt clean and warm and so, so strong, and I—I felt clean.
"Everything here, all of the—everything felt so messy, I just—who I was supposed to love and who I did love and who was family and who wasn't and why I had some people and not others and what I'd really done by bringing Emma here and forcing her to break the curse and who I was—it was so messy, Mom. It was so messy and crowded and then when I shot him, all of it just… fell away. Everything just left. I felt so clean, and new, and warm. Warm like—like when you stand in a patch of sunlight in the winter."
"And strong." She thinks of the first heart she took, the softness in those sweet wide eyes, the sorrow. How she'd expected the heart to be messy, bloody, stringy. How it had been instead: neat and compact, coming free with the slightest pop. How she'd been fascinated and horrified and frightened and exultant—
"And strong," Henry echoes.
The first heart she took because—because—was different. Graham's heart was heavy, unbalanced, but still bloodless and neat. But there had been that look in his eyes, not of betrayal or sorrow but of horror and pain and that had been hers. She'd made that. She'd made that and triumphed in its creation.
Archie flips a page on his notepad and nods slowly. "When you think about that feeling now, that clean and warm and strong feeling, what do you feel?"
After a long moment in which there's no sound but Henry's uneven breathing, he whispers, "Shame." Archie immediately lifts the two fingers still holding his pen to warn Regina to wait. Wait. "I spent two years screaming about good and evil and right and wrong and the first minute—I picked up a gun and shot two people and I felt clean."
She wants, wants so desperately, to hold him. Assure him that it didn't matter, it didn't matter, she loves him all the same—but that's not the point at all. His question has never been is he loved.
"Regina?" Archie asks, and her gaze jerks to him, to the shine of his pen in the firelight. "Did you—you want to say something?"
"It felt right," she says softly, and keeps her eyes on Henry's hand planted on the seat cushion between them, fingers tense and spread. "Not the first time, but every time after. It felt right, and I felt strong, and—not clean, exactly, but above. Above. It all just fell away and there I was, above it."
His hand tenses further, fingers twisting in the striped upholstery, and she can't not, slides her own hand across the couch and wraps her fingers around his pinky, holds on tight. "But that—it wasn't—I wasn't. Not enough to be real. Not there. I didn't know until—until I was here, and you were here, and you were smiling and trying to say Mama and meaning me. Until—until you were here and so eager to be loved, Henry. That's when—when it became real. Being clean, and above it."
His eyes, his lovely hazel eyes, are pinched shut, but he shifts his hand until they are palm to palm—palm to palm, as if his hand had never been small enough to fit entirely in her own, as if his hand had never been so tiny as to be dwarfed by her pinky—and he can hold on through strangled sobs.
Across the street, Emma and David are in the faintly lit window of the animal shelter, and from the way Emma is fidgeting and moving her hands around her body, Regina's willing to bet there's a money-gnawing hamster crawling all over her.
Clearing his throat, Henry moves to cross the street but comes up short when she doesn't move with him, when their hands start to unlink. "Mom?" he asks, and his eyes are red and his nose is raw but he is here and walking and holding her hand.
"Go on ahead, sweetheart," she murmurs, and lets go of his hand. "I need to make a quick stop."
He frowns, but acquiesces. "Should we order for you?"
"Yes. Something warm, preferably sweet, and possibly artery-damaging." His grin is just like Emma's—delighted by ordinary rebellions—and despite the knot of tears lingering in her throat, despite the way the last hour has drained her, she feels… capable. "I won't be long."
She waits until he's fully across the street and holding the door to the shelter open for David, waits until Emma is outside and looking across the street at her with curiosity. Subtly, Emma points to herself, then across to Regina, and tilts her head just enough to be asking a question.
Sweet, sweet Emma. Regina shakes her head, nods towards Granny's, and watches Emma accept it, put her arm around Henry's shoulders and let David take the lead. Then, weaving her way around the slow-melting snow, she crosses over to the Marine Garage. The main garage bay is open and that Tercel from the other day is up on the lift. The tiny sales room is empty, but the light in the adjoining office is on.
When Michael sees her he freezes, then stands up abruptly, sending his chair skittering into the wall behind him. "Your Majesty—"
"No," she says quietly.
He hesitates, then tries again. "Ms. Mills. What—what can I do for you?"
She doesn't move further into the office, doesn't sit. "The Dormans are moving to New Hampshire at the end of the month. The Barretts are trying to use lacrosse to weasel Teddy into Foxcroft."
Smiling in a way that isn't a smile at all, Michael sinks back into his chair. "And no one knows what the Tillmans are doing."
Regina stays silent.
"I don't know. I—I don't have that kind of flexibility. The garage is all we have." He spreads his hands across his desk blotter, shakes his head. "Nick, when he talks—all he talks about is leaving. Like we can just leave this all behind. Forget he ever…"
He doesn't finish and she doesn't make him. "Would you? If you could."
"Let him forget?" He won't look up and she can't help but stare. "No. And yes. And—I don't know. I—I don't know." The tension in his arms collapses, and the sudden movement of his head—the defeated slump he sinks into—exposes everything about him. Everything she thought she knew, everything she knows. "Do you want us to leave?"
She can hardly blame him for asking; it would make sense, her sudden arrival in his empty garage, her refusal to give an inch. "It's not up to me," she answers softly.
Michael chuckles darkly, the bags under his eyes deepening. "But if it were?"
If it were… She shakes her head sadly. Even disappointment is beyond her, now. "After everything—all of this—you want me to tell you if you're paying enough."
It takes him a moment. A long, long moment, and when she sees it settle, sees it click—
He sinks into himself again, as if he'd never even risen, and she closes the office door behind her.
—