A/N: Based on whose perspective it is, the names may possibly change. Snow will be Snow, for example, but if it is Emma's perspective, she may think of her as Mary Margaret, for example. With the exception of Emma and Henry doing it, I really hate when the characters on the show refer to other people using their curse identities and I try to avoid that, but it may come up every once in a while as part of characterization. I hope it's not confusing.

"He's perfect!" Tears streamed down Regina's face as she held the baby. The depth of a baby's piercing blue eyes rivals even the blue of the ocean, she thought, holding out her hand with her fingers spread. His little hand pressed against hers. Perfection.

"Do you have a name picked out?"

The Social Services man...Spite? No, Slight. How appropriate for a bureaucrat. He'd lingered far longer than she'd wanted him to, standing there grinning.

"Yes. Henry."

"Henry Mills," he repeated in a slimy tone. Raising an eyebrow, Regina held Henry closer to her. "So...mayor."

"Yes." What was it about the people from this land? So devoted to their small talk. It was as if they were all afraid to ever learn anything about anyone.

"No plans on moving then, in the near future?"

"Is that a standard procedure question?"

"Actually, yes. We check up on new parents for the first few weeks, especially with a baby. Didn't the man I spoke to on the phone...Mr. Gold, mention that?"

"Mr. Gold and I aren't what you would consider chummy," she said, half-turning towards the house, kicking a few autumn leaves off of the walkway, hoping he'd take a hint. "No, no plans to leave and I have a nurse coming, so if that will be all..."

"Well, Miss Mills-"

"Mayor Mills."

"Of course. My apologies. The boy's fingerprints? New clerk back at the home office. Would forget her own head if it wasn't attached to her."

Regina gaped at Mr. Slight. Car seat between them, they stood on her walkway with the wind blowing more and more with him taking out his fingerprint kit like a kid in those junior detective things. Sneering, she thought of asking him if he'd remembered his magnifying glass and decoder ring, but Henry's gurgling stopped her. It didn't take as long as she'd expected for him to fingerprint him.

"Could I have a copy of that?" she asked.

"Sure, you can. Hey, Storybrooke, Maine is what you'd consider a...safe place?"

"We discussed all this after Mr. Gold recommended your state to me. I doubt we would have come this far if you were still doubting this would be a good home for him."

"Just double checking." He winked and with two fingers, gave her a half-salute before departing.

Regina stood in the galley, lifting her hands at the empty barrels and cupboards, her eyes closed in concentration. Conjuring every image of what a well-stocked kitchen would look like, canned fruit materialized on a shelf in the pantry, each can enchanted to replace itself after use. Burners appeared at an open counter space. Cans of vegetables, bottles of spices, an oven, a freezer—each item able to replace itself once taken out for however long they needed. It made her grimace at first, a queen demoted to short order cook, but after twenty-eight years of clipping recipes out of magazines and marveling at how the chefs on the television whipped up what they did, she had learned that food could be the quickest way to bring one's morale up or down, and they would need morale.

At night they would be docking at another island, this one full of huts and what looked like temple ruins. Surely someone there would have seen Henry or heard something. She would go, come hell or high water.

Opening one of the coolers, she opened a can of pizza dough and began rolling it out on a baking sheet. Henry used to love making pizza with her. She'd made it their Friday evening activity. Early on, she'd realized that being the mayor of a town she had complete control over could be as easy or as demanding as she wanted it to be, and since it was her curse and her town, she worked to keep it at the level she wanted. Friday evenings, she cleared her schedule and would go into the kitchen with Henry and roll out dough. They'd done it together even back when he went through his "no sauce" phase. She would fry up sausage while he spread shredded cheese and, once he was a little older, ripe red tomato slices and juicy strips of bell peppers. Within nine minutes, dinner.

If there was any consolation to be found, she thought, it was knowing that Greg and Tamara and whoever required they take Henry would treat him well. He was a hostage, a commodity, and the only positive thing about that was that they would keep him alive as long as they needed him to be. If he struggled or mouthed off, and she was certain he would, they might hurt him, but not enough to damage him.

She would know. She'd dangled countless people's lives in front of others, some days even forgetting she had so-and-so's heart or so-and-so languishing in a cell.

See, this is why everyone needs a hot piece of pizza, she told herself. She could take, had taken, but she could nurture, too.

Seahorses looked different here, Emma thought, alone in an alcove of the ship, head in her arms. Any other scenario, any at all, and she would have packed a camera. More bulbous than ones she'd seen at aquariums, their snouts resembled bottle-nosed dolphins more than any horse. They must have been marine mammals here. They played in a small group the way dolphins played, bobbing up and over, their tiny tails wiggling underneath them when they flipped out of the water and back in again. If only Henry's book contained an illustration of the sights here.

Blinking back tears...she was not going to cry in broad daylight with everyone around...she sat back down and plopped her hands into her lap, trying to think up what could best occupy her time until dropping anchor, when the corner of her eye caught Hook approaching.

"Seahorses," he said, pointing out at them. "They breathe the air and the sea."

"Thanks for the wildlife trivia." She paused, her arms bracing the seat. "They're not just one more thing that attacks people around here, right?"

"Those?" One let out a high squeak and threw itself back under the water in response. Well played, seahorse, she thought. He stood with his back against the ship, staring off into space. She'd seen him sulk before, the long interludes on the beanstalk when she refused to talk to him, but that wasn't what this was. She stared back out, hoping the seahorses were still playing, when she heard it. At first, she thought it was the wind carrying out an echo. Ghosts of songs stretching out over the sea seemed about right for this place, but no. He was singing to himself, mumbled and a bit slurred, but singing. Reluctantly, she found herself listening more carefully than she'd wanted to make out the words.

"Most chivalrous fish of the ocean/to ladies forbearing and mild/though his record be dark/is the man-eating shark/who will eat neither woman nor child."

So, she thought, when not flirting or vowing revenge, Captain Hook sings dark-humored kid songs. Scintillating.

"I can readily cite you an instance/where a lovely young lady of Breem/who was tender and sweet/and delicious to eat/fell into the bay with a scream."

"Kid song?" she interrupted, stopping it before it went the old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly route.

"Sea shanty...not much of a difference sometimes, though," he said with a laugh. Smiling down at the deck, he lifted his head back up and hummed it to the water.

At first glance, the cruelest part of her mind observed, he didn't belong. The rest of them, for all their long and drawn-out differences and disagreements...there's an understatement...were a family, all united by Henry. Hook had said nothing more of his reasons since Storybrooke and, for fear that she would walk in on him and Gold fighting to the death one day, she'd kept that book closed, not interested in finding pages she found too complicated or dark for what needed done.

"Is this about more than Henry? You volunteering to come?" That naughty...understatement again...grin conveyed pure amusement. Raising that one eyebrow a mile high, he swaggered closer to her.

"Sing me a song and maybe I'll tell you."

"I don't sing in front of people."

"No, you wouldn't." He looked her up and down. "Well, if you'd like another verse, 'she struggled and flounced in the water/and signaled in vain for her bar...'"

"It's not going to be very loud," she sighed. At least it was passing the time.

"Good. So then I'll have to listen closely." In one swift movement, he was sitting in the alcove next to her with rapt attention.

Had Emma been completely oblivious to his past treacheries, she might have fallen into this trap. The man had eyes the exact color of forget-me-nots, icy or warm depending on the situation, framed by the long thick lashes some women tortured themselves trying to get. So if she kept her eyes on the ocean, she could handle it.

"Long afloat on shipless oceans/I did all my best to smile," she sang in hushed tones, praying she didn't lose control of her voice. It didn't have to be perfect, she reminded herself, and Tim Buckley sang it better than she ever could anyway. "Till your singing eyes and fingers/drew me loving to your isle/and you sang/'sail to me'/'sail to me'/'let me enfold you...'" Any more and her voice would quiver, eyes glued to the horizon or not. "'Here I am'/here I am'/waiting to hold you.'" Clearing her throat, she shrugged. "A guy sings it, so..."

"A siren?" Mild surprise on his face, the corner of her squinted eye told her. With something, damn, something sincere.

"We have songs about the sea, too."

"I hadn't heard that one before," he said, with enough sincerity that she did turn her head in his direction, his smile almost contagious. "You sail around as long as I have and a new song becomes rarer and rarer, even if you cross lands." There was a beat, long enough of one for her to tuck her lips into her mouth, shielding them from his gaze. "A land without magic. Is living in it all the time as boring as it sounds?"

"Answer the question first," she warned, the same warning tone she would give Henry when he tried to puppy-dog-eye her into giving in.

"I came because I knew Baelfire," he said, quick and casual but with a pained look on his face. "Briefly, but well enough to want to do right by his child."

That, that...it was one of those conversations she'd had with just about everyone in the last year that left her wanting to just reel back and forth in a full tub with the door locked behind her with "it's too much" as her mantra. For someone who felt she'd never had much of a childhood, why was she suddenly always the youngest person around?

"Do you need to lower your head between your legs and breathe?" Yep, add slapping Hook to the day's agenda before they reached the next island. Finally something close to alarm spread over his face. "Emma, do something to put some color back in your face."

"I won't ask how..." When she felt young, she felt like a pawn, and when she felt like a pawn, she felt like she was sitting helpless in a hospital bed having the only good thing in her life ripped out of her arms, willingly, and taken away to someone else. She did not lower her head between her legs, but she did balance it in her hands with her elbows on her knees for the count of three, eyes closed.

"So...what?" She brought her face up, confident to look at his without faltering. "You help rescue Henry and that's it, no next step?"

"Rescue Henry and go home. See? There was another step." He grinned again at her.

"And just where is home for you now? If..." Shut up, Emma, she warned herself. You're not here to fix anyone. "If you're just trading one obsession for another, and this one's not going to take however long you've been around or whatever, because we will find him, you'll still have nothing left."

She'd won for a second, watching him be taken aback and his lashes flutter at an array of answers that probably danced in front of him.

"You're going to question the motivation of the person who got you this far?" was his cool question. "That's rather stupid of you since he's your son."

"Which is why I've put off asking and making sure you're not going to flay Gold before we even have a way to get back-"

"Nice to know you believe I could do it." He winked.

"I know what desperate, dying-inside people are capable of," she said.

"Well," he breathed. "Perhaps I'm hoping all our lives will be destroyed in the process, that we'll fail and the very last sight I'll see is that of Rumpelstiltskin's eyes going still, that all this is in vain and is just a more elaborate, more romantic way to die." His eyes on her lips again. Their bodies closer than she ever would have felt comfortable with. She steadied herself.

"I don't believe that."

"Then don't ask me those questions," he purred at her, sliding further away from her on the seat. He didn't leave, which, no, she stopped herself again. Don't analyze. Don't fix. He wants a wall there, then it's best that there is. She knew how unsettling having someone try to scale one of her walls could be. Their eyes burned holes into the water out before them.

"She doesn't die," Hook added. "The shark rescues her and sees her safely to a dinghy the skipper lowered himself into. He does eat the skipper, however." He gave her a warmer smile than she'd expected, but, even with him farther away than he had been only a minute ago, that come-hither look he gave her at times caused her a self-loathing shiver. He turned and tromped up the steps behind them to the helm.

"Try it," Regina said, bringing a plate up to Hook at the helm. Everyone else stood on the deck, silently chewing. She'd read up on other cultures when she'd first started cooking for herself. Hearty conversation and slurping were meant as compliments to the chef in some places; others, quiet, methodical dining. Besides, she thought, it could be a comfort of home for most of them.

"What the bloody hell is it?"

"It's pizza. It's not poisoned."

"Is it melting?"

He hadn't stayed at her house long. Mother hadn't even been able to stay at the house long, but she really should have immersed them in the Land Without Magic more. Still, it was always nice to know something another didn't.

"The cheese on it is melted, yes. Come on, now. You can eat it with one hand."

"Amusing."

"Hook, I plan on stepping onto this island and look as long as it takes. You have to go with me and whoever else goes since you have been here before. You can do it on an empty stomach, or have at least one piece to tie you over."

He reached for it with his good hand, hooked one still on the wheel. Smirking, Regina placed the slice in his hand and chuckled inside watching him observe how the others ate it before taking a bite.

He devoured it.

"Good to know you're pulling your weight around here," he uttered, licking his lips. "Be a dear now and prepare for docking."

"Right then." Leaning over the rail, she cringed realizing that of the four of them, she preferred Emma accompanying them. "Emma, we'll be there soon." A little wave answered her as Emma finished her piece.

"Well, wait." Gods, a little late to play the overprotective dad, aren't we, Charming? "The three of you are going? Emma, you can help guard the ship."

"If there's even the slightest chance Henry's on this island, I'm going."

"And there's no way I'm not going," Regina added, smirking. Really? They'd plotted out this arrangement during the last search, three search, three mind the ship in case the mermaids followed them.

"I could go, too," Snow said, hoisting a quiver of arrows over her shoulder.

"And leave only the grandpas to fend for themselves? Gold would run out of magic so fast it would make your head spin." This was rich, she thought. "And I doubt your husband would leave you and Gold alone to defend the ship by yourselves."

"Relax, guys," Emma said. "All it'll be is we ask a few questions, get a few leads, and then hightail it out of here." Making her way further down the deck nearer to the bow, she crossed her arms and cocked her head at the tiny island. "Something tells me Henry won't be on this one."

Quite the discouraging day when she and Emma Swan felt the same way about anything, Regina thought.

A/N: Yes, I got the idea for the seahorses' design from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. They're adorable! "The Chivalrous Shark" is a real song and not as old as one may think, but it was exactly the kind of song I wanted to use and I do not own it or Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren," which is hauntingly gorgeous and worth a listen.