Got a new phone for Christmas! YES! Hahaha! I only wish that my family would stop having birthdays and/or walking through the door and demanding my presence in the room so I could have finished this sooner ;) enjoy it! And merry belated Christmas!

Having woken up alone, David was now walking down the stairs in search of Regina. He remembered her leaving to get the door but he had fallen back asleep when she had told him to. He thought perhaps he should be worried that she was currently missing but he wasn't. There was no air of danger or loss in the home, no hairs rising on the back of his neck, no unsettling churn to his stomach. Everything was fine and if she had left then she would have left a note or something of the sort and if she was home then he would find her at some point.

He thought to go and check the kitchen first but with no sound coming from that direction and the living room right next to him at the bottom of the stairs, he checked there first. He smiled when he caught glimpse of her form on the couch and that smile grew further with joy and adoration when he saw Henry sleeping soundly in her arms with his head on her chest.

"Good," he whispered to himself and then with one final look over the pair he turned and walked out of the room with the brightest smile. He stopped on his way to the kitchen when the phone rang and quickly picked it up and answered it before it woke anyone, "hello?"

"Is Henry there!? I woke up this morning and I can't find him anywhere and-!"

"He's here, Emma," her soothed and she took a breath to calm herself down, "I just found him now. He's sleeping with Regina on the couch."

"...I'm coming to get him."

"No you are not," he replied sternly and heard a tense and displeased sigh on the other end, "they are perfectly fine. A little boy doesn't come running back to his mother at two forty five in the morning for no reason, Emma. Give them time to talk it out," he finished softly and looked back in to the living room as he stood in the foyer and Emma remained silent.

"Fine."

David nodded at her sharp answer and opened his mouth to thank her but the line went dead. With a breath out his nose, David dropped the phone from his ear and ended the call as well.

...

"What happened, sweetheart?" Regina whispered slowly and softly as she combed her fingers through his hair while he remained in her arms with his head on her chest. He hadn't said much when he had arrived. Only cried and apologized profusely between pleas for her to stay with him as he refused to let go of her. So she reassured him, agreed to his pleas, and led him to the couch and sat with him in hopes that it would calm him down.

It had. He had fallen asleep there with his arms around her waist and his head on her chest and his body slumped against her own. She took it upon herself to reposition them so she laid on her back and he laid on his side between herself and the back of the couch. He had woken up before her though. She woke up to him gripping the grey fabric of her robe over her chest and moving his thumb back and forth over it. Clinging to her like he used to when he was just a small child.

"...was it all true?"

"Was what all true?"

"Those things you said in the video you made me...about why you adopted me and that you knew who I was the whole time?" He felt her fingers stop abruptly in his hair and he waited intently for her answer.

"Yes. Yes I knew who you were."

Henry frowned and felt his tears start to burn in his eyes once again at her gentle voice. He turned his head and pushed his face in to her chest and sniffed quietly, "and you still loved me and took care of me."

"Of course I did," she whispered and kissed the top of his head, "you are my son. I have always and will always be here for you. I love you."

"I didn't know what you did for me. I didn't know you risked your curse for me. I'm sorry I called you evil," he apologized against her chest and felt a tear roll down his cheek when her arms moved around his back and shoulders and squeezed him tight.

"It's not your fault, Henry," she whispered and turned her head so her face pushed in to his hair, "it's not your fault."

He only hugged her tighter around her waist and pushed his head deeper in to her chest, "I miss you so much."

"I miss you too," she nodded against him and left another kiss on his head.

"Are you still with David?" He asked with a frown and he felt her swallow nervously before she nodded a few times and answered him in a tight voice.

"Yes, sweetheart...I am."

Henry frowned a little more and slumped his shoulders but didn't loosen his tight grip around her. He remained silent and still.

...

Henry bounced down the stairs with a small smile, excited to be home and have one of his mother's grand breakfasts. He had managed to avoid seeing David so far that morning. Whether it was by chance, David's intuition, or his mother's request, he didn't know. But his little bubble of a world was still intact for the time being.

He moved in to the kitchen with a skip in his step only to stop dead in his tracks, a small startled gasp escaping his mouth as he did. He was expecting the kitchen to be empty for his mother and David were still upstairs and yet there was a woman in the kitchen. An older woman who looked just as startled to see him as he was to see her. "Who are you!?" He asked nervously, his voice a little unsteady. He hadn't see this woman before and anyone willing to sneak in to the house of his mother wasn't likely to have good intentions.

"Who are you!?" Cora parroted accusingly at the boy.

"Mooooom!" Henry called slowly over his shoulder without removing his eyes from the woman on the other side of the kitchen.

Cora dropped her shoulders in frustration and motioned past him with her hand, "why did you have to go and do that? Now she's going to come down here and lose her temper which means I am going to be working a whole lot harder to get her back!"

Henry furrowed his brow in confusion and his mother's hurried footsteps were already heard coming down the stairs but he called for her again, "mooooom!"

"Hellion," Cora muttered under her breath with a scowl just before Regina walked quickly in up behind the boy, her eyes meeting hers before dropping to her son.

"Did you touch him?" She all but snarled in Cora's direction.

"No I haven't gotten any closer to him than this," she motioned lazily between herself and the boy with her hand.

"If you touch my son I swear to god I will kill you!"

"I am not going to touch him, Regina! He is merely paranoid and doesn't know who I am! Would you like to tell him or shall I?"

"Yes because telling him who you are is going to make it all better," she nodded with her brow knit together, her tone dripping with fury and heavy sarcasm.

Cora crossed her jaw in irritation and folded her arms over her chest and then looked to the boy, "my name is Cora. I am Regina's mother."

"...oh..."

Cora's expression immediately dropped in to displeasure at his tone, like her name and status explained why Regina was so inexplicably defensive over him. She didn't miss the slight shift of his weight either as he leaned more toward Regina. "What did you tell him?" She hissed and Regina leaned forward fractionally with an irritated smile that showed her teeth as she spoke.

"I haven't told him a thing. Why would I want to repeat anything about you to him?"

"Well he knows something!"

"It doesn't take any spectacular intuition to know that you are a terrible mother, Cora!"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean!?"

"I am the product of your 'motherly love'," she spat and took an aggressive step forward, feeding Cora's rage, "the one and only Evil Queen. I didn't earn that title by being kind and loving. I earned it by following in my mother's footsteps because they were the only ones I knew!"

"You do not get to put all of the blame on me!"

"I am not putting it all on you! But you do deserve it!"

"How dare you!"

"How dare I!?"

"I did what I did to make certain that you had a good life! I taught you how to be strong! To take blows and pick yourself up when you fell!"

"I shouldn't have had to get back up from a fall caused by my own mother! You were supposed to be there to help me to my feet not knock me off of them! I banished you for a reason! I sent Hook after you for a reason! I want to be free of you!"

"You don't know what you want! You never have!"

"I have always known what I have wanted! I wanted your love! I wanted Daniel! I wanted my freedom! I wanted Snow White's heart in my hand! I wanted happiness! I wanted love! I have never wanted more than that and you have constantly been there in the shadows plucking your god damned strings to make certain that I never got any of it!"

"Okay!" David shouted and stepped quickly between the two angry and powerful sorceresses with his hands raised, "this is stopping right now before it explodes in to a full out battle of magic!" He looked back and forth between the two fuming women but they kept their eyes locked on one another, "hey!" He shouted again and Regina's dark eyes flicked over to him, her jaw still clenched with rage, "you are both done! Let it go!"

Regina quirked her head at him subtly with spite and then looked to Cora as he backed away, "get out of my kitchen."

"You don't get to talk to me like that!" She hissed and leaned forward, "you insolent child!"

"Get out of my kitchen, wretch!" She shouted furiously with magic burning at her fingertips as she stepped forward again so she was right in her space.

"That's it!" David yelled and yanked Cora away with a hand around her upper arm, "stay!" He demanded sternly of Regina with a hand pushing her shoulder when she tried to turn and follow Cora as he dragged her away.

"Let go of me!" She snarled and dug her heels in but he pulled her along bend him as though she wasn't even there.

When the front door slammed shut she was left in complete silence and she sunk to the floor with her hands in her hair and her back against the cupboard doors. With one leg stretched out straight in front of her and the other lifted and bent, she took a long deep breath to try and calm herself back down.

Henry walked up to her silently. It seemed that they had all forgotten his presence in the room. "So...you and your mom don't get along very well," he observed with a lighter tone that brought a small laugh out of his mother as she shook her head and opened her eyes to look up at him.

"No, Henry, we do not," she smiled a little and he offered her his hands for her to take and allow him to help pull her up. Her smile grew at the gesture and with one final deep breath she took his hands and he helped her back to her feet.

...

"Alright listen up, Cora," he swung the woman around in front of him and let go of her arm before she shot it back down to her side with a harsh scowl. "I don't trust you and I don't know what to believe when you say you want to win Regina back but for hell's sake you're only digging yourself a deeper hole!"

"She is infuriating! And so god damn headstrong! I don't know how you deal with her!"

"Yes, she is infuriatingly headstrong! And so are you which makes it absolutely impossible for you two to see eye to eye! One of you has to give in first and I am telling you now that it will not be Regina!" He shouted and Cora opened her mouth to retaliate but he lifted his finger for her to stop and he started talking instead. "I am only going to say this once and you are going to listen because I am the one who's won Regina's heart after all the hell we have put one another through," he watched her carefully, blue eyes moving back and forth between a familiar dark brown.

"She does not trust you. You fucked up her entire life for your own selfish reasons and she doesn't function properly because of it. She is constantly in defense mode and she will lose her temper and that is alright as long as you don't lose yours as well. You need to be patient with her and you need to let her lash out. She needs to know that you will stand by her when she is at her very worst because if you don't she won't even bother showing you her best. It's not worth it to her.

"So you will bow your head, you will bite your tongue, you will let go of your pride, you will give her the upper hand, and you will let it be her choice to let you back in. It will not happen any other way. If you want her you need to give her something in return and I promise you that simply standing by her and offering her a kind word will take you farther than you believe. She does not respond to demands or anger. She responds to a gentle hand and a tender mouth.

"She is a bright woman that has been traumatized by darkness and anger. Traumatized by you, traumatized by Rumplestiltskin, and traumatized by Leopold. So throughout the years she has built up a maze of walls around her so that no one can hurt her anymore. Your daughter is in pain, Cora, and you cannot seem to understand that. She is tired of being the puppet."

He shook his head at her, his jaw still tense with frustration at her and Regina's vicious behaviour toward each other. "She is so easy to please. You give her one genuine smile and she will feel her heart burst with joy, you laugh with her and she will hold it close to her heart for the rest of her life, you give her a hug at the right moment and she will never forget it. When she lets you in to her heart she will happily move mountains for you and she won't ask for anything in return other than the continuation of your love and loyalty."

He took half a step closer to her and lifted his hands a little, moving them up and down in short gestures as he spoke, "you just have to be patient. You have to get it through that thick skull of yours that she does not want you in her life. You need to prove to her that you are here to make amends and soothe her pain and that you are not accomplishing any of that right now. She is expecting you to fight back when she pushes you. She wants you to fight back because every time you do it proves that she is right and that you are not here to win her over. With every fight she is successful in instigating, her belief in the dishonesty of your claim to do better only grows.

"So like I said," he tilted his head ever so slightly and Cora's scowl remained in place but he knew she was hanging off his every word, "bow your head, bite your tongue, let go of your pride, give her the upper hand, and let it be her choice to take you back," he stared at her for a little longer and she merely scowled at him. He raised his eyebrows in a silent demand for her to agree to the terms he had set in place and she let out a huff of air from her nose and shifted her weight, irritated by the fact he was demanding things of her he imagined.

"You don't scare me. You've been at the top for much too long and it has gotten to your head. You will not cause me any harm because you know that Regina will never forgive you. You are just a person to me and I have no intentions of treating you otherwise. Take what I have said to heart and apply it to your interactions with your daughter. She will try harder to piss you off when she realizes her earlier attempts to do so have begun to fail. Just take it in stride and it will stop."

"I shouldn't have to take such-"

"She's angry at you," he cut her off and she crossed her jaw, "she has been her entire life. You have to allow her to let it out. She will exhaust you, there is no question but if you hold out to the end I promise you it will be worth it all and then some."

Cora shook her head and folded her arms over her chest as she chewed over his words. She didn't like it. She didn't like it one bit. But the proof was right in front of her...David was right in front of her. "Fine."

"Good," he nodded and held her gaze for a little bit longer before he stepped to the side and opened his arm in a gesture toward the house. He allowed Cora to pass and then fell in step behind her. When the door was opened the sound of quiet laughter was heard from inside the home and he could just feel the frustration flowing off the brunette in front of him.

...

"So," Henry started as he jumped up on to the island counter after finishing cleaning up breakfast, "why is your mum here?"

"Because she wants to reconcile."

"But you don't want to?"

"It's not that I don't want to it's just that...well I don't see it ever working out," she shrugged and hung the dish towel over the oven handle before turning to face him.

"But you don't know for certain it won't work."

"I am pretty close to certain," she stated simply and stood next to him with her back against the counter.

"But what if it did work?"

"Henry," she breathed out with a shake of her head but before she could continue he was heard again.

"Seriously though, why not? I've decided to fix us why won't you decide to fix you two?"

Regina exhaled slowly through her nose as she lifted herself slowly up on to the counter next to her son, his eyes focused on her the entire time, "that's different sweetheart. You and me are so much different than her and me. There hasn't ever been a time that I have gotten along well with Cora."

"But you want to," he argued and she looked down at her hands, "I know you do! And I haven't even seen you two together that long!"

"Henry, dear, this isn't another one of your operations. She and I do not work together and that is a fact."

"Well yeah I've noticed that too but that's only happening because you don't know how to work together."

"I don't want to get in to this, Henry," she snapped halfheartedly as she slipped down from the countertop, "the things she has put me through, the pain she has caused me, are not things that I am willing to forgive."

"But that's the flaw in your character, mum!" He stopped her hurriedly and she crossed her jaw and pursed her lips a little, "you can't forgive when you need to and that makes it impossible for you to move on!" He was waiting for the stern defensive reply for he knew he was exhausting her patience on the topic of her mother but the words never left her mouth because as she opened it, so did the front door. The sound had her immediately moving her attention from him to the door and when Snow's furious voice was heard calling her name, his mother was hurrying out of the kitchen.

...

Cora had been listening carefully to the conversation between Regina and Henry from the dining room. She was standing hidden from sight of the kitchen in the large doorway between the dining room and foyer. She jumped a little and spun when the front door opened. She thought about hiding but she was too startled and intrigued by who came through the door.

"Regina!" Snow called as she slammed the front door behind her. She didn't even make it up one stair before she stopped dead and her eyes went wide with cold fear.

Regina jogged in to the foyer and looked to Snow who glanced at her for half a moment before she focused back on Cora with her mouth open a little. "Well..." Regina started and shook her head at her mother as she tried to find any words but none came to mind, "...shit."