Disclaimer in Chapter One.
A/N at the end of this chapter.
"What happened?"
"You fell asleep."
"I did?"
"Oh, don't worry. It was just a little catnap. The night is still young."
"Wait... I remember something. My dad! When I was asleep I could've sworn I heard him calling for me... It must've been a dream."
"Well, how can you be sure?"
"Because... because my dad is dead."
"I'm sorry, Henry. It makes sense for us to dream about the things we've lost and the things we hope for. Like your father being alive and your mother coming to find you. But eventually you will find new things to dream about. And when you do... they'll start to come true."
"How do you know?"
"Because that's what I did and now you're here. Neverland used to be a place where new dreams were born. You can bring that magic back, Henry, and we can be your family."
~ ( SQ ) ~
Henry lay very still in his bed, staring into the darkness, tracing the shadows cast by the sliver of light coming from the gap in his curtain. He hadn't made any move to record the dream since he'd awoken. He had only remained still, trying to calm his heart, thundering in his chest.
For several months now he had been writing things in his dream journal. Each night he had hoped that he would dream about Regina and perhaps gain more clues about who she might be and how he could find her. He had felt certain that she was in fact a real person, even if he couldn't understand her connection to him and his mom.
After dreaming of the three of them having dinner together, Henry had tried to casually bring her up to Emma. Maybe she was a friend or someone they knew in Boston and he just couldn't remember her. He'd brought it up at breakfast that Saturday morning.
"Hey, Kid. You slept late this morning. Another dream?" Emma slid a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her son.
"I did have a dream but it didn't keep me awake too long. I'm a teenager now, Mom. We're supposed to sleep late. It's in the handbook they gave me at orientation on my birthday," Henry said around a forkful of eggs.
"My, aren't we a comedian today?" Emma chuckled as she turned her attention to the cocoa. "I'll never know where all this sass came from. You certainly didn't get it from me." Emma had her back to him, sprinkling some cinnamon onto his cocoa and grimaced at her own words. She tried to avoid mentioning his father at all costs. It wasn't a fun talk for either of them when it came up.
"Yeah, yeah," Henry winked at her as she turned to him, silently saying her indirect mention of his father was okay. Taking a deep breath, he tried to bring up the visitor in his dreams as nonchalantly as possible. "Hey, Mom? Do we know anyone named Regina?"
"Regina? Hmm, I don't think so," Emma had a faraway look in her eyes, like she was trying to call up a face for a name and coming up empty handed. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason, I guess. I just had that name pop up and I wondered. So, nobody comes to mind?" Henry gently pushed a little further, hoping not to stir her curiosity too much.
"Nobody comes to mind," Emma said, a frown of concentration wrinkling her forehead.
"Oh, ok," Henry shrugged. "So, what's the plan today?"
The rest of breakfast had been small talk about the bills and laundry and homework that lay ahead of them that day. Henry cleared the dishes and as he closed the dishwasher his blonde mother spoke. "I thought of someone! There was a Regina in Boston but I'm not sure you would remember her. She worked at Thompson's Cleaners where I took my suits. Did you ever go in there with me?"
An odd marriage of relief and disappointment washed over Henry. So Regina was real. But she wasn't some mysterious figure from their forgotten past. "Um, I'm not sure. I think I went in there a time or two. That must be it."
"Well, if you ever met her, Kid, you'd remember. She sorta reminded me of that girl in the movie Brave, all that unruly red hair and freckles. I always wanted to anonymously leave her some hair products on the counter. Wow! So much hair!" Emma was laughing at the memory of someone who clearly was not the Regina in Henry's dream. "Is that who you were thinking of?"
"Um, maybe. I'm not sure. I don't remember the hair though. But, I guess it doesn't matter." Henry was surprised at how glad he felt to know Regina wasn't some random cashier in a cleaners in Boston. But who is she?
After that, Henry had dropped the issue.
Days became weeks, weeks became months and the dreams of his mother and Regina and he had continued. Vivid and real, the dreams often depicted the two women arguing over him but many showed them trying to get along. Some, like the dream of a lasagna dinner, showed the three of them laughing and enjoying time together.
Although the dreams didn't offer any direct information that could point him in the right direction, he was able to glean some information by things that weren't in the dreams. He knew Regina didn't live in Boston. Everything seemed to take place in a small town. Regina was certainly not a shop girl. She apparently had a job in an office. In all the dreams she wore suits and heels. Her home in the dreams was large, immaculately kept and the furnishings expensive.
None of this information was useful in finding her though. If only he knew her last name, or the name of the town. That would be something to go on. But maybe she wasn't real at all. Maybe he was reading too much into his dreams. Maybe he was going crazy.
Henry had decided four nights ago that he wasn't going to think about Regina anymore. He was going to stop recording his dreams and let the whole thing drop. He had hoped that the act alone of making this decision would cause his brain to stop pumping out these realistic images every night. And it seemed to have worked. He hadn't dreamed of her once.
But there was something about tonight's dream that made him long for the confusion of the others. There was something bizarre and even sinister about the dream tonight. It was just as real as the others. He'd been in a jungle, watching shabbily dressed boys dance around an open fire. He could feel the heat on his face, smell the dampness of the earth beneath him where he sat and his dry mouth felt like he hadn't had a drink of water in days.
Sitting before him was an elf of a boy, trying hard to comfort him about his dreams and encouraging him to trust the denizens of the jungle as family. Dream-Henry seemed to trust so easily though there were alarm bells as he saw the scene unfold. This boy was dangerous. He didn't know why or how he knew, but Henry was sure this boy wasn't to be trusted.
But when the boy had said they were in Neverland, Henry had abruptly awoken, safe in his New York bed. He had felt the immediate urge to write the dream in his journal but he resisted. If he wrote this dream- one where he was in a fantasy land with what he assumed were Peter Pan and the Lost Boys- if he wrote that in his book alongside the dreams of Regina then he would be crossing a line from which he could not return.
Either he was denying that the dreams with Regina were real or he was affirming the possibility that Peter Pan was in fact a real boy and Neverland a place he had traveled. Somehow Henry felt that these two stories couldn't coexist in his journal, a forgotten memory and a fantasy. Either everything in the book deserved to be given at least the possibility of being real, or none of it did.
So he lay there in the dark, tracing the shadows, unwilling to move until he'd come to a conclusion. What would it be? Turning on the lamp, Henry slowly reached for the book and pen and began to write. Regina was real. The town she lived in was a place he had been somehow though he could not remember. Peter Pan was real and Neverland a tangible place.
A shiver ran through him as he made his decision. He didn't know when or how, but he was sure more than ever he was going to find out what was going on. And the place to start was Regina-he was sure of it.
~ ( SQ ) ~
For the next month, Henry slept through the night every night. If he was dreaming of Regina or Peter Pan or anything at all, he didn't recall it when he awoke each morning. The more time that passed without a dream, the more Henry began to doubt his conviction that the dreams were real. As his certainty waned, so did his drive to find this woman who lived in his dreams. Soon, Regina was all but forgotten.
Day in, day out, Henry and his mother fell into a routine and life went along as ordinary as ever. Henry had made several friends with whom he played video games more often than his mom would like. But Emma had started going on dates occasionally and that was more often than Henry would like so things evened out. Everything seemed to be ok again, and Henry's dream journal found a new home in his nightstand drawer amid scads of comic books and mate-less socks.
By the time school let out in early June, it had been almost five months since Henry had last dreamed of Regina. It had been a year since they had moved from Boston and Henry looked ahead with excitement to his birthday in 2 weeks. It would be his second birthday celebration in the Big Apple. Apples… what was it about apples? He was happy at the thought that this year he would have friends to celebrate it with.
On the first official night of summer break, Henry stayed up well past midnight, the TV turned down so low he was nearly reading the lips of the actors. Though he fought it, sleep came for him there on the sofa and in moments he fell into a deep yet restless sleep. He was dreaming again.
Henry was in a cave of some kind, maybe a mine tunnel because there were tracks for a cart. He was huddled between a man and woman about his mom's age. They seemed to be shielding him from something. Henry strained to look between them and a few yards away he could see his mother's long blonde hair and beyond her was Regina. They were facing each other, staring intensely into each other's tear filled eyes.
Henry couldn't see what was between them but there was an odd sound and bright light. Then without warning, there was a blast and both women flew backwards, the light suddenly extinguished. The couple who had been surrounding him ran to check on the women and Henry remained crouched and confused. What is going on?
Before he could stand to join his mother and the others, a hand was across his mouth and a strong arm about his body, tugging and dragging along. He tried to call out to Regina and his mother but the hands were too tight and moving too fast. He squinted against the sunlight as they stepped out of the cave and ran toward a waiting car. It was then he saw clearly a woman, smiling a self-satisfied grin.
The scene changed and a man and the woman were pulling Henry along a boardwalk between two buildings toward the harbor. Henry wasn't sure where they were going but he was certain he would be safe. Something inside him kept saying my mom will come for me, both of them. At the water's edge he wondered if they were going to simply drown him. There was no boat and yet his kidnappers made no move to stop.
Behind him, Henry could hear the sound of his mother and Regina calling out. His thought was right, they were coming for him. But a moment later the man, Greg he'd heard the woman say, he threw something in the water and a green glowing vortex had appeared in its wake. A moment later, they three had jumped into the swirling madness.
Suddenly self-aware, Henry felt trapped in a lucid dream. He knew he was dreaming and he wanted desperately to awaken, but try as he might, he couldn't break the spell of sleep. The dream had a hold and he could only keep watching it unfold. It was no longer a dream, but a nightmare.
Tumbling through the vortex with Greg and the woman, the green glow began to fade and the dream changed. Henry found himself again sitting in the Lost Boy's camp deep in the jungle. In his hand was a woman's compact mirror. It began to glow and Henry peered at the glass.
The image reflected wasn't his face. No, there in the mirror he saw his mother and Regina, both smiling with teary eyes. They assured him they too were in Neverland and were coming to get him to take him home. When someone approaching threatened exposure of the mirror, Henry dropped it and the glass cracked, the light dying out.
The dream changed again and Henry was now a spectator, no longer in the jungle but floating above a ship. Below him he could see the golden curls of his mother and the rich black locks of Regina kneeling on either side of his body. Henry watched awestruck as Regina took a glowing red and gold heart and pressed it into his chest. Gasping for air, Henry opened his eyes, now in his body again. He looked up into the adoring faces of his mother and Regina and tightly embraced the two women who had saved him.
The nightmare offered Henry no respite and quickly changed again. He was standing in the middle of a two lane road, a man's arm around his shoulders. In front of him he could see his mother facing Regina. He couldn't make out what they were saying but Regina turned now calling him to them. Regina was holding tight to his mother's gloved hand and promising them a happy life and good memories. Behind Regina Henry could now see a small band of people, all watching the interaction with saddened faces. Beyond them a strange green cloud barreled toward them all.
Regina was hugging him close and Henry could hear his own voice saying "you're not a villain, you're my mom." Then he and his blonde mother were running toward her faithful yellow bug and driving away. Henry looked back and watched in amazement as purple light shot out from Regina's hands and attacked the green cloud. The purple and green swirled and danced together and Henry had an incongruous thought that the colors were like and aging bruise. As he watched the cloud devour the gathered few and just before they all disappeared completely, something to the right of Regina caught Henry's eye—a green state road sign.
Now Entering Storybrooke.
A/N: As a writer it is important to me that I receive credit for my work when someone else uses it, in whole or in part. In this spirit I would like to point out that the dialogue between Henry and Pan in the first dream is nearly verbatim that of the scene from the show. Kudos to the writer. I obviously liked your work.