Regina was still seething by Wednesday of the following week. The only time she wasn't consumed by rage was when she was with her kids, their tiny little faces making it impossible for her to do anything but smile. Regina threw herself into her work, just as she always did when she was upset, creating extravagant and artistic activities with the kids, which required hours of cutting, gluing, and pasting together prior to handing them out to the children to finish.

She hung their Thanksgiving creations along the corridor leading up to her classroom, getting ready for the parent/teacher night which was two nights away. When she wasn't at school, she was home preparing progress reports and collecting pictures and paintings, putting them into portfolios, each carefully labelled with each child's name. Regina tried engaging her son, but even after four months since the discovery of his adoption, he was still angry with her. He refused to say more than two words to her, always turned down her offer for a bedtime story or a goodnight kiss. It ate at Regina, made her ache, and the only distraction she found that helped was to concentrate on work. So she worked long after she was tired, getting up far earlier than she needed to, and kept herself going on coffee and the occasional power bar. She couldn't keep this up forever, Regina knew that, but right now, it was just about surviving.

Parent teacher night came much too soon for an absolutely drained Regina, so she forced down a fourth coffee and threw on a bright smile as she greeted each and every parent. She really was happy talking about 'her' kids, the energy and pride as she spoke of each child's progress absolutely genuine. The parents beamed, and Regina was happy to converse with them about their children. But after three hours of meeting with parents, Regina was beyond exhausted. She felt like death on her feet, her body protesting the long hours and lack of sleep, lack of nutrition. Truthfully, Regina hadn't eaten properly in… she couldn't remember how long. Weeks, months maybe. She made supper for Henry every night, good, healthy meals, but she couldn't bring herself to swallow down more than a few bites off her own plate. Her appetite escaped her completely, sitting next to the surly child who used to be her bubbly and energetic little boy. She could barely choke down the food knowing her son hated her so much, feeling it radiate off of him any time she got too close. How could she eat knowing the person she loved more than anything in the world couldn't stand her?

Regina had been dragging the boy to therapy since he'd first discovered the adoption papers, which is where the little notebook he kept tucked under his arm at all times had originated, but it didn't seem to be helping. At least he was offering her more than the grunts he had been before therapy, but giving her a "no" or a "whatever" or a "go away" wasn't much more than the grunts of the past. And now, as she attempted to bring him to his classes so she could speak to his teachers, she was about ready to give up on everything. He was refusing, as always, to do as she asked, and Regina was just so tired. She was trying hard to keep her patience, but all she wanted to do was scream at him. Or cry. Or both. And the migraine that was beginning to beat at the back of her skull was doing nothing to help her patience.

"Henry. I need to meet with your teachers. Come on."

"So go."

"You cannot stay here alone, Henry. Let's go," she said, mustering as much strength into her voice as she could.

"No."

"Henry, for once will you please just do as I ask," Regina growled. Before she could say anything else, Regina heard that familiar, irritating, aggravating voice coming from behind her.

"Something wrong?"

"No, there is nothing wrong, Miss Swan. Please leave."

"Uh, you're standing right outside my door, so… no." When Emma's eyes finally looked away from Henry and landed on Regina, she was shocked to see the state in which the normally pristine woman was. "Jesus, Regina. You look like shit."

Regina closed her eyes, inhaling deeply through her nose.

"Thank you, for that that incredibly insightful observation. Anything else you'd like to add? Perhaps you'd like to help Henry break free of the Evil Queen's cruel clutches? He clearly wants to be anywhere but here. And you're in luck. The Queen is feeling worse than she looks. Now would be the prime time to take advantage."

Emma frowned. Going up against Regina when she was at full force, in a fair fight (verbal, never physical) was one thing. But to attack her now, when she looked seconds away from collapsing, was another. Emma might hate Regina, but she wasn't one to kick a man while he was down.

"Leave Henry here with me. Go talk to his teachers. You have to come back here anyway to talk with me about his school progress."

Her gentle tone immediately set Regina on edge.

"So that you can further poison my son against me? No, thank you."

Regina was definitely not going to leave her son with the woman she despised so.

"Regina," Emma said calmly, "you look like hell. Go to the bathroom, fix your make up, talk to his teachers, and come back here when you're done. I promise you the kid'll be poison free by the time you get back."

"You're in no way in charge of my actions."

"No, but I'm betting my suggestion sounds pretty good right now, doesn't it? Got an alternative that doesn't involve binding and gagging your kid? Cause I'm thinking that's the only way you'll get him to go with you. I bet that'll look real good to social services."

Regina glowered. She didn't have any other ideas, and she was loathe to admit that the woman was probably right. Henry was still glaring at her, and that migraine was slowly creeping deeper into her skull, which meant what little energy she had left would quickly be wiped out with another of her son's fits. She had an hour, two tops, before she would be bedridden for the next twelve or so hours, so any hope she had to speak to his teachers was slowly dwindling. She had time though; she could still speak to his teachers if she left him with the irritating blonde before her.

Decision made, Regina sighed heavily. Fine. She'd have to call David when she returned to retrieve Henry. Whenever her migraines hit, David made sure to take the boy out of the house, lest he worry about his mother curled up in the fetal position, crying out if even the slightest bit of light or noise entered her bedroom. Regina wondered if at this point it was even necessary because she doubted Henry would even care.

"Fine," Regina growled out, agreeing. She hated that she had no other choice.

"We'll see you in a bit."

Emma watched the woman leave, turning to her surly looking son once she was out of view.

"So, what's got you all pissy?"

"I am not pissy."

"Uh, yeah you are. And what's with all this Evil Queen business? You call her that or something?" Emma asked casually, leading the way into her classroom. It was a fitting title, but it gnawed at her that the boy might call his mother that. She had seen Regina, however briefly, with Henry. She was… well, she was different. And she had seen the woman with the other children as well, she was an entirely different person that the cruel bitch persona she adopted around Emma. Seeing her tonight, just now, it almost reminded Emma that Regina was human.

Almost.

Henry's shrug caused Emma to frown. She didn't like the sounds of that response.

"Maybe."

"Why?"

"Cause she is."

"Why is she the Evil Queen?"

"Cause she does evil stuff. And she's mean."

"She's not mean to you."

"Sometimes she is."

That set off Emma's internal alarms. Calming her adrenaline, she looked at him carefully.

"How?"

He shrugged again.

"Henry, I'm not going to ask you again," Emma said, employing her rarely used no-nonsense voice. "How is she mean to you?"

"She lies to me."

"What has she lied to you about?"

Henry looked at her. Then looked at the open door, hesitating. Emma understood. She got up and closed it, assuring him that no one would hear. Still, she could tell he was debating, and Emma waited patiently. She waited, and waited, watching Henry, willing him to speak. He licked his lips, glancing up at her every so often, as though weighing whether or not he could tell her. Emma sat, unmoving, not saying a word. Before he could speak, she heard a knock on her door. Emma cursed loudly in her head, screaming internally at whoever it was that was interrupting such an important moment.

"Oh. Hey, Joe." Pizza guy. Emma's anger deflated. She was starving, and as much as she hated that he chose this moment to interrupt… well, pizza.

"Hey, Em. Can't stay and talk, busy night. It's 9.56 for this one."

Emma dug into her pocket, pulling out some bills and handing them over.

"No problem. Here. Thanks."

"Thanks, Em. Enjoy. Have a good night."

Emma closed the door, chuckling at Henry's wide eyes.

"You get pizza delivered here?!"

"Yep."

"And he knows your name?"

"Well, Storybrooke is pretty small. There's only like two pizza guys, and for the amount of pizza I order, well… yeah. They learnt my name pretty quick."

"It must be awesome to be an adult. You can order pizza any time you want."

Emma chuckled.

"Yeah, it's alright. You hungry?"

Henry nodded eagerly, eyeing the loaded pizza before him. He loved pizza, and he so very rarely got it with his mom.

"You got any allergies?"

"Only to arugula."

"Aruga- what? Jesus, kid. Whatever. Go ahead then, dig in."

"You sure?" Henry hesitated, but he very clearly wanted some.

Emma shook her head, amused.

"Yeah, go ahead. I'll take the heat if your mom gets mad."

"Okay."

Henry quickly tore into the pizza, grabbing a large slice and bringing it to his mouth. He groaned happily, chewing quickly and immediately taking another bite.

"Hey, slow down, kid. Old people aren't lying when they say if you eat too fast your stomach'll hurt. Trust me. I learnt the hard way."

Henry nodded, slowing his chewing and then swallowing.

"It's just been a long time since I've had pizza."

"Your mom doesn't feed you or what?"

"Yeah. But she never gets take out. She only ever makes me stuff at home."

"That doesn't sound so bad, kid."

"I like eating out."

"It's nice once in a while. But trust me when I tell you that having home cooked meals is way better. Especially when your mom makes 'em just for you."

Henry sat quietly after the comment, looking at her desk as he ate his pizza at a much, much slower pace. Emma could tell he was thinking, so she slowed her eating as well, not wanting to startle him out of his thoughts by leaning forward and grabbing another piece when she finished the one in her hand. She waited, feeling instinctively that he was going to talk. And Emma was right, the boy finally confessing what he was debating telling her earlier.

"I'm adopted."

Emma knew this was obviously a big deal to him, so she waited for him to continue.

"I'm adopted and she never told me. She made me think I was hers, forever. For my whole life. She lied to me. And she wasn't gonna tell me either. I found out because I was looking through her things."

He was so angry he was shaking, and the slice of pizza in his hands quickly came to rest on his lap.

"That sounds like a pretty shitty thing to find out on your own. Did you talk to her about how angry it made you?"

"Of course I did! But it doesn't make it better. She still lied to me. My life sucks with her!"

"You wanna know what sucks kid? Feeling like nobody likes you, or wants you, or loves you. Does your mom make you feel like that?"

When Henry stayed quiet, Emma continued.

"I didn't think so. Yeah, it was a shitty thing to do to keep your adoption from you. She should have told you, but I'm gonna go ahead and bet that she wasn't keeping it from you to hurt you. I'm gonna guess she was waiting 'til it was a good time to tell you, right?"

Henry looked down, picking at his pizza.

"She said she wanted to wait 'til I would understand," he mumbled, then suddenly got angry again. "I would have understood right away! She should have told me."

"Like you're understanding right now, kid? Maybe she was afraid you'd get mad at her or push her away like you're doing right now. Or worse, she was afraid of you telling her she wasn't your real mom."

When Henry looked away guiltily, Emma knew she had hit a sore spot.

"You've already done that, haven't you?"

Henry nodded. He was angry with his mom. He hated what she did, but he… he also didn't like hurting her, not always. Sometimes he was happy to hurt her like she had hurt him. But after he'd said that, that she wasn't his real mom, that he hated her, and seeing the way she recoiled like he's slapped her, watching the tears fill her eyes and her voice crack as she told him she needed to check on dinner, seeing the redness in her eyes as she joined him at the table after it was ready… that hadn't felt good. That hadn't felt good at all. It still made his belly curl up in regret in fact.

Henry dropped the pizza on the desk, tears welling in his eyes as he thought about that day. He tried not to, because it made him feel so bad.

As soon as she saw his reaction, Emma immediately put her dinner down and got up, wiping her hands on her jeans before dropping on the floor beside the boy. She pulled him into her arms, shushing him softly as he cried.

"It's okay, Henry."

She rocked him as he wept, whispering soothing words as he clung to her. He trembled and clutched her close, holding tight as he cried. Emma held him until the tears finally stopped, shushing him softly as she waited for him to calm down.

When he finally quieted, Emma reached up for the napkins, handing them to the boy still seated in her lap. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose, tossing the used tissues into the garbage. Emma rubbed his back gently, leaning back against the desk as she pulled him close. She wasn't great at this whole talk and comforting thing, but she needed to do something.

"She called herself the Evil Queen because it's what I call her. In my stories."

"What?" Emma asked gently, trying to keep her tone neutral so as not to discourage him from explaining.

Henry buried his face in her collarbone, squeezing his eyes shut against his confession.

"My mom. Regina. After I found out about… after I found my adoption papers, my mom made me go to see Archie, a doctor. Psychologist. He told me I should write what I was feeling because I was really angry. So I did. At first I just wrote how much I hated her. And then I said that she was evil. And so I… I made a story. She was the Evil Queen and she stole me from my real mom. And she brought me to Storybrooke and made all the people here unhappy. Cause she was evil. Lots of people here don't like my mom, so… it worked."

"And your mom knows?"

"Yeah. I left my notebook out once, on purpose. I wanted her to…" Henry squeezed his eyes shut tighter, his voice muffled by Emma's shirt as he spoke. "I wanted to hurt her. So I left it out so she'd see it."

He began crying again, so Emma held him tight.

"It's okay, kid. I know it's upsetting, but she's your mom, bud. She's gonna forgive you. She loves you. A lot."

"She doesn't," he sniffled, "not anymore. Besides, she lied to me. I can't trust her."

Emma rubbed his back soothingly, waiting until he'd calmed before she spoke up.

"I was given up when I was a kid. A baby."

"You were?"

Emma nodded, tucking his head under her chin.

"Well, abandoned actually. I was found on a road in the middle of the night. My mom- the woman who gave birth to me," Emma corrected herself, "tossed me out like yesterday's newspaper and never looked back. I was adopted when I was a few months old, but then the couple changed their mind and they gave me back when I was three. I grew up a foster kid, bouncing from home to home, school to school, family to family. I was a little like a ping pong ball. Nobody really wanted me. Certainly nobody loved me when I was a kid. Definitely nobody made me homemade meals every night, or bought me nice clothes, or read me stories at night. Nobody put me in therapy even though I really should have been (that had come later, when Emma was an adult, and had accepted that she needed help), or put band-aids on my cuts, or held me when I cried. Everybody was more than happy to tell me I wasn't theirs, that no one would ever adopt me, and that they hated me. I would have killed to have a mom who loved me, kid. Even if she made a mistake and didn't tell me right away that I was adopted.

"I'm not saying your mom was right to lie to you. But I think she did what she thought was best for you. I don't think she did it to be cruel, did she? To hurt you?"

Henry stayed quiet, still, before finally shaking his head.

"I didn't think so. I think you need to tell her that she hurt you, that you don't trust her now, that you're gonna have to work on trusting her, and that you wish she'd have told you the truth. But I think you also owe her a pretty huge apology, and you need to tell her as soon as she gets back here that you love her. Because she loves you lots kid, and she's hurting too. And she probably is regretting not telling you the truth.

"There's no guides out there telling you the right thing to do in life; you're gonna figure that out pretty quick. We all just kinda just wing it. Sure, you learn as you get older, and sometimes you know the right decision to make when you're in a tough spot because you've been in a similar situation in the past. But mostly, you're trying to figure things out day by day and the best you can do is make the choice you think is the right one, doing the best you can for yourself and the people you love. And I think your mom made a decision, thinking it was the right one for you. She wanted to love you, didn't want you to feel different or abandoned or even a little bit unwanted, which maybe you would have felt if you found out you'd been put up for adoption. So she chose not to tell you. But the thing is, having an adoptive mother is even better than having a birth mom. Know why?"

Henry shook his head, wrapping his arms around her back as he listened to her speak.

"Because, like your mom with you, an adoptive mom chooses to love you. She chooses you, Hen. Your mom picked you, out of all the kids in the whole world waiting to be loved, waiting for a family. You were waiting for a mom, and she picked you, kid. She chose you to adopt out of all the kids in the world, and that's because she knew you were special. And being picked, man, that's a great feeling. She picked you and brought you home and loved you and nurtured you. And she's gonna love you forever and ever, cause she's your mom. A mom isn't the person who gives birth to you. A mom is the person who holds you, and kisses you, and cares for you, and makes you feel better, and protects you, and teaches you, and punishes you when you need it, and loves you unconditionally. And when you find someone who loves you like that, you gotta hold onto it as hard as you can, okay? Cause that's the best feeling in the world. I know I would have."

Henry breathed in a deep breath, clutching at the back of Emma's shirt.

"You think she still loves me?"

"Jesus, Hen," Emma bit back a watery laugh, "course she does. Do you see how she protects you? She loves you so much, she lashes out at anyone she thinks is gonna hurt you."

Henry let out a small laugh.

"She can be scary sometimes."

Emma laughed along with him, wiping at the tears on her cheeks.

"Yeah, but that's good. Means she loves you. And she'll keep you safe. The best moms always do." Emma, she had met a few… a few good moms. Some had been good. "They're the ones you wanna have. You're allowed to be upset and be angry, Henry, but you're not allowed to be cruel like you have been to your mom. Part of growing up is learning to communicate. And instead of talking to her like you should have been, you've been really angry and mean. That changes today, okay? If you need helping talking to her, I'll help you. But you guys need to talk. Alright?"

Henry nodded against her, enjoying the comfort of her embrace until his stomach started rumbling.

"Hungry, huh?"

"Yeah. Guess that talk made me hungry."

"You did do a lot of confessing. You were pretty brave, telling me what you did. You feeling okay?"

"Yeah. But, don't say anything okay? To the other kids or like… to anyone."

"Henry," Emma said, looking at him seriously. "Unless your secrets are dangerous or- or if it's a bad secret, like someone doing something to you that they shouldn't, I'm never gonna say anything, okay? You can tell me anything and I won't repeat it unless your safety or the safety of someone else is in jeopardy."

Henry nodded gratefully, getting up when Miss Swan started to stand.

"Thanks."

"Now eat your pizza before it gets cold, mister."

Henry giggled, looking so much like the ten year old little boy that he was. It made Emma happy that his mood had been lifted, the boy holding up his pizza and bringing it to his mouth.

"It's already cold."

Leaving Henry's math teacher's class, Regina stopped in her tracks. She could feel the black spots forming before her eyes, the dull thud of pain reverberating in her skull.

No, no.

It was too soon. It had only been forty minutes. She should still have a little more time, at least enough to get home. But as she slowly made her way down the hall, she realised that the time she had allotted herself before the migraine truly began to take over had been grossly misjudged, and now she was struggling to get herself back to Emma's classroom. She wasn't going to make it, she already knew, so Regina stumbled into one of the faculty washrooms, immediately turning off the lights and struggling to the floor.

Regina curled into a ball, pressing her forehead to the cool tile and breathing deeply. She needed to get ahold of David. Mustering what little energy she had, Regina reached for her phone. She winced as the movement of her hand against the fabric of her pants echoed in her head like nails against a chalkboard. She bit hard on her lower lip as she dialled David's number, trying desperately to keep the tears at bay. When she got his voicemail, she sobbed, dropping the phone onto the floor and giving up. She couldn't move, could barely breathe, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to calm the panic that threatened to consume her.