Reset

“The kid’s already confused enough, his Mom was the Evil Queen, he grew up in a town where time was frozen and he was the only person ageing, suddenly his grandmother is Snow White and she’s also thirty..”

“Twenty nine,” Mary Margaret corrected softly.

“Twenty nine,” Emma smiled, “there’s magic everywhere and dwarves and people can’t leave the town and now his Mom has.. replaced him..” tears started to fall again, “I don’t want Henry to feel the way I feel.”

“Henry has lots of people who love him, Emma,” Mary Margaret reminded her kindly, “and he is a strong boy..”

“Strength can sometimes be a mask,” Emma confessed.

“I know, believe me, I know,” Mary Margaret reassured before suddenly shaking her head, “Regina.. Regina loves Henry, she’s an overprotective, suffocating mother but she still loves him, I don’t understand why she would let him go like this..”

Emma let out a small laugh, “she’s taking a potion, from Gold, something to lessen her emotions when it comes to Henry. Not forget him, just lessen the strength of her love for him.”

Mary Margaret smiled softly, “then there’s still hope.”

“What hope?” Emma asked with a frown.

“Regina is taking a potion to forget Henry, because she knows that if she remembers him she wouldn’t be able to let him go,” Mary Margaret explained, “she loves him.”

“What am I going to tell Henry?” Emma mumbled, “I can’t exactly tell him he has a new sister. We had a heart to heart earlier and he is struggling already. He’s just a kid, he doesn’t understand what is going on.”

Mary Margaret nodded, “yes, we do all forget that he is only eleven, I was still playing with dolls when I was his age.”

“He has had to do a lot of growing up very quickly,” Emma agreed, “but that doesn’t mean he is ready for all of this. He should be.. I dunno.. running in the forest and playing on his games console, eating ice cream and focusing on his homework. Not wondering if his mother loves him.”

“You’re his mother now,” Mary Margaret reminded Emma.

“I don’t feel like it,” she sighed, “I can never give him what Regina gave him.”

“What do you mean?” Mary Margaret looked stunned at Emma’s comment.

Emma shifted to face Mary Margaret head-on, “look at Henry, what do you see?”

Mary Margaret considered this for a moment, “a bright, kind, loving boy..”

“I let Henry go when he was minutes old,” Emma told Mary Margaret seriously, “everything about Henry, every single thing is a result of Regina’s parenting of him. She raised him from a baby, she educated him, she made him into the loving boy he is today. We could get into a big nature versus nurture debate but I honestly believe that Henry is a direct result of Regina’s influence.. and I don’t know how to feel about that! I mean, I should hate her, right? Evil Queen stuff aside, she murdered Graham, she tried to put me in a coma and ended up nearly killing Henry, she tried again and again to separate Henry and that’s not even mentioning the curse!”

Emma looked away and took a few deep breaths, “but, then I see Henry,” she smiled and her bottom lip wobbled, “and I realise that without her.. he, he wouldn’t be who he is. She cared for him, loved him regardless, gave him everything he needed. He gave him the life that I couldn’t give him, the life I wanted for him. The Goddamned Evil Queen gave that to him.”

“I know how it feels to be conflicted when it comes to Regina,” Mary Margaret calmed the blonde, “trust me. I loved her like a mother.. and then we spent years trying to destroy each other. But,” she looked around to ensure no one was listening, “if I’m really honest.. I never wanted to hurt Regina.. I wanted to help her, take back what I did. Help her to be happy.”

Mary Margaret laughed ironically, “I’m such a cliché, all I wanted was for everyone to be happy, still do.”

Emma sighed, “yeah, well, I can’t see a way for everyone to be happy here..”

“Except Regina,” Mary Margaret pointed out.

Emma looked at her with a confused expression.

“She’s got a new baby, someone to love. Someone to give her unconditional love in return, someone who needs her, someone who can’t leave her,” Mary Margaret listed.

“Someone who can’t be taken away, the clause in the contract,” Emma pointed out with sudden realisation.

“And she has a potion to stop her from feeling any guilt about Henry,” Mary Margaret finished, “she’s got her happy ending. And I think we need to respect that.”

Emma looked at her mother and slowly nodded her head in agreement.

Chapter 9

It was the sound of tension that shook Emma awake the next morning. She didn’t particularly hear anything being said but she could hear tense whispers and could feel that the atmosphere was thick. She started to turn over but paused when she realised she was laying on the small sofa with a thin quilt over her, she searched her memory to try to remember why she was sleeping on the sofa and then she recalled the previous evening, well, the current morning.