Reset

“Henry!” Regina called out as she attempted to pick up the bits of paper and follow him but it was too late and she heard the door slam behind him.

Chapter 27

Henry sped down the middle of the road on his bike not giving a damn about the occasional car or pedestrian crossing the road. All he could think about what getting away from Regina so he could have some time to think, he was so confused about everything that had been happening and he couldn’t full comprehend this new relationship he had with the older woman.

He knew he had been immature and hurtful, he should have gone back to see Regina after the curse had broken to try to talk with her and figure things out. Emma had told him many times that running away from his problems was not the answer but he knew he had run away from Regina. He had begged and pleaded with both Emma and Mary Margaret to not make him go back to the mansion and to not have to see her. He had told them he hated Regina but the truth was he was terrified of speaking to her again, he didn’t know what to say, he couldn’t understand the opposing feelings of love and hatred that filled him.

But as time had gone on it became harder and harder to mend the broken relationship, he was frightened that Regina would somehow force him to go and live with her and he knew that Emma would fight for him. He didn’t want the women to fight because he knew, despite Emma being the Saviour, Regina would win any battle in a flurry of fireballs.

So it had continued, between his fear of speaking with Regina, his confusion of his feelings and his desire to keep the peace he had kept away from the woman who had raised him for the last ten years. The woman he loved as a mother. Not that that took anything away from Emma, who he also thought of as his mother just in a different way.

He always thought that one day he would be feeling particularly brave and he would bump into Regina in the town and he would just smile and hug him and he would hug her in return and everything would go back to the way it was. In his heart he knew that was completely unrealistic but it was an easy dream to maintain when the alternative was facing all his fears head on.

But the day didn’t come and the legal paperwork did and then Grace. Henry began to understand the meaning of hindsight for the first time in his short life, the idea that if you had your time again you would have chosen differently. He often dreamt about going to see Regina a week or two after the curse, once all the death threats and drama had died down. In his dream they simply hugged and then he helped her cook his favourite meal, they watched a movie and then he went to bed in his old room.

Sometimes those dreams morphed into nightmares where he walked into his room to see Grace’s ornate crib that he had heard of but not seen with his own eyes. He would turn to Regina and she would tell him that he didn’t live there anymore and that he had to leave.

At first he had only wanted to see Regina again, he thought that some of the pain would go away if he could just see her now and then. If he could pretend that he was fine with everything and that he was just going about his life. But soon he knew that he had to do more, after a more intense nightmare he found he missed her powerfully and remembered when he was young and would suffer from terrible nightmares.

At first he would sleep in her bed after he had a nightmare, some nights he would ask to start out sleeping in her bed. She would read soft, gentle stories to him before he went to sleep in an effort to soothe his dreams, sometimes it worked but on the nights when it didn’t she would quickly lull him back into a peaceful and safe dream world.

One day she presented him with a jam jar as if it was a precious heirloom. He held it in his hands with confusion as she explained that it was a magic jam jar that kept bad thoughts at bay, all he would have to do was write down the details of the nightmare and put it in the jam jar and screw the lid on tightly. It would keep all of the bad thoughts at bay.

He had wanted to use a similar technique to prevent good thoughts from getting away from both himself and from Regina and so every evening he sat down and wrote notes about their life together. He wrote each one twice, one he put in a jar under his bed and one he gave to Regina and hoped that she was reading them. He could see that the jar in the hallway was slowly filling up but he had never seen her read one.

The sound of a police siren behind him made him turn around and he saw Emma glaring at him angrily and pointing to the side of the road, he pulled over and came to a stop. A second later Emma was out of the car and fast approaching him, “Henry, what were you thinking?!”