The Way

Chapter Twenty-Two

Henry was awake when his mother walked into the house, and it didn't take him but a moment to discern the state of her features meant she had been crying. She seemed flustered and worried, absently rubbing at her chest, and before she could notice him he snatched a mug and filled it with coffee. By the time she had removed her shoes and looked up to see him, he was already shoving the mug into her hands and offering her a sad sort of smile.

"You told her, didn't you?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

Regina regarded him for a moment, as if trying to decide how to respond. He watched as she took a grateful sip of the coffee before she gave a stern but quiet, "Yes."

Now his smile was less sad, and more excited. He could feel his eyes crinkling and his teeth showing through his lips as he grabbed his cup of chocolate milk. Mirroring his mother, he took a sip and then hurried over to one of the island stools to sit. His mother sat down across from him, scolding him when he threw both his elbows on the surface and rested his chin in his hands like a child preparing for an exceptional story. He ignored her request for better etiquette and only raised an eyebrow in a very Regina-like fashion.

"Well? How'd she take it?"

The coffee mug landed on the island now, but Regina left her fingers wrapped around it for warmth.

"I'm not entirely sure," she started, and Henry could tell that she wasn't by the way she stared into the mug. "But she's going to stay the night, and I expect we will be able to talk in more detail about how we're going to get through this...mess." His mother looked up now, and as she did he reached across the island to pat her on the arm.

"If she's staying the night, I'd say she took it well," the boy offered to his stricken mother. "She's not running away, like she would have done a year ago if something like this had happened."

Now Regina's face grew stern.

"Actually, she very well could be running. She has all day to do so."

But the boy only rolled his eyes.

"Stop being so dramatic Mom," he retorted with a laugh. "She wouldn't do that to us. Not anymore."

Still, as he watched his mother's varying expressions, Henry could tell she didn't quite believe him. He didn't know everything about Regina or her time before she'd come to Storybrooke, but from what he had heard and what Emma had told him, he knew enough to understand why she feared Emma would leave them. No one else had stayed for her. Why would Emma be any different?

Regina had been tense for most of the day and afternoon, her mind rolling through what had happened at the pier and during the walk home that morning. Her anxiety was worsened by the extra cup of coffee she'd had not long ago—an overload of caffeine, perhaps—but she tried her best to ignore the feeling. She tried to convince herself that Henry was right, that Emma wouldn't run from them...from this...from her...but still, the worry was ever-present, gnawing at her being like a persistent rodent.

She couldn't stop thinking of Emma's words, of the way she had spoken them, of the way her hand had fallen against her neck and her fingertips against her skin. Regina shuddered to think she had allowed such a thing to happen. More than once she had suffered as a result of that same sort of touch, a means of trickery and betrayal that usually ended with an attack against her life by way of choking. Somehow she had always managed to get out of it, but between her mother's tendency to place that magical choke-hold upon her as a child, and the men who claimed they were lovers trying to do so with their own hands, Regina had grown fiercely protective of that particular area.

Yet she had, without so much as a hitch, let Emma in. She had let Emma touch her. She had let herself be vulnerable and weak, and for what?

Would Emma return to her, or would she run, just as so many others had?