"Of course, we can play." She made their way down the stairs, adjusting him on her hip to hold onto the railing.

"Eat food," he determined. "Aaaaand watch."

"Treasure Planet?" She guessed, settling him on his feet and ignoring the churning of her gut at the prospect of watching the movie and only hearing the laughter of Emma and Henry as they made farting noises on their arms.

"Yeah!" He raced off to his playroom in a gallop, leaving his mother at the entrance of the kitchen.

The routine of making his apple cinnamon oatmeal helped clear Regina's mind. Too much apple bits, Henry would find it too fruity. Too much cinnamon, he'd refuse to eat it.

It'll give it more of a kick.

Regina shut her eyes, forcing the image of Emma tampering with a perfectly good apple turnover recipe from her mind. If she walked through that door right now, Regina would let her alter the recipe entirely if it meant she was safe. Her ears perked only slightly, hoping to hear a knock or a doorbell or a rattle of keys but nothing.

Keep it together, Regina told herself as she stirred Henry's breakfast. It's fine. She exhaled through clenched teeth before spooning out the pot into a bowl for Henry. She carried a cup of coffee for herself since she didn't have the appetite to put away anything more than a piece of toast or the leftover chicken strips Henry couldn't finish.

She entered his playroom, deposited the bowl on his table where he eagerly sat and began chomping on the dish, pretending to feed the Rex family while his mother crawled into the rocking chair in the corner. Regina hadn't crawled anywhere since she was a baby, but she tucked her foot under her thigh and brought her left leg up to wrap her arms around. Making herself small in that rocking chair wasn't the typical stance of the Mayor who made every chair she sat in look like a throne, but burrowing in the corner was all she had the energy to do.

Her chin rested on her knee, and she only moved to take the daintiest sip of her coffee, letting Henry's chatter soothe her mind.

She had the laundry to do today and wash all the bedding. Even the guest room. That needed to be changed. Henry needed a haircut again, but that would take some convincing so that would be pushed to the bottom of the list. The developers want to create traffic through the town by creating a mega mall. Crush them. Let Felix's younger brothers know that she'll pay them to shovel the driveway and sidewalk. Have her meetings rescheduled again. She could phone conference the more important ones from her home office. Remember to sign off on her secretary's Christmas bonus. Henry's class was having a party for. . .Valentine's Day.

Regina pinched the bridge of her nose. Don't think about it. Don't. But how was she not supposed to? Emma said she would be home for Valentine's Day, some fool's prank—No. She wasn't a fool—some prank to surprise her during the holidays. Emma was mischievous like that, but so kind-hearted. Regina paused. Is. Is like that. She's not dead. There wasn't a body. She's just, just not here at the moment.

She scoffed bitterly. A female soldier captured. On the nights when sleep absolutely refused to come to Regina she had sat up and researched testimonies from prisoners of war. Torture. Humiliation. Beheading. And that was just from the men.

She swallowed the bile rising in her throat and squeezed her eyes shut tight. Emma was fine. She was fine. She'd be fine.

"Mommy?"

Regina picked her forehead off her knee and smiled weakly at her son. His eyebrows knit in concentration and just the tiniest hint of oatmeal saved on the corner of his lip. She placed her coffee, now cold, on the floor beside them and used her free hand to wipe away his breakfast. "Yes, darling?"

He held up Rexy and Mrs. up to her face and stuffed them under her neck in a big hug before climbing into her lap. "Are you sad, Mommy?"

Guilt flooded through her as her eyes slowly shut in a silent scolding. She opened them, pressing a kiss to his cheeks and hugging him tightly. Four-years old and he was already so perceptive. He was practically five. Five years since this little tiny baby was placed in her arms and now here he was staring worriedly up at her as she struggled not to cry. Her little prince was getting so big.

Stop growing up, Emma had once said. She couldn't have agreed more.

Regina snuggled against him again and carried him and his friends up the stairs. It was time.


"Mommy?" He asked again as they entered her bedroom.

"I have something for you," she said quietly, gently placing him on the corner of the bed and retreating to her closet where the bag of Emma's belongings lay hidden.

She hadn't been able to look through it thirty-two days ago, and even still it lay untouched at the bottom of her closet. But Rex stuck out of the bag, a habit of Regina's since Henry had enforced in her that his toys needed to be able to breathe. Thankfully she didn't have to dig through much to get the dinosaur, actively turning her head away when the gloss of a photograph skimmed her pinky. Fingers clutched around the plush, she held it behind her back and turned to face Henry.

"Whatcha got there?" Henry asked excitedly, craning his head for a peak behind her back.

She smiled softly and sat beside him, all the while keeping the toy out of sight. She produced it, and the way Henry's eyes widened and his mouth parted in stunned happiness made her heart stop aching for just a little bit. He grabbed at Rex and held him so tight to his chest that stuffing surely could have come out him. "Rex is home!" Henry announced, hopping up onto his feet and jumping up and down. "Rex is home!"

He giggled, holding the t-rex by its tiny arms and jumping in a circle, the plush toys at his feet bouncing forgotten. Suddenly remembering the other two members of the Rex family, Henry abruptly sat on his bottom and scooped Rexy and Mrs. into his arms and hugged them all, a content smile on his face, his eyes blissfully closed as he cuddled in absolute ignorance.

"Look, this is Mrs. Rex," he introduced the female dinosaur to the newly returned male one. "She missed you!"

He made the dinosaurs hug before sneaking the baby toy into the middle and put on a high pitched voice. "My turn! My turn!"

A chorus of kissing noises came the reunited dinosaur family as Henry puppeteered happily. Regina stretched out on her side, holding up Mrs. Rex since Henry's tiny hands could only hold so many toys and made kissing noises to both the baby and her husband.

Continuing in his Rexy voice, Henry used the smaller dinosaur to talk with the bigger one in both hands. "Daddy, did you have fun with Emma?"

Henry deepened his voice. "We had so much fun, little baby."

Then Henry looked up at his mother with a tilt to his head. "Can Emma play?"

And the other shoe dropped as her clever little boy pieced together the fact that Rex was here but Emma was not. Regina averted her eyes briefly, placing the toy in her hand down as she pushed herself up. "Sweetheart, I have to tell you something."

"'Kay." He continued playing, half his attention on bouncing his toys up and down as they moved across the bed while he glanced up every so often at his mother to show he was listening.

Regina took a deep breath and sat cross-legged, extending her hand to Henry who stopped his playing and crawled into his mother's lap so that he straddled her. He cupped her cheeks and locked their eyes in an adorable gesture saying she had his full attention.

She could back out now, Regina thought. She didn't have to tell him now. He was happy now. But he loved Emma just as much as she did. Does. Resting her forehead against his with a heavy sigh, Regina shut her eyes and let out a breathy shudder. "Sweetie," she began quietly. "Emma, Emma—she didn't bring Rex."

"How'd he get home?"

She pulled her head back just a little and couldn't help but dart her eyes to the hidden bag in her closet. If she just locked that bag away, then everything would go back to how it was before. When she used to dread the wait between every letter, now she desperately craved it.

She'd never have that again.

Choking sharply, her eyes watered again and Regina struggled to compose herself. "Sweetheart," she began again, timid and frail and not like anything she'd ever shown in front of Henry before. "Baby, Emma isn't coming back."

"Why?" He whined, his lip quivering and his eyes wide and glassy. "Doesn't she love us?"

"Of course, she does," Regina reassured quickly, wiping under his eyes at the moisture that leaked there. She shook her head softly, her hands tightening around him instinctively as her own tear escaped for the second time that day. "Because Emma—she's. . ." Captured, left for dead, worse.

It took her a half a minute to find a suitable response for the four-year old. "She's lost."

"Lost?" He repeated.

She nodded. "She doesn't know where home is."

"She can drive," Henry supplied.

Regina smiled softly and kissed his forehead. "It's not that simple, dear. She, she forgot where we live."

Henry scrunched up his face. Clearly living in Storybrooke where every street led back to Main which ultimately got to some familiar face who obviously knew who he was was a foreign concept. The only instance he had of being lost was that time when he wandered off into the forest when he was two, though Regina wasn't even sure if he truly remembered it. Then suddenly he sat up from her lap, a bony knee digging into her thigh before he ran out of her room, leaving his mother and the dinosaur family stranded on the bed.

Regina's confusion matched her son's. Quite frankly, she was expecting tears and tantrums. It was the norm whenever the soldier had to leave them, and now, the confusion dominated her heartache as she followed her son's rummaging and found him in his room, dumping his pencil case full of crayons and markers and pencil crayons onto the floor and flopping onto his belly where construction paper sheets lay.

"Henry?" She wondered, stepping into the room. "What are you doing?"

"Drawing," he answered obviously, marking a green construction paper with a big red 'X'. On a beige paper, he drew a stick figure with yellow hair, two green dots for eyes, and a wide toothy smile. Dash lines starting from the figure were drawn in curves and loops, jumping over the gap between the two pages, before ending at the 'X'.

Regina kneeled beside him on the carpet by the foot of his bed, her hair falling over a shoulder as she bent over his work. "What are you drawing?"

A big white lopsided square with a triangle on top was placed next the 'X' before two more figures were added. A woman with short brown hair and red lips and a little boy with shaggy brown hair, and—was that a rat's tail?

"A map!" He held up the two pages excitedly before putting them back down to continue his drawings. Soon trees were forming in the background, along with roads, and cars.

Regina was too baffled as she watched his map come to life. "For what, dear?"

"So Emma can come home." His childish shrug filled with blessed naivety tugged at Regina's chest. He pointed at the some of the landmarks on the page, starting closest by Emma. "She has to go over the bridge, and across the river, and inside the cave, and then she can find our house."

Regina had loved the fact that Dora the Explorer was able to teach her son the basic Spanish she had learned as a child, but never before had she praised the little girl and her talking monkey until now.

A genuine smile, one that reached her eyes for the first time all month, spread across her face as Henry continued to colour in his drawings. It was so simple to him. His logic made so much sense, and Regina couldn't fault him for that. Quite honestly, his simple solution gave her something to hold on to, reminded her that wherever Emma is, she's alive. She just knew it. She knew by tomorrow, she'd be wallowing again, but for now, her son had given her hope. So Regina crawled to her forearms and picked up a pencil crayon, nudging Henry's head with her own as he smiled up at her. "What else can we add?"


Chapter 21

Chapter Notes

Disclaimer in Chapter One.

AN: Fair warning that roughly the next three or four chapters will be solely about life in Storybrooke. That being said, it doesn't mean the story is over yet. Also, there will be considerable time jumps throughout the next few chapters, so I hope it isn't too jarring.