Chapter Text
one.
He's had these dreams for several years now, but this is the first time there's someone else here with him.
“Hello?” He tries to move forward to the newcomer lying on the floor in front of him—a woman, he sees, an adult in an expansive purple dress—but is rebuffed by a warning gout of flame. “Who are you?”
His voice seems to rouse the woman, who shakes her head and picks herself off the ground. She's halfway to standing when she spots him—and immediately, her face face fills with light.
“Henry,” she murmurs over a sigh, her voice low and warm, warm—
He frowns.
“How do you know my name?” he asks, and wakes up.
* * *
The next time Henry dreams of the room on fire, she's there, standing tall—though not that tall—and waiting for him.
“Who are you?”
She smiles again, and once again there's that warmth—he's surrounded by flames, but only his mom has ever made him feel like this.
“I'm a friend,” she says instantly, the words rolling off her tongue like they've been prepared long in advance. “But you can call me Regina.”
“So how do you know who I am?”
She laughs, low and harmonious. “Oh, Henry. This is your dream; of course I know who you are.”
“Oh.” Duh. That should have been obvious. “So why are you here?”
“Because of the same reason you're here, I suspect.”
And that isn't really helpful in the slightest, because—“This is a dream. I don't know why I'm here.” He tries a different tack. “I've been dreaming of this room for ages. How come you're here now?”
She smiles again, but not like before; this feels distant and—and sad, somehow. “I suppose I needed a friend, like you.”
Which sort of makes sense, except for one thing. “You're just in my dream. Do dream people need friends?”
“Henry,” she reproves, but gently, so gently. “Everyone needs friends.”
“Oh.” It still doesn't make total sense, but he accepts it. For some reason, there's something about this woman that he simply trusts. “I'm glad you're here. It got lonely in here.”
She's definitely sad this time, there's no mistaking it, and he's briefly tempted to go hug her—and as if responding to the mere idea of it, flame rushes between them, warning him away. But Regina, she just stands there, still and poised and smiling that sad smile of hers.
“I promise you, Henry, you won't be alone again.”
He blinks, taken aback by the openness of the promise. “Thank—thank you,” he stammers, unsure how to reply, but it seems to be all she needs because there's that warmth again.
“So why don't you tell me how you've been doing?” she says, in a voice too composed to be entirely natural—she's definitely been rehearsing this. As much as dream people can rehearse anything.
“But shouldn't you already know?”
“I don't know everything, Henry. Besides, we have a lot of time before you wake up.”
“But what about—”
“I'm a dream person,” she says, soft and comforting. “I'll be here for as long as you're here. I promised, remember?”
“Okay.” He sits on the floor, crosses his legs, and tells his new friend about his day.
two.
They talk for hours, spending the rest of the night in the same position, seated opposite other on the floor.
Or, rather, Henry talks. Regina mostly listens, only occasionally interjecting to ask him a question which invariably eggs him on, teases out some part of his story that he hadn't thought to vocalise. And it's nice, it's great to have someone who just listens like this, but—
“What about you? Don't you have any stories?”
“I'm a dream person, Henry. You haven't forgotten, have you?” Regina reminds him, and he wonders whether dream people are meant to be snarky. He likes it, though.
* * *
He's in the middle of telling her about his friends at school when she holds up a hand to pause him mid-sentence.
“Henry, wait.”
He frowns. “Is there something wrong?”
“Look down.” He does, and his hands are strangely transparent. As is the rest of his body.
He realises what it means at once. “I'm waking up.”
She nods, and for a brief moment her face cracks and—oh, Henry just wants to run across and hold her.
“I'll be back,” he promises instead, and it works, it works.
“And I'll be here.”
He wakes up drenched in warmth and a smile on his face.
* * *
He tells his mom at breakfast, but it doesn't go quite to plan.
“I made a friend,” he declares over waffles. “Last night.”
Her postures hardens, her green eyes wide and round. “What do you—”
He rolls his eyes, because whilst Emma is a great mom, relaxed and cool, she gets way, way too protective of him sometimes. He's thirteen, not six. “Not like that. I mean in my dream.”
Her shoulders loosen, and she lets out a snort. “Right, okay.”
“We talked for ages,” he begins, his voice trembling with excitement, “Her name is Regina and she's really nice, she just sits there and listens to me—”
“Kid, you do know it was just a dream, right?”
“Oh—yeah.” He looks down at his waffles, which have already begun to go cold.
three.
He next dreams of the fire room a few weeks later, and he's met at once by that warm, warm smile of hers.
“My mom doesn't believe you're real,” he says glumly, without preamble—but to his surprise, he gets a scoff and a roll of the eyes in reply.
“Of course she doesn't. I am just someone who appears in your dreams, after all.”
And he knows, but—“Just because you're just in my dreams doesn't make you less real.”
Not for the first time, he wonders how anyone can smile like that, how someone can look so happy yet so heartbroken at the same time. “No, it doesn't. But Miss Swan has always been quite the cynic and—”
“Wait. You know my mom?” he asks, surprised—and she freezes, her face two shades paler than before, as if she'd just given away a closely-guarded secret, but he soon remembers himself. “Right, hang on. In my dreams.”
She constructs a composed smile. “Of course. So, how have you been, Henry?”
He sits down in his spot and talks of school, New York, and a man named Walsh.
“This Walsh,” Regina drawls slowly, not quite making eye contact with him, “what do you think about him?”
He shrugs, well aware of his mom's checkered history with boyfriends. “He's nice, I guess. Mom just started going out with him.”
“Hmm.”
He has no idea how a dream person can make that sound that disdainful.
* * *
“I found an apple tree in Central Park.”
She quirks an eyebrow. “Oh? What type?”
“Honey crisp.”
A smile. “My favourite.”
He wonders at that—after all, do dream people like apples? But he doesn't question it.
“I might have stolen some,” he admits, trying to look bashful and failing miserably.
She snorts. “You truly are your mother's child.”
* * *
“You know, for someone who's only in my dreams, you have a lot of opinions.”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
“You don't like soft drinks,” he says, interpreting the roll of the eyes he'd just seen seconds before. “I love soft drinks.”
“Just because I'm a dream person doesn't mean I have to approve of all your tastes. Merely most of them,” she declares, her voice strangely firm. “And besides which, I don't hate them. I merely think they're very unhealthy, and you would do well to cut them down.” She sounds oddly tired as she finishes, as if she's said this many, many times before.
“You're not my mother,” he grumbles, and something happens to her face, something he doesn't recognise at all.
“Regina? What's—”
“Nothing. It's fine.” And just like that, she's composed and dignified again. “So: the museum.”
He nods, accepting, and continues his story.
four.
Six months in, his mom falls ill.
“—And she's always sleeping and has a fever and coughing and I don't know what to do,” he gushes, several days' worth of mounting anxiety spilling out in a rush.
“Your mother is an exceptionally strong woman. I'm sure she'll pull through this just fine,” Regina reassures him. It sounds exactly like the platitudes he's been hearing all week, but from Regina it feels… real, somehow.
“What can I do?”
“Make sure she sleeps and drinks plenty of water. Some honey and lemon tea may help with the sore throat, if she has that.”
He nods, but—“I'm only thirteen, I don't know how to take care of her like that—”
“Henry. I know you'll take care of her. You always have.”
He doesn't ask how she knows, because he sure as hell doesn't.
* * *
“Kid, this is amazing,” Emma rasps, her voice sounding marginally less like her throat had been dragged over a cheese grater now that she's drunk the honey and lemon tea. “Where'd you learn this?”
He swallows, unsure how to reply. “A friend taught me.”
“Well, tell them I said thanks a million.”
That night he does, and Regina laughs.
* * *
Despite his best efforts, Emma's condition does not improve over the next few days. In fact, the precise opposite happens.
“She has pneumonia,” Henry tells Regina glumly. “She got admitted to hospital this afternoon.”
“Oh, Henry.” Regina sighs, and her face is suddenly pale and drawn, which—which is good. He doesn't need reassurances and kind platitudes right now, he has plenty of those. He needs someone who understands.
“I'm scared,” he says miserably, wrapping his arms protectively around himself.
“I know, sweetheart. I know.” And her face is open and kind and no one, not even his mom—who has always displayed her love in other ways, though equally meaningful ones—has ever looked at him like that.
“What should I do?”
“Be there for her. That's all we can ever do.”
He nods, but he still mumbles, “I wish you were there for her.”
“So do I.”
* * *
A week which feels like a thousand years later, Emma, together with Henry, as he had spent most of his waking hours by her side, is discharged from the hospital. Henry clings to her on the ride home like she'll float off into the sky if he doesn't.
When he dreams of the room that evening, he tells her immediately.
“Thank you,” he says, more than a touch bashful but nonetheless determined to give his friend her due for the last week. He desperately, desperately wants to give her a hug, but the room—as ever—has other ideas.
In any case, the brilliant, star-bright smile he receives is all the reply he needs. He sits in his usual place, and starts telling her about how much he hates hospital food.
five.
Eight months, and for the first time he doesn't sit straight down when he dreams of the fire room.
“Henry, what's wrong?”
He turns away, not wanting her to get a full look on his face. Regina isn't his mother, she's just a friend, a dream person—but regardless, something tells him that she won't react well to the unsightly dark purple patch surrounding his left eye.
“Henry.”
His eyes fixed to the obsidian-black floor, he shuffles ever so slowly back so he's facing Regina. Sort of. Just enough so he can claim that he isn't hiding anything from her, whilst still hoping that she can't see—
“Is that a—”
He flinches. Damn.
“It's not a big deal,” he claims, trying to sound convincing and evidently failing, because Regina's lips thin and her eyes are glinting in a way which doesn't seem entirely natural.
“What happened, Henry? Was it those… those children?” She's talking about that clique of wannabe-footballers at school, he knows. He's ranted about them often enough in the past.
“Nothing, I just—”
“What happened?” Her voice hasn't raised in volume, but there's something about that tone which makes every hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
He swallows, a tightness in his stomach that he hasn't felt in this place before. “It's seriously nothing. “We were just playing hockey at school, and—and these guys came over and started arguing with us, and I—I got—Regina, are you okay?”
Regina's face had been gradually twisting into something genuinely terrifying, her jaw has locked in a way which must be painful and her eyes are burning with fires far less controlled than the ones separating them. Frankly, she looks murderous.
“You—you're scaring me a bit here,” he says, taking refuge in colossal understatement. Even his mom, who is easily the most intimidating person he knows when she wants to be, has never looked quite like this.
Mercifully, the words seem to pierce whatever hellish bubble Regina has sunk into, and her expression drops—too far, in fact, because it quickly descends into blatant horror. It's better than what came before, but not much.
“Henry, I—I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you—”
“It's fine,” Henry reassures, maybe a shade too quickly. “It's really nothing. I got distracted and the puck hit me in the face when I wasn't looking.”
She relaxes, just enough so his own anxiety melts away. “And you're sure it was an accident?”
“I'm sure.” He rolls his eyes. “You're almost as bad as mom was.”
“Oh, I can be much, much worse.”
six.
The second time he doesn't sit down immediately is close to a year after moving to New York, almost to the day.
“Henry, is there something wrong—”
“It's not me,” he says quickly. He sighs, and sits down. “Walsh proposed to mom.”
Regina's face twitches, then becomes expertly neutral. “I see.”
“You don't have to pretend,” Henry says, smirking a little at her reaction. “I know you don't like him. And I don't know if mom is going to say yes.”
Regina looks pleased—suspiciously so—but her voice is carefully calibrated to betray no emotion when she says, “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “She's been super weird ever since.” Once again, safety in understatement—he hasn't been able to get a handle on his mother all week, since coming home from the dinner with Walsh and telling Henry that he'd proposed to her. Ever since that day, she's been erratic and distracted and so not like his mom at all.
He guesses this is what adults around him call commitment issues. It's a good thing that he's already aware of his mom's awful track record with men (since his dad, anyway), or he'd be worried about her.
“And what do you think, Henry?”
“I just want her to be happy.” It's a non-answer, but an honest one. Walsh is the first boyfriend of Emma's that Henry's even met, and even though he's iffy about the man—Regina's work, mostly—Walsh seems to make her happy, which is the important thing.
He scratches the back of his head. “I dunno. I mean, I like him, and he was around a lot and visited us in the hospital when mom was sick but he didn't really take care of her.” Not like we did, he doesn't add. “I mean, he's nice, but shouldn't that be his job?”
“I suppose it should, but Emma had you. That's more than enough.”
“More you than me. I didn't have any idea what to do.” He pauses. “You know, for a dream person, you really care about my mom.”
“I don't know about that,” she says cautiously.
“You do. You keep asking about Walsh and about her work and you were really worried about her when she was sick.”
“Only to ensure she's taking good care of you, Henry. You are all I care about here.”
He doesn't buy it, but he doesn't push the subject either.
* * *
If anything, Emma gets worse. Much worse, given that they abruptly up and leave New York a few days later to go to Maine of all places. To make things even stranger, they go with a dark-haired man that Henry had never met before—a client, apparently, though the way he looks at her gives Henry other suspicions.
But Emma barely takes any notice; she's sombre and elsewhere even as she's driving, unresponsive to conversation and gazing pensively into the distance. Their new companion—Killian—is friendly enough, but even he is weirdly evasive when he asks about this supposed case that Emma just took, and he's soon bored out of his mind.
So bored, in fact, that he doesn't even notice he's drifted off until he feels cool, polished stone under his cheek and the insistent heat of nearby flames on his back.
“Henry!” Regina calls out as Henry hauls himself to a sitting position. “I didn't expect to see you here.” As ever, she looks delighted to see him.
“Hi.” He stretches out his limb—he may be dreaming, but the floor is still uncomfortable. “I—uh, I guess I nodded off.”
“In the middle of school?” Regina narrows her eyes in a manner that looks so mothering it's almost funny. “Henry, you know you shouldn't—”
“No, um—mom took a case. In Maine. We're driving there now and I guess I fell asleep.”
“In Maine?” She frowns. “But you said that she wasn't taking any cases outside of New York.”
“Yeah.” He purses his lips. “I think it's about Walsh.”
A second's pause, and another. “Ah. She said no.”
“Yeah. She's being really weird about it too. She says she's fine with it, but then the next day she packs our bags and takes us on a road trip with some random guy with one hand who we've never met—”
“Henry, wait.” Regina's voice is suddenly sharp and her eyes wide. “Are you—can you say that again? A man with one hand?”
“Yeah. Weird, huh?” He looks at Regina, noticing for the first time the unguarded shock written all over her face. “Is—is there something wrong? Should I worry about this guy?”
The look of total surprise hangs for a moment, but then collapses into a neutral and very-obviously-fake smile. “It's nothing. I'm merely as surprised as you were to hear about his… handlessness. I'm sure Emma knows what she's doing,” she adds with more conviction.
An idea strikes Henry and he opens his mouth—before hesitating. It's a stupid idea, one he knows is ridiculous and he's probably going to get mocked for it.
But still...
“If—if I find out anything about this case, could you help me out with it?” He already feels ridiculous, because Regina is a literal construct of his imagination—yet even so, he's never been quite able to shake this feeling that she's something more, so he continues, “I think mom could use a hand with this.”
As he had suspected she would, Regina laughs—but kind and warm, without a trace of mocking to be found. “Henry. Even if I could help, I don't think there's anything I could provide Emma Swan that she would actually need.”
It's honestly as good an answer as he could have expected. “Okay, I just—sometimes even mom needs some help.” And you could give it, he doesn't say.
“Oh, she'll have it. I'm absolutely certain of that.”