epilogue. germination

Mom is standing by the window, hands clasped behind her as she watches the New York traffic far below them. There are long-dead plants around her, brown leaves drooping at her feet, and Henry thinks that this is the only time that Ma had gotten plants during their years- false years- together.

This had been the first place that they'd meant to stay long enough that plants had been an option, and now they're dead and Mom stands in their place and it's a fair trade, really. He wouldn't have it any other way.

"Do you like it here?" he asks, peeking up at her again.

Mom half-turns, a guarded smile on her face. "It's beautiful. You had so much sunshine." Her eyes are warm but her fingers are fidgeting where they're locked together, anxious energy like she can't wait to get out of this place.

New York scares Mom in a way that Boston and all the rest stops they'd made along the way here haven't. Henry knows what it is about this city- this apartment- that frightens her. He's been wiggling the foot he has trapped under him with the same trepidation. "It's been a long time since she went downstairs."

"Yes." Mom gestures for him and he joins her at the window, squinting down at what she'd been watching before.

There's a tiny figure seated at a cafe across the street, elbows down on the table and head pressed into her palms. Mom's arm goes around his back and he leans into it, watching Ma down below worriedly. "You don't think she's…she's coming back with us, isn't she?"

It's been quiet since Zelena's ultimate defeat. Ma's officially been living with Gram for the past couple of months, but she spends nearly all her time with them and she'd seemed happy, he'd thought. She'd started smiling with her eyes again, even around Zelena, and she looks at Mom like she's awestruck that they're together all the time. It had seemed like a safe and opportune time to make the trip back to New York to pack up their stuff and make themselves a proper home at last, but maybe he'd overestimated Ma's state of mind.

"Of course she's coming back with us," Mom says firmly, steering him away from the window. "She'd never, ever leave you, you know that."

"And I'm staying in Storybrooke," he says with certainty. Mom lets out the tiniest exhale, like she's been just as worried about him as she has Ma, and he lays his head down against her shoulder in silent confirmation.

They have a home. This is just a part of his past now, less fuzzy than the rest but still not 108 Mifflin Street in a little town in Maine. He knows it. Ma knows it too.

He sits back on the sofa and Mom tries to bring him closer to her, to have him curl against her like he's still a little kid. It's awkward and he's too tall and they both laugh uncertainly at it, but he scoots in there anyway, nestles his head into the crook of her arm and closes his eyes.

When he opens them, it's getting dark outside and he's stretched out on the couch. Ma and Mom are arguing back and forth over whether or not they're keeping one of the wall hangings, their backs to him but each with an arm wrapped around the other's waist.

The car is packed with dozens of silly little things they'd kept from the apartment- Ma had shrugged it all off in the end last night and said, It doesn't matter anymore, and suddenly it had mattered very much to Mom instead- and he falls asleep three hours into the ride with his head squashed against a stack of boxes and wakes up alone in the parking lot of a New Hampshire rest stop at noon.

He blinks and squints out of the car with bleary eyes, wondering if he's been abandoned, but then he sees his moms perched on the hood of the car together, Ma leaning back on her palms and Mom sitting straight with her legs crossed and her head turned to Ma's. They're kissing. What else is new.

He rolls his eyes and leans back against the boxes, eyes closing again.

They're six hours into the drive when they finally hit Maine, and now it's Mom who's asleep in the passenger's seat as Ma slouches over the wheel, eyes determined. "Shouldn't be much longer now."

"Cool." He perks up, sensing a chance. "Hey, this highway is really quiet. What if I took the wheel?"

"What if I died a gruesome death when your mother figured out what we were doing?" Ma gives him the stinkeye in the rearview mirror. "You're twelve."

"And a half. That's basically fifteen."

"You're also basically an infant."

"We can drive side streets?"

Ma maneuvers her hand behind her seat to swat at him and he dodges it. "I haven't forgotten you trying to crash my Bug. I'm not letting you near the driver's seat until Regina pays someone to teach you how to drive."

"Spoilsport." But now he's remembering that night when he was ten, seizing the wheel from Ma and twisting it before she can cross the town line. He looks up and into Ma's eyes in the mirror, suddenly somber, and he knows she's thinking of the same.

"I never thanked you," she murmurs, and he blinks.

"What?"

"Twice. More than that, but twice you didn't let me leave. Even without your memories." Her eyes are worn and weary, too much still weighing on them, but beneath them she looks at him and he feels so…

Loved. "Last night, when I went down to collect the mail from the Newtons, I guess I got sidetracked, thinking about what being here had meant to me." Ma glances over at Mom as though to make sure that she isn't listening to her confessional. "That things were right and they were happy and so little around us mattered." She laughs. "I think that was the biggest appeal of it. How nothing mattered but you. And when I thought about it, thought about what we had there and what we have now…" She looks away from the mirror, her voice sounding strained. "There's no comparison, is there?"

"Mom gave us good memories." He stares thoughtfully out the window, watching the trees fly by. "She never gave us a happy ending. I don't think we could have one without Storybrooke."

"We'd just be missing pieces of ourselves," Ma agrees, and there's a haunted quality to how she says it. Ma's lived her whole life missing pieces of herself, longing for her parents and then eventually him. And now she looks so different than she had in Boston on the day they'd met again, fewer sharp angles and more gentleness in her eyes. "Thank you for bringing me home, Henry. Thank you for never letting me leave again."

They cross the town line at a snail's pace but Mom still jerks from her spot in the driver's seat and slumps against the wheel for a moment, and Ma is suddenly quaking in her seat like she'd been struck by lightning.

Mom sits back up but Ma's still shaking, ragged breathless sobs tearing themselves from her throat, and Mom parks in the middle of the road and pulls Ma out of the car, holding her with light hands cupping Ma's elbows. "Breathe," she instructs her. "Let the magic flow through you. It's yours, remember? You control it."

Ma slips into her arms instead and presses her forehead to Mom's right temple. "I think I was just smacked in the chest with a sledgehammer."

"Oh. Yes, your heart." Mom actually flushes, the faintest orange highlighting her cheekbones, and Henry prepares to find reason to zone out before they get embarrassing.

But instead, Ma takes a deep breath and the shaking slows and she says, "Yeah, my heart. Ever going to tell me what that's about?"

"What?"

"You know. That thing you pretend isn't a thing. It's been months." Henry surreptitiously leans forward, closer to Ma's open door and his mothers beyond it. "What happened to my heart on that day when…when you woke up?" Ma doesn't talk about anything else from that day anymore, but no one else wants to, either, so that's okay. Zelena dances around it and gets grouchy when it's brought up and Robin Hood avoids their whole family now and Gram always looks like she wants to cry, and all in all, the town seems mostly relieved to act as though nothing from that whole week had ever happened.

"Oh. That." Mom's arm tightens around Ma's waist and she speaks with reluctance. "You'd tried to burn your heart up alive. Which I'm told is impossible, but you were very powerful and very stubborn and very stupid," she adds warningly. Ma smirks. "By the time I got to you, you were already halfway gone."

"So how am I alive now? Did you–"

"No. Yes," Mom corrects herself almost instantly. "It wasn't just me, Emma."

Ma takes a step back from her, brow furrowing. "I don't understand."

"You have…your heart was born of true love." Mom drops her arm from Ma and fidgets with her fingers. "And there was never going to be a way to heal you without that."

Ma gapes at her. "We–"

"We rebuilt your heart from the mess you'd left it in." Mom's flush gets deeper. "Your magic and mine together saved you. I was able to siphon as much of your life force as I could to keep you alive, then I rushed you to the hospital. And your heart drew energy from us whenever we were together again." She presses her lips together, visibly self-conscious. "I didn't tell you because I thought it was…too much pressure, I suppose."

"Because we share true love," Ma breathes. Her eyes are round and her mouth is still open in an "o" and Henry grins at her from behind his stack of boxes because duh, Ma.

"We share magic, too. Your heart was remade from my…my love, my power, just as much as your own." Mom still looks uncertain, taking Ma's hand in her own and holding it tightly. "I know it's a lot to take in."

"Yeah." Henry had seen them like this a year ago, in the same pose in the same place in front of the town line. And their faces are different now, fewer tears even with this new revelation, but the same awe is shining in Ma's eyes and the same love is in Mom's and he'd thought that they'd fallen in love when he'd returned to Storybrooke with Ma but now he's certain that he was wrong. They'd fallen in love at the town line a year ago, had reached an understanding and bidden each other goodbye a moment later, and he's inexplicably mournful at the thought of it even now.

Ma closes her other hand around Mom's grasp and tugs it closer to press their joined hands against her heart, and she says, "Let's go home."

Henry is the first up the walk to the house, balancing a box of his clothing and trying his best not to trip, when the door is thrown open and Gram comes rushing out in a tearful rush of emotion. "Henry! Emma! You're back!"

He gets a quick hug before she's tearing toward Ma, throwing her arms around her, and Ma pats her back and says, "It was just two days, Snow. What's so–" She pauses, eyes narrowing. "Zelena did something."

But Zelena is in the doorway now, looking cranky at the accusation. "I was on my best behavior, thanks for asking, Emma." She rounds on Mom. "And you left me with those two? Do you know how hard it was to resist the urge to arrange an accident?"

"I've been there," Mom agrees solemnly, stepping to the side to sleekly avoid Gram's attempt at a hug. "We had no choice."

"I don't need a babysitter," Zelena mutters. She's been getting more of her powers back lately and Mom had been worried about leaving her alone in town, but Gram had been adamant that she'd be fine with them and the house is still standing. So it's probably okay.

"Welcome back," she says now, and there's a ghost of a smile on her face when she meets Ma's eyes. Ma rolls her eyes good-naturedly in response and Zelena turns to Mom, and there's another brief smile sparkling in her eyes that's returned with Mom's lips curving upward.

Henry gets the full-sized grin and he ducks in for a hug with her, glad that she hasn't killed anyone during their trip. He sets down his box in the foyer just as Ma says, "Did you think I wasn't coming back?"

He glances back and Ma is back in Gram's arms- no, Ma is hugging Gram, arms flung around her and eyes shut tight as she holds on. Gram strokes her hair and murmurs into her ear and Henry doesn't know what Ma says in response, but he makes out the way her lips form the word Mom and now Gram's the one with eyes squeezed shut in her arms.

He talks on the phone to Adi and Ava about plans for tomorrow morning and Mom gives him a curious look while Ma says in a stage whisper, "So which one is he dating?" and then he flushes and says crankily, "I'm twelve," which isn't really an answer at all.

But Ma is so obnoxiously happy and Gram has already packed up the last of her things from the loft and sent them over and they both drop the topic in favor of the lightness that suffuses the household tonight. Ma makes dinner and Zelena makes snide comments about it but refuses to surrender her plate when Ma tries to grab it from her. They all sit on the couch after dinner and watch America's Funniest Home Videos and Henry and Zelena pretend not to notice when Mom and Ma sneak out of the room and upstairs.

They do turn up the volume, though, and they loudly complain their way through that dumb fantasy show that plays afterwards with mutual silent agreement to never acknowledge what's probably happening upstairs. This is how it'll be from now on, he guesses. The healing period is over and they're all finally home again.

The next weekend, Mom and Ma are set up in the yard playing- they call it practicing magic or working, but Mom came inside once with purple hair and Ma once spent the evening after as an overly exuberant chihuahua so he doesn't buy it- and Henry sits at the patio table, doing his homework with Mom as she barks out warnings at Ma in tandem.

He forgets to make himself scarce when Ma and Mom start to argue, gritted teeth and animated disagreement and Ma stalking in closer to Mom. When he looks up next, they're kissing, parting with laughter and smiles and love, and Ma stumbles as she steps back and seizes Mom's hand instinctively and they crash down into the grass together.

Flowers sprout up where they land, blues and purples growing more numerous for as long as they remain on the ground, and Ma lies back and Mom rolls over and they're both lying beside each other in a garden that seems to surprise neither of them.

Some of the flowers are so dark they're nearly black and some are so light they're nearly white, but almost all of them are somewhere in between. Henry doesn't understand it but it's magic, same as everything else his family seems to be when they're all together.

Mom plucks a purple-blue flower and presses it briefly to her lips before she tucks it into Ma's hair, and Ma smiles.

And there you have it. Much thanks to those of you who've stuck with me throughout- I know this wasn't an easy ride, and I appreciate all the encouragement you've given me that kept me going, whether in comments or kudos or favorites or even hits. :)

And if you are so inclined, I'd love to hear what you thought of this!

Until next time~