Nope, I don't own 'Once Upon a Time.' Which is a pity, as I'm just dying to find out what happens next! It's not often a show grabs me by the throat and shakes me down, but this one has. And it's not even six episodes into the first season yet! *screams in frustration* Still, that means I get to muck about in their universe and have fun with their characters and the premise (which is pure genius, by the way, wish I'd thought of it) all I want. Mwahahahaha! Enjoy, and please review. I live for reviews. They're my happy ending.

Henry's always been different from the other kids.

He's always been different from everybody.

He was six when he first noticed it. "Tell me a story," he demanded of Granny.

"Once upon a time," she started, and Henry shook his head.

"No," he said, tugging on her sleeve. "Tell me a real story. From when you were a little girl."

Granny just stared at him. Her mouth opened once, twice. Then a cloud passed over her eyes and she smiled, absently, almost blankly. "Once upon a time," she said again, and proceeded to tell him the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The same one she always told him.

He tried pestering her for another story, a different one, a true one, but the same look drifted across her eyes and she always started again, "Once upon a time..."

Henry fled home, vowing he would never read another fairy tale again.

Henry was seven.

"Mr. Gourd," he asked the friendly farmer who sometimes let Henry ride on his lap and steer the tractor, "How long have you lived here?"

The old man plucked a stalk of grass from beside the road where they walked and tucked the fat, juicy stem between his teeth, where he crushed it betwixt his back molars, rolling the three-foot stalk as he chewed, and walked, and thought. "Oh, bout mah entire life, Ah reckon," he said at last. "An' mah gran'pappy before me."

"What was it like, when you were my age?" Henry asked, eagerly. He'd picked a grass stem of his own and, watching Mr. Gourd closely, tucked it carefully into his cheek, biting down hard. And instantly spit it back out again, hard, woody splinters sticking to his tongue.

Mr. Gourd didn't seem to notice, lost in thought. "Bout the same as it always is, Ah reckon," he finally replied. "Allus has been, ever since mah wife left. She had wanderin' feet, always did." He heaved a heavy sigh. "Thought she'd come back for good when I built the ol' homestead. But I ain't seen hide nor hair of 'er in I don't know how long."

Young Henry digested this. "So...you built your own house?" he asked. The massive, orange-colored farmhouse had always seemed ancient to him. It didn't seem conceivable that Mr. Gourd had built it himself.

"A'yup," said Mr. Gourd. And that was all.

Inquisitive Henry was undeterred. "How long did it take?" he asked, eagerly. "How many boards? Did you have any help at all? How did you get the roof on?"

Mr. Gourd paused in the road, rolling the stalk between his teeth, pulling it in and folding it over, chewing it down to an inedible wad before he spat it out into the ditch. "Now don't you go fuddling an old man's head, Henry," he said, uncharacteristically firmly. "The past ain't meant to be lived in, it's meant to be forgot." His voice softened. "Now why don't you tell me about that garter snake you found yesterday. Mrs. Shuester said she 'bout jumped a mile when you come up out of the grass holdin' the thing."

Henry grinned and related the tale enthusiastically, and Mr. Gourd laughed and laughed. "Oh, Henry!" he gasped, hands on his knees as he chortled. "Life around here was not the same before you came! Definitely not the same!"

He thought about that day later, much later, when he started to put the pieces together.

Henry had just turned eight the day that he met Tony and his sister Amber. They were in his class at school, foster kids who had been lucky enough to be kept together.

"Don't you think it's weird?" Henry mused to Tony one day. They were wandering along the beach, having just spent the day examining tide pools (mostly boring), looking through the wrack on the tideline for interesting bits and pieces (slightly more interesting, the two boys had filled their pockets with sea glass and weird-looking rocks and seashells. Tony really seemed to like the bright white stones the best), and just enjoying a day out from under the thumb of their parents. Amber had been with them for awhile, until their foster mother had called her in to help with chores.

"What's weird?" said Tony, voice rather sticky. "Want one?" he asked, offering Henry his bag of candy. Henry didn't think he'd ever seen Tony without it tucked somewhere on his person.

Henry reached in and selected a jawbreaker, which he tucked into his cheek to suck for as long as he could get it to last. His mother frowned on candy, much preferring apples and other, healthy snacks. "The other kids in school," he answered. "I don't think I've ever had anyone the same in any of my grades. How about you?"

Tony shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "We've bounced around a lot. I guess I can't really tell." He swallowed his latest mouthful and pulled a gumdrop out of his bag, admiring the weak sunlight shining on its faceted sugar coating before popping it into his mouth and closing his eyes with evident relish.

"Where were you before?" Henry asked, idly curious.

Tony opened his mouth to answer, frowned, and cocked his head to the side, like he was thinking. "I dunno," he said at last. "We bounced around a lot. Want one?" He offered Henry the bag again, but Henry batted it aside impatiently.

"You already said that," he said. "How long have you been here?"

A shrug. "A year? Maybe six months? It's hard to keep track. We -"

"Bounce around a lot, yeah," said Henry. "I get it."

"Don't get mad, Henry," Tony said, a hint of a whine in his voice. "I don't want you to be mad with me."

"Why not?" Henry asked, petulantly folding his arms.

Tony gripped his arm, suddenly. His eyes flicked from side to side, frantically, before he leaned in and whispered, "Because things aren't - they don't feel as real when you're not around. You make things... they live when you're around. Don't leave me and make me forget again. Please, Henry! I don't want to go numb again!" Then his eyes went wide and he let go of Henry like he was a hot iron.

Henry turned around. His mother was standing there.

"It's time to come home," she told him. "Tony, your foster mother is looking for you. I think she has some bad news for you." Regina took Henry's hand to lead him back to her car.

Tony took one long, last look back at his friend, eyes big and sad and resigned."Bye, Henry," he said at last.

"See you, Tony!" Henry waved at the other boy.

Tony shook his head, sadly. "No. I don't think you will." Then he hustled back to his foster parents' house.

Henry didn't see Tony or Amber again. Regina said that their foster family had gotten tired of them and sent them back, and the system had shipped them across town, to the other school.

Then, mistaking the fear in his eyes, she hugged him and told him that he was her own, precious boy, adopted or no. She was never going to give him up, not ever.

He hugged her back, but it wasn't her face he saw before his eyes.

It was Tony's.

Henry was nine.

He hadn't been able to make any friends, not since Tony. The other kids all felt... flat, to him. Like they were characters, made of paper. They smiled, and joked, and did things and had emotions and acted like they were real, but Henry, who had learned what to look for, wasn't fooled. They could pretend like they were his friends, but there was no depth there, no substance. Nothing concrete. Like they were walking around half-dazed, all the time, and they didn't understand what he meant when he said he wanted more, deeper.

So he retreated into books. They were flat, and made of paper, but that was okay. They were supposed to be. And though they couldn't respond to him, he could respond to them. The characters became his best friends.

He tried to explain this to his mother.

That was when he and Dr. Archie Hopper really started spending a lot of time together.

And then, just before his tenth birthday, he uncovered It.

The Book.

Oh, he'd read fairy tales before. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen had been two of his favorite authors ever since he was big enough to not be intimidated by large books.

This one was different.

It told the stories in ways he'd never read them before. Snow White was a tough bandit. Cinderella had made a Deal with Rumpelstiltskin. Jiminy Cricket had once been a man. And a baby had been born to Snow and her prince, just before the Evil Queen had destroyed their land with a curse.

He devoured the stories. Once he finished the book, he opened it back up to the beginning and read it again. And again. And again.

And slowly, a germ of a spark of a speck of an idea took root. He looked around at all of the people, who seemed real enough, but weren't. His classmates never aged, he'd noticed that. The adults never changed. Nothing ever changed.

Like they were asleep. Awake, but asleep, wandering about in a dream.

Like they were waiting for their stories to continue. For their endings to come.

And Henry knew from the book that there was only one way for those endings to happen. He had to find Snow White's daughter.

He had to find Emma.

He had to find, he came to realize suddenly and all at once, just one person.

He had to find his mother.

Henry was ten.

He stood outside the door of the small temporary housing unit where the website had said Emma Swan had her residence, and took a deep breath. This was it. This was the culmination of all his months of searching and plotting and planning.

He raised his fist, and paused.

Three...two...one...

The winds of fate were at his back as he brought his knuckles to wood and knocked.

And Henry smiled.

Things were about to change.