Title: Every Inner Inertia (3/?)
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Characters: Swan Queen, Henry
Warning/Spoilers: Light spoilers for Season 1. Warning for dark themes and angst.
Summary: Post-curse Fairytale Land AU. It has been two years since the curse broke but nothing is as it was supposed to be.
Disclaimer: This is purely fictional. I own none of it.

[. . .]

A/N: This chapter — this whole scene, especially the last part, I'd like to say, is the core of this story. This was the first scene I wrote for this fic — back then it was a one-shot and Emma wasn't even in it — and then it kinda squirmed and turned over and grew limbs and horns and a tail and everything. Also, this scene was written in its entirety while listening to 'Famous Blue Raincoat' by Leonard Cohen on repeat, which is possibly the saddest song on earth (and I know it isn't remotely related to this fic but it makes my heart hurt so bad!). Not a lot of things I write make me want to cry. In fact, fanfic making me cry is rare — my own fanfic making me cry is almost unheard of! This did. This does. I guess what I am trying to say here (on the risk of sounding cheesy) is that that last scene has a little piece of my heart in it.

[. . .]

"Don't you know," he said sadly. "All the tales are true."

...

They kept her in a small cell in the deepest, darkest part of the dungeons. Cold and bleak, it was the same one that had been especially constructed for Rumplestiltskin all those years ago, to hold his magic back, even though she didn't have a lot of magic left. When they had captured her, the King had wanted to kill her at once. The Queen had stopped his hand but it hadn't been out of pity. Henry still remembered the words she had uttered in the grip of mad grief and anger, freshly returned from thirty years of exile, freshly reunited with a now insane daughter.

"I will not have her killed," she had said, voice hard as stone and just as emotionless. "She has little, if any, magic left. Let her suffer. Let her suffer for thirty years. And then thirty more. Even then will I not be satisfied. Let her suffer."

Regina hadn't said anything, she hadn't uttered a word of protest or a sound of regret. She had gone very quietly with the soldiers.

Getting rid of the guards that night was easier than he had thought. He was their prince, after all, and they left him alone when he asked them to. He walked towards her cell passing intentionally through the shadows, his boots making a soft, tapping sound on the stone floor covered with rushes. He stopped a dozen steps from the metal bars, shrouded in the dark.

"Is it time to eat already?" called out the voice he knew so well. He didn't answer, just stood there in the shadows and looked at her.

Her body seemed to have shrunken but her presence was still the same; it was as overpowering as ever. She was thin, her hair hung limp around her face, longer than he ever remembered but shorter than he knew they once had been. There were dark circles around her eyes and the drab grey garments she wore hung loosely on her shoulders. Her cheeks might have been hollowed, her face paler than it had ever been, but she had lost none of that regal grace that had always made her face unforgettable. Her features were still haughty and as composed as ever. It didn't look like imprisonment had affected her much. But even as he stood there watching silently, he saw some of the composure falter.

"Who is it?" she said, peering at him in the shadows, and he saw an uncertain look pass over her face, followed by something akin to hope, as she came forward to grip the bars of her prison cell.

"Are you—?" She took a deep breath. "Is that you, Henry?"

Henry was surprised, but only for a moment; of course she would know.

"Yes," he said after a few seconds of debating silence, and saw her face strangely light up in the dark, damp dungeon. The change was instantaneous; for a moment he thought she was going to laugh out loud.

"Won't you — come into the light? Let me look at you." Her tone, though, was hesitant, pleading. "Please." She added when he didn't respond, and somehow he found himself stepping forward and pushing back his hood, letting the flickering light of the lone torch on the wall fall on his face. He watched her looking at him, drinking in his face like a thirsty, starving survivor in the desert who happens to find water at the last moment.

"Look at you," she whispered, a gleam of sudden, unshed tears in her eyes. "So tall, so handsome. So grown-up."

He was a little ashamed at how much he craved that note of pride in her voice. His heart was starved of any maternal affection. The King and Queen were the only paternal figures he had right now and they were still grieving for their own daughter, still trying to catch up on thirty years of parenting and the fact that they hadn't been able to do anything about it, and how helpless they had been, unable to do anything even when the end had come. They did not have time for a fifteen-year-old boy in their grief and pain.

For a moment the pride and love in her voice made him feel much taller than he actually was. For a moment he felt like a little boy and he wanted nothing more than to rush into the arms of the woman who had brought him up, soothed so many of his hurts and pains for most of his short-spanned life.

"You look so much like her," she said. "You have her eyes."

That made all the feeling in his heart turn to ice in a moment and he planted his feet even more firmly at the spot he was standing, willing himself to move not an inch closer.

She smiled wistfully like she understood. "I'm so proud of you," she said. "You're all grown up. My handsome little gentleman," she whispered, and that was exactly the wrong thing to say because it hit him right in that raw, bruised nerve.

"I'm not!" He hissed vehemently. "I'm not your anything."

He saw a shadow of deep pain pass through her eyes before she schooled her features back into a semblance of serene composure.

"Of course not," she said.

They were both silent for some time. He looked at her, moving a step closer. There were lines on her face which had never been there before, and her eyes were full of a deep, aching sorrow.

Finally he was the one to break the silence that stretched between them.

"I heard that song the other day," he said abruptly, and because he could not think of anything else to say. "The one you used to play to me on our piano back—" Back home, he wanted to say but stopped. "—back in Storybrooke. And when you used to sing me to sleep at night. You only ever sang that one song."

"You never wanted any other," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "You only quieted down when you heard that song."

"It used to make my heart ache, even when I didn't know what the words meant." He watched her watching him, her gaze was steady but her eyes glittered with something that looked very much like unshed tears.

"You never sang me the whole thing," he continued, softly, slowly. "You never told me which part of the song it belonged to." He watched her eyes widen a little, her mouth set in a pinched, hard line of pain. "You never told me it was the part where she—" He stopped as he saw one lone tear make its way down one cheek. "—where she was singing to her dead lover, telling him to sleep peacefully and forever. After digging his grave under the old oak where they used to meet."

"Who—" she began but he over-rode her, speaking in that same soft voice.

"I read all of it today. 'The Lay of the Lost Lovers'. About true love and happiness, and betrayal and sorrow. About the man who died thinking he had eternal happiness in his grasp till his dying breath, when his heart was ripped out of his chest, when he found out how wrong he had been. And about the girl who broke so completely as he died in her arms even as she kissed his already cold lips, trying to bring him back with True Love's kiss which never worked. The void she then tried to fill with pain and heartache and dark magic, which sent her over the edge and into sheer darkness."

He saw the tears falling freely from her eyes now.

"Who — where did you hear — who told you this?"

"The old court bard," he said.

"Zorbas?"

He nodded, remembering his shriveled up, old face.

"You know him? The song said up in the East there is an unmarked grave under an old oak tree. The Queen banished him from the court when she found him singing this song to me."

"Good riddance, then," she said, wiping at her face with the back of her hand, her voice shaky. "Telling you such tales!"

"Don't you know," he said sadly. "All the tales are true."

He let the sentence hang there like a dark, cloying cloud and she looked at him feeling her heart ache. He was much too young to feel such sorrow, to have his voice weighed down with sadness so much greater than his years. He was much too young to stop believing in the possibility of happy endings. She took a deep breath and gathered herself.

"Snow doesn't know you're here, does she? She would never have allowed you to see me. She hasn't, for the last two years, no matter how hard I've begged, pleaded, cajoled every time she comes to vent and scream at me. Does she know you're here now?"

Silence greeted her question, seconds lengthening into minutes.

"My mother has lost her mind," he said after minutes of absolute quiet, in a voice soft enough to be a whisper, enunciating each word with great care as if they would break, or he would break.

He saw the shadows of pain and regret deepen on her face.

"My mother is insane. They keep her in the tower. Shackled to the walls." He spoke haltingly. "They can't unchain her because then she hits them. And hurts herself." He stopped for a moment as if to collect himself. "She doesn't know anyone anymore, but sometimes when I go to see her, she holds my hand. She cries — or sometimes she laughs. And sings. Not really proper words, she just—" he looked up to see her gripping the bars with white knuckles, tears sliding down her face steadily.

"It sounds like your song," he told her and he could see the ache in her eyes. Silence stretched between them.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," he said.

"I wish I could—" she began but he went on.

"This isn't how it was supposed to be. The Evil Queen was supposed to be destroyed. You were supposed to die. And Emma was supposed to live. Happy." He swallowed. "Sane."

His voice was oddly thick. She looked at him and ached. "I wish I could make that happen for you, I swear. Give you and Emma your happy ending even if it means I have to get out of your life forever. What are another thirty years of misery to me, if you're happy."

He swallowed hard and went on.

"For so long I have hated you, even before the curse was broken, even in the other world. I hated you so much." Even though she tried to maintain her indifferent expression she could not; he saw the pain his words were causing her but he did not stop. "What was there to love? You were the Evil Queen, incapable of love or regret or simple acts of kindness, and in turn unworthy of all of these, either. You had stolen the happy endings from everyone around you, and I was sure your love for me was all an act, that I was a part of some evil plot or a scheme, a mere cog in the whole evil machine."

She started to shake her head but then stopped, lips pinched, letting him carry on.

"For years I hated you. I hated you when I woke up, and I hated you when I went to sleep. I hated you with an absoluteness that only a ten-year-old can manage. And when you started seeing Emma, I was sure it was a scheme to bring down the White Knight. In my mind you were the source of all evil. And everything you did was a ruse, every thought was a scheme, every word was either a veiled threat or a lie. And I was the hero, the persecuted one, and Emma was the Knight in shining armor, only she fell off her horse at the wrong place."

"Henry—"

He shook his head, opened his mouth to speak but it took him a moment to get the words out.

"When I was four I used to make you kiss every spot I got hurt at, to make the pain go away, you remember?"

She nodded; of course she remembered.

"You never once said no," he went on. "You kissed every scraped knee, every broken fingernail, every bruised ankle, every head bump, every spot I said hurt until I out-grew it."

He had stepped forward towards her, his hands reaching out to grab the cold metal bars as his voice broke. "It hurts."

"Oh, baby." She reached out hesitantly and cupped his face, wiping at his tears with her thumbs.

"It hurts, Mom," he said as a sob escaped his throat and he slid down to the cold, stony floor of the dungeon. She slid down with him, never letting go of his face. From across the cold, hard bars she pulled his face forward gently and kissed his forehead.

"I still hate you. I blame you for everything that happened. How could you — with all your might and power, your curses and spells and everything — how could you let that happen to Emma?"

He sobbed harder than ever as Regina held him from across the bars.

"Your love was a lie! Hope was stolen, Hope was false, it was lost! How could you let that happen, Mom?"

"I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry, Henry," was all she said as her tears splashed down her face and onto the top of his head.

A/N: That's that for now. I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.