Title: Motionless
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Characters: Henry, Regina
Spoilers/Warnings: Perhaps. Short fics/drabbles with various OUAT pairings, based on List Beta/Hero from '30 kisses' prompts on LJ.
Summary: Once she was his hero — his mother, the Mayor, who could do anything and manage everything. She ran the whole of Storybrooke effortlessly, and she was a perfect mother.
Disclaimer: This is purely fictional. I own none of it.

[…]

Henry, Regina — motionless

A/N: Another stab at Henry and Regina's relationship. In my mind, this is essentially connected to my other fic 'Realizations' and continues to explore Henry's relationship with Regina. Have I ever told you how it is one of my favorite things to write? Nods. Title from prompt.

She comes into his room every night when she thinks he is asleep. He usually never is, but he learned to lie very still and breathe very slow a long time ago. He knows what she will do (his mind makes automatic connections now). This has been her routine for many years. He doesn't even remember when it started.

Every night he knows she will come when she thinks he is asleep (mostly he won't actually be — he waits, you see), she will dim his nightlight, and then sit on his bed, tuck him in. Next, he knows, she will smooth back his hair and kiss his forehead. Usually it's just the one kiss, but sometimes (lately more often than anything) it's two or even three, accompanied by a warm wetness on his forehead, which she gently and hurriedly wipes away with her fingers as if she fears it will wake him up.

Sometimes that's that, and she leaves. But sometimes she sits there for quite some time and just watches him sleep. That seems to be the longest time to him. Because he wants to open his eyes and look at her, or he wants to burrow deep in his quilt, away from her longing-filled dark gaze.

He peeks at her sometimes, and he doesn't understand why her eyes in that moment remind him of the stray kitten he had once brought back home after he had watched it being hit by a car one day. The little thing had been hurt so badly that its piteous meows were soon silenced; it had just trembled like a loose leaf in his hands and looked at him with his big, brown eyes filled with pain as she had cleaned his wounds and bandaged them (she was good at that — all the mom stuff). They had put it in a little box in front of the fire, but even with the extra warmth, it was all stiff and unmoving in a few hours. They had buried it in the backyard and he remembers how she had held him as he had cried himself to sleep that night.

In that moment, when she sits on his bed and looks at him, he is so desperately reminded of that kitten that he wants to curl up in a ball under his blankets. (Oddly enough, she thinks of that kitten often, too, because that was one of the last times he had let her hold him like that).

There's only so much of this that he can take.

He hates her, you see. He hates the way she dims his nightlight, hates the hands that gently tuck him in, the fingers that brush back his hair, the soft, warm lips, the sighing breath on his forehead and the salty stiffness of her tears when they dry beneath his hairline (it itches something fierce). He hates her dark, dying kitten eyes and the little dip that remains in his mattress when she leaves.

Once she was his hero — his mother, the mayor, who could do anything and manage everything. She ran the whole of Storybrooke effortlessly, and she was a perfect mother. Maybe they weren't best buddies but he idolized her and everything she did; his world started and ended with her. Then he grew up and looked deeper and began to find little cracks in the perfection. Oh, he had so many questions but there were no answers anywhere. The more he tried to find anything, the more stumped he was. He was bewildered when he looked around (all he saw was stasis), but most of all he was afraid for himself and his mother. Something seemed intrinsically wrong and he couldn't figure out what it was.

And then one day Miss Blanchard gave him that book. Everything began to make perfect sense — the people in Storybrooke were all victims! Everyone had been cursed by the Evil Queen. He was satisfied with this explanation until one day he began to guess the identities of the Fairy Tale Land residents and realization crashed down on him: the mayor, his mother, his hero was the Evil Queen.

They were distant before but this was the first time he began to actually flinch away from her touch, keep secrets and lay awake at night, waiting for that particular floorboard to sigh (she would never let them creak in her house now, would she? But this one's a stubborn thing and sort of sighs when weight is put upon it, you just need to learn to hear for it) and then he began to hate her. And he couldn't even escape. She was everywhere, every day. From the voice that woke him up every morning to the perfectly laundered and ironed clothes in his wardrobe, from the steaming hot breakfast to the neatly packed lunchboxes and painstakingly made dinners, from the corrected spellings and double-checked math sums in his homework books to the regularly updated stack of comic books on his shelf, from the flawlessly reattached buttons on his shirts and his seamlessly mended jeans no matter how many times he broke them or ripped them, to those daily, late night visits. Every corner he turned to, he found her.

So he ran away and found Emma.

He thinks about Emma a lot. Emma, whose eyes, even though filled with shadows and old sadnesses, are bright green, who looks at him with wonder and tolerance and concern, and something which he likes to think of as love. Emma who does not have dying kitten eyes and does not cry over his forehead (not yet, no, that comes later). Emma who cannot even boil an egg properly but breaks toasters in rage, who cannot lay a straight stitch to a fabric (let alone darn and mend) but who fishes him out of cold, collapsing mines and likes cinnamon on her hot cocoa. Emma who can tell when he's lying and argues about code names over walkie talkies and lets him eat ice creams and cookies and whatever else he wants, and does not give him grief about his peas and broccoli.

Emma who humors him and fights his mom over everything, who agrees with his mom over his well-being.

Emma who does not believe in fairytales but gives people their happy endings, nevertheless, who saves Evil Queens from office fires and stands up to overbearing landlords. Emma whom he wants to call mom and live with even though she drives a rickety Bug and lives in a cinder block apartment.

Emma who does not know that he cannot sleep until his nightlight is dimmed to a setting he doesn't even know, or that he needs a cavity filled in his lower left molar but hasn't said anything because he is scared of needles (but not for long because Regina noticed this morning how he flinched over his cereal and is going to march him right into the bathroom to look at his teeth when they both get home) or that in a fight between the Hulk and the Thing, he would always back the Thing, or that he does not like Batman. Emma knows about Operation Cobra and subterfuge and police laws, and how to defy his mom and how to fell a man who is trying to overpower you (she teaches him sometimes) but does not know what questions to ask in a parent teacher meeting.

No, that's Regina - who builds playhouses for him and buys him video games in order to make him smile (he doesn't), brings him forgotten lunch boxes and bakes lasagnas that he can't help but take second helpings of.

He hates every second of it.

He waits every night, though.

~fin~

A/N: This went a little astray from what I initially had in mind, but I think it works. Thoughts?