They disappoint, they disappear, they die but they don't.
They disappoint, in turn I fear, forgive though they won't."
'No More' - Into The Woods (Sondheim/Lapine)

Disclaimer: This story, while it borrows the title, does not follow the events of 'We Need To Talk About Kevin'. No school massacres, and the only crossbow will be Granny's, I promise.

Little boys shouldn't play with knives, Henry.

Mom told him that time and time again. But then she turned out to be the Evil Queen of his nightmares, and somewhere along the line he stopped listening to all the important things she tried to teach him.

Emma told him to stay with Ruby, but Emma doesn't really teach lessons like Mom does, other than the best way to get someone else to do your laundry or how to jimmy the lock on an apartment door when you lose your keys for the third time in a week. And Ruby is really sweet, but she's really easy to sneak away from, even with the whole wolf tracking thing.

He used to sneak away from his mom a lot too. But that woman who also taught him not to play with matches is still the Evil Queen, and she's probably tried to kill everyone in this room. She even killed Henry himself once, but that was an accident and it's hard to get mad when it broke the curse and made everything so cool.

But when she's the one to pick up the dagger, and Mr Gold lunges at her, Henry no longer sees the Evil Queen. He sees his mom, who knows that he likes chives in his eggs, the way she makes them for herself; he sees his mom, who knows all the words to his special song about bears, that nobody else in the whole world has ever heard, not even Emma, because he's really too old for that now.

Little boys can be so much faster than adults, and in a split-second, Henry lunges too.

He doesn't have to make a choice, really. Just by grabbing the dagger from his mom's hand, Henry puts himself right on course for Mr Gold to fall on its silver blade. Henry scrambles out from under him, pulling the knife out as he does.

"I did it for you, Mom," Henry tries to say, but his mouth is so dry and the words just won't come. The blood is leaking out on either side of Mr Gold, rich and dark and not as red as Henry imagined it would be. It looks more like wine, like the time he spilled a glass on Mom's spotless white rug, and she had to throw it out.

With a gurgling sound, Mr Gold goes very still, and Henry really hopes someone is going to hurry up and make him okay.

He looks at the two people on the floor: his grandfather, and a grandmother he never met, before looking back at his Mom. He expects a hug, maybe one of those kisses on the top of his head that he squirms away from but secretly likes. But when his Mom's eyes meet his at last, she screams.

"I hate magic!" Neal growls and he unleashes his anger on the nearest tree, kicking at it until he connects a little too well and hobbles off in fresh frustration.

Emma bends, grabbing her knees and trying desperately not to hurl. No matter how many times she sees magic—hell, no matter how many times she's done it herself—the adjusting is taking a hell of a long time to happen.

"We've got to get back," she shouts after Neal. The woods are still largely unfamiliar, but this part Emma knows well, by the Toll Bridge. "Cora, we have to stop her!"

"And what are we supposed to do, Emma?" Neal demands, marching up to her like it's her fault he never filled her in on the whole fairytale mess. He gets right in her face, and for a moment between them it's so ugly that Emma can't remember which part of her ever loved the guy.

"Well," Emma says, taking maybe the deepest breath of her life. "I think I should try to do the same spell that brought us here?"

"Woah!" Neal doesn't look thrilled at the news. "Magic enough to use the chalk is one thing, but you can do spells? What are you, some kind of witch?"

His tone really only stiffens Emma's resolve to tell him to go screw himself. This stuff is weird enough, and he could have helped her so much sooner. She could have spent ten years hunting down her parents, or maybe even broken the stupid curse earlier. That would have been ten more years of not feeling completely alone.

"Yeah. I mean, maybe? I don't really know. And while I've never done the whole purple smoke thing, your Dad tells me it's just about wanting it bad enough," Emma informs him. "So I'm going to try that, instead of running the whole length of town. You coming with?"

"Hell, no," Neal fires back. "You could end up anywhere! Or turn yourself into a toad!"

"That's not going to happen," Emma says, almost like she actually believes it. "But if you're punking out on me again? Fine. Walk for all I care."

She turns away from him, leaning one hand against a tree for a moment as a fresh wave of nausea roils in her stomach. Emotion, Gold had said. Think about what it is you want to protect, or in this case, where she really wants to go. She closes her eyes, focusing on the musty, mothballed smell of the pawn shop, of the weird trinkets that line the walls, from swords to baby clothes, and feels the strange electrical kind of feeling start to charge somewhere in her thighs.

Well, now this really has to work, she figures. It's just the magical version of the time when she hurled herself into the deep end of the pool at the Y when her foster dad said he'd sooner see her drown than spend a dime on swimming lessons.

Neal is yelling at her, but Emma can feel it happening already. For a second it's like floating, and every part of her body tingles instead of feeling the normal way that it does, that she doesn't have to think about. She's muttering 'shop, shop, shop' and the one hand shoved in a coat pocket is clutching her piece of invisible chalk until she can't feel that or even her hand anymore.

When she opens her eyes, she's standing right by the cash register, surrounded by broken glass and the other debris from the earlier battle.

Well, goddamn.

Way to be a magical genius on her third time, Emma figures, feeling pretty damn smug for just about the first time in her life. She'd consider a little victory dance around the space, but there's a scream from the back room so ungodly that her blood turns to jello in her veins. Time seems to stop, until Emma's feet do the thinking for her and she's running towards the open door.

Of all the people she expected to be screaming, Regina wasn't actually that high on the list. Emma winces at the horrible sound, but her first instinct is to confirm that both her parents and Henry are still standing. They are, even if Henry is staring at Regina like he's never seen someone have a total breakdown in front of him before. Which, probably, he hasn't.

Although he is holding some funky kind of knife and everyone looks like a house just landed on someone… which is when Emma completes the sweep and registers the two inert bodies on the floor.

Cora, that Emma didn't dare to hope for, but the witch is slumped beside Regina in that stiff, awkward way that Emma recognizes as not just a nap. She steps closer to Henry, and as she does the blood pool around his body comes into view.

"Did anyone…" she starts to ask, but the words won't form when her eyes finally look at the knife up close. It has Henry's name on it, and he's holding it like a damn Olympic torch, offering it up to Emma like it's burning his hand. She snatches it from him, just in case it is, and that finally shuts Regina up long enough to pull her mother's body into her lap and start rocking it.

"Emma," Mary Margaret says finally, shattering the newfound silence. "Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" Emma sputters. "Uh, all that happened to me was a bit of teleporting. What the hell happened here?"

"She killed my mother!" Regina snarls. "She brought her heart back and when she… when she put it in, it killed my mother!"

"Is that true?" Emma demands, but it's her father who answers when Mary Margaret stares at her feet in shame.

"We had to stop her somehow," David insists. "Without her heart she would have killed us all, once she had the dagger."

"This is that dagger?" Emma stares, staring at the chilled metal that isn't warming at all in her hands. There's a red sheen on the blade, and it doesn't take CSI to line that fact up with the blood spilled from Mr Gold. "How does someone getting their heart back kill them?"

"The shock must have been too much for her," Mary Margaret mumbles, and even in her extreme state of distraction, Emma feels the niggling sensation that she's being lied to. "I was protecting all of us."

"You were trying to stop me getting my son back," Regina whines, eyes closed as she rocks her mother gently back and forth. "That is all you cared about."

"Did nobody think to call a doctor, or…" Emma trails off at the shaking heads and incredulous looks.

"They're both dead, Emma," David explains. "It's too late."

"What happened to Gold?" Emma asks, trying to ignore the sinking sensation as her brain puts the facts together without her permission. "Do I need to, you know, make this a crime scene?"

"He was going to hurt my mom for it," Henry says, and Emma's relieved that he sounds like a regular kid, even in this weirdest of situations. Archie will still be buying a new car with all the therapy Henry is going to need, though. "I had to protect Mom."

"You did this?" Emma gasps. "Henry, you stabbed him? He's your grandfather." Sometimes she can't quite believe the crap that comes out of her mouth during these panicked moments of motherhood in extreme circumstances.

"He did it to protect me!" Regina interrupts, lowering her mother gently to the floor, covering her with Regina's black coat before standing up to face Henry more directly. "And I'm so touched that you tried to save me, Henry, but oh my darling…"

"If he stabbed Gold with the dagger then he—" Emma has to say it out loud to believe it, but her own mother interrupts her.

"Oh no!" Mary Margaret cries. "It can't work on Henry. He's just a little boy!"

"It does," Regina confirms, and those two words are the saddest sound that Emma has ever heard. "I'm sorry, Henry, but when it comes to magic this dark, not even your age will protect you."

"No," David argues, stepping forward from where he'd been standing with his hand on Mary Margaret's shoulder. "Regina, I don't care what you have to do, but you take this away from him. Now."

"I can only do that by killing him," Regina says, stepping closer and pulling Henry to her side. "And I will die myself before I'll harm a hair on his head."

"Shame you didn't have that attitude when you were poisoning baked goods," David grumbles, and Emma shoots him a warning look. This is hands-down the most volatile situation she's been in, ever, and she does not need cheap shots to light the fuse.

"Henry," Emma says, trying to sound bright and breezy. "How are you feeling, kid?"

"You mean do I feel like the Dark One?" Henry asks, but his smile is his regular one, just a little shaky. "No, I feel pretty much the same," he confirms, letting Regina hug him a little tighter without complaint. Emma's gradually aware that everyone left in the room is staring at her, or more specifically the dagger in her hand.

"Okay," Emma breathes. "We need a plan."

"I need to..." Regina dissolves into a sudden sob that catches everyone by surprise. "My mother. I have to bury her."

"And we have to find Neal," Snow reminds Emma, laying a hand on Emma's forearm, making the dagger twitch. "I don't really know where things stand with you two-"

"He's engaged to someone else. For the last time, I have no feelings for him!" Emma snaps.

"Hello?" Neal calls out from through in the shop.

"Cover-for God's sake-" Emma reacts when no one else does, pulling Gold's ratty old blanket from the sofa and covering his body with it. She'd feel more sympathy if she had the time, maybe.

Neal spills in, no sign of the sword he'd had in the woods, and Emma stops herself from rolling her eyes just in time.

"Neal," David steps up. "Listen, man, some stuff went down here, and I'm sorry to have to-"

"Papa?" Neal says, sounding even younger than Henry as he notices the body on the floor. He moves so quickly Emma doesn't have time to move out of the way, and he barges her with his shoulder as he reaches for the blanket that covers Gold's body.

The howl of anguish chills Emma's blood, and she looks away from the sad scene before her. Her eyes meet Regina's, just for a second, but Regina isn't too squeamish to look at Neal, to step in and place a tentative hand on his shoulder. He shrugs her off, but then he sees Cora's body at Regina's feet and they nod at each other in the most desperate flash of understanding that Emma has ever seen.

"Henry," she says quietly. "You're going to go with Mary Margaret and David right now, and I'll be there as soon as I can."

"No!" Regina snaps. "You idiots have no idea what you're dealing with."

"When you've dealt with your mother, you'll come meet us, Regina," Emma says, standing up and asserting what she desperately hopes is authority. "But we can't stand here arguing when you both have parents to bury."

That shuts everyone up in very short order.

Emma pulls out her phone and fires a quick text to Archie. Whatever they decide about Henry later today, the kid is going to need as many voices of reason as they can find.

"Neal, do you need me to-"

"I got this," he says, voice gruff as he rubs at his face with his sleeve. "Thanks, Emma, but I need to do this myself."

"Regina?"

"Not necessary," Regina responds, without her usual bite. "I'll be coming by your apartment later," she adds, every bit a warning, before gently lifting Cora and disappearing in a swirl of purple smoke.

Wary of further questions and not needed, Emma heads towards the door. Neal looks around for a moment, seemingly unfocused, before moving towards a rack of tools on the far wall. He picks the spade up, crying again, and Emma leaves him to it.

She slips the dagger into the inside pocket of her coat, because Emma can't really think too hard about how freaking powerful it's supposed to be, or the blood she wiped off on her sleeve. This day feels a lot like the one where all the brain elastic thinks 'hell, no' and snaps completely at yet another load of fairytale bullshit to take onboard; it's kind of a miracle Emma isn't rocking quietly in a corner somewhere right now. Maybe Regina can suggest a nice room in the asylum they liberated after the curse broke.

Before Emma can even get in the apartment's front door, Ruby is falling all over her with a hundred chattering apologies, swearing she only looked away for a moment and Henry left a bunch of his dirty laundry in the room to make it seem like he was still there, and Ruby promises next time she won't just rely on the wolf senses, which is when Emma holds her hands up in surrender.

There's going to be a whole lot of blaming and finger-pointing before they all go to bed tonight, and Emma isn't in any hurry to start it by taking shots at one of her few friends.

Henry is sitting on the sofa, hands folded in his lap, trying his very best to look angelic. Emma knows the pose all too well, she tried the very same butter-wouldn't-melt routine outside every social worker or principal's office she was ever sent to; hell, she even tried it when the cops threw her in Central Booking the first time.

"How do you feel, kid?" She asks again, watching him closely for crackling firebolts or any sign of crazy purple eyes. All that looks back at her is Henry, a little paler than usual and his hair in desperate need of meeting a comb. His checked blue shirt is hanging a little loose on him, and Emma wonders if that's her cuisine to blame for underfeeding him. No doubt that will be just one more complaint on the list when Regina shows up.

"Okay?" He says, but he gets even paler as he says it. "Did I really kill Mr. Gold?"

"Uh," Emma flounders in the face of the direct question. She looks to her parents for guidance, but they're just as dumbstruck by the kitchen counter. "Henry, whatever happened back there, you were trying to save your mom. It might feel really weird, but you were kind of a hero."

"He's my grandpa," Henry says, in a horrified whisper. "Emma, what's my dad going to think? Did you tell him?"

"Not yet," Emma admits. "He's pretty sad right now, Henry. We'll talk to him when he's had a chance to deal with the first part, okay?"

"Did you invite him to join us?" Mary Margaret asks, putting her mug down on the counter and coming to sit next to Henry on the sofa.

"Why would I do that?" Emma asks. "He has enough going on right now."

"If we're going to talk about what's best for Henry, I think his father should be involved," Mary Margaret says, quite firmly.

"Regina and I will decide," Emma corrects her. "We don't know what the hell we're dealing with yet. Maybe Henry is too young, maybe he'll be perfectly normal."

"I feel normal," Henry insists, clutching his grandmother's hand between his two smaller ones. "I want my mom, though."

"She'll be here in a little while," Emma assures him. "You should try to be nice to her, Henry. She's having a really bad day."

"I feel kinda tired," Henry admits. "Can I go nap til Mom gets here?"

"Sure," Emma says, a little relieved at the easy out. "Just take your shoes off before getting into bed this time. And you should change your clothes," she adds, not want to mention anything like blood spatter.

He stands up and hugs her, before bolting towards the stairs. His shoes come bouncing down a moment later, and any other day Emma might have smiled at the sass of it.

"Emma," David says, moving behind the sofa and leaning on the back of it. "We need to talk, right now."

"I know," she groans, slumping into the armchair opposite her parents. "I have the knife here, obviously. Do we know how it works?"

"As far as I know," Mary Margaret begins, and there's a look on her face like she's going to go up to the board and start drawing a diagram to make it simple. Emma can't help wish there was a way to make any of this simple, even just a little bit. "Henry is free to walk around and do his normal things. If someone holding the dagger makes a direct command, however, he will have to follow it. He'll have no power to resist the order."

"That's horrible," Emma groans. "And it means we have to guard this dagger like his life depends on it."

"His life does depend on it," David says. "And once word gets out that there's a small, much less scary Dark One in town... well, I don't like the thought of that one bit."

"So we keep it quiet?" Emma confirms.

"Absolutely," Mary Margaret tells her. "Ruby," she adds, calling out to her friend who's hovering by the television set. "I don't want you even to tell Granny, okay? Not a word outside this house."

"Regina already knows," Emma reminds them. "And I do have to tell Neal. He'll probably be able to fill us in more on the dagger, right?"

"Fine, but that's it," David says, his tone not inviting an argument. "Regina and Neal have no interest in letting anyone know something that could harm Henry."

"Right," Emma says, and the running around New York, and the boat, and people dying right there on the floor, hits her like a train. "I'm going to take a shower," she blurts, handing the dagger to her mother and dashing off to the bathroom before anyone can stop her.

When the door closes firmly behind her, there's no holding the tears back any longer. She manages to strip, eyes blurry, and turns the water on scalding and full-blast. She steps into the shower stall and braces herself against the tiles with palms flat to stop her hands from shaking. Raising a kid was scary enough, but the prospect of raising a little Damien has Emma's chest tightening and her head pounding.

Someone had better have a damn plan sometime soon; she only hopes it isn't supposed to be her.

Emma lingers until the hot water runs out, allowing herself to be selfish just this once. Stepping out, she bundles herself up in Mary Margaret's fluffy pink towels and wipes the condensation from the mirror.

The dark circles under her eyes aren't going anywhere soon, but she lingers to wipe off the remnants of makeup the shower didn't quite get, brushing her teeth to counter the dull acidic taste that's there every time she swallows. The peppermint doesn't do much about it, but it kills another couple of minutes away from questioning eyes and expectant family members.

Pulling her ratty gray robe on over the towel, Emma ventures back out into the living room to discover the other three adults are quietly working together in the kitchen, preparing some kind of meal. Emma watches for a second as Ruby and Mary Margaret exchange easy smiles over chopped vegetables, observes the casual way David grips Mary Margaret's hips to guide her out of the way as he passes. They're a team, they were for a long time before Emma was even born. How does she tell them that she doesn't know how to be part of their merry band, or whatever the hell they'd call it?

When they notice her, she nods and makes her way upstairs to grab clean clothes. Henry isn't sleeping, and she didn't expect he would be. Pulling the robe tighter around her, Emma sits heavily on the bed and after a moment's consideration, grabs his ankle in a way that's half affectionate and half awkward. He seems to relax a little at her touch, at least.

"Did you nap?" She asks.

"Nuh uh," Henry says, sitting up and shaking his head. "Is there gonna be food? I'm hungry."

"Regular hungry or..."

"Regular hungry," he confirms. "I haven't eaten since that bagel you got me."

"Right," Emma remembers. That seems like a different lifetime, not just that morning. "They're making something with carrots, I think."

Henry wrinkles his nose.

"If it sucks, we can go out later for cheeseburgers, okay? Just don't say anything," Emma warns. "It might be a good time to talk to Neal about all of this, too. He was there when your-when Mr Gold-first got the dagger, apparently."

"How do you know?" Henry asks, face scrunched up as he attempts to fill in the blanks.

"We talked, on the boat," Emma tells him. "But he might want to wait and talk to me alone."

"Because I killed his dad," Henry sighs, and the tears are threatening to spill already. "Emma, have you ever had to... I mean, have you ever done something like that?"

"Defend myself?" Emma goes with the nicer phrasing. "Yeah, I've been there. And everyone you know here has probably had to step up like that to protect themselves or someone they love. You were protecting your mom, Henry. That's something heroes do."

"I don't know," he says, and she can see thoughts playing out on his face. "It's just that my mom killed people and we call her evil for it. Am I evil too?"

"No," Emma says, ignoring the flutter of doubt that the magic dagger stuff causes in the recesses of her mind. "Henry, listen. You're not bad. You're just not. And you don't have to become that way, either."

"Yeah?" He asks, eyes pleading with her.

"Yeah," Emma says, and for the first time she's pretty glad that he believes everything she says just because some book called her the Savior. Henry looks comforted by her certainty, at least. "Now scoot, kid. I need to make myself look human again."

"You should use some primer," Henry says as he wriggles off the bed. "Under your foundation, I mean."

"The hell?" Emma asks, looking at him in confusion.

"Mom didn't really have many people to talk to when I was little," Henry explains. "And I like to ask questions, so she explained stuff to me."

"Thanks for the tip, Tim Gunn," Emma teases, as Henry heads out the door.

"Please, Emma," Henry sighs. "Tim does fashion, not beauty."

Emma rolls her eyes and throws a pillow at Henry's retreating back. They might be able to cling on to some normal, after all.

Normal is back to being a pipe dream twenty minutes later, when Emma is blowdrying her hair and a cloud of purple smoke appears behind her in the mirror.

"We have a front door," she groans, turning to face Regina and shutting the blow-dryer off. "How did you know I wasn't naked up here?"

"With the way you dress, I really feel like I've almost seen it all anyway," Regina sighs, but it's barely registering on her usual scale of venom. She slumps onto Emma's bed, as if this is in any way a normal situation, as if she were actually someone Emma invited to have cozy chats in the bedroom like a regular galpal.

"Can I help you?" Emma asks, hands on hips. She's changed into her favorite pair of jeans and an old white tank top, figuring they can't really go wrong with the familiar today.

"How is he?" Regina asks, her eyes reddened from crying, her makeup showing hints of mess around the edges; it's clearly been tidied up but not reapplied. "Is there any sign of..."

"What?" Emma asks. "What are the symptoms of being the Dark One?"

"Has he done magic?" Regina continues, and the desperation in her eyes for a 'no' is so overwhelming that Emma actually takes a step back.

"No," she offers in reassurance. "He says he doesn't feel any different. He was hungry, so he's gone downstairs to eat. Normal kid stuff."

"Okay," Regina clasps her hands, pressing them between her thighs. With slumped shoulders and her usually perfect hair hanging around her face, she doesn't seem to have much threat left in her.

"Shall we, uh..." Emma starts to suggest, but Regina doesn't react. "Did everything go okay? I mean, were you able to do what you needed?"

"My mother is at rest," Regina mumbles, still not looking up. Emma sees tears start to splash on Regina's lap, and looks away in discomfort.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Emma offers, and sure she'll regret it, she still moves closer to squeeze Regina's shoulder; it's the kind of thing she's seen Mary Margaret do dozens of times.

"No, you're not," Regina corrects her, but she doesn't shove Emma's hand away like she expected. "My mother was a difficult woman, and I've already grieved for her once, but..."

"Doesn't make it any easier, huh?" Emma ventures. "Especially when it happens right in front of you."

"Something like that," Regina says, and this time she stands, letting Emma's hand fall away without comment. "We should go check on Henry."

"We?" Emma can't help the question. She hasn't seen this sort of solidarity since they were chasing down true love potions and battling Gold.

Regina hesitates, gloved hand resting on the doorframe as she looks back at Emma. Inhaling sharply, Regina looks up to the ceiling like she's quietly praying, before answering the question Emma didn't quite ask.

"I can't... Emma, I don't think you appreciate the scale of what Henry is dealing with now. The Dark One is the one who... let's just say I wouldn't be the woman everyone hates without his particular brand of help. And the things his magic can do would terrify anyone with even half a brain cell," Regina explains. "I wasn't strong enough to stand up to him when he was simply Rumpelstiltskin; I'm going to need your help even more when it's my own son."

"What makes you think I can resist Henry's puppy eyes any better than you?" Emma demands, hands on her hips.

"Because you're the Savior," Regina replies, her voice entirely hollow. "Or maybe I just don't have anyone else to turn to."

"I've heard worse reasons," Emma admits. "So let's go downstairs. Henry's waiting."

Regina nods, and Emma falls into step right behind her.

A/N: Okay, I'm weirdly nervous about this one. I know in my head where I want it to go, and I don't want to cut corners, so the intent is to tell the whole story of Henry being the Dark One and what that means for each of these characters, and how it brings Emma and Regina closer together. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this start and if you want more, soothe the insecurities of a fic writer and all that!