Chapter Text
In the end, there had been two children. It had been so inexplicably simple, after all the drama and uncertainty and fear.
The divorce had been abrupt and bitter, and the one point of contention had been the baby they’d been scheduled to adopt. Emma had dreaded the idea of sharing a child with Regina– with the fury that the child would endure, the conflict of two adults who can hardly speak to each other without ice dripping off of every word. She’d dreaded the idea of adopting a child with instability , who doesn’t have the single home she’d always dreamed of as a girl.
But they had committed to adopt the child, even now that their lives have been turned upside down. They war over custody agreements– and oh , how they’d warred, even worse than before– and they bring each other to tears, to desperation, to please this baby is all I have please please please –
And then, eight months into the birth mother’s pregnancy, there had been the joining of all the realms and, unexpectedly, an identical birth mother in the same dire straits in the universe that Emma had wished into being. (The universe that Regina had crossed into solely to bring her home , had crossed time and space to save her, and there’s a pit in her stomach when she thinks about it.)
It had been so clear. Two identical babies who’d needed a home, two women who no longer shared a home. And Emma and Regina would never have to see each other again. Emma had seen the other infant only once, cradled in Regina’s arms as Emma had cradled her own. Regina had been staring down at her in wonder, had looked at that baby as though she’d been her whole world, and Emma’s heart had finally cracked fully into two.
There is no reason for Emma to long for the other child. They had made no commitments except to stay away, and her own daughter is everything , is a child made bright and strong and beautiful. Regina’s Henrietta (they’d fought so hard over the name at the start, and Emma wants to laugh and cry when she thinks about Regina’s indulgent, overly sentimental choice, so intensely Regina ) has nothing to do with Emma.
And still she thinks of her every day, and dreams of her as often as she dreams of Regina, a spike of pain in her chest at the thought of both.
It’s not that Hope likes the idea of being away. It’s always been just Ma and her, except on the rare occasions when Grandma and Gramps come to visit and spoil her rotten for a few weeks before they head back to the Enchanted Forest. She’s not one of those annoying kids who think that twelve is too old to want to spend time with your mom. And Ma is cool . How many kids have moms who get jobs hunting magical beasts and still come home and play video games with them? Ma’s the best , and Hope loves spending time with her.
It’s just that this opportunity is so great , and she’d been picked as one of eight kids in the whole realm who are going to get to go. It’s just a two-week realm-hopping program to foster unity between kids of different realms, and she’d written a pretty awesome letter about why she’d wanted to go, awesome enough that even the Storybrooke Government of the Realms had picked her from the pile.
And Ma reluctantly agrees after she glances over the chaperone list and is satisfied. “Look,” she says. “I know I’ve taught you plenty about fighting. But I don’t want you going out there and looking for trouble, okay? You have to stick with the group. A lot of monsters out there looking for delicious adolescents–” She snatches Hope’s shirt and pulls her to her, and Hope laughs and scrambles to get away before they settle down together.
“I mean it,” Ma says, her arm curled around Hope’s shoulders. “I don’t want to keep you locked up for the rest of your life. I want you to see the world. But the world isn’t all good, and there are people out there who can really screw you up. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” Hope knows that Ma has been through a lot. Ma talks about it sometimes, living on the streets and moving from home to home and never really belonging anywhere. And then the Other Times , the times with Hope’s other mom, which she rarely talks about at all.
Not technically your mom, Ma has said, staring down at a picture she keeps of Her. She just– could have been, if things had gone differently . Hope still thinks of her as Mom anyway, the mysterious woman who had been married to Ma before it had all gone downhill. Ma gets melancholy sometimes, and Hope knows that it’s about Her. She insists that it had been a bad relationship, that it’s one she doesn’t regret ending, but Hope has heard her talking to Grandma sometimes and it has sounded like something else entirely.
How are they? Ma whispers, and Grandma says, You know how bad you get when I answer that , and then she cradles Ma in her arms like Ma is the kid that Grandma had never gotten to raise and Ma trembles with silent sobs.
They , she always says, and Hope resents Her just a little for it. She’s not stupid. She knows what must have happened, and why She had hurt Ma so badly. She’s old enough to know about cheating and that people sometimes fall in love with other people, and the woman who might have been Hope’s other mother must have done the unforgivable.
Still, Hope likes to wonder about Her. Does she ever think about Hope, or does she have a family of her own now? Does she think about Ma? Does she still love Ma? How could anyone give up on Ma? She imagines them together, imagines the shadows that live on Ma’s face being driven away for good, and she knows with all the surety of twelve that it’s the way that things should be.
“I think she would love you very much if she knew you,” is all Ma will say. “My brave, beautiful girl.” She presses kisses to Hope’s forehead that might break a curse in another realm, and the topic is concluded.
When it’s time to pack for her trip, Hope sneaks over to Ma’s bedroom and finds the photo tucked into her nightstand drawer. It’s of a woman in a stunning wedding dress, her eyes bright and a bouquet of purple flowers in her hands as she laughs. She has a kind face, Hope thinks, like someone who loves so much that it transforms her.
Hope tucks it into her bag, right alongside the pictures of Ma and Grandma and Gramps, and she buries them in a pile of shirts and goes off to hunt for her hairbrush.
The departure point isn’t Storybrooke but a realm-hopping terminal in Boston, which is disappointing. Hope has wanted to see Storybrooke for forever . According to Ma, it’s boring– just a bunch of houses and shops and then the huge complex where the Mayor of Storybrooke, Queen of the Realms, lives and governs– but Hope is pretty sure Ma just doesn’t want to go back there. It’s where she’d lived when she’d been married, and it would probably bring back bad memories.
Ma holds her tightly, and she asks again, “Do you want me to stay until departure time?”
“It’s okay. None of the other kids have their parents here,” Hope says, rubbing her short-cropped hair self-consciously. There are a few dozen kids sitting in the circle where the chaperones are, and she wants to go to them, not lurk at the edge with her mother. “I’m going to be fine, Ma. I swear.”
Ma holds her tightly for another minute. “I’m a little afraid you’ll go out there and never want to come back,” she murmurs, and she shakes her head. “You’re going to fall in love with…with all the realms, with the magic, with…” She swallows, and Hope looks up at her in concern. “Maybe we will go to the Enchanted Forest sometime to visit your grandparents,” she says at last. “There’s a whole world out there.”
“Ma.” Hope wriggles away from her. “Two weeks. That’s it. It’s basically a vacation for you.”
“I don’t need a vacation from you, kid,” Ma says, and she squeezes Hope one more time before she backs away. “Go. Stay close to Mulan, okay? I love you.”
“Love you!” Hope turns to the group of kids, settling near the chaperone whom Ma had already introduced as Mulan. Soon, she’s ensconced in a conversation with a set of twins from the Enchanted Forest and a girl from Camelot, and she doesn’t notice the hush that has fallen over the group until Gretel says, “Hey, isn’t that Mayor Mills?”
“Mayor Mills?” Hope echoes. “Like, the Mayor Mills?” The queen of the realms prefers to be called Storybrooke’s mayor, and Hope has seen both Disney adaptations of her life, the cartoon and the live-action. Ma says they’re garbage and won’t keep them in the house, but Jade down the block has both of them and a huge poster of the actress who plays Mayor Mills on her wall and Hope had always imagined that Mayor Mills would be…well, taller .
She can’t see her from here– she’s turned away as she tends to a well-bundled girl in front of her, but there is something regal in the arch of her back and the way she presses a kiss to the girl’s cheek and strides away. The girl huddles under her coat, walking straight toward the opposite corner of the group, and Hope watches her with interest. “Mayor Mills has a daughter?”
“Duh,” Gretel says, and she drawls, “Henry Mills, pride of Storybrooke. You’d think she’d be picked on with a name like that, but I guess no one’s starting up with Mayor Mills’s daughter. The magazines all say she’s been learning magic with her aunt in Oz. I guess she came back for this.”
“Seems like this whole thing is rigged then,” Violet says, wrinkling her nose. Henry Mills has already been accosted by a crowd of fans, too many for Hope to get a look at her, and Hope looks away. Ma has always been disdainful of celebrities, and Hope sees her point. It’s not like Henry Mills has done anything to deserve the hoopla. She’s not her mother.
“Here I thought I was special,” Hope says, and the others laugh with her and fully forget Henrietta Mills. Good . Hope can’t wait to get home and tell Ma about the girls she’d met from other realms.
So cool.
Henrietta Mills does not want to be on this little unity tour at all, which has led to plenty of tension between her and her mother. For one, she’s busy . She’s twelve years old and has already learned more about the realms than most people will learn in a lifetime. She knows that Mayor of Storybrooke, Queen of the Realms is a democratically elected position and not hereditary, but it’s hard to grow up with a mom like hers and not want to follow in her footsteps.
She doesn’t have any innate magic, but neither does Aunt Zelena anymore, and that’s what makes her such a good teacher. She learns to mix potions and chant spells, and she’s already been pronounced a formidable opponent by at least three separate assassins who’d tried to kill her. So what if she can’t make fire appear in her hand just by thinking it? She’s good enough that it doesn’t matter.
Mom is exasperated with her drive. “You have nothing to prove, darling,” she reminds her, over and over again. “I am so proud of you. You don’t need to slay dragons to excel.” And, incessantly, “Wouldn’t you rather make some friends your own age?” whenever Henry makes a new contact in Storybrooke. “You’re all alone at home.”
There is always the shadow that crosses Mom’s face when she thinks about Henry being an only child, and Henry doesn’t understand it. Because, like…Mom loves kids. Everyone knows that. She probably could have adopted ten instead of just Henry and she would have spent every waking moment taking care of them. But Mom never had. “You’re enough for me,” she promises, over and over. “You’re all I ever wanted.”
But if that were true, then she wouldn’t be so sad all the time, like Henry is absolutely not enough. Henry had been adopted right after Mom had gotten divorced, and the divorce had gutted Mom so badly that she’d never really moved on. She still talks about Emma so much that Henry thinks of her as her other mother, sort of, who’d abandoned them both instead of just Mom.
She kind of hates Emma, whoever she is. She’d googled her once; had searched for Emma and Storybrooke and come up blank. She doesn’t even have a last name to go on, just a few pictures in one of her mother’s enchanted photo frames. Emma is Snow’s and David’s daughter, and they are careful never to talk about her, never to bring her up around Henry or Regina when they’re visiting. Which is probably for the best, because Henry’s learned a particular hex that she’s going to use on Emma if she ever meets her, and Mom is not going to be happy about it.
Anyway . This whole stupid unity thing is pointless, but Dorothy and Ruby had suggested that she might approach it like an ambassador instead of a kid. So Henry sweeps around and says, “A pleasure to meet you,” to a pretty girl who’s looking sidelong at her. “I’m Henrietta Mills.”
“Jacinda Vidrio,” the girl says, grinning, and motions to the girl beside her. “This is Tiana. Are you really…you know…?” She motions toward a big poster that reads STORYBROOKE next to their party.
Henry bobs her head. “Future Mayor of Storybrooke, at your service,” she announces. Jacinda raises her eyebrows and looks unimpressed at her grandiosity. Somehow, Henry likes her even more because of it. “Or…just Henry,” she says, and she glances around.
A few of the chaperones are doing a head count, and when they’re satisfied, they motion everyone to a portal. Henry hangs back, watching the awed sounds of the kids who’ve never experienced this before. There’s a girl near the front with her hair cut short bouncing like she’s about to pitch headfirst into the portal, and Henry rolls her eyes.
“Lots of portal traveling, huh?” Tiana says. “We’ve gone a few times– my mother’s a queen in our realm, and we have a sister city in the Land Without Magic– but it’s always so cool. Like you never took more than a step.” She glides forward, falling into line, and Henry envies her grace.
But still, appearances. Henry takes a breath and steps forward, her head high, and nods to a few of the chaperones. They look awed instead of bemused, and Henry feels like a little less of a fool in this gaggle of children and a little more confident, a little more like herself.
She steps through the portal when it’s her turn, smug at her ease when she passes from one realm to the other, and she emerges triumphantly, without so much as a stumble, when a girl crashes into her. Henry topples over, her regal bearing falling to pieces, and she lets out a horrified noise.
“Sorry,” the girl pants, climbing back to her feet and extending a hand. “Gretel grabbed the last donut and I–” She stops. “Huh,” she says, staring at Henry.
Henry stares back, aghast. The girl is the one with the short hair, dark and rough like she’s never had much use for it, and she is all frenetic energy and confidence that Henry has always lacked. And she’s…
“You look just like me,” Henry blurts out. It’s impossible. She’s an only child, the apple of her mother’s eye, and she knows absolutely that she doesn’t have a twin . She’d been adopted at birth. She would have noticed– But this girl looks exactly like her, down to the slope of her eyes and the little dimple on her cheek. Their skin is the same shade of brown, their eyes the same deep color. It’s like looking in the mirror after a really bad haircut.
She touches her own hair self-consciously, and the girl gives her a cool, unimpressed look. “I don’t think so,” she says.
“H-how can you not think so?” Henry sputters, aghast at her nerve. “Do you see us?”
The girl circles her, almost predatory, and she smirks unkindly. Henry has never seen anyone be unkind to her, Henrietta Mills, Princess of the Realms, before, and she gapes at the girl, taken aback. The girl says, “I mean, our coloring is similar, I guess, but your nose is off-center.” She screws up her own nose in distaste. “And your eyes are way too small for your face.”
“Excuse me?” For an instant, Henry had almost imagined that this girl might be a friend , a vaunted someone-her-age to show off to Mom. That thought is long gone.
“Scrawny,” the girl decides. “Scraggly hair.”
“It’s wavy –”
“And one ear is freakishly bigger than the other,” the girl finishes. “I don’t really see the resemblance.” She looks very smug, stepping back, and the expression on her face is much like the one that Henry gets when she’s taken down another assassin with a few easy spells. Henry wavers in place, and for the first time, she understands the shell-shocked expression on the assassins’ faces after she’s done with them.
“You…you…” The girl waits patiently for Henry to finish, and all Henry can manage is, “You!”
“You know it.” The girl slopes off to a few other girls, past a chaperone who watches her with bemusement. Henry stumbles, scurrying to the side like the opposite of a queen. Humiliating . She decides right then and there that she despises her lookalike, and would be very happy to never see her again.
She has better things to contemplate, anyway. They’re in a reception room, a high-ceilinged ballroom from a castle that looks to be Enchanted Forest in design. There is a food table along one wall and small tables in the center of the room, and Henry wonders if they might be dancing soon. She’s well-trained in ballroom dancing, has danced hundreds of times with Mom and visitors, and she loves it nearly as much as she loves doing magic. It requires the same finesse, and she likes to imagine one day dancing through a fairytale of her own, a relationship with a girl or a boy like the ones that Mom has had– albeit with a happier ending.
But there is no dancing tonight. Instead, the leader of the program, a man named Dr. Porter, says, “We’ll be giving out room assignments for the trip today. Although we’ll be in a different place most nights, your roommate will remain consistent throughout. For safety reasons, there will be no swapping rooms. You get who you get.” His stern voice softens. “You’re all coming from very different worlds,” he reminds them. “You might learn something new about your roommate along the way.”
Henry tunes out the speech. She isn’t worried about that . Aunt Zelena had gotten her hands on the roster before the trip, and she’d paired Henry up with an absolutely mad roommate , she’d said.
Then again, with Aunt Zelena, that could be a terrifying prospect.
Right. Cool. So Hope is stuck with the single worst roommate on this trip, her improbable doppelganger who also happens to be Mayor Mills’s stuffy stuck-up daughter. This is about to become the trip from hell instead of a cool tour of all the realms, and Hope slouches in her bed and ignores the prim voice from the other bed that says, “Mom says that the first step to self-confidence is to carry yourself at all times like you’re in the presence of your worst enemy.”
Henry, of course, is sitting perfectly straight at the edge of her bed, inspecting her appearance in a mirror. She has one leg crossed over the other like she’s ten years older, and her long hair is braided over one shoulder. “And my nose is not off-center,” she says. “I measured it. It’s borderline on the right, but still fine.”
“It lists to the left,” Hope says, mostly because it’s so easy to rile Henry up. Henry looks horrified and peers closer into the mirror. “Why are you here, anyway? Don’t you have some fancy functions to attend or something? What are you going to get out of a trip like this, beyond taking someone else’s spot?”
Henry tears her eyes from the mirror to glare at her. “I didn’t want to go,” she says haughtily. “Mom thought that I should spend time with kids my age . If you’re the microcosm of those, I see I’m going to gain very little from this trip. Mom will not be pleased.”
Hope eyes her dubiously. “So I could piss off the Queen of the Realms by annoying you?”
Henry looks pleased. “Now you’re getting it.”
“Neat.” Hope stretches out on her bed. Henry gapes at her, outraged again, and Hope enjoys it with savage delight. Ma would find this hilarious, she’s sure, and she feels a little wave of homesickness at the thought of her. She has a phone with her to speak to Ma, but it doesn’t have any charms on it that will let it work between realms, and she’s pretty sure they aren’t in the Land Without Magic anymore. She’s on her own, and if annoying Henry is all she can do right now, she’s fully prepared to do her best at it.
She watches Henry out of the corner of her eye. Henry is muttering something at her mirror now, some kind of charm, and she straightens even more and then exhales when there’s a voice from the mirror.
“Henrietta,” says the ringing, silky voice of who Hope is sure is the Queen of the Realms. Hope swallows despite herself. There is something very imposing about even the tone of the queen, commanding respect even as it turns wry. “You look like you’ve been sitting too many etiquette lessons.”
“Mom!” Henry protests, and she glances at Hope as though daring her to speak. Hope yawns, pretending to find a brochure fascinating rather than showing any interest in the conversation– which she is intensely interested in. “This is how I always sit.”
“Mm-hm.” Mayor Mills sounds amused. “Not when you’re on the couch playing video games. I’m always afraid your back will never unbend. How is your trip so far? The house is so quiet without you, sweetheart.” She sounds almost mournful, and Hope– briefly entertained at the image of Henrietta Mills, stick-in-the-mud, playing video games– sneaks a look at the mirror. Henry is keeping it pointed at herself, out of Hope’s view, but Mayor Mills sounds so… nice . Normal, like a regular mom.
Ma will never believe this. The few times she’s ever mentioned the queen, it has been less than complimentary. Hope figures that Ma blames the queen for joining all the realms, which has led to way more monsters for Ma to fight. Ma mutters sometimes about it– the hell was she thinking , this disaster in the making , and always snide comments that turn gloomy– and Hope knows that Ma must see the queen as another out-of-touch celebrity. Definitely not normal.
She angles herself on the bed, trying to get a glance of the queen, but Henry sees her peeking and frowns fiercely. “It’s fine,” she says. “I made some friends. There’s this absolutely nightmarish girl who I’m rooming with, but I’m not going to complain about it. I’m made of sterner stuff than that,” she finishes, her eyes darting to Hope smugly.
“Henry,” Mayor Mills says, and she sounds like she’s holding back a laugh. “Is your roommate in the room with you right now?” Henry looks shifty-eyed. “Be nice ,” the queen says reprovingly. “Find some common ground.”
“Oh, we have nothing in common. Except–” Henry hesitates, her eyes flickering back to Hope. Hope wonders what Mayor Mills might say if she’d see Hope, their near-identical faces. Maybe she’d want to meet her. Maybe Hope could get an audience with the queen .
She shakes off the thought. It might mean more time with Henry, which would be agonizing. Instead, she taps her own nose and flicks it, and Henry scowls at her. “Nothing,” she says instead. “Absolutely nothing in common.”
“Make an effort, darling,” Mayor Mills says. “Sometimes the people who mean the most to you will be the ones you have to fight to understand.” She sounds distant, melancholy, and Henry’s fist clenches around the mirror. Hope watches, her eyebrows rising. “I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” She raises her voice. “And I’d love to meet you, too, mysterious roommate,” she calls, the melancholy fading from her voice. She lowers it again. “I love you, Henry.”
“Love you, Mom,” Henry mutters, and she sets down the mirror, blank again, and glares out into nothingness.
Hope says, “Wow. You’re a fraud, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re all mature and buddy-buddy with the chaperones like you’re some kind of delegate to this trip instead of one of us, but you’re all fake .” Hope is delighted at the realization. “You’re just like everyone else here! Another cranky adolescent.”
“I’m a future queen ,” Henry says haughtily. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She stretches out on her bed, staring up at the stone ceiling.
Hope rolls over to stare at her. “Who is it?”
Henry stares back. “Who?”
“The person your mom was talking about. The one you looked like you wanted to strangle.” Hope had seen that fist and almost liked Henry for a minute, had been enchanted at the thought of rage simmering beneath the surface.
Henry shrugs. “My other mother,” she says, and it sounds strange, like it doesn’t quite sit well on her tongue.
Hope is spellbound. “Mayor Mills, Queen of the Realms, is gay ?” Henry’s eyes flash, and Hope says hastily, “No, like, it’s cool. My mom used to be married to a lady. I just thought that would be bigger news.”
“Storybrooke is a lot more advanced than your dumb world,” Henry says, rolling back over. “Just means that sometimes the jerks who leave your mom are girls. That’s all.”
Her fists are clenched again, and Hope says, “I think–”
“Shut up, Swan .” And for all her snottiness for appearances’ sake, Henry is a pro at infusing her voice with disdain.
“Go screw yourself, Mills ,” Hope retorts in the same exact voice, and they glower at the ceiling in tandem and refuse to speak again for the rest of the night.
Regina watches her mirror go blank and feels an indescribable wave of loneliness. It’s always like this when Henry is away, even when she’s only visiting Zelena and comes back home by night. She had filled the scarred crevices of her heart with Henry– had filled her whole heart with Henry, and she is only the spaces that hold her daughter in place– and when Henry is away, she is left with her regrets and sorrow.
Mostly, she is left with the absence of Emma, ever-lingering in her heart.
She turns over every piece of the past seventeen years in her memory, over and over again, as though they can explain where it had all gone wrong. Maybe it had been her all along, too sharp and mercurial to ever be loved safely. Maybe it had been Emma, who had never been too comfortable with belonging anywhere. Maybe it had been both of them, women accustomed to self-sabotage and in disbelief that they could ever keep anything good.
She wonders sometimes if it had only been that they had gone immediately from enemies to lovers and never learned how to be friends. Emma had arrived at her door, chasing a bounty that had never materialized. She had stayed because of a budding attraction, because of Regina, because of the curse. They had fallen in love and broken a curse and it had still taken them years to figure out who they’d been to each other– for god’s sake, Emma had nearly gotten married to that cretin Hook before Regina had whisked her away on her wedding day– and they’d only known how to fight together and never how to embrace the quiet as a team.
Maybe it had only been that they had never had anything else to unite them but their tumultuous attraction, but the love that had swallowed them both up until they’d been lost.
Regina takes a breath and stares at the photograph on her mantle, the portrait of her with her arms wrapped around a gap-toothed six-year-old Henry. There are times when she’ll look at Henry and think Emma would love her so much and her chest tightens painfully. Henry, sunshine incarnate, determined to become her mother and yet with so much youthful innocence that Regina had never had. Henry with her desperate desire to be taken seriously and her need to know everything . Emma would have tempered her, Regina thinks, would have taught her to have fun. Emma would have taught her cynicism when Regina had only managed to give her idealistic eyes.
If only Emma were here, she would have given Henry everything. And Regina knows that she isn’t thinking about Henry anymore at all, and her heart seizes up.
She doesn’t even know the other girl’s name. It had been a question on her lips when she’d seen Emma watching her, holding her daughter so tightly that Regina had longed to go to them. But then Emma had averted her eyes and Regina had swallowed the question and looked back at Henry.
There have been moments of weakness over the years– moments when Regina had thought to search for them, to see where Emma Swan and Daughter have gone into the world. To see the other little girl, just like Henry but not, and to see what they could be as a family. Two mothers. Two daughters. Sisters , and Regina lets out a dry sob. She had wanted to seek them out, except that there had never been a reason that wouldn’t be rebuffed. The other little girl is not hers. Emma is not hers. They had agreed with cold fury that they would leave each other alone for good, the only kindness they’d done for each other in years.
If nothing else, you owe me that , Emma had said fiercely at the final arbitration before the divorce had been finalized. You’ve taken too many of my years.
Twenty-eight, then five more. Regina had had no retort to that. There had been a time when Emma had sworn that Regina had left the Evil Queen behind– that their love had been redemption, forgiveness, a new life– and that arbitration had been the nail in the coffin of their marriage, the death of their love.
Yet, as the years have passed, in the quiet of Henry’s absence, Regina thinks only of her big, empty house, and the three people she longs for most.