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At first, there’s only a weird little tingle in his fingers that he doesn’t think much of. Maybe he’s just been writing too much lately. Maybe it’s the author’s pen calling to him. Either way, it’s nothing to worry about until the day he’s at school and a surge of white energy shoots from his fingers and cleaves his desk in half.
He jumps back, his eyes wide, and Grandma gapes at the desk and immediately declares him the victim of some dark attack. “It’s the Evil Queen,” she decides, hurrying him out of the classroom. “I’m taking you to your mothers.” She nods to the rest of the class. “Find five facts about birds in your textbooks and we’ll present them when I’m back.”
“Couldn’t we just do some algebra?” Jack says plaintively.
Grandma gives him a dirty look. “No one asked you, Jack.” She turns back to Henry. “We have to get you under a protection spell.”
“But–” He means to tell her about the magic that he’d seen– felt – from his hands, glowing and warm and not evil at all, but instead he feels another tingle of it and jumps away from her before he winds up splitting her in half. Grandma squeezes his shoulder and launches into a hope speech, and Henry nods and smiles for the first twenty minutes of it, his fingers shaking a little as they make their way to Town Hall.
Inside, Ma is stretched out on the couch in the mayor’s office, her head in Mom’s lap. Mom is twirling blonde hairs around her fingers as she talks, eyes fond on Ma, but they both spring up at the sight of Henry.
“It’s okay,” he protests, and magic jumps in his chest again.
He asks Ma about it later, when they’re heading to his house early to heat up dinner before Mom gets home. “When did you realize that you had magic?”
She shrugs. “There were a few incidents that didn’t really make sense,” she admits. “But I didn’t understand it until Cora tried taking my heart. And I couldn’t really use it even after that without your mom being there.” She smiles, her eyes distant, and Henry feels the magic within him roil in response. “Or being really, really irritating. Why do you ask?”
“It just…” Henry chooses his words cautiously. “It feels a little like I have some, too. Sometimes.”
“Oh, Henry.” Ma pulls away from him, lays her hands on his shoulders and fixes him with a comforting gaze. “You don’t need magic to make you feel special. You’re so much more than that.” Henry smiles uncertainly at her, and she lets his shoulders go, satisfied. “Magic isn’t always genetic,” she says. “I mean, maybe your mom’s magic is. But mine was only because I’m the product of true love.”
Henry bites his lip, considering. “You have it because your parents share true love.”
Ma tosses him a sidelong glance. “I loved your dad,” she says, and she sounds firm about that. “But true love? That’s something else entirely.”
“Right,” Henry says agreeably, and he pretends not to notice when Ma shoots off a series of texts that have her grinning and the magic tingling at his fingers again.
The magic gets better some nights, and worse other ones. Sometimes he still feels like himself, without any strange energy that he can’t control, and he lies awake and falls asleep to the sound of Mom reading alone in the next room.
Other nights, he sets his blanket on fire and has to put it out himself, yelping, and Mom and Ma both burst upstairs into his room with wine glasses still in hand and their eyes dark with protectiveness. “It’s fine,” he says, as Ma paces and makes dire threats of the Queen. Mom watches her, her gaze pained, and Henry feels the magic fade to a flicker instead. “It’s fine .”
Eventually, they decide that he’s picked up a smoking habit, and Mom gives him a lengthy lecture with visual aids and looks so fierce and sad about the whole thing that it takes all he has not to deny it. Ma gives him a lecture about upsetting his mom, and Henry accidentally turns her hair green and then back to blonde during that conversation without her noticing.
He decides it’s probably for the best if they don’t think he has magic. They aren’t ready for it, anyway. He skips school and goes to Aunt Zelena’s farmhouse, and she cackles so loudly when he explains that she wakes up Robyn.
He gets put on babysitting duty instead, and he walks past Granny’s that afternoon and sees his moms in the window of the diner. Mom is sighing blissfully over whatever she’s eating, and Ma makes a face until Mom proffers her fork. Ma leans forward, eating the bite off Mom’s fork, and Henry accidentally makes the wheels of Robyn’s carriage disappear.
Robyn gives him as disdainful a look as he’s ever seen from an infant, and the wheels reappear in a cloud of green smoke.
It’s not that it’s really that bad, having magic. It’d just be nice to actually have it so he can learn to control it instead of these weird bursts of energy that he can’t stop. But Aunt Zelena’s still in the gleeful mocking stage, and he doesn’t think there’s anyone else he can ask who won’t use it against his family.
He’d have thought that the bursts would lessen when his moms are fighting; instead, they get even worse. “You can’t dictate my life!” Ma is snapping downstairs, and Henry crouches at the top of the stairs and tries frantically to make the linen closet door reappear.
“It’s not your life I’m worried about!” Mom barks back, and Henry is all magic, glowing with it so strongly that he can’t breathe. “You’re so sure that you’re dying that you won’t even try to live, and I can’t– I can’t–” She’s breathing hard, and Ma takes a step forward. Henry can see them in the foyer, their eyes hard and fiery as they glare at each other.
Mom is shaking, tears in her eyes, and Ma reaches for her. They don’t hug. Henry doesn’t think he’s ever seen them hug, which is weird , though maybe not as weird as it taking four years for him to get magic. Ma holds Mom’s hands in hers and Mom shakes her head, voiceless, as Ma whispers I’ll try, Regina, god, I’ll try, I just–
Mom smiles tremulously and she says again, “I can’t lose…” before her voice trails off and Henry’s next wave of energy crashes into her, sending her stumbling into Ma. They’re both crimson when they detangle, and Henry winces and ducks back into bed before they figure out where that magic had come from.
“How come Neal doesn’t have magic?” Henry asks Grandma one afternoon. Grandma stares at him, puzzled, and he hastens to explain. “I mean, like Ma. Isn’t he the child of true love, too?”
Grandma’s eyes cloud over even more, and Henry is worried that he’s gotten this all wrong. “The child of true love,” she repeats unsteadily, and then she’s charging across the room, frantic, to Gramps. “Who is she?” she demands. “He? I knew those bromances weren’t just missions . Was it King Arthur? Are you even my husband?”
Gramps is bewildered and there are more hurried arguments, strident and perplexed, and then a passionate embrace that Henry turns delicately away from, packing Neal into his stroller as Gramps says, “I will find you! I will always find you!” and wraps Grandma into his arms.
Henry doesn’t know when he’d become the family babysitter, but he isn’t complaining this time.
Mom finds him at the farmhouse later, listening to a rather violent story about Aunt Zelena’s reign of Oz as Neal and Robyn coo on the floor together. “Sweetheart,” she says, and she sounds sad.
“Oh, darling, I didn’t know you cared,” Aunt Zelena says, throwing her arms open. Mom pokes her and wraps an arm around Henry’s shoulders.
They drop Neal off with Ma before Mom takes him back home, sitting him down at the kitchen table and taking his hands in hers. For a moment, Henry thinks finally , he’s going to get some answers, and then Mom says, “Of course your grandparents have true love.”
She looks very sincere and very concerned, as though she thinks that…that they’re the reason he believes in love or something. He keeps a straight face and bobs his head, which only makes Mom more concerned. “It isn’t just true love that produces someone like Emma,” she says, and the warmth in her tone when she says Ma’s name is enough for Henry’s magic to bloom again in his chest. “It has to be a very perfect kind of true love. I don’t think that it would have been quite as perfect in the Enchanted Forest, when both your grandparents would have been thinking about their lost daughter.”
“Okay,” Henry says, and he still doesn’t quite understand. “So Neal won’t have magic because it isn’t perfect?”
Mom’s shoulders bump up for a moment. “Maybe he will, someday. Who knows? He may be feeling it now, even if it isn’t quite a part of him, yet. When there’s peace, though…”
She’s smiling again, a little fond, and Henry says, piecing together a few things in his mind, “That’s when the magic stabilizes.”
The vault is colder than he remembers, and he’s shivering as he descends the stairs into the dark. It’s quiet and dank and can’t really be a nice place to live, and he wishes he could at least use this pointless magic to light a fire.
Instead, a fire flares on the other side of the vault, and the Queen glides into sight. She has a predatory smile on her face, the cat paid a visit by the mouse, and she purrs, “Do I have a– Henry!” she says, standing straight, her eyes wide and startled. It takes her a moment to regain her composure. “Where’s your coat?” she demands when she does.
It appears on his shoulders a moment later, and Henry says, “Thanks,” and finds that it’s easier to swallow back his anxiety now. The Queen leads him into a warm secret room, and she sits gracefully on one end of a coach as he perches on the other. “Uh…sorry to bother you,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve been busy with…stuff.”
The Queen tilts her head, her lips pressing together into a tight smile, and he’s reminded of Mom in those first few months after the curse when she says, “Of course. What can I do for you?”
“I think…” And she might be the one person to believe him and to understand, so he says, “It’s about Emma and Mom,” and waits for her eyes to widen and the answering surge of magic to appear. This time, he doesn’t try to stop it when it emerges, exploding like fireworks in a shower of sparks. “And this,” he says, and the Queen looks nothing less than heartbroken.
She’s a little sharper than Mom, a little more reckless when she begins to teach him, but she shows him how to wield his magic and says nothing about the way that it returns when it fades whenever he talks too much to her about his other moms. “Not that I don’t approve of murder and mayhem,” she says when he nearly sets her on fire. “But not until you graduate from high school.”
“Mom,” he whines, and she glows so visibly in response that he softens. “Okay,” he says grudgingly. “I’m not going to murder anyone, anyway. I just want to understand .”
“Of course you do,” she says fondly, and sometimes it’s impossible to figure out where Mom begins and ends with her.
The afternoon passes quickly into evening, and the Queen claps her hands together and an entire meal appears on the table in front of them. “Mom,” Henry says reprovingly, and she sighs and snaps her fingers to pay Granny, too. It’s Mom’s money she uses, but he guesses that that’s sort of her right, at least, instead of petty theft.
They finish quickly, and Henry says, “Can you show me how to make things appear like that?”
“Energy transfers,” the Queen says, shaking her head. “Not unless your magic stabilizes. We don’t want you to try to move something and lose your power midway through. Especially not a person .”
Henry shudders. “Okay. How about–?”
“Hey!” comes the voice from behind them. It’s Ma, a sword raised as she glares at the Queen. “Get the hell away from my son!”
Henry watches the Queen, sees the flicker of despair on her face that she twists into a sneer. “Over your dead body,” she says, and her hand lights up with flames.
“Whoa,” Henry says, alarmed. “Hold on a second. Ma, I came here on my own . Mom didn’t kidnap me.” Ma’s eyes go wide, just like the Queen’s had when he’d called her Mom , and Henry says, “It’s okay. I promise. I just wanted to see her.”
The Queen stands stubbornly in place, still with her palm up and a fireball hovering, but Ma stares from Henry to the Queen almost desperately. “Henry, she could hurt you,” she says finally.
We can hurt her, he thinks, but doesn’t say. He looks up at the Queen and the Queen watches him, her eyes as heartbroken as Mom’s used to be during the curse when he’d pushed her away. She’s surprisingly human when she isn’t all threats and fury, and he says, “It’s okay. I promise,” again.
The Queen touches his shoulder, and Ma watches them, her eyes hard and suspicious and a little uncertain between it all. The Queen meets her eyes evenly, and Henry feels a quiet surge of magic that has him exhale in relief.
Mom is eagle-eyed for the next few days, hovering and keeping up with his schedule to make sure that he isn’t wandering back to the vault. He protests feebly and she shakes her head and says, “You’re too much like your mother,” with so much wry affection in her voice that it jolts through Henry like more magic.
He still manages to make it back to see the Queen once, and he finally ventures the question there that his other moms aren’t ready for. “Has something like this ever happened before?”
“Like this?” the Queen repeats warily.
He shrugs. “You know. Getting magic and becoming the…the child of true love after the fact. I know that my situation is pretty unique, but I can’t be the only one, right? This must not be the first time–”
“It’s the first that I know of,” the Queen admits, pursing her lips together. “And I can’t imagine that it will ever…” She doesn’t finish the sentence, just sits in her place in the vault, looking very lonely. She hasn’t left the vault much since the cobra episode, hasn’t done much more than waited around for him, and Henry swallows and takes a step forward to hug her.
It’s tentative at first, but then she wraps her arms around him and holds him tight, and she’s Mom , she feels like Mom and smells like Mom and she might be evil but she’s still his mom. He shuts his eyes and presses his chin to her jeweled shoulder, feels her arms tighten still as though she doesn’t plan on letting him go.
When she finally does, Mom– the other Mom– is there, leaning against the doorway of the vault and watching them expressionlessly. “Time to go, Henry,” she says, and Henry’s hand trails across the Queen’s as he steps back to Mom.
The Queen watches them go in silence, and Henry’s magic hums like a song within him.
There’s more fighting now, but it isn’t the kind that triggers his magic. It’s fighting over him , over the Queen, and Mom and Ma are both helpless when they fight, as though they can’t quite pin down which side they’re supposed to be fighting. “She’s pulling some kind of con,” Ma insists, and then, when Mom agrees, “Or maybe she just wants to see her son? I can’t tell with her.”
“He wants to see her,” Mom says, sounding dazed. “Why would he want to–”
“Well, she’s still a part of the mom he loves, isn’t she?” Ma says quietly, and Mom’s head jerks up and the magic surges through Henry again as he observes silently from the stairs.
“No,” she says weakly, and Ma puts a hand on Mom’s hand and looks so quietly understanding that Henry kind of expects it when Mom leans forward and presses her lips to the corner of Ma’s mouth. The magic feels stronger within him, more stable than ever before, but all he can think about is the Queen, desolate, I can’t imagine that it will ever –
“Emma,” Mom murmurs, her voice hoarse, and Ma catches her lips before she can pull away, puts a hand at the back of Mom’s head and tilts it so she can kiss her properly. Henry makes a beeline for his bedroom and slides out the window and down the tree beside it, leaving a trail behind him of magic-scorched tiles and grass.
The Queen knows, somehow. She’s drinking when he bursts into the vault, pensive and unsmiling, and she doesn’t brighten even when she sees him. “No magic tonight, Henry.”
“Stop that,” he says, affronted, and grabs her bottle before she can pour herself another drink. She stares at him, bleary-eyed and a little outraged. Fine . He can do outrage right back at her. “I jumped out a window to see you.”
“You jumped out a window because Regina was debasing herself with that woman ,” the Queen sneers, and Henry glares at her until she scowls and looks down. “What? I don’t care about any of that.”
Henry’s fingers ball into fists. “Oh, come on . We both know the truth. I’m not getting this magic because just two of my moms are in love, and I–” She makes a grab for him and he ducks away, unafraid. “I don’t know what all of you are afraid of– why you’re still lurking here when you still care –”
“They don’t!” the Queen snaps. “They want me dead , they want me hidden , they want me gone –” She stops, looking horrified at her own admissions, and adds in a sulky, “And I don’t give a damn about either of them.”
“Right,” Henry says, deflated, and the Queen hugs him again, holds him to her with clumsy, uncoordinated movements. “Mom–” he says, and he closes his eyes and focuses with his magic, breaking the one rule she’s given him since the start of this and pulls until they’re both standing in the center of town.
There are two voices in the dark, calling his name, and he calls back, “I’m here! I’m here!” until Mom and Ma skid to a halt in front of him, wide-eyed and accusing as they see the Queen behind him.
She groans. “I am not doing this tonight,” she says, turning away, and then a hooded figure breaks free from the shadows and hurls himself at Ma.
It’s the figure from her dreams, it must be, and it’s the man who’s supposed to kill Ma. Henry screams and Ma draws her sword, driving him back, but only for a moment. “No,” someone whispers from behind him, and he doesn’t know if it’s Mom or the Queen because they’re standing together, moving forward to Ma.
Mom lets loose a wave of magic that clips the hooded figure but does little more, and the Queen hurls a fireball that makes him duck for long enough that Ma gains the upper hand for a moment. Mom looks at the Queen, gratified, and the Queen just narrows her eyes and throws another fireball at the figure.
“You have to work together,” Henry says frantically, but they don’t seem to hear them. Their eyes are on each other, both determined and both only aware of Ma in front of them, and they turn as though in perfect sync and raise their hands in the same stance to draw on their magic.
–Ma turns– sees them both, united–
–Henry feels a new surge of magic building within him, stronger than anything he’s ever felt before. When his moms strike at the figure, it erupts from him like a geyser, bright light with multicolored bands that illuminates the entire street as though in daylight. He sees–
–Ma, holding her sword high–
–Mom on her knees on the ground–
–And nothing else, just light and eyes open in wonder and disbelief. His magic settles within him, calm and sated, and he can feel it all through his entire body.
When the light finally fades, there’s nothing but a ripped hood below Ma on the ground. Ma is breathing hard and shaking, Mom is staring at her hands, and the Queen is gone.
No .
Not gone .
His moms are both quiet as they walk home with him, their hands joined at his back. Ma still looks stunned at the idea that she’s lived through her encounter, and Mom…Mom just looks shellshocked.
“Does it feel okay?” he ventures when they’re finally inside. Ma keeps a casual hand on Mom’s hip, and Mom leans into her and reaches out a hand to touch his cheek. “Being…being one person again?”
“There are…a lot of new memories,” Mom says. “Some worse than others.” She sends a furtive glance Ma’s way, and Ma’s lips quirk into a smile. Ma doesn’t know , not yet, but Henry’s pretty sure that that’s a good thing. Ma will probably freak out once she realizes whose magic that was.
He can still feel the magic, and it doesn’t feel so volatile anymore. It spreads through him, is as natural as breathing, and he doesn’t think he’s going to accidentally set anything on fire anymore. It’s good. It’s finally finished , and he’s finally–
“What now?” Ma murmurs, and she still has that expression on her face as though she doesn’t quite know how to take any of this, Mom back together and her death sentence commuted. “What do we do now?”
Mom catches her gaze, and then they’re both warm and flushed and smiling as brightly as Henry’s magic had been. “Now we live ,” she says, stroking Henry’s hair.
And they do.