The Way

Chapter Seventeen

Henry stood frozen in place, staring at the lifeless forms of his two mothers. The dust of Emma Swan's heart collected into a pile on the ground near where Regina's hand had come to rest when she'd collapsed, the fragments glinting in the dim light. His breathing quickened, his nostrils flared and fury pulsed through him. Regina had killed Emma. She'd killed her! After all of her preaching that she was a changed woman, that she was no longer evil, that she loved him... The young man began to visibly tremble and his hands clenched into tight fists.

Softly, from a short distance away, he heard Snow murmuring to herself.

"It didn't work...why didn't it work?!"

Snapped out of his enranged stupor, Henry's eyes bolted to those of his grandmother, noting the wide, frightened expression on her face, and then he looked back to his adoptive mother. He looked at the pile of dust that had been his birthmother's heart. Suddenly, it all made sense. This had been a rescue attempt, not an attempt at murder! Then he looked at Cora and his eyes darkened.

"This...is your fault...!" he growled, and although Cora herself looked just as surprised as her counterparts, she took it upon herself to offer him a cruel grin.

"It appears my daughter was not as strong as I'd anticipated," she said calmly, approaching Henry and Snow White. Charming hung between his wife and grandson, still unconscious. "Whatever it was she was planning appears to have backfired. Not that I should be so surprised...she always was quite useless when it came to this kind of magic."

Henry's breathing grew faster, angrier, and as the veins on his forehead began to protrude, a strange white glow began to form around his entire body.

"Henry..." came Snow White's gasp from nearby, "Henry, you...you're glowing!"

But the boy wasn't listening.

Suddenly, with a sound like a firecracker, a pulse of white-light energy exploded from Henry's body and smashed into Cora, slamming her against the opposite wall so hard the stone behind her cracked and gave way. His hands freed, Henry advanced on the old sorceress—who seemed quite taken aback by the boy's unexpected flair for magic—and held his hand out as he had seen his own mother do so many times. Cora was lifted off the ground by her neck, her feet dangling and kicking while she struggled to gurgle out words to make him stop.

But he didn't, and not long after the attack had begun, Cora, too, lay unmoving on the cold stone ground.

For what seemed an eternity Henry stood over her looking down, shocked at his own actions but knowing it had been the right thing to do. Then, remembering the situation at hand, he bolted to his grandparents who had been released from their magical bonds by Cora's death. David moaned and grumbled something uninteligible as he returned to the realm of consciousness.

Henry's eyes met Snow White's and she quickly told him, "We have to wake Regina. She's the only one who will know what to do. It looks like the poison affected her too—kiss her Henry! Wake your mother up!"

Nodding, the boy dashed to the fallen Regina, skidding to a halt and dropping immediately to his knees. He pressed a firm kiss to her forehead and then shook her by one arm in the hopes of jarring her back to life.

Some days later, Regina would compare returning to the world of the living as being worse even than all of her most severe hangovers combined. In truth, she hadn't actually been dead, but as far as her family was concerned, she had been. When she sputtered awake and opened her eyes Henry was leaning over her, shaking her, and Snow White and Charming hung back in her peripheral vision. She sat up, pressing a palm to her forehead and groaning. Then she remembered what had happened.