After Henry (Once Upon a Time)

Chapter Thirteen: We need the Savior

Ivy: What happened to "wanting a baby"? What happened to "wanting to be a dad again"?.

As I stared at Henry's face, shortly after I told him the truth, I couldn't find any traces of his wishes to build a family with me.

All I saw was a face wrinkled by fear, the same as mine. But fear was nothing but a pale word that didn't even come near the explanation of how we both felt.

A few days ago, I'd never think of myself as a mother, I hated children and even cursed them with unpleasant words. Now...Fate chose me to be a mother. And how could I? I felt so unprepared, unfitting for the role. But as my hands fell over my belly and I sensed the love my child had for me, even though she or he wasn't born, it was a feeling I never wanted to escape from.

Warm, gentle, calming, a child is worth the entire universe, it can melt your heart like nothing else. I was going to be a mother.

For the first time in my life, it didn't seem scary, when I held my belly tight and felt that bottom of warm and fondness loving me like no other force in the universe. And it didn't feel like a curse anymore, it could never feel like it.

When I discovered I was about to have a child, the whole world lost its meaning. Even my dilemmas about breaking or not the curse, everything lost its meaning, as I held my hands and felt the warm love of my soon to be "child".

But on the shadow of that love, was my love for Henry, which was also the strongest thing I ever had in my life, and how much I cared for him to stop him from finding his other daughter.

The one he calls Aby isn't dead, she is alive, on the other coast. She's my step-niece, Lucy, and her mother is...sadly enough...Cinderella. A single mom named Jacinda, trying to piece her life together with an unsteady job, a dreamer who ends all their life savings with foolish pursuits, named Sabine, and Victoria Belfrey throwing stones at every time her step-daughter seems to succeed in something.

Still, the little parts of me that cared for that and their place in Henry's life seemed to evaporate, as I realized me and Henry were about to have a story of our own, a family, a child! Nothing else seemed important and I knew that was selfish, but somehow, it dangerously felt justified by the love I instantly had for my child, the one being fate brought to my life that embodied the possibility of having a new destiny, in the arms of Henry Mills, of me giving him the one thing he never thought to have again, the one thing he always wanted to have.

"Henry?" I called him back to reality, trying to find the part of him that showed thrill and love for the idea of having a child. At least, he was like that, before I told him I was pregnant.

"Ivy, that's wonderful..." He finally replied, with a small giggle.

His arms wrapped around my body and his lips fell over my cheek, oddly kissing me, as he looked even more worried.

As my face fell on his shoulder, eyes wondered at the tv and as I read the deadline, I finally found out what was troubling Henry so much.

"Ivy Belfrey. Missing. Possibly kidnapped."

"Henry..." I whispered my beloved's name, as I let go of his arms and picked up the remote to raise the tv's volume.

"As the investigations continue, we wish to know what the mother, Victoria Belfrey, has to say about it."

"It's a pain no one can describe, I do hope they find my daughter." The obnoxious woman lied to all of America.

"They say I was kidnapped? What? By whom?" I asked as I found that news more ridiculous than serious. I mean, please, watching my mother's fake sorrow took away all the point of it, making me forget the mess I was in.