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It took a great amount of effort and willpower, but Regina raised her head from its bowed position as she realized that he cellphone was going off. By reflex, she pulled it out of her pocket to hit the ignore button, but hesitated when she saw that it was Mason’s school calling. She quickly wiped the stain of tears from her cheeks (as if it would matter), sucked in a deep breath and answered the phone, her voice coming out lower and more tired than she had intended.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Mills? This is Principal Merriweather, I’d like to talk to you about your son, Mason…”

Inwardly, Regina groaned. She had been getting these phone calls all week and as much as she stressed that ‘now isn’t a good time’ before, she never meant it more than now.

“He got into another fight didn’t he?” Regina asked the principal with a knowing tone.

“Uh, yes…how did-ah, never mind.“

Regina couldn’t help but to roll her eyes at the idiocy of the man who claimed to be the head of the school board.

“Send him home, I’ll have a talk with him.” She said after a long pause on the other end, clearly the principal was too frightened to suggest any course of action that needed to be taken hereafter. Mr. Merriweather made a slight noise on the other end of the line that indicated to Regina that he wasn’t at all happy about doing that, but the last thing Regina was about to do was drag her ass halfway across town to go and speak with him in his office right now.

“It’s the third time this week…” Mr. Merriweather began but Regina cut him off immediately.

“And if it’s anything like the last two times, it wasn’t his fault.” The Mayor snapped coldly.

There was a brief pause, and then,

“I’m afraid your son has broken the nose of one of his classmates; August Booth. When we tried asking Mason what happened, all he said was that he deserved it, and August swears up and down he didn’t do anything. Mr. Booth hasn’t lied to us before, and we have no reason to believe-“

“Are you calling my son a liar, Mr. Merriweather?” Regina quickly interrupted. Somehow, she had pulled herself up from the floor in her rage and was now standing tall, looking rather imposing if she were having this conversation with the man to his face rather than on her cellphone. “Send. Him. Home.” She demanded hotly, and promptly ended the call.

Immediately her back hit the door, her legs reminding her of just how weak she still was. She pocketed the cell phone and ran her fingers through her mess of black hair and down her face, albeit gently as she felt a few new bruises rising to the surface. She couldn’t let Mason see her, not like this. Taking in a deep breath, Regina pushed herself away from the door and limped to the stair case. Her nimble fingers grasped down on the hard wood of the railing until her knuckles turned white, and began the painful ascent up to her room where she could get in a quick shower and do a bit of makeup magic.

XXX

“Mom?”

Regina could hear Mason calling out to her, the front door slamming shut behind him and the familiar sound of his backpack being tossed to the floor by the door. Had it been any other day, Regina would have yelled down to him to pick up his backpack and hang it up properly and even though she couldn’t hear it, she knew that his shoes had been kicked off and strewn around somewhere in the middle of the living room. Today, however, wasn’t a normal day and so she made no mention of it.

Regina quickly applied the remaining touches of her makeup to her neck and cheeks before throwing on her black turtleneck shirt and fluffed out her blown-dry hair. She had managed to get the majority of the blood off of her skin in the shower since it had only broken in a few places; unfortunately those places were as plain as day on her face and not somewhere she could hide like on her neck or chest. Still though, the makeup would provide an excellent cover so long as Mason didn’t get too close to her.

“I’m here Mason. Give me a moment and I’ll be right down.” Regina called as she quickly hobbled out of her bathroom and into her bedroom to put on her heels, but she wasn’t given the chance.

“Mom Mr. Merriweather is a liar! It wasn’t my fault this time! August called you a…” He paused as he entered Regina’s room, blushing that what he was about to say next could land him in trouble. “…a witch.” He finished.

Sighing, Regina sat on the edge of her bed and instead of putting [i]on[/i] her high heels, she pretended that she was taking them [i]off[/i].

“Mason, if you’re quoting someone it’s okay to say the real thing.” Regina said calmly.

“I did say the real thing.” Mason said, blinking and Regina, in turn, blinked back.

“Oh…”

Mason shook his head and approached his mother further into her bedroom and took a seat next to his mother, throwing his arms around her waist in a sideways hug and burrowing his head into her chest. Regina immediately sucked in a pained breath and tentatively put her arms around her son, holding him to her.

“I don’t like it when the kids at school talk about you, it’s never anything good. They don’t know you like I do, I know that what they say isn’t true but I can’t convince them that you wouldn’t ever hurt anyone.” Mason mumbled into her chest and even though Regina couldn’t see his eyes, she could tell that he was crying. Regina frowned and rested her chin on the top of his mess of brown hair, staring absently at the wall in front of her as she rubbed Mason’s back soothingly.

“It’s alright Mason. You’re going to be dealing with rotten people your whole life. The best thing you can do in those situations is stand up for yourself, or what you believe in, just as you did today.” She reassured her son, feeling her chest growing warm with the love that Mason was showing her right then. Sure, standing up to a nine-year-old wasn’t exactly Knight in shining armor worthy, but she couldn’t have been more proud of her prince right then. He was all she had left, and suddenly, she realized, that would be enough.

She ran her fingers delicately through his hair, easing his sobs until she almost thought that he had fallen asleep like that until he turned his neck to look up at her with a shy smile.

“You’re my mom, I’ll always protect you.”

Regina caught his chin between her fingers and radiated her smile down on him, bending forward to kiss his forehead quickly to keep him from looking upon her face.

“I must be the luckiest mother alive to have the loyalty of such a vigil knight.” She said hugging his head back into her chest again.

“You are.” Mason replied, and the two shared a laugh.

Mason eventually eased out of his mother’s loving embrace and swung his legs back and forth as they dangled off her bed, but Regina kept her gaze away from him as she felt him studying her.

“How about pizza?” Regina asked clearing her throat and getting up and off of the bed. Her ankle nearly gave out on her immediately after standing, causing her to lurch a bit and Mason’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Mom?”

“You’re right, we’ve had pizza twice this week, maybe Chinese?” Regina went on, continuing towards the door.

“Mom?” Mason asked again, more urgently this time as he stood up off of the bed.

“Then there’s always that meatloaf we have in the freezer, I wonder if-“

“MOM!” Mason bounded from his spot and ran in front of Regina, his eyes glancing up at her accusingly as Regina refused to make eye contact with him again. He could see it now, at first he thought it was the shadows of the bedroom playing tricks on his mother’s face but now he saw. Her right eyebrow was swollen and towards the corner stripe of hair missing. Her nose looked a little blue and her lip was just as swollen as her eyebrow. Knitting his brows together in concern, he took his mother’s hands in his, tugging at them slightly and urging for her to look at him.

“You stood up to your bully today, didn’t you?” He asked, the question causing Regina to look upon her son at long last. His eyes bore into hers intently, and she felt compelled to nod and smile sadly, feeling bad for making him look upon her with concern.

“Yes, I did Mason.” She settled on, unable to really tell him the truth. She watched as her son grit his teeth beneath his lips, a flash of anger clouding his eyes for a moment.

“You shouldn’t have gone alone! I should have been there with you! I could of-“

Regina held fast to Mason’s shoulders, staring back at him just as intently and causing him to stop talking.

“You were where you were supposed to be, Mason.” She assured him sternly. “Who knows what would have happened if you had let August run his mouth about me, it could have been chaos!”

Sometimes, Regina wondered where these motherly instincts even came from. Of course what she said sounded ridiculous the moment it came from her mouth, but it seemed to ease Mason’s thoughts a little and he nodded in reply, indicating that she was right. With a somewhat dejected sigh, Regina pulled Mason back into her for a tight hug, holding onto him as if he would vanish from her any moment. She couldn’t afford to think about what was in store for her once Gold had his way; what might happen to Mason. All she wanted was to cherish this moment and think that for once in her life, she had touched the heart of someone else in a positive way and changed their life for the better.