You know how you sometimes get plot bunnies and you have to write it down it will just keep bugging you? This was a freaking plot elephant! If I didn't write this down, I might have exploded. I actually used to have one of these with my cousin when we were little and it was a lot of fun so now Henry's setting one up. I'm excited for this so please review and if I get a good response, I'll continue. :)
"Hey, Emma!" Henry called out as he spied his birthmother sitting on a bench a little ways away from the school doors.
"Hey, kid. How was school?"
"Awesome!" Henry said. "Look what I got." He reached into his backpack and pulled out a book on spies.
"Do the fairy tales know you're cheating on them?" Emma asked with a grin. Henry shot her a glare that would have made Regina proud and Emma quickly said, "So what? Now everyone in town is a superspy?"
"No, I just got it so that Mom would stop bugging me, but it's actually really cool and I think it might help with Operation Cobra."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah!" He sat down on the bench next to her and flipped the book open. "Check this out. Spies have these cool things called dead letter drops that let them pass information without actually meeting. Maybe we can use that so that Mom doesn't catch us together anymore."
"That's…actually not a bad idea," Emma admitted. "Do you want to try making one?"
Henry nodded vigorously and jumped up with the spy book under his arm. "Where can we do it?"
"Henry?" The mayor's voice floated across the school grounds and her high heels clicked on the sidewalk as she made her way over to the pair.
"Hi, Mom," Henry said quietly.
"Madam Mayor," Emma greeted.
"Sheriff Swan," Regina replied curtly. Then she turned to Henry. "How was school?"
"Good," Henry said. Then he held up his new book. "Look what I got."
"Interesting," Regina said as she flipped through the book. "Are you ready to go?"
"Yeah. Bye, Emma!"
"See you later, kid," Emma replied. Regina shot the sheriff a glare and then turned around with an arm on Henry's shoulder. Emma stood up and stretched lazily. Then she saw Mary Margaret walking out of the school.
"Hey!" Emma called.
"Oh, Emma," Mary Margaret said. "Hi. What are you doing here?"
"Well I was talking to Henry and then Madam Mayor decided to take him home."
The schoolteacher smiled sympathetically and shifted her books to her other arm. "So your day was pretty good then?" Mary Margaret asked knowing that Emma never came to the school unless she didn't have any paperwork to do.
"Yup. No paperwork and Henry showed me his new spy book and I think we're going to be starting a dead letter drop for Operation Cobra."
"Interesting."
"I'm pretty impressed I got that all out with a straight face," Emma said. "Hey, you want a ride home?"
"No, that's okay," Mary Margaret replied. "Are we sill doing dinner at Granny's?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world. I'll see you later!" Emma called as she walked off towards her bug.
It was four thirty when Emma heard the walkie talkie on the desk next to her buzz.
"Emma?" Henry's voice came through the static. "Can you meet me in the park in ten minutes?"
Emma grinned as she picked the walkie talkie up and spoke into it. "Sure, kid. What's going on?"
"It's about Operation Cobra and that thing we talked about earlier."
"I'm on my way." Emma grabbed her jacket and keys and started outside.
She pulled up to the park at exactly four forty. Henry's bike was leaning against a tree and the boy himself was standing next to the gazebo with an envelope in his hand. He waved her over and started talking as soon as she was in earshot.
"You see this stone here?" Henry asked kicking at the aforementioned stone. Emma nodded. It was about the size of a brick. It had come loose over the years and now it could easily be removed from its place. "This is the drop spot. All you have to do is pick up the stone, put the letter in and then turn the stone around so the flat side is out. Easy, right?"
"Yeah," Emma said. "Wait a sec. Does your mom know you're here?"
"I told her I was going to the park because I thought I left my pencil here."
"She let you bike down to the park just so that you could look for a pencil?" Emma asked incredulously.
"Yup," Henry replied. He held up a dirty, broken pencil and then grinned. "I'll show you the drop thing." He pulled out the stone, placed his envelope inside, turned the stone so the flat side was facing out and then pushed it back into place. "See? And then when you take it out, you turn the stone back around."
"I got it, kid," Emma said. This seemed like an awful lot of work when they still had the walkie talkies. "Any other rules I should know about?"
"Just a few. Make sure you type the letters so that if anyone else finds them, they won't be able to tell it's you and you also need to use code words and code names and stuff like that so no one can understand it if they intercept it."
"Henry, you know this seems like a lot of fun, but why can't we just stick with the radios for now?" Emma asked. It came out as almost whining.
"Because this is what real spies do and this way Mom won't ever find out that we're talking about Operation Cobra."
Emma made the mistake of looking into Henry's puppy-dog eyes and she sighed. "Alright, we can use the dead letter drop," she conceded.
Henry's smile was dazzling.
"On one condition," Emma said. The boy's smile faded a little as he waited for his birthmother's ultimatum. "You don't come sneaking around here at all hours of the day or night to see if I've left a note. You have to promise me that you'll be responsible. If I hear that you're running off or lying so that you can get out of the house, it's over. Got it?"
"Okay," Henry said. "I can do that."
"Good." Emma glanced at her watch. "Now I've got to get to the diner to meet Mary Margaret for dinner. I'll see you later?"
"Yeah!" Henry called as he raced over to his bike. "Bye!"
Emma waved and then headed off to the diner. Her inner child kept telling her that this would be a lot of fun. There was a part of her that thought that maybe this was some sort of plan, but the child eventually won out.
"Hey, Mom!" Henry called. "I'm home!"
Regina walked out of the kitchen and met her son in the foyer. "Did you find your pencil?"
Henry nodded and held up the pencil.
"Good," Regina said. She started back into the kitchen and Henry followed her. "You were gone for a while. Did you do anything else while you were there?"
Henry hesitated. "Well, kind of. You remember that old stone in the gazebo that you always used to trip over when we went to the park?"
Regina nodded and she could feel a faint blush creeping over her cheeks at the memory.
Henry didn't seem to notice and he continued speaking. "I had an idea from my spy book. It's this thing called a dead letter drop where two spies can leave notes for each other and stuff."
"What do you mean?" Regina asked.
"I mean it could be like when I was little and you used to leave little sticky notes around the house for me."
Regina paused as she stirred the spaghetti sauce on the stove. "You want to…to do something like that?"
"Yeah," Henry said. "We could just do it for fun and all you have to do is put the note in the hole behind that stone and then turn it so that the flat side is facing out."
"Oh really?" Regina asked. "Is that all I have to do?"
"Well, you should type the notes and use code speak so that if anyone intercepts it, they won't get it."
"And what types of things should I write about?" Regina decided to play along. This was only a tiny bit better than the fairy tales, but it was a step in the right direction.
"Anything really," Henry said. "Just make sure that it's secret so that only I could understand it."
"Alright," Regina sighed when she saw the boy's puppy dog eyes. "We can make a dead letter drop."
"Awesome!" Henry exclaimed. "I'm gonna go work on my homework."
"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes!" Regina called after him, but he was already upstairs. She shook her head and turned her attention back to the sauce in front of her. That boy was up to something, but this did sound kind of fun. And right now she was willing to do anything to get her son back.
When Henry closed his bedroom door, he sat down at his desk and pulled out his notebook. But he wasn't doing his homework. He started writing a letter. He finished up just as Regina started calling him for dinner.
Later on that night after Regina got in the shower Henry snuck downstairs to her office and typed his letter. He printed it out, folded it, stuck it in an envelope and placed it in his backpack.
The next morning was warm, sunny and beautiful, so Regina let him walk to school. He stopped by the park on his way and stuck the letter into the drop spot.
Now all he could do was wait and hope his plan worked.
