The door to the station slams and Emma rolls her eyes, continuing to do her work and waiting for Leroy to come marching down the hallway. "Hey, princess! What happened to the mines? Why can't we get in?" he asks, clearly angry with her. Emma doesn't even bother to look up at him but instead continues to do her paperwork.
She lifts a page, checking a box on the paper and letting it fall back to the other page. "There was a cave-in, Leroy. I already told you, that's David's case," she says, her voice monotone as she continues turning pages and going through books to find definitions. She hears the door slam again, looking up and making a face of confusion. Leroy's already here. Who's that?
Before Leroy can say anything, Neal marches into the station, holding Henry by the arm and she can practically see the smoke coming out of his ears. Leroy takes that as his cue to leave, thankfully. That leaves them alone with Henry.
She notices that his lip bleeding first thing. "What happened?" she asks, clearly surprised that Neal's mad at Henry in the first place. It's not a common thing for Neal to get mad at anybody, especially their eleven-year-old son, but when he does, everything gets chaotic.
Neal stands there, breathing heavily with Henry's arm still being held up by his hand as he waits for the boy to explain what he did. "He got in a fight at school, didn't you, Henry?" Neal says, waiting for the boys to admit to it. Henry just looks down at the ground, nodding in shame. Emma looks up at Neal, confused as to why Henry would ever hit anybody. Emma does have to say, by the looks of it, he won. "He wouldn't tell me why," Neal says, still just as mad as he was when he walked in.
Emma looks over at Henry, who walks over to her and looks down at the ground, still not saying anything. Neal sometimes uses… colorful language when he's angry. Something tells Emma that Henry heard an earful of it on the drive over here. She's also learned that it's easier to get confessions out of Henry if she's softer with him. "Henry, why did you do this?" she asks, taking his hands in hers and looking up at him, tilting her head to the side to meet his eyes as he looks down.
His eyes start watering and Emma looks to Neal, who's staring at them, looking just as infuriated as before. "He was bullying a girl. He hit her and called her a bad name and Dad said that when someone's mean to someone who can't defend themselves, especially a girl, you fight for them," he says. Emma looks over to Neal, who now looks a little bit less in shock and a little bit more stunned and maybe even just a little bit proud.
Emma looks at Henry, her head tilted to the side as she notices his eyes start to water. "I didn't mean to get in trouble, I just wanted to help her. The other boy didn't even get in trouble, though, Mom. I told them what happened and they said that she should've told a teacher. They were all inside and he had her cornered. He would've beat her up if I didn't do something," he says and Emma nods, looking over at the wall, thinking for a minute.
After a moment, she looks back up at him. She keeps his hand in hers, rubbing the back of them. As anyone could imagine, Emma wasn't exactly unfamiliar with the unfair school system, given her attitude and need for everything to be fair for everybody. "I get that, kid. But, you know not to hit people, right?" she asks and Henry nods, opening his mouth to speak as a few tears fall from his eyes. "I used to get in trouble like this, too, so I really do get it. I know why you did it and I really wish that I could just let it go, but something tells me your other parents won't understand as well. So, I'm gonna tell you this. You don't hit people unless you absolutely have to. Did you absolutely have to?" she asks him and Henry looks over at her.
He lets go of her hands, suddenly angrier than before. "Yes, I did! He was hurting her! An ambulance had to come, Mom! An ambulance! He didn't just like, poke her or something, he beat the crap out of her! So, yeah, I had to!" he practically yells at her, looking over at Neal, as well, who clearly didn't get the whole story before now.
Emma nods in understanding, taking his hands back and to her surprise, he didn't let go of them. "Okay. Here's the deal, okay? This is a tricky situation because you did the right and wrong thing at the same time. He deserved it, I agree, I'm sure your dad does, too, right Neal?" she asks, looking over at him. Henry turns his head to see his father, who just nods and looks at the ground. "But, you really can't get into fights. You could be arrested, Henry," she tells him and the boys look turns from blank to absolute terror.
"I'm not going to, but I could. I think what we could do if your dad agrees, is we just take the book away for- let's say two days. You think that's fair? Given that I could arrest you instead?" she asks and Henry nods. She looks up at the boy's father, who looks back at her. "Do you?" she asks and Henry looks at his dad, hope and fear in his eyes as Neal nods once, looking back at Emma.
She nods again, looking back at Neal. Henry takes off his backpack and hands her the book. She takes it and sets it on her desk. "Okay, so… I personally am just doing this to say that I did something about it because I totally agree with you and I don't think Regina would. So… you guys wanna go get some ice cream from Every Given Sundae? It's half-price waffle cone day," she asks and Neal nods, Henry agreeing and they both take off. Emma stays behind, putting the book in a drawer and locking it after Henry's gone to make sure that he won't try and steal it back if he knows which one it's in.
So, I really liked this one. I got it off of an interview Jared did. It turned out different than I intended, but it's fine. Basically, he was talking about punishments and said that Henry goes to Emma first and asks for help when he's in trouble because she would probably just put him in a time-out and say no video games because all he could do is write and Regina would kill him. Then he brought up a thing about if they said he couldn't read the book and Henry would be like 'whaaa?' So, that's what they did in this. Very different reaction from Henry, though.