CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: OPERATION TALLAHASSEE AND OTHER DISASTROUS IDEAS FROM THE MIND OF HENRY MILLS
(In which there's too much exposition instead of real-time scenes because The Author was feeling lazy A&E style.)
If Henry Mills had a nickname, it would probably be "King of Spectacularly Doomed Operations". The sad fact was, every one of his operations had some horrible result. Operation Cobra led to being poisoned, the arrival of magic, his mother and grandmother being sucked into another realm, and from that the arrival of Cora and Hook. Operation Praying Mantis led to being kidnapped and his father being shot, which led to his grandfather's death and resurrection, and from that his father's death and Zelena casting her time spell. Operation Mongoose led to the unleashing of a psychotic scribe who trapped his family in a book and rewrote history so that he could get rich off the misfortunes of others, and that subsequently caused his mom to become the Dark One.
Considering the spectacular fail of Operation Jackass, Henry really should have quit while he was behind, but it just seemed to be in his "Charming" nature to forget his proven incompetence where planning was concerned and go by the motto "If at first you don't succeed, try try again." Whoever came up with that saying probably did not have family like Henry's, because anyone who knew them for very long would conclude that after one failure at something, they really ought to just stay home and not touch anything.
Oh, the trip had started out well enough. It had almost felt like they were a real normal family getting dinner at a pizza place and watching an old kung fu movie at the motel in Bangor. They'd quizzed each other on the questions and did some mock kung-fu fighting that would have left Mulan appalled, probably. But it had been fun! And, sure, Henry's parents had both been a little miffed to find out that he'd gone and rented a beach house in Florida for a couple of weeks and got tickets to Disney World, but he'd also used Grandpa Charming's credit card, so angry as his mom was at her dad, she'd decided it was a forgivable theft... before he got a lecture on taking other people's credit cards.
Things had been looking up.
Until they got to the DMV in the morning.
Perhaps, if Henry had lived for real in some big city other than New York where everyone took taxis and the subway, he would have understood that if the Dark One could be personified by a location, that location would be the Department of Motor Vehicles.
After standing in lines, filling out forms, taking tests, filling out more forms, having horribly unflattering pictures taken, sitting around for hours past their appointment times in the most uncomfortable chairs known to man, using a bathroom that smelled worse than an airplane lavatory, listening to elevator Muzak incessantly interrupted by an automated voice calling out numbers in a stilted fashion, and being generally glowered at and mistreated by employees that ranged from apathetic to snide and patronizing, even Henry had lost much of his enthusiasm for taking his behind-the-wheel test at a real DMV where he'd be fairly graded instead of just passed because everyone was afraid of his family's "heroic" retribution.
Had Henry lived for real in some big city other than New York, he might also have understood that DMV employees were not known for being fair. If they weren't taking bribes from customers, they were failing them so they'd have to come back and pay the extra fee, or letting them sit around for hours before deciding to inform them that, oops, the computers had been down since they'd opened, so, no, it wouldn't be possible to process that stuff that the person at the front desk told them to take a number to come to their window to get done, even though that person had obviously known the computers were down so that wouldn't be possible, but they had nowhere else to be while waiting to see if the computers came back online, so why should they care if anyone else might?
By the time Henry's name was called for the road test, his parents had both looked ready to punch someone.
Thankfully, he hadn't gotten the tester who looked ready to punch someone, but rather the slacker who spent the entire ten minutes texting on his phone and probably wouldn't have been able to recall what color Henry's hair was after scribbling his approval on the form.
Which had been great for Henry. Not so much for his mom, though, as Emma had gotten the angry-looking guy who failed her two minutes into the test for blowing a stop sign - which Neal had made the mistake of finding completely hilarious.
Things had snowballed from there.
Emma had brought up giving Hook driving lessons complete with euphemisms about stick shifts and pistons and the obvious insinuation that she'd done more with Hook in the little yellow Volkswagen than just teach the pirate how to drive.
Neal had accused her of letting the pirate blow a load over everything of theirs.
So, it probably hadn't been a good idea for Henry to try and diffuse things with music.
In his defense, his mom had never told him that "Charley's Girl" was their song. He'd also had no idea that his dad had seen Emma and Killian's wedding reception video on her computer at work.
All he'd ever known was that Emma'd had an old Lou Reed tape in the glovebox that they'd played on the way to New York after their "camping trip" following the "apartment fire". She'd promised to take him to Coney Island... though they never did make it. Because, before that planned summer trip, Killian Jones had shown up and, well, gone about co-opting everything that was theirs. Although, to be fair, it was probably Henry's fault for ignorantly playing the tape on the way to Storybrooke to break the weird tension... which had led to a different sort of tension after "Feeling Crazy" when Killian had begun shamelessly using the lyrics to flirt with Emma about booze and royalty. In retrospect, Henry now understood why, when he'd started on about her turning him in to the cops in Central Park meaning the music gods were clearly trying to tell her something, Emma had glared and put on sports talk radio instead. But she'd never clued him (and Henry supposed not Hook either) in on the importance of the song, and so, naturally, the pirate had decided after the "Prince Charles" thing that "Charley's Girl" was the prefect song to play for their first dance as a married couple, apparently encouraged by Mary Margaret who reached the same myopic conclusion, as people in Storybrooke, to Henry's observation, had some annoying delusion that anyone's life and interest prior to finding their spouse had to immediately be assigned some "fated true love" meaning.
In response to Emma's attempted defense of it being "just a song", Neal had thrown Coney Island Baby out the window into the ditch at the side of the highway.
Emma had called him a child.
And if something was bad, it could always get worse.
They'd driven straight through the night and the following day, Neal and Henry taking shifts, secure in the knowledge that, at least, there would be a destination with clean beds, air-conditioning, and a roof over their heads.
How stupid of them, really.
As Neal pulled up to the front of the address on Tallahassee Street in the tiny seaside town of Carrabelle, Henry blinked in confusion at the dumpy bungalow with a weedy yard and rotted front porch that looked nothing like the picture on Craigslist.
"Maybe it's better on the inside," he tried to be hopeful.
It wasn't.
There were only two useable beds, because the roll-a-way in the loft was just the frame without a matters. The water coming out of the tap was rusty. And rain water from the badly leaking roof had shorted out the window-mounted air conditioner.
"I'll take the couch," Neal offered with a sigh, after Emma was already carrying her suitcase into the back bedroom.
Henry thought he should be the one enduring the lumpy sofa, but instead he just nodded and took the other bedroom. It was no real great prize with the paint-glued-shut window, mildew pillow, and one very loud cricket that after a half an hour he gave up trying to catch, resigned to sweating through his pajamas while listening to the mournful solitary chirp and the muffled sound of his mom crying through the stagnant air vent.
AN: Wow, so that was super depressing!
Next up: The Unhappiest Place on Earth. Kind of.