Feeling their pain from having lived through the same experience, Emma, with David's help, desperately tries to help two homeless children find their birth father before they're separated and put into the foster care system.
***
"Whatcha reading?"
Henry jumped at the girl's voice and spun around to face her. "The Hulk vs. Wolverine," he answered. He was at the Dark Star Pharmacy reading the comics for sale, debating on if he wanted to buy one or not. He was also watching the people of Storybrooke, trying to figure out what they did to his mother and why she punished them. They were good people.
"I'm Ava," the blonde girl introduced herself with a pleasant smile, her green eyes bright. "I think I've seen you around school. You're in Miss Blanchard's class, right?" Harry smiled in return and nodded.
"You almost ready, Ava?" Henry jumped for the second time when a brunette boy with brown eyes appeared next to him, moving closer to Ava.
Ava nodded to the boy. "This is my brother, Nicholas," she explained to Henry.
"Hi," Nicholas greeted, and Henry smiled at him. "Come on, let's go," Nicholas told Ava, gently tugging on her hand.
"You wanna come hang out?" Ava asked as she turned to follow her brother.
"Sure," Henry nodded, picking up his backpack and shrugging it on.
Ava beamed and led him after Nicholas, who went to open the door. Before he could tug it open, Mr. Clark, the man running the pharmacy, pushed the door back into place and stood in front of the three children. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" he demanded. He sneezed before he could continue, and as the kids grimaced, the pharmacist looked at Henry. "Open up your bag," he demanded. "Now."
Henry blinked. "What?"
Mr. Clark looked at him through narrowed eyes. "Don't think I didn't see you rob me. Open your bag."
Henry's eyes widened; next to him and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the look that Ava and Nicholas shared. "But I didn't take anything!" he argued.
Mr. Clark grabbed Henry's bag off of his shoulder and examined its contents. He scoffed after a moment and pulled out a fistful of candy. "And a liar, too," he muttered angrily.
Henry stared at the candy he had never touched, then he whipped to Ava, who looked like a deer in headlights. "That's why you were talking to me," he accused. "So your brother could put that stuff in there!"
Mr. Clark shook his head, running a hand over his temple. "Henry, I'm shocked," he told him, and Henry wilted as Mr. Clark turned to Ava and Nicholas. "And you two . . . just who do you think you are?"
***
"I'm sorry, Madam Mayor," Mr. Clark spoke to Regina later, Henry hovering anxiously at her side, "but your son was shoplifting."
Regina raised an eyebrow then looked expectantly at Henry. "Were you?"
Henry quietly shook his head, but Mr. Clark gestured towards Henry's backpack. "Well, look for yourself!"
He pointed over to a bench, and Regina examined the contents next to Henry's backpack: toothpaste, chocolate bars, and Graham crackers. She picked up one of the candy bars then sniffed in disdain. "My son doesn't eat candy, and he knows better than to steal," she told the physician. She took Henry's backpack and zipped it back up, handing it to him. "It was obviously those two," she glared at Ava and Nicholas. "We're going."
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Operation Cobra (Book Two of The Savior Fables)
Fanfiction"It was the kind of small-town with nothing to look at - unless you knew where to look. After all, it's a town no-one knows exists." In which it's time for the small, sleepy town in Nowhere, Maine to wake from its twenty-eight-year nap. When Emma Sw...
