Hello, lovies! So, I'm sorry for the late update, life happened, *insert a lot of excuses*, but I'm here!

As a note for all of my readers of my other stories (provided you exist...), Once Upon A Thunderstorm is probably going to not be updated for a while longer because while I have the entire thing outlined, it takes a very long time to write and it takes a lot out of me to do. So don't hold your breath for that, because I love you and don't want you to die :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon A Time. I do own my headcanons though, and what strange headcanons they are...

This place is creepy.

Emma eyed the fluorescent lights on the ceiling of the county morgue's hallways. They gave everything an eerie washed-in-bleach tint, and it reminded Emma of a hospital at night. Except, Emma remembered for what must have been the fifth time in the fifteen minutes of waiting, instead of sick and healthy people residing here, there were only dead ones.

The door to the laboratory swung open suddenly, and Emma pivoted instantly on her heel.

"Did you find anything on that envelope?" Emma demanded, her arms folded across her chest. She could feel herself holding her breath. What if there had been some drug or toxin on the letter? What if Henry had come in contact with it? She could barely stand to think about it.

The young brunette scientist shook her head firmly, her full lips curved into a tight smile. For a moment, Emma was reminded faintly of someone, but she couldn't pinpoint who.

"Nope, nothing. It's clear of anthrax or anything like that; it's just a letter, through and through," The woman confirmed. Then she frowned.

"Are you positive this isn't from some sort of ex, Officer? It seemed strangely intimate, considering you're so worried about its safety."

Emma shook her head once, internally disgusted at the idea of being romantically involved at any point in time with the strange Hook guy who seemed so insistent in getting her to listen to him. Her lips tingled in unwelcome memory; the kiss he had planted on her still seemed branded into her brain like that of an owner's mark on an animal. (Except Emma had never been around farm animals and branding in her life. She shook herself slightly, adding the strange and unbidden simile to her list of 'freaky things that have happened in the past few days'.)

"Nope, definitely not an ex," she affirmed, her lips quirking slightly.

"So do you want the letter, then?" the toxicologist inquired.

The blonde reached out her left hand in response, to receive the letter, sticking the other hand into her back pocket. The toxicologist pulled the familiar creamy envelope out of the breast pocket of her pale lab coat, and placed it in Emma's hand.

"Is that all you need, Officer?" the woman asked, her eyes flickering past Emma towards a huge metal door. Emma had to repress a gag on what might be past that door - dead bodies, probably, all frozen and stiff and blue and - a thought pierced through the blonde officer's mind for a split second like an speeding bullet; a fleeting vision of a pile of corpses, sprawled on the ground with bloody gaping wounds right over where their hearts would have been.

"No, no, that's it. Thanks for your time," Emma spat out hurriedly, before practically dashing down the creepy hallway and out of the morgue. The second the warm sunlight hit her skin, she exhaled relievedly. She did not like dead people, no she didn't. Her gaze drifted down to the envelope clutched in her hand, its now confirmed to be innocent page brimming with information.

"And now for you," she mumbled to herself under her breath, heading towards her cruiser. "Some sort of ex. Pfft."

"Mom!" Henry's voice rang, disrupting the silence that had been the Swan residence. "Mom, are you home yet?"

Emma looked up from her mangled position on the sofa, the letter in her lap. "I'm right over here," she said, her eyes dropping back down to the paper. Henry's footsteps thundered like an elephant's through the foyer, and Emma thought she heard the sound of a backpack plummeting to the ground with an audible cracking sound (undoubtedly, Emma inwardly groaned, those drumsticks she had just bought Henry last week).

"So did the letter come through okay? Did you read it yet? What does it say?" Henry burst, words pouring from him like water from a broken dam. Emma couldn't help the faint smile that sprung to her lips. Of course, at the thought of the letter, the smile fell right off again, leaving the pinched expression that Emma had worn to start with.

"Mom?" Henry asked again when his mother didn't answer. Emma took a deep breath, watching her son carefully as one of her hands picked up the paper again, as if to verify that it was real. The kid looked like he was about to explode with anticipation, and if the letter hadn't creeped her out enough, this intense reaction of her son towards the whole situation did the job perfectly.

"It's not signed. It's asking to meet in a park tonight."

She braced herself.

"Mom, we have to go!" Henry exclaimed. "It could be that Killian pirate guy again with the hook! The one who knew stuff about our family and the book and -"

Emma held up her hands, letting the letter drop into her lap once again. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, kid," she said, cutting him off in his rant. "That's the exact reason why we're - not even we, why I'm not going. This guy's weird, he could be dangerous. He broke into the apartment in the middle of the night to leave this! I don't want anything to do with him."

She sighed.

"And as for him saying he knew about my parents...anyone could have known that. Anyone, Henry, they just would have had to look hard enough. This is insane." Henry's expression cooled down from its excited fervor, and he began to back away slowly. Emma's chest clenched, and she grabbed his wrists gently, her gaze imploring.

"Kid, my main job is to make sure we're safe. This guy isn't safe. Do you understand?" she asked, trying very hard to conceal the evident begging tone in her voice. Looking at Henry's countenance full on now, could easily pick out her own features and that of Neal's, but the look in her son's eyes belonged to neither of them. This expression belonged to someone else entirely, someone cold, someone angry, someone closed off. (Emma knew she used to harbor a similar expression back before she had Henry, but after he had been born, there was little time to angst about Neal or her past. The only thing she could worry about was how to improve for Henry.) The look in his eyes - the look that didn't belong - broke her heart just to look at.

"Please tell me you get that I'm doing this for your own protection, Henry," she pleaded. "This is crazy stuff, and I have enough crazy for the both of us."

Henry groaned after a terrifying whole five minutes.

"Fine," he sighed. "I get it."

His eyes darted towards the letter, and then he flashed his mother a smile to show that all was forgiven. "I'm gonna do my homework. Can we order pizza?"

Emma sighed in audible relief.

"Sure, kid. You want soda too, or you wanna stick with the apple juice in the fridge?" she asked, pushing herself off of the sofa and abandoning the letter, the cell phone in her hand already dialing the nearest pizzeria's number. Henry paused in the middle of unpacking his backpack, a broken drumstick in his hand.

"I kinda want the apple juice tonight. It doesn't feel like a soda night to me," he answered, setting the drumstick gingerly onto the surface of the table. Emma nodded in agreement.

"Apple juice it is."

She lifted the phone to her ear, pacing towards her bedroom no doubt to search for her wallet.

"Hi, yes, I'd like to place an order..."

The second his mother was distracted, Henry abandoned his homework, leapt over the sofa, and snatched the letter in a feat worthy of some swashbuckling bandit in a fairy tale somewhere. He scanned the page greedily and then shoved the paper quickly into his pocket, the brief and to the point message still branded into his mind.

Swan, meet me at the park near the end of your large path with the horseless carriages. I'll be there tonight at the eleventh hour.

I hope y'all liked this chapter! I'm so nervous with only seven days left until season 3B begins...omgomgomgomg