Disclaimer: Only plot and any original characters are mine.

A Curse and a Blessing (A Neal Cassidy prompt for Eevylynn)

The Enchanted Forest, a long time ago…

"What are you so excited about, Papa?" Baelfire asked as he watched his father bustle around the best he could cleaning out their small hut. "I've not seen you this excited about anything in a long time. Not since before Mother died."

"I'm excited because someone is coming to live with us, Bae," his father told him. "Someone I can't wait for you to meet."

"Who is it?" Bae asked. "Is it a new mother?"

"No," Rumple shook his head. "It's a girl a few years older than you. Your sister."

Bae paused. "But I don't have a sister."

"Yes, you do," Rumple sighed and sat down. "She's part of the reason your mother and I fought so much. She was the product of an indiscretion that was a terrible lapse in judgment on my part. After she was born, your mother didn't want to keep her, so she made a deal with a wealthy woman named Cora to adopt her. Give her a good home. I never knew what happened to her after that, but now that Cora has died, she's coming home to us. Her name is Regina, apparently."

"I don't know about that, Papa," Bae replied. "She might not like it here after being wealthy for so long."

"Perhaps," Rumple nodded. "Maybe not right away, but maybe once she knows how much she's loved and wanted, our humble circumstances will no longer matter to her."

"I hope so," Bae replied.

But despite Rumple's optimism, it seemed like Bae was correct about his sister: she had enjoyed wealth, status, and privilege, and had no desire to adjust to a life where she was poor, even if love and affection did come with it.

"What are we gonna do, Bae?" Rumple asked after a few weeks of trying to bond with his daughter and getting nowhere.

"I don't know, Papa," Bae shook his head. "We've tried as hard as we can. Maybe we just have to admit that she'll never like us."

"No," Rumple shook his head. "There has to be a way. There has to."

And it was shortly after that for that reason (among others) he chose to become the Dark One, much to Bae's chagrin.

"Why does he look like that?" Regina asked when she first witnessed Rumple's new appearance after the darkness had overtaken him from a window of the small hut.

"Part of why he did this was to impress you and that's all you're concerned about?" Bae asked his sister. She was still as distant and snobby as ever. "Don't you have a heart?"

She'd been walking away from him then, but as he asked the question, she turned around to stare at him, giving him more attention than she had before. When she answered, her gaze was dark, and her voice was much too sharp and cold for a girl of her tender years. "You must know that I have no heart…. Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt… and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no - sympathy - sentiment – nonsense." She shook her head and shuddered before striding back to her room without giving him a chance to reply.

Bae sighed and went out to help his father. She'd always be like this, no matter what they did. And she would never change.

Storybrooke, the present day…

"Well look who it is!" Neal got out as he opened his eyes and saw Regina sitting at his bedside. She started a little and then smiled. "Yes, I…I'm here. I'm glad you're awake. When we found you, you just…you weren't moving, and I thought…what the hell did you do? What happened? With all the trouble Zelena is causing, I hate having to deal with your nonsense too."

"What I did, I did to save our father," Neal told her. "I couldn't stand to see him tortured like that, so I let him share my body. I would have thought you'd want to help too, seeing as how it was your own sister who was abusing him, but you still…you still don't care, do you?"

"There you go again trying to make me feel guilty instead of thanking me for saving your ass," Regina sighed. "You know I don't feel guilt. I told you that. And while we're on the subject of who ignored our father, you were the one who ran off to England or Neverland or wherever the hell you went without him. I stayed. I was not the neglectful one."

"You only stayed and gave him the time of day because you knew he could teach you how to be powerful," Neal pointed out. "That's self-interest. Not love. But thank you for saving my life like you won't save his."

"Well and why should I love him?" Regina lashed out. "The only reason why he taught me magic was so I would cast a spell that would help him find you! Why should I love a man who cares more for my brother than for me and so much so that he would use me the way that he did?"

Before Neal could answer, Rumple came in, leaning on his IV pole for support. "Bae," he breathed. "He's all right!"

"I am," Neal nodded and Regina helped him sit up. "I'm all right. And it's all thanks to Regina. Don't you think there's something you ought to say to her?"

"There's something I would love to say to her," Rumple told him. "But it all depends on if it will matter to her or not. All the other times I've tried…it hasn't mattered."

"Well, maybe try it again just one more time," Neal urged. "I insist."

"All right," Rumple said and then sat down on the bed next to Regina and took her hand. "Thank you," he told her. "Thank you for saving my boy. You know by now how much that means to me."

"Of course I do," Regina nodded. "It's all you ever talk about. Can't…can't you focus on me for once?"

"You know I've tried over the years, but you've always pulled away if I wanted to talk about something other than magic," Rumple reminded her. "Acted as if you didn't want to be bothered. I thought I was just doing what you wanted by leaving you alone."

"And maybe for a while you were," Regina admitted. "But now…now I think I'm ready to be brought into the family if that's all right with you."

"Of course it is," Neal told her, wincing from the pain as he tried to sit up. "After what you did for me, how could you not? I've wanted to think of you as family for a long time and I'm glad you're finally ready to accept it as well."

They all sat in silence for a moment and then Regina asked, "Do we hug now?"

"We could," Neal replied. "Do you want to?"

"Well, I can't say I really enjoy being touched," Regina remarked. "But in the spirit of our newfound feeling of family togetherness, why not?"

So they all got in position and soon, Regina was being hugged on either side by her father and brother, and feeling more loved than she'd ever felt in her life. She should have jumped on this family togetherness bandwagon a long time ago. Oh, well," she told herself as they let her go and she let out a breath. Better late than never.

The End