What would have happened is Emma had told the truth to Henry about his father?
This story is set during episode 9 in season 1 'True North', when Emma is looking for Hansel and Gretel's (Ava and Nicholas) father and Henry asks about his father.
Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon A Time
I started to wonder ever since I met Ava and Nicholas, and the search for their father had begun, wonder about my own father.
Who is he?
How did he and Emma met?
Does he know about me?
What happened between his father an Emma?
And Had he ever tried to find me?
Were the questions that kept rolling around in my head. I had made up my mind, I would ask Emma about him I wanted to know the truth and I hoped that she would be kind enough to give it to me, even if it was painful for her. I resolved to ask her about him the next time we were alone together.
My chance came sooner then I thought it would, she was sitting in the sheriff's station going through files trying to figure out who Ava and Nicholas's father could possibly be, when I saw my opportunity.
"Emma I was wondering about my father, who was he?" I could see that she was shocked by my question it had obliviously thrown her that I had asked it. The shock finally wore off her face as she relaxed back into her chair and faced me.
"Kid, you sure you want to hear this, it isn't really the happiest story?" I thought it over I knew it wouldn't be that happy considering I knew she had given birth to me whilst in jail. But still I needed to hear it, so I sat up on the desk she was sitting at and nodded to her.
"Alright then, what do you want to know kid?" I thought about it for a moment before turning her and just saying "everything" almost a little bit too cheerily then I probably should have.
"His name was Neal, Neal Cassidy. He was a very daring man who had ways of bringing down all the walls I had built from my time in the foster system. I first met him when I found my yellow bug for the first time." Emma smiled slightly at the memory, which comforted Henry knowing at least his parents were happy for a time. "Neal was asleep in the back seat of the car and I didn't realize until a couple of minutes after I started driving down the road, it turned out I had stolen a stolen car."
I gave a slight giggle at the thought of Emma realizing that the car she had stolen was already stolen and there was someone asleep in the back seat of the car. But I did start to wonder about how this would be a sad story because so far it seemed pretty funny, not that stealing is funny or anything.
"After that first car ride we got to talking after he convinced me to get a drink with him and we found put we had quite a bit in common, including absent parents. So we kind of became partners, robbing convince stores sneaking into motel rooms. But we never robbed for money only ever for food, we found money for gas elsewhere"
Emma paused for a moment and just looked at me with that sideways sad smile of her, that when I knew the next part would be the sad part.
"One day, the day after we had decided to settle down and go to Tallahassee Neal found a wanted poster of himself in the post office. Apparently before I had met him, he had stolen a bunch of watches from a high end jewellery place that in total cost up to twenty thousand dollars. He started talking about going to Canada and hiding there by himself. I told him I loved him for the first time that day right before I talked him into letting me go get the watches from where he had hidden them, at a train station, so we could fence them and go to Tallahassee together like we planned."
Emma looked down at her hands for a moment and sighed before looking back up at me and sighing again, before continuing.
"I got the watches like we planned and after meeting giving them to him and agreeing to meet later that night after he had seen the fencer. But instead of meeting me a cop turned up that said that Neal had made a tip to the cops saying that I had taken the watches from the train station. I was arrested and sentenced to 11 months jail. The last time I had any sort of contact from him was when an envelope arrived for me, it was the keys to the bug with the key ring he got me on them. That was also the day I found out I was pregnant with you"
I looked down at her from my spot on her desk and watched her face, it was oblivious that this story upset her. That is how I know she told the truth that was the real story about my father and not something that is made up. It was in that moment that I realized that she was nothing like Regina.
I jumped down from the desk and wrapped my arms around Emma.
"Thank you for telling me the truth." She turned around in my arms and gave me a tight hug back.