The clearing was silent as everyone turned to watch Emma and Gold's reaction to the startling news. The pair however seemed unable to comprehend the miracle. It was Mary Margaret who eventually broke the silence hanging heavily in the darkness.

"It's Neal, he's alive." She directed at her daughter in a careful tone.

Her comment broke Emma out of her reverie and still staring at Neal blankly, she murmured a soft response. "I can see that…"

"Son!" Gold cried out, when he finally approached Neal. whilst his father had limped towards him, Neal's gaze didn't leave Emma. Even as he tolerated the gentle hug his father gave him his eyes didn't leave her own. As Gold released him and started blubbering loving sentiments Emma walked forwards. With a quick glance at his father and a small smile, he pushed past him and made his way towards Emma.

The pair stopped a foot from each other in the middle of the clearing, unaware of all those around them.

"You're alive" Emma chocked out, her hand raising to his chest, looking for the gunshot wound.

"I know," he replied, catching her hand in his.

"You're fine", she murmured, in disbelief.

"I know"

"You met Mulan and Aurora"

"Yep"

"They took Henry"

"… I know" he replied guiltily.

This made her finally look up into his warm eyes. And a surge of emotions rose up within her, making its presence the only way she knew how to express it. By anger.

"How? How are you alive Neal? You should be dead right now! I had to tell Henry you were dead! Where the hell did you end up? The Enchanted Forest? And how on earth did you get here? What are you doing here? Oh, and Tamara! That Bitch took our son. He was separated from us anyway so you… you slipping into that freaking portal all alone - was for nothing!"

As she spoke, his gaze lowered, focusing on some point over her shoulder, and he refused to look at her. He shoved his hands in his pockets and had the right to look ashamed. "At least you had your family." he murmured.

"sure I did, but you know what, NEAL, what I didn't have was you… or Henry… and now… now I'm not getting any answers! Are you going to fix that at the very least?"

He remained silent.

Someone cleared their throat, and Emma, realizing how close she was standing to Neal took a step back before turning her gaze to the voyeurs of their argument.

It appeared to have been Mulan who had interrupted. Emma nodded at her and sent a small friendly smile in her direction. Which Mulan took as a hint to answer some of her questions.

"Hey Emma, yes you're right… Neal ended up in the Enchanted Forest with us. We were at the safe haven when we saw a portal open. The three of us went to see who had come to our land and found Neal unconscious."

"Yeah well… how did you fix him, he seems okay now?" Emma asked quietly.

It was Aurora who chimed in next. "Well Mulan and I collected some of that special water from where you and Snow went through the portal back to your land. And we have found it quite useful in the past year. We still had some left so we poured it down his throat, and within moments he was fine."

"Lake Nostas," Mary Margaret announced to the clearing. "It has restorative properties."

Emma nodded, remembering. "Yeah but how did you know about Henry… how did you get here?"

Aurora chimed in again. "As to how we got here… that's a long story… but it appears Henry has been having some nightmares since his capture. I fell asleep one night, and ended up in the netherworld with him. I told him his father was alive, and then I found out he was in Neverland. Ever since, Mulan, Phillip and I have been helping Neal find a way here. He was desperate to return home to you Emma, but the moment he heard about Henry, he knew he needed to come here and find a way to help your son. And we were more than happy to help."

"Thank you," she murmured, grateful for their friendship. "I owe you"

"It was no problem" the man she assumed was Phillip assured her. Emma smiled at him.

Charming cleared his throat then, introducing himself and Gold to the new arrivals. They each seemed wary of Rumpelstiltskin.

As the group talked and considered finding some food, Emma turned to a still mute Neal. As they made eye contact, she nodded to the forest and stalked of, hoping he was following her.

She didn't stop walking despite Neal's calls out to her until she reached what appeared to be her fallen log from earlier. It was very dark, and although not much was visible the moon was sending a shaft of light though the branches so Emma could just make out Neal's face as he entered the clearing behind her.

"Emma, I'm sorry." He blurted the second he caught up to her

Emma stared at him blankly with one eyebrow raised and her heart racing in her chest.

"I'm sorry I didn't believe you about Tamara, I'm sorry she stole Henry… I… I really thought she loved me. I never realized how insane she was. I'm sorry."

Emma listened to what he had to say, knowing undoubtedly that he was telling the truth. It was nice to hear him admit Tamara was just as evil as she had been attempting to convey, however it wasn't quite what she needed to hear. There was something else niggling at the back of her mind… and in the depths of her heart.

"You let go" she whispered into the silence of the night which was only punctured by their heavy breathing.

"Wha-"

"When you went through the portal. You said… what you said… and then you let go, again."

Neal took a step forward and placed his hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. "I did that because I didn't want Henry to lose both of us. I didn't know what was going to happen… and well I didn't want you lost somewhere with me… dead… and no way to get home to him."

"But you let go. You… you told me that you loved me then you left! And despite the circumstances, it brought back painful memories, and even more painful feelings. It was just so similar to Portland Neal. One minute, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that you loved me… the next… I wasn't so sure…and then my son was being ripped away from me again … it was just unbearable…"

A sad smile crept onto Neal's crinkled face, as he moved a hand to her cheek and caressed it slowly causing her eyes to close lightly. "I'm sorry" he whispered, "I know saying that doesn't fix anything but I'm more than sorry I hurt you, you need to know that"

Emma leaned her tired head into his palm enjoying the familiar rough feeling against her skin. "I know you're sorry… just, don't do it again."

He let out a small chuckle as her eyes popped open and looked at him with an intense passion he hadn't seen for 12 years. It was a look so purely Emma, and he knew what was coming instinctually before his mind caught up with it.

Within seconds, Emma had lent her head forward slightly and pressed her lips softly to his. A shockwave went through the pair of them as they kissed. It had been such a long time, and kissing each other again was like returning home after a very, very long day at work. It was filled with relief, love, hope and passion that made the hairs on the back of Neal's neck stand on end. If anything kissing Emma was better than he remembered. His memory had not done her justice.

After countless moments Neal pulled away, he knew he needed to say something. Something important.

"I love you, and I hope you never forget that." He whispered to her in the darkness. An elated smile spread across her tired face, and Neal thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as her smile.

She leaned in to kiss again him but paused momentarily, her lips almost touching his, to murmur "I love you too."

They held hands as they walked back to the clearing, and Emma could feel her mother's piercing stare as they joined the group who were eating dry crackers from Hooks bag of supplies.

Once all the crackers were gone and everyone felt relatively full, Neal looked around the circle, his eyes landing on Emma, who he asked, "what do we do now?"

She looked back at him, knowing exactly what he meant. "Now we try and find a way to get Henry back."

Charming nodded and asked the group if anyone had any ideas. The 10 of them just sat silently, looking around at each other, hoping someone else would know what to do. Emma's stomach clenched unpleasantly.

Eventually, Neal cleared his throat. "Ok so what do we know? - Henry was captured by Greg and Tamara, they used a magic bean to get here… and then what? Why did they need to bring him here?"

Surprisingly, it was Regina who answered him. "Actually, shortly after we got here it became apparent that they had taken Henry to the group of children down by the beach. We overheard them talking about 'having the boy' and assumed it was Henry. We haven't seen or heard from Greg or Tamara since we got here."

Neal's face paled and his eyes rose from the fire, which he had been staring at, to look at Hook in horror. "Henry's the kid they were after?"

The pirate nodded slightly, "must be… unless they're talking about someone else."

"But that would be too much of a coincidence…" Neal added, before turning to look around the circle. Emma was severely confused, and by the looks on everyone else's faces she wasn't alone, apparently this was something you only knew of if you were familiar with Neverland.

"Can someone please explain what's going on?" Mary Margaret asked, "Who is after what?"

Neal took a deep breath, looking into the bright flames of the fire before beginning. "Peter Pan was only a boy when he came to Neverland, and century's later he still was, because no on ages here. Pan grew attached to this place but was lonely so he brought friends back from a world close by, through the stars in the sky. However, the tale gets confusing from there. One day, he stopped letting boy's leave the land. He begun searching, looking for something… for someone. There was a prophecy made that a boy would be found and that he would help Peter Pan with something. No one ever knew what. Even Peter's right hand men had no clue. All they had was a picture of the boy they were looking for. They were instructed to find him. However, the mysterious thing is that since his orders to capture the boy were made, no one apart from one of his guard has seen him. And the shadow of course. "

"The shadow?" Mulan asked skeptically

Hook replied then with an unpleasant expression on his face. "The shadow of a boy that has been ripped from its body. The shadow flies to the other world and captures children, with the hope of returning with the prophesized boy."

It took Emma a moment to process what was being said, but when she did, she felt 10 times more anxious then she had all week. "So what you're saying is that Henry is the prophesized boy? Tamara and Greg brought him here because they knew that?"

A small anxious nod from Neal, "most likely"

Emma felt like she was going to feint, but the sound of her dads voice brought her back to the present. "Look, we don't even know if it is Henry that was captured. It could have been any random kid. What we need is to get into their camp, and see if Henry really is there."

"And how exactly do you propose we do that David?" Gold asked sarcastically. "This island is filled with children, they won't let adults enter, and they have enough people defending their entries that if word got out we were searching for Henry something bad would certainly happen to the boy."

Half the circle grimaced, their ideas going down the drain. But Neal stood up, squeezed Emma's shoulder and made his way to his father.

"Do it papa… make me 14 again."

There we go. Chapter two. Done.

Thank you so so much to everyone who has already reviewed/favourite-d/and followed this story. It means sooo much to me that people actually care about this.

I'm sorry for the wait for this chapter… but I'm in the middle of doing exams right now, and finding the time to write hasn't been easy. But my hardest exam is over so I will hopefully update in a few days. (The 20th at the latest... which i know is more than a week but still... exams...). Anyway I finally have an idea of where to take this long term so there will be at least 5 more chapters to this story :D so hopefully you all still like it :p

Let me know what you thought of this chapter… good/bad/awkward… I don't mind… and oh yeah THANKYOU for reading!