A/N: thank you to everyone who reviewed the first chapter. I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue it, but I guess I want to due to the lack of Daddy!Charming moments. Also, to the 'guest reviewer', I thought about what you said and talked to other members of the fandom, who are very trustworthy people who pay attention to detail. We all had the same thought that it's never been addressed on the show whether or not Nealflake was an accident or not. So, to each their own, but my head-canon is that Snowing wasn't actively trying to have a baby. Emma would have been gone barely 3 months, and with the way David was panicking (and the fact that in Storybrooke, he acted as though he couldn't rule out the possibility that the baby was an accident), I can't imagine they would be ready to have another baby so quickly. There was a scene where Snowing was talking about having a baby in the EF, but that was before she got pregnant with Emma, because they were worried about Regina's threat from their wedding. I'd be glad to discuss this further with you, if you have an account on , or a tumblr, or whatever.
Emma looked tired, David decided. She was practically slumped on her desk, though she probably still thought her elbow was perpendicular (it had long since slid further across the desk, and he wasn't even sure she was actually reading the paperwork before signing it).
"Why don't I go get us some coffee?" He suggested.
"Hmm?" His voice seemed to startle her, as she shot upright in her chair. "What did you say about coffee?"
He had to fight back a chuckle. "I was going to go to Granny's to get some, do you want any?"
"Umm, sure," she sighed and leaned back in her chair.
"Are you okay, Emma?" He asked, his voice laced with concern.
"Yeah, I'm fine," the blonde responded with a nod. "I just didn't sleep well." There was no way she was going to tell him about her and Snow's heart-to-heart. She wasn't sure she could deal with another one, so she wasn't about to give him any ideas.
"How come?" David draped his jacket across the back of his chair again and sat back down. Emma made sure to keep her groan internal.
"Just couldn't," she shrugged, hoping he'd leave it alone. "So yeah, coffee would be great right now."
"Uh uh," he shook his head. "Not till you talk to me. Normally, you sleep like a rock, so something's wrong."
"You're holding me hostage with coffee?" She raised a challenging eye brow.
"Yes, Sheriff Swan, I am," he declared proudly.
"Well, for your information, I was upset, but Mary Margaret made me acknowledge it, so I'm fine now. If you don't believe me, you can text her. Now you have no reason to hold me hostage."
"You're mad at me," he looked down, all traces of his previously joking tone gone, replaced complete seriousness.
"What? Come on, don't be ridiculous," she threw her pen down onto the desk and sighed again.
"No, Emma, you are. It's been eating at me for a while, but with all the villains and curses, I haven't had a chance to figure out if I'm paranoid or if there's something more going on."
"You're being paranoid," she said.
"I don't think I am. At the hospital, when Zelena was going to attack, and I told you to take Hook with you, you said something–"
"I say a lot of things without thinking. Don't take whatever it was personally."
"You said that 'I know a lot about keeping secrets from loved ones', referring to Neverland, when I didn't tell you and Snow about the dreamshade."
"Look," Emma rolled her eyes and carefully put on her poker face, "I said some things then, hurtful things that I realize now, I shouldn't have said. I think I made the world record for insulting Killian the most times in a minute, and I was just reacting emotionally… which is generally angrily. Alright? I didn't mean anything by it."
"You don't have to do that, you know," he said quietly and tried to get her to meet his eyes.
"Do what?"
"Hide things to keep from hurting me. I remember sitting on my dad's lap when I was really little –he died when I was pretty young, but I remember bits and pieces of him– and feeling like it was the safest place in the world. I never got to do that for you, but that doesn't mean I can't comfort you now. I mean, you're welcome to try to fit on my lap, but I'm not sure how comfortable you'd be." Finally, Emma met his gaze and saw nothing but sincerity. Not a hint of a lie. She looked down and wringed her hands.
"Yeah, I'm mad. I have a right to be, don't I? You were perfectly fine with letting yourself die, and when you hugged me that last time, you knew it was supposed to be the last time, and I didn't, and I would never have gotten the chance to tell you that I love you, or to get advice, or to give me hope. You would have just been… gone, and Mom would have been a wreck, and I would have had no freaking clue about how to make it better. And maybe I'm mad at myself, because I knew there was something wrong with what was happening, but I didn't say anything cause I didn't want it to be true. And that's all beside the fact that you guys weren't gonna tell me Neal was alive, when out of everyone there, I had the biggest right to know!" She took a deep breath and finished quietly, "So yeah, I guess I'm still mad."
"That's good, Emma, you should be," David said quietly. "I was wrong to keep the dreamshade a secret from you and your mother, and yes, we shouldn't have kept Neal a secret from you, either. I just… I didn't know if it was true, if he was alive, and I didn't want you to get your hopes up only to have them crushed." At that, her lips twitched up in a small smile.
"Before I met you guys as my parents, I was a professional hope-keeper-downer."
"Having hope isn't a bad thing, sweetie," he replied.
"No, but Mom goes a little overboard, don't you think?"
"She wasn't always like that," he said with a hint of sadness. "When I first met her, she was a bandit. A very cynical one at that, kept herself distanced, thought everyone was out to get her, thought everything was a fight. Actually, you remind me a lot of her, the way she was back then. So, if she's happy now –even if her unicorn sticker and rainbow kisses idealism gets on my nerves every so often– then I'm happy."
"I guess," she shrugged in that adorable way of hers –not that David would ever tell her that, because he knew she'd stop doing it. "I know your heart was in the right place when you kept the secret, but… I need to know if something bad's gonna happen, cause I'd hate to never forgive you for it, if I didn't get to tell you everything I needed to."
"That's a deal, Emma," he said with such sincerity and strength and truthfulness, it caused the blonde's eyes to well up.
"I'm gonna hold you to that," she mumbled, looking down, desperately trying to gain control back.
"Oh, sweetie," he rushed over to her and wrapped her in a big hug.
"You're right," she said through his shirt, "this does feel like the safest place in the world."
In response, he held her tighter.
