Letting Go And Holding On
4 days later
As soon as Henry left, Emma stopped cleaning away the tea-things and, seating herself at the table besides the silent Neal, looked at him closely.
"Another talk with Belle?"
"Yeah." he answered abruptly, not meeting her eyes. "She wants to find a way back."
" I know. Yesterday Regina made short work of explaining to her the sheer impossibility of this and she was not too gentle about it either, but Belle just stared at her and then left."
"Belle won`t give up," he stated in a colourless voice.
"David and Mary Margaret are enthusiastic about the rescue party idea as well," said Emma with a not very good attempt at the " you-know- what- they- are like" air.
Neal glanced at her.
"And what about you?" he asked trying to keep his voice from sounding too strained.
Emma was silent for a moment and then she shugged her shoulders.
"I have never been easy with leaving him - anyone - behind. It is only fair that we should at least try to do something."
Neal smiled wryly and after a short painful silence suddenly looked Emma straight in the eyes.
"Emma, out with it. It is evident Belle is currently regarding me as the unfeeling bastard of a son, but what about you?"
Emma opened her mouth to answer - stopped - tried again. A shadow had flitted across her face, softening her eyes, her voice.
" He loves you, Neal." she offered slowly, her eyes searching his, asking him not to jerk away from her words as she knew he would. As he did, breaking eye-contact with her, answering in the same harsh tone he assumed every time they discussed Rumplestiltskin.
"That kind of settles everything, yeah. Look, I am grateful for his getting us all out and I would never have left him there willingly - but that is it. And I sure am not going to over-sentimentalize about this like you all are clearly expecting me to do. After all, he is pretty well used to abandonment - ought to be."
Emma winced at the pain that dripped from his last phrase, at the way he stubbornly kept his eyes down, at the way he tried to keep his voice from trembling- so boyish-like, so hurt, and…angry and insecure...
She drew a deep breath. And began.
"Neal, look, I am not actually a fan of your father`s - never was. He abandoned you, left you alone, let you go, failed you. I know- I lived through this. Not once, not twice: with every succeeding foster family I went through the same hell."
Her initially calm. collected tone broke. She felt him move, but she was not looking at him. She blinked the tears from her eyes, locked her hands together and went on.
" And later – it happened once more. So... you see, I just know everything there is to know about the Being Abandoned business. I `ve done it."
She drew a deep breath. Closed her eyes for a moment.
" And... I have done the Abandoning thing as well. And I know which hurts worse."
Neal was silent - he could not speak, he no longer even could hear Emma`s voice. His father`s - low, hesitant, barely rising above the whisper. No longer asking him for anything, no longer trying to reach out to him, incredibly tired, - just letting go.
Neal looked up and Emma froze as she saw the waves of pain in his eyes, his mask gone.
" We" he had to stop and begin anew, " we really can`t go back, that much is certain. But even if we could... " he broke off and abruptly finished, " He made me promise we would never try to find a way back. We- struck a deal."
/
Softly Belle closed the front door and for a few seconds just stood there, her forehead pressed to the wall, her breath uneven, her body tense with the expectation of the almost physical impact of the pain. And it came, waves breaking over her head, smothering her with sharp ache, never letting her free... his eyes, the way he smiled, looked at her - gestures, intonations, endearing tiny things that tie us to the beloved ones, that feel us with tenderness when we are close, with sweet memories when we are apart and uspeakable pain when the distance between us is not surmountable...
She had been staying away because she could not bear being surrounded so closely by his belongings, by all the things that created so cruelly the illusion he would be stepping in any moment.
And now she was here- to, yes to think of him, to- probably- rediscover him? Or- rediscover what?
After Neal`s words today, the revelations he made to her...
Belle gasped, the sobs that had shaken her while he was talking, returning...
" Belle, no. There is no possible way of getting there. Not from here."
" There must be."
"There is not."
She resolutely walkes up to him, so that he cant turn away from her fearless gaze.
"Mary Margaret and David would be happy to help, they are not exactly comfortable with the way the journey ended. And Emma would help, I know, and you..."
His anger leaps.
"And I tell you once again- it is impossible! What do you expect me to do, start looking for stray portals?"
She flinches at the dark irony of his tone and softly, never letting his eyes go says:
" I...I want you to care."
They are both silent after this- Neal almost staggered by the sincerity and overwhelming sadness of her appeal, she just looking into his eyes deeper and deeper.
"You have given up on him." her voice breaks. " You...just gave up."
And they both know she is not talking of the journey to Neveland- not just of it.
"I am not the first one to nave done it." he finally breathes.
"No. But he spent three hundred years searching for you."
"Making deals."
"He was trying to make amends, he was trying to reach you!"
"By twisting, ruining countless lives? By..." he draws a deep breath, passes his hands angrily across his face. He is in for it now. And so is she- for the truth.
" Belle, you think you know him but you don`t actually. It is all very well to say that you know he is a monster and still can believe in the better him and even bring the guy out, but do you really? know him? I mean, have you seen my dad in action? Doing some harmless stunt like stepping on snails that were human beings just, like, two seconds ago? What part of his darknes did you actually SEE? Some harmless tricks? Or nobly sparing some poor robber desperate to save his wife? Come on, Belle. Just tell me what you Do know. "
She just stares at him and he can`t go on. But he can`t stop , either.
"OK, so you do know he is dark- and mind, he has always been on his best around you."
Belle has been stepping further ahd further away from him.
"I... I have no right to say I don`t care," she begins, and her voice is again steady, her eyes are warm, as she goes on, " But I love him. I do. I know what he is and I know what he can be. And - I will not give up either on him, or on the way of getting him back."
Neal lookes up and their eyes lock- hers suffised with tears, steady with promise, his pained and no longer challenging.
" I want to stand by him, if everything and everyone else fail him. Like now."
She leaves.
That was today...today.
And now she was trying- oh, ever so hard- to process everything Neal had told her - and could not. Just could not concentrate.
She was missing him - that was the overwhelming feeling, crowding out everything else, even crowding out the fear for him.
She had been trying to look into herself , into Rumpelstiltskin- trying to look into the pesron he was. The one she was wishing him to be. The one he had been once, the one he became, he one he could become- but now she just could not . Not now.
Belle slowly collapsed on the floor, hugging herself, feeling cold and no-longer- brave ( for herself) and frightened and aching ( for him)...
His getting back, his being here, his just being- safe. Nothing else - not now.
His just being - safe.