I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I have no excuse!
It took a great deal of convincing, especially of the parental figures on board.
"I'm a grown woman, you can't tell me what I can and cannot do," Emma had retorted when he father went so far as to use the word 'forbid'.
"You lost the right make any sort of parenting decisions regarding me a long time ago," Neal had hurled at his own father's protests.
It began to feel like old times again – Neal and Emma against the rest of the world, holding strong and stubborn. It would have bonded them if Neal hadn't continued to try and dissuade Emma between his own stubborn resistance.
"They are the lost boys," he had insisted. "They don't take girls."
"I was a scrawny kid," Emma countered. "People mistook me for a boy all the time before I hit puberty. Turn me back far enough and tuck my hair in a hat and I can pass for a boy."
"Emma, please," Snow had pleaded, stepping forward and taking both her daughter's hands in hers. "It's too dangerous."
"Don't bother," Neal had said, waving a hand exasperatedly as he turned took a few strides down the dock.
"What is that supposed to mean," Emma snapped at him. He turned to face her.
"It means you're stubborn as all get out, and you always have been," he accused. He didn't know why his tone was so hostile, it was one of the characteristics he always loved about her. Perhaps it was his fear for her that made his voice so harsh now and he pointed an accusatory finger at her. "Once you get an idea in that thick skull of yours, you never drop it!"
"Hey!" Charming barked, stepping forward in a surge of protective instinct and coming between his daughter and the man pointing an aggressive finger at her. "Back off."
"No, he's right," Snow said, her eyes still on her daugther's face as both she and Charming turned to look at her incredulously. "You are incredibly stubborn."
"Gee, I wonder where she got that from," Regina said in a snide voice as she strode past the family tangle, beginning to pace with her arms folded across her chest. Snow shot her a dark look over her shoulder.
"What a Charming family dynamic you all have going here," Hook quipped from where he stood a bit to the side, leaning cockily against the railing with a snarky smirk on his face. Neal turned towards him.
"I'm a lot bigger than the last time we met, and I have absolutely no problem punching you in the face, so unless you want a fist in your eye, you can just keep your trap shut."
Hook blinked at him, his expression not faltering. He looked over at Emma, his eyebrows raised.
"Wow, you chose one just like your father, love," he said directly to her, his cheek still sore with the blow Charming had dealt him back in Storybrooke. "Practically a replica."
Neal made to advance, but Regina paced in front of him and peeled him back before he even got started.
"Maybe we should stop worrying about the people on this boat who are all fully grown and capable adults and start thinking about the completely helpless twelve-year-old kid that is most likely already in that jungle of horror!" she barked.
That got everyone back on track, and all parents involved swallowed their fear as a hazy plan began to unfold. While Emma was eager to begin immediately, the sun was beginning to set and Hook refused to land on the shore in the dark. When Neal agreed with him, recounting that Neverland was most dangerous at night, Emma dropped her protests. This landed the crew, exhausted and anxious, sitting strewn about the deck as evening grew to night with nothing but concerning thoughts of the next day bouncing around their heads to pass the time.
"What's it like?" Emma asked, looking directly at Neal from her perch folded on top of one of the cargo boxes, her knees pressed up against her chest. "There?"
"In Neverland?" Neal clarified. Emma nodded. "It's like…" he was trying to find a way to describe it that someone would understand. The pain and the loneliness and the hopelessness of all those children who didn't have someone to love them, until they banded together to love each other as best they could. And then he realized he was talking to the one person might actually understand in an instant. Understand from experience. "It's like the homes."
He and Emma shared a look and he saw harsh memories slide into her eyes as she swallowed hard.
"What homes?" Regina prodded, at as much of a loss as the rest of the crowd on the ship.
"He means the group homes," Emma explained, not taking his eyes off of Neal's. His gaze was almost apologetic that she had to go back into somewhere like that. "The places we used to go while we were waiting for the ACS to find us another family. Full of children whose families didn't want them."
"If you don't want to go…" Neal pressed her hopefully. He did not like the idea that she would be diving into danger with him.
"Nice try," she smirked. "Of course I'm going. I just… I need some air." She extracted herself from her perch and walked off towards the lower deck, dropping down the stairs and out of sight for a second before she became visible again at the bow of the boat, leaning on the railing as the sea breeze swept her hair back. Snow's eyes followed her in concern, then looked up to meet her husbands, both asking each other the same question – should one of them follow?
"Aw, look, we scared her away," Regina jested.
"She wouldn't be the Miss Swan we all know and love if she weren't running away from something," Gold said with a smirk in the direction of the blonde across the deck. Snow was about to defend her daughter and chastise the other two, but Neal beat her to it as he whipped around and confronted them with an accusatory glare.
"It's not funny," he retorted sharply, cutting the biting humor of the comment down to size. "What happened to her in that system wasn't funny. Do you know what it is like to feel nobody wants you? To know that the people who were supposed to love you abandoned you, that you are completely and utterly alone? To know the only thing you have in the whole world, in any world, is yourself, and no one else? Because she does. She spent her entire life feeling that way. Like she wasn't good enough, like she wasn't wanted."
Neal wondered if he was only talking about Emma, or if somehow he had ended up also talking about himself. He turned to face his father squarely.
"And do you know why she grew up that way? Because one hundred years before she was even born you made a cowardly decision and then couldn't live with the consequences of that decision. You let me go, and then you regretted it, and you tore hundreds of lives apart in order to get me back when, if you had just come with me in the first place, none of this would have happened."
It was too much for Neal, the memories and the pain, and the slight pang of knowing that he, in some small way, had played a part in the hard shell Emma had built around her from the years of abuse and misplaced trust and betrayal. As he threw these words at his father and saw his face slide into shame, he realized he should also be chastising himself. He had done those things to Emma the same way his father had. In the end, he really proved to be his father's son.
He stood suddenly and made to walk away, but upon seeing Emma alone on the lower deck, he was afraid to descend the stairs. Instead, he made his way up and stood by the wheel of the ship. Etched in the wood in front of it was the compass Hook had drawn for him when he had been teaching him to sail the ship, in that brief moment when Neal had trusted him before he found out the truth. For that brief moment when Neal thought he might have found a home aboard this ship, before realizing that it was just a trick. Like all the places he had ever called home. He saw now that Hook had scratched out the lettering. He wondered how long he had waited after Neal, then Baelfire, had been abducted before getting rid of this reminder of his time on the ship.
The rest of the crew was left in a guilty silence in the wake of Neal's tirade as they watched him walk away. Snow's eyes swiveled back to her daughter, her maternal concern doubled. She rarely spoke to Emma about life in the system. She could tell her daughter didn't want to talk about it, and if she was being perfectly honest with herself, Snow was glad not to. She wished they could all just pretend like it had never happened, but it had happened. She wondered what her daughter needed right now – to be alone, or for a parent to come and comfort her. She couldn't tell and the fact that she didn't know made her feel completely incompetent. Her thoughts strayed to the child now in her stomach, and she nearly involuntarily placed her hand on top of her abdomen before she stopped herself. She had a fully grown daughter that she hadn't raised, and she had no idea how to be a mother.
Gold eyed his son's back hesitantly, wavering with the same decision as the princess beside her. Follow his troubled son and engage in a conversation, or let him be. He seemed on the verge of resolving on the latter when, of all people, he caught eyes with Hook. Hook's glare seemed to bear into him from across the deck and as he caught his attention, the pirate's eyes darted from him to Bae at the wheel of the ship, and then back again, his eyebrows raised as if challenging, "if you don't go after him, I will."
Gold would not be outdone by Hook when it came to his son. It was bad enough Milah had chosen him, but Bae was all Gold had left. So he dragged himself up and forward until he was directly beside, and slightly behind, his son. At first he didn't exactly know how to start, and the pair stood in a terse silence in the evening breeze, Bae sensing his father behind him but refusing to speak first.
"I was just trying to make things right," Gold said in a small voice that made Neal look over at him. In an instant, he had ceased to be the dark one and had instead turned into a very lost and confused man. Neal felt the roles reverse, like he was the parent, and his father the child who kept screwing up, but he would love him anyways. Neal almost laughed when at last he realized that it had somehow always been like that. Sometimes, his father shocked him by how much he could seem like a lost puppy. It was impossible to stay mad at him when he was like that.
"I know you were," Neal offered, trying to strike a balance between his anger at the past and sympathy for how his father was feeling. As he looked back down at Emma on the bow of the ship, he could only sympathize with him. "I was too. I was just trying to do right by her, to get her back to her family. I didn't know there was a kid."
"You love her," Gold said, noting the longing in his son's eyes. It was not a question, and Neal felt no need to answer it. At this point, it was merely a statement of fact. Gold followed his gaze to the blonde at the bow of the ship. "You should go to her. She needs someone right now."
"Pretty sure she doesn't want anything to do with me," Neal mused, trying to keep his voice indifferent. "I left her. Twice. Her words, not mine."
"We only ever get so angry when we really feel we have something to lose," Gold offered wisely. "She loves you back, or she wouldn't be so angry at what you did. Letting go. So go make it right."
Neal turned to squint at his father, wondering if this was some kind of joke he was playing on him, or if he was honestly giving his son advice. There had been many times growing up when he had wished he could have asked his father's advice about something, but he wasn't there. Somehow that made him angry, now having it given to him, but he swallowed that when he realized that he truly needed the insight. He looked back at Emma, took a deep breath, and turned towards the staircase to the lower deck. Gold tried to hide his smile as he watched him descend.
Steps from her, Neal paused. He was sure she knew he had followed her from the echo his footsteps left on the floorboards below him, but she had not moved or indicated in any other way she was aware of her presence.
"Hey," he started gently and innocently. She did not change her stance, but she cocked her chin over her shoulder and eyed him with half her face. It was stern, but not uninviting. More the kind of stern he recognized from when she was trying to hide her emotions by freezing her face. "Mind if I join?"
Emma did not respond, and, knowing her well, Neal took her silence for consent and stepped closer, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry I snapped earlier," Emma offered stiffly, her pride siphoning away ever so slightly. "I get that way when I'm stressed."
"I know," Neal said with a small smile as he pressed closer behind her. "I remember."
Emma was surprised to find that the comment did not offend her. In fact, it made her feel surprisingly happy. Like she had a family, a past, someone who really knew her inside and out. She felt him move closer, and surprised herself by allowing her head to relax onto his shoulder. She felt his arms wrap around her.
"I didn't think I'd see you again," she explained. "I had been trying to come to terms with it for days. Henry went missing, and then you were there in the water and I just couldn't let myself hope…"
"Hey," he cooed in a warm voice, "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
Emma nearly snorted.
"Not going anywhere? You're going back in time. And you're going into the depths of Neverland, which, despite everything I grew up believing, is apparently one of the most dangerous places in the world."
"You're coming with me." Emma felt the soft warmth of his breath on the back of her neck as he spoke. "You know they're going to dote all over you when you are back to your pre-pubescent self, right?" he cautioned, a slight smirk on his face as he cast her a sideways at the Charming couple on the upper deck, who had stood and moved alone to one side along the railing to speak with each other more privately.
"Right back at you, Baelfire," Emma bit back, unable to hide her own grin as she nodded in Gold's direction. Neal sighed in frustration and agreement. "We will just have to use really big words and really mature voices to remind them we are actually 30 years old."
"I'm actually nearly 117 years old," Neal interjected.
"And we can throw some swear words in there too to be extra sure they remember," Emma said, not commenting on Neal's interlude.
"Or we could just let them catch us making out in the closet to remind them we are fully grown adults," Neal suggested, grinning in the curls of her long hair.
"I'm pretty sure pre-teens make out in the closet as well," Emma told him, smirking. "Probably more so than adults."
"You're very right," Neal agreed, but his good-humored smile became a grimace as the conversation died down and squinted out into the setting sun. "We'll just have to do whatever we have to do," he pondered quietly, "to get him back."
"Hey," Emma assured him, placing her hand gently on top of his where it lay on the railing of the ship. He looked down into her eyes. "None of that self-doubting attitude. Can you think of a time when you and I weren't able to steal something that we wanted?"
Across the ship, Snow noticed Neal and her daughter smiling at each other, the words he had spoken about the pain of her childhood echoing in her memory. She began to realize that she didn't even know how the two of them had met. With Cora and then her own guilt over killing her, then August's near-murder, Regina's disappearance and Greg and Tamara's scheme, they hadn't really had the time to discuss the details.
"It's odd," Snow said from down the dock from where she stood beside her husband eavesdropping on her daughter. "We have this whole history, this whole life story that she never knew about, but sometimes I forget that she does too."
Charming turned from where he was looking out over the water and followed his wife's gaze to her daughter, now in Neal's arms. He narrowed his eyes, a protective discomfort sprouting in him.
"I'll just be glad when he's fourteen again and I don't have to worry about him having his hands all over my daughter."
"You think fourteen-year-old boys have less hormones?" Snow said skeptically, raising her eyebrows at her husband's faulty logic.
"I think fourteen-year-old boys are easier to pound into the ground if necessary," Charming explained curtly.
"Not fourteen-year-old boys whose father is the Dark One," Snow cautioned good-humouredly. She caught her husband's concerned and disturbed eye as he continued to watch Emma across the dock. "You think he's not good enough for her?"
"No one's good enough for her," Charming insisted, his face extremely serious, but at that, Snow couldn't help but smile.