"What happened?"

Neal was trying to keep the rage out of his voice for fear that Emma might sense it and think it was directed towards her, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Emma sat beside him, her face bathed in light and shadow as the fire they had rekindled flickered across it. Her shoulders drooped self-protectively, draped in a makeshift blanket of newspaper. Her shivering had diminished in the heat of the fire, but a subtle layer of trembling persisted that Neal knew had nothing to do with cold.

He reached out towards her. In all truth, he wanted to wrap her in his arms, but even this soft movement towards her made her wince, and he pulled back.

"Did he try anything?"

"What does it matter?" Emma retorted, her face hard. Neal's eyes left her face and flickered to the flames, but they couldn't stay away.

"Emma…"

"Don't," she spat. "I don't need your pity. I just need a place to stay until he cools off." She repositioned herself defensively, and immediately took in a sharp breath and brought her hand to her side, hissing in pain. Neal realized that while the gash on her temple might be the most visible injury, it might not be the only one, or even the most concerning.

"We need to get you out of that house," Neal said as August came to kneel beside Emma, a tissue and a bottle of hand-sanitizer in his hands.

"No!" Emma insisted loudly, wincing as he blotted the disinfectant on the tissue and padded her wound.

"Emma, if it's this bad..." August started.

"I'm fine!" she insisted.

"Fine?" Neal argued. "For all we know, your ribs could be broken."

"They'll heal," Emma hiccuped. "You start involving the cops, and who knows where I'll be placed next? We'll be separated and I'll never see you guys again."

"Maybe they can find you another family nearby," August offered weakly, though the three of them knew it was unlikely at best.

"I don't want another family," Emma cried fiercely. "I want my family."

The trio sat in silence in the wake of the confession as Emma gave a little sniff, the residue of the emotion she had not been able to contain. Neal and August looked at each other over the cowering girl, because they knew that what she said was even more true than she had known. Not only would her being sent away stop the three of them from being together, but they were Emma's only chance of finding her actual family, the one she didn't even know she had.

Emma cleared her throat and sniffed a few more times until she felt her emotions come back under her control. A stubborn and resolute expression slid onto her face, hardening with her resolve.

"It's just a few more years," she said. "I can handle a few more years."

"Can you?" August asked gingerly.

Emma did not respond. She merely stared at the dancing flames in front of her. Neal crept closer to her slowly for fear she could continue to lash out.

"You shouldn't have to handle it, Emma," he cooed softly. "It's not worth it - we're not worth it - if staying means you will continue to get hurt."

"I'll be more careful," she promised dryly, almost as if she were just speaking to herself. Swearing a personal oath. "I'll make my curfew and I'll do whatever he wants and I won't give him anymore reason to get angry, and then I won't get hurt."

"That's not how these things work," August tried, but Emma cut him off.

"Decision made," she said. "We're not telling anyone. Promise?" August and Neal shared a skeptical look, this time one that Emma saw because she was looking from one of them to the other. "Promise?" she repeated forcefully.

"Promise," Neal agreed solemnly, and that was the moment her realized that he would never be able to deny her anything she wanted.

"Promise," August echoed, taking Neal's lead.

"Good," Emma said, turning back to stare into the fire. "Now go to sleep. It's late."

But none of the three of them moved. They each sat in a disturbed silence through the rest of the night until the fluorescent lights buzzed on in the morning, signaling that the first of the workers were arriving for their shift. At that time, August packed his belongings away, and Emma and Neal snuck out the back.

Months passed, and while the bruises continued to pop up every once in a while, they were few and far enough between to keep Neal and August's protests at bay for the most part. Perhaps this was because Emma always wore long pants and long sleeve shirts, even as summer progressed into its hottest months. But Neal couldn't bring himself to bring up the unpleasantness, so he just watched warily from afar, a curling sensation settling in his stomach every time she said good bye for the night.

The trio passed the summer, and then the fall, in a state of routine familiarity with each other. When each was not working or in school, they were always together, eating stolen apples under the freeway, taking long meandering walks up and down the abandoned railroad tracks, threatening to push each other in front whenever a train came by.

Emma turned fourteen, and Neal breathed a sigh of relief to know she was one year closer to leaving the system. They scratched together a makeshift birthday cake from a box of half eaten donuts they had stolen from the cops themselves, and lit the ends of twigs with August's lighter, the tips of which they had wrapped in newspaper so the flame would have enough time to catch. As they burned, they filled the warehouse with a faint aroma of soot and autumn as September drew to a close.

When Neal saw Emma smile as she dipped her finger in the pink icing and painted it onto Neal's nose, he realized that he would do anything just to see her smile. The thought took him off guard, and even scared him a bit as the frosting fight ensued. What had begun as a completely honor-driven mission to reunite a complete stranger with the family she'd never had, had grown into to something he had not let himself experience since Wendy Darling, and only for a very fleeting moment, even then. The idea terrified him. That he might lose her. That they might lose each other. That he might somehow stand in the way of her fulfilling her destiny. And if push did come to shove, would he have the will power to step aside and let her do what needed to be done?

But he was getting ahead of himself, he sighed in his own mind as the leaves began to change and fall. Breaking the curse was years away. She was still in the system for quite some time. Again he began to wish he had a warmer jacket as his breath became increasingly visible in the cold winter air. He started spending less and less time at August's warehouse, because at least there was heat at his home, and it gave him the opportunity to walk Emma home, despite how her foster father hated it.

One day the temperature dropped below freezing and as they walked Emma blew warm air into her balled up hands, until Neal reached out and took her hand in his and put it in his coat pocket. She caught his eye as he did this, and then very quickly looked down at the sidewalk. Neal saw she was blushing deeply, and he let his breath out from his daring. He laughed at himself inside his head. He had definitely faced much more fearsome foes that awkward teenage romance while in Neverland, but somehow this still seemed the most daunting and courageous task. Emma drew that kind of power. He watched her flush still deeper when they arrived outside her gate and he slid her hand from his pocket and placed a delicate, gentlemanly kiss on her knuckles, like the princess she was. Despite her scoff, she even chanced a glance backwards over her shoulder at him as she walked down her front path.

Yes, breaking the curse was years away, he assured himself as he grinned at the sidewalk before continuing to walk towards his own house. Years away. They had all the time in the world.

Little did he know that that night would be the last night Emma Swan spent in the foster system. From inside the house, her foster father stood looking out the window. His scowl deepened as he let the curtain slide back into place, the sound of the front door closing in the other room.