Author's Note: Hey everyone, sorry for the long, excruciating wait. I've just been enjoying my time off from school and considering how I've been non-stop with writing since I began writing SwanThief/Fire fics since last November I really needed the break you know?

I really hope this hiatus, if you will, has not turned you off from the story. I've really wanted to continue it. I just had to relax some much like I did from school but I am back and hopefully better than ever!

Enjoy! And thanks for your patience.

2. Be Still and Listen

Darkness had descended across the Enchanted Forest. Mulan and Aurora had torches with them as the group of five, plus the raccoon, made it to some abandoned hut buildings. Like most of the forest this area had been ravaged by the curse. Parts of the buildings were in shambles.

Neal ran his hands over parts of the building silently mourning a long but not forgotten past.

"What is this place," Mulan asked.

"My home," Neal replied.

Philip nodded, "Well camp here for the night," he said as he began to set up.

Neal remained silent as he walked into the battered shack. He hadn't been here since he was fourteen years old but even that wasn't quite accurate given his age of technically over three hundred years. There had been some good memories. His mother was a descent woman but her hatred for his father always soured the household. Rumple was more a parent to him than Mila it sometimes seemed. At times in his young child it felt like Mila resented Bae, blamed him for his father's actions. Neal had loved his father, hadn't cared if he was a coward because at least he had his papa but the second he decided he wanted power over anything else- it was something Neal could never understand. It's what separated him from the monster his father had become.

"This place," Pocahontas said entering the room with Neal, "There's much darkness here, much pain."

"How can you tell that?" Neal asked her.

Pocahontas looked at her surroundings, up to the sky where there was a hole in the ceiling of the home. "I can feel it," she said. She then turned her attention to Neal, "And I can see it from the look in your eyes."

"I'm that easy to read, hu," Neal said looking down.

"Not really," she replied, "I'm just very in tune with the world around me." She took a step toward Neal. "What I can't figure out is why come here when it makes your heart shatter?"

Neal shook his head, unsure of what to say. "Redemption I suppose, closure?" Neal sat on the edge of what used to be an old bed. Some of the legs had collapsed from it but it was still usable for a seat. "Emma's in this world, I don't how but I can feel it," he said looking up at his new friend.

Pocahontas took a seat on the floor next to him. "Your spirits are connected. You calling out to her earlier, coming here, your souls are leading you on a path."

Neal just scoffed, "Well why here? This is the last place I ever wanted to come back to. And if there is a path, is my path and how will I find it?"

Pocahontas smiled, "I asked my grandmother the same thing once. She told me to listen; that all around us are spirits. They live in the earth, the water, the sky. If you listen, they will guide you."

Neal paid close attention to her words. He got up from his seat and made his way outside.

Behind him Pocahontas sang the same song her grandmother had sung to her long ago, "Que que, na tu ra, you will understand. Listen with your heart, you will understand. Let it break upon you like a wave upon the sand. Listen with your heart, you will understand."

She repeated it several times as Neal focused in on his breathing, focused on the fresh breeze that was making its way in for the evening. He had never been religious or spiritual but he understood the meaning of true love and what it meant in this world of all worlds. It wasn't like his previous world where love could be broken easily. In this world when you found love it remained and no challenge in this world or the next could ever break that bond. And the fact that Neal had fallen in love with the purest of all love, the essence of it, only solidified his belief in fate, in her, in love.

Yes he was meant to return to his childhood home but not for Emma's benefit, not yet, but for his own. For so long he had despised his father, but now he found himself grateful because had it not been for Rumpelstiltskin's actions then he and Emma would have never met. The world was connected like a ball of thread- take out one piece and the whole thing becomes useless, there is no point- every web is connected and they were all part of that.

He had come for closure and he found it. And after three hundred years of caring that weight, he felt free. Neal did figure he could not fully forgive his father but at least now he felt ready to give it a second try. His father may have been a bad man but that didn't mean Neal was. He was nothing like his father except for maybe his compassion to love and Neal could embrace at least that part of himself.

Now the next step would be to find Emma and he knew where he would start.

For tonight though he called out to Emma in his heart hoping if anything that the wind would carry the undying torch he long carried for her.

Elsewhere and at a location twenty miles from Baelfire's home, Emma and her dysfunctional family stopped for the night.

Instead of reading Henry stories from his book, he had wanted Emma to tell him of some of her adventures from last year when she and Mary Margaret had been stuck in the Enchanted Forest so she told him the ogre story of when she thought she had been doing Mary Margaret a favor in protecting her from Mulan and Aurora by firing her gun into the air- something which Regina laughed at and Gold and David stifled theirs. Emma shot them all a look, what, it had not been her fault that the real world had not prepared her to deal with ogres. After their snickering had subsided Emma continued with the story.

Now Emma stood several feet away from the makeshift tents, the tree line to her left and open range in front of her. Regina was watching over Henry as the boy slept. It was strange sharing custody of him this way but at least Regina hadn't tried to kill any of them yet. A part of Emma concocted the idea that so much had happened between them and their families that they were now at a truce of sorts.

Emma heard footsteps behind her and then could feel as Mary Margaret reached for her daughter's hand.

"We're going to find him you know," her mother said with a smile.

Emma let out a deep breath. "I know."

"But something else is bothering you. What is it, spill."

Emma glanced behind her where Henry slept and then turned her attention to the dark and empty woods in front of her.

"For months I tried to deny that Henry looked like his father," she began. "I lied to my son because I was still hurt over what Neal put me through. I've only come around to forgiving him for that. And now being her, being so close to Neal, looking at Henry-," Emma looked at Mary Margaret, "What if we're getting our hopes up? Henry's all ready talked about me and Neal getting back together and the three of us getting a castle."

"He's really thought this through hasn't he?"

Emma crossed her arms, "I just don't want to keep disappointing him."

Mary Margaret rubbed her hand on Emma's arm. "He knows you're trying, we all are."

Emma smiled at her mother.

Mary Margaret took a breath unsure but knowing she had to ask. "What did happen between you and Neal?"

Emma glanced sharply. That was a question that she hadn't been ready for.

"I'm sorry if that seemed out of line," Mary Margaret quickly apologized. "You once said that we didn't know who you were before Storybrooke and you were right we don't but you're my daughter and I'd like to get that chance to know you."

"You won't like what you hear," Emma admitted. "I didn't have the kind of life you wanted."

"I know, but I'm willing to listen, if you let me."

Emma let her mind wander for a bit. She knew what her mother was asking was big, probably the biggest thing next to telling Mary Margaret about when she had been pregnant with Henry. They had all missed out on so much and Emma knew from basic human experience that not only was it a parents greatest wish to see their child get married, it was also a great wish to see their daughter pregnant for the first time. And there was no way of turning back the clock. Mary Margaret and even David had nothing but good to her since her arrival and Mary Margaret to Henry long before that so she knew she owed them that much. And not only did she owe them, she wanted her parents to know her even if her past came with a lot of ugly baggage.

Before Emma could begin telling her mother a swift wind blew through the camp. From the overcast several hours before the group knew they would probably get rained on but this wind was slightly different. Emma closed her eyes. She wasn't sure what it was exactly she was doing. She lifted her head up to the empty skyline and let the wind fill her. There was a personal touch to it that much was clear. The sensation resonated in not just the wind but through her body until the physically powerful part reached her heart. At that moment she truly knew.

Emma smiled. Maybe she wasn't getting her hopes up after all.

"Neal," she said out loud.