"That's the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard."

Neal, with August's help, had taken point in relaying the story. The true story. Perhaps it should have been the other way around, but August was glad to take the back seat, as his role in the tale was less than honorable. He felt his own shame radiate heatedly from him, even as Neal skated by his most dreadful of transgressions with little-to-no mention, for which he was grateful.

"I swear to God, Emma, it's the truth," August pleaded. "I was there when he curse hit, I saw it."

"You know we're not lying," Neal challenged her. "You can tell."

"Then you're both mentally insane," she accused.

"I know it seems that way."

"Your parents are out there, Emma," Neal offered, "and they need you."

"My parents didn't want me!" Emma exploded, for the first time her voice breaking from it's harsh furry and fading to the true devastation inside her.

"Yes, they did!" Neal said back, troubled by the statement. "They do! They are waiting for you to find them..."

"No, they're not!" Emma cried, tears piercing her eyes. "They left me. They abandoned me on the side of the road. They don't love me, and they never did, and I don't know what I ever did to them, but that's the truth, and it's the only truth."

Silence followed her statement as Neal regarded her, completely at a loss. He bit back his own frustration. They had waited too long. She had already lost hope. Perhaps she had lost it a long time ago. Neal had never heard it put so straightforwardly. What she must have believed her whole life. Why should she have believed any different? But now, he was coming to her telling her it wasn't true. Why wasn't she jumping on the possibility that their might be another explanation to why she grew up alone?

"Why is it so hard for you to believe?" he asked, his quiet voice breaking with desperation and grief.

"I'm done with this," she said, emotion once again out of her voice as she swung her bag over her shoulder and turned to leave. "I'm done with you."

Neal's heart sank as he watched her walk away. Hop through the open window and disappear up the fire escape. He wanted to call out to her, but there wasn't anything left to say. He had told her the truth. All of it. And she hadn't believed.

"Let me talk to her."

Neal looked up. August was already halfway across the abandoned room.

"What are you going to...?"

"I'll be right back," was all he said, already halfway out the window.

He found her on the roof of the building they had scaled, on the opposite edge of the fire escape, facing down to the main street. She sat at the edge, her feet dangling over as she crossed her arms over herself against the cold. August approached cautiously, until he knew she must be aware of his presence, but she didn't say anything, so gently he lowered himself until he was sitting next to her. For a long time they sat in silence, August looking out on the city landscape. He took a breath.

"I held you the day you were born," August started. He wasn't sure how to do this, how convince her that she was the savior, born a world away to a cursed Prince and Princess, how to console and comfort her in her most confusing and premature hour, so he decided to just get right down to the truth. "My father put me through the portal to save me first. He never told your parents the wardrobe could carry two. They thought that because you were born early you would have to go through alone, and instead of tell them the truth, my father chose to save me from the curse. Even then, I knew better. I should have stopped him, not let him put me in the wardrobe, but I was young and terrified and he was my father. I ended up in the woods, and not moments later you came along, brand new and squealing, wrapped in that white blanket…"

"I told you, I was found by the side of the highway," Emma corrected him darkly, not meeting his eyes. "Not in the middle of the woods."

"By a five year old boy," August noted looking at her sideways. "Who had a harder time trekking through the woods to find the highway than he had coming up with the lie about where he found you."

Emma still would not look him in the eye.

"Look at me, Emma."

At first she seemed as if she was going to refuse his request, but eventually she deigned to squint in his direction. His eyes were wide and pleading.

"Am I lying to you?"

Emma studied his face, the hardness in hers fading ever-so slightly.

"Just because you believe what you are saying doesn't make it true," she murmured, but the ice was beginning to thaw, and August could see it.

"I was with you in the first home they brought us to in Augusta. My father charged me with staying by your side and helping you to fulfill your destiny, to come and save everyone when the time came. But I failed. I failed him and I failed you, Emma. I ran away from the home with a group of kids not three weeks after arriving. I was angry and young and terrified and I left you all alone. And it has haunted me ever since."

It was Emma's turn to look at August's face as he stared guiltily into the distance in front of him, wringing his hands. The true pain and remorse Emma saw there startled her, and her harsh visage slackened still further.

"I was your family," he continued, his voice struggling not to break as the guilt of the memory wafted over him. "I was all you had, and I should have been there for you. But instead, I betrayed and abandoned you to grow up in this world alone, with no one."

Beyond the buildings, Emma could see the corner of the art museum illuminated in the evening darkness.

"You have no idea how sorry I am for that, Emma," he said, sniffing subtly. "How much I wish I could go back and make a different decision. They caught all of us, of course, and we were back in the system, but even then I didn't come looking for you. I was too cowardly. I couldn't even take care of myself, let alone you. I even tried to convince myself that I was crazy, that I had never lived in that other world and it had all been a dream and I had always been a boy in the system here. That you were nothing special and I didn't owe you anything. But of course, I never was able to convince myself, because I remembered everything. I may have only been five years old, but I remembered my father, and he was kind and warm and he loved me so much."

Emma was shocked to see a tear trickle down the silhouette of August's cheek, and then another.

"Even when I stopped denying my true past, I still didn't come looking for you. Not right away. I thought it was too late. I couldn't convince you anymore, it was too late and you wouldn't believe me. And honestly, it would mean facing what I had done to you, which I was too much of a coward to do. And then I met Neal."

Emma turned away and pressed her eyelids tightly shut. She didn't want to know Neal's involvement in all of this. Somehow, his dishonesty felt like a stronger betrayal to her. August turned to face her at her reaction.

"He wasn't there, Emma, for any of this," he told her. "He was far off in some other land until just a year ago. He came from our world, yes, but he didn't come through with us. He came through years before and has been to other worlds besides this one as well. He didn't abandon you like I did, Emma, I promise you. He never knew you existed until he and I finally discovered our shared past home and I told him about all this. About the curse, and about you. We found out where you lived through the records of Child Services and from the moment he met you, he has been entirely devoted to getting you back to your family. He's as good as they come, Emma, and his completely on your side. He's never left you. Not once. Not like I did."

Emma sniffed and squinted up at the lights of the skyline, trying to hide the fact that she felt tears rising from somewhere behind her eyes.

"He wanted to tell you right away. About the curse and your destiny. I convinced him not too. I wanted to wait until we had more to go off of, until we had more proof and more of your trust. I didn't think you would believe, and I was terrified of that because that was the one thing my father charged me with doing before he sent me through the portal. I was supposed to make you believe. And if I failed at that, then I knew there would be no hope."

Emma blinked at him. She didn't think she had ever heard him sound so genuine. He caught her eyes and kept her gaze.

"But believe or not, Emma, this is real. It's the truth, and you are our only hope. It has to be you. It is your destiny, it's what you were born for. You're special…"

"I'm not special," Emma rejected.

"You are, Emma," August insisted. "Deep down you must have known that…"

"How?" Emma challenged, looking up at him fiercely. "How was I supposed to know? When my first family sent me away because they wanted to have kids of their own, was that when I was supposed to realize I was special? When my foster mother stuffed me in a basement with thirteen other foster children so she could eat off of the support payments? Was that supposed to make me feel special? When Roger was breaking a glass bottle over my head, was I supposed to think, well, he wouldn't be doing this unless I was some special, miraculous savior from another world…"

Emma knew she was going to far. The shame that spread over August's face as she recounted her memories should have quelled her, but her anger persisted.

"I'm your only hope? Where was my hope? Where was I supposed to get it from?"

"I don't know," August whispered, hanging his head between his knees. Emma let up then. She watched him in silence as he wouldn't look her in the eye. She knew what it was like to have strong regrets. Somehow her anger subsided and she was able to feel the fear that was underneath it. Fear of what, she wondered?

"I have parents?"

August looked up at her. She definitely looked the fourteen years she was. Just a girl, really. A girl who had been through so much, but a girl nonetheless. Her voice was small and hopeful and trembling and vulnerable all at the same time.

"Yes," he breathed.

"And… they really did want me?"

"More than anything."

"I don't want to believe you."

That took August aback.

"Why?"

"Because it's all I ever wanted, and I never thought I'd get it," Emma sniffed. "Not for real. I'm afraid it's too good to be true. It's too easy."

"I assure you, it will be anything but easy," August said with an ironic laugh. "We've got miles to go, a curse to break, and an evil sorceress to defeat. I'm not offering you a happy ending. Those don't exist here, I know that. All I'm offering you is the truth. It's years late, but there it is. What you do with it is up to you. And whatever you choose to do with it, we will support you. Neal and I both. Because we are your family, and whether or not you want to believe it, we love you, Emma."

When they returned to the abandoned apartment, the found Neal sitting in the second room where they had all hid before, his back against the wall, staring forward with a hard expression in his eyes. Emma settled herself next to him, August on the other side, and she looked up at him expectantly.

"So fairytales are real?" she prodded, her voice difficult to read.

"In a manner of speaking yes," Neal said, avoiding her gaze.

"And we're all a part of the stories I learned growing up?"

"That's about the gist of it."Neal still would not look her in the eye. He didn't want to see the disbelief staring back at him. It was too painful.

"So that makes the three of us… what? The three musketeers?"

Neal looked up into her eyes and saw she was smiling hopefully. She believed. She was confused, she was scared, she was hurt, but she believed. He grinned back at her, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Sure," he said, feeling a warmth spread through him as he accepted the title. "Why not? We're the three musketeers."

"The three musketeers," August agreed, raising the flask he kept in his breast pocket at the initiation. He took a swig, then passed it to Neal, then Emma, who each took a swig in turn before settling into a comfortable silence.

Neal felt a twinge of something he hadn't felt in hundreds of years. Something he knew had been growing steadily since his return to this world, but he hadn't allowed himself to recognize until it had just been solidified this very night. He looked up, first at Emma, then at August, then back at Emma, and found himself surrounded by family.

I have a family again, he thought to himself. I'd almost forgotten why that's worth fighting for.


Disclaimer: I know August was 7 in the show when he went through the portal. I made him 5 in this version because it seemed less creepy to have an 18-year-old be friends with a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old than a 20-year-old to be. Wanted to keep things consistent, even if it is just within the scope of this story.