Neal looked in the mirror, ignoring the sound of the water running into the basin. He didn't want to go to bed—he didn't want to face those nightmares—but he didn't want to stay awake, either. The past days had been too exhausting, too draining, for him to not welcome the sweetness of oblivion.
This place was just too much. Being in this town was like being a starving man looking into the window of a banquet. Everything he could have ever wanted was laid out before him, but he couldn't touch it. All he could do was breath against the glass and hope someone noticed and invited him in.
There was a knock at the door and Neal ran a towel over his face and turned off the faucet. If he hadn't been so tired, he would have found it funny that for stranger in this town he sure was popular.
Of all the possibilities, the one person he hadn't expected to see at his door in the middle of the night was the just the person standing there. He was barefoot and in a pair of rain soaked pajamas, as if he had come here in a rush.
"Henry?" Neal breathed in confusion and shock. He was rather ashamed to admit it, but he had been avoiding the kid since Emma got back, even going as far as living off of convince store burritos and cold cans of ravioli just so he didn't have to risk running into him at Grannies.
Emma had made it clear that she didn't want Neal anywhere near the kid and, as much as it killed him to do so, he was trying his best to heed her wishes. Despite that, he didn't have the courage to face the kid with the truth—he just couldn't make Emma out to be that bad guy in this but he couldn't lie to Henry. Neal knew all too much how the lies could wound so much deeper than the truth, even if told from a place of love.
"Come in," Neal said stepping aside so Henry could get out of the cold.
For a second Neal couldn't tell if the kid had been crying or if it had just been raining on his face, but then he sniffled and rubbed his eyes on his soaked sleeve. Yep. He had been crying. And that revelation only brought up a slew of new questions.
The parental instincts Neal never imagined himself having kicked in and he grabbed the comforter off the bed and wrapped it around Henry's shoulders as he guided the kid to sit in front of the heater.
"What's wrong? What happened?" he asked, worried. After all what could have happened to send the kid running to him at this time of night.
"Is it true?" Henry whispered, shattered and Neal's heart went out to him.
"What?" Neal already knew the answer. Only one thing fit but he still had to play it off. Henry had to ask, had to say the words. Neal had promised Emma that he wouldn't tell and he kept his promises…at least as much as he could. He had to be sure he wasn't misreading the signs—wasn't just seeing what he wanted to.
"Are you my dad?" Henry asked, half afraid of the answer.
Neal sighed and nodded. As happy as he was to hear that word fall from Henry's lips, he knew this wasn't going to be easy. There was no way it could be, even with as understanding of a kid was Henry was, there was bound to be some bitterness. Neal didn't want Henry to hate him for what he did—things that had seemed right at the time. But more than that, he didn't want Henry to hate Emma for keeping this secret.
"Oh kid," he said kneeling down and brushing a stray bit of hair out of Henry's face. "I didn't know until I came to Storybrooke and met you."
It was half an apology and half an explanation, but even in its whole, the words weren't enough. They were no excuse.
"Why didn't you say anything?" The pain in the kid's voice cut at Neal's already war-torn heart. all he could do was shake his head slowly, wishing he could take the pain away, wishing that he could make the kid understand…but if his conversation with Emma had been any indication…
"I wanted to wait until Emma was back so I didn't sound like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. And I had no clue what Emma had told you."
Actually he did have a clue but he figured that none of it would be flattering…not that he hadn't earned her ire, but still, if all the kid had heard was bad things his best chance at having any kind of relationship might have been just as a grown up friend.
"She said that you were a fireman and that you died trying to save people."
Neal's eyebrows shot up. He was surprised that she made him out to be a hero and he couldn't help but wonder if it was out of an inner desire she had to think the best of him—as she said, she had waited to hear it was all a miscommunication—or if it had been more for the kid's benefit. Perhaps both?
"Is any of it true?" Henry said, seeing the look on his face. Neal swallowed, knowing that there was no way to keep the kid from hurting more. Truth or lie. Either would crush him, and so Neal went with the one that would heal the easiest.
"No kid, it's not."
The devastated look on Henry's face crushed Neal as well.
"Why would she lie?" he asked, clearly lost and aching.
Neal sighed and looked out the window, looking but not really seeing the rain soaked street below. How was he supposed to explain this?
"Because I hurt her." He said, looking over to the kid, begging him to understand, to be the one person on his side. It was big thing to ask of the kid, but Neal couldn't keep it out of his voice. He couldn't bring himself to try. "I never wanted to…but to do the right thing I had to. Emma only knows part of the story and that because of that she has reason to think I'm a bad guy."
"But you told her the truth, right?" Henry asked, like it was just that easy.
"I tried, but she was so mad she wouldn't listen to the whole story."
There was a pause as Henry digested this. "Then tell me."
Neal's head whipped around to look at the kid.
"What?"
"I want to hear the story," Henry said, pulling the covers tighter around his shoulders. "And don't lie."
Neal hesitated. He had wanted Emma to be the first to hear the story—he had promised himself that he would give her that much—but that promise had been made a long time ago. Now there were more things to consider and if anyone besides her had a right to hear it, it was Henry.
"Alright, but you have to promise me you won't tell Emma," he said, continuing when he saw Henry's confusion plastered all over his face. "I'm the one who hurt her, so I should be the one who explain."
Henry nodded, liking at him the same way Belle had—unjudgingly wanting just to hear; to understand.
Neal started with his job in Phoenix and the watches and then moved on to the car and beyond. He didn't lie or try and hide what they had done; he didn't gloss over any of the details. The convince stores and the hotel rooms. It was all fair game.
Henry just sat, listening as he continued his story. Once Neal got to the part about August, he had to remind himself that the puppet was the kid's friend and it would do no one any good to mess with that. If wasn't going to ask about the money, Neal wasn't going to mention it.
"And now she wants to know how I could just believe him," Neal said, finishing his tale.
"But you grew up in that world, of course you'd believe."
Neal sighed, his shoulders sagging "She didn't let me get to that part."
There was a single beat of silence as Henry pursed his lips, considering all he had been told.
"You need to tell her."
Neal laughed a little. Like he hadn't been trying since he got here. "I plan on it. As soon as she lets me."
Henry gave a big yawn and Neal knew that it was time to get the kid back to his mother. As much as Neal was dying to see Emma again, he was more than a little apprehensive to see her reaction at just how much the kid had been told.
"Alright kid, let's get you home."
"I don't want to go back just yet." Henry was still hurting over the lie and Neal would be lying if he said he wasn't excited at the possibility of spending time with the kid. Sure he hated the circumstances surrounding it, but that didn't change the fact that he had a lot of time to make up for.
Neal sighs, although it probably won't help him in the long run with Emma, but he couldn't' bring himself to say no. "Well then at least get to bed. Tomorrow is a school day."
Henry crawled into bed and pulled the cover tight around his chin.
"Can you light a candle?" he asked, trying hard not to sound like a scared little boy. Like it would make a difference to Neal either way. "Gramps says they're supposed to keep out bad dreams."
Neal lips twitch as he walked over the dresser to do as he was asked. "I'll keep that in mind."
Neal sat on the other side of the bed and leaned against the headboard. He wasn't going to sleep—chances were good that Emma would be here soon and he needed to be awake enough to keep her from breaking down the door. Almost absentmindedly he rubs a single knuckle up and down Henry's spine gently. It was the same thing his own father used to do to keep away the nightmares or calm a fever…at least during the good times.
Gods this was messed up. Everything he had ever tried to do in his life had failed misrabaly. He couldn't save his father. Couldn't do the right thing by Emma. And now…
There was a loud knock at the door and without so much as a noise, Neal slid out of abed and crossed the room. Desperate to answer before the commotion woke Henry. He didn't bother asking who it was, he already knew the answer.
"Quite," he hissed softly as he threw open the door, "he just got to sleep."
"I told you to stay away from my son and you—" She started in on him, her tone yelling even if her voice was not.
Neal didn't have the strength to deal with her undue hatred right now. "He overheard you and your mom talking and figured he would get the truth from me," he said, cutting her off.
She calms, and has the decency to look slightly ashamed—not enough to apologize, of course, she wouldn't be Emma if she showed contrition so easily. "What did you tell him?"
"Everything."
She looks at him in disbelieve and anger. And Neal looked back, matching her glair. What else did she expect him to do, tell him another round of lies?
"I wasn't going to lie to him and the kid's tough enough to handle the fact that we had a wild youth."
Without a word, Neal grabbed his jacket from where it hung on the back of a chair and walked over to the bed. He threw it over Henry and picked the boy up. Neal's heart flutters as Henry's face nuzzles closer into his neck, but the boy didn't wake.
"August told me about the money," she said as they reached the car. Neal didn't reply. There really wasn't' much he could say—not without it ending in a string of curses directed at the puppet. He had been the one to ruin everything, so wasn't it only proper that he be the one to fix it. And yet, Neal bristled at the thought of August trying to fix things. Hadn't eh done enough?
He waited for Emma to say something—anything else—as he strapped Henry into the passenger seat of the bug, but she never did and Neal was left to wonder how everything came to be like this.
Things used to be so easy between them—so natural. They had never really needed to talk even though they never ran out of things to talk about. he could remember them sitting for hours talking about stupid stuff—the things kids talked about when they didn't have a care or a worry in the world. He could remember it being so easy…
But now every word was a fight in and of itself. Both of them were tired of being right… and tired of being wrong.
This had to stop and the only way that would happen is if he came clean.
"Emma," he whispered as she opened the driver's side door.
She stopped and turned to look at him, her arm resting against the open door.
Neal took a deep breath, trying to inhale the strength he needed to speak the next, terrible words. It was something he had never talked about…something he had never wanted to talk about, but it was something the needed to be said. Emma needed to hear this as much anything.
"You asked me how I could just believe," he said, staring at her, begging her see the truth in his words. He didn't think he could handle much more of this—of her hating him. "It's because I was born in that world. I know what price magic costs—I know how it's never the casters that pay that price. It's always an innocent, someone who deserves never to be involved in it."
"What—?" It took a moment for his words to sink in, but when they did her disbelieve turned to anger.
"Don't tell me you were supposed to be watching me too," she hissed, slamming the car door and stepping closer to him.
"No, I didn't even know about the curse until August told me. I didn't know about you—your destiny."
She gave him an 'oh really' look that told him that she didn't believe him.
Neal smiled and could feel the lines around his eyes deepen for the first time since coming to Storybrooke. "Don't look at me like that. You were the one who stole, my car remember?"
Emma crossed her arms and her face softened a bit, "You're going to have to explain better than that."
"My past isn't something I like thinking about—let alone talk about. I haven't had enough sleep or liquor to change that," he sighed. "Tomorrow after work. I'll tell you everything…"
He takes the necklace—her necklace—out of his pocket and drops it into her hand, "if you'll let me."
She didn't look up as she stared at the charm and for a moment Neal was afraid she would throw it at him again. That she would completely close that door to him.
"And then," he said, choking on the words, "And then if you still want me to, I'll leave. But you have to hear the full story first."
Emma didn't say anything. She just gave one curt nod and drove away, taking the charm with her.