"Emma! Emma, wait up!"
"I swear to God, Neal..." she starts, turning around and folding her arms, the movement so quick she feels the cutlass harnessed across her back shift.
"It's not about us," he says, holding his hands palms-out in a surrendering gesture.
"Is it about Henry?" she retorts. Her chin juts out. About time we all get back on track.
"Yes. Well, in a roundabout way." Waiting to see if she'll wait and listen to him, he swallows, looking more fearful than she'd like him to be. This can't be good.
"You said Regina was teaching you magic?"
"Well, not officially. It's only been like one lesson."
"But...last I knew, Regina was trouble. We didn't want Henry anywhere near her," he says, and judging by his tone, it's only the first block of a Jenga game. But at least she knows she can argue this one.
"I think the moment we all stepped on Hook's ship, we decided to put all our differences aside to rescue Henry," she says. Neal nods in a "fair enough" way, but they're not done talking. She has no idea what the next block in the tower he'll move is, or if she can come up with a good counter move for it. Her gut shouts at her to just walk away, but she's growing more and more frustrated with herself every time she does it.
"You can do magic?"
There were times when they'd been together that his face went all soft when he looked at her, usually right before he'd kiss her fiercely, but this look makes her shiver, like he doesn't know what to make of her anymore. It's the look he would have given her if he'd known who she was when they'd met, she realizes, her nostrils flaring.
"I didn't know until I'd gone to the Enchanted Forest," she explains, choosing to ignore a couple of weird incidences when she was a kid that now strangely make a lot more sense. "I don't always know how to use it, or even how to control it, or what my limits are."
"It's dangerous stuff," he says. "You have no idea what you're getting into."
"No, I don't, but I have it in me, so I might as well do something good with it."
"But you don't know anything about it!"
"I know it picks up the slack when other people decide to be dumbasses!" she shoots back, considering assuring him that the next time one of those shadow things decides to go all The Walking Dead on him, she'll just stay out of it. But she'd rather just block out Dark Hollow altogether.
"Magic tore apart my family, Emma. I watched it corrupt my father. It separated me from everyone I ever cared about," Neal says, his eyes shimmering. "I don't want that for Henry."
"Magic's already found him, Neal." Doesn't he know where they are? How they got here? "I'm not going up against magic with pointy sticks and bare fists. I have to use everything I can."
The cost can't be this family, her mother had warned. But Henry's part of the family. The cost of not using magic will be so much greater.
"I... Look, this isn't something anyone should be messing around with."
He thinks she's "messing around?"
I have yet to see you fail.
Her eyelashes flutter at just the memory of it. Damn, for being so dead set on not humoring any of this, she's not doing a great job.
A/N: Well, I'm back! The move is coming along, so it's time to start posting again. Thank you for reading, and especially for reviewing as it always makes my day. Coming up? Maybe we'll catch a glimpse of Henry.
