Unfair treatment

Grace asked for a oneshot of *6x17 spoilers!* (I don't think you intended for it to be based on the latest ep, but better safe than sorry). Snowing finding Emma when she's still little. They have Neal not long after. Neal gets frustrated because they let Emma away with everything that he gets into trouble for. Snowing realise he's right. They only do it because they still feel guilty over Emma's time in the system. I've lowered Emma's age when she was found to three.

Neal never understood. It wasn't just because Emma was the big sister. No matter how many times one of his parents used that excuse, he knew it was a lie. That might explain slightly later bedtimes, but never the way Emma got to stay up way into the night and then skip school the next day. He'd tried to do it once and got grounded. Emma was allowed to have her room a mess, she never had to eat her vegetables. She got to go wherever she wanted, when she wanted. It wasn't fair, and Neal was now sick of it. His sister got to do everything he never was allowed to do! Well, he wasn't standing for it any longer. Whatever Emma got away with, he was getting away with too. Starting with playing on his computer all night.

When Charming went to say goodnight to Neal, he was surprised to find him still on his computer. Neal knew the rules. He wasn't meant to be on his computer after eight o'clock.

"Neal, buddy, what's going on?" Charming asked him. "You know you're not meant to be out of bed, let alone on the computer playing games. Into bed right now, please." Charming told him. Neal looked defiantly at his dad.

"No." He said simply. Charming was shocked. Neal never spoke back to them.

"Excuse me, young man?" Charming asked.

"I said no." Neal repeated. "I'm not coming off my game. Emma gets to stay up all night playing games whenever she wants. It's not fair and I want to do it too." Charming sighed. He knew this was bound to happen eventually. He and Snow had both discussed how they treated Emma compared to Neal. How it was backfiring. Emma was using her time in the system to get whatever she wanted (despite the fact she barely remembered any of it), and Neal was bound to notice the difference eventually. Snow and Charming didn't favour Emma over Neal, that wasn't the case at all. They were just more likely to let her away with things out of guilt for missing her infancy. Maybe it was time they rethought how they were dealing with that.

"Listen, buddy…maybe your mom and I have made some mistakes." Charming came in and leaned against Neal's desk. "You know Emma's story. You know we didn't find her until she was three. That was hard for us, and pretty hard for her too. So we may be a little easier on her for some things, but I think you're right. It's not really fair on you. Maybe I won't ground you this time, and I promise your mom and I will start being fairer, but you still have to go to bed." Charming told him with a pointed look. Neal shrugged and shut down his computer. He guessed that was fair. Charming ruffled his hair.

"Night buddy." He told him before going into Emma's room. He took a moment to ready himself. Emma was thirteen now and was stuck in her ways. Charming hated telling her no, but Neal was right, it wasn't fair. Sure, she'd probably kick up a stink, but it was time to start saying no, for her sake.