Judgement call

Torie714 asked for a oneshot of Emma playing with Neal and he falls. She tries to catch him, but misses. Snowing comes in and misreads the situation. Emma runs away. Afterwards Neal yells at them for hurting his sister's feelings.

It all happened in a split second. Emma had been play-wrestling with Neal, teaching him about some of the greats from her childhood. Emma turned her back for one second and Neal had clambered up onto the table they had in the back garden. Emma had set out the rules before they began to play: ground moves only. This was exactly the kind of thing Emma had been trying to avoid. Neal had just got overexcited, but it was too late now. Emma turned around as Neal launched himself at her, attempting to do one of the more complicated moves. Emma wasn't ready for him though, and didn't catch him. Luckily, Neal landed on the grass instead of the path, but he still gave himself an almighty bump.

Snow and David had heard Neal's crash landing from the kitchen. They came out and quickly observed the scene before them and made a snap judgement.

"Emma, we spoke to you before about playing too rough with Neal. This could have been serious! We should be able to trust you with him without encouraging him to climb onto unstable surfaces and jump off."

"What were you thinking?" They both told her off. Emma didn't really know what to say. She didn't encourage this!

"I-"

"Before you answer Emma, please don't try and downplay this. You're supposed to be an adult and responsible for your little brother. Not encouraging dangerous play." David added. Emma felt the red mist come down. Her defence mechanisms kicked in. In her mind, they'd made their minds up and there was no point in defending herself.

"Oh think what you want. You clearly already do." Emma spat. She didn't even try and answer them. She needed to cool off before she said something she regretted. She stormed off and away in her car. Snow and David turned to Neal, who had got up from the grass now.

"You upset Emma!" He yelled at them. Snow and David were taken aback. Neal didn't normally shout at them.

"Neal, don't use that tone with us." Snow warned him. "Emma is upset, but had she been more careful she wouldn't have gotten into trouble…"

"Emma wasn't the one being uncareful, I was! She told me not to climb on anything. That was one of the rules or else we would stop." Neal admitted. He hated seeing Emma hurt. Now Snow and David felt bad.

"I'll go and get her." David said. "I suspect your mother will want to have a few words with you." David said to his son.

David did eventually find Emma, but she wasn't exactly in the best mood.

"Emma, Neal told us what happened." David said gently. "We're both sorry we jumped the gun."

"You just assumed I'd be careless enough to let him jump off a table." Emma said, clearly still hurting. "Like I wouldn't care if he got hurt."

"And we were wrong." David told her. "We see that now. Please come home. I know your mom wants to apologise as well. She's in the middle of giving Neal his punishment for not listening to your rules." David told her. He knew that would get her home.

"Don't be too hard on him. He's just a kid. Getting hurt was his punishment. Is he alright?" Emma asked, coming towards her dad.

"He's fine." David promised her. "Just upset that his sister's hurt."

Emma did come back with her dad. She accepts her mom's apology and made sure that Neal was ok with her own two eyes. Snow and David might be fairy tale heroes, but they were also humans. They too made mistakes.