Neal found Emma sitting stiffly in her usual chair, fingers tapping the mug Porter had made for her years ago.
He could see it.
The fact that she had already prepared herself for the worst.
(Neal had gone back and forth on what this story would qualify to her. Good. Bad. Miraculous. Evil. It had everything stuffed into one wrapper that Emma, Neal knew, would find unbelievable.)
Despite desperately craving the comfort of her touch, he forced himself to settle into the chair opposite, a table between them as he wrapped his hand around the mug she had set out for him, warming icy hands because it felt like all the heat had been zapped from his body, leaving him cold and empty.
He still didn't know where to start and a silence, awkward and deafening fell over them, until Emma broke it, words slicing through the tension.
"I understand that you thought our family might be in," she held her hands in front of her, hands representing her search for exactly the right words, "some sort of danger so I can forgive you for breaking the rules. But –"
Neal furrowed his brow, stuttering out a confused "Breaking the rules? What, Em –"
"Rule Number Three," said Emma dismissively, "but One trumps it so it doesn't matter."
He desperately tried to follow her logic and could only assume that Emma must think he and August had formed some sort of plot in her absence. He hadn't promised August though. Not beyond his vow to talk to Emma. But the choice would remain with her. He had meant that.
"Em, baby, I didn't decide anything without you," he said, doing his best to explain, "the only thing I did was listen and, maybe, make a promise to pass some information alone."
"But you decided to talk to him. Without me," corrected Emma, her voice steady and calm and hard as it cut through the silence. "And I've been trying to think. Desperately trying to figure out when I ever made you feel like you couldn't tell me anything. "
"Emma," said Neal sharply, needing her to understand this truth, "you didn't. It had nothing to do with you. It's just … it's not something you just tell."
"After eleven years?" Emma asked, a brow raised and Neal swallowed, ducking his head, unable to look at her because he didn't have an answer to that one. Not a good one. "After eleven years, Neal, why couldn't you tell me?"
Fear and vulnerability coated her words, making her sound small, and Neal abandoned his hot chocolate in favor of reaching out to Emma, crouching down beside her, arm snaking around her shoulder, leaning desperately against her temple.
"Because of me," he murmured somewhere near her eye, "because I was scared. Most of my life, Emma, I've run from this, okay. And I finally got to a point in my life where I didn't have to think about it. I didn't think I would have to think about it ever again. I didn't want to bring it up. But more than that – I was scared of what would happen to us if we did."
She sat stiffly, arms stretched out straight in front of her, hand glued to her mug. Unmoving. Until she moved her head, just slightly, Neal feeling her cheek brush past his hair as she settled her forehead against his, just shy of looking him straight in the eye, instead landing on his bruised knuckles.
"You're hurt," she noted, forcing him to glance down and actually remember the throbbing in his left hand.
"Don't worry about it," said Neal having mostly forgotten the pain himself. "This is –"
"You should get the first-aid kit," Emma cut-in briskly, "if we don't clean it, it'll get infected."
And while Neal knew her well enough to know that she was diverting, delaying the conversation, he stood anyway because he didn't want to have this conversation either.
Despite having two active kids whose choice of activities meant that, on a regular enough basis, they came home with their share of cuts and bruises, they never really had to update the contents of their medicine cabinet. Even doctor recommendations got ignored in favor of the notable observation that their kids shook colds as quickly as they caught them while their cuts tended to fade, never requiring a new Snoopy band-aid, despite Emma's diligent efforts to change them in the recommended time frame.
They just bounced back quickly. Porter always. And, despite her extensive medical record before coming to live with them, even Carina …
Shit.
He remembered thinking it, back during the height of Carina's nightmares, when Emma had made a joke about their apparent co-dependency, even while, asleep, but just like he had in the delivery room he had ultimately brushed it off. Because of things like habit and comfort. Because impossible.
Though, after tonight, obviously not.
"But why?" Emma asked after he had returned, obviously picking up right where they left off, popping the kit open and Neal winced involuntarily as she removed the anti-bacterial crap.
"Because it took everything," Neal told her, the fingers of his uninjured hand threading through her hair as he found her gaze, refusing to let her break it. "It always takes everything. So many times over and I can feel it now, baby, and it's trying to take this too."
"If you'd just told me –"
"I did tell you, Em," he insisted, a reminder, hissing inward when she sprayed his hand twice. "I told you everything that made me, me. Granted some of the details are a bit different, but they are so insignificant to the story. I need you to understand that I told you what I could, Emma. Please tell me that you understand that."
She held his gaze and for a long moment they just looked at each other, Neal silently willing her to understand.
(And knowing that she wouldn't.)
"I don't think I can," she said quietly, turning to face him fully now, hand finding his in her hair, clutching it tightly. "Not until you tell me."
And while he had hoped differently, he had expected as much. Neal, mostly, took things on faith. But Emma needed the whole story and an added dash of proof before she reached any sort of resolution.
He stood up and reached a hand out to her.
"Not here," he said when she hesitated.
She took his hand. He led her up to their bedroom, stopping in front of the wall, looking up at their Lover's Knot. When Emma first hung it, it hadn't been any bigger than the frame of their bed, but now. Now it extend beyond that, curling, growing up and down, and out, reaching to the wall's edge in both directions. Vibrant green leaves offsetting sturdy brown branches.
"Look," he told her.
" Neal ," she stressed his name, warning him to get to the point with a single word.
"Did you think it would actually grow?" Neal asked, "When you first hung it, I mean?"
Emma shrugged, "A little bit maybe. I mean I don't know much about plants so ," she furrowed her brow, "Neal, what –"
"It shouldn't, Emma," he told her, "Not like that. Not when we don't even water it."
"Well, I special ordered the branches," she said practically, simple and precise, offering an explanation.
"It's a symbol of our love," he told her and then, because he could feel her getting impatient, frustrated with the fact that he wasn't just telling her whatever he needed to tell her, he took her by the hand, leading her to the window, where he fingered the dreamcatcher they had liberated from a borrowed hotel room back in Portland. "Do you remember what you told me? About dreamcatchers?"
She gave him a hard look, a cross between duh and get to the point.
"You said it was supposed to keep the nightmares out and only the good ones in," he said, repeating words that didn't really need repeating.
"It's an old superstition, Neal."
"Is it an old superstition that," Neal started, fingering a feather, "that the nightmares all but stopped as soon as we adopted it as our own?"
"You've –"
"Not when I'm with you," he stressed. "Not after we got this."
He didn't know if it was the dreamcatcher itself, or Emma merely drawing inspiration from it, empowering it.
(He would have to guess the latter because the one he had given Carina hadn't proven itself nearly as powerful, proximity he imagined, an issue, even for subconscious attempts, because nightmares had still plagued him during those weekends without Emma and Port in New York.)
"Neal, the mind does weird things, if you think something is …"
He didn't let her finish forming the logical leap from A to B, cutting her off, moving on to his next point. He didn't want to overwhelm her, but he knew he needed to overload her brain with the possibilities if he hoped for this to work. The more time she had to think, the more likely she would come with a plausible alternative.
"The kids don't get sick."
"Yes they do," she said flatly.
"Not the way most kids do," he insisted before stressing, "not the way Carina did. Before she came to live with us."
"Yes, well, she's in a healthier environment now," Emma murmured.
"They always want you when they're sick or hurt," he continued, noting the weaker defense and moving on.
"I'm their mother," she said, "of course they do."
"Except you'd think their father would do in a pinch if mom's not around," he continued, "but do you know what Porter said when I tried to rub his belly so we didn't have to wake you up. He said Mommy makes it not hurt . And do you ever notice how you never have to change the kids' bandages."
"Just stop," she snapped, defensively.
But he couldn't. Not now.
"You check them, have everything ready to clean it out again, only to take the band-aid off and realize it was like nothing was ever there at all." He stepped forward, hands weaving into her hair, pressing his forehead against hers, knowing that he was treading dangerous ground because it had become one of those unspoken rules, something they never ever talked about because it hurt too much, "and when Porter fell off that stupid …"
" Don't," she warned, voice hard.
"And the doctors said they didn't know if he would wake up." The words hurt, like a raw and open wound and he had to force them out, even as he saw the pain that crossed Emma's face, her eyes squeezed shut as she desperately tried to pull out of his grasp. He held on tighter, wrapping his arms around her in a tight hug. Because he couldn't not comfort her. But he needed her to hear this too. Needed her to listen. "And that even if he did they still didn't know if he would be the same. But he did wake up and he was fine. Do you remember? We weren't even in there five minutes and then he was awake. And he was Porter. It completely threw the doctors for a loop. They called it a miracle."
He stepped back, taking a hand between his and held them over her heart. "But clearly they don't understand the power of a mother's love."
Her features shifted, pain shifting into something straddling the line of disbelief and downright uncertainty. As if she couldn't quite decide if he was having her on or not. "You think what? My mere presence woke him up."
Well, not exactly that . No.
"I think you healed him," he told her, "just I like I think you heal their cuts and scrapes. Just like you heal their colds and make the pain go away. Just like I think you've been catching my nightmares. Just like I think you are so happy that it can't help but burst out of you and make those vines grow."
He didn't always. He didn't think anything of it really. But now that he had and now that he knew the truth. It made sense. All of it. Memories flooding his brain.
"I'm not happy now," she said flatly. "And I don't understand. I don't understand what you thinking those things mean. I don't understand what any of this has to do with Booth showing up here."
She spoke with increasing volume, tearing her hand out of his grip and Neal tried to calm her with a gentle reminder, " Carina."
Emma gave a sharp nod, returning to a normal volume, but her voice still held a note that bordered on hysteria, her fear bubbling to the surface. "And I especially don't understand what this has to do with whatever it is you haven't told me."
"I'm saying that you have magic," Neal said, voice gentle but firm. "And that Booth came here to tell you that you were from a place called the Enchanted Forest. And I know he's not lying because that's where I'm from."
"Oh," she said drily, "Are you a wizard, Harry?"
(They should have never forced her to watch those movies.)
"That's why I didn't tell you," said Neal, ignoring the jab. "Not because I didn't want to but because being from another world that's magic is unbelievable."
Emma pressed her lips together. "What do you want me to do with that, Neal?"
"I want you to listen," he said, simply, looking at her with pleading eyes. "Just like you always do."
She gave him a long, hard look - As if deciding whether he had any right to her time – before she sighed and settled onto their bed, right at the edge, sitting stiffly in a way that almost never did in the bedroom. But she was trying. That was all he could ask for.
He sat down next to her, forcing himself not to close the distance between them, knowing that she needed space as she tried desperately to process everything.
"I grew up in a place called the Enchanted Forest, Emma, and while it's not another country it is another world. A world where we had kings and queens, men went to war with ogres and, yeah, a place where magic existed." He swallowed thickly. "It was the war with the Ogres that I got drafted. Another battle in the war my father ran from."
"Ogres?" Emma asked, features scrunched in confusion. "Like Fee Fi Fo Fum."
He tried not to smile but he felt his lips inch up despite themselves.
"Same realm," Neal agreed because close enough.
She raised a brow. "And you're telling me that in your world they expected children to fight these things and win?"
"Well, you go with what you got when you're on the losing side," said Neal, "but my father was of the same mind as you. He knew I would die but when we tried to run we ran into someone that offered to help us. He told us of The Dark One and his dagger and that anyone who had the dagger would be able to control The Dark One and, by extension, his power."
Neal sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Long story short. It was a trap. To be freed from his captors The Dark One needed to be killed by his own dagger. But the power didn't die with him. It was passed on to the person that killed him. My father."
"He changed," Emma surmised, voice carefully neutral.
"Yeah," Neal said, the word heavy and weighted down. "I was told that if I brought him to a Land Without Magic his curse would break. The only thing I had to do was get him to go through the portal."
"He promised …" He felt Emma's gaze turn on him as the words caught, her hand brushing against his on the bed until she threaded their fingers together, squeezing tightly. "He promised that he would do it. If I found a way to break the curse without killing him, he promised he would do it no matter what. We shook on it and everything."
He glanced at their hands before looking at Emma whose gaze was somewhere far away.
"It wasn't a round trip. Just a one way ticket and the flight was booked." He pressed his lips together. "At least it was supposed to be. Anyway, that was what I didn't tell you. And I didn't because I didn't think it mattered. Or maybe because I didn't want it to."
Magic had ruled so much of his life and taken so much from him that, in his attempts to run it he had ignored signs of it in his own home.
"August wasn't here to see me though," he said carefully, squeezing the hand holding his. "He claimed that you're from that world too. Your –"
Emma turned, looking at him sharply. "Neal, that's insane."
"I know it's a lot to take, baby …"
"No, Neal, just think about this logically for a second. Okay. Think. Even if you are from this," she released his hand, making a frustrated gesture, "world with magic . And I'm not saying I believe that, but let's say that you are. Then what are the chances that I'm from there too. And not only that what are the chances that we just happen to meet."
"Fate," he said simply. They had had this discussion before. Well, argued. Heated debate, really. But they had talked about it in a passing sort of way, Neal positing that things happen for a reason while Emma rolled her eyes (kinda like now) and argued that things like fate and destiny took away things like choice and she didn't want to live in that kind of world.
Most days, he wanted to live in a world without fate.
He just couldn't believe that it didn't exist. Not knowing what he did.
Emma would either accept it or she wouldn't.
And she didn't, her words dripping with sarcasm, as she said, "How romantic."
He couldn't quite gage her reaction to the rest of it, unsure if she had bought any of it enough to at least give it consideration, a part of him wanting to suggest that they sleep on it because he could feel exhaustion beginning to pull at him, finally catching up to him after the long evening. They'd both feel better after sleep. Except they had to pick up Porter in the morning and it would get put off until tomorrow night at the earliest. Putting it off, giving into demands of sleep, easing her into this wasn't an option given the time table August had left them with.
He started hesitantly, carefully, as if he hated the idea of burdening her with this. "There was a curse –"
He barely got the words out, however, when Emma's voice, cold like ice, cut over his. "Who is he, Neal?"
Neal cocked his head, brow furrowed in confusion. "
August," she clarified. "Who is he? An old partner? Someone you screwed over before you met me?"
The disdain behind her words acted like a slap in the face, throwing him for a loop, and he stuttered out a defensive, "No, Emma, haven't you-"
"Did he threaten you?" she said, talking right over him. "Is that why you're doing this?"
"What I'm doing, Emma," he said, his voice a bit harsher than normal, but he couldn't quite follow her thought process. He knew that he deserved her accusations, but he'd much rather stick to the things he did do, rather than the ones he didn't. "Is trying to tell you the truth."
"Yeah, well, maybe you should have started with something a bit more believable," she said flippantly and he understood then what she was doing.
Any other time, maybe, Neal would have reacted rationally and recognized her fear rather than letting his own insecurities rule his. Because Neal rarely lost his temper, but everything had started to spin out of control, and he felt himself go with it, his voice rising as he snapped, "And maybe you should stop and listen to what I'm saying instead of trying to run from the truth."
" Calm down," hissed Emma, issuing the reprimand through narrowed eyes, Neal's jaw tensing in the effort to reign in his anger.
"Just," he looked to the side before deciding another tactic. "Will you let me get to the end? Before you make up your mind?"
"Fine," she said shortly after leveling him a look, staring him down and sizing him up, clearly trying to figure out if he was lying, "weave your little fairytale."
The words stung and, running a hand wearily through his hair, he murmured, "Nice attitude, Em."
"You're not doing yourself any favors, Baelfire ," she said, practically spitting the words out, the venom accompanying his name surprising him because, despite teasing him about the oddity of it from time to time, she had never used it against him before. It hurt, really, that she'd go there even now. Which she sensed, immediately following it with a regretful, "I'm sorry."
But he understood then that this, her defensiveness wasn't about him at all, but her own fear, twenty-eight years of not knowing the truth finally culminating in this one moment, in a way that she couldn't have possibly anticipated.
That didn't make it hurt less.
"Forget it," he told her, suddenly wishing they could have just forgotten this whole evening. He should have listened to her and sent Booth backing with an unapologetic go to hell.
"Yes," she agreed, turning, looking at him desperately, "Let's forget it. You don't have to tell me the truth. We can just go to Effie. She'll figure out a way to take care of Booth. He'll never bother us again."
Emma, very clearly, wanted this conversation to end. Wanted it to stop. Wanted things to go back to the way they were before.
And that desire was exactly the reason she needed to have it.
Not because Booth said so. Not because of destiny and curses and whatever else. But because of Emma. Because she had spent her entire life searching for one answer and, at the same time, fearing it. He couldn't erase twenty-eight years of hurt, he would never try to belittle what she went through, but this could give her peace of mind and she deserved that.
"Except I'm not lying, Emma." He kneeled down in front of her, taking a hand between one of his, the other gently stroking her cheek before guiding her chin, doing his best to get her to just look at him. To see the truth in his eyes. "You don't have to be afraid of this."
"I'm not afraid," she said petulantly, still not quite meeting his eyes.
"You are," he said, following her line of sight. "Because Booth said he knew who your parents are."
"He was lying."
"And I'm telling you that I don't think he was," Neal said firmly, "and I know you trust me. You just don't want to. Because you're afraid of what truths you'll have to face if the story changes. It's okay to be afraid, Emma. I'm scared. Every part of me is telling me to take you and the kids and run-"
Emma's eyes brightened, cutting him off, "Let's do that."
He smiled indulgently. "We can't."
"Why?" she asked in a strange mix of pouting skepticism.
The words burst out of him, Neal not planning to say them, but they just fit. "Argo Navis."
Emma groaned. "You gotta stop using your magic story."
"You said magic ," He grinned, pointing a triumphant finger at her. "You think it's magic."
"No," said Emma slowly, the word softened as she showed the bare hints of a smile, "but you clearly do. You try to apply it to everything ."
"Not everything. Only when it fits," he said, pointedly ignoring her responding dry look, adding, somewhat defensively, "it's a good story."
She rolled her eyes, and then, teasing, "I'll have morning sickness and you'll be like don't worry, Em, that's nothing. The crew of the Argo battled sea sickness for forty days and nights. "
It made him giddy, the thought of Emma pregnant, and the thought she was already referring to herself as such, even if she meant sometime in the future.
(They might have to put it on hold.)
"And then you'll come down for breakfast one morning," she continued, her smile a growing a bit wider, "and it'll be the crew of the Argo didn't have to eat cereal for breakfast."
"I've never complained about cereal for breakfast," he said, grumbling, and anyway, they had gotten significantly off track. And he honestly couldn't tell if Emma had diverted him purposefully or if it simply meant she had begun to warm to the things he'd shared. "I was just saying the crew of the Argo probably had their own reservations about sailing through a passage that had taken every ship before it. But they didn't let their fear rule them and, maybe, if we face ours down we'll surprise ourselves." Emma
She sobered, the smiling fading, and she fell into silence before asking, voice vulnerable and quiet, "He told you why didn't he?"
"Yes," he said softly.
She looked him dead on, jaw tensing, and clearly on guard, waiting for the worst. "It doesn't change anything. Not what I've been through. How I feel about them."
"No," he agreed, understanding that truth better than most, "but you still deserve to know the truth, baby."
"I don't believe in magic," she added.
"I don't need you to believe in magic," Neal told her, taking a risk and threading their fingers together once more. "I just need you to believe in me."
She hesitated. And while he knew, almost completely, that it had more to do what he had to tell her rather than him specifically, it still caused a twinge of hurt.
"Okay."
He pressed his lips together into a thin smile, "Okay. Come here then."
He settled back on the bed, laying down, holding his arms out to her in an invitation, and again she hesitated, but he knew she hated the distance just as much as he did, and he desperately wanted to erase the wedge that had appeared between them, leaving him cold. Alone, almost. Despite the fact that they occupied the same room, sitting on the same bed.
"There was a curse," he told her, voice low and gravelly, hot against her ear. The way he knew she usually took comfort in. She had laid, not face to face as they usually did, but she let him wrap his arms around him, Emma stroking the skin of his arm with absent fingers. "A curse that took everyone from the Enchanted Forest here , trapping them in a place where time wouldn't move and they would have no memories of who they were, the things they had done, the people they had loved."
The fingers stopped and Emma flinched, letting go of a shuddering breath, Neal tightening his grip, doing the only thing he could in that moment – remind her that she wasn't alone.
"But all curses can be broken," he continued. "A prophecy was made, predicting the events that would lead to the end of this one and, more specifically, the girl who would ultimately break it. But first they needed to get her to safety. The plan was for her mother to go with her, but this girl, stubborn as she was, came a little earlier than planned. So they sent her ahead to this world. To save her. And then, maybe one day, she could return and save them."
He swept aside blonde hair, pressing a kiss against her neck, letting his forehead land on the back of her shoulder, head turning, his cheek rubbing against it, waiting. Letting her digest (or try to) what he'd just told her until, finally, turning in his arms, leaving them nose to nose, asking, "How?"
How could refer to a number of things and Neal's brow furrowed in response. "How what?"
"How do I break the curse?" she asked simply and already he could hear in her tone the seeds of doubt.
"I don't know."
"Where then?"
He knew then that she didn't believe him and that, without any concrete answers or proof that this town existed somewhere, out there in the world.
She smiled tightly. "Don't you see, Neal. He told you a story. And you're gullible enough –"
"That's not fair, Em," he cut in, sitting up, jabbing himself in the chest harshly, "I know what I've been through."
"Okay," said Emma practically, sitting up with him, "you said that in this place time doesn't move. So what? I'm guessing these magic Enchanted Forest people haven't aged in twenty-eight years."
He could follow her line of thought but, reluctantly, despite knowing it was a trap, confirmed her assumption anyway. "Yes."
"So why haven't we heard about it?" She retorted. "Town with a bunch of immortal, ageless people. That shit would be all over the news."
"Magic would protect it, Emma," he said, though he knew by now that he was fighting a losing battle, "My guess is that the curse made it unplottable."
"Yeah, okay, sure," she said glibly, before pointing up, directing his attention to the skylight, "except we live in a world where I can look up our house – any house – on a map. You think that they missed an entire world of people. Or that they saw it and thought, hey, we don't know what that is. Better ignore it."
"The magic would-"
"Protect it?"
"Make it invisible," he said pointedly, finding it more and more difficult to not take her jabs personally. He knew that they still came from that self-protective instinct, Emma desperately trying to protect herself, but he didn't appreciate her treating him like an idiot.
"So there's this hole in the middle of the world that no one thinks is odd?" retorted Emma, "c'mon, Neal. "
Jaw tense, he repeated his earlier words, "I know what I've been through."
"That's the thing, Neal," she said, wearing a sad smile, "I'm not sure that you do."
"Emma-"
"Or you do," she continued, sounding disappointed, "and you're saying it anyway."
" Emma-"
"I need to," she made a frustrated gesture, anger meant she had even harder time finding the right words. "Think. Alone."
He felt fear bubble up, returning with a vengeance. Emma may not have liked the things he'd said, but at least she listened. Now she wouldn't even do that.
"Please just listen –"
She cut him off with a loud, forceful, " No ," before stalking to the door, pushing it open, waiting, not quite looking at him. "I think you should sleep downstairs tonight."
He squeezed his eyes, painfully, a sick feeling settling in his stomach. The handful of times they had slept apart in the past eleven years had always involved some sort of necessity. But never anger. He forced himself to walk out the door, ignoring his instincts, hating the way she pointedly looked away when he passed her. Behind him, the door slid close with a forceful click.