Neal had turned off her alarm.
"Sleep, baby," he had murmured, his lips brushing across her forehead, "I'll get the kids off to school."
Which she appreciated because yeah, sleep had definitely turned into this fleeting thing these past couple of days. But not even an hour later Carina had bounded up the stairs, wrapping her arms around her as she stage-whispered a goodbye.
Porter didn't come up, at all.
She tried to not let that bother her, instead forcing herself out of bed sometime after hearing the sound of the car pulling out of their rocky driveway, grabbing a glass of water, suddenly remembering, with crystal clarity despite her half-asleep state at the time, the conversation with Neal the night before. She gulped down half a glass, knocking back two pills over the sink of their adjoining bathroom before climbing back into bed.
And she had meant to go back to sleep. Really.
But when she closed her eyes, instead of sleep, tears came out instead.
She missed Porter. She missed talking to him. And maybe that seemed silly because barely three days had passed, but it felt like forever. Which was on her. She had screwed up and therefore needed to carry that burden.
But that didn't make it hurt less.
"Hey," Neal murmured, the bed shifting sometime later and again when Phang decided to join them, pacing until he settled. She could feel Neal's breath, hot against her ear and Emma sniffed, ducking her head, because she was being stupid. So her nine-year-old refused to talk to her. All kids did that. But to Neal's credit he didn't comment on her complete overreaction to something as ridiculously trivial as her kid not saying goodbye to her (Porter always said goodbye though). He just smoothed back her hair and Emma tried not to cry, but he had started tracing patterns on her back with gentle fingers and the more she tried, the more her eyes burned and the bigger the lump in her throat got until she couldn't help it and she just turned, burrowing into his embrace, the floodgates just sort of opening, half-repressed tears turning into downright sobs.
"We're going to talk to the kids," he reminded her when she had calmed down somewhat, "right after school. First thing."
Emma wiped at her eyes with the back of her palm. "What if he doesn't …"
"He will because despite being stubborn like his mother," Emma let out a light snort, "he's also reasonable. This is as hard on him as it is on you. He's just not used to being left out of the loop."
She nodded, maybe a bit too frantically, and while the hurt still lingered (that wouldn't ease, she didn't think, until they laid everything out in the open and, hopefully, Porter embraced her without his father's prompting), she could maybe let herself believe it wouldn't last forever.
"Do you wanna talk about the rest of it?" Neal asked, stroking a finger across her still wet cheeks as she frowned in confusion. "What's bothering you because it's okay if it is, Em. A lot got flipped upside down the past few days."
She sniffed and swallowed thickly. A part of her really wanting to say no because most of what she felt she couldn't make sense of, and the tiny part of her that merely felt disappointed kept manifesting into guilt and she really didn't want to risk adding that to Neal's plate too. But they had promised. Promised that they would make more of an effort. To talk about things rather than let them fester.
She nodded and let out a shaky breath. "You go first."
He sighed but didn't really hesitate. "I'm furious," he told her in this calm sort of way that seemed completely contradictory to his words.
"Me," she guessed because who else would it be, really?
"I'm not angry at you, Em," he said, "I never was."
She didn't understand that. How he could forgive her when she had done the one thing she never should have? " Why though?"
"Because," he said heavily, fingers stroking up her arm, "as hurt as I was and as scared as I was that I'd never see you or the kids again, there was also a tiny part of me that was actually relieved. Because at least I knew I could count on you to never let the kids get mixed up in that shit."
"Except that I did," she muttered.
"Yeah, well, destiny's a bitch," said Neal bitterly, repeating a phrase that he had used before. And she knew, of course, that he believed in things like destiny and fate and even karma, but she had never heard him speak about it in quite those terms before this past weekend.
"Do you really believe that?" she asked, somewhat skeptically. "That I would have wound up there regardless?"
She didn't like that. It felt like her choices didn't belong to her. And if her choices didn't belong to her then what was the point of even trying.
"It's been my experience," he said slowly, and Emma got the impression that he was putting extra thought behind each word, "that certain things … things that have been foretold have a way of happening regardless of the steps that you take to avoid them. I mean," he furrowed his brow, "have you heard of self-fulfilling prophecies."
"Like Oedipus?" she asked, vaguely remembering studying him in one of her college courses.
"Exactly," agreed Neal, and he sounded almost pleased at her reference, "if they had ignored the prophecy and just raised the poor kid himself then nothing probably would have come from it, but by trying to control the situation it created the events that fulfilled the prediction."
"Which I did when I drove off," concluded Emma, but Neal shook his head.
"You're not the only one that heard the prophecy. A lot of people believed that you would break the curse on your twenty-eighth birthday," he reminded her. "And, obviously, we don't know what the thing said exactly or why everyone thought that it pointed to you. Just that they thought that it did. Prophecies, I believe, set certain events in motions. Events that need to happen. That are meant to. They influence decisions, yes, whether you're trying to make something happen or avoid it, but they don't make the decisions for you."
That made sense, she supposed, and while she still felt iffy because she'd really rather nothing influenced her decisions but her , Emma could, maybe, accept that her parents had made the choice to send her to this world and her freak-out had really only been her stupid inability to process things in any sort of healthy manner (which probably shouldn't make her feel better, but at least it was her) .
"And it still sucks obviously," he continued, as if sensing her thought process, "I wish we could live in a world where we didn't have to buy into that sorta shit, at all, but it is what it is. And I don't think it's all bad. We met obviously."
Emma raised a brow, saying dryly. "I doubt that was foretold."
"No, but it's a nice thought, isn't it?" he said, a note of nostalgia in his voice. "That for all the bad, there's something out there looking out for you too, making sure you're in the right place, at the right time so something amazing can happen."
A smile pulled at her lips. "Amazing, huh?"
"Wonderful, miraculous, life-changing ," he said, pressing kisses against her cheeks and then her mouth between each word.
She scrunched her nose playfully, feeling somewhat lighter, as if a weight at started to lift. "We have done pretty well for ourselves, haven't we?"
"More than," he agreed softly, but as he pressed a kiss against her nose she saw something in him shift, his eyes darkening and she understood, because she felt it too.
"That's why you're angry, isn't it?" she asked gently, following him as he rolled onto his side.
"One reason," he confirmed, watching as she looped their fingers together. "It's not fair that we have to risk our family because of someone else's feud. And seeing my dad again … it's just intensified everything. Both the anger and the hurt. And I'm furious with myself because I thought I could handle it. I should be able to handle it. I mean, it's been what? Three hundred years? And –"
She had meant to cut him off and remind him that no, actually he had every right to feel the way he did and of course, it would have thrown him for a loop, seeing his father again. But then he mentioned three hundred and the words just sort of burst out of her. "You're what?"
"What?" Neal repeated before he blinked, realizing exactly what he said.
"Is that like an Enchanted Forest thing ?" Emma asked, suddenly feeling an odd wave of panic. "Immortality?"
"No," he said quickly. "I'm aging normally now, but I got stuck at fourteen for a while. I was in Neverland. It's sorta like Storybrooke was. Time doesn't move."
"Neverland," she echoed before her eyes widened. "Oh, God. You're him, aren't you? Is that why you won't let the kids watch Peter Pan? Because you're him."
He flinched as if she had just slapped him. "I'm not him. Those movies, Em," he swallowed and made a motion above his heart. An 'x' she realized. His scar. "He did that. Some kind of sick target practice for the Lost Boys. They'd either aim true and Pan would vanish the arrow at the very last second or they'd miss and I'd get to watch their punishment. Sometimes when he was feeling really vindictive or he just wanted to hear me bow to his mastery he'd let one hit."
Emma pressed her lips together tightly and tried to think of something substantial to say but all that came out was, "Yeah, the kids can't watch those movies." He snorted darkly and Emma leaned, over kissing him softly, her hand landing over his heart. "I'm sorry, Neal, that you had to go through that."
He covered her hand and squeezed. "It wasn't all bad," he said, somewhat sheepishly, "I met the Darlings."
She brought her head down, realization reigning. "George Michael."
"George Michael," he repeated. "When I first landed in this world I was just this wide-eyed little fourteen year old. I'd never been outside my village, let alone another world. And at my lowest I climbed in through the window of this fancy house to steal a loaf of bread and got caught. But instead of turning me in, this girl, Wendy , helped me."
"Did you two –" She nudged him, offering him a significant look. Teasing, really, because honestly it sounded more like Port and Carina, when Porter first tried helping her.
"We were fourteen," he retorted, looking half-horrified at the concept, "and it was, like, Victorian London."
"It's not that out of the question, I mean," said Emma practically, "I was fifteen when me and Sam Jennings did it in the back lot of an Arbys'."
He gave her a blank look. "I don't like that story."
She kissed him playfully, "If it helps it was awful."
He shook his head, deepening the kiss, murmuring, "First times should be magical."
Unless you didn't believe in that sort of thing and, like her, mostly just wanted to get it over with.
"You've become significantly more weirder today," she told him as she played with the hair at the nape of his neck. He snorted and ducked his head. "But you shouldn't feel guilty. Not about wanting to protect our family or wanting to wait for a baby. Not even about not wanting to see your father."
He looked, just for a moment, like he might protest. But then he sat up, leaving her feeling oddly cold, before he stuck his hand out, wriggling his fingers. "C'mon."
She grabbed her glasses and slipped them on as she let Neal lead her down the stairs. They stopped abruptly in front of Operation Hope.
The old cork board had filled out a great deal over the years, though Emma couldn't actually remember the last time she or Neal had added to it themselves. They hadn't needed to, really. Everything they needed they had and anything she could want was mostly obtainable. So it had gotten taken over by the kids. Porter putting up pictures of animals he wanted and more recently, as the travel bug hit, places he wanted to see, hike, or climb. Like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone. Carina had slapped up a picture of Disney World and Ariel (who she wanted to meet at Disney World) along with that past summer's Olympic gymnastics team holding their gold medals (Emma hadn't quite figured out if it was because she wanted to meet them or because she wanted to be them one day). All of this, accompanied by the usual toys, she and Neal would systematically knock off when they did well at school or birthdays or just because .
Neal picked up the pen and the paper they kept next to the board, giving her a significant look. "What should we say?"
She barely had time to think about it before the phone rang abruptly and Emma grabbed it off the hook. "I'll get back to you," she told Neal, finger hovering over the talk button, because this was more than just scribbling baby on a piece of paper. "I wanna think about it … Hello."
"Hi, Emma," said a nervous-sounding girl, "this is Ashley. From Storybrooke."
Emma frowned. "Ashley? Is everything alright?"
"No, not really," she said quietly. "I tried taking your advice. About doing whatever I needed to do to get rid of the doubt and, well, I'msortainjail."
"Jail," repeated Emma. "Ashley, breaking the law is usually a last resort kind of thing."
Neal snorted and Emma swatted at him.
"This was a last resort," said Ashley, her voice reaching a panicky octave, "He can't take my baby, Emma. It was stupid to sign those papers. I know that now. I was just scared and she's mine. I can feel it."
"Ashley," said Emma firmly, hoping that this would grab her attention through her panic. "Ashley, listen. No one's going to take your baby. Okay?" Neal set a bag of chips aside on the counter, his earlier grin fading from his lips. "But you have to stay calm. Your baby needs you to stay calm. Do you understand?"
Ashley took a shaky breath and then another. "Good," said Emma. "That's good. And if you start to panic again, keep doing that. We're just going to take this one step at a time. Is there anyone in town that you can call? To come bail you out?"
"You," said Ashley pointedly, her voice reaching that high octave once more.
"I'm back in New York, Ashley," said Emma calmly and Neal's brow furrowed as he mouthed Storybrooke. Emma pressed her lips together, nodding as Neal ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "I promise, I'll help you, but I won't be able to get there until tomorrow. What about the father?"
"Sean?" Ashley said and then, "No."
"Never mind. I'll figure something out," she said, waving this off. She'd call Ruby or something. She could always pay the waitress back later. "Now though, Ashley, I need to know what happened exactly?"
"I thought, maybe, if I could steal the contract back from Mr. Gold –" Well, fuck. Emma bit her lip, glancing at Neal who had started listening to the conversation intently, arms crossed. "But he caught me and I sorta pepper sprayed him. I was gonna leave but Sheriff Graham caught up to me before I could make it out of town."
"Okay. That's okay," she said quickly. "Ashley, if I call someone to come bail you out, I want you to promise me that you won't skip town, okay? Because that contract you signed. It's not going to mean anything if you've changed your mind."
"He gave me money," said Ashley helplessly.
"Doesn't matter," said Emma, "the worst the courts can do is make you pay him back. And usually they don't. The law is on your side here, Ashley."
"Yeah, but I –" started Ashley helplessly.
"It doesn't matter, Ashley," she said, "this is what I do for a living, okay. I know your rights. I know the loopholes. I can get you out of this and I will. But if you run, you will make things worse for yourself. So I need you to promise me that you will stay put."
"Okay," she said, but it didn't exactly inspire any confidence in Emma.
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"Good," said Emma, smiling tightly. "Now I'm gonna see about getting you out of there. Remember what I said. Stay calm and, maybe, send a menacing glare at Sheriff Graham for me."
"Yeah," said Ashley and Emma thought, maybe, she heard the first hints of a smile. "Thank you, Emma."
Emma smiled sadly. "Anytime, Ashley."
She hung up and silence fell over the kitchen until finally, Emma broke, "I have to help her, Neal –"
"Of course you do," agreed Neal and no signs of reluctance or judgment lingered in his tone. "We'll drive up tomorrow. See if Lucas and Saffron can take the kids after school."
Immediately, Emma shook her head. "No, Neal. Me. I drive up there tomorrow. You stay –"
"Absolutely not," he shot back.
"This is for work, Neal," said Emma, "There's no reason for you to be there."
"Try that one again, Emma," said Neal, as Emma pulled out the leftover Granny sent home with her the day before hoping, maybe, that she could find a number somewhere on the bag. "And maybe with a bit more honesty this time."
She turned, staring at him, a helpless expression on her face as Neal's jaw tensed and he nodded in sudden understanding.
"The him … the guy trying to take her baby?" he said darkly. "It's my father, isn't it?" She nodded, somewhat reluctantly and his nostrils flared. For a second, he looked like he might hit something. "Son of a bitch."
"I'm sorry, Neal." She set the bags off to the side and reached forward, but before she could do so much as brush his shoulder, he stepped back, frantic energy sending him pacing.
" That , Emma, is why I have to go with you," he said angrily, "He's using this to lure you back."
"We don't know that," said Emma practically. "Ashley did break into his shop."
For a moment, Neal almost looked impressed, before he sobered and stepped forward, looking at her quite seriously. "That's not how he works. Everything's a manipulation, Emma. He's using this situation to his advantage."
"Okay," said Emma, accepting that. "But you still can't go." And when he looked ready to argue again, she pressed a finger to his lips. "No, Neal. I get it. You're angry and you're worried and you want to protect me, but I have to think about Ashley and what's best for her and I can't risk you getting in the way because you have issues with your father."
And, maybe, if they were going off the premise that the curse was real and Gold and Mills were as dangerous as Neal seemed to think, she didn't want to risk the both of them. They couldn't risk doing that to the kids. Just the thought of it was unacceptable to her.
"I won't get in the way then," said Neal but while it was very clear that he was trying to make himself look calmer, everything about him still screamed desperation. "But I should be there."
"You should be here," murmured Emma, stepped forward, her hands caressing his jaw, fingers then weaving into the hair at the nape of his neck. "With our children. And you don't have to worry because this is my job and I know what I'm doing." She gave a modest shrug. "Sometimes I'm even pretty good at it."
"That's the thing, Em," said Neal, "this town. It doesn't play by the rules. Not the ones you know. My father especially."
Emma shook her head. "He's gonna have to, Neal, because I'm not gonna give him a choice."
Neal pinched the bridge of his nose. "Baby, Emma, this isn't … you don't know anything about that world … about magic."
"Maybe that's a good thing," said Emma, adding pointedly, "Maybe that's the point."
"If the point is people like my father trying to take advantage of you then yeah, I agree."
"Except I know , Neal," she reminded him. "I know about the curse."
"A curse that you only maybe believe in," he said.
"Doesn't matter," she said, waving this off, "Because I know who he is. And I know to look out for Mayor Mills. And I will be careful, Neal. I get that you're worried. That you think I don't take the curse seriously enough or whatever. But you can at least trust that I take my job seriously and that I want to do right by this girl."
Neal sighed, closing his eyes. "You shouldn't have to do this alone."
"My job?" retorted Emma lightly, "Yes I do."
"You know what I mean," he muttered.
And yeah, she did. Emma understood exactly where Neal was coming from because, maybe, she wanted to do the same for him. And the kids. She didn't understand the curse, not really, and she had no idea of how to break it (apparently savioring didn't come with a cursebreaking handbook), but if she got calls like this, drawing her back to Storybrooke, than she could at least do one the one thing she desperately hoped she never failed at. Protecting her family.
She leaned forward, kissing him gently, before murmuring, "This is the way it has to be."
Neal didn't quite meet her eyes, his focus on the floor intense, his lips parted as guilt and worry and fear flooded his features. And while she hated that agreeing with her … adhering to her wishes would inevitably weigh on him, Neal's mind a hotbed of guilt, she couldn't back down from this. Their situation sucked beyond the telling of it, but this, going at things alone, remained the only way she knew how to get out of it with the least collateral damage.
"Hey," she said, her voice thick with unsaid emotion even as she put on her best, fake smile. "I think I know what I want."
She grabbed a piece of paper and, written out in her somewhat messy scrawl (after pausing every so often to remember the exact wording), she gave to Neal to read:
"May this home be blessed with the laughter of children, the warmth of a close family, hope for the future, and fond memories of the past."
Neal managed to meet her eyes finally, "It's beautiful, Emma. You came up with this?"
Emma snorted. "Does that sound like something I would come up with? No. Foster home number," she scrunched her nose in thought, "five had it pinned to the wall somewhere." Ironic because, like most of the places she had wound up, it embodied the exact opposite. "I remember looking at it and thinking what a bunch of crap."
She saw the beginnings of a smile, the corners of Neal's eyes crinkling with amusement. "Right? But I get it now. Why someone would want that on their wall, cliché as it may be. I want out children to always be happy and loved and safe." She stuck her thumb at Operation Hope, "I want them to always dream big and when Porter rescues all the abandoned animals in the world and Carina wins her gold medal, I'd hope they look back and think – 'hey, I'm doing pretty well now, but I had it pretty good as a kid too.' "
Because she and Neal could say that, never mind how far they've come. "But that town, Neal, it'll poison that. It already has. That's why you have to stay here, babe. We have to protect this," she pinned the quote to the board, "as long as we can."
Even if it meant splitting up and going against the way they always did things: Together.
Finally, they managed to sit Porter and Carina down, telling them a watered-down version of everything over milk and homemade brownies. She and Neal had two whip-smart kids, Porter catching onto the fact that fiction in their world played out like reality in the Enchanted Forest (though Neal insisted, going as far as to make it a Rule , that the kids shouldn't necessarily believe everything they read), while Carina quickly deduced, after a vague comment about her and Neal discovering that they had discovered an unexpected connection, that Emma had come from that world too. Porter, thankfully, shared in his mother's skepticism over this whole unplottable town thing, wondering why, exactly, no one had found Storybrooke yet, while Carina had taken a vested interest in whether mermaids, and more specifically Arial, actually existed.
(According to Neal they did.)
They told them about the curse and her role in breaking it. The kids, much like their stubborn father, desperately wanted to come, claiming their ability to help before deflating when Emma reminded them they had school.
They did their best to not raise any alarms, refusing to pass the full extent of their fears onto their children, though they did express the need for caution. Neal emphasized that magic wasn't always good, something Porter had already learned from his beloved books ("I've read Harry Potter, Dad."), while Emma insisted that they should never talk to a man named August (who might go by Pinocchio.)
Both reminded them that they couldn't tell anyone. Because despite a cursed town in the middle of Maine, magic didn't exist in this world (well, except for her, she supposed) and so sharing would likely cause more harm than good.
The kids took it better than she had, Porter even finding a reasonable excuse for her actions ("Because the hero always refuses the call at first."), forcing Emma to explain that no, actually, fear and confusion had driven her away, a comment met with an exasperated eye roll because apparently she didn't read enough books. They believed , though Emma couldn't quite tell how much they actually understood.
For one, Porter's attempts to draw lines between his books and that town worried her, Emma fearing that he would get an idealistic view of what was not a very glamorous role. But, in his own child-like way, he seemed to at least understand why things had escalated the way they had over the weekend (he had jumped to the wrong conclusion, fearing she and Neal would get a divorce). He didn't even protest when she came in to say goodnight and when she settled on the edge of his bed, he nestled into her side as she wrapped her arms around him.
"I am sorry," started Emma, combing her fingers through his hair, "about this weekend."
"I know, Mom," said Porter, tone bright and understanding.
"And I want you to know that it won't happen again," she stressed, looking at him quite seriously, "I made a mistake. I know that now. We're working on it too. Your father and I. Telling each other everything so things don't spiral like they did."
It felt important to tell him that. Emma firmly believed (and Neal agreed) that, even though grown-ups didn't necessarily need to tell kids everything , they didn't have to dumb things down for them either. It was about knowing their children and what they could and couldn't handle. So while she and Neal did feel a need to shield Porter and Carina from the messy, terrifying details of Neal's (and even her's) childhood, that didn't mean they sheltered the kids from all the imperfections of the world. Not so long as it was age appropriate and didn't take away from their ability to find the beauty and hope of it all.
They were like Neal that way.
"Why didn't Dad tell us?" Porter asked. "About the Enchanted Forest?"
"I don't think it's something he really likes to talk about," admitted Emma, before biting her lip, "and probably because he knew I wouldn't understand."
"You do mix up Spiderman and Superman with a surprising frequency," noted Porter, causing Emma to snort as a wide, teasing grin spreading across his features.
"Yeah, yeah. Poke fun," muttered Emma with fake disgruntlement before she sobered, nudging Porter. "And about what you said. About me taking you in a divorce. I never want you to worry about that. I would never keep you or Carina from your father. Okay?"
Porter nodded.
Emma smiled and pressed a fervent kiss to his forehead. "Good," she murmured, "now get some sleep. You've got school in the morning."
She climbed off the bed, tucking the blankets up around him as he scooched down. "Mom?"
"Yeah, honey?"
"You'll be careful, won't you?" he asked, gaze suddenly intense. "When you go tomorrow. You'll be careful."
" Always ," said Emma, smoothing back his hair as she added, "This thing tomorrow? It's just like the people I work with everyday. Nothing for you and Care to worry about. We're gonna take this curse thing a day at a time. No more. No less."
Mostly because they had no conceivable idea how to break it. But whatever.
"Kay," murmured Porter, "love you."
Relief coursed through her and she pressed another kiss to his forehead. "I love you too. Sleep tight."
It worked miracles. Hearing those words from Port. Seeing him smile. Hearing him joke with her. And while she knew that, like any parent-child relationship, they would have their bumps along the way, she still hoped that they would always get back to that good place.
Later, long after they had put the kids to bed and locked up for the night, Neal wrapped his arms around her, pulling her flush against him. "Better?"
"Better."
And it was. They had a long way to go until they got back to the near blissful happiness of less than a week ago, but right then her children were safe, snug in their beds and they had finally gotten everything on the table – with Porter and Carina, but between her and Neal too. And right then, she couldn't ask for more.