Chapter 2: John Neilson

They had left Portland, giddy with the knowledge that they had added twenty-thousand dollars to their name and no further incidents. But despite the lack of cars on their tail, marked or otherwise, they didn't weave a straight line from Oregon to Florida, instead swinging by one of Emma's old contacts in Tennessee. She introduced Neal to a man she called Jay, who knew his way around a computer. He would help them get new plates and a fresh VIN number for the bug, as well as secure a new identity for Neal.

For a pretty hefty price.

"That's most of what we got." Neal shot Jay a suspicious glance even as Emma dragged him to a remote corner, presumably out of earshot.

"And all of it'll mean shit if you get pulled over for something stupid like a busted tail light," Emma shot back before softening, bumping his shoulder with hers. "It's worth it if it keeps you out of trouble."

He smiled softly, her words warming him as he let the subject drop, leaving behind only a trace of worry. He tried not to dwell on it, the what if's, but a part of Neal would probably always wonder if he had done the right thing. They could have parted ways, back in Portland, and Emma would have had the chance to move on to far bigger and better things rather than attaching herself to a wanted man.

(He still liked this idea, the one where they got to stay together, better.)

And so, on paper, he had received all sorts of new things. Including, of course, a fresh name, allowing the wanted-by-law Neal Cassidy to officially fade away into law-abiding citizen John Neilson.

(Fact number one about John Neison: His girlfriend liked to call him Neal.)

Just settling on a new name though had turned into a long and somewhat tedious process. And while he liked John, picking it for a very specific reason, Neal would have preferred something a little less common and generic.

"You want common." Jay looked up from where he was typing furiously on his laptop. "Common helps you blend. Keeps the attention off."

He knew this, of course, having already gone to this zoo (that wasn't exactly right, was it? Circus, maybe? No? Well, whatever.). Still, he would have preferred his first pick: George Michael.

Upon hearing it Emma immediately threw down her veto with an obvious frown. "It's just not ... you, y'know? Besides you have to get over this habit you have of naming yourself after people that already exist. It creates a pattern."

Confused, Neal furrowed his brow. "What?"

He had, very carefully, fashioned something original this time. After all, he could have just gone down the more emotional route and tried for George Darling or something.

(And while he fucking hated the way the stories in this world tended to romanticize Pan and Neverland, Neal at least appreciated that they had gotten the Darlings right. They deserved that. He just would have liked, maybe, the chance to honor them himself - y'know, without the connection immediately coming back to a historically inaccurate, and therefore life-threatening, kid's movie.)

"George Michael." He looked at her blankly because obviously just repeating the name wasn't going to help and she elaborated. "The singer."

Jay did more of his furious typing before turning the computer around, revealing a fansite and letting Neal put a face to the name.

Right.

They moved on.

Emma eventually picked Neilson, offering a practical, "So I can still call you Neal."

He settled on John so that he could, maybe, still pay tribute to the Darlings in his own little way and because Emma had scrunched her nose distastefully at both George and Michael.

("People might try to call you Mike." She stressed the 'k' in a way no one actually would. "And George just sounds old.")

To go with his new name, Neal also got new stats and a footprint that extended backwards, creating a fake history and making this identity far more real than any of the others he had adopted and discarded during his time in a Land Without Magic. Now he had things like a birth certificate and a social security card as well as a paper trail that had granted him a diploma, a somewhat decent credit score, and a pretty extensive job history. He had even adopted the very dead June and Matthew Neilson from Connecticut as his parents.

It all cost a pretty penny, setting them back before they'd even really had a chance to get started. But taking in what it had gotten them - a roof and jobs and home - Neal could agree that they had gotten their money's worth. Because broke and together definitely remained a vast improvement over jail.

After, when they had set off nearly a week later (paperwork in tow), Emma popped a disc into the music player, and a spunky beat faded into words, an unfamiliar voice singing, 'Well I guess it would be nice if I could touch your body ...'

Unable to help himself, Neal smirked in amusement before Emma held up the case, finger tapping the plastic, smugly informing him, "George Michael."

(What followed had mostly involved Emma giggling like a mad woman as she quizzed him, digging for any other glaring holes in his musical history.)

They kept the song on repeat until somewhere in Georgia when, at his insistence, they followed a series of signs, stopping off at an estate sale, allowing Neal to unwrap one of his hidden passions to Emma. One of those things that they hadn't gotten a chance to explore back in Portland due to no money and a lack of space to store things.

He flicked through a box of old records adding, "I love the search," when Emma made a pointed complaint that he didn't have anything to play them on so why bother (that, and she just really hated shopping). "There's that moment, y'know? The one after a long hunt, when you've given up on actually finding anything good and then ... Bam."

He revealed a frayed album, the faded letters on the cover spelling out Only You by Yazoo and prompting Emma to roll her eyes in that way she did whenever she thought he was being too cheesy. He leaned in close like he would in those quiet moments when he'd whisper lyrics in her ear and continued, voice low and husky in that way he knew she liked, "The haggling starts. A fiery debate between patron and owner, prices firing back and forth until, finally, the owner relents and I get to steal on a steal."

Not that he had ever actually stolen anything from a garage sale. He had drawn a line in the sand sometime ago, marking the difference between necessities and things with actual value. Things like precious family heirlooms with an irreplaceable history.

(Stealing the watches had skirted close to breaking that rule and look where it had almost landed him.)

In addition to an album he couldn't play ("That," he told a skeptical Emma, "doesn't take away its sentimental value."), he also picked out a cuckoo clock and, following Emma's patented eye roll, he shared an elaborate history of their origin (such as, "They originated in Schwarzwarld. The German Black Forest."), before entering into a well-crafted dance with the owner. But later, after they had parked the bug somewhere out of the way of prying eyes, Emma launched an assault on his neck, demanding that he repeat other historical facts to her between crafting a convincing case on why, exactly, he thought she should remove her clothes. Because Neal had learned that, despite all the complaints and eye-rolling, she had found the whole thing incredibly sexy.

He eventually hung the clock up in their kitchen, but only after further impressing Emma by fixing the broken mechanics inside (and nearly making up for her displeasure following the discovery that he had knowingly bought it broke to begin with). Both that and the album went nicely with a set of mismatched, hand-painted plates they had picked up and a reportedly rare copper lamp (chosen because Emma happened to like the dragonfly design on the shade). Those items, along with the dreamcatcher, became the first additions to their new home. It wasn't much, of course, but they gave their place that special touch, giving it a lived in feel rather than something empty and sterile.

Unfortunately all of this meant that money had remained their primary concern from the very beginning, making things far more difficult than the picture they'd originally painted over a map in an abandoned hotel room.

(They, meaning Emma, had the forethought, at least, to save enough first and last month's rent, letting them luck into an apartment on their first run through. Well that, and their own low expectations.)

Neal, however, refused to give up. This life, here with Emma, meant something to him, making the hardships they had endured since arriving in Tallahassee more than worth it. So he would continue to insist that they stay on the straight and narrow and Emma mostly went along with it, even if she had a harder time seeing the same bright future he so easily envisioned, getting stuck instead on the stormy clouds that had haunted their steps since Portland in the form of an unfulfilled threat.

Then two became three and things got complicated.

(Not bad. Just complicated.)

They didn't talk about it. At all. Emma only skirting the bare edges of the apparently forbidden topic when she announced that she had made an appointment at the free clinic for the following week.

"Can I come?" Neal asked over his pizza crust. He had told her they would do this together, and he had meant that, but would Emma want that promise to extend to things like doctors visits too?

Emma shrugged and jerked her head in a single nod. "If you want."

She didn't look at him.

But huddled up together in the bug for six months meant he had gotten to know Emma pretty well. Back-of-his-own-hand well (a thing he quite liked to tease her about). He knew what she had told him ("Fourteen," she had said, fingers picking at a paper label on her stolen coke bottle. "I've been in fourteen foster homes. The last one didn't even last a month."). He knew what he had observed (her passion for food had, apparently, no limits and the ending of E.T., which they had caught from a distance near an old Drive Thru, made her cry).

And then there were the things she hadn't shared with him at all.

Things like the fact that she still worried that Tallahassee wouldn't work out the way they wanted - Neal would prove her wrong on that - or that Emma, as soon as she possibly could, would seek out the local library and scan databases whenever they arrived in a new city, hoping to find something that might point her in the direction of her long-lost parents. She had done it in Portland, had disappeared at some ridiculous hour when they had stopped in Georgia, and, of course, had done much the same after they had settled in Florida. And after, for some strange reason, she'd bring him doughnuts.

"Because everyone deserves to know why," she had said, passing a bottle of stolen scotch between them as they laid out on a worn blanket beneath the starry night sky. She didn't bother with specifics, but the longing look she gave the stars said enough. She wanted the answer to who just as much as the way.

Frustratingly enough, however, Emma had become impossible to read since that day in the bathroom.

Here's what he did know: Emma, if he wanted to avoid arguments and such, liked (and needed) her space whenever it came to processing the new stuff. Or just the plain big.

He had discovered this shortly after their relationship had shifted from partners-slash-friends to something more than. Because even if she had mostly made the first move (though she liked to argue-slash-tease that two moves had been made prior to what he called their first kiss), she had also woken up the next morning where she had curled up against his side, and promptly (albeit privately) freaked out about ruining a good thing because, according to her (and he could agree), it was one of the only good things they had. She had even managed, despite their tight living quarters, to successfully avoid talking to him for days. But then (he still couldn't say how, exactly) she had reached some sort of conclusion all on her own, turning to him in the middle of Charley's Girl to lay out a series of ground rules (all of which served as a poor imitation of what had later become their official list) for how things would work going forward if they were going to add feelings to the mix.

(He'd neglected to tell her that it was already a bit too late on that one.)

So he didn't worry and just expected, perhaps naively, that things would play out much the same this time around. So he waited. Because he wanted to give that space to her. He did. And he tried. He just would have like it though if they had, maybe, talked about something (anything, really) else while he gave her said space. But they didn't. Well, she didn't. Again, Neal tried, but Emma had surpassed the guarded girl he had first met, retreating far beyond walls that he hadn't figured out how to break down just yet.

He got a whole week full of this non-angry, but still stony silent treatment.

It worried him. More than Neal cared to admit. And he didn't just worry that Emma had already made up her mind, deciding that she wanted to give away the baby. But also that, at the end of everything, there would no longer be enough of them to salvage and piece back together.

It didn't help that the boundaries of the situation felt blurry at best, filling Neal with an anxious unease as he struggled to determine exactly how much of a right he had to really assert his own wishes in this situation. Neal knew what he wanted, and it surprised him how deep that want really went. But he absolutely understood why Emma had the concerns she did. Because of course he worried about those things too. He couldn't even fully expect her to turn everything on its head for something they hadn't planned. Quite suddenly Emma found herself faced with this difficult, life-changing decision and a part of Neal really hated himself for the role he had played in the irresponsible behavior that had led them both here.

(But fuck. He wanted this baby.)

Then they went to the clinic. Already nearing the four-month mark, they (or some other strange couple, he supposed) would have a baby by the beginning of December. They even heard the heartbeat as Emma, he couldn't help but note, stared stonily at a point just beyond the screen.

Meanwhile Neal, who had always believed in things bigger than himself, considered the sound and the tiny little speck of a thing growing inside the safety of Emma's body the living embodiment of the fact that miracles absolutely did exist.

(They made that.)

(Really.)

(Already, Neal loved this child.)

He had hoped, maybe, that they would finally talk about it after that, but then a week passed. And then another. Then, finally, Neal broke, his frustration and nerves bursting out of him as he slammed the ultrasound down on their rickety patio-slash-kitchen table after a particularly tense breakfast.

(He had taken to carrying it in his wallet ever since the ultrasound, pulling it out and looking at it whenever he had a moment to himself, tracing the lines of their child, a warm feeling settling in his chest.)

Emma winced. An action that would normally send Neal rushing toward an apologetic fit, but they absolutely had to talk about this.

He said as much out loud.

Emma agreed.

More silence followed.

Neal studied her. Really studied, taking in her ponytail, flower-patterned dress, the hands fidgeting in her lap, and the half-eaten bowl of Lucky Charms in front of her. All stark reminders that, despite the shit she had endured in her life, there were still ways in which she remained very young.

The both of them, really.

He had put up with a hundred plus years of torment in Neverland before finally escaping to a new world that required very different tactics to survive, all forcing him to learn how to look out for number one from a ridiculous young age. But yeah, sometimes, he still felt like that emotionally naive fourteen-year-old that had stupidly believed his father really wanted to give up magic so they could start over together.

Abandonment made you grow up real quick, but it stunted you too.

Tense lines faded, softening into understanding as the thought forced him to calm his sudden burst of anger. "Look, Em. I know what I said. About wanting to keep the baby. And I meant that, but that doesn't mean I won't be right there with you if we decide to do something different."

"I know." Her reply came quick, almost defensive, but Neal hadn't quite finished yet.

"But you have to let me in on the thought process." This was an indirect but very pointed reminder of Rule Number Two - they always make decisions together.

He got a jerky nod and then more silence. Should he push his luck? Or let it drop for now and hope Emma would come to him when she finally gathered her thoughts. But then, rather abruptly, the words just burst out of, "I screwed up."

Neal opened his mouth, floundering and gaping like a fish because, if anything, they screwed up, he'd insist on that, and even then he thought the phrase kinda fell on the strong side when trying to describe their obviously unexpected situation. But Emma hadn't finished either.

"I hate kids, Neal. Really. Hate them. Especially the little ones. They were all over the foster homes and they cry, like, all the time. They steal your shit and then they break it. They're sticky. And they always, always," she sighed, as if getting ready to admit something she wasn't particularly proud of, "get picked first. Except when they don't. And then I just felt sorry for them because each time you get passed over the less likely you'll ever get picked for anything other than getting bounced around for the long haul. Which really sucks. And I never wanted kids. But I always thought that if I did have them then they'd be planned, y'know? I'd be older and settled down with a good job, some money saved, and maybe even a house. And the baby would be a decision we made. Together. Something that we wanted and cherished and couldn't ever imagine not having, you know? Like we couldn't live without it."

That took first place for the most he'd ever heard Emma say in one go. So much so that it required a certain amount of effort to keep a mask in place, hiding the emotions that her sudden speech had inspired. Nothing bad, really, but Emma would likely mistake his very mild amusement as something cruel and teasing and the last thing Neal wanted was to discourage her from sharing with him in the future. Because he knew she didn't like it. Talking about her feelings.

(And sometimes just talking in general.)

"Emma, just because a baby isn't planned doesn't mean it isn't wanted."

"But it'll know," she insisted, "even if we keep it - it'll be a thought in the back of its mind. It'll know that it was an accident and it'll always wonder if we wished things wound up differently."

Neal shook his head and knelt down in front of her, tucking a missed strand of hair behind her ear before he cupped her cheek, soft and yet firm, making sure Emma looked at him as he said this very important thing.

"He'll know that even if he was an accident that we still made the choice to keep him. And she won't wonder because she'll know that she's loved. Because we'll tell him. Everyday. That's what parents - the good ones, at least - do. Or," because Neal didn't want to pressure her with assumptions, "even if we give her up then she'll realize that we did it because we wanted what was best for her and that whatever lucky family we pick did choose him even if we couldn't. And," here he took on a lighter tone, "I'm pretty sure hating kids that aren't yours is a universal thing."

Emma snorted, showing the bare bones of a smile that let Neal break out into a grin of his own. But before he could really tease her about it, maybe even try to turn it into that toothy grin of hers that he loved so much, she sobered, "We screwed up."

"Maybe," he agreed, "but that doesn't mean we can't fix it."

Her hands twitched in her lap and Neal took the initiative, covering her hand with his, threading their fingers together. It hit him then, as her sweaty hand squeezed his work-calloused fingers, that they hadn't really touched since that day in the bathroom.

"I don't know what to do" The admission exited as this quiet thing but managed to still feel big. Probably because it was the sort of thing Emma wouldn't normally admit to feeling due to the fact that it left her feeling exposed and vulnerable.

Emma didn't appreciate false platitudes so that only left Neal with one option - honesty. "Me either, but I think the fact that we care so much is a good sign."

Emma smiled, quick and tight, and then took some initiative of her own, wrapping her arms around him and burrowing into his shoulder, moving to kneel with him on the ground. "I love you," she murmured, nose pressing into his shoulder and glasses digging into his neck before she pulled back, gazing at him with an intense sincerity.

Neal brushed his lips against hers before resting his forehead against hers and, for the first time in weeks, he could finally breathe easy.

"I love you too."

Emma smiled, this big and brilliant thing that he couldn't help but match, and for a while they simply stayed there in each other's arms. They hadn't solved anything. Not really. But for the first time since this whole thing had started Neal let himself really, truly believe that what he had said to Emma would come to pass and that maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out in their favor, after all.