Author's Note:Sorry for the wait guys, I got a little caught up in my other stories for a while there!

As Emma was getting out of the shower, she heard someone running around downstairs. Curious, she paused to listen. It was too early for Henry to be home from school, so it had to be either one of her parents, or Neal who was sort of, kind of staying with them. Emma wasn't entirely sure she was okay with that, really, but she didn't want him to be on his own after what had happened with Tamara.

A series of increasingly loud yells and then a couple of thuds had Emma hurriedly pulling on her clothes and running down the stairs a moment later.

What greeted her at the bottom of the staircase was chaos.

The dining table had been knocked on its' side, and in crumpled next to were both her parents and Neal. Neal was clutching his cheekbone with a pained expression. Her father was lying on the floor, looking winded with his wife sprawled across him.

"What the hell is going on here?" Emma asked once she'd finished picking her jaw up off the ground.

"Emma!" Snow said, startled.

She quickly pulled her husband off the floor, and the pair of them stood awkwardly at attention.

"Snow White just gave me the chair," Neal informed her.

Emma's attention snapped to her mother, whose eyes widened at the accusation. Snow rushed to explain.

"I did not; I was just trying to split the two of them up. Neal fell on the chair!"

"Split them up?" Emma was even more confused now, and she looked to Neal, and then to her father.

Her father avoided eye contact. Emma narrowed her eyes at the obvious guilt in that action. She looked again at Snow, and raised her eyebrow, waiting for further explanation. Snow squirmed under her miniature daughter's gaze.

"I kind of… told your father. About Neal. And you going to jail…" She trailed off and cringed in anticipation of her daughter's reaction.

"Mom!"

"I'm sorry! I couldn't keep it from him," Snow gave her a doleful look, "I didn't realise he'd try to strangle him! Although in retrospect, I guess that is a possibility I should anticipated, but – "

Snow continued to babble nervously as Emma stared at her father. He felt her eyes on him and raised his head to give her a sheepish look.

"Wait."

Emma's tone was thick with disbelief.

"Were you actually just…" She almost choked on her next words, "…defending my honour?"

"A little bit," Charming admitted apologetically. Then he caught sight of Neal again, shot him a dirty look, and added, "Which is completely within my rights as a father."

Neal correctly interpreted the threat inherent in that comment, and shuffled a couple of steps further away from Charming. Snow elbowed her partner in the ribs and gave him a warning look.

"Have mentioned that I was only doing what I thought was best for her? So she could find her family? And that I didn't know she was pregnant?" Neal put in.

"And there wasn't any other way to achieve that without abandoning her and setting her up go to jail?" Charming stepped forward aggressively, pulling his wife along with him as she attempted to hold him back.

"Charming!" she hissed.

Emma's eyes bounced between them like a tennis ball between a pair of racquets – this was definitely getting interesting.

"Oh really? You're going to talk to me about abandoning Emma?" Neal spat back. "You put her in some magical wardrobe without even knowing where it would send her!"

Charming broke free of Snow's hold a shot forward, right into Neal's face.

"I would never abandon Emma. I love her.I put her in that wardrobe give her a chance." His voice was taut with fury, "Regina could have killed her if we hadn't gotten her away. She could have been cursed right along with us, forever. She deserved better than that!"

"… And she deserved better than what she had here!" Neal returned, "You think it was easy to do what I did? You're not the only one that loves her, you know. She was all I had in this miserable world, and I let her go, so she could go back where she belonged, with her family. So she could find what she's been looking for her entire life! You think I would have chosen to spend the last decade without her if I thought there was any other way for her to get that?"

Charming looked somewhat taken aback by Neal's passionate spiel. Before he had time to think up a response to it, Neal was gone.

Emma stared dumbly at Neal's back as he stormed out of the apartment, thinking she'd definitely heard a present tense in somewhere in that rant.