AS PROMISED, HERE'S THE SECOND CHAPTER! AND I'M REALLY SORRY, BECAUSE I MEANT TO HAVE IT UP LAST NIGHT, BUT I ENDED UP IN THE HOSPITAL, SO I DIDN'T HAVE ACCESS TO THE DOCUMENT.
He briefly wonders why he hadn't realized before that Emma Swan was his Emma, his baby girl. He had, after all, held her for all of five minutes. Those five minutes are five minutes for which he will be eternally grateful for. He had resigned himself for the few weeks before she was born to the fact that when he would first see his daughter, she'd be twenty eight years old. So for him to have five minutes with her, to cradle her in his arms and hold her close, it was the best thing that could have happened under the circumstances. Of course, that train of thought goes out the window when a light bulb lights up and he realizes that for twenty eight years, his daughter was completely and utterly alone. And it breaks his heart.
She doesn't have the ebony hair her mother has –not even his, really, because his is quite a few shades darker than hers. Her eyes are a mirror image of Snow's, and Emma clearly has her porcelain skin.
Personality-wise, she really his her mother's daughter. He knows from his time as David Nolan that Emma is jaded and stubborn and sarcastic and –well, Mary Margaret once had told him teasing, borderline playful, but he still has trouble believing that. He knows that she has the strength of a Greek god and the heart of a lion made from gold. He also remembers the look Emma always had in her eyes, the one that was a cross between looking like she was going to kill somebody or cry. He knows now why he recognized that look, because when he first met Snow (and the first few weeks they were really together as lovers and partners and friends and everything in between), it was the same look she had. The one where for all their exterior toughness, they just want a home and to be loved.
He's fully prepared to give that to Emma now. A thought briefly flickers through his mind, wondering if she remembers him taking her to the safety of the wardrobe. He thinks back to sitting in the nursery, utterly devastated, because his daughter would not need him nor want him when she was twenty eight because she'd had her mother for all those years. He thinks back to swearing to protect her at the cost of his emotional pain of never really getting to be a father, because that would be the only thing he'd ever be able to do for her.
That all changes, though, because he sees the way her eyes are downcast and there's something on her face that he can't quite put his finger on. It's a mix of sadness and surprise and… unworthiness. How can his baby girl think she's not worthy of their love? Of her parents' love? Then he remembers that this world had been unkind to her, that it had been so cruel she needed to close herself off from everything. His heart that had been split in half breaks into fourths. This was not what he wanted for her.
It's not what he wanted for him, either, nor for Snow. While this hurts him, he knows it has to be worse for her. He'd already accepted the fact that he would not be raising their daughter, but while he was accepting that, she was accepting the fact that she'd be raising Emma on her own. She had planned on being there for all of Emma's firsts. But nothing's going like he thought it would. This isn't a farm. His mother isn't here with them. Emma isn't an Emmit –not that he'd cared when Snow told him (or told Rumple) she was a girl, he'd just been thrilled to pieces at the fact he was going to be a dad– but the point is that this is so far from what he'd thought was going to become of his life, it's almost comical. But he wouldn't change it. The love he felt for Emma (or at the time, 'Kiddo') when the pendant swung over Snow's hand hadn't changed since then. In fact, he swears it's grown. Because at the end of the day, he'd been wrong about so many things, on so many levels, sitting in his daughter's nursery. Clearly, he can teach Emma a thing or two about swords and horse riding. More importantly, he can teach her how to love and how to accept love. He can tell just by the way she isn't immediately pulling away that she wants him and Snow in her life.
That is more of a gift that the five minutes he got with her when she was a baby.