CHAPTER THIRTY: PARENTAL WARNING

(In which Emma and Neal talk, and the best course of action is the path of lease resistance in avoiding parental temper tantrums.)

Neal had just gotten out of the shower and pulled on a pair of track pants when there was a loud banging on the door. The last person he expected was Emma and looking desperate and uncertain as she exclaimed, "We should take a roadtrip."

"Um... what?"

"A roadtrip. A vacation. With Henry. It was his idea. It's the last day of school. I'm already packed. If we leave in a couple of hours, we can-"

"Avoid whatever it is you obviously don't want to deal with?" Neal prompted.

Emma scowled and then sighed. "Okay, so I might have fired my dad."

Now that was a surprise. Neal's brows nearly hit his hairline. "You fired your dad?"

"That's what I said! He's a horrible cop, Neal! He's been embezzling money from the Department to pay off massive gambling debts and my mother's Toys R Us bill and let Leroy out of dozens of DUI's that could have killed people, never mind Walter who should have had his license revoked years ago with the number of times he got pulled over on night patrol for sleeping behind the wheel! And all this time I thought Graham didn't want to work for the department again because it was just his curse-assigned job, but my father threatened him, because he didn't want any male competition!"

"Well, yeah..."

"You knew?"

Neal shrugged. "Kinda consider Graham a friend. We bonded over being formerly dead ex-lovers of yours that you let your new friends and family treat like crap."

Wincing, Emma dared to ask, "Did Killian... did he ever-"

"Punch me in the face?" Neal retorted. "Naw. He knew it hurt more to just go into detail about the many ways in which you liked to be jabbed with his sword while screaming his name and digging your nails into my mother's name. You know, that and teaching Henry how to sail and about the stars, all the stuff I actually did and now it's too late to do, stuff that he did intentionally just to take it away from me posthumously because so much of it is otherwise completely irrelevant, but he just liked knowing he won that too."

Emma shrunk back, guilty. "I didn't know. Henry... he knows you wanted to teach him that stuff, and that's what matters, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't make it not hurt, Emma," he responded, "any more than you having fake memories of keeping Henry makes it not hurt that you gave him up and Regina did all of that. It was supposed to be me, but it was someone else, somehow who didn't value him, who was just using him to get his happy ending and reading off my script to do it."

Emma opened her mouth, the shut it again. Her phone chimed before she could come up with a response and she found a text from her mother, all caps, a lot of exclamation points, and a flurry of angry emoticons... followed by her phone informing her of a voice mail (she'd had her mother's phone numbers go straight to voice mail for quite some time, since she was constantly calling about stupid things) which Emma reluctantly played.

"EMMA EVA SWAN, YOU DID NOT JUST FIRE YOUR FATHER AFTER ACCUSING HIM OF CORRUPTION AND THUGGERY! YOU GIVE HIM BACK HIS BADGE AND GUN THIS MINUTE! I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR MOODY BEHAVIOR! YOU CAN'T GO MAKING BASELESS ACCUSATIONS AND TREATING YOUR FATHER LIKE A CRIMINAL JUST BECAUSE YOUR BOYFRIEND DUMPED YOU! SO YOU GET YOUR BUTT BACK TO THE STATION RIGHT NOW, MISSY, BEFORE I-"

The message was cut off... and then her phone showed another voice mail.

"GO TO REGINA AND HAVE HER TRACK YOU DOWN AND POOF YOU-"

Neal took the phone out of her hand and shut it off. "So... roadtrip, huh?"

"You don't have to on my account."

He shrugged. "Hey, we might be taking a break from romance, but that doesn't mean I'm adverse to a roadtrip. We are still a family, presently the saner half of it, apparently, and Henry did ask me to take him to a DMV appointment in Bangor tomorrow. Said you never got a New York license, so yours was expired, and he needs someone with a current license and registration to take the driving test."

"Manipulative little jerk," sighed Emma, and Neal chuckled.

"Yeah, but he's our manipulative little jerk. And, hey, I'm sure we can manage a couple of hours together."

"Right," Emma agreed. "I mean, after all the Dark One-related stuff, the DMV should be like a vacation."

Neal laughed at that. "Let me just throw some things in a bag," he said, heading toward the bedroom. "How long of a roadtrip are we planning here?"

"Well, considering how pissed my mother is at me, consider how pissed she's going to be when she figures out that my father really has been dicking around and owes a hundred grand to a bunch of pirates, thieves, and King Midas..."

"So... a week?"

"At least. I'd just assume miss the inevitable post-fighting incessant make-up canoodling stage," groused Emma. "Knowing my parents, they'll spend a few minutes shouting at each other, my mother will ignore my father for a day or two, and then he'll will come up some incredibly sappy two minute speech plagiarized from a rom-com - or nearly get himself killed - and she'll forget he screwed up and lied and jump him like a rabbit in heat. So they'll act like a couple of dumb, horny teenagers for at least a week. Well, dumber and hornier than usual. And there's no way I'm getting stuck baby-sitting while they try to make me another bratty sibling."

"Not digging the big sister thing, huh?" Neal asked, as though that hadn't already been obvious.

"If I actually felt like a big sister instead of just some person with an illogical hereditary connection to parents who never actually parented me and barely parent their next batch of kids," sighed Emma, revealing perhaps more than she meant to with that statement. Thankfully, the clock tower chimed, almost deafening in the apartment, after which she said, "I should get Henry. My mother should be in a teacher's meeting until three-thirty, so that's just enough time to get him and pack."

With a nod, Neal followed her to the door where it occurred, "Hey, if you're Sheriff and you fired your dad, then who's in charge while you're gone?"

Emma grimaced. "Let's just say I may have accidentally sort of adopted five cats."

AN: The DMV always makes me think of an Animaniacs episode in which the entrance to Hell was in a DMV parking lot. I miss that show. I am a Loony Toons person. Disney people can suck it! (Just kidding.)

Next up: Let the National Lampooning begin!