CHAPTER NOTHING: THE FUCKING EPILOGUE

(In which The Author couldn't decide between going with "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" or paying homage to Eastbound & Down so flipped a coin. Kenny wins!)

The Loft was quiet when they entered, just like the last time two months previously, also from a gathering at Granny's. This time, though, there was no rush to remove clothing... well... not for the same reasons. Instead of the bedroom, they headed to the bathroom to wash off 'sex stank', hours in a tiny car eating gassy fast food stank, and bits of Meatloaf Monday. It had been a very long time since Emma had shared a shower just for bathing purposes, but they were both exhausted and the water heater was three decades old and protested having to sustain heat for more than a few minutes.

Those few minutes of heat felt heavenly, somehow the act of just bathing together the more intimate shared act of the evening. Though Emma would never admit it, she got a bit teary-eyed at the reverence of Neal's touch as he ran the soapy washcloth over her stomach, stuck for a moment in the memories of cold showers in prison when she hadn't yet resigned herself to the likelihood that Neal had really abandoned her for good and would imagine him there with her, her hands as his hands. Emma didn't have to imagine anymore. Nor did she have to sleep on a prison bunk with bars on the windows or in scratchy dungarees.

Not especially sexy or colorful, but soft and cozy pajamas were the choice for the evening, a little-used set that had ended up packed away in the upstairs closet back when her father was using her room, remaining there forgotten and undiscovered until her parents move - which had led to a twice gifting. From a local shop, Mary Margaret had gotten the PJs for her that first Christmas. Her amnesiac mother had been so anxious that she wouldn't like them or that they were the wrong size, and Emma had broken down, because it had been years since anyone had given her a Christmas present and she hadn't even thought to get something for her new friend, and she was going crazy with worry for Henry and anger over Regina's restraining order threats that had meant over a month since she'd seen her son.

How ironic now, Emma thought, that she was fine with Henry spending the night at his adoptive mother's. Well, maybe not fine, but he was old enough to take care of himself, and she'd wised up enough to know that she was never going to have it quite figured out how to be the parent in their relationship. At least, not without actually raising a kid for real rather than by the appropriated and augmented hazy memories of borderline sociopath... and by then, well, Henry would be her age. Now that was scary! That was something she tried not to think about. Never mind how the fake parenting memories of a real psycho woman would affect her real parenting judgment considering it seemed to have done in a real shitty way the past couple of years. Archie was going to get rich off her family, that much was certain!

Sometimes Emma really hated her family. There were too many of them and they were weird and selfish and sometimes homicidal, and on the bad days it felt like she was being strangled by their good (or bad) intentions or just their physical presence. It was because of their craziness that she'd forgotten charity is not a substitute for justice. She had gotten so caught up in forgiveness to take away the power of the hatred that had defined her dysfunctional family, to not have her story, her identity, defined by Regina's revenge-based happy ending, that somewhere in there, the justice part of the equation, doing right by the victims - including herself - had been forgotten. And in all aspects of her life.

She examined her old new badge with a slight grimace and a sigh before setting it back on the dresser.

What it really came down to, she reasoned, even if she'd screwed up, even if they'd led her astray and left her with even more issues to sort out, more baggage to carry around, is that after being alone for the better part of her life, it was better to be strangled by a necklace of fairy tale characters than to be strangled by no one.

"Pinstripes?"

Emma dropped her hand from the swan charm and turned her gaze from the window that looked out at the clock tower as Neal returned from brushing his teeth, his towel now swapped for a T-shirt and cotton sleep pants retrieved from his suitcase.

"You were expecting farm animals?" Emma retorted.

"Nah, just never saw you as the matching pajama set kind of girl."

"Well, I was the living in a car and sleeping in my clothes kind of girl when we met," she reminded, then shrugged, and admitted, "I think it's some weird osmosis thing from Regina's memories. She has a matching pajama set obsession. At least I was spared the satin and silk fetish. I'm still a plaid girl all the way. Although, considering my father's obsession with plaid and I apparently passed it on to Henry... I'm not really sure I can sell the grunge groupie inspiration anymore."

"Hey, I shop at thrift stores for clothes I wear in public," Neal reminded with a shrug, "I'm not gonna judge your frumpy pajamas."

"There's nothing wrong with your clothes," Emma told him. Sure, she had acquired a taste for pricey leather jackets and boots, but that had come after years of pinching pennies and living in crappy one bedroom roach-filled apartments until she could splurge a little on some nice clothes and nicer apartments than she really should have considered in her price range, leaving her always just barely getting by to live beyond her means.

Maybe her father wasn't the only one with a gambling problem, Emma realized before amending, "Well, apart from that pair of old man feeding pigeons in the park shoes. You really have to get rid of those shoes."

"Hey, if you had to walk through Central Park every day, you'd pick ugly but comfortable shoes."

"I walked through the Enchanted Forest in designer boots," she argued, though he was undeterred and she finally relented. "All right fine. My toe nails nearly fell off and I ended up with bunions that would have taken months to heal without some of your father's magic foot bath shit. But you're still getting rid of those shoes."

"Only if you send those plaid pants back to Rodney Dangerfield circa 1980."

Emma rolled her eyes, but agreed. "All right. They were a stupid Fashion Week impulse buy decision anyway."

"See? We've already got the relationship compromise thing down," Neal laughed, and gave her a peck on the cheek as he walked past her to his suitcase, where he paused at the discovery of a slender package wrapped in yellow paper.

"It was supposed to be a birthday present," Emma explained. "But... that obviously didn't go as planned. I was planning to give it to you when we got to the beach house, but..."

"You weren't in a gift-giving mood?"

"That's part of it," she conceded. "Maybe I should re-wrap it. The whole concept is kind of ruined, but... I really meant what I said, that I wasn't trying to destroy our past."

Rather confused by her cryptic explanation, Neal took the large thin square and unwrapped it. And instantly understood at the Lou Reed single album LP single cover for "Charley's Girl". It wasn't the right weight or thickness for a record, though, and when he tipped the jacket a familiar, slightly yellowed, slightly frayed dreamcatcher with red and green beads slid out. His heart seized up a little. No wonder Emma had been so pissed off when her present was ruined for a second time before the trip hardly began.

"How did you...?"

"I always had it. I took it when Regina and I went to get Robin. I just... it didn't feel right to hang it up without you," Emma explained. "I thought about giving it to Henry, and I probably should have. He was really upset that Gold and I didn't save anything of yours from your apartment, though being Henry he didn't say anything until a few months ago when I found out he stole your credit card after the mess with the Author, when he was told he couldn't bring you back, to hire a P.I. to find your stuff... which apparently he didn't. I've been trying, though. Which doesn't mean I'm going to tell you how much of my Sheriff's salary I've had to pay a hipster dumpster diver in Greenwich village," Emma tried to play off her guilt with humor.

Neal fingered the brittle lanyards and had to blink back tears and swallow a lump in his throat. "You don't have to. It was just stuff. Mostly other people's trash. I didn't have a lot going on, remember?"

Taking his hand, Emma told him, "I shouldn't have said that, okay? It was mean. And I didn't have anything going on until I got to Storybrooke. Just blowing money on vacant spaces to feel like I was successful, that I mattered, because I had no one to share anything with. And... one man's trash is another man's treasure, right?" Neal used to say that as he picked through dumpsters and took broken things left curbside in the Portland 'burbs. "That stuff was yours and I let it get thrown away, and I'm sorry. I lost enough broken and outdated junk in the System to get it, that the stuff matters, and I just... I want to get you your life back. Starting over with nothing sucks."

"Hey," Neal squeezed her hand, "I have plenty of something, Emma. I have you and Henry. And another kid on the way. Plus, my crotchety old man who occasionally tries to corrupt and or murder my loved ones for power. But no family's perfect..."

"Yeah, I think ours is Game of Thrones levels of imperfect," Emma joked., though she understood what he meant and knew he understood that she did, because they got each other like that, in a way no one else ever had. Even though she'd tried to pretend that mystery and constantly surprising each other made a relationship, she knew now that was bullshit. Really knowing someone, that was love.

Neal chuckled. "True. But at least we keep the incest to family-by-marriage. And wedding reception carnage has been limited to property damage."

Emma snorted at that. But hers had come close to serious bloodshed. That should have been a sign. "Yeah, just so we're clear, I am not doing the fancy-ass dress, church, freak'n ballroom crap again!"

"Are you proposing?" asked Neal, brows raised.

"What? No! Honestly, I only got married because my parents are the literal king and queen of peer pressure," she clarified. Well, that and if she'd rejected Killian he would have taken at as a personal insult, probably assumed she was in love with someone else, and then gotten involved in some magical assholery that would have gotten someone killed; between his fragile ego and man pain and her mother's matrimonial infuriation, it had just been easier.

"So don't go getting any ideas that I'll be 'Mrs. Cassidy' any time soon," she warned while pulling back the covers. "And that's another thing. I like my name. Sure, it's a badge of abandonment and misery, but it's my badge of abandonment and misery."

"And a good name," Neal told her with a smile. "Everyone saw you as the ugly duckling who wouldn't amount to anything, but deep inside you knew that wasn't true, that you had something amazing and beautiful to add to the world."

Emma felt her cheeks grow hot. "Neal..."

"You are. And I want us to find Tallahassee... just... not in an actual bug filled swamp. Married or not married. This apartment of a castle. I don't care. My Tallahassee is where you are you."

"Wherever we are," Emma agreed and thought again of that night in Portland, after getting the watches, how that moment, that brief moment she had been the happiest she had ever been. She hadn't known it then, but she was pregnant, and as much as she had hated Neal over the years since that night, he had given her Henry, given her a son, a child she chose to give up and that broke her even more it was true, but the kid also healed her, made her whole in a way she hadn't understood, not then, perhaps not even fully now. Just as Neal, his love, and her loss of him at different times in different ways had shaped her and driven her, for better and worse. Because of them both she had finally started to understand the true meaning of 'home'.

It was a place you just missed, that was true, but it was the people more than the place itself, and maybe it didn't have to be defined by feelings of loss, Emma considered as they climbed beneath the covers. But maybe it also didn't have to be perfect either. She'd been through too much to believe that even magical kisses could chase all the monsters away. She'd also grown rather attached to her crazy, occasionally strangling family. So, as unlikely as it seemed, maybe there could be joy in what was found here, in this small, weird town in Maine filled with hopelessly optimistic (and jaded) fairy tale characters, enough to offset and even eclipse the pain of their past. Maybe this was Tallahassee.

"It turned out to be an unintentionally appropriate dream destination though, didn't it?" Emma remarked, turning onto her side to lean on her elbow. "Reality's never as perfect as you want it to be. But maybe that's been the problem, us aspirating toward some perfect, unrealistic state of being, when Tallahassee really has bugs and swamps and isn't remotely beach-adjacent," she concluded.

"It is kind of a metaphor for life," Neal agreed, before he leaned over and kissed her, soft and sweet.

For that moment, Emma let herself believe, just a little, in the possibility of true love. Then she lay down, eyes growing heavy with the call of long delayed sleep.

Neal watched her for a few minutes, the way he used to when she'd curled up in the back of their twice stolen car, the stifling a yawn, he hung the dreamcatcher from the lamp before turning out the light.

END OF STORY

AN: Emma's quote about her family is also from Eastbound & Down, "It's better to be strangled by a necklace of Mexicans than to be strangled by no one." When I first saw Emma's horrible plaid pants from 3.12, I thought of Caddyshack. And poor Neal, he gets a flack from Hook fans for his normal person clothes, though I do have to say, his shoes were awful.

END NOTE: Well, that's it. I may write a short one or two chapter follow-up, but on the matter of going into the B and C plots with the dead and FTL's class warfare that some readers wondered about, I have no immediate plans for a sequel. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen. But with the looming start of production for the next clusterfuck season, and all of the no-doubt infuriating spoilers that will be intentionally leaked to add more hazardous waste to this toxic fandom, it's hard to say if I'll be in the mood. My muse is fickle and prone to lengthy hibernation's while my bitterness toward OUAT only increases. But do feel free to send me ideas here or on tumblr. I have genuinely enjoyed writing this story and reading and responding to all of the kind reviews. To the loyal readers who fav'd and followed and reviewed more consistently than I probably ever have, you have my deepest gratitude. It's been fun! So long, and thanks for all the fish!