Here it is, the moment you have all been waiting for…Emma's back. Oh god. This one hurt my feels just writing it. Also, just to let you know, the link to the playlist is now up and ready for action. I couldn't figure out how to activate the link so just copy and paste.

A lot of you have mentioned wanting to see Snow go all mamma bear on Neal's ass. I racked my brain for a way to make it work but it's probably not going to happen. I think Snow realizes just how complicated love is and that there probably is more to the situation than Emma knows or was letting on. The fact that Neal was in Stroybrooke would be the first give away that he is connected to all this and he came back…which is something most people wouldn't do if they had really set someone up.

Just saying. They'll be some interaction between the two. Actually I have a thanksgiving themed chapter planed that's after Neal and Gold's big reunion so yeah…

OH MY GOD! OVER 100 REVIEWS! You guys rock. So to celebrate here's a little gift. It's a headcannon that may or may not make it into the story.

Emma and Neal's second child doesn't call Neal Dad or Papa. She calls him Baebae. Why? That's what Rumple and Belle's kid(s) call him and she doesn't understand the difference. Neal has stopped trying to correct her and he doesn't really mind. it's one of the few times he has anything to do with his old moniker.

It took a moment for Neal to realize that the pounding sound was not, in fact, that sound of his blood pumping into his ears. It was a louder, harsher sound with a fucked up cadence; it was the sound every thief knew: the commanding knock of a police officer.

He groaned as he got up from the bed and reached over to grab his pants. Apparently being dead tired with a head wound and a bad case of nightmares was about as much fun as the morning after a fifth of tequila.

Everything in him wanted to tell Nolan to go fuck himself—he wasn't in the mood for games. Two hours of sleep in as many days were not enough with the overprotective father of the love of his life who was trying to make up for lost time in the harassing ex-boyfriends department.

"Damn it Cassidy, open the fucking door!"

Neal stilled for a split second as the voice registered in his mind. How long had he been since he heard it?

The sound was as sobering as a cold shower, a pot of strong black coffee and a full night's rest all rolled into one. Neal partially ran to the door, tripping as he tried to walk into his pants.

"Emma." He said, unable to keep the wondrous tone out of his voice as he opened the door. Despite all hell that was about to come, he was looking forward to seeing her. He had waited eleven years for this.

And she hadn't changed. Not really. Sure she wore her hair differently and had a fondness for leather over dresses, but in that one moment he could pretend that the last eleven years—and all the heartbreak that came with them—had been nothing but another of his nightmares. That they were still kids sneaking into hotel rooms to shower and dream of a future destiny wouldn't allow.

"Why are you here?" she hissed and there was no mistaking the fury in her voice.

"For you."

He had rehearsed this conversation so many times in his mind with a million different outcomes. Best case scenario, it would be like nothing ever happened. She would hear his side of the story and understand (unlikely, yes, but a guy can dream, right?). Worst case—

"God damn it," he hissed in pain, doubling over. Neal hadn't been surprised that she would swing at him, but to take such a cheap shot… "Did you have to go for the stitches?"

She ignored him and pushed her way into the room.

"You have a lot of nerve showing up here."

"You're the one standing in my bedroom." Neal said, falling back into that lighthearted teasing that had defined them before. All it took was one look at her face to know that perhaps that wasn't the wisest choice.

"Answer me on thing before I haul your ass over the line and personally hand your ass over to the feds," she spat, the tone turning each word into a razor cutting into his already sore and broken heart. As much as loved seeing her again, it was hell. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that she hated him as much as he loved her.

"Did you or did you not sell me out."

Neal closed his eyes. He had long ago promised himself that he wouldn't lie to her…especially about this… but he hadn't expected the truth to be so hard. The words caught in his throat and he had to fight to force them out. She deserved that at least.

"Yeah, I did but—."

She stepped forward, ready to hit him again and, thought Neal didn't blame her for that, he stepped back. He had to get her to listen before she stared beating him up or he may never get a chance to tell his side of this whole fucked up story.

"But there's more to it than that."

She narrowed her eyes but dropped her hand. As she crossed her arms, Neal caught a glint of silver at her neck. The keychain. She kept it. Could that (and the car) mean that there was a chance? The he wasn't wasting his time? That he wasn't just reshattering his heart for nothing?

"You have two minutes."

"I was on my way to meet the fence but I was being followed. At first I thought it was a cop but" he sighed and began pacing. This was where it got complicated. This was where it got unbelievable.

"It was August."

Her eyes widened and she blinked in surprise. Whatever she had expected, that sure as hell wasn't it. But how could she have expected it? He had never mentioned that world so how could she have connected him to it in even the smallest way? Besides, it wasn't like August would have told her. That man may be a lot of thing, but honest wasn't exactly one of them.

"August? As in typewriter carrying, annoying—"

"As in Pinocchio. Yes."

That caught her attention. Her eyes narrowed, suspicious.

"You're down to a minute and a half," she reminded him, leaning against the wall.

"He told me about the cures—about your destiny…"

All the times he had practiced it in his head it hadn't sounded so stupid. It hadn't sounded so flimsy.

"And so you turned me in…so I could fulfill my destiny." There was an incredulousness underneath her even tone that told Neal he was in trouble.

"Would you have been strong enough for all this otherwise? That life wasn't good for you." his reasoning sounded weak even to his ears that he wished he could take it all back, even before the words had finished leaving his lips. The words were August's—and he supposed possibly Rue's too—and they were the same ones he kept repeating to himself over and over. The same things he kept telling himself every time he thought of Emma over the last eleven years.

When august told him, about his father and about the curse, he instinctually knew they were true—that he was, again, paying the price for magic he never wanted nor asked for—but had still needed those flimsy reasons to convince himself. He knew he wasn't convincing her with the same logic; she was still all so new to the hazards of this world.

Emma looked as if her rage was going to boil over so he switched tactics fast.

"Without breaking the curse you would never have been with your parents and I know how much you wanted that." it was a reason that was his alone—one that he hadn't come from August's mouth. One that had given more weight to his earthshattering decision then anything the puppet had said.

"I wanted to be with you!" She shouted, her voice cracking.

Neal forced himself to keep looking at her. Despite the fact that she wasn't the only one hurting—that his pain mirrored hers, she deserved that much. She had been the victim here because, as little of a choice as Neal really had, he could have just said no. He could have told everyone else to go fuck themselves and lived happily ever after with Emma.

But that wasn't the right thing. It was just the coward's way out.

"I looked for you for two years in Tallahassee," she screamed, probably showing more of her emotions then she wished, "hoping that somehow it had all just been a big misunderstanding—that someone else had made that call ant that you would meet me there. But you were nowhere to be found."

The lost look on her face knocked all the air out of his lounges. It was one thing to know what he did would hurt her, but to see it plastered across her face now…

"You never loved me. You used me—"

"No Emma," he whispered. He could handle her hating him—her thinking almost anything of him—but not that. Those few months had been the one real thing in his entire life. To say he never loved her would be as false as to say he never breathed.

Emma stepped back and closed her eyes before taking a deep breath—like she was trying really hard not to either hit him or walk out (or both).

"Let's pretend for a second that that's not the biggest load of crap I've ever heard," she said as if forcing out every word.

Neal was glad for this little concession. Dealing in hypotheticals had to be a good thing: it meant she was at least entertaining the idea that he wasn't lying to her.

"How could you just believe him?" she spat, looking at Neal the same way her father had the other day in the jail—like he was something disgusting and squashable.

"What?"

"Some stranger you've never met shows up and tells you that your girlfriend has some sort of special destiny and you just believe it? Of all the things I have ever thought of you, Neal, completely stupid was never one of them."

He paused. How to tell her? What could he say to make her understand that it wasn't stupid to believe what he had known since he was barely any older then Henry? How could he tell her that this was all just another layer to a string of nightmares that never seemed to go away?

"Emma…" he said, unsure.

"You know what," she says, cutting him off, "it doesn't matter. You still left…and you didn't just leave me, you left Henry."

That was a low blow and she knew it…but it wasn't any less true; it wasn't any less crushing.

"I didn't know." He whispered, like it gave him any absolution.

"I gave up my son because of you," she hissed, seeing just how lethal a chink she had found in his armor and going for the kill shot "I had to sit there listening to a bunch of councilors—people who didn't even try to understand how much I wanted him—tell me how impossible it was for a teenaged delinquent with abandonment issues to take care of a kid. I had to listen as they told me that there was no way I would be his best chance… and the worst part was, I knew they were right. I was alone and hurting and you were god knows where doing god knows what."

Neal stared at her, shattered. Knowing these things were one thing but hearing them from her lips was another. Was it wrong of him to want to say that he had only did the best he could have with the situation he was given? Was it wrong of him to think that meant anything? Probably. Things still wound up fucked up.

Her eyes are wet as she stared at him.

"Fuck you, Cassidy," she said, her voice about as raw as his heart felt. With a violent tug and a soft ping she ripped off her necklace and threw it at him, the swan token landing face up on the ground at his feet. "And stay the hell away from MY son."

The door slammed behind her as she left and Neal stood there his mind reeling.

All he had ever tried to do was do right by her, and it seemed that the more he tried, the more he just wound up making everything worse. Even before they had met, he fucked up her life. After all wasn't it his fault that the curse existed in the first place? Wasn't it his fault she had been ripped from her family to begin with?

Maybe he was cursed to bring curses to others. A curse bringer. Maybe the best thing for everyone would be for him to just go back to his life… but then what life did he have to go back to? a life of waiting? But every moment for the last eleven years had been leading up to this one moment.

And Henry…

Neal didn't have the strength to leave again. Even if it was the best thing. Even if staying was the cowardly thing. or was it going that was cowardly? Running away from this fight?

He didn't know the answer any more. Maybe there had never been an answer.

Neal bent down to pick up the necklace, his thumb running over the design like a child with a worry stone. He kept telling himself that she had kept it—that maybe there was a chance after all.

"Is it true?"

Neal could hear Emma's accusation from the hallway and could only guess the rest as the opened the door. August stood there outside his door, keys in hand.

"Is what—" the puppet asked, confused at first as to what the princess was asking. He looked over and saw Neal standing in his doorway. Neal gave him a little nod—answering the unspoken question and August sighed, knowing what it was all about.

"Yeah."

Neal would be lying if he said he didn't get a certain degree of satisfaction from watching Emma hit August, but he wasn't sure August deserved it.

"Damn it Emma!" August said, dropping his keys as his hands went to his nose.

"I am sick of it! My entire life has been about this fucking curse—"

Neal couldn't tell if she was raging at August, him, or the entire situation. Probably a good mix of all three, but her blind anger wasn't helping him fix anything. It wasn't giving him any signposts on the road to redemption.

"I did what I had to do," August said, his voice both forceful and unapologetically as he defended himself, "You think you are the only one who's entire life has been taken over by this? You, me, him," he said, waving his hand in Neal's direction and Neal had to fight the desire to smack him for dancing so close to a secret that wasn't his to tell. "It's affected us all and the only way we were really going to get to live is if you broke it.

"You needed to be strong for this and that life—the one you had with him," August motioned to Neal, "robbing stores and doing nothing with your life, it wasn't helping you. Do you really think you would have been able to do what you had to if you had been able to live some normal apple-pie life?"

"You had no right!"

"Look, Emma," August said, looking her strait in the eye, "I'm sorry it had to be you. I'm sorry you got dragged into all this, but that doesn't change the fact that it had to be you. That it always had to be you. I'm sorry that i had to do what I did, but I'm not sorry I did it. This curse messed up my life too. I never asked for this. I never asked for the responsibility of looking after you—a task I largely failed at," he admitted before lowering his voice, his words laced with the most honesty Neal had ever heard from him. "I just wanted to get home to my father."

For a second Neal thought she was going to hit him again but she just stared at them—both of them—with a look so full of disgust and loathing it made Neal's blood run cold.

"Stay away from Henry. Both of you." She spat, walking away, leaving Neal emotionally numb. Of all the worst case scenarios he had imagined, the situation had been a million times worse in practice.

August shuffled in place, obviously uncomfortable.

"Listen Neal, about the money…"

Neal's head snapped over, his mind finishing the thought.

"Damn it, Booth! I asked you to do two things; two! Be there for her and give her the cash. Did you do either of them?" He shouted, as angry as he could be in the wake of the pure emotional exhaustion Emma had left him in.

"The money would have only—"

"Don't try and justify this." Neal snapped, "Do you realize what you have done?"

August had the decency to look down. He really did feel bad, but that wasn't going to help Neal get Emma back. That wasn't going to help him see Henry without Emma turning this into some kind of tug-of-war battle.

"I'm not good at temptation—I told you that. Sending it to her in jail would have just gotten her into more trouble and it wasn't like I could just leave it sitting in the car. I tried to hold on to it for when she got out, but..."

Neal didn't care about the money, not really. As much as it would have helped her, they had lived without it so long it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. The real problem went so much deeper than money.

"You don't get it, do you? Now she thinks that's why I did it—that it was all about the money—and she's too fucking pissed to listen."

That's it. He was done. He was taped out. His emotions were too drained for him to really be pissed at August and yet he was still too pissed to fight.

Neal just turned and walked down the hall, not even bothering to throw on a pair of shoes or a shirt over his wife-beater. Right now he needed a friend and the one (sort of) friend he had in this crazy ass town wasn't the best company if he didn't want to give Emma an excuse to arrest him for murder.

So there was only one place to go…