So sorry this took so long. Darth Real Life is a bitch of a sith to slay (and sims3 is a gigantic black hole that eats free time).
I do have good news, though. Originally there was only like three more chapters left before I completely ran out of things to write, but something mentioned on a podcast over last week's episode gave my muse a bit more to chew over, so I do have another arc planed.
Enjoy.
Neal sat on the hood of the bug and leaned back against the windshield, looking up at the stars. He probably could have gotten away with putting this conversation off until tomorrow. With all that had happened today—Henry being kidnaped and rescued and the entire confrontation with Gold—Emma would have understood. Hell, she was almost just as emotionally worn out as he was, but the thing was, he just wanted it all over with. This had been poising his life for far too long.
"So you want to hear my story?"
"That was kind of the deal." Emma said, sliding onto the hood beside him and handing him a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. He looked at it and smiled.
"It was a dark and stormy night…"
"Neal." She said, telling him to cut the bullshit. Was it wrong of him to try and lighten the mood? To try and make this all less painful for him?
"What? That's how horror stories usually start around here, right?" He said, twisting off the cap.
She looked at him, not really buying his charm and he sighed.
"Where to start?" he muttered to the stars, taking a sizeable swig from the bottle. There was just so much to tell and even now there were parts of it that didn't make much since to him.
"For as long as I could remember it had just been me and him and that was alright. I always knew I was the most important thing in his life—I never questioned it. And then…" he hesitated, losing the words.
Taking a different approach he turned to her and looked into her eyes, begging her to understand. "The first thing you have to understand, Emma, is that the Gold you know is nothing like what he used to be.
Neal needed her to realize that the monster in Henry's book and the jackass she knew now…neither of them were really his papa. And that having so many good memories made it all the worse. At least if he had been a bastard from the beginning, Neal would have had nothing to compare him to.
"People would make fun of him behind his back and to his face—called him a coward. For the most part, adults wouldn't do that in front of me, but children can be cruel. I heard what the other kids called him and knew they had heard it from their own parents. I never asked why, because honestly it never mattered. He was my papa and I saw the truth underneath it all—I knew that he could be brave if he only let himself—but I guess he had heard himself called that so much that even he believed it."
The last words came out as a whisper and Neal looked back at the stars. He could still picture his papa through the eyes of a boy—the flawed yet somehow perfect man he had wanted to be just like in a lot of ways—the man he was sure Gold could still be.
"Through all this I did have one friend: Morraine. Our birthdays were within the same week so we saw ourselves as special friends. We would play together all the time…and she was the only one of the kids in the village who never said one bad thing about my papa."
"Sounds like someone had a crush." Emma muttered as she elbowed him playfully.
"Er…" he muttered, wondering if Emma was talking about him or Morraine.
"Don't lie." She teased and in that moment he could see what she was trying to do. She was trying as desperately as he was to keep it as light as possible—to help him hold onto his saintly and sobriety. Without that he would have been a lot deeper into the bottle then he already was.
"Okay maybe a little…Now can I finish the story?"
She nodded and turned her own eyes to the stars as if she were trying to picture his words played across the dark canvas like a movie screen. A part of him wanted to stop now—to keep her from the same things that had fueled his nightmares for what felt like eternity…but deep down he knew she could handle it. She always had been stronger than he.
He took another drink, steeling himself as the story edged closer and closer to the darkness.
"The world we lived in was like the dark ages—feudalism and all that crap. At the same time there was a war going on. I don't know what it was about…not really. All I knew was that the sky was always red with blood and the village empty of anyone old enough to fight the Ogres.
"On Morraine's fourteenth birthday, some knights came into our village and dragged her out. The draft age had been lowered. Again. Her parents tried to stop them but there was nothing they could do. The nights had the Dark One under their control."
"The what?"
Of course she wouldn't have heard of it. That would make this all too easy.
"A dark wizard." It was an oversimplification but it was still the truth and honestly he wouldn't know how to describe it otherwise. A demon? Darkness incarnate? Everything he could think of sounded too much like something an overly superstitious boy from the dark ages would say, and none of them were all that close of an answer anyways.
"Nonetheless, it scared the hell out of me—my birthday was just a few days away—but it scared my dad more. He packed us up that night."
"Wait a minute. They wanted fourteen year olds to fight a war…against ogres?" For the first time during his story she was appropriately shocked and Neal couldn't help but wonder if she had any first hand experience with the beasts.
Neal shrugged. What else could he say?
"Neal," she whispered, "that's not much older then—"
"Henry. I know." He said, finishing her thought with a swig. He had never blamed his father for why he became the dark one, just what he became after. Now that Neal had Henry to think about, it just added another layer to the horror. Another corner of his mind for the nightmares to hide in. another form for his demons to take.
"We didn't get far though," he said, bringing the conversation back to the horrors of the past rather than the horrors of a possibility that would never happen. "The knights passed us on the road and we knew we couldn't run."
He swallowed back a bunch of bitter memories before continuing. Neal trusted Emma with everything he was, but there were somethings he couldn't say aloud. She didn't need to hear the details of how his papa had been humiliated there. "So we went home."
"On the way back, we were approached by a strange beggar who saw the whole thing and promised he could help."
"Take it that didn't work out so well." She muttered humorously, reacting to his bitter little laugh.
"You have no idea."
After another sip of liquid courage, he continued.
"I didn't like the idea of running. I mean I didn't want to fight, but if that's what I had to do… anyways, as I slept, the beggar told my dad a story. He told him that there was a way to control the Dark One—that that was the only reason the creature was working for the Duke to begin with.
"When I woke up the beggar was gone and my dad had this crazy ass plan. We were going to break into the Duke's castle and take the ability to control the Dark One from him."
"How would you take that?" Emma asked and Neal knew she was confused. He had been vauge for a reason.
"Please don't ask me that," he said looking at her, his eyes begging her not to push it.
"That bad, huh?"
"No. It's just as much as I hate him, I don't want to tell anyone how to kill him." It was a blunt and brutal statement, but that didn't make it any less true.
"Even me?" Emma teased, trying once again to lighten the mood.
He looked at her and couldn't help but wonder if it was pure emotion that laced his voice or if it was the whisky doing the talking. Probably both. "No Emma, I'd tell you if you asked. I'm just asking you not to ask."
She looked back at him, measuring, and he couldn't help but wonder if he had somehow gone too far. If he had been too honest.
"So what was this plan?" She was trying to change the subject and Neal wasn't yet drunk enough to miss that. He looked down at the bottle in his hands, debating if maybe it was time to put the cap on, before he decided not to. The worst part of the story was yet to come.
"We wrapped some torches in wool and dipped them in lanolin—" he stopped, realizing that Emma wouldn't know what that was. "It's made from sheep and it's highly—"
"Flammable." She finished for him and it was his turn to look confused. "Yeah, I know."
"Apparently your little adventure wasn't the last time he pulled that one."
He almost asked for more details but she just motioned for him to continue and he knew she was right. That was a story for later.
"That night he ran into the castle as it burned and I did what he told me—I went home and waited." He took a drink, ignoring the fact that the bottle was already half gone. It didn't matter. This was where he needed it most. This is where the story really started to get difficult. "I didn't sleep. I couldn't. I just sat there waiting, thinking."
He looked over to her, watching for a sign that she understood, but her face was still turned towards the stars and he couldn't get a read on her.
"I knew it would end badly…I knew that the moment he told me what he was going to do but I said nothing because in that one moment I was the proudest of him that I could ever be. It was the one time he let himself be the courageous man I knew he could be. It was the one time he didn't let the villagers words define him.
"It doesn't change the fact that it would have been better if I had just fought."
Her head whipped around in disbelief, probably imagining a child—one resembling Henry a bit too much for comfort—going against those creatures. But didn't she get it? Didn't she understand? If he had fought—died or not—his father would not have become the Dark One and there would have been no curse. She would have grown up as deserved: a princess in a castle surrounded by all the love and adoration she had been so lacking in this world.
"Around sunup I heard a noise at the door, I got up to meet him, to find out how it all went, but it wasn't him. It was the knights. In all the excitement I had kind of forgotten it was my birthday.
"I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared but the thing is…in a way I was relieved too. If dad failed then maybe everything wouldn't go to shit. They dragged me out and I didn't really fight it.
"I knew something went wrong when I saw him standing there—or maybe something had gone right. I don't know. He killed the knights and he enjoyed it.
"The sad thing is that I could understand it. They had been dicks and they had been willing to hurt me. I may have done the same had it been Henry…but he didn't have to humiliate them first. I could see it in his eyes; something Dark had taken root and was hollowing him out from the inside. He wasn't my papa anymore and I was afraid of him." The last part was whispered like a dirty confession and in a way it was.
Emma looked at him, and Neal could tell she was really trying to understand, but something just wasn't clicking for her.
"I know Gold is an ass, but he's that horrifying."
"No Emma," he said, his eyes burrowing into hers, willing her to comprehend horrors she had never seen. It was a tall order, but if she didn't then she would never truly know how he could just give her up. If she never knew then she could never forgive and he wasn't going to let Rumplestiltskin take her from him. Not again. "He wasn't like Gold. He was so much worse…he wasn't even human."
She wasn't getting it; it was time to take a different direction. "Have you read Henry's book?"
She looks down and muttered "skimmed it a bit."
"Well take a good look next time. Almost thirty years without magic has done a lot to help him."
"O—kay" she said, drawing out the word. She didn't really understand…but Neal kind of figured it was the kind of thing you had to see to believe so he let it go. That wasn't the most important part anyways.
"The next two months were hell. I was terrified of him but he went on like nothing had changed. Now that he could conjure anything we wanted he thought things were better, but I would have traded it all in a heartbeat. He wasn't my papa anymore but I had to keep reminding myself to always call him that. I was terrified of what would happen if I slipped.
"He didn't sleep anymore. He just sat there spinning thread on his wheel like he always did but that didn't stop the nightmares, it only made them worse. He never noticed. I was too terrified to tremble even in my sleep. I was living in a horror movie…the cheap made-for-TV kind where someone's possessed or something and the ones who notice can't say anything because nobody else would believe them…"
"The nightmares never really went away."
Her head snapped over, skeptical, although he couldn't tell if it was because she had trouble buying his truths or because she was unsure she liked the direction this was going. "But you never had nightmares."
"I never had nightmares with you, Emma. With you I always felt safe."
"Don't talk like that," she muttered, grabbing the bottle from his hand and taking a swig and he couldn't help but be grateful that she didn't comment on how much was gone.
"Like what?" he asked, feigning innocence.
"I'm still pissed at you," she reminded him but even mostly drunk, he could tell he was making progress.
"Fine," he snorted. "Nightmares weren't really an issue on our road trip. Better?"
She grunts.
"So how did you get here?" she asked changing the subject and he knew she wasn't talking about Maine.
He gave an ironic little smile. "I made a deal with him. If I could find a way to get rid of his powers—a way that wouldn't hurt me or kill him—then he would do it.
"We even shook on it." he said sarcastically as if that guaranteed the outcome.
"It didn't take me long. Morraine was one of the few people who weren't afraid to talk to me. She told me on old story she had heard during her short time on the front lines—a story about something more powerful than what ever had its hooks in my father. Reul Gorum. The Blue Fairy.
"She said that she couldn't fix him, but she could send us to a place where whatever the hell was wrong with him would be gone: a land without magic.
"I took the bean and went straight home so dad could hold up his end of the bargain. When I threw it down, a horrible vortex appeared and I was afraid of what was on the other side, but I was more frightened of staying—of being around my father when he was like that.
"The portal frightened him a lot more, apparently because as it was sucking us in he grabbed my hand and dug his blade into the ground. And in that moment I knew he wasn't going to come. He wasn't going to leave behind the power he had never had before."
His voice cracked and he couldn't keep his eyes form watering. Neal had thought he put this all behind him—that it was all ancient history—but it came out rawer then he expected. He sounded like a lost little boy, abandoned and alone…but he wasn't that little boy any more. Not really.
"I don't know if my hand slipped or if he let me go." It hurt to say and it hurt even more not to know, but maybe just saying the words could begin to heal the wounds. "But when I came through I was alone."
Emma looked at him with sympathy and part of him wanted to jerk the bottle back. He knew Emma well enough to know she never really pitied anyone, but his skin crawled all the same. Neal blew into his palms and rubbed them together, looking over at Emma with his most charming smile. She smiled a little back and it wasn't as genuine as Neal would have liked, but anything was better than some invisible (and possibly nonexistent) pity.
"So there I was in a strange world looking like I had escaped from a renaissance fair. Everyone thought I was crazy and after a while I stopped talking…didn't sleep much either. I just stayed up watching TV, trying to learn the rules of this world.
"I was in and out of a shrink's office so much, I knew them better than I knew the lady that ran the home... not that she liked me much anyways. Honestly, I think she thought I was a sociopath in the making or something. She would always watch me and was sure to keep me from all cooking utensils and most sports equipment."
Emma's lips twitched as she put the bottle to her lips and he continued.
"I would have continued like that but about a year after getting here, I got the best piece of advice I had ever heard. It was picture day and the photographer was heckling me about not smiling during the shot. I didn't get it. What did I have to smile about? But the kid beside me—he was living in the same home as I was—told me the truth: that no one here cares how you feel. It's all about how you look. If I would just give them what they wanted they would shut the hell up and leave me alone.
"So I did. I gave them my most dazzling smile and they left me alone. It didn't take me long to realize that it didn't just apply to school pictures. Back at the home I did what they expected—I said what they wanted to hear—and they stopped thinking I was crazy. They started thinking that whatever treatments they were trying worked.
"I may have had the adults fooled, but the kids at school were another matter entirely. They still thought of me as the freak and kids can be cruel. I was sixteen when I took off. Starting over alone wasn't as scary when you've already done it once.
"I took odd jobs to get by and even picked up a few skills that are generally frowned upon, but other than that, I did okay for myself…I put my old life behind me and never looked back.
"And then you came along and for the first time ever I started to feel healed. We were both two fucked up kids alone in the world…but we weren't alone; we had each other. For the first time I thought that maybe coming here was worth more than just getting away from my dad—for finding you.
"I guess the joke was on me."
Oh god was the joke on him. Of all the people he could fall in love with… she had to be one of the only other people on earth from the enchanted forest. She had to be the only person who could clean up the mess he left by running. It was horribly ironic and poetic in a morbid kind of way.
Neal eyed the bottle in her hands and considered asking for it back but thought better of it. Instead he just kept talking, finally coming to the one truth that mattered. The one truth he needed her to know more than anything.
"I really had been planning to come back with the money—for us to go to Tallahassee. But when August told me everything, about my father and about the curse, what else was I supposed to do? I didn't want to let you go but how could I not? This was all my fault, if I had just stayed, none of this would have happened."
"No kid should live in fear like that." She said, looking over at him with a concern he had feared disappeared like mist the moment he had turned her in, and he knew that deep down, underneath all the pain, all the anger, she still loved him as much as he loved her.
But that didn't necessarily mean they were going to get their happily ever after. Here love wasn't the most powerful thing…pain and loneliness was. Here people spent their entire lives looking for something profound and never getting it because when they do find it, they're too damaged to see it.
Maybe Storybrooke was enough like the other world to give him a chance, but Emma was raised in this one. She was just as damaged and had just as many trust issues as the rest of them.
And he had done that to her.
"And no one should live cursed like this." He waved his hand in the general direction of the town and her mouth pressed. She knew he was right.
The spent a long moment just watching the stars in silence and, if Neal closed his eyes and tried real hard, it was almost like he was back in the past. That none of this crazy shit had ever happened and they were just two kids against the world.
"You know," she said, taking a drink and looking over at him, "without the curse we never would have found each other and Henry would never have been born."
It was a valid excuse, but they both knew it didn't outweigh the big picture. What did that say about them? That as horrible as it all was, neither of them would trade Henry…not even for a whole town full of people? Did it make them selfish or just human?
He stared back at her, his eyes boring into hers and came to a single conclusion. Sometimes the big picture didn't matter. Sometimes it wasn't about what was best for everyone. But that didn't make the truth any easier to live with.
"And that," he said, moving his face in closer, "is what makes it all so fucked up."
Given the state of things between them, he probably shouldn't have done it. Maybe—alright, a little more then maybe—it was the alcohol or maybe it was just the fact that they were together, here, now after all these years.
One hand held the back of her head as they kissed. He was lost in the touch and taste of her—things that had long ago been seared into his very soul and yet his memory was nothing but a pale and lifeless comparison of the real thing.
She didn't pull away, just as lost in the moment as he was, and for seven seconds all was right with the world. For seven glorious seconds, there was no curse, no nightmares, and no pain. There was just him and her and that was all they needed in their own little world.
Neal hoped this moment could go on for eternity.
She pulled back, her face pained as if she had finally come to her senses. As if she knew it was a bad idea, and that single expression shattered him more than her words. "Neal, no."
He sighed, and rested his forehead against hers, accepting the fact that that was probably all he was ever going to get. That by doing the right thing he irrevocably damaged the one thing he valued most in both worlds and this was his penance. To always be near—to look but not touch. Hell.
He looked back at the stars and was careful to keep his face causal. Like nothing had ever happened.
"So what about you?" he asked.
"What about me?"
"What happened after…" he couldn't finish. He didn't have to.
She looked down the neck of the bottle before taking a swig.
"You don't want to hear that."
"Yes Emma, I do," he said looking at her, "I may wish to god it was never like that, but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear it."
"Well," she began and he closed his eyes and rested his back against the windshield as seh told him of giving up Henry, getting out of jail, the string of bad relationships, becoming a bounty hunter. It all killed him to hear. To know it was all his fault, but he was glad she told him.
Most wouldn't notice it, be Neal knew her far too well to miss the way her tone lightened up when she got to Henry—how he had found her and drug her to Storybrooke by her heartstrings…
"So let me get this straight," Neal said with a little bit of a smile, "the kid stole a credit card, found you, hopped a bus, and tricked you into staying by leaving his book in your car."
She nodded.
"He so played you." he laughed, like he would have been any different. He had known the kid a week and already knew that if Henry tried any of that, Neal would probably fall for it…or at least let him get away with it. "The slick bastard." It wasn't an insult.
"You surprised?"
He smiled and shook his head.
"No. Not at all."
He sighed. "So not that you've heard everything do you want me to leave?"
Neal was dreading the answer. He had told her he would go and, as much as his insides churned at the thought, he would keep his word.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as if she was seeing through a layer of bullshit Neal didn't know he was spreading. "That wouldn't be fair to Henry. He's already grown attached."
Neal laughed. "Emma, I know you like me. There's no need to be hostile about it.
Emma shook her head but said nothing.
"Alright, time to get back." She said, looking at her phone. As she slid off the hood of the car, she wobbled and looked at the almost empty bottle.
"I am so not driving."
"Pass me the keys." Neal offered and Emma scoffed.
"You had more than I did."
"And you are the sheriff." He reminded her teasingly, "or is your dad the sheriff? You could call him and ask for a ride."
She gave him an umamused look and drunk or not, he could still read the thoughts behind her words. Just because she had parents now, doesn't mean she was going to accept being treated like a teenager.
"Or we could sleep it off in the car," he suggests.
"Neal." Emma warned. During their road trip they had a very specific way to keep warm on cold nights when they couldn't keep the heater running all night. He actually hadn't been implying anything. it had been her mind that had gone into the gutter, not his.
"I said sleep." He reminded her.
Emma nodded and pulled a small blanket off the floorboards of the back seat. Neal wasn't surprised she kept one there. Even after all these years there were just some habits that died harder than others and when you spent as much time living out of your car as they had…
She curled up with the blanket in the driver's seat, leaving Neal with just his jacket. He gave a sad little smile, taking that action as a hint that she was still mad. Emma looked at him and reached back, feeling for something in the backseat and hands a second blanket to him.
He smiles at her but she just turned on her side until she's facing the window.
"You know, Em, it killed me to do what I did but as horrible as it is, I wouldn't change my choice." The liquor was making him more truthful then he ever thought he would be, but maybe that wasn't a bad thing because the truth was, as much as he wished he would have done everything different, as much as he hated what he had to do, he knew that if he was put in that exact situation again, nothing would change. "That's just what good people do. They don't leave a whole town to rot in hell. I would have given anything, though, for it not to be you that got hurt."
He sighed as he spread the cover around himself.
"I know it will probably never be what it was and I know I don't deserve a second chance, but I do hope you'll at least forgive me." He looked over, memorizing every detail of her silhouette.
"I do love you. Always. "
Emma gave no indication that she had heard his confession. She might have already passed out... or maybe she was just pretending.