I'm so sorry about the wait guys, between finals and getting caught up in The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, I just lost track of time. But I passed everything and recent spoilers have renewed my SwanThief feels (hope on over to the Ouncepodcast forums and look for episode 14 spoilers if you want to—I would put them here, but not everyone likes them).
On a much less pleasant note, I would like to ask you all to keep the families of Newton in your thoughts and prayers. For my overseas readers who may not know, about a week ago a gunman walked into an elementary school and killed twenty six people most of them around the age of five or six.
In regards to that, there is one last thing I would like to ask you that may be a little unorthodox. When you talk about what happened, don't mention that monster's name; forget you even know it if you can. He does not deserve to be remembered. Vicky Soto, the teacher who hid her children from the gunman and saved their lives, losing hers in the process. Emilie, the oldest of three girls who was learning Portuguese with her father. The office worker who flipped the button on the intercom system, warning the rest of the school of the attack. The stranger who gave an enter escaping class a ride to the police station. And countless others. These are the people who deserve to be remembered. These are the heroes. Not that bastrard.
Neal stood in the small kitchen of David and Snow's apartment and tried not show just how completely out of place he felt. He knew he shouldn't be here—not now. This was the first Thanksgiving—hell, the first holiday in general—that Snow, David, Emma and Henry got to celebrate as a family. He had no business being here.
"Anything you need me to do?" he asked Snow, desperate to do something, anything, to keep his mind off the shear awkwardness of the moment.
She looks at him, skeptically and Neal could tell that Emma may have mentioned what happened the one time he had tried to cook for them (no matter what anyone says, those eggs had it coming).
"Can you cook?"
"I've survived this long." Neal said, dodging the question.
"From what I've heard it's mostly been on convenience store burritos."
He grinned. "That has been a staple."
Snow looked at him and Neal had to remind himself not to squirm under the woman's gaze. She was measuring him as precisely as she would the ingredients to a cake but she said nothing and just passed him the large mixing bowl of potatoes and told him to mash.
"I'm kind of surprised I was invited," He muttered, more talking aloud then to anyone in particular.
Snow cocked her head and looks at him, honestly confused, "Why wouldn't you be?"
"Considering how," he looked, struggling for the right word to describe the complicated mess his and Emma's relationship had become. He didn't know where he stood with her; she had stopped looking at him like she was just waiting for a chance to take another cheap shot but she wasn't welcoming him back into her life—Neal knew she didn't want him here but he wasn't entirely sure she wanted him to go either. He was living on a perpetual tight rope, unsure just what way he would fall when the wind blew. "strained things are between Emma and I…"
"Well," Snow said, placing biscuits on a pan, "hiding in your room isn't going to fix that."
"I wasn't—" Neal began but stopped when Snow looked up at him, a single brow arched. Apparently Emma's bullshit detector was hereditary. "Okay, maybe I was."
"Besides," she continued, placing the pan in the oven and ignoring Neal's interruption, "Isn't the holidays the time to fix those relationships?"
Neal stared at her, unsure how to reply as she walked over and joined her husband. Did he read that wrong, or was she actually encouraging him?
"What was that about?" Emma said, walking over.
"I'm not entirely sure." Neal muttered, "She's not what I expected."
Emma snorted. "What did you expect?"
He looked down and gave the potatoes a practically vigorous mash, even though they were only a little thicker then soup at that point.
"I thought she would go all mama bear on me given how your dad reacted."
Neal looked over and saw Emma's odd expression. On anyone else it would have looked like a strange cross between being freaked out and amused but he knew Emma well enough to read the truth behind it. As uncomfortable as she was discussing Snow and David in those terms, she would have liked to see David giving him a hard time.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Henry and Snow talking by the table. Henry's face was intent and Snow's brow was furrowed like the boy was trying (and mostly succeeding) to convince her about something she wasn't entirely on board with.
"Is it just me or does it seem like they're up to something?"
Emma snorted into her hot chocolate. "Henry's always up to something."
Neal grinned. He may not have known the kid long, but he knew that was spot on. The kid always had some sort of operation going on; he was constantly trying to help…even if it was by trickery and manipulation. And the best (or perhaps worst) part of it all, Henry was good at it; he had in innate sense of good that seemed to make him smarter than someone his age should be.
A nock at the door brought him out of his thoughts and he watched as Emma walked over to open it. He could tell by the confusion on her face that they hadn't expected anyone else…at least she hadn't. a tingling along Neal's spine told him that there was a bigger surprise on the other side of the door.
He turned to look at Henry, almost accusing, but the boy deliberately looked away. This mystery guest had something to do with his new operation—whatever it was—and Neal had a sinking suspicion he knew who it was.
"Ah…" Emma said in surprise a and Neal couldn't help but give a sigh of relief when he saw who it was…as far as he was concerned, it could have been a hell of a lot worse.
"Henry invited me," Regina explained, trying and failing to completely hide her discomfort. She didn't want to be here, that much was obvious, but Henry had as much sway over her as he did over the rest of them. This was what he was up to.
Emma was just as uncomfortable as the dark queen at the idea of her being invited to dinner but she said nothing. She just looked over at her mother for conformation and Snow looked away. She had known.
"I brought a pie," Regina said, holding up a covered dish as a sort of peace offering. Emma blinked once and stared at the older woman with one of her signature 'are-you-kidding-me' looks.
"It's not apple." Regina said, struggling to keep the venom out of her voice. Neal had to give her credit; she was trying and this whole thing couldn't be easy for her.
"It's not? Too bad." Neal said, walking over with one of his biggest smiles plaster across his face. the tension between the two women was suffocating think and he knew that if they let if fester, it wouldn't help this already awkward situation. The least Neal could do was try and loosen things up a bit.
Both women looked over at him like he was crazy.
"What? Her apples are good." He said, taking the dish out of Regina's hands. The older woman gave him a little smile of appreciation but Emma looked incredulous.
"You've had her apples?" she hissed, walking over to the counter with Neal to put the pie with the rest of the deserts. He just rolled his eyes and turned to look at Emma, a little surprised she hadn't already seen his thought process behind that.
"She's not stupid, Emma. If it was cursed, she would be the first suspect. Actually, by that logic, her baked goods would be some of the safest around, right?" Neal picked a sliver of crust off the pie and popped it into her mouth, all the while looking holding Emma's stare. "Umm. Pumpkin."
Emma just stared at him, unable to decide if he was crazy or not. Neal never got her answer to that unspoken question; she just turned and walked over to talk to Snow.
Neal tried not to let the hurt show. He had been trying to bridge the gap between them but he had no clue how to ease the tension between them. It had gotten better after Neal explained everything—she no longer looked like she want to punch in at every opportunity and she no longer tried to use Henry as leverage—but she was still distant. It was like she was hovering just beyond his reach, dancing somewhere along the line between indifference and caring.
He sighed and looked away; dwelling on this now wouldn't help him keep the mood light and the last thing they needed was more tension. Hell this whole damn get together needed someone to hit the release valve.
"Hey kid," he said, sitting down on the couch next to Henry.
"Hey Neal."
He hadn't been able to hang out with Henry as much as he would have liked to since coming to Storybrooke. At first he had just been another interesting stranger to the boy, a stranger his grandfather had been careful to keep as far away as possible from the boy. After Emma came home, she had made it clear that she didn't want Neal in Henry's life at all…that he and given up that right when he had sold her out. Things had gotten better after his talk with Emma, but that had only been a few days ago.
Neal would have liked nothing more than to sit here with the kid and have some male bonding time, but there was something else that needed to be done. Something Henry may not have noticed.
"Maybe you should go hang out with your mom for a bit. She looks lonely."
Henry looked over to where Emma was talking to David and MM and was confused. That didn't look like she was lonely.
Neal tipped his head in the other direction to where Regina was standing back, lingering awkwardly in the corner and Henry got it.
"Don't invite her here just to make her feel like an outsider, oaky?" Neal knew that wasn't what Henry had been trying to do, the kid wasn't like that, but he still needed to understand the other side of this. Being here wasn't easy for Regina and Henry needed to understand why.
"What do you mean?"
"She's here for you—she doesn't even like anyone else here—and it's not fair if you ask her to be here if you're just going to taunt her with how happy you are without her…with your new family."
Henry's eyes furrowed. "That's not what I'm doing."
"Not on purpose and I'm sure she knows that." Neal said, "but that doesn't mean it can't feel that way to her."
Henry thought on it for a moment and then looked over to Regina. She gave him a smile and he turned back to face Neal. "You're right."
Henry got up and walked over to his mother. Half way there he stopped, turned around and gave Neal a big smile before continuing on. There was more behind that smile but Neal couldn't even begin to guess at what…he didn't know Henry well enough to second guess what he was up to.
"That was kind of you." David said from behind him, handing Neal a beer.
Neal shrugged and took a drink. "The kid's ten. As smart and perceptive as he is, there's bound to be a few things he just doesn't think of, besides, anyone can see she's trying and that means a lot."
David was silent and Neal knew the prince could sense the deeper meaning in his words—that as much as he wanted to deny it, he wasn't just talking about Henry and Regina. When Neal had told Emma his whole horrible life story that night, he knew there was no way to keep it from getting out, the was too small and the drama too big to keep the lid tight on that volatile mixture.
He hadn't really expected Emma to keep his secrets—he had hurt her badly and was handing her the keys to the closet. She could have let all his skeletons come pouring out for the world to see lying there naked and exposed on the carpet.
But she didn't. She had kept the story to the barest minimum. All she had told those who asked was that Rumple had gotten his powers to keep Neal from being killed in the Ogre wars and the family had been separated due to a mix up with a portal. Besides the fact that Neal had had no idea about the curse until almost twenty years after it was enacted, she told them nothing.
"Gold? What are you doing here?" Emma said and Neal's head snapped around, a mixture of surprise and dread turning his insides into ice.
He couldn't be here. Not now. the last thing Emma and her family needed right now was a throw down fight in the middle of their first holiday dinner and that's not something Neal could promise, not when his feelings were still so mixed towards his father and not when all the pain he had spent decades burring had so newly come exploding to the surface like a volcanic explosion, leaving those wounds seared into him.
They hadn't even begun to heal enough for him to be ready to deal with this.
"Henry invited us." Belle said, politely.
Neal closed his eyes. Of course. That sounded like the kid but that didn't make anything any easier for him. Things between him and his father were bound to come to another boil eventually, but that didn't mean Neal wanted Henry anywhere near ground zero when that happened.
Neal looked over to David, silently asking if he had known about this and the other man looked down, almost like it was in guilt. He had known. Snow probably had too, in fact, judging by expressions, only Emma and Regina had been in the dark about this.
A brief thought flashed across his mind like lightning. Was this some sort of punishment? Where they getting some sort of twisted revenge for what happened between him and Emma all those years ago? Was that why they had been so nice to him, to give him a false sense of security? But if that was the case, then why wasn't Emma in on it? Didn't she have the most reason to want retribution?
Unless it had never been about retribution.
Neal sat his beer down on the coffee table and walked over to where Henry was talking to Regina, careful not to even look over his shoulder at the man he had both never wanted to see again and secretly prayed every day to be reunited with.
"Excuse me," he said, interrupting them, "do you mind if I talk to Henry for just one moment?"
"By all means," Regina said, guessing what it was about. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that she was about as pleased with Gold's presence here as he was but Neal had enough experience reading people to know she wasn't pleased that Gold was there either.
He grabbed Henry's arm and pulled him over to a corner where they could have at least some semblance of privacy before kneeling down until he was at eye level with the boy. "Henry, what are you doing? Why would you…?"
Henry looked down and Neal couldn't tell if the kid was really ashamed of his actions or if he was just working some angle.
"I've read the stories. I know what happens to bad guys when good always wins. The either become good or they die in the fight…I know you don't want that. I don't know what I would do if something happened to my mom.
"I just thought that if my mom could try to be better for me, then maybe Mr. Gold would try for you," he said looking up at Neal, "besides, what's the point of having our family all together if no one can stand each other?"
The last part was almost a lost little whisper and, con or not, all the anger melted from Neal's face. The kid was only trying to do what he thought was best for everyone, even if he was being as manipulative as Gold in doing it.
"Oh Henry…"
"Are you mad?" Henry whispered and in that moment, Neal could tell that the kid was just as anxious about this as he was. Henry was as new to having a father as Neal was to being one and they both wanted this to work—they were both terrified of making a wrong move.
Neal put both hands just below Henry's shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze.
"No," he sighed, "I'm not mad; I just wish you would have given me a warning."
"But then you would have tried to stop me." Henry said as if it were the most obvious thing. Neal snorted. He couldn't exactly argue with that logic, now could he?
Neal just shook his head as Henry walked over to talk to Gold and Belle. His first thoughts on meeting the kid echoed in his ears. A handful was right.
Neal grabbed his beer off the coffee table and sat at the bar near the adults he could actually stand. It looked like his day just turned into the holiday from hell.
"I can't tell if the kid's delusional or smarter then all of us," he muttered to no one in particular.
Emma snorted from the seat next to him. "I've been wondering that myself."
David chuckled over the green bean casserole and stepped aside so that his wife could get to the oven.
Neal tipped the neck of the bottle of the other man's direction, "You don't happen to have anything stronger than this?"
He was going to need it. Oh god was he going to need it.
David nodded, taking an unopened bottle of whisky and a few glasses off the shelf, and sat them on the bar. "I explained the situation to Whale and was able to get some prescription strength ibuprofen, too."
Neal didn't' bother to hide his surprise. Nolan didn't seem like the kind of person to use mends even if they were just supped up Tylenol; after all wasn't he supposed to be related to the sheriff? If he was guaranteed to get away with it, he might as well have sprung for the good stuff like Xanax or something.
Snow looked over at her husband, appalled. "Is this what our first holiday as a family been reduced to? Something we need alcohol and drugs to get through?"
"It would appear that way." Regina muttered and David looked over at her, trying to decide if there was something more to the comment, if she was suitably mocking them or just making a statement. Whichever he decided it was, Nolan didn't comment. It wasn't worth a fight. Not when the group was already so volatile.
"Welcome to modern America." Emma said, pouring everyone a generous glass of whisky.
Neal could feel Gold's eyes searing into the skin of his back, but he didn't acknowledge him. He was going to do his damnedest to keep this tension from escalating into another fight. Emma—and Henry—deserved better.
"I have a question." Henry's voice came drifting over from where he was standing, talking to Gold and Belle. "If Mr. Gold is Neal's dad and you're dating him, does that mean I call you Grandma?"
Neal started coughing and he wasn't the only one. Whisky burned as it dribbled out his nose and Neal felt around desperately for a dishtowel or something to clean up the mess.
"Er…let's stick with Belle for now." Belle answered.
"Oaky, Dinner." Snow said as she pulled the turkey out the oven and Neal closed his eyes. At least he wasn't the only one trying to prevent this from going up in smoke…this was a fire he was sure he couldn't handle on his own.
Neal slammed back the rest of his drink back, knowing he would desperately need it if the night continued this way, before picking up a covered dish and walking over to the table.
"Bae," Gold began, reaching out to touch him.
"Don't," Neal said cutting the old man off. Gold's hand fell and a small, irrational part of him felt guilty for hurting him. It would be so much easier if he could just hate the old man completely—if he didn't remember the man Gold used to be. But even though Neal remembered—even though he couldn't forget the things Gold had done—he still wanted his papa back. He had wanted that for a long time.
"Just don't," he whispered, defeated. Neal saw the pained look in Gold's eyes and it cut him to the core, but that didn't change anything. Gold took the hint; his didn't try and hide how much this hurt, but he didn't say anything.
If before dinner was painfully awkward, the dinner itself was agonizingly so. No one really said a word. There had been a few feeble attempts to start a conversation (mostly made by Henry or Belle) but nothing had worked. When half the table had attempted to kill the other half at some point in time, small talk kind of became difficult.
Tensions were bad and Neal could tell that Henry noticed. The way the kid was watching them, trying desperately to keep things from flat lining. For the millionth time that night, Neal felt bad. Henry was trying so hard to fix things—to make them right—and Neal couldn't even bring himself to try. But it wasn't out of some arrogant desire to hurt Gold; it was a apprehension born out of years of disappointment and the searing knowledge that he was the only one trying. If Gold had put more of an effort into fixing things, rather than wondering just why things weren't the pure, unblemished gems they used to be…
Henry was passing notes under the table to Belle. Neal never would have noticed if Belle had had a better poker face, but she was hardly discrete as she looked down to read them. Everyone at the table noticed as she looked at Henry, undecided about whatever she wanted to go along with whatever he was asking.
"Rumple?" she said, making up her mind as she turned to face her boyfriend.
"Yes, Belle dear?"
What happened next surprised everyone, Gold most of all. She picked up the her plate of pie and planted it right between his eyes. There was a moment of comical silence as the pumpkin filling and whipped cream slid down his face.
Neal couldn't tell just how many amongst them Henry had recruited to his little plot and how many of them just picked up on it on their own. Either way, within the span of a few seconds a full blown food fight was underway.
It didn't last long but after every bit of food was plastered anywhere but on a piece of china, Neal started laughing. He didn't know why, really. It was more a release of tension then anything, but it was contagious and everyone was laughing until it got so bad many had to grip their sides and Neal even fell out of his seat.
Neal thought he was going to die when Gold whipped a bit of pie off his cheek and tasted it.
"Compliments to the chef," he said nodding to Snow, completely unaware that it had actually been Regina to make that confection.
Neal looked at Henry, unsurprised at the knowing little smirk spreading across his face. Neal took it back, he took it all back. The kid just might be right; maybe…just maybe…there was a tiny shred of hope that underneath this shit heap lies some semblance of a family buried beneath.