Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

PART II

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

NO WAY HOME

The funeral service was held at the Convent's chapel that still had scorch marks on the walls from the battle with Pan's Shadow. It was attended by the surviving Merry Men and a few of the other Forest Dwellers who'd realized this was an excuse to get out of the rain for a few hours.

Little John gave a moving eulogy that was, like many eulogies, fifty percent bullshit to make the dead look better than they really were. Roland appeared mostly apathetic at the proceedings, probably because the large man had been more of a father figure in his life than his father, always tasked with babysitting him while Robin carried out daring thefts... or went on dates with Regina. With support from Archie after assessing the situation and some financial support from Regina, Little John would end up adopting the boy.

Everyone had agreed it was for the best.

Regina had spoken about the unknowable nature of soulmates and true love, wondering if what they had been told, lead to believe through ages by the fairies was bullshit that had lead to a lot of broken families and funerals.

That was when Mother Superior had kicked them all out, they'd put Robin's coffin the ground, and then all trudged to Granny's for the usual lackluster reception. Well, not everyone.

With a sigh, Emma tugged her knit beanie over her hair after finding Neal sitting on a damp piece of driftwood in the spot where she'd gone to think that day she stood him up for coffee. He didn't look up when she approached, but somehow knew it was her.

"When I think about it," he began, "I dunno which is worse. That you actually believed after being murdered and never getting to say good-bye to my son or my mother that I had no unfinished business, that you lied about the effort you would have made to save me when you had already once passed up on a chance with some dead hero bullshit, that you asked me to help you split your heart for the dead hero bullshit of a man who destroyed my family as if that wouldn't be a fucking insult to my feelings for you and the actual lack of effort you made to save me, or that you didn't even know that wasn't me at all you were asking... but then the first three kind of explain the last, don't they?"

Emma had to take a shaky breath, absorbing the accusations again that she'd been facing for months now in a vicious cycle she didn't seem able to escape... because none of the explanations or justifications she gave ever seem to explain it all without her just sounding like a selfish asshole.

"I don't know what to say, Neal," she finally spoke as she sat down beside him. "I can say I'm sorry a million times. I can say I made a lot of stupid choices because I was afraid, but it obviously won't make a difference."

Neal let out a breath, then asked, "Did it ever occur to you that when Robin died before, it was for you to be with Hook? That a man who was raped by my murderer because you didn't have the balls or sense of justice to do anything about Zelena died, never got to see his son grow up just like me, so you could save a rapist you met under a pile of hundreds of people whose murders he was an accomplice to? Who handed me to a child abuser for centuries out of spite? Who tried to kill your entire family out of spite?"

Emma hung her head miserably. "I've screwed up a lot, I know. I get that how I hurt you is different from how you hurt me. You thought you were helping me, you believed I'd get that money and maybe if I had I could have raised Henry - and I was only thinking about myself, and I hurt our son with my selfishness. I don't expect you to ever forgive me, Neal. It meant a lot that you said you wanted to, one day, but... I'm guessing that's probably an unrealistic hope, isn't it? You don't trust me. Not in that way."

When Neal didn't say anything, Emma sniffed and asked, "Won't you even look at me? I know you weren't pretending to sleep at the funeral during my eulogy just to spite Robin."

He shrugged and answered, "Feels like if I do, Emma, I'll want to forgive you. Or I'll want to never see you again."

She winced. "Oh..."

"Thing is, I'm not sure which is worse, because I do love you, just... You're right, I guess, that I don't trust you with my heart, with my happy ending. I want to, but you changed, you're not the woman I did trust once, and every time you do something that reminds of that fact, it's like I'm in love with a ghost. Or worse. My own delusion. That maybe I just made up some perfect version of you in my head, in my memories, after I left, to make myself believe it was worth it, that you really deserved all the happiness in the world. I don't know anymore..."

Neal shrugged again and concluded, "Maybe my leaving freed you up to be who you really are. Maybe you wanted me to stay dead because then you wouldn't feel obligated to put on an act for my benefit."

"It wasn't an act," Emma argued. "I was being honest then, Neal. That was really me. We've all got some flaws, some darkness - or maybe a spell means I didn't have my own, only what I associated with - but I chose to associate with you, and you were good and you made me stay good. It was my fault that after you died I chose to fill that void with darkness. But I didn't do it to hurt you, to spite you, or anything like that. I loved you. I missed you. I just... I didn't want to. Because it hurt too much. Same as you being a jerk when I found you - because it meant then I couldn't reject you. It gave you the power, and I get that, okay?

"I get I was being an asshole to feel like I had control, like I can keep my heart from being broken if I gave it to someone else before I acknowledge how much it hurt to lose you and be partly to blame for your death. You died trying to get to me, to help me, and I should have been able to save you. You did everything for me and I did nothing for you. I wouldn't even let you see Henry. And that haunted me, Neal, the rest of my life, because I saw how much Henry missed you. Maybe he didn't grieve you right away, but every milestone in his life that you weren't there... he lost you all over again. And I did too. And I should have shared that with him, I should have let him know I still missed you, that I wished you were there and things could have been different, but... that part me, my soul, whatever, even before the time portal, that Emma died with you, and I didn't know how to get her back. It didn't want to get her back. I know that's awful. But I do now. Can't you believe in that?"

Neal looked out at the ocean and after a moment, instead of answering, told her, "I was going to propose to you in Tallahassee. At least, that one day, when we had it all worked out, I knew I was gonna propose when we got there. I'd use the money from the watches to get you a real ring, we'd go to the beach... And you know," he laughed sadly, "I even did buy a ring eventually. I knew I'd never get to give it to you, but I'd take it out and think about what could have been, I'd dream about another life where we were just ordinary people, where magic wasn't fucking me over, where we were happy. Together."

"We could still have that," Emma argued while fighting tears. "When I fix things-"

"You know we can't. It doesn't work this way, Emma. No more fairy tale happily ever afters.. It's all real life from there on out."

Emma sniffled, angry with him for having lost his eternal optimism... and herself for being the reason he had.

"It doesn't have to be," Emma stated. "We can still have a happy ending. It'll be real problems that real people deal with that no one here ever does because there's always magical distractions and shit, but we had that once and we were good."

"We're not those people anymore, Emma. And we can't just go back to being them because we believe hard enough."

"People can change! I can change. I'm trying to," Emma insisted. "I know I still do stuff when I'm stressed or distracted, and they're nasty habbits, but afterward I feel awful about it. That has to mean something, right? That I'm not... inherently bad?"

Neal let out a sigh. "I never said I thought you were inherently bad, Emma. I don't think you or anyone is really. You just... you went down a path I couldn't follow and this one we're walking now, it's not about us. Truth is, it never was. It was all about magic."

"I don't accept that!" Emma argued. "It was my choice to love you, to want to spend my life with you."

"And it was your choice to love and want to spend your life with Killian," Neal reminded. "And his opinion of you was the most important thing in the world, whether it was calling you a useless bitch one day or his become of mortal fortitude the next. Sorry if I don't put much stock in your choices, Emma, and what that says about us. Once you want a homicidal rapist to be proud of you for screwing over your family to save his worthless ass, that doesn't hold much weight."

"How many times do I have to say regret all of that, Neal!?" Emma snapped. "Because I do! Every part of me does! I want to erase it from my memory. I want to make it so it never happened and we have that life I know we both dreamed about! But I can't! All I can do is say that I love you and try to show you that I do, but I you don't believe me when I say it, and nothing I do is proof enough! Why won't you even give me a chance? Are you trying to spite me for not choosing you? At least tell me that."

"I'm not trying to hurt you," sighed Neal.

"And I'm not trying to hurt you!" Emma countered. "I meant what I said that I couldn't be me without you. That Emma had to died. I had to change to move on from that pain and face all the shit that was being thrown at me! So I did it fast. And I fell down that time portal and my soul got sucked out and without it, without that love, that guilt, that pain, all of it, it was easier to just be changed. I didn't know I could split my heart. I didn't know there was an Underworld. And, okay, maybe even if I did, I wouldn't have tried to save you, and I'm so sorry. I'm sorry how disgustingly selfish that is, what a bad person that makes me.

"Maybe there is something just wrong in me, because of my parents' spell or my genes, or whatever that made it easy for me to change from someone you trusted into the image Hook envisioned of me, of us, but it was mostly lies. I married him, but I knew deep down I was only doing it out of guilt, out of what I did to him, because I couldn't let Robin's sacrifice be for nothing, because my parents kept encouraging me, because even Henry seemed onboard with it. I don't know... it was just a lot of guilt and peer pressure and self-loathing and fear of ending up alone, and there were days when I would look in the mirror and tell myself that this was the new me, this was the stronger me that could bury the past and embrace all this fairy tale nonsense completely so I had to keep going even though I hated that person, even though I missed the good, honest, just person I was before I came here.

"I missed who I was, Neal. But I couldn't be her without you. I couldn't handle everything. Only the asshole Emma could... but that obviously turned out a disaster too... so the point is I can't do this without you, Neal. I'm either not strong enough, or I'm a selfish bitch who ruins it all in the end."

Neal shook his head. "You can't need me that much, Emma. I can't be your conscience version of whatever Hook was, your desperate something that you clung to like a barnacle. It was bad enough being the loser in your teenage vampire novel love triangle, but I can't be your relationship gender role reversal reason you don't do bad things. That's not how love's supposed to work. And it sure as shit isn't fair to me, not after what I went through with my father."

"I didn't mean... I don't..." Emma trailed off, because she didn't really know what she was trying to say other than what he assumed, which she knew wasn't healthy. She'd been Hook's conscience, and a really shitty one at that who basically just let him get away with murder and called him a hero. She didn't want to put Neal in that position, force him to compromise his own moral fortitude for love, and maybe that's what would happen. Maybe her love would destroy him the way Hook's love destroyed her.

"Sometimes you just end up alone," said Neal. "I've spent like ninety-nine percent of my life alone, so I know it hurts and it's fucking unfair, but you can't make up bullshit reasons to not be alone when you fuck it up. I tried and I got shot."

"I know," sniffed Emma. "You're right. I don't want to put that kind of pressure on you. I don't... I don't want to ruin you, taint all of the goodness in your heart the way mine was. Maybe I can't change. Maybe I can't make the right choices and even with a second chance I'll just screw up. But I'm trying to change. And you being here, that makes it easier. You make me remember the good person I was before all of this and now that's not a bad thing, because you're here. You make me want to be that Emma again."

"I want you to be that Emma again," said Neal, shaking his head. "I saw you become the very thing you once hated, that caused you a childhood full of pain and not even seem to notice or care. It was like watching a kid who was abused grow up to smack her kid around without ever thinking 'this is so fucked up'. It broke my heart."

After a pause, he continued, "And the thing is? I hoped that when you finally got your soul back, it would hurt like hell, it would break your heart, because that would at least mean you weren't fully committed to all of the shit you did. But I hate that I wanted that. You're not supposed to want the person you love to hurt for your benefit, to prove you right. I'm no better than Hook thinking like that..."

"You are better than him," Emma insisted. "You wanted me to still have a conscience for me, so I'd be a good person again, not so I'd fall into bed with you. You've always been about what's best for everyone else, Neal, and that's what makes you better than him... along with a whole bunch of other things, like not raping or murdering anyone."

"Yeah," he laughed dryly, "but even in the real world the pretty bad boys still win out. Us regular Joes in thirft store clothes end up drinking coffee alone."

"I was going to meet with you."

"And I didn't call the cops on you." Neal sighed. "I stood you up in the parking garage and you went to prison for eleven months. So you stood me up at the diner and I fell down a portal and ended up in a cage for eleven months. But those things don't cancel each other out. Not when we had a son I risked my life to help rescue."

Neal shook his head, concluding, "We are how we were written - or how we could write ourselves to be after Henry got that quill - and you didn't write yourself to be better, instead you made yourself into the person you became, made yourself fit into a bad carbon copy of another story, and that... that's the biggest fucking insult to Tallahassee, Emma. Not that you chose to find it with him, but what you did to yourself to get it."

"But I didn't get it! There was no Tallahassee without you!" Emma exclaimed. "I didn't want it without you. And you had no right to just tell me to find it with someone else! And will you at least look at me!?"

Neal stood up, facing away from her.

She stood up too, frustrated. "Damn it, Neal, I-"

"Don't get to play the victim, Emma!" he cut her off, finally turning to look at her, his eyes flashing with anger but also red from tears. "If that's how you felt, then you should have told me that! If that's how you felt then you should have fucking kissed me and maybe that magic of yours would have worked! But you didn't do either! At the very least, if you'd told me that, it would have hurt a lot less when I was dying, knowing we at least had that dream as ours and only ours, even if it had died long before me."

"Neal-"

Emma stepped toward him and tried to lay her hand on his arm, but he stepped back and turned away again.

"I can't, Emma. I can't. I had to look up into your eyes and know that I loved you more than you loved me, that you would always be my true love, but I wouldn't always be yours if I ever had been, and everything, the tragic fucked up mess of my life, it was too much bare that I was gonna die and be replaced as your true love, as the man who'd raise my son, by the guy who destroyed my family. It was like... the Universe or God or whatever hated me for not dying as a kid and just kept screwing me over for surviving by no one ever choosing me. No matter how many people I tried to help, no matter how many times I passed on my own happiness for others, there was never any good karma on the back end. You're supposed to do good and good things happen to you, but I did good and all I got was more bad, more disappointment, more abandonment 'cause all the good things I thought I was doing amounted to nothing, were canceled out by some magical bullshit and everyone else getting second chances, getting forgiveness, getting true love. I never got any of that. All I wanted my whole life was a family, and instead I got conned into leaving 'em, the mother of my child chose the man my mother chose over me, and even my old man moved on, replaced me with another kid while my own was growing up without me, was always gonna think I was some uninteresting loser who didn't matter enough in the grand magical scheme of things to get the same loopholes as all the legends he read about in that book, the rest of his family who mattered."

"Neal, you matter," Emma insisted, crying now. "I told you, Henry missed you-"

"He didn't even know me, because you didn't tell him about me," Neal corrected. "I was just a vague concept. A father. We played with wooden swords. I let him stand at the helm of the Jolly Roger, but teaching him to swordfight? To sail? Even those went to your father and Hook. I didn't teach him anything."

"You did. You taught him the power of forgiveness. And of taking responsibility for mistakes. And that no matter how many obstacles life throws your way, you can still have hope, you can still be a good person who sees the goodness in others," Emma insisted. "Maybe I didn't tell him enough about you, and I'm sorry, and maybe you didn't teach him all of the bullshit stuff that my parents seem to think is what constitutes parenthood, that they passed me over to have another go at it for, but sailing and sword-fighting aren't what real heroes are remembered for. It was your heart, your goodness, your kindness, your bravery even when no one would know, when you wouldn't get written about in a magical book, that made you more important to Henry than anyone else. I'm not saying he realized that as a hormonal teenager caught between a crush and wanting to measure up to the crazy powers and adventurous resumes of his surviving family, but I know he did when he became a father."

"Even though he didn't really," sighed Neal.

"And I have that to live with too," Emma uttered. "That I passed up my happy ending to follow some crap my parents were selling and in doing so I indoctrinated Henry into the same view of love and happiness that was all a lie. It has to be some great cosmic joke that my parents are true love, soulmates, but have no fucking clue what that actually means or how to help other people find it."

"Yeah, must be," Neal chuffed.

"I know I screwed up, Neal. I know you suffered for a long time and I am so sorry that your life was filled with such loneliness and pain, and that at the end I just made it worse. I didn't know, not fully, not really, because I didn't want to - how much you'd suffered. I didn't want to see how my choices, what I was using to feel better about my crazy life, were a betrayal of everything you did for me - and our love. But you have to believe if I'd known how badly you were hurt, how much your mother leaving you for Hook, that he handed you to Pan and never tried to free you, that I wouldn't have chosen him. I want to believe that I would have chosen you, chosen honoring your memory and your sacrifice over feeling good."

"I want to believe that too," agreed Neal. "But I don't know if I can."

Emma watched him walk down the beach, hands shoved into the pockets of his thrift store coat, his ugly-ass shoes sinking into the sand as he went. It felt like he was walking away from her for good, that a door had been shut, locked, and covered over in bricks and mortar.

She thought of Tinerkbell's hypothesis about Regina and Robin, that when the timing was all wrong, instead of completing each other and making each other better, they broke each other, ruined each other's happiness. She'd been fighting against that, wanting to prove it wrong with them - but maybe Cruella was right, that sometimes you had to give up the fight, that admitting defeat was the less painful option, because then at least the cycle ended.

Pulling out the keychain again, Emma regarded the little swan that had meant a variety of things to her over the years.

Once upon a time it was akin to an engagement ring, and it still meant more than any actual engagement ring she'd been given. It didn't have some deep family history and it hadn't been enchanted by a sorcerer. It was just a cheap token presented in a moment of pure happiness, a moment when anything was possible, when two people were in perfect harmony and happily ever after was unknowingly within their grasp.

But it had all gone to shit. Pinocchio had interfered, the keychain was lost and returned as a symbol of betrayal, viewed so wrongly and unfairly by her for years until she tossed it away to put an end to the bitterness... only for Neal to return it as he lay dying.

She'd put it on for his funeral and had intended never to take it off to honor him, but when she became the Dark Swan everything she'd worn was stripped away and not returned when the Darkness was pulled out of her. And that had changed her, no matter how she'd tired to pretend it hadn't. Soul or no soul, it was being the Dark One that created a greater rift between her physical self and that spark of conscience, that place from which love truly came.

And then it had been easier to embrace her new life, her new "love" and put away all those momentos in her keepsake box that she'd rarely opened, because those tokens reminded her that she was a good person once, taunted her that she was not a good person anymore, and all for the biggest lie told in her life made up so many lies.

The irony was, of course, that it was the one she told herself.

She'd thought of herself as a phoenix once, rising from the ashes of that prison.

But she was no Firebird and the cigar box she'd later realized was the reason Henry had chosen that operation - to get back the mother he missed - was burned now, turned to ash. And her son never had gotten that Emma back, because sharing her heart with a villain was never going to erase the stain that being the Dark One had left on her soul and her heart.

Neal was now out of sight. The clouds had grown thicker and a cool breeze now buffeted the beach. Another front was moving in.

AN: Nothing but angst for those two!

Next up: Some humor for a change!