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

GUEST: 1) See above. 2) What makes you think Tink and Neal are not friends? People sometimes have a falling out with a friend. Tink has a substance abuse problem. That doesn't mean the two won't patch things up if she gets help.

PART II

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW PART TWO

Emma managed to shower - in the almost dark with her eyes closed just to get through it because it didn't help that Tamara had probably bathed here - and then found one of Neal's t-shirts to wear. She hadn't had much occasion to wear any of this clothes when they were living in car and it felt weird and a little heartbreaking pulling one on now.

She was pulling on too-big socks to fight the chill of the floor when Neal arrived with bags of greasy food that smelled heavenly. Though his brows raised at her change in attire, he didn't comment.

"Grilled cheese and onion rings," Neal said, handing it over. "Rootbeer floats. Kitchen was out of chocolate ice cream."

"Thanks," Emma muttered, feeling self-conscious of her bare legs that she hadn't shaved in a week and she quickly sat down cross-legged on the bed and unwrapped her sandwich while Neal grabbed the morning's paper from the nightstand and used it to set up an indoor picnic on the bed the way they used to back in Portland.

"So..." she asked, lest he bring up how this was just like old times, "you're really not looking for a place of your own? I mean, I get not wanting to live with your father and Belle..."

"Naw," Neal replied while pulling out his BLT with mustard instead of mayo and fries and wishing Storybrooke had better food. Even if he wasn't binge-eating like Hook, it was doing nothing for the gut he'd been trying to work off.

"Not even... you know... switch rooms?" Emma asked. "I mean, I know you didn't have time before you, you know-"

"Died twice?"

"Yeah... And I know the forest people have kind of taken over the place, but you could probably ask to switch..."

"It's not a big deal," Neal insisted, brow raised slightly. "I mean, nothing happened here between me and Tamara. I went to bed, she was out running. I woke up, she was getting ready to go running. Which I assume meant 'down the hall fucking Greg' and 'just got back from fucking Greg'... or, I guess, torturing Hook or Regina or whatever sick shit they got up to."

Shrugging, he amended, "Compared to the other options, it's the lesser of all the evils. Tink's room is probably coated in pixie dust and it's next door to Hook's. Then there's the room Ruby said Regina and her sex slave banged in for twenty-eight years which is also the room pretty much everyone else in town uses for their elicit couplings, so the place probably looks like the Blue Man Group exploded under a black light..."

"There's mine and Henry's old room," Emma pointed out. "It wasn't bad. I mean, it smelled a bit moldy. I could, you know, wiggle my nose and turn the twin beds into a queen."

"And risk getting reamed by Granny for messing up her Hotel Hell vibe?" countered Neal, and he shrugged again. "Besides, don't you need a room? You can't sleep in your mom's car forever."

"Asking to share?" inquired Emma, surprised.

"Just wondering what your plan is," said Neal. "I think some family with six kids is using it anyway."

"No plan," Emma grumbled. "Turns out I overestimated how easily I'd be able to find a place when I moved out. I didn't consider how many forest people had enough gold coins or how many residents with spare rooms would take a sob story as a security deposit. I might actually have to move back in with my pervert parents," she concluded with a scowl.

"Well, that's what you get for burning down your creepy old fuckpad," teased Neal with a smirk. "Coulda been some forest hobo's fuckpad instead of a charred hole in the ground and then you'd have a room."

"I'd still have had to drive by it, though," Emma complained.

"Why? You're not the Sheriff anymore. You're not obligated to patrol the streets."

"I didn't know I was going to resign when I blew it up!" huffed Emma while mashing her onion ring into some ketchup and watching the breading fall off. "And you know what? I'm fucking tired of fucking onion rings! I've never even liked them!"

"Um... then why did you always order them back in Portland and Granny says it's your usual?" asked Neal, confused.

"I don't know!" Emma moaned. "I just wanted to be different as a kid so I'd stand out and maybe some family would adopt me, and I know onion rings instead of french fries is a stupid thing to think would make a difference, but I was getting kind of desperate! And then I guess it just became a habit and I stopped hating them and you thought it was interesting that I ordered them instead of fries... So I kept the Bug and ordering stupid onion rings, and then Hook thought they were my favorite too so he kept bringing me onion rings, so how I was supposed to tell him that I only ordered them because you thought I liked them and then I have to give them up, which, I mean, I don't like them, but he'd probably have been thrilled I was giving them meaning you up for him, which I know I did anyway, and I know I'm rambling, but I'm just so fucking tired of fucking onion rings!" she sniffed, feeling stupid for crying about food.

Neal pushed over his fries. "You could have just asked."

"I'm sorry," Emma sighed. "I guess the whole recovered childhood trauma thing has got me thinking about a lot of stupid stuff I've done with my life for stupid reasons."

"Like pretending to like onion rings."

"And pretending to be a badass bounty hunter who gave a shit about justice about crime victims and women with deadbeat asshole ex's," she grumbled. "And now everyone knows I'm a fraud and that just makes all of this so much harder! How am I supposed to help people when they think I'm a compulsive lying slut? I can't even help myself find a place to live!"

Shaking her head, Emma lamented, "I don't know how to deal with coming back here, seeing all of this stuff with a different perspective that makes everything I used to think was my happy ending into a twisted pile of perversions. All I see is one screw-up after another, one more massive character flaw that I have no idea how to fix to be what I'm supposed to be. And now that's all everyone else sees."

"Hey, at least they see you," Neal countered. "I've got a tombstone and it's like no one cares. They didn't care that I died. I had, what seven people at my funeral, and Hook was only there because he wanted to bang you, Robin was only there because he was banging Regina who was only there for Henry who didn't even remember me and your parents were their out of guilt. I was just some schmuck who came to town and died a couple of weeks later. Now I'm back, but I'm still just a schmuck with no job who can't get by on a pretty face or panty-wetting accent or even an epic back-story of all the damsels I saved... or banged or whatever. I could kick it again, and no one'd really give a fuck other than my old man and Henry for maybe like five minutes, because they sure as shit got over me fast last time around."

"I'd give a fuck," Emma said sadly.

"You'd get over it again too," shrugged Neal. "You might not be as screwed and selfish as before, and I appreciate that you at least think you care Emma, but you've buried me enough times already and there's always some crisis to focus on, so you'd get over it and I'd still just be 'that guy' you loved once when you didn't know who you were, before your life got meaning."

"But that's when I was the best version of me," Emma complained. "Finding out who I 'really am'," she made air quotes, "or at least believing it, is when I started getting seriously fucked up! My life had the most meaning when we fought for each other, when we tried to be good people even when we had to do bad things to survive, when we dreamed about just being regular people with boring jobs who took our kids to the beach crammed into the Bug. That's the life that would have made me the happiest, but the choices we both made ended that before it even began, and we kept on making bad choices so nothing like it ever could. I never wanted a fairy tale, Neal, but that's what I got stuck with, and it screwed me up even more than I already was... and I don't know how to un-screw-up myself."

"Therapy?"

Emma threw an onion ring at Neal, which missed and landed in the ugly gray chalice on the nightstand. She snorted, "Well, at least the onion rings aren't cursed. Maybe I should pour my rootbeer float in it and see if it takes away all my magic for good?"

"Considering bringing magic into the world through the vessel of Merlin led to the creation of the Dark One," Neal countered, "the Savior drinking out of it's double would probably take all magic our of the world... with some equally horrible consequences."

"Yeah, probably," Emma conceded. "It'd be a good plan, though, if it wasn't for the horrible consequences part."

"And it could kill you," Neal reminded after swallowing a bite of his sandwich. "Magic is part of you, Emma."

"Not by natural design, though! It's only because I was basically cursed in-utero. True love conception's got nothing to do with it, no matter how long my parents tried to bullshit that theory on everyone."

"Still mad at them about that, huh?"

"Little bit, yeah!" grumbled Emma. "Sometimes I wish they'd all stayed stuck in that stupid steampunk world, you know? That Tamara had really killed The Dragon and we never found a way to portal them all back and it could have been just me and Henry and Regina - but not in a gay way - like back before The Curse broke with no magic and no crazy relatives other than your dad."

"Yeah, probably would have had a less crazy life that way," Neal agreed.

"Plus, no Hook, so I'd have maybe un-skanked myself with time and found a way to reclaim my soul," mused Emma. "I've been wondering if maybe part of it's the whole cursed kiss Zelena put on him, you know? She told him it would take away everything about me that made me special and powerful. Which has to include my soul, right?"

"Well, I wouldn't put past her to have been experimenting with some variation on the Curse of the Empty-Hearted," said Neal. "She did get Regina's heart, after all, so I suppose she coulda used it in combination with you smooching him inexplicably back from drowning. Might explain the inexplicable resuscitation by nonexistent CPR. And people under that Curse do develop a blind infatuation with their intended that they mistake for true love."

"Plus the syphilis," snorted Emma. "And the soul-separation. And the stupid shit curse my parents put on me before I was born."

"And Isaac," interjected Neal. "The guy did kick it, what, a couple of hours before The Apprentice tried to stuff the Dark One in that hat? He'd have had time to pencil in a 'if then Emma becomes the Dark One' situation in that other book of his that Henry destroyed before anyone read what he added to it."

"Great," groaned Emma. "So who the hell knows how it all combined in this world where magic has like no set rules to fuck me over! I just hate that I feel like I never had control over anything, whether it was being a good person or a complete asshole - which is maybe how everyone is stuck here, but I was supposed to be the one to break the mold and instead I broke reality... twice."

"Third time's the charm?"

"I hope so," sighed Emma.

Neal finished his drink, then told her, "Look, Em, we both got robbed of being the best versions of ourselves. Most people probably do when you think about it. Most people have probably got either a shit parent or a bad teacher or a back-stabbing friend, someone who gets them to make one choice instead of another and then the great thing they could have become or done isn't as likely and becomes more and more out of reach as they make more choices based on that choice until one day you think back to what you wanted to be, to do with your life when you were a kid and think it was never possible at all based on who you are... cause it hurts less than to plot out all the right choices you should have made to be that person. It's easier to just think you were always gonna turn out an asshole. Then here, you throw in magic as the cause of all ills and it's less depressing than admitting a mix of bad circumstances and shitty judgment got you where you are, to a place where it's too late to have the things you used to dream about and you've just gotta make due with your crap hand."

"That is depressing."

"Yeah, no shit it's depressing," agreed Neal. "But the only other option is some heroic death, but good luck with that if you're not already a legendary hero with a knighthood or a kingdom, or even a villain cleaning up your mess Darth Vader style. Everyone else, even if you die for a good cause, people don't really care," he complained.

"I mean, what good did my death do? Zelena got to live happily ever after with her kid and Henry eventually forgot she had anything to do with, you know, murdering me. I didn't achieve anything lasting, anything that wasn't almost instantly undone when you went back in time. And if you don't have a memorable death that means something, people forget, apparently even those that are supposed to love you."

"I really am sorry, Neal," Emma told him sadly.

"I know," he sighed, "and I really don't blame you anymore, Emma. It just... sucks that I can't seem to connect with anyone, that it feels like I'm always just meant to be the outsider, the misfit. I'm not famous or infamous enough or cool enough or good looking enough. I don't fit any of the categories that count around here to be someone who's not the equivalent of a red shirt on Star Trek."

"Been sci-fi movie binging?" Emma asked, trying to lighten Neal's mood.

"Well, not much else to do around here," shrugged Neal. "Henry's avoiding me. My father's up to some scheming. Tink's dealing drugs. The only thing I've got going for me, apparently, is regular depressing conversations with you. Which, I guess, is better than sitting around moping alone, but still. I mean, I'm back from the dead. I should be happy to have a second chance-"

"But it just feels like we got punked," concluded Emma with a deep frown.

"A bit, yeah."

"I suppose I deserved it, though," snorted Emma. "For all the horribly selfish things I've done. 'Here, you get a second chance to be The Savior'. The catch being that no one thinks I'm up to the challenge anymore, that I'm just a selfish jerk. Which is what everyone should have seen when I really was a selfish jerk! And now I'm really trying not to be, and I all get is yelled at by everyone... so I guess I kind of understand what Regina went through when she really was trying to be good and help everyone - while still screwing up half of the time."

"So find her and tell her that," Neal suggested. "You're even less to blame for Robin dying this time around, so the only thing she has to hold against you is upsetting Henry - which she also forgave last time. I'm not saying become BFFs again, cause that was weird, but, you know, you could encourage each other to not be assholes for Henry's sake."

"Maybe," Emma considered. "She was a better drinking buddy than Hook who just used it as an excuse to get into my pants."

"Probably all of you should quit drinking."

"But then how would we endure this shitty life? It had to be alcohol that made everyone think it was so great! Well, and the syphilis," said Emma, "and my mom's brain injuries. And, I guess, pixie dust and various magical editing and curses and time travel that messed with our perception of reality..."

"Yeah, no wonder the universe imploded!" snorted Neal.

"Yeah," sighed Emma, "maybe it wouldn't have if I wasn't such a shit parent. Sometimes I think you were the only one who really understood Henry, even if you didn't know him for all that long. But I screwed that up once, left you dead and the kid without his dad, and I screwed it up this time too. He wants nothing to do with either of us."

"At least Henry isn't back to drinking the 'love magic' Kool Aid. There's still a chance he won't grow up hating us. That's a good thing."

"I don't know," sighed Emma. "He forgave me for the dreamcatchers, but that was in a messed up world where I he was drinking that Kool Aid. Now... I think this is a lie I'm not gonna get out of, Neal. I basically misrepresented myself our entire relationship."

"So did Regina, and he's given her a chance."

"Regina raised him. She's his 'mommy'. Henry's going to love her no matter what. Me? I came on the scene late and he only overlooked the abandonment thing because he bought the 'giving him his best chance' fairy tale parallel crap to my own birth which turned out to be a lie too. He's not ten anymore and he knows the memories we shared that year in New York are more lies than half-truths," Emma stated, "so now I'm definitely not the hero he thought I was or even could be. The kid deserved better from me."

Shaking her head, Emma amended, "So did you. So did Robin. He shouldn't have had to die. If I hadn't fucked up defeating Pan by being a shitty mother, he'd still be in The Enchanted Forest raising Roland, never brainwashed by that true love with Regina bullshit. And you wouldn't have died and all the crap that happened after that with our family, because you wouldn't have stood for it. We would have kicked Zelena's ass and really worked on being a family, the one Henry wanted us to be, the one he deserved to get instead of a recovering rapist-slash-murderers for an aunt and stepfather.

"You shouldn't have had to die because your father was a selfish asshole," she continued, "or because I decided you weren't my true love anymore. It's such bullshit that true love is this... fickle... well bullshit that you can have one moment and not the next. That if it's romantic but then it's not, even if you still truly love someone not romantically, if you're not blood-related, somehow it doesn't count."

"Blood magic's factual magic," Neal told her. "That's the difference. But they're both still fucked up. True love magic... it's all belief, so you can be an asshole adopted parent with a psychopath's narcissistic definition of love for your kid and it'll still work. Blood magic has to work, asshole or not, whether you know each other or not, like that crap with Regina and Zelena as kids. Like the spell my old man used to 'merge' us to keep me alive. No matter how fucked up and wrong it is or if you're just using someone as a pawn, blood'll make it work.

"Which isn't any better or worse than if you're a psychopath who gets in a fight with your true love the day a sleeping curse hits," he considered, "so the magic is just not strong enough. I mean, if your mother had told your father to fuck off before she went off to meet Regina and eat that apple, probably you'd have never been conceived. True love breaking curses is just not wanting to punch each other in the face at all the right moments."

Emma snorted and mused, "Kinda wish my dad had punched my mom in the face over the cursing me thing. I mean, I'm totally against domestic abuse - what with the whole getting myself stuck in an emotionally and psychotically abusive marriage to a man who saw nothing wrong with hitting women and once slammed me headfirst into a wall - which really should have been a deal-breaker before we were ever a thing -but I'd make the one exception just to not turn out so completely fucked up as a person that I'd fall in love with an abusive asshole."

Neal finished the last onion ring and countered, "Okay, but what if they didn't cast it? Then there would've maybe been no Dark Curse. I'd have stayed stuck in Neverland 'cause Pan wouldn't have let me go to the Land Without Magic to make Henry with you - so I guess he'd have had The Shadow bring me back to The Enchanted Forest," considered Neal, "if that 'prophesy' even still applied since Henry was needed to believe in The Curse to get you to Storybrooke and his heart thing was just a happy coincidence for Pan. So maybe we'd have never met because Henry wasn't destined for anything," Neal considered, "and you'd have ended up marrying some random jerk prince. Or even ended up again with Hook after Cora tried to take over The Kingdom and Zelena tried to change history, because you'd have grown up in a world where men abusinv women and getting sexual favors for not being as big of an asshole as a guy wants to be is just how things go."

"You don't know that," Emma insisted, shaking her head. "We were supposed to meet, Neal. Curse or no Curse. Who knows, maybe I'd have ended up taken to Neverland as a kid or something? And maybe if I'd have seen what a complete dick Hook was to you, I wouldn't have ever fallen for his false charms. We still could have had Henry and raised him together and been happy."

Shaking her head again, Emma insisted, "Whatever kind of life I might have lived, you were meant to be part of it. You gave me hope, made me a better person. You were the best friend I've ever had. And I know I wouldn't have ever been happy living in a castle as a princess, even if I was raised that way. My brother could have inherited everything and we could have just had our regular life, had our Tallahassee somewhere in Fairy Tale Land... even if it was badly scripted. I'd rather share a badly written story with you than anyone."

"Doesn't matter now, though," Neal reminded. "We're going off script, writing our own stories... or trying to, anyway, with mixed results."

"What are you going to do?" asked Emma as she picked at some congealed cheese on her sandwich wrapper. "I mean, what's your story? What do you want to be? To do with your second chance?"

Neal shrugged. "Drawing and math are the only things I've ever been good at. Doing Granny's books gets me a room, but it's not my life goal. I used to think maybe I'd do a children's book, but never got around to writing a good story to illustrate. Words aren't really my strong-suit. I thought maybe if I got that publishing company job, in a few years, if things went well... but that doesn't matter now either."

"It does matter," Emma argued. "You should follow your dreams, Neal."

"Not everyone has that luxury," he argued with a glance at the dreamcatcher he'd hung in the room's window. He didn't know why he'd hung it up here when the bad memories now outweighed the one good one.

"Most people don't," he concluded, and cleared his trash. "It's getting late. I'm gonna take a shower."

Emma watched Neal gather his gather his things and head into the bathroom then turned her gaze sadly on the dreamcatcher, remembering how she'd carefully packed it in the trunk after Regina's confrontation with Zelena, then back in Storybrooke wrapped it in her blanket and kept it in her box in her office at the Station when she couldn't bare to look at it anymore.

She definitely couldn't bare to look at it after she used dreamcatchers to take her family member's memories to cover up murder. It had stayed wrapped in that blanket for the rest of her life, two bitter memories of what was meant to be her happiness but was instead reminders of everything she'd lost, a person she could have been but would never be because other people's actions and the cruel hand of fate had snatched those futures away and forced her to change into someone different, someone who was not a benevolent princess looking out for her subjects - nor an optimistic young lover and loving wife and mother who had the best brought out of her by the family she chose. And certainly not a heroic bounty hunter fighting for justice.

Emma wanted to believe that should have been any of those, that if her mother hadn't had that spell cast on her before birth and Rumplestiltskin had never made her his get-out-curse-card, she could have been a good person in whatever life she lived. If she'd just grown up whole without some tainted magic she wasn't supposed to have, she could have been strong enough to just be herself and be a good person at the same time, instead of having to put on an act to seem like she was a hero, because she didn't think she could be otherwise.

As the shower came on, Emma laid down and shut her eyes, letting the exhaustion she'd been fighting finally take over. It felt like it had been years since she'd slept.

AN: Sorry for the long break between chapters. Life has been busy. Sorry for the depressing chapter. There's a few more angsty ones before humor returns.

Next up: Cleaning up some messes.