"I get it," Neal said with a patronizing smirk, "we're all messed up. Let's just try not to pass that on to Henry, okay?"
Emma nodded and dropped her eyes, emotionally collapsing in on herself as she watched him climb out onto the fire escape to talk to their son. Suddenly she felt small, unimportant, petty. Suddenly she was that unloved, emotionally stunted seventeen year old again.
For years after her arrest she'd hoped and dreamed of the moment she'd see Neal again, hoped he'd come back for her, hoped there was some reasonable explanation for why he'd left her, why he'd set her up for his crimes.
But as the years passed without even a word from him, that hope had died. She decided she really should thank him. He'd taught her a valuable lesson: that you've got to look out for yourself, never let anyone in. She'd built the walls that had protected her for the past decade, and she was stronger for it.
So imagine her shock when she'd successfully run down Gold's long lost son this afternoon, only to discover that son was Neal.
She'd wanted to hate him on sight; wanted to throw in his face how much he'd hurt her, wanted to at least show him she was over him, over it all, but she couldn't. As soon as she saw him, she realized she'd never stopped loving him. She'd never gotten closure, and so, she'd never moved past being that lonely seventeen year old who'd wanted so desperately to be loved that she'd soaked up every scrap of affection Neal gave her like the parched ground when it finally got rain.
Emma had agreed to have a drink with him, finally asking him for the truth. When he gave it to her, she wished he hadn't.
"Did you know who I was when we met?"
"If I had, I wouldn't have gone near you."
"You left me and let me go to prison because Pinocchio told you to?"
She'd left, her heart shattered all over again.
And then he'd returned to his apartment, and everything had hit the fan. She'd had to come clean to Henry about his father, and the betrayal in her kids' eyes had nearly destroyed her. She knew what this kind of betrayal felt like, and she was damn well NOT going to let Neal further hurt her boy.
She'd tried to stand up to Neal, tried to show him one last time how much he'd hurt her, tried to give him one last chance to apologize–or at least explain, but what she'd gotten instead was condescension and a chiding about being petty with regard to their son.
Maybe Neal was right. Maybe she still was nothing more than that unloved teenager who'd never be worth a damn as a girlfriend, as a mother, or even as a human being.