Dreams Come True:

Page 67: Henry's Father:

*Meanwhile*

"Well, what do you wanna know, Emma?" Neal asked as he sat in the empty bar with Emma. "You want the truth? Ask away." He continued when Emma looked up from the counter.

"Did you know who I was when we met?" Emma asked him, making Neal sigh to himself.

"If I had, I wouldn't have gone near you." 

"Come on." Emma scoffed at his answer. "Come on... Come on, what? I was in hiding. I came here to get away from... from all that crap." Neal sighed when he kept looking around them, making sure no one was listening, while Emma stood up, angry. "So, if you didn't know, then you were just using me. You just needed someone to take the fall for all the watches that you stole." Emma scoffed at him.

"I wasn't using you..." Neal said, trying to reassure her. "When we met, I didn't know, but I found out." He continued when he paused, watching Emma sit back down.

"How?"

"When I went to sell the watches, I ran into a friend of yours. August..." Neal sighed, looking down at the counter. "You left me... and let me go to prison because Pinocchio told you to?" Emma asked, starting to tear up at how ridiculous this all was. 

"Emma..." 

"I loved you," Emma confessed to him.

"I was just trying to... I was trying to help you." Neal sighed, after a pause, looking down when Emma took a deep breath to calm down. "By letting me go to jail?" Emma asked, not looking at him. "By getting you home... August also told me that even my father's cursed self... made a deal and that I have a little sister..." Neal said, looking up at him, while Emma kept avoiding looking at him.

"Are you telling me that us meeting was a coincidence? Because how did that happen if it wasn't in your plan or your father's?" Emma scoffed at him, finally looking at him again. 

"Think about it. He wanted you to break the curse. Us meeting... that could have stopped it. Maybe it was fate." Neal suggested, making Emma scoff at him again. "You believe in that?" Emma scoffed at him. "You know, there's not a ton about my father that I remember that doesn't suck. But... he used to tell me that there are no coincidences. Everything that happens, happens by design. And there's nothing we can do about it... Forces greater than us conspire to make it happen. He even had a bracelet that he made that was supposed to be a sign of fate. Show your true destiny..." Neal paused when he looked down, remembering the bracelet his father always held close to him. It was made from his old life when he lived with spinsters after his father left, then he spelled it after he turned into the Dark One. "Fate, destiny, whatever you wanna call it, the point is, maybe we met for a reason. Maybe something good came from us being together." Neal said when Emma thought about what he said.

She could not let him know about Henry. She could not let him break Henry's heart. Or hers, again.

"No. Not that I can think of." She lied when she tried to keep a serious expression, despite feeling her walls threatening to break down at any moment. "I just went to jail. That's it." Emma sighed when Neal nodded.

The two went quiet for a moment when Neal took a sip of his beer. "What is she like?" He asked when Emma furrowed her brows. "My little sister... What is she like? August just told me that she was like nine or ten, but I never got her name. Or whoever on earth would agree to have a child with my father..." Neal said when Emma sighed to herself.

"Her name is Dream. She's nineteen, twenty... And she's a very brave and sweet kid." Emma said as Neal smiled a bit. 

"So, you've got to know her?" 

"It doesn't matter now... I'm over it. And you." Emma sighed, standing up again, when Neal nodded, sighing to himself. "Why do you wear the key chain I got you?" Neal asked when Emma realized she wore the key chain as a necklace after she had Henry and got out of jail when she was eighteen.

Emma sighed to herself, yanking the chain to take it off before placing it next to Neal. "To remind myself never to trust someone again..." Emma said, making Neal sigh when he looked down at the key chain. "Come on. I made a deal with your father; I'd bring you to him." Emma said, making Neal look up at her.

"You made a deal with him?" Neal asked, sighing to himself.

"Yeah. And I'm upholding my end." 

"Emma, you don't have to, you know that." Neal tried to tell her. "I know..." She sighed to herself. "Okay, so this should be real easy for you. Tell him that you lost me. Tell him you can't find me. You do that; you'll never have to see me again..." Neal said before grabbing a napkin and a pen. "But please... Give this number to my little sister. I just want to get to know her. Or at least get to meet or call her." Neal said, handing the napkin to Emma, who walked out of the bar.

A minute or two later, Emma stopped in between the bar and where she left Henry and Gold. She called her mother, trying to figure out what to do. Or at least let out everything instead of keeping it bottled up.

"Wait, Gold's son is Henry's father?" Mary Margaret asked, sounding just as shocked as Emma. "I know... I know. The millions of questions you have, I have, too. But the problem is, it doesn't matter right now because I don't know what to do..." Emma sighed, looking around the busy street, trying not to have a panic attack.

"Please tell me you're not calling to ask me to tell you to keep it from him?"

"Henry thinks his father is dead. I told him that for a reason..." Emma sighed, looking at the napkin with Neal's number on it before she shoved it into her pocket. "I wanna protect him," Emma said, holding onto the railing next to her.

"No matter what this man did, Henry has a right to know who his father is. The truth about your parents... Emma, you, of all people, should know how important that is." Mary Margaret tried to tell Emma, who was on the verge of crying. "I don't want Henry to get hurt. I just want to protect him." Emma stuttered out when she tried so hard not to start crying. 

"Are you sure this is about protecting Henry... and not yourself?"

~season 2, episode 14: "Manhattan"~

~1129 words~