#Cassidy will always be a motorcycle boy in my heart

[chipistrate]

Cassie and Elizabeth are roller blade gals, Michael is a skateboard dude, CC is a scooter kid, and Gregory and Cassidy both ride those small motorcycles made for kids

[searchingwardrobes]

Someone to Watch Over Me: 12/26

 I originally planned for this to take place over the course of three chapters, but it just didn’t feel right to break it up, so I kept going. Does that make up for taking a month to update?

The part with Killian and Martha in this is based on something my husband does with our little girl. It started when she was two or three and he called her a “silly goose.” Since she was at that age where kids take everything literally, she stomped her little foot, crossed her arms, tipped her chin, and shouted with indignation, “I am not a goose.” Now it’s become a thing they do even those she’s seven and knows what the expression means. I wish you could see and hear my daughter do it because she is tiny for her age and has this high, squeaky voice, and it’s just adorable!

Summary: Emma Swan is ten when she first sees the pair of bright blue eyes watching her from the cracked door of the wardrobe. She thinks it was just an imaginary friend, until she sees those eyes again at 16 and 23.

Rating: T

Trigger Warning: attempted rape and violence in chapter two

Words in this chapter: 2,600 and some change

Can also be read on Ao3

Tagging: @snowbellewells @kmomof4 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @jennjenn615 @bethacaciakay @teamhook @thislassishooked @kday426 @snidgetsafan @delirious-latenight-laughs @winterbaby89 @vvbooklady1256 @mythologicalmango @shireness-says @let-it-raines

 Chapter Twelve: The Man She Thinks of With Regret

 “Neal,” Emma says, voice as calm and low as she can make it, “why don’t we meet you this afternoon at Granny’s? I need to talk to him.”

“If you’d told me about him years ago, this wouldn’t be an issue!” Neal hisses back.

Emma bites the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t seen it when she was young and blinded by love, but Neal had always been this way. If a scam went south, it had always been her fault. But she was older and wiser now.

“You didn’t exactly leave a number when you took off for Canada,” she reminds him, “or wherever the hell you went.”

She feels Henry get up from the bench behind her, and she tenses. She pleads silently with her eyes for Neal to keep his mouth shut, but he’s too busy rolling his own to notice.

“That again? I did what I had to do, and you could’ve tried at least. Or where you ever going to tell me?”

“I waited two years for you in Tallahassee!”

He gives her a look of utter confusion, and Emma hates to admit how much it still hurts. “Tallahassee?”

“You don’t even remember, do you?”

“Um,” Henry pipes up at her elbow, “my bus is here, so . . . “

Emma feels relief flood through her, but it’s short lived when Neal reaches out his hand and claps it on Henry’s shoulder.

“Please, kid, wait.”

Henry turns slowly, warily. Emma puts up her hand, attempts to intervene, but Neal turns on her.

“Let me tell him!”

“Don’t yell at her!” Henry shouts, to Emma’s complete surprise.

“I don’t know what she told you,” Neal continues, even though Henry has shaken free from his grip, “but I’m not a bad guy. I . . . I didn’t know about you.”

Henry looks at Emma now with wide, almost fearful eyes. “What’s he talking about?”

“Henry - “ she begins, but Neal cuts her off.

“I’m your father.”

Henry shakes his head, backing away from both of them. “No. No! My father is dead.”

“No, Henry, I’m alive,” Neal says, patting his chest with his hand, “and I want to get to know you.”

Henry hesitantly looks Neal up and down, then turns to Emma again. “Is it true? Is he my dad?”

Emma lowers her head and whispers, “Yes.”

She glances up tentatively to see Henry’s face red and his lower lip trembling. “You lied to me? How could you?”

“I was only trying to protect you,” Emma explains, and she wishes so badly she could turn back time and change things.

“I’m so tired of people telling me that!” Henry shouts. “That’s what my mom always says about her lies, too. You’re just like her!”

Emma recoils at his tone and his words, and her heart plummets. Then Henry turns and runs in the opposite direction from the school bus, and she suspects from her son’s hunched and shaking shoulders that he’s crying.

“See what a mess you made of everything?” Neal shouts.

Emma whirls on him, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Me? I told you to wait. I told you to let me tell him. But oh no, you had to do it your way.” Boldness sweeps over her, and she steps closer to him, shoving him firmly with both palms to his chest. “I’m not a teenager anymore! I won’t let you bully or manipulate me into doing everything your way!”

“What the hell are you screaming about it?”

Emma rolls her eyes. “You are the most dense man I have had the mispleasure to share a bed with.”

“Oh God, you’re talking like him now too?”

“This isn’t about my husband.”

“Hook you mean? He’s not husband material, I hate to break it to you.”

“You know nothing about Killian, and I’m more concerned about my son right now than your wounded ego.” With that, she starts walking as fast as her pregnant figure will allow down the sidewalk. She winces and rubs at that same spot right below her ribcage. This kid seems to love to camp out right in that spot. Her back aches a little, too, and it suddenly occurs to her that she’s in the first week of her third trimester. Neal really picked the perfect time to come crashing back into her life.

“Hey, wait up,” Neal says as he catches up to her. She doesn’t slow down or turn to look at him, so he’s forced to talk and speed walk at the same time. “Look, I didn’t mean to upset him, okay? What do you say we call a truce for Henry’s sake?”

Emma stops and turns to face him. “Look, Neal, this whole situation is delicate. He’s just met me only to find out that I had another kid and am pregnant with a third. The woman who raised him is the Evil Queen who, as you can imagine, doesn’t like me very much. Henry’s already caught in the middle of that, and I don’t want him pulled in yet another direction.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Now that you’ve shown up, I would never in a million years try to keep Henry from you. He deserves to get to know his father. See, that’s just the thing, when you have a kid, it isn’t about you anymore. It’s the whole reason I gave him up to begin with. So if this thing is going to work, you have to make it about Henry, Neal. Not you. Not us. Not the past. Just Henry and what’s best for him. Got it?”

Neal blinks, and Emma realizes that she has a power now she didn’t at eighteen – she can make Neal Cassidy squirm. She bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from smiling. Neal nods, lowering his gaze in an almost humble gesture.

“Okay. I’ll shut up about the past, about Hook, everything. I’ll just focus on getting to know Henry.”

Emma lets out a long, relieved breath. “Good.”

“So where do we find him? Cause I really don’t wanna face the Evil Queen if we lost him.”

Emma manages a half smile at his joke. “Probably at his castle.”

“He has a castle?”

*****************************************************

Emma watches nervously from the swings a few feet away from Henry’s castle. She idly pushes herself back and forth gently with her foot, which is the most movement her shifted equilibrium can handle. Neal is sitting next to Henry in the same spot Emma did just a few days ago. She hopes he really listened and isn’t throwing Emma under the bus to their son. Their son – it seems so weird to say.

Neal nudges Henry in the shoulder, and the boy smiles. Then he glances Emma’s way, and her heart stutters in her chest. He hops down from the castle and heads her way, Neal hanging back a short distance behind him. Emma rises from the swing, her nerves a hard knot in her throat.

“Neal - I mean my dad,” Henry’s brow furrows as he trips over the words.

“Hey,” Emma quickly assures, “you get to decide what to call us and when, okay?”

Henry nods. “He . . . um, told me that you didn’t know where he was.”

Emma sinks down to his level, even though her lower back protests the movement. She really hopes she can get back up again.

“I honestly never thought I would see him again,” Emma tells him, “but that doesn’t excuse the lie I told you. I should have told you the truth. I just . . . I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Henry manages a tiny smile. “A lot of stuff is changing.”

She gives a wry chuckle in reply. “Yeah, that’s the truth.”

“I guess I thought, when the curse broke, we would all be I the Enchanted Forest, and life would be . . . it would be . . . “

“A fairy tale?”

Henry’s shoulders slump. “Yeah.”

Emma manages to stand upright again, wincing as her hips pop. Her face must look more contorted than she thought, because not only does Henry ask worriedly if she’s okay, but Neal rushes over.

“Uh, you’re not about to pop this thing out are you?”

Emma glowers at her ex. “No, I’m not a toaster, Neal.”

***************************************************

“He asked if you were going to pop?” Killian chuckles with one eyebrow raised.

Emma narrows her eyes at him as she grabs a pair of dark wash jeans from the display in front of her. She cocks her head at her husband as she holds them up, trying to remember his measurements from the last time they saw a tailor. She makes her best guess and shoves them into his arms.

“I honestly didn’t remember him being so . . . so . . . “ she lets her words trail off when she remembers, once again, that Killian knew Neal in another life.

“Don’t mince words with me now, Swan,” he teases, though the gentle way he brushes her hair from her face communicates how much he means the words.

“Okay . . . I didn’t remember him . . . having such a small vocabulary,” she finishes lamely.

Killian laughs freely as he presses a kiss to her cheek. “Or perhaps you’ve just grown used to my sesquipedalian ways.”

“Seriously?” Emma snorts. “How long have you been waiting for an excuse to pull that one out?”

He waggles his eyebrows at her, and she rolls her eyes. She grabs his hook, and pulls him to the other side of the store where the jackets are. She finds two black leather jackets: one a simple motorcycle style, and the other with multiple zippers.

“What are those ridiculous baubles, love?” he asks, fiddling with one of the zipper tabs.

“Motorcycle jacket it is then.”

Soon she has Killian behind the curtain of the small clothing store’s only dressing room. She can see his bare feet peeking from the bottom as he peels off his leather pants. A bit of his dark hair is visible over the top. She bites her lip as she watches his billowy black shirt come up over his head and then hit the floor. She would really, really like to be assisting him, but she has a feeling it would lead to things that aren’t appropriate behind a tiny curtain in a local, small town clothing store.

“You sure your parents have everything under control?” Killian asks, his voice slightly muffled.

“It isn’t like Martha’s never been on a horse before, babe.”

“I know, but your father doesn’t exactly have practice with a three year old little girl.” Killian peeks over the curtain with an apology in his blue eyes. “Not that I would ever say such a thing to him, considering . . . “

Emma waves her hand at him. “I know you wouldn’t. Honestly, that’s why I want them to get plenty of time with her. It’s not the same, but . . . “

“I know they are cherishing every moment, love.”

Emma should be listening to Killian’s encouraging words, but instead she’s standing there with her mouth hanging open. She might be drooling, actually. He’s pulled the curtain aside, and she’s gotta say . . .

“This is a good look on you,” she tells him huskily as she comes closer and wraps her arms around his waist.

“Really?” he asks with that slight hitch to his voice he never reveals to anyone but her. The one that gives away his insecurity.

“Oh, yes,” she says, sliding her hands up the front of his chest. Her fingers skim the deep crimson vest to rest at the opened buttons of his navy-blue shirt.

Killian looks down hesitantly where her fingers are stroking his chest hair. “I notice most men of this realm don’t leave quite so many buttons undone. Perhaps I should -”

Emma silences him with a press of two fingers to his lips. “Don’t you dare even suggest such a thing, pirate.”

He grins broadly at her, then swipes his tongue salaciously across his bottom lip. “Feel that passionately about it, do you?”

She nods, batting her lashes playfully. “I do. Would you like for me to show you just how passionate I feel about it?”

The moment is shattered by a high-pitched squeal as the bell over the shop door chimes. Emma groans as she drops her head to Killian’s chest, and she feels his chuckle beneath her.

“Later,” he whispers huskily in her ear as he turns to greet their daughter. David is following behind Martha, a smile brightening his face.

“Papa!” Martha cries, looking her father up and down in surprise. “You look diff’ent.”

Killian feigns ignorance. “Do I?” He pats his chest and looks himself up and down in exaggerated confusion.

Martha giggles. “Your coat is short now.”

He swings her up to even louder squeals. “Is it?”

“Yes,” she laughs as he settles her on his hip. She turns suddenly serious, however, and cups her father’s face in her small hands. “Papa not a pirate ‘nymore?”

“Of course, I’m a pirate,” Killian tells her firmly with a wide grin. “Who says pirates have to wear long coats, silly goose?”

“I am not a goose!” Martha protests, an equally wide grin adorning her face. This is an old bit.

“Not a goose? Okay, a duckling then?”

“No, Papa!”

Killian glances over at Emma with a fond smile. “Oh, I see, your mother is a Swan, so you must be a . . . “

“Cygnet!” Martha crows, and Killian responds with a shower of kisses to her cheeks.

David clears his throat nearby, and the three of them turn his way. Emma is startled to see tears shining in his eyes. “Um, Mary Margaret is waiting at the diner.”

“Oh, right!” Emma quickly says, yanking at the tags on the clothes Killian just changed into. “Let me just, um . . . pay for this. Babe, you wanna take her on over? She’s probably starving.”

“Aye, love,” he tells her, leaning over to brush a chaste kiss to her lips, “and get me a few more pairs of these . . . what are they called?”

“Jeans,” she smiles fondly, “and I’ll get several of the shirts too.”

Killian nods and turns to leave with Martha still in his arms. Emma’s surprised when her father lingers. She tilts her head at David.

“Are you okay?”

He shocks her further when he pulls her into his arms, his hand coming up to cup the back of her head. “We missed so much with you,” he says in a choked voice. “I didn’t get to be . . . your Papa.”

Emma chokes back a sob of her own. She tries to think of something to say, but all she can do is let him hold her.

[nataliepeebles]

GREMLIN

Gremlins are tough to tackle. I have done a lot of work exploring my gremlins over the past two months.

Messages from growing up: 

A lot of people in college still haven’t been forced to fully grow up. Well I grew up at the age of 8. My parents divorce has caused me to be the way I am today. 

At the roots, my parents got divorced because of cheating. My mom simply could not find it in herself to be able to trust my dad after that. They lied to us for years growing up because they didn’t want us to hate my dad.

This has caused some serious trust issues in my life. Forgiving my dad took a lot of time. I don’t understand why anyone could ever do something so selfish. His stupid choice has royally fucked up my family life for so many more years that he would have even imagined. If people understood the consequences of their actions, usually they’d never do that to begin with. Cheating is something I will probably never understand. I can’t stand cheaters in relationships, on assignments, or even simply people that cut lines. Something about it has been ingrained in my head to be a horrible thing because I am the product of this. I’ve seen the consequences and so when someone told me “everyone cheats” (meaning on assignments) I absolutely obliterated this kid the other day. Not everyone cheats. We should not continue to let this be something that is even moderately accepted in our society.  It disgusts me.

I went from my mom’s house to my dad’s house each week from the age of 8 until 18. Yes, I lived out of a suitcase, a lot of the time because you always have your favorite clothes and makeup to carry from one place to another. I always had to know what was being kept where because when I wasn’t organized, I had to make additional trips between houses which has wasted an incredible amount of time over the years. Maybe this is why efficiency is so important to me? A lot of people take not going back and forth for granted. People don’t realize how lucky they are to not have to be on the move at all times. On the bright side, this has made me so much more adaptable because I am able to fit into my various environments. 

I have seen the inequalities in life (to put it simply). My dad has had an easy time. He is lucky to have had wealthy parents, that allowed him to excel in school and sports. He went to an Ivy League school (Cornell) and ran track there. That allowed him to find a career he was passionate about (sales and healthcare) so he is now a VP of their existing sales division at Anthem. He has had this career and continued to move up the corporate ladder for the past 25 years. He works his ass off and is a workaholic. He is constantly traveling, but makes a gross amount of money each year. He is cheap and only likes to save, but he is literally in approximately the top 3% of people financially. My mom is decently educated. She went to UConn and studied Psychology, but has barely used her degree at all. She also worked in healthcare for a few years before becoming a stay at home mom to raise us. When they got divorced, my mom did not realize how difficult it would be to reintegrate into the workforce. She has struggled from recruiting job to school jobs. She has never really had a career and at one point growing up we had to go on food stamps because a single mom and 3 daughters without making much money at all is hard to live off of. This has made me so much more empathetic to people and situations, because I believe people should work hard and get to earn more, but I also believe that sometimes bad things happen that you have very little control over, and sometimes these people deserve additional help until they get back on their feet. To go from one house to the other where my mom constantly struggled to my dad who has never had to worry about finances has shaped my outlook on life. It has made me crave stability in all aspects of my life. I never want to have to worry about money especially. 

Because of my mom’s struggles with finding a satisfying career, and lack of confidence, she constantly seems to end up dependent on a man. She has literally had every single type of boyfriend; the bad boy motorcycle rider, the Italian, the entrepreneur, the soccer player, the millionaire, the average boyfriend. We kind of make fun of it now but growing up we got introduced to so many different men that also lacked stability and I hate seeing her stay with someone just because she feels more stable with someone. I never want to be forced to depend on a man. I want to have a mutually trusting and dependent relationship by choice. Quite honestly this might be the part of my life that has made me more liberal, more feminist, and more fiercely independent. I can’t control most things in my life. I can’t control other people’s choices, decisions, results, but I can absolutely control my own. This might also be part of the reason I tend to be a control freak sometimes.

My stepmom can be neurotic sometimes. She doesn’t realize how good she is at guilt trips and making people feel bad when she wants them to. This has caused me to have so much more awareness for all situations but it has also made me too apologetic. I sometimes apologize for everything, even if I didn’t do anything wrong because I had to be so empathetic and aware growing up or else someone would get their feelings hurt. 

My parents never pushed me too hard growing up. Unlike most parents, mine actually were just proud of the work I did because they knew that I pushed myself (sometimes into the ground). I do think part of the reason I work hard is because I watched my dad work his ass off and how successful he has become from that. I’ve always pushed myself because I don’t want to end up in the horrible situation my mom was in. I push myself because I want to be able to travel and live well. Another reason I push myself is because of my older sister. Cassidy has always been great at everything. Growing up and only being 16 months apart was amazing because we were best friends, but so damn hard because everything was competitive and I hated it. We did all of the same things too. We were on the same soccer team, same track team, both honor students so we had the same teachers, we both even did student government. The main differentiator in sports was that she was way better than me at everything. Of course, she was on the state team, of course she got 5’s on all of her AP tests, of course she had no trouble with the ACT. I really felt like I lived in her shadow growing up. We did too many of the same things, and I constantly compared myself to her in an unhealthy way. It caused me to lack confidence in myself for years. It wasn’t until I started doing my own things such as marching band in high school and coming to a different college to be able to fully differentiate myself from her. For this reason, I hate competitive atmospheres because even when it didn’t seem competitive growing up, I always made it competitive myself. 

When I came back to these on October 17, I realized that there was an area that I refused to even talk about. Those were all my big surface level problems but I had an ice-burg underwater that even for this I didn’t want to talk about because I am afraid that you will view me differently after reading this. 

There is such a deep level of shame that I waited almost a year to tell my roommates. Boys. I give so much power to boys that use me and throw me away. I give so much power to horrible people that I know I shouldn’t give power to. I am so hopeful about the future and about relationships because I haven’t really seen these great loves in movies in real life, but I desperately want to find that. I think I am someone who gets lonely easily and compares myself to others. So many people think that because I am so focused on school, I can’t also have fun. People think that because I am so independent I don’t want a relationship. Just because I am happy on my own doesn’t mean that I don’t crave and hope for the best kind of real and vulnerable love.

I’m in a weird place right now where I don’t know what I want because I want to move away and this is the perfect time to do so. I don’t want to hold myself back by getting emotionally invested in someone this year for me to just move to realistically a different place than someone else.

I have had a friend with benefits for over a year and I didn’t tell more than a few close friends about it until AUGUST OF THIS YEAR. This is confidential.

I don’t share this part of my life because it completely conflicts with how I am in other areas and I don’t know why I let other people have so much power in this area and it terrifies that I do. My mom always says that I need to stop giving my heart away to people that just hurt me but I can’t seem to stop. Since I have gotten to college and gotten out of a long term relationship there is so much shame associated with how much I hoe around. People don’t know about this side of me and I think it’s because I like how people see me now and I don’t want them to see me as being a hoe. Granted, relative to some people it isn’t even bad at all, but relative to my expectations it is. 

And I keep saying that I am going to stop seeing this boy that was HORRIBLE to me. He has held me back from success and I shouldn’t even want that in a friend let alone someone to have deeper feelings with. 

I am so afraid of people's perfect perceptions of me being tarnished. I like being known as the hardworking girl who doesn’t have it all, but will work her ass off until she does. 

My gremlins if other people would find out (including my friends) would say: you’re disgusting. You’re such a slut. No one will ever want to be with you after this. Why do you continue to make such shitty decisions? You’re so unbelievably desperate. 

If I would go on a date with a boy from a dating app (which has happened a few times), I would wait until I knew he was relevant enough to share about to my family. And I said that it has been because I don’t want my family to make fun of me for going on a date, but it truly comes down to shame with my family thinking I am a slut. 

This is the least perfect side of myself. My family knows nothing about this side of myself because I am so good at hiding it. I work so hard at everything that I do. I don’t know how to half ass things. That is included in relationships. Growing up, not that my family was conservative because they weren’t but they definitely didn’t encourage me to make stupid choices with boys either. 

So much of my life I am a control freak about. I want to have control of every aspect of my life and I simply do not. 

I really think shame is a huge point in this realization...

When I hear my gremlins + what they are saying to me:

At class: you’re wrong, don’t even try to answer that question. 

At home: Natalie, stop being a lazy ass that just sits in your room all day watching shows

With friends: I never tell my friends all of the details about boys

While running: Don’t stop or everyone will see you

In academics: I try really hard, am I keeping up, I don’t want to disappoint anyone 

With boys: you disgusting slut. 

I care so much about other people having the perfect perception of me, but deep down I am just searching hard for love and meaning. And as I do everything, i am working really hard to find it. Granted, I won’t settle for less long term, but short term I seem to be okay with it. Why??? I don’t know. 

I hide the things that scare me most about other people finding out about me. I used to hide from everyone that my parents were divorced because I didn’t want to be known as the girl with divorced parents because I am so much more than that. I guess it’s because I want to control other people’s perceptions of me because I am afraid that if you find out these things about me then you won’t like me.

My gremlins are centered around things that aren’t at the surface because I never let them be, but deep down they exist and I notice them constantly. 

Ideas: buy invisible ink and write things. There are so many things I hide. And that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there, that just means that I am good at hiding them. I know that things are there. 

Think about those things that are always there even though no one else sees them… It’s like glasses that I am wearing and see but no one else sees them. 

More Ideas: beneath the surface, beneath the iceberg. My titanic. This has the perceived ability to sink me. It weighs me down wherever I go. I carry this baggage with me wherever I go.  Bird Set Free by Sia.

I cried 4 times that day that I realized how much I hide. That cut deep to realize. And I don’t usually cry at all. That was an emotionally draining day. I also realized that while I thought I was scared of other people’s perceptions of me changing, in reality I was scared of having to realize my own perception of myself changing because of how much I mess up and because of how high my standards for myself are. 

I liked the name as “Bird Set Free” for a while, but now realize that is a great song and metaphor, but not a name. I have renamed my Gremlin, Gnat. Gnat is like Nat or Natalie, but it’s my bad side. It’s my side that is slowly annoying me more and more with its inability to leave me alone. I have trouble not thinking about anything, and my internal Gnat is the reason why my head spins. This is the progress I’ve made thus far and I’m curious to see where I can go as I try to befriend my gremlin moving forward