They were staring at her. Snow and Neal. Her lungs were about to explode. She was suffocating under their expectations. She was seething with anger and drowning in heartache all at the same time. Pan was good. He had placed one obstacle after another in the path to Henry. All she wanted was to find her son. Find Henry and deal with the all the drama from Echo Cave later. It could wait. All of them could wait. Snow, David, Neal and Hook. So, she did what she always did best. She deflected, she evaded, and she built up her defenses. She stuffed her heart back down her chest and buried it deep.

Strolling out in to the light and glad to be out of the cave, she bristled as Neal spoke. I'll never stop fighting for you. " And she wanted to scream. Scream at how much she had hated him for so long. Sure she loved him, but she hated him. God did she hate him. She despised how weak he had made her feel and how much loving him had cost her. It would be easier if he had been dead, because she would not have to be reminded about how he had abandoned her. 11 years later he still never showed. And he knew where she was but still never came.

Apart from feeling alone and scared 11 years ago when he left, there was another emotion that she battled. More than anything she hated herself. She was weak. She could have been stronger for Henry 11 years ago. She could have tried. After all the times she had been left, she ended up leaving the one person in her entire life that had needed her. Didn't that act make her just as bad as Neal? After all she justified her reasons for giving Henry up, just as Neal justified his reasons for leaving. But when it came down to it, they both were cowards.

The last thing that she needed to do right now was revert to feeling like that scarred and scared 18 year old girl. Emma had felt trapped in her past for so long. And she didn't know how to move forward. Henry had told her that time stood still in Storybrooke until she had arrived. So she could move time forward for everyone else, but not herself, she mused.

"Tick Tock", she heard in her head and tried to fight her own amusement. Hook was rubbing off on her. She looked ahead expecting to see his leather clad silhouette ahead, but to her dismay he was out of sight.

To say that his confession in Echo Cave had frightened her was an understatement. This journey was about saving her son. But somehow along the way, Hook had slowly began to take her by surprise, starting back in Storybrooke when he returned with the bean. After offering his ship and his services, he had been fighting alongside them the entire time. Perhaps what had frightened about his secret was that his bravado and façade were gone. He made no attempts at self-preservation. For close to 300 years he had held on to the ghost of Milah. Emma knew what it felt like to hold on to Ghosts. She herself had been in love with a ghost. "Until I met you.", and for a moment she forgot about why they were even in that cave. Forgot that her parents and Neal were there. It wasn't just a kiss to him, he wanted more. More than he had in 300 years and that scared her.

She barely had time to register it all before Snow had cut his confession off with her own. Now that Emma had time to process the whole set of events she found herself thinking more and more about his confession. That kiss had been in the back of her mind all day and like a slow burning fire, was still spreading Emma could not recall every being kissed like that. In that moment she was not a lost girl, not an orphan, not the savior. She was just Emma to him. Her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. She felt guilty for even thinking about it. Henry needed her. And now Neal was here and she just couldn't deal with it.

Emma was so lost in her thoughts about Echo cave, but she noticed that David had fallen in to step with her. Figuring out how to get her father off this island was going to be another obstacle. Pan 3, Operation Henry 1. Wait, did she just refer to David as her father, she thought. Operation Henry 2, Pan 3.