#swanfire

"When I heard you might be here, and that you might still be alive, I knew I should be happy, but I wasn't. I was terrified. I didn't understand why until now. From the moment I saw you in New York, in the instant you stepped back in my life, I knew. I knew I'd never stopped loving you."

I was on Tik Tok and saw an anti Swanfire edit, an old one, and in the comments people were complaining about how Neal left his pregnant girlfriend, but here are some things those people don't understand or take into account.

Neal didn't know Emma was pregnant. Emma herself didn't know she was pregnant until she was already in jail. So saying Neal left and let a pregnant Emma go to jail is wrong because as I said HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW!

If he did know I don't think he would have left because he never wanted to be like his father.

Neal is Selfless. Neal left Emma because he knew how much she wanted to meet her parents. August basically told Neal that if he stayed with Emma she wouldn't go to Storybrooke and wouldn't break the Curse and in doing so would never meet her parents.

This could have gone two ways for Neal. (or three if you have read the Fanfiction "Wishing On a Shooting Star and Thinking that a Heart Can’t Lie" by Dragonbat on AO3)

1. He stayed with her and they leave get their money, go to Tallahasse, have a son together and Neal would never have to think about Storybrooke or his father who would never come back into his life because Rumple would never remember and the Curse would have never been broken. (but Emma would never know that her parents didn't want to abandon her)

or

2. What happened in Canon. Emma got to find her parents. All the people cursed broke free due to Emma coming to Storybrooke. But most of all Rumple remembered, Rumple came after him.

Something Neal didn't want but knew would be inevitable if let Emma go. Which he did because he knew how much Emma wanted to find her parents, how much she wanted to know why, why did they abandon her on the side of the highway?

And of course all those people caught in the crossfire of HIS father's curse, a curse that was made to find HIM.

We don't know Neals Age. Now no one said anything about his age in the comments of this specific video but I have seen other Anti Neal and Anti Swanfire edits on Tik Tok saying that Neal statutory r*ped Emma. Even though we are talking about a fictional character who was in Neverland, a place that doesn't age one physically or mentally, for who knows how long. We kinda know the age he goes to Neverland at. (I think it was around 15 or 16, I don't know for sure) but we don't know how long he was in Neverland or when he leaves. In other words we don't know his age and I wouldn't put it past him to fake credentials when he go back to this new world were you need an ID to live.

ONCE UPON A TIME Swanfire in 2x16 "The Miller's Daughter"

I’ve decided every time I read some stupidity like “he was obviously in the LWOM for ten years before meeting Emma,” I’m going to compress the known timeline of his age a little bit more.

I’ve got him down to fifteen years and three months to Emma’s seventeen. I can probably shave off a little more so that they celebrate his fifteenth birthday after getting together.