Emma was around less and less now.
When she did appear, her energy was different. Also her vists were shorter. Her smiles came quicker, her laughter bubbled brighter but they weren't the same as before. They weren't theirs. That warmth, once built between late-night pie at the diner and whispered confessions under flickering streetlamps, now carried Neal's name. Neal's shadow. Neal's spark.
Nathan noticed everything. He always noticed.
At first, Emma tried to keep the balance. She dropped by the shelter late at night, sometimes sneaking in food, sometimes just to sit across from him and talk. She still ruffled his platinum hair like an older sister, still teased him for being "too serious for a kid." But the phone calls came more often. The texts buzzed while Nathan was mid-sentence. The glances down at her screen, the faint smile she tried to hide it was all the proof he needed.
It was death by inches and Nathan felt each one.
He rubbed the bracelet she'd given him for his birthday, the silver charm warm from his touch. A promise. A symbol that she had once chosen him, even just for a fleeting moment. But promises, Nathan knew, were fragile things. Neal's gravity was already pulling her into a different orbit changing those promises.
One afternoon, Nathan again spotted Emma across the street. Neal's arm was slung comfortably around her shoulders, casual and possessive all at once. She laughed at something he said, tilting her head back in a way Nathan had never seen before. Her walls those iron defences she carried like armour crumbled around Neal, piece by piece. While it took him weeks and month's too crack.
The sight should have warmed him. She was happy, freer than she'd ever been. But instead, a sick ache filled his chest, heavy and selfish. He wanted that smile to be his. He wanted to be the reason her guard had fallen, not Neal.
Emma noticed him then. Their eyes met across the street. She lifted a hand to wave, but the gesture was distracted, almost hurried. By the time Nathan raised his own hand in return, Neal was tugging her along, and she didn't look back.
The city noise swallowed him whole cars rushing by, people brushing past, horns echoing down the block. In the middle of it all, Nathan felt invisible.
Back at the shelter, Nathan sat on his bunk, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling. Voices echoed around him kids laughing, bickering, calling out to one another but none of it reached him. Emma used to fill that silence. Now it pressed down on him like a weight, suffocating in its absence.
He whispered into the empty air, words he didn't dare say aloud to anyone else. Curled up on his bed knees to his chest.
"You promised, Emma. You promised tomorrow."
The System stirred faintly in his mind, its voice metallic and detached:
[Observation: Bond with Emma Swan is waning.]
[Big Sister Affection… deteriorating.]
Nathan shut his eyes, covering his ears as if he could block it out. "I know," he muttered. "Just… shut up."
But the voice didn't fade.
[Directive: Endure until Storybrooke.]
[Directive: Survive.]
Nathan curled into himself further beneath the thin blanket, bracelet pressed to his chest like a lifeline. Endure. Survive. Was that all he could do?
Their last night together before the fracture came quietly, almost tenderly, as though the universe was giving him one final memory before tearing it away.
Emma slid into their booth at the diner well past midnight, her hair damp from rain. She smelled faintly of smoke and street air, her cheeks flushed with energy.
"Sorry," she said, shaking droplets from her jacket. "Lost track of time."
Nathan didn't ask with who. He already knew.
They talked, but it wasn't the same. She was distracted. She stirred her coffee absently, eyes drifting toward the window. Her phone buzzed twice, screen lighting up with Neal's name. She silenced it quickly, but Nathan had already seen.
When she caught him looking, she gave a guilty little smile. "He just… makes me feel like I'm not broken, you know?"
The words hit harder than she realized. Nathan's fork froze halfway to his mouth. He forced it down and spoke quietly, his voice raw. "You're not broken, Emma. You never were."
Her eyes softened at that. For a moment, just a moment he saw the Emma who used to belong only to him. The one who ruffled his hair, who gave him a bracelet because no one had ever celebrated his birthday before who promised him tomorrow.
For that moment, Nathan thought she might reach across the table. Reassure him. Prove him wrong.
But the phone buzzed again.
Emma sighed, stood and reached out instead to brush some of the strands of his hair back. "I'll see you tomorrow, Nathan. Promise."
The words was the same. The tone wasn't. Just repeating the same line again.
He nodded, though his throat felt tight, as if the simple act of speaking would betray him. "Yeah. Tomorrow."
Emma smiled once more then left, chasing a tomorrow that wasn't his.
Nathan sat in the diner long after, pie untouched, bracelet cold against his skin. Outside, the rain fell harder, running in rivulets down the neon-lit windows. The world kept moving, page after page, chapter after chapter.
And Nathan, alone in the booth, felt the weight of inevitability settle on his shoulders. For the first time since his reincarnation, he understood: Emma's future no longer had space for him.