Though Neal can compare this place to Neverland with understanding and ease, it's different for him. Neal spent his days in Neverland planning, drawing, thinking, angry and hurt, resentful and thoughtful. He spent his time there growing up, slowly, far more slowly than a boy might in the real world, each year was a creeping, crawling day to him that involved very little physical growth, but even the most stagnant of places can afford some level of maturity for a teenage boy with little else to do but learn to cope.
Neverland hadn't been a punishment to him like it had been for Hook, and unlike there, Neal hardly feels the timelessness that neverland offered. Not here, not in this hotel- on the contrary, he feels like he's on the edge of his seat. Like the impending and inevitable loss is coming, the day when Hook and Emma learn the secret to their escape, when all of this comes to a head and balance is restored, they'll go home and he'll...
End, probably. For good, for a stark and undeniable finality. He appreciates every bit of extra time he's given, and feels like he's wasting this opportunity by letting things settle into monotony. Feels the foreshadowing of hurt that will come when things reach their climactic reveal, which is why it's probably easier for him to reach out to Killian now than it ever would have been back in Storybrooke. People don't get a lot of opportunities to bury the hatchet, to create new and arguably decent, positive memories. Especially when aforementioned people are definitely dead as a doornail.
Neal shakes his head at the suggestion that it's captivity-inspired hallucinations. He knows them as well as Hook knows them, and he knows that isn't what this is. He doesn't touch on the subject of his mother's death again, not just yet, instead hedges with, "Emma thinks it might be some kinda... technology thing. Like the people running this place are faking it somehow."
Because specifying holograms or projectors probably... wouldn't mean more to Hook than vague a technological thing anyways, so. He gets the drift, and the point is that Neal wholly disagrees, and it's apparent by the look on his face and the skepticism in his voice.
no subject
Neverland hadn't been a punishment to him like it had been for Hook, and unlike there, Neal hardly feels the timelessness that neverland offered. Not here, not in this hotel- on the contrary, he feels like he's on the edge of his seat. Like the impending and inevitable loss is coming, the day when Hook and Emma learn the secret to their escape, when all of this comes to a head and balance is restored, they'll go home and he'll...
End, probably. For good, for a stark and undeniable finality. He appreciates every bit of extra time he's given, and feels like he's wasting this opportunity by letting things settle into monotony. Feels the foreshadowing of hurt that will come when things reach their climactic reveal, which is why it's probably easier for him to reach out to Killian now than it ever would have been back in Storybrooke. People don't get a lot of opportunities to bury the hatchet, to create new and arguably decent, positive memories. Especially when aforementioned people are definitely dead as a doornail.
Neal shakes his head at the suggestion that it's captivity-inspired hallucinations. He knows them as well as Hook knows them, and he knows that isn't what this is. He doesn't touch on the subject of his mother's death again, not just yet, instead hedges with, "Emma thinks it might be some kinda... technology thing. Like the people running this place are faking it somehow."
Because specifying holograms or projectors probably... wouldn't mean more to Hook than vague a technological thing anyways, so. He gets the drift, and the point is that Neal wholly disagrees, and it's apparent by the look on his face and the skepticism in his voice.