[ On some level, he knows Emma's likely right. At least when Snow told him about his future, it was some comfort. But he'd asked her for that update, and besides, who but Regina would assume bad intentions from Snow White?

It's the subsequent comments thrown his way that have been needling at him. The questions, the casual assumptions that he's already been reunited with her. As if he'd ever leave her again if he already got her back. Not only does it leave him feeling her absence all the more painfully, but it also makes him feel like a fool for coming here at all. Like he's keeping himself from a bright and happy future, prolonging his misery by being here.

So he has to scoff at her talk of their Storybrooke neighbors trying to offer him some assurance. And he's about to dismiss everything she says until the last words that Emma says. Preparing himself.

It strikes a nerve. He'd mentioned something to Harley the other day, during her house-call.

(Yeah, he has a madwoman for a therapist. Of course he would.)

Jefferson stops fiddling with the cup, dropping his hands flat on the table, and the dark expression softens, resentment giving way to something more vulnerable. ]

I worry sometimes. [ He doesn't know why he's confiding in Emma about this, considering their past. Maybe because even then, when he was ranting and waving a gun around, he was unloading his grief onto her. ] That when I see Grace again-- my Grace-- [ Not Paige. ] That I can't be any sort of father to her at all. That's the future I imagine sometimes.

[ That he can't take care of her, or he'll scare her. That she'll want to go back to the neighbors he'd left her with back when Regina wanted to go to Wonderland. They were, after all, her parents during the curse. Stable, kind, good people. Not like him. ]