Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
Title: The Outstanding Balance of Morality
Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon A Time. If I did, Adam & Eddy would be fired and picking up litter by the side of the highway.
Summary: There's a new villain in town using old tricks, and when the mysterious thief brings about Storybrooke's latest plot-twist, a lie is discovered and an old enemy re-sworn to revenge unleashes a far worse threat. [Emma/Other (non-romance), Swanfire] (rated M for language)
Genre: Family/Action/Romance/Adventure
The Outstanding Balance of Morality
"True love, Miss Swan. The only magic powerful enough to transcend realms and break any curse."
- Mr. Gold (1.22 "The Land Without Magic)
"See, the next time your lips touch Emma Swan's, all of her magic will be taken. Everything that makes her special, that makes her powerful, that makes her a threat will be gone."
- Zelena to Hook (3.17 "The Jolly Roger")
CHAPTER ONE
THE PRICK AND THE PRINCESS
At the prick of the needle, Storybrooke's sheriff cried out in startlement and stumbled a little before yanking free the hypodermic needle, it's old-timey metal plunger pushed in and what remained of the orangey-red liquid dripping onto the floor with a splatter of blood.
Just then, co-Sheriff David "Prince Charming" Nolan burst into the creepy mad scientist lair followed shortly by sometimes deputy and occasional Harbor Master Killian "Captain Hook" Jones who wheezed out, "Bloody bastard got away. Transmuted a manhole cover into some sort of portal."
"Is that?" David noticed the needle his daughter was holding while rubbing her backside. And an assortment of more needles filled with familiar liquid scattered on the table and floor around her.
Instead of getting an answer, Storybrooke's Savior cried out, dropping the needle and began to transmutate herself.
In retrospect, they probably shouldn't have kept Dr. Jekyll's dirty needle after Regina used it - or at least made sure it was destroyed after being used for the purposes of researching an antidote before Dr. Whale decided to also recreate large batches of the original serum... though, to be fair, he did have good intentions for curing things like lycanthropy or allowing mermaids to remain fully human without fancy enchanted jewelry.
Still, given how good intentions always paved a path to Hell - or The Underworld - in Storybrooke, they probably should have cut their losses and known better than to mix magic with fringe science that had previously tried (and sort of succeeded) to raise the dead. Sadly, no one ever seemed to catch on and destroy the roots of the evils that continually and without fail came back to bite them in their asses.
This particular time it was that particular potion and the ass was that of Sheriff Swan's - literally - when in investigating the looting of Whale's lab she lock-picked her way into what used to be Any Given Sundae and then The Three Bears Day Spa (before the Storybrooke health department shut it down for its water temperature being just right for noro virus to thrive in) and while observing former mud baths and Jacuzzis turned into vats of percolating potions found herself propelled backward by the cloaked culprit and in the process a full hypodermic needle not only jabbed its way right through her very tight jeans but in being slammed up against the wall, the plunger had been pushed down, injecting its contents into her, well, ass.
And so it was that Storybrooke's latest victim of magical mayhem shuddered violently and began to glow, another Emma soon materializing with a translucent veiny sparkliness overlaying the original, features contorting and separating in what seemed to be a quite painful experience.
Standing by helpless to stop the transformation, Charming and Hook could only watch as the specter began freeing itself, nearly solidify into a corporeal doppleganger with a Seattle 1990s grunge fashion fetish and hipster glasses.
Both men drew swords to battle the potentially malevolent bespeckled duplicate, poised and ready to launch an attack... which, of course, wouldn't destroy the not-really-human entity, but it would least send it packing to reform Terminator style until they could get their hands on the aforementioned antidote and re-merge Emma with her potentially villainous double as Regina had been the year before.
When the glowing and separating subsided, the second Emma Swan did not try to murder the first or anyone else, much to their collective surprise. Instead, she instantly slumped unconscious, followed moments later by the confused Emma in jeans and leather.
Rumplestiltskin glared at the gaggle of do-gooders that had taken over his shop. The wards he'd once placed around the pawn shop no longer seemed to keep them out after Emma's barrier spell, no matter that it was long since shattered by Cora and Regina. At least the silent alarm still worked to alert him when her family of trespassing 'heroes' trampled all over his personal property.
"What have you lot done now?" Gold growled.
"It turns out Whale replicated Jekyll's serum, someone stole it, and Emma got injected in some sort of booby trap," answered Regina who'd poofed herself and Henry over after the call from David. "Our hospital thief appears to be an alchemist.
"I can only assume the serum was modified somehow. Considering these two," she gestured to Charming as well as Snow, who'd hurried over with cranky toddler in tow, "ripped Emmas darkness out, so I don't see how the original syrup would even work on her. We were hoping you could... run some tests. Alchemy isn't my strong-suit and I don't completely trust Zelena."
"No, you lacked the patience for it," Gold conceded. "And your sister's last attempt rewrote history with countless unknown possible alterations and possible compounding paradoxes that could ultimately result in the complete and utter destruction of reality."
It was clear none of them had considered that consequence so, Rumplestiltskin just moved on to the matter at hand, correcting Regina's assumption.
"Modifications aren't required. Just because one has been robbed of their own darkness doesn't mean they can't borrow it from another. Magic and nature both abhor imbalance. I'm sure Miss Swan picked up enough of it over the years by leeching onto murderers and rapists, such as yourselves," he nodded at Regina and Hook.
Regina flushed while Hook rolled his eyes and snarked, "You always have to be petty, don't you, Crocodile? We're all family here-"
"Family?" scoffed Gold. "Ah, yes, Emma said I was family and that she would fight for me when you tried to murder me in front of my own son and grandson, but since then has chosen to damn me repeatedly, even using my wife as a pawn to blackmail me into her selfish, childish, tantrum of a demand to save your worthless life and, by her account, insisting I not attempt to change the future to save my son because it would be so very wrong to take away his dying a hero from him," he scoffed, amending, "Of course, my boy was actually a hero while all you've ever done is clean up your own filthy messes for the reward of a nice warm scabbard in which to sheath your diseased cutlass."
"Emma doesn't think I'm worthless," Hook growled, "and you're hardly a hero with all you've done to us and your so-called true love and second go at fatherhood. You're just jealous that everyone recognized that I'm one of the heroes now and have seen you for the scum you are!"
Rumplestiltskin snorted derisively. "Jealous? Scum? I think that would be the other way around, pirate. The Dark One always brings out the truth in one's blackened heart, and yours was to bitch and moan about your so-called true love being nothing but an anchor holding you down, holding you back from your true self: a villain. I've just stop deluding myself that I like power and hurting those who try to hurt me, or just simply stand in the way of what I covet. As long as you keep drinking the do-gooder Kool Aid, dearie, you'll never truly be happy," he scoffed.
Then nodded to Emma's family with an added, "So why would I even want to be part of this disgustingly amoral family of self-righteous, hypocritical idiots? You can't stomach owning up to your darkness, any of you, that you love it, that it makes you stronger, that other people fearing you gives you power. Because they certainly don't respect you, not the joke you all are, playing the reformed mayor and the buddy cops and whatever it is," he waved a hand at Snow White, "you think you're actually instilling in your students that help them be anything more than mouth-breathing breeders of another generation of ignorant, superstitious arseholes."
Poking the unconscious Sheriff with his cane, Gold said, "I don't envy any of you. I pity you and how pathetic you are that you actually think this woman is a hero, your savior when she's nothing but a spoiled brat teenager who treats justice like it's a suggestion and all of you are the eternal exception to it, allowed to screw over everyone else in this town and be praised for cleaning up your shite.
"Well, I'm not one of your sheep, Charming," he told the Prince. "And I owe your family nothing. Your daughter fulfilled her role with my curse, and now that's the extent of our connection. Emma Swan may have birthed my grandson, but this sorry excuse for a savior," he belittled, "foresaked any sympathies from me after she let my boy die and remain that way while running to Hell for Baelfire's deadbeat stepfather like a brainless school girl.
"Emma alone could have saved my son as the product of true love, but she let him die and he stayed dead, because heaven forbid any real life matter, even if it's an actual life, should complicate budding romance with a loathsome bastard who shot my innocent wife in the back and who now gets to carry a badge and gun just so Sheriff Swan doesn't have to go more than two minutes without being able to dry-hump her sick little addiction.
"I'm terribly sorry," Rumple concluded in a condescending tone, "but as far as I'm concerned, this woman is nothing but an emotionally dead and morally corrupt pirate's whore and whether she lives or dies because of her own stupidity - which I can only assume is half genetic and half syphilis eating her brain - is your problem, not mine.
"So all of you," he sneered, "kindly get the fuck out of my shop."
After getting the fuck out of Gold's pawn shop, everyone gathered at Storybrooke General where Dr. Whale had been their next best hope to understanding Jekyll's (possibly augmented) serum and why neither Emma nor her magically manifested doppleganger would wake up, no matter how many times Hook stuck his tongue down the former's throat and after Henry's failed forehead smooch, Regina zapped the bespeckled Emma with bolts of magic until her flannel dress began to smoke.
Henry had even tried to find answers in The Book, his magic quill refusing to pen anything to clarify what was going on beyond the point of the splitting serum taking effect... so the fifteen year old had now resigned himself to playing Pokemon GO in the waiting room.
Probably, Henry should have been more concerned about his mother being mysteriously unconscious, but he'd had so much crazy shit go down in his short life that he honestly couldn't muster the emotional investment between bullshit school work, bullshit Author writing, trying to have a bullshit social life, and bullshit hanging out with his grandfather and not-yet step dad in their perpetual frenemy bromance of trying to one-up each other in being the most dashing and important man in his birth mom's life.
It was really no contest at this point, which made David's enthusiasm kind of pathetic in Henry's opinion. Obviously, he should have been Number One as Emma's son, but since he had been out of the running since he was like twelve and only existed when Emma needed date night pep talks or he screwed something up but didn't even get punished for it just a lame-ass lecture, what hope did the dad she never knew have? Zilch.
His family was fucked up, Henry decided as he captured a Charmeleon from David's lap and Hook's patience, what minuscule amount he actual had, ran out.
"This is madness!" the pirate growled at Nurse Ratched behind the counter as Henry was trying to grab a Rattata from his chest hair. "I demand to see Emma."
"Which one?" the nurse asked, tone utterly bored and unfazed by the pirate's anger.
"The real one, you bint! The woman I am going to marry. You bloody well know which one I mean!"
A nun passed by with a cart of flowers and Henry snatched a Vileplume, wondering not for the first time if those pink flowers from Camelot were also evil.
"I'll page Dr. Whale and see if he has an update," Ratched blandly responded but made no move to actually do that.
"Grrrrrrrrrr! Who were you in your other life!?" Hook demanded.
"That's for me to know and none of you to ever find out," she quipped. "Now sit your faux leather-clad pretty but otherwise completely useless butt down and wait before I have security escort you out, Mr. Jones."
"That's Deputy or Captian Jones to you! I wouldn't be caught dead in faux leather! And you can't tell me what to do! I am the law in this town, woman!"
"I only recognize law enforcement who have undergone state-mandated training and are licensed to carry a fire arm, never mind drive a car," Ratched responded snootily while flipping through forms. "And since the only one here, corrupt as she may be, is unconscious or dead and you two are just an idiot blood relation and an idiot bootycall playing cops and robbers to compare your penis size while diddling with the siren rather than doing anything beneficial for this community, I reserve my right to call your bullshit, Deputy Captain Chlamydia, and issue my own psychiatric hold on all of you."
"Wha-I don't-I've never hadChlamydia! You take that back!" Hook insisted.
"It says right here that you did," Ratched gestured to a chart. "When you were admitted after that car accident, you had significant seepage."
"SHUT UP, YOU BINT!"
"Gross," Henry groaned while everyone else looked disgusted.
"Which is the only reason," drawled Ratched at the teen, "that I didn't whack your bony backside for stealing those condoms from the clinic last week. Between this walking petrii dish as a role model, your lazy-ass birth mother who can't be bothered to get her lovers checked out before spreading her legs, your judgementally questionable adoptive mother who banged a forest vagrant in a crypt covered in mold and rotting-corpse-seepage polluted ground water, your grandfather who had an extramarital affair and wasn't using condoms given his fake wife thinking she was pregnant and his previously prude of a mistress skipping in here to get the strongest dose birth control pills available, which she stopped taking to have a do-over after failing with the first kid and to start her creepy-as-fuck-and-insulting-to-modern-feminists-everywhere Overly Fertile Princesses Club that celebrates the cliché happy ending of a submissive little twit with a tiara and a baby-stretched vag, it was a relief that you even remotely understand safe sex."
"Hey, don't talk about my daughter that way!" Snow exclaimed. "Or my vagina!"
"You what!?" Regina howled at Henry.
"I just want to be prepared like she said!" Henry defended. "I don't want to get a bunch of venereal diseases like Mom! Or have a kid when I'm still a kid like mom! I'm not ready for that. Plus, Violet would join the Overly Fertile Princesses Club and I'd have to go to all those stupid dinner parties with those stupid princesses and their stupid princes. Seriously, like ninety percent of them must have eaten paint chips as kids or something!"
"We're not creepy and they're not dumb!" Snow harumped, which received a snort from Hook, an eye-roll from Regina, and David suddenly deciding to join the previous conversation.
"Did you say Emma has VD? As in-"
"Her vagina has seen more swabbing than the deck of the Jolly Roger," snarked Nurse Ratched.
"But... but..." Snow stammered.
"How can you possibly be surprised?" snorted Regina. "Besides just looking at what she's bedding, you never looked in her medicine cabinet?"
"I... I thought that was cold sore medicine."
"I can't believe you!" David growled at the pirate. "You gave my daughter your whore diseases!"
"It's not my fault, mate!" Hook huffed. "I finished the whole bloody bottle of pills Whale gave me even after Pan tossed us back to The Enchanted Forest when I pledged myself to celibacy until I could be reunited with my one true love. How was I to know I had some resistant strains?"
"That's why you get your junk tested again before even touching my daughter!" David snapped, throwing Hook up against a wall.
Snow sighed. "David, please, you can beat him up later in the parking lot."
"What!? Hey!" Hook huffed. "This isn't my fault! Emma knows it! She wouldn't have agreed to be my wife otherwise. She knows my love for her is pure even if my loins have plundered many an unclean-"
"Spare me the nauseating fake romance, you diseased manwhore," Regina cut him off, "and sit your unclean ass down before your dick falling off from the slutty barmaids you plundered in between drunk raping and infecting innocent damsels who popped out generations of congenital syphilis mental defectives is the least of your concerns," she snapped.
"I have not-"
"Please, during one of your blackout drunk stupors I bled you all over a map just to make sure Henry never touches one of your bastard decedents."
Unnerved, Hook sat down and demanded, "You didn't... tell her... did you?"
"About how many imbecile stepchildren and grandchildren and great-grandchildren she has running around this town thanks to your wandering dick over the past three hundred years? If she can't figure that out on her own, frankly, she deserves you."
"I thought you were Emma's friend," muttered Snow.
Regina snorted and told her, "I was the Evil Queen. If I didn't consider the two of you friends, I wouldn't have any. I mean, honestly, I let my lover's rapist who murdered my son's father move in with me, I was so desperate for companionship. And as pathetic as I admit that is, that you're happy to be friends with a former mass murderer who tried to kill your family doesn't exactly say a great deal for your critical thinking skills where friendship is involved. Your happily welcoming Captain Chlamydia into the family says even less."
Snow and David scowled and Hook glared at Regina before taking a seat next to Henry, closer than any normal person would, and patted him on the back.
"Don't worry, lad, whatever happens, you've still got me. Your mum and I might not be married, but she considers me family no matter what your other mum says and I'll look after you right and proper."
Henry rolled his eyes and sarcastically (not that Hook noticed) responded, "Great, thanks. That means a lot."
Everyone else lapsed into boredom and throwing nasty looks at Nurse Ratched for several minutes, until...
Dr. Whale returned to the waiting room suddenly and declared, "Congratulations, it's twins!"
"Funny," sighed Regina.
David jumped to his feet. "How is Emma? Is she awake yet? Do you know if anything was done to the potion? Is her duplicate dangerous? Can they be reemerged? Can we-"
"Why didn't my true love's kiss awaken her?" Hook butted in. "It must be a poison rather than curse then, yes? Because true love is the rarest and most powerful-"
"Bullshit of all. Yes I know," groaned Whale. "You all are so delusional basing your entire philosophy on a concept that's the equivalent of a Tinder hook-up between a sexual predator and slutty teenager. True love means absolutely nothing if it's entirely based on belief and feeling something to be true. I've heard less bullshit feeling-based policies from than son of an orangutan who thinks he's the best at everything when he's really just a hypocritical loser."
"He seems like a fine chap to me," said Hook.
"You mean you actually watch more than old pirate movies and pirate-movie-based porn?" scoffed Regina.
Whale continued, "Anyway, Emma is fine. She is awake. The serum was slightly modified but presents no danger to her or her sister's health."
"I'm sorry," Regina cut in, "what? Her sister?"
"That's right. Her identical twin sister," Whale said.
"WHAT!?" gasped everyone.
"Technically, her mirror twin," explained the doctor, "as seems to be the case with this sort of hereditary situation in your world, at least from the books I studied while trying to figure out the mess of Jekyll and Hyde. You didn't notice that after they split they are mirror versions of one another?"
Everyone exchanged a look that signified they had not.
"Hmm, well, I suspect a magical glamourie of some sort was probably masking this or you'd have noticed and Emma's magic, probably like the whole Dark One bit, Savior magic wanting to protect itself from interference - even if it had already been hijacked and was being used to essentially protect a Curse that had been thrown in reverse, in a matter of speaking, and then throw in Zelena's magic-siphoning kiss curse... it's really a clusterfuck of magical manipulations that put your daughters in this situation."
"Wait... we... really-"
"have... two daughters?" croaked out Snow and Charming.
Giving the pair a look that didn't say much for his thoughts on their intelligence, Whale confirmed, "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Two babies who shared one physical body thanks to magic: Emma who has ill-gained magical powers and came to Storybrooke and broke the Curse, and the one you've been calling Emma for the past few years who really isn't and screwed up your meet-cute in the past and used that magic mostly to benefit herself in between sessions with Archie to rant about being the Savior interfering with her pirate-smooching time, which was the rest of the time in the back booth at Granny's. I had to put out a public health warning about that booth lest someone get herpes from the condiment bottles. Or syphilis. Or gonorrhea... not to mention crabs, and not the kind that make a good deep fried sandwich with a side of slaw."
"I hate this bloody hospital!" Hook growled.
"But how," Snow asked, "I mean... I never knew... I was really carrying twins?"
"It had to be the spell The Apprentice cast on Embryo Emma to remove her darkness," stated Whale. "It's the only thing that explains the unusual absorption rather than, well, the usual outcome."
"Gold was right," groaned Regina. "Magic abhors imbalance. That curse took away Emma's natural predisposition to make her own selfish choices - her darkness - which was also the equivalent of having too much goodness. I assumed she found balance in life by associating with criminals, and I suppose that was part of it, but the other half came from her sister."
"Yes, exactly," nodded Whale. "Lacking in darkness, Emma's magic absorbed her sister into herself to try and restore as much balance to her magic as possible, which effectively also gave her more than the natural amount of light potential, although not as much as it would with regular twins since her sister is, after all, an Evil Twin, who clearly took advantage of Zelena's magic-sucking spell to switch dominance and hijack her sister's magical ability. Quite clever, really, though it would seem also subconscious, or if it was conscious, any dual full consciousness of being separate beings on either's part has been erased by the splitting, and probably for good measure as Dr. Hopper says that would be quite psychologically traumatic, and just the awareness of having behaved in ways contrary to their dispositions is hard enough to reconcile with-"
"I'm sorry," Regina cut in, "but did you say 'Evil Twin'?"
"Yes, that's right. Emma's sister, let's call her 'Bella'."
"Bella?" asked Hook, brows furrowed.
"Yes, you know, Bella Swan. Twilight?" Whale stated to blank stares. "Emma and her sister are like... Harry Potter and Twilight," he explained. "As the great Maine philosopher Stephen King said, 'one is about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity. The other is all about the importance of having a boyfriend.' One is The Savior. The other is a skank obsessed with her centuries old yet unnatural youthful, pale, leather-clad, emotionally-and-physically-isolating-from-her-family-and-also-undead boyfriend. Throw in some blood sucking and a not-gay werewolf and you two," he scoffed at Hook, "are a real life rip-off of that nauseating teen romance played by a syphilitic pirate and a thirty something woman acting like a dumb, slutty teenager. Which, from what I have read, is one of the hallmarks of Evil Twin Syndrome. Sexual promiscuity compounded by adolescent, narcissistic behavior."
"Hold on," interjected David. "If Emma has an 'Evil Twin' does that mean-"
"Your brother was one? Obviously," nodded Whale. "He was hereditarily predisposed toward evil behavior due to a blood magic curse upon your family known as 'Imago tenebrarum', which roughly translates to 'Mirror of Darkness'. You can thank Belle for finding that one. Or not. I understand you all mostly ignore her.
"She's quite put out that you left her to remain dead in The Underworld while trying to rescue a man who tried to murder her, you know," Whale told them, "even if she did briefly consider him a friend whens he was going through an unfortunate period of depression, anxiety, and extremly poor decision making stemming from a poor integration of her late-activated curse identity... according to Dr. Hopper, anyway. We trade trade secrets on poker night."
"And then blab them to everyone?" Regina snarked.
"Sometimes," Whale confirmed with a shrug. "But she has been a pretty shitty wife, banishing her husband on the word of a pirate, doing nothing to help with his PTSD from being tortured in a cage for a year, deciding somehow that she was no longer truly in love with him at a particular moment-which near as I can tell, completely violates that magical premise you base so many of your stupid decisions on, unless it really is ninety-nine percent belief, which I suppose is the only way to explain how a psychotic murderer-slash-rapist witch was able to true love kiss back into beating the heart of a psychotic megalomaniacal murderer-slash -rapist god after hugging it out sisterhood style sent to Heaven a sociopathic mass murder-slash-daughter-of-an-abusive-alcoholic with zero remorse for her atrocities that included magically abusing her youngest daughter and intentionally sending her eldest daughter back to be physically abused by a drunken prick. Honestly, you all are a bunch of selfish pricks with the critical thinking skills of brain-damaged toddlers, so it's no wonder you've got Evil Twins in your gene pool."
"That's rather harsh, mate," grumbled Hook.
"Really? Because from where I'm standing," Whale huffed, "you spent three centuries consumed with true love inspired vengeance, met a hot girl who once banged your stepson you sold to a demon out of spite, and decided 'Milah who?' to get into her pants. That poor woman got thrown into some eternal damnation estuary in the process of being blackmailed into helping save your wart-riddled dick, and instead of lamenting her tragic sacrifice, you made out with your new younger, tighter vagina at the funeral of a man who also got murdered because you and Bella were a couple of self-centered douchbags. No sane woman, or woman with two brain cells still firing," he scoffed in the direction of Snow and Regina, "would not see complete and utter apathy toward the horrible re-murdering of one's previous true love as a world-record-sized red flag."
"To be fair, I never supported those two," Regina harumphed. "Snow, though, was trying to get Emma engaged and pregnant on their first date."
"I was not!"
"You kind of were," groaned David.
"Perhaps we should schedule you for an MRI," Whale considered. "You've suffered more concussions than a football player in your lifetime from what I understand. You might have irreversible brain damage that's hampering your reasoning ability."
"Yes, yes, Snow is an idiot," Regina drawled, "tell us something we don't know. Get back to this Evil Twin thing. I thought the Good Twins never survived."
"Aye," nodded Hook.. "I've heard about that. Nasty business it can be."
"It gives new meaning to 'Vanishing Twin Syndrome' for sure," confirmed Whale. "The curse consumes the Good Twin in the same way as rarely in nature a fraternal twin will fuse with its brother or sister early in embryonic development such that a few of those cells with remain present as, say, a kidney or even blood cells that will lead to confusing DNA results. Although, from what I understand, it usually happens later in gestation was is quite painful and horrible and often leads to the death of the mother and both offspring. In the case that the Evil Twin does survive, usually some magical treatment was used to try and spare the mother's life and often the Evil Twin was then killed to prevent spreading the curse to another generation. And, you know, them being evil and growing up to do horrible things in general.
"I can only assume David has some sort of mutation that in combination with magical help allowed him and his mother both to survive, along with his Evil Twin."
"That gypsy charm!" Snow remembered. "Your mother gave it to me as she was dying. She said it was just supposed to tell the sex of our first born."
"Well, would you have still married him," snorted Regina, "if she told you it was to spare your life as one of your twin children possibly consumed the other in your womb? And if both survived, one would be an evil little shit you'd feel compelled and guilt-ridden to give up to the Dark One to spare it from murdering its good twin in the crib?"
"I... I don't know," Snow admitted while also realizing, "She tricked me into drinking that water! How... why would she do that!?"
"Because all parents in the Enchanted Forest are stupid, selfish assholes," stated Whale matter-of-factly. "Now. As I was saying, David and his brother are an unusual case. So are Emma and her sister. You could say that the spell the Apprentice cast resulted in a Vanishing Twin case turning into a Parasitic Twin case, but instead of additional physical features it presented in additional magic and/or behavioral features due to the shared consciousness of the two twins, one whose physical form remained intact but was suppressed or hidden by magic. You might say they battled for dominance like Spock's Vulcan and Human side, but the Savior magic kept Emma on the Human side for the majority of her life."
"Aren't Vulcans the more logical, though?" asked Henry.
"Well, if you truly follow Star Trek mythology through to the prequel series," Whale countered, "Vulcans are actually paranoid assholes who care a lot more about spying on and painting themselves as superior to other alien races than they then do about logic and religion. They just used that Surak fellow and his reformation as the perfect cover to seem like alien Buddhists.
"And, yes," the doctor sighed, "I realize knowing all of that as well as anything about Twilight reveals that I am a loser with no social life, but that's all your faults for trapping me in a world I hate full of people from other worlds that I hate. So there!"
Whale paused to think, the asked, "Where was I?"
"Explaining Emma's dual nature," said Regina, sounding a bit bored already.
"Ah, yes," Whale nodded. "Also, Evil Twins, like Vulcans, don't process alcohol well. So, Bella Swan chumming around with a barely functional alcoholic when her sister was already - perhaps on Bella's influence - prone toward drinking when emotional due to hereditary alcoholism didn't help curb her sociopathic tendencies."
"Hey! I am fully functional!' argued Hook. "In all ways!'
"Gross," groaned Henry.
"Emma is an alcoholic?" sputtered Snow.
Crossing her arms, Regina gave the younger woman a 'seriously' look and stated, "Exactly what were you doing every time we met at your apartment and she had her personal walking liquor store pour out his flask into her cup of coffee - the coffee she poured into it after pouring your hot chocolate 'with cinnamon' down the sink - or we met at her place and she was just straight up day drinking hard liquor?"
"I...I... why didn't you say anything!?" Snow croaked out, distraught and Regina shrugged.
"About the drinking? It was blatantly obvious and not my business. I probably drink three too many glasses of wine a day."
"More than one is too many," Whale told her.
"See?"
"She was really pouring out my hot cocoa?" Snow sniffed. "But she loved that. We bonded over that."
"Well, you and your firstborn bonded over it," shrugged Whale. "You and your second born bonded over Cuban coffee and lies."
Snow gave Regina an accusing look.
"What? Was that supposed to be a big flashing sign that Emma was body-snatched?" the former Evil Queen grumbled "I just thought Emma was only pretending to like the stuff for Henry's benefit when she first got here and didn't know how to break it to you all that she hates the stuff and probably told him when they were living together in New York so it was old news and if you cared you'd ask her and if I said anything you'd snark at me to mind my own business. It's not like I lived with her for five months or anything."
Snow scowled.
"Okay, so let me get this straight," Henry interjected, "Emma was in charge until Zelena took her magic so Bella took over control, which mean's Hook's arm candy who's been criminally neglecting me since my uncle's coronation is actually my aunt?"
"Exactly," Whale nodded.
Henry jumped up and threw a fist in the air, then told Hook, "Suck it, pirate scum! My mom isn't really a slut! And you'll never be my step dad!"
Hook harumphed and crossed his arms while responding, "Yes, well, I never wanted to be your step dad, you big-nosed nerdy bookworm brat with an unnatural scarf fetish."
"At least my dick doesn't seep puss!" Henry retorted.
Hook flipped him off.
"David, this is all our fault," Snow moaned. "We were going to have twins! That's what those visions meant! We caused this!"
"Yep, all your fault," nodded Whale, "but also, if it makes you feel better, if not for your stupid spell, you probably wouldn't have gone into labor early - since Evil Twin Syndrome causes premature labor due to the attempted twin-killing - so you'd have ended up in this world giving birth to two brats, one of them evil that would have spent her childhood on welfare and food stamps trying to kill her sister, assuming Social Services didn't take one or both of them away from you, since you'd have had no identification, no money, no education, and no job skills, in which case, with the luck your family has, Bella would have been raised up by Regina or that creepy ice bitch to murder your entire family.
"As it is," he shrugged, "being subverted by her sister for thirty years, Bella wasn't able to hone her psychotic tendencies to their full capacity at puberty with the hormone changes that alter brain chemistry and had to settle for a delayed and rather pathetic attempt at evil puberty even with the help of the Dark One. As such, Bella is less of an 'Evil Twin' at this point as she is just a selfish jerk with a sex and rum addiction. Really,, you lucked out with your selfish, bad parenting decision and it turned out for the best, probably. I mean, on the other hand, Bella could have turned out like Zelena. She's one of the worst cases of Evil Twin I have ever seen."
"Zelena is an Evil Twin? You never thought to mention that before!?" Regina growled.
"Doctor-patient confidentiality?" shrugged Whale. "Honestly, I hate all of you and dealing with your bullshit. Knowing that green freak has a hereditary mental disorder would have made you fawn over her and excuse away all of her horrible crimes with even more self-righteously misguided passion. I mean, I'm a fucking necromancer, and I think you lot are a bunch of morally bankrupt assholes."
The Doctor picked at a hangnail and continued, "As I was about to say before that rude interruption, even though Robin is a Good Twin, like most Good Twins, she carries the Evil Twin gene as well, so unless a cure is found, when she is older, something will have to be done to ensure she doesn't pop one out."
"Wait... how is she the Good Twin?" asked Regina.
"Same as Henry. Her Evil Twin was self-aborted. In his case that might have been due to Emma's lack of her own darkness for the curse to latch onto or just have been due to his mother already harboring her sister and that world's magic being unable to sustain both spells. Or maybe that believer heart magic, which frankly makes zero sense to me and seems fairly stupid was the cause. In Robin's case, if Dark Bella Swan hadn't given Zelena those onion rings, the poor brat would have been magically eaten by her sister and thus saved from being raised by a certifiably insane woman and her step family of idiots and psychopaths which will no doubt result in her either becoming a rapist or falling in love with a rapist. But, long medical explanation short, since that enchantment only accelerated the gestation of the Good Twin as the light one would attract the Dark One magic to snuff out such pure innocence, Robin's Evil Twin was miscarried at about twelve weeks during her birth."
"So..." Hook glanced between Regina and David before asking, "if Zelena was an Evil Twin and Regina here is her sister, does that mean-?"
"I am not that evil!" Regina snapped.
"You were pretty evil," Whale stated, "but not due to a curse. Zelena got it from her father. It's far more commonly passed down by males, what with The Enchanted Forest and it's arcane attitudes toward women being pretty much a haven for rapists. It seems that your mother's predisposition toward murder and raping was just regular inherited sociopathy amplified by an abusive childhood and in your case child-bride marriage to an old pervert who left you locked up in a castle to be tormented by the Dark One - and, of course, your mother removed her heart which surely made her a cold bitch and would have probably caused you severe subconscious emotional trauma as fetuses and newborns find comfort in their mothers heartbeat, which would not have existed in The Enchanted Forest while heartless, causing you to grow from conception without the foundational auditory bonding mechanism. Honestly, I don't know how you forgave that woman. She's ruined your for life. Probably fucked up your brain chemistry during development because of that - which you botched even more with a severe hormone imbalance caused by the sterility potion your mother tricked you into drinking while pretending she actually cared about you.
"Which reminds me, you should make an appointment to check your hormone levels and see if any adjustments should be made. Just because having ruined ovaries due to magic has kept you youthful long after most women would be suffering through menopause and turning into ugly old crones, doesn't mean you shouldn't keep on top of things."
"You really give less of a shit about doctor-patient confidentiality than Hopper, don't you?" Regina snarled.
"Not a bit. Prince Charming had a third nipple removed, Snow White really should think about bleaching her Wookie ass situation that makes her annual vaginal exams highly unpleasant, and from my examination of the Lost Boys, it seems likely that your son's unnatural pixie-dust-accelerated puberty has stunted his penis size."
"Awe, that's a shame, lad!" tittered Hook. "Already not having much to work with, I'd imagine."
"Actually," said Whale, "Henry's paternal line is predisposed to being above average. His father, even with his own presumed pixie-dust-accelerated puberty, was well endowed enough not to be embarrassed. Rather a shame, though. Both could have had award-winning careers as a porn actor and banged more ladies than you. Now Henry will still suffer the usual white male embarrassment in the locker room. Actually, this town is so ethnically un-diverse that he probably has a better chance of being struck by lightning than standing pantless next to a black penis, so-"
"Stop talking about my penis!" moaned Henry.
"It's all right, Henry," David reassured him. "Size really doesn't matter."
Regina, Snow, and Nurse Ratched snorted.
"Aaaaaaaaaaanyway," Whale continued, "where was I? Oh, right, I kept Robin's malformed Evil Twin in a jar in my office. If you'd like to see-"
"NO!" everyone exclaimed, horrified and disgusted.
Shrugging again, not remotely bothered by the offended looks, Whale scoffed, "Your loss. It's pretty cool."
"Can we see our... daughters?" asked Snow.
"Sure, why not? Just be aware that Bella will be even less inhibited. Try to encourage good behavior with rewards, like you would be a bad-tempered dog. But by 'rewards' I don't mean make-out time with Captain Douchebag here as that clearly leads to bad decisions like covering up cold-blooded, racist homicide."
"I was cursed! And I am not racist!" Hook exclaimed. "I may be a lot of horrible things, but I am not racist. My not caring that I offered that wizard has nothing to do with race. I generally don't care about any of the wankers I've bumped off."
"Lovely," sighed Regina.
"Like you care," argued Hook.
"Neither of you care," Whale told them. "You're both sociopaths. At least this one," he gestured to Regina, "has been trying to be a high functioning one using her lack of empathy to help defeat the threats against this town instead of sticking with selfish asshole."
Hook glared and Regina smirked.
"Anyway," continued Whale, turning back to Snow and Charming, "Be aware that one of your daughters is a psychological mess after being freed of her sister's skank-o-rama freedom tour and the other is a selfish, amoral slut who probably only suffered even the slightest moral crisis because of her sister and is otherwise incapable of properly experiencing empathy due to her affliction which is essentially entirely your fault for not getting tested for MTDs before doing the self-righteous heroes with two backs."
Whale then dropped his stethoscope like a microphone, declared, "Whale out!" and strode off down the hall.
"He's gotten bloody weird since bleaching his hair," muttered Hook.
"At least it's all his," snarked Henry. "I know you keep your magic rogain shit behind Aunt Skanky's herpes meds."
David gave Hook a two-fingered eye threat. "Parking lot, mate."
AN: The title is taken from the words of immunologist Peter Medawar who wrote about a particular case of human chimerism in The Uniqueness of the Individual, "There is no telling how long Mrs. McK will remain a chimera, but she has now been so for twenty-eight years; probably, in the long run her twin brother's red blood cells will slowly disappear, and so pay back the still outstanding balance of his mortality." He was writing about a woman who had absorbed her twin early in their gestation and so still had his tissue in her body. Chimerism is rare, but it does happen.
AN2: I started this story when PokemonGO was the new craze. A description of the Rattata says: "It is not picky about where it lives—it will make its nest anywhere." While the Vileplume's "toxic pollen triggers atrocious allergy attacks. That's why it is advisable never to approach any attractive flowers in a jungle, however pretty they may be." Lastly, MTDs = magically transmitted diseases. Duh!
AN3: As for Whale's geeking out on Twilight, I only ever saw some of the first movie when it was on HBO and turned it off because it was so very very very bad. Someone posted King's quote about Twilight and Harry Potter on Twitter and I had to use it.
AN4: On Star Trek, happy 50th! I got to reading all the "top episode" lists and other factoids about it, and how Enterprise revealed, or at least heavily hinted, that Vulcans are actually self-centered jerks pretending to be devout pacifists. I was never a Trekkie, but along with the movies I have seen TOS, TNG, and a couple of episodes of DS9 and Voyager. With a local station now showing Star Trek series, I happened upon "Q Who?" today. If only Q would show in Storybrooke and reveal that the past three seasons were all one of his illusions meant to teach Emma a lesson.
Next up: Breaking the news to Savior Swan and Skanky Swan.