Title: Carnivhell
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: Death is a farce. Entirely based upon a character death, namely that of Emma Swan. Rated for language and mentions of rape and incest. (Swanfire?)
Genre: Horror, humor, parody, maybe some spiritual and eventual romance, who knows. Characters from other works of fiction may make cameos, but this is not a crossover.
Author's Note #1: This was originally going to be a take-off on The Five People You Meet in Heaven, but Heaven is boring and Emma sure isn't worthy of the Pearly Gates. Instead, this is an Emma-bashing/torture-fic, because I am just so out of love with the villain fangirl she's become.
Author's Note #2: I don't actually have in mind any particular torturous trails for Emma to endure (yet). I'm hoping readers will respond with some witty suggestions. Or, if you like, write your own chapter!
Author's Note #3: Death is played by Niecy Nash.
Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
CHAPTER ONE
DEATH BECOMES HER
There were screams, a flash of brilliant magical light, and people calling her name in the midst of momentary agony as though every bone in her body had been crushed to dust -
That gave way to the scent of wet asphalt and the feeling of her face pressed up against ground embracing her, cold and unyielding.
Slowly, Emma Swan pushed herself up from the damp blacktop where she had come to rest. The place was dark and the stars in a night sky above half hidden by clouds. Her first thought was a portal, which would explain both the sudden change in surroundings and what seemed a loss of a time of a good half day... as well as, perhaps, her wardrobe.
She had a vague sensation of being hit by a shit-storm of magic, and though Emma couldn't recall any sort of magical travel that altered her clothing to leather and flannel, she had become uncomfortably accustomed to being thrust into ridiculous situations with sudden changes in venue and clothing. The absurd had come to define her life, and against her initial better judgment, she'd ultimately embraced the crazy that was her dysfunctional mess of a family and their heritage.
It wasn't the life she would have chosen for herself or her son, but it had kept choosing them no matter how hard she'd fought until she'd just thrown her hands up and joined in the calamity that was defined by magical mayhem, ad nauseam epic adventures, and a morally ambiguous mashup of heroes and villains that she had come to realize, over time, had changed her in ways that her pre-Storybrooke self wouldn't have approved.
To her silent shame, she'd traded her sense of justice for the comfort of family and not growing old alone, which Emma supposed was a choice that many people made, and perhaps came to regret too late to become the person they'd once hoped to be and have their children be proud of.
Perhaps, she sometimes considered, that change was inevitable and the heroic person Henry believed her to be was just as much a figment of his imagination as her parents being virtuous leaders was pure fabrication.
Henry...
Something about her son tugged at her memory, but the thought shattered as her boot crunched something in the darkness.
Bending down, Emma discovered a pair of glasses. Her glasses. The ones she hadn't worn since living in Tallahassee.
It took a moment to make the connection. The glasses, her clothes, the surroundings that seemed distantly familiar - her reflection in a puddle as the clouds parted to let the moonlight illuminate the Portland amusement park and the teenager staring back at her.
Emma leapt back to her feet. What kind of trickery was this?
She moved quickly through the park, her feet taking her toward the looming shadow of the Italian Trapeze - the spot of her first date with Neal.
It had been a long time since she'd thought about this place and him - and at the same time Neal was never far from her thoughts, though just as that first decade she had become skilled at never making those moments known.
Emma had applied herself to living and loving in the present. But that didn't mean she was always successful, that she didn't look at her son's smile and feel a momentary heartbreak that Neal wasn't there to see it. Or that she never took out her cigar box of pre-Storybrooke momentos and stared at that Polaroid when she felt like she was forgetting what he looked like.
And though she'd stopped wearing the keychain, put it away for safekeeping after so many crazy world-hopping, wardrobe-changing adventures, she did take it out now and then when the world felt like too much, when the life and the person she used to be seemed so far away, like a dream, and she worried that she would lose that sense of herself to the "fairy tale" she'd landed herself in.
There had been a demarcation line in her life, the person she was when she didn't know her family and the person she became after breaking the Curse - and they were frustratingly irreconcilable, forcing her again and again to choose Savior over Bailbonds person, Swan Princess (or Dark Swan) over Emma Swan - bestower of charity and unjudging "heroism" over fighting for the forgotten and demanding justice.
It was hard to fight for justice when her family seemed forever the perpetrators who'd wronged others and her son so desperately wanted everyone to have a second chance, to have their slates whipped clean as they started over in the post-Curse world. Maybe that made Henry a better person than she was, or maybe he was just even more brainwashed by growing up the son of the Evil Queen than she was as a result of her indoctrination by magical fire into the fold of "everyone deserves a happy ending, no matter how despicable they are... unless they're someone truly good standing in the way of the bad guys getting their happy ending, in which case, fuck 'em."
The closer she got to the swings, the more Emma's heart hammered, unsure of what she would find, and what she wanted to find.
If anyone had deserved a second chance and a happy ending, it had been Neal, but fate was cruel to him, like it was to Graham, Johanna, Marian and all those truly good people who had loved and were lost out to the benefit of others less deserving.
Good always wins was a lie that parents told their children, and even in fairy tales it wasn't true. More often than not, evil was triumphant while masquerading as good.
And she'd been party to that.
She'd essentially wished Neal dead after the Cannery, a wish she'd come to regret when he'd died in her arms, a wish that had twisted itself into a painful and festering guilt with compounding betrayals she'd peiced together into some counterfeit version of Tallahassee. All of it was well hidden beneath the layers of a savior's armor, the frills of a princess' ball gown.
But she had none of that here, strangely young again and dressed as she had been that night, the only thing missing her cup of coffee and her companion thief.
At last, Emma rounded a concessions stand and there, on the platform, was an out-of-place shadow moving beneath the Italian Trapeze. Another sliver of moonlight revealed the figure and her heart lurched.
"Neal..."
She'd dreamed of him over the years, but none felt quite so real as this. And though she'd hastened to this spot, hoping - she was suddenly paralyzed with fear and the thought came to run away. Because this had to be a trick. She was not seventeen and he was not in Portland. And if it was real... would he be happy to see her? Did he approve of how she'd lived her life? She wasn't so sure that he would be, had shied away from any notion of using Zelena to contact him. And even if he was... what did this mean, the both of them here, like this?
No, it had to be a dream or a trick.
He looked up, gaze scanning the darkened surroundings and Emma pushed down that fear, determined to face whatever this was, to not be fooled or toyed with. Instead of slipping back into the shadows, Emma took a step forward, raising her voice, "Neal!?"
She expected his immediate response, but instead he just kept looking blandly about, then dropped his gaze back to his lap and the glove he was toying with.
"Neal?" she repeated, taking another step.
"Honey child," a brassy alto boomed from behind, "he can't hear you."
Emma spun, nearly tripping over her chunky boots, to face a tall, curvy, ebony-skinned woman. Dressed in a boobsy black cloak with hot pink press-on nails that matched extensions in her long, dark hair, the woman was regarding her from a spot leaned casually against a lamp post.
"Who the hell are you?" Emma demanded, clenching her hands, ready to unleash white-hot magic if necessary.
"Hell's got nothing to do with it. Not yet, anyway," said the woman. "And what are you planning to do? Blast me with your special Savior powers? Honey child, you're no one's messiah now. And in this place only I've got magic skills!"
That said, she snapped her pink-nailed fingers and the park's lights came on... which didn't seem to phase the brooding man on the swing. Neal didn't even seem to notice.
Emma tried to conjure a ball of light, but found the woman's words held true. She could feel magic, but she was disconnected from it.
"Where are we? What do you want?" Emma asked. "And is that-"
"Really your original baby daddy?" the woman prompted. "That's him. Like I said, he can't hear you. Or see you. Where we are is a construct of your mind, a place of significance that you both share, a place that could be made real and everything altered if you pass the trails ahead, but right now, the twain are not overlapping. What I want? That's irrelevant. I'm just doing my job."
At Emma's still bewildered and annoyed look, the woman rolled her eyes and sighed.
"Honey child, I'm the Grim Reaper and you dead."
Next up: Emma takes a hard look in some mirrors.