Title: Heroes Are Stupid, Villains Are Attractive

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: "Dark and light are now mixed as heroes seem stupid and villains are attractive and pitied." The dead have returned to Storybrooke to upset the happy endings. (Swanfire.)

Author's Note: I'm going to call this a dark dramedy with a liberal dose of South Park-like satire, because Once Upon A Time has crossed the 98% pee threshold.

Dedication:Thank you to everyone whose rants on tumblr inspired this story, filmscoreaficionado and brorotica for the titles, twuwuvdearie (who's inspirational post was sadly deleted), and especially sarashouldbestudying who let me have fun with a short crack fic from Belle's POV. Anyone I haven't mentioned, apologies in advance. If you catch something from a post of yours or someone you know that hasn't been credited, please let me know and I will footnote accordingly.

PS: Just for fun, I've tried to fit in some Ridiculous Sentence Prompts by nothingeverlost at tumblr. (post/119051293643/ridiculous-sentence-prompts). I'm not sure if I'll get all of them.

HEROES ARE STUPID

VILLAINS ARE ATTRACTIVE

(or I Don't Hate This Female Character, I Only Hate The Lazy Writing and Shallow Male-Based Wish Fulfillment That Went Into Her, an increasingly frustrated ongoing novel)

"Dark and light are now mixed as heroes seem stupid and villains are attractive and pitied."

— filmscoreaficionado on tumblr, "Where Once Upon A Time went wrong: part 2"

CHAPTER ONE: NO COFFEE MEANS NO SEX

(In which Neal broods and Ruby rants, because some lame-ass book release two years later is not compensation for cruelty against anthropomorphs.)

The sky above Storybrooke was gray, the temperature chilly and everything just a bit damp. which was pretty much the weather in Storybrooke all year round, save arbitrarily out-of-season snow falls and heatwaves, of course.

This gloom suited Neal's mood just fine as he sat at Granny's with a cup of coffee in his hand, staring vacantly out the side window, as had become his habit such that his chosen booth was always left empty when he came in and sat down with his back to the door to gaze out at the alley. It wasn't because he was liked the view or was looking for anything in particular. It was more the opposite, in fact. Few people ever walked through the alley and he'd rather watch plastic bags blowing out of the trash bins and the occasional stray cat than chance seeing Emma walk by, hung off the arm of Killian Jones with that stupid smile on her face that made her look like she was under a spell - one part deliriously happy, one part devilishly horny, and one part disgustingly oblivious and unapologetic that their public display of affection bordered on that obscenely inappropriate.

When they'd met (again) in Manhattan, Neal had thought the girl he loved was still there, beneath the hurt and the fortress of a wall around her heart. He thought he'd seen glimpses in that girlish smile and the way she walked, that bit of a skip in her step still present, but apparently he'd been mistaken, because the Emma Swan he rediscovered again was a virtual stranger. Maybe it was emotional and psychological trauma from the Dark One thing, as Belle said his papa had a long recovery; or maybe it was the company she kept in the form of that two-faced pirate, a lying puppet, Henry's sociopath of an adoptive mother, and Emma's self-righteous and obnoxiously unkind and rather dimwitted parents who were touted as the epitome of good leadership and moral fortitude... or a combination of all of the above.

Regardless, Neal felt like he didn't know this woman who'd grown a few years older and a lot of years unwiser during his absence. And wasn't that some fucked up irony? He'd returned from the dead only to mourn the loss of the woman he'd died for and be haunted by this doppelgänger who looked like her but acted like a Pod Person. It just didn't seem fair that he'd lost his mother to Hook and his father to the Dark One... and then lost Emma to the very same. It quite frankly felt like the universe was having a good laugh at his expense.

Maybe this was ongoing punishment for bringing his father back from the dead. And hoo boy had that turned out just great! Not that anyone would have probably believed his old man about the whole Dark One escaping and finding a new host thing, but still, not even trusting Belle to help, not even trying to get sympathy from the good guys when he had the whole "I just sacrificed my life for all of you" to hold over them? Sometimes his father could be a real idiot. And maybe that apple didn't fall far from the tree, Neal had to concede, but he'd used Hook as a pawn. Hook! And sure, he hated him, but everyone else had already been swayed by the pirate's false charms, which his papa would have known if he ever interacted with anyone outside of his shop, so that had blown up in his face badly. Everyone believed Hook that he was up to no good, even Belle - because The Charmings told her the crock of shit that Hook sold them - so his papa never got to fully test how much old and powerful magic The Hat could contain, and the end result was Emma becoming the Dark One! Because, for some reason, True Love's Kiss didn't work in this world, or maybe it would have still unleashed the darkness, but at the very least his papa and Belle could have gotten that instead of magical heart bypass surgery, since it seemed to be the only way people around here deemed any love real enough to matter.

Being a good person? A good friend? A good parent? A good spouse? Nah. Those didn't amount to a hill of magic beans if you hadn't shared a rainbow-y smooch.

Which meant what he felt for Emma, what they'd once shared, didn't matter. He was just a sperm-donor that had regrettably turned up after they thought they were rid of his annoying presence in their perfectly fucked up family!

It was frustrating as hell, because Neal considered himself one of the good guys. And he'd died thinking that Emma considered him one too, but now here he was and it felt like Killian got his hook in her heart and twisted her view of villains and heroes. And the end result was a world where dark and light were now mixed as heroes seemed stupid and villains were attractive and pitied. It beat being trapped in the Vault of the Dark One, sure, but even being tormented by Pan in Neverland wasn't this demoralizing.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself," Ruby advised, bringing his attention back to his surroundings.

"Doing what?" Neal feign ignorance.

"Coming in here every day for coffee hoping a time portal will open and Emma Swan Circa 2012 will show up," she told him pointedly, then amended, "Waiting to be included by people who've unfriended you, wondering what you did to make them toss out your friendship like it never mattered or if it ever mattered at all and you were just a big chump for thinking that overtures marking your heroism, your honorary family status, were genuinely given instead of just selfish grandstanding using you as a prop. I've been where you are, and believe me, it'll only get you an ulcer."

Neal 's brows furrowed, flicking his brown eyes to the waitress' blue ones as she slid into the seat opposite. "You and Emma's parents were friends, right?"

"Were being the operative word," replied Ruby. "I was Snow's best friend, a good friend with David. They made me Emma's godmother. I thought we'd pick up where we left off after the Curse broke. I thought I'd gelled with Emma during the Curse, so when the Curse broke and David and I seemed tight while Emma and Mary Margaret were in the Enchanted Forest battling Cora, I was excited. I thought I'd finally get to do the godmother thing, even if it was a bit weird being younger than Emma, because we were all friends. Only we weren't. Not anymore. None of them cared about arresting King George for ax murdering Billy or getting equal rights for anthropomorphic humans so never again could one of us be killed and the crime passed off as 'but he/she wasn't a real person until they were cursed into this world'," she scoffed. "It was always 'later, Ruby, we have this important family crisis to deal with without you.'"

Ruby crossed her arms as she continued with a frown, "And it wasn't long after they sent you and Belle packing on your own that they replaced me with Robin Hood as their favorite tracker so Snow could try and set him and Regina up. I tried to inspire some... giving a shit about my having been part of their group, their family, at Prince Neal's coronation, but the fact that I remembered how they met didn't seem to mean anything. It was all about how adorable they were and then Hook oozed his way into the conversation and their past and they immediately forgot about me.

"When Mary Margaret appointed herself mayor, I tried to bring up the rights thing again, and in response she didn't even invite me to her so-called fireside chat that included a half dozen of her most avoid supporters who, for some stupid reason, trusted her to deal with the power crisis, because that's totally something a fourth grade teacher would know how to deal with and not cause a massive fuel shortage and rolling blackouts. And, of course, she promptly stepped down begging Regina to take over but never apologized for raising everyone's electricity bills as a result of her 'I'm Snow White, I can do anything regardless of absolutely no knowledge on the subject!' and made it seem like she was the victim because the Curse had appointed her to be in control, the Curse she cast that she made absolutely unnecessary because by bringing David back from the dead, that voided the required price of the Curse, so Emma didn't stop Zelena, lost her magic, got sucked into a time portal, and as a result we are all now living in this fucked up alternate timeline!"

Ruby huffed, then concluded. "Anyway, it's pretty clear now they only cared about what I could do for them, whether it was bringing Snow food when she was on the run or mauling Regina's guards during the war. And now that everyone knows what I am and would pull a Billy on my ass if they though they could get a jump on me or avoid Ganny putting an arrow through their hearts, Snow White and Prince Charming are not going to associate with someone who couldn't get a wedding cake at the Bakery, because it's against their moral code to serve werewolves. I mean, a pirate they barely knew who'd committed rape and murder, who tortured people, who was proud of his long history of whoring, sure, he was redeemed by virtue of having a hard-on for Emma so Mary Margaret could plan her fantasy dream wedding, but their best friend for years who ate her boyfriend because Snow screwed up and made me believe that he was the werewolf who had full control of her curse and only ever killed people on their orders? Nope. I went from honorary sister and godmother to friend-zoned to blocked.

"So them naming their second kid after you? That doesn't mean diddley squat. If you're not a hot guy romantically attached to their family like a starving leech in the desert, they don't have time for you, and any public overtures to the contrary are just about making them look good. It was hard to accept, but I did. With lots of therapy from Archie. Clearly, he doesn't get nearly as many patients as he should!"

Neal absorbed her story, which made him feel all the worse. If they'd abandoned an old family friend like that, what hope did he have? But instead, he asked, "Wedding cake?"

Ruby quickly scoffed, "Don't get any ideas. I get enough of that from Granny. Things with Graham are good, but I'm not some fairy tale princess who marries the first handsome guy to look in her direction after one five minute conversation about how to avoid getting killed by some crazy person their family screwed over. I have a smidgen of integrity. And, you know, issues over the whole boyfriend eating thing. Unlike everyone else in this town, I'm trying to get my shit in order so I don't end up in some codependent clusterfuck of a marriage."

"Do you kiss your grandmother with that mouth?" Neal joked.

"Where do you think she got it from?" interjected Granny and the old woman gave him a sympathetic look.

"Life is full of disappointments. People will let you down. I loved my daughter, but she joined a human-hating werewolf cult and changed completely, and nothing I could do would bring her back. All you can do is hold onto the good memories of those you love and let go of the bad people they've become, move on, fill those empty spaces with people who make you a better person," she said, giving Ruby's arm a squeeze, "who want to be better people themselves. That Game of Thrones is a great TV show, but it's not the kind of thing anyone should actually be involved with in real life. That self-destructive incestuous bullshit will fuck you up."

As Granny and Ruby left him alone, Neal considered that self-destructive incestuous bullshit.

Belle was most-likely sorting child-rearing books to take to Mommy & Me class tomorrow in a rather pathetic attempt to try and be included by Mary Margaret who would probably ignore her, even if she was nine months pregnant with octuplets, in favor of singing those stupid songs - the ones he'd caught her practicing to the blue birds that she let shit all over her classroom and on Henry's schoolwork that she probably never read anyway before giving him straight A's; and he was the liar for informing her that Henry had just plagiarized a book report that August, the literary trope for the biggest liar of all time, wrote for him!

Henry, he was probably hiding cameras in bird houses outside the bedroom windows of his female classmates - if Killian's boasting was to be believed. And, of course, Emma was likely fucking Killian in her office while her dad kept a former Lost Boy in a stress position in the interrogation room for not having valid ID when he stopped him for cutting in line at the pharmacy and just happened to find a comic book in his backpack that he said was stolen, even though the guy was nineteen and illiterate because Mary Margaret never came up with an education program or housing situation for the Lost Boys who'd ended up living at Zelena's old farm until the anti-technology loons took it over and kicked them out like unwanted sons at a polygamist LDS compound.

Because that's basically what happened last week when Neal had endured fixing the department's old computer after the two "love birds" emerged from Emma's blinds-closed office with the scent of sex to taunt the kid with a half-eaten Pop Tart while David read the comic book he'd clearly wanted for himself and Killian groped Emma's ass and she giggled at how adorably insatiable he was like they were in a cheap porno - like Neal wasn't right there; never mind the unfairly imprisoned young man who wasn't allowed to make a phone call or get a lawyer like they weren't even living in America anymore. And, of course, when Neal called Regina to file a complaint, he was pretty sure her heavy breathing had nothing to do with having to take the stairs because the elevator was out.

No, Storybrooke was just full of horny assholes.

The clock tower chimed, and Neal pushed his cold coffee aside. Another day wasted, hoping time would rewind and bring back the family he died to ensure their happy ending instead of this nightmare.

Neal paid his bill, adjusted his scarf, and trudged out into the biting cold and damp in search of those elusive things called home and family that had always seemed just out of reach.

AN: So, yeah, that was kind of depressing. Sorry.

Next up: Neal tries therapy.