Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
Title: Once Upon A Q
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. Same for the idiots running the show referenced at the end of this story. I don't own anything Star Trek: The Next Generation, but my Gene Roddenberry's legacy live on for another 50 years!
Summary: What if Q paid Storybrooke a visit? A #StarTrek50 crack fic crossover. (rated M for language)
Genre: Parody/Humor
"Once Upon A Q"
Suddenly, Emma Swan was standing outside Zelena's barn. Hook was laying soaked and unresponsive on the ground. The Wicked Witch was cackling. Rumplestiltskin was looking disheveled and broken. And for some reason, both Zelena and her Dark One slave were as still as the drown pirate.
"What the-"
A laconic voice interrupted, "You wanted to know what your life would be like - what you would be like - if you could just let go of the past, of all that guilt and pain, never letting it weigh down on you and making your job as 'The Savior' such a terrible burden."
Head snapping around, Emma faced a man with curly brown hair and broad lips. He was dressed in Enchanted Forest clothes and his expression was somehow both extremely bemused and utterly bored.
"Who the hell are you? And what-"
"You can call me 'Q'. Think of me as the ultimate Author," he answered in a braggadocios tone. "And what I mean is that nothing from this moment forward that you lived really happened. It was an elaborate, if sometimes poorly constructed, I'll admit, fantasy - that 'true love's push' thing was pretty shoddy narration, but that nauseating farce of a quest really just had to end already - to answer that nagging question of yours that had you stuck between staying and leaving."
"You're saying I didn't-"
"Fall down a time portal, alter your parents meet-cute, fall in love with the man who handed your son's father to a child abuser after banging his mother, wore horribly cliché and submissive outdated fashions, became the Dark One, went to Camelot, turned your villainous and recovering rapist boyfriend into another Dark One, brainwashed your family to cover up murder, killed your boyfriend who was trying to kill you, dragged your family to The Underworld where you left your son with a serial killer while trying to resurrect your one-handed and recently homicidal lover, shared some true love moment, got rewarded by Zeus so you could make out at the funeral of the man you got killed that everyone said you didn't get killed, stopped your son from destroying magic after he gave this world's most humiliating speech, ditched your son again to make out with your boyfriend, picked out drapes for your completely out-of-character house from a catalogue while day drinking with your... you get the point."
Q shrugged and concluded, "Nope. Didn't happen. Feels like it did, though, doesn't it? And everything that felt so good and right and perfect and happy then now has your limited human mind so very unsettled."
"I... I loved him," Emma croaked out, her mind, limited or not, definitely reeling.
"You were obsessed with being loved by him," Q corrected, "seen as perfect no matter what atrocities you committed. You were never alone with him. Never flawed. The past was meaningless and you lived in every lustful moment. That's what you would be, more or less, without that pain. That pain, owning it, makes you strong. Makes you 'The Savior'. Without it you're just another blonde slut with a tight butt."
"Why did you show me this?"
Again Q shrugged. "I took an interest in humanity several hundred years from now, but in an alternate reality without these silly fairy tale realms. I thought I would branch out, see what the human multiverse had to offer, if they were damned or worth saving."
"Worth saving? From what?" asked Emma.
"Themselves, of course," said Q. "I doubted that bunch would make it. They were so myopic and xenophobic beneath their claims of diversity and seeking out new worlds. Much like your magical realms. So primitive. Really, that Dark Curse, bringing your people here is the best thing that could have happened to them. Otherwise they'd almost certainly be found guilty and sentenced to nonexistence. You, raised in a world so unlike theirs gave that one hope. But give up the kind of real pain that has no place in that fairy tale philosophy based on contrived true love and temporary curses, and you're as useless as the rest of them."
As he spoke, Q walked over to the frozen individuals and remarked on them. "Think of what you became. You welcomed into your family this woman who murdered your son's father, who raped a man to have a child out of spite and that she was allowed to keep. You fell into the arms of this man who repeatedly tried to kill you, who stalked you, belittled you, and admitted to vile crimes you plugged your ears to so you could live in that fantasy of being with a good man. And you damned and blackmailed this man, your son's grandfather, who was held in a cage and tortured for a year, who lost his child, who was cast out by his true love on the word of a man who called him his sworn enemy and for what? Trying to find a way to stop The Darkness that by not trusting him you instead unleashed and took into yourself, corrupting you even further beyond use to your people."
Emma looked at them all and said of Hook, "If I don't do something, he'll die."
Rolling his eyes, Q told her, "So kill the witch. She dies, so does her curse. Or let him die and then kill her. They're just guest actors on this show who've overstayed their welcome anyway. Besides, she can reunite with her true love and try to find a way to get revenge on you all with that silly crystal. And he can chum around with his mass-murderer brother, sail off to judgment and be sentenced to eternal drowning or being raped or whatever your gods find amusing at present."
"I thought... Liam went to Heaven?"
Q scoffed. "Oh, no, that Hades fellow just likes to psyche out irredeemable pricks by making them think they're being ferried off to eternal bliss before they end up spending the next thousand years pushing a boulder up a hill or having their liver ripped out by birds."
Emma thought about that, then had to ask, "Neal... is he... has he moved on?"
"If he's his mother's unfinished business and she's still playing crossing guard, how could he have?" Q challenged. "I may have removed a few key players from the story to uncomplicate it and get my point across. But you were the one stupid enough not to see all the plotholes."
In the distance Storybrooke's clock tower chimed and Q smiled creepily.
"Seems my time here is up. Make the right choice, Swan. Your little pocket of humanity may very well depend upon it."
And then, with a snap of his fingers, Q vanished in a flash of light and time unpaused, Zelena looking triumphant that her gambit had paid off, fully expecting Emma to do the heroic thing and leave the fight to save Hook.
But Emma didn't. Instead she turned and splashed the contents of the vial in her pocket on Gold's grubby hands. Instantly, the Dark On was immobilized in a shimmery purple forcefield.
The magic squid ink from the pawn shop was limited in supply. Emma had completely forgotten it was in her pocket after the craziness of her mother going into labor.
Zelena snarled like a petulant child, "Noooooo!"
"An immobilized Dark One is a useless Dark One. Looks like it's just you and me now!"
Zelena launched magic at Emma.
Emma teleported behind her and fired her gun into the Wicked Witch's back. Her magic ceased instantly and she pitched foreword in shock, collapsing to the ground.
"You bitch! You... shot... me!?" Zelena howled.
"You started the Wild West analogies," Emma retorted, leaning over her and taking the dagger. "Don't bring magic to a gun fight, bitch."
Emma then ripped off Zelena's necklace and smirked. "I destroy this, and your magic goes with it, right?" she taunted, not entirely sure that was true given Q's 'vision'.
"Please, I'm sorry!" Zelena whimpered, looking so unconvincingly apologetic that it was pathetic.
"You tried to erase my family from existence. Why should I believe you?" Emma retorted.
"I just want my happy ending!" Zelena wheezed, pushing herself to her feet, clutching her bleeding chest wound while her other hand slipped into the folds of her cloak...
And then the rusted prongs of a pitch fork emerged from her chest, one directly through her heart. Just like that, Zelena was dead, and the magic wand she'd been pulling free landed harmlessly on the ground.
Gold yanked the pitchfork free and Zelena followed with a drawled, "Ding dong the bitch is dead."
Momentarily, Hook sputtered back to life, hacking up water trough scum with a, "Bloody hell, that tastes worse than sour goat's milk!"
"How the hell are you not dead?" Emma sputtered in shock.
Shrugging, Gold reported, "That trough is full of gillyweed. If I'm going to kill the damn pirate, I'm going to do it of my own accord."
Hook gave Emma a shocked and affronted look. "You were going to let me drown!?"
"Touching your lips would have taken my magic and doomed my entire family," Emma shot back. "I'm not the idiot who got cursed by not-so-secretly stalking me like a love sick sexual predator."
"You were going to let me die!"
"What can I say?" Emma shot back. "I guess you were just dried up and useless."
"I gave up my ship for you, Swan!" Hook snapped, still dripping in trough scum water.
"And you expect a reward for that?" scoffed Emma. "Just like you demanded a kiss for saving my father after telling him that wanting to get with me was the only reason you did it! And how about the fact that you abandoned my family in The Enchanted Forest because you didn't give to fucks about them if I wasn't in the picture to try to fuck. Or that you left Prince Eric to starve to death because your ship meant more than his life and let me believe you reunited him with Ariel. You're not a villain, Hook, you're just a selfish asshole. And if I ever saw anything in you, I must have been high on pixie dust!"
Turning back to Gold, Emma handed him the dagger, to his obvious surprise.
"You're enslaved enough by the Darkness without someone adding to it, Gold."
He nodded his thanks, before remarking, "That was some impressive magic, Miss Swan."
She shrugged and half-lied, "Regina gave me some lessons and apparently she learned from the best. Though throwing me off a cliff wasn't really fun."
Gold smiled a bit at that. "Ah, I suppose you can blame me for that lesson."
"I figured."
Hook interjected in a huff, "Can you use that impressive magic to dry me off before my leathers are ruined at least?"
Instead Gold dried him off, to the pirate's added aggravation.
Emma then remarked, "Now, how about we get everyone's weirdly corporealized character trait metaphors reinserted, destroy this tacky-ass necklace, and get back to the hospital before my parents do something else completely stupid like name my brother after my dead lover."
"You defeated her?" Regina gasped when Emma and Hook rounded the corner.
"After Hook got in the way being useless," Emma reported and the pirate glared at her.
"She's dead," Emma reported. "I managed to get the dagger and then Gold ran her through with a pitchfork."
"Lovely," sighed Regina.
"Oh, here," Emma pulled the former Evil Queen's heart from the bag she was carrying. "Gold already retrieve his... ah... brain. I just have to somehow restore my father's courage with a sword, which is utterly ridiculous, but what isn't in my life now?" Like strange time and dimension jumping aliens.
Leaving Regina in the hall with her jilted almost lover, Emma went to her parents' room where her mother, wearing the absolute ugliest nightgown in the history of nightgowns - she'd thought that had to be Q's artistic license, but no - was holding a newborn.
"Emma!" her father gasped, standing quickly to hug her. "You're okay."
"I'm fine, Dad. Still have magic, though not for lack of Hook's trying to rid me of it by being a useless idiot who instantly got himself drown," Emma reported and gestured to the sword. "I believe you lost this. Hopefully with it back you'll never again send a one-handed narcissistic pervert whose only combat skill in a magic fight is kissing the ground as my back-up."
"Ah... sorry about that," winced David. "That certainly wasn't my intention."
"Obviously," groaned Emma. "I'm a big girl. I can handle myself. No more fairy tale chauvinist chivalry crap, okay? Especially from you. Promise?"
"I promise."
"Good," Emma nodded and handed him his sword back.
"Can't say I haven't missed it," David stated, "though having you and your brother means more to me than having courage."
"You really defeated Zelena?" Snow asked.
"Gold killed her actually. It's over."
"I hate to say it, but that's a relief. Maybe things can finally get back to normal around here."
"Back to?"
"Point taken," Snow conceded and her newborn son cooed. "Finally make some attempt at normalcy then."
She beckoned to Emma. "Why don't we start by introducing you to your baby brother?"
Emma smiled at that. Even though she did feel some of the envy and bitterness that her vision version had, at the same time, her parents in that fantasy were, well, pretty shitty parents and they hadn't exactly started it off great with her brother, so maybe, all things being equal, she'd turned out as good as she could have in any world.
"I'd like that," Emma agreed, taking a seat by her mother's bedside. "Just promise me you're not going to inflict on me and Henry that stupid Enchanted Forest tradition of naming kids after recently dead people. I'm already my own kid's niece. I don't need my brother named after his father. So, you know, pick someone deader if that's what you guys are into.
"Plus, I understand the Dark One can use his blood to open a portal to The Underworld..."
"You think you can bring Neal back?" Snow gasped.
"You brought Dad back by splitting your heart. I know that won't work, but I might as well try something," Emma answered. "Besides, Hades is apparently in love with Zelena, so they're probably already planning some revenge honeymoon to Storybrooke."
"So much for attempting normalcy," groaned David.
Meanwhile, in another parallel universe with hidden magic and dastardly villains, Abbie Mills glared at the mysterious omniscient being who was sitting at her bedside dressed as a British field marshal.
"What the hell was that!? You killed me and trapped me in Purgatory just to have me die all over again permanently!?"
AN: Love it? Hate it? But don't you just wish Q could turn up on all over your once-loved-and-now-despised TV shows to reveal that the awful writing, bad plots, cliché ships, and character assassinations were all a trippy fake reality meant to teach a lesson... or just because Q is an egotistical brat with the emotional IQ of a toddler... much like Adam & Eddy?