Our defeat.

[6x21/6x22] : Mini-fic. UA. Emma doesn't believe in magic any more, the worlds are disintegrating, and Gold lost against his mother. Henry may well fight, it will be useless. Bad ending + Death ! Fic.

English version of "Notre défaite"

Prologue : Burn our dreams and our illusions.

Emma made her choice, the one she hoped, no she knew was the good. Even if it made her be heartbroken as she had to do this to her son, but she didn't have the choice.

The young woman knew it, she had to admit it, it was Fiona who was right about all this. It would not be good for her, nor for Henry that this last still believed all these stories completely fantasist…

And also, an improvement for him would certainly signify an improvement for her, no ?

After all, it was really her fault if he still believed in it, if he still believed that fairies and curses were real.

Because she had once the naivety and the weakness to believe in what he told her, because just for a time she though she was the Saviour.

She had been wrong, and today she was paying an expensive cost because of her error. Emma had desperately desire to believe that what Henry said was real then.

How could have she do this differently at that time, when he came at her apartment, in order to ask her for her help against the Black Fairy and her curse ?

How could have she not have faith in him, as he put all his hopes in her ? He was now the only family she could ever have, the only happy ending (well, at least, if this kind of thing really existed) to which she would ever be entitled to.

So yes, she believed in it, almost despite herself, maybe because she dreamed to have a family, and that everything was well and truly true.

And after, Henry ate this apple turnover, and almost died, and her and Fiona were so scared that they now knew that they had to stop this madness.

Strangely, it was not Fiona who asked for the internment of Emma in this psychiatric hospital, but Emma herself. This story didn't have sense any more, and she had to end it as a matter of urgency.

She didn't want to loose her son, and if she had to get cured so he would get better, so, she accepted it.

It had been a success, at least for a time…

§§§§

Despite the joy she had to see Henry again, Emma rapidly was disillusioned by hearing the speech this last made to her.

Magic, again ?

And her who though she was done with it, that her son finally put this behind him.

(There was no moment where she imagined that maybe he could be right, even if that moment on the roof seemed just as an illusion or an hallucination, more than something true.)

But it wasn't the case, he still re-entered the fray, even after all these years, even though she was sure that he began to forget about these stories.

Of course, she had been moved by his concern, but she didn't understand why he asked all these questions; and she didn't always catch what he was saying to her.

Apparently, her son was still insane, and maybe her too; even if there was still a little part of her that always believed in him.

(Maybe that the Saviour in her didn't completely disappear, and that she was trying with all her forces to make her remember.)

Fiona's proposal immediately choked her, and, this, despite the logic of this one. It would just when Henry would have realized that his mother didn't believe any more in these tales and these stories invented that things would change. And that, finally, he would understand that it was worthless for him to continue to desperately attempt to make her believe.

(She didn't know her son as much as she though she did, and ignored that he would always fight; for them, for their family, their happy ending, and against the Darkness. At the risk of dying by fighting if he had to do it.)

If Emma refused first to destroy the book, this is not by conviction that everything was real, but just in order to protect Henry.

Quite simply.

This life wasn't good, nor for her, nor for him, or for Fiona neither (that Emma sincerely pitied, this one did many efforts to protect her son and raise him correctly. And everything that she collected in exchange for it, it was an unfounded suspicion.)

With time and despite their disagreements, Emma learned to appreciate the Mayor, by seeing how much she loved Henry.

(There was no moment where she saw the darkness included in her heart, at no moment she realized what was really happening, and she didn't see the duplicitous and nasty smile of the false adoptive mother of Henry.)

But even with this to take into account, she instantly refused to burn the storybook. Because it would have signify to put into pieces all the dreams and all the hopes of Henry, destroy all his universe.

And it was not what she wanted.

§§§§

Thisisjustwhen Henry's life was put in jeopardy by his obstinacy to make her believe in imaginary things that her vision of the situation changed.

She had been definitely blind, believing that Henry told her the truth, by pretending he gave up about this story.

(It seemed that she finally didn't have this famous gift to detect the lies.)

And she had been so afraid, and even if in other circumstances she could have congratulate him for his improvisation (he reminded her of herself at the same age, more or less), everything that appeared to her at this precise instant, it was the necessity to end with this crazy story.

Fiona wasn't wrong, and this is with a quasi automatic gesture that the former Saviour, who didn't think she was it, took the storybook of her son.

It was what she had to do, there wasn't any other solution.

(Or maybe yes. Maybe there were others; simply she didn't have any strength to believe in it. But how could have she do it, after all these years in this psychiatric hospital ? In what way could have she continue to believe, as everything she saw around her incited her to think the contrary ?)

If she hadn't been to that degree under the influence of the medicines, Emma most likely would have ask herself why Fiona so much wanted her, and no one else to throw the book in the flames.

Burn her hopes and her dreams. That was what she must do, even if it didn't please her.

(And, unlike what happened during the first curse, there was nothing in her this time that told her that she was doing the wrong choice. Forced to endure the curse, she didn't succeed just to think that she could be wrong.)

And suddenly, facing the flames, she didn't hesitate, and threw the book in these flames.

When this one opened on a page that represented the man she though she saw before, she just frowned.

Unconscious she was that she just destroyed her happy ending, and that she just chucked her family to its death…