Summary: Snow White has questions. Unfortunately for her, she gets her answers.
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Chapter Two: And Emmagina Just Sounds... Wrong.
"H-how did this happen? How did you two decide to be together like this?" It wasn't her priority question, but she was beyond curious.
She took a moment to gather her... their thoughts. "Well, it started with my super power. My original one; the bullshit detector. Emma asked Regina if she loved her son. Regina was naturally affronted at the question, yelled for a bit, and that was enough for Emma. Thing is, she already put a down payment on the room at Granny's, and she needed a vacation anyway. She just found her son, for God's sake, who she thought was having a delusional breakdown at the time. She couldn't have found a better opportunity to take a break from her work.
"So Emma showed up the next day with a cinnamon bouquet and an apology. I guess you could say the rest is history." Emmalina shrugged. "But if I'm to thoroughly convince you of the validity of me, I guess you should know more. Firstly, we broke the curse. Regina was scared out of her mind before and after. "'I can't kiss you,'" she quoted, sounding exactly like Regina. "'Because I am afraid what might come next.'" Snow finally took into account her voice, a melodious tone, smooth, a bit deeper like Regina's, and playful as Emma's. It was a perfect mix. "By that point, she told Emma and Henry the truth, and at that point, had a decision to make. 'I'll always be here,' Emma had promised. 'And so is Henry. We won't let anything happen to you. And if the curse breaks - well, you'll have your proof that I'm here to stay.' It's all really sappy once you think about it. But it had to happen. The Savior fulfilled her destiny, like everyone wanted."
Snow thought it was amazing how she switched between voices. "So you two broke the curse? With True Love's Kiss? That's how we got our memories back?"
She nodded the affirmative. "Then the angry mob arrived, and Emma came out of the mansion and announced that she had arrested the queen. Of course, Grumpy decided to be an idiot and tried to challenge her. I'm sure you remember his arrest."
The memory of betrayal on her friend's face as he was dragged away still upset Snow. She and David had fought viciously to get him released, but Emma had none of it. "You didn't have to arrest him, Emma."
"Better than the alternative. Had he gotten past Emma's cuffs, he would have faced a fireball." She giggled at Snow's disappointed look. "Oh, don't bother. Besides, Emma was right. She had, incidentally, put Regina on house arrest. It's not like she could have been mayor anymore – although I remember a lot of consulting needed to be done to run this crazy town – and it gave her and Henry more time together. The kid needed a lot of reverse therapy, but we managed to patch things up. Perks of having the kid with the heart of the truest believer as a son. He knew there was good in Regina, eventually, and she did what she did for a reason."
Snow frowned. She seemed to doubt the hybrid's words. "Care to enlighten me?"
Emmalina shrugged. "She wanted her happy ending, simple as that. She got it, so the curse didn't need to exist anymore - both couldn't exist at the same time anyway, if every time we kissed would've broken the curse all over again. She's a powerful witch, and Emma's the savior, and we called the purest truce you could think of. Not much more to it."
"No! I mean the curse! You said she had her 'reasons'? You did it to torture me! To get back at me! Don't lie!" She shook a little in her chair, struggling to break the invisible bonds.
"Not everything's about you, Mary Margaret. Sometimes, it's about me. Regina really didn't want you to have your happy ending, true. But she mainly wanted to have what she's always wanted. Happiness. Incidentally, your destruction was what she thought that happiness entailed. But, goals changed. She wanted you to be apart from your true love, because she didn't have one of her own. She didn't even know that Emma was your daughter. She had a panic attack when she put that together, but when Emma reminded her that True Love's kiss breaking a curse couldn't work as a deception, she calmed. You have no idea how much she wanted to rub our relationship in your face."
She tilted her head curiously. "Though I suppose that's why I'm in front of you, telling you our relationship right now. It gives a small part of me some satisfaction to know that your daughter has been taken away from you, and that you can never see her again."
Snow looked horrified, as Emmalina kept a straight face, flawless and unblinking. "So... you mean to tell me that... there's no – "
" – Counter-Spell? Cure? Antidote?" She looked amused. "Silly Snow White! That implies it's a curse. It's not a curse, nor is it a poison. This bonding is the cure. I'm the result of True Love. Would you call your marriage to Charming, or giving life to Emma, a curse? This is so many steps above from that, you should find it hilarious." She smirked devilishly. "Though, tit for tat. You'll never see the Evil Queen again, either. Problem with that is, you're looking at the most powerful being in existence right now. Powerful light magic and powerful dark magic becoming one. Stronger than the Dark One, a thousand combined. I mean, together, we were pretty unstoppable as it was, but together like this?"
"Wait." Snow was hesitant to ask her next question, hearing the casual way she mentioned how much more powerful she was than the Dark One. "What happened to Rumplestiltskin?"
"I released the darkness. The Dark One essence is no more. Unfortunately, he's lived a very long time, and his age immediately caught up with him until he was a pile of dust. Yeah," she chuckled, "You can believe Belle was not happy about that."
Snow honestly didn't know how to feel about that. The Dark One was gone? Gold was dead?
"Anyway," she continued, unimpeded, "Regina was on house arrest, spending time with her son and Emma, and Henry was the only other person we told about us. If the truest believer needed time to process it, we felt it was best to wait. We eventually told Ruby, since she was delivering food to the Mansion on occasion. Oh! That reminds me." Quickly pulling out her phone, she pressed a couple of buttons and pressed it to her ear. "Rubes? Hey, It's me." Her voice had changed into Emma's, and Snow needed to only close her eyes to visualize her daughter in front of her, instead of this oddly familiar, enchantingly terrifying stranger. "Listen, I'll tell you everything later, but right now, Gold is gone, as in gone, and Belle might need a friend. You wouldn't happen to know her favorite food, would you? Of course you would. Well, make a personal delivery, wear your red dress, the one with the... yeah, that, and pick up a few roses. I'm sure her father would give you a free dozen once he gets the news... oh, and Ruby? Don't fuck this up like you did with Mom." Only hearing an indignant squawk on the other end, she hung up her phone and pocketed it. She returned her attention to the stunned brunette. "Where were we?"
"I... I, uhh..."
"What? Oh, that? Well, Belle seems to have a thing for people with a darker side. And, letting that cat out of the bag, Ruby's interested." She shrugged. "I guess you wouldn't know that. You seem to be more protective of the big picture than your friends' little problems. And you wonder why Regina took your throne."
Snow made a noise of protest, but didn't really follow up on it, still stuck on the possibility that her best friend might have been in love with her.
"So Emma had all but moved in after that curse break, and Regina was slowly starting to appeal to her softer side. Every night we tucked in Henry, Emma reading from the Storybook, Regina telling him her side. Oh – another note." She summoned her notebook and quill, and scribbled something else. "I need to have a talk with that Author..."
"Author? Who?"
"Nothing, nothing." She rested the book on the arm of her throne. "Emma was the sheriff deputy for like, three days before Graham left Storybrooke. Turns out Regina gave him his heart and banished him when he couldn't do the one job he had – making sure no one left Storybrooke, and to report them if he couldn't stop them. He did neither when a ten-year-old did it, so the job went to Emma. We just told you all that the Sheriff had resigned, and let you guys fill in the blanks. The Mayor and Sheriff, if you recall, made a spectacular team together. A Dark Queen and her White Knight. I'm sure all of you were suspicious. But you wouldn't have believed it if we told you. We worked well, and played better. I am honestly surprised you didn't notice."
"Well, I'm sorry, Emma. I was a bit preoccupied on finding us a way home."
She shrugged. "Emma liked it here, but you didn't bother to ask. You were so busy trying to hook her back up with Neil, you forgot to ask her how she felt about being transported back to the dark ages in the first place. Well, dark for her. You forget she grew up in New York, so having to face a troll was a very foreign experience for her. You were having the time of your life, weren't you? Reuniting with friends, with your cute little bow and arrow. All Emma knew was the sweet little school teacher. She was a pretty good friend." She smiled fondly, as if recalling someone who wasn't in front of her. "Of course, you were Henry's favorite teacher before the curse. Then you started teaching the kids how to shoot arrows, and his value for you shot up. Pardon the pun." She crossed her arms. "Did you even get any parents to sign off on something so absurdly dangerous?"
"...Everyone signed off on it, sweetie."
She gave off a tired sigh. "Of course. Snow White teaching defense lessons is something one would pay for. This whole town is so backwards."
"You really hate the Enchanted Forest that much?"
"What Emma's seen of it, she hates it, and Regina's not really itching to go back, either. The second Emma arrived, one of your friends was killed by Regina's mother, who did not approve of her relationship with Emma, by the way. Not that Emma wanted her blessing. She was seconds away from killing the bitch herself." She seemed to remember something. "You made Regina kill her own mother! Remember that? That was fucked up, even for you."
Tears came to the teacher's eyes, not really understanding the woman's personal attack on her from all sides. "That's not fair, Emma! She was trying to kill Blue!"
"Yeah, God forbid if anything happens to Blue!" She chuckled to herself, and she could practically hear Regina's mocking tone in her candor. "The only reason Emma didn't kill Cora was because of Regina's wishes. Hell, the fact that Blue was her target was an unexpected bonus. But making Regina do the deed herself? You wonder why Emma didn't talk to you for almost a year afterwards. Hell, it was Regina who talked her into going back to your apartment. Fair's fair, seeing as how it was Cora that killed your mom."
"She WHAT?!"
"Oh. I guess you didn't know that." She drank a sip of coffee from a cup that Mary Margaret swore wasn't there before. "It's not just the memories of Emma and Regina in here. I can call upon Rumple's, if I need it. Being the new Dark One allows me to have visions and buried away memories, too."
"Wh – WHAT?"
"Yep," she muttered almost apologetically, stirring her finger in the steaming mug. "Sorry to tell you that your little deal with the devil didn't work. Maleficent told us everything." She didn't look particularly sorry, and neither did the horrified looking woman in front of her – yet. "She thought it was hilariously ironic that the savior fell in love with the Evil Queen. She's living with her daughter, by the way. Not that you care, but there it is. Emma and Lily – you know, the girl you poisoned – they kept in touch after Emma found her again. I find it incredible that you think your heart is still so pure. So many deals you've made and sacrifices for the sake of family, and your precious subjects, that you think your heart's still in the right place. You took away a part of me because of your fear of – what? My potential for... darkness?" The steam blackened into smoke, pouring out of the cup and billowing onto the floor. "How did that turn out?"
Snow whimpered at the sight, watching a dark fog swirling on her carpet. "Emma... baby..."
"I'm not Emma, and I'm certainly not your baby. You're thirty-three years too late for that, mom. You abandoned two babies in the woods, in a foreign realm, and you didn't even think about Lily's fate until you saw Maleficent again. Who does that? Did the fucking fairies tell you to do it?"
"No, I swear I... fairies? What do you have against the fairies?"
She rolled her eyes. "We'll talk about them later." Dropping her coffee mug into the fog, the black smoke dispersed, leaving nothing behind. "But right now, I want to talk about Neverland."
"Emma...lina, please. I can't move. I'm so sorry you feel the way you feel, but everything I did, I did it for you! I tried to make you the best person you could be. I did it because I love you!"
"I know!" she exclaimed, with an exaggerated enthusiasm. "And it's really weird, what people would do for their kid, to their kid, under such mis-guidance. I mean, Regina admits that she had been a monster, but she's clearly what her mother and Rumple made her. That's her excuse. Rumple's a coward and Cora didn't have a heart. That's theirs." She tilted her head. "You sound exactly like them. What's your excuse?"
"Emma! That's – What do you want from me?" Snow blubbered, confused and afraid, and a slight bit defensive of the accusations thrown at her that her daughter should have known nothing about. "What is all this for? As much as I hate to admit it, we wouldn't be here if I didn't do what I did. It was the only way!"
"Perhaps," Emmalina shrugged, "perhaps not. But after Henry got kidnapped, and we went to Neverland, where were you?"
"I was in Neverland! With you!"
"No. No you weren't – not truly. Emma was almost as good as Regina with her magic, and you never even noticed. Emma wasn't trying too hard to hide her magic from you, but you barely ever glanced her way. You were too busy looking at Charming and Neal, working together, imagining a big ol' happy family." She grimaced. "I don't know what percentage of me is trying not to vomit at the thought. Regina and Emma almost killed him on the spot. He did abandon Emma and her unborn son in prison, so it was a natural response. And naturally, you completely understood and respected him for his 'sacrifice' for the greater cause, so you named your first-born son after him." She sighed deeply, looking down at the trapped teacher. "What am I gonna do with you? You just keep making bad decisions, over and over again. Hell, you remind me of Lily, and we both know her excuse. You didn't even consult me on whether or not you were going to name my brother-slash-step-grandson after Emma's ex." She stood up, hands behind her back, and the throne disappeared behind her. "That's like me naming my kid fucking Frankenstein."
"B-but I thought you liked the name Neil! You never said anything about it!"
"Anything's better than your other choice. Leopold? Firstly, you have to realize that we're in the twenty-first century. 'Leopold' isn't going to cut it. Secondly, naming your kid after a rapist was unacceptable – "
She waved a dismissive hand, and Snow White was silenced before she could even open her mouth. "Not a word. Not a single fucking word about that cradle robber. It's bad enough that I have memories of being assaulted by my own goddamn grandfather, but if I hear a word of protest about what you thought you knew, we're cutting this party short."
Emmalina sighed to herself, knowing the strife she was causing her mother, step-daughter, and former friend. In the middle of a celebration, no less. "You know what? I think we'll do just that. Look, I have a few friends to catch up with, so I'll leave you to your thoughts, and we'll pick this up later. A part of me can't stand you, and a part of me remembers you as an angel who couldn't be capable of such things. If you think you know who hates you and who misses you, think again."
Without preamble, she swirled away in a cloud of white smoke, leaving Snow White alone with her thoughts. And her mobility.
She fell out of her chair to her knees and let out a cry, lamenting the loss of her daughter, and the choices she made thus far.
What had she done? What had they done?
Dedicated to my Favorite Patrons: Alexander S, Ranma, AtomicStryker, and mxwn.
Next Chapter (at rihaansfics dotcom): Belle and Ruby help Emmalina discover more about what she's become, and instead find what should've been.
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