Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fork.
Note to Mir: I'm actually confused about the "keep two Emmas" thing, or I should say "keep two Eleanors" thing. It was a glaring plothole on the show that Real Eleanor was brought on the train to The Good Place by Trevor yet was never mentioned until the train was leaving to take Fake Eleanor to The Bad Place and Michael demanded they stop. Only then did Trevor reveal Real Eleanor to shock them/throw a wrench in their plan to keep Fake Eleanor, because she was taking Real Eleanor's place. To not think of it as a plothole, Real Eleanor had to be an ace up his sleeve that he planned to only use if it came to that.
CHAPTER TEN
THE REAL EMMA SWAN
Everyone sat (or stood) awkwardly in Michael's office, Emma and... the other Emma seated opposite him at his desk.
"Well, this is an amazing coincidence," Michael began after looking over the file Trevor had given him, "the Real Emma Swan is a princess born in a nightclub called The Enchanted Forest in The Land of Music. And Fake Emma Swan is a princess born in a part of The Land of Fairy Tales called The Enchanted Forest. And get this. You both died at practically the same time, within one ten thousandth of a second in the same accident!"
"The car accident?" asked Emma, confused.
"Piano," sighed the other Emma. "I was visiting my friend who runs The Enchanted Forest and helping her tune the piano for her charity fundraiser for homeless children on my way to catch a portal back to The Land Without Magic to attend a death-penalty conference. Suddenly a tornado ripped open the ceiling. I fell in and the top closed. And the next thing I knew I was plummeting out of the sky above an unfamiliar and town and, well... that's all she wrote!"
"Yes, right," nodded Michael. "Real Emma was attempting to help better lives of countless people when that tornado struck while on the other end of that portal Fake Emma was buying lube and the new issue of Celebrity Baby Plastic Surgery Disasters."
"It was for my mother," Emma muttered.
"Anyway," Michael cleared his throat. "It's just an embarrassing clerical error. I mean the odds of two princesses born in places with the same name at the same time dying in the same magical tornado summoning sparkly pink piano accident is... well... I'm sure Janet could give actual odds if she wasn't still relearning everything," he concluded with a look in Emma's direction.
"Hey, Bad Janet!" Trevor called and a bleached blonde Janet in leather appeared glued to her smart phone. "What are the odds on that?"
"What are the odds on what? Your dick falling off?" Bad Janet mocked and fake dropped a microphone. "Bad Janet out!"
"What's even the point of her?" asked Real Emma.
Trevor shrugged and stated, "Well, now that everything's cleared up here for Real Emma and Fake Emma, we'll be taking Fake Emma-"
"No, we're going to negotiate keeping both Emmas here," Michael cut him off.
"Really?" Emma gasped.
"What!?" cried Trevor. "But why? Why would you want this horrible person forking up your place? Did I just say 'fork'? Really? You still have that forking filter on?"
"The residents don't like cursing. And fake Emma may have a bad record," Michael stated, "but she knows she did bad things. And a lot of them did involve manipulations caused directly or indirectly by our common enemy."
"More of a frenemy," shrugged Trevor. "But it's not like Fake Emma had no free will." He threw her a grin. "Thanks for forking up that election with your time travel by the way. I'm super stoked about adding Trump to the Presidents Wing!"
"How many presidents are there?" asked Real Emma.
"All of them but Lincoln," sighed Michael who then pressed Trevor.
"Zeus is not our 'frenemy'. He threatens to undo reality with all of his meddling! Everything we worked so hard to maintain, he has no rules and regulations! He sends people back to life just to be a... a..."
"Douche?" Trevor suggested and shrugged.
"Yes, a douche. He's even douchier than you!" Michael huffed.
"Okay, fine, Zeus has almost destroyed reality a few times with his stupid pen that he gave to humans for some stupid reason that probably involved a drinking game and one of his orgies," Trevor conceded, "and we could probably trace the TPI to something Isaac here wrote down to inspire that crazy witch to attempt a time travel spell that Dumb-Dumb here ran toward when she had no magic to stop it. But what will you give me for both Emmas?"
"I don't know... how about a unicorn?" Michael offered.
"Already tried one," Trevor shot down. "The meat was tough. Kinda gamy. And the powdered horn did not give me a boner as promised."
Michael rubbed his temples. "Fine, we'll come back tomorrow and work this out. Maybe Janet will be recovered by then."
Emma wasn't sure the situation could get more awkward until she had to take "Real Emma" to her house. Plus, Trevor had insisted on joining them.
"Huh," the demon remarked, "This place looks exactly the same on the outside as your house in The Bad Place. Wonder if it has an Elvis nook?"
It did, of course, have an Elvis nook and Real Emma looked on it fondly, stating, "These pictures were my safe haven amidst the broken baby toys and extremely unsafe crib with a broken glass unicorn mobile that would randomly start spinning and shooting very sharp pieces of glass."
"Is that it?" Emma shrugged.
"Oh, no. The toaster would come alive and chase me around the house, the toilet seats were always up, the only food in the cupboards was stale, half-eaten Pop-Tarts that turned to spiders in your mouth, the couch smelled like cheap rum and sex and no matter how much Fabreeze I sprayed on it, I couldn't get the stench out, and my bedroom was a prison cell with a cricket that I could never find. At least I had my paintings to remember there was goodness even in such a dark place!"
"Yeah," grumbled Emma, "an Elvis impersonator tried to molest me in a fun house once. I hate them."
"Well that explains the Flying Elvi parachutting in for the baby shower then."
"Baby shower?"
"Yes," Real Emma nodded. "I had to organize and attend an endless baby shower for a woman I didn't know every day. For some reason it was always at one of those pop-up carnivals or a state fair and if I didn't know everyone's names I got trapped in one of those claw machines and the toys would come to life and try to suffocate me.
"Night was far worse, though, with the flying piranhas, lava monsters, college improv, and constant jazz music."
"And the cricket," Neal recalled.
"Oh, no, I made friends with the cricket!"
"Of course you did," Emma grumbled to herself, thinking of that time she didn't listen to Archie about getting her shit together and wishing she could go back in time and punch that Emma in the face.
Emma poked miserably at her convenience store favorite ever meal food. Michael's office was uncomfortable. Her house was really uncomfortable. Dinner with a good version of her was way worse.
For one thing, her meal was no longer as meaningful as it would have been had she joined Neal for the restaurant opening. He'd ordered something different, anyway, and didn't seem to even notice her stupid attempt to show she remembered. Because now he had his real soulmate.
"... and I can't say I have a great singing voice," laughed Real Emma, "but I do love music. I was able bring some records back to The Land of Music and enchant them to play. I've almost worn out 'Coney Island Baby'."
"You like Lou Reed?" Neal beamed.
"Oh, yes..."
Emma turned them out and got nudged in the side by Trevor, her chaperone, who snarked, "You should smile more, beautiful!"
"Shut up," Emma grouched.
"Not a fan of the obvious true love connection, huh? I guess now you know how it feels to get ignored by the person you love in favor of someone prettier with a British accent in your last moments before you might never see them again. Feels pretty crappy, huh?"
"Yes, it does!" Emma hissed.
"So, Real Emma," Trevor spoke up, "tell us more about yourself. You're just so fascinating!"
"Yeah," Emma challenged, "I mean, you must have had quite a cushy life to have turned out with such a sparkling personality and do such good all the time. Perfect loving parents, nice house, money up the wazzu. I mean, me, my parents abandoned me by the side of a road. Or that's what I thought, anyway, until I was twenty-eight. I grew up in the Foster System. A puppet took all my money and sent me to prison where I had to give up my kid. That sort of thing can mess a person up."
"Actually, I never met my parents," Real Emma answered. "I was also abandoned as a baby-in a fish tank at a train station in Bangladesh. A couple adopted me, the Swans, but they died of bird flu when I was four - I know, ironic! Then the orphanage burned down. But I made it to England where I learned English from Monty Python reruns and fell in love with Nigel. He was a few years older, attending Oxford. I was working as a maid. We were married for six years before he was killed in the London subway bombing. Which was right after I'd found out I was pregnant. We'd already had three miscarriages. We had a daughter, but she had a congenital disease and died after only a few days. I was actually working on a benefit for the charity I founded in her name to raise money for medical research when this old wizard showed up and told me I had a destiny to save The Land of Music and he sent me there and I did save it and a number of other realms and now I'm deader than a stuffed parrot."
"I've ceased to be!" Neal chimed in and they both laughed.
Frowning and growing seriously annoyed, Emma asked, "How are you not messed up from all of that? And being accidentally sent to Hell?"
Real Emma shrugged and answered, "I've always tried to make the best of situations. I didn't really believe in Heaven or Hell, so I wasn't expecting to go any place in particular. It was shocking at first, of course, but I really felt bad for the people torturing me. And for the other souls there. I mean, many of them have had terrible lives. Far worse than mine."
"But you must be suffering the trauma of your experiences! You were being tortured down there!"
"No, no, no, it was fine. I had a rusty cot to sleep on and made up songs with the cricket."
"That's... really inspirational," Neal piped up. "I mean, when I was stuck in Neverland it was really hard to remember that the Lost Boys and the pirates had crap lives, that Hook probably got messed up as a kid to hand me over to that child-abusing demon, and to have hope that I'd find a way out even if there was no one to help me."
"And you did!" gushed Real Emma.
"And you couldn't last five days without losing your shirt," sniggered Trevor at Emma. "Well, not your actual shirt. Although that came rather soon after along with your pants and your dignity for step-daddy of the year. Yo-Ho-Hoe," he made a crude gesture with his fingers under the table, "am I right?"
"I need to use the ladies room," Emma mumbled and hurried off to the bathroom. She splashed water on her face and grabbed a paper towel, jumping when Trevor was in the mirror.
"You know the rules, Trash Bag."
"I am not letting you watch me pee, you pervert!"
"That's fine. I'm cool with watching you cry," he shrugged.
"I am not crying!" Emma snapped and walked back out to the restaurant where Neal and Real Emma had their heads down together, talking too quietly to eavesdrop on.
She didn't bother going back to the table and headed into the night air instead, aware that Trevor was trailing her, texting on his phone as he did.
This was awful. This was worse than being stuck in The Bad Place. That stupid douchey demon was right. Getting a taste of her own medicine in the form of Neal's oblivious happiness was worse than any punishment anyone else could have devised, even Isaac. She'd been stupid to keep pushing him away out of spite and bitterness while throwing herself at a pretty bad boy. Sure, he was a pretty bad boy whose backstory didn't converge with hers in any meaningful way so there was no annoyingly complicated stuff like guilt and regret other than the magical crap that got thrown at them after she jumped into his bed... which may or may not have been the bed he banged Neal's mom in for years, depending of if Blackbeard changed the mattress, and she really didn't want to know the answer to that.
"Nope," said Bad Janet, having appeared out of nowhere and still glued to her phone. "You totally forked your kid's step grandpa in the same bed he porked your kid's grandma in for seven years. And no, the pirate never used detergent. Or had more than one set of sheets. Looks like a Jackson Pollock painting under blacklight."
Bad Janet held out her phone which somehow had a picture of Hook's bed on his ship with a magical UV light.
"I'm going to be sick!" Emma gagged and ran back into a stall.
"That's a cool filter, Bad Janet!" Trevor complimented.
"Wanna see your bedroom?" the bad guide bot said, changing the picture. "Oh, filter doesn't seem to be working. No wait. It's just cause you can't get laid and your unicorn boner dust didn't work. BAD JANET BURN!"
Bad Janet vanished and Emma emerged.
"You forked up, Ding-Dong," Trevor told her with a grin. "How about a drink?"
"Fine, whatever," Emma sighed, letting him guide her into the nearest bar.
"I mean age differences be damned to a certain extent, but really, that pirate was past his prime before you were even conceived as that alternate reality should have proven, Fake Swan," said Trevor, earning a glare.
"I'm just as real as the other Emma. Stop calling me 'fake'."
"Oh, please, sweetheart!" Trevor scoffed her. "When have you ever not been fake? You pretended to be whatever you thought parents would want to adopt.
"You pretended to be whatever you needed to be to rob convenience stores.
"You pretended to be a hardened criminal to not get your ash kicked in prison.
"You pretended to not be ready to raise a kid so you wouldn't have to risk screwing up the kid, which is really just the poor non-magical version of your dumbshirt mother's curse-your-zygote method.
"You pretended to be a criminal loser for years so you wouldn't have to face that maybe you could have made something of yourself and been good enough to be a mother but gave up your kid and regretted it.
"You pretended to be Cleo Fox 2.0, a real badass you never were, and even worse you kept up that act so your kid wouldn't be disappointed in you and you tried to convince yourself there was even the slightest bit of good in any of that, like the jacket you so callously bought off that bawling girl was armor or a super hero cape, anything but the mark of a self-involved bench who ruined the happy ending of two people to get a file with nothing in it."
Emma scowled.
Trevor continued.
"And in your delusion to not admit your criminal past turned you into a total shirthead, you pretended to like being a savior so your family would be proud of you and you wouldn't lose your boyfriend who only liked you because you being extra good made him feel extra special, even though you both also hated that the responsibilities made you age hella fast and badly and took away from your sexy time.
"And let's not forget," Trevor continued laying into her, "you pretended to be a big bad Dark One, memory-wiping your family and taking little girls hearts and making up some bullshirt story that they wronged you to scare everyone, when really you were just a scared little girl who wanted to cry in the corner of the ugly house you essentially stole from the previous owners because your boyfriend wanted to buy it for you because it symbolized his happy ending and looked sort of vaguely like an ugly castle or something and you failed to get a happy ending for all the guys you liked, including your kid's dad that you kinda screwed over and acted like you completely forgot about, yet turned your lame-ash cover-up scheme into an arts and crafts project recreating again and again the one thing other than your kid he left behind with memories that weren't tainted by a decade of assumed betrayal."
Trevor smirked while Emma stared at him in shocked dismay at his psychoanalyzing.
"What? I'm a selfish demon, but I've got eyes and a brain, baby. Plus all the famous shrinks are in The Bad Place. Freud. Jung. Even a few not German ones who didn't want to fork their mothers. I've already got a perfect hovel picked out for Dr. Phil."
"I didn't want to fail one more person who was counting on me, okay?" Emma sighed. "Who thought I could help them find happiness. That... that I thought I could find happiness with," she sniffled over her drink. "All I ever wanted to have was a family. A normal family like everyone else. A normal life. I thought I was going to have that with Neal. I really did truly love him even if it was only because of a Curse that we met."
Emma shook her head. "I suppose that's the only reason for us to have met. He's a good person. And I am a bad person. He deserves Real Emma. I am a fake. All I ever did in life was run away from my feelings and the right choices and tell people bullshirt stuff like you just have to come back and ask for forgiveness. But you can't if they're dead! And even when you're dead too, it's too late, because you ruined your afterlife by trying too hard to make a perfect happy ending in actual life.
"I could have been happy with Neal," she sighed. "Maybe it wouldn't have been all violent passion and desperation and lies-"
"The best kind of romance," grinned Trevor.
"But I wouldn't have had this terrified voice in the back of my head all the time saying it was all just a big sham," Emma lamented, "that it was going to fall apart so I had to try harder, be more... whatever Killian and my parents and Henry wanted or needed me to be so it would be... as close to Tallahassee as anything could without Neal."
Emma threw back another shot and stated, "I don't deserve to be here. Neal has his soulmate now. I should be punished for all the good people I've let down."
Trevor grinned and patted her on back. "There. Now doesn't it feel better to get that all out? Come on. We've got packing to do, Ding-Dong!"
Emma awoke in her bathtub with a splitting headache and Neal looming over her with steaming coffee cup.
"What... oh... I thought you couldn't get hangovers here!"
"The Bad Place people wanted the filter turned off. It was that one or the cursing filter."
"Fork."
Emma took a sip, discovering it was hot chocolate (with cinnamon) rather than coffee. "Thanks."
"I figured you'd need it."
Emma looked sadly at the cup. "I haven't had hot chocolate in ages. My mom used to make it for me and Henry, but she just got preoccupied with my brother, I guess. I started getting coffee at Granny's for myself and my dad... and Hook. It was just easier and less... no lingering reminders that the person I thought was my new awesome super close best friend turned out to be my judgmental, intrusive, not very close mother. I think New York with Henry was the last time I made it, when I didn't remember my life sucked in all kinds of creative ways. It's at least the last time I had any without boozing it up. Did I mention that I kinda became an alcoholic?"
"I kinda figured that out," Neal told her. "It'd be hard not to living an especially a high functioning one who put rum in pretty much everything and didn't think anything of anyone else's far lower tolerance when he wasn't only thinking of that to get laid. Plus from all the empty rum bottles you keep throwing in the trash and behind the bushes instead of the recycle bin."
"I'm not a good person, Neal," Emma told him sadly. "I wanted to be. When I pointed to Tallahassee on that map, I wanted to finally try and succeed at being a good, honest person. I really thought I could do it too. I could get my shirt together, the two of us would help each other, and then we'd be good people. Maybe not super good perfect people like Real Emma who fight world hunger and save ogre war orphans, but like at the upper end of medium people, you know?
"We were going to take our bad karma money and make ourselves better. We'd get medium jobs, have a medium wedding and a medium house, send our kids to a medium school to give them a better life than we had, you know? Henry would have grown up never wondering if he was loved. Maybe he'd have had brothers and sisters. And not skipped class so much."
"Yeah, maybe," Neal sighed.
"But that didn't happen," Emma lamented. "That never happens for us. I'm just... I screw up your life. It's no wonder August wanted you to leave. Maybe he wasn't trying to help me. He was just trying to save you from being more Emma Swan collateral damage."
"Hey, you didn't entirely screw it up," Neal pointed out. "We had a son together. And I got to meet him."
"For like a second. He barely remembers you. He's replacing you. If he'd gotten to see you before you died, if I'd encouraged him to learn anything about you, spent time talking about you, took him back to New York myself to get your stuff than maybe he'd remember enough to care, maybe he would," Emma sniffled. "But I didn't do any of that. I was happy to forget. It was easier to forget you and just start over and hope he could forget too and let Hook be whatever he needed that you couldn't be. And I'm so sorry, Neal. I hurt you. And I really hurt Henry and he'll never know how much I wish I could go back and make different choices."
"Or, there is. I did call you, remember?"
Emma startled. "Wait... you're saying The Good Place has a phone? Like The Underworld?"
"Well, I don't know about The Underworld, but yeah. Janet took me to it. But it can only be used in the case of an emergency."
"Like if someone you knew was going to try to raise the dead by taking her entire family to The Underworld which could led to a god escaping to terrorize humanity and innocent souls being tossed into eternal tormentor death?"
"Yeah, like that."
"I suppose me getting sent to The Bad Place doesn't qualify," Emma moped.
"Probably not. But Janet's not really in a condition to enforce the rules, is she?" Neal countered.
Henry found himself sitting in his old castle next to... "Mom?"
"Hey, Kid," Emma smiled sadly. "Though you're not much a kid anymore, are you?"
"I've grown up a bit since you died," he said, swallowing thickly. "Is this a dream?"
"No, like your dad told me once, we'd be talking donuts or something," Emma responded.
She let out a sigh before continuing, "I'm sorry, Henry. I failed you pretty badly as a mother. And as a savior. I wasn't a very good person. I wanted to be, once. You made me want to try again. But... it was hard and I got scared and I kept taking the easy way out, doing what felt good, which usually wasn't good. I made the choices that didn't hurt as much over choosing the paths that were more difficult, less guaranteed to have a happy ending."
"Did you even want me?" Henry asked, tearing up.
"Oh, Henry, of course I wanted you!" Emma gasped, taking his hands. "You're the best parts of me and more, and all the good parts of your dad and he has a lot more than I do. Those are the parts you should focus on, not all of this fairy tale, Author, sword fighting and damsel saving crap. Being a real hero, a real good person, is really helping people who need it, even knowing you don't get any recognition. That's what you brought me to Storybrooke to do, and I let our family of, well, not very good people, lead me astray into helping them be happy without atoning for the things they'd done, without helping the people they hurt. I forget the wisdom of that little boy on my doorstep who just wanted justice done."
"I also wanted to be loved," Henry told her. "I was hoping you'd love me too."
"And I did. I do, more than you can know," Emma told him tearfully. "I just... I was never good at showing you that and I surrounded myself with people and things that made it easier to not have to. People I could cling to and lose and no matter what I told myself, still be okay. Losing you? That would have destroyed me, Kid. But you, losing me, you'll be okay."
"It doesn't feel like it," Henry lamented. "It feels like nobody understands me anymore. Though, I guess, it felt like you stopped understanding a long time ago. I guess I hoped you'd change back, that things would be like they were before Neverland when I screwed everything up. If I hadn't given Pan my heart, he never would have gotten to Storybrooke and cast the curse again. Grandpa wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself and Dad wouldn't be dead and-"
"I wouldn't have married Hook and got squashed by a piano?" Emma finished for him. "It's not your fault, Henry. I was the one who got the savior destiny. And I was your mom. And I was Sheriff. I should have protected you. Instead I spent days wandering around in the jungle with my head up my butt seesawing between feeling guilty and flirting with Hook. Meanwhile, it took your dad like an hour to find you, which I never even knew. He just got tricked into losing you and was too embarrassed to say anything.
"That's the kind of parent he was, the kind of guy who risked his life for others but never expected any recognition for anything he did," Emma praised. "I should have been helping him find you. And I should have met him for coffee that day and told him I was worried about you. I bet he'd have figured it out and we'd have stopped Pan. And maybe we could have been happy together as a family."
"Now it's too late," Henry moped. "You're both dead."
"Yeah, we are," Emma sighed, "but we really are looking down on you, Henry. Your dad is here, and he loves you. I know it's hard, it's hard to be part of a family made up of legends who think having their story in some book or deciding not to do bad things anymore makes them heroes when you know deep down that's a bunch of crap. Ten year old Henry knew that. I used to know that.
"Don't let growing up and losing and being crapped on by the universe make you forget what real heroism and goodness are," Emma cautioned. "Don't be like me, giving everyone a free pass so I could get one too. And acting like everyone has to have hope only at the worst of times and that it'll make everything okay but if it they don't have hope then they don't deserve help. Hope shouldn't only exist in the darkness. And you shouldn't give up on someone just because they can't find it for themselves."
There was a distant roaring sound then like the ocean or an approaching train and Emma sighed.
"I've gotta go, Kid. I love you."
She placed a kiss on his forehead and jumped down to the sand.
Back to the beach near the Self-Destruct Button where an old-timey phone stuck out of the side of a cliff. Henry was gone along with his castle, his old safe place that she'd never even bothered to rebuild before he was too old for it.
"How'd it go?" Neal asked.
Emma tried to answer, but ended up shrugging before the effort to hold back tears became too great. Neal stepped forward and pulled her into a hug as she started to cry. Henry really did hug just like his dad. And she'd never gets hugs from either of them ever again.
AN: So that's a wrap until The Good Place returns in January! (I don't own the parts of Real Emma's backstory that belong to Real Eleanor.)
Credit to alice / dahliaface on Twitter for "I mean age differences be damned to a certain extent, but really, he is past his prime before you were even conceived."