FACING DESTINY
Demigods
They had a meeting at the sheriff's station instantly in the afternoon to discuss the urging news.
"Swan, this can't be," Killian said in disbelief once Emma was done telling everything. "There is no way that Fitzgerald is the Evil One's son!"
"Well that's what Rosetta and her new BFF Maleficent's granddaughter were saying!" Regina snapped. "And to crown it all, apparently the Evil One -whoever he is- wants to turn Fidget into a Dark One so that he himself can reincarnate into Fidget and get all the power when the eclipse comes."
"Great Ra..." Anubis gasped. As dismayed as he was about his daughter associating with villains and estranging herself willingly from her family, he was more shocked by what he was hearing from the heroes. "Not again..."
"Not again?" Emma asked. "Wait, you mean it's been done before?"
"Indeed. By a god with...severe attention issues that led him to kill a Dark One from the past and become the first godly Dark One. Even allied all together, none of the existing god could defeat him until his creator extracted the darkness and put it back in a human host while the other gods banished the mad god into a territory forbidden to other immortals."
"You do know of course that it's highly likely that the god you're talking about and the Evil One are probably the same one?" Mr. Gold said as he toyed his thumbs.
"That's what I'm worried about." Anubis began to pace the station. "Thanks to what happened in the past, no god is allowed to become a Dark One. Matter of fact, once the darkness is extracted from the host, that host can never be the Dark One ever again!"
"Those are true and accurate facts," the ex-Dark One said, "but so is the ancient spell that grants an ex-Dark One to regain his old powers along with infinite, mastergod ones if he were to reincarnate in his own flesh and blood...as long as the host has evil born and made within him that's beyond powerful."
"And if the Evil One is indeed Fidget's father, that can only mean that his mother is the late priestess Svjetla Briga-Posten Ashiva..." Bartok muttered as he slouched forward on his chair, his elbows on the nearest table and his fingers pinching his nose.
"But wouldn't that make him your distant cousin then, Dad?" Hermia asked her father. Everyone watched as the albino Batrishan pinched his nose with even more frustration.
"Unfortunately yes," he muttered. "Which means that based on lineage accuracy and heritage from Svjetla, one of the last Batrishan Priests, Fitzgerald Denada Cortés is indeed the Crown Prince born from Ashiva's royal descendants."
'Shit' was heard throughout the room. Honestly, no one would have imagined that Fidget the Bat, a severely crippled but clever and evil Batrishan, could have been the son of an evil god and the heir of a most likely extinct civilization.
"I guess it makes sense in a way," Killian finally said. "After all, his patron Kaïra found him in the woods sometime after the Batrishan Genocide first started and personally delivered him to the front steps of St. Alejandro's Chapel in Aldorada, which is beyond far away from the Batrishan Sanctuary. But how did he get out of the city alive and without his...father finding out?" Killian hesitated at the mention of the word 'father'.
"The Evil One came back to the Batrishan Sanctuary to collect his child a couple of days after the baby was born, only the baby was never found. The god was beyond not happy!" Bartok said.
"So maybe he was smuggled out?" David suggested. "Perhaps somebody took him when he was a baby and hid him far away from the Sanctuary before the Genocide was unleashed and right at a time when Kaïra found him and took him somewhere else that was safer? I mean, that's almost what Snow and I did when we had to send Emma away from home when the first Dark Curse came." He looked meaningfully at his daughter, who understood what he meant.
Bartok rubbed his chin in thought. "You're probably right. From what I heard, Svjetla's maternal family, including her mother Briga, was still alive when Fidget was born. It's highly possible that they smuggled him out as an infant from the Royal Palace before the priests were going to kill him and out of the Sanctuary way before the Evil One returned to claim custody."
"What happened to them? Fidget's maternal family?" Emma asked.
"Clearly the Evil One had them killed since he had his minions kill every Batrishan from the Batrishan Sanctuary without exception," Bartok answered. "As for the survivors who sacrificed our species by joining religious monasteries or breeding with humans, the Evil One must have decided to let them destroy themselves with their actions without even lifting his finger."
"There is just one thing that I don't get," Marion said as she lifted a finger. "How come it's only now that we find out Fidget is the son of a homicidal god and that same god hasn't found his son in like...300 years?"
That was quite a question. For one, it didn't seem like Fidget was aware or cared about his godly parentage. For all the heroes knew, the dark Batrishan knew only that his godly patron, Kaïra Lokisia, had deposed him in front of a chapel for him to be adopted by human noblemen after he was supposedly abandoned by his parents presumed to have come from the Batrishan priests. But Fidget himself had never bothered to look up on his past. All he had cared for was everything he had as he was raised by humans and getting his revenge-hungered heart nourished from losing all of the life he had before turning into the villain he was.
"First things first," David said. "For one, we should speak to Fidget himself and tell him everything. Perhaps see what he knows."
"No problem finding out where he might be," Hermia said. "Thanks to one ticked demigoddess and her new weird friend, I know just where they might be."
Later, at Gary Point Park
Theresa and Fitzgerald sat at one of the picnic tables in the park that had a nice view of the sea. A turquoise tablecloth had been placed in order to keep their hands and elbows clean as they did the procedure. Theresa pulled out the Crystal Chalices and put them on the table while Fitzgerald took out two bottles: one of them containing strands of their hair, which formed a purple glowing liquid, and the other a bottle of good quality Aldoradian sangria.
"A bottle containing true love in order to break me free from the Elixir," Fitzgerald said as he poured the purple liquid into each of the chalices, making sure that he gave an equal amount. "And a bottle of sangria to celebrate."
Theresa giggled. "You sound like my mother. Back in the old days, if she was in such a good mood after she was done with her work, she'd pour herself into a celebratory drink."
Fitzgerald smiled at her. He handed her a chalice while he took one with his gloved hand. After what had happened to him with the terrible visions after he had touched one of the Crystal Chalices, he was almost afraid of touching them again until he found out that nothing happened to him if he touched them again, only this time with gloves on.
"You ready?" Theresa asked. She began to raise her cup until his hand caught her and gently lowered it.
"I have a few words to say, Theresa," he said. They stared at one another for a bit before he began to speak. "Theresa, thank you for helping me through my own conflict. After what happened to my family, my ex-fiancée, and my country...I didn't think I could ever be genuinely loved again. All I could think about was a never-ending pursuit for a revenge that I could never obtain, leaving me in evil darkness." He gently stroke her cheek as he spoke. "But then you came. You, the young woman I met back when I first moved to my cottage while you were tending lilacs, my favorite flowers. You finally gave me a reason to feel more complete and give up this eternal immortality that I have. Starting today, once I drink from this chalice, I will have a mortality back and I am ready to finally have a peaceful, normal life...with you."
Tears were growing from his eyes while a touched Theresa stroke the hand that was caressing her cheek. "Thank you as well, Fitzgerald. I must admit as well that, despite how crazy and ridiculous it might seem to you, I fell in love with the peg-legged, wing crippled, ear notched 300 year-old Batrishan right when he first moved to that lonely little cottage above the cliff."
Fitzgerald blushed a bit. He and Theresa then crossed their right arms together while their right hands held the Crystal Chalices full of true love.
"To a better future?" Fitzgerald asked.
"To a better future," Theresa said.
They clanged the chalices together and began to drink the entire contents. The flavor of the drink was way too sweet, but the main focus was that the couple pulled their arms away in order to gag at the flavor on their tongues and wince in pain at the magic that was filling in them. Theresa was coughing terribly as she felt a chill slither down her spine while Fitzgerald was screaming and clutching his hair in agony as he felt like a part of his soul was ripping away from his body like a sword chopping into flesh.
They managed to sit dizzily on their seats once the entire painful magic is over. "Did it work?" Theresa gasped. "I feel like I ate a boulder."
Fitzgerald snorted as he began pouring sangria in the Chalices. "Well I feel like every single one of my organs got poked by a needle on the inside. So...I'm going to say WE DID IT!" He raised his chalice triumphantly in the air.
"You hypocritical swine..."
Fitzgerald and Theresa turned to see something they did not expect: Bartok and the rest of the heroes of Storybrooke standing a few feet away from them.
"What's up, Bartok?" Fitzgerald waved his hand gleefully. "Nice day today, isn't it?"
"It would have been a nice day if you weren't such a selfish jerk," the albino Batrishan said. "How dare you have come to me centuries ago to demand that I give you the rest of the Elixir of Nine Lives' formula and murder my Jasmine while you were at it, and here you are getting rid of your eternal immortality by sharing it with a woman? What happened to you blabbering about love being weakness?"
"That was so in the past, Bartok!" Fitzgerald walked towards the albino Batrishan and put an arm over his shoulders. "You know, everything seems so much brighter right now. I feel like I just stepped in Candy Land. Is that what freedom looks like?"
Bartok and everyone else including Theresa frowned at Fitzgerald's behavior. "Either he's getting creepy or he's drunk," Emma commented.
"Hey, Killian!" the dark Batrishan left Bartok in order to join the pirate. "Old mate, how I missed ya! Sorry about all those nasty things I did to ya in the past, especially calling you a codfish. I wasn't in my best form. Forgive me?"
"What happened to him?" Killian asked as he and David grabbed Fitzgerald by the arms and helped him sit up on the picnic seat. "He doesn't sound like himself."
"Clearly the spell wasn't finished," Mr. Gold said. He turned to face Theresa. "If you were so detailed, Ms Rogers, you'd have also ripped off the page that says what must be done after drinking true love at the same time."
"How did you find out?" a surprised Theresa asked.
"You have an distinctive odor and I happen to clean my shop every five days, for your information. Now, if you want to break your new inamorato out of his odd trance, I'd suggest you give him a traditional act of true love."
Message received, Theresa took Fitzgerald's face in her hands and leaned in to kiss him, ignoring the disturbed or awkward faces from the heroes as the dark Batrishan regained his regular attitude, much to their relief.
"Why are you all here?" Fidget demanded. "If it's about the town line..."
"No, it's not the town line," Killian said. "Fitzgerald, there's something that we need to tell you..."
"And I'm afraid I'm not interested." He held out his hands, indicating Killian to be quiet. "This is clearly heroes' work and therefore not my kind of work. I am going to move on, Killian, and restart from square one without any of your interference." He waved a finger at them while his other hand took Theresa's. "I finally found something to fill my empty black heart."
Theresa smiled back at him.
"It is sweet but that's not the point," Mary Margaret cut in. "Fidget, we have reasons to believe that someone may be after you."
"Like that's new?" Theresa scoffed, which shocked Mary Margaret. "Your business isn't..."
"Theresa?"
Everyone looked at Anubis and Marion, whose eyes were wider than plates when they saw the young blonde.
"Theresa? Is that...really you?" Marion gasped.
"No, it can't be. She was still so little the last time we saw her!" Anubis said.
"The last time you saw her?" Emma asked in disbelief. "You mean...you know her?"
Theresa was starting to sweat when her stunned eyes seemed to realize that her hair wasn't pulled up in the usual, well-detailed bun that she used to hide her magenta streak whenever she was going to educate the children at school. "Shit!" she realized.
"Theresa?" Fitzgerald was getting concerned.
"How could I have not seen that?" Marion gritted her teeth in frustration. "You used some sort of spell to get make your demigod odor and aura invisible so that no other god, including my husband, or anyone related to the Avengers could identify you!" Her eyes widened in realization and the redheaded woman exclaimed. "That's how the Evil One was unable to find Fidget for 300 years! Her mother must have used that same spell to veil Fidget's mere existence!"
Fitzgerald turned to face Theresa. The crimson in his eyes stared at her green orbs while his mouth tried to hold back a tearful gulp. "Theresa...please tell me you're not..."
"Well it was about time!"
A puff of green smoke appeared and a familiar woman appeared, sitting on the picnic table in the same outfit she had worn back when the heroes had to deal with Xibalba, La Muerte, and the heroes of San Angel months ago. A woman who was the spitting image of Theresa, only with brown instead of blonde hair, even sharper green eyes, and paler skin. A woman, who this time, came accompanied by a golden sickle spear in her hands.
"Hello," Theresa told Kaïra Lokisia in a cold tone. "Mother."