Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

General Note: Damn, I did again - as in didn't write the battle scene. I'm so sorry, readers! But with my interest in the fandom waning and having already worked on portions of the story after this, I just wanted to move things ahead to the character-driven parts I'm still interested in. Consider this chapter an interlude and the story will then continue in Part III.


CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CARS

...with a piercing look through the jail cell bars, King George sneered, "You may kill me, but know that you'd have died long ago if it wasn't for me, boy."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Charming shot back, expression dubious.

"It means that I kept your jealous, vengeful twin from seeking you out and putting an end to your simple peasant existence," George explained. "If your father had never sought James out, your safety would have been secured by your brother's ignorance. Instead, Robert foolishly thought he could reclaim the child he gave up, the child stricken with the same sickness that infected his brother who died of a sword to the gut in self defense, not being thrown from his horse.

"Regret and grief drove your father to a foolish act that not only secure his death," the former King stated, "but implanted in the son he gave up a single-minded obsession with finding you and doing to you what his uncle had tried to do to your father: carry out the unrelenting task of that blood magic."

While David digested his unsettling information, George sat down on the jail cell's cot. Seeing the counterfeit prince had no response, the deposed king continued, "It started with drawing pictures. He was just a little boy. But it unnerved me enough to call upon Rumplestiltskin who informed me of the particular reason your father chose to give away your brother over you. I was furious, of course, but I'd made my deal- and there were benefits to a child infused with such ambition, fearlessness, and blood lust - if molded to a less singular task.

"So I groomed the boy, steered that familial infatuation into other vices," explained George "I transitioned your brother's primary addiction from fantasies of your murder to whoring and gambling, vices easily satisfied on Paradise Island which James associated with the discovery of your existence. I would send him in search of clues until he got so wrapped up in his whores and his gambling that he delayed his murder plot."

Leaning back against the wall, George concluded, "I essentially bankrupted my kingdom to keep my adopted son from killing you. And this is the thanks I get?"

"Yes," Snow told him. "Because the only concern that drove you was the fear that his killing David would reveal he wasn't your son and thus not a legitimate heir."

"Perhaps," shrugged George. "But I couldn't have my kingdom fall into ruin simply because my wife was unable to bare me a child. My cousins made King Xavior look like a cream puff. On the plus side, I suppose, being deposed from my throne in the midst of a war against a far more flamboyant foe did give me the opportunity to hunt them down and destroy them with no repercussions.

"But at the very least," he amended, "you should be grateful that I ensured your brother's firstborn was smothered before the cord was even cut or you'd have an evil nephew to deal with."

"Thanks so much for that," sighed Charming.

"I don't suppose I'll get any thanks either," said George, "for dosing your true love with that sterility potion. Alas, you found a cure and thanks to that fairy's meddling you ended up with another generation of Good and Evil. I must say, I've enjoyed hearing how you two managed to brainwash yourselves into loving that vile child and being laughably supportive of every self-destructive, cruel, outright villainous thing she's done in pursuit of her evil desires under her own identity delusion that she was a savior."

"Is that how you'd describe yourself then?" Emma cut him off. "Laughably supportive of James?"

"I loved my son," George argued. "But I was under no delusions about his nature. I curbed it when I could and used it to the advantage of my kingdom when I could. I may have warped public perceptions but I never fooled myself into thinking it was natural to treat genocide like a game or a lover like a disposable sacrifice for monetary gain. I recognized that my son was what this world calls a psychopath. I'd say that, at least, makes me a better parent than yours."

"Really?" Charming spoke up. "I'm not as stupid as you seem to think. I know you gave my brother's opponent a potion so he'd escape a fatal wound long enough to take James out when he was unaware."

"Wait," Regina's interest in the conversation spiked and stood from the desk chair where she'd been filing her nails, "you're saying he had your brother killed?"

"Obviously, bankrupting the kingdom to keep him from murdering me and causing bad PR was no longer working," replied Charming who then turned back to George. "Was it? So you made a deal with Midas and then offed James. Only Midas then altered the deal so you had to bring James back. But that actually seemed at the start to work out great for you, didn't it? You got rid of the psychotic, ambitious son, replaced him with a good version who'd do whatever you said, marry whomever you said. James had fulfilled his usefulness. He'd cultivated the image you wanted of a ruthless but passionate son, a capable ruler in public perception if hated by those who knew him privately. Once he failed with the Giants, there was nothing more he could do. You'd 'sacrificed' too much to keep him in line and paint the image you wanted of your successor, so that 'much' was keeping your kingdom solvent long enough for him to inherit it."

"I'll admit, I always considered there would come a time when James needed replacing," shrugged George.

Charming scoffed. "I'm sure you even had a mistress picked out for me to impregnate so you could kill my firstborn and ensure the kid I had with Abigail wasn't evil...even if he or she would still pass on the curse. But you'd be dead of old age by the time that became an issue."

"Quite possible."

"Entirely possible," growled Charming. "So don't play victim or hero, old man. You used my brother to escape the problem of your dead kid. Then you used me to escape the problem of your replacement child. And when that didn't go your way, you targeted the woman I loved, not out of the goodness of your heart and concern for humanity, but just to hurt Snow for standing up to you and me, in my ignorance, from the future I wanted to make with her. Any secondary good that might have come from that had nothing to do with your motives."

"And if you knew either of us at all," he continued, "you'd know that we would succeed where my father failed and find a way for both of our daughters to live full and happy lives."

"Really?" spoke up the woman in the other cell. "How has that worked out for you?"

Snow scoffed at her, "We really don't need to hear your take on the situation, Tremaine."

"Oh, please, call me 'Gabrielle'," she insisted while twisting her anti-magic cuff. "I feel as though we ought to at least die on a first name basis, don't you?"

"No one here is dying," said Emma. "We don't behead people like back in The Enchanted Forest. In this world, there's an actual system of just-"

Belle barged into the Sheriff's Station. The brunet was wide-eyed and breathless as she exclaimed, "We have to get out now! She has the dagger and-"

"Tremaine!?" sputtered Regina.

Before she could answer, Belle suddenly collapsed and standing behind her in the entry way was...the dead old woman from the cabin in the woods!?

"You're dead!" Emma gasped.

"Someone is dead," she shrugged, amending, "I understand you're familiar with the transfigured body in the wrong grave con. What is it they say? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice-"

"Who the hell are you?" Regina demanded.

"I don't think that's it. But to answer your question: judge, jury, and executioner," she replied, pulling her hands from the pockets of her cloak, each one holding a heart. She squeezed and they cracked and disintegrated to dust.

In the two cells George and 'Gabrielle' fell dead.

"Don't worry," she continued while walking around Belle. "She's still alive. I wouldn't want to end the fun of torturing the Dark One too soon. And as for your question, you can call me 'Gothel'."

"Wait, Mother Gothel from Rapunzel?" asked Emma.

"I'm no one's mother, dear," she said, "but I did know that cowardly girl. I killed her brother, the heir to her kingdom's throne actually and built the tower your father visited in that forest and let him free the girl in what I can only assume both idiotically assumed was part of a hallucination," she continued with an askance look at Charming.

"A kingdom's succession crisis and a poor girl's madness was a simple sacrifice to obtain your blood, Prince Charming, as a way around your family's protections."

"Hold on," Snow interjected. "You've been hatching some plot to take over Storybrooke since we weren't even here?"

"But were destined to return since your daughter hadn't completed her fate to purge magic of the Black Fairy's curse and in order to do that it had to be recast and its power relocated back to this world," Gothel nodded imperiously. "And the only way that would happen would be for you to crush your true love's heart...but you're also far too needy and self-important to let him go and believe any universal laws of magic apply to you, Your Majesty. So you were sure to cast it, resurrect your beloved, and the result would be thwarting the very reason you cast the Curse, because even perfect little princesses who are the fairest of them all are not exempt from magic's price...they just tend to pass them off onto other innocent people while being utterly oblivious to being the cause of any suffering."

"She's not wrong there," snorted Regina, receiving a glare from Snow.

"I get it," Emma spoke up. "You wanted to wait for Fiona to be out of the picture to make your move. Maybe even the gods if you knew about the books. You look ancient enough to have been banging Merlin's apprentice. But just like that old geezer you were still moving all your pieces on the chess board in a game we didn't even know we were playing...and those two," she gestured to the dead coconspirators, "apparently didn't know their full part in it either."

"They got what was coming to them," Gothel shrugged. "Gabrielle crossed me long ago after coming to me for help winning the heart of some king who fancied her sister. She betrayed blood and true love in an attempt to get power. I killed her once, from what I understand, but then that time travel idiocy occurred and the paradoxes forced the gods to create The Land of Untold Stories - or perhaps it was an excuse to create it as a spin-off? In any case, in this universe my sister escaped to avoid the punishment she was meant to receive, all because your silly little whore sister and her swashbuckling dolt lover fell down a deranged lunatic's time portal. After that I had to wait not just for Fiona to settle the score with her estranged son - I think we can all agree she wins the worst 'Mother' contest - but for the gods to keep reality from falling apart. After all, what good is ruling the worlds if they're just going to implode in a year or two? Perhaps a decade or two if I'd murdered your entire family to keep them from further fuckery, but I rather intended to live longer than that."

"With that butter face?" scoffed Regina.

"You sound like a raving lunatic," Snow told Gothel.

"We're not going to let you take over any worlds, lady," added Emma. "Whatever you're planning, it ain't gonna happen on my watch!"

Gretel shut the laptop and handed it back to Henry with a critical, "It still sounds cheesy, though points for using 'whore' if you can get that by your parental censors. But your need more exposition and description of the characters. Plus, no one cares about all the family crap with your grandpa. They want action and sex. No one wonder your book in that other future was a total bomb, Henry!"

"Thanks," glowered Henry, taking the computer and shoving in his backpack behind the counter of Marine Garage.

"Why are you writing this shit anyway?" she asked while grabbing a candy bar from the snack rack by the register. "You're not The Author anymore. That was just a scam."

"I like to write," Henry shrugged, "and someone's got to record my family's history accurately. You're right that the books were a scam. The gods hired people who'd write stuff the way they wanted it written."

"History is written by the victors," quoted Hansel as he walked in from the garage. He continued. "Dad said everything's hooked up. Whale's doing his thing - whatever that is - with the heart you stole."

"I didn't steal it," Henry insisted.

"Yeah, you did," snorted Gretel while turning up the volume on the small TV that was showing the 11 o'clock news weather forecast.

"Okay, maybe," he conceded. "But it wasn't doing anyone any good in that vault. Mom was never able to figure out where all the hearts left over from her mom came from. I mean, Cora liked turning people into zombies and shit. I figure it's saving someone from being a rotted corpse that she buried alive without, you know, crushing it."

"Just keep telling yourself that, buddy," Hansel patted him on the shoulder.

"If you think this is stupid," Henry asked, "why are you helping?"

"We never said it was stupid," Gretel argued.

"Just that you were stupid for thinking you wouldn't get in trouble for doing it," concluded Hansel and he then hushed them and shouted, "LIVE RADAR, DOC!"

Whale came hustling in dressed in his mad scientist gear followed by a less enthusiastic Michael Tillman in his mechanic's overalls; he'd gotten stuck in the Igor assistant role.

"Excellent!" Whale tittered. "That storm cell will be over us soon."

"You're sure this'll work?" asked Henry and the doctor shrugged.

"Hell no. Those books you found while pretending to help Belle with her stacks sorting for the Library renovation are promising, but unless Professor Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang flies through a portal with some magical flubber to explain the particulars, I'm winging it."

Thunder cracked close by and Whale rubbed his hands together in excitement before pulling on his thick leather gloves and practically skipping back into the garage.

Frowning, Tillman remarked to his daughter, "I can't believe I let him take out your appendix. This guy is nuts! Why am I even involved in this!? I should tell your parents," he directed at Henry.

"But you won't," Henry argued, "because you owe me. If I hadn't guilted my mom into acting like she believed in the Curse to help you, Hansel and Gretel would either be living out there in foster homes or have died in a car wreck."

The mechanic sighed and Gretel told Henry, "You have enough of your grandpa in you, Henry, that after being raised by the Evil Queen and a few years with Captain Rapist as your step-grandpa-slash-step-dad I really hope you stay in therapy to make sure you don't turn into a total psycho like your grandma-slash-great-grandma-slash-step-great-great-grandma Cora or your half-aunt-slash-step-half-great-great aunt. No offense. But nature and nurture are not on your side."

Before Henry could muster a snarky retort, the lights flickered.

"IT'S GO TIME, PEOPLE!" Whale bellowed. "LIGHTS OFF! GOGGLES ON!"

"Better make sure both you and that laptop are sitting on something rubber," Gretel told Henry, "or your brilliant historical writing might get fried with your balls."

Henry flipped her off but took his backpack along to a stack of tires in the garage where Tillman was activating the hydraulic lift and complaining as rain began to fall in, "I never should have had that skylight put in."

"Everyone, take your places!"

Everyone's places was also on the tires to avoid electrocution while Whale did last minute fiddling with his mad scientist contraption that was wired to a lightening rod now on the roof of the garage.

As they waited for the storm to pass over, Henry pondered the recent events and how best to record them. They'd all been played by that Gothel witch, even Zelena to whom she'd promised her magic back. He couldn't say he felt bad that Zelena had died in the battle, though he did feel bad that Regina had been forced to do it as taking any lives, even bad ones, really unnerved her like she might lapse back into random heart-crushing. It was probably for the best, though that his aunt was sort of at peace - at least not suffering with her Evil Twin-ness in life anymore without her magic or her creepily contrived rape-acquired baby that she'd doted on like a crazy person with a baby doll they thought was alive.

Of course, that had left Henry's grandparents feeling out of sorts about what to do regarding his other aunt. If they could remove Zelena's magic, but not her curse that kept her heart dark no matter how she tried to reform and which had dragged her back in to villainy like an addiction without any real medical invention to ultimately curb her impulses, then was there hope for Anna?

When Henry had left them at the Town Hall helping the usual influx of disaster victims, his mom had been arguing that death was a kinder fate for her sister as someone who could never be free of what she was while his grandparents were countering that she just needed to believe that and that even if it was true for Zelena who'd gotten the full brunt of the Evil Twin curse, Anna had been spared even more of its effects than James so there had to be a way to break it. Then it all got a bit messy talking about Whale dissecting Zelena's brain and Henry had said he was going home - which wasn't a lie, he was just stopping off at Marine Garage to-

There was a sudden bright flash and almost simultaneous crack that rendered Henry momentarily blind and deaf. When he regained those senses, Whale was using a stick to flip a switch on a large, crackling generator upon which had been placed the heart. Electricity was still streaming down from above and then was joined from bellow, coiling up with a red light around the lift's base...

888

It was after midnight when Emma slid out of the passenger seat of her parents' pickup still in her ballgown - but carrying her heals.

Neal had stayed behind at the pawn shop to help his father clean up the mess there, which meant no immediate foot-rubs...though she was too exhausted to enjoy one anyway. Even the candlelit bubble bath she'd been dreaming of for hours would have to wait until she could stay awake long enough not to drown...or burn the house down.

As Emma swatted the garden gnome with the small, muddy shovel kept by the tree at the curb, a cheerful beep caught her attention and she turned to find the Bug lurching its way around the corner on the rain-slicked street. She wasn't even certain at this point where she or Neal had left it.

"What the he-"

The car pulled up to the curb and her son got out of the driver's seat.

"Seriously!?" she huffed. "Henry, you know you're not allowed to drive yet! Especially not at night!"

"I wasn't driving," Henry insisted, grabbing his backpack from the passenger seat.

"Uh-huh," Emma answered, crossing her arms. "You actually expect me to buy-"

The Bug's horn beeped again.

Emma blinked. She watched Henry open the garage and Christine's lights come on. The Bug's headlights flashed. The Crown Vic's headlights flashed. The Bug beeped. The Crown Vic beeped. The Bug swished its wiper blades as rain began falling again. So did the red and white Chevy. Christine's engine revved and the one time demonic car peeled out of the garage and onto the street beeping maniacally and was followed by Emma's beloved yellow Volkswagen in the direction of Marine Drive.

Emma watched them go in shock and dismay and found herself just too exhausted to start screaming at her son about it. She did, however, pin Henry with her best Evil-Mayor-Regina look.

"Grounded?" sighed Henry.

"So grounded," Emma confirmed.


AN: Sorry again about the lack of resolution for the battle. That entire storyline got away from me. And then I read part of an episode recap that Tremaine wasn't actually the Big Bad and got killed by Gothel who was the one who raped Wish Hook...or something? So, I decided to just tie up the lose ends with Gothel beiing the old woman from Aurora's cabin who killed someone else and planted their body the way Cora did with Archie. Gothel is also the younger apothecary that Archie referenced many chapters ago and who found Jack Horner in the woods where Neal had left him unconscious. If I'd gone into more detail, I would have revealed that Horner was one of her drug dealers and because he got sloppy and revealed himself, she turned him insane.

Next up: Part III kicks off with a look at Emma's renovated bungalow (there will be a photo-shopped picture on tumblr) and some mother/daughter shopping spree bonding.