A/N: Only two more chapters to go after this one… are you excited? Nervous? Neutral? I just really wanted to thank all of you for your support (again). It's been an interesting and fun journey, writing this story. I'm glad you all have been there with me!
Don't forget, I am posting the last chapter on Saturday!
P.S. If you are interested, I will be posting the prologue for a new story on Saturday, also. You can either follow me or check my profile page throughout the day to see if it has been posted yet, if you would like to read it.
Mwah!
"Emma!" Bang. Bang. Bang. "Emma, open the door! I'm sorry!"
Emma lay on her enormous four-poster bed in one of the spare castle bedrooms, studying the baby angels – cherubs, Emma believed they were called - delicately painted on the ceiling. They looked so cheerful and content with their lives, like they had done nothing but good deeds for eternity and would do nothing more. Emma snarled. Their good deeds had never backfired on them.
To Emma, it almost felt sacrilegious to put such a dark soul inside of such a religiously devoted room. The angels seemed to stare back at her in disgust, even though her situation wasn't completely her fault. They taunted her with their innate goodness and the rewards they had received for being so angelic.
Look at her. The Dark One.
The scum of the Earth. The lowest of the low.
Hungry for power and never satisfied.
What does she want with us? We do not bother her.
I know, Emma whispered silently at the chubby cheeks, the feathered wings, the tiny, pointed arrows.
"Emma!" came the voice again. "Emma, please, I just want to apologize!" BANG. BANG. BANG. The heavy knocks reverberated through the room. Emma rolled on her side so that she could not see the door or the mocking cherubs.
Emma didn't want to talk to her mother; her mother was treading on thin ice with her Dark side. Emma was bouncing back and forth between two polar opposites, and the leaps were so large that they left Emma exhausted. She tried to stay as the slightly more normal version of herself, but the Darkness was tempting and inevitably roped her back in. When she was fully the Dark One, Emma would try to ignore the dark desires she felt, but her voice was seldom heard over the roar of evil want and longing.
Luckily, the Dark One hadn't asked Emma to do anything too terribly drastic yet.
Since stepping back into a world that did have magic, Emma's frame had thinned even more, the circles underneath her eyes had turned nearly black, and her eyes were sunken deeply in to her head. Emma looked like one of the skeletons people hung on their houses at Halloween to frighten off eager trick-or-treaters. She was clearly going downhill quickly; they had only been in Camelot for a couple of days now. Every task Emma attempted took an extreme effort, lots of help, and several minutes to complete. Even brushing her teeth was difficult. The only thing that didn't completely zap Emma's energy was magic.
With the way things were progressing, would Emma simply waste away and die, being the Dark One? Would the battle between Darkness and Light kill her? No, of course not.
Things were never that easy for her.
Emma glanced up at the ceiling again. With a passive wave of her hand, the angels disappeared from the ceiling. Black paint coated the deep colors that told of an easy life, an easy life that made Emma jealous. She felt better without the judgmental gazes of the puny things bearing down on her. They didn't understand. Nobody did.
I had good intentions.
All the while, during Emma's conversation with herself, there had been a constant knocking on her door. Mary Margaret was obviously intent on talking to her daughter.
Emma flashed her palm at the door, bolting the second of the three locks on the door shut. The noise stopped momentarily as Snow heard the click of the lock, and Emma wondered if her mother had gotten the message and given up on trying to talk to her. But, then, a few more knocks resonated in the stone room, and Emma received the answer to her previous question. The knocking continued on.
Emma bolted the third lock.
There was another slight pause in the knocking. Then, she heard Mary Margaret's sigh, followed by receding footsteps. Emma listened to the thud, thud, thud noise quieting as Mary Margaret made her way down the long hallway and down the staircase.
You're doing what you have to, Emma reminded herself. You're stable right now, and you don't want to do anything to bring the Dark One back prematurely.
Emma soon realized that there was nothing she could do from stopping the Dark One in her as she suddenly felt herself slipping away. Colors went from out-of-focus to black as night. Sounds muted and died away. The soft mattress and silk sheets went from warm and welcoming to cold and hard as stone underneath her.
Emma breathed in deeply. The transition from Emma Swan to Dark Swan was always a difficult, uncomfortable one. The transition back was even more difficult; she supposed that was because it was harder to fight the Darkness than it was to embrace it.
Everything snapped back into focus for Emma. Objects jumped out at her in laser quality, and she blinked, trying to make what she saw less intensely defined. Noise magnified itself and separated into individual waves so that Emma could hear the conversation in the Dining Hall two floors below as if she were in the room with everyone herself.
She heard the heavy wooden door creak open painstakingly slowly, and Mary Margaret joined the group.
"…don't think that's such a good idea," Regina said slowly.
"Well, why not?" David said. "She wouldn't do anything unless she was provoked; we know that much about Emma. She has to have a reason for doing something, or she won't do it."
"No," Regina said authoritatively. "We are not doing anything to provoke Emma. You don't poke the sleeping dragon, unless you plan on getting crispy-fried, David." Regina bit down on David's name, frustrated with his stupidity.
"Yeah," Mary Margaret said, "I agree with Regina. Emma's the Dark One; there's no telling what she'd do if we angered, let alone whether or not it's the right thing to do. What if someone gets hurt?"
"That's the thing." David put special emphasis on these words. "Any of us is willing to do anything for Emma, right? She's done nothing but save our asses so far."
Everyone nodded.
"So," David continued, "we've decided as a whole that she needs to make some sort of mistake, right? And we're not cruel enough to allow her to harm some innocent stranger. Right? I would certainly hope not."
Murmurs of agreement rose from the group and met Emma's ears. Emma grinned wickedly at this joke of a statement. Let her hurt someone? She had the dagger. What did they think they could possibly do to stop her from doing what she wanted, getting what she wanted? The best defenses they had against her were Lily and Regina. Lily was new to being a dragon; she didn't know how to use it to advantage. And Regina? Regina was laughable in comparison to Emma. The Evil Queen was no match for the Dark Swan.
Even if Emma were the old Emma, there would've been no stopping her once she put her mind to something. She broke Regina's curse with absolutely no magic at her aid; imagine what she could do with magic.
"If someone gets harmed, it needs to be one of us," David finished. "Besides, that would likely be the only thing drastic enough to make Emma's dark side think twice."
Up in her room, Emma nodded in agreement. Yes, I agree that it should be one of you that gets hurt. I even know exactly who already: the one who never trusted me in the first place.
A black liquid that resembled tar dripped through the ceiling and slowly formed a puddle in front of the group. Regina, David, Henry, Hook, Mary Margaret, and Lily all watched in confusion as the puddle grew larger and larger and inched closer and closer to their feet.
They stared at the liquid for a long while, trying to figure out what it was. Puzzled, Hook glanced at the ceiling, searching for the source, but there was no residual black liquid left on the ceiling to indicate just where it had come from. Henry nudged the goop with his foot, and it dipped inwards where he touched it. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.
"Henry!" Regina scolded him. "Don't touch strange black substances!" Upon hearing this statement exit her mouth, Regina sighed and placed her fingers to her temple. She had never thought she would have to say that sentence in her life; it was probably the most ridiculously necessary thing she'd ever had to say.
A figure emerged from the liquid. It rose, blackened by the tar, as if awaking from a long slumber, and slowly stretched its arms out wide. As it straightened itself out and unfolded itself like one would unfold a lawn chair, the group noticed that the shape of the figure resembled that of a human.
The liquid finally fell away from the figure and splashed to the floor. Midnight droplets spattered the group, and they all immediately wiped their faces clean of the disgusting liquid.
"Emma!" David gasped, seeing what the figure actually was.
Emma smiled satirically at him and held her arms up to the light so the group could see them. Her skin was golden and sparkling, catching light from the chandelier and flashing it into everyone's eyes. "Hello, Dearies," she said simply.