CHAPTER TEN: REVENGE OF THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER

(In which Zelena has an internship and Cora is definitely up to something.)

After exiting the hall, Dr. Whale gestured to the bored-looking blonde flipping through a magazine. "Call me if she suffers another psychotic break... or sprouts monkey wings. That only happened to the first batch of rats, but, you know, better safe than more broken windows."

"How did I get Savior baby-sitting duty?" Tinkerbell whined while twiddling with her butterfly necklace.

"I'd imagine it's because Mother Superior hates you for undermining her authority, dressing like a Seattle grunge band roadie from the nineteen-nineties, and having woefully inferior non-fairy friends."

"Yeah, she's kind of a stone-cold bitch," Tinkerbell agreed before slipping into Emma's room.

Leaving the rebellious fairy to monitor Emma Swan, Whale went to the laboratory where he found Zelena bent over a small pink lump of brain in a petrii dish. For a Wicked Witch, left without her magic, the redhead was a surprisingly quick study of microbiology. He suspected if she'd grown up in the Land Without Magic - or his own, but adopted by a progressive family who didn't discriminate like his own - and was treated for her syphilis at birth, she could have done great things.

Sure, she was a bit emotionally unbalanced from the neurosyphilis (acquired from her mother who got it from her rapist father), but treating the symptoms of the brain damage with meds for bipolar disorder seemed to have helped. Both Regina and their mother appeared to suffer from a milder form of the mental disorder, but getting Regina to take medication was problematic... hence dosing her coffee at Granny's. They'd gone through Olanzapine, Quetiapine, Risperidone, Ariprazole, and Ziprasidone (which made for some rather unpredictable behavior) before settling on Clozapine.

Unfortunately, not everything in this town could be set right with some Penicillin and anti-psychotics. There was no medicine for the malady of compounding crises that had added up into a massive fiasco of accumulative magical bullshit.

"How much of that have you picked at?" Whale finally said when the ex-witch didn't look up from her dissecting.

"Oh, it's not like it'll be missed!" Zelena scoffed back. "It's even more riddled with holes than flying monkey brains. Speaking of which, the last treatment I tried caused the lab rats to cannibalize each other. Not that I'd mind if Sleeping Fuck-Me Hair Beauty and her cardboard prince tried to gnaw each other's faces off, but I don't need that stroller gang of brain-damaged princesses coming after me!"

"It is a bit of a problem," agreed Whale. "The monkey disease, not the stroller gang. Well, them as well, I suppose..."

Shrugging that off for the moment, Dr. Whale approached the lightboard where a CT film showed the damaged areas of a brain scan as dark spots. Not nearly as bad as the one beside it that was riddled with lesions, but still confirmation, at least in part, that Emma's behavior had at least partially a medical cause.

"Hopefully whatever residual magical component is in her brother's blood will start to bind with the... whatever it is that's mutated the syphilis..."

"Anything that cures even some of Boo-Boo Birdie's ills is a success as far as I'm concerned," snorted Zelena. "Stupid bitch locked up innocent people, let thieves and rapists run amuck. And then thought bringing some dead woman to the future was heroic? It served my purposes, of course, but, honestly, her family has an utterly buggered sense of morality. Between that and marrying a three hundred year old walking disease..."

"You're just upset that the pirate's cursed lips didn't work out the way you'd hoped and you had to get knocked up by a bleeding heart fool with the integrity of wet tissue paper."

"Cursed lips, contagious dick, hardly matters now," shrugged the former witch. "And I'm still not letting Baby Sis or Mummy Dearest near the fruit of my deceitful womb. Never mind that troglodyte. I mean, honestly, who jumps at the chance to shag their wife's murderer next to said comatose wife and then declares it's honorable to stay with their rapist? I've met rock trolls with more sense than that shits for brains the Blue Fairy tricked my sis into believing is her true love. Though, in Robin's defense, I think Snow White is still stupider."

Setting her scalpel down, she asked, "You're really sure we can't take Snow White's other brats? I'm sure Tonkerbell would be more than happy to blow some fairy dust up her-"

"I'm really sure we can't take her children and cut open their brains," stated Whale. "We were lucky just to get Emma in a position to do so."

"Yes, lucky," another voice sans British accent startled both.

In her usual fashion, Cora slithered into the room... holding a white rabbit which earned a scowl from Whale.

"We must make our own luck. In this case, the pirate had to pay for betraying me for princess pussy and you needed your Savior brains. It's a win-win."

"Are you saying you orchestrated the accident?" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Hardly an accident. Killian Jones certainly isn't the first rape-inclined handsome rogue to suffer tragedy for crossing The Miller's Daughter. A little fairy might have informed me of a new shipment of diamonds and a little poppy dust in Sneezey's handkerchief gave Sleepy that extra incentive to fall asleep behind the wheel at just the right time with that van conveniently full of fairy dust. Of course, the little Savior magically gluing his boots to the road wasn't my doing. That should make for some amusing guilt juxtaposed with the rage of betrayal. It's always so fun to watch that family try to process more than one emotion at a time. Perhaps, you could inject something into her brain to fix that?"

Whale's frown increased and he ordered, "Please stop petting the test subjects."

"Oh, you're no fun," Cora scoffed and in a purple poof that bunny had returned to its cage.

"You realize that you are admitting to premeditated murder?" Whale stated.

"Because that's a first for the women in this family," scoffed Zelena with a roll of her eyes. "And says the necromancer."

"Murder that was so masterfully planned it resulted in the very test subject you most desired being wheeled into your operating room," Cora defended and walked over to the light board. "Funny pictures. Is this the pirate's brain? It's more riddled with holes than Zelena's."

"Like yours is much better, Mummy!"

"Oh, don't sass me, girl. You have a brain like swiss cheese thanks to that no good father of yours and Snow White's dimwitted sire. Just be grateful that I convinced your sister to let you play assistant for Dr. Whale in his apothecary project to reduce potion costs for the lowly peasants."

"It's a compounding pharmacy," said Whale with a harumph. "We make drugs not potions."

"Yep, drugs," sniggered Zelena. "Lots and lots of drugs. Just call him Dr. Heisenberg."

Sighing, Whale retorted, "That show has been off the air for years."

"Hey, I've been dead for years. And we're providing a very important service for all those anti-tech nutters shitting in the woods which, in turn, provides a service for this town as it keeps them so strung out, they don't have the time or mental acuity left to sabotage the power plant or shut down Main Street with their protest marches. Frankly, we should just turn them all into flying monkeys. They're practically flinging their own shit as it is."

"Now, now," Cora cautioned. "This world's advances may have their advantages, but that's no reason to turn its detractors into winged simian. You must learn to curb your animosity, Zelena, and keep channeling it into a sustainable lucrative addiction-based business. Goodness knows it worked for the Blue Fairy for centuries. You're filling the void created when that bug found religion. And I'm very proud of you."

"Really!?" Zelena gushed.

"Of course. You're learning to plot the downfall of others in small ways that benefit your family's legacy. Unlike your sister who is plotting her own downfall at the expense of this family by sharing a bed with that slack-jawed yokel from Locksley. Mind you, I'm not thrilled that you bedded him as using an unborn child as leverage in a game of revenge is no way to guarantee happiness. After all, it might turn out mentally defective or hideously ugly or smarter than you, and then you've gone and invested all of that time and effort and made an enemy out of its parents under the presumption that the brat will turn out a perfect puppet. It was only after giving you up that I realized some good might have come out of the horrible dishonor of your existence if I had been patient and made the best of the hand I was dealt."

Zelena frowned and asked, "I thought you told Regina you wanted her to get married and have a child for her happiness, and it was the pain you carried from having to give me up that made you realize what real happiness is?"

Cora scoffed. "Oh, please. I didn't have a heart. And we both know that 'you can feel deeply without a heart' thing that you and Rumple sold Regina for your time spell is complete bullshit that she deluded herself into believing like every other good thing about herself, including her love for that adopted brat of hers. I didn't realize how fulfilling motherhood could have been until I was dying. Anything I said before that was purely to mind fuck Regina. She was just so gullible and self-defeatingly headstrong. And I needed Rumple to get that curse cast so I could kill him in this boring little world and become the Dark One myself. If she wanted to destroy her womb, that was irrelevant to my plan... and clearly for the best considering her taste in men, as any child she and the forest hobo produced would be likely be riding the short bus to school, too stupid or insane to effectively manipulate.

"And there's another thing, Zelena," she lectured, "just aspiring to control the Dark One. You should never sell yourself short. Plan big. But that doesn't mean one should make a habit of stacking the deck, either, as you're likely to get caught and ruffed up by the House. Or hit by a van. The pirate also swindled me in a cockfight and refused to pay the dry cleaning bill. Magic in this world won't remove blood stains from silk!

"Anyway," Cora changed the subject abruptly, "I'm only here drop off dinner from Granny's..." A take-away bag appeared in a cloud of purple smoke on the counter. "And to pick up the next product shipment for Nottingham to continue undermining Saint Eva's attempts to civilize and unradicalize the forest dwellers and farm fanatics so that we can live in one big utopian society."

Smiling, Zelena opened a cupboard and handed over a large clear bag of blue crystals. As she did, Cora complained, something chirped annoyingly in Cora's pocket, and the older woman pulled out an iPhone in with a bunny ears case. "I don't know why I have to carry around this infernal contraption when we can use mirrors!"

"I can hear you, Mother," responded Regina's annoyed tone. "You are late for-"

"A very important date."

"Your Wonderland jokes are not funny."

"Of course they are. You were simply born without a sense of humor, Regina."

"And you were born without respect for other people's property. You need to stop leaving dead bodies in my kitchen, Mother. They nearly gave Daddy a heart attack!"

"Well, it could be worse, you didn't rip his heart out and crush it."

"Mother!"

"Honestly, your father is so pathetic. Dying is the best thing he ever did for you. Now he just plays golf with Leopold all day. A couple of imbeciles, those two. It's like an elderly version of that Odd Couple show on that picture box. Of course, Leopold is the slob. I don't know what I ever saw in him. He couldn't even make fire!"

"Mother, the bodies!"

"They're just transfigured snails, dear. I was simply trying to make a point to Roland that it's unseemly to go about wasting salt on the snails in the garden that you should be eradicating using that potion I brewed."

"Stop trying to parent my step-son, Mother! And one of them is my housekeeper!"

"You have a snail as a housekeeper? That seems counterproductive."

"MOTHER!"

Hanging up, Cora sighed. "If I had a snail for every temper tantrum that girl has thrown, I could rule France."

"You've been to France?" asked Whale.

"Don't be silly. I've been to a timeless realm of literary clichés based on the British Regency where I attempted to seduce The Prince Regent, though I suspect he might have preferred the company of his butler, if you know what I mean."

She vanished in a puff of purple smoke, phone, meth and all, leaving an irritated Dr. Whale who complained, "Your mother is overconfident. What if the Sheriffs find out and they start sniffing around?"

Zelena shruggingly told him, "Relax, Victor. Like anyone will miss the pirate. He served no purpose other than replacing The Savior's vibrator. And knowing The Charmings, they'll have Narcoleptic Dwarf driving Henry to school while Emma throws herself under the next available man to get over her poor shmoopie's demise. It's how things work in the world I was born in. A world populated by chivalrous rapists and stupid princesses who think that swigging from a flask and punching the men in the face offsets making all of the boozing and physical violence about their soul-sucking desperation to have a cock between their legs. Me? I don't try to couch it in some false feminist buggery when I'm feeling horny," she declared, moving swiftly to pin the doctor against the light board, then grinned and amended seductively, "What do you say we shag in the morgue, Dr. Whale?"

The Doctor slipped an arm around her waist. "Thought you'd never ask!"

AN: Yes, Tinkerbell was the "little fairy". I see her a dissident within the "order" trying to undermine The Blue Fairy and gain followers to overthrow her so that they can be free of her ideological tyranny! Obvious nods to iZombie and Breaking Bad. Tonkerbell cracks me up, so I had to mention her. What timeless realm did Cora visit? Hint: she's referencing a television series known for its satire, one of the stars of which later shared screentime with Jennifer Morrison.

Next up: Emma contemplates a dick.