CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: HEIGH HO HUMBUG

(In which Emma gets bad news and the Dwarfs should really be investigated by The Mine Safety and Health Administration.)

The patrol car barreled down the dirt road, sirens blaring. It was against her better judgment that Emma had allowed August to ride shotgun, but all hands were on deck (she regrettably still found herself occasionally using Killian's mariner-isms). When she leapt from the car, it was to a cluster of Dwarfs. Leroy had called her within minutes of the earthquake that there was what appeared to be a sizable collapse at the mine, having rushed there immediately with Sleepy and Sneezey, having earlier that day dynamited into a new section... and, of course, without getting around to properly shoring it up before the Dwarfs skivved off early to celebrate at Granny's.

Emma noted that they were looking a bit inebriated, but she figured there was no point in giving them sobriety checks and ticketing whichever one had driven their repaired creepy rape van here. Resisting the urge to call them Drunky, Sleazy, and Stupid, she addressed Leroy, "Okay, what's the deal, guys?"

The trio exchanged a look, then Leroy nodded to the trailer where they kept their gear. "Better come see for yourself."

Bewildered and annoyed, Emma followed into the trailer... where three filthy teenagers were getting cuts cleaned and bandaged by Doc.

"They snuck into the mine," said Leroy. "With Henry and... er... Baelfire."

Emma's heart seized. "Where are they?"

"Trapped behind the cave-in," Ava/Gretel answered, adding contritely, "I'm really sorry, Ma'am. It's just... we heard about the diamonds and we figured... we'd take a few. No offense, but... well... whenever the next psycho magic user attacks the town, based on experience, everyone outside of your family has to fend for themselves, and most of us don't have magic. Hansel and I thought it'd be protection in the case of a magical emergency, and Henry and Baelfire agreed to help."

Emma sagged, torn between fury and guilt, because the girl wasn't wrong about her family ignoring everyone else when the shit hit the fan. Somewhere along the way, she'd fallen into that mindset, given up being everyone's Savior and just saving her family, generally from the fiascoes they were responsible for. It was all pretty fucked up. So, of course, Henry would choose now to get off that family bandwagon himself after the last few years of severely narrow-minded focus following their return from New York. She really hated that she'd let her parents screw her up and then passed that on to her kid, and neither of them had even had the benefit of being raised within that family to blame for being screwed up by their parents... well, aside from Regina, who was probably the most self-centered person in any universe and left Emma to seriously rethink having let her back into Henry's life and working her own ass off to help that lunatic get a happy ending after zero remorse for all of the crimes she'd committed.

Sometimes it felt these past few weeks like she'd awoken from a haze, had been under a curse like everyone here had for 28 years. The therapy sessions led to some seriously uncomfortable self-reflection on how much she could blame on syphilis and monkey herpes and how much was just the accumulated baggage of her upbringing and being in all kinds of denial over how that had and was still fucking her up and causing bad judgment.

She would have to have a long talk with Henry about bad judgment as soon as she hauled his ass out of the mine for the second time.

"All right, so where exactly are they trapped?" Emma asked, reigning in her anger and panic.

"Who's trapped?" Regina interjected, barreling into the trailer.

AN: I wonder when the various character decided "this is the name I'm going with". I get that Snow White considered "Mary Margaret" as an alias, so she wouldn't be adverse to using it, but why would people want to go by a cursed name given to them for their miserable imprisonment? And who is in charge of the mines, anyway? It always seems to be David mucking around with the Dwarfs, but shouldn't The Blue Fairy be in charge? Or maybe she's just hoping a cave-in will kill them all?

Next up: Mixing recycled plots.