CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: BE OUR FUCKING GUEST
(In which everyone ends up at the Library, and they do not obey the quiet rule.)
It was around midday that Belle grabbed lunch to go from Granny's and made her way to the Library on what was usually her day off, until a frantic Snow White had called her, saying that Emma had gotten herself into some sort of trouble that required research. She should have known. Both that Emma would screw something up and that her parents would only call on Belle for "nerd stuff" as Hook had referred to her place in the group after, no doubt, learning the word from Henry in his attempt to be "cool"... or maybe from Charming, considering the Prince seemed to have about the same level of distaste for literature as the Pirate, preferring to jump headfirst into every situation without even the most minimal of research into important things like strategy and tactics. Honestly, Belle believed without the help of Rumple and the Blue Fairy, neither of those two so-called leaders would have been able to find their way from one end of King George's castle to the other, let alone won a battle, let alone two wars to take over two kingdoms!
I'm being suffocated by an atmosphere of barely literate incompetence, Belle thought with an underwhelmed sigh as she crossed the street on a particularly pleasant spring day that should have been spent pruning rose bushes in the afternoon and discussing with her husband the matter of the increasingly cult-like farm and forest communities in the evening over a bowl of Rumple's homemade Mulagatani soup. She'd already had to waste many a day off disinfecting the Library after her ill-advised attempt to give Hook a chance, given that she had married a "villain", but in retrospect, her first impression was correct: there was a big difference between someone who feared the loss of power after acquiring it through a cursed entity that possessed them for three centuries and someone who was just a violent sociopath. Belle wouldn't deny she had some issues that had inspired her attraction to Rumplestiltskin, but hoo boy, Emma must have had one seriously fucked up childhood and time in prison to fall ass over tits in love with a man who had a short time previously called her dried up and useless and left her to starve to death! Well, of course, there was the pixie dust, and the neurosyphilis, and the monkey herpes, but still...
Tits, ha, Belle sniggered to herself. Sometimes those Lacey traits were amusing to have.
Sometimes she wished she could just go play pool.
Instead, she was going to be stuck in a room with some of her least favorite people who only considered her family when they needed her brain power and had completely and utterly failed to keep their promise of maintaining her literacy program for both children and adults brought over with the Second Curse or other later inter-dimensional means of immigration. It was just infuriating how little these people cared about knowledge, and Belle often wondered if this was how famous philosophers and scientists like Socrates and Galileo felt, wanting nothing more than to share their knowledge with others and inspire them to advance humanity only to be met with scorn and accusations of blasphemy! The Charmings and their cohorts might not go so far as to consider her curious mind traitorous to the status quo they'd established, but they sure did as little as humanly possible to spread her philosophy, as though learning about the world might poison the minds of the peasants into rising up and overthrowing their incompetent asses the moment they got back to the Enchanted Forest - which they all still believed in like they were awaiting The Rapture.
Belle was fairly certain that people returning from the dead did not have some positive magical or religious significance. Negative? Almost certainly! Which was also something she could be researching and discussing with Rumple, instead of straightening out yet another Charming Family Fuck-Up. Of course, Rumple hadn't come along, telling her when she called him at the pawn shop to cancel their lunch plans that he had no interest in being involved. If Baelfire wasn't in any danger, and it was just Emma who'd gone and done something idiotic, well... Rumple didn't think much of Emma for reasons that Belle supposed were both somewhat justified and for certain aspects of her personality reminding him too much of himself and his bad decisions as a young man... the sort of person he didn't want hurting his son as he had. Of course, Rumple could have shared all of this with Emma and attempted to apprentice her upon the discovery of her magic and had a positive influence on her, but her husband didn't do the "life coach" thing, as he put it derisively.
Maybe it was for the best. If spending any length of time with Emma was like spending it with her parents, then Rumple probably would have turned her into a snail and stepped on her. More than once, Belle had entertained the notion, though, of course, she would never do it. Well, not the stepping on them part, anyway.
"Oh, look it's the bookworm."
Belle had been so lost in her thoughts as she'd entered the Library that she hadn't bothered to note that it was already occupied. Although, to be fair, the door had been locked, so there had been no reason to consider that someone else would be there already. That someone who'd spoken being Zelena, seated at one of the rearranged tables with Regina, Robin, August, and Emma's parents. Zelena's wrists, at least, were shackled.
"What is she doing here?" Belle snapped.
The last thing she'd expected was Snow to invite along the nutcase who'd tried to murder her children and erase her bloodline from existence. But then, it was also Emma's mother who'd assigned Captain Hook as Belle's bodyguard without any deference to the whole having tried to murder her and physically assaulted her on multiple occasions or offering an apology akin to one given by a ten year old bully on a school playground forced by his teacher... only to later give his victim a wedgie behind the gym for not coughing up some lunch money.
"Turns out I know a thing or two about maintaining magic outside of this podunk little town," stated Zelena with a smirk.
"And since Rumple refused to help..." sighed Regina.
"For some reason," scoffed the former Wicked Witch, "Rumple refused to be in the same room as me!"
"I believe his exact words," drawled August, "were 'I will eviscerate her alive and let flying monkeys feast on her liver before healing her and repeating the process all over again'. It was a whole Prometheus thing."
"Rumple is so kinky. Very into bondage. Definitely a better lover than forest boy over here."
"Shut up, Zelena!" Regina sneered.
Belle eyed both the Mills sisters warily, vaguely registering what Zelena had said. As the meaning slowly sunk into her mind, her eyes widened in horror. It was another thing on which Rumple had lied, but she couldn't blame him, only feel anger at herself for not being observant and attentive to his needs after the way he was abused.
"You're disgusting," Belle finally managed.
"And you're nothing but the mob wife of a washed up don who lost his bite," Zelena shot back. "You don't think Rumple is looking for another way to get power? You really think that was the Dark One? He chose the power, it didn't choose him. And like the philosopher Voldemort said: 'There is no good and evil, there is only power... and those too weak to seek it.' Rumple may be a coward. But he's not weak. I'm not sure I can say the same for you. Or your love. I mean, think about it. It took a random stranger yanking out his heart to cure him, not true love's kiss. What does that say about you and your relationship?"
Squaring her shoulders, Belle defended, "It says that we have a real relationship. That we're both flawed and make mistakes and admit to them without trying to place the blame on anyone else. We don't need magical proof. Our love is enough."
"Or maybe you get a thrill out of his ambition, like you apparently do from dressing like a stripper attending the funeral of a Tel Aviv nightclub owner. Call me old fashioned, but I think your skirt should be longer than your vagina. All it takes is a slight breeze to flash your Enchanted Forest. Better make sure you don't bend over around Dildocchio."
"Hey!" August exclaimed, embarrassed. "I can't help my nose!"
"Like I can't help my environmentally conscious complexion when I get jealous," Zelena quipped. "I'm sure there should be a support group for that.
"And you," she waved at Belle, "can take your teenage slut wardrobe along with Emma's camel-toe jeans to 'Mommy Issues Anonymous'."
Snow interjected angrily, "Are you saying my daughter dresses like a slut?"
Zelena rolled her eyes and slouched in her chair before answering, "No, I'm saying your daughter dresses like an emotional trainwreck whose mommy and daddy put her in a magical tree with a puppet who left her to rot in baby jail and then convinced her one and only friend who hadn't betrayed her for magical bullshit yet to betray her for magical bullshit and land her in grown-up jail to have her baby that she had to give up, leading her to ten years of renting out her ruined vagina to the same sort of deadbeat thugs she was making a killing off of. I mean, I may have raped my unborn child's father after murdering his wife, but you are a terrible mother."
Snow glared and Charming looked ready to draw his sword, but Belle beat them both to the punch, stalking toward the redhead, snarling, "You have no right to judge anyone. And the skirt is short on purpose! Not that it's any of your business! I can be a-"
"Empowered, independent woman who shows her book smarts while embracing her femininity, because a strong, self-assured woman can wear four inch heals and skirts from the prepubescent girl's section to make herself feel sexy?" The redhead snorted and rolled her eyes. "Darling, that's just what men want you to believe. You're still just a dumb girl playing into every man's slutty librarian fantasy. The only thing you're lacking in this place is an aluminum pole and cum stains on the floor.
"Actually," she amended, "considering Hook's use of your sanctum sanctorum while you were away and what Cyrano de Bonerac probably gets up to in the mystery section, taking a UV light to the place would look like a glow-in-the-dark Jackson Pollock painting. You don't need those fertility treatments to get knocked up. Just sit down on any surface in that skirt."
"How do you know about that!?" Belle gasped, furious. Yes, she had been undergoing fertility treatments with Dr. Whale, but no one was supposed to know about that! It was embarrassing in a town where all of the fairy tale princesses seemed to breed like rabbits, that she didn't need them gossiping about her and Rumple's difficulties!
"I'm training to be a medical technician, of course," boasted Zelena and she flashed a grin, amending, "Which means I've got access to all your files! Teehee!" While the others looked mildly nervous, she continued, "And in your case, I know the former Dark One is shooting blanks. No wonder he's so obsessed with power. Men always have to compensate. You should consider it a blessing, really. Now that he's no longer immortal, he's probably got, what, five, maybe ten good years left? He'll be dead before the sprog is old enough to fall down a portal."
"And you'll probably sacrifice yours in some insane magical ritual," Belle shot back. "The only way you'd let yourself get pregnant was if you needed a sacrifice."
"Yes, but now I'm undergoing extensive medical and psychiatric treatment," pouted Zelena. "I've come realize that my actions were really just an attempt to find empowerment in the tragedy of my of own conception by dominating a nature-loving thief with a wandering dick."
"Hey!" Regina growled. "Don't insult Robin!"
"Robin can speak for himself," her sister retorted, then shrugged, "or maybe he can't. I'm surprised he can read. Actually, I'm surprised he stuck his arrow in the right quiver on the first try, if you know what I mean."
Finally speaking up, Robin stated to Regina, "I told you we shouldn't have brought her."
"Oh, did I hurt your widdle feeweengs?" Zelena cooed.
"You need more than just extensive medical and psychiatric treatment," Regina told her. "More like my high heal up your 'quiver'."
"I'm not that kinky. I draw the line at incestuous sadomasochism. I'm crazy, but I'm not a monster."
"I think that's debatable," muttered Charming.
"No one asked you, ex-Sheriff Nolan," snarked Zelena. "Here, I thought you were providing drinks to this get-together. Regina said there would be margaritas. I even made guacamole. I'm very disappointed."
"The Sheriff's Station is still warded against intruders," David grumbled, crossing his arms and glared in Regina's direction. "And someone is apparently also considered an intruder by the Sheriff pro tem, what with having kept him prisoner and raped him for decades."
Regina shot him a glare. "Technically, I only raped him the one time and sexual dalliances under the influence of altered personalities is debatable. But that's beside the point. If you hadn't lied to your wife about your massive gambling debts, we would have margaritas. Actually, we wouldn't be here at all, because your daughter wouldn't have run away to avoid your wife turning into an overbearing harpy in your defense!"
"I tried to call Emma and apologize!" Snow shrilly responded.
"Maybe," David mumbled, "if she didn't have your number go straight to voice mail for incessantly calling her about your damned baby class..."
"Shut up, Charming," Snow snapped.
"I know," Zelena giggled, "you all should start coming here every week. You can call it 'Hypocrites Anonymous'. Where witless, self-proclaimed heroes who only give a shit about their own happy endings see who has the most self-righteous bullshit justification for screwing over everyone else!"
Flashing a grin toward Belle, Zelena continued, "You know what's more hilarious than his getting fired by his own daughter? That time my sister borrowed your heart and wiped your memory of Rumple revealing that he was dying."
Eyes widening, Belle turned a glare on Regina. "You knew Rumple was dying?"
Regina defended with a scowl, "I had no idea it would mean the unleashing of the Dark One when the last time he almost kicked it, that demon was supposed to just... evaporate benignly into the either. Excuse me for not being the preeminent expert on ancient evil and the nonsensical nuances by which it could or could not be destroyed. Perhaps if someone hadn't killed my mother," she shot at Snow who turned pink.
"I said I was sorry."
"You knew he was dying," Belle repeated, "but that wasn't important enough to share?"
"Of course not," scoffed Zelena. "I'm sure it just slipped Gi-Gi's mind, what with the syphilis making her irrationally obsessive over having that crazy writer erase me from existence so she could spend all day shagging the Earl of Adultery! And, you know, the whole thing where she's a selfish bitch with the emotional depth of a teaspoon."
"I have the emotional depth of a teaspoon?" Regina snapped at her.
"I never said I had emotional depth. I'm a high functioning psychopath. I'm embracing it. So should you, instead of this pathetic attempt to conform to society's expectations of normality. You're a sociopath, Sis. Learn to love your crazy! Really, take a look in the mirror and instead of asking it who's the fairest of them all, say to your reflection, 'I'm bad enough. I'm crazy enough. And doggone it, who gives a fuck if people don't like me?'"
After a pause, Zelena considered, "Really, it's a pity you didn't get to chat with the Snow Queen's mirror. Might have knocked some truth into your head to counteract the spirochetes. Then again, a lot of good it did Nerd Girl," she cackled while cocking her head back in Belle's direction.
"Now that was an entertaining bit of magic to behold," she smirked at Belle. "'Everyone sees you for what you really are, a pathetic coward'," Zelena imitated her accent. "And then you tried to slit Rumple's throat! Making you believe horrible things? Yes, the truth is so horrible. Well, letting a girl fall to her near death for a rock is truly horrible."
"How the hell do you know about that?" Belle gaped. "You were-"
"Frozen?" Zelena rolled her eyes. "I was also disembodied and floated around through a time portal, somehow had the magic to re-corporealize myself, and vanish Marian into a pile of atoms, even though removing my necklace was supposed to take away my magic, and another little piece of jewelry I had Monkey Little Jon nick from Robin Hood, the one I imagine he had shoved up his ass back when your boyfriend was horribly torturing him to within an inch of his life for stealing from his horder's paradise, and which I just conveniently happened to have on my incorporeal person, because your dumbshit friends and lover didn't bother to frisk me for any other potentially dangerous magical items, so I could implement a last minute back-up plan to impersonate Marian and ruin my sister's life, conveniently even glamoured my pitch black heart. It's just one of those paradoxes. Don't break your Mensa brain over it any more than it is from dropping that pebble."
As Belle paled further, the former witch giggled and relayed, "Oh, yes, poor widdle Belle let Anna fall down and break her crown and when her memory stone went tumbling after with a shatter, it left a big dark blotch in her grey matter."
The others looked shocked and Belle fisted her hands, trying not to burst into tears and turn as pink as her skirt.
Regina put in, brow raised, "You have brain damage? Well, I suppose that would explain your sudden study-buddyship with Captain Guyliner!"
Belle threw her a glare, though she couldn't deny it. Yes, it was true, the destruction of her memory pebble had caused irreversible brain damage. After the mess with not noticing Rumple's PTSD and strange behavior and her own out of character behavior - like befriending Hook - she'd gone to Dr. Whale, worried that perhaps the Lacey thing had left her with some sort of multiple personality or bipolar disorder. Whale had done a brain scan and concluded that stroke-like damage had been done to an area of her brain associated with memory and with some hypnosis by Archie, they'd concluded that the removal of memories and their physical destruction corresponded to physical damage to the brain... which, more recently, he'd hypothesized might have contributed to Emma's occasionally odd behavior - during the period when Ingrid had possession of some of her memories. Of course, Emma had her memories returned, so her brain was gradually able to reintegrate them with the memories to which those were connected and heal - well, apart from the neurological STD damage - while Belle didn't have that luxury. For someone so enamored of history and language, to be unable to trust her own mind with her own experiences, let alone those she'd read, was both terrifying and humiliating. Their trip around the world was as much to help her cope and heal as it was for Rumple.
"I made a mistake," Belle defended. "And I can see how ruining someone's life would include living with a man you can't stand, in a world you hate, raising his children, getting a minimum wage job since you have no education, and never seeing anyone you knew ever again for the rest of your life. Well played!"
"Cray cray!" Zelena repeated. "Seriously, though, what's with people around here repeatedly reliving their worst traumas? I guess you felt robbed of that, and that's why you traveled to a far off land to remember exactly how Ogres tore your mummy limb from limb. You wanted to be haunted for the rest of your life with the horrible moment of her demise to build proper princess character. I get that. Not that you're a princess. I bet that really sticks in your craw, surrounded by royals and you the lowly barely-noble from a backwater frontier province. So much so that you hatched a plan to get close to Rumple so you could influence the Dark One in all of his political games and have your sweet revenge. It's quite brilliant, really. And I applaud it."
"That's not true!"
"Isn't it? I mean, come on. You trusted Pippi Longstocking after she told Charming that murdering the local tax collector's associates would free his town from the horrors of the IRS despite her being a foreigner with zero comprehension of the socioeconomic systems beyond trading ice for wool, so instead of freedom they got their asses audited so hard his mummy took an arrow to the heart. I mean, not-yet Prince Charming buying that, sure, but you were supposed to be smart before you broke your brain."
"Hey!" David growled.
"But maybe," she accused Belle, ignoring Charming, "it's just that you secretly crave power. Because you looked awfully giddy every time you held that dagger. You liked having power over the most powerful man in the world, and you hate being powerless, don't you? Did the other little lower noble brats exclude geeky baby Belle from their Ring Around the Rosies? It wasn't some superior ethics that exiled Rumple, it was your pride. You were just too embarrassed to admit that your one selfish choice for an utterly stupid reason had left a permanent dead spot in that pretty little head of yours making you miss all of the blatantly obvious signs that something was very very wrong with your new hubby.
"And the tragic irony, of course, is that even after having it pointed out, you reached all the wrong conclusions. Well, to be fair, you trusted the conclusions of the drunk MILF fetishist who's hobbies included date raping, metaphorical back-stabbing, literal back-shooting, and punching you in the face.
"So," Zelena gloated, "you can throw around accusations, but I got brain damaged before I was even born. You made a choice that nearly cost your husband his life and led to The Savior becoming the Dark One. People in hypocritical libraries shouldn't throw magic memory-containing pebbles!"
Clenching her fists, Belle took a breath. She wouldn't let this crazy woman get the better of her. Maybe what she and Rumple had wasn't a healthy relationship by general psychiatric standards, and maybe they both had some selfish reasons for it, but they were honest about that now, and they understood each other in a way that no one else did - or seemed to care to even try. And maybe that wasn't the classical definition of True Love, but then the examples she'd thus far witnessed were nothing to emulate!
And so she shot back, "Yes, well, at least I have taken responsibility for my actions. I care that I screwed up and hurt people and I am trying to do right, to make up for my mistakes. And you're obsessed with power! That's the only reason you're here! Not some therapy making amends bullshit!"
"No, I'm here because I was promised free margaritas," Zelena retorted and threw another nasty look at Charming. "I should have known better than to trust Prince Witless. Hey, I bet if he'd gotten face time with the Snow Queen's mirror, he'd have thought it was his evil twin and tried to stab him!"
"Hey!" snapped Snow, "don't insult my husband's intelligence!"
Zelena scoffed. "Really? Are you only just now picking up on that I've been doing that all along? I'm still waiting on your brain scan. Do you have a traumatic brain injury from all the times you've gotten your head smashed into something while trying to be stupidly heroic? Because I'm still trying to understand how you trusted a complete stranger and self-ascribed peasant midwife who inexplicably had a giant piece of expensive bling and full knowledge of this world - unlike everyone else brought with the second curse - to help you birth you child instead of an actual trained doctor. And fleeing a safe-haven carefully warded against your mortal enemy who wants to kill your infant son and take your daughter's magic in order to let the man you had an extramarital affair with stick his hands up your vagina? That's got to be the worst case of 'baby brain' in human history! And your stint as mayor? You're not the leadership type, you're more of a 'follow a butterfly around for a day' kind of girl."
"Leave my wife alone!" David exclaimed.
"You'd rather I focused on you, the father who insisted that a one-handed, magic-less, alcoholic opportunist who had a stalkerish obsession with the women bedded by the males in Rumple's family and who was cursed to be the singular agent of your daughter's downfall be her back-up in a magical gunfight with the witch who cursed him? I guess it takes a psychotic stalker incapable of genuine, selfless human emotion to know one?"
Snorting loudly, Zelena continued, "Honestly, I'm really not sure which one of you is more stupid. Prince 'So what if I broke my arm I'm still doing it because my vitreous chivalry can overcome all physical limitations!' Or Princess 'So what if I'm nine months pregnant and I can feel the baby's head popping out, I am going to waddle weaponless into the middle of a magical street fight with a woman who wants to steal my true love brat and erase me from existence!'"
Regina snorted at that and even Belle failed to voice any protest while the pair glared.
"Either way, if it wasn't for my slightly less deranged little sis, here, you'd have been picking out coffins for both of your children instead of naming one after the man I put in a box... up until you all ceased to exist because of your utter incompetence, of course!"
"Don't you call my wife incompetent!" David snarled, pulling his sword at the same time Snow uttered the same, swapping 'husband' for wife, and drew her bow.
"How about dense then? Doltish? Half-witted? Imbecilic? Slightly less simpleminded than Robin of Lorax over there?"
"Hey," Regina hissed. "You're the brainless bitch who was jealous of growing up with an abusive psychopath!"
"That's not very nice," Cora's voice interjected from the entrance, no one having noticed her arrival. "Sorry, I'm late. I was told to bring salt, and since Roland is no longer melting snails, I thought I would borrow some from Regina's pantry."
"Never mind, Mummy," said Zelena, "Charming didn't bring the margarita machine."
"Typical," scoffed Cora.
"Well, why don't you just conjure them then?" Snow snapped.
Cora rolled her eyes. "Have you ever tried conjured food, dear? It tastes like hot buttered ass. Oh, wait, so does food prepared the regular way in the Enchanted Forest. Zelena is right, though. Your alleged bad-ass banditry aside, all I've ever seen out of you is a half-wit who has the confidence of a child that was raised in a basement. Good thing you had Charming around to bolster your self-esteem with a mystical all-powerful sword that just happened to be a day's ride from your location and coincidentally just when you were feeling uninspired in the matter of waging two-kingdom-wide war, or you might be raising your healthy, well-adjusted, never cursed children on an idyllic farm. But, of course, you'd be peasants, and as your mother liked to say, anything's better than doing manual labor and taking a shit in a hole in the ground!"
"My mother changed!" Snow hissed.
"Yes, by forcing some peasant woman to pledge her fealty and endure her spoiled spawn treating her worse than her prized stallion. Did Regina ever mention that she murdered your horse?"
Snow's eyes widened and she threw a furious look at Regina. "You killed Starlight Glimmer McTwinkleshine!?"
Regina shruggingly responded, "He asked to be put out of his misery for being called 'Starlight Glimmer McTwinkleshine'."
"You murdered an innocent horse! What did Starlight Glimmer McTwinkleshine ever do to you!?"
"It was more a case of your father forcing me to give you riding lessons while you didn't even bother to listen to a word I said, yammering instead about 'Do you want an apple, Starlight Glimmer McTwinkleshine?' Or 'Look at that butterfly, Starlight Glimmer McTwinkleshine!' And 'When I grow up, I'm going to be Queen, Starlight Glimmer McTwinkleshine!' Starlight Glimmer McTwinkleshine, Starlight Glimmer McTwinkleshine! I had nightmares about that goddamned horse!
"Maybe your mother changed, but she should have gotten around to suppressing your inherited snotty little bitch genetics some time prior to, say, on her death bed, because having actually raised a child instead of foisting it off on a servant, I happen to know it takes more than one lecture for the words coming out of a parents mouth to stop sounding like that trombone in the Charlie Brown cartoons, and you didn't learn a damn thing until you had to depend on the peasants for your survival. You credit your mother with your goodness, but I taught you that lesson!"
"By murdering peasants!? Yes, Regina, that makes perfect sense!"
"Aaaaaanyway," Cora cut in, taking a seat and pinning her youngest daughter with a look. "You were saying, dear, that I'm an abusive psychopath?"
Zelena interjected, "Gi-Gi's just jealous that you like me more than her because I didn't have a hand in killing you... before abandoning years of plotted revenge in our family's name to become BFFs with the witless spawn of the woman who destroyed your life."
"We are not friends! And stop calling me 'Gi-Gi' you skankly, good-for-nothing whore!" Regina seethed.
"Then stop making me live in an insane asylum, you sanctimonious bitch!"
"You live there because you're insane!"
"You're insane if you think you're really one of these 'heroes'!"
Regina conjured a fireball.
Zelena, who'd picked her way out of her handcuffs with a pen Hannibal Lector style, grabbed Charming's sword and deflected the fireball, sending it through one of the windows.
"ENOUGH!" Belle shouted, stepping between the sisters. "No weapons or magic in the Library! No family feuding in the Library. And if you're going to trust Greenie McRapist or the Queen of Black Market Heart Removal," she snapped at everyone, "you can leave me out of it!"
"What?" Snow sputtered, as though that simply didn't compute. "You won't help us?"
"What did I just say?" Belle huffed. "In what alternate reality do you think I would trust either of them? Well, I'll tell you, it's not this one!"
At Regina she directed, "I never though much of you, but at least I had always believed you were more intelligent than those two idiots."
"Excuse me?" Regina sputtered.
"You... think we're idiots?" Snow exclaimed.
Belle responded, "I may have suffered the magical equivalent of a stroke, but I think if there was a book entitled Monarchy for Dummies you'd still completely misinterpret the meaning, leave the peasantry to rot, play the victims of your self-made fiasco, and then call Emma a hero for saving the day - when she either did jack shit or made it worse!"
While The Charmings gaped and sputtered, Belle continued, "I am tired of putting up with this shit. Every time one of you does something incomprehensibly stupid that a five year old would know is a terrible idea - like trusting a homicidal murdering rapist mental patient without magic for advice on what to do with quite possibly the most magical heart in existence - you come running to me. 'Belle, there's another crisis that's all our fault and we need you to solve it! Belle, research is hard, can you do it while we run around making it worse because we can't wait more than five minutes to come up with a plan!? Oops, that completely went to shit, what do we do, Belle!?'" she mocked, now yelling, the group of do-gooders and their sponsored recovering villains watching her, rage giving strength to her voice. "Belle, that is the tenth demon summoning this week, holy shit, we have no idea what to do, save us from our incompetence and yet another magical monstrosity it has unleashed upon this town of innocent people we don't give a flying fuck about - but save us!"
"Forget margaritas," tittered Cora, "I should have brought popcorn!"
All the anger and the hurt Belle had bottled up in the past thirty plus years was now flooding out of her, ready to crush everything and everyone. "And to think that I was ever rooting for all of you, ever hoping for you to get your happy endings, because when you apologized," she directed at Regina, "I really believed you meant it.
"And," she directed at Snow, "when you hugged me and asked if I was okay, I really believed you cared. But, as always, I was just too hopeful and naive to realize that none of you really care about me. You just want my help. Steal my heart to use as a walkie-talkie for your happy ending, but fuck how it affects mine. Sell me a load of bull told to you by a lying sack of shit pirate who's betrayed you a dozen times to get revenge on Rumple about how evil Rumple has become without bothering to verify it and then come running to me when my doing what you asked based on your fraudulent 'facts' goes to shit. Because that's what I am to all of you: the help, the girl you go looking for only when you need something. At least when Rumple brought me to the Dark Castle he told me I was going to be his maid!"
"Belle, you can't really mean it…"
Snow's shocked tone only made her angrier.
"I goddamn mean every word of it and I'm not nearly done, Princess 'let's show you how much we care about your safety and well-being by forcing you into a small locked room with the man who punched you in the face, shot you, and repeatedly attempted to kill you as your body guard and then completely forget about you until I need someone to babysit the child I let get stolen by this sociopath for all of the completely legitimate reasons Zelena cited. Which I could have told you was just about the most fucking idiotic plan ever conceived if you hadn't forgotten that I existed as soon as Neal was dead and my research skills were no longer necessary!"
David tried to interject, "Belle, that's hardly fair. Things were happening so fast-"
"Then learn some accuracy instead of trying the first bullshit idea that comes to mind, Wyatt Earp! Or find someone who can! Like me! Before you fuck it up even worse!" Belle snapped at him.
Glaring at all of them, she continued, "I've always done everything to help you. I've spent endless nights doing researches for you, looking for spells, translating them, looking for the necessary magical items, and maybe if I had not spent so much time in this Library or in the shop trying to help you I would have had more time to spend with Rumple after his son's death and I would have realized there was something wrong with him, that he was sliding back into the darkness and maybe I would have realized it soon enough to help him deal with his heart in a way that didn't involve corrupting Emma or her becoming the Dark One. And what do I get from all my hard work for you people? Less than nothing. I had to take a year long vacation to keep from burning this fucking town to the ground. I asked two things of you. To keep the Library open and keep my literacy class going. Instead, I come back to find this place has been turned into a gambling den strip club and you're passing out comic books."
"We did try to keep the class going," Snow attempted to speak up. "It was just... it took a lot of time-"
"Away from your baby making, sure," Belle retorted. "And I guess it was my fault for forgetting that you only have a fourth grade reading level," she snapped, drawing a hurt gasp from Snow. "Gods forbid you should put any effort into helping anyone other than yourself, right? I mean, none of you stood by my side when Rumple died. No one helped me and Baelfire when we tried to bring him back. In fact, you outright told us in not so many words that we could go fuck ourselves because we weren't family."
"Belle, that's not-"
"Absolutely true," Regina piped up drawlingly. "I was there. You told the two of them to fuck off with an implied 'and die for all Charming and I care'. And after giving the pirate mascot a horse and supplies no less. If that's not a royal burn, I don't know what is. She's smarter than you, better looking than you, and didn't have to make shady deals with Rumple to get him to do her bidding. You hate her, Snow, admit it. And Neal... well... that much is obvious. He's the son of the Dark One and a peasant, yet still probably has better than a fourth grade reading level, and your has-to-be-perfect child would be mating down on the number scale instead of mating up with Hook who, sure, he was a filthy pirate, but he had even Emma beat in the looks department, which would guarantee perfectly pretty future princes and princesses for your Christmas cards instead of whatever comparatively homely Cathedral custodian she might pop out with the jewel thief."
"Plus, you know, the whole underage premarital sex stolen virtue is clearly what made Emma grow up to be a filthy whore addicted to one night stands thing," interjected Zelena.
Which earned a group, "SHUT UP, ZELENA!" from all, save Cora.
"I hate to say it," Belle spoke up, "but Regina is right. As a result of your selfishness and warped expectations, this witch managed to trick us and got Neal sacrificed for her plan to go back in time and screw over all of you. So what did you do? You recast the fucking darkest curse ever created and if that wasn't bad enough, because all magic comes with a price, you found a loophole to negate that price and thought you were so virtuous and soulmate-y that it would mean rainbows and uniform stickers for here on out. Never mind you were pregnant when you killed your husband to save your replacement baby by once again placing the burden on the kid you'd entirely given up on up to that point, so when you split your heart, what if that gamble hadn't worked? You'd have killed yourself and your unborn child, murdered your husband, and trapped everyone in a town at the mercy of the Wicked Witch with no forethought into how Emma would even get there to save everyone when she had no fucking memory!
"And what did your 'successful' half-assed, halfhearted back-up plan get you? The entire fucking reason you cast the curse, to find Emma so she could use her magic to defeat Zelena before she could carry out her plan didn't happen. No, instead Emma lost her magic, Zelena changed time, and then the bitch came back and screwed things up even more to the point that you had to get some sociopathic scribe to try and fix things by fucking it up further.
"At this point, this trainwreck of an alternate reality created by your daughter's bad fanfiction rewrite of your meet cute has probably had so many compounding Butterfly Effect alterations over the thirty plus years between that past and her returning with that whiny 'love yourself' ice bitch and her screwed up family bullshit, that it's no wonder everyone acts like self-centered assholes who think justice is becoming best friends with your attempted murderer!
"Except for Rumple, of course," Belle continued, seething, "because for some reason he's always an irredeemable bastard no matter how pure his heart is or how many times you go to him for help. And never help him. None of you, not even Emma, or even Henry worried about Rumple after his captivity, after he had to leave his son's body in the middle of the forest and then didn't even get to attend Neal's funeral. And then you came to me with some story told by Hook about his evil deeds and I was foolish enough to believe you had actually confirmed what he was doing, that he was trying to hurt us when he was trying to save us all, especially Emma! Everything went to shit after that, because you were calling for his demise and toasting your efforts! Until That Apprentice finally revealed the truth, and then you were so concerned that you rushed to the pawn shop to save your own asses!
"That's all Rumple and I have always been to you," Belle snapped, "people to ask for help when your lives are in danger and to despise the rest of the time. You only were luckier with me because I never ask for a price, but now I realize why Rumple did."
"You have to understand," Snow argued, "when there's a danger we're not really thinking about the needs of the people who might help us…"
"My Gods," Belle exclaimed, "do you even hear yourself? How selfish and narrow-minded that sounds? You are monarchs. It's your job to think about the people who might help you! But you don't get it. You never do. From your deplorably inexcusable, historically inaccurate reappropriation of 'fireside chats' to this current impending shitstorm with the isolationists at the edge of town, all you do is rain down on all of us problems you're responsible for, and with infuriating frequency. And every time, all you ever care about is getting your own ass out of the fire.
"And then this mess between Emma and Neal?" Belle continued, scoffing. "You practically pushed Emma into a marriage bed with Hook after mourning Neal for all the length of time it took to walk from the cemetery to Granny's while you had the nerve to name your son after him, to paint yourself as these compassionate heroes when it was really just self-righteous bullshit to sweep your culpability under the rug like your compendium of 'take our sage advice as the epitome of perfect people who can do no wrong' that you convinced yourself was penance for cursing an innocent baby and sending it to another world - in order to save yourselves from the apparently too-hard task of getting your heads out of your virtuous asses and actually raising your daughter with all of the uncertainty and mistakes that entails. But then, your idea of parenting is snapshot moments and the play dates you want to have, because once they grow up, well, if you didn't have those selfish early memories to gloat over, they're the disappointment.
"You wonder why Emma's ripped her heart out? Why it's a magical mess? It's because you are the absolute worst parents I have ever seen! And having met Rumple's father and knowing Cora, that's saying something! But at least they never spewed self-righteous bullshit excuses for destroying lives!"
Regina snorted. "I can't say I disagree on that point."
Belle turned on her. "You think you're better? You fraudulently adopted the child of the woman you tried to murder as a baby, whose life was completely destroyed, who had to give up her baby because of the life you're responsible for her having, and then named the kid after the father you murdered to get the happy ending you promptly decided was boring as watching paint dry. And when Henry, shockingly, was unhappy and confused about being stuck in a town where he had no friends because no one aged, you tried to gaslight him. You all love to say I have Stockholm Syndrome for falling in love with Rumple, but after ten years of being emotionally and physiologically abused and brainwashed, Henry's so desperate to excuse away the Evil Queen's crimes to have the mommy he wishes raised him instead a cold-hearted tyrant, that no matter what you do, he'll still love you.
"You abused him with magic, tried to kidnap him and leave all of us to die, then threw a pity party and called yourself a victim because someone else stole your mass murder/kidnapping plan and had the gall to torture the Evil Queen - and Henry says you're not a villain because you're his mom? You're a 'hero' because you gave him memories and left him with Emma so he wouldn't be left alone and stricken with another bullshit case of amnesia? That's not heroic, Regina, and that's not some selfless maternal act. It's the least that any decent person could do when the latest magical trophy you horded to gloat over got yet again co-opted by someone even more psychotic. The lesser of two evils is still evil. And yet after your committed mass murder and raped a man you then killed for having the nerve to not sleep with you of his own free will, when you killed an innocent horse to spite a child, your own horse and your own father after having him murderer your husband, after you tried to murder a baby and then kill her years later to covet her illicitly acquired child to preserve your fiefdom - we're supposed to feel so sorry for you?"
Belle laughed coldly as she continued, "How the hell does that make sense when you don't even feel sorry for any of it? Or did you not escape Pan by telling the magically certified truth that you would do it all again because it got you Henry, your salvation. Do you have any idea how fucking nonsensical that is?" Belle ranted, throwing her hands in the air. "That literally makes no goddman sense, Regina! That right there is the definition of 'cray cray'. You can't get atonement for doing horrible things by association with something you stole doing those horrible things that you would do horrible things all over again to steal! That is the absolute most fucking illogical and narcissistic concept of redemption I have ever heard, and I spent more days than I would like stuck in this place with Captain Sex Offender who thought being blindly infatuated with a woman to the point of practically believing she farted rose petals and pixie dust was some sort of lazy-ass man's version of redemption for every horrible thing he ever did, except for selling Baelfire out to Pan and cuckolding Neal, because somehow it was a young boy's fault he didn't want to hang out with the bastard his mother loved more than him and sending Emma off to her destiny meant Neal had relinquished any right to still be a part of her life and it was Neal who needed to ask that bastard permission to even try to be part of Emma's family - and I know that's a run-on fucking sentence, but I don't fucking care!"
With a scoff, Belle shook her head and imparted, "And what's most ridiculous? You spent months going on about The Author stopping the villains from getting their happy endings, Regina, but you were so busy babbling and whining about how unfair your life is that you really don't realize how ridiculous you are. You were sitting at Granny's with the people you tried to kill for years, mayor of the town you cursed, the Savior falling all over herself like some teenager with a weird lesbian crush trying to be your best friend, and with your son by your side so desperate for affection that he just nodded at your delusional hallucinations that you actually had happy family gatherings with him and Robin and Roland, while the whole world seems to have forgotten all the horrible things you did to them, including and most disturbingly your husband who probably can't spell 'honor' let alone define it and makes Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber here look like geniuses," she scoffed at Robin and The Charmings.
"You got stuck with the exact same scenario as under the Curse, Regina," she railed, "except they were doing it voluntarily, and instead of suffering they wanted you to be their family. But your response was 'me me me', and, as usual, you didn't get a crisis of conscience until after you'd let the evil genie out of the bottle and presto, once again your devious plan was stolen by an even bigger wackjob who put Henry's life in danger and messed up everyone's lives! And all to get your happy ending with a man you barely knew because some gullible fairy told you a tattoo meant you were true love, which meant the good you had with the son you almost killed and brainwashed to keep as all yours wasn't nearly good enough, because you're still a greedy, selfish bitch.
"Because of you. Because of all of you," Belle pointed accusingly, "Emma had to sacrifice herself and now she's a complete basketcase! Because instead of actually helping her deal with all of it, like I helped Rumple, you just swept it under the rug, called her a hero, told her nothing is her fault, and then threw a man on top of her to get her over it just like you harassed me and harassed me until I went on that fuck date with Will so I'd stop trying to figure out what Rumple was up to and focus on getting married and having babies - like you'd even actually have let me join your stupid Princess Club even if I had, disgusting knowledge-seeker and compassionate person so completely anathema to your world view that I am!
"You are the reason Emma's heart is abnormal!" Belle shouted. "Every one of you here! You made her the biggest pawn of all in your fucking dysfunctional family drama of inter-generational murder and borderline incest, made her question if she ever had free will in anything, tried to pass off blame for all of the bad things you did so that she had to be the one to clean them up by sacrificing her soul and her sanity just to have the chance at having a family. Well, as far as families go, Emma deserves a hell of a lot better than all of you!"
As the clock tower chimed, Belle headed for the circulation desk, telling them, "I am tired of you people and your completely illogical and self-centered philosophy that you're entitled to everything, and even when you get more than you deserve, it's not enough! Well, I have had enough. So when you're all not too busy debating who deserves the most praise for fixing what you fucked up in the first place, you're free to check out a book. Until then, if you don't get your self-proclaimed heroic asses and evil family relations the hell out of my library in the next thirty seconds, I will pull the goddamned fire alarm and the potion I put in the sprinkler system will turn you all into snails!"
Regina gave her mother a scathing look as they headed for the door, and Cora shrugged, responding, "What? You told me to dispose of the rest of it. No point in letting a perfectly good transfiguration potion go to waste. She paid good money for it. And I got a Library Card. You should try one. Maybe check out that book by Machiavelli and reinvigorate your inner ruthless monarch. It's quite good!"
"SHUT UP, MOTHER!"
"Shut up, Mother!" Zelena parroted mockingly at her sister.
Growling, Regina slapped the cuffs back on her, and declared, "I am eating all of your guacamole with a margarita while you're strapped to a chair and forced to watch The Wizard of Oz!"
"No, please, not that again!" Zelena exclaimed, horrified.
Cora smiled proudly. "Now you're getting it, Regina!"
Getting into their truck, David considered with a sigh, "Well... we do have two children. Maybe we should just consider that two out of three isn't bad and-" At Snow's glare he sighed, "Yeesh! I was kidding!"
"Husbands who are a hundred grand in debt don't get to make jokes, Charming," grated Snow, crossing her arms. "Now shut up and drive. You're late for Gambler's Anonymous. And I have a manny-peddy with the girls and three."
"What about Emma?" asked Charming and she rolled her eyes.
"What about her? Belle loves research way more than she hates us. She'll figure it out. She always does... or Rumplestiltskin will. Then, when Emma gets back, we tell her how panicked we were at the thought of her dying and shower her with hugs and kisses and she'll forget to be angry with you."
"And give me my job back?"
"I wouldn't push it, Charming. Besides, a Sheriff's paycheck isn't going to cut it if we're going to pay off the mortgage on that mansion. Have you ever thought about exotic dancing?"
Putting the truck into drive, David grimaced, thinking it was a shame he couldn't rip his half heart out. That sort of thing always seemed to work to get Snow to forget his massively selfish failures and forgive him.
AN: I really did try to edit this chapter more. 9,000 + apologies! Snippets of dialogue taken from/inspired by sarashouldbestudying's tumblr post "Fuck you" post/117884017558/fuck-you-or-what-i-really-wish-could-happen-in. Thanks so much, awesome ranter, for giving me permission to use your angry Belle meltdown. Additional insults are from the New Girl episode "Par 5". The Wyatt Earp reference is a famous quote by the lawman: "Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." The name of Snow's horse is from Googling My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic; I figured the show would provide the perfect name. The Rock Troll pebble was the only thing I could come up with to explain how Belle became OOC in Season 4, including in a pre-Snowing-AU flashback that retcons Season 1. As to several guest reviews early on that called me a Rumbelle/Rumple apologist, I don't consider myself one, and the fact that Belle has the last word and considers her marriage remade into something healthy(r) than the rest was mostly done just to piss off those trolls; I personally think the ship between an older rich guy in a suit and a very young bookish woman in stripper clothes was written that way to appeal to Hollywood studio executives who are banging their assistants/interns, but now that Eddy has let it slip he gets ABC exec's stopping him in the halls to tell him how wet Colin makes their real housewives, there's no reason to give airtime to Rumbelle anymore, and they're focusing on their knock-off Fifty Shades bullshit. (Apologies if there are any deplorable typos. I could only proofread it so many times before my eyes started to cross!)
Next up: A new brand of hell awaits Neal and Henry in Tate's Hell. Also, who names a state park that? Seriously, it sounds like slasher movie title and setting for the gratuitous murdering!