Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
Warning: Contains a recent spoiler for 5x10... yes, 5x10, because this show is really called Once Upon A Time We Blew Our Set Security Budget on Hook Posters. On the bright side, I understand Adam Horowitz lost A LOT of followers today after this #nospoiler. I mean, who wants to watch a show that consistently and pathetically ruins its own plot twists (most of which turn out to be shitty CS rape culture fanservice) by letting paparazzi lurk around the location sets - let alone follow the asshat who will, no doubt, deny that anything has been spoiled, just as he did with the Emma-Becomes-The-Dark-One YouTube video leak.
CHAPTER FIVE
CARNIVAL OF CARNAGE
"Who are you?" Emma warily asked, "Saint Peter?"
"God no," the dark-haired man answered in a snarky tone. "And I'm not God either. I'm an Angel. A Seraphim in fact. So don't get your hopes up that I'm your Guardian Angel."
"Well, if you were, you'd be a really crappy one," retorted Emma with a scowl, then she considered, "Is that really a thing? Guardian Angels?"
"For real world people, sure, to a point. For your kind? Fun fact: fairy tale characters don't have Guardian Angels. No real point when their freewill is constrained by the literary parameters of the world in which they were born. It would be a waste of resources."
"Constrained?" asked Emma, confused, and the Angel rolled his eyes.
"Asks the woman who literally had a spell cast to augment her freewill. Yes, constrained. No matter how hard any of them try to 'play against type' they will always end up being the archetype they were written as in the allegories, cautionary tales if you will, that the Muses inspired to warn humanity about the dangerous vices of mortality and nudge them to favor their virtues. Fairy talers lack the full capacity of freewill in order to inspire humanity to use theirs for good rather than evil."
"That doesn't really seem fair," Emma commented with a frown. "Creating people that don't have real freewill."
"Tell me about it," sighed the Angel. "We Angels don't have freewill. Of course, we can also bask in the glory of the Almighty without our brains melting out of our ears. You all have magic. It's a tradeoff."
"Kind of a sucky one right now," complained Emma, crossing her arms like a child.
"Well," conceded the Angel, "your situation didn't exactly play out the way it was intended. Thanks to that Disney fool, the cautionary tales ended up rebranded to inspire hope, which is all well and good in the fictional connotation, but the living, breathing characters started getting ideas that didn't fit with how they were made. Of course, they weren't meant to be alive at all in a literal sense, more of an... imaginary one. Don't make me try to explain how God's imagination works, or my head might yet explode."
After a pause, he continued, "Anyway, things went awry after life was accidentally breathed into those stories giving the characters and their realms bona fide existence... even if their worlds are essentially timeless. Another hindrance to the freewill thing. People can't really change individually or as societies if time is essentially standing still, whether it's stuck in a feudal system, the Victorian age, or Boardwalk Empire," he concluded, scowling particularly hard at the last.
Frowning as well, Emma said, "So... you're saying... everything in that book... it really is just stories? Or that it was meant to be, and my being here and everyone I know is just one big divine accident?"
"From a certain point of view everything in existence was once just a story to God," said the Angel, "but essentially, yes. You're people are more or less a drunken one night stand pregnancy. It doesn't mean God doesn't love you - you exist, after all. But the universe would have been a lot easier to manage had things gone according to plan."
He raised a brow and intoned, "But as interesting as all of this is, shouldn't you be more interested in asking about the whole you being dead thing? Most people are a bit less blaze about an unexpected demise."
Emma shrugged and that and answered, "I kinda got the gist of that from... my... not better half. The whole thing where I destroyed a universe and created some soulless version of me that inhabited a fake reality where everyone's going to die because some kid that not-me had is having a kid that's the resurrected Dark One."
"Which you really should have seen coming," quipped the Angel, "when you and your one-handed shmoopie got your names conjoined on that sword."
"Excalibur?" Emma replied. "But... I thought the sword was a legendary good."
The Angel snorted. "Yes, a good that broke off and became tied to the most heinous immortal evil to ever possess a human soul. Did you lot honestly think Excalibur is the Flaming Sword?"
"Um..." Emma muttered, not clear on what that meant and her ignorance drew a sour look.
The Angel quoted, "'He placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.'"
At Emma's clueless blink, he growled out, "Genesis 3:24. Honestly, you morons immersed yourselves in Grail Lore and couldn't even be bothered read the Bible? God really screwed up with you lot!" he huffed.
After shaking his head in dismay, he explained, "Excalibur is not that sword. It's not meant to protect the tree of life - or it wouldn't have been embedded in a rock. If it was anything good, it would never have been tied to the Dark One, and uniting the halves in the name of true love would have actually required true love, not a couple of horny jackasses who passed on protecting family for some shallow bought of eye-fucking and dry-humping. By getting yourselves branded on that blade, created by Lucifer, you cemented your roll in creating a true physical form for the Dark One that cannot be controlled by any weapon."
"Great," groaned Emma.
The Angel raised a brow. "That's it? You all but signed over your soul to the Devil - save for, lucky you, you'd already lost it, and 'great' is all you have to say?"
Emma shrugged. "What do you want me to say? After all the shit I went through even without all her memories, I think I've pretty much lost the ability to be shocked by anything. Death. My love life sponsored by Satan. Why not? And all of this... whatever it is," she waved her hand around, "is just another crazy-ass adventure I got stuck in.
"I could have done without being a terrified child though," she concluded.
"It's essentially what you are," the Angel explained. "Everyone becomes their innermost self when trapped in Purgatory. For all the titles you have been assigned, the person you have tried to be, you will always be, at your core, that frightened little orphan girl."
"Pan was right then."
"Psychopaths are good at reading people. Your boyfriend-slash-great-grandfather for example... who passed that on to your grandmother. Thankfully, that gene got weeded out by your mild-mannered, if simple-minded, grandfather who was more of a weird shoe fetish type pervert than a rapist - and your father's side of the family which, a certain elevated interest in bloodlust aside nurtured in your uncle by King George, tended more toward depressive than functional alcoholism and douchey but harmless vanity."
Scrunching her face, Emma retorted, "So, what you're saying is that I should have given up drinking and promiscuous sex and maybe I wouldn't have screwed everything up?"
"Everyone has vices, Emma. Those aren't your most damning ones," replied the Angel. "Yours is your pride. Hence the 'not-you' that you created."
"My pride?" asked Emma, brows furrowed.
"There are seven heavenly virtues," he explained, "Chastity, Abstinence, Liberality, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Humility. And seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, the epitome of humanity's tendency toward selfishness: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride. Each is a form of Idolatry-of-Self wherein the subjective reigns over the objective."
"Um...?"
"Subjective information - personal opinions, interpretations, points of view- these take precedence over factual or statistical evidence. Humans act selfishly rather than showing empathy inspired by facts. An example being rulers who lay out massive feasts for one even as their subjects starve... a rather common practice in your birth world, actually, even for your so-called virtuous parents."
The Angels sighed, amending, "But then those fairy tale realms tend to be defined by a sort of caste system in which all are born into what fate has meant for their life barring a visit from a fairy godmother, those Angelic pretenders who market fairy dust like meth."
Again the Angel paused, shaking his head in disgust, then continued, "You were meant to break that cycle, Emma. You were meant to be a paradigm shift, the first child born after all that was written who could bring those realms into a new age - and world, i.e. the real world - where both heroes and villains could break free of their clichés. Unfortunately, between the meddling scribe muddling up your soul and your prideful pratfall down a time portal..."
He shook his head and explained, "Basically, you are here, Emma, because of mortal sin, those likely to destroy the life of grace and charity within a person, to corrupt the soul - and in cases where magic is involved can actually spawn soulless facsimiles - in your case, a homunculus begot of pride that literally came before your fall, took your form upon your death, and left you trapped in Purgatory whilst that dark facsimile of you usurped your life... or what amounted to it in that counterfeit world unsanctioned by God."
The Angel told her then with a slight shrug, "Of course, your soul was already damaged by that Sorcerer's spell, your potential for darkness cut out, given to another, replaced by Lily's potential for good, which is an unnatural state for any being, even of the fairy tale persuasion, particularly given you were meant to herald in a new age, be like your real world, free-will-gifted cousins. And because she was not meant for some greater purpose, everything was a bit lopsided, ill-fitted. You were meant to be, essentially, a real person, but you got this... fictional, if you will, 'capacity for good' tacked on and all of the compounding edits in your story by other fairy talers trying to shape your path basically left you a hot mess."
"Does that mean I'm off the hook for the whole universe creating and destroying thing then?" Emma asked, hopeful, a hope that was dashed by the Angel's sour expression
"You still had enough freewill to not run into that barn, even if your conscience was always a bit embattled and ill-fitted," stated the Angel. "Lacking potential darkness might have drawn you toward those with blackened hearts, and some... overly-aspirational goodness might have kept you from fully giving in to that temptation, but nothing told you to run headfirst into a magical portal with no fucking clue how to stop it."
Emma winced. "Yeah... that... I messed up."
"If by 'messed up' you mean the universe and 'at which point it began its descent into the whirlpool of tasteless garbage that it sits at the bottom of now', then yes."
Emma gave him a sour look, then letting out a sigh, she picked at the shoelace on her wrist, admitting, "Everyone said I was the Savior and I had to save them and I... I didn't want to disappoint them. I wanted to be... be important after growing up with everyone saying I was worthless."
"I know you did," the Angel nodded, not without empathy. "Subjectivity over objectivity. You acted because people said you were the Savior, not because you knew yourself and that you had the ability to save everyone. And it was growing up being treated like you didn't matter and couldn't achieve anything that made your pride and ambition so dangerous when you got the first taste of fame. Any intelligent being could have foreseen that. Instead, you got stuck with the Blue Fairy and a puppet trying to set you on a righteous path, to teach you humility in the worst possible way and then crown you their messiah without any forewarning or training and no one to have your back who wasn't really in it for their own selfish agenda.
"You were used badly," he conceded, "and I'm sorry for that. Even God can't anticipate everything where freewill is involved. Inserting those damn authors into the fairy tale landscape was always asking for trouble, particularly after the Muses stopped inspiring them. Really, you were probably doomed no matter what. God tends to put too much faith in humanity's capacity for goodness. And it didn't help that there wasn't enough goodness in those stories to make up for it. I mean, biological parents dropping like flies, teenage girls cannibalizing their boyfriends, everyone with an evil and unnaturally attractive and young stepparent... and the amount of borderline or actual incest..."
"I would never have kissed Hook if I'd known he was my great grandfather!" Emma defended, disgusted.
"And that he was your first love's stepfather?"
"I didn't know that either!" Emma huffed. "Not me me. Other me didn't care, I guess, but she was apparently an amoral mess even without being the Dark One. And, okay, maybe it was a lapse in judgment on my part not to figure that stuff out, to ask questions, to be suspicious, but I was a mess after Neverland, okay? Then I got my memories taken, my mom was nine months pregnant, Neal died, Henry didn't know what was going on and then he did and everyone was pressuring me and I just couldn't think."
"You could have, but you chose not to take the time. It's a nasty habit of yours, Emma," the Angel argued. "Why deal with emotional issues today that can be put off until tomorrow? It's easy to pretend that emotion is a hindrance to making the right choice.. It's not so easy to deal with the consequences of those choices. Of course, emotion can just as easily lead one astray as it did Neal. Hence, having the full freewill to which one is entitled is rather important."
Brows furrowing, Emma asked, "Will I get to see Neal? Is he... is he okay? I mean, I know he screwed up, resurrecting the Dark One, and he left me, but... he wanted to do the right the thing."
"Baelfire has faced the consequences of his actions - and inactions as in the case of keeping from you things that he should not have."
Emma sniffed. "Like magic and August - and that Hook was with his mom. Always his stupid, chivalrous not wanting to interfere with my destiny or love life or whatever by not telling me stuff. What the hell was wrong with him!?"
The Angel gave her a look. "I'd say three centuries of being repeatedly rejected and or abandoned gave Baelfire - and Neal - some issues. He'd lost twice to his stepfather, his mother's love and just basic human decency. That the love of his life and mother of his child would similarly be enticed by the pirate's overbearing charms and sexual dominance over his being respectful and patient... well, it's probably exactly what he expected. "
"But he still tried to give me space," Emma muttered, annoyed and a bit ashamed how she'd treated him for that.
"Indeed, he did. What he expected didn't change Baelfire's approach to the situation or his deep love for you and your son, Emma. He did want you to be happy above all else, even if the path you chose for that happiness was the same that had brought him only misery. That is real 'true love', not the shallow, cliché bullshit couched in flowery language that your storybook histories and their people spout like it means anything more than what it truly is: bad poetry that came from Serendipity inspiring some bards after an all night bender."
A brief silence stretched between them as Emma continued to fidget.
"I do love Neal, you know," she finally said. "I never stopped. I just... not being with him, and the risk of losing him again, seemed easier. It wasn't."
"No, it wasn't. You could have saved him in the forest that day if you'd just channeled your love."
"I did same thing with the portal. I had the power and I didn't use it. I didn't even think that I could," Emma lamented. "So what's the point of all of this power if I never know when I have it or how to use it? All I do is end up hurting the people I love!"
"Because you have never allowed yourself to love completely," said the Angel, "though given how your soul has been tampered with, that's not entirely your fault. Love is complicated and requires both dark and light, all the good but also all of the bad within the mortal soul. You did your best with what you had, tried, subconsciously, to borrow from others with your magic what you lacked, but that worked poorly in a world not meant for magic and a soul is unique besides so you can't swap in parts from another if a piece goes missing and have it work right. Souls aren't like cars."
Shaking his head, the Angel complained, "Which made just one big mess with your parents and your mother splitting her heart to revive your father which forced him to share her soul to sustain his life force and quite frankly turned the both of them into a pair of useless morons since their souls were wanting and ill-suited to the Land Without Magic to begin with A pity. I liked them both - in as much as I ever like any humans - until that 'lack of free will' written into their story regarding their being soulmates and twu wuv," he made a disgusted face, "undermined the whole mess and became the catalyst for your fall from grace."
After a pause, he told her, "So, essentially, to some degree, God is at fault for what ultimately became the death of a universe. Which is why I am here to give you the chance to fix your soul. Regaining your pride was just the first step. All of your vices, they're still essentially neutered by that spell, hindered by the goodness that isn't yours, keeping you from succumbing to temptation, a danger that all mortals are basically required to be capable of doing for the whole freewill thing to matter and for souls therefore to be judged accordingly and sent to Heaven or Hell."
The Angel, without warning, thrust a hand into Emma's chest. There was no resistance as he yanked out - a pulsing orb of light?
"You were expecting a heart? You're dead. You don't exactly need a heart in the afterlife."
Brows furrowing, Emma watched as he waved a hand over the orb and little tendrils of light floated around his fingertips leaving the orb a bit less glory... and revealing a void at the center. That was the emptiness she'd always felt, Emma realized, the part of her soul that her parents had removed and replaced with something that didn't fit, that could never fill it right.
The Angel waved his hand and the tendrils changed from light to... absence of light that flowed quickly into the void.
"Good as... well.. not new, but certified used," said the Angel before shoving it back into Emma's chest.
It burned, but with cold rather than heat.
"One intact soul. Now, the fun begins."
"Fun?" Emma gasped while holding her chest.
"Maybe 'fun' is the wrong word for it. You have your freewill, Emma, your darkness. It's time you were tempted."
The Angel snapped his fingers and suddenly she wasn't sitting on a bench anymore, she was in a gondola... in the Tunnel of Love?
AN: Thanks to ouatcritic on tumblr for that description of OUAT. I don't know exactly "at which point it began its descent into the whirlpool of tasteless garbage that it sits at the bottom of now" but I couldn't have worded it better!
Next up: It's the Looooove Boat...