Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

Note 2: Apologies for delay in updating this story. Life has been busy lately. I further apologize if this chapter isn't up to snuff - not that I think the story itself has been thus far, sadly - as I finished it without a great deal of editing to try and get something posted. Let me know of any glaring grammar/syntax/continuity errors and I will fix it in as timely a fashion as I can!

CHAPTER SIX

BADLY WRITTEN TUNNEL OF LOVE

The boat was stuck.

And the ridiculously poofy red ballgown Emma was wearing did not make getting out of the thing onto the narrow service catwalk easy. She really hated fairy tale clothes, never really getting used to them, even after a variety of experiences (sort of since it wasn't exactly her) being magically forced into them.

She'd found herself wearing this satiny, corseted torture device, complete with sparkly tiara, and riding in what looked suspiciously like a Disney World swan boat through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride... if there had been an apocalypse and both were left to rot for a couple dozen years.

It could have been worse, Emma supposed, as far as wardrobe choices went. She could have been stuck in that white dress with flowers in her hair, as dressing guests like extras from The Wicker Man was apparently all the fashion rage in Camelot... which seemed like a far less amazing place when it was actually populated by idiots and sycophants in Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament outfits, and King Arthur was sort of evil and kept Merlin as a tree while showing off his hot young trophy wife at parties every night for ten years while waiting for someone else to restore Excalibur to its fully-intact-but-still-utterly-useless-as-a-sword-what-with-the-wavey-blade self.

And that had worked out real well!

Prophesies were such bullshit, and Emma was sick and tired of her life - and death, it seemed - being ruined by them.

And magic.

And stupid costumes...

Her gilded crocodile heals that pinched her toes - and which she couldn't fathom why Rumplestiltskin would ever conjure when he hated the pirate who'd dubbed him "The Crocodile" - caught on the hem of her dress as she tried to extricate herself from the boat.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeek!"

Emma landed in the murky water with a splash and momentarily panicked at the weight of her dress pulling her down, until she realized the water was only three feet deep.

"You," a voice startled her, "look more like a drown rat than a swan, my dear."

Sloshing around to face the speaker now in the boat, Emma frowned at the matronly woman wearing the same blue gown she'd had on for much of the brief period that Emma had known her.

"Cora," Emma spat - while also actually spitting out some nasty water.

"Still upset I tried to kill you, I see, even though you are quite dead by your own idiocy," sighed Cora. "Doesn't it count for anything that your mother murdered me... after your grandmother ruined my life?"

"I dunno," Emma retorted, glaring, as she hauled herself back onto the boat, "considering you teamed up with her rapist father to try and murder me. And calling me an idiot doesn't help!"

"Her rapist father who is also your great grandfather that you slept with many times and whose evil spawn you birth and is herself the progenitor of the end of the universe, you mean? I stand by my descriptive!"

Glaring, Emma grated out, "That. Wasn't. Me."

"Well, you did kiss him."

Emma scowled. "In Neverland. I'm sure there was pixie dust or something. And I didn't know he was my douchebag ancestor who screwed over my kid's father after screwing Neal's mom, okay?"

Crossing her arms, Emma concluded, "With all the debauchery in your family, you've no right to get judgey!"

"Perhaps not," conceded Cora, "but I've never cared much for right and wrong. And regardless of where your soul was residing at the time of the debauchery, that Emma Swan was and is part of you," tutted Regina's mother while leaning on a parasol. "Don't be like my youngest and pretend all of the darkness in your heart, all of your selfish and depraved inclinations, were some convoluted conjuration of circumstances beyond your control. Even your bad self recognized Regina;s selfishness. More than your good self, actually, who wanted to be her friend."

"More like just not trying to kill each other while fighting over Henry," Emma argued, ringing out her dress. "She taught me some magic, that's it. Maybe I thought she had the potential to become a good person-"

"Good person." Cora rolled her eyes. "Good can be so blinding. And welcoming sociopaths into one's family never ends well, particularly when we all are what we were written to be. You were supposed to unwrite our destinies but now you're here, all of your good potential wasted while your dark passenger ran amuck, destroying everything you were meant to rebuild, making a mockery of family, hope, and true love - turning our world that could have been so much more into a parody of the worst kind. Quite honestly, I'm ashamed to have known you."

"Seriously?" Emma scoffed. "You're ashamed? You did just as many awful things - and if you'd succeeded in becoming the Dark One-"

"I would have killed my lover, not elevated him to godlike status," argued Cora with a judgmental scoff.

"Yes, you succeeded in poisoning Gold using Hook as your pawn, congratulations," Emma returned with a roll of her eyes.

Cora cackled at that. "Oh, I didn't mean Rumple, though it's true that the pirate was as much my pawn as my lover. Love certainly had nothing to do with it."

Now Emma's jaw slackened slightly in shock and disgust. "You slept with Hook?"

"If it makes you feel better, it wasn't consensual on his part."

"That's disgusting!"

"It was justice. He raped your great grandmother - and many other woman. Of course, I had to remove that from his memory for him to be of any use to me. I did intend to restore it before killing him. Sadly, his unnaturally long life went on a bit longer still than it should have, but there is some consolation in knowing he has to watch, helpless, as his own progeny destroys existence. That should be quite entertaining."

"I wouldn't call it that," groused Emma.

"No, you wouldn't," Cora agreed. "Your family has never been in possession of a sense of humor on any side. Quite a pity. The two best things in life are sex and laughter. Of course, when you're sleeping with your own kin..."

"You had your daughter marry your ex-fiancé!"

"Whom I never slept with. And I'm rather certain neither did Regina as Leopold suffered from terrible erectile dysfunction - hence having only the one bratty child. Frankly, instead of wishing that genie his freedom, he should have wished for a hard cock. He could have freed Regina from her pointless position and married and impregnated some other wench, produced an heir possibly more intelligent and capable of running a kingdom than your mother. And Regina might yet have run off with her forest hobo. And I could have used that silly old sorcerer hack pupil of Merlin's to become the Dark One without getting the pirate involved to murder Rumple and we all could have lived happily ever after... but, alas, we are here thanks to Leopold's limp dick and small brain. Well, you're partly here because he got it up the one time by rubbing the ashes of the one known remaining Pegasus feather on his penis-"

"Gaaaa! Stop talking about my grandfather's junk!" Emma howled while flopping down onto one of the benches with a loud wet slap of her ruined red gown.

"Would you rather we went back to talking about your great grandfather's genitals with which we are both intimately familiar? I always thought the birthmark on his foreskin rather looked like a-"

"NO!"

Cora cackled again, looking down her nose at the scowling Savior. "Oh, you poor dear, wallowing in your self-loathing at your sexual depravity! I know how that goes. I paid the price as well. You can console yourself, I suppose, that at least you didn't rape any innocents. That's quite a rarity in this family. You only befriended and slept with them and had their hereditarily-predisposed-to-raping children. I suppose the gene skipped a few generations... or was seeded back in. Killian never had a problem getting aroused, even when he didn't want to be. The wonders of male physiology..."

Emma dropped her head into her hands. "Please, go away!"

"Now you do sound like Regina," complained Cora, slowly pacing the deck, twirling her parasol as though it was a fine sunny day for a boat ride rather than being stuck in a mildewed catacomb.

"She never appreciated my advice," the woman lamented. "If she'd just married Nottingham and instated him as king and had a son... but no, she rejected him, downed that infertility potion, and instead of finding happiness by manipulating a powerful man and his descendants, she spent forty years wearing ridiculous costumes and raping that flea-infested huntsman before throwing herself at that forest hobo who couldn't tell her from his dead wife - from the other woman he slept with who murdered her the second time around. Honestly, I didn't raise that girl to be that stupid. In no untainted universe would Regina have sacrificed everything respectable about herself for a useless and dishonorable doormat of a man just because a fairy told her to..."

Emma blinked, brows furrowing at a realization finally in the middle of Cora's prattling, and her head snapped up as she gasped, "Hold on, Regina raped Graham?"

Rolling her eyes, Cora paused to give her an exasperated look. "Goodness, but like your mother you really did get Leopold's stupidity, didn't you? Yes, dear, Regina raped her sex slave and then killed your boyfriend. It seems the price of my acquisition of magic after being raped by that rake of a gardener was for my progeny to indulge in the sexual assault of innocent - if not always intelligent - men. Magic has a rather despicably ironic sense of humor."

"Yeah, no kidding," Emma grumbled and picked a condom wrapper out of her cleavage. At least it wasn't a condom.

"Oh, don't look so glum, dear," the older woman objected. "You might have checked out early, but your nasty side had a few more years of sowing her wild oats, and she's part of you now. Embrace that depravity, the power she acquired that you would never been strong enough to - what with all of that conscience and good-heartedness."

Emma glared and snapped hotly, "She was the Dark One. That's not something to be proud of!"

0"Yes, well, neither is sleeping with my father-in-law, but it got the job done."

"You slept with your father-in-law too? Did you sleep your way through the Enchanted Forest or something?"

Again, Cora paused and leaned against her parasol like an evil Mary Poppins... though, to be fair, her eldest daughter had pulled off the costume better in her midwife guise.

"Women acquire power in two ways in that world, dear, sex and magic," explained Cora as though speaking to a child... which made the topic rather creepy. "Xavier was far more skilled than his son, though not nearly as kinky as Rumple. But then, given the ridiculous prices required to deal with the Dark One, a throne for my daughter and the occasional outbreak of genital warts was the better option."

Emma blinked and then glared. "Wait, you gave Hook HPV!? I got HPV from you!?"

"Technically, you got it from Zelena's father if you want to play the degrees of separation card," said Cora. "The syphilis he got from Milah."

"Wait... syphilis?"

"Yes, Cupid's Disease is eating your brain - or it was while you were alive, helping what was left of your conscience make all sorts of terrible decisions. You probably should have checked the pirate's mouth for soars before drunk kissing him in Neverland. Also, on top of your HPV and syphilis, you got Monkey Herpes from that pet of my eldest daughter's. Basically, dear, in life your vagina was a petrii dish of nastiness, so it's no wonder you spawned a psychopath. But that's what happens when you lead with lust in a world that's gone off the deep end."

Emma sputtered out, "I don't... I'm not..."

"A slut? Becoming the Dark One let out your inner slut," said Cora. "You became a sexual deviant as part of your uncontrolled desire for power. As required by the stereotypes of the magical construct of the world in which we were born, sexual deviancy experienced by men is considered a romantic archetype while women who display sexual aggression are automatically evil. It's how things are written."

"That's terrible!"

"I know," sighed Cora. "You'd think that God being a woman, She wouldn't be such a terrible feminist. But then, our stories were written so long ago and we weren't ever meant to be living, breathing beings. Humanity is the Almighty's masterwork. Fairy Tale Land and all that lays within it or was brought forth from it is God's badly edited fanfiction that was never meant to be given true existence."

"How do you know about fanfiction?" asked Emma, bewildered.

"In between examining the various bobbles Henry had Regina and sniffing her clothes I came across a box of her printed out fanfictions of that Fifty Shades book, with her and Graham replacing the characters - and roll-reversed, of course... and rather more sexually dominating in a non-consensual-"

"OKAY I GET IT!" Emma cut her off, not wanting to hear any more about Regina's rapist tendencies. Apparently, she'd been right at the start that Regina was a sociopath - and maybe that wasn't as bad as a psychopath like Zelena, but clearly there was some sexual deviancy in that family that she didn't want to touch with a ten foot pole...

Though a ten foot pole would be helpful in getting this boat closer to shore...

Cora sighed and remarked, "The great tragedy of my life and yours that binds us, Emma Swan, is that I died trying to escape the confines into which I was written, the 'destiny' that shackled me to servitude and submissiveness. And that you were supposed to break those shackles for all of us. Instead you failed us all."

Smirkingly, she amended, "Perhaps if you'd applied your ambition toward a more concrete goal instead of 'happy endings for everybody' and leaping into every magical fiasco before you looked, you would have had more success."

"Nobody told me what was at stake!" Emma complained. "And seriously, lady, you can't judge me when your brilliant plan resulted in being killed by your own daughter after trying to kill one of your crazy lovers!"

"By accident. Regina didn't mean to kill me, obviously," Cora huffed. "I had successfully manipulated her again into believing that I had her best interest at heart. It was your meddling mother, Eva's spawn - the pirate's grand-spawn - who convinced her that I could love her more if I had my heart within my physical body... even though Regina shortly thereafter deluded herself into thinking she could love just as fully with or without her heart because of some cockamamie spell from my book that she placed on it to protect it from harm. Funny story: the spell is complete rubbish. I just put it in there to give Regina a false sense of security!"

Glaring, Emma snapped, "What is wrong with you? What kind of mother are you?"

"What kind of mother are you? Giving your baby his best chance was not your primary objective, it was alleviating yourself from a burden you didn't want to be strong enough to carry. And you never wanted your second child, you merely gave into the pressure of your insipid family and their brood-mare values."

"That. Wasn't. Me!"

"It was a fully-formed being spawned from the seed of darkness in your heart that never wanted to bring life into the world because of the horrible life that world gave you. I understand, dear. The darkness in you despised your son for compounding your pain with a dream broken by betrayal. And it despised your daughter for chaining you to an emotionally suffocating and sexually manipulative man - a man whose true nature the Dark One realized, but the shell left behind after that darkness was purged felt obliged to kneel before like a common whore, showing her eternal gratitude for his part in freeing her of that enlightenment by spreading her legs and birthing his spawn - as every good woman must to be happy. Or so we are told."

Cora clicked her tongue and shook her head. "Even the most selfish part of you failed to achieve true happiness and live up to your potential. Now that really is pathetic."

"Why are you here?" Emma finally demanded wearily. "If annoyance is part of judging my soul-"

"Young people today, always so impatient."

"I'm not that young," Emma argued, uncomfortably. "At least... not the 'most selfish' part of me..."

"The most selfish part of you has the wisdom of life experience. And knows how to use magic. Don't discredit your pride entirely. One should take pride in their achievements after all, when well earned."

"Yeah, well, apparently none of mine were."

"Then it's time to change that," Cora challenged. "It's time you accomplished something to be truly proud of rather than a laundry list of failures touted as successes by your fan-fuck-boy."

"A lot of good that'll do me when I'm dead," argued Emma.

"A wise man once said that death is but the next great adventure, dear."

Frowning, Emma mused, "I'm pretty sure that was Albus Dumblefore."

"Quite. And he is wise. And a selfish, manipulative old bastard who made his fame using a child to accomplish his goals. Unfortunately, he also prefers men..."

That said, Cora vanished in a swirl of purple smoke, leaving Emma alone on the dilapidated swan boat.

"Wait... Dumbledore is real... and gay?" Emma uttered, confused.

Before she had time to think further on the possibility of a Harry Potter universe, a rather loud sloshing sound drew her attention to the aft of the boat just off the port side.

Emma silently cursed Hook for informing her of nautical terminology just before the murky contents of the canal erupted in a geyser of fowl-smelling water...

AN: Who best to run the Tunnel of Love than the Queen of Hearts? I had to bring back my unapologeticly evil Cora after the retcon bullshit of Season 4. You know Regina had to be into Fifty Shades... but why Cora was sniffing her clothes, I'm not sure I want to know! As for how Cora knows about petrii dishes and anything else that didn't exist in the Enchanted Forest and she wouldn't have learned about while plotting her manipulation of Regina and Rumple-murdering - who gives a shit, it's not like the show would! And, yes, I brought back the syphilis and Monkey Herpes, this time with a side of HPV, because, why not? The more STDs the merrier, I always say of OUAT fanfiction!

Next up: Emma finds her way out of the Carnivhell sewer of lust, sadly without help from the Ninja Turtles.