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

Warning: Rape herein.

CHAPTER NINE

ON YOUR BACK

(an interlude in getting a clue)

Emma came to laying on her back amidst the royal garden's roses bushes with a stranger looming above her.

"I've had many a kitchen maid who's nicked a bit of the royal wine," the man said, unbuckling his breeches. "And I bet you taste just as sweet."

"Not really," hissed Emma, kneeing him in the nuts.

As the gardener gasped, she squirmed to flee, struggling to her feet and cursing her clothes which had now become one of the white medieval Madonna-esque monstrosities fashionable in Camelot. The corset was murder and she tripped and stumbled while the cape caught on the thorny bushes, impeding her progress and allowing her capture.

But when she was spun to face the man she had realized was Zelena's father, instead it was Hook who had her literally hooked by the fabric of her cloak.

And this was not Killian with "romantic" desire in his eyes, but a dangerous pirate with the lusty madness of the man from that seaside tavern in his leer. Of course, to be fair, he was always that man she now realized, and the violence had simply been curbed by her capitulation to his advances. After all, the moment her Dark-One-possessed self had turned the tables as the sexually aggressive and personal-space-invading-without-consent party, he'd wanted nothing to do with her; he'd said he didn't love the Dark One... yet six weeks earlier he'd been more than happy to fuck the Dark One's brains out when she was emotionally traumatized and insecure and he nagged and dragged her off to some meadow to not deal with her very real problems by indulging in sex.

Well, not her... but kind of her.

Emma's head hurt, still trying to reconcile the parts of her like the mental clusterfuck that followed the breaking of Regina's fake-life-memories spell.

And Hook's head was going to hurt if he didn't let her go.

She didn't know if his presence meant that universe had ended and her sometime lover was dead or if he was an apparition. It didn't matter.

She slammed the heal of her pointy boot into his kneecap.

The pirate hissed and Emma found herself tripped again, this time landing not in a pile of garbage but a field of tea roses that couldn't logically grow that way, something her distracted self didn't seem to have considered at the time she was banging a dirty pirate atop them.

Emma grabbed one of the thorny stems and tried to swipe at her captor as he pounced atop her. Hook pinned her wrist into the dirt with his hook and smirked.

"Uh-uh-uh, luv. None of that."

"Get off," Emma demanded, struggling.

"You like it rough, do you, luv?"

"No, I want you to get the hell off of me!"

"You know what they say about a woman who says 'no'. She just needs a little more persuading. And I'm very persuasive!"

"Only perverts and rapists say that!" hissed Emma.

"Now, now, you bought me drinks, you kissed me, and now you think you can just leave? You don't know pirates very well."

Oh, but she did. And he had a sword at his hip, one that Emma expertly drew. She never got it to his throat, though. His hook caught the blade before she could make any real attack, and suddenly his fist had made contact with her face causing her head to slam back to the ground, eyes seeing stars.

"You're quite feisty, luv," he chuffed, "but there are other pursuits I prefer with a woman on her back. And when I jab you with my sword you'll feel it."

"And you'll feel my boot up your ass!" Emma growled.

"Not really in a position to make threats."

And she wasn't. The tea rose stems had begun coiling into vines around her wrists and ankles.

Hook grinned and began unbuckling his belt. "Now, if you pay your debt by fulfilling your promise, I'll let you walk free... assuming you can walk of course."

Emma spat blood in his face as she continued to struggle futilely. "Go to hell, you asshole!"

"I'm already there, luv," he chuckled darkly. "What about you?"

And then Emma's horribly scratchy fairy tale undergarments were removed with a few quick slashes of a grappling hook and instead of feeling relieved and wet and lusty as hell to consummate years... months... a couple of weeks? of sexual tension with her obsessive stalker former date rapist boyfriend, Emma felt her panic rising in equal measure to... well... okay maybe more than equal measure to Hook's manhood since he was not as well-endowed as he liked to think. But she was still freaking the fuck out.

This is not real, Emma attempted to tell herself and maybe that was what all of Hook's victims had told themselves in their boozy hazes as he had his way with them.

Emma felt his chains heavy and cold upon her bosom, his fowl rum breath infiltrating her nostrils as the pain came, causing her breath to hitch.

She refused to scream, tasting more blood where she bit down on her tongue.

The "Dark Swan" had loved it rough and whatever she was afterward (and before), soulless and driven by lust, had eagerly made consummation into some kind of battle, more love-fucking than lovemaking, a competition for dominance that left bruises and hook-related scratches - easily healed by magic.

There was no magic here that Emma had any access to.

She thought again of the nameless women in the mirrors and of her great grandmother. She thought about the twisted, thorny bramble, the poisonous vine that was her family tree, part of it written to be so disgusting and the other part a vicious cycle of depravity out of which each generation tried by failed to escape.

Emma was supposed to be the one to the pick the lock on their imprisonment, to set those tumblers in motion and break these cliché and horrible characters free from the tropes they were trapped in and allow them to enter the real world and become real people with real free will and real accountability.

When the pain faded to a numb sensation, when the fetid weight upon her let up and Emma opened her eyes, she found she was no longer in that field in Camelot but in the captain's quarters of the Jolly Roger, naked in the tangled sheets that were scattered with pink petals... remnants of a wedding night she'd only been part of in some carbon copy physical form, though she now carried the memories of it... of that "passionate" night with... her great grandfather.

Emma vomited up her carnival eats on the floor, and of course in this place the meal worms now wriggled in the vomit, turning her stomach even more.

"Too much rum last night?" a snarky voice inquired.

AN: Yeah, so... that was kind of messed up. But since rape is all the rage on OUAT, it just seemed wrong not to feature it... and then promptly gloss over it and move on to other trivial bullshit.

Next up: Other trivial bullshit... and Hangovertinis.