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

Warning: Game of Thrones levels of viewer discretion advised. Extreme character torture ahead. Also, the usual absurd amount of profanity, because what is fanfiction but a void into which you can scream all of your "fuck you's" from the week?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EX-LOVERS' REVENGE

(a second interlude in getting a clue)

By the time Emma reached the smoldering gates of the Emerald City, her feet had blisters and her blisters and bunions. She hadn't come across any scarecrows, tin men, or lions, just a flock or crows that pooped on her head, a rusty barbed wire fence inexplicably strung across the road that snagged her 1940's farm girl dress, and a feral house cat that made that hedgehog look sweet.

In short, Emma was filthy, tattered, and picking globs of orange fur from the scratches on her arms and legs when she came upon the city's welcome sign. Well... less welcome and more warning. Someone had added "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".

No one guarded the massive green doors that were hanging off their hinges and it was with apathetic trepidation that Emma slipped through the gap into the city's enclosed interior.

Yes, apathetic and trepidation were mutually exclusive adjectives, but considering that Emma's entire life consisted of being forced into unknown situations that were likely to be disappointing at best and physically and emotionally traumatic at worst, she had become so familiar with the 'fight for flight' feeling that she quickly squashed it down, resigned to her fate of every good thing in her life eventually being snatched away, usually with the revelation that some or all of it was a massive lie perpetrated by those she had trusted and even sometimes loved.

This whole whatever it was thing since dying was just one continuous 'adventure' in getting fucked up the ass, so whatever lay ahead in the Emerald City couldn't possibly be much worse.

Well, maybe the smell could, Emma revised her assessment as she got her first whiff of death and broken dreams Oz style. It was a worse stench than that time she accidentally made a wrong turn and took Henry to New Jersey on his winter break when trying to go back to Boston to visit the friends he never really had and were just figments of his Regina-addled imagination.

And like that whole year living a lie, Emma was sure nothing good would come of this day-tripping.

She just hadn't expected something putrid to drip out of the sky onto her shoulder.

The 'something' she discovered upon looking skyward was the rotting remains of three women hung by the large-broached necklaces at their throats, the chains twisted tight and fastened to ropes that swung in the breeze from a large buttress. Their big glittery hairdos were still immaculate, their heaving bosoms a putrid shade of purple, and it was the gases produced by the decomposition of their corpses that was stinking up the courtyard.

Emma covered her nose against the stench as she hurried onwards only to let out shriek as a Flying Monkey appeared out of the shadows. It didn't grab her and leap into the sky, however. Instead it paused, looked a her with glassy eyes, and then limped on its way toward a broken and toppled statue of "Oz the Great" where it disappeared into the shadows, hidden but for making unsettling wheezing sounds.

"Where is everyone?" Emma muttered to herself, getting a Twilight Zone sort of feeling.

"Dead."

The voice came from behind and Emma spun around, getting really tired of doing that. Why did all of her crazy companions have to sneak up on her? It was so cliché!

"Dorothy?" she sputtered, surprised and relieved... but Dorothy didn't look remotely happy to see her nor willing to help.

"Nice threads," the farmer's niece scoffed while stowing in a rather large knife in the holster on her Tomb Raider outfit. "You shouldn't have come."

"Zelena sent me. She said-"

"Your family has a pathological problem with trusting psychopaths," snorted the other woman.

Grimacing, Emma conceded, "Yeah, I know.

With a glance back at the Flying Monkey, she asked Dorothy, "What happened here?"

"Besides here not being really here? Well, it's more-or-less a representation of the real Oz in its final days," the brunet answered, leaning against a cracked green pillar. "Everyone caught Flying Monkey Herpes. For some reason it was far more virulent here than in the Land Without Magic. Probably the magic. People went crazy and began killing each other after they found the Good Witches and demanded a magical cure, but Glinda and her cult were just a group of bimbos who found some magical jewels and liked to sit around giving themselves magical boob jobs, so they couldn't help."

"Because I screwed up the universe..."

Dorothy snorted. "No, they were always like that. If Wonderland was the realm of arrogant weirdoes, Oz was the realm of egocentric idiots. Anyway, between the madness and the plague itself, the city only lasted a few years."

"If it's just corpses and a few diseased Flying Monkeys, then why did Zelena send me here? And how am I supposed to get... ah..." Emma trailed off, not sure how to complete that sentence.

"Home?"

"I'm not sure what that is, being dead," sighed Emma. "I'd like to think it's Heaven, but the way things have gone so far, it doesn't seem like I'm heading there. I thought I understood how Purgatory works from the Underworld, but it turns out that was apparently God's fanfiction bullshit to fuck with 'not real' people who're just... puppets in some badly conceived morality play for actual humanity to ignore."

"Though ignoring it's maybe for the best, all things considered.," Dorothy scoffed, then shrugged and admitted, "It was hard to accept that I wasn't real. Not really real. My world seemed so normal."

"Apart from the lack of color thing, you mean," snorted Emma.

"I thought I was color blind and the magic here let me see... I think... maybe," sighed Dorothy. "My backstory wasn't well flushed out. Lots of metal gaps attributed to tornado concussion memory loss."

"Sometimes it feels like my life is like that too," Emma uttered glumly. "And I have no way to know if it was always that way - if Merlin did something, if Ingrid did something, if Regina's memory spell is making me remember things wrong or not at all, or if it's just that... retrograde rewriting of history thing because of the time spell. Dates are all messed up, you know? Why did I get sent from Boston to Minnesota? Did my first family move there when they almost adopted me or was it something else? Did I run away before I ran away from that group home but someone made me forget? Because sometimes I swear I lived in Worchester when I was sixteen, but it was nineteen ninety-six, which makes no sense, and I got arrested. But then I know I lived in Minnesota at the group home and I was just a kid still then and the first time I was arrested was when I was seventeen in Portland, but I don't know if it was two thousand or two thousand and one. And I can't have been seventeen even though I had a juvenile record, but that doesn't make sense. I mean, I had Henry, and I know I was pregnant with him and I remember giving birth to him, but chronologically, it's like I wasn't even pregnant as long as Zelena!"

"Well, you fucked up time, girl," said Dorothy, rolling her eyes. "Lot's of shit stopped making sense. How was I sixteen when I first got to Oz at the same time Zelena was plotting against her sister who was married to your grandfather and we all aged completely differently or not at all even without factoring in that dumbass Dark Curse? Twenty eight plus years, I should be like... fifty, but my ass was tighter than yours when last we had the displeasure of crossing paths thanks to your cunt of a step grandmother BFF."

Dorothy smirked at her own vulgarity, amending, "Girl, you have shit taste in friends and lovers, and your family deserved to be unwritten from the storybooks they defiled with their incestuous villain-loving. I thought I was a bit messed up after having to move in with my aunt and uncle, but honestly, I pity you that you had so little comprehension of what love is and your own self-worth that you repeatedly and desperately debased yourself to get the obsessive and abusive affection of sociopaths, assholes, and parents who told your baby daddy to fuck off so they could make a better you from scratch without having to deal with your screwed-up-ness that they failed to fix pre-natally because they want only perfect kids. If they weren't such selfish imbeciles who set this whole mess in motion and did absolutely nothing but enable you being a stupid bitch for the back half of your life after magically making you an emotionally dead inside bitch for the front half, I'd feel sorry for them having to put up with you."

"Gee, tell me what you really think," sighed Emma.

"Imagine if I actually knew you well," retorted Dorothy with a smirk.

Suddenly there was a loud whooshing sound a shadow blocked out the sun - what wasn't already blocked by smoke. A dragon swooped down, landing in the courtyard and with a burst of fiery breath charred the pathetic Flying Monkey to a crisp before transforming into a petite but voluptuous woman with dark hair and brown skin.

"Nice of you to join us, Lils," Dorothy scoffed before pulling the stranger into a smoldering kiss.

Emma startled, but spied the mark on the woman's arm. "Lily? But... you... I mean... you're...?"

"Not a big-ass straight white woman anymore?" snorted Lily. "That racist homophobic asshole Author fucked me over. He hated the Apprentice, thought he was pathetic and a sellout for doing Merlin's bidding and orchestrated things to ensure that your pirate murdered him. He made sure Gueneivre was trapped in a rape marriage with a psychotic white man as punishment for loving a black guy too. Also, the thing with Ursula being voice raped by your pirate and that genie, he wanted him to be freed by your grandfather and wrote his lamp to the shore just so he'd get enslaved even worse. Also, I'm pretty sure he had something to do with writing out Aurora's gay so Mulan would be forever alone and unhappy after being used and tossed out by that Anne Hache slut werewolf.

"Seriously, I don't know what that geezer was thinking going to 1960's America to look for a new Author," Lily concluded, "And then trapping him in a book? Like that was going to stop his master plan!"

"Wait... how exactly did Isaac orchestrate all of that from inside a book?" Emma asked, confused.

"In the wise words of Merlin, the hottest black man to ever grace our fictional-verse before being tragically-and-hate-crime-ily cut down by the most over-rated and secretly-prematurely-balding-but-for-special-werewolf-cum-potion-he-got-from-Rumplestiltskin white man rapist to ever grace our fictional-verse: It doesn't matter, bitch. Just like how Arthur Pendragon was maybe supposed to be my father, but then I got whitewashed and since my mama's white, that wouldn't fit with the whole slavery and subjugation theme Isaac was going for, so that just became a plothole and I've got no daddy and spent the rest of my life carrying around your dark bullshit while you got to shit all over my light, because you and your parents were too busy caring about your dead pirate to resolve the whole fucked up magic issue!

"Aaaaaaanyway," Lily amended, "being dead has its benefits. I may be trapped in limbo forever because I'm a fictional character incapable of salvation thanks to you fucking up your divine mission - but I can turn into a sweet-ass dragon and twerk my sweet Latina ass!"

She smacked her ass proudly, then amended, "But I am still fucking pissed off at you for the magic thing, not to mention shooting me with a canon and laughing about it and high-fiving your fuckboy and your dumbass kid like I never meant anything to you, which I forgot to mention when I was alive in Hell with you, because thanks so much for dragging me there, you dumb slut! I can't believe I actually liked you and you Piper'd me!"

"Oh, please, you Vause'd me first, lying about being an orphan with no family!" Emma argued.

"Because I was afraid of getting caught and had a magical dark shit complex. You were just a controlling, manipulative bitch when you fucked me over, Emma!"

"I'm sorry," she pitifully replied.

"Yeah, well, I don't forgive you. But I do pity you. How does that feel to be the one I pity? You're the fuck-up who can't do anything right now," Lily declaired with a smirk. "How's that for a plot twist?"

"We should go, Lils," interjected Dorothy. "It's almost nightfall."

Lily stepped back and transformed into a dragon then. Emma watched the Kansas farm-girl-slash-demon-hunter climb onto Lily's back and with a shout of, "Peace out, Bitch!" and a middle finger salute as they took off into the darkening puke green sky.

Which was annoying and insulting enough, without the loud and noxious dragon fart that her former best friend lit on fire, turning the dead witches to ash and nearly taking off Emma's hair with it.

She really should have picked better friends, Emma decided, while picking bits of Glinda out of her hair. Even the 'good guys' were actually assholes. But then maybe that was just how the stories and people that made up her reality were supposed to be: no heroes or villains, just a lot of assholes.

Pondering that, Emma made her way toward the large emerald palace with its broken windows and dead monkey corpses rotting on the spires. Surely, there had to be some portal that would get her out of here, since clicking her heals had only served to make her bunions bleed: as if Zelena would have given her real magical slippers!

The palace was large and cavernous but also opulent and it didn't seem that the Emerald City Dwellers had looted the upper levels where there were endless guest quarters and what Emma assumed had once been quarters for a royal family.

She was just about to flop face down on one of the beds when she heard laughter coming from a room down the hall. It was definitely masculine laughter, and more than one person. Zelena had mentioned Walsh, but she'd started to think the witch was just having her on.

She wasn't.

When Emma reached the threshold, she found Walsh sitting at a table... with Graham and Jefferson! They were playing poker while guzzling some green beverages and eating from a pile of buffalo wings.

Her stomach rumbled and they all turned away from their game.

"Emma!" Walsh crowed, "you're late."

"For a very important date!" quipped Jefferson.

"She never dated you," sighed Graham. "You drugged her and tried to shoot her."

"I know, and that's obviously her thing! But I had a kid, of course, and she doesn't like kids."

"What!? I like kids! I have kids!"

"A son you neglected horribly and a daughter who grew up evil due to incest and being parented by a soulless loser and a heartless psychopath," pointed out Graham.

"FYI: You're the soulless loser," quipped Walsh.

"Yeah, I gathered that," Emma grumbled.

"You know," continued Graham, "I helped you put down roots in Storybrooke so Henry could have an actual parent who cared about him, who put his needs first, because I never had that. I died for that. But you left me dead. Went after your dick pirate."

"I... I thought you were in Heaven."

"And, what, you worried you'd rip me out of eternal peace and happiness and I'd turn into an abusive, self-destructive rapist?"

"Yeah, Emma," sniggered Walsh, "This was real life, not Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And you already had your quota of those, anyway. There was no need for you and Captain Hot Guy McDouchebag putting on that bad cosplay remake. Jesus, that was hard to watch."

He nodded to Graham and Jefferson. "At least I had my sidekick bros to help make sarcastic comments."

"Hold up," Jefferson seethed, "you think you're the leader of this group?"

"Duh. I am the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz. Who actually got that woman over there to bang me. You're just some bipolar nut who lost his magic hat and fixated on her magical ability to get your daughter back so you could be a seriously unstable parent that drove Gracie to pole dancing."

"Yes, well... at least she didn't marry Henry!"

Gesturing to Graham, Walsh amended, "And he's a heartless people-hating assassin who fixated on Emma because her mother was the only target he let go and he had some delusion that she could cure his sociopathy, because we all know that even if you don't have your heart, you still feel shit."

"Hey! At least I didn't rape anyone! I got raped!" Graham argued. "Which no one remembered or cared about!"

He pointed to Emma. "You best-friended my rapist murderer and sacrificed whatever was left of your soulless conscience to give her a happy ending with the guy whose wife she killed! You are even more messed up than I am! I wholly regret that I 'fixated' on you in any positive way! I should have done Regina's bidding and killed your disloyal, rape-apologist skank ass!"

"Well, we can't kill her now," sighed Jefferson, "she's dead."

"Yeah, but we can make her suffer!" reminded Walsh.

"I still have my darts!" recalled Graham. "This time I won't miss!"

Obviously, this is what Zelena wanted, Emma realized, and she took off at a run, as fast as her ruined feet could take her - which wasn't fast enough, because Walsh suddenly appeared in a poof of green smoke, swirling Glinda's wand.

And Jefferson and Graham appeared with the other dead witch's wands, surrounding her.

"You don't have magic here," Walsh reminded. "But we do. Now... remember that thing you wouldn't do, no matter how many times I brought it up in bed?"

Emma's eyes widened. "Oh, hell no! Get away from me, you sick fuck!?"

"You're going to tell me you never let your pirate stick his sword in the wrong hole?" scoffed Graham. "We've been watching you, remember? We watched all of those rape fantasies he played out with you."

"We read the stories he published on fetish websites about it too," said Jefferson. "Not that we liked them, of course, but being dead is boring."

"Just like being married to you was boring," amended Walsh. "All that stuff he wrote, those fantasies he couldn't carry out because of the heart-sharing thing that made you wet for his every need without the fear and the domination."

"Poor fucker," Jefferson dismayed. "You ruined him for his favorite pastime by shackling him to you."

"I saved his life!"

"A life not worth saving. Just like yours now," said Graham. "You had the potential to be a good person once, but you threw that away even before you ripped out your soul and handed over half your heart to a man who'd have surely murdered me himself if I'd survived, just to eliminate the competition. After all, he failed to inform you of what had happened to your baby daddy, didn't he? 'Oh, Neal will show up like he always does'. If he'd told you what had really happened, maybe you could have been prepared and found a loophole - like sharing your heart. But you only care about the hearts of murderous assholes, apparently, not the people who actually sacrificed themselves to help you succeed in the mission you tore up, shite on, and set on fire because it conflicted with your sudden infatuation over being in an emotionally abusive relationship that made my fling with Regina seem positively healthy."

"You're a stupid whore," piped up Walsh, "who deserves to suffer. I could have been free if Zelena wasn't obsessed with you. If you had even given a damn about me after finding out she'd turned everyone into her pets, I'd have had a chance. You didn't even come to my funeral, bitch, and you claimed you cared about me and used my death in some self pity-party make-out session? Fuck you, Emma Swan. Also, you gave me HPV and syphilis!"

"You gave me Monkey Herpes!"

"And you didn't have the good grace to die from it or any other of those diseases you acquired being a skank because of your fucking special magical immunity to death!"

"Hey," mused Jefferson, "at least it was fun watching Killy Poo come to the realization that he was not long for the world as his half a heart quickly went the way of its better - though not by much - half."

"Yes, tragic," sniggered Walsh. "Poor bastard had to watch you sacrifice your life and his for some little brat that he knew but decided never to tell your or Henry wasn't your biological kin, what with his getting drunk and sleeping with Henry's wife and knocking her up."

Emma's jaw fell open. "Wait... Henry's... my... she was...?"

"Come on, you're surprised? Fucking the wives of the 'Stilstkin men was his thing," Jefferson reminded. "I mean, the dude practically said he wanted to fuck Henry's girlfriend when she was thirteen."

"You sooooooooooo fucked up with your choices," Graham sniggered. "It's one incestuous ouroboros that began and ended with your lover's dick.

"Also," added Walsh, "he gave Henry's wife syphilis and HPV which she gave your son, which is probably why he grew up to be such a dumb shit who never suspected the cuckold."

"Man, true love is a bitch in our world, eh?" mused Jefferson. "The real love always dies and gets replaced with diseased creeps. I don't know if God was playing a sick joke on all of us, if that was actually supposed to teach Her real babies a lesson, or if she just didn't give a flying fuck about our happiness."

"Combination of all three?" proposed Graham. "All I know is that I got a raw deal so Emma here could get shagged by a much bigger asshole than me with a much smaller cock."

"True," agreed Walsh, "and you are an asshole. Probably, you shouldn't have forcibly kissed her. Made her think that was how all British guys with abandonment issues showed genuine and healthy affection and that it was always her fault."

"Yeah, well, it was," Graham argued. "And if Regina's curse hadn't given me a much nicer personality, I'd have showed Little Miss Bra Tease exactly how much of a man I am."

Emma gaped. "Youwould have raped me?"

Graham scoffed. "You thought I was a good guy? Well, you obviously didn't read anything but your parents retconned story in that stupid book. Regina got tired of shagging a bad boy and wanted me to be her whipped puppy. Like Monkey Boy said, I saved your mom because she was hot. I kissed you because of some magical bullshit connection to my past. You really do have her chin. She's got better tits and ass, though. And I'd have tapped that if I'd had all of my faculties about me as soon as I got my memories back - had I not dropped dead instead. I'd have had you bent forward over that desk before you could say 'happily ever after'. And you would have felt dirty and defiled but wanted and decided that you were in love with me because you are so pathetic. And we'd have lived happily ever after, as far as your fucked up definition of that goes.

"Unfortunately, I died."

"As did I," lamented Walsh, "before I could get you tied up and gagged. I had a variety of toys."

"I love toys!" giggled Jefferson. "Can we play now? All of this talk is boring, bros! Let's have a tea party with Emma Swan as our guest of honor!"

"You're one crazy motherfucker, Jefferson," said Walsh, "but why not?"

A cloud of magic smoke enveloped them all and when it faded away, Emma found herself once more naked and tied up, her ankles shackled to metal loops in the floor and her arms strung up by chains, pulled so tight she could feel her calves and biceps immediately start to cramp.

"Oh, this brings back memories," Graham mused while holding a cup of tea. "Of course, I was the one tied up in Regina's sex dungeon against my will. I never gave her the satisfaction of screaming... though keeping her screaming probably kept me alive. She was prone to throwing out people like a child does used toys. Kind of like you."

"I'm sorry," Emma croaked. "Just because I didn't visit your grave doesn't mean I didn't still care!"

"Liar liar pants on fire," scoffed Jefferson after munching on a cucumber sandwich. "Well, if you had pants."

"Personally," interjected Walsh, "I'm not into the Brazilian thing. I like at least a welcome mat so I know I'm not going down on a thirteen year old girl. Guess the pirate wanted the only curly hair in their relationship to be on his chest."

"Oh, he complained about choking on pubes if he even had to make the effort," said Graham, "and little Miss Battered Wife Syndrome couldn't get to the salon fast enough. This is a woman who called thongs 'butt floss' and considered high heals part of a misogynist conspiracy against women - until she got herself happily brainwashed into dressing like a slutty June Cleaver who waxed her beaver. I knew Emma had some issues when she came to town, but I didn't think she'd go so quickly from a bad-ass bountyhunter hauling in narcissistic deadbeats to letting one pound her in the ass over my desk."

"IT WAS ONE TIME!" Emma exclaimed. "He... he was drunk and he... slipped..."

"Please," scoffed Jefferson. "That man was a three hundred year old functional alcoholic date rapist who could find a vagina in his sleep. He just wanted to see if he could get away with it. And he did. And instead of kicking him in the dick, you let him convince you that it was your fault and you walked your aching anus all the way over to Granny's to buy him grilled cheese and onion rings, your favorite food that he co-opted, like he adopted everything of yours so you had no individuality left as a means of controlling you - and not only did you fall for that con, you willfully let yourself become like him to cater to his narcissism. He couldn't possibly love anyone as much as himself unless you were basically his doppelgänger with tints and a cunt."

"You should listen to him," said Walsh with a nod. "Being insane gives him a certain insight into the mind of other lunatics. You got played, sweetie. I guess it's your thing, going all the way back to your first."

"Neal loved me," Emma defended. "It wasn't his fault."

"I'm talking about your brief stint as a Lesbian. And he totally did play you whether he loved you or not. You're the poster child fool for 'fools fall in love'. You fall for people who can't love you or won't love you, but you're so sure that they can and they do that you sacrifice everything about yourself to be what they want, lest they realize you're just a sad, pathetic little girl with nothing to offer and leave you."

"You don't even know who you are anymore, do you?" asked Graham. "You just emulate the people you think love you so they don't leave you. And then you gave up your soul and what little individuality, what uniqueness you still had left, was locked away out of reach, making you nothing but a series of fuck-based personalities."

"Sadly," interjected Jefferson, "none of them were particularly interesting. Especially that 'Dark Swan'. I mean, Merlin's balls, woman, you couldn't even Dark One right. You were just a pale, deadpan faced, bright red lipped, white hair flocked disappointment whose biggest baddest act was to screw over your own kid because you were afraid to move in with your asshole boyfriend."

"True that," Walsh nodded. "Your dark magical powers consisted of moping and making empty threats in your best 'I am Batman' voice. You were trying so hard to sound like a supervillain, but you failed so horribly at every aspect of it other than just, you know, being a regular old asshole to your family. Between your Wickerman sacrifice impersonation in Camelot, the submissive 50's date night look you coveted with such nostalgia, and being the bitch of an even lamer Dark One than you, you set feminism back to the fifties - and kept it from ever manifesting at all in the magical worlds."

Graham smirkingly amended, "You're a white racist misogynist asshole's perfect match, Emma. I mean, your pirate murdered Merlin in cold blood and not only did you recant your threat that killing the guy would be the end of your relationship forever, you literally turned the dead guy to dust to blow away the evidence. That's fucked up, Emma. I never took you for a racist - but then I never thought you'd murder anyone or cover up the murder of a good man by a sociopath just so you wouldn't have to risk being alone. That's messed up."

"Really messed up," agreed Jefferson. "And I'm insane."

"You're the reason that all of our lives sucked," Walsh spoke up. "You were supposed to save us, Emma. Instead you saved all the wrong people and didn't even help them become better. You're a loser and an asshole and a whore who deserves to be punished!"

Emma struggled and began to panic as her former almost fiancé grabbed a cat-o'-nine-tails from the wall. "W-what are you going to do to me?"

"The kind of things that rapist fangirls should find a real turn-on," quipped Jefferson and he feigned a British accent, "Oooo, Emma, luv, you made me try to kill you and your family and call you a pathetic cunt who'll never be loved by anyone with your fear of commitment!'"

He switched to an American falsetto. "Oooo, Killian, being at fault for all your murdering and assholery makes me so wet! I forgive you. Take my heart along with my dignity! I love your cock more than my parents and son and the safety of this whole town! Kiss me so hard I feel your tongue in my pussy!"

Graham and Walsh sniggered while Emma began to plead, "Please, let me go. I'm sorry!"

"I was her first victim. I deserve to go first!" Graham exclaimed, ignoring her.

"Can't argue with that. Just leave her conscious enough for us!"

Emma turned desperate, "I get it. You're lives sucked because of me. I know I hurt you," she directed at Graham, "and I didn't honor your sacrifice in any wa-"

The whip cracked against her flesh and Emma was so shocked that he'd done it and from the excruciating sting that she wasn't able to hold in her scream.

"That's for not believing me," hissed Graham, "when I told you I had no heart."

His arm flew back and again crack bit into Emma's back again.

"For my death. You didn't even try CPR. What did you think shaking me was going to do? Did I look like a fucking Magic 8 Ball?"

Again.

Emma screamed.

"For defiling my memory by wearing my bootlace, by keeping my jacket and boots in the office where you fucked your own great grandfather."

Three lashes.

"For never visiting my grave."

Again.

"For utterly destroying the office of Sheriff and everything that justice stands for!"

The last lash was the hardest and Emma wept as she felt the blood seeping from the wounds on her back. This couldn't be happening, her mind buzzed. Did she deserve this kind of punishment? Raped by her former husband. Tortured by her former sort-of lovers... and... whatever Jefferson was.

Yes, you do, a voice in her head answered, one that sounded distinctly like Killian Jones and concluded with a smirking "luv".

Did she really, or was it just her messed-up-ness once again saying everything was her fault and she deserved to take the brunt of the blame?

These are the questions that swirled in her mind after they'd left her there.

Emma didn't know how long she was left alone, two days, maybe three. It was dark and she ached so much that she couldn't sleep, including the ache of hunger that they taunted when they finally did return.

"I'll give you something to swallow, sweetie," Walsh sniggered.

At this point, Emma was so weak and hungry that it was tempting. To be able to get her arms free, let her knees give out - and disgusting as it was, semen did have a lot of protein...

But she shook off that weakness and defiantly spit what little saliva she had at the Wizard of Oz.

Walsh gave her a smirk - and then punched her in the mouth. Emma felt several teeth dislodge and she sputtered.

Giggling, Jefferson held her mouth shut and sing-songed, "Swallow your medicine, Emma, like a good girl. You can even have some water!"

To her humiliation, she gave in to the promise of water and swallowed her own broken teeth, hardly noticing the metallic tang of blood that slithered down her throat with the tepid liquid.

"Good girl," said Graham. "Maybe you can learn to take orders after all."

"Please," Emma pleaded, "let me go."

The three men just turned and walked away, leaving her starving and bleeding and ultimately finding the only warmth she could in the puddle of her own urine that seeped between her toes.

The next time her captures appeared, they debated removing a finger with Jefferson's cigar cutter.

"Too clean," argued Graham. "Regina would never just cut off a finger."

"Personally, I think Zelena's method is called for," said Walsh, pulling out a knife. "You have to get them to beg you to do it, see. That's how you show you're in charge. It's not the taking of body parts, it's how you do it. Bitch'll never learn if we just lop bits and pieces off."

"What?" Emma uttered, hazy, barely coherent. "What are you-"

And then the knife was slicing at her skin and she cried out.

"It's what you deserve," Graham told her, "for putting a murdering rapists' ring on it. You should feel the pain of all the woman your lover soiled while that ring you coveted hung around his neck."

Oh, she did.

In the ensuing days, Emma was whipped, racked, cut, and violated with various medieval "sex toys" that had belonged to either Regina or Zelena, but none of it compared to the pain of her finger, the flesh left to dry and crack and fester.

"Please, just cut it off!" Emma finally begged.

Walsh obliged, bringing her to blissful unconsciousness.

AN: Yeah, so poor Emma got a watered-down Theon treatment. Ramsay would have raped her and sent her clit to her family in a box, but that would have been going rather too far in an already over-the-top scene of gruesomeness. I don't think Walsh, Graham, and Jefferson are Ramsay-level assholes, though I don't think any of them are particularly good people. Graham has been martyred to the point of sainthood by most of the fandom (save maybe CSers who think every man save for Killy Poo who's had an interest in Emma is a pedophile rapist), but juxtapose his interest in Emma with Hook's, and he's just a more G-rated version who also stalked and forced himself on her until Emma gave in, blamed herself for his bad behavior, and concluded upon his death that she loved him enough to wear a momento of his doucheyness. Jefferson just seems like a mentally deranged character prone to obsession and physically violent outbursts, but probably not with true malice aforethought; he seems more bipolar or schizophrenic than Joker-like. Walsh is a wild card. We never got to see what kind of a person he really was, other than a huckster who swindled the people of Oz until Zelena found out and transformed him. But considering he could have found some way to escape while in New York but went along with Zelena's plan to manipulate and basically rape Emma for eight months, he's probably either a sociopath himself or was sufficiently brainwashed by Zelena into being her Reek that even given the freedom to escape, he'd still do her bidding and bring an innocent stranger to the slaughter. Anyway, I expect this chapter will unnerve readers and I'll get complaints for going too dark with Emma's punishment. Sorry about that. My muse went there and I couldn't dissuade her. But that's probably the end of the physical torture and we'll back to the emotional evisceration next chapter!

Next Up: Escape from Oz!