Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
A Special Note to OAFK:
First, thank you for not using "Guest" to throw shade at me and my story. I appreciate that courtesy, even if your review shows a complete failure to understand the nuanced point of this story, and in particular Chapter 13. That's okay, the OUAT fandom is now full of uneducated trolls with the mental acuity of thirteen year old fangirls who watch shit TV and if their entertainment medium has any deeper message than two hot actors trying to 69 each other the hard way by shoving their tongues as far down each other's throats as humanly possible and as frequently as possible, then their minds blank like Homer Simpson thought-bubbling a monkey clanging a toy symbol... meaning they fail to take note of all the toxic and abusive shit going down in between the dry-humping. If you are still trying to strain your brain to read this story, then I will explain for your slow-witted-nes that Chapter 13 was meant to shine a spotlight on the sad fact that Once Upon A Time is the PG-rated Game of Thrones for abusing the shit out of women for the pleasure of male characters whose manpain is the focus of the story arcs rather than the poor lady getting raped or burned at the stake. Also, the rape fetish stuff was inspired by a recent episode of The Good Wife, a show I am going to guess you have never watched because it is about actual strong female characters who don't take shit from men and regularly shines the light on social issues that OUAT would rather sweep under their rug of misogyny and "underprivileged" pretty, thin, white, full-hair-headed straight people who suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Sociopathy, and/or Stockholm and Battered Wife Syndrome.
Anyway, in closing, rest assured that my female self will not rape and murder any women, just as I'm sure Adam & Eddy will refrain from mass murdering poor people, shooting their enemies' girlfriends, baby theft, gaslighting their children, and stalking with the purpose of drunk date raping female family members by marriage.
It's fiction you asshat!
(Actually, I'm not sure about gaslighting their kids thing, because, really, isn't that what OUAT is all about? Brainwashing kids into buying Disney DVDs and for some fucked-up reason finding true love with hot bad boy abusive assholes and cheaters?)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
VAINGLORIOUS
The tick-tock of a clock brought Emma slowly back to consciousness. As light and fuzzy shapes began to form in her blurred, abused vision, she took stock of the aches and pains that lingered in her body, a worse state she couldn't recall since giving birth to her son.
It had to be intentional irony then, that when her vision finally cleared and the fog in her head faded enough to think coherently, Emma found herself in a familiar hospital bed with wood paneling and ugly pastel walls and a window with venetian blinds that looked out onto a nurses station with a withering potted ficus that she had spent hours staring at long ago - because that stupid tree was the only real tree she'd seen in nine months considering she was locked up in a desert where the prison yard was just sand with a view of more sand and cactus beyond the fence.
"You made the wrong choice."
The voice startled her gaze from the window.
A chair that wasn't supposed to be was positioned at her beside, and in it sat her son. Not her newborn son, nor a grown up Henry, but the ten year old little boy who'd shown up on her doorstep, right down to his coat and school uniform scarf.
"What?" Emma rasped out.
"You made the wrong choice," Henry repeated with solemnity uncharacteristic even for her son at ten. "Giving me up. And I was wrong when I said you were giving me my best chance, just like your parents were doing for you. Neither one is true."
Emma swallowed thickly and tried to sit up straighter. "W-what do you mean?"
With a shake of his head, Henry leaned forward in the chair and she the Once Upon a Time book was in his lap, but it was now battered, the leather cover scuffed and torn, the glided lettering chipped and pealing, and the pages within crumpled as though with water damage that had swollen and rippled the parchment.
"Snow White and Prince Charming were not iconic heroes, they were just as fucked up as everyone else," Henry answered simply, the vulgarity sounding so wrong from his young mouth. "Only difference is, they thought they were special and perfect. At least you knew you were fucked up. For awhile. But they brainwashed you into thinking you weren't just like they brainwashed me into thinking everyone deserves happy endings. That everyone is fixable. They aren't. You're not. Ignoring all of the bad things, all of the wrong choices, and if you 'give in to love' thinking everything would be great is a lie. Our ending wasn't happy. And you weren't great."
Emma's shoulders sagged and she nodded meekly. "I know. I was far from great, Kid, and I brought about a really shitty ending. I'm so sorry."
"Sorry doesn't change what happened," Henry accused bitterly. "You should have given in to love here not twelve years later by dragging me to Hell to play a bit part in your epic crapfest of a love affair!" he snapped.
"I know," Emma repeated, eyes brimming with tears.
"You should have kept me," continued Henry. "Maybe then you'd have gotten a clue what love actually is instead of getting just the warped, twisted memories of a sociopath who couldn't love me right, who tried to kill you, that I loved because I was a screwed up emotionally abused kid like every other screwed up emotionally abused kid - and you were supposed to save me from that. You were even supposed to save my other mom from herself, get her to take responsibility for destroying our family. But you didn't. You let her and everyone continue to use me, to screw me up more while they screwed you up even more and then you used me too. I was a child and you were a grown-ass adult that I trusted, that I found to save me and everyone from all of the bullshit. Instead you just turned a pile of it into a mountain."
"I didn't mean to, Henry. I-"
"You fucked up is what you did!" he shouted, standing. "I followed your example, never holding anyone who hurt me accountable until I thought that was how love works - that no matter how often and how horribly people hurt you, you keep on loving them, you stay with them, you forgive them, you try to make them happy at the expense of your own happiness because you'll be rewarded! But that's not love! That's not remotely how love works! And there is no reward. And I went my whole fucking life never understanding that because of you!"
Emma swallowed thickly while fighting back tears. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Henry. I know that I failed you. I wasn't a good mom. I was an awful savior. I messed up everything over and over until it all just blew up. But I really did want to be a hero when I started Operation Cobra. I really did want to be the mom you deserved, Kid. I just... I got lost along the way, and the harder I tried to get back, the more lost I got instead -"
"And asked all the wrong people for directions," said Henry coolly.
"I... guess I did," Emma conceded and her son shook his head and looked at her with such utter disappointment. It was the look she'd been so terrified of that day of the debate against Sydney Glass, the one she'd briefly glimpsed when Henry found out she'd used Violet to free Merlin and then as part of her plot to keep Hook from finding out he was the Dark One. Then, her shame was tempered by the Darkness. Now it had nothing to smother it and she wished she could go back to that dungeon in Oz, because the physical torment hurt less than the shame that burned in her heart at son's disappointment and disgust.
"You were supposed to be my hero," Henry continued, driving the knife of nostalgia in. "You were supposed to be my mom who looked out for me, who protected me. Instead I always had save everyone. I always had to be the voice of reason, and if that didn't work, the shoulder to cry on or the wingman - anything but the pissed off kid I was entitled to be, a kid who'd been kidnapped and abused by his grandfather and didn't even get to say good-bye to his dad before he died. Who shouldn't have had to be okay with one of his mothers jumping into bed with his asshole step grandfather and his other being willing to write him out of her story entirely to have a do-over with the adulterous dolt who so didn't care she'd killed his wife that he banged her right next to what they both thought was her frozen comatose self."
Henry waved the battered book as the volume of his voice increased, "Do you have any idea how much that messed me up!? I never got to be a kid, Emma! For fuck's sake, I barely even went to school! If I'd had to make a living in the Land Without Magic, outside of Storybrooke, I'd have been a thief or a bum for all of the education I actually got while my selfish prick family either dragged me along on stupid romance field trips or didn't have the sense to tell me 'no' when I was being an arrogant thirteen-year-old kid! I didn't even graduate junior fucking high! That's worse than you and Dad!
"What happened to parents wanting better for their kids, huh? Castles and chivalry and being an uneducated idiot knight who saves dumb damsels from dragons is not better!" he shouted, slamming the book down an instrument tray and scattering the contents with a loud clatter.
"I thought you always wanted to go back to the Enchanted Forest," Emma squeaked out.
"I was a dumb kid, Emma," Henry snapped at her, the use of her name instead of 'mom' stinging immensely. "It was your job to give me my best chance. I had potential, I had talents that were useless in that world so how could I truly ever be happy?"
"Why didn't you tell me?" Emma asked, shocked, confused, and dismayed that her son had been unhappy. She'd never suspected such a thing!
"Because it was never an option," Henry accused. "I was so fucking indoctrinated into the family bullshit about 'happily ever after' that I didn't even question it until it was too late. I didn't care that Regina made everything about her and used me like a pawn to rewrite her story. I didn't let myself feel slighted that everything was always about your happy ending after you became the Dark One. That you stopped paying attention to anyone else and their problems, including me. I had to be the good little prince, the self-sacrificing hero like the ones I idolized, the ones who never actually existed, because everyone I thought was a great hero when I was ten turned out to be legendary assholes instead."
"I-"
"Don't say you're sorry," Henry growled, pointing angrily. "I don't fucking care if you're sorry. I care that you know what you did, that you know you destroyed my happy ending, Emma. From the moment you got your real memories back, you stopped caring about my happiness. You made everything about what you wanted, whether it was to stay in New York and avoid the complicated mess of your family or to stay and complicate it even more to get your rocks off, to compensate for your fear of ending up alone and unloved by loving a psychopath stalker who was too obsessed with you to ever leave you short of death - death you had to reverse to keep your safety net.
"You weren't giving in to love," scoffed Henry. "You were giving in to fear, same as always. That's all you are. Pan was right about that. You're a scared little orphan girl - who brought me into this world by being careless and selfish. And you took me out of it doing the same."
"Henry," Emma cried, "please, let me explain. I didn't have my soul-"
"I know," he cut her off. "You created a monster. You replaced yourself with it. A monster who wasn't otherwise all that different from the whole you, just more selfish and impulsive, all the bad things that you were exaggerated a bit more. You were different, but not that much. Not that much more than anyone else in this family who finally stopped pretending they were good and stunk up Storybrooke airing out their dirty laundry.
"Even I became a jerk - and a chump," said Henry, raking a hand through his hair in a gesture that was both too adult for his 'age' and so like his father.
"I extorted my own grandfather, played on his grief at losing my dad to spy on him, to snoop around his shop for anything Regina could use to selfishly erase my life and write her new life with Robin," he scoffed. "How fucked up is that, huh? And did you even notice? You were too busy going on creepy dates, abusing prisoners, and forcing me to spend time with a man I hated, who told me lies about my father to paint himself as the hero in their story, who blamed Baelfire for getting taken by Pan, for not being grateful for his generosity at taking him in after he showed up Neverland - for being pissed that he wanted to avenge the death of a woman who left him to the mercy of fucking genocide - to even notice what I mess I was. You were too busy making evil dreamcatchers and masturbating in your creepy-ass Dark One fuckpad about a man who murdered his father and orphaned his brother to care that I missed my dad. That I was growing up with utter shit for role models.
"I mean, Jesus, my one grandfather was irredeemably evil every six weeks for no fucking reason. My dick grandfather nearly let me kill pedestrians with his stupid truck to prove he was cooler than your boyfriend who taught me how to cheat at gambling and got me to teach him how to use a cellphone to take upskirt pictures of barely legal girls including my girlfriend And Robin, what the hell could I learn from him?
"Same as you, I guess," Henry accused. "that as soon as the body of your true love is cold, that love is over and done and was never important to begin with, that person no longer worth remembering or honoring because they were just a place-holder and genetic contribution to the next generation assigned to your life story on the road to finding your soulmate and giving them a step kid to screw up like every other stupid bullshit fairy tale story that cares more about evil stepparents than the good ones who died just so they could fuck up another family!"
Henry waved his arms as he spoke, "And the only person I had to talk to about any of that was Violet, and you messed that up too! She the first friend I ever had in Storybrooke, but after what you did, that was tainted, tied to all these things about my dad that were supposed to be good, but you destroyed them, used them as bait to save a jerk you had been dating for two months. To cover up what a selfish bitch you were. And what did I do? I fucking forgave you. I helped that bastard find a place to shack up with you where he could take even more of your attention away from me, I helped you find him and give him half your heart so you could share even less with me until it was like I was just neighborhood kid who came by sometimes, who got replaced by a new kid you loved more-"
"That's not true!" Emma shouted. "I didn't love her more."
"You did," Henry countered. "You shared your heart with him and you shared her with him, so by the laws of magic, you loved her more than me, the reminder of the man you still blamed for destroying your first chance at happiness, that you told yourself you never loved as much, because you and Hook were destined and Dad was just a mistake that happened because the Curse screwed up how things were meant to go, like Marian was never meant to be with Robin if Regina had met him that day in that tavern. So I was a mistake, an aberration, a reminder of your life gone to shit, and when it got back on track and your heart was with your real true love and the life that created, there was no place for me in it."
"No!" Emma pleaded in tears. "That was a mistake. All of it! There was always a place for you, Henry. You were my first love - and my last love. My only true love. I'm sorry if I couldn't love you enough. I didn't know I'd lose my love for you. If I'd known, I wouldn't have done it, you have to believe me!
"You saved me, Henry," she cried. "I know I failed you and your dad. I tried to make some perfect fairy tale parallel to your grandparents so I wouldn't have to face that I screwed up, that I let the happy ending I was supposed to have, the love that made you die because of this stupid, useless old anger for something that I knew wasn't even is fault, but those old habits were hard to shake. I thought... I thought if I finally shook them, if I found a way to be happy then I was keeping my promise to Neal to make sure we were both happy together, even if it hurt that I wasn't able to do that for him."
"Yeah," scoffed Henry, "it hurt so much you turned into a selfish, narcissistic bitch who gave me hypocritical advice never to change myself to get anyone's love as you were doing exactly that. Actions speak louder than words. I followed your actions. I ended up betrayed. I raised that fucking sociopath's spawn and you died for her, not because she was family or because you were the Savior, but because Hook made the mistake that put her life in danger and all you ever did was clean up his messes using us as your mops - just like you dragged us all to Hell for him. And that's one shitty attempt at keeping a promise."
"You're right, it's really shitty," Emma agreed. "I'm sorry you weren't happy, Henry. I'm sorry you based your love on a lie because I was too afraid to be alone, too afraid to face my shame and grief over your dad. That wasn't fair to you."
"No, it wasn't," Henry stated. "And I don't care if you're sorry. Sorry won't bring my father back. Sorry won't give me a do-over at all of the hopes and dreams I scarified to get my selfish family back to their world. Sorry won't get either of my mothers back as the people I used to think they could be. It doesn't get me anything. I'm still alone, same as I started out. Different and 'special' because I was born on the other side, without magic, without a story of my own. Other people die and they get to hope that at least they've got family in Heaven, that they'll get to see all those people again. But I don't get that. That's what being your son gets me. And this time you don't get to come with me - and the truth is, I wouldn't want you with me even if you could."
"I didn't know," Emma cried. "I don't want you to be alone, Henry. I never wanted you to be alone..."
"I was always alone! My whole life I was alone! I could never keep any friends because of my family! And none of you really cared about me, because I was different, because I was never really one of you! I was born in the wrong world and the wrong time so I was never going to fit in and I could never escape that stigma any more than I could being a bastard in a world where that mattered!" shouted Henry.
"I didn't fit in either," Emma tried to argue. "I didn't fit in here, but I didn't fit in there either."
"Really? You did a crap job of showing that," scoffed Henry. "And even if that's true, it's back to being all about you. You were too busy trying to make yourself fit in to notice that I was struggling, that no one respected a kid who just wanted to tell stories. So, of course, how could any woman from that world have really loved me? I was a fool. Just like my dad was a fool to turn that key to try and get back to us. The father I knew, even if it wasn't for very long, would never have made that impulsive move. Just like the mother I brought to Storybrooke would never have turned a man she barely knew into the Dark One to save him from a death he deserved. Love doesn't work like that.
"You were both better than that -until you weren't, until all you cared about was your happiness and I was just an afterthought. But that's how love works in your world, right? Getting your rocks off comes first, ensuring your kids are happy is so distantly behind that you'd need the spyglass Hook used to stalk you to see it. It's ingrained in your literary DNA not to give a shit about your kids. Growing up in this world without parents was supposed to be some nurture over nature crap, give you that... basic altruism that real people have, but you threw it away at the first chance you got to get laid!
"You're not a good person and you're a terrible mother," Henry hissed before Emma could even mount a response. "You should have left Storybrooke and never come back. Or better yet, I never should have found you at all. We'd all have been off under the Curse than 'saved' by you. I'd have grow up, I'd have been able to leave and have an actual life, maybe even found my father who'd still be alive too and was a much better person than you."
"I know he was," Emma whispered, bowing her head. "I always knew he was..."
"Then why did you treat his memory like shit?" Henry demanded. "My dad loved you. He gave up his happiness for you. He gave up his life for you. And how did you repay his love? His sacrifice? You could barely even forgive him while you showered endless forgiveness on a man who repeatedly tried to kill you and me, who never truly cared about anything but himself. You ruined your song for me. You turned that dreamcatcher, the only thing I had of his, into a nightmare I could never escape, into a reminder of sick and twisted bad memories that boiled down to you never choosing him. Never choosing me."
"I didn't... my soul wasn't-"
"Bullshit!" Henry shouted. "I don't want to hear anymore about your soul, Emma! Soul or no soul, my father deserved better than a pirate's whore! Than a lover with such little self-respect she changed herself into his mother to fuck his step father. You're just like Milah. You took something good and you hated it, you destroyed it for flattery and adventure. For an ever-ready cock with a pretty face that turned you into selfish bitch who fucked everything up and everyone over.
"That's what you are," Henry told her coldly. "Everything you thought about yourself before you knew the truth was right: you're a loser that no good person could want who would never amounted to anything but a complete and utter failure. So here you are, exactly what you feared was true, where you could have changed that, where you could have become someone good who'd have done great things - but instead you chose yourself. For the first time, you chose yourself and you said you were choosing me, but you weren't. This, right here, is where you planted that selfish seed that grew to fill the void of potential darkness your parents deprived you of - and that was worse, because it was real not just a hypothetical."
Shoving his hands into his pockets and tipped his head to the side, Henry amended, "But the thing is, you're not really real. Not anymore. You're just a worthless failure who won't be remembered by anyone, because unlike all of the other characters in that book, you're just a baby on some pages that got ripped out and a faceless nobody dancing with a pervert. You're nothing. And you will be stuck here forever as nothing."
Henry stepped back from Emma, nothing but disgust in his hazel eyes, and turned toward the door.
"Henry, please!" Emma cried out, trying to follow, but found her ankle was cuffed to the bed. "I love you! Don't go! I love you!"
She tugged at it as the door clicked shut, but then futility set in and she broke down, just as she had all those years ago in this room.
"I love you," she wept. "I'm sorry. I wanted to be a good mom. I wanted to make the right choice. I wanted you to be happy..."
Emma sobbed until she had no tears left, no strength to even lift her head from the pillows, and finally curled up like that pathetic diseased Flying Monkey and wished for death that wouldn't come because she was dead already. Her son hated her. Her son hated her because she'd ruined his life. She'd killed him!
She'd promised Neal she would make sure their son had what neither of them did, that he didn't grow up like they did - but he grew up exactly like they did because of her.
"Tallahassee, baby, we're almost home," Neal's voice echoed in her head, looping over and over.
Tallahassee didn't exist anymore.
She'd been so close to being everything she'd wanted, everything she was supposed to be, but somehow it all went wrong, and everyone and no one - and mostly she was to blame, it seemed.
She should have kept her son.
She should have taken him back to New York.
She should have stayed away from that barn.
She should have let Hook die.
Instead she did the opposite and told herself those were the right choices, but they were really just the selfish ones, the ones that would forever keep her from finding peace, from having the one thing she and Neal had both so desperately wanted.
"Home," Emma whispered longingly - and if this was a story about happy endings, she would have miraculously woken up in the passenger seat of the Bug on the way to Canada and it would have all be a crazy fever dream.
But this wasn't.
"Home is where the heart is," her own voice uttered, only it didn't come from her lips or inside her head.
Leaning against the door where the corrections officer had once stood was the Dark Swan, all scaly leather and weirdly flocked hair.
"Which," the Dark Swan said, "means half of yours is definitely in Hell. Only question is, where's the half you kept gonna end up?"
Emma sniffed and asked, confused - on two levels since she was essentially talking to herself, "I thought there was no Heaven or Hell for... fairy tale people?"
"Nope, just no Heaven. Satan is a lot let choosy. Besides, fairy talers make the most amusing cliché villains who always think they're victims."
"How do you even know about Hell? If you're me!?"
"I'm the answers to the questions you haven't even learned how to ask, Emma. I'm the you who wasn't constrained by social constructs like morality."
"Pride," Emma wheezed out and the darker her grinned.
"Bingo. I'm the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins: the source of the others." Pride Emma declared. "I'm the you that wasn't bothered with the problems of others, because I know that I'm better than they are. Why bother acknowledging their accomplishments when it would be up to me to save them in the end? I am hubris. I am vainglorious. I am what you became, the desperation to be good enough, to be a hero, perverting that belief in yourself, that love of yourself into hatred and contempt for others.
"I am the deadliest of all the sins that leads directly to the damnation," the dark woman bragged. "After all, it was pride that caused Lucifer's fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. It was yours that caused your fall down that that portal and away from ever finding... what was it you called your happy ending? Oh, right: Tallahassee. Fitting that it's really a swamp nowhere near the ocean."
The Dark Swan smirked as she mused, "You were really into that dream, weren't you? Pathetic. You had so much potential, but you gave it up for love to steal those stolen watches for a prospect-less loser, and what did it get you?" She scoffed. "Then you threw even more potential away to split your heart for a creep. And, look, you're right back in the same place.
"I'm the only thing that kept you and that fucked up world functional as long as it was," the Dark Swan continued in her weird monotone while leaning forward on the side rail of the hospital bed, invading Emma's personal space.
"Without me," she intoned, "your soulless self would have been the Dark One's plaything. And better a pathetic excuse for a Dark One than completely consumed by and turned into the puppet of an immortal evil. Sadly, while I was battling the Darkness, Lust was putting it all out there like a horny baboon flashing her flaming red ass - and then we were all on our way to the U-"
A gurgling sound interrupted the Dark Swan's monologue and brows furrowing she looked down at the scalpel driven into her chest.
Emma stared defiantly at her alter ego... or... well... her Ego she supposed. "I don't need you," she stated, driving the blade in deeper with her bandaged hand.
The Dark Swan gave one more gasp and then vaporized in a cloud of ash.
Scooting to the end of the bed, Emma used the slender knife to pick at the lock on the cuffs. It was all about the tumblers...
When she heard the telltale snick, she pulled the shackle free of her chaffed ankle and limped to the door, pulling it open-
Not to the hallway lined with exam rooms, but the dismal grounds of a carnival closed up after hours.
Emma turned in a circle, finding any evidence of the door she'd walked through gone, just chilly air. That dreamscape or whatever it was had been replaced by the dark shapes of booths and rides, the antiseptic smell of the delivery room now instead stale popcorn and overfilled porta-potties.
And there was music.
The tiny strains of a high-pitched, twangy woman's voice echoed off the boarded up game booths and food stalls, adding to the eerie feeling.
Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory
And I ain't saying it ain't a fact
But I've heard that I'm on the road to Purgatory
And I don't like the sound of that
I believe in love and I live my life accordingly
But I choose to let the mystery be
The wet blacktop was cold against her feet and Emma shivered in her hospital gown, wrapping her arms around her torso as she moved cautiously, unsure of what she would find here - until the massive silhouette of the Italian Trapeze came into view.
Emma's heart stilled once more at the site of a figure in an old coat and a hoodie, hunched forward in one of the swings. Her feet felt glued to the pavement as her voice struggled to work, finally croaking out a breathy, "Neal?"
AN: Cliffie! If you're not aware, that song lyric is from "Let the Mystery Be" by Iris De Ment, and is the opening theme music for The Leftovers Season 2, a show I have not seen yet, but I hear is really great! I'll give a shoutout to anyone who knows what show inspired the line "I'm the answers to the questions you haven't even learned how to ask".
Next Up: A conversation about dead people.