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: I just want to kiss you and love you and squeeze you and call you 'George'.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE SAVIORS LAMENT

The figure pulled his hood back and looked mildly chagrined as he told her, "Sorry to disappoint."

"You," Emma grumbled, glowering at the Angel and slumped into the opposite swing. "Neal really doesn't want to see me, does he?"

"That's not my place to say," Metatron answered, folding his hands between his knees.

"I miss him," Emma sighed, picking at the bandage on her ruined hand. "I just want him to know how sorry I am. I failed everyone. Even my son hates me."

"That's not true, Emma. He's... disappointed. He hung the moon and stars on you, never could knock down that superhero pedestal he put you on because of the story in that book - until you knocked it down yourself," explained the moody Angel. "People immerse themselves so deeply in denial, in falsehoods of the people they love that when the truth is finally forced on them, it's only natural to get angry. But he's more angry with himself for clinging to the unrealistic concepts of a child, for enabling you and the rest of your family under a desperate hope that the 'happily ever after' lie was still achievable, that somehow the piling up bullshit would just magically disappear and those who had wronged him and his family would finally face punishment while his own happy ending would be waiting."

Metatron leaned back and explained, "No matter what he told all of you as a child in his desperate longing for a family - one that wasn't trying to kill one another - Henry wanted to believe that bad people eventually get what's coming to them, their lies revealed and their usurped happiness destroyed to mitigate justice for their victims. Good always winning over Evil, just as he told you as a little boy who believed with his whole heart that you could be the Hope that vanquished that cruelty. He also believed that if you sacrifice your own happiness long enough for the happiness of others, in the end God or karma or the laws of the universe - or magic - rewards heroes for their sacrifices. Or if you're a villain and you show remorse for you actions and spend every day thereafter working to show you're reformed through helping the people you hurt and good deeds to prevent others from taking the same dark path - then you have a shot at being a hero and having a happy ending. He wanted to believe that people change for the better and that it's acts of contrition for wrong actions that bring happy endings to all."

"But it doesn't," sighed Emma. "It's just random, unfair bullshit. You can sacrifice your entire life and die, forgotten, your happy ending given to the assholes who wronged you and did nothing to deserve all the rewards."

"Sadly," confirmed Metatron. "People are who they are, and though they grow and are shaped by their experiences and the people they love and hate, at their core, they are the virtues and vices imprinted on them even before birth, and once they give in to the latter, changing back... it's not easy, and it's more often impossible - because there is no karma waiting to smack them down, because sometimes people are prone toward being selfish no matter how much they love another, no matter much they are loved. It's particularly hard for your kind, so many of you type cast into roles that exaggerate qualities, good or bad.

"And God doesn't answer the prayers of every schmuck on his knees begging for forgiveness and twenty grand," Metatron amended with a scoff. "Everyone wants to believe that God is listening, but why should God bother fixing the problems you people got yourselves into? Why should God be selfless and giving when you're selfish and take take take. God tried that once, and how did that work out? The Crusades is how it worked out followed by a second wave of revenge for said Crusades, all in His name. Oh, sure, both sides can agree that Jesus was a great, loving, and selfless man who turned the other cheek, but follow his example over telling everyone else in the world how to live their lives? God no."

Metatron shook his head and draped an arm over the back of his chair as he continued, "What your son and so many refuse to acknowledge in life is that people live their lives, they make their choices, and they pay the price for that by the choices of others. Waiting for the hand of Justice to balance the scales, to damn some deadbeat being given a free ride, is naive. But it's also comforting. Whether it's religious dogma or the happy ending magic of fairy tales, it doesn't matter. It means there's a design, a plan, that everything bad that happens has a reason behind it, even if it's unknowable and that every good thing is a reward, even if you have no idea what you did to deserve it."

Emma bowed her head. "I should have told Henry that. I shouldn't have... have gotten so caught up in the idea of everyone getting a happy ending. But it just... it was such a simple and... easy thing, that no matter what I did, I deserved a happy ending. If mass murderers and rapists deserved a happy ending, if I was supposed to save them, then I had to deserve one, even though I never felt like I did after giving Henry up."

"Of course you wanted to believe that," said Metatron. "You think Christ thought it was fair he didn't get a happy ending? He had to die for murderers and rapists, he had to abandon his family to whatever retribution there would be for his message of peace, because that's what his being a Savior meant. That's the story God wrote for him, the part he had to play with very little say in the matter.

"And when it was done," the Angel continued, "do you think he looked at the centuries that followed and thought 'well, that was worth it, job well done!' when his message was corrupted by greedy men who pulled the world in the Dark Ages? God has Her reasons for everything, but Her own son wasn't in the know for all of it. Even he's left with a guilty conscience over the consequences he couldn't foresee, the people he trusted would take his message to heart and be saved who instead betrayed him and others for their selfish gains. But you know what? He would do it all again if he was asked. He would give up everything he loved to save everyone he loved."

Frowning, Emma uttered, "Yeah, well, I'm no messiah. That's what Death said, right? I'm just a screw-up who got an impossible task because my parents' story was a convenient spot to start. And even when I told myself I was giving up everything for everyone, it was a lie.

"I mean, look at Henry? I told myself I was protecting him. But the truth is, I was protecting myself. I just couldn't take it anymore," she sniffed. "I couldn't take any more disappointments. I couldn't take loving someone again and losing them or their love. And I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I could be his mom and love him enough, the way he deserved, when I spent all those months with him growing inside of me thinking of him as the consequence of all the bad choices I made and all the people who threw me away. I know that isn't true now. I know he was a gift, the best thing to happen to me that I never appreciated enough, because I was afraid to love him that much - and then, I guess, because I was incapable of it without a soul and half my heart given to another and Regina's messed up sociopath mom memories. But that's how I felt then - and how could I tell him that?"

"You couldn't. Not then," Metatron conceded, "but Henry did grow up. He would have understood."

"I didn't want him to see me as the... the damaged person I am," Emma cried. "I wanted to always be that hero who stood up to the Evil Mayor. It's pretty messed up irony that she probably ended up the better mother, the more well-adjusted person."

"Well, she did have a soul, rudimentary and corrupted as it was, and a whole heart, blackened as it was," the Angel pointed out.

"I have my whole heart and my soul now, but I don't feel any different," admitted Emma while wiping at her eyes. "Henry was right. I am a failure and a loser. God never should have put any faith in me. I know I don't deserve a happy ending. I just... everyone else shouldn't be punished because I failed. All those good people, the innocent ones or the ones who really are sorry, they should get a chance to go to Heaven. They deserve to be real.

"And I don't want Henry to be alone," Emma worried. "He should have his father with him. All of that stuff with Neal using dark magic, it was such bullshit that shouldn't keep him here. He never would have really done that, not if he'd been in control of his story, not if I hadn't already started screwing things up. Neal hated dark magic and he just wanted to have a family. He didn't want Henry to lose his father like he did. But no one would listen," Emma angrily lamented.

"How could my parents turn their backs on him, but serve me up like a prize to a man who repeatedly allied with murderers and tried to kill us?" she asked. "How could they want me to 'honor' their own love and sacrifices by splitting my heart for that, something so... repulsively opposite to their love?"

"Because parents make stupid choices," Metatron said with a roll of his eyes as though it was obvious. "They want their children to be happy. They want their children's love. Sometimes the fear of losing the latter leads them to enable a happiness that's self-destructive. Just as children often put up with a lifetime of emotional neglect and being the runner up to jobs and lovers, because some affection is better than none.

"I'd wager that you're parents put up with a great deal they didn't truly support because they thought it made you happy - and you perused things, clung to choices and people that brought only a fleeting distraction and ultimately disappointed, because you didn't want to disappoint them," he postulated. "You didn't want to keep failing and losing at love, to constantly hear about their perfect romance and always fall short, particularly after you had entwined your love story with theirs in a way that could not easily be unwritten - so you contrived something, made yourself believe it could be as perfect, that a dark spell could lead to something fated, even when deep down you knew it was a lie, and you were just giving in to fear."

Emma laughed miserably. "So it was all a lot of misunderstandings? Neither of us was happy with my choices?"

"That's often how life works," Metatron told her. "A long series of misunderstandings that are only straightened out when it's too late to change things. Life isn't like Sliding Doors. Universe destruction aside, you can't go back to the past and make the other choice you realized years later was the right one. All you're left with is regret and trying to pick up the pieces."

"That's a shitty pep-talk."

"I'm an Angel not a motivational speaker!" the Angel huffed. "But in the interest of making you feel better, nothing is beyond salvation."

"Really? Because I just destroyed a universe!" Emma pointed out.

"That universe was essentially not real," Metatron countered. "Anything not sanctioned by God is blasphemy. But the universe that came before, the one whose destruction brought it into being, that one is not without hope."

"But... it's destroyed," Emma stated. "That's what you said. The one I caused replaced it. That's what threw everything into chaos. I destroyed our real stories. They got replaced with some... some crazy ass fanfiction version of them, and they weren't even great stories to begin with! I essentially made the Fifty Shades of Gray to God's Twilight! And I don't know what's salvageable about either of those!"

"And here I thought you'd be into vampires and bondage," the Angel quipped, earning a glare.

"Saviors, never a sense of humor!" he complained and Emma harrumphed.

"You think it's the first time a universe has been accidentally poofed out of existence?" Metatron stated. "Thankfully, God keeps a back-up copy in case the mortal hard drive crashes thanks to the malware of humanity. It can be rebooted if there's reason to believe it's not corrupted beyond repair. Which, of course, generally requires assigning some prophet or savior the task of fixing everything that caused it to go to shit. Now, usually, that isn't the same person who hit the 'self-destruct' button, but seeing as you are available..."

"I'm dead," said Emma, confused. "Dead is dead."

"Dead in the real world is dead unless it isn't," scoffed Metatron, "which was ninety-nine percent of the time with you people, yet Henry was the only one who ever questioned the nonsensical hypocrisy of those magical laws. And this is not magic we're talking about. This is God.

"Lazarus was dead. Never mind Jesus. Though, you're right that comparing you to Christ would definitely be blasphemy," the Angel mused to which Emma snorted. "Still, you were meant to be a prophet to your people before that got screwed up. This is your chance to do what you were meant to do. You just have to undo all of the stuff you weren't meant to do before you can do that. Like world destruction."

"How... how would I even do that?"

"Well, on the last one, stop the time portal. As for the rest of it, who do I look like, Yoda? You're the prophet, you figure it out."

Shaking her head, Emma remarked, "I don't know if I can do this. It's a lot of pressure. What if I fail?"

"Then nothing changes. It can't be worse than destroying two universes, Emma. The other option? You stay here, you keep battling the demons of your failures, and maybe, eventually, you succeed and you get to see your son again and earn his forgiveness, but everyone else...? They're fighting their own battles, for their own souls, and they're at a disadvantage.

"You can save them, Emma," Metatron told her. "And in the process, you can redeem yourself."

Emma swallowed thickly. She was afraid. But she didn't want everyone to suffer in this torment because she was scared.

"Everyone will go back to... to being alive? To before any of this happened?"

"The ones that were alive at the time. The rest... well... they'll still be here counting on you. Just maybe no longer hating you and rooting against you for letting them down."

Brushing at her tears, Emma considered that maybe, just maybe then Neal would still be rooting for her too.

She reached up with her bandaged hand and clutched at the keychain at her throat.

"Okay," she agreed. "I'll do it."

The sky was starting to grow light, and Emma felt something pulling at her soul, an unstoppable force.

"What should I-"

Before she could finish her question, there came a violent force propelling her away in flash of brilliant light as she thought she heard the Angel of Death shouting from within the void, "This time don't fuck it up, girl!"

AN: In retrospect, I shouldn't have had Metatron appear until now. Oh, well. That's what happens when you write the Once Upon a Time chapter-by-chapter way! The quote from the last chapter was inspired by "A dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask" said by Scully to Mulder in The X-Files episode "Paper Heart". That line always stuck with me.

Next Up: We kick off Part II in which Emma returns to the restored Original Universe/Timeline... which still isn't our universe, but don't get me started on Adam & Eddy being fucking oblivious to how the International Dateline and time zones work!

Story Progress Report: Some have worried this story is coming to a close, but don't fear, it's only Part I that's ending here. I already have the first six chapters of Part II written and just need to edit, so updates will probably be every weekend in January while I try to work on writing more chapters. Part II probably won't be as long as Part I, though it depends where my muse takes me and whether or not I want to wrap this story up and attempt a sequel to "Heroes Are Stupid, Villains Are Attractive" or write something new.