Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
"be a hot asshole who shows zero remorse for their horrible actions, fall in love with a hot good guy who validates everything you do, and you'll live happily ever after but if you're an actual decent person who made mistakes b/c you're human, well...life sucks and then you die".
— Ravenclaw312
PART II
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FIRESTARTER
With a taste of your lips
I'm on a ride
You're toxic I'm slipping under
With a taste of a poison paradise
I'm addicted to you
Don't you know that you're toxic
And I love what you do
Don't you know that you're toxic
Don't you know that you're toxic
Emma jabbed a preset button on the radio...
I'm the bitch you hated, filth infatuated.
Yeah, I'm the pain you tasted, fell intoxicated
She punched another, which brought up static, because Storybrooke had only two radio stations, the one broadcast out of the television studio's building near the power plant and the other from the basement of the sub-standard community college that made those sketchy for profit outfits with non-transferable credits seem like the peak of academic excellence.
Unfortunately, magic kept out the broadcasts from Bangor and the patrol car did not come with even a tape deck.
Hence Emma let out a frustrated sigh and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, wishing for something to stave off mind-numbing boredom as she found herself with nothing to do and no one to hang with, which was a rare evening. But Henry was grounded in jail with Hook, Neal was having dinner with his father and Belle, and she was on the outs with both her parents and Regina.
That meant "night patrol".
It had been a long time since she'd done night patrol from both points of view. Much longer from the whole future lived point of view, but even just starting over she'd been in New York for a year and before that hadn't had time to a night patrol since... like... February 2012 or thereabout, which was over a year ago.
She felt badly out of practice and not sure what to look for in a magical town quite honestly. After the curse broke, during the brief stints of a month or so when there was no mortal peril going on, her father did all of the night patrols, he said either because the baby would keep him up anyway or so that she could go out with Hook... though, ironically, her lover had often had other plans already which she now knew was bro-ing around with her father and bullying various fairy tale villains in town so Hook had an outlet for his violent tendencies that kept him from throwing her head first into more walls and David satisfied his own hereditary bloodlust that he pretended was all in how George had raised James despite his always being sword-happy to slit some bad guy's throat as the first course of action.
Most night patrol evenings, Emma realized, she would spend home alone in her big, empty, kind of creepy Victorian that she'd decorated with magic out of a Martha Stewart magazine left by the previous owners who'd had their memories wiped of having ever owned and put up for sale the house she took as her own for free and for some reason never felt remotely bad about doing.
As if by subconscious design, rounding the corner brought Emma right to that very house with a "For Sale by Owner" sign on the white picket fence. She hated big houses that reminded of group homes and she hated picket fences that reminded of stereotypical families she was never part of - but Hook hadn't known that and she hadn't known that Henry was trying to pick out a house she wouldn't like, so she'd pretended that she loved it for what it represented... even when every time she walked through the foyer she remembered Hook telling her that he wanted to hurt her, that she made him pathetic, that she was pathetic, and then used the image of her son against her.
What doesn't break us makes us stronger she would tell herself, thinking it applied to their love.
It didn't.
And that house would always be a reminder of that toxic shitfest of a life that she'd deluded herself into thinking was love and happiness like a stupid teenage hippy in some guru's cult.
"Fuck it," Emma exhaled, throwing the car into park and getting out.
She had her department issue lock pick and the tumblers clicked over easily.
Emma shivered through the atrium and headed for the basement. In the basement there was an old door blocked by accumulated Curse provided holiday decorations which she pushed aside to head down into the cave system.
From there it was only a five minute walk to where the Dwarfs were mining for fairy dust diamonds they never seemed to find after that first crop.
With a couple of sticks of dynamite and some fuses in hand, Emma returned the basement, set the explosives on the rock that could have contained Excalibur, lit the fuses with some strong emotion and then high tailed it out of there.
Probably she should have poofed herself, price of magic or not, but that didn't occur until she was being thrown through the picket fence by the resulting explosion and tossed over the hood of the patrol car hard enough to crack the windshield.
"It's no big deal," Emma grouched, shoving a disgruntled Whale away and scowling at her anxious parents who had decided to stop being mad at her and pester the hell out of her because for some reason she had made them her emergency contacts.
"No big deal!?" Snow exclaimed. "Emma, you were nearly blown up! You were knocked out!"
"For like a second. I'll be fine!"
"Piss off!" Regina suddenly made her presence known, the declaration directed at everyone as she was holding her pounding head.
She waved a hand and healed Emma's multitude of minor injuries and complained, "You really need to learn how to do that yourself."
"You really need to mind your own business," Emma retorted, not even sure what that was supposed to mean, but apparently she was back to the early months of Regina getting on her nerves.
"A reported gas leak is my business," said Regina, arms crossed, "particularly when there was no actual call to the gas company and no residents reported the smell of gas. Care to explain?"
"Um... I smelled gas?"
"You were driving around in the middle of the night when it's forty degrees out with your windows open?"
"The cold keeps me awake."
"And the Dwarfs are missing two sticks of dynamite. Dopey went to check their dig site to see if it had been compromised by the explosion. I wiped his memory. You're welcome," Regina coolly told her. "Now, are you going to tell me why you blew up that house?"
Emma shrugged and picked at her bootlace bracelet that she realized maybe she should stop wearing if Graham was really such an asshole.
"As Mayor I have the authority to place you under a 48 hour psych hold, Miss Swan."
"Oh, Jesus, not the 'Miss Swan' thing," Emma groaned. "Fine, it brings back bad memories, okay?"
"Of what? You never set foot in that house. And, yes, I realize that is further confirmation that I had Sydney spying on you until you broke the Curse after which I used mirror magic to keep tabs on you and Henry during my period of being unable to see him - and the mess with my mother which also might have included bugging your apartment and car... Anyway, you can't possibly have bad memories of some boring, unimportant house owned by some 'naturist' who recently decided to trade their comfortable home for shitting in the woods."
After rolling her eyes, Emma retorted,. "Who says someone or some thing didn't wipe your memories? Or everyone's?"
Regina was a smart woman and while The Charmings would have scratched their heads and asked what she was talking about, the former Evil Queen scowled and deduced, "You didn't stop the time spell."
"I did! Well... sort of... years later... after the fact," Emma replied. "And I was kind of dead or soulless and in Purgatory so it wasn't even legit me that lived in that other timeline, more like a carbon copy - like the whole universe. But then the other me died doing something she thought was heroic - and maybe it was, but still kind of stupid, I guess - and I got all of 'her' memories and was able to reset the timeline. And let's just say some really really really messed up shit went down in that house, and it's bad enough I have the memories of participating in them without having to drive past fucking triggers, okay?"
Regina threw her hands up in the air. "Wonderful. So now we have to rearrange our lives to spare your fragile psyche after you screwed something up in a future that none of us remember. What exactly did you do that was so traumatizing?"
"Took everyone including Henry to the Underworld to save Hook because I wanted to split my heart to be with him. Plus... other bad stuff."
"You took Henry to Hell to save Hook to share your heart with him so that, in the untimely event of his re-death you would also die?" Regina scoffed.
"I was kind of also the Dark One and had made Hook a Dark One too," Emma admitted with a grimace, "and he threatened to kill us all after murdering Merlin in cold blood and told me that he wanted me to suffer for making him the Dark One and basically was an abusive asshole, but I blamed myself, because I'm a really emotionally screwed up person who's used to equating being treated like dirt with being cared about," she concluded, which resulted in a withering look from the other woman.
"And you had the nerve to lecture me this morning on my parenting?" Regina seethed. "You screwed up the universe through atrocious parenting and I am forbidden from seeing Henry? Here I thought we had reached a certain understanding in Neverland, but clearly I was wrong. Perhaps I shouldn't have given you those memories of raising Henry after all. You obviously don't deserve the entitlement they gave you."
She scoffed, amending, "You really are just like your mother. If you'll excuse me, I am going to take Henry his favorite blanket and make fun of your venereal-diseased true love."
Regina spun on her heal and stalked off leaving Emma thinking glumly that it really was a sad commentary on the world in which she lived that being compared to Snow White was an insult to one's character.
Neal returned to Granny's to find Emma sitting on the steps of the Inn's dumpy front porch picking at a dried piece of weed grass.
"Thought you had night patrol, Sheriff Swan?" he asked, brow raised.
"I kinda broke the patrol car," she sighed, then raised a brow, asking, "You didn't hear the explosion?"
"You blew up the patrol car?"
"More like a house."
"Okaaaaaaaaaaay," said Neal, sitting beside her. "I think I need details. And no. Belle insisted on diner at Mickey Mouse's mansion which Pops soundproofed for reasons I don't want to consider, because it's either dark magic-related or sexual.
"On the bright side, though," he pulled out a familiar black-covered book from a satchel, "I nicked Isaac's 'unpublished' fanfiction, so even if he escapes, he'll have to start over. Got the key too, just so no one gets the bright idea to let him out," he concluded with a pointed look at Emma.
"Maybe I should blow up that mansion with all of the blank books, magic quills, magical wardrobes - and throw Henry's book in the fire."
"Pretty sure you're trying to cut down on the murdering here," Neal reminded. "Sure, he's a racist, bigoted, misogynist psychopath, but you could also have Henry use that magic quill to write him into murdering that Kurt Flynn guy and he could live out of the rest of his very ordinary life in supermax trying not to drop the soap. You know, before breaking it and tossing it in the fire."
"Did you just come up with that now?"
"Naw, been stewing on it for a few decades," said Neal. "So... house exploding?"
"The house Hook was planning to buy me that I stole using the Dark Curse he cast by killing Merlin..."
"You blew up your fuckpad?"
Emma huffed and amended, "And then Regina figured out it wasn't a gas leak and I had to admit that I'd altered time once and had to try and fix it and about the whole Hook-Underworld thing, and she yelled at me for yelling at her this morning about being a bad parent."
"And that surprised you?" Neal snorted.
"Not really. I deserved it."
Shoulders slumping, Emma grumbled, "She said she'd thought we 'had an understanding'. And I kinda thought... I mean... not yet but in that other timeline we became friends."
"You think you were friends?" Neal asked, surprised.
"You... don't?"
Neal rolled his eyes. "Em, you were just two women encouraging each other's horrible romances with horrible men. It wasn't any different than what Isaac wrote for you two: both intermittently used as a vehicle in the other's story to drive your awful romances. A relationship based on enabling unhealthy dependence on anyone, particularly when it involved neglecting your kid on both sides, isn't friendship, it's just... two junkies relying on the currently more sober one to help them score some smack."
Emma scowled and harumphed, "Wow, thanks for making me feel even worse about this, Neal."
"Hey, you need someone telling it like it is. No fairy tale bullshit. Regina isn't your friend. She tried to murder you as a baby. She illegally adopted your baby and said she'd commit mass murder and cast the Dark Curse all over again to get Henry as her son to be her savior and make her a good person. That's fucking delusional. Someone with logic that narcissistic and nonsensical can't be anyone's friend. The woman needs serious therapy, an admission of accountability, and regret before you should consider her anything but a co-parent who only gets to be a co-parent because she is - I hate to say it - better at the actual logistical parenting thing with her anal retentive micromanagement personality."
"You don't think I'm good at parenting?" asked Emma, brows furrowed.
"You kind of come off as more of a... cool aunt who only sees Henry a couple of times a year and is trying to discipline the kid without any clue how to do it. You know, when not relying on fake memories that turn you into an emotionless tyrant."
"What you're saying again is, I need therapy," sighed Emma.
"I'm signing Pops and step-mom up tomorrow for marriage counseling. I bet I could get a family group rate."
"I dunno. Archie tends to blab people's secrets almost as bad as my mother," recalled Emma. "At least I can trust Regina not to mention the time travel dying thing to anyone. I mean, she didn't even remotely let on the barest hint that she had any idea she hired Hook on tasking him with murdering his own father."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was some crap universe retconning paradox stuff that didn't actually happen. Time wise it would have been impossible," Neal pointed out. "Regina hired him to kill her mother and he took the body of the guard from right where he was left bleeding through the portal. I'm sure Hook murdered his old man, but it didn't happen like that. And real deadbeat assholes don't get saved by True Love's Kiss in an un-fucked universe. Papa Jones probably got cursed by the actual Ursula sea goddess and then the two tried to date rape the same barmaid, Hook offed the guy, then his little bro probably happened to see the whole thing and ran off and Hook didn't give a shit and found the bread crumbs Regina left to lure him to her castle and forgot all about Liam 2.0."
"Probably? That's awfully specific, Neal."
"Okay, maybe actually. Henry's book has a lot more details in the stories after ripping out the page The Author is trapped in," Neal admitted, pulling the ripped page out of his bag.
"What is that... mustard?" Emma asked of the yellow stain.
"Lobster bisque. I'm a bowl of soup. Don't ask," said Neal as he stood. "I'm gonna turn in. 'Night, Em."
Emma felt a little twing in her chest at the use of her old nickname. As Neal turned the knob on the front door, she blurted, "We could get coffee in the morning. Like... around nine? Talk about the book stuff and whatever?"
AN: That monstrosity of a fuckpad had to go! The Regina/Emma non-friendship spiel is taken from NotSoEvilRegal on Twitter letting Adam know "That's not friendship, that's just lazy writing. Stop acting like your show is about strong women instead of women w/unhealthy dependence on men." And if you don't know who is a bowl of soup, you're not a real Oncer! (Sorry for not showing Neal's family dinner. Maybe it will feature in a flashback/dream sequence at some point.) Oh, and the lyrics at the start are from "Toxic" by Britney Spears and "Firestarter" by The Prodigy.
Next up: Regina has a chat with Henry.