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

PART II

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BAD DADS

Sleep was just not in the cards for Emma tonight. Neal had left her on the Inn's steps to hide his stolen magical items, and though she'd intended to follow up to her own room soon after, Emma really had little desire to deal with the mess that Hook had made.

Of course, she could have just used magic to fix it, but her few uses of magic thus far had left her feeling as jittery and unsure of it as back in the original beginning... before she'd quickly succumbed to the high of the feeling came with just translocating a cup of hot chocolate.

Regina had, for at least a short time, sworn off all magic to curb the temptation of dark magic, and a she found herself wandering Main Street, Emma wondered if she shouldn't take similar precautions. After all, Gold had his heart purified and yet still the psychological draw of that power had crippled him with remarkable speed.

Emma didn't want to backslide, and she already knew that she had addictive tendencies, thanks to alcoholics on both sides of her family tree.

But at the same time, it was supposed to be her magic that saved everyone... somehow... at some point... maybe?

Actually, Emma realized, she wasn't even clear on that. Other than breaking the Curse, was her magic part of anything greater than being the contrived consequence of the Apprentice's spell? Perhaps, while it was a power that had set her apart in a way that had singled her out to be selected for the task of saving an entire world, magic itself wasn't her real weapon in this fight?

It hadn't really been in breaking the Curse. Oh, maybe without having it her kiss wouldn't have done more than wake Henry - if that - and maybe her magic had helped weaken the mental fog around everyone she'd helped, sure. But helping them had been the main thing, that's what Henry had told her so long ago, before Jefferson and August had gotten into her head with the magic part.

Emma kicked at a can and shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets.

Magic really had fucked up everything.

She'd been a good person - or wanted to be - until she started using magic. It had changed her even before falling down that time portal screwed everything up. Neal had been right to be judgey in the pawn shop, and she had been right to feel secretly ambivalent despite acting offended. Because magic was 99% emotion, and love and hate were so similar, so often entwined that pretty soon you couldn't tell the difference between the emotions fueling your magic... and Emma could only presume that was the effect magic, like a drug, changing brain chemistry or something similar.

Because she'd definitely confused her emotions and had darkened her magic and those two had feed off each other in a vicious cycle. And it was certainly true of other magic users she knew. Regina clearly couldn't tell when magic she thought was fueled by love was still a selfish love - though it didn't help that the stuff visually manifested as "light magic" even when it was gray at best and could still break curses. Apparently, God hadn't been terribly specific in the underlying factors of "love" for curse breaking, so it didn't matter if you were a raging psychopath whose love was more of a selfish coveting; you could have a very fucked up worldview as long as that other person was the center of your world.

That's how Gold had saved them, sacrificed himself for his son and Belle. But it hadn't saved him. All of these vague parameters regarding true love apparently didn't reach the level of the soul. Whatever had happened in the Underworld wasn't down to a fundamental level, because it was still a place ruled by magic, in which the living could die and those wielding magic could use it to alter things. Souls were not really stripped bare for judgment there, just cast into whatever mockup of the real world Hades had on his mind and forced to interact with people - some incarnation of them - from their past who had scores to settle. Considering a Young Cora possessing Mary Margaret, Emma was loathe now to say that any of those people she'd met in the Underworld were really those people, but perhaps some versions of them, homunculi just like her own successor that magic had split off and sent to the Underworld for Hades to play with, to torment others when they died.

Which meant there was a soulless version of Cora and Pan probably skulking around a burnt-out version of Storybrooke right now, thirsting for living people to take a vacation to the Underworld with their shiny, tempting souls.

Emma really wanted to avoid that.

Really, there was a lot she wanted to avoid, particularly anything to do with Isaac. Burning the page was seriously tempting, no matter how valid Neal's argument. Would it really be a stain on her soul so much to kill a man who'd destroyed multiple worlds and thousands of lives for his own personal quest at fame? He was decades out of time. No one would miss him. Whereas bringing him back into the timeline of the "real world" where he'd come from, even without his magical quill, could be dangerous.

It was the mind, not the magic, that was the true weapon, and that man was a megalomaniacal asshole!

Emma kicked the can again and watched it bounce into the gutter next to her father's pickup.

To her surprise, David sat up in the passenger seat and looked blearily at her.

"Emma?"

"Dadvid?" Emma retorted, regretting the 'Dad' and trying unsuccessfully to shape it into 'David'.

He rolled down the window and asked, "Did you just call me 'Dadvid'?"

"It's been a long day."

"I have coffee," her father offered a thermos, looking hopeful.

It was a surprising change from looking betrayed this morning, so Emma reluctantly nodded and got in as David slid into the driver's seat.

"Why are you sleeping in your car?"

"Fight with your mother," sighed David. "I was hoping with the distraction of the whole explosion thing she'd at least let me take your room, but... apparently, she's Neverland levels of pissed at me."

"Well, she did forgive you less than a day later," Emma reminded after taking a sip from the metal cup-lid. "It'll blow over. I mean, you two share a heart after all."

"Of which she kept the part with the dark spot."

"Hmmm, true," Emma conceded. "Do I even want to know what the fight was about?"

"It wasn't even anything important," shrugged David. "I think she's mostly upset with some things Ruby said. I made a stupid comment after she left, and your mother's taking it out on me. Although, I probably shouldn't have called our son a 'thing' and told her to shut him up."

"Ouch, David."

"It was a long day! I got suspended by my own daughter, called a selfish prick by someone I considered one of my oldest friends, drank too much to deal with that, and had to put up with a screaming newborn that I have no idea how to take care of, because A) I never got the chance to figure that out with my first child, B) the two weeks I had back in this world that has actual information on how to do that was spent fighting flying monkeys and conning my own amnesiac grandson. And C) since my aforementioned first child objected to the name my wife and I chose for our second child, my son doesn't actually have a name."

"Still, though, 'thing'?" Emma groaned. "I at least called Henry 'kid' when I had no idea if he was a girl or a boy and was kicking the shit outta my spine and bladder, which is a lot more uncomfortable than putting up with some crying."

David groaned. "Okay, I get it, men are weak and ungrateful and would pass out from one menstrual cramp. I already got that speech from your mother. Can we not talk about my very bad day as a parent?"

"Well, you're not alone," sighed Emma. "Regina kinda ripped me a new one over my poor parenting."

"For what?" asked David, confused. "You've been a good mother, Emma. If Regina is still stuck on the whole thing about taking Henry back to New York, you just wanted to protect him from danger, and there is a lot of that here. I mean, a house randomly blew up tonight, and that's a quiet night here!"

"It was about a lot more than that," Emma countered. "And you're wrong about New York. I was being selfish. I didn't want to deal with it, with being the Savior. It had nothing to do with Henry. Or, at least, that wasn't my main reason. Just like giving him up for adoption was really about me first and my not wanting to deal with all of the possible failures and disappointments. So, I know, I was being hypocritical yelling at you and Mom about that spell, and wanting to just focus on having another kid and putting all of this crazy shit that's full of pain and disappointments behind you. I know all that, but it's hard not to still be angry at you guys, to forgive you... I guess... because I'm still trying to not be angry with myself and forgive myself for the choice I made back then... if that makes any sense?"

"Well, it makes more sense than most things around here," answered David. "And for what it's worth, Emma, your mother and I are sorry for the choices we made. I knew it was a bad idea, that spell, but I loved your mother so much, wanted to see her happy, that it was easier to go along with it than try and... I don't know... try to work through all of her unresolved childhood issues that made her that terrified of being a bad mother who couldn't raise a good child."

"I guess having a mother that her father put on a pedestal like some saintly martyr while making constant comparisons between them really screwed her up, huh?" mused Emma.

"Which she knows now was a lie," David grimaced. "She knows her mother was not a good person for a large portion of her life, that she ruined lives in some pretty terrible ways that had consequences her descendants are still paying for. I think it must be hard to go the majority of your life worshiping someone, basing everything you do, the choices you make, particularly about your family, on trying to live up to that standard only to find out, just as you're about to become a mother, that all of the horrible tragedies in your life, the battles you are still fighting, were the result of that someone."

After a pause, he mused, "I suppose it's a good thing that Snow and I decided our first child wouldn't be named after a family member, or you'd have been named 'Eva' and then things would probably have been more strained and distant now with your mother than they already are."

Emma let out a sigh before responding, "I guess I never thought about how hard things are for her, just hearing about the stuff with Cora and Eva in a sort of... peripheral way. And Henry doesn't seem to bothered by discovering he's named after his grandfather that his mother murdered. Which, really... I think I'd better get him back into therapy, because that should bother him, right?"

"We could probably all use some therapy."

"Yeah, that's what Neal said. That maybe Archie would give us a family discount or group rate or something."

David snorted at that and turned the thermos in hands. "I really am sorry about not helping Neal. We were being selfish. And it was more my fault than your mothers. I was the one who really insisted he let go. I don't even exactly know why, to be honest. I don't dislike him. And I don't hold his paternity against him. God knows I have nothing to be proud of in that regard, even if my father was just an abusive drunk. I suppose... he abandoned you, and even if it was for good reasons... I did the same, and if I couldn't find the strength to look for you, I didn't want him to either."

Emma sighed again and shrugged. "Doesn't really matter. What happened - happened. We can't change it. And that... we're not together and I don't think we ever will be."

"Still afraid of taking a chance on a good moment?" asked David. "A man comes back from the dead, Emma, I think that's reason enough to give love a chance."

She shook her head. "He's the one who doesn't want to, and he had a valid argument. There's stuff... stuff I can't tell you about me and us, stuff that being dead clued Neal into. But if I did, you'd agree with him that I'm not the Emma he fell in love with anymore. And I'm not sure I can ever be that person again, someone Neal would respect again."

"Emma... you don't know that."

"But I know the odds aren't in our favor," Emma countered. "It's like... Regina and Robin trying to being this soulmate fated perfect happy couple decades too late, after they made choices that add up to being two people who can't possibly be so destined anymore... or at least not in a good way, a way that makes them both better.

"I mean," she continued, "when they were young, Regina was just a depressed, desperate young woman looking to escape a shitty childhood and a loveless marriage. And Robin was an amateur thief trying to save up enough to buy a tavern. But now? Robin turned his thieving into a career, brought an innocent women into that life, made choices that led to her to being targeted by Regina, that got her killed by Regina. Regina is murderer, a rapist, a woman who'll do anything to escape responsibility for her crimes - which, now, is apparently falling for a man who doesn't want her to in spite of the crime of murdering his wife, the mother of his child."

Emma shook her head again and concluded, "Two morally bankrupt people, soulmates or not, are only going to make a codependent, self-destructive mess of a relationship that hurts even more people."

"You think that you and Neal are morally bankrupt?" asked David.

"I think one of us is," she grimaced, "and, if Regina has proven anything, trying to get that morality back isn't so easy."

David gave Emma a curious look and deduced, "Something happened at the barn, didn't it?"

Grimacing, Emma replied, "Let's just say that I got a look at the kind of person I could become, that I've already started becoming, and if that's what my mother saw in that vision... if you'd seen it... well... you'd have made the same choice."

"But whatever you saw, Emma," David argued, "you're not that person. And whatever choice's you've made that could lead you down that path... you know the end result now, so you won't become her."

"I wish I could believe that. Gold likes to say that just because you know what's going to happen, doesn't mean you know what's going to happen. And trying to change something... He tried to change his fate, his son's fate, and ended up making it happen by trying to avoid it."

"Maybe so, but he didn't have a family on his side."

"Do I really, though?" Emma asked, "Have you guys on my side? Because it feels like all I get is either criticism for not being optimistic enough or in the right way that honors my royal fairy tale heritage, or encouragement to keep doing foolish fairy tale exemplifying stuff, because it's me being optimistic, even if it's also me being an idiot. Neither of those are helpful."

David gave her a pained, apologetic look. "I had no idea you felt that way."

"I thought I made it pretty clear in Neverland."

He grimaced. "I'm sorry. I got distracted-"

"By hiding that you were dying," Emma interrupted. "While somehow my mother ended up pulling a Regina and making all of my abandonment issues that she was responsible for all about her not getting to be a mom."

"Yeah... that... sometimes your mother says things that can be hurtful," David sighed. "I know she really doesn't mean it. She wasn't trying to replace you, Emma."

"But she was trying to make sure I turned out perfect when she had that spell cast on me before I was born," Emma reminded. "It's hard to get over that, even when I know I've been a crappy mom and made selfish choices. It just... that's what I do. But Snow White... everything pointed to her being just like her 'character', but she has these moments when-"

"She's unpredictably selfish like a normal person?"

"I guess," agreed Emma. "Maybe it would be easier if she acted like she knew she was a normal person instead of like her shit doesn't stink - pardon my French."

"She was raised a princess, Emma, you have to remember that," David reminded.

"Yeah, even if her pedigree is anything but royal other than pain in the ass," Emma muttered under her breath.

David frowned and asked, "What was that?"

"Nothing," sighed Emma.

"Hey," David inquired, "What about Graham?"

"What about him?"

"No," David said, gesturing to the bootlace on her wrist, "I meant as a name for your brother. He helped your mother and I, but I know were close in a quasi-romantic way, so..."

"He was infatuated with me because he was an assassin who was obsessed with my mother, because he wanted to know why she was the one person he couldn't murder in cold blood."

David grimaced. "So... scratch another one off the list then."

"Yeah, sorry." Emma shrugged and handed back the thermos cup. "I've had enough emotional trauma for one day. I think I'm finally going to call it a night."

"Probably a good idea," David agreed and watched his daughter slink off into the night.

On the second floor of the apartment building he could see his wife watching through a crack in the curtains, and David rubbed his temples wondering if he should risk going back upstairs. He loved his wife, really he did, but sometimes... there was 'unpredictable normal' and there was just 'completely out of character'. It was something he'd been trying to deny for awhile, but ever since Neverland and then in the Enchanted Forest, how she treated Neal (and Belle) and became so obsessed with having another child yet not even worrying about it's wellbeing when she decided to try and bring him back from the dead, a previously unaccomplished act that might have killed her and their baby...

David loved his wife, but there was something wrong with her.

AN: David strikes me as a character with a superiority complex and an inferiority complex about his superiority complex. He has some of the same dark qualities as his brother in him. He said on the show that the possibility of that scares him, which suggests based on the stab-happy/unsympathetic writing of his character (he wanted to leave Regina to be killed by the wraith, imprison Regina in solitary confinement in the Enchanted Forest, slit the mermaid's throat, gleefully beat up Bo Peep with Hook after an absurdly disproportionate amount of violence and bloodshed on his David's part in flashback) suggests that David is in deep denial that he already exhibits the same disturbing violent streak as James. David increasingly comes off like all of those asshole police officers who think they are super good people upholding the law while they go around shooting people who just happen to tick them off on a bad day. But at least he's not racist!

Next up: Emma and Regina, the morning after.