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 FOURTEEN

BAD BLOOD

"What are you doing here?"

Emma held up her peace offering as she stepped into Regina's office. "I brought you an apology fruit basket."

The brunet scowled. "Using apples you stole from my own tree?"

"It was this or a kale salad. I can go to Granny's..."

"Just tell me what you want," Regina grumbled while stuffing another personal effect into a file box on her soon-to-be-Mary-Margaret's desk.

"To apologize. Hence the 'apology fruit basket'," Emma replied, setting the basket down. "So... I'm sorry. I'm sorry I blew up that house. I'm sorry I messed up the future past-"

"And sorry you got caught and had to admit to any of it?" Regina cut her off with a surely look that drew a wince from Emma.

"Well... yeah... that too," she conceded and crossed her arms, "but you can't fault me for that, really, when it's been your default setting since before I was born."

"Actually," Regina countered, "I can. One of us has been trying to become a better person for Henry. One of us clearly has been becoming a worse person in spite of him. And the last thing Henry needs is your kind of influence."

"Hey!" Emma snapped, "that's not fair. You killed your own father, you tried to murder me as a baby, you killed hundreds of people, and you poisoned Henry. But I'm the worse influence?"

"I was already a bad person when I did all of those things," reminded Regina. "You and everyone else here touted what a hero you were, what a good person dedicated to justice, but clearly that's been a lie. You admit to hurting Henry, to endangering your family, all to keep the affection of a man you met under a pile of corpses of hundreds of people whose murders he was knowingly complicit in, who spent weeks lulling them into a sense of security and becoming their friend only to use their bodies as a means to infiltrate your little bad of merry wenches so he could get a portal here by leaving you all to starve to death, who then left this entire town to be blown up if we hadn't stopped that self-destruct crystal, who then spent our mission to save Henry being generally useless other than trying to get you drunk on his homemade rum and get into your pants. And then, according to Henry, he sexually assaulted you in New York, but you still came with him and recruited him to baby-sit Henry instead of anyone else in this town, so that he can, what, teach Henry how to get a date through stalking, alcohol and lying?

"So, yes, Miss Swan, I have a problem with your influence on my son."

"I'm not doing that anymore! I locked Hook up! While you're dating the man whose wife you had executed!" Emma exclaimed, hands fisted at her sides.

"Actually, Robin and I are taking a break," Regina countered. "I have a problem with his lack of a problem with that. You can't help whom you love, but that doesn't mean you have to act on it when it's morally repugnant. Tinkerbell was right when she said I ruined my happy ending. Expecting to be able to reclaim it decades later is foolish, soulmates or not."

"I know," sighed Emma and she slumped without invitation onto the couch. "Mine's ruined too. Neal was afraid and left. I was afraid and I let him die. And now... now he doesn't want to give us a second or third or whatever chance. He said I became someone too different from who I was back then, someone who's done bad things he can't just forget and doesn't have the same... interest in justice and honor that he does. He thinks I'm selfish and messed up, that I don't even understand how love works, so maybe I don't even really love him, just the idea of that happy ending, and that's why I ended up with Hook."

"Maybe Neal isn't as dumb as I thought," Regina mused. "And what do you want, sympathy? I get what you're trying to do. But we're not friends. We're barely even co-parents. We occasionally do magic together, but other than that, all I am to you is an obstacle, a reminder of what you gave up, what you'll never be able to get back, what you'll never know how it could have been, because all you have is my memories of Henry, and deep in your heart it twists like a knife that in every one of those memories when he calls you 'Mommy' he was really talking to me."

She smirked and continued, "I will always be his mommy, while all you'll ever be is a fairy tale princess he got to live with in New York for awhile. Those fake memories will never stand up to the real ones. You'll always have second billing."

The coldness in Regina's voice and expression reminded Emma uncomfortably of those first few months in Storybrooke when Mayor Mills was trying to get rid of her. It had hurt then, because part of her had known it was right, and it hurt now, because nothing had really changed and probably never would. She'd given up her position when she gave up her son, and nothing could change the consequences of that, the bond that Henry had with Regina - whether she deserved it or not - and the bond that she would never have with her son. Or, for that matter, her mother.

"I know," Emma finally managed. "I'll always be the one who gave him up, and no matter how often Henry says it was to give him his best chance, that won't change that I abandoned him. I get that better than anyone. And I hate it. I hate that I want so badly to have that with him while being so angry with my parents for trying to connect with me, like they're not to blame at all for how my life sucked.

"Best chance or not, Henry wasn't happy here," she sighed, "and I'm as much at fault for that as you - but you were the villain and I was the hero of that story, Regina, so I'm always gonna get the blame."

"And right now," Regina answered, picking up an apple, "you have no idea how much satisfaction that gives me."

She rubbed it on her jacket while asking, "If that's all, I'm rather busy."

Emma grimaced in defeat, stood and walked out.

Regina watched her go, taking a bite of the Honey Crisp after she'd gone and looking out her window onto the Town Common. It was days like this she wished she'd taken a shovel from her garage when she discovered that woman cutting up her tree with a chainsaw - and then whacked her over the back of the head, cut her up in the bathtub, and used her Savior parts as mulch.

No, they were not friends. They were never going to be friends.

Though, Regina considered as she watched Ruby Lucas walk alone across the grass, 'friendship' with a member of that bloodline was hardly something to strive toward.

Well, this day truly sucked, Emma decided as she sat in a booth at Granny's. First, she'd had to let out Henry and Hook, the former who refused to join her for breakfast and the later who blaming her for "getting arse raped" and threatening to sue the department for complicitness in medical malpractice, all words she was shocked the pirate even knew.

Then she got snarked at by Regina when trying to apologize. And she'd thought it was a really good apology, too, like clever and stuff.

And now Neal had stood her up for coffee, which she should have seen coming just like Regina's response to taking apples off of her own tree. It seemed to Emma that she really stunk at trying to make amends with people she'd hurt. The worst part, she mused, was that some didn't even deserve her making amends with them, but she really did have this annoying need to please people, and in particular a need to be liked by people who were unlikable... which was really messed up.

"You look worse than Grumpy this morning," Tinkerbell remarked while refreshing Emma's coffee.

"Neal stood me up," Emma grumbled.

"Well, you did stand him up and then proceeded to make cow eyes at Captain Syphilis as Pan's Curse was barreling toward us. Plus the whole him dying to get back to you and you acting like he never came back into your life at all the very next day."

"Thanks for that," Emma glowered. "I'm aware. And thank you for encouraging Hook to stalk me, Tink."

"Hey, I just think Bae deserves better than you," the ex-fairy stated bluntly.

"Yeah, and you think Regina and Robin deserve each other too," scoffed Emma.

"Well, she's a murderous witch queen, and he's an honorless creep who wants to shag a murdeorus witch queen," shrugged Tinkerbell. "If they deserved each other as novices to make each other better people, now they deserve each other as a couple of skanks who'll reinforce each other's douchery. That's how soulmates work. You meet at the right time, when you're in sync in a good way and you complete each other, make each other better, your relationship is a love for the ages. You wait too long and then try to force what's long past its expiration date, and there's a good chance you'll end up in a co-dependent, self-destructive relationshit."

"So, basically," Emma surmised, "you've been encouraging all of us into unhealthy relationships just to fuck with us?"

"Damn straight!" Tinkerbell nodded. "I got screwed over by the fairies, I got betrayed by the humans. Why should I help any of you?"

"But I thought you just told Regina not to pursue Robin."

"Duh. I'm fucking with her. Bitch ruined my life. I tried to do her a solid. I saved her life from a suicide attempt and the bitch sold me out for no reason," huffed Tinkerbell. "She could have said she wasn't ready for love. Instead, she set me up to steal that pixie dust and when she chickened out, did she give me a heads up? No. She left me there hanging, thinking I'd helped someone, that I'd shown the Blue Bitch that just because you foresaw someone could go full evil didn't mean it was wrong to try and steer them away from that path. I got de-winged and exiled to Neverland for eternity. If you hadn't taken me with you, I'd still be there rotting for not being that sparkly hoe's blind little minion."

"Then why did you try go back to being a fairy?"

Tinkerbell shrugged. "Why did you keep flirting with Captain Barely Functional Alcoholic every time he went behind your back to do something vengeful, stupid, or, Hell out right insulted you to your face?" she challenged. "Self-loathing-filled glutton for punishment. I screwed up. I thought I was better, smarter, more compassionate than I really was. I was just naive and foolish and arrogant. Did I deserve to spend eternity in an acursed jungle? No. But I shouldn't have done what I did. It was full stop stupid. And now... I just want to prove that I've learned from my mistakes. I want that snotty bimbo to see that I know where I screwed up and that I can do a better job - even if I think she's an irredeemable cunt who's probably got some nefarious plan to kill off humanity and take over the world. I mean, she's the closest thing a fairy has to a mother, so I'm basically programmed to crave her approval even when I hate her guts."

Grimacing, Emma considered, "Maybe I lucked out not being raised by my mother then."

"Or maybe it fucked you up more. Who can say?" Tinkerbell responded. "Well, Dr. Hopper could probably say. You should make an appointment. He's pretty booked, though. I'm seeing him for my anger management. Every time I feel like I might punch someone in the tits, I take a breath and repeat 'serenity now'. You should try it. Oh, and the avocados. I'm obligated to tell you to try the avocados, even though it's April and they're from Chile and came on the mysterious night supply shadow train."

"Shadow train?"

"You never once thought about how supplies get to a cursed town no one can find or leave? Obviously, it's a shadow train."

Emma just nodded, because of course it was. She'd heard stories like that when she was locked up in Arizona. Hell, maybe it was even the same one that one of her cellblock mates insisted she'd seen... though she was a meth addict, so that was fifty-fifty.

"Gimme a grilled cheese with some avocado to go," Emma sighed.

AN: OUAT and friendship is even more toxic than OUAT and romance. The train thing is a real myth from Willcox, Arizona. I figured even if the writers don't give a shit about their magical curse rules, there has to be an explanation for how in the flying fuck a freight train was able to cross inside the border of Storyrbrooke. It couldn't have been that steam engine from Arizona myth, but who can say what parallel literary universe it might have come from? I like to think if Bo Beep is a warlord, then it's from The Little Engine That Could-verse and instead of an enchanting tale of a little train filled with toys, books, fruit, milk and treats for "all those good little boys and girls on the other side of the mountain" the poor train was punished for something and has been sentenced to bringing avocados and Tampax to all those assholes on the other side of the Dark Curse line.

Next up: What are Rumbelle up to? What new story facts have appeared in Henry's book? Will Hook's sphincter ever recover?