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 SEVENTEEN

I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM... BECAUSE THE ICE CREAM LADY IS A PSYCHOTIC SNOW WITCH!

"I can't believe my grandparents still haven't named my uncle," snorted Henry as he walked with his dad down Main Street. "I mean, how hard can it be to name a baby?"

Technically, he was supposed to be in school, but ever since the Curse broke, school was more like college in that kids just ditched whenever they felt like it and no one seemed to really notice.

There wasn't much motivation to go to school and learn about a world they could never see outside of Storybrooke, professions that were pointless here, and neither were they much interested in learning about the abysmally sexist, racist, and classist world they might well still be doomed to return to when the magic that sustained Storybrooke inevitably ran out and their parents, who had some insane nostalgia for that disenchanted pile of social inequality and bigotry, would force them all to jump through some portal back to open sewers and chastity belts.

And, yes, Henry knew what chastity belts were no thanks to listening to Hook during their shared incarceration, a night that would probably give him nightmares until he was old and gray and balding... like Hook, who had threatened him with bodily harm if he told anyone that he'd started losing his hair about fifty years ago during his trips outside of Neverland and was now on some cocktail of drugs from Dr. Whale that used werewolf spit from Ruby that he hoped could replicate the pomade made from werewolf cum that he'd been using in the Enchanted Forest to curb his male pattern baldness as Neverland's magic began to fade and time was no longer quite so standing still.

In short, Henry was traumatized and hadn't objected to Regina saying he needed to go back to therapy. His first session was tomorrow, and he was hoping Dr. Hopper could give him some anti-anxiety meds for dealing with all of the stuff he now knew about Hook's anatomy and sexual function - or dysfunction. Emma had truly and maliciously punished him!

"Well, considering all the people in your family named for assholes and namesaking victims of those assholes by the aforementioned assholes, and just thewhole 'Snow White' in general as a name, taking their time might not be a bad thing," Neal considered.

"I guess that's true," agreed Henry.

"Hey, my mother hated me so much she named me 'fatal fire' and a fucking candle flame got me killed," continued Neal who amended, "Also, don't tell either of your mothers I said 'assholes' and 'fucking' or I might end up like Hook."

"Names have power. Shitty tragic power," sighed Henry. "Regina was named by her bat-crap crazy mother who wanted her to be Queen. Emma was named by an old lady with hearing problems and a blanket-"

"And toting that abandonment blanket and the name it gave her around for twenty-eight years kinda screwed her up real bad, yeah," concluded Neal.

"What do you suppose being named by your mother after her father that she murdered and her lover that her mother murdered means?"

"Well, realizing you could end up screwed up is the first step to not ending up screwed up," Neal advised. "You just gotta find a better, healthier, connotation for your name than your patricided grandpa and your mom's murdered first lover who tried to strangle you to death after being resurrected as a monster."

"Yeah, still not exactly over that one either."

"You could also change your name," suggested Neal, "though I've been told that's not entirely healthy either, the not dealing with the shitty name that screwed you over. Still, 'Baelfire' is an awful name. First time I used it, the social services people thought I was some Bosnian refugee who'd stowed away on a ship. Only reason I got a social security number and a way into the system that is existence in this world. Didn't figure that was something I wanted to be defined by either, even if the 'my father was a warlord' story was believable enough, so when I finally got free, I took an alias from a poet I liked... though, to be fair, I didn't actually intend to emulate the whole under-aged pregnant wife thing. And I don't do dudes, not that there's anything wrong with swinging both ways... just not while drugging and boozing it up around the country, probably. So... don't do that."

"Ah... okay."

"And that includes Pixie Dust, Avalon Sand, and whatever other magical narcotic shit my father and your mom probably have bottled in their basements. You've seen what pixie dust has done to Regina and Robin. That crap is still in their systems making them obsess over each other like teenage idiots. To say nothing of Emma and Hook getting dosed in Neverland."

Henry grimaced. "Which is kinda half my fault since Pan conned me into tossing that stuff around," he sighed. "I basically soul-mated them."

"You can't really soul-mate people, just fake them out with magic, and pixie dust is the most potent of that," Neal said. "No way to even know for sure if Regina and Robin are soulmates or if the Blue Fairy set Tinkerbell up to ensure that Regina would continue down her path to darkness so she'd cast my father's curse. I wouldn't put it past her after she gave me that bean to get rid of him and when that failed did jack shit to find me. I'd punch her in the tits too if that was socially acceptable, to be honest.

"Also, don't say 'tits'. Only women can say 'tits' without it being sexist."

"Then why do women think it's sexy when Hook says it?"

"Because he's pretty. Women are just as shallow as men."

"So... they'd think he was a creepy pervert if they knew he had more real hair on his chest than his head?"

Neal nearly walked into a lamp post. "Hook is bald?"

Hook just happened to be walking carefully out of Any Given Sundae with a cup of rum raisin ice cream, glared at Henry, and hissed, "Balding. And not anymore! I'm taking meds, okay! You can't tell anyone! My looks are my only marketable commodity! I'd be destitute without them!"

Neal crossed his arms, "You stop hitting on Emma, because that is not gonna happen with or without hair on your head, and I won't tell anyone you're taking hair tonic to keep from looking like a giant penis. Speaking of which, your leather foreskin really smells."

Hook glared and defended, "It's Zelena's death stink! I was locked in that bloody cell all night!"

"Guess you should have let me keep the coat then," smirked Neal. "Too bad you can't wash leather. Maybe my pops has a spell for dead witch stink... for a price, of course."

The pirate gave him the finger and then gingerly crossed the street.

"He's such a tool," sighed Henry, heading into the ice cream shop.

Ingrid - or Sarah Fisher as she went by in Storybrooke just in case Regina tied her to a non-cursed name, even though that was unlikely since she altered Regina's memories - had been the purveyor of Any Given Sundae since 2001: so named for her love of Cameron Diaz, sports that caused head injuries resulting in memory loss, and puns.

After she'd failed to locate Emma, Ingrid decided to just wait for her in the boring little town where nothing happened, which wasn't much different than her castle when she wasn't allowed out because of her powers.

Over the years, while waiting for a prophesy foretold by a creepy old sorcerer, Sarah had learned everyone's favorite ice cream flavor.

Snow White liked "Winter White Chocolate" though it was now fat free vanilla frozen yogurt to drop the baby weight. Spoiler alert: the yogurt was not remotely fat free and the woman was going to remain the size of a small blimp if she kept it up!

Her husband, though only a recent customer, liked "Old Fashioned Butter Pecan". He was an old-timey sort of guy with the flannel, the truck, and not realizing that chivalry should be dead because it was more like chauvinism.

Their daughter was a "Rocky Road" girl. Hers certainly had been. Considering how often Emma came to buy pints of the stuff, it was surprising she could fit in her ass-tight jeans... but then she must have gotten her father's metabolism, lucky girl.

Regina, since the Curse was broken, had switched to "Black Walnut", because apparently Dr. Hopper felt she needed to make small changes in her life as part of her (half-assed at best) redemption journey. At least she'd chosen something more refined than her goober of a (ex)boyfriend who'd come in here a few days ago to buy a whole gallon of "Cookie Dough" which he said was for Roland, but she knew he was just going to sit out in the woods and eat the whole thing!

And then there was Henry, the kid who used to love chocolate, but ever since his return from New York City-

"German Chocolate Cake in a sugar cone!" Henry ordered.

"Someone's growing up," said Ingrid with a wink at Neal. "He used to be a straight chocolate kid."

Henry rolled his eyes and Ingrid asked Neal, "Can I interest you in a sample of my newest limited time flavor?"

"Love Potion Number Thirty-One?" Neal noted the flavor which looked like the Snow Queen blew someone up and then froze their liquefied insides. "No thanks. I'll take a scoop of 'Pumpkin Pie' and a scoop of 'Nutty Coconut' in a waffle cone."

"An odd combination, but the customer is always right."

"What can I say? I'm an enigma. I'd say it was two conflicting identities, but I was spared the whole Curse thing," Neal replied. "Must be hard, reconciling that."

"There are days it gives me headaches."

"I'll bet."

Back outside with their ice cream, Henry asked, "So... that's it? We just wait."

"Tracking charm on the money should lead us to her magical mobile meth lab... or whatever it is she does in it other than obsessing over Emma."

"That's so creepy," said Henry. "I mean, this town is full of creepy people with crazy ideas, but believing there's a prophesy that her niece and my mom are the reincarnations of her dead sisters is nuts..."

"Particularly since Elsa's mother died after she was born," scoffed Neal, "but I think it's more like a belief she can drag their souls back from the Underworld and swap them with Emma and Elsa. Of course, with Elsa still stuck in that urn back in the Dark Castle, she'll be waiting for a long time, while Mickey Mouse is probably miffed and panicking that his carefully manipulated prophesy that would turn Emma into the Dark One and bring her to Camelot to free Merlin, so Merlin could die, and the Dark Ones could unleash the Underworld upon humanity or in some other way unravel the fabric of reality isn't going according to plan."

"You really think that's what the guy who owns that big mansion wants?"

"It's a theory in progress," Neal admitted, "but nothing he did has been beneficial to anyone nor functioned by Merlin's ethical code. It's possible Isaac hated him and was trying to undermine him for a good reason -he just decided to do it for selfish reasons rather than saving humanity. Either way, Merlin's apprentice is a douchebag who employed another douchebag, and Merlin is probably better off staying a tree."

"I still don't get how Mom met Merlin when she was little if he had already been turned into a tree by Nimue, who shouldn't even have existed as a physical person anymore because the Dark One curse had been transferred."

Neal patted him on the back. "Don't strain your brain, Henry. Like I said, history was retroactively rewritten, so not all of that would have happened this time where things didn't get screwed up by Zelena's spell. There really is only one Dark One at a time, but unraveling reality split and multiplied the Darkness, creating more Dark Ones than could logically have even existed between the time of Nimue and my father. It was a lot of compounding paradoxes that weakened reality to the point that one final spell ended the universe."

"After this universe was already ended by the creation of that one, because two universes can't coexist on the same plain of reality and you can only really travel forward in time because traveling backward in time creates a paradox that negates you existing and/or the circumstances under which you'd go back in time, hence a new universe with a different history had to be created, but the circumstances under which it was created made it defective."

"Yes, exactly," Neal confirmed. "You've got a mind for this sort of thing, Henry."

"Yeah, well, lot of good science and math'll do me here or in the Enchanted Forest," he grumbled. "I could go to Mars or something, but instead I'm stuck here. I mean, I didn't want Emma to leave and not be with her parents just because she was afraid of bad stuff happening, and I don't want to not have contact with my mom, because she is my mom, and I want her to be a better person, and I don't think she would if I wasn't around to keep her from killing people... But I'd like to have a choice, you know? To one day be able to choose my own path. It's just... I didn't think it through, exactly."

"Your heart was in the right place, and I'm sure you're smart enough that you can fake a degree from MIT."

Henry smiled at that. "Thanks, Dad."

AN: I know, I know, making fun of Ginny's baby weight isn't cool, but she really put on the pounds and took absurdly long to lose them considering how little screetime she had. And, okay, it's mean to call out Colin's balding noggin, but rumor has it he's looking to get hair plugs because he's embarrassed by how his hair (and presumably that awful toupee) look on screen. Between the two of them, kudos to Ginny for not being vane! I don't remember what flavor Regina was given in that dumb retcon flashback to explain Ingrid being in Storybrooke, sorry. Or if Emma was given a flavor when she remembered arguing with Ingrid in the ice cream shop. If anyone does, I'll put that in. (Question: If Hook only has one hand, how does he carry a cup of ice cream and use that tiny little pink plastic spoon? Beats me!)

Next up: Ingrid builds an ice wall to keep out Mexicans... or something... not like anyone really gives a shit, am I right?