Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
General Note: A slight edit was made to Chapter 35. Not overly important, but required to prevent later retcon.
PART II
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SECRETS & LIES
Using magic to contain one of glowy sprite things, Emma moved her hand toward Hook's chest. The creature fought her efforts, but she was ultimately stronger.
Hook raised a brow as the ash glowed and melted into his skin.
"Trying to light my fire, Swan?"
She rolled her eyes. "Trying to protect you from being mind-whammied by Arthur into betraying us. We can't exactly walk into Camelot with a bag of anti-dark magic creatures without it raising suspicions," she told him before repeating the procedure with Neal, to which the sprite was far more agreeable.
"What about the flame?" Hook asked. "Walking into Camelot with an ancient anti-dark magic relic is hardly not suspicious, Swan. Won't the sword sense it's magical nemesis?"
"Maybe," sighed Emma.
She'd thought of that. Excalibur was, essentially in whatever form it took, the darkest of magic and despair cursed onto (fairy tale) man by Satan. The flame that Promethius stole from the gods was a counter to that, a spark of the lightest of magic and hope created by God. The two would cancel each other out - or so that was the original story Emma was given.
So, yeah, maybe Excalibur, even incomplete, would sense the Flame and somehow alert whoever was wielding it that an enemy was in their midst. They'd have to deal with that when they crossed that drawbridge.
"We have to be prepared for anything," Neal interjected. "Camelot doesn't work magically like any other place in this world."
"Why not?" asked the pirate.
"Because of how it was recreated. It's like Storybrooke. A kingdom that essentially didn't exist until it was formed in the Land Without Magic. Merlin wanted to rid himself of the Grail and the power that came with it, which he saw as a curse. Turned out having a magical kingdom in a world incompatible with magic and full of greedy and superstitious people who coveted magic didn't work out so well, though, so they returned to this world. But a kingdom once destroyed can never again come into being as it was. It was altered. Magic was altered.
"Snow White," Neal continued, "never should have been able to split her heart to outwit the price of a curse. She didn't entirely outwit it, but she did manage to split her heart and somehow have her and David survive in Storybrooke with half a heart each.
"And even though Camelot only underwent the one reversal," he added, "it's older, created using the full strength of the Dark Curse directly siphoned from the Grail rather than the leftovers that my father used to transform our part of the Enchanted Forest into Storybrooke. Therefore, it's older, darker, and magic is more potent and more unpredictable. Also, time slowed down to something like Neverland after Merlin was turned into a tree. Whatever people think is like five years is more like five hundred. They're actually older than us."
"What we need is to find Lancelot," said Emma. "Somehow, he escaped Camelot's wards that, like Storybrooke, should keep anyone from leaving. But he went back for some reason before the Dark Curse was cast, maybe because he'd heard rumors that it was connected to Excalibur and thought he could steal it from 'Arthur' and save everyone."
"Or the other kingdoms in the Enchanted Forest just hate black people more," offered Hook with a shrug. "I mean, at least these people in their delusions of loving their tyrant king idolize Merlin as their savior."
"They think he's an old white guy with a beard," said Neal.
"Don't worry, as a sleazy white man who considers women a place to store his dick," amended Emma, "you'll be welcomed like a visiting king."
"Maybe this Farquaad isn't so bad then," the pirate considered, earning a disgusted look from his companions.
"He murdered a good man, brainwashed his wife, subjugated an entire kingdom, and plans to unleash the Underworld upon the Enchanted Forest using the souls of those who try to stop him in exchange for opening the portal."
"So, what you're saying is, if I join him..."
"I already marked you with anti-dark mojo," Emma pointed out. "Besides, he regularly murders his devoted followers that he uses as pawns to achieve and maintain his power. You'll be one more idiot with a jousting lace through your head."
Hook glowered. "Bugger. Being one of the good guys is not remotely rewarding without a sexual conquest!"
"Well," Neal shrugged, "there's always the possibility that if he's separated from the influence of Excalibur he'll be content with just keeping his kingdom of brainwashed people and not try to open a portal to the Underworld to let all the exiled lesser divine beings run amuck."
"Too bad Merlin didn't relay any of this last time around, before he got murdered," Emma sighed under her breath.
"Well, he was under Arthur's control," Neal reminded. "And if we're going down that route, it's too bad you instantly forgave his murderer and then covered up the crime to hide your complicitness in creating another Dark One."
"Wait... what?" Hook demanded, coming to a halt and then gave them an annoyed look.
"Nothing," said Emma. "Figure of speech."
"That is not a 'figure of speech'. Enough of these riddles you two have been snarking since Nealfire fell out of the sky! If I am going to risk my life to get this cup-sword, then I deserve to know what is going on? What do you mean about creating another Dark One?"
Emma threw Neal a furious look, then sighed and told Hook, "I didn't stop the time portal the first time, okay? There was another timeline for awhile before I fixed what I messed which had led to me becoming the Dark One and also turning you into the Dark One after which you murdered Merlin and I took everyone's memories including yours so I could try to fix everything without anyone knowing what I'd done, but you found out and tried to open a portal to the Underworld to bring dead Dark Ones back to life in exchange for the souls of my family. Then at the last moment you pulled a Regina and decided to try and clean up your mess, which meant I had to kill you. I stabbed you with the reforged sword, you died, and then, in my stupidest move yet, I dragged my whole family to the Underworld anyway to find you and split my heart so I could bring you back to life... which seemed like a good idea at the time but defied so many laws of magic, morality, integrity, and common sense that the universe imploded, but not before I died and was given the chance to go back and reset the original timeline that went to literal almost Hell because we fell through that time portal which caused me to lose my soul, destroyed that universe and replaced it with a new defective one that I then, as I said, fucked up even more by trading every ounce of dignity I had to debase myself to be your Milah replacement.
"I turned my back on my family, on my son, on justice and everything that's right," Emma told him coolly, "because of you. I traded my independence, my individuality, bound my life and death to you, even though I barely knew you, even though all you ever did was manipulate me, lie to me, insult me, and make me feel guilty for all the bad things you did.
"You're like a disease that infected me, Hook," Emma said and scoffed. "Actually, you did give me syphilis, a virulent strain that took divine intervention to cure, so thanks for that. I hope it rots your brain and your dick falls off!"
On that exclamation, Emma stomped off ahead of them, furious at pretty much everything.
Hook watched her go, processing everything, then concluded, "So, I did bed Emma then!"
Neal snorted. "Yeah, you did. You married and bedded your great granddaughter, you sick pervert."
"My... what?"
"Queen Eva was your daughter. You raped her barmaid mother, she gave the kid to my father who facilitated two nobles in her secret adoption, she grew into a beautiful but cruel blue-eyed, black-haired little bitch princess who publicly destroyed Cora's virtue and let the woman's rapist go free so she could marry Leopold with whom she had Snow White who subsequently gave birth to Emma - which makes her your great granddaughter, and thus your sexual infatuation with her and previous reciprocation of that extremely disgusting."
Hook started at Neal for a good minute, then bellowed an angry, "SWAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!" and stalked after her, lashing ferns with his hook as he went.
"Why in the seven hells did you not tell me you were my kin!?" Hook demanded after catching up with the angry princess.
"Because I don't want to be related to you!" Emma snarled. "You're vile and disgusting and even if we weren't, I'm ashamed and disgusted with myself that I ever had any feelings other than grudging gratitude for lending me your ship to save Henry and getting me that memory potion! The only thing worse than knowing I actually let you inside of me is knowing I have your nasty little genes inside me!"
She shoved him as she spoke, slamming Hook back into a tree and drew a knife, holding it to his throat as she had done when they first met.
"Woa, E-"
"Every horrible aspect of my personality," Emma snapped, pressing the blade against his scruff, "every vice I've been fighting against since the day I was born is because of you! You're the reason that both my mother and grandmother were snotty little brats who grew up to think they were saints while simultaneously destroying lives with their narcissism!" she shouted. "You're the reason I ended up caring more about getting laid than spending time with my son because you're completely incapable of empathy, and sometimes I think the only reason I ever was came from the fucking spell my parents had done to give me an extra helping of goodness!"
Emma dropped the knife, choked back a sob, and purple poofed away. Neal had reached them in time to hear most of her rant and picked up the knife as Hook rubbed at the bleeding cut on his throat.
"Good thing she hadn't found Excalibur yet," snorted Neal and at Hook's bewildered look explained, "A paper cut from that thing will kill you."
"Fantastic," grumbled Hook. "We're stuck on a suicide mission with an emotionally unstable sorceress!"
"She definitely gets the unstable from you."
"Shut up! This is a bloody nightmare! I'm in love with my own great granddaughter who abandoned us in a forest full of mind-controled murderers!"
Neal glared at him. "You really are an asshole, you know that?"
"Well, as you said, it's heredity, so I am going to blame my father."
"That you murdered. Did he murder his father?"
"I never met my grandfather, so I suppose it's a possibility."
"Yeah, that's what your family does. Murder people and pass off blame onto previous generations."
"That's why you're no longer into Swan then," Hook deduced. "You're just as disgusted as she is to be related to me, the man who took your mother. How tragic for you. Falling in love with the descendant of someone you so revile. That's even worse than my plight, mate."
"Like you actually can comprehend love, you geneticly defective slut," Neal scoffed. "Not sure Emma can either thanks to your genetic contribution and her shitty upbringing. I'd like to hope she has enough of David's mother in her to counteract your psycopathy, but she didn't exactly fight it last time around when she still had a soul."
"That's rather harsh, mate."
"It's honest, which is more than you've ever been with her," Neal accused. "I love Emma. I'll always love her. But it's hard to stay in love with someone who just keeps on hurting you. And that's what we ended up being to each other, because of assholes like you. I hurt her even though I didn't want to, and because of that, all that good she had was overshadowed by the darkness, or by that void her parents left in her that she filled by associating with pricks like you, and because of that she became the worse version of herself, someone who hurt me back because she did want me to suffer as she had."
Neal shook his head. "I can forgive a lot. I forgave my old man. But no matter how many times I tell myself that Emma lost her soul, that she was a conscienceless version of herself trapped in a messed up universe, that even before that she had lost important memories thanks to Ingrid and had other fake memories messing with her own thanks to Regina, and the whole stupid spell thing her parents did... I can't escape that she countered my genuine remorse with apathy.
"I died, and she didn't care while she went to the Underworld for you after you dated for like a fucking month," Neal sighed. "Before that, she even wished me dead to spare herself the inconvenience of having to feel anything but relief that I wasn't there to complicate her emotionally stunted life. She wanted to choose the psychopath side of her family tree, because it was easier to just twist lust into love, and she had the magical power to make that good enough to fool fate."
Neal shook his head and conceded, "You're right about one thing. That's not someone who's stable. That's not someone I want to split my heart for or be called their soulmate."
With a sigh, he concluded, "You are what you love, not what loves you. And I don't want to be that."
Hook rolled his eyes and responded, "Yeah, well, considering she's my kin, it doesn't seem' fate' gives any of us much of a choice in that, does it? You don't choose who you love, even if it goes against the laws of gods and nature."
"But you can choose not to act on it," Neal countered, "and that's what sets the heroes apart from the villains."
"Then being a hero is overrated, just as I always thought," scoffed Hook.
Suddenly there was a rustling in the undergrowth and Hook let out a sigh. "Look, Swa-ah, bugger!"
Because it wasn't Emma. It was a mob of men in rather cheap looking red and blue tunics with swords and a brainwashed agenda.
Neal sighed and raised his hands while muttering, "Oh, farts."
AN: Yeah, I know, Neal and Hook having a conversation about Emma and romance is even worse than Hook and Belle discussing loving Rumple. It's seven ways from Sunday wrong.
Next up: The Charmings finally settle on a name. What will it be? Prince Humperdink? Prince Valiant? The Artist Formerly Known as Prince? Does 'Blue Ivy' work for a boy? And unrelated, if Zelena hadn't died and still raped Robin and had his baby but gave it her 'surname' would she have named it 'North West' to commemorate killing the Good Witch of the North? And if it was then named 'North West Hood' would it sound like the whitest suburb ever where 50's Fuck Date Emma and Hook would have lived in whatever temporally differed throwback alternate reality that night occurred in? *Discuss*