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 TWENTY-TWO
THE POWER OF NAMES... IS PSYCHOLOGICAL, NOT MAGICAL, YOU IDIOT!
"Okay, that's it," Belle said when the couple walked in the front door, "you are naming your child today, otherwise, I am going on strike. And Granny has already refused on the grounds that she has to start over with embroidering her blanket, which means no one else in this town has the time or the disregard for personal safety to baby-sit your son."
Snow exchanged a guilty look with David and explained, "We just haven't found the right one yet. We'd settled on 'Neal'..."
"No one's buying that anymore, guys," Belle told them. "And if you didn't know before that was creepy and wrong-"
"That's not fair," argued Snow. "And we have tried to come up with a good name. We both like 'Lance', but apparently our friend Lancelot isn't actually dead, and it's considered unlucky to namesake a living acquaintance, and, well, there is a law in our kingdom about... you know... naming a royal heir after... well..."
"A not white as snow person?" groaned Belle. "You're the Queen. Change the law. Or don't. Maybe you should put someone else in charge of naming your son. Also, I am available for the position of god mother since Ruby has basically told you both to go to Hell. You owe me as much for forcing me to remain in a closed space with the man who had assaulted and shot me 'for my own good'."
"That was all Snow's idea," David defended.
"And for leaving me and Neal to rely on Regina for supplies to look for a way to get Rumple back so Neal could get back to Emma and Henry, which he only did by dying, and as a result, Emma apparently pledged her devotion to his skeazy step father, so now he has zero respect for your daughter who is miserable and spends her lunch hours moping in my library mutilating all of my copies of The Princess Bride."
"All right, all right," sighed Snow, "we'll pick something. By tomorrow."
"Good."
Belle pulled her coat from the rack by the door and strode primly out of the Loft, leaving the couple exchanging a worried look.
It was with a great deal of anxiety that the people of Storybrooke gathered in the Town Hall after a radio and TV broadcast alerted them to an emergency meeting called by their new mayor.
And so it was with something less like anxiety and more like extreme aggravation that they soon were informed by Mayor Blanchard-Nolan that they had been summoned to help name her son.
Yes, the bubbly new mayor stood in front of the assembled chairs with a Bingo basket telling everyone that since Neal Cassidy was back amongst the living and it would be confusing and awkward for the family now, they were going to rename their newborn son, but in the interest of being good leaders, Snow White and Prince Charming wanted "the people" to name their future leader.
It was further instructed that a charm had been placed on the Bingo basket to prevent any malicious suggestions, so there went anyone considering "I. P. Freely" or "Jesus F. Christ".
In contrast to what the majority of monarchs think, their people don't actually like them, and even if they do find them tolerable, they don't actually give a shit about their personal lives. At least, this was the case in The Enchanted Forest.
Who they paid their taxes to was really not relevant, so long as they weren't being massacred or starved... and so things hadn't been bad until Snow White had started rallying support against the Evil Queen and then spilled that over into King George's land.
The truth was, "the people" didn't actually like Snow White and Prince Charming anymore. All of the promises they'd made during that war had been broken. Their families were not safer, their farms were not more prosperous, they were not able to strive toward any occupation their heart desired. Not at all. Their families were threatened roughly ever one to three months by a magical apocalypse which usually killed about a dozen people whose funerals those two selfish jerks never attended. They no longer had farms, but were rather stuck in the same dead-end jobs they'd had under the Curse, because no matter what inspirational bullshit David Nolan had spouted at the town line, people couldn't just stop doing the jobs they had magically imbued skills to do when they all came from a world devoid of technology and pretty much everything else relevant to being a functional person in this world.
In short, if they didn't keep on with the lives Regina gave them, they'd all be shitting in the woods with her boyfriend.
So, no, the citizens of Storybrooke were not happy to be pulled out of their warm beds on a Saturday morning to deal with more tokenism.
But, of course, they obediently wrote down names on their ping-pong balls - not with any great enthusiasm or thoughtfulness, mind you - and then slumped back into their chairs, texting on their phones while the King and Queen of Cluelessness changed Little Prince No Name's diaper and Queen-Sort-of-Regent Regina griped at Prince-But-Not-Really-Because-He-Was-Born-A-Bastard Henry for trying to sneak off to Camelot.
When at last the little prince's butt was clean and swaddled in a diaper that finally didn't fall off, because neither of his parents had bothered to take any kind of childbirth and rearing classes, Snow and Charming toted the tot up to the front of the room and the King who was really just a Prince Consort if those two had obeyed actual established rules of royalty, spun the bin a dozen or so times.
"Well, this is it!" chirped Snow White, and she pulled out a the 42 ball and read, "Jermajesty Kyd?"
"What?" sputtered David and hissed in his wife's ear, "seriously!? No way are we naming him that, Snow!"
"Who would write such an atrocious name!?" Snow huffed, indignant. "If one of you have broken the charm, we will find you, so you'd better just admit to it! Who wrote this!? It's barely even legible!"
Of course, in the front row of the gathered assembly, Roland of Locksley raised his hand high and exclaimed, "Can I have a cookie now?"
Standing off to the side, Regina snorted, "You should have put an age line on your Goblet of Fire, Madam Mayor."
"We'll just pick another-"
"No can do, dearie!" piped up Rumplestiltskin from the back of the room where he'd mysteriously appeared in that creepy and dramatic way he always did. "You had me charm it. Your terms were quite clear. First name out is the one. Unless you'd like the price to circumvent that. Or, more than likely, little Jermajesty would pay it!"
David glared at his wife. "I told you we shouldn't have gone to him! Why do you always want to go to him when he always screws us over!?"
"It was a simple spell to keep our enemies from interfering, David! He wasn't being malicious!"
"No, you were just being shortsighted as usual in your requests," the Dark One pointed out. "Either way, it removes my son's name for your bloodline, which is good enough for me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going back to my nice warm house to do something that is not a gigantic waste of everyone's time."
And with that, everyone else got up grumbling and filed out of the Town Hall, leaving a defeated Mayor and annoyed suspended-without-pay co-Sheriff.
Smirking, Regina remarked, "You should probably stop at the ugly bird painting. Chances are you'll be looking at a recall soon. Oh, wait, you weren't even elected. Funny how you brought an angry mob to my house and made all sorts of demands about representation and living in a new democratic society, but you get one year back in ballgowns and sitting your ass on a cushy throne, and suddenly you're lapping up the power."
"You told me that it was my position because I cast the Curse!"
"And you believed me, so I could get a vacation from all of the civic employees who have decided since they are no longer under threat of dismemberment to slack off on their paperwork. Good luck with sorting through Mr. K's filing system while he takes an extended leave of absence for shingles."
Regina strutted out of the Town Hall onto the lawn where Robin was cleaning chocolate chip smudges off Roland's face.
"Regina," Robin greeted her with a hopeful look.
"We're still not back together," she said, and handed the many a wad of cash, "but this should get you a room at Granny's for the rest of the month."
"I feel rather bad about this," he said, but didn't refuse the money.
"They're idiots," Regina retorted. "They would have scarred him with whatever name they gave the boy."
"They did all right with Emma."
"Which Granny chose because she misheard Snow and had already embroidered the blanket and Snow felt too bad about it to say anything. They were going to call her 'Annawrad' which isn't even a correct spelling, presumably as some quip about her not having any dark potential. Subtlety is not exactly their strong-suit."
AN: Yes, Regina paid Robin to have Roland submit a stupid name. I like to think Roland came up with it himself at the Coronation after Emma's blowup over the name "Neal" and Regina overheard and began to plot the downfall of her frenemy through the humiliation of the next generation. The two parts of the chapter would suggest that Belle and Rumple might have been in on it, Belle's revenge for that lack of apology and being reduced to a book-lending babysitter who is otherwise completely ignored by The Charmings. Belle and Regina might dislike each other, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all! "Jermajesty" is the name of Jermaine Jackson's offspring. Yikes! "Kyd" is actually the name of David Duchovny and Tea Leoni's son. Celebrities should really be forced to take drug tests before signing a birth certificate! I almost went with "Blanket", but since I reserve that for Zelena's nonexistent baby, and this is also sort of another dig at Emma (she just can't win!), it seemed funnier. Plus, Henry would probably be cool with no longer being called "Kid" as it seems pretty clear he disliked it from the pilot. "Anawrad" is a Welsh name that means "undisgraced, free of shame". I was looking for anything that would shorten to "Anna", the name Emma was given in the original pilot script. How Regina would even know this is a plothole that will remain unfilled. Anyone know the significance of the number 42 here? I'll take more than one! (On an aside, Storybrooke is again operating Sheriff free. Which reminds me, if the Dwarfs went to Camelot with everyone, then why when everyone returned memory-less were the Dwarfs acting as deputies? Wasn't one of them dressed like Emma and driving the patrol car? So did they get bored after a week and somehow use the Granny's Portal to get back to Storybrooke or did not all of them go?)
Next up: Back to Camelot.