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-FIVE

WHITE TULIP

"I deserved to be king," defended Farquaad from behind the bars of his cell. "When The Author came to me and told me of Arthur's research into The Grail... I wanted that power, a power I could not have in my land, even with the magic of his quill."

"You can't pull the 'I was just a pawn of a more evil villain' card," Emma retorted. "I don't care if the Ghost of Hitler told you to do it to get your happy ending that you deserved. It's bullshit. You don't get excuses when you used magic dust to brainwash people, including a woman you basically raped for five going on five hundred years."

"It was the only way to make them accept me after a few early missteps," huffed Farquaad. "The people disliked me. Not because I was a tyrant and a terrible leader who hosted baby fights, which I now realize is weird and not that entertaining even after the addition of the cobra, but because I spent all of my time researching. The people - my own wife - had no respect for a man of scholarly pursuits!"

"Because they were evil scholarly pursuits," scoffed Lancelot. "You missed every anniversary, every birthday, every solstice ball with your wife to study how to help unleash evil onto the world so you could rule this kingdom forever as some sick deal with the Devil."

"To be fair, I never actually met Satan," said Farquaad, "just his assistant Azreal. He was a douche."

"You're a douche," said Guineviere. "I don't even know what that means, but you are one. And the only reason people had no respect for intellectuals is because no one ever showed them that something positive could come from math and literature after Vortegan's culture of bloodshed. In retrospect, some book-learning might have clued us all in that our king was replaced by a psychotic impostor."

"Also," Hook interjected, "might have been a clue that your book-learning-obsessed 'king', instead of using his being king to build schools and libraries and printing presses spent all his time throwing balls and making speeches about how real heroism is saving damsels in distress."

Guineviere gave him an annoyed look and he shrugged and stated, "Just saying, luv."

"I was brainwashed."

"But before you were brainwashed. I mean, who can't tell when they're best friend from childhood that they've been shagging for years is replaced by a psychopath?"

"Yeah," scoffed Neal, "it's like not knowing you were the Dark One."

"That never happened!" Hook huffed.

"Not in any life you remember..."

While the group continued to argue, Emma noticed Merlin's pinched expression and followed him to the courtyard where he'd spent so long in arboreal form.

"I'm guessing that didn't go down quite how you foresaw, did it?" she prompted.

"Nothing every quite does."

"Got that right," sighed Emma and she shook her head. "I was hoping that this time would be different, a second chance, get everything right, get... forgiveness or respect or whatever for doing the right thing, for finally letting my walls down."

"You expected Neal would fall back into your arms. That he would put behind him those past grievances."

Emma sighed and wrapped he cloak more tightly around her for warmth as she answered, "It's just hard. I always seem to push the right people away at the wrong time and let the wrong people in at the right time... if that makes any sense. I know part of it is being messed up not having parents and then having famous parents and then having a brother who can be everything to them I never can and giving up my own kid whose always going to have a bond with Regina that I'll never be able to... to duplicate even with those fake memories. There's all of that and probably a shit ton more and the end result is that I don't choose the people I should when I should or how I should."

With a shrug Emma disparaged, "I guess I have a shitty gatekeeper. All I know is that when Neal hurt me, it took me until after he'd died twice to really forgive him, to love him again, so I can't really expect any different from him, can I?"

"It is always difficult to expect better of others than we are ourselves capable of," said Merlin.

"You're saying Neal is a better person than I am?"

"Perhaps just a less self-loathing person," the Wizard restated, "and I know a little something about that."

"What, the whole wanting to die to be rid of your immortality that turned your true love into the Dark One thing? Yeah, I get that," sighed Emma. "Been there, done that... sort of, maybe not the true love thing, although if it's all subjective, then maybe it doesn't matter magically speaking if it's incestuous and wrong?"

Emma shrugged again and continued, "I really messed up with romance. I got caught up in that fairy tale nonsense, you know? Like these stupid flowers," she complained of the pink monstrosities growing in a garden urn. "And every time Hook plagiarized some line from The Princess Bride or just looked dashing or whatever. I let myself get... caught up in his charm and mystery and danger and the whole 'legends' thing. I guess... I told myself that I acted distant and disinterested at the start of whatever we were because I cared too much and was afraid to lose him too. Even though that was dumb. I mean, what was I losing other than a fanboy? But having a fanboy felt good."

"There is nothing that saddens me more than someone who does not know their own heart," Merlin uttered. "Emma, I have watched you. All that time trapped as I was, I could still extend my consciousness to other worlds - as you know - always watching, waiting for you to free me. And I saw you many times let people through those walls. You fell for Neal, and even after you felt betrayed by him, you were beginning to fall for Graham - and Walsh. And you became close to August, an ally, a friend, when your only other confident was Henry.

"You embraced your family, your son, your role as mother. You found friends in Storybrooke - and in the Enchanted Forest," reminded Merlin, "so it's ridiculous to say that you acted distant and disinterested in Hook's pursuit because you 'cared too much' and were 'afraid to lose him too'. It saddened me to see you convince yourself of that, try to replicate your parents romance so hard to be 'one of us' and gain their respect."

Wincing, Emma muttered, "It's that obvious?"

"You were pretty out of character, even for being separated from your soul - something I also know a little bit about," said Merlin.

"You told your mother after Neverland that he would always be only a 'fun trip to Vegas' and that you would never trust him with your son," he continued, to which Emma grimaced. "Those are not the words of a woman in denial of some deep abiding affection, of some attraction, a love at first sight triggering a fear of abandonment and a defense mechanism to protect your heart."

"We must have had... some connection, though, right?" Emma sighed.

"Beyond blood kinship, you mean? I realize that tends to mean little in this world beyond inheritance, but someone being fated to see you to some self-realization doesn't require true love or even knocking boots-"

"Knocking boots? Seriously?"

"My pop culture terms may be a bit outdated," admitted Merlin. "My point, Emma, you didn't care too much. You didn't care at all," Merlin told her, "at least not until you'd failed at your mission so many times that your only way to stay in denial of that was a reinterpretation of the past. Well, that and a misplaced desperation to please your parents by emulating their love story so they wouldn't completely replace you with you brother," he amended.

"Don't try to reinterpret it again out of some feeling of shame for hurting Neal or dragging this ignorant Hook into the mess, imposing on him all sorts of anger for crimes he never committed. Perhaps that is unfair, but don't try to read fate or even badly contrived sympathy into your motivations. It's human to feel guilt and anger. But it's also human to not feel anything for someone who doesn't deserve more than apathy - and that includes family."

"I wish you wouldn't call him that," Emma grumbled. "I hate that he knows that. I hate that Neal knows that. That I'm... infected with whatever is wrong with that asshole, that it's in my DNA and it has to be at least half of what made me an asshole, inutero spell fuckery or not."

"Possibly," Merlin conceded, "but you don't have to be defined by either half, Emma. Or these walls that your mother made so big a deal of when you first got to Storybrooke, which seems to have gotten stuck in your head and blown out of proportion.

"Everyone has walls," Merlin continued, "and yes, yours were higher and thicker than most, but you have always managed to love and care. Using a fear of doing so as an excuse for initial indifference turned passionate romance is both insulting to you and to those you have genuinely loved-"

"Yeah, I get that," huffed Emma.

"And," Merlin continued unfazed, "perhaps you did let your walls down for that pirate, but only to cover up the lie that was your love, no different from your scheming to cover up my death that went so deep you had even yourself fooled that you shouldered all blame and your love could overcome even death without a price."

"There is always a price," Merlin stated. "There are things in which men should not meddle. Only God. Keep that in mind, Emma. You have been given a task, a divinely ordained task, but that does not make you divine. It does not give you the right to pass judgment on anyone, to bless them or damn them. That is a mistake that I made."

"The Grail and Nimue, you mean."

The Wizard let out a sigh of his own and shook his head.

"If I could go back and bury that goblet instead of drinking from it, our world would be entirely different," Merlin considered, "a history not plagued by the Dark One, by that vile demon inserted into our stories by Lucifer. I let myself be swayed by my vices, and in doing so I became the pawn of the Devil and damned every subsequent chapter, every new character in our world to a life and death in limbo. It is my fault," he admitted grimly, "that our people have inferior souls, forever banned from Heaven.

"And it is now, as it was once before," Merlin told Emma, "your task to right my wrong, to overcome the obstacles Satan created, the self-perpetuating 'plotholes' if you will that have prevented our people from overcoming all those tropes and clichés and evolving, growing up from children's stories to people who are whole and capable of breaking free from the chains that hold us in this literary bondage."

"But how?" Emma groaned. "I don't know how to do any of this! Even knowing what happened before, I still feel... trapped and manipulated by these 'plotholes'. If I can't break free of them, if I can't defeat them, how can I be anyone's savior?"

"I suppose it would be cliché to say to believe in yourself," Merlin joked.

"Yeah, no shit," Emma snorted. "I wanted to believe I could do this, but picking up these pieces is far, far easier said than done."

"In my long life, what I have experienced, and what I have born witness to as an observer," said Merlin, "have led me often to wonder on such things as 'Does the punishment fit the crime?' and 'Can you ever give a younger person back their innocence?' I have seen how these questions permeate everything in your life, Emma."

"I used to think I knew what life was about," Emma told the immortal sorcerer with a grimace. "Then I discovered I was a fairy tale princess and it was one crazy revelation after another and I realized... I don't know anymore. I have no idea. Even after death and being told I'm not really real and I have this important task, I still have no fucking clue what it's about. What being real is supposed to be."

"Cherish that moment," Merlin told her and at her confused look amended, "when you don't know what life is about. That's truth."

"Seriously? That sounds like some fake guru bullshit," Emma scoffed. "And, anyway, a lot of good that truth will do me now. Maybe if I could go back to who I was before I went 'full bitch', if I could make different choices. Or even better to before I came up with a plan to steal those watches or leave the meeting place when Neal didn't call so we could have gone to Canada together, raised Henry..."

"It wouldn't have changed things now, where your life ended up."

"You can't really know that," argued Emma. "I don't care how old and immortal you are."

"I know that if you went back to that fork in the road," responded Merlin, "you'd still have ended up here. Maybe not here exactly but somewhere similar. Your life would have taken a different path but still reached the same important highs and lows and brought you to a place where you lost Neal, where you had to save everyone - the only difference being that, perhaps, you would have understood love and succeeded."

He paused, then considered, "Or maybe you wouldn't have, and you still wouldn't be happy. Perhaps this is just your fate."

Merlin shrugged and said sagely, "At the end of every fork there's a cliff. Go ahead, take the road less traveled. You'll still find that cliff."

"But-"

"Whatever you think you could have changed in your life or his, Emma, you couldn't have," Merlin stated. "You were given a destiny, and it was always going to guide you, require that, in one way or another, you met and lost certain people, achieved certain things, and failed at others."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," Emma argued. "Either I screwed up my life or my life was fated to be screwed up and everyone I've ever met was just fate's bitch trying to push me in one direction or another?"

"I know it's little consolation," Merlin conceded. "I have certainly been 'fate's bitch' and been the reason that others suffered. My beloved... she had good reason to want Vortegan dead and doing so should not have corrupted her, but that demonic relic I had so foolishly believed was a gift from the gods twisted taking any life into corrupting her soul, binding it, and turning her body into a vessel for a magical virus that would infect so many down through the ages, turning my legacy into one of death and destruction of worlds.

"And those two boys," he sighed with a shake of his head. "I thought if I handed all of my knowledge to another he could keep the Dark Ones at bay until you came along as I had foreseen. I thought Arthur, born like your son with the Heart of the Truest Believer, could protect Camelot and Excalibur until that time - but the Darkness had become an entity that infected all of the shadows of our magical worlds and brought forth the weak-minded and ambitious with whispered promises of wealth and power to thwart my efforts at damage control.

"I should have known better," said Merlin. "I was a man trying to meddle in the affairs of Good and Evil that were begat far above and bellow the realms in which we mortals toil. I was given great powers by the darkest of fallen angels, compelled to forge the 'gift' into a weapon while believing I was doing God's work to protect his Holy Grail. All I did was sign over my true love's soul to Satan and ruin more worlds than you could ever know."

"So did I," Emma pointed. "Ruined all those worlds. We double ruined them and Existence ended. But I'm the one who was supposed to do something great. You were just a guy who got played."

"Perhaps, but I let hubris take over," Merlin argued. "I thought I could fix those mistakes and only compounded them. I foresaw that you would come, that you could save us - or damn us - and by interfering in your life, in just that one small moment when I distracted you as a girl, that I thought was significant in shaping your future, in assuring that our universe would be saved, I might well have caused the later, a self-fulfilling prophesy of destruction."

"I didn't even remember that moment until I met you again," Emma pointed out.

"But meeting me in that moment, Emma... Just a moment can alter the path of the future in ways not easily fixed. That moment... you missed what was important because I thought I knew what was important. All I did was frighten a small girl and no matter how I exerted my power to try and fix that, it spiraled out of control. My attempts to reset history with the next generation are something I have failed at repeatedly, I'm afraid," Merlin concluded.

"Yeah," Emma agreed, "you do have that Dumbledore vibe. All powerful and all knowing and on the side of good, but screwing over little kids to do all the hard work like you really think you're helping them, but we're just disposable pawns in some greater fight. No offense, but I wouldn't name any future hypothetical children after you."

"None taken," Merlin replied and smiled ruefully. "I must admit that I do like lemon drops and have been known to go commando under my robes."

Emma crinkled her nose. "More sharing than I needed there."

Merlin just shrugged and told her, "I cannot tell you which fork or path to take, Emma. I am the last person who should guide anyone after all of my failures at doing so. I myself have wondered if by my actions, in betraying God by drinking from the Grail, that everything that has happened to me since was Him punishing me.

"But I can tell you what life is. It's making the most of what you have, finding happiness in each small moment you can and letting that be enough, be your strength to make it through the big moments of darkness and despair.

"Life is in the small spaces, the little things that don't make it into fairy tales," said Merlin, "and that's where happiness and strength lies. Not epic adventures fighting and besting evil foes or passionate kisses in flowering fields.

"Life is in your son's smile, a kind gesture from a stranger, the quiet support of a friend. Those things, they are what sustains us at our most desolate, and it's those small kindness we bestow on others by which we are ultimately jud-"

Suddenly, the wizard let out a gasp and his body jerked as a wound appeared in his stomach, the broken blade of a sword.

As Excalibur was pulled free, Emma startled at the woman wielding it. Guineviere smirkingly declared, "Your guards shouldn't have let that bitch have a word alone with me."

In a rage, Emma conjured a burst of magic and slammed Fem-Farquaad into the castle battlements.

Merlin, meanwhile, collapsed to the ground.

"I... I can save you," Emma exclaimed, kneeling beside him. "The Flame..."

"No, you must use it to unbind me, fuse the blades, and banish the Darkness," Merlin rasped. "I have lived long enough."

Fighting tears, Emma pulled the small magic flame from her satchel, the Dark One dagger from a rather uncomfortable if kind of sexy garter belt, and then passed the bloody broken blade and its twisted tip into the fire. As she did, the blades fused and the name 'Merlin' flashed in gold, imbued but hidden from sight in the metal he had reshaped.

As Merlin drew his last breath, the sword fought - or the Darkness in it - did, and her arm shook with the effort, but then it broke free, all of the darkness swirling out and into the flame with the wizard's soul where it was burned away.

Just as before, it seemed far too anti-climatic to really be gone.

The flame, the sword, the dagger, and the man bound to it for over a thousand years were reduced to ash.

This time, Emma sent a silent prayer for the wizard's torture soul as she scattered the ashes into the wind.

It was with both heavy hearts and a sense of relief that the trio left Camelot under the leadership of Lancelot and Guineviere. Now with much-needed horses loaded up with supplies for their journey to the Dark Castle and beyond, they set out through the snow-covered field, now devoid of dots of demonic pink that Emma supposed would forever haunt her dreams.

The Dark One had been destroyed, but not without another causality... yet another that seemed unavoidable, predestined by fate to never know true happiness - or to have it snatched cruelly away and replaced by a series of well-intended misfortunes leading ultimately to a tragic death.

Hook, of course, cared little about any of it, just glad to be departing in search of his beloved ship.

Neal held hope that this meant they would return to Storybrooke to find his father cured - and without the possibility of relapse.

Emma just wanted to stop tilting at windmills and be happy, but she couldn't help wonder if it was too late to fix things the way she should have the first time, to be what Merlin had needed then - and what she was meant to have been if he hadn't interfered and sent her down a different path, one that led to her universal destruction.

Would she ever gain forgiveness for the things she'd done?

Something caught Emma's eye, and she slowed her horse peering down at a lone white tulip sprouting up through the fresh snow...

How odd, she thought, and wondered if that was some kind of magical sign...

AN: Sorry for leaving out how they got Gwen and exposed Arthur, but Camelot is boring me to fucking death here. Poor Merlin, dead again. Sorry if the matter of how Merlin and the Dark One are tied to the sword/dagger is wrong; that really confused the fuck out of me, and pretty sure the writers were just pulling it out of their asses consistency-wise. As I noted in Chapter 21, I had to go back and remove the line about the dagger from Chapter 20 as I realized the retcon error; if Emma didn't have the dagger with her, Rumple could have done the same spell on it to become an even more powerful Dark One somehow... and it seems the blades needed to be merged to actually trap and/or redirect the Dark One completely. Anyway, Arthur's line about baby fights is King Richard's from Galavant. Emma's conversation with Merlin: 1) post/137431819099/ive-always-had-a-problem-with-the-idea-of-h00ks on all the required "wall" related retcon for CS. 2) Crime and punishment is Carol Mendelsohn talking about Game of Silence, MRJ's new project. 3) "that my actions had betrayed Him and that everything that had happened to me since was God punishing me" is Walter Bishop from the Fringe episode "White Tulip". 4) The Good Wife's Ruth/Alicia conversation about fate and taking a different path with the late Will Gardner. 5) Merlin admitting to unintentionally distracting Emma from something of great importance that was ultimately the beginning of the end of the universe was inspired by the Fringe episode "Peter" in which The Observer September intends to witness something that will save the universe, but his presence actually causes it to be missed by Walter Bishop, thus bringing about events that, no matter what September does to try and change things, lead to the destruction of universes instead... and ultimately his death. (Poor Merlin. The black guy even gets whitewashed in death with a "white" tulip!)

Next up: Flashback to the goings on in Storybrooke as three storylines are about to collide in an awful fanfiction of a fanfiction!