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-EIGHT
BAD FIC
One minute Henry was in the pawn shop with his grandfather trying to determine the whereabouts of the Snow Queen... and the next Rumplestiltskin had vanished along with the blizzard and everyone in town.
Exactly why Isaac would write everyone away without erasing the town was a mystery... though, as Henry thought about it on the very illegal drive out of Storybrooke, the creepy scribe probably wanted to do some sort of "Harry Potter World" type thing and turn the town into a theme park where people could take selfies in his bedroom.
Henry parked the Mercedes rather haphazardly in the parking lot of some fancy hotel with a banner advertising this douchebag's latest masterpiece, and pushed through crowds of fans who made Twilight stans look like academic NPR types until he'd reached their false god.
Isaac's expression fell. "Oh, it's you."
The Merry Men were a merry group of men. Okay, that sounded stupid and redundant, and quite honestly they were not remotely merry. They lived in the forest barely getting by after all. Plus, winter was coming, which meant the late Queen Eva's army of ice zombies that had been banished to the North beyond Queen Ingrid's ice wall would be trying to come down and kill them, so... that always sucked.
There had been a time when they'd aspired to steal from the rich and give to the poor, but it was rather difficult to get through the armed guards and magic spells that the rich used... and even if they did, other than stealing food, there wasn't much they could give away to the poor that wouldn't send up a red flag at the nearest pawn shop and get the people they'd wanted to help thrown in the Evil Witch Queen Snow White's dungeon.
It was, Neal of House Cassidy had to admit, a pretty shitty existence. And he'd been trapped in Neverland for like an eternity being tortured by Peter Pan! Of course, escaping there was worth just about anything, but he'd been hoping to get to another world, not the one he'd voluntarily left behind because his family had been killed in the Ogre Wars and he was poor and uneducated and would have ended up in the child slave trade.
As a young man, he'd gotten a job at a tavern owned by Robin of Locksley... who'd seemed to be a good man but turned out to be a spy for Snow White, selling out any dissenters - including his own wife.
Neal had fled with some of the others, formed up a posse of sorts with a vigilante life. They stuck it to the rich who were leaving the poor to rot, just as they had back in The Frontlands. Or, at least, they tried to. But Locksley was now Sheriff, after Snow ripped out the heart of the previous Sheriff for his failure to bring in her enemy Regina, and he was hunting traitors down with the Queen's guards.
Oh, there was a day when they might have been able to get help from the Dark One - for a price - but Rumplestiltskin was locked up by Snow White so he could no longer facilitate deals with her enemies - particularly, again, Regina.
That was something of a sordid soap opera mess, Neal considered as he whittled another arrow by the campfire.
Snow White was Regina's stepdaughter, but less than ten years separated them in age. Neal didn't know the full details and exactly who were the villains in the tale (perhaps both), but the two had met as respective child and teenager, Regina was married off unwillingly to King Leopold after Queen Eva's death, and Snow White, it seemed, didn't like her father paying attention to the pretty young woman - not that Regina had liked it either, apparently - and convinced Leopold that Regina had poisoned Eva and set up the whole thing to marry him with a plan to kill him and usurp his thrown.
Naturally, the King had thrown his wife in the dungeon... and within a year suffered a massive heart attack, leaving Snow White, barely eighteen, in charge of everything west of Sherwood Forest. Oh, and Snow White may or may not have killed Regina's father at some point in the whole mess.
Regardless, Snow White then took a lover, the once brave and honorably Prince James that rumor had it was really his evil twin David who orchestrated his death in a duel making some sort of deal with the miserly King Midas, and the two laid siege over the continent.
King George the Good was the first to fall, betrayed by his house fairy godmother who'd somehow been swayed into Snow's employ; some believed the Blue Fairy was playing all sides of this little war, anything to keep selling magic and enslaving Dwarves.
Again, regardless, Regina had ever since been a prisoner of Snow White, locked up in her father's mountainside fortress castle in an inhospitable icy wasteland while she and Prince James ruled and carried out their conquests from George's old castle where the Dark One was alleged to be still be locked up. Of course, rumor also had it that the Dark One was dying, so whatever magic he had may or may not have been compelled to use to imprison Regina all those years ago might be weakening... and allow anyone to enter the castle and pillage all of its riches (and, perhaps, find some secret to bring down Snow White).
Of course, Snow White and Prince James were not the only ones involved in this tyranny. Snow White was really just a steward for her cousins, a triumvirate of ice witches that ruled the continent across the eastern sea... though rumor had it that their governance was not truly equal and Queen Ingrid had her younger sisters under some spell acquired from the Dark One.
The people over there apparently called this land "Misthaven" for the thick fog that choked the coast, that made it easy for pirates to pillage and plunder seaside towns. Few people here had ever been to the naturally snowy land across the ocean or the hotter and more tropical kingdoms beyond that Ingrid and her sisters had yet to turn into snowy wastelands. Neal had once met a fierce pirate named Mulan from Shangri-la, a land even beyond the kingdom of Arendelle, but he had never met anyone from Arendelle; it was said that "The Snow Queen" had put an ice wall around the kingdom proper that no one could get through without magic.
It was also said that Snow White resented not being able to call herself The Snow Queen when it was her mother, Ingrid's aunt, who'd created the frozen zombie army that Queen Cora built the ice wall to keep out before Snow banished her to Wonderland.
Really, there were more crazy bitches with ice magic here than that show Zoom had super-powered speedsters.
He kind of missed TV.
That was the only good thing about an adventure to Victorian London World... several centuries after he'd last been there, a pit-stop on his way to Neverland. They'd been trying to steal some technology that might help against the zombies and Snow White... a job that went spare when the White Rabbit turned out to be a traitor working for Alice who got them locked up in a metal institution. If it wasn't for Jafar's magic staff, they'd have been stuck there being given "shock therapy" still. Any longer and they probably would have needed those rock trolls to restore their memories... though everyone said those things were pure evil, of course, and took your soul in exchange for memories.
Anyway, the Merry Men had tried to get into Snow's old castle once before in a roundabout way of trying to free Regina's mother Cora from Wonderland, where Snow had sent the kindly old woman, but the Mad Hatter and Knave of Hearts had betrayed them.
There was a lot of betrayal going around with the whole Wonderland thing, to be honest. It wasn't their best run.
Thankfully, they were able to escape with the help of Bo Peep's magical crook, the means by which they'd discerned the true nature of this evil monarchy as well. In it they had a magical contraption that allowed them see - or sometimes only hear, depending on the distance - goings on in other lands, between their enemies.
Some days it also picked up catchy musical numbers from what seemed to be another magical land where the people were cursed to burst into song about their feelings. Here, people were more likely to burst into mass murder over their feelings.
Probably neither one was very healthy.
Magic was weird.
"OWE! LET ME GO!"
Neal turned and found Jafar - former sorcerer exiled from Agraba to Wonderland by the Sultan Aladdin and his murderous wife Jasmine - holding a kid in odd clothes by the scruff of his neck.
"I found him snooping in the bushes," said Jafar. "He said he was looking for Baelfire."
That gave Neal a start. Outside of the Merry Men no one knew his birth name. He had put that moniker to rest a long time ago. Because, come on, it was a really stupid name. The only thing worse was his middle name. Baelfire Cosmo Cassidy! It was just cruel.
Neal approached the kid with a weird deja vu feeling. The Mad Hatter - before he betrayed them - used to say that deja vu was real, that you felt like you'd been somewhere or met someone before, because in an alternate parallel universe where time was different or you made different choices that led to slightly different outcomes, you had. His father used to say that it was the universe's way of telling you that you were on the right path. Of course, the first option came from an insane traitor and the second from a man who happily walked into battle in a genocidal war that ultimately wiped out most of The Frontlands, so there was nothing honorable about it.
"How do you know my name?" Neal demanded after shaking off the feeling.
"Duh," said the boy, "I'm your son."
"... Oh, and King Midas' daughter has finally set a date for the wedding," reported Court Advisor Archibald Cricket, standing before a severely dressed Snow White who sat upon her throne in a pose of boredom.
"Took her long enough. James only saved her 'true love', what, two years ago?" scoffed the Queen. "I was beginning to think we'd never see dividends for that agreement."
"To be fair, Your Majesty," Archibald reminded, "there was an agreed upon marriage contract for your children, and after-"
"I am well aware, Cricket," snapped Snow White. "Anyway, I've held up my end. Assuming Abigail isn't blessed with all sons, it's finalized."
From a spot beside the throne, looking even more bored, the Prince Consort uttered, "When is this ghastly gilded affair going to take place?"
"A month from Saturday," reported Archibald. "The bride and groom have registered with Fantastic Taxidermy Beasts and guests are encouraged to bring their trophy kills to be stuffed and mounted for later gilding by King Midas. The more exotic the better."
"I suppose you'll have to slay another dragon, dear," said Snow White to which her husband shrugged.
"Fine, whatever. I'm going to go rough up some villagers with Locksley," he declared. "Can't let them get too complacent."
Prince James gave his Queen a quick kiss on the corner of her mouth and a cheerful, "I'll see you for dinner, Shmoopiekins."
"Don't be late, Honeymuffin. And try to get all of your blood lust out of your system before dinner. It's getting quite hard to find new chefs."
As the Prince Consort headed off, Snow White inquired of her adviser, "Is that all, Cricket?"
"Erm, no, Your Majesty. The people of East Riverton are complaining about the stench from the corpses in West Riverton. Perhaps you could cast a freezing spell on the town?"
"I could, but I don't particularly feel like being generous with my magic today." Snow White snapped her fingers at one of the guards. "You, whatever your name is-"
"Alexander."
"Whatever. Go tell my husband to kill everyone in East Riverton."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Smiling with satisfaction, the Queen proclaimed, "That should kill two birds with one stone. Speaking of which, has the cooking staff killed those swans yet? Their trumpeting every morning is cutting into my beauty sleep."
"I'll inquire about your at once, Your Majesty," said Archibald with a bow before skittering off like the bug he so often turned into to spy for his monarch.
Growing bored with sitting on her fancy thrown, Snow White retreated in the direction of her bed chamber to consider her selection of ball gowns for Abigail's wedding.
She really did love weddings. Weddings and wars. If she hadn't been born royal, surely her calling would have been to combine the age old arts of wedding planning and weapons dealing. Fortunately, she was born a princess and so she didn't have to work to survive in this patriarchal society. She just had to kill lots of people and instill abject terror to ensure she wasn't toppled by some chauvinist pig tyrant.
Thankfully, while her "prince" was a chauvinist pig, he was content to be her field marshal, his thirst for blood greater than a thirst for power.
At first, she'd been reluctant to pursue a relationship with a man she discovered was an impostor, born of peasant blood, but when she'd heard about his past adventures, like slaughtering that little tart tax collector Bo Peep's family after using them in his faux rebellion to usurp his brother's place and kill King George... well, Snow had known the shepherd had a place at her side.
That their wartime alliance became something more, well, that was unexpected. But no one ever claimed true love was just for heroes, Snow considered with a smirk, just before realizing that lost in her musings she'd turned the wrong direction down the hall, come to stand in front of a locked door.
Furious with herself, the Queen stomped back the other way to her quarters and yanked open the doors to her closet.
"Are you quite well, Your Majesty?"
Snow White glared at Johanna who considered her from inside the mirror on the vanity. "I am fine. And you are dead."
"I'm well aware as it was you who killed me."
"Go away!" snapped Snow.
"I can't go away if I am in your mind, Your Majesty."
In a furry, Snow grabbed a large candlestick and hurled it at the 'ghost' who vaporized as it impacted the mirror with a crash.
When later James - who was really David - found his wife crying on the bedroom floor, he cursed the day he ever trusted that ice merchant from Arendelle.
AN: If heroes and villains are swapped in this story, does that mean original good guy Rumple here was on the Duke's side and basically a FTL Nazi? I've wondered why Henry took the Mercedes and not the Bug, but then after the fiasco with David's truck, maybe he was smart enough to realize that he doesn't know how to drive stick? (I just had to get a Game of Thrones joke in there.)
Next up: Across the Middle Sea... or whatever the fuck the FTL ocean is called.