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: Okay, so you're all probably wondering how did Whale get Cora's organs? It's simple! Regina used the same magic she used on Daniel to preserve her mother's corpse seconds after her death. Now, how exactly Regina preserved Daniel's corpse when she didn't know magic and he had a gravestone and only later was shown to be in a glass coffin with a pause button on his expiration dates so Whale could revive him using science and have the only thing wrong with him be his lack of a soul... well... don't worry your pretty heads about that MASSIVE CANON PLOTHOLE. It's like trying to figure out how the fuck Hook's corpse is being toted away on a gurney and minutes later he's taking a boatride in the lake next to where he kicked it Angelus style and somehow both corporal breathing people are hanging out with physical manifestations of souls and they all get a nice tickling in some CGI fire or acid baths in cheesy VFX rivers! Here, some residents are organ donars. For the others, Whale has an agreement with the grave digger, so after the funerals are over the graves aren't refilled with dirt until after he can procure what he needs. So, you're probably asking, did he poach Neal's parts? Of course not! What if Rumple tried to bring him back and found he had no heart and brain!? Also, Whale is focusing on magical people. In this case, he was doing an experiment: if you put organs from magical people into tissue-compatible non-magical people, will they get magic? And is magic in the brain or the heart? The answer would seem to be 'yes' and 'both', but only for a short while. Like Jay Garrick using Velocity to temporarily reconnect to the Speed Force, the Apprentice's wand temporarily jolted Cora's organs into a sort of magical harmony, but it was temporary and obviously with horrible consequences.

PART II

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

WALT DISNEY'S SPINNING FROZEN HEAD

"I can't believe I stole another stolen car," Emma groaned, slumped in the passenger seat of a blue Chevel as they passed over the town line.

"It is pretty sweet, though," grinned Neal, enjoying the old stick-shift that had been Lily's most recent project in the illegal chop-shop run out of the back of the garage by the diner. "And everyone'll just think Lily ran off with it, so we're in the clear!"

"I suppose so. Though it doesn't make up for Aurora and Philip being murdered."

"Maybe not, but they were selfish assholes," Neal reminded. "I know Mulan loved Aurora, but she deserved better."

"Their son has been orphaned," Emma countered.

"Well, that's par for the course where we come from," Neal countered.

"Which is what I'm supposed to change!" huffed Emma. "I can't leave town without it all going back to shit!"

"Yeah, okay," conceded Neal, "it's a setback, but Regina said they found the killers, right?"

"Yeah, I suppose that's something," Emma sighed and Neal pulled over where Belle was standing, holding the scroll to get into town.

"I thought Regina would be here to let them in?" she questioned.

"She's... preoccupied with the killers," explained Belle.

"And you're all right hitching a ride with the two women who held you hostage?"

"Not really, but it's nice of you to ask."

Emma frowned at that Neal looked ready to protest, but Belle was already walking away and giving the scroll a toss.

It was a ten minute drive to the Sheriff's Station and that's where they found Regina standing, glaring at Emma's parents, each in separate cells, apparently sleeping. For some reason, her mother was wearing an uncomfortably familiar navy blue ballgown and David's shirt was covered in blood.

"This can't be good," Emma sighed.

"No, it can't," grunted Regina, her crossed arms somehow going even tenser. "Meet Storybrooke's latest mass murderers."

"My parents killed all those people?"

"That's right. Including Robin," she growled out.

"Wait... Robin? He's dead?" Neal uttered, startled. "Now I feel a bit bad about being kind of an asshole last time we had a bro-to-bro talk..."

Regina glared at him.

"What happened?" asked Emma.

Regina let out a sigh, then explained, "Whale used my mother's brain and heart in the transplant and apparently some of the residual memories and magic remained causing some sort of dissociate disorder," explained Archie from his seat at one of the desks. "I evaluated them both before Dr. Whale administered a sedative. Neither of them was aware of what they were doing at night... and don't ask my why it happened at night, though it has been moonless, so perhaps it's some opposite of ware-magic type thing as they did both undergo a transformative process that involved magic, particularly that shady wizard's wand."

"Which I am going to find and incinerate," growled Regina.

"But why were they doing it?" asked Neal, bewildered. "I mean, okay, the compound people, but Aurora and Philip? That's extreme. And Robin? I know he was kind of an idiot, but-"

"To teach me a lesson," huffed Regina, crossing her arms.

"Apparently," interjected Archie, "the remnants of Cora's memories were integrated into Snow's unconscious in such a way that she wanted Regina to admit that the happy ending she has been so hell-bent on getting for herself is not deserved on account of all of her evil deeds as a terrible monarch. That she did not fall far from the apple tree, as it were. It seems Cora had some revelations shortly before her death that were strong enough to imprint despite methods both medical and magic to remove any residual essence of the woman."

"So... she was killing people out of some messed up maternal love?" cringed Emma, amending, "Been there, done that. Ugh. What a mess."

"It seems even with her heart," sighed Regina, "my mother had a very... warped sense of affection. But also it seems likely the dark spot in Snow's heart related to killing her played some role, triggered some magic when Tinkerbell used that wand to jump-start my mother's heart. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if that old geezer hadn't foreseen and planned this all as some revenge from beyond the grave as he was offing himself."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," agreed Neal. "He did scheme for like three hundred years at least to do all kinds of messed up shit. And he probably wasn't pleased with you trying to free Isaac to rewrite your story. Plus, I think Robin mentioned once stealing from his mansion back in our world. I guess the guy was killing two birds with one stone as it were."

"And orphaning Roland," sighed Archie. "I'm looking into fostering him. After talking to him... well... I can't say I fault Snow for killing Friar Tuck."

"What did he do?" asked Emma.

"It seems eh was a pedophile," Regina explained with grimace.

Neal shook his head and considered, "Well, now we know why Roland was happy to spend time with his mother's murderer-slash-replacement."

"I don't need a sibling loophole to turn you into a toad," Regina hissed at him.

Neal just rolled his eyes, thinking he should probably feel worse about Robin being dead, but he'd been dead, and while the guy was kind of a tool, it was more lack of intelligence than maliciousness, and you couldn't damn someone to hell for being a mimbo.

"And, as I said, I won't be taking Roland," Regina explained. "Dr. Hopper thinks it would cause him further trauma once he grew up and learned the truth about his mother's death."

"And I know that from personal experience," Archie sighed.

"Things not going well with Geppetto, huh?" asked Emma.

"To put it mildly."

0"Will they remember any of this when they wake up?" asked Emma.

"They're still not aware of their nocturnal activities," said Archie, "beyond 'waking' with sunrise and being bewildered by their appearances. I used hypnosis and, as I said, then Dr. Whale sedated them. We'll have to tell them, of course, but I felt it best that they had some sleep given they do not seem to have experienced REM sleep for several days, which will just make processing all of it more difficult."

"And the rest of the town?" Neal wondered, "what do we tell them?"

"That the killer was some monster that has been dealt with," Regina answered. "They don't need to know. They hate Snow and Charming enough as it is, and it really wasn't their fault, much as I would love to blame them. It wasn't even Whale's considering we all agreed to this insanity without considering the consequences and he is rather ignorant of magic."

"Regina is right," agreed Archie, "it won't do this town any good. But David and Snow do need to be aware of possible side-effects. While it seems that in accomplishing her 'task' with Regina the bits of Cora's personality were finally purged and Snow's memories and identity fully integrated, that doesn't mean there might not be some other consequence of the unusual connection that she and David now share - different from sharing Snow's heart, but still... magically uncertain."

"I'd like to say," Regina mused, "that the misplaced guilt they both feel will make me feel somewhat better, accept that it will probably involve Snow demanding I rip out her heart and crush it again and eating more junk food than Hook - and her ass can't afford to get bigger, not when she clearly lacks the body type to pull it off."

"Don't be mean, Regina," Archie scolded. "Snow has dealt with body image problems her whole life. Her mother used to tell her that she was fat as a child and as a consequence she did not eat enough when she was pregnant with Emma, which is probably yet another reason," he imparted to Emma, "you have certain... deficiencies. Physiological function can be adversely affected by a mother suffering malnutrition during gestation. Low second- or third-trimester weight gain has also been shown to be associated with spontaneous preterm delivery risk, which is probably why you came two weeks earlier than the Blue Fairy had anticipated."

"Great," sighed Emma, "another reason I'm messed up. Good old Gradma Eva."

"Yes, scoffed Regina, "I'd like to think Hades is tripping her in the Underworld-"

"She wasn't there. Or at least I didn't see her. I guess she must have repented and become a good person before she got poisoned."

Shrugging, Neal interjected, "Hey, I used the darkest magic in existence to trade my soul for the Dark One and I got a free pass to... well... not Heaven, but free of being abused in cliché mythological realms."

"Yeah, I'd take real Purgatory any day over the Underworld with that gas-leak haired douche," agreed Emma. "And the red-filtered sky, that got old real fast. Plus the whole everyone having grave stones but they're not in the graves. Yeah, real symbolic. And dumb."

"Dumb like getting everyone alive in the Underworld grave stones too? I'm surprised Regina didn't throw into one of those fire pits... although they don't seem to actually do more than tickle you. But that was the Underworld in a screwed up reality, so maybe in this one it would actually incinerate you."

"You got us all killed in the Underworld!?" Regina snapped at Emma.

"Not... exactly...?"

"Ugh, now you really sound like your mother," she sighed. "You know what? I don't care. Either way, you were probably being an idiot encouraged by your idiot parents. I don't have time for any of your guilt."

"Then you can use your time for your own guilt over what you did to Maleficent while helping to bring her back from the quasi-dead dust monster state under the Library."

Regina groaned. "Do I really have to?"

"So her daughter doesn't kill us all, yes. And she's actually remarkably well adjusted."

"In your crazy reality, but in this one?"

"Fair point. But she does have great fashion sense across realms."

Regina considered this a moment then conceded, "Well, it would be nice to talk fashion with someone who doesn't consider haute couture flannel, denim, and L.L. Bean ponchos. Do you have all the... whatever is required to bring her back?"

"Cruella has some rattle thingie that Maleficent put some of her magic in or some shit," responded Neal.

"How eloquent."

"Well, excuse me for talking like a ghetto peasant street urchin who spent three hundred years being tormented by uneducated gang members and then had to fight sewer rats for pizza."

"You fought sewer rats for pizza? Really?" snorted Emma.

"Ugh, I hate you both so much," Regina grumbled. "Can we just get this over with? Preferably as quickly as possible so I can go home and drink a bottle of wine to forget that my long time nemesis was compelled by my mother's transplanted organs to murder my ex-lover soulmate to teach me to be a better person?"

"Regina," Archie began, "you really shouldn't use grief as an excuse to-"

"Shut up, cricket or I'll turn you back into one and step on you!'

Archie winced and shut up and watched the trio go. With a sigh he lamented, "Fine, just leave me to deal with these two jerks. Don't consider how it adversely affects Dr. Hopper's sanity!"

He still suffered nightmares of that time Pinocchio sowed him into Snow White's corset and he almost suffocated, trapped in her underboob sweat only to end up nearly drowning in her beer. It was times like that he really felt cursed... and was relieved to return to this world where he was human again and could form real bonds... even if right now it was only with Pongo.

The sound of the door opening again caused Archie a moment of hope that maybe they'd reconsidered and at least would offer to bring him lunch... but instead it was an unfamiliar, rather thuggish looking woman in her mid-twenties to mid-thirties who looked like she'd probably wasted some of her beauty and youth shooting heroine or something equally detrimental.

"Can I help you?" asked Archie, warily.

"Yeah," Lily answered, "you can take a nap."

"Pardon?"

She explained by punching the poor shrink in the face and knocking him out cold.

With a cruel smile curing her lips, Lily approached the jail cell and gazed upon her enemies. "Snow White and Prince Charming, we meet at last..."

AN: So, that's the Snow White arc. I have no idea who thought up the dumbshit idea to have Jiminy in Snow White's boobs as the reason she appeared to be having a heart attack in "Souls of the Departed", but it sure makes it increasingly obvious that the show is written by men with the emotional IQ of adolescent boys... and the occasional woman with the IQ of an adolescent boy.

Next up: Have you ever wondered if "The Gang" bothered to clean up Greg and Tamara's torture room after killing those flying monkeys that were their friends but it took the rest of the season for any of them to say, "Hey those are our friends don't kill them!" and that somehow was Hook and no one ever mentioned that they had previously slaughtered like a dozen of their transmutated hommies at the Cannery?