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 FORTY-NINE

PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON... WAS ACTUALLY ONE CRAZY BITCH

When Snow White came to she was strapped down to a cold surface, unable to move. Bright light shining in her eyes obscured her surroundings until the glow was eclipsed by a person moving into view.

"Wakey wakey, Princess...or is it Queen?" an unfamiliar voice inquired sassily as her eyes struggled to focus. When they finally did, she saw a dark haired woman with pale skin and pinched expression.

"Wha-what's going on?" Snow asked, confused. She felt groggy like after her surgery.

"Well, a lot it seems," her captor cackled. "I overheard your family talking about how you and your hubby suffered some sort of magical transference fugue state from an apparently psychotic bitch named 'Cora' and spent the last couple of nights slaughtering people to prove to 'Regina' that she's still a villain who needs to hold herself accountable for her own evil shit... or something."

"Wait... what!?" Snow gasped.

"You murdered a lot of people and don't remember it, including Robin Hood who is apparently a real person... or was. I'm Lily by the way," said Lily.

"R-Robin... we... killed... but... what?" Snow stammered out.

Lily patted her cheek. "Oh, don't worry your pretty but crazy brain containing head about it. You'll be too busy screaming in agony to ponder your emotional torment at murdering your sort-of friend... but you gotta ask yourself, was he really worth the effort to keep alive if he apparently had a creepy fetish for banging women who murdered his wife? Plus, one of his best friends apparently was diddling little kids including his own, so the guy had to be either a total creep or a clueless idiot. I'd give you points if you'd actually made the conscious effort to kill all those NAMBLA freaks, but since it was the synaptic ghost of your dead great step grandma... or is it step great grandma? Anyway..."

Lily flipped the switch on the machine, sending volts of electricity into the electrodes attached to Snow White's body and ripping an agonized scream from her throat as her muscles contracted involuntarily.

"Niiiiiiiice," purred Lily after turning off the juice. "I was thinking I'd have to get creative with some pliers and a car battery, but then I stumbled on this little setup. Between this and the surveillance equipment tricked out pedophile ice cream truck in the warehouse next door, I don't think kids should be watching this fairy tale."

Putting an army booted foot up on the table, Lily scrolled through the phone she was holding. "What ever happened to this Greg guy with the food porn obsession anyway?"

"Peter... Pan... killed... him," Snow gasped out.

"Of course, because Peter Pan would be real too," sighed Lily and she tossed the phone aside. "I gotta say, the catfishing texts to Emma's baby daddy pretending to be his girlfriend are amusing. Wish I'd met old Greggy and got to shake his hand."

"He... kidnapped... Henry... to give... to Pan... a child... abuser."

Lily shrugged. "Yeah, but I make exceptions for child abusers and assholes who hurt your family specifically, because you all deserve to feel what I have."

Voltage turned up, this time when Lily flipped the switch, Snow was left shaking.

In the corner a muffled sound drew Lily's attention and she smirked at the man who had a bloody nose and a blackening eye.

"Oh, you've joined the party again."

Lily used a grappling hook she'd found in the cannery to pull the gag from David's mouth.

"You won't away with this!" he shouted.

"Well, I've already gotten away with torturing your wife. Smells like she pissed herself," said Lily and glaring at the two she continued, "Do you know what that's like? Too be so terrified you piss yourself? Thanks you, I do. You took away my light potential, and maybe in your world that would that would have made me a psychopath, but in this one where there's no magic it just meant I had a shit-ton of unearned bad karma. While your baby Emma was lamenting going through endless foster homes and group homes, crying because no one adopted her? I got adopted by an asshole who molested me and his wife who pretended it didn't happen. I had to run away and get an abortion when I was fourteen, but Emma's pissed off that I ruined her happy bullshit month with The Waltons? I was only going with a deadbeat criminal because those were the only people who ever helped me because of your spell!"

"I'm sorry!" Snow wailed.

Lily flipped the switch again, eliciting more screams from Snow.

"STOP!" David shouted.

"And what? Torture you instead?" scoffed Lily as Snow continued to trash against the bindings in pain. "Don't worry, soon as she passes out, you're up next. After all, who's more the fool? The fool or the fool who follows him?"

Another jolt, more voltage this time.

Lily loomed over Snow with a maniacal grin. "How does it feel, Snow White? How does it feel to have all your potential sucked out! How does it feel to have energy ripping through your body! Like that portal did mine when I was just a baby! I didn't come out in a fucking cushy tree either! I was in the hospital for weeks with broken bones! And they thought Ursula and Cruella had stolen me and abused me so the only people who knew me and cared about me had to run off and leave m-"

David had used the distraction to work on his cuffs with a paperclip, something Emma had taught him that she said, of course, she'd learned from Neal and used for stealing. He grabbed the grappling hook and swung it hard, though Lily caught site of the impending attack in her peripheral vision and weaved in time to avoid a blow to the head.

The impact to her shoulder sent her tumbling backward, but only momentarily phased. Lily was no shrinking violet. She was five eight with muscles and hit back like she'd been practicing for the UFC.

David had never been one to hit women, but when she kicked him in the balls and slammed a fist into his jaw before launching herself at the controls, turning up the voltage all the way, and letting it rip, he saw no alternative.

Blood poured from Lily's nose and split lip and was thrown back long enough for David to pull one of the clips off the battery - and luckily not get electrocuted himself.

Lily, who just wouldn't go down, tackled him.

"YOU RUINED MY LIFE!" Lily snarled.

"YOU TORTURED MY WIFE!" David shot back.

Suddenly, Lily vanished in a swirl of purple and Emma was standing there, looking grim and apologetic as David hurried to check on Snow who was unconscious but alive.

"I'm really getting tired of the hospital," sighed David before Emma whisked them there, and immediately amended, "and still not used to you being able to do that... and not really liking it without any warning."

"Sorry," Emma apologized as a medical team came over to whisk Snow away and she steered David to a bed in the ER to get fixed up.

"Not going to magically mend us both?"

"The way I see it," Emma replied, "the price of teleportation is getting a flat tire or running out of gas when you really need to get somewhere. But messing with injuries and illnesses... that can lead to prices that the wrong people end up cashing. Like Robin using magic to save his wife and unborn child from a fatal illness. Marian died and even when it wasn't Regina who did it, fate gave the task to someone else. Roland survived, but a life had to be taken in his place, the one that used magic to save it.

"Magic isn't grace. It's not divine. And no matter how often Rumplestiltskin tried to impart the kinds of prices, the rules, the loopholes that we had no business creating or taking advantage of and what it would lead to, I didn't listen. I was arrogant. I was blinded by pride and lust and the fear of not being in control of anything when we were constantly surrounded by terrifying chaos, but stuff that was never part of my life, that was crazy and I just had to accept it and go along with it or the world would fall apart... only it did fall apart because of my complacency... and a shit ton of anti-anxiety and depression meds I was getting from Happy who got them from Leroy who stole them from the hospital during his night janitor rounds. I think I spent the better part of two years after getting back from New York in a self-medicated haze," Emma concluded, the first she'd openly admitted her prescription drug addiction. Half the reason she probably did such stupid shit like becoming the Dark One, turning Hook into the Dark One, and going to Hell was the pills she started popping, first to deal with having two sets of memories, then Neal died, then Ingrid showed up in her life again...

"Lily said we killed those people," David spoke up.

Emma grimaced. "Yeah, you did. Some kind of... residual memories and magic of Cora's. It wasn't either of your faults. Me, the bad stuff I've done, it was my magic, my decisions. You just... ended up Whale's guinea pigs. But... if it helps... most of them were bad."

"Not Robin," sighed David. "He was a bit incompetent and not very thoughtful of other's needs or property and neglected Roland quite a bit, but... that seems to be a prominent theme amongst Enchanted Forest fathers... or mothers for that matter. Our world doesn't make very good parents does it?"

"No, which leads to a lot of kids who grow up to be either evil or addicts," Emma stated.

"And speaking of," interjected Archie who walked over with an ice pack against his head, "you both should come to a group meeting at the chapel. It's every Thursday night."

"What... like AA?" asked David, uncertain.

"We're a small town with only one curse certified psychiatric professional," returned Archie. "It's more like 'All Addictions Anonymous'... without the anonymous since we all know each other. But it's a chance for everyone to share their stories and find support."

"We'll think about it," Emma told the shrink and checked her phone. "I should get to the station and check on Lily. Looks like the resurrection went well and Maleficent's itching to meet her."

Emma gave her father's arm a squeeze. "Call me when Mom wakes up."

She vanished in a cloud of magic just as Whale was walking up and the doctor huffed, "No teleporting on the premises! There's a sign, damn it!"

David glared at Whale. "You gave me the heart of a psychopath!"

"But you're alive."

"People are dead! A good man is dead!"

"And you sentenced a baby to thirty years of misery and loneliness. Plus that Lily girl."

David sighed. It was a lot harder to argue the good side when everyone knew his dirty secrets. "Just tell me how my wife is doing."

AN: I bet they never cleaned that torture room up!

Next up: A conversation between two assholes.