Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

Note to jane: They are massive hypocrites and Emma is definitely a Barbie Doll. I hate what Belle has become on the show, though the more of a two-faced bitch she becomes, the clearer it becomes that she does not suffer from Stockholm Syndrome (and the more it becomes clear that Emma does). Belle seems to be a morally gray character by nature who is in denial that she actually wants (even needs) to be less ethical because her academic upbringing schooled her in the philosophy of ethics and makes her feel bound by some social contract to follow it. Rumple, by contrast, is a morally gray character who has come to believe he needs power and to have power be on the opposing side of the ethical spectrum from Belle, because power is always dark magic/The Dark One which cannot be good. They SHOULD balance each other into each seeing that they don't need to be TOTALLY GOOD or TOTALLY BAD to be heroic people.

PART II

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

APOLOGIZE

Emma slumped in the driver's seat of her mother's used Suburban after putting the car into park and just because she was feeling particularly emo turned up the volume on the radio.

...You tell me that you're sorry, didn't think I'd turn around, and say (that)

"It's too late to apologize (it's too late)."

I said, "It's too late to apologize (it's too late)."

I'd take another chance, take a fall, take a shot for you

And I need you like a heart needs a beat, but it's nothin' new (yeah)

I loved you with a fire red, now it's turning blue, and you say,

"Sorry," like the angel heaven let me think was you, but I'm afraid...

"It's too late to apologize (it's too late)."

I said, "It's too late to apologize (it's too late)."

Emma cut the engine before the refrain's repeat and let out a weary sigh as a light rain began pitter-pattering on the windshield, blurring Storybrooke's few street lights and illuminated shop fronts.

Her conversation with Neal, her attempt to apologize (again) - which was maybe kind of insane because he was the one who'd insulted her parents and walked off last week - hadn't gone as she'd hoped (again). She had to be some kind of masochist, she supposed, but she'd been indoctrinated into this whole 'never give up, always fight for the one you love because love makes every stupid thing you do okay no matter how much it endangers everyone you love' thing... which maybe, as Cruella had said, wasn't actually the healthiest approach to every love.

It just really really sucked, Emma gloomily considered, that after everything they'd both gone through, after all of the separations and mistakes and tragedies that they couldn't get Tallahassee. That concept had been such a central aspiration in her life since the age of seventeen, and even if she'd stopped believing in it for a decade or so, it had still been there as an unobtainable goal, a dream of a different and better life that might have been.

Which was all it was going to be.

She'd had her chances, more than one, when Neal had been willing, before he died (the last time) and she'd blown it. Hell, she'd even blown it in that trick of a "vision" when she thought it was him. Maybe if she'd said something different, been honest, or if she'd stopped being afraid and an idiot and put him first - or hell put Henry first - now he'd be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But he hadn't.

Whatever unfinished business he'd had wasn't with her other than to tell her it was over, that she'd proven herself someone he couldn't trust with his heart, someone he seemed to not even like - not that she could blame him with either.

A knock on the window startled her and Emma looked up to find her mother standing on the sidewalk with a bag of groceries. She reflexively reached over to unlock the passenger side and the pixie-haired woman slipped in out of the rain.

"Thanks, I didn't bring my umbrella to the pharmacy," Snow explained. "Do you mind if I wait it out?"

"It's your car," shrugged Emma, adding, "I could drive you."

"Three blocks? And you have your trailer hitched. It's fine. I can wait. Let David change some diapers for once."

"Like you've changed many," Emma muttered under her breath, but not low enough the other woman didn't hear and give her a pinched look. "Sorry."

"No, it's fair. I haven't been as present in your bother's life as I should have been. I'm trying to change that," Snow told her with a tight smile. "Just like I'm trying to change things with you."

She reached into her bag and pulled out cups of cocoa from Granny's, and Emma rolled her eyes. "So, the groceries were a con?"

"I wasn't sure free hot chocolate would be enough to get you to open the door," Snow admitted. "You've been... hard to read since the whole..."

"Thing with Neal walking out after calling you and Dad bad parents who screwed him and me over?"

"Which I assume you don't disagree with."

Emma grimaced and inhaled the scent of chocolate and cinnamon from her cup. "You want the truth?"

"I've already gotten a sampling of it," said Snow, "I think I can handle it."

Letting out a sigh, Emma told her, "I think you and Dad only care about yourselves but you pretend to care about other people to look good, because you want to be heroes and heroes have to look like they care about other people, that they'd put strangers before themselves. Only you never do that, not really, without an ulterior motive you can put some pretty, deceptive wrappings on that make it look like you're doing it for some selfless reason.

"Like jumping down that hat hole after me. Was that really for me? Or because you wanted me to accept that you were my mother and have some mother-daughter moment for you to feel less guilty about what you did?"

Emma shook her head and continued, "Or when you cast the Dark Curse. Was it really to save everyone from Zelena? Was it even to save your unborn kid from her? Because splitting your heart could have killed you. And if it was really about everyone you wouldn't have risked a shitstorm of magical price backlash fucking over everyone you were supposedly trying to save just because you couldn't live without Dad. That's not true love. It's not heroic. And it sure as shit is not good parenting.

"And Neal. Not my Neal but my brother, whatever name you want him to go by, the kid is just an unfortunate prop to make you feel good, to make Dad feel like he has someone to protect to stroke his macho ego. He's not a person, not really. He's not someone you want to encourage to have his own opinions, his own hopes and dreams if they don't line up perfectly with yours.

"Like were you going to really give me a choice in going with you back to the Enchanted Forest with those magic beans? Fuck no. I was the last to hear about it and the moment I even hinted at an expression of reluctance you both ganged up on me with a shit-ton of shaming me into going with you, because, 'Hey, Emma, your life in this world has completely sucked from the start and no one here has ever loved you so how can you be happy here?' Yeah, way to support my free will, but then you took that way before I was born, right, so I shouldn't be surprised!" Emma hissed out.

"We just... we wanted you to be happy. You were so unhappy," Snow squeaked out.

"Yeah, I was unhappy, because I was living a real life with complications. I was trying to not deal with my first love, my kid's father showing up with a fiancée and acting like a jerk. So you went from trying to pressure me into admitting I was in love with him to a 180 'fuck it and come with us, and who cares if your son grows up without ever knowing his father? We're the only ones that matter!' That's your definition of family and that's what you used to screw Neal over, and screw me and Henry over.

"And that's what lead to my own brother siring the fucking antichrist! I mean, my daughter, who I had with my own fucking great grandfather had a kid by my own brother! That's the kids you raised! A couple of incestuous assholes! And you think you're good parents?

"You're not," Emma continued to lay into her wide-eyed mother who flinched at the rather vicious character assault. "You only care about me and my brother when it's about you. You had another baby because you wanted someone to grow up adoring you the way you did your mother. You wanted so badly to get back to Storybrooke from The Underworld after Cruella damaged the loved-one-haunting phone booth, and Dad wanted so not to go back and have you go instead that he had Hook vandalize your gravestone to put his name on it so you could hitch a ride with Ruby to Oz to get there and he could continue to hang out with Robin's innocent baby and Belle who was pregnant, and Henry, and how is that selfless? How is that being a good parent or a hero? Near as I can figure, you guys only want to be parents to be needed and loved unconditionally by someone who'll be so indoctrinated they'll never be able to truly hate you for the fuckups you are the way Henry can't Regina, but he can hate me and I can mean it when I say I'm never going to love you the way you want, cause I came on the scene late."

As Snow looked ready to burst into tears, Emma told her, "I'm not saying I didn't totally go along with all of the selfishness that went down over the years, but it's pretty well established that I'm an asshole here who makes shitty life choices and endangers people instead of helping them - but at least I've acknowledge that and it feels like crap and I don't think a cup of hot chocolate and pretending I have some sage wisdom to give will make it better. So please stop pretending your parental concern is anything more than wanting to feel good about yourself, like you're not fucking it all up. Because you are, you have, and you can't fix it!

"You ruined my entire life," Emma told her, clutching the cup so hard the hot chocolate nearly sloshed out, "with one incredibly selfish choice that even if you didn't know it was sending a baby through a portal was at the very least criminal animal abuse. Then you doubled down sending me 'alone' in a magical wardrobe where I'd have frozen to death if not for a little brat stowing away and abandoning me anyway. But, hey, why not then tell me I'm a disappointment and you want another kid to feel like you're doing it right? And then tell my kid's father to fuck the hell off, the family motto doesn't apply to the next generation unless it's pairing me up with a pretty asshole you could put in fancy clothes and pass off as cliché prince material, because who cares if Henry recording that all in a book for future generations teaches that men can be lecherous and violent but all they have to do is smirk and pursue a 'damaged' woman and they're considered a hero - if it makes for a pretty family portrait?"

"Emma," Snow tried to interject, "whatever happened before-"

"A lot of bad shit happened," Emma cut her off. "It happened and it changed me into someone who wasn't just damaged but who damaged my kids and the whole universe. I became someone unrecognizable, and mostly because it's all about fucking appearances with you and Dad. I used to be pissed at everyone in this place blaming their parents for how they turned out such awful people, but I get it now. It's really a thing. It's really how it works with our kind.

"Because I didn't used to be like that," Emma continued. "Growing up, I wasn't a bad person. I wasn't selfish or shallow and I didn't betray the people I loved for superficial bullshit and call myself a hero. If I fucked up, I owned it and it ate away at me. I didn't say 'Oops, I'll say it was destiny testing me and totally be a better person now so I never have to regret anything!' And I got that being obsessively pretty on the outside usually meant being disgustingly ugly on the inside. And that abusive men don't change.

"But you got me to buy into this fairy tale garbage that says it's the opposite, that everything is exactly as pretty and perfect as it looks. So my happy ending was losing my soul and splitting my heart with a man who was either putting me down and blaming me for things I didn't do to feel worse about myself or idealizing me, praising me for things I didn't deserve, so I'd be grateful to him for loving someone so fucked up as me. I actually ended up with someone who made me feel like trash half the time and enabled me being a selfish bitch the other half, but that was true love, and he had half my heart, so I was trapped. I was so trapped I wasn't even able to feel it most of the time, because the darkness he put into his half of my heart was nurtured by our toxic 'love' until we were just two halves of the same horrible person.

"So what happened before?" Emma told her, "I can't forget it. It was a sham, a lie, a fucking illusion, but it ruined my life and destroyed the universe and now I'm supposed to clean up my mess, which doesn't make me a hero, it just makes me pathetic.

"My son hates me. His father is disgusted by me. I'm disgusted by me!" Emma exclaimed, "And you don't really love me, you just tell yourself that you do because you're supposed to."

"Emma..."

"Please, just go. Thanks for the hot chocolate, but you've done enough."

Snow looked so heartbroken, but Emma couldn't find it in herself to care as her mother got out and hurried down the street. Maybe that made her a bad person on top of everything else. Or maybe she'd just been hurt by her family's lies and manipulations so many times that she just didn't have it in her to completely forgive them, or even like them.

Which, she realized depressingly, was exactly how Neal felt about her. It was a fucked up cycle that her parents had started, that his parents had started, and passed on to them, that had ended up destroying Henry's happy ending too.

They had lived in a lie, ascribed to an illusion like some brainwashed cult members, believing everything was sunshine and rainbows while all around them was misery and death -but who cares? As long as the victims didn't share their blood or their beds it was unfortunate collateral damage then it had nothing to do with them or it was some lesson of destiny to make them hold on tighter to their fraudulent lives, their disgustingly creepy true love that had been so watered down in its parameters that it might as well have included rape and pedophilia... and, hell, maybe it even did for some when it all ended in an incestuous orgy!

They were such a fucking mess. How was she supposed to fix something so fucked up beyond all recognition?

"This whole world is totally evil without romance, love, family happiness, happy endings…" Emma snorted as she turned the radio back on.

REM's "Losing My Religion" filled the cab of the Suburban and Emma gave another snort.

She definitely wasn't feeling the love for any deities right now.

AN: "C$ teaches us that men can be lecherous & violent but all they have to do is smirk & pursue a "damaged" woman and they're considered a hero" was a tweet by NotSoEvilRegal. Emma's closing line is Amazon-Hollow's comment on "Ruby Slippers" at that concludes, "Because everything is filled up with action, killing, violence and murder..."

Next up: Ruby gets a new job. Emma has a traumatic experience.