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 Mir: You have nothing to apologize for. Trolls are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink.

PART II

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

SNOWING GET FREAKY (EMMA FREAKS OUT)

(flashback)

1994

Emma sat on the big couch in the group home administrator's office with her legs clenched tightly together and her hands fisting in her blanket. She knew it was babyish of her to need it. She was ten, almost eleven, after all. She'd stopped sleeping with it and taking it in her backpack to school when she was eight and she got shipped off to a different foster home after she punched a boy in the face at recess for stealing her blanket and making fun of her having it, because what kind of loser kept the blanket they were named after by parents who dumped them in it by the side of the road to die?

So, yeah, Emma knew she was kind of messed up before she even got sent back to the group home the first time by the Swans or she wouldn't have kept that name either. She didn't even know what last name the social worker gave her as a baby - if any - since the family that took her in when she was three weeks old and was planning to adopt her had a court make "Swan" her official legal last name. Of course, if a family ever adopted her they'd probably change that, but it wasn't looking much like anyone would want her.

"Emma," the dark-haired lady told her, "it's okay to talk about it. No one's going to get mad at you."

Emma shook her head. "I don't want to," she meekly told the lady who sighed.

"All right. You don't have to this time, but I have something for you."

The lady reached into a drawer in her desk and pulled out a rubber ducky. "This is Mr. Quackington," she said, holding out the toy, "and you can keep him."

After a moment of hesitation, Emma took the ubiquitous rubber ducky and brows furrowed asked, "Really?"

"Only if you want to."

Emma considered Mr. Quackington. She was too old for stupid toys like rubber duckies. But... she had so few things that were hers, that weren't second hand, stolen, or charity.

"Thank you," she told the lady and wrapped Mr. Quackington in her blanket. "Can I go now?"

Emma didn't wait for more than a nod, springing up from the couch and bolting from the room.

(present day... as in somewhere around the Spring of 2013, give or take six months to a year!)

Emma sat at Granny's spinning her Sheriff badge on the counter as looking through the real estate section as she finished her dinner... which was probably no better or worse than whatever her parents had made. Rain all week had kept most dinner customers away and Ruby gave her a sympathetic look.

"Still nothing, huh?"

"It's as bad as when I first moved here. I think a bunch of the Forest Dwellers must have jumped at the chance to get places after the whole massacre thing made them realize living in the forest actually was pretty dumb. Belle's even subletting her apartment above the Library to Tinkerbell, and there's no way I'm rooming with that insane klepto fairy."

"Then go back to the Loft," shrugged Ruby. "I know they're jerks, but a warm bed over the back of that old Suburban? If you won't stay here, at least give it a thought. You're going to be in traction by the end of the week."

"I dunno," Emma shook her head. "I kept getting sucked back into that place before. It has too many memories, too many of them of me being someone I'm ashamed of."

"Don't tell me you banged Hook in your bed?"

Emma winced and rubbed her temples. "Er... well... no... not in the bed."

"Okay, now I'm never touching anything in that place again," said the digested waitress and she handed Emma her change and a take-away bag. "I might get some astral cross-temporal pirate jizz on my hands."

"Funny."

"I thought so."

Emma pocketed her change and regarded the badge again. Instead of clipping it back to her waistband she told Ruby, "You know, I only took the job to have an excuse to be around Henry?"

"But you were good at it," Ruby told her. "Graham wouldn't have hired you if he didn't think you were qualified."

"Yeah," Emma snorted at that. "I might have lied on my resume. Thing is, he thought I was the exception to the bounty hunter rule, someone'd reformed out of jail and dedicated her life to justice and hauling in assholes to make the world a better place, but the truth is, I only did the job for a year and I only took it to avoid going back to jail after basically being a fugitive for a decade - and for the money to have a nice apartment. I had fuck dates with assholes who were just like the ones I hauled in for the cash, who cheated on their wives, who didn't pay their child support, who had records of restraining orders and assault."

While Ruby looked at her in shock and a flicker of dismay, Emma gestured to her standard outfit of jeans, white top, red jacket and leather boots and muttered, "This is as big a lie as those booty shorts and crop tops you used to wear. It's just... an act adopted from someone I got killed doing something selfish and stupid that I convinced made me strong, that it was some kind of armor or whatever to honor her dying and never getting to meet her kid that she gave up, but it's just my usual being an asshole and the world would probably be a better place if I was the one who'd died that night and she got to meet her daughter. I'm no Savior. And I sure as shit shouldn't be anyone's Sheriff."

She handed the badge to Ruby.

"I... I don't..." Ruby stammered.

"You were basically the Sheriff of my parents' kingdom. You deserve to do something you're good at. And there are a lot of people here who deserve to have someone who's good at protecting them and can put them first. That someone's not me."

Walking back to the Suburban, Emma felt slightly lighter. The Sheriff thing, to be honest, had always nagged at her from day one. Being a deputy had been marginally fun, because it was mostly fucking around while Graham did all the real work - while being half worried he'd find out she was an amateur hack who'd only done the bail bonds thing to stay out of jail herself. But then she was Sheriff, she was up against Regina, she was actually fighting for something that would have made Graham - and Cleo - proud. That brief attempt at redemption and being a good person had made her feel more alive than she ever had, but like Regina's shortly after, it had failed pretty miserably, an illusion of being good while still being an asshole. Henry had been right to run away and try to destroy magic (both times), but the rest of them were such addicts, including her parents who'd only used it by proxy to clean up their messes.

If she succeeded in this, magic would be gone from this world forever. Maybe it would be gone in that other world too. Either way, people would have a chance to not just try miserably and fail at being better people than they were written - or edited by some hack or hormonal teen - to be, but to actually succeed and have real deserved happy (or not) endings.

Emma knew she was doing a pretty shitty job, though. So maybe giving up the Sheriff thing was the first positive step she could make, stop living that lie that she was a hero who deserved to protect everyone even in that mundane way. She wasn't. She didn't. Regina had been 100% right with her accusations those first few months she was in Storybrooke. It had to be her love for Henry - messed up as that was - that had ultimately kept her from revealing to the kid that Emma had been a criminal loser until the age of 27 and only became a bounty hunter in a plea bargain deal with a too-generous DA who'd basically indentured her to Cleo's company for a year.

That douchebag who'd spilled wine on her dress might well have been her last job. It had been on her mind to leave Boston, her record clean, and do... whatever. She'd only returned to it in NYC because Regina had written her memories differently, had her become a bounty hunter when Henry was still a baby. Regina had made her a better person than she really was for Henry, and that was both amazing and fucking depressing - because it meant maybe that mass murderer had grown more than she had and that Henry's fake notions about her being a hero all her life had been reinforced by Regina's good intentions - so the truth was only going to hurt more.

Hurt like her back that was killing her from sleeping in a car. How had she done that on a regular basis not so long ago?

If only August wasn't back living in that trailer.

The windshield was littered with soggy carry-out menus and... a parking ticket. Which could only have been issued by her father whose suspension had ended a few days ago, mostly because she felt bad about what she'd said after Neal's rant, even if she wasn't sorry for saying it, because it was all true.

But, seriously, a parking ticket!?

This is just an excuse to get me to talk to them!

And it was going to work, Emma grudgingly conceded as she stomped down the street, through the atrium, up the stairs, and knocked on the door.

"I know you're in there! I can hear music!" she called out.

When still no one answered, Emma let herself in. The stereo was on playing some sort of classical baroque waltz, the stuff people listened to in The Enchanted Forest that made her want to fill her ears with concrete.

She knew in their hearts they wanted to go back to their home, they always had - enough to make that executive magic bean field decision without consulting even her until it was a done deal. If her father could get away with it, he'd probably ride around town on a horse threatening people with this sword while her mother would spend all her time organizing fancy balls at the Town Hall to be followed a week later by weddings between virtual strangers who met at those balls.

"You'd better not be hiding!" Emma exclaimed. "I got your stupid seventy-five dollar invitation!"

There were cookies on the counter, and she snagged one, taking note of the dishes soaking in the sink. The truth was, she kind of missed this place, but the apartment she missed was from her first couple of months when it was just her and her roommie making dinner together - she mostly just chopped stuff after breaking the oven - and watching Netflix. She'd never had a roommate before, had always been a loner, and it had been a surprisingly nice change to have someone she could confide in and who confided in her - but who also kept secret stuff that would complicate Emma's life and didn't meddle in her own personal business.

Unfortunately, that new experience that had started her emerging from her antisocial shell had been shut down after only four and a half months thanks to Henry and that apple turnover. Then she got a mother who never had time to just hang out, because when she wasn't making up for lost time with her husband she was sticking her nose in Emma's private personal stuff and giving condescending advice while never sharing any of her own life that didn't fall under the "I am a perfect hero in amazing true love and I am going to repeat it ad nauseum until you stop being a disappointment and emulate my perfect princess hero-ness" heading.

Realistically, Emma knew her mother didn't consider her a disappointment as a person and was proud of how she'd coped given the circumstances of her life, but it couldn't erase the truth of her words in the Echo Caves or that she had in Neverland and more than once since chosen "true love" over her children... until Emma had started doing that too. It was such a shitty example, and it made Emma angry that her parents had always put themselves first, even when they tried to make it look like they were putting her and her brother first. They were hypocrites of the highest order.

But so was she.

The apple hadn't fallen far from that poisonous tree.

Trying to make them proud of her by emulating their true love example with the shitty materials she'd been given and a track-record of bad romances, going for the old easy stand-bye of her asshole emotionally abusive douchebag type had left her even emptier inside... but she's been so empty already it had been hard to really tell the difference and she'd let passion mask that pain.

Now she didn't have that passion and it hurt.

Emma was so tired of feeling empty.

Whatever Metatron had done with that 'spark', it hadn't really made her feel whole even if it supposedly re-balanced her magic. She supposed as she climbed the stairs to her old room, that being damaged before birth wasn't the sort of thing that could really be fixed thirty-odd years plus another timeline later.

"You'd better not be defiling my bed!" she called out before reaching the landing.

Peering in her old room, Emma found it empty. The bed had been moved to the corner to make room for her brother's currently empty crib and large piles of toys that made her both envious and disgusted.

The truth was, she hated nurseries. Always had. Maybe it was something subconscious from when she was hours old imprinted by magic. Maybe it was the anger and pain she felt after being sent away by her first foster parents from the warmth of that nursery to the cold, sterile one in the group home with its broken hand-me-down toys and older kids who made her cry.

Her hatred had increased after seeing her own in the Enchanted Forest. Enough that even in her fake memories of raising Henry, he'd never really had one, which probably wasn't fair to the kid after the obvious care Regina had put into giving him at least material possessions.

Of course, she was also dirt poor and living out her car in the beginning before she became a bounty hunter ten years early so she couldn't have afforded a nursery for Henry until he was too old for one.

She'd tried to get over her quasi-phobia by helping with this place, making it a distraction from Neal's death. But then her parents went and named her brother after him and she ended up in The Underworld where her new, if creepy from the start, house had been replicated with the remnants of her hated nursery.

Her personal Hell was her own nursery, filled with reminders of what a mess she was and why.

Then there was her daughter...

Emma had been trying not to think about her since all this happened. She hadn't wanted another child. She'd only gotten pregnant to appease her mother and for Killian. But even then she'd orchestrated a ruse to accelerate the pregnancy so she wouldn't have to go through nine months of that again, carrying and hating her unborn child.

It was different sort of hate with her daughter, though. Her son she had hated because she couldn't keep him and that was so unfair when she finally had family. Her daughter she hated because she couldn't give her up, because her existence meant she was irrevocably trapped, tied even further to a man who didn't know how to love, who treated her so badly.

Life would have been so much easier if she'd realized what a delusion she'd fallen into before it was written into that damn book how happy they all were.

The truth was, she'd considered cursing her own child the more apparent it became that the girl was a budding psychopath who made Zelena look sane.

Of course her daughter would grow up to rape her brother while her husband seduced her son's wife and fathered her own not-really grandchild who led to her own death.

She'd been such a fucking idiot. She'd ruined so many lives. This was supposed to be her chance to fix them, but fixing herself seemed the even harder, perhaps impossible task.

Emma let out a deep sigh as she headed back down the stairs. She really couldn't take another round of hollow apologies from her parents. They were her parents, so she loved them and she wanted to make them proud, but she disliked them a great deal of the time... a dynamic that she supposed wasn't really unusual, accept that her parents were famous heroes who pushed her into the bed of a trophy-wearing murderer who'd spent three centuries getting women drunk to rape them in the bed they shared their wedding night - which was also the same bed that he'd shared with her son's grandmother for seven years, the bed that apparently her son's father, as a boy, had even napped in when fleeing the cruel intentions of Smee in the crew quarters before Hook handed him over to his child-abusing grandfather for spite.

She was a sick sick individual!

And her life was a string of lies going back to the start, full of false hope, and that was the worst kind.

"Stupid hope," Emma grumbled, noticing with disgust that the Once Upon A Time book was laying open on their bed to their story. At least it was the right story and not changed to include her bullshit romance, but it was still a lot of bullshit in the original.

On impulse, she conjured a fireball-

A loud splash and a yelp delayed that plan, and Emma rushed in the direction of the bathroom. She wasn't a big fan of her brother, but if he drown in the bath because her mother slipped on a bath toy and cracked her head open - which was just the sort of thing Snow White would do...

The bathroom door was half open and Emma pushed it the rest of the way, ready to magically intervene.

But there was no need for intervention, and instead Emma screamed in abject horror at the site before her that had nothing to do with her brother and everything to do with bath toys being used in a very inappropriate way.

"OH MY GOD! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MR. QUACKINGTON!?"

Emma turned away, shielding her eyes from the unnatural sight and somehow managed to reach the front door and stumble down the stairs without falling and breaking her neck. She felt dizzy and sick at the image imprinted in her brain, and then others started swirling into focus that were even worse.

She threw up in the azaleas out front and then ran down the sidewalk, not even sure where she as going, just that she had to get away!

AN: Did you get the Tinkerbell joke? JMo and Rose McIver are roomies in Vancouver. Yes, Snowing has a kinky side. But, of course, it involves terrible parenting. This chapter obviously referenced "Firebird" and how it recton destroyed Emma further as a character, turning her into always a jerk who didn't really care when she got people killed and used lame-ass honorifics to feel better about it just like her dumbfuck parents. What happened to Cleo was awful. Emma basically impersonating her down to her clothes and her walk was creepy and disrespectful and utterly destroys any badass cred Emma had in the pilot. It made her look like a fraud, a criminal who just found a way to get out of jail and beat up people without any consequences - like a great many bounty hunters, and the reason it's illegal in some states. It was simply a way to make her more of a selfish opportunist who deludes herself that she's a hero, just like Hook. It destroyed her even her past for CS. Just when you think OUAT can't reach a new low, they further vilified Emma while being totally clueless about it. And just when you thought THAT was as bad as it could get, Emma's going to full-on make-out with Hook at the funeral of the man who was murdered by the same woman who killed his wife and raped him, all three because of her fuck-ups involving her love for Hook. The toxicity of this ship is boundless!

Next up: Emma has a breakdown and The Gang tries to figure out the best course of action, but mostly they just trade insults.