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: This chapter contains spoilers for the Season 5 finale.

PART II

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

EMMA GOT MOLESTED

"I was molested, okay!" Emma burst out, taking Neal by complete surprise.

He stared at her a moment, computing that. "You... as in...not with-"

"No, not with a rubber ducky!" Emma snapped and the lights flickered again. "Why the hell would I keep it if I was! That's Hook kinds of messed up!"

"Woa, okay, calm down," Neal tried, holding up his hands.

Emma slumped back against the cage and sighed in defeat. "Pastor Tim. He took in 'troubled' kids, and I'd gotten caught stealing so I was sent to live with him and his wife Alice.. Eventually, some kid in his Sunday School tattled and the cops came and found the pictures he took and they arrested him and Alice. She knew all about it and would make me take baths in ice water and hold me under and tell me that I was a pretty little blonde distraction who was filling him with Satan's desires and making him do those things."

"Isn't that basically what Dark Two Hook told you minus the Satan thing?" Neal recalled.

"Pretty much," Emma grumbled.

"So that's-"

"Hook kinds of messed up. I know!" Emma cried. "He wants to sleep with women who remind him of his mom and I fall for guys who sexually assault me because I got molested as a kid!"

She sniffed, adding, "Which is probably also why I fucked that prison guard, which probably just messed me up worse."

"Wait, you-"

"He was smuggling in contraband for a price," Emma explained, "and I had a lot of weird cravings. It was mostly just blowjobs, but it turned out he kind of had a thing for the pregnant inmates, and I was lonely and hormonal and this one time he cornered me in the Laundry-"

"Jesus, Emma-"

"It's not like I didn't want it! I had a lot of, you know, sex dreams, Not about him. More like weird stuff with Kermit the Frog and Barnie the Dinosaur, but they weren't there, and I knew I wouldn't get my Lucky Charms if, well, I didn't give him mine, and it wasn't... it wasn't that bad all things considered."

"Emma," Neal groaned at her seriously weak justification, "the guy was in a position of power. He was basically extorting prisoners for sex. If you refused he'd have probably had your cell searched after planting drugs. Whether you were sexually frustrated or not, that's sexual abuse at best, rape at worst."

"Says the guy who banged a seventeen year old girl," Emma reminded.

"You told me your were eighteen and you had a very good fake ID," Neal reminded right back, then ran a hand through his hair and sighed, "Jesus. Did you actually want to sleep with me or did you just think you owed me?"

"Well, you did let me stay in the Bug and taught me how to be a better criminal, and you were really nice. I mean, you never tried to force yourself on me, so-"

"JESUS!" Neal repeated and groaned. "I think I'm gonna be sick!"

"But that's not why I slept with you!" Emma exclaimed. "I mean, at first it's why I considered sleeping with you. I was worried that you'd kick me out if I didn't, but then I tried to give you a hand-job that time and you told me you didn't expect anything, that you liked me as a friend and a partner. So when I did sleep with you it was because I really wanted to because I loved you and wanted to be with you."

Emma sighed miserably and considered, "I guess you're the only person I ever slept with and it wasn't partially out of guilt or fear or feeling like I owed them."

Neal grimaced, though he was relieved that he wasn't actually a rapist. "Have you ever told anyone about any of this?"

"Why would I?" Emma countered. "Who'd want to hear it? My parents would probably have labeled that guard my true love and Pastor Tim best foster father of the year."

"That's a bit harsh."

"They sided with a rapist who murdered their grandson's father and tried to murder their son raising her kid over his father that she slept with after murdering his wife and eventually murdered too - and were still okay with it. Plus, they sent Roland back with Little John and Friar Tuck the child molester. Plus, they knew Regina raped Graham for like forty years or something."

"To be fair, no one knew Friar Tuck was a child molester, though, yeah, the Zelena thing and Graham is pretty bad judgment."

"Yeah, pretty much!" Emma grumbled.

"Look, I get you're freaking out here-"

"Because I kind of repressed the worst of what Pastor Tim did and convinced myself it was just some over the covers groping by a creepy priest and his bipolar wife-"

"Til the duck sex toy thing," Neal concluded.

"The police councilor lady gave me Mr. Quackington," explained Emma. "And I just keep seeing it over and over," she gloomily continued. "I don't know what's worse, the memories or seeing my parents doing that. I haven't even taken a bath since leaving here when Pan cast his curse. I thought Mr. Quackington burned in the fire that didn't happen. I couldn't bring myself to take a bath, even though I knew it was stupid.

"And I guess since the whole Dark Swan spell thing transported all my stuff to my creepy house last time I've just been too busy to remember that I'd left him at the Loft and go get him since it's not like I was going to take a bath in one of Granny's petrii dishes."

"You could switch to hot tubs."

"I'm sure every hot tub in this town is swimming with Hook's STD's," she snorted. "He probably jumps fences at night and bathes in them like a bear."

"He definitely has the back hair to look like one," Neal considered.

"Hook has back hair?" Emma choked.

"Saw him when I was taking a walk. He had another session with that shaman. Pocahontas said he had to stop using some magical hair shit that's supposed to transfer hair from other parts of your body to your head since it leads to sterility."

"That's a thing?"

"Sterility?"

Emma punched him in the arm.

Neal answered seriously, "It's a thing. Used to be an apothecary at the market we'd take yarn when I was a kid who sold it. Papa used to say that the butcher who had weird curly bangs was using it to transfer his pubs to his head. He was kind of a baby-faced guy. Not a lot of other body hair to choose from. But given Hook's chest hair, I mean, that's generally a package deal."

Emma shuddered as it suddenly made sense why Hook's hair had gotten progressively... weird looking after arriving in Storybrooke. "Oh my God, I spent years running my hands through and putting my face in Hook's back hair!? I think I'm going to be sick!"

"Yeah, I threw up a little my mouth at that realization," said Neal. "Though, I admit, I did laugh a bit too. I mean, you let me die, but then you sniffed Hook's back hair for the rest of your life, so..."

"I'm such a loser!" Emma moaned. "What kind of person goes through that shit I did and then befriends and marries rapists and child-abusers, never mind people who are that fucking vane?"

"A really messed up one? You've been repressing one and justifying the other as hormones, Emma, for two lifetimes, and believe me, I know how that shit can mess you up."

At her befuddled look, Neal relayed, "Let's just say the new kids in Neverland quickly figured out that Pan wasn't the one to fear the most. You could outwit his mind-games and the wounds his forced fights left healed eventually. The kinda shit that Felix got up to with his unrequited love for his asexual leader, it lead more than a few kids to throw themselves to the mermaids."

Emma gave him a wide-eyed look. "You mean that Felix-"

"Didn't like that I was Pan's new favorite, dosed me with pixie dust and I spent the next week unable to sit comfortably?" Neal returned. "At least when Pan found out, he took Felix's heart and made him make a fool of himself to teach him not to touch me again. I guess he figured I'd be too messed up to sleep with a woman and make his prophesied heart donor otherwise.

"Which didn't mean Felix didn't keep trying after I got away from 'em all," Neal recalled. "Pan wasn't all-knowing. On the occasions he left Neverland or was using some creepy mind-melding magic to see through The Shadow's eyes in search of new victims, that blonde freak would come looking for me to beat the shit outta me and then try to get his version of make-up sex. That's how I met Tinkerbell, actually. She clocked him over the head with a coconut. Which, thinking about it, makes it kinda messed up that I lost my virginity to her."

"Besides you being fourteen."

"Yeah, that too."

"You don't think that Henry...?" Emma asked, suddenly horrified at the thought.

"Naw, Pan had to have kept him close. If Henry distrusted them in any way he'd have never given Pan his heart. Felix was a psychopathic child molester, but his devotion to Pan outweighed his sick needs in the short-term. After what Pan did to him on my account? Naw, he wouldn't have risked it."

Emma slumped back in relief but looked at Neal sadly. "So all that time in Neverland, you were living in constant fear of getting raped by some lunatic?"

"It was pretty good motivation to find a way out. Only took a couple hundred years."

"I'm sorry. No child should have to... You deserved so much better for escaping that," Emma told him.

"And you deserved so much better for escaping that priest and that guard," Neal sighed. "But did we? I mean, in the literal sense Pan let me go. Some cops caught your perv. In the metaphorical, though, you never really escape that kind of shit. It's always there. Would you have ended up with Hook if you weren't diddled as a kid and assaulted by that guard? Would I have settled for a shifty bitch like Tamara if I wasn't worried I'd been personalty scared by Neverland and was just lucky someone showed an interest?"

Emma miserably considered, "It's like we had this one perfect moment in time when we could have helped each other heal from that crap, but instead August ruined it and we just kept making bad choices and now we're too messed up - or I am anyway- to put back together again. I turned out to be Humpty Dumpty, Neal!"

"Well, you turned out to be some famous fairy tale character at least," he quipped.

"I'd rather be a nobody than an idiot ruler known for a big-ass wall who got himself smashed to irreparable pieces!"

"It really does fit you, now that I think about it-"

Emma punched Neal in the arm again. "I'm trying to be deep here!"

"Then stop hitting me!"

"It's how I deal with not knowing how to be deep about things!" Emma huffed. "It's either hitting you or screwing you, and besides you stating having zero interest in sleeping with me, I think fucking in a metal elevator cage would be a lot more painful!"

"Plus there's the electrocution factor," Neal pointed out as the lights flickered and one popped, throwing sparks.

Emma slumped back again and he advised, "Emma, I know it's hard, but now that you remember it, you have face up to it and then you acknowledge it every day, how it messed you up, how you'll never be a whole person again. Which is really really hard. But otherwise you bury it again, let it fester, subconsciously influencing a shit ton of bad decisions that leads to dealing with things by either punching or fucking."

"You make it sound so fun. Punching and fucking sounds better. No way I'm telling all this to Archie! I'd rather die!"

Neal sighed. "Look, I'm not an expert, but you can talk to me. I volunteered, helped kids that'd been through abusive situations talk about it. A lot of street kids at shelters, trying to get them into programs before they ended up turning into drug addicts and prostitutes. Always felt guilty I wasn't able to help Rufio, that I left who knows how many other kids there who ended up choosing suicide by pirate or mermaid. I know, logically, running was the only choice I had, but it still feels cowardly sometimes. At least that way I was helping some kids, even if it wasn't the Lost Boys. I just hope I did more good than in my attempt to help Wendy and her brothers."

"I'm sure you did," Emma assured him, even as she felt more guilty for not knowing that about him. "You probably did more good in your life than I ever did. I didn't even help the Lost Boys in Storybrooke. I promised to help them gets homes, find families, and I never did that..."

She sniffed and realized in disgust, "Most of them were probably living in the forest getting molested by Friar-"

"Is that smoke?" Neal cut her off.

Before Emma could blow enough snot out of her nose to even begin to tell, the wall that hid the elevator opened revealing a smoke-shrouded Blue Fairy holding the Black Fairy's wand. She gave it a swish and they were transported to the street.

The Library was almost fully engulfed in flames.

Belle was crying as the rather pathetic old pumper truck attempted to douse the flames. Hook was babbling something about his rum and Funyuns stash to an irate Tinkerbell while Snow and Charming stood with Regina and a worried Henry who ran up with a cry of, "Mom! Dad!" to hug them both.

"Well done," Regina drawled. "You managed to do what in twenty-eight years I could never get done. You don't know how many times I tried to get rid of this damn place."

"It wasn't on purpose," Emma sniffed. "Can't you stop it?"

The Blue Fairy answered, "It was your magic that started the fire. There's darkness in your magic. And with pixie dust as an accelerant," she scoffed with a glare at Tinkerbell. "Never mind the residual protection spells Mayor Mills placed on it and the residue from Maleficent's dragon magic that was dispersed all over when you," she scoffed at Emma, "turned her to magical dust. You're lucky I was able to get you out, but there will be a price for using this," she said with a distasteful look at the wand before she stalked off then, leaving Emma even more miserable.

She told Belle, "I'm really sorry. I'll buy you new books."

"A lot of those were ancient magical tomes that can't be reproduced!" Belle huffed. "At least your stupid jacket is ruined! Everyone else might have believed it made you some kind of badass, that it was your Superman cape, but I know what it was. When everyone was ignoring me while Rumple was in a coma, I read all of the information that Regina had Sydney find out about you - all your dirty secrets that he paid that creep genie to give him after you won the election."

Looking superior, Belle informed, "I know the jacket, the tight-ass jeans, the boots, the way you walk, it's all a bad imitation of a woman who died because you're a stupid selfish amoral fucktard and this is just a sad little attempt by a scared little fraud to intimidate people into not realizing that if you didn't have that badass act and what it tricks people into giving you, you'd still be a dorky little loser who deserves the shitty situation she's in - you know what everyone thinks I am."

Emma recoiled at the accusation while a grim-faced and wincing Rumple took his wife by the arm. "Come now, Belle. Let's go back home. I'm sure much of it can be replaced..."

Belle pulled away from him rather angrily and Rumple was left to limp after her.

As they walked away, Emma sniffled and asked Neal, "Did your step mom just compare me to your dad and call us frauds?"

"Seemed like it," Neal exhaled. "That's gonna be one awkward drive home..."

"Mom?" Henry asked, dismay in his voice. "Is what Belle said true?"

"It is," Emma muttered with an ashamed look at her son. "I was a bad person until about two years ago, Kid. My clothes, my attitude, it's all just an act to look badass and do a job I didn't even really want, that had nothing to do with being a good guy and fighting for justice when I took it, just a plea-bargain to stay out of jail for skipping on my probation back in Phoenix. I didn't live in ten cities in ten years because I was fighting crime, it was because I was a criminal on the run. I just... I didn't want you to be disappointed in me," she concluded while Henry's expression transformed from confusion to shock to betrayal and disgust, reminding her painfully of that day in Neal's apartment.

As Henry turned and stormed off, Regina pursed her lips and declared, "So, I was right all along. How do you like that? You on your high horse, calling me names, putting yourself on a hero's pedestal when you had blood on your hands and were pulling off your own charade. Which of us was the bigger impostor? At least I owned being the Evil Queen when I looked in the mirror. Did you actually fool yourself into thinking this hero act was for real? And I thought Hook was delusional!"

"Hey, at least I didn't rape and mass murder anyone!" Emma hissed. "You've never held yourself accountable for that! You act like you just suffered from multiple personality disorder or some shit and it's not your fault that 'Evil Queen' personality killed people. Well, you know what, it is your fault! That's not part of you, it's you! I may have gotten one woman killed by being a selfish jerk, but you intentionally ordered the slaughter of hundreds of men, women, and children all because some stupid princess was prettier than you! And you wonder why fate was cruel to take Robin away? It's because you were cruel and he was your soulmate! Tinkerbell said you ruined both of your lives, and you did! He was bound to you by magic, whether it was actually being your soulmate or that fucking pixie dust you used to find him, and because you don't deserve a happy ending, someone good, after decades of slaughtering innocent people, the price of magic was his life!"

Regina stood stiffly for a moment, then lashed out and smacked Emma hard across the face.

The street lights fizzled and the former Evil Queen glared.

"Maybe I wouldn't have needed that pixie dust if this world allowed anyone even five minutes to grieve. I'm the one who lost someone, that everyone is terrified is going to go evil again and kill them all, and you're throwing a magical tantrum over a toy that destroyed a building and nearly got your entire family killed. So which one of us is the real danger here, Miss Swan?"

Regina gave one last glare before storming off.

"Emma," Snow began.

"She's right. You don't want to be near me right now," Emma told her mother, pretty sure she would completely lose it and give the woman another concussion if she had to hear a speech. She just wanted a portal to suck her in and take her far away from here and the cold hard truths she didn't want to face. But there wasn't a portal around, so she headed down the block in no particular direction, just away from the group of gawking looky-loos watching the Library burn to the ground.

Neal jogged to catch up with her.

"Please, just leave me alone," she sighed.

"You can't just walk off into the woods like last time," Neal told her. "I've still got my room at the Inn, and as long as we get there before Granny ambles her way back from gawking at the fire, she can't refuse to give you a room for being a fire code violation."

"Which is a perfectly legit reason that I should avoid the place!"

"You're not gonna burn down the Inn," Neal told her, giving her arm a tug toward Granny's.

"You don't know that."

"I do actually," he said with a smirk, gesturing to the anti-magic cuff he'd just slapped on her. "Snagged it from the pawnshop awhile ago. Figured it might eventually come in handy."

"And you couldn't just hand it over before I burned down the Library!?"

Neal shrugged. "I didn't think you'd go that far or take into account Tinkerbell's pixie dust prank countering anti-fire spells. And it's not like it's a big loss. Might be beneficial actually. I was storing all the books from New York in the attic. Last thing we need is someone taking a magic quill to worlds we've never been to."

Emma gave him a wary look. "Was it really safe storing them there? What if setting them on magical fire had some... bad magical consequence?"

"Well, a portal hasn't opened up and dropped one of Don Quixote's windmills on us, so I think we're safe," Neal quipped as they approached Granny's.

"I'd rather go through the back," Emma mumbled, every time she had to walk by the place making her think of all the times she ignored Henry to selfishly make-out in front of the diner.

"Fine," Neal didn't argue and tossed her his room key. "Find something good on TV. I'll get us some dinner."

Emma raised a brow. "If you're thinking we're going to Netflix and chill... I'd be okay with that."

"Therapy," said Neal.

(flashback)

As the police car pulled up to the group home, saw a familiar couple talking with the administrator on the front steps by the maple tree. They'd been to see her twice, had talked about fostering her, maybe even more than that from what Emma had overheard, what she'd been desperately hoping.

Her heart leapt with hope for a moment-

And then it sunk when the couple gave her a look of disappointment and betrayal and headed to their car.

"I'm sorry, Emma," the administrator said with a somewhat sympathetic look as Emma gloomily climbed the steps to meet her, "but you're being transferred to a home for problem children."

"I didn't mean to hurt anyone," Emma cried. "I just wanted to see a movie. I didn't even sneak into the right theater..."

"Well, that's karma, isn't it, then?" the woman told her, though not harshly. "Maybe this will teach you to stop stealing, Emma. I know you don't do it for bad reasons, but the law is the law."

"No one's ever going to adopt me now, are they?" she sniffled, watching the couple drive off.

"Don't think like that. Someday you'll have a family."

Emma nodded. She didn't believe it, though, not anymore. This was her last chance, she felt it in her heart as she packed her meager possessions. Why did the good guys never believe her? Why did they always punish her?

Good guys aren't so good! Emma silently huffed.

It was the bad guys like that creepy pervert probably child molester usher who scared her who got away with things. He was probably touching some kid in the bathroom right now while her happy ending was walking away, labeling her the bad guy. She wasn't! She just did bad things sometimes because her life sucked and it sucked a bit less if she didn't have to walk home.

Stupid her for trying to celebrate, to be happy and normal for one day.

Her happy ending was ruined.

All because of a stupid sword in a stupid stone!

AN: And there you have it, why Merlin felt responsible for the asshole that Emma became and the ways in which she suffered that she would not have if she hadn't gotten caught with that wallet. Who knows what an Emma who was adopted by a nice couple would have become? Most-likely not the Emma we have in canon today! (Pastor Tim & Alice are names taken from The Americans, but they are not pedophiles, just annoying there). As for Emma being molested as a kid and raped in prison, I know it's cliché, but this is a show about clichés, and they LOVE rape as a reason women are evil. Cora was an ambitious but moral feminist who got raped and turned evil. Zelena was a product of rape who turned evil and raped a guy. Ingrid was almost molested as a kid and almost raped as an adult and turned evil! So it's legit by OUAT logic that Emma being molested and raped would cause her to grow up to be evil and even more fucked up than the villains who just raped or almost molested. As for Neverland, that was based loosely on MRJ's part on Game of Silence, Gil, who was molested at a juvenile detention facility when he was fourteen. Belle's OOC crude attack on Emma is from a tweet by Natalie Tudor York. Yes, Emma, you are a fucktard.

Next up: An epilogue to Emma and Neal's elevator conversation.