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

GUEST: 1) See above. 2) What makes you think Tink and Neal are not friends? People sometimes have a falling out with a friend. Tink has a substance abuse problem. That doesn't mean the two won't patch things up if she gets help.

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read the Author's Note at the end unless you have watched Orange is the New Black Season 4. (Or don't give a fuck about the show.)

PART II

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

ASHES TO ASHES

I never done good things

I never done bad things

I never did anything out of the blue,

Want an axe to break the ice

Wanna come down right now

Emma awoke to the clock radio scratchily blaring David Bowie - and the clanking radiator. She swatted blearily at the closer of the offensive noise makers succeeding in knocking the alarm clock onto the floor and shifting the tuner dial to full-on static.

"Damn it," she grumbled, hanging over the side of the bed and finally just yanking at the cord until it came of the outlet.

That done, Emma finally realized the oddity of sleeping in a bed after having camped out in a car for a week.

She rubbed grit from her eyes as she remembered that she was in Neal's room at Granny's. Just like the last time, he wasn't there, and there was a moment of panic that everything since had been a dream and he was still dead - then she found a note on the night stand indicating he'd gone to help clean up the Library. On the other side of the paper he'd done a quick sketch of her sleeping that brought back uncomfortable memories of following Henry to New York.

Regina had found a letter from Robin, but she'd found a folder of old sketches that Neal had done, some of them yellowed, many of them of her from when they were together, others that seemed to be variations on the large charcoal drawing on the bookshelf in his apartment, but clearly with them and a child, some masochistic envisioning of Tallahassee that would never happen.

It had made her sad and angry and redoubled her effort to bury all that pain and grief - real grief for someone she'd really loved - and devote herself entirely to the sexy, shallow distraction that was her affair with Hook. Her grief when he died was, quite honestly, grief for herself, for losing again and more importantly losing the addiction she'd been using to self-medicate the pain of all the shit that had gone wrong in her life that she didn't want to face, the most devastating being the death of her son's father and knowing she was, on several levels, complicit in his dying and being unable to return the way Hook had.

If she focused on having Hook there to distract from everything else, she didn't have to deal with the self-loathing she felt deep down that she'd risked everything for someone who certainly didn't deserve a second chance to get into her pants - but hadn't risked anything for Neal who'd just wanted to be a dad, who'd had her back even when he could tell she'd already chosen his deadbeat stepfather over him.

"I'm such an asshole," Emma told her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

She had all kinds of possible magical extenuating circumstance excuses for a lot of the bad things she'd done, but most of that compounding crap came after Neal died. She had her parents' curse on her causing her to be drawn toward villains to fill that void, and she probably had syphilis for like a year, and some lingering pixie dust in her brain besides, and maybe even later on those creepy flowers that Arthur had kept everywhere and Hook always brought her with the same unnerving frequency the psychotic king brought Gueneviere, but even if she'd been having wet dreams about Hook, she had twice as much good magic, so that shouldn't have prevented her from trying to save Neal, from trying true love's kiss before the possible contribution of the Middle Mists or whatever affect Zelena's cursed kiss might have had.

Even if their love was a complicated and painful mess, Neal was her first true love, Henry's dad, the only best friend she'd had (for more than a couple of days), and someone she'd once envisioned a happy ending with and did truly want to be happy himself.

It came down to her being a coward. Just like she was getting Cleo killed and then assuming her wardrobe and personality less as armor to keep people out as much as a costume to be someone else, because it was easier to be someone else, to pretend to be good and brave than to actually be good and brave.

She'd spent months trying to be both as herself, learning to be a bounty hunter to stay out of jail but learning to do the job for the right reasons.

Lily wasn't the only one who ended up totally fucked up by that spell, always making bad choices, taking the easy way out, no matter how much she wanted to be a better person and do the right thing.

Maybe it was another one of those Star Wars analogies, Emma thought as she put the previous day's smoky clothes back on: complete good was just as corrupting as total evil. Without the balance of darkness to keep the light in check, it was just as corrupting a power that in its self-righteous blindness ultimately served to help darkness. Her parents and their actions certainly seemed to be proof of that as much as anything.

Without the ability to even feel the sort of cruel impulses she was able to experience as the Dark One, all of her good intentions ended up undermined by some natural magical craving for balance that was satisfied by criminality even when she was trying to bring the bad guys in to be held accountable for their actions. She couldn't maintain that sense of justice when she was unconsciously drawn toward bad people to experience bad behavior by proxy. Lily. Neal. Hook. Even Regina.

Neal had reformed, though. And he hadn't done bad things because he himself was inherently bad. He was just a refugee in another world without all of the paper trail bullshit you need to be legit. And he had become legit in spite of that, after leaving her. He'd done good things, helped strangers, because it was the right thing to do, because he cared, not because he wanted to look like a good person. He wasn't pretending for the sake of some social contract. He didn't turn doing good works into some self-centered means to get an expensive apartment and be some disingenuous characiture of someone better, someone he'd hurt.

Looking at the dreamcatcher again, Emma thought of Henry's look of betrayal the night before.

She wouldn't blame him if he wanted as much to do with her now as she'd had with him the last time around; which was about as much interaction as she'd had with her mother in the form of a pep-talk a couple times a year and being otherwise completely focused on her newest costume, her newest fraud, of being some stepford wife-like emotional doormat for a man who could make her forget with sex what an awful person she was even as he made her even worse, the whole messed up 'true love' based on belief thing blackening her heart, filling that emptiness with his evilness. Which was some fucked up irony when Emma supposed another reason she'd so shallowly clung to Hook was her insecurity over her self-worth and ability to be a good person for real.

Who else but an obsessive stalker would want to be with a woman who didn't know how to be herself anymore? She didn't even care that being around him made her look like crap, that it had to mean something more than the obvious stated by Hades when trying to put half of her heart into his chest felt like she was dying.

In retrospect, it was obviously some kind of dark magic thing stemming from the toxicity of their relationship. Some kind of weird Dorian Grey thing that kept Hook looking ageless and sexy (or aging handsomely) while she had to use all kinds of magic shit to not look like she was turning into The Red Woman on Game of Thrones.

Emma didn't really want to contemplate why he hadn't seemed bothered by either of those, by her increasingly unhealthy appearance and emotionally erratic behavior. But then, it's not like Hook had really known her at all, even the fake her when they got together, because they never talked unless it was trading half-truths and outright lies to either look like better people than they were or to get a self-pity fuck for "honesty". The entirety of their relationship, from beginning to end, was like some all-consuming teenage crush romance with less depth than the kiddy pool she bought Henry in her fake memories of living in Tallahassee.

Of course, Hook was apparently also using some magic back-to-head-hair shit, Emma remembered, so maybe they were both just shallow assholes pretending to be someone else because of abandonment issues. Not that she thought it absolved the pirate of his crimes against countless women and her, though she did think Hook had genuinely believed in the sanctity of their love and that its selfish and consent-issue-riddled foundation was actually romantic.

Though, even there, Emma knew he was right that she shouldered some blame for having met him in the past and started him dreaming about her and leading to the delusional conclusion that they were fated because of a paradox that she made him "fall in love" with her. That he lied and said he didn't remember her was probably as much fearing the truth would cause her to run away again as it was just his default asshole kind of response to cement the fated-ness of their bullshit romance.

The neurosyphilis had probably helped with that on both sides, Emma supposed as she took Neal's room key from the dresser and headed downstairs.

Tinkerbell was at the counter when Emma entered Granny's and the ex-fairy gave her a nasty look and a brusk, "Rough night?"

"Can I get a coffee to go?" sighed Emma.

Still glowering, Tinkerbell went over to start another pot remarking, "Can I get my home and all my worldly possessions back? No, because they burned up in a magical fire!"

"I said I was sorry," mumbled Emma, adding defensively, "and you did make it worse with your stupid pixie dust! Why the hell would you put that stuff on the stairs?"

"Obviously to keep Hook out so he wouldn't raid my fridge and try to rape me!" Tink shot back. "I was hoping he'd fall down the stairs and break his neck!"

0Frowning, Emma countered, "But I thought you were sort of friends. I mean, didn't you encourage his interest in me?"

"We shagged once in Neverland after Baelfire left, when I was high and depressed," Tink said, "which that creep interpreted as 'friendship' and by 'friendship' mostly the 'benefits' part that he kept pestering me about as being without saying when 'friendship' involves parties of the opposite sex.

"At least this time around you stayed in the present and he didn't develop a wet dream obsession with you that ended our 'friendship' with the bastard trying to give me your bloody cleavage scar," she concluded.

"Neal told you about that, huh?" Emma winced and rubbed at the scar on her left clavicle from getting a mole removed when she was living in New York without her memories.

She'd found out sometime after the whole Underworld thing the basics of the sexual nature of Tink's relationship with Hook and that he'd lied about not remembering her in the past and thus making that connection in the rewritten timeline and thus altering his motives from the start of their meeting from trying to kill her for Cora after raping her for kicks to raping her in revenge and then killing her for getting him drunk and stealing his ship... which over time knowing her in the present transformed from the raping and killing to wanting to make her fall in love with him and then break her heart... to, he believed, being genuinely in love with her.

"I thought he'd be too drunk to remember me," sighed Emma.

"A functional alcoholic for three centuries develops a tolerance to blackouts," Tink snorted. "And while I've got a tolerance to functional assholes, I don't want them breaking my friends' hearts. Neal was my friend, and I know I've fucked that up with the pixie dust thing, but I hoped that if Hook went full perv on you, you'd either realize he was a sexual predator and reconsider giving Neal another chance - or you'd show your true asshole colors and that you weren't worthy of him in the first place and he'd find someone who was instead of risking his life for you.

"I was really hoping for the former, though," Tink admitted. "I'm a romantic at heart and all that kid ever wanted was a family, and I know you wanted that being an orphan and all, so you could have given that to each other. Instead," she glowered, "you rebuffed all of his attempts to apologize and just be friends and co-parents and wallowed in your self-pity and parenting problems Regina style, acting like he didn't even exist, something you continued doing after he died. Your eulogy was utter shit. Your reception was pathetic. You didn't even try to save him, but you magic kissed Hook back from the dead a few days later!

"And according to Baelfire, you apparently didn't do a damn thing to try and change things when you had the past at your disposal other than making Captain Rapist even more obsessed with you," Tink ranted on, "and then you threw away that keychain Bae gave you and replaced it with Hook's inherited 'the only one he didn't kill for but was set with a stone gained by mass murder' ring. Not to mention you welcomed that green witch bitch into your family and repeatedly screwed over Baelfire's father for being the Dark One even though you were the Dark One and did horrible things.

"You're a fucking hypocrite, Emma Swan," Tink told her scathingly.

"I didn't throw it away," Emma tried to defend herself. "I did keep it, just like the dreamcatcher. I just couldn't... see it every day and be reminded of the bad choices I made and how the universe fucked up our chance to find Tallahassee. Neal said he wanted me to find it, and how I could do that with someone else and still wear that? It felt like cheating."

"Hiding it so you don't have to be reminded you're doing a bad thing doesn't make it not a bad thing," Tink scoffed. "You think your dad taking off his wedding ring while he was having an affair with your mom under the Curse made what he was doing any less douchey to Kathryn? You had a true love, a soulmate, the father of your kid that you didn't lift a finger to fight for and then went and saved someone who helped ruin his life, who helped turn him into the kind of screwed up teenager who'd leave the girl he loved if someone told him he wasn't good enough for her, because he didn't think anyone would ever choose him, certainly not a princess whose life his father fucked up."

"I know that now," Emma lamented.

"Yeah, well, now doesn't do much good, does it?" Tink countered. "After his parents, and leaving out the other trauma Pan as his goons inflicted on him, Hook's a quarter of the reason Baelfire left you and never looked you for, not even when he knew you were in Storybrooke, but you chose that bastard and you never looked back and you didn't so much back-stabbing shit that I wouldn't be able to even look at you if I was him.

"Which just goes to show what a good person Baelfire - Neal - is," the ex-fairy stated coolly. "And I know I'm not. But I'm also not the Savior, someone who's supposed be on the side of right, fight for people who've got no one to fight for them - the stuff everyone says you did before you broke the Curse and then presto-chango became a shallow little shit just like every other princess."

Grabbing a cup from under the counter, Tink told her coldly, "You disgust me. You didn't even try to honor Neal's memory by telling Henry about him. And you believed some punk-ass joke by a god's impersonation, which is pathetic enough, but you told him you wanted to split your heart for Hook, and you wanted his help? What kind of a selfish cunt does that? Tells the man you helped get killed, who loves you, that you want his help to save a scumbag who banged his mother with your heart instead of giving it to him so, you know, his son could have a father back?"

Glaring, Tinkerbell poured a cup and then added a double shot of espresso.

"Two black eyes on the house," she said, setting the paper cup down. "I'd give you another two, but Granny'd fire me. And right now I'm sleeping on a cot on the laundry room."

"I'm sorry," Emma told her again. "I didn't want to turn out to be a bad person. This whole thing," she gestured to her clothes, "really wasn't maliciously intended. I did want to honor Cleo and stop being so selfish and careless. I really wanted to be the hero Henry believed I was. I just... got carried away with the looking bad-ass part of the act and what everyone was telling me and what felt good and I forgot what was important."

The ex-fairy sighed. "Look, I do sort of get it, okay? I wasn't a real good fairy either. I shirked my responsibilities and got a bit of a... problem with pixie dust. I didn't want to be an addict. I really wanted to prove that I could be a good fairy, that I could help people, but doing it by stealing dust and making up some bullshit that I was leading Regina to a new true love so she'd stop moping over her dead one and that would count as doing a good deed? Yeah, that was fucked up and it made a lot of people's lives suck in the long-term, yours included. I saved her life only to ruin it, and it took me years in Neverland to realize that, to get why the Blue Fairy, glittery bitch that she is, exiled me.

"You can't do something deceitful like that - use people and their grief - or your own - to build yourself up as a good person, a hero," said Tink. "It just makes you an even bigger asshole."

"I know."

Sighing, Emma paid for the coffee and headed out front, stopping short when she came upon Hook sitting at the front table looking pathetic... and angry when he turned at the sound of the bell to recognize her.

"If it isn't Miss Prohibition!" he accused.

"Who told you to store your rum in the Library's attic? Why the hell didn't you have your creepy frat parties on your ship?"

"Because the Harbor Patrol is run by a bloody thief who steals off unattended ships," Hook shot back, "which you'd know if you ever did your job as Sheriff. Ruby's investigating. She really is quite good. If she hadn't declared herself Lesbian, I'd totally be into her now."

"I can't deal with you this morning, Hook," Emma told him.

"You burned my things, Swan!"

"Well, you're lucky it wasn't your stupid ship that you 'gave up' to shag me! And I think you leaving me and my mother to die in a dungeon trumps me burning your stupid rum! Plus you gave me syphilis!"

"You're just upset that discovering our relation means you can no longer publicly lust after me."

"No, I'm upset that I was so shallow that I lusted after you because you were nothing but a hot piece of ass with an accent who conveniently distracted me from all the shit in my life I didn't want to deal with. If I wasn't sure before, seeing your fat-ass self now open-mouth chewing Mexican food has revealed just how disgustingly shallow I was, and I what horrible message I sent to my kid, never mind my other mistake of nature Omen-esque spawn whose previous existence I'm trying to block out of my memory completely."

"The Omen... Was that the one with that mischievous, rambunctious kid, Damien?"

Emma groaned. "God, you really are a psychopath!"

"And you are definitely disinherited now. You aren't getting my buried treasure map," Hook declared.

Emma rolled her eyes. "The other you told me that was a lie you boasted about when we met to appear more attractive."

"Yes, well, I lied. Probably on account of learning you were a no account criminal loser your entire life and after that thing with Neal and the twenty grand in watches worrying you were a gold-digger who'd seduced me with magic in the past and would kill me in my sleep in the present!"

Emma glared. "A gold-digger. Really? Have you been listening to Kanye West songs again?"

"He has a great deal of wisdom to share on the fairer sex in this strange world," retorted Hook. "And you are a trifling friend indeed when I'm in need, Swan," he huffed.

Emma snorted. "And I can tell by your charm and your arm that you've got a flock of stupid little forest hoes who'll happily let you get them drunk. But here, have my coffee," she concluded handing him her cup.

Hook scowled at her retreat, but sipped the coffee which he contemplated uncertainly on his way into Granny's. "New roast of beans?" he asked.

Tink raised a brow. "No. My urine."

Hook choked. "What the bloody hell!? That's disgusting!"

"Well, Emma was supposed to drink it, though you're still number three on my Most Hated list after Blue Tits," Tink told him.

"For what? What did I ever do to you!? And you got me pixie stoned. That's not cool," Hook accused. "I kissed Ruby. And she's gay."

Tink's brows shot up. "She is?"

"Well, bi, I suppose, but she declared she's now in a women-only phase or something because men smell and don't want to talk about being on the rag," said Hook. "Which I think Swan must be."

"I know, right?" scoffed Tink. "Thank Merlin's unfortunately hot murdered balls that fairies don't menstruate. I mean, can you imagine dealing with that in a tight-ass sequined tutu?"

"I'd rather not. Now I've lost my appetite."

"Good, you could do with losing some weight."

Hook glared, then got distracted when Ruby entered in a Graham-ish outfit with a badge on her belt. He greeted, "If it isn't Wynona Earp. I'll leave you lovely lasses to talk about woman times stuff - and disinfect the espresso machine."

"I didn't pee in the machine, you idiot!" Tink called after him.

"You're peeing in customers' coffee now?" asked Ruby. "What the hell, Tink? Granny'll be... well... pissed!"

"It was just Emma's," she defended and Ruby relaxed.

"Oh, well, I get that."

"What is wrong with her?" Tink asked. "I mean, she's clearly got some messed up childhood shit or Pan couldn't have played her so well, but, seriously?"

Ruby shrugged. "Besides being related to my deadbeat former bestie who's related to that fat douche? Who knows. Wanna go out for drinks tonight?"

Tink beamed. "Hell yes!"

AN: In watching Season 4 of OITNB, I see Piper and my Emma similarly. They are both women (with shitty parents and who went to prison for a stupid fuckup) who deluded themselves that they were heroes, did despicable things with all kinds of self-righteous justifications that were really selfish and about being needed/wanted/respected. Then the badass act leads to self-ruination. And somehow we're still supposed to root for these selfish fucktards who have destroyed lives just to look important or have the upper hand in a seriously dysfunctional relationship. (You could argue that if Piper hadn't fucked Alex over in revenge she wouldn't have ended up in a position to start that panty business, so she wouldn't have been targeted by "The Dominicans", so there would have been no escalation with the guards in her fake anti-gang movement, which would mean no searches and thus no forcing that stanky inmate to stand on the table, thus no reenactment which lead to Washington's death).

Emma's found herself in a similar situation. Her actions, however unintentional, hurt people who trusted her or if they did deserve it, others who didn't got caught up in that escalation. And even though that happened, for the most part, in a timeline that no longer exists, bits and pieces of that were made known, particularly during Ingrid's curse, and now people who looked up to Emma have had their rose-colored glasses shattered and aren't sure they can trust her to protect them while she's wallowing in guilt, in suffering for what her pride wrought. Emma is, you could say, over that metaphorical stove trying to turn her swastika into a window with the few friends she has left... but asking herself not if God exists, but why God let everything go to shit and then gave her a responsibility she was in no way equipped to handle.

Next up: Mr. Quackington is released into the wild.