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 SEVENTY

OF DRAGONS, QUEENS, AND CRIPPLES

The last thing Regina Mills remembered, she'd stopped at Granny's to take something home for dinner and ended up ordering a drink while she waited. And then another. And another.

Apparently she'd consumed a lot of drinks from her pounding headache and the horrible taste in her mouth. She couldn't even remember the last time she got drunk, but she supposed it had been coming for awhile, since Robin's death.

Just because she'd realized that their relationship was mutually self-destructive, that being "soulmates" could never fix the fact that they missed their chance to end up like Snow and Charming and instead grew apart into people too different to ever be truly happy together and make each other the best versions of themselves - though if Snow and Charming were, they must have been destined to be pretty awful people apart - that didn't mean it hurt any less.

If she hadn't gotten so caught up in the idea of recapturing her one-time possible happy ending, Robin might not have been with them when Snow White cast the Dark Curse and sent them all back to Storybrooke. He might have been out in the forest, beyond the spell, raising his son and never compromising his honor to get some Evil Queen. Because of her selfish influence, a good man had died with his honor tarnished. Oh, sure, he made those choices, but could any man resist her cleavage and her smok'n ass?

A swat to said very naked under the covers ass made Regina startled and roll over, removing her face from a pillow that wasn't hers and as she pushed the hair from her eyes, concern building at just what she'd done last night, she was rewarded with the absolute most horrible 'thing' that anyone could ever do while drunk.

"Always figured you'd be a whore in the sheets, luv," Hook leered at her, half dressed in his ridiculous attempt at modern clothes that were now several sizes too small and showing off his gut along with his chest hair.

"No. No," Regina moaned, taking a the room at Granny's.

Just when she thought it couldn't get worse, Maleficent sauntered in from the bathroom wearing a bra and slip and gave Hook a dismissive wave, "Be gone, pirate whore."

"You weren't complaining last night."

"Only in your deluded fantasies. Stop toying with Regina and get out or I'll tie you to the bed and let my daughter practice magic on you."

"I'm sure I could seduce her into other activities," Hook leered.

Rolling her eyes, Maleficent retorted, "She's a lesbian."

Scowling, Hook retreated from the room, leaving Regina bordering on panicked. "Please please tell me I didn't sleep with that walking venereal diseases!?"

"You didn't," Maleficent reassured. "He just showed up for a second opinion on that salve he's been using to transfer his back hair to his head. It's an obvious rip-off, but I told him he just wasn't using enough of it for long enough."

Regina snorted at that and sighed in relief. "Thank god. I'd have had to memory potion myself just to erase the memory of knowing I'd done it even without having any memory of what happened last night, it's that traumatizing a thought. What did happen last night?" she asked, sitting up, holding the covers around her.

"No need to be so modest," Maleficent retorted while pulling a blouse and skirt from her closet. "You're no older than I was when we had our first dalliance. And not aging under a curse has been kinder to you than it was to me - what with being stuck as a dragon thanks to someone being a spoiled, stuck-up bitch about a curse that I risked my life for."

"I said I was sorry about that," Regina groaned.

"You didn't, actually."

"I'm sorry about that?"

"Too late now," Maleficent retorted.

"You're still angry with me but you slept with me?" Regina asked, bewildered.

"Got you drunk and slept with you," Maleficent corrected, "which could technically count as sexual assault or outright rape depending on my intentions when we started doing tequila shots, but considering you spent over three decades raping some poor motherless assassin to smother your pain that your mother tricked you into sterilizing yourself, I don't think anyone would prosecute. Not that anyone could since your town's District Attorney is an actual ax murderer that no one has seen in months and might well have run off to Magical China the moment Pan dropped us all in the Enchanted Forest. Which, at least, I got to be stuck as a sand banshee in my own home after you and Captain Combover stumbled around my prison to get your piece of evil rock candy."

"That wasn't my most brilliant moment," conceded Regina.

Maleficent snorted and buttoned her blouse, "Getting caught in your plot to kidnap your son and leave everyone to die, you mean? Yes, getting caught always did bring out your remorse, didn't it? Honestly, you're a terrible mother, Regina. You emotionally neglected and psychologically abused Henry for ten years. You poisoned him trying to murder his birth mother. You've left him in the care of murderers, rapists, and psychopaths. And completely useless dimwits like Snow and Charming. You used his dangerous obsession with that book to help you essentially write him out of existence, all to be with a man you hardly knew who was willing to shaft his own wife who'd only been dead to him for about a year to be with you. Such great examples you've set!"

"Well, I didn't exactly have any good female role models growing up," harumphed Regina. "You were probably the most sane and you cursed a girl and her true love because her father was a dick."

"You know it was more than that," snapped Maleficent. "And to be fair, Philip was never Aurora's true love. He was gayer than a male figure skater, but his father made him take various magical supplements to be into women. I was trying to do him and Aurora a favor by cursing him. Better a fire monster in a foreign land saved by some sexy Chinese soldier - with a dick - than denying his sexuality, tethered to a dumb little twit for the rest of his life because my ex sisters brainwashed them into believing they were soulmates."

"From what I understand, Aurora was actually tolerable after Philip lost his soul," shrugged Regina.

"So I've heard. I suspect she was bisexual like her mother. I do feel sorry for that Mulan girl, caught in the middle of that fraudulent mess. She certainly was a more worthy partner than Philip, if Aurora did have actual wits to develop when not focused on her duties to pop out babies. Her mother did get a clue, after all, just too late. King Stefan really didn't deserve her. It's unfortunate that both died young, because of foolish princes. More tragic that Aurora squandered her potential to lay on her back and open her legs for a mediocre prince who had to fantasize about the stable boy to get it up."

At 'stable boy' Regina's expression soured further and Maleficent inquired while pulling on her stockings, "Oh, you're still caught up on Daniel are you? I noticed you have a replica of his headstone in the cemetery, the one. you made before you discovered that your mother had kept the boy's corpse magically preserved for reasons she never divulged before you banished her to Wonderland. Is it true that Whale reanimated him using one of the hearts of in your vault?"

"He did," Regina grated out. "And I suspect he used one of my mother's victims who'd died and their soul was trapped in eternal torment until I... destroyed Daniel's body."

"And yet you still have that vault full of hearts. Wouldn't finding their owners and destroying those belonging to the dead go a ways toward redemption for your own murdering?" Maleficent countered.

Shrugging, Regina argued, "I've been busy."

"Being your mother's brainless stalking horse still insipidly desperate for her approval," scoffed the ex-fairy. "You need to grow up, Regina. I cared for you, I really did, but we could never be more than fuck buddies. You just refused to own your mistakes and act like an adult. Yes, that quill was evil and being tethered to the printed page, recorded by egotistical idiots born in this world is a cruel fate for anyone, hero or villain, but being locked in a room with a pile of cocaine doesn't mean you have to snort the whole kilo. You had enough free will not to make the bad choices you were given. It was just easier to blame the world.

"I've been there," she said. "And I'd hoped that when you came to me for help and ended up helping me, I would have inspired in you the same realization that dark magic and murder are not the way. I didn't, of course, I just added to your repertoire of harmful magic while hoping that with age would come wisdom. I'm not entirely sure that it has."

"Tell me what you really think," groused Regina.

"That you have just enough of your father's cowardice to counter your mother's psyopathy and give you a chance at being a stable member of society," answered Maleficent. "Of course, even though you are capable of empathy, I believe, you're also just too chicken-shit most of the time to let yourself feel for others unless it benefits you, so, really, you inherited the worst of both of your parents and the silver lining in that cloud is pretty tarnished.

"But you do have Henry, if only because that Emma Swan turned out to be an equally shitty parent in different ways and so has very little moral ground to stand on to challenge you for custody, particularly considering the revelations about her future past behavior as a pirate-loving skank who dragged the boy to The Underworld and then woefully neglected him for the next ten years. Poor boy. Ignored by his adoptive mother the first ten, ignored by his birth mother the next while you allowed it because, of course, you must have enjoyed being the one he went to, his primary mother, rather than seeing the boy was hurting for his other mother's neglect and telling her to get her priorities straight and dump her sex toy. You're threatened by the fake memories you gave them both, that they're better than Henry's real ones."

Regina harumphed and crossed her arms.

Maleficent rolled her eyes again. "Well, don't worry, they're not. At least for her. These walls are thin and she's emotionally traumatized by having entirely fraudulent memories of the past decade that portrayed her as a more caring version of you rather than herself, because even with that 'gift' you couldn't let Emma be Emma, couldn't give up that control."

"No, it's because I knew her history from Sydney's research and she was a complete fuck-up. There would have been no way to believably weave that persona with raising a child."

"Plus control."

"Okay, maybe. What are you a shrink now?" Regina grumbled. "And where are my clothes so I can get out of here?"

"You vanished them. No idea," the blonde shrugged while grabbing her room key and heading for the door. "Make sure housekeeping airs this place out. It smells like unwashed pirate and pussy."

"I have impeccable feminine hygiene!" Regina growled at the retreating sorceress, cursing under her breath, "Bitch."

Getting up, Regina summoned her suit, which arrived damp, muddy, and covered in pine needles. She banished the filth away and quickly got dressed, trying to put last night's presumed activities out of her mind - and the occasional actives of years ago, before she acquired Graham as her sex toy and Maleficent refused to continue their relationship in that capacity; the sorceress wouldn't attempt to put a stop to it, but she'd refused to condone or reward Regina for what she did to The Huntsman... even if he was a cold-blooded murderer until, for some reason, Snow White thawed his heart slightly.

Regina sighed and hated that she felt guilty for what she'd done to her old friend. Maleficent had been her only friend for a long time, and the only real mentor she'd had as well, but she was so desperate to cast the Dark Curse that when the sorceress stole that orb from Rumplestiltskin in an attempt to stop him after losing Lily, she nearly killed and then trapped Maleficent in dragon form for 28 years. It was a horrible thing to do to a friend, particularly one who had lost a child in the whole sordid plot that Rumple had set in motion between the Dark Curse itself and his fight with The Apprentice for magical supremacy over The Dark One. They were both pawns, and instead of seeing reason, Regina had victimized a fellow victim.

She couldn't bring back her father. And she couldn't bring back the years Maleficent lost with her daughter, a girl who'd clearly grown up into an even more maladjusted criminal loser than Emma. Sadly, even with none of her own light, Lily probably had a better chance of getting her shit together with Maleficent for a mother than Emma did with Snow and Charming, even with memories of a life ill-spent under their tutelage.

"I may be a bad parent," Regina said to her reflection, "but I am a better parent than Snow White."

It didn't have the same ring to it as, "Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" But as far as egotistically competitive remarks went, at least the facts backed it up. The Evil Queen she might have been for many years, but she genuinely did want to be a better mother than better liked than Snow White.

Honestly, at this point, that wasn't even hard!

"Ladies," Maleficent nodded to Snow and Emma on her way into the diner.

"Hey... how's Lily?" asked Emma.

"Still at the farm. She hasn't mastered her transformations yet. Perhaps if she had all of her magic..."

Maleficent didn't give them a chance to respond, leaving the diner while Snow looked guilty and Emma unsure.

"I don't think it's as easy as she wants to believe," Snow finally said after setting down her cup of cocoa.

"You just want to justify what you did by saying this town or our world needs me to be a savior," Emma countered. "Maybe they do, but it's still wrong that Lily has to fight to be good more than she should. She didn't make a choice to be tainted like Rumplestiltskin. Or Regina. Or even me. Not that I suppose I had the free will, really, did I? Anny darkness I carried around my whole life was only what rubbed off on me from others. It wasn't balancing anything, It just made me an asshole by magical proxy. It was preventing me from being me, so how could I ever hope to find my happy ending?"

Snow sighed and told her genuinely, "I'm sorry."

"I know you are."

"I made a lot of bad choices as your mother-"

"And I hope you can be better at this with my brother, but... I really don't need you to be my mother. I just... need a friend," Emma told her.

"Emma, I always wanted to be your friend," Snow insisted, "I just went about it wrong after the Curse broke. I had wanted so badly to be your mother, to raise you, and then I didn't do any of that, and here you were, this... almost complete stranger who didn't want to get close, to accept your family. It was... hard to accept on my end. I'd lost my mother, then I lost my daughter too."

"And I lost my mother and my son and my daughter was... she was a mistake that was never meant to exist and I haven't even come to terms with that really. It's just easier to pretend that she didn't exist," sighed Emma. "What a fucked up family we are, huh?"

"I don't think you've lost Henry. He's a teenager. He'll come around," Snow told her, "and what happened in that other timeline, Emma, the relationships you had... It seems you weren't entirely yourself. No one was, and-"

"I can't just pretend they didn't happen because it was a messed up universe," Emma cut her off. "The choices I made, I did those things without a soul. And considering Cora had Regina without a heart and she became a mass murderer, and her father was a psychopathic rapist... it's no wonder my daughter turned out to be a psycho who helped destroy the world. I was one step removed from being the mother of the antichrist, basically. I can't just pretend that was a bad dream."

"But you can learn from those mistakes, Emma."

"Which doesn't make me a good person!" argued Emma. "Learning from what you did to Lily and me, that doesn't just make you a good person, not when it ruined my life!"

The outburst drew a pained look from Snow who turned her cup in her hands. "I know that, Emma. My one selfish choice has lead to so much destruction, so much pain, for the people I love. And there's nothing I can do to make it right."

"There's nothing I can do to make right what I did either," Emma told her. "I didn't die a hero and get a second chance to fix things. I died a useless, pathetic death for my grandchild that was actually fathered by my own husband who was screwing my son's wife. I didn't even save her. She died. Everyone died. The choices I made, because I didn't save Neal, because I made all the selfish choices a savior shouldn't make, lead to the end of existence."

"But you're here," Snow pointed out. "You have a second chance to make the right choices."

"A chance that I'm still screwing up," grumbled Emma. "And it's not my chance. It's only because 'lucky' for us, our existence is actually some bullshit fiction that's not really real, or as real as everyone outside of this town. We're bound to that pen and that stupid stupid book. Everyone's stuck, who they are made up by their stories. Only, I was just a baby when the book stopped being written because of the Dark Curse, so I was supposed to change things. But I didn't. Instead I went to The Underworld for Hook, I helped Henry bring that awful quill back, made him The Author, and in doing so I trapped us both in bullshit stories, took away what free will we had. I destroyed the world instead of saving it."

Snow let out a breath and mused, "So, that nonsense Ruby and Tinkerbell were going on about is true. We aren't real."

"We're sort of real. We just... don't have souls that go to Heaven. We're... inferior creations," Emma snorted. "And I don't know how to fix that. I thought... when Neal came back, that maybe us getting a second chance would be the way to do it, like true love broke the Curse the first time. But everything I did... Neal's too disgusted by my past and future past actions to trust me, let alone feel true love for me."

"That doesn't mean with time you won't gain his trust and rekindle that love," Snow stated. "I know our world has a tendency to speed things along, to fall in love in a day. And you're right that's not how love really works. Or it's not supposed to. Your father and I... I suppose we were written that way, and everyone else was too, including you and Hook in that other timeline when you got inserted into The Book in the past, right? But you and Neal, that wasn't in any magical book, that was real. And real doesn't happen over night."

"Sometimes it doesn't happen at all," sighed Emma. "I don't think he's going to forgive me. And it's all my fault. I'd buried my love so deep. I had... one moment in Neverland when I let it out, but I shoved it back down so hard I couldn't even let him see it," she lamented. "I told him that I'd rather he'd stayed dead. I think that's where I lost him. No matter what I really meant, I think that's where we ended. I chose his death, his not being there for our son, over facing the pain of real emotions, real love. I chose all the shallow shit after that, and it didn't help, and that's a declaration I can't take back. It was my first chance to choose him selflessly, to choose love, and I didn't. And then I didn't even grieve, so it's like I didn't care, and that's what he sees. Me giving up on him. Me not caring that he was gone."

"It's never too late to choose love, Emma," Snow told her. "It's never too late to make up for your mistakes."

Grimacing, Emma responded, "Yeah, you say that, but the thing is? I'm not good with love. Or fixing my mistakes. I feel sometimes like I don't really know what love is, like I don't know if what I feel is what love is supposed to feel like, or if it's just... desperation and fear or lust and obsession... I think my childhood really messed me up so I don't even realize half the time I'm even screwing up let alone have a clue how to fix the damage."

Snow gave her a guilt-ridden, despondent look. "I'm so sorry, Emma. If I'd known you were going to grow up so... unhappy, with so little love... and all because of the selfish choices I made, I never would have had that spell cast. And maybe all the speeches about love and happy endings are my way of... desperately hoping something can fix all of those mistakes, that if you can find your happily ever after, a love like mine and your father's, then it will... lessen my guilt, it will mean it's not too late to fix things."

"But it won't, and it is," Emma told her. "It's like Henry in the other timeline thinking if he could write Cruella back to life it would make me no longer a killer. But bringing someone back doesn't undo the act that killed them, it doesn't remove that dark spot. And maybe you can actually do that too with the magical stroke of a pen, but our lives were an endless loop of magical loopholes that meant we never had to face the consequences of our actions. But that's not how life is supposed to work. You screw up, someone gets hurt.. And it's supposed to impact you in a way that changes you. And you shouldn't be able to magic it all into sunshine and rainbows. You can't. It's all a sham, a trick, and it ultimately collapsed under the weight of all those lies, all of that denial. And I see it still happening, and I don't know how to change it, to do it right this time.

"You can't fix all your mistakes," Emma said sadly. "I got damaged because of them. I'm always going to be damaged. People talk about how you get out of the system, you get out of prison and you move on, you put the past behind you, but you don't really. I'm still in that group home. I'm still in that prison cell. And until I figure out how to get justice for everyone here, how to make sure all of the magical crap that ruined my life can't ruin Henry's or any one else's, I'm stuck there being alone, being nothing but a number, and it's time that I accept that."

"Emma, you are not a number!" Snow gasped. "You're a wonderful, brave, smart, kind woman-"

"I'm not," Emma interrupted. "You guys give me all these titles. The Savior. A Princess. I've been The Dark One. But none of those are really me, just what other people have made me. I guess I don't know what I am other than not happy. I don't think I've ever really been happy."

Snow looked at her sadly. "This may sound strange, but I do understand a little. Growing up... I was the Princess, the heir to the throne, and never given an option. Then my mother died and I was also supposed to live up to the pedestal my father had put her on - that now... I have to wonder if he was overcompensating for my benefit, that he didn't want me to realize what a sham their marriage was, how angry he still was at being conned into a union that cost him one with the woman he truly loved. He didn't want me to live with the truth of what my mother had done, so instead he made her this saint, this martyr I was always trying to be like and failing - because, of course, she wasn't real, so how could I?"

With a grimace, Snow continued, "I was so sure that my mother would be disappointed in me, in how I had failed our kingdom, how so many died because I wasn't able to fight Regina for so long, that I suppose I wanted to make sure you weren't... as weak as I was, indecisive, tempted by selfish things. And that's why I had that spell cast. I didn't want you hampered by my weaknesses, not when they could lead you down a path like Regina's. And I'm so sorry. I failed you, just as my mother failed me."

"Seems to be a pattern in this family," muttered Emma darkly.

"You're right," Snow conceded. "And we need to stop it. We both need to do better. I've spent too long struggling to fit these two versions of me together and failing to see how fractured this family is. That's why I need to let Mary Margaret go."

"Yeah, you really do. You can't be the real you plus the worst version of you tacked onto it," said Emma, "because that's double all your shittiest qualities which undermines all the good ones. That's what this town has been since the Curse broke: a bunch of people with Amplified Asshole Syndrome failing to do anything good because they're too busy trying to embrace the inner loser that Regina's happy ending brought out of them. And no body wants to take responsibility for all the bad shit that happens because of it. Anyone who even hints at getting a clue, at some character development, they get shot down, their self-reflection spackled over with a 'forget about it, guilt is too messy, true love is an end that justifies all means' speech. But guilt is supposed to be messy and nothing justifies everything, not even true love."

"That might be true. Love might not be able to solve every problem and erase every betrayal, but an honest heart, Emma, is happier than a deceitful one."

"But just as lonely," sighed Emma. "I am working on the honesty, though."

"Belle, I'm sorry," Rumplestiltskin pleaded at the brunet who was packing up the study in his house, the house that was supposed to be their house with the musty, dusty room filled with her favorite books.

"You're always sorry, Rumple," Belle countered. "And nothing changes. I thought with Baelfire back you'd give up this thirst for power, but I was wrong. Neal and Emma freed you from that vile curse and you want to bring it back? You're lucky I found the vault key before you succeeded."

"You don't understand," he grumbled, gripping his cane that he once again needed for his limp as he followed her to the front door. "You can't just 'destroy' The Dark One, Belle. Oh, you can destroy objects it uses to acquire human hosts. but destroying an evil that ancient and not of this world is beyond any mortal wizard's capabilities, so it certainly wasn't going to be accomplished by Baelfire's dimwitted ex and that vaudeville villain of a pretender king offing Merlin with some spark from a progenitor of the gods. Nothing good comes of mortals wielding the divine."

"Or the demonic?" Belle countered. "I'm done with you twisting words to sound like your actions aren't self-serving. Maybe it's the magic you brought here conflicting with the magic of this world, but you were more honest, had more empathy and humility when you were covered in scales and giggled insanely at your own jokes. Good-bye, Rumplestiltskin. I'll send the divorce papers in the mail!"

With a sigh, the sometimes Mr. Gold watched the never officially-on-paper Mrs. Gold stride in her stripper heals and so short it was illegal in some towns skirt down the sidewalk to the green Gremlin she'd acquired off some poor sap who'd died in some magical calamity and drive off.

"Good luck finding a lawyer," he grumbled spitefully.

Rumple was growing frustrated with Belle. Probably it was her mother who'd instilled in her some stupid notion of perfection she had to aspire toward because of said woman's death. That's always how it was. Snow White tried to be so good she ended up cursing her own unborn child to a life of misery out of fear of not being as good as her own tragically dead mother who spoiled her rotten. It worked in reverse, of course. Regina and Zelena tried to be so bad, just like the mother who treated her horribly/abandoned her, that she ended up a victim of her own plotting.

Of course, Rumple also realized this worked with fathers and sons. He'd wanted so badly not to be his father that he screwed up his own son's life by becoming a selfish prick in his own way. And much as he wanted to believe that he took on the Dark One curse out of love to protect Baelfire, he knew that was just one reason and underlying every decision he made was the crippling childhood fear of being a coward, powerless to change his fate or that of those he loved, "fate's eternal bitch" as his son had described his own life more recently.

Limping into the kitchen to make tea, ignoring the chipped cup in the china cabinet, Rumple wondered how Baelfire/Neal was doing. They'd not spoken much since the one pleasant family dinner they managed. His focus, after being un-Dark-One'd had been on the threat of that entity finding a way into this world with no way to control it. Now that his heart was pure, he could contain it for another good 300 years if necessary, though he'd hoped it wouldn't take quite that long. Finding a way to extend Belle's life would be tricky, even with such powers.

Well, unless he made some sort of deal with Hades, but that god already had that creepy old healer's contract that he stupidly signed when Baelfire was sick, so he couldn't even have children with Belle until it was ripped up, and he certainly wasn't going to help Hades take over Olympus - which he could only imagine was that immortal's intention now that he almost certainly had Cora's most psychotic daughter at his side.

For being heroes and given everything Emma had been through in that other timeline and talked about, they were pathetically myopic about what the alterations to this one could entail. One didn't need clairvoyance to realize there were dangers ahead, that Storybrooke would almost certainly be threatened by those two lunatics. And if The Underworld was unleashed on this town and that purgatory left unsupervised, then the Dark One would not be as defeated as they believed while all those who'd played host with their soul-corrupting insanity would run wild upon the town while Zelena's chosen were sent to The Underworld in a life-for-a-life exchange. Hadn't Swan said that was Hook's plan? Yet none of them were concerned!

"Idiots," sighed Rumple. "Even my poor Belle. If only she would embrace her darkness. Yet she refuses to acknowledge that Lacey was created from a part of her..."

Lounging on the floor, an orange tabby gave him a look that seemed to say, "You know you're talking to cat, right?"

"Stop giving me that look, Antonio Banderas," snapped Rumple. "And I won't be cleaning your litter box either. Belle can have you in the divorce. She's the one who wanted to rescue you in the first place. All you do is get hair everywhere and leave dead birds on the doormat."

Antonio Banderas just went back to licking his privates, or what was left of them after Belle had the cat neutered.

Rumple felt neutered. He'd been with the darkness for so long, that it had become his only true friend. His friend that made him betray his family and trick and murder innocent people. But still, it was better than being the crazy old cripple who talked to a cat!

"I know, I know," Rumple told the feline who'd gotten up and started walking away, tale swishing dismissively. "Therapy."

AN: Is Antonio Banderas Puss in Boots? Naw, he's just a cat. I fully expect "Puss" to be a character from The Land of Untold Stories who exists solely for Hook to make a vagina joke. As someone's fake script tease of Hook in search of Emma penned, "Sorry, you're not the pussy I'm looking for." Also, didn't I write back in Part I that Metatron gave Emma back her darkness? I think so. But she's still carrying around Lily's light. At least Lily's no longer extra dark... I guess... or something.

Next up: While The Underworld threat looms unknown to Emma and her ignorant companions, the gang tries to get some of their shit together! At least they're trying!