CHAPTER FOUR

THE FALL

It happens on Charley's eighth birthday, the fall that leaves her badly broken and unconscious.

Emma sits at her daughter's bedside as one of the rudimentary healers who was made a nurse in Storybrooke tries another poultice to reduce the fever and swelling. Magic could heal this, Rumplestiltskin conceded, but magic's price is always highest when using it to fight mortality. Look what had transpired of her mother splitting her heart to outwit magic's required sacrifice? Instead of Emma stopping Zelena, she lost her magic and a universe was destroyed... not that her parents will ever see it that way, of course.

Or see the parallel in using magic here, when Rapunzel's parents used magic to cure her of a terminal disease, magic soon after killed her older brother. Because they are special, their family always different and better and protected by beneficent gods.

But magic does not take kindly to mortals who try to act as gods, expecting that ambition and cleverness or virtue and compassion can exempt them of the consequences for violating natural laws.

It weighs on Emma that given magic preserved Neal's body and made what would otherwise have been impossible possible - this might be the price.

Or maybe it's just the natural law of gravity that's to blame here.

If only Charley hadn't climbed that tower...

If only her mother hadn't found Charley drawing in the solarium and insisted she needed to get outside. There's no way she ran off during hide-and-seek to climb that tower without some kind of bullying to spur her on. Charley has Neal's interest in more solitary pursuits without that carefree nature. She's an introvert like Emma with the awkwardness that had often gotten her bullied as a child, but lacking the hereditary skills of a warrior to fight back. It makes her a target for Emma's brother and sister who are not the kindest of children, something her parents refuse to see.

By the time Dr. Whale arrives with the setting sun, Charley's condition is grim, and he declares that she needs surgery for internal bleeding and to reset broken bones before sepsis sets in, if it hasn't already. She'll likely need a transfusion, or least there is a risk of hemorrhage. Prenatal testing back in Storybrooke already told that Emma's then unborn child, like her son, did not share her blood type and so he selects Henry as a donor after rejecting Killian's offer, based on the vertigo he's been recovering from since his last naval assignment.

It's the nurse assisting Whale who interjects, "But, Doctor, Henry does not have the same blood type as Mr. Jones."

Frowning at the nurse, the Doctor insists, "You're mistaken. I treated them both in Storybrooke."

"I handled all of the charting," she presses and goes into some medical-ease rant about blood typing and prenatal tests, following up with, "And regardless, while he was cuffed to a bed in the ER, you joked that his blood type was his only positive redeeming quality."

"Hey, that's right," David recalls, "We all took bets on whether or not you could stick 'hepatitis' before the 'A'."

Other than an annoyed look from Killian at the comment, there's a round of confused looks from everyone, trying to sort out the inconsistencies.

"Well, someone has to be remembering something wrong," groans Henry.

"Or," interjects Regina with a smirking expression, "someone is lying."

"Why would someone lie about a blood type?" asks Robin, bewildered.

She crosses her arms and declares, "To cover up infidelity, obviously."

"Regina!" Snow gasps. "How can you accuse Emma of such a thing?"

"You cheated."

"I was cursed!"

"And she was cursed into a union with an infatuated stalker who has a MILF fetish for women in a single family line," Regina huffs, with a sour look at the pirate she'd never warmed toward. "Eventually, common sense must have cleared the fog of passion. I mean, surely," she scoffs, "I can't be the only one that failed to notice the more time Emma spent with Captain Guyliner here, the more she went from being a justice-minded we're-all-family do-gooder who'd do anything for her son to a rules-mean-nothing Rumplestiltskin-is-evil pirate's wench who couldn't get away from Henry fast enough after her time trip to fuck her pirate. She might as well have become a brunet and changed her name to Milah."

"That's unfair," Killian interjects.

Regina snaps back, "Only because she obviously woke up 'round about the time she got knocked up and realized that she'd let her 'true love' transform her into a substitute his first whore. I know what it's like to look in the mirror one day and realize you've turned into a replica of the heartless bitch who fucked your husband first. Of course, I wasn't actually sleeping with my husband when I took a lover on the side..."

"No, you're just sleeping with the man whose wife you killed before your sister also killed her," David points out with a snort and throws a look at Robin, amending, "Who considers it honorable to stay with their rapist who murdered their wife?"

"A lot was happening!" Robin exclaims. "It was confusing!"

""I didn't 'take a lover on the side'," Emma speaks up.

Snow puffs her chest up and gives Regina a sour look. "Just because you can't see that they're true love-"

"But," Emma continues, avoiding her husband's eyes, "Killian isn't Charley's father."

There's complete silence then and looks of disbelief from all save Regina, Whale, and Killian, who's expression is stony and unreadable.

"Emma," Snow utters first, a look of disappointment and confusion finally settling into a desperation to justify the revelation, "if you had too much to drink and had a one night stand... I know you tend to... drink... a lot... instead of dealing with your emotions..."

"You're calling me an alcoholic?" Emma exclaims, "and you're using that to justify a one night stand? Just because you got drunk and slept with Whale-"

"I WAS CURSED!" she huffs. "And that is not the point! Emma, we're all just trying to understand-"

"It wasn't a one night stand," Emma cuts her off. "It wasn't an affair." There's a beat and she can see the wheels turning toward the next most obvious option and rolls her eyes. "It wasn't that either. You think I'd actually have some rapist's child? I may be part of this fucked up family, but I'm not that sick," she says and to Regina and Robin, "and, yeah, look in the mirror sometime. Your marriage is a creepy-as-fuck trainwreck. And maybe you both deserve that, but just wait until your niece-slash-daughter grows up, marries his step-sister-slash-half-sister and goes Mordred your asses!"

Turning toward her parents, she amends, "And what made you even think I wanted another child in the first place?"

That secret seems to shock them even more the first, even baffling Regina enough to kill whatever snide remark was on the tip of her tongue, and it's just another reminder of how different the world is in which these people were raised. Angry, Emma snaps at them all, "None of you get it. Not one of you had kids for the right reasons. And then you neglected the shit out of them. I never wanted to be like you, any of you. But you pushed and you nagged and it was abundantly clear that the only way we'd have something even remotely resembling a familial connection was if I stopped trying to do what I wanted and just gave in, because all I ever wanted was a family, and it was just... easier to accept this fake feminist fairy tale bullshit than every day seeing the looks of disappointment and listening to the incessant nagging."

"Why..." David begins, shocked and confused, "didn't you say anything?"

"Why do you think?" Emma sighs, and glances at her mother, shaking her head. "You were there in Neverland, in the Echo Caves. I realized that you were never going to really be my parents, not the way I wanted, no matter what I call you, because I can never be the child you raised. All I had left was to try to be one of your... princess groupies," she says to her mother, "who believes in falling forever in love with strangers and first sight and marrying them even if they're assholes, because, apparently, fate or destiny or some bullshit magic whatever.

"Well, you know what?" she continues, her voice raising, "it isn't fate. And it sucks to wake up one day and realize you don't actually know the person you married, that you were living in a story book delusion that everyone shoved down your throat again and again until you were practically brainwashed. That's what 'true love' is. Or all it has to be. Just... believing you truly love someone. It can be based entirely on lies or denial or pretty much any selfish motivation as long as you convince yourself it's real. Killian needed me to be his one true love or he'd have nothing to live for, so that's a powerful placebo affect. But it's not really love."

It's then that Killian turns away and heads for the door. Emma catches the faint look of hurt on his face, but she doesn't follow, and she's too angry and afraid and exhausted to even really care how hurt he is. Instead, she continues to stare down her parents, amending, "Whatever true love actually is, it's not the altruistic fantasy you all seem to think it is. I had real love and destiny doesn't bend over backwards and smote all of the competition to make it happen. So don't you goddamn lecture me on morality when you treat the sacrificial victims of your perfect soulmate love like some merit badges you earned to prove how perfect your love is. And I'm sorry if my being imperfect disappoints you. But I'd rather be myself, with all of my potential for darkness intact, than some super-powered magical messiah created out of your own selfish inability to parent your children. Which maybe you should try to actually do, because my brother and sister are probably the reason my daughter's going to die!"

With those words, Emma finally turns and leaves. Whale can fill them in on the dirty details.

AN: Regina's hypocrisy annoys me. It's so hard to like her character when she's just so self-centered; and now Emma is being written the same way.